The Weekly Warfare   Musings martial from across the SCA

It’s damnably strange to say this here of all places, but melee has lost a lot of its charm for me.  I really can’t say I missed fighting at WotW, and at practice I find I’d much rather work on my tourney game than on melee.

Maybe I’ve just been off the wagon for too long and forgotten the rush, but I have a hard time finding enthusiasm to get out there and run people down like swine.

Maybe it’s the season; I always get a little worn out and crispy when the days get shorter.

But this had has a negative effect beyond the borders of my skin.  I’m not terribly interested in running melee training at practice.  We’ve got a shit ton of people, it’s the time to do it, but when people look to me to organize melee I just think “meh”.  Part of this may just be that I feel the need to improve the newcomers’ skill first, but historically I’ve thrown newcomers into melee at their first practice.  I’m not sure if that was a mistake, or that having this many newcomers in a melee would be counterproductive.  Probably both.

Then again some of it, maybe most of it, goes back to this summer where a series of conversations left me feeling like the things I enjoy most about melee were Not What Is Done.¹ Instead, I feel the expectation or even the demand is that as a Leader I sacrifice my enjoyment to the Greater Good at melee events.  Which just makes melee a chore.  Frankly I got enough of those to take care of at home, so I might as well stay there.

At this point it is now my duty to look in the mirror and say “Go cry, Emo Fencer.”  Put on my big boy braies and figure out the solution, rather than moping about the problem.  So breaking it down:

1)Melee feels like a chore.  Well, it’s time to recognize that it shouldn’t be and that, like teaching a single student, I can’t let myself put in any more effort than the other half of the equation does.  No more suffering alone.  So I’ll kick other people into leadership roles (hi, Letia!).  At events… it will be what it will be, but if I feel inordinately imposed upon I’ll speak up.

2)Practicing melee with the newcomers does not seem like a good idea.  We’re going to fix that: Because they lack skill to fence well in melee, we’re going to separate the fencing from the melee training.  Instead, Glove Melee.  No masks, no weapons, just maneuver, range, and communication.

We’ll see if this works.  It’s about the best strategy I can come up with, but I realize it may not be great.  I don’t know that I can brain my way to a better one, but am willing to take all suggestions for better methods.

I do miss the dreams about woods battles.

¹Master Dunstan le Herryngmogere has identified my superpower as “leaving no line uncrossed”.  He meant it in a social sense (“What would be a horribly inappropriate thing to say- oh, what Wistric just said”), but truth is on the melee field I feel better on the far side of the enemy’s line.  It is where I was meant to be.