April 2021

 So. From my past posts on this blog, I'm not afraid to buy nerd stuff. Mainly it's been sonic screwdrivers which have been mostly for cosplay, but a few weeks ago I bought something that didn't have anything to do with Doctor Who or cosplay (or even the whoniverse for that matter). Last year, I found this guy named Mike Starwalker on social media (instagram and youtube mainly), and what he does is he not only choreographs lightsaber fights with dueling lightsabers, he also reenacts lightsaber fights from the Star Wars movies shot-for-shot, and it's pretty impressive honestly. 

If I've gotten you curious about him, this is his page on youtube, and you should DEFINITELY check it out, it's freaking LEGIT. 

I don't do impulse purchases very often when it comes to something like a dueling lightsaber, but I was really liking the workouts, and I needed something more than what I had, which was a knockoff version of a lightsaber from walmart I bought for halloween last year, and after I got annoyed with that one cause of how cheaply made it was, I found one on amazon for $25 but it turned out that I hadn't done any "scale-for-size" research and had ended up getting a tiny, padawan-sized one which I felt kinda stupid about for a bit, but you live and you learn, I guess. So I did some research and further searching around on amazon and I found this. 

           

The price on it now is $110 (probably a bit more with tax) but when I found it it was $87 (and $95 with tax, but it was worth it). I purchased the one with the black handle (called "gun" for some weird reason), and a few days of impatiently waiting later, it finally, finally, FINALLY came in the mail. 

I would be lying if I said that when it was put by the front door by the mailman that I took it inside calmly, built it calmly and didn't lose my mind. The only composure I had was when I was getting it from outside, and then I fangirled like a maniac. I think what made the experience is that they had a little baggy of tools (an allen wrench and retention screws), which basically made me feel like I was an actual Jedi putting their lightsaber together, which is why I was half crying and half laughing with happiness. I may have scared my mom and slightly annoyed my brother who was playing a video game in the living room because I was making too much noise, but I have no regrets. Now on to showing you my purchase and lemme tell ya it is BEAUTIFUL. 

Here it is in the brilliant green of Luke's lightsaber from Return of The Jedi. It only has one button so I'm still trying to figure out how to switch the colors (of which there are 5: green, purple, red, blue, and pink), but because technology and my brain don't work well together sometimes, there are struggles, mostly on my end, especially when trying to figure out how many controlling aspects just one button can have on something like a lightsaber. 

I filmed this the day I got it, and the color that it was set in was purple (the color of Mace Windu's lightsaber, which automatically made me feel like SUCH a badass), so here is almost 40 seconds of me just marveling at the sound effects and just the full beauty of it like a nerd. 

Lately I've been doing some practice with it, and here's where I'm at progress wise.

I'm not "Obi-Wan Kenobi" good, but I feel pretty proud of the progress I've been making. The hilt of the dueling saber is actual metal and the "blade" is hard plastic, so the whole thing is weighted, which is a pretty good workout arm-wise. Also a few months ago I wouldn't have been able to do that twirl at the end so I've come a long way for sure. 

Also because I've been inspired while wearing/holding pop culture items and taking selfies, I decided to take another nerdy selfie in the dark in my room, and surprisingly it turned out pretty well. 

I honestly have no idea why my selfie game any other time straight-up sucks, except when I have pop culture stuff to take a picture with. But you know what they say, don't look a gift horse in the mouth, so I may as well just leave it at that. 

So I've seen a lot of videos on Mike Starwalker's channel as well as the stuff he posts on Instagram, and he's broken down each move into numbered sequences, which has made things pretty easy for me to learn which has been nice. But hopefully by the end or mid-point of 2021, I want to be able to have learned this. 

He's definitely going REALLY incredibly fast, but I've figured out how I can start learning the moves. I used the screen recording feature on my phone to grab this video that he posted on instagram, and then it was saved to my photos. Now I can watch it and take notes on the moves he's doing. I also need to figure out how I can slow it down so that it's easier for me to learn, cause for right now I have to manually scroll through the video slowly so that it's slowed down (I might be somewhat technology-savvy but I still have more to learn). 

Will post more about this later, I'm so excited to show you my progress on learning how to use it! 

Thanks for reading, and happy wednesday!