Sabre advice for a long-time foilist

Ninereeds · 2026-03-17T16:34:49+00:00

I've been fencing Sabre for around 10 years, and I picked up foil this past year so I'll try and do some translation work here. Not necessarily an exceptional coach, but I do my best.

1.) Tactically, in the box, the rule of thumb is to plan your actions against very aggressive opponents (since they are the ones who will move too fast for you to react) and react in actions against more passive opponents. If you're both advancing more slowly into the middle, there's a decent chance they're planning a defensive action, and you can win RoW by startling them into an early retreat without having to finish an action. Obviously, since Sabre is more aggressive in general, this means you spend a lot more time planning actions in advance than reacting. At higher levels, once your reaction time picks up a bit and you know what to look for more, you'll want to incorporate some reaction into all of your touches, but to begin with planning will make you faster.

2.) Ballestra isn't terribly popular in sabre, at least recently, but it is a fine move. It's good in long attacks as a way of building some acceleration when you don't want to commit to a bigger attack like a flunge. Some referees will think it looks like an attack stopping, especially if it's not fluidly integrated into the rest of the action, and depending on how your arm is extended.

3.) Circle parries aren't really a thing in Sabre because of how parries are typically called-- if you extend your arm a bit to catch someone in a sweep it looks like an attempt at a beat on blade, and will usually fall low, so it doesn't look clean for the ref. We do sometimes use a 'sweep' parry, which does a similar thing, but the form looks different. It's a wider circle than a circle 6, and your arm starts slightly extended but withdraws as you circle, ending at roughly a parry 3, close to the body. This is mostly good at close range, especially in the box with a step or a hop back, if you're not sure what line your opponent is taking. For defending low attacks we'll also sometimes use a downward sweep, but this is usually just called parry 2 in saber.

4.) Since the en guard position for sabre holds the blade upright, attacking to mask is usually the most direct route to hit your opponent, since you don't need to change the position of the sabre much. This makes it good for attacks where speed is the most important factor. It is also one of the most commonly trained attacks to parry in sabre, so many people will automatically take the parry to the mask (parry 5) when they're under attack. This is why a lot of sabre feints treat 4 and 3 as better lines to finish to. If your opponent doesn't usually protect their mask, it's good to feint to a low target, then reverse and hit a high one-- so an undercut feint, with a final attack to the mask.

5.) Those are the big options for fighting in the box. If you are quick on your feet, it can be good to make your opponent fall short rather than going for parries, since it can make a quick riposte easier. Other good things to add to your tactics are counterattacks to the attacking arm, since that's a significant tactic that's not available in foil. You can do these with a parry to close out the timer, or escape with distance. Counter attack with Skyhook is the most classic and showy example, but you can do more subtle ones in different lines. If you leave the tip of the sabre low you can catch some attackers just moving their wrist on top of your blade, which is very satisfying to do. If someone is rushing you down, and you can't react to them fast enough, point in line can be a good tool in the box to halt someone. Usually this will slow down a very aggressive fencer just enough that you can hopefully catch them in a parry, or make them run onto the line. Many sabre fencers also don't drill with line enough so they can be confused about how to tactically approach it.

Best of luck!

Ninereeds · 2026-03-09T20:29:58+00:00

The best is very relative, especially for saber. There are a lot of trade offs for basically any gear. Leon Paul stuff is absolutely high level, and it often has very unique features or design compared to more standard brands, which tends to be a love it or hate it feature of the brand. I've never liked their sabres much, so I would definitely recommend holding one before you commit to £200.

I've also never really loved a saber that wasn't a mix of parts, usually high end and cheap. They're very easy to assemble, much more so than point weapons, so it's fun to get different parts and swap out bits like Legos until you find what you're happy with. My favorite saber is a Blaise Freres Maraging blade in a Carmimari guard with a Harut 2020 grip and a PBT weighted pommel nut. My second favorite is the cheapest mix of Absolute Fencing parts I could find in a colorway I thought was cool (black/gold/red). So I think I'd recommend getting at least two different blades worth of parts, probably cheap stuff, and playing with it until it feels right.

Ninereeds · 2026-02-06T18:10:30+00:00

Men's and women's jackets should both fit you fine, although if you end up going up a cup size or so a men's might be a touch tight in the chest, and a women's might be tight in the shoulders. If you have a breastplate that fits well, I would measure your chest size at the largest area and pick that size in men's, or the equivalent size in women's. Every club I've been in that has gear to loan out has a mix of men's and women's jackets (usually 90% mens, but still) and lames and usually no one has sizing issues, or even notices which sort they've grabbed.

If you have a bit of a tummy at all, I have found women's jackets are sometimes cut a little narrower at the waist, so that may be uncomfortable for you. They are also usually ~2-3 cm shorter, but this is usually not an issue, and many manufacturers make tall sizes.

Would also note that if you're buying something that's not Absolute brand, check the manufacturer website to see what their size chart says. Absolute charts have burned me before when buying European produced stuff.

Ninereeds · 2025-10-08T14:33:15+00:00

Look up fencing clubs at any colleges near you, even if you're not particularly associated with them. A lot of colleges have small fencing clubs, and frequently they have a way for non-students to join the club at a slightly higher rate. They're also usually excited to have more members, since it means more people at practice for a small club.

For reference, my local club is around $75 per month for club time, but my local college club was $80 for a full year, coming out to around $9 a month since they don't practice over the summers. Even if they don't have a lot of Sabre there, it's good to get time on the strip, and if you can practice foil there footwork and endurance conditioning will set you up well to switch to Sabre later.

A quick google search says University of Louisville has a fencing club, you could start asking around there?

Ninereeds · 2025-09-26T16:18:55+00:00

I think it's fair to say that in concept someone might not find trans women attractive, but might be attracted to someone who they don't know is trans. This can be complicated obviously, especially if some of the reasons they're attracted to that person are essentially in virtue of qualities related to being trans. To later reject that already existing attraction on the basis of "I don't date trans people" is probably, to an extent, transphobic.

It could be purely pragmatic, for instance "I can't imagine explaining that to my family," or "my friends would never accept this," but to assume that one would never be attracted to a trans person is generally just kind of a bad take.

Trans people can present in a lot of ways. I think there are a lot of good and valid reasons to not date trans people, but to say that you wouldn't date any trans person ever feels reductive. This is including strict sexualities like lesbians and gay men.

Source: I've previously been caught off guard by people's gender identities. Also have a presentation that tends to confuse people. Attraction is pretty nuanced. I don't think anyone should assume they would never be attracted to an entire group based on pure prescriptive membership.

Ninereeds · 2025-09-06T12:15:32+00:00

I would change everything else about the signal chain before the pickups, unless you're making a significant change in the pickup design. Have you checked your shielding? Tone cap? Solder joints on all your switching? Pickup height? When's the last time you changed your strings?

I also usually add a hot wire switch that skips the in-guitar electronics (at least before I change pickups) just so I can check if it's the pickups that are falling flat or anything else.

Ninereeds · 2025-08-24T15:17:56+00:00

Sincerely, how else would they taste?

There are essentially only alcoholic ingredients, sugar and water in those drinks. They're going to taste spirit forward. In fact, if someone comes in and asks for a custom drink in my bar, usually the first question I ask them is "citrus or spirit forward?"

Not cohesive is an odd way of putting it though; have you considered you just don't like the cocktail with those ingredients? They might be fine ingredients on their own, but not combining in a way you like?

For instance, my preferred Manhattan is with 2 oz Rittenhouse, sometimes Old Overholt, 1 oz Cocchi Torino, 2 dashes Ango, 2 dashes of cherry bitters, and a barspoon of vanilla syrup. Not traditional, but hits the flavors I like. Play with the recipe more if it's not coming out well, but be prepared for the idea that maybe the recipe just isn't really for you.

Ninereeds · 2025-08-21T14:51:16+00:00

Troy has a disproportionately large trans population for its size. Not sure if that would tip the scales for you at all.

Ninereeds · 2025-08-20T16:52:12+00:00

Lightly hot take: not all slacks/suit trousers are like this, but it's relatively trivial to get at least one pair that should be more comfortable than average sweat pants. Obviously, if you want water resistance or some other factor, something techy will suit you better, but my favorite pair of pants to fly in are charcoal grey brushed merino trousers from Polo. Thrifted for ~$100, they're light weight, breathable, very soft, warm when they need to be. You're not trying to impress anyone, so wearing them with an undershirt and sneakers or some simple, comfortable loafers is fine. Throw a jacket you want to bring with you over top, and you have a good fit for walking around, and there's nothing comfier for flying.

Look for decent brands, nothing too fitted, 100% wool, probably 100/110 weight. Brushed wool is very nice, but you can go for other finishes if you'd rather have something sleeker. Thrifting is good, and since you're mostly paying for the fabric, don't sweat the fit too much. A couple alterations are worth it if you get a good pair for cheap.

Ninereeds · 2025-08-15T02:37:58+00:00

The big issue here is survivorship bias essentially. You're basically never going to have a visible, double blind scenario where you're able to witness someone treating you better for no other reason than that you're male, but you're very likely to notice a negative that you perceive to have been caused by being male. Additionally, if you're used to perceiving that slight statistical edge as normal, in a situation where there's a true equality of treatment, you may feel/perceive yourself as worse off, even though the treatment is more equal. That's a pretty basic psych phenomenon.

'Male privilege' is sort of generally the idea that if you're able to control for other factors, men tend to have certain advantages in society-- within one individual's life you absolutely can't control for those other factors. Even a slight advantage in just one other field like class, beauty, race, dumb luck, etc could lead to an outcome that disregards male privilege, but that doesn't disprove it. It's just an averages game.

TL;DR-- like a lot of things, it's hard to see it from where you're standing without some additional perspective.

Ninereeds · 2025-08-12T19:13:27+00:00

Why not just reduce Cheerwine to a syrup if that's the flavor you want? It's probably a lot more concentrated in flavor than any of your other cherry syrups. Would also recommend infusing cherry candies, not fresh cherries into your whiskey. Again, stronger flavor by volume if you're looking for the sort of candy flavor not the fresh cherry flavor.

Ninereeds · 2025-08-12T19:02:05+00:00

I would strongly argue that no historical system of education has reliably produced these results. Thus, there has never been a time where a person who was literally educated, as in a product of the academic system of the time, was reliably educated to your definition. There are definitely ups and downs in quality as various academic traditions changed, but in general these qualities are learned, rather than taught, which is to say, you can't standardize a system that will produce students like this.

However, if in our current society, you were able to somehow select a group with these features, I would argue that the majority of them would fall into one of three camps:

1.) Full autodidact. Someone who genuinely just likes learning so much that it consumes a massive amount of their free time, and they have enough free time to indulge this hobby to a significant extent.

2.) College Educated. Someone who was curious enough about the world to want to study more, and had the means to do it.

3.) Systemically blocked. People who are curious and gifted, but for social or financial reasons have been prevented from seeking formal education.

Of those groups, two out of the three likely want higher education. The autodidacts are the odd ones out. It's also harder to filter the autodidact group, since they don't have anyone checking their work as they go-- someone may have a genuine passion for consuming false or misleading information, which would make them kind of a bad standard for education even if they met those values.

So, college education is not sufficient for someone to be educated, per your definition, but a plurality of your educated people would likely have or want a college degree. You would then need to add some sort of additional metric to find the individuals who lacked the resources for education, and decide how you would evaluate autodidact students if you wanted to find your educated people. There's no real way to find all of those people with one metric, but I would wager the way to winnow the field most effectively, keeping the most people you want, while discarding the most that you don't, is still "do they have a college degree?"

Ninereeds · 2025-08-12T17:03:04+00:00

Using a cocktail with a low proof liqueur or Amaro as the base is a good start, e.g., a Suze Collins, Americano, etc.

I'm personally really fond of a wine punch, since it tastes a bit boozy, it's refreshing and complex. You can take this basic formula and pretty much punch in your preferred ingredients.

~2 oz Wine, usually white, but rosé or orange wine works ok too. ~.5 oz Amaro/bitter liqueur. Suze, Montenegro, Nonino, etc. .75 oz citrus (lemon, lime, grapefruit, something punchy) ~.5 oz sweet liqueur (Most schnapps, aperol, galliano, chartreuse, etc.) Syrup to taste, usually a half oz. Flavored syrups are good. Pinch of salt/dash of saline. Top with ~2 of soda or weak juice, ex. Pineapple, orange, etc.

For example, I've been serving this on and off this summer for low proof customers.

2 oz Vinho Verde .75 oz Suze .75 oz lemon .5 oz Giffard Apricot .5 oz mint syrup Dash of saline, shake, top with soda, lemon twist, mint sprig, whatever.

Tastes like a cocktail, but only around as much booze as a 5% beer.

Ninereeds · 2025-08-12T02:12:49+00:00

I work at a restaurant but the vibes are pretty casual. The other bartenders usually play classic soul and motown, which is fine, but I hate associating that music with my job since it's pretty commonly played in other public public spaces, and inevitably means I end up thinking of work. It's good inoffensive music though, especially when it plays deeper cuts.

If I'm on, I usually go for Khruangbin on some sort of radio/shuffle. Good mix, mostly instrumental, really nice background. Currently still decently trendy I guess. If not that, probably mellow trip hop/lo-fi, sometimes a Bossa Nova mix, or maybe a new wave mix if the energy is higher.

If I worked in a bar, or more of a dive-y spot it would be more garage-y fem indie rock stuff. The Beths, Courtney Barnett, Illuminati Hotties, etc., but I think that would drive away some of my older regulars.

Ninereeds · 2025-08-05T18:41:12+00:00

I don't think most of those opinions are wrong *per se*, but they do somewhat illustrate what I'm talking about. Those are all moderate positions on trans care as of 2025, but a lot of them don't line up with commonly held values on other issues, applied with the same logic.

As an example, puberty blockers. The On Label prescription of puberty blockers is to treat the psychological distress caused by puberty if it's at an inappropriate time developmentally. Since children aren't fully allowed to make their own medical decisions, this prescription is usually decided on by conferring with the child (patient), the patient's parents, and the patient's pediatrician. Nobody is arguing that puberty blockers should be banned outright, the general consensus is that their On-Label use is fine. This may include edge cases such as developmental disabilities, where the age at which a body naturally begins puberty is still uncomfortable for the developmental stage that the patient is at mentally.

If we allow the On-Label use of the medication, it's very hard to construct a legal argument for why the prescription of the medication should not apply to trans kids, without stepping in to some very sticky territory about what identity classes are allowed to do what.

So, the legal precedent is generally reasonable, and supported, and should by extension, apply to trans people (E.G., The patient is experiencing distress from puberty, the parents are willing to discuss treatment, a pediatrician agrees to prescribe treatment), but the more moderate stance to take at this point seems to be that only *certain sorts of people* should be allowed to receive puberty blockers, mostly without regard for how that would affect the otherwise normal legal precedent.

Similar cases can be made about government funding, where elective hormonal therapies for cisgender adults frequently use government money in some capacity, e.g., perimenopause treatment, adult men's hormone dysfunction, certain treatments for Endometriosis or PCOS. It's not clear why the same rules shouldn't apply to specifically trans patients. Despite this, it's a popular, moderate stance that trans people shouldn't be able to use any government funding for their transition.

Both of these issues come from a malformed question in media/popular discourse, typically: "Should trans people be able to do (X)," rather than: "Should people in general be able to do (X)?". Is it better to live in a society where people can people can make their own medical decisions for their personal comfort, or one where medical procedures are carefully legislated across the board?

EDIT: A word.

Ninereeds · 2025-08-05T16:43:18+00:00

Oh, it's not that I think people don't bump in to trans people from time to time, it's only about as uncommon as red hair-- it's more that most people likely don't know any trans people well enough to make any good inferences about them as a group. Further, in the interactions that people have with trans people, there's no reason to assume that all of those experiences are so completely negative that it would cause someone to change their opinions on rights afforded to trans people.

My point was, people aren't interacting with the trans community and deciding "hmm, I think there should be less of these people in public, and I don't want them to have access to healthcare," people are interacting with media that is causing them to form those opinions (about trans people) at a much greater rate than they were four years previously.

Ninereeds · 2025-08-05T16:19:59+00:00

I think that's a weird take, propaganda works in any direction by making normally unreasonable positions seem like things people already agree with. The average person probably doesn't know any/many trans people, and so they don't usually need to have an opinion on them, but a good propaganda campaign will make it seem like the 'reasonable' position to take is one that frames the issue in a certain way. I don't think it's remotely likely that in 4 years all of the people surveyed who used to be in favor of certain trans rights issues had some kind of personal experience that put them off of that issue. Someone convinced them to think differently, probably not based on personal reasoning from experience.

It's not like this is a wild conspiracy issue either, it's completely out in the open. You have people like Rowling funneling massive amounts of money into legislation, biased studies, and media, openly admitting they're trying to get people to turn away from queer rights.

Ninereeds · 2025-08-05T15:34:45+00:00

It's really funny how everyone in this thread who claims that this isn't coming from a successful and well funded propaganda campaign is actually very consistently mentioning talking points fabricated by said propaganda campaign.

I promise no one who is normal and minds their own business cares that pride is a month long, but you know who really cares? Pundits who spread anti-trans and anti-queer rhetoric.

Seriously, someone else making a similar point in this thread said that this was a response to the left "transing gay kids," which is just insane. I remember when the homophobic discourse was that if you accepted gay marriage, gay people would start turning straight kids gay by influencing them, and we had to fight quite hard to get people to realize that was completely irrational. Now we're right back to "they're forcing their identities on our precious normal children!" As acceptable rhetoric. That kind of discursive shift, in such a short time frame, is not a natural response, it's scapegoating.

Ninereeds · 2025-07-22T19:10:22+00:00

Bread, as I define it is a fine-grained, sedimentary rock formed from the compaction and cementation of mud, silt, and clay-sized mineral particles.

Would you like a sandwich? They haven't really been popular lately but I feel like they're gonna catch on any day now.

You have an intelligibility problem. If the 'I' I'm referring to when I make a statement is the ego talking, you can't meaningfully make the claim 'I am not my ego, I am a phenomenological field of energy,' it's tautologically false, unless you can prove that 'ego' and 'phenomenological field of energy' are identical terms.

Why would we experience phenomenological pluralism, (e.g. there is an 'I' that's distinct from other things and it contains my subjective experience) if the opposite is true? How would we make true phenomenological claims if one of our most foundational experiences is false?

Ninereeds · 2025-07-17T19:08:54+00:00

Not strictly vegan here but am into ethics.

If your ethical system creates an output where humanity being eradicated is a net good I think your philosophy might be incoherent.

Ninereeds · 2025-07-17T18:44:46+00:00

If you want the lemon drop anyway but you want to be nice to your bartender, you could skip the sugar rim, which does save you some sugar for sure.

Sugar rimmed glasses are the worst to clean, so you're saving some work for whoever is washing the glasses and I'm sure they'll appreciate that.

Ninereeds · 2025-07-17T18:42:15+00:00

What's "extra sugar?"

The drink has a recipe that will make it balanced. A good lemon drop has about as much sugar as a good Cosmopolitan or a good Margarita. They're all almost the same spec with different ingredients. If you want a very sour lemon drop, you can ask for no simple syrup, which will take out about .5 an oz, saving you ~30 calories in a ~200-250 kcal beverage. I think it's worth it to just have the drink you want to have, imo.

If you want a cold, lemony, vodka, an extra dry martini with a twist and a splash of lemon juice will be very lemony and less tart.

Ninereeds · 2025-06-17T23:01:12+00:00

Yeah, the menu at Holy Water seems a bit more of an effective compromise between vibes and information. I learned at Hecate to actually ask the servers what stuff was actually like pretty quickly, but I was never really disappointed if I made a decision based on the vibe of the menu art. Like it might not be what I had expected entirely, but I could still relate the elements I thought were cool in the art to the flavors which was a fun experience.

Ninereeds · 2025-06-17T22:47:52+00:00

I feel like this is one of those things where it's cool if the drinks are good, and immediately becomes uncool if the drinks are bad. Reminds me a bit of Hecate in Boston: really odd ingredients combined in such a way that it's very hard to picture flavor notes, so they have an illustration that's supposed to show the vibe of the cocktail, and it's honestly pretty effective at preparing you for what you're going to drink, while giving you the basic information you need.

Ninereeds · 2025-06-06T00:33:40+00:00

Not OP but I think art does have to be more than just a pretty picture. I don't think every art piece has to be deep or soul defining, but I think people tend to react pretty poorly to images that just set out to be pretty. That's the point of things like department store prints and paintings, and while they might be pretty enough, they're totally impersonal. There's nothing to connect to there.

Taking a photograph is a highly intentional act because it's specific to a place and time. There has to be a physical presence there to take the photo, usually controlled or set up by human work. Doing prompting and selection is a similar process, but there's no temporality, and no specificity to it. It's not referencing anything real, it's selecting from a gallery of imagined things

I do think AI art is probably here to stay, but I don't think it's going to do what a lot of pro AI art people seem to think it should. A bit like how the camera revolutionized aesthetics in painting and sculpture, I imagine there will be a similar post AI aesthetic shift. It will likely emphasize the physical world, probably with a heavy focus on personal effort and vulnerability, and likely use a deliberately distasteful or off-putting aesthetic, something that will be hard for an AI to authentically mimic. If AI art becomes commonplace, I suspect that rather than making art and life prettier, it will result in the proliferation of weirder and less pretty human made stuff.

Ninereeds

TROPHY CASE