A day late but have a meme rerun

[redfiona99]

You post a topic, list, category, whatever, in my comments section. (examples: "Five Fannish Characters (Non-Dr Who) Jack Harkness Has Had Sex With", or "Five Cases (not necessarily canon) Nick Stokes Has Nightmares About (feel free to substitute CSI character of choice)" or "Five Ways Cecric Diggory Didn't Die" or "Five Pairs Of Actors I'd Love To See Team Up On-Screen" (no, they don't have to be fannish - I'm quite happy to give non-fannish Top Fives). Then, in a separate post, I'll post the answers to your Top 5 ideas, according to me. Serious or fun!

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5 Characters I Think Would Be Good Fencers

[redfiona99]

I am skipping all characters who have been shown to be good at swords in general, I know it doesn't always follow that you'll be good at fencing if you can sword fight, but the skills are definitely transferable.

That rules out a quite frankly disturbing number of characters in fandoms I like. I am aware that sword-fights are a really quick way to get me to watch/read/consume a work.

I will now give two general tips:

I will buy any character that is a trained dancer as being a good fencer without further explanation. Give me a decent dancer IRL and I can make them into a decent fencer. I think it's because they've already got the bodily control required to do it correctly if a coach says, "when x, do y". If she hadn't already been ruled out by my criteria at the start, I could totally buy Natasha Romanov being an excellent fencer without seeing it because of her ballet training.

You can happily write any character who canonically went to a public school as having been a fencer, I'm not going to say a good one, but no one will bat an eyelid. UK fencing is getting a lot better, but it's by more comprehensive schools offering fencing rather than fewer public schools doing it. Oddly the minute that happened, us oiks started beating the posh kids. So they moved all the good facilities to London :(

1 - Cheating because I was thinking about him because of ioplokon's question, but I am happy to believe Drew McIntyre in the wrestling could fence, if only because a slightly larger but generally Jason Momoa-shaped person who can do top rope dives has the required bodily control. (Yes, I know Dallas/Lance Archer was the prototype for this but I can't see him bothering with the pokey fencing swords, I see him going straight for the nearest mace. Said with love and affection.)

2 - M. Gustave from Grand Budapest Hotel - I am not sure why he would need it as a concierge but ...

3 - Dennis Stanton from Murder She Wrote (I suspect Michael Hegarty probably can use a sword but not necessarily fence)

4 - Detective Shepherd from Brokenwood Mysteries - because why not, he has some really intriguing hidden talents (I am not just saying this because I want to see Jared in fencing gear ... I am creature of simple tastes). Or Detective Sims. She would also rock in breeches.

5 - Rachel from Highlander, the first one. Am I cheating slightly, yes. But we never see her near the holding end of a sword, so not completely. I just love the idea of Connor being all, well I will return her to her family. Okay, can't do that. I will leave her with nuns. Nope, no nuns. I will take her to the US and ... I will come up with a plan once I get there. And he doesn't even train her, she just watches him, and he's terrified that she won't fit in at school because she's French and her experiences are not those of the other girls and then boom, she's the captain of the fencing team.