a study in fifths

whiskeyowl:

So ever since seeing the pictures of our brand-spankin’-new pro bending gear, the people of the internet have been wondering how we made our bending stuffs and how we’re playing the game. So here’s how this all happened:

Basically, I had a dream last night that we were Korra-LARPing and we were pro bending with streamers and frisbees and stuff. I told Mr. Boyfriend about it in the morning, and was fully expecting to be mocked mercilessly, because he thinks larping is stupid. Surprisingly, he said “hmm… tell me more,” so I told him all about how we were playing, and then we called up our BFF and we all piled in the car to go shopping. We went to a sports store, a fabric store, and a hardware store to find our supplies. Here’s what we bought: a few bags of tennis balls, some tent pegs and rope (to create our arena), several yards each of blue and orange sports nylon fabric, colored zip ties, round bucket lids (they looked more like earthbending discs than frisbees did), black primer (spray paint), and textured spray paint. 

The fireballs were the easiest: we cut 15’x15’ squares of orange nylon and secured them around tennis balls using orange zip ties. So far we have made 6 each per firebender.

The first accessories for the waterbenders are similar: basically the same thing, but with a longer tail than those of the fireballs, to represent the streaming water. We made two per waterbender.

The other item the waterbenders have is one long water “foxtail” each. It’s a long strip of nylon (about 20ft), wider at one end, and I used my sewing machine to sew a foxtail shaped tube for the ball, and then we secured it with a blue ziptie. 

The earthbending discs were the hardest part to get right. We originally were thinking about some foam discs we found at the fabric store (not sure what they were actually intended for!) but they were $7.99 apiece— way too expensive to buy enough of those. We thought about frisbees, but they didn’t look quite right. It also really hurts to get nailed by a frisbee if it hits you hard enough. At the hardware store, we found bucket lids on sale for $1.50 each. Sold. We bought 16 (8 per earthbender) and two cans of spray paint: one black primer, so our paint would stick, and one can of fancy textured “stone” paint. Here’s how they turned out:

After a few hours of throwing them around in the parking lot, the rims were a little beat up, but they still look pretty good to us. They probably would have held up a little better had we played in the grass instead, which is our plan for next time. It probably also would have helped if we had waited for the paint to dry fully, but we were way too excited. 

Here’s a photo of some of our loot piled up: 

So, that’s all our equipment. Next time I’ll probably be wearing some protective eyewear, because I got nailed in the face with an earthbending disc and I have a black eye now. I think it’s kind of cute, but Mr. Boyfriend said that he’d really appreciate if I’d stop getting black eyes because then people start looking at him funny. *shrug*

After an hour of gear building had gone by, our BFF Jake was like, “so, this is how normal people in their mid-twenties spend their weekends, right?” (the answer is yes— if they’re awesome). 

So— the rules— we’re still figuring these out, but after spending an afternoon practicing, we’ve got a pretty good idea of how this’ll work.

Head shots are illegal. The torso, arms above the elbow, and legs above the knee are fair game. If you’re hit, you have to call it out (or the ref will blow his whistle) and you move back a zone. If you step over the line, it’s a foul, and you have to move back a zone. We had rounds go for two minutes, and if no one had been backed off the field by that time, the team that had gained the most ground by then wins the round. What we found in our time practicing though (most of our friends were busy today, but we managed to grab an extra and play doubles), was that more often then not, rounds were finished way before the two minutes were up. 

Firebenders each have six ammo to start with. They’re pretty light, so our firebender just stuffed them in his pockets. We’re thinking we’ll probably just get fanny packs or something equally stupid looking to stash our gear in when we’re playing a match. Water benders each have one long foxtail, and two smaller ammo. The end of the foxtail is usually wrapped around the non-dominant arm, and swung with the other. It isn’t launched like the fireballs and small water balls are— the foxtail is retractable. The earthbenders each have eight disks, but only two may be held at a time. The remaining disks are piled up in their zone in whatever configuration they like. When a player runs out of ammo, they need to dodge for 10 seconds before they can go retrieve their ammo. We hope we’ll have enough people to have someone dedicated to ammo running during matches. 

Um, I’m probably forgetting a few things, but I’m really tired, so I’ll probably come back to this later and add other things. Here are some photos of us practicing one-on-one in the parking lot. 

Can’t wait for next weekend when the rest of our friends will be around for a real match! 

Let me know if you guys have comments, questions, etc. What do you guys think?