over on tumblr someone (tumblr user weepingchoir) sent me just about the best ask i can remember ever getting so i'm gonna crosspost it here and let y'all enjoy it too
Hey, I just finished reading Peregrine Phoenix vol.1 - I adored it enough to come poke the author about it. I'm a fervid martial arts guy, and I noticed that, despite the relatively sparse description of grappling in comparison to the abundant striking, both of Mokou's barehanded fights ended with suplexes. Interestingly, she fights taurs both times. I'd love to hear more about the process behind choreographing this, particularly the process of figuring out what might and mightn't work on a quadrupedal body plan. Were you inspired by judo, wrestling, something else?
thank you so much for this ask. it's maybe the perfect question so i hope i can do it justice.
it's been about 2-2.5 years since i wrote the fight scenes in book 1, so i don't have as precise an idea anymore of my peripheral inspirations. as far as personal experience with martial arts, i don't have a whole lot - i took karate in high school at a suburban McDojo and got to... brown belt? then a whole lot of nothing. but by the time i started writing book 1, my wife's interest and appreciation of Wing Chun got me into the off-and-on habit of doing daily Si Lim Tao with her.
because of this, i'm a bit of a chameleon when it comes to my influences. i rely on media depictions a lot. i see a cool martial arts movie (like the Ip Man movies for Wing Chun, or like The Raid for Silat, etc) and i'm like "well that's cool as fuck, and mokou loves to tussle and she's lived forever so i bet she knows that." i like to give her worldly influences and i also like to give her otherworldly/larger-than-life/future influences because she's been part of this unbroken continuity of being and her knowledge and practice should reflect that. so it's things like Wing Chun and Silat, but it's also things like Lunarian CQC from the Lunar Wars, Danneskjold Pit Style from her life across the Moghra'yi, or Heaven Sundering Fist from wherever the hell you learn fake anime martial marts in the time and space between Gensokyo and Qud.
the suplex finisher is for any number of reasons. number one, there's something incredibly decisive and definitive about a suplex. number two, it's flashy as hell and i love flashy things. number three, and perhaps most critically, it gets your foe off of their feet! and when you're facing a quadruped, that's very important, that's the root of their strength! they can get twice the leverage out of the ground as you can, so the sooner you can negate that advantage, the better!
writing this series has me thinking about the ergonomics and design philosophy of centaurs more than i usually do, which, if you look at my #taurposting tag (EVA NOTE: only my tumblr presently has a taurposting tag. there have not been enough posts about taurs on cohost for me to develop a taurposting tag here yet. please make more posts about taurs), you can probably understand is something i already think about a great deal. whenever agate fobs off mokou's interest or training offers with "i have my own techniques" i'm always like god. but actually what do those look like. how do you get gains as a centaur in a world with no gyms. one of these chapters in one of these books i'll probably go into it.
mokou's moveset in ULiL/AoCF is also a big inspiration! she's got all these great stomps and kicks and flips and nasty fire-claw punches whenever she deigns to pull her hands out of her pockets. she's not a very "honorable" fighter, she cares way more about getting to cut loose. agate's lucky she didn't catch a handful of homemade explosives to the face!
my choreography process is usually like… well i do a lot of rotating these gals in my mind and seeing what would be the coolest thing for them to do, the most sensible thing for them to do, the most emotionally or thematically resonant thing for them to do, the best nod to that dope move in the martial arts flick i just watched, etc, and then whatever i settle on i try to depict as clearly as i can. then if there's room for textual flourishes i'll spruce it up some.
Judo wasn't really a direct influence over book 1's fight scenes - i think the first judo-centric martial arts film i've seen was Sanshiro Sugata (1943), and i saw that one for the first time in may of 2022, too late to influence book 1. hilarious movie for fight choreography btw, he just fucking shuffles up and GETS them and then they fly across the room and almost die and it keeps happening. beautiful.
that said, there's some tussles coming up in book 2 that give a nod to Judo! this is because i've been getting way into Sumo lately and Judo has a good playbook to help in Sumo bouts. also Judo is a great style for someone who is too depressed to regularly keep herself in peak condition, because a lot of it is about putting what force you have to best use, and using your enemy's force against them. Wing Chun is also good for folks who aren't in the best shape, so that's another of my justifications as to why she talks that one up.
and finally, caves of qud as a game is one that has sadly underdeveloped (though not nonexistent!) barehand combat support, so there's a bit less inspiration i can pull directly from the game. mokou's new in town anyway, so she hasn't had a chance to soak in the styles regardless. i'm gonna take this opportunity to plug the Qud-Fu - Mixed Martial Arts Skills mod which i keep meaning to install and play around with but so far haven't. but if i do it strikes me as one very likely to show up in the fic XD
i love a question like this. please everyone ask me more things about taurs.