I personally will never not trust my gut feeling.

  • Tiefling IRL
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    6 hours ago

    Fire breathing

    For context I’m a professional fire & sideshow performer. I have almost a decade of experience and am fire safety lead for a large fire arts retreat. But the name of the game is risk mitigation and fire breathing is too risky for my taste despite its popularity.

    If you go on Wikipedia and type in fire breather, the second result is Fire Breather’s Pneumonia. I also personally know many people who have gotten large facial burns or have had to retire due to lung problems caused by excessive fire breathing.

    The risks are technically still there with fire eating, which is one of my main skills, but I mitigate it by limiting my exposure and taking breaks. There’s also significantly less liquid fuel involved.

    • @AsheHole
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      55 hours ago

      I’m an entertainer as well and thought about fire breathing. I spoke with a couple friends who do it and them all casually talking about collapsing a lung a few times turned me off that idea.

      • Tiefling IRL
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        5 hours ago

        Sword swallowing too. My friends do it but I’ve heard the term “perforated stomach” one too many times

        • @AsheHole
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          1 hour ago

          That one never caught my interest. It makes me so nervous. I’ve gotten into stilts and jumping stilts over the past couple years and I’ve been doing face painting, balloons, glitter, etc. for half my life. I’d love to get back into juggling and unicycling but that will have to wait for a bit. I also really wanna try German wheel and aerial hoop!

          Also editing to add: what made you wanna do fire and what’s your favorite way to use fire? I have a friend who just got a sword, another who favors fans, and most men I know use staff or poi. I personally have never spun or played with fire, but it fascinates me. Many of my friends will eat but not breathe it.

          • Tiefling IRL
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            16 minutes ago

            I started with fire before I ever really knew I wanted to be a performer, it just seemed fun, and things moved from there. My first prop was staff.

            A lot of stuff happened over the years and I hardly spin any more, but I’ve carved out a nice space for myself as a sideshow performer doing dangerous and grotesque things. Bed of nails, blockhead, mental floss, butterfly knives, stapling, etc. But my expertise is fire (especially fire eating) so I tend to combine most things with that when the venue allows it.

            I invented two fire eating moves :) One is a split tongue torch hold, the other I named a black hole sun