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McAnally's (The Community Pub) => Author Craft => Topic started by: Velkyn_Faer on January 25, 2007, 12:37:25 AM
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There is a point to this, so bear with me.
Ever since I first started seeing things like this, I have hated them, and considered certain styles of writing to be totally unrealistic because of certain traits in most of the books.
1. Cat/fox/monkey/cow/anything else -demons. Uh-uh. I don't see why so many people were/are fascinated with a dude that has a tail growing out of his rear. While some people will certainly think differently, I don't see the huge deal about it. Why cross a human with a fox, what's the point?
2. Insanely big weapons. Why do people think swords that are taller than them are cool? And, how come almost all the people I talk to about this are willing to defend it vehemently, saying it's just really big, and we could use them in real life if we had them?
There are more, but I'm pressed for time, so I'll leave it at that for now.
My question to you is, do you use these items/characters in your stories? And, please try to persuade me with better reasons than 'it is cool'. I'd love to be persuaded, really. I just don't see the point behind it all.
(Yes, I do realize the whole 'magic' thing is also unrealistic to some people, but the two above styles just really get to me.)
Velkyn
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While I use neither as a general rule, I can defend one of them (that being the demons).
The point behind crossing a human with a fox is that it will be associated with a human, it can also be disturbing. If you have a cat demon, that's fine and dandy, but if you have a Humanish fox demon, first the reader has to deal with the fact that the thing is humanish, but that it is also an aberration. Think about this, the U.S. has laws against the making of Chimeras (crossing humans with other species and such), because with all the cloning technology, we're coming closer to being able to do it, and it scares the shit out of us. Would you want to consort with a fox-man? It pushes the reader off balance, and whether they conciously realize it or not, it's going to disturb them.
As for the big swords; that's just people compensating for things. In real life you'll never find a sword that weighs more than a few pounds (usually 3-5... I've heard of some massive ones being ten pounds, but that's enormous). Whoever tells you that we could use them, kick em in the crotch, cause we couldn't. We might be able to get in one swing, maybe two. The recovery time would be long, and we'd be cut up by people who weren't afraid they were too small down there.
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1) To be truthful, if it fits the story setting it might fit. However, if the author is just throwing in random cross breeds of animals and then deeming them "demons". Being truthful it reminds me of this picture I saw from the Naruto Fillers of a guy from episode one crossed with a tiger (thus "Tiger Mizuki") and not only does it looks ridiculous but it makes little sense. Now, for the "cross a human with a fox" if it makes sense like if like Belial suggested, and it was a chimera caused from something then I think it can be more acceptable. Now if it were like "Tiger Mizuki" I'd be shaking my head and thinking something around the lines of "What the hell?"
2) On the subject of "big swords" I think a lot of it comes from the simple fact "it looks cool!" and appears in things like anime/manga like Bleach. I mean, there is nothing wrong with big swords IF it's practical to a degree and makes sense. Example, a six foot-five guy like Harry+sword bigger than him=reeeeallly impractical in a fight. Depending on what you consider insanely big I may have used the second one. I actually have a guy (he's about 6-foot 2ish) in my story weilding a nodachi that's about five foot long (impracticle?) but in my eyes it just fits the character. Because a) he's showy and flashy b) to begin with, he isn't the guy that relies completely on the sword. A lot of it is arguable for show. He mainly ends up using using his body to attack while people are worried about the sword and then uses the sword to finish things. and c) he's got the strength/skill to back up using it d) it's what he's trained himself to use since it was the only thing around when he started e) even though he's been told arguable that a naginata or a nagamaki is more efficiant since Draven's a stubborn guy (and an idiot) he refuses to be less than skilled with his chosen weapon.
Feel free to grill me if you don't like my reasons for using that sword for my character. I actually don't mind criticism but these are simply some of the things that I think contribute to why Draven uses his sword.
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The reasons seem to fit pretty well, and besides that it's an actual sword which people can use (although it's a bit big for my tastes, personally.)
I don't have problems with big swords, as long as they're reasonable. The thing about the Nodachi is that although it's long, it's also pretty slim, it's made for cutting not crushing. So it can be long, and still not weigh too much. A Nodachi is usually around 5 feet long I believe (correct me if I'm wrong). A western sword of comparable length is the Claymore, it probably weighs a good deal more though. It wouldn't matter if a claymore is sharp or not, it's going to hurt.
So, I guess I can stomach swords five feet long, maybe up to six (depending on who's using it). My problem comes when a sword would be fifteen to twenty pounds (or more) and be too massive to use properly. People seem to think that's cool, and I suppose if you don't know the mechanics it could be. But I've always preferred more accurate fighting.
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It really depends on the medium. For example in anime and video games, I am pretty forgiving if it looks cool. In those mediums, plot usually takes second place when compared to the look and feel. For a live action movie or a novel, that sword should be reasonable length for the creature holding it.
The Half issue. I am sort of bias agaisnt such stories. Hypocritical of me considering that most of my early fan fic work was Half-*blank*. I think it is because there are so many of them and most of them go into either sugarly anime mode or cardboard cut out mode.
There are good stories out there. Barb and JC Hendee's Noble Dead series is damn good. And that has a Half Vampire AND a Half-Elf for main characters. I put off reading it because I though the concept was kind of hokey.
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Most mythologies have demons and devils that are human/animal hybrids. Egyptians, Sumerians, Greeks, Romans, Norse...men...anyway...Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Shinto, Hindu, Aztec, Mayan...hell, every culture and religion on earth uses anthropomorphized animals as a demon of some sort.
And big swords just look COOL. Why do you think it is that no one uses Greek or Roman swords in movies? Why is it that rapiers used in movies these days look very little like traditional rapiers but very thin broadswords? Is it realistic? Well, the Scottish used Claymores which I can vouch are as tall as most people (I'm 6'3" and my roommate's claymore comes to my eyes). The Japanese developed a sword about 8-10 feet long. The problem is that historically, these big swords were meant for attacking mounted opponents, chopping the horses' legs out from under them. They're not meant for person-to-person combat...
But come on, they look awsome!!
The Abstruse One
Darryl Mott Jr.
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Re #1, half-whatever demons...the examples you cite are actually something I see as taken from asian mythology. For example, there is a Japanese spirit called a kitsune, which will sometimes appear in human form and have one or many fox tails. People borrow from mythology a lot, so the kitsune, and other "half human" characters show up in stories because people base some aspects of their stories on mythology.
Re: #2, absurdly-large swords...this is something seen in anime, not SFF fiction, and I believe they do it because in art form it can look pretty cool. It's just an art style.
Do I use these in my stories? I do use half-human creatures, yes. I don't use extra-large swords, though, because I'm a writer, not a visual artist. It doesn't make sense in written form.
The reason I use half-human creatures is twofold...I like to explore ideas of what exactly makes us human. What human is, and what it isn't. Octavia Butler is one of my favorite authors, and many of her books dealt with part-humans, and explored what makes us human--I seem to have a very strong leaning in that direction myself. Secondly, if I have a part-human character, he or she is an ambassador between human and non-human. So I have a narrator which bridges the gap between something human and known, and something inhuman and unknown. I'm not forced to use an entirely non-human narrator and dilute their alienness so folks can understand him/her.
It also makes for interesting characterization sometimes. I have an urban fantasy where I have a faun character--he's half human, half minotaur. The way he dresses is affected by how he looks...he wears a hat all the time to hide his horns, and he's very body-shy and won't go swimming with people or disrobe in any way around them. If he was a purely human character, he'd seem eccentric or shy, but with a part-human character you can see there's a reason in his life he does this. You can also explore bi-racial themes without actually having a half [insert race here] / half [insert other race here] character, and one of the bonuses of SFF is that you can explore real world issues in this way without touching on Hot Topic Real World Issues hard enough to taint the viewpoint you're trying to give someone. (IE, people hear about the hot topic issues so often that when someone touches on it in mainstream fiction or the news, people react one way or another automatically. If you approach it very subtlely in a sideways manner in SFF fiction, you can discuss it without the reader realizing at first that it's a Hot Topic Issue. Some of these issues being racial, which touches back on the half-breed character thing.)
So yeah, I have a reason for half-human creatures. :)
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1. Cat/fox/monkey/cow/anything else -demons. Uh-uh. I don't see why so many people were/are fascinated with a dude that has a tail growing out of his rear. While some people will certainly think differently, I don't see the huge deal about it. Why cross a human with a fox, what's the point?
What this immediately suggests to me is an Ancient Evil that's slowly seeping back into the world, and that finds it easier to take and warp animals than sentient beings, and the different ways that could work and what they would mean about which animals you were most likely to see being affected. The only premise you really have to grant for it to make sense for them to become more humanoid is that hands are rather useful, which I do not think is a stretch.
2. Insanely big weapons. Why do people think swords that are taller than them are cool? And, how come almost all the people I talk to about this are willing to defend it vehemently, saying it's just really big, and we could use them in real life if we had them?
Maybe you talk to too many people who don't know squat about swords.
The situation in which a long heavy sword actually makes sense is if you're riding a heavy-cavalry sized horse and you need to be able to hit the infantry you're charging through before they cut you down or get close enough to disable your steed.
The other place where "it's cool" is kind of a defence for really big swords is ones that are more for display than use; I've seen executioner's swords that nobody in their right minds would try to actually fight with, you'd swing once, miss, and get killed half a dozen times while trying to stop the blasted thing and bring it back for another swing. But if all you have to do with it is chop the head off some poor wretch kneeling in front of you in a showy fashion, one stroke is all you should need, and it needs weight enough to go all the way through on one swing unless you want to stand there hacking and looking like an incompetent.
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1. Cat/fox/monkey/cow/anything else -demons. Uh-uh. I don't see why so many people were/are fascinated with a dude that has a tail growing out of his rear. While some people will certainly think differently, I don't see the huge deal about it. Why cross a human with a fox, what's the point?
Usually because its interesting to come up with something. I have two races of the like in a big fantasy world I'm currently writing in. One is a set of cat-people and the other are sort of wolfish humanoids with horns that spawned from a failed attempt at drawing my Tauren Druid from WoW. Both are races affected by magic, though, so they were originally human.
I'd explain more on them but that would give away thing's that will come up in the stories in that world that I'm not willing to tell people. Would completely ruin things if you went and read them.
2. Insanely big weapons. Why do people think swords that are taller than them are cool? And, how come almost all the people I talk to about this are willing to defend it vehemently, saying it's just really big, and we could use them in real life if we had them?
The really insanely big weapons are more seen in anime (Samurai Deeper Kyo or Bleach) or games (Cloud and Sephiroth from Final Fantasy 7) than anywhere else. Large weapons in reality are really only useful when on horseback or attacking someone on horseback - in a regular old swordfight you'd die trying to use one. The insanely big one's are just always seen as more cool than regular old weapons.
Sometimes the overlarge weapons make sense - there's an actual explanation for the big weapon used by the main character Ichigo in Bleach - but usually they don't. Sometimes it just goes with the character.
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just a quick note on point #2.
Would you want to bring about the apocalypse with a butter knife...?
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Thought not.
Sharon.
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Well, there is a legitimate use for a giant 2-handed sword used by foot. The flamberge was used by heavily armored foot soldiers to neutralize pikes. You could use the blade to either cut or foul the shafts of several pikes at once, giving your more traditionally armed soldiers openings to kill the pikemen. The blade itself while large actually only has about 3 feet of cutting edge. The blade can be grasped above the quillions for close fighting, and it only weighs about 8 pounds. This is significant as most swords weigh around 3 pounds, but when used by a warrior trained in its use it can be devastating.
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just a quick note on point #2.
Would you want to bring about the apocalypse with a butter knife...?
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Thought not.
Sharon.
...I am so tempted to write a story where a character is armed with a butter knife whilst trying to stop an apocalypse now.
And here's a small snippet I just jotted out in Word:
My life blows.
No, really, it does.
Here I am, bleeding and covered in grime that’s made of stuff I don’t even want to think about, and standing in front of one of the scariest things mankind has ever seen – a god walking on earth. Don’t ask what god; nobody knows or really cares to find out anymore.
But, yeah, here I stand with a crazy, gun-toting Amazon woman to my right and a half-reformed Black Mage to my left while everyone else runs in terror. And what do I have? A frickin’ butter knife.
See? My life really does blow.
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^_^
Spreading inspiration wherever I go.
Make his life suck more... it's a plastic knife.
The god has a spork.
Stalemate...
lol
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just a quick note on point #2.
Would you want to bring about the apocalypse with a butter knife...?
"So, what do you do, then ?"
I paused in the middle of buttering my crumpet. "Oh, I'm with the Department of Eschatology."
"Pure or Applied ?"
"Trust me. You don't want to know."
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So many to reply to, and so little time.
I'll keep it general, because I truly have very little time.
Belial: True, true, I can understand the 'familiar but only just familiar' feeling (as in, it is related to humans, but with crazy traits. Something we know, but also something totally wild.) , and setting the reader off balance. Thank you.
About the swords, that was what I was getting at. Other than cavalry purposes, (didn't think of that, thank you to all who mentioned it.) who is going to use a weapon that nobody in their right minds would try to actually fight with, you'd swing once, miss, and get killed half a dozen times while trying to stop the blasted thing and bring it back for another swing
as neurovore said.
On the note of 'they look awesome' I do have to agree, but I personally try to keep things as real to the story and the world the story takes place in as possible. I think that's the key.
Well, there is a legitimate use for a giant 2-handed sword used by foot. The flamberge was used by heavily armored foot soldiers to neutralize pikes. You could use the blade to either cut or foul the shafts of several pikes at once, giving your more traditionally armed soldiers openings to kill the pikemen. The blade itself while large actually only has about 3 feet of cutting edge. The blade can be grasped above the quillions for close fighting, and it only weighs about 8 pounds. This is significant as most swords weigh around 3 pounds, but when used by a warrior trained in its use it can be devastating.
That makes perfect sense, and has real-life usage. Thank you for pointing that out to me. I'll keep that in mind for the story I'm writing.
As to the butter knife, Jim Butcher should totally have Harry in a fight with that. He's laying in a ruined diner, smoke drifting in the air, with tables and chairs overturned everywhere. His opponent stands over him and kicks his blasting rod away with a laugh. Harry snarls a curse and rolls, searching for anything to use to fight back. His hand closes on something, and he hauls himself to his feet, lifting his weapon. His eyes widen with surprise as he realizes that he held a butter knife. It would have to do.
(Not much credit to my writing, but I slapped that out without thinking, so take it as it is. But, Jim should totally do that.)
Velkyn
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As to the butter knife, Jim Butcher should totally have Harry in a fight with that. He's laying in a ruined diner, smoke drifting in the air, with tables and chairs overturned everywhere. His opponent stands over him and kicks his blasting rod away with a laugh. Harry snarls a curse and rolls, searching for anything to use to fight back. His hand closes on something, and he hauls himself to his feet, lifting his weapon. His eyes widen with surprise as he realizes that he held a butter knife. It would have to do.
Omigod, YES. I am drawing Chibi!Harry now with a butter knife and a WTF look. ;D It must be done.
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As to the butter knife, Jim Butcher should totally have Harry in a fight with that. He's laying in a ruined diner, smoke drifting in the air, with tables and chairs overturned everywhere. His opponent stands over him and kicks his blasting rod away with a laugh. Harry snarls a curse and rolls, searching for anything to use to fight back. His hand closes on something, and he hauls himself to his feet, lifting his weapon. His eyes widen with surprise as he realizes that he held a butter knife. It would have to do.
Omigod, YES. I am drawing Chibi!Harry now with a butter knife and a WTF look. ;D It must be done.
Woohoo! Can't you see Jim making that happen, though? Of course, Harry would have a cool, smart-ass remark about it, or a bad pun, but you get the point.
Velkyn
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Hello everyone. I've been away for a bit. Nice to come back to some interesting topics.
The first thing I thought of when I read this, at least concerning the oversized weapons, is Final Fantasy, and Devil May Cry...both manga-ish video games. I'm not a FF fan, so I'm not sure about the lore of that guy's giant sword, but I know it looks damn cool in the artwork. And in Devil May Cry, the main character Dante is half human, half demon, and the sword he eventually gets is part demon too. So the big sword works here, because it compliments his superhuman abilities. And it looks cool...lol.
As far as the animal-human demons...I think they're a bit cliche for fantasy stuff, but I tolerate them. I try not to write them in because they don't feel like a new idea. I'm not a good enough writer to be cut-and-pasting existing concepts. I at least need to come up with some fresh stuff. In the book I'm writing now, there are demon-like beings, but they take the form of a cat or human, but no crossing the two. And then there's the third type of demon called the Aphantor that is your basic scary shadow creature; think a doppleganger from D&D that's always shrouded in a cloud of darkness.
I think a human with anamilitic personality traits is scarier than a human with physical animal traits. Or, animals that act human. I use a lot of this in my current project. The animals are very alert and human-acting. The ones that are part of the main cast, anyway. Not all the animals are...special. And then the main bad guy is just an Englishman, suave and collected until someone pushes his buttons...then he turns vicious. He pounces and moves like a predatory animal, snarls, slobbers, and such. I don't think it's necessary to cross the physical attributes. Plus it keeps the reader thinking (I hope) about what the thing actually is, because it's not acting like a human normall acts.
That's my two cents.
BLG
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Of course, Harry would have a cool, smart-ass remark about it, or a bad pun, but you get the point.
"Taste Excalibutter, jerk."
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He'd know better than to bring a butterknife to a buttergun fight :)
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Nah, he's just repeat the curse of the frozen turkies from BR and make it a butterball fight. ;)
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Of course, Harry would have a cool, smart-ass remark about it, or a bad pun, but you get the point.
"Taste Excalibutter, jerk."
"I can't believe it's not Waldo's."
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On half animal demons, I think a previous poster nailed it...most religons have demons/devils and they have animalistic features. One reason for this is an imagination limitation, we expect a body, a head, a locomotion system and arms. It is easy to describe and visualize and getter the audience scared of a mismash of animal parts than a wholly new subject. A black amorphous cloud is scary but not a bad as a goat headed bat winged human with talons, goat hooves and a barbed tail.
On the subject of really big swords, you have two other major factors involved:
Armor One reason for a big ass sword is to penetrate heavy armor. European weapons got bigger and heavier as armor did, and the Europeans had the heaviest steel armor made. Rapiers did not develop until after gunpowder made armor obsolete. England had a series of laws restricting the maximum length of a sword (starting at 4' and moving down).
Combat style: Roman style infantry with stabbing short swords defeated Celts with long swords because they work better in formation style fighting. Individual combat went to the Celts, with the bigger sword. This goes back to the cavalry/infantry comments from before.
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On half animal demons, I think a previous poster nailed it...most religons have demons/devils and they have animalistic features. One reason for this is an imagination limitation, we expect a body, a head, a locomotion system and arms. It is easy to describe and visualize and getter the audience scared of a mismash of animal parts than a wholly new subject. A black amorphous cloud is scary but not a bad as a goat headed bat winged human with talons, goat hooves and a barbed tail.
On the subject of really big swords, you have two other major factors involved:
Armor One reason for a big ass sword is to penetrate heavy armor. European weapons got bigger and heavier as armor did, and the Europeans had the heaviest steel armor made. Rapiers did not develop until after gunpowder made armor obsolete. England had a series of laws restricting the maximum length of a sword (starting at 4' and moving down).
Combat style: Roman style infantry with stabbing short swords defeated Celts with long swords because they work better in formation style fighting. Individual combat went to the Celts, with the bigger sword. This goes back to the cavalry/infantry comments from before.
That does make sense, and is probably the best answer I've heard yet for a good reason behind it. (You said someone's said it before, and I scanned recent posts but I didn't see anything.) Kinda reminds me of the Trollocs from Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. Creatures that all have a human body but different feet/heads/faces/arms. A goat-snouted animal with wolf paws and an eagle's feathered crest. The next will be wolf-headed and have rams horns on its head. All similar to real animals and to humans on a basic level, but all totally different. And, they're probably a hell of a lot scarrier than the cloud monster from Lost.
Thank you, I'll keep that in mind. All this new information takes the stuff I knew before and kinda throws it out the window. I'm glad I made this topic. I'm already making minor changes to my story for the sake of realism. Thanks!
(please keep the information flowing, too. Anything you know about either of these subjects, please tell us, be it big or small.)
Velkyn
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just a quick note on point #2.
Would you want to bring about the apocalypse with a butter knife...?
...
Thought not.
Sharon.
Well. One of my characters is a synthetically-created human who fights, and wins, against people with gigantic swords.
And he fights with a switchblade. Lawl. <33
...Devil May Cry is awesome.
Big swords are mostly for aesthetic appeal. And why not? Each writer has in their ability to create their own, fantastically messed up little worlds. Why not create a world where it makes perfect sense for a normal human to swing around a huge sword? That's like calling urban fantasy unrealistic because, after all, magic doesn't really exist!!
The above belief can be applied to creepy anthros too. Which, I believe, is an Anime-fan thing on a broad standpoint.
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As to the butter knife, Jim Butcher should totally have Harry in a fight with that. He's laying in a ruined diner, smoke drifting in the air, with tables and chairs overturned everywhere. His opponent stands over him and kicks his blasting rod away with a laugh. Harry snarls a curse and rolls, searching for anything to use to fight back. His hand closes on something, and he hauls himself to his feet, lifting his weapon. His eyes widen with surprise as he realizes that he held a butter knife. It would have to do.
Omigod, YES. I am drawing Chibi!Harry now with a butter knife and a WTF look. ;D It must be done.
...so where's the linky? We must see Chibi!Harry with butterknife... NOW! LOL
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My life blows.
No, really, it does.
Here I am, bleeding and covered in grime that’s made of stuff I don’t even want to think about, and standing in front of one of the scariest things mankind has ever seen – a god walking on earth. Don’t ask what god; nobody knows or really cares to find out anymore.
But, yeah, here I stand with a crazy, gun-toting Amazon woman to my right and a half-reformed Black Mage to my left while everyone else runs in terror. And what do I have? A frickin’ butter knife.
See? My life really does blow.
I almost snarfled all over the keyboard from that, lol. Great quickie job.
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1. Cat/fox/monkey/cow/anything else -demons. Uh-uh. I don't see why so many people were/are fascinated with a dude that has a tail growing out of his rear. While some people will certainly think differently, I don't see the huge deal about it. Why cross a human with a fox, what's the point?
It depends on what you're doing and how. Free reign to anything that's well written. Where would manga and anime be without those kooky hybrids?
2. Insanely big weapons. Why do people think swords that are taller than them are cool? And, how come almost all the people I talk to about this are willing to defend it vehemently, saying it's just really big, and we could use them in real life if we had them?
Having fought with these kinds of weapons myself a few times, I can tell you that the idea of pixies wielding flaming greatswords wouldn't fly in world that has physical laws that even vaguely resemble our own. Most of what gets passed of a greatswords in video games and such also wouldn't work in the real world. Myself, I prefer a mace or war hammer, shield, and heavy armor. I'm strong enough to bull rush you and have taken several people off their feet, winning my bout in the first few second of contact.
Even if I don't, I have a shield to block your blows, particularly from the fancy-schmancy 2 handed weapons while I continue to pound on you with considerable force using my blunt solid object. It doesn't take me long to begin to put dents in things. Now, since we fight for fun and bragging rights, we tend to avoid blows to the head and such. The moral of the story here is that while you can't really hit me, thanks to my shield. I can shove you all over the tournament field and wail on you basically at will. There's a good reason that in the old tapestries you don't see gigantic fancy swords. When you live and die by your weaponry and your ability to use it, you don't have time to dink around with showboat pieces. You use what works and what keeps you alive until the next battle.
Secondly, steel weighs .283 pounds per cubic inch and steel plate weighs in 1/4" thick = 10.2 pounds per square foot. Steel is *heavy*. To give you a real world example, we'll look at the Scottish claymore, one of the larger swords that was ever in common usage. The "William Wallace" claymore is a whopping 54" long from sword tip to pommel. 14" of that is the hilt and the other 40" (for you math impaired) are blade and it weighs in at a whopping 6 pounds. Now, six pounds doesn't sound like a lot until you try to start swinging it around for hours on end. That's the real world example.
The "fantasy" example I'll use is a rather misguided in-duh-vidual I know who owns an "Excalibur Replica". This thing is a full 6 feet (72") long and weighs in about 20 pounds. I'm strong and know what I'm doing and I can't barely get the tip of that monster off the table top. Making the dangerous assumption that you could wield it, it's far too long for me to manage effectively and I'm not exactly a runt. It's far to long to manage effectively in anything approaching a confined space - like a room where it would get stuck in the ceiling while you're trying to slash and jab. It's completely retarded and created for people who know nothing about weapons and think that, like the male member, swords that are bigger are some how better.
My question to you is, do you use these items/characters in your stories? And, please try to persuade me with better reasons than 'it is cool'. I'd love to be persuaded, really. I just don't see the point behind it all.
I have one character that carries a gigantic sword around, but she almost never uses it for anything at all. It's ceremonial and something of a penance for her to have to carry it with her everywhere she goes.
2 cents,
RecentCoin
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Human/animal hybrids I have no problem with: there's a long-standing tradition in a lot of mythologies with animals morphing into people (ie. kitsune in Japan) or gods/demigods being partly humanoid and partly animal (ie, fauns/satyrs and centaurs in Graeco-Roman myth). There's even a small, almost forgotten touch of this in Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Byzantine Rite Catholicism: there's a little known but very ancient icon of St. Christopher, the patron saint of travellers, that depicts the saint as a kind of dog-human chimaera with the head, tail and legs of a dog and the arms and torso of a human. The legends about him describe him as "a giant", but this didn't always mean a big-huge humanoid creature that would make Michael Clarke Duncan look like a midget; the original Greek word which our "giant" is derived from meant anything very strange-looking and rather vaguely humanoid.
Human-demon hybrids, I don't touch that since I'm really not too comfortable around demon-characters. Just my devout Catholic upbringing, nothing more. I've got the same position about demons as Michael does. :: laughs a little::
Big-ol' weapons. In a fantasy situation, I can suspend my disbelief, but I'll still be scratching my head for a moment or two. Case in point, Seras and the big-ass anti-tank gun in "Hellsing". I remember laughing at the image of this wee girl with a gun longer than her entire body, and then thinking, "How the hell is she going to use that big wonking thing?!" And then having to remind myself she's a vampire now, she's not limited by the limits of mere human strength.
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The answer to both questions is that people are lazy and tend to rip things off that they think are cool.
Avoid cliche. The first rule. Both hybrids and giant weaponry are now ridiculously over-used cliches.
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Big swords are mostly for aesthetic appeal. And why not? Each writer has in their ability to create their own, fantastically messed up little worlds. Why not create a world where it makes perfect sense for a normal human to swing around a huge sword? That's like calling urban fantasy unrealistic because, after all, magic doesn't really exist!!
Both the Scottish claymore and the great swords used by the Irish Galloglass warriors tended to be about a foot shorter than the men who would swing them. I saw a reference to the "Wallace Sword" that's being sold in catalogs a lot in the past decade. The genuine article - an original blade used by Wallace but re-hilted sometime in the 16th century - is 66 inches long, with 55 of those inches being blade. Wallace himself was over six and a half feet tall, at a time when the average man was about five-foot-six. Since most of Wallace's career was spent ambushing English patrols and convoys with small guerrilla forces, I'm betting he used an effective weapon.
These swords were brutally effective against pikes, mounted cavalry, and poor slobs with lighter weapons - think about it. This big guy with a sword twice as long and twice as heavy as yours comes at you. What do you do? These swords were long, but also fairly light, and the men using them were freakin' huge. The intimidation value on the battlefield would've been immense. The power in a swing would've been similarly immense. The real trick was balancing the size of the weapon against the weight of the weapon.
Now, a lot of "experts" will tell you that Claymores couldn't be used effectively because they were "too big", or some such. Bear this in mind:
The claymore was in use in Scotland from before William Wallace's time (He was active around the year 1300) until its last recorded use in battle, the Battle of Killiecrankie in 1689. That's almost 400 years, and you know that Wallace didn't invent the thing so it had to have a history before him. A weapon doesn't stay in use that long unless it works and works well.
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Yes, I know and I've encountered plenty of crowd pleasing show-offs that tried wielding one against me. All I have to do is get in close enough to you to keep you from swinging effectively. At that point I'm bashing the living daylights out of you with my shield and beating the living crap out of you with my mace or war hammer. And war hammers, interestingly enough, were concurrent with the claymore.
2 cents,
RecentCoin
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Yes, I know and I've encountered plenty of crowd pleasing show-offs that tried wielding one against me. All I have to do is get in close enough to you to keep you from swinging effectively. At that point I'm bashing the living daylights out of you with my shield and beating the living crap out of you with my mace or war hammer. And war hammers, interestingly enough, were concurrent with the claymore.
2 cents,
RecentCoin
There's some major differences you're overlooking. They weren't trying to kill you, and you weren't trying to kill them. Another major difference - I'm talking about steel, in real life. You're talking about rattan SCA weapons, with rules to keep folks from getting seriously hurt. Their rattan sword isn't gonna break your arm under the shield. If you don't understand how SCA "combat" differs fundamentally from the actual medieval battlefield, then you need to take a step back from the hobby.
War hammers were concurrent with the claymore. So were Welsh longbows. I'll bet you don't have to worry about a hail of thousands of arrows while you form up for your battle games. Heavy cavalry was concurrent, too, but I'm betting you don't have to face down 1000 pounds of warhorse and mounted knight in your battle games either. SCA experience does not trump the historic record.
I'm sure you're a total badass at SCA. That's all well and good, and sounds like you have a lot of fun. That doesn't mean I'm going to take your word for "how things were" over the history books on the shelf behind me.