Beating your sword to death

[kippurbird]

Mind over Metal Part Two


They go to the smelter and Saphira takes the glop of bright steel from the trough and breaks it in to fist sized pieces. Then they go back into the forge and sort the metal according to its hardness, which she call tell by the color and texture of the metal. Harder metal will be used for the outside for a sharp edge, softer steel for the inside so it can absorb and bend. This done, Rhunon enters Eragon's mind. She should find it pretty roomy.

The first thing Eragon noticed about Rhunon as their minds met was the low chords that echoed through the dark and tangled landscape of her thoughts. The music was slow and deliberate and cast in a strange and unsettling key that scraped on his nerves. What it implied about Rhunon's character, Eragon was not sure, but the eerie melody caused him to reconsider the wisdom of allowing her to control his flesh. But then he thought of Saphira sitting next to the forge, watching over him, and his trepidation receded, and he lowered the last of his defenses around his consciousness.

It felt to Eragon like a piece of raw wool sliding over his skin as Rhunon enveloped his mind with hers, insinuating herself into the most private areas of his being. He shivered at the contact and almost withdrew from it, but then Rhunon's rough voice sounded with in his skull: Relax, Shadeslayer, and all shall be well.

There is nothing sexual about that last paragraph at all. Not at all, with any sort of enveloping of skin, insinuating into private areas and rough voices insisting he relax. Nope. Not at all.

Nothing sexual.

>.>

<,<

If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you. Paolini really missed his calling. He should have been a Harlequin Romance novelist.

However, the first paragraph is mostly a reasonable example of trepidation and fear that I would think someone should feel if they were going to be invaded in their most private of places. IfyouknowwhatImean. I'm not sure exactly what good having Saphira near by is, but if it makes him feel better... all right then.

For some reason they need to wait until dark to start forging... I don't know why, but there you go. In the mean time Rhunon works out working in Eragon's body until she's got him moving in a comfortable manner for both of them. Then they start to forge the sword.

Saphira heats up the metal again and Rhunon beats them flat into metal sheets. She checks the metal over again and is highly displeased with it. So she breaks the metal into bits and has Saphira heat them up into melting point until it turned white. Then she started to make the sword by folding metal.

Rushing Eragon forward, Rhunon had him transport the glowing brick of clay covered steel to the anvil, where she seized a hammer and welded the disparate flakes of brightsteel into a cohesive whole. She continued to pound onto the metal, elongating it out into a bar, then made a cut in the middle, folded the metal back on itself, and welded the two pieces together. The bell-like peals of ringing metal echoed off the ancient trees that surrounded the atrium.

Rhunon had Eragon return the brightsteel to the forge once its color had faded from white to yellow, and again Saphira bathed the metal with the fire from her belly. Six times Rhunon heated and folded the brightsteel, and each time the metal became smoother and more flexible, until it could bend without tearing.

And this, I believe is the katana making technique for the hand and a half sword.

As they work, Ruhnon sings magic into the sword, spells of making, sharpening and binding.

What she does next is to do the same with another bar of the harder brightsteel and then for the softer steel she makes a shorter heavier wedge. Then... well, I'm not really sure.

Next, Rhunon had Saphira reheat the two bars of harder steel. Rhunon lay the shining rods side by side on her anvil, grasped both of them at either end with a pair of tongs, and then twisted the rods around each other seven times. Sparks shot inot the air as she hammered upon the twists to weld them into a single piece of metal. The resulting mass of brightsteel Rhunon folded, welded, and pounded back out to length another six times. When she was pleased with the quality of the metal, Rhunon flattened the brightsteel into a thick rectangular sheet, cut the sheet in half lengthwise with a sharp chisel, and bent each of the two halves down their middle, so they were in the shape of long shallow V's.

We then get a short interlude of elf children. There are two elf kids, the only two in the city conceived twelve years ago. Yes, conceived as opposed to born. I dunno, I guess elves count it important when they're conceived as opposed to born.. Which is not entirely unreasonable. They have tear drop faces that "seemed wise and innocent in equal measure". You know, that's really a Sue trait that is. I mean we already know that elves are the Mary Sue race but this idea of something being innocent and wise at the same time is a classic trait. It's a contradiction that Mary Sues are so fond of having. They have to be wise beyond their years so that they can be uber-smart and everyone can marvel at their wisdom, but they also have to be innocent because it'll attract the protective interests of the guy they're trying to catch. And no guy wants a slut, there for they have to be innocent. Men like innocent women, or something. I think I'll leave it on the or something. At least, virginity is a key part of the innocence. Even if they're harden killers who killed millions of people with just an evil eye, they're still innocent in the ways of the world and of luuuuurv.

But I'm getting sidetracked. The elf children are innocent and wise and they are special with special powers which go away as they age. This was mentioned before. I believe it was stolen from the young wizards series if I recall correctly. Anyway they're remarked upon and then they go back to making the sword.

The wedge of brightsteel is put into the V of one of the longer pieces and makes a sandwich. She smashes it together until it is all one piece and makes it all sword like. She files it and scrubs it and grinds it. She paints a mixture of slurry on it made of dark, fine grained clay, ash, powdered pumice and crystallized juniper sap. Thicker coating in the middle so it'll cool slower and keep the center softer. More blade making. Blah. blah. Quenching of blade. More polishing and filing and shiny blade becomes shiny.

Finally, his body gives out on him and Rhunon sends him to bed. She says that since the blade is done, it won't bother her oath to finish the sword.

Um.

I'm fairly certain that just making the blade isn't the entirety of making - of forging - a sword. There's more to it, and so she should still be bound by her oath not to make a sword. She shouldn't be able to do it. After all, a blade alone does not make a sword. If it did, then people wouldn't use them very much for they would cut their hands a lot. So, she shouldn't be able to make the rest of the sword without Eragon's help. But... if she did that, then we couldn't have the sword reveal in the next chapter.

That's very important, you know. Where the smith says to the hero, "here is your sword. Isn't it awesome!" generally followed by "This is the best I've ever made." The hero then gets to look in awe and stuff. Which happens in the next chapter. So, what we have here is a breaking of continuity in order to fit in the 'important' cliche found in the 'traditional' hero's story.

Comments

[kevias.livejournal.com]

The conceived vs. born distinction among elves comes, naturally, from Tolkien. Have a look here (http://www.ansereg.com/what_tolkien_officially_said_abo.htm).

On the related subject of bodily possession, I don't know why Paolini doesn't admit there is a sexual (or at least awkward) component to it. There's no reason why Eragon couldn't find it strange, disturbing, and uncomfortable on a variety of levels. Or arousing. It wouldn't be wrong, it wouldn't make him a worse person, and yet Paolini shies away from it, as he does from most opportunities to develop his characters into anything interesting.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

I figured that it probably came from Tolkien. I vaguely
remember reading something about it before.

He shies away from having them have any sort of emotional response in general. They have to be as bleh as possible.

[anarchicq.livejournal.com]

So someone is playing a saw in her head?

In the mean time Rhunon works out working in Eragon's body until she's got him moving in a comfortable manner for both of them.
DO NOT WANT!

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

DO NOT WANT!

[autarkhos.livejournal.com]

"Relax, Shadeslayer, this is not really rape because you secretly enjoy it."

Yeah, this technique does not work for a double-edged blade. Why would you want the blade to bend? That's just wrong. HOW could it bend without breaking? It works for single edged blades but not for double edged ones. :| The only thing I could think of is if you parried a blade on the edge of your one and it absorbed the force via compression of the center and then decompression. But, yeah, I don't think that'd work. The only reason the Japanese did this was because their iron was very, very brittle (extremely low quality) which meant that it would shatter if you didn't have the curvature on it.

Why is this necessary if Brightsteel is amazing and invincible, anyway?

How did they end up with metals of different strengths from a single batch of metal that was done exactly the same way? This makes no sense. The strength of a metal isn't decided by some arbitrary magic or whatever. It's decided by the composition of the metal itself which is what you shove into the smelter.

NONE OF THIS CHAPTER MAKES ANY SENSE AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.

It MIGHT make sense if it was a Japanese-esque sword, but it's not. It's an entirely Western sword. Forging something like this is a waste of time and effort. It also makes no sense. It's no stronger than an ordinary sword and it could, in fact, be weaker if I can tell what I'm thinking of.

The worst part of this chapter is "LOOK I AM DOING THE WANKERY" which would be fine BUT HE GETS IT GOD DAMN WRONG.

[torylltales.livejournal.com]

Trust me, you're not the only one with these questions. This is easily one of the most stupid scenes in the entire series so far, and I'm counting the Hairless Groins scene, the Murder A Conscript scene, and the Sloan Judgement scene in that. None of those are as desperately stupid as this. Not even the Dwarf Ninjas were as mind-numbingly awful.

[jacedraccus.livejournal.com]

Bad enough that he gets it wrong, He could at least try to describe it n a way that makes sense.

[(Anonymous)]

...On the bright side, most of the cycle's readers are probably too young to notice the blatant rape overtones.

...On second thought, that may not be a good thing.

Seriously, though. It's unbelievable how oblivious CP is about his writing style. O.O

[chocolatemithra.livejournal.com]

But can anyone really believe he's oblivious? I mean, after reading this section? To call the squicky subtext thinly-veiled is too generous here. It's not veiled at all.

[hekateras.livejournal.com]

I can only conclude that he must be oblivious. From what we've seen of CP on interviews and such, he's like a very naive, optimistic and enthusiastic puppy who's a bit full of himself the way a kid might be after winning a spelling Bee. And he doesn't seem to have much contact with the Real World of the Internet....

[autarkhos.livejournal.com]

Do his parents really molly coddle him THAT much?

[jacedraccus.livejournal.com]

They published the first edition of Eragon. If you believe them, they risked their own livelihood and family finances.

Plus, they drove him all over the place to publicise and sell it.

So... yes?

[torylltales.livejournal.com]

Plus, the Paolini patriarch actively moderated to original Shurtugal fan-forums, and aggressively eliminated any comment or commenter who had anything to say that was less that praise. According to those people who were around back then, that is.

[autarkhos.livejournal.com]

Wow.

That's just a bit ridiculous.

[autarkhos.livejournal.com]

Why would you do that with a kid's first book? I don't GET it.

[jacedraccus.livejournal.com]

Makes even less sense when you consider that he was fifteen when he started writing Eragon, and even though it took him a couple of years to get it printed and publicised and properly published, it doesn't seem to have been improved upon at all since the initial writing.

I mean, I hope that's the case, because otherwise... geez, the first draft would have been even more awful.

So yeah.... I guess their darling is just that SPESHUL? Heck, they homeschooled him, and it really doesn't seem to me that they did it for the right reasons, or that they socialised him much at all, because he seems painfully sheltered, judging by what he's written.

[princesselwen.livejournal.com]

I never realized that section sounded so...sexual. Ewwww.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

I processes everything through a brain that lives in the sewers. If I can find it, I will point it out. >D

[chocolatemithra.livejournal.com]

I'm fairly certain that just making the blade isn't the entirety of making - of forging - a sword. There's more to it, and so she should still be bound by her oath not to make a sword. She shouldn't be able to do it.

I have to think what he was going for here was an instance of elf and human minds not working the same way. In other words, where a human might find that ridiculous - as Eragon actually does earlier in the chapter - an elf might be more willing to separate the two. The hilt, pommel etc. won't be used for the actual killing so it doesn't violate the oath? He's already established his elves as having a predisposition towards literal language, if I'm remembering correctly: I think there's a chapter where Arya tells Eragon a figure of speech he uses is dishonest.

Admittedly a very convenient way to lead into the big sword reveal, as you say. But given a charitable interpretation it isn't totally nonsensical.

Raw Wool

[autarkhos.livejournal.com]

I don't get it, what does raw wool running over your skin feel like? I can imagine it's quite pleasurable, really. So, is Eragon getting off to this, or what?

Re: Raw Wool

[hekateras.livejournal.com]

Raw wool is SCRATCHY, constantly pinpricking you in a hundred different places every time you breathe or shift a limb. If you're not used to it, it can be downright torturous...

Re: Raw Wool

[autarkhos.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, I remember reading somewhere it was used for devices for penitence in Catholic monks instead of using barbed wire. Still, though, the metaphor doesn't really work for me. :|

Re: Raw Wool

[foxypope.livejournal.com]

Rough wool would have been a better term than raw wool, I think. It's just a matter of Paolini using strange terminology and hoping readers are impressed by it, but instead it's him avoiding being literal and causing confusion as a result.