LAST EDITED ON Feb-01-19 AT 04:25 PM (EST)
 
I read Undocumented Features for the first time in years, and I get UF dreams. I guess that shows how deep it's embedded in me.

Not SotS, though, even though that's what I read the most of, which is why it's in here. :V From what I can remember, Darth Vader was telling Saionji and Anakin about how the Ancient and Obtenebrated Order of the Sith felt that hate could be a constructive and even a positive force. He compared it to forging a sword. Too much heat and the sword would lose its shape and melt; too little, and it would shatter on the anvil as it was hammered. Similarly, too much hatred would cause you to lose sight of what you were hating for, and eventually would cause the hatred to become your master instead of you its; too little, and your foe would shatter you.

But the best kind of hatred, he said, was the kind where you held it towards someone on your level, and it was tempered with another emotion, such as respect or even love. Then, the two of you could climb each other into the sky, like a ladder, with both parties improving after each encounter. This was the kind of hate that could move worlds, and in the dream he'd had some kind of Santovosku word for it, but I can't remember it now.

Then the dream degenerated into trying to play an ancient DOS flight simulator, but the emulator for it wasn't working right, and it probably wasn't UF-related anyway. And given how hard the Wedge Rats fight to preserve their peculiar segment of cultural heritage, the odds of a DOS flight sim being unemulatable would be next to nil anyway.

EDIT: I hadn't read Fulcrum V when I had this dream. Interesting that it came rather close to one of the major plot points.

Your dream Vader's got some interesting points, but as he's a lightsaber guy and not a smith, he's missing one aspect that'd make the metaphor much better -

Iron -burns-

If you overheat during the forging process* then, depending on the specific atmosphere you're in and how much oxygen is available, the surface of your piece will begin burning as it grabs oxygen from the air and starts sparking off various iron oxides.

(I use this as a demonstration for younger kids who come visit during reenactment days, because it looks -just- like a fourth of July sparkler.)

Needless to say, it entirely ruins the surface of your workpiece and requires extensive work to get it back to where it was before you inadvertently let it heat up to a burning temperature.

You can use this extra info to inform dream Vader so that the metaphor can be extended to the price of hating too much or whatnot ;-)

* During the -shaping- part, anyway. There's also the tempering part - if you heat it more than is required for the kind of heat treatment you're using, you will literally "lose your temper" and, yes, that is where that comes from.

>
>EDIT: I hadn't read Fulcrum V when I had this dream. Interesting that
>it came rather close to one of the major plot points.

yes, dreams can be inconvenient in that way Zemyla, though what really prompted me to reply was Munisfire's comments that indicate he is a weaponsmith... And though I have never actually laid hammer to steel the way I think he has, I totally get where he is going, and would have been my own points about the whole thing if he had not beaten me too them

Aaaaaand on that note... Roit folk. No need to drop hints, I get I should be staggering off to bed right about now.

...and now I'm imagining Anakyn appearing on Forged in Fire.

"You'll be making a fully functional blade in your signature style using steel harvested from this hovercar. Your blades must meet the following parameters..."

You know, I've never watched that show. Maybe I should try it out.

I like it? It certainly has episodes where some of the challenges feel more sane than others, but I generally think it's a good example of skilled people getting to use those skills in creative ways, with a minimum of manufactured drama or bullshit.

(Honestly, for all the stunts they set up, the biggest challenge aside from the time limits seems to be the smiths against themselves, and that rings pretty true to me.)

Anywho, there's a small metric fucktonne of episodes out there, so I'd suggest picking a few and giving it a whirl. :)

If you have a cable service or live tv streaming service login, you can watch the entire series on the History channel website.

Not only the creation of the blades, but watching the show's weapons expect go to town on a ballistics dummy or a Hog carcass is a sobering reminder that while these weapons are considered obsolete, they are no less deadly then they were when they were actually being used.....

Craig

Very true. Particularly when someone talks about the difficulty in cutting through, say, a wild boar carcass, and it gets bisected with one swing.

>Not only the creation of the blades, but watching the show's weapons
>expect go to town on a ballistics dummy or a Hog carcass is a sobering
>reminder that while these weapons are considered obsolete, they are no
>less deadly then they were when they were actually being used.....

"They did most of the good work with this. I'd like you to see what it does to a side of meat, because in hand-to-hand combat, that's all a man is."
- James Burke, holding a medieval sword of the kind used at the Battle of Hastings (1066), Connections episode 3, "Distant Voices" (1978)

--G.
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