Why the curved blade? (Why a spoon brother?)

In a previous post I made the observation that modern blades have tended toward the katana/sabre style of curved blade. I suggested that perhaps the katana design is better and that is why more modern military blades moved in that direction. Upon further thought, I might have over simplified the situation.

Curved blades on swords served different purposes. I'll talk about two. Kukri blades are curved to place the balance of the striking edge forward, similar to an axe. A similar balance can be found in some machetes and other 'tool' blades.This kind of curve is also popular in the Philippines. It's similar to the Greek kopis Why? Well sure these swords can cut people, but are they better? Yes. They're better like an axe is better. The balance toward the end of the blade means that they can chop. Think about it. If you live in a heavily jungled area like the Philippines or Nepal you're going to need to chop. You might have seen movies where the adventurers are chopping their way through a jungle with a machete. It's not just cool looking, it's also very practical. Jungles grow like crazy. The environment encourages heavy undergrowth, and to get a group of people through that undergrowth you'll need to clear a path. This curved blade is very useful at chopping. Not just people, but plants.

The second benefit of a curved blade is with cutting. This is not the same as chopping (just go with me here, I love playing with words just to mess with people but I'm not just messing with you now. Seriously chopping and cutting. two different things. Okay? Okay.) When you chop, as with an axe, the force is straight up and down. You are using the weight of the wedge (the axe) to split the target.

Cutting on the other hand is when the blade is pulled across the surface of the target, like with a saw. (but without the saw teeth, or else it would be sawing. Bear with me, I have a point.) For an example, think of cutting a raw steak or chicken. If you simply press your blade down into the meat you'll need to use quite a bit of force, but if you draw your blade across the meat is splits without much resistance.

Drawing your blade across a surface is what a curved blade is really good at. When you cut with a curved sword it keeps the pressure at the point of contact. This kind of curved blade is a cutting and slicing machine. And it's quite effective against unarmored opponents. Cutting against chain mail or armor is mostly useless. Armor is best defeated with crushing blows or thrusts.

So why is any of this important? My earlier statement suggests that the curved katana blade has some clear advantage that made other weapons emulate it (knowingly or not). But that advantage is not found in a unopposed world. The advantage of a blade curved for cutting is that it is great against unarmored enemies. But who would go into battle unarmored? Well, pretty much everyone as soon as guns came around. Guns made traditional armors nearly obsolete, and when designing swords for use against clothing then you don't have to worry about how to penetrate the armor. Thrust weapons (like foils) are designed to thrust between the gaps of armor. Some foil type weapons didn't even have edges, just sharp points for stabbing. But a weapon just for stabbing is a gentleman's game when you could have the whole edge for cutting and a tip for stabbing. (check out the ever popular pirate cutlass)

My point is this: tools are designed to do a job. Weapons are tools. If we all started using square head screws, then the flat head screwdriver would become obsolete. The saber style blade probably became more popular because armor disappeared, not because the curve is better, just that it was better for the job that needed to be done. I hastily drew a conclusion that has some credence but there was more to it. I imagine that there's still more, but I think I'm done for now. Thanks for reading!

Video Games and Entymology

I recently watched this video.


It comes from a series of videos about video game design, but their method is so thoughtful that I have found that it applies to quite a few other areas of creativity.

By this point you may have guessed at the purposeful misspelling in the title of this post. Well, I warned you in the blog title.

But, on to more time consuming discussion. This video is about the word "Game" as used in the video game industry. Within the past few years there have been an increasing number of not fun games created. When I say that I don't mean that they aren't good games, I just mean that their primary purpose is not to entertain.

To me this creates an interesting look into how words develop. The tone of this video seems to suggest that the word game isn't useful, and that we should abandon it in favor of a new term: Interactive Experience. Early on in the video the speaker makes a comparison to poetry and suggests that it's crazy to question whether or not a piece of writing is actually a poem if it doesn't conform to certain rules (i.e. rigid meter or rhyming couplets). But the truth is that the scholastic community did question poems that broke those rules. And eventually they came to the conclusion that the term "poetry" was broad enough to contain these new expressions, they just came up with new names to contain the newer, free form poetry.

That's how language works. Us silly humans are always making up new stuff. If we find a new medium to work in, then we explore it. If someone pays us, we explore more. If people are willing to pay enough, or pay enough attention, then the business minded part of humanity jumps in to exploit it.

And they need something to call it.

"Why?" you ask. (You know, it gives me a perverse pleasure forcing that on you. You may not have even wanted to ask that question and I just attributed it to you. Writers are sick.) Because that's how we have learned to communicate. We make a written or audible symbol and someone else sees or hears the symbol and interprets it.

But words, spoken or written, are only useful for communicating an idea if we have a similar understanding of their meaning. Definitions are useful because they allow us to communicate. (One of my favorite discussions of the usefulness of words and definitions is by C.S. Lewis in his paper, Mere Christianity.)

The term "game" is historically used to denote play, and there's no doubt that our current "video game" started there. The new term the author of this video suggests, "interactive experience", would be useful for a discussion about interactive experiences, but it fails at telling me what kind of interactive experience (which is currently the problem with the word game). The word is undergoing a change.

It may be useful to adopt "interactive experience" as a term for the medium and leave "game" to it's old usage. I say useful because the use of a term is found in its ability to communicate an idea. If we're divided about what "game" means, then the word loses validity. Another option would be to keep the word "game" and just lump the other kinds of experiences in with new adjectives to keep them apart (e.g. fun game, strategy game, intellectual game, game that makes you question your own sanity, etc.). One problem I see in using the word "game" is that the word has other ties. We already have a definition that is associated with other activities (e.g. soccer, chess, uno, tag, etc.) and they are usually tied to fun or entertainment. If we continue to use the word "game" for every interactive video experience then we lose a bit of meaning. I'm not saying it can't work. I'm just saying that this is a problem I see. "Interactive Experience" for me, lacks some of the original connotation attached to the word "game".

The difficulty is that we are creating new experiences that are categorically different than what games and video games have historically presented. We've invented a new category that is related, but is genuinely different. If it weren't, then we probably wouldn't be having this argument. We'd find something else to argue about.

So we've got multiple interactive experiences being created. Lumping them together as "games" has caused confusion. A new term that embodies the whole is useful in this case.  "Interactive Experience" is as good as any I can think of. It would sometimes be nice to force everyone to agree on categorization methods or terms, but language seems to evolve much more fluidly. We'll see if "Interactive Experience" catches on as a description of the medium. Though in the end, I think it will probably be most useful to people talking about interactive experiences or trying to sell them. People who want to play games will still just play them.

Katanas

While preparing to write I tend to do a lot of research, perhaps too much. One of the things I am currently studying is combat. Since I'm writing a fantasy novel set in a time without guns, I'm studying really anything that came before guns.

One thing that I've noticed is a rolling commentary on the katana. The katana is a Japanese blade that has become extremely popular. People who love the katana say it was the best sword ever. People who like other swords usually say the katana is overrated because of popular culture. I've just got a few observations:

Katanas are not just swords. To many people the katana represents the values and belief system of the Samurai. It's not just the sword, but the entire Samurai culture that is involved with this sword. It's similar to the way those of European descent view King Arthur and the knights of the round table. There is a sense of romanticism and adventure surrounding the Katana.

Military change throughout the ages represents a huge back and forth between opponents. If I sent my army at you with a stick, you might get bigger sticks for your army. If I put on a lot of heavy clothes and to pad my warriors bodies and some wood on their heads to protect them, you might come at me with a sharpened weapon to cut through that padding, or a club with spikes that could poke through. If you just found this great stuff called metal that you could shape, you might use as much as you could find. But you might, instead, change your fighting style so that you could pinpoint the weaknesses in my armor without finding a new weapon. Chances are that you'd probably do whatever you could to come out on top.

The point here is that weapons, armor, fighting styles, and even military philosophies change throughout the years in concert with enemies, resources, and technology. Swords throughout the world have gone through various changes throughout the millennium. Materials dictated how long and how thin swords could be made (a 4 foot copper sword would not stand up to continual beating, but a 2 foot copper sword made thick enough might do the job). Sometimes it was a matter of knowing how to forge the metal. Sometimes it was about finding the metal (Iron, as it turns out, is not found naturally in bars or sheets at a local sword making store). Katanas were made in Japan. Japan is an island with limited resources. Katanas have a thick back side made of lower quality metal with a blade forged from a very high quality metal. This design allowed the weapon smiths to create a strong blade with less cost. It is an ingenious design that comes partly from the real world limitations.

One fallback katanas have is that they don't bend. Katanas are created like a long, thin, axe blade. Thick at the back and sharp at the edge. They can stab, but Europeans started making swords that could take a lot of strain and still come back to their original shape. One reason flexible swords are useful is that they can slide along tough armor and slide into weaker joints. The knight was like a tank. He let the armor take blow after blow until he was in position and then he attacked. We don't see many knights fighting with rapiers, because thin and flexible rapier blades made it easier for unarmored opponents to take down a knight.

But there is one piece of evidence that may support the katana's effective design especially in more modern combat. The swords used in more modern wars are single edged, curved blades like the katana. Part of that is that sabers are very useful for cavalry who want to ride through and slice down their enemy. A curved sword is much better if you want to keep going, while a straight sword tend to hang up a bit. Also, plate armor became less and less useful when guns came around (thick enough plate to stop a bullet may well just be too heavy).

I don't know if there is any connection between the saber and the katana. The truth is that every weapon is useful in certain situations, but just looking at the trends, it seems that over time we gravitated toward a similar style. That doesn't mean that the katana is the best sword ever, but the convergent design seems like a good indicator that there is something to be said about katanas.

Who am I?

A friend of mine just became the president of the Color Country Nightwriters. It's a writing group, and a branch of the League of Utah Writers.

From the sounds of her opening letter, she's got some good energy to help the members push forward with their writing goals.

One of the first things she asked is for members to create a short bio. These are some questions she asked to help get the autobiography juices flowing. I'm sure she wanted the writers to get creative, but I'm just going to straight up answer them. What  can I say? I'm lazy.

- What is your name/pen name?

Derrick Duncan

- What do you write?

Science Fiction/Fantasy

- What have you written in the past that you're most proud of?

I wrote a Science Fiction novel that takes inspiration from Little Red Riding Hood and Star Wars. According to the agents, it seems that it's really nothing to be proud of, but I still like it.

- What have you written in the past that's most embarrassing?

I wrote a short script that my buddy made into a short film. I'm mostly embarrassed by it took my writing in a different direction than I wanted to go.

- What kind of books do you like?

Fantasy, Sci-fi, pseudo philosophical non fiction

- Who is your favorite author and why?

I like Shakespeare, though strictly speaking he was a playwright and not an author. I enjoy that he took stories from everywhere and applied his own genius to them.

- What kind of styles (first person, third person limited, stream of consciousness etc.) do you like to use?

I think each style lends itself to very different uses. Since I see writing as a tool for communication, I prefer to use the style that the widest audience will easily understand. Currently that's either third person limited. First person has really come in strong in the past few years though and it creates a fun sense of immediacy. I'd love to be able to pull off third person omniscient, but it's a bit out of vogue. Other styles are pretty limited and I'll probably use them only for short sequences.

However, I do have plans for writing a second person novel based on a suggestion my buddy gave me.

- What is your goal with your writing?  (Why do you write what you write?)

I write because I know some stories that deserve to be told. I've had both profound insights and moving experiences with these stories in my mind, and they deserve to give those experiences to other people. But I also write because of my extreme narcissism. I want other people to find joy in something that I wrote. And I want them to know it was me who wrote it. 

Suspense, Mystery, and Cheaters

Writing a good suspenseful story will nearly always compel readers to keep going. Sometimes keeping a certain amount of knowledge hidden will excite the reader to find out just what they're missing. But keeping useful information from a reader JUST to keep them reading is usually cheating.

When you're writing, take a look at what you are keeping from the readers. You might be surprised how much not keeping secrets adds to the story.

When Shakespeare has two people in love with each other, he often lets us in on the secret but keeps his characters in the dark. This is called dramatic irony. When we as an audience know something that the characters don't it can help increase tension because we know that they are making a poor decision because they don't have the knowledge we do. "Oh if only Romeo knew that Juliet wasn't really dead!" The action of the story is compelling because we know that there's another choice. If you're like me when you read Romeo and Juliet you find yourself trying to telepathically give Romeo some help. This happens to me every time, and it works for comedy and drama just as well. Shakespeare was a master of suspense.

Another time that you can help the reader is when your characters have a plan. We often try to keep our readers in the dark so that they can be amazed by how we solve problems when if they knew our crazy answer they would be compelled to find out if it worked or what our characters did when the plan failed.

Any time you have a mystery though, it should be the kind that the reader could solve on their own by the time your character does. The reader should either be saying, "I should have guessed." I know that I am always caught up in stories when I say, "I knew it!"

But there's a caveat. You need to give your reader the clues along the way so that they say, "I know what happened" just before or even while your character is making the connection. You'll need to find the balance so that readers don't get bored because they figured it out three chapters ago and the character (given the same hints, not using dramatic irony this time) is so dense they just don't get it.

Last but not least, if you're building up some great suspense, you better make sure your solution is just as great. Unless you're trying to screw with your readers' heads, don't hold a simple solution ransom just to make your readers watch. Nothing turns me off to a series more than reading or watching a story that is keeping one stupid secret. Your story should be engaging to read whether the reader knows the ending or not. I watched the Sixth Sense plenty of times even though I knew the ending because the whole movie is good. Don't mistake secrets for good mystery.

Create suspense and mystery by giving out knowledge at the right times. Don't ever hold a piece of knowledge ransom just to keep your reader reading. They should enjoy the story just as much as the revelation at the end.

So in the end ask yourself. Do I need to keep this secret? If you do, then make the whole journey up to that secret enjoyable too. If you don't need to keep the secret, then tell it as early as possible and see where your story takes you.

(NOTE: I'm going to be consolidating my blogs soon. I've just got too many. I'll probably put them all here so keep a look out.)