# Prominence of Swords in Fantasy Settings



## Black Dragon (Feb 27, 2019)

Why do you think that swords feature so prominently in most fantasy stories?  Is it due to symbolism, historical significance, or something else?


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## pmmg (Feb 27, 2019)

Cause they're cool...

I think it really has a lot to do with the romantic and chivalric imagery. A sword kind of represents taking ones destiny into their own hands, and bringing about, for good or for ill, whatever change needs to come about. And it carries with it an honorable method of bringing about, I am not challenging the fates in an underhanded or unfair manner, they get to pick up their sword and defend what they do not want to change if they can.

I don't think other weapons carry this connotation as strongly, but I think there is a similar feel with six shooters via gun slingers in the west, and WWII fighter planes dog-fighting it out.

In a fantasy setting, I also think swords kind of make sense. Its like an easy to carry, to use, and universal type of tool. I can see why many would carry one. Not always the best choice, but never the worst.

I've heard others talk about the phallic nature of the sword and its imagery and suggest that that is also part of it. Male symbols of power forcing their way upon things, but I never quite found that imagery to resonate. Maybe...


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## Snowpoint (Feb 27, 2019)

Swords are so extra. Axes are cheaper, easier to make and use, you can throw it. But the real winner is STICK. Can't beat stick.


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## WooHooMan (Feb 27, 2019)

Spears were the original guns.  They’re the best and most widely used weapon.
As far as the ‘cool’ factor, i think spears and swords are about equal.  They both have about the same level of symbolic meaning.

I think the prevalence of swords in fantasy mostly comes from how well known Excalibur and the Sword in the Stone are in the modern West.  There’s no mythological spear with a reputation like that.


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## pmmg (Feb 27, 2019)

The spear of destiny. Even Hitler went looking for that one  Sorry, but swords are cooler than spears in my book. But...spears would be better to give to an army.

If it had been the Axe in the stone, I don't think it would have caught on as well.


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## skip.knox (Feb 28, 2019)

Well, most fantasy stories are set in pre-industrial times. True, there's a window there of after gunpowder but before the 19thc, and has its own little sub-genre, but far more stories are quasi-medieval or quasi-ancient. So, swords.


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## Firefly (Mar 5, 2019)

I honestly think a lot of it has to do with familiarity. We all know, generally, how someone fights with a sword, we've all seen swordfights in movies and read enough of them in books to have picked up a little bit of vocabulary. A writer who's read a lot of fantasy novels can usually write a scene where characters fight with swords without any extra research and have it seem fairly plausible to the average reader. The same is not true (Or at least, less true) for most other weapons. The MC in the story I'm working on right now fights with axes and I'm sorely tempted to change it back to a sword every time it comes up because I just have no clue what kind of training or tactics would make sense and I'm not super excited to go out and research it.


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## Malik (Mar 5, 2019)

Firefly said:


> We all know, generally, how someone fights with a sword



I built a career on the fact that vast numbers of fantasy authors don't.

The sword does a thing that other weapons don't--and can't.

The sword is defined by its singularity of purpose. It's a tool for the taking of human life. Daggers, spears, axes, hammers, bows . . . they all have secondary roles. More to the point, they're tools that have been repurposed.

Swords kill people. Period. You don't hunt with it, you don't drive nails with it, you don't split wood with it, you don't eat with it in a pinch. If you carry a sword, you're carrying a prominent thing for the sole purpose of killing someone with it. Throughout history, that has spoken immense volumes: if you've trained with a sword, you're a trained killer. If you're carrying one, you're ready to kill someone at any moment. Just contemplate that for a moment. I think it gets lost in the trope quite a bit. It's not a thing to be taken lightly. For all of time immemorial, the hard and fast rule has been to stay the f*** away from someone carrying a sword. We never see this, of course, because it's the go-to for fantasy characters ("Oh, you have a sword? Cool! I have a sword! YAY SWORDS!") but when you really think about what a sword is, and what it does, and what it stands for, it gets kind of weird to think that everyone is carrying one all the time, everywhere. I mean, that's an awkward and ultimately untenable social construct, right there. Just my two cents.


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## Svrtnsse (Mar 5, 2019)

Malik said:


> I built a career on the fact that vast numbers of fantasy authors don't.


Put the pointy end in the soft part of the bad guy. How hard can it be?


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## A. E. Lowan (Mar 5, 2019)

Very, to be honest. You're carrying around a three foot razor blade and hoping you don't lop your own head off. Sword fights can be blindingly fast.


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## Malik (Mar 5, 2019)

Svrtnsse said:


> Put the pointy end in the soft part of the bad guy. How hard can it be?











Only took ten years of study and practice and only cost me the tip of one finger. Just sayin'. Y'all better hurry.


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## A. E. Lowan (Mar 5, 2019)




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## A. E. Lowan (Mar 5, 2019)

I remember, when I was younger, working with a group called Renaissance Sword Theatre who performed with live steel. I was only seventeen, so no sword work for me, but I got to pick up a few fingers and hold pressure on one guy who'd been run through.


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## Malik (Mar 5, 2019)

A. E. Lowan said:


>



I ****ing love you maniacs, just so much.


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## Svrtnsse (Mar 5, 2019)

Malik said:


> Only took ten years of practice and only cost me the tip of one finger. Just sayin'. Y'all better hurry.


I'm gambling on you forgetting this exchange before WorldCon. 

Seriously though, I get where you're coming from. I hadn't considered the point about how swords were designed exclusively for killing humans (and that's probably telling), but it makes sense now you mention it. 

That said, I also wouldn't have attempted to write combat scenes like the ones in Dragon's Trail.


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## A. E. Lowan (Mar 5, 2019)

My entire goal in life is to be Malik when I grow up.


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## Malik (Mar 5, 2019)

Svrtnsse said:


> I'm gambling on you forgetting this exchange before WorldCon.



Remind me to show you the finger. Unfortunately, it's one removed from the one I'd like to show you.


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## Svrtnsse (Mar 5, 2019)

A. E. Lowan said:


> My entire goal in life is to be Malik when I grow up.


I lost my fingertip to regular door, and I can't write a werewolf story even if the main character is a werewolf - apparently.

...and I'll stop derailing the thread now. 

As to the original question of why swords are so prominent...

I think a lot of it is to do with genre convention, reader expectations, and the "cool" factor.
Heroes in fantasy stories fight with swords, because that's what fantasy heroes do. It may be a bit of a simplification, but I don't think it's necessarily wrong.


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## Malik (Mar 5, 2019)

A. E. Lowan said:


> My entire goal in life is to be Malik when I grow up.



Living the Research


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## A. E. Lowan (Mar 5, 2019)

Malik said:


> Living the Research


YIS!!!


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## Ban (Mar 5, 2019)

I'm now glad that my stories take place in modern and futuristic settings. Guns are easier to work with. You can even grip them like an idiot, hold them sideways and still be relatively effective in short range. Perfect for the incompetent slackers who make up my protagonists.

As for why swords are so prominent? Besides everything mentioned prior, I also think a big chunk of the popularity comes from simple memetics. If something is prominent in a work, then those inspired by that work are likely to imitate it.


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## A. E. Lowan (Mar 5, 2019)

I have a faerie knight who uses both a gun and a sword. Double homework.


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## A. E. Lowan (Mar 5, 2019)

I was just reading sections of Living the Research to my wife and writing partner and she almost fell out of her chair laughing.


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## Svrtnsse (Mar 5, 2019)

A. E. Lowan said:


> I have a faerie knight who uses both a gun and a sword. Double homework.


Gun and sword is a pretty kickass combination though. No idea on how to go about it, but it conjures up a lot of cool imagery.


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## A. E. Lowan (Mar 5, 2019)

It helps that he's ambidextrous and a little over a thousand years old, so I'm cheating a bit. He tends to wield the sword in his right hand and the normal gun in his left hand. He also has a magical gun in Faerie Rising, but that only comes out on special occasions.


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## Svrtnsse (Mar 5, 2019)

A. E. Lowan said:


> It helps that he's ambidextrous and a little over a thousand years old, so I'm cheating a bit. He tends to wield the sword in his right hand and the normal gun in his left hand. He also has a magical gun in Faerie Rising, but that only comes out on special occasions.


One of my MCs is carrying guns. They'll only see use twice in the story though, and at both times it's in situations where the technical details aren't really relevant to the story - because it's not that kind of story.


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## A. E. Lowan (Mar 5, 2019)

I actually don't have a whole lot of personal experience with guns, but I've found a couple of books to be very helpful.

https://www.amazon.com/Violence-Writers-Guide-Rory-Miller/dp/1481921460/
https://www.amazon.com/Writers-Guide-Weapons-Practical-Reference/dp/1599638150/


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## Ban (Mar 5, 2019)

I just take the Tarantino approach to gun violence. Flashy and bloody with some nice camera angles. I'm again lucky that I put most of my stories in the future. Who's to say they don't have built-in gun stabilizers and other enhancements by then? 

Gun research would just distract me from the important stuff. Writing food scenes.


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## FifthView (Mar 6, 2019)

The poet Auden had a perspective that matches mine. At least, once I read his I began to see the issue similarly:

_The advent of the machine has destroyed the direct relation between a man’s intention and his deed. If St. George meets the dragon face to face and plunges a spear into its heart, he may legitimately say “I slew the dragon,” but, if he drops a bomb on the dragon from an altitude of twenty thousand feet, though his intention — to slay it — is the same, his act consists in pressing a lever and it is the bomb, not St. George, that 
does the killing._ [from "The Poet & The City"]

_From the height of 10,000 feet, the earth appears to the human eye as it appears to the eye of the camera; that is to say, all history is reduced to nature. This has the salutary effect of making historical evils, like national divisions and political hatreds, seem absurd. I look down from an airplane upon a stretch of land which is obviously continuous. That, across it, marked by a tiny ridge or river or even by no topographical sign whatever, there should run a frontier, and that the human beings living on one side should hate or refuse to trade with or be forbidden to visit those on the other side, is instantaneously revealed to me as ridiculous. Unfortunately, I cannot have this revelation without simultaneously having the illusion that there are no historical values either. From the same height I cannot distinguish between an outcrop of rock and a Gothic cathedral, or between a happy family playing in a backyard and a flock of sheep, so that I am unable to feel any difference between dropping a bomb upon one or the other. If the effect of distance upon the observed and the observer were mutual, so that, as the objects on the ground shrank in size and lost their uniqueness, the observer in the airplane felt himself shrinking and becoming more and more generalized, we should either give up flying as too painful or create a heaven on earth. _ [from "Hic et Ille"]

Lots to unpack there, but for me the central theme is that swords are far more personal. The effects of every move are immediate and _near_. I think it's true that the bomber from the airplane (or from a further remote drone-operating station) can feel regret and unease and remorse—depending on the person; but even so, there's still some distance, some inherent safety in being able to strike while being very hard to strike in return. Isn't this why guns and bombs were invented, at least in part? The nearness of swordwork lends itself very well to the sorts of stories we write; I am tempted to say there is an analogue between the use of swords and the use of close third-person limited narration in many fantasy novels.

I think there's also a nostalgia involved, or a pseudo-nostalgia, insofar as advanced technology and related developments in our world have made so much of our world seem impersonal and even threatening beyond our ability to control what happens. As if we are the "family playing in a backyard" or a flock of sheep, and distant, unknowable threats are circling far overhead.  Lately I've been wondering whether the fantasy genre is little more than this attempt to escape into a more...heh, manageable world, or at least give us that sense of possibility, as a reaction against the complex modern world.

Of course, guns are a bit more personal than bombs dropped from 10K feet, but not nearly as personal as swords.


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## Futhark (Mar 6, 2019)

I think Malik has the right of it.  Swords were never tools, they were made to kill people.  I think this is true of the six-shooters in westerns too.  Rifles, as I understand it, are more accurate and reliable, but they evolved from hunting weapons, I think.

There is also the coolness aspect and the status of carrying a death dealer on your hip.  Which is my second point.  The sword was only rarely mass produced for the common rank and file, Roman Legionaries being the exception.  It was a status symbol, a mark of rank that few could afford but many aspired to.  From the stereotypical medieval knights to the samurai, the sword marked them as the elite.  And of course the main character is special, so he needs a sword, right?


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## Demesnedenoir (Mar 6, 2019)

Well put. I have a character in Eve of Snows who “earns” a sword froma family (their ancestor earned it long ago by for fighting for the local lords) and they give it to him for saving their daughters. The next town he walks into, he finds people quite impressed to see a man carrying a sword. It’s old fashioned (for anyone who knows swords) but godsdamnit, it’s still a sword. The man earns respect, nd they find he’s asking questions about a guy that nobody likes! They’re right willing to talk, LOL.

But, a lot has to do with time period also, and culture.



Malik said:


> I built a career on the fact that vast numbers of fantasy authors don't.
> 
> The sword does a thing that other weapons don't--and can't.
> 
> ...


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## Demesnedenoir (Mar 6, 2019)

The revolver was not purely for killing people. The revolver has a lot of utilitarian uses, a signal, or in herding cattle for instance, or even as a hammer... heh heh. Lots of old revolver butts will show signs of being used as a hammer.

The revolver in the old west and the sword are similar in one aspect, they’re side arms. That is key. The spear and its variants and the rifle are awkward in various situations. Comparisons: A (shorter) spear and carbine are both good horseback, a musket and heavy-bladed halberd, not so much.

Another point about swords is that not only were they designed to kill people, their design is extremely effective in defense and in relatively tight quarters! In later periods, the era of the rapier then small sword, they’re both status symbol and practical self defense that you can just hang from your hip. Much like the revolver in the old west. An axe can kill just fine, but defensively just doesn’t match up with the sword. Although offensively, the sword offers more options.


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## Snowpoint (Mar 6, 2019)

FifthView said:


> _The advent of the machine has destroyed the direct relation between a man’s intention and his deed._.


Thanks for posting this. Relevant to a story idea that popped in my head today.

On Topic: I think fantasy stories, readers and writers, are on a quest for Agency. When bad things happen in the real world, those issues are not solved by the choices of one person. But in Fantasy, Climate Change can be solved by slaying Ice Zombies with what... MAGIC SWORDS!!  

Magic is often the element that gives the protagonist agency. Like many Greek Heroes are Demi-God, and most Shakespeare heroes are Royal. Those are the elements that give them both the freedom to act, and what makes their choices matter to the universe. Now we don't believe in gods or kings like we used to, so now it is magic.


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## FifthView (Mar 7, 2019)

Snowpoint said:


> Thanks for posting this. Relevant to a story idea that popped in my head today.
> 
> On Topic: I think fantasy stories, readers and writers, are on a quest for Agency. When bad things happen in the real world, those issues are not solved by the choices of one person. But in Fantasy, Climate Change can be solved by slaying Ice Zombies with what... MAGIC SWORDS!!
> 
> Magic is often the element that gives the protagonist agency. Like many Greek Heroes are Demi-God, and most Shakespeare heroes are Royal. Those are the elements that give them both the freedom to act, and what makes their choices matter to the universe. Now we don't believe in gods or kings like we used to, so now it is magic.



Thanks for bringing magic into the discussion. I'd been pondering it since I posted my previous comment here. Also, I think you are right about the issue of Agency.

Sorry to mix metaphors, but magic is like a double-edged sword.

On one hand, the character possessing magic can gain Agency, or have the power to affect the world in significant ways.

But on the other hand, magic in fantasy can be used in an allegorical way to represent our modern world. I recently watched the new trailer for GoT S8, and the line Rob delivers about the enemy stands out: "Our enemy doesn't tire. Doesn't stop. Doesn't feel." The magic-created enemy is an impersonal, somewhat vague and distant threat..until it's not distant anymore, heh. This is like some politician in Washington D.C. or on the other side of the world, or some shadowy hacker collective, or hidden but moving terrorists lurking in the shadows doing things or planning things that will change the world for the worse. Magic can play that role very well in a novel, and perhaps readers will recognize the feeling of being threatened by those impersonal but powerful forces.

Swords—and probably more so, magical swords—may be a way to condense positive Agency into the hands of the characters, like giving them a lever on the power dynamics of whatever is happening in the fantasy world.

Now that I think of it, swords had this effect in _our_ world too, hah. But then again, so have guns and bombs. This is becoming an even bigger issue now that the general public has greater access to guns and explosives, compared to when those technologies were first invented. These technologies may give the individual a sense of greater agency, and depending on the individual...well, you know our world.

Sometimes in discussions on various topics, we seem to begin an objective discussion relating our world to our fantasy worlds, to the point of discussing these things in the abstract and forgetting, I think, the interstice. The interstice is the literary use of these things. While I like crossing the bridges between the real and the fantasy in abstract thought, I'm leery of forgetting the bridge.

Bombs and guns can be effective in a story—just like offensive magic—although I do think swords and other melee weapons have the effect of adding/heightening stakes and agency for the characters while also allowing us as authors the opportunity to explore the "nearness effects" in various ways. We can slow down the fight; the fight's not decided with a single bullet, heh. We can explore the physical effects of the fight, insofar as swinging a sword in a hard-won fight is more exhausting than pulling a gun's trigger. We can explore the learning curve because wielding a sword effectively takes a lot more practice than being able to shoot a gun effectively. (However, I don't want to dismiss the positive effects of long training for marksmen!) We can have our character both receive and give many nicks, slices, punctures, close calls during a sword fight. We can have our characters seeing and displaying growls, grimaces, and the blood and sweat, up close, and reacting to all these things.

Offensive magic gets an easy pass from me, depending on how it's used. There may be some similar effects—the learning curve, the exhaustion or other negative physical reactions, even closeness if the magic wielder is inexperienced and his opponent is a master swordsman. I do think offensive magic has another thing going for it when compared to guns and bombs: Readers already know all about guns and bombs, but the effects, use, limits, etc. of magic may still be quite mysterious for the reader.


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## pmmg (Mar 7, 2019)

Mr. Fifth, you are a well thought out individual.

Since I live right next to DC, it really does not seem all that distant to me. In fact, I have installed computers in both the White House and the Supreme Court at various times in my life (not quite the Congress yet) (oh, and the Pentagon too, I used to work there once), and pretty much our local news is national news. And I do at times walk around in DC with the thought that maybe DC will blow up today, a lot of people would like to... I suppose I wont have much agency then, but if it was to happen (and I survived), I could see getting my apocalypse gun out and providing some agency.

Swords are still cooler though. When I used to watch the show Walking Dead, it was bothersome to me that so many characters were not prepared properly. If you are gonna be in a zombie apocalypse, you should have three weapons, a rifle, a pistol and a melee weapon of some sort. I would have all three of those really quick. And no doubt, I want a sword. (BTW, one of those weapons was not a crossbow--Darryl. Unless stealth matters, your weapon is silly).


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## Miles Lacey (Mar 7, 2019)

Swords are associated with rank, status and honour which is why many armies still have swords as part of their ceremonial or formal uniform.

However only one word needs to be used when it comes to why swords are so popular in fantasy: Excalibur.  

Need I say more?


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## AlexK2009 (Mar 7, 2019)

Black Dragon said:


> Why do you think that swords feature so prominently in most fantasy stories?  Is it due to symbolism, historical significance, or something else?



As well as the phallic bit (latin for a sheath is 'vagina') Swords are like big knives and can be used like axes if need be. They are versatile tools. I understand they are not always effective against a staff. They can also be used like a crutch. 

I would suggest it is because it is what readers expect. But why do so few fighters put poison on their swords?


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## Demesnedenoir (Mar 7, 2019)

Poison coated swords... probably lots of practical reasons, not the least of which is that poisons tend to act too slow for combat. In 1 on 1, the fight would be long over. In battle, it’s not going to be effective for long. And if you had, say, an extremely effective contact poison, the hell if you want to be carrying that around much... good way to x your eyes. Speed and practicality. 



AlexK2009 said:


> As well as the phallic bit (latin for a sheath is 'vagina') Swords are like big knives and can be used like axes if need be. They are versatile tools. I understand they are not always effective against a staff. They can also be used like a crutch.
> 
> I would suggest it is because it is what readers expect. But why do so few fighters put poison on their swords?


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## pmmg (Mar 7, 2019)

Probably for the same reason 'Do not eat' is written on our mines.


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## Insolent Lad (Mar 9, 2019)

A. E. Lowan said:


> It helps that he's ambidextrous and a little over a thousand years old, so I'm cheating a bit. He tends to wield the sword in his right hand and the normal gun in his left hand. He also has a magical gun in Faerie Rising, but that only comes out on special occasions.



That was kind of the accepted approach for a cavalryman of the 19th Century. The sword was considered the primary weapon, the pistol his auxiliary, and the reason the US cavalry wore their revolvers butt-forward on the right side. Of course, if you used both at the same time, managing a horse became a little more difficult!

The combination of sword and gun is common-ish in my Donzalo books, which are set in a quasi-Late Renaissance period, when men still wore armor and carried swords, but also would have a good wheel-lock pistol (if they could afford one).


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## Chuck (Mar 9, 2019)

Magic gives the user an advantage. It allows them to attack from a distance. That creates tension, since the warriors will have to risk injury or death to get close enough to defeat the wizard. Once you introduce guns to the story, that range advantage disappears. There is no point to spend the time studying magic if a new infantry private is just as powerful as the wizard.


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## Gray-Hand (Mar 10, 2019)

AlexK2009 said:


> As well as the phallic bit (latin for a sheath is 'vagina') Swords are like big knives and can be used like axes if need be. They are versatile tools. I understand they are not always effective against a staff. They can also be used like a crutch.
> 
> I would suggest it is because it is what readers expect. But why do so few fighters put poison on their swords?


It is dangerous to the person wielding the sword.  Even assuming that they don’t cut themselves, there is still a good chance that they will touch something with the blade - their hand, their clothes, their horse, their shield etc that they don’t want to accidentally wipe poison onto.  For that matter, if the poison is in liquid form, just swinging the blade about might be enough to send the poison flicking about all over the place.


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## TheKillerBs (Mar 10, 2019)

Chuck said:


> Magic gives the user an advantage. It allows them to attack from a distance. That creates tension, since the warriors will have to risk injury or death to get close enough to defeat the wizard. Once you introduce guns to the story, that range advantage disappears. There is no point to spend the time studying magic if a new infantry private is just as powerful as the wizard.


It depends on the guns and the magic. If it's line-of-sight wave-a-stick spells like Harry Potter against modern assault rifles, sure. Even then a suitably powerful and creative wizard could come up with spell combinations to render even modern gunmen useless.


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## Jeremiah Reed (Mar 10, 2019)

The importance of swords is due to their association with the warrior class. For centuries, swords were the universal symbol of nobility, chivalry, and military might. Because of this, several swords throughout history have been associated with mystical, holy, or otherwise powerful properties. Such as the Sword of Giants from Beowulf or King Charlemagne's sword, Joyeuse, which was said to have been forged from the spear that Christ was stabbed by. Heck, Excalibur is so ingrained in our culture that we don't even bat an eye when we see it depicted in media. These mythical swords inspired fantasy writers like Tolkien, George R.R. Martin, and others to write about fantastical swords with mythical powers that granted their wielders untold gifts.


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## Demesnedenoir (Mar 10, 2019)

Tangent!

Which got me to thinking... what other weapon is really made JUST for killing people? A good mace. A flanged mace wouldn’t be good for shit except maybe popping open treasure boxes, heh heh. The halberd you could call crowd control, but as the sword is a specialized knife, so to speak, so too is the mace an advanced and specialized version of the club, and the halberd a specialized spear against armor and depending on design, against mounted foes. A horseman’s pick is also a specialized killer. The lance as specialized spear... don’t see much use hunting or anything else wth a lance. Sport, but many weapons have a sport version.



Malik said:


> I built a career on the fact that vast numbers of fantasy authors don't.
> 
> The sword does a thing that other weapons don't--and can't.
> 
> ...


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## Devor (Mar 10, 2019)

There's a lot of specific weapons that are designed for killing.  An ax might be a tool, but a battle ax would obviously be designed for killing and war.  A bow might be used for hunting game, but there's no question what the longbow is designed for.  I suppose the sword benefits from being easy to carry around the city though.

I would argue that a good part of the reason we like swords is because of the sport of fencing, which means that for hundreds of years people have witnessed swords in action.  Fencing might not be a realistic portrayal of warfare, but it's a good portrayal of how much skill goes into wielding a sword.  We don't get that sense of _*skill*_ thinking about an axe or a spear or even a bow.  Okay, it takes a lot to swing the weapon all day and hit your target accurately.  But with fencing you get to see the parries, and redoubling, and how an opponent might hope to counter your movements.

Skill is cool, that's what you want in a hero.  Other weapons are missing that.


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## Gray-Hand (Mar 11, 2019)

Demesnedenoir said:


> Tangent!
> 
> Which got me to thinking... what other weapon is really made JUST for killing people? A good mace. A flanged mace wouldn’t be good for shit except maybe popping open treasure boxes, heh heh. The halberd you could call crowd control, but as the sword is a specialized knife, so to speak, so too is the mace an advanced and specialized version of the club, and the halberd a specialized spear against armor and depending on design, against mounted foes. A horseman’s pick is also a specialized killer. The lance as specialized spear... don’t see much use hunting or anything else wth a lance. Sport, but many weapons have a sport version.


Morning Star.  Barely usable as a weapon, and completely useless for anything else.


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## Insolent Lad (Mar 11, 2019)

Gray-Hand said:


> Morning Star.  Barely usable as a weapon, and completely useless for anything else.


Though a morning star is a radical redesign of an ordinary flail.

Btw, one non-weapon use of a sword can be for cooking, shish kabob-style. Not good for the tempering of the metal, of course.


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## elemtilas (Mar 11, 2019)

AlexK2009 said:


> As well as the phallic bit (latin for a sheath is 'vagina') Swords are like big knives and can be used like axes if need be. They are versatile tools. I understand they are not always effective against a staff. They can also be used like a crutch.
> 
> I would suggest it is because it is what readers expect. But why do so few fighters put poison on their swords?



Because that's what Orcs do!  Noble folks like Elves and civilised Men do not stoop to such low tactics. 

My take on the sword in fantasy, in general, is because they are a matter of legend and mythic history. 

Who carries swords? Heroes carry swords! We venerate George Washington and Robert Lee and Ulysses Grant as heroes. We have their swords that saw many heroic battles. Charlemagne carried a sword. It's in a museum. It is named Joiuse. Ogiers bore Curtana; Roland bore Durendal.  It's been banged into the side of a building.

Genghis Khan bore a sword as did Caesar (Yellow Death) and Alexander and Arthur (Excalibur) and Cú Chulainn.

We expect heroes to carry swords, and so they do.  When we arrive at the time when fantasy as a genre was being forged, the ideals of knights and chivalry and ancient heroes  become cemented into modern mythmaking. And so we have Guthwine and Narsil/Anduril and Sting. The pattern set, later heroes in fantastic settings all bear swords too. Garion bears the sword of Iron-Grip. Martin the Warrior bears a (broken and reforged) sword. Conan bore a sword.  Luke bears his father's sword.


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## FifthView (Mar 11, 2019)

pmmg said:


> Since I live right next to DC, it really does not seem all that distant to me. In fact, I have installed computers in both the White House and the Supreme Court at various times in my life (not quite the Congress yet) (oh, and the Pentagon too, I used to work there once), and pretty much our local news is national news. And I do at times walk around in DC with the thought that maybe DC will blow up today, a lot of people would like to... I suppose I wont have much agency then, but if it was to happen (and I survived), I could see getting my apocalypse gun out and providing some agency.



Anytime I make a list of examples, I feel the twinge of guilt knowing that there will be exceptions to those cases, heh.

The "shadowy forces"  could as easily be mortgage banks, insurance companies, or school boards. They could be regulatory agencies or Facebook's clients who buy the data Facebook collects from its users.

I could launch into a looooong discussion on this. Usually, I start with Shakespeare's _Romeo and Juliet_ as an example, for metaphor. There was a Prince (central power) who the Montagues and Capulets somewhat feared, but his fingers didn't reach everywhere all the time, so the families basically could take vendettas into their own hands. At least, some members of those families could do this until the Prince became aware of their efforts.  They used swords, heh. But modern societies have organized to eliminate that sort of personal endeavor as much as possible.  (Many murders and other crimes still reverberate in a R&J way....) Modern society and modern technology have led to a complexity that results in having various levers on powers distributed to such a degree, we can't always know who or what has or will cause us harm. Some unknown file clerk 1000 miles away misfiles our insurance claim and....boom! We might be negatively affected in a serious way. I think this has led to an uneasiness (at the very least) that can be exploited in fiction via the use of malevolent magic.

That's a nutshell of the looooong discussion I could launch. 



pmmg said:


> Swords are still cooler though. When I used to watch the show Walking Dead, it was bothersome to me that so many characters were not prepared properly. If you are gonna be in a zombie apocalypse, you should have three weapons, a rifle, a pistol and a melee weapon of some sort. I would have all three of those really quick. And no doubt, I want a sword. (BTW, one of those weapons was not a crossbow--Darryl. Unless stealth matters, your weapon is silly).



Ah, I've always liked crossbows in fiction.  In Walking Dead, they are put to use because of the necessity of stealth. Guns make loud sounds that will draw more Walkers. Or more of Negan's forces, as was the case in a military assault in at least one of the recent seasons. [Edit: I think simple bows were used in that scene.] This creeping about, trying not to draw attention, can create tense situations, and many of my favorite stories feature that kind of situation at least once. Alas, most of those examples didn't feature a crossbow, however.

But this raises the issue of balancing the various powers of Agency between heroes/protagonists and villains/antagonists. A crossbow works in Walking Dead. GRRM invented a seemingly unstoppable magical force but also introduced Valerian steel and dragonglass. This can seem too pat when first considering a story—but it's probably a good thing for an author to consider, whether guns and bombs or swords or magic is used!


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## FifthView (Mar 12, 2019)

Ban said:


> I'm again lucky that I put most of my stories in the future. Who's to say they don't have built-in gun stabilizers and other enhancements by then?



Or bullets that go around corners.

But this is why movies often have to default to the incredibly poor training for gun wielders.  I mean, 1000 misses from the blasters in Star Wars—from the bad guys at least, heh.


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## FifthView (Mar 12, 2019)

Jeremiah Reed said:


> The importance of swords is due to their association with the warrior class. For centuries, swords were the universal symbol of nobility, chivalry, and military might. Because of this, several swords throughout history have been associated with mystical, holy, or otherwise powerful properties. Such as the Sword of Giants from Beowulf or King Charlemagne's sword, Joyeuse, which was said to have been forged from the spear that Christ was stabbed by. Heck, Excalibur is so ingrained in our culture that we don't even bat an eye when we see it depicted in media. These mythical swords inspired fantasy writers like Tolkien, George R.R. Martin, and others to write about fantastical swords with mythical powers that granted their wielders untold gifts.



Thor's hammer is similar. If we first define the weapon as being a talisman signalling intrinsic worthiness—an outer display of inner worth—then we can easily show the wielder to be good, true, noble, etc. This was used to good effect when Vision picked up the hammer.

There may be an odd historical parallel for magical incantation.  Those who could speak and/or sing in a language largely unknown to the general public might have acquired the status of being particularly good or evil. Latin was used by Catholic priests to this effect—but also, evil spellcasters, heh. At least, from the POV of the common man. I don't know to what degree earlier priests or shaman, from other cultures, used this method, but I imagine there were plenty.


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## AlexK2009 (Mar 12, 2019)

One thing occurs to me. 
At one time smiths were regarded in a way similar to sorcerers, able to turn goose droppings ( which contained iron filings they had fed to the geese in order to carbonise the metal as it went through the goose) into a blade that would cut a cloth dropped onto it.

Perhaps we are seeing the remnants of this magical aura.


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## Malik (Mar 12, 2019)

AlexK2009 said:


> One thing occurs to me.
> At one time smiths were regarded in a way similar to sorcerers



We need to remember, too, what steel is and does. The idea that a handful of charcoal and a day-long, arcane process steeped in tradition could alter iron's properties so drastically and create effectively a super-substance can be viewed as a type of magic. Absolutely.


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## Gurkhal (Mar 12, 2019)

AlexK2009 said:


> One thing occurs to me.
> At one time smiths were regarded in a way similar to sorcerers, able to turn goose droppings ( which contained iron filings they had fed to the geese in order to carbonise the metal as it went through the goose) into a blade that would cut a cloth dropped onto it.
> 
> Perhaps we are seeing the remnants of this magical aura.



Exactly. And its not like magical or superhuman smiths are uncommon. In fact I can't think of a single craft that is as prominent in, the ones I know at least, mythology. I'm thinking of Weyland and Hephaestus and at least a few Celtic deities as I recall.


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## Heidi Hanley (Mar 15, 2019)

pmmg said:


> Cause they're cool...
> 
> I think it really has a lot to do with the romantic and chivalric imagery. A sword kind of represents taking ones destiny into their own hands, and bringing about, for good or for ill, whatever change needs to come about. And it carries with it an honorable method of bringing about, I am not challenging the fates in an underhanded or unfair manner, they get to pick up their sword and defend what they do not want to change if they can.
> 
> ...




I agree that they're totally cool. I would add- elegant. Even the largest sword has an elegance about it, that I don't necessarily feel with guns. In my fantasy series, The Kingdom of Uisneach, the protag is a female and she carries a large broadsword type of sword made out of magical faerie steel. Automatically one would roll their eyes at a woman wielding such a heavy, large weapon, but I was determined to portray the sword as a symbol of more than just male power and dominance. Briana's sword is not just capable of lopping of a villain's head, but of aiding our heroine with its magic.


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## Mizore (Mar 15, 2019)

I would ask about the prominence of melee weapons over range weapons in fantasy settings. I think one reason is that it's easier for a melee weapon to become legendary, like Excalibur or Dragonslayer, than a range weapon. Legendary range weapons are in fiction works but they are much less frequent. This can be because range weapons are always going to leave something out, that is, the projectiles, so they can never be so valuable or close to the wielder. Instead a much more intimate relationship can be established between a melee weapon and its wielder, making the weapon legendary.

Then the prominence of the swords concretely, I do not have it clear, it can be because swords are more balanced than other melee weapons.


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## Malik (Mar 15, 2019)

Mizore said:


> I would ask about the prominence of melee weapons over range weapons in fantasy settings.



Range weapons also don't work in one-on-one combat, which is a huge component of heroic legends.

There's a whole thing about flight times and arrow speeds in the Ask Me About Archery thread. The short and nasty of it is that an arrow isn't a bullet. They are comparatively very, very slow. Even at rock-throwing distance, you can't hit someone with an arrow if they see you pointing it at them. As soon as you loose the arrow, all they have to do is take half a step to the left. I've had deer duck under an arrow from a recurve bow at a few yards' distance just from hearing the string.

And a spear? Forget it.

You're not going to get the whole, big, heroic champion battle if you have two people running around a field shooting arrows or throwing spears at each other. They'll be there all day.

"Dammit! Stand still!"
"No!"


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## Chuck (Mar 16, 2019)

Malik said:


> Range weapons also don't work in one-on-one combat, which is a huge component of heroic legends.


I remember reading that archers were not considered honorable because they fought from a distance and did not put themselves at the same risk as the swordsmen. I don't remember what culture that was from, though.


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## Mythopoet (Mar 23, 2019)

Malik said:


> Only took ten years of study and practice and only cost me the tip of one finger. Just sayin'. Y'all better hurry.



To be honest, this kind of thing bores me. I mean, great job for all the people who are into move-by-move fight scenes but I just skip over them. In general, I hate reading any lengthy fight scene.


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