now i babble about the two things martin does that annoy me most

[paranoid_monkey]

ok now that i've praised him, i must point out two things martin does that drive me up the frickin' wall. but before i start, i must note - though i've read a lot about heraldry, i am not remotely a medievalist and at least two of you are, so please correct me if i say something totally off

Comments

[den_down_unda]

It's the Cool Theory of Literature in action, Soph.

Martin thinks that stuff is Cool, so he does as much of it as he can. And if it makes no sense? So what. It's cool.

(Which isn't to say you aren't right, but the way. It's just that the Cool Theory of Literature is a wonderful explanation of things like this.)

[paranoid_monkey]

*whines* i'm sure you're right, but it's so annooooooooying! he'll have me all invested in a scene, suspension of disbelief etc etc, and then he describes tywin lannister's scarlet-lacquered armor with gold rondels gold fittings gold codpiece gold gold gold gold and then some huge snarling gold lion's head on top that somehow tywin is so cool as to be able to support without breaking his own neck. *whine*! it would be easier to deal with if other things didn't seem so realistic.

actually - you know what else bugs me? the names of the castles. everyone has castles that mean things in modern speech - you know, winterfell, sunspear, Xhall, the aerie, etc. of course this is fine some of the time, but you know, i've seen plenty of castles, and they tend to either be named for the local village (or vice-versa) - meaning, named some random meaningless sound - or, well, just some random meaningless sound. sigh.

[den_down_unda]

Yeah. It would help if they had names with words that mean "town." On the other hand, places like the Aerie don't exist in the real world, so I suppose he can be allowed a little leeway here.

(Also, I want to comment on your post about Martin's good points, but that requires a lot more complex thinking and I'm at work. Maybe when I get home.

How are you, btw? Come visit us!

[ladybird97]

The other thing about making armor out of gold is that gold is soft!! Only a complete idiot would make a helm out of gold!

And yeah, so with you on the silly jewels and things.

Also with you on the other post, but I'll comment on that over there :)

[paranoid_monkey]

dude, so true about the softness. i totally missed that when i was bitching about the damn rondels. and i mean, now that you point that out, besides the weight of the damn baraethon horns, would they just start falling apart, even outside of battle?

(i'd totally forgotten about tywin's actual helm being gold. god. or was that kevan, or someone? oh, whatever.)

[ladybird97]

The horns wouldn't fall apart, but they might get bendy. *snicker*

I forget who had a gold helm - one of the Lannisters, undoubtedly. You could kind of maybe sorta make a case that Tywin wasn't expecting to see actual battle and that's why he did it? But it's still a pretty dumb thing to make a helm out of.

[paranoid_monkey]

heee! bendy. you have made me snicker as well. that's such a great image of robert.

wasn't tywin's armor like, disturbingly meat-like? was it described that way, or am i just remembering wrong? i haven't gotten that far yet - i mean, he's been mentioned riding out, but the armor hasn't been described.

really, what annoys me most is, like i said - it would have been /so/ damned easy, given this is fantasy, to come up with some excuse. renly's armor is described as being a green which had somehow actually been infused into the steel - i can deal with that better. i mean, valyrian swords, right? valyrian swords could never exist in real life, obviously. what's the number of times you can fold steel before it breaks - ten, twelve tops?

[paranoid_monkey]

my point being, i can deal with the swords because it's so clear that making them involved some kind of magic.

Folding Steel

[pineal_servo]

I watched a cool Nova episode on Japanese swordmaking. The metal folding process was pretty interesting; the smith would basically elongate the piece of steel, fold it over, and pound it back into roughly the same shape. I'm pretty sure it could be repeated indefinitely, just like you can fold dough as many times as you'd like, but there's a point of diminishing returns

Re: Folding Steel

[paranoid_monkey]

no, it's totally relevant... when i was talking about the valyrian steel, i was thinking about what i'd read (on wiki) about the way katanas were forged. that nova episode sounds great - i might try to find it. my impression is that steel can be folded over and over, yeah, and it creates the cool rippling and such, but that each fold creates another point of (admittedly, probably slight) weakness. my only real issue is that martin describes valyrian swords as being folded thousands and thousands of times, which i've read (i'm not sure where?) is simply impossible if you want a functioning sword.

BUT, of course, the key is that martin makes it clear that the process the valyrians used was very probably magical, and is now lost - so in the context of his world, it's acceptable that a sword can be folded over twenty thousand times and still be the strongest sharpest thing in existence.

Re: Folding Steel

[pineal_servo]

Well, I really have no idea if the metal would be usable as a sword after performing thousands of folds, but perhaps that's not what he meant. Because each fold doubles the number of layers in the metal, a few executions of the folding maneuver will give you thousands of layers, which one might refer to as folds. 10 folds, which I understand was within the range that Japanese swordmakers used, would give you over a thousand layers. One more fold would be two thousand layers, etc. Taking the base-2 log of the number of layers would give you the number of fold maneuvers you'd have to execute to reach that number of layers/folds. Or, maybe he was just exaggerating and figured if a little folding was good, more must be better

[den_down_unda]

Especially considering gold is about three times as dense as steel. Hello, compression fractures!

[ladybird97]

Of course, if it was Kevan, then that explains why he's such an idiot, if he's been wearing a gold helm all this time...

(Which is not really fair, 'cause we've seen a more sympathetic and intelligent side of Kevan by now. But still.)

[paranoid_monkey]

poor old kevan. i don't think that's a good family to be sympathetic in.

(oh, when i was talking about favorite characters, i totally forgot tyrion. i heart tyrion.)

[den_down_unda]

Everyone hearts Tyrion.

Westeros didn't know what it had in Tyrion.

[paranoid_monkey]

have you read the sample tyrion chapter of /aDoD/? ... poor tyrion. it's so appropriate, though.