#this is going to end up in blood and gore

[orsuliya]

On sword maintenance and anger management

Ever since I saw episode 42 raw, I’ve been having some Thoughts about the sword sharpening scene. Bear with me, please. Beware, spoilers ahead!

Now, Xiao Qi is having a really Bad Day. First he gets to know that his beloved wife is planning to meet his personal enemy/her kidnapper in order to save Wang Qian, whom he very much does not like. This results in a single kick to a nearby table as well as slightly laboured breathing (see how his nostrils move!). Then he actually (quite calmly) quarrels with said beloved wife, gets hit with some uncomfortable truths and storms away, leaving the doors behind him swinging back and forth. On his way out he encounters the very reason for this quarrel, Miss Screecher. Even so he still has some compassion for her... until she has the audacity to come uncomfortably close, touch him and make a poorly veiled proposal. He is positively disgusted! Aghast! Enraged! Really, if any of his enemies saw his subsequent power walk, they would immediately run for the hills.

As a result, instead of joining Awu in bed, Xiao Qi comes into his manly lair to sulk, takes a sword from its stand and I immediately think: ‘Aha, we’re getting another sword dance, good, good, let him burn off some of that anger!’, but no. He goes to sharpen it instead and I am suddenly very, very afraid. Let it be said: brooding heroes are usually very, very bad at sword sharpening, but very, very good at sword torturing. Now, I don’t know if that’s the case with katanas, since polishing a katana and sharpening a sword is a wholly different kettle of fish. But the type of blade Xiao Qi is using? Those suffer a lot on screen.

But as always, The Rebel Princess has our backs on the tiniest, yet vitally important details! Imagine my surprise when Xiao Qi actually does a fine job! To start with, he carefully inspects the blade for any residue; since it looks fine and was resting on a stand, I’ll give him a pass on not wiping it off. He holds the blade for sharpening as one plausibly would in the field (none of this tip-on-the-floor nonsense), he goes steady and gentle with his filing, and at a more or less correct angle. Moreover, he starts from the middle towards the tip, which are, respectively, the parts that would see the most wear and need to be the sharpest. That’s exactly what a consummate soldier would do. (This particular sword, by the way, boasts a double fuller and a lovely, not too steep secondary bevel, which tells us that it’s a really strong and not too heavy blade for killing a lot of armoured people in quick succesion very, very efficiently!)

But that is not what gets me about this scene.

What you need to know about sword sharpening is that it’s a really bad idea to do it while angry and/or distracted. It really is not as easy at it looks and you can seriously hurt yourself and/or the blade. You need to pay attention. (Sharpen calmly, kids and keep your fingers!)

Go too hard and you risk exposing an edge too much and oversharpening. Now, this type of sword, one built for war and melee, is decidedly not designed for that. If you get it too sharp, not only will it dull much quicker than it should, but it also may actually get worse at killing people. And you really don’t want that to happen!

Go at a wrong angle and you can mess up the whole geometry of your blade. What’s more, keeping to your chosen angle is crucial and takes a whole lot of control and endurance, especially if your sharpening tool is neither fixed to a table nor guided. This is slow and back-breaking work – just re-setting a single edge takes time and once he breaks out the oil and gets down to proper sharpening? The whole thing can easily take an hour or more.

Also, a sword this long? Impossible to do in one piece. You need to go by sections, which means paying attention is a must! Otherwise you can end up with a visibly uneven edge. Sure, it may not matter that much when in active combat, but they are currently not on the battlefield, so I think Xiao Qi would actually care about the nice finish!

Gentle, steady and consistent, that’s what you need to sharpen a sword by hand. So… it may not necessarily be the best way to work out your anger, unless you’ve got blades and effort to waste. And swords are expensive in low-tech settings! (Not that they are very cheap nowadays…)

This whole scene tells us a lot about Xiao Qi’s usual anger management strategy. He does not work his anger off nor ever fully expresses it in a constructive (or non-constructive) manner. Why, in this particular case he basically chokes down his rage and then deliberately sets himself a task which requires considerable control and gentleness. Sure, the familiarity and routine of the task may help some, especially if he’s counting the strokes, but on the whole? Oooof! Xiao Qi, baby, this is not healthy! I totally get why you are doing it, you hyper-responsible poor thing, and your self-control may be truly inhuman, but all that suppressed anger? It doesn’t just go away.

Those jokes about him snapping, bathing everything in blood and then carrying Awu over the resulting rivers of gore? Yeah… They may not be that far off from the truth.