Elegant Weapon for a More Civilized Age: Difference between revisions

[[File:your fathers lightsaber.jpg|link=A New Hope|frame|Being [[Rule of Cool|awesome]] is just incidental.]]

 

 

A weapon or type of weapon, [[Good Old Ways|once common]], that is only used by a small group of people (or just one person) who are just better than you. Don't expect the weapon to actually be [[Awesome but Impractical|practical]]. There are times when it's [[Justified Trope|justified]], because it requires [[A Wizard Did It|magic to use]].

 

See also: [[Unusable Enemy Equipment]], [[Cool Sword]], and [[Katanas Are Just Better]].

{{examples}}

* ''[[Dragon Ball]]'' Goku's power pole.

* Belkan-style Devices in the second season of ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]'', optimized for close combat in a variety of forms. They get more common in the third season, but the majority of mages still wield staff-type ranged weapons.

* Actually inverted in ''[[The Five Star Stories]]''. Personal combat has come back into fashion once more because people realized what a waste nuking things from orbit was, the goal of most warfare in the series being to conquer territory while doing as little damage to said territory as possible (after all, who wants to rule over a radioactive crater?). The trope is also somewhat deconstructed here, as the dominance of showy, impractical weapons like [[Laser Blade]]s and [[Bling Bling Bang|ridiculously elaborate]], sword-fighting [[Humongous Mecha]] are seen as a sign that war has become some kind of sick game to the rulers of the galaxy.

 

 

* The Operative in ''[[Serenity]]'' uses a Chinese-style sword as an apparent throwback to the warrior traditions of old. He lectures one man about how a dishonored Romans would fall on their sword... while forcing the man to do so.

 

* The Lenses of the [[Lensman]] series.

* The Claws used by some Mantids in ''[[Shadows of the Apt]]''.

{{quote|It was an ancient tool of his people and a laughable anachronism, save that Stenwold had witnessed what he could do with it.}}

* [[Robert A. Heinlein]] - [[Author Appeal|who was a competitive fencer in his Naval Academy days]] - goes to some length to point out how a sword is really great in several of his books. Never jams, never runs out of ammo, and so on.

** He also has his [[Mary Sue]] (Lazarus Long) talk about learning how to best use a bayonet in the ''twenty-fifth'' century.

* Hiro Protagonist, the [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|hero protagonist]] of ''Snow Crash'', carries a [[Katanas Are Just Better|katana]] for various reasons, not least because it makes him look like a [[Badass]]. In one job he was equipped with a particularly powerful pocket-sized handgun that looked like a fashion accessory and so was somewhat inadequate for intimidation. Carrying a sword, on the other hand, gets you a little more respect.

* Averted in a [[Spider Robinson]] short story. Street gangs carry swords because they look cool, and a critic dies because he [[Smug Snake|refuses to accept]] a world with both swords and laser pistols. {{spoiler|He walks into a sword while getting mugged.}}

 

* The Klingons in ''[[Star Trek]]'' love to fight with their swords, (called ''bat'leth''), even though energy guns, such as phasers or disruptors, are very common in the [[The Verse|Trek universe]], and the Klingons themselves know perfectly well how to build and use the latter ones. But they obviously consider it to be [[Proud Warrior Race Guy|more honorable to defeat your enemy in close combat]].

 

* The world of ''[[Exalted]]'' is a [[Magitek]] [[Fantasy Kitchen Sink]], with flamethrowers, beam cannons, and [[Wave Motion Gun]]s all available in somewhere in the setting. However, even at the technological heights of the First Age, the traditional weapon of the titular Exalted is the daiklave, a [[BFS]] that is so massive that it needs to be enchanted [[Required Secondary Powers|just so the wielder can use it without difficulty.]]

** Eldar Phoenix Lords wear armor and wield weapons forged probably more than 20,000 years ago, all of which are at least as good as their modern counterparts.

** A lot of the Imperium works like this as well: Artificer Armor and Master Crafted Weapons tend to be centuries, if not millennia, old. The reason they're still in use isn't just because of sentimentality; it's because they ''still work better'' than a lot of newer things, and in fact repairs and modifications may make them ''better''. This also plays into the fact that, prior to the formation of the Imperium, humanity lost vast swathes of technological knowledge during the Age of Strife, afterwards leaving the newly-formed Imperium to scramble to secure whatever was left over. It's rather a Big Thing whenever a new [[Lost Technology|Standard Template Construct]] is discovered.

** Aslan: they prefer to fight duels with claws. As humans have no claws, a human fighting Aslan fashion would wear an Ayloi, or artificial claw. Ayloi could count as this.

** Another example with Aslan is their taste for ornate decoration for weapons of all kinds including more modern ones.

*** Semi-averted because shooting guns inside a ship does bad things to delicate electronics, so melee is used in order to have a usable ship after boarding.

 

** It's so difficult to use, in fact, that only three people in the game use them: Squall, Seifer, and Laguna (though he only uses it as an awkward sword). Seifer uses it because it matches his fantasy, and there's some in-universe speculation that Squall uses it ''because'' it's difficult to master, reflecting his stubborn nature.

* Inverted by the Howling Voice Guild of the ''[[Suikoden]]'' series, who are the only people in the world to wield guns. As Cathari explains in ''[[Suikoden V]]'', they're louder than bows, so worse for stealth, less accurate, and less reliable (Though not in [[Gameplay and Story Segregation|actual combat]], where one shot from Cathari can do more damage than most fighters can pull of in three, she also has a high hit rate). In a civilized age, they're the only ones using these uncivilized weapons. The only thing that makes them useful is as an intimidation tactic.

* Parodied meta-wise in ''[[Halo]]''. Luke Smith says that the Spartan Laser is not an overpowered weapon, but an elegant weapon from a more civilized age. Said [[In Name Only|"Elegant Weapon"]] is a [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill|Goddamn]] [[Frickin' Laser Beams|Laser]] [[BFG|Cannon]] that kills nearly everything that goes into the path of the laser. And that thing costs more than four fully-armed warthogs and is worth only five shots per battery! ([[Video Game Cruelty Potential|Not that it isn't fun to use]])

* In the ''[[Fallout]]'' series, the Brotherhood of Steel are individually highly trained warriors who use powered armor, energy weapons and combat robots, which are all from a more civilized age. They are fewer in number compared to the raiders, mutants and NCR Army, but one Brotherhood Paladin is the equal of three to five (or for even less developed foes, ten or more) of the aforementioned. However, their inability to quickly replace lost soldiers was a major reason why they lost the Brotherhood-NCR conflict. A similar statement can be said for the forces of the Enclave.

 

* ''[[Errant Story]]'' features "Durus Flamma" weapons, that look a lot like lightsabers and are used by the elves exclusively for duels. And a dual bladed one, that is completely impractical (even in-universe) but the one person who uses them anyway is just that [[Badass]].

* Parodied in ''[[xkcd]]'' [http://xkcd.com/297/ #297].

{{quote|'''Gwynn:''' Torg, are you stupid or something (...) running into a gunfight with a sword?

'''Torg:''' A sword is an elegant weapon. Not as clumsy or as random as a blaster. ''CHEEEARGE!''

** Double Subverted when the sword actually ''does'' prove decisive, in that battle and in others down the road. It saved the characters more than once, in situations where other weapons would obviously fail (soul trading demons in the spirit world for example).

* [[Schlock Mercenary]]'s The Very Reverend Lieutenant Theo Fobius is an accomplished fencer since his seminary days. He even makes it [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2004-12-04 work for him]. (well, [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2001-03-03 not always], but that time he at least got points for trying).

 

 

* Swords, particularly some varieties thereof (the Rapier and the Jian, for instance) have often been the mark of noblemen, military officers and others in high social standing, presumably owing to the fact that they were expensive. Ironically, one of their functions was to hack at any [[Dirty Coward]] who tried to break formation and run away.

* Subverted in the Battle of Agincourt, where France clung to the weapons and tactics of chivalry, charging at the English army of longbowman, who rained arrows down on them as they slogged through mud and sharpened stakes. Bows were considered a lowly peasants weapon by the French, but the English made them the backbone of their army.

* Blades (especially the bayonet) have long been used and still have a place on modern battlefields, because firearms have limited ammunition and rifles may not be practically aimed and fired in close quarters. Over-reliance on the ability to simply shoot the enemy can lead to a soldier's death. A knife doesn't jam or run out of ammo.

** Famous saying by some 19th-century Russian general: "A bullet sometimes misses; a bayonet never does."

* Archery fell out of military use due to the long training time needed. However, hunters commonly end up abandoning guns in favor of bows, for both sentimental and practical reasons (bows/arrows are quieter and lighter than guns and make cleaner kills). This is often an [[Enforced Trope]]. Gun season for deer is often only a week or two (with half that time dedicated to black powder arms), while bow season is open for the entire winter.

* In a looser application of this trope, most fly-fishermen have this sort of discreet snobbishness about their way of angling as compared to spin-rod and bait fishing. In particular, it is the fly rod itself—thinner, lighter and longer than its counterparts, giving it an almost katana-like sensitivity to the angler's whims, with a reel whose basic design still looks very 19th-century—that symbolizes this.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Weapons and Wielding Tropes]]