This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Securiger: This may well be one of The Oldest Ones in the Book. At my primary school there was an old book which explained stage magic tricks and special effects from the last couple of decades of the nineteenth century. One of the effects was from a production of Siegfried (part of Wagner's ring cycle) in which this effect was produced on stage by electrifying one of the swords and grounding the other. It's a long time since I saw the book, but I think the production was in the 1880s.
Darmok: I have actually witnessed this phenomenon several times first hand, albeit to a much lesser degree than TV shows portray. Parrying/blocking a sword with a sword causes small nicks to the blade, and over the course of a 1/2 minute sword-fight, the weapon can accumulate several of these. All it takes then is for one sword to slide the length of the other, and as it encounters these nicks, small sparks fly as a result.
Travis Wells: I pulled out this url
◊ from the avatar example, since it's hotlinked from a domain that went spammy.
Wiki: "(which may have actually come from his pyrokinetic power as a firebender)"
You mean to tell me that that reached here too? Oy, just see this image- [1]
◊
Wiki: Not so much Epileptic Trees then people confused by a trick of the eyes. Is there a Sword Lines trope? I've seen it a whole mess of times in anime.
Lale: What are "sword lines"? Linear Sword Sparks?
Wiki: Ya'know, that lumninescent line that follow the trail of a really fast sword swipe? Follow the link, or watch just about any fight sequence in Samurai Champloo.
Lale: I thought that was another type of Sword Sparks.
Wiki: Not really. Sword Sparks is about the sparks that are generated just about every time two swords clash. Sword Lines are those lines animators add to illustrate the speed and movement of a really fast swipe of a sword.
Lale: I'll step aside then, being a compulsive Lumper.
Darekun: This effect is described as "visible sharpness" on Audible Sharpness…
Red Shoe: It occurs to me that, as the word appears in the artcle, hardly anyone, I suspect, knows that "true" means in reference to a sword. And even though it isn't really relevant, I suspect that a lot of the people who use the term don't really mean it, even if it doesn't affect anything. When people refer to a sword as being "true", they generally seem to mean that it's good, noble, strong, whatever. "True", of a blade, is a technical term, and it means that the edge of the blade is all aligned in the same direction, which results in a cleaner cut. It's the difference between a sword and a saw. For example, a serrated blade can be very sharp, but is not very true. A stone makes a blade sharp; a steel makes it true.
So if you ever see a fictional character describing a wacky-looking scalloped sword as "true" because of its power or deadliness, you can have a little chuckle. Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.
That Other 1 Dude: Now that Sword Lines is it's own page, I took Avatar off this one
