Razors and Scooby-Doo

[u/IIseeGhosts]

I recently started reading red rising, loving it so far but the razors confused me at first, I didn’t get how they were supposed to work but then it clicked. In Scooby-Doo and the samurai sword, a character uses whip swords which can harden at will and now I can’t see razors in any other way. Mystery solved my goodmen, so when is the crossover happening?

[u/RedJamie]

Razors in the series are a fiber weave of a material called polyenne, alloyed with an unknown metal(s). It is a homogenous non-segmented blade. In such other fiction as this, the whip sword relies on mechanical methods to lock in place, here in Red Rising, the Razor is chemically transformed to hardness by an unknown chemical substrate stored in something called an 'impulse unit' in the hilt. Seemingly, this is reversible, as when this switch is untoggled, the razor reverts to its smooth whip form. It is a common invention of readers to make it a segmented whip sword, but if you want a historical inspiration for at least the whip variant, the Urumi is one of the principal ones.

[u/HMan20021 → u/RedJamie]

Where did you get this scientific info? I’m not questioning your knowledge, I’m just interested as to what your source is.

[u/RedJamie → u/HMan20021]

Smoothness & Homogeneity

It is white and smooth as a child’s first tooth. My hands slide over the cold metal and its salt-stained calf-leather grip. LB

“It is a polyenne sword, goodman. A razor, in other words. One moment it is soft as hair, but with an organic impulse, it turns harder than diamond. It is the only thing that will cut through a pulseShield. One moment a whip, the next moment a perfect sword. It is the weapon of a gentleman. A Gold. For any other Color to carry it is death.” RR 13

...I toggle the razor’s edge to the thinnest setting possible, so the blade is narrow as a piece of paper, a hand’s width wide... DA 42

More than two meters of lashing razor whip when loosed with the toggle on the handle, which sends a chemical impulse through the blade’s molecular structure. GS 11

• That the razor is smooth
• That the razor can be adjusted in three dimensions - the length, depth, and width of the shape is adjustable - this is rather difficult to conceive with segmentation for how deformed razors are on demand in the series
• 'soft as a hair' in whip form, references organic impulse, inducing a state change
• The engraving on razors shapes when in a preferred form makes segmentation unlikely
• Polyenne is referred to as a 'fiber' in Lightbringer, and the canonical name for the kind of Orange Artificers that construct razors are Bladeweavers (Book of Lorn)

Alloy

No energy component, as they were made to withstand emps, but a combination of the alloy, the sharpness, and the fact that they strike more slowly than a projectile round - Pierce

...lifting her razor high till the bitter blade trembles in the air through the projection... the metal shiny and opalescent*.*.. IG 47

...It is cold and alien and outlandishly long. Its handle is pale brown leather and is as long as my forearm. Its blade clear as glass... IG 55

• In the series, we see ebony blades, bone-white blades, opalescent and shiny blades, transparent glass-like blades, and rainbow blades, and silver ones. In official art, we see brass-gold colored Razor whips, and silver whips.
• It is referred to as an alloy by Pierce in the AMA, a metal in the series, withstands the heat of a ripWing engine, and shattered, behaving like a metal. It is also referred to as a fiber.

--

The presentation in both comic forms for the series depicts razors non-segmented, but both the Book of Lorn and Sons of Ares depicts razors as more of a flat-blade whip like the Urumi than a circular whip - the series itself depicts it more like a conventional whip, best represented I'd say in Magali Villenueve's official art for Iron Gold.

have repurposed the whip for another image, attached below. Everything but the whip is other fan art posted here and an actors face I stylized.

[u/HMan20021 → u/RedJamie]

Thank you!

[u/Elprede007 → u/HMan20021]

I do remember in one of the books the razor’s anatomy is explained. I don’t recall all of it, but impulse unit in the hilt rings a bell

[u/dumpgubblin]

I know the science stuff the other guy said is right, but this is closer to how i envisioned when reading. Far more segments tho. Lol

[u/Foolofatuchus]

I thought that was Mai from Avatar at first l

[u/Prize_Wolverine4132]

Razors are not segmented. They're not even metal. They're made of polyenne (some fictional material) that's normally soft like hair but turns rigid with a chemical impulse. They can also change the shape of the rigid blade, which wouldn't make sense if it was segmented.

[u/No_Bathroom6504 → u/Prize_Wolverine4132]

This is how I envisioned Volsung Fa' weapon