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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  3351 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: LARPing, Parkour, archery ... world's fastest archer shows us how Hollywood does it wrong

Yeah, I read that thread. It didn't seem nearly as conclusive as the title suggests. The best point I saw was that being able to shoot a lot of things quickly was a bit more helpful (until the rise of the longbowman) than being able to shoot the occasional thing from a long distance. At the very least, both are valid skillsets. They also wandered into a discussion about whether what he was doing could puncture chainmail, ignoring the fact that most of a medieval archer's targets wouldn't have had any, including many knights.

Anyway, the interesting part is that if you had asked me yesterday whether I thought Legolas' back-quiver thing was the most efficient way to store arrows before shooting, I would have said yes. But in retrospect, that seems entirely wrong.





kleinbl00  ·  3351 days ago  ·  link  ·  

In every account of archers I've ever seen, they hold their arrows like this:

As in, "come for me fuckers I'll be right here."

That guy ain't doin' a lot of running and jumping.

I'm with 'em on the chainmail bit. Yeah, most targets wouldn't be wearing any but 10 lbs of push behind a field point will bounce off drywall, let alone trees. It'll stab a foamcore target just fine but as far as actually doing anything useful in the way of death'n'such, not unless you're a squirrel.

I have no doubts that the dude can run and jump and do all sorts of impressive things with a bow. I don't think that means we need to rethink everything about archery. Bows just aren't designed for melee no matter how nifty it looks in the movies.