Could do with a beta,

but it's not for Hellblazer: Hogwarts. I am working on that, it's just not anywhere near beta status just yet. (It's audit season at work. grrr.) No, see, last night I went to do 15minuteficlets' challenge-of-the-week, and it kind of got away from me. Anyone wanna beta-read some Sergeant Preston fic before I put it up here? (Corporal Preston, actually- it deals with an incident when he was a lot younger.)

(no subject)

Punk cover by Me First and the Gimme Gimmes notwithstanding, I am reasonably sure that "Seasons in the Sun" is not supposed to engender images of a guy gleefully strapping on a kamikaze bandana or something else of that nature in preparation for one last deliberate berserk in his country's name.

Nevertheless, my brain insists that this is, in fact, the individual singing the song. Said image shall go in the same file as Jenny the Self-Made Ninja (spawn of "She's A Little Runaway" by Bon Jovi") and the paratroopers who now make it impossible to listen to "It's Raining Men" with quite the same degree of enjoyment that I used to have.

Crossposted to fanficrants

Because I haven't geeked out properly about my Dangerous Pointy Objects habits and hobbies recently...

The thing about a setting like The Lord of the Rings is that it takes place in an era when weaponry was truly old-school. For the most part, this meant swords and other edged pointy things, at least as depicted by Tolkien. However, even then, there was a need for projectile weaponry. In LOTR, this sometimes meant catapulty things (mangonels, possibly, but bugger if I know my siege weaponry). More often, though, it meant bows.

Now, any goober with $150 and a Renaissance Faire nearby can pick up a sword. Heck, if they've got $30 they can get one from the scratch, dent and rust bin, at least at the New Jersey RenFaire (sadly, this is over for the season). True, they won't answer to the same description or behave in the same way as the swords in LOTR. Most of 'em will come with a note saying 'sharpen this, and your guarantee's shattered, mate'. But at least there'll be a swordy-looking thing close at hand that'll give the aspiring writer a general idea of what's involved in describing and possibly even holding or swinging a sword.

This is generally not the case with bows.

Despite their widespread use in ages past, medieval-style bows are really rather tough to come by, compared to swords. I've been going to Renaissance Faires for six or seven years now, and the only place I saw a bow for sale was at an SCA event about five years back. If you go to a Faire and want to try archery, you generally have to plunk down $3 or $5, and you'll be handed a crappy little plastic bow and a bunch of overused arrows with bits falling off. And then you'll try to shoot, and you'll get slapped by the string and your arrow will go wide, or not, and you'll wind up wondering how the dickens guys like Legolas or Robin Hood or William Tell pulled it off. Might even put bows down for good, after an experience like that.

I don't want that to happen. I want you to like archery, or at least understand the basics of it. If you're a fanficcer, I want you to be able to write at least a decent simulacrum of someone using a bow. It pains me to see some of the stuff out there that gets written in the course of LOTR elf-fic. It's time to set matters as right as I can.

( We'll start with the equipment. )