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fanficrants
Aug. 9th, 2004 11:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynBecause 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.
In a time of swords, your average bow is most likely going to be a longbow. They're very simple in terms of design, good weapons for use in forest environments, and quite powerful when designed right. Your average longbow will be well over five feet, six inches long- probably more, depending on who it was made for. I own several longbows; I'm 5'10", and only one of them is taller than me. Then again, my bows are for hunting, not war. The bows in LOTR would be a lot longer and a lot heavier, so as to punch through enemy armour. When it's not strung your average longbow looks like a stick with tapered ends and leather wrapped around its middle, and that's about it. There'll be grooves cut into the ends, and most likely if you look at the thing from one end it'll have sort of a D shape to it, but it won't be very fancy. This is because a bow moves, all the time. Even when you're just preparing it for use.
Notice how you never see guys in LOTR carrying sticks around with them? They've already strung their bows. Their bowstrings are twisted cords with a single loop on each end. To use their bows they put a loop over one end and nestle it into the grooves there. Then they have to bend the bow enough to get the other loop over the other end- and that takes a lot of strength, since the bow is a stick of wood that doesn't much want to bend. The whole point of the bow is to make that wood bend, so that when Faramir or Legolas or whoever pulls the string and lets go, all the resistance in the wood- the stored-up energy- gets transferred into the string, thence to the arrow. As soon as Faramir lets go of his string, the limbs of the bow- which had bent even further than usual when he drew the string- are released, hard. They basically go SPROING! and the string jerks forward. Longbows are generally not very fancy-looking, because this SPROING! motion would cause any decoration to pop off or crack or split after hard use.
Legolas' bow had decorations on it of a sort. You'll notice that they weren't particularly fancy, though. Even the Galadhrim who gave him that bow didn't have enough elven craft to get around the basic fact that Stuff Stuck To A Longbow Will Break. Please, don't write up a fancy decorated bow. It will only make you look silly.
There are, of course, other styles of bow. If you saw King Arthur, then you saw bows that looked… well, wiggly. They were probably a bit flat when seen from the side, too. These are what we call 'recurve bows', and they originated in central Asia. They started off as bows used by guys on horseback, and so tend to be a good deal shorter than longbows. They're not usually carved from single staves the way longbows are, but are often made by layering different thicknesses of wood together, or sometimes wood and other material, such as horn. The orcs in LOTR used short recurve bows; Tristan had a longer recurve bow in King Arthur. Recurve bows often look a bit fancier than longbows, because people will use ornamental woods in their construction and occasionally apply stuff to the limbs to strengthen the bow (more on that later). They are not, however, particularly funky beyond that. Like longbows, they too are in constant motion when in use, so anything stuck to them is likely to pop off or crack.
It should be noted, though, that a recurve bow can have some form of patterning on it. Thin layers of substances with the right properties can be applied to the flat surfaces of recurve bows, as long as the right glues are used. Sinew is popular for this, as is snakeskin. They add to the strength of the bow's limbs by making them a bit stiffer, so that if you pull the string back you have to add more force into it. You're not going to find painted recurves, though- they'll crack the paint job. I have to check my own recurve over fairly regularly to make sure that the outer layer of urethane varnish is still okay. All the attractiveness in my bow comes from the woods involved- they form a lovely set of stripes when the bow is seen from the side, but the front and back of the limbs is just pale yellow fiberglass (this has the same effect as sinew, namely, it makes the bow stronger).
A recurve bow is usually going to have a section in the middle where you grip it. This may or may not be wrapped in leather. The design of a longbow unfortunately involves something called 'handshock'- when you fire a longbow, part of the energy released is thrown back into the wood from the string, and the bow jerks in your hand. It hurts, if you aren't used to it or prepared for it. There's a lot less handshock when you fire a recurve. Both of my recurves have nicely shaped and polished grips, but no padding of any kind. They don't need it.
Longbows and recurves share a characteristic in common, namely, that lovely lovely string. Know the string. Love the string, Respect the string. Do not put a bow into the hands of a character who wears billowing or baggy sleeves, because the sleeves will tangle in the string. This will cause the arrow to fly straight up into the air and land somewhere roughly atop their head- and yes, that happened to me. Do not put a bow into the hands of a character with long, unrestrained hair. I do not know exactly what will happen, but if the two interact, it's gonna hurt. Do not put a bow into the hands of a character with 'curves in all the right places', because bowstrings and bounteous 'tracts of land' don't mix. Unless the character takes great care to tilt the bow exactly right, there's a pretty good chance she'll get thwapped by the bowstring when it's released, and that hurts. I wore a sports bra to most of my archery classes in college and escaped the worst of this, but I have thwapped myself once or twice. It's not fun. Please, be very careful about the string, or it will hurt your character and you.
Speaking of hurting . . . You may be tempted to bring crossbows into play in your fic. If you do this, I may have to find you and hit you over the head with one, because it's really easy to get them horribly wrong. Crossbows are a relatively recent invention in terms of European history, and a pretty old one in Chinese history. They're very powerful compared to recurves and longbows, because to bring them to draw you use a crank or other device rather than just the strength of your arm. They became popular because they fired arrows in a straight line rather than an arc, so it was pretty easy to learn to aim them. The Swiss were the biggest developers of crossbows in Europe; William Tell's legendary feat with the apple involved a crossbow, not a longbow.
THE SAXONS IN KING ARTHUR SHOULD NOT HAVE HAD THEM.
Seriously. Unless the Saxons had raided Silk Road caravans before invading Britain, there's just no way they could have had crossbows. The Chinese invented their form of the crossbow around 500 BCE, possibly earlier. The ancient Greeks knew about the basic form of the weapon. The Carthaginians used hand-held crossbows against the Romans in 397 BCE, but after Carthage fell the weapons were largely destroyed and did not surface in Europe again until their re-invention in France around 1050. It is really not a good idea to put crossbows into your fics unless you're willing to do a hell of a lot of research. Neither Tolkien or Peter Jackson put crossbows into the hands of Saruman's orcs, the Middle-earth fighting force most likely to have them. You shouldn't either.
There are, of course, other kinds of bow. I do not know Asiatic bows well enough to comment on the yumi or the Mongolian horse bow (which is a type of recurve), and I do not know the native bows of the Americas very well either. It should be noted, though, that most bows used by Native peoples of the American plains were shaped like longbows, but were a lot shorter. For the most part, they either stalked their prey until they were within a few yards of it, or rode up to it on horseback and fired from close range. Their bows didn't have to be very strong. They weren't shooting at a guy standing a hundred and fifty yards away while he tried to kill them, the way Faramir and his men were. I know nothing at all about African bows, except for a little bit about the bows used in Egyptian tomb paintings, but the day someone claims to have one of them in a fanfic is the day I have to take up watching Stargate: SG-1.
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.
In a time of swords, your average bow is most likely going to be a longbow. They're very simple in terms of design, good weapons for use in forest environments, and quite powerful when designed right. Your average longbow will be well over five feet, six inches long- probably more, depending on who it was made for. I own several longbows; I'm 5'10", and only one of them is taller than me. Then again, my bows are for hunting, not war. The bows in LOTR would be a lot longer and a lot heavier, so as to punch through enemy armour. When it's not strung your average longbow looks like a stick with tapered ends and leather wrapped around its middle, and that's about it. There'll be grooves cut into the ends, and most likely if you look at the thing from one end it'll have sort of a D shape to it, but it won't be very fancy. This is because a bow moves, all the time. Even when you're just preparing it for use.
Notice how you never see guys in LOTR carrying sticks around with them? They've already strung their bows. Their bowstrings are twisted cords with a single loop on each end. To use their bows they put a loop over one end and nestle it into the grooves there. Then they have to bend the bow enough to get the other loop over the other end- and that takes a lot of strength, since the bow is a stick of wood that doesn't much want to bend. The whole point of the bow is to make that wood bend, so that when Faramir or Legolas or whoever pulls the string and lets go, all the resistance in the wood- the stored-up energy- gets transferred into the string, thence to the arrow. As soon as Faramir lets go of his string, the limbs of the bow- which had bent even further than usual when he drew the string- are released, hard. They basically go SPROING! and the string jerks forward. Longbows are generally not very fancy-looking, because this SPROING! motion would cause any decoration to pop off or crack or split after hard use.
Legolas' bow had decorations on it of a sort. You'll notice that they weren't particularly fancy, though. Even the Galadhrim who gave him that bow didn't have enough elven craft to get around the basic fact that Stuff Stuck To A Longbow Will Break. Please, don't write up a fancy decorated bow. It will only make you look silly.
There are, of course, other styles of bow. If you saw King Arthur, then you saw bows that looked… well, wiggly. They were probably a bit flat when seen from the side, too. These are what we call 'recurve bows', and they originated in central Asia. They started off as bows used by guys on horseback, and so tend to be a good deal shorter than longbows. They're not usually carved from single staves the way longbows are, but are often made by layering different thicknesses of wood together, or sometimes wood and other material, such as horn. The orcs in LOTR used short recurve bows; Tristan had a longer recurve bow in King Arthur. Recurve bows often look a bit fancier than longbows, because people will use ornamental woods in their construction and occasionally apply stuff to the limbs to strengthen the bow (more on that later). They are not, however, particularly funky beyond that. Like longbows, they too are in constant motion when in use, so anything stuck to them is likely to pop off or crack.
It should be noted, though, that a recurve bow can have some form of patterning on it. Thin layers of substances with the right properties can be applied to the flat surfaces of recurve bows, as long as the right glues are used. Sinew is popular for this, as is snakeskin. They add to the strength of the bow's limbs by making them a bit stiffer, so that if you pull the string back you have to add more force into it. You're not going to find painted recurves, though- they'll crack the paint job. I have to check my own recurve over fairly regularly to make sure that the outer layer of urethane varnish is still okay. All the attractiveness in my bow comes from the woods involved- they form a lovely set of stripes when the bow is seen from the side, but the front and back of the limbs is just pale yellow fiberglass (this has the same effect as sinew, namely, it makes the bow stronger).
A recurve bow is usually going to have a section in the middle where you grip it. This may or may not be wrapped in leather. The design of a longbow unfortunately involves something called 'handshock'- when you fire a longbow, part of the energy released is thrown back into the wood from the string, and the bow jerks in your hand. It hurts, if you aren't used to it or prepared for it. There's a lot less handshock when you fire a recurve. Both of my recurves have nicely shaped and polished grips, but no padding of any kind. They don't need it.
Longbows and recurves share a characteristic in common, namely, that lovely lovely string. Know the string. Love the string, Respect the string. Do not put a bow into the hands of a character who wears billowing or baggy sleeves, because the sleeves will tangle in the string. This will cause the arrow to fly straight up into the air and land somewhere roughly atop their head- and yes, that happened to me. Do not put a bow into the hands of a character with long, unrestrained hair. I do not know exactly what will happen, but if the two interact, it's gonna hurt. Do not put a bow into the hands of a character with 'curves in all the right places', because bowstrings and bounteous 'tracts of land' don't mix. Unless the character takes great care to tilt the bow exactly right, there's a pretty good chance she'll get thwapped by the bowstring when it's released, and that hurts. I wore a sports bra to most of my archery classes in college and escaped the worst of this, but I have thwapped myself once or twice. It's not fun. Please, be very careful about the string, or it will hurt your character and you.
Speaking of hurting . . . You may be tempted to bring crossbows into play in your fic. If you do this, I may have to find you and hit you over the head with one, because it's really easy to get them horribly wrong. Crossbows are a relatively recent invention in terms of European history, and a pretty old one in Chinese history. They're very powerful compared to recurves and longbows, because to bring them to draw you use a crank or other device rather than just the strength of your arm. They became popular because they fired arrows in a straight line rather than an arc, so it was pretty easy to learn to aim them. The Swiss were the biggest developers of crossbows in Europe; William Tell's legendary feat with the apple involved a crossbow, not a longbow.
THE SAXONS IN KING ARTHUR SHOULD NOT HAVE HAD THEM.
Seriously. Unless the Saxons had raided Silk Road caravans before invading Britain, there's just no way they could have had crossbows. The Chinese invented their form of the crossbow around 500 BCE, possibly earlier. The ancient Greeks knew about the basic form of the weapon. The Carthaginians used hand-held crossbows against the Romans in 397 BCE, but after Carthage fell the weapons were largely destroyed and did not surface in Europe again until their re-invention in France around 1050. It is really not a good idea to put crossbows into your fics unless you're willing to do a hell of a lot of research. Neither Tolkien or Peter Jackson put crossbows into the hands of Saruman's orcs, the Middle-earth fighting force most likely to have them. You shouldn't either.
There are, of course, other kinds of bow. I do not know Asiatic bows well enough to comment on the yumi or the Mongolian horse bow (which is a type of recurve), and I do not know the native bows of the Americas very well either. It should be noted, though, that most bows used by Native peoples of the American plains were shaped like longbows, but were a lot shorter. For the most part, they either stalked their prey until they were within a few yards of it, or rode up to it on horseback and fired from close range. Their bows didn't have to be very strong. They weren't shooting at a guy standing a hundred and fifty yards away while he tried to kill them, the way Faramir and his men were. I know nothing at all about African bows, except for a little bit about the bows used in Egyptian tomb paintings, but the day someone claims to have one of them in a fanfic is the day I have to take up watching Stargate: SG-1.
