beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

I follow a bunch of tumblrs that post really pretty weapons
and sometimes I just stop and think
because humans put all their science and all their art into creating beautiful, elegant, decorative pieces of metal
for killing people.

I mean, someone looked at a sharp piece of steel and decided
this needs more flowers
and possibly some birds on it.

Someone got a handful of arrows and decided the arrowheads really needed
cut out hearts, or flowers, or entire sculpted dragons.

Presumably because if you're going to kill someone
you might as well make it classy
and be clear it's with love...

*facepalm*

... okay so the heart arrows are vaguely disturbing in ways the flower arrows are not, but, still...

I get the big pointy things on sticks whose primary purpose was being held by royal guards.
You're not planning to use them, they're going to be on display all day every day, might as well make them look like sunbursts and moons and engrave a bunch of birds and plants and things on them.

I do not entirely get how common this impulse seems to be.

But then I know with the smallswords there were times they were worn as an item of men's jewelery, primarily, and a pointy stabby instrument of death kind of on the side.
... but they were very pointy stabby even so.

And I really love throwing knives turned weird rainbow colors. It clearly does nothing to help their function, but you can stab someone from a distance with a rainbow.

... so there's a bunch of humans like me.

... which is not entirely reassuring.



I titled this post cool weapons though, and I don't think that rainbow heart flowers make them cool, per se. The style might not be in fashion.

... but it is stylish.



Basically there's a whole lot of items around if you value killing people with an aesthetic
and that's just very human
in a worrying way.

I'm reading a lot of fic with archers, and I have discovered something about my attitude to bows. While the uber high tech shiny ones have clear advantages, I don't feel the same way about them as I do about a proper Robin Hood job. I feel one of the essential features of a bow is that you can take to the woods and make them your own self. All the fancy arrowheads and alloys just seem to miss the point. A bow and arrow is up there with bare handed martial arts, with quarterstaff or bo or escrima sticks. So simple they can never take it from you.

That's key.

Sticking an archer on the same team as a billionaire inventor, making it about being a military sniper... it's just not the same vibe at all. Even the DC Arrow clan have a splash of that, with the trick arrows and occasional richstuff background. But a good bow and arrow is about being stripped down to the basics, letting it all fall away until the arrow falls right into the target.



I don't know what stories I want to tell about the Robin Hood stuff (aside from a strong feeling they are British stories). I'd probably need to watch some actual Robin Hood or attempt to read my Green Arrow collection that I can't currently recall a single bad guy from or something.

But it would not be about the high tech.