#the bigger unwashed nerd

[daughterofhel]

Arrows are a bitch

A buddy of mine is constantly doing research for her stories/comics and it often turns into a group nerd fest (mostly between her and my mate) with me offering tid bits of ideas.

Today’s topic was the removal of arrows. I think just about everyone vaguely understands that unless the arrow hit a bone, you’re suppose to break the end with the fletching (those feathery bits) and just shove the fucking arrow clean through- hoping it doesn’t hit any fucking organs.

But hell, we all learn new things. I’m gonna be a little scattered with the info- sorry about that.

One thing I think we tend to forget about flying objects, especially when they are accurate, is an object spins. Hell, that’s how we increased accuracy with guns- inside the barrel its been etched in a spiral to get the bullet to basically do the spinning death dance that makes it so accurate. For you sports fans- look at the most obvious- the football. Spiral is the way to go bro.

So this fucking death object from hell is coming at you in some triangle shaped form, spinning, and slamming into your weak pathetic human flesh. Clearly that’s a fucked wound there. The flesh is torn to hell and there will be no easy way of extracting it.

Historically any culture who regularly was attacked by archers, made methods to extracting arrows. None of them enjoyable at fucking all. It’s more or less what you’d expect— the concept was to widen the hole of the wounded area just bigger than the arrow head, and remove that way. Given fuck boi flew through the fucking sky in its fancy little barrel roll intonyoyr flesh- it means new cuts in a wound. Yay.

Now that we’ve talked those things- let’s talk about wars most deadly enemy. Infection.

God knows how long this has been in use- I’m sadly not the nerd in our group- just the stab happy idiot here to learn- but it has been documented that honey was one of the earlier antiseptics. There was this entire article when talking about the arrow to the fucking face Henry V took in a battle at the age of 16 and how this doc did some revolutionary surgery to save his life.

Pretty much back then, alcohol was the best you could do to sterilize an area though often you’d find the patient drinking it given they sorta had to grit and bear through the pain wide awake- unless I guess they passed the fuck out. Anyhow. Back to the thing.

So the Mongels (though it’s debated that they stole this from the Chinese- damn you Mongels) often wore silk shirts under this armor. It wasn’t known at the time but silk has some antibacterial properties? Which fuck me man, I didn’t know that shit either. Nice.

But the coolest part? It was thick/strong? enough to where when they got hit by arrows- it didn’t fucking break. The arrow still penetrated the flesh— but NOW they could tug on the shirt to remove the arrow.

Still a bitch to deal with pain wise- but let’s back up how that’s brilliantly wonderful. Number fucking one. Dirt and rust. It’s hard in war and it’s usually filthy and miserable and the elements do you no favor. In the heat of battle and an empty quiver- when you get arrows, you’d typically slam them boys into the dirt and fire away like our bad ass general from Wonder Woman. So- this had the added effect of infecting wounds. We all know how bad rust is in an open wound. Dirt is bad enough too.

That said. Silk shirt method prevented that entering the skin. Total win brah.

Now point number fucking two. Did you forget about the arrows deadly pirouette from hell? Pretty sure you wouldn’t if you’ve been stuck by an arrow. Anyhow- that spinning fuck twists in your fancy silken shirt- which means when you tug that arrow out- it’ll follow the same spinning path back out. Nice. Very nice. Still painful- horribly- but hey, bonus points.

Too bad the Mongels religiously didn’t believe in bathing or something cuz this would’ve been the boon— but their wounds could still get infected due to their unwashed bodies. Brilliant you halfassed idiots. Fancy shirt but filthy body? Be ashamed.

Anyway. This was fun info. I’ll toss ya links we snooped around on for some of the info. The first link has pictures. Get excited.

https://www.quora.com/How-were-arrows-removed-in-medieval-times-especially-when-the-arrow-was-curved-backwards

https://mattlewisauthor.wordpress.com/2014/05/21/the-scar-of-henry-v/

[navelgazed]

Speaking of weird music things

Rn I'm on my way back from Miku Expo Austin. It was hella, although there were a few people I would classify as sort of unwashed basement types? Who were like, /in the front/ and not about to lose their spot even though they're 6 foot whatever and there were shorter people directly behind them but I guess they wanted their holographic waifu to notice them ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Other than that though, it was super cool! We met a few folks in line and in the crowd and it was nice to talk nerd at them. The music itself was really cool too. The band was so enthusiastic and talented! The projection effect was really neat in person, if you kinda tilted your perception to the left a bit you could almost see them like they were actually there.

I will say I was kind of disappointed I couldn't get a shirt because they only went up to XL and they ran kind of small, so there's no way I would have fit into one. I'd really like it if they expanded their sizes next time, or made some bigger sizes of this years stuff to sell on the website.

Anyway, if we get the chance @gorocakes and I will definitely be going back in 2020, though this time I think in balcony seats (I was not suited to standing for about 4 hours on hard concrete lmao)