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>Elizabeth Bear's primary complaint seems to be "Andersen is shooting so fast that he doesn't have time for a full draw." I didn't take that as her primary com

>Elizabeth Bear's primary complaint seems to be "Andersen is shooting so fast that he doesn't have time for a full draw." I didn't take that as her primary complaint. I thought it was quite clear what her main complaint was right at the top: >But he's not actually doing anything we didn't already know about, he's not shooting in a manner that would be at all effective in combat or for the historically more common purpose of feeding his family, and his quiver-handling skills are worthy of the "before" segment of an infomercial. and >Here's the thing. He's basically misrepresenting a bunch of well-known techniques in non-Western-European archery as his own invention or "rediscovery" (bonus cultural appropriation!), and into the bargain, he's not actually putting any strength into that bow of his. To say that his tactics are suited to a shorter recurve supports one of her points, that he isn't showing anything archers didn't know about.

mcguire 12y ago
> "not actually doing anything we didn't already know about" Yeah, that's another one of my pet peeves. "We already knew that" is a wonderful way of shutting down any kind of discussion and it's rather frequently followed by a significant lack of evidence that "we already knew it." Yes, the idiot's techniques, like most "trick shot" things, are completely ineffective at anything useful. But still, which are they, ineffective or "well-known techniques in non-Western-European archery"? Or is non-Western-European archery assumed to be ineffective? And if short-bows and non-Western-European archery are the topic of the day, then what's with the long digression into The Queen Of All Archery, the English longbow? Fortunately, it's Monday and I'm allowed to hate everything.