Both are cosplayers who try to be the archer dwarf from The Hobbit movie trilogy, both are obviously girls, and neither of them can shoot with a bow and arrow.
First I'd like to address something relating to cosplay. Why is it so that all the Kili cosplayers I've seen on the Internet have been female, trying to be the male dwarf, glueing or painting some stubble on their chins? That does not look remotely real or believable. Everyone notices right away that they are not men. Male and female physique is quite different and the smaller jaw usually exposes the female gender easily, if nothing else (like the obviously female haircut in the B picture, or the makeup). And if the human inside the character speaks, the play is over.
Cosplay is one of my hobbies too, as well as costume and prop making. I just can't understand why it's premarily a female hobby, at least in Finland where I live. Most of the people in conventions who have dressed in costumes are women. Men tend to be more interested in gaming (traditional and video). Another question is, even though there wouldn't be enough men willing to cosplay some male characters, do women really have to cosplay them? There are plenty of female characters out there to cosplay, even if we rule out all the sexist and stupid 80 percent of them!
And then there's genderbending, even though I'm not the greatest fan of it, but if you really must play as a character of the opposite gender, can't you adjust the costume to your own? Just with a little bit of imagination you can make the role yours. Women can make female versions of male characters, be just as happy cosplaying them (if not happier, since it requires less tied breasts and glued stubble on face), and look cool and inspiring instead of obviously fake and ridiculous.
But now to the mistakes in these girls' archery, if it could even be called that.
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- Sideways shooting. One of the worst mistakes you can make. Enough said of it already in the previous posts.
- What is this bow supposed to be made of? Looks like plastic and cardboard to me, but it might imitate wood and bronze. Anyway, if it would be bronze, it would be too heavy, cumbersome and unbendable to actualy work well.
- The arrow is on the wrong side of the bow. This is the most common mistake seen in this blog's examples of crap archery. How she think the arrow keeps there? She has to literally hold it between her fingers, unless it would drop to the ground! Did the thought not cross her mind to maybe put the arrow on the other side of the bow? No? Okay, terrible. You just failed your basic archery course.
- Four finger grip around the string. Not necessary and quite amateurish.
- These little arrows and the dashed line show the two points where the bowstring bends. Because she's shooting stupidly sideways, the position of the drawing hand is unnatural and results in the bending of the string. It is true that you can bend the string sideways like this to give the arrow and extra spin in direction or another, but that is super high skill level precision archery stuff, not for the novices in these pictures.
- The larger opaque white arrows show the direction of her arms. And they are not anywhere near where they should be. The biggest problem is again the sideways shooting, which results in a very poor shooting form, and the arms are just all around the place.
- This arrowhead is not sharp. What are you trying to do, knock someone out? Or hunt squirrels without damaging their fur? I doubt that. It's also too big and heavy for this arrow (if the tip would be made of metal. I bet this foam tipped "arrow" flies as good as a foam tipped "arrow" can, which is probably below ten meters).
- This mock of an arrow doesn't have proper fletching, what a surprise! Two feathers in terrible condition instead of three good ones. Nice job there.
- I just ended up lining this whole figure, since everything about this form and holding of the bow tells me that this person has never hold a proper bow in her life, let alone shoot with it. It's like she's holding a delicate crystal goblet full of red wine, in a pure white silk dress, walking on killer high heels on a slippery wet marble floor. That's not the way to hold a bow and arrow. That should be like a lumberjack and his trustworthy double-bitted felling axe, not just with brute force, but with firm hand and expert's preciseness, every hit of the axe splitting a log in two perfectly balanced halves, never hitting a rock or his own leg.
- Maybe she wasn't holding the bow properly because it's not a proper bow! Or then not. Anyway, the bow is a toy. With a bow this thin you can create enough energy to maybe get an arrow stuck in a dartboard, if the arrow is sharp enough. With a real war bow you (well, not you, but a professional ancient or medieval archer) would hit right through the wall behind the dartboard and nail a guy hiding behind it.
- Arrow. On. The. Wrong. Side. Of. The. Bow. Again, she has to use her thumb to keep it there.
- These transparent big white arrows show the position of her arms. They are again a mess (and covered in obvious plastic foam!), and even though she hasn't made the full draw yet, I bet my head that her arms aren't aligned when she does that. A novice just don't get it right without proper instructor.
- The cock feather (red one in here) should point towards the face of the archer, not outwards. That's because the two other fletches (which are opposite to each other) then pass the arc of the bow without touching it and thus damaging the fletches.
That's for today. I have nothing good to say about these "archery" pictures.
From the perspective of a female cosplayer who happens to be learning archery (Mongolian horse bow) and also cosplays Kili, here's some insight for you.
ReplyDeleteThe average cosplayer knows little, if anything about archery. It's a bit of a pet hate of mine as I've seen some rather nasty examples at cons such bows strung backwards, but I try to ignore it as much as possible, barring friendly advice when it seems appropriate. Why? Because most cosplayers aren't necessarily interested in doing method acting research into their characters to the point where they learn the skills of those characters (even such as playing an instrument when cosplaying a bard). The average cosplayer cosplay because they think it's fun.
Secondly, most coaplay photographers know little, if anything about archery. They are usually more interested in getting good light and an angle that makes an aesthetically pleasing image, rather than getting archery stances and arm positioning right. They often instruct the cosplayers by telling them to to this or that, and the cosplayers usually listen.
Thirdly, most conventions won't allow functioning archery gear and thus a lot of cosplayers make non-functional prop bows and arrows. Because they know little to nothing about archery, they often go only by what they see, with little thought to engineering and physics, which may have unexpected results when they try to use what they have made. Some bows are made as a solid replica with elastic as bowstring, which means it is less likely to look natural in pictures. Arrows are often completely forbidden from certain conventions, unless they are either attached to the quiver or otherwise non-projectable.
I'm not saying that it makes theit archery errors less erroneous, only that it explains why there are so many mistakes made in cosplays and photos.
As for the matter of females cosplaying male characters, the sad fact remains that in movies such as The Hobbit (and LotR, for that matter) there are less than three named and important female characters that have any impact on the plot. Two of them are elves. One of them is the subject of a shitstorm of hate. That doesn't really leave us girls a lot to pick from. Cosplay is about having fun, dressing up as a character you love and and about making a costume. It's not a competition about who looks the most like the original. Or who can legitimately "pass" as a man (although if you claim no female cosplayer is capable of that, you clearly have not seen Tankhera's Thorin! Seriously! Google it!) or female for that matter. Things may be different in Finland that it is in Norway, UK, the States and the rest of Europe, but I assure you, out here, it's generally a non-issue. ;)
I'm all for bringing more archery knowledge into the cosplay community, but there are better ways of doing it than making fun of people who have never fired a real bow in their life and simply have fun with a game of dress-up. ;)
Firstly, thanks for your lengthy comment, and let me respond with an equally long one. :)
DeleteI wrote an even longer comment, but it disappeared in the cyberspace, sadly. This is the second one, a bit shorter...
My style is to be angry, frustrated and sarcastic here in this blog. It's not who I am in real life. It is for fun and entertainment, since this blog is supposed to be also that, as well as educational. I hope I don't ruin someone's day with my writings, since it is not my purpose. I just think this "sarcastically humorous" approach is great for people to remember things properly. I also don't usually address people by their names.
Cosplay really is a great hobby. I just watched cosplay's Finnish championship contest in TV a few days ago. All the contestants, judges, 3 of 4 hosts and most of the crowd were female. Why is that so? Nothing wrong with female cosplayers, but why this hobby is so gendered and doesn't interest more men? There were also Fili and Kili cosplayers from Hobbit (why is this movie trilogy so popular amongs cosplay girls?). There were also few other archer characters. None of them had even the basic knowledge of how to hold the bow or shoot with it.
I perfectly understand if there's safety regularions regarding bows and archery in conventions and contests. I agree with that, not harming people. But it is not a reason not to learn even the tiny little basics of archery, which would greatly improve one's cosplay character. It is not in the same league with playing an instrument, since that requires much more practise. I know since I've both practised archery and played classical music with cello for ten years. Playing classical music takes years to learn, and cannot be expected from a cosplayer, who has only between days to months time to practise while making his/her costume.
Archery otherwise is more easy to make to look like you know a lot of it. Correcting the stance and form of the arms is crucial, as well as holding the bow and arrow right. I've given this informations numerous times in this blog since people (both in real life and in drawings) do these beginner mistakes over and over again. Correcting these would made any archery related cosplay character hugely better, and with very little effort. I should probably make a blog post aobut that later.
I hope you understand my stance in this subject. It is very frustrating to see archery get the same "not interested to learn properly" handling time and time over from Hollywood movies to DeviantArt drawings. I also apreciate your bringing of archery knowledge to the cosplay community.
PS.
I looked up Tankera's Thorin, and I must say that cosplay was really good! I hadn't seen that one already.
PPS.
Thanks for following me! :D You're the first actually. Nice to see that blogger scene is still alive! And please share your archery thoughts (or whatever thoughts) with me in the future also, if you feel like it.
Thank you for taking the time to give such a thorough answer! I will be the first to admit that I wasn't really sure whether it was simply your style of writing or if you were in fact genuinely angry, lol. :3 I've read a few of your other posts now and I'm getting into the flow of your writing and finding myself laughing now and then! ^_^
DeleteI think cosplay is very female dominated for many reasons, perhaps most strongly because it it a creative outlet for a fandom, rather than an acquisitive sort (which, if you look at fandom in general, (historically speaking) is often the difference between male and female fans, the females traditionally being the creative fans (making costumes, writing fanfics), the males traditionally being the acquisitive (gathering information and knowledge, buying merchandise and rare collectibles)). Hardly the only reason I would guess, but probably a very important one, I would wager.
I agree that archery is something that is relatively easy to read up on to get the basics to look right for a photo (even if you'd never hit close to a target should you try to actually fire a real bow), however, as I've discovered, a lot of cosplayers simply don't care, and some might not know where to start. The amount of incompetence in "Google Fu" can sometimes be astounding amongst cosplayers!!! (Sometimes I do wonder if it is simply good old laziness or if people have become so used to being fed information that they have forgotten there is such a thing as Google and Wikipedia…) Most cosplayers go by how things are done by the character in whatever source that character is from, which, as your blog illustrates, is very often very wrong.
I know that at least here in Norway, more experienced cosplayers have panels where more unexperienced cosplayers can learn some tricks of the trade (how to make cool cosplay performances, how to build armour, mechanics and electronics in cosplay, and so on), so I definitely think there would be room for things like "Archery in cosplay" panels! But that means someone needs to do them. ;)
Yeah, the blogger scene is not an easy one to get regular readers in, but it is a much tidier format than Tumblr. Personally, as my hobbies tend to take up most of my time, and I end up focusing on my Facebook page, my Instagram and my Tumblr, which have grown more demanding as I've gained followers, so I very rarely find the time to blog anymore. Instead I just read them, lol!
Either way, I have found this blog to be very educational and enjoyable, as I am only just an aspiring archer with very little training, especially on the technical side, and I’m looking forwards to reading more! ^_^
thanks for such an informative post. Archery is a good recreational sport and it can help to shape the mind and the body positively. So we are here to guide and serve at Archery in Pakistan with skilled and experienced coaches.
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