| abstract
| - In media, the bow, one of the ancient world's most effective ranged weapons, has nowhere near the punch it has in Real Life. A character struck with an arrow need only grab the shaft and yank it out with little more than some momentary discomfort, then go back to doing whatever they were doing. If they're too busy in the middle of a melee, they can just leave them in place and deal with them when things settle down. If you've gotten your knowledge about bows and arrows from the media, it's understandable that you'd think they were easy-to-use but relatively useless weapons. Needless to say, this is yet another area where Hollywood gets it wrong. Frequently. What really put the bow and arrow out of business as a weapon of war was the sheer difficulty in mastering and reliably using it, while increasingly prolific firearms were vastly easier to train. It literally took a lifetime of daily practice to produce a competent longbowman - as the apprentice of a competent longbowman. An old phrase about archery is, "How do you train a good archer? Start with his grandfather." In comparison, all but the most stupid of people could be instructed in the basic operation of a firelock in hours; this despite the fact that, at least initially, such firearms were inferior in both range and accuracy. An arrow hit on a lightly armored or unarmored person might knock them off their feet. Trying to continue doing anything with an arrow sticking out of you is difficult at best, although whether the difficulty is primarily physical or psychological is dependent on where the arrow is sticking. Attempting to pull out an arrow will only make things worse - historically, arrowheads were not firmly adhered to their shafts. Sometimes they were attached with a blob of candlewax, but usually the archers would simply spit on the shaft before sticking the head on - thus, snapping the shaft (a lot more difficult than Hollywood makes it look, as they were made from the hardest woods available so they would fly further and straighter), was completely pointless, as pulling on the shaft would leave the arrowhead inside the wound. The only way to remove one was to widen the wound, either with a knife or by wiggling it around. And as archers would usually stick a number of arrows in the dirt at their feet in preparation for firing them, this meant arrow wounds always became badly infected. The only way to deal with an arrow quickly was to push it through until the head came out the other side. A hit from an arrow was never Just a Flesh Wound. A form of Worst Aid. May play a part in a Rasputinian Death and can easily invoke Human Pincushion. Contrast Bulletproof Human Shield, Guns Are Worthless, Almost-Lethal Weapons where it's the modern-day firearms that get similarly shafted. A common justification is to make the pull-ee the Implacable Man or Made of Iron. Almost always averted when it comes to Arrows on Fire, because, well...they're on fire. For slings being treated similarly, see Suffer the Slings. Not to be confused with annoying Eros. Examples of Annoying Arrows include:
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