Live by the Blade

German warhammer, 16th century

Some slightly less silly pics of me with a bow!

Archery has been difficult. I’ve become very comfortable with close combat, and am super happy with my skill level. Archery, though? I’m horrible. To make matters worse, everyone seems to expect me to be automatically good at it, and there’s lots of laughter when I make a bad shot/ obviously have no idea what I’m doing.

It’s getting better every week, but it’s sure been a little bit of humble pie. 

Many more women dressed as men to fight.

Long before female nurses were officially considered to be a part of the military, they were already on the battlefield. They merely didn’t get written into official reports because they were “invisible women”, “not supposed to be there”. Usually they would be local women running a makeshift care center out of their homes.

Movies involving ancient societies? Guess how many had female fighters?

Spies? Mostly female. Yeah, only the men were caught, usually (because nobody suspected the servant woman), but historians believe most cases had more women spies than men. Most cases meaning across time and continents.

Giving me a movie on samurai? Women were trained as well to avoid being captured and raped, and often fought just as hard as men. One woman notably survived multiple battles, and became a hero alongside her sisters after taking out 7 men before dying in her last fight (usually in sword fighting you’d be lucky to take out 2 enemy soldiers. 7 is fucking insane, but because she was a woman it was shoved under the records how the lord managed to survive).

Women have ALWAYS been on battlefields. Women have an intense history in driving victories and losses alike. They were supply runners, fighters, spies, assassins, prostitutes (look up how prostitutes essentially ran the western world, or even the social status of harem members. They literally fucking ruled), even underground activists.