When I first watched the Malec balcony scene in 2x05, I thought that Alex had gone out and gotten into some fights with with people and hurt his hand that way (my internet was being shady and it was all horribly pixelated). But after seeing Daddario’s answer, my response is… “huh?”
This is going to be continued below the line cause I’m about to get very nit picky. Y’all better be prepared.
First off, I understand shows have a certain amount of tv magic and the viewers must use a bit of suspension of belief. But for myself, Alec hurting his hand by shooting his bow is hard for me to believe. (I just want to point out that I am in no way an expert in this area. This is just something based off of my own knowledge and experience with archery.)
Here’s a screenshot of his hurt hand. You do see red lines from his thumb to his forefinger. However note that this is his right hand.
I edited this to help bring out the color, to better see his hand.
Here’s a screen shot from the season 1 trailer. So, we see here that Alec is a right handed archer (he’s drawing the bow with his right hand).
But wait! Maybe he’s ambidextrous? Here’s a screen shot of the beginning of 2x05. Yep, still shooting right handed, but I guess the argument could be made that he was shooting with his left hand prior to the start of the scene. Also, note that he is using the rest and it is nowhere near his hand (in season 1 he had a different bow and it looks like the rest was the top part of the grip, which is similar to the recurve bow I had when I was a kid). If he was letting the bow contact that area of his hand, wouldn’t we still see him doing that?
I wanted to show this screen shot cause we can see that there is some damage to his hand (I tried seeing if there was a similar view of his hand like in the balcony scene, but alas I was unsuccessful). Also, I wanted to show how he draws a bow. The arrow does not come into contact with the hand that was damaged.
I wanted to have this show this screen shot to point out an irregularly. We see blood between the 2nd and 3rd, and 3rd and 4th fingers. But maybe he stopped somewhere and washed his hands before stopping at Magnus’? I also have some problems with the directionality of the blood (yay for Forensic classes), but I won’t get that nit picky. I’m assuming this scene is implying that he’s been shooting so long that his fingers have started to bleed. All right, I guess that’s feasible. That’s never happened to me (I used to practice without any guards, except for once [I was just beginning and I didn’t have my form correct and the string kept hitting the inside of my forearm]) but I guess it’s possible.
Going back to the first image. I considered maybe the editors flipped the images, but you can see part of the soundless rune (which we do know is on his right forearm). For arguments sake, let’s say Alec was shooting left handed and he was not using the rest on his bow (as Daddario implies). Under this assumption, I circled in orange the areas I think would have come into contact with the arrow. Because the thumb is on the other side of the grip, it would not have come into contact with the arrow (also, the directionality of the red marks do not make sense).
I understood the context this scene, that it was trying to show that Alec is self-harming as a way to cope with his feelings and guilt over the death of Jocelyn. I do not mean to downplay that, but I just wanted to discuss how I thought it was not believable that Alec was harming himself while practicing.
Now I’m sure, people may be like “Dude, chill it’s only a tv show.” In the media, there is a tendency to mis-portray information in my field and there is a growing propensity for professionals to hold the media responsible and address the problems (Kristina Killgrove is an excellent example with her series “Who Needs an Osteologist?”).
I really enjoyed the scene (even though Alec killed my heart) but I just wanted to discuss the problems I had with it.
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