hsavinien:

spanxbgone:

zero0000:

anexperimentallife:

I am falling so in love with Filipino culture, including traditional Filipino martial arts, and I want one of these ginuntings so bad. (And a second blade, of course.) They’re like 200 bucks each, but this manufacturer is endorsed by Dan Inosanto himself.

(Incidentally, the ginunting is what my heroine carries in my story about monster-hunting bad-ass post-apocalyptic steampunk Filipina lesbians.)

They’re also issued to the Philippines military in this version.

But just look at the beauty of some of these traditional blades, like these Itak Tagalogs:

Or the pinute, or the Sansibar (not to be confused with Zanzibar), or balisiong (not to be confused with balisong, the famous Filipino butterfly knife, or just… JUST LOOK AT THE BEAUTY OF THESE  BLADES THEY ARE NOT JUST WEAPONS AND TOOLS THEY ARE ART WHY DON’T MORE FANTASY WEAPONS LOOK LIKE THIS:

Seriously, dude, I want to make a fantasy RPG video game just so I can have all the coolest weapons modeled after Filipino blades. JUST LOOK AT THE BEAUTY!

A note, the itak is also used as an all-purpose utility blade in most farming communities. In this case, farming also includes coconut farming, which includes climbing up those insanely tall trees with no rope and using the itak to cut down the coconuts

tathrin

Weapons people!  I’m guessing these Filipino blades may have been the source of some of the aesthetic design of the elven weapons in the Jackson Tolkien films.