Legolas pretty quickly gets in the habit of venting about his travelling companions in Elvish, so long as Gandalf & Aragorn aren’t in earshot they’ll never know right?
Then about a week into their journey like
Legolas: *in Elvish, for approximately the 20th time* ugh fucking hobbits, so annoying
Frodo: *also in Elvish, deadpan* yeah we’re the worst
i mean, honestly it’s amazing the Elves had as many languages and dialects as they did, considering Galadriel (for example) is over seven thousand years old.
english would probably have changed less since Chaucer’s time, if a lot of our cultural leaders from the thirteenth century were still alive and running things.
they’ve had like. seven generations since the sun happened, max. frodo’s books are old to him, but outside any very old poetry copied down exactly, the dialect represented in them isn’t likely to be older than the Second Age, wherein Aragorn’s foster-father Elrond started out as a very young adult and grew into himself, and Legolas’ father was born.
so like, three to six thousand years old, maybe, which is probably a drop in the bucket of Elvish history judging by all the ethnic differentiation that had time to develop before Ungoliant came along, even if we can’t really tell because there weren’t years to count, before the Trees were destroyed.
plus a lot of Bilbo’s materials were probably directly from Elrond, whose library dates largely from the Third Age, probably, because he didn’t establish Imladris until after the Last Alliance. and Elrond isn’t the type to intentionally help Bilbo learn the wrong dialect and sound sillier than can be helped, even if everyone was humoring him more than a little.
so Frodo might sound hilariously formal for conversational use (though considering how most Elves use Westron he’s probably safe there) and kind of old-fashioned, but he’s not in any danger of being incomprehensible, because elves live on such a ridiculous timescale.
to over-analyse this awesome and hilarious post even more, legolas’ grandfather was from linguistically stubborn Doriath and their family is actually from a somewhat different, higher-status ethnic background than their subjects.
so depending on how much of a role Thranduil took in his upbringing (and Oropher in his), Legolas may have some weird stilted old-fashioned speaking tics in his Sindarin that reflect a more purely Doriathrin dialect rather than the Doriathrin-influenced Western Sindarin that became the most widely spoken Sindarin long before he was born, or he might have a School Voice from having been taught how to Speak Proper and then lapse into really obscure colloquial Avari dialect when he’s being casual. or both!
considering legolas’ moderately complicated political position, i expect he can code-switch.
…it’s also fairly likely considering the linguistic politics involved that Legolas is reasonably articulate in Sindarin, though with some level of accent, but knows approximately zero Quenya outside of loanwords into Sindarin, and even those he mostly didn’t learn as a kid.
which would be extra hilarious when he and gimli fetch up in Valinor in his little homemade skiff, if the first elves he meets have never been to Middle Earth and they’re just standing there on the beach reduced to miming about what is the short beard person, and who are you, and why.
this is elvish dialects and tolkien, okay. there’s a lot of canon material! he actually initially developed the history of middle-earth specifically to ground the linguistic development of the various Elvish languages!
Frodo: *frantically scribbling* Hang on which language are you even speaking right now
Pippin, confused: Is he not speaking Elvish?
Frodo, sarcastically: I dunno, are you speaking Hobbit?
Boromir, who has been lowkey pissed-off at the Hobbits’ weird dialect this whole time: That’s what it sounds like to me.
Merry, who actually knows some shit about Hobbit background: We are actually speaking multiple variants of the Shire dialect of Westron, you ignorant fuck.
Sam, a mere working-class country boy: Honestly y’all could be talkin Dwarvish half the time for all I know.
Tags:
#Middle Earth #language #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #my past self has good taste #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what
You put ice cream in a glass and pour soft drink over it. It creates a thick layer of delicious foam on top of a sweet, creamy drink with ice cream in it.
And yes I did attempt to get a picture by googling “Australia spider” like a fucking moron.
Spiders Georg out there pioneering previously-undiscovered levels of brain freeze
Tags:
#we’re not here to fuck spiders because that would give us horrible yeast infections #language #food #Australia #Spiders Georg #embarrassment squick? #illness mention #the more you know
I love how about a third of the characters in the Game of Thrones universe have some silly little nickname and personal catchphrase that everyone uses with perfectly straight faces while having serious conversations. Every council meeting is like,
“My lord, the Spatula grows more treacherous by the day. He must be stopped.”
“The Milkshake is right, Your Grace. Soon his forces will be encroaching on the bay, into the lands of Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy.”
“This has not escaped my notice, Ser Boring Guy With No Nickname. The Spatula is the gravest threat to the kingdom. But what can we do about it?”
“I have ten thousand troops ready at your command. Simply say the word and they will march to his castle gates. You know my house words, Your Grace.”
“Yes, yes. The Milkshake brings all the boys to the yard.”
When one had enough power to take a life with a twitch of a finger, a thought, they earned the right to wear skin-tight clothing and call themselves Hero, or Legend. To wear a mask and name themselves something inane like ‘the Cockatoo’ and still take themselves seriously.
it’s the same thing, deep down
Tags:
#A Song of Ice and Fire #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #death tw? #embarrassment squick?
Every time I see this I go “oh, neat pony” and scroll past while my brain chugs through the caption like the slowest computer on earth and I have to scroll back up to it
me: I thought of the WORST dating sim / visual novel idea
by WORST I mean I am grinning manically as I type this
(but also. it’s a bad idea. I want to make it very clear I know that)
YOU are a brilliant female physicist who has Mulan’ed her way into the Manhattan Project
YOUR OPTIONS ARE: von neumann, feynman, oppenheimer, etc etc
…I have to google whether this has been done. hmm. mildly surprisingly, no!
He’d actually be a good YA girl protagonist. Check out this scene where Niels Bohr summons him specifically because he’ll be honest and irreverent
This went on for about two hours, going back and forth over lots of ideas, back and forth, arguing. The great Niels kept lighting his pipe; it always went out. And he talked in a way that was un-understandable—mumble, mumble, hard to understand. His son I could understand better.
“Well,” he said finally, lighting his pipe, “I guess we can call in the big shots now.” So then they called all the other guys and had a discussion with them.
Then the son told me what happened. The last time he was there, Bohr said to his son, “Remember the name of that little fellow in the back over there? He’s the only guy who’s not afraid of me, and will say when I’ve got a crazy idea. So next time when we want to discuss ideas, we’re not going to be able to do it with these guys who say everything is yes, yes, Dr. Bohr. Get that guy and we’ll talk with him first.”
I was always dumb in that way. I never knew who I was talking to. I was always worried about the physics. If the idea looked lousy, I said it looked lousy. If it looked good, I said it looked good. Simple proposition.
I’ve always lived that way. It’s nice, it’s pleasant—if you can do it. I’m lucky in my life that I can do this.
made commissioned art for massage parlors, got into the papers for being a caltech professor who was at strip clubs more nights than he wasn’t, almost got into a bar fight because he had no idea what to do when a stranger was being aggro at him but didn’t want to be ‘a sissy’ so escalated on autopilot, spent an enormous sum buying drinks for women at bars, screamed in a hall full of hundreds of other undergrads that he wanted to be hypnotized…
Tags:
#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #story ideas I will never write #embarrassment squick? #sexism cw?
Iceland is fucking bizarre my name change made the news
Like just @ me at this point I’m literally the only person in iceland (and very possibly the world) who has the first name Lauf
(Article title reads “Lauf and Birningur in group of new names in the name register”)
No one lives here so now two of our biggest news outlets are vagueing about me lmao
Hmm you’re right. Correction: two of our biggest media outlets are talking about me specifically because they are obsessed with me
This morning I showed up to work and my boss was like “congratulations :))” and I was kinda confused so asked her on what and she said “your name, I heard about it on the radio”
So far I have counted two online articles and apparently the radio is also talking about my name change so I’ll keep you guys updated when I’m on national tv or something
With a little legwork we can make more people on Tumblr see this than the entire population of Iceland.
Tags:
#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #names #Iceland #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what #embarrassment squick?
A Vulcan named Stork works at the Terran adoption agency. Parents always request that he be the one to deliver their child to them.
It’s years before anyone explains it to him.
People keep gifting him robes with long white birds on them.
The fun thing is he would understand why people were getting him outfits with storks on them. That’s a word, it’s his name, straightforward. All the humans get him the same gag gift, but like, they’re putting effort in at least. This is a genuinely nice outfit. Stork will be a walking zero-effort pun sometimes, rather than waste a perfectly fine robe.
It’s fine. This is a readily comprehensible human illogic. Exactly the kind of thing he expected from moving to Earth.
Six years in he finds out about the stork bringing babies.
Stork has a good long meditation session about this myth, his name, his job, the outfits, the whole shebang (or whatever Vulcan concept is the equivalent).
And he decides he’s honored by it, in a humanly illogical way.
The humans are asking him to do what is after all his job, and specifically requesting him for the joy his name brings them on top of an already agreeable and satisfying task. He has no objection to engendering positive emotions in others. Harm hastens the heat-death of the universe, Surak teaches, so happiness must logically slow it down.
Plus, Vulcans of his generation love puns. There were two decades of punning competitions in colleges across the planet. So when he realizes that he is a walking zero-effort pun, and that the humans also love the pun, he is all for it. He is the Joe Cool of the entire Vulcan population in his city.
And via this pun, the humans are including him in a cherished and traditional myth, by casting him as the literal bringer of life and the expander of families.
There’s no downside. Stork wears his robes, pins, keychains, and other bird-related tchotchkes with genuine pride.
Tags:
#Star Trek #fanfic #story ideas I will never write #puns #adorable #embarrassment squick?
#oh my god #adventures in human capitalism #covid19 #vaccines #illness tw #this probably deserves some other warning tag but I am not sure what #embarrassment squick? #(ftr the NYT pirates say that the ”terrific news” is that the bivalent boosters reduce your risk of getting Long COVID)
all goofs aside I do think it would very funny if beloved airhead billionaire philanthropist Bruce Wayne was like. VERY publicly forklift certified and happily reminds everyone of it every time Wayne Enterprises social media posts a publicity picture of Bruce swinging by one of the factories, wearing a hard hat and hanging with the working folks.
Bruce retweets this to the Official Bruce Wayne social media and it’s always “So great to meet the people who make our work possible! What we do at Wayne Enterprises wouldn’t be possible without these hardworking folks. They seemed so surprised when I told them I’m also forklift certified! Maybe I can drive one next time.”
the man is always reminding people that he theoretically COULD operate a forklift but no one will let him because that’s Bruce Fucking Wayne and it just seems safer to Not.
meanwhile Batman, obviously, can operate a forklift but isn’t technically certified due to the technically impossible nature of getting a certification made out to The Goddamn Batman, which culminated in Batman having to (briefly!!!) drive a forklift in the process of foiling someone’s stupid warehouse-related scheme and briefly becoming a meme when someone gets a picture and starts a furious online debate over whether or not Batman can be operating heavy machinery. “flying a fighter jet down city streets is one thing but I’m drawing the line here, this is an OSHA violation,” that kind of thing. #batsVosha gets trending probably.
Bruce, ever the opportunist, capitalizes on this by tweeting out an open invitation for the Batman to stop by Wayne Enterprises for a course in forklift safety.
Tags:
#Batman #fanfic #I didn’t actually laugh aloud but it still amused me enough to reblog #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what #embarrassment squick?
Brinens and Things 