i love that jrr tolkien has nearly as many epithets as some of his characters at this point but the characters are like “aragorn son of arathorn, elessar telcontar, heir of isildur” and he’s like “jirt”
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#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #Lord of the Rings
“Stealing, of course, is a crime, and a very impolite thing to do. But like most impolite things, it is excusable under certain circumstances. Stealing is not excusable if, for instance, you are in a workshop and you decide that the Silmarils would look better in your crown, and you simply grab the Silmarils and take them there. But if you were very, very hungry, and you had no way of obtaining money, it would be excusable to grab the Silmarils, take them to your fortress, and eat them.”
“Finrod was an Arafinwean, a word which here means ‘lithe blonde twink who, for some reason, everybody in the entire world except for Celegorm seems to underestimate.’
Curufin was smitten, a word which here means ‘not Celegorm.’”
“Now, “in the dark” is a term meaning that one is not aware of something that is going on, and has very little to do with physical light, or the lack of such a thing. If it is a bright sunny day and you are sitting in a park and you have no idea that buried beneath your picnic spot is a treasure chest then you are in the dark not in the dark, and if it is the dead of night and you are traipsing through the woods and you are entirely aware that you are being followed by a troupe of ballerinas then you are not in the dark in the dark, and if you are sitting at your kitchen table working and you are so intent on your work that you do not even realize night has fallen then you are in the dark about being in the dark in the dark, until you look up and find yourself no longer in the dark about being in the dark in the dark. And immediately after Melkor extinguished the Trees, all of Valinor found itself very comprehensively in the dark.”
“Fingolfin was an optimist, a word which here means ‘attempting to make amends with his half-brother who has just threatened him with a sword.’
Fingolfin was an optimist, a word which here means ‘willing to trust his half-brother to bring him across an ocean in the boats they have just stolen together.’
Fingolfin was an optimist, a word which here means ‘about to cross an ice bridge, having previously turned back because such a thing was clearly impossible.’
Fingolfin was an optimist, a word which here means ‘about to charge an evil god and stab him with a sword.’
Fingolfin was an optimist, a word which here means ‘dead.’”
real talk why do so many fantasy universes think giant spiders are necessary
The sad part is there’s a decent chance a large proportion of them can be blamed on one spider.
The tarantula that bit JRR Tolkien as a child.
He swore he didn’t have a spider phobia and the experience had nothing to do with the man-eating giant spiders in The Hobbit, the even more giant and even more man-eating spider in Lord of the Rings, or the unholy eldritch spider from outside creation that plunged the world into darkness and made literal Satan scream like a little kid in the Silmarillion. Very few people believe him.
Given LotR’s influence in the fantasy genre, there is a high probability that tarantula is the progenitor of even more fictional spiders than Ungoliant was.
wow fuck that one tarantula
“fantasy universes have too many spiders” factoid actually just statistical error. Georgs Spider, who bit JRR Tolkein & is to blame for menacing over 10,000 fantasy universes, is an outlier adn should not have been counted
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#spider #Lord of the Rings #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #Spiders Georg
I love when ghost hunting shows are in a fucking ancient ruin and ask their questions in english
“what is your name” homeboy I was a viking several hundred years ago I don’t know what the fuck you’re saying
Is anyone else imagining “J.R.R. Tolkien: Ghost Hunter”
“Alright, now I’m going to try 8th century Anglo-Norse”
YES
#Hm no how about 4th century Gothic #Welsh? No? #Let’s try good ol’ Latin #this could go on and on #safe bet he wouldn’t accidentally insult the ghost’s mother or anything
the thing about writing fantasy stories is that language is so based on history that it can be hard to decide how far suspension of disbelief can carry you word-choice wise – what do you call a french braid in a world with no france? can a queen ann neckline be described if there was no queen ann? where do you draw the line? can you use the word platonic if plato never existed? can you name a character chris in a land without christianity? can you even say ‘bungalow’ in a world where there was no indian language for the word to originate from? is there a single word in any language that doesn’t have a story behind it? to be accurate a fantasy story would be written in a fantasy language but who has the time for that
Tolkien had the time apparently
LIsten. Linguistics Georg, who invented over 10,000 conlangs each day, is an outlier and should not have been counted.
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#language #yes this #I have been thinking lately about how much of the development of English comes down to sheer serendipity
Brinens and Things 