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splickedylit · 1 year

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excerpting

Domestic Diplomacy II is turning out to be even more "splickedy gratuitously gets caught in the weeds of xenosociology and alien language barriers, the fic sequel" and tbh I'm not mad about it

“Oh, your moirail!” says Jade, and bounces upright, ignoring John’s wary little soft human cautionary hiss. To your vague surprise, she’s apparently learned enough not to do the human holding-out-a-hand gesture they usually do when they’re introduced; she clasps her hands in front of her, nonexistent claws politely folded in, and ducks her head briefly forward and to one side, careful not to jab at him with her nonexistent horns.

It's a pretty passable greeting—for a social equal, which is its own bizarre issue, considering he’s a highblood. But relatively non-offensive, for a human, and fortunately for her she’s picked a highblood who isn’t likely to give a shit. Gamzee laughs out loud and gives his own lazy-ass version of a greeting back, a vague twist of his wrists and dip of his head, condescending to use an equal’s greeting back at her. When he says “Gamzee Makara,” there’s a hint of a threatening buzz to it, a testing you should know to respect me warning—you could have told him she’d show absolutely no sign of hearing it, which is exactly what happens.

“I’m Jade Harley! I meet you,” Jade says, a carefully neutral statement-of-fact greeting—not fawning or hostile. You don’t know if humans are out here just learning neutral address no matter what, or if this human particularly just doesn’t give a shit that your moirail’s a fuck-off mutant-huge highblood with horns that scrape the ceiling of the block—by the expectant way she looks up at Gamzee afterward, she wouldn’t give much of a shit either way. Out of all of the humans, Jade Harley might actually win the prize for giving the least shits, no matter what Rose and Dave like to pretend.

“Yeah, I meet you too, motherfucker,” says Gamzee, looking incredibly amused, and glances down at you. “She’s a rude-ass little motherfuckin’ toothful, huh? I like her.”

“Of course you do,” you say, pained. “Don’t take it personally, alright? You’re not a highblood here, they don’t get highbloods.”

“Oh, best friend,” says Gamzee, and kisses your nugbone again, embarrassingly. “I’m a highblood wherever the fuck I go. It’s cool though. Squishy-ass little motherfuckers won’t get any grief from me.”

“<Motherfucker>,” Jade repeats behind you, and switches back to English, in the bright, wide verbal tone you’re starting to learn means ‘smiling and happy’, weird interstitial ‘vowel’ breath-sounds further back in the throat through pulled-back mouth-corners. “Hmm, <motherfucker>… Oh, neat! Is that dialect? It sounds like, ahh, what’s that other word. Kk—kkkht— Uh, dammit. You guys need to learn how to use vowels— It sounds like <;brother>.”

“It is like,” you say, surprised despite yourself. “<Brother> is a troll, and <motherfucker> you put it all spots you want. It’s a thing, it’s a troll, it’s a, tss, a doing-things word, it’s a name. It’s bad, it’s good. Any spot you want. And he does want, for all those, all the time.”

#splickedydrabbles #Homestuck #Domestic Diplomacy #me staring into the distance: what if 'motherfucker' and 'brother' are translated different but they're related words in alternian....#what if 'brother' and 'sister' aren't different words theyre just translated in english based on gender but there's no distinction actually #it's all the word I tend to translate as 'kin'/'family'/'fam' lol but gendered by english-speakers for comprehension #what if alternian greetings have implicit settings for 'i'm hostile to you' and 'i'm trying to be non-offensive and polite'#and the lack of either is an implicit message of 'we're equals' which comes with its own social baggage RE: castes #what if I approached Homestuck as though it was implicitly a translated text ala JRR Tolkein's meta-narrative of Lord of the Rings #''Alternian wouldn't spell his name 'karkat vantas' of course but it's been anglicized for the audience with additional vowel sounds''#'when his tone of voice is referenced in this line it of course actually refers to his engagement of his third subvocal chatterbox--''#WHAT IF--#I am frothing at the damn mouth I love fucking around in this sandbox so much I will make up ALL the societal/cultural indicators #this is the casual/semi-formal/court-formal code-switching in Save a Horse Ride a Dragon all over again lmao NO REGERTS

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writer-of-random-things · 4 months

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On Muddy Trenches & Middle-earth

I recently finished All Quiet on the Western Front for school and my only thoughts are: A) I should have never gotten emotionally attached to a war story, and B) the book made me understand The Lord of the Rings so much more. I know Tolkien stated the the LOTR was never allegorical, and so it may be; but meaning there is. So obviously, I'm going to write about it: how the 'lost generation' is reflected in Middle-earth, the beauty of comradeship, and maybe most importantly, finding hope in the darkest of times.

Paul Baumer, the protagonist of All Quiet, was goaded by his schoolteacher to enlist for WWI only to find out its realities as everything he loves gets destroyed. Although this is very different from Frodo's story, the emotion, the trauma, and the comradeship both of these characters went through is something that will be remarked on time and time again.

When people talk about Tolkien, WWI, and LOTR, they most often draw the connection between the Dead Marshes and No Man's Land. After all, the Dead Marshes are described as such:

"They all lie in pools, pale faces, deep deep under the dark water...grim faces and evil, and noble faces and sad. Many faces proud and fair, and weeds in their silver hair. But all foul, all rotting, all dead."

Meanwhile, No Man's Land in All Quiet is described as:

"Thus we stagger forward, and into our pierced and shattered souls bores the torturing image of brown earth with the greasy sun and the convulsed and dead soldiers who lie there--it can't be helped--who cry and clutch at our legs as we spring away from them."

The land is barren, people are dead. And the protagonist of both stories have to trudge through the wasteland without looking back. Furthermore, All Quiet Chapter 9 has Paul stabbing a French soldier in a fit of panic, only to have to watch him slowly die. Paul laments:

"Comrade, I did not want to kill you...we always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that our mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony--Forgive me, comrade, how could you be my enemy?"

This is quite similar to Sam's reaction when he sees a dead soldier; Tolkien writes,

"It was Sam's first view of battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad he could not see the dead face. He wondered where the man's name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil at heart, or what lies and threats had led him on the long march from home; and if he would rather have stayed there in peace."

The above connection was first brought to my attention in Tolkien in the Twenty-First Century: The Meaning of Middle-Earth Today by Nick Groom, though I selected the quotes myself. Yet that is not all. Before we delve into the beauty of Sam and Frodo's friendship, I want to focus on Chapter 10 of All Quiet, where the soldiers get to guard an abandoned village (with lots of food, no less!) and continue to cook while shells are falling amongst them. They take refuge in a dugout, where they have a feast. Why is this important? Because the dugout is basically a hobbit-hole. A hobbit-hole is cozy, with food and warmth; the ideal of an idyllic home, even if the rest of the world is going to shambles. @moonlightredfern said it best, in a reply to this post. It's a testament to all the cold and miserable days, dreaming of a better time where everything is nice and cozy. It's deciding that the simple joys are worth risking your life for--indeed, that such tiny moments is what makes life worthwhile in the first place.

The same sentiment can be applied to friendship. Tolkien himself said that Sam was "a reflexion of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen in the 1914 war, and recognised as so far superior to myself". Sam's humble origins in the Shire brings into mind a scene of Paul's thoughts when he encounters Russian prisoners:

"They ought to be put to threshing, reaping, and apple picking. They look just as kindly as our own peasants..."

Like the soldiers, Sam could've stayed a gardener for the rest of his life; he comes from the same simple origins they do. Despite all the odds, they both go into battle; more importantly, they both rely on comradeship. And that makes all the difference. For both Paul and Frodo, friendship is what makes their battles bearable. Take Chapter 5 of All Quiet, when Paul is cooking a goose with his friend Kat:

"...we have a more complete communion with one another than even lovers have. We are two men, two minute sparks of life; outside is the night and the circle of death. We sit on the edge of it crouching in danger...in our hearts we are close to one another, and the hour is like the room: flecked over with lights and shadows of our feelings cast by a quiet fire."

Friendship is the flame that keeps out the dark. Gollum only became the creature he was because he was alone while the ring slowly corrupted him. But Frodo had Sam. And Sam would not have grown as much as he did, would not have been a brave as he was, without Frodo. The same is for Paul; when the only thing he has left--his friend Kat--dies, Paul says, "All I know is that Militiaman Stanislaus Katczinsky is dead. Then I know no more." Without friendship, life sparks out. In its fragility, maybe, lies its beauty: that moments and memories between two people are as magnificent as life itself. This connection, in a way, is one of the most important things in both stories.

Finally, I want to touch on my favorite chapter in All Quiet, and its connection to the ending of The Return of the King. In Chapter 7, Paul returns home, only to find out that nothing was the same as it was. Everybody treats war as a glorious thing when Paul has seen what it really is. He feels lost and disconnected:

"I...say over to myself: 'You are at home, you are at home.' But a sense of strangeness cannot leave me, I cannot feel at home amongst these things. There is my mother, there is my sister, there is my case of butterflies, and there the mahogany piano--but I am not myself here. There is a distance, a veil between us."

For refrence, let's just compare this to Frodo's lines near the end of RoTK, shall we?

"But I have been hurt too deeply, Sam. I tried to save Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me."

I don't think I have to explain this much. It speaks to the lost generation of WWI veterans as a whole; after all the pain and torment, battlefields filled not only with blood but also broken dreams, how does one pick up the threads of an old life? It makes sense, then, that both Paul's and Frodo's stories do not have a 'satisfying' ending that readers would like to see. Instead, they portray the reality of trauma and healing--or rather, the absence of it. Yet both tales are not devoid of hope. Paul states that all his experiences would be worthwhile if he could make sure that nobody could experience what he has again:

"A word of command has made these silent figures our enemies; a word of command might transform them into our friends...I am frightened: I dare think this way no more...I will keep them, shut away, until the war is ended. My heart beats fast: this the aim, the great, the sole aim, that I have thought of in the trenches; that I have looked for as the only possibility of experience after this annihilation of human feeling; this is a task that will make life afterward worthy of these hideous years."

In addition, hope has been pervasive throughout the entire LOTR trilogy, even when fear and despair have the upper hand. Hope is not a passive act; it is a decision of will, a choice of a small, unsurprising hobbit that said, "I will take the ring, even if I do not know the way." It is symbolized in Sam carrying Frodo up Mount Doom, of Eowyn and Faramir overcoming their past troubles and finding each other, of a group of people that saved the world because they dared to try.

I think the most important thing to keep in mind when comparing All Quiet on the Western Front and The Lord of the Rings is that they are two works with different purposes, yet their authors lived through similar circumstances. The thematic motifs of friendship, hope, trauma, and violence are still relevant today. Perhaps Paul's hope for the future, as well as the Fellowship's determination to see the quest to be end, can be summarized by the oft-repeated words of Gandalf:

'I wish it need not have happened in my time,' said Frodo. 'So do I,' said Gandalf, 'and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for us to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.'

#lotr #tolkein #tolkien meta #frodo and sam #all quiet on the western front #im westen nichts neues #look I just wasn't expecting a book I read for school to hit me this hard okay #I think this calls for a lotr reread

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maeofthenoldor · 1 year

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“Harfoots of the first age suffered greatly”

Over the past few months, I've been forming a rough idea on hobbits (harfoots) who lived not just in early third age or second age like “Rings Of Power” likes to believe, but actually are much more ancient, descending from the first age. I have built around a culture that they would have, stemming from what I know of Tolkien's already written history of harfoots, and I would like to go even further. On more of the fine details, their culture, how they affected the first age and why they were written out of history. This will be a series of meta posts, and this is part one of five that I have planned. This will be focusing on the rough outline of their history, to get people interested before I go into what their folklore was, how their migrations worked, some of their notable figures, there culture and customs.

Before I continue I would like to mention that this is not about “Rings Of Power “portrayal” of Harfoots, this is completely my worldbuilding and culture creation. also these are only headcanons, not canon.

Anyway, let's get to it!

The Harfoots resided in Beleriand, long before the Noldor returned from Aman, and none knew where they came from. They lived in Thargelion, living in the tall grass that grew there. It was flat, with protruding mounds, so that you could have a clear view of Lake Helvorn and the blue mountains. They lived as the hobbits of the shire did, with the same concept as holes underground, but less sophisticated. These holes were like gainat ground squirrel holes, dug directly in the dirt, straight down and not in the side of hill. Their walls were made of packed grass and soil, building a technique to keep the soft mound from caving in by learning to take great stones and roll them with their wagons all the way from the lake bed of Helvorn. Which became heavily ingrained in their culture to live in holes, a longest ancestral tradition.

Their society was built on surviving, nothing was audaciously adorned, everything was to be used to hide from morgoth's spies. As they were built on highlands of a plateau, they had access to upperground which allowed them to hide for longer.In fact, none knew they existed until the first rising of the sun and moon, when dwarves discovered them. At first they thought them faeries, and were wary of them, before it gave way to eager friendship between the two peoples, who were both very different and alike.

They were semi nomadic pastoralists, who relied heavily on trade with the dwarves, who raised sheep and gathered food in trade for metal pots, wool, clothing and other things that helped their colony to continue surviving. They had many places to set up throughout Thargelion, all the way to the first river of Ossiriand. They would have seasonal migrations from the plains to the entrances of great Dwarf-holds to keep their sheep warm for the winter, where they would be sheared and clothing would be made. They would have a main village near the greater gelion, where the early “smials” were created.

When Caranthir took rule of Thargelion, the hobbits did not pay homage to him. It was a large area, and not populated by elven settlements throughout the middle part, and seldom could he find the small smials, or even care to look for them. Only when they were travelling with dwarves on the dwarf road would they have to pay for access.(I’m sure the dwarves had a few ways to cheat the harfoots out of paying the tax, Like hiding them in their wagons.) and Carnthir, though interested in their lore, paid them no mind.

The hobbits too were relatively safe, at the time. Carnthir and his troops patrolled the borders of Thargelion, so it was not often that an orc battalion would slip through. Rarely did they ever find the hobbits, for they were good at hiding, and defences strong from what the dwarves crafted for them. If they were truly attacked, the dwarves and sometimes spare elves would come to their aid if they were near, but it hardly came to that.

With the cross community of Dwarves-Hobbits often mixing with each other, there were many cases of Dwobbits (dwarf-hobbits) being made. Though few since dwarves tend not to find their “one” outside their race. This caused different sects of hobbits, which would later breed back into the harfoot race, but caused slight physical differences which would lead their clan to be called the Stoors, who could grow beards.

In their culture, food was valued highly, for it meant survival. They had many rituals for when the first berry of the spring began to show, and sang songs when winter came to brush it all to frost. Those who heard the singing from the harfoots said it was an enchanting thing, eldritch and unique, but haunting nonetheless. Usually their musical instruments would involve wooden flutes, drums and tiny bells they would put around their ankles to make noise when they danced. Their songs were fast-paced with many interpretations with imitating chirps of birds and crickets that dwelt with them.

The hobbits suffered gravely, but near the time Carnthir came to Thargelion, they were relatively safe. Carnthir and his troops patrolled the borders, so it was not often that an orc battalion would slip through. Rarely did they ever find the hobbits, for they too were good at hiding and concealment, their defences strong from the sturdiness of dwarves. If they were truly attacked, the dwarves and sometimes spare elves would come to their aid if they were near, but it hardly came to that.

Harfoots were traditionally skinnier than hobbits of the third age which is why the beauty standard for hobbits was to be chubby or plump. It showed them that being big was comfort and safety, being skinny took them back to the primal fear of starving, and once they didn't have to worry about it, they were able to see being plump as beautiful and meant you were well off. Their clothing also reflected their surroundings. Though the dwarven style of clothing lended for brighter colours, they found ways to dye it to more natural/neutral colours that they would be able to hide better in the grass. By then they were able to make their own clothing much easier than before, and everyone at least had several pairs. They build nets covered in leaves, so that if they ever needed to hide, they would go under it and blend in to their surroundings.

However, their race would be utterly desecrated. In the Dagor Ballgorach, Galrung and his army came down from Angband and set the harfoots' world on fire. The dwarves did not come in time, and when they did, they were harshly beaten back. Many settlements of the harfoots were turned to ash, most of Thargelion and their ancestral migration roads were destroyed. Only a dozen family groups survived, and taking all they had left, took the dwarf road and crossed along the mountains of Ascar and passed through Sarn Athrad where they only stopped once to replenish supplies with the Dwarves of Nogrod. They did not stay long, for the harfoots were more close with the dwarves of Belegost, and these ones were less generous.Then they left the underground and continued past the blue mountains and into middle earth. The second age begins for them, and lead a hunter-gathering lifestyle until the fallohides lead them to where the sects of hobbits would separately settle, in the northern regions of Middle-earth in the early first age.

It is said that hobbits only entered the history of men until the third age. It is a common misconception that hobbits didn't exist until the third age. This could be because they were not notable in any way during the last two ages, but I think they were very prominent in ancient dwarves' history, like in the kingdoms of Nogord, Belegost and other ancient dwarven kingdoms. Considering the closely connected cultures, it would be realistic. However I believe that these were written history, and most of the records were destroyed by dragon fire in the kingdom's fall, only to be forgotten orally by dwarves who later did not see the hobbits for centuries after since they moved all over the place in the second age.

Feel free to leave me questions in my ask box, I want to be challenged on creating this society, and I’m always in need of more ideas that can help corporate into a realistic looking culture.

For my next few posts, I’ll be focusing on their Folkore containing elves and men, and some Ocs that helped with cultivating their society, the most famous being Razo Thorn foot who was eloped to a dwarf lord of Belegost, otherwise known as Azghal.

#silmarillion #the first age #tolkein #harfoots #meta #headcanons #hobbits #ocs #silm edit #DWARVES #lotr

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something-pithy · 4 months

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Notes and an Update: What's in a Name?

Chapter 16 of an echo, a stain features Astarion doing what he does best -- feeling terror, spiraling and at the very least contemplating terrible choices as a result. lol.

SPOILERS FOR ACT 2 OF BG3 BELOW

Those of you who are mostly caught up on an echo, a stain know I love me a flashback (and now the rest of y'all know, too lol). There are two in this new chapter, one of which is set in the Shadow-Cursed lands after Astarion has confessed his initial intentions toward and current feelings/desires for Tav to Tav (post-Orthon confession). As a result of that conversation, they've put a pin in the sexual aspects of their relationship, but are still together romantically. Then, the Araj Moment happens (spoiler alert: nobody bit that heifer), Thaniel is reunited with Oliver, Halsin's... admiration of Tav is becoming more apparent, and Astarion is... yes! Spiraling!

I think that flashback speaks for itself, and I'll let y'all get what you will from when / where in the story it appears.

The OTHER flashback, which is much more brief, is about this Tav's name. Now, I'm not trying to make any secret of the fact that the Tav in this story and I have a lot in common in terms of ethnic backgrounds when you remove the high fantasy fake world element from Tav's lol. FIRST I want to say, I don't give a fuck. There is no shame in my game. Nobody comes for George R.R. Martin or Robert Jordan or J.R.R. (the Rs are for REALLY RACIST) Tolkein (don't @ me -- or do, go ahead and send me an ask if you really want to know my feels on that one looool) for writing about characters whose ethnic and cultural backgrounds are Western European / British.

Second of all, maybe I'm being unnecessarily defensive because I'm an old head who came up in a time when writing a self-insert character was like THE VERY WORST POSSIBLE THING YOU COULD DO AS A WRITER, but once again I don't give a fuck.

The lived experiences of ethnic minorities, people of mixed ethnic and cultural heritage (not fucking half-elves who most of the time are just people of the Caucasian persuasion with pointy ears and shorter lifespans than regular elves), first generation children of immigrants, and all manner of permutations of non-white, non-Western "others" are in extremely short supply in all forms of media / popular narratives in the Western world (shit honestly, it ain't just the West but that's another struggle for another day). This is especially true, from what I've experienced as a lifelong nerdalerd, in speculative fiction.

So yeah, I conceived my Tav as a mixed-race (kind of, she's all high elf, but mixed sun, moon, and sea because she's a motherfucking unicorn, come at me bro looool -- no, there are other reasons too but also she's a unicorn lol), mixed-ethnic-and-cultural-heritage person whose life choices are NOT aligned with a lot of the conventions and values of the cultures in which she was raised.

Because that story and perspective is wildly underrepresented in literature, mass media, speculative fiction, and fan fiction.

So here we are. loooool

Having said all that, I got a comment from my fucking delightful beta and queen of my soul, Komo, asking about the naming conventions I reference in this chapter (or their real-world analogues).

So for the notes part of this episode of "Notes and an Update," I'm going to quote part of the comment she left on AO3 about the story and my response, which adheres to my policy of "why say it in five words if you can say it in EIGHT MILLION." Let me know what you think!

NAMING CONVENTIONS IN AEAS

(FROM THE COMMENTS SECTION OF AN ECHO, A STAIN CHAPTER 16:)

Komo wrote:

I have so many questions about naming conventions, both from the corner of the world that Tav’s family hails from and BG proper. Like, in American and Japanese culture, women take their husband’s last names when heterosexual couples get married. In the States, there are exceptions to this rule, of course, with some women hyphenating. In China, women do not change their last names, but kids are almost always named after the father’s side (the old one child policy may have affected this, but the top 100 most common surnames make up 85% of the population anyways). If Tav and Astarion do end up together, would names be a thing they’d have to navigate? Astarion is such a possessive little yandere after all.

I wrote:

OK so this Tav's ethnic and cultural background, as we know, is mixed

(I'm not even getting into her racial background I just can't with fucking elvish loool and her families on both sides are far-enough removed from immersion in elven culture where I'm like LOOOOOOOOOOOOOL SEE YOU LATER TOLKEIN).

On her father's side, she's Zakharan / DnD-analogue MENA (Middle Eastern North African, with apologies to Said for the orientalism of the term Middle Eastern).

On her mother's side, Amnian / New Amnian / DnD-analogue Latina but -- oh lordt OK without getting into the complexities of codified colonial Spanish racism and colorism, that identity is complicated. Through a combination of executive decision-making about elves and race and how they interact with culture on the material plane (aka not in the Feywild) AND really leaning into the idea of cultural analogues in Toril / the Forgotten Realms, her Latina-analogue ethnicity comprises a mix of indigenous and colonizer racial/ethnic heritage.

(I also can't with how fucking convoluted figuring this out was, is, has been, will forever be looool.)

SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, for the sake of brevity (looooooooooooooooool), we'll say Tav's full name results from the combination of her parents' names using Amnian/New Amnian (Spanish) naming conventions, BUT that means her full name (which is not even as long as it could be but is LONG) incorporates both Arabic naming conventions AND Spanish naming conventions that result in impressively / annoyingly long names loool.

In modern Spain, at least, when women marry, some don't even take their husband's name. But the kids' names are composites of parents' family names.

A Spanish child takes the surnames of both their father and mother. The structure is usually [father's surname] y [mother's surname] (though in modern Spain and Spanish-speaking countries a lot of people no longer use the "y"), but the main surname would be the father's surname. So for example, someone's full last name might be Juana Garcia y Martinez or Juana Garcia Martinez, but she might just go by Juana Garcia.

ALSO, especially for children of families of some kind of note / nobility when the dad's family was not as well-known as the mother's, this would include the composite names of both parents.

So Juana's name might be Juana [Garcia de Manzanilla (dad's composite surname)] y [Martinez de Hierro (mom's composite surname)].

So Juana Garcia de Manzanilla y Martinez de Hierro. And like, when people get real into it this can go back generations. Like, I don't even remember my mom's whole-ass name. looool.

NOW, Arabic names are composites, too, but incorporate the father's first name, the grandfather's first name, then the family name -- back in the day, they'd link these things with words that indicated the relationships. So for example, if Yemina's dad is Yusuf and HIS dad is Muhammad and their family name is Rashid, Yemina's name would then be Yemina bint/bin (daughter of) Yusuf ibn (son of) Muhammad al-(of the family) Rashid.

So Yemina bin Yusuf ibn Muhammad al-Rashid.

OK SO THERE'S ANOTHER COMPLICATION (aren't you glad you asked this question loooooooooooooooooooool): with regard to Spanish naming conventions, apparently this patrilineal thing hasn't always been the case and only came to be the norm around the mid-1700s. Before that, surname transmission was often matrilineal.

(This comes into play here because the year in BG3 is like, idk, 1492-98 or something? I forget whatever who cares it's before the mid-1700s and I'm just making it vaguely and very much not perfectly analogous with the time / calendar of the Western world because I don't have the bandwidth for anything else loooooooooool).

In this Tav's case, her mom ditched her dad and the kids were young enough at the time that she was able to, as a sign of DEEP FUCKING DISRESPECT TO HIM loooool, change their names to MATRILINEAL AMNIAN-STYLE COMPOSITE SURNAMES LOOOOOOOOOOOOL

(So for a while Tav's government name was Zeneida Nqa Tavares de la Torre de López Jimenez y bin Harun ibn Ishaq al-Jazairi loooool)

I mean this was like looooooooooooooool FUCKING PROFOUNDLY SCANDALOUSLY DISRESPECTFUL FOR HER TO DO TO A ZAKHARAN MAN especially one of SOME NOTE WHO WAS SELF-MADE

That shit was mad personal and a level of petty that mere mortals can only aspire to it was so deep

But TAV'S MOM DOES NOT PLAY

(Now, could she have just cut Tav's father's name out entirely? Sure, but 1) THAT MOTHERFUCKER IS NOT GETTING OUT OF CLAIMING THESE KIDS / PAYING CHILD SUPPORT esp if he ever got married again HER KIDS ARE THE FUCKING HEIRS AND HE AIN'T GON FORGET IT and 2) (possibly more importantly) FUCK HIS COUCH, PEOPLE ARE GONNA KNOW HE FUCKED AROUND AND FOUND OUT)

Even though he's deadass like "lol wtfever I don't give a fuck, I know what their real legal names are" and also this resulted in a protracted, multinational legal battle that was never actually resolved until each kid reached the age of majority and decided what their own legal name would be.

Ahem, anyway as a consequence of all this, Tav's full-ass, whole-ass, government name is:

Zeneida (first given name)

Nqa (middle given name)

bin Harun ibn Ishaq al-Jazairi (full Arabic/"Midani" patrilineal surname)

y (conjunction [means 'and'])

Tavares de la Torre de López Jimenez (mother's full surname)

So: Zeneida Nqa bin Harun ibn Ishaq al-Jazairi y Tavares de la Torre de López Jimenez

But as we know, she just goes by Zeneida Tavares, and she wasn't lying when she said on most docs it's just "Zeneida Nqa Jazairi Tavares."

Second...

tl;dr: Tavvy for short. Ms. Tavares if you nasty.

ALSO LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

If Tav and Astarion do end up together, Astarion better adjust them expectations, bc after all the drama that's existed around her name, he gonna have a hard time getting her to change it looool

Not to mention, she has a career based in part on people knowing who she is so... loooool

SOMETHING TO LOOK FORWARD TO IF THE STARS AND PLANETS EVER ALIGN FOR THEM / THEY EVER GET THEIR HEADS OUT OF ASSES

#bg3 #ascended astarion #astarion fic #meta #characterization #poc in genre #woc in genre #bg3 fic #bard!tav #astarion x tav #bg3 astarion #astarion #banter #slow burn #tolkein was a racist #i said what i said #sorry not sorry

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gerardspuppy · 2 years

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Possibly the only part of Tolkein’s works that I would accept as a dark and gritty, GoT style adaptation is the Fall of Numenor. I think that Tolkein’s works represent an escape, they function as a reminder of the kindness and courage that humanity will always possess, and of course this is extremely apparant in LotR with Sam and Frodo. To me Sauron and Morgoth represent the opposite of that - they are that grim, nihilistic view of the world that makes people lose all hope in humanity. So I would love to see a showing of the Fall of Numenor that starts of in a style similar to Lord of the Rings, focusing on friendship and love and hope, and then Sauron comes in, and it turns into dark and bloody politics. I believe that at one point Tolkein said that Sauron is supposed to represent extreme capitalism (or something similar), in which people are only workers with no time to enjoy simply being alive. Of course a change in tone like this can be shown more simply, but I think that it would be much harder hitting if it was the very production value of such a show that changed. If it started off as a passion project, and ended as a hurried cash grab as Sauron’s influence sucked the life out of Numenor.

#yes these thoughts came about after hearing about rop #obviously a show like this wouldn't work in real life but its interesting to think about #my thoughts #numenor #the fall of numenor #the silmarillion #silmarillion meta #sauron #mairon #morgoth #melkor #tolkein #lotr

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thelaithlyworm · 2 months

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Writer ask!

What fic of yours would you recommend to someone who had never read any of your work? (In other words, what do you think is the best introduction to your fics?

Are there any tropes you used to dislike but have grown on you?

Gonna mash up 18-21 and say: if you wrote another fic in the "all creatures fierce and bright" collective, what would it involve?

Promote one of your own “deep cut” fics (an underrated one, or one that never got as much traction as you think it deserves!). What do you like about it?

Hmm.

What fic of yours would you recommend to someone who had never read any of your work

Well, if I knew something about their tastes I'd tailor the recommendation, but sight unseen I might try:

Short, dunt need to know canon, a bit funny, a bit sweet, some pretty wordplay and descriptions and a few real feelings under the fluff.

For Podfic I'd probably go for

which is short, funny, and has a widely recogniseable canon. (With the caveat that I recorded it a while back and my voice is a touch better now.)

Are there any tropes you used to dislike but have grown on you?

I don't know about "dislike" exactly, but hanahaki has gone from, 'I don't know why people would want to write that' to 'I really should try that sometime.' Something about the complete over-the-top grandiosity of the premise, I think.

if you wrote another fic in the "all creatures fierce and bright" collective, what would it involve?

Probably something early in the timeline, where Xiuxiu doesn't particularly like Hei Xiazi (the common cavalryman who was suddenly taking up so much of her cousin's time and likely the reason he was cursed, was he cursed in all the twenty years she's known him? He was not) but like hell she's going to let Xie Yuchen whistle in the wind so they're going to make this exile and escapade work. And Hei Xiazi doesn't know what to make of this tiny slip of a thing (whose grandmother cursed him, what the hell?) who is now following him around and if she gets hurt Xie Yuchen will eat his eyeballs but he needs someone around for the few times Xiao Hua is lucid so by god and all the devils they're going to make this work. I like V-shaped relationships where the two outer points have to make their own bond, I think.

Promote one of your own “deep cut” fics (an underrated one, or one that never got as much traction as you think it deserves!). What do you like about it?

So "Of Things Left Out" did absolutely terrible numbers by The Hobbit standards but I'm still overpoweringly fond of it. In which Thorin reads Bilbo's journal and realises the little guy has been absolutely roasting him for pomposity the whole way and... gently twits him back by improvising a completely over-the-top praise song for the occasion of Bilbo's birthday.

I liked it for the meta-ness of it. If "The Hobbit" is an in-universe text which the subjects know is being written as they go, how do they feel about it? Do they care for about the silliness Bilbo puts in, how do they want to be described? And, light as much of the fic is... in that frame of Bilbo-the-Chronicler, how fucking raw does it get when the business with the Arkenstone happens. Would Thorin want to be recorded that way? (In my version, he has an answer to that.)

And, I'm always very soft for gentle hurt-comfort fics. And a chance to compose Tolkein-style poetry, hee!

Thank you for asking!

#asks and answers

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miirshroom · 12 days

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I feel like I should make a schedule or something for clearing out my Elden Ring drafts. As an overview of the essays I have in progress:

Key References to Tolkein's Legendarium

Astrological Zodiac and calibration of the FromSoft meta-narrative

The influence of Kuon (2004) on Miquella's storyline

Radagon Anagrams and Word String Theory

Atomic Shells and the discovery of Helium

Literary Parallels to a certain other story that is constructed around Alchemy and Witchcraft

Atomic Decay of Nihonium: a comparison of the spontaneous fission of Dubnium to the 7-step decay chain ending in Californium

Visual references to the Vatican, Rome, and Pompeii

Australia

I also have a tangential analysis of the thematic subtext in .Hack//Sign that's sitting at near complete, but I need to acquire screencaps.

#elden ring #elden ring lore #theory synopsis #my interests are many #I think that maybe this is the preferred order to tackle them in?#The one about atomic decay gets into some sombre topics and I am not sure how to convey them with sensitivity #So does the witchcraft one because it isn't worth doing unless it is to specifically dissect a certain author's terrible conduct

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tolkien-feels · 2 years

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You know how Luthien, Ereandil, Elwing, Elrond, Elros — that entire family represents hope, a chance at salvation, victory against all odds, mercy. Even Aragorn's name means hope. And oh is it not painful that it's Estel's and Arwen's children that become the villains in the fourth age, (and at such degree that Tolkein couldn't write of it? Here you'd think first age was bad) and maybe it's a blessing that Elrond wouldn't get to know of it, even if he has to live in ignorance....untill Dagor Dagorath, that is.

This got long-ish and. slightly off-topic if I'm being honest? Sorry

You know, I think Tolkien was very right to abandon the New Shadow storyline. For all that the First Age is extremely sad, it's never gratuitous pain. It's often undeserved by the characters, but from the point of view of a reader, it doesn't feel like Tolkien is just hurting characters and destroying kingdoms for fun or shock value. There's a story worth being told and we're being told it. Unless Tolkien could find something interesting to tell, the New Shadow would be just... the fall of Numenor 2.0? From peace and prosperity to self-inflicted evil is a story we've been told before, and it's very tragic and worth telling in its tragedy, but to see it happen again would be just mindlessly twisting the knife, I feel. It's not even that I feel like the Fourth Age has to be blissful, it's just that if you're going to tell that story, then you should have, well, a story to tell. Another way of putting it is that if Beren and Luthien die and Dior's life is a nightmare, then well, it'd better be a damn poignant nightmare, or else I'll feel like I'm just having my emotions toyed with for no good reason.

....but that's all on a meta level. If we assume that the Fourth Age does happen like that, and Tolkien, like me, simply thought that's not a story that needs to be written, then I think that much like Elrond presumably grieved the fall of Numenor but kept alive the hope that evil can never wholly triumph, I would probably be really sad to see the story develop, but would also be sure that more painful evil will necessarily lead to even more moving heroes. That's maybe not something that works out in the real world, but in Tolkien? I wouldn't for a second think Aragorn's line and Arwen's line both failing mean that the Children of Iluvatar as a whole have failed. I'd be devastated because my blorbos's children are my own children and of course I'd love it for them to be good people, but I wouldn't quite say that Aragorn brought no hope. I bet that the limited peace he was able to secure was enough to allow someone, somewhere to live in safety and freedom until the time comes for them to be heroes. (Not that I measure worth of action in terms of goals accomplished, anyway.)

So like, is it painful? Yes. Does that mean Estel’s hope was, after all, in vain, as were the hopes of everyone who came before him? I wouldn’t say so. The great thing about Arda being a Great Tale that never ends is that literally anything bad that happens cannot be permanent. It’s just the nature of evil in Tolkien. It’s painful, but it’s like... keep reading. After the New Shadow there will be a New Light, because that’s how things work in Tolkien, and then we’ll say “Oh, look, Aragorn didn’t fail, you can see how that story continues until this new happy ending!” If Tolkien had written the New Shadow, and the Fourth Age was a horror show, then well. Let’s see how the Fifth Age goes. No Age is ever going to be perfect bliss, but if you can somehow find a happy ending even for Children of Hurin - the Shadow can’t touch them after death, and the entire family remained brave and true to the end, and there’s always the Dagor Dagorath and Arda Remade to look forward to - then I think it’s hard to imagine that the Fourth Age could reach a level of darkness that is too dark to ever manage to get a happy ending.

To put it more simply... If the Fourth Age proves to be the darkest Age yet, to the point where you can compare it to the lowest point of Frodo and Sam’s journey - “Well the First Age was like Gandalf falling in Moria, but the Fourth? The Fourth is Mordor” - then there’s always either Hope Unquenchable or Endurance Beyond Hope, whichever is applicable. Does that make sense?

...I probably still would find it very painful to read each and every sentence, though, so I think you’re right.

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silvantransthranduiltrash · 6 months

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You know what i think is an interesting concept?

The elves know war, but like specifically one 1 kind of war with the occasional stray into another kind.

And that is, elves (from what we’ve read) know war against 1 evil enemy. Like, a war where they are indisputably the good guys.

But continues war where there are 2 sides that simply disagree with each other? They don’t know how to go about that!

The closest they’ve come is the feanorian massacres, but even then it’s more like a few very direct instances of battle rather than a full scale war.

Furthermore, the war they are used to is against a god, essentially, and it’s deformed, damned minions. Not against a different government with normal elves or anything.

There also hasn’t (really) been an instance of civil war or violence breaking out due to discrimination. Cause there’s lowkey discrimination amongst elves in tolkein, but it’s not erupted in an actual war, yk?

Idk, i just find it fascinating how these successful elven generals and war heroes know about counter strategies and army manuevering, but at the same time wouldn’t really understand the use of say suicide pills/espionage/assassination. Things that you can use to get inside the enemy’s domain and turn the tide against them there.

I’m not saying that elves are bad at combat or war, but it’s more limited to direct confrontation than anything else. And they probably have dipped their toes in on the other ways to do it, but, like i said, it’s rather limited as (other than the feanorian bs) from what we’ve seen (i’m only refering to what’s written and not what we might believe the silvan and avari and other elves have done) the elves are, generally, a pretty united front and they aren’t inclined to turn on one another.

It’s not that the elves are naive or don’t know how the world works, but there’s definitely an area of how war works that they’ve barely discovered.

#lord of the rings #lotr #silmarillion #the hobbit #lotr elves #what do i even tag this as?#food for thought #tolkein meta #noldor #vanyar #teleri #sindar #war in tolkein #elves simultaneously have a lot of experience and undeniable blindspots in regards to war #it’s such an interesting contradiction though #even when there was celegorm and curufin’s coupe #it was pretty non-bloody

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superbeeny · 2 years

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I try to talk smart about fiction on this godforsaken website, but I know deep down I’m dense AF because it took me years to notice the joke behind Samwise Gamgee, a gardener, falling in love and marrying a girl called Rose, whose named after a flower that’s commonly recognized as a symbol of romantic, erotic love.

#it had to have been intentional #tolkein was a language professor and a father when he wrote these books #if it looks like a pun it probably is a pun #it is so on the nose I'm dying I love it #lord of the rings #LOTR #tolkein #meta #samwise gamgee #rosie cotton

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oflgtfol · 2 years

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Lord of the rings

i have not read a single work or watched a single movie but i've had people on my dash talking about this basically for my entire time on tumblr so. i think i know a decent amount but i'm also very confident that i've gotten my wires crossed while absorbing the information. so here we go

there's this group of dudes. one is an elf archer named legolas. one is a hobbit named bilbo baggins. there may also be a second hobbit named samwise. i think there is a dwarf. and another is just a normal dude who i think has a beard. they have to go on an epic adventure across the world in search of some ring which contains like Epic Power which they will use to defeat the eye of sauron. tolkein wrote it because he was fucked up after world war 1 and so the whole qeust for the ring or whatever also parallels real life war trauma. the end. woo hoo

send me an ask about a fandom i know nothing about and i will summarize it as best i can

#in hindsight i see a lot more analysis about the meta stuff regarding lotr than like. lotr itself #i dont know much about the plot huh.#but its post after post about tolkein's war trauma #sorry his name is tolkien i cant even spell his name right #ask #Anonymous

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writer-of-random-things · 6 months

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On Epic Heroes & Hobbit-Holes

"In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit."

The opening line of The Hobbit is one of the most charming yet simplistic in British literature. It's the perfect segue into the fact that Tolkien, in the course of developing Middle-earth, drew inspiration from many sources of Anglo-Saxon literature, notably Beowulf (which is arguably the opposite of simple). His lecture, "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics", gave him academic fame. In fact, the term "Middle-earth" is even used in Beowulf. The quests, the act of defeating of monsters, and the poems/songs scattered throughout Tolkien's works are heavily reminiscent of the style of the epic poem. However, I want to focus on how Tolkien deviates--in both character and symbolism--from Beowulf.

That being said, many parallels have been made between the character of Beowulf and Beorn in The Hobbit: both are larger-than-life warriors, and although Beorn means "bear", it can also mean "warrior". So it makes sense Beorn should be the protagonist--Tolkein's own epic hero.

Yet Beorn is not. In fact, he is a minor character. Who do we get as the protagonist in this epic poem of a children's story, then? Surely someone as heroic as Beorn?

Nope. Meet Bilbo Baggins, everybody. He just wants to get thirteen dwarves out of his house and live in peace. Oh, and there's a wizard. Bilbo is the polar opposite of Beowulf: completely ordinary, sedentary, and slightly eccentric. As Nick Groom writes in Tolkien in the Twenty-First Century: The Meaning of Middle-Earth Today,

"...in a long letter written in 1951 [Tolkien] described [The Hobbit] as 'the study of a simple ordinary man, neither artistic nor noble and heroic' if 'not without the underdeveloped seeds of these things' ".

When all is said and done, that is what is at the center of The Hobbit. The simplicity of Bilbo's lifestyle contributes to the complexity of his character. While Beowulf abides by the Scandinavian heroic code and kills in the name of honor and duty, Bilbo as a main character falls into the shades of gray. He is kind and witty, yet is employed as a thief to rob and lie throughout the book; he takes the Arkenstone from Smaug (more on him later) simply because he is vain and it is shiny. Yet he is brave and risks his life to save his dwarf friends on numerous occasions. He also willingly gives up said Arkenstone for a chance at peace, though it backfires. While the (intended) theme of Beowulf is how one can only gain renown and loyalty by doing honorable deeds, The Hobbit is about adventure, courage, branching out, and most importantly, trying to do good even though you might not know what you're doing.

Bilbo's story focuses on the contradictory actions of life, and how the road to self-discovery includes a lot of stumbling and regrets; he is but a humble hobbit, but rather than rejecting that to become a graceful hero, he embraces it. This is in great juxtaposition to Smaug and the dragon in Beowulf, both of which depict power and greed. In both texts, the dragon is wakened in exactly the same way: a person (or hobbit) enters the dragon's cave and steals and golden goblet, unleashing the dragon's fury and causing him to set fire to nearby villages.

In Beowulf, the death of the dragon--and the subsequent death of Beowulf himself--contrast each other in terms of legacy. For example, while Beowulf is remembered as a heroic warrior and a good king, the dragon is described as such:

"[Beowulf's] nightmarish destroyer, lay destroyed as well, / utterly without life... / the sky-roamer lay there rigid, brought low beside the treasure-lodge"

The dragon, although he perished next his mound of gold, is nothing in death despite being surrounded by riches; the beast shows the shallowness of greed as opposed to honor. However, the dragon (or rather, his treasure) in The Hobbit symbolizes the corruption of greed: the dragon does nothing but sit on his pile of gold, but the influence of said gold corrupts not only the dragon (through fueling his greed) but Thorin as well, showing how power corrodes one's morality.

The excess of materialism and war compared to the strength of friendship and uncertainty is central to the story of Bilbo Baggins. In addition, it demonstrates how an author can borrow heavily from a pre-published text without necessarily adopting it's message: for what it's worth, I prefer the message of The Hobbit over many classics--a testament to the strength of a home-loving creature that is nevertheless always "quite ready for another adventure".

#the hobbit #bilbo baggins #smaug the dragon #middle earth #tolkein #beowulf #seamus heaney #classic literature #tolkien meta

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