Bilbo Was Declared Dead While He Was Away In The Hobbit (and Had To Do A Bunch Of Paperwork To Get Declared

Every so often I think that I really need to get back to writing because I really enjoyed writing and, very excitingly, other people seemed to enjoy my writing too

Before any Finwean family dinner can commence, all seatinging arrangements must be approved by the Councle of Eldest Sons (Maedhros, Fingon, and Finrod). This is a really serious matter of safety. Without them the rate of kinslaying among the Noldor could easily have tripled what it was.

You never know how long your words will stay in someone's mind even long after you've forgotten you spoke them.

— Unknown

not even JRR Tolkien, who famously developed the concept of the Secondary World and firmly believed that no trace of the Real World should be evoked in the fictional world, was able to remove potatoes from his literature. this is a man who developed whole languages and mythologies for his literary world, who justified its existence in English as a translation* simply because he was so miffed he couldn't get away with making the story fully alien to the real world. and not even he, in extremis, was so cruel as to deny his characters the heavenly potato. could not even conceive a universe devoid of the potato. such is its impact. everyone please take a moment to say thank you to South Americans for developing and cultivating one of earth's finest vegetables. the potato IS all that. literally world-changing food. bless.

Every family gathering and you're with your favorite cousins.

Also,

the Dads. ❤

{older bro only irritated by the spilled drink.}

Things that are really fucking me up today

Just how close in age Elrond and Elwing are, by the Elf standards. It must be so strange when they finally meet, to look at each other and realize the difference between them is only a little over thirty years.

Like, in comparison Finwe was a thousand years older than Finfarin, and Elrond was already roughly 4000 years old when he had Arwen.

So idk it just must have been so strange for them. A mere thirty years is such a wildly negligible amount of time. They’re basically peers when they first meet.

I really hope the Amazon show picks a side in the Gil-Gadad debate. Just for the drama. I think it will be funny to watch.

Watch out Dracula he’s got… Academic Credentials

Speaking of linguistics fics, an idea I’ve played with but never put into practice is using maximal Latin-rooted words when characters are speaking Quenya and Germanic-rooted words when they’re speaking Sindarin.

The effect being to make the language shift more meaningful than just a dialogue tag, (maybe even to the point where I don’t always have to say it outright) and it would work by playing on associations of Latinate words as more highbrow and polysyllabic and Germanic words as more common. (Think regal/kingly, dine/eat, or educate/teach.)

It might backfire, it might be impossible (sometimes the connotations run the other way!) but I think it’d be fun to try.

It sure is convenient that all these songs that ostensibly weren’t written in English all rhyme when translated into English, isn’t it, Mr. Tolkien?