Icon from a picrew by grgikau. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
Using you summing up my thoughts perfectly as an excuse to say:
Tolkien’s choice here was absolutely commentary on the way the false glory of war was sold to his generation before they were shipped off to die in WWI.
//in trying to find out if The Children of Húrin was ever translated into Icelandic (there are quite a lot of name changes in Hobbitinn) I have instead found something more interesting:
[id: screenshot of a wikipedia subheading “In science” with the text “In 1999, Finnish entomologist Lauri Kaila named three species of moth, Elachista turinella, Elachista morwenella, and Elachista nienorella, after Túrin, Morwen, and Niënor respectively.” end id]
Oh ho ho, my friends, it gets so much better. Please enjoy this list of THIRTY-SEVEN (37) Tolkien-inspired moth names from the same researcher,all painstakingly extracted from the Wikipedia article on this genus. I wish I were this dedicated of a fan.
Also:
The Children of Húrin gets even more names. Túrin even gets Dagnir and Neithan in there.
How many goddamn moth species can a single person name in ONE YEAR? I wish my 1999 was that productive.
Special honors for most obscure reference goes to Elachista ibunella, who’s named after Ibûn the fucking petty-dwarf, who I also had to look up to double-check.
Elachista aerinella: Kaila, 1999
Elachista amrodella: Kaila, 1999
Elachista aranella: Kaila, 1999
Elachista aredhella: Kaila, 1999
Elachista arthadella: Kaila, 1999
Elachista bregorella: Kaila, 1999
Elachista caranthirella: Kaila, 1999
Elachista celegormella: Kaila, 1999
Elachista curufinella: Kaila, 1999
Elachista daeronella: Kaila, 1999
Elachista dagnirella: Kaila, 1999
Elachista diorella: Kaila, 1999
Elachista eilinella: Kaila, 1999
Elachista finarfinella: Kaila, 1999
Elachista galadella: Kaila, 1999
Elachista gildorella: Kaila, 1999
Elachista gorlimella: Kaila, 1999
Elachista guilinella: Kaila, 1999
Elachista haldarella: Kaila, 1999
Elachista ibunella: Kaila, 1999
Elachista indisella: Kaila, 1999
Elachista maglorella: Kaila, 1999
Elachista marachella: Kaila, 1999
Elachista miriella: Kaila, 1999
Elachista morwenella: Kaila, 1999
Elachista neithanella: Kaila, 1999
Elachista nienorella: Kaila, 1999
Elachista olorinella: Kaila, 1999
Elachista ragnorella: Kaila, 1999
Elachista rianella: Kaila, 1999
Elachista serindella: Kaila, 1999
Elachista tauronella: Kaila, 1999
Elachista telcharella: Kaila, 1999
Elachista telerella: Kaila, 1999
Elachista turgonella: Kaila, 1999
Elachista tuorella: Kaila, 1999
Elachista turinella: Kaila, 1999
This is the nerdiest thing I’ve ever seen and I’m living for it
No fanfiction, no fanzines, no Tolkien music, no Tolkien quotes (without permission), no writing in Tolkien languages (if you intend to post it somewhere), no Tolkien-related events (even charitable and not-for-profit ones - no exceptions), no public readings (without permission), no recordings of reading of Tolkien works (and TE is going to take action against unauthorized audiobooks or readings on social media), no Tolkien photographs.
Tell me if it is true, or if someone is joking!
Holy crap, it’s been YEARS since anyone did something as stupid as try and threaten fanfic writers. Those are dark days we talk about as legends! Does anyone know when these policies were published and if any legal actions have actually been taken?
Good lord, reading through this whole thing, this could be the death of the fandom. we may have to go underground, because the level of control they have exerted over this outright stops fans from even interacting with the work. It’s far beyond stopping people from making a bit of cash off of it, it full on threatens any creator who wishes to engage with the material! I’m honestly surprised they didn’t just go all the way and say making fan art is illegal too!
I don’t know the exact day that the new policies came out, but it was within the past two weeks. I haven’t heard that the estate has cracked down on anyone yet. It’s probably too soon still.
I’ve been checking some of the other large Tolkien fan communities (theonering.net, Tolkien Society, Silmarillion Writers’ Guild) to see if anyone has released a statement about the new policies, but I haven’t seen anything yet; nearly all discussion so far has been relegated to the site’s new appearance and the new artwork released on it. (Although there is this hilarious Reddit discussion about the new policies.)
I’m not sure how many Tolkien fanfic sites are left since I only use
AO3, but this makes me wonder what could happen to the fanfic sites that haven’t
yet moved their archives onto AO3 and don’t have the protection of AO3′s
lawyers, should the estate decide to crack down on Tolkien fanfic
sites. This could really deal a blow to some of those communities if the estate firmly enforces the new policies.
I’m astonished, though, that relatively no large Tolkien communities (that I’ve seen) are talking about the changes, except for on here, and that even the conversation about it here is pretty limited. I don’t know how seriously the Tolkien Estate will enforce this, but it’s a major shift in tone from the estate nonetheless.
that link has Facebook tracky nonsense in the URL, here’s a clean one:
and emyn-arnens’s “within the last two weeks” is as of 2022 March 5
To clarify a point: The wording they use for fan fiction seems to be designed to rule out fan art, too. You should probably ask a lawyer (which I am not) for details, but the wording there is not limited to literary fan material, it seems to cover everything a fan might want to create.
they’re also including in this ban such things as quotations for the purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship, or research that the Tolkien estate won’t like—I know this because the only thing they’re saying about quotations is “here’s where to ask for permission” and having to ask implies the possibility the answer will be no—and criticism, comment, scholarship, or research that the copyright holder won’t like are so unambiguously the sort of thing that US copyright law protects as fair use that I’m quoting those purposes from Section 107.
which, even setting aside all the discussions about the legality of fanfiction and composing songs in Elvish and etc, tells me the Tolkien estate didn’t consult an IP lawyer.
This is a hoot, they have said very seriously that you cannot use the trademark TOLKIEN name for anything without permission, examples given are things like: naming a park. I am fascinated by the implication that fanfic, academic works and rogue municipal park-namers are some of the key menacing threats to intellectual property
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
Legolas:
~*~earlier~*~
Legolas: ugh fucking hobbits
Merry: Frodo what’d he say
Frodo: I’m not sure he speaks a weird dialect but I think he’s insulting us. I should tell him I can understand Elvish
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!
Legolas: Alas, verily would I have dispatched thine enemy posthaste, but y’all’d’ve pitched a feckin’ fit.
Aragorn: *eyelid twitching*
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.
Pippin, entering Gondor and speaking to the castle steward: hey yo my man
If I remember correctly, in the “tree of tongues” material from The Lost Road, Tolkien goes into some detail about how the reason elves have so many dialects is that elves view language as a form of collaborative art, which they delight in, so a newly-coined word or grammatical construct gets spread around just like a new song would.
Elves may be immortal, but they’re also immortal nerd OCs and we must never forget this
Thank you for this addition which is both lovely and educational
So what you’re saying is, they’re us. They’re the internet. Sending “yeet” and “smol” and “I lik the bred” all over creation until two elves who’ve never met in their lives and be like “beans, amirite?” and “yeah I love kitter feets too.”
EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS IS BEAUTIFUL
Somewhere in the Grey Havens, Tolkien is reading this post.
He is simultaneously laughing with delight, and utterly PISSED that he can’t reblog with a whole nerdy essay to build on what you’ve all said.
‘i did not even want him’ well there’s a faramir mood
this is SUCH a writing mood omg
Strider did this to him too, wayyyyy back when. Just showed up there in Bree, smoking in the corner. Refused to leave or let the story go on without him.
Maybe it’s a Númenorean thing. XD
@lorata with some excellent Tolkien commentary over here
I love that this is a universal experience among writers.
Petition to rename RotK “Return of That Weirdo in the Tavern, I Don’t Know Who He Is or Why He’s Here.”
It’s important that the ponies were all safe tho.
This is literally the best post I have ever seen on tumblr.
I will never not reblog the fact that the Good Professor himself was a plot pantser. He was a masterful world-builder, but plotter, outliner? Nope!
You know, that makes me feel oddly reassured about my own writing endeavours
