predictably chaotic art

They/He • Occasional Artist and Full-Time Nerd • Commissions Closed • Please do not repost my art without credit

[briannyssey]

Oh easy mistake. Yearning actually rises from the floor and longing hangs from the ceiling

[briannyssey]

🥺🥺

[predictablychaoticart]

New sad man!

[audliminal]

Thinking about the whole "there is no platonic explanation for this" thing and how it doesn't account for intense platonic situationships and anyways I think we should start saying "there is no casual explanation for this" bc really what we're talking about is the way the characters in question are Obsessed with each other

[deslizada]

man sometimes friendship really is just "I saw this and knew it would give you psychic damage. please respond with agony" and then they do. and it's great

[the-tomorrow-road]

@ghostlyarchaeologist

[predictablychaoticart]

Wanted to experiment some with colour palettes/designs for outfits for some of my characters. Didn't really branch out with the outfit design for this one (I hate drawing all her muscles only to cover them up) but at least the palette is new.

Also figured it'd be fun to do a little animation for a neat trait she got after ascending; her bones glow, and in full dark it shows through her skin. The intensity of it pulses in time with her main heartbeat.

[rat-in-a-cloak]

some closeups, bc i had a lot of fun with this piece lol

[penny-anna]

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:

[penny-anna]

~*~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

Merry: I mean you could do that but consider

Merry: you can only tell him ONCE

Frodo: Merry. You’re absolutely right. I’ll wait.

[penny-anna]

#legolas’ hick accent vs #frodo’s ‘i learned it out of a book’ accent #FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT

Legolas: umm well your accent is horrible

Aragorn: *hollering from a distance* HIS ACCENT IS BETTER THAN YOURS LEGOLAS YOU SILVAN HICK

Frodo: :)

[storywonker]

Frodo: Hello. My name is Frodo. I am a Hobbit. How are you?

Legolas: y’alld’ve’ff’ve

Frodo, crying: please I can’t understand what you’r saying

[ramshacklefey]

Ok, but Frodo didn’t just learn out of a book. He learned like… Chaucerian Elvish. So actually:

Frodo: Good morrow to thee, frend. I hope we twain shalle bee moste excellente companions.

Legolas: Wots that mate? ‘Ere, you avin’ a giggle? Fookin’ ‘obbits, I sware.

Aragorn: *laughing too hard to walk*

[reformedkingsmanagent]

@ghostriderofthearagon

[cryptidscrypticcrosswordclub]

dYinGggGggg…

[whetstonefires]

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.

[whetstonefires]

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!

[bowditch]

Legolas: Alas, verily would I have dispatched thine enemy posthaste, but y’all’d’ve pitched a feckin’ fit.

Aragorn: *eyelid twitching*

[linguisticparadox]

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.

[sainamoonshine]

Pippin, entering Gondor and speaking to the castle steward: hey yo my man

Boromir, from beyond the grave: j e s u s

[esser-z]

Tolkien would be SO PROUD of this post

[runiaimperii]

It got better

[peaceheather]

there may come a day when i do not reblog this post, but it is NOT THIS DAY

[predictablychaoticart]

Did an updated piece for the dress their moms made them; got a better handle on how I want to draw them now, and wanted to add some details for the summer ball since that's coming up

[entnoot]

Commission of Stella Noctis, changeling/hexblood druid, for Charlie! Really enjoyed working on this one :)

[predictablychaoticart]

Made some updates to Ivy's ref sheet, so I'm reposting them

[predictablychaoticart]

Ref sheet train keeps rolling, lol

[predictablychaoticart]

Aaaand we have a new ref for Dáithí! Some things I'm not the happiest with, but it's good enough where it needs to be

Also finally found a brush to make freckles easier to add in!

[predictablychaoticart]

Decided to actually do something for pride month this year; I don't usually bother, but I think being in a space where I'm finally able to be out and get the legal things done to live as myself put me more in the mood for it.

So Kavi gets to be fabulous for once, lol

[lukewarmtomatosoup]

exploding him with my mind powers

[predictablychaoticart]

Continuing along the ref sheet train with my lovely spores druid Erzsi!

Also glad this allowed me to mess around a bit more with their hair and face til I was really happy with it; struggled a bit with build as well at first. I always forget she's tall, so she's not going to be as frail/dainty as she seems when clothed.

[predictablychaoticart]

Got a ref sheet for my girl, now

Decided to make some small changes as well, mostly in bringing the temperature of her hair and skin closer together and making her antennae closer to her skin tone as well

Also changed her tattoo to be neater and to show the planetary system she spent some time in growing up

[predictablychaoticart]

And now it's Arram's turn to get an updated ref sheet

Featuring some colouration tweaks, drawing feet that do not resemble awkward blocks, and also doing a slight redesign of his tattoo