As Above So Below

shelikespretties 2.0 Viv, fandom elder (Gen X), queer, tired I don’t have side accounts, I tumble eclectically

[shelikespretties]

Welp

Like an idiot, I have deleted my old main blog, shelikespretties

So uh, I'll be refriending and stuff, looks like.

[shelikespretties]

I’m amused (but not delighted) seeing the fan angst over iwtv and its characters who do evil things.

Friends. They are monsters. Actual monsters. And they are pretend! Vampires aren’t real! I promise! They’re going to do terrible things. That’s literally why they exist.

Go with it. It’s fun to watch monsters and villains do what they’re meant to do. You don’t have to justify a damn thing.

I’m so glad the Internet wasn’t a big thing yet in college when I read the series. I just read and enjoyed the monsters.

[sexygrammaticalerrors]

[winepresswrath]

This is off topic, but I firmly believe that Wen Qing is, on some level, is as much of a bi disaster as WWX is. I mean for starters, she’s a med student. She may have four different binders for each class she’s taking (color-coded) but that doesn’t mean she’s not five minuets away from a mental breakdown. She’s living in a five-room apartment with her entire extended family (and that engineering student who got kicked out by his family, long story).

Anon, please never think delightful chengqing ethical dilemmas are off topic in my inbox. I do see Wen Qing a someone who is very used to functioning in high stress/low control circumstances, which I think makes her very good at grimly determining what she can do and triaging based on that, but also means she’s used to a black pit of anxiety and doom living within her at all times. “Can I put off telling my BFF I railed his estranged brother until after finals and if so, is it permissible to keep railing him in the interim” is so much more fun than trying to figure out exactly how complicit in your uncle’s megalomania taking over a supervisory office makes you. Jiang Cheng would last like four dates tops before failing to brush past the inevitable small talk about how many siblings you have and then crying on his hookup about how the answer is complicated now but he doesn’t want it to be. Wen Qing is absolutely in charge of the household taxes, and has as an unfortunate consequence of tax season already gotten drunk with Wei Wuxian and revealed that this dude she’s kind of half-seeing was a virgin but it’s chill, he’s very open minded and surprisingly flexible in multiple senses of the world. This is what she gets for saying yes to business majors just because they have nice eyes and long fingers. There’s always something wrong with them.

[therozanov]

THE UNTAMED | episode 25

[mozertone]

dragonfly larva fossil, Brazil

[marcus725]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[nemo-the-goat]

guess he died!

[vangoghcore]

by briscoepark

[shelikespretties]

Third one is Baba Yaga’s house

[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

[pmamtraveller]

Bat vase by Richard Freiwald

[therozanov]

THE UNTAMED | episode 48

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[mini-wrants]

Outdoor in sun perfec t place for president to do speech! Outdoor very warm very soft put old man on green lawn under sun. Put old man in warm sun. no problem ever in warm sun because good view and audience can see long speech. Nice podium outdoor sunny perfect place for old president can trust warm sun to give nice view to President good luck to President. friend sun.

[a-mel0n]

reblog if you’ve had an online friendship that’s lasted more than 2 years

[shelikespretties]

Reblog if you’ve had one (or many, like me!) that’s lasted more than 20 years!

[the-lisechen]

Donate to Help Elise (and cats!) Survive Unemployment, organized by Elise Horn

Well, folks, I got canned. Hi! My name is Elise. You may have seen me here… Elise Horn needs your support for Help Elise (and cats!) Su

i hate having to do this, and i SUPER hate having to do this when i did it not too long ago, but here we are. i'm absolutely terrified, though i'm working as hard as i know how to. but there isn't anything i won't do for the cats.

things are pretty dire. please help if you can, even if it's just a reblog.

[iusedtobecharming-deactivated20]

Do we have a franz kafka diary entry for july 1st, i want to know what he thinks!!!

[rehearsing]

happy too tired July everyone

[cute-catts]

this is amazing 🐈 ♥️♥️

[legally-a-bastard]

im blowing up this is adorable

[cerastes]

Did I ever tell you how I got kicked from Chess club back in school?

[cerastes]

Ok, so, as I’ve mentioned occasionally, I used to also be in the school theater troupe, and for a role, I learned basic sleight of hand, the kind magicians use for such stunts like card tricks and ball tricks. Mind you, I wasn’t doing Criss Angel Mindfreak levels of shit or redefining the capital H in Houdini, but I knew how to do basic sleight of hand with small objects, which I used for party tricks and other such parlor tomfoolery.

But I realized I wasn’t using my newfound power to its full extent, so I got an idea one day. I arrived early to the chess clubroom and pocketed a few extra pieces from the other chessboards (which didn’t matter, the club never had enough members to actually use all of the chessboards at any one time), then I challenged the club prez to a game. Now, this guy already didn’t like me too much, dude was kind of a cunt and held a grudge against me because my cousin ended up with one of his crushes and then I ended up with his next crush, so he had bloodline beef with us. So he accepts to the match and we set up the board.

Now, this guy was pretty good at chess, objectively better than myself, but I wasn’t here to win, not at the game, at least. We start playing, it starts pretty even as we develop our units, he castles better and faster than I, and then starts putting pressure on me. It’s at this point, the midgame, where my Belmont to his Dracula would shine in full force: Whenever he looked away (to answer someone’s question about where to find something or about some chess rule), I would put One (1) pawn down from my sleeve. 

Initially he didn’t notice, but he did look twice at some placements. But as time went on, he started to visibly grow frustrated and confused, until it became so fucking ridiculous and obvious that he called a pause and counted a total of 14 black pawns on the board (you only have 8 pawns, for reference), at which point I couldn’t hold my laughter anymore. He starts insulting me, I look behind him, to the door, and pretend I’m addressing a teacher that had just come into the room, he turns around, sees no one had actually entered the room, and when he looks back at me and the board, there was suddenly a second black queen next to his king and I just fucking lose it when he makes one of the faces of all time and starts saying colorful things about mine mother.

Anyways I got banned from Chess club after that but it was worth it.

[idliketobeunknown]

this story is literally this meme