we're making it up as we go

well there have been better plans, but none that i could ever understand :::HIATUS:::

[sleepystorm]

reasons I am contemplating coming back to The Hellsite:

1. YOU GUYS RLY WENT AND GOT INTO MDZS/THE UNTAMED P. MUCH AT THE SAME TIME I DID. you know who u are

2. since I started actual serious weekly therapy I’ve felt an increasing need to type shit out occasionally. but if I just keep a diary I can’t get likes that will validate my feelings.

3. going through my dash now feels...fine? guess I weeded out most of the discourse and shit??

[sleepystorm]

anyway peeps, just felt the need to make it clear that i’ve exhausted pretty much all of my motivation for keeping this thingie alive. i’ll still be kinda active on my sideblog (which tbh should’ve been my main blog but since i first got pulled in by this site through the anime/tv show fandom aspect.....my main blog shaped up to be what it is). anyhow...8 years is long enough. too fuckening long. tumble.com has been bringing me more frustration than joy for way too long now. i AM a weak fool tho, so i can’t promise i won’t be back!!!! cheers, luv u all 

[pedromgabriel]

- Last Night’s Dream - 

by Pedro Gabriel

[jariten]

東京 BABYLON (Tokyo Babylon), CLAMP

[orb02]

some GoT sketches.

[mirkwoodest]

One of the ballsiest things Tolkien ever did was write 473k words about some hobbits called frodo, sam, merry, and pippin and then write in the appendices that their names are actually maura, ban, kali, and razal. 

[mirkwoodest]

This just in: Eowyn and Eomer’s names actually start with the letter “L.” [source for other nerds] 

[mirkwoodest]

#wait so they have hobbitish names and common names?

No, they have Westron names and English names.

What you’ve got to understand is that everything Tolkien wrote was him pretending to merely translate ancient documents. He was writing as if the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were actually been written by Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam (or Bilba, Maura, and Ban) and he was just some random contemporary academic translating it all into English for us. 

There are many languages in his books, but generally speaking, everything written in English in the books is a translation of the language “Westron.” Therefore any names that come from Westron, he translated. Names coming from other languages, like Sindarin, he left as they were. Why? IDK. Maybe because the stories are from a hobbit perspective and hobbits speak Westron, so he wanted the Westron parts to sound familiar and the other languages/names to remain foreign? 

“But Mirkwoodest!” you cry, “The word ‘hobbit’ isn’t an English word! And the names Bilbo Baggins, Frodo Baggins, Samwise Gamgee, Peregrin Took, and Meriadoc Brandybuck” all sounds super weird and not like English at all!”

Psych! They are in English! (Or Old English, German, or Norse.) Once again you underestimate what a nerd Tolkien was. Let me break it down: 

In Westron, hobbits are actually called “kuduk,” which means “hole-dweller,” so for an English translation, Tolkien called them “hobbits” which is a modernization of the Old English word “holbytla” which comes from “Hol” (hole) and “Bytla”(builder). 

“Maura” is a Westron name which means “Wise.” Weirdly enough, “Frodo” is an actual Proto-Germanic name that actual people used to have and it means the same thing. 

“Banazîr” is Westron for “half-wise, or simple.” In Proto Germanic, the prefix “Sam” means half, and wise is obviously a word we still use. 

“Razanur” means “Traveler” or “Stranger” which is also the meaning of the word “Peregrin(e)” This one is a twofer because  “Razar” means “a small red apple” and in English so does “Pippin.”

“Kalimac” apparently is a meaningless name in Westron, but the shortened form “Kali” means “happy,” so Jirt decided his nickname would be “Merry” and chose the really obscure ancient Celtic name “Meriodoc” to match. 

Jirt chose to leave “Bilba” almost exactly the same in English, but he changed the ending to an “O” because in Westron names ending in “a” are masculine. 

I’m not going to go on and talk about the last names but those all have special meanings too (except Tûk, which is too iconic to change more than the spelling of, apparently). 

The Rohirrim were also Westron speakers first and foremost, so their names are also “translations” into Old English and Proto-Germanic words, i.e. “Eowyn”  is a combination of “Eoh” (horse) and “Wynn” (joy/bliss). 

“Rohirrim/Rohan” are Sindarin words, but in the books, they call themselves the “Éothéod” which is an Old English/Norse combo that means “horse people.” Tolkien tells us in the “Peoples of Middle Earth” that the actual Westron for “Éothéod” is Lohtûr, which means that Eowyn and Eomer’s names, which come from the same root word, must also start with the letter L. 

The names of all the elves, dwarves, Dunedain, and men from Gondor are not English translations, since they come from root words other than Westron. 

The takeaway from this is that when a guy whose first real job was researching the history and etymology of words of Germanic origin beginning with the letter “W” writes a book, you can expect this kind of tomfoolery.

Notes: Sorry I said “Razal” instead of “Razar” in my original post I’m a fraud. 

Further Reading: 

Rohirric , Westron 

[messmikkelsen]

you created a family for yourself.

[lilli9]

day to day

[zenvdaya]

Zendaya attends Glamour Women Of The Year 2016 at NeueHouse Hollywood on November 14, 2016 in Los Angeles, CA,

[travellersfarfromhome]

I can’t accept. I can’t forgive.

Hereditary 2018

[davidbyrne]

One of the reasons GoT ended up being a massive disappointment is bc every character seems to end up alone. That’s the end of their story and they’re all alone, they’re without the people they love most in the world. None of the Starks are together. Even after hearing for years about “the lone wolf dies, the pack survives”, they all separate. Bran and Sansa are both coronated without a single member of their family there. Brienne is alone without Jaime, as is Tyrion. It all just seems incredibly depressing. It’s an awful cold and uninspiring message to leave your audience with after 10 years. All your favourite characters either died (before or after their arcs were destroyed) or they ended up alive and alone. What a miserable legacy to leave.

[bettsfic]

i’ve been thinking about this a lot – when entitled white men write mass media, the central theme to nearly everything is “independence.” it’s sociopathic, the degree to which the golden standard to a character’s arc is “and they lived completely free of the need for love.”

i keep seeing these text posts about how a major failing of the avengers is that it lacked the “found family” vibe that is so central to millennial life, and that’s how we got so many avengers movie night in the stark tower fics that were so cathartic. the avengers aren’t even friends. they’re just coworkers.

at best, in most big-budget things, we see a protagonist end up with Their One Person, but not a community. it’s terrifying to me, as someone who is wholly independent and has spent years battling isolation. 

moreover, the inability of these writers to conceive of recovery and redemption is also terrifying. jaime retconned his own recovery by going back to cersei after he found love. and going back to the avengers, the reason we have so many recovery bucky fics is because the mcu doesn’t let him actually recover from his trauma.

i know i shouldn’t look at pieces of media and point the finger at the writers, but i truly believe these repeated themes are 100% the fault of white cis male entitlement. men are raised to be dependent on women, so of course they’d glorify complete independence as the one true outcome of a character arc. men are rarely given the introspective tools or coping skills to recover from their traumas, so we get stories that tell us recovery and redemption are impossible, and that people can’t change and/or must suffer their whole lives.

i also believe that many people have difficulty loving in selfless ways. many people are taught to give and receive love as validation. they need love to affirm their existence in the world, rather than believing in that existence on their own. and that single thread links together almost everything i watch and read, the sad truth that these writers aren’t providing a story the awareness it needs to understand the kind of love it’s trying to convey.

it’s such a sad, narrow scope of the human heart. it’s so hopeless. 

[babypears]

a utena commission

[lovingpanzheonruins]

moonlight,detail

[mostbeautifulgirlscaps]

[humorblr]

What We Do in the Shadows (2014) directed by Taika Waititi & Jemaine Clement.

[chaelinsbitch]

Me tryna figure out why ppl are still tryna defend seungris ass

[flintsjohn]

luke arnold said game of thrones sucks ass, watch black sails