Pipe and Blade @thunderfell - Tumblr Blog

“So… obelisks, right? It’s the apex predator of architectural bling. Practically completely useless. You can’t do anything with an obelisk, you can’t interact with it in any way. It’s just there to dominate the landscape.”

— Anthony Kaldellis, Byzantium & Friends Podcast #49: “Why is there an Egyptian obelisk in the hippodrome of Constantinople?, with Cecily Hilsdale”

silmaspens

“ He sought her ever, wandering far Where leaves of years were thickly strewn, By light of moon and ray of star In frosty heavens shivering.  Her mantle glinted in the moon, As on a hill-top high and far She danced, and at her feet was strewn A mist of silver quivering.”

nevver

Devil’s in the details, Yota Tsukino

silmaspens

Here’s some drawings✨

Messing around with designs for the Lords of Gondolin (from left to right: Galdor, Eagalmoth, Ecthelion, Glorfindel, Duilin, Penlod, Salgant, Rog)| Eowyn resting | Maedhros’ clothing layers | Maedhros armor concept | @arlenianchronicles gender bent Beren & Luthien | Galdor armor concept | Dior & Nimloth in the style of Yoshitaka Amano for shits and giggles| concept for Nerdanel’s family

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

sunny-dayze

@words-writ-in-starlight

wodneswynn-deactivated-deactiva

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

kittyknowsthings

Thank you for this addition which is both lovely and educational

kyraneko

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.”

ekjohnston

EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS IS BEAUTIFUL

prismatic-bell

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.

na-yserin

@deadcatwithaflamethrower you have probably seen this but it made my morning :D and I hope you enjoy it!

deadcatwithaflamethrower

Laughed so hard I was sitting here wheezing when I hit Boromir being embarrassed from the grave.

kyraneko

Tolkein maybe can’t reblog with the essay but he can damn sure write it, and it and several additions to it based further down the forthcoming reblog chains and half a dozen entirely new Middle-Earth stories and a couple alternate histories will all be waiting for us when we catch up with him, and then you’ll be able to respond to that desired reblog to your heart’s content.

worldheritageposts-official

World Heritage Post

wrathofgnon

“The truth about Gothic architecture is, first, that it is alive, and second, that it is on the march. It is the Church Militant; it is the only fighting architecture. All its spires are spears at rest; and all its stones are stones asleep in a catapult. In that instant of illusion, I could hear the arches clash like swords as they crossed each other. The mighty and numberless columns seemed to go swinging by like the huge feet of imperial elephants. The graven foliage wreathed and blew like banners going into battle; the silence was deafening with all the mingled noises of a military march; the great bell shook down, as the organ shook up its thunder. The thirsty-throated gargoyles shouted like trumpets from all the roofs and pinnacles as they passed; and from the lectern in the core of the cathedral the eagle of the awful evangelist clashed his wings of brass, and amid all the noises I seemed to hear the voice of a man shouting in the midst like one ordering regiments hither and thither in the fight; the voice of the great half-military master-builder; the architect of spears. I could almost fancy he wore armour while he made that church; and I knew indeed that, under a scriptural figure, he had borne in either hand the trowel and the sword.” — G.K. Chesterton

artofbigham

Some old environmental prop designs from the Grineer Queens ship set. I got to design various doorways, pillars and props which could be broken up into different pieces for varied use. I also had the chance to work on the Queens’ throne which had lots of constraints and design modifications constantly shifting because of a cutscene that involved it.

fhtagn-and-tentacles

NIGHTMARE

by Yin Zhe

futurumterra

The amazing art of su jian - 220 | 221 | 233 | 238 | 271

absynthe--minded

okay guys who wants me to drag George R.R. Martin

absynthe--minded

alright so

a big thing in GRRM’s works is the idea that being a good person does not equal being a good leader. the good man is not necessarily a wise king, or a competent king, and it’s boring (to him, anyway) to say simply “he ruled well and justly” and leave it at that. because ruling realistically involves compromise, and learning to balance lots of different agendas, and working with people who don’t like you, and trying to figure out how to do the right thing (if that’s what you want to do) in between dealing with… well, basically everything else that could possibly go wrong, you know?

this comes up in interviews with him talking about Tolkien, and it usually focuses on Aragorn (I’m reminded of the infamous “Aragorn’s Tax Policy” quote, which is as bad as it seems even in its proper context) and it’s exacerbated by the Peter Jackson films, which erase most of the politicking that happens behind the scenes in LotR for the sake of making the story accessible and allowing emotional appeals to take precedence. which. okay, good, this makes watching that trilogy of films an intensely personal and emotional process, I’m here for that.

but.

Aragorn isn’t some random idiot who rolled up to the gates of Minas Tirith with a sword and a dream and went “oh yeah I’m related to this guy thousands of years dead, make me king now”. He’s also not just a good king because he’s good at making emotionally arresting speeches, or because he’s a friendly guy who people like, or because he intuitively Knows how to be a leader or whatever.

Aragorn takes the throne after eight decades of training for Kingship.

He spent his childhood in Rivendell, raised by one of the most brilliant minds in Middle-Earth, someone who served Gil-galad in court and who’s shepherded countless generations of Dúnedain and probably provided aid and counsel to Arnor when it still existed. He learned from Elrond and Gilraen how to be a good leader even outside of any formal education, but he also received a formal education. And in his adulthood? He went out to see how the different realms of Men worked! He traveled to Rohan and fought in their wars under Thengel, he went to Harad and Umbar and learned their ways and saw how their people lived, he lived in Gondor and familiarized himself with Gondor’s politics and political system and which families were powerful and how the steward ran Minas Tirith. Aragorn’s entire life is a practice run for Being King. He was literally raised to Be King. He has learned from the best and from the brightest of all stripes, from rich and poor, from elf and man alike, and he spent longer in the realms he meant to rule or interact with than in Rivendell. He’s already lead his people as Chieftain of the Dúnedain and he’s ready to gear up to do it again.

He’s not an incompetent ruler, or ill-equipped for the job, or merely a good man who governs well due to his good heart. to say so both does a disservice to JRRT’s worldbuilding and dismisses all the textual evidence to the contrary.