but really though, this pride month, shout out to straight trans people. it’s gotta be rough sometimes listening to people constantly complaining about “the straights” and how “it’s gay month if you’re not gay go home”. you’re not contributing to heteronormitivity just by being yourself. you 100 percent belong at pride and all of you make this community a better place.
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.
So a couple things about Coruscant, circa roughly right before Order 66 and probably during the whole Empire too but I like the Prequel era as a backdrop so bear with me:
Most of Coruscant’s population technically lives in the sam building as the rich and powerful but MUCH lower down and the levels aren’t necessarily easily acessible.
Padme mentions in an episode of TCW that power rationing in the lower levels had gotten to the point where her senatorial aides only had power and running water once a week.
Coruscant’s police department is underfunded and too small for the sheer masses it’s supposed to patrol, so a lot of “crime” occurs in the form of “Normal business transactions but we ain’t paying taxes for services we’ll never see”
It gets more dangerous the farther down you go not necessarily because of crime but because the lower levels are full of things like Giant Mutant Rats, Escaped Monsters From The Pet Trade, and Monstrous Eyeless Humanoids That Might Have Been Normal People Several Centuries Ago Until They Stopped Being Able To See The Sun And Also Might Like To Eat Toes
But between food shortages, a lack of regulation and Lots of large Animals Down There, you can’t tell me there aren’t people who are effectively
Ecumenopolis Bush-Meat Hunters. Owing to the lack of actual Bush and the Rule Of Cool, we’ll call them Dark Meat Hunters.
Anyone willing to brave The Deep Dark and come back with fresh* meat for thier hungry communities and maybe also some cool tusks the size of your whole leg is probably a very respected member of thier community**, and with the proliferation of military-grade weapons in Star Wars it’s probably not that difficult to get your hands on the appropriate gear*** So there’s probably an entire collective of Dark Meat Hunters. Some of them might have even made firends with the Eyeless Humanoids**** and formed cooperative You-Return-Any-Lost-Eyed-People-You-Find-And-I’ll-Smuggle-Some-Vaccines-Down relationships with them.
*Well, it was killed today and is free of any visible parasites at least. You should porbably have your steak well-done though. As a precaution.
**Not Canon, but heavily suggested by canon: If there aren’t enough cops and it’s a beauractic nightmare anyway, it might not be that hard for say, an entire city block to stop paying taxes and turn themselves into an autonomus commune if they didn’t actively pick fights.
***Drive your friend’s crappy speeder at the truck hard enoug and you could LITERALLY knock an arms dealer over.
**** Hunter 1, new on the job: “WHAT IS THAT HIDEOUS CREATURE???” Hunter 2: “What? Oh, that’s Eyeless Bob. Say Hi Bob!” Bob: *Throaty, wet gibbering noises and flailing* Hunter 2: “HA! You’re hilarious.” Hunter 1: “You can understand him?” Hunter 2: “Sure, it takes a bit to get used to his accent but he’s a riot at parties.”
Aw man this has potential for a short story/RPG characters/Art, but its 3 AM and i oughtta go to bed.
-Dark Meat Hunters are rarely solo- it’s way easier to take down a Mutant Pig-Rat the size of a minivan when you’ve got some friends and maybe a riding animal to help you. it’s also a lot easier to hold down a good territiory or keep your books and sell your prey at market if you’ve got some friends who can do patrols and bookeeping and sales for you.
-Hence, most Dark meat Hunters are part of “gangs” which is Imperialst for “Community organization that doesn’t pay taxes”, that contain not only multiple types of hunters, but other food-generating professions, managment and in the larger groups, quality control to make sure whatever you dredged up isn’t going to sicken important clients.
-Some of the other food-generating operations include: Hydroponic farming in empty warehouses that still have sewerhookups, insect farming, fungal farming, water collection and purification, Deep fishing and Grand Theft Basil.
-Seriously, spices are at a premium and worth killing for in the half-starved mid and lower levels. There’s big money in ripping off fancy restaurants or rich people for seasoning.
-Hunters identify themselves with luminescent face and body paint, both to show they’re not prey and to identify what Clan they belong to. It’d be pretty dumb to get speared by your buddy just becuase he thought you were a rival gang member. Luminescent paint is also camoflage- many animals living in the sunless lower levels of Coruscant are bioluminescent themselves, to attract mates and rey, and to blend in with the neons.
-Speaking of Levels, consider: If the average Cloud Cover level is “0″
Cloud-Level: 0-1 miles below cloud cover, rich bitches. The senate, a good portion of the jedi temple and Padme Amidala’s penthouse are up here.
Upper Level: 1-2 mi below cloud cover, upper-class-but-not-the-1%, sa bit of an economic dead zone- food is delivered regularly enough that shortages are rare. If you’re sneaky you can do hydroponic farming, process water or insect farm. You’ll need guards, engineers to fix the sewer and powerlines, probably a few biologists with student loans, and someone to manage the beuacratic end of things (whether that’s bribery or a string of mssing tax collectors is up to the clan)
Mid-Level: 2-3 mi blow cc: middle-class to poor, this is where dark food is sold, without the payment of taxes. limited light, limited power, MASSIVE shortages, this is where markets happen. Clan fights for control can get bitter and extremely voilent but are rarely public- the masses are already scared and desperate, open violence will only incite more violence and reduce sales. Public clan fights take the form of verbal taunting a vicious rumor mill. Once out of the market, things can get nasty- there’s a persistent rumor about the Dark Markets that if you piss of one of the clans enough, you could end up being their wares the next day.
Lower Level: 3-4 mi cc: Poor, actually less populated than the Mid-Level, almost no sunlight. This is where game starts to appear- escaped exotics from the pet trade, mutant rats, invasive small and medium game that’s adapted to city life. Wookies, Togruta, Trandoshans, and Rodians dominate the species makeup of the Hunters, many of them bringing thier planet-of-origin’s hunting traditions and hunting animals with them. Humans, Twi’lekk and other populous meat-eating species are common too, and many operate Hunt-Adjacent businesses, like trap and weapon maunfacurers, Kennels, bait-makers, outfitters and guides.
“Bottom” level: 4-4.5 mi cc. About 4,5 miles down from the highest buildings is most of coruscant’s water table. Sections of it are acessible and are filled with billions of tons of blind sewer fish. Fishing’s a risky business- some of those fish are the size of tiberian freighters. This is also where many of the large carnivores like urban Nexu, narglatches and rancors live, where they don’t have to compete with the citizenry for food. Also down here are the ruins of the first civilization of coruscant, and open sections of former city filled with dark-growing mushrooms, extoic plants and all kinds of treasures, many of which can poison or eat you too. High risk, high reward, requires a biology degree to mine properly
4.5 miles and lower: Byssal level.Entirely underground (or underwater) , this is where the cnothic people (eyeless pale and slightly cannibalistic humanoids) live, and thier secrets are not easily given up. Poorly mapped and barely explored, “delving” here combines aspects of spelunking, mining, cartography, archeology and sheer dumb luck. People have come back with amazing things- original Kolto cultures, ancient force-user artifacts, paper books , but they also come back changed- hypersensitive to light and sound, and a little looser on the ethics of potentially eating members of your dig team
If i ever GM a Star War I’m stealing this for my game
Steal Away! And tell me all about it, this is a concept I highly encourage people to take and use in games/fic/art whatever!
content of your favorite character, tiers of desperation
ao3 tag, sorted by kudos
tumblr tag
ao3 tag again, sorted by update date
fanfiction.net crossovers
fanfiction.net
pixiv
tumblr rp blogs
doujinshi
hentai
wattpad
pixiv again
ao3 tag again but using google translate to labor your way through the ones written in chinese
staring longingly at the previews of doujin involving your favorite character on japanese online stores that require you to pay money to see the full thing
hentai but your adblock blocks everything on the site so you turn off your adblock and regret it immediately
clicking a website that a korean artist linked in a tweet that screenshotted what was clearly a doujin picture but it has art of your favorite character so you cant not try and see it, but the website is in korean so you have to use google translate, and the art is marked adult so you have to make an account, but once you make the account, if you’re a citizen of korea you have to verify that you’re an adult to the republic of korea because thats where the website is hosted, and theres no option for if youre not a korean citizen, so you have to provide either your id or your phone number, so you try to put in your phone number but it expects 10 digits not 9 so you cant even use your mobile to try and prove that youre an adult and you made this account for NOTHING, and all you can do is sadly bookmark the work even though you have no way of seeing it in hopes that one day youll just be able to glimpse his face once more
contemplating for a full five minutes about going through the ao3 tag to read the russian fics even though you know that youll regret it
