Subject: I also apologize for possibly being confrontational.
Author:
Posted on: 2015-01-09 06:21:00 UTC
As anyone whose work I've edited or reviewed can attest, I can be very... blunt in expressing myself. My intention was to address something related to writing for the PPC. Real life is its own thing altogether.
A peace offering:
So I just watched Battle of the Five Armies and seriously all I have to say is this:
SCOTTISH DAIN ON A BATTLE PIG!
(or a war pig, if you like referencing Black Sabbath)
I mean seriously what in Arda was that?! First the Battle Moose (rest in peace, my antlered friend, you went out spectacularly) and now this?
And don't get me started on the Battle Rams (they're rams right? or some form of giant curl-horned sheep. I dunno). Where in Arda are they getting these creative steeds? Does Beorn or Radagast or someone just breed giant animals for riding up majestic slopes or into war or whatever?
Please, feel free to respond with other strange things that might work as creative curses. I feel like Battle Rams might be an expletive all by themselves. Thorin on a Battle Ram?
I've always been a bit iffy on creative curses like "Flaming Denethor" or "Jadis in a block of ice." They always felt unwieldy in most situations. I'm pretty sure I've written a post saying as much sometime before now, but my thoughts have evolved a bit. I think writing that workshop on speech helped.
Characterization shapes how someone speaks (and a bit of vice versa). Dialogue and word choice are informed by a character's background and personality. That means by extension, characterization also shapes how someone swears. Hot-headed Laura Dukes and happy-go-lucky Rachel Calendar are not necessarily going to be using the same curse words at the same rate.
The vast majority of curses are quick, forceful expressions. Even the invented fictional ones typically are: shazbot, frak, frell, bosh'tet, and so on. Big elaborate curses like "Radagast on a bunny sled" only work if they seem like something the character would say. I typically associate such profanity with either very large hams, the vaguely eccentric, or certain period piece characters. I could hear Bertie Wooster saying something like that, for example. ("Great Radagast on a bunny sled, Jeeves!")
Such phrases don't feel right coming out of the mouths of most agents, who are typically contemporary young adults. As such, having them say something like "Scottish Dain on a battle pig" feels a bit too much like the author stepping in and inserting something they think is humorous just because they can. It's very forced, in my view.
Sorta like how people say stuff like "Jesus on a pogo stick" or "Great Goddess on a stick" or "In the name of God's green Earth", but adjusted for fandoms. Also agents who originate in certain continua might have curses stylised like those expressions but more befitting their origin canon, or agents who spend a lot of time in those continua pick things up.
So it's not necessarily something quick and forceful like the one-word curses that we all know and love, but more of an expression of long-winded exasperation, when you're completely done and exhausted by the antics of the Sue but you can't kill her yet, so all you can say is "Oh, for the love of Scottish Dain Ironfoot" in an exasperated voice and clutch your forehead.
I'm being completely serious. I've never heard someone say "Jesus on a pogo stick" in real life. The most common expressions of exasperation or dismay that I've heard are typically phrases like "Are you serious?" or "For f*ck's sake" or the ever popular quiet murmur of "...oh my God."
You say "more befitting their origin canon, or agents who spend a lot of time in those continua pick things up." If that were the case, why wouldn't they just pick up canonical curse words or phrases? I'm pretty sure no one actually says "For the love of Scottish Dain Ironfoot" in Middle Earth. Agents from that canon would have no reason to use it. Outside agents with a lot of experience working in Middle Earth would more logically adopt Dwarvish oaths, Orcish profanity, or what have you. Fans of the canon working there might use such phrases, but they wouldn't come from the canon itself.
"Crap on a pancake!"
and
"Oh, monkey f____er."
I've heard "Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ," although that was more astonishment.
(also it was one of the Freeman's Mind spinoffs)
'Son of a werechihuahua' for several years, along with 'Christ in a sidecar'. I've also heard 'Jesus Christ in a dump truck', which never fails to make me laugh. Also 'Christ on a cracker' and just today my brother used 'flaming Denethor!'.
I mean, maybe I spend too much time with the Tumblr crowd who love coming up with really creative insults and curses that don't involve gendered slurs, so I'm just more accustomed to hearing/seeing/reading people call others "useless paperclip" and "crinkled plastic bag" and other ridiculous things.
It's all down to people's preferences. In fact, since the Potterverse has creative curses about Merlin's saggy buttcheeks, I'm guessing people (Agents?) who like that kind of cursing would be into things like "Scottish Dain Ironfoot" and "Thranduil on a Moose". Also, people who just aren't comfortable with swearwords, fictional or otherwise, or writers who want to keep their work more family-friendly (once again, the Potterverse cursing style comes to mind, and arguably even some PPC writers; I know in my early days of writing for the PPC I relied more heavily on weird phrases for curses because I was a sweet innocent spring chicken who hadn't become comfortable with dropping F-bombs everywhere yet) might use these.
Look, if it's your personal opinion that these curses are weird, that's your thing. But it's another to dismiss it as stuff people wouldn't say. My Agents (read: Christianne; Eledhwen uses phrases that are more Elvish) might be more comfortable using things like "Radagast on a Bunny Sled" than yours, and maybe that stems from their idea of what consists of verbal humour.
Dialogue and word choice are informed by one's background and personality. That applies to real people as well.
Also, I did say that these curses sound strange coming from "most agents." If your agents are characterized in such a way that it would make sense for them to use things like "Radagast on a bunny sled" -- not liking to swear being a good reason -- then they should be able to do so. Many of the occasions I've seen such phrases used in missions, however, have come across as forced to me because it doesn't fit what I know of their characterization. The voice becomes that of the author rather than remaining the character's.
And I completely agree that the choice to use long creative curses is dependent on whether or not the agent/person in question knows the context of the curse and would have the personality to use the curse in lieu of other things. It's just that I read your comments as dismissive of the way some people speak, which really doesn't sit right with me.
There are times and contexts in which certain phrases can be used, and the writer in question shouldn't try to force it. But that doesn't mean bringing up new ridiculous things to turn into potential new curses is a bad thing; I'm not saying that everyone needs to use "Thorin on a Goat" or "for the love of Scottish Dain Ironfoot" immediately in all of their missions now. It's just a chance to toss out what I found ridiculous about the last film in a PPC way.
That being said, Thorin on a Goat just brings up such hilarous mental images that I think I might start using it IRL.
As anyone whose work I've edited or reviewed can attest, I can be very... blunt in expressing myself. My intention was to address something related to writing for the PPC. Real life is its own thing altogether.
A peace offering:
...may have been to remind the Abused!Legolas writers that yes, Thranduil does have a good hart.
Seriously, though, Melian did apparently learn a thing or two from Yavanna; the moose were probably domesticated in Doriath. And also, Doriath did have fairly decent relations with Nogrod and Belegost before the unchaining of Melkor, so the battle rams and battle hogs might date back quite a ways. Certainly by the time of the Battle of Unnumbered Tears.
But anyway, I'm trying to find a way to work out the expanded role of Dark Island in the VDT film. "Seven Swords for Dark Island", perhaps?
The idea of Melian being the ultimate source of the giant animals is appealing, though I can't think of any instance of the Doriathrim riding anything. And it doesn't need to conflict with my Dorwinion theory - after all, we know from the Lay of the Children of Hurin that the dwarves of Nogrod and Belegost traded with a wine-producing country of that name, though it appears to have been in a different location.
So, the timeline goes like this:
-Melian sets up shop in Middle-earth.
-To ward off the giant creatures bred by Morgoth before his captivity (eg Wargs), she starts producing large variants of local animals, including the Dorthonion Moose, the hogs of Brethil, and the goats of the Andram.
-Elsewhere in Beleriand, south of Taur-im-Duinath, a group of Nandor reach the coast. They establish the land of Dorwinion, 'the country of new land'.
-The dwarves of Nogrod and Belegost awake. They establish communications with their eastern kin.
-Eol the Dark Elf establishes trade and relations between the dwarves and the Doriathrim.
-For transportation, the dwarves purchase giant boars and goats from Doriath.
-The dwarves establish a trade route with Dorwinion, and make a lucrative profit selling their wine on to Doriath, and selling Doriathrim megabeasts to Dorwinion.
-Morgoth returns. The Girdle of Melian is laid. Trade mostly ceases with the dwarves (there is a war on, you know). Of course, the dwarves still trade cheerfully with Dorwinion, and get blind drunk on a regular basis.
-The dwarves use their megabeasts in battle, and strike an agreement with Dorwinion: the southern elves will breed and train the things, then sell them to the dwarves.
-In time, the War of Wrath comes about. Nogrod and Belegost are destroyed, and their remnants flee to Khazad-Dum. Doriath is lost. Dorwinion is flooded, and their population flees east, following in the footsteps of a certain Oropher and his son Thranduil.
-Dorwinion 2.0 is established on the Sea of Rhun. Since, unlike Oropher (late of Doriath, which does not like dwarves these days), they would be perfectly happy to pass through Khazad-Dum, they establish a new megabeast trade with the Longbeards. They also become friends with the elves of Lorien (long before Galadriel shows up, of course).
-Durin's Folk continue to trade with Dorwinion; when Khazad-Dum falls, the dwarves retreat towards their allies: first setting up shop in Erebor, then moving north to the Grey Mountains, then back to Erebor.
-With the dwarves so close, and using cavalry, Thranduil creates a cavalry of his own. Since horses aren't much use in the forest, he invites experts from Dorwinion up to breed him the giant moose he vaguely remembers from his childhood in Doriath.
-Erebor falls to Smaug. The dwarves are (to Thranduil's mind) a spent force in the Iron Hills. With cavalry now useless, Thranduil downsizes them - keeping just one moose for his own purposes.
Are the people of Dorwinion of the Third Age human or elven? Probably the former, by this point - but with a hint of elven blood like that of Dol Amroth, and several millennia of contact with the dwarves and their megabeasts to keep them looking weird to the rest of the world.
hS
*dons shades*
Dorwinion evolution?
YYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-
*is horribly killed*
=]
I have a theory that Peter Jackson has an overwhelming compulsion to make Legolas ride on things.
Think about it. He kept it down during Fellowship by thinking really hard about the boating scene, and by working out the tension during the Moria staircase surf (which I don't think involved Legolas, but I might be wrong). Then in Two Towers he let himself go a bit - Legolas got to ride on a horse, naturally, but also went shield-surfing at the Hornburg. By Return of the King, nothing could satisfy PJ but letting Legolas surf an entire Mumak (after riding on a boat and, oh yeah, an avalanche of skulls). Only a vestigal respect for the plot forced him to keep Legolas off the giant eagles at the end.
But okay, films over. He figured he'd gotten over it. Positive thinking and all that. Then The Hobbit comes up. Okay, fine. Deep breaths, Peter. He's not even in the first one - it'll be fine. You can do this. Good, good, we're past Rivendell, into the Misty Mountains...
... oh gods, this Stone Giant sequence is just like the staircase surf.
And from then on, the compulsion overwhelmed him. Trees, barrels full of dwarves, rooftops, probably boats and orcs as well, Legolas jumped on everything in Desolation. And by the time Five Armies rolled round, he simply couldn't keep himself from throwing Legolas onto falling towers, into the sky for bat-joyrides, up a load of freefalling stonework as if it were a staircase...
(On the other hand, would it be a PJ!M-e film if Legolas didn't engage in increasingly ridiculous stunts? And anyway, he made up for it all with the 'whoops, empty quiver' shot. Orli's face, good grief)
hS
I think Orli's contract consists mostly of looking around in an attempt to seem mysterious and wise, pulling faces in the background, and doing ridiculous stunts.
Speaking of ridiculous things, though, did anyone else think it was funny how the Elf-army spun around everyone who tried to walk through their ranks? I bet Wood-elf army training involves a lot of synchronised dance classes.
The movie was increasingly finding new ways to disappoint me, but that stone-jumping scene just killed it for me. Do they seriously expect the audience to accept that?
The sad part is that the answer is yes.
Remind me, why other than fan service were Legolas and a new elf thrown into The Hobbit?
As for the Moria falling staircase thing, that was Frodo and Aragorn, if memory serves.
... a perfect trio of curses. "Thranduil on a moose! (Elk? Megaloceros giganteus?)", "Radagast on a bunny sled!" and now, "Dain Ironfoot on a war pig!"
This makes me very happy. Also I believe someone, possible hS promised some sort of reward for whoever wrote a mission and had their agents use all three.
"Bombur in a bouncing barrel!"
It's not a megafauna, but it's the only curse we've got from the second film, as far as I know. Plus... well, just check out the end of this video. Or all of it. But especially the bit starting at 3:23.
Phobos and I have a theory that Peter Jackson secretly wants to make video games instead of movies.
~Neshomeh
Though if whoever it was doesn't show up, I can probably try and come up with something. Ehm...
Well, I can offer any one of:
a) A short PPC story.
b) A short crossover meetup story which may or may not be 'shippy (and would rely on me knowing both fandoms in question)
c) A coat of arms for a character of the winner's choice.
hS
It's not as implausible for Dain to be on a War Pig (or a War Boar) since giant boars were a thing and could have resided near the Iron Hills, which were eastward of the Mountain (and thus where a lot of other giant animals resided).
However, where Thorin got the Battle Goats he, Fili, Kili, and Dwalin rode up the cliffs is still a mystery and an even more unexplainable one at that, so I submit that the curse to complete the triumvirate should be "Thorin on a goat!" Because it just sounds more ridiculous.
It's spitting out rideable animals whenever it's plot-convenient to do so.
Seriously, those goats literally don't appear on screen until the exact moment Thorin starts thinking he needs something to ride. And there are exactly the right number, too.
Also, did anyone else notice Dain is only a live-action figure for about one set of frames, and completely CGI otherwise? What about the dwarf man was so difficult to act that they needed to sub in a computer?
...if Mary Sue comes riding in on some giant animal I wouldn't even bat an eye. Damn you, PJ.
It made the camera come out in a rash of tartan and woad.
hS
Tartan
Woad
Both very Scottish. If you throw too much Scottish at a camera... etc etc.
Things I have learnt in the past three minutes:
-Woad-as-blue-skin-dye is a mistranslation.
-Woad is actually caustic to the skin.
-The 1500s had some weird ideas about war-tattoos. Uh... technically warning for nudity? I think?
hS
My lack of canon knowledge for my own world strikes again!
Thanks for the info, anyway.
The Boar of Everholt was a one-off as far as I know, and Rohan isn't that close to Rhun - not to mention the Anduin's in between. And the Iron Hills are still a fair distance from Rhun themselves, and without the convenient river Esgaroth's got.
But it's possible, at any rate. And... well, there's a Sherlock quote about that. So unless anyone's got any better explanations...? ^~
hS just mistyped that as ^# and created a Borg smiley
Doesn't Thorin's group do the goatlike 'hop vertically up a mountain' trick?
Giant animals... well, let's see. Historically, both Morgoth and the Valar bred giant animals (Carcharoth and Huan, respectively). There's also the Kine of Araw, which were giant oxen; they lived around Rhun, but were supposedly descended from Orome's cows. I always figured they were aurochs. And there is actually a giant boar in Middle-earth - the Boar of Everholt, which lived in Firienholt in Rohan, and was killed by Folca the king.
All of which suggests a theory, actually. The movie megafauna are:
-Mumakil
-The moose
-The boar
-The goats
-Technically the 'bats', though I'll come back to them.
All of those hail from the eastern areas of the world - the moose is the westernmost, and it's still way east. We know that Dain (in the movies) has contact with the other families of the dwarves, who live out east. We know that Thranduil has trade with Dorwinion (he drinks their wine) by way of Esgaroth - and Dorwinion is on the shores of Rhun.
So to answer your question: there is strong movie evidence that large animals live in the eastern lands - around Rhun, and also to the south of Mordor in the case of the Mumakil. Most of that territory is under Sauron's rule (by way of Khamul the Ringwraith at the time of The Hobbit); those areas which aren't would be struggling for any advantage over the Eastern Shadow. So yeah, breeding giant war steeds might well be a thing they did. And when you've got a breeding program, selling bits of it off is always worth considering.
Though, since I don't recall seeing any sign of Thorin's goats before he suddenly jumped on one - maybe those in particular are actually automata dug up from deep inside the Mountain? They certainly didn't seem to come in with Dain's company...
~
As for the bats - those did not look like bats to me. They looked more like Morgoth's fearsome flying messengers, the vampires - which we know Sauron once had command over (at least in part), and could transform into... hey, he's still using Wargs, why shouldn't he have a vampire breeding program in place too?
~
And, creative curses? "Oh, were-wyrms!"
hS
("We've got were-wyrm sign!" Come on, I can't have been the only one thinking that)
Dwarves are about 4 ft/122 cm tall, right? Domestic hogs, some of which are very shaggy, can be up to 6 ft/180 cm long and 770 lb/350 kg with tusks up to 9 inches long. That's while breeders are not trying to see how big they can go. The ideal commercial pig of today is slim and low fat, quick gaining, and as docile as possible.
Look at Google images of feral pigs in the US. They are all descended from domestic pigs, but are huge and shaggy. The biggest problem would be that the boars are for the most part viscious omnivores with massive sharp teeth.
How much bigger would one have to be for a dwarf to ride on it?
(Can't speak to the goats. I saw that part and nearly spit my pop corn out. I mean, maybe if they had shown a bunch of dwarves on them at the beginning of the battle, but those were like *hammer space goats!*)
...being dug up from the underground pastures of the Mountain suddenly made me think of the Ypurs for some reason.
Still, "Thorin on a ypur!" has a kind of nice ring to it...
hS
Just the whole Middle-earth large animal breeding programme. Because why have an ordinary pig when you can have a WAR PIG. Or rather, the War Boar.
(Which, should I actually get around to writing more of the Sherlock/LotR crossover, should make the Hound of the Baskervilles preeeeetty interesting.)
Oh yeah, were those weird giant earthworm thingies also one of the hidden wonders of Middle-earth that I never got around to discovering? Because I don't recall that ever happening in the books. And if giant earthworm thingies existed, how come the Orcs didn't use them during the War of the Ring?
Bilbo says, "I will try it, if I have to walk from here to the East of East and fight the wild Were-worms in the Last Desert". The, uh, precise details may have been contributed by Jackson et al. Also, given that the Hobbits also have tales of giant island-turtles, winged insects called Dumbledors, bone-gathering Mewlips, and heaven knows what else, they probably don't exist. (That said, Hobbits came from the East originally, and they did know about Mumakil, so maybe there's a grain of truth in it...)
The 'why didn't they use that against Gondor' question is an interesting one; it's closely related to the Star Wars question of 'where did Artoo's rocket jets go?'. The answer is really 'filmmaker didn't think of it', though in this case we could argue that the various troll/hyperorc superweapons were driven to near extinction by the B5A, and hadn't recovered for the War of the Ring. We know the Misty Mountains were mostly orc-free by the time the Fellowship set out, at least.
hS
Phobos and I got to talking about discrepancies between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings last night, such as why the trolls talk in The Hobbit but not LotR, and it occurred to me: what if Bilbo made that up? What if Bilbo embellished a lot of his tale? We know some things had to have happened based on what's reported in LotR, but we also know Bilbo wasn't entirely honest about the Ring, so why not other stuff? What must be true, and what could have been lightened up, left out, or added for the sake of a good yarn to tell his young nieces and nephews?
Regarding the trolls, we know there were trolls because Frodo and friends find them on the way to Rivendell, and they probably did capture and try to eat the dwarves... but I bet they didn't talk. What kept them from getting their meal before dawn, then? Gandalf? Blind luck? Or perhaps the dwarves weren't quite so helpless as Bilbo makes them out to be, and they actually put up a fight? That seems likely to me.
So, what else?
~Neshomeh
Some of which may be mutually exclusive. ;)
1/ Why do you think they couldn't talk? We know from all five hobbits that orcs talk, and in an idiom that Tolkien translated as something very close to how the trolls speak. Granted, they probably weren't named 'Bill 'uggins', but that's a translation issue too.
Wait, there's a 1.5 too/ That said, talking trolls are a part of Shire folklore - 'Troll sat alone on his seat of stone' and so forth - so it's entirely the sort of thing Bilbo might have added.
2/ Other things Bilbo might have, uh, misrepresented: how about all that singing? We know he was very fond of songs, so we can accept that he would have sung a lot (though if memory serves, he doesn't). And the hobbits in his circle could well have caught the bug, so they're fine. In fact, all the songs in LotR are justifiable as a racial hobby (hobbits, elves, ents) or a special occasion (the Rohirrim). They also all fit the cultures they're in.
The songs in The Hobbit? Nnnnot so much. Singing orcs, singing dwarves, all of whom sing in Hobbittish ditties? Not a chance. I'd guess Far Over The Misty Mountains Cold is a real song, but the rest of them are just Bilbo's pen running away with him.
3/ And it's not just Bilbo! The Middle-earth stories are semi-unique, in that the writing of the modern book is part of the fiction too. And that means Tolkien can be an unreliable narrator - or rather, a better novelist than he is translator.
For instance, we know that Bilbo's story started life as his diary - the title is still on the front cover. Who writes their diary in third person? I'm guessing that Bilbo's entire work - and that's everything up to Frodo reaching Rivendell, mark you, since we know he caught up with Frodo then and wrote it all down - was written in first person, and (in the case of 'The Hobbit') as and when he had a chance to scribble something in.
So, for instance, everything from being captured by goblins to being rescued by eagles could've been written at Beorn's house. Which means the early parts may have been quite quickly covered, since Bilbo probably forgot about the details. So Tolkien had to embellish.
For specific instance: the riddles. I'll accept that Bilbo wrote 'Got into riddling contest with slimy Thing. It asked me riddle about mountain. [etc] It asked me one that stumped me, and pressed me, so I called out for "Time!", and that of course was the answer.' But I refuse to believe he wrote down the actual riddles - which explains why some of them are Old English riddles.
Of course, the sparseness of Bilbo's account means that all Tolkien had to do was 'fill the gaps'. When he got to Frodo's far more complete work, his changes got a little more... involved.
Things added by JRRT
-Boromir. Boromir exists solely to be a mirror of Aragorn - in fact, to allow Aragorn to sit firmly in the role of 'Anglo-Saxon hero', with none of that icky 'being tempted'. But people don't actually come as mirrors. Clearly in the original, Aragorn tried to take the Ring - and didn't receive any punishment for it, but went on to rule the world.
-Faramir. Faramir consists in equal parts of mirror to Boromir (who never existed), plot device for feeding Frodo ( the real world doesn't have plot devices), and self-insert (need I say more?). We also have an explicit statement by Tolkien that he created him, so there's that. ;)
-Tom Bombadil. He's a children's doll, and Tolkien needed something to fill time. This of course means that Frodo's escape from the Barrow Downs was probably effected in some other manner. My theory is that the great disappearing character, Fatty Bolger, originally went with the other four - and then died in the Barrow. But that's too depressing, right?
-All the history. We know Tolkien was working on his Book of Lost Tales long before he got his hands on the Red Book. That means that everything we know about the First Age is a Tolkien invention - and its mentions in the narrative are either Tolkien additions, or changes to what was really said about history...
hS
So...... Discworld?
Oh man, the Dumbledors. I mean, it does mean 'bumblebee', so I'm assuming they're referring to a type of bee, but now I'm imagining a bearded bumblebee flying around meddling in people's affairs like Gandalf does, and... stop me. This is the most unlikely crossing point for a Harry Potter/LotR crossover. (No, there are far more implausible ones but this one is pretty high up there)
On an unrelated note, I'm working on the Silmaril Sue's mission again! I just got to everyone being completely horrified at the Sue's genetically-impossible backstory.
