A question on Letters

A christmas present from me to you. by Huinesoron on 2016-12-23 20:43:00 UTC Reply

Or three, or... technically seven presents!

First up (to be appreciated by a handful of you, and fully appreciated probably by none), hot off the presses of the Nutmeg media empire:

Tengwablocks - Tinco Attan (T for Two), a children's book for Quenya speakers. In this short work - written in Quenya (Tengwar and Latin letters) and English (just Latin letters) - the Tengwablocks teach young kids in HQ all about the special dual form of nouns.

Second up, or indeed second through sixth... a few days ago Iximaz asked for more slice-of-life stories with the Illian family. That reminded me that for a decade now I've had a set of short stories sitting around covering the period just after Dafydd and Constance's retirement. I hunted them down, cleaned them up, and present the series now for your debatable pleasure: Envinyata.

1 - Cultural Exchange
2 - Narrative Voice
3 - Aesthetic Viewpoint
4 - Religious Dissent
5 - Wedded Bliss

They span a year, from just after After Midnight to a few months before Tanfin was born. After the holidays, I may move some of The End of the Beginning into Envinyata, and sort out a hub page for the series too. We'll see if I remember. ^_^

Finally, and maintaining the elvish theme: I worked up a new timeline for the Illian family. It's fairly rough-looking, but it lets you choose which character you want to see dates/stories for. (It does, however, contain a spoiler for the first Envinyata story, so don't look if you mind that.)

Again, I'll probably clean the timeline up later, but I felt it was worth sharing at this point. It uses Javascript, but should just show everything if you've got that disabled, so no loss there.

I know this flood of Dafydd isn't everyone's cup of tea, but it's what I've got done. So Merry Christmas, one and all.

hS

Read everything but the timeline, and... by DawnFire on 2016-12-25 17:04:00 UTC Reply

I think it's all excellent :D

The stories are sweet to touching to funny; I could really, seriously see shades of Maglor in...I think it was the one Kaitlyn wrote; and they were overall just very enjoyable to read. As for Tengwablocks, I'm impressed you put so much Quenya together (how long did it take you?) and I think the story is adorable. I'd totally read more. (I also think that if you made one for a widely spoken language it might sell, assuming a different language version could keep the charm of the Quenya one...just a thought.)

Anyway. This was all great fun to read. Thanks for sharing it with us!

~DF

And: thank you! ^_^ by Huinesoron on 2016-12-28 07:42:00 UTC Reply

Speaking of secrets... my wife is genuinely a much better character writer than me. She just doesn't actually write anything any more. Which personally I think is a right shame.

hS

PS: It didn't take that long. I could churn out 2-3 pages of writing (including the translation and Tengwar) in a day, and did all the pictures in 2-3 days. I just had a few breaks in the middle. ^_~

hS
Let you in on a secret? by Huinesoron on 2016-12-25 17:12:00 UTC Reply

Alphablocks

hS, fanficcer at heart

*facepalm* figures by DawnFire on 2016-12-26 00:07:00 UTC Reply

On the plus side, I was right! :D It *is* a marketable idea!

~DF

A question on Letters by son_of_heaven176 on 2016-12-24 02:05:00 UTC Reply

On page 6 (where Tinco meets Silma and Ore at the multiple rivers), the black Tengwablock has what looks like a dotless right-side-up question mark on his head. But on the next page, its "question mark" is upside down. Was that a drawing error, or does that have something to do with the way that letter works in Quenya?

Also, comparing the English with the Quenya, it seems that vowels are notated as a series of dots above the consonants. Would I be correct to surmising that the Quenya writing system is an abjad, i.e., that Quenya is consonants-only and the vowels are optional, like in Hebrew or Arabic?

--SOH176, whose mastery of languages clearly does not extend to the various Elvish languages

You knew I'd have answers. by Huinesoron on 2016-12-24 12:00:00 UTC Reply

The Silma (black letter, S) has two forms. The basic form is actually the upside-down version, while the question-mark should be used when there's a vowel over it. Which means that it IS a drawing error - I managed to get them precisely backwards!

You're right about vowels being the marks above (they're called tehtar, singular tehta), but they aren't optional. Well, that's not quite true: the A (three dots) is optional in Quenya. That's because it's the most common vowel, and the rules of forming Quenya words are strict enough that you can usually say there should be a vowel there. Example: if you wrote 'clm' in Tengwar, a Quenya-speaker would know that 'clam' and 'calm' aren't valid words. That would mean the only interpretations are 'calma' and 'calama' - and 'calma' means 'lamp'.

hS

Oooh, excellent! by Iximaz on 2016-12-23 21:20:00 UTC Reply

I'm a bit busy at the moment, but I can't wait to read the new stuff!

(Also, the children's book is adorable... I might have to use it in the future. The very, very far future.)

Now that I've read them... by Iximaz on 2016-12-24 17:17:00 UTC Reply

The first one, I d'awwed quite a bit at the end. And then was overcome with a strong desire to feed Dafydd marshmallows and give him hugs. (But I doubt he'd appreciate that much...) I did think it was a bit odd, though, that Constance went from "Dude, you need to stop hiding our relationship from everyone" to "Wanna get married?" but maybe that's just me.

The second one: very amusing scene right off the bat, with Dafydd stealing the chocolate bar. (Do Elves have chocolate? Now I'm curious if they do, and if not, what Dafydd's first reaction to it was...) And yay, fourth wall breaking! Always fun. Nice amusing vignette I'm sure I'll want to read again in the future.

Third one: I'm sorry, I started cracking up at Constance mentioning not liking trees. It reminded me too much of Anakin's hate for sand. That ending, though... *waggles eyebrows* Very cute. I liked it.

Fourth story! It took me a moment to figure out what was going on. And then I laughed, though I can't help but wonder why Dafydd thought playing the song in the first place was a good idea...

Last but not least, the, er, last. Not much to say about this one other than d'awww. Cute and fluffy. :)

(Side note, I went back and reread After Midnight and found a missing period: "Dafydd, you were dead")

All in all... a very nice Christmas present indeed.

Thank you! ^_^ by Huinesoron on 2016-12-28 07:38:00 UTC Reply

(... Star Wars reference... :(...)

Re: the first one - well, bear in mind this was ten years ago, who knows what was going through my mind? But I think Constance was aiming for 'put up or shut up'. Also, he was clearly struggling to find the words to ask her to marry him - she just fed him the line.

But I agree that it's probably the weakest of the five - it struggles too much with needing to infodump LaCE at the lot of you. Bad storycrafting (and it was worse in the original version), but again, it's been a decade...

If you've any suggestions for improving it, I'd be glad to hear them - and given how key a moment it is in their timeline, I might even edit to accommodate them.

hS

PS: Chocolate is either a native product of the Undying Lands, or a Numenorean Exilic discovery from after the changing of the World. But that's cocoa. True chocolate is no older than 150 years, and Dafydd didn't actually encounter it until 1907. His mind was suitably blown, and he developed quite the addiction for about 10 years (until he ran into jewelled chocolate and promptly had some very nasty flashbacks...).

hS
"I hate trees. They're coarse, and rough, and the sap..." by DawnFire on 2016-12-25 16:57:00 UTC Reply

"...gets everywhere..."

:P

Disclaimer: I've never to my memory seen more than a gif of that scene. Maybe a clip, but I doubt it. It amuses me anyway :D

~DF