At your agent's discretion

Charge help. by Storme Hawk on 2013-11-25 13:33:00 UTC Reply

Hey, I'm working on my first mission (see fic link below). The fic seems to either have been written by two people with incredibly similar writing styles or one person who only gets half their chapters Beta'd.
The problem is in the even chapters, where elves become elleths and the occasional elf becomes an elleth. What Charge does this fall under? I'm tempted to put it under a general Spelling Error, but I'm not sure if it would create a Mini or not.

My other problem is potentially unique, instead of describing their clothing to the minutest detail there is literally no description of their clothing at all, besides the fact we're told they're wearing some. Does this mean they are covered in a Generic Material (or something like that) which would become a Charge or what?

badfic: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6272813/1

General Thanks (nm) by Storme Hawk on 2013-11-28 05:31:00 UTC Reply
Nesh and Huinesoron have both touched on "elleth"... by Herr Wozzeck on 2013-11-25 16:37:00 UTC Reply

...so I'll just pipe in that you can charge the fic for beige prose for not describing their clothes.

Depending on the amount of beige prose involved, you could also charge for general beige prose. I've actually tinted the canon in sepia tone a couple of times because of excessive beige prose...
Elleth is legitimate. by Neshomeh on 2013-11-25 14:26:00 UTC Reply

Elleth is Sindarin for a female elf. The male version is ellon. However, the plurals are ellith and ellyn, respectively, so "elleths" is incorrect. If they're using "elleth(s)" to refer to both genders, that's also incorrect. Those would be charges of mangling canonical languages, IMO.

~Neshomeh
Well. by Huinesoron on 2013-11-25 14:22:00 UTC Reply

'Elleth' is Sindarin for 'female elf' (you may already know this?). I think the masculine equivalent is 'ellon', but that's not used very much in stories. I think the author doesn't want to say 'women' about a pair of elves - similar to not wanting to call Haldir a man, even though, as a male humanoid, the term applies reasonably well - so tries to use the Sindarin.

Unfortunately, 'elleths' is absolutely not how 'elleth' would pluralise. My Sindarin is a bit rusty, but Ardalambion seems to suggest 'ellith'. Good luck getting that past English speakers. ;)

I'd charge it for 'abusing Elvish languages', myself. When I asked a few months ago, I was told misspelled canon-language words (such as Sindarin terms) do not make a mini: they're just a mistake.

Which allows me to continue a long-running gag of mine: the mini-Word. Mini-Words are formed by things that wouldn't normally make a mini, in a situation where they clearly would. The first one to be observed was Aaragog - which came from a misspelling of the term 'mini-Aragog'. He looks like this:

Of course, as was pointed out, that typo would just make a mini-Aragog of its own, albeit a rather meta one, so he doesn't exist.

The second was a badfic which misspelled the Sindarin word 'aen' as 'sen' (it's in the first line of the FotR prologue). Here she is looking rather tragic in the Mode of Beleriand:

Of course, as just discussed, Sindarin typos don't make minis, so sen doesn't exist either.

And neither does 'elleths', the remarkably English mini-Word who would otherwise look like this:

(Yes, she smokes a pipe. Why does that surprise you?)

In summary: mini-Words don't exist. But if they did, 'elleths' would be one, and would be an adorable pipe-smoking string of runes.

hS

You know Eledhwen would love that mini-word. by Lily Winterwood on 2013-11-26 04:18:00 UTC Reply

Save the frequent pipe-smoking getting ash everywhere, of course.
Sindarin plurals by Desdendelle on 2013-11-25 19:17:00 UTC Reply

Assuming that's the general rule and not an exception, that's remarkably similar to Hebrew plurals. Which is weird, because Khuzdul is supposed to be similar to Hebrew, not Sindarin (which is sorta like Welsh, IIRC; Quenya's Finnish).
Those are adorable by Sevenswans on 2013-11-25 16:53:00 UTC Reply

I ought to be writing thesis right now, but that Aaragog has so many fuzzy legs! So many legs, I tell you!
Ack, ninja'd. (nm) by Neshomeh on 2013-11-25 14:28:00 UTC Reply

Wow, only just. by Huinesoron on 2013-11-25 14:37:00 UTC Reply

Considering how long that post took me to write, if I'd stopped for a break in the middle, you would have won.

From what I can tell, the story uses 'elves' for every other plural, and applies 'elleths' solely to the pair of protagonists. It's a valiant attempt at immersion, but falls rather flat due to the linguistic error.

hS

At your agent's discretion by Sevenswans on 2013-11-25 14:10:00 UTC Reply

If it's significantly annoying, you can charge them for beige prose in general, such as "reducing middle-earth to featureless plains of grey," or something along those lines. In this case it would probably be "annoying the agents," depending on how you describe the agents' reactions to the clothes - like, do their eyes slide off them, making it hard for them to track the sues?

Also, from what I've read of the stattaco first chapter, don't forget to charge them for neglecting the common comma!

I can't help with the elleth situation, I'm afraid. My bet is that you've got a persistent mini, but spelling like that might change the behavior of the fic world.