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so the headmistress of HFA would be a certain feminism-appropriating transphobic reactionary.

It's an in-universe additional dilemma alongside the real-world "is it ethical to enjoy HP now" discussion.

What are the "issues surrounding HFA's headmistress?" Why wouldn't it be ethical to buy things from an OFU?

—doctorlit is feeling like a major outcast right now . . .

<.<

-- like how people are jumping at the chance to do their own take on Winnie the Pooh now that those stories are public domain, huh?

Incidentally, I wonder if Lin Wei-ting and Mandy would want a piece of the bathtub hooch!bleeprin pie, since they're the materials assessment folks, after all. No doubt Alembic's still got his old tools of the trade, but now they can openly R&D their own bleeprin formulas in the DAS labs!

Holmes and Whitson are delightful, of course, and the transposition of the RACHE scene! -chef's kiss-

Clearly this is yet another one of the Shire's excellent cultural exports, right after The Great Shire Bake-Off! Not as gritty as The High Hay, but still a very respectable procedural mystery romp with a dedicated fanbase. Hemson shippers unite!

Granted, a dragon may claim that all things in the hoard spark joy for them...

Tidying Up with Marië Kondo, now available to stream on all Elvish palanbaeth sites! Right after Menegroth and The Little Mole, obviously.

I do not mind admitting, my dear Meri, that I came close to fainting when I saw the scene. It was one of the Big Folk, a Ranger by his garb, laid flat upon his face outside the Hay Gate. Were it still dark, one might have thought him asleep, as indeed the Shirriff had when he passed by about the middle night. But the cold light of dawn revealed the unnatural stillness of his body - and the blood that had dried on the road about him.

Hemlock was there before me, of course; I have never known her to be late when there is news of blood on the ground. Such crimes are uncommon in our Shire, and as such the Shirriffs are not well equipped to deal with them. That is where Hemlock Holmes comes in; she calls herself a "Consulting Detector", and is called upon whenever the Shirriffs find themselves out of their depth.

"Ah, Whitson," she said, looking up with a smile entirely at odds with the grisly scene. "Come, tell me what you see."

I passed through the gate and gingerly approached, tying my hair back as I went. It is one of Hemlock's quirks that she never calls me Juniper, or June, or anything other than Whitson; I am not in the least certain she even knows my given name. I crouched down, careful to keep my skirts clear of the pool of blood, and looked at my friend. "I see much that I would rather not," I told her. "A Ranger of the Big Folk - murdered, I should suppose, by some bandit or creature out of the Old Forest."

"Quite so," Hemlock agreed. She pointed at a few features of the body, which to me seemed little different from any other. "Of course you can see that he had travelled far recently, probably in the Trollshaws; but though the old wound still bothered him at times, it was not enough to slow him down. It is curious about his knife, though..."

I frowned down at the sheath on the Ranger's belt. So far as I could tell, it was a perfectly ordinary knife, if sized for one of the Big Folk: suited for eating, hunting, and defence at need. I was about to say as much, but Hemlock had already moved on.

"Tell me, then," she said, nodding past me at the open gate, "what you make of that."

I turned and gaped. There were elegant Elvish letters on the gate, a handspan tall and a good three feet off the ground, written in what must be our victim's own blood, and spelling a single word: RACHE.

"That is-" For a heart-stopping moment, I thought the word to be evidence of an Elvish hand in our murder; but then I recalled that of course, the Rangers used both Elvish letters and the runes at need. "I suppose the poor man must have written it himself," I said. "'Rache' - it is no word I know. Could it be his name?"

Hemlock gave me that slightly disappointed look I have come to know so well. "Shirriff?" she called out, beckoning to the nervous hobbit beside the gate. "I believe I have something of interest."

The Shirriff approached, shivering despite the warm day. "I do hope so, Miss Holmes," he said. "I don't want to have to look at the poor man any longer than I have to, if you get my meaning."

Hemlock gave him a brief smile which suggested she got nothing of the sort. "I have determined that the Ranger was killed just before midnight," she said briskly. "If you would begin asking at the nearby houses, hopefully you will find a witness. The murderer would have approached up the Newbury road, though I cannot guarantee they returned that way."

The Shirriff's look of astonishment was second only to my own. "Just a moment!" I said, taking my friend's arm. "Surely you cannot mean to say one of our people did this!"

Hemlock treated me to that same thin smile. "You have been falling behind in your studies, my dear Whitson," she said. "Do you not recall the map of the southern lands I lent you two weeks ago? Rach, the singular of raich, as in the Sindarin name of the road to the White City, Imrath Gondraith."

I looked down at the Ranger, then back at Hemlock none the wiser. "Something to do with stone?" I hazarded.

Hemlock Holmes sighed. "The word means Stonewain," she supplied. "By the E in our message, we can deduce that the word was not completed - but see how close it comes to the gatepost? There can only be one further letter to write, and the only logical way to complete the word is to add a lambe."

"Rachel," I repeated blankly. Then it clicked. "Rach-el; I know that word! It means Elf; but in the old poems it stands for..."

"Star," Hemlock confirmed, "with the whole meaning Starry Wain. And the only Starry Wain I know of, besides the one in the northern sky, is the inn at Newbury." She took my hand and led me through the gate, back into Buckland. "You see, Whitson? When you bother to pay attention, it's quite elementary."

---

Because "Wain" is a Hobbitish name for the Plough, and Hemlock was right there. Carnë is literally 'scarlet' in Quenya; properly I should have used Sindarin Caran, but I prefer the Quenya.

(Re 'midnight': by the height of the message Hemlock deduced that it was written by a hobbit, who must have been the killer, and interrupted by the Shirriff passing by. Quite why the killer would do that, I have no idea; Newbury is close to the Old Forest, so perhaps there's a connection there.)

hS

Ohhhh, yeah, not American, probably why. Makes sense lmao. But all of this name stuff is really interesting too lmao!

You say Neshomeh, I say Neshomeh... ^_^

In January 2019, I reported that there was no Bleeprin shortage. None. No problems at all.

But before that, in May 2016, the REAL Real Multiverse Monitor^{TM pending} hacked Legal's emails and found out there was a trademark issue involving unlicensed knockoffs of Bleeprin^TM. Meir Brin wasn't happy, apparently.

All of which was inspired by a conversation with Neshomeh earlier that month, which is apparently where I first found out that the stuff is trademarked (and has promotional materials!).

It looks like Alembic Deepwarren (formerly Medical Research Division, now DAS-VOID) was running a crackerjack bleeprin plant back in '16, and my original posts suggest the otherwise-unknown Agent Daisybert was too (probably much less safely). I'm sure they'd be more than happy to spin back up if there was a shortage.

What would be nice would be if we could find a solution that still acknowledges Meir Brin as the creator of Bleeprin. She's still a real person who hasn't done anything wrong. Hmm...

-- oh.

OH!

Patents last 20 years. HFA was published in 2002. Bleeprin just went out of patent. It is now legal for lowercase bleeprin to be made by anyone mad enough to mix bleach and aspirin in their bathtub.

There you go. A nice, elegant solution.

hS

There are twelve canonical Disney Princesses (plus a whole lot more princesses who are Disney, but I don't have that kind of time), so let's work down the list.

• SNOW WHITE - not Elvish, but appears in LotR. Snow-white! Snow-white! O Lady clear! / O Queen beyond the Western Seas! It isn't actually a translation of either of Varda's Sindarin names, but might well be a rendering of Quenya Oiolossë, "Ever-snow-white", ie Taniquetil.
• CINDERELLA - very nearly Quenya. Cintarella is tiny (cinta) + an abstract suffix (re) + a polite plural 'your' (-lla). "Your tinyness" would work, and sounds like an amusing royal title.
• AURORA - Doriathrin Sindarin. Another one with that -a genitive suffix, this is a strangely repetitive word. Aur is day, and or- is... day, in the names of days. So Aurora, "day from a day".
• ARIEL - still both Quenya and Sindarin Ariel, "Noble Daughter".
• BELLE - possibly Telerin BELLE, "physical strength". I say possibly, because this isn't attested in the later phases; but the use of bel- words to indicate strength continues in Sindarin.
• JASMINE - corrupted Quenya. There is no J in any Elvish language, so we have to spell it with a Y. Unfortunately there's not a lot of late Y words to choose from... best I can do is Yassemina, "once upon a time - eager", or something like "let's start the story!".
• POCAHONTAS - -_- but oddly enough, straight Quenya. Pocahontas, "before-after-heart-pointing/there", or "always follow your heart".
• MULAN - close to Sindarin. Going for the pronunciation this time, I would pick Muilann, "dreary gift". It might even shorten to Mulann over time.
• TIANA - Quenya, from tie-ana > Tiana, "towards the road".
• RAPUNZEL - haha no, that's not Elvish. That -nz- tells me it's obviously Adunaic, the language of Numenor. With the tiny word list, the closest I can get is raba+inzil > Rabênzil, "dog flower".
• MERIDA - nearly Sindarin, meril+îdh+a > Merîdha. It means something like "from the repose of the rose".
• MOANA - Quenya, sort of. I'm actually going to combine a Qenya and Quenya word here and write moa, "sheep", +ná, "that is a fact" > Moana - "yes, it's a sheep!".

hS

Two words, in fact. Condo is an unusual form of Quenya cundo, "Lord", usually found in compounds. But from back in Tolkien's early days of writing Qenya, when he still used K, we also have Kondo itself - meaning "dragon".

hS

So everyone knows Bleeprin's a wonder drug, can't live without it, a major staple of the average agent's food pyramid, etc.

However, something a lot of people might forget (unless they've been reading the Wiki recently, anyway) is that Bleeprin comes from the Hogwarts Fanfiction Academy. It's manufactured by the mini-Aragogs.

Given all the issues surrounding HFA's headmistress, I wouldn't be surprised if there's plenty of agents looking for other sources of Bleeprin, or just other mind-erasing substances in general. A couple thoughts on that courtesy of a chat between me and Nesh late last night (for me):

• Bleeprin is a brand for a proprietary combination of brain bleach and aspirin. This means there's a generic version somewhere, maybe with a different name.
• If there is no generic version of Bleeprin, there could still be generic brain bleach. It is a meme, after all. Bleeprin just made it easier to consume. I mean, is brain bleach topically applied to the eyes, ingested, or mainlined?
• What about the HFA setting allows for the creation of Bleeprin? Normally, bleach (like Clorox) is created by running electric current through saltwater. Would that be substituted for magical energy in the creation of Bleeprin? Could someone with magical energy, saltwater, and powdered willow bark create bathtub hooch!Bleeprin?
• Is the headmistress still in charge at HFA? If, say, Meir Brin and co. sacked her, would it still be ethical to support HFA financially through the purchase of Bleeprin?
• Or you could switch to Suebuprofen. (This message was brought to you by the Continuity Council of Gallifrey-in-Exile. I think.)

What do you think about the Bleeprin conundrum? Should agents find a different source or experiment with their own knockoffs? Does there exist a generic equivalent? Or are your agents switching to Suebuprofen/some other mind-erasing wonder drug?

No, the Silmarils do not spark joy.

Something something victim writing "rache" in an attempt to point out the wain-driver before they die...

Ideally I'd like more filtered searches but I don't know how feasible that is :P

No horse in the "collapse thread" race, though. Maybe the option to hide what has been read, but again, not sure how feasible that is?

but it turns out I didn't, because my brain is on "let's not and say we did" mode. Anyway, happy Boardiversary!!

And by which I mean see if their existing names already make plausible elf names, and translate them if they don't. We already have Ariel, now for the others…

Okay, I'll cool it with the badfic reporting, guys. :P

Hi! I'm AstralCat, and my two main fandoms are Pokémon and One Piece. I am also slightly into Warrior Cats, though not as much as the first two. I am also a proud Redditor (AstralCat69420) and Troper (jacksonk987). My favorite goodfic is This Bites, and you can read it here.

I'm looking forward to doing my first mission!

Are there several ways of pronouncing it?

I think this is a fitting song for the occasion: The Last Length