I need a Valium the size of a hockey puck

Again, sorry if this sounds weird-

Do not be fooled by my positive commentary in the tags, they are just as insane as I am:

My dad built a fake bomb in a high school project in the 70's for the FBI touring fair, they wanted to hire him after his primary schooling was over to join their bomb reconstruction team, He said no and to quote him: "He's been behaving and building model trains ever since". My mom was a waitress and pastry chef in Vegas and got to pet Siegfried and Roy's large cats when animals in circus shows were still allowed. The Lions all loved her. My sister @anubisrahorakhty took a masters in writing and does equestrian riding as a hobby, both of which is insane enough on its own. My bro is a batshit crazy comedian with social anxiety and heart of gold.

That's not even counting all the socially adopted siblings/friends/grandparents *my parents* decided were their responsibility to support too. Even though they've never met in person, if me or my siblings talked about them enough, to them: they were their kids now. like some pack of wolves adopting a dog that got lost in the woods.

Yes @x-villain-vibes-x @snarky-badger and @inthewildyrness, I'm so sorry it was revealed this way: You're adopted, and there's no escape. XD

This has been happening all month with little to no international media attention. Here are a few organizations you can check out for resources or to support:

ActionAid India

SEEDS India

GlobalGiving

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:

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

Merry: I mean you could do that but consider

Merry: you can only tell him ONCE

Legolas: umm well your accent is horrible

Aragorn: *hollering from a distance* HIS ACCENT IS BETTER THAN YOURS LEGOLAS YOU SILVAN HICK

Legolas: y’alld’ve’ff’ve

Frodo: Good morrow to thee, frend. I hope we twain shalle bee moste excellente companions.

Legolas: Wots that mate? ‘Ere, you avin’ a giggle? Fookin’ ‘obbits, I sware.

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 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.

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.

black hair? check. bad parent(s)? check. trauma? double check.

bruce: how’d you get your scar?

zuko: my dad got mad at me for saying that killing people is wrong so he lit my face on fire and banished me.

J: "wan na kno w h ow i go t thes e sc ar s"

Consider

Iroh: you too must learn patience. Boiling the water ruins the delicate flavor of the white jade

Alfred: oh I'm dreadfully sorry - for some reason I expected this tea to have TEA in it

(later)

Alfred: *aggressively laying out full tea service with milk, lemon, sugar, and, just to drive his point in, jam*

while Zuko is enthusiastic about cream and sugar

You may need to learn how to set up your paints and such… but this is what people did, live, while the show aired. That’s what the show was for. I had family members create lovely works of art they enjoyed, which I still have on my walls, because William Alexander and Bob Ross both said:

SCREW METICULOUS CLASSICAL ART PRACTICES — JUST GRAB A PALETTE KNIFE AND BIG OLD BRUSH AND PAINT!

They freed a whole generation of people who were taught to paint detail and realism and exact representation of reality — people who largely gave up this kind of thing because it got tedious.

I watched the joy of family members as they rediscovered art as a messy fun spontaneous half hour activity.