Rabbi Tupac posted:

Where is this beautiful thing from?

Rabbi Tupac posted:

Where is this beautiful thing from?

dwarf74 posted:

Xanth. Do not read it. Never, ever read it. It's an attempt at light-hearted comedy fantasy - with excursions into extremely lovely sexism, idiotic characters willing to let the world suffer for their own honor, plus what could charitably be called "the author working through his pedo tendencies"

BonHair posted:

PYF exonyms.

Badger of Basra posted:

The Portgueuse name for Prague is Praga which is also the Portuguese word for "plague."

Platystemon posted:

‘Libya’ and ‘Africa’ have almost swapped meanings since Roman times.

‘Libya’ was the entire continent. ‘Africa’ was a province on the Mediterranean Sea, not coterminous with the modern state of Libya but overlapping in areas.

SlothfulCobra posted:

Drawing fake maps that look believable is hard because the map of Earth is full of ridiculous shapes that don't make sense. Sulawesi? Ridiculous. Why is one big ocean full of islands and the other basically empty? There's a boot peninsula right next to a peninsula that looks like a hand?

And then it's a lot weirder and more awkward to draw inland maps of geographic features because most of the big maps that we're used to are more for naval navigation anyways.

Honj Steak posted:

Norimberga, Lipsia and Francoforte sul Meno are also p good.

FreudianSlippers posted:

Kiev is still Kænugarður in Icelandic but the endonym is becoming more and more common.

Guavanaut posted:

eSwatini and Czechia seem to have taken off in a way that Côte d'Ivoire never did.

Pope Hilarius II posted:

Maybe because it's recognisably French, even if it is what they want to be called? We still say 'Ivoorkust' because we recognise 'Côte d'Ivoire' is the same thing but in French.

Guavanaut posted:

Konec Hry posted:

All hail the mighty iStock empire

Vivian Darkbloom posted:

Starks posted:

Counterpoint: “Côte d’Ivoire” is fun as hell to say

OddObserver posted:

It's even funnier since it's sometimes used verbatim, untranslated a such in Russian, and "Kot" is the word for a cat.

elise the great posted:

First things first: we actually do know what elves called their dicks, because even the glorious JRRT couldn't keep his hands out of his pants. The poetic term (yes, elves seem to have engaged in erotic poetry) would be gwî, but for everyday usage gwib was the preferred term. Puntl is provided as the coarse, moderately transgressive term, and likely what you would be invited to suck if you went down on a male elf. Alas, due to the ban on the Noldorin language, we have no surviving slang for Fëanor's johnson.

Second, if we assume that JRRT's intention is the guiding light for inferred details of the history and function of Arda, we are left with several clues as to the genital features of elves. In early drafts of the Silmarillion and pre-LotR writings that would eventually give rise to the War of the Ring, JRRT called them "gnomes" rather than "elves," a detail that reflects his internal monologue about them and is consistent with his para-LotR writings about them, including mutilations, betrayals, incest, genocide, colonial violence, and misotheistic rebellion. His mental image during the construction of Ardan history was almost certainly closer to the Rankin-Bass imagery than the Peter Jackson interpretation. Thus we are left to interpret the idea of gnomes-- a Paracelsean ideology tied closely to alchemy-- and of their Germanic and Norse equivalents, nature and household spirits that include classic Germanic dweorgs (that is, dwarves) but with the added qualification of tallness as a common indicator of worthiness.

I discern here between dwarf-figures of Greek and British mythology, which tend to be lusty, massively endowed pranksters, and gnomes/dweorgs, which are rarely cast in a sexual light. Some textual support could be interpreted for the influence of Pan on the elves, given that Silvan elves (and their Rivendell cousins) are singing, dancing, merry-making, traveler-harassing figures throughout the books. If we adhere to this interpretation, elves are probably packing huge veiny wangs that could put your loving eye out while you're trying to slip em the suck.

I feel that it is, however, more likely that JRRT would have viewed his elves as more romantic and less sexual. Certainly they reproduce at an exceedingly slow rate and for an incredibly small window of their adult lives. A Panic elf would be extremely unlikely to live for two thousand or more years and sire no more than three or four offspring. For this reason, we are most likely dealing with the less overt sexual characteristics of a Paracelsean elf, which rules out giant Priapus-style horse cocks that are eternally bone-ready, but leaves us with less to go on than we might need, if we're gonna pour a giant silicone elf dick.

Ah, but now we've alluded to reproductive evidence of elvish sexual activity, and down this road we find some very interesting possibilities. For one thing, the gnomes of Paracelsus were closely related to the concept of the homunculus, and tended to be sexless or at most secondary-masculine (think garden gnomes). We can assume, in combination with the romantic, Victorianistic leanings of JRRT, that male elves were not afflicted with unwanted boners, and found it fairly simple to reserve their sexual activity to intramarital intercourse. Additionally, in the extracurricular writing Laws and Customs of the Elves (LACE henceforth), we find some fascinating aspects of elvish sexuality laid bare. Elves are incapable, it seems, of adultery, which actually kills them. They are also heavily implied to be incapable of masturbation, and are explicitly hesitant to remarry after the death of a spouse, which carries over into the Silmarillion, when Fëanor's father seeks permission from the spirit of his mother (who has died in childbirth) to remarry. Clearly, something about their physiology and/or psychology is not compatible in any way with promiscuity, and the consequences of promiscuity can be literally fatal.

The lethality of sex can, I feel, be best comprehended as an immune function similar to rH incompatibility between mother and fetus. It would, from an evolutionary standpoint, benefit a male elf (ellyn) to be certain that his offspring are actually his own, since their gestation and childhood are protracted and may consume a great deal of resources. This may have resulted in a gradual evolutionary arms race, in which an ellyn might conjugate not only his genetic material but also a dose of antibodies and/or chimeric B-cells, which are keyed to attack all sperm without his specific antigen set. In return, the female elf (or elleth) might perhaps develop her own antibody/B-cell dosage, but this begs the question of how to confer them to the male, since transmission of microbes from vagina to penis is much less reliable than the inverse. I am getting a horrible idea and I will refer back to this concept in a moment.

So assuming that extramarital sex results in autoimmune-induced death similar to anaphylaxis in mechanism, we ask ourselves: what about the other compelling aspect of elvish sexuality, that of interbreeding with humans? Leaving out the question of DNA compatibility-- which is demonstrated in canon, and which we must accept as legitimate if we are to consider this topic at all-- we have a disturbing question to address. We have multiple incidents throughout the history of Beleriand and Middle-Earth of elven/human offspring, all of which occur between a Man and an elleth. Given that the two species are capable of creating not only hybrids but fertile hybrids (Elrond produced three offspring), it is foolish to imagine that in all of Ardan history there was never a potential ellyn-woman romance that resulted in offspring, unless there was something preventing reproduction between ellyn and woman that did not exist between man and elleth. The safest bet is not that all ellyn-woman romances remained chaste-- anyone who's met a teenager can tell you better than that-- but that ellyn-woman sexual activity is incapable of producing offspring.

This is extremely unusual, as the most obvious reason for sex-discriminant infertility is more likely to favor female humans than male humans. Human ova contain mitochondria, while human sperm consume their mitochondrial power for motility and do not confer mitochondrial DNA to their offspring. Either something is happening on an immune/cellular level, which would seem to conflict with our immunological theory of lethal adultery, or something is happening on the mechanical level-- something which is, perhaps, related to the transference of female immune material to the male partner.

Perhaps, to put it crudely, the ellyn just can't get it up.

In humans, the penis consists of several structures of erectile tissue which cradle the urethra between them. This specialized tissue is capable of interrupting venous return, creating penile engorgement and thus erection by trapping blood within the corpus cavernosum. This tissue is notoriously indiscriminant about stimuli, making it easy for male humans to ejaculate without even the participation of another human. Elves, on the other hand, can't even masturbate, an activity so universal among species with external genitalia that it's almost unimaginable for a species capable of poetry to be incapable of wanking. And yet human males can couple with elven females. This implies some weird-rear end poo poo, so I suggest you pour yourself that drink right now.

Male elves achieve erection by external constriction. To have sex, they need some biological equivalent of a cock ring. Whether their penises are "innies" or just flaccid except during intercourse, they are incapable of restricting venous return on their own... and yet the elven vulva must be compatible to some degree with penetration, or else man/elleth coupling wouldn't produce offspring. One may, if one is willing to consider extreme possibilities, entertain the idea that the elven vulva may exhibit some mechanical trait that assists the ellyn in achieving erection by constriction, by restricting venous return through strangulation.

Something that would not put off human males universally, although it might make man/elleth couplings more rare and account for the relative scarcity of elf/human offspring.

Something that would make it impossible for an ellyn to penetrate a woman, or to achieve orgasm and ejaculation with a human female.

Something that would even allow the ellyn to contribute internal disposition of antibodies and B-cells reliably, potentially through urethral penetration of the penis.

The elvish vulva, my friends, consists of outer labia, inner labia, a vaginal vestibule opening on a penetrable vaginal canal, and a set of tentacles.

In elven intercourse, the vulval tentacles constrict and penetrate the flaccid penis, simultaneously permitting/inducing erection and depositing immune bodies deep in the genitourinary tract, most likely the bladder, where they can swim up the ureters to the renal anastomosis and infiltrate the bloodstream. The erect elvish penis is then able to deposit its genetic-- and immune-- material within the vagina. Human females, having no corollary to these tentacles, can arouse a male elf and even engage in non-PIV sexual activity, but can never obtain genetic material from male elves, and therefore no ellyn/woman pregnancies occur.

For human females, this means you can have a hot elf boyfriend that can never get you pregnant, but he's likely to leave you eventually for somebody who can actually get him off. Male elves probably got the gently caress around in Middle-Earth, since they could chow down on human pussy for decades before settling down with a nice elleth who would get knocked up as soon as they exchanged fluids.

For human males, this means that you're totally capable of landing a hot lady elf, as long as you don't mind her tentacles crawling up your dick every time you shark her in the rear end while she's asleep, and as long as you don't mind that she can totally cheat on you and in fact might have chosen to gently caress you specifically because she can screw around behind your back without breaking out in a fatal case of hives.

Aragorn was one kinky-rear end fucker.

And if you read all the way through this drunken, giggling spiel, the silicone elf dick you're looking for is of normal to generous proportion, but it's strangled up and down with simulated tentacles, or at least constricted by a really tight cock ring.


I thought way the gently caress too much about this. I consulted the LACE about this. gently caress every last one of you for goading me into this nightmare of grisly overanalytic humiliation. I hope all your girlfriends catch you.

System Metternich posted:

The German word for ivory is Elfenbein (lit. "elf‘s bone") which makes Côte d'Ivoire ("Elfenbeinküste") super tolkienesque if you think about it

Platystemon posted:

quote:

Alas, due to the ban on the Noldorin language, we have no surviving slang for Fëanor's johnson.

System Metternich posted:

The German word for ivory is Elfenbein (lit. "elf‘s bone") which makes Côte d'Ivoire ("Elfenbeinküste") super tolkienesque if you think about it

Take the plunge! Okay! posted:

That’s cool! Serbo-Croatian for Istanbul is Carigrad, which means Emperor’s City. Alas, it is archaic and it’s falling out of use.

Požun for Bratislava

Groda posted:

"Gdansk"

Reveilled posted:

My homebrew D&D campaign setting is almost literally just a mirror image of the Bosporus: