T w e n t y S i d e d
It’s Christmas! What are you doing on my blog? Why don’t you go watch that one Christmas movie you love? Or eat some food? No? Socialize a bit maybe? You’ve done all that? That’s not your thing?
Okay then. I guess I can share this YouTube video with you. After all, the nature of snooty fantasy elves is a topic near and dear to my heart.
Link (YouTube) |
Anyway. No matter what you do with the day, have a good one. Later in the week we’ll have another Andromeda post, and then next week we’ll be doing my end-of-year retrospective.
Merry Christmas, you big crazy internet.
Overused Words in Game Titles
I scoured the Steam database to figure out what words were the most commonly used in game titles.
Project Octant
A programming project where I set out to make a Minecraft-style world so I can experiment with Octree data.
The Strange Evolution of OpenGL
Sometimes software is engineered. Sometimes it grows organically. And sometimes it's thrown together seemingly at random over two decades.
Batman v. Superman Wasn't All Bad
It's not a good movie, but it was made with good intentions and if you look closely you can find a few interesting ideas.
Quakecon Keynote 2013 Annotated
An interesting but technically dense talk about gaming technology. I translate it for the non-coders.
Christmas elves seem a lot like hobbits…
North pole elves are burrow elves I guess?
Nadolig llawen!
A blwyddyn newydd hapus i chi a’ch un chi.
I was worried you wouldn’t get a comment for 12 hours, Shamus. That would be a travesty!
It’s Christmas! What are you doing on my blog?
Still Jewish.
Me: still antisocial.
Still curmudgeonly.
Yeah, but curmudge is wasted without an audience.
Merry Christmas all!
It is currently tomorrow where I am.
You need a very … unconventional (time) frame of reference to make it even possible for this statement to become true.
Unless you were sending this message from before the Big Bang, in which case I have a very important question for you: is there ice cream with dark matter flavour?
Still in Australia, where it’s the day after Christmas today due to time zone shenanigans.
Same here. XD Happy Boxing Day!
Still a night owl and everyone else is worn out for the day.
(Okay, this is much later than others.)
Still having all the family stuff on the 25th.
Aww! You didn’t even wrap it!
We ?ussians don’t have Christmas today, so we can do whatever we want! :)
Ahem. What was I about to say? Oh right, Merry Christmas!
You mean we can go to work like every other day of the week :)?
Umm… yes, yes, I guess that’s about right. :)
On another note…how come the plural of ‘dwarf’ has traditionally been ‘dwarfs’, but the plural of ‘elf’ has always been ‘elves’? We even have ‘elfin’ as an adjective, but somehow ‘elfs’ almost never shows up.
I’ve actually seen “dwarves” more often than “dwarfs”. But it is weird how I’ve also never seen “elfs”…
We have Tolkien to thank for “dwarves”. It was pretty universally “dwarfs” before that. I am not sure why…
We had lunch and are relaxing for a bit before we start figuring out where all these new toys are going to go. I think some existing toys will be going bye-bye. Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and/or bah humbug to all :-)
Tolkein actually used “dwarves” as much easier than the *proper* Anglo-Saxon pluralization of the German root, which would have been “dwarrows”, which you can still see in the Dwarven name of Moria, the Dwarrowdelf. Dwarfs he regarded as an infantilization of the language. (He also drove “elves” instead of “elfs”.)
That’s a linguist for you. Dwarves just sounds so much better, so it should be right. :)
I for one propose we start calling them Dwarrows, because that sounds like a small bird and is hilarious.
‘dwarfs’ is ‘multiple people with dwarfism’, which Tolkien explicitly wanted separate from his race of Dwarves.
(and it’s probably good practice for anyone writing fantasy to do this, really – plus we get the happy convenience of elves and dwarves matching, which does sound much better than ‘elfs’ and ‘dwarfs’)
Checks out!
‘Dorfs’ is becoming more common these days.
Don’t forget that Aelfs are a thing now, as well…
I think you mean ALFs and it’s Melmacians, thank you very much.
I only ever saw ‘dorf’ on the Bay 12 Forums, where Urists of all nations unite.
Merry Christmas day! I’m with the inlaws, so have to keep this brief.
plot twist: Christmas elves were engineered by the same species that created the Remnant!
You mean Cerberus, don’t you?
*smokes cigarette, ominously*
Merry Christmas once more to all of good will.
Christmas was hours ago. It’s now the awkward time where the whole world, having hyped up Christmas for weeks if not months, is working as quickly as possible to remove all evidence of it’s passing.
Most of the world, anyway. I’ve still got 10 days of feasting to do.
Y’know, there is a bridge between the two varities of elves. In the Hobbit, they sing the song O what are you doing . Strangely, that was cut out of the movie. It’s hard to imagine Elrond singing that, let alone Fëanor. But maybe Legolas, if he gets really drunk one night…
I think I know why that was cut out of the movie.
The differences between UK and US english are a source of endless merryment.
Merry Christmas, you big crazy blogger/author/composer!
Oh cool, we’re talking about College Humor! See the guy playing the high elf? His name is Brennan, and he’s the best comedian these days on College Humor (and they have a really good team right now). What you all need to do is check out Fantasy High, it’s a D&D game set in a kind of 1960 american town, but also in a D&D world, more specifically its high school. So you get the snooty neurotic preppy high elf wizard, the goblin Veronica Mars, or the super awkward barbarian orc who has been raised by gnomes who can’t exactly relate to his blood rage.
The players are almost all College Humor comedians, and they’re very very good. Murph and Emily are actually D&D veteran and have their own, hilarious Dnd podcast that I also can’t recommend enough!