The Return of Menace

[Dominus Digg]

Article

[NobleBear]

It's odd for me, as much as I love animal synthesis and anthropomorphism, I've never gotten the bugbear. ever.

I think it's because I tend toward the literal and the creature in question doesn't seem to particularly represent either component part implied in the name. It makes my brain hurt.

Artistic interpretations very, but if I had to make a guess as to what it might be the product of, I'd say some alternate universe Gizmo, where, instead of turning into a full gremlin when fed after midnight, instead becomes a larger, feral, more bulked out version of himself. Of course, to accept that explanation I would have to overlook the detail that the creature existed before the movie by a good 10 years. But, hey, as long as I'm making it up, why go halfway?

Perhaps its one of those mysteries of the universe, destined to go unexplained; right up there with how many licks it really takes to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop.

[Dominus Digg]

Agreed.

The actual bug-bear is visualized by the Umberhulk,

which is umber colored but doesnt start out as a Ed Norton, then become the monster after being bloodied.

Goblin bear is too unwieldy, gobear too, how about Urblin? Ur from Ursa, latin for bear.

[NobleBear]

For urblin, the phonemes seem too round and thus make him sound cute; but I like the direction you're going in.

Hmm...

As a suggestion, if we assume him to be part ursine hulk and part gremlin, then we could say he was a gremsine (pronounced [grim-sign] or[grim-scene]), perhaps. It doesn't roll off the tongue as well, but it would seem to evoke thoughts of a more serious stature.

[Nicole]

It seems to be the victim of the desire to use pre-existing terms for legendary creatures to add to the air of familiar myth and folklore to Tolkien's books, and one step further to the monster manual of D&D. The term's original meaning does not align with the current game concept.

Dictionary.com reference for bugbear:

bug·bear Audio Help /ˈbʌgˌbɛər/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[buhg-bair] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun 1. any source, real or imaginary, of needless fright or fear.
2. a persistent problem or source of annoyance.
3. Folklore. a goblin that eats up naughty children.

The imagery of a monstrous cross between a...bug and a bear, hulking and nightmarish, may have originally been appropriate. D&D drift from original concept is not a unique occurence. Hobgoblins of D&D do not in any way resemble Robin Goodfellow. The manual took all "goblin"-y names and unified the concept rather than taking the generic concept of goblin, and inventing fresh names for sub-species.

A GOOD thing, I think, as this would have probably resulted in the sort of stat-based fragmentations that the elves were victims of.

Wood goblins and sylvan goblins- slightly different, although I always forget how.. grey goblins that are generic and green goblins that are peaceful pumpkin farmers. Sea goblins because wouldn't water breathing goblins for no good reason be awesome? Winged goblins- I think Piers Anthony's Xanth novels had one of these.... And of course, light goblins, which are the rejects of the goblin world, always lawful good and living in shining hilltop cities in a inversion of the goblin mould....

And an evil light goblin pirate would have to deal with the prejudice that non-goodly creatures have against light goblins, as he breaks free of his race's enlightened ways and seeks a new path in the dark places of the earth and the monstrous wilds...



It's better this way.

[Dominus Digg]

I doubt goblins could ever have that much fragmentation given their innate ugliness and minion role creates little to no fan demand. Every bad ass in Tolkein is an elf or elf-related or a goddamn dragon or Sauron. Goblins are apparently the smaller bad guys contrasted by the bigger orcs with Uruks being the elves of goblins and orcs.

Bugbears are now the vulgarized term for a D&D monster that looks kinda like a bipedal bear, hangs out with goblins, is strong and worth 200 XP. Linguistic evolution has diluted that dictionary entry into obscurity.

I like that Prescott the 4E artist gave the goblinoids a vague family resemblance with the prognastic mouth and flat triangular ears. Grimsine (sign) I like but Noble must decide for it to be sine or scene lest spawning hundreds of debates like the correct drow (cow) vs the idiotic drow (crow).

[Chad]

With respect to LOTR, there are some non-elf bad asses. The Ents, Barrow-Wights, the man on the floating city by the lonely mountain (Bard I think), and several other Dwarfs. I think the fragmentations of Elves may have resulted because Tolkien was so ambiguous about the different sort of Elves, most people who read the books don't really care that Elrond was a lonely half-elves, or that the gray elves hestitated and lingered in Middle Earth when the Valor called the elves to live with them to save them from Melkor.

The stat based differences of wood elves, gray elves, and so forth in my opinion makes as much sense as providing stat differences for Irish and Japanese nationalities ;-p

[Nicole]

Drow (pronounced either /draʊ/, rhymes with "now", or /droʊ/, rhymes with "throw") is a mythical elf-like creature in Scottish folklore which lived in caves and forged magical metal work.


I think the D&D version would win. But either pronunciation is correct.

A lot of words have variant pronunciations or spellings. Nothing wrong with that. No one ever likes the "You're both correct..." answer to conflict, though.

Although, if Grimsine was based on the bear-like attributes of the subspecies, "Sign" would be correct. They sound much more menacing and less goofy than bugbear. I imagine bugbears call themselves that, and get irritated when people call them bugbears. An insult to the noble Grimsine race! Bugs, indeed!

Folklore vs. Monster Manual creature battles. Sorry. Can't help it. I'm a girl. I like faerie tales. Unicorns pissing rainbows, and such.

[Dominus Digg]

It's drow rhyming with cow; the other is a slang for hydroponically grown marijuana ... so I hear.

When I played a hobgoblin I invented the racial name Nomo, from their patron deity Nomog-Geaya plus it went with the Japanese sounding theme I'd set up with the character Noriyuk.

I think, technically, unicorns fart rainbows and piss Alize