Harpies Artsy?

So I was looking at... don't remember what, but it made me think of harpies and slur language. One thing led to another, and then I had a few ideas.

First of all, a handful of characters (Two handfuls, actually... Vivian ... more than handfuls!) rely on harpies to keep 'em updated. Mebbe we could make them the official gossip columnists of Felarya, with more than a little penchant for exaggeration and dramatizing. The fact that they're the ones best suited to flying around (if there was anything big enough in the sky to eat the giant ones, it'd have to be invisible or else we'd have seen 'em already) also makes them the most likely species to get around and travel. Now, given they're savages, I'd reckon they wouldn't trade much of anything with that ability... but I'm sure it'd make them the best at getting the best view, and at getting the gossip spread far and wide. Other than dryads, that is... but unlike dryads, they don't sleep 30 hours a day, and they are a lot easier to relate to.

Now, speaking of the best view, well, harpies get views no one else can. I mean, they fly, and while this might not sound like much to harpies themselves, they're the only species that can go so high they can see the sea from the top of the atmosphere, and watch the sun go down in the horizon. Would it surprise anyone if harpies had the best shot at getting the inspiration so many of us are writer's blocked 'cause we don't have?

And speaking of writer's block, I've always wondered when did harpies get that mouthful of cursewords. I think I've found a possible alternative. Maybe harpies consider their speech a form of art... I mean, I'm sure these talons can be very, very agile (I've seen videos of people without hands weaving baskets with their toes. I'm impressed. Surely we all would be) but I'd still expect most of their art to be word of mouth. So I thought maybe harpies like that kind of language? They like the art that goes with it and it kinda bleeds off into everything they do. Maybe harpies are into noir, where every mortal's bothersome mask is cracked open in word, an omniscient narrator mercilessly baring the ever so private filth lurking in every heart, just to delight a voyeur they never met! Maybe it is Lovecraft's art, and his bilious muse pleases the unbecoming ears of those licentious tramps, so infatuated with his abusive prose that they squeal it back to every fleshling they meet. Maybe someone gave them a thesaurus and they learned all the bad words. Basically, what I'm saying is that harpies could actually be versatile oratory performers, rather than the Tourette Girls (OMG I HAVE ALL YOUR ALBUMS! Can I get an autograph?).

Were this so, were harpies to consider their speech artful rather than abusive, then we could expect some harpies to be counter-culture, and avoid that hip lingo, using different registers instead of the default, all of them taking a great deal of work. I'd suppose we could have harpies that praise life with every breath, harpies that rhyme every other word, and probably one or two that presents her information formal and academically, using a neutral point of view ^{[citation needed]}. Personally, I'd like it if harpies actually had a variety of registers, but saved most of them for special occassions. It'd be a hella thing to think about if a harpy suddenly started talking like wikipedia, or recited an Edgar Allan Poe short story. It might even give them something to put them on the intellectual level of sphinxes, who'd come off as saner, rather than nicer, when you think of it this way.

They could also think it's also expected of them to share information using their registers, as they hold their own communication to be a form of art in itself, and their current language is just a widespread trend. I mean, only dryads can spread info faster than they do, and even then, their waking time and reliance in memory is a bottleneck. Dryads aren't renowned for their creativity (yet).


How's this? Gives you any ideas?