#idk if this makes sense. eh. whatever.

[drunk-poets-society]

Kinda blows my mind sometimes when people don’t understand that there really is no wrong way to analyse media.

Everyone looks at things differently, and any personal interpretations are heavily influenced by the self, and one’s own life experiences that have shaped them.

No two people deal with problems the same way. Although a basic understanding of what the author was trying to convey is important, in media of an ambiguous nature it is up for interpretation because such is the nature of ambiguity.

Of course, reading comprehension and background knowledge is very important in literary analyses, which is why media analyses are grouped into distinct sections, that is; a completely neutral perspective, in which one draws the analysis around the stencils of societal values, which may not always be morally correct, but is completely detached from humanity, I.e., existing solely as a concept which is to be applied, much like concepts of mathematics.

And then there’s the reader’s own interpretation which is heavily biased and influenced by personal experiences. Whence one draws parallels with one’s life, and other forms of media consumed, concepts of personal favour, etc.

in this section of literary analysis, there is no wrong interpretation as it draws from personal interests. This is also, the kind of analysis we see most on the internet, or just discussing media with people in real life. It’s tainted heavily with personal biases, which are sometimes believed to be factual by people, sometimes almost to the point of genuine hatred of others that do not agree with them.

Thus we see the phenomena of name-calling and other things. The belief that one’s personal interpretation is the only correct one, and the rest of them are all wrong.

Sometimes the inability to acknowledge the fact that everyone is different, and will thus have different interpretations of media, leads to immense psychological distress, which can simply be avoided by not engaging in debates in an uncivil manner.

That’s why I don’t try to change people’s minds about my favourite pieces of media, my interpretation is my own, and though it might overlap and share many of its points with others, they relate to me in a different way. The nature of humanity is such that each experience is so alarmingly universal yet so painfully unique.

[karaspal]

jon’a age up genuinely becomes a good story once you start looking at it as a metaphor. like grant morrison said, superman has normal problems on bigger scales. and this story is meant to represent growing up. there are three angles i’d like to point out.

nightwing (2016) #103

the first, and most obvious, is the feeling of growing up too quickly. it goes hand to hand with the regret of not doing enough reckless, fun things while you had the freedom to. a lot of people, especially in current years, feel like they’ve missed out on the teen experience. it’s usually due to mental health struggles and not having the energy to - the volcano represents that. a prison that holds jon and stops him from enjoying his youth.

superman (2018) #7

the second angle is from a parent’s point of view. parents usually feel like the time they spend with their kid flies by too quick. lois and clark saw jon being a happy 10-year-old and just three weeks later, he was 17 years old. this is a representation of the “they grow up too fast”. although, in their case, they do grow up too fast indeed.

action comics (2016) #1038

the most overlooked and, in my opinion, interesting angle is the portrayal of the distance that grows between the kid and their parents during their teen years. being a teenager is hard enough, but having parents who don’t understand your struggles makes it even worse. those are the years you develop your own self, instead of mimicking your parents. it’s a period of self-discovery. sometimes, parents are understanding and helpful. sometimes, they refuse to accept you are your own person so in their head, you stay the last age they liked you. this disconnect, where parents cling to an idealized version of their child, often leads them to ignore the teenager's struggles. and in doing so, a rift forms in the relationship.

it isn’t exactly like this with clark and jon, of course. had jon grew up with his folks, clark would’ve been more than happy to help his son navigate finding his true self. but jon didn’t. in clark’s eyes, he went from 10 to 17 in a matter of weeks. it’s hard to understand your son when suddenly he isn’t the kid who followed you around all the time anymore. when clark is wounded, he dreams of jon as a kid. it’s how he sees him still. and that’s not fair to jon, who is very much not that kid anymore.

mere weeks before that, jon begged clark to stay, but clark reassured him it’s fine. he couldn’t see how much jon truly was struggling. jon didn’t want clark to stay because he is superman, he wanted clark to stay because he needed his dad.

and clark tries to be a good dad, he does. and jon wants them to be close again, he wants nothing more. but the first step in mending their relationship is to accept it could never go back to the way it was. this is a time long passed, and they have to find a new footing in their relationship.

i’m sure there are more angles to this story, but those are the three i see. it’s not the best story, but once you looked at it as a metaphor and not a literal story, it becomes better.

[storfulsten]

´`

[stinkypeanutbutter]

me rn making an aiden angst fanfic and I’m literally dying over it I’m making him struggle fr

[mewling-central]

The Collective Seraphic Writing System

This post is going to be the one dedicated to explaining how the Seraphic writing system works. This writing system is entirely digital, as physical writing is no longer in everyday use throughout the Collective, so it's a bit inconvenient to actually write out. It's also weird to read, because it's written in a way that makes the assumption that you know how to speak and understand Seraphic, but I'll try to explain what I can.

Seraphic has two written forms: longform and shortform. Longform is used primarily to teach young instars how to read and write, and as a way to show how a shortform word is meant to be read. Shortform is the main form of writing, and due to its complication it's usually put off for a year or two before being taught in pupariums. Shortform is the method I'll be teaching today. It's primarily morpho-phonetic, with elements of both an alphabet and grammatical logograms, and is written bottom-to-top and right-to-left in reverse boustrophedon (the path of writing goes up, flips 180°, and goes back down). Because of this, you're expected to be able to read both right-side-up and upside-down. For this post, I'll be using an example sentence to highlight specifics areas of the writing system, as shown below:

It reads: nJasāğn k'œ̄nan ālxōr e-fya.

"There are 16 dull knives on the floor."

There are seven elements you need to be aware of when writing in Seraphic: the alphabet, class cartouches, procedural and plural ligatures, preposition glyphs, tone diacritics, numerals, and punctuation. I'll be going through each one step-by-step.

Alphabet

The alphabet makes up the majority of Seraphic writing. There are 30 consonants and 6 vowels, and they all arrange into syllable blocks called "cells". Each consonant takes one of three forms depending on if it is at the start of the syllable, before a vowel, or at the end of a syllable. The alphabet is featural, meaning that the way each letter is written is meant to encode its pronunciation. Here is the alphabet in full:

Each consonant (excluding the ejectives) showcases the three variant forms it can take (similar to capital and lowercase letters in the latin alphabet). The largest, leftmost character is the form that hosts the interior vowels within it. The rightmost vertical form is used when preceeding another consonant, and the upmost horizontal form is used at the end of syllables. If a syllable contains a syllablic consonant, the main consonant will have no vowel within it and instead a syllable-final form of one of the syllabic consonants (r, l, m, n, or ŋ) placed on top of it.

Concerning vowels, they are solely meant to be written within consonants, acting sort of like internal diacritics. They cannot exist on their own, nor can more than one be written within the same consonant (Seraphic doesn't allow diphthongs), and if a vowel must be written by itself it is written within the glottal stop letter ' (in this instance acting as an independant vowel holder).

These rules apply to individual syllables. In multi-syllabic words, each syllable cell is arranged together in a specific way based on the number of syllables in order to keep the line uniform and compact.

the flow of reading word-internally definitely follows the overall direction of writing (bottom-to-top, right-to-left) so broken down an entire word will usually look like this when written:

Seraphic written in longform will be written entirely using the alphabet. Spaces are put between words, punctuation and numeral symbols are still used, and tone diacritics may be included as well, but otherwise it's entirely spelled out in this way. Writing this way makes the text as a whole quite longer, and can come off as childish or imply you're a new learner of Seraphic, so shortform will usually be used in official contexts. In shortform, alphabetical letters are restricted to non-declined parts of nouns, adjectives, and proper nouns.

Class Cartouches

In Seraphic, there are seven noun classes: Solar (people), Astral (animals), Vital (plants), Terranean (places), Metallic (objects), Lunar (concepts), and Oceanic (everything else). Similarly, the writing system employs seven symbols called "class cartouches" to encode which noun class a word is in. This is drawn from this writing system's predecessor, the Aeonic Seraphic alphabet, that also used glyphs to notate class. These are the seven noun class cartouches:

The thing about the class cartouches is, not only is it morphological, but it's also phonetic. A noun is never spelled out in its entirety, usually only part of it is. When a class cartouche is used, it's supposed to stand in for the class prefix itself without having to additionally spell the class prefix in the rest of the word. For example, in the word zājlux (tail), the "-jlux" would be spelled out, and the solar class cartouche would be drawn around it to stand in for the "zā-". Even though you don't write it, you still know it's there because of the class cartouche. Because of the nature of the noun class prefixes, and how many different forms they can take, it can be daunting to have to guess if you're supposed to pronounce a word with a "za-" or a "zo-", but there are patterns to which prefix (and thus, declension patterns), is meant to be read depending on what the following sound is.

Solar class

read as zā before f, v, s, z, c, j, pf, ts, tc and any cluster of two consonants (e.g. zāsā, zāfr, zājlux)

read as zō before x, ğ, h, ', and kx (e.g. zōxō, zōxur, zōğœcl)

read as zē in stressed syllables, and occasionally before consonant clusters (e.g. zēzmp'ux, zēzt'e, zēvasax)

read as s before vocalics (vowels and syllabic consonants), r, l, w, y, n, t, d, p', or k' (e.g. srāc, sēr, sōğœc)

read as ts before t', the ts replacing the t' entirely in pronunciation, for example tsn would be written as (Solar)t'n (e.g. tsn, tsā, tsłzaf)

Astral class

read as ğr before f, v, s, z, c, j, x, ğ, h, pf, ts, tc, kx, p', t', k' and and cluster of two consonants (e.g. ğrzles, ğrxur)

read as x before vocalics, r, l, w, y, ŋ, k, g, p', or t' (e.g. xūc, xŋox)

read as kx before k', the kx replacing k' in pronunciation (e.g. kxa)

Vital class

read as wā before r, l, w, or y (e.g. wāya, wārāc, wāwax)

read as wō before k', k, g, x, ğ, ŋ, or kx (e.g. wōk'ł, wōxur, wō'ōf)

read as wē before consonant clusters (e.g. wēzles, wējlux, wējlozln)

read as ū before n, m, p', p, b t', t, d, f, v, s, z, c, j, pf, ts, or tc (e.g. ūt'u, ūp'n)

read as w before vocalics (e.g. wē, wīn, wājr)

read as wī occasionally before consonant clusters (e.g. wīzya)

Terranean class

read as va before f, v, s, z, c, j, pf, ts, tc and any cluster of two consonants (e.g. vafl, vasērn, vasa)

read as vo before x, ğ, h, ', kx, and consonant clusters (e.g. voxāl, vodsā, vojrayux)

read as vu in stressed syllables and occasionally before consonant clusters (e.g. vujlux, vulvren, vuzajni)

read as f before vocalics, r, l, y, w, m, n, ŋ, p, b, t', or k' (e.g. fe, fruvn, fmağo)

read as pf before p', pf replacing p' in pronunciation (e.g. pfan)

Metallic class

read as ja before f, v, s, z, c, j, pf, ts, tc and any cluster of two consonants (e.g. jafa, javlni, jawaya)

read as jo before x, ğ, h, ', and kx (e.g. joxl)

read as c before vocalics, r, l, w, y, n, t, d, p', or t' (e.g. can, cya, cenaŋx)

read as tc before t', the tc replacing the t' entirely in pronunciation (e.g. tcłvr, tcāŋğl, tcū)

Lunar class

read as la before r, l, w, or y (e.g. lara, layeğr, lalel)

read as lo before k', k, g, x, ğ, ŋ, or kx (e.g. loxir, loğn̄, loxel)

read as le before consonant clusters (e.g. levp'ā, levren, lejt'ān)

read as li in stressed syllables and occasionally before consonant clusters (e.g. liwayi, lit'n̄, livasāx)

read as y before vocalics (e.g. yar, yu, yawu)

read as l/ł before n, m, p', p, b t', t, d, f, v, s, z, c, j, pf, ts, or tc (e.g. lce, łzēwok'u, lvulvren)

Oceanic class

read as a/ā before m, n, p', p, b, t', t, d, s, z, f, v, c, j, pf, ts, tc, w, r, y, l, and all consonant clusters (e.g. ap'i, āt'ē, ācèya)

read as o/ō before ŋ, k', k, g, ', x, ğ, h, and kx (e.g. ōxūr, ōxān)

read as aw/āw before vocalics (e.g. awun, awaf, awaman)

Of course these rules are not hard set, and there are several instances where a written word contradicts these rules or even when two words end up spelled the same, but for the most part these rules will generally be consistent for most written words. It seems like a lot to remember, but usually it's a thing that you eventually develop a sort of "ear" for.

Procedural and Plural Ligatures

The procedural and plural ligatures are additional glyphs used to mark, respectively, the procedurals and the plurals of a noun. The procedural are written at the bottom of the noun (since Seraph is written bottom-to-top and these are prefixes of course), and there are 12 separate procedural symbols in use. Similarly, the plurals, being suffixes, are written at the top of the noun and contain only three symbols (the singular is usually unmarked). They are as follows:

The plural ligatures attach to both nouns and adjectives freely, but in order for a procedural ligature to attach to an adjective, the adjective needs to be put in the oceanic class and subsequently written with the oceanic class cartouche. Additionally, if you want to write remote past/future forms for each procedural, you would need to attach the resultative present ligature underneath the preexisting past or future ligature (these conjugations haven't developed their own separate ligature forms, so they follow the tradition of using the resultative in addition as semantically that is where the remote forms originated). I don't really have a way to show you how to pronounce the plural forms, as even though the different pronunciations are pretty few they're actually pretty inconsistent on which one goes where. It's just one of those things you kinda have to already know. You can check the introduction to Seraphic post to see what forms the plurals can take, but otherwise it's basically, like, memorization. The procedurals on the other hand DO have a predictable pattern of pronunciation, but each tense has a different form based on what class and declension the noun is in, and with six tenses and seven classes each with at least three different declension forms, it's definitely something I can't summarize here. Again I HAVE to make a separate post for that because the declension forms are vital to knowing how to decline properly in Seraphic.

Preposition Glyphs

This section will probably be the easiest to explain really. The preposition glyphs are pretty easy to recognize. They're written in between words, attaching to both of them instead of floating freely like regular words are. There are 19 glyphs for the 19 prepositions, and they don't really change form. Sometimes, if occurring at the beginning of a sentence, they'll have one end sorta lopped off, but not everyone follows through with this convention. Here are the glyphs listed below:

Two or more prepositions can't occur sequentially, it's a very one-at-a-time situation, although in colloquial speech you'll see two prepositions being used in certain instances.

Tone Diacritics

Seraphic is a tonal language, and luckily it has diacritics to indicate the tones. They frame the words on each size, being used on both nouns and adjectives where applicable. You'll usually see them in formal contexts like government documents and letters of address, on signs and boards and menus and any kind of display especially in highly populated areas, in use by those whom are just learning Seraphic and don't have a hang on remembering all of the tones yet, and just in any context where clarity of literacy would be important. In everyday colloquial text conversations and things the tone diacritics will be usually dropped as context is sufficient enough to know, although tone diacritics may be reintroduced to differentiate homonyms that are distinguished only in tone (e.g. lxal "power" vs. łxāl "day"). There are eight individually recognized tone diacritics:

The low tone is the base tone and is usually left unmarked, so there's no sign for just the low tone. When a low tone transitions to a rising or falling though, the low transition diacritic will be used to connect the two. Many of these diacritics are usually connected consecutively when a word requires it, flowing as if they're one larger tone diacritic. This can give a whole host of unique tone symbols, but for the most part, all of the tone symbols can be broken down officially into the 8 diacritics. There isn't a 1-1 correspondence between individual tone diacritics and syllables within a word, usually you can know from context and just knowing how the word is pronounced. For example, the word łxāl would be written with one high tone marker even though the word is two syllables, but it's meant to infer that the entire word is pronounced with an even high tone. Here are some additional examples:

The top example is the word jalzègxa "chronicle". You can see that it uses the two low tone transitions to connect to the central falling tone, representing a low-falling-low relationship. The word below that is māzefādnu "hourglass". It employs a high-low-high, and then a high-low, with the last high-low meant to merge with the high-low-high. So truthfully it's meant to be interpreted as high-low-high-low. There's a lot of possibilities, but breaking it down will simplify what tones are being used specifically.

Numerals and Punctuation

This final section will discuss Seraphic numerals and punctuation. Now, unlike in most human languages which uses base-10, having 10 unique symbols to represent the values of 0-9, Seraphic uses base-16 and represents the values 1-16 with 16 individual symbols. In base 16, we would write 16 as 10, standing for one set of 16 and zero sets of 1. It's written in positional notation like arabic numerals, where each position represents a power of 16 (instead of a power of ten like in base-10). Here are the numerals:

If you were to write a number like 299,792,458; you'd convert it into base-16 which would be 11,DE7,84A; and since Seraphic numerals are grouped in 4 instead of 3 it would actually be 11DE,784A. This is how you'd write that:

Both Arabic numerals and Seraphic numerals describe the same amount of things, they just group things differently. We group in sets of 10, they group in sets of 16.

As for punctuation, there are only 5 marks that's in standard use, and these are them:

Single bar - separates individual sentences.

Single dot - separates clauses for clarity, separates numerals into groups of four.

Double dot - separates individual words such as in lists or replaces a single dot when separating clause groups.

Triple dot - Distinguishes quotes and dialogue, as well as highlighting names, terms, and titles.

Double bar - used to end full paragraphs/passages instead of a single bar.

Overall, that's pretty much everything I can detail about how the Seraphic writing system works! It's complicated but it was very fun to develop and boy was it satisfying to get it to work. Hopefully you'll now be able to decode a little better Seraphic writing, and maybe even write something of your own!

ŋKowīci cu-stux 'ōf tsa-levp'ā cu-zāsláf pi-lizt'n ğōdjasa! (Thank you all so much for reading!)

[wannaliveattheholidayinn]

had an insane interaction on facebook

[moonstandardtime]

i want to put link in isat. im sure hed do fine. the heros spirit endures

[ramblingsfromthytruly]

something about going on pinterest after a long productive day of studying and it's the evening and you're tired and feeling kinda funky and stumble upon an edit of one of your favourite ships and it just feels sooo good. like it just feels so right, the particular edit. the way the graphics and cuts are designed and the music and the fancasts, it itches just right. seems to be a monthly thing too.

[sheathnknife]

the vampire diaries 8.16 // louise gluck, crossroads

“and damon, like the voiceover tell us, he was worried he would never see stefan again. it was just elena assuring him that there would be peace. that we’ve dealt with this other side of darkness for several seasons, but there’s also light out there and there’s peace, and damon will find it. if you search for it, you will find it. and we wanted to get that last moment to see that [...] damon found it too, and it looked just like his brother.” — kevin williamson

[its-ezraaa]

Nicholas laughed, spinning under Seiji’s arm once again, “They're having fun. And now,” He suddenly stood still, earning a raised eyebrow from Seiji, “I’m going to dip you.”

Seiji's eyes went wide. “Wh–?! No, you're not–!”

Nicholas quickly put one hand on the small of Seiji's back, did a leg-pull he learned at boxing practice and dipped Seiji so far down that his fox ears touched the grass. He blushed so hard, you could practically see the rainwater on his face evaporate.

It was absolutely worth the headbutt Nicholas received a few seconds later.

A witch apprentice with cute fox ears and a Kitsune with a pointy witch hat - both dancing in the front yard of the Katayama Estate. You know, just the usual Friday night stuff.

Fanart inspired by @kori-senpai and their amazing fanfic! It's such a cute and funny fic, you should totally check it out! <3

[torgawl]

gojover? i barely ever know her

[fatherdmitri]

an emerald summertime filled with no mercy

[glamrockbee]

okay okay so like vague au idea: 2014-era night guards but security breach

[rainerghost]

Google didn't give me any answers to my question (womp womp) sooo...

Question.

What's it called when you start thinking a sentence but then you have to start over because you didn't "think it right"?

[dustyfairywings]

.

[grimxark]

I love how family-centered ROTB is. Everyone feels like a family: of course, you have Noah and his brother and mom, but you also have Noah attempting to be the “older, assertive sibling” to Elena (it didn’t feel like romance to me, just two people bonding over growing up in a hard place) and even accept Mirage into his family. Mirage inserts himself in the House team, bonds with Noah’s little brother, they care for each other. I didn’t really see any sort of chemistry between them, but I’m not judging people for that.

I just think it’s nice. Noah shows genuine pride at seeing Elena on the news, he’s relieved for his brother, he cares for Mirage and in turn Mirage cares for him. Noah isn’t quite in Mirage’s family as Mirage is in his: because the Autobots are a family, one that tries to mirror what Noah has going on. I think Elena sums it up pretty well in the movie (comparing Optimus to Noah, two soldiers who are too worried about taking responsibility for every inconvenience that happens around them to really worry about themselves) and I think it’s a nice way to put it