#Universal Grammar

[omegaphilosophia]

The Philosophy of Natural Language

The philosophy of natural language is a branch of philosophy that explores the nature, origins, and use of language as it is naturally spoken and understood by human beings. It involves the study of how language functions in communication, the relationship between language and thought, the structure and meaning of linguistic expressions, and the role of context in understanding meaning. This field intersects with linguistics, cognitive science, logic, and semiotics, aiming to understand both the abstract properties of language and its practical use in everyday life.

Key Concepts in the Philosophy of Natural Language:

Meaning and Reference:

Semantics: One of the central concerns of the philosophy of natural language is the study of meaning, known as semantics. Philosophers explore how words and sentences convey meaning, how meaning is structured, and how language relates to the world.

Reference: Reference is the relationship between linguistic expressions and the objects or entities they refer to in the world. Philosophers like Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam have contributed to understanding how names, descriptions, and other expressions refer to things in the world.

Pragmatics:

Context and Meaning: Pragmatics deals with how context influences the interpretation of language. It examines how speakers use language in different contexts and how listeners infer meaning based on context, intentions, and social norms.

Speech Acts: Philosophers such as J.L. Austin and John Searle have explored how utterances can do more than convey information—they can perform actions, such as making promises, giving orders, or asking questions.

Syntax and Grammar:

Structure of Language: Syntax is the study of the rules and principles that govern the structure of sentences in natural languages. Philosophers and linguists investigate how words are combined to form meaningful sentences and how these structures relate to meaning.

Universal Grammar: The concept of universal grammar, proposed by Noam Chomsky, suggests that the ability to acquire language is innate to humans and that there are underlying grammatical principles common to all languages.

Language and Thought:

Linguistic Relativity: The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis suggests that the structure of a language influences how its speakers perceive and think about the world. Philosophers debate the extent to which language shapes thought and whether different languages lead to different cognitive processes.

Conceptual Frameworks: Language is often seen as providing the conceptual framework through which we interpret the world. Philosophers examine how language structures our understanding of reality and whether it limits or expands our cognitive abilities.

Philosophy of Meaning:

Theories of Meaning: Various theories of meaning have been proposed in the philosophy of language, including:

Descriptivist Theories: These suggest that the meaning of a word or phrase is equivalent to a description associated with it.

Causal Theories: These argue that meaning is determined by a causal relationship between words and the things they refer to.

Use Theories: Inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein, these theories claim that the meaning of a word is determined by its use in the language.

Language and Reality:

Metaphysical Implications: Philosophers explore how language relates to reality, including how linguistic structures might reflect or distort our understanding of the world. This involves questions about whether language mirrors reality or if it plays a role in constructing our experience of reality.

Ontology of Language: This concerns the nature of the entities that linguistic expressions refer to, such as whether abstract objects (like numbers or properties) exist independently of language.

Communication and Interpretation:

Hermeneutics: Hermeneutics is the study of interpretation, particularly of texts. Philosophers in this tradition, such as Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur, explore how understanding is achieved in communication and how meaning is negotiated between speakers and listeners.

Ambiguity and Vagueness: Natural language often contains ambiguity and vagueness, where words or sentences can have multiple interpretations. Philosophers study how these features affect communication and understanding.

Language and Social Interaction:

Language as a Social Phenomenon: Language is inherently social, and its use is governed by social norms and conventions. Philosophers study how language functions in social contexts, how power dynamics influence language, and how language can both reflect and shape social structures.

Language Games: Wittgenstein introduced the concept of "language games" to describe how the meaning of words is tied to their use in specific forms of life or social practices. This concept emphasizes the diversity of language use and the idea that meaning is context-dependent.

Evolution of Language:

Origins of Language: Philosophers and cognitive scientists explore how language evolved in humans, the relationship between language and other forms of communication in animals, and the cognitive capacities required for language.

Language Change: Natural languages are dynamic and constantly evolving. Philosophers study how languages change over time and what this reveals about the nature of meaning and communication.

Critique of Language:

Deconstruction: Philosophers like Jacques Derrida have critiqued traditional notions of language and meaning, arguing that language is inherently unstable and that meaning is always deferred, never fully present or fixed.

Critical Theory: In the tradition of critical theory, philosophers analyze how language can perpetuate power structures, ideologies, and social inequalities, and how it can be used to resist and challenge these forces.

The philosophy of natural language offers a rich and complex exploration of how language functions, how it relates to thought and reality, and how it shapes human interaction and understanding. By examining the nature of meaning, reference, context, and the social dimensions of language, philosophers aim to uncover the fundamental principles that govern linguistic communication and the role of language in human life.

[unpickled-olive]

a lot of people think linguists hate stories about apes learning sign language because it's "unscientific," "low quality data with non-rigorous research methods," "anthropomorphizing non-human behaviors," "just operant conditioning and association with no grasp of grammar or pragmatics."

false—linguists actually just fucking hate chimpanzees and gorillas. Charles Hockett actually wrote the design features of language immediately after his first (and only) meeting with a chimpanzee that he really hated.

[kaleidoscopic-quiddity]

what's the deal with dan everett and the Pirahã? I know very little about linguistics but I saw the documentary and q&a on internet archive a few weeks ago. the missionary part is already very fucked ofc but I'm curious if there's other context

im neither a syntactician nor cognitive scienctist so take my explanations with a big ole grain of salt, but essentially;

in linguistics theres this concept of 'language universals', that is, features that are found in all languages (spoken and signed), how many universals there may or may not be, and what phenomenomena is actually universal as opposed to just common in the languages that have been studied by linguists is the source of a lot of debate and research

operating off of this idea that there are some things inherent to all languages, linguist noam chomsky devised his theory of 'universal grammar', one of the most influential and widely held theories in linguistics, which is super complicated and honestly not smthn im able to fully explain bc i dont fully understand all the technical aspects but essentially; UG is the idea that humans are innately born with syntactic principles which is why there are syntactic language universals, or rather; humans are not cognitive 'blank slates' when it comes to language, our neurological structure/capacity dictates how our language functions

chomsky and other proponents of UG claim that recursion is a language universal, and thus evidence in favour of UG; recursion, in the simplest of terms, is the ability to embed a grammatical structure within itself, e.g; "he said they said she said the cat was sick" or "the table in the house on the street on the city on the coast", in theory these kinds of sentences could go on forever (altho obviously they dont) and whilst it can look very different across languages or be subject to different constraints, recursion seems pretty dang universal

then dan everett comes along and says, actually, pirahã (the language) doesnt have recursion, he makes a bunch of claims as to why this is the case, citing different aspects of pirahã culture that would negate the need for embedded grammatical structures (and, whilst i want to say unintentionally, nevertheless painting the pirahã as primitive and unintelligent) and says that hes disproven UG, and that his theory of language, that it is a tool devised by humanity like knives or wheels, rather than a biologically innate capacity, is correct

this leads to loads of debate and outrage, people, including everett himself, re-examine everett's intitial works on pirahã as well as conduct their own, newer, research and the issue of whether or not pirahã has recursion or not is still unclear (depending on who you ask), nevertheless everett maintains that UG is bullshit, chomsky maintains that everett is a 'charlatan' who doesnt know what he's talking about (yes chomsky called everett a charlatan, i love academic beef) never mind that he tweaks the definition of UG every time it gets challenged, and this is currently one of the biggest and longest ongoing debates in linguistics

UG and everett's theory are only two of many that aim to explain why humans have language and where it came from, and tbh you could dedicate your whole life just to studying that question

overall i personaly do align more with everett's ideas, and have my own beef with UG, but everett is certainly A Character to say the least (as is chomsky) and i dont take everything he suggests a granted

that being said, i do highly reccomend his book 'how language began: the story of humanity's greatest invention', its accessible to non-linguists (i read in high school before i started studying linguistics) and is a good introduction into the debate and theories behind language orgins, obviously biased towards everett's ideas of course, but you can judge the conclusions he makes for yourself, i personally find a decent few of them pretty dang convincing

i would also say you should go read chomsky's work on UG, but honestly thats like telling someone to read the mf bible, idk theres probably good youtube videos explaining it in a way thats understandable to people who've never had to suffer through drawing syntax trees to pass a class

[authormarialberg]

Depth Grammar

It’s already April, and at Experience Writing that means it’s time for NaPoWriMo (National (Global) Poetry Writing Month) and the A-Z Challenge. Continuing this year’s theme, I’m writing about the A to Z of Depth. Final Words by Maria L. Berg 2022 While searching for aspects of depth, I got really excited when I came across “Depth Grammar.” Could there be a more perfect topic for a writer…

[ravxnstudies]

noam chomsky's dead. how we feeling, linguistics tumblr ?

[john-keels-sinister-goatee]

Generative grammar is the contemporary equivalent of Lullism. I can only kind of explain what I mean.

[vivianthepigeon]

Tim: “I need to tell you something”

Bruce: “What did you do??”

Tim: “when Alfred was doing our taxes he noticed a missing check”

Bruce: “what did you do???”

Tim: “Before I answer do you trust me enough to understand that it was for a good reason and just leave it at that?”

Bruce: “What. Did. You. Do.”

Tim: “it’s all Jason’s fault! He is a BAD person, I’ve been telling you for years!”

—————

Bruce to Jason: “WHAT DID YOU DO?”

Jason: “okay now before I answer that-“

Bruce: “just tell me whatcha did”

Jason: “I got a DUI”

Bruce: “Jason!”

Jason: “it’s not as bad as it sounds”

Bruce: “How is driving drunk not bad???”

Jason: “I wasn’t exactly driving”

Bruce: “I don’t follow.”

Jason: “I was at the bar with Damian and I had a few”

Bruce: “DAMIAN?!”

—————

Damian: “With God as my witness I’ve never been to that bar in my life.”

Jason: “He knows.”

Damian: “Oh I’ve been there a bunch”

[bobelhosary]

Hello my dears

I am Bahaa, a Palestinian-Ghazawi photographer

My life consisted of my beautiful, wonderful work with international companies and agencies. In addition, I was working on developing myself and my photography equipment.

Suddenly it was gone and all my dreams, ambitions and equipment in the family’s 5-storey house were destroyed

I was trying to create a project of a lifetime after hard years of continuous work, but before starting it, it was destroyed as well

Now I will tell you about my brother. He is a visual artist and a calligraphy artist, and everything he owned was destroyed

Now I will talk about my mother, the beautiful, generous woman. We owned a kindergarten and she ran it despite her illnesses with diabetes and pulmonary fibrosis. They also burned and destroyed the kindergarten to the point that they did not leave us anything to earn a living from, and now, after the difficulty of the road out of Gaza, we do not know how to travel to treat my mother.

I am asking you to please save the life of an entire family and I hope that you will help me so that we can all travel 🙏🏽

I don't want anything else but to survive the war, death and annihilation that haunt us every second

[omegaphilosophia]

The Philosophy of Syntax

The philosophy of syntax is a branch of philosophy that examines the fundamental principles and structures underlying the organization of language at the level of syntax. Syntax is concerned with the rules and principles governing the arrangement of words into phrases, clauses, and sentences to convey meaning and communicate effectively.

Key aspects of the philosophy of syntax include:

Universal Grammar: The philosophy of syntax often engages with the concept of universal grammar, which posits that humans are innately predisposed to acquire language and that there are underlying structural principles shared by all languages. Philosophers explore questions about the nature and source of universal grammar and its implications for linguistic theory.

Grammar and Rules: Philosophers analyze the nature of grammatical rules and constraints that govern sentence formation in natural languages. They examine questions such as whether there are innate syntactic rules, how syntactic structures are generated and interpreted, and the relationship between syntax and semantics.

Syntactic Categories and Structures: The philosophy of syntax investigates the categorization and hierarchical structure of linguistic elements such as words, phrases, and clauses. Philosophers explore the principles underlying the classification of syntactic categories (e.g., nouns, verbs, adjectives) and the hierarchical organization of syntactic structures (e.g., phrase structure trees, constituency relations).

Syntactic Variation and Change: Philosophers study syntactic variation and change across languages and over time. They investigate the factors that influence syntactic variation, such as social factors, contact between languages, and language acquisition processes. Philosophers also explore theories of syntactic change and the mechanisms by which syntactic structures evolve.

Syntactic Interfaces: The philosophy of syntax examines the interfaces between syntax and other components of grammar, such as semantics, phonology, and morphology. Philosophers investigate how syntactic structures interface with these other components to generate meaning and produce speech sounds.

Syntactic Universals and Typology: Philosophers explore the existence of syntactic universals—patterns and principles that are found across languages���and their implications for linguistic theory. They also investigate language typology, which involves the classification and comparison of syntactic structures across languages to identify cross-linguistic patterns and regularities.

Computational Syntax: The philosophy of syntax engages with computational approaches to syntax, which use formal and computational models to describe and analyze syntactic structures. Philosophers examine the role of computational methods and theories in understanding syntactic phenomena and modeling language processing.

Overall, the philosophy of syntax offers insights into the fundamental principles governing the structure of language and provides a theoretical framework for understanding syntactic phenomena across different languages and linguistic contexts.

[anycrazy]

Captain marvel remembers everything. He remembers all the memories of past champions, like their family, their emotions after becoming the champion of magic and their pain. He feels the pain of their death or even when the females champions gave birth (pregnancy included). Cap can't never forget about the memories was given when becoming the champion. It's like his own body record everything that happens in their life, civilian or champion form doesn't matter he will always remember.

But on his civilian form he has a somewhat larger capacity of remembering things than a average person. Captain remembers everything and never forgets but Billy forgets things and will always remember as much an average can. So imagine this:

Captain marvel is at the watchtower with the rest of the JL members for a meeting. Marvel is getting a bit bored so he space out a bit and then he remembers a memory of a past champion child. But due to sharing the memories and emotions of the past he also thinks that the kid is his. So he let's out a small chuckle and he continue to be spaced out as he enjoys the memories of playing with his kid. Some of the members look away from were Batman was talking and look at Captain, Batman notice and question him.

Batman looked at Captain with a small tilted of his head and had a confused, curious and annoyed look: What so funny Captain? You seem to be spaced out in the middle of the meeting.

Captain marvel shook off of his Dreamland thoughts and unintentionally said something he might regret later on (He is still a bit spaced out so he doesn't notice what he says): Oh nothing much I'm just remembering some memories of my kid.

Many of the members of the jl are shocked because they didn't know Captain had kids. JL member: wait what! You have a kid.. wait no hold up!

Captain marvel: Yeah I do...

JL member: what's with that sad tone?

Captain marvel: Oh nothing much I just remember that I can't no longer see her after all these centuries.

.

.

.

☆---------------------------------------------------------☆

(Sorry if I missed characterized Batman/Captain I don't know how to make characters canon.)

I don't know much of dc I have on watched the 1966 Batman (Batman and robin!Dick) or something like that and Teen titans Go! Oh and Gacha reaction :)

(Oh and when remembering pain of past champions he can definitely feel the phantom pain (?)).

[todays-xkcd]

The distinctive 'UCLA comma' and 'Michigan comma' are a long string of commas at the start and end of the sentence respectively.

University Commas [Explained]

Transcript Under the Cut

[A sentence is written in greyed-out text, with the commas in black and each labeled with an arrow.] Please, buy, apples, mac, and, cheese, milk, and, bread,.

[The labels are as follows, in order from left to right:] Harvard comma Yale comma Stanford comma Columbia comma Cambridge comma Cornell comma Oxford comma Princeton comma MIT comma

[Caption below the panel:] The Oxford one is the most famous, but many major universities have their own comma.

[sightseertrespasser]

Odds of Survival Part 6

Prowl comes up with a grim but viable theory, misses his ESP (Emotional Support Pterodactyl) and Jazz has a “cultural exchange” with Bluestreak.

Credit to @keferon for creating the AU!

———————————————————————

The cascade of Prowl rapidly drumming his fingers on the console was the only sound in the room. His gaze was fixed a million miles away, boring a hole through the far wall.

Hypothesis: Jazz, and possibly others, were secretly cold constructed by the Functionalists for the sole purpose of fighting Quintesson forces.

Many of Jazz’s eccentricities fell into place within that framework. He lacked a subspace, which would make it very difficult to hold onto personal items or contraband. His anatomy was was entirely specialized for battle, all curved angles, narrow gaps and thick plating. Likewise, Jazz’s subdued reaction to injuries could be accounted for if the Functionalists had removed a large portion of his sensory network and replaced his extremities with non-living metal prosthetics.

Prowl shuddered.

He turned from the physical to the mental. Jazz was smart, undeniably, but also severely starved of information.

The Functionalists were exceedingly well practiced in the art of secrecy and subjugation.

Keeping their custom soldiers in the dark about the greater galaxy would significantly reduce the chances of their mechs trying to escape or revolt. The muting, or possible removal of Jazz’s EM field would prevent him from easily emotionally connecting with other mechs and would hamper his ability to detect malicious intent from any handlers.

That alone could account for Jazz’s extremely tactile extroversion. It could be a form of compensation or maybe just a coping method for the loss of sensation. Add a manufactured language barrier, and even if Jazz had had previous brushes with mechs other than his handlers, he wouldn’t have been able to communicate with them. A perfect isolation tactic ensuring total control.

Until now.

Prowl finally straightened, creating a task list to execute once the ship arrived.

- Get Jazz seen by Velocity immediately. Both to treat his injuries properly and to document any evidence of prior abuse. He trusted her to catch and catalogue details only a medic would know.

- Debrief Elita One. He would need to phrase things carefully to ensure Jazz isn’t unfairly imprisoned or executed for possibly being connected to the Functionalists.

- Awake Green from hibernation. Despite his initial reluctance to interact with his therapist mandated “work-life balance tool”, the organic had grown on him. Further more, his Flyt afforded him an entirely neutral sounding board for times when speaking aloud was the best way to sort his processor.

The theory was good, but Prowl could still feel an itch in his processor. He was still missing something. He rubbed at the heat beginning to build under his helm.

Prowl tacked on a fourth task:

- Stick entire helm inside tub of coolant.

The tactician almost quirked an irritated smile as he made his way back towards his brother and the walking processor ache.

At least the likely hood of Jazz dropping us off another building was lower.

(14%)

Marginally.

For now, the Functionalist Creation Theory was still just that. A theory. He needed more information on where Jazz came from, and for that, they’d need to overcome more of their language barrier.

Thankfully, Bluestreak had offered to assist in catching Jazz up to speed on more Common.

Prowl keyed the door open.

“Frugg!”

Primus help him.

Jazz had his back turned to the door, free hand waving away Bluestreaks mispronunciation.

“Na, no R sounds. It’s Fuck.”

“Fugg!” Bluestreaks face was the picture of determined ambition.

“Getting closer! Now drop the Guh and replace it with Kh.” Jazz nodded encouragingly.

“Fruck!” His brother shouted, servos slapping on his knees.

“Nope, you’re putting an R back in there again. Like this: Fuck. Fuh-uck.” Jazz moved his hand through the air like a conductor, enunciating each Phoneme with clean cut clarity. “Try again, you got this man. Fuck.”

“Fuck.”

Jazz turned around at the perfectly pronounced cuss word.

“Heeey! What’s up mother fragger! How’d the meeting with your slag head boss go?”

Prowl turned on his brother so slowly you could have mounted a telescope on him. “Adequately.”

Prowl continued his one sided stare down with Bluestreak, who was lightly clapping his hands together while seemingly fascinated with the far wall.

Jazz was laughing again. “Don’t be too disappointed in him. I do have a much better understanding of Common now.” He stood taking the anesthetic tape with him.

“Aight, it’s your turn, sit down.” Jazz patted the bench.

Prowl broke his stare down and cycled his optics. Bluestreak stopped pretending to stare at the wall.

“That is unnecessary.” He said automatically. “We need to be ready to leave in one breem.”

Jazz crossed his arm over the sling, cocking his head to the side. “Well then you better sit your shiny ass down so we aren’t late.”

Bluestreak kept silent through sheer force of determination to not ruin this moment.

Prowl couldn’t move Jazz, and Jazz knew it.

He sat. Glowering.

“Thank you!” Jazz sang, warbling across the vowels. He tossed the tape to Bluestreak. “I’m pretty talented but handling sci-fi duct tape one handed isn’t for me.”

Bluestreak sputtered briefly, before going to work tearing off small strips.

“How. How? It took us VORNS to get Prowl to take care of himself even a little bit! And you pull it off in less than a cycle? I had to get blown up before he’d even step into a normal med bay AND Smokescreen had to basically drag him in! You could not BRIBE this mech into self care if you had all the shanix in the entire galaxy!”

Bluestreak talked and worked quickly, knowing he was on a time limit before Prowl would try and escape.

“Hah, I feel that. Whenever I go back to the {Shatterdome}, er, “base” they basically gotta corner me to do any kind of check up.” Then Jazz sounded almost nostalgic. “{Ratchet} had it down to a science before he left.”

As the small aches and pains began to dull, Prowl took lead of the conversation for some subtle information gathering.

“So Jazz, how many of your kind are there?”

Prowl ignored the hard flick Bluestreak gave him. However, Jazz seemed unfazed by his bluntness.

He leaned against the wall, looking up slightly in thought. “Uhhh let’s see. The base I’m from has five mecha. There’s me, my little brother {Ricochet}, {Hot Rod}, {Blurr} sort of, aaaand {Vortex}.”

He counted off on his fingers. Then made a so-so sign.

“Well, Vortex isn’t the uh, the person? The real Vortex died a long time ago. Now it’s just a uh.”

Jazz struggled to translate something, unaware of the Praxians steadily growing looks of confusion.

He snapped his fingers, “Dead-Not-Dead location stay? Some people think the Dead-Real-not-Real Vortex is still in there. I think it’s just a {Death trap.} Dangerous to be near positive-positive-positive.”

Jazz made a gesture above his head. “Vortex kills more quintessons than people though, so the high-important-leaders won’t get rid of the thing. They just,” he shrugged a little uselessly. “Keep feeding us to it.”

Is he… Is he describing what I think he is?

“You live with a Sparkeater?” Bluestreak broke the silence.

“Spark-eater?” Jazz sounded out the syllables. “That sounds like a good word for it, yeah.”

At least Prowl could finally confirm Jazz couldn’t detect EM fields. His and Bluestreaks horror saturated the room.

“…You guys okay?” Ah. Just dulled then.

“Yes.” Prowl reeled in his field and elbowed Blue to do the same. “Simply surprised.”

“And concerned.” Bluestreak chipped in. “Is your brother going to be okay? I mean, he’s alone with that thing! Are your leaders going to feed him to the vortex next? Is that what happens to mechs that don’t perform well enough?!”

Jazz startled upright, quickly shaking his head from side to side. “No no no! He’s fine! They won’t do that to Rico, he’s already proved himself plenty and it’s just new fighters they send to Vortex.”

“They don’t always die either, sometimes they just go crazy.” Jazz made a circling motion with his index finger next to his head, stopping awkwardly mid gesture.

“That.” He put his hand down. “Sounded better in my head.”

Bluestreak clasped his servos together behind his helm. Mouth pressed into a thin line.

Prowl twitched as he received a ping from their ship. “Our transport has arrived. We can discuss that later.”

Later.

Yes, let’s discuss the horrifying implications of your entire existence later. Perhaps over some lightly warmed energon?

Maybe he likes Flyts. Jazz can pet Green while they both have mental breakdowns.

With a consciously steady ex-vent, Prowl stood, dipping his doorwings in thanks to Bluestreak. “If you would follow us, I will see to it you are comfortable until we are able to..”

Prowl briefly struggled to find the right term. “Sort out. Your… management situation.”

Jazz nodded, “Right, right. You mentioned transport?”

Gratefully, Prowl gestured for Jazz to follow him towards the airlock.

Before the partial vacuum could cut off their voices once more, Prowl nodded to the narrow window facing the landing strip.

Curiosity pulled visored mech over and when Jazz reached the window, he gasped.

Prowl lifted his doorwings and held out one servo, presenting their ship.

“Welcome aboard the Lost Light.”

———————————————————————

Jazz pov: “Huh. Spark eater. I get it, cause it metaphorically snuffs out peoples spark of life. Cool analogy for a death trap.”

The Praxians pov: “whaT Do YoU mEaN THERE’S A VAMPIRE IN YOUR HOUSE?!”

Little be of extra short hand, these {} denote a word being spoken in English. So Prowl is hearing the sound of the word but doesn’t know its meaning.

Extra bit of world building, the Shatterdome Jazz is from was the one that originally housed all the Combaticons, which is why it has specifically five mecha cradles. It’s also the number one Research and Development Shatterdome which is why you’ve got stuff like Blurr’s turbo fast mecha housed there.

In addition, Ricochet is a fairly normal pilot, but he’s housed there specifically because of his relation to Jazz. You know those tests they run with twins where they’ll send one into space for a month and keep one on earth to compare the differences? Basically Rico is the control group and Jazz gets to try the crazy shit.

- SSTP

[se-rae2]

i want to write yan batfam so bad like u can suck my dick idc, smh imagine batfam with isekai reader who's knows nothing—like, the empty void, eternal darkness but with a few specks of light type of nothing—about the dc verse. the only thing girliepop (gender neutral) knows about the verse is none other than batman himself, but even then, the stuff they know is limited.

like, their knowledge is so limited it's practically useless. they also only recently learned about the batfam, and all the stuff they've learned about the fam are just shit from random videos they saw on the internet, some of which are just random headcanons from ppl (that they stupidly thought was canon, but like, who could blame them?)

one thing they are sure of tho, are everyone's identities—identities they found on a random video, on a random tuesday, before their death (obvi).

they then proceed to just. ignore the fuck out of canon and just live their life normally in gotham cause they have virtually no ties to any prominent character in dc (that they know of) and they know that their acquired knowledge would not help them cuz they have no ulterior motive whatsoever except for maybe surviving till their fifties (and also maybe they were born in a crime ridden city much like gotham, not as bad, but close, and the whole getting mugged on a day-to-day basis was pretty much the norm both in reader's past and present life—cause god forbid the city they were born into wasn't filled to the brim with crime)

and they do a spectacular job at it, at first.

reader makes a few friends here and there, they have a stable(-ish) job that doesn't pay so bad, they have a (rat infested) apartment, and it was all going great. until they find out that one of their friends was actually a villain, a major one at that, and they've caught the eye of a few vigilantes who either:

a. think they're the victim of the big, bad villain (aka they were tricked and/or manipulated into conversing with said villain)

b. think ur conspiring with said villain for a scheme to endanger gotham and her ppl

or c. think u know nothing that the villain was the villain (the truth, but was quickly scratched off of the list because it'd be impossible not to know said villain's face, like it's physically impossible not to know cuz of how prominent this villain is so they think it's one of the two first options—but reader rlly just didn't know cuz they were too busy trying to survive in their ratty apartment to pay attention to stuff like that, and they also could not comprehend the idea of these fictional characters actually being real and pushed it to the very back of their mind)

so yeah... finally squirted the brain juice. will expand tho cuz there's more, trust 🤞

[reader-from-nowhere]

Despite everything, it's still you.

_________________________________

Thinking about them, about how Shockwave lost himself loving Orion, about how absolutely doomed they were from the very beginning. They wouldn't have lasted, neither of them could've kept each other. Not in this line of work.

But still, if one word can be used to describe the two of them, it would be selfish.

Shockwave is selfish in which he refused to let Orion rest, dragging him through hell and back, into the pit of insanity with him. Orion is selfish in which despite everything his partner had done, he still wants Shockwave next to him, close to him. They cling onto one another, hold themselves so close that when they get separated, their claws ripped each other apart.

It changed them, scarred them beyond what they used to be.

Orion, now Optimus, in a body that is not his, with a mind with millions of years worth of memories - Shockwave, with a broken and mind and a shattered heart.

Their past is long dead. But their future, is still very much alive.

And by Primus, Optimus is GOING to drag his dumbaft of a partner kicking and screaming back next to him no matter what. And, hopefully, into a better life.

This new Shockwave caused this big of a mess, might as well help him clean it up. Damn it, Shock', Optimus is suppose to be the troublesome one.

________________________________

This is so self-indulgent sob 😭😭 you can't give me ShockOp and not expect me to go bonkers over them. They are so tragic I HAD to give them a hopeful ending, Primus knows they've suffered enough. Tell me Optimus, the guy who has attachment issues SO BAD that it dragged a war on for millions of years, wouldn't absolutely find any and all excuses to not hand Shockwave over once the shenanigans are over even after what Shock' did to him.

"Erm actually once I told him he can try to revive me if I die during a drinking game as a joke so TECHNICALLY it's fine.☝️☝️ " "He killed hundreds of our men." "I plead insanity."

Also, we kind of need Shockwave if we gonna do the whole 'Jazz gets robot'ed' thingy, so this is an easy fix for any potential plot hole. (and totally not me trying to keep pookie alive) Let Optimus bring Shockwave to Cybertron ‼️‼️

Mecha au by @keferon (sorry for tagging you sm i just love making content for this au 😭😭😭)

[philosophybits]

As soon as I speak, I express the universal, and if I do not do so, no one can understand me.

Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

[vivianthepigeon]

Bruce and his batbrats

Edit: fanon Bruce