#circular gallifreyan

[mypeople-skillsarerusty]

I admit, I don't know what came over me when I was painting this... but here is a crazy watercolour abstract Doctor Who painting from yours truly.

I really need to brush up on my circular gallifreyan.

[dandelionjack]

circular gallifreyan is circular because doctor who is a circular narrative 🌀 when you are a time-sensitive like them you conceptualise everything as a cycle with no beginning or end. including language. which is also music. yay

[jessiarts]

I'm sorry... I'm so, so sorry. Inspired by this post

[vivvision]

Circular gallifreyan in marketing…

There are some misspellings but based on context and more this is what I’ve translated:

“Can you hear me”

“Keep your eyes peeled”

“Hello”

[intuitive-revelations]

Random headcanon I came up with early this morning, because I’ve been thinking about Gallifreyan language recently:

The reason why so many Time Lord things are decorated with circular Gallifreyan, often too impractically to actually be read (eg. on the Moment), is because it’s a cultural touchstone that remains from pre-/early-Pythian Gallifrey’s use of magical runes and sigils.

Presumably it was more typically Old High Gallifreyan used in that time (though The Timeless Children does seemingly confirm circular Gallifreyan existed at least as far back as Rassilon's time, if not earlier), however. Twelve describes it as ‘the language of the Pythia’ in The Lost Magic, and as Eleven says in The Time of Angels:

ELEVEN: There were days, there were many days, these words could burn stars and raise up empires, and topple gods.

This is obviously very reminescent of the Carrionites' (themselves from the Dark Times too) "word-based science" from The Shakespeare Code:

MARTHA: What did you do? TEN: I named her. The power of a name. That's old magic. MARTHA: But there's no such thing as magic. TEN: Well, it's just a different sort of science. You lot, you chose mathematics. Given the right string of numbers, the right equation, you can split the atom. Carrionites use words instead.

In other words, while they probably weren't actually intended as such and may have their own specific meaning, whether they be poetry, namesakes, histories, instructions, whatever... these are basically protective wards:

[ID: Five screenshots of Circular Gallifreyan in New Who.

1. Rassilon's Inner High Council meeting in The End of Time Part 2. The table and headrests are inscribed with circular Gallifreyan.

2. The Moment in Day of the Doctor. Gallifreyan writing bends round the edges of the wooden frame.

3. The 'whirligig' rotar in Eleven's second TARDIS, inscribed with individual Gallifreyan symbols.

4. Set photo of the glowing Gallifreyan writing on the steps of Thirteen's TARDIS.

5. Tecteun's laboratory in The Timeless Children. Circular Gallifreyan lines the light above her, and a door in the background.]

As a side note - if they actually are kind-of intended as a form of protection, perhaps this is why we were only introduced to Circular Gallifreyan in New Who, despite it seemingly existing through Gallifreyan history. Because it was retroactively inserted into Gallifreyan culture as a form of defense during the War in Heaven / Last Great Time War?

Regardless, this also opens up questions how many other Time Lord traditions are holdovers from the Dark Times.

For example, who's to say that the renegade naming tradition didn't begin as a form of protection from hexes - either from hostile forces in the pre-anchoring universe, or from oppressive magic-users back on the homeworld? This may also be connected to the change in Gallifreyan name format before and after the Intuitive Revelation (eg. ancestral -sti and -sor names), though shifting power structures, gender roles etc. presumably played a role too.

Heck, is this one reason why Gallifrey's own name has changed over its history? From Jewel to Gallifrey in Rassilon's time to try and protect it from vengeful Pythian curses. From Gallifrey to just 'the Homeworld' in the War to protect it from new rituals of alternative histories and paradox?

[the-worms-in-your-bones]

hello scherzo fans, I have a thing for you

[terranceholdsapencil]

Since Ive only got a black phonecase I decided to apply my artistic nature :") it works much better in real life than as a photograph of the art but I still like it.

The acrylic markers were a bit big for the task. I have some nitpicks despite being fine with the turnout, but its mostly small stuff I couldn't change much.

I want to make something for the back side too, but I want that to be more 'grand' and put more than 2 minutes of planning into it. Potentially get some new acrylic markers to expand my very limited colour palette or just thin variants of those Ive already got, who knows.

[justgallifreyanthings]

The sharpness of the tongue defeats the sharpness of the warrior

Because I’m a petty asshole, I took an hour and pulled together my own version of the proverb on the new Sonic Screwdriver. Let me know if any of y’all want this as a sticker or something, and I’ll digitize it when I have a chance.

ETA: now available as a sticker! Links are shared on my blog :)

[linguistwho]

So apparently there's an official Gallifreyan translator now.

On the one hand, I'm really excited that Sherman's Circular is becoming more and more canon. On the other hand, it feels weird that such major part of the fandom is now being kinda... corporatized. But this blog isn't for my opinions and I don't want to influence yours. All I will say with conviction is that I really hope they credit the original creator.

However, for those who want some more info, I did a comparison between the new "official" translator, the old translator that most people just getting into Gallifreyan probably used, and my own style.

The first image in black is the old translator, the second in yellow on blue is the new one, and the third in blue is my style from two years ago, and all of them say "Never Give Up, Never Give In". (Though only mine includes punctuation). The first and biggest difference between the computer-translated ones and mine is that mine has the various words interlocked. This is something that anyone can do when they write the Gallifreyan on their own, little practice required, but it cannot be done by the computer translators. They only ever put the words in fixed, equidistant positions. Another major difference is the curve of the connecting lines -- this is another thing that neither translator will do for you. The old translator does allow you to curve the lines yourself, but is very finicky about it. The dots are worth noting as well -- in both translators, they are quite small, while I make them big and pretty separated, for ease of reading. In other words, in terms of style and readability, these computer translators will never replace those created manually.

However, there are clear benefits to the translators. They are extremely helpful for those who are just getting into Gallifreyan and want to double-check their work. So long as you remember that what really matters for readability -- the shapes and positions of the circles and the number of lines and dots -- the rest is just stylistic flourishes. And both allow you to download the Gallifreyan as a .svg so that you can edit it in Inkscape or Illustrator or whatever vector editing software you prefer. As for the comparison between the two translators, the new one has more color customization, and will probably better match how Gallifreyan appears on-screen (though I find it interesting that the Gallifreyan on the new Sonic has the starting point of each word be at the furthest point from the center of the circle, while this translator has them at the usual bottom), but the old one allows for more in-engine editing, and as the lines actually connect to somewhere and the dots are slightly larger, it is easier to read.

TL,DR: Manually-made Gallifreyan still allows for far more stylization and is generally the most easily readable, but both translating websites can be useful, especially as both can be downloaded as editable .svg files. The old one is more readable and has in-engine editing capabilities, but the new one allows for color customization and may be more accurate to what is seen on-screen. And Sherman needs to be credited for its creation.

[circles-of-gallifrey]

Sun - Mercury - Venus - Earth (Moon) -Mars - Jupiter - Saturn - Uranus - Neptune - Pluto

(yes I can count, and had to add in two extra planets 😅)

[gotyouanyway]

that thing romana said in zagreus

[ID: hand drawn circular gallifreyan, white on black, captioned “our duty is to the inevitability of events”]

[bzlgrmpf]

"You were not born with venom in your veins"

Still on my writing in Gallifreyian Train

[autumn-doodles]

After I have no idea how long I FINALLY finished transcribing the tensimm speech in EoT into Gallifreyan oh my god-

For the design, i wanted to differentiate dr’s and master’s speech, so I made master’s writing white on black and doc black on white. You may not notice it but I also slightly altered the way I wrote for each of them. The doctor’s speech is full of curved lines and all the dots seen in his speech get larger/smaller in circles, I thought it was a bit more playful like the dr. The master on the other hand has super straight lines and similarly sized dots since master is a lot harsher.

The writing along the outside also reads “End of Time” bc I thought that circle needed something so I just wrote the ep title this speech was from in some weird improvised linear gallifreyan-

And this is how you would read it, each circle is read anti-clockwise from the bottom unless you see the little ‘start here’ symbol: —(•

(If you can be bothered tho lol, I know it’s a bit of an effort)

And now my watermark which I also wrote in gallifreyan for authenticity’s sake

Sadly I can’t post each of the sentences separately but if people are interested I could try sending them in the reblogs!

[lunariumarcs]

Doctor Who tag is like an A-plot of people who are screaming about how cute the doctor (Gatwa and Tennant) is, the messages about self love and healing, and then there's a like a B-plot of all the circular gallifreyen artists mad that they fucked up the spelling on the sonic screw driver

[unpredictable-probabilities]

"A hundred years, then?" - Dream of the Endless / Hob Gadling, The Sandman

[the-worms-in-your-bones]

Well it seems I’m doing this now