#idk if it'll make any sense

[sugaroto]

Aftg x ουκ au in which Neil is Menippos, Andrew is Hermes and Charon is Kevin

[grimgummies]

Was goin on a weird lil rant on Toyhouse about how I wasn't super satisfied with my older character designs which quickly spiraled into me realising I just wasn't happy with my art in general and probably need to take a break before I explode 😅

Welp, I will be cutting down that 'rant' then putting it up here as a way to officially say that I'll be taking a short hiatus cuz I need some time for myself whether I like it or not (I don't want to go on a hiatus at all but look if I don't I will explode and my passion for art will only dwindle further qwq)

[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!)

[everlastiingiimmortals]

About duplicates — this is something I feel I should formally address as I see it in so many rules, but I've never had the thought to establish as a rule myself: I love duplicates!

For some unnecessary context, I come from a fandom where it's incredibly commonplace to see multiple alternates of a muse in one space and even see them interact with each other — at one point, there was even a collective of at least four alternates of one character that were friendly with each other and regularly interacted at the same time (and I recall more than 9 fairly active ones total, across the history of my time rping in that fandom). Multiverse interaction is widely embraced and more or less learned and encouraged from the get go in that fandom, and any rules on duplicates are nonexistent, so it is by habit that I tend to assume the same in other spaces, which is my mistake! I'm not used to people being strict or openly nervous about duplicates, and this did at some point extend to exclusives as well.

All that aside, now for the important part: what does this mean for my blog?

I openly encourage and am very comfortable with duplicates. I am also very willing to have duplicates interact, particularly for Stelle! I think there's a lot of very fun potential to be explored there. Due to the inherent multiversal nature of HSR, as a general rule my HSR muses are aware of the multiverse (except Gepard, because of Belobog's isolation from the galaxies) and will react accordingly. You will not see any (again, bar Gepard) surprised by another version of themself.

For Stelle in particular: there is only one Caelus that she will consider a twin ( @celestial-narwhal ), due to the nature of our established verse. Furthermore, any other Trailblazers regardless of gender will be treated as an alternate of herself by default, unless prior discussion between you and myself establishes otherwise. If you are not Starry, do not ask me to establish a twin dynamic with you! Platonic bonds otherwise are fine; I'm very open to Stelle being close to an alternate of herself. She may still bring up her Caelus in conversation with a Caelus duplicate, but only if you, the mun, are fine with that (I will check with you first!).

Of course, if you have any questions, please poke me! And if this doesn't jive with you, feel free to ignore and/or block, I won't be mad about it.

[korperlos]

funny how fond you can grow of strangers. for the last few months i took a different train to work because i adjusted my working hours, and everything felt strangely different ever since. something was missing. it never became a routine. so today i took the earlier train to work again, for the sake of nostalgia i guess. when i arrived at the platform, i passed so many familiar faces. all of them people i have never spoken a word to on my life, but i've been passing these people for such a long time, every morning at the same time, five times a week. younger people, older people, a bit of everything and everyone. i recognised them despite it all. and it felt comforting. just right. and idk, but when i passed all these people to get to the spot i always waited in, some of the people smiled or nodded at me. they seemed genuinely surprised to see me, in a good way. they acknowledged my presence. and they appreciated it. which in turn means they also acknowledged my absence. it's so hard to believe anyone would notice and remember me like that. the person that always used to wait in the same spot with me kept looking over again and again, smiling, seeming genuinely happy to see me. it's such an uplifting feeling, because for once i feel seen like an actual human being, like a person, not just a terrible impersonator of the very same. none of them said a word, and neither did i. but these strangers really spark comfort and reassurance in me like few others could. we're just waiting for the same train. that is it. but i am one of you. and you see me as one of you. why ever you would do that. why ever you would remember me. and why ever you would be happy to see me. but i appreciate it. very much so. i'll try to hold on to this feeling for as long as possible.

[krynutsreal]

I got this really cute notebook as a gift a while back and I have decided to use it as my OC/AU rambles whatever sorta thing. BUT EVERYTIME I WANT TO WRITE IN IT I FEEL LIKE . EMBARRASSED. Like what if this is cringe but also why should it matter. It's my cutesy notebook I can write whatever I want in it ....

[lys-jeorge]

.

[comet-wire]

I think part of the reason why I love Streber sm and that he's a big comfort stems from the fact that I was also one of those freak ass lil vampire kids. I have two bat beanie babies that are from my childhood hung up like they're sleeping on my plushie net; I took them to school for Halloween as a kid and they'd have parades at my elementary-middle(?????) school where the elementary students show off their costumes and parents can join in too if they want. My parents were also dressed as vampires. We dressed up as a family of vampires. 🧍

Anyways new headcanon that Streber was like that as a kid because I'm projecting./lh

[randomnameless]

Yeah Sothis was so cruel and selfish that when she won the war against the humans/agarthans she.. restored the land back to its original self before it was ravaged and then screwed off to Zanado. And when she saves Billy's live from getting axed by Kostas or that time when they were stuck in Zaharas and she sacrificed her existence to fuse with Billy so that she could save their class and the people, or when she woke Billy up after the timeskip. I swear Nopes ruined discourse lmao.

Small correction, Sothis didn't "screwed off" to Zanado, she fell asleep.

Just like her granddaughter, Sothis expanded all of her forces and then fell in a restorative sleep, but Nemesis popped up and the rest is history. And let it be from FEH or FE16, we know Sothis enjoys, uh, having a body, being able to move around, party in festivals, etc etc. But she choose to forego this to fall in "sleep mode" to restore the land (and its people? It's still unclear what "humans" like Raphael are, for Agarthans they're not humans, but to Nabateans, they are, so...)

Sothis also shows care, albeit in a tsun tsun mode, for Billy and Billy's students. In Nopes's voiced lines - especially in the jp script - she feels delighted to see Cethleann, calling her a "wonder", seems proud of her children having grown up, worries about Cichol underperforming and shows grief and anger at relics.

IIRC @fantasyinvader already explained it in an earlier post, when FE16 is supposed to follow the Nabatean/Sothis narrative, Nopes is supposed to be the inverse, following an Agarthan narrative/agenda - the endings are reversed, in FE16 only one route ends with the Nabateans having disappeared from the surface of Fodlan, in Nopes, it's the 2/3rds. There's also the sky during the endgames - when Tru Piss was the only route that ended at night, when the others were at dawn or showed some light (Dimitri moving towards the light at the end of AM, Rhea's falling during the sunset in SS, Claude being likened to a new dawn in VW) in Nopes only AG, iirc, ends during the night - most likely because AG is the "bad ending" route for your faction (Agartha), aka Nabateans are still alive, and they return home.

This more or less explains why Sothis is seen in bad light, or supposed to be seen in a bad light, in Nopes - after all we side with Larva.

There's also the tidbit from the developers who wanted to show a more "terrifying" side of Sothis, which would only make sense in that optic, we're Larva'n'pals, Sothis won't save out butts this time, but scorch them since we're trying to erase her and anything related to her... (excepted for AG, again, but the plot follows the same beats because the Fodlan games are nothing but half-assed projects).

I won't say Nopes ruined discourse, but rather the same group of people who ring at your door to sell you flyers for their newest party, and refuse to go until you go to their party and tell them it was the best thing ever.

All jokes aside, I think the Fodlan games have a very interesting subtext, but the devs didn't believe in it, or rather, in its potential and prefered to go with low hanging fruit - make a new waifu, "uwu alone b4u", raise steaks, build parasocial relationships up to 11, jpop music and dialogue that sounds intelligent - to make their game(s?) sell.

And it's unfuriating because deciphering all this subtext and making weird fan theories is still bajillion times funnier than playing those damn games, but even at one point, I guess I'll stop honeypotting because the source material, the one I'm supposed to care about, is just so dry.

[joshuaalbert]

tbh i do think changeling jack would have been a better option like. first of all i think just actually sticking to the changeling plot, rather than the antagonists being the changelings and the borg in an alliance that i guess doesn’t not make sense but ultimately brushes aside the changeling stuff at the end probably would have been better, but i also think there’s some potentially interesting stuff in there. again with the caveat that this is kind of operating off of like...not totally changing the setup but trying to do something better with the same beginning.

like ok loose concept 20 years prior to ep 1 beverly picks up this kid while she’s on a mission in the wake of the dominion war and initially doesn’t know he’s a shapeshifter or anything, just that he’s a child who needs help. he’s on her ship for a while and she gets kind of attached to him, especially when he shows an early interest in medical stuff, but at some point she gets confronted by some subset of starfleet that’s after him, and it comes out that he’s a changeling who did something bad in an attempt to escape capture by starfleet and they’re here to take him back.

and like. she’s gotten to know him, and she feels protective of this kid and she believes he was genuinely acting out of fear and possibly reacting to mistreatment, whereas their charges seem. kind of questionable? they feel like the result of paranoia in the wake of the dominion war and she doesn’t trust the people that are going to bring him in to treat him fairly, and she’s already somewhat more disillusioned with starfleet than she used to be because she’s already lost one son to starfleet ideals and is starting to regard jack as another, so that questioning really gets kicked into overdrive here on a broader scale. she makes the choice to protect this kid that she’s gotten attached to and they escape, but they have to go on the run, and that’s why she’s been off the grid for so long. she raises him, and they do their medical thing, but eventually they run into trouble and she doesn’t know where else to turn, so she reaches out to picard and tells him not to involve starfleet (both because they’re potentially compromised but also because her trust in them is still not at an all time high)

and then also since that’s dealing with the dominion war and that story belongs to ds9 i would have loved to bring back sisko (probably like. as at least a 2-3 episode arc, one of which replaces the episode w/ro laren bc i love her and all but she deserved better and we could have made the points that were made there in other ways). like. put him face to face with picard for the first time since the ds9 pilot and have them reassess each other after this time. i don’t know exactly how i’d see that dynamic playing out but i think bringing them back together to try to negotiate a threat would be super interesting AND like. i would really love to see picard going to sisko for advice about fatherhood tbh. maybe picard has read jake’s work and is familiar with the fact that they have a very close relationship so in trying to bond with jack he realizes sisko could be a really good person to learn from, even if they’ve had personal struggles in the past (and even if they’re never like Friends now). idk feels like a way to bring sisko back in and give him some closure that would have worked thematically on multiple levels.

like idk i dont have a whole plot seeing as ive been thinking about this for. not very long. but by focusing more on the changeling plot and giving it personal relevance we can focus on questioning starfleet and the federation, and how having to question these things picard has dedicated his whole life to affects his identity, but ideally to me the conflict would be one that shows the potential for positive change.

[amethyst-halo]

actually nightheart moving to shadowclan could be interesting bc we saw in both avos and tbc they just straight up start fights over shit in shadowclan and by god nightheart is good at stirring the pot

[linabirb]

talked to my mom about education again. mentioned dropping out. felt sad. downloaded renpy.

[goatmilksoda]

When you go through the entire aesthetics wiki and look at all the new-ish ones that have specifically developed on Tumblr, TikTok, and Pinterest, you start to realize that they can really be put into three categories like 75% of the time because people choose the same music constantly when they're making -core playlists so they all fit into either "Soldier, Poet, King", "Bubblegum Bitch", or "Sweater Weather".

[todayisafridaynight]

if i doodle during unlucky monkey stream later would we be mad at me

[cobaltfluff]

putting my genshin best boys in maid outfits heh (1/?)

kazunya...

[fabdante-sparda]

hello gang!

zutara week is this month and I thought i would celebrate with some reblogs of old zk week art in the lead up to it! you can expect those over the next few weeks.

I'm super excited to share the days I have done for this year and while I'm not sure that I'm going to finish all 7 days, what I have done I love a lot!