#how to create b&w letters

[jitendradesigns]

#cover designer #how to create b&w letters #how to create block letters #how to create a font logo #how to create letter logo #s optical illusion tutorial adobe illustrator #adobe illustrator optical illusion tutorial #optical illusion adobe illustrator #how to create an optical illusion in adobe illustrator #op art tutorial illustrator #how to create optical illusions in illustrator #optical illusion in illustrator #how to make optical illusions in illustrator #s #blend tool tutorial #adobe illustrator #blend tool in illustrator #how to use blend tool in illustrator #3d type in adobe illustrator #Youtube

[maddiebuckley]

TILE TRANSITION TUTORIAL

a couple of people have asked me for a tutorial on how I did the penultimate gif in this set, so here goes! this is my first tutorial, so please feel free to reach out with further questions if anything's unclear.

note: this tutorial assumes you know the basics of gifmaking, can create the base gifs, and are familiar with timeline mode.

STEP ONE: create the base gifs! I'd recommend staying between 25-40 frames for each gif, since the transitions we'll use later tend to increase gif sizes. these are the ones I'll be using for this tutorial:

STEP TWO: create the guide layouts for both base gifs. for this panel, I chose a 4x4 grid — I would recommend keeping the number of "tiles" low because it can get tedious, but have a minimum of 9 (3x3 grid).

now your canvas should look like this:

STEP THREE: create the tiles. this is where the going gets rough; there might be easier ways to do this that I couldn't think of 😭 if there are any please send me an ask!

essentially, in this step we'll cut up the base gifs into smaller squares so that each tile can be manipulated separately when we put both gifs together. to do this, first create a square using the rectangle tool and the guides. then duplicate the base gif, move it above the square, apply a clipping mask, and then convert the clipped gif and square (selected in the image below) into one smart object.

ALTERNATELY: you could duplicate the original base gif and use layer masks to isolate tiles. create a layer mask for the duplicated gif layer and, with the layer mask selected, drag your mouse over a square (using the guide layout) and press delete. then press ctrl/cmd + i to invert the layer mask so that the gif only shows in the square of your choosing.

now repeat until you've got the entire gif in tiles, and do the same for the other gif!

since the transition effect is achieved by staggering the crossfades for each tile of the final gif, you can cheat by having multiple tiles "flip" at a time, ideally no more than four. this means you need to cut the base gif up into fewer pieces. to do this, simply draw multiple squares instead of one and then merge the shapes, before duplicating and clipping the gif onto them.

if you do this, it's essential to remember that you have to divide both gifs up in the exact same way. each piece of the b/w gif has to correspond to a piece of the purple gif!

this is what the layers look like for each gif once I'm done:

I have them lettered so that it'll be easier to match them up in the next step.

STEP FOUR: this is the complicated bit that took me two days to figure out. I'll do my best to explain but don't hesitate to reach out if something isn't clear!

to begin, open up a new psd and import both base gifs into it. (remember to click "create video timeline" and ensure that your gifs are all in order before proceeding.)

now, the trickiest part about this transition is ensuring that all the little tiles sync up so that the larger gif is coherent. so first we'll create some markers (just empty layers) to ensure that everything lines up as it should. — marker 1: at about halfway through the first gif (b/w in this case) — marker 2: at about a quarter of the gif length — marker 3: close to the end of the gifs

at this point we're ready to start bringing in the tiles. I'm going to delete the base gifs from this new psd just to keep things cleaner!

first thing to do is import my b/w tile. move the timeline slider over to marker 1 and split the first gif. (if it helps, rename the split gifs and add (start) and (end) to the two halves.) then, move the (end) half to the beginning of the timeline, and the (start) half to line up with marker 3.

the purple tile is easier to manage. simply import it into the psd and line it up with marker 2.

your timeline should now look like this:

notice the overlap between the gifs at their beginnings and ends — this is where you'll be able to cascade the tiles flipping, so it helps to have a significant amount of overlap.

crop the three gifs for this tile as you see fit! since this is the first tile I want to flip from b/w to purple, I'll crop gif 1a (end) all the way to the current position of the timeline slider (red line with blue tip) and leave the beginning of gif 2a uncropped. for the flip from purple to b/w, I'll crop both gifs a bit.

once that's done, drag all three gifs onto the same level in timeline so they form a video group. your timeline should look something like this:

now you just repeat the process for all the other tiles! as long as you made sure that all the tiles in one gif correspond with tiles in the other gif in step three, this should be a fairly painless process. make sure to crop the starts/ends of the gifs separately so that they don't all flip together.

this is what my layers look once I've done all the tiles:

and the gif!

STEP FIVE: transitions! click on the half-white square (top right of the left column in the timeline, beside the scissors) and select the crossfade transition, then drag it between two gifs in a video group. it should create a two-triangle symbol and shorten the overall length of the video group.

apply the transition to all the tile flips, ensuring that the duration of all transitions is constant. this can sometimes be tricky because ps likes to change the duration of each transition, so right click on the transition symbol and manually change all your transition durations to be the same.

your layers should now look something like this:

STEP SIX: draw the grid. bring back the guide layout from step two and using the line tool (I like 2px thickness), trace the grid. adjust opacity as you see fit (50-80% is usually a good idea), so that the canvas looks like this:

STEP SEVEN: export and celebrate! you're done!

I hope this tutorial made sense and was easy to follow, and happy giffing! my inbox is always open for any questions <3

#tutorial #ps help #ps tutorial #userace #alielook #userabs #usercats #userhella #userfaiths #tuserabbie #usershreyu #usertreena #tuserlucie #uservivaldi #usertj #usergiu #userroza

[blubberquark]

Why Not Write Cryptography

I learned Python in high school in 2003. This was unusual at the time. We were part of a pilot project, testing new teaching materials. The official syllabus still expected us to use PASCAL. In order to satisfy the requirements, we had to learn PASCAL too, after Python. I don't know if PASCAL is still standard.

Some of the early Python programming lessons focused on cryptography. We didn't really learn anything about cryptography itself then, it was all just toy problems to demonstrate basic programming concepts like loops and recursion. Beginners can easily implement some old, outdated ciphers like Caesar, Vigenère, arbitrary 26-letter substitutions, transpositions, and so on.

The Vigenère cipher will be important. It goes like this: First, in order to work with letters, we assign numbers from 0 to 25 to the 26 letters of the alphabet, so A is 0, B is 1, C is 2 and so on. In the programs we wrote, we had to strip out all punctuation and spaces, write everything in uppercase and use the standard transliteration rules for Ä, Ö, Ü, and ß. That's just the encoding part. Now comes the encryption part. For every letter in the plain text, we add the next letter from the key, modulo 26, round robin style. The key is repeated after we get tot he end. Encrypting "HELLOWORLD" with the key "ABC" yields ["H"+"A", "E"+"B", "L"+"C", "L"+"A", "O"+"B", "W"+"C", "O"+"A", "R"+"B", "L"+"C", "D"+"A"], or "HFNLPYOLND". If this short example didn't click for you, you can look it up on Wikipedia and blame me for explaining it badly.

Then our teacher left in the middle of the school year, and a different one took over. He was unfamiliar with encryption algorithms. He took us through some of the exercises about breaking the Caesar cipher with statistics. Then he proclaimed, based on some back-of-the-envelope calculations, that a Vigenère cipher with a long enough key, with the length unknown to the attacker, is "basically uncrackable". You can't brute-force a 20-letter key, and there are no significant statistical patterns.

I told him this wasn't true. If you re-use a Vigenère key, it's like re-using a one time pad key. At the time I just had read the first chapters of Bruce Schneier's "Applied Cryptography", and some pop history books about cold war spy stuff. I knew about the problem with re-using a one-time pad. A one time pad is the same as if your Vigenère key is as long as the message, so there is no way to make any inferences from one letter of the encrypted message to another letter of the plain text. This is mathematically proven to be completely uncrackable, as long as you use the key only one time, hence the name. Re-use of one-time pads actually happened during the cold war. Spy agencies communicated through number stations and one-time pads, but at some point, the Soviets either killed some of their cryptographers in a purge, or they messed up their book-keeping, and they re-used some of their keys. The Americans could decrypt the messages.

Here is how: If you have message $A$ and message $B$, and you re-use the key $K$, then an attacker can take the encrypted messages $A+K$ and $B+K$, and subtract them. That creates $(A+K) - (B+K) = A - B + K - K = A - B$. If you re-use a one-time pad, the attacker can just filter the key out and calculate the difference between two plaintexts.

My teacher didn't know that. He had done a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation about the time it would take to brute-force a 20 letter key, and the likelihood of accidentally arriving at something that would resemble the distribution of letters in the German language. In his mind, a 20 letter key or longer was impossible to crack. At the time, I wouldn't have known how to calculate that probability.

When I challenged his assertion that it would be "uncrackable", he created two messages that were written in German, and pasted them into the program we had been using in class, with a randomly generated key of undisclosed length. He gave me the encrypted output.

Instead of brute-forcing keys, I decided to apply what I knew about re-using one time pads. I wrote a program that takes some of the most common German words, and added them to sections of $(A-B)$. If a word was equal to a section of $B$, then this would generate a section of $A$. Then I used a large spellchecking dictionary to see if the section of $A$ generated by guessing a section of $B$ contained any valid German words. If yes, it would print the guessed word in $B$, the section of $A$, and the corresponding section of the key. There was only a little bit of key material that was common to multiple results, but that was enough to establish how long they key was. From there, I modified my program so that I could interactively try to guess words and it would decrypt the rest of the text based on my guess. The messages were two articles from the local newspaper.

When I showed the decrypted messages to my teacher the next week, got annoyed, and accused me of cheating. Had I installed a keylogger on his machine? Had I rigged his encryption program to leak key material? Had I exploited the old Python random number generator that isn't really random enough for cryptography (but good enough for games and simulations)?

Then I explained my approach. My teacher insisted that this solution didn't count, because it relied on guessing words. It would never have worked on random numeric data. I was just lucky that the messages were written in a language I speak. I could have cheated by using a search engine to find the newspaper articles on the web.

Now the lesson you should take away from this is not that I am smart and teachers are sore losers.

Lesson one: Everybody can build an encryption scheme or security system that he himself can't defeat. That doesn't mean others can't defeat it. You can also create an secret alphabet to protect your teenage diary from your kid sister. It's not practical to use that as an encryption scheme for banking. Something that works for your diary will in all likelihood be inappropriate for online banking, never mind state secrets. You never know if a teenage diary won't be stolen by a determined thief who thinks it holds the secret to a Bitcoin wallet passphrase, or if someone is re-using his banking password in your online game.

Lesson two: When you build a security system, you often accidentally design around an "intended attack". If you build a lock to be especially pick-proof, a burglar can still kick in the door, or break a window. Or maybe a new variation of the old "slide a piece of paper under the door and push the key through" trick works. Non-security experts are especially susceptible to this. Experts in one domain are often blind to attacks/exploits that make use of a different domain. It's like the physicist who saw a magic show and thought it must be powerful magnets at work, when it was actually invisible ropes.

Lesson three: Sometimes a real world problem is a great toy problem, but the easy and didactic toy solution is a really bad real world solution. Encryption was a fun way to teach programming, not a good way to teach encryption. There are many problems like that, like 3D rendering, Chess AI, and neural networks, where the real-world solution is not just more sophisticated than the toy solution, but a completely different architecture with completely different data structures. My own interactive codebreaking program did not work like modern approaches works either.

Lesson four: Don't roll your own cryptography. Don't even implement a known encryption algorithm. Use a cryptography library. Chances are you are not Bruce Schneier or Dan J Bernstein. It's harder than you thought. Unless you are doing a toy programming project to teach programming, it's not a good idea. If you don't take this advice to heart, a teenager with something to prove, somebody much less knowledgeable but with more time on his hands, might cause you trouble.

#programming #cryptography #learn programming #teaching programming

[tawaifeddiediaz]

Hey, I love how you did the B/W strip + the text effect on your margaret atwood set, would you be willing to do a tutorial? 🙈

Hey Nonnie, thank you! Sorry this is a little late, but I did manage to hang onto this PSD for you.

We'll be making this gif:

This tutorial assumes basic knowledge of gif-making, Photoshop, and coloring. I’ve only described the text tutorial in this, but you can reach out if you have any questions.

(This is a different version of my gradient text tutorial, but the same principle applies!)

Tutorial under the cut:

Couple things to note beforehand:

There is a lot of trial and error involved when doing any sort of effect, and this is no exception! You might have to play around with the colors and the settings before you find something that looks good and readable and that fits your set!

This text effect works better on big gifs (540px width) that have quite a bit of movement below the shape so you get that effect.

For this effect, I find that a simple font works better than a cursive one, but play around with what you like.

We're going to start with this gif:

First, I'm going to add my text and center it. For this text, I used the font, Solar vesta Serif, with these settings:

Note: when you do letter spacing + underline, sometimes, the space after the last letter can lead the underline to stretch a little too far past the letter, making it look like the underline isn't centered properly.

To get past this, I just select the last letter separately, and put the VA setting to 0-10, depending on the font/letter.

We're also going to add a drop shadow here itself, and this is fully up to preference, but I used this:

All of that should give us this (yeah, it's the simplest thing because I'm lazy and I like easy things xD nothing too fancy)

Next, we're going to draw our rectangle around the letters. I like to keep even spacing around all the letters on all sides (in this gif, it's 4px on all sides) but just eyeball it initially, and then adjust accordingly.

I changed the fill to white (this color isn't important, I just used white because it's easier to show) and moved the layer in the back so the text is on top. It should all look like this:

Next, we're going to add a gradient map between the rectangle and the text later. I simply used a black and white gradient, and my gif now looks like this:

Here are the settings:

Next, we're going to delete that white box - the layer mask - next to the gradient map. Just click that and press delete (or right-click > delete layer mask). Your layers should look like this:

Now, we're going to add the rectangle as a layer mask. While pressing Ctrl, we’re going to hover our mouse over the square box next to Rectangle 1. Your cursor should show a white box with a dotted border. Click the square box with that dotted cursor and you should get a dotted selection line all around the box, like so: 

Next, we're going to select our gradient map layer, and then create a new layer mask. At the bottom of the layers panel, you should see a box with a circle in it (denoted with a red arrow). Click that - make sure you have your gradient map layer selected, or you'll end up putting the mask on the wrong layer.

The black and white will disappear, leaving you with just the box again. It'll look like this:

Now, just hide the rectangle layer so it looks like this;

And you're done! This is my final gif:

Once you get this basic thing down, you can play around with it all. For example, I like to adjust my gradient sliders so they emphasize the colors:

You can also just change the colors;

Unlike my previous text effect, we're not going for inverse X-ray effect, so for this, I like to make sure the lighter shade of the gradient is on the lighter parts of the gif, and same with the dark shade.

(If that's confusing, here's a side by side comparison of what the "X-ray" effect vs normal color effect looks like)

Anyway - it's fully up to you!

Because of the effect I was going for, I didn't add a drop shadow underneath the rectangle itself, but you always can if you want to make that a little bit more 3D.

You can also do this with any other shapes, too, with the same procedure.

Hope this helps, Nonnie! Let me know if you have any questions.

#zee's tutorials #tutorials #gif tutorial #photoshop tutorial #resources #dailyresources #completeresources #itsphotoshop #allresources #dailypsd #userisha #userdahlias #alielook #userabs #tuserheidi #userelio #userjaelyn #userisaiah #usermorgan #usergert

[atom-writings]

If you don’t mind me asking, what would it be like if the Axis (including Prussia and Romano) were the reader’s next door neighbor. And how would they try to romance the reader?

(Hetalia Axis x Reader) Next Door Neighbor!

(Gender Neutral) Headcanons ~ A/N thank u for giving me a reason to write romano i love him so soososos much. Also whoopsies i did not write japan if u guys want me to do japan i will do it separately and then it will be longer thank u for ur undertsanding <3

Trigger Warning: Men being incredibly insistent, other than that none!

Feliciano has never been subtle. Especially with those he wants to romance. As soon as you move in, and he lays eyes on you, he’s completely enraptured. It wouldn’t even occur to him to take it slow. You’re cute, so he has to have you.

Anytime he sees you coming out of your apartment, he immediately strikes up a conversation. Of course, this would become very irritating for you, if it weren’t for how charming he was. Originally he tries to line up when he works with when you do, but he’s always late for everything anyway. That plan doesn’t last long.

“Y/N!” Feliciano calls from down the hall, sprinting towards you, “W-Wait up!”

Obliging him with a huff, you turn around to greet him. As he catches up, he immediately keels over, out of breath and panting desperately.

“Feliciano, good to see you. “

“Y-yeah…” he sputters out, still trying to catch his breath, “Good to see you too…”

He takes a moment to regain his composure. While you wait, you set down the luggage you had down on the floor outside your apartment door.

“Listen, listen, I wanted to ask you something before you disappeared. Which, wait, where were you? Did you leave or was I just missing you?”

“Ah, yeah, it wasn’t anything big. Just visiting some family out of town.” He perks up at the mention of your relatives.

“Oh, great! B-but, uh, I wanted to ask… Will you go on a date with me?” As he asks that, you look at him in shock, clearly taken aback.

“Seriously?” You ask, incredulously.

“Yeah! I’m cute, you’re cute, why not?”

You jump a little bit in excitement, “Of course, Feli!”

Oh, Ludwig would absolutely despise this scenario. He thinks you’re absolutely adorable… and now he has to see you around every day? Why can’t anything be easy…

He’s definitely very aware of the complications that could come with dating someone you have to see all of the time. He’s never been the most smooth… and now, if he messes up, he has to hear you through the wall all the time. What if you started dating someone else then too? He’d have to move… oh dear, oh no… clearly the best route is to just not talk to you at all! If he can take it…

“Ludwig?”

Immediately spinning around from opening his door, pressing his back against the wall when he makes eye contact with you, he responds, “Y-yes?”

You step back in surprise at his extreme reaction, “Woah, something wrong?”

“Nein, nein, nothing is wrong. What is it?” As he says that, he tries to pose casually.

You calm yourself down, pulling out a letter from your pocket and unfolding it. His eyes immediately widen at seeing it, and your suspicions are immediately confirmed.

“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about this love letter I got, would you?”

He stutters, “N-No! I mean… a little, but no! Yes! Maybe!”

“Ok, yeah, because I looked it up… and the only place that makes these kinds of seals is in some obscure German village. And I thought, who would know about an obscure German village? Probably my neighbour, right?” You smile at his reaction, noting his blush.

“Ja, ja, I do… I… um…”

You cut him off, “Did you send it?”

He freezes, his face flushing more, “Y-Yes…” he gulps nervously, “I-I’m sorry! I did not want to make you uncomfortable!”

“No… no, it’s really cute.” 

He looks at you in surprise, “Really?” He continues as you nod, “Well then um… would you like to go out with me next Friday?”

Romano falling for someone super quickly? Someone who, if he dated them, could create lots of awkward situations? Shocker. Fortunately, reality has never stopped him before.

You’re gonna immediately realize what’s going on. Considering that he trips over himself every day to say good morning and try to strike up a conversation, he is just as subtle as his brother. Except he can’t help but add at least one compliment every day. If he wasn’t so handsome, it would definitely be a bit creepy.

“Bella.” Romano greets you simply. He stood before you awkwardly, sweating but trying to hide it smoothly. Although he was the one who knocked on your door, it seemed as if he was waiting for you to speak first.

You pause, “Yes?”

“As you may have noticed, I have been trying to get your attention since you moved in.” He continues, trying to keep his composure.

“Yeah… I noticed.”  Multiple occasions in which he had almost cornered you to talk to you, for only a moment, come to mind immediately.

“Well… that is because I like you quite a lot.” You struggle to respond before he quickly takes out a bouquet of flowers out from behind his back. He thrusts them against your chest awkwardly, returning to crossing his arms and huffing.

“Oh… um… thank you.”

“Yeah, yeah. You're welcome. All of this… and that…” He cringes as he remembers his overly drastic behaviour, “was just because I think you’re really… attractive… and interesting. So go out with me, alright?”

You look back up at him, amused, “Not much of an offer there, is it?”

He freezes, wringing his hands and looking away, “S-Scusami… will you go out with me? There’s a new French place that opened down the road, I thought… maybe we could go there together sometime…” his voice trails off.

“I’d love to, you weirdo.”

Gilbert is very aware of how awkward this is going to be. Unfortunately for you, he does not care. He can’t stop himself from slipping little gifts under your door all the time, with a note proclaiming his entire full name, title, job history, and every reason you should date him. 

But… every time you try to actually talk to him, he panics, yells, and runs away. A couple of times he’s told you he doesn’t speak English… after he just spoke English. It’s cute how he gets so flustered, but also incredibly frustrating if you actually like him.

“Hey.”

Just one simple word makes Gilbert desperately press himself against the wall to get away from you, but he quickly recovers, pulling a comically awkward pose.

“Funny seeing you here!”

“Outside… your apartment? …That I live right next to?”

“Yes, that’s what I said.” His tone rises nervously.

“Listen, I’ve been getting all your little gifts and-”

“WOW! Would you look at the time! I have to be going, tschüss!” He yells, his strong accent coming through. He tries scooting past you to escape, but you grab his shoulder quickly, stopping him.

“Gilbert. Listen, you always run away-”

“Me?! Running away?! I can tell you, I have never done so! Ask any Danish soldier from before 1700!” He says, laughing nervously.

“Gilbert.” Your tone becomes sterner, and he deflates, his tone and face dropping, “Are you really in love with like you say you are?”

His face flushes and he brings his hand up to cover his cheeks, “Ja… Yes… I am.”

“Then, let’s go out already! I’ve been waiting for you to ask me on a date for months!”

“What, the notes were not enough?” He jokes.

“Not when you keep running away from me!”

#hetalia imagines #hetalia x reader #feliciano tag #ludwig tag #gilbert tag #romano tag #hws italy x reader #aph italy x reader #aph germany x reader #hws germany x reader #aph prussia x reader #hws prussia x reader #aph romano x reader #hws romano x reader #not proofred at all

[liapher]

Dracula! 🧛

[Click on the pictures for better resolution.]

After my previous experiment with wrap-around hinges, I kept thinking about how to secure the wrap so it remains shut when the book is closed. When I started reading Dracula, the solution was obvious: vampire fangs that “bite” into the front cover!

Since almost all diary entries, letters, newspaper articles and telegrams in Dracula start with a date, I decided to have some fun there and set the date in a way that matches the item: different handwriting fonts for different recurring characters, a telegram font and a newspaper font, a little waveform separator for Dr. Seward's phonograph diary, and—my favourite—Pitman's shorthand for Jonathan and Mina's diaries.

I've been reading Dracula via the Dracula Daily substack and wanted to be able to carry on doing this also in this different media format, so I added an index that tells me the pages that belong to each day, and also added the dates to the footer.

More typesetting/binding notes under the cut:

⁂

Typesetting

Set mainly in ETbb (11/14), which is based on Bembo. The various decorative fonts were much harder to find than you'd think—sooo many cursive handwriting fonts on the web, but most of them look very modern or have horrible kerning or entirely unnatural character transitions. Explaining how I created the stenography bits (over 70 distinct little "intros"!) would really warrant a post of its own, but the short version is that I spent some time reading up on Pitman's shorthand, then used a tool that can, more or less, convert English (or phonetically written English) into shorthand, then double-checked various words with the help of old dictionaries on the Internet Archive and edited the strokes to my liking.

(The appendix includes a brief introduction to Pitman's shorthand as well as a dictionary-of-sorts for the stenography bits that appear in the book.)

2. Binding the textblock

Until now, the books I've bound have always been slim enough for me to get away with square-back bindings without the books looking too wedge-shaped, but Dracula here is just over 500 pages, so I figured it'd look better with a rounded spine. (Since backing the spine is beyond my expertise and I also don't have the tools for that, I skipped that step, but I'd love to give it a try someday.) To get the spine into a shape I liked and to glue it, I used two clamps, two sheets of cardboard, and two sturdy old encyclopedias, like so:

Which worked pretty well.

I sewed two-colour (b&w) headbands, this time with 2-ply embroidery thread:

3. The case:

The main part of the case is a Bradel binding with a rounded spine. The inside of the front cover contains an extra layer of bookboard with triangular cut-out that are slightly larger than the fangs, and partially covered with some thin cardboard.

The white bookcloth unfortunately proved to be trickier to work with than I'd hoped: it's basically see-through (so I had to glue white paper to the outside of my black bookboard first) and smudges super easily.

If I do something like this again, I might consider making all of the front and back cover as thick as that fore-edge section of the front cover currently is, to make it look more even. Also, important lesson learned: even if everything fits together nicely when it's just bookboard and paper, adding bookcloth will make all the hinges much stiffer (I unfortunately had to redo the fore-edge hinges).

Cheers 🩸

#bookbinding #book design #dracula #dracula daily #crafts tag #mission update

[mewling-central]

Introduction to Collective Seraphic

Now that Seraphic's at a stable place, I think I'm gonna take some time to delve into the basics of how it operates. For this post I'll only be going into the language itself and not the writing system, as that's going to need a post of its own to elaborate on. I'll try to keep this as concise as possible, but I may make separate posts expanding on topics discussed in this one. So, without further ado, onto the infodump!

Background

Collective Seraphic (which I'll be referring to as "Seraphic") is an artlang that I've created for a comic that as of this post I have not began yet, but am still developing. The majority of the comic will take place on the Seraph Homeworld, an alien planet some 3,000 lightyears from Earth populated by the seraph species (pictured below):

Within the story, Seraphic acts as the lingua franca of the Seraph Homeworld and the many colonized planets under Seraph control. It's used in the government, and among speakers of differing languages. As such, this language was the first one that I knew I would need to make as it will play a vital role in both the storytelling and narrative structure.

Syntax

Seraphic is largely a fusional language, employing affixes to modify the semantic role and meaning of morphemes. Seraphic does not, in the traditional sense, have verbs, so the sentence structure is strictly subject-object (will expand upon later). Nouns decline for number and tense, and are grouped into seven noun classes. Adjectives agree with nouns in number, except if derived from nouns themselves, in which case they'll also agree in class. Seraphic is very head-initial; with demonstratives, numerals, possesives, adjectives, genitives, and relative clauses following the noun the modify; and prepositions preceeding the nouns they modify. Auxiliaries preceed procedurals (again, will expand upon later).

Phonology

Here is the phonological chart for Seraphic:

It has a syllable structure of (CC)V(CC). Plosives cannot exist word finally, clusters of consonants of the same manner are illegal, and vowel clusters are also not permitted. Syllabic consonants are grouped with vowels and behave much like them, carrying tone and stress, so they together are grouped and referred to as vocalics. Seraphic is a tonal language, employing the use of four tones: rising (á), falling (à), high (ā), and low (a). Low tones remained unmarked in both the Seraphic script and in romanization. Stress is syllable-independant. It will take either the ultimate, penultimate, or rarely the antepenultimate. Stress always falls on the syllable with a voiceless initial obstruent nearest to the end of the word. If none are available, it will fall on the syllable with an initial sonorant within the same parameters. Stress will never fall on a voiced obstruent. For clarity, I'll provide a key describing the pronunciation of the romanization.

Sounds that are similarly pronounced as they're read in American English:

m, n, p, b, t, d, k, g, f, v, s, z, y, w, l

Sounds that have special pronunciations:

ŋ, like the ng in English "sing"

p', like the ጴ in Amharic "ጴጥሮስ"

t', like the t' in Navajo "yá'át'ééh"

k', like the კ in Georgian "კაბა"

', like the the space within English "uh-oh"

c, like the sh in English "sharp"

j, like the s in English "measure"

x, like the gh in English "ugh"

ğ, like the γ in Greek "γάλα"

pf, like the pf in German "Pfirsiche"

ts, like the z in Italian "grazia"

tc, like the ch in English "chain"

kx, like the kh in Lakota "lakhóta"

r, like the rr in Spanish "perro", although occasionally like the r in Spanish "amarillo"

i, like the ee in English "meet"

į, like the ы in Russian "ты"

u, like the oo in English "boot"

e, like the é in French "beauté"

œ, like the a in English "Tina"

o, like the o in Classical Latin "sol"

a, like the a in English "bra" although this can change to be more forward or more backward.

Another letter that might trip people up is ł, which is meant to represent the high tone syllabic 'l'. Otherwise, syllabics are written the same as their pulmonic counterparts, with tone markers written when applicable.

Nouns

Nouns make up the bulk of the Seraphic lexicon. Every noun is grouped into one of seven classes:

Solar class: nouns related to seraphim or seraph-like beings, and seraph body parts. Prefix appears as zā-, zō-, zē-, s-, or ts-.

sēr = "person"

Astral class: nouns related to non-seraph animate lifeforms (their equivalent to "animals"). Prefix appears as ğr-, x, or kx-.

xuc = "cherub"

Vital class: nouns related to inanimate lifeforms (their equivalent to "plants"). Prefix appears as wā-, wō, w-, ū-, wē-, or wī-.

wējlux = "tree"

Terranean class: nouns related to landscapes, locations, and natural phenomena. Prefix appears as va-, vo-, vu-, f-, and pf-.

voxāl = "sun"

Metallic class: nouns related to inanimate objects, both natural and artificial. Prefix appears as ja-, jo-, c-, or tc-.

jağrú = "rock"

Lunar class: nouns related to abstract concepts, and terms related to time. Prefix appears as la-, lo-, le-, li-, y-, or l/ł-.

levren = "job"

Oceanic class: nouns related to general words, tangible concepts, numbers, all adjectives, and non-incorporated loanwords. Prefix appears as a/ā-, o/ō-, or aw-.

awuf = "group"

Adjectives do not agree in class, due to the fact that nouns originally are derived from adjectives, and noun classes acted as a way to differentiate between nouns and adjectives.

fa = "warm, hot"

jafa = "fire" (lit. "a hot thing")

When adjectives are used as predicatives, they decline into the oceanic class in order to take the procedurals (once more, will expand upon later).

Nouns also decline for four numbers: singular (one thing, usually unmarked), dual (two things, both things; suffixes as -ac, -oc, -œc, or -c), plural (things, many thing; suffixes as -n, -an, or -in), and collective (every thing, all things; suffixes as -āf/ōf, -áf/-óf, or -'ōf).

Seraphic doesn't use pronouns. Everything and everyone is referred to by name, including yourself. From our perspective, the Seraphic language constantly speaks in the third person. However, it can be repetitive to use the same name over and over again in a sentence, and sometimes you don't know the name of things, so they'll apply what I've called pro-forms. They consist of the demonstrative adjectives fl "this", sl "that", and xl "yon" declined into the Solar class and taking the place of the first, second, and third person respectively. For ease of reference, I'll provide the forms and their declensions below.

zāfl (I/me), zāflc (both of us), zāvlin (we/us), zāfláf (all of us)

zāsl (you), zāslc (both of you), zāzlin (you guys), zāsláf (all of you)

zōxl (they), zōxlc (both of them), zōğlin (many of them), zōxláf (all of them)

Seraphic makes no distinction in the gender of the speaker, in this regard. Although these resemble pronouns, they're not meant to be used as often as regular pronouns, and whenever possible it's much preferred that you refer to someone or something by name.

Adjectives and Prepositions

Adjectives are fairly straightforward. Adjectives follow the noun they modify (e.g. sēr tan "big person"), and agree with them in number (e.g. sēr tan "big person" vs sērn t'aŋon "big people"). Adjectives agree in the singular form with singular and collective nouns, and they agree in the plural form with dual and plural nouns.

There are three main types of adjectives: native adjectives (e.g. cna "good"), borrowed adjectives (e.g. anzn "nice"), and noun-derived adjectives (e.g. arfi/ofi "new"). Native and borrowed adjectives don't agree with noun classes, but noun-derived adjectives do. It originated from the animacy-based adjective agreement system in Proto-Seraphic, which has been lost in all other adjective instances. When you want to make a noun into an adjective you'll affix one of two prefixes to it: ar- (if agreeing with Solar, Astral, and Vital nouns) and o- (if agreeing with Terranean, Metallic, Lunar, and Oceanic nouns). There are specific rules on the forms each prefix takes based on the noun they're attached to:

"ār-" when preceeding high or falling vocalic syllables (e.g. sēr ārzājna "popular person")

"ar-" when preceeding low or rising vocalic syllables (e.g. wēn arfe "local fruit")

"ó-" when preceeding high or falling vocalic syllables (e.g. lalel ówē "grassy flavor")

"o-" when preceeding low or falling vocalic syllables (e.g. lesar olvulvren "economic problem")

"ōw-" when preceeding words that start with a vocalic (e.g. lnin ōwāsāvbas "momentary event")

Prepositions occur before the nouns they modify, and don't change form in any circumstance. There are currently 19 prepositions in the modern language, and they are usually connected to nouns via a hyphen (e.g. e-fe "at (the) place"):

cu = of; indicates possession

pr̄ = indicates the indirect object, equivalent to "to" in the phrase "The man sends the letter to me."

in/īn = as or like; indicates similarity or resemblance. Will either be low or high tone depending on the tone of the following syllable.

e/ē = at or on; indicates location.

tsa = near or for; indicates relative distance from a location or an action performed for the sake of the referent.

cni = without; indicates a lack of possession or company.

wa = in or inside of; indicates interior position.

tn = on top of, above, or before; indicates superior position or a prior instance in time.

pux = under, beneath, or after; indicates inferior position or a following instance in time.

pi = with, together with; indicates being in company of or making use of the referent.

fān = from or away from; indicates the motion of leaving the referent.

ku = out of; indicates motion from within the referent towards the exterior.

tun = into or through; indicates motion from outside the referent towards the interior.

xel = to or towards; indicates the motion of approaching the referent.

kxun = across; indicates motion from one location to another

pn̄ = around; indicates location surrounding the referrent.

cāza = between; indicates location in the middle of the referrent.

tē = after, behind; indicates posterior position.

fr = during; indicates a moment in time

Prepositions aren't combined in Collective Seraphic, but may be in certain instances in colloquial speech.

Procedurals

Okay, this is probably the most complicated part of Seraphic, so I'm going to need to get into things individually. First, I'll start with defining a procedural itself. Procedurals are the term I use for the prefixes used to describe the relationship or process of and between the agent noun and the patient noun. These are what act as the equivalent to "verbs" in earth languages. There are three in use:

Existential: used to denote a state of being or equivalence between agent and patient, or to the patient and itself. Equivalent to English "to be" (e.g. A is B, there is B). Usually prefixes as some variant of n-, m-, or ŋ-.

Actional: used to denote an action or process between the agent and patient, or with the patient and itself. Equivalent to English "to do" or "to act upon" (e.g. A acts upon B). Carries a connotation of agency and intent. Usually prefixes as some variant of re-, ra-, or r-.

Resultative: used to denote an occurence or change in state between agent and patient, or patient and itself. Equivalent to English "to become", "to happen", or "to change into" (e.g. A becomes B, B happens to A). Carries a connotation of passiveness or motion. Usually prefixes as some varient of ed- or ez-.

The procedural will change its form slightly depending on the class and declension pattern of the noun it modifies. It always affixes to the patient noun, demonstrating a relationship of an action and what is being acted upon. In this way, the patient can be clearly identified. In transitive or causative clauses, the word order is always S(P)O, with the agent acting as the subject and the patient as the object. In intransitive and passive clauses, the word order is always (P)S, with the patient acting as the subject and the agent demoted to the indirect object or omitted entirely.

Although seemingly limiting, using these three procedural, as well as prepositions, nouns, and adjectives, altogether can be used to make all sorts of verb equivalents that are called "procedural phrases". I'll demonstrate how to build a sentence now. First thing we need to know is the subject and object:

Sāx ... jafa (The child ... the fire)

Next, I'll add the actional procedural in the present tense to this.

Sāx rejafa (The child acts upon the fire)

By itself this is technically grammatically correct, but it doesn't really mean anything. It's too broad. So we add a prepositional phrase to specify exactly what action the child is taking towards the fire.

Sāx pi-sīman rejafa (The childs acts upon the fire with (their) eyes)

Now we know that the child is performing an action involving the use of their eyes. Now of course this could mean many different things in English, but in Seraphic the first thing that comes to mind would be fairly obvious: to see! Thus, "Sāx pi-sīman rejafa" would be the same as saying "The child sees the fire" in English! There are a lot of set phrases that equate to verbs, and remain consistent in their arrangement. Often differing phrases are a useful way to ascertain where someone is from or what their first language is.

Tense and Aspect

Seraphic has six main tenses: two pasts, two presents, and two futures. The two pasts consist of the recent past (happening recently) and the remote past (happening a long time ago), and they prefix and/or combine with the procedural.

Sāx pi-sīman ğrejafa (The child just saw the fire)

Sāx pi-sīman eğrejafa (The child saw the fire a while ago)

Similarly, the future tenses consist of the near future (will happen soon) and the distant future (will happen eventually).

Sāx pi-sīman drejafa (The child will soon see the fire)

Sāx pi-sīman izrejafa (The child will eventually see the fire)

The present tenses consist of a general present tense (happens) and the infinitive (to happen) which is used with auxiliaries and copulae and carries no presence in time.

Sāx pi-sīman rejafa (The child sees the fire)

Pi-sīman ezrejafa (To see a fire)

Whether someone considers an event to be nearer or farther in time from them is completely up to their discretion. There's no set timeframe for when to use the recent vs. remote past, it's all fairly subjective. However, whether you decide to use the recent or remote can really indicate whether you believe something to be in the distant past or future, or just a few moments ago or soon.

Seraphic also makes use of two copulae, the perfective -r and the imperfective -l, helping clitics that expand on the aspect of the procedural, i.e. how the procedural happens over time instead of when in time. The copulae are separate from the procedural, being placed directly before it and conjugating on their own similarly to the lexical procedural. When the copulae are in use, they are conjugated instead of the lexical procedural, while the lexical will be put into the infinitive. The exception to this is if the point in time is considered necessary to be stated for the sake of clarity or emphasis, in which case the lexical verb will also conjugate (though this isn't considered to be the default). The two copulae each conjugate to six tenses, and give 12 individual aspects in total. They are as follows, starting with the perfective:

āgxōnr - Pluperfect: indicates that the action happened at a point before some time in the past either specified or implied (e.g. āgxōnr nidsl "that has happened")

xōnr - Preterite: indicates that the action happened in the past with no reference to if it was completed recently or remotely. A general past (e.g. xōnr nidsl "that happened")

nar - Relative: indicates relative clauses, i.e. clauses that act to modify a noun similarly to an adjective. Equivalent to "that", "who", or "which" (e.g. lsl nar nidsl "the thing that happens")

ednr - Gnomic: indicates general truths, common knowledge, and aphorisms (e.g. ednr nezłsl "things happen")

t'enr - Future Simple: indicates the action will happen in the future with no regard to how near or far it is from the present (e.g. t'enr nidsl "that will happen")

āt'ēnr - Future Perfect: indicates that the action will happen before a time or event in the future (e.g. āt'ēnr nidsl "that will have happened")

And the imperfective:

ŋ̄xōzl - Discontinuous: indicates that an action was happening in the past, but is no longer happening in the present (e.g. ŋ̄xōzl nidsl "that used to happen")

xōzl - Habitual: indicates that an action is done often or out of habit (e.g. xōzl nidsl "that always happens")

īzl - Progressive: indicates that an action is happening at the very moment of conversation (e.g. īzl nidsl "that is happening")

nizl - Prospective: indicates that an action will be starting to, or is in the process of happening (e.g. nizl nidsl "that is about to happen")

t'ezl - Iterative: indicates that an action happens again, repeatedly, or more than one time based on context (e.g. t'ezl nidsl "that happens again" or "that happens again and again")

nt'ezl - Continuative: indicates that an action happens continuously and without end (e.g. nt'ezl nidsl "that still happens")

With both tense and aspects, this largely expands the capability of Seraphic in referring to time.

Moods

Seraphic makes use of seven modal particles to denote seven moods. They are always placed at the beginning of clauses, and no two modal particles can exist in the same clause. They are grouped into four categories: the declaritive (indicative and negative), the inferential (evidential and interrogative), the deontic (volitive and imperative), and the epistemic (subjunctive and conditional). They add extra clarity in the speakers mood or opinion concerning the clause they modify, and are as follows:

Indicative: base form of a clause. Indicates that the speaker is stating a fact or what exists, and is unmarked (e.g. idsl "that happens")

tu - Negative: indicates that the speaker is stating a fact that is untrue or what doesn't exist. Usually only appears in formal, official texts, as the first syllable of the procedural will chage tone to contrast as well and leaves the particle unneccesary in colloquial speech (e.g. tu īdsl "that doesn't happen")

cuc - Evidential: indicates that the speaker is stating a fact that they believe or understand to be true, regardless of having experienced it or not. (e.g. cuc idsl "apparently that happens") Direct evidentiality is denoted using a different method.

an/ān - Interrogative: indicates that the speaker is confirming whether a statement is or isn't true. Forms questions (e.g. an idsl? "does that happen?")

tcān - Volitive: indicates that the speaker desires for the statement to be true (e.g. tcān idsl "that wants to happen" or "that needs to happen" or "that should happen")

má - Imperative: indicates that the speaker is giving a command or suggestion, to themselves and/or to other referents. Functions additionally as a cohortative and a jussive (e.g. má idsl! "let that happen!")

tir - Subjunctive: indicates that the speaker believes the statement to be possible or likely (e.g. tir idsl "that could/would/might happen")

nun - Conditional: indicates that speaker believes the statement to be possible under specific circumstances or conditions (nun idsl "if/when that happens..."

Miscellaneous

That's about the basics of the Seraphic language outline. I'd like to eventually get into things like comparison, evidentiality, declension forms and the like, but those are all topics that definitely need their own individual posts. Real quick, I want to provide one more additional fact about Seraphic.

Seraphic uses base-16, meaning it groups numbers in sets of 16 instead of sets of 10 like we do. 1-16 would be written 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, F, 10. 10 would be read as 16, and equally 20 would be 32. They're still counting the same amount of things, they're just dividing it up differently!

Anyways that's about it, I hope to share more about Seraphic soon, and when the comic gets released I hope you'll all be able to read it and pick out the many many lines of Seraphic I've poured into it!

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

#conlang #constructed language #artlang #grammar #phonology #syntax #linguistics #seraphic #collective seraphic #info post #hope i didn't make a fool of myself in front of the whole community #accidentally showed the world i dont know shit abt linguistics gotdamn #im sure itll be fine #writing system tutorial forthcoming

[johannestevans]

the thing about unfucking a chaotic space is that it's like. do we actually thrive in mess? no, not really. it's not that you HAVE to have utterly clean spaces devoid of clutter, but the more clutter there is, the harder it is to find things when you need them

because once you've looked over everything once, your brain just flattens basically all that information into a static image because it's like "looked for patterns, didn't see any :)" and even though your keys are RIGHT THERE, it already looked, didn't see them sorry :)

so you need to have somewhere where keys live. you want that somewhere to be visible! so a pocket is bad, because you can't see it, and also, which pocket? which coat? what if i change my coat and forget to move my keys, then i'll go out and forget my keys

you can't put them in a drawer because like.

a) they'll be in a drawer, out of sight, and you'll have to remember which drawer

b) because you can't see them on your way out, you'll forget them! you need to be able to see them to know!

okay, so how about a bowl or plate, or a tin, or something like that? now, that bowl could be in the living room or bedroom, but that's bad - if you have to go through other rooms, you might forget about your keys coming in or going out

especially if you're already in a hurry or in a rush (which, let's face it, you often Will Be), like, you absolutely NEED those keys to be next to the door - in the hall or the first room or whatever, because otherwise you'll have to go through the whole house to find them

but. a bowl or a plate? right next to the front door?

you'll put everything in there. letters. junk mail. bits of crap out of your pockets. paperclips, marbles, receipts, candies, loose change. because it's a great place to put things and it's THERE

so imo like. keys as much as possible belong on a hook by the front door, and you get yourself in the habit of as much as possible putting keys on the hook - esp getting it so habitual that if anyone walks past in the house and SEES keys left on the side, they'll put them there

it's great to ALSO have a tin or bowl or smth to also keep all that random crap in, but like. keys want to be separate because they're the most important thing - especially if there's several people w diff keys living in the same house and they want to be separate but together

it might be that you prefer a plate for keys or you do like a pocket or whatever but like. the point of this post isn't the keys themselves, it's the process of getting to keys on a hook.

when you have difficulty maintaining order in your spaces, whether it's because of neurodivergence or exhaustion or depression or whatever else, establishing order and then maintaining it IS A NEW SKILL.

getting containers is just. the start of it.

you can buy 20 boxes to put things in, but what happens if you don't remember to put things in them? what if you don't remember which box goes where, and you keep swapping them around? what happens if you just don't have the muscle memory to do it?

you come home, you focus on the task at hand - you toss the unnecessary stuff aside. you don't need that shopping bag right now, so you drop it on the floor or put it on the arm of the sofa, or you drop it into the nearest box.

and then suddenly, three weeks later, there's fucking shopping bags everywhere, because you keep forgetting to take old ones out with you so you keep getting given new ones, and you don't have a box for them, and they're all over, and it's insurmountable

creating and deciding a dedicated space for x thing is one aspect of it. getting a container for x thing is a step further. but what about trouble shooting that container? what are the problems or flaws with it? what makes that container harder to use, or more inappropriate?

for example, if it's a medium-sized box, where does it live? if it lives up on a high shelf but you need to constantly use it, well, that's terrible. it's never gonna go back up on that shelf, and now it's in the way all the time, which sucks, but it's either here or there

and an outsider might come to your house and go. well. why don't you move this OTHER medium-sized box, which contains paperwork you rarely need, to this high shelf, and put this one, which you regularly use, here right under your bed?

except that a lot of people wouldn't comment on your space like that, because it can feel rude or judgemental, and also, YOU might feel called out or insecure or humiliated by that, and they don't want to make you feel that way

bc the worst is for someone to just come in and go "Oh, it's messy :/" but that's not helpful. you can see the mess, of course you can. but can you see the end and the beginning? can you figure out where to start? how to make it better?

and then, can you troubleshoot the system you've made to fix it? or will you institute a system from scratch, fuck it up a bit, and then panic or get frustrated and give up, maybe even hate yourself a bit, but just live with the mess?

seeing the mess is a skill; seeing how to tidy the mess - how to section it up, how to tidy, how to clean - are separate skills; getting containers to put them away is a skill; getting the RIGHT containers is a skill; letting yourself go "oh, i need smth different" is too

for example, for a lot of people with ADHD like mine, baskets are great. they let you see what you have - unlike a drawer - but they still contain your stuff!

except that i have asthma, and i already struggle to get dusting done - i find it hard to do, and also i FORGET

so baskets? oh, god. for me, it's like, great, i've organised all this stuff and i can see it in one place and it's not on the floor or on surfaces or scattered around the house, and also, it's coated in poison for my allergies and my ailing lungs. lifehack!

i have the same problem with open boxes - for stuff in boxes, what's best for me is boxes with lids, especially clear boxes where i can see most of what's in them from the outside

but yeah it's just. it's letting yourself change it and tweak it. it's letting yourself change and adjust GRADUALLY, and train yourself into new habits, and try as much as you can to keep them, and make it as easy as possible FOR YOU to keep them.

#musings

[rpgarbage]

HTML BASICS

hey goobers, let's learn some basics for rp.me HTML coding.

under the cut, we have:

-getting image URL -what are hex codes? -how to post a gif/image -how to add a background -how to bold, italic, underline, or highlight text -coloring text -centering text or right aligning text -line breaks -creating a link

*ignore my typos, i'm stupid **if you need any extra help w/ these, lmk on discord @feralgnat

getting image url:

i'm only adding this because it's important for other steps and i don't wanna assume y'all know how to get this.

to get a image url, typically you can right-click on any interwebz photo and click "copy image link/url."

you can also upload onto imgur or similar places and still copy the image url. some sites have specific copy zones for those urls, but i always just right click and copy. up to you.

make sure your url ends in .jpeg, .png, .gif and similar. i don't think .svg works for html coding but i am probably wrong and stupid.

hex codes:

we're gonna be using a lot of hex codes too so here's what they are!!!!

hex codes will have # and 6 characters after that represent any color you can think of. for a full list of hex code colors, go here and look around. copy and paste that number/letter code, including #, and use that in any codes that require hex codes.

black: #000000 white: #ffffff

posting gif/image:

whenever you're posting a gif or an image, you'll use the same code, which is:

<img src='IMAGE URL HERE'>

with this code, it will post the original size of the photo you're using. sometimes that's OK!!!!!! but a lot of the time, we are lazy and don't want to personally resize pictures. there is a solution!!!

back to our original code but with a new addition: <img src='IMAGE URL HERE' width=100> or <img src='IMAGE URL HERE' height=100>

this code will keep the aspect ratio the same, but will now make the picture 100 pixels in width (or height in the second code). you can TECHNICALLY add both width and height to your code, but you might fuck up the aspect ratio (you do you, tho). you can obviously edit the width/height number to whatever space you need to fit it in. you'll probably have to play with it and adjust it a lot, but that's life, baybee.

adding a background:

idk this code off of the top of my head, but here u go.

background image:

<style> body {background-image:url("URL HERE") background-attachment:fixed; background-repeat:repeat; background-position:top; }</style>

the url used should end in .jpeg, .png, .gif, or similar.

background color only:

<style> body {background-color:HEX CODE HERE; background-attachment:fixed; background-repeat:repeat; background-position:top; }</style>

(this code could prob be shorter but i'm not touching it. what if i fuck it up? we will DIE!!!!!!! more code is better than less code, imo)

bold, italic, underline, or highlight text:

bold: <b>text herehehehehrehherehhe </b> italic: <i> text heehrhehrhehhehehheh </i> underline: <u> text herehehrhehrheh </u> highlight: <mark> text herehehrhehr </mark>

there's a way to change the highlight color, too!!! add this code: <style> mark {background-color:ADD HEX CODE; color: black; } </style>

background color is the actual highlight color and the second color is your text color. typically we're gonna use black but you can also adjust that with another hex code if ur feeling fancy.

with all of these codes, do not forget to add the second code when you are done with transforming whatever text you're working with. those </> codes are your friends.

coloring text:

you're gonna need ur handy, dandy hex codes for this too.

before text you wanna color, use: <font color=HEX CODE HERE>TEXT WHEEE</font>

once again, don't forget that </font> or else everything after the code will be the color you chose. unless you want that.... it's your life.

centering text or right aligning text:

centering: <center> TEXT OR PIC CODE??? WHATEVER </center>

right align: <p align=right> TEXT OR PIC OR WHATEVER </p>

left align (default but here u go): <p align=left>TEXT WHEEEE</p>

line breaks:

many of you prob know this but JUST IN CASEEEEE

new line: <br> skip a line: <p>

creating a link:

<a href='LINK URL'>link name</a>

#rp.me #roleplayer.me #get crazy get stupid #html #resources #this post likes to not show up in the resources tag #why

[flaresanimedump]

Is it Ranpo or Rampo? PSA since the spelling is different between subs:

The real life author Edogawa Ranpo/Rampo was a very cool person. There are lots of fun stories about him, but the thing to know is that he liked Edgar Allan Poe and could speak English. (He liked Poe's mystery stories specifically, Poe having created the proto-Sherlock in his stories about character C. Auguste Dupin).

Why RaNpo: The original author based his pen name on Edgar Allan Poe. Because of the Japanese phonetic system, the first O is considered "soft" and can be skipped over when talking fast, and the W sound is so soft it's often omitted from translation altogether. The Rs are a little more complicated but for the purposes of this explanation I'll just say that soft Rs at the ends of English words are often omitted in their Japanese counterparts (i.e. "computer" is pronounced "computa"), and Japanese doesn't have an L sound exactly, so the R in Ranpo is a stand-in. Thus:

Edgar Allan Poe -> Edga aran po -> Edgaa ranpo -> Edogawa Ranpo -> えどがわ•らんぽ ->　江戸川•乱歩

So this makes it seem like a no-brainer to spell it Ranpo. I'll give another point in Ranpo's favor: Japanese does not have a stand-alone character for M. Each Japanese character has at least two letter sounds in it and one is always a vowel (thus "do" instead of just "d" in Edogawa). Vowel-only sounds are an exception to this rule. They have characters that represent solo A, E, I, O, U sounds - and one for N. ん is just the letter N. They do have the M sound of course, and Ranpo is written "Ra-n-po" so this must mean it's Ranpo, right?

Why RaMpo:

Now it gets complicated. As previously mentioned, Edogawa Rampo could read and speak English. He couldn't write it, however, and so in the 1950s he collaborated with a translator to translate his works into English. His chosen romanization of his pen name? Edogawa Rampo.

Now we KNOW he knew better. He can read English and he's a huge Poe fan, he knows this isn't how Allan is spelled. I haven't been able to find anything on his reasoning, but nobody in the US even realizes this is a play on Poe's name upon hearing it, so I doubt copyright had anything to do with the spelling (and they got way fewer claims for that in the 1950s anyway). I will say that I've seen quite a few Japanese people choose handles related to things they like in German/English and then choose to spell it differently in the romanization, so it might just be for fun. But whatever the reason, the fact remains that Edogawa Rampo himself spelled it Rampo.

On the use of ん, a translator friend of mine once explained the phonetics of the ん character to me. If you're an avid weeb you might have seen "senpai" spelled "sempai" on occasion. You know how the letter A has long and short pronunciations (denoted by "ā" and "ă" respectively)? Similarly, ん has 4 different pronunciations depending on the sounds around it. The most common one is indeed the N sound English-speakers are familiar with, but if ん comes before a sound where your lips press together (such as M, B, or P) it's pronounced like an M. Rampo has one of these sounds following the ん. Certain style guides advise using the letter M in this case.

Since these style guides are prevalent in Japan, it's possible that Edogawa was just following one of those in his chosen translation. Or he might have been being artistic. Someone out there may know but I sure don't.

As a final note for Rampo, all of the official Japanese merch uses the M spelling. I take any and all official merch spellings with a grain of salt, but in this case it's very consistent. Funimation's written romanization has been Rampo (check season 2), but Yen Press has used Ranpo.

So what's the answer?

Technically both are "right," it just depends on your style guide (and, personally, I like Ranpo better), so the answer is... use whichever you like! Such is the way of romanization in anime fandoms.

#edogawa ranpo #ranpo edogawa #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs #but sadly there's more evidence for RaMpo #I will be ignoring it #update: I blame dyslexia for not noticing the Yen Press translation of the manga uses Ranpo #as do the scans #THAT is how the spelling got popular lol #analysis

[drawdownbooks]

Kris Sowersby: The Art of Letters is a visual feast of letterforms celebrating one of the world’s leading type designers. The 800 page publication examines Sowersby’s letter drawing practice while considering the characters as independent works of art, exploring their interconnections of function and style. It champions the absurd beauty involved in creating multiple expressions of predetermined alphabets through nuance and theory.

While a typeface is a well considered set of many elements, if one removes the context of language systems and alphabets, each character may be viewed as a singular abstract drawing, as art in their own right. As presented in this book, it allows us to re-see, or to see for the first time, their individual form and function.

As Sowersby expresses, “There is no definitive form of the alphabet. The alphabet is a concept made concrete through countless written and designed letterforms; the alphabet is not defined by a single typeface but expressed through all of them. There’s sets of rules, largely unwritten rules, of how a typeface is put together, about relationships between letterforms and between styles”.

Printed one per page in black on cream paper, the publication features over 750 large character illustrations selected from Klim typefaces including Calibre, Domaine, Founders Grotesk, Heldane, National, Signifier, Söhne and Untitled.

The volume features an essay—"What We Read When We See"—by graphic designer, writer and educator Paul McNeil and a foreword by Formist publisher and designer Mark Gowing.

Kris Sowersby: The Art of Letters is finished with black-edged pages and the dust jacket features gold foil-stamped custom typography. Sowersby and Gowing collaborated on a custom typeface used to typeset the book. Inspired by the rich history of rotunda typefaces, its use is exclusive to the publication.

Edited by Mark Gowing and Dave Foster

Designed by Formist

Published by Formist Editions, 2021

Paperback, 800 pages, b&w and color images, 6 × 7.9 inches

ISBN: 978-0-64-859634-9

#Kris Sowersby #Formist Editions #graphic design books #typography books #books #Draw Down Books

[xxscarletxrosexx]

An Anthology of Linguistic Analyses by XxScarletxRosexX

Of all the peculiar things I could have done with my Master's Degree in Linguistics, I didn't expect that I would be applying everything I learned in Spy x Family. In any case, it's the perfect marriage between my two passions <3

I decided to make a master post of my linguistic analyses because I have a feeling that this will be one hell of a deep dive. It's all thanks to the the Short Mission 11 / Chapter 90.1, which actually made me realize there's so much more to Spy x Family if I revisit the anime AND manga with my linguistic lense.

Below is a list of my published works thus far.

This list will be constantly edited when a new analyses is posted. So, if you wish to have the updated list, be sure to reblog this post (it will be pinned on my page).

Linguistic Jargons:

Discourse: written/spoken communiction or debate; dialogue.

Etymology: study of origin of words and the way in which their meanings of have changed throughought history.

Loss in Translation: to fail to have the same meaning or effectiveness when it is translated into another language; omitted text.

Orthography: spelling system; how letters combine to represent sounds and form words.

Phonology: a system of contrastive relationship among speech sounds that constitute the fundamental components of a language.

Psycholinguistics: the study of the relationship between linguistic behavior and psychological processes, including the process of language acquisition; metalingusitic.

Syntax: the arragnement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language; grammar.

A Linguistic Analyses... Anthology:

A

"Ania" is the closest to an identity reveal | Part 2

Source(s): Manga - Chapter 90.1 / Short Mission 11

Topic(s): Ania/Anya; Yor Forger; Loid Forger; Identity Reveal; Character Analyses

Linguistic Component(s): Discourse; Orthography; Etymology; Psycholinguistic

B

C

D

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

Manga Translation (EN/JP/TWN) Comparison of Chapter 90.1 | Part 3

Source(s): Manga - Ch. 90.1 / Short MIssion 11

Topic(s): Ania/Anya; Loid Forger; Ostania

Linguistic Component: Discourse; Orthography; Psycholinguistics; Loss in Translation

N

O

P

Q

R

S

A Linguistic Analysis of the Spelling Names "Ania" and "Anya" (and the chapter and languages of Ostania) | Part 1

Source(s): Manga - Ch. 90.1 / Short Mission

Topic(s): Ania/Anya; Loid Forger; Yor Forger; Ostania; Character Analyses; Setting Analysis

Linguistic Component(s): Orthography; Etymology; Discourse; Psycholinguistics

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

#Spy x Family #Spy x Family x Linguistics #Linguistics #Linguistic Analyses #SxF #yor forger #loid forger #twilight #anya forger #analysis #Anthology #Linguistic anthology #scarlywroteathing #scarlydidathing #scarlymadeathing #Linguistic Analyses Master Post #Master Post

[ficbrish]

F.I.C.B.R.I.S.H.

Tagged by @sushee to make an URL playlist. Thank you! I love games like these!

Rules: Create a playlist matching the first letter of a song to each letter of your URL.

I'm completely obsessed with Vistarion [Astarion/Tav w my OC, Vistri as Tav], so I'll be extra af about this and choose songs that also fit my ship 💀

(Y'all I'm obsessed 😭)

BG3 SPOILERS BELOW

F - "Feeling Myself" by Nick Hakim [Spotify] [YouTube]

This is so Vistri and Astarion starting to fall in love. Maybe Act II, before they confess that this is something real. It's there, and it makes them happy, and they don't know what to do with it.

I - "I Dropped Out" by And The Kids [Spotify] [YouTube]

After the Cazador fight, like right after killing him. The time between that and the graveyard scene. They have their lives back, but both of them are also super triggered. (Vistri killed her abuser pre-canon, and Dark Urge Vistri has a slightly different version of that.) They're both just reeling, hopeful, and ragged. It's a brand new world.

C - "Come As You Are" by Nirvana [Spotify] [YouTube]

Accepting each other for who they are, as well as accepting themselves. They don't have to be perfect, they can just be Vistri and Astarion. This is a good thing, but it's also got a very deep pain attached to it for both of them. They're afraid of it, but it's also welcoming because they're there to accept and celebrate everything they learn about each other.

B - "Blah Blah Blah" by The Oozes [Spotify] [YouTube]

Their initial meeting. When Astarion tackles Vistri and holds his dagger at her throat, and she finally feels something other than numb. They don't trust each other because they recognize how similar they are right away. It's unsettling. They're drawn to each other and despise each other because of it. Flirting is knives. Their charms and witticisms are a subtextual war.

R - "Rocket" by Beyoncé [Spotify] [YouTube]

Act III, post-Cazador. Y'all know what this one is. Completely involved, devoted, passionate, rough lovemaking after they decide to live their lives again. Indulgently in love.

I - "I Found Out When the Day Had Come" - bb sway [Spotify] [YT]

After sleeping together that first time. It was "just fun" but they feel a euphoria they're not used to feeling. They have no idea they're falling in love.

S - "Sanctuary" by K.ZIA [Spotify] [YouTube]

Vistri and Astarion finding safety in non-sexual intimacy together after a lifetime of hypersexuality as a trauma response. Just laying together, holding hands, and talking for hours. Not needing to do or be anything. Not needing to perform to be worthy. Loved and adored exactly as they are without giving anything.

H - "HEATED" by Beyoncé [Spotify] [YouTube]

Post-canon. Astarion and Vistri ruling over the 7,000 vampire spawn in the Underdark. Happy, thriving, fabulous.

Tagging: (No pressure at all!) @malabadspice @ourladyofmaplemurder @elfjpeg @girlstandstill @lauraceaaee @tealenko @unicorn-farm @vela-ad-astra @ace-trash-boi (And anyone else who sees this and wants to play!)

#vistarion #astarion x tav #playlist game #balders gate 3 #bg3 spoilers #BrishFics

[shiningwonderland]

Syo Kurusu (Repeat)

Translator: Terry (twitter: turtlemudge) Proofreader: Ellie (twitter: ellieplatypus) Editor: Edel (twitter: chickandnugget), Snail (twitter: herbert_snail)

April — Mignon Prince

Suddenly, a gigantic limousine drives onto the school grounds. The brakes squeal loudly as it stops right in front of me

Bang!

The door to the limousine slams open and a well-built man appears.

Shining Saotome: Everyooone~, everybody! The opening ceremony is about to start! Being late on the first day is a no-nyo~!

This is the principal of Saotome Academy, Shining Saotome, in the flesh.

Snap.

At the snap of the principal’s fingers, several stagehands appear from inside the limousine.

Syo Kurusu: W-why are stagehands—!?

They’re all dressed for backstage work, wearing black from head to toe.

Haruka Nanami: Hya—!!

The stagehands lift us onto their shoulders like they’re celebrating something.

Shining Saotome: HA-HA-HAAA~. Stagehands, please bring them into the auditorium!

In an instant, we’re brought into the auditorium for the entrance ceremony.

When we arrive, the four of us are put into chairs, and the stagehands vanish as though they were never there at all.

Shining Saotome: ...And so, we at Saotome Academy place a particular emphasis on singing. Should you make it successfully to graduation, you...

Syo Kurusu: ...Wait. That guy was just on the grounds, wasn’t he? How has he already started the ceremony?!

Ren Jinguji: (whistle) That’s an impressive illusion. When did he arrive at the stage, I wonder…?

Tokiya Ichinose: I’d heard rumors, but this…

To cross such a distance in a single instant...he really is a legendary idol. He’s amazing.

That’s right, Shining Saotome is the one who created the age of idols.

He sailed past previous records, and his hits have yet to be surpassed. He’s a living legend in the world of entertainment.

Aside from his singing career, he has a number of other accomplishments. He’s involved in philanthropic work and manages a company, as well as a lot of other things. He’s really engaged in a broad range of activities.

Also, the details of his rise to fame are shrouded in mystery....He’s so popular that the TV gossip shows have had special compilations about him.

This remarkable man is our principal. Sigh... I’ve come to an utterly incredible school.

I’ll have to try my very best.

After the entrance ceremony.

Once we’re in the classroom, Syo-kun quickly runs up to the blackboard and energetically yells with a loud voice.

Syo Kurusu: Okaaay!! Attention, everyooone!!!

Everyone in class stops what they’re doing and turns to look at Syo-kun. Syo-kun bounces along the length of the blackboard, writing on it in big letters.

It reads… “Servants wanted!”...

Servants...?

Syo Kurusu: And... there! Okay, there you have it! Anyone who wants to join my retinue, raise your hand~!

……... Silence.

In an instant, the classroom goes completely quiet. After a few moments, little by little, whispers and mutters begin to fill the room.

Female Student A: Hey, that kid’s really cute once you get a good look at him! His clothes are really trendy, too.

Female Student B: Yeah. He’s a little weird, but he’s small and cute. Uh, but... yeah, I don’t really want to become his servant.

Female Student A: You’re right… If he wanted a girlfriend, though, my hand would be up right now.

Syo Kurusu: …!! Quit ignoring me!

...If he’s trying this hard to find someone, then he must have a very good reason. I don’t know if I’d be fit for a position like that, but…

I must be better than nothing...right? Maybe I should raise my hand…

But, if I end up being a burden instead… Hmmmm.

Syo Kurusu: Not even one of you is interested!?

Haruka Nanami: M-me!

Oh… I was startled, and answered without thinking….

Syo Kurusu: ...Huh? R-really…? Are you sure?

Haruka Nanami: Yes, I am!

Huh? Syo-kun... seems surprised? Why?

Ren Jinguji: Seriously? You want to be somebody’s servant? Hey, Lady. Instead of becoming Shorty’s servant, wouldn’t you rather go steady with me?

... “Going steady”? I’ve come across the phrase in dramas and manga, but I didn’t think people actually used it...

Tokiya Ichinose: Ren... you shouldn’t say things like that so lightly. That’s taking a joke too far.

Ichinose-san grabs Jinguji-san’s hand and removes it from my shoulder.

Tokiya Ichinose: You too. If you don’t reject people like them flat-out when they do something you’re uncomfortable with, they’ll only take advantage of you more as time goes on.

Syo Kurusu: “People like them”...Are you including me in that?

Tokiya Ichinose: Of course. A servant? Even jokes should have their limits.

Haruka Nanami: Ah... but... um... I. I really want to try for the position, so…

If I have the chance to be useful to someone else, I want to try it. And besides…

A servant is someone who supports their master from the shadows. It’s kind of cool, when you think about it…

When I was in middle school…

I didn’t really have anyone who I could call a friend, but, for a little while, the student who sat next to me occasionally interacted with me.

They would say things like, “Hey, Nanami. Go get me some bread from the student store,” or ask for small change, or have me run errands for them. They would ask, “Can you throw this out for me?” or let me help them when they had class duties.

They also relied on me when they asked things like, “Will you switch cleaning days with me?” At times like those, I felt just a little bit more connected to another person. It made me happy. I’m sure that if I become a servant, there’ll be lots of times like that. I’m already a little eager to get started.

Tokiya Ichinose: Are you... sane?

Select the phrase!

Yes. (+20 Love +0 Music)

Syo Kurusu: R-really? Uh, th-then, I’ll be counting on you!!

Haruka Nanami: Okay.

Syo Kurusu: I mean, of course. It’s actually an honor to join the retinue of someone as amazing as me, you know!

Is there something strange about that? (+10 Love +0 Music)

Syo Kurusu: There’s nothing strange about it at all! Believe in yourself!

Syo-kun smiles as he declares this, full of confidence. He grips both my shoulders firmly.

Haruka Nanami: Understood!!

I don’t know if I’ll be of any use, but… (+0 Love +0 Music)

Syo Kurusu: “Don’t know if you’ll be useful”? Don’t be so timid! You’re going to be my servant! Work hard and make yourself useful!!

Haruka Nanami: Understood!!

Tokiya Ichinose: ...I suppose there are many kinds of people in this world.

Syo Kurusu: Okay! From now on, you’ll refer to my awesome self as “Your Highness,” got it?

Haruka Nanami: Understood!! But, um... why “Your Highness”? Are you the prince of a country, or… ?

Syo Kurusu: Um, well, no…. But I do have a reason.... I guess you don’t want to call me that, though… ?

Haruka Nanami: Not at all! Your Highness!

Syo Kurusu: Is that so? That’s good to hear. Oh, that’s right. I haven’t asked your name yet, have I? What’s your name?

Haruka Nanami: Oh…. It’s… Haruka Nanami.

Syo Kurusu: Got it. Nice to meet you, Haruka!

Haruka Nanami: Yes.

Ryuya Hyuga: Oooookay. Homeroom’s starting~. Hurry up, take your seats.

As soon as our homeroom teacher, Ryuya Hyuga-sensei, arrives, everyone returns to their seats at once.

Hyuga-sensei…. I’ve seen him on TV before, but seeing him for real, right in front of me, is really impressive.

He has the sort of sharp stare that could make delinquents on the street break and run if he just glared at them a little….

But... At the same time, I get a deep sense of kindness from him. He’s a smartly dressed man in a suit, but he also seems friendly and reliable.

I’m sure that male students as well as female students think he’s really cool.

Male Student A: Whoooa, it’s really Ryuya Hyuga! The legendary man who played the Gang Leader, and whose show got a 20% viewership rating!

Male Student B: Yeah, all the songs he released hit a million sales or more. They say he’s a jewel in the crown of Shining Agency. Oh, but didn’t he quit singing?

Male Student A: That’s right—he hasn’t made as many media appearances lately, either. They used to happen one after the other….

Ryuya Hyuga: Hey, you two! Quit whispering.

Hyuga-sensei hits the top of his desk and the students all freeze and quiet down, trembling.

Male Student A: Sorry!

Male Student B: Yes, sir.

Ryuya Hyuga: Unbelievable…. Okaaay, a lot of you probably know this already, but I’m Ryuya Hyuga, the homeroom teacher for this class.

Lately, I’ve been working as an executive for the agency and as a teacher as well. I’ve worked less in the entertainment industry lately, but I’m still an entertainer. You should respect that. In this world, good manners are vital, got it? Oh, also, this isn’t a normal high school—you’ll only be here for one year.

You’re all going to have to rise to a professional level in that year. It’s a real short student life. Try your very hardest so you don’t have any regrets.

With that, Hyuga-sensei finishes introducing himself and explains some things about Saotome Academy.

Come to think of it, it seems like if Hyuga-sensei doesn’t like us, we won’t make it in the entertainment world.

Even so, he’s an upright person with a strong sense of justice, so we should be okay as long as we don’t do anything terrible.

Ryuya Hyuga: ...And I think that’s just about everything regarding the school facilities. Basically, remember that romantic love is forbidden. Stay within the bounds of common sense and you should be fine.

Next, we need to pick partners.... This was explained during the entrance ceremony, but at our school, composers and idols aim to debut in pairs.

Syo Kurusu: Excuse meee, Senseiii! I wanna be with her.

Syo-kun takes my arm and walks with me up to the teacher’s desk.

Ryuya Hyuga: Well, that was awfully quick. But it looks like a pretty interesting combination.

Haruka Nanami: Uh… um…. Are you really okay with me?

Syo Kurusu: You’re my servant, after all. Isn’t it obvious that a servant would serve her master?

Haruka Nanami: O-of course! I will try to serve you well.

Syo Kurusu: Sure. You better make a song that’s gorgeous and cool enough for an awesome guy like me.

Haruka Nanami: I will.

Ryuya Hyuga: I don’t really get what’s going on with you two, but if you’re fine with it, alright. I’m going to list you as partners, okay? You won’t be able to change your mind later.

Haruka Nanami: Yes.

Then, everyone in class chooses partners one after another and informs Hyuga-sensei at his desk.

Ryuya Hyuga: ...Well, I guess it’s about that time. I’ve explained things, so if there aren’t any questions, let’s move on to self-introductions.

Syo Kurusu: Excuse meee, Senseiii! I have a questiooon!

Ryuya Hyuga: Oh. Kurusu, right? For someone so tiny, you sure have a lot of energy. Go ahead, squirt.

Syo Kurusu: T-ti…. W-well, whatever. Um, can I always wear my hat, even if it’s during class?

Ryuya Hyuga: Hm? Oh, right, you’ve been wearing your hat this whole time, haven’t you…?

Normally that’d be against the rules…. Do you have a reason for it?

Syo Kurusu: The truth is… this hat is a memento from my grandpa….

I always really loved my grandpa, and when I’m wearing this, it feels like he’s here with me…

… Also, I made a promise. I said I’d always wear it. That I’d cherish it…. So….!

Tokiya Ichinose: Bold of him to tell such a transparent lie….

Ren Jinguji: No matter how you look at it, an old person wouldn’t wear a hat with that design. … So then, there’s only one reason he’d care so much about wearing a hat….

Tokiya Ichinose: I’d say he’s probably trying to make himself look taller.

Ren Jinguji: Right? Sheesh, what a cheap trick…. There’s no way it’s going to work, either.

Ichinose-san and Jinguji-san mutter to each other with exasperated expressions, but…

Hyuga-sensei listens to Syo-kun’s words very seriously. And then…

Ryuya Hyuga: Huh… your grandfather’s…. Well, then, fine…. My grandfather passed away last month, too….

Hyuga-sensei’s eyes well up slightly as he answers.

Ryuya Hyuga: My mother’s always been obsessed with work. My father died a long time ago…

My grandfather pretty much raised me. Manners, studying, how to fight, how to stare someone down… even how to throw a punch…. He taught me everything....

Where he was from, they called him the Red Dragon of Shounan, and he was pretty famous…. But the flu took him so fast....

In the end… I never had the chance to win against him, and now, I’ll never get to spar with him again….

… Sorry, that got too personal.

Saying this, Hyuga-sensei wipes a tear from the corner of his eye.

He seems a little scary at first glance, but he’s such a compassionate person….

Syo Kurusu: Ah... um... well…. No... it’s fine.

Syo-kun falters in his answer, looking taken aback for some reason.

Syo Kurusu: So... I can wear my hat?

Ryuya Hyuga: You do have a reason. Personally, I’d like to let you, but….

As for what the principal will say…. In the end, he’s the one who decides the rules here. Even if I allow it, hats aren’t really allowed without the principal’s approval.

As Hyuga-sensei is saying this…

Shining Saotome: You called, Ryuya-saaaaan?

Suddenly, the principal’s voice rang out from inside the teacher’s desk.

Ryuya Hyuga: Gah! Principal... where the heck did you…?

Hyuga-sensei looks around, flustered.

Shining Saotome: HA-HA-HAAA~. Do you know where IIII AM~?

Uh…. W-where could he be? I look…

Select the phrase!

… at the window. (+0 Love +10 Music)

On the window… There’s a note stuck to it that says, “Sorry, that’s next week.”

N-next week… ? Does that mean that the principal will come to visit our class next week, too?

… under my chair. (+0 Love +10 Music)

Quietly, I look under my chair.

When I do…

Mayim mayim mayim mayim mayim besason

Little middle-aged men the size of my finger, wearing fundoshi, were holding hands and doing a “mayim mayim” dance.

Haruka Nanami: ???

I blink and look again, and suddenly, one of the men meets my eyes.

In the next instant, the men all scream, scatter like roaches in all directions, and vanish.

… What was that?

… at the floor. (+0 Love +10 Music)

I look at the floor for some reason.

There’s a note there that says, “Look up.”

Up… ?

I raise my face towards the ceiling. This time there’s a sign that says, “Look down.” So I look down again.

There’s a sign that says, “Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A”

“B A”?

I don’t really get it, but I try tracing the letters with my finger. Then I look at the wall.

I read, “Failure! Ding dong, you were wrong.” …

But when I rub my eyes and look at it again, there’s nothing written there at all.

It seems there are many mysteries at this school.

And then...

Shining Saotome: The correct answer is heeere!

Fwip.

What I had assumed was just part of the wall suddenly peels away, revealing the principal.

Ryuya Hyuga: There you go, popping out from random places again. You’re going to scare students, doing it right off the bat like this….

Shining Saotome: HA-HA-HA~. It’s my secret ninja fake-wall technique.

Ryuya Hyuga: There’s… a lot of things wrong with that….

Shining Saotome: A-ny-wayyys. I have an announcement to maaake. And it’s this: from this moment, “The Self-Introduction Show” has beguuun!

Ryuya Hyuga: Wait. Why are you doing this…? Don’t ignore me and don’t continue the class by yourself.

Male Student A: Uh...why is it a “Self-Introduction Show” now? Is a normal self-introduction not good enough?

Male Student B: I guess not, if it’s a show…. But then, what on earth should we…?

Shining Saotome: Starting now, I will give you three minuuutes. In that time, everyone please come up with a marvewous dispway, understand?

Ryuya Hyuga: … Yup, he’s ignoring me…. … Sheesh, when the principal gets like this, there’s no stopping him.

Shining Saotome: The winner might get something good. Let's hope you're the Wizard of Odds in this little game! By the way, the judge is meeee!

IIIIIIIIIT’S SHOOOOOOOOOWTIIIIIIIIIME!!

When they hear that the principal will be judging, on top of everything else, everyone in the class is scared stiff.

In the middle of all that….

Tokiya Ichinose: I’m Tokiya Ichinose. I’m sixteen years old. I’m often told that I look like HAYATO, but I’m someone else. My skill is “singing.” Please listen.

Ichinose-san sings his heart out, a capella.

Shining Saotome: Oh-ho. That’s some excellent singiiing! Good, good! Very good indeed!

Jinguji-san speaks next.

Ren Jinguji: My name is Ren Jinguji. I’m the guy who will enrapture every lady on earth.

He says this with a single wink. Then he plays magnificently on a saxophone.

Shining Saotome: Now there’s a sound with preseeence! What a brilliant feeliiing!

They’re both very impressive and cool.

Shining Saotome: Well then, next is MISS Nanami. Please do your beeest!

Haruka Nanami: Y-y-y-yes!!

Well, I said that, but…. I really have no idea what to do…. I stand there, uncertain, and…

Select the phrase!

… gaze at Syo-kun. (+20 Love +0 Music)

Syo Kurusu: … Haruka? What… are you nervous?

Haruka Nanami: Y-yes….

Syo Kurusu: Geez, what’re you doing getting so nervous right at the beginning like that? You’re my servant, aren’t you? Pull yourself together!

Haruka Nanami: Okay….

Syo Kurusu: Agh, come on! Quit makin’ that face! Head up, and smile!

Haruka Nanami: Um… like this… ?

… look at the principal. (+0 Love +10 Music)

Shining Saotome: HA-HA-HA~. Please do your beeest.

Haruka Nanami: O… kay….

I d-don’t really know how…

… turn to face Hyuga-sensei. (+0 Love +0 Music)

Ryuya Hyuga: Hm, what’s wrong? If nothing comes to mind, you can start by just giving your name.

Just say my name. Just say my name….

B-but, I’ll do my best!!

Haruka Nanami: Ah… ahh… uh….

As I’m trying my hardest, completely frozen, Syo-kun stands up from his desk and comes to stand at my side.

Syo Kurusu: Geez, what’re you doing getting this nervous before you even start? You’ve got this. Have some confidence and go for it!

Saying that, Syo-kun gives me a hard thump on the back.

Syo Kurusu: Worked up the courage yet?

Haruka Nanami: Yes.

I take one deep breath to calm myself and look straight ahead.

Haruka Nanami: My name is Haruka Nanami. I want to be a composer. I don’t have a special skill like all of you. I can’t do anything but write music, but I want to try my very best.

After saying only that, I bow.

Syo Kurusu: Let ‘em hear it.

Haruka Nanami: Huh...?

Syo Kurusu: A song you’ve composed. You’ve got one, right?

Haruka Nanami: Right now...?

Shining Saotome: Ha-ha-ha. If you mean the digital recording, then it’s right heeere! With the push of a button…

The principal produces a tape player from somewhere or other, slips in a cassette, and hits “play.”

I… submitted my song on a CD…. Why is it on a cassette tape?

After listening to my song, everyone in class gives me a round of applause.

... I’m happy.

Syo Kurusu: Hey, it’s a good song. I suuuper like this song!!

Haruka Nanami: ... Thank you.

Syo Kurusu: Good job on your self-introduction. You can do it if you put your mind to it, see?

Haruka Nanami: Yeah.

Syo-kun grins and gives me a thumbs-up. I’m sure that I was only able to try like I did during my self-introduction thanks to him.

Syo Kurusu: Next up is the amazing me, right?

Select the phrase!

Do your best, okay? (+20 Love +0 Music)

Syo Kurusu: Of course! Carve my heroic figure deeply in your mind!

Haruka Nanami: Yes!

[Square Insert]

I’m looking forward to it. (+10 Love +0 Music)

Syo Kurusu: Hehe. It’s gonna be a surprise for sure. Don’t look away, or you’ll miss how awesome I am.

Haruka Nanami: I won’t.

What will you do? (+0 Love +0 Music)

Syo Kurusu: I’ll let you look forward to it.

You’re lookin’ at Syo Kurusu! In the future, I’ll be known as a genius idol and a man who stands at the top of the entertainment world! My specialties are violin and... karate!

Whoosh.

Syo-kun’s fist strikes the air.

Where does all that power come from in his small body… ?

His flying fists cut through the air. Kicks and jabs flow gracefully, one after another…. Every movement is captivating.

Ryuya Hyuga: Hmm… you’re not bad. Isn’t it boring by yourself, though? I’ll be your partner.

Hyuga-sensei grins with a gleam in his eye.

Haruka Nanami: Um, Sensei, fighting is…. If someone gets hurt….

Ryuya Hyuga: It’s fine, Nanami. This isn’t a fight, it’s just a bit of sparring. I’ve got faith in my own abilities, too.

Taking on one tiny opponent isn’t that big of a deal. I won’t give or take any injuries. Don’t worry!

Syo Kurusu: Just for the record, I’m not gonna hold back at all.

Ryuya Hyuga: Ha. Excellent!!

Syo Kurusu: SEI!!

Syo-kun’s fist just grazes Hyuga-sensei’s cheek, and...

Ryuya Hyuga: Hyah!!

Syo-kun immediately ducks under Hyuga-sensei’s punch, which goes flying over his head. All of their attacks are only milliseconds off from connecting.

Without any preparation at all, they’re each responding perfectly to the other’s attacks.

Ryuya Hyuga: Hmph. Not bad at all, kid!

Syo Kurusu: You still throw a pretty good punch too, considering your age.

Ryuya Hyuga: I’ve stayed in practice. … Let’s end this. Ready?

Syo Kurusu: Yeah.

Ryuya Hyuga: Haaaaah!!

Syo Kurusu: Graaaah!!

They throw their whole bodies into the final blow. And then, they stop inches from each other’s faces.

Ryuya Hyuga: Heh.

Syo Kurusu: Heheh.

They both burst out laughing. Before we know it, the whole classroom is filled with cheers and applause.

The principal stands up and starts clapping, too.

Shining Saotome: Braaavo, bravooo. Mmmmmmm, the winner this time is MR. Syooo.

Not a single person protests the decision. That’s just how amazing Syo-kun’s karate was.

Shining Saotome: As your prize, I will grant you any one wiiish.

Syo Kurusu: Really!? Then I want permission to wear my hat in class.

Shining Saotome: HA-HA-HA~. That’s an easy wiiish. Permission’s a thing any thief could steeeal.

And that’s how Syo-kun gets permission to wear his hat in class.

After class, Syo-kun, Ichinose-san, Jinguji-san, and I stay behind in the classroom to chat.

Haruka Nanami: I’m glad you’ll be able to keep wearing your hat, Your Highness!

Syo Kurusu: Yeah, thanks.

Tokiya Ichinose: Well, that hat was the cause of all this trouble, and now everything is as it was intended. But… Your performance was definitely impressive enough to pass.

Ren Jinguji: And yet, even though the one and only Shining Saotome said he’d grant any wish, you still chose such a small one. You’re not greedy at all, Shorty.

Jinguji-san pokes at Syo-kun’s hat.

Syo Kurusu: Oh….

For a moment, an “oh, crap” expression flits across Syo-kun’s face.

Ren Jinguji: Did you seriously only realize that now, Shorty?

Syo Kurusu: N-no, not at all! I just really wanted to wear this hat, no matter what! And don’t call me short, you beanpole!

Ren Jinguji: Ha. Call it a model’s build, please. It takes a lot of work to look this stylish, you know.

Jinguji-san runs a hand through his hair.

Tokiya Ichinose: … I suppose I’m stuck with you all…. Ren, Syo… and you…. It seems like it’s going to be a troublesome school year.

Ichinose-san sighs, but getting to meet these amazing people…. I’m so excited.

I gaze at the three of them, lost in thought.

Syo Kurusu: Hm? What’s up?

... Syo-kun notices me staring, and asks me why.

Select the phrase!

I’m so happy…. (+20 Love +5 Music)

Haruka Nanami: Everyone’s so cool…. I’m glad I’ve gotten to meet such incredible people. And most of all, I’m so happy that I get to spend a year trying my best at your side, Your Highness….

I’m sure we’ll win the graduation audition!!

Syo Kurusu: Yeah!!

I’m so excited I can hardly stand it! (+10 Love +5 Music)

Haruka Nanami: Everyone in class, and the school, and Your Highness are all so incredible that… it almost seems like a waste for me to be here…. So I’m so excited for this year!

You’re so cute…. (+0 Love +0 Music)

Syo Kurusu: Don’t call me cute!!!!!

Haruka Nanami: Ah, s-sorry! I won’t say it again! I’m sorry!!

Syo Kurusu: Well, as long as you get it…. You better not….

He… might have a complex. But if he does, that’s kind of cute too.

There’s a long road ahead of us with difficult obstacles before we can debut. But, for some reason… My anticipation is greater than my uneasiness, and I can’t calm this heart-pounding excitement.

I can’t help but feel like this is going to be the school life of my dreams. All riiight! I’ll set my sights on debuting and do my best~!!

Mini Game

Ryuya Hyuga: Alright, let’s start this private lesson~. That’s right. We’ll test your sense of rhythm before starting the composition class.

For composers, rhythm is the most basic of basics. From here on out, study hard and learn all you can!

First I will show you the pattern. After that, you’re gonna continue.

So, let’s begin.

S Rank

Syo Kurusu: Amaziiing! You’re really an amazing person. I’ll keep relying on you from now on!!

The next morning, when Syo-kun asks me about the test and I tell him I got a perfect score, he’s pleased, too.

Haruka Nanami: Yes, I’ll do my best.

I’ll keep working hard and leveling up. I want to become even the tiniest bit more useful.

Chapter End

#syo repeat #syo kurusu #utapri

[gladstones-corner]

On Sigils

I haven't done one in a while, not since I gave up most forms of magic last January. But I think people are getting really creative with them, and it's pretty neat. That being said, some of them are terribly difficult to copy and frequently reuse (no matter how beautiful they are).

So! I thought I'd share something I cooked up a while ago; I call it Pentagram Shorthand. There's a more advanced version called Enneagram Shorthand, but that's another post.

Go ahead and plot five points on a sheet of paper like points of a pentagram. Number them clockwise, starting from the top at 1.

Great! You're a third of the way there. Next is to grab your intention. You can make it as long as you need to, but ideally the more concise the better. Go ahead and do the standard things (remove the vowels, repeated instances of letters).

Here's where it gets a little different. Instead of comparing your phrase to the standard 1-9 alphabet map, use this one:

1: B H N T 2: C J P V 3: D K Q W 4: F L R X 5: G M S Z

Convert your letter sequence to numbers, then remove repeated instances of numbers. What you should be left with is a simple sequence of unique numbers.

Plotting them on those dots you made earlier will create a "shorthand sigil" that you can keep in pocket notebooks, use as somatic components of spells, or even combine to make supersigils.

Let's look at a photo example. Here, I've created two Shorthand Sigils: Courage of Heart and Strength of Mind. I've overlaid them together at the bottom to show an example of a supersigil, too:

Maybe soon I'll make a second post detailing the Enneagram; it's the same basic format only with nine points. Those are primarily for written sigils or more traditional magick, while Pentagram Shorthand is primarily for carved sigils or "on the go" magick.

If you give the shorthand a try, please let me know how you like it! Blessed be~

#glad's thoughts #sigils #ritual and magic

[popculturebuffet]

Monthly Mupppets Madness: Seasame Street Presents: Follow That Bird Review!: A Film that Will DestroY you In A Good Way ( Brought To You By Emma Fici)

For Carroll

Hello all you happy muppets nad welcome back to Monthly Muppet Madness. Today's review is brought to you by the letters W and B as I finally got told how to get to Seasame Street! Yes after touching on them in Muppet Family Christmas it's time to give Kermit's other family a proper look with their feature debut FOLLOW. THAT. BIRD. This one.. has been delayed a bit, but we're finally here.

It also.. puts me out of my element as i'm way more familiar with the muppets as a troupe than I am with their public education forebearers, having only watched some as a kid too young to remember any of it (I scarely remember having a tickle me elmo), and as an adult watching his nicce and nephew, where it was very diffrent. I know the muppet side fine, but knew none of the adult performers as they were all gone by the time I was growing up and certainly by the time my niece and nephew came in.

For a brief history Seasame Street was created by producer Joan Ganz Cooney and LLoyd Morrisett , VP of the Carnigie Foundation, both things i only learned when looking this up on wikipedia but both vital. With crticism of tv at a high, the two decided to weaponize it's addictive qualities for good, to create educational programming to help kids in poorer areas who may not have access to as quality education, as well as promote diversity. The result was Seasame Street. Jim Henson was asked aboard as his muppets were incredibly popular and Cooney knew what she had. Jim didn't want to do it at first as he was worried it'd make it seem like the muppets were just "for children", a fear that sadly came true as it made getting the muppet show out there harder.. but he relented. It was a good cause and they inteded to make the show alla ges: mainly to edcuate small chidlren but entertaning enough their parents and older siblings wouldn't change the channel.

It goes without saying Henson was key to the shows success, with many of his performers joining the cast and while he had to wittle down to just performing his characters as the muppet show took off it's clear he loved these characters too.

Seasame Street naturally became the monster hit it is today, big with kids, loved by the kids who grew up with it and well loved, parodied with affectoina nd generally important. It's so relevant that last year it even got a newer parody survivial street about a ragtag group of public education performers fighting for seasame street in the post apocalypse. And if your wondering if that'll be covered her eventaully

(can confirm)

When I don't know the in pile is pretty big over here. At any rate as for how follow that bird happened

(daffy hands)

I tried my best but from my usual first choices (wikipedia and the muppets wiki to at least start) to combing I couldn't find anything behind the scnenes on why this film was made. I found out what I could but I can't tell you why the film came to be.

What I can is that it wasn't a huge success in theaters. It got slammed right up against films such as back to the future and pee wee's big adventure, and thus got utterly destroyed, not helped by WB barely promoting it and mostly saying "EH WE GOT BIG BIRD".

Thankfully like Muppet's Christmas Carol after it, Home Video and in this case HBO gave it a second life, so many an 80's and 90's kid saw the film and loved it young and slightly older, and the film became a bit of a cult classic. Yet despite having seen many a film from the Jim Henson era of muppets until sitting down for this review i'd never seen this one. So with fresh eyes join me under the cut as you, me, the seasame street players, a misguided racist social service bird, two shady canadian sketch comedy actors, and more FOLLOW. THAT. BIRD!

This is More Soul Destroying Than I Expected:

This film taught me NEVER to underestimate a muppet production. See I thought , much like it's succesor, this would be a light film , a road picture about finding big bird. Which it is.. what I didn't expect.. was for it to do THIS to me.

For those of you less familiar Follow That Bird is about the fedral council of birds deciding that Big Bird cann't POSSIBLY be happy without other birds around, so they send Mrs. Finch to go take him from his happy found family and stick him with a bird family. Yes today's show is brought to you by Bird Racisim.

HIs family reluctantly lets him go as he's curious to have a bird family, and is too innocent to relaize the system's broken. I didn't expect a muppet film to be an indictment of social services and unittional racisim and shame on me for not thinking they could do it. THey do it well too: Miss FInch isn't INTENTIONALLY racist, she's just so set in her ways she genuinely CAN'T see why Big Bird would be happy where he is and dosen't put any real thought into his placement, putting him with the dim witted dodos. The Dodo's themselves aren't BAD people, they just don't know how to take care of big bird like their own childrne, lack his imagination. Even Big Bird can't understand writing a letter asking "Why am I not happy?"

The only bad thing they genuinely do intetionally.. is tell Big BIrd he should have a bird friend instead, which gets him to run away. And what makes all this more painful is that Big Bird.. is a kind kid. He writes the dodo's a thank you note and simply wants to go home and being only 6, yes really, he dosen't get that he can't just walk home, how dangerous that is, and how CPS will be right after him. Carrol Spinney does a masterful job conveying Big Bird's innocnece and pain throughout the picture and part of why it hits so hard is his earnestness. It makes me miss the guy that much more seeing just HOW brilliant he was in the role. THe heart the emotion, he's a true master at Muppetry.

The film DOES ballance the melancholy at the center well: while it's got a downbeat tone in a lot of it for obvious reasons, it ballances it with heart: Big Bird is warmly naive and befriends anyone he meets wehter it's some small children or you'd expect or of all people country music legend I know nothing about whatsoever Waylon Jennings. Why is it the Seasame Street Movie iis one of the weirder ones i've seen. It's Big Bird's genuine kindness and childish innocence that keep the film from getting too dark. For instance with said kids we go form him sadly reflecting on being alone to spending a day with the kids goofing off while their parents are trapped in the negative zone, I guess.

Also helping are the rest of the main cast. Naturally while Big Bird's the titular bird to follow , our heroes are going to follow him. They see a news report about his running away lead by Chevy Chase, with of course Kermit showing up in his original role as newsman, something that's werid to me. This was also Jim's last film performance as Kermit, and it seems fitting that kermit end his film career with some old friends.

So the Seasame Street crew splits up into teams: America's faviorite power couple in a biplane,the count riding solo in his bat mobile ah ah ah, Maria (the big sister style oft voice of reason on the team) unfortunatley gets saddled with Oscar who in natural oscar fashion keeps derailing the quest, and Gordon, his sister olivia, and Cookie monster all pile into a car with Linda, a local deaf librarian. ALl the human actors are pretty good but me and @jess-the-vampire got a good chuckle out of the fact that they still act like their on a show for small children with all the overacting that implies. Having seen seasame street I spotted the style ofa cting at once and it still works fine here it's just weirder to see it when the stakes are far higher. Linda is the easy stand out, a deaf actress who not only revolutionzed portryals of deaf people on tv with her apperances on seasame street but is damn funny and energetic the whole film and is easily the standout of the huaman performers. And of course capping them all off is Grover on his own as SUPER GROVER!

Along the way the gang gets into various hyjinks: Bert and Ernie go upside down and sing an upside down song while chasing Big BIrd north by northwest style, something we'll get into more when we get to their song.

We also get one of my faviorite set pieces as Oscar forces his party to go to the goruch cafe, with only Linda going inside (Telly and some other guy are also along) with him: we get sandra berhanrd as a waitress, the food you'd imagine from a place like this and then throw up from thinking that, and salad served by catapult.

Finally we have one of my faviorite runners, the fact that Cookie monster spends the entire movie SLOWLY eating Gordon's car. By the end it's barely back and he owes them

I was also suprised he ate something besides a cookie. Granted unlike others I didn't get my hackles up when he switched to veggies, I got why, but I assumed those were the only two things he ate.. and was delighed when emma pointed me to THIS PAGE ON THE MUPPET WIKI.

Yes folks it's a list of EVERYTHING cookie monster has ate. My faviorites include:

An Aretha Franklin Record The Most Snowballs Two Safes Telephone 1973 Ford F-250 Pickup Truck Nearly All of Seasame Street Brick Wall Filmstrip and Rosebud A Baskedt Faith Hill and Tim MCGraw's Kaledioscope Ernie's Ukelele Smoking Pipes A Guitar (And never drew a dime) Ernie's Frying Pan Autumn Leaves NPR Microphone Stephen Colbert's Peabody Award Emmy A Sneaker Wooden Toy House TV Guide Logo Mattresses A Rock Two Hot Dogs and a Donut Bust Stop Sign Paper Clip, Egg Timer, and Microwave Cords Jack Black's Xbox 360 Half of Ernie's PIllow Bicycle Dr. Zhivagho John Oliver's Tie

And just for the anti vegtable eating idiots: An apple, bannaa, carrot, grapes, watermellon, yam, two apples ah ah ah, asaparagus, raisins, cucumber spears, carrot sticks, more apples, even more apples, and more bananas.

I also had no idea he and Ernie used to be friends.. though I can see why it's also in past tense. Where was I? Oh yes, these antics help ballance the deep sadness of the main plot making things work: we see plenty of misery from poor big bird, but the wacky hyjinks ballance it just so.

Speaking of which in addition to the muppets, what good would a muppet film be without a hammy villian who can match the muppets. And this one picked two excellent canditates, two people I never thoguht i'd see in a muppet film and who had I known were in this would've watched it long before I started this series: Dave Thomas and Joe Flahrety as Sam and Sid Sleaze!

Yeah for most of you they'd be before your generation.. or mine even. But thanks to binging SCTV dvd's in college I know these two as sketch performers supreme and with the film shot in canada, they were perfect. The two perfeclty play the sleazes as over the top villians with Sam as the slightly smater one asnd Sid as the goofy idiot, and both hamming it up as they tended to anyway. Their bits tend to read as an SCTV sketch that ocasionally guest stars muppets, and that is not ab ad thing> The bit with them extording a nickle from a kid to let him off a ferris wheel kill me and the two's comedic timing is great, with dave in paticular getting to ham it up about money. The two are just fantastic, while also being nicely cruel when needed whent hey imprisoin a 6 year old for thier own finacial gain. The shot of joe crying druing the most heartbreaking scene of the film, which we'll ocne again get to shortly, is something i'll be using for some time

The two are just great and as an added bonus I assumed, being a big star at this point, John Candy wouldn't share a scene with his two co stars… and I was wrong as John's one cameo is arresting the two fo them and i'ts glorious. I would like to see the rest of the sctv cast such as rick moaranis, eugene levy and cathrine o hara show up in a muppets production if they haven't yet as this showed me just how great it could be, and while they never got their co stars success, Dave and Joe REALLY are on the level of the others and this film shows it. Their easily top tier muppet villians and only charles grodin or tim curry may surpass them. Thankfully the Sleazes don't kidnap big bird long as some kids call seasaame street, they call our various heroes and they come resuce him. I also love how adorable the climactic chase is. They managed to get Big Bird's cage open before the sleazes took off with him, but Big Bird bein ga children is reluctant to jump and takes some gentle coaxing to jump.

Naturally they return home and while Mrs. Finch finds them she finally realizes family is not your species or race.. but who you love and who loves you and agrees to back the hell off. It's a happy ending and a truly great film. The film deftly ballances comedy and melacholy to create something truly special, that's just sappy enough without going too far and really touches the heart. It also has a great soundtrack and has been tradition lately, let's break it down:

Musical Muppetry:

We oepn with the Grouch Anthem, a gloriously batshit way to open the film as Oscar stands in front of a flag pattons tyle and goes on and on about his grouchy creed while other grouches back him up. Did I see this coming? No. Did I love every second of it? You better you bet.

Ain't No Road Too Long is our Waylon Jennings number and I loved it too, a nice jolly road song. The kind you need in this kind of film in the vein of movin right along or on the open road.

One LIttle Star is truly heartbrekaing as Big Bird and Snuffy sing to each other in absentia, as does Olivia because apparently she did this a lot. If a small child and his weird friend who everyone assumed wasn't real for several years , and his surrogate aunt singing about how much they miss each other dosne't break your heart you do not have one and I do not know why your here.

Easy Goin Day is a fun number with Kermit playing with some other kids. Simple, nice, and a nice break from the overwhelming misery before OH NO MISS FINCH IS BACK.

Upside Down World is probably my faviorite number, burt and ernie just singing upside down in a plane… and Jim Henson and Frank Oz really WERE upside down for this one, and sang it upside down as a result. The dedication these men have to a good muppet stunt is amazing and I love them for it.

I'm So Blue comes very close though and if you thought One LIttle Star was heartbreaking, this is heart atomizing as poor Kermit sings painted blue in a cage while Joe Flarhety rightfully sobs. one of the saddest, most emotoinal numbers in any muppet film and only not THE most emotoinal because When Love is Gone exists. True poetry

Rankings:

The sountrack as you can see lands in a solid fourth place, just inching out the muppets take manhattan. It's good but it's not the best.

Movie wise it also lands in fourth beating out Muppet Treasure Island, as I feel the character work is stronger here, and given how hard it's been to crack the top spots that's high praise but this film more than earns it. If you haven't seen it yet it's on HBO Max and I highly recommend it and i'm happy to own it. Check it out as soon as you can.

Next Month: Emma takes a break and it's Kev's turna s we enter one of the muppets few purely for adults experiments as live from new york IT'S SATURDAY NIGHT with the land of gorch. Thanks for reading…. this has been a great year of content and I can't wait to see what year 2 of monthly muppets brings.

#seasame street #muppets #big bird #oscar the grouch #sctv #linda #grover #super grover #burt #ernie #burt x ernie #telly #kermit the frog #chevy chase #dave thomas #joe flaherty