Paint it Black!

My nephew is 13 years old. Whenever he writes a paper for school, I check it over and fix all of his mistakes for him. He said to me, "Maybe I'll proofread your paper for you in exchange," meaning one of the scholarly articles I write for work. I said, "Cool," and gave him the file. And he said, "Well, this is full of errors! See, you always say you have a lot to correct on my stuff, and look at all the stuff you got wrong!" And I said, surprised, "What? Where?" Because I'm sure there are typos in the draft I sent him, but not, like, that many.

And then he pointed to the screen and said, "Look at all the blue and red lines you have."

And I said, "Yeah, but those are wrong. Like, those are blue and red lines I'm ignoring because the computer is wrong." And then I paused and added, "You know you can't proofread a paper by just looking at the red and blue lines, right?" And he gave me the blankest look, because that clearly is EXACTLY what he thinks. And it became even clearer suddenly why, whenever I correct something on his paper, his immediate reaction is, "It didn't have a blue or red line."

There's a very good reason for that: THAT'S BECAUSE THE COMPUTER ISN'T SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW THAT IT WAS WRONG.

I am so tired of being sold the idea that computers are better than humans and so we should just outsource everything to them, which is clearly the lesson my nephew is absorbing in U.S. middle school. COMPUTERS ARE NOT BETTER THAN HUMANS. Like, maybe they are better at humans at crawling through rubble to find people trapped inside. They are also better at preserving things in a searchable format. Things like that. Very limited circumstances.

I don't want to sound alarmist but everything I hear about people using generative AI freaks me out. It's not just that I'm freaked out by people being like, "I use it to write novels!" (Although I don't see how they do, I have tried to have it write fiction for me and the output was truly terrible.) But I recognize my bias around creative writing and so no one needs to credit my views on artificial writing. But! Other things are alarming, too! "I use it to brainstorm x, y, or z." But...why? Why not just...use your own brain...to...brain...storm? The computer doesn't even have a brain to brainstorm with! And you might be like, "But it comes up with things that my brain would never think of!" So would other people! You could also brainstorm with other people! Or even through Google to see what other people have thought before you (not AI). Please don't belittle the wonder of thinking.

My nephew is 13 years old. Whenever he writes a paper for school, I check it over and fix all of his mistakes for him. He said to me, "Maybe I'll proofread your paper for you in exchange," meaning one of the scholarly articles I write for work. I said, "Cool," and gave him the file. And he said, "Well, this is full of errors! See, you always say you have a lot to correct on my stuff, and look at all the stuff you got wrong!" And I said, surprised, "What? Where?" Because I'm sure there are typos in the draft I sent him, but not, like, that many.

And then he pointed to the screen and said, "Look at all the blue and red lines you have."

And I said, "Yeah, but those are wrong. Like, those are blue and red lines I'm ignoring because the computer is wrong." And then I paused and added, "You know you can't proofread a paper by just looking at the red and blue lines, right?" And he gave me the blankest look, because that clearly is EXACTLY what he thinks. And it became even clearer suddenly why, whenever I correct something on his paper, his immediate reaction is, "It didn't have a blue or red line."

There's a very good reason for that: THAT'S BECAUSE THE COMPUTER ISN'T SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW THAT IT WAS WRONG.

I am so tired of being sold the idea that computers are better than humans and so we should just outsource everything to them, which is clearly the lesson my nephew is absorbing in U.S. middle school. COMPUTERS ARE NOT BETTER THAN HUMANS. Like, maybe they are better at humans at crawling through rubble to find people trapped inside. They are also better at preserving things in a searchable format. Things like that. Very limited circumstances.

I don't want to sound alarmist but everything I hear about people using generative AI freaks me out. It's not just that I'm freaked out by people being like, "I use it to write novels!" (Although I don't see how they do, I have tried to have it write fiction for me and the output was truly terrible.) But I recognize my bias around creative writing and so no one needs to credit my views on artificial writing. But! Other things are alarming, too! "I use it to brainstorm x, y, or z." But...why? Why not just...use your own brain...to...brain...storm? The computer doesn't even have a brain to brainstorm with! And you might be like, "But it comes up with things that my brain would never think of!" So would other people! You could also brainstorm with other people! Or even through Google to see what other people have thought before you (not AI). Please don't belittle the wonder of thinking.

Meanwhile Kim’s PTSD-riddled ass pulls a gun on a fridge because it’s shaped like a big bear, and his new bear-boy-best-friend put the idea of wrestling bears into his head. 

“Most films made for children are flashy adventure-comedies. Structurally and tonally, they feel almost exactly like blockbusters made for adults, scrubbed of any potentially offensive material. They aren’t so much made for children as they’re made to be not not for children. It’s perhaps telling that the genre is generally called “Family,” rather than “Children’s.” The films are designed to be pleasing to a broad, age-diverse audience, but they’re not necessarily specially made for young minds.”

“My Neighbor Totoro, on the other hand, is a genuine children’s film, attuned to child psychology. Satsuki and Mei move and speak like children: they run and romp, giggle and yell. The sibling dynamic is sensitively rendered: Satsuki is eager to impress her parents but sometimes succumbs to silliness, while Mei is Satsuki’s shadow and echo (with an independent streak). But perhaps most uniquely, My Neighbor Totoro follows children’s goals and concerns. Its protagonists aren’t given a mission or a call to adventure - in the absence of a larger drama, they create their own, as children in stable environments do. They play.”

“Consider the sequence just before Mei first encounters Totoro. Satsuki has left for school, and Dad is working from home, so Mei dons a hat and a shoulder bag and tells her father that she’s “off to run some errands” - The film is hers for the next ten minutes, with very little dialogue. She’s seized by ideas, and then abandons them; her goals switch from moment to moment. First she wants to play “flower shop” with her dad, but then she becomes distracted by a pool full of tadpoles. Then, of course, she needs a bucket to catch tadpoles in - but the bucket has a hole in it. And on it goes, but we’re never bored, because Mei is never bored.”

“[…] You can only ride a ride so many times before the thrill wears off. But a child can never exhaust the possibilities of a park or a neighborhood or a forest, and Totoro exists in this mode. The film is made up of travel and transit and exploration, set against lush, evocative landscapes that seem to extend far beyond the frame. We enter the film driving along a dirt road past houses and rice paddies; we follow Mei as she clambers through a thicket and into the forest; we walk home from school with the girls, ducking into a shrine to take shelter from the rain; we run past endless green fields with Satsuki as she searches for Mei. The psychic center of Totoro’s world is an impossibly giant camphor tree covered in moss. The girls climb over it, bow to it as a forest-guardian, and at one point fly high above it, with the help of Totoro. Much like Totoro himself, the tree is enormous and initially intimidating, but ultimately a source of shelter and inspiration.”

“My Neighbor Totoro has a story, but it’s the kind of story that a child might make up, or that a parent might tell as a bedtime story, prodded along by the refrain, “And then what happened?” This kind of whimsicality is actually baked into Miyazaki’s process: he begins animating his films before they’re fully written. Totoro has chase scenes and fantastical creatures, but these are flights of fancy rooted in a familiar world. A big part of being a kid is watching and waiting, and Miyazaki understands this. When Mei catches a glimpse of a small Totoro running under her house, she crouches down and stares into the gap, waiting. Miyazaki holds on this image: we wait with her. Magical things happen, but most of life happens in between those things—and there is a kind of gentle magic, for a child, in seeing those in-betweens brought to life truthfully on screen.”

This post has way too many notes and they've been clogging up my notifs for a month, but these are the first ones I've seen that Get It. Thank you. This is exactly it.

I wasn't talking about the absurdity of companies trying to advertise cars or vacations that no one can afford, like everyone in the notes seems to think. There are plenty of people who can afford them. Fewer than there used to be, but corporations aren't starving.

I was talking about the invasive way advertisers have taken over every modicum of available space and how it's no longer possible to turn anywhere without advertising being pushed on you, despite the fact that most people don't have the kind of expendable income that these companies are trying to extract from them. The less money the average person has to throw around, the more aggressively they're hounded to hand it over. Where people used to be able to afford a new car and a vacation and still throw expendable income around, they now save up for one or another big purchase (those who can afford one, and that population has significantly dwindled). People limit their other spending, and in response companies descend on our consciousness, on every last bit of space they can squeeze their presence into, like pigeons onto a handful of seeds thrown on the ground.

You have to sit through advertisements to watch something on youtube only to realize the video is, itself, an ad in disguise. You can't pump gas without a little screen blaring at you wanting you to buy things. Billboards and bus benches weren't enough, they have to be energy gobbling screens now so five companies can sell you shit while you wait instead of just one. Every available surface is screaming at you to BUY THE THING. Where you used to be able to play a game on your phone, now you can't get through more than a round of any without having to sit through ads to keep playing. Ads that are pushing other games to you that have more ads. Games based on making working class jobs look fun. Be a barista and fulfill every order or the customers will be angry! Lolololol! Work at a hotel and don't fail, making the demanding customer angry is failing don't fail! Hahahahahahahaaahaaaaahaaaaaaaa it's fun! Run a farm and make money to buy more things to grow and sell to make money to buy more things to grow and sell to make more money to buy more things to grow and sell and and and! Even in your free time you should be thinking about your place in the market economy! Or worse, they're ads for predatory games, whether they're "play our game and win real money!" bullshit or "doctors want you to play this to avoid alzheimer's [if you're old play this game where we'll exploit your confusion about technology to sell you more things.]"

Every free moment you have, every free surface you come across is another opportunity to sell you something. We aren't able to get a break from it in our free time in our own home unless we constantly take steps and make effort to, like installing ad blockers - which youtube and other websites are constantly working against - but those don't even work on your phone or tablet. And the closer to home the advertisement, the more it targets you specifically, because your personal devices, that should be your personal, intimate, private property and space, are exploited to collect data on you to wrench every last cent from your wallet. They want to get to know you, not because they're curious about you, but because they want your money. They don't just see you as a wallet with thumbs, they do so unabashedly and brazenly and aggressively.

This post wasn't about the content of what's being advertised to us. It was about the relentless, instrusive aggression with which advertising invades our privacy and personal space and every inch of public space. We are exposed to hundreds of images daily, none of which are art or even remotely creative or inspiring, but instead demand our attention and our money while ignoring that both have been stripped bare by the mere need to exist from one day to the next.

I hope that our few remaining friends

Give up on trying to play with us

I hope we come up with a redstone trap

To blow up the dumb few that forgave us

I hope the pickaxe we crafted

Despawns after you meet your fate

And I hope our carts roll past the far lands

I hope it's already too late

And I hope the base built a few blocks from here

Someday blows up

And I hope the explosion carries me far away

And I never join back to this world again

In my life

I hope I lie

And tell everyone you were herobrine

And I hope you mine

I hope we both mine

I hope I fall in lava mining tomorrow

I hope I lose all my tools

Our friends say most mobs spawn before the sun rises

We're pretty sure they're all fools

I hope you look at an enderman

I hope the night is forever

And I hope your dog dies when I do

I hope I don't leave the nether

And I hope when you play minecraft years down the line

You can't find one good world to play

And I'd hope that if I had a pick to dig out

You'd never join back to this game

I am mining

There are no blocks of sand

You are digging down with me

Hand in unbreakable hand

And I hope you mine

When an English teacher, or reader, taught or picked up 1984, it wasn’t with the intention they were going to love the protagonist. They picked it up with the intention of reading a whole story and trying to grasp the theme or catharsis from the story. If the protagonist was a *shitty* person it played into the the themes or the story, because it wasn’t about morally judging the book or *liking* or feeling attachment to the protagonist. Sometimes and often times, books were just about gaining another perspective. 

No one read Lolita expecting to endear, or like, or be inspired by Humbert. You are supposed to be upset by his behavior, you don’t read Lolita with the intention of being inspired. You read it to learn more about what the fuck is going on inside someone’s head when they behave like that. How children get sucked into abusive situations. Or read “The Great Gatsby” not because they want to fall in love with Gatsby or Nick, but to better understand and analyze the experience of the 1920s or destitution of the American Dream. 

A lot of internet and fandom culture has changed that though. When we say something like “I love the Great Gatsby” it comes with the idea or association that means you must *love* or relate to one of the characters. And maybe you do, but the first assumption is not longer about the quality of the work or themes, or cathartic impact-it’s about character admiration. And with that character admiration, in tumblr stan culture, or kin culture, or exalting characters with fanart/romance/so on you don’t just ‘admire’ or find that character ‘compelling’ it now translates to ‘you LOVE that character’ or you ‘DIRECTLY relate to that character.’ 

You can’t say “I love how Humbert is written, it’s so fascinating and dark”, without it directly translating you somehow relate to a child abuser or condone his actions. Taking in media has become an act of worship and connection. We no longer watch meant to just see the story as a whole, we watch expecting to connect to a character and if we offer them our “worship” as it’s become, as opposed to just attention or interest study as it traditionally was, it means we are condoning the character or saying we directly empathize with all their actions. 

I think that’s why there is often now so much fuss over *toxic* characters or not. Or whether that classical novel is showing good or bad things anymore. We’re treating the characters as people we should love or want to draw or write about. Sometimes a story is just about getting the the theme or catharsis or learning another perspective. We don’t NEED to like the character. Or we don’t HAVE to like a character to be impressed by how they’re written or intrigued by their behavior. 

With this in mind, 90's Trek had very distinctive language usage. It is formal, even stilted at times, but it comes off as erudite and evolved. Even Patrick Stewart has commented how he could always tell when Star Trek was on TV because he'd hear the dialogue and recognize that distinctive formalness.

From a narrative perspective, this choice falls in line with the whole "humanity has evolved" theme. But from a technical writing standpoint, it seems to have served a much more important purpose of setting the time period by scrubbing the dialogue of any time-stamped, current slang.

So in this future universe setting, casual, current language (such as F bombs) would be akin to one of us using slang from the 1600's. It's jarring not because it's crass (for some it is), but because it cracks the suspension of disbelief that what we are watching is set in different time period because they are using our language, not theirs.

I apologize for the massive run up to this question (maybe I've completely missed the mark with my musings) but what were the instructions you were given that gave DS9's dialogue that "period piece" feel?

Good observations regarding language use in Star Trek.

There were no specific instructions on how to write "proper" Star Trek dialogue. It was mostly learning by doing. But we adhered to the same unwritten rules as TNG, and that could be gleaned from reading scripts and watching episodes. Once I started on the job, a few things became quickly apparent to me:

Avoid slang.

Avoid religious expressions.

Generally, dialogue between Starfleet characters should be respectful (or even warm), slightly formal, and thoughtful.

Playful is fine, but not too goofy.

Use metric units.

Most aliens don't use contractions or use them minimally.

basic pronunciation followed by egyptological transcription in parentheses and translation in quotation marks.

frame 1: inek inpu (i̓nk i̓npw), “I am Anubis”

frame 2, poison: em wenem (m wnm), “do not eat”

frame 3, smoke detector: pa-yee pu em khenem khety (pꜣy pw m ḫnm ḥty), “this is for smelling smoke”

frame 4: ah-sh pa-yee tchen yot khena ta-yee tchen mawt (ꜥš pꜣy.ṯn i̓t ḥnꜥ tꜣy.ṯn mwt), “call your father and your mother”

frame 5: ankh wedja seneb (ꜥnḫ wḏꜣ snb), “live, prosper, and be healthy” ← like egyptian “farewell”

Fictional characters are objects.

Stop telling people to encourage the cop inside their head.

How you treat fictional characters, given they are entirely objects of fiction, does NOT necessarily speak to your own character, and you do not need to be "careful".

It is not dangerous to imagine dark things happening to fictional characters. It does not mean you are secretly a bad person. It does not mean you unconsciously want to hurt people in real life. It is not a "slippery slope" to doing bad things to people in real life. You cannot damage your brain or turn yourself into a bad person by consuming "dark" fanfic.

You feel this sort of thing is "weird". Ok! You're allowed to feel that! Your feelings are valid - they aren't necessarily based on facts, but they're valid.

I don't actually care if you think dark fiction is weird, as long as you leave me alone and let me do what I want, seeing as how I'm not hurting anyone, and I'm making myself happy, and I'm making the people who read my stories happy.

But the core of this is that no, it's not weird to strap a fictional guy to a thing and do bad things to him. Humans have been writing fantasy about this for thousands of years, and will continue to do so for as long as we exist, I imagine. You can FEEL weird about it, and that's ok. But in reality it is actually perfectly normal and common.

The Internet is full of people doing very, very bad things to fictional characters, and enjoying it and even getting off on it, because fiction and fantasy is a safe place to express thoughts, desires, urges, curiosity, etc, about dark topics. Dark fiction is HEALTHY.

To be clear: no matter what your percentage of dark thoughts to "wholesome" thoughts is, it doesn't matter, because they are thoughts. I could imagine nothing but fluff all day and that doesn't mean that there's an actual human person having nice things happen to them because of it: it is as equally unreal as bad things happening because I am imagining them. So even if you are literally thinking of nothing but murder all day, those thoughts are not causing any actual damage.

I would say believe in what you guys think, there's definitely a part of that agrees,but there's a larger part of that remembers what fandom I'm in,it's with a child a 12 year old as it's mc (a girl) depending if your in a fandom or not you'll probably know why opinions like yours aren't really welcome, mostly because it gives proshippers the excuse to be wierd about children,in a sexual way and you can only see an innocent child that your supposed to be rooting for get r***d and f*** and g*** ****d so many times, if getting off by sexual writing/drawing about a child is the urge that you need to scratch or crave or want you start to see how people think your not ok in the head

But again: fictional characters are not real. They cannot be harmed or feel bad or die. Thinking about something doesn't make it happen, and having thoughts doesn't mean you are manifesting those things into existence or that you want those things to happen in real life. Full stop. No exceptions.

Now, your reasonable response is going to be: what about people who do want to have those things happen in real life? What about people who write about murder because they want to kill people, or write about rape because they want to rape people? Aren't their thoughts a warning sign for their actions?

Here's the thing: because both good people and terrible people write stories and think about dark things, the fact that they are writing those stories or having those thoughts is not, by itself, evidence of terribleness. And plenty of people are terrible without ever having read or written dark stories! It is no more dispositive than knowing that someone owns a car or has a pet cat.

I am far more concerned about their actions in real life. Repeatedly going in for hugs when the person clearly says they don't want them, for example, is a way better indicator that someone disregards and violates physical boundaries than writing stories about a rapist, because it's a thing they are doing, not merely thinking, reading, or writing about.

But what if a bad actor uses your rhetoric to advocate for a bad thing? That is definitely a thing that happens! But that happens with any argument, no matter what it is, because that's how bad actors work.

Consider how many white supremacists use the language of racial justice to promote their white supremacy ("of course I have white pride - Black people have Black pride!"). Consider how many domestic abusers use the language of pysch treatment to manipulate and control their partners. Consider how many homophobes use the language of protecting children from pedophiles to criminalize gay and trans people.

People acting bad faith can use anything to justify the evil they're doing, including anti-shipping arguments. Actually, especially anti arguments, because they have historically been used to remove queer content from platforms (because two boys kissing was "sexual content" inappropriate for children) as well as to justify harassment, doxing, and death threats of people for the crime of [checks notes] "liking the antagonist of a fictional work."

You are right it's not morally wrong at all,nor those it harm anybody that is true your not Wrong.

But I want you to know that despite all of that,I will still not like people that I see as wrong or have wronged some fictional being, because I don't like you doing that,there is no deeper meaning I don't like you as a person because you you write wierd fantasies about r*****g a child,they might not be real,but my feelings are and that's the greatest crime

What’s not okay is to say that, because you don’t like a person, they must have secret evil intentions. Your feelings are real, but your assumptions about what that means - that they must want bad things to happen in real life - are not. No one is being weird at you. No one is making up dark stories at you.

Let me put it this way: I recently went to a science museum with my husband, and there is an exhibit there of bugs in tanks. I hate bugs, they freak me out, I cannot stand them no matter what the context is. But my husband loves bugs and thinks they’re cute (which is very weird to me), so he wanted to see them.

My fear is real, and it’s okay for me to be afraid, and if someone was forcing me to look at the bugs, that person would be causing me harm. But the fact that there are bugs in the museum at all is not causing me harm. A person liking bugs isn’t harmful, and the fact that they like bugs doesn’t mean that they must want to scare me and other bug-phobic people or think about nothing but bugs all day or, I don’t know, want the world to be taken over by bug-shaped aliens or something.

So what do I do? I just skipped that exhibit and hung out on my phone while my husband got to look at the bugs. Sometimes I’ve gone through an exhibit with my eyes closed and have my husband tell me if there’s something in the tank I can open my eyes to look at (like bees) or not. And if, despite my efforts, I see a bug that scares me anyway… well, I don’t like it, I don’t think it’s fun, I’m going to need to calm down later to avoid getting upset, but that’s a feeling that I’m having, not something that someone is doing to me.

(Bonus: it’s making old white men really really mad.)

I thought, you know, calcified remains should be really interesting to see in color, so I tried to find some that had been taken by others, in color. It was not nearly as visual stunning, they were just white rotting remains, I won’t scar anyone by posting them.

But what caught my eye wasn’t the dead. It was the fucking lake.

It’s BLOOD fucking RED.

It’s super alkaline (deadly), blood fucking red (terrifying), and oh, it gets to be 106F/41C in the water. Red spirulina algae thrives here and provides food for the main denizen of the lake…. fucking lesser flamingos.

Look at their fucking mud nests!

You need to leave!! You have found flamingo Silent Hill!! What are you still doing here!! I’ll tell you!! They’re still doing there because literally the death lake protects them from predators, nothing big enough to be a threat to them gets across the lake to get them. There are millions of them living there safely.

They play the same roles as I/me/my/mine. In modern english, we use “you” for both the subject and the direct object/object of preposition/etc, so it’s difficult to compare “thou” to “you”.

So the trick is this: if you are trying to turn something Olde, first turn every “you” into first-person and then replace it like so:

“I” →  “thou”

“Me” →  “thee”

“My” →  “thy”

“Mine” →  “thine”

Let’s suppose we had the sentences “You have a cow. He gave it to you. It is your cow. The cow is yours”.

We could first imagine it in the first person-

“I have a cow. He gave it to me. It is my cow. The cow is mine”.

And then replace it-

I sleep in the attic. Thou sleepest in the attic. He sleeps in the attic.

I love pickles. Thou lovest pickles. He loves pickles.

I go to school. Thou goest to school. He goes to school.

The -(e)st ending is only added to one word in a compound verb. This is where a lot of people make mistakes:

I will believe it when I see it. Thou wilt believe it when thou seest it. He will believe it when he sees it.

NOT

*thou willst believest it! NOPE! This is wrong

If you’re not sure, try saying it in the third person and replacing the -(e)st with -s:

*He will believes it when he sees it. ALSO NOPE! 

In general, if there’s one auxiliary, it takes the -(e)st ending) and the main verb does not. If there are multiple auxiliaries, only one of them takes -(e)st:

I could eat a horse. Thou couldst eat a horse. He could eat a horse.

I should go. Thou shouldst go. He should go.

I would have gone. Thou wouldst have gone. He wouldst have gone. 

You can reduce the full -est ending to -st in poetry, if you need to drop a syllable:

thou sleepst, thou lov'st.

In some common words–mostly auxiliary verbs, or what you might have learned as “helping verbs”–the ending is always reduced:

I can swim. Thou canst swim. He can swim.

Sometimes this reduction takes the last consonant of the stem with it:

I have a cow. Thou hast a cow. He has a cow. 

Or reduces the -st down to -t:

I must believe her. Thou must believe her. He must believe her.

I shall not kill. Thou shalt not kill. He shall not kill.

However! UNLIKE the third-person singular -s, the second person -(e)st is ALSO added to PAST TENSE words, either to the past stem in strong (irregular) verbs or AFTER THE -ed in weak (regular) verbs: 

I gave her the horse. Thou gavest her the horse. He gave her the horse.

I made a pie. Thou mad’st a pie. He made a pie.

I wanted to go. Thou wantedst to go. He wanted to go.

This is different from the third person!

*He gaves her the horse. He mades a pie. He wanteds to go. SO MUCH NOPE!

It’s not wrong to add -(e)st to a long Latinate verb in the past tense, but it’s unusual; it’s much more common to use a helping verb instead:

I delivered the letter. (Great!)

Thou deliveredst the letter. (Not wrong, but weird)

He delivered the letter. (Great!)

I did deliver the letter. (Normal if emphatic, or an answer to a question; otherwise, a little weird.)

Thou didst deliver the letter. (Great!) 

And a couple last things:

1.) Third-person -(e)th is mostly equivalent to and interchangeable with third-person -s:

I have a cow. Thou hast a cow. He hath a cow.

I love her. Thou lovest her. He loveth her.

I do not understand. Thou dost not understand. He doth not understand.

HOWEVER! Third-person -(e)th, unlike -s but like -(e)st, can, sometimes, go on STRONG past-tense verbs:

I gave her the cow. Thou gavest her the cow. He gaveth her the cow.

This never happens with weak verbs:

*He lovedeth her. NOPE NOPE NOPE!

And even with strong verbs, from Early Modern (e.g., Shakespearean) English onward, it’s quite rare. But you will see it from time to time.

2.) In contemporary Modern English, we invert the order of subjects and auxiliary verbs in questions:

Will I die? I will die. 

Has she eaten? She has eaten.

If there’s no auxiliary, we add one–do–and invert that:

Do you hear the people sing? You (do) hear the people sing.

In Early Modern English, this process was optional, and mostly used for emphasis; all verbs could be and were moved to the front of the sentence in questions:

Hear ye the people sing? (Or singen, if we’re early enough to still be inflecting infinitives.)

Do-support was also optional for negatives:

I don’t like him. I like him not.

Thou dost not care. Thou carest not.

She does not love thee. She loves thee not.

3.) Imperative verbs never take endings:

Hear ye, hear ye!

Go thou and do likewise!

Give me thy hand. Take thou this sword. 

4.) Singular ‘you’–that is, calling a singular person by a plural pronoun–arose as a politeness marker; and ‘thou’ fell out of use because it eventually came to be seen as impolite in almost all contexts. In general, once singular ‘you’ comes into use, it is used for addressing

people of higher social status than the speaker

or of equivalent status, if both speakers are high-status

strangers

anyone the speaker wants to flatter

‘Thou’ is used for

people of lower social status than the speaker

family and intimate friends

children

anyone the speaker wants to insult

It is safer to ‘you’ someone who doesn’t necessarily warrant ‘you’ than to ‘thou’ someone who does.

5.) And finally, that ‘ye’? That’s the nominative form of you–the one that’s equivalent to ‘I’ or ‘we.’ 

I  → thou → he/she/it  → we → ye → they

Me → thee → him/her/it → us → you → them

My → thy → his/her/its → our → your → their

Mine → thine → his/hers/its → ours → yours → theirs

Any time you’re using ‘thou’ for the singular, the second person plural– ‘y’all’– declines like this:

ye:  Ye are all a bunch of weirdos.

you: And I love you very much.

your: This has been your grammar lesson.

The way I learned the myth in my childhood, and I assume the way most of us did, Hades was the villain. Persephone was happy aboveground with her mother, and just as miserable down in the Underworld as Demeter was to lose her. She was tricked into eating the pomegranate seeds, not knowing that they would bind her to Hades, and the ending was bittersweet, as she happily reunited with her mother for part of every year, but for the rest of the year was forced to go back to her loveless marriage in the bleak Underworld.

This was the standard version of the myth I was taught.

But then, in more recent years, a backlash rose against portraying Hades as evil. I suspect it really took off after 1997, in response to his villainous portrayal in Disney's Hercules. People argued that the ancient Greeks didn't view Hades as evil, they worshipped him like all the other gods, and that modern portrayals of an evil Hades tend to conflate him too much with the Christian Satan. They extended this argument to the story of Persephone too, pointing out that Hades truly loved Persephone, that he had her father Zeus's permission to marry her, that by all accounts he was the most faithful husband of all the gods, and that Persephone gained power in the Underworld: she became its revered queen.

There was also a feminist push to give Persephone more "agency" and avoid ending the story with her remaining unhappily married to her kidnapper.

This led to the rise of retellings that romanticized Hades and Persephone's marriage. They emphasized that Hades's love was true, portrayed Persephone as genuinely falling in love with him and coming into her own power through their marriage, and portrayed her as choosing to eat the pomegranate seeds because she wanted to stay. It also became popular for these retellings to vilify Demeter, portraying her as a controlling, possessive mother who needed to learn to let Persephone grow up and leave the nest.

But now there's backlash against those retellings. People are pointing out the ugly implications of romanticizing a kidnapping and forced marriage and victim-blaming the kidnapped girl's distraught mother. They're arguing that the story was always meant as a tragedy with Demeter as the heroine and Hades as the villain. That it reflects the forced separation of mothers and daughters through arranged marriage in ancient Greek culture, and/or that it's about death and the loss of a loved one, and of course that it explains the seasons and why part of the year is bleak, cold, and infertile.

For example, these various swings of the pendulum truly prove that myths are read and interpreted depending on modern society’s values - because these successive changes correspond very strongly to the different morals and codes our modern society adopted successively. I could compare the changes of the myth’s reception based on how feminism, Me-too and the relationships between girls and their parents evolved throughout these late decades, but I won’t do it cause I’m not here for that and don’t have the knowledge needed X)

But I have enough knowledge in Greek myths to point out that, the most fascinating thing with these swings of the pendulum, is that they are all partially false and partially right. At least in the reading of the myth. Because one has to split the interpretation and the reading of the myth. Myths are made to be interpreted, re-interpreted and re-written, that’s their nature - and so any adaptation or interpretation of the myth is bound to change things and add things and remove things, and is bound to have “some things false some things right”. But here I am talking about the “reading” of the myth - that is to say the understanding of the myth as it existed in Ancient Greece, based on the literary works we have about it, the religious festivals surrounding it or the society and customs of the Ancient Greeks. That’s two different things - but nowadays people keep confusing and mixing the two. A good reading of the myth can lead to an adaptation or reinterpretation of the myth - but interpreting the myth does not mean you read the myth well. The Christians interpreted the heck out of Greek myths to depict them as heralding the coming of Jesus - it doesn’t mean they understood what the myth originally was about. They just added a new piece to it.

Anyway, to take back this example right here - each new interpretation of the myth changes things.

Interpretation 1: Hades as the villain, Persephone as an unhappy wife, the whole thing with a bittersweet ending. Already I want to tackle something... People nowadays seem to be obsessed with finding in the myth of Persephone a “good” and a “villain”, a “hero” and an “antagonist”. But... This isn’t about it. The myth of Persephone isn’t about that AT ALL. It is not about a fight between good and evil - it is a neutral story, between two parties both right and wrong. In fact this is why the conflict can’t be easily settled and causes so many complicated things. If it was easy, like a hero fighting a monster, the hero would kill the beast and be heralded as a hero. Here it is infinitely complicated - hence the need to settle for a solution that can’t satisfy both parties.

Hades is certainly an antagonistic force in the Greek myth, since the stories about it are always told from Demeter’s point of view, and in many ways she is the protagonist of it all. It should also be reminded that for the Greeks, Hades was not a likeable or sympathetic god - he was a frightening, disliked figure, and so of course he was never placed under a very good light (because you know, for the Greeks death was one of the most horrible, frightening and ugliest things to happen, and it was never fully accepted in any way). It also doesn’t help that one of the meaning of the myths is how a parent copes with the sudden and brutal death of their child (because young Persephone being ravished suddenly and brutally into the Underworld by the ruler of the dead is clearly a stand-in for the sudden death of young people). 

But to depict Hades as a full “villain” would be absolutely wrong. Because gods are never fully evil or fully good (well except some minor gods, like Eris for example), and Hades never had any villainous intentions. He truly acted out of love for Persephone (else he wouldn’t have taken her as his queen), and as it is later pointed out, he did abide by the Greek laws and customs by asking the daughter’s hand to her father ; and taking a girl away from her parents’ house and forcing her to live into her husband’s house was literaly how Greek weddings happened. (I also have to point out that the version of Persephone’s disappearance the Western world knew for a very, VERY long time, was Ovid’s Roman reading of it, which gave a HUGE emphasis to the whole “she was brutally snatched away against her will and screamed but no one could her her” - no wonder it was his version that was called the “rape of Persephone”. And I do not know how much was added by Ovid, who had a rape-fetish in his writings, and how much was originally in the older Greek texts... I need to check that back).

Interpretation 2: The backlash. And it is actually a very justified backlash. Just look at Hades’ depiction in Disney’s Hercules. It is a Christianized, “Ancient Greek devil” situation. An angry, monster-producing, antagonistic, evil entity of flames and fire in the underworld? That’s Disney throwing his Christian viewpoint into the Greek world. If you are not convinced, just look at the original concept arts for Hades in the movie: he was supposed to be the literal devil, with a tail, red in color, and horns! And it is a viewpoint that marked deeply the American mindset when receiving the Greek gods (just look at the Clash of the Titans remake). All the things they point out, that Hades acted legally, that he was not a bad guy, that Persephone became a very powerful and important goddess - all of this is right! Yes Hades was disliked by the Greeks, but it was out of fear of what he represented, out of disgust for the concept of death. For the Greeks, the dead were a literal stain on the face of the world, hence why there was a lot of purifying rites going on. Hades was literaly the god who ruled over a mix of a constant horror movie and a huge garbage storage, in the mindset of the Greeks - not a guy you want to hang out with. But a lot of people thus interpreted Hades as a force of evil - which is wrong. Hades is a neutral entity that embodies death, the stern and unflinching order of death, and he is not supposed to be an evil, demonic entity. He is just the stern ruler of the dead, and the one who makes sure that humans die - a grim and unpleasant job, but not one inherently evil.

But making Demeter into the villain... is a more complicated thing. It makes sense that in a story that focuses on Hades and makes him look better, Demeter would become the antagonist and look worse. This is the just balance when reversing the original stories. It makes sense... But one should not forget that Demeter was the protagonist and sympathetic party in the original stories. It was her suffering, her grief and her tribulations that the Greeks followed through poems and stories. And it was this same suffering that was remembered and honored. Heck, an entire cult was built around Demeter's wanderings and her winning back persephone - the Eleusis mysteries, which were all about gaining a paradise after death, and who reinterpreted the Persephone myth as a hopeful message about life after death and a happy world of resurrection and reincarnation where death could be defeated.

Making Demeter a full antagonist would be just as bad as making Hades a demonized, full antagonist - at least in the “reading” of the myth. Again, I want to insist, people can interpret and re-interpret and adapt the myths however they like, it is not the point. The point is here the “reading” of the myth - because when someone claims their adaptation or interpretation of the story is the “right” way of reading the myth, that’s dangerous territory. Myths have multiple meanings woven into each other, and can be read numerous ways - and thus the adaptaton of the myth can only be “closer” or “more faithful” to the Ancient canon, or more “freely adapted”. 

In a similar way, this interpretation can fall into the mistake of making Hades "an all-nice, all-loving, sweet good guy". While it is nice to not demonize Hades, and his many qualities should be praised and remembered (he doesn't meddle in the affairs of mortals, he is an even and calm god, he is a neutral force merely enfrocing the natural law, he is faithful to his wife), one shouldn't forget the reason why the Greeks didn't like him in the first place... Hades is the stern god, the austere god. He doesn't laugh, he doesn't smile, he is not a happy or sweet god. He is harsh and cold, without pity or open-mindedness. He is literaly bureaucracy. So one would understand why Persephone would want to escape her wedding to him - she gains love and power, yes, but in turn she becomes too the hard-hearted and frightful queen of the Underworld...

But then... Interpretation 3 comes in. An interpretation that gets a lot of things right, as I said above, highlighting that Demeter is the heroine of the tale, and that Persephone reuniting with her mother is a celebration, and needed to maintain life on earth - all right, all right. BUT again the curse befalls, and a new aspect of the myth is stripped down... "Don't blame the mother". Except... the mother is a bit to blame. Things are never easy in myths, and in the myth of Persephone - Demeter, despite being the sympathetic protagonist, is not supposed to be the good and pure hero. In the various ancient texts concerning the legends, there are details added that clearly make Demeter a more nuanced figure - details that were taken back, and rightly so, by those that "demonized" Demeter above (again, there is material to depict Demeter as the antagonist, and interpreting her as such is entirely possible - but it doesn't mean she is the antagonsit IN THE MYTH itself).

For example, we can take in consideration the fact that Demeter massively over-reacts. She is a possessive mother, for sure - while quite brutal and surprising, Hades went through the usual process to earn Persephone's hand, got it legally, and acted out of love. Zeus' fault isn't to have given his daughter's hand to a suitor in love with her - Zeus fault would be to not have informed Demeter of who Persephone's husband was, leading her on this wild chase throughout the world. But again, we have here a mother opposing sternfully the fact her daughter leaves the house to join her husband's household - which was the very opposite of how Greek society worked for women, where at wedding they HAD to leave their family to join their husband's, to mark a new step in their life, to grow from daughter to woman... And the latter fact is implanted in the myth. Persephone's name with her mother is "Kore", which literaly means "maiden/young girl". Persephone only gets her full name and an identity of her own by marrying Hades - as per the Greek view that marriage is the "rite of passage" for a girl to enter adulthood. With Demeter, Persephone is just a young, immature girl - and in many ways, Demeter's behavior is extreme because she is a mother who refuses to let her girl grow up and wants to keep her as a child forever. (Plus of course, you know, the whole "I'll kill all of humanity" thing).

So... there was definitively something wrong in Demeter's behavior in the myth, hence why she couldn't fully get her daughter back. It was a story about a mother leaning to let go of her daughter - letting go of a daughter who married, letting go of a daughter who grow up, letting go of a daughter who died. It is no surprise that here Demeter's actions cause an unbalance in the natural world (the vast dying of plants) - because she is literaly opposing the natural order of things (daughters leaving their parents, girl growing up, people dying), she is literaly breaking the balance of the universe... Which is why she isn't a full "hero". Even though it doesn't mean that Hades is a "hero" either - in the Greek mindset, death and the underworld can't just win, Hades can't just drag down life and get to destroy youth without any repercussion, and even though Persephone's new position has her receive love and power - it is still an unpleasant, sterile, horrifying existence in the eyes of the Greeks. Hence why Persephone has to switch between the two. She can't stay forever with Hades because she needs some happiness and life in her existence ; but she can't stay forever with Demeter because she needs to become a woman of her own and respect the natural cycles of the world.

As a last note, to point out how difficult it is to adapt fully and entirely the tale in all of its complexity - and to drive further the difference between "reading" the myth and "adapting" the myth... Most modern adaptations focus on Persephone herself as the main character. After all, it is her legend, right? It seems to make sense - and you can agree that there is nothing wrong with this. But, despite this being a perfectly legit and reasonable angle of attack to adapt the myth, the mere fact of placing Persephone as the main character actually makes the adaptation somehow "unfaithful"... Because in the texts we have kept of the legend, Persephone is ever the main character. She is a prize in a competition, a secondary character in her own story, without much characterization - she just appears at the beginning to be ravished, and at the end to be reunited. She does nothing, decides nothing, and is just a tool, an object, a focus for the great struggle between Demeter and Hades, life and death, with her ultimate fate being decided by Zeus, the supreme cosmic authority. If we call it "The myth of Persephone", it is not because she is the protagonist - but because the story focuses around her. It is like the "legend of the Golden Fleece". Persephone is a Golden Fleece in the Ancent Greek texts.

Why is the mountain range square. How did the mountain range form. Why is there one singular volcano in the center. Why does it act like a composite volcano but have magma that acts like it’s from a shield. If it’s hotspot based volcanic activity why is there only one volcano.

my favorite thing is the american great lake snowbelts! so, the 'flow' of weather across north america, in very general terms, blows from the northwest on down south and east to the gulf of mexico.

so the wind is blowing from west to east, and in the winter it's a dryer wind than in the summer because it's colder. but after blowing across a great lake for a hundred miles, the wind is wet again. and that wet turns into snow. so for all of these lakes, the big cities are on the west side, not the east sides, because the east sides absolutely suck to live on.

the sole exception is buffalo, NY, which literally has to be there because, unfortunately, that's where all the important canal stuff between lake ontario and lake erie is happening.

also this always strikes me as cool, check out where cleveland is: