Lovelorn Star

Now take this logic and apply it to things like ADHD, autism, clinical depression, and other less visible/divergent disabilities. You cannot think your way out of feeling.

New Release: Narcissus [-Victoria-] Purple Cape, Red Cape and Dark Green Cape

A comic for Cloud's last birthday. This is my first post here

sebastian in the rain

It is important to consider the culture of the person who created the piece, absolutely; but the different perspectives offered by the viewers is fascinating in and of itself and does not always detract from the message.

As an example, when I was younger, I watched Schindler's List. This movie is famously shot in black and white except for one section, concerning a little girl in a red coat. The camera follows her until her eventual death.

I am Turtle Island Indigenous and I was always taught that the only color spirits could see was red, because it is the color of life and blood.

So the second the girl in the red jacket came on screen, something inside me chilled with fear.

The only color in the movie was that red. At some point, I, the viewer, had died.

I remember sobbing at the sight of the burning human piles that were shown, convinced I was buried in there somewhere. The reason I had only seen red on the girl was that my death was recent. I was the ash in the air mistaken for snow. I had died before her and had followed her, helplessly, until she followed me.

The message I got for that was maybe not what the creator had intended: that there was no "being clever enough" or "good enough" or "kind enough" that would shield or protect you from such a massive tidal wave of evil.

You are not exempt from tragedy, that red jacket whispered. You are not special.

When I told some of my white friends about my experience with viewing Schindler's List, some were shocked and the rest just out-and-out mocked me for my "media illiteracy".

"it was just a filming trick to make you feel something," I remember one saying, which terrified me. How had he not felt anything even before she showed up?

my girlfriend is also my man is also "my partner" if i'm in a professional setting. yesterday we went to a ren faire and a man mimed at me - you're together? and at my delighted nod, his baffled, you're gay? made me laugh. a woman with rainbow hair said i love the two of you together. you're both so beautiful it's absurd.

my dad introduced my partner as my "..... friend. or whatever" the other day. he knows we're dating. in the same way, i was never able to get my sister's husband to stop saying that's gay like it's 2008. he still uses the word fa***t, and my sister's defense of him has always been well, he's just kidding.

my lover and i dance to old music in a tiny kitchen. we judge new music together and take food critique very seriously. we watch love is blind before we fall asleep and agree that if they had a queer season, it would be bloody but also make for excellent tv. of fucking course queer people would meet someone for 2 weeks and agree to get married. what are you saying.

at a bar with friends, a man puts his hand on my wrist. got a boyfriend? and yes, i do have a boyfriend, she's amazing. i am texting her while i wander around a gas station named after geese. i am visiting a swing state for a wedding. in the candy aisle i overhear: she's actually like a lesbian it's disgusting. two teenage girls with packaged sandwiches in their hands, giggling. no literally, like. i'm not, like. okay with her being there while we're all, like, naked and changing.

my girlfriend and i tailgate, drink gin and cider out of cups. from the frat group beside us, a man corrects himself with one of his friends: bro, i mean, nonbinary entity, and it makes everyone around him laugh, myself included. he razzes his friend the same way i would have killed for at 19 years old - like nothing happened, he continues: you apply sunscreen like an alien. he does a little sassy (and fairly accurate) dance interpretation of the motion. his friend is laughing so hard they're crying.

i am lucky, i live in a safe neighborhood in a safe state. my masc passenger princess comes up from DC. i drive her for an hour to where all the leaves are a violent arrangement of color. we walk along the trails, letting autumn into our blood. in this part of the state, there's a lot of pickup trucks and trump signs. when we chastely kiss before getting into the car, i accidentally make eye contact with a woman holding her child's wrist. she looks disgusted. she looks fucking pissed.

two hours later my girl and i are eating dinner on a patio, soaking in the last warmth of new england sun before the chill of winter sets in. we are giggling and trying to talk through plastic vampire teeth. at another table, i see a young woman sit up straighter. i watch her watch us. she blushes and takes her partner's hand from across the table. shy, like the taste of evening has just become something deeper.

what kind of english is that? let's look at some famous examples of each.

Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum, / þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon, / hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon. <- this is old english. note that it is unintelligible to a modern english speaker. (excerpt from beowulf)

Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth / Inspired hath in every holt and heeth / Tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne / Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne … <- this is middle english. it is more intelligible, but it’s still very different from what we speak now. (excerpt from the canterbury tales)

Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. / I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. / Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible / To feeling as to sight? <- this is early modern english. this is so intelligible that we trust teenagers to read it in school. (excerpt from macbeth)

the english you are using to give a post a medieval or renaissance/shakespearean vibe is early modern english, not old english. (it's fine that you're using early modern english for a medieval vibe; no one expects you to learn middle english for a silly post about knights.)

how do you use pronouns?

'thou' is the informal second-person singular pronoun.

thou/thee/thy/thine

thou is the nominative form. you can use it for the subject of a sentence -> thou knowest me.

thee is the oblique form. you can use it for the object of a sentence -> i know thee.

thy and thine are the genitive forms. you can use them as possessive adjectives for nouns starting with consonants and vowels respectively. -> thy leg is broken. thine arm is broken too.

thine is also the possessive form. think about it like the word 'mine'*. -> my heart was once thine.

*'mine' is also used like thine as a possessive adjective in early modern english; you would say 'mine art' instead of 'my art'

ye and you

originally, 'ye' was the formal or plural nominitive second-person pronoun, and 'you' was the oblique form. so, it would be 'ye know me' and 'i know you'. 'ye' fell out of use and was replaced by 'you'. at that point it was already used as singular. but it was still much more formal than 'thou'.

the 'ye' you see in 'ye olde shoppe' stuff is not this pronoun. it is the way that printers who no longer had a thorn (þ) wrote the word 'the' (previously 'þe'). the 'y' in certain typefaces looked like a thorn, so we got 'ye' for 'the'.

how do you conjugate a verb?

you can't just slap a -th or -st onto the end of any verb. those are for specific conjugations. phrases like "i hath noticed" or "he thinkest that" are not grammatically sound. it's like saying "i has noticed" or "he think that".

the -st or -est ending is for (most) present and past tense verbs conjugated with 'thou'

some examples: thou canst, thou couldst, thou sayest, thou goest, thou wentest, thou hast, thou hadst, thou dost (or doest).

'thou' also has a few irregulars. some examples: thou wilt, thou art and thou wast (for 'to be'), thou shalt.

the -th or -eth ending is for (most) present and past tense conjugated with 'he', 'she', or 'it'

some examples: he hath, she sayeth, it doth, he goeth, she thinketh, it moveth

there are, of course, irregulars. the most important one is 'to be', which conjugates the same for this set as it does in modern english.

note: not every verb conjugates this way. for example, past tense verbs might use auxiliary verbs. so, not 'she cookedeth', but 'she did cook'.

by and large, the 'i', 'we', 'you' (or 'ye'), and 'they' conjugations were the same as they are today.

there were also some verbs that were used differently than we use them today, though (some of these fell out of use over the early modern period):

to be -> sometimes this verb is used instead of 'to have' as the auxiliary verb. 'i am arrived' means 'i have arrived', and 'she is come to see thee' means 'she has come to see you'.

to do -> sometimes this is used for the present progressive (i think that's the right name for it). 'he does speak' means 'he is speaking', and 'i do write' means 'i am writing'.

would -> this can be used to express a desire. 'i would i were a bird' means 'i wish i were a bird'

must -> this can be used without 'go' to mean 'must go'. 'i must to england' means 'i must go to england'

will -> this can be used without 'have' to mean 'will have'. 'you'll none of that' means 'you will have none of that'

there are a million other things i'm not covering, like different sentence structures for questions ('thinkest thou...?' as a valid alternative to 'dost thou think...?'), and different contractions ('she'll not' rather than 'she won't') but this post is long as fuck and i have things to do! enjoy! linguists, feel free to correct me on what name of tenses or declensions or whatever i have mixed up.

'wherefore' = 'why', not 'where'. think about it pairing with 'therefore'. an example of the two in use:

'my love, wherefore didst thou pretend to see me not?' [babe, why did you pretend not to see me?]

'thy father, from whom we do keep our love hidden, did at that moment walk nearby. therefore i turned from thee that he might not espy us together' [we're keeping our relationship secret from your dad and he was walking by. i did it so he wouldn't see us together.]

'hither' = 'to here', not 'here'. there's a whole set of these, actually. 'whither' = 'to where' and 'thither' = 'to there'. these pair with 'hence' ('from here'), 'whence' ('from where'), and 'thence' ('from there'). an example of some of these in use:

'whence came you?' [where did you come from?]

(pointing to the left) 'thence came i hither.' [i came here from there.]

'and whither go you now?' [and where are you going now?]

(pointing to the right) 'my lord calls me thither.' [my boss is calling me over there]

'very well. get you hence.' [alright, get away from here.]

'whom' ≠ fancy 'who' and this one is just also true today.

'whom' works for the object of a sentence. 'who' is for the subject. in other words, 'whom' receives the action and 'who' does the action.

'whom wrote that letter to you?' -> incorrect! this should be 'who wrote that letter to you?' because 'who' is doing the action.

'whom did you write that letter to?' (or even better, 'to whom did you write that letter?') -> correct! 'whom' here is receiving the action.