"Henry Cavill is a massive fan of the books and the games and he quit the show because the writers wouldn't stick to the books and he just cares about the source material so much."
Henry Cavill not only did not know that the books existed when he started pursuing the role of Geralt, but he actually thought that the books were based off of the video games (and he still didn't bother to read them) and he didn't learn that the games were actually based off the books until Lauren told him (even though the first thing in the game credits is that they're based off the books); as of 2021, he as only read the full series once — right before he was cast in 2018; while he has played TW3, he has only played a little of TW2 (and I've never found any evidence that he's played the first game); and he also has not played the DLC for TW3.
Henry Cavill also started heavily pushing the narrative that he's just such a massive fan of the books and how important adhering to the source material is to him during the press for S2 to deflect from how it was due to his acting choices of cutting Geralt's lines and either saying nothing or just grunting instead that Geralt's characterization — who is much more verbose in the books — was book inaccurate in S1:
He also lied about the situation and tried to act like Geralt was never originally written as being verbose and blamed the lack of dialogue on Yennefer and Ciri's prominence, which cannot be true as confirmed by Lauren:
And tried to act like the lines he was cutting weren't that important anyway so it wasn't really a big deal, which also cannot be true as confirmed by Joey:
He also started pushing the narrative that adhering to the source material is so important to him and it's 'tricky' to do that with Lauren's vision, but his definition of "Lauren's vision" is the show being an ensemble piece with Yennefer and Ciri at the forefront (like the books) and the show in general heavily centering around women (like the books):
So the idea of him caring so much about "book accuracy" is, in fact, not accurate to the books at all as his problems were the prominence of women in the show when Ciri is the main character of the main book series, which the show started adapting from S2 onwards (which is when Henry Cavill started to complain about wanting "book accuracy" in the first place), and when women are very prominent, central, key figures in the books and they often drive the plot forwards.
Lastly, S3 was the closest adaption of the books out of all the seasons so far, so the idea that he quit after S3 because the writers just weren't respecting the source material and the show wasn't following the books doesn't make any sense anyway.
"Henry Cavill is the only reason why the show was even close to the source material at all."
I've not only never seen any evidence of this, but if anything, I've seen the exact opposite: Henry Cavill was either directly responsible for or at least contributed in some way to a lot of things that went against the books or didn't happen in them.
As I already pointed out, he cut Geralt's lines in S1 and either said nothing or just grunted instead which is inaccurate to Geralt's characterization in the books. Here's another quote from Joey affirming that:
(Just to note: During the press for S1, he frequently talked about how the games inspired his performance as Geralt — sometimes talking about them even more than the books despite how the show is based off of the books, not the games — and it wasn't until S2 press that he suddenly changed his tune and started talking about how important adhering to the source material ie the books is to him. He also only started advocating for a more book accurate Geralt because he got dunked on by reddit for his book inaccurate performance in S1.)
He didn't want to play Geralt and Jaskier's friendship as directly as in the books and buddy-buddy with each other:
He didn't want to have any kind of conflict in Geralt and Ciri's relationship in S2 — at least on Geralt's side of things:
Nor play Geralt struggling with fatherhood at all — all of which led to the domino effect of Yennefer's betrayal:
Eskel's death (which in itself also led to things like Vesemir trying to create new witchers and Lambert's attitude toward Ciri):
And Voleth Meir being the big bad of the season:
He didn't want Geralt and Triss to even just platonically find comfort in each other in S2 — which is what happens in the books:
He nixed a sex scene between Geralt and Yennefer in S2 because he didn't think it'd be in character of them to have sex after reuniting which, uh, is absolutely in character of them:
While this is an incredibly inconsequential change, given the prevalence of this idea that Henry Cavill is such an ardent defender of the source material ie the books and how much he wanted the show to adhere to them, I do think it's important to note that he pushed for — and got — more signs into the show even though by his own admission that is more of a game thing than a book thing and he got it into the show for the explicit purpose of catering to game stans:
This is also another incredibly inconsequential change, but again, given how prevalent the idea of Henry Cavill pushing for perfect source accuracy is, I do just want to point out that he would wear his armor 24/7 to make it look worn down:
Even though it is canon in the books that Geralt will buy himself brand new clothes, so the idea that Geralt's clothing has to look worn down and can't be brand new is not actually book accurate.
"Lauren wanted to make Roach's death a joke."
Just to address this point specifically, Lauren wanted to make a meta reference about how all of Geralt's horses are named Roach. That in no way, shape, or form means that she wanted to make Roach's death into a joke or even that the scene had to be played comedically. This is what Lauren had to say about the subject and the 'joke' in question (which, js, actually fits the tone of the books more):
And as far as the "Henry Cavill is the only one who cared about the source material and he's the only reason why the show even stuck to the books at all" front goes... Henry Cavill did change the dialogue in this scene to a book quote/reference; however, the quote in question ("Enjoy your last walk across the meadow and through the mist. Be not afraid of her for she is your friend.") is not something that Geralt himself says and the line/scene from the books foreshadows Geralt's ending in them.
So, at least imo — especially taking into account the incredibly high standard the fandom has set for Henry Cavill as the #1 defender of the books — I don't think this change was actually book accurate especially given the narrative significance of that exchange in the books.
This post is going to be the one dedicated to explaining how the Seraphic writing system works. This writing system is entirely digital, as physical writing is no longer in everyday use throughout the Collective, so it's a bit inconvenient to actually write out. It's also weird to read, because it's written in a way that makes the assumption that you know how to speak and understand Seraphic, but I'll try to explain what I can.
Seraphic has two written forms: longform and shortform. Longform is used primarily to teach young instars how to read and write, and as a way to show how a shortform word is meant to be read. Shortform is the main form of writing, and due to its complication it's usually put off for a year or two before being taught in pupariums. Shortform is the method I'll be teaching today. It's primarily morpho-phonetic, with elements of both an alphabet and grammatical logograms, and is written bottom-to-top and right-to-left in reverse boustrophedon (the path of writing goes up, flips 180°, and goes back down). Because of this, you're expected to be able to read both right-side-up and upside-down. For this post, I'll be using an example sentence to highlight specifics areas of the writing system, as shown below:
It reads: nJasāğn k'œ̄nan ālxōr e-fya.
"There are 16 dull knives on the floor."
There are seven elements you need to be aware of when writing in Seraphic: the alphabet, class cartouches, procedural and plural ligatures, preposition glyphs, tone diacritics, numerals, and punctuation. I'll be going through each one step-by-step.
Alphabet
The alphabet makes up the majority of Seraphic writing. There are 30 consonants and 6 vowels, and they all arrange into syllable blocks called "cells". Each consonant takes one of three forms depending on if it is at the start of the syllable, before a vowel, or at the end of a syllable. The alphabet is featural, meaning that the way each letter is written is meant to encode its pronunciation. Here is the alphabet in full:
Each consonant (excluding the ejectives) showcases the three variant forms it can take (similar to capital and lowercase letters in the latin alphabet). The largest, leftmost character is the form that hosts the interior vowels within it. The rightmost vertical form is used when preceeding another consonant, and the upmost horizontal form is used at the end of syllables. If a syllable contains a syllablic consonant, the main consonant will have no vowel within it and instead a syllable-final form of one of the syllabic consonants (r, l, m, n, or ŋ) placed on top of it.
Concerning vowels, they are solely meant to be written within consonants, acting sort of like internal diacritics. They cannot exist on their own, nor can more than one be written within the same consonant (Seraphic doesn't allow diphthongs), and if a vowel must be written by itself it is written within the glottal stop letter ' (in this instance acting as an independant vowel holder).
These rules apply to individual syllables. In multi-syllabic words, each syllable cell is arranged together in a specific way based on the number of syllables in order to keep the line uniform and compact.
the flow of reading word-internally definitely follows the overall direction of writing (bottom-to-top, right-to-left) so broken down an entire word will usually look like this when written:
Seraphic written in longform will be written entirely using the alphabet. Spaces are put between words, punctuation and numeral symbols are still used, and tone diacritics may be included as well, but otherwise it's entirely spelled out in this way. Writing this way makes the text as a whole quite longer, and can come off as childish or imply you're a new learner of Seraphic, so shortform will usually be used in official contexts. In shortform, alphabetical letters are restricted to non-declined parts of nouns, adjectives, and proper nouns.
Class Cartouches
In Seraphic, there are seven noun classes: Solar (people), Astral (animals), Vital (plants), Terranean (places), Metallic (objects), Lunar (concepts), and Oceanic (everything else). Similarly, the writing system employs seven symbols called "class cartouches" to encode which noun class a word is in. This is drawn from this writing system's predecessor, the Aeonic Seraphic alphabet, that also used glyphs to notate class. These are the seven noun class cartouches:
The thing about the class cartouches is, not only is it morphological, but it's also phonetic. A noun is never spelled out in its entirety, usually only part of it is. When a class cartouche is used, it's supposed to stand in for the class prefix itself without having to additionally spell the class prefix in the rest of the word. For example, in the word zājlux (tail), the "-jlux" would be spelled out, and the solar class cartouche would be drawn around it to stand in for the "zā-". Even though you don't write it, you still know it's there because of the class cartouche. Because of the nature of the noun class prefixes, and how many different forms they can take, it can be daunting to have to guess if you're supposed to pronounce a word with a "za-" or a "zo-", but there are patterns to which prefix (and thus, declension patterns), is meant to be read depending on what the following sound is.
Solar class
read as zā before f, v, s, z, c, j, pf, ts, tc and any cluster of two consonants (e.g. zāsā, zāfr, zājlux)
read as zō before x, ğ, h, ', and kx (e.g. zōxō, zōxur, zōğœcl)
read as zē in stressed syllables, and occasionally before consonant clusters (e.g. zēzmp'ux, zēzt'e, zēvasax)
read as s before vocalics (vowels and syllabic consonants), r, l, w, y, n, t, d, p', or k' (e.g. srāc, sēr, sōğœc)
read as ts before t', the ts replacing the t' entirely in pronunciation, for example tsn would be written as (Solar)t'n (e.g. tsn, tsā, tsłzaf)
Astral class
read as ğr before f, v, s, z, c, j, x, ğ, h, pf, ts, tc, kx, p', t', k' and and cluster of two consonants (e.g. ğrzles, ğrxur)
read as x before vocalics, r, l, w, y, ŋ, k, g, p', or t' (e.g. xūc, xŋox)
read as kx before k', the kx replacing k' in pronunciation (e.g. kxa)
Vital class
read as wā before r, l, w, or y (e.g. wāya, wārāc, wāwax)
read as wō before k', k, g, x, ğ, ŋ, or kx (e.g. wōk'ł, wōxur, wō'ōf)
read as wē before consonant clusters (e.g. wēzles, wējlux, wējlozln)
read as ū before n, m, p', p, b t', t, d, f, v, s, z, c, j, pf, ts, or tc (e.g. ūt'u, ūp'n)
read as w before vocalics (e.g. wē, wīn, wājr)
read as wī occasionally before consonant clusters (e.g. wīzya)
Terranean class
read as va before f, v, s, z, c, j, pf, ts, tc and any cluster of two consonants (e.g. vafl, vasērn, vasa)
read as vo before x, ğ, h, ', kx, and consonant clusters (e.g. voxāl, vodsā, vojrayux)
read as vu in stressed syllables and occasionally before consonant clusters (e.g. vujlux, vulvren, vuzajni)
read as f before vocalics, r, l, y, w, m, n, ŋ, p, b, t', or k' (e.g. fe, fruvn, fmağo)
read as pf before p', pf replacing p' in pronunciation (e.g. pfan)
Metallic class
read as ja before f, v, s, z, c, j, pf, ts, tc and any cluster of two consonants (e.g. jafa, javlni, jawaya)
read as jo before x, ğ, h, ', and kx (e.g. joxl)
read as c before vocalics, r, l, w, y, n, t, d, p', or t' (e.g. can, cya, cenaŋx)
read as tc before t', the tc replacing the t' entirely in pronunciation (e.g. tcłvr, tcāŋğl, tcū)
Lunar class
read as la before r, l, w, or y (e.g. lara, layeğr, lalel)
read as lo before k', k, g, x, ğ, ŋ, or kx (e.g. loxir, loğn̄, loxel)
read as le before consonant clusters (e.g. levp'ā, levren, lejt'ān)
read as li in stressed syllables and occasionally before consonant clusters (e.g. liwayi, lit'n̄, livasāx)
read as y before vocalics (e.g. yar, yu, yawu)
read as l/ł before n, m, p', p, b t', t, d, f, v, s, z, c, j, pf, ts, or tc (e.g. lce, łzēwok'u, lvulvren)
Oceanic class
read as a/ā before m, n, p', p, b, t', t, d, s, z, f, v, c, j, pf, ts, tc, w, r, y, l, and all consonant clusters (e.g. ap'i, āt'ē, ācèya)
read as o/ō before ŋ, k', k, g, ', x, ğ, h, and kx (e.g. ōxūr, ōxān)
read as aw/āw before vocalics (e.g. awun, awaf, awaman)
Of course these rules are not hard set, and there are several instances where a written word contradicts these rules or even when two words end up spelled the same, but for the most part these rules will generally be consistent for most written words. It seems like a lot to remember, but usually it's a thing that you eventually develop a sort of "ear" for.
Procedural and Plural Ligatures
The procedural and plural ligatures are additional glyphs used to mark, respectively, the procedurals and the plurals of a noun. The procedural are written at the bottom of the noun (since Seraph is written bottom-to-top and these are prefixes of course), and there are 12 separate procedural symbols in use. Similarly, the plurals, being suffixes, are written at the top of the noun and contain only three symbols (the singular is usually unmarked). They are as follows:
The plural ligatures attach to both nouns and adjectives freely, but in order for a procedural ligature to attach to an adjective, the adjective needs to be put in the oceanic class and subsequently written with the oceanic class cartouche. Additionally, if you want to write remote past/future forms for each procedural, you would need to attach the resultative present ligature underneath the preexisting past or future ligature (these conjugations haven't developed their own separate ligature forms, so they follow the tradition of using the resultative in addition as semantically that is where the remote forms originated). I don't really have a way to show you how to pronounce the plural forms, as even though the different pronunciations are pretty few they're actually pretty inconsistent on which one goes where. It's just one of those things you kinda have to already know. You can check the introduction to Seraphic post to see what forms the plurals can take, but otherwise it's basically, like, memorization. The procedurals on the other hand DO have a predictable pattern of pronunciation, but each tense has a different form based on what class and declension the noun is in, and with six tenses and seven classes each with at least three different declension forms, it's definitely something I can't summarize here. Again I HAVE to make a separate post for that because the declension forms are vital to knowing how to decline properly in Seraphic.
Preposition Glyphs
This section will probably be the easiest to explain really. The preposition glyphs are pretty easy to recognize. They're written in between words, attaching to both of them instead of floating freely like regular words are. There are 19 glyphs for the 19 prepositions, and they don't really change form. Sometimes, if occurring at the beginning of a sentence, they'll have one end sorta lopped off, but not everyone follows through with this convention. Here are the glyphs listed below:
Two or more prepositions can't occur sequentially, it's a very one-at-a-time situation, although in colloquial speech you'll see two prepositions being used in certain instances.
Tone Diacritics
Seraphic is a tonal language, and luckily it has diacritics to indicate the tones. They frame the words on each size, being used on both nouns and adjectives where applicable. You'll usually see them in formal contexts like government documents and letters of address, on signs and boards and menus and any kind of display especially in highly populated areas, in use by those whom are just learning Seraphic and don't have a hang on remembering all of the tones yet, and just in any context where clarity of literacy would be important. In everyday colloquial text conversations and things the tone diacritics will be usually dropped as context is sufficient enough to know, although tone diacritics may be reintroduced to differentiate homonyms that are distinguished only in tone (e.g. lxal "power" vs. łxāl "day"). There are eight individually recognized tone diacritics:
The low tone is the base tone and is usually left unmarked, so there's no sign for just the low tone. When a low tone transitions to a rising or falling though, the low transition diacritic will be used to connect the two. Many of these diacritics are usually connected consecutively when a word requires it, flowing as if they're one larger tone diacritic. This can give a whole host of unique tone symbols, but for the most part, all of the tone symbols can be broken down officially into the 8 diacritics. There isn't a 1-1 correspondence between individual tone diacritics and syllables within a word, usually you can know from context and just knowing how the word is pronounced. For example, the word łxāl would be written with one high tone marker even though the word is two syllables, but it's meant to infer that the entire word is pronounced with an even high tone. Here are some additional examples:
The top example is the word jalzègxa "chronicle". You can see that it uses the two low tone transitions to connect to the central falling tone, representing a low-falling-low relationship. The word below that is māzefādnu "hourglass". It employs a high-low-high, and then a high-low, with the last high-low meant to merge with the high-low-high. So truthfully it's meant to be interpreted as high-low-high-low. There's a lot of possibilities, but breaking it down will simplify what tones are being used specifically.
Numerals and Punctuation
This final section will discuss Seraphic numerals and punctuation. Now, unlike in most human languages which uses base-10, having 10 unique symbols to represent the values of 0-9, Seraphic uses base-16 and represents the values 1-16 with 16 individual symbols. In base 16, we would write 16 as 10, standing for one set of 16 and zero sets of 1. It's written in positional notation like arabic numerals, where each position represents a power of 16 (instead of a power of ten like in base-10). Here are the numerals:
If you were to write a number like 299,792,458; you'd convert it into base-16 which would be 11,DE7,84A; and since Seraphic numerals are grouped in 4 instead of 3 it would actually be 11DE,784A. This is how you'd write that:
Both Arabic numerals and Seraphic numerals describe the same amount of things, they just group things differently. We group in sets of 10, they group in sets of 16.
As for punctuation, there are only 5 marks that's in standard use, and these are them:
Single bar - separates individual sentences.
Single dot - separates clauses for clarity, separates numerals into groups of four.
Double dot - separates individual words such as in lists or replaces a single dot when separating clause groups.
Triple dot - Distinguishes quotes and dialogue, as well as highlighting names, terms, and titles.
Double bar - used to end full paragraphs/passages instead of a single bar.
Overall, that's pretty much everything I can detail about how the Seraphic writing system works! It's complicated but it was very fun to develop and boy was it satisfying to get it to work. Hopefully you'll now be able to decode a little better Seraphic writing, and maybe even write something of your own!
ŋKowīci cu-stux 'ōf tsa-levp'ā cu-zāsláf pi-lizt'n ğōdjasa! (Thank you all so much for reading!)
Hello tumblr, I've just recieved news from a friend about their termination and the reason why. And due to links to a post going around, I wanna talk about it
Skelly's "this is probably a PSA"
So. As previously stated, my friend got terminated. The reason given was "concern for your safety".
People must've been reporting their mental health posts if any, possibly hoping that tumblr staff would reach out to help
That did not happen
There is a post circulating, encouraging people to report posts about people's mental health (more specifically suicides), because of the "concerned for safety" report option.
If this is intended to be malicious, then it is misinformation and should be called out.
If it's intended to be nice, then it's wrong and should be politely corrected, which I intend to do with this post. As I predicted, reporting does what it always does: raise a tally for potential termination.
Don't report people who are having a hard time with their mental health. Reach out, see if they're ok.
If you don't wanna do that, reach out to someone who could help. Or just move scroll on. Don't report it, it isn't helpful and may lead to account termination which could make it worse.
i was rewatching enies lobby, and theres a scene where luffy asks zoro a math question, and granted, it’s an easy multiplication, but i had a thought. what if…what if zoro is just really good at math for no reason?
