#second place is semi colon

[leave-her-a-tome]

FIGHT

#writeblr #writing #eris talks #writers on tumblr #writing community #tumblr polls #eris makes her first poll #naturally i like the em dash #second place is semi colon #writers

[writingwithfolklore]

Punctuation Rules

Punctuation is like the very last thing I actively think about when writing something (what's the point of fixing the punctuation of a sentence you'll end up taking out or editing anyway?) but it is still an important step!

Having proper punctuation increases your credibility and the overall quality of your work. Also, it’s doubly important in professional work, emails, and resumes. With that, let’s get into it!

Commas

We use them all the time. We get them wrong all the time. There are six rules for where you can use commas:

Use to separate items in a list or series:

The book was long, tedious, and painful.

The comma after tedious is called the Oxford’s comma. Feel free to debate if you need it in the reblogs, but you won’t get in trouble professionally if you use it or leave it out (in most cases.) It always comes before ‘and’ in a list to prevent confusion of the items:

I ran into my mother, my best friend and a scientist. (1 person?)

Is very different from

I ran into my mother, my best friend, and a scientist. (3 people)

2. Use to separate independent clauses, with a coordinating conjunction.

An independent clause is just a sentence that makes sense on its own.

A coordinating conjunction is: and, but, or so.

Miley had a ton of work to do, so she set her alarm early.

3. Use after an introductory statement.

Introductory statements begin with many different words, but typically: Before, after, when, while, as soon as, etc.

Before her first class, Stacy looked up her prof on Rate Your Teacher.

Main point about this, “Before her first class” is not an independent clause, it needs a second part.

4. Use to surround info in a sentence

This info is not essential to the sense-making of the sentence, but it should be relevant.

Parents, no matter how skilled, cannot function at 100% all the time.

5. Addresses and Dates

6. And with direct quotes

Important for essay writing.

Casey said, “I hate this house!”

Colons:

Introduce a list after a complete sentence:

I have three favourite foods: spaghetti, chowder, and garlic bread.

2. Use after ‘the following’ or ‘as follows’

Please provide the following information: your date of birth, full name, and address.

3. Don't use with sentence fragments

A sentence fragment is an unfinished sentence (that doesn’t make sense on its own).

My favourite foods are: spaghetti, chowder, and garlic bread.

This is wrong because, “My favourite foods are.” Isn’t an independent clause.

4. Introduce an explanation

My parents ask one thing of me: that I try my hardest.

5. Introduce a quotation

Mom always quoted the bible: “The truth will set you free.”

6. And times (12:00)

Semi-Colon:

Not super common, but makes you look good if you can use it properly.

Separate two related independent clauses

I never drink Starbucks; it tastes burnt.

2. Similar, but with conjunctions: however, moreover, therefore, nevertheless, etc.

I don’t like Starbucks; however, it does the job.

Agatha didn’t witness anything; nevertheless, she was called in to court.

3. Use to avoid misreading in a series

The invited guests are the club leader; the treasurer; the new member, Jason Tanner; and Wanda Johnson, the investor.

Semicolons clarify the separation between the four people. Had it been, “The club leader, the treasurer, The new member, Jason Tanner…” it would seem that the new member and Jason Tanner are two different people.

Apostrophes – Possessive

‘s shows possession of a singular noun

The girl’s parents were quite rich.

2. S’ shows possession of a plural noun

The students’ books were all over the place. (there are multiple students who have books)

3. ‘s to singular words ending in s, and nouns that are plural

My boss’s office My children’s toys

Apostrophes – Contractions

Use to combine two words (they are, he is, there is, etc.)

It is -> It’s a beautiful park They are -> They’re really good friends You are -> you’re good at this and so on.

#writing #creative writing #writers #screenwriting #writing community #writing inspiration #books #film #filmmaking #writing advice #punctuation #punctuation rules #rules of punctuation

[altraviolet]

How do you find a character's 'voice'? I have no problem writing OCs, but when it comes to existing characters I get so anxious that I'm mischaracterizing them!

This is a great question! This is definitely something I struggle with sometimes. Here are some of the things I've done to try to keep characterization consistent:

watched a bunch of videos about characterization and the craft of writing

gone back to the canon and reread parts that featured the character you're trying to write

reduced the character to like, ONE descriptor, ONE "essence," if you will. JRO did a great job making very identifiable characters for us. although many of the initial characterizations are modified by the end of the comic, you can still use that "essence". I'll give an ex in a minute but after you identify that "essence," keep it in mind for your character when you write them

when writing from their POV, or from a close third narration (or heck second person talking to them), remember what the character knows. how did they get to the place they are now? what kinds of details in a room would they notice?

This is not all I've done but it would take me SO LONG to put together more points so we'll move on~!

Okay so for more details on the above:

The Essence Thing

I think Ultra Magnus is a really good example of this. We're introduced to him having a very specific outlook on life (we literally see through his eyes in one early panel, it's great). We understand him to be a VERY strict mech who adheres to the Autobot Law to the letter (semi-colon, actually, lol). We see him meticulously arrange and rearrange objects, we see him point out screws that are misaligned by 0.001% (paraphrase, I don't remember the exact wordage). All in all, it's really easy to understand in just a couple of words who he is. Meticulous to a fault. Rodimus distracts him by using bad grammar on purpose.

By the end of the comics, he's loosened up a little. And (SPOILERS for the end of the comics), Megatron telling him to abandon his armor and be true to himself is something he's receptive to. Whereas in the beginning he wore it as somewhat literal armor. And refused to smile.

So what have I done with my fic? Well, it's important to keep in mind that UM isn't going to change all his ways. He won't be as much of a stickler as before, because he's learned to have friends in some capacity, and that's loosened him up a little tiny bit. But he's going to retain that core trait of being really into keeping things neat and tidy. And, the UM that Megatron told to abandon his armor isn't the one that made the jump. So I assumed they had that convo later in their friendship. The TEG UM still has those organized traits (cuz it's funny), but he's not as bad as he used to be.

So hopefully that makes sense. Boil your character down to a trait or two and keep it in mind for everything.

Oh boy the asks are piling up so I'm gonna try to go a bit faster now.

What The Character Knows

Let's do a little thought experiment. Tailgate and Drift walk into a random Autobot bar. What does each mech notice?

If I said one of them quickly identifies friendly mechs and the other one identifies unfriendly mechs, can you tell which did which? Who notices the energon specials and who takes note of the weapons behind the bar? Which one will remember a time he went with his conjunx to a bar and didn't get in a fight? haha

Okay so you can probably guess the answers that I intended for the above! Drift had a hard past, then became a violent Decepticon. Tailgate was asleep for 6 million years and then woke up and befriended a ton of people and had Movie Nights and also some trauma but he never had to fight for his life like Drift did.

So, as you can see, what the character knows (which is informed by their past, their education, their belief systems, the friends they have, the enemies they have, etc) really impacts how they see the world. And you can use that to your advantage by trying to look through their eyes keeping in mind what they know.

Sorry I'm gonna have to end this here, but this is a great topic. I'll try to write more about character voice and POV in the future. If you want to poke me later about it here or on twitter, please do. I will get my thoughts together and also find the links to the videos I've watched :)

#ask #anonymous #character voice #characterization #writing advice #long post

[luvtak]

bath time & four minute love stories

✧ pairing felix x reader

✧ genre/tw so much fluff its actually disgusting, est. relationship, suggestive at the end but no smut xoxo, mc is in the bath and thus they are naked lmao, lots and lots of kissies, felix being the most adorable bf, probably a lot of run on sentences and unnecessary semi colons ://, mostly unedited but i hope you love it!!

✧ w/c 994

masterlist

“Did you know you can fall in love in four minutes?” 

Felix’s voice is a welcomed but intruding sound to the quiet atmosphere of your bathroom. His company, while not unwanted, is a quiet disruption to your alone time; Your bath was meant to be spent by yourself, surrounded by lavender scented candles and the soft melodies coming from your phone, time set aside to relax with your own thoughts. However, this plan was quickly changed when your boyfriend decided your living room was too cold and lonely to be by himself; hence his place outside the tub. 

His figure is out of place on the cold blue tile, slouched over the cabinets and looking at you like you’re the prettiest thing he’s ever seen. You know part of it must be your soap sudded skin out in the open for him to admire, but he never looks down–keeping steadfast eye contact as he speaks in soft whispers. 

“And! And! If you make eye contact with someone for like… seven seconds you’ll fall in love, like right away!” God, he’s so excited… and dreamy. Something about the steamy room turning him into a daydream before your eyes. 

“Baby, I don’t think that’s true.” you laugh. You wonder where he heard this fun fact, but you’ll be forever endeared at his willingness to believe. Too often he’ll come home spouting off crazy stories he thinks are true or instagram articles filled with obvious pr stunts and gossip that he takes as gospel. 

“It is true, it was on the internet! And anyway, I definitely fell in love with you in four minutes, so it must be true.” His silken voice is laced with happiness and honesty like always. Felix confesses his love like he’s reading off the daily paper, an unbiased summary of events. Too often you’re surprised by how nonchalant his affections are, seducing you with soft touches and domestic romance you never dreamt of having. 

“Just because it was on the internet doesn’t mean it’s true…” 

Even with your eyes closed you can see his eyes roll, scoffing at your cynicism. He wasn’t lying, the very first time he spoke to you he knew you were his. Lovely and warm and his. 

You were sitting on the stairs at some party, bored out of your mind and so beautiful he couldn’t believe you were real. He hit on you with practiced grace and such adorable nervousness you couldn’t help but agree to go out.

 Looking at him now, it’s almost a shock to believe he’s still here with you, sitting on a cold bathroom floor just because he couldn’t help being away from you. 

He’s angelic against the candlelight, a vision out of a storybook; a fairy prince come to steal you away. 

You wonder if you’ll ever be brave enough to tell him, speak all your wishes and desires as clearly as he tells you. 

“My love, it has to be true–it happened to us.” His voice is so deep and so quiet, it takes a few minutes to blink out the loved up haze you were in to really hear him. Hear how true these words are and have no doubt he means them. You don’t know if you did fall in four minutes–it could have been thirty seconds or three months, but you do know you love him now. You love him almost too much, it’s all consuming and obsessive and true.

He’s looking at you moony-eyed and colorful and the water is going tepid, but with his gaze pointed at you, you feel as hot as you did when the bath began. There is something to say about how even with your body laid out bare before him, he is staring at your eyes–with every freckle, stretch mark, and scar ready for him to map out, the only thing he is truly focused on is the way your lips gently tilt up. Sure, it’s the bare minimum and you wouldn’t expect anything less from him, but it still has a confession bursting out of your smile. 

“It did, didn’t it? I remember being so sure we’d be together forever that night, even if all you did was ask for my number.” 

You know he isn’t used to you divulging so much of your feelings, but it is still a surprise when he rushes closer to the tub–quickly getting up and stepping inside fully clothed. He settles on top of you, jostling you and giggling when water spills over the side. Kisses pressed all over you, some gentle pecks and others all teeth and drool because he’s laughing too hard. 

“I love you, I love you, I love you.” and even though it’s uncomfortable and you know you’re making a big mess, all you can do is laugh along with him. Snorting and gasping through the giggles when his lips swipe over a uniquely tickly spot. 

You love him too, so much, and while it’s hard to say, it’s the easiest thing in the world to show him. Swiping slightly damp strands from his eyes and holding his hands against the water, if he didn’t rush in you’re sure you’d be shivering by now, but with his body atop yours you don’t think you’ll ever be cold again. 

He’s still kissing you, swiping his tongue against your lips before slowly easing himself in, and taking control of the kiss. It’s dangerous how he’s kissing you, but it all feels so innocent–he’s yours, yours and no one else’s and even if you’re undressed it’s the purest thing you’ve ever felt. 

“Come on,” his voice is a shadow of itself, deeper and more shaky than you’ve ever heard it. “Let’s get dried off, huh, so I can put you to bed.” but the way he’s looking at you, all teeth and blown out pupils; flushed from the water and all the kisses, you don’t think he’s going to simply tuck you in. 

© LUVTAK

#skz fluff #skz x reader #felix fluff #felix x reader #lee felix #skz imagines #skz scenarios #stray kids x reader #stray kids fluff #felix #✧ drabble

[skelussy]

We were playing a sexy game.

which of us could last the longest without begging for more with my tip at your slit, uncovered. We didnt have any condoms, so we figured itd be fun yo play a sexy game then do some oral becuase not only are you not on birth control, its a dangerous time.

But I had different plans, the second you relaxed under me and giggled with that sweet sweet smile I grabbed your body, arms pinned to your sides, so you could barely move. My full weight on you fully incapacitating you. Then slid my cock into your tight, wet, fertile little pussy. You immediately screamed that it wasnt safe and that I promised not to and those screams transmorphed into "stop" and "please please stop im scared" and then again into crying. But as your voice calmed enough to hear me you heard my whispers.

You are such a perfect little womb. I knew the moment I met you I wanted to keep you pregnant and barefoot. I wanted to track your cycle and cum into your pliant little body everytime you were ovulating. I cant wait till youre late pregnancy and you start lactating so I can suckle on your pretty little udders while I breed you. I have been making every move ive made with the purpose of getting you here, beneath me. You quit your job on my offer, you cut out your family. You have no where to go but in my loving arms, sitting on my cock.

You start to forget why you were even upset. You always wanted children, and you love me. And my cock is sliding in and out of your velvety walls at such a deep slow place that you feel yourself comeing to a finish.

I cum over and over into your pretty pussy. You cant not be pregnant now. I havent taken my cock out of ypur pussy in hours. Im soft in you when you feel me pull out, an almost inhuman amount of cum falls out of ypur pussy when I do, to which my responce is to finger it back into you, claiming it my job not to waste a drop.

I carefully turn you around. Replacing you in a tight grip that I had used earlier. Which confused you, you had given in, you werent going to try to stop me from breeding you. And anyways Id already filled you up enough that it wouldnt matter anyways.

But you then understood. This was no longer about putting a baby in your little virgin womb. This was about my pleasure. You felt my semi hard tip rub up againt your tiny pink asshole. I was still covered in a mixture of yours and my cum.

You begged one more time "..no...please stop itll hurt" and i responded by useing the slimely fingers I had fingered you with to ease slowly into your little asshole. I opened you up so gently before you felt my raging hardon touch your relaxed sphincter. You felt a sharp pain as my cock opened your tiny ass but you couldnt move as I had replaced both arms around you.

You cryed and wailed as I fucked your asshole raw, and came into you three times before I pulled out quickly and whipped around to hold ypur gape open and look at your winking, abused, desecrated little ass. I pulled a plug from the side of the mattress where I had planted it and shoved it into you, keeping my hot cum in your colon.

#4n4l

[landwriter]

challenge: tell me, in eight sentences (or less!) about Untitled 1 (6)

ahaha first of all this is bullying on my own blog and second of all [western music starts playing] you have no idea how long i can make a sentence, how many semi-colons i can fire off until we're left facing each other and you're wondering to yourself: did she use six semi-colons or only five, and to tell you the truth, i kinda lost count myself; but a semi-colon is a powerful thing, will increase your wordcount massively, and you've gotta ask yourself just one question: do i feel like reading a wall of a text??

but let me endeavor to try with minimal cheating:

Hob Gadling has spent six hundred years on this earth, and he's lost many things, but the one thing he loses over and over is language. He is engaged constantly the act of translation. He walks the knife-edge of memory and discretion in choosing to teach history. He has little record of his own changing language, and has not kept a true journal since he found a forgotten one in a museum and felt sick with it. It shows up only in hasty notes unintelligible to anyone but himself: the ſ in place of s, abbreviations from different languages, archaic spellings and forgotten words. There is nobody who could understand it all regardless, save one, and he drove him off in 1889. One day, his stranger returns, and names himself 'friend'. Hob protects his secret idiolect still, because he would not lose him anew, because there are truths in it that are better translated, and because he could not bear it if the one person capable of seeing the whole of him did not like what he saw. Then he fails.

#asks #wip filename ask meme #the death of translation #a medium amount of cheating i would say #an act of great restraint on my part #the sandman #dreamling #hob gadling

[queerfox-tales]

First Line Tag

I don't think I've posted anything in months so this should be a good place to start again. I'm searching my series 2 WIPs for a beginning line that's good. Not sure if it allows for all chapters/scenes but I'll do first line of the novellas.

I'll do all 4 out of 5 written since it's been so long.

#1 - _Thrown Out the Gate_

"A dark blue interdimensional portal hovered over the white ceramic floor of the training facility's second level basement."

#2- _A New World_

"Gwen, Max and Rose drove their mopeds off the road. They didn't have a choice." I added a second line cuz they kind of go together. It could have been a semi-colon in between. Alas, my poor semi-colon is dying.

#3- _Reality's Arrival_

"The seven of them looked at each other." Out of context, it sounds like little interesting is happening but this series, the novellas continue after each other. So it's actually the beginning of a potentially intense scene. The assassins found their targets. They had just teleported to the spot.

#4- _In a Cocoon_

"Soldiers packed themselves in the back of military support vehicles."

And that's it. I'm pretty happy with them. They show how far I've come as a writer. Doing this for my first series wouldn't have been as interesting. It probably helps that series 2 is more intense and stuff. Might start coming out end of this year. May have to wait until earlier next year since I'm editing them in twos. We shall see.

If you see this post and want to share your own first line, consider yourself tagged to do so (if you wish).

[dragonthunders01]

Spectember D18: Ecological engineering

The semi toxic lands of the planet Pharax are result of its young age of formation as this planet only has existed for nearly 2 billion years, geological records seems to remark that it could have hosted complex life for a while after finding traces of a previous terraforming event for a now extinct civilization 80 million years ago that brough a different variety of what’s supposed to have been their homeworld life, which seems to have failed in their colonization as no trace of advance settlements were found or any organism as complex as a amoeba-like creature for the fauna, but something remarkable is that there is still in existence an unique ecological flora agent that apart to have survived by its own the harsh conditions, it also turned quite successful on thriving at managing the environment it created.

The Chthonic Lichen is the only terrestrial flora organism to exist on the planet and the most prominent organisms, it forms on large fields nearby recently inactive volcanic regions, feasting on the chemicals and grow exponentially covering the soil with a 50 cm deep cap that looks semi crusty, with prominent semicircular shaped structures that correspond often to what is often called the autotropic nodes, large photosynthetic structures  that allows the organism to exploit the sunlight in the middle below there is a second cap formed by tissue that works sort of like a vascular plant, although lacks any cell and it behaves like a fungus spreading and collecting nutrients, and in the edges of the super organism there is the third detoxifying cap, a series of multiple ciliated tissue that properly digest and modify the terrain to be suitable for the other two tissues to grow up. Sometimes growing around lakes the second cap properly just grows around the water body they start isolate them and filter the toxins of it if they are acidic or just filled with impurities, normally more disorganized root like structure forms, which often host potential seeds they deliver when the time comes. Although it seems that the majority of the main colonies of this organisms are cloned multiple times from a single individual they can also wander free in the shape of a motile seed structure that crawls around an stays mostly inactive, these drone seeds often works as detritus feeders that eat the substrate rich on microorganisms to regain energy and then walk to the most lifeless regions of the continent on which would plant itself and start growing a new colony, digesting the toxic grounds and creating new ideal conditions for the mega organism to grow again.

The way the organisms regulates the environment has caused two interesting effects, one which at large scale has regulated the greenhouse gas amount, making it more cooler of what normally the planet temperature would get if it did not have complex flora on its surface and regulated the oxygen amount so it doesn’t poison exaggeratedly the atmosphere; as well when colonies dies or just wash away for any precipitation it provides of a burst of nutrients to the ocean, which for studies on the microorganisms diversity in the regions where these nutrient flow constantly is replenished, the complexity of life is greater than in place which lacks that burst. As geological activity is still too young that for example the first continent have formed just 200 million years ago, so many aspects of the chemistry of the planet are still developing, and probably without the chthonic lichen life conditions similarly to the Ediacaran wouldn’t have risen until probably other 2 billion years, but now this world might see the development of its own native multicellular life evolution in probably 300 million years, which is a lot of time, but for a planetary scale is very, very young.

#exobiology #terraformed world #bioengineering #superorganism #flora #spectember

[alanshemper]

In 1862's 'Rome and Jerusalem,' perhaps the earliest Zionist text, Moses Hess asked France to "help the Jews to found colonies which may extend from Suez to Jerusalem and from the banks of the Jordan to the coast of the Mediterranean." 2/

In late August 1898, the Second Zionist Congress established the Jewish Colonial Trust, the financial arm of the World Zionist Organization and the first official Zionist bank. In 1902, the Anglo-Palestine Company Ltd. was founded as a subsidiary of the Jewish Colonial Trust. 3/

In 1902, Theodor Herzl, father of political Zionism, begged Cecil Rhodes to support the Zionist project and facilitate Jewish settlement of Palestine. Zionism was in Britain's imperial interest, Herzl suggested, "Because it is something colonial." 4/

Revisionist Zionist leader Vladmir Jabotinsky, who founded and led the Irgun militia, wrote explicitly in his 1923 Zionist manifesto, "The Iron Wall," that "Zionism is a colonization adventure and therefore it stands or it falls by the question of armed force." 5/

Jabotinsky also wrote, "Zionist colonization, even the most restricted, must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native population," and that it was "necessary to carry on colonization against the will of the Palestinian Arabs." 6/

One of the leading Zionist organizations supporting the Yishuv (Jewish settlers) in Mandatory Palestine was the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association, established in 1924. (It was originally founded in 1891 as the Jewish Colonization Association.) 7/

The Jewish Agency, formed in 1929 by the 16th Zionist Congress, was (and is still) tasked with increasing Jewish immigration to Palestine. Its fundraising arm originally operated under the auspices of World Zionist Organization's aptly-named "Colonization Department." 8/

On October 5, 1937, David Ben-Gurion - later Israel's first prime minister - sent a letter to his son Amos in which he wrote that "Palestine...contains vast colonization potential which the Arabs neither need nor are qualified (because of their lack of need) to exploit." 9/

In mid-1947, the Jewish Agency presented its position to the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine. It declared "industrial development in Palestine" was "part of...the migration of industry from the old industrial countries to colonial or semi-colonial territories." 10/

During the presentation, Chaim Weizmann-later Israel's 1st president-stated, "As compared with the result of the colonizing activities of other peoples, our impact on the Arabs has not produced very much worse results than what has been produced by others in other countries." 11/

Moshe Shertok-Israel's 2nd prime minister-boasted of Zionism to the UNSCOP, saying "it will not be easy to find an instance in the history of colonization where a large scale settlement scheme has been conducted with so much respect for the interests of existing population." 12/

Clearly, Zionism's colonial nature was explicit from the outset and was leveraged as a selling point to gain European support. When colonialism began to lose legitimacy, the term was retired.

So don't ever claim that "we Zionists never called ourselves colonialists."

13/END

In 1891 leading Zionist thinker Asher Ginsburg (Ahad Ha'am) wrote that "when the life of our people in Palestine will develop to such an extent as to push out, to a small or large extent, the indigenous population of the country, then not easily will they give up their place." 2/

In 1898, Theodor Herzl recognized that, in order to establish a "Jewish state" in Palestine, the inconvenient indigenous population would have to be removed. “We shall try to spirit the penniless [Palestinian Arab] population (i.e. Arab) across the border," he wrote. 3/

Israel Zangwill, British leader of the Jewish Territorialist Organization (ITO), wrote in 1904 of "a difficulty from which the Zionist dare not avert his eyes, though he rarely likes to face it." It was that "Palestine proper has already its inhabitants." 4/

So what was his solution? "We must be prepared...to drive out by the sword the tribes in possession as our forefathers did."

Similarly, Chaim Weizmann referred to Palestinians as "the rocks of Judea, as obstacles that had to be cleared on a difficult path." 5/

his 1926 address to Nat'l Conference of the United Palestine Appeal in Boston, Weizmann said Palestinians "are in the country, and have been there for ages. We are the newcomers and have to become part and parcel of the country. We are planting a new people in the country. 6/

In 1929, early Labor Zionist intellectual Berl Katznelson declared, "Zionist enterprise is an enterprise of conquest," admitting that "it is by no chance that I use military terms when speaking of settlement." 7/

In 1930, Menachem Usshishkin, a powerful early pioneer of Zionism and leading member of the Jewish National Fund, stated, "If there are other inhabitants there [in Palestine], they must be transferred to some other place. We must take over the land." 8/

in 1936, Ussishkin commented, "Now the [Palestinian] Arabs do not want us because we want to be the rulers. I will fight for this. I will make sure that we will be the landlords of this land...because this country belongs to us not to them." 9/

In 1936, another leading Zionist, Arthur Ruppin, who led colonization efforts through the Jewish National Fund, declared, "On every site where we purchase land and where we settle people, the present cultivators will inevitably be dispossessed." 10/

In June 1937, David Ben-Gurion wrote to Jewish Agency head Moshe Shertok, "Were I an Arab...I would rebel even more vigorously, bitterly, and desperately against the immigration that will one day turn Palestine and all its Arab residents over to Jewish rule." 11/

Ben-Gurion told the 20th Zionist Congress in August 1937, "New Jewish settlement will not be possible unless there is a transfer of the Arab peasantry," adding, "Jewish power in the country...will also increase our possibilities to carry out the transfer on a large scale." 12/

At the November 21, 1937 meeting of Jewish Agency's Transfer Committee, Yosef Weitz, Land Department chief at the Jewish National Fund, boasted that "transfer" not only "diminish[es] the Arab population," but also "release[s] it for Jewish inhabitants." 13/

In 1938, Ben-Gurion reaffirmed these sentiments: "Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves. Politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves. The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down." 14/

At the same time, Ussishkin insisted, "We cannot start the Jewish state with...half the population being Arab...Such a state cannot survive even half an hour." Regarding the forcible ethnic cleansing of over sixty thousand Palestinian families, he added: "It is most moral." 15/

Ruppin agreed: "I do not believe in the transfer of individuals. I believe in the transfer of entire villages." He also wrote, "Land is the most necessary thing for establishing roots in Palestine...We are bound in each case...to remove the peasants who cultivate the land." 16/

Moshe Shertok, Jewish Agency chief and later Israel's second prime minister, said, "We have forgotten that we have not come to an empty land to inherit it, but we have come to conquer a country from people inhabiting it." 17/

On March 20, 1941, the Jewish Agency's Yosef Weitz wrote, "The complete evacuation of the country from its other inhabitants and handing it over to the Jewish people is the answer." 18/

In 1941, Weitzmann told Ivan Maisky, Soviet ambassador to England, that "if half a million Arabs could be transferred, two million Jews could be put in their place. That, of course, would be a first installment; what might happen afterwards [would be] a matter for history." 19/

In a 1941 memorandum entitled "Outlines of the Zionist Policy", Ben-Gurion recognized that "the majority of the Arabs could hardly be expected to leave voluntarily," noting, "Complete transfer without compulsion – and ruthless compulsion, at that – is hardly imaginable." 20/

Founder and longtime president of the World Jewish Congress Nahum Goldmann recalled Ben-Gurion saying in 1956, "Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country." 21/

In 1969, Moshe Dayan declared, "Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages...There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population." 22/

Again, Zionism is a colonial ideology that explicitly relies on the forceful removal of the native population from its homeland. To live in peace with those you have displaced, dispossessed & disenfranchised, you must guarantee equal rights for all. 23/END

#zionism #israel #nima shirazi #history #Moses Hess #Theodor Herzl #Cecil Rhodes #Vladmir Jabotinsky #David Ben-Gurion #Chaim Weizmann #Moshe Shertok #Asher Ginsburg #Ahad Ha'am #Israel Zangwill #Berl Katznelson #Menachem Usshishkin #Arthur Ruppin #Yosef Weitz #Nahum Goldmann #Moshe Dayan #colonialism #settler colonialism #irgun

[skylarstark4826]

Consciousness returns to him like a splash of water. He feels sore and nauseous, but he forgets about that when he notices that there is something warm covering him like the sun through the water.

He is not used to warmth, not since he has learned that everyone leaves at some point, not since his mother left. It surprises him a little to feel that warmth around him like he was everything like he deserved it.

He decides to open his eyes and that’s when he understands.

He is not home; he is far from home.

He blinks several times to get his eyes used to the semi-dark room around him. He is used to the darkness of the deep sea, but somehow this one is a different kind, he can feel it in the cold chill that floats around. The darkness is metallic, warm, and synthetic, a construct of a familiar material that can only be found in one place besides his nation.

He almost smiles.

He knew she’ll find him.

He takes a few seconds to take in his surroundings. The room is silent, so he guesses that it must be somewhere between night and morning since the room wasn’t as dark as his nation. He also notices that he is not alone, that there is someone familiar that smells of fresh waterfalls and…fierceness as if that could have a smell.

He smirks, none less, recognizing her not just by her unique lovely smell all over the place but also because of her warmth and snoring.

Who would have thought that the Queen of Wakanda snored so loud?

With sore muscles, he touches his naked chest, where her hand is resting close to his heart. He thinks is ironic, because he now wears the scars of the ripped wing and her claws. She could be warm, but also a pain in the ass.

He shifts in bed until he is facing her. In the semi-dark room, she looks small and vulnerable but also like salvation. Her short curls are all over the place, contraposing the rest of her body that was curled close to him, but in a way, a cat will. It occur to him that she looked dead to the world, way too vulnerable to be just sleeping beside someone who tried to kill her and was almost successful not so long ago.

Surface people were weird he guessed.

He smirks, nonetheless. She had kept her promise of protecting his nation from the surface and keeping his secret when she became Queen of Wakanda while her nephew was older enough. In exchange, he decided to have fun, since he liked to send warriors to cause a little bit of innocent mayhem just to remind her and the Council that they were still around.

But somewhere between the political teasing (and some other type too) and the loneliness being a monarch brought, her protections had failed, and some colonizers started searching for vibranium again. And this time, his forces were not available to defeat them (with the Wakandan technology) because they brought their own.

After a fight where they succeeded in defeating his army and himself, they took him somewhere, but before they could stick needles into him to make tests like he was a damn new species of fish, he got out and went to the first place he knew he was going to get help. He passed out in the place where they first met, after asking her something with the last strength he had left. (Those damn colonizers had made something to him, given something, and made him weak).

And now he wakes to her and her warmth, to her vulnerable snoring self, making him realize once more that they have more in common than they thought. They were alone, with a common enemy and a common past, with the same desire of burning the people that made them suffer in the first place.

He was proud and he had a plan, but that was before the colonizers turned to him and not her and Wakanda (as he thought they will). He had lived enough to know that his people came first and that he could forget his desire to destroy Wakanda in revenge, of making her beg. He needed help to get his warriors and people out of the colonizers’ hands and safe enough in Talokan.

Yet instead of waking her up with the questions of why they are sharing a bed like he guessed he should, his trembling hand approaches her face to get a curl out of her forehead since her curls were getting longer. He slowly and softly gets it out but some feeling, some temptation makes him succumb, and before he knows it his thumb is back in her forehead and decides to go down, through her nasal bone and the curve of her nose, down to her upper lip and then across them, brushing her lower lip, until his thumb is stopping in her chin.

He thinks he has gotten away with it, since she hasn’t moved an inch or reacted in any way, that he touched a goddess in a dream, and he can now run away without her noticing. But just when he is about to let go of her and pretend nothing happened, he notices the snoring is gone and a pair of chocolate eyes are looking at him through the dark.

And he swears for a second that her eyes shine like a panther’s when she is so ready to strike her pray.

They stare at each other like they have been caught stealing algae from the wrong field or like they have been caught by the Council snicking more technology than accorded to their allies. A few heartbeats pass until she regains enough consciousness and panic enters her bloodstream.

As fast and not so graceful as a panther, she sits down in the bed and pushes away from him with panic in her eyes. He reaches for her in reflex, yet before he can grab her, she goes back once more, and then the noise of something falling and breaking and a loud thud are heard.

“Shuri”, he calls, using her name in what feels like an eternity. He crawls to the other side of the bed, worried about her, but before he can go farther, her curls pop from the bed’s side.

“Shhh!”, she whispers-screams.

He frowns.

“Why are you -?”

Steps fast approaching are heard and he can understand why she told him to shut up.

“You need to hide”, she whispers-yells again, getting to her feet in a second.

Before he can complain, she is taking his arm to get him out of the bed.

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to save your life from Okoye”, she answers, before she drags him to the bathroom. “Hide and don’t even think about moving”.

And then she closes the door in his face, and he is alone in a very fancy bathroom. (Of course, she is a Queen).

He hears the door of her room opening and steps entering.

The voice of another woman but much older is heard through the door.

“My Queen, we heard a commotion, are you alright?”, she asks, while he hears other people entering the room and walking around it.

“Okoye, I’m fine, I just knocked this lamp on my sleep”, Shuri answers, a little bit lamely. He chuckles because she could kick his ass but not lie. What a true Queen she was.

There is a moment of silence where he hears people inspecting the room. He stays still as a statue in the dark behind the bathroom door in case someone decided to enter.

“Are you sure that you’re fine, my Queen? You look flustered and…”

“I’m fine, just had a nightmare”.

“I thought you didn’t have any more of those”.

“Well, I have them sometimes. Ladies, please, stop looking around. It was just the nightmare”, he hears the steps stop, especially the ones that were pretty close to the bathroom door.

There is a moment of silence before the Dora Milaje leave the room and there is only Okoye with Shuri.

“Would you be fine?”

“Yes, Okoye. I just need a moment”.

A beat of silence.

“Very well”, he hears Okoye leave, but then he hears her steps returning. “I was going to tell you this in the morning, but I think is pertinent I do it now”.

“What happened now?”, Shuri asks, sounding exhausted.

“Namor, the Fishboy”, he frowns making an offended face no one can see.

“He is older than the two of us together”.

“Your point is?”

“That he is your elder and you shouldn’t call him that”, Okoye says something in their language that he very much would like to know.

“Like as I was saying, Namor is not in the medical wing. Wouldn’t you know where he is?”

“No”, Shuri answered a little bit too fast, and a little smirk grows on his lips.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Are you sure he didn’t escape?”

“No. Pretty sure someone with a high-ranking pass, took him from the medical wing”.

There is silence.

“I’m pretty sure that whoever did it had good intentions”.

“The Elders may not see it like that”, he hears Shuri sigh annoyed and he can imagine her rolling her eyes. “They are not happy with how you rule, my Queen, I don’t think getting him out of the medical wing to keep him in your quarters is a wise decision”.

“He would have made a fuss if he didn’t see a familiar face”.

(It’s ironic when the one who made a fuss was her).

“He could have attacked someone. I wasn’t going to take that risk”.

Silence.

“The others are still in the tanks; he would have looked at them and calmed down”.

“Or would have destroyed the whole place thinking we did something to them. No, thank you, Okoye”. 

“Very well, ma’am. I’ll see you in the morning, my Queen”.

Shuri doesn’t say anything while Okoye leaves the room and he doesn’t wait much to move.

Once her room door is closed, he steps out of the bathroom not caring if he gets caught or not.

“What did she mean?”, he asks in a rush, invading her personal space. She steps back in reflex, so he steps ahead again.

“I told you to not move”.

“Answer my question”.

Shuri sighs, going backward, while he keeps approaching.

She doesn’t answer until she stumbles with one of the walls of her room.

“Queen Shuri, your heartbeat is spiking, should I call Okoye back?”, a voice comes from the nothing, making him look around for the person.

“No, Griot, don’t call anyone”.

He looks at her, and he knows that he may look like the Namor that threatened her.

“Griot is my AI”, she explains, but he doesn’t get it, nor cares.

“What did she mean by the others in the tanks?”, he asks again.

Shuri sighs again, and for a few moments, she looks like a kitten and not a panther.

“You were conscious when I found you close to the water”, she starts explaining, without looking at him. “You were talking your language, rambling, and mumbling, Griot translated for me. After getting you medical help, I send the Dora Milaje, our best warriors, to infiltrate the colonizer’s ship and get your people out. They arrived a few hours ago”.

Something softens in his insides.

“Are they fine? How are they?”

“They are alright outside the fact that they are pretty drugged”.

“Drugged?” He is angry, and she knows it.

Her cholate eyes lock with his.

“The colonizers gave you and them something, we still don’t know what, but we are analyzing it to find a way to get it out of their system as fast as possible”.

“I want to see them”, she knows it's not a question. And he is pretty sure that she also knows that if she doesn’t let him go, he will find his way there.

“Okoye is going to kill me”.

“Aren’t you the Queen here?”

Shuri groans and a little smirk escape his lips.

“You’re very demanding, Fishboy”.

“Take that back”, he frowns, and she smirks, passing him.

“It's better than the boy without love”.

He wants to believe his chest made a fuss because he was angry and not because of a wave of warmth.

The medical wing was a lab with too much white for his taste and too much light. She was walking ahead of him, guiding him in the damn labyrinth that was the place like he had done with her in his nation.

He felt utterly uncomfortable with the damn clothes she gave him, they weren’t small or anything, he was just not used to use so many clothes or feeling cold. It was almost like it was hard to breathe.

Neither of them talked on their way to the medical wing. Some guards salute her and thanks to the clothing he was wearing, he wasn’t recognized.

“We are here”, she finally announced, and well, he didn’t expect to see all the white nor how she started moving and talking, or how nice she looked like she was in her element.

“Your people are over here, in some tanks”, he follows her to another room, and then, he finds them.

All of them, are there, floating in some tanks, with their eyes closed. He approached one of them and put his hand on the glass.

“If they gave us the same thing, why I’m awake?”

“I don’t know”, and he can sense that she feels like a failure for that. “I’m thinking that is because of your physiology. You can do things they can’t, like being in the land without a face mask, for example. We are working hard on finding a way to wake them up since the scans show that the drug is in their system in a high dose yet”, she then shows him some scans.

He stares at that and then at them and then looks at her again.

She was talking, explaining something to him, but he wasn’t listening, not really. She looked so beautiful when she explained things to him or when she talked in general.

And that’s when he notices that his mother’s bracelet is on her wrist.

It amuses him and…something else at the same time.

“You keep it”, he suddenly says, making her stop. She looks at him confused until he points at the bracelet.

She looks down at her wrist and…she flusters.

“Queen, your heartbeat is accelerating again”, he smirks, she looks mortified.

She shakes her head and mumbles something in her language before she looks at him.

“Yes, I keep it. Do you want it back?”

“No”, he answers before she can get it off. “I just thought you weren’t going to keep it after…our situation”.

“What situation?”

“Where we almost killed each other”.

A beat of silence.

“I’m glad you keep it”.

“And I’m glad you didn’t die in my arms. It would have made things much worse”, he chuckles, before approaching slowly, this time she didn’t step back.

“Thank you for rescuing them”.

“You made me promise that I was going to save them. At least, that’s what Griot translated before you lost consciousness”.

“Thank you for listening to me, then”.

“I have to listen to your little shows now and then, listening once more is not a problem”, she smiles at him before she passes by his side.

His arm moves alone and a second later, he has grabbed her hand.

“I had bad plans and wishes for you. For a fish that has been so long in the sea, that was pretty…immature”.

“Did you just make a sea pun?”

“That’s everything you catch from that, seriously?”, she laughs, and it takes him aback, is the first time he hears her doing that.

For a moment or two, he has never heard a more beautiful sound than that one. It made him forget what he was going to say.

She puts her hand in his, and he swears he can feel the warmth running through his bloodstream.

“That’s why I call you Fishboy, you may be older than me, but we both have much to learn”, and then she winks at him, and then she lets go.

He stays there, for a moment or two, processing the whole thing.

“If you want to stay with them, you can. I will tell Okoye to stop searching for you”.

He looks at her.

He simply nods and she does the same before she goes to the other room.

He sits down in one of the many chairs on the tables in front of the tanks. He hears Shuri talk with her AI while he looked at the tanks.

When morning comes, Shuri returns to check on him to find him sleeping on the table. She puts a blanket over his shoulders before she pats him in the head like a child.

“Rest, Fishboy, the Panther has it all under control”.

#nashuri #namor x shuri #shuri x namor #namor and shuri #namor of talokan #shuri of wakanda #king namor #princess shuri #nashuri fanart #namor x shuri fanart #black panther #black panter wakanda forever #namor mcu #namuri

[supernatasha]

On the Mediterraneans and the South Asians

Honestly, it pisses me off so much when people say the Ancient Greeks/Romans were all white because these ignorant people have no idea how much mingling there was of Africans and South Asians in these areas, particularly the Asians. So here's a quick little history lesson talking about the Mediterraneans (Greek, Persian, Assyrians) and South Asia (Aryans, Dravidians, Tamils).

First of all, we all know race is a social construct, right? Okay, second, I'll try to provide modern-day locations along with their past counter-parts to avoid getting confusing because I know not everyone has this shit memorized like me (rather uselessly, it seems). Also of importance, a HUGE amount of South Asia's history has been lost due to colonization of modern-day India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Afghanistan, and Burma (Myanmar). So unfortunately, much of this will rely more extensively on records from the somewhat better preserved Greek and other Mediterraneans rather than the South Asians (though there is still plenty of info). 

So let's start with about... 6th century BC, okay? For a hint of what we're dealing with, check out this very rad and surprisingly accurate map of the 8th century. Estimations of the beginning of the Greek empire are about 800 BC. South Asian civilizations are just about in the middle of their Iron Age, which overlaps with the Vedic period (the settling of Aryans into modern day India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan). These are relatively light skinned people, by the way, who had been mingling with East Asians, Europeans, Africans, and Dravidians/Tamils (local people of South Asia) for several thousand centuries. So you probably think they're white...

Thankfully, we have art to show us explicit brown people and people with East Asian features (epicanthal fold) :

Greeks were perfectly aware of dark brown skinned people in Africa during this time period, btw.

First of all, I don't quite know how well-researched/respected this book by Edward Pococke written in the 1800s is, but this guy gives us a semi-convincing argument that South Asian tribes basically settled in the Mediterranean first a long time ago. But on the other hand, I genuinely believe this whole argument can just as easily be applied to North African tribes, and that's probably more likely. (Also, he says Mediterranean language is descended from Sanskrit, which is a bit inaccurate; both Mediterranean languages and Sanskrit are descended from Proto-Indo-European.) But anyway, if you're looking for more info, read through the book. It's not that long, it's pretty interesting, and a lot of what he says is pretty good proof of Africans founding Mediterranean civilizations. 

So, one of the earliest hints we have of Greeks sharing roots with Aryans was the religious cult of Orphism, which was descended from the myth of Orpheus. It's first hints appeared in literature around 600 BC. It shares many elements with the Aryan version of Vedic Hinduism, and it has often been theorized that the journey Orpheus traveled through was a reference to India.

In 537 BC, Cyrus (Persia) makes it to Peshawar (Afghanistan) and adds Gandhar (also in Afghanistan) to his kingdom; Hindus will recognize this as the name of another ancient kingdom. and Darius makes it to Punjab (Pakistan/India). 

In 484 BC, Herodotos (Greek) wrote another book about India. In it, he describes South Indians (Dravidians) as "dark as Ethiopians" and North Indians (Aryans) as "similar to Egyptians in appearance." HMMMM. 

Around 380-ish or so, we get Megasthenes. This guy claims he knows Hercules and Dionysus (both the god and the ambassador) hung out in Pentapotamia (Punjab) a lot. He came with a whole court, and he got as far south as Sri Lanka (which is pretty much as south as you can possibly go, unless you wanna go down to the Maldives or Mauritius). Now, he was not "discovering" these places; the Greeks and other western cultures were well aware of them, as well as of their religion. He was an ambassador. This implies that these people were in close enough contact to have ambassadors. Here's the book he wrote on Indika. 

In about 327 BC, Alexander "the Great" comes knocking around Paurav (modern day Punjab). At the time, that was considered the border of the biggest empire around, seeing as how Alexander's armies slaughtered all the "tribes" he encountered on his way to Paurav. Now he encounters the surrender of King Purrushotam... and on his shield is something resembling a symbol of the Shurasens (Herakles), and some historians have predicted that's because this guy had ancestry related to the Greeks. You know who? Our friend Megasthenes!

In 322 BC, Alex dies and King Chandragupta of the Maurya empire reconquers the northwest (Punjab, etc). At this point, those people are practically indistinguishable from both north Aryans and east Grecians. 

In 250, the Greco-Bactrian kingdom develops (present day Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan). This city, acknowledged in Hellenic texts as a Greek city, sat right at the edge of the Hindu-Kush mountains, leaving little room to doubt they were mixing with the Aryans on that side and the Iranians (called Sogdiana back then, where it's presumed some Aryans migrated to South Asia from) on the other side. (Bactria, btw, is considered one of the early Central Asian civilizations, not Greek or South Asian, and their religion was a FASCINATING mix of Zoroastrianism Hinduism, Buddhism, and eventually early Christianity and Islam.) Check out this rad Bactrian art: 

Around 180 BC, the Greco-Bactrian empire pretty officially converts into the Indo-Greek Kingdom with Demetrius's arrival. 

Also, check out this map of East Asians mixing with the Greeks and the South Asians during this time: 

"Alexander took these away from the Aryans and established settlements of his own, but Seleucus Nicator gave them to Sandrocottus (Chandragupta), upon terms of intermarriage and of receiving in exchange 500 elephants." - this is talking about what's now modern-day Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. Now, since this is talking about intermarriage in about 64 BC, we can assume that they've been getting it on for a while. So there are plenty of Greeks running around in actual Greece descended from people of Aryan/Dravidian backgrounds. 

#history #indian history #greek history #asian history #afghani history #pakistani history

[itis-obsessesions]

Okay, so before I start rambling, obvious SPOILER WARNING for ROTTMNT Movie and the Second Season FINALE, for those who haven't watched it yet!

...So, I just finished the movie and there was barely any explanation for that one plot point that was subtly hinted at in the second season finale, that just blew my mind...

I might be kinda reaching here and some stuff might be jungled up, but bear with me. The narrative is a little confusing to me, so here's what I gathered that might confirm my suspicion:

We all kinda know that the first time the Krang showed up, it's most likely because Karai's Father contacted them 500 years ago to protect his clan from unknown harm. Or at least I assume that, but we know for a fact that the Demon was shown to be Krang-

Therefore the shredder being Krang technology.

We also know that the Foot Clan worship the Krang as deities, which makes sense, considering they literally made Shredder.

We also have later seen in the finale that "Imperion" (?ist this how its spelled?), a substance where allegedly the power of all Yokai stems from is oozing besides what looks like an ancient Krang corpse.

(Which both is amazing foreshadowing for the film, applause to that)

So, here's where I might be getting a little delusional. My theory is that the Krang landed on earth and either accidentally or purposefully started mutating animals and humans into what we know now as Yokai. These Yokai upon entering consciousness and suddenly having no place to belong to (and untrained acces to mystic powers for some of them) start wrecking havoc, endanger the Foot Clan and Karais Father (does he have a name? I can't remember) not knowing of the danger the Krang represent makes a risky deal with them: They give him means to protect his family against the Yokai and he helps them (reach earth? Defeat the resistance? Again, I don't know)

Did he know they want to colonize earth and he simply was too desperate to care or did they trick him? Who knows. Not that important.

Anyway. Shredder then became a weapon for Krang, one of the most destructive ones even. Especially because he knocked all of the resistance into unbalance due to familial and emotional ties-

Karai, like we know, then made the Hamato Clan and I assume lead the resistance against the Krang, but also decided that her father was salvageable unlike the Krang and banished him into the Twilight Dimension (which absolutely seems like a different thing to the Prison Dimension. How many semi empty Dimensions are there?).

Which leads me to the thing that blew my mind (yep, it's not the fact that Krang caused every single mega disaster in the whole ass series):

The Yokai are just Mutants, that were lead to believe that they are inherently mystical beings, completely separated from humans-

Which they are not.

Maybe the humans, like the Hamato Clan explained it away that way, due to their culture and beliefs (Karai after all called the Krang an Oni and it would explain why the Yokai in New York call themselves Yokai, despite apparentlybeing from various ethnic backgrounds). Maybe they just forgot. Maybe they just denied it due to trauma and believed it so long until the truth faded away from existence.

But fact is, that every single Yokai with human like consciousness in the show has human DNA (which I believe, because Draxum seemed to have created the Ooze through studies about the Imperion and if the Ooze can make Human like Mutants only through some Human DNA, then the Imperion behaves most likely like that too).

Which like I said, JUST BLOWS MY MIND!

The inherent culture of Yokai, their beliefs and the hate of humans is build on a hidden history of experiments of an malicious alien species and fights born out of fear and confusion. The separation of Mutants and Yokai doesn't actually exist! It's just a matter of who created them (and the period of existence...but then again oldest ones being 500 years old, but the newest ones being kids, kinda disproves that (Hueso has a son after all, Yokai are capable of populating))

Yokai are literally hiding from their relatives, they estranged themselves so far from, that they don't even know that they are hiding from relatives.

Like damn. That's a total tragedy.

(And also might be all old news, but I can't seem to find anybody talking about it)

#rottmnt fandom #rottmnt #rottmnt yokai #rottmnt season 2 #rottmnt movie #rottmnt krang #rottmnt draxum #rottmnt theory #rottmnt headcanons #rottmnt spoilers

[sanitymakesposts]

What do you think about Diabellstarr so far

I've got a few thoughts! I'll share them under a readmore. For reference to the uninitiated, Diabellstar the Black Witch is a Yu-Gi-Oh! card. It's powerful, new, expensive, and supposedly is going to kick off a new Yu-Gi-Oh! storyline, exclusively told through card art. (This has happened a few times before, though most recently, with the Albaz and Visas Starfrost storylines, they've taken about three years to complete.) It looks like this one is going to be following an outlaw on the hunt for treasure, and is the first girl MC that I've seen from a recent card storyline.

First, a quick overview of who Diabellstarr is, and what she does.

Diabellstar the Black Witch is a 2500/2000 7-star monster, with the effect below.

You can Special Summon this card (from your hand) by sending 1 card from your hand or field to the GY. You can only Special Summon "Diabellstar the Black Witch" once per turn this way. You can only use each of the following effects of "Diabellstar the Black Witch" once per turn. If this card is Normal or Special Summoned: You can Set 1 "Sinful Spoils" Spell/Trap directly from your Deck. During your opponent's turn, if this card is sent from its owner's hand or field to the GY: You can send 1 card from your hand or field to the GY, and if you do, Special Summon this card.

So, in a vacuum, without knowing what the 'Sinful Spoils' cards, are-- Not a bad monster. A free level 7 body, 100 ATK higher than Kashtira Fenrir, with an ability to come back to the board, and plus on summon. An important distinction about this effect, though, is the 'sending' from hand or field to the graveyard isn't cost. For her first effect, it's part of the summoning condition, meaning it can't be interrupted, and for her second effect, there's no semi-colon. This just means you won't be caught in a situation where you go negative to bring her out, only to get stopped. Not bad, but we really need to know what those 'Sinful Spoils' cards do, to make any value judgement. Let's take a look, shall we?

Sinful Spoils of Subversion - Snake-Eye is a normal spell card, with the following text.

Target 1 face-up monster on the field; place it face-up in its owner's Spell & Trap Zone as a Continuous Spell. You can only activate 1 "Sinful Spoils of Subversion - Snake-Eye" per turn.

This card has only one effect, and it's... Interesting. At first blush, it's a unique form of removal that most cards can't deal with -- Being placed in the Spell & Trap Zone isn't traditional removal, and only unaffected or untargetable cards could hope to dodge it, but it feels like there's probably better targets than this. Still -- Maybe a one-of, or a side-board option to have to deal with tricky decks you can't out.

Lore-wise, this appears to be what Diabellstar is after, the gem that is able to control other monsters to fight Diabellstar, and the object she either wants, or wants to destroy.

WANTED: Seeker of Sinful Spoils is a quick-play spell card, with the below effect. Add 1 "Diabellstar" monster from your Deck or GY to your hand. During your Main Phase: You can banish this card from your GY, then target 1 of your "Sinful Spoils" Spells/Traps that is banished or in your GY, except "WANTED: Seeker of Sinful Spoils"; place it on the bottom of the Deck, then draw 1 card. You can only use each effect of "WANTED: Seeker of Sinful Spoils" once per turn.

So, off the bat -- We're not going to be able to activate this card the same turn we set it with Diabellstar's effect, which is a big hit. Especially with the effect that we can see -- It's just an add. Not bad by any means, but it means you're going to want to see this in the opening grip to kickstart your plays, and not set it off Diabellstar's effect. Still, a free Reinforcement of the Army for an archetype is nothing to shake a stick at, especially with the second effect -- Recursion and a free draw is a great effect for a spell card to have, especially when it pluses you with its first effect anyways.

Lore-wise, I love this card. It's Diabellstar's wanted poster! There's even a line in the Age of Overlord Set intro where the announcer talks about how she'd like to lay-low in your deck for a little bit, if that's okay. Super cute.

Sinful Spoils of Doom - Rcilea is a quick play spell card, with the following effect.

Target 1 Level 7 or higher Spellcaster monster you control; apply the following effects. ● While face-up, that monster is unaffected by other monsters' effects this turn, and is sent to the GY during the Standby Phase of the next turn. ● All monsters your opponent currently controls lose ATK equal to the targeted monster's ATK, then if their ATK becomes 0 by this effect, destroy them. You can only activate 1 "Sinful Spoils of Doom - Rciela" per turn.

So, we're getting a card with two effects, with a once per turn activation. Keep in mind, cards that negate activations will allow this card to be played again, assuming you have another copy. The cost to target a level 7 or higher Spellcaster monster... Does in fact synergize with Dark Magician, yes, but it's obvious this is intended for use with Diabellstar. The first effect is... Okay? But has some inherent non-synergy with the fact that Diabellstar hitting the graveyard is actually okay, with her built-in-recursion effect, and there's nothing specific about her that makes her great, or worthwhile to keep around on the opponents turn. The second effect, however -- Not... Great, but not terrible. Because it's an attack-modifying effect, I believe it can trigger in the damage step, and if it's not set off of the effect of Diabellstar, (IE not known by your opponent), then it could be a semi-valuable series of pops for your opponents monsters. I could see this being a play.

Lore wise... I'm not sure what's going on here. It looks like Diabellstar has huge ass wings, and she's getting ready to fight a... Miasma of some sorts. Good for her. #girlwin.

Sinful Spoils of Betrayal - Silvera is a normal trap card with the following effect.

Send 1 "Diabellstar" monster from your hand or face-up field to the GY, then target 1 face-up card on the field; negate its effects. When your opponent activates a card or effect in response to your "Diabellstar" monster effect or your "Sinful Spoils" Spell/Trap Card or effect activation: You can banish this card from your GY; negate that opponent's effect. You can only use 1 "Sinful Spoils of Betrayal - Silvera" effect per turn, and only once that turn.

First things first - It's a trap card. Those are generally not great, even archetypal ones that plus you to infinity. Still, let's give it a look. The cost to send from face-up field... Sucks. It has non-synergy with the last card, and dies to a book of moon before you're ready to use the rest of the effect, but the fact it does send from hand means it synergizes with the WANTED at least. A targeted negate is pretty good, especially as an omni-negate. The second negate is even better -- Finding a way to cheat this into the graveyard, just to use the second negate, actually would be pretty good. This card, I'd argue, would border on playable if not for the strict hard-once-per-turn condition at the end.

Lore-wise, this kind of gives some light to what's going on in the previous card -- It looks like Diabellstar can use her effects to control that... Other dragon, to attack the blue dragon controlled by snake-eye. Cool!

Original Sinful Spoils - Snake-Eye is a normal spell card, with the below effect.

Send 1 other face-up card you control to the GY; Special Summon 1 Level 1 FIRE monster from your hand or Deck. You can banish this card from your GY, then target 1 "Snake-Eye" or "Diabellstar" monster in your GY; add 1 Level 1 FIRE monster from your Deck to your hand, then place the targeted monster on the bottom of the Deck. You can only use 1 "Original Sinful Spoils - Snake-Eye" effect per turn, and only once that turn.

So, with the first effect -- The cost is a bit steep. Requiring a face-up card likely means it'll be a monster, turn one, and can't be activated under shifter. Remember, though -- Because Diabellstar can set any sinful spoils card from deck to field, this is a good candidate. Since it's a spell card, it can be activated this turn, and we're already going to have a Diabellstar face up on our field to send, so that cost isn't too much. Now, factoring in the effect... Special summoning any level 1 FIRE from hand or deck. Wow. That's pretty good -- Notable level 1 fires include Jet Synchron, which will give you repeatable access to tuners for synchro summoning, a few monsters to support the Infernoble Knight archetype, and Rescue Ace - Fire Hydrant, to start any R-ACE plays. Considering the Diabellstar -> Snake-Eye -> LVL1 Fire combo only costs a single discard, and can start your plays off without falling prey to Droll & Lock Bird... Pretty good! Now let's read that second effect. Pretty good recursion, balanced out by the hard once per turn clause at the bottom -- It just means unless this card gets removed from the grave, you're likely going to be able to get another Level 1 FIRE monster on your next turn, as well as resetting your Diabellstar for the following turn as well.

Lore-wise, it looks like this card shows Diabellstar... Seemingly winning! Using her cool ass dragon and powers to kill the snake eye dead, and hopefully gain its power? All and all, an interesting set of cards, from a lore perspective.

~

We've got one more aspect to cover though, and it's not very fun. WANTED: Seeker of Sinful Spoils came out as a secret rare in AGOV, and Original Sinful Spoils - Snake Eye, came as an ultra rare in the same set. These look like the two best Sinful Spoils cards. The former is $80, the latter is $4, and Diabellstar is $20 (coming out in AGOV also as a secret rare), which means... A playset will easily get you into the $300 range. Ouch. This is a part of yugioh I'm not a huge fan of. While it's nice that the... Worse cards are all less than a dollar, and there is another printing of those three cards... They're all 25th century rares, which are much more expensive.

Which, obviously, sucks! The fact they're level-one-fire support, as mentioned before, can help synchro archetypes, rescue-ace, and infernoble knight, all three are very competitively viable! It also very much feels like we're gonna be seeing a sinful spoil level 1 fire monster in the future, and kidna guessing at what is gonna come up next is super neat. I'm also clearly a big fan of women, and I hope Konami pulls a dogmatika with her, and not an ice barrier :3

So, in conclusion -- I like Diabellstar! It interacts with the game in a very interesting way, it has some clear setup for a cool storyline in the future, and also has some neat gameplay loops. It feels balanced, it feels interesting... I just wish it was cheaper :)

#yugioh #yu-gi-oh! #tagging it as both cause idk which ill use in the future #i dont usually tag stuff but ill probably do so for big posts like these in the future. #if you like this #or wanna see more card analysis or anything... let me know! I had a surprising amount of fun with it #long post #ask #answer

[tapwrites]

Commas & Structural Punctuation

Commas can be a little hard to get your head around, as a writer. They are used for many different things to structure a sentence, so unless you're thinking about that structure, you can end up with commas all over the place.

Let's go over how commas affect the structure of a sentence, and how this relates to other punctuation...

The most obvious is to indicate an "aside" as I call it. When you use two commas, like this, what is happening to the text between the commas? It's almost like using brackets (like this) to whisper something related to the sentence in the middle of it.

The comma can also mark a continuation of the sentence in a slightly new direction, tagged onto the end like this. This is similar to a colon: which adds more information to what was said so far.

However, it can also be used after the introduction to a sentence like this.

An em-dash (or long dash) can be used the same way—as an aside—in the middle or end of the sentence. It may be easier while writing to use two dashes--which are easier to type--and then go back and swap them out before printing.

"The em-dash can also be used to show something—" "Being interrupted by something else."

For example, when dialogue or narration is stopped short by some event, or another person speaking over them.

A list of items can be separated by commas such as item 1, item 2, and item 3. The comma before the final item and the "and" is called the oxford comma, after the Oxford Style' Guide's recommendation to use it. Some writers avoid that, which is recommended by the Associated Press Style. As long as it doesn't confuse the reader, you can do whatever feels natural to you.

A semi-colon is something different altogether; it joins on another complete sentence to the first that's related to it. As opposed to the colon or comma: which joins on a continuance to the sentence that's related to it.

A "full stop," or "period," leaves two sentences separate from one another. The sentences might be closely linked. They may even continue the same thought, really--like that one did.

That said, depending on your writing style or the way a character speaks, the rules about "complete sentences" can be pretty loose and casual. As long as it's not confusing, and an "incomplete sentence" continues a complete one, you should be okay.

Dialogue may contain a complete sentence, which would normally end with a full-stop. But if the sentence in general continues—with a dialogue tag indicating the speaker, for example— When a full-stop would be used at the end of a sentence as part of dialogue, but the s

"The time is six thirty-two," said the clock.

Read more about sentences here: Breaking Paragraphs and Splitting Sentences.

And an ellipsis (or "dot dot dot") lets something trail off… And maybe get picked up again later. Or to denote a pause. This is most common in dialogue, though you may choose to use it here and there in narration too if that's your style.

Just be careful to not just throw it in all over the place. A full-stop is a pause too. And a comma can be a pause. Be sure to use it when it's necessary to add to what the reader understands from the text. Use it when it adds to the story, not just any time someone takes a breath.

However, these different ways of using the comma can be confusing. The comma can be used for many things, things other punctuation can do just fine, including asides, lists, and related ideas, but also to join on new thoughts, like this. Now... how do you think that sentence was structured?

Main sentence: "The comma can be used for many things"

Aside: "things other punctuation can do just fine"

New direction: "including" a list:

"asides"

New item: "lists"

New item: "related ideas"

New direction: "but also to join on new thoughts"

Aside for the second part: "like this."

And how easy was it to figure out how it was structured as you read it? The reader doesn't know ahead of time what the structure is going to be, so they will rely on context clues to read the commas—which may be incorrect or misleading.

"The comma can be used for many things" (the main sentence). Then a comma, most commonly used to have an aside/new direction to the sentence.

"things other punctuation can do just fine". This could be an item list in theory, or maybe more likely it's an aside from the first part. This isn't completely clear, though.

"including asides". Another comma. This could end the aside and go back to the main sentence; or maybe "asides" is the first item in a list, and we're going onto a second comma.

"lists". With another comma. As that was so short, this is probably a list item, and the comma indicates it'll be followed by another item. So then "asides" was actually the first item of this list! If we guessed wrong, we've got to restructure the sentence in our minds.

"related ideas". Another comma, so this is probably going to followed by another item and the list will continue.

"but also to join on new thoughts". It doesn't really fit with the list, as this is a contradictory "but" phrase. Although this new comma could mean another item is coming, so maybe this is part of the list?

"like this." Ah, so that looks a lot like a simple aside tagged onto the previous "but" phrase. So the list wasn't continued after all.

It's kind of hard to reason about when you go word by word, comma by comma, isn't it? Your brain works fast, but it still has to do that processing. And still has to re-structure things if it went down the wrong route. This kind of thing is why sometimes you need to re-read a sentence once or twice; your brain got a bit lost in how it was structured in the first place.

This is why those other structural punctuation marks exist; to let us more explicitly structure the sentence without ambiguity. If we go full-on with using those instead, the sentence could look like this:

The comma can be used for many things (things other punctuation can do just fine), including: asides, lists, and related ideas—but also to join on new thoughts, like this.

Which can come off as more "formal" in style, as if written in a business document. But that's because it's explicit about its meaning.

And notice, I still used commas. But now, they are used within clearly marked out areas, so their meaning is clear. The one after "asides" is between the semi-colon and em-dash, and it's quite easy to see that the commas in that part are separating items. Whereas the one used before "like this" at the end is within a section between the em-dash and full-stop. And through the context you can pick up that it's a little aside.

For a more casual style, such as writing fiction, you don't need to use this explicit punctuation everywhere. Commas are just fine. Just be mindful of keeping it clear what they're doing, so the reader doesn't have to spend time and energy figuring it out.

#comma #punctuation #grammar #sentence structure #writing #ellipsis #ellipses #colon #semi-colon #full-stop #period

[landwriter]

Ten Books To Know Me

Rules: 10 (non-ancient) books for people to get to know you better, or that you just really like.

Tagged by @softest-punk, thank you for utterly derailing my afternoon into nostalgia <3 My problem is less not picking ancient books and more not picking exclusively Canadian and English children’s lit published between 1995 and 1999. (Still the first three picks all the same though because it is like, the opus within which my psyche is almost wholly contained.) This got long but I'm going to be very brave and not apologize about that at all. I love talking about books, and these are some of the books I love the most. In chronological order of arrival into my heart.

Some of the Kinder Planets - Tim Wynne-Jones This book has been a part of my life for so long I cannot remember when, exactly, I first read it - only that it was taken from my gran’s shelf; Tim had sent her a copy with a lovely inscription. It’s a short story collection which remains today (and forever) my favourite format. Ted Chiang’s Exhalation, Karin Tidbeck’s Jagannath, Karen Russell’s Orange World, Margaret Atwood’s Stone Mattress are all fabulous examples, stacked before me at my desk, but Some of the Kinder Planets itself lives (alongside my two most precious childhood stuffies) at my mum’s house, the safest place of all. The stories are kids being kids in the way you want to read as a kid yourself: clever and wondering and scared and brave. Special mention also to his Zoom trilogy, beautifully illustrated in black and white by Eric Beddows.

Skellig - David Almond Another book likely pilfered from my granny’s library. There’s a little magic in Some of the Kinder Planets, but here is ALL the magical realism, and it changed me. This book has a sickly bird-or-man-or-angel in a garage being nursed to health by a boy with an ill baby sister in hospital that he can’t help at all; the indelible image of surviving off bluebottles and then getting snuck Chinese takeaway and brown ale; nature and weird kids and William Blake poems. I will weep if I continue thinking about it.

[Not Any Book But Just A Lot Of Books] - Kit Pearson, Diana Wynne-Jones, Kenneth Oppel, Philip Pullman, Madeleine L’Engle, etc. Listen, I know this is an INSANE cop-out but if you know the authors you know more or less exactly what I mean. These are the books that made me more tender than I already was, made me believe in Good, and Kindness, and Love, in a totally immutable way I thankfully do not ever want to change, because I don’t think I could.

Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett My first introduction to Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, and footnotes. Also one of the first books I did not simply pick up because it was Lying Around. I bought it because my older cousin listed it as one of her favourite books on Facebook, and she was (and is) impossibly, horribly cool. I was maybe 13 or 14 and wanted to be cool too. I’ve since read a smattering of Gaiman but I’ve yet to read Terry Pratchett on his own. I’d like to! I know I’d love it.

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul - Douglas Adams Loaned to me by my best friend before we were best friends. It is, apparently, the second novel in the Dirk Gently series, and I remember nothing of it except a very good bit about a couch getting stuck in a stairwell; nonetheless it’s listed here because this is clearly actually a thinly disguised chronology of sentimentality, and also because Douglas Adams is a wonder and delight to read and I don’t need to fully remember the book to know that in my bones. I’m not sure if it’s fair but I’ll also blame Douglas Adams for my inability to be brief and to resist using semi-colons. Could’ve been someone else. But it was definitely someone English.

Sailing to Byzantium - W.B. Yeats This is not a book, but it was in my English Literature textbook in high school, so it counts. If it wasn’t, I would still count it. Why a sixteen year old girl connected with a poem that begins “That is no country for old men.” is irrelevant, as is every stanza but the third, which contains the fateful, ruinous lines: “Consume my heart away; sick with desire / And fastened to a dying animal / It knows not what it is;” I remember when I read it, and I remember the chill feeling of Yeats’ spectral hand reaching all the way from his grave in County Sligo, across the whole Atlantic and the enormous landmass called Canada, to reach into my chest and cruelly grab my own heart, and I remember thinking How, and Exactly. The first thing I read that named the strangeness I felt inside of me. The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost of all my teenage angst. Written on my bones to this day, if I’m being honest.

Hamlet - Shakespeare We got off on the wrong foot, after I was personally victimized by the line ‘Brevity is the soul of wit’, but I do love Shakespeare. I credit this to having an excellent teacher for it, and reading it aloud in a cohort of tryhards and musicians and theatre kids. A case of familiarity breeds...appreciation, actually. We did a lot of Shakespeare, but we were asked to learn 20 lines of Hamlet specifically, and rewrite them, marked down for every error. Forty lines for bonus marks. There was much grousing and it seemed like a cruel, outdated task of rote memorization, but writing this a decade later, I am belatedly realizing this was a sneaky way to get a bunch of kids to recite a soliloquy so much that they couldn’t help but find the life in it, the rhythm and meter to make it stick in our minds. And now look! I love it! I am writing fanfic in iambic pentameter! Wherefore art my fucking restraint!! I learned my lines so hideously well that when I pulled up the scene just now (2.2, from “Yet I, a dull and muddy-mettled rascal peak”), I a) noticed and b) was offended by, minute differences from the version I memorized, which I then searched out and knew the moment I found. Incredible?!  

Still Life With Woodpecker - Tom Robbins The most recent time I’ve read a work of fiction and been rearranged by it, at the tender age of 21. here I am, I wrote, in my journal, after a very good sob, happier and more rudderless than ever. This man writes with totally unfettered joy and unhinged sincerity, two things I am hopelessly into, but also with a deep distaste for institutions and conformity that I desperately needed back then: lost, returned from a year of magical realism and the sort of adulthood growth spurt that makes you feel dizzy, home and yet horribly missing the home I’d made for myself elsewhere, all my nearly-fulfilled ambitions towards security and prestigious government postings feeling sort of hollow and reeking in my hands. It comforted me that I wasn't wrong as much as it spilled my own guts into my hands, and while I went on for another year seeing things through, it planted a seed that quickly grew proper roots and pushed me right off the ledge of respectability. And it’s a love story, of course.

It’s his prose that sits glowing on the horizon to me when I try to write richly: a distant shore of orgiastic language (from which you can surely hear the wind-carried cries of people fucking day and night), towards which I, still shy and prudish, ever point my prow.

How to Be Happy - Eleanor Davis A comic collection. Sharp and wonderful and alive. Another Best Friend gift (bless those around us with impeccable taste), of which every single panel is MARVELOUS. I meant to share one of my favourites here but apparently it has! Gotten up and left!! I will buy another copy in hopes of coaxing it back out of wherever it’s hiding.

Down to Earth - Monty Don This did not rearrange anything. But it does give me a good hug about it, so to speak. A month-by-month gardening guide which is chock-full of brilliant, sensible advice, and also so cheerfully comforting in a highly specific English way that I actually feel like I’m drinking a cuppa whenever I read a page or two of it. It makes me think of my grandmother. And so we’ve come full circle, eh?

I hope some of you are now nodding thoughtfully and thinking, well, Chrissakes, that explains it. Very sorry, hope this helps, etc. Passing on the tag to @fancy-rock-dove, @chubsthehamster, @broomsticks, @wordsinhaled, @btwimkindagay, @hardly-an-escape, @xx-vergil-xx, @that-banhus, and anyone else who wants to expose themselves on main and chat about their fave books

#about me #god also slap up tamora pierce #inkheart book thief all those guys #the bartimaeus trilogy!! also brilliant footnotes #i tried SO hard to keep this brief..... so hard..... #but like im a bookclub girlie at heart #i just wanna talk about the works of art i love and why and how they make me feel and i want u to love them too #book recs #i can still rattle most of those hamlet lines off with feeling #a good party trick

[ashes-in-a-grecian-urn]

A Few Years After Your Suicide Attempt

We sit on the floor in our underwear and play games together. I am always worse than you - I lose in chess, place second in Mario Kart. You laugh at my feigned anger, and it feels so normal, so inconsequential. Yet there is something incredible about the fact that you are still here with me. 

We go on a hike together and talk about harder things, under the shroud of evergreen trees and soft clouds. We talk about our families, about death & love & neglect & old, festering wounds we haven’t bothered to suture yet. You hike in front of me so we don’t have to look each other in the eyes. 

We get to a Lookout Point, and there’s nobody around, so we take our clothes off to feel the sage-scented breeze on our skin. I rest my chin briefly on your shoulder, where your semi-colon tattoo is. We gaze over that expansive Colorado wilderness, and we see a family of foxes, down there in the brush. 

You show me the hardly-healed scabs on your hands, from the drunken night a few weeks ago where I sat you on the curb at 1am and ripped a dozen splinters out of your palms. You had gotten the splinters climbing a wooden fence, and you couldn’t get them out yourself, so I held your hand an inch from my eyes and made a bloody mess of things. Your dried blood stayed caked under my fingernails until the next morning. 

I probably made the scars bigger, I laugh, from gouging at you with my fingernails like that. We should have waited until we got home and used tweezers. 

No, it was better that way. I didn’t want to be in pain all night - you say. 

That’s what I want to do. To keep you from being in pain all night. But I don’t say that part. 

We finally leave the mountainside when the sky darkens. We don’t offer to help each other climb down the craggy rock face, but I feel your presence next to me constantly, your watchful eye sizing me up and confirming that you could catch me if I fell. Your love is quiet, but I know how to listen.

I sleep at your house that night. We smoke a bowl together, eating peach pie with our fingers and laughing loud enough to piss off your neighbors. Nobody else is here, you say, we can be as stupid as we want. You invite me to sleep in your room, but I choose the couch. Something in me still fears our closeness. 

You ask me if I need anything before bed. I tell you I love you. 

I hope you aren’t in pain all night. 

#freeform #unedited