The Fall (2006) Dir. Tarsem Singh

"you have a responsibility to consider how your writing would affect other people" literally 50% of writing is manipulating the audience by setting tone and mood and drawing them in to fuck with their emotions. writers do NOTHING but consider how our writing is affecting other people and this is implying that our moral imperative is to make them feel warm and fuzzy which it is not

This snippet will plague me for weeks on end! arrghhhh!!

“Your wands, if you please,” the worker said, motioning towards it.

Without pause, and to Harry’s great shock, Malfoy pulled out his wand. He slipped it into one of the open holes in the wall without question, then tied the bag shut.

“Mokeskin containers,” he explained to Harry, who was surely watching Malfoy surrender his wand unquestionably in utter shock.

“Mokeskin…?”

“Of course. It’s a standard policy at places like this—the decent ones, anyway. Mokeskin makes it so no one but the rightful owner of the wand can retrieve it.”

Harry took a moment to consider that. Really, he thought, it was quite genius. Having a bunch of wizards getting drunk in a public space did seem like a recipe for disaster, and making it so that they all had to keep their wands out of reach was an excellent way to mitigate any potential damage. Mokeskin was probably the only foolproof way to ensure that the owners of the wands would not have them stolen.

It also must have been bloody expensive too, Harry thought. He knew the mokeskin bag that Hagrid had once gotten him was far from cheap.

Unwittingly, Harry recalled the last time he had seen that bag. When Voldemort had forced him to open it, to reveal all his most precious items…

Maybe I have an affection for broken and damaged things.

…before vanishing them all, forever.

“It’s perfectly safe,” the worker said, drawing Harry’s focus back to the present. “At Cloak and Laurel we take the utmost pride in making sure that all of our—”

“Just take us in,” Malfoy interrupted in a drawl. The worker gave Harry a questioning a look, but didn’t seem to want to argue with Malfoy or ask anything of Harry at all. He eventually nodded stiffly, then opened the door for them to go in. Evocative, jazzy music met their ears, and Harry could see more faerie lights illuminating a much larger space.

Harry swallowed hard. Malfoy didn’t think he had a wand, that was perfectly clear. Harry was perfectly content to let him—and everyone who worked here—think that. He took a deep breath and followed Malfoy into Cloak and Laurel.

The second he stepped over the threshold, the doorway lit up in blue.

Malfoy whipped around, his confused, pale face glowing blue from the now glowing doorway. His magic become bright and frazzled, as did that of the worker’s.

“S-so sorry, sir,” the worker said. “But I must ask that you stow your wand at the front like Mr. Malfoy did. It’s for the protection of all of our clients…”

Harry tensed. He really didn’t want to give away that he had a wand at all, let alone the Dark Lord’s wand…

Malfoy stared at him with his brows raised but said nothing. Harry, not seeing a way around it, slowly reached into his pocket. He reluctantly withdrew the yew wand.

Please do not let debt collectors play in your face.

How to learn a language when you don’t know where to start:

General Plan:

Weeks 1 and 2: Purpose:

Learn the fundamentals sentence construction

Learn how to spell and count

Start building a phrase stockpile with basic greetings

The Alphabet

Numbers 1 - 100

Subject Pronouns

Common Greetings

Conjugate the Two Most Important Verbs: to be and to have

Basic Definite and Indefinite Articles

Weeks 3 and 4: Purpose:

Learn essential vocabulary for the day-to-day

Start conjugating regular verbs

Days of the Week and Months of the Year

How to tell the time

How to talk about the weather

Family Vocabulary

Present Tense Conjugations Verbs

Weeks 5 and 6: Purpose:

Warm up with the last of the day-to-day vocabulary

Add more complex types of sentences to your grammar

Colours

House vocabulary

How to ask questions

Present Tense Conjugations Verbs

Forming negatives

Weeks 7 and 8: Purpose:

Learn how to navigate basic situations in a region of your target language country

Finish memorising regular conjugation rules

Food Vocabulary and Ordering at Restaurants

Money and Shopping Phrases

Present Tense Conjugations Verbs

Weeks 9 and 10: Purpose:

Start constructing descriptive and more complex sentences

Adjectives

Reflective verbs

Places vocabulary

Weeks 11 and 12: Purpose:

Add more complex descriptions to your sentences with adverbs

Wrap up vocabulary essentials

Adverbs

Parts of the body and medical vocabulary

Tips for Learning a Foreign Language:

Learning Vocabulary:

What vocabulary should I be learning?

There are hundreds of thousands of words in every language, and the large majority of them won’t be immediately relevant to you when you’re starting out.Typically, the most frequent 3000 words make up 90% of the language that a native speaker uses on any given day. Instead try to learn the most useful words in a language, and then expand outwards from there according to your needs and interests.

Choose the words you want/need to learn.

Relate them to what you already know.

Review them until they’ve reached your long-term memory.

Record them so learning is never lost.

Use them in meaningful human conversation and communication.

How should I record the vocabulary?

Learners need to see and/or hear a new word of phrase 6 to 17 times before they really know a piece of vocabulary.

Keep a careful record of new vocabulary.

Record the vocabulary in a way that is helpful to you and will ensure that you will practice the vocabulary, e.g. flashcards.

Vocabulary should be organised so that words are easier to find, e.g. alphabetically or according to topic.

Ideally when noting vocabulary you should write down not only the meaning, but the grammatical class, and example in a sentence, and where needed information about structure.

How should I practice using the vocabulary?

Look, Say, Cover, Write and Check - Use this method for learning and remembering vocabulary. This method is really good for learning spellings.

Make flashcards. Write the vocabulary on the front with the definition and examples on the back.

Draw mind maps or make visual representations of the new vocabulary groups.

Stick labels or post it notes on corresponding objects, e.g when learning kitchen vocabulary you could label items in your house.

How often should I be practising vocabulary?

A valuable technique is ‘the principle of expanding rehearsal’. This means reviewing vocabulary shortly after first learning them then at increasingly longer intervals.

Ideally, words should be reviewed:

5-10 minutes later

24 hours later

One week later

1-2 months later

6 months later

Knowing a vocabulary item well enough to use it productively means knowing:

Its written and spoken forms (spelling and pronunciation).

Its grammatical category and other grammatical information

Related words and word families, e.g. adjective, adverb, verb, noun.

Common collocations (Words that often come before or after it).

Receptive Skills: Listening and Reading

Reading is probably one of the most effective ways of building vocabulary knowledge.

Listening is also important because it occupies a big chunk of the time we spend communicating.

Tips for reading in a foreign language:

Start basic and small.  Children’s books are great practice for beginners. Don’t try to dive into a novel or newspaper too early, since it can be discouraging and time consuming if you have to look up every other word.

Read things you’ve already read in your native language. The fact that you at least know the gist of the story will help you to pick up context clues, learn new vocabulary and grammatical constructions.

Read books with their accompanying audio books. Reading a book while listening to the accompanying audio will improve your “ear training”. It will also help you to learn the pronunciation of words.

Tips for listening in a foreign language:

Watch films in your target language.

Read a book while also listening along to the audio book version.

Listen to the radio in your target language.

Watch videos online in your target language.

Activities to do to show that you’ve understood what you’ve been listening to:

Try drawing a picture of what was said.

Ask yourself some questions about it and try to answer them.

Provide a summary of what was said.

Suggest what might come next in the “story.”

Translate what was said into another language.

“Talk back” to the speaker to engage in imaginary conversation.

Productive Skills: Speaking and Writing

Tips for speaking in a foreign language:

If you can, try to speak the language every day either out loud to yourself or chat to another native speaker whether it is a colleague, a friend, a tutor or a language exchange partner. 

Write a list of topics and think about what you could say about each one. First you could write out your thoughts and then read them out loud. Look up the words you don’t know. You could also come up with questions at the end to ask someone else.

A really good way to improve your own speaking is to listen to how native speakers talk and imitate their accent, their rhythm of speech and tone of voice. Watch how their lips move and pay attention to the stressed sounds. You could watch interviews on YouTube or online news websites and pause every so often to copy what you have just heard. You could even sing along to songs sung in the target language.

Walk around the house and describe what you say. Say what you like or dislike about the room or the furniture or the decor. Talk about what you want to change.This gets you to practise every day vocabulary.

Tips for writing in a foreign language:

Practice writing in your target language. Keep it simple to start with. Beginner vocabulary and grammar concepts are generally very descriptive and concrete.

Practice writing by hand. Here are some things you can write out by hand:

Diary entries

Shopping lists

Reminders

What could I write about?

Write about your day, an interesting event, how you’re feeling, or what you’re thinking.

Make up a conversation between two people. 

Write a letter to a friend, yourself, or a celebrity. You don’t need to send it; just writing it will be helpful.

Translate a text you’ve written in your native language into your foreign language.

Write a review or a book you’ve recently read or a film you’ve recently watched.

Write Facebook statuses, Tweets or Tumblr posts (whether you post them or not will be up to you).

Write a short story or poem.

Writing is one of the hardest things to do well as a non-native speaker of a language, because there’s no room to hide. 

There are lots of ways to improve your writing ability, but they can be essentially boiled down to three key components:

Read a lot

Write a lot

Get your writing corrected

suddenly remembered this poem as i was making breakfast this morning & frantically googled “poem remembered to buy eggs?????????” & somehow managed to find it & it utterly knocked the wind out of me just as much as when i first read it

Fanfiction Club: The Rules

This idea came to me when I woke up first thing this morning.

hey, i read your rec list and fell in love with dust in your pocket. do you know any other fics like it?

by ‘other fics like it’ i’m going to assume you mean femslash tomarry fics, not vaguely steampunk tomarry aus (which would also be incredibly valid.) however, i will grab at any excuse to talk about fem tomarry

femslash tomarry/harrymort recs

at first and fierce affirming sight by @being-luminous is probably my favorite on this list. it’s a one-shot featuring Giant Immortal Snake Queen Tom Riddle and Tiny And Incredibly Smitten Harry Potter: Life Companions. i just adore tom’s characterization in this one

til death do us part (i know that you are mine) by @artsy-death is a short, smutty one-shot featuring a master of death, universe-hopping harry who harbors a minor obsession with tom riddle (across most universes) and of course a deliciously possessive and sadistic tom to top it off.

if you like dark themed tomarry, tag, you’re it by @whotooklortan is perfect. obsessive tom, kidnapped harry, and a wonderful case of stockholm syndrome. i personally like my toms as sociopathic as possible, and i adore this fic

for the well loved Tomarry As Academic Rivals That Also Occasionally Have Hate-Sex trope i offer you favourite pastime by @hookedonthesky

and finally, wolf_of_lilacs has written a ton of great fem tomarry/harrymort fics. here is the link to their collection

go forth and read fanfiction !

WARNING!! Gore with Dachuu. Brutal Kisses (ʃƪ˘ﻬ˘)