I'm Sure These Are The Embodiment Of Fandom, They Are Not Of Any Of Us, But They Are What We Think

there are girls who go crazy to have the new lipstick signed and then there are me that I would touch the sky with a finger if you give me one of these

Sword with Scabbard of Faustin I (1782–1867), Emperor of Haiti by Robert Mole, Arms and Armor

Medium: Steel, silver, gold, wood, textile (velvet)

Bequest of William S. Delafield Sr., 2012 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY

http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/35859

Help a Family in Need

I am reaching out on behalf of my dear friend, Mohamad S., who is facing one of the most challenging times of his life. Mohamad is 37 years old and left his homeland in 2015 in search of a safer and better future. He’s a kind, hardworking man, and his small family has always been his greatest priority.

Living abroad, Mohamad has recently endured unimaginable loss and financial strain. Amidst the ongoing conflict in his homeland, his mother passed away, leaving behind his sister and her five young children—the last remaining members of his immediate family.

As the situation worsened, Mohamad managed to help his sister and her children escape to safety in Egypt, covering their immediate needs and securing a temporary refuge for them. Since then, he has been fully responsible for providing everything they need to survive during this transition.

In his efforts to support his family and cope with this devastating loss, Mohamad has found himself deeply in debt. To make matters even more difficult, he recently underwent knee surgery, which limits his ability to return to work for the foreseeable future. This has made it even harder for him to manage his financial responsibilities and the pressing need to provide his family with a stable future.

Mohamad is now working to bring his sister and her five children to join him in Belgium, where he hopes they can find stability and opportunity after all they’ve endured. This transition, however, requires significant resources that he is currently unable to meet alone.

For privacy reasons, we are not sharing Mohamad’s full name, as he has chosen to keep his identity discreet. While he initially refused the idea of asking for help, I couldn’t stand by and watch him struggle alone. I insisted on doing this for him because he deserves a chance to overcome these challenges.

Your contribution will help Mohamad repay the debt incurred during this difficult time, cover ongoing living expenses for his family, and assist with the costs involved in bringing them safely to Belgium.

Mohamad has been a good friend of mine for years, and I’ve always admired his resilience and generosity. Any support, no matter the size, will make an incredible difference in helping Mohamad and his family rebuild their lives after these painful experiences.

Thank you for reading his story and considering helping a man who has always done everything he can for his loved ones.

Adam

✅ Vetted by Association: @bilal-salah0

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Donate to Help Mohamad reunite his family and clear his debt, organized by Adam Bin Ali

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Guys I need a hand to find a fic clex where clark and lex meet because of a phone call to a wrong number

Studies of the Arm showing the Movements made by the Biceps, Leonardo Da Vinci

Medium: ink, paper

The only place full of pepole i really like

Reasons why I like tumblr

1. None of my family is on here

È il mio 7 anniversario su Tumblr 🥳

Dear Supporter,

I hope this message finds you and your family in good health. My name is Eman Zaqout from Gaza. I am reaching you out to seek your urgent help in spreading the word about our fundraiser. I lost both my home and my job due to the ongoing genocide in Gaza and we are facing catastrophic living conditions. 💔

I kindly ask you to visit my campaign. Your support, whether through donating or sharing, will help us reach more people who can make a difference. Thank you for your continued support for the Palestinian cause. Your dedication brings us closer to freedom. 🙏🕊

Note: Verified by several people as 90-ghost and aces-and-angels. ☑

Unfortunately I am not in a position to donate but I am posting this in case anyone who is sees it.

Grazie @ayowotsdis e tutti coloro che mi hanno portato a 5 reblog!

Loose threads and various trivia from the Poppy War series that I can't stop thinking about

I'm writing this because I have very little time to write at the moment so I won't be able to fit all these elements into the Poppy War fic I'm writing but I still have to get it out of the system because the amount of detail is insane.

DrUgS!

Ancient Chinese medicine in general is full of hallucinogenic and poisonous plants that were dosed very carefully, but shamans used them to talk to the gods, and the most common ones were:

The fly agaric mushroom: the mushroom that Chaghan and Qara gave to Kitay and Rin for the anchor ritual.

The ephedra plant: it was generally drunk in the form of tea and I think it's the liquid from the flask Jiang gives Rin in the first book when he sends her to meditate in the forest since Rin describes its effects not as a high but more as the beneficial effects of the plant in question.

The datura plant: it's extremely poisonous and was used in small amounts for its powerful hallucinogenic effects and sometimes its flowers are a blue-violet so I think it's the famous blue powder that Chaghan carries around in a small bottle although I couldn't find anything claiming it was used in that form. On that note, one of the candidates for Chaghan's drug is also cannabis, which was also used by Taoist monks and nomadic peoples from which I assume Hinterlands are inspired and, although they are modern hybrids, there are blue variants of this plant so it could be an artistic license from Kuang.

Betel nut tree: as Shiro experiments on Altan and Rin rants that the introduction of the Speerly to opium was an idea of the Red Emperor to make them addicted to Nikan and that previously their people used the bark of a tree without specifying which one. I think this is the tree in question although in reality, it is the nuts that are consumed because in addition to being the fourth most commonly used psychoactive substance after tobacco, alcohol, and caffeinated drinks, according to the World Health Organization, it energizing effects prevent fatigue and thirst so the famous fame of the Speerly warriors, at least those in Tearza's time, perhaps also stemmed from this as well as the brutal training regime and the legend of its origin is also very much linked to the Speerly eyes.

2.The Different Peoples of Nikan

I will only talk about Speerly and Hinterlanders otherwise I will never stop writing.

Speerly: As I mentioned above, the Tiwanese legend of the birth of the Betel Tree is linked to the inspiration for the red eyes of our phoenix warriors. According to the legend of the Paiwan tribe, one day a child with red eyes was born in a village, who killed any living thing with a glance. In the end Pali, this is the child's name, after finally integrating himself into the village and using the power of his eyes in wars between the other tribes, will be put to death after accidentally killing children but a friend of his notices that a betel nut tree was born on Pali's grave, the fruits of which are as wide and red as the boy's eyes that will protect the people of the village from then on. Now, what do you do with an intriguing legend about a red-eyed boy whose death essentially gave rise to a light drug tree? Apparently Kuang's answer was an entire red-eyed people reaching out to their murderous goddess via a drug of the colour of their eyes. I love this woman.

Hinterlanders: Rather than being one of a single people they are a sort of confederation of clans inspired by the Huns and the Mongols but I find it fascinating that many have light eyes and hair isn't an artistic license by the author to make them more 'shamanic' like most fantasy writers do because apparently a lot of ancient nomadic Asian ethnic groups had light eyes and hair. I used to think it was incredibly rare and more a thing of the descendants of peoples who lived near the Silk Road or the European border.

3.The Dragon

The Dragon is a Yao not a God.

I know Chaghan has already explained this, but many seem to forget about it, while I who had read Poppy War because I was in abstinence of Wuxia like MoDaoZuShi started shouting IS A FUKING Yao! and suddenly Nezha's whole speech about how it's not like Rin suddenly makes sense. Because Yao are often confused with Magical Beasts or Gods but Yao is a broad term for any animal, plant or even inanimate object that has gained spiritual awareness and magical powers. In this case, as Chaghan explained, an animal has absorbed the power of the Caves (if we want to speak in terms of theology or even Wuxia it would be Qi or even Mana if you prefer) which are one of those places where the veil between the two worlds thins and supposedly filled with the power of the real Rain Dragon and has become the 'Dragon'. But he is not a god because, as has already been said in the trilogy, true gods do not have material bodies. This can be confirmed in the story Vaisra tells Nezha about the shaman Yu who suggests that he has turned into the Dragon when in fact he may have been eaten and absorbed into the 'collection' of the Yao because in The Nine Curves River, a story by Kuang in the collection The Books of Dragons, she suggests the Yao existed before Yu's time because she makes no mention of Yu's legend but instead it is a fisherman who becomes the dragon in one of the versions.

The Dragon (Yao) is a Yinglong

The story of the Cave Dragon that Vaisra tells Nezha is inspired by the story of the legendary King Yu, founder of the Xia Dynasty who, according to the story, controlled the flooding of the Yellow River thanks to a Yinglong a very powerful water dragon that had lost its wings to kill a drought demon. This dragon is also related to the eels, through a connection that I honestly didn't understand, at least as Wikipedia explained it, and it relates back to how Rin sees him when he attacks the cave, because at least to me he reminds me of a giant eel.

Maybe the Yin sacrifice their children to the Yao

Okay I know, it sounds absurd, now I'll explain. Also in The Nine Curves River it is understood that it is set before the reign of the Red Emperor (the monks still operate) and the people of Arlong sacrifice the most beautiful people they can find in times of severe drought. Now there is no reference to anything like this in the era in which Poppy War is set but something may have changed when Yu was the one bound to the Yao in Dragon form, because in the story it is referred to that Yu would not allow anyone else to suffer, and in The Nine Curves River the Yao can cause an abnormal and prolonged drought until the sacrifice has been made but not in the times we are shown. So Yu did something that kept the Yao at bay for over a thousand years after his death or the Yin family sacrifice their children in secret. I have this theory that the Yin took it upon themselves to nurture what they thought was a God for the sake of their people after all forms of worship had been banned and, since in The Nine Curves River it is specified that the sacrificed people must go there voluntarily (perhaps a limitation imposed by the fact that even real gods cannot invade the minds of shamans unless the latter want them to and so a Yao who feeds on their power cannot go out and eat whoever they want whenever they want) the Yin Lords of the past would have piqued the curiosity of the sacrificable children to make them go to the Grotto voluntarily and the Yao would accept them as offerings and prevent the drought. So Vaisra knew that one of his sons would be eaten? Hell yes. Or at least he hoped that Yu's legend had some truth to it (knowing Riga) and that he would end up with at least one son turned into a Dragon to use for his revolution. As they say, be careful what you wish for.

Mingzha was not devoured by accident

Of course the whole theory above is dismantled when Nezha tells Yao that he was so hungry that he hadn't even thought of keeping Mingzha for himself and had devoured him straight away and that Nezha would go with him, presumably to do what Yu did (perhaps he had intuited something that is not told) to keep him at bay for so long. But hunger may not have been Yao's only reason for choosing to eat the child. Mingzha is presented to us with gold bracelets and anklets that are good luck charms for children, and so far nothing strange apart from the potential to be a heartbreak parallel for Nezha's handcuffs. But in The Nine Curves River the author implies that all Dragon sacrifices are marked with gold bracelets and anklets, so when the Yao chose Mingzha it was because he thought he was a sacrifice to be devoured.

The Red Emperor and Yu were like Nezha and Yin.

Me with a really crazy theory? More likely than you think.

So from what I understand even though it's not specified, the Yao doesn't eat all his sacrifices otherwise people like Yu and Nezha and the Fisherman wouldn't exist, even in legend. Maybe he plays with his food or maybe he has to give a fraction of his power in return, unfortunately we don't have enough elements to determine this but in Yu's legend there is a reference to the fact that the Dragon Province had become unlivable due to the currents and climate towards the end of the Red Emperor's reign, giving us a very specific time window in which to place the tale, which is strange in itself, but also makes a heavy implication (at least to me) that it was the Emperor's presence that made Arlong prosperous and, towards the end of his life, the work of his 'sacrifice' tapered off until Yu took his place.

Now, why do I think the Red Emperor was a Yin? Because Kuang loves to make us suffer and since Rin is Tearza's descendant it would make sense for Nezha to be a descendant of the Red Emperor but also for a few other reasons: Kitay says that the aunts and cousins of the Yin Clan were chosen as concubines of the Emperors and if the intrigue of the Harem didn't go out of fashion it wasn't just because of their beauty, women related to Kings and Emperors were a useful chess piece in political machinations. The coat of arms of House Yin is a dragon and speaking of historical reality the only ones who could wear the dragon on their robes or as a family crest were the Emperors and his family. Reference is made to the fact that there were no survivors of his lineage almost too insistently, just as there is no reference to Tearza's lineage until she calls Rin my blood. The Yin have the Imperial Seal that was thought to be lost. I'm pretty sure the Red Emperor is historically the equivalent of Emperor Qin Shi Huang, whose birth name was Ying Zheng and well . . . I know the Ying character and the Yin character are different but they sound similar and from a plot point of view the Red Emperor's remaining descendants could have hidden themselves by changing surnames but still one that had a resemblance to the one of origin or a side branch of the family, the possibilities are many. Lastly, he might be right about the Yin feeding their children to the Yao in Dragon form.

As for Yu, I think he was another yin descendant because, at least in the Italian version, Nezha seems to know that Yu is his ancestor.

That's all for now, at least until I find the rest of my notes. If any of this inspires you to write something I would love to have a little credit, even a small one, and oh. . .I definitely want to read it, or if you want to go in the rabbit hole with me don't be shy

Dragonfly corsage ornament made of gold, enamel, chrysoprase, moonstones, and diamonds, by René Lalique.

I'm back to you sleepless readers, I'm looking for a Jaydick fic where Jason had a lipstick collection before he died. I'm afraid it's been deleted, if anyone has downloaded it could you help me? Or if you remember the title I could look it up on Archives?