I came across a link on Spacebattles.com with info on the terror group calling itself Hezbollah.
www.timesonline.co.uk/art...68,00.html
It's fairly political so I put it here.
It looks like Israel is pretty much fighting Lebonon forces in spite of what Lebanon's leaders are saying.
When 14 of 128 seats of a nation's government belong to the group that is bombing another nation you are at war with that nation.
howard melton
God bless

Inspired by this thread I remembered that I wrote a pretty longish peice on another forum about how to write a decent fight scene. So, I thought I'd reproduce that here, just for anyone who may be interested. Feel free to comment and chip in your own advice as well. Someday, I'll clean this up and expand it and turn it into a proper essay on my website.

There are five things you should do to write a good fight scene. Handle all of them and your fight scene is almost gaurenteed to come out competent. Handle them all well and your fight scene will be good.
I'm going to use some terms from wrestling in this post, not because I particularly enjoy wrestling, but because they are very handy for defining some of the concepts.
Part 1: Establishing Heat
Your fight scene actually starts long before your fight itself technically begins. Your primary goal is to build up the heat for the fight. If you accomplish this, then you will be halfway towards having a fight scene readers will enjoy.
Heat is a shorthand way of saying that 'the audience cares about the outcome of the fight'. Specifically, it means that you are guiding the audience towards wanting to see a single specific outcome of the battle. By taking the time to establish the characters of the story in the readers mind and making them care about what happen to them, you are part of the way towards this. However, you still have a ways to go. You must not only have the readers care about the characters, but care about what will happen after the fight. You must make them want to see one person win or lose.
The easiest way to do this is by building 'villian heat'. If you create a villian for the fight that you build up as particularly vile, that the readers will want to see lose, that they will cheer to see lose, then you have established villian heat. You can establish villian heat by having your bad guy do lots of nasty things, but this is a short term solution. Simply having the villain be nasty will go part way towards this, but you must make the enemy one that is vile. The problem with villian heat is that it can not really be carried past the villian's defeat. You can certainly have the villian win a few of the initial encounters, but if you pull that off too often the audience will turn on you. Sooner, rather than later, you will have to have the villian be defeated. Once this is done, the villian is essentially useless to you (as a villian). They lose all their heat. So you better finish them off and write them out of the story, or be ready to build up that heat again from scratch.
Harder, but better in the long run, is building up 'hero heat'. Hero heat is essentially the opposite of villian heat. You make the audience want to see the hero win, want it so bad they can taste it. Hero heat is built up by making the hero and their cause sympathetic to the readers. Revenge is a common hero heat building story conceit, but for it to work we have to feel the hero's loss and their rage at that loss. If the goal is to protect something, then we must understand how important this thing is to the hero. Rescue involves a similar in depth look at how the kidnap victim is important to the hero. In all cases the key to building hero heat is to make the readers understand why the hero is doing this and why they must win this battle. Mere life and death struggle won't work. If you successfully inspire hero heat then the best thing is that it will retain its value far longer than villian heat. Even if the hero loses (and depending on the circumstance, especially if the hero loses) they will often retain their heat. And if they win, but their underlying motive is not fixed, then they can still retain heat for fighting the next villian and the next.
Ideally, you should establish both kinds of heat for the fight, but this is very hard.
The third kind of heat is harder to define. I call it 'character heat' because it really has nothing to do with heros or villians or, in fact, who wins the fight at all. With character heat, you are building the fight scene up not as important in terms of who wins or who loses, but something important that is going to happen during it. Usually this involves a moral choice. "Will the hero give in to the Dark Side to win the battle?" is an example of a common heat building question. In these cases the outcome of the fight is not so much in question. The question is how the fight will conclude.This is the hardest kind of heat to build up.
Step 2: What Is The Fight About?
Once you have built up to the fight itself but before you type the first word you should know what the fight is about and how it is going to conclude. This does not mean you know what is going to happen blow by blow, but you must identify the elements of the fight. A fight scene is just like any other scene in your story. It has a theme, it has a mood and it has a climax.
The theme of the fight is a concept that you will keep returning to over and over during the course of the fight. It will color the descriptions you give and serve as an underlying structure for the fight. For example, the theme of your fight could be something esoteric like 'challenging your limits'. In that case, your descriptions of the fight are going to include a lot of references to how hard it is. The hero (and villian!) will be constantly pushing themselves, always trying new things they aren't sure will succeed. Your theme could also be something prosaic like 'gore'. In this case you will want to vividly describe injuries, the pain they inflict and the heros disgust at what is happening to him and what he is doing to his opponent. A big part of the theme will depend on what kind of heat you have built up for the fight.
The mood of the fight is the underlying emotion of the conflict. It could be comedy, tragedy, romance, suspense or any of the other emotional contexts you can write for. Once you decide on a mood for the battle do your best not to break that mood during the course of the scene. If you want this fight to be a tragic battle in which the brave hero is unable to save his lady love from the diabolical villian, then don't have people cracking wise or have silly things happening. You can either have the mood and theme be complimentary or at odds (either is good, depening on what you want to accomplish). Once again, the mood of the scene will depend on the heat you have built up for the fight.
The climax of the fight is, of course, what everything has been building towards. It is going to be the single dramatic moment that marks the end of the fight, or at least the end of the part the audiene cares about. Generally speaking the climax of your fight should always be a choice by one of the characters involved. Readers care about choices. Simply having a hero use a new super technique to win the fight isn't that entertaining (the old "I go supersaiyan ten!" problem). However, if the choice to use that technique costs the hero something, then using it is more enjoyable to the readers.
Step 3: Build the Scene
No fight takes place on a featureless plain stretching in all directions. Every fight occurs somewhere, and you should be using this to your advantage.
Before the first blow is exchanged take a paragraph or two to introduce the scene the fight is taking place in. If it is taking place in a building establish as much, define the general dimensions of the room and what is in it. If it is outdoors describe the local landmarks. Pay careful attention to things that could be used as cover or weapons. Remember that you are not telling a story to someone as you type, so if you feel the need to have something appear in your scene later that you forgot to include earlier, you can go back and rewrite your introduction to include it. Don't spend too much time doing this, however. You'll want to paint in broad strokes at first and get into fine detail as the story permits.
While the fight is occuring use the environment to enhance the drama and your descriptions of the fight. If there is a cliff nearby it is just begging for someone to be (almost) tossed over it. Parked cars make excellent cover, things to smash people into and (if your story has enough superhumans) improvised weapons. Have people duck and weave through objects, leap over obstacles, get trapped in corners, gain the high ground on their enemy and come inticingly close to very dangerous hazards (electical wires, lava pits, grinding machinery, etc.).
Sometimes just a word or two to play off the scene can enhance a particular exchange of blows in a way just describing the blows would not. "The sun was setting behind Mark, casting his body into shadow as Joe struck, sending him staggering back." Use such description to play up the theme and mood of the combat again. A theme of a lonely desperate battle can be well established by decsribing how empty the place the fight is taking place in is, for example.
And, as you said, use all five senses to fill in the details. Don't go overboard, but describing the smell of rotting garbage in an alley or the oppressive heat of a foundry can go a long way towards drawing in the reader.
Step 4: Know What Your Characters Can Do
Here we begin to get into some of the technical details of the fight scene. When you are righting a fight scene you must be aware of what your characters can do and can't do. Just as importantly, you must know what they will do and won't do.
To a certain extent, this means if you are writing a fanfic you are going to have to do research. For instance, if you are writing a Ranma 1/2 fight scene you would do well to go and consult on exactly how powerful Ranma is. Get an idea of how fast he is, how strong, what kinds of tactics he uses and how he deals with certain threats. If you do this for all the participants in the fight, you should have a good idea of how the fight will go.
If you are trying to build up a new character and/or are modifying the abilities of already existing characters you must personally define what the extent of these abilities are. You need not tell the reader exactly what they are, but you must keep them in mind yourself. Resist the urge to have character spontaneously develop new powers and strengths with all your might. Instead, you can get much more drama out of a character finding out a way to overcome their own weakness through cunning and perseverance than you ever would by having them pull a new technique out of their nether regions.
When you are describing a martial arts battle do not worry too much about getting highly technical. For the most part, your audience is not into martial arts and thus if you begin to use technical terms they will not understand them. Do not also feel the need to describe a fight in blow by blow detail. You can gloss over the unimportant exchanges of blows with a few words, only focusing in for a blow by blow description during the truly important parts.
A thesaurus is your friend. Bookmark thesaurus.com. You can get a lot of mileage out of just using new words for "attack". Adjectives are also your friend, but be careful not to overuse them. Any more than two per noun (and three per sentence) and you are getting a little too wordy.
Step 5: Poetry
Finally once you have done all the pre-writing work you can begin to write the actual fight. These is were you will learn that the single most important part of any fight scene is pacing.
You want the reader to feel the action of the fight personally, and you can establish this with how your write it. When the fight is fast, the sentences should be fast. Keep things simple. Use short sentences. Rapidly shift focus. Avoid words like 'and'.
At the important parts of the fight you want to slow down. Use longer sentences to establish the mood and theme more directly during these parts. Don't be afraid to make seemingly unimportant (but short!) digressions during these longer sequences. You want the reader to focus more on them and draw them in.
Then change speeds. Shift focus again. Spend some time drawing in the reader by appealing to their senses with an out of place and lazy sentence or two. Back to the short, sharp action again.
You can use several common tricks to enhance your fight scene at this point. I will decsribe some of them.
Establishing Dominance: In most fights there will be one character that is clearly superior to the other. There are two schools of thought on who this should be, and both of them have valid points. One school of thought is that the villian should always be more powerful then the hero. This creates an immediate visceral level of suspense. However it can get strange, even ridiculous over time. Each successive villian must be more powerful then the last, or the suspense won't be there. This is especially true if the hero grows in power either during or after the fight. The other school of thought is that the hero should be stronger than the villian, but the villian cheats, commits dishonourable actions or is otherwise avoiding a direct fight with the hero. This is good because it can be drawn out for longer and doesn't get quite as ridiculous. However, in this case you are shifting the focus away from the fight and towards the circumstances around the fight. The actual fight itself is a foregone conclusion, should it actually occur.
The Hope Spot: In a fight where the hero is going to lose, usually if the villian is more powerful, there should be a moment where the readers are convinced they will win. This is the 'hope spot'. Allow the hero to briefly gain the advantage in the fight, build up to it and then when his hopes are dashed the readers will also be equally dashed. This is best used in the first encounter between hero and villian, so that you can build good heat for the rematch.
Ironic Defeat: Using irony (and other literary devices) can really help you out in a fight. An ironic defeat is one in which the character almost literally defeats themselves. For example, if a villian challenges a hero to a fight in an orphanage which he has set fire to, it would be ironic if that fire is the cause of his defeat. This allows the readers to feel suitably rewarded. Ironic defeats aren't limited to just villians however. Heros can also metaphorically shoot themselves in the foot as well. This is often best used in the case of an arrogant hero whose hubris is the cause of his own downfall (usually but not always followed by the hero learning his lesson and changing for the better).
The Finishing Move: In almost every fight you can see or read the fights often come down to one blow. Combatants exchange a long series of near misses and inconsequential hits until one of them lands a final, dramatic strike that ends the fight instantly. If you are going to use this concept, be sure to do it right. Everything in the fight has to build up to that one last strike. Make sure to slow down the pace of the fight for that strike. Make the description as poetic and evocative as you can. Tie in both the theme and the mood to it, if possible. Add in a dramatic change in the environment of the battle. The finishing move also gets a viceral response from the reader if you have established villian heat. They want to see the bad guy get his just deserts, so don't scrimp on it.
Speech: Nine times out of ten you are going to want to have the two combatants talk to each other during the fight. This can be as simple as trash-talking or as complex as a romantic interplay. Fight scenes are excellent excuses for charcater development and one of the best ways of highlighting what the character says and thinks about their opponent. Think of the fight as a crucible in which anything but the pure underlying emotions of the characters is burned away.
Non-fights: Sometimes you just have to recognize what is a non-fight. Even if two people are technically in battle, you may not want to spend a scene describing it. If your readers don't care about the fight, if the outcome is a foregone conclusion... then feel free to skip it. A few lines of description or just a scene break away before the action starts and then switch back after the fireworks are over should be good enough.
Random Monsters: Common in video games is the idea of random monsters, minor threats that the hero faces just because they are there. Never do this in your story. Readers don't care about them. Even if there are hordes of faceless minions in the battle, try to avoid getting involved in fights with them. They are non-fights. Just say "The hero fought long and hard but the zombies were no match for him. Eventually he was alone, the badguy having escaped while he was distracted." and be done with it. The concept of random monsters can also include things like random thugs trying to mug the character and similar threats.
Cutting Away: A simple way to build drama in a conflict is to change scenes half-way through it, usually just before or after some dramatic event. Don't do this for long, or often or the readers will lose interest in the fight. Also, the scene you switch to should have some immediate meaning to the fight. Switching from a heros dramatic battle with the villian to the kidnap victim he is trying to rescue worrying about him is okay, switching to an unrelated scene about the villian's flunkies playing cards is not.
And that is all the advice I can think of right now off the top of my head.
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Epsilon

Just a little something I came up with a while back and have been working at every now again. Feedback would be greatly appreciated.

This wiki may be interesting for anyone interested in the guts of the stories, including fanfic writers.
They've got pages about all the standard tropes, heroes, stock phrases, etc, with examples, and conversely, lists of the tropes etc used by most major TV/anime shows. Trying to avoid using these tropes in fanfic would not be a good idea, but being able to recognise which ones you're using and which ones are inherent in the show could be useful.
There's also a random plot generator, one trope from column A, one from column B, ... which actually produces more original plots than some TV shows.

Just a reminder... I'm still looking for a good song to use for smelting and/or working ore/metal; I need it for a couple different Steps. Does anyone have any ideas?
-- Bob
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...The President is on the line
As ninety-nine crab rangoons go by...

During the past few weeks I've been thinking about all the "pet peeves" and "stupid author tricks" threads we've had in here over the years, and I finally decided to try to consolidate them and turn them into some kind of guide document for fic authors. I'm far from finished, but I've got a big chunk of the first section done, and I thought I might post it here for commentary and suggestions. So please take a look at this and let me know what you think. Thanks!
-- Bob

I wrote this bit a year or two back, as one of the "flavor" pieces to help me visualize how all the characters in "Girls Girls Girls" might interact. However, once I finalized the structure of the Walk, it became obsolete, as many of the worlds they come from are either relegated to the "Drunkard's Vacation" series, or have been abandoned entirely. And in at least one case, I changed my mind about who was going to represent her world.

So I figured, what the hell, might as well share this, because even though it's now "apocryphal", it might still be entertaining. It has been edited, though, to remove some material that is spoilericious for as-yet unwritten Steps.

Enjoy.

I was reading some HP fanfic tonight, and Winamp decided to throw up Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall". This got me to thinking, isn't Snape just a poster-child for this song? This further got me wondering if JKR is a Floyd fan, because pretty much the whole Harry Potter saga could be set to "The Wall". So, without further ado, I give you:
Harry Potter: The Wall
a rock opera
Starring
Harry Potter as Pink
Vernon and Petunia Dursley as Mother
Snape as the child-hating teacher
Cho Chang as the little tart who flashes her tits to get in for free
Ginny as Pink's cheating wife
Hermione and Ron as the backup band
and guest starring Voldemort as Hammer
Now, I really don't have the dedication to follow through with this idea, so if anyone thinks they can do justice to it, by all means, run with it. The only things I ask are 1) idea credit and 2) linkage.
"Ah, great. More androids." "We're not androids, we're the Knight Sabers!" "Huh. Frederick's of Hollywood has a line of power armor out. Who knew?"Falling out of aeroplanes and hiding out in holes

Waiting for the sunset to come, people going home

Jump out from behind them and shoot them in the head

Now everybody dancing the dance of the dead

I don't recall offhand how far you'd gotten in actually writing the Griffin arc, but I do remember having a discussion with you about which version of the Batmobile Sylia ended up using.
I still say, BTW, that an extreme enough variation on all-wheel steering would be able to get adequate performance out of the Animated Series version, though granted the thing is always going to be a rocket first and foremost.
Anyway, the question is now solved.
Ja, -n

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"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

Again on a short-retention-time site, so grab it while you can...
"Only Peorth puts on more clothes to go swimming than she wears around the house," to quote the person who scanned the image.

-Rob Kelk
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012