English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

I always, always hated when a story about a fictional world was in any way connected to the real world, be it through a closet, a dream, time, whatever.

I could get over it eventually, but it made for a terrible start.

tchrist

Yep.

It is not its own creation.

Cerberus

5:05 AM

It is pathetic.

tchrist

Have you read the Lays?

Cerberus

An attempt to draw the reader without an imagination in, who can only swallow what is close to home.

No?

I don't know that Planet thing either.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus I just read a story where the main character is a nerd who wishes Narnia were real. Only it's not Narnia but a copy of Narnia. Then it turns out to be real.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Uhhh...is it as pathetic as it sounds?

Or is it supposed to be funny?

Like World of World of Warcraft?

tchrist

Sounds like crap.

Cerberus

5:07 AM

I do like it if SF connects to the real world.

As in the future.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus It was a mediocre story about a magic school. Kinda like Harry Potter, only more realistic, and "edgier". But I found the whole fake-Narnia thing annoying.

Cerberus

Usually the far future is more imaginative, but the near future can still be interesting.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Edgier how?

tchrist

Magic school? Please!

Cerberus

It sure sounds annoying.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

It's like he wanted to make a Narnia fan-fic but couldn't, for copyright reasons, so he made an ainran fan-fic

Cerberus

5:08 AM

One reason I never read Harry Potter.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Harry Potter was alright, for what it is.

Cerberus

Uhh...

It may be.

Just never appealed to me. I might like it, who knows?

But...

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

This book was like someone decided to "do magic school right" and set it in a narnia fan-fic.

Cerberus

I would probably never like it as much as Tolkien or Vance.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Tolkien is great, for certain aspects, but not so great for others.

Cerberus

5:10 AM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Must you continue to hurt my poor ears so?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 His world view is of course pretty black and white.

And Vance often has awful characters.

But their worlds!

I would like to read about a Tolkienesque or Vancian world with a plot like those of Tolstoy or Dostoevsky!

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus His characters are also pretty shallow and his plots are lacking.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I suppose.

Well, his sub-plots get repetitive; but there are also many great sub-plots.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I mean, it strains credulity that Elrond, Gandalf, and Galadriel would just send a hobbit into mordor.

Cerberus

And a character like Denethor was very well done, I thought.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes, of course.

Certain parts of the main plot are weak.

Here the religious part comes in:

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Also it makes no sense that the ringwraiths didn't kill frodo outright on weathertop. 5 nazgul against one man and 4 hobbits? come ON

or else nazgul are just totally overrated

Cerberus

5:14 AM

The hobbits were destined to perform that task.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

well, that's not a good story though

"it works because the author wants it to work"

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Hmm I don't remember exactly how that skirmish went, except that he put on the Ring...

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 It works in religious tales.

And maybe a single, main prophecy can be nice. But LotR is of course chock full of them.

But I must say I still like Tolkien a thousand times better than the television series based on the Game of Thrones.

(I haven't read the books.)

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus well, there's prophecy and prophecy. Some books do it badly... the Sword of Truth series is awful in that regard. The prophecies all come true while the main character whines and whines about how he hates prophecies and how he doesn't believe in them.

Cerberus

Haha.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus The Game of Thrones books are way better written than they are televised. At least, the first three books (seasons 1-4)

Cerberus

5:18 AM

Then Tolkien is not as bad as that.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 What if I really don't like the series very much? Would I like the books?

Rob did not, I believe.

I mean, the series is of course extremely addictive...

tchrist

@Cerberus Well, he has literary blueballs by the end of the fifth book, I believe, but that’s Martin’s fault.

Cerberus

On par with Downton Abbey, I'd say, in quality: very addictive, and not bad, but not great either.

tchrist

It was just an installment in a series. Not a novel proper.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus you might not like the books. But they are very well constructed and the story is well-told. The characters have depth and proper motivations. The multitudinous plot-lines are coherent and convincing. Books 4 and 5 start to derail a bit, as the author rambles too much.

tchrist

Exactly.

Cerberus

5:20 AM

@tchrist I don't think he liked the other books?

tchrist

I don’t know.

But I thought he read them all.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 But how about blonde chick?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus the one with the dragons?

Cerberus

The first scene was great, but every other scene with her in it was very disappointing.

Yes, that one.

The scene where she is wedded off and touched by her brother is nice.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Well, I like that character in the books.

tchrist

5:21 AM

Pretty much all of this stuff perpetually disappoints me. I don’t know what to do about it.

Cerberus

Which stuff?

tchrist

It could be so much better, but isn’t.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

The problem is that GRRM wants to make a super-realistic story. And then he gets bogged down in the details.

tchrist

TV series, movies, even a lot of books.

Too damned much crap.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I think it would be better if he hand hand-waved 5 years time, like he originally planned.

Cerberus

5:22 AM

Of course. TV series and movies are pop culture, which is never ever high quality.

tchrist

Yes, he boxed himself in.

Cerberus

There may be exceptions.

tchrist

I guess that’s it.

I just can’t bring myself to get excited about any of that shit anymore. I’m tired of having my hopes dashed.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I think there's hope that the final two? three? books can restore the series. Lots of novels have slow parts... I will consider the series to be like a looooong novel.

Cerberus

And truly, I don't think the kind of story that a book lends itself for is ever nearly as good in a film or series.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Tolkien does that too, a bit, occasionally. Almost everyone does...

@tchrist Why did you ever hope? We never had any hope for the LotR films.

They were supposed to be just fun.

Not great.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

5:24 AM

@Cerberus The TV series is doing an admirable job. I think the biggest problems with the TV series are 1: not enough budget for battles on-screen, and 2: they rush the story too much, so it seems hard to understand.

tchrist

I had no hope going into the first one, and was actually surprised.

The other two, well, the other way around.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Those would not be my main gripes.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus Tolkien was nothing BUT bogged down in details. That's why only 4 of his books got published.

Cerberus

I don't care about visuals much.

tchrist

I keep gaining two rep, and I have no earthly idea how.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 That is so wrong, in so many ways.

Mahnax

5:25 AM

Good evening.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yeah. And the details of travelling across a barren land are really boring, always have been; but things like dwarven genealogy can be really cool and enjoyable.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@tchrist I wrote it just for you :)

Cerberus

@tchrist It was as good as could have been expected, yes. But no better.

@Mahnax Hello!

Mahnax

@Cerberus Hey there, Cerby! How's life?

Cerberus

Good! We are discussing Tolkien and Martin and such.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

5:27 AM

@Cerberus I thought the first movie was excellent! much better than I expected. Almost as good as a fantasy movie could be.

Cerberus

And how Tolkien is just better.

Mahnax

Oh, fun stuff.

tchrist

He published turning his lifetime the Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings, Leaf by Niggle (part of Tree and Leaf), The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, On Fairy-Stories, Smith of Wootton Major, and Farmer Giles of Ham.

That isn’t 4.

You count dumb.

Mahnax

Martin as in ASOIAF Martin?

tchrist

Yes.

Cerberus

5:28 AM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 ...which is not nearly as good as a book. But yeah, I didn't think they could have improved it much beyond what it was.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@tchrist Did you forget Roverandom? or was that posthumous

tchrist

I didn’t forget it, but I wasn’t sure.

Noah

Hi

tchrist

There’s also Mr Bliss.

Mahnax

Who's backing Martin?

Noah

5:29 AM

NoONE.

tchrist

Shiny.

Cerberus

I must say all the male-protagonist-lonely-hero legends from the Silmarillion and other stories blend together a bit. Those were never my favourites.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@tchrist Anyway I wasn't counting the non-Middle Earth works.

Cerberus

@Noah Yo.

tchrist

Then you still count dumb.

Since the answer then is 2.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

5:29 AM

And I count LotR as 3 books even if JRR counts it as one.

Noah

@Cerberus Howdy

tchrist

Dumb.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

because it is three books on my shelf and that's how everyone knows it.

Cerberus

Does the number really matter?

tchrist

6.

6 matters.

Cerberus

5:30 AM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 It is one book on my shelf.

Noah

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I can't believe you still read those books.

Cerberus

Always has been.

tchrist

One book on my shelf.

Ok fine, like maybe 17, but each is just one.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Noah still?

Cerberus

On very thin paper, that is.

Noah

5:31 AM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yep.

tchrist

I have the 3-volume version of the 12-volume History of Middle Earth. Now that is thin paper.

Cerberus

I have the Oxford Latin Dictionary. Now that is thin paper, and it's still huge.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Anyway, I'm not going to try to say that GRRM is "better" than JRRT. But I do like lots of things about A Song of Ice and Fire better than LotR or the Silmarillion.

tchrist

I also have the regular hardcovers for reading.

Oh, the sex is hotter, sure.

Cerberus

What is GRRM? Martin?

tchrist

5:32 AM

Don’t call him GRRM.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus yes, George R R Martin

Cerberus

OK.

tchrist

It’s Martin. Mr Pretentious.

Cerberus

I loathe the sex and the violence.

tchrist

The prose quality is mostly lame.

Cerberus

5:32 AM

I really can't handle it.

@tchrist Is it?

tchrist

I call it torture-porn. It freaked me out.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus The books have more sex and violence than the show.

Cerberus

The series already freaked me out.

The vulgar, modern language too.

tchrist

The dialogue is hackneyed at times.

Right.

He has exactly one and only one beautiful sentence in the first book.

And you have to read all the way until the last sentence of the whole damned book to get to it.

Cerberus

The problem is also that I am comparing the world to Tolkien's.

Including the names and places and languages.

tchrist

5:34 AM

> As Daenerys Targaryen rose to her feet, her black hissed, pale smoke venting from its mouth and nostrils. The other two pulled away from her breasts and added their voices to the call, translucent wings unfolding and stirring the air, and for the first time in hundreds of years, the night came alive with the music of dragons.

There. Now don’t bother reading the book.

It is the only sentence that uses actual poetic devices.

Cerberus

"In hundreds of years"?

What is that?

I freak me out.

Who says that?

Can't wear any hat.

I think it is like centuries.

Maybe millennia.

Cerberus

5:35 AM

Must be. Then why not call it that?

tchrist

Scansion, maybe.

Cerberus

But it is okay.

tchrist

I give him too much credit perhaps.

Cerberus

Except that the names sound so...arbitrary.

tchrist

It is ok.

Yes, he is crap with names.

Cerberus

5:36 AM

I like about 0 % of the names.

tchrist

It makes no sense.

Cerberus

He has "Westeros", I believe.

I mean, come on.

tchrist

There is a lot worse than that, trust me.

Cerberus

Tolkien's Westernisse actually makes sense.

Like what?

I do like the concept of the Wall in general.

tchrist

Remember, his original career was a screen writer.

Cerberus

5:37 AM

And I like the dwarf.

tchrist

Tolkien did not create Westernesse.

Cerberus

I can't remember what I never knew.

tchrist

That is from Middle English.

Cerberus

Exactly.

That's why it is fitting.

tchrist

Martin’s names are all fakey-fakey.

Cerberus

5:38 AM

No erudition.

You know what's strange?

tchrist

He uses y-substitution so much you puke.

waits

Cerberus

Vance is not very learnèd either (although his command of the language is superb), and yet most of his names and places are great.

tchrist

True.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

so tchrist, what fantasy writing, besides tolkien, doesn't suck?

Cerberus

His most atrocious mistakes are incorrect Latin, but those are few and far in between.

tchrist

5:39 AM

Steven Brust.

Neil Gaiman.

Gene Wolfe.

Cerberus

So why couldn't Martin have come up with names like Pandalume and Phandaal and Pao and such?

tchrist

He’s a hack screen-writer, that’s why.

Cerberus

I may have read some Gaiman and Wolfe, I don't remember.

tchrist

Roger Zelazny, mostly.

Cerberus

Are they erudite?

tchrist

5:40 AM

Wolfe is.

Cerberus

Okay.

tchrist

He is the one with a book called The Sword of the Lictor.

Cerberus

A lack of erudition is not always a problem in fantasy or science fiction. But, when it is, it is.

What is that about?

No, I must to bed.

tchrist

Me, too.

Read the Book of the New Sun, by Wolfe. 4 books.

Cerberus

Oh,

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

5:42 AM

neil gaiman is okay. I liked Neverwhere and American Gods, but Anansi Boys was just American Gods redux and the one where a shooting star falls from the sky was boring as hell.

Cerberus

I also want to say that I really, really liked the trees in Tolkien.

Perhaps the best part about his mythology.

tchrist

Nobody cares about the trees any more.

Cerberus

No?

I remember this book about a planet...

Or maybe it was a gas cloud...

tchrist

The Integral Trees.

Cerberus

Anyway, people lived in some sort of trees.

tchrist

5:43 AM

Niven.

Cerberus

Yes, that sounds familiar!

I read that in school.

I think I liked it.

tchrist

Sometimes I amaze myself that my brain is not complete Swiss cheese.

Cerberus

O.S. Card also has trees.

tchrist

About one time in a hundred.

Card is a homophobic freak.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Well, I must be off too. see you later.

tchrist

5:44 AM

That is not true.

Cerberus

Yes, but I still think he's not a bad writer.

tchrist

But it is complicated, and icky, and not worth dealing with.

Cerberus

Bye!

tchrist

I used to like him.

Got a bit repetitious.

He goes by “Scott”, BTW.

Cerberus

His connections to the real world are too arbitrary, but he uses some powerful concepts, and fairly interesting characters.

I only read one or two books.

The scene with the Chinese philosopher was fun.

tchrist

5:46 AM

Why does Ramesh keep asking us about Indian words? :(

Noah

@Cerberus I thought you were going to BED.

Cerberus

Right, Scott Card.

@Noah Indeed.

tchrist

Go to bed.

I go. Now.

Cerberus

I am bleaching a shirt. Shall I leave it in during the night?

I don't want it damaged.

Noah

@Cerberus No

Cerberus

5:47 AM

OK.

Then good night!

Noah

Night

Cerberus

I leave.

poof

Mahnax

Bye!

Ethan

how old are you people

Noah

@Ethan What do you mean?

Looks like you are doing a research.

And to answer your question, some are very OLD and some are very YOUNG.

RegDwighт

10:30 AM

Geez. @kitfox has 14 hats already. I am jelly. And if she gets just one more, she gets yet another one for free.

RegDwighт

11:09 AM

0

A: Pronunciation of "harass"

ur all stoopid i can spel lyk a god

tchrist

12:04 PM

This is what not closing crap buys us:

0

Q: Should there be a comma before ‘and’ with respect to different nouns?

What is the difference between tomato puree, paste, and sauce? OR What is the difference between tomato puree, paste and sauce? Do we need a comma before and in this case?

KitFox

@Reg, omg ur viscacha is soooo cute with that cupcake on its head!

Robusto

Hey, @Martha and @cornbreadninja: Don't go approving edits to my posts that destroy the sense of what I'm trying to say.

I said what I meant, and you let some idiot reverse it.

Now someone downvoted it because it was the EXACT OPPOSITE of what I was trying to say, which was CORRECT.

Hope you like your review hats.

tchrist

12:26 PM

I’d wondered what was wrong with your posting.

Or how you’d gone wrong, I guess.

RegDwighт

Ouch. How unfortunate jlovegren had to be involved, of all people.

@KitFox I no write. It looks cute with other hats, too, but I have to show off the super secret one.

tchrist

RegDwighт

@tchrist nah, that gets posted reliably every week. What we don't get reliably every week is that the OP acknowledges it, and that the answer can be merged as is.

tchrist

What’s that hat?

RegDwighт

Another secret one?

tchrist

12:34 PM

Apparently.

I’m too lazy to look at the page source.

RegDwighт

Page source? There's a tooltip.

tchrist

22

A: Are there any secret hats?

It looks like there are 3 secret hats. I found the following in the sprite image used to display the hats that are not described on the winterbash site: Also, these two hats aren't in the sprite at all:

Not for me there are no tooltips. :(

RegDwighт

tchrist

Ah ok.

The pirate one is for getting some number of votes over that of the accepted answer of at least some value.

RegDwighт

Bushido is actually your domain, no?

Go get it.

tchrist

12:43 PM

Yes, I suppose I have 8.

RegDwighт

Make it 9, then.

We are closing in on Arqade.

450 vs 410.

JSBձոգչ

i just got the pronunciation badge

whoah, Reg is a viscacha again? i don't trust that

RegDwighт

Of course you got the pronunciation badge. What ded you expect, spelleng?

@JSBձոգչ pssssst. I am a cupcake.

JSBձոգչ

i don't trust that either

tchrist

Last night in my delirious exhaustion I couldn’t figure out how come my rep kept pinging up by a bunch of onesy-twosies. Turns out that kiamlaluno was running the Delete queue, delivering a quick coup de grace to 17 moribund questions in a row, and in short order.

RegDwighт

12:48 PM

Okay, this is just no fair.

JSBձոգչ

i just got that

WTH?

RegDwighт

You cheaters.

JSBձոգչ

what is up with their time zones?

tchrist

Eh?

Kiwivania?

JSBձոգչ

i just switched to it. mayan death mask suets Magus

RegDwighт

12:49 PM

So wait, which date is it now where you are?

tchrist

My bear will strip your suet.

macbook# date;date -u
Thu Dec 20 05:50:00 MST 2012
Thu Dec 20 12:50:00 UTC 2012

Dunno how they are at December 21st already.

JSBձոգչ

time travel

tchrist

macbook# env TZ=Pacific/Auckland date ; env TZ=Australia/Melbourne date ; date; date -u
Fri Dec 21 01:52:46 NZDT 2012
Thu Dec 20 23:52:46 EST 2012
Thu Dec 20 05:52:46 MST 2012
Thu Dec 20 12:52:46 UTC 2012

Notice how the three-letter timezones in Australia are the same as ours, but different.

I cannot tell you how badly this fucks up billing records at certain unmentionable phone companies.

RegDwighт

0

Q: Them Maya is in your Stack Exchange messing with your calendar

Looks like the end of the world is closer than we feared. People already are getting Maya hats. That screenshot is of this user's profile, if you must know. But he's not alone. Here's another one.

bug timestamps winterbash dates

JSBձոգչ

man, that's a pretty Moat

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…