The Reading Room

Rand al'Thor

12:00 AM

The last one (which I think was the only link in your comment before you edited it?)

Shokhet

Right, I think it was.

I'm happy I was able to help reunite you with the book :)

Rand al'Thor

Yesssss.

Shokhet

Note also that some of the political interpretations discussed on the WP page I linked to in the first comment are based on the illustrations. Having the original set might help your question.

Rand al'Thor

@Shokhet Ah, are these illustrations from the original edition? Were they by Baum himself?

Shokhet

@Randal'Thor I don't know.

I don't know if the illustrations were changed at all

And the illustrations are by John R. Neill (WP and the book you're looking at agree on this)

Rand al'Thor

12:06 AM

> "I've got a right to cackle, I guess," replied Billina. "I've just laid my egg.'

"What! Laid an egg! In my throne room! How dare you do such a thing?" asked the King, in a voice of fury.

"I lay eggs wherever I happen to be," said the hen, ruffling her feathers and then shaking them into place.

"But—thunder-ation! Don't you know that eggs are poison?" roared the King, while his rock-colored eyes stuck out in great terror.

"Poison! well, I declare," said Billina, indignantly. "I'll have you know all my eggs are warranted strictly fresh and up to date. Poison, indeed!"

I used this passage in some of my own earliest writing.

Shokhet

Rand al'Thor

> "Well, well!" said the King, sitting up and looking surprised. "Why didn't my magic belt work, I wonder?"

"The creature is made of wood," replied the captain. "Your magic will not work on wood, you know."

Just like the Doctor's sonic screwdriver.

Shokhet

@Randal'Thor I'll take your word for that :p

I'm looking through various WP articles about fantasy creatures. ...WP and Wikia get some classifications wrong, which makes the wording of my question a tad unwieldy.

If it has four horsey legs, it's not a hippogriff. It's not a griffin if it doesn't have wings. ...these are definitions that I confirmed from WP themselves! Inconsistent wikipedians :p

I never quite got what a wyvern was, or how it was different from a dragon

Wikipedia says:

> In the fantasy genre, the wyvern is usually considered to have two legs, whereas the dragon may have either four or none.

Rand al'Thor

12:26 AM

25

Q: Differences between dragon, drake, wyrm and wyvern

In many different books including Dragonlance, Tales from the Sword Coast, Magic: The Gathering and other similar fantasy series, I've seen references to dragons, drakes, wyrms and wyvern (which may be plural version of wyrm?). Is there a standard definition of each; and if so, what are the diffe...

Shokhet

...if so, the use in the word "wyvern" in the articles I'm reading is misused as well.

@Randal'Thor Thank you. I'll take a look.

And, of course, I knew someone would have to say this: scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/34088/…

Rand al'Thor

@Shokhet We're lucky the "too broad" squad hasn't found that question yet.

Shokhet

@Randal'Thor Lol. I think it could be fine (but you know SFF better than I do), if people answered from traditional mythological sources

...I skimmed the top bunch of answers, and couldn't find that anyone sourced their claims. They gotta a lotta upvotes, though, so maybe everyone thinks those answers are accurate?

Rand al'Thor

@Shokhet There's no clear policy on questions like that, but in reality, given the users who are most active in the review queues, most of them nowadays get closed.

Shokhet

Maybe it can be re-asked on Lit (or Mythology, but I don't know how those guys work), with an emphasis on old fantasy/ mythology sources.

@Randal'Thor Hrm. If so, my question would probably also be closed.

Rand al'Thor

12:32 AM

@Shokhet Why? That question is restricted to a single franchise.

Shokhet

@Randal'Thor One franchise, yes, but many canons. There have been a lot of Batmans.

See also scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/80814/… and other comments there (which admittedly didn't threaten closure, but I felt like it was at the time).

Rand al'Thor

(... Batmen?)

Shokhet

11

Q: Is it grammatical to say "the batmen"?

As far as I know, the five actors to have played the role of Batman in films are Adam West, Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, George Clooney, and Christian Bale. Is it grammatical to call them "the batmen"?

grammaticality nouns grammatical-number proper-nouns

Top answer recommends "Batmans"

Rand al'Thor

Well, it says "do whatever you want" really :-P

> So you have three choices. If you want to be strictly correct and not be awkward, "the actors who portrayed Batman". If you don't mind being a bit awkward, "the Batmans". If you can tolerate a few points off on your poetic license, and can see Batman as not so much a proper noun but as a type of man, then why not ... "the Batmen".

Shokhet

@Randal'Thor Right, but the first option doesn't really apply to our case. Also, I can't afford any more points on my poetic license right now :p

Rand al'Thor

12:41 AM

Tut tut, have you been drinking and composing again? :-P

Hamlet

@Gallifreyan @Mithrandir any interest in writing a meta answer explaining your decision to reopen the turing question here: literature.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/717/… (people don't like my answer, but im not the only person to reopen it)

Shokhet

@Randal'Thor ROFL!!

Although, as per the second answer there, some form of Bat-canon includes "Batmen," so...

This answer also raises an interesting point.

Bookworm

12:58 AM

0

Q: Are the guardians of Dream's palace based on mythology?

In chapter 3 of Season of Mists (The Sandman #24), there are three creatures shown guarding the gates of Dream's palace (p 21). (click for larger image) The creatures are an eagle-faced lion (I couldn't find a name for a creature like this on Wikipedia's list -- I'd call it a griffin, as ...

inspiration comics neil-gaiman the-sandman

BESW

1:12 AM

Hamlet

4:29 AM

@DVK-on-Ahch-To any interest in asking some questions about the "thinking machines" in Dune?

Shokhet

in Literature Tweet suggestions, 16 secs ago, by Shokhet

Huh. So it appears that #IcelandicSagas is actually a thing. I also found these people, but I don't think they'll be of great help to us.

Hamlet

4:51 AM

@BESW stack exchange question:

Is the following comment the best way to word this idea? (or am I completely off-base here)?

> Five people voted to close the question. Five people voted to open the question. On a beta site with a not-well-defined scope, that's how consensus is built. This meta post isn't a binding poll, it's a place for people to write their thoughts about the process and to make arguments. If the top voted answer on meta doesn't reflect what actually happens on the main site, then that's a sign that not everyone has given their input, not that the people on the main site are wrong.

I don't even plan to post that comment; I just want to know if the things I say are correct or not.

BESW

It's a bit... misleadlingly incomplete?

Like, I've seen plenty of cases where people come down hard one on side of an issue when talking about principles in meta, but when confronted with a practical example of the thing, the same people flip their opinion completely.

We'll also see plenty of cases where experience teaches us a more nuanced understanding of a subject, so a meta consensus that used to match site praxis is no longer accurate.

Hamlet

@BESW How would you make it complete? (so I can get a better understanding of this)

BESW

I'm not sure that the relationship between meta discussion and mainsite praxis can be expressed thoroughly in 600 characters.

The key, then, is to leave a comment that doesn't sound like it's complete.

Hamlet

@BESW that's one of the reasons why I wrote the comment, then thought about it, and then realized that it didn't apply to all situations.

@BESW any recommendations for meta posts on the subject?

BESW

I'd look at existing meta posts about meta posts on other sites, especially Meta Stack Exchange.

Mithrandir

7:04 AM

@Randal'Thor it doesn't, unfortunately. I was thinking about bugging Mike for one. Then again, I'm the only active user in that room, sooo...

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