People get such a bad view of what Puzzling is from HNQ, to the point where people have actively complained about the site's existence on Meta.SE multiple times. So, trust me, I totally get that.
In Stack Exchange portal, it says:
Stack Exchange is a fast-growing network of 112 question and answer sites on diverse topics from software programming to cooking to photography and gaming. We build libraries of high-quality questions and answers, focused on the most important topics in each...
@EᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏIʀᴋ No thanks. I don't try to do English word puzzles, for the same reason as I don't try to make English puns and don't try to read English poetry.
@DVK-in-Florida Oh, that spike is legendary. I wasn't here for that, I only remember the Game of Thrones final, the SW Force Awakens, Fantastic Beasts, and SW Rogue One.
(I also remember the release of the later Harry Potter books, namely Order, Prince, Hallows, and the translation of Hallows, but those were before the Sci Fi SE site.)
First I want to thank all of our awesome users who stepped up to the plate and helped out on a day that will live on in infamy, Answerama Day. The Facebook post got us a lot more eyes on the site, and it did result in a lot of interesting questions, but it also resulted in some solid stuff that i...
> TL;DR: Not really feasible, she had to have some water. Either Poe made a mistake, this is a different universe, or Madeline became some sort of zombie who didn't need water.
I've posted sort of a devils-advocate answer to the question of whether non-book/not-strictly-textual media should be on topic here. I'm curious to know what your guys' thoughts are - I'm not 100% sure I believe my own argument yet.
@Mithrandir You'd have to merge it with Arqade too. There have been some questions about the back story of Pokémon in the games that are overlap between SFF and Arqade.
sigh and more bikeshedding. 6 upvotes for a "cool" answer that has zero shown research or citations of material or explanation of why it's even correct
Pokémon is funny because there's some of it that's on topic on each of Sci Fi, Movies&TV, Anime, Arquade, and Board Games (though no question is on topic on all of those at once).
But then, I could say something similar about other large franchises: you could ask Star Wars questions on Sci Fi, Movies&TV, Arquade, Board Games, Role Playing Games, and now Literature too. (Not on Anime though I believe.)
@Emrakul Yeah, and that's exactly what I have another site for. And that site certainly won't shove the engaging analysis here to be left with trivia and ID.
@DForck42 I'm fine when people clear up my language in posts, at least the first few times in a question. (I might roll back half of it, and obviously I don't like if they edit war on it.) I'm not perfect in writing questions very readable, so there is often something to fix.
typically on m&tv, if there's a non-movie source that's considered cannon, it's ok to post it as an answer to a question. asking questions about that piece of cannon, if it's not in relation to th emovie itself, gets dicier
@NapoleonWilson So, I think the question of scope goes beyond site overlap. Questions on video game literary analysis can't reasonably be appropriate here while questions on movie literary analysis aren't.
@DForck42 Makes sense. Otherwise we could make a Porn SE, but rather than asking about porn, we'd just ask about anything else, because there's porn versions of anything.
@Emrakul so, I'm working on an internal definition of literature for myself that's a bit clearer. basically, if it's a type of media that can't be consumed via words in a print fasion (a la printed or on an e-reader), then it's probably off-topic
@NapoleonWilson That's the principle. But recently there was an on topic story ID question closed on Sci Fi just because it was asking for a Harry Potter fanfic, and everyone knows that most Harry Potter fanfics suck, and we hate them.
I think, when I get some time later in the day, I'm going to post a couple detailed self-answered questions about video game analysis and literary theory, just to test the waters. I'd be okay with them being off-topic, but we need a couple good questions to look at and say, "that was an interesting question and interesting answer, and it's still inappropriate for Literature."
@DForck42 I don't think we should try to define "Literature." We're not going to make much progress doing that. What we can define are the types of questions we want to field here.
@Emrakul that's why i said it's my own personal definition, i don't intend of enforcing it other than via downvotes on questions that i perceive to be off-topic
@b_jonas if there's a script or novelization, a la hitch hiker's or ward of the worlds, then THOSE are on-topic, imho
I'm guessing this is what you're discussing but I feel like we're trying to be too inclusive... I can understand poetry but I really don't get song lyrics... same with plots of video games etc....
@Benjamin I'd say yes. I can POSSIBLY accept the argument that the screenplay format is so special it makes it not literature (I disagree, but that argument at least has objective merit)
Here's the thing: defining "literature" is an age-old way to separate the haves from the have-nots. Like "standard English," literature is historically a self-confirming concept that people who go to the good schools learn the good things, QED, and whatever isn't taught in the good schools isn't good.
@Benjamin I'm absolutely serious. If this site uses literature as a cultural cudgel, I want no part of it. I'm saying this as a print designer who works in a confluence of oral and written tradition.
@HDE226868 And many many song lyrics tell a narrative as much as, or more so, than most poems. My question isn't "how are song lyrics different from novels". It's "How are song lyrics different from poetry"
@HDE226868 your argument would seem to indicate for something, at least a poem, to be on-topic it should include a narrative. poems are a piece of literature but don't always have a narrative
@DVK-in-Florida I'm not trying to make an argument from quality here. Looking at the lyrics to Call Me Maybe, is there anything remotely like, say, The Grapes of Wrath?
@BESW Okay, I think I am slightly more liberal in my definition of literature than you, but I think I can agree with you that I want to limit it to things that are read.
If you can ask a literary question about a thing, then literary questions about the thing are on topic. That doesn't make non-literary questions about the thing on topic too.
@BESW Um. I'm confused now. Is your argument that songs are not literature, or merely that songs lyrics are (and ontopic) BUT that non-lyrics questions are offtopic? I'm fully onboard with the latter.
@DVK-in-Florida The latter. It's not a hard concept to wrap one's head around when we stop trying to be "all-or-nothing" about entire categories of how a thing is presented.
@Shog9 i think at this point it's gotten more into the philosophical side of what makes something literature, we haven't posted any new questions one way or the other
@HDE226868 Arany János translated two of them in poetic form. He might not be perfect, but he's not so stupid as to make such a huge mistake as thinking those are poetry when they aren't. He could actually read English decently.
@HDE226868 Because what is or isn't a question we should accept shouldn't be subject to what the body of people unfamiliar with the site would think. It should be subject to what we think.
We, as a site, get to decide. And limiting "literature" to just one type of medium is harmfully limiting, both in the scope of culture that the site can talk about, and the people to which it can appeal.
@BESW OK, so looks like there seems to be a consnsus? Everyone here seems to agree that song lyrics are OK, and song OTHER stuff is offtopic? Why were we arguing again? :)
I'm coming at this whole site from the perspective of a print designer whose specialty is navigating contact zones between Western and Pasifika cultures.
That includes having one foot outside the Western literary ouroboros and seeing how very limited its concept of itself is.
U2's song "Bullet the Blue Sky" was inspired by Bono's trip to EL Salvadore in 1986, and America's role on the Salvadorean Civil War. As he said in an interview,
And it upset me as a person who read the Scriptures, to think that Christians in America were supporting this kind of thing, this k...
And I've changed my mind about song lyrics, for the record. I think that they can work, and I can definitely see lyric symbolism questions becoming interesting.
A storyboard contains all the significant literal and symbolic elements of the story in a single space. You know how manga sometimes spends many panels showing lots of different ways of considering a single moment? Storyboards do the opposite.
They use a single visual space to contain the entire story.
Note also that they were originally architectural elements, and only became portable as something to sell to tourists. This history of that shift is complex and fascinating.
@DForck42 A Japanese artist who fled Japan prior to WWII immersed himself in the Palauan culture and got permission to respectfully commoditise what had previously been secret knowledge, so the local people would be better able to adapt to a tourist-based economy without being unduly exploited.
In Stack Exchange portal, it says:
Stack Exchange is a fast-growing network of 112 question and answer sites on diverse topics from software programming to cooking to photography and gaming. We build libraries of high-quality questions and answers, focused on the most important topics in each...
U2's song "Bullet the Blue Sky" was inspired by Bono's trip to EL Salvadore in 1986, and America's role on the Salvadorean Civil War. As he said in an interview,
And it upset me as a person who read the Scriptures, to think that Christians in America were supporting this kind of thing, this k...
