The Reading Room

12:02 AM

Any idea why this answer got downvoted?

0

A: How did Edith Hamilton become interested in transcribing her famous Greek myths?

We can trace out some possible answers to this by examining the history of her life. Her father encouraged her interest in the classics from an early age. "My father was well-to-do, but he wasn't interested in making money; he was interested in making people use their minds"; thus, her fath...

Is it my reasoning or my sources that need improving?

OK, it does mention Wikipedia a couple of times, but always has a better source propped behind that.

Mithrandir

12:20 AM

@Randal'Thor People are being downvote happy.

Benjamin

@bookworm

Rand al'Thor

@Mithrandir Which is a good thing - this is when it's most important to discourage bad content. I'd just like to know what's bad about that answer, so that maybe I can improve it.

Mithrandir

@Randal'Thor exactly. I'd also like to know what was wrong with my posts that I received 35 dvs.

Rand al'Thor

... you've kept count?

Well, I at least have tried to explain my downvotes in most cases.

And yes, I've been more downvote-happy than usual here.

TrojanByAccident

12:35 AM

@Mithrandir which?

Bookworm

0

Q: How should we distinguish between series and individual books?

Questions, such as [redwall] could apply to both the book and the series. How should we distinguish between questions about the book, but not the series as a whole?

Rand al'Thor

12:53 AM

@Bookworm You've missed a few questions today, you dozy worm.

Riker

1:13 AM

so literature = any books right

Rand al'Thor

Why, what edge case are you thinking of testing out now?

Riker

no just a new book series

like from 2 years ago I think

this post, fantasy book series from like 2014

Rand al'Thor

What could be wrong with that?

We aren't all snobby here, saying "it's not literature if it's not at least 100 years old" or anything like that.

@Riker Did you see this? literature.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/386

Riker

now I ddid

Rand al'Thor

Danke :-)

Riker

1:19 AM

@Randal'Thor it's 5:20 i got up at 3 am give me a break ok ;p

Rand al'Thor

@Riker Jeez. What's up with your sleeping patterns?

Riker

not sleeping patterns just had to do stuff early in the mornign

@Randal'Thor noramlly I'm up at 7 am and sleep at 10 pm

Rand al'Thor

Well, that's pretty good.

(I was sure you'd been in chat a lot at ridiculous times of night, but maybe I'm just getting muddled with timezones.)

Riker

ah okay

I'm PST so about 12h away from you

i htink

no 8

Rand al'Thor

There's already four questions about this Theodore Boone thingy? :-o

Riker

1:27 AM

lol

Benjamin

@Randal'Thor I have been asking because I have seen others asking.

Could someone check my tag wiki edits?

Riker

already reviewed htem all

needs another though

Benjamin

@Riker Thanks!

Riker

@Randal'Thor?

Rand al'Thor

Just a sec ...

user61230

1:38 AM

I'm not sure this is a useful way of defining this tag.

user61230

I'm not rejecting it yet, though.

Riker

it's better than nothing IMO

like, not to be fatalistic, but it's better than nothing

Benjamin

@Emrakul It is what we have been doing consistently. I also want to just get it down and clean it up later.

@Riker That's my view.

Rand al'Thor

I've approved the edit to lord-byron, just so that I can now go in and improve it myself.

Riker

lol

Rand al'Thor

1:39 AM

yesterday, by Rand al'Thor

I really wish there was an option to "Improve Edit" when reviewing tag wiki suggested edits with only 750+ rep.

Riker

yeah

Rand al'Thor

Darn, still needs someone else to approve.

@Riker? literature.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/394

Riker

done

apaprently there was more

oh god benjamin you're getting like 100 rep from this

there's so many

Benjamin

@Riker I am just getting it done. I don't care about the rep.

Riker

ik but still

oi why downvotes on this

Benjamin

1:45 AM

@Riker I don't know, but I counteracted it.

@Riker Probably a policy vote.

eh

@Benjamin ?

@Randal'Thor Yeah.

What does "policy vote" mean?

Riker

they don't like the topic

Benjamin

1:47 AM

@Randal'Thor They are voting because they think it should be off-topic.

Rand al'Thor

@Benjamin Well, that's a reason to close-vote, not downvote.

And nobody's close-voted yet.

Benjamin

@Randal'Thor They could be out of close votes. I was just conjecturing not saying definitively.

Benjamin

1:59 AM

Why can I no longer edit tag wikis?

Napoleon Wilson

The site graduated! \o/

Benjamin

@NapoleonWilson Not according to Area 51.

@NapoleonWilson Does that have anything to do with my inability to edit tag wikis?

Napoleon Wilson

@Benjamin I'm largely joking. Graduation comes with rised privilege thresholds. But no, that happens in a few years. ;-)

Benjamin

@NapoleonWilson Okay, I was confused. It seems I had too many things in the queue for review. Thanks to whoever got them.

Napoleon Wilson

Sorry for adding to the confusion. I tend to forget that not everyone might be aware of the site evolution process.

Benjamin

2:05 AM

@NapoleonWilson I knew that and that was part of my extra confusion, but I thought you meant graduation to Public Beta.

Napoleon Wilson

@Benjamin That's unlikely too, though, it should happen in about 2-3 weeks.

But I admittedly don't know if that comes with any privilege changes other than close/reopen votes.

Benjamin

@NapoleonWilson The many levels of confusion.

@NapoleonWilson I don't think it does.

Rand al'Thor

Urgh, I had to prove to SE that I'm not a robot in order to post my question.

@NapoleonWilson Anyone can suggest edits to tag wikis anyway, even unregistered users.

Benjamin

@Randal'Thor Man, that happened to me.

Rand al'Thor

Blimey, 10 suggested edits in the queue.

Benjamin

2:12 AM

I am going to take a break from tag wikis after a few more.

Rand al'Thor

OMG, that's hilarious.

Benjamin

@Randal'Thor What was the image?

Rand al'Thor

@Benjamin Brandon Sanderson discovering a new kind of Hemalurgic spike which enables him to steal writing speed from Patrick Rothfuss and George RR Martin.

@Benjamin Maybe we should not write wikis for some of these tags until we have a clearer idea of how they're going to be used?

For a tag like religion, for instance, I can think of a few different types of question that might be used for. Under the "let things grow organically" principle, let's wait to make a tag wiki for that one until we can see how it's actually being used?

Benjamin

@Randal'Thor Okay.

Got to go for tonight. See you in the morning.

Rand al'Thor

Goodnight!

Riker

2:27 AM

I'm out too

see ya both

user61230

2:38 AM

I'm tempted to be really snarky on this meta question, with an answer like: "Graphic novels are on topic, but just like with songs and movies, only the writing and words within them, not the graphics themselves."

Napoleon Wilson

That song and movie thing hasn't been established anywhere, just to remind you.

user61230

That's fair.

Rand al'Thor

@HDE Since you were keen on Sherlock Holmes questions ... any thoughts on my new one?

Napoleon Wilson

> I think this shows an interesting side to the character which most people aren't aware of

Rand al'Thor

@Emrakul is saying a less quantitative approach would be better, but I feel that quantitativeness makes it more objectively answerable and easier to pin down.

Napoleon Wilson

2:44 AM

Just that it doesn't actually, as Emrakul says. His's would, though.

@Randal'Thor That...is true, though.

BESW

Objectivity is not the Stack's holy graill; rather, supportability.

It's easier to see if an objective thing is properly supported, but the Stack's all about well-supported subjectivity.

Napoleon Wilson

Indeed.

Rand al'Thor

A number would give us a cold hard fact, which we could then quote without being contradicted. A more subjective "does he do it a lot?" might be well answerable with some solid reasoning, but equally solid reasoning could probably be applied to support the opposite.

Napoleon Wilson

@Randal'Thor That's why there's space for more than one answer on a question.

user61230

But saying "Holmes commits 17 crimes" isn't the same as "The way Holmes is written normalizes committing crime to solve crime."

Napoleon Wilson

2:47 AM

But, "he was 7 more criminal than the cops"...is just a factoid.

user61230

They're related, but the number isn't the goal - the latter conclusion is.

Rand al'Thor

I want to be able to say "Sherlock Holmes committed seventeen crimes over all of Doyle's stories", not "well, there's an argument that the Holmes stories normalise committing crime to solve crime, because blah blah blah and blah".

@NapoleonWilson And that's precisely what I'm looking for.

Napoleon Wilson

@Randal'Thor Okay, well, then your question perfectly serves that goal and the discussion is back to if this goal is worthwhile.

BESW

> - inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”
- tend to have long, not short, answers

user61230

@Randal'Thor Then the reason for my downvote would be that the question isn't very intrinsically useful, even if factually answerable.

BESW

2:50 AM

"Factoid" questions are totally legit, but a very poor application of the Stack's experts.

Rand al'Thor

@Emrakul Define "intrinsically useful"?

Is anything we do on this site ever likely to be useful, except a few classes of question like ID and reading order?

user61230

What does a number tell you?

Napoleon Wilson

The "everything here is trivia" argument.

Rand al'Thor

It tells me a number, which is a fact I can then use to support an argument if I want to make one.

user61230

If you're looking for facts to support an argument, ask about the argument. That's a definitional XY-problem.

2

Rand al'Thor

2:53 AM

Maybe it's a mathematician thing :-) I can see numbers as a valid goal in their own right.

@Emrakul But I don't want other people to make my argument for me.

I want help from experts in gathering the facts I need to (possibly) make an argument myself.

user61230

You can still construct your own argument. In fact, you'll construct a better argument if you consider the arguments that others consider constructing, first.

user61230

If you're looking to build an argument, you might want to ask something like "What evidence is there to suggest [X]?" You can make decisions about how you present an argument in consideration of that evidence.

user61230

(Incidentally, I'm not sure a number of crimes is good evidence for that argument, anyway. Holmes could just as easily have been written to commit many crimes, but have those crimes cast in a negative light. The number isn't important; the portrayal is.)

BESW

We can treat Stack experts as unpaid interns for menial data-crunching, but that's not going to win any favours and it's a tragic waste of valuable expertise.

Rand al'Thor

Honestly, I'm less interested in any argument I might make using that number, and more interested in just getting the number.

Napoleon Wilson

2:58 AM

Which...is the problem, I guess. ;-)

Rand al'Thor

Maybe I'm too used to SFF, where a question like "is there a theme of X in the portrayal of Y?" would be quickly shut down as opinion-based while "how many times did X do Y?" would get a nice detailed answer.

Napoleon Wilson

Which is unfortunate.

Rand al'Thor

Which isn't necessarily a good thing, I guess.

BESW

Yeah, I've seen a lot of SFF habits getting applied here. Like taking Word of God at face value.

scifi.se is used to having canon handed down from on high, and treating fanon as secondary. Literature has many alternate lenses, include the "death of the author" where the author's context and intent is irrelephant.

2

Even lenses which take the author's stated intent into account tend to recognise that authors lie, exaggerate, misremember, and just plain aren't always the best people to explain why their own work succeeds or fails.

(Remember, Russell T. Davies is on record that women like his Doctor Who revival because it's got family drama and we see Rose's mum a lot.)

Riker

@Benjamin I'm out of reviews, @HDE226868 and @Mithrandir will have to review some more (idk about rand he's probably used all of his)

doppelgreener

3:04 AM

@BESW [shoots drink out of nose]

BESW

scifi.se is also very down on comparing multiple unrelated works, because it tends to turn into Gorilla vs Shark. Literature is all about that, and isn't not Gorilla/Shark at all.

Rand al'Thor

@Riker Apparently I've got one left for the day. Might save it up in case I really want it later.

BESW

@doppelgreener Creators will say the darndest things.

@BESW Bah, accidental double negative.

@BESW To explain why their work succeeds or fails, no. But for other things, like explaining what they meant by specific things in their work, they're the best source there is. Sure, they might be lying or misremembering, but the best anyone else can do is make an educated guess.

BESW

3:08 AM

@Randal'Thor Literary criticism doesn't always agree with you, depending on the lens being used.

2

user61230

@Randal'Thor That's not guaranteed to be true. Literary authors can be notoriously bad at analyzing their own works, depending on who you ask.

BESW

I have my own deep-seated issues with literary criticism as a field, but I know my enemy.

The idea that an author has any authority over the interpretation and meaning of his work is a contentious one.

user61230

(*their)

BESW

(And one which doesn't even make sense for some groups/lenses.)

Rand al'Thor

How about this answer, for instance? Would you rather see a long essay putting together multiple hints in the text to try to form some kind of guess at the temporal setting, or just that single-paragraph answer from the person who created the text?

BESW

3:14 AM

> - inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”
- tend to have long, not short, answers

Rand al'Thor

@Emrakul You approved this edit - just sayin' ;-)

@BESW Isn't that from the "Good Subjective, Bad Subjective" post?

user61230

Whoopsie.

doppelgreener

@Randal'Thor BESW is not saying that when analysing works you must avoid taking the author's word for anything; he is saying that the idea that the author's word is the sole source of facts and the sole authority is not always true.

BESW

Of course I'd rather see a nuanced analysis than an unchallenged quote from a single source, regardless of what the source is, whenever reasonable.

Rand al'Thor

@doppelgreener And I'm not disputing that. I'm just saying that it's sometimes (more or less) true.

doppelgreener

3:15 AM

I do not think anyone disputes that!

BESW was talking about multiple lenses to analyse a work. That doesn't make the "take the author's word for it" lens wrong.

BESW

And again, multiple answers per question are quite legitimate.

In fact, I'd argue they're necessary for lit.se to be a really quality resource.

user61230

On that point, Stack Exchange's assumption that there is a best answer breaks down on Literature.SE.

Napoleon Wilson

Multiple answers are an amazing thing!

BESW

@Emrakul Not really. There's two sorting systems.

Napoleon Wilson

Just look at the Area51 stats (yeah, I know, the site isn't really judged by them anymore, except that it still is.)

BESW

3:17 AM

One is a binary on/off switch for most useful to querent.

user61230

That's fair.

BESW

The other is a crowdsourced gradient for *most [effort]/[popular]/[useful]/etc."

Napoleon Wilson

@Emrakul As on many other sites.

BESW

We've even got badgers for when an answer gets dramatically different feedback from each sorting system.

Rand al'Thor

@NapoleonWilson In fact, I'd guess there are quite few sites where there's usually an objectively best answer (Puzzling is an exception).

doppelgreener

3:19 AM

@Emrakul If I got one answer quoting the author saying "it's 2020" and someone analyses the text and asserts in another answer "it's demonstrably 2048, because in this scene in the book they are celebrating the 100th anniversary of an event in 1948 and this isn't an alternate history" (maybe the author did their math wrong; JK Rowling's set precedent there), we've got the answer from two frames and one of them seems quite a bit more reliable.

Napoleon Wilson

@Randal'Thor Well, sure. Noone doubts there are. (Though Puzzling is a really odd one among SE, together with its programming friend.)

Oh, you said "quite few", not "quite a few".

BESW

Yup, JKR's an excellent and well-known example of making supposedly authoritative statements which contradict each other and the text.

Sorting out JKR's maths and logics bumbles is one of scifi.se's bread-and-butter staples.

doppelgreener

I think it's safe to sit back and watch and see how voting will sort out various analysis lenses. Different questions will vary in what lens best satisfies as an answer.

Rand al'Thor

@doppelgreener I would be much more inclined to trust the "it's 2020" answer there, and assume the "100th anniversary of an event in 1948" to be a maths error. If the author wrote the whole book with 2020 in mind, I'm not going to throw that idea out of the window because of a single passage which doesn't quite fit.

@BESW Urgh.

BESW

@Randal'Thor So your critical lens includes the assumption that extra-textual statements by the author take precedence over the text itself.

doppelgreener

3:23 AM

@Randal'Thor You may go ahead and do so. I will happily go with 2048, and assume what the author said outside the book to be their own maths error contradicted by what the book's actually saying.

user61230

@doppelgreener @Randal'Thor The comprehensive answer in that case is that "We can't know, because it's not clear. There are authorial reasons to believe it's 2020, and textual reasons to believe it's 2048." Otherwise, both answers would be incomplete.

Riker

@Randal'Thor ah okay

holy shit 18 more need reviewing o_o

user61230

When someone asks a disputable question, the goal of an answer shouldn't necessarily be to resolve that dispute.

BESW

We may be falling into a zero-sum fallacy which is antithetical to productive literary criticism.

Rand al'Thor

@BESW I don't think my literary analysis is advanced enough that I'd refer to myself as having a "critical lens" :-) I'm just trying to use common sense there.

Napoleon Wilson

3:25 AM

Indeed. Harry is a horcrux, because Dumbledore effin' says so, no matter what JKR tweets. ;-)

HDE 226868

@Randal'Thor Let me catch up on the chat transcript.

BESW

@Randal'Thor That's exactly the concept I'm trying to deconstruct. EVERYONE uses critical lenses whether they mean to or not, and there's no objective "common sense" default.

HDE 226868

I leave to play Catan and it seems like a week's gone by in here.

Rand al'Thor

@NapoleonWilson Actually, the statement that Harry is not a horcrux is supported by textual evidence and not just tweets from ~~JKR's agent~~ whoops, I mean JKR.

doppelgreener

@Randal'Thor There's danger there in assuming your approach is "common sense". You're implying that I am operating without common sense in taking the book over the author's mentions about his book (the opposite of your preferred lens). I imagine you might notice that leads to it being sort of an impolite claim.

Rand al'Thor

3:26 AM

But yeah, specific examples aside, I agree with your point there.

HDE 226868

@Riker 21 items in the queue!?!

user61230

@NapoleonWilson @Randal'Thor Again, a comprehensive answer to that question would need to address both the fact that the author says it's not, and that there are textual reasons both to believe and not believe that Harry is a horcrux.

Rand al'Thor

@HDE226868 Benjamin has been going a bit crazy with tag wiki edits ...

user61230

This goes back to what I was saying earlier. There isn't necessarily a correct answer to these questions.

HDE 226868

@Randal'Thor I'll hit the queue and then focus on your question.

Rand al'Thor

3:28 AM

@doppelgreener I said I'm trying to use common sense. I accept that you are too.

doppelgreener

@Randal'Thor I understand, and my response fully applies to you saying that.

BESW

There's an implicit assumption here that one way of understanding a text can be default, or superior, or right.

That assumption is going to be toxic to lit.se if we want to get any seriously trained experts to frequent it.

Rand al'Thor

@BESW What if they're not really advanced enough in the theory of critical analysis and lenses to necessarily have a consistent approach?

doppelgreener

I am not insulted (we're discussing a scenario that's entirely theoretical!) but holding one's method as "common sense" easily traps one into thinking other methods are incorrect and not common sense, and rather, entirely uncommon and nonsensical.

BESW

@Randal'Thor That's something which an educated, aware community can help with.

Not unlike when someone on RPG.SE makes a post with implicit assumptions about how all D&D games work.

Rand al'Thor

3:31 AM

I mean, I gave my take on the specific scenario which doppelgreener described, and then you concluded something about my "critical lens". Don't necessarily assume that I'll always take an extra-textual authorial statement above something in the text itself.

BESW

Right.

And that'd be bad if you did.

Instead, we learn to say in each answer what our assumptions are in reaching our conclusions, like that author statements supercede textual evidence.

The ability to switch critical lenses is a skill that many English professors I know have difficulty with, but it's a threshold concept.

HDE 226868

@NapoleonWilson I believe it changes all the thresholds, roughly doubling many of them - or more.

Rand al'Thor

@BESW I wouldn't just write that as an assumption. I'd say why, in this particular context, I was taking author statements above textual evidence (or the other way round, or whatever).

BESW

@Randal'Thor That'd be awesome.

user61230

@Randal'Thor Yeah!

Rand al'Thor

3:35 AM

As I tried to do just now, but didn't really do very well, because the character limit and real-time nature of chat dissuades long essays here.

Riker

@HDE226868 yes

HDE 226868

@Randal'Thor I'm 50-50. It seems both interesting and mundane at the same time. I can think of one or two cases off the top of my head - Milverton, of course, being one - but most are likely in the same vein, likely along the lines of breaking/entering or stalking of some sort, which happened at least once - it might have been The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter.

I don't know if the question's anything more than trivial on the whole, though.

I agree with the arguments that essentially it's the XY-problem.

The problem is that there are cases where it's questionable as to whether or not Holmes actually committed a crime.

Rand al'Thor

Hmph. I'm seriously considering deleting the question. Unfortunately I don't know of anywhere else where I might be able to post it :-(

@HDE226868 Well, a good analysis would discuss those cases, right?

HDE 226868

@Randal'Thor Well, yes. I don't recall Holmes committing many crimes, so there are likely only a few cases - in other words, it's not too broad and such an analysis could probably cover them all in an answer of reasonable length, though possibly the longest on the site so far.

Rand al'Thor

Eh, it's late. I think I'll delete it for now and then decide tomorrow whether I want to undelete it, edit it, post a different version instead, take the issue to meta, or a combination of the above.

Thanks all for the conversation! I think I've learned a lot here :-)

Riker

4:27 AM

pls there are still 10 more tag edits ;-;

Mithrandir

7:32 AM

@Riker I reviewed everything :)

SQB

7:54 AM

@NapoleonWilson okay, that's proof. @NapoleonWilson = @WadCheber.

Mithrandir

@SQB More sockpuppetry accusing? I still maintain that I am not @Randal'Thor.

SQB

@Mithrandir of course you are! You both have "rand" and "th" in your name!

Note to mods: I'm joking in both cases.

Mithrandir

8:27 AM

I just want another 80 rep now...

> “These people have been found guilty of treason and revolt against the Imperial family. For these crimes, the punishment is death. We hope that this will disillusion any other people who may plot against the Imperial City.”
The young new emperor - his father having been killed in the revolt - had no idea of what a proper execution should sound like. He looked at the blood-splattered traitors, three men and a woman, standing on top of the wall, proud and defiant even with the noose literally around their necks.

^want opinions on that

Mithrandir

8:43 AM

Let's see how this Q/A goes...

BESW

Four years and many many letters from distressed children later, CS Lewis clarified/retconned the Problem of Susan. With that as a starting point, one can read read two utterly conflicting morals from the Chronicles of Narnia text with regard to Susan's rise and fall across the books.

(For those unfamiliar, "The Problem of Susan" is a short story by Niel Gaiman but also a long-standing point of contention over Lewis's dismissal of Susan in The Last Battle as no long able to enter Narnia because she was too grown-up.

In context it seems horribly cruel because of what we know about the situation she's left in when Aslan kidnaps the rest of her family.)

Mithrandir

@BESW thinking of writing a q/a, or can I? :P

BESW

Go for it.

Mithrandir

thanks

BESW

But keep in mind, this is a thorny issue.

As just one example, it's rife for the intentional fallacy, as noted in the Tweets I linked: it's easy to assume that Susan's portrayal is sympathetic because we can see parallels to Lewis's own spiritual journey, but there's little-to-no textual support for that reading.

Mithrandir

8:59 AM

Mhm.

> At the end of *The Last Battle*, Peter states that Susan has become 'too grown up' to return to Narnia. However, we *do* see grownups coming to Narnia, or Aslan's country - we see their parents. Also, it would be *very* harsh if no grown-ups could go to 'heaven'.

**Is it possible for Susan to come to the Narnia in Alsan's Country?**

BESW

And that's not getting into the details of Lewis's very complex relationship with his faith and how they're inconsistently reflected (or, rather, reflect the changes and nuances) across the Narnia series.

Might wanna pull up the full quote and make sure you're not asking someone people can just quote at you for.

The Stack loves it some easy literalist answers.

Mithrandir

What?

> In 1960,C. S. Lewis wrote back to a reader and said that Susan is not in Aslan's country.

>Not because I have no hope of Susan ever getting to Aslans's country, but because I have a feeling that the story of her journey would be longer and more like a grown-up novel than I wanted to write. But I may be mistaken. Why not try it yourself?

<sub>[Source](https://storify.com/JillBearup/what-happened-to-susan-pevensie), provided by BESW in chat</sub>

So, it's entirely possible that she makes it, he just didn't feel like writing a 'grownup story'.

@BESW too short? Or fine?

BESW

I'm thinking, quotes from The Last Battle would be useful.

Mithrandir

Sure

BESW

I mean, all her siblings are plucked out of a crashing train which would have killed them, leaving Susan and their parents behind in the train.

Mithrandir

9:06 AM

...No, it did kill them, Susan wasn't there, IIRC.

BESW

Lewis later quibbled that we aren't told Susan's dead, but if I remember correctly we're told her parents are.

Can't recall the details.

And there's all the "no longer a friend of Narnia" bunk.

People have made PhDs combing over this stuff for every possible literal, figurative, symbolic, etc., meaning, coded and uncoded.

Mithrandir

0

A: Was Susan ever able to return to Narnia?

In 1960,C. S. Lewis wrote back to a reader and said that Susan is not in Aslan's country. Not because I have no hope of Susan ever getting to Aslans's country, but because I have a feeling that the story of her journey would be longer and more like a grown-up novel than I wanted to write. But...

Let's see how this one goes... :P

@BESW posted ^

BESW

Sorry, got the link to the answer and thought it was the question.

Mithrandir

:P

Great, so now I need 8 answer upvotes to finally have a site where I have mod tools...

Bebs

9:21 AM

guys I'm trying to do my best

I'm working on the question/answer right now

BESW

@Mithrandir Actually, the title's a little misleading. I think you're asking if she might be able to, but the title sounds like it's asking if she did.

The latter's a lot easier to answer (we don't know), the former's a lot more interesting to analyse.

Mithrandir

@BESW better?

BESW

I'm editing it to put the answer in a single sentence at the top, too.

Mithrandir

Viola, approved.

You now have access to review queues!

Bookworm

9:37 AM

1

Q: Is a [title] tag useful?

I proposed a [title] tag for the questions a bout the title of books. When people need to understand, or discuss about the meaning of a book, they could use that tag. What do you think?

discussion tags

Mithrandir

@Bookworm Yes, but I don't feel like writing an answer.

Bebs

ok

BESW

BTW, the "intentional fallacy" is when we say that the author did something in a work because they said they meant to, whether or not we can support that having happened in the text.

(eg, if Poe says that he wrote The Raven to evoke strong feelings and so we say it evokes strong feelings because he wanted it to. If we add evidence from the poem itself which shows how it evokes strong feelings, we are no longer in danger of the intentional fallacy.)

Mithrandir

Interesting

BESW

For SFF-minded users, consider how this differs from Word of God declaring that something happened off-screen.

Mithrandir

9:50 AM

Did you know that Jon Skeet does not have the Electorate badge on SO? o_O

BESW

@Mithrandir In this case, if we state baldly that Susan can return to Narnia because Lewis regained his faith, that's a kind of intentional fallacy: ; the cause (Lewis's not wanting to write a more adult story) is confused with the effect (Susan's fate being left open-ended); the cause (Lewis's personal experience) is confused with the effect (Susan's implied redemption).

A poor work will itself suffer from this, as things happen simply because the author wants them to and not because of any emergent narrative logic.

A related and opposite fallacy can be called the Thermian fallacy after the aliens in Galaxy Quest. The Thermian fallacy is invoked when analysis of an author's choice for what is true in the book gets deflected by saying that another thing which is true in the book justifies it. That is, treating the book's internal logic as separate from the choices the author made when writing it and removing the author's responsibility for the contents of his work.

Mithrandir

@BESW I added this to the answer. You're welcome to write your own :P

BESW

@Mithrandir Is there any text within the Chronicles themselves to support a redemptive arc for Susan? That'd make it much less of an intentional fallacy.

Examining other redemptive arcs in the series and seeing if we can draw parallels to Susan's, for example.

(I doubt there is, because Susan's got pretty much the most arc of anybody in the whole series.)

Mithrandir

@BESW I'm currently searching. I've found that she gets 'redeemed' in PC, and that Trumpkin is also redeemed in PC, and that their parents make it to Aslan's Country...

BESW

But if there's somebody who lost faith and found it again, or pretended to be grown-up and then learned the immaturity of affecting false maturity... that'd go a long way to implying the end of Susan's own arc.

I suspect Eustace's redemptive arc might be useful.

Mithrandir

10:01 AM

I haven't found anything like this case yet.

BESW

It doesn't have to be obvious or literal. Just dealing with similar themes.

If you can successfully argue that Eustace's stubborn avoidance of fantasy is representative of pretend maturity, that might be interesting.

(And it'd tie back into the extra-textual references to Lewis's own shame in reading fairy tales.)

(Which would, in turn, reinforce your reading that Lewis gives characters his own redemptive arc.)

...There's sometimes a fine line between literary criticism and conspiracy theorist.

Mithrandir

In the beginning of TDT, it says They were very up-to-date and advanced people, which is sort of like grown-up...

I'm stopping my hunt for quotes now, maybe continue later.

Benjamin

11:04 AM

Hello

user61230

Hello!

Mithrandir

'Allo

I have a long answer written up for a question that has not been asked yet.

Does anybody want to ask it? :P

Benjamin

@Mithrandir Sure.

Mithrandir

@Benjamin The question is: Are the different mythological series by Rick Riordan set in the same universe?

Benjamin

@Mithrandir Can I add to that in the question body with examples?

Mithrandir

11:15 AM

@Benjamin Definitely

I was just giving the summary.

@Randal'Thor can review one more :P

@Benjamin Ping me when you've posted

Benjamin

0

Q: Are the different mythological series by Rick Riordan set in the same universe?

Rick Riordan is the author of many series of fictional works about mythology. These include Percy Jackson & the Olympians, The Heroes of Olympus, The Kane Chronicles, the book set Demigods and Magicians, Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, and The Trials of Apollo. However, he is not solely rete...

rick-riordan intertextuality

Mithrandir

0

A: Are the different mythological series by Rick Riordan set in the same universe?

Yes. The Percy Jackson and the Olympians, The Heroes of Olympus, and The Trials of Apollo are definitely in the same universe – they center on Camp Half-Blood. In The Kane Chronicles can conclude that they are in the same universe, given that there are no less than three crossover stories with...

Benjamin

@Mithrandir Thanks, I had never read that series, but when finding the names of the series, I read some blurbs and it looks interesting.

Mithrandir

You're welcome, hope you enjoy :)

Mithrandir

11:40 AM

Come on... Three more answer upvotes...

Bookworm

11:56 AM

-2

Q: Should leaflets and other printed matter used to advertise products or give advice should be on-topic?

According to definition of literature in Oxford Dictionary, the literature also includes: Leaflets and other printed matter used to advertise products or give advice: ‘advertising and promotional literature’ So should this be on-topic also?

discussion scope

Helmar

People stopped up voting^^

Mithrandir

I really wish people would explain their downvotes >.<

Benjamin

@Mithrandir I am downvoting because I am also voting to close.

Mithrandir

@Benjamin Which?

BESW

Up/downvoting and close voting are two separate mechanics measuring only coincidentally related qualities. I frequently upvote something I'm voting to close.

Mithrandir

12:05 PM

I was talking about your question and my answer @Benjamin, anyway :P

Benjamin

@Mithrandir Oh, I thought you meant the question on meta. There I am doing both because it is both off-topic and shouldn't be asked even if it were on-topic.

Mithrandir

Cool, I dragged Valorum/Richard here!

Oof.... One more answer upvote...

Benjamin

The review queue for suggested tag wiki edits appears to be full.

Mithrandir

Yes...

I ran out reviews a long time ago...

Benjamin

@Mithrandir Yeah, okay, we will have to wait for someone else.

Mithrandir

12:12 PM