Question deletion powers aren't much use - there's probably only one question really worthy of deletion at this point - but seeing deleted posts and detailed review history is always fun.
The black and white dualism is probably the most common dichotomy and can be traced back to Pythagoras' Table of Opposites, which lists both good and evil as well a well light and darkness. Usually all of those light/white/day/good are opposed to darkness/black/night/evil.
Since you asked for th...
@randal'thor : 10k is when you get instant healing, x-ray vision, and the ability to see 15 seconds into the future. 20k, you get improved stamina, and 25k you get a Starbucks gift card.
@Emrakul @BESW Either of you around? I'm planning to post another question and would appreciate your thoughts on phrasing, in reference to our chat last night.
user61230
Iiii'm around for about another six minutes, I think!
@Emrakul OK, this should be quick :-) I'm wondering whether the idea of a fallen star being a person in Neil Gaiman's Stardust is directly influenced by the same idea in CS Lewis's The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Now my SFF training tells me that "did the one inspire the other?" might be considered opinion-based while "did Neil Gaiman ever confirm the connection?" would be well received.
user61230
@Helmar @fi12 Yeah, that's a valid challenge. I've undownvoted and deleted my comments; it's approaching 6 AM, and I'm going to have to think about exactly what I'm asking later. There's a vague question in my mind, concerning esp. how the representation of black as applied to people and actions has changed, but maybe it's not as well-defined as I thought it was.
But for this site, given all the issues we discussed last night, perhaps I should post it as "did the one inspire the other?" and let people answer however they want, either by quotes from Gaiman or textual comparisons or anything else?
@Helmar Sure, but there could still be a direct link from Lewis to Gaiman. The way the trope is done in those two stories feels more similar than either does to things like the Bible.
user61230
1:43 PM
Because, in this case, I think the likely answer is that Neil Gaiman is drawing on oral traditions (typical), and CS Lewis is drawing on religious ones (also typical); and that while related, they're not exactly the same and it won't be possible to draw a direct line between them.
Heh. I was just thinking about a question about a book being based off of WoT...
user61230
The stars have an origin story in most cultures, and many of them also have implications about stars falling from the sky. Though, usually Gaiman pretty strongly hints at which culture (or cultures) the work is being connected with, so there's that part of it, too.
Some people use contractions and others don't. Fixing people's spelling errors is one thing, but changing their style of writing isn't necessary or nice.
they are not grammatical or spelling errors that make questions harder to read
I disagree with that. Using capitals and paragraphs the right way actually makes the post easier to read. And that is exactly what we want! We want a useful, clear Q/A knowledge base.
Of course, we value every si...
@Gallifreyan Great question! If nobody answers, I'll dig into that one at some point. I think there may have been something in BNS's online interview on the topic.
The front page of the site was recently flooded with approximately 20-30 edits which did nothing but remove contractions from posts, e.g. changing "I'm" to "I am" and "it's" to "it is".
May I take this opportunity to remind everyone of the help centre guidance on edits:
Some common reasons t...
In Jasper Fforde's "book world," Miss Havisham is a speed demon who races cars with Mr. Toad. This seems... out of character, based on my understanding of her.
Is it just funny because it's unexpected, or is there a joke or reference I'm not getting?
@Randal'Thor speaking of trivial edits, what's up with a lot of the new tag wikis? They all begin with something like "for questions about [tag name]". Isn't that useless information?
If we look at the map, we can conclude that Lilliput is in the Indian Ocean. Is there any significance to its location in the Indian Ocean? What is that significance, if any?
@Hamlet @Helmar But please let's hold off on doing more tag wiki edits to fix those, at least until tomorrow. The review queue is already chock-full and everyone with 750+ rep is out of reviews.
Gulliver's Travels, is a story by Jonathon Swift that is widely accepted to be a satire. In it when Gulliver visits Lilliput he agrees to a set of articles about his presence, which read as follows:
Golbasto Momarem Evlame Gurdilo Shefin Mully Ully Gue, most mighty
Emperor of Lilliput, deli...
@Hamlet @Helmar Also, re those redundant tag wikis: remember that "for questions about [author name] or their literary works" does actually provide usage guidance, because it tells people the tag is to be used for all questions about that author's works, rather than just questions about the author.
Although that tag wiki contains the author of the poem, which is helpful, it begins with "For questions about The Waste Land", which is just an absolutely useless sentence
@Hamlet Yeah, I might have rejected that one if I'd seen it. Not sure though: at least it does specify that the tag is about the poem by Eliot, rather than just wastelands in general.
This question concerns "Choose Your Own Adventure" books. These are books that start out as a normal story, but then ask the reader to make a choice. (The book will say something to the effect of "turn to page 8 if yes, page 9 if no"). In this fashion, the story expands like a tree.
It seems to...
While reviewing the suggested edits queue, I ran across a number of new tag wiki excerpts from the same user, all starting with "For issues relating to". For example:
gantt: For issues relating to creating or displaying gantt charts.
divide-by-zero: For issues relating to handling or preventing...
It seems that Holmes's assessment of Milverton as "the worst man in London" was due less to long experience of the man than to the extreme revulsion he felt about him. It didn't take an exceptionally long study of Milverton and his methods for Holmes to get the gist of the man, and to realise tha...
I have noticed I have had great success using another co-worker as a metaphorical rubber duck (sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally). It improves my productivity vastly. However, I know that it probably must distracts others when I am using them in that way.
That's why I want to bu...
In software engineering, rubber duck debugging or rubber ducking is a method of debugging code. The name is a reference to a story in the book The Pragmatic Programmer in which a programmer would carry around a rubber duck and debug their code by forcing themselves to explain it, line-by-line, to the duck. Many other terms exist for this technique, often involving different inanimate objects.
Many programmers have had the experience of explaining a programming problem to someone else, possibly even to someone who knows nothing about programming, and then hitting upon the solution in the process...
Good question!
It's open to many possible interpretations. Lewis Carroll intended it to be little more than a joke, with no real answer, but his readers bugged him so much that eventually he proposed an answer, which he included in the preface to the 1896 (some sources say 1897) edition of Alice...
See, this is the advantage of having one review left in the day. I can go and look at a suggested edit and see who made it without actually reviewing it.
@BeastlyGerbil The Suggested Edits review queue has been flooded today, and every single user with the ability to review tag wiki edits is maxed out on reviews for the day. We literally can't review your suggestions without a CM. Can you wait till tomorrow please?
@Gallifreyan The films were not too bad but definitely not a very faithful adaptation. Especially #2, it basically had little to do with the book. I never read the English translations, so don't know how faithful they are to the original.
@Mithrandir You fight like a younger man, with nothing held back. Admirable but mistaken. :)
@DVK-in-Florida We have people actually answering Strugatsky questions, I mean not story-id ones, but ones where you actually have to understand the meanings, but not people for Stanislaw Lem questions? Whoa
@b_jonas If you know any Polish-speaking book fans, drag 'em here. There's going to be Witcher questions too, if Napoleon and I have anything to do with it.
I don't speak a word of it. But we have a very good translator, Murányi Beatrix, who has translated all or almost the sci-fi of Lem, and that's no easy feat.
@Randal'Thor Meh, as much as I'd really prefer to feed this site instead of the other one, it would feel strange to ask my questions here when I already started to build a stock on the other one.
@Randal'Thor I'm sorely tempted to get into Witcher, but the need to play videogames AND the risk of not having 100% of material translated into English is something that stopped me so far.
@NapoleonWilson Yeah, if that was the only reason I may have done what I did with Star Wars (All I know about KOTOR and other modern SW game lore is from Wookiepedia)
@NapoleonWilson I keep meaning to plop a bounty on your reading-order answer over there. It's one of the few SE posts that's actually been practically helpful to me.
At the end of The Prisoner of Azkaban,
Harry and Hermione travel back in time to save Sirius (and as it turns out, Buckbeak) and escape the Dementors.
If this is a legitimate option for saving people, why don't they ever use it again? If they can use it to save Sirius in The Prisoner of Azkaban,...
@DVK-in-Florida In contrast to Star Wars, though, there isn't anything that could in any way be regarded canonical to the slightest, other than Sapkowski's books. I'm just saying this because I know you appreciate canon.
Hmm, now I want to post a question along the lines of "which languages have the Witcher books been translated into, and which have the most complete translations?" I wonder if that would be closed as too broad.
@Randal'Thor Additionally, there's likely a factor that very few people in the West would be interested (as far as commercial opportunity) in translated Witcher TV series, whereas more Russians would. Russian TV is.... not quite filled with good content recently from what I heard