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00:22
Pinterest keeps bugging me to sign up. If anyone can view this page properly, it may have some good public-domain letters L.
Why not just crop down to focus on the L on a book cover like one of these? one, two, three, four-ish.
That'll move away from the snobby old-world Literature implications, too.
Aww, I thought we were going for a nice old-world fancy calligraphic L.
Sure, you can do that. But consider what it tells people about the site.
Otherwise we might as well just write an L in any paint program with any random font and call that our image.
If you don't think there's a difference between a designer's cover choice and something slapped together in Paint, then you won't like the prices I charge for book design.
Fast and dirty screen crops to showcase the idea of an L in the context of a book, in a way that doesn't reinforce concepts of "literature" as an exclusionary category.
00:31
@BESW This one is what really made me start thinking about crappy Paint jobs. It's nothing but two perpendicular line segments - no style or anything interesting going on.
I'm sure there's better photos to grab from, I just skimmed the free site linked above.
Unless you include some of the other letters around it, and then the image seems more 'noisy'.
But what do I know. You're the expert on this kind of thing :-)
Still, I don't think it's necessarily "exclusionary" to use an old-style calligraphic image to advertise ourselves. Anyone looking at our front page will see that questions about things like and are on-topic. But if we advertise ourselves as being about comics and song lyrics (just to pick an example), then we're less likely to attract literature experts.
You're right, that one example is especially poor.
I'd rather have people think "this is a site about things like Shakespeare and Poe - oh look, we can also ask about Natsume Soseki and Leonard Cohen" than "this is a site about Harry Potter and Leonard Cohen - oh look, we can also ask about classical literature".
Anyone looking at the tumblr will decide whether to look at the front page based on the tumblr. And I'm suggesting a contemporary-neutral look rather than a specific genre. Which an illustrated capital does suggest.
00:36
So questions about horror, sci-fi, Harry Potter or Leonard Cohen get upvoted on this site, and questions about 19th-century French literature get downvoted? — Your Uncle Bob May 30 at 19:37
This comment still haunts me.
[shrug] It's got one downvote and seven upvotes on an obscure ID question.
And I suspect the downvote(s?) were because it's an ID question.
I wouldn't take one guy's misinterpretaton of a toxic site habit that we're actively trying to remedy, as a call to action to influence our presentation of the site's topicality going forward.
@BESW Agreed, but even so.
While I don't dispute comics and song-lyrics being on-topic, I'm very slightly concerned by how popular those tags are becoming.
What if it were gonzo journalism and 70s pop psychology instead?
There's a pretty broad swathe of literature between "traditionally accepted classics" and "contemporary alternative forms."
I'm trying to suggest designs which land broadly between them.
We could go for something fairly non-descript, not trying to be suggestive of any particular genre or subcategory of literature.
 
2 hours later…
02:54
0
Q: Why does Ishtar insist on being called "Ishtar"?

ShokhetThere are many characters in Gaiman's Sandman stories that have multiple names; Morpheus is one of them. For the most part, they usually don't mind if someone calls them by one name or another. The first that I've seen this happen was with Ishtar. After meeting Ishtar, Morpheus calls her by two ...

@Bookworm In this same conversation, I wonder if Dream calls Ishtar by different names to antagonize her, as a sort of revenge for her relationship with Destruction, which he did not approve of. What do you think, @Gallifreyan?
I hadn't thought of that until I posted the above question, and almost included it in that post, but ultimately decided that although it's part of the same conversation, it's really a different question (and might be asked on its own at some later point)
 
3 hours later…
06:08
@Randal'Thor why?
The tags are popular because they're broad. If we had a novel tag...
@BESW what about a design with a spiral
e.g. something like this cover for Calvino's Invisible Cities
I guess what I'm trying to go for is something that conveys the experience of literature.
Which I don't think of as a bunch of dusty books. I think of the experience of literature in terms of images.
Or these image results for "Borges Illustration"
06:26
Or the paintings of Salvador Dalí
Yep, I really like that image of the nautilus shell, which is from wikimedia commons
And I disabled the avatar on the tumblr, so people won't see it.
But the avatar is still the favicon and the profile image when you don't click on the blog
hmmmm
07:32
Spanish artist and sculptor Alicia Martin uses books as the raw material for her works #womensart https://t.co/QNeJCjSDL8
 
2 hours later…
09:36
2
Q: Should we quickly send questions about literature to Literature SE?

ab2Three recent questions are much more suited for Literature SE, https://literature.stackexchange.com/ See the question about Pride and Prejudice Pride and Prejudice, what does: “decline the office, I will take it on myself” mean?, which has an outstanding answer by @Kiloran_speaking, and another P&...

^ ELU meta post that we may want to watch
Yaaaaay, people are actually reading and using our /help/on-topic page! :-D cc @Hamlet
Ooh, the author of the series I'm reading right now is also the guy who wrote one of the Seventh Doctor's most popular stories.
@Mithrandir I know, but that ELU meta post is about more than just one (or even just three) questions.
For the record, questions about "what does this collection of words [in a work of literature] mean" are on topic at Lit.SE - see e.g. this question or this one. I'm not sure how ELU tends to treat this type of question (I notice that the two P&P questions currently have 1 and 2 close votes), but if you don't want 'em, we'll definitely have 'em. — Rand al'Thor 52 secs ago
"Beta sites are never offered explicitly [as migration targets]" - is this true?
I think so.
09:52
Ooh, we've broken 1000 answers.
@Hamlet It's a nice image, but I'm not sure how I feel about it as a symbol of our site. What do nautilus shells have to do with literature? Makes us look like a marine biology site.
10:14
I think Hammy's going a bit abstract on us. [grin]
 
2 hours later…
12:40
0
Q: Is there a good "learn to read" software for those struggling with literacy?

scorpdaddyThere must be a software that teaches people how to read - that can be used on one's computer at home? It would present texts of increasing difficulty as one progressed. Perhaps it would sound out a word if one clicked on a word in the text that one could not pronounce. Etc. There are some 30,...

@Bookworm Ugh.
 
1 hour later…
13:56
0
Q: Why was Cowen easily seen to have been Cohen?

MirteIn Agatha Christie's book The Listerdale Mystery, in the story Swan Song, there is the following qoute: It required no imagination to realise that his father's name had been Cohen. This comes after a description of Mr Cowen, the agent of an Opera Singer. The description is: He was a ta...

14:25
1
Q: Is this qoute by Mr Eastwood a pointed remark by Agatha Christie?

MirteIn Agatha Christie's book The Listerdale Mystery, in the story Mr Eastwood's adventure, there is the following paragraph: He knew only too well that the kind of story that the editor in question did not want that kind of story - beautiful though it might be. The kind of story he wanted, and i...

14:37
@Randal'Thor it's a connection between math and literature.
Lit mod here. Happy to have the questions, but please don't migrate old questions, or questions with a lot of votes, etc. — Hamlet 18 mins ago
15:08
@Hamlet Interesting though that might be, I still don't get how it's meant to represent the field of literature as a whole.
@Hamlet Old questions (>60 days) can't be migrated anyway. — Rand al'Thor 9 mins ago
And if a new question is off-topic enough to be migrated, I doubt it'll have boatloads of votes on it.
15:20
@Randal'Thor "the field of literature as a whole" I don't really know what would, it's so diverse. If you think of anything...
15:37
@Randal'Thor Nice!
Lit user here. Happy to have the questions, but please keep in mind Jeff's golden rule of migrations. — Shokhet 5 mins ago
Exactly so. Bad questions will simply be closed on our criteria. Questions which are about English (whatever the context) don't need to be migrated elsewhere because they are on-topic here. Questions which are reasonable questions but which require specialist knowledge or treatment which may be available on another site -- including ELL -- might be migrated. — Andrew Leach ♦ 2 mins ago
@Hamlet Actually, those are the sorts of things that make a question a good migration candidate (assuming it's under 60 days).
 
1 hour later…
16:47
If only someone invented a way to make outdoor statues that you can just leave in a public space for decades without much maintenance like marble statues, resistant to most attacks of the weather and vandalism, but doesn't have to be carved, can simply be created by molding like bronze statues. It would be a great innovation.
(Though of course on the other hand it might cause a statue inflation where having a statue in a public space no longer means anything much, because anyone can buy such a statue for cheap.)
@Catija no, not really. We want to judge questions ourselves; we can't do that if the question has a lot of votes/comments.
2
A: Challenging migration of "System for Documenting Ideas" question

Robert CartainoPlease do not migrate new or largely-unanswered questions unless there is a very compelling reason to do so (e.g. trying to save otherwise long-standing great content). If the question is off topic, simply ask the author to ask their question in the context of the correct site. Migrations have...

17:04
@Hamlet how about not migrating then, but posting a new question here with the same topic (and a link)?
@Hamlet Also, "We want to judge questions ourselves; we can't do that if the question has a lot of votes/comments" from a moderator made me think at first that you're talking about that locked question on Sci Fi.
@Catija @Hamlet Ugh, the "what kinds of question are migrateable" debate again. There's so much contradictory advice from CMs on various metas - questions should only be migrated if they're answered, questions should only be migrated if they're unanswered, ...
3
@Hamlet Well, maybe something fairly non-descript, which suggests written material without suggesting too much beyond that.
Oh look, I found a whole page of public-domain images at Pinterest.
@Randal'Thor Seems like the simple solution is to trash it all and just close the question and point them in the right direction.
^^ How about something like that, cropped to a circle, for the Twitter avatar? @Shokhet
Pinterest is hell and needs to die. If I could make some sort of browser script that would automatically add -Pinterest.com to all of my web searches I'd be happy.
@Randal'Thor If only it was even smaller and had another line that would inevitably end up on the circular avatar :D
17:15
Maaaaybe?
@Gallifreyan The line won't end up on the avatar if the image is cropped sensibly.
90x90 is too small - recommended size is 400x400, if memory serves.
@Randal'Thor lol
How about "questions should only be migrated to the meta of the same site"?
Well, that's the only kind of migration which is always possible even for non-mods.
@b_jonas or the reverse.
One of those ELU Pride & Prejudice questions has now been closed:
1
Q: What does this passage mean from ‘Pride and Prejudice’?

conan If a woman conceals her affection with the same skill from the object of it, she may lose the opportunity of fixing him; and it will then be but poor consolation to believe the world equally in the dark. There is so much of gratitude or vanity in almost every attachment, that it is not...

Do we want it?
I could see an argument for it being "too broad" for us too, since the OP is asking a few different questions, but all those questions could be packed into "what is this character saying?" or "what's going on in this passage?"
17:32
@Randal'Thor Yeah, I have asked such questions, where it's unclear what a phrase or a word means in a poem. Some parts of texts are just obscure for current readers.
This one is good, with a great Lit-style answer, but still open with only 3 close votes.
The hard part is when you get two or three contradictory answers by the way.
hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Tudakoz%C3%B3/… is my favorite. The hu.wikipedia refdesk repeatedly gets young students asking questions about Egri Csillagok, and especially about certain strange words in it. The one that's caused the most trouble is "külyüs malom", for which there are four contradictory answers.
FAVORITE, damn it, FAVORITE. I can't get myself to consistently use the american spellings for these, my fingers just keep typing "neighbour, behaviour, favourite" (but "color")
(Or possibly three contradictory answers and a non-answer.)
17:48
ELL gets a lot of "what does this mean" contextual questions, too. I think I actually have a P&P answer there.
@Catija I have one on French SE.
0
Q: What is "a very proper wife" referring to in this sentence?

user10222 She will make him a very proper wife -Pride218- Does it mean she will become a proper wife? Or she will make him turn into a woman(wife)? I think that the sentence above goes like this: He quit smoking cold turkey. This could mean he quit smoking + he was cold turkey. So, cold turkey desc...

Well, my main concern is that with questions that have already been answered, I would want someone from this site to look over the answer and make sure that they're good first.
Yeah. It'd be a pain to have bad answers being shunted over which have got a load of upvotes from a non-literary site.
@Randal'Thor Are you thinking of Worldbuilding?
17:59
which is why I asked for new questions.
@Hamlet Do you think this one is good enough to flag for migration?
@b_jonas No, ELU in this context.
The detective novels of Agatha Christie and of Doyle, when I read them in original, are full of words that are hard to understand because the concept they tell about no longer exists. They talk about things that have disappeared because technology or culture has changed. The most common ones are house servants and (for Doyle only) horse-pulled taxicabs.
"hansoms" and "hacks"
Yes, there used to be hansom cab drivers in London.
There's a nicely non-associative phrase, @b_jonas (at least when read aloud so that "hansom" = "handsome").
Also, to clarify: our main worry is less so the quality of questions (which we can close without much fuss if they're bad) but the quality of answers. Some of the answers here are really good, but there are a few answers that have a lot of upvotes but that don't really fit what we're looking for. And of course, if the answers have a lot of upvotes that they wouldn't get on our site, that's something that's harder to fix. So it would be great if you could run migrating questions with highly upvoted answers by us first. Other than that, thanks for your help! — Hamlet 6 mins ago
18:09
Perhaps you should do a self-answer for this question citing your "Naming of Parts" Q&A, so that we can point people at this post to tell them what close reading is rather than at one where the question doesn't even mention close reading. — Rand al'Thor 21 secs ago
If you don't want the migrations, just kick them back or tell them not to do them. It's really not fair for you to require the ELU mods to give you permission before migrating things... and, really, you're better off blocking them because (as an ELL user), they're not all great at deciding what's not "crap".
@Catija Does your last comment apply to the ELU mods or just their users?
Because it only takes five 3k users to migrate from ELU to ELL, but it needs a mod to migrate here.
@Randal'Thor ELL got some pretty crappy migrations even before graduating.
@Catija Did they get the Math SE / Software Engineering SE effect, where people tried to direct bad questions from MathOverflow or StackExchange to what they thought was a garbage site?
Not necessarily by migrating, but just finger pointing users to post there.
@b_jonas ELU meta has many questions from ELL users complaining that ELU is/was using ELL like a trash can - both before and after graduation.
18:16
So they did. Ok.
94
Q: A friendly reminder: ELL is not EL&U's trash can

snailplaneWe've been getting a lot of migrations to ELL lately. That's actually fine by me – I think a lot of them are okay on ELL, even if they're not suitable for EL&U. The two sites have different standards, and that's okay. But we've also been getting migrations like this: When someone wanna tal...

That's the highest-voted question on ELU meta.
Hmm, that reminds me, I have a math question, but it's not a good one. Should I ask it on the trashcan site?
If I had a way to find some examples of questions I've seen mods migrate to ELL, I'd share them but they'd be deleted, anyway so it doesn't really matter.
@Randal'Thor I'm really peeved by the top answer there.
@Catija we can block/kick back migrations?
@Hamlet We can definitely close them at least.
18:24
@b_jonas I know that we can close them.
@Hamlet If a question gets migrated and then closed on the target site, that automatically rejects the migration.
@Randal'Thor oh.
But what I'm worried about is a question gets migrated with an upvoted answer that doesn't meet our standards.
But the question is on-topic, so there's no reason to close it.
But we don't want the answer.
Maybe I should make a meta post about this.
Yes... Unless the question is closed as a duplicate, the migration will be rejected and the question will be deleted. If the answer doesn't fit your standards, downvote and delete. You're overly concerned, I think with the what-if.
@Randal'Thor We can try that, and play around with the size of the circle. The particular letter L that you gave is a little low-res, though:
1
Q: How is the Brother Officer being portrayed in "The Hero"?

Rand al'ThorSiegfried Sassoon's short poem "The Hero" (full text here) is about a young soldier who has died in the First World War, and describes the news of his death being given to his grieving mother. When I studied this poem for an English literature GCSE, I remember disliking the character of the "Bro...

18:29
@Shokhet I was worried about that. Is it too small?
@Randal'Thor Told ya.
Also, can you shift that circle slightly to the left to block out the black line without it looking silly?
@Randal'Thor Yes, a little bit. Click on teh image to open it in a new tab, and see how fuzzy it is.
@Randal'Thor Yes. Hold on, I'll show you.
@Shokhet The difficulty with decorated initials is that while it's easy to find a lot of them (since they were popular in handwritten and old printed books that are now out of copyright), but most of them are in square-shaped boxes, not very good for a circle frame. Let me try to find you a better one.
@b_jonas Thanks :D
18:32
Can we pick a CC0 or public domain font, and just use their letters?
@Randal'Thor found a bunch of good links earlier, if that helps you start your search.
@Shokhet Sorry, I don't have a higher-res version. (I got it from here fwiw.)
@Randal'Thor Okay
argh! all of them are square-shaped, or ugly, or show some specific recognizable figure or object in the drawing rather than just nonfigurative flower motifs
What are you doing this for, anyway?
18:35
Yeah, there's a Curse of the Square going on here.
6
Q: Design a profile picture for our Twitter account!

MithrandirAs our request to use the site favicon was status-declined, we need something else. The goals: Design a suitable profile picture for the Twitter account, that sizes well, and has something to do with books/literature and isn't copyrighted or anything. (recommended dimensions are 400x400 pixel...

@Catija The community run Twitter account avatar
(or use old style fonts like gothic and blackletter that I can't even read)
does it need to be a letter L?
could it be something about books instead?
@b_jonas Yes, it absolutely can. @Hamlet wanted to use a nautilus ;-)
@Randal'Thor Nah, it's more like the curse of the circle. Why does google plus have to use a circle? It's so much harder to frame pictures as circles than as rectangles.
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/… has a decent L that isn't boxed
I'd prefer something about books, so maybe I'll try to search one though.
Is this another literature question?
18:47
Curious if anyone here would be receptive to the idea of post notices?
I wonder if you could take an image like this and cut an "L" shape out of it.
@Hamlet What kind of post notices d'you think we might need?
We have some answers from the private beta that got a lot of upvotes but that didn't back up their claims.
There's your letter L, @Shokhet
@b_jonas That could work.
18:50
How about this famous miniature from the Képes Krónika commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/…
I wonder if that would suggest a history site rather than a literature site though
I mean, it's a recognizable scribe
but still it's from a history book
@Hamlet That sounds like it could be exactly what post notices are for. Do you have some examples handy?
(One of the worst answers I've seen here has got to be this one, but it was (self-)deleted.)
Here's one:
4
A: Was Catcher in the Rye autobiographical?

RikerNo confirmation, but evidence points to at least some basis in Salinger's early life They were both born and raised in Manhattan, New York. They both attended preppy private schools in Pennsylvania, and both were all-boys schools. Holden was kicked out of school for failing 4/5 courses, and Sal...

(I only remember it because I posted it in chat a while back).
I'm not a big fan of the wording of the current post notices.
@Shokhet Needs to be shoved left a little more, I think
Hmm, I upvoted that one.
18:53
> Some of the information contained in this post requires additional references. Please edit to add citations to reliable sources that support the assertions made here. Unsourced material may be disputed or deleted.
or
It's some good info, but I agree it'd be much better with sources.
How do post notices work? Are they only for mods, or can high-rep users post them also (like question protection)?
> We're looking for long answers that provide some explanation and context. Don't just give a one-line answer; explain why your answer is right, ideally with citations. Answers that don't include explanations may be removed.
@Shokhet Mod-only.
@Randal'Thor but there's no such thing as info without backing it up.
18:54
@Shokhet Mostly only for mods, but when you set a bounty, you can give a short custom text that goes with the notice.
@Hamlet This one sounds like it could fit (except for the deletion threat - I'd say an unsourced answer should be downvoted rather than deleted).
(That's a notice nobody reads though.)
@Randal'Thor Is there a built-in flag option for plebs, or is that only by custom flag?
@Shokhet No, custom flag (or sometimes "very low quality").
0
Q: Can post notices on the hard-science tag actually do something?

HamletI occasionally browse through the hard-science tag. One of my pet peeves is having to scroll through answers on the hard science tag that have a lot of upvotes, but don't meet the requirements of the hard-science tag. Lately, answers that don't meet the requirements have been receiving post noti...

18:55
@b_jonas But I don't think that's the type of post notice we're talking about. That only lasts a week, and leaves no permanent record.
@Randal'Thor Got it. Thanks :)
@Hamlet ... sorry, why are you linking me to a Worldbuilding meta post?
@Randal'Thor it's a feature request
@Catija Like this?
> Opinion, by itself, is noise. The Back It Up! principle, together with the voting and reputation systems of the website, amplifies the signal and dampens the noise.
@Shokhet It's a difficult thing. That looks like it went a bit too far... I'm looking at the two bottom corners of the shape and wanting them to be the same distance from the circle's edge. But I'm super picky. I've had a FR on Cooking.meta asking them to center the logo there more precisely.
18:57
@Shokhet It does leave a permanent record in the edit history (also on data.stackexchange)
You know what, we've had a lot of new questions today.
@b_jonas The only permanent record it leaves in the edit history is whether it was "reward existing answer" or "draw attention" or whatever. Any custom text from bounty notices is lost forever.
@b_jonas Oh really? I've never seen a custom bounty comment in the history of a bounty post, only the bounty reason ("reward existing answer" "canonical source needed" etc). Is that a new thing?
@Catija I can understand if you're picky, but in that case you should find the right position yourself and tell it directly, rather than just asking someone else to find it.
@Gallifreyan Five?
18:58
@Randal'Thor It is? Hmm, let me check this.
Including one closed.
@b_jonas I don't know how you're even doing it to do it for you...
That's 2.7 more than our average.
You seem to be using some sort of application.
1.7 if you subtract the closed one.
18:59
@Catija I can give you the login info for the Twitter, if you want to try to do it yourself. Is everyone else on-board with this "L"? @Randal'Thor @Hamlet @Gallifreyan
Damn it, you are right. Then the permanent record it leaves is accessible only from data.stackexchange
I have no idea why they decided to ask for a software rec here.
@Shokhet better to do that privately
Like you told me
@Mithrandir I am aware. If @Catija wants to try that, we'll figure out some private channel that we can use.
But thanks for the reminder :)
@Shokhet Looks good.
19:01
@Shokhet It'll do, I guess.
@Catija Crop it to a square image such that the circle inscribed in that square works fine, then hopefully just uploading that square image to google plus should work because that will be the default crop?
@Shokhet Wait, I'm still considering the scribe image from Képes Krónika, but trying to see if it works as a circle. I'll have to edit it a bit for that.
I'd actually like a Holmesesque magnifying glass, but that probably won't happen :P
@Mithrandir Magnifying glass looking at a letter "L"?
@Shokhet and if you end up using that L, then I suggest you give credit to commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/… or the flickr source (perhaps in the Meta question): even if it's public domain, the people who carved it an digitized it are worth our thanks.
Is 400x400 enough room for that? (The magnifying glass and the "L," I mean.)
19:05
The other option is to crop the L shape slightly with the circle like this:
I'm not even sure it's in public domain, mind you.
It's more "artsy" that way.
@b_jonas Sure. I can do that in the meta, or in the Twitter bio
L overflow!
ah yes it is public domain. it's a reprint of an old book from 1900s, the original book is older
19:08
(maybe a tweet, @Shokhet?)
Hmm... it has to look good at a 73 pixel wide circle? That might be hard.
@Randal'Thor Sure. :)
@Shokhet I don't have time right now to think of a good short message about it.
@Randal'Thor Me neither. Whichever of us gets there first, then? :)
19:10
Oh no. Oz and politics again.
Isn't that sort of an overdone theme?
@b_jonas Well, it's the only such question on this site. I'm hoping for a good answer which will teach me more about that theme, as I read the Oz books when I was too young to appreciate political references.
@Randal'Thor I feel that, as the OP, you'll have a better shot at succinctly summing up the heart of the question in an engaging way. I can try, but you'll do better at getting the heart of the question, I think.
@Randal'Thor If growing up means understanding all the political references in Oz, then I don't want to grow up.
19:17
Can a mod (@Randal'Thor, @Mithrandir) please delete this message before someone tweets it? Thanks :)
Argh, it's not even 73 pixels. The disk is just about 48 pixels wide only. Scribe is impossible.
19:36
@Shokhet gone
@Mithrandir תודה
Is right left? Is left right? Is this a political reference in #OzmaOfOz by #LFrankBaum? literature.stackexchange.com/q/2479
20:31
1
Q: Why does Melville call Washington "General" rather than "President"

Mario TruccoIn Moby Dick, beginning of chapter 10, I read about the resemblance of Queequeg's head to George Washington's: It may seem ridiculous, but it reminded me of General Washington's head, as seen in the popular busts of him. Now to this European, George Washington is better known as first Presi...

> Doctor Endless: A New Genderfluid DC Comics Character For Suicide Squad Based On Neil Gaiman’s Sandman
But it seems it's been cancelled.
20:50
> Except, it seems, no one had thought to tell Neil Gaiman. Who has, as part of his deal with DC Comics over the series, has maintained the right of refusal as to how DC Comics exploit Sandman and characters created for the Sandman series. Which includes all the Endless aside from Destiny.
Lol :)
What's special about Destiny?
@Gallifreyan Also, wouldn't Desire be the better choice for a genderfluid character?
@Shokhet Destiny predated Gaiman.
He was already a character before Gaiman started writing The Sandman.
...was Doctor Endless supposed to be Sandman, only, or all of the Endless? Because they have Death's eye makeup. And sort of has Delirium's hair.
@Gallifreyan Didn't know that. Interesting.
So were Merv (I think), Lucien, Cain, Abel, and some others.
And Matthew, he came from The Swamp Thing.
@Gallifreyan He wasn't a raven then, though, was he?
Yes, he was a guy called Matt Cable. He died in the Dreaming, and Morpheus offered him to become a raven, none of which is explicitly shown.
In other news, I'm becoming hooked on Terry Moore's Rachel Rising. I might need to read his other stuff.
He draws exclusively in black and white, in a realistic style.
He's even got two books on comics, How to draw women and How to draw expressions.
20:58
@Gallifreyan McCloud really likes the black and white style of comics :)
@Gallifreyan Interesting.
Also How to draw funny
My roommate (who draws comics and other things) saw that I was reading Understanding Comics, and told me that he read McCloud's Making Comics a while ago, and said he liked it.
@Gallifreyan I heard Swamp Thing was good. Would you recommend it?
No idea, never read it.
Okay.
But it seems that it was pretty big back in 80s. Gaiman returned to reading comics because of Swamp Thing.
Then he became buddies with Alan Moore, Moore taught him how to write comics, and theeeeeen...
21:03
Right, I think I saw some of that in the supplementary material in one of the Sandman books I read.
@Catija Which...is pretty much what SE wants anyway.
By the way, there's a preface to Brief Lives (included at the end of the edition that I'm reading) that includes some more info on Delirium that I thought might have been relevant to several pre-existing posts here. There was something about eye color, I think, definitely speech bubble color.
This one opens with it.
Also stuff about who different characters were based one.
21:05
@NapoleonWilson If it's what they want, they're being awfully slow about implementation.
Admittedly, I skipped the introductions.
@Gallifreyan I do, most of the time, because spoilers. They're usually better for people who are rereading the stories.
This one, cleverly, was included at the end :)
But I'm reading The Norse Myths right now, and I've read both the introduction, and the notes after the each myth.
@Catija Well, it's all across meta that they hate migration, though.
@Gallifreyan I read the introduction also. I wasn't as concerned about spoiling Norse myths as I am about spoiling the Sandman stories.
21:09
I'm concerned that my copy of Gaiman's Norse Mythology hasn't arrived yet.
Did you know "connexion" is a real word? I didn't. At first I thought it was a typo, but then he continued using it throughout the book.
@Gallifreyan I knew it was an archaic spelling. I didn't realize that it was still being used
Well, it's a somewhat old book.
@Shokhet ...looks like all of them. From the original announcement: "Doctor Endless pulls their look and powers from the Sandman’s Endless characters," -- characters, plural? I'm not really sure.
The coat looks like Delirium. Genderfluid + the face means Desire. Makeup looks like Death's. Don't know where the rest are, though.
Gotta check that one.
@Gallifreyan I noted before that the haircut looks like Delirium, as well.
@Gallifreyan Which sister would that be? Death, Delirium? Desire?
(too distant and blurry to tell?)
21:22
@Shokhet That's Killer Frost. I don't see why he calls her sister.
@Gallifreyan Oh, I didn't know that.
I don't think I've ever seen Killer Frost in comics, but I know who she is in The Flash TV series.
21:32
Dammit, I can't seem to find this panel.
@Shokhet She's mainly a Batman/Suicide Squad figure, from what I know.
@Gallifreyan Interesting. I thought she must have belonged to the Flash because of the TV show.
That too, but that Flash show seems to have thrown a bit of everything in.
I see.
Should probably read some Flash comics at some point or another. I kinda like the character, and the powers.
That news site cited the wrong issue. They said it's Justice League Rebirth #1, while it's Justice League of America Rebirth #1
21:49
0
Q: How not to publicise SE Literature

Araucaria A random excerpt from Ezra Pound's war speeches AXIOM. Against an organized force of four or more, probably EIGHT million, a hundred individuals can NOT prevail until ORGANIZED. The sporadic efforts of a few excited young men are no use. The dilettante velleities of a few the...

 
1 hour later…
23:13
@Librarian Oops :-/
user15026
@Randal'Thor Good on you for fixing it, and for your gracious response to the meta post in general :)
Thanks :-)
23:28
FYI a lot of authors are racist or Nazi sympathisers
Knut Hamsun is another figure who's well-regarded as an author but was also a Nazi sympathiser.
Though how much of the latter was an act to appease the occupiers in Norway, I dunno.
@Hamlet Anything special about authors? Or is it just that a lot of people are?
Authors, of course, being people who have more of a platform than most to promote their views.

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