The Reading Room

North Læraðr

00:00

I would cry in the corner with a tub of ice cream except there's no ice cream left

Eddie Kal

No one seems to get the I scream joke...

It has two cross-cultural references

Ice Cream, I Scream

Ice Cream, I Scream (Turkish: Dondurmam Gaymak) is a 2006 Turkish comedy film written and directed by Yüksel Aksu and starring Turan Özdemir, the film's sole professional actor; the rest being residents of Muğla, Turkey. The film was Turkey's official submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 79th Academy Awards, but it was not nominated. == Plot == Ali, who is ice cream salesman in Muğla, tries to survive in the face of fierce competition from the big ice cream brands. While trying to promote his ice cream, he tours the village with his brand new yellow ice c...

Hyouka

Hyouka (Japanese: 氷菓, Hepburn: Hyōka, literally "frozen dessert") is a 2001 Japanese mystery novel written by Honobu Yonezawa. It is the first volume of the Classic Literature Club (古典部, Koten-bu) series. Five additional volumes have been published between 2002 and 2016. A manga adaptation drawn by Taskohna began serialization in the March 2012 issue of Kadokawa Shoten's Shōnen Ace. A 22-episode anime adaptation produced by Kyoto Animation and directed by Yasuhiro Takemoto aired from April 22 to September 16, 2012. A live-action film, Hyouka: Forbidden Secrets, directed by Mari Asato and starring...

Eddie Kal

00:15

@Mithical What I wanted to focus on earlier was reactionary voting. Maybe because of what I perceived to be reactionary voting my phrasing was a bit too sweeping. I am happy to adjust my phrasing as we go deeper in this discussion.

Bookworm

04:39

0

Q: Why the added speech in J. Huston' s 'The Dead'?

John Huston's beautifully haunting film of James Joyce' short story 'The Dead', from 'The Dubliners', is so faithfully rendered as to be almost a perfect replica in film of the story itself. But there is one speech at the dinner table which is not in the story and I've never been able to discover...

Rand al'Thor

05:54

Wow, lots of chat in here yesterday. Let's see how much I can respond to before I get dragged AFK again ...

@EddieKal I don't know much about Japanese culture, but this seems to be a massive and instant overreaction to a simple misspelling of a guy's name. I always try to spell names (or anything else) correctly, but misspelling a name doesn't necessarily imply disrespecting the person's entire culture. You seem to be reading something offensive like "who cares, it's just a foreign name" into what looks (assuming good intent and the razors of Occam and Hanlon) like a perfectly innocuous misspelling.

2

In fact, the guy's follow-up comment seems to suggest that he at least cares something about Japanese culture, even if he gets it wrong.

@EddieKal What's wrong with that? Seems like exactly the kind of question Lit SE is good for: experts in literature may be able to identify an out-of-context quote and provide proper source and context for it. We have 100 quote-identification questions many of which are based on "I found this quote floating around the internet attributed to this person".

Lack of research is not a close reason here, or on most SE sites AFAIK (ELU is an exception). It can be a reason to downvote, for sure, if a user feels that makes the question bad, but it doesn't make a question off-topic according to site policy. Meta post, but Mith already linked it.

Eddie Kal

06:16

@Randal'Thor forbes.com/sites/tanyatarr/2019/05/31/…

> A culturally appropriative situation often shows up like this: a white person or white-owned business makes a creative or product choice that is culturally offensive or exploitive. An example can be found in the naming of a sandwich at a popular British chain of stores, where the sandwich was named a biryani. Not only was the name misspelled, it wasn't even an accurate use of the name.(Biryanis are not sandwich, as chef Maunika Gowardhan points out in the article.)

insider.com/…

> Critics have accused Ariana Grande of cultural appropriation after it was revealed that her newest tattoo, which is meant to say "seven rings" in Japanese, is misspelled.

@Randal'Thor No. Absolutely not.

If I had a shred of worry that I might be assassinating someone for a typo and blowing this out of proportion, which I did, that dude helped me make it go away fast with that comment.

abc.net.au/news/2020-06-27/…

Rand al'Thor

@EddieKal I think this is the first time I've ever seen someone on SE finding comment upvotes offensive. Comments can be offensive, sure. Votes can be inappropriate, if a post is pure spam etc. But you can never be sure why someone voted, and especially comment votes are pretty much the most worthless thing in the SE framework. Maybe someone found just one part of the comment valuable. It's impossible to tell, and not worth worrying about IMO.

@NorthLæraðr How would we decide what "can" replace the title though?

Eddie Kal

I am not assassination happy, and I understand age might be a factor and the dude probably doesn't even realize what I am talking about. If only he'd be willing to listen. But I think that like really helped convince him that he was right all along.

@Randal'Thor Heard that one before

> "With Bill C-16 and surrounding legislation, it's the first time I've seen in our legislative history where people are attempting to make us speak their language,"

-- [Peterson] said at a free speech rally last week, according to U of T's student newspaper The Varsity, which first reported the video.

vice.com/en_ca/article/qbnamx/…

So a Canadian professor said that about people complaining about gender pronouns

All in all, I wasn't that upset, until. I find the until part kind of uncomfortable

Rand al'Thor

06:41

@EddieKal OK, I can answer that one since I was the person who upvoted the "OP is sleeping" comment. It was nothing to do with ideological whatever - I think I hadn't even fully read/understood the question at that point. I just thought "I’m closing this question because the question owner has not explained [...] in spite of a moderator's request to do so" was a bit unfair after just a few hours when you don't know the OP's timezone. Not everyone is on SE 24/7 like me :-P

In fact, even I'm not very present online these days, and may have to run before I even finish responding to yesterday's conversation ...

Bookworm

0

Q: Why does Tolkien barely mention the Ring in terms of Frodo's physical handling of it?

As I'm approaching the end of The Two Towers, I'm increasingly frustrated by how, other than in the very beginning of the story in the first book, we never hear a single phrase such as: Frodo immediately sat up, looking around for Gollum, realizing that Sam was still sleeping next to him, reachi...

j-r-r-tolkien the-lord-of-the-rings

Mithical

Sleep? Nobody does that anymore.

Eddie Kal

@Randal'Thor Thank you for that explanation.

I won't get into the upvotes on that "Cultural Marxism" question now, but they were there too, just for the record

Rand al'Thor

@EddieKal Again I think you're reacting too extremely. Of course some authors are unfairly weighted more than others in this site's tags - either because they're more well-known and studied in the cultures that produced much of this site's userbase, or sometimes simply because a single user was very prolific in asking questions about a particular author. But "you know something isn't right" doesn't seem like a fair reaction to a comparison of a few tags.

I always champion the underdog, so I try to help populate smaller tags, or create tags for works/cultures that haven't been represented yet here. But there's nothing wrong with asking Tolkien or Orwell questions, if that's what people are interested in. I know you're not shaming individual people for asking those questions, but nor should we shame the entire site for having such people. As you know several of us are actively working to increase the diversity of literature represented here.

Phew, think I've finally responded to the main points from yesterday.

@EddieKal OK, well as said I don't know much about Japanese culture, so I'll defer to your knowledge on this one. But bear in mind that the comment upvotes might have come from someone who knows as little as me, who saw your comment as pointless nitpicking rather than defending Japanese culture. Doesn't make that person bigoted or whatever. (To be clear, the comment upvoter wasn't me this time :-) )

Mithical

07:05

@NorthLæraðr normani

Bookworm

0

Q: What does "let me be your motivation" mean in Normani's "Motivation"?

In Normani's song "Motivation" (video slightly NSFW), there's a repeated line that goes "I'ma break you off, let me be your motivation". For instance, the first stanza / chorus goes: I'ma break you off, let me be your motivation To stay and give it tonight And, baby, turn around, let me give you...

song-lyrics normani

Bookworm

07:31

0

Q: What story is this from ? A feather chokes an opera singer to death on stage

The audience at the opera watches a feather float slowly down and spiral into the mouth of the lead soprano, and she chokes to death. I remember reading this sometime in the last decade, but don't remember when or where. I don't have any more information. I've searched Google but can't find anyth...

story-identification

Mithical

We've dropped to 4.4 QPD.

@Bookworm nytimes.com/1970/08/21/archives/…

books.google.co.il/…

b_jonas

08:15

@Randal'Thor Yeah. I just found I can't even make SE list the comments that I have upvoted on a site.

Bookworm

10:48

0

Q: Did Joyce "estimate" how many readers would understand Finnegan's Wake?

I'm pretty sure I once (a long time ago) read a Joyce quote where he said that only twelve (or was it thirteen?) readers would ever fully understand Finnegan's Wake. But I couldn't convince Google to find a source for this. Do I remember correctly or did my memory make this up?

james-joyce finnegans-wake

0

Q: Fills now my cup

In the lines of one of Rilke's poems there is this sentence: Fills now my cup, and past thought is my fulness thereof. I harden as a stone sets hard at its heart. What does "Fills now my cup" mean? In italian is traslated as "misfortune" or "misery".

meaning poetry rainer-maria-rilke

b_jonas

13:03

look out for literature.stackexchange.com/q/15574/139 , if it gets closed on Sci Fi, we'll migrate it to here

Mithical

?

b_jonas

Oh wait, that's already on Lit. Sorry, I'm stupid

Mithical

That question is currently on Literature.SE.

The Restaurant has a feed for [story-id] questions, I think, so that's why it showed up there ;)

G Dugdale

13:37

Last night I posted re the motif: a traveller finds the person s/he has come to see is dead. There were 2 negative votes on the grounds that I was seeking opinion (just wrong) or a list (pedantic). Suggestions are surely not 'a list' in the sense: 'Shakespeare's complete works'. This is fantastically self-defeating - SO is supposed to be for sharing knowledge! I would appreciate support to correct this daft situation.

Mithical

21

Q: Should recommendation questions be on-topic?

The previous incarnation of Literature SE included a lot of recommendation questions. I don't have any specific examples to hand from that site, but typical book recommendation questions might look like the following: What are some other good 19th-century romance novels, for someone who enjo...

discussion faq scope

A question asking for works which feature a certain motif both cannot be answered objectively and has a potentially unlimited number of answers, making it not a good fit for the Stack Questions & Answers format.

Napoleon Wilson

The specific motif is also quite generic. It probably happens in about every third story.

Tsundoku

14:52

@GDugdale Open-ended list questions are off-topic. When I am interested in this type of thing, I get around the list-close-reason by asking for the earliest extant example, possibly the earliest extant example in a specific literature.

b_jonas

15:13

Or, for simple stuff like this, TVTROPES WARNING search on TvTropes, and if you can't find it, ask for help on tvtropes.org/pmwiki/query.php?type=tf

North Læraðr

@GDugdale You can always just drop by chat if you want a recommendation! We're all book nerds here and would love to give suggestions. But these types of questions on the actual site are not considered appropriate here.

b_jonas

@NorthLæraðr Yes, chat can work too.

Bookworm

15:46

-1

Q: What are some instances of foreshadowing of the malovolent nature of the One Ring in the Hobbit?

Tolkien's legendary series The Lord of the Rings, is centered around a magical artifact known as the "One Ring" and part of this story recounts the tale of a Hobbit traveling to destroy this Ring. The ring was first "re-discovered", if you will, by Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit. The One Ring is sho...

j-r-r-tolkien the-hobbit

North Læraðr

Wait, but why is it downvoted

@Bookworm Is this not a perfectly legitimate question?

Whatever

Napoleon Wilson

It's an interesting question, especially since the ring being evil is more of an afterthought to what was originally just a cute childrens' book about a hobbit.

North Læraðr

The Hobbit came before Lord of the Rings right?

Napoleon Wilson

Yes.

North Læraðr

Hm. I wonder why Tolkien decided to make the ring evil

Napoleon Wilson

15:51

Well, he only spun out the bigger story later.

It's noticeable in many places that The Hobbit is really just an independent childrens' book.

North Læraðr

Huh

Is it similar to how The Adventures of Tom Bombadil is like a separate novel?

Napoleon Wilson

I don't know about these.

North Læraðr

I haven't read it, but I know it exists. @Mithical should be more familiar with this

Mithical

It's a collection of poems.

North Læraðr

Oh. Nevermind then

@Randal'Thor Hm. Perhaps the rule of thumb that GarethRees proposed: "If it has been published in its own book format...etc." Should also be a reasonable length, though that definition varies from person to person

See, the thing is though, comics seem like a useful enough tag even though keeping it would be inconsistent

I've never read Ayn Rand's works, but why/how is she so famous?

She's the second most used author tag after Shakespeare, which is a bit surprising

Mithical

16:12

@NorthLæraðr Mostly due to one user.

North Læraðr

ah...

We have a really interesting author popularity, actually. It's: Shakespeare, Ayn Rand, JRR Tolkien, George Orwell, and CS Lewis

Of all the authors that's the top five most used author tags

Kind of surprised about C.S. Lewis

Well, mostly ~~you~~, EJoshua, and Rand :P

Mithical

For what? Ayn Rand?

North Læraðr

I'm trying to think of a challenge for November-December, but I can't think of any

@Mithical CS Lewis

Maybe Pachinko?

Mithical

@EddieKal turns out there is one question on Maya Angelou but it was self-deleted for some reason. Screenshot: i.sstatic.net/3u20J.png

Rand al'Thor

@NorthLæraðr Some of our top author tags are mostly there because of one prolific asker, like Ayn Rand, Lord Byron, and GK Chesterton.

North Læraðr

16:16

@Randal'Thor Oh I see

Mithical

(I've VTUDed it.)

Napoleon Wilson

VedTUD.

Faded Giant

@NorthLæraðr Probably inspired by Germanic mythology. Already the Nibelungenlied and the Völsunga saga included evil rings.

Napoleon Wilson

Really?

Faded Giant

16:29

And not the only one who did that, if you look at Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen.

North Læraðr

@FadedGiant That counts?

I thought that's called the Ring Cycle because it's like

In a circle? I don't know

Eddie Kal

@NorthLæraðr What did I wake up to...

North Læraðr

@EddieKal Nothing really much

Faded Giant

Der Ring des Nibelungen

Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung), WWV 86, is a cycle of four German-language epic music dramas composed by Richard Wagner. The works are based loosely on characters from Norse sagas and the Nibelungenlied. The composer termed the cycle a "Bühnenfestspiel" (stage festival play), structured in three days preceded by a Vorabend ("preliminary evening"). It is often referred to as the Ring cycle, Wagner's Ring, or simply The Ring. Wagner wrote the libretto and music over the course of about twenty-six years, from 1848 to 1874. The four parts that constitute the Ring cycle are, ...

> The plot revolves around a magic ring that grants the power to rule the world, forged by the Nibelung dwarf Alberich from gold he stole from the Rhine maidens in the river Rhine.

North Læraðr

@FadedGiant Huh

Napoleon Wilson

16:32

I thought that was Wagner's invention, though.

But I don't really know that too well. I've only read the Völsunga saga ages ago.

I might have read the Nibelungenlied. Or I've just seen the Lang film. ;-)

Rand al'Thor

@NorthLæraðr I seem to recall a theory that Tolkien's One Ring was inspired by that ... or maybe by another Ring in Germanic mythology, I'm not sure. There's a question about it on Lit.

Eddie Kal

@NorthLæraðr Ayn Rand is an interesting thinker and a good point of comparison if you are familiar with Hannah Arendt

Tsundoku

@NorthLæraðr Why is Ayn Rand still a thing??

Eddie Kal

They took ideas in two very different directions

Faded Giant

@Randal'Thor Maybe Wagner and Tolkien were independently inspired by Germanic mythology. And maybe the story of both rings can be traced back to this one: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andvaranaut

Rand al'Thor

16:46

Ha, I'd forgotten it was my own question.

@EddieKal Want to edit the psychoanalysis tag into this question I just posted? It's only fair to let the system credit you for creating that tag.

Eddie Kal

@Randal'Thor Done. Appreciate it.

(Meaning "Thank you for letting me do the honors" and "I appreciate the question.")

@Mithical That's actually a very good question.

I still find one liners, um for want of a better word, wanting

An ELL habit

Rand al'Thor

17:09

@EddieKal I hope the question isn't too naive. I'm expecting some downvotes because it could probably have been solved with a little more online research, but in the spirit of embracing non-Googlers ...

I was also partly inspired by the "cultural Marxism" question: asking about a big topic when all you know is from hearsay and a Wikipedia article or two.

b_jonas

So I haven't found a good on-topicness boundary probe question for Lit, but I found one for Sci Fi.

Eddie Kal

@Randal'Thor Far from it. It is a very necessary question, I think. The only reason I haven't upvoted it is because I don't know if it is answerable in a way that'll do justice to the topic and remain relevant to Lit SE

Rand al'Thor

That's very fair. I can imagine this kind of "explain this whole theory" question being so broad that a good answer would be either book-length or a collection of links, although I'm hoping it's possible to give a good summary perhaps with links for further reading.

Eddie Kal

I am pretty sure there was an article in German that covered the relationship between psychoanalysis and literature. I may be able to find it ( and may not) but it would really put my German to test. I might need a little help from the German dudes here.

Rand al'Thor

@Tsundoku both speaks German and knows about literary theory.

Oh, looks like you ruined a neat 777 rep with that suggested edit :-)

Oh, I forgot to reply to something ...

Napoleon Wilson

17:20

Better downvote a post then. ;-)

North Læraðr

@Randal'Thor Do you still get +2 for editing posts even after having enough reps to not have to be approved?

Eddie Kal

@NorthLæraðr No you don't

North Læraðr

Huh

Darn

Napoleon Wilson

@NorthLæraðr You can't get approved if you can't make suggestions.

Rand al'Thor

@GDugdale Welcome to Literature! Your question was closed because it's asking for a list of examples, which is off-topic per the discussion Mithical linked to. The rationale is basically that such questions are too open-ended, not objectively answerable, and would attract short low-effort answers. If you get 20 answers each citing one story with that motif, how would you choose between them?

Napoleon Wilson

17:22

(And if you got +2 for plain edits, the entire site would impode.) ;-)

North Læraðr

@NapoleonWilson True. So the +2 I'm assuming is to encourage new users for making good edits

Napoleon Wilson

Probably.

There's also a limit of 1,000 in sum that you can earn through edit suggestions.

North Læraðr

@NapoleonWilson That's... a scam

Darn

And here I thought I could amass my reps from purely editing tags

b_jonas

@NorthLæraðr But by that time, you learn to not care about your reputation score smbc-comics.com/comic/stoic-genie

Rand al'Thor

@GDugdale (continued) In fact, asking for "Shakespeare's complete works" would not be an open-ended list/recommendation question, since the answer to that is a clear finite list and it would be put in a single answer. (Asking for a list of Shakespeare's works wouldn't be a good question, since the answer is so trivially findable, but it would be technically on-topic.)

You mention that SO/SE "is supposed to be for sharing knowledge" - yes, it is, but that doesn't mean that any possible question inviting the sharing of knowledge is acceptable here.

North Læraðr

17:25

@b_jonas I care less about my score and more about the privileges that come with it

Also the clout that comes with it XD

Okay not reallly. But I want to have enough rep to do stuff after this site graduates

Rand al'Thor

@GDugdale As well as Tsundoku's suggestion of asking for the first work of literature featuring a particular trope or motif, you could also make your question more well answerable (and maybe closer to what you want to know) by asking about the history and development of that motif through the history of literature. See for example the following well-received questions:

Napoleon Wilson

So...you want rep in order to do things but all you ever want to do is...edit. ;-)

Rand al'Thor

10

Q: Why did attitudes change towards tragedy?

Views on whether or not tragedy provides a fulfilling end to a work have changed over the centuries and it has slipped in and out of popularity in contemporary works of a given period. Great literary classics, such as Romeo and Juliet, have always been respected regardless of prevailing literary ...

history-of-literature tragedy

50

Q: Where did the idea of a "true name" come from?

There's a common trope in Western fantasy that, up until now, I've sort of taken for granted: the "true name." This is the idea that all things have true names that are somehow more closely linked to what the thing is, and that knowing it grants some degree of power over the thing. This has many...

history-of-literature tropes

b_jonas

@NapoleonWilson That usually doesn't matter, except on SE sites with design, because otherwise at 1000 rep score you can start to edit without review, so on Lit you could only exceed that if you lost a lot of rep to bounties or downvotes.

Napoleon Wilson

@b_jonas True.

North Læraðr

17:29

@b_jonas So I can still amass >1k rep from tag edits as long as I'm below 4k

Cool

Tag Dooku awaits!

@NapoleonWilson I mean, that's also why I've been asking questions

Though I noticed you get more upvotes from answers, but I'm normally not smart enough to answer those so....

@Tsundoku You're probably gonna have to make the psychoanalysis tag, I don't know what to put for that

Rand al'Thor

@NapoleonWilson And there's a nifty way to see how much you've earned from edit suggestions, without using Data.SE queries or any calculation or scripts. (Waiting to see if anyone else knows it ...)

North Læraðr

@Randal'Thor ! How...

Is it under that tag badge?

Copy Editor?

Or your profile page?

Mithical

/reputation, at the bottom

Rand al'Thor

@NorthLæraðr literature.stackexchange.com/reputation

North Læraðr

cool

Rand al'Thor

17:41

That page is a fun thing which few people know about. It's rare to see something on SE with so little formatting.

North Læraðr

Dang I earned 364 rep from suggested edits O_O

That's little more than a third of my rep

Holy crap

Rand al'Thor

I wonder how much @Tsundoku earned there.

He was mostly doing tag wikis for a long time before becoming a prolific poster.

Knight

yesterday, by Mithical

...it seems like there a lot of people obsessed with @NapoleonWilson for some reason I can't fathom and I'm wondering if I'm missing something.

Wow! Appreciate that.

North Læraðr

@Randal'Thor Yeah

Knight

If you’re in good mood just come to SE chat and you will be whacked

North Læraðr

17:45

@Knight ?

I don't get whacked in here

Knight

Whacked = fuc*ed

@EddieKal Hiya! Pinging you here after a time :-)

By the way, can you please share your precious first thoughts on these lines :

North Læraðr

@Randal'Thor So basically me, except he posts stuff

Knight

> Ridiculous the waste sad time \\ Stretching before and after.

North Læraðr

@Knight The first line doesn't make much grammatical sense

Knight

If you want me to post it on main site, I shall have no problem just let me know.

North Læraðr

17:48

Who is this by?

Ah. T.S. Eliot

@Knight What are you exactly asking?

Knight

I’m asking “what it means”

North Læraðr

ah

Yeah I have no idea

I read the entire last section and I'm like

w u t

"Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end."

Bookworm

1

Q: What Tolkien essentially means by "Fall, Mortality and The Machine"?

I recently started reading The Silmarillion, and came across the below passage in a letter Tolkien sent to Milton Waldman. "Anyway all this stuff is mainly concerned with Fall, Mortality, and the Machine. With Fall inevitably, and that motive occurs in several modes. With Mortality, especially as...

j-r-r-tolkien the-silmarillion tolkiens-legendarium

1

Q: How is psychoanalysis relevant to the study of literature?

I've recently seen the term "psychoanalysis" used a few times here on Literature Stack Exchange. Looking it up, I learned that it seems to be more a branch of psychology or philosophy than literature, however: In the 21st century, psychoanalytic ideas are embedded in Western culture,[vague] espe...

theory psychoanalysis

b_jonas

18:54

Well you might get the question after all, if it's closed on Sci Fi.

Rand al'Thor

@b_jonas It seems on-topic for SFF, although I don't know which site you'd be more likely to get answers on. SFF is bigger of course, but Lit probably has more people interested in ancient literature, which predates the modern concepts of "science fiction and fantasy" even though we could pigeonhole it that way.

Rand al'Thor

19:18

@Bookworm HNQ.

b_jonas

@Randal'Thor Yes, but Sci Fi is more interested in this sort of image-based multiple identification question.

Tsundoku

@Randal'Thor The bottom of my reputation page says "earned 1000 reputation from suggested edits". @NorthLæraðr How far are you off? ;-)

North Læraðr

19:33

@Tsundoku 636 reputations off :/

Or 318 edits

I will reach it :)

smiles maniacally

Tsundoku

@NorthLæraðr Down history lane: 23 March 2018. I can't remember when I reached those 1000 reps from suggested edits.

Rand al'Thor

19:55

^ that same history lane brought up some other interesting things:

3

Q: Frankenstein's Repulsion towards his Monster

Throughout the novel, Victor Frankenstein is horrified at the fact that he created his monster. However, he does not discuss any emotional or moral reservations towards the act of creating the monster and the monster itself. In fact, when he is talking with the monster in the Alps he says that ...

character-analysis frankenstein mary-shelley

Mar 23 '18 at 11:52, by Rand al'Thor

Harry Potter and the Half-Crazed Bureaucracy <--- an analysis of the dark portrayal of government in the HP series. (Hat tip to Wildcard for the pointer.)

Tsundoku

21:01

I have written the tag wiki excerpt for psychoanalysis. I have added that the tag should not be used for questions requesting a psychoanalytic interpretation, for consistency with close-reading (assuming we want to stick to that policy).

Rand al'Thor

@Tsundoku Should both tags always be used in conjunction with theory? Or does "theory" mean something more specific not necessarily covering close reading?

Tsundoku

Strictly speaking, close-reading refers to a method, not a theory. The tag psychoanalysis is currently ambiguous, since there is both psychoanalytic literary theory and psychoanalytic literary criticism. If that sounds like casuistry: theory has sometimes been accused of actually ignoring literary works... So the tag theory should only be used if the question is about, well, theory. We also have literary-criticism for that other thing.

North Læraðr

21:24

@Randal'Thor So regarding your comment, should I rephrase the question to "Was the ring's malevolent nature foreshadowed in the Hobbit" and let you answer? The question as it stands then doesn't make much sense

I assumed he did it on purpose, like Smeagol's deformed body or like idk maybe there were some other instances

But the question doesn't really make room for a "no" response

Tsundoku

@NorthLæraðr Or "How was the ring's malevolent nature foreshadowed in The Hobbit?"?

North Læraðr

@Tsundoku Ooh yeah that works too

I'll rephrase my question

Rand al'Thor

@NorthLæraðr That might be a good idea even disregarding my comment. Asking "in what ways was X done" is making an implicit assumption that X was actually done. Asking "was X done, and if so how" is a little broader, but leaves the field open to more different possible answers.

(channelling something Hamlet told me years ago)

North Læraðr

@Randal'Thor Yeah. I posted the question and something felt a bit off about how I was asking, and I think that nails it on the spot.

The question is phrased in a way that it assumed it was already there, so an answer of "no" doesn't make any sense

Okay, it's been revised, so feel free to try answering it now

Rand al'Thor

Well, an answer of "it wasn't" would still be valid to the original question, but it would have to be a bit of a frame challenge.

North Læraðr

21:31

@Randal'Thor Yeah.

Btw this question hit HNQ

Rand al'Thor

@NorthLæraðr It's a bit late for me now, but I might try having a go at it tomorrow.

North Læraðr

@Randal'Thor Sounds good. Yeah, you should get some sleep :P

Rand al'Thor

My question count is way ahead of my answer count again. I was cruising through the short-stories tag a few minutes ago looking for anything I could answer.

North Læraðr

It's bright and sunny in the afternoon here still (well, not really, because the sky's all cloudy from a fire that's happening)

Tsundoku

@Randal'Thor Yeah, I have done that too, occasionally. The easier ones have been grazed away, haven't they?

North Læraðr

21:49

@Randal'Thor Are they easy to answer?

Rand al'Thor

Not necessarily, but for lots of them it's at least easy to read the work that the question is about.

North Læraðr

Ah

Mithical

Same for song-lyrics.

North Læraðr

I mean you could do that for song-lyrics

@Mithical Sniped

Rand al'Thor

I've read several poems and short stories purely motivated by wanting to answer questions about them here.

North Læraðr

21:52

I would say the same for poetry, but idk. I think those are a mixed bag

Those tend to be bit more convoluted in my opinion

Mithical

You can often find the full text of poems at poetryfoundation.org

Rand al'Thor

@NorthLæraðr Often harder to interpret and analyse, yes.

North Læraðr

@Mithical Not the "finding poem" part, but analyzing it

North Læraðr

22:37

You know, I don't think I've been more proud of an answer than the one answered to Mith's question about Wicked. Forgive the blatant self-promotion

Funny thing, I first said "no", but then I started to look back at some of the other songs in the soundtrack so I changed my answer to "yes". :P

Mithical

@NorthLæraðr decent job I'd say

;)

North Læraðr

Har har

For the explainer badge, do you have to edit and answer the same question in order for it count?

Mithical

Yes

North Læraðr

Okay Mith... time to edit something realllll quick

Mithical

(rolls eyes)

North Læraðr

22:40

Shucks I can't edit anything though

Hmm

Haha! Discovered a typo in the lyrics...

Won't care to help myself to fix these rather egregious mistakes

Wait do you need to edit it and then answer the question?

Hold on found some typos on my question, better delete it and then repost it

jkjk

Oh my God there's like 3 different edit counts

There's the one on my profile page, 176

And then there's "revision" under "all actions" which is 199

And then there's the editors under the user page, 188

Huh? WHERE'S MY BADGE

Tsundoku

@NorthLæraðr As far as I know, the data for awarding badges are processed on a schedule, i.e. not continuously, so it can take some time before the badge is actually awarded.

"Some time" being a number of hours.

North Læraðr

22:55

@Tsundoku Okay, but I answered the question and then edited it. Does that not count for an explainer badge?

@Tsundoku I was already aware of that, I was just messing around :P

Tsundoku

@NorthLæraðr Assuming the answer has at least one net upvote, yes. (I had to look up what the explainer badge was.)

North Læraðr

@Tsundoku Okay cool.

Look at me getting excited over one badge

Tsundoku

Wait until you start working towards a tag badge...

North Læraðr

Oh dear...

Tsundoku

Mortarboard is also rather elusive here, unless you get a bounty.

North Læraðr

23:02

@Mithical Now let me just rollback those rather trivial edits because I'm totally not trying to get the "cleanup" badge....

Okay no, I won't do that :P

Tsundoku

But I'm trying to write an answer to the psycho question before going to bed, so I'm hitting the books again now ...

North Læraðr

@Tsundoku I mean you could just answer 20 questions and hope for each question gets an upvote

Or ~~you~~ could edit 100 tag wikis in one day :D

Eddie Kal

@Knight Hmm, interesting lines. My reading is here as Eliot tries to bring Burnt Norton to a conclusion, he is returning to the physical world. Everything moves (panta rhei) and living things all die

Tsundoku

@NorthLæraðr Believe me, I tried! But 100 tag wiki excerpts requires a lot of time and stamina.

North Læraðr

@Tsundoku Yeah...

Hmm I'm considering whether I should set aside a day to just grind out tag wikis....

Tsundoku

23:05

@NorthLæraðr Yeah, I mean, it's only 20 questions within a single day. Where's the challenge in that :-P

North Læraðr

@Tsundoku LiGhT wORk

Eddie Kal

@Knight Words too die away. Eventually it will all go. So the laughter of children sounds kind of cruel.

North Læraðr

The harder challenge is getting people to upvote your answers

Eddie Kal

That's why it is "sad" for Eliot.

That's the general idea.

North Læraðr

You know Rand is the only person with the Pundit badge?

Eddie Kal

23:11

@Randal'Thor That, is an interesting question, and psychoanalyzable.

Not sure OP would want Frankenstein Freudianized

@Tsundoku "psychoanalytic literary theory" and "psychoanalytic literary criticism"?

Tsundoku

@EddieKal I hope you weren't thinking that theory and criticism have a straightforward relationship with each other, let alone that they would be the same thing.

Eddie Kal

@Tsundoku I was hoping you'd say more

You know I can't normally tell them apart.

Tsundoku

@EddieKal I'll try, but not tonight. It's getting late and I'm desperately trying to finish an answer before going to bed.

Eddie Kal

Sounds good

I have been trying to write an answer to this question since it came out

2

Q: Meaning of this verse from "Someday"

So I was rereading through some of the songs from the Disney animated/live musical, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and there's a verse in "Someday" which goes, "Till then, on days when the sun is gone We'll hang on And we'll wish upon the moon" What does it mean "and we'll wish upon the moon"? An...

meaning song-lyrics alan-menken

b_jonas

@NorthLæraðr I have one on sci-fi

North Læraðr

23:31

@b_jonas Sorry, on LSE

North Læraðr

23:43

@EddieKal Lol. I'm so confused on that verse

Eddie Kal

23:54

@NorthLæraðr It's an interesting question. I'd say more if your question was about Esmeralda haha

North Læraðr

@EddieKal Ooh lah lah

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