The Reading Room

1:02 AM

@verbose Here is another crazy theory: MAGA Conspiracy Theory Suggests Donald Trump And Joe Biden Are Doing Face/Off.

1:18 AM

@b_jonas Will that depend on what hemisphere you're in? Like, if it's December and I'm in New Zealand, will my question get ten rep per upvote? Or perhaps it depends on where the upvote is—in December, an upvote from NZ counts for ten rep but one from CA five rep?

@Tsundoku Oh I had read that one a few days ago. (Not the story, but the post on Parler)

I don't understand why this answer to the Myrmidon question is attracting downvotes. I get that the Achilles/Patroclus stuff is irrelevant, but the first sentence does answer the question completely, I thought. Not descended from ants == not a myrmidon.

Full disclosure, Valerie is a friend and I asked her to take a look at the question. (I didn't know what her answer would be, and found out only upon reading it.)

Could one of the mods move the Achilles/Patroclus stuff to a comment on the question? It's clearly meant in response to @Randal'Thor's comment on the question.

bobble

... you could flag it?

Tsundoku

@verbose I don't think we can move part of an answer to a comment.

bobble

Using a custom mod flag, or just a plain NAA (though NAA might get it deleted through the VLQ queue)

verbose

@Tsundoku oh okay. Thanks for clarifying

Tsundoku

As the asker, I think the first sentence of this reply fully answers the question. By definition myrmidon requires a descent from ants, and Ant-Man isn’t so descended. I agree that the second paragraph is irrelevant and should be in a comment to the q rather than in the answer, but I don’t get the downvotes; the answer does satisfy me. — verbose 4 hours ago

verbose

1:30 AM

@bobble Except, I do think it's an answer

Tsundoku

^ That comment seems to overrule any "not-an-answer" flags...

bobble

then custom mod flag, I hadn't checked up on the context

also, I feel a bit guilty about the rep for the Good Omens interview question, now that I've found the cross-site duplicate.

verbose

@Tsundoku do you mean as a technical limitation, or do you mean as a matter of policy?

Tsundoku

@verbose It's a technical matter. We can convert an entire answer to a comment, which results in a deletion of the original answer. I am not aware of a mechanism to convert part of an answer to a comment. Let alone creating a comment that looks like it was written by another user.

verbose

Thanks. I'll ask Valerie if she's interested enough to revise as needed. (She doesn't have an account here or anywhere on SE AFAIK)

@bobble I'd not worry about it. Different sites have different audiences, and asking a q on one site might yield an answer when there isn't one on the other site. Case in point, this Petrarch question was cross-posted to both Music and Lit SE.

b_jonas

1:39 AM

@verbose Hmm.

Tsundoku

For the Star Wars fans: twitter.com/DanielNewman/status/1352843844090474496

bobble

> This is not available to you

granted I don't have a Twitter account

Tsundoku

@bobble Can you see the image at pbs.twimg.com/media/EsZEThwXMAcnt_o?format=jpg&name=small

bobble

a bit blurrily, but yes

Tsundoku

It is a bit blurry for me as well.

bobble

6:00 AM

@Bookworm HNQ, as expected

Rand al'Thor

@verbose I downvoted it and flagged it as Not An Answer, per my comment. Saying Ant-Man isn't descended from ants doesn't imply that his creators never took any inspiration from Myrmidons. Two things don't have to be identical in all respects for one of them to be inspired by the other. The whole thing, IMO, should be a comment rather than an answer.

Also, we can convert part of an answer to a comment, but it requires a bit of editing. Convert answer to comment, edit comment to be only the second half, edit answer to be only the first half. I've used that kind of trick sometimes to convert an answer to a series of comments rather than just one.

verbose

6:28 AM

@Randal'Thor The question header is "Is Ant-Man a Myrmidon?" If the answer is categorically no, then the rest is irrelevant. Because if he isn't, the stuff about whether the story lines were inspired by Myrmidons doesn't matter. Those story lines would be ways to underscore that Ant-Man was a Myrmidon, which (as the answer rightly points out), he isn't.

Rand al'Thor

What does it mean to ask if Ant-Man is a Myrmidon, though? He exists in a different "universe" / collection of literature from the Myrmidons.

verbose

Fair enough. In which case, the question itself could be answered with, "He's not a Myrmidon because that doesn't apply to this universe." Or "Well, a case can be made that he is a Myrmidon because these story lines / plot elements clearly are meant to recall the Greek and Roman myths." But those are alternative answers to the question; I don't see why "He's not a Myrmidon because by definition, Myrmidons are descendants of ants and he isn't one" is not just as valid as either of those.

So why is it NAA?

Rand al'Thor

6:43 AM

Hmm. I guess I assumed the real question is about inspiration, since "Is Ant-Man a Myrmidon" makes a good headline but can't really be answered without defining what it means to be a Myrmidon (do all aspects of the ancient Greek Myrmidons have to apply?) and isn't such an interesting question (checking whether a list of criteria apply to Ant-Man, or glibly answering "no because that doesn't apply to this universe").

To me it seems like saying Animal Farm isn't about the Russian Revolution because Lenin and Stalin were humans not pigs.

But you're the OP, so you know better what you were asking.

I can still do the convert/edit trick to transport the Patroclus parenthetical to a comment, and leave only the direct answer part in the answer.

verbose

@Randal'Thor well as you know from some of my answers, I'm a huge fan of reframing questions so that I answer the question I want to answer rather than simply tackling the question as asked. So sure, the question could be taken in any number of ways, some glib and some more complex. That said, I'm actually fine with the answer "nope, myrmidons have to be descended from ants."

If someone comes back with "Despite the fact that he isn't descended from ants, his story clearly evokes the same sort of tropes as evinced here, here, and here, and/or the creators mentioned this in this interview", that's a great answer too.

@Randal'Thor That would actually be super cool, because I think Valerie just didn't know that this isn't a forum and that discussions of extraneous matter doesn't belong in an answer. I'ven't spoken to her about the answer yet ... I plan to.

Gallifreyan

7:00 AM

@Bookworm I could've sworn I've watched an interview where Gaiman talks about that interview, or maybe both Pratchett and Gaiman

Or maybe in a preface to a printed version, but I don't own one at the moment

Never the interview itself, though

Rand al'Thor

@verbose Done. I had to edit the Patroclus part slightly (remove one of the sub-parentheticals and some quote marks) just to make it fit into the comment character limit. Hope she won't mind.

verbose

7:18 AM

@Randal'Thor Thanks! She's cool, she won't mind.

Gallifreyan

@Randal'Thor here's Gaiman talking about that bit: youtu.be/CPBetz7p3fQ?t=1503 (starts at 25:03)

Rand al'Thor

8:08 AM

@Gallifreyan Well, that gives us a month, a location, and a host. "February 1990, New York, ABC affiliate radio station" - assuming their memories are reliable.

It's all in the SFF question already though, and nobody there managed to find a transcript or recording.

Rand al'Thor

12:23 PM

@verbose Fantastic answer, as always. I have nothing else to say or add/suggest in a comment, so my appreciation in chat this time.

verbose

As always, you're too sweet to me, Randolph. Glad you liked it! It took me aeons to write for some reason. Like, three weeks or so.

Rand al'Thor

Oh, is that the one you mentioned back there?

I hope your mental state is better now that the transfer of power has officially happened over there.

Fun video of the day: What If English Were Phonetically Consistent? - makes an obvious point, but very much worth listening all the way to the end; you'll see why.

verbose

@Randal'Thor Aye, indeed, 'tis the very one.

@Randal'Thor Thanks!

@Randal'Thor very droll

Bookworm

5:16 PM

0

Q: What literary term/device is used when a character in a novel represents the author?

I'm reading a novel called Persepolis for my English course, and it's about a girl named Marji that grows up during the 1979 Revolution. The author's intention with the novel is to break Western stereotypes of Iran and to show what it was like growing up during that time period. Marji is a fictio...

Eng Lit Learner

6:28 PM

-1

Q: Can we write the part in bold like I wrote?

All this – the house and the remnants of the pasture land, the seashore below the pale clay cliffs, the walk along it to the fishing village of Kilauran, the avenue over which the high branches of the chestnut trees now met – was as much part of Everard Gault as the features of his face were, th...

sentence-meaning interpretation literature

Bookworm

7:50 PM

0

Q: The grammatical function of "Nor" without "Neither" or "Not" in poetry

I've seen a number of examples of poetry, where "nor" appears without a preceding negative. In these examples, I'm unsure of whether I'm meant to understand the sentence as: "neither" is elided, so it's really a hidden "(neither) ... nor" sentence "nor" is an abbreviation for "and not", so the f...

poetry

bobble

9:36 PM

I'm so close to rep capping here, I want to badly

bobble

9:54 PM

WOOHOO Motorboard badge!

Bookworm

10:24 PM

0

Q: Gutensberg's press by different design

Could Gutenberg have used a different medium to make his printing press besides a wine press? It just makes some sense to me because there has to have other devices that could have done the job of inspiring him.

publishing

Tsundoku

10:44 PM

@bobble Congratulations :-) It's not so easy to reach rep cap on Lit SE.

bobble

11:39 PM

since I repcapped I got +20 less than I would've, so far

oh well

i already got a lot

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