English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

> 4 A consoante designada doravante por /ʁ/ tem uma variedade de realizações, dependendo do dialeto. No Brasil, este som pode ser velar, uvular, alveolar ou glotal, e pode ser surdo a menos que esteja colocado entre consoantes sonoras,3 embora seja costumeiramente pronunciado como uma fricativa velar surda ([x]), uma fricativa glotal surda ([h]), uma fricativa uvular surda ([χ]) ou uma vibrante múltipla alveolar ([r]). Na Europa, suas mais frequentes realizações são a fricativa uvular sonora ([ʁ]), a vibrante múltipla uvular ([ʀ]) e o vibrante múltipla alveolar ([r]).6 Ver também R gutural.

Cerberus

Gens can mean many things.

tchrist

A gentilic is a demonym.

Cerberus

12:04 AM

In English?

tchrist

I believe English we speaking were.

gentilic

Adjective: gentilic (not comparable)

Tribal or national.

Noun: gentilic (plural gentilics)

A personal name derived from a place name.
A demonym.

Cerberus

> †a. Heathen, pagan (obs.). b. Tribal, national.

This is all the OED has.

A recent word?

tchrist

Oh well. It is a normal word. Ask JBJ.

@Cerberus Don’t think so.

Alfacinha

A origem do termo alfacinha para designar os naturais de Lisboa não está clara etimologicamente. A sua primeira referência clara surge em meado do século XIX, na obra "Viagens na Minha Terra" (1846): "Pois ficareis alfacinhas para sempre, cuidando que todas as praças deste mundo são como a do Terreiro do Paço…" Mesmo assim os naturais de Lisboa também são conhecidos como "Saloios". Segundo uma explicação, o termo advém do facto de na região da cidade de Lisboa a alface ser uma planta abundante, e dada a origem árabe da palavra, ter sido cultivada em larga escala durante o período muçulmano. Esta...

gentilicio

Adjective: gentilīciō

dative masculine singular of gentilīcius

Noun: gentilicio m (plural gentilicios)

demonym

Gentilicio

El adjetivo gentilicio, también llamado a veces demónimo, es aquel que «denota la procedencia geográfica de las personas», ya sea por barrio, pueblo, ciudad, región, entidad política, provincia, país o cualquier otro lugar. El adjetivo gentilicio se puede sustantivar, es decir, se puede referir a una persona mencionándola únicamente por su gentilicio y así se puede decir correctamente el bruneano (en lugar de decir: el individuo bruneano), la francesa, etc. Los gentilicios ordinarios del idioma castellano o español se forman con una variedad de sufijos: -a, -aco, -aíno, -án, -ano, -ar, -ario, ...

Hm.

In any event, it is an old word, old as the Capitol.

Cerberus

Right, so in Latin it is just "of a gens".

tchrist

Demonym

A demonym /ˈdɛmənɪm/ is a name given to natives or residents of a place. Traditionally, the term used was gentilic, though this term is now not widely used. A demonym is usually, but not always, derived from the name of a place. For example, the demonym for the people of Canada is Canadian; the demonym for the people of Finland is Finn; the demonym for the people of Germany is German; the demonym for the people of Switzerland is Swiss; the demonym for the people of the Netherlands is Dutch. Some locations have double forms; for example, the demonym for the people of Britain can be either British...

Cerberus

12:11 AM

And gens is vague.

tchrist

> Traditionally, the term used was gentilic, though this term is now not widely used.

Cerberus

I know demonym.

tchrist

You knew demonym.

Now you know gentilic.

It is traditional.

Cerberus

@tchrist Then why doesn't the OED know it?

tchrist

I knew you would appreciate that.

@Cerberus ¡Yo qué sé?

Cerberus

12:12 AM

It doesn't mention a noun gentilic.

tchrist

@Cerberus Write them.

And yes, both ¡...? and ¿...! are permissible.

Cerberus

Noted.

It appears from the question about the ions that the existing words are at best inconsistent.

Sedenion, but Trigintaduonion?

tchrist

Shocking.

Ick.

Cerberus

What is that supposed to be?

tchrist

Ni puta idea.

Cerberus

12:16 AM

The Romans would never invent such overlong words.

tchrist

People are silly.

I shall be seeking out the bubos this evening.

As that is easier to say than strigisomething.

Cerberus

Good luck.

0

A: What comes after the ducentiquinquagintasexions?

I'm afraid the words you mention were already formed incorrectly and inconsistently. I see some were formed from distributive numbers + an unknown suffix -ion (like quaternion). Others were formed from cardinal numbers + -nion (like trigintaduonions) Others again were formed from something tha...

Am I too harsh?

tchrist

12:41 AM

Nope.

Cerberus

Well, well, well.

Looks like the LSE is/was occupied as well.

And we got statements of support from Lincoln, Jena.

I also heard something about an occupation in Oxford?

And something in Toronto?

All respectable places.

Noam Chomsky already pledged his support weeks ago, of course.

Robusto

1:21 AM

@Cerberus LSE?

This is like asking "Which is better to say, knife or fork?" Both are exactly the right word, depending on what you mean to say. — Robusto 13 secs ago

They say these things because they mean to say "Go down this road" or "Go down this corridor." — Robusto 8 secs ago

My new zero-tolerance policy.

Cerberus

1:45 AM

The London School of Economics.

Have you reached 100K?

Now you're all snarky with people? Oh, wait...

You have!

Nice number.

Looks good on ya.

tchrist

4:38 AM

Luscus is the Latin word for a one-eyed person. There is no English word. — John Lawler 25 mins ago

Robusto

9:20 AM

@Cerberus Thank ye.

RegDwigнt

11:00 AM

@Cerberus and in today's issue of Russia beats America:

Yo dawg.

Mitch

12:38 PM

@Europeans - did you see the eclipse? how was it?

RegDwigнt

I saw it. It was meh.

The last one was better. It was actually dark, you know.

Today, you barely noticed anything until someone told you, hey yo, teh sun's half gone.

The thing is so friggin bright, it can be nine tenths gone and you still go blind.

tchrist

1:02 PM

Logarithmic response doesn’t help there.

RegDwigнt

Instead I recommend logarithm and blues. Or L&B for short.

tchrist

I have no oomph to answer the latest question on our meta. Who’s going to tell him it’s because most of the questions, including his, are crap?

L*a*b is a color space.

Big L.

RegDwigнt

If you put a mat in your lab, you get a matlab.

If you put a big MAT in your LAB, you get MATLAB.

tchrist

I had the impression that @MattE.Эллен was normal sized at most. Where do I get a big Mat from?

terdon

@tchrist MatDonald's

RegDwigнt

1:17 PM

@tchrist be my guest.

I don't know that we can reliably, or even speculatively, answer this. All votes are private, so you will have to ask every user individually. There's only one person we know of that goes around downvoting a lot. (And even for him, the focus lies on answers, not questions.) So at the end of the day we can only establish this: 1) the hive mind finds the average question on ELU more crap than the average question on Biology and 2) not that there's anything wrong with that. For starters, I don't know how many people on Biology can spell "biology", but not many people here can spell "English". — RegDwigнt ♦ 16 secs ago

tchrist

Most of my recent downvoting has been kicking off the roomba.

It doesn’t apply to this guy.

I cannot speak for Kris. :)

I did find the fellow’s referenced question hard to read.

And pointless.

yet-another-stupid-and-pointless-single-yes-single-only-did-you-hear-me-i-want-no-hyphens-nor-apostrophes-word-request-please-right-now-just-because-why-are-you-downvoting-me

RegDwigнt

Also, it was only earlier today that I came across a blatantly off-topic question that was not even a question but a rant, and it had 3 upvotes. So perhaps the solution is for people to post more rants. — RegDwigнt ♦ 24 secs ago

tchrist

I voted 70 times yesterday. I’ll leave it to your algebraic skills to figure how many of those have to have been downvotes. :)

Where yesterday=yesterGMTday

RegDwigнt

OVER 9000?

tchrist

Good guess.

RegDwigнt

1:23 PM

It was educated. blushes

tchrist

Nadie dijo nunca que fueses maleducado.

Ni jamás. :)

RegDwigнt

Jamás? The terrorist one?

tchrist

That is how they spell it, IIRC.

RegDwigнt

Jilárious.

tchrist

Tells you something about how soon they’ll achieve their goals.

RegDwigнt

1:26 PM

Jarjar.

tchrist

Nominative determinism.

I just remembered that the answer to Mari-Lou’s question is tuerto.

Close ally of tortuous, but with completely different meaning.

RegDwigнt

Tuerto rico.

The tuerto is a lie.

terdon

@tchrist @RegDwigнt I know that user from biology.se where his contributions are excellent. I'm posting an answer explaining i) our site's scope and how it differs from ell and ii) the general dislike of single word requests.

RegDwigнt

@terdon ah that's very good. Thank you.

Personally, I am not sure why people take a single (a single!) downvote so personally.

tchrist

And Italian has torto, but there it has the expected meaning of twisted. Spanish tuerto is one-eyed only to my knowledge. Cattivi amici.

RegDwigнt

1:31 PM

After all, this is a question-and-answer site, not a question-and-upvote site.

People, supposedly, come here for answers worth something, not imaginary internet points worth nothing.

tchrist

They don’t imagine internet points worth nothing. They imagine them worth a chest to pin them on.

RegDwigнt

In fact it would seem to me that the people that are downvoted the most actually care the least. They do not care if their question is sitting at -1000, or as closed as off-topic, as long as someone answers it.

And of course the people that get a ton of upvotes for nothing don't complain either.

So there's really only this gray area in the middle, where someone gets a single downvote (or just a single upvote rather than six), and it's the end of the world for them.

tchrist

@terdon What is the connection between cojo and cojonudo? :)

Mitch

@RegDwigнt I've never been impressed by eclipses (thwy never line up just right, so whenever I'm checking it out at the place I am it's always partial or cloudy or near dawn or over in 5 seconds.

RegDwigнt

@tchrist One is naked, the other one could or couldn't be dressed. I will leave it as an excercise to you to find out which is which.

tchrist

1:36 PM

That’s amusing.

RegDwigнt

@Mitch I will impress you by an eclipse in just a sec.

Hold on just a sec.

klaus Nomi - Total Eclipse

►

Mitch

What would impress me if I could have a button that no one else has, that I can flick on and off. Like whenever anyone says the unknown code word, flick it off or on. That would be impressive.

Stupid eclipses

tchrist

Aja! Cojo is unrelated to cojón after all!

Mitch

@RegDwigнt That guy looks like he needs some sun.

tchrist

Cojo < L. coxus but cojónes < L. coleus. I never knew the plants had balls.

Lame.

RegDwigнt

1:38 PM

@Mitch which is not unusual in the circumstances of a total eclipse.

So if inflammable is flammable, is desnudo nudo?

Latin really never cared for making sense now, did it.

Mitch

@RegDwigнt He travels from country to country experiencing everyone's eclipses.

RegDwigнt

Someone's gotta do it.

Mitch

It's self-serving. He does it to preserve his youthful by deathly complexion.

terdon

@tchrist Pues, es que alguien le cojió el cojon. Obvio.

RegDwigнt

En Barcelona hay una fábrica de coches.

tchrist

1:43 PM

I was waiting for a lame pun.

terdon

O bien que lo que le dejo cojo fue un golpe pero muy fuerte.

@tchrist That was a lame pun! I even used the other meaning of cojo!

tchrist

I knew I wouldn’t have to wait long.

RegDwigнt

En Barcelona hay un chiste cojo.

tchrist

@terdon Yes, exactly. It was what they call in standup a straight line.

Well, or burlesque.

RegDwigнt

So. Back on-topic: are cojo and coche related now or what.

terdon

1:48 PM

@RegDwigнt I don't think so. According to RAE, coche comes from the Hungarian (of all things) kocsi while cojo from the Latin coxus.

lema.rae.es/drae/?val=coche

lema.rae.es/drae/?val=cojo

tchrist

coucher

couchette

RegDwigнt

That wasn't a sirius black question, but thanks nonetheless.

tchrist

courgettes

RegDwigнt

@tchrist voulez-vous cojer avec moi ce soir.

tchrist

zukes

GADZOOKS!

RegDwigнt

2:30 PM

The word is author. And Armen said so in the very first comment. Why is everyone after him falling over themselves trying to reinvent the bicycle? It is author. "Please provide the author of the quote." Not sayer, not orator, not speaker. It is author. And nobody at all will take that to mean "please provide a URL". So simple. Come on. — RegDwigнt ♦ 2 mins ago

Cerberus

3:42 PM

@RegDwigнt Brilliant!

But isn't Marriott American?

terdon

I'd probably use source of the quote if the quote was spoken but author is indeed the simplest.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@terdon ngrams for "* of the quote" shows both source and author as possibilities.

source being more common.

terdon

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yeah but we can't break that down and separate utterances from written quotes.

And Kris suggested utterer? Seriously?

Andrew Leach

An utterer is a distributor of counterfeit currency.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I strongly dislike the use of utter (and its other forms) to refer to writing.

> In summary, the word author cannot mean "the originator of an utterance," although it does not exclude such an instance.

What is Kris saying here?

Is it saying "A cannot be X, although it does not exclude X"?

Andrew Leach

3:54 PM

Yes. He's saying that author isn't right, but it might be.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

so... it cannot be right, but it might be right.

terdon

That's helpful.

As usual.

Andrew Leach

1

Q: Something that is impossible but has happened

I would like to know if anyone knows the word for something that should be impossible but has happened. An example is the Big Bang Theory. It shouldn't have been possible but something happened for us to exist.

Much the same.

terdon

What's wrong with unlikely? Or, in a pinch, very unlikely?

Andrew Leach

Feel free to write an answer :-)

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

4:05 PM

I was watching a TV show about a time-traveller from the future stuck in the present. She is acting as a cop and provides future memories of details of the case to her non-time-traveller partner. He accuses her of being in league with the bad guys or of doing illegal things to gain intel or of keeping secrets from him. So she says "I confess. I'm a time traveller." He storms off ("Do you think I'm stupid?") but later forgives her: "When you rule out the impossible, whatever remains must be true"

It was such a facepalm moment. He ruled out "in league with bad guys" as impossible but "time traveller" was just "not likely".

Matt E. Эллен

"one is against the laws of physics, the other requires you to be able to convince me a of a lie."

I know which one I'd pick! always root ( or is that route?) for the underdog :D

terdon

@AndrewLeach Fair enough, done.

@tchrist if you have a second, is there any reason to explicitly close a file handle opened with open(my $fh, "<","file.txt); while (<$fh>){ stuff...}? I think there is but I'm not sure what.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

4:29 PM

@terdon I'm going to say that it's a good practice to close things when you're done using them, in case your code ends up as part of a larger thing that expects to do more than you expected. E.g. your function might end up as part of a larger app that reads many fields and you could run out of file handles.

But the perl interpreter closes file handles when the script ends, from what I can see.

terdon

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Point, but theoretically, the new(ish) open function in Perl deals with these things automoagically. It's supposed to close things as soon as they go out of scope.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@terdon Ah. dunno about that. I'm just annoyed with past devs who worked on the code I maintain, who relied on automatic db cleanup code to handle closing their statements and whatnot. It means their resources were kept around too long, which was fine in normal use but terrible if you ever called the commands in a loop in a single db transaction.

terdon

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 And I just found this at the very end of Perl's open documentation so there goes my argument:

> WARNING: The previous example has a bug because the automatic
close that happens when the refcount on "handle" reaches zero
does not properly detect and report failures. Always close the
handle yourself and inspect the return value.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

ugh.

why not fix the automatic close thing?

either thing thing can be closed, in which case, close it automatically. or it can't be closed, in which case... what is checking the return value going to do?

terdon

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Kinda goes over my head. I think they figure it's OK for simple things but not for more complex ones.

RegDwigнt

4:38 PM

@Cerberus that's the whole point, innit. Mariott may be American, but only in Sochi will they get this... um... thing.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

"Here is a feature which does things for you. Here is code which relies on that feature. Warning: the code has a bug because the feature is broken. Always manually do the automatic thing, even though you can't really do any better yourself." starts loading shells into the shotgun

RegDwigнt

But I must be commuting.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@RegDwigнt Got an elves set yesterday. It's got great new part/colour combos!

terdon

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Nah, not quite as bad as that :)

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@terdon where did you find this text? The doc I found words it much more gently, saying just "it's better" to manually close.

terdon

4:51 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 At the bottom of perldoc -f open

Also here: search.cpan.org/~tonyc/perl-5.17.2/pod/perlfunc.pod

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

This is where I looked

yeah. So those 5.17 docs make me want to load a shotgun. They are saying that you should never use the feature they've provided, yet don't adequately explain why not. If you go to the close() page, you don't find a good description of the possible errors or what you should do about them.

"sometimes it doesn't work" is what they're essentially saying.

Anyway from what I can see in the docs, the automatic close should be fine, assuming it works as well as they imply. The fact that close() can fail seems unimportant for input files; what are you going to do about it anyway?

Matt E. Эллен

log it and tell a sysadmin

tchrist

5:15 PM

@terdon So you know whether you had an I/O error on the read, including a lost network connection.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 This is being addressed.

Maybe.

Cerberus

@RegDwigнt Russia and America had a baby, and it looks like this.

tchrist

Sarah Palin.

Cerberus

Haha.

She should go live in Sochi!

I have added duceniquinquagenisexions to my answer because the OP wanted them so badly...

tchrist

5:38 PM

I prefer spaces. :(

du ceni quinqua genisex ions :)

Cerberus

Hah.

Meanie!

Mitch

I prefer a bag of letters. That way I can make up my own words. Down with the Author!

Up with Scrabble!

I hate it when people hear what they expect to hear rather than what you're saying.

I'm just sayin!

There's gotta be a Schopenauer quote about that

tchrist

5:57 PM

I note that duceniquinquagenisexions scores 53 in Scrabble not counting double- or triple-whatever squares. Which, actually, is going to be hard to do. :)

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

6:17 PM

it's tricky to make a word longer than 15 letters on a typical board :p

tchrist

Oh, we always play with wrap-around-the-edges rules. :)

terdon

@tchrist Ah, good point, thanks.

tchrist

I guess the CMs are not friendly this week. :(

7

Q: Request for aggregate data regarding deleted questions with subjects containing CORRECT, GRAMMA, or RIGHT

This support request will require the assistance of a Stack Exchange employee, probably a kindly Community Manager. As shown at the bottom of this answer, I present some SEDE results on just how many non-deleted questions’ titles contain any of “correct”, “gramma”, or “right”. I used queries lik...

discussion support deleted-questions blacklisted-keywords

If anyone hasn’t upvoted the request for data, purdy please?

(Actually, I know they are busy.)

Not unfriendly or unkind.

But it’s funnier the other way.

I also updated my list of crapola.

5

A: "Are these sentences correct?"—Is a title like this enough reason to close a question?

Summary After looking into this in some detail, I now strongly believe in the following proposition Resolved: The words “correct” and “grammatical” should both be forbidden in question titles. Actually, just the strings correct and gramma would be better, not full words. They are almost a...

I’ve been watching the Roomba purgings and adding the ones that apply.

Now, I don’t know for sure we ought to do that.

It might not be a good idea.

But without aggregate info on what's been deleted, we really can't ponder it from an evidence-supported vantage point.

I am just such a purple square.

tchrist

7:06 PM

> Note also that in Latin some words have two alternative forms, like triceni/trigeni "thirty each"; I have used the commonest alternative in each case.

@Cerb Ahem. :)

Or more common.

Not *most.

Jez

methinks kit is on holiday

or has left stackexchange

shame

tchrist

Please don’t be silly.

Thrice over.

Jez

well where is she

tchrist

If she were on holiday, I certainly hope she wouldn’t be attending to her volunteer duties as a moderatrix, whose attentions she has not forgone.

Where she is is her business.

But she is not not here.

Jez

wow

(doge style)

being a mod on here is a bit like being a supreme court justice, isn't it? you're one for life

Robusto

7:23 PM

@Matt or @Reg or @AndrewLeach: OP wants to delete own question.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Jez She doesn't chat much anymore.

Cerberus

@tchrist Yes, I added two later, but some numbers have more than one alternative.

"Twenty-eight each" could be duodetrigeni, duodetriceni, deni octoni...

I will make it "two or more", then.

P.S. I try to use commoner and commonest whenever I think of it.

Andrew Leach

7:46 PM

@Robusto Done (no votes to consider).

Andrew Leach

8:00 PM

I think there's a minimum time limt before self-deletion can occur.

Robusto

8:20 PM

@AndrewLeach I wasn't sure if it was a dupe or not, but apparently the OP thought it was.

Jez

9:02 PM

Hmm.

I'm wanting to join a Critters (critique.org) workshop, but I'm stuck at a relatively early hurdle: I'm not sure how to classify my story!

SF/Fantasy/Horror?

Mainstream and literary fiction?

Mystery, Thriller, and Adventure writing?

Cerberus

Probably all of those.

Will there be any interesting future technologies in your story?

Jez

did you read the first chapter?

i haven't decided yet. maybe.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Just classify what's being critiqued so far. Is it thrilling? mysterious? Fantastic? etc.

Jez

9:19 PM

all of the above

lol

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

then try to figure out what surprises the audience least. Will mystery readers be annoyed by magic? if you think so, choose fantasy over mystery. etc.

Andrew Leach

@Robusto No idea. Actually, the OP could have deleted it if he registered his account. So I advised him to do that for his second flagged request.

Jez

9:37 PM

actually, looking at that Critters website, it's pretty ramshackle

reminds me of something from 1995

the forums are broken, broken links, out-of-date information, dodgy design, no HTTPS for password,s creaky .cgi forms mixed with PHP, e-mail, newsgroups, forums

quelle bordel

Cerberus

@Jez I did. The setting was decidedly futuristic, so SF, but I don't remember seeing any actually new technologies yet.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Wise.

@Jez Hey, don't be too critical of their infrastructure: it's the content that counts.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus We need a directed graph for what genres allow other genres.

Jez

@Cerberus that's not so impressive either. the forums have cobwebs and the email i got sent was a total mess and hard to read

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Haha that would be fun.

Jez

@Cerberus see I'd have said it was a mystery, given that the plan is to have a bit of a surprise moment at the end

but it has sci-fi, adventure (probably), and fantasy

so it doesnt really fit into these narrow classifications

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

9:41 PM

@Jez from my experience, a "mystery" is usually a whodunnit

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 As a fantasy reader, I am very tolerant, except that I really wouldn't touch with a pole fantasy with elements from modern, Western life in it.

Jez

well then i guess it's not a fantasy

Cerberus

I know.

Jez

it's not really anything

Cerberus

@Jez Then I would pick SF.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

9:42 PM

@Cerberus So, a magical world where the first three books feature sword fights, but the fourth book takes place 300 years later and involves guns as well, would be off-limits?

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I have nothing at all against guns. I like guns.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus so what are "modern, Western life"?

Cerberus

As long as they're not typical guns from the 20th or 21st century.

I want no AK47s.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I'm not sure where the boundary lies.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

So I guess Harry Potter is off-limits

Cerberus

Most certainly.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

9:44 PM

Many sci-fi readers hate anything with "magic" in it.

Cerberus

Reading Narnia, I wished for the closet to but shut forever and the outside world to disappear. I hated the ordinary part sof it.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

BUT they make exceptions for things like Star Wars

Jez

i wonder whether people like J K Rowling wrote for the fun of it, or with a view to selling and making money

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I think you're right. For me, it depends on how hardcore the SF is.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Jez both, probably.

Jez

9:45 PM

i'm kind of in the middle; i'd like a decent number of people to read it

sucks to put a load of work in and very few to read it

Cerberus

If it's fairly hardcore and close to the 21st century, this SF, then I want no magic.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I haven't seen Star Wars, but it seems too much like a fairytale to me, too undeep.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus and if it's not hardcore, then the tech is probably indistinguishable from magic anyway.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes, quite possibly.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus I can't talk to you anymore.

Cerberus

Haha aww.

Well, Star Wars is kind of for children, right?

Or isn't it?

Like Harry Potter?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

9:47 PM

no, not in the same way

Cerberus

I'm sure I would like HP if I read it. But the part about where he is actually an ordinary kid yadda yadda puts me off.

Oh.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

well, he's NOT an ordinary kid.

that's sorta the point.

Jez

so, does anyone in here write fiction?

Cerberus

Of course he seems like an ordinary kid in his 20th-century, bourgeois life, but in reality he is superman.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

but HP is written in a childish way; from the start the tone and language are for young readers. But as the series progresses it gets less childish.

Cerberus

9:48 PM

So I heard.

@Jez No, but we all plan to.

Jez

hey, this place looks a bit like Critters, but with a site 100 billion times nicer: scribophile.com

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus The first chapters of the first book set up that he is more than a regular human; eventually he finds out just what, and the rest of the series is almost entirely set in the wizarding world.

@Jez I write fiction. Every tuesday at 5 UTC there is a writers chat where we do (usually) fiction exercises.

But I haven't written a novel. yet.

Kit and Matt both have, for NaNoWriMo

Jez

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 what fiction exercises?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

we have 10-minute writing exercises on random topics.

Mitch

@Jez Everything I write is based on fact.

Except fiction wouldn't be that interesting if it were totally made up.

Cerberus

9:57 PM

@Jez A nice site means superficiality...

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yeah, those first chapters I would hate.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus I don't know why you'd hate them. Do you hate all stories set in the modern era? Does it help if I tell you that the story takes place in 1992? That's a long time ago.

Jez

10:13 PM

scribophile does seem like a very active site

hopefully it will be helpful when writing a story

it has a karma system so you're likely to get good critiques when you finally get the karma to post something for critique

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Hah. I hate stories that mix ordinary life with magic.

And I hate when ordinary people are secretly heroes, it's childish.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus How do heroes become heroes if they don't start out ordinary? In any case, in the HP books HP doesn't succeed because he is some kind of superstar. Among wizards he's not any kind of amazing talent.

@Cerberus can you give me an example of a book with a hero that you liked, and one that you hated?

Cerberus

Not ordinary in that way.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Ordinary as in, someone living in a society that closely resembles our own.

If there is magic, I don't want it to be in my world.

For several reasons.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I'm not sure why that should be a show-stopper, but, whatever.

don't bother reading HP then

:p

Jez

OK question: since recently, is anyone else having the weird phenomenon that when they click away from this chatroom and then click back in, it briefly flashes black before becoming the normal colour?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

10:28 PM

but Star Wars is definitely not our world

No, i haven't seen that.

Cerberus

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I know.

@Jez Yes.

The editing box, when I was editing an answer, also had some weird kind of scrambling. It's not all the time, and it disappears when I resized the box. But it is new, just like the black flashes.

So this is some weird thing about Firefox + Stack Exchange?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

time to go. cya later

Cerberus

Bye!

Jez

10:54 PM

this takeaway pizza with juicy lamb donner kebab meat and chilli sauce and salad on it is so delicious it should be illegal!

Cerberus

11:11 PM

Yay!

tchrist