The Reading Room - 2017-07-23

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1:35 AM

0

Q: Where to place the feet in the line "Floated midway on the waves;" of Coleridge's "Kubla Khan"

I'm currently teaching myself to scan, and I'm practicing with Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" at the moment. You can read the entire poem online. I've arrived at line 32: "Floated midway on the waves;" and I'm confused about where to place the feet. It's pretty obvious to me that the stress of the lin...

poetry samuel-coleridge scansion

2:05 AM

0

Q: What was the purpose of Sam Black Crow in American Gods?

In Neil Gaiman's novel American Gods, many of the characters Shadow encounters turn out to be somehow part of the world of the gods, even those like Low-Key Lyesmith who'd seemed innocuous. Most of those who don't had either been part of his life before prison, such as Audrey, or were people he m...

character-analysis neil-gaiman american-gods

1 hour later…

3:30 AM

@Ash Ha! I do the same thing, but much more often in real life.

There's a pretty wide range of ages in my school.

user15026

@Shokhet I assume everyone is like 25-30

@Ash I assume everyone is exactly my age (now 22), unless there's reason to assume otherwise. I've been off by 3-4 years, which matters more in college.

People assume that I'm their age also...it hasn't happened recently, but a few years ago, I got a bunch of people assuming that I was in my 40s :p

Oh! And when I started on SE, most people on Mi Yodeya assumed I was an older rabbi type, mostly because of my username :p

6 hours later…

9:31 AM

@Feeds Ooh, shiny!

2 hours later…

Napoleon Wilson

11:14 AM

@Librarian Oh, I even read that. But that was way too long ago anyway.

I wonder how this satisfies the whole obscure/non-popular thing that challenge was supposed to get going, though. Seems like quite a famous thing to me.

TIL there is a book called Feminism in the Worlds of Neil Gaiman.

11:38 AM

@NapoleonWilson the book covers a topic that we don't have any questions about yet

0

Q: What is happening in the scene with Coldmoon and the geisha?

In chapter two of I Am a Cat, we see this scene: As we turned at Hotan’s corner another geisha appeared. She was slim, well-shaped and her shoulders were most beautifully sloped. The way she wore her mauve kimono gave her a genuine elegance. “Sorry about last night, Gen-chan—I was so busy. ....

i-am-a-cat natsume-soseki

11:54 AM

0

Q: What does this 'Each that we lose takes part of us' quote from Emily Dickinson mean?

Each that we lose takes part of us; A crescent still abides, Which like the moon, some turbid night, Is summoned by the tides The drift called the infinite, on making sense of the loss -Emily Dickinson What does this mean?

meaning emily-dickinson

1 hour later…

1:01 PM

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Wake up, ~~Ciri~~ @Shokhet!

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1:42 PM

@Gallifreyan Hallo!

Nice pictures; love the Dream/Death one.

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@Gallifreyan Who's on either side of Batman in this picture?

^ Some of Jill Thompson's art (cc @Shokhet and @doppelgreener)

The Community Event for the August Topic Challenge will start showing in 10 hours. :)

@Gallifreyan Is that the Corinthian? ...y'know, it's funny that I never considered any part of his stories from his POV.

1:43 PM

@Shokhet I don't know - the right one may be Hulk or Swamp Thing. Ask Sam Kieth :D

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@Gallifreyan I was thinking Hulk, but Hulk is Marvel, right?

Same batch. Jill Thompson apparently did those for The Sandman film that was never made.

@Gallifreyan Destruction on his way out after talking to Dream and Delirium?

Very nice.

I'm sharing those because she took 2 Eisners yesterday, and I thought I should revisit her art.

I found this awesome website where collectors share arts for sale and not for sale. This gallery (spoilers from last volumes!!!!) is all about Jill's art for the film.

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@Gallifreyan Another from Brief Lives?

1:47 PM

Yep.

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Do comics that I haven't read yet (World's End and on) have more with Delirium and that dog?

Not World's End. The other two, yes. Not much, but it's nice nonetheless.

That's nice. That dog has a nice amount of character, and it's probably interesting to watch the interplay with Delirium

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That one is by Charles Vess.

@Gallifreyan Is that the flower that was your avatar a little while ago, or just standard impossibly-thin Morpheus?

1:54 PM

@Shokhet No, that one was by J. H. Williams III, from Overture. This is Vess' convention sketch, if I'm not mistaken.

Cosmic Comics 1997.

@Gallifreyan I didn't mean to ask whether it was the same picture. What I meant was whether this was an attempt at recreating that.

It kinda looks like it could be a flower on a stem, which was why I asked.

Don't think so, the years don't match.

Oh, I see. When was Overture written?

2013?

Something like that.

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^ By Shelton Bryant.

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Guess who did that one?

Not sure. Vess again?

2:09 PM

...you? :P

Guess again.

Neil Gaiman?

Yes :D

Nice :)

“Nothing is more human than a book.” ~Marilynne Robinson "Except another human ... Sometimes." ~ Me RT… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/889116987959508992

Tweeted by VeganYogaDude on July 23, 2017 at 1:36 PM

2:15 PM

I'm trying to find the author of a particular Morpheus sketch and I've looked through an outrageous amount of sketches on that website.

Have you tried Google Images search?

@Gallifreyan Is that a problem? :}

user image

I'm not complaining, but there are a lot of arts there.

11

Q: Who drew this depiction of Morpheus (from "The Sandman")?

I've been seeing this image of Morpheus - the main character of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman - quite frequently: Slight variation here and here It appears in multiple articles about the [now bust] The Sandman film; everywhere, of course, without attribution. I set out to find the author, but rev...

vertigo-comics the-sandman art

That particular picture is on almost every website about the now-bust The Sandman film, but never cites a source for it.

Hm.

Always attribute the original author, kids.

2:25 PM

I started a Google reverse image search with that image, and found a lot of results, but no attributions, yet. This image looks similar, and may be part of a set:

user image

(Found here)

The art looks similar, and there's the big white circle in the background.

@Shokhet That one looks like it came from an actual comic page.

Dringenberg or something.

@Gallifreyan That's some really beautiful art!! :D

@Shokhet That review is evil.

> Most issues in this selection are great, but there are also some that don't quite hit the mark for this reader. For instance, one of the longer chapters involves demons and fanciful creatures putting on a Victorian-era play for Morpheus for apparently no reason.

That's about Midsummer Night's Dream, I assume? Wtf?

@Gallifreyan Didn't actually read the review :)

> Two of Morpheus' nightmare creatures attempt to overthrow his throne while he is imprisoned

I lol'd.

2:32 PM

@Gallifreyan Yeah, I didn't really get that one either. Part of the problem, I assume, was that I haven't read the Shakespeare play.

> A disfigured and imprisoned Dr. Doom faces off with the king of dreams in a fight to the death

It's Dr. Destiny.

This page has attribution for the pic:

> Sandman, aka Dream aka Morpheus, as depicted in Neil Gaiman's comic series (Vertigo Comics)

“Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.” - Voltaire #amreading… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/889085321157259265

Tweeted by MyBookCushion on July 23, 2017 at 11:30 AM

Why does O'Brien claim that the party didn't believe in solipsism? https://literature.stackexchange.com/q/3046/481?stw=2

Tweeted by StackLiterature on July 23, 2017 at 2:09 PM

@Gallifreyan Heh :)

He was never depicted thusly.

@Shokhet You didn't get the review or why there is a play?

2:34 PM

@Feeds That was you, @Mithrandir, right?

@Gallifreyan I didn't really get that issue of Sandman.

@Shokhet yep

I couldn't tell what was part of the actual play, and what was Gaiman improvised, or why it made sense that Shakespeare put on that play specifically for Morpheus

@Shokhet Morpheus commissioned two plays from Shakespeare in exchange for the gift of poetry. This was the first.

But I did notice that it wasn't the demons putting on a play (mostly), which is what that reviewer described; it was actually Shakespeare's crew

He explains himself that he chose this play to commemorate the Faerie, so that they will be remembered forever.

2:37 PM

Aha. And that's why Oberon and company come to watch

This is a result from page four of the Google images search.

Exactly. There is also some interesting interplay which I only realised after reading The Sandman Companion; for instance, it's hinted that Titania and Morpheus were lovers.

@Shokhet hehe :D

Oh, that's interesting. I should probably read the Shakespeare play, and then go back to that issue afterward

(And yes, I have seen scifi.stackexchange.com/a/115020/41144 :))

This article raises an interesting point (but no image attribution). D'you think that Sandman could work as a movie, @Gallifreyan? I think Heisserer might be right, and TV might be the better medium for this series.

@Shokhet I wouldn't want to see any of the published works being adapted anywhere. New stories, on the other hand, I'd be the first to watch.

@Gallifreyan I hear that.

This isnt the place to ask a quick question about writing style right?

2:51 PM

@pingOfDoom That's Writers.

Or their chat, although that's not very active.

@Shokhet But if people who are making American Gods made a spinoff about The Sandman, I wouldn't object at all.

@Gallifreyan You might like this short review, but still no image attribution. Seriously!

@Gallifreyan There are Sandman characters in American Gods?

@Shokhet Hehe :D

I meant the creators of this show could also tackle a Sandman show, but your remark reminded me...

> Baron Samedi, the voudon lord of death, had taken over the body of a teenage Goth girl from Chattanooga, possibly because she possessed her own black silk top hat, which sat on her dark hair at a jaunty angle.

^ From chapter 17 of American Gods.

This 2015 page attributes geeksnack.com, but my browser is telling me that that site doesn't have the proper certification. (And they're probably not the original artists, either.)

Emphasis on original author:

31 mins ago, by Gallifreyan

Always attribute the original author, kids.

@Gallifreyan Ha! :)

@Gallifreyan Literally the next Google result I saw

3:00 PM

@Shokhet They have that picture in their video too.

Hmm. This guy says "IMAGE VIA DC COMICS"

@Shokhet I don't like some of the recent changes Wikia made. :/ It just looks... worse.

Of course they'd say that.

@Gallifreyan I didn't play the video through. That's probably why it came up in search.

@Shokhet But that guy agrees with me that their style is very suitable for a Sandman TV series.

3:06 PM

This wallpaper website has an attribution.

I think.

@Shokhet Not really.

There's a name, but no link.

I saw a poster like this once on a print-on-demand site, but couldn't contact the seller to ask if they were the original author.

E.g. this one should have "Jill Thompson" in attribution.

Maybe I'll search the name later.

The names are the names of the uploaders, not the authors.

3:15 PM

Ah. Okay, never mind, then

Also I think the date was newer than the (almost) answer you got on SFF, so it was probably a repost, anyway.

I don't care that much, really.

I wonder if it was from The Absolute Sandman and I simply overlooked it.

What is our policy about spoilers?

@AJ No spoilers in titles.

33

A: Should we assume that questions about a book spoil that book, or should we use spoiler markup?

Honestly, I'm a big fan of M&TV's policy: No Spoilers in Titles Most answers will contain spoilers to someone. There's no way to draw a line that will make everyone happy. If the OP is asking for advice about a book they have not read, answers should be considerate of this and consider putting...

...what if Dream drew it himself?

3:21 PM

OK.

@Shokhet Like he ever has the time.

@Mithrandir @AJ Answered by M&TV users, no less :D

@Gallifreyan Can he be do more than one thing at the same time, like Dr. Manhattan?

Death says that she can do that.

@Shokhet It's never shown in the original run, afaik, but he can do so in Overture, in a way.

I mean, most of the captions for that pic that I saw around the interwebs (when there were captions) merely said "Dream." Maybe that was attribution rather than description?

:P

3:24 PM

In fact, I was going to ask a question about Morpheus' omnipresence.

@Gallifreyan So then he has all the time in the world :)

Hello, @Morpheus. We were just talking about you :)

Naturally.

Always handy to have a sock on hand for jokes like that :P

@Morpheus Oh. This is you, @Gallifreyan? :/

Nope.

It shall forever be a secret ;)

@Mithrandir?

3:28 PM

@Mithrandir @Shokhet I posted a question about that novel.

...it's not me, in case anyone asks.

Hm?

@AJ I saw that. I haven't read it, but recognized it in a Google search from your description.

It's about the story of that novel.

@Shokhet it would have been one big coincidence if it wasn't a sock...

3:29 PM

@AJ I didn't want to ruin it for you, but I did notice that the WP page said this:

> The novel closes with the men confessing that they had loved the girls, but that they will never know the motives behind the suicides.

I am looking for an, what we say, out-of-universe explanation.

@Mithrandir True, but maybe Morpheus regularly searches chat for mentions of his name? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@AJ Ah, okay. Good luck :)

@AJ I edited your question. Please check that I didn't break anything by accident :)

It's good. I wasn't sure about the tagging.

That's all right. That's what peer-editing is for :)

Was there two comments?

3:37 PM

I just thought it might be interesting to future readers of your questions to see how they were related, especially since you mentioned in the [story-ID] question that you wanted to find out the motive

@AJ nope, only onr

I got two in the inbox

@Mithrandir I wrote two comments. One on the [story-ID] question, and one on the new question.

ok. I got it now.

2

Q: Was the motive behind this ever explained by the author of The Virgin Suicides?

In the novel The Virgin Suicides, we find that every daughter of the Lisbon family has attempted to suicide and succeeded. However, in the end, we don't find any motive behind all of this. Was the motive behind the suicides ever explained by the author? Because this was never explained in the ...

character-analysis the-virgin-suicides jeffrey-eugenides

3:42 PM

Ahh.. Bookworm brought my question.

@Shokhet Not me.

@AJ Yeah, it does that :)

@Gallifreyan I assume @Mithrandir, because the sock's home SE site is Puzzling.

@Mithrandir has two socks now? Finally.

@Gallifreyan His other foot must have been so cold.

This page says Vertigo

Correct - DC and Vertigo are copyright holders.

3:50 PM

@Gallifreyan is that a parody?

Aha. So that doesn't necessarily mean that the particular piece of art came from their published works. Hm.

(Please tell me that's a parody.)

@Hamlet It's a bad summary of a Sandman story: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

@Hamlet It's a review, and inaccurate one at that.

Odd that the onebox for a section of a WP page quotes the article from the beginning, rather than the section linked to.

3:53 PM

That particular issue tells the story of "Midsummer Night's Dream", which in that world was written at the request of Morpheus. It was staged by Shekespere's crew for actual Faerie folk.

4:04 PM

@Shokhet Appears that this is an old issue: here is a 2011 feature request on MSE

1 hour later…

5:14 PM

0

Q: The Fall of Hyperion

I am currently reading The Fall of Hyperion In that in Chapter 33, an AI named Ummon is introduced. He tells Johnny and Brawnie at lengths about the Ultimate Intelligence. Can someone please explain to me what he meant? Just that part.

5:43 PM

0

Q: Are there any gender-neutral alternatives to the phrase "feminine ending"

A feminine ending is a line in verse where the last syllable is slack. For example, the first four lines of Hamlet's famous "to be or not to be" monologue all have feminine endings. To be, or not to be--that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows ...

1 hour later…

6:52 PM

@Bookworm anyone want to go and edit the terminology tag wiki?

@Gallifreyan at least.

@Librarian I must admit that I don't see the point of downvoting the announcement post.

@Hamlet Someone has to, but I'm not sure what to write.

The current definitely must go, though.

I made an attempt. Feel free to tell me how badly I mucked up.

@Hamlet ^

> The following is a list of literary terms; that is, those words used in discussion, classification, criticism, and analysis of poetry, novels, and picture books.

From Wikipedia.

7:07 PM

...what page?

Glossary of literary terms

The following is a list of literary terms; that is, those words used in discussion, classification, criticism, and analysis of poetry, novels, and picture books. == Further reading == M. H. Abrams. A Glossary of Literary Terms. Thomson-Wadsworth, 2005. ISBN 1-4130-0456-3. Chris Baldick. The Concise Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford Univ. Press, 2004. ISBN 0-19-860883-7. Chris Baldick. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford Univ. Press, 2001. ISBN 0-19-280118-X. Edwin Barton & G. A. Hudson. Contemporary Guide To Literary Terms. Houghton-Mifflin, 2003. ISBN 0-618-34162-5. Mark...

Looks like a nice resource, but I don't see why you mention it now.

> Use this tag for questions about the terminology of things in Literature, such as tropes, genres, classification, terms used for analysis, and other such subjects. E.g, "What do we call it when we look at the text from this point of view".

Yeah. You're saying that they sound similar?

Not at all, I was bout to say we can draw inspiration from a formal definition.

Why is "Literature" capitalised? "terminology of things", really? "other such subjects"? And the example isn't really clear.

7:12 PM

Terminology of things has a nice ring :P.

Feel free to edit; it's there as a starting point.

> For questions pertaining to terms used in the study of literature, including the names of the genres, tropes, terms used for analysis, and so forth.

^ How does that look?

I don't think it even needs a guidance, but anyway.

Sure, looks fine

3 hours later…

10:13 PM

@Mithrandir I think at least one person has done that every month so far. Maybe someone doesn't like topic challenges?

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