Hello, fellow writers! Got any question that you can't find answer from Google or Wikipedia, but you don't think it needs a separate thread for? You came to the right place!
Don't be shy, and just ask away. The nice folks here, writers and non-writers, experts and non-experts, will do their best to help you.
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- Just don't talk about space warfare over there; use Sci-fi Warfare thread below instead.
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- The opening post of the linked thread includes links to political threads on specific countries as well.
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Also take a look at Useful Notes on various topics. They can be pretty useful.
Now, bring on the questions, baby!
edited 11th Apr '18 6:31:51 PM by dRoy
That's a pretty narrow set of constraints you have set there, which probably explains why you haven't found much. Historically, I think your distinction between Gods and lessor non-human spirits is probably somewhat fuzzy in most cultures. I tried a quick Google search and also came up with nothing.
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.Do you always need a Chekov's gun?
I'm writing a space opera. During this bit of the story the various protagonist races are recovering from a near cataclysmic war and in recent months have been victimized by ambush raids and thievery by forces yet unknown, resources and warships are the main targets. One of the protagonists is an intel chief/spy with a lot of contacts/sources. In this chapter they find the source and go to the antagonist's home system. They're confronted by various ships that have previously mentioned as being stolen, would it be justifiable for the protagonists to be then ambushed by other ships that haven't been mentioned? Is it enough for the audience to know the antagonists are capable and have stolen warships in the past without having to mention every specific instance? Would it be enough for the spy to admit she's not infallible and doesn't know everything?
I hope that makes sense.
Thanks
edited 22nd Sep '13 5:46:16 AM by wabbawabbajack
The Bechdel test was and is a satirical stab at gender bias in media. It was never intended to be taken as seriously as it has been...and this can be seen with how goddamn vague it is. The entire freaking point of the test is that it is easy to pass...have two women talking about something other than a man at some point in the story. Do that? You pass.
The reason for this; men talk about stuff in stories all the time which has nothing to do with women, yet female characters never seem to do the same. More accurately the test is designed to illustrate that, in media, women exist as an appendage to men. While I don't agree with everything feminism says, considering the state of modern media I am prepared to grant them that point.
So yeah. If you are even vaguely informed about modern gender roles - and have spent even a little time developing your female characters - you probably pass the Bechdel Test. So stop worrying.
If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~More to the point, whether a work technically passes the Bechdel test or not doesn't necessarily have much to do with whether it contains content that could be objected to as sexist. A work can be perfectly fine if it simply has no female characters in it, because it's set in the military/a monastery/whatever. Or there's just not much conversation at all on matters not immediately crucial, as many action films tend to do. Conversely, a work that passes the test can still be offensively sexist in all sorts of ways.
The original point of it was to count the number of works in the public sphere which passed the test rather than didn't. In that context, the large number which don't pass can be considered to point to problems in media as a whole. But when you're dealing with a single work, you can analyze it more closely, so you should.
Shinigan (Naruto fanfic)Not impossible since the usual interpretation is that males can take part in the conversation as long as the women are talking about something other than a male character, and it'd probably count to overhear a brief exchange between women—but that's hardly important, because yeah, writers especially shouldn't be obsessed about the one test. For all the reasons mentioned above, and... if you only pass it because you wrote specifically to pass the test but didn't bother with anything else to portray women as individuals, that's basically cheating for feminism points anyway, making the test meaningless when applied to your work. Merely passing the test wouldn't fool any halfway-serious feminist if the rest of the work totally fails at everything else.
You will not go to space today.Sure. Liquid gasoline doesn't burn; it has to vaporize first. (If you drop a match onto gasoline, if it's in a situation like windy open air that doesn't let a layer of vapor form, it'll go out. (Don't try this recklessly.
)) A sufficient quantity of gasoline, applied sufficiently quickly, will smother a fire just the same as water will.
Of course, "applied sufficiently quickly" can't mean "toss a bucket of gasoline on it from a safe distance", because the gasoline probably will at least start to vapourise just from that.
ERROR: The current state of the world is unacceptable. Save anyway? YES/NOStep 1. Read all of it.
Step 2. Love it.
Step 3. Be funny.
Step 4. Combine the two.
Read my stories!It looks like you'd have to ask them first if you don't want them to come after you.
edited 24th Sep '13 8:04:24 PM by CrystalGlacia
"Jack, you have debauched my sloth."![]()
Unless you're intending to get very specific (e.g. actual questions from actual test materials provided by the College Board), you should be fine. They cannot protest you referencing the test (the mere existence of something is not copywrightable), and your referring to them by name is not violating trademark law.note You should probably throw a note on the title page verso about SAT/AP being the trademark of the College Board, but that would be the most you'd need to do.
EDIT: I looked over the "guidelines for usage" link from the link Crystal Glacia provided, and while it sound intimidating, I'm don't think that much of that is legally enforceable. However, I'm only passingly familiar with trademark law and am not a lawyer, so I'm not entirely sure.
EDIT2: After looking over some online materials, most notably a summary on the Harvard website
, my initial impressions seem to be correct. You can use the term to refer to the tests in your book without needing any permission from College Board, but it would be a good idea to put a "trademarked by College Board" disclaimer onto the title page verso.
edited 24th Sep '13 10:12:59 PM by Nocturna

I'm not talking about deities. I don't actually want deities, Al Kardai are actually more what I'm talking about — spirits that do bad things to people who are guilty, setting horses free and causing fevers and miscarraiges for people who have committed unpunished crimes or come from families with blood on their hands.
It seems like mythology should be replete with them, pretty much all societies have some kind of idea of karma and supernatural justice, but I'm having a hard time finding any that are not specifically ghosts of wronged people. So I'm not looking for deities, I'm looking for explicitly not ghosts.