Random Questions Thread

Also note that page count is not indicative of the chapters' actual length. The dialogue, for example, would take a lot of space vertically, filling up a page while not having that much text in it.

Edited by Millership on Nov 11th 2018 at 11:42:14 PM

Spiral out, keep going.

Hey, can y'all help me name a character real quick?

I need a name for my Chooser of the One. He's this jovial little guy who knows more than he lets on (think Yoda in Empire). I want him to have a name that relates to his role in the story, maybe something from Greek mythology, but one that doesn't stand out too much in a modern setting.

Anyone got a good one?

Is that a Wocket in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

Chiron.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

Also, we do have a thread for coming up with names for things.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Too obvious.

Thanks, I'll post there.

Is that a Wocket in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

I know on this thread that someone told that you don't need to be a creator in order to criticize a story but what happens when a critic decides to or is challenged by someone to create a story and it turns out terrible? Are any of the previous criticisms that they had are still valid?

Also is a fallacy to assume that people who criticize a piece of work are also not creators themselves?

"Eratoeir is a Gangsta."

Art and criticism are inseparable in that the former cannot live without the latter, and vice versa. Art requires audience, and the critics are professional audience members, so to speak, providing (presumably) useful feedback the works of fiction, assessing whether the artists' message was thought-provoking and/or was delivered in an expressive way. Whether the artist said what they meant to say and if what they said was good. And, of course, to tell the other audience members if the art piece is worthy of reception at all or not.

To do that, they at least need to be familiar with the methods of creation, tropes and whatnot. A lot of the Writers' and Critics' skillset overlaps (and the line separating "Artist" and "Critic" is blurry in the first place), and yes, criticism of a work can be and is a creation, since it's a work that studies a certain subject matter and conveys its authors' thoughts and analysis of it, and is aimed at a certain audience. Only with art the subject matter is life, critics just study other art pieces.

The difference is not only in the subject matter, but also in the perspective: critics provide outside opinion, artists provide their own; artists act, critics react; critics can afford to be impartial, artists must live their art out. So yes, even if a critic creates a terrible piece of art (though I doubt that a highly skilled critic could create something downright terrible), it doesn't invalidate their earlier criticism. They might have a similar skillset to writers, but a change in perspective matters a lot.

There is also a matter of criticism not being allowed to have a wide range of expression. Once it gets too creative, it becomes commentary.

Edited by Millership on Nov 20th 2018 at 5:16:48 PM

Spiral out, keep going.

Does anyone have any sites with a good, interactive map of the stars closest to Earth? I've found plenty of sites with lists of stars, but they usually don't have the right details.

No sites, but several software applications will allow you to display the stars within a given range of a specified point (incl the Solar System). Celestia is one, and free to download.

Edited by DeMarquis on Nov 24th 2018 at 7:11:10 AM

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

I know that Inuits are dark-skinned, saw some photographs of the Inuit people, but can't really put my finger on how dark are they. In the sense of how their skin color shade is called.

Would "reddish-brown" be a safe bet?

Spiral out, keep going.

That is a very delicate qestion. Many people of color have strong feelings about how skin tones are described. I would suggest you do some research first.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

Research is good and all, but what, precisely, should I look for? I only need a single word for the skin color of fictional people who are not meant to represent the Inuit. They only got it the same way: living in polar region with their fish-heavy diet providing hefty vitamin D intake. They are culturally different from the Inuit otherwise.

Spiral out, keep going.

I would check out this post from Writing With Color.

"Jack, you have debauched my sloth."

While that link is a good one, but unfortunately I dont think that this issue is as simple to deal with as a list of acceptable words. It's all about characterization, and taking some time to think about what a particular description says about the character using it, and what impact this might have on the readership. Context is everything and unfortunately I dont believe that there is a straightforward approach that applies to every situation.

Skin color is a bit like sex, the moment you introduce it, that's what the scene is about. It carries such emotional weight that a lot of people will focus on that and be distracted from whatever else you are trying to accomplish in that scene. That's not to say that you should avoid it or downplay it, if your story requires a skin description then it does. But we would be very remiss not to advise you to think very carefully about how you want to handle it.

Edited by DeMarquis on Nov 30th 2018 at 11:25:47 AM

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

It would also be relevant to consider who is using the skin color descriptions. An impersonal third-person narrator would usually have less reason to concern themself with such things when the narrative doesn't make them important, compared to a character being the narrator; since the narration is from the character's POV, it would make sense for the character's description of other characters to reflect their own personality, so if they're the type who doesn't really focus that much on the exact shade of color, their descriptions would reflect that by using more imprecise terms (e.g. an African American woman, a Greek man and an Inuit elder may all just look "dark" in this character's eyes), whereas if they're the type to be all about precision and details even in their own internal monologues, then their descriptions would reflect that by using more specific terms.

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That said, I have a question about superpowers: Would having Super-Intelligence of the "advanced reasoning" and "exceptional perception" types lend itself to the possessor being able to make more efficient use of Super-Senses (e.g. extracting more details from the same input, or having a higher threshold for sensory overload)?

Or in other words, would it be plausible to say either of the following?

1. Having Super-Intelligence correlates with increased efficiency in utilization of Super-Senses.
2. Super-Intelligence synergizes well with Super-Senses.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

I suppose, but I think that it might be confusing for the reader, in that it could be difficult to tell which power he is using and how.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

On describing character heights, if you have an Arabic man, Russian woman, Finnish woman, British man, Chinese man, an American of German descent, an African-American, and a Japanese of German descent, who should be the tallest and who should be the shortest?

That sounds like the setup to some overly elaborate punch line. Human heights are quite variable, so there's no automatic reason to assume that any of those is taller than any of the others. Generally, one expects people of Asian and Hispanic heritage to be slightly shorter than average, but the standard deviation is barely 2 inches. Also, women tend to be shorter than men by about 5 to 6 inches.

Wikipedia has a comprehensive article on the topic. (Changed link after looking at more search results.)

Edited by Fighteer on Dec 10th 2018 at 7:19:44 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Sorry if it came out that way. Wanted to note out in the narration for a story of mine that one character is short.

I wasn't upset, just amused. Anyway, I edited some more info into my reply.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Old questions from last year that have never been answered:

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Would it be plausible to extend the definition of the term "domatium" to include acarinaria, mycangia, and any other kind of specialized anatomical structure in a non-microscopic organism — be it an animal, plant, or some other kind of organism that doesn't fall neatly in either category — that exists primarily to be inhabited by mutualistic/commensal symbionts? Because that would handily take away the need to come up with suitable names for such structures in some of my Bizarre Alien Biology designs.

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What would be a plausible range of values for the average global population growth of humanity in Neon Genesis Evangelion over the period from 2001 to 2016, considering that the Second Impact and subsequent worldwide outbreak of wars, natural disasters and other forms of mass chaos and destruction ended with the global population being halved (i.e. from +6 billion to +3 billion)?

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

They may be just a little too obscure for this thread.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

I posted this question in another thread, but figured I'd put it here, too, just in case: There's a character in my story with (rather Lovecraftian) shapeshifting powers, and I was considering having his alternate form's Bizarre Alien Senses carry over into his human form by giving him the ability to see ultraviolet light, but not much. Like, just enough that he might occasionally notice things the other characters don't, but he wouldn't necessarily know why, or even see much of a difference most of the time. Question is, is it plausible to have a low sensitivity to UV light, or is it a "you either really see it or you don't see it at all" kind of thing?

First, UV represents a decent chunk of the electromagnetic spectrum when compared to visible light and so it's completely reasonable for a character's visual range to extend slightly into that area without seeing all of it.

Second, sensitivity to light spectra varies widely among animals, so there's nothing at all wrong with the idea that a character might see different ranges than normal people.

Now, there are reasons within the realm of physics why going too far into the infrared or ultraviolet would be impractical for things that resemble our eyes, and you'd need to evolve (or genetically create, or whatever) different biological structures to make it reasonable, but near-IR and near-UV don't present this sort of problem.

As for what such a character would see that other people wouldn't, there are lots of videos, like this, that explore the idea.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Google "bees" and "vision".

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."