Random Questions Thread

I have a Warrior Cats OC who's a half-pet. His clan father is a normal cat, while his ex-pet mother is a breed cat, resulting in him getting some physical trait that's rare or nonexistent in wild cats, "marking" him as not being a full clan cat, which he then tries to hide because he has issues.

I'm not familiar with cat breeds or genetics, so i'm not sure what this trait could be. My plan for the OC's design is that he'd be black or dark grey, and his name would be "Ravencall", so that needs to be taken into account. He also has amber eyes, and his father was also black or grey ("Sootshadow").

I thought about making his mother a rex, curled-eared, charcoal bengal, colorpoint, or a munchin cat, but i'm unsure about a cat daschund's survivability in the wild (and he's the Greater-Scope Villain, so he needs to be able to be taken seriously), how being half either of those from mom's side specifically would affect Ravencall's appearance, how could they be hidden, and if it'd make sense for the cats to peg any of those as "pet traits".

Edited by Nukeli on Jan 24th 2022 at 12:12:00 PM

Does anyone know of a way to write dialogue for a character who for whom English is not her first language? There is an important character with a lot of speaking lines in my story, but English is not her primary language. She learned it in a clandestine and highly touch-and-go setting, so I'd imagine there would be little "mistakes" she'd make in terms of grammar and other such things.

Is there a way to portray this without resorting to a possibly offensive "caricature" or Funetik Aksent?

Edited by Swordofknowledge on Jan 24th 2022 at 10:36:42 AM

Simple words. Punctuation plenty. Lack of anything beyond basic.

Example: (If being thrown an insult)" Repeat. You die."

Example: (If seeing something stupid being done.) "No. Repeat Right!"

Example: (At their wedding.) "I do."

And if needed to say something unfamiliar, always carry a lexicon on your person to look it up when given time and try to learn new words whenever you can, even if it takes a while.

One possible way to do this would simply be to have the narration state (and possibly the other characters occasionally commenting on) that she has an accent, makes the occasional mistake, and possibly struggles for words ad time, while presenting her speech as completely normal. Some kind of Translation Convention, but to an incorrect use of the language.

Otherwise, I think you can simply have the character occasionally struggle for words, use the wrong word or make the odd grammar mistake without this being turned into a caricature. Funetik Aksent can be dispensed with, or used very lightly - I have found it makes reading harder and does lean toward caricature if used too much.

Edited by C105 on Jan 24th 2022 at 4:54:56 PM

@ Titan Jump and C105:

Thank you both! I think I can find a way to weave together both of your suggestions. Short, curt sentences would work well, and when she has to speak in longer form out of pure necessity, that might we when the mistakes and wrong words start to pile up, especially since she really only learned enough English to have a broad ability to communicate rather than real immersive understanding.

As for Translation Convention—-her inner thoughts and/or telepathic communications have always been free of any kind of errors more out of convenience for me than any real plot point...although I suppose I could write it in that this is because she is thining/thought-projecting in her native language and so obviously speaks more clearly in it.

It would probably help to look up how people who share the character's language background speak English in real life.

For example, native Russian speakers who speak English at an ESL level commonly drop their articles and treat the verb-object order flexibly in their sentences. Native Mandarin speakers tend to be prone to using culturally-specific idioms and structuring questions as binary. Native German speakers break their sentence clauses at places that might seem odd to native English speakers, and often use phrasal verbs where an EFL speaker would just use a singular verb.

Every language (to include English and its varieties) has its own distinctive word choices and syntax, and that could make it easy to spot when its native speakers carry over those little quirks to a language they're not natively fluent in.

@ eagleoftheninth:

That is an interesting nuance that I hadn't thought of, though the things you mentioned are details I've noticed in real life. I just hadn't really thought about carrying them over to this story.

The character in question speaks Romanian as her native language. I have looked up Romanian accents as a template for how it would be spoken in English but haven't really seen anything that truly differs from how a native speaker would convey the language, apart from the accent and pronunciation of certain words. Then again, these have been people who have spoken English for years, and while that applies to this character, her education on it was far from professional or structured.

Is there any particular way Romanian-as-a-native-language would differ with English, the way you described Mandarin and Russian?

Maybe look up some English-speaking Romanian vloggers on YouTube and take notes on their speech patterns? I brought up the above languages because I personally have enough exposure to be familiar with the linguistic tells that their speakers often bring into English.

It's up to you to decide how much of the Romanian language you'd like to learn for a writing project. But I'd suppose that once you have a basic grasp of its sentence structures and common turns of phrase, it'd be easy enough to connect the dots to the little linguistic quirks that native Romanian speakers might display when speaking English.

Edited by eagleoftheninth on Jan 24th 2022 at 9:43:46 AM

@ eagleoftheninth:

I'll have to go back to the Youtube drawing board to see if I can find some with a little perhaps less experience with English. The ones I'd found originally were so good that it was only the faint accent that would have given it away if I hadn't read the title of the video and searched it up in the first place. But the internet is a vast and infinitely deep pool so I'm sure something will come up.

Ah I understand. I think I was so taken aback by the information you gave that I thought I'd see if you had anything else for me lol. Sorry if I put you on the spot.

I do intend to learn a few sentences and conversational bits for this project (as it pertains to this character, her childhood flashbacks with her family contain quite a bit of Romanian). But you're right; that should be enough to translate quirks over to English. And I suppose if I get it wrong, someone out there will correct me in some form or other.

Okay I'm wondering if there are any quotes that fit at least two categories

• A quote about an Enemy Mine (besides the obvious) or Even Evil Has Standards
• Authored by Franz Kafka (rather importing here)
• A quote about the truth of the person Beneath the Mask

Long story short I decided to add a RL quote to the chapters of my fic that tries to encompass the themes of the chapter. and due to adapting a certain event of Arknights I want to it to be authored by Kafka himself if possible. (Failing that I am also looking into Kafka quotes in general)

Anyone recommend Wattpad for publishing stories? They seem to not only use a website for posting stories but also an actual publishing company.

3. "He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn't yet lived."

Edited by TitanJump on Jan 24th 2022 at 6:00:26 PM

Does anybody know this horse color's◊ name? (Orange with yellowidh mane)

Edited by Nukeli on Jan 25th 2022 at 11:31:06 AM

"Carrot".

A little hard to tell from the lighting, but either chestnut or palomino.

Edited by eagleoftheninth on Jan 25th 2022 at 4:37:40 AM

x3 @ Nukeli:

For what it's worth, I would personally go with "copper" or "rust" myself.

Edited by Swordofknowledge on Jan 25th 2022 at 9:33:25 AM

That's not what i meant. Horse colors and patterns have actual, "official" names.

Edited by Nukeli on Jan 25th 2022 at 4:52:31 PM

@ Nukeli:

Ah, I see. My apologies; I'm not familiar with official horse colors and just thought of what came to mind when looking at the image .

Any tips on writing an Autistic character that went through a bunch of trauma?

I have this super-powered character with Autism who attends a private school alongside several other super-powered teens that are her roommates. (Who'll be called Eva here for simplicity's sake) She is the Team Mom and makes sure her roommates don't make irresponsible choices and get their schoolwork done on time. Despite her social anxiety she manages to socializes and befriends them, plus she tries to be empathic towards them as most of them went through trauma.

Then an evil corporation sends out a bunch of agents to kidnap them but only successfully kidnap Eva. Upon kidnapping Eva, she goes through unethical experiments that include replacing her hands with metal claws in a surgical operation without anesthesia and being whipped and electrocuted to test her endurance. Once she's rescued, she is sent back home to recover from the trauma. When she returns, she's now a Broken Bird who is more sensitive in nature who relies on the support of her family and roommates.

That's all I got so far, so I'm wondering what else to do and if I got some things right.

Read these and ask these people [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]

Is it possible for parents to forgive the person who murdered their child? Let me rephrase that, how probable is it for them to forgive the killer?

This situation occurs twice within my story; the first time is when my protagonist decides to meet and reconcile with the parents of a random werewolf Mook he killed in Part 1. The second time involves different characters but is far more involved, since the parents must not actually work and cooperate with the killer of their child.

1. Never.

2. Zero.

(And honestly, I would be concerned if there were parents willing to do just that in that specific instance.)

Edited by TitanJump on Jan 26th 2022 at 3:14:29 PM

Forgiveness is a very situational thing. It would really depend on the kind of person the forgivers are.

There's plenty of stories of murderers (and worse) being forgiven by the victims' families (or indeed attempted murder victims forgiving their attackers). Indeed many of them follow the pattern "I always thought I'd never forgive someone who killed family of mine, but...". A lot of people also choose forgiveness less because they forgive the killer, but because they need to move on themselves (and avoid Revenge Before Reason).

Generally it helps if the murderer in question is; 1) repentant and 2) not a mass murderer (aside from the greater scale of the crime, it's a lot easier to stay angry at someone when you have a bunch of other victims to be angry with). An Avenging the Villain situation might also make it more plausible.

Edited by Bisected8 on Jan 26th 2022 at 2:19:41 PM

@ Titan Jump:

Yes I had my doubts. It was supposed to be a heartwarming "bury the hatchet, power of forgiveness" and all that stuff moment with the parents of the werewolf my protagonist killed. It was supposed to be especially significant because the dead werewolf was another kid my protagonist went to school with, so he knew the family even if not well.

The second one is a little more tricky. The parents have to work with the killer of their kid in order to help avert (or rather stop an actively ongoing) apocalypse, so I kind of need them to at least tolerate the guy in order to keep things moving. I figured that they would hate the very ground he stands on, but at least be willing to aid him and follow his orders.

Edited by Swordofknowledge on Jan 26th 2022 at 9:20:39 AM

@ Bisected 8

Sorry .

The precedent of murder victims' families actually forgiving the killers is kind of what I was going for with the first example. There's no pressure on the parents to forgive my protagonist and he genuinely is remorseful. The person he killed was a classmate of his and so he knows their family slightly and they know him and his, due to it being a small rural town. My plan was for him to explain himself and why he acted in self-defense and for the parents to at least understand, especially in the story's context.

The second example is more pragmatic since the killer and the parents need one another in order to help stop the world from being destroyed so there's more pressure and time is limited. In this case I wasn't really trying to go for forgiveness as much as I was for Teeth-Clenched Teamwork. But I wasn't even sure if I could get that.

In case 1 the killer is sorry but not exactly remorseful since he did it to save himself. In the second scenario the killer regrets his actions, but not because of the actual murder itself, so that works against him lol.