Feb 2019 Archive, part b

by J.K. Rowling Newton Artemis Fido Scamander, allegedly! To be clear, this is the book, not the films. I haven’t seen those, and don’t particularly feel any great draw to do so, for some reason.

Do I still warn for spoilers when the book is composed almost entirely of summaries of organisms? Of course I do. Reading is an experience, regardless of the content. Spoiler warning for the book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, but not for the films, probably? I don’t exactly know what the films took from the book, really.

I’ve been looking forward to reading this for a while, though I’m not really sure what I was expecting. Although I enjoyed the “beastiary” section well enough, I actually found the introductory sections, about the history of classifying magic organisms, and the pains the Wizarding World goes to in continuing to hide them from Muggles. I think I would have preferred a lot more content in that section. In fact, that kind of answered a question I had never really articulated to myself: why do the magic animals need to be hidden at all? Why wouldn’t Muggles just accept, for example, that unicorns are just an odd member of the Equus genus? For some species, like dragons, it could be written off as protecting Muggles from dangerous organisms, and for others, it could be to prevent poaching. But now I see I’ve been wrong to think of “magical beasts” as just “animals, but different.” Some of them are indeed magical themselves, and would demonstrate to Muggles that parts of their physics is wrong. Others were produced purely by magic, and would seem to break the rules of biology, again showing Muggles that there was more to the world than they realized. (Would an analysis of basilisk DNA reveal it to be a combination of chicken and toad DNA? I somehow doubt that—the toad only warms the egg, but then . . . what is a basilisk’s DNA? It’s clearly not pure chicken!) And some beasts are pretty clearly not organic at all, or at least I don’t think so. The Lethifold seems to be an enchanted sheet or cloak, although perhaps I’m wrong there; fabric shouldn’t be able or required to digest food.

The tone of the actual beast entries varies from the purely humorous and whimsical to the dark and creepy, just like the actual Harry Potter series itself. It’s pretty clear that they share the same author (no offense to Mr. Scamander). Funnily enough, that also makes the magic beasts feel that much more like real animals: the Muggle world has its even share of frightening, dangerous big cats, monitor lizards and thick-skinned giant grey mammals, but also the small and tamable rodents, songbirds and pets. It seems reasonable that the same range would be present in magically produced or influenced organisms.

I know it’s a little mini-book made for charity, but boy oh boy, would I love to read the actual, full in-universe text. (You can’t tell me Hogwarts has for decades used an 88-page book as the primary text for one of its classes!)

—doctorlit will have to find a copy of Quidditch Through the Ages eventually, though he is not looking forward to the sportsball book, even if it is about magic sportsball

Obviously not in regards to the Alliance/Horde conflict, but various subgroups within those factions each vying to make themselves heard and push what they think is the best agenda for each faction.

Take the kingdoms of Stormwind and Gilneas, for example. They both support the Alliance, but they have different ideas of how to do it. Stormwind are definitely the Gryffindors of the bunch—wanting to rush into a fight to get the drop on their enemies. Gilneas was reluctantly dragged into the war after the Horde sacked their kingdom, and they're much more likely to call for defensive measures and scouting tactics before jumping into a fight (unless the Forsaken are involved, in which case, all bets are off).

1. Arl Eamon's Camp in Dragon Age Origins. While he admits the Warden could form a rebellion they should seek a political opposition to restrain Loghain and stop the Dark Spawn.
   
   2. Cerberus in Mass Effect 2 (It becomes a different situaiton in 3). The Illusive Man is acting in what he thinks is Humanity's Best Interest, it is just in a wildly different manner than the Alliance.
   

... Okay, when I started writing this post, I was completely convinced there used to be such a thing as a naysmith, whose job it was to challenge the assumptions of the other people making the important decisions, like the Notary on the Continuity Council. Now that I Google it, though, I find no support for this. Apparently the surname Naysmith or Naismith comes from the occupation of a cutler. Did I make this up? O.o

Well, that aside... you could cast someone like that as a hero in a story. Maybe the people they're arguing with aren't even wrong, they just don't have all the information, and it's up to the loyal opponent to find it before it's too late?

~Neshomeh

Have some return chocolate and enjoy your stay!

Have a suit of used Imperial Guard flak armor, guaranteed for life.(Average life expectancy of deployed guardsman: 15 hours)

Have a magical device which, when installed correctly into a standard-issue clothes dryer, will send your socks ten minutes into the future.

(Anyone get the obscure reference? No, I didn't think so.)

The Board archives place me here in 2004 at least, and your name rings a vague bell - hi! It seems that a lot of us oldbies are coming back right now.

Glad we can appease~

Please feel free to poke about the Board!

/offers you chocolate bark of any flavor of your choice.

I wrote the current version of that wiki page! Glad you don't disapprove. {= D

I don't know if you'd remember much from back then, or would have any bits of writing still hanging around on a computer, but as one of our self-appointed historians, I'd love to hear anything you've got. There are a few things about the Troll Division that weren't quite established, such as what Fixie Dust and Grapnades are, and how "sunning" a troll actually worked, and it's not every day you get to talk to a primary source. Plus, I like the one Troll Division story there is a lot, and I wish there had been more. ^_^

~Neshomeh, who joined roughly mid-2003.

I'm eatpraylove, and I haven't been nearly active enough to be the resident anything of the Board. Glad you found your way back to us! *gives popcorn*

I'm Twistey. I need not say much about myself because you'll get to know me soon enough. Here, have a very flat flamethrower.

-Twistey

I'm Iximaz—the Board's resident nutcase. I was just starting kindergarden when you were around. Nice to meet you!

[Squee] Hi, Oldbie!

The Board archives (over here) place you as early as January 2003, which in PPC terms is well old. Looking through the lists of names from back then is like looking at mythology: "And lo, in those days was Otik the Progenitor incarnate in the Board, and the twin dragons Saph and Leo did walk beside Suzine the Magnificent; yea, and even did Leelee and Saphie bestride the Board like Colossi."

hS

I see it, but Rance is an actor, not a writer.

And I watched the movie yesterday.
Meh, whatever, both of them look grat.

(Do they count as spoilers when they're for a trailer?)

Things I spotted:

-Elsa doing magical research is really interesting! She doesn't seem to be trying to achieve a specific goal, just to "test [her] limits/and break through".

-The alien invasion is... spooky. Are they purple/pink, to match the fire Elsa's fighting off later? There seem to be three different designs: concentric diamonds, a bird-foot with dots, and a teardrop/tree that looks lighter in colour.

-Nothing much to say about the Charge of the Sven Brigade, except that I think those trees are some kind of beech.

-It looks like Anna gets trapped somewhere, underground or down a ravine or something. Her clothes match the autumn scene from later.

-Magical fire! In a vague heart-shape, for anyone still hoping for Elsa/fire-queen 'shipping. ^_~

-New character! I actually get Brave vibes off the whole of Autumn Land, though this definitely isn't Merida. I think the magical pop-up is Anna, but I'm not positive.

-Aaaaand hero shot, where the gang discovers... autumn? I don't really know, there's no reason 'gasp - trees, but orange!' should be a thing. But apparently, per the stinger, there's... something in the woods?

Kaitlyn pointed out that the aesthetic seems to draw a bit from Coco, for which they clearly invented a leaf-simulator. It looks a lot darker than Frozen itself, colour-wise (the plot of Frozen is pretty darn dark), so... yeah, looks good.

Dangit Disney I need some of my money.

hS

There seem to be quite a few in the yo kai watch community currently, especially on fanfiction.net.

Uff. I was not planning to spend all day rehosting the 2008 Mary Sue Invasion RP, but guess what? That's what happened! {= D

I'mma go do normal people things like food now.

~Neshomeh

Since I wasn't able to get to my sketchbook this week, instead of an art update, y'all who are interested get a bit of trivia!

All the Knights' names are intentionally selected so that they match names I liked at the time they each represent. This means that all but one are borrowed from persona-type OCs I created during those times.

- Cass Kingside is my planned Newgrounds pseudonym.

- Update, I'm changing Myla's name to Luna, because I'd been thinking of naming her that originally, but at the time, the OC "Luna" was still active, and I don't like having multiple characters with the same name. I threw away the story recently, and so the option to do this was opened.
- (Who was Luna? Luna was me, Sue-ified. You'll learn more about her in another post.)
- (And as for the name "Myla", it's an alternate spelling of a shortened version of "Ludmila", the female lead in a very odd opera I learned to love at the time.)

- Sakura was a character I made for a role-playing group I briefly had with my school friends. She went by the nickname Mountaineer because of her earth powers, but her real name was Sakura, because I overused Japanese names a lot. She later became the basis for one of my agents-to-be, Amber Callahan.

- Jacqueline was one of my first OCs, and definitely a Mary Sue. She was a Viking from Berk and fought alongside Samurai Jack. *Snrk*

- Elinya was one of the many characters I briefly invented for a single session of dress-up. Her name was "Elina" (the character Barbie plays in "Barbie: Fairytopia") plus a y.

- The name "Aldegund" was never actually used for any characters I had, as it sounded a bit unwieldy, but I know I eyed it. It's an ancient Germanic name meaning "old war".

- Scarlet was my character in a recurring RP I did with Moon Moon, called "Path Wars". Because it was Pathfinder (the D&D offshoot), plus Star Wars... plus Minecraft? With our hypothetical mods? Anyway, she was definitely a servant of the Emperor, and used Nether Star amulets (my creation) to augment her power.

- Teyori was a medieval-ized name for me, Twistey. The name was used in a fanfic I planned to write involving a friend and I being stuck in Stephen King's book The Eyes of the Dragon and having to find the portal out of the continuum. Interestingly enough, that fanfic yielded a concept I created for a multiverse like the PPC's... except worse. Yeah.

Alright, that's it for Knights trivia!

-Twistey

As of... Monday, I think it was, we have officially moved to https://ppc.fandom.com. Please update your links accordingly (she said hypocritically, having not yet done so herself).

Also, I have now updated a whole bunch of hS-related links that have moved from Webs to Neocities or Gdocs. I'm happy to do the rest of them as soon as they're moved, too, especially since it looks like ppchistory is down at the moment. Bloody Webs.

~Neshomeh

Amazon have started a Twitter account for their Middle-earth series.

Wroop, wroop, this is not a drill.

The first tweet is an unlabelled map of Middle-earth. Mostly so far so canon, but - paging DOGA - it features what looks like a sunken island in the Sea of Rhun (that might be pilfered from the old RP game), as well as a brand new eastern forest and mountain range.

hS

Okay, they got hitched in 2018, but they're still cute. {= )

Other contenders may include Derik and Gall, but that's just terrifying.

... Ix, we should figure out if Ilraen and Farilan are still a thing. Like, I assume yes? Probably?

And let's not even get into the fluffy love polygons of HQ's resident polyamorous pansexuals...

~Neshomeh

Also, Ix and I already came up with a Spanish place in New Cal called Sabor del Mar, which presumably does quite a bit of seafood. {= )

Which reminds me, I think I found where a bunch of the other restaurants were originally mentioned, in one of the 2013 Multiverse Monitor issues. I'm gonna go add that reference to the article.

~Neshomeh

http://springhole.net/writing/character-voices-and-slang.htm

Feel free to check out the rest of this writing site too. It's a good site.

-Twistey

Actually, first, allow me to refer you to PoorCynic's workshops on characters and speech. There's a ton of good advice in there, and it'll save my fingers. ^^

Now, to elaborate a bit on what's in there: how do you determine what unique word choices to give your characters? PC touches on this a little—a coarse character may swear a lot, a sociology student will talk differently than a high-school educated person, etc. But what does that mean?

Here are three things to consider when finding your character's voice.

1. Background

Where did your character grow up? What kind of language and speech cadences did they hear around them as a child? Someone from a big city might speak more briskly, use more blunt language, and use choppier sentences than someone from the rural South, where life happens in less of a hurry and more emphasis is placed on manners than rapid conveyance of information. People from different countries, who may or may not have English as their first language, also speak with different rhythms, variant vocabulary, and possibly nonstandard grammar (following the habits of their first language).

Also, some families are more inclined to get loud with each other than others. You can convey intensity of speech with shorter, simpler sentences without having to resort to lots of italics and exclamation marks, but you can use those tools (sparingly) to set one character apart from another, too.

2. Education

This is a biggie. How much, where, and how your character was educated is possibly the biggest influence on how they speak as an adult, because like the clothes we wear, it's a huge part of how we choose to present ourselves to others—although, in moments of great stress or excitement, people tend to revert to the mannerisms they learned as a child.

A quick way to set a highly educated person apart from a less educated person is the percentage of Latin- and Greek-derived words they use. Someone with a college-level education knows more of the fancy Latinate synonyms to the simple Anglo-Saxon building blocks of English, and uses them naturally. They'll also speak with stricter grammar than someone who has never known or cared what a split infinitive is.

It's important to note here that "less educated" does not mean less intelligent. Intelligence is reflected in one's ability to process information and make good decisions about what to do with it. The more world experience you have, the easier this gets, but just because someone has lived a more isolated, less complex life does not make them stupid.

The exact kind of education your character to has will influence their way of thinking, and therefore their way of speaking, even further. That sociology student thinks and expresses themself in sociology terms. A movie director thinks in terms of cinema. A politician (theoretically) is always thinking about the impact their speech will have on people's perception of them. A self-taught entrepreneur will also have self-made speech habits, drawing from the books they've read and the people they know.

The point here is that people learn to speak in ways that most effectively convey their interests (helps us make friends), and status (we all value this to some extent), and intent (helps us get what we want) to the people around them. An educated person who has learned to communicate with similarly educated people has a different set of tools for doing this than a less educated person who has learned to communicate with less educated people.

3. Personality

This is perhaps the finest level of refinement when it comes to speech. A character's background and education give them certain tools in their linguistic toolbox. Their personality determines when and how they choose to use those tools. A selfish person might talk about themself most of the time and use the highest status speech they know to impress. A considerate person listens to and asks relevant questions of others, and leaves themself out of it. A happy, excitable person has a faster cadence and uses shorter, bubblier words than a taciturn one.

Personality determines the amount of swearing one chooses to use, whereas their background and education determine exactly how they do it.

Personal interests and hobbies can influence the figurative language a character uses. Someone who loves music may use musical metaphors and similes. Someone who loves math may explain things in terms of equations and functions. Someone who loves The Lord of the Rings may quote the books and/or films to make a point.

And so on, and so forth.


I hope that helps! Speech is complex, because it's completely wrapped up in the sociology and psychology of human beings. To really understand it, you have to understand people. It's hard, but you can get pretty far just by listening attentively to how other people talk and paying attention to how other writers do dialogue. Personally, it's my favorite thing to write, and I've put a lot of thought into it. I'm happy to talk about it more if you have more questions. ^^

~Neshomeh

Come up with a few personality traits and a backstory. These can be very simple (cynical, parents killed in freak knitting accident) or incredibly detailed. But having something to focus and build around helps a ton. From there, you can develop outwards as you write until you have something fully fleshed out.

IIRC (bitter, deadpan, serious, cold, typical Thousand Son) was Thoth's original attribute/backstory list, if you're curious.

I've taken to giving out explosive chocolate bars! Here's one for you!

Have one of my own shed feathers and a complimentary kit of Spikes!

Hi there! I'm Twistey! You'll get to know me soon enough. What are your fandoms? Also, what are your agent ideas? I'd love to help you with them.

For your newbie gift, here, have a different potion. This makes you more resistant to persuasion and brainwashing, but if you drink too much of it, there'll be bad side effects. You'll need it when dealing with this one *grinning, gestures at Snowblaze, who I've been having joke RP fights with for some time now.*

Welcome aBoard! I hope you have a great time here!

-Twistey

Have a potion which helps you feel more awake with... minimal side-effects.

I'm new here myself. I look forward to reading your missions.

Welcome, welcome! Take a seat and stay a while! I made a fresh batch of SPaGhetti—help yourself while you read the Original Series and the Constitution.

*looks around, pokes*

Have a suit of Tau Recon Armor. When the Space Elves come for you you'll need it.

...There should be a light gun course where you shoot sues.

So much so that there isn't one. Or is there? It's among the PPC's greatest mysteries, up there with the fabled Pool.

Is this--can it be--

Is this the one from back in, wow, 2013 or 2014 or so? The one I have an unfinished interlude for?? Can it truly be?

Or, y'know, do I have the wrong end of the stick here?

(But if this *is* the one I have an unfinished interlude for...well, maybe I'll have to finish it.)

~Z

Yeah... What the subject was.