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The Beer Cellar - Forum Games! / Re: Word Association
« on: Today at 04:11:12 PM »
Wario
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Skill Needed Adverts / Skill/Resource Needed: Newsletter Section Submissions
« on: Today at 10:08:00 AM »
Please post in this thread or PM me to advertise for a skill or resource that you need in our next newsletter. Ideally no more than 1-2 lines of text per request. Valid requests will get posted in the subsequent newsletter; once you've had an ask printed, we'd ask you to skip one issue of the newsletter before making the same request again (different ones are fine). Please do fire away!
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Skills & Resources Offered / Skill/Resource Offer: Newsletter Section Submissions
« on: Today at 10:06:57 AM »
Please post in this thread or PM me to ask for your skill or resource to be offered in our next newsletter. Ideally no more than 1-2 lines of text per offer. Valid requests will get posted in the subsequent newsletter; once you've had an offer printed, we'd ask you to skip one issue of the newsletter before making the same offer again (different ones are fine). Please do fire away!
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History, Science, and Interesting Information - The Great Library / Re: Pangolins: Rare insight into world's most trafficked mammal
« on: Today at 10:02:14 AM »
It didn't, but thanks for posting 
And yes, pangolin trafficking... the scale of it is just terrifying given that pangolins reproduce pretty slowly.
And yes, pangolin trafficking... the scale of it is just terrifying given that pangolins reproduce pretty slowly.
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Game Tutorials / Re: Occidental Heroes: The Complete Guide/Walkthrough
« on: Today at 09:58:43 AM »
Thanks for the tip
I should really get back and play some more of this sometime...
I should really get back and play some more of this sometime...
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The Beer Cellar - Forum Games! / Re: Change a Letter III
« on: Today at 09:07:36 AM »
A bit vain of them.
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Exilian Articles / Re: The Problem of Focus
« on: February 18, 2019, 11:06:38 PM »
Interesting threads to pull out here - re Harry Potter, I don't think its high focus is consistent (I'd point to Rowling's use of "love works as a protection spell" as a very low focus moment), and I agree that fandom has a tendency to push for higher focus than authors do. I still think it's categorically high focus though; my argument is that high focus is useful for plot consistency and problem solving, not that high focus leads to those things. The time-turner I'd say is a massively high focus piece of kit. It's magic as machine, you turn the thing X times and go X distance back into the past. It's rare and dangerous, sure, and creates some plot holes by its existence, but it's still fundamentally a piece of functional magic. The reason I picked Potter as the exemplar though is its spell system - you say a word, always the same word, and as long as you're doing it right the thing happens. This is perfect for high focus writing, because it gives a defined toolkit for the protagonists to use before something happens. And Rowling is very good at using that: look at the challenges in book 1 or the Triwizard stuff in book 4 as particularly good examples. She puts characters in a defined scenario, and we have a bunch of specific things we know they can do - Harry summoning the firebolt with accio is a clever use of a tool we already knew he had. I think it's also important that Potterverse is a well recorded world - the history of it is well known and followable, the creatures are catalogued and studied in schools, etc, so there's little mystique or blurring there either.
Re Gandalf, no, the more you dig into the lore the lower the focus of Tolkien's magic gets if anything. It's implied that some undefined "lore" underpins certain areas of magic, like the forging of the rings, but ultimately lore (as represented by e.g. Saruman) is inadequate compared to the will to do things. Tolkien's magic, I think at its heart, isn't a toolkit, it's about an actor imparting their will into the world in various ways, and there's no bounding to the depths of that which is definable - the strength of will, the extent to which the magic user has an affinity with the thing being done, and the extent to which an action is in accordance or not with the cosmic order, seem to be perhaps factors, but not in ways that you could really pin numbers on meaningfully.
I have not read any McKillip or Cherryh but apparently should do, and am very interested to know about Nine Fox Gambit
Re Gandalf, no, the more you dig into the lore the lower the focus of Tolkien's magic gets if anything. It's implied that some undefined "lore" underpins certain areas of magic, like the forging of the rings, but ultimately lore (as represented by e.g. Saruman) is inadequate compared to the will to do things. Tolkien's magic, I think at its heart, isn't a toolkit, it's about an actor imparting their will into the world in various ways, and there's no bounding to the depths of that which is definable - the strength of will, the extent to which the magic user has an affinity with the thing being done, and the extent to which an action is in accordance or not with the cosmic order, seem to be perhaps factors, but not in ways that you could really pin numbers on meaningfully.
I have not read any McKillip or Cherryh but apparently should do, and am very interested to know about Nine Fox Gambit
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The Beer Cellar - Forum Games! / Re: Word Association
« on: February 18, 2019, 03:22:29 PM »
Dany
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The Beer Cellar - Forum Games! / Re: Word Association
« on: February 18, 2019, 09:07:43 AM »
Tarragon