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Author Bloopers?


Trencher

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-authors often use religous sayings or actions that make absolutely no sense in the context of the world they've created. Same goes for using modern wording/sayings/slang.

Similar to this, is science fiction authors who try to use future-sounding swear words. I'm reading a book at the moment where the characters say stuff like, "what is kraffing going on?" Yeah, it's cute. But it's not a good substitute. Fuck has a clear reason for being a swear word in our society, it fuses sex and violence, both of which we seem to struggle with, but what the kraffing hell does kraff mean? And since when does a swear word end with a weak arse "-ff" - a good swear word needs to end with a sharp sound, like "-t" or "-k" or something. A good savage sound that feel just great to say.

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This is probably a silly thing to be irritated about but when I was reading The Lions of Al-Rassan, "Doña" was misspelled as "Dona." I didn't understand why, either, given that he used the "ñ" pretty frequently throughout the story.

I was struck by the way knights were called "Ser" in that one, considering all the characters were meant to be speaking Spanish. It's one thing for Martin to use it, but.... "Hey, look, it's To Be Rodrigo!" is just weird. I wasn't sure if Kay was trying to incorporate thematics that way, or if he just doesn't know Spanish.

But then I read another author who called all knights "Sire," and it always felt like they were all being addressed as kings. Give me some good old-fashioned "sirs"--you're not fooling anyone anyway.

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-authors often use religous sayings or actions that make absolutely no sense in the context of the world they've created. Same goes for using modern wording/sayings/slang.

I agree up to a point, but it's almost possible to truly address the fact that we're talking about a wholly seperate world. I mean, fine, change the most obvious things, but past events dictate everything about us, up to and including our language. take the crossbow, for instance. I'm guessing that the name CROSSbow came in part from the religious cross*. Assume that you're dealing with a world without Christianity. Why would crosses have anything really special about them? But, at the same time, how would your novel be better served: just calling it crossbow and swallowing the inconsistency, or calling it a Spring Bow? Yeah, one kinda undermines the world, but if we go too far with the other it'll all be impossible to relate to/understand from our perspective.

*I know absolutely nothing about the origins of the term crossbow, and if - as is decently probable - it has nothing to do with religion, I'm confident that you can substitute your own example and understand my point.

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I was struck by the way knights were called "Ser" in that one, considering all the characters were meant to be speaking Spanish. It's one thing for Martin to use it, but.... "Hey, look, it's To Be Rodrigo!" is just weird. I wasn't sure if Kay was trying to incorporate thematics that way, or if he just doesn't know Spanish.

I saw that too - it reminded me of GRRM, which is the only other place I've seen that. I'm not 100% sure, but I think knights are styled Sir in Spanish too. It was out of place, though. If you want to evoke 15th century Spain then you need to use the right titles to do it.

Ha, I'm reading Lions of Al-Rassan for the first time right now, and that bothered me too. My first thought was, 'is she a gift?' :P

Pretty much the only thing I can think is that he made a mistake one of the times he used the word and a copy editor who wasn't familiar with Spanish decided to "fix" everything? :dunno: It was really jarring, though.
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I saw that too - it reminded me of GRRM, which is the only other place I've seen that. I'm not 100% sure, but I think knights are styled Sir in Spanish too. It was out of place, though. If you want to evoke 15th century Spain then you need to use the right titles to do it.

I'd assumed it was "señor", but the one site I can find addressing the issue indicates that you're right. Either way, using "ser" as anything other than a verb in quasi-Spain is just plain goofy.

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Similar to this, is science fiction authors who try to use future-sounding swear words. I'm reading a book at the moment where the characters say stuff like, "what is kraffing going on?" Yeah, it's cute. But it's not a good substitute. Fuck has a clear reason for being a swear word in our society, it fuses sex and violence, both of which we seem to struggle with, but what the kraffing hell does kraff mean? And since when does a swear word end with a weak arse "-ff" - a good swear word needs to end with a sharp sound, like "-t" or "-k" or something. A good savage sound that feel just great to say.

Yeah I hate this. One of the things that I disliked about Battlestar Galactica.

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"from the same angle" That's just the thing: why would it be from the same angle? As separate bodies, one would imagine that they are in two separate locations. While it is possible for two bodies to be at the same angle from the observer, it isn't likely, and even less, necessary. If you will, imagine a circle on the night sky; that's the location of things that are at the same angle; every other location on the sky has another.

I would say they can be in different phases - as in one full, and the other quarter - but opposing crescents are clearly impossible.

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I'm not sure this is strictly true. Triton has a retrograde orbit to all of Neptune's other moons. Seems to me you could get something like crescents in opposite directions. However, it'd be a very unstable arrangement, far as I can tell. Triton's predicted to either collide with Neptune or break up and become part of a ring system around it in 3.6 billion years.

You know, two moons would have a weird effect on tides, wouldn't they?

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The retrograde motion is irrelevent - it changes the order of phases (ie waxing and waning are swapped) but it does affect the actual phase, which just depends on where the moon is, not on where it's going.

Bastard: no, opposing crescents are perfectly possible, and could be quite close in the sky. Look at Wikipedia's diagram - imagine two moons, one placed halfway between "Waning Crescent" and "New Moon", and the other between "New Moon" and "Waxing Crescent". They'd be thin opposing crescents and they would appear quite close to each other in the sky. They'd be highest around noon, when they'd be less visible, but they could still be like that and both be visible for much of the morning and afternoon. [Or, if they were closer or brighter, they could be easily visible even at mid-day]

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Guest Other-in-Law

If you're seeing two moons in the same sky, lit by the same sun, from the same angle, they better look pretty much alike. Think of it as a lighting problem. How would you get opposing crescents from a single light source?

As a lighting problem, it's pretty easy. I was able to do it with two baseballs standing in front of a lamp. It worked best while facing the light, and the closer the two spheres are to each other with the sun between them, the slenderer the crescents. If the two are at opposite sides of the horizon, they become half moons instead of crescents.

The only catch I can see is that it would have to be done during daylight to have them really be crescents, so as a naked eye phenomenon, I doubt it would be visible...we can often see the full moon while the sun is up, but a crescent moon I'm not so sure. It could work if the sun was setting earlier than both moons, but that would mean they were not truly opposite; rather than 180 degrees apart wrt the sun, something closer to 90 degrees. I don't think the orbits are that significant, considering how close they should be to each other.

That probably sounds very garbled, so see here for a quick diagram.

ETA: eh, Wastrel pretty much has it covered, though I'm not convinced they could be seen in full daylight. Google images yielded several crescent moon photos while the sky was still quite light, but the sun itself looks to be mostly below the horizon in all of them. Of course it could be totally different with a dimmer sun or whatever variables one adds.

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I agree up to a point, but it's almost possible to truly address the fact that we're talking about a wholly seperate world. I mean, fine, change the most obvious things, but past events dictate everything about us, up to and including our language. take the crossbow, for instance. I'm guessing that the name CROSSbow came in part from the religious cross*. Assume that you're dealing with a world without Christianity. Why would crosses have anything really special about them? But, at the same time, how would your novel be better served: just calling it crossbow and swallowing the inconsistency, or calling it a Spring Bow? Yeah, one kinda undermines the world, but if we go too far with the other it'll all be impossible to relate to/understand from our perspective.

*I know absolutely nothing about the origins of the term crossbow, and if - as is decently probable - it has nothing to do with religion, I'm confident that you can substitute your own example and understand my point.

I believe crossbows are called such because they are shaped like a cross (sort of) when viewed from above. Religion has nothing to do with it. In fact, the Vatican banned Christian soldiers from using the crossbow for a time because the Pope considered it to be an abomination of a weapon (as it made armour, particularly light armour, useless and thus made the holy knight, anointed in the name of God, susceptible to death from the unwashed masses, or something to that effect), and it was later revoked because the weapon was so damn useful.

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I believe crossbows are called such because they are shaped like a cross (sort of) when viewed from above. Religion has nothing to do with it. In fact, the Vatican banned Christian soldiers from using the crossbow for a time because the Pope considered it to be an abomination of a weapon (as it made armour, particularly light armour, useless and thus made the holy knight, anointed in the name of God, susceptible to death from the unwashed masses, or something to that effect), and it was later revoked because the weapon was so damn useful.

The word "cross", or its Latin origin, certainly existed before Christianity and only describes the shape.

I am sure that someone could come up with an example of a word whose etymological origin goes back to a religious or cultural term from our world, but which it would be hard to do without using, even if one's fantasy world didn't have those same cultures or religions.

However, I definitely agree that it is a mistake to have people from a non-Christian religion "crossing" themselves. And it's also a mistake to have characters with names like Christina and Christine in a world where there is no indication that Christianity ever existed. That's a mistake Sarah Monette made in Melusine.

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I'm reading a not-terribly-well-thought-out alternate history right now. The latest "huh?": the United Nations is apparently an active political force in the book's 21st century. Why is this a huh? Because the alternate history involves Germany winning World War I and World War II never occurring. Where did the United Nations come from? I have no idea.

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One thing that really bothered me about the Wheel of Time was how the Seanchan had lived for a millennia without any contact with the home continent and they still spoke the same language except for a "slur". Not very realistic linguisticly speaking.

Compare that with for instance Iceland, here's an island populated by Norwegians about a thousand years ago. Over the years, there have been plenty of contact with Norway and Denmark. Now, while Norwegian and Danish is (more or less) mutual intelligible, Icelandic is not even close.

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It's a problem for all of Randland (and, for that matter, all of Westeros, and Middle-Earth too). It's just one of those things you need to handwave about a lot of epic fantasies.

Yep. If languages in Westeros worked at all like in our world, the common people south of the Neck should speak mutually (almost) incomprehensible dialects/languages. The common people in the North should speak the Old Tongue. You just have to force yourself to suspend disbelief.

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