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#21

Nuts & Bolts / Usage Wars: the sad, slow deat...

Last post by SepiaAndDust - Nov 08, 2024, 07:05 PM

For over 150 years now, whom has been the next word about to disappear from the English language.

Hasn't happened yet. Not quite. The rules for using who or whom aren't that difficult, but most people can't be bothered. And when they do try, they often botch the job and hypercorrect.

I say let it die. Outside of famous quotes, titles, and dialogue for people who would use (rightly or wrongly) the word whom, it is archaic, commonly hypercorrected, and overly formal. The word has no place (other than the above examples) in our language.

Consider any primer or guide on the matter. The examples for where whom should be used are almost all stilted and formal. I know with whom I will speak. Who talks like that?

The few examples that aren't stuffy and convoluted--that sound like actual human speech--are all sentences that people usually use who for. Whom should I talk to about an insurance plan? Nah, people in real life just say who.

So there's no point in whom anymore. Thoughts?

#22

General Writing Advice / Re: What sorts of storylines w...

Last post by SepiaAndDust - Nov 08, 2024, 06:41 PM

Another one for me is teenage love triangles. As it is, I'm staring straight down the barrel of one. Gotta defuse it, and quick.

Still, I'm not sure that it really counts as a love triangle if it's just common teenage romances that go round and round for a while, then just stop.

(And don't even get me started on soulmates... ugh!)

#23

General Writing Advice / What sorts of storylines will ...

Last post by SepiaAndDust - Nov 08, 2024, 06:40 PM

I'll never write a story about some particular bloodline having an inherent right to... well, anything. People in my stories may believe that, often strongly, but I won't write it as truth. (Curiously, I'll readily curse a bloodline, but that's usually due to inbreeding or breeding outside the species.)

Similarly, The Chosen One. Harry Potter would have died early on in my stories. Hermione and Neville would have led the resistance, and they would have wrapped it up in record time.

#24

General Writing Advice / Characters' feedback to their ...

Last post by SepiaAndDust - Nov 08, 2024, 06:32 PM

Character A: "Mister Writer, please stop referring to my friend's hair as wild or crazy. She's a beautiful person with a generous soul. You shouldn't make fun of how someone looks, even if she did kidnap the neighbor."

Character B: "Kidnap? I just gave him a ride! Anyway, Mister Author Man, 'A' is all in love with this guy... can't you throw the poor girl a bone?"

Character A: "Oh my gawd, 'B'! That sounded so dirty! But yes, please."

#25

General Writing Advice / Re: The ethical considerations...

Last post by SepiaAndDust - Nov 08, 2024, 06:27 PM

The genesis of my story came when I watched Timeless a year or so ago. I started wondering what I would do with a time machine.

First, I went through the fluff. Save MLK, stop 9/11, kill Hitler. Then I figured nah, we as a society need lessons like those every so often. We can't really get better on our own without going through hell first, and we have short memories.

Then I wondered whether I would save my friend who died long ago at age 12. She was killed by a bad diagnosis, and a relatively simple surgery would have saved her. I thought and I thought, and I decided that yes, I would save her, that god himself couldn't stop me from at least trying.

Even if I had to do bad stuff, like kidnapping a 12-year-old and holding an ER team at gunpoint.

On that, screw the timeline, forget how things are "supposed" to be, and whoever doesn't get born because of my fiddling with time just doesn't get born. Maybe god himself even ordained that I get a time machine so that I could (dangerous thinking in its own right).

So that's where I'm coming from. Lots of ethical questions. Lots of philosophy.

#26

General Writing Advice / The ethical considerations of ...

Last post by SepiaAndDust - Nov 08, 2024, 06:22 PM

I haven't worked on my time travel story in quite a while, but I'd still like to have the discussion.

Conceits:
1. The past can be changed. You can stop the JFK assassination, and the world you return to will be different.
2. The time traveler is not directly affected by the altered timeline. You can kill your own parents before you were born, and that will alter the world you return to, but you won't cease to exist. You'll be a person without a personal history as far as records go.
3. You travel through time in an actual time machine. It's pretty hardy, but it can be destroyed. There is only one (though future time machines can't be ruled out.) The time machine also cannot be "uninvented." Kill its creators in the crib, and the machine will continue to exist as a thing without an origin.
4. No travel to the present's future (it literally doesn't exist), just to the past and a return to the present.
5. Time passes in the present while you're in the past. Spend 2 days in the past, and the present you return to will be 2 days later than when you left.

Questions:
Do you have an ethical obligation to right wrongs? To stop the MLK and JFK assassinations. To save George Floyd. To warn the commanders at Pearl Harbor or the people inside the twin towers on 9/11 (whether you'd be taken seriously is another matter). Should you give the police the names of serial killers active at that time?

Or more personally, are you obligated to save your daughter from the drunk driver who put her in a wheelchair? To warn your father to get checked for the aneurysm that killed him? To shoot that rabid skunk before it meets your childhood pet?

Or is the current timeline sacred to you? Make one change, and lots of people may never be born. Is that the same thing as killing them?

#27

Nuts & Bolts / Re: The American Sign Language...

Last post by SepiaAndDust - Nov 08, 2024, 05:58 PM

How do you deal with jargon in ASL?

Same way any language does--they have signs for it. Of course, not everyone fluent in ASL will know all the signs for everything, just like most people fluent in English will not know all the words in a treatise on brain surgery.

So someone could have extensive knowledge of (for instance) prehistoric megafauna signs, but know very little of astrophysics signs.

When all else fails, it comes down to fingerspelling.

#28

Nuts & Bolts / Re: The American Sign Language...

Last post by SepiaAndDust - Nov 08, 2024, 05:54 PM

Halloween isn't a thing in all countries, but for those who celebrate, here's how to sign Happy Halloween! from 90 different countries (Facebook link):
https://www.facebook.com/exploretheworld2017/videos/1656876901029664/

#29

Nuts & Bolts / Re: The American Sign Language...

Last post by SepiaAndDust - Nov 08, 2024, 05:52 PM

Personally, I'd use descriptions of signs sparingly. John asked, Betty said, Chris signed are usually sufficient.

You can gloss the occasional idiom (though you might leave off the all caps).
FISH SWALLOW (means "gullible.")
FORK IN THROAT (means "stuck.")
TRAIN GONE, SORRY (means "too late, we're done, it's over." Things like that.)

#30

Nuts & Bolts / Re: The American Sign Language...

Last post by SepiaAndDust - Nov 08, 2024, 05:46 PM

Someone wanted to know what the hardest part of being an interpreter is.

My local interpreter responded, "Prison sex phone calls."

She was only half joking. It happens, and some terps won't do them. Then, there's this guy.

Most other problems are caused by Stupid Hearing People™ who are taken aback and don't quite know how to proceed when confronted by an interpreter. They'll talk to the interpreter, tell the terp to ask the client a question (client's standing right there!), and sometimes refuse to interact at all.

Other problems are caused by Deaf people who sign sloppily or don't pay attention to the terp. For phone calls, the Deaf person's phone might be pointed at the ceiling or randomly whip around the room like an amusement park ride as the caller talks animatedly.

Yet other problems are because of the system, especially for phone calls. Do not announce is a directive Deaf people can give the interpreter, which means that the terp cannot tell the person on the other end of the phone that this is a Deaf person using an interpreter. If the Deaf caller is male and the interpreter is female, the first thing the hearing person might hear is a female voice saying, "Hello, this is John."

And yes, ASL interpreters sometimes get asked how long it took them to learn Braille.