ecohansen

Thanks, Spieles! Kaisa-- Sweet. Up here the only common pigmented white-rotter is blue stain--I've always wanted to make t-bridge ware out of it. I spent a year in British Columbia, and obviously became very familiar with the blue rot associated with the dendroctonus beetles that killed off all the lodgepole pines in the region. What group specifically are you working with? I'm wure I'll have to google it, but pigmented fungi are always fun.

Krystalynn. Thanks you! corrections noted and being addressed presently. It looks like I'll definitely have to work on clarifying scene 1. Before Joebob takes off the control helmet, he perceives himself as the soil microbot he is driving: many-legged and hairy-armed to move through the soil environment. After he takes off the helmet, he perceives himself as he is: a normal human. The naming conventions would have been clarified in a section I cut, but I think I'll have to work it back in. People are born with names that would belong to farmers and woodsmen in a particular place. In Appalachia, that means hillbilly names like Joebob. In the Rice Village, there is the added convention that they have two given names (joebob, june anne, etc). When someone is initiated into Rice Totem, they give up their childhood name and adopt a name from one of the tribes currently living in Melanesia (Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, and the Solomon Islands). They do this because they borrowed their ideology from those tribes: There are several Papuan and Solomon tribes that believe that only humans and rice plants have souls, and rice plants have a higher and purer soul than people do. But Ahh...I didn't have room to put all that in the text, so I might have to simplify the naming convention. Thanks again! Kaisa, Let me take this opportunity to say that I'm insane with jealousy. I knew some people who worked with the fungi of the Guiana Shield. Am I right that there aren't many plants with ECM partners in the Amazon outside of the Guiana Shield?

Kaisa, Thanks so much for the comments. I'd almost finished convincing myself that I should rip everything up and turn it into a novella, so I was very glad to hear someone say I should stick to my initial plan, kill some darlings, and keep it a short story. What forests do you work in? With what fungi? Is morel season coming soon in your neck of the woods? Fungi are my very favorite group of organisms, and I feel like I gave them short shrift here.Will you by any chance be attending any NAMA forays this year? Or, being a professional, are you more the Mycologica Society of America type? Q8 was about the ending overall, and I guess also the ending of the Katy subplot. The ending was supposed to ambiguously imply either that he was bringing Terrell out of the Hall, or that he himself was going in. As far as which fungi the nematode ate, most nematode fungivores are fairly generalist--i suppose since this one was in the soil proper rather than in the duff it would have been more likely to dine on mycchorizal fungi than on saprobic, but that's as specific as I can get. The Stachys plants were mints in the genus Stachys. Several of the species have the common name "Bettony" or "Rattlesnake Root" , but the species that are native to the appalachians are less well-known. All of them have small edible tubers. As for passing Bechdel, what about Liza Mae's initiation? It's a ceremonial conversation that takes place mostly between Twiyoy and Liza Mae, and is solely concerned with Liza Mae's accomplishments. The people aren't intent on not hurting microbes: the smallest thing Joebob deals with are nematodes--mesofauna rather than microfauna. The society follows the strict vegan injunction of not harming things with neurons (Actually, when I was a vegan, I ate jellyfish since they have neural networks instead of brains--but I was pretty atypical). I know that by many metrics a slimemold can out-think a planarian, but having neurons is a useful cutoff. And yes, I definitely should have written "neurons" instead of "a brain". And ooo...I wish I had been clever enough to think of the Enkidu comparison. I might need to steal it.

Some more great writers writing in non-native languages: Joseph Conrad was originally Polish. Samuel Becket was Irish and wrote in French. Dai Sijie is Chinese and writes in French. Personally, one of my very favorite books is The Palm Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola. His first language was Yoruba, and the English he uses in the book is very non-standard, but he wrote one of the best books ever written in this language, and he jumpstarted the entire field of Anglophone African literature that would later give us masters like Chris Abani and Chinua Achebe. So there's a small but real chance that even if you don't master English, you can still write an english-language masterpiece.

So, the lyrics list a variety of things, good and bad but mostly good. The wind takes them away from us (l'emportera). We can't hold on to anything, we lose everything. The same wind of change that steals everything from us also carries us through life (nous portera). Without change, we are nothing, but that doesn't mean we have to like it. The video lays out a specific example of the song's theme: the wind carries away the boy's mother, and destroys his sandcastle. Or at least that's my interpretation of it all.

Not bad at all. It reminded me a lot of Noir Desir's "Le vent nous portera"

Hello all. So the story's obviously a mess. I can't get the two most pivotal sections to work. It feels like the natural length the story wants to fill is 8,000-10,000 words: too long for a short story, too short for a novella. (Q1) Should I expand it to a novella, or shrink it to a proper short story? I'd originally planned it as a short story for Metaphorosis, a venue that gives brownie points for vegan fiction. I'm not even a vegetarian anymore, but for the story I channeled my inner angsty teenager, who was a vegan for a couple years. Hopefully none of my future submissions to this group will be similarly whiny and argumentative. If I do wind up submitting to Metaphorosis, the entire story will have to be under 6000 words. (Q2) Where should I cut? "The Village of Rice" seems like an obvious candidate, but the scene does several things that I'd need to shift over to other scenes if I cut it, and I like the way the scene develops its world. Q3. What on earth should I do with Twiyoy? I feel like I really failed in writing her character. She comes across as an offensive compilation of negative female stereotypes. I started the story off with an epigraph from an essay on feminine/ist fiction. I, a male, appropriated the quotation to instead be a commentary on vegan/utopian fiction. When I then fill the story with stereotyped characters like Twiyoy, I feel like I'm setting myself up for a lynch mob. How can I make Twiyoy better? Q4.Does the story as a whole come across as too much of a sequence of vignettes instead of a real story? Q5.Is having section names within a short story too kitschy of a gimmick? Do the actual section names I chose work well? Q6. I tried to write a story about characters with philosophical disagreements. I feel like I spent too much time describing the philosophies themselves instead of the characters, but I also feel like, in trying to prevent that problem, I didn't explain the philosophies clearly enough for the differences between them to matter. Did I at least halfway succeed in threading the needle? If I failed, should I devote my energy to clarifying the differences between the characters' philosophies, or should I devote my energy to cutting out philosophical prattle wherever possible? Q7. I tried to do little tricks with intentional repetition. Did they work, or did it just sound like I was stuttering and too lazy to use synonyms? Q8. In general, what do you think about intentionally ambiguous endings? Are they a good way to keep your readers thinking about your world even after the story is over? Or are they just irritating, pretentious, overused, and a sign that the author doesn't have the courage to settle on one ending or the other? And in this instance, did I do a decent jo with the ambiguity? Q9. And of course, I'd appreciate advice and council on what I should do with those two lightly-sketched-out sections. The story has plenty of other problems, and I'd appreciate advice on any and all of them. Best, and thanks again, ecohansen

Wow. I liked that a lot, Morzazoth. Although it's from a completely different culture, the song reminded me a bit of China's "Zou Xikou" genre of folksong. They are songs of parting for when loved ones are preparing to leave town to support their families, likely never to return in person. Like your song, they are sad and strange, with somewhat abrasive and occasionaly full-throated vocals. One of my favorite female "zou xikou" singers is Linna Gong: .One of my favorite male singers in the genre is Wang Xiangrong: http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/d5zqbQflCWk?union_id=102197_100001_01_01 Take your pick. I like both of them quite a lot.

Howdy all. I'm one of the two people who just joined. Since it looks like the fifth spot's still open, I'll sneak in and claim it, unless someone has their heart set on it.

Nope, just my own sad little mind. Your bane is that whenever you are near a live chicken, that chicken will become 30% less intelligent. I once had a beautiful dream. I was a marmot, and I was with my whole marmot family, and we were all huddled together lovingly on a log in an alpine meadow overlooking a canyon with a waterfall. I wish that I could actually live in that dream for an hour.

Do we have WOB on why you can Soulcast it, but not Forge it (since it is also known as Ralkalest, the UnForgable Metal?) Well, if position doesn't matter, you should be able to use aluminum-lined shirt collars instead of aluminum hats. They'd break fewer social conventions than wearing a hat everywhere would.

I like this. So far, every crazy cult that Brandon has introduced has been right in some respect: look at the Envisagers. I would say that Iadon is definitely getting something from his participation in the Mysteries. And I can most definitely see sacrifice as a form of Devotion. I think there's definitely a chance that you're on to something.

By wishing for something that already is true, you have doubled down on reality's realness--the real universe is now the only imaginable universe. Your bane is the only bane that is now possible--all the bad things that actually exist in your life, still exist in your life. I wish the only wish that is now possible: I wish that my mind exists in a state of wishing.

Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently books have lots of small puzzles that wind up having solutions that can be reasoned out from elements elsewhere in the story--for instance, how a sofa wound up stuck on a staircase in a position it couldn't possibly be rotated into or out of. Most things by Neal Stephenson have big cryptic elements: I recommend Snow Crash and Anathem. What do you think of Nabokov? Several of his books, like Pnin, Ada, and Pale Fire have fantasy/sci fi elements, and all of his books are chock-full of puzzles to solve. Dude created chess puzzles in his spare time. There are a lot of uncomfortable elements, but the language is as beautiful as you can get. Pale Fire is a quick read, and features royalty getting hit by lightning at a picnic--or does it? Old trickster folktales featuring Renard, Puss in Boots, Coyote, Loki, Raven, or Joha are fun. A lot of them are baldly obvious these days, but then there's a lot of figuring out the cultural background that makes them real mysteries. The Exeter Book is older than Beowulf, and consists of riddles that are pretty darn fun and raunchy. For instance, there's this one--the answer is "a cow," so don't go thinkin' nasty thoughts.

I always read the OP passage as Ialai seeing that Sadeas' ship was sinking, and warning him that she was going to take her spy network elsewhere. I think she could very easily wind up thanking Adolin for taking Sadeas off her hands, and maybe even team up with him. Although now I see that pregnancy is definitely at least as likely as a breakup warning...

Wow. Right. Short on sleep, I guess. Let's try that again.

edit: I made a very stupid mistake, which Indigo pointed out. Ignore this post and read my next one. Yep, Oversleep, that always seemed to make sense to me--his main henchmen were the Koloss, the Obligators, the Kandra, and the Inquisitors. The first three were all his children, so it made sense that at least some of the Inquisitors would be too. I always thought that Vin's extra-strong powers could be the result of Tevidian (her Inquisitor father) being a relatively recent descendant from TLR. And why would the Obligators have to work so hard to wrest power away from Tevidian if Tevidian and TLR didn't have some special bond?

In most instances, caffeine makes ibuprofen more effective. Releasing pigeons makes a gun salute more memorable. A racist chatbot being released by microsoft is like a British research vessel being named RMS Boaty McBoatface.

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An easter egg on Easter Day: In Mistborn: Secret History,

Going with descent, what if the last person to ascend at the Well before Rashek was also Terris, and created ferruchemy in the same way TLR created allomancy? All of the metallic arts coud be relatively new, and the Terris prophecies could be the last remnants of the original Scadrian magic from 2 Ascensions ago.

Thanks. These days, I'm writing all my jokes in base 13.

What do you get when you multiply six by eight? All of your beverages now taste almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea. I wish to share a beautiful moment with a small bird in front of a stadium filled with enraptured onlookers.

Done. I'll PM you. Also, In The Art of the Deal, Captain Picard joins up with the Star Trek Corps of Engineers and the crew of the USS da Vinci to confront a group of saboteurs on a rapidly-industrializing agricultural planet! What do you mean, that's the wrong Art of the Deal? For your bane, you now have tiny hands. Morel season is almost here in my neck of the woods! I wish that over the next few weeks, I'll be able to bring home baskets and baskets filled with delicious morels.

At some point, his predictions should be realized. An actual, living woman should say to him: "Lopen, I know that you're a Herdazian who has lost limbs in the past, but I see that you can glow. You should kiss me now." Beyond that, I see him drifting a bit out of Kaladin's orbit as he shepherds his family and cousins safely through the Desolation. The Herdazian Cousins becomes an auxilliary group providing aid and shelter to Kaladin's other squires at times of need. At some point, Kaladin does something that endangers Lopen's family, a rift forms between them, and Lopen loses his squire powers. At the last minute, Kaladin's in danger, Lopen reconciles, and a herd of Herdazians comes riding to the rescue.