(EE) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

What can I say? It doesn't fit above, put it here. Also the location of board rules/info.
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Re: (EE) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by elemtilas »

Salmoneus wrote: 22 Mar 2019 01:00 Don't troll, "friend".
:roll:
And yes, clearly the responses do not in his opinion answer the question in some way or another. Hence my post asking in effect in what way we had failed to answer the question (that is, what sort of answer would have answered the question).
And hence my response to your question. It's quite possible fruityloops is looking for an answer that would follow the selective breeding direction and that within the context of their dragon rider world. Genetics may not work the same in all worlds. Perhaps pigments other than those available to Earth humans will be required.

While all of the answers given are interesting and informative, they all share the same feature of being answers to Earth questions rather than answers that actually deal with the issues of a non-Earth world.

Take it for what you will, friend, but when clearly none of the answers are working, try a different tack.
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Re: (EE) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Dormouse559 »

This exchange is feeling very testy, and it's over an answer that hasn't been given yet. Let's pause and give fruityloops some time to clarify if that's something they want to do.

fruityloops wrote: 21 Mar 2019 15:37 might as well use the magic excuse...and you folks wonder why i don't chat here anymore....
If you're dissatisfied, please tell us why. I believe everyone commenting on your original question was doing so in good faith. It is an interesting question, and it might be helpful for us to learn what wasn't working.
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Post by fruityloops »

Dormouse559 wrote: 22 Mar 2019 05:00 This exchange is feeling very testy, and it's over an answer that hasn't been given yet. Let's pause and give fruityloops some time to clarify if that's something they want to do.

fruityloops wrote: 21 Mar 2019 15:37 might as well use the magic excuse...and you folks wonder why i don't chat here anymore....
If you're dissatisfied, please tell us why. I believe everyone commenting on your original question was doing so in good faith. It is an interesting question, and it might be helpful for us to learn what wasn't working.
some of the answers were alright. I could incorporate the feathers as hair thing for maybe some other idea. (it's legit a very interesting idea that shouldn't go to waste).

I think it's more that in real life such things are kinda impossible to do unless you dye your hair.
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Re: (EE) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Dormouse559 »

fruityloops wrote: 22 Mar 2019 15:30I think it's more that in real life such things are kinda impossible to do unless you dye your hair.
I'd quibble with that. These things have never happened and are highly improbable, but that doesn't make them impossible. Anyhow, one way or another, that isn't what you were looking for. In our world, there isn't a likely way I know of for bright hair colors to emerge, but you could still create a justification that jibes with the rules of your conworld. We might be able to help you with that, but you'd have to tell us any relevant info about your conworld first.
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Re: (EE) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by fruityloops »

this kinda spoiler heavy but I might as well:

the humans in my setting...aren't really human. they're the result of integrating dragon dna to make them more resilient to their respective environments. as a side effect, some of my humans depending on caste might have scales or other quirks that justifies some things. (how they got integrated with this dna I don't have answers to but i might think of one eventually)

the things is a lot of my conworlds are a bit more unrealistic meaning I see no reason to justifying certain things unless i can make things up and hope it makes some sense. can they be believable? in terms of the settings rules then yes they can be but they aren't realistic and that's not the intent. Though do feel the way approach world building is more based on "this sounds cool I should add it in" then "does this have a connection that plausible and makes sense for my setting?"

it helps that I'm a artist and I'm largely more interested creative sides of things than boring politics or economics.
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Re: (EE) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by elemtilas »

fruityloops wrote: 22 Mar 2019 17:36 this kinda spoiler heavy but I might as well:

the humans in my setting...aren't really human. they're the result of integrating dragon dna to make them more resilient to their respective environments. as a side effect, some of my humans depending on caste might have scales or other quirks that justifies some things. (how they got integrated with this dna I don't have answers to but i might think of one eventually)

the things is a lot of my conworlds are a bit more unrealistic meaning I see no reason to justifying certain things unless i can make things up and hope it makes some sense. can they be believable? in terms of the settings rules then yes they can be but they aren't realistic and that's not the intent. Though do feel the way approach world building is more based on "this sounds cool I should add it in" then "does this have a connection that plausible and makes sense for my setting?"

it helps that I'm a artist and I'm largely more interested creative sides of things than boring politics or economics.
Thanks for clarifying! I think I was heading in the right direction with my replies, then: you're not really looking for reasons why it doesn't work this way on Earth; you're not looking for reasons how Earth animals do similar things. You seem to be looking for help defining one or more in-world rationales for how this works *there* rather than *here*. It that close to correct?

I think if we understand your purpose, your perspective and your goals better, we can come up with better answers and hopefully prevent any discouragement!
Dormouse559 wrote: 22 Mar 2019 17:09
fruityloops wrote: 22 Mar 2019 15:30I think it's more that in real life such things are kinda impossible to do unless you dye your hair.
I'd quibble with that. These things have never happened and are highly improbable, but that doesn't make them impossible. Anyhow, one way or another, that isn't what you were looking for. In our world, there isn't a likely way I know of for bright hair colors to emerge, but you could still create a justification that jibes with the rules of your conworld. We might be able to help you with that, but you'd have to tell us any relevant info about your conworld first.
Exactly what I was getting at!

It's often the case, I find, that worldbuilders suffer from this strange disease called "real world mimicry". Questions are presumed to require actual physics or chemistry or biology from Earth in their answers. There is certainly a spectrum of worldbuilding from ultrarealism to anything goes. Just my (non-testy-at-all) opinion that questions about world types other than Earth are probably not looking for ultrarealistic answers. And while interesting and useful, they may not be terribly helpful. In other words, if the real-world answers aren't cutting it, then perhaps we need to be looking beyond the real world for answers.
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Re: (EE) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by sangi39 »

As far as I can see, with this sort of thing there are three ways to answer this question:

1) Using what we know from the real-world, i.e. assuming these are humans as we understand them at the moment, then you can't justify, say, blue hair being a natural occurrence.

2) Using what could make sense, but would need some research behind it in order for it to make sense, i.e. how does, say, blue colouring occur anywhere in the real-world, and can it reasonably be applied to humans (which is a maybe, but would involve more research than people here can probably manage).

3) Hand-waving it, i.e. either it's "magic" or it's meant to have a natural explanation but you just haven't gone into it (which is fine, and honestly I think, to a point, some conworlders get so bogged down in realism that they give up on "interesting" just because "it doesn't happen").

And I do feel that answers of all three kinds have been given, but with not all of us either having the knowledge, time, or resources to provide a more in-depth and hopeful answer doesn't mean the question wasn't answered.





As for Sal and Elemtilas, could the two of you stop picking at each other. Sal was asking what sort of answer Frootyloops was looking for (Fruityloops response presumably coming from being disheartened), and there was no need, Elemtilas, to jump on that question in the way that you did.

If the two of you are incapable of interacting in any way that resembles a civil manner, then please keep yourselves away from each other.
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Re: (EE) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by LinguistCat »

I'd like to mention that there are probably various proteins that do not occur on Earth naturally, or other substances that could be used by animals as pigments that WOULD produce the colors you would like, but are not used/found on Earth only due to random chance at how life here evolved.
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Re: (EE) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by GrandPiano »

The guide to making a table in the general information & rules thread is a broken image. How do you make a table on this board?
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Re: (EE) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Dormouse559 »

There isn't a direct way to create tables on the CBB. There are two workarounds I know of. 1) Make a table in Excel or a similar program and post a screenshot of it. 2) Use a word processor and a monospace font like Courier New to make a table and copy-paste it here between [ code] tags. I did a quick example of that below:

Code: Select all

      SG        PL
MASC  public    publics
FEM   publique  publiques
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Re: (EE) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by GrandPiano »

Oh, I see. Thanks!
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Re: (EE) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by HJH »

Is there a relationship between the zompist bboard and the cbb?
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Re: (EE) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by shimobaatar »

HJH wrote: 17 Apr 2019 13:31 Is there a relationship between the zompist bboard and the cbb?
To the best of my knowledge, not formally, no. I think that a number of people are members of both, though.
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Re: (EE) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Dormouse559 »

shimobaatar wrote: 17 Apr 2019 13:41
HJH wrote: 17 Apr 2019 13:31 Is there a relationship between the zompist bboard and the cbb?
To the best of my knowledge, not formally, no. I think that a number of people are members of both, though.
That's correct. The CBB and ZBB are unconnected, but there is significant membership overlap.
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Re: (EE) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Tanni »

I'm searching for a French family name to name a character (a capitain of a sailing ship) in a short story. The name is required to have one or two (or even more) french accents (acute, grave, circumflex, cedille). I searched in naming sites, but the names given only seldomly carried accents, even where I'd expect one.
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Re: (EE) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by shimobaatar »

I assume you're asking for help finding names. I typically look on Wikipedia or Wiktionary, honestly:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:French_surnames
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category: ... e_surnames

Hopefully this helps somewhat.
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Re: (EE) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by sangi39 »

The only two names in either of those lists I could fine that had two accents (other than one of African origin) were Ménétries and Côté.

I'd be particularly interested in why you're looking for a French surname with two or more accents, though.
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Re: (EE) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by shimobaatar »

sangi39 wrote: 13 May 2019 02:22 I'd be particularly interested in why you're looking for a French surname with two or more accents, though.
This is the way I read their post the first time, too, and I assumed it was to ensure the name looked particularly "French", but looking back, I think their goal is actually just to find a name with at least one diacritic:
Tanni wrote: 12 May 2019 14:52 The name is required to have one or two (or even more) french accents (acute, grave, circumflex, cedille).
(Emphasis mine.)
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Re: (EE) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Tanni »

Thanks sangi39 and shimobaatar!

In Wiktionary, the results I got showed very few accents. Maybe I got results for French names in German.

Ménétries -- you mean Ménétrier? -- would be quite good, it just means "fiddler" (A witch fiddling around with magic?)

Côté -- would be perfect, but is too common a word.
shimobaatar wrote: 13 May 2019 02:27
sangi39 wrote: 13 May 2019 02:22 I'd be particularly interested in why you're looking for a French surname with two or more accents, though.
I write a textbook for teaching LaTeX to people who are authors or novelists or want to become an author or novelist, so the target audience is NOT supposed to have much computer knowledge. The book features a short story ''Hexe Thekla und der Glücksdrache'' (Witch Thekla and the dragon of fortune) as an exemple text. To get Thekla to the dragon of fortune, I have a sailing ship and a dirigible (Zeppelin), both of them having a captain, of course. The captains are actually foxes. Up to now, they don't have names. I wanted to have diacritics in their names, especially accents, to show how accents can be applied to letters in LaTeX. The book uses an "intuitive" approach as the first chapter shows some source code exemples with explanations and the results as screen shots. I hope I can manage that all the exemples will show up in the Amazon previewing (Look inside) feature.
This is the way I read their post the first time, too, and I assumed it was to ensure the name looked particularly "French", but looking back, I think their goal is actually just to find a name with at least one diacritic:
Tanni wrote: 12 May 2019 14:52 The name is required to have one or two (or even more) french accents (acute, grave, circumflex, cedille).
(Emphasis mine.)
One or two (or even more), if possible.

A possible name could be M. le capitaine de la Liberté for the captain of the sailing ship. Or would it be De la Liberté? Or something like Delaliberté? The name should also bear some metaphoric connotation to the topic of the short story. So a possible corrospondent for the captain of the dirigible would be M. le capitaine Responsabilité. (Thekla is a 7 year old girl in second grade wanting to start her career as a witch.)

According to https://www.name-me.net/de/familienname ... mit-d.html it is: De la fontaine, De sauveterre but Delacroix, Deschamps, Desjardins, Dubois, Duchamps, Duval.
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Re: (EE) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Salmoneus »

Do you specifically need/want your characters all to be white? There's quite a few Franco-African surnames with diacritics. Dembélé, for instance*. Less commonly, Kéréku (as in the president). Or you could go the whole hog and have messers Đổng and Biện...


*I don't know, off hand, anyone who had all the common French diacritics in their name, but Marie-Thérèse Houphouët-Boigny came close - if only she'd had a circumflex as well!
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