OOTS #1267 - The Discussion Thread

[Peelee]

Pardon?

Post fixed. Small issue I had with the Multiquote.

[Fyraltari]

Post fixed. Small issue I had with the Multiquote.

Even "formally" they don't have that kind of power.

[Debatra]

Bold of English speakers with their "he" and their "she" and their "his" and their "her" and their compounds in "-man" to look down on other languages with grammatical gender.

Those pronouns are meant to refer to actual living things with a biological sex to describe rather than attaching a gender to every word, and the suffix "man" is actually gender-neutral despite what the people attempting to replace it with "person" would have you believe.

[Sorator]

I think an even bigger danger here is the Quinton. It will almost certainly notice a seemingly random bird acting in a very orderly.... fashion.

With no specifics on what its contractees are looking for, it has a reason to pay attention for any anomaly at all.

I don't think the Quinton is likely to bring Blackwing up, even if it does notice Blackwing. The Quinton is performing a set list of services:

• Accompany Team Evil while they search behind the doors in the canyon
• Assist in restraining hostile creatures found within
• Keep a mental record of which doors TE entered, in what order, and the physical dimensions and orientation of each room they visit

Blackwing might qualify as a hostile creature, but Blackwing is not within/behind the doors in the canyon, so the Quinton is not compelled to point Blackwing out. I suspect the Quinton will not do anything beyond that list of services and offering ads. Maybe if Redcloak asks the right kind of question, the Quinton will answer and give more information that Redcloak expected, but I don't think that's especially likely?

I think if the Quinton notices anything about the MitD it will be that the Monster actually spoke his plan aloud when walking right next to the Quinton rather than thinking it to himself.

For the same reason, I don't think that's much of a concern, though it's a good observation that MitD was speaking aloud.

[Aquillion]

The ad thing really killed me

Good thing Xykon's being so oblivious with regard to the MitD. However, the Inevitable will probably catch on that something is up.

I think that that's not in his contract.

MitD is being dangerously obvious in his attempt to subvert Team Evil's goals here. Even if we assume that no one overheard his remark in panel 7, despite it not being marked as a whisper, I'd say that there's a good chance Xykon at least has figured out why MitD is asking him all these questions.

Sort of, but remember that this is Team Evil. Xykon himself would gleefully do exactly what MitD is doing if Redcloak was under such a restriction, just to get under his skin; and Redcloak is probably resisting the urge to do it right now. It's likely he views what MitD is doing the same way, ie. pointless evil trolling rather than intentional sabotage.

[Psyren]

I don't think the Quinton is likely to bring Blackwing up, even if it does notice Blackwing. The Quinton is performing a set list of services:

• Accompany Team Evil while they search behind the doors in the canyon
• Assist in restraining hostile creatures found within
• Keep a mental record of which doors TE entered, in what order, and the physical dimensions and orientation of each room they visit

Blackwing might qualify as a hostile creature, but Blackwing is not within/behind the doors in the canyon, so the Quinton is not compelled to point Blackwing out. I suspect the Quinton will not do anything beyond that list of services and offering ads. Maybe if Redcloak asks the right kind of question, the Quinton will answer and give more information that Redcloak expected, but I don't think that's especially likely?

Point, but all it will take is for Redcloak to ask the right question. Granted, this might occur after Blackwing is hopefully recalled.

I agree the odds of discovery are low, but they're not zero, and they're certainly higher than the very imperceptive Team Evil would have alone.

[Fyraltari]

I wonder why Redcloak isn't telling the MitD to knock it off.

It's the most fun he's had in a long time.

[Laurentio III]

I wonder why Redcloak isn't telling the MitD to knock it off. If the Modron disappears, any replacement is going to be coming out of Redcloak's soul.

Redclock knows that Xykon has a very high INT and can keep speaking by the rules all day.
Maybe he thinks that MitD is just trying to make Xykon fall in error for fun, and decided it's so unlikely to be unworth his intervention.
Plus, the Quinton already passed at least three errors allowing Xykon to correct at the last moment. It's not like it is going to rule out the collaboration so easily.
Last, it's possible that Redclock hope is for Xykon shutting up already.

[Corian]

So... (lazily) put the letters in an anagram descrambler, and got those 4: coder, credo, cored, decor.
I especially like decor, given that the canyon as a whole is a decoy, and could well be called a decor.

[DaOldeWolf]

Nice. It seems like Xykon will handle the issue wuth stuttering.

Also, is the word from the ad "decor" when solved?

[Debatra]

Given the crossword above it, I think you're supposed to come up with as many words that use only those letters as you can.

[warmachine]

I can't see MitD's questions succeeding, besides being forced to stop asking by Xykon. Legal systems recognise mistakes can be made and regard remedying a failure to fulfil contract as acceptable. If Xykon ends a sentence with an even number of characters, the quinton will stop, demand Xykon correct his mistake, then carry on when it's corrected. The quinton has not specified no mistakes must be made and is merely interested in Xykon's effort in considering his words, not some perfect, vocal effect.

[Corian]

Given the crossword above it, I think you're supposed to come up with as many words that use only those letters as you can.

Clearly correct but I thought the full anagram was the most likely to be significant. And I'm happy with decor. Though of course a (contrived?) argument could be made for any the other three. Full crossword left as an exercise to another reader.

[hroþila]

Those pronouns are meant to refer to actual living things with a biological sex to describe rather than attaching a gender to every word, and the suffix "man" is actually gender-neutral despite what the people attempting to replace it with "person" would have you believe.

Those pronouns are still a remnant of a fully gendered grammatical system and they're still applied to non-sentient things occasionally (like boat names and countries). Like duh, of course gender is a more important grammatical concept in e.g. Romance languages than in English, but my point wasn't that English was the most gendered language on earth but that it's still gendered. Especially when compared to many languages that *are* properly genderless.

Also "-man" is not actually gender-neutral because diachronicity and sinchronicity are different things and while etymologically "man" does mean "human being, person" that's not how it's perceived sinchronically by many speakers even if you try to dismiss them as if their opinion didn't matter in something like language use which is entirely determined by consensus.

[drDunkel]

Xykon sure twist that tongue rather well for not having one, +1

[Laurentio III]

			e
			c		r
		c	o	d	e
d					d
e		d	e	c	o	r
c	e	o				e
o		c		r	o	d

[Metastachydium]

I wish I knew Greek. I only learned Latin.

I learned that one too and liked it the most. Clean. Elegant. Simple. For the most part, anyway.

Nah, it's pretty neat. The issue is in tying it up with human gender. Bring back abstract and physical, dammit!

Animate/inanimate is also an interesting one, and a classic at that. I totally intend to use it in a conlang sometime.

Nah, the linguists were quite happy to go with the general consensus of masculine. The académiciens were the ones who decided to be a pain.

Ah, my mistake! Our Academy employs linguists of its own for such tasks.

Bold of English speakers with their "he" and their "she" and their "his" and their "her" and their compounds in "-man" to look down on other languages with grammatical gender.

Bold of you to assume English is my first language. (Spoiler alert: arguably it might not even be my second.)

Anyway, I feel MitD might be pushing it. At this rate his aura of uselessness will stop protecting him eventually.

He's been pushing it to varying degrees since before O-Chul's escape, but yes, it going unnoticed requires more and more luck on his part indeed.

It's the most fun he's had in a long time.

It's Xykon getting "ordered around" and forced to do something kinda-sorta "nerdy"! How could it not be?

Those pronouns are still a remnant of a fully gendered grammatical system and they're still applied to non-sentient things occasionally (like boat names and countries). Like duh, of course gender is a more important grammatical concept in e.g. Romance languages than in English, but my point wasn't that English was the most gendered language on earth but that it's still gendered. Especially when compared to many languages that *are* properly genderless.

Well put.

Also "-man" is not actually gender-neutral because diachronicity and sinchronicity are different things and while etymologically "man" does mean "human being, person" that's not how it's perceived sinchronically by many speakers even if you try to dismiss them as if their opinion didn't matter in something like language use which is entirely determined by consensus.

What's the singular of people? (DISCLAIMER: the question isn't entirely rhetorical.)

(For some reason I can't have all letter capital if I don't add a text line)

(That's mostly for the prevention of FORUM YELLING!!!4! and, perhaps, for undoing Caps Lock errors.)

[Corian]

E
C E
CODE
D D
E DECOR
CEO E
O C ROD

(For some reason I can't have all letter capital if I don't add a text line)

First: Thank you!
Second: Try a CODE tag.

   E
   C E
  CODE
D    D
E DECOR
CEO   E
O C ROD

Third: EEDO? (down from 6, 2)
ETA: Ah saw you corrected to REDO in 2nd attempt. Thanks again!

[Lord Vukodlak]

It may seem like MITD is pushing his luck, but everyone in that group (as well as us as the readers) knows that if the situation were reversed Xykon would totally be asking similar questions to mess with Redcloak or whoever else was the one who had to watch what they say. Turnabout is fair play lich-boy.

I can see Redcloak at some point pulling him aside and asking MITD to stop but at this point he'd find it to funny.

I can't see MitD's questions succeeding, besides being forced to stop asking by Xykon. Legal systems recognise mistakes can be made and regard remedying a failure to fulfil contract as acceptable. If Xykon ends a sentence with an even number of characters, the quinton will stop, demand Xykon correct his mistake, then carry on when it's corrected. The quinton has not specified no mistakes must be made and is merely interested in Xykon's effort in considering his words, not some perfect, vocal effect.

We aren't dealing with corporations here but supernatural magical forces.
Quinton's goal is cosmic order and Xykon's goals stand in opposition of that. He'll wait until Xykon screws up at a critical moment and then pull out.

[Laurentio III]

Do [#]drones appear and disappear as required? The gate is closed, and I don't remember Quinton to be able to teleport minions on demand.
Are all of them conveniently offscreen?

[bunsen_h]

Given the crossword above it, I think you're supposed to come up with as many words that use only those letters as you can.

In the version I played briefly, the "crossword puzzle" used only a subset of the words that could be made with the letters. The score was one point per word entered that matched the letters, regardless of whether or not the word was in the "crossword". If one entered a word that was in the "crossword", that word was filled in. The game ended when the "crossword" was completed. So one got a maximum score by coming up with as many words as possible that weren't in the "crossword"... but still recognized by the game as real words. I got frustrated by the game's too-frequently telling me that real words that I know weren't real. I'd also gotten into the bad habit of rearranging subsets of the letters algorithmically to see what combinations the game would recognize as words, even if I had no idea if some combinations were valid.

[Corian]

Nah, it's pretty neat. The issue is in tying it up with human gender. Bring back abstract and physical, dammit!

Animate/inanimate is also an interesting one, and a classic at that. I totally intend to use it in a conlang sometime.

It is great esp. in ergative languages: subject and object are grammatically marked only if they diverge from base subject-animate object-inanimate assumption. (Which I strongly suspect you know but may interest other readers.)

I once learnt rudiments of kiSwahili: humans (irregardless of sex) are in first pair (1-2) of 18 noun classes (semantic categories, often paired by pluralization) but it includes a few other abstract animal nouns; most animals instead fall in classes 9-10, which is a grab bag with many loan words. My favourite is class 14 for abstraction, as requested by Fyraltari; which being represented by a noun class can be used to "abstract" many words by prefixing with u-. Eg moja=one, umoja=unity. Collectives can have agency but fall in class 5-6. Plants have vitality but not agency and fall in class 3-4.

Really a different view of the world. Of course, the categories are not neat, and anybody expecting neat categories is invited to read Lakoff on Women, Fire and Dangerous things (title referring to a noun class in an Australian language.)

[littlebum2002]

The ad thing really killed me

Good thing Xykon's being so oblivious with regard to the MitD. However, the Inevitable will probably catch on that something is up.

I mean in the last comic Redcloak made a point of how funny it is to make Xykon follow the word rule so it's not much of a stretch for hi to assume the MitD is just having more fun with it than he should have.

[Coppercloud]

Initial thoughts. On. This. Page. About xykon getting teased.
[...]

Are you aware that "teased" has six letters?

[Metastachydium]

noun classes

Sometimes this category is lumped together with grammatical gender – a practice that I wholeheartedly endorse.

anybody expecting neat categories is invited to read Lakoff on Women, Fire and Dangerous things (title referring to a noun class in an Australian language.)

(Anybody whpo doesn't expect that is likewise encouraged to read it; it's worth your time, people!)

[Laurentio III]

Besides...

ODD letters "blue" synonyms
azure
beryl
royal
turquoise
ultramarine

EVEN letters "blue" synonyms
cerulean
cobalt
indigo
navy
sapphire
teal

In Xykon shoes, I'd go with "Royal". For a massive number of reasons.

[Corian]

Sometimes this category is lumped together with grammatical gender – a practice that I wholeheartedly endorse.

Amen! I left that implied by association, but absolutely worth being explicit!

[Coppercloud]

I can imagine what is going on in Blackwing's mind during the previous scene. "Try not to laugh... Try not to laugh...".

Come to think of it, have we ever seen Blackwing laugh?

[Frozenstep]

Wow. That's...really bold of MiTD. O-chul would be proud. Might already be proud, if blackwing is relaying this to the group.

[Grey Watcher]

Xykon is doing a way better job with this restriction than I would. Does that mean he's smarter than me?