The Big "Commentasaurus"-thread, For those who want to comment on multiple stories at the same time! Options

[minque]

THIS thread is meant to give us an option to comment on several stories and authors in one single post! Maybe we read two or three stories and then we'd like to give some overall comment on all of them instead of posting in each one of the story-threads!

Mark this: It's optional! You can choose whether you like to post here or in the original thread!!!!

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My first general comment will be this:

There's a lot of good work in the fanfic-section at the time being, it might be because of the latest contest, but nevertheless it's a sheer joy to visit the section and read all the nice stories. You really are a bunch of goos serious writers and I hope you find it as fun to write as I find it to read...

Keep up the good work, all of you!

[Alexander]

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Plus, you could potentially claim a Minotaur as a bull of some type. Perhaps that's the manure they are speaking of

Ok, ok. I'll admit, I haven't played Daggerfall so I didn't know that.

I'll rephrase my advice, I'd say it's important before letting a character use something, that you look and see if the phrase would be logical for them. For instance, a Dunmer, who's never in his life set foot outside of Morrowind, hardly seems logical when using a word like bull manure.

Okay this is actually a very difficult topic. There are clear-cut cultural references of an obvious kind that are simply out of place, like saying "Maervin's plans for the new castle in Chorrol would put the Taj Mahal to shame" and there are anachronisms that are discontinuous with TES, like saying "Kud-Ei sighed as she threw the rag into the sink 'Varon Vamori!' she shouted. 'Did you use all the hot water again?'" and there are things that are just wrong, like referring to "Tuesday" or "November".

But we know very little of the lingo of this world. Certainly I can't imagine that with all the races, all the classes, all the factions, the nobility, the daedra worshippers, the academia, the legion, the merchants, the pirates, the young, the old, the rich, the poor, the beggars... I would expect in such a setting the language to be bursting with colourful phrases. Instead it seems like everyone says "by the nine!". This is ridiculous!

In Daggerfall you had streetwise, etiquette, orcish, harpy, and mercantile, and in general there was a lot more text. In Oblivion all that is left is "speechcraft" and "mercantile". This limits the authors of any fan-fiction (and I would say that all the words in the fan fiction competition would easily be more than the number of words used in the actual game) in their attempts to produce color.

I am not one of the judges of the competition, but I am conscious of the barren lexicon of colorful in-game expressions from which the authors have to paint a picture for us of any of the many in-game factions or social groups. And I would certainly advocate a leniency and freedom for the authors to create color for us to compensate for the lack thereof in the game.

Good reasoning, though I don't entirely agree.

While I realize Oblivion hasn't given us much in terms of expressions and terms and such, I believe any author whose imagination is rich enough to create a great story like the ones I've read, both for the competition and otherwise, would be creative enough to come up with their own lingo rather then simply copying what we use in every day. I can think of an easy way even; simply think of the things we'd use, and transport those to things someone in Tamriel would use, making use of animals, or things similar to our world.

Examples for Morrowind;
bull manure could be Guar Droppings
By god could be by azura
Son of a b.... could be Son of a mudcrab/dog/guar/cliffracer/(insert animal)
And that's not counting things that were given to us like N'wah, Fetcher etc which all seem similar to lingo we might use in real life. Well some of us anyway

Same for Cyrodiil;
Guar droppings could be horse manure
By god, could be By Talos
etc.

I guess that's all I'm saying, a little creativity and ingenuity rather then simply copying something