The CBB

The cathedral is certainly surviving! Most of the roof is gone, to be sure, as is the spire (but it's only from the 1800s anyway), and part of the vault/nave are damaged, but the structure itself is still there, the two towers are safe, and the roof/vault can be rebuilt.

You all might appreciate this--the latest argument I've seen against The Last Jedi is that it has a planet with salt on the surface. I'm not entirely clear why someone thought a salt planet was the last straw, but I'm delighted they've provided me with the silliest argument yet to "prove" The Last J...

:eng: English Once there was a king. He was childless. The king wanted a son. He asked his priest: "May a son be born to me!" The priest said to the king: "Pray to the god Werunos." The king approached the god Werunos to pray now to the god. "Hear me, father Werunos!" The god Werunos came down from ...

ahhhh I'm dying for information. According to GPS, the Iditarod frontrunner abruptly slowed down and stopped several hours ago. Some other mushers passed him, and then he limped his way to a shelter spot, very slowly. There's absolutely no way of telling what's going on until the others get to the n...

If it's sound changes you're after, the Index Diachronica has some and cites a couple print sources you could look into.

Does anyone other than me follow the Iditarod ? Aliy Zirkle's currently in the lead (for as much as that's worth at this point), she's taking the risk of pushing on to the Iditarod checkpoint (roughly halfway through the race) for her mandatory 24-hour rest rather than stopping at the previous check...

And a distinct lack of cell service, to boot... #thanksverizon

On the other other hand, if sapient spiders did actively eat other bugs, but not as their predominant food source, then I can't see societies crumbling either. Humans have wars. We kill each other. We just tend not to eat each other after we've done the killing part. And when we do, it's mostly rit...

Thank you!

And now for something completely different, because I rarely stick to the same topic of "research" for long... addresses! (inspired by a post about postal codes on the ZBB which led me to write a big post about addresses that had barely anything about postal codes in it) Sanmra doesn't have a nation...

That depends on where you are in Sanmra. While it might seem like an obvious answer, enclaves in North America largely use "Western" utensils (forks) while those in Asia eat with chopsticks. And everybody eats saiha , a type of flatbread, which gets pressed into service as a utensil as well. Most de...

Dalar physically age like humans, just at a different (and much slower) rate, so an elderly dalar looks very similar to an elderly human. Perhaps a spry elderly human--even old dalar heal better than old humans--but elderly nevertheless. The ratio of equivalent dalar/human ages isn't a constant thin...

It’s been *checks watch* nine months, so it’s time for another post. I’ve been working on thoughts for the origins of the dalar. In-universe, the dalar have a variety of opinions, tied to where they think the world came from to begin with. If you believe in a god or gods creating it, you’re likely t...

Can anyone tell me, what language and/or dialect the following three-line dialogue is in? And/or maybe translate it? A: “Jeetchet?” B: “No.” A: “Squeet!” Translation seems pretty straightforward to me: A: Did you eat yet? B: No. A: So go eat! But as to the dialect, I couldn't say for sure!

Ah yes, I should've specified--I was referring to Western fantasy for the most part.

IME anime and manga with fantastical elements have a broader range of settings than Western fantasy (although there's obviously still a lot of common settings--how many anime are set in high schools??)

Sal spent a great deal of time rebutting each point quite well, so I'll just say that I thoroughly agree with him--and with elemtilas. You seem very concerned with "realism", or at least a form of realism that happens to place a lot of value on things you find important, but you've missed that "real...

The obvious answer, as it pertains to fantasy novels, is probably "for urban fantasy, anything not set in either the US or England" and "for non-urban fantasy, anything not set in faux-medieval Europe". Those two types of settings are so overrepresented in fantasy novels that literally anything else...

I speak Inland North American (with the Northern Cities Vowel Shift), so for me it's:

TRAP/BATH/MAD: eə
FATHER/LOT: a (well, ä, I think?)
CLOTH/THOUGHT: ɒ
START: ɐɹ

I love the variants! It's clear how they're related or derived from each other, while still being quite distinct.

Ah yes, very normal, nothing at all to be concerned with...

The star map is beautiful! I love it.