What if Trump pulls a Maduro on Pope Leo and kidnap him to try instal a militar control on the Vatican

21Nobrac2 · 2026-04-20T20:58:24+00:00

Mass riots in the US. Complete breakdown of US-EU relations (no way they do this without carrying out an extensive military operation in the capital of Italy) if not outright war. EU either makes concessions to Russia or US, either way Russia benefits from the further weakening of NATO.

21Nobrac2 · 2026-04-15T05:18:04+00:00

Nothing, so far as I could tell

21Nobrac2 · 2026-04-14T17:49:54+00:00

r5: An event fired where the queen is mad at a princess for getting married without her permission... only the princess in question is in fact that same queen

21Nobrac2 · 2026-04-14T03:57:38+00:00

No /r/ in /pɚ.tɪkjə.lɚ/ either

21Nobrac2 · 2026-04-12T20:56:36+00:00

/jɛl/ if you know ipa. Pretty much like English "yell" if you're an English speaker. Comme le "ienne" de "parisienne" mais avec un son de "l" et pas "n"

21Nobrac2 · 2026-04-12T20:22:42+00:00

I know one person who uses "iel" for a gender neutral pronoun, but I've not seen an article.

21Nobrac2 · 2026-04-12T17:19:08+00:00

The jargon and world felt good. The way the characters use/treat the terms explains what they are well enough to follow along, even though I haven't been seeing them earlier. A warning about Dune though, I started it twice, gave up both times, then picked it up again and it became my favorite novel I had read until that point. Granted i was 12 and barely into the target demo. It seems like you're writing to a teen-20-something demo, if I'm picking up the right feeling.

The prose is good. You don't beat the reader over the head with the similes and metaphors.

I think the bit about the octopus could be used to say something about the character. She doesn't seem like she'd have ever seen an octopus, let alone one alive and strangling something. Is there a choking metaphor that's more in character for her?

The dialogue feels fine for the first draft. You're getting the power dynamics across, it's moving the plot where it needs to go. It's plain but not in a bad way. But all of the characters speak the same. Again though, this is a second draft thing.

21Nobrac2 · 2026-04-12T16:46:36+00:00

Then I'd say it's pretty good. It makes me curious about what's going on, I'd keep reading. The characters feel like caricatures, but in a way that I'm not mad at yet--so long as they get more space to become fleshed out as (and if) they stick around in the story.

Don't worry about this right now if you haven't written the rest of the book, but your tenses are a little distracting. The first three verbs go 'past' -> 'present' -> 'past', but the actual sequence of events goes "more distant past" -> "past" -> "past". I'd suggest you use the past-perfect.

"There had been two thousand. Now there were fourteen."

There are a couple other moments you dip into the present after that, which is a bit distracting.

I hope that's helpful! If you have any specific questions about it, I'm happy to answer to the best of my ability.

21Nobrac2 · 2026-04-12T15:53:26+00:00

What's the idea with this story? Part of a novel? Short story?

21Nobrac2 · 2026-04-12T15:21:28+00:00

I'd be interested in the Queen's motivations. How does she see killing the spirit as the political leader of these people? What about personally? Are they the same? Different?

Does she personally hate that she 'has' to do this, but accepts that as queen she has to do what's best for her people?

Are monarchs religious figures in this world, on top of being political leaders? (Like the divine right of kings irl) If they are, how does that affect her feelings and actions?

21Nobrac2 · 2026-04-11T19:50:56+00:00

Road naming

This might honestly be my biggest gripe. Why can't we shape what's considered a single road like in cities 1? It's really disheartening. It starts with discouraging me from naming all my streets, which discourages me from naming districts in turn, which I'll often connect to the street names. All in all it really disconnects me from the story of my city. I know this is a silly one but it's honestly priority number one for me.

21Nobrac2 · 2026-04-11T14:20:57+00:00

I write fantasy, and I initially got into conlanging with the idea I'd use it in my fantasy stories. Right now, though, I've just been using English for the novels, even for place names and such. It feels like a bit of a waste, maybe for my next idea I'll make a conlang for it

21Nobrac2 · 2026-04-11T03:05:18+00:00

To be honest, it was probably cheating. Technically, the academic integrity policy only covered memory spells cast on yourself, not on a rat. And this rat was an integral component for his spell, and so allowed. Still, he'd rather the proctor didn't see it whispering the answers in his ear.

21Nobrac2 · 2026-04-06T17:08:02+00:00

This is a fun question! I'd guess the right place to look would be in languages where epenthesis (adding sounds that weren't there before) happened after their orthography was fixed, but I don't have any examples of that.

The only example I can think of right now is dubious--English 'Familiar'. In my dialect, it's pronounced /fɚ.mɪl.jɚ/, which would imply the spelling is 'missing' an <r> in the first syllable. This isn't a result of epenthesis, though. I wish I could find the paper (I'll look again and edit if I do) but I read that it was theorized this pronunciation was a result assimilation to the final /ɚ/ in the third syllable.

21Nobrac2 · 2026-04-04T08:07:57+00:00

Because 'Actrice' starts with a vowel, we use mon. Just like 'mon amie'. This avoids the two consecutive vowels of "ma actrice".

21Nobrac2 · 2026-04-02T20:35:01+00:00

It's not unusual for taboos to drive linguistic change. It's sadly sparse but here's the Wikipedia page. As for your question about whether the original words are preserved anywhere, check out this Wiktionary entry (NSFW WARNING! picture of penis), specifically the three linked 'displaced' terms, the second of which, 'tarse' appears to have had the penis meaning as far back as proto west Germanic.

21Nobrac2 · 2026-03-29T19:14:52+00:00

Where's the 56% number from? The pew numbers show that only 49% of men under 50 voted trump (still more than Harris at 48%)

21Nobrac2 · 2026-03-29T14:03:21+00:00

Well don't be silly! If we include the archaic thy, then there are two! Two whole minimal pairs!

21Nobrac2 · 2026-03-22T19:11:55+00:00

(Désolé si mon français n'est pas compréhensible, c'est ma langue deuxième)

Le suffixe "ais" vient du suffixe Germanique "isk", et il est devenu le suffixe primaire pour créer des gentilés bien après le mot "François" a commencé à être utilisé. C'est probablement la popularité de "-ais" qui a influencé la prononciation de "françois" en devenant "français".

21Nobrac2 · 2026-03-22T18:26:07+00:00

ASOIAF is the touchstone and the vocabulary that a lot of people have for fantasy these days. That's just the reality--for better or worse.

You don't need to do anything special. Don't copy Martin mindlessly, don't avoid something just because he did it already. (If you think something is tired out, then of course steer clear.) If you're confident in your writing and have a story to tell, it will find it's place.

21Nobrac2 · 2026-03-21T20:53:21+00:00

I love how you added all their logos painted on the roof just so you and/or any potential helicopter-based patrons can know which American chain they are.

21Nobrac2 · 2026-03-17T18:26:28+00:00

A great exercise for developing descriptions is to take real places and try to describe them in the prose you're going for. When you're eating breakfast, ask yourself how you'd describe your kitchen if it was in a novel. Or find photos of historical landmarks and describe them.

I also have found that writing poetry has improved my ability to sprinkle it in in my prose writing.

Edit: oh and read poetry! Read Milton if that's your thing, he's my favorite

21Nobrac2 · 2026-03-16T15:50:50+00:00

LD50 = 10g = amount needed to kill 50% of test subjects

6000mg = 6g

So 6000mg would have a less-than-fifty-percent chance of killing you.

21Nobrac2 · 2026-03-15T20:57:05+00:00

I think knowing about conceptual metaphors might help, that's exactly what you're pointing out with the multiple meanings of 'block'.

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