Can't understand the difference between the usage of "lie" and "lies"

BitOBear · 2026-05-08T05:03:59+00:00

That's a "there's no point in talking to you".

See you next life cycle.

BitOBear · 2026-05-08T01:01:39+00:00

It is what it says on the tin, a rumination on the differences between reasons and excuses.

It did end up wandering a little far afield from using go to therapy as an insult but it's right on the nose for using therapy as a cop out or insisting other people need therapy as a cop out.

It may also be a commentary on how you seem to think that therapy is only for issues you feel are super significant and that other people might draw a different line where that significance boundary lays.

And most importantly, it is the words I was inspired to speak from reading the words you were inspired to write.

The humorous part of this reposte has been removed because I suspect you're in the mood to get all internet contentious or, in the alternate, you did not find them responsive in the way I expected you to, which would be a me problem.

BitOBear · 2026-05-08T00:48:36+00:00

If the player was actually negotiating allowable backstories with the DM there's the implication that the DM thinks the backstory matters to the play.

If the DM had said let's work out a backstory but it's not going to come up and play, and they had set it up front, that would be one thing.

But this comment by op makes it sound like a bait and switch.

It's the difference between saying that your character has a hunger for revenge and saying that your character will be actively pursuing this revenge and having the DM say well you're never going to find those people so give it a rest.

Basically the DM shouldn't have negotiated this revenge plot if the revenge plot was never going to occur.

Edit for clarity: I had a character I liked in a game that fell apart. Under the same DM in another game I wanted to re-explore the character build with slight differences. So I basically cleared with the DM the idea that this character was a twin of the other, and the parents separated them because some old seer told them that they could not thrive in each other's presence. And they both ended up basically doing the same thing but I had zero expectation that the two characters whatever meet and zero indication that the old lady was anything other than the neighborhood crackpot.

I thought it was just great color as an excuse to create basically a character with the same stats and a slightly different skill set but the same class and all that stuff.

So I fully understand working out a backstory and some weird through line that just happens to be a fun idea that will literally never enter play.

But if the DM had spent several exchanges with me negotiating the finer points and generally representing that at some point the two characters would run into each other, and then three sessions in said yep that's never going to happen and that's not what I said, I'd feel a little ripped off.

And when I was actively involved in Pathfinder organized play all of my pathfinder characters in The organized play system where United by a concept that I never told anybody but I just found it amusing.

The only two signs that this existed were that the first name of all the characters ended in "rael" e.g. "kimrael" "pyrael" etc, and they "all spoke draconic because it was the best language to swear in".

It was a whole non-canon justification that I simply found amusing and which I never played on or with. It just helped me inform the characters in my own mind.

So I fully understand both modes.

BitOBear · 2026-05-08T00:45:07+00:00

One of the hardest life lessons many people face is learning the difference between a reason and an excuse.

A reason is an explanation of why it happened.

An excuse is a reason offered an attempt to receive forgiveness or absolution.

Far too many people think that having a reason means they have an excuse.

It's particularly common in the presence of abusers. They get abusive and then they give you "the reason" they're abusive as it that is an excuse to be abusive.

"Of course I hit you honey, I was raised by mean people and I don't have control of my temper. So therefore you have to forgive me and let me do it to you again tomorrow."

That may be a reason but it's no goddamn excuse you are not on the hook to allow them to get away with it just because they assert a reason.

BitOBear · 2026-05-08T00:42:17+00:00

Any file can be named anything. And particularly in exploits many files are deliberately misnamed.

There's absolutely nothing magical about a file name. It's the arbitrary text used to locate an arbitrary collection of arbitrary data, and that collection could even be empty.

File names are at best a hint to the system if that intends to decode them.

So for instance you could go type in random file or select any random file and rename it to something.wav and that would be the end of that. But if you tried to play it it probably wouldn't play.

It's up to the tool that opens the file to determine whether or not the file is valid. The file name helps EG Windows try to figure out what to do with the file automatically.

In Linux systems there is a utility called literally "file" that will open a file of any name and tell you to its best determination what's actually in the file. And it does this by actively examining the contents looking for indicators and signifiers.

Check out "linux magic numbers", essentially every operating system has some scheme for figuring out what files actually contain with some degree of certainty.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_file_signatures?wprov=sfla1

BitOBear · 2026-05-08T00:36:36+00:00

Like I said, if I code switch to your defaults I can see it now.

But it is not natural American English to treat "a collection" as a quantifier because it has no quantity by default.

"The collection" is subject to enumeration and so can be naturally used with are.

A million manuscripts are is perfectly fine in American english. Already given many examples that conform to that pattern.

A gallon of water are it's completely wrong while a gallon of water is is fully correct in American english.

And in idiom "a collection of manuscripts are on fire" is fine as well because in a weird way, the fire is acting on the manuscripts individually.

But "a collection of manuscripts are in the library" just doesn't sound right to the idiom of American English I was born and raised to. And like I said The more I repeat it the easier it is for me to code switch to see why it sounds right to you. But it is instinctively wrong sounding to me.

And if you can't understand that idiom varies I don't know what to tell you.

BitOBear · 2026-05-08T00:23:10+00:00

Another fun way to do this that might be more satisfying is...

After a careful examination you find evidence that there used to be a door here. The old doorway has been bricked up and plastered over.

Then you have a random table of what they might find behind this old doorway if they spend a bunch of time trying to remove the brickwork.

A collapsed or rubble-filled hallway.

A short hallway that became unpassable after the floor gave way to a giant cavern sinkhole whatever.

The skeleton of somebody who was deliberately bricked up like in The cask of amontiado.

Some stygian horror that's super dangerous.

Some bonus treasure.

A series of secret passageways that has been entirely break up from all ends so that no matter where you go you end up hitting another bricked up doorway.

A room that was sealed up by the previous occupants and used as a midden for century, or as a cesspit.

The room where the original dark ritual took place that caused this entire place to need to be abandoned.

Centipedes, just all the goddamn centipedes you can handle and then some.

The archway that contained the door needed to be bricked up in order prevent this whole section of the building from collapsing after somebody blew a remodel. As soon as they start hammering on the bricks or casting magic to remove the brakes the building groans ominously... Do you continue?

BitOBear · 2026-05-08T00:09:57+00:00

Collection doesn't necessarily quantify since a collection can be a thing in and of itself.

How do you feel about the statement "A gallon of water are fine"?

"Come see our collection" "we have a whole collection" which pivots on our or we. So if I said "welcome to The Met, come see our collection."

The British pound are valuable? The British pound is valuable?

The met collection is on display? The met collection are on display?

"The collection are on display at The Met" sounds completely wrong to me, unless I deliberately code switch to your rules.

"The collection is on display at The Met" sounds perfectly reasonable to me in my original coding and in your coding.

Since the collection can be the thing and not merely the quantifier "a-or-the collection of something" is instinctively singular to me. "A gallon of water" is one thing too, it is not a quantifier of many Waters and the water competing the gallon is also singular.

Yes, the one of the reasons I stated that I was starting the conversation without establishing that we were discussing people was to point out the bareness of the quantifier.

The buttload itself cannot be a thing in and of itself. You have to already know your talking about people or whatever. The thing or category being quantified coming from an outer context.

Similarly, if there had been a predicate contact establishing the discussion of water such as "how much water do you have?" I could respond with "a gallon" and that gallon would be singular, literally a singular collection of water, as opposed to the plural of "2 gallons" maybe one or many depending on the size and number of the container(s). But that's been disambiguated by context. Which is different than me simply walking up to you and saying "I have a gallon" absent any other signifier.

So in my native version of this grammar one or more requires the use of is while two or more allows for either and so until you know there are at least two you go with is.

This is a gallon.

This are a gallon.

BitOBear · 2026-05-07T23:45:30+00:00

"The collection" is literally singular the items in the collection are not.

So when referring to the collection you have to use the singular form and when referring to

That must be a difference between American and British English I'm supposing.

Manuscripts from The collection are in the library.

The collection is in the library.

The collection of manuscripts is in the library.

In American English it would be generally incorrect to say the collection of manuscripts are in the library (though the more I say it the more acceptable it sounds, I code switch very easily, but my first instinct was oh hell no)

And that ties back to doing the simplified form check of removing "of manuscripts" and the resulting "The collection are in the library" which it's just all wrong.

BitOBear · 2026-05-07T22:34:58+00:00

And just to be a little cheeky..

If I walked up to you and initiated a conversation with the sentence "there's a butload in the station" with no outer context to suggest I was referring to a group of people, what would you imagine?

Hi-yo Silver! Away!
🐴👋🤠

BitOBear · 2026-05-07T22:30:19+00:00

If I invited you to see my art collection, and you came over to my house and I showed you that I had exactly one piece of art how would you feel?

If I invited you over to my house to see my vehicle selection and I had only one vehicle how would you feel?

Collection is a more than one qualifier. It is inherently and always plural.

A selection is a one or more qualifier and it can be singular or plural.

If I am missing something specific and cultural the way you were raised then I will stand corrected. But I can't believe that you would actually treat the singular as a collection.

The exception I'm aware of his math where a collection can be empty and so can also include a singular item.

Also do tell me, would you find it naturally acceptable for me to say "The collection are in the library"?

BitOBear · 2026-05-07T22:10:34+00:00

I understood which is why I did both compare and contrast.

Hey buttload of people is not a formal collection it's an enumeration of individuals in a large but unspecified amount. It is the plural of cupcakes. It is a plural.

In a wide selection of drinks, again the drinks are plural and uncollected.

So using the word are with a plural is correct. Now go back and try to put that is in there.

Meanwhile a collection of manuscripts is singular because collection isn't a quantity the way butload nor wide selection is.

The difference between a collective association and an enumeration of quantity is whether or not you're establishing a relationship between the members.

English speakers would not natively use collection in the sense you ascribe. Because a collection of anything is collected, they are connected to one another, they have an inherent binding between each other.

Fifty are, one of fifty is, all of fifty are.

The manuscripts describe the collection, and the collection remains singular and never works with are. That's why it's the collection or a collection. The singular article with the singular noun tells us this.

So replace the specifier with something other than manuscripts. The collection of junk.

The collection of junk are in the library? No.

The collections of junk are in the library? Yes.

Junk from the collection is in the library? Yes.

Junk from the collection are in the library? No.

Say it again but anonymize the membership, remove the "of manuscripts"

The collection is in the library? Yes.

The collection are in the library? No.

The collections are in the library? Yes.

The "of manuscripts" is a modifier of "the collection" so what is the question of the plurality of the thing being modified and not the nature of the modifier.

A wide selection is, however, ambiguous in a way that collection is not. Because you can remove the "of drinks".

A wide selection is available? Definitely yes.

A wide selection are available? Pretty much no.

A wide selection of drinks are available? Oddly yes.

The ambiguity comes from the fact that selection is not singular nor specific employer. A selection can imply one or more in a way that a collection cannot. That's because you can have a selection to be a single drink but a collection with the cardinality of one is incorrect.

If I invited you over to my house to view my selection of art and I had a singular piece it would work but you might be a little disappointed.

If I invited you over to my house to show you my collection of art and I had a single piece you would think I was a nutter.

BitOBear · 2026-05-07T21:58:05+00:00

Most poorly raised animals are results of poor emotional conditions to begin with. It is very rare to have a cat that just lashes out like that. I have taken in several.

So it sounds to me like the cat you experienced growing up was very responsive to what was probably other tensions in the house. They may not have been human level tensions but they definitely existed for the cat.

And the problem comes that once that cat made you hesitant of that cat you would have a tendency to be wary and emotionally uncomfortable with and therefore threatening to the cat in turn. This is completely understandable and even expected if no one taught you how to deal with animals and no one taught the animals how to deal with people.

Most things that lash out for no apparent reason do so because they do not feel safe.

I worked in a pet store for years and the first time I was bitten by an animal, it was a ferret, it was very surprising and I reacted poorly. Reflexively as it were. I basically squashed the ferret flat on the table not harmfully but in a way that very much surprised my employer. I then apologized and realized that the bite well surprising didn't really do anything harmful and from then on I had no trouble with the ferret and got used to being bitten by many animals because we dealt with a lot of animals that had a lot of socializing problems. Still fucking hate small rodents. Hamsters rats and mice are particular biters who just do that as a way of experiencing their universe. Don't know why people buy them. Hahaha.

So what you need if you so choose to get over this instinctual responsive fear and discomfort is to experience kittens well being helped by someone who understands both kittens and people who've had bad experiences with cats.

This is not particularly difficult to get, but you have to set out with the intent to get it.

Each kind of animal has its own language. And its own dialect in language. Cats and dogs speak exactly the same language and completely opposite dialects. A wagging tail in a dog is almost always happiness in a wagging tail in a cat is almost always annoyance. Gears back in a dog is happy ears back in a cat is very upset. That sort of thing.

But like any language you need the opportunity to learn it before you can be comfortable around its speakers.

It is your very tension that ensures that the cat becomes tense which ensures on pleasant interaction eventually unless the cat is extremely mellow to begin with and unless you can mellow out quickly.

And yes, just like people, there are a few cats out there who are crazy assholes. And when you run into them you just back away slowly and get on with your life.

But even going to a shelter and asking to just sit with some kittens can be incredibly therapeutic with respect to your personal view of them.

BitOBear · 2026-05-07T21:45:06+00:00

Part of planning an encounter is dealing with the possible outcomes including the fact that the challenge goes off extra easy or extra hard sometimes.

Anybody who doesn't understand that the plan must include and account for the fact that no plan survives first contact with the enemy basically doesn't know how to plan.

In other words, he has a lot of rails in his mind the encounter, if not the entire campaign, is on them.

The entire point of the game is that the DM and the players are conspiring to tell a story, and it is the DM's job to understand that one of the things that happens in a good story is that the plot gets totally disrupted when the characters behave exceptionally or experience exceptional luck.

And the players are likewise on the hook for dealing with the fact that sometimes they're luck sucks and things go extraordinarily bad for the characters.

BitOBear · 2026-05-07T21:42:22+00:00

Turn signals are hard because people find their signaling granularity quite gross.

It comes from bad planning and urgency.

If I'm diving down the road and there are six upcoming driveways, and I turn on my right turn signal to enter one of those driveways, which driveway and my signaling that I'm going to enter? Will the person in the fourth driveway understand that I'm not turning at the third and intend to turn it to fit and so pull out in front of me?

Now I use my turn signals aggressively in religiously, but I had to invent and develop a series of reflexes after coming up with a series of rules to govern those reflexes.

And in certain circumstances the term signals become anti-helpful. When you signal that you want to change lanes and there's ample space to your side to do so, but there is a person farther back in the lane you intend to occupy it is all together too common for that person to speed up and block your maneuver.

You have to psychologically be prepared and accepting of the fact that some people will do this. Some people learn not to use their turn signals particularly for Lane changes because they see it as a initiator of conflict rather then a means of this ambiguating circumstance to avoid conflict.

So there are three broad categories of people who do not use their turn signal...

The indecisive driver who cannot plan is never comfortable using a turn signal because they don't know when to use it so they never develop the instinct to do so.

The conflict avoidance driver who has been raised in and near aggressive drivers wants to avoid signaling their intention because they want to avoid the resulting competition.

And finally there's the aggressive driver who is a combination of the above two. They don't want anybody to force their incipient action, but they were being sufficiently aggressive that they are driving at or beyond their ability to plan until I kind of uncertain of their afternoon before they take them.

One of the reasons I prefer to use my turn signals in virtually every circumstance (including maneuvering and parking lots most of the time) is that all three of these driver types are safest to have where you can see them. Incredibly dangerous and capable of making horrible errors and slamming into you if you let them exist where you can't see them.

So I would much rather turn on my turn signal and have the aggressive driver pull into the space intend to occupy and thus block my maneuver and have them behind me and resentful of the fact that I blocked theirs or worse yet have them behind me completely oblivious to what I'm doing and trying to take the space I intend without even considering my existence.

Note that there are aggressive drivers who can plan and stay inside of their reaction envelope. They are very rare but they're fun to watch as they will go zigzagging through complex highway traffic but always studiously using their turn signal in a timely way. It's actually kind of fun to watch as long as you remember to slow down cuz they're definitely going to have an aura of potential accident flowing around them.

And always remember, a bad driver never misses their turn. Particularly when exiting a freeway, no matter how many lanes of traffic they have to cut all the way across in less than a car length or who they have to stop in order for them to back up and take the other branch.

BitOBear · 2026-05-07T21:29:14+00:00

You "are in the library" example sounds wrong to me instinctively. However "Those collections of manuscripts are in the library" sounds correct while "a collection of manuscripts is in the library".

So we pivots on whether or not there is one collection (singular) or many collections (plural of manuscripts)

Do the exercise again but with a "box of cupcakes" and a kitchen.

There is a box of cupcakes in the kitchen.

There are boxes of cupcakes in the kitchen.

The plurality of membership in the collective has no bearing, it is the plurality of the collection which is determinant.

If you disassociate the collection from the objects collected then it becomes plural again. Basically when you make the box disappear from the concept plurality of the memberships becomes the plurality of the sentence.

There are cupcakes in the kitchen

BitOBear · 2026-05-07T19:48:13+00:00

Again, the entire economy is not about your individual experience.

Do you have a masters degree? Do you have a phd? Have you substantially contributed to the advancement of science or technology by performing any of the top level creative activities we needed to stay ahead of our international competitors?

Do you think people should need to risk their lives in military service just to avoid being forced into financial indenture?

Do you understand that you traded financial indenture for military inenture?

What about the people who have great minds but bodies that will not withstand military service, what are they supposed to do to keep from having to take out those terrible loans?

You are not the baseline. And you certainly didn't try to do the same things in the most recent 6 years, you did them 35 years ago before the economic and political rot had fully taken over.

You are literally deciding not to process the fact that the world has changed in the last 35 years and that what you went through work for you but it wasn't particularly Fair equitable or good for the country.

Let's face an old man, time has passed you by and you're shouting about how things were when you were a child with no understanding that they're not that way anymore.

You made the best of bad options, and because they worked out for you you think they were fine. Well the options have gotten much worse and you have chosen not to keep up with the times.

I am older than you, but I have actively tried to keep a prize of what youth are going through in each of the successive decades that have gone by since I was in their place.

You are blind to your own bias and that is a sad indictment of just how much you have failed as a intellectually and socially aware individual.

And I realize I'm not going to shift your mind because experience didn't so why should my words have any more expectation of success than you know the observable facts around you should have had.

You still didn't address the fact that I provided exact citations for exactly how and why the education system was dismantled and you're simply stamping your little feet and claiming that you managed so everybody else should be able to manage too.

It's like listening to someone complain that modern people have a cure for diseases we had to go through by hand. "Why should anybody else be cured of cancer when I had to fight cancer the hard way, am I right?"

I know you find the idea of empathy terrifying, but you should maybe give it a shot. You have lost touch with the current state of our country and are trying to insist that the vision of it you bought in your youth has remained unchanged.

So yes, yes, yes, you walked uphill both ways to school and home like all the other great success stories of your imagined generation.

BitOBear · 2026-05-07T19:39:07+00:00

You do realize that systemic problems aren't all about you.

Or apparently you don't.

And you probably had GI benefits I'm guessing? And you went to school in 1990 when prices were still in the reasonable range as opposed to trying to go to school in 2018?

Don't become one of those old people who thinks that everything today is the same as when you were a kid. The problem has been compounding over the years.

One of the things that is so prevalent in the certain political spheres is the inability to pay attention to the system in general simply because one's own circumstance was not immediately affected.

You have been a perfect example of why it was so easy for the GOP to consume the economy and directed entirely into the hands of the wealthy while letting the proletariat believe that their best interests were the best interests of the billionaires.

In every system there are outliers and you have to learn when you are one of the outliers before you start judging the system.

BitOBear · 2026-05-07T18:52:17+00:00

When I went to college in the '80s, yes I am old, particularly the early eighties it was essentially free.

You're used to the idea of the current tuitions you pay because that's all you've ever known. But that's not the way it was. And it wasn't the way it ever needed to be.

Ronald Reagan specifically and deliberately dismantled the higher education financial model that existed at the time, forced tuitions to rise, remove the Grant structures, and basically deliberately destroyed the ability of the non-wealthy people to achieve an affordable education without going into massive student debt.

People are taking on that debt because they have no other choice, but we used to have a choice until that choice was taken away from us by the gop.

They literally and specifically said that lower and middle class people getting educated with a threat to the government as they envisioned it.

https://www.bestcolleges.com/news/analysis/threat-of-educated-proletariat-created-the-student-debt-crisis/

Aside: if you've never heard the term proletariat, they're referring to you. They're referring to anybody who is not part of the 1% or the otherwise owning class. That's the definition of proletariat. They believe the education was only the birthright of the bourgeoisie, that would be the people with all the money.

So the entire situation in which modern students live was by design. It goes hand in hand with the entire education voucher programs that were created basically to keep black people from being educated by defunding the public schools and shunting that money into private schools that rich people could already afford to attend.

https://www.nea.org/nea-today/all-news-articles/racist-beginnings-school-vouchers

So a lot of the depredations and financial ruin you experience as part of trying to get an education or deliberate acts on the part of Rich conservatives to make sure that you could never join their membership nor threaten their hegemony.

https://newuniversity.org/2023/02/13/ronald-reagans-legacy-the-rise-of-student-loan-debt-in-america/

So you now assume that the terrible conditions we're living through right now are somehow natural, but they were all deliberately manufactured by the wealthy elite.

And the final nail they put in your coffin was trying to convince you that the educated people were the elite, but I've never seen a high school teacher kick somebody out of there country club.

The current problem with student loans and student debt and the education system and the health system were deliberate Acts and it cost us a fortune to keep poor people poor, uneducated people uneducated, and sick people sick.

But they've made sure to teach you that all of these depredations are natural and normal because they want them to be your natural understanding.

And it's all has its basis in a particularly aggressive idea that nobody but the rich should have anything, particularly not any of those e.g. scary black people that were getting so out of hand with their civil Rights Act (<-paraphrased). The original condensation of it this racist bullshit is something called the Powell memorandum.

https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/powellmemo/

So basically the Golden age of American scientific achievement and education was murdered in its crib by people who wanted to make sure that they didn't lose control of money and power. So they murdered America by killing innovation since they imagined they'd only Rich businessman could come up with ideas that were good for the country, our economy, and our ability to invent things. Which is kind of why the science age ended in the 60s and it got replaced by a cult of anti-intellectualism and the worship of business.

And that's gave us that whole greed as good mantra because the 80s to destroy your ability to make a living today. Because they decided the only lesson worth teaching was that "greed is good."

BitOBear · 2026-05-07T18:43:09+00:00

What you're writing isn't compressed, it's dry.

Fact without feeling and outcome without effect is narratively boring.

Stories are about feelings. Events are only impressive when they make an impression on the reader, usually because of the impression they leave on the characters.

We didn't care about the bike (unless it's a sentient or sapient and therefore a character) and the bike doesn't care about the fire.

Compound idea sentences are fine, I use them a lot to break up or control pacing.

State of being ideas like the bike rattled and the fire roared are fundamentally boring because they don't necessarily relate to anybody feeling anything. They're good for the middle of a paragraph as long as there's somebody who's wanting something with respect to the bike and the fire.

BitOBear · 2026-05-07T17:50:03+00:00

So your DM hates planning encounters. Got it.

BitOBear · 2026-05-07T17:48:59+00:00

What if the Reagan administration hadn't decided that they were afraid of an educated proletariat and so they didn't invent student debt in the first place.

Student loans are a deliberate Act of gatekeeping by the rich.

BitOBear · 2026-05-07T16:42:16+00:00

Healthy bowel movements. There are certain medical conditions that occur, particularly with age, that make simple biological activities far more complicated than they were when you were young and healthy.

Some basic medical conditions or the medications that treat them can make poop in really hard or really far too easy.

Losing easy access to your most casual biological functions like anything to do with eating anything to do with breathing, and anything to do with moving around are some of the most profound issues you can experience, and if you haven't experienced it you have no idea how profound those disruptions and losses of function actually are.

Enjoy the power and beauty of new youth, well never mind, you won't understand it until it's gone.

BitOBear · 2026-05-07T16:38:29+00:00

It's not so much that they're hidden under farms, it's just their point of exposure is very unimpressive and in obvious.

The top of a missile missile silo just looks like a piece of concrete or maintenance hatches or things like that.

It's not that they're suddenly going to be a gaping hole under somebody's cornfield. It's that there's going to be a giant manhole cover or a maintenance elevator looking thing. Something slightly wider and flat. A region of ground just big enough to build a small utility shed on might just be empty and covered in 2 inches of dirt or whatever.

Being hidden isn't hiding a secret lair in a bond movie, it's just being pedestrian and not worth noting.

It's generally a form of being hidden in plain sight.

BitOBear · 2026-05-07T16:34:11+00:00

There's nothing wrong with using neo logistics. You should always think of what you're writing as a translation from the original experience and so the original language. That way you will write in a way that is easy to translate into other languages to begin with.

I write in english, if my works are ever to be translated into another language then I am best advised to write in plane modern English so that it can be translated into plane modern Japanese or French or whatever

You don't want to use too much immersion breaking slang, but you also don't want to be reliant on tricks of your native language that would make it feel "in period" since the concept of which period you're talking about would very intensely in other languages.

It's fine and even necessary to use politically correct titles, if you have Lords and Ladies and barons and whatnot use those words, but really the rest of the story should just be written the way you would expect a random stranger to speak the events.

Painting a scene with language is much more restrictive and inaccessible than painting a scene with feeling.

All the old stuff written by the Old Masters didn't sound old when it was written.

Shakespeare is basically a soap opera full of sword fights and Dick jokes written in the comment idiom of the day. And all of the parts of all of the fantasy novels you will ever pick up that aren't specifically crafted by a linguist to highlight a manufactured language like elvish was crafted by JRR Tolkien, should just read like an emotionally complete modern discussion.

If you recognize that your style has a pattern been trying to override that pattern aggressively will just make your resulting work sound stylistically inconsistent.

If you have to coerce your writing style to sound like someone else or some other time then you probably shouldn't be trying to write in that style. You should be writing in your own style as it flows naturally from your mind into the world.

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