Recent content by Dioltach

Maybe tomorrow I'll make it into my office and look in my Benson Benson & Ibsen Dictionary of Word Combinations.

The wife and I are both language professionals, and we've noticed it in the last few years. Apparently it's used for announcements on at least some trains in the UK: "We're arriving to Manchester station", for instance, according to one credible source.

This always struck me as weird. It's a built-in premise in the world that every story is just a retelling of something that's happened before, in a different age. And yet the biggest fans of the books happily ignore that.

And the vampire was played by Ian McKellen.

We have Disney+, Prime, Spotify Premium, Audible... and that's it, I think. I'll occasionally take one of the sports channels for a month or so to watch the rugby, but I cancel it as soon as the M6N/W6N is over (and the Dutch commentary is atrocious). I used to have Kobo Plus, but I have too...

What I'm not following is your reasoning. You complain about how LW was brought into TSR, then when I point out that it's nothing out of the ordinary you complain that she only managed to keep the company afloat for 12 years after saving it. What does that have to do with how she and Gygax came...

How is this a bad thing, or even relevant? That's how business is done. "Hey, I need something. Let me ask around to see if my circle of business contacts know someone who can help me out." If you end up regretting who you pick, that's on you.

It happens all the time in the corporate world. "We need an X type product, which sister company A makes. So even if it's not the best one on the market. we'll use it." It's a form of synergy.

When I saw Rogue One at the cinema - midmorning on a Wednesday, if I recall - there was a father with three small kids. Very small kids. I always assumed it was his day to have them, but he was going to see the new Star Wars movie, dammit! I wonder whether he regretted it by the end of the...

A couple more for me. Carlito's Way. That movie really sucked me in, so much that I'd forgotten how it started by the time it reached the end, and I was completely shocked. After the movie my mate went to the toilets and I waited for him in the lobby. Every man leaving the theatre was walking...

When I was 10, I lived in a rural part of the Netherlands where there wasn't much in the way of cinema, and what there was was too expensive for my parents to take me and all my sisters to. I think I'd only been to the cinema once in my life. But in 1983, before The Return of the Jedi came out...

The Old English name was "nyrdwirkan". And its practitioners were "nyrdingas".* *Not really.

A couple of my favourites: "Iron Eyes and the Watered-Down World" and "The Faithful Soldier, Prompted", both by Saladin Ahmed and included in his collection Engraved On The Eye.

Another recommendation: Sharp Ends, a collection of short stories by Joe Abercrombie that are connected to his First Law series.

GRRM and Gardner Dozois have compiled a bunch of anthologies of some top-notch short fiction, using themes such as Rogues, Dark Sorcery, Magic and Epic. Edit: There are also Shawn Speakman's Unfettered and Unbound anthologies.