Way to get girls (?!): the new column for the new Dragon.

[BASHMAN]

Are you trying to suggest that the reason we don't like the article is that it was written by a woman? I don't like it because it's not a good article. I couldn't care less about the gonadal status of the author.

QFT. It is wrong to assume people are sexist if they don't like an article that a woman wrote. There have been plenty of excellent articles written by women. This just isn't one of them. However, I don't know if the fear of girls thing was actually a statement that people are sexist, rather than an opportunity to show a youtube parody of D&D players-- though I like Summoner Geeks better.

 

[BASHMAN]

I'd bet $10 that over half of my (ostensibly native English-speaking) students can't properly define either ribald or conflate. They're not part of the common parlance.

I'd bet that half of college professors cannot define ribald or conflate.

 

[EnglishScribe]

I am a native English speaker in the UK. Amongst other media I have read, on average 2-3 books a week for the past 30+ years. I may have encountered 'ribald' once or twice, but have until now not encountered 'conflate'. The more common 'vulgar' and 'blend' may be be more meaningful to a wider audience even if they are less precise.

To answer earlier replies, I believe that ‘informal text’ belongs on message boards, blogs, personal emails and glossy magazines aimed at fashion clones, not in articles in a professional publication.

And yes, Brownies (or even brownies for the informal) are young girls enjoying organised recreational and charitable activities – remember that 95.5% of the worlds population lives outside of the borders of the US.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

I could at least six sentence fragments, and the text contains nonsensical sentences such as:

Let's all jump on the bandwagon!

"7 unruly, unfocused PCs ISO of Dungeon Master." - ?

ISO = In Search Of. It's an abbreviation commonly used in personals ads. For instance, "SWM ISO SWF" means "Single White Male in search of Single White Female." This is generally used to save space; when you're paying by the character, you want to get all the pertinent info down as quickly as possible. So, you'll see ads like "SWM ISO SWF; enjoys cookings, long walks on the beach, dancing. [Phone Number]"

"Be gone Kashi and snap peas!" - ?

Kashi is a relatively new company which produces breakfast cereals, snack foods, and the like with a focus on being ridiculously healthy (and, by extension, almost always an acquired taste*). Snap peas are, of course, a vegetable.

So, what we're looking at here is someone who is banishing fru-fru snacks for the real heart of D&D cuisine: soda and bad snackies.

* - This is a polite way of saying that all of their products taste like absolute crap. I have yet to taste a Kashi anything that was worth the experience.

"Your character is going to bite it," -Is this referring to food again?

"Bite it" means "die." It's such a ridiculously old piece of slang that I'm shocked anyone doesn't understand it.

"schwiiiiiiing"

Onomotopeia. It's also a reference to Wayne's World, a popular skit on the show Saturday Night Live.

“untaint”

You really don't get this one?

And the article fails to take into consideration that the audience is international:

"That which does not kill you makes you brownies" - Brownies are young girl guides in the UK, so this could be considered to have a much more sinister meaning.

*snort, chuckle, guffaw*

Brownies, my snooty English friend.

Learn them, live them, love them.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Why should a term like brownies, a perfectly normal word in the English language, be held out as being particularly non-international-friendly?

Because it is.

This is how the Wikipedia entry begins, for example: 'In American cooking (. . .)' - emphasis mine, of course.

It's an American cooking term, not an English language term. No-one makes them or eats them, where I live. For example.

 

[wgreen]

And yes, Brownies (or even brownies for the informal) are young girls enjoying organised recreational and charitable activities – remember that 95.5% of the worlds population lives outside of the borders of the US.

Ahh, but does 95.5% of Wizards' audience live outside the borders of the US?

-Will

 

[Wormwood]

- remember that 95.5% of the worlds population lives outside of the borders of the US.

And what percentage of Dragon Magazine readers are outside of the U.S.? Because that's the only number that means anything in the context of this discussion.


edit: dammnit wgreen! wgreen Must Be Stopped!

 

[Aus_Snow]

And what percentage of Dragon Magazine readers are outside of the U.S.?

Indeed. That would be interesting to know.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

To answer earlier replies, I believe that ‘informal text’ belongs on message boards, blogs, personal emails and glossy magazines aimed at fashion clones, not in articles in a professional publication.

And there lies your problem. You think Dragon is a professional magazine.

I'd wager 99.9% of the readers do not.

 

[WayneLigon]

And there lies your problem. You think Dragon is a professional magazine. I'd wager 99.9% of the readers do not.

You get paid for your work, therefore it is a professional magazine, containing professional-grade work and materials. It's also not a medical journal or a text book where an informal voice - especially for a column, not an article - is out of place. Many newspaper and magazine columns use an informal voice, especially where the style and tone is supposed to be tounge-in-cheek and at least somewhat humorous. It's obvious that her column is meant to be both.