Some sites have “Water Coolers” where you talk about what you want; other sites have open threads to talk about whatever you want.
We have the Open Sesame, because creating an open thread with references to other things that are often “open” in a romance novel would lead to very interesting Google hits, indeed!
So- what’s on your mind? Whaddya wanna talk about?
I deflowered my hubby; in college I was a mattress with blond hair. We’ll be married 18 years this August. Happily.
I’m now breaking my brain trying to figure out how to correctly pluralize “deus ex machina.â€
I knew my Latin classes in college would eventually come in handy. It’s dei ex machina. Machina doesn’t change, because it needs to be that form since it’s used with ex.
I say Latin should be required in schools. At least a year. It’s so useful.
Who cares if Snape really is Ever So Evil as long as Alan Rickman keeps playing him in the movies….
Darlene said I used to sing “Hope Eyrie†to my sons as a lullaby.
That, and “The Green Hills of Harmony†and a few other filk songs fit for young ears.
do you know the parody to that? it has the phrase “so fare thee well, all vestiges of harmony, all of the Dorsai are singing..”
I dearly love filk. can’t sing worth a damn, but I love listening. I’ve got my mp3 player filled with it.
I didn’t have time to get through all the posts, but I think combining the first part of Maili’s Latin with the second part of Candy’s will give you the correct plural.
Deus is masculine, so it would be Dei. Machina is feminine, so it would be machinae. So, dei ex machinae. At least I’m pretty sure.
Actually, it’s dei ex machinis because ex always takes the ablative form and the plural abl. of machina is machinis.
“Actually, it’s dei ex machinis because ex always takes the ablative form and the plural abl. of machina is machinis.”
Although now a really arcane question: do you have multiple gods from multiple machines, or is it enough to have multiple gods from one machine (dei ex machina)? I see it as similar to mothers-in-law or passers-by, where you make plural the central noun and leave the rest singular. I tend to favor Alyssa’s translation for this reason, but think you could pitch it either way, depending on how you see the image multiplying.
Well, I think we’re both right in some way. It just depends on how you think of it. I’m just saying that it’s either Dei (Di) ex machina or Dei (Di) ex machinis, but there aren’t any other correct pluralizations. I too also think of Alyssa’s as the more correct when I think of it.
Becca—The parody is called “All of the Filkers Are Singing” and the chorus is “And it’s fare ye well, all vestige of harmony, all of the filkers (or Dorsai, depending on the crowd) are singing.” It’s in the Westerfilk collection, among others.
When I went to Intersection (Worldcon, Scotland) I was at the Edinburgh Festival and got tickets to a program on folk songs of Northeastern Scotland. By sheer fannish coincidence, the singer was the man who composed “Banks of Sicily”, the song “Green Hills of Harmony” is a riff on. It was weird. And fun.
But if this devolves into a fannish discussion, or as we say at Litforum, a discussion of cats or barbecue, we’ll have to take it offline.[g]
“Well, I think we’re both right in some way. It just depends on how you think of it. I’m just saying that it’s either Dei (Di) ex machina or Dei (Di) ex machinis, but there aren’t any other correct pluralizations. I too also think of Alyssa’s as the more correct when I think of it.”
I hope you don’t think I was questioning your grammatical explanation or pluralization, Nicole; I was just drawing the question out to a ridiculous level of analytical minutae because, well, that’s what happens in my sick and sordid brain. I had come up with both forms in my head when I contemplated the plural question myself. I just felt the pluralization of Deus alone made more conceptual sense, although I can see an argument either way, depending on how you want to use the image and the device. I really think this is a question for Monty Python to resolve, don’t you?
lol oh no, I never got that out of it. 🙂 I’m more thinking out loud. And yeah, I always have to analyse things like this. And pluralizing Latin phrases are always complicated. Hell, pluralizing Latin words is complicated.
hmm…I’m not sure I really want to know what Monty Python would make of this conversation. *g*
Maili said:
If I remember correctly, the majority of romance readers are married with children and there’s a strong implication that the majority of that majority demands virgin heroines. I’m still trying to figure out why. I mean, I like to think that there is more to the heroine than the state of her hymen [whether it’s intact or not], but not in romance genre, it seems.
I think the attraction of virgin heroines lies in revisiting one’s youth, the one-time fresh perspective, the innocence of not knowing how it all is. When we read about virgin heroines’ first experience, in a sense it is like vicariously reliving it for the first time too. On the other hand an experienced heroine reminds us of our own “jaded” state a bit too much. So, in a nutshell, it’s a desire for a fresh clean start in the emotional romantic sense, with each new book we read.
Virginity becomes an emotional metaphor for a blank slate.
On a different note, I was wondering the other day what it’s about men’s dark hair that attracts so many women? And why blond men end up as villains?
As someone who is attracted to blond men more than dark, I can say that it all depends on what we are looking for in our dream guy. I think that on some unconscious gut level, “dark” implies experience (and hence a protective male), and “blond” implies innocent youth (for those of us who prefer to deflower our hunk). 😉
Since this is our “kinda water cooler” area I just wanted to post a note that I’ll be offline Aug. 1-Aug. 11, unless I get desperate and pop into an Internet cafe. I’ll be at Interaction, the World SF Convention in Glasgow, Scotland.
Life is good.[g]