Recent content by La Volpe

That was very cool. Nice find.

I agree. YA isn't a genre; it's just books aimed at the target market of "young adult". The question this raises is: What sets it apart from other markets? I.e. What makes a YA book a YA book? What makes these books particularly suited for the young adult market? My feeling (which is a...

I've found that YA tends to use particular themes and tropes. E.g. love triangles, coming-of-age, school-themed stuff, etc. There are a lot out there that don't (or at least not enough to bother me), but the majority of them do. But, for example, the Reckoners series by Sanderson is apparently...

I think you can still have tension even if the ending is known. But you get a different kind of tension, and it leads to a lot of dramatic irony. E.g. Two people are having lunch in a cafe. You (the reader) know that there is a bomb under the table and that it's set to explode, but the two...

First, a quick aside: Loved that movie (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen). My list would be hundreds long, but if I had to pare it down (and avoiding people that a) I would hate spending a lot of time with and b) have overly powerful abilities (thus making the point of a team moot)), it would...

Upon further googling, I concede your point. It seems I was confusing subject with actor/agent. Interestingly, everywhere I looked, the subject of a sentence is defined as something along the lines of "the person, place, thing, or idea that is doing or being something", but the moment passive...

I agree with 99% of this. But one bit doesn't seem right: "when the subject of the sentence is acted on by the verb" The subject of a sentence is never acted upon by the verb (at least, as I understand that sentence). The subject, by definition, is the thing doing the verb. E.g. John kicked...

If I might add to my previous post: The sentence it marked out is "and the City was once known by another name". You can tell that this is in passive voice by looking closely at how it's constructed. So, the verb in the sentence is "was known". Ask yourself, who is doing the knowing? It's not...

I don't think you need to worry about that particular instance. So, we could rewrite that (the second part of the sentence) into active voice by introducing a subject. So, e.g. "they once knew the City by another name." But that kind of sentence flows better with an implicit subject, so I'd...

The passive voice is really just an inversion of the regular sentence order. So normally, a sentence is: <Subject> <verb> <object> (E.g. John kicks the ball.) In passive voice, it's: <object> <verb> <subject> (E.g. The ball is kicked by John.) So whether people are talking, and whether or not...

From my limited knowledge, I'd first point out that bronze and copper are not equivalent. If I recall correctly, bronze was a better material for edged weapons than iron (steel was, of course, superior to both; and copper only better than stone). As for bronze's performance against steel, I'll...

I agree with this. You might get issues with people continuing their crimes even with the curse. I.e. Badman gets a curse for 10 years. Since he's cursed anyway, he just carries on doing what he's doing. And anyone with a compulsion to kill will not be stopped with the curse. So e.g., if...

I remember reading these quite a while back, but I had a great time reading them again. Good find. -- Someone forgot rule 20.

I looked that up, and from what snippets I could see, the Far Side is hilarious. I'd be a hard pitch to knock Calvin & Hobbes off the podium, but the Far Side is at the least a strong contender. Thanks for the recommendation, I shall endeavour to find more of that. Sigh. Well, what can you...

I only discovered Calvin & Hobbes a few years ago, to the detriment of my childhood. It's one of the best (or dare I say, the best?) comic strips I've ever read, and I'm quite annoyed that the newspapers over here didn't print strips of Calvin & Hobbes along with the usual Hägar and Peanuts strips.