Magnetic Poetry Duels

The Descendant blogged that MidnightRambler had blogged about The Descendant's wholesomeness. I posted a word-frequency comparison between The Descendant and me. These are words he likes to use more than I do:

laughter placing tone lifting fought gathering cheek cried rested floated chuckle father giggle washed blush features wrapping fighting familiar sigh wonderful daughter hug slid breathed frosting slightest nuzzling kiss calling lingering chest forelegs whispered drifted giggled embrace joined worried brushed treats resting lingered giggling nuzzle younger pelted dove wished hidden catching hide giggles wife girls laying

These are words I use more than he does:

toward yellow road details pull center comfortable problem eventually rainbow birds lose five horn someone imagine explain haven ends sharp feet bright notice horse flowers kid die says several liked paused shrugged twenty approach managed shame unicorns anyway background burning calmly eyebrows impossible lip nor sake snorted listen third throw tonight flank terrible angry colors

Looking at these, I think of... magnetic poetry.

Calmly burning eyebrows,
terrible angry colors,
shrug toward the yellow road.

So. The challenge, should you choose to accept it:

- Pick someone whom you think does not write like you.
- Challenge zer (him or her) to a stylo magnetic poetry write-off.
- Get some kind soul to run stylo's oppose() on your stories vs. zer stories.
- You write a poem in which at least 3/4 of the words come from zer top 100 preferred words. Ze writes a poem in which at least 3/4 of the words come from your top 100 preferred words. (You may change the word list length and required fraction by mutual consent.)
- You each post your poem on your blog, and link to the other person's blog.
- Profit!

Comments

[Titanium Dragon]

Why didn't you just use "their" and "them"?

Also, The Descendant's word list is very fluffy. Though also seem more, uh, intimate.

[Bad Horse]

2406945 Come on, you already know why, or can figure it out with three seconds' thought.

[TacticalRainboom]

This is the fucking best idea ever.

[Titanium Dragon]

2406948
Because you're trying to exclude intersex individuals and edgy people who claim not to be hims or hers from consideration, clearly.

[TacticalRainboom]

... the instructions for how to do this have too many computer words and not enough cuddling or horse dicks

this is harder than I thought

[Bad Horse]

2406975 Find somebody to do it with first, then see if someone will run the software & give you the word lists.

I'll run stylo for the first 4 pairs of writers who ask me to, if they each have at least 10,000 words of stories on fimfiction.

[Super Trampoline]

Ill volunteer to run against someone. Like, idk, Titanium Dragon.

(Yes, I want a free style analysis)

[TacticalRainboom]

2406997

I want to run against Stereo_Sub. I don't know how unlike him I am, but that's what we're here to find out.

I've bugged him to come confirm. He'll be around. He'll be around or I'll smack him until he comes around.

(He will probably ask you not to use his shitty but popular ones, the shipping one or the totally-not-masturbation-joke one.)

[Bad Horse]

2406956 Because 'they' is plural.

[Bad Horse]

2407071 Heh. I thought about asking Stereo_Sub, but I thought he wasn't around anymore. I don't know which ones you think are shitty but popular.

200 words Tactical Rainboom uses more than Stereo Sub:

rainbow spread dash flew twilights dear ponyville fur sight liked spit squeezed rear sparkle indeed team proper type join led solid folded hand target view himself dashs twilight finish knees struck beneath crossed growl nor rose display round unfortunately merely throughout trained flicked kicked lifted grip lower captain friendship aimed pool shimmer shed sent foal glad learn lift lifting owner presence tossed six except aside didn bottom house older pitch smell smirk flapping hidden reaching reared slid town wondered admit drag ends extended flanks glared grumbled moments search showing slide twitch home position control morning guard met powerful upon forelegs inches seeing flat guns midnight planted pounded alongside changed crystal furious brushed buried castle loudly swept tucked veil darkness perhaps simply lights path clouds cover streets wild floating heads pressed serious touched allowed awkward main power pegasus shock everypony such leaned table level pinkie rarity clutching princess vision windows breaths age business chair hallway soaked chill doors hide maned noise personal unlike bounced during shudder spun wearing distant surface stretched crowd clenched entered worn angle books challenge clamped clicked dense doorway enemy jus often rooms stretch swung trail weapons contained exertion failed firmly halt happily helping impact slip wouldn't

200 words Stereo Sub uses more than TacticalRainboom:

could've redheart octavia vinyl redhearts lying shoving shouldn't it'll obviously frowned isn't deal flickering manehatten spinning odd ugh ignoring leaping frowning gigantic irritated saddlebags wouldve trot tavi octavias lyras nurse greenish killed freaking mumbled wider quiet definitely grinned nearby suppose lyra otherwise shoved rhythm haven't freakin mentally extremely eyebrows motioning confident argue wincing azure bag confused weird marefriend hint er incredibly apparently tendrils blushed pieces chapter squinting pulsing continuing humming there's dead doesn't hadn't song kill shrugged thoughts liquid obvious smacked giggled wow stick ink gods universe blades figured drops sighing thunk figures insane veins wandering stumbling anymore boring gleaming ignore oblivious regular wriggling I'd shaking alive guys leapt broken self murmured realize avoid swear pointing alley hopefully pulse shiny saving general smack ass fairly previous woke although dreams suns assuming they've uh couple forehoof flank middle weren't forth entirely change aura faster louder anyone grabbing irritation blast damned absolutely approval friendly grow wildwood sonus dimension bottle ash thralls stab terrified daggers russani tavi's bitter grateful killing widening bluish layer managing nasty problems shaky spin action coughed flicking hopping object peered battered elegant heal incredible chocolate consider credit eerie needle sarcasm struggling connected grand later wouldn't pain they're line

[TheJediMasterEd]

TERRIBLE ANGRY COLORS!

[TacticalRainboom]

2407158

I don't know about "around," but he's a gaming buddy of mine.

I think my favorite is the character names that appear there.

These lists aren't very telling, are they. He uses "real" dialogue things like "uh" and I don't, I suppose.

[Admiral Biscuit]

I have a Lemony Snicket magnetic poetry set. For what that's worth.

[Chris]

I'm kind of curious about how I'd come out doing this compared to other authors, but the instructions in your previous blog(s) on the subjects zoomed right over my head, and I guess I didn't care quite enough to figure it out.

I really enjoy seeing these posts come up each time, though! I think you've hit a sweet spot so far, offering possible interpretations of the data without making unfounded statements. Although math as a whole isn't my strongest suit, I do have some small grounding in statistics and polling research, so it always makes me happy when people don't draw sweeping generalizations unsupported by data--or at least, when they have the courtesy to recognize that they've moved from the realm of fact into educated (or just completely unsupported) guesses.

[Jordanis]

2407112

I think that's a forlorn and hopeless battle you're sticking to, there.

[Southpaw]

Are there versions of Stylo that we mere mortals can download and install? You've had me curious with all of this word crunching...

[Titanium Dragon]

2407112
2407395
Not anymore! Years of abuse by people like me has succeeded in finally ruining the word to the point where it can be used in this manner. "Go find someone and ask them for help" is now grammatically correct.

Truly, it is a victory for us all. Or at least for me.

[Axis of Rotation]

Poetry? That thing I suck at?
Pass.

[Jordanis]

2407931

Singular they can actually be found in Chaucer, apparently. The gender-neutral usage appears to date back to at least the 1700s.

[Titanium Dragon]

2408109
I'm not terribly surprised; people out here on the left coast have done it as long as I've lived here, which is to say, my whole life. I was surprised the first time someone told me it was wrong, truth be told, simply because it felt like a natural, necessary part of the English language, as you need to be able to refer to people of indefinite gender somehow.

[Professor Whooves]

The singular "they" has been in use since the 14th century. It wasn't until 450 years later that grammarians decided to prefer the generic "he". Today, the singular "they" is once again accepted. See Garner's, CMoS, and Fowler's.

[equestrian.sen]

I'm breaking all the rules.

The Descendant
A familiar Pie
Resting by
Fights a sigh
And slides inside her laughing hide
As the girls
Whisper frost
For all they never knew they lost.

[equestrian.sen]

Böd Hoarse
Birdie, birdie, burning bright
Burning in the dead of night.
You audience will shamefully
Beg for pause eventually.

Birdie, birdie, not tonight.
Your voice is far too far from right.
A unicorn might feel worn
For the sharpness of your horn.

[Silent Strider]

2407410
Depends on what you mean by that.

Installing, and using, it isn't hard with the instructions Bad Horse gave; step 5 is optional (though omitting it can result in some analysis flaws), and step 6 is not needed when using 64 bits R for windows (which you will likely be doing, unless you are in the minority that uses iOS or Linux).

Bad Horse posted the instructions on using the oppose() function in another post; they build upon the previous instructions, and aren't too complex.

On the other hand, to the best of my knowledge, a truly user friendly version does not exist. It's a research tool, made for use by people who are, if not experienced programmers, at least used to the concept of entering commands through a prompt. The R language as a whole is a research tool, meant to allow scientists to quickly create programs to analyze sets of data in different ways.

[Southpaw]

2408650 Thank you, I appreciate your response. I missed BH's how-to post.

I have no problem dealing with technical challenges. I did discover the method with a concentrated search, and found that my effort would be better spent on writing than comparing my own poor texts with anyone else's stories. I think I'll just enjoy BH's posts from here and stop bugging him...

[TacticalRainboom]

2407158

Which stories did you use, exactly? All of them for both of us?

[equestrian.sen]

Assuming the author has 100 or fewer stories.

for page in `seq 10`; do wget -O - "http://www.fimfiction.net/stories?user=14744&page=$page" | grep story_name | sed 's/.*\/story\/\([0-9]*\)\/.*/\1/g' | while read story; do wget -O $story.txt "http://www.fimfiction.net/download_story.php?story=$story"; done; done

[toafan]

2408650
R as in "the R statistical language"?

I should

sudo aptitude install R &

get in on this.

(Sure, I've got more pressing issues to resolve. Like sound not working. On the other hand, ponies and science.)

[Bad Horse]

2414948 Ooh. Thanks. Tho it would help to mod that to rename the file

<user>_<title>.txt

as stylo uses everything before the first '_' to group texts by color.

[Bad Horse]

2410891
TacticalRainboom_A Cloudborn's Restless Spirit.txt
TacticalRainboom_Bedtime Stories.txt
TacticalRainboom_Equestrian Aerial Magic Assault Unit 00.txt
TacticalRainboom_Long Live the Queen.txt
TacticalRainboom_Reach and Flexibility.txt
TacticalRainboom_Starswirl Walked Through Time.txt
TacticalRainboom_Tactical Shorts By Request.txt
TacticalRainboom_The Sixth Age.txt
TacticalRainboom_The Skyborne Dance.txt
TacticalRainboom_Waking From the Nightmare.txt

Stereo-Sub_A Little Night Music.txt
Stereo-Sub_Operation Crimson.txt
Stereo-Sub_RUN.txt
Stereo-Sub_The Eternal Song.txt
Stereo-Sub_The Mare In Black.txt
Stereo-Sub_Thirty Minute Ponies- Silly, Sad, and Sweet.txt

[Bad Horse]

2407931 Making "them" singular just makes things worse. The purpose of a pronoun is to tell us sex, number, and point-of-view, or in the case of "them", just number and POV. Now you're degrading it not to tell us even number. Two wrongs don't make a right.

[equestrian.sen]

2416517
Fimfiction doesn't like leading spaces, so I included comments where the for and while loops end.

#!/usr/bin/python

from urllib2 import urlopen, quote
from lxml import etree
import re
import sys

def escape(s):
return re.sub(r'[^a-zA-Z`~!@#$%^&*()=+{}[\];"'"'"'<>,?| ]', '-', s)

userid = sys.argv[1] # '25781'

userpage = urlopen('http://www.fimfiction.net/stories?user=%s' % userid).read()
storylines = re.findall(r'.*story_name.*', userpage)

authorline = re.findall(r'<span class="author">.*', userpage)[0]
author = etree.fromstring(authorline).getchildren()[0].text
author = escape(author)

i = 0

while storylines:
for line in storylines:
e = etree.fromstring(line)
index = e.get('href').split('/')[2]
title = escape(e.text)

story = urlopen('http://www.fimfiction.net/download_story.php?story=%s' % index).read()

filename = '%s_%s.txt' % (author,title)
output = open(filename, 'w')
output.write(story)
output.close()
# end for

i += 1
userpage = urlopen('http://www.fimfiction.net/stories?user=%s&page=%d' % (userid, i)).read()
storylines = re.findall(r'.*story_name.*', userpage)
# end while

EDIT: I don't know which other characters you want escaped, so you might have to edit the regex in escape().

[equestrian.sen]

2416523
You're right, but people understand that when trying to determine the number of people involved, "them" has a low priority. (Similarly, "he" and "she" have a low priorities when determining an unknown "someone"'s gender.)

There's nothing wrong with a gender- or number-specific pronoun if it provides something useful. In your case, it provides redundancy in the number of people to challenge at a time, or affirmation that you're not telling people to specifically challenge males or females. The redundancy in number here either diverges your writing from your intentions (since you probably see nothing wrong with having a three-way challenge) or provides nothing (since the intended interpretation is exactly what you already specified with "someone").

The affirmation of gender-agnostic is probably warranted given the kinds of comments you don't want here, but "them" accomplishes that well enough.

[Silent Strider]

2417440
2416523

Interestingly enough, I just finished reading Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing (currently the first book on Writing Excuses' Book of the Week page), where the author makes a passionate argument for using "them" in the singular as a gender-neutral pronoun