Alicornutopia

...I can't reproduce it again now. Dunno what happened.

I'm not keeping that close track of it but people seem to still being finding bugs and the fixes sound like they change some behaviors.

There might also be a UI overhaul in the works at some point because UI design isn't Marri's strong point and a lot of stuff is currently at the "well, there sure is a button to do that, somewhere!" stage. I've contemplated helping, but UI design isn't my strong point either. Anybody around here know anything about UI design?

Fitts's law is a good starting point. How easy something is to click/press is a function of how close it is to where your mouse usually is and how big it is.
The general idea is something that you do rarely or not at all (delete a character) should be a little button tucked into a corner compared to something that you use all the time (reply to post) which is a big obvious button near where the mouse tends to hang out. I am also not a UI professional and haven't taken a good long look at the Constellation UI though.

Very unlikely prediction: Mason is a very old mage or friend-of-a-mage. It fits so well: perhaps he is following old fashioned abuse standards instead of knowingly being abusive, he does not own a computer in 2003, and it would not be surprising if some character had this secret and he might be the most fleshed out character without a conflicting backstory.

Counter-prediction: the authors will make that true now that you suggested it.

http://alicornutopia.dreamwidth.org/299 ... mt19053570

*reads post*
hm what is bugging me about this
oh
right!
that's Gandalf!

Probably bel- will become a prefix people think of as synonymous with 'invention'.

"It should also be noted that the voiced plosives b, d, g only occur in the clusters mb, nd/ld/rd and ng (some varieties of Quenya also had lb instead of lv)."

Should the assumption be just that they are pronouncing it slightly differently and it isn't being written because it would be confusing to read, or does the initial b of bel- stay because it is from a different language?

EDIT: apparently this might have been before the relevant sound change?

No, you're totally right, Quenya words can't start with a 'b' and I don't think proto-Quenya words could either.

Primitive Quenya actually did! (I went and looked up the extrapolated history after commenting on that in chat). That's where Quenya v comes from (well, some of the Quenya v-, there's a sound change later in Noldorin Quenya from w- to v-). And apparently the relevant sound change is as late as pre-recorded Quenya, so it actually works fine if you assume that one hasn't happened yet (Although iirc they've been using 'Vala' not 'Bala' so... maybe if it's going on at the time?).

I thought the sound change was back in Common Eldarin before I looked though.