Stats
Top Question:
The top question was What prevents Asimov’s robots from locking all humans in padded cells for the humans protection? asked by budgiebeaks with the highest voted answer by PMar.
Top Answer:
Mike Scott had the highest voted answer of the quarter for the question Why did Aragorn call this stranger father? asked by the-profile-that-was-promised.
Most Viewed
How did Thanos beat Hulk so easily? had the highest views at 27931 asked by KyloRen.
Most Controversial
Looking for a sci-fi/fantasy series of novels from 80’s involving tripods that cap children on the 13-14th birthday to control their minds asked by Derrk Miller with 15 up-votes and 8 down-votes.
Bounties
There were 25 bounties awarded for a total of 6200 rep (that’s slang for reputation, the currency and life-blood of Stack Exchange). A significant amount of that was from CreationEdge.
Blog Posts
December
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse in 100 words or less – Spoiler Free
November
Ralph Breaks the Internet Review in 100 Words or Less – Spoiler-Free
Highlights from 2018 – 3rd Quarter
Apparently there were no posts in October
User Picks
Questions
I quite liked this pair of questions by user Dakkaron
- In Star Trek Voyager: How often did ‘distress calls’ turn out to originate from antagonists?
- Does Voyager ever answer a distress call from anyone good?
I expected the ratio of genuine vs. deceptive to be very different based on my recollection.
Answers
I thought my answers to these were nicely comprehensive
And I honestly feel like this answer deserves a special mention since I staked out a ‘furry’ chatroom for nearly a month waiting for the author to turn up, then finally managed to catch him at 4am on a school night.
Questions.
- What is this creature on the back of Harry Potter 2 illustrated edition This is one of my favorite questions that I’ve asked (I still think it needs a good answer).
- What does the circular symbol mean that is worn by many men of the house of el I know that this has been said twice now, but it’s a really interesting question, if you haven’t already go upvote it!
Answers.
- Was the “Something Wicked This Way Comes” tag line to the Prisoner Of Azkaban movie poster taken from the 1962 Ray Bradbury novel of the same name? I honestly think both answers on here are great (along with the question).
I read Lord of the Rings recently. These questions were bothering my curiosity very much.
Why didn’t Saruman break Gandalf’s staff on Orthanc as Gandalf broke Saruman’s?
Why didn’t Galadriel take off her ring?
Questions
- What prevents Asimov’s robots from locking all humans in padded cells for the humans protection? – I remember seeing that one in First Posts review, and skipping it because it left me puzzled as to whether action to take, thinking about it and coming to the conclusion that “well s***, this is indeed a pretty good question”
- Who first used spacefaring sapient felines in science fiction? – because there are so many story-id questions about space/alien cats. This had to come from somewhere.
- What does the circular symbol mean that is worn by many men of the House of El? – I never really noticed, but that question made me curious.
Revision history
Seriously, hat down to Looking for a late 1950s to early 1960s movie or TV show with some similarities to “The Zanti Misfits”. I honestly haven’t even read past the first few revisions; but each new edit still makes me chuckle – this post just keeps getting longer and longer, probably one of the longest posts on SFF. Will that ever stop? (yes, I know of the 30k word limit, but still)
Answers
- Ubik’s answer to Is there a calendrical error in Asimov’s “The Last Trump”? and the related comments, which made me dwell into how big of a nitpicker Asimov was.
- The Dark Lord’s answer to What is this creature from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban?. Go upvote this, people – neat answer, straight from the horse’s mouth.
- I personally had a lot of fun gathering the timeline elements to When, exactly, does Justice League (2017) take place?. Turned out some very precise dates could be found, even if that involved squinted eyes and bleeding ears 🙂
Questions
These copyright questions were rather interesting to read. I hope we see more of these “behind the scenes” questions in 2019:
- When does the copyright on Isaac Asimov’s works expire?
- How is the Mary Poppins Sequel legal when the author denied a sequel?
Answers
- My own answer to Why did J. K. Rowling choose to downplay dragons? – Mostly because I like to discuss broader genre trends instead of just the specific details of individual stories.
Near miss
- I really wanted to include Jason Baker’s well-researched answer to a Mass Effect question, but it missed the 2018 boat by just under two weeks. Please ask more Mass Effect questions – it’s a rich franchise with a lot of backstory.
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