Favorite Question and Answers from First Quarter 2021

Question

Please link to your favorite questions and answers which were either asked or answered from January 1st 2021 through March 30st 2021 (or Smarch 31st).

Your answers will be compiled into a blog post like previous quarterly posts.

I will be using DavRob60's queries for a baseline, but I really appreciate people voicing the ones they really enjoyed. Maybe you feel like you answered one really well, even if it didn't receive a lot of votes. Let me know about it.

• Questions with most Votes created within 3 month range
• Questions with most View created within 3 month range
• Questions with best answer created within 3 month range

I will be linking all blog posts that happened within this quarter year. Also the most controversial question of the quarter. Also a sum of all the bounties that were awarded.

Additionally if there was a meta post you feel should be spotlighted those are also acceptable.

Answer 1

I quite liked this one. Like my Matrix animals answer, it required a deep dive into the Harry Potter films and a frame-by-frame (if you'll excuse the pun) analysis of the characters who appear in the backgrounds.

Is Harry Potter the only student with glasses?

It also had some great answers (from TheLethalCarrot and MBEllis) that focused on the books and the video games.

Answer 2

Topic challenges

The first quarter of 2021 saw the start of SFF.SE's topic challenge program, with three topic challenges completed during this quarter: Isaac Asimov, Hal Clement, and Cornelia Funke.

• The first one produced five questions from four distinct users (Clara Diaz Sanchez, Rand al'Thor, therxv, SuperCreff). My favourite was When was the origin of the "Nightfall" quotation found?, where I awarded a bounty to Ubik's answer.
• The second one produced five questions from two distinct users (Rand al'Thor, cometaryorbit). My favourite was What is the significance of Hal Clement's comment about "Pancake in the Sky"?, where I awarded a bounty to Clara Diaz Sanchez's answer.
• The third one produced six questions from three distinct users (Skooba, Mithical, Rand al'Thor). I chose to promote Where is the setting of the start of Dragon Rider? by offering a bounty for fez's answer.

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Underappreciated posts

New user ferjsoto42yahoocom posted a number of questions and answers about Lewis Carroll's Alice books during March 2021. Most of them were heavily downvoted, for some reason, but I enjoyed learning interesting things from some deep Q&A about a classic of fantasy literature which has been under-appreciated on this site. Favourites include:

• Are there linguistic reasons for the Dormouse to be treated like a piece of furniture in ‘Wonderland?’ and Are there linguistic reasons for the Dormouse to think himself a bat in A Mad Tea-Party? (who knew there was so much multilingual and dialectal wordplay about the simple dormouse?)

• Does Pat the gardener correctly identify what he sees in the window as a giant Arum flower in ‘Underground’ (and Wonderland’)? (seems like a silly question at first glance, but the answer shows a surprising amount of evidence for a double meaning here)

• Who locked the door to the garden(s) in Underground and Wonderland, after Alice had unlocked it with the golden key? (seems at first glance to be a minor unimportant point, but the answer shows that Carroll himself considered it important enough to rewrite and clarify in a later version of the story)

• Is there evidence in Carroll’s text to show the Devil as a character in Wonderland’? (an unexpected literary/historical connection indicating possible references to an innocuous character as the Devil)

• Why are there so many references to, or instances of, rotational motion in Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland? (a question about a recurring motif which is still unanswered)

I found it very sad that so many interesting Q&A were so poorly received on this site. The SFF community has historically had something of an aversion to self-answers, although they're explicitly allowed by policy, but surely this is an excellent way for an expert in a particular work of sci-fi/fantasy to share their interesting knowledge with us?