Grrl Power #687 – A friendly tongue
My favorite thing about this page is that we break into this conversation midstream, so you need to realize it took Sydney that much longer to realize the other girl was speaking English. I don’t know what she is. Demoness? Tiefling-adjacent? Whatever. Obviously Gray-gal there suggested Sydney have some more of that supposedly dangerous-to-human spicy food so she could film it for her universetube channel.
There’s obviously other ways onto the station. People can beam down or take shuttles, but you’re supposed to use the starports if you dock, otherwise there’d be ships landing all over the place. There are some races than can fly using various methods, so they can just hop out of their ship and float down wherever they need, but they still need to park their ship either at a port or put it in orbit. Gray-gal can’t fly and doesn’t have her own personal shuttle, so she was being a little absent minded when she said there wasn’t any other way on to the station.
Also, there are travel gates all over the station (basically human scale stargates) but unbeknownst to most of the station’s populace, there are some gates that lead to weird places. Technically they’re shut down and not equipped with information kiosks, but it is still quite possible to get onto the station and miss the amenities.
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After looking at some ‘tasteful art’ on deviantArts, speculum that the hand on Sydney’s shoulder belongs to one Ivy Valentine, what she is doing on Fracture and how she knows Sydney’s name will be revealed tonight :D
I recon it is Captain Cora
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2994
Given that her hand (seen onW the previous page) looks the same. And we know she was closing in on Sydney.
But dull sensible analysis aside, a bit of googling allows me to see the association you have drawn.
Obviously it will be Cora the Explorer, was just having some funs :(
It’s Cora’s evil twin, Aroc.
Oh, no, no. You mean “speculate”. A “speculum” is a sort of medical tool. Quite a different meaning.
Didn’t make an error in word choice :P
I stand corrected, and particular portion of my psyche is giggling like a schoolgirl.
I hope not tiefling-adjacent. I don’t care for 5e Tieflings; I much prefer the “base species with demon-like features” of earlier editions, rather than a bunch of beings that all look identical. Among other things, the 5e version doesn’t have room for anything other than humans to be such.
At some point I shall have to acquire myself some gaming manuals again. Of which GURPs will be my first priority, as I will be too busy for anything beyond solo character creation. But will want to get some D&D stuff, so I’m up to speed, for when I can eventually go to a convention again.
Is 5th ed the way to go?
If you want to do convention play, yeah, 5e will be your go to. Specifically, Adventurer’s League will be what you’ll need. However, Pathfinder is basically 3.5 with extra stuff, so if that’s more your speed you could also look into Pathfinder Society games. You can try your luck with other systems, but those 2 are the most popular at current conventions.
Cool, thanks.
5e is a much simpler game than previous editions. If you are looking for something easy to get into, then it is definitely the best D&D. I find it can be a bit lacking in terms of mechanical depth, but there’s a lot of pretty good extra stuff on the various reddits.
Is it a coincidence that Sidney’s last name is Scoville and that is also the unit of measure for the very spicy food Sidney is so fond of?
Yes. Oddly enough given that various other names were intentional plays on words (e.g. Super Hiro and Peggy), but that one slipped by Dave.
Mind you that measurement is not exactly a household term, which crops up in conversation every day, so that is understandable.
Maybe not in your household.
A case of Nominative Determinism.
It is also worth noting that the name Sydney Scoville also follows a long standing tradition in comics of alliterative names. Harem follows this tradition as well with her name, Daphne DeShantis. Anvil’s name, Kenya Cassidy, is pseudo-alliterative as the initial letters differ yet sound alike.
Remember the most famous of them all: Clark Kent
Or Lois Lane, Lana Lang and Lex Luther. (That is how we know Perry White and Jimmy Olsen are not primary characters, they don’t fit the pattern.)
It was planned, to be that name.
As Yorpie said, DaveB Himself admitted to not realising the true significance of the name when he came up with it
Noticing a lot of confusion and talk about the translators and how they work and the basic needs of such a technology. Translators are unfortunately one of those tech part of a special list of sci-fi tropes that have been around since the starting days of sci-fi and as a result are subject mainly to those rules and conditions; much like the Gravity Engines in ships so people don’t float everywhere, food synthesizers, endless air supplies, anti-gravity belts, jet packs, flying cars, and keeping alien or robot mascots on the ship for no apparent reason, ect…
The simple answer is
Kid’s show.
While outer space sci-fi today is taken more seriously, and we try to have (reasonable) or at least in-universe consistent elements, a lot of stuff got grandfathered into this type of sci-fi; that had no or next to no real scientific basis when introduced. This is because the original sci-fi outer space shows and movies were targeted to children. It wouldn’t be until stuff like Star Wars and Alien, and the popularity of one kid’s show (yes it was targeted to children originally) Star Trek, took off and got adults interested that the science part of science fiction started to get more focus as opposed to just calling them “space dramas” or “space fantasies”, or “space operas”. Sure there were a few adult targeted ones back in the 70’s (targeting people who were kids in the 40’s and 50’s so had that…naughty version of kids stuff like their version of Happy Time Murders).
But in the end, what is the universal translator? A handwave by the writer to avoid having to make up new languages for their alien of the week on the planet of hats. Just like the artificial gravity generator is a handwave to explain not wanting/needing to extend the special effects to have the whole cast look like they are floating around.
Yeah, we want more science NOW, but these are elements from the kid show days of sci-fi that are part of that foundation. Think of it like we have this big fancy building, lots of business floors, the penthouse is a science lab, but the foundation of the building is a chuck e cheese full of ball pits and kids running around saying “pew pew” while wearing visor helmets and carrying plastic commander cody ray gun blasters.
That may be their purpose, in a story, but is it unrealistic? In this example usage, I do not believe so. Here the device is not guessing the meaning of a language it has only just been exposed to.
Rather we know that the Twilight Council (and thereby aliens) have been active on Earth for three thousand years. Their language databases have been recording our languages since before English even existed (by that name)!
Recognising a known language is trivial, for advanced technology. Therefore it is simply a matter of translating one known language to another. Something which even we have apps for!
Although Google translate was laughably bad, it has improved. To the point that was reliable enough for me to convey matters that were too complex for my pigeon Bulgarian, without having had an instance of a miss-translation causing me any problem. Nor anyone else I knew making practical use of it.
Give the technology 3000 years to mature, and exposure to 6000 alien languages, and I think ‘universal translators’ would easily work as well as we see here.
We are already starting to have a similar technology https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cBc2dup-uw so imagine what it will be like in just a decade not even 3k years.
I must point out that we used the written language version. I have yet to use the Youtube version, for spoken dialogue, without abandoning it. But each test has shown a marked improvement (with LONG gaps in between each).
I have to agree with Yorp in that many of the ‘Magic Hand Wave” technologies of early SciFi have become reality (and come cases very scary reality). Translators are well in production (just not perfect nor intuitive). While Artificial gravity (generated, not done by spin) is well in the future if it is indeed possible, the first steps have been taken in transporter tech (on the particle level). A tech most would have said totally impossible on any level. Many of McCoy’s medical instruments in the original Star Trek were considered such Magic Hand techs are now very real technologies in hospitals. Along with the Hand Held communicator, Tablet PC, Nanites. If we can dream it, there stands a good chance we can eventually create it if there is any way it might possibly be done. Just don’t expect it in your local electronic store in time for the holidays. I’d say the only real issue we have is all too often we forget which things are yet in the dream stage and what is currently real. Oh. Flying car.. have it, (there is at least 4 types currently for sale) just not terribly practical to have people who can barely follow the rules of the road half the time up in air and deciding they can cut off that jetliner with room to spare….. I’d rather only a couple of professionals have them, than my drunken neighbor. There are Food Printers….yes… we are 3-D printing food now.
Way to miss the point of Rhuen‘s post, both of you
Yes, we kind of expect that to be realistic now because nerds growing up on all those old Science Fantasy shows decided “Hey, why can’t we make those a reality?” and work for decades making them, to the point most people just assume them to be everyday devices without really thinking about how they work (until you get a bunch of armchair nerds playing scientist and picking things apart)
Yep,
I can recommend the documentary this for everyone as a basic.
https://www.cbs.com/shows/star-trek-discovery/news/1006354/how-star-trek-s-tech-changed-the-world/
the long short is, this type of tech was a handwave, but we saw it and obsessed over it over the years to try and make it a reality. Reflected in the type of talks we are seeing on this page trying to figure out how to make work what started off as *eh its make believe*, we got automatic doors, the obsession of having every piece of information and music we could as much available at any time as we could *with “Computer play Beethoven” we’d never have “Alexa play baby shark”.
So what makes it funny is we are basically looking at stuff originating in kids shows, being passed down via more serious sci-fi that is so ingrained in it that we simply MUST find a way to make it work for real to make our childhood fantasies a reality.
And it actually goes back further, to the old Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serials and newspaper strips
In simple terms, universal translators are a dodge to avoid having to spend excessive time (hours, days, months?) deciphering alien languages and instead devote that time to advancing the plot. The obvious exception is stories where deciphering the alien language is an integral part of the plot like the movie “Arrival” or the “Star Trek: Next Generation” episode where the translator “worked” but the aliens could not be understood because everything they said was a cultural reference of some type.
LoL, all female aliens have boobs(and nice breast) , they are like Halloween party…
BREAST POWER!
Except for the ones that don’t have them, so you don’t know they are females, or the ones that are male but you think they are female because they have breasts that are actually testicles, and the.sexless species who’s swim bladders resemble.breasts.
Ummm, how come the worker of the restaurant didn’t have a translator in the last page?
Who says he did not? Pointing at a device is not something that needs translating (other than to individuals lacking sight or a comparable sense). And he my just be someone who enjoys pantomime.
Or we could consider that such devices may not come cheap. Trivial compared to the cost of interstellar travel mind, so he would expect transient customers to be equipped when th them. Whereas locals would not need them.
So even if he has one, why bother with the discomfort of wearing it, if he only rarely needs it?
I was wondering how Sydney paid for it, but honestly? Just getting a bunch of hits on Space YouTube might pay for itself for this civilization.
I’ve got to say, that’s a really dedicated process server.