Grrl Power #1332 – Al-ari, al-ara, al-ari, al-ara ha ha ha ha
I don’t know if only a wolverine could be specifically responsible for Lorlara’s speech pattern. I don’t have any esoteric knowledge about wolverine digestive processes. Maybe a goat could also work. Possibly a housecat with pancreatitis?
I think propriokinesics is a made up word. If you’ve read my Tamer fanfic novels, you know I have a tendency to do that. Not… inveterately. Just like, once in every hundred thousand words. Anyway, it’s supposed to mean “how people move.” In this case, we can blame Lorlara for not being satisfied with just saying that instead of needing to do a bunch of googling then slam two words together like she was speaking casual German. Not that I did the exact same thing >cough<.
Essentially though, what she’s saying with the Neural Voltage Potential bit is that nerves carry a certain amount of voltage, (with many factors contributing to that voltage, including the coating on nerves (the myelin sheath) and attenuation of voltage etc, etc.) and that voltage affects everything from reflexes to how hard someone can flex their muscles, and the differences in the neuromuscular biology between and alari and humans is a tell-tale in how they move. Sciona grew up in an Alari body, then most of her inhabited a troll for a while, then back to an Alari, and now a human. Lorlara is saying Deus is perceptive enough to notice all the little signs of the different bodies she’s inhabited.
Which is simply not true. Deus might be able to tell if an alari recently Freaky Friday’d with a human, but the brain would probably start to compensate and smooth over any weird propriokinesic quirks after a few weeks.
Speaking of English being a fine and/or sucky language, I always want to capitalize race names, but you just don’t. If you’re talking about a klingon, you don’t. If you’re speaking in Klingon, you do, so that’s another irritating thing about English.
The new vote incentive is up! (Finally.)
I’m revisiting a panel from a recent page, but I included some comic reactions and a few outfit swaps, so hopefully you all enjoy it. I also plussed up the art from the comic version a bit, though I suspect that despite the time I spent on that, not a whole lot of people would immediately notice that, so I’m gratuitously pointing it out here.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
As it concerns the issue of capitalizing names of ethno-cultural groups or not, I am a bit uncertain on the issue and sometimes go back and forth. However, in the end I usually favor the option of capitalizing everything in a semi-consistent way regardless of whether they are races, ethnicities, or cultures, or whether they are RL or fictional. It seems more accurate and convenient this way.
Being an alt-history geek that often writes or discusses related scenarios or topics, it seems more convenient to me to have handy labels to distinguish say descendants of African slaves that live in the Americas from descendants of European or Asian immigrants that live in Africa, or to remark the important ethno-cultural difference between North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa. It comes convenient when say you write about timelines where a Pan-American USA sent the entire African diaspora in the Western Hemisphere to set up the Americo-Liberian equivalent of Greater Israel in West Africa after abolition or slavery, a more ruthless British Empire turned Southern Africa into an Euro-Asian settler land, or a successful Rome forged all of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa into China-like unbreakable unity.
This from the PoV of a guy that hates woke ideology with the intensity of 1000 suns, does not give its concerns and pet causes the time of day, and cares for values like freedom, facts, truth, pragmatism, science, and enlightened selfishness orders of magnitude more than equality or anybody’s feelings.
Having read your comments, I can’t help suspecting that what you hate is actually the strawman version of “woke ideology” — with its focus on “special snowflakes” and suchlike — that’s widely mocked by many in place of the actual “don’t arbitrarily treat some people worse than others for inborn traits” that’s actually at the core of “wokeness”. Well, that and the way some people (including many in the movie industry) congratulate themselves for how “socially aware” they are when they’re really just focusing on superficial aspects, with no more actual depth than someone who insists they’re not racist because they have a black friend who fake-laughs at their bigoted jokes.
Admittedly, there’s other stuff that’s built up around that aforementioned core, some of which is about trying to oppose entrenched unfairness, some about trying to help people realise things they might otherwise overlook, and some about… well… people trying to make themselves feel special, because this is still human social behaviour that’s largely developed on the internet with its many echo chambers.
Honestly, discussions of the subject are, distressingly often, a mess of miscommunication and overreaction. Still, as you’ve mentioned your liking for facts and truth, I thought it might be worth trying to help a little with such things. Remember, there are a lot of people who have vested interests in misleading others on this topic (in both directions and often for political reasons), so it’s probably best not to blindly accept anyone’s claims on the subject. Including mine, if only because I’ve probably explained this poorly due to lack of sleep.
“Woke” as it is now is just a word bigots use instead of slurs, demonize virtues and attack acts of basic human decency. Most of it is just imaginary stuff to shout out to get people into a frenzy over innocuous stuff or to distract people from the actual issues causing problems.
Its propaganda to melt your brain and blind you, shouted out by those in charge to put the blame on the vulnerable for their own actions.
“Oh gods, I traded Sydney for this.” – probably way to many people speaking to Lorlara
there are worse things than Sydney and LorLara. I’ll take both of them.
Lorlana is a gem. She’s bucking for employee of the month and I think she has a chance!
In that last panel Sciona sounds like she was briefly possessed by Sydney, doe that slap go both ways or something?
I am certain Sciona referenced the animal wolverine, not the Marvel character Wolverine.
It was the mild insult-barrage itself that is reminiscent of Sydney, not who she was talking about in the barrage
Sweet, Deus’ two favorite Alari finally meet! I have so many questions! Are they related? Will they like each other ( guessing no from this interaction)? Will they make out (which has nothing to do with them liking each other!)? Will Sciona look down on Lorlara for denigrating herself by playing Deus’ lapdog? Will Lorlala look down on Sciona for binding her soul to an inferior human body? Will they fight? Will there be a Jello pool for said fight? Will Deus sell tickets??
I share your interest and approve most of your questions, but this
> Will Sciona look down on Lorlara for denigrating herself by playing Deus’ lapdog? Will Lorlala look down on Sciona for binding her soul to an inferior human body?
seems unlikely to me. For all their faults, Alari do not seem hypocrites about their Might Makes Right ethos. A lot of the survivors are coming to accept Deus as a better leader than their own Houses, with Lorlara as a forerunner. Sciona came to see her current body as an equal or better option than her old Alari one. Arguably it makes her rather more powerful and resourceful, esp. in a combo with her blood magic; also, no need to use magic to get an ideal body.
If the Alari saw themselves as superior to Muggle Earthlings, they had factual reasons to deem so within their value system, including superior tech level, better mastery of magic, and greater personal abilities. It would be interesting to know how Alari rate themselves in a comparison with demons/succubi, which seem on a level playing field and broadly similar in civilization and group-achievement terms.
If and when conditions improve for Earthlings in terms of more of them becoming supers, getting access to interstellar-level tech, and/or mastering advanced magic, it is quite possible and even likely that Alari opinion of them shall considerably improve.
Admittedly, humans so far have not overreached themselves and pissed off a stronger species into genociding them.
No one expects the Alari PA!
English is an amazing language. We stole ALL the words.
I forget who it was who said something like “English doesn’t just borrow words from other languages. It chases them down alleys, mugs them, and rifles their pockets for vocabulary.”
“loose grammar”, not “vocabulary”
SF reviewer and perpetual snarker James Davis Nicoll, I believe.
Yes. James used to run a game store in Kitchener, ON where he was delightfully snarky to his customers and that was one of his favorite lines. Though Steven Brust and the late, great Roger Zelazny said similar things.
The last speech bubble from Sciona made me laugh out loud, unfortunately having been coughing my lungs up with some illness for the past week, it caused me a great deal of pain. That’s on me, I should know not to look at funny stuff while ill.
Sciona speaks the truth.
Two webcomics shitting on the English language today XD
Is this a coordinated thing or a coincidence?
Don’t leave us in suspense. What is the other one?
https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5510
QC is still going? use to read it a long time ago, but thought it ended when some of the characters got married or something (unless that was a different webic… )
Nice! Thanks for the link. I had somehow managed to skip right from 5509 to 5511. I suppose that’s what I get for checking my comic links at random throughout the week instead of using a RSS feed or something.
last insult feels like she caught a dose of the sydney’s when she hit the trio with the hypno drug last page.
There doesn’t seem to be any point at this time.
English is fine you just have to know how to use the words.
Oh and I forgot to add…this is a soul takeover, Sciona has DNA currently, not DHA. Otherwise she would loose access to the Superion field.
But you DO capitalize race names… just not the unofficial versions. An Indian person is an Indian, a Jewish person is a Jew, a German person is a German, etc. But white and black are really just general descriptors, not a proper race name. So a Klingon person is still a Klingon. A human would be an Earthling or Terran, human is just the unofficial term we use in common speech.
You’re describing ethnicities/nationalities. Not races.
Difference seems entirely irrelevant and misleading to me since ethnicities, nationalities, races, ideologies, and religions ultimately share the same nature of cultural and political constructs. So to force relevant differences in the way of labeling them and the members of the groups they create seems an irrational and wasteful effort to me.
Barring the many other reasons why I loathe it, Political Correctness looks like an futile effort to me since the euphemism treadmill is an irresistible force as long as people stay people. Its ever-changing winds and ever more complex and maddening nomenclature are trying to win an impossible battle against human nature.
There is only one hyu-mon race (despite what certain racists want to believe), every thing else comes down to region
Jew is a religion, German is a nationality, neither are a separate race (yes, it is possible to be both a Jew and a German at the same time… shocking isn’t it?)
True, biological unity of the human species is a basic scientific fact. Culture makes all the difference. Relevant cultural differences started out as countless regional ones in prehistory, but since then state-building, conquest, migration, and imitation/assimilation have made the pattern much more complex.
Having acknowledged that, culture creates important differences between groups all the time in history. In this regard, the stance of deeming all cultures of equal value is something good for scholarship and to prevent unnecessary suffering and waste of human potential, but a major folly for almost everything else. To pass value judgement on cultures according to their achievements (from their fruits you will know them, indeed) is quite appropriate, esp. for the overarching goal of giving people the best lifestyle possible. A culture that creates the tools to give members a better lifestyle and masters greater achievements has not equal value to a one that keeps its members trapped in greater misery or a lower development level. In this regard, ‘culture’ definitely includes ideology and religion too.
Vote Incentive: See what happens when these two Alari get left alone together in a hotel room! And yes, English allows the use of “alone together”. What a great language.
If you use a word, made up or not, and people know what you meant, then you used the right word.
It’s fun to quietly invent words and watch them slowly get integrated into the mindsets of people :)
DaveB two questions, what sites do you post your fanficts on, and what’s your pen name?
That doesn’t look like a good place to keep a phone.
Will it leave tan lines or an indentation?
How do IRL female humans store their phone?
I’ve seen women accurately store their phone there, but only if they have c-cups or better and a properly structured bra. Those same women really don’t care about the result of chest grease. I personally go for having garments with actual pockets. Or at least a purse.
How much is a woman with Sciona’s current skin tone going to tan with casual exposure to sunlight in the USA? Honest question, I know little about how much a Latina of Escorpia’s type tans. I can only guess she is a IV or V skin phototype (in comparison to Deus next to her who seems a II or III). For that matter, do Grrlverse supers tan? I seem to remember reading somewhere they don’t. Coming from a species with dark-blue skin tone (cfr. her next to Lorlara), I tend to assume she is oblivious of the issue. In any case, it is nothing a little topless tanning would not treat, and Sciona is anything but a prude.
Any indentation is only going to be temporary.
Ah yes, the Klingons, speaking Klingon. At least they’re better off than the Romulans, speaking Romulan, from Romulus: Qo’noS managed to dodge the bullet of being known as “Kling.” https://screenrant.com/star-trek-klingon-homeworld-name-changed-why/
Jagannath? How about Jagganoth?
Panel 2 with the Translation bubble that needs a frakking Translation is perhaps one of the greatest panels I have ever seen.
Read it aloud phonetically. It’s Hollywood hillbilly.
“I could switch to House (wooltensor) if you like”.
Presumably that’s an Alari house looked down on for “talking funny” by the other Houses.
Which brings up a another point: Sciona has been on Earth for a long while (I think centuries). If Deus guess at the origins of her accent are correct (and Sciona’s reaction seems to confirm it), then Alari accents change much, much slower than human ones do.
For reference, Chaucer, of Canterbury Tales fame, wrote that seven hundred years or so ago. Try reading it in the original; it’s a different language. Yet it was written using the language of the times.
Other languages have changed about as much.
Admittedly, part of this is that humans lacked the ability to move around and talk to each other for much of that time. They also mostly lacked the ability to read during most of that time. Both literacy and mass cheap transportation (and tourism) have smoothed out languages to some extent.
Against that, Alari Houses apparently have their own accents. Considering their level of competition I doubt there’s much tourism between Houses. Reading documents produced in other Houses probably comes under “opposition research”.
I’m surprised they don’t have their own languages. Perhaps they do and that explains the accent for speaking “Alari”. Which is likely some sort of trade pidgin, done by mashing together the languages of major Houses. Perhaps there was a period of domination by one or more of the Houses, leaving a version of a “language of diplomacy”.
Oh, and I capitalized House in the above because it seems to be an important thing with the Alari.
I am utterly losing it at the wolverine description XD
So, everybody agrees that Lorlara is dumb, right? Not “so annoying that it boomerangs around to funny” dumb, but fill-on “annoying, narrative-killing, scene clogging and utterly useless” dumb. Right? I can’t be the only one who scribbles out all of her speech balloons (have to keep cleaning the damn monitor ) every time she appears?
Is she… supposed to make Deus more likable, by contrast with her fingernails on chalkboard idiocy?
Or make him seem, what, shallow and vain because he has her around to do his bragging (really really stupidly) for him?
Whatever it is, it ain’t working, at least for me.
Please, someone have my back here.
Dave – a you have someone drop a city-sized rock on her? Is there a Kickstarter tier I can sign up for to help design her death? Really really soon?
Lorlara is an Alari, who sees what she thinks is the winning side, and attempting to get onside.
It comes across as annoying and overdone, because English (and northeastern American) affect is “cool”. Don’t do anything too enthusiastically.
Other human cultures do things differently. How much more differently is an alien (who looks more or less human) going to react?
An Alari who switches Houses is likely to be super-patriotic to his or her new House for life. Other Alari would regard the new recruit with much suspicion. How often would they even be allowed to switch?
For a human example, look at the Swiss. Their official version of birth citizenship requires you to be in the third generation of foreigners living in Switzerland to even qualify. And the unofficial version (people saying, “Yeah, he’s a Swiss”) is likely to be much more restrictive.
There are lots of other examples.
It’s funny because most of the audience think it’s overdone. Deus on the other hand probably has a handle on Alari culture, so he likely thinks it’s about the right level – for her.
Lorlara is rapidly becoming my favorite Hench.
She may just replace 21, aka General 21, aka Two-Ton 21, aka The New Kano, aka Gary Fischer…
Which is, honestly, a matchup I’d like to see. I feel like Big D would keep it from turning fatal, and then probably hire 21more-or-less on the spot. He’d make Avery entertaining foil for Syddles, I think.
Actually, that’s a fun idea. A Grrlverse, Vertureverse crossover. Big D & Dr. Killinger desperately trying to separate the two cosmoses, Hank mooning after Max so hard that even Dabbler’s last aura can’t touch him, Dabbler furiously trying to figure out HOW, Dean and Gadget getting into ALL the Super Science/Super Engineering trouble with harpoons, Zephan and Dr. Orpheus having mutually opaque aphorism-measuring contests, Brock and Math failing to kill each other, The Monarch and The Ascenders going to war for incredibly petty reasons while 21 and Anvil, surprisingly, hit it off and become frenemies with benefies…
“Benefies?” Yeah, I dunno. Just roll with it.
And of course, absolutely nothing of any consequence or lasting importance results from it all.
BTW: panel three works with the tune of “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”
Nerves don’t really give a shit about voltages, beyond “enough to trigger the next Action Potential” or “not enough to trigger the next Action Potential”. Nerves chiefly deal in spike-trains – basically your nervous system is delta-sigma-modulated, not amplitude-modulated