Grrl Power #377 – Club encounters of the third kind
The rooftop there would probably still have music playing, but being open air it would probably be a more reasonable volume to prevent noise complaints. I like the idea that there’s just some subwoofers pressed against the ceiling just beneath them and they’re getting muffled bass up their feet and butts. (Or try this one if you like)
What do you think the chances are of Maxima ever wearing gold lamé? It’s not zero, but it’s not very high either.
If the word “Human” sounded like the Galactic Common word for “poop smear” then we still have the option of going by Terran or Earther or even Earthican. Imagine a Star Wars like Galaxy with thousands of sapient species and thousands of different languages. Whatever your race called itself, you’d have to remember that there are like 350 different languages in which your race’s name is super rude, stupid sounding or insulting, and you have to remember an alternate version. That would extend to every individuals names too, of course. Luckily everyone in the Star Wars galaxy can understand Galactic Common, even if they can’t all speak it.
It bothers me in a lot of science fiction that most of alien races don’t have a species name, just something derived from the name of their homeworld. Vulcans are from Vulcan, Romulans are from Romulus, Ferengi are from Ferenginar. Klingons are from Kronos, so it would be legit to call them Kronans, (I would definitely watch a late night talk show hosted by Kronan O’Brien) BUT, it should be notes that prior to The Undiscovered Country, the Klingon homeworld was known as Klinzhai, and also Kling, so they only get half credit for that. (The writer for the movie probably had the same issue that I do and was just like “Nope, changing that.”) Star Wars is better about giving races names separate from their homeworld. Wookies are from Kashyyyk, but Mandalorians are still from Mandalore. It really depends on the ‘Verse though. The Star Control games* were pretty good about it. The Arilou Lalee’lay’s homeworld is Falayalaralfali, the Chenjesu were from Procyon, the Clairconctlar from Enkidu, the Druuge from Zeta Persei 1. It’s possible they were neighbors of the guys from Omicron Persei 8. (Known as Omicronians BTW.)
*Star Control II is one of my favorite games of all times BTW. That link is to a 100% legit free version of the game with an amazing soundtrack done by the community. Take heed this is a seriously old school game so if you decide to play it, it might not be the worst idea to use a walk-through or a FAQ of some kind since you can totally hose yourself many hours into the game and not realize it till many hours later.
Here’s the link to the new comments highlighter for chrome, and the GitHub link which you can use to install on FireFox via Greasemonkey.
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Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
Wow, there are actually other people in the universe who played, liked, and remember Star Control I and II. It doesn’t surprise me this would be the community, though. Bonus points awarded! I was actually playing the Ur-Quan Masters again recently, albeit with a walkthrough… I bought the original game in 1992, for gosh sakes.
So, the planet Druuge in the game…. is that where the Druuge Report comes from?
I’m only starting to get into the Star Control series (currently on hold for lack of time to play anything I can’t pick up, play for a few minutes, then put back down feeling satisfied), but I thought I’d mention that, if people want SC1 or SC3, GOG.com is selling them as DRM-free downloads.
https://www.gog.com/game/star_control_1_2
https://www.gog.com/game/star_control_3
my dad and i played that game when i was little. it was fun but i was never any good at it.
Yup I am another who liked, played and remember Star Control 1 and 2, and even further back really enjoyed Starflight 1 and 2 (trade routes of the cloud nebula). What they lacked in cutting edge graphics more than made up for in hours of gameplay and imagination…..ah those were the days. I did also hear earlier in the year that the rights to Star Control had been brought out by Stardock and were looking to reboot the series, lets hope its not all hot air.
First introduced to the series through my cousin via the very first game. The melee alone was reason enough to play the game over and over. Then I ended up getting the second game, though can’t remember how. Still have the box and the floppies for them. :) Was pretty much blown away at just how much of a leap it was from the first to second. Those who never played the game, do not listen to the Word of Dave on this one and use FAQs. Much of the fun playing the story is the fact it doesn’t hold your hands, forcing the player to figure out where he needs to go and what to do, not to mention the story isn’t blatantly told outright beyond you returning to Earth and adding new members to your Alliance. When you do know everything you need to know, playing the game all over again will pretty much end up taking maybe a couple of hours to complete.
Well, mandalorians are more of a alien culture/nation than an alien species per se and apparently were space nomads for a time, so it actually makes A LOT of sense that the planet was also named for the mythic founder of their people.
Incidentally, the Star Wars universe is pretty interesting in that several non-human species can also be found in a variety of different star systems or conglomerates, identifying themselves by their “star-nation” instead of species, what adds another interesting layer of verisimilitude.
And if I remember it correctly, they settled on that planet only later in their history. Not hailed from there. (Just in case that wasn’t clear from what SolCannibal wrote.) So this would be a case of a planet named after the people. Not the other way around.
i cannot stop looking at Dabbler’s thigh while she traces her finger on it. maybe because i can see Sydney through the negative space.
i am still appreciative of and surprised by Sydney’s restraint. she was surprised by an alien serving her nachos, but chose to do scouting and then conferring with a teammate. no off-the-handle-ness. not even grabbing for the forb and book it out of there.
Just imagine how she would be behaving if Dabbler seemed even slightly alarmed or apprehensive to learn about the aliens!
Any chance a Grrl Power book exists or is about to be born? I can’t find a store link.
Hey: I’d buy it.
One is upcoming!
Said DaveB when he posted the last vote incentive:
Also, on a side note, the idea of native non human species living in secret reminds me of the welcoming Selkie. I wonder if this universe has a separate organization for monitoring, or if they just fob it off on archon.
Someone, somewhere, is spying on this conversation…
“Whatever your race called itself, you’d have to remember that there are like 350 different languages in which your race’s name is super rude, stupid sounding or insulting, and you have to remember an alternate version.”
Dusting off some very old memories, I recall Alan Moor’e comic “D R and Quinch” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.R._%26_Quinch) which featured two hyper intelligent, morally questionable – the “D R” stood for Diminished Responsibility – juvenile delinquents who among other antics stole a time machine and geo-engineered earth as a prank so that on that day in the far flung future that the human race joined the galactic federation and the holo image of earth was put on display in the hall of planets the entire civilized galaxy would be shocked because they’d arranged the continents to spell out the most vile insult imaginable.
(From my quotes files)
Judge: “Ernest Errol Quinch and Waldo Dobbs, also known as “D.R.” or “Diminished Responsibility”, you are charged with arson, kidnapping, theft, grievous wounding, possession of unlawful atomic weapons, taking and driving away, conspiracy to overthrow the government, coveting thy neighbour’s ox, grave-robbing, torture, criminal libel, blackmail, polluting the environment, shoplifting, 714 separate driving offences, forging sacred relics, transmuting base metal into gold, genocide, spitting, and thirty-two offences so unusual and horrible they do not have names.
Before I pass sentence, do you have anything to say?””
D.R: “We’re fantastically incredibly SORRY for all these extremely unreasonable thing we did. I can only plead that my barely-sentient friend any myself are underprivileged, deprived and also college students.
Your Honour. we sincerely want to grow up and change our irresponsible ways.”
Quinch: “S’right”
Hah! It turns out that the BBD has that entire story – which was apparently the very first D R & Quinch comic – online at https://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/comics/2000adstrips/drandquinch/drandquinch01.shtml
Ahhh, so it’s proof read for typos, THEN hit submit comment… I’ll make a note of that for future reference.
In the mean time BBD is how I decided to spell BBC for… Reasons?
This is nostalgia week. First Star Control and now back to the days of Reading 2000AD with D R and Quinch (annoyingly my parents cleared out those and my Eagles when I was about 9 as it was “making a mess”……..and of course now regret it when they are now worth money lol
Would still be getting the 2000AD comics, if the local comic store hadn’t closed down last year because of a ban on ‘synthetic highs’, but… have started getting the Judge Dredd collection, lovely hardbound collections of various Judge Dredd (and Judge Dredd-related stories), interestingly enough, two parts of the “Cursed Earth Saga” are no longer permitted to be ever re-published (due to unflattering similarities to Ronald McDonald and Colonel Sanders :P)
Mickey D’s and KFC are actually recycled human remains?! *GASP!*
No. If that were the case they’d probably taste better.
DaveB states “What do you think the chances are of Maxima ever wearing gold lamé? It’s not zero, but it’s not very high either.”
Come on! I’m boringly straight (well mostly), but there’s no way anyone with Maxima’s skin colour would wear gold lame. Apricot, maybe. Deep blue for contrast, possibly. But gold, never!
What if she were convinced the dress was blue and black? :p
Romulans are from Rihan, actual species name is Rihansu the names ‘Romulus and Remus’ were done by humans during the war- no one knew what the people called themselves, they barely even understood each other.
‘Klinzhia’ is I believe the species name, and Q’uonos is the capital.
Yes, I am a star trek geek.
And all of this is on top of the fact that Star Trek handwaves the whole thing by use of the universal translator–names are automatically translated into something the listener understands, too. So the names that we hear in English are established to be almost certainly NOT what the people call themselves.
This actually closely imitates the real world. We only call ourselves “human” in English, after all. It’s “duine” in Irish Gaelic, “chelovek” in Russian, “ningen” in Japanese, and “ren” in Chinese. (Approximately, in all cases, because other than Irish Gaelic, none of those languages even use the same alphabet as English.) We just accept that all these words have the same meaning as “human” and thus we’re calling ourselves “human” in every language.
Technically, “humans” is not what we should be called in sci fi, anyway. It SHOULD be something like “Terran,” referencing a place name/cultural identity, because “human” should technically apply to any sentient species, on the basis of how it’s used in English, so the species-referal name should translate to “human” in English, and the formal scientific name by whatever conventions the aliens use would be more like “Homo sapiens” in English. So what name we’re actually looking for would be one more similar to English, American, Spanish, Japanese…all of which actually DO come from their respective country names of England, United States of America (or if you’re referencing continental identity, North and/or South America), Spain, Japan… Most human languages have a similar convention of “place name + modifier.” Or “modifier + place name.” Very few cultural-identity names actually break this convention, even in English, and the ones that do usually refer to an historical place-name, such as “British” referring to “Great Britain” rather than the modern “United Kingdom.”
The languages that don’t have a ”place name + modifier” convention usually have a ‘tribe + modifier’ (ignoring order for the moment) convention – and many tribes are named after where they live. (And vice-versa…)
At the very least “Humans” would refer to all humans where as “Terrans” or whatever would refer to all sophots from Earth (Terra).
If I was born on Mars I wouldn’t want to be called an Erthican.
Actually Japan is a good example of how names are translated. In English it is “Japan” in Japanese it’s “ni-hon” and the language is called “ni-hon-go” if I remember right.
So if the sounds that make up “human” in English are a problem in an alien language the translation into that language will change the sounds to something more appropriate, (and possibly unpronounceable without 3 tongues.)
Sadly — tragically even — the works of Diane Duane and John M. Ford are not Trek canon. It would be a better world if they were.
“If there are gods, they do not help, and justice belongs to the strong: but know that all things done before the naked stars are remembered.”
It’s “Rihan” in STO too – “New Romulus” is “mol Rihan”, even though grammatically it should be “Rihan mol”, since adjectives go after the noun in the Romulan language.
(I guess you also get the whole “Mumbai”/”Bombay” mix-up where the listener mis-records the native name)
I fully concur – the works of Ms Duane and Mr Ford are arguably the very best of Trek fiction.
Well, not ALL of them. Diane *does* have story credit for one ST:TNG episode (“Where No One Has Gone Before), so at least that is canon.
If I were her, I’d disown that one. It’s a horribly mutilated version of “The Wounded Sky.”
She probably has disowned it. Or pawned the blame off on the guy who shares the story credit with her. (It’s what I’d do. “Don’t blame me, it was HIS idea!”)
On the matter of names in my own setting, lemurians used to be called “deep ones”….then along came a certain author, who engineered the military committing a massacre of a certain town….and now “deep one” considered a slur against anybody with aquatic tendencies regardless of species.
Dabbler… you’re trying way too hard.
It’s not actually all that appealing.
Speak for yourself. I’d love to play follow the leader with her fingers and my tongue… IOW, quite appealing to me. :D
Not complaining either. :D In fact, Dabbler has been looking particularly sexy these last few pages, be it human or alien. Definitely not complaining. ;D
She’s not even trying for Sydney. She’s just doing her natural seduction thing. I don’t think she’s even especially conscious of it.
‘Sides, it’s hot.
Please pardon me if this has been discussed before, but I’m making the leap that lots of aliens = FTL is possible in the Grrlverse? Has it been established what kind? Warp drive? Wormholes? Outer space Bugattis? The Spice? And does EarthGovCentral have this tech and are keeping it secret, or has the Galactic Council decided humans aren’t ready? I know, lots of questions, but the topic is always one of my favorite bits of sci-fi world building.
There are SO MANY possibilities in this regard. Dabbler demonstrates that it’s possible to travel between universes. Maybe FTL is possible in this universe. Maybe it’s only possible in certain other universes, but effectively available because of cross-universe travel. Maybe it’s really expensive (for any of a variety of reasons) and the waitress scraped together every asset she could find to pay for transit away from a really bad situation which may or may not have involved government officials seeking to confine her.
Food for thought: 99% of the time, any given alien race’s name for itself would roughly translate as “the people,” and the name for their homeworld would be something suspiciously similar to “Earth.” Because no matter what your species is, they all grew up on a lonely ball of dirt with nobody to talk to but themselves (with a few inevitable exceptions).
This means that the name you call any given race of aliens is just your name for them, and the easiest way to come up with that is “the people from their planet,” which in English would probably come out as some variation of “Planetnamians.”
Though the actual name used may come from our name for the planet or be based of the phonetic version of their word for it.
There was a book by Phil Foglio (also author of the ever-popular Girl Genius webcomic) called ‘Illegal Aliens’ in which alien criminals showed up on interdicted Earth to pull off a scam, only to find they bit off more than they could chew. One of the things commented by the alien pirate crew was that everywhere you go, the name of their planet was typically their word for dirt, and habitually referred to humans as ‘Dirtlings’.
Also, you can flip this around. Remember, back in the 50’s, aliens typically called humans ‘Earthlings’ because they were from the planet Earth, the species named after the planet of origin rather than the planet of origin named after the species.
Also in Star Control game series; humans = earthlings.
And one of the crew called his planet “The Place That Holds Our Roots in Safety.”
In Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat, they also translate “Earth” as “Dirt”
There was a long series by E. C. Tubb about a guy who had stowed away on an alien ship as a child and, as an adult, was trying to find his way back to Earth. “The Jester at Scar” is the one I remember best. (Very, very violent series. I remember thinking that I wouldn’t let my kids read them until they were adults — not that it ever came up — and I used to let them watch the Terminator movies without qualms.) Anyway, every time he told somebody about his quest and the name of the planet the other person would say, “Might as well call a planet Dirt, or Loam.” The joke got kind of old, actually.
There was another series, hmmm, the Sten Chronicles. They’d landed on a planet and their xenopsychologist predicted some approaching natives would likely call themselves “The People of the Lake”. How the heck can you know that? Pfft. Look at that huge, gorgeous lake they live right next to! Of course he was right, and very smug about it.
I’m reminded of https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2006-08-07
If I ever write a sci-fi interplanetary parody, one species will be the Planetnamians.
As long as everyone’s doing book recommendations involving this concept, I’ll throw in “Only You Can Save Mankind,” by Terry Pratchett.
I’ve always been a fan of how it works in James White’s “Hospital Station” universe, where each species’ name for themselves translates as “human” into all other languages, resulting in the need to use planet/of-origin & physiological classification codes instead. So you have Hudlarian FROBs & Earth-human DBDGs, for example.
Yes, those are from memory. Can’t remember the name of the other DBDG species, daggummit.
James White’s books were awesome. Every species name got translated into “human” and every planet name got translated into “earth” or “dirt”
Ha! I’d hoped to see that idea someday, but I didn’t know that anyone had actually done it! Sounds like an author that I need to check out.
I remember Hospital Station, was a long time ago. I didn’t know there was more than one book, however. Research time.
yep, there’s 12 of them… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sector_General
on a slightly different topic, does anyone know if he (or anyone else for that matter) ever made a complete listing/chart of the various species designations: DBDG, FROB, etc.? and what the individual letters MEAN? i seem to recall him explaining one or two of the letter combo’s in one or two of the books as the plot needed, but i don’t remember if there is/isn’t a “complete” listing somewhere, and not with “just” the species he actually listed off in his books, but as the actual classifications themselves even though no character was from that species ever shown in his books… i know that Wiki page has a liosting of various species, but it doesn’t define what those letter-codes mean… anybody else know?… anyone?… Bueller?…
This is the Internet, dude. I have absolutely no doubt that someone, somewhere, has done exactly that – fully annotated and cited besides, probably.
Who and where? Heck if I know. Google that sucker is all I can suggest.
I see a listing of the classifications given https://www.sectorgeneral.com/articlesclassification.html but no decryption.
Reminds me of this quote from the Alien Nation movie…
[after Sykes makes fun of George’s name]
Det. Samuel ‘George’ Francisco: It is like your name… Sykes. I’m sure it doesn’t bother you at all that it sounds like “ss’ai k’ss,” two words in my language which mean “excrement” and “cranium.”
[pause]
Det. Samuel ‘George’ Francisco: Shithead.
Won’t Dabbler get into trouble for cluing Sydney in without permission? Then again, I guess Dabbler can do whatever she wants to do…so, why does she hang out with Arc-SWAT? For the fun of it? To get a rise out of Maxima?
Well, considering she has X as a watcher or minder, I’m assuming she’s trying to work off a citizenship, or at least prove herself as a non-threat. “Sure, you can come play on Earth, but you have to work for Arc both so we can keep an eye on you and because we really need the help”.
You are assuming that this is what they were talking about. Maybe this is within her pay grade and there are more interesting secrets that are not…
Considering Sydney’s already blown Dabbler’s secret out of the water (As far as She’s concerned anyway) it’s a case of “she knows the start of the truth, might as let her know the rest”
That’s a whole lot of good Dabbler thigh…
Given that (presumably) sex is food to Dabbler, I wonder if she receives sensual as well as gustatory pleasure from the act. Since her nature is such that she’s in a constant state of heat around humans, I’m wondering if she reacts that way to other galactic species? I’d suppose that whomever she can extract pleasure (food) from is okay with her. She must really be a fan of tentacle sex. :D
She wouldn’t necessarily be cool with anyone who can provide her nourishment. After all, some people are picky eaters.
There are a lot of people who think eating can be quite a sensual experience, so I see no reason why it would be any different for Dabbler.
And on the other hand I’ve met some who thinks eating is just unproductive so they just try to get it over with as quickly as possible. Google Soylent (yes this is a thing, though I don’t think you can get it in green) if you want to see how far some are willing to take it to minimize the time needed to fuel their bodies.
Well, Doh!… of course you can’t get it in GREEN!…
the people that designed the packaging for it are using Soylent WHITE… that would be a conflict of interest, a copyright violation (and you KNOW how the RIAA goes after those people!) AND a possible monopoly charge levied by the U.S.Dept. of Justice, so they’re playing it safe and just not offering it in Green, to avoid all that unpleasantness of the courtroom and the associated bad publicity.
For soylent green.
Buy regular white soylent.
Go to grocery store, buy green food coloring.
Mix the two.
You now have Soylent green.
DaveB, in the 4th panel, Dabbler’s shin area looks a bit too thick. Just sayin’.
It might be some fore-shortening but then her leg is really twisted (not to say she isn’t that flexible and wouldn’t contort just for the fun of it.
That or her glamour bugged out trying to match that pose from her leg/knee combination to a human one.
Too thick?
Coming in on the end of “Day Two as a Superhero!” is going to leave one EXHAUSTED Sydney! (Especially with her first boute with PT [Physical Training]!) Man, it must feel like YEARS! :)
Normally I’d hope that she has a weekend coming up, but as a small business owner…
Being a small-business owner gives you complete freedom. You can work whichever hundred hours of the week you choose.
I can appreciate the term “Alien” meaning any entity not of this earth, so perhaps extraterrestrial would be more accurate, or would Demons count as extraterrestrial as well?
One thing I wonder is how Dabbler put together her human disguise. Like did she just put together the most attractive qualities she could think of and still pass as human? Or did she get a bunch of earthling buddies and try different things in front of them? Also find it interesting that aside from heterochromia eyes, nothing else strikes me about her human disguise looks that much like Dabblers real form.
In Robert Asprin’s “Myth Adventure” series, “Demon” is short for “Dimensional Traveler.” This means any species, including humans were potentially demons.
Though in the Grrl Power setting, I don’t know if that applies similarly. From various flashbacks, it sort of looked like it, but I don’t know for certain.
:D
And ‘Trollops’ are female ‘Trolls’ :D Really enjoyed that series, last one read was the one where Pip(?) the dragon finally spoke
I could be wrong, but after Dabbler picked a disguise that would appeal* to Sydney, she liked it so much that she used it for the press conference (and is consequently stuck with it, apart from minor variations).
* By “appeal”, I mean “reached inside her very soul to pull out her deepest, most private desires, and now walks around wearing that fantasy as her public face”. Inexplicably, Sydney thinks that’s really cool.
I rather doubt that Dab’s human disguise was made on the fly just for Syd, as she probably has been around long enough she would have needed it for other teammates and other human interaction not really in the know about her actual colorful origins.
Well, clearly it wasn’t her first human disguise (no doubt there were lots of other versions before the interview), but Maxima seemed to imply that she hadn’t seen that particular glamour before (at least, nothing so extreme). Later on, just before the press conference, Syd looks like she is taking the credit for Dab’s new shape.
But you’re correct, that doesn’t really fit with showing a consistent face around recruits, others not in the know etc., before Syd came on the scene.
Maybe this was discussed in the comments at the time – I’ll have to go back and check.
In all seriousness, we have so many languages on our one planet, each of which has a different name for this planet, and for its technologically-dominant sentient species. “Earth” and “Human” in English. “Terre” and “Humain” in French. “Tierra” and “Humano” in Spanish. “Ddaear” and “Dynol” in Welsh. “Erde” and “menschlich” in German (at least in whichever dialect Google Translate uses; there are dozens, between which even city names will vary). “Kadur Ha’Aretz” and “Adam” in Hebrew (and I was surprised to find they weren’t the same word, given the origin of the name “Adam”). “Toprak” and “Insan” in Turkish. Eventually, either the languages would need to consolidate to come to a consensus, or names would be picked by either whatever extraterrestrial sentient race encounters them first or by some interplanetary standards organization… which might be based on the language of the first locals they talk to, or might not even be in any of the local languages…
It’s certainly possible, especially when you have a single race that has colonized multiple worlds before encountering another sentient race, that the residents of the planet would go by the planet name, much as we do with nationalities and country names. Or a planet could be named for its race. A lot of First Nation tribes’ names in their own language meant “people” or something similar, but in any other tribe’s language by some other (often insulting) descriptive, and their territory or range would be referred to based on the other tribes’ names for them. And… look at “Bangladesh”, which is effectively “the nation of the people of Bengal”, or something like that, and “Bengali” (“of Bengal”) and “Bangladeshi” (“of Bangladesh”).
In addition, while a race may colonize a world, long separation way result in enough genetic mutational deviation (new traits) and/or homogenization (losing of previously-existing traits) over time to produce results, potentially planet-wide, that the remaining residents of the homeworld might not recognize (or not acknowledge) as their own. Or the colonists’ genome(s) might be intentionally tweaked, either pre-departure or during multi-generational transit or in the first few generations after arrival, to better adapt them to the world they’re settling on, with the same results but faster. So you get a branched-off race, and for lack of a better option, name them after the new homeworld.
Also, “Kronos” is actually “Q’onos”, “Romulan” is actually “Rihannsu” (according to Diane Duane, who wrote several official novels about them), etc., and the mispronunciation is due to human pronunciation bias. “Klinzhai” is a character set used for writing “tlhIngan Hol”. Meanwhile, in StarCraft, a certain bipedal pink/brown-skinned non-telepathic species is consistently referred to as Terrans even though Earth is a hundred-generations-distant memory for all of them except for the invading fleet in Brood War. So, in the end, it’s “whatever works”.
Speaking of colonized planets referring to themselves as new names; didn’t the Romulans in Star Trek start off as Vulcans?
Yes, yes they did: Romulans being the Vulcan’s who didn’t let go of their emotions
When clubbing, don’t fear the aliens you can’t see (they’re there just for a good time); fear the ones you can see (they’re there to start something,
you speak of do not fear the monster hiding in the rocks for it is defensive, fear the comforter of both* falling from the sky swinging a sword at your head for it is hostile. *from succu or succor meaning to grant comfort or peace and bi meaning two or both.
No, no, you’re conflating Latin and Greek. It’s succ (next) and ubi (wherein), giving us the more appropriate “where-in next?”
Dabbler is doing a test to see if the increased resistance of females to her wiles is a direct product of this “Midol” and whether it would be prudent to figure a way past this new chemical defense. IE Succubi don’t ‘bleed’ so do not understand the concept of the period.
Monarans a tip of the hat to Dr. Graevling’s Monara?
Babylon 5 gets this too sometimes (the Minbari are from Minbar, the Centauri are from Centauri Prime, etc.), but it seems to avoid it other times, mostly by not giving the name of the home planet and having the respective species just calling it their Homeworld. And then there is the race commonly known as the Shadows (but who knows what they call themselves) from Z’ha’dum.
Actually, the Centauri probably named their Homeworld after themselves, now that I think about it.
The name the shadows have for themselves is 10,000 charecters long.
This was mentioned when Sheridan went to Z’ha’dum.
Well the Mandalorians being from Mandalore get a pass since they are a nation not a species, and they’re very nationalistic so they’d rename everything they own after themselves.
Except that we find out in KOTOR2 that Mandalore is also the title given to the leader of the Mandalorians.
I prefer being called a Terran from Terra than a Tellurian from Telluria or Earthian from Earth. Don’t like “Earthlings” to be used at any time.
And in the Trek universe also Kardassians from Kardassia etc.
Oh and Mandalorians are Humans as are Humans from other colony worlds. So why not use their planet’s name for themselves?
We were told in one episode that the real name for the “Shadows” is at least 100 characters long and damn hard for a human to pronounce. So they called themselves “Shadows” after how they operate & easier for the new generation species to understand.
Mandalorians were originally an alien species from Coruscant, but were expelled and started accepting outsiders into their culture. They ended on their current planet and renamed it Mandalore. Eventually the original species died out but the culture continued, being a mixture of several alien races, but predominantly human (as everything else in the Star Wars Universe).
Well, if you get down to it, and dig down to the roots of most groups’ self-names, they all come out to something very much like The People. So if you translated that into whatever common tongue, everyone would be calling themselves the same thing, so you couldn’t tell who was from where. Hence the tendency to NOT do that…
Suppose you were a non-Earth species who wanted to visit Earth to research human crowd behavior. Your species is kinda human looking but had the wrong skin color, lacked any hair at all, and did not communicate by speech. Also, the E.M. field of the standard holo-disguise kit is harmful to your physiology. How could you fit in? Why, get the government to set up a cover story for you. Which leads to…
*jump cut to a 1990’s news news broadcast*
“The City of Las Vegas has announced the introduction of a new show starring the Blue Man Group opening soon on the Vegas strip.”
Every now and again I ask a Christian if they beleive in aliens. When one says no, I ask what they think their God is. If Jehovah created Angels and Earth, that is about as extra-terrestrial as it gets.
I just point out that in a universe with trillions of trillions of stars and even more planets it is the utmost manifestation of arrogance to think that WE are the only “Intelligent” race.
The brother of a friend of mine writes science fiction. He used to be that way… he always believed that if there are other life forms out there, they’re non-sentient, because of Genesis 1:26, which begins with “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle”…
To which my reply was, “You’re forgetting the end of the verse. It ends with ‘and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth‘” (emphasis mine). “It doesn’t give us dominion over the beasts of Kepler-442b or KOI-3010.01 or Gliese 832c, if there are any.”
(Of course, to find out if they have any beasts, we have to get there first, which might be kind of difficult… some of the most likely candidates to be potentially habitable are over 1100 light years away.)
“Also, you can’t prove a negative. The Bible, which was inspired by God but written by humans for humans, doesn’t say that God didn’t create sentient life on other worlds. But that’s not proof that He didn’t… maybe He left that out because we weren’t ready to know, or maybe somewhere among all the revisions and translations that the Bible’s been through, maybe someone mistranslated it or left it out.”
(Or to put it another way, I agree with Adamas. It’s arrogant to think that in all the planets orbiting all the stars in all the galaxies, that we are the only sentient race.)
The reason the bible says nothing about extraterrestrial life is simple.
Try explaining the concept turn a stone age individual and see what happens.
Wear some armor and track shoes when you do.
Exactly my point. The Bible didn’t mention extraterrestrial life because we weren’t ready to know. And in some respects, still aren’t. We’re still too prone to rampant xenophobia. (Not all of us, mind you. Some of us, like Sydney, are much more open-minded and far too curious to be xenophobic.)
After all these years, I’ve just discovered that Fraggle Rock came in different versions for different markets. So the version I saw (with Fulton Mackay as the Captain, with his dog Sprocket) is not the same one as most other commenters. And I now regret looking that up, because it seems most of the British episodes have been lost for ever. *sniff*
Also from the same era (but too obscure even for Sydney) was Morons From Outer Space.
Wait, there are different flavours of Fraggle Rock? o_O
Sweet and sour,Terryaki, Spicy, Cheese covered.
And oh so many more.
I was always more into Starflight than Star Control, I found the arcade elements of SC2 to be too twitchy for my tastes.
As to the race name/ planet thing, I’ve always just assumed that that is a result of the fact that humans are lazy, so the common word in English is going to be something that is easy to remember and associate with the people and planet, it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with what that alien species call itself.
Probably the best example of this in TV is in Babylon 5. Ambassador Londo Mollari refers to himself, in English, as a Cantauri, from the Centauri Republic, despite the fact that both he and the people he is talking to know that that terminology is completely wrong. The Centauri are known as that on Earth because first contact happened in Alpha Centauri, but the Centauri themselves are a large empire with their homeworld (Centauri Prime) elsewhere. The name stuck, presumably because world-wide media would have gone crazy for months before any real information filtered through.
This effect was exaggerated by the Centauri themselves who adopted some Earth naming practices for their newer colonies as part of a complicated plan to convince humans that we were a lost colony of their own empire, thus bringing us under their “protection” more easily, and ripe for economic exploitation. By the time of the series, all of this was old news, but the name Centauri was still in use in English.
Similar effects can be seen in the real world all the time, where the people of a country or ethnic group use different words for themselves and their language, but the English words are very similar. For example, in English we say that “the people from Japan are Japanese who speak Japanese”, but they would say that “the people of Nippon are Nihonjin who speak Nippongo” (roughly, there are variants).
One job of any author is to translate content into the language and social constructs of the target audience. The way in which Star Trek and Star Wars do it may be a bit lazy of the part of the writers, but that also makes it more realistic in many ways. It’s hard enough to maintain a multi-ethnic civilisation without having every culture use separate terms for everything, thus increasing the difficulty of other races getting to know them.
What bugs me is the presumption that all off these alien planets are mono-cultures, but that’s a completely different discussion.
It should be noted that human comes from the protoindoeuropian word for eathling. All be it the word has morphed a lot since then.
I got a question about Harem, though it might be a bit strange.
Any idea on what would happen to her if 1 of her 5 gets herself killed? I saw them get injured, but what if the injury was a mortal one?
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You know… As gruesome as it may sound, that’s actually a very good question and really interesting in a macabre kind of way.
And it’s something that’s been discussed in macabre detail many many times, and yet no one knows the answer to that.
Well Dave probably knows, but so far he hasn’t said anything.
Was hoping there had been some prior revelation. Obviously, if one feels pain, the others will as well to varying degrees. But it also looks like she may have a built in healing factor. Haven’t seen her with a long term injury.
She’s currently got one of her bodies in storage waiting for the doctor to work through the backlog of cases caused by the recent super fight. While her body is in storage it doesn’t suffer or grow weak, but it doesn’t heal either.
One effect of her only having four bodies active is that each of them is slightly stronger and that she can teleport more mass in addition to her own bodies. I don’t think it has been said that she gets tougher though.
As for pain, sudden pain that come as a surprise can affect all of her bodies to a degree. The atomic wedgie proved that.
I have a theory on Haram’s mortality, but as I am not Dave this is only a theory.
Haram has as many as 5 bodies at any one time, but is only one mind/soul/spirit. This spirit has to have at least 1 corporeal form in existence at any given time in order to remain alive. Should an individual body suffer a fatal wound, this does not kill Haram the spirit as long as at least one other corporeal form is manifest. Haram would unmanifest the deceased “self” and remanifest a replacement. This replacement would be a baseline self, that is Daphne DeShantis without any tattoos, hair dye, piercings, etc. This theory would place a hitherto unmentioned limitation on Harem’s teleportation power, in that she cannot port all 5 selfs at the same time. One has to remain manifest at all times. Harem would likely want to keep this information to herself. Otherwise ArcSwat may decide she can take on the occasional suicide mission, as long as they keep one Haram safe back at headquarters. A single self-death may not kill her, but it would hurt like a bitch.
Then there’s the part that Harem herself doesn’t know and makes it a point to never have to find out. ;p
Now THAT is quite certainly true!
And then there’s always Solarians. But I guess that would amount to “the people of the sun”, wouldn’t it? I guess aliens would have their own name for our star, and in their native language call us by that name with a modifier that means “the people of” in their language. Just like we do. I mean, really, do the Japanese call themselves “Japanese” in Japanese? (Hint: no.)
Me, I’m proud to live on Dirt. Though I do live in on a continent named after some Italian dude wandering around the Atlantic looking for the Indian Ocean, rather than a prominent landmark.
No, if anything, they will refer to us as being from “The Third Rock from the Sun” (or whatever their name for Sol is)
We could follow the same convention used in Dune. The Ixians were from planet Ix. The planet’s name was originally chosen by settlers using the standard star + planet position to give ‘Rodale IX’. The name was shortened for convenience after a few thousand years.
Earth would be Sol III. So in due time we would be from planet Iii, and we would be Iiiians.
Hologuise? Man, if there are Lombaxes in this universe, that would be awesome! …And potentially dangerous. Those guys love their big guns and impractical inventions.
I think someone probably already said this or at least hit near it, the words we use in scifi are often wrongly used. Human is the common word for our species. We have our nationality. We have our citizenship. We have other classifications like our religion. In effect, we can be broken down like so:
human = dog = common name
homo sapien = canis lupus = scientific name
Italian (as in Italian-American) = English Bulldog = genetic descent
American = American = Country of origin
Earthling = Earthling = planet of origin
The universal translator in Dr. Who and Star Trek are simply easy writing explanations for Science Fiction so that a different and usually stupid sounding language doesn’t have to be created every episode. I will admit my favorite Donna Noble episode in Doctor Who is when she tries to talk Latin in Pompeii after the Tardis auto translates for her.
I don’t have a big problem with the Vulcan/Vulcans thing, at least not for the same reason. Keep in mind that the naming convention is a direct derivation of current geopolitics; nationalities are named after their nation: England/English, Russia/Russian, Taiwan/Taiwanese, etc. When identifying ourselves to alien races, we would likely abandon HUMAN as a descriptor (since the world has so many semantic entanglements) and go with Terran. No matter how many worlds we spread among, other species would identify us first with our world of origin for as long as it was remembered and probably longer. We would need to be both truly ancient and ubiquitous as a race, with many profoundly different cultures, for other races to identify us as more than just Terrans.
My problem with names for classical sci-fi worlds/races like Vulcan/Vulcans is simply that those are HUMAN names; if we really ran into “Vulcans” we’d ask their name for themselves and adopt the nearest pronounceable equivalent we could. Anything else would be just terribly insulting.
“Mrs. Dabbler, are you trying to seduce me?”
Or is she trolling for a lust ping from “X”? He should be around somewhere…