Grrl Power #719 – Idiomatic, planetary…
I think if aliens really did show up, most countries would freak the fuck out, but then the one country who was all “Come on down” and the aliens are like “Thanks, here’s the technology for optical circuitry that’s ten orders of magnitude faster than anything else on your world,” all the xenophobic countries would be all “Oh… shit.”
Ah, alien idioms. To watch just about every show and read every book ever, one might get the impression that English is the only language with idiomatic expressions, because aliens are always stumbling over them, no matter how intelligent they’re supposed to be, and no matter how obvious the meaning is from context. Well, except for those “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra” aliens who are the cartoonish counter example. Seriously, how did that race invent integrated circuitry or crack warp travel talking like that?
“Jablus and Forbgyte… used silicon to channel electrons into this XOR gate? Guys, can we lay off the metaphors for like, one hour so we can get some work done?”
“Dornius, at noon, knows only hunger.”
“Yes, Phil, I ate your sandwich, because you never label anything.”
God, imagine just trying to order a ham on rye on that world. “No, no, I don’t want yellow mustard, I want the dijon… gah, I mean, Fligbus, his senses filled with spice! No! Not the red pepper flakes! Who puts red pepper flakes on a ham sandwich!?”
It always bugged me when Spock or Data’s IQ would suddenly drop to 70 when someone said something like “Hit the sack” “Beat around the bush” and they’re all, “Why would you attack the area around foliage?” Based on context, those things should be pretty easy to figure out. If you’re dealing with a language that replaces every third word with “smurf” or “squanch” then it can get a little more challenging, but those aren’t really idioms.
Aren’t all news excerpts in movies/TV/comics/etc really just exposition vehicles? I think they’re better than two informed characters saying to each other “As you know…” then going on to explain something they both know for the audience’s benefit, and both options beat the hell out of a boring preamble. At least Star Wars had John William’s music blaring overtop of it.
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They landed in Galtyn.
How serendipitous.
A real Deus ex Machina
-Finger Guns-
more Deus circumspex* Machina, perhaps ;)
* yes, i know. don’t @ me. as it were
Definitely suspect. From Deus’ interactions with Sciona to his appearance on the station it really feels well orchestrated.
Sciona said she had spoken to her people only days before. Did Deus bed her and deal her the sky hook somehow already knowing her planet was invaded? Heck, did he orchestrate the invasion somehow. Hell, he knew her entire plan for breaking into the sanctuary (minus bypassing the death field).
Deus does seem like the kind of guy who’d orchestrate a planetary invasion just so he could use the alien refugees to launder his stolen alien tech.
Firstly, it wasn’t stolen. Smuggled maybe, but not stolen.
Secondly, he is also a guy who is always ready to seize
an opportunity when he sees one.
Lastly we haven’t seen him go in for mass murder before.
I rather doubt that the individuals he was buying from had acquired it legally.
And while he hasn’t personally gone for mass murder, he’s shown plenty of willingness to manipulate murderous dictators for his own end.
He bought alien tech from an alien radio shack. The guy may have been used car salesman sleazy with (oh yeah, by the way you might not be able to get through customs to most planets with this stuff, but hey, you bought it, not my problem if customs won’t let you take it home)
but there was no indication it was acquired illegally either.
Exactly. Bought it. Not stole it. Whatever he traded had actual value to that alien radio shack owner :). It’s completely legal as far as it matters to Deus. In that he did not do anything against the laws of the country or planet of which he is a citizen or species.
As for killing the dictator?
1) Technically it was self-defense
2) Technically he didn’t do it, his special bodyguards did it. Which they wouldn’t have had to do if the murderous dictator hadn’t been ordering his guards to murder Deus.
3) The son seemed pretty okay with it after Deus explained how he was going to make him a very rich man, and the son was the new ‘de facto’ leader of Galytin at that point.
Deus literally did NOTHING illegal to get that tech.
It was not illegal to salvage the skybreaker thing.
It’s not illegal to use it with existing technology that your company created to make an intergalactic portal.
It’s not illegal to engage in commerce.
It’s not even illegal to bring the tech back to Earth, because Earth doesn’t even have any laws on bringing stuff from outer space to Earth. If SpaceX goes to the moon and collects moon rocks, there’s no law on the books that say Elon Musk can’t do that.
Is it illegal according to the intergalactic politics? Maybe. Except Earth isnt part of that. So no, not as far as Deus is concerned. Not to mention that then, Sydney has done something far more illegal than Deus. Which she hasn’t. Because it’s not illegal for humans. The only one who’s done anything even arguably illegal would be Cora, by smuggling Sydney from the Fracture to Earth.
Deus, on the other hand, is a businessman and explorer, who has done nothing but stay within the constraints of the law and know how to exploit the completely legal loopholes of what is not covered by law. God bless that wonderful man.
I’m going to question why you don’t think it was illegal for him to take the skybreaker as it was stolen property and there are probably other laws involving taking it from a crime scene and moving it to another country however I believe you are right on your other points.
Stolen property.
This was covered by a ton of talk in the comments for that page. But legally speaking the vault was an unmanned location down too deep and for the sake of secrecy unclaimed as far as the surface governments are concerned. Technically one could claim salvage on it.
Also its very existence was a shady operation; chances are many things in that vault were themselves acquired illegally. That said, the item was known and being pursued as an object of interest in an on-going investigation by Archon, so at the point Vale took off the mountain THEN it was stealing evidence from a crime scene.
So yes, he did commit a crime; just not the one most of the above commenters are claiming.
You claim to be a lawyer, and yet you appear to be arguing that just because Deus broke no laws as far as Earth is concerned that he is innocent of any crimes. Deus knew that exporting tech to Earth was illegal as far as the alien governing bodies, whoever that might be, were concerned. He is clearly guilty of breaking those laws, as we saw him casually discussing with the seller of the illegal tech how it was Deus’s problem to find a way to bypass customs to get said tech away from the Dyson-spherelett.
I get the feeling that you’re not a very good lawyer. Or you’re bucking for a job with Deus, similar to how Whittaker ‘applied’ for the job of Attorney General with Trump.
I’d argue that he did commit multiple crimes that were illegal by local laws.
Taking the Skybreaker was indeed illegal: He was salvaging stuff from a piece of property he didn’t own, which to do legally should require both permission (from the property owner) and a permit (for salvaging). Furthermore, the skybreaker was stolen goods, that he knew was stolen goods, and also evidence from a crime scene.
(If he hadn’t owned his own country the importing of manufactured goods from out of country would have also probably broken tax laws, but not applicable in this case obv)
You’re close. It should have been:
Deus does seem like the kind of guy who’d orchestrate a planetary invasion just so he could finally bed an Alari.
Nothing serendipitous about it. Since Deus already knew about the existence of ETs, his thought-process probably went something like this:
1) “When the ETs show up, every government on Earth that doesn’t just freak out is going to want to control the release of alien tech. Private businesses (like mine) will have to go through a government to get access. That will take forever.”
2) “Therefore, I need to control at least one government.”
So there you go; Deus likely had Galatyn’s new young ruler prepped and ready to say “Welcome to Earth! You can park right here.” to the first race that made contact. It might not have been the ONLY reason he essentially bought himself a fixer-upper country, but he’s not the type to have only one reason for doing anything.
Secondarily, national governments might try to pass laws limiting production of alien tech while they “study the impacts” and stuff. Having a government in his own pocket gives him a place to start ramping up production fast, virtually guaranteeing him early market dominance. If other nations try and boycott Gallatin economically, well at the very least it’s got its own sustainable power sources.
The boycott would only create a lucrative black market.
More to the point can your fixer upper country survive russian destabilization that justifies a UN Security Council mandated ‘Visit’ from the USA ?
When Deus first got the country and he thought he had an edge in supers he might have been all “Bring it” Now its just a ‘probably. but lets not test the theory until i get Maxima in my pocket”‘.
Doing it while his alien refugees/colonists do their level best to enact a long game that treats this world like europeans treated the americas?
Even Deus is eventually gonna bite off more than he can chew.
Maybe, but I’m not sure this is the “eventually.” A European/America scenario is out of the question since the refugees are just that: refugees from a race that has been almost entirely wiped out. In fact you could argue that this may be the best First Contact scenario you could ask for; a race reduced to almost extinction levels. Their low numbers and lack of resources minimizes the threat, even without factoring in the forewarning Earth has had. At least some governments have known about the existence of ETs for awhile, which has given them plenty of time to prepare. I’d be surprised if Archon wasn’t one of those preparations.
Of course this doesn’t consider the “other” refugees, the Alari “souls” that fled to Earth through the gateway…
They lost their homeworld.
We don’t have any information about their other worlds though.
Sacking Rome wasn’t sacking the entire empire, although it was disastrous.
True enough, although you’d think that if they had other colony worlds then the refugee colony ship would have gone there instead. And I’d love to at least write another Halo/Astra crossover. That was fun.
That said, just hope by herself alters the what’s out there equation, seriously between Hopes Verntec supers, the Teatime anarchists medaling, and now whatever the Colonists and refugees have brought with them things like the osprey May already be a meuseum piece.
And yes please to a crossover. I would love to see Jackie’s reaction to Sydney.
just by herself, hope showing up at the convention…..
It’s not a refugee colony ship though – it’s a trade ship that picked up a bunch of hitchhikers (or perhaps had their ticket class demoted as news of the Alari situation spread). They didn’t have any control of the destination, otherwise they surely would have headed to another Alari controlled (or at least friendly) planet.
Also, write another book of Crossovers.
Well, he managed to recover the country from the after effects of decades of the US & USSR’s destabilization. The reason why Africa is in the state it’s in is becase The US &USSR decided to fight their proxy wars there. The Cold War was only cold if you lived in the US USSR or Europe.
The instability of large parts of Africa is due to a lot more than just Cold War shenanigans. Other culprits are colonialism, which often resulted in “national boundaries” drawn without regard for the actual territories of different tribal ethnicities, and post-colonial flirtation with socialism by a lot of African states.
And the post war dismantling of colonialism.
Everything from testinfg nuclear weapons in the middle of a civil war, to England, France, and Spain “indirectly” funding various anti colonial factions, never miNd the Cold War and that crap, I have to wonder if the fact that the US Military was Technicaly occupying Europe was the real reason that the old Colonial country were not at war with eachother by the early 50s.
It wasn’t serendipity, it was an invitation.
Dave, speaking as an autistic, it’s actually pretty easy to not get social slang that well.
that said, you do get used to it after awhile, so you would think Data or Spock would understand the expression after the first few times or so they heard it, even with their difficulty understanding humans.
But it’s so cute, when they get it wrong.
Or at least get that there is social slang….
It’s easy to not get slang if you’re not familiar with it. But Data and Spock live in a future where there are dozens of different sentient species living together that all have their own languages full of idioms and expressions. There ought to be libraries worth of books on the subject, but Spock never bothers to pick up a copy of “The Vulcan Guide to What The Hell Those Wacky Humans Are Talking About.”
There might well be libraries full of such books, but who has time to read them all? It’s not only difficult to translate idioms from one language to another, but words and phrases may have wildly different meanings even in different national and regional dialects of the same language. Knowing the exact meaning of a given idiom might require detailed information about the speaker’s background, which the listener could easily lack.
And if that’s true on earth, how much more complex would it get once you start throwing in alien cultures? Especially since each species would likely have multiple languages and cultures. I’ve always found it a little hard to believe that most fictional alien species seem to have a sort of planetary/racial monoculture. Granted, my sample size of actual alien cultures is currently zero. Extrapolating from human history is therefore purely speculative, but it’s all I have.
I’m fairly confident that Spock understood the idioms but was trolling the “silly humans” on his startship when he got the chance.
Interesting theory. I like it :)
There is also the possibility that Data was specifically programmed to have that as a harmless “flaw” to make him seem more “human”. Somebody who does everything perfectly might creep the hell out of organic lifeforms who do not.
Considering that was why Lore was deactivated, that could well be.
McCoy: “You mean I have to die to discuss your insights on death?”
I am reminded of an episode of Archer, where Archer was in the south Pacific and his translator was having issues as Archer kept speaking in idioms and being told they wouldn’t translated and Archer realized just how much he/Americans rely on idioms when speaking.
deus now has an excuse for where he got his alien gizmos he bought from. he will be able to “investigate” them openly
“These things totally dropped off that spaceship that visited last month.”
Who’s to say Deus didn’t use his connections to get the ship to earth just to make aliens known?
How “Lucky” of Deus to just get the alien tech to fix the Alari ship. (I Assume Galtyn is the one Deus “Owns”) Seriously! How lucky is he? He better not to be revealed to have future sight or something.
Umm… The only reasons the Alari are on Earth at all is because Deus invited them with promises of a safe haven. It’s part of the reason he needed control over a country in the first place – to have the political clout to handle the public affair as a diplomat and not hide as much. I get the impression that while Deus may have a number of things going on behind the scenes, and unadvertised, he would much rather prefer not to have to hide anything he does.
Ok, who says that was Alari?
We still haven’t seen one on tv.
What Deus want to do with Galytn (not Galtyn), is to use it as a safe harbor – indeed.
Now, what Deus wants, what he knows, and what he needs?
He knows that Alari were xenocided into oblivion by hitherto unknown force of overwhelming magnitude. Probably, ’cause of personal stuff. He knows, that most – probably all – of the Alari elite stratas were eliminated. He needs engineers and scientists, not another batch of unskilled workers who, probably, wouldn’t be able to provide much info on their tek in first place.
Go, make a nuclear reactor and/or microprocessor with medieval tek, I dare you.
See how easy it is – and you use thouse things every day.
More to that – all the Alari souls in the philactery are now reside inside of his assistant/bodyguard, safe, compact, ready to be used – and completely unknown to anyone bar few very trusted individuals.
Therefore, inviting Alari refugees to Earth not only counterproductive to his interests, but may as well be suicidal.
They are better be left alone to rot on back on the station until the Alari race will be no more.
There are plenty of now “unowned” Alari assets on the secondary market though. Possibly, “unowned” not without certain magnate involvement. Assets like colony ships, for example.
He also has few quite illegal items that needs to be legalized.
The course of actions is obvious.
Hire some actors, plop rubber ridges on their foreheads, and make them pretend to be an Alari refugee group, who – out of sheer gratitude, of course – will “grant” their benefactor some previously highly illegal tek only to be killed in horrible act of terror by thouse horrible, horrible racists. Literal hitlers, they are, thouse detestable xeno-hating scoundrels!
Enter Sydney – with the real Alari refugees on board of the (probably not) Gloryhole…
Do we know that Deus knows about all the souls? I think all we know is that they came over. We don’t know what happened after that. We don’t even know that his assistant is still really on his side.
Also, presumably many of the souls are of the upper strata. Scientific, military, political?
Good point on the property that might now be available for plundering. Be it IP, or space stations, ships, even planets.
Finally, I wonder how the Alari will react when they find out Sydney blasted a decent number of the aliens. Its likely she has militarily useful intel, that would be worth a lot to the Alari.
Also, will they attempt to steal her tech (likely), or hope to pay her off for her help recapturing the homeworld.
Ohh, plus, the alari might have an ‘honor’ based social system. They may be triply indebt to Sydney.
– She got revenge for them
– Her team effected a rescue of the souls. Granted, not on purpose
– She rescued the refugees directly.
True on the assistant angle.
I agree with phylactery contents assumption.
Unless Alari had a lot of friends, their former stuff is pretty much free-for-all now. And, given the militaristic attitude – conquests et cetera, they probably only had “friends”. Who rapidly disappeared the moment empire’s homeworld was glassed. Probably saving all that valuable and completely undefended stuff from random scoundrels, so it wouldn’t be stolen from their dear departed friends…
As for Alari reaction – depends on what strata prevails among the survivors. Lover classes usually tend to be less honorable per se, but more honest in their interpretation of what “honor” is. Higher stratas are clingy to the notion of “honor” and “proper behavior” as you wouldn’t believe – but their understanding of it lands right into the Blue/Orange territory.
They may as well decide that since she saved them, not she has the holy onus to look after them. Either way, from Alari’s point of view she must be repaid. The only question is how.
…
Come to think of it, I’ll amend my theory about Alari refugees being paid actors (slightly).
It would be prudent to hire some real aliens to impersonate the Alari.
This way, if truth ever would be brought to light, Deus could make a dolorous face, and declare his intense disappointed in thouse no-good wretches who tried to scam him out under the guise of humanitarian cause using his kind and compassionate nature. Ding! – your social credit has been increased.
My statement is just speculation, but ya having alien engineers would help a lot.
Also, you might be wrong about the higher ups being gone. Remember when Sciona found that crystal full of Alari souls? I wouldn’t be surprised if they weren’t doing a Skrull Invasion of Earth right now, or at least making it easier for the Alari to get equal rights.
This is all just guess work at this point. We don’t know if Deus planned this at all. Sydney’s refugees are proof enough to show that there are others alive, and most likely were called by the other Alari that came to Earth in soul form. Where is a good Soul Reaper when you need one, am I right? Cant wait to see what happens next! (God, I wish I had a time machine!)
I’ll agree on the phylactery being chock-full of most prized Alari souls. That’s only makes sense in the face of existential denial event. The refugees, though, are most certainly not of the class, or they wouldn’t be in such sorry state as begging for a refuge in first place.
…Well, with the amendment that this particular ship may be an Ark of sort, and containing all necessities to recreate the Alari Empire – but oh well. We shall see.
What we definitely know, though, is that right now the souls from the phylactery are contained inside Deus’s assistant – so, really, all speculation hinges on her: her nature, her relations with Deus, and what exactly Deus knew and had planned for.
So, yes – beside different angles on what little we know for sure – it’s all just trees falling in the forest. Baseless speculation on irrelevant things indeed.
Again, we shall see. And I believe – pretty soon.
We don’t definitely know the souls are in Vale, the vapor stream doesn’t resemble the skulls in anything but color. That was Vale herself. Though, there was a green glow there before the re-entry, so there’s a good possibility she already put them in there before she got the Skybreaker.
She might have kept Sciona with her recently, which could help with dialing the Skybreaker. However, unless it’s difficult to keep them from causing trouble, I don’t think there would be much good reason for her to walk around with all of them the whole time since. No privacy, for one :)
The Alari are an empire.
We don’t know if they were attacked other than on their home world.
The elite took heavy losses, but no way would part of their elite not be off governing the rest of the empire.
Sciona wouldn’t be so utterly devastated upon discovering metropolia obliterated then. She’d just had to find a way to give a whistle to her compatriots in other places.
Secondly, Alari refugees on the Hub. It is really unreasonable for the refugees to run to the local wretched hive of scum and villainy if any of their off-world colonies existed.
Next point – from what little we’ve seen about the Alari in person of Sciona, they lean heavily towards militaristic aristocracy. Conjectural it may be, but no imperial aristo would ever run from the Last Stand scenario. Unless, of course, their empire is well and truly in decline – in which case second class citizens like engineers and scientists still would die in defense of the homeworld, and the elites survived would mostly be composed of bankers, socialites, and other useless trash first class cream of the crop members of the ruling class.
And how lucky for America that Sydney brought her own ship load of aliens with her.
Won’t they want to join the rest of the Alari rather than stay in the USA?
If the CIA gets a hold of them first, do you honestly believe the refugees will have a choice? More likely it’s a one way trip to Area 51 for the lot of them.
CIA would have a hard time getting their hands on them. There would be international protest.
Archon would protest. The US military would protest. The State Department would protest.
Commercial interests would protest. Civil rights organizations would protest. News media would protest. This is already world wide news, it is hardly something they could hide under being classified.
Yyyeaaah, just FYI, the government doesn’t give two shits about ‘protests’ when matters of nationa (let alone intergalactic)l security come into play, and the military would back them up. Archon, if I’m not mistaken, is a branch of the government that employs many active duty members, so while they might voice their suggestions/concerns/objections, whatever branch has final say over such matters is going to do what they see fit, regardless of people in pink hats screeching at the sky in the streets says.
When one of the people protesting is a high level military officer who could crater entire cities and has the good PR to win any political office she wants to run for they listen.
This isn’t the cold war era (let alone the fictional cold war era), the CIA has very little power.
The CIA will end up with them anyway, of course: they’re the ones with the most institutional experience in keeping defectors and valuable refugees sweet. No need for one-way trips to anywhere. Indeed, all of this solves the Veil problem, once and for all. “Oh, wow, the Galaxy is full of humanoid races and ones that aren’t! Hey, look at that wolf-man! Next to that… other wolf-man dude.” Somebody get the colony ship a Twitter account!
The CIA has very little experience with refugees and they don’t have a good track record with humInt. The only reason they gained so many defectors in the cold war is because life in the west was genuinely much better.
Life in the west is still genuinely better. Why do you think that the activities of many of the 911 hijackers in the days leading up to the event were clubbing and drinking? Because in their repressive countries these things are forbidden, and they were about to die and wanted to spend their last days doing fun things and enjoying themselves.
I think that Cora’s expression is better as it will hold up better to the test of time. I mean, who keeps a cat in a bag anymore?
Back then in the old ages it was apparently common to sell a cat in a sack. So both of these taken together…
The phrase comes from the middle ages where it was common to take piglets to market in a ‘poke’ (bag) for sale. Now a piglet in a bag and a kitten in a bag struggle much the same and make much the same noises (but kittens are cheaper), so provided no one looked in the bag prior to sale, you could sell a small cat as a piglet and make a tidy profit. Unless the buyer opened the bag, and well then ‘the cat is out of the bag’ and the scam was revealed.
So “buying a pig in a poke”, and “letting the cat out of the bag”. Two phrases detailing the one scam!
Oh, the word “poke” comes from the French word for bag “poque”. Now like some other French words, you make a diminutive term by adding “ette” or “et” to the end, so the word “pocket” comes from the French “Poque-et” (or maybe “Poque-ette”) meaning “small bag”.
And now you know. :-)
Huh, Finnish also has the expression “buying a pig in a bag”. Although the cat never comes out of the bag, you just lift a cat on the table if you want to talk about a difficult thing.
“Letting the cat out of the bag” is more revealing a secret than talking about a difficult subject.
Talking about a difficult subject would be “talking about the elephant in the room” ;)
As opposed to the (originally Australian?) expression of ‘dropping a dead cat on the table’, which refers to forcibly changing the subject <i<away from a difficult one you don’t want discussed. Someone’s pushing you too closely on what you were doing last night? Wham “Jeez, mate, there’s a dead cat on the table!”, and suddenly everyone’s talking about the mangled moggie rather than your nocturnal indiscretions.
Thank you!
Indeed, I didn’t know all that.
And knowing is half the battle!
The other half is getting the cat off of the elephant and back in the bag.
Back then in the old ages it was common to *drown cats* by putting them into a sack and throwing it into the water. This is where the saying comes from.
Or at least that’s what I was told.
Cora was trying to pussyfoot her way around it but Sydney, being the pussywillow, wouldn’t let her get away with it.
…and then aliens interpret that as sexual slang.
The expression comes from when people used to sell young pigs in sacks, and apparently there was an urban legend about a guy trying to sell a cat in a sack as a pig, so when the “cat was out of the sack” his scam was revealed.
Nut sure if it is so in English but in Slovak we say that buying something without knowing, what it is, would bu buying a cat in a sack.
Well at least Dave is not running on my bean yet….
It means both “buying without knowing what you buy” and “the scam is found out”.
We have the same saying in Germany, so I guess it is a Universal European Legend.
The Latin (even older) is “Caveat Emptor”. Seeing as a lot of English has Germanic roots, it makes sense that old Germanic sayings made it into English and morphed as the language evolved.
Oh, c’mon, check your facts.
Everyone knows ‘caveat emptor’ means ‘the cave is empty’.
Letting the Cat out of the Bag has more or less evolved further into the revelation of any secret, not just the original “Pig in a poke” scam.
To be honest idioms in foreign languages can be confusing. Someone without any knowledge of German culture try to tell me what the “poodle’s core” is.
Also several cultures on earth do not have irony. Or a completely different understanding of that. So confusion is to be expected when you expect your own cultural standards to be universal.
I see, you’re heavy on wire.
I’m not that smart. But when I see someone trying to press their Leitkultur on everyone else, intentionally or not, I could jump in the triangle.
(( Not a jab at anyone here. ))
My hovercraft is full of eels.
There is a trapped cat here.
Word!
This thread is the bee’s knees!
Well you can make a pretty good guess at what “the poodles’ core” means without knowing the specific background of why specifically a poodle rather than any other thing or critter.
An uncropped poodle can be really fluffy. Like is there even a dog under there?
Foreign countries? My colleque had problems with idioms from different cities.
Huh, that poodle idiom must be regional. Never heard of that in Berlin.
Definitely not regional.
As many original German idioms it’s a Goethe quote. (Faust I)
Small point: the humanities are subjects like literature, art, history. When talking about the place the species might or does occupy, it’s humanity’s.
“Who put the cat in the bag in the first place?!? Shame on you!”
From what I heard, apparently someone trying to pass it of as a pig in a bag
How did the Darmok aliens manage to speak at all?! Relating a cultural reference requires a language of some sort to relate it in.
Plus the names, the events, and the common knowledge of all this. Tbh I think that the Darmok episode overdid that aspect, but then again, English is developing in that direction, maybe all languages do. Memes, movie references (not to speak of comic references), they come up more and more. Extrapolating that, in some 1000 years we may speak like Darmok and Jalad.
Of course all languages do this. Metaphors are a standard method of generating new words. You don’t *really* stand below things you understand do you? Most of them aren’t even physical.
The idea it is vastly harder to understand or translate such phrases than it is any other morpheme in a language mostly shows you the person who wrote the story is a bit fuzzy on how languages work. It’s easy to fool yourself about what languages do or do not do if you only know the one you learned as a child. If you are writing a plot that really depends on something about a language, running it by a native speaker of a foreign one before you publish may save you from looking like an idiot.
Not sure I got all you said.
FYI, I’m German :)
I watched the Darmok episode in German translation and it worked well. There are German sayings that come out as completely nonsense when you translate them literally, so these things exist in the German Language, too. But maybe it goes not that fast, because German is not all over the internet.
But then again, it seems that most of these things appear in the social sector (of communication), much less anywhere else and perhaps never in the technical sector.
But it may be or become a serious hurdle when learning a language that makes much use of such idioms.
Altogether I think it was a very good episode.
Well they do have the universal translators and since the aliens on the fracture station could translate human, it means the aliens that lived on earth probably cataloged human languages and uploaded them to the translator database
There are humans around the space already:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-693-someone-forgot-to-file-a-flight-plan/
If those are actually humans, and not just some species of sapiens spacefaring aliens that happened to look like humans. The basic two arm 2 leg with a head on top bilateral symmetry body plan seems to be fairly common. Over a third of the aliens we’ve seen on screen seem to follow the same basic layout as humans. Convergent evolution, pre-planning by a progenitor race, doesn’t really matter. If there are only a set number of ways to arrange a Sapient species, when sooner or later you’re going to get two completely different species that happened to look extremely similar.
That was probably a one-off joke, not to be considered canon as to humans in space, considering the lower ship is from Galaxy Quest…
I believe the episode said the race was short range telepathic to some degree, and their brains had evolved to rely on that telepathic input as part of speech. The telepathy provided an emotional component without which the brain couldn’t interpret the meaning behind the words, so to speak. The phasic allusions to culturally important legends was a way they managed to create long-range communication, since it provided the emotional context through memory rather than telepathy.
In a high tech interconnected world, the manor of speech would become habit, when in cases where not strictly required (standing next to a member of their own species with witch they shared that telepathic link, for example)
This would make the base language mostly used just in childhood to learn the epics and such, and moving to allegory being a requirement for making a phone call, the base language would probably end up sounding infantile if spoken in later life.
My guess was that they started with a normal language then eventually ended up only talking in memes.
Since it probably wasn´t seen last time:
DaveB, Since i had time to spare I wrote Tags down for the comic. They are one line every page so the Linenumber represents the comic number. I posted them at pastebin since it´s 715 lines atm: https://pastebin.com/nES1Dbb0 (hope it´s ok to post this link here)
May I give you some translations of idioms from other languages? German:“You have tomatoes on your eyes.” “I only understand the train station.” “To buy a cat in a sack.” Swedish: “There’s no cow on the ice.” “To slide in on a shrimp sandwich.” “It fell between chairs.” Thai: “Take ears to the field, take eyes to the farm.” “The hen sees the snake’s feet and the snake sees the hen’s boobs.” “One afternoon in your next reincarnation.”
Tell me they are all clear.
The Thai ones explains why my mom never said any idiom. They seem as clear as nipples on a cock – I mean rooster.
To be fair, you haven’t given us any contextual clues. I might not have understood “That ship has sailed” right away if not for the context.
I had fun looking these up. Thank you!
Suppose these idiom-aliens from Star Trek got visited by another alien race, and they got the technology from those aliens? Then saying “K’kor and M’Ael landing at Tanagra” will get you the whole blueprint of the spaceship. :-)
they didn’t land there by accident, couldn’t have…
there must have been a beacon of sorts to ” guide” them in……
which means Deus KNEW they were coming…..
I’m beginning to think our resident “Lex Luthor” may have orchestrated the attack on the Alari homeworld.
Deus wouldn’t have to orchestrate the attack in order to exploit the Alari. He’s definitely savvy enough to have noticed all of those refugees wandering around the Fracture, figured that they had to find somewhere peacable to go, and then gave them navigational data to get to Earth…To a place where he wanted them to land, of course.
At the very least, Deus has already been “appointed” by Galtyn’s king to act as Xeno-Diplomat…
Umm, the ones on Fracture had no ship of their own, that’s why they were refugee’s in rags worried about what is going to happen to them
If they had no ship, how did they get to the Fracture? Do you think that only the one ships would be sufficient to hold all of the refugees?
Those are probably not the same portion of refugees that Cora & Sydney picked up.
Deus probably talked with whatever leaders that the refugees had among them but that does not imply that ALL of the refugees made it to the same ship.
How many Alari survived & escaped the attack? Thousands? Tens-of-thousands? Millions, perhaps? Still likely to be more refugees getting on ships other than Cora’s or the one in Galtyn. How many other worlds are going to be seeing Alari refugees showing up?
Indeed, if they Alari are to have the best possible chance to survive as a race over the long-run, they had better spit up & scatter by groups, just to make it harder for their attackers to track them all down & finish their total genocide.
They ended up on fracture because the people-smugglers dumped them there after taking everything they had left
If he could orchestrate an attack of that scale, why is he still handing around in a small African nation?
Disguise, plus fear of reprisal
Two words…
“Diplomatic Immunity’
If he’s the official “Ambassador” of Galytn, whatever he does is under sanction of the King….
Sovereign nation status, plus alien “refugees”…..
Dave’s twisted version of Wakanda perhaps?
Diplomatic immunity only covers Earth Governments, though. Acts of extraterrestrials or non-Government actors, though…
And not so much Wakanda, but given its location (Eastern part of DRC), presumably a post-warlord Rwanda thanks to Supers stand-in?
When ever someone says “Diplomatic Immunity”, there is just one response to that: “Just been revoked!” :P
On one hand sure, but why would he want aliens to reveal technology to people when he could pretend he invented it and make a ton of money?
Firstly, why put citations marks around refugees as if there is some thing suspicious about there refugee status? Somebody bombed their planet to rubble. That seems quite enough for refugee status without any question marks.
Secondly, nobody would have believed that he had invented it. Now they “reveal” it to HIM and he patents it and makes a lot of money.
Who says their world was bombed back to the stone age? The supposed refugees, with no one to confirm their stories
SmugD can’t patent something some other civilisation has made, so them showing up ruins his scam
judging by that expression, I’d say that dating is complicated for her species.
On He-Man and the Masters of the Universe Orko’s race only show
their face as an act of deep significance.
I guess this means Orko and Dree Elle are engaged.
There was some random “sci-fi” trash-flik back in the 80s where the curiously-indistinguishable-from-humans aliens considered the sight of uncovered hands to be quite intimate, and downright shameful if shewn in public. To the point of insinuations of sexual assault in case if one saw other’s hands without gloves and given consent.
The Basitins in TwoKinds are this way about feet and ankles. Showing them uncovered in public is considered an act of indecency punishable by law. Considering they also have _fur_, so bare skin isn’t even being exposed, it makes it doubly-weird. But then again the whole society is pretty hung up on odd rules.
If I remember correctly it was explained they used to consider the groin regions indecent (like humans), but over time as they grew more prude it started to extend down to their ankles (like in Victorian times), so even baring your ankles was considered vulgar.
But over time they become so focused on the ankles they kinda forgot about the groin region, so now only the ankles are considered indecent.
I can see that, TV and movie censorship in America is like that with the female nipple.
Look at older movies and shows and watch the progression change.
Yeah that’s not quite Earth slang more like I would expect dabbler to say that anyone else.
Galytn… is that the country Deus bought?
He took it rather than buy it.
Well, Deus had to defend himself from the King’s bodyguards somehow & taking over was the best way to do it.
He only had to defend himself (with hired Supers-thugs) after he had the king murdered, because the king wasn’t going to just let SmugD do whatever he damn well wanted
And appointed the man’s son as a figurehead allowing himself to, well, do whatever he damn well wanted, with the added safety of dumping any future blame on the ‘ruler’
Bodyguards shot first, on order from the king. THEN Dues’ super-thugs killed him & he took over, via threat to the king’s son.
I wasn’t trying to defend Dues’ actions at all. Tongue-in-cheek sarcasm.
Deus is a total @$$wipe–yes, but you have to admit that he’s a shrewd total @$$wipe.
Well, more carrot than stick with Junior.
“Your Dad was a murderous, vindictive thug, but I know you aren’t like him – we have video proof – and killing folks who don’t need to be killed is bad for biz. So, you wanna be rich?”
I sometimes wonder if Deus is not really the evil mastermind everyone believes. Sure he had King Indinge killed, but let’s be honest King Indinge needed killing. He only had Indinge killed after he gave the tyrant an opportunity to cooperate and therefore survive. And Indinge’s death is the only one we’ve seen so far that was actually the responsibility of Deus.
Rather than kill Indinge’s son and heir he gave Junior the same opportunity to cooperate and continue to live, and live well. Deus then proceeded to use his dictatorial hold on Galytn to build up the country’s infrastructure and make life for the average citizen better than any of them had ever hoped or dreamed.
Make no mistake, Deus is a Machiavellian Tyrant, but he clearly prefers to accomplish his schemes with as little collateral damage and as much collateral uplifting as possible. Not exactly your typical villain by a long shot.
Will partially disagree: mastermind? nah. Evil sack of festering offal? So much YES!!
Well, there is the fact he could have had all Indige’s guards killed the moment they pulled their guns. Instead, cowed, but alive.
Evil? Perhaps; he is ruthless in his pursuits. But he does like his carrots. “Working with me can be … lucrative.”
There is a decent argument that Deus is enlightened in his extreme self interest, even if he might occasionally be brutal about it. He’s accomplished more real good than Mother Theresa. I mean, given everything we have actually seen him do, his net body count is approximately (some huge negative number).
He’s a jerk and a boor, but his plans that are awesome for himself are great for others as well.
He did say it himself…
He puts value in trust and loyalty.
And it doesn’t do well for relations if you do things, like, kill your compatriots.
The bodyguards didn’t get to fire their weapons, if they did, it was after the King was attacked
That’s the country SmugD took control over after having the previous ruler murdered
So, no, not quite the same as ‘buying’ it
Competent assassins who can induce heart attacks are very expensive.
Not sure like this new ‘realistic’ look to Suzie News
Hey! It’s Suzy News!
She’s gone from local news to the network?
One of the reporters from my local cable news 12 channel is now
at CBS NYC so it happens.
Wasn’t talking about her promotion, was talking about her literal look
Not sure about the new ‘realistic’ look for all the characters. Love everything else. I hope he keeps in the habit for those ‘anime’ moments.
I like both the original comic book style of art and the newer “realistic” look. Either is fine with me. What really brings me to the Grrl Power webcomic is the great characters and compelling story.
Sidney’s finger is just really, really long in the last panel… :-D
It does look weird, but then again all hands are weird
She’s just wearing a two knuckle finglongerer. Remember, she’s been to *SPACE*, so she can get advanced tech like that.
Oh thank you for mentioning Newcomers and Prawns in the same sentence. I am now awaiting a eventual crack about the Visitors. 1980’s FTW!
It would be great if the Alari are lizards in a humanoid suit just so we can see Deus face when he hear that he slept with one.
Eh, think the only part about that which would irritate Deus is having to change the sketch in his book..
Deus is nothing if not cosmopolitan in his tastes.
My sci-fi experience made me think of DEARS last page.
It is an anime series where one ship of human like alien refugees landed beside Japan. They mostly keep to themselves but have a program to try and interact with humans. Problem is they are escaped pre-programed slaves and don’t want the humans to find out about that out of fear they’ll be enslaved again unless they can overcome their programming.
Oddly the topic is played for laughs rather than how dark it clearly sounds as its a “Waifu” type anime (think like Chobits only with an alien).
The nut sack is out of the nut sack bag.
After returning to Earth,Sydney would have to endure many questions from everyone,but mostly from Maxima…
What type of questions should Maxima ask Sydney?
1: What did you do?
Also asked by Dabbler, with an entirely different emphasis.
Did you just emit a Roman candle fart?
Isn’t it a bit suspicious that Galytn had the technology to repair a spaceship, hmm?
Nothing was said thus far indicating they did. They just gave the people in the space ship permission to land in their territory, allowing the space ship people to fix their own ship. (I’m guessing it had temporary patches on hull breaches, as most other issues I can imagine could be fixed while floating dead in space or in orbit.)
With First Contact in the news, how are the aliens who are
on Earth secretly handling it?
Earth’s secret supernaturals??
Don’t the Alari have a bad reputation in the interstellar community?
“They should fix their ship and leave!”
OTOH, when Sydney gained the ability to open wormholes one of the waypoints was scrambled. She thought it may have been for Earth and something happened to the last orb user on arrival.
I think The Veil might have something to do with it. And now that the aliens on Earth no longer have to hide maybe that part of The Veil will be canceled and Sydney will be able to use her orbs for trips off Earth – and more importantly GET BACK.
The Veil seems to be purely illusional in function, so I doubt whatever caused the previous owners demise was related.
Also I don’t think anyone could block an aetherium gateway
How are they handling it? In at least one case, not well. Maxima just put down one that went on a rampage because he was terrified by the incoming “invasion”. Which may or may not need to be in quotes, time will tell.
The two don’t have to be related. In fact, its extremely unlikely.
Deus has presumably been conspiring for years to take over the country, raid the vault, build a portal, and buy alien tech. The attack on the Alari homeworld was a complete surprise to everyone, and happened less than a week? ago.
How could Deus have had advanced knowledge of the genocide?
There is no also requirement that deus had to orchestrate this ships arrival. He just had to be an opportunist and take advantage of it once it happened.
Thread 1, he conspires to take over a country and buy high tech.
Thread 2, alien ship shows up and he leaps at the chance.
The alien ship could have showed up here because
– It was known to them, was not a threat, but had resources that could be used
– Because the vast number of ‘ghosts’ was already here, and they sent a message.
– Because it was enough of a backwater, to give them time to do ‘stuff’, possibly nefarious.
I suspect that Deus is a super, and that his power is somehow related to knowledge, possibly knowledge of some things in the future.
I like to think that he is not super himself, just smart enough to hire them. You don’t need to see the future, if the guy who can see the future knows that you’re willing to pay him a million bucks a month the lounge around the coffee shop and text him whenever you see the future.
But being able to actually see the future, even if only partially and a shortish way ahead, is in itself a really good way of becoming fantastically rich, but the effect only truly works if others don’t know that you have it and so aren’t watching what you’re up to closely. That’s why I suspect that’s his own power (and everything else is driven off that) and that it’s something he keeps really seriously quiet.
He has the advantage of actually being smart too. And not dead-set on ensuring that those around him do less well than him (that’ll just eventually happen anyway by lower rate of growth of financial might).
Prime example being cherry-picking stocks for day trading.
My guess is he is related to some succubus and his power is to read minds of those he slept with.
ps
Don’t assume the ship is actually damaged and in need of repair. Could they have, gasp, been lying?
Their empire was a rapacious expansionist empire. Earth may well have already been on their conquest list. Plus, of course, all the ghosts that are already here.
that’s more likely even sciona said we sill still invade earth. but not as conquerers but as refugees. thus this is one of the ships from that attack that made it.
Woo, the genitals are unveiled! Let the global unrest begin!
Just ignore the barbs. They only hurt the first time.
I think “As you know…” dialog is also known as “Maid and butler talk” because in stage plays that’s who often spoke that kind of dialog.
Cora had better phone Maxima first instead of just assuming it’s okay to drop down openly and add more to the chaos.
Indeed.
A broadcast about alien refugees who escaped from a planetary aggressor, followed by supposition about whether or not that aggressor will follow the refugees to Earth. Then another alien ship appears.
Yeah. The locals’ll be real friendly towards Cora if she doesn’t handle her arrival correctly.
I think that the most important question here, which everyone seems to be missing, is Who the hell is TeaBagger Vance?
Some random troll’s screen name, I’m sure.
Some news stations like to put twitter comments from random people at the bottom of the screen. It’s better than standing there reading them I guess.
A (former?) member of the Twitterati. It has been years since I saw any of his tweets, so I assume he’s either dead or banned from Twitter. A search didn’t turn up anything by him but several mentions of tweets he made.
Heh heh. His comment is straight out of Cat Planet Cuteys.
Better question: How did they get a name like that on the air?
I have a theory. Deus is like Merlin, or Farther Time in the Piers Anthony series. He experiences time backwards. That would explain so very much.
I believe Spock played it up to mess with Kirk. They were friends, and dad-joking him was the sort of thing that he could get away with while on duty.
Joking is distinctly un-Vulcan….
But it would be a logical explanation. :P
Spock was half-human, and his troubled life on Vulcan encouraged him to join Starfleet as soon as he could – he was a commissioned officer by age 20.
For all Vulcans talk about logic, he was generally rejected and mistreated by them even though there was no logical reason to do so. Humans, however, accepted him as one of their own, in spite of him always being sort of an odd duck.
He spent a great deal of time learning human cultures and social mores, and had effectively taken up anthropology and human psychology as hobbies before he even met Kirk.
None of this is fanon, mind you. This is all from primary sources circa the Roddenberry era.
Aside from him having spent years among humans, and having a personal and intellectual interest in human behaviors and interactions, there are also several episodes where the other senior staff realize that Spock is having them on and make a big deal about it.
Even more so with McCoy.
I think this scenario is wildly optimistic.
More likely, WWIII would have immediately broken out. No way the US or Russia or China sit around and let some crap-hole country in Africa control the biggest thing to ever happen to the human race. And there’s no way two of those three sit around and let one of the others take control.
There’s a 1% chance the three of them could agree to something jointly done, but either way Galytn is toast. A couple of supers working for Deus can’t stop that.
What could stop the interference you’re thinking of:
Deus is a primary vendor for the superhero organizations of all of the UN veto powers with such organizations, and a prime defense contractor for all of the UN veto powers that don’t. He uses a separate company for each of these countries, to keep it as low key as possible. It’s entirely plausible that he has figurehead CEOs for each of those companies, so that they can each appear to be run by a citizen of the country with whom they do business. But each of those companies have moved a substantial part of their business to Galytn, and each of those CEOs has been named the Galytn ambassador to their country of birth. And each of those ambassadors have assured the country of their birth that they’ve arranged for Galytn to be hosting the aliens for the exclusive benefit of their homeland, while keeping the aliens far enough from their homeland to not cause undue risk.
Heh, clever. Hard to maintain for an extended period, but doable for a few years.
“But Mr Bond, I am a secret ambassador with exclusive access to Galytn as well! Do you think he could be lying to one of us?!”
Seems unlikely. Even if the Alari ship IS damaged, there’s no way of knowing what kind of weapons it has, except they’re far more advanced than ours. Not likely that any country is going to attack Galytn without knowing for sure the Alari ship can’t easily wipe the floor with any invading army.
Never underestimate the stupidity of people in power
If the Alari ship fires on anything that is not directly attacking it, then it just became an invasion.
Wonder if they have shields that could stop a nuke? Because I would not be surprised if whoever doesn’t get control tries to drop one on the ship, to prevent someone else from controlling it.
Maybe I am too much of a pessimist.
I don’t think that these nations are likely to go in guns blazing, either – at least not until the other nations show signs of doing it first (in which case it would be a “defensive” operation). Until then, overtures toward the nation will be diplomatic on the surface, with a strong undercurrent of intelligence gathering, both to find out how the OTHER nations’ diplomats are being received (if they do too well, it might be time to send in the guns, or at least start making a racket on the world stage to ensure equitable sharing of knowledge) and to crib what alien secrets they can clandestinely.
While it’s undeniably the case that these world powers would be loathe to see sudden radical technological advances in their rivals, none of them is strong enough to take on basically the whole world INCLUDING their rivals and probably the aliens as well if they were to move rashly. You can bet, though, that the embassies in Galytn are gonna be getting a fresh coat of paint.
And those responses are from the “normal” political structure… what about the RELIGIOUS, um shall we put it politely… WHACK JOBS… that think anyone not of their religion is a heretic and shall be blown to smithereens!… THEN add in that the various first world powers have aided, heck they have even TRAINED up to current standards some of the various members of those groups before… whats so unlikely about somebody in oh lets say the US government covert ops arm of some of the various Alphabet Agencies”suggesting” to some operative in the Middle East (whatever nation/terrorist group mole/ sympathizer etc…) to use this as an opportunity to advance their cause by blowing up the ship and it’s passengers? that way the US is not to blame, and can then send in the troops to “protect” the survivors and “evacuate them from that horrible horrible war-torn, terrorist magnet country” and bring them to the USA, under “protective custody”, of course… after which the news cycle will forget about them in a few months and/or maybe they’ll get a few “tame” representatives to go on a “dog-n-pony show and tell” under carefully controlled circumstances of which the usual Main stream media outlets will get spoon-fed what the Government whats to let out, when they want to let it out, etc, etc… and eventually the John Q Public will forget all about them…
The problem with that scenario is that Deus has his own security force of supers. He’d presumably be on the watch for any efforts to destabilize.
And when you have people who can literally read minds, quick to roll up the line to see who pulled the strings.
Who then get little visits…
Right. Sure, some folks would imagine doing that… then would get Gibbs-slapped by their more sensible peers.
The few groups that were crazy enough to try it – whether or not funded directly or indirectly by first-world powers – would be quickly squashed and the husks hung up as a warning to others.
“I’m sorry… did you think that we didn’t have security that was a century advanced over yours? True, we unfortunately didn’t have the extra resources to be kind to these particular terrorist attackers. We do, however, have the ability to track back anyone and everyone who supported them in their attempt… and will deal with them diplomatically for the moment…
Does anyone else want to try?”
“Well, the cat’s out of the bag now.” is what I’ve been thinking since Thursday’s comic, but I held off saying so because I figured they could have gone in under cloak or something. However as soon as I read the first panel I was ready to say it! Now I’m glad I read the rest of the page.
““Well, the cat’s out of the bag now.” is what I’ve been thinking since Thursday’s comic, ”
I was never in a bag!!!!
I feel very ambivalent about this as a plot development. I’m already ambivalent that aliens just got revealed to Earth, but on top of that, as IHeartComics points out, the way it played out is wildly optimistic. Everything about this response just seems completely off, and also way too fast. Is Sydney in the Matrix or something?
The veil probably helped
Oh, and there’s our girl Suzie again. Which reminds me; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InTuAeGjr4M
Really loving that alien idiom. I love trying to come up with new vocabulary and idioms to portray a fictional culture or language (whether alien or not). This is honestly quite a good one.
When I was in the 8th grade, we spent weeks creating alternate forms of common expressions. That was in 1964. :)
“Cease enumerating your fowl prior to gestation.” That sort of thing.
That sounds like a very Rolph thing to say
Not using stealth on the way down will make it easier to communicate with air traffic control and to avoid mid-air collisions. Mind you, I don’t think Cora’s ship’s systems know how to work with TCAS.
Halo: Let’s see. Who would be doing air-traffic control for this area? Hmm. Oh, I got it. Let’s see what frequency they use. [ Looks up info on wrist device and switches frequency ] Houston, this is Archon 4. Requesting permission to descend from flight level 2700 to flight level 100 on approach to Texas. Flight plan to follow.
Oops, that should have been flight level 27000 = 2 700 000 ft.
Andy would be good at Cinema Sins
So he’d be a sometimes funny, but mostly annoying nit picker who takes what should only be a seven minutes at most video and extends it to over 20 minutes by pointing out things that end up not really being funny but more show they don’t understand the source material, the genre, or the concept of fiction.
While aliens might not get idioms, they sure do use plenty of Earth-based words in their descriptors. It started bugging me how it seemed like practically every alien creature always used an Earth animal in its name. E.g. A “Teluvian Bat” or a “Gulorpian Marmoset.” I get the actual reason is so the audience knows roughly what is being described, but still… it’s a little immersion-breaking when Tribbliar the Fourth-Dimension Alien from the planet Triskettshimp talks about the “Blipblorp kangaroos.”
And while on the subject of Trek characters dropping IQs, I think one of the ultimate examples of that is in one of the worst episodes of TNG’s run: Masks.
The audience was practically yelling the answers, Blue’s Clues style, at these super-smart future people who can design warp drives and fly spaceships failing to grasp such obvious symbolism. Like, it shouldn’t have taken you that long to figure out sun and moon! Did the script say “And then everyone drops 120 IQ points. Including Picard, who’s so into this stuff that he almost became an archeologist instead of a Starfleet officer, and should’ve picked up on it immediately”?
Tasmanian Tiger,
Sea Spider,
Sea Pig,
Sea Cucumber,
Raccoon Dog,
We do it with each other, we will often call new animals we discover or those from other countries with no close relative to ones in our own back yards by names comparing them to what we know. Its pretty common actually, if it has physical traits in common with something you recognize, to make others of your own culture more quickly grasp the mental image you’d compare it like, Its a Tangarian Bat or a Sozbarian Sky Dolphin. Yeah not a bat or a dolphin, but you get the idea one is a winged, ribbed wings or leathery wings most likely flying creature, and the other has a torpedo shaped body but also has a cute or friendly appearance otherwise you’d have called it a Sozbarian Shark.
Like let’s take for example three aliens from my neck of the woods and tell me which one you just from the name have some idea what it might look like,
Armodian Wooly Slug,
Xenoceratops,
Gobglarkus,
blasted mental typos,
Xenoterratops, as Xenoceratops was taken in 2012 and given to a real extinct animal. Forgot I changed the name.
“kangaroo” When aksed by the English, the natives said Kangaroo, which in their language, means “I don’t, know.”
Sooooo… are we ever going to find out what the hell Dabbler and Harem were talking about way back in episode 651, or did I miss something?
If the genitals are unveiled, might as well go balls-out.
It’s all about justice for Harambe.
I seem to recall some language that did or does have an idiom that basically means (we are exposed naked now).