Complements to Arioch... you did good there with the alien way of speech...
Yes. 114 is one of my favourite pages, both for the dialogue and the art. It wouldn't work nearly as well if Talon spoke standard English.
I know this has been discussed before, but why was Beryl bothered by the handshake?
Did she fear a faux pas from Talon? To prevent Alex from influencing other Loroi?
Or just wished to remain Alex's sole "friendly" Loroi and thus the only one whom he would trust with his secrets?
As far we know Tempo could have chosen Beryl as a spy of a sort, her "cuteness" a deliberate persona for a pliable male in an extremely complicated situation.
There is no way to know for sure, but I think Beryl was simply jealous.
I like how everyone thinks Tempo is engaged in some sort of deeply woven plot. What did she do to earn so much reader distrust? I mean, poor girl is probably just thinking "What else could *possibly* go wrong with this damn mission?" : )
"That's what you get for shipping the unedited manuscript straight to the target demographic for novellas with a Japanese female protagonist."
Luckily for me, my beta readers were more diverse than that.
Casual touching among Loroi, especially between a male and female, is kind of a restricted thing... and the previous time Alex was touched by a Loroi was when he was being roughly interrogated. What possible reason could Beryl have to be concerned about unexpectedly finding the pilot touching her alien charge who she promised to take good care of?
There is no way to know for sure, but I think Beryl was simply jealous.
I think of it as Captain Kirk rescuing an alien space babe, who says "Hi there, my name is Alexandra but you can call me Lexxy, rhymes with sexy", and then reaches out to grab Kirk's butt, claiming that it's a traditional greeting on her world. Kirk of course does the diplomatic thing and reciprocates, with an amused smile and that humorous musical cue in the background. The buttshake lingers just a moment too long, with just a bit too much direct eye contact to be plausibly deniable. And then Spock walks in.
(I base the first part on how Talon misunderstands Alex's request to use his original rank as a direct offer to be on a first-name basis, or the Loroi equivalent. "Ensign" sounds a lot like "enzin", which means "guardian", which is presumably how Alex translated his given name.)
Loroi speech is so amusing since the word choice is a bit odd and basic... which is no doubt reflects their heavy reliance on telepathy.
In all my life I have never heard any human I have ever spoken with use the term "That is not even the most fortunate part" with regard to themselves or those they were with. I have heard humans say "That's not even the best part!"
Complements to Arioch... you did good there with the alien way of speech... a far cry from the embarassing Picard series where even the Romulans curse and use F-bomb swear words.
Thanks. One of the (many) problems with the "lazy" writing so common in today's mainstream media is that all the characters speak the same way, and that they use colloquial language even if the setting is exotic. Dialogue is such an important tool both for characterization and immersion.
I think part of it is just laziness, but I think they may also be chasing the goal of making media "more accessible to 'modern audiences.'" Which is one of the other chief problems with today's shows.
Wouldn't Human speech also be a bit different considering this is hundreds of years into the future? I don't think anyone speaks the same way we did in the 19th or 20th century, not just in English but likely every language from Hindi to Arabic to Chinese. Alex might have some sort of accent compared to modern day.
I kindof doubt its going to diverge that much more, you are already seeing a lot of regional dialects being obliterated due to the pervasiveness of communication across huge areas at this point.
Wouldn't Human speech also be a bit different considering this is hundreds of years into the future? I don't think anyone speaks the same way we did in the 19th or 20th century, not just in English but likely every language from Hindi to Arabic to Chinese. Alex might have some sort of accent compared to modern day.
Sure, realistically languages drift over time (though I think modern media forms slow that drift... though that probably remains to be proven). That can be a great tool for highlighting how human culture has changed over time... when, as in A Clockwork Orange, that's the subject of the story. However, if the focus of the story is on alien cultures and how they're different from human culture, then adding a lot of detail about how human culture has changed can be counter-productive, and in particular if you have the character translating the alien language speak in language which is unfamiliar to the reader, that's just confusing. It would be hard to know whether Talon's unusual speech patterns are coming from Talon or Alex.
For the purposes of this story, future human culture is not considered an "exotic setting."
Wouldn't Human speech also be a bit different considering this is hundreds of years into the future? I don't think anyone speaks the same way we did in the 19th or 20th century, not just in English but likely every language from Hindi to Arabic to Chinese. Alex might have some sort of accent compared to modern day.
Sure, realistically languages drift over time (though I think modern media forms slow that drift... though that probably remains to be proven). That can be a great tool for highlighting how human culture has changed over time... when, as in A Clockwork Orange, that's the subject of the story. However, if the focus of the story is on alien cultures and how they're different from human culture, then adding a lot of detail about how human culture has changed can be counter-productive, and in particular if you have the character translating the alien language speak in language which is unfamiliar to the reader, that's just confusing. It would be hard to know whether Talon's unusual speech patterns are coming from Talon or Alex.
For the purposes of this story, future human culture is not considered an "exotic setting."
Reminds me of the first part of We Are Legion, We Are Bob where it's made clear that FAITH (the future USA) does speak a new dialect of English, but because it's barely comprehensible to people from the 21st century, Bob has to run it through a translator. Also, Dr Landers (the cyberneticist who trains AI replicants) has had speech training in order to be able to speak 21st century English.
As a result, we only get a scarce few sentences of the future speech, presumably to preserve the author's sanity. We can't all be Tolkein.
If every cloud had a silver lining, there would be a lot more plane crashes.
"In all my life I have never heard any human I have ever spoken with use the term "That is not even the most fortunate part" with regard to themselves or those they were with. I have heard humans say "That's not even the best part!"
I've spoken something close to this, on occasion. I had to train myself out of it.
"In all my life I have never heard any human I have ever spoken with use the term "That is not even the most fortunate part" with regard to themselves or those they were with. I have heard humans say "That's not even the best part!"
I think it´s a cool thing Arioch puts "broken english" like this into the story; that adds well to the alien background of this story!
I instantly remember Spiral on p166 saying "not so true" when Talon said "...Spiral has bad spoken Trade (language) also" - "not so true" would be the literal translation of eg german "(gar) nicht wahr", reflecting the different syntax between two different languages. I guess the correct english form would have been "Not true at all."
By syntax you can often tell if someone is pretenting to be a native english speaker when actually he isn´t, even if the pronunciation sounds convincing.
Brother, you have no idea. The hardest part was becoming aware that I was doing it. Add the fact that I was training myself out of several other counter-productive behaviors at the same time...
Brother, you have no idea. The hardest part was becoming aware that I was doing it. Add the fact that I was training myself out of several other counter-productive behaviors at the same time...
Oh, i DO know. Because I failed in every discipline, i guess...
Not to put too fine a point on this, as I understand the dedication an artist has to seeing their vision completed to their satisfaction to excellence I and many others are curious if there is any ETA on a new completed page? I completely agree this is a hobby and proceeds at the rate of convenience... but some hint as to an estimate on new completed pages would be nice.
