Spacetrawler, audio version For the blind or visually impaired, October 6, 2023.
Euphemisms are such an interesting thing. Gentle and attempting towards delicacy, but also opening things up for shame for being truthful and feeling the big feels.
Spacetrawler, audio version For the blind or visually impaired, October 6, 2023.
Euphemisms are such an interesting thing. Gentle and attempting towards delicacy, but also opening things up for shame for being truthful and feeling the big feels.
What’s the over-under on this guy being an ex-acquaintance of Choan? Maybe even her ex?
He would have recognized her instead of calling her a stranger.
She did say it’s been few generations, but I don’t get how she can tell that unless terminal told her the local time.
@Rob C., she was rocketed into space for 10,000 Draak-Sim rotations, which is about 55 years. And at least a decade or two or three has passed since then (because she started off in school where she met Nogg and Kuu-Drahc).
“You’ll want to avoid all of them. There’s only one thing to eat now, so they serve the same thing as we eat at home, but at much higher prices… Oh. You were euphemizing again.”
At first sight, to me, beige-bro looked like a Choan version of Mr. Zorilla!
When the phrase “take out” is applied to a sizeable number of people, the thing that comes to my mind is some kind of genocide. It’s a sad state of this world that such an unpleasant horrific thing is the first thought in my head.
I got so many questions about the biology, technology & logistics of this place.
Choan’s awful flippant for someone who two panels ago was feeling awe, terror & sadness.
“Flippant” is kind of her ground state. This comic is littered with the wreckage of people who have tried to “teach her a lesson in humility and seriousness.”
Gentile? Do Jews have a reputation for being being plain-spoken? ????
@Drew, heh. Fixed. 🙂
For a survivor of a near race extinction event, Euphemisms should be something he should be touchie about.
Euphemisms exist in an ecology of quieted emotions and mannered avoidance of unpleasant subjects. They serve as padding to what otherwise be rather sharp and decidedly blunt objects that are hard truths and unforgiving results. You may find them awkward and mere avoidance mechanisms, but they keep from upsetting the ordinary and everyday people who must still live with said truths, such results.
It could be worse. You could use dysphemisms instead — words deliberately harsher than the unvarnished truth. No, no ‘taken out.’ Instead, say ‘slaughtered.’ Or perhaps ‘sh!tcanned.’
No ‘tragedy,’ just ‘sob story.’ And no ‘euphemism’ either — just ‘a kick to the balls.’ Straightforward, yes. Effective communication? Oh hells no.
So it’s been more than a half-century since Choan was a household curse word, eh? An effective cloak for whatever else she might want to do at ‘home,’ assuming there’s anything left to do. I can think of at least one thing, but Choan doesn’t strike me as mannered enough to consider it worth her effort. Idle curiosity seems as likely to impel her as any normal emotion of a reasonable and stable personality. So we shall have to wait and see what idle thought comes to her that she will act upon, if for no other reason than to leave her mark as a vandal chips the stone of ancient monuments.
Does anybody else find Choan a reasonable facsimile of Elon Musk here? The similarity is striking, if not intended. A Death’s Valley of morals who believes technical ability overmatches any petty concern about how other people deal with the life left for them. Disturbing, and beginning to be more than a little annoying.
I don’t see the resemblance, mostly because Choan actually has technical ability.
And Choan is at least trying to become a better person.
Choan is genuinely smart and as far as I recall has lots of shrewd and- important- successful common sense and is not speciesist. So not much like Musk in important ways.
Smart, self-centered, careless, indifferent, joyfully destructive and without the merest smidgen of fellow-feeling. No, I think Choan has Musk down to a T. The resemblance is remarkable enough to be just as chilling as the original. And at least as dangerous.