Comments on: p. 178 (Chapter Six)

By: Tara

Tara — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 00:23:21 +0000

Oh, the material is all done now! (There are still a couple pages that have yet to be posted.) I won’t have the book ready before the end of the year, though– the plan is to have it ready for the spring.

By: Corbin

Corbin — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 18:17:29 +0000

Side question: my girls keep asking; about how much longer until we have material to complete and publish dead-tree version of Book 2? Holidays are approaching…

By: Rachel

Rachel — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 17:36:01 +0000

“Yotz” and “frell” are made-up expletives within the alien cultures of Farscape, used where you would normally use a profanity. Yotz basically would be used in place of ‘hell’ by one of the characters (the swearword was more particular to his culture), while the others used ‘frell’ in much the same way as ‘frack’ was used on the new Battlestar Galactica.

*strikes a dramatic pose* Geek-Trivia… and AWAAAAY!

By: David

David — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 10:58:43 +0000

Nate,

I don’t know that I would describe Interplanetary Patrol as “an organisation devoted to exploring”. I believe that is more TerSA’s role. IP spends its time more patrolling established space lanes.

By: Andrew Crisp

Andrew Crisp — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 01:41:10 +0000

I don’t think it’s brain damage he’s suffering from. The more I think about it, the more I think he’s suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Probably a very serious case of it, judging by how long he’s been there and how long it took the Rautani to thin down their numbers from 70+ to 5.

Have a look back at page 175, when Carl first breaks the news about how many were lost in the first year. He says: “I don’t like remembering it.” Interesting phrasing, don’t you think? Whatever happened to his crewmates, whatever the Rautani did to them, it’s something that his mind is doing its level best to lock away in some little corner and not touch. Not repressed memory – Carl probably remembers the events just fine, but I’d gather he’d rather be burned alive than dwell on what happened. Not thinking about it has probably been his way of coping for the past nine years.

So he hasn’t had much experience trying to deal with those memories outside of locking them away, and thus it’s safe to say he doesn’t talk about it with his fellow survivors or the Orehu. Probably at certain times he might not be able to cope, and probably suffers a breakdown now and then. And now he’s on the horns of a dilemma – he doesn’t want to dredge up those memories (and risk a nervous breakdown in front of the people he’s trying to warn), but if he doesn’t dredge up those memories, he can’t warn Scavina and the others and he risks what happened to his crewmates happening to them. He’s trapped between two personal hells.

By: redbeard

redbeard — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 17:20:36 +0000

He’s lived with the problem for 10 years — it killed almost all of his crewmates, and he’s surrounded by people that have lived with it for far longer – and he speaks their language just fine. And this problem is *the major problem of their existence* — indeed, it’s the reason they’re all living like Troglodytes. And he’s not able to just come out and tell folks what it is? Just how much brain damage does he have anyway?

By: Vulpis

Vulpis — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 14:54:52 +0000

*laugh* Well, it does help that I’m also reading Myth Adventures itself on the Studio Foglio site. I saw the ‘Are you gonna shake my hand or am I gonna rip your heart out?!’ line, and went ‘Waitaminute’. And looking at it again, I’m also noticing the ‘partial scene’ on the screen on the previous page.

Also, going back a bit, I’m amused by the decor in Aria’s room (Catbus, Hack and Slash figurings, the Bujold titles on the shelf, among other things) and in Major Nelson’s room (the games motif–chess piece sculptures, checker/chessboard pillow…the other pillow with a diffrent boardgame pattern…and I’m trying to remember what the heck the game in the wall hanging is called, but all I can remember is that I saw a version of it in Dragon magazine once..). Nice detail work.

By: Fred

Fred — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 09:32:54 +0000

Carl is certainly coming across as if the head injury scrambled his brains a bit.

By: Nate

Nate — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 08:35:07 +0000

@Andrew: But he was a machinists mate on a spaceship in an organisation devoted to exploring. You’d think he’d at least have some geek points and know his science fiction.

What could be so far out of his experience that after ten years of constantly facing it, he couldn’t even come up with a fictional comparison?

By: Andrew Crisp

Andrew Crisp — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 02:09:39 +0000

Hm… I don’t think Carl is dissembling or holding back. Not willingly, anyway.

It’s been ten years since he’s had to punch the IP clock, so I doubt he’s had much practice in giving succinct reports in all that time. Plus, whatever the Rautani are, I’d bet dollars to donuts that it’s something so far out of his experience as a machinists mate he’d have a tough time describing it without sounding like a loon. There’s a threat – he knows its a threat, he’s seen it in action – but his warning would be for naught if the SCT and Scavina respond with, “Yeah right, you’re imagining things. The Rautani can’t be that wierd/scary.”

I’m not surprised he’s at a loss for words, and suggesting they talk to someone who could explain it better.

That said, Scavina’s made a gutsy move to force the issue – I just hope it doesn’t lead to her and the others examining the business end of those guns again…