5.7 KiB
r Animorphs: The Reckoning Chapter 9: Interlude
-
Author: u/callmebrotherg now posting as /u/callmesalticidae*
-
URL: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11090259/9/r-Animorphs-The-Reckoning
-
Score: 28
-
Created: 2015-10-08T05:19:19
Post:
Comments:
u/noggin-scratcher [+8] I am a happy tree (4 hours later)
Well, that took at least two readings before it started to make sense.
Nicely done.
u/DCarrier [+3] (13 hours later)
Is it? Warnings aren't supposed to take multiple read throughs.
u/noggin-scratcher [+5] I am a happy tree (13 hours later)
I imagine you'd get it one go if you were an Andalite.
Can't really blame them for putting their warnings in their own language, rather than pre-emptively translating it into a form that's conveniently comprehensible for the funny little hairless monkeys that they don't even know exist.
(Also the two statements weren't really causally related; I just didn't want "it took me a few goes" to read as criticism)
u/DCarrier [+3] (13 hours later)
I figured it was designed to be understood regardless of language, like those ideas of putting spikes or something around wherever we store nuclear waste. If that's the Andelite language, it sounds like it must take them a really long time to communicate.
u/noggin-scratcher [+12] I am a happy tree (13 hours later)
The way I'm picturing it is a high-bandwidth channel of pushing pure concepts into your head directly.
It becomes difficult to understand the point exactly when it's translated into low-bandwidth written English but as an actual communication method I could imagine it just making intuitive sense, with the intended message emerging in much the same way as you sometimes "just know" something during a dream.
u/TK17Studios [+5] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (14 hours later)
+1. In practice, it would likely take LESS time than it does to read and process the message in English. Note that, with this mode of communication, a lot of the handles/concepts would likely be as standardized as words, so that (for instance) leaves leaving a swirling pool simply IS the way you indicate a countdown (and how many units are left). The listener doesn't have to process/interpret the concept—it's received and understood in a single pass, as you said.
u/noggin-scratcher [+3] I am a happy tree (14 hours later)
Have been thinking further about this, and our written languages are really just a means of transcribing the noises we make at each other, with spoken language itself being a crude affair where we take an abstract and nuanced concept then force it through a lossy and limited little information channel of "flapping our meat at each other" in a desperate attempt to convey enough of the relevant details of the concept that a listener can reconstruct the idea inside their own head out of their own thought-stuff. But along the way we lose encoded connotations and associations (and pick up unintended new ones) and introduce all sorts of ambiguity by virtue of not having a word for every conceivable thought and feeling.
So when we try to voice the welcoming familiarity of a warm summer's day at your childhood home with the family, tinged with the subtle sadness of returning home to find it not quite the way you remembered it, the knowledge that your parents won't live forever, and the slowly growing responsibility to take care of them (I'm not sure precisely why this was my first go-to for a thought with a lot of little nuances attached but I'm running with it)... well our best option is to describe it with clumsy words and hope we have enough shared reference with the other person that they say "Oh yeah", and imagine their home and build that whole dense web of emotions anew, but there's no guarantee that they actually feel the same way, and no way to check, and limited ability to articulate the differences.
Long story short, I am not surprised that Andalite has the potential to be a faster means of communication.
u/NukeNoodles [+8] (8 hours later)
I was on a bit of a rational fic binge a few months back and I read the first few chapters of Animorphs: The Reckoning. I was really excited about seeing one of my favorite book series done in a style I had just started being exposed to. I initially wasn't a huge fan but read it anyway and I'm very glad I did.
The author has done a great job varying his writing style, especially in the last few chapters, and I love his Marco and his Jake. I'm really interested to see how things go with Ax, considering the major shift from canon we got from Elfangor.
I loved the lizard and fly morph scenes. It was very reminiscent of the canon scenes where the Animorphs experienced a new morph for the first time.
Really glad to see that you've seemed to hit your stride and really excited for all that comes next!
u/nicholaslaux [+3] (15 hours later)
I'm still not 100% certain - was the translation provided for the reader, or did Jake actually receive the translation in thought-speech too?
Additionally, is this taking place immediately after the last chapter, or when Jake first passed out before Marco gorilla-escaped?
u/ketura [+5] Organizer (16 hours later)
I think the translation is for the benefit of the reader, and quite possibly how Jake understood it once he figured it out.
u/Salivanth [+2] (3 days later)
Very nice. I think this has the potential to be one of the best of the genre when it's done.