Grrl Power #868 - Patreon 2x (Patreon)

Thanks so much for your support! 

To view the full-size version, left-click the image once, then right-click and open in a new tab/view. At least that seems to work for some people.

I'm sure no one will be surprised to learn that this page contains a Patreon cameo. Robert Nava asked if he could appear an alien in a Robert Nava disguise, and I was like, that fits in rather nicely with a storyline I'm just about to start.

I do feel bad that some cameo request have been languishing in the void for a while, but I want to actually fit them into a storyline and not just have them walking by in the background. I guess "cameo" might be the wrong term actually. They're more like supporting cast usually. Still, if you're wondering where your cameo is, they're in the queue. I may need to revisit the Twilight Council relatively soon, because there's quite a few supernatural characters waiting in the wings.

Anyway. Universal Translators. I won't go off on a huge tear about them*, as I've done so a few times in the past, but I do think that a society that had them would largely devolve into a bunch of monoglots. Why learn more than one language when only knowing one language would let you understand every other language? It'd be like everyone today and phone numbers. I can barely remember mine half the time, and if you put a gun to my head I couldn't tell you my wife's. 

I actually think having universal translators would actually cause languages to converge in certain ways, because you'd want to properly translate certain concepts. The easiest fix for English would be to introduce more words for "love." It's a wildly overused word, because we have one single word to convey how you feel about a girlfriend, pet, parent, favorite food, brother, mentor, scent, sexual partner, etc, but clearly those are different emotions. Even having a word that means "like this more than anything else in this category" would help break up the love monopoly, but we don't. 

Western languages generally have plurals, Eastern languages by and large don't. It's one of those reasons why putting phrases through multiple languages in google translate always fucks stuff up, because information is lost. Language doesn't have metadata. Universal translators might be able to introduce something like that, and reduce language from words to concepts and intent. Then putting new words in using the proper grammar would become a lot easier. 

*I will.