I had thought this would fit particularly well in your de-aged slave children AU. Because this Anakin, whose identity as a slave is known by everyone as far as he’s aware, doesn’t have his older self’s reticence to divulge his past.
Picture this:
Baby Anakin becoming enthralled by a particular piece of tech. A very shiny, cutting edge piece of tech. The kind of which he only dreamed he could get his little desert rat fingers on before. And of course since this is an army on the move the piece of tech is a weapon system.
And the adults clones are like, maybe we should not let the little 3.5 years old, mechanical genius or no mechanical genius, play with things that are lethal.
So one of them picks him up, sets him down at a safe distance, and tells him he shouldn’t touch it.
“Do you know why?”
“yes, sir. It costs more than I do.”
Have I mentioned I love your brain? Because I do. Baby Anakin would totally say that, voice pitched in that sing-song tone of a child repeating something he’s been told a thousand times before. “And if it breaks, I’m the one getting sold to replace it,” Anakin says, finishing the threat more familiar than the sound of his own name.
OKAY BUT IMAGINE THE REACTIONS
Rex just kind of stares at him for a really long moment, trying to process what the tiny, child version of his general just said.
In fact, all the clones in earshot are staring.
And finally, all Rex can get out is, “I-I…no. No, it’s dangerous, and we don’t want you to get hurt.” Which sounds lame, even to his own ears but what in the hells does he say to that???
yeah but later could u imagine the clones comparing notes since they cost money too.
“the general was a slave”
“yeah he said he’d cost less then –”
“so about how many of us would he have cost then?”
Today I figured I’d write a bit about an interesting phenomenon in Scandinavian folklore: the concealment of the true names of some of our wild animals.
The idea that a true name holds magical power is fairly universal; it pops up in everything from Egyptian mythology to German fairytales, and nowadays it’s a pretty common fantasy trope too. In Nordic folklore in particular, it was often believed that speaking the true name of a dangerous creature could actually summon it. For example, the English idiom “speak of the devil (and he shall appear)” has as its Swedish equivalent “speak of the trolls (and they stand in the hallway)”, stemming from the belief that trolls would appear if you mentioned them by name.
Now, what’s really interesting about all this is the way it’s shaped the Swedish language. You see, the danger of speaking a creature’s name out loud also applied to wild animals that were feared in the old days: bears, wolves, and so on. As a result, people invented new names for these animals - false names, if you will, that could be spoken without risk. Nowadays, such false names are said to be “noa words”, while the true names are “tabu words” (these terms are borrowed from Māori, just like the English word taboo).
Over time, the noa words for many of these animals became their de facto names. That’s just kind of how language works: call something an X enough times, and voilà, now its name is X. Even today, many of our animals’ true names are archaic words that a Swedish speaker would never use naturally. Here are some examples:
Wolf:The true name of the wolf is ulv, which shares its etymology with the English word. Ulv is archaic; the average Swedish speaker would recognize it, but never think to use it. Instead, we say varg, which originally means something along the lines of “killer” or “criminal”.
Magpie: The true name of the magpie is skjora. This word is still in use in some dialects, but most Swedish people would not have heard it, and it is not officially recognized. Instead we say skata, meaning “something long and thin” or “something that sticks out”, referring to the tail. The magpie might not seem like an animal to be afraid of, but they were considered bad omens, thieves, or even harbingers of death… and besides, have you ever been swooped by a magpie?
Fox: The true name of the fox is räv, and in this case, it has actually remained in usage. I guess the fox wasn’t intimidating enough for its name to become completely forbidden, hehe! In the old days, farmers would sometimes refer to the fox as Mickel to avoid summoning it. You see, foxes weren’t direct threats to humans, but they did have a tendency to break into hen houses and run off with the chickens. (This is also why foxes are known in our folklore for being cunning and sly, rather than outright dangerous). I’m not entirely sure why the farmers chose to refer to the fox by what is essentially a Scandinavian version of “Michael”, but I did a bit of digging, and it turns out that old Danish uses Mikkel as a generic insult for an incompetent or foolish man. So, I guess it’s a little bit like calling the fox an asshole.
Bear: The true name of the bear has been lost to history! No one actually knows what they were originally called, since all Germanic languages use “bear” or some variation thereof, and Slavic languages use medved (meaning “honey-eater”, from what I gather). In any case, the contemporary Swedish word is björn, which - like the English word - seems to just mean “brown”. Historians speculate that the true name of the bear might be similar to the Greek ἄρκτος (arktos), but I guess we’ll never know.
There are more examples on Swedish Wikipedia, but sadly there seems to be no article in English. Still, I hope you learned something interesting from all this!
Now, imagine the kind of power we would have if we knew the bear’s true name…
Yes, a deer. A three-day-old baby deer. It was a terrible idea. When the students rocked back up to the field station with it, we told them off for stock rustling, took it to the farmer who was like, what the fuck am I going with that, I’ll have to cut its throat and use it for dog meat, and we were like, uh, no, so we took it to the SPCA, who were DELIGHTED.
I THOUGHT A “FAWN” WAS SOME KIND OF OBSCURE GEOLOGICAL TERM I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND
YOU PUT A BABY DEER IN A BACKPACK
More geology field shenanigans!
Respected professor claims our hydrochloric acid solution is less acidic than coca cola. We dare him to drink it. HE DOES.
Hiking up a mountain on crutches. “YOLO!”
Painting Cambrian-age trilobite fossils with nail polish.
Creepy abandoned fishing villages. So many creepy abandoned fishing villages.
Student finds brachiopod fossils in an outcrop behind said creepy abandoned fishing village. Respected professor gasps and squeaks “Brachiopods??!?” and goes tearing off up a hill to find them.
Students collect so many rock samples that we can no longer see the floor of the 15 passenger van. The van floor begins to develop its own stratigraphy.
Racing the roadside moose in the 15 passenger van.
Respected professor takes both hands off of the wheel of the moving van to get a picture of the moose. Panic ensues.
Mapping an island with nothing but a Brunton compass, a field notebook, and the largest bottle of fireball whiskey money can buy.
Respected Professor singing along to “Man-Eating Trilobite”
Entire class goes to local bar and won’t stop singing local drinking song for about a week.
That one vegan student that survives off of french fries for a month.
Stealing rock samples from National Parks
Straddling the moho
Licking the moho
Peeing on mantle peridotite just to see if it fizzes
Using the same pocket knife for everything. Eating. Scratching rocks. Removing splinters. Seriously, it’s gross.
Hiking down a river only to discover the water level is MUCH HIGHER than anticipated
Nearly drowning in said river but damn it you kept your electronics DRY
“It’s not safe to drink the water. So everyone gets 2 beers per meal”.
Fitting the entire class into a single hot tub
Every lobster is named Jack Daniels. It is known.
That one “Chinese Canadian Fusion” restaurant
*DID* IT FIZZ?
my husband was once Responsible Adult on a geology field course and the highlight was when I was calling him and it was like
Dr Glass: Oh, an undergrad’s just thrown his compass into the sea.
Me: is that… part of the exercise?
Dr Glass: *nonjudgmentally* well…
(an unearthly, animal roar is heard over the phone)
Dr Glass: Ah, now he’s going into the sea.
Me: …To get the compass?
Dr Glass: I think he just wants the sea to take him.
(a peaceable, nonjudgmental silence follows, with distant splashing)
Dr Glass: Well, I think I’ll go get him now.
I wanna know the lyrics to “Man-Eating Trilobite”.
-Leaping away from rattlesnakes you can only hear, not see.
-Playing “hide the rock”
-Loosing your compass because it flipped out of your holster while you were peeing on the outcrop, which was actually a win, because it’s so hot out that usually you don’t pee all day.
-Flinging your rock hammer (i.e. lightning rod) and running like mad because a thunderstorm suddenly hits.
-redrawing cross-sections at night while the tent bows inward from the force of all the insects trying to get in.
-finding dead things and getting unreasonably excited because it’s something other than a rock.
-Listening to a professor sing WWII german army songs…
-Trying to keep up when drinking with a European and regretting it one hour later.
-Climbing up an outcrop and then realizing there is no reasonable way to get down.
-Eating at the last restaurant open in town because it’s 9 pm and camp is still not set up.
-Losing half your caravan when there was only one time the road split.
-Inspirational night pees out under the milky way.
Oh, god, this post keeps bringing back all my repressed college memories.
-Running away from angry cows
-Running away from suspicious, armed ranchers who think you’re from the govt
-Squatting to pee and falling over into a cactus
-Losing parts of your tent as you raft down the Green River; by the end of the trip, your tent no longer stands
-Having to ground your raft repeatedly in stands of seriously thorny salt cedars
so tonight I’m at synagogue, listening to the Purim Night reading of the Book of Esther, like you do
and near the end of this chapter my brain presents me with the following:
nooooo ooooone plots like Haman calls the shots like Haman plans a genocide by casting lots like Haman
(It only works with the Hebrew pronunciation of Haman, which, like Gaston, is accented on the second syllable.)
By the time we get home my brain has added:
for there’s none so well-favored and kingly yes, we all can be certain of that he’s so rich that his pockets are jingly and he looks really sharp in a three-cornered hat
*face in hands*
Petition to sing this every year at Purim.
I shared this with my dad, and he added:
No one’s spruce as Haman, Nor abstruse as Haman; No one’s half as good tying a noose as Haman! He’ll use gallows in all of his decorating! No one else hangs as well as Haman!
niiiiice
i know several people who will definitely appreciate this.
this is beautiful
oh wait
When I was a lad I hatched four dozen plots Every morning, to raise myself high… And now that I’m grown I hatch five dozen plots So all those who oppose me shall die!
Been seeing a lot of these Humans Are Space Orcs posts around- which is good, because I love them- and I started thinking: in sci-fi stories, humans in the future often have a bit of genetic engineering- like disease immunity or faster healing or even just a lack of body hair.
And I had a thought- what if that’s just us? What if we’re the only species to engineer ourselves like that? Imagine how freaked out they’d be;
“You’re telling me that you alter your own genetic code?”
Or take it a little further- we’re the only species to use vaccines. Every other race just toughed it out and evolved past it, but humans injected ourselves with weakened diseases to make ourselves stronger.
Or even further back, when people used to drink poison to gain an immunity- imagine that reaction:
“OH MY GROP THEY DRINK POISON TO GET STRONGER THAT’S IT FUCK THIS PLANET I’M OUTTA HERE”
Equally, what if we’re the only ones who don’t use genetic engineering on a mass scale? Like, we just make machines that’ll adapt for us, and everyone else does it by biology - much slower, but much less chance of it breaking down at the critical moment?
Imagine a species who’ve spent decades adapting a small group to colonise a planet with an inhospitable atmosphere, almost ready to start their mission, and along come the humans like “masks on, lads, here we go!”
And imagine the reactions that humans get when they come along in their environmental suits. Like, we have everything our bodies need to survive in our suits and then we go off and explore. We use our suits to set up shelter that we can live in without our suits.
And the aliens are uber-confused by the fact that we don’t wait to adapt to an environment. We go with what we’ve got and then change the planet to meet our needs. (“What do you mean your bodies aren’t suited for this environment? Why are you here then? Wait, you can deal with it because of that mask?”)
Can you imagine how frustrating it must be when they’ve spent years adapting a group to survive a planet they want to colonize and humans just show up and go, “Eh, we’ve got breathing masks. Let’s go!”?
