NofNA, "Syconium" page #140

Syconium
140

February 3rd, 2017

23 .	by: Lhexa	June 9, 2022, 11:33 pm
His attitude is an objectifying one. He sees Egress as a research subject, and that sometimes gets in the way of seeing her as a person. URL : http://lhexan.dreamwidth.org

22 .	by: @21	June 7, 2022, 11:25 pm
i think he's referring to getting past all the flirtation and show she puts on as Fig

21 .	by:	June 6, 2022, 9:48 pm
"I'm a person too!" "Yes, I intend to uncover that" ????? Why does that have to be "uncovered" though? She's a person regardless of her job. It's not on her if he needs to do "research" to see it.

20 .	by: no one	August 3, 2021, 9:54 am
it's interesting she told him not to view her as an art project when she tried to make herself into a (sexual) 'masterpiece' for everyone. I wonder if she gonna develop a lil crush on him x>

19 .	by: Furrama	February 4, 2017, 11:01 pm
It does make me more afraid for him, yes. I think that's a really good thing though.

18 .	by: Zack	February 4, 2017, 10:20 pm
Hi Furrama, I've updated the dialogue as per your suggestion. I wonder if it's good to make a connection back to that harrowing incident, for him. It certainly raises the tension a little.

17 .	by: Furrama	February 4, 2017, 2:48 pm
Hey Zach, are you going to change her dialog on the bottom of page 100 now that you're pro buttons? It would be a good callback once readers got to here.

16 .	by:	February 4, 2017, 11:57 am
In a lot of ways her actions contradict every worry we've seen her have. She wants to be seen as a real person and yet she deliberately makes a sex object of herself and only seems to want to have sex with the one person that came here to know her as a person. She did this out of frustration and despondence when society rejected her art, instead making herself into an art piece of sorts. Maybe at this point she feels like she just has to play the game if she's stuck here, but she's not helping her cause any. I guess this is where the divide between 'Fig' and 'XX' comes in, imagining them as separate but inseparable entities with one having more push than the other at times (obviously, at the moment, being Fig). I'm still rooting for the XX inside her to claw her way to the surface and show us who she really is. I want to see her overcome Fig.

15 .	by: hazard	February 4, 2017, 10:45 am
I actually think XX defending herself is very telling. I think it'sa hint XX wants to give him that she had another life and other dreams but Fig doesn't want to share. It's also telling that she doesn't feel like a full person by assumption, she has make it apparent because she's so used to being treated as a consumable.

14 .	by:	February 4, 2017, 1:22 am
I mean he's still a bit of a shit. Her being 'more of a person than [he] thinks" shouldn't be something he has to uncover - it should be self-evident. Still, he may be good for her in the long run.

13 .	by:	February 3, 2017, 4:02 pm
Well Smoothie was a bit presumptuous at first, but at least he's up front about his intentions AND asks Fig's permission to visit. I like him regardless. :) I hope this turns out to be a good thing for her. (but he didn't tell her about the bet, though. Hmmmm... that could turn out bad, if she finds out...)

12 .	by: Dani	February 3, 2017, 3:45 pm
Ah true @11, it does look a lot like a mouse now that I read your comment (than a bird). Maybe on the next page we will see some dialogue between the mouse and Smoothie. URL : http://danibeez.deviantart.com

11 .	by:	February 3, 2017, 2:02 pm
@10 probably one of the mice to lead him back out of the maze.

10 .	by:	February 3, 2017, 1:33 pm
Wait, what/who's at the end of the path in panel 11?

9 .	by:	February 3, 2017, 8:49 am
oh, destrustor managed to much more succinctly explain what i was just attempting to type out, lol. it doesn't even have to just be that it's a concept that's not well translated to english though, sometimes it could be more of a "well, this particular expression in english might better express the same tone, context, or flavour, than a direct translation would." maybe a more direct translation would be "riling someone up" but the "pushing someone's buttons" expression has a double meaning in english (inducing anger, vs a sexual connotation) and tends to be a little more intense sounding, a little less silly. maybe "riling someone up" in animal society would have the same sexual double meaning, but in our society it doesn't, really. we've got a different expression, which includes a concept that doesn't make total sense in this context, but the expression still makes sense to us, which is the important thing. i thought about this too when ol' fig trees said "i hear they're tightening the noose around here." i sincerely doubt that animal society would carry out capital punishment via hangings when they have psychic kung fu powers, and animals like the hedgehog at the end of secretary. but "tightening the noose," while potentially sounding out of context, gives us a good enough idea of what the old rat is saying, and more importantly, /how/ he's saying it. an expression that evokes death - and choking, a repeated symbol in this story. like zach said, letting it slide where it doesn't count...or DOES count, maybe...haha. translator's choice. that's how i tend to "headcanon" it too, anyway.

8 .	by:	February 3, 2017, 8:43 am
"Accepting new patience." Nice word play there.

7 .	by: Destrustor	February 3, 2017, 7:53 am
About the buttons thing, my (headcanon-ish) assumption has pretty much always been that the nofna characters aren't speaking english in the first place, so anything we actually read is simply the closest translation that english can manage. So "buttons" is merely the most closely accurate word for the concept they're saying, but said concept doesn't mirror our word for it perfectly.

6 .	by: kuu	February 3, 2017, 7:08 am
and we cannot have all new words for human objects right? waterstone is one thing. a conundrum of animal comics. like when people thought wolves being named after weapons in Black Blood Aliance was kind of "stupid", because "what would an ice age dire wolf know what swords are?"(and that, at that time those swords did not even exist) a button is a thing to push, but it's also to fasten pieces together. a computer key is a button. a key locks and opens things. some people call the spot before the tail of animal an "ass button"(or at least one friend I had did) because when you poke it, the cat sits.

5 .	by: kuu	February 3, 2017, 7:08 am
and we cannot have all new words for human objects right? waterstone is one thing. a conundrum of animal comics. like when people thought wolves being named after weapons in Black Blood Aliance was kind of "stupid", because "what would an ice age dire wolf know what swords are?"(and that, at that time those swords did not even exist) a button is a thing to push, but it's also to fasten pieces together. a computer key is a button. a key locks and opens things. some people call the spot before the tail of animal an "ass button"(or at least one friend I had did) because when you poke it, the cat sits.

4 .	by: Zack	February 3, 2017, 12:54 am
Hi, The decision to bring back the "buttons" was because, appearing as often as they did in the script, I decided that human objects were too embedded in the language to excise them, at least from simple expressions. Back when I first made the statement, I went back and reviewed just how many times I did this subconsciously. There were a lot of occurrences. Then I thought, "where do I draw the line? Do I stop using 'hell' because they don't have that kind of concept of the afterlife? How about the rats and saying 'cheese' instead of 'Jeez'?" I consciously avoid human objects for prominent names (Quintet's Geoduck was originally Galleon before I finally decided against it), but the rest can slide.

3 .	by:	February 3, 2017, 12:35 am
This Fig is acting much more like dream Fig than we've ever seen her act, or at least it seems that way. Probably related to her turn to solid white, although it looks like she's maintaining a very light gray tint after her conversation with him.

2 .	by:	February 3, 2017, 12:27 am
yes! I love her!! I'm so glad she'll defend her personhood! I remember pages ago zach said he was avoiding phrasing that implied technology like "pushing buttons"... i wonder what changed! Maybe there's just seriously no good replacement for what this is in our vernacular. It's such a specific thing...

1 .	by:	February 3, 2017, 12:26 am
Time for another dream sequence? It feels like it's been a while. I'm glad that he'll be visiting her repeatedly, I figured that's what was going to happen. I'm very curious to see where their interactions lead. She's still acting very detached, you would think in her isolation she would be interested in someone that's wanting to do more than just have sex, to connect on more of a mental level than physical, but she is putting on a very heavy facade. I guess this is just another reason for her lack of color, she's not really willing to expose her true self to others and keeps everything locked away inside herself. I hope he'll be able to at least chip at her facade, it would be interesting to see her really open up to someone for once since she's so closed off from others and from herself.