harlequin2262 wrote:If nothing else, the general transliteration can be applied, even if the meter and rhyme is wasted. If they heard him speak it though, at least a measure of it could be retained.
I imagine poetry to be something the Loroi struggle with as well, being as rooted as it is with creative mistruths.
I didn't realise that the primary harem spoke English, though, although after the period of the time spent together, it's a logical step, particularly for Beryl and Tempo.
I try not to think of them as a harem, because from their point of view, it's five guys and a girl.
Beryl was already eager to be learning English in the comic, because she is such an
adorable xenophile guys. Tempo would want to learn it as part of her job. The rest would pick it up after some instance came up in which the group needed to communicate privately with one another and they couldn't because
someone has all the telepathic receptivity of a rock, and it would be easier for Tempo and Beryl to teach the others English than for all of them to learn a third language.
Also, so Alex couldn't curse them out whilst smiling politely.
"I'm not really aiming anything towards provoking thoughts in the human audience, I'm anticipating how Loroi would react."
Oh, of course. But the relative nativity of the Loroi does lend itself to an examination of the fundamentals of a given poem/practise. Forces the reader and writer to examine that basics of their society. Smooshing THAT together with the already existing culture clash is very fun to watch.
It does, but sometimes such an examination can just fall flat, as happened on the bridge. Alex isn't a scholar of poetry, after all, and might have had an easier time just relaying it as a quiet beginning-of-a-space-voyage ritual, something the Loroi can almost certainly understand, and providing full context to Beryl, Tempo, and maybe Fireblade later.
Also, I was rapidly running towards the nebulous "when Notepad++ says the wordcount is 55,000, stop writing" limit. Kind of a shame, really, I had wanted to have Alex show that picture of a Supermarine Spitfire to Talon, and have her first express disbelief that it was capable of flight, and then incredulity that Alexander's people were flying those things as top-of-the-line technology
225 years ago, literally within a Loroi lifetime.
So far, the shoe hasn't dropped. Nobody with the intelligence and context to understand how fast human technology has advanced has seen any of the hints dropped about human tech from earlier. When it does, well...
Loremark lived a long life by Loroi standards in the absence of violent death. She was 459 years old. Round that to 460 and subtract it from where humanity is as of Outsider, and you're in the Golden Age of Sail, and Edward Teach is the most fearsome devil sailing the West Indies, (Edward Kenway excepted). Meanwhile, it took the Loroi 525 years to go from the industrial revolution to Sputnik.
The Loroi and Umiak have a hell of a headstart, but humanity are catching up by virtue of riding the technological equivalent of a rocket-powered death-dragster.