If it cannot break its egg’s shell,
a chick will die without being born.
We are the chick.
The world is our egg.
If we don’t crack the world’s shell,
we will die without being born.
Smash the world’s shell!
For the revolution of the world!
...I like Utena. A lot.
And suddenly I want to know: What is Selkie’s favorite band? 🙂
BABYMETAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
BABYMETAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
OMG Yes!! 😀
Yes! Much to her dads chagrin as he seems like an old school metal fan. 😛
This is perfect actually, I think it would mesh well with the whole Girl Power thing she enjoys XD
I’d accept an answer of Sabaton, Teräsbetoni, or Black Ingvars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pH4W9b8upk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLTpKs2ylP4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ3gkWbnNnM
That first one’s the Black Ingvars’ rendition of the theme to Pippi Longstocking. They also have a version of the theme to My Little Pony. Both in Swedish, I think.
Sabaton’s “White Death” there is about a famous Finnish sniper. Bet Selkie would love the whole feel of that song. “Snow in mouth, hiding his breath…” (Look up the Finnish concept of “sisu,” btw.)
And Teräsbetoni I first encountered in a World of Warcraft video, so I linked that one. She’d probably like that as well, given the trolling.
The anticipation is killing me! I wanna see the cute baby!
Someone’s been watching Deathklok…
“Thats metals” ??
I’m suddenly thinking of the egg-hatching sound from Spyro 3.
Since I didn’t have time to find this last night, sound effect can be heard here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tipmjmQ_60o
“That’s metals as craps.”
Okay, now I want that on a T-shirt with Selkie wailing on a guitar (or keytar) with Andi, Todd, Pol and Suko (in suitable regalia) as backup while Amanda pouts off to the side. (Or just some [fan]art will do…)
daaaamn now i want that too
I feel like Sarnothi physiology would make key-based instruments more difficult to play than plucked or strummed instruments. Claws, you know. Like built-in guitar picks.
Personally, I’m seeing her as a Bassist (with a Bass shaped Bass) because she’s got that quirky personality that a lot of bassists seem to have- guitar players tend to be more overtly sociable.
Now I have to think of Selkie’s essay… Why struggling out of a cocon is good…
Human babies do something similar when born. Mothers who wish to breastfeed are advised to put the baby on their stomachs skin-to-skin and let baby crawl to find the nipple. Supposedly this is better than just popping the breast in their mouth because the baby smelling food, pinpointing the source, and then moving to it develops neural pathways in the brain and fosters early muscle control.
Obligatory note that while this may work for term babies (and/or neurotypical term babies), do not try this with premature ones; before about 8-8.5 months’ gestation or so, the suck reflex does not exist, even besides the lack of muscle development and fat deposits, etc.
Which would be why my kid, ripp’d untimely from my womb at 7 months gestation, got expressed milk delivered via nose-tube directly to the stomach. (Unusually for preemies, she was good at getting a grip on the tube and pulling it out.)
Moo.
Utena fans represent!
Utena is a remarkable anime for having such a minimal budget (so I hear). They used that budget constraint to delve into symbolism like nothing I’ve seen before or since. And their duel music still rocks.
Sekai o kakumei suru chikara o!
It is. Very much so. Utena is in my top 10 anime of all time.
See I never really liked Utena. I mean that doesn’t mean anyone else can’t like it or anything, but I found it INCREDIBLY repetitive (half the episode climbing stars to fight, ok maaaaybe thats an exaggeration but not much 😉 ), and the plot felt bizarre for bizarres sake a lot of the time. The whole turning in to a car thing? I mean really?
I think a lot of the stranger points were meant to be symbolic, and therefore might not have made the cultural gap. Same with the repetition. It’s something that happens a lot in the more symbolism-heavy animes. There’s also the fact that rituals and repetition are important as a cultural thing, and tend to also show up in the more symbolic/mystical genres.
still waiting for selkie to discover dethklok/dethwater (“it’s metal… for fish!”). or just metalocaplyse in general- it has a mix of metal, good story and likable characters, and has a heavy focus on water and oceans, and even avoid the pitfall of being “dark and brutal” all the time, allowing for both:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxOtD7OZ294
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYz6qMbWpAw (both videos are SFW, but they may lead to somewhat NSFW ones. )
I remember I was told something similar while watching Jurassic Park, about how if they helped them get out of their egg they’d be allowing too-weak ones to survive.. or something like that. and I’m just thinking.. you just genetically engineered dinosaurs out of mosquito vomit, patching them up with frog DNA, for the purposes of a theme park. Maybe “letting nature take its course” is a ship that sailed already
You’d think they’d want the weaker ones to thrive anyway. They were (at least initially) just making theme park exhibits. It would be a ton better safety protocol than that Lysine Contingency, which never works. Just strong enough to look good, but too weak to eat the guests.
Plus like, I forget if this was canon or just in the book or what, but didn’t they start them in ostrich eggs? Since a clone still has to start in SOMETHING.. but an ostrich egg is possibly a lot thicker and harder than a proper dinosaur egg (assuming leathery croc-type ones), and the wrong shape (given the fossil ones we find are pill-shaped unlike any modern reptile or bird).. so yeah. That was a lot of thinking to do to just object to something I think my dad told me when I asked why they arent helping the little thing out of its egg. And of course the real answer is “it’s a puppet, if they took it out it would stop moving”
Actually, as one who studies paleontology, dino eggs came in both the pill shape and the roundy shape. There is evidence that both types had hard shells at the point of hatching, though were probably a bit leathery at first when laid to prevent them breaking upon impact with the ground from such a height. Yes, ostrich eggs are thick but the dino babies are actually quite strong and built more like very large flightless birds such as ostrich and emu vs. crocodile/turtle/lizard. I am a fan of saying that a dinosaur is a dinosaur, a bird is a bird, a reptile is a reptile, but they’re all related, sure. I also don’t call sharks “fish”. They’re their own thing: sharks. Related to fish? Sure. Do I call them fish? Nope. Thems sharks.
Suko just wants to make sure everyone knows who the real Suko in the room is. Now that he’s about to be the big brother and all.
Natural child birth at its finest. 😀
Also, I find it amazing and impressive that given we have seen so few Sarnothi characters and heard relatively little about their history that we get a real feel for their culture. They seem to be a very loud/fierce and playful people/species with relatively little fear of the unknown—very different from man of us humans who at one time weren’t just predators–but prey–and thus can be scared of minute differences/changes.
That’s a truly perceptive comment. Thank you.
Also, I’m grinning, because this very comment section regularly furnishes proof of the accuracy of the last part of your final sentence!
I’m with Selkie there. That is metal as craps.
Human pregnancy and birth is pretty damn metal, too. 😉
Never realized it until I looked at cross-sections of a mother’s body as she went into different trimesters. A mother’s body changes in really crazy ways that most people dont think of—from her stomach and intestines being relocated next to her throat to her gaining a huge volume of blood volume to accommodate new life (I believe double to triple). Moms don’t just carry the babies…they carry the babies’ ecosystems. After birth the organs don’t always return to their exact place. Many women experience internal changes—from their ribs being wider to their digestion feeling different.
Then the birth process is pretty crazy, too. The mom instinctually rips her clothes off before the babies come. Most mothers don’t even realize or remember doing this. The contractions are supposed to be good for the baby as the squeezing gets the fluid out and is a signal to the infant to move head down. Really crazy and neat and disturbing (especially when you are pregnant) stuff.
Don’t forget the little bit of cartilage at the front of the hips getting stretched out. I remember that all my cartilage got kinda wonky towards the end there. I could lie on the floor and it would feel good for a while, but then my hips would flatten out around the sacrum and that was just oogy.
Oh, I’ll never forget that. I had pelvic something or another disorder which also caused sciatica. Made it so I couldn’t sleep more than 2 hours at a time. What a shock I got more sleep after the baby was born than the second half of the pregnancy.
Hmm… and what’s the human parallel to this “born fighting”? Let me think about this a moment…
Let’s see. In most modern countries, the mother gives birth on her back, on a table or bed of some kind (in less clinical settings, traditionally a mother gives birth, standing, holding onto a branch or bar of some sort, which is actually much faster and easier because gravity is assisting… but let’s focus on how the supposedly better-educated half of the world manages childbirth for now). The mother also tends to poop in the process, since she’s employing many of the same muscles to push. It is therefore entirely common for a birthing baby to exit his or her mother and land in a pile of poo (which is one of the reasons the nursing staff are so quick to clean the kid off before they’ll even let the mother see the child).
So… “Every human is born eating shit.”
Doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, no matter how true. :/
Actually that’s really inaccurate (at least the last part is)—unless the mother has a hole in her colon leading to her vaginal canal it is very unlikely the baby will ever touch the her feces. If she is immobile (terrible way to birth), the hospital staff cleans the poop. Even if they didn’t clean it, it falls down if when a woman is on her back (away from her vagina).
If she is lucky enough to be able birth the way most women are built to (moving about–*rarely ever* lying on the back) there is very little chance of poop being anywhere near when the baby comes out.
A stressed baby–however–can poop during the birthing process (merconium). This is rarely serious but sometimes there is a risk the baby inhales it depending on when it happens.
Yeah, I wasn’t referring to a vaginal-rectal fistula. I was picturing more a situation with the mother on her back, knees spread up and out, pushing out. Poop and baby both land on the bed.
I suppose in a well-staffed hospital, if everything is going to plan for a change, the baby is born straight into the doctor’s hands, never touching the mattress Mommy just unintentionally shat on. Imagine the story if the maternity ward was extra busy and the kid came out without anyone “playing catch” though!
When Selkies says, “That’s metals as craps.” What does it mean? Am I missing a cultural reference only younger people might understand? Would someone please explain?
I took it to be a reference to heavy metal music, which all tends to have a certain defiant in-your-face, do-your-worst, I-can-take-it attitude to the world. If something is ‘metal’ it exhibits that attitude. Selkie says it admiringly.
Bear in mind, though, that I certainly don’t count as “younger people”!
Thanks.
Can pretty much replace metal with badass or hardcore in this context.
Thanks.
Metal as craps… yeah the sounds I made giving birth to mine could have been used for metal album that is for sure… I would have much rather laying a soft amphibian style egg for sure… ugg
And on that note..
Dave> do they lay the egg as already fertilized or do they place egg and sperm in the water and let it have a go themselves like… fish? *shrugs* Or do they do procreate a different way?
They procreate with the same method humans do and the egg is laid already fertilized. It gestates inside the mother for a short period before being lain.
The egg (as well as the infant) can’t function out of water, either. Sai Fen had to crawl in to that aquarium and sit there submerged and pantsless until the egg was lain for both children.
Man, I pity the Sarnothi woman in exile on land who becomes egg-bound :/