[D31] Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids

[stillwinningthehardway]

[Blue is Scout talking, gray is 9S]

So you’ve probably noticed that this stop has a higher technological level and is more diverse than most places we go to. Finally! Now, I need to explain space and aliens.

[From the background comes a disgusted groan that sounds suspiciously like, “Ugh, aliens.” Scout sounds annoyed when she goes on.]

You’re all used to different worlds being sort of isolated, and often they’re different versions of the same planet. But it doesn’t always work like that. In most realities, the stars are very distant suns, and some of those have planets warmed by them, and some of those have life, even people. These worlds can be very different but the fundamental rules of the reality will be the same, and sometimes people can build ships to cross the distance between them. It’s like the different planets are islands in a great sea, and you can’t go into the water unprotected.

[Now she sounds nostalgic.]

The definition gets all complicated when travel’s been relatively easy for a long time, but whatever your species, you call life that originated in a different world from you “alien”, the same term a lot of one-worlders use for people from a different enough part of their world. There are a lot of different species here for this event, and whatever you are, if you leave the Carnival now you become some form of alien. Don’t go out of your way to antagonize anyone and don’t go outside of the domes without an environment suit and it seems safe enough.

Safe? Sure, if the aliens don’t start trouble first. But they will. They always do.

They’re just people, Neens. Don’t be such a provincialist.

Comments

[soft_focus]

....

[Sir.]

...People who talk about 'who starts trouble first' normally end up making the trouble happen....

[Anyway.] What's a provincialist?

[stillwinningthehardway]

Someone who has a narrow, limited view and a closed mind. There's nothing wrong with starting ignorant, everyone's got some provincial views, but a provincialist insists on keeping them and not taking in life as it is, even when they leave home.

[soft_focus]

[GASPS...well, not really, there's no gasp. But she IS learning things now.]

Does that mean provincial means something narrow?

[stillwinningthehardway]

It can, but not narrow like a blade. Narrow like a worldview. Rude out of ignorance. It's a word you use a lot for someone from the middle of nowhere, some backrocket place, but anyone can be stupid about expecting things to be the same everywhere.

[soft_focus]

Oh...so it's only one kind of narrow... [She gets it! ...It explains why you'd have a word for it, certainly.]

...It feels like everything is going to be different if you go somewhere else... ...there probably aren't 'human' people in all of the places at all, not just like here... [Her only real 'non-human' experience before this place was the Manor and the few at the Caravan, really.]

...but even different dimensions have a lot of different things there...

[stillwinningthehardway]

Humans are really common, in and out of where I'm from. I've been with the Carnival for about a year and a half and we've gone places without humans before. Some of them might have had human people somewhere else, some of them probably didn't have humans at all.

Yeah. Travel is easier on someone who can adapt and get that some things might be the same, but that doesn't mean everything is, or that things that are different are wrong.

[soft_focus]

You can have bad or good anything, that won't change in a different place.

[That one, she's Certain of.] Mnh, I guess that makes sense though. [The people travelling easier if they're 'open' bit.]

[stillwinningthehardway]

Yeah, but some things are kind of mushy. Something that's horrifying in one place can be unremarkable in another. Or one place can do something that looks like an awful thing done somewhere else but it's not actually the same.

[soft_focus]

[OH...OH NO...]

........

How do you know what'll be bad to do then..!?

[OH NO!!!]

[stillwinningthehardway]

You just... make your own judgments. Set your own lines. You don't need to do something you find terrible just because it's expected in a certain place, and sometimes even if something's acceptable somewhere that doesn't mean it's right.

[soft_focus]

Mnhh...

[Someone is now crippled by Moral Indecision]

...just being nice works too right..?

[Sadly, No.]

[espigeon]

[Julien butts in.]

Reira, it's cool! You know how there's like different layers of rules? Like there's "don't hurt anyone" and then "don't make random trouble for people" and then you have things like "don't wear ugly colors"? Some rules are more important than others.

...That's what you mean, right? Or like, how stepping over someone or showing the bottoms of your shoes is a deadly insult in some places?

[stillwinningthehardway]

[Scout suppresses a sigh.]

Sort of, but that's... it goes deeper than that. The Codru-Ji treat their children like nonsentient animals, like treasured pets, because until they metamorphose that's what they are. You can't watch them doing this and judge them like you would your own species doing that with their children.

[espigeon]

Huh? Their kids are animals?

...are these like, talking frog people, or like caterpillar butterfly people, or what?

[stillwinningthehardway]

It's this sort of common thing, sometimes it seems unsavory, but not everyone's a mammal that makes one or two high-investment offspring at a time.

These look like... dogs, sort of, until they cocoon and when they come out they look a lot like humans with more arms.

TO THE RESCUE TBH...

[soft_focus]

[Oh-! Hello, Julien.]

Mnnhhh...

[She supposes there has been...a certain Gap between how certain rules are treated.] ...It sounds like what I mean...

[UNCERTAIN]