TG posted:

in case anyone is wondering about my tv watching habits, i am once again watching ds9. its possible that i have a real problem

one thing i find interesting about star trek is that aliens are almost always only given one name while all the humans have at least two and often three. youve got james tiberius kirk and jean luc picard but only spock or worf or quark. its like they go out of their way to treat the aliens the same as humans, referring to them as people, or men and women, but then they overlook the fact that there are ostensibly tens of billions of klingons, and even the emperor and members of the high council have only one syllable to go by. maybe they get a house name (but why is it still the house of mogh when mogh is dead? why isnt it the house of worf, or better yet, the house of some long-dead patriarch?). i know that aliens in star trek are meant to represent a certain aspect of human behavior, so theyre all one-dimensional: vulcans are pure logic, ferengi pure greed, etc. maybe the naming conventions are designed to reflect that fact

a notable exception is that bajorans get two names, ie kira nerys (but even then, most of them just get the one, like wynn or opaka). its as if theyre trying extra hard to make you sympathize with the plight of an oppressed people by extra-humanizing them as opposed to the lizard people who occupied them, led by the evil dukat. i know garak has a first name, but in many ways he stands for the redemption of the cardassians, because he overcomes his cia training and helps the Good Guys so he earns himself a mark of humanity that aliens just dont have. of course, worf was raised by humans and has himself a human last name but it is Never used. he isnt commander rozhenko at all. this is probably because, despite his close association with humans, he does all he can to reject his humanity and embraces his klingon side

in official federation documents he's just registered as "Worf" but whenever he introduces himself to other klingons it's "Worf, Son of Mogh" so I think that is properly his full name by our standards. i think Spock does the same thing but i don't remember for sure.

i went to rewatch ds9 with my then-gf last year and we were both surprised by how the first episode is dark as fuck and everyone dies and sisko is torn up by the worst hellish torment (amplified by avery brooks being a pro at anguish) etc etc etc. in my memories i just think of all the emotional intrigue on the station as ds9, but i guess it takes a while to get into that

swampman posted:

It's probably just some Ellis island shit where the guy is like "Ok, so your name is 35 consonants in a row huh? how about Worf for short then. See ya"

yeah, except in this case it's "oh, your culture identifies people completely differently than firstname lastname? welp don't care"

anyway, a monosyllabic name plus a common repeated monosyllabic ancestral part is how most of china worked for a long time. name duplication isn't really a problem irl, either your society is small enough that it's fine and you deal, or it's large enough that practical unique identification uses id numbers and/or birthdates.

the klingon social security department must be fun to deal with

tpaine posted:

oops that shouldn't have heh...that shouldn't have showed up. nothing weird going on here. try not to think about it too hard, kamekred.

For my silence I demand access to the secret time travel forum

kamelred posted:

timeline.jpg

tears posted:

NEON DEMON: good shit

really? everything i saw/heard about that made it look like creepy garbage