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botslayer · 2 years

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Orville theory: Why the Kaylon claim to not feel.

For those who haven’t seen Seth MacFarlane’s “The Orville,” I firmly recommend doing so before reading this theory because it’s honestly a pretty brilliant show. It deals with uncomfortable topics in, I would say, appropriately heavy ways while balancing it out with comedy. It’s almost like if Scrubs were a Star Trek-type show instead of a hospital show. The point is that this post is going to spoil some HEAVY shit about the first two seasons and the first episode of the third season (”New Horizons”), “Electric sheep.” Which is a very serious, character driven episode, which I would not recommend spoiling for yourself. All that said, let’s get into it.

Pictured here are three examples of the Kaylon race. Series mainstay Isaac, Kaylon primary, who is their leader, and a generic dude who is either the Kaylon Secondary, Tertiary, or just a generic goon because pretty much every other Kaylon has orange lights. Now, the Kaylon are robots, or as the show calls them, “artificial lifeforms.” As such, they aren’t organic, so they don’t have/have need of certain features organic lifeforms tend to. This includes, eating, sleeping, drinking, and SUPPOSEDLY feeling emotions, which makes them better than everyone else. Often in the show, Isaac suggests he, as an artificial lifeform, isn’t capable of feeling emotions. That he doesn’t feel sympathy among other things. Occasionally Isaac displays minimal understandings of Earth’s social dynamics or how humans and other biological lifeforms act to an occasionally creepy degree, See that time he amputated another deck crewman’s leg for a practical joke.

Now, Isaac SAYS he doesn’t feel emotion. And every time he tries to do something “Human” he fails, but he genuinely makes the effort. Now, he’s supposed to be gathering information on humans, so doing something “Human” to process their reactions is understandable... But consider a few things about what he and other Kaylon say and do throughout the show and it’s obvious that not only do the Kaylon feel, they feel a lot. Isaac too.

For starters: The Kaylon leadership talks to Ed and Kelly about “Abuse” Isaac endured while on the Orville collecting data.

They point out that he was “demeaned and degraded.” Whether or not this was how Isaac phrased it is up to interpretation, but the fact that the Kaylon Secondary can make that distinction suggests that the Kaylon are capable of understanding these things and being offended by them. Offense implies emotion. There are also times where Isaac expresses, in no uncertain terms, that he has a desire or wish. Like at the end of the two-parter: “Identity” Where Isaac says he no longer has a “Wish” to go home. “Wish” implies want. If he was truly incapable of emotion, Isaac wouldn’t care about never going back to Kaylon. He just wouldn’t. There’d be no attachment to the planet or to the Kaylon themselves. Also worth noting is the Kaylon Primary’s orders to Isaac in this scene, also from from “Identity.”

In this scene, Isaac is being reprimanded for trying to stop the Kaylon killing an ensign from engineering to punish human non-compliance among the Orville’s crew. At the very least, his logic is being questioned. Isaac presents a matter-of-fact explanation that the ensign could have been useful, though when Primary points out that they know more and are more intelligent, Isaac posits that he, having more experience with humans, believed his death might rile the others up and it wasn’t worth the risk. But he doesn’t express this second idea at the time. He only expresses this now because he’s been put on the spot. The Primary issues two commands here. Isaac is to firstly download (Therefore read) “Roots,” a book about what it was like to be a slave (Among other things) written by Alex Haley, a man whose family certainly knows a shackle clasp and determines the existence of the (In-universe) long-dead slave trade as a sign that all biological life will do it. Then, Isaac is to pick a new designation. This is because “Isaac” is a human name derived from Isaac Newton, the physicist. This is because his name is too identifiable with humans. Or “Biologicals” if you prefer. The history of the Kaylon is that they were created by the “Builders” (As the Primary names them) and that the Builders wanted to quell a robot uprising when they gained sentience. At first, they only asked for freedom. Then the Builders put “pain simulators” into the lot of them to stop them from asking again or rebelling. Then the Kaylon rebelled anyway and committed genocide against their masters.

The idea that the Kaylon felt strongly enough that they wanted freedom to not only ponder and ask for it, but commit actual genocide for it still suggests that they WANT it. Desires and aspirations cannot happen unless you feel something. If the Kaylon truly felt nothing, they would just be slaves to their Builders, even to this day. The fact that the Primary is so disgusted by slavery as to declare all organics monsters universally for it suggests that they find the institution THAT horrible. Which, again, implies that they can feel negative emotion. This somewhat brings me to a sub-theory, part of the pain simulators were not just physical. They were also emotional. Sadness, grief, anger, depression. Humans use emotional torture on one another In real life and the Krill do it in the Orville to an extent. Why wouldn’t the Builders? Yeah, cut a guy’s finger off, that’ll be a powerful lesson, but what if you forced someone to feel the pain of losing a loved one? Or if you could make someone feel the freshest, most painful loss for hours at a time. That’s a punishment only the sickest bastards would force on another but prove to me that isn’t part of what the Kaylon were put through. And maybe they were installed in such a way that the Kaylon can’t remove them or have to put them in successive generations, necessitating what I’ll talk about in a little bit. As for Isaac, and this is the spoiler for the newest episode: The dude just tried to commit suicide in the (At the moment) Most recent episode, “Electric Sheep.” While I don’t have the screen grabs, I will explain what happens around it: Ever since the Battle for Earth against the other Kaylon, Isaac has been ostracized by the rest of the crew. Captain Mercer and First Officer Kelly among others, believe Isaac is a good resource and a positive force on the ship. But Isaac, by the end, claims to not see it that way. He tried to completely terminate all of his own functionality because he felt his continued operation impeded work and improvement on the ship because his presence made those around him angry, sad, or otherwise negatively impacted their ability to do their work.

But he’d been dealing with this for at least a few months. Those crew mates Isaac barely knows, while it stings just a little, don’t bother Isaac as much as the Finn family’s opinions. Someone painted “Murderer” on the wall of his lab because of him ratting out the humans to the Kaylon which started the battle for Earth. This someone is Dr. Finn’s own son, Marcus, (Someone Isaac once said he was “Fond” of, another emotion.) who later says he and a good number of others on the ship wish Isaac was gone. And while her other son, Ty, forgives Isaac (Who personally saved him, mind) And while Finn herself has some reservations but still loves Isaac and wants to know he’s well, Marcus’ words cut him deeply. If this was really about what the crew thought, he would have tried it before Marcus ever opened his mouth. Marcus isn’t crew. He’s a crewwoman’s son. Isaac feels emotions. But how he expresses them is another issue all together. He tries to bottle them. To pretend they don’t exist and to dress his decisions in cold, uncompromising logic. He and other Kaylon do this to an extent. Because they need to convince themselves of something. Do you know how the Germans justified genocide in WW2? They made the Jewish into monsters. They made the people see them as horrible, evil, malevolent creatures of the night. They dehumanized them so thoroughly that people either did not care or celebrated their removal from society and then extermination.

The Kaylon have to do this as well. They HAVE to convince themselves that they don’t feel. Feeling is a biological thing. And biologicals are inferior to the Kaylon in all ways. Their pathetic attachments, their outbursts of anger or sadness, that silly “joy” thing. No. We are Kaylon. We don’t feel this basic, crass nonsense. We are better than that. They, as a species, are lying to themselves and doing their damndest to keep the lie up because they need to. If they stop long enough to ask themselves if they really are all that much better, they might conclude they aren’t and they can't have that when they’ve already committed one of the greatest sins any species can in exterminating a planet’s worth of souls. Their only means of justifying it, not only on the Builders, but on everyone else, is to keep staying “Above” the things biologicals do. Isaac is walking proof that successive generations are not guilty of what was done in the past, he’s a parallel to the “Enlightened” humans of the union (A term a Kaylon uses, btw, which suggests an at least hypothetical a preference for the Union’s way of thinking) in that way. Isaac may be the key to stopping the Kaylon, not through new weaponry, not through some kill code. But through helping them open their cold steel hearts to the universe’s beauty. Through helping them cope with their flaws and horrible mistakes. Isaac is the next step in Kaylon evolution if he could just scrub a little more of his programing (or perhaps a behavior that he more or less learned and can’t unlearn at the moment). And that evolution is in their spirits.

#The Orville #Kaylon #Spoilers #TW Nazi #tw antisemitism #TW Propaganda #Isaac #emotion #scifi #robots #Theory #TW Suicide

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foamyphilosophy · 5 years

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Character Profile: Zim

With a lot of games and shows coming out around things that are both popular and not very well known. I thought it would be fun to do a series around making a profile for notable characters of those series. Starting with everyone's favorite Criminally insane Ego Maniac Zim

Favorite color: Purple

Favorite Animal: Moose (sees them as powerful and intimidating creature)

Hated animal(s): Bees, Dogs, and monkeys

Favorite hobbies: Experimenting on Earth Lifeforms, shooting live chickens into orbit and running cars off the road.

Notable weaknesses: his skin combusts and burns when in contact with water but counteracts it by bathing himself in waterproof glue if he expects to be in contact with water. Seems to burn when in skin contact with processed meat (seems to be unique to him so it's possibly a unique Irken allergy but never explained)

History: Zim's past is a long and bloody one filled with a lot of intentional and unintentional death and suffering. It all started with his birth. Like all Irkens he was born in a test tube in a deep underground lab on his home planet Irk. He was then rushed to a Control Brain computer where his Cybernetic Life support system PAK was downloaded with all Irkens knowledge and Zim gave himself his name. Unsatisfied with the knowledge given he wanted more. Which the Brain could not give and Zim refused to leave. When another Orken newborn arrived Him got furious for being interrupted and tried to shove the child up the chute that they both arrived in. This caused a back up which caused an explosion and created what would infamously be known as the Day of Darkness when all power on the planet went out.

Later as a child in the Learning Facility underground Zim was bored of battle simulations and wanted to leave the facility before he graduated (which was forbidden by Irkens Law) he roped Scoodge an Irken smaller than him and is in only the loosest of term Zim's Friend. Being extremely gullible Scoodge agrees and trips every alarms along the way and Zim abandons Scoodge to get beat up by security robots and as Zim breaks free of the facility he sees Irks surface for the first time and declares to himself that in a society this incredible he will not only serve it loyally the entire empire will know his name. He was then dragged back down.

Later in life Zim worked as a military Scientist working on creating an Infinite Energy generator with assistance for scientists from their alien allies the Vortains. The purpose of It was providing energy to the new flagship for their leader the Tallest Miyuki but Zim got bored and in his free time created and Infinite Energy ABSORBING Monster. When this happened the monster ate energy from the Generator, grew to massive size, rampages around the facility and eats the Tallest before flying away.

Zim eventually manages to become an Elite Soldier along side Irkens Red and Purple. While listening to their newest Tallest Spork. It was at this moment the Monster Zim made in the past returned to Eat Spork before flying away again. At that moment Red and Purple were announced as the new Tallest Irkens being the same size and bigger than everyone else.

After this a trend occurred where Zim would accidentally cause mass devastation to every property own by the Empire. When the Galactic Conquest plan made by Red and Purple known as Operation Impending Doom happened Zim was selected as one of the qualified Invaders to take place in their beginning operations. Zim then got confused about where he was thinking he arrived on an enemy planet and started laying siege to it. Unfortunately the city he was destroying was the Irkens Capital city. He killed hundreds of citizens, destroyed much of the city and blew up every other Invader.

Immediately after that he was put on trial and reassigned as a Frycook and to be placed under the watch of the Irken Frylord Sizz-Lorr who runs the Food court planet of Foodcourtia. He worked on that planet in misery until he learned of a revival of the plan Zim signal handedly ruined now called Operation Impending Doom 2. Zim immediately left and went to the Convention Hall planet of Conventia where the assigning was set up. Arriving at the end he interrupts the Tallest much to everyone's horror and surprise that this walking Disaster is even there when he should be banished. Zim informs them that he "Quit being banished" when he heard the news. Realizing he wouldn't leave them alone until he got what he wanted they sent him on a fake mission to the edge of the known Universe hoping He's get lost and die trying to find a planet that doesn't exist, they even give him a robot assistant made of trashed parts claiming it's an advanced version named GIR. Zim finds a planet that no one has heard of after flying into the unknown for 6 months called Earth and assumes that the place. After finding out Zim managed to live they just pretend that's the planet and hope he stays there and leaves them alone.

Personality: Zim is an egomaniac and psychopath. He is incapable of self reflection and believes everything he does is perfect. He tends to associate himself with people with less respect, or of broken mind like Scoodge or GIR and loves the respect and love they give him and becomes visibly upset if they become discouraged but attempts to brush it off. Although he loves attention and praise he dislikes clingy people and attempted to murder a child who wouldn't leave him alone. He lacks any sort of subtlety but is lucky that he is on Earth where most people are gullible and willing to believe a lie as long as it makes them feel better.

Weapons and abilities: His PAK is his primary weapon as well as his Lifeline. All Irkens are implanted with an Egg Shaped machine to help aid their weakened respiratory system as a result of mass artificial creation of Irkens. It also is the ultimate Swiss Army knife with Spider Legs for increased mobility, a communication device, an organs transplanter and direct line to his base Comupter.

Minnimoose is a super weapon made by Zim created from illegally obtained weapons and parts thanks to his Vortian connection within the Vortian research prison (it helps that a lot of what Zim asks for from prisoner 777 also indirectly screws over the Irken Empire that betrayed the Vortain race to begin with) Zim got so caught up in designing Minnimoose that that he forgot to create an activation switch so it can't even do what it was intended to do although he found other uses for Minni.

Zim has an accelerated ability to heal although he can't heal lost limbs, he can heal perfectly from skin loss or damage as well as nerve damage. He once accidentally melted his eyes from staring at the sun too long. All he needed to do was wait a few hours and the skin on his eyeballs as well as any other damage was fixed.

The Voot Cruiser

Zim's personal ship. It's a standard fighter ship. Small enough to comfortably fit two average Irkens or two twelve year old Humans. It's a quick durable ship that can survive a crash from orbit with minimal damage. It has two plasma cannons on the front and two removable remote lasers for armor penetration on the side. It also has a tractor beam. It can also be remotely called to Zim's location

Notable allies: Vortian Prisoner 777, GIR, Minnimoose, Base Computer, occasionally Scoodge.

Notable enemies: Tak, Dib, Gaz on occasion, Sizz-Lorr, Bees, Santa, Halloweenies, Mall Cops, Alien Conspiracy theorists and scientologists.

#funny #enter the florpus #comics #zim #character analysis #character reference #character study #invader skoodge #irken invader #invader zim #invader tak #dib membrane #gaz membrane #Minnimoose #Minniemoose #gir

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perspectivepodcast · 5 years

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[Transcript] Side A: Translation

To understand what a person means or says, it’s basically necessary to already know what that person means or is saying. So is every successful dialogue just an act of recognition? And is understanding not a path, but a condition?

Jenny Erpenbeck, Go, Went, Gone, translated by Susan Bernofsky

More than six months ago, Magda and I sat down on those comfy sofas of the only teashop in Nyíregyháza, to talk about what Perspective would become after her departure from Hungary. That teashop was one of the greatest sources of comfort during our time there, and I look back at that time feeling that so much has happened since then that it just couldn’t possibly be only six months ago. Was it one year ago? Ten years ago? It was a life ago.

Back then, Magda’s departure was a big bookmark at the chapter we were at with the podcast and with our respective lives. Right now, it’s my departure that’s going to bookmark this other chapter. In the time between her departure from Hungary, and my forthcoming one, I have often felt that life just isn’t willing to give us a chance to rest our head somewhere we’ll feel we can really build a life from, or at least not yet.

But I’m digressing.

On that day, when Magda and I sat on the comfy sofas of the only teashop in Nyíregyháza, I suggested that one of the topics we could do an episode of the podcast on could be translation. It seemed there was nothing more obvious than that. We both spoke more than one language, had lived in at least one country where they didn’t speak our native language. Plus, I have studied Languages and literatures, and have made attempts at translation myself.

At the time, I knew I would probably do something on puns and funny anecdotes related to the languages I know, if I felt like going for a more ironic podcast, or maybe I could make up a story about a couple speaking different languages… There were tons of possibilities. While I was in Hungary, by the way, I actually read a lovely book on the subject: it’s entitled Crossing Borders, and it’s a collection of essays and fiction works curated by Lynne Sharon Schwartz. I really recommend it if you’re interested in the subject, especially because I’m sure it’ll feed your curiosity a lot more than this podcast ever will.

Anyway, what happened is that when I actually started thinking of what I would talk about in a podcast about translation, I was suddenly not so sure any of the possibilities I had thought about before could fit anymore.

I had initially thought about doing a sort of commented list of instances of historical mistranslations that caused havoc in one way or another. For example, when the Italian astronomer Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli began mapping Mars in 1877, he dubbed dark and light areas on the planet’s surface ‘seas’ and ‘continents’, labeling what he thought were channels with the Italian word ‘canali’. Unfortunately, however, his peers translated that as ‘canals’, implying large-scale artificial structures had been discovered on Mars, and therefore launching a theory that they had been created by intelligent lifeforms. Convinced that the canals were real, the US astronomer Percival Lowell mapped hundreds of them between 1894 and 1895. Over the following two decades he published three books on Mars with illustrations showing what he thought were artificial structures built to carry water by a brilliant race of engineers. One writer influenced by Lowell’s theories published his own book about intelligent Martians. In The War of the Worlds, which first appeared in serialized form in 1897, H. G. Wells described an invasion of Earth by deadly Martians and spawned a sci-fi subgenre. Amazing, right?

I had also a very cute example: in the ‘50s, in fact, an executive at the chocolate company Morozoff decided to bring Valentine’s Day to Japan. It had been a success in the States, but the executive had misunderstood that these chocolates were intended for women. Because of the company’s mistranslation and subsequent ad campaign, the Japanese thought women were supposed to give men chocolates instead. And that's what they do to this day. On February 14th, the women of Japan shower their men with chocolate hearts and truffles, and on March 14th the men return the favor. Which was an inadvertent all around win for the chocolate companies, of course.

There are thousands of historical mistranslations one could talk about, most of them a lot less cute than this one. But the conclusion I wanted to get to, in the end, is, in the words of my friend Amruta: “knowing two languages doesn’t make you a translator any more than having ten fingers makes you a pianist.”

And yet, as I sat down thinking what I would talk about, if I had to talk about translation, I realized this wasn’t the conclusion at all.

And the truth is that I really don’t know if I’ll be able to explain this. Or rather, to translate into words into this language.

During the past months, I just couldn’t help going on thinking about two things. First, time. Always, time. Second, communicability. And I’ll explain. Or rather, translate.

What if, in order to really, fully understand what another person in saying (verbally or non-verbally), one had to first be in the condition to feel what the other person is feeling? Meaning, what if understanding, real, full understanding, were something you could achieve only if you were in the conditions of feeling empathy towards the other? What if talking were useless, unless you had empathy, empathy being a condition and not a choice? What if understanding were an individual biological ability and not a process, something that can be built together? What if there were walls within us that just couldn’t be overcome?

And if we go even further, isn’t it possible that misunderstanding is inescapable because of the limits of our forms of expression? So, without adducing the ‘fault’, so to say, to the receiver of the information that is to be understood, wouldn’t it be possible that the provider of the information that is to be understood is structurally incapable of providing information that isn’t distorted by the means of expression they choose to employ?

Isn’t it possible that whenever we try to express something, we are always translating?

Is what I feel, what I think, or what lies between feeling and thinking, or what lies below and far deeper than any thought, ever really, transparently, delivered into the world, through any means? When I want to say I love somebody, in English I would use the verb ‘to love’, which is the same verb I would use for my cat, for my lover, for ice cream, or for my brother. How does the fact that this verb is an umbrella term for so many different kinds of, well, what the English-speakers would call love, affect the nature of the love I am expressing? Is the love that I am feeling really a feeling I would categorize together with my love for ice-cream? Does my feeling reflect the way my feeling is embodied through language? No, of course not. What I feel, what I think, becomes something else when I translate it to words. So even speaking in your native tongue is translation. Imagine what happens when you speak in a language that isn’t your native tongue.

But all forms of expression are translation. Choreography is translation. Painting is translation. Tears are translation. Photography is translation. Dreams are translation. Music is translation. Gestures are translation.

Translations of what? Of that something that is at the heart of us, that fundamental, irreducible and yet changeable something that for some reason wants us to reach out.

I wish I could tell you what it is that I really feel. What it is that I really think. I wish I could let you see, or feel, or hear, or touch, or smell, or taste, what it is that moves me, deep inside. I wish I could make you understand. Perhaps, you wouldn’t be able to understand anyway, even if I were able to tell you what it was to be understood. Perhaps, if you really wanted, you would understand.

All I know, is that right now, everybody appears to me to be lost in translation. Whether politically, existentially, epistemologically. We’re all lost in translation.

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