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A young apparent-woman opens the door.
"...Hello?" she calls, seeming confused but not necessarily surprised. "Hello, is anyone here?"
When no answer is forthcoming, she walks over to the bar and sits down, puzzled.
Aurin and Pletha in Milliways
"And if you find a way to convince the part of my brain that find things surreal of that I will be impressed."
"Well...for one thing, the smell thing is a bigger deal than you seem to think it is. It, hm, it doesn't just tell you factually what gender someone is. There's, you know, meaning to it. Like the fact that I have breasts doesn't just tell you factually that I'm a childbearing gender, but also serves as a focus for attraction. And everyone smells differently, so you can tell someone's gender but you can also tell who they are. On I guess a more practical level for someone like you...on average, harmi have larger breasts and wider hips than haran, and desret are a little taller and a little more muscular than a desan, and of course the interfertility thing," she gestures at her chart.
"Well, yeah, but I'm not trying to describe its practical utility, I'm trying to describe its social importance. Think talking to a species that doesn't have a spoken language and explaining that you can tell people apart by their voice, kind of thing."
middlingalong
"I wonder how the translation effect would render it. I'm out of practice at not falling over, though, and doing it without wings is the equivalent of having a terrible accent."
middlingalong
The translation effect is not as seamless, but you would understand the dancing as well as seeing it performed.
"There we go. No need to test it."
"There we go. No need to test it."
middlingalong
"I guess. I don't think the translation effect is actually... doing anything to me? It wouldn't improve matters, anyway. So I don't know what that would be like."
middlingalong
He snorts, knocks back the last of his drink, and gets up.
He dances: I am least likely to fall over with this language! The sensation is sort of a cross between actually hearing the sentence in her own language and finding all the motions of the dance self-evidently expressive.
He dances: I am least likely to fall over with this language! The sensation is sort of a cross between actually hearing the sentence in her own language and finding all the motions of the dance self-evidently expressive.
"Oh, like--it was half like I was hearing it in my language, and half like I was just understanding the language as it was."