"is there a plan b?""yeah! make sure plan a works!"
― mark s, Monday, 1 July 2019 20:44 (four years ago) link
other enlisted marines will use gunny as a term of respect because duh, that probably means they’re your bossnavy officers use gunny as a replacement for the second person pronoun, with baggage
― El Tomboto, Monday, 1 July 2019 21:22 (four years ago) link
that probably means they’re your boss
wait who's whose boss?
this wasn't at all obvious as i originally wrote it but my abreaction was purely in response to its usage in this show: where lines of are somewhat corrupted by the fact that the high-ups are all* scheming arseholes who treat lower-downs as contemptible pawns and worse (so that even if neutral or affectionate usage occurs here -- as y'all say it does IRL hoss -- it's poisoned by viewer doubts abt the users and their agendas)**
*even the "good" ones**noticed at all bcz "gunny" is more a regional term perhaps than other possible names for ranks (but this is probably why it was chosen in the first place)
― mark s, Tuesday, 2 July 2019 09:36 (four years ago) link
a gunnery sergeant in the USMC is in the upper echelon of the enlisted hierarchy
― El Tomboto, Tuesday, 2 July 2019 10:17 (four years ago) link
bobbie's strength as a character is possibly that she's the only (lasting) person who actually believes in military ideals as ideals (and martian military ideals as ideals): everyone else is more or less sardonic or cynical towards same, so that their appeals to esprit de corps always ring hollow (amusingly when yr one of her men i guess, and nastily when yr one of her superiors)
― mark s, Tuesday, 2 July 2019 10:23 (four years ago) link
Alex believes in in Them too but for him it was just a means to an end, flying spaceships, whereas Bobby, at least at the start, is a true believer in the Martian project.
― American Fear of Pranksterism (Ed), Tuesday, 2 July 2019 10:29 (four years ago) link
ok but that's not quite the same thing as i'm talking about really: she can break with the martian hierarchy bcz she's drawn to the professed ideals, it's not so much the project she believes in as what she's been brought up to believe the project represents
(she prefaces her turning point with a story abt her dad telling a lie, albeit a comfortable lie)
― mark s, Tuesday, 2 July 2019 10:41 (four years ago) link
the crew of the rossie are all also idealists sorta-kinda but not really inflected thru an official ideology? alex is martian and certainly has residual martian loyalties -- and can get riled up when martian stuff is dissed -- but i don't think he gives a stuff abt the project or what it represents
(his deep loyalty is to the rossie itself: at the close of s2 he has a very fireflyish speech abt "she's beat up but she'll fly right")
― mark s, Tuesday, 2 July 2019 10:44 (four years ago) link
Can't read this thread until I catch up, but man is this show good—pacing, music, characters, themes, direction. I keep waiting for it to go south like Star Trek: Discovery or Battlestar Galactica, but it's as if the whole series had been created as a whole before airing, without a care in the world for whether it gets canceled.
― Peter Scholtes, Tuesday, 2 July 2019 17:34 (four years ago) link
I never thought of "gunny" as being derogatory? I thought it was a reference to common US military nicknames? Like calling a Lieutenant "El-Tee" -- you would call a Gunnery Sergeant "Gunny"?
― sarahell, Tuesday, 2 July 2019 19:27 (four years ago) link
And the Gunnery Sergeant would be "Gunny" to differentiate them from a Staff Sergeant or other Sergeant who would be "Sarge"?
― sarahell, Tuesday, 2 July 2019 19:28 (four years ago) link
outside this show: likely not derogatory much of the time (caveat: i have not served and have only encountered this term in the context of fictio) within this show, as said by others at bobbie: often if not always somewhat sneering in my opinion
― mark s, Wednesday, 3 July 2019 13:53 (four years ago) link
i dunno mark! i just watched S2E1 last night and bobbie's CO calls her that a couple of times and i never felt that. he is always kind to her and generous with his experience. i guess what people used to call 'paternal' (in a good way)
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, 3 July 2019 15:14 (four years ago) link
ooh i will go back and check that out
― mark s, Wednesday, 3 July 2019 15:35 (four years ago) link
red kibble
― mark s, Wednesday, 3 July 2019 19:45 (four years ago) link
the invention of mpbile phones were you can see the message from both sides is a great step forward for privacy and security
― mark s, Saturday, 6 July 2019 18:15 (four years ago) link
scene where alex thanks bobbie for saving everyone: when he calls her gunny it is (i entirely accept) not sneery
i do however think it's an index of how he hasn't yet clearly worked though his relationship to his martian loyalties (since he only recently nearly got the roci and the razorback seized by three very cross martian children)
― mark s, Sunday, 7 July 2019 10:02 (four years ago) link
the slingshot vessel which cones to grief in the ring is call y que, which is the equivalent of " so what" but of course translates as "and what" :D
many redditors want a full release of the not-yet-identified version of "highway star" that manéo jung-espinoza is playing before he does the kessel run in under 11 parsecs, some on the grounds that it slams more than the deep purple version
― mark s, Sunday, 7 July 2019 11:11 (four years ago) link
a low-key virtue of this high-key grebt series is that the TV news ppl watch now and then is evidently just as shitty as our own
(provoked into the observation by the moodly collage of holden and tbe ring, with the legend "james holden to visit the ring", which inspires manéo jung-espinoza ito lol do the same, but there's several earlier examples)
― mark s, Sunday, 7 July 2019 11:18 (four years ago) link
the encounter between drummer (and naomi) and klaes ashford (and diogo) is terrific, given that it's also largely exposition and introduction
― mark s, Sunday, 7 July 2019 11:45 (four years ago) link
ashford cracks me up every time he's on-screen, esp. his accent, which is more like a weird ironic riff on scotty in star trek than any of the other belters
(in general this is a thing i like abt the belter accent, that a good percentage of it is actually consciously performative on the part of the individual belter: as in "i am now going to speak in a totally fucked-up way that fucks you up, for piratey lulz bcz i am in fact a pirate")
― mark s, Sunday, 7 July 2019 15:20 (four years ago) link
Ashford sometimes spoke a bit like Papa Lazarou.
― chap, Sunday, 7 July 2019 16:49 (four years ago) link
I'm a bit disappointed the Martians aren't given any kind of defining accent. The first few we ever met (Alex excepted probably) had a kind of Germanic thing going on which I thought was quite cool.
― chap, Sunday, 7 July 2019 16:50 (four years ago) link
alex has an accent!
― mark s, Sunday, 7 July 2019 16:55 (four years ago) link
back to klaes ashford: when he's confiding with e.g. naomi he has almost no evident belter accent at all, of any kind, which is what i mean by "performative" -- it's like code-switching in the wrong direction, to position yrself
(i mean obviously since it's all being performed -- by david strathairn -- so it can't help but be "performative" but there's a self-conscious outsizeness to it being deliberately signalled. it's not necessarily fully realised but i think the idea is that accent is actually mostly political in this context, rather than "natural" if you see what i mean) (this may also explain mars?)
― mark s, Sunday, 7 July 2019 16:57 (four years ago) link
i like when ppl regain consciousness and their nose blood is floating in pretty little blobs in front of their face
― mark s, Sunday, 7 July 2019 17:19 (four years ago) link
what's the little fleet of baby bits and bobs that tags along with the nauvoo aka the behemoth, i don't remember this ever being explained? i mean self-built salvaged belter shit but is there a reason they need it like space navally, or whatever
― mark s, Sunday, 7 July 2019 18:00 (four years ago) link
question for readers of the book i guess
They're automated drones that act like tugs.
― Garbo Pond (Leee), Sunday, 7 July 2019 18:28 (four years ago) link
ah! ok
why are tugs needed at all times in deep space?
― mark s, Sunday, 7 July 2019 18:29 (four years ago) link
Because the Nauvoo wasn't outfitted with thrusters (it being a generation ship) and firing up its engines would've melted Tycho Station into space slag. Some neat details here, I don't think it's too spoilery: https://expanse.fandom.com/wiki/Tycho_Manufacturing_Accelerator_Tug
― Garbo Pond (Leee), Sunday, 7 July 2019 18:37 (four years ago) link
ah i get it, like external micro-steering :)
(aka tugs lol)
i was reading them more like the reaver ships in serenity, but i guess if you look carefully they all look the same
― mark s, Sunday, 7 July 2019 18:43 (four years ago) link
"lids on and load up"
― mark s, Sunday, 7 July 2019 18:44 (four years ago) link
Just like a Texas-y accent though no? None of them have a wacky made up space accent like the Belters.
― chap, Sunday, 7 July 2019 19:03 (four years ago) link
the all-blue protomolecule room inside the nucleus inside the ring reminds me (inexplicably, given the colour scheme) of cult 1957 east german TV fairytale the singing, ringing tree
http://images.rottentomatoes.com/images/spotlights/2007/rtuk_obscura_0803.jpg
― mark s, Sunday, 7 July 2019 19:06 (four years ago) link
actually there's quite a lot of blue there i guess
here's the entire thing (which i haven't seen since the night thatcher resigned lol)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhVFcy4ZMIg
― mark s, Sunday, 7 July 2019 19:07 (four years ago) link
yes that's true chap, but in my (evolving) theory, belter-speech isn't so much an accent as a syncretic urchinspeak patois* unrolled as a political act of defiance and subversion: mars was officially settled (in discrete communities which largely retained their speech-of-arrival even despite the fight for independence) whereas the belterworld is much more fluid and piratical and marginal and etc
― mark s, Sunday, 7 July 2019 19:12 (four years ago) link
also in dramatic terms it makes sense for earth and mars to be on a level language-wise for the big set pieces, which a third accent would probably fuck with
(also lol belterspeak being extremely unstable of manifestation is acceptable in one made-up way of speech if you can give it a rationale -- if that's what i'm even doing -- but i think two of them would tend to suck a bit) (a LOT)
and getting the mars one to be stable wd just end up annoying
― mark s, Sunday, 7 July 2019 19:17 (four years ago) link
for me the true Martian accent is Bobbie's Australian one. i kind of pretend everyone else has one. making the best of an inhospitable desert world.
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Sunday, 7 July 2019 19:22 (four years ago) link
dude it's NZ-samoan
― mark s, Sunday, 7 July 2019 19:24 (four years ago) link
DAMMIT
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Sunday, 7 July 2019 19:27 (four years ago) link
shohreh aghdashloo meanwhile has a BA in international relations from brunel
― mark s, Sunday, 7 July 2019 19:31 (four years ago) link
i still think it's weird how quickly she became a good guy given that we saw her literally torturing a belter in person in S1
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Sunday, 7 July 2019 20:16 (four years ago) link
brunel's very well regarded
― mark s, Sunday, 7 July 2019 20:40 (four years ago) link
"regrowing a spinal cord is a delicate procedure even under the best circumstances"
trudat!
― mark s, Sunday, 7 July 2019 21:37 (four years ago) link
Alex comes from mariner valley which was colonised by Texans and Indians so he has the classic mariner valley drawl. The writers make a big deal of this in the books.
Bobby is from Londres Nova which clearly doesn’t have a distinctive accent because I’m not sure it is mentioned once.
― American Fear of Pranksterism (Ed), Sunday, 7 July 2019 22:10 (four years ago) link
nu-coquenie
― mark s, Sunday, 7 July 2019 22:12 (four years ago) link
if you bear in mind what's happening w/her spine, drummer's mini-waldo in the final ep of s3 is as bad-ass as ripley's in the finale of aliens
― mark s, Sunday, 7 July 2019 22:21 (four years ago) link
I like the way this show has an arse-kicking grandmother with a voice like razorblades, and it makes perfect sense.
― And according to some websites, there were “sexcapades.” (James Morrison), Monday, 8 July 2019 00:30 (four years ago) link
finished my rewatch of the expanse s1-s3, now rewatching the singing ringing tree for the first time in 29 years just in case it's relevant expanded universe material
― mark s, Monday, 8 July 2019 18:06 (four years ago) link