What pet peeves do you have about trek books?

[Dayton Ward]

^ My "Did he have to mention it?" was actually directed to the wearing of the gowns, not the "everybody needs a date" part, so my apologies for not being clearer.

As for the date bit: Yeah, I find that stupid. Of course, I've also taken issue with the notion that a ship has a "first officer" as well as an "executive officer." Maybe those two should be each other's date at future functions, and they need to flip a coin to see who wears the gown.

 

[JustKate]

^ That would be a good way to cut down on the catering bill.

 

[BrotherBenny]

^ My "Did he have to mention it?" was actually directed to the wearing of the gowns, not the "everybody needs a date" part, so my apologies for not being clearer.

As for the date bit: Yeah, I find that stupid. Of course, I've also taken issue with the notion that a ship has a "first officer" as well as an "executive officer." Maybe those two should be each other's date at future functions, and they need to flip a coin to see who wears the gown.

In my fanfic, I've always seen the first officer and the exec as the same person, but doesn't PAD have the exec as the gamma shift bridge officer(the person in command of the bridge at night)?

 

[captcalhoun]

yes

 

[Count Zero]

Huh, I never noticed the XO and the First Officer not being the same person in on-screen Trek. Was that the case in TNG?

 

[JustKate]

^ I don't think so. I believe Riker was considered the first officer and the XO. Memory Alpha seems to sort of confirm this, but only sort of.

 

[Dayton Ward]

I guess my joke was a bit too subtle.....

 

[JustKate]

^ You are a subtle kind of guy.

 

[Myasishchev]

I wound up reading the wikipedia page on "cunt." Sez it isn't possible to determine whether "cunt" is Germanic (kunta) or Latin (cunnus), and that this suggests it might just be prototypically Indo-European (gon).

I wonder why wikipedia doesn't consider the most obvious approach - that the word derives from "cunny", a cute furry animal, just like "pussy"? It might be a mere coincidence - or then the connection to "gon" might be.

It's a rationalization close to my heart, as we Finns still use the word "cunny" (local spelling "kani") to describe the little hopping pests.

Timo Saloniemi

I have never in my life heard of this animal. Is it a rabbit, or its own species, or what?

Also, remember Finnish isn't an Indo-European language. I suppose it is somewhat possible that Norsemen might have adopted a Finno-Ugric word and brought it to England. Personally, I think the Latin etymology is the most believable, since it literally does mean vulva. Interesting, "cuneiform" is a related word. It technically means wedge-shaped, but I wish I'd known back in high school history that it could plausibly be argued to literally mean "vulva-shaped."

Btw, going from "Higgs mechanism" to "cunt" on Wikipedia has got to mess up their statistics somehow. It is perhaps also a shame that only one of these articles has pictures, and it's not the sensible one.

 

[Myasishchev]

^ Did he really have to mention it? Besides, as I've been told repeatedly, despite them fighting all the wars, court-martialing people when they get out of line, wearing fancy uniforms, and pontificating about rules and regulations and duty while yelling "SIR!" all the time, Starfleet's not really the military. Instead, they're just a bunch of eggheads who apparently read a book or download a training program for the holodeck when it's time to go into battle. So, it's easy to understand how they might not observe every little bit of time-honored military protocol.

But to give you a straight answer to your "question," Dayton...yeah, he really did have to mention it, just because there are people like me out there. Picky people. People who dislike unnecessary plot points. People who will say, "Wait a minute. Since when do Starfleet officers have to have dates in order to attend an official function?"

I could have overlooked the uniform thing, but the "must have a date thing"? No.

In case you haven't read it recently or at all, it really was presented that way. Riker and Picard, for example, both mention that they have to attend and they have to escort somebody. Like Picard would be tossed out of the joint if he didn't have a gal on his arm?

What, was it an officers' swingers party?

 

[Dayton Ward]

^ Yep. First thing you do when you walk in is toss your combadge into a fishbowl....

 

[justcorbly]

Long narratives of battle scenes. Boring, boring, boring.

 

[Sci]

There is nothing immature about so-called "foul" language, and there's nothing mature about refraining from using such language.

Curse words are verbal tools, used to reflect extremities of emotion. Like any tool, they are appropriate for some situations and not others, and over-use of them can cause the blade to be dulled.

And "Goddamn" is so common that it hardly even counts as any more of a curse word than does "golly" -- which, by the way, originally meant, "God's body," and was considered an obscenity.

Handguns and assault rifles are literal tools, used for the purposes of killing people, and I think it's a very mature decision to refrain from using those.

To begin with, it is absolutely absurd to equate the use of a "vulgar" word -- which endangers nobody -- with the intentional discharge of a firearm against a victim.

Knowing when and when not to use a "curse" word is a sign of maturity and respect, certainly. There's nothing mature about using a "vulgar" word in a professional setting, for instance, when you know it is likely to cause offense or to be seen as rudely emotional.

But, similarly, there's nothing immature about using them amongst people whom you know will not take offense, or in your own mind. (Which, we should all bear in mind, is where Archer used the "f-word" in Last Full Measure: In his internal monologue.)

I think it's pretty presumptuous to say that refraining from using curses is a sign of an immature person;

Then it's a good thing I never said that.

Specifically, I said that refraining from using a "vulgar" word is not inherently a sign of maturity; I never said it was a sign of immaturity.

Some would argue that a more mature society wouldn't get too bothered by the fact that certain words are derived from Anglo-Saxon rather than Latin.

Some would argue that to describe a society as "more mature" is profoundly ethnocentric, and that it's not at all hard to see where someone from another society might be deeply insulted by the implication that his/her society isn't "mature."

And if we were talking about real societies, that would be a completely valid point. But Christopher is talking about a fictional society being, in theory, more "mature" than modern society, so I doubt any reasonable person is going to be too offended.

Having said that, I've often felt that the Federation is more than a little ethnocentric (or, if you well, "Federation-centric") in its thinking and evaluation of other cultures, and more than a little self-congratulatory about its supposedly greater levels of "social maturity" than its ancestors' so-called "primitive" societies.

 

[Christopher]

^Pretty much. I wasn't saying I considered any societies to be more "mature" than others. I was responding to Elemental's assertion that the use of profanity was inconsistent with a "more mature" society. I disagree that the fear of words is a sign of maturity. I don't think it's very mature to curse gratuitously, excessively, or with deliberate intent to shock or abuse others, but neither do I think it's mature or reasonable to suggest that profanities should -- or could -- be expunged from language altogether. Sometimes they have their uses. For instance, if there were no profanities, my ability to tell my computer or my printer how I felt about their performance would be severely constrained.

 

[Tara]

I haven't read many of the recent novels, but I have been re-reading many of my faves from the 1980s and 1990s--particularly Mike Ford, Annie Chrispin, Diane Duane, and others.

I've been on a Pike kick since seeing the new film, so I literally have read and re-read Vulcan's Glory a dozen times in the last six months, and one thing that really bothers me is that--out of all the First Officers in all the series, Number One gets seriously short shrift.

The only novels where she has a storyline, a personality, and meaningful examinations of her relationships with her CO, Boyce, Spock and Fontana's OFC Cait Barry are Vulcan's Glory, PAD's The Rift and Jerry Oltion's short story "Conflicting Natures" in Enterprise Logs. Thank God for IDW reprinting Early Voyages and commissioning Crew and Romulans: Schism. But fangirl cannot live on comics alone, you know?

Sometimes it just seems like, in all the Pike-centric other tie-ins, she's treated like a piece of furniture--like part of the helm console. Or is snarkily jealous of Colt and Spock, and snipes at them both. I know in the novels set after "The Menagerie" that Pike/Vina is canon, and so the authors have to pretty much drop the Pike/Number One romance subplot, I do. But even Jose Tyler gets more play, in terms of characterisation, in some of the novels. Majel's performance I thougth was full of nuance and potential and to see her portrayed as nothing more than a cold fish, erstaz-Vulcan, or downtight petty just bothers me.

(Also, you don't want to ask me about Timothea Rogers in A Flag Full of Stars as I read the original draft of the novel, and have massive issues with it).

I am STUPIDLY EXCITED for David Stern's The Children of Kings. Not just because he's the editor who commissioned Vulcan's Glory from DC Fontana, back in the 1980s. But he's been lovely on his Amazon author page, sharing details about the novel plot, and his take on the characters. I'm really looking forward to more Pike, Number One, and Boyce after a long hiatus. It's really making me excited for the April Pocket releases...

(and before anyone asks, I haven't read any of the New Frontier novels or comics with Morgan Primus, tho I did read the first multi-part story when the line was launched and it just really wasn't my cuppa. But from what I've read, it seems like, rather than Primus actually being Pike's XO, they can also be read just as Primus being another character "played" by Majel.)

 

[captcalhoun]

PRECISELY!

 

[Thestral]

I understand the difference between Latinate and Germanic words in the development of the English language and associated class connotations. But I've never, not ever, heard anything to indicate curse words as being derived from a "lower" class of words and that's what makes them curses. I was fishing for more information about that specifically.

As a rule, curse words are Anglo-Saxon in derivation. The f-word is Germanic, from the same root as the German word fokkein, meaning to penetrate or strike (as in the Fokker triplane flown by the Red Baron; it literally means the Striker, or perhaps the Piercer). It's considered obscene or at least vulgar, while the Latin equivalent "copulate" is considered technical. The s-word is of Germanic origin and is considered vulgar, while the Latin "excrement" or "feces" are considered technical. The "c-word" for the female genitalia is from Middle English and is considered extremely obscene, whereas Latin terms such as "vagina" or "vulva" are considered technical. What more do you need to know? The words mean exactly the same thing, but the ones from Germanic roots are considered dirty, emotive, and unspeakable while the ones from Latin roots are considered clean, scientific, and socially acceptable. I'd say that's pretty clear-cut.

Huh. Thanks, I'd never really thought about that. I'm just gonna leave the whole cursing argument alone though, since I know I'm outnumbered and overmatched on that one.

 

[Timo]

I have never in my life heard of this animal. Is it a rabbit, or its own species, or what?

Oh, sorry - I just meant that "cunny" or "cony" or "coney" is how they used to spell "bunny" (as in Oryctolagus cuniculus) until very recently, isn't it? In fact, I've heard it said that the spelling was changed specifically because cunny became too much of a dirty word. It just hasn't happened to "pussy" yet, but probably will.

Although at least Wikipedia seems to support the idea that "cunt" was there first, and "cunny/coney" came to mean the same thing because it sounded similar and thus was a nice wordplay for something attractive covered in hair.

Our "kani" for O. cuniculus isn't old Fenno-Ugric stuff at all, but a Germanic loan related to "kanin" and the English "cunny". I don't even know what the Fenno-Ugric version would have been - "kani" completely replaced it centuries ago already (although "hare" is still the old "jänis".) So, sorry about the confusion caused by bringing Finnish into this... Just a tangent.

Sometimes it just seems like, in all the Pike-centric other tie-ins, she's treated like a piece of furniture

Agreed mucho. I wonder if this is because the writers are afraid to do anything much with the character, believing that her main attribute is to be mystical?

I can't believe the mystery would have carried the character very far had she become a fixture of Star Trek after the pilot. Well into the first season, we'd probably have found out her first, middle and last names, her favorite color and half a dozen odd personal habits. But since she never made it past her first appearance, writers are left thinking that her name was supposed to remain a secret. Secret from whom? Didn't she tell Starfleet? That way lies silliness...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[BrotherBenny]

Maybe she's El-Aurian?

 

[Christopher]

Oh, sorry - I just meant that "cunny" or "cony" or "coney" is how they used to spell "bunny" (as in Oryctolagus cuniculus) until very recently, isn't it?

In the Lord of the Rings books, Sam referred to rabbits as coneys. When I read that, I had to look it up to find out what he was referring to.

In fact, I've heard it said that the spelling was changed specifically because cunny became too much of a dirty word. It just hasn't happened to "pussy" yet, but probably will.

According to one etymology I've read, the word "pussy" is originally derived from a word meaning "vulva," and its meaning of "soft" (as in "pussycat") came later. In fact, the etymology specified that the word meant "mare's vulva," but I don't want to think about the ramifications of that...