If someone (or something) could successfully eliminate a person’s desire to swear, they would still effectively be a swear filter, whether they actually know the swears or not.
Whimsy’s Crown subconsciously eliminated Nick’s desire to swear. Bubbe Z goes one further, and makes Nick consciously want to not swear.
As I once answered to *my* Jewish mother when she asked me in my 30s during a Mother’s day dinner, when she inquired when I was going to giver her grandchildren…
“Before or after I’m married?”
(…my father’s jaw hit the floor…)
“Well… Is she a nice girl?…”
(…Dad lost it, and bellowed out a laugh…)
He was born human so he might see his parents. If Bubbe Z raised him she might have had a hand in creating his personality. Ginny made him a helicopter so it could be her. Tigerlily clones his brain to make the human body of his so he might see her. For all we know the nightmare could have our favorite puppet wielding werewolf since they had him come to terms that he is not a human but a helicopter.
Aye, but all of the other characters had visions of their direct creators, so I wonder what the difference is here. Perhaps she had a greater formative influence on him than his parents did.
Perhaps it was never their maker but instead an early childhood influence? Dr Lee didn’t just build Unity but also seemed to be her primary influence for several years, and it’s implied that Leo’s creator took a similar approach.
…so does this blow a hole in the theory that these dreams are tied to Anasigma and the whole “find me the most vulnerable” sapients, thing? Because Nick is human.
How he self identifies would only ever matter if Anasigma is picking targets individually, rather than using some sort of blanket effect that targets non-humans.
Even then, it doesn’t matter so much how Nick self identifies – what matters is how Anasigma identifies him. If they’re picking targets individually, they wouldn’t pick him as a target if they consider him human. It doesn’t matter if he disagrees with their assessment – they’re the ones choosing targets, not him.
And if Anasigna ~IS~ using some sort of blanket effect that is somehow designed to not affect humans, Nick wouldn’t be affected regardless of how he self identifies, because he’s still physically and biologically human.
Context overwhelmingly suggests they meant non-human sapients, since Anasigma is speciest and xenophobic.
Regardless, it’s starting to seem that this current arc simply isn’t connected to Anasigma’s plans, whatever those may turn out to be. This is all playing out separately, while A-Sig works on whatever they’re doing in the background.
I agree with your assessment of the context, however I will suggest that what’s occurring with Nick is a result of over-saturation, since Zombies were, once upon a time, Human
But that’s a removable decal, so it doesn’t really count as a tattoo. I suppose you could call it one, but it’s like one of those temporary tattoos you used to get in a box of Cracker Jacks.
Tip: “Talk about hypocrisy, mixing fabrics like that!”
Z: “What? These are all 100% cotton!”
Tip: “But you’ve mixed short-staple and Egyptian! Blaphemy!”
Tattooing is a form of scarification, which is a biological process. By definition, you can’t tattoo an inorganic hull.
Tattooing is tattooing and decaling is decaling. They’re different processes.
You could decal your living skin if you want, but it still wouldn’t count as a tattoo anymore than taking a tattooing needle to a fuselage counts as decaling.
Tattooing is simply embedding permanent ink into the skin. It doesn’t actually scar the bearer, but it is permanent.
However, Leviticus forbids “writing marks” on yourself. Basically, any sort of desecration of the body. That could refer to the tattooing that was done by Egyptian women, and it also could refer to the Canaanite custom of burning or branding marks in the flesh, which is indeed scarification.
But yes, I believe you’re quite right. A removable decal doesn’t count as a tattoo. I think if he had painted it directly on the fuselage, making it permanent, then it would count as “writing marks”, although Nick would argue with you, because his fuselage wasn’t created by God. It was built by some dudes in Ridley, Pennsylvania.
By the same token that some dudes in Ridley, Pennsylvania “build” an aircraft fuselage, doesn’t a mother “build” her child? Yahweh isn’t reaching into her abdomen and spontaneously generating a child from nothing – we humans “build” other humans from biomass.
If an aircraft fuselage isn’t “created by Yahweh” because humans do the actual assembly, the same must be said of people themselves.
Or conversely, if people ARE “created by Yahweh” because he ostensibly created the universe and everything in it, then the same must be true of an aircraft fuselage, because the metals and other materials it is fashioned out of were ostensibly made by Yahweh.
It’s all totally arbitrary, to be fair. The only real value any of it has in in helping us communicate with clarity. Since we’re clearly drifting away from that and straying into navel gazing, I suppose we should let the matter drop and not worry about it too much.
Don’t look at me. I took Nick’s argument directly from Nick’s argument:
“Okay, listen, you,” I say, “’cause it’s time for Hebrew School. The Shakh suggests that tattooing is forbidden ’cause it’s a desecration of the perfect human body as HaShem created it.” I use Violet to give myself a good thump on the fuselage. “This here body ain’t from HaShem. It was built by some dudes in Ridley, Pennsylvania. I figure if HaShem was gonna create a perfect helicopter, He woulda made something a little less susceptible to vortex ring state.”
A rabbi’s argument would be that a V-22 wasn’t created in the image of God, and it is therefore not disrespecting God’s work to decorate it as one sees fit.
For some reason, I’m reminded of some of the issues discussed in “Wandering Stars,” an anthology of Jewish science fiction published in 1971. Can’t recall if tattooing came up, though.
Hmm, I was going to snark about Bubbe complaining about tattoos when her ears are pierced, but it turns out that those have different status under the halakha and the piercing thing might have been more specific to my family! (There’s a thing about ear-piercing being a sign of slavery, but piercing is mentioned at other points in the Torah, and tattooing is specifically forbidden in Leviticus.)
My mom too, but I figured that those earrings are a bit too big and hoopy to work as clip-ons from the “not falling off your ear” perspective. I could be wrong though!
I mean, think about half of what Yoda says, and picture him saying it in a stereotypical old Jewish man accent.
“Do, or do not. There is no try.”
“When nine hundred years old -you- reach, look as good you will not!”
“Adventure! Excitement! A Jedi craves not these things!”
“Judge me by my size, do you?”
“Great warrior? *laughs* Wars not make one great!”
“Away put your weapon! I mean you no harm!”
[I don’t belive it!] “That is why you fail!”
[I am not afraid!] “You will be! You… will be!”
“Ready are you? What know you of ready?”
“Mudhole?! Slimy?! My home this is!”
I kind of want to see someone redub his lines, but with Yiddish tossed in liberally. “You want I should teach him? The boy has no patience! He’s mshuge with the anger and such – just like his father!”
Also also…she’s Bubbe “Z.” Presumably short for “Zerhakker,” meaning this woman is Nick’s father’s mother. That also means Nick has another Bubbe out there, somewhere…
I don’t know how firmly established it is, but when we first met them, Dr. Lee said Nick has no living family or friends (see the link s854 posted above).
At last we meet his swear filter.
Let’s face it… That’s pretty much anyone’s swear filter.
You never met my grandmothers.
Airman Higgs’ expression in your icon perfect for your comment.
It really is.
No, but I have met a few who could probably make Nick blush. That’s why I qualified it as “pretty much” anyone.
How else could you be a swear filter if you don’t know the swears?
If someone (or something) could successfully eliminate a person’s desire to swear, they would still effectively be a swear filter, whether they actually know the swears or not.
Whimsy’s Crown subconsciously eliminated Nick’s desire to swear. Bubbe Z goes one further, and makes Nick consciously want to not swear.
But we already knew he spoke Yiddish
Which is relevant how? The point is that he can’t swear in front of his grandmother.
“Look, you want *great*-grandkids or not, Bubbe Z?”
As I once answered to *my* Jewish mother when she asked me in my 30s during a Mother’s day dinner, when she inquired when I was going to giver her grandchildren…
“Before or after I’m married?”
(…my father’s jaw hit the floor…)
“Well… Is she a nice girl?…”
(…Dad lost it, and bellowed out a laugh…)
Anybody wanna bet at the end of this nightmare, Bubbe Z says “I’m coming for you.”
Naah, she says “I’m coming for HER” 😛
No… That’s what Nick says. 😉
Up till now it’s been the creators who’ve said that—I think Bubbe Z is a generation removed from that.
I may end up being wrong, but I’m going to bank on this not being a nightmare. 🙂
Nick meets his maker and it’s surprisingly not Ginny?
Of you want to get technical, Bubbe would have started his immediate family line, and therefore could be considered his “maker”.
He was born human so he might see his parents. If Bubbe Z raised him she might have had a hand in creating his personality. Ginny made him a helicopter so it could be her. Tigerlily clones his brain to make the human body of his so he might see her. For all we know the nightmare could have our favorite puppet wielding werewolf since they had him come to terms that he is not a human but a helicopter.
She can’t be his maker, unless something Oedipal is going on…
Well, indirectly she is, since she’s his maker’s maker.
Aye, but all of the other characters had visions of their direct creators, so I wonder what the difference is here. Perhaps she had a greater formative influence on him than his parents did.
Perhaps it was never their maker but instead an early childhood influence? Dr Lee didn’t just build Unity but also seemed to be her primary influence for several years, and it’s implied that Leo’s creator took a similar approach.
Didn’t that happen with Artie and the intelligent hamsters back in “Narbonic?”
Being an only child runs in his family, then.
Not necessarily. He’s her only grandSON; she may very well have daughters and granddaughters.
TheYsabet: She may “have had” granddaughters. It was stated early on that Nick had no living relations. http://skin-horse.com/comic/being-a-man-either/
Whups, forgot that; thanks.
I wonder if this is an INT or WIS saving throw, and if I could have given either answer without provoking a counterargument.
She’s a Jewish grandmother. There is no answer that doesn’t provoke a counterargument.
Wait till she finds out that he *used* to be circumcised…
A kind DM would say “Either!” . A harsh DM would say “Both!” .
…so does this blow a hole in the theory that these dreams are tied to Anasigma and the whole “find me the most vulnerable” sapients, thing? Because Nick is human.
But he said internally he identifies as a helicopter. Granted now he’s a helicopter with a copy of his old meat sack attached.
How he self identifies would only ever matter if Anasigma is picking targets individually, rather than using some sort of blanket effect that targets non-humans.
Even then, it doesn’t matter so much how Nick self identifies – what matters is how Anasigma identifies him. If they’re picking targets individually, they wouldn’t pick him as a target if they consider him human. It doesn’t matter if he disagrees with their assessment – they’re the ones choosing targets, not him.
And if Anasigna ~IS~ using some sort of blanket effect that is somehow designed to not affect humans, Nick wouldn’t be affected regardless of how he self identifies, because he’s still physically and biologically human.
With some upgrades from Dr. Tigerlily Jones and tech in his head from Dr. Ginny Lee.
Interesting. So now the question might be is Anasigma looking for the most vulnerable species, or the most vulnerable individuals among the sapients?
Context overwhelmingly suggests they meant non-human sapients, since Anasigma is speciest and xenophobic.
Regardless, it’s starting to seem that this current arc simply isn’t connected to Anasigma’s plans, whatever those may turn out to be. This is all playing out separately, while A-Sig works on whatever they’re doing in the background.
I agree with your assessment of the context, however I will suggest that what’s occurring with Nick is a result of over-saturation, since Zombies were, once upon a time, Human
hi, ira.
I mean, Nick does have some nose art…
But that’s a removable decal, so it doesn’t really count as a tattoo. I suppose you could call it one, but it’s like one of those temporary tattoos you used to get in a box of Cracker Jacks.
“Sure, right after you explain those pants, Bubbe.” This is where Nick needs Tip for backup.
Tip: “Talk about hypocrisy, mixing fabrics like that!”
Z: “What? These are all 100% cotton!”
Tip: “But you’ve mixed short-staple and Egyptian! Blaphemy!”
This brings up an interesting question. Would new hull decals count as tattoos?
Which then leads to the secondary question of are there Jewish airplane graveyards?
Just the regular airplane graveyard but with Jewish symbology disguised in the decoration of those planes’ markers.
Tattooing is a form of scarification, which is a biological process. By definition, you can’t tattoo an inorganic hull.
Tattooing is tattooing and decaling is decaling. They’re different processes.
You could decal your living skin if you want, but it still wouldn’t count as a tattoo anymore than taking a tattooing needle to a fuselage counts as decaling.
I wonder if there were any formal theological discussions about this before the mass reality blindness kicked in.
Tattooing is simply embedding permanent ink into the skin. It doesn’t actually scar the bearer, but it is permanent.
However, Leviticus forbids “writing marks” on yourself. Basically, any sort of desecration of the body. That could refer to the tattooing that was done by Egyptian women, and it also could refer to the Canaanite custom of burning or branding marks in the flesh, which is indeed scarification.
But yes, I believe you’re quite right. A removable decal doesn’t count as a tattoo. I think if he had painted it directly on the fuselage, making it permanent, then it would count as “writing marks”, although Nick would argue with you, because his fuselage wasn’t created by God. It was built by some dudes in Ridley, Pennsylvania.
That’s a curious distinction to draw, no?
By the same token that some dudes in Ridley, Pennsylvania “build” an aircraft fuselage, doesn’t a mother “build” her child? Yahweh isn’t reaching into her abdomen and spontaneously generating a child from nothing – we humans “build” other humans from biomass.
If an aircraft fuselage isn’t “created by Yahweh” because humans do the actual assembly, the same must be said of people themselves.
Or conversely, if people ARE “created by Yahweh” because he ostensibly created the universe and everything in it, then the same must be true of an aircraft fuselage, because the metals and other materials it is fashioned out of were ostensibly made by Yahweh.
It’s all totally arbitrary, to be fair. The only real value any of it has in in helping us communicate with clarity. Since we’re clearly drifting away from that and straying into navel gazing, I suppose we should let the matter drop and not worry about it too much.
Don’t look at me. I took Nick’s argument directly from Nick’s argument:
“Okay, listen, you,” I say, “’cause it’s time for Hebrew School. The Shakh suggests that tattooing is forbidden ’cause it’s a desecration of the perfect human body as HaShem created it.” I use Violet to give myself a good thump on the fuselage. “This here body ain’t from HaShem. It was built by some dudes in Ridley, Pennsylvania. I figure if HaShem was gonna create a perfect helicopter, He woulda made something a little less susceptible to vortex ring state.”
A rabbi’s argument would be that a V-22 wasn’t created in the image of God, and it is therefore not disrespecting God’s work to decorate it as one sees fit.
For some reason, I’m reminded of some of the issues discussed in “Wandering Stars,” an anthology of Jewish science fiction published in 1971. Can’t recall if tattooing came up, though.
Hmm, I was going to snark about Bubbe complaining about tattoos when her ears are pierced, but it turns out that those have different status under the halakha and the piercing thing might have been more specific to my family! (There’s a thing about ear-piercing being a sign of slavery, but piercing is mentioned at other points in the Torah, and tattooing is specifically forbidden in Leviticus.)
Someone Bubbe Z’s age might have one tattoo, but it’s not exactly something one might bring up in polite conversation.
She also might eat shrimp and wear mixed fabrics, but never in front of a rabbi so why make a fuss about it? *snicker*
“Rabbi, why are you eating oysters today of all days?”
“What, there’s no R in Yom Kippur?”
Pretty sure tattoos received against your will don’t count.
I think that was the rabbinical ruling.
Yes, that’s Talmudic and goes back well before the Holocaust: https://www.sefaria.org/Shulchan_Arukh%2C_Yoreh_De'ah.180?lang=bi
Oh, I hadn’t even thought about that angle. Hrm.
How do you know her ears are pierced? Many people without pierced ears (such as my mother) wear clip-on earrings.
My mom too, but I figured that those earrings are a bit too big and hoopy to work as clip-ons from the “not falling off your ear” perspective. I could be wrong though!
Oy, do I know these people! I believe that would have more correctly been “A tattoo you might as well get!”
“A tattoo you might as well get”? Like Yoda you are sounding! Nothing wrong with that is there, of course.
So would that mean that Yoda was the ‘Star Wars’ equivalent of an old Jewish man? Vey oy…
Nah, if that was the case, then I’m sure Mel Brooks would have played the Yoda-type role in Spaceballs.
I mean, think about half of what Yoda says, and picture him saying it in a stereotypical old Jewish man accent.
“Do, or do not. There is no try.”
“When nine hundred years old -you- reach, look as good you will not!”
“Adventure! Excitement! A Jedi craves not these things!”
“Judge me by my size, do you?”
“Great warrior? *laughs* Wars not make one great!”
“Away put your weapon! I mean you no harm!”
[I don’t belive it!] “That is why you fail!”
[I am not afraid!] “You will be! You… will be!”
“Ready are you? What know you of ready?”
“Mudhole?! Slimy?! My home this is!”
I kind of want to see someone redub his lines, but with Yiddish tossed in liberally. “You want I should teach him? The boy has no patience! He’s mshuge with the anger and such – just like his father!”
Also also…she’s Bubbe “Z.” Presumably short for “Zerhakker,” meaning this woman is Nick’s father’s mother. That also means Nick has another Bubbe out there, somewhere…
Well… yeah. Everyone has at least two grandmothers.
But since Nick has no living relatives, his other Bubbe – as well as this one – can only be seen in his dreams.
Is that firmly established? His parents are dead and he’s an only child. But maybe others? So far this could be Nick’s real life and not a nightmare…
Besides, I thought Nick and Ira might be related…they both act in similar ways…
I don’t know how firmly established it is, but when we first met them, Dr. Lee said Nick has no living family or friends (see the link s854 posted above).