Unicorn Jelly on T.V. Tropes

[Relee]

It's between Dresden Codak and Dreamwalk Journal. Apparently it's not alphabetical.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... csExamples

[strange_person]

Odd use of the spoiler tags.

[InterNutter]

Judging by the folderol, I'd say these people can't handle a decent fantasy.

[Nick]

"These people?" It's a wiki. It's edited by tons of people. You can edit it too, if you don't like it.

That page is for pointing out stories with elements you'd have to preface with "I am not making this up" if you were explaining it to a random person on the street. If I showed a person the first few pages of Unicorn Jelly, I'd certainly say "I am not making this up" while explaining some of the later pages.

I looked around TVTropes, and there are a handful of other references to Jennifer's works.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... yWebcomics

Unicorn Jelly: A scifi-fantasy comic strip. It is completed. Starts out cute, but gets a little dark. Okay, it becomes extremely dark and creepy. If there is an atrocity a main character hasn't done, I can't think of it.

If by main character she meant Chou, then yes Chou did commit a number of atrocities - mostly related to the kaymakers and what she did with them. Still some hyperbole there though.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... iWebcomics

Unicorn Jelly: A scifi-fantasy comic strip. Starts out cute, but gets a little dark. Okay, extremely dark and creepy. Includes a well-thought-out alternate cosmology that goes down to the molecular level. Finished.

I wouldn't say extremely, and such a short comment can't do UnicornJelly justice, but otherwise accurate.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... rWebcomics

Pastel Defender Heliotrope: Very strange, very philosophical story from Jennifer Reitz, perhaps better known as the creator of the earlier Unicorn Jelly. Recurring themes of both include questions about the nature of gender and identity, and what it means to be human. One of the recurring villainous organizations is the Roman Catholic Church -- specifically, the Inquisition -- with the serial numbers filed off, which may or may not leave a bad taste in the reader's mouth.

I don't recall any questions of gender identity in PDH, but maybe who ever wrote that got gender identity confused with sexuality (a common mistake). Or maybe I have swiss cheese for brains. Other than that it's pretty accurate.

[strange_person]

I think they meant "questions about the nature of gender and the nature of identity." Certainly, this one contains both.

[Nick]

I have to kind of turn my brain sideways to see any questions about gender there.

[strange_person]

Heliotrope is physiologically gender-neutral (plastic) but has a female personality and female-shaped frame. Chartreuse is completely female, and has just finished attempting to kill herself because of a larger societal attitude that women exist for the pleasure of men, a situation which she is having some difficulty explaining to Heliotrope. Doesn't seem like too much of a brain-twist to me.

[Yubi Shines]

She's also in the Crystal Dragon Jesus entry. That's the only one I've run across personally, at any rate.

[meatwhichdreams]

I've been running across references to Jennifer's works in the soul-sucking stupendous time-slurperTV Tropes, but I had seen some of these...which are surprisingly apt! I have noticed that when she is referenced in the religious trope pages - like Crystal Dragon Jesus for instance - the poster seems rather annoyed by the "obviousness" of the target of the Church.

Jennifer Diane Reitz is known to have an antipathy toward religion. Her strip Pastel Defender Heliotrope has a monolithic Corrupt Church which is keen on the oppression and persecution of virtuous sexual minorities, such as the protagonists, and which worships an entity known as -- wait for it -- Godan. It is then debunked repeatedly. Come on, girl, put some effort into it.

Well, I can understand their argument, but I think they are either purposely overlooking/not familiar with the background of the Godan Church, which is....the Christian Church. It's supposed to be eerily similar. And I think someone like Jennifer who's been mercilessly tormented by the Church's "love and forgiveness" deserves a chance or to to sharply stab at its overinflated ego with a pointed stick.

The God-Godan thing was a bit of a lucky coincidence for them, though, huh? Reminds me a bit of Waiting For Godot. After Beckett got fed up with people telling how clever his play was and how they'd figured out that God=Godot, he said "If I had meant that he was God, I would have named him God!"

Odd use of the spoiler tags.

So glad they cleared up that question for the rest of us though. I couldn't sleep at night not knowing.

[strange_person]

So glad they cleared up that question for the rest of us though. I couldn't sleep at night not knowing.

Petey had the very same problem. It killed most of him, but then things got interesting.

[Jennifer Diane Reitz]

Waiting For Godot is my favorite play in all the world. That is why an entire chapter of Unicorn Jelly is basically a twisted retelling of a section of the play.

[meatwhichdreams]

I've only just very recently studied Godot and found it to be fascinating, and I am utterly sure my molecular structure would totally break down in a shiver of pure geeky awesomeness rereading sections of your already incredibly fascinating story with that influence in mind.

But, uh.....

....forgive me if I'm being impossibly dense, but could you pretty please point me to the chapter in question?

I can think of plotlines that could be considered in that light, and just the thought of going back and reading them all makes me so so so exited and I, er, don't really have time to go back and reread the entire story tonight. Which is what I would have to do now, you understand.

Actually, that's not a half bad idea...~wanders off towards archives~

[strange_person]

The one where two characters are sitting in the sand, next to this crappy little tree, waiting for their savior to show up (as they have apparently been doing every day for quite some time) and an angry dude shows up with 'lucky' on a leash and they all gripe about how good stuff just stops happening for no obvious reason, and then Lucky freaks out, the angry dude leaves, the sun sets and they go back to whatever it is they do.

[meatwhichdreams]

The one where two characters are sitting in the sand, next to this crappy little tree, waiting for their savior to show up (as they have apparently been doing every day for quite some time) and an angry dude shows up with 'lucky' on a leash and they all gripe about how good stuff just stops happening for no obvious reason, and then Lucky freaks out, the angry dude leaves, the sun sets and they go back to whatever it is they do.

Oh.....oh COOL. Oh man of COURSE.


~smacks forehead~

[Ejia]

UJ also appears on the Unusual Euphemism page, mentioning farg and talcryl. Someone should put in the origin of this iteration of the word farg - the incident with the Fargnaxians, IIRC. I'd do it, but I can't remember whether the story was on the old forums, or on one of UJ's bonus pages. Then again, I may have just imagined the whole thing...

[Alikat]

I am guessing that "fargnax" translates loosely into "fucknax." Who knows, maybe I have the talent of Universal Translation, why not?

[strange_person]

Alikat is incorrect.

[Ashes]

I am guessing that "fargnax" translates loosely into "fucknax." Who knows, maybe I have the talent of Universal Translation, why not?

The Fargnax were a race of peaceful pastoral creatures from a distant planet. They fed on the unborn fetuses of a heard animal they raised, by sticking a proboscis into the uterus. A miscomunication between a pregnant human diplomat and a Fargnaxian diplomat led to a tragic loss, an epic war, and the phrase "Fargnaxian fetus eater!" In time the phrase was whittled down to just "farg."

(IIRC)

[Alikat]

Alikat is incorrect.

I know all of those words, but they just don't make any sense in a sentence together like that!

[Ashes]

I found the full story with a quick Google search. Of all places, it turned up on Portal Of Evil.

Alright, Alright, I will tell the story of 'Farg'!

You are correct, I use 'farg' in the same way that 'frell' is used in Farscape...the creation of an alien language swear word is a very, very old tradition in Science Fiction, you know. Back during the fifities and sixties, author Zenna Henderson used to have her alien 'The People' use "Adonday Veeyah!" as a swear word, heck...in more modern times, programs like 'Alien Nation' had the Tenctonese 'Nk'Syks', Star Trek has the Klingon "Ptakh!" and...well...it is a very old tradition...and a tool, too.

A culture is defined as much by its swear words as by any other cultural artifact. Perhaps even greatly so, because what is forbidden, or nasty, tells us instantly something of the values of a given culture!

However, 'Farg' is actually a private, inside 'gag'. I could have used any word in it's place in Unicorn Jelly. It is not important to the story in itself, other than it suggests that the Gryrnese have a different, non-earthly sense of what is good and what is bad, or forbidden. Which is important because the reader must realize that the people in Unicorn Jelly have their own, unique rules and beliefs, ones that are not always expected.

So where did my placeholder word 'Farg' really come from, and what did it mean originally?

For that, we must go back to my days as a Dungeon Master, and the campaigns I ran in my own universes. One of these universes was the Gorbald Universe, a median-entropy, Mundis-like pocket universe that featured galaxies of about 100 stars, and about 50 galaxies in the entire cosmos. It was a 'recycler' style cosmos...big black hole at one 'end' that sucked in matter, and a big white hole at the other 'end' to spew out that very same matter to form new stars and galaxies. It had all kinds of details, and I have a set of handmade books that list those details, for virtually every planet in the universe. I had a lot of time back then, and I was much sharper than I am now.

Anyway, one of the many worlds in the Gorbald cosmos (which was my standard game cosmos at the time) was a little planet (all the planets were little, by that I mean about 4000 mile diameters) called 'Fargnax' which circled the stars Nexalibur, Chrysthinimee, and Velderfar. The Fargnax system was only a short jaunt from one of my most poetic inventions, 'Balocampaspe' the World Of Forgotten Dreams. Goddess, that was a cool place. Anyway, I digress...

Fargnax was home to the Fargnaxians, the Kfyll, who were a purplish biped about seven feet tall. They had dolphin-like heads on a vaguely reptillian body, six fingers arranged like a Venus-Fly Trap on each arm, writhing tendrils where eyes would normally be (these could percieve electrochemical variations in their surroundings, including moods and even distance) and a set of five eyestalks at the top of their elongated skulls that could sense four-dimensional space.

The Kfyll were super-intelligent artisans who built hyperdimensionally folded houses, and they were kind, generous, wise, and utterly without guile. Lawfull Good. Nice folks, if a bit alien on the whole.

They had one thing about them that upset my human cultures in the Gorbald universe though: how they ate.

The Kfyll raised sheep-sized animals called Glicks. A Glick looks like a bright red mass of squirming sea-anemone tenticles all wrapped up into a ball...their body is hidden inside the tendrils...and the only things that peek out of the mass of tendrils are two big floppy ears, five eyes, and a long, twin-tubed elephant-trunk with which they feed.

Now the Fargnaxian Kfyll who breed the Glicks have these dolphin-like faces, only with the 'beak' or 'snout' ending in a long, flexable trunk as well... all animal life on Fargnax follows a similar morphology, as you can imagine...its only logical.

This trunk is used to feed...on Glick fetuses. The Kfyll use their snouts to root about inside pregnant Glicks and gobble their unborn fetuses. This is how they feed, and it is natural to them. It does not harm the rapidly reproducing Glicks at all, and makes for a pretty bloodless way to get meat.

However, at the first human-Kfyll confederation banquet, there was an unfortunate incident of culture clash involving the pregnant wife of a human diplomat and the Kfyll ambassador, and well.... the Kfyll were never admitted to the local version of the 'Federation' in the Gorbald universe. Ever. Their planet was listed as forbidden, and the word 'Fargnax' became one of the worst epithets known. Dirty rotten Fargnaxian Fetus Eater. They could Detect Fetus By Smell, as a basic ability, you know.

Which is all a shame, because the Kfyll had long ago figured out the solution to issues like immortality and the elimination of all disease, as well as multiversal travel and how to achieve lasting peace and so forth.

Fargnax was oft abbriviated to simply 'farg', and so it was in my games, in my worlds, in my campaigns for many years.

In doing Unicorn Jelly, I knew I needed a proper, common swear word for folks to use. It would be too cliche to just have everyone say 'shit' or 'damn; or whatever all the time...a unique word can express so much, give such a feeling of otherworldliness. I remembered the poor Fargnaxians and their Glick herds, and the word that came from them. I remembered how much fun those old games were that I once ran....

So...since some word had to be used...I used 'Farg'. Happy memories for me every time any character swears.

That is the story of the word 'Farg', and where it comes from.