X-Men Unlimited #43: Cypher in the Cryptolect, Part 2

[superboyprime]

Comments

[shakalooloo]

"Why lie?"
Cypher does not understand the concept of telling kids they can hear the ocean in a sea shell. Okay...

[deh_tommy]

Doug doesn’t understand a lot of things, ironically enough. Like saying languages can be irreconcilably evil because of the individuals speaking them.

[alliterator]

"Like saying languages can be irreconcilably evil because of the individuals speaking them."

He never said that languages were "irreconcilably evil" because they could be twisted. He was just trying to find a way for one not to be used for evil. Jesus.

[lordultimus]

He literally said you can't reconcile a language that has been used for both good and evil and should be abandoned.

[alliterator]

That's not what "irreconcilably evil" means and you know it.

[lordultimus]

"can't reconcile evil"

"irreconcilably evil"

Nope, pretty sure that's what it means. It's literally in the word.

[sadoeuphemist]

"can't reconcile a language that has been used for both good and evil"

"irreconcilably evil"

These are not the same thing. "It's incomprehensible how it can be good some times and evil other times" is not the same thing as "it's incomprehensibly evil."

[deh_tommy]

Incomprehensible is not the same as irreconcilable.

What Doug said was, and I quote, “How do we reconcile the fact that the language of Shakespeare is also the language of the Salem witch trials? Or that the language of Goethe is also the language of the Holocaust? We can’t. We shouldn’t. Krakoan has to be different. It has to be a tongue without sin--one that can’t be twisted to an evil end.” Maybe irreconcilably evil was an oversimplification, but it’s still a really dumb and really clunky line of thought that pretty much exists solely to get shot down by the narrative.

[alliterator]

"irreconcilably evil" means it's 100% evil. What you just quoted was how he couldn't reconcile with the fact that the language was used for both beauty and evil.

[lordultimus]

He said that "irreconcilably evil" was an oversimplification.

[alliterator]

Yes and I was pointing out that it just didn't apply in this case.

A better phrase would have been "incompatibly used for both good and evil." Or perhaps "a language used in antithetical ways."

[alliterator]

"He literally said you can't reconcile a language that has been used for both good and evil and should be abandoned."

Boy, I wonder if "this language has been used for both good and evil and you can't reconcile those two things" and "this language is irreconcilably evil" are the same thing. Let me check.

No, no, it turns out "we cannot reconcile something that is simultaneously used for good and evil" is not the same thing as "this thing is totally evil."

[lordultimus]

"this language is irreconcilably evil"

"this thing is totally evil."

These are not the same thing. You changed it with something else.

[alliterator]

irreconcilably: in a way that makes it impossible to find agreement, or is impossible to deal with:
* They were irreconcilably hostile to each other.
* Here are two writers with irreconcilably different aims.

So, if something is "irreconcilably" evil, that means it is impossible find it in any way other than evil. You cannot reconcile good into something that is irreconcilably evil.

It's totally, 100% evil. It's irreconcilably evil.

[lordultimus]

That definition is the exact opposite of what you claim it to be. It does not say "something that cannot be found in any way other than this". It literally says "impossible to find agreement". At best, you could say "irreconcilably evil" means the other definition of "too evil to deal with", which doesn't necessarily mean "100% evil".

[alliterator]

"It does not say "something that cannot be found in any way other than this"."

...you realize that is literally what "impossible to find agreement" means, right? It means it is impossible to see it in any other way. If someone is "irreconcilably hostile" to you, they are 100% hostile to you, because they cannot reconcile not be hostile to you.

"irreconcilable" literally means "Unable to be reconciled; opposed; uncompromising." If someone is irreconcilable, they are 100% uncompromising in their belief -- an irreconcilable hate is a hate that cannot be reconciled, an irreconcilable evil is an evil that cannot be reconciled. If there is good in it, then it's not irreconcilably evil.

Believe me when I say that I know the English language and this is what the English language means when it says "irreconcilably evil."

[lordultimus]

Okay.

[icon_uk]

That's assuming he's asking because he doesn't understand, rather than to lead the conversation down a specific path by having Beak think about the concept further.

[icon_uk]

For some reason I really like that Doug is a very bad poet!

[numeronone]

Harpo Marx was famously never taught to play the harp - his parents merely handed him one at a certain age and told him to learn it so he could make a living (just as his other brothers learned guitar, piano, etc). Thus the techniques he used fell far out of the scope of typical harp-playing.

When he got famous he paid for proper harp tutors to refine his methods, and more often than not they would give up and watch, spellbound, as he showed them how he did it.

[icon_uk]

An old music teacher told me the story of the blind pianist who was so entranced by a new piece of music he heard that he taught himself to play it by ear and couldn't understad why people were so surprised he could play it himself, until he was informed that the piece he'd heard was a duet.

I suspect it's apocryphal, but I always liked it.

(On a much more mundane level, when I started work I PO'd the secretarial staff in the office I was in because I could touchtype and in many cases faster than they could, despite never being taught to type "properly". An unexpected benefit of being an early computer geek, though I had to admit I could type faster on a computer, but would likely not be nearly as good on a typewriter, which were still much in use at that point in the 80's)

[cainofdreaming]

Doug's very verbose for someone who has at least second degree burns in his gums. Augh!

[agharta75]

He must have a healing factor.

[cainofdreaming]

Healing factor, schmealing factor. Get me a morphine factor!

[dan_ingram]

With a weakness to bullets, apparently

[icon_uk]

A surprisingly large number of X-Men do, but it's not brought up as often, for some reason. ;)

Oh, and don't say that in front of Dani, she was ready to throw hands with Logan when he made the same comment, and that's when she DIDN'T have powers...

[icon_uk]

Warlock has been known to absorb some of Doug's pain in the past.

Or else Krakoa grows an analgesic fruit.

[deh_tommy]

Clunky framing aside, this was a nice story.

[blues32]

It's the adventures of Burnt Face Man!

[justsotired]

This is such a weird and awkwardly-staged high-concept idea. But it's a step up from Hickman's "my meta-mutant power is that I cannot be beaten in any contest, this is clever, I am so very clever" characters and his glut of cheap narrative tricks and empty intrigues that it feels like a breath of fresh air.

What, bitter? Me?

[justsotired]

Also how did Doug not lose his eyebrows or his hair...?

[icon_uk]

The Ramsey hairswoop is pretty close to being a mutant power all by itself, and it clearly extends to the eyebrows.

[justsotired]

Apparently his secondary mutation is that his hair's made out of asbestos, then!

[blues32]

Which I guess means that as a side effect, he gives people cancer. And possibly himself.