Post #1181552

2026-04-16 04:37 UTC

One last reveal: the woman walking around and introducing herself as "Merrow" wasn't the digital pet in humanoid form, she was Geordie in femme mode. What tipped D off was, all of Geordie's tropical fish were the kind that can change sex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequential_hermaphroditism The specific thing D says: TP: They're all what you would call...transsexuals. SS: They're all hermaphroditic. So, okay, D would certainly *know* the scientifically-accurate term. Fish that can switch from one sex to the other are "sequential hermaphrodites." At the same time, it's true that Leon would definitely just *call* them "transsexual fish"! (Or y'know, something ruder. But if he was trying to use a non-offensive term, this would've been the standard in the '90s.) On the one hand, I get the value of being precise, here. On the other, I like D making the explicit connection to the human trans community. Geordie/Merrow identified with these fish because ze was trans (possibly bigender), not because ze was a hermaphrodite (which is not a thing in *human* biology, and D would know that, too).

Replies (1)

@ErinPtah@universeodon.com 2026-04-16 05:02

Weirdly, the second-to-last page of the chapter is almost totally different between translations. I'm not typing all of it, but the TP version starts with D asking "Do you think it's possible for a fish to cry?", and then getting poetic about the connection between Geordie and Merrow-the-fish. It's a callback to an earlier scene where Geordie was crying, so Merrow asked what tears were. And it leads neatly into the last page, a sweet moment between the couple. (The implication I get is, this is their reconnection in Silicon Heaven.) SS starts with D saying "Perhaps he became a woman in both body and spirit," and then getting poetic about how computers only think in binary, but humans don't have to. It's a sweet sentiment in general...but it feels disconnected from the plot. It's not a callback to any earlier scenes of Merrow-the-chatbot struggling to understand/accept Geordie for being nonbinary. Or struggling to process "being two things at once" in any other context. SS also gives Leon a side comment about knowing that intersex people exist. *Do* you know that, cis perisex man from the 1990s Leon Orcot?? I am not sure that you do!

Open ##1181551