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Out-of-Placers
A story of inconvenient changes
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OOPs now has a Russian translation which updates shortly after the English pages are posted!
Now also in French:
And Ukranian:
From now on, when I don’t know the answer to a question, I’m going to flop down and splay out all my limbs.
This guy is actually holding up the right answer! Better lucky than good, I guess?
Doubly right. For a yinglet, which is the hand opposite their left hand? Both the right hand /and/ the right foo, as the foot can also be used to grip and counts as a hand.
I’m confused; did he ask that question specifically to mess with their brains so he didn’t have to deal with them?
It doesn’t make sense to me otherwise.
Checking for very basic education, which yinglets clearly have a hard time fitting into the, oh, month or three they start paying attention before they’re considered “adults.”
Education: absent. He’s got spirit tho!
This is the problem for yinglets. We’ve seen that they can be educated, but seldom are. In theory a yinglet-friendly curriculum could be devised, but the costs involved and political consequences would be a problem. It’s not out of the question for a well-off Baxxid to start such a program, but it’s not likely. The enclave appears to depend on an informal but seemingly well-defined education system that functions something like apprenticeships: The Patriarchs supervise work groups lead by adults, who in turn tutor the younglets who join them. It’s a good system for purely practical skills, which is most of what the enclave needs.
They could pass on the skill of Baxxidhelping in the same way, but first someone needs to teach one of the yinglets do do it. Then that yinglet can take on an apprentice.
Oh, THAT’S what he meant by “that hand thing”, I thought he was referring to swinging from his talon, like the kid just was. But it was just a really broken up sentence.
Yep, yep, I was having the same issue for a long while. Had to keep coming back to the comic to work it out.
I am zhinking dat dis Baxxid is about to find out why it is hard to employ doze who are homeless, regardless of de species. Zhough “Spots” did hold up bozh correct paws to answer de question. So perhaps a Baxxid wizh a utterly alien mindset can break zhrough de “Yinglet Zhoughts” zhat we all have as a disability to a degree and maybe educate doze zhat de enclave has mostly given up on.
Perhaps dere is hope for de outcasts in ValSallia wizh Kass and some VERY patient humans and Baxxid to assist some of de outcasts out of zheir lifestyle of poverty, theft, and debauchery. Or at least less of de three.
This is a perfect job for the homeless. The job is on-demand, and temporary. It needs minimal training and no equipment or fixed location. There’s no entry requirement at all, so the job is open to even the poorest of yinglets – with the caveat that the pay will be correspondingly tiny as well, perhaps no better than begging. Unlike begging though, it’s a job with the prospect of advancement: Those who demonstrate competence are more likely to be recognised in future, and one who gets a reputation as capable and dependable may even be hired for a long-term position.
But the debauchery is the best part!
This looks like literally the job that Kass was brought on for: integrate Yinglets into existing societal structures.
I bet the Baxxid would appreciate some discount helpers.
An issue with using many of the yinglets is that their lack of general knowledge and education – and poor memories and distractibility – would mean largely having to micromanage them. With a human, you can say “Hrrrrnnnn… Bring me the Local Guide headdress” and they’ll go grab it and put it on you. With a yinglet, they may get distracted by something shiny, bring you the wrong headdress, forget where the relevant headdress is, etc, so instead you’ve got to keep an eye on them, tell them exactly where to go, and exactly which headdress it is (“Hrrrnnnn… It is just left of center. No, the other left. No that’s the wrong way, you’re getting even further from it…). I also get the feeling it may not be terribly comfortable for baxxid to speak in human- and yinglet-audible frequencies rather than their native infrasonic ones.[
They’re not necessarily stupid though, and we’ve seen plenty of them keep up with complex tasks for a long time. Even the less disciplined ones could, theoretically, learn some basic skills like “grab those things, which are too fragile for me to grab, and put them in my bag” or “help me pull this headdress up so it’s not covering my mouth”.
Not stupid, but young – they mature faster than humans. An adult yinglet may well be less than ten years old – they lack life experience. Their short lifespan is a curse: By the time a yinglet has lived long enough to aquire the practical experiences of a typical human adult, that yinglet is entering the decline of their life. See Vizlet, or some of the patriarchs. They can match wits with a human easily – but they probably have only a few years left before senility sets in. That is why the Yinglet social structure gives automatic respect to their elders.
Give them another century of their eugenics program though, and that might change. More immediately, I expect some Baxxid would settle for an inexperienced assistant – most of the positions are unpaid volunteers anyway. Maybe once those yinglets have been assisting opportunistically on a regular basis for a few months they will grow practiced enough and earn enough trust from the Baxxid to be hired more formally on a regular basis.
Yes, I tend to agree. On the other hand, maybe the “average” yinglet is long dead, from reckless behavior, philosophy, or what you will, before he approaches Vizlet’s age? Maybe there’s a strong correlation between a yinglet’s intelligence and his longevity?