I don't actually know, but I'd be very surprised if the deeply misogynist Ferengi weren't given that verbal quirk to make fun of human misogynists that predated TNG.
Possibly. Amusing, the name 'Ferengi' is based on the Persian word for 'European'. Also: Oh god. The laser whips. The jumping. It was so bad.
Interesting point made by Satireknight: it's a weird combo of powers to have a super-empath who is violent at the drop of a hat.
Screamingly obvious plothole; villain's plucky teenage son finds the secret dungeon wing of the manor where daddy is keeping kidnapped women. He promises to help them, and then goes off and enacts an elaborate two-year scheme to get a gun and kill his father, leaving the women there all that time, despite the fact that he obviously had a way to get in and out of the dungeon wing and could easily have brought them with him or fetched the keys. Argh!
Was passing an ad for a comic where the main lead was named Zhang Xiao I don't know chinese but that kinds looks like one of those "last name-last name" names, can anyone clarify?
I’m not certain at all, but as anecdata, I do know Xiaoxiao is a Chinese given name (there was a girl named that at my elementary school), so Xiao as a given name sounds plausible to me—but again, I know next to nothing about Chinese language or naming myself, so def wait for a response for someone who does.
I know next to nothing, but Zhang is one of the example surnames used in Duolingo, so I'd guess it's quite common. I did find some pronunciation videos from Ohio State University? Both of these seem to be in the top ten most common surname/given name lists. The channel says there is more than one tonal pronunciation for some of these, but only one is demonstrated for clarity. Doesn't say which dialect, but as this seems like intro course material, I'd guess Mandarin. Xiao as a given name, sounds like xiāo, the high tone, to me, but I'm not super reliable: Here's Zhang as a surname, sounds like Zhāng to me probably:
I've seen Xiao as a surname before, maybe they misspelled Zhao. Or it can be used as a given or surname.
Given Chinese doesn't really have 'spelling' and there are quite a few romanization systems, it's possibly a difference in opinion. Behind the Name claims Xiao is a place and used as a geonymic.
There are so many results for googling Xiao Zhang, a great many where it's clear very quickly that Xiao is the person's given name, that it's overwhelming. Zhang Xiao gives way fewer results, but there are still people, including 1700+ LinkedIn profiles for professionals with that name, reportedly. I'm getting the feeling that it's frequently written given name first when it's romanized. It doesn't seem like an unusual name as far as I can tell?
Three cheers for characters who are supposed to be paragons of good who intentionally collapse mine tunnels on top of already-helpless opponents.
Possibly the creepiest book I've ever heard of. Ick. TW for abduction, rape, mass murder, and rampant misogyny, all of which is completely ignored by the author to go into raptures about how pretty the dresses are. At least in 50 Shades and its ilk the abduction/stalking/etc is generally not a systemic problem for every woman.
Apart from the misogyny, the book also features multiple head-high snowfalls in Florida, with no acknowledgement of climate change or anything.
This book should be horribly offensive with its bizarre handling of the abortion debate, but it's so nonsensical it becomes hilarious. The basic conceit is that pro-life and pro-choice sides ""compromise"" by making it law that life is inviolable from conception to age thirteen but after that parents can choose to have their kid killed and their organs donated, which, erm, yeah. Sporker's comment: "Maybe I should write a story where there’s a war between people who think you should only get medical care if you can afford it and people who think everyone should have it, and the “compromise” is that no one gets medical care!"
It's a pretty good book, though I haven't read the sequels, about in line with the other slightly nonsensical YA dystopias of its time. In practice it's a rather grim look at the practice of eugenics through a SFF veneer.
Honestly I think it would have worked better with the writer not tying it into the pro-life/pro-choice debate at the beginning. Killing teenagers for organ donation doesn't really have anything to do with that, so it kind of comes off like the author thinks pro-choice people actually want to murder kids for the heck of it.
But the point of that is that it's an absurdist, horrific compromise for the pro-life people. You know how everyone makes those memes about Republicans going "every life is sacred until the baby pops out poor or a minority"? That is exactly the position it is taking aim at.
My impression of the book was that it was taking aim at the people who treat children as burdens and investments that one can abandon or recoup their 'loss' on as soon as it becomes inconvenient - note how many kids get unwound for stuff like having behavioral issues. I admit when you're hearing about the book it's very very easy to see it as a horrifically offensive pro-life tract, but that isn't actually the position it takes.
Like, the sad fact of the matter is there are entire industries of 'reform schools' in the USA set up specifically to send inconvenient children that don't conform well enough to their families, and the practice of 'rehoming' adopted children without oversight is overwhelmingly an evangelical, right-wing one, although I wouldn't go so far as to say nobody outside their categories treats children as property to that same extent, just that white, right-wing evangelical christianity encourages people to adopt minority children from what they see as undercivilized countries but also doesn't provide resources or support to deal with actually raising children that might not conform to their ideals.
