With my curiosity sated for now, let’s take a break to read some Worm.
Now, now, don’t worry, I know you all came here to read me prattle on about idiomatic etymology. We’ll be back to that before you know it, but for now, let’s do something else for a little while, okay?
So, because I’m guessing at least a couple of you are as curious about it as I am, here’s what I found about going south and west with a little quick research:
Wiktionary has this about going south, citing Christine Ammer’s The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms:
The origin is unclear. Common belief attributes it to the standard orientation of maps, where south is the downwards direction. Alternatively, it could stem from a euphemism used by some Native American for dying.
Norwegian Wiktionary didn’t have anything about going straight west. However, the Norwegian language council has this (translation mine):
“To go west” has in English long been used about dying (or breaking). The origin is probably the frightening thought of ending up where the sun sets (possibly far out at sea).
Some sources instead mention that it is criminal slang for ending up at an execution site in West Midlands in England. That is impossible for us to judge. The Wild West in America can at least be ruled out, as such an origin would be known in the Anglophone world.
The idiom supposedly spread wildly during the First World War. It probably came into Norwegian through sailor jargon. Tor Myklebost writes: “Seamen never say about their deceased mates that they’re ‘dead’. ‘He went west,’ they say.”
Straight west is a natural extension of west in Norwegian, and has long existed in its geographical sense.
Previously, the expression was often that something went north and down in Norwegian. Down in Denmark, projects rather go down and home, and in the east ((TN: Sweden)), to the woods or to hell, which of course also exists here. They can otherwise go in the sink, or worse. Things can further go ad undas ((TN: Latin, to the waves)), to the devil, in the dogs and to pieces – if it doesn’t simply bust. There might not be quite as many expressions for things going well.
One recurring thread in the Norwegian one is references to the sea. I have in the past suspected that it had to do with that, as the sea is to the west for most of Norway. But by the sound of it, the idiom originated outside Norway and spread here via sailors.
Also worth noting is that both the English and Norwegian etymologies appear to possibly have to do with death. It’s worth noting that in several mythologies, west is the direction to the underworld, so maybe some influence there might have been involved too.
And now that I’d fucked that up, I’d entrenched them. The status quo was now quickly becoming ‘not listening to the supervillain’, and it would be twice as hard to get them to go against the rest of the herd.
Damn. This is going south, and that’s where Taylor and the shockwave just came from, so we don’t want to go back that way right now.
…I wonder what made south the bad direction for something to go in English. In Norwegian, it’s west (something that is going badly “går rett vest”, “is going straight west”), and I similarly wonder what’s behind that.
Maybe it’s that south is down on maps these days? But why would the idea of bad things going downwards (notably, “going down” is a value-neutral phrase for something happening) be transplanted onto a map? And it’d need to be a fairly new development, since on older maps, down would… be… west. Huh. Maybe that is the origin and the difference is in when the speakers of each language adopted the idea?
I should probably just look this up. :p
Fuck me. My head wasn’t in the right place. I’d forgotten. I’d been taught in the first aid classes you had to be direct and specific when dealing with people in a crisis.
Ah, yes, that’s good advice specifically because of what I just said about stepping forward, and because of bystander syndrome (which itself is often a result about the other thing). “Someone help me!” isn’t going to be half as effective as “You there, help me!”.
Asking for help was begging for disappointment, because people would hesitate to step forward, or assume that someone else would handle the job. Instead of asking for help, we were supposed to single someone out of the crowd of bystanders and give them a clear, identifiable task.
Exactly.
Something along the lines of, ‘You in the red shirt, call nine-one-one!’
And yeah, that’s a bit better than the vague “help me” I used as my example, too. This way the person knows exactly what you want them to do and can start doing it immediately.
Using the bugs I’d spread around the area, I augmented my voice, allowing it to carry. “The most important thing is to remain calm.”
“Please do not attack me or each other in a panic- and grief-fueled rage.”
But yeah, if she can actually convince them of this, that would be good.
More people turned toward me. I stepped closer to the ambulances, where paramedics were working with some of the most critical cases. I felt like a charlatan, a pretender.
Because you’re not practicing what you preach?
The look of mixed fear and incredulity from the paramedics didn’t help. Still, someone had to take control and organize before people started lashing out, and the city’s heroes were apparently occupied elsewhere.
There is a lot to do around town right now, I’d imagine, and they’ve practically allowed you to take responsibility for this area, so they might be relying on you doing exactly this.
“I don’t intend you any harm,” I reassured them. “If you’re unhurt and able-bodied, there are people who need your help. Step forward so I can direct you to them.”
Ooh, good call.
Silence and stillness stretched on for long seconds. I could see people who had no visible injuries, who were staring at me, unwilling to respond to my appeal.
It’s like with the supply crates. It’s hard to be the first one to step forward, even if you want to, but once someone does, more will likely follow.
Generally speaking, the types of people who lived in the Docks weren’t the sort who were used to being neighborly, to putting society’s needs above their own.
Fair enough.
I told them I’d protect them, but there was no stopping this.
Yeah. That is true, but good luck telling them that.
I wasn’t on my game. My thoughts were on Dad and on Tattletale, not on these people and all the factors that I was supposed to take into account.
Yeeeah. The only thing Skitter actually did to protect these people from Shatterbird was call Charlotte, and she didn’t even take the time to ask where Charlotte was (though admittedly that might be because she was supposed to be here, unlike Sierra), so we can’t be sure that even helped these particular people.
She did do her best to protect the people she was capable of protecting on the way to her dad, though. That counts for something as far as I’m concerned.
But here’s a question: If Taylor hadn’t focused on her dad, would she have actually had a chance of making it to the territory in time to make a difference?
But I didn’t have a choice.
I gave the order, and my swarm spread out, flowing through the crowd. It was enough bugs to get people’s attention.
“Hi, there. Bug girl’s in the house.”
I just hoped the benefits of having the bugs there would outweigh any fear or discomfort the bugs generated.
Which benefits do you mean in particular? Intimidating would-be aggressors? Scoping out the crowd? Giving them the sense that you are present and intend to take care of the situation as best you can?
Regarding Leviathan being analogous to a tsunami:
It would’ve been quite appropriate if he’d sunk Honshu rather than Kyushu, or if the Fukushima disaster (which happened in March 2011, so before Worm even started but still topical by the time Leviathan was introduced) had taken place on Kyushu instead.
Honshu is quite a bit bigger and more populous than Kyushu and Newfoundland, though, so it’d paint his powers as even stronger than they already are. Maybe Kyushu was indeed mentioned because Wildbow wanted to reference the Fukushima disaster but found that Honshu was too big and important, and so went for a different island while still getting the reference through by hitting Japan.
But then again, even if he wasn’t specifically referencing that disaster, Japan is well known as a frequent target of tsunamis. Hell, it’s where we got the word from. So even without Fukushima, Japan as a target of the tsunami Endbringer is super appropriate.
I wonder if Hawaii and/or Iceland have been struck by Behemoth and New Orleans by the Simurgh.
Heads turned as I approached. I’d put my costume on again, and I had a swarm of bugs following in my wake, giving me more presence.
Yeah, that’s a head turner, alright. But I’m not sure they’re going to be very happy with Skitter. This is the sort of thing she was supposed to protect them from, and it just happened, so even if many of them would rightly conclude that this was not something she could’ve stopped, even those might still be too caught up in the heat of the trauma to think clearly, and many will take the scapegoat that’s conveniently walking down the street.
When people were this hurt and scared, it didn’t take much to tap into that primal part of their psyches and intimidate them just a little.
…true.
Oh, and another group of people who might take this out on Skitter: People who genuinely think she’s working with Shatterbird, or even that Skitter did this.
Surveying the scene, I could already tell there were going to be issues.
Hundreds, thousands of hurt people, many in critical or potentially critical shape, there were only two ambulances here, and the hospitals would be overcrowded.
Yeeah.
I wonder what Panacea is up to. I’m guessing once she realized what was going to happen or had just happened (it sounded like the Slaughterhouse Nine had trouble finding her, even with Cherish on board, so they may not have been able to warn her), she had to make a decision on whether to continue running from her problems or go back to the closest hospital and offer her services to help out in the crisis.
I don’t think she likes it (not that anyone should like what just happened), but I do think she’d go with the hospital option.
People were going to panic when they realized that they wouldn’t necessarily get help. They would get upset, even angry. This already unstable situation would descend into all-out chaos.
In terms of sheer destructive power, Shatterbird is just as analogous to a natural disaster as the Endbringers are (though the Endbringers are more specifically themed after them: tsunamis for Leviathan, volcanic eruptions for Behemoth, and probably hurricanes for the Simurgh). But unlike Leviathan, she’s also a terrorist. Both things are in play here.
But even without the glass, there was still sand.
Clearly what we need to defeat Shatterbird is a magical pink lion.
Anyway, I considered mentioning the sand in the intro post, but I decided “painted crystal red” was too poetic to sully with “and maybe a bit of white/yellow/brown from a sandstorm and the tannish brown of corpses, plus whatever colors are on their clothes and stuff…”
I stepped out of the way as a trio of people moved down the street, supporting each other as much as they were able. Each of them had been blasted by the sand, their skin left ragged.
Ouch.
It had turned a bruised combination of black brown and purple where it hadn’t been scraped off and left raw, red and openly bleeding. One looked as though he’d been blinded. The sandburns covered his upper face.
There’s a reason one particular tool we use to remove material so we can change the texture of a surface is called sandpaper.
Two ambulances had stopped at an intersection just a block away from where I had announced my claim of territory. At a glance, I could tell that they’d had all mirrors removed and all glass stripped from the dash, doors and windshield.
More of Coil’s people, unless the hospital took the same precautions at Sierra’s warning.
Those that had emerged from their homes and shelters were gravitating towards the ambulances. There was still dust settling on the streets, and I could taste it thick in the air, even through my mask.
It seems like Wildbow’s eyes had recently been opened to the possibilities in using the sense of taste when describing something. Only two chapters ago, we had Taylor tasting Lisa’s blood (…now that’s something that sounds a bit different out of context), and now this.
I wondered if we needed to be getting masks out to people. It couldn’t be healthy.
Probably wouldn’t hurt, at least. Unless of course the masks had an eye portion with glass lenses. That would be a bad idea.
I never thought I’d be thankful in any way that Leviathan had trashed my hometown.
Would it happen to be because he broke a lot of glass that Shatterbird could’ve used now?
Or maybe because the water is washing away the blood and glass shards?
Leviathan’s tidal waves had shattered many of the windows and the residents had put plywood, plastic and boards up in their wake. It meant there was less material for Shatterbird to use against us.
Got it in one. 🙂
Countless people had been spared from injury and death due to Shatterbird’s glass shards because Leviathan had gotten to us first.
In a way, Leviathan was less dangerous than Shatterbird, largely thanks to the shelters and forewarning system. Shatterbird also has much, much greater range for quickly killing tons of people, though Leviathan did have the sinkholes to try for.
Though I doubt Shatterbird could match Leviathan’s murders-per-day record of nine million. Although she might get close if she went to a city like Tokyo or New York (New York City alone doesn’t have enough people to hit nine million, but its population is almost twice as dense as central Tokyo). Then again, she might be limited to doing something on this scale only once in a while – a cooldown, if you will – which would drastically limit her kill per day ratio even in such cities.
By the way, it feels so weird to talk about cities with that many people. 9 million, 13 million, 38 million if you include the greater metropolitan area of Tokyo… And here we Norwegians are with 23 times as much
total land area as the Tokyo metropolitan area, 148 times as much as central Tokyo, 413 times as much as New York City – and 5.2 million people to fill it.
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