"We try to blend in," Lea said, giving a bit of a shrug. "But it's not easy. There's a lot of seemingly insignificant stuff that we're unaware of that people can pick up on if we're not careful."
Idioms, common sayings, well-known bits of history, even any knowledge of the pop culture of the past thirty years that had seeped into the consciousness of the natives, much of it was lost on them. Organization XIII had been different. They hadn't tried to mingle with the people of the worlds they'd visited. Here, they had to survive in amongst the natives, and even not knowing some famous single that came out ten years ago and took the world by storm set them apart from everyone else.
"And that's not taking into account that we fight differently to everyone else," he said.
Being here was like learning another language. Even if you learned all the formal stuff, there was so much slang and casual nonsense that you'd struggle to blend in even if you attained technical fluency. The unspoken was easier, but not perfect. It almost the same, but not quite. A jerk of the head could as easily be an invitation to settle your differences outside as a request to repeat something you had said. It was getting easier, but it was by no means perfect.
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Date: 2015-12-17 05:26 pm (UTC)Idioms, common sayings, well-known bits of history, even any knowledge of the pop culture of the past thirty years that had seeped into the consciousness of the natives, much of it was lost on them. Organization XIII had been different. They hadn't tried to mingle with the people of the worlds they'd visited. Here, they had to survive in amongst the natives, and even not knowing some famous single that came out ten years ago and took the world by storm set them apart from everyone else.
"And that's not taking into account that we fight differently to everyone else," he said.
Being here was like learning another language. Even if you learned all the formal stuff, there was so much slang and casual nonsense that you'd struggle to blend in even if you attained technical fluency. The unspoken was easier, but not perfect. It almost the same, but not quite. A jerk of the head could as easily be an invitation to settle your differences outside as a request to repeat something you had said. It was getting easier, but it was by no means perfect.