​ Hello my wonderful viewers and welcome to another episode of Betty Adams over-analyzes. Today we look at season 7 episode 9 of the clone wars. “Old Friends Not Forgotten”.
In a crowded section of well lit space the episode opens in classic Clone Wars fashion. We swoop in over an orbital battle and down into the atmosphere of the planet the forces of the clones and the Separatists droids are fighting over today. The sky is a brilliant blue and the clones are surging across a bridge towards a wall of droids. The show immediately sets the tone with a well work plot device. The camera lingers on a group of clones, not letting you know which ones you should root for. Will the aggressive clone with the dirty armor be the hero of this episode? Or the cautious clone with the extra tech on his helmet. One by one the show takes a few seconds to attach you to each character and then kills them in turn.  

 Humans are Weird – Cravings


“Human Friend O’Leary,” Trs’kts called out. “It is our designated break time. Would you like to accompany me to the beverage dispenser in order to stretch our motile appendages?”
Human Friend O’Leary twitched sudden at Trs’kts’s voice but glanced down at him with a strained smile.
“Sure Trs’kts,” he said as his hands flew over the control panel, closing out his program and shutting down his computer.
Trs’kts wondered at that. So far every human he had seen in a professional situation took the time to completely lock down the terminal they were on before they left it even for a short time. The behavior seemed rather unnecessary and wasteful of time, but it was not what had the Trisk concerned today.
The human finished the task and leaned back in his chair. He indulged in a period of prolonged, slow movement where he extended and contracted symmetrical muscle groups to their full extent before standing. The humans called it stretching and it seemed necessary to their muscle function. Then the human extended his hand for Trs’kts to walk out on.
“So how are you feeling this work cycle?” Trs’kts asked as he settled himself down on the human’s broad shoulder.
“Eh, so-so,” the human said, dipping his shoulders in a sudden shrug.
Trs’kts was very experienced in riding humans and he compensated for the movement easily enough. It was not the shrug that disturbed him but the humans response. Humans, and Human Friend O’Leary in particular, were notorious for exaggerating their sense of well being. If he were admitting that some part of his experience was unpleasant then he was probably experiencing some severe discomfort.
“May I ask what the positive element of the so-so is?” Trs’kts asked as the approached the water dispenser.
“The usual, I guess,” Human Friend O’Leary said with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.
“I like all you little guys. I get plenty of human interaction in the other departments. Got an actual physical letter from my buddy Jim back on Terra.”
Trs’kts clicked in sudden delight.
“Do you plant on sharing it with the rest of us during the sharing time tonight?” Trs’kts asked.
Human Friend O’Leary’s facial muscles gave the tiniest twitch of unease at the question.
“Of course the sharing sessions are not mandatory,” Trs’kts quickly assured him. “If the letter is too intimate-”
“Nah,” Human Friend O’Leary said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Nothing like that. It’s a perfectly un-intimate letter. Mostly reminiscing over old times you know. We were in a little garage band together as kids. He was on drums.”
“What was the purpose of the band?” Trs’kts asked curiously.
“We played music together,” Human Friend O’Leary said. “We weren’t all that good but we had a fun time.”
“That sounds enchanting,” Trs’kts said with a delighted skitter as Human Friend O’Leary sipped his water.
The human smiled and then his eyes drifted to the middle distance and he sighed. Trs’kts decided that the subtle approach hadn’t worked and prepared to jump right in.
“If the letter contained no disturbing information then why are you so disturbed Human Friend O’Leary?” Trs’kts asked as they headed back to the desk.
“Say what?” Human Friend O’Leary asked.
“You have been distracted and twitchy all day,” Trs’kts observed.
“Yeesh,” the human ducked his head and rubbed the back of it uneasily. “That obvious huh?”
“Indeed,” Trs’kts said.
“Well no problem,” Human Friend O’Leary said. “The reason why I’m staying home tonight from the sharing session is to get it out of my system.”
“Get what exactly out of your system?” Trs’kts asked.
“The hunger,” Human Friend O’Leary said, his voice deep with earnestness.
Trs’kts mulled over this while they went back to their work station.
“I was under the impression that it was unwise for humans to eat just before going dormant,” he observed.
Human Friend O’Leary laughed and shook his head as he deposited Trs’kts down at his work station.
“Different kind of hunger lil’bud,” he said. “We were in a band. Jim was on the drums and I was guitar. Some days I just need to play.”
Human Friend O’Leary’s fingers suddenly began the strange twitching pattern they had been attempting to complete all day and the human hummed out a few notes.
“The music gets in you,” the human with on with a far off look in his eyes. “It wants to get out.”
Trs’kts stared at him uneasily but the human shook himself and grinned down at the Trisk.
“Not to worry little bud,” he said with a dismissive wave. “I just let myself go too long without breaking out the old six string and giving her a spin. I’ll tune her up and be back to normal by tomorrow.”
Trs’kts idly wondered if ‘normal’ for a human meant something less confusing than the concepts that Human Friend O’Leary had just expressed.


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The Second Lie of Lost in Space Part 3 – Mouth Watering Kobe Beef Should be Dirt Cheap – Don West


Hello my wonderful viewers and welcome to another episode of Betty Adams over-analyzes. Today we look at the second main lie of Lost in Space for the third time.
Alpha Centauri is a lie. Not to say that a human habitable planet in the Centauri system doesn’t exist. The planet is there. Twenty three missions of Jupiters, each with sufficient greenhouse space to grow enough food for eight people and last them for years, have left Earth for the new world. Oh, Alpha Centauri is real. Very, very real. But the vision of it that exists in the dreams of the colonists isn’t. 

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​

This idea was crawling around Tumblr and I rather liked it. But I thought the final product needed a more...Celtic perspective.  Here is the result. 

 Humans are Weird – A Decisive Stroke


“And so as each-what was the word you used?” Rollsacross asked. “Oh yes, after each pass, you simply take the meaning of the existing pattering into consideration and begin the next missive from there.”
The Undulate dipped his appendages in the tray of water under him and then shuffled forward to demonstrate. He moved across the translucent film that was already marked with spiraling tracks. He stopped and pivoted, then gave a sideways shimmy before arching up and off of the film. The new marks were rapidly darkening where he had touched the film and the gathered students of language moved forward to watch the new words form.
Three Shatar Sisters clustered together so they could touch antennas without disturbing the others. Their triangular heads tilted this way and that and their neck frills pulsed with interest. Two Gathering were sniffing at the edge of the film suspiciously. Or rather the Undulate admitted to himself, everything the stiff reptilians did looked suspicious to one of his kind. The two Trisk professors certainly found them flexible enough. The eight appendage professors were happily perched on the broad heads of the reptilians for a better view of the drying document. A flight of Winged hovered over everyone’s heads, a constant cloud of movement.
“Wasn’t Human First Brother going to be here?” one of the Shatar asked, twisting her head to the side and flicking her antenna at the door.
“He was,” another answered. “I wonder if he forgot?”
“Human Friend Obecny is not the type to forget an engagement,” one of the Trisk observed.
There was a rolling trill of assent from the flight of Winged overhead and the two gathering gave one of the wide variety of grunts that indicated they had no opinion on the matter. However the conversation was derailed by a massive thump that shook the door and the wall it was attached to. The Shatar stiffened and their frills snapped to full extension. The Winged flight swirled away from that wall before taking up a hold position facing the door with dozens of teeth gleaming in snarls. The Trisk gripped the heads of the Gathering as they heaved huge sighs and muttered something about lumbering mammals.
Rollsacross noted that the reptilians’ assessment was correct as the human in question fell through the opening doors with far more erratic velocity than was strictly usual for him. He was grasping a thermal canister in one hand which he brought up to his mouth in a mammalian hydration movement before he righted himself and reduced his swaying to a level that humans considered ‘still’.
“Ahoj,” he greeted the room in general with a swing of his hydration canister. “Not too late am I?”
“I have just finished the first applied layer Human Friend Obecny,” Rollsacross said. “I am afraid you missed the explanation and the first application.”
“Sorry,” the human said his mouth gaping in a yawn. “I over slept. My alarm was buzzing for a solid hour before it penetrated my skull?”
“Did you not achieve proper sleep last night?” the Shatar, the medic asked.
“Not a bit of it,” the human replied as he swayed closer to the three cousins.
His feet seemed to drag along behind his center of mass as he re-positioned himself in the room.
“Was that a negative or a positive response?” The cousin pressed.
“My babička called,” he explained. “One of the cousins is acting up over in the Grister sector and she wanted to let me know in case he swung though this system. We were talking for hours. You know how worried babičkas get.”
The Shatar clicked in sympathy until Rollsacross shuffled back over to the tray of water and began explaining the increased difficulty of creating meaning on the third pass over a document. The class fell silent and observed. Rollsacross finished the pass and invited them to examine it. There was the usual muttering until Human Friend Obecny suddenly failed to correct one of his forward sways and caught himself heavily on the table surface. The collected linguists stared at him curiously until the Shatar medic suddenly clicked in alarm.
“Why are your irises oscillating like that?” she demanded, skittering forward to peer up into his eyes.
“This writing,” the human said in an odd hollow tone. “It’s...it’s...I think it’s giving me a stroke!”
The medic’s frill flushed with horror and she grabbed his arm, clicking at him earnestly to follow her to the medical bay. The human obeyed after a moment but seemed unable to tear his eyes away from the drying Undulate script. When the door closed behind them one of the Gathering reached up to paw at his eye.
“The human was simply being facetious, right?” he asked.
“Of course,” the leader of the Winged flight snapped out. “A human would not have a stroke from simply looking at foreign script.”
“That is my understanding,” Rollsacross agreed.
There was a long moment of silence before Rollsacross firmly brought their attention back to the lesson. 



 Thank you all so much for your updoots and feedback. It gives me the will to go on. Want to see more? Think about becoming a Patreon.  Tea refuses to buy itself and the more time one has to spend on a day job the less time there is for befuddled aliens.

My Innocent ESL Student: "What is meaning the word ....set... Teacher Betty?"
Me, knowing simple words are hardest to define quickly pulls up the Oxford English Dictionary while talking: "Well, you see, the English word set means..."
Me: Sees 430 separate definintions and a 60,000 word explanation.  
Me:....
Me:...
Innocent ESL Student: "Teacher Betty?" 
Me sweating: "means something very offensive. Never ask me or any other teacher that again. Now moving on....

 Humans are Weird – Pop Ups
The bright noonday sun shone down on the recreation area. Travel streams wandered lazily around the various surfaces before gathering in a central pool. The water sparkled with artificial cleanliness as it moved and Seventh Flap wrinkled his nose-flaps in irritation at the near blinding light it reflected. He supposed the health regulations required sterile waterways but it was so clearly unnatural that it set his sensory horns tingling. He gave the horns an idle rub with one wing hook as he used the other to position the meal orb better in his teeth.
The orb was a positive delight compared to the usual half formed buds they got at their home station. It tasted tree-grown. No matter what the nutritionists said about chemical content he could always taste the difference between tree and vat grown batches. He idly rotated the orb, licking up the outer layer as the fluid beaded on the side.
His attention was drawn to a pair of humans who appeared to be sneaking across the recreations yard. The sight of a sneaking human was always entertaining to watch. The behemoths shouldn’t have any chance of stealth, and yet a well trained human could move below the ambient sound threshold with surprising ease. He grinned as he listened to their whispered conversation. These were clearly not well trained.
The humans were crouched down below the ridge of one of the artificial hills. They were clearly not bothering to hide themselves from anyone at elevation so the object of their focus must be fairly low. There were no Shatar on the grounds at the moment and the Gathering were so oblivious in this kind of sunlight that there would be no reason to sneak around them. Seventh Flap followed their trajactory for a moment and then followed it out.
As he had expected there was a pair of Undulates ambling along the edge of a stream on the other side of the ridge from the humans. Adding the vectors made it clear that the humans intended to intercept them where the long hill ended.
Seventh Flap gave his meal orb another lick and the taste came up empty. He grunted and tucked the empty orb into his carry pouch. He took to wing and caught a thermal that allowed him to perch with a much better view of the vector meet.
The humans had paused and pulled something out of a sack. They looked like helmets of some sort. They had clearly been modified to resemble the gaping maw of some predatory species. The humans dawned the helmets and dropped down resting their hands on the ground.
Seventh Flap started up in astonishment. The literature on humans, and everything he had personally seen. Indicated that they were strictly bipedal. But these two were scrambling along as easily as any Gathering. They had altered their vectors several times by this point and he was beginning to suspect he was wrong about their intended destination but they increased their horizontal speed and reached the end of the hill several body lengths ahead of the Undulated. There the humans stopped and crouched in a predatory manner.
Seventh Flap felt a prickle of unease run across his horns. While he didn’t know any of the individuals involved he was fairly certain that the humans bore the Undulates no ill will. However that was a very predatory pose. He shook out his horns and firmly reminded himself that if a human wanted to harm an Undulate they hardly needed to sneak up on them to do it. Still he watched closer. The Undulates rounded the curve of the hill and the humans pounced.
That is to say they both pounced about three wings forward, raised their hands over their heads, and emitted a low rumbling sound. The Undulates idly turned to the humans and gave a happy sort of wriggle in greeting. The humans stood there uncertainly and finally returned the gesture with a wave. The darker Undulate lifted a few appendages curiously.
“Is this the normal greeting for your subculture Human Acquaintance Smythe?” the Undulate asked. “I have not seen one like it before.”
“Ah, no,” the human replied in a surprised tone.
“Well thank you for sharing a rare greeting with us,” the Undulate replied. “My colleague regrets that she cannot converse with you but she has not yet learned English.”
“No probs,” the human reassured them. “Have fun on your amble.”
After a few more cursory exchanges the Undulates did indeed continue on. The humans stood there a few moments longer before taking off the modified helmets and exchanging confused glances. Seventh Flap was feeling generous now that he had a full belly and decided to relieve their confusion. He took to wing and came up behind them, making sure to stay in the overlap of their blind spots. He went into a glide just outside of their hearing and dove. The humans were caught completely unaware as he latched onto the center of one’s back.
The human’s response was more than satisfactory. Seventh Flap wasn’t aware that grown human males could generate sounds that high in the register. The reaction was however short lived, and the scream quickly turned to laughter.
“Who are you?” demanded the other human.
“I am Seventh Flap,” he replied. “And I thought I’d answer your question.”
“What question was that?” the human he was clinging to asked.
“Why you failed to get a jump reaction out of the Undulates,” Seventh Flap explained as he detached and circled them until one held out a hand for him to perch on.
“Yeah?” the human who he landed on replied. “Why was that? Did they see us coming?”
“No,” Seventh Flap replied. “Your stealth was more than sufficient for an Undulate.”
“Then why?” the human asked with a wave in the direction of the still ambling Undulates.
“There are no predator species on their planet,” Seventh Flap explained, pulling his faced into a smug grin. “They have no jump scare reflex. I must say it will be nice to have people we can really play with on the base now.”
He took off to let them ponder that. As he flew out of hearing range he heard one human say to the other.
“What did we just get ourselves into?”  

 Thank you all so much for your updoots and feedback. It gives me the will to go on. Want to see more? Think about becoming a Patreon.  Tea refuses to buy itself and the more time one has to spend on a day job the less time there is for befuddled aliens.