it was mainly for kids to learn about the diversity of earth’s flora and fauna but it became popular with adult aliens too and had to be shut down after almost causing no less than three diplomatic incidents.

Somewhat cocky contestant (who heckles the others for wrong answers) looks at the hologram on display: “I’ve read up on a lot of Earth animals, even visited the Earth zoo, so you can’t fool me.  It’s a picture on a farm so that’s the first clue.  It’s white, fluffy, got a sloping forehead and no distinct… muzzle.. if I do remember the term correctly.  It’s most definitely a sheep.”  

Dog or Not becomes a sort of inside joke on the Normandy, one that the non-human crew members still kind of get - they’re always invited to the viewing parties and sometimes sit in - but don’t really understand. Tali especially doesn’t understand when a snickering Shepard elbows her and, pointing to a varren being taken for a walk, asks, “Hey, Tali - dog or not?”

“That’s…that’s a varren, Shepard,” Tali responds, bemused. “You know what a varren is.”

Shepard is still giggling, and Kaidan, who heard the exchange, joins in.

-

Liara, Ashley, and Shepard go to recover the lost data drive at Admiral Hackett’s request. They eventually find themselves surrounded by the strange monkey-looking organisms.

With a straight face, Ashley comments, “Wow, sure are a lot of dogs on this planet.”

Shepard doubles over. Liara isn’t sure whether or not to laugh. She’s watched “Dog or Not?” before, so she knows these creatures aren’t dogs…right?

-

Garrus accidentally joins in on the fun after they discover a new species on a fog-covered planet. They’re bright red, they have carapaces, and they breathe fire. The team is examining one’s corpse when Garrus asks hesitantly, “So…is that a dog?”

Shepard’s head whips up and they stare at him for a full five seconds before breaking down. Garrus has to half-carry a wheezing, crying Shepard back to the shuttle. Jack’s eyelashes are wet from her own mirth.

-

They’re driving full speed over the scorching desert of Tuchanka. They’ve just called Kalros, the mother of all thresher maws, to deal with the Reaper destroyer in their way. All faces are pressed to the windows to see the fight.

Kalros bursts from the sands with an unearthly screech and tackles the Reaper. The two grapple in the sands, both representing the might of organic and synthetic, respectively.

“Garrus,” Shepard says in a low, awed voice.

Garrus has been around Shepard for too long not to know when they’re about to make a joke. “Shepard, I swear on all the spirits of Palaven - “

“That’s the biggest dog I’ve ever seen.”

- Money, and most forms of currency, is fungible. This just means that any piece of it is interchangeable without changing value -- one dollar is one dollar, whether it is represented by a fresh new dollar bill or an old wrinkled dollar bill or a record kept in a ledger or a record in a computer. Being fungible is one of the core things necessary for a currency to work as a currency (alongside other things such as ‘being recognised as currency by others’ and ‘the value being backed by something that can ensure reasonable stability, like a stable government’). If you’re currency isn’t fungible, then it isn’t currency -- you’re not buying with it, you’re bartering. So that’s what the “fungible” part means.

- People trade with non currency stuff all the time. People trade in favours, faith, and small numbers of resources that someone else needs more. When people trade in large value items, they usually estimate a value for the item; people might trade in high value artworks, for example. This is a pretty common thing for rich people to do as you can cook books in all kinds of ways through the trade value of unique items with no obvious parallels. Who’s gonna tell you your numbers are wrong, after all?

- NFTs -- non fungible tokens -- are the latest fad by cryptobros who are a) trying to imitate the unregulated illegal trading of the rich without understanding it, or b) running scams that bank on the idea that other cryptobros don’t understand it. They’ve basically taken cryptocurrency and made it non fungible. Cryptocurrency is ‘mined’ by making computers do really, really complicated math, and the math gets more complicated the more of it is ‘mined’. It has to be like this to keep it rare and combat inflation. But, while each bitcoin will have a different ‘serial number’ the same as each US dollar note does, bitcoin are fungible -- one bitcoin has the same value as another bitcoin. (Users frequently ‘tumble’ their cryptocurrency -- swap it with each other in a complicated, automated fashion -- to launder it.) NFTs are instead URLs, and their gimmick is that each one is different! And can be worth a different amount! You can’t just swap them; they’re non-fungible!

- To convince people that the URL is worth something, they put a ‘unique’ digitally generated picture there. These are hilariously ugly. Confused cryptobros who don’t really understand NFTs tend to become convinced that what they bought is that picture, and they ‘own’ it in some way that’s deeper and more entrenched that’s just like, commissioning art. This is quite funny because you can really upset a lot of them by ‘stealing’ their NFT (copying the picture).

1) As Buffy's shadow, Faith is meant to be symbolic of Buffy's repressed desires, and specifically her frustrated sexuality. Buffy is dealing with imposed chastity throughout S3, first with her trauma over Angel getting in the way of a relationship with Scott, and then the curse preventing her from being physical with Angel. It's the centre point of Enemies, its touched on in Amends, and is one of the reasons they break up. There's a reason the season climaxes with Angel and Buffy in a passionate embrace, making orgasm faces as he 'penetrates' her. It's a whole season of sexual frustration for Buffy.

Faith needs to be constantly reminding Buffy of the thing she can't have - sex. She needs to talk about sex to Buffy - and she does, extensively. Faith is written as a very sexual person in general, but it's specifically and disproportionately aimed towards Buffy, because that's her narrative role. So you end up with this character who is constantly going around like "hey Buffy do you like sex? you should think about sex now. sex. when I'm on screen the main thing on your mind should be sex and having it". Which begs the question - why does Faith want Buffy to have sex? Symbolically, it's because she represents part of Buffy, and Buffy wants to have sex. But on a pure character level... what is the explanation? What is motivating Faith to constantly talk about sex to Buffy? A few instances you can write off as her making Buffy uncomfortable for jokes, but not all of them. How it comes across is that Faith has some sexual interest in Buffy, and is probing for her feelings.

2) Faith is a Seductress. That's not a comment about her character, that's her function in the story. She is the version of Buffy who goes down a darker path, and is trying to seduce her into doing the same thing. Part of Buffy's arc in S3 is resisting this temptation, and the symbol of what she is resisting is Faith. So Faith must be an enticing, seductive figure. To quote Passion of the Nerd's review, if Faith is there to to tempt Buffy into a moral dark side, it only makes sense that she is, well, tempting. The seduction is happening on many levels.

Faith is more or less filling the Femme Fatale archetype: the seductive, sexual figure who leads the Hero off their path. It's a trope you see all the time in male-led stories, going back to goddamn The Odyssey. Buffy as a character was invented as a simple gender-swap of an old horror trope, and part of the appeal of the show is that she gets to fill the role of The Hero as a woman. So what happens when you gender-swap The Hero and don't gender-swap the Femme Fatale? You get a gay story, that's what.

3) The Faith arc of S3 is a recreation of the Angel arc of S2. It is structured in the exact same way, with the two having a push-and-pull in the early parts of the season, a setback in their relationship in episode 7, getting closest again mid-season before a night of passion that ends in sudden tragedy. Angel/Faith then turn to the dark side, become the Big Bad, and show that they are beyond saving in episode 17. The season ends with Buffy having to fight and the kill them in order to save others. This is all an intentional recycling, as part of the show building up the Trolley Problem and the idea of Buffy being a killer, repeatedly escalating it to get us to The Gift. What this means is that Faith steps into the role that Buffy's love interest played in the previous season. This is the story that we have just had told to us as a tragic love story. We see it again, and guess what? It's still a tragic love story. Only now Faith is in the role of the love interest.

4) Part of the conflict surrounding Buffy and Faith is Buffy's fear of being "Single White Female'd". She fears Faith might steal her loved ones, and Faith does threaten that. She gets along with her mother, her friends... but most of all, her love interests. Buffy's fear of being replaced manifests as Faith trying to literally seduce away anyone romantically linked to Buffy. Angel, Scott Hope, Xander, later Riley, Spike, Robin Wood... Faith is comprehensively and exclusively attracted to men that Buffy dated. I'm honestly surprised she didn't find Owen and Parker from somewhere for a night in the sack. Again, this makes perfect heterosexual sense from a symbolic point it view - she threatens to take Buffy's place in the narrative, so she takes her place in relationships - but on a character level it becomes ambiguous. Is she actively trying to replace Buffy? Or is she trying to stop Buffy dating anyone for another reason? The simple fact is, there is exactly one common denominator with all of Faith's romantic entanglements: Buffy.

It's a canonical aspect of Faith's character that she is jealous of Buffy. We see that made explicit in Enemies - she's jealous of everything Buffy has: her family, her comfortable home life, her friends, her narrative standing, and of course her loving partners. So of course Faith displays jealousy whenever Buffy is involved with a guy. It's a necessary part of building Faith as this figure of Want and Envy. But how it plays out on screen isn't that Faith is jealous of Buffy because she wants these other guys - of course not, because we see her look jealously through the window at Buffy and Riley in This Year's Girl and Riley obviously means nothing to her. Rather, it very much appears that she is jealous of these other guys, because she wants Buffy.

There's also the added bonuses that come from the show playing with so many metaphors, that sometimes they cross in interesting ways. One of Faith's main purposes is to celebrate being a Slayer, and to encourage the same in Buffy. She wants Buffy to accept and embrace being a Slayer. Here, Slayerhood is standing in for independence and hedonism and making your own rules, all the things that Faith is encouraging. But one of the many other metaphors used is the 'coming out' metaphor. "Have your tried not being a slayer?" "It's because you didn't have a strong father figure isn't it." "I've tried to march in the Slayer Pride parade." It's a note that's hit really hard specifically around the time in the show that Faith is introduced. So if you carry this metaphor on, then Faith becomes an out-and-proud lesbianSlayer, trying to convince Buffy to accept and embrace her sexuality.

And it has a recursive effect too. All this stuff contributes towards Faith feeling like a very queer character. And Faith, of course, is Buffy's shadow self, meant to represent her unconscious desires. So when the symbol of your unconscious desires is so lesbian-coded, then the implication becomes that one of your unconscious desires is lesbian desire. Faith's existence as a part of Buffy implies the existence of Buffy's bisexuality. Which contributes to the relationship feeling ever more queer, which makes Faith even gayer.

Archfey

Fiend

Celestial

Great Old One