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N O T I C E : : m e m o r y _ s t r e a m _ l o c a t e d
I D : : C h ' i k a n
T Y P E: : R E C O L L E C T I V E
Ch'ikan is basically our shorthand for neurotypicals. It's only used by
yuyayni; most
ch'ikan, ironically, wouldn't actually understand if you spoke the word to them. It's an example of that phenomenon where an in-group never bothers developing a word for themselves, because they're not actually aware that they're an in-group and they just categorize everyone who isn't like them as deviations or outsiders. Sort of like how the Terran word 'outsider' is incredibly old, but the word 'insider' is much newer.
The etymology of the word is purposefully ironic; it derives from the Saltiltomeyin word for 'different', which is historically what we've gotten called by them. Beyond that and its general meaning to refer to 'neurotypical people', it also has a lot of associations to do with neurotypicals as a social class. When one of us refers to 'the
ch'ikan', for example, it comes with a sense of 'otherness'; the acknowledgement that they are an impossibly vast group of which we can never quite be part of, no matter how hard we try, and nor can we ever fully interface with. It's got a lot more cultural nuance than just directly calling someone a neurotypical does, but it's also definitely not a slur in the way
ente is.
Describing all of the nuances and specific associations present in the word is difficult. But in essence, it's a word that invokes the full weight of everything that exists outside of the
yuyayni realm of experience; the way that when you look out of your window onto a street, chances are that of the ten or twenty people you see, none of them will be like you. The way that any time you engage with a system, you know it will have been designed for a portion of your species that do not operate the way you do. The knowledge that any time an important decision was made, even ones regarding people of your neurotype, it will have been made with no meaningful input from you or those like you.
In short, the word reflects the knowledge that this is
their world, and we're just living in it.
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N O T I C E : : m e m o r y _ s t r e a m _ t e r m i n a t e d
