A Door on Other Time

Title is from Tolkien's "On Fairy Stories". Handle means "storyteller" in Nahuatl. This'll mostly be about pop culture, linguistics, philosophy, history, and other things that interest me, but also about writing.

[tlaquetzqui]

[crabs-and-bedbugs]

[peaceshine3]

[bobbsayshi]

I looked it up just to be sure and this shit is Fr y'all The Tasmanian people had a dialect and way of life that was different from other Aborigines. The British killed the men and women of the tribes and took away their food supply when they first arrived. Later they tried to “civilize” the Tasmanians and subject them to foreign diseases to kill off the last of them. The last full-blood Tasmanian woman was said to have lived until the year1888.

[eternalfratboy]

Wow!

[norest4thaweary]

at this point, what isnt racist in this country??!!

[jjsinterlude]

WHAT THE FUCK

[prettyboyshyflizzy]

Wow 😳😥

[marauders4evr]

As a History Concentration with a rather unsettling love for Looney Tunes and other classic cartoons, I never thought that I’d see the day where my two completely unrelated passions merged up so wonderfully.

And yet, here we are.

So let’s talk about Tasmania, shall we?

Actually, pretty much everything that the OP said about Tasmania is correct.

By the way, her name was Truganini (Nickname: Lallah Rookh.) If you’re going to use her legacy to try to criticize an old cartoon character you should at least give her the common courtesy of a name.

Now then, let’s talk about Looney Tunes.

Or more specifically, let us talk about the Tasmanian Devil.

Taz for short.

Great character.

Fun, energetic, hungry, and not a racist portrayal in any way, shape, or form.

The statement that Taz is a racist portrayal of the Tasmanian people is completely and one hundred percent wrong.

Now I know what you’re thinking…

“Alright marauders4evr, what is the Tasmanian Devil based off of?”

Well, Im glad that you asked.

Gather ‘round and listen closely now because this is going to be one of the greatest revelations that you will ever hear in your mortal lives.

The Tasmanian Devil…

…is based off of the Tasmanian Devil!

Yeah!

It’s a real animal!

An energetic animal who eats everything in its sight.

And Robert McKimson based a character off of it.

Speaking of one of the great men behind Looney Tunes…

Let’s talk about Mel Blanc!

I love him!

I wish that I could have met him!

He’s one of my late heroes.

Phenomenal voice actor.

The best that has ever existed.

The Man of 1000 Voices he’s called.

(And that’s an underestimate!)

The point is that he took a lot of pride in his work.

So what did he base Taz’s dialect off of?

I can tell you right now that it wasn’t the Tasmanian people.

Mel Blanc based the sound of the Tasmanian Devil…

…off of the Tasmanian Devil!

Here’s a clip of Taz’s dialect:

And here’s a clip of the Tasmanian Devil’s scream:

(Chilling, ain’t it?)

(On a side note, I just love to imagine Mel in the recording booth, screaming and growling before calmly doing Bugs’ voice!)

In conclusion…

What happened to the Tasmanian people truly is saddening and I wish that it hadn’t happened.

THE TASMANIAN DEVIL (TAZ) IS NOT A RACIST PORTRAYAL IN ANY WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM

THE TASMANIAN DEVIL IS A REAL ANIMAL!

MEL BLANC WAS AWESOME AND DESERVES YOUR UTMOST RESPECT!

T-T-T-T-T-T-THAT’S ALL FOLKS!

[beardedmrbean]

Found it, horray for the search function working occasionally

[crazy-brazilian]

wife material

[nonenosome2]

I know the idea of NFTs were poisoned by idiots, but imagine this.

A website that archives websites to a blockchain as NFTs such that a permanent, non-deletable, history could be maintained so that websites couldn't just get rid of the evidence of their wrongdoing.

Just as an example, shadow edits to EULAs could be kept in perpetuity.

[georgettekaplan]

So, Red Sonja. It's actually kinda fun--very much of a piece with the cheesy eighties fantasy films like Deathstalker or Beastmaster. Some good production value and actual actors (Philip Winchester! Rhona Mitra! Strike Back reunion!) sharing space with MST3K-worthy editing and special effects. Largely, it's just weird.

Like Red Sonja herself. You think she'd be a savage barbarian, but they make her go all in on being this nature-loving heroine, pretty much a Disney princess, who is like aghast at people abusing animals. "You use and slaughter animals!" she accuses the villain during the litany of his sins. It's like... honey... it's the Hyborean Age. Beyond Meat isn't exactly a thing at this point in prehistory.

(They have her hunting animals, but then saying a little Avatar prayer over them. Like, does that really make much of a difference? If you shot an arrow into my neck, I don't think I'd care much if you thanked me for my meat.)

Or the hair. They start her off as a redhead, then at the finale they make her really a redhead, and you're like... oh. We really needed to Surf Dracula her having red hair?

Or the armor. The villains try to embarrass her by making her wear a chainmail bikini in gladiatorial games, with the script jibing about how little it protects her (not that the villains wearing full armor ever seems to do them much good). Then she gets some real armor by being nice to the armorer (the script also makes a weirdly big deal about Sonja being super compassionate, like she's Wonder Woman). And it covers, like, ten percent more of her body.

It's like they wrote the script thinking they were going to put her in the chainmail bikini for one scene as a mythology gag and then they'd give her a real costume, but someone said "Fuck, guys, it's Red Sonja, she needs to be in a chainmail bikini," so instead they just put her in a different chainmail bikini and didn't rewrite the part where she's supposedly asking for and getting practical armor.

At one point, the villain sets fire to the forest Red Sonja is hiding out in to smoke her out, then he sends his men into the burning forest to get her. While it's on fire.

The villain is Robert Sheehan and boy, let me tell you, it is a sight to see Matilda Lutz underplaying everything (clearly a graduate of the Gal Gadot School of Acting) while Sheehan overplays everything. If you raised a child on Eddie Redmayne's performance in Jupiter Rising, the result would probably be a lot like "Emperor Draygan."

Clearly a man who knows that the more sniveling and fey your fantasy movie villain is, the better. Look at this guy!

There's a bit where the obligatory Miniboss Villainess Who Is Super Into The Main Villain asks him "Why have we never shared a bed?" and I swear to God, he turns around just like this

iWh

Imagine a Sex And The City character becoming an evil overlord and you're about there. I don't know what movie he thinks he's in... some kind of atheist relationship drama involving cyclops?... but you wish A24 had picked it up instead of burying it in a barbarian revenge film.

Like, his complaint is that the gods didn't intervene to help him when he was enslaved as a boy, and then the gods do intervene when Sonja is mortally wounded and he's won fair and square, so yeah! Valid! If the gods had just intervened during the opening scene instead of the third act, everyone would've been so much better off!

It's a female goddess specifically, too, so I guess we're not supposed to notice.

[tlaquetzqui]

“Helmet and loincloth” is 100% realistic armor. If anyone is wearing any armor and not a helmet, and we didn’t see their helmet get knocked off, realism has left the chat.

[dertaglichedan]

[luckyladylily]

So the thing is boobs really do be jiggling. If having breasts has taught me anything it is that the ladies frolic. I don't even have that large of boobs but every time I go down some stairs all I can think about is that stupid quote about boobing breastily down the stairs or whatever it is because God Damn.

But anime and video game boob jiggling is like. The most uncanny valley shit I've ever seen nine times out of ten. You would think people this horny about tits would have actually looked at some but I guess not.

What we really need is some pervert to compile the ultimate visual guide to boob bouncing physics that's just like 500 hours of meticulously organized videos of breasts of different size and shape and under different fabrics bouncing around from a wide variety of physical movements so horny game devs can finally get it right and I don't have to be creeped out by women who appear to have surgically implanted softballs in their chest under skin made of rubber bands.

[official-boob-posts]

official boob post

[greek-mythologies]

The last line revealed a lot more than it'd care to admit.

[tlaquetzqui]

“The early reviews are overwhelmingly positive!” The early reviews are from the “access media” critics. If you believe them, you probably also think the stripper is actually into you.

[baygeethefirst]

[superkalafragilisticiexpectitall]

[tlaquetzqui]

It’s not radical and it’s not just now that it’s in control. It’s mainstream.

The reason Islamic authorities condemned ISIS is that ISIS has no claim to be a caliphate. Everything they do is allowed if not encouraged, provided you go through the proper channels. “The Holocaust is fine, but Hitler came to power through backroom deals.”

[retiredtsgt]

[georgettekaplan]

Modern Problems

"Yo new girl, where you at?" - Airk, Willow (2022)

With the impending release of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey comes news that he's having the characters speak in contemporary English ("My dad is coming home." / "LET'S GO!") rather than the more formal tone usually associated with fantasy and historical fiction.

Quoting the director:

Speaking to the Los Angeles Times ahead of “The Odyssey” theatrical release this month, Nolan said that as the film’s screenwriter, he wanted to prioritize “language that has emotional not intellectual meaning to people.” This is why the characters in Nolan’s “Odyssey” speak in contemporary English dialogue and not Homer’s words. “I was maybe being naïve, it might bite me on the ass, but I wanted an earthy narrative. To me it was a no-brainer,” Nolan said of his decision.

That's the pro argument. You want modern audiences to relate to these ancient characters, so what better way than to have them talk and act (and look) like modern characters? Well, there's always doing research, finding out how people behaved in the time period, and then using artistry to show that, in their way, these people are feeling the same emotions and having the same thoughts as humans throughout history.

But that's hard and you can just have the characters talking about hashtags and listening to the Ramones so we know what they're feeling. Or to have a joke, because it's a lot easier to just write a Twitter bon mot than to come up with something an 18th-century person might say which would also amuse modern audiences.

"But hey," you might say. "The characters in The Odyssey would really be speaking archaic Greek, not English at all. And they'd probably talk casually with each other and use slang. So isn't having them say 'what up, pops?' exactly the same as them saying 'how bodes the evening, Father?'"

One, no. History was frequently a lot more formal than modern times, when people go shopping in pajamas. You'd get arrested for that in Victorian times. They'd think you were streaking if you weren't wearing a shift, stays, petticoat, and bodice. So it's plausible to have characters talking in a heightened, Shakespearean register. Even if it weren't, you could argue just as meaningfully that "real people" shouldn't zing each other with awesome one-liners

They should go "uh" and "ummm" like mumblecore or Robert Altman characters after a stroke. But that's no FUN!

And that's pretty much my second argument. You can be as pedantic as you want and say it's not really accurate, but it's more fun to hear fantasy characters talking in poetic English (or at least like an American who's read books outside the romantasy genre) than it is to hear them talking like they're from Brooklyn.

One helps me invest in the story. The other takes me out and makes me think of how clever the director thinks he's being. It's just dumb when these directors are trying way too hard to seem contemporary, like they're embarrassed to be making a period piece.

If you watch that clip all the way through, you'll see Muslims setting up an ambush with an arrow bazooka. Sorry, I think that's dumb. I think just having a historically accurate Crusade sequence would be way better than pretending bows were M7 rifles.

I mean, fuck, they're practically wearing plate carriers!

So that's my modest opinion: if you're doing fantasy or if you're doing historical fiction, don't make your characters larping 21st-centuryers. Commit to the bit.

[tlaquetzqui]

Ancient Rome actually did have that fucking thing—a thousand years before this. The medievals switched from torsion siege weapons to traction (counterweight) ones, because they didn’t have the infrastructure to do the quality-control on the torsion springs. Their only torsion weapon was a relatively rare spear launcher called a springald, something like a ballista with its arms in backwards.

Plate carrier thing is also real, it’s called brigandine. But that would mostly be after Robin Hood, who is originally placed in the reign of Edward Longshanks (the king in Braveheart) and then, in Victorian retellings, in the reigns of Richard and John. Brigandine is more Hundred Years War, other end of Longshanks’ century.

Late in the period, medieval Europe had breech-loaded cannons. They used preloaded cartridges that were basically metal beer mugs of black powder, with a cannonball on top.

[knifenymph]

change does not come from a place of comfort

[aquareaper3]

I find pennies and nickels in my couch all the time, so I don’t know what you are talking about

[homofied]

[opalfairy]

[beginnerblueglass]

I’ll never forget the story my dad told about the time our church was contacted by a man who was in need of some money for food, so the pastor took my dad to meet this guy at a cafe to talk about what was going on in his life, and some specific ways they could help, both materially and spiritually. The guy rebuffed every attempt to establish any kind of relationship or to hear the gospel, and made it very clear that he just wanted the money. When the pastor eventually gave him a gift card for a grocery store, he got upset that it wasn’t cash.

Another story is of my former pastor who had a man walk into church after the service and ask for money for food. The pastor said he’d take him to lunch at the MacDonalds down the block, and they could talk about what was going on in this guy’s life, and how the pastor and church could help. The pastor got a phone call at the door, so he handed the guy a twenty dollar bill and told him he could go order. After his phone call, he went into the restaurant and the man was nowhere to be seen. He’s taken his whole $20 and skedaddled.

Another story of a pastor who invited a man who had come to the church asking for money for food to his house for dinner. Later that night, the man broke into the pastor’s house, stole a bunch of stuff, and stole his car.

Rest assured pastors are used to people dealing with them in bad faith. These men remain some of the most generous people I know. They give to all who ask them. But a pastor’s willingness or unwillingness to give his church’s money and resources to someone he doesn’t know, who will not even attempt to engage in the community that is a church, especially someone who won’t even show up in person, is not an accurate barometer to gauge the generosity of a church or individual or Christians in general. The pastor’s job is also to protect his flock from wolves, like scammers who prey on the generosity of kindhearted people.

[absentia-misere]

Trust me, we all know well and good that Christians are only for other Christians bud.

[homeiswhere-thephobicis]

>posted stories of churches being cheated of their money and resources

>frames this as churches being selfish

probably don't have to guess very hard as to how you treat retail workers

[scarabesque-returns]

I like when creatures like that have me blocked before I ever set eyes on them.

[feminismisstillahatemovement]

It's terrible what far-left indoctrination does to people's brains. Feminism systematically renders women incapable of love.

[ranty-mc-rantface]

Holding hands with my boyfriend to own the libs

[crabs-in-a-trench-coat]

"All I want is a good loyal woman who cares about me and we love each other"

"Oh so you're a misogynistic incel! Etc"

[syabm]

>Reddit

Yeah, that tracks.

Right.

Because it's clearly beyond the pale of reason that people would naturally have a security camera pointed at their front door and garage, and the only reason they'd want to share it is tradwife propaganda.

For all we know, the wife works from home.

[ostdrossel]

In Michigan, we only get the Rubythroated Hummingbirds (except for VERY rare exceptions), and people often get confused when they either see a female that does not have the red gorget or when a male moves so that the red appears black. I slowed this clip down so you can see how the colors are changing, it is quite magical.