AH Cultural Descriptions
- Thread starter Ganesha
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A translation from the poem Dreamtime of the Goanna, a collection of western australian aborigine folklore collected by british-canadian anthropologist Angie Lansbury. Lansbury's studies have been criticised in recent years for liberties in translation, and having giving it an unfittingly sardonic tone.
Dawn on the Jurassic African Plains
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A documentary on the Jurassic period in Africa, produced in 2009 by the Geographic Abroad line. Material includes research from paleontologists from various eras. The documentary has since been criticized by later research, especially with inaccurate data about what the environments really looked like.
School of Drug Addicts
Deleted member 90949
Nickname for school used by students of SDA; Saint Damien Academy.
The Queen's Gambit
Name given by historians to Edith I of Northumbria's successful political manipulations to play England and Scotland against each other in order to keep her country independent. She also successfully made Northumbria a player in European politics.
The Dutch Maid
The second volume of the Queen Mary Chronicles that depict the life of Mary Stewart from Queen Consort of England & Ireland, to Queen of Scotland following her brother's untimely death, to Queen Regent for her daughter Margaret I. The series highlights Mary's importance in the union of the Isles that lead to their Empire.
A Chocolate Spanner
Edit: ninjad please ignore unless lost for inspiration
A book exploring the role of Milton Hershey in the Third Revolution
In order to support the Communist and Syndicalist uprisings in the 1920s, Milton Hershey began making chocolate bars in the shapes of various industrial tools. Hershey- disgusted by the treatment of workers and their disenfranchisement under the Pinker Presidency- claimed that this was in mere solidarity; however, the workers brought the chocolate tools into the factories and attempted to use them. The chocolate thus sabotaged the more sensitive equipment, which proved vital in removing the US Army's equipment advantage.
More importantly for Hershey, it helped him gain the role of Economics Minister. This let him rebuild the factories and rearm the US- and, more importantly, the slaves in the CSA, without the President of the CSA noticing. Because of this, he was able to spark the Fourth Revolution, freeing the slaves and reuniting the USA and the CSA under the People's States of America- aside from the breakaway Republic of California from the USA, and the Republic of Texas from the CSA.
Beltane
A 3rd century Roman play about an evil Queen name Beltane who seduces the 5 Kings of the fictional continent of Rumora. However, a boy named Leonidus is born and had been sent by Mars to defeat Beltane and free Rumora from her tyranny. Beltane has Leonidus exiled to an island ruled by Barbarians. However, there Leonidus grows to be an excellent warrior who swims the seas and returns to Rumora. There he befriends the Demigod Lucullus and the Princess of one of the 5 Kingdoms, Gaia. Together they fight and defeat Beltane freeing Rumora and forming the Rumoran Empire. Leonidus then fights a Hydra and sacrifices it to Mars. The play was dedicated to Emperor Leonidus of the Roman Empire, the first Emperor of Celtic descent.
The play was later adapted by William Shakespeare into The tragedie of the Queen Beltane. This adaptation portrays Beltane as a paranoid Queen whos seduces the 5 Kings for safety but accidentally angers Mars who sends Leonidus to kill her. This is the more common interpretation though in recent years the original Roman story has made a renaissance with it being adapted into the Blockbuster movie, Leonidus.
All if false
A collection of essays by atheists on the existence of morality regardless of the existence of any god.
The title comes from an aphorism by Voltaire: All good works, even if under false assumptions of worship, are still good works. All bad works are likewise bad, even if true.
The Dutch Maid
Great interpretation of that title! Made a typo though I meant it to be All is False as a play on Shakespeare’s All is True, really like that though!
Yeah I realised but thought it would fit a partial quote better and had to really think how/what! Typos can be a great inspiration sometimes 😎
A children's story about a Dutch maid who finds a collection of magic beans and gains magic powers. She then defeats a gang that had been attacking her town. This was part of a Dutch folklore collection published in the late 1800s.
Fail Mary
An experimental film in which the entirety of the Roman Bible (from a sect of Christianity which holds the Old Testament in broad strokes) is recited - but the catch is its made entirely of clips of people flubbing the verses, either by themselves or external forces. Was released in 1998 to much disdain from the Roman Church.
The Stable Boy of the Universe
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2008 spin-off TV series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a 2005 BBC mini-series based on the radio play by Douglas Adams, owned and produced by NBC Universal. The series focused on the daily hijinks of the valets in the parking lot of Millyway's, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, including as the primary cast Johnny Galecki as Leo, a human from 2025; Jim Parsons as Stock, a Vulcan-Parody (implied to be a GMO human), and Ross Bangley as Chevy, a human-looking alien. Recurring stars include Charlie Sheen as Bossman (the boss), Danny Trejo as the Parking Enforcer, and Tatyana Ali as a frequent customer at the restaurant.
Failbaddon the Armless
Fannickname for Ilbaddon, the main bad guy of the first period of the popular MMORPG Chainsword 20k - for three years, Ilbaddon was the primary antagonist of the storyline side of the game, orchestrating countless attacks on the Republic of Species ( a diverse union of humans and aliens) in the name of his xenophobic god-Emperor strapped to a life support machine, Kharn. His constant failures earned him the nickname Failbaddon, and then, when he was finally defeated and all four of his arms were removed in the final quest to the Kharn's Resurrection Expansion, he got the 'the Armless' added to his existing nickname.
Ilbaddon would be consumed body and soul by Kharn when he arose, taking direct command of his Knights of Total Order (dedicated to Totalitarian Xenophobia) and launching a brutal attack on the Republic, setting the state for the next Expansion - Divided Republic.
Lovedagger
Nickname given to F-102 Delta Dagger aircraft variants modified to carry the "Gay Bomb". Developed in secret by USA in the 1990s, the pheromone-based chemical weapon was transferred to Turkey for battlefield testing between 1999 and 2005. Turkish F-102 "Lovedaggers" deployed the bomb on several occasions in Cyprus against Greek militants, in Eastern Turkey and North Iraq against Kurdish PKK and even against the Armenian army during the 2003 "Nakhchivan Crisis".
White Dagger Society
The White Dagger Society was the name of a resistance group that grew up in early 1700s England in opposition to the ruling Hapsburg Dynasty. After Spain invaded the British Isles in 1588, they eventually secured control of England and Wales by 1597, at great cost. Philip assumed the throne and began a harsh campaign of recatholization. By the 1630s, it seemed, England was peaceful, but after England split off from Spain under a distinct branch of the Hapsburgs in 1689, the British crown's authority began to decline in the face of debt, resurgent aristocrats and crypto-Protestants rising up (not to mention the loss of all of England's colonies, such as they were, to France in 1649). The White Dagger Society was a major nucleus of resistance, and in 1712, launched a rebellion in the north with mutinying soldiers - though the rebellion was put down by loyal troops, the real plan had been to have those troops sent north, allowing members of the White Daggers to launch an assassination campaign across London, killing virtually the entire British branch of the Hapsburg family and most of their leading collaborators.
The White Daggers, however, proved unable to wield much authority in the aftermath - only the fact that Spain was both bankrupt and fighting a war with their Austrian cousins over Naples prevented them from invading during the resulting English Civil War, which ended when the Stuarts of Scotland were invited to take the throne in 1719, and a new order was arranged, allowing protestant free worship and catholic free worship, though the Stuarts favored Presbyterianism.
Harpoons and Hamburgers
oboro
Banned
New England chain of fast seafood restaurants, famous for their whale burgers. Although the whale species, of all kinds, were initially nearly hunted to extinction, mass sea mammal husbandry operations began, as the baleen filter feeders went from hunting wild krill to being fed farm raised protein slurry. Although some groups try to claim that whales are more intelligent than cattle, and deserve better, their claims are ignored, as whale meat is so delicious and such an important part of the American diet.
The dogs who thought Pavlov was their god
The dogs who thought Pavlov was their god
Ivan Pavlov, a Russian immigrant to England, studied under Alfred Wallace and conducted multiple experiments into the validity of the theory of evolution. In his most famous, he took a large number of Japanese, European and American wolves and began culling them with two selection criteria: either they be friendlier than normal, or extremely aggressive. At the end of the 50-year experiment, he had accidentally and successfully the Pavlovian Retriever, a completely-new dog breed, from the first group. From the second, the result was a completely-solitary creature, similar in color to a wolf but slightly larger. Until genetic testing on fossils was done in 2020, this animal was used as a model for the dire wolf (Aenocyon Dirus).
The results were twofold: first, the two animals would not breed (despite genetic compatibility), showing a possible route to speciation- that of behavioral isolation. Second, the results of this experiment were used to support eugenics programs worldwide until they were reexamined for ethics in the 1960s.
Harry Potter Fanfiction