From Natter:

Betsy: "The Mad" and "The Butcher" are never promising nicknames.

Nutty: No, and neither is Eirik Blood-Axe. But I'd be OK standing next to Ethelred the Unready.

ita: Wait -- what's wrong with Blood-Axe?

Nutty: I don't remember the specifics, except inasmuch as he and his kin were bad enough that a whole population of Scandinavia decamped to Iceland to get away from him. (Okay, because they wanted democracy and he was the king. But I bet he let them know he was king in not-nice ways, involving an axe.)

Also, axes are heavy, and if they're bloody, I bet they drip all over the carpet.

ita: But Nutty, those sound like they belong in the plus column (assuming you have enough Resolve).

billytea : For a Viking, 'Blood-Axe' probably suited pretty well. (You probably know this already, but 'Unready' actually meant the guy lacked counsel (good advice), 'rede' in Old English. One site suggested a decent translation would be "Ethelred the Clueless".)

Nutty: Like I said, I could stand next to that guy and feel relatively safe.

Well, from his evil mastermind plans, if not from his big scary knife.

[Edited to include the whole exchange]

ita: Lots of things that squick me have plenty of precedent.

Hec: Sure. Vivisection, Steve Gutenberg, soy-based meat products.

Damn, I love COMM. Although I very nearly died here, choking on my brioche as I laughed in a most unsightly fashion. Not the most embarassing way to die (the guy who was electrocuted to death whilst pissing on railroad tracks is pretty high on the list), but still fairly embarassing. And untimely. Anyway, unspoilery discussion of Fred/Gunn over in the Angel thread:

victor: Am I wrong to think Fred is hot?

p.m. marcontell: She's pretty, but I think she'd boil your bunnies if you dumped her. IJS, she's not all there.

Besty: I just imagine her putting little fuzzy hand puppets on his penis.

Going out for a brainwipe. I may be some time.

Nutty (whom I seem to just follow around and COMM today), in Natter:

The New Testament is slightly hampered in its unified message by its being translated badly several times, and the bad translations being taken as earthshatteringly Right And Infallible, which is just cruising for a Greek nerd to get all "um, actually".

Moral of this story: Primary sources are our friends, and make us not look like morons lo those 1100 years later.

I sometimes have to remind myself that most of you come by these things from a completely different angle - mostly, you know so much, that I need to remind myself that I can't use a Hebrew word when I'm missing an English one, because no, you won't understand it (that's why I was so startled the first time ita wrote 'Krav Maga', both Hebrew words - it was like the very thing I was trying to avoid doing jumped in my face and said 'ha, I'm here anyway, from your subconscious to computer screens worldwide').

-- Nilly

It's like anthropology in miniature - - putting on your coats/jackets . . . see what you were doing last time it was cold.

--Sumi

Erin G.:

I want to have gilded slave- of- love nipples, but the cat ate all my gold flake. Now he's pooping ingots.

billytea:

See, here's a thing for me. Whenever I hear some autobiography or article or interview being advertised as "Randolph Stoatbladder - in his own words", I always think "What, he ran out of English ones?" Like, if you tuned in you'd get "Fninkle. Yarzblot, nak blint geznibah." (Pause for rapturous applause from captive audience.)

Betsy Haynes Perry: If people were writing "David Bowie takes me out to dinner and chit-chats" stories, I would be indifferent. It's the "Everybody in N!Sync gets off with each other and a raccoon" fiction that I find deeply offensive.

RPF talk in Fanfiction.

Michele T. in Buffy:

I cannot possibly imagine William, the human, from even the little we saw of him, going "eh, I was a vampire, these things happen" and going on. I called him snapping like a twig over the summer, and I'm happy that he did.

I actually can believe him like this. He doesn't even have half a deck, but he's holding on to his three pretty tightly.

edited for tags