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Re: Silly Childhood Misconceptions on Fantasy Elements?
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Originally Posted by
digiman619
As for silly childhood misconceptions: When I was 7 or so, I saw Star Wars for the first time. When I saw the scene of Vader chocking the rebel ("If this is a consular ship, where's the ambassador?"), my young mind thought the sound of him asphyxiating was actually Vader snapping his neck. I was also disappointed that I couldn't get anything else to make that noise.
I thought Vader was using telekinesis to control his victims' hands so that they move to their owners' necks and squeeze really hard, aka choke themselves.
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Originally Posted by
Slipperychicken
I think it's just people not really understanding what that would feel like, to have teeth break skin and enter your veins, or even just to lose so much blood by any means. They want to believe that a vampire bite is just a pale, edgy, unique equivalent to a neck-kiss.
I just pretend that my characters, almost literal superhero adventurers who encounter much more horrifying things on a daily basis and just go home every night with little consequence, would find a vampire's kiss adorable. Especially if both parties have put in effort to set the romantic mood.
Doesn't work for all genres, though.
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Re: Silly Childhood Misconceptions on Fantasy Elements?
Hey, never underestimate the power of numbing agents and anticoagulants.:smallwink:
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Re: Silly Childhood Misconceptions on Fantasy Elements?
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Originally Posted by
GorinichSerpant
Now I want to have an ability in an RPG that is called "Curse" that causes a target to suffer some supernatural effect until they learn a valuable life lesson.
It'd be even greater if ANY life lesson was enough to break the power, leading to magical duels that pretty much sound like rejected episodes of Dragon Tales.
"Oh no, I'm bleeding out of my eyes...it's only now that I see that the delivery fee isn't a substitute for tipping your pizza guy!"
"My heart...I can feel it slowing to a stop. I'll never steal my roommate's Poptarts again!"
"I've been rendered infertile! If only I'd remembered to look both ways before crossing the street..."
"Begone accursed imp! I banish thee with the power of improved personal hygiene!"
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Re: Silly Childhood Misconceptions on Fantasy Elements?
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Originally Posted by
Kid Jake
It'd be even greater if ANY life lesson was enough to break the power, leading to magical duels that pretty much sound like rejected episodes of Dragon Tales.
"Oh no, I'm bleeding out of my eyes...it's only now that I see that the delivery fee isn't a substitute for tipping your pizza guy!"
"My heart...I can feel it slowing to a stop. I'll never steal my roommate's Poptarts again!"
"I've been rendered infertile! If only I'd remembered to look both ways before crossing the street..."
"Begone accursed imp! I banish thee with the power of improved personal hygiene!"
This is beautiful. I think I just regained my ability to feel hope.
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Re: Silly Childhood Misconceptions on Fantasy Elements?
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Originally Posted by
Sith_Happens
I could have sworn I read at a zoo or someplace as a kid that they have tubes running through their tongues that they use like straws.:smallconfused:
It has grooves, not tubes - which help facilitate it - but the lapping is what does the work:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_vampire_bat
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Re: Silly Childhood Misconceptions on Fantasy Elements?
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Re: Silly Childhood Misconceptions on Fantasy Elements?
Re: Hollow-toothed vampires:
It was actually Twilight that convinced me there were vampires who didn't have hollow teeth (I remember reading stories about vampires that specified they had hollow teeth; I can't remember where or which, though), and I thought the entire outrage about them not being "real vampires" was because they didn't have hollow teeth.
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Re: Silly Childhood Misconceptions on Fantasy Elements?
As a child, I thought that Baba Yaga was a Jack and Jill Magazine character, like Superman is a DC Comics character.
Well, it was the only place I'd ever encountered her.
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Re: Silly Childhood Misconceptions on Fantasy Elements?
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Originally Posted by
Sith_Happens
I could have sworn I read at a zoo or someplace as a kid that they have tubes running through their tongues that they use like straws.:smallconfused:
Technically true, it's just that sometimes the life lesson is "Don't piss me off" or just straight up "**** you.":smalltongue:
"It's a gift". Because you don't want to offend the giver any further.
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Originally Posted by
Jay R
As a child, I thought that Baba Yaga was a Jack and Jill Magazine character, like Superman is a DC Comics character.
Well, it was the only place I'd ever encountered her.
Urg, nuke it from orbit now. :smallfurious::smallfrown:
Hi to Baba Yaga.
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Re: Silly Childhood Misconceptions on Fantasy Elements?
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Originally Posted by
Vrock_Summoner
Kids think up the craziest things sometimes, for no real reason other than that they're kids. That's part of why we love them so much.
So what're some of the wackiest theories and silliest misconceptions about elements common to fantasy and fantasy gaming that your young self, your own children, or other kids you've known pulled out of seemingly nowhere?
I'll start with myself. I really have no idea what inspired my brain to assume this and miss the most obvious choice, but for some reason, it took me watching my first R-rated vampire movie (at the tender age of... Actually, I don't remember, but I had to have been at least 9) to realize that vampires just use their teeth to make incisions and then drink the flowing blood in the normal swallowing methods. It blew my mind when I finally realized that, because I'd spent my whole experience with vampires working off the much weirder assumption that they drank more like four-pronged mosquitos, with their teeth having little tubes in them that sucked the blood directly out of your bloodstream. To this day, I'm both confused by what I was thinking, and cautiously optimistic about the idea of someday implementing insectoid vampires into a game.
Alright, you guys' turn!
Wait, so they don't suck through their teeth? Oh...
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Re: Silly Childhood Misconceptions on Fantasy Elements?
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Originally Posted by
nyjastul69
I also thought vampires had syringe teeth. I didn't realize this misconception was so common.
I saw Star Wars in a drive-in theater when I was 7 or 8. I thought stormtroopers were robot's, like 3PO, and was bit confused about how Han and Luke could fit into robot suits.
Me too :smallsmile:
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Re: Silly Childhood Misconceptions on Fantasy Elements?
For a long time I was convinced that zombies where fictional creatures.
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Re: Silly Childhood Misconceptions on Fantasy Elements?
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Originally Posted by
The Insanity
For a long time I was convinced that zombies where fictional creatures.
Either you're talking about the cultural voodoo zombies of Haiti, or I need to hear how this a misconception. Because I'm pretty sure zombies as portrayed in film are very fictional.
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Re: Silly Childhood Misconceptions on Fantasy Elements?
I once, long ago, ran across a couple of kids who believed that invisible people could see other invisible people and that it was only visible people who could not see invisible people. That never made any sense to me.
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Re: Silly Childhood Misconceptions on Fantasy Elements?
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Originally Posted by
Telok
I once, long ago, ran across a couple of kids who believed that invisible people could see other invisible people and that it was only visible people who could not see invisible people. That never made any sense to me.
I had completely forgotten about this, but when I was like 5 this made perfect sense to me. Also syringe vampires.
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Re: Silly Childhood Misconceptions on Fantasy Elements?
Syringe Vampires, for sure.
I used to wonder why people didn't just stab a hydra's head, and concluded that a hydras brain must be in it's chest.
I also used to think that all wizards knew how to make fireworks.
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Re: Silly Childhood Misconceptions on Fantasy Elements?
This is the first I'm ever hearing of syringe vampires.... and I've heard of vampires that scrap and lick rather than suck.
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Re: Silly Childhood Misconceptions on Fantasy Elements?
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Originally Posted by
comk59
I used to wonder why people didn't just stab a hydra's head, and concluded that a hydras brain must be in it's chest.
... that makes a disturbing amount of sense.
Although I have to admit that my favourite method of dealing with a hydra popped up in Groo the Wanderer- the titular idiot barbarian just lopped off heads so fast that the bloody thing ended up looking like broccoli with teeth and falling over under the weight of its own heads!
And I'm fairly sure I've seen the 'invisible people can see other invisible people' thing pop up somewhere in fiction, now that it's been mentioned...
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Re: Silly Childhood Misconceptions on Fantasy Elements?
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Originally Posted by
TeChameleon
And I'm fairly sure I've seen the 'invisible people can see other invisible people' thing pop up somewhere in fiction, now that it's been mentioned...
That does make a certain amount of sense from a physics standpoint; invisible retinas shouldn't be able to see light that passes literally through them, so 'invisible' creatures should be reflecting a color we can't pick up, so eyes that are also thusly shifted seeing shades of light normally invisible.
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Re: Silly Childhood Misconceptions on Fantasy Elements?
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Originally Posted by
comk59
I used to wonder why people didn't just stab a hydra's head, and concluded that a hydras brain must be in it's chest.
That seems perfectly logical. The heads never bicker with each other or act separately from one another, because the beast isn't controlled from the head. (Also makes sense from a 5e standpoint, where you can kill a hydra through simple hit-point attrition irrespective of current or original head count).
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Re: Silly Childhood Misconceptions on Fantasy Elements?
I used to play a lot of D&D with my little brother when I was twelve or thirteen, which means he couldn't have been older than nine or ten. It was mostly just collective story-telling at that age, with me as the DM telling him what to roll, and we had a good time with it. At one point, though, he decided he'd create a dungeon for me to run through, and the lack of pictures in the old Rules Cyclopedia started to show when he described my character walking into an ambush laid by a pack of short, mostly-naked little humanoids with big eyes and wild multicolored hair streaming above their heads....
Of course he hadn't adjusted the stats, either, just assumed that they were scrawny little fairies, and was kind of suprised that they murdered my 3rd level fighter so quickly.
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Re: Silly Childhood Misconceptions on Fantasy Elements?
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Originally Posted by
Kid Jake
"Oh no, I'm bleeding out of my eyes...it's only now that I see that the delivery fee isn't a substitute for tipping your pizza guy!"
Sigged.
Why isn't the minimum character-count for posts 6?
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Re: Silly Childhood Misconceptions on Fantasy Elements?
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Originally Posted by
TeChameleon
And I'm fairly sure I've seen the 'invisible people can see other invisible people' thing pop up somewhere in fiction, now that it's been mentioned...
Well I know it happened in the first season of Heroes when Peter Petrelli first meets The Invisible Man while not even realizing he's become invisible himself.
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Re: Silly Childhood Misconceptions on Fantasy Elements?
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Originally Posted by
ATHATH
Sigged.
Why isn't the minimum character-count for posts 6?
Yay! I like to be sigged.
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Re: Silly Childhood Misconceptions on Fantasy Elements?
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Originally Posted by
TeChameleon
And I'm fairly sure I've seen the 'invisible people can see other invisible people' thing pop up somewhere in fiction, now that it's been mentioned...
Lord of the Rings does this to a certain extent. Frodo's ring makes him invisible, except that the thing he really wants to hide from is mostly invisible and can see him better when he has it on.
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Re: Silly Childhood Misconceptions on Fantasy Elements?
I used to think pirates wore eyepatches because of injury to the eye, much like how they had peg-legs and other prostheses. It wasn't until later I learned about how it helps the covered eye adapt to darkness.
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Originally Posted by
Bestigle
Um.. I still think the syringe teeth makes the most sense. :smallbiggrin:
Anyway, when I was little, I listened to LotR on tape, and I spent the first two books thinking Merry and Pippin were girls. I thought that all dragons wore gemstones like armor (thanks Tolkein) as well. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why, if centaur blood poisoned Heracles, how come they didn't poison themselves, and I tried to figure out why a well-tender would want Odin's eyeball, whether it was because he needed an eyeball (and subsequently, I thought that you could use someone else's eyeball in pinch) or if it was because he liked pirates. :smalltongue:
I thought Merry was a girl for the longest. Same with wondering how creatures with poisonous blood don't poison themselves.
Well, using someone else's eyeball isn't so far-fetched in that tale, since Odin could still see out of his while digesting it. That implies you don't really need a connection to the brain for it to work.
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Originally Posted by
Vknight
-I thought evil witches had to be teachers around 6 to 8 area, or otherwise in a position of power over children. Evil Nurses, bad babysitters, Unreasonable Parents etc.
-A curse isn't something that is malicious but is instead always meant to impart a life lesson on the person.
I feel some plots brewing in my new-DM mind. Missing kid, turns out the mean old witch-teacher keeps her lair under the schoolhouse, took him there because he saw her do magic during detention. Normally wouldn't be a problem because that's the kind of thing a mischievous kid would say, but along with previous reports of witchery, that could have brought the inquisitor down on her head. Either that, or it's a witch making children do her bidding (namely stealing important things from their parents) in preparation for a nasty demon-conjuring that could wipe out the whole town.
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Re: Silly Childhood Misconceptions on Fantasy Elements?
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Originally Posted by
Slipperychicken
I used to think pirates wore eyepatches because of injury to the eye, much like how they had peg-legs and other prostheses. It wasn't until later I learned about how it helps the covered eye adapt to darkness.
There isn't actually any direct evidence for that, though it is plausible.
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Re: Silly Childhood Misconceptions on Fantasy Elements?
I always believed the suction vampire as well. A big part of the problem is how fast (in many versions) the vampire drains a human. Especially Buffy/Angel (and I KNEW better by then).
Seriously. Your average vampire on that show kills a human (unless it is a main character) with about 5 seconds of feeding through two tiny holes. They must have industrial strength vacuums hooked up to those fangs!
The pirates wearing eye patches for night vision is plausible, except they wear the eye patch during the day as well. So it's either injury or a fashion statement.
Not a misconception, but i always wondered how Midas went to the bathroom...
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Re: Silly Childhood Misconceptions on Fantasy Elements?
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Originally Posted by
tomandtish
The pirates wearing eye patches for night vision is plausible, except they wear the eye patch during the day as well. So it's either injury or a fashion statement.
I meant for when they go below deck, where it's supposed to be dark.
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Re: Silly Childhood Misconceptions on Fantasy Elements?
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Originally Posted by
tomandtish
Not a misconception, but i always wondered how Midas went to the bathroom...
Must...resist...urge...to...make...tasteless joke.