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Will Truman

Will Truman is the Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. He is also on Twitter.

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16 Responses

  1. Rose Woodhouse says:

    If one of the characters spoke in that grammar, I’m buying it!

    Actually, I’ve always been impressed with the Onion’s names.Report

  2. Will Truman says:

    Back when I was part of a fantasy wrestling league, I had a character who was Pakistani with a flawed understanding of English. Whenever he spoke, I basically took what he was going to say, translated it into another language and back, and that’s what he spoke. “Bounty Hunter” became “Hunter of the Cousin” and all sorts of goofiness. It worked well for what I was trying to do, though the translation tools online have gotten better and I don’t know if it would work today.

    After 9/11 happened, I had what I thought was an inspired plotline where he became a hyperpatriotic American. “Yay America! (Please don’t injure me break precedent.)” (the latter being the double-translation from “Don’t beat me against the rules” or somesuch.)Report

    • Rose Woodhouse in reply to Will Truman says:

      That’s awesome!

      Some of our students try to plagiarize by changing random words in a copied and pasted work with words they get from a thesaurus so it will fail a google search. My favorite (not mine, someone else’s paper) is when “norms of rationality” became “customs of shrewdness.”Report

    • greginak in reply to Will Truman says:

      Fantasy wrestling league????Report

      • Jaybird in reply to greginak says:

        You have bookers, you have wrestlers, and the job of the wrestler is to write a promo (a speech).

        This guy’s speech is held up against that guy’s speech and that’s held up against the short term and long term plans of the bookers.

        (At least that’s how it worked at the place where I spent most of my time in the 90’s.)

        An example from a promo one guy wrote about what he wished Ric Flair had said to Brock Lesnar before their match:

        “So, Brock, you’re a big tough guy, huh? I *SPECIALIZE* in big tough guys! You’ve got your big muscles but you don’t know how to keep going after a burst of strength. At ten minutes…” (pants) “twenty minutes…” (deeper pants) “thirty minutes…” (wheezes) “AND I’LL JUST BE GETTING WARMED UP! YOU WILL BE MINE ALL NIGHT LONG!!!! WOOOOOOOOO!”

         Report

        • greginak in reply to Jaybird says:

          I’m boggling. At least D and D had 20 sided die and spells and monsters.Report

        • Will Truman in reply to Jaybird says:

          Something like this. The actual matches were done on the N64. The fun of it, though, was in the press releases. My marquee character was The Alien, who was a guy from parts unknown who spoke some indecipherable language, but one that was easy to decode for someone that picked up on it (words spelled backwards, vowels switched, apostrophes and compound consonants like th left in place.)

          So “I am concerned that Elian Gonzalez’s deportation bodes ill for the child’s future”

          Became “Y me danracnuc teth Neyla Szaleznu’g nuytetrupad sadub lly ruf ath sdly’ch arotof.”

          Which would then be translated by his manager (who had no idea what he was saying) as “I am going to rip my opponent’s head off!”

          I’d often work in words that sounded like other wrestlers, so he’d be talking about Reece’s Pieces, but it’d sound like he was challenging Skip Sacar to a match. And thus he and Skip Sacar would have a match.

          Ahhh, college.Report

  3. Mary M says:

    Ate you going to share any of the interesting material you speak of?Report

    • Will Truman in reply to Mary M says:

      Unfortunately, I had a hard drive failure shortly after college, and much was lost. It’s all pretty context-sensitive anyway. If I’d found an artist, I might have tried to make a comic book out of it.Report

  4. Tod Kelly says:

    Thanks for sharing this fabulous post!  I know that it will contribute to my learning about the great things you talk about!  I’ll be talking about it myself here, if you ever want to come an join in!Report

  5. I have hundreds and hundreds stored up from my other site that I’d be happy to send your way if you’re interested. One man’s junk is another’s antique I guess.Report