Didn't see a claim on this in the DE...

[themightyspazz]

...but if somebody's already called this, let me know and I'll take it down.


FOURTH WALL BREAKDOWN, Y'ALL.

Have some coca/eggnog/whathaveyou, compare presents, and enjoy the festivities at the end of the universe.

Comments

[camwyn]

"Well, the other side is where the big money is," says Cam. "I'll show you the DVD of the Rex vs. G. Carter papers sometime- Dad's grandfather was basically a Young Indiana Jones character. The man successfully defended himself in court against charges of high treason against the Crown of England for his role in a 1920s labor uprising in South Africa. Talked the court down from 'hang him for high treason' to 'sentence him to time already served for incitement to public violence', despite not actually having any kind of law experience that we know of other than maybe having worked as a policeman in Australia."

[sdelmonte]

"That even trumps the uncle I had who was supposed to be hanged as a deserter from Czar's army and managed to luck out of it." Though Alex has never quite bought that story.

[camwyn]

"Huh. Nice trick- how'd that one happen?"

[sdelmonte]

"They called another name ahead of his. He figured, why delay my inevitable hanging? Only the guy ahead of him - who was somehow not there, probably escaped - was not up for the death penalty. So my uncle managed to get back to Warsaw and shock his family.

"I think he fled to the US right after that."

[camwyn]

"I'd leave in a hurry too, under those circumstances. Good for him, assuming that's actually true."

[sdelmonte]

"It seems possible. No Jew wanted to be in the Czar's army. And no Communist, either. And apparently, you go drafted for 20 years." Another so called fact that seems just a bit fishy.

[camwyn]

"Ellen, put your eyeballs back in your head," says Cam absently. "I don't want to have to use the 'aghast' icon."

[sdelmonte]

"You find this to be hard to swallow, Ellen? Your life is a lot more outlandish that the story of my uncle."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"It's the twenty-year draftee enlistment," says Ellen. "I'm surprised that anybody in a time when body armor wasn't part of the standard issue was expected to last that long, let alone be able to be discharged at the end of it."

[sdelmonte]

"I don't think they were supposed to last that long. It was a sign that the army owned you. A leftover of the serf system."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Ah. Okay, that makes more sense," says Ellen. "I guess I'm just used to people being more up-front about 'no one here gets out alive' attitudes."

[sdelmonte]

"The Russians weren't big on honesty. Especially when dealing with Jews. And the only reason you would conscript Jews was to make them cannon fodder."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"... so, basically the Red Chinese with anybody who wasn't ethnically Chinese and enthusiastically atheist," says Ellen. "Got it."

[sdelmonte]

"The atheism came later in Russia.

"Though my uncle would have been more at home with the Soviets. For a while. Totally one of them and totally a non-believer. Who insisted on leading the Passover seder." Jews. Go figure.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"That's something else I'm never going to be able to get over," says Ellen, shaking her head. "Any universe where the Soviets made any kind of splash at all. They were barely mentioned in anything in my canon."

[sdelmonte]

"Sometimes it's surprising they managed it in reality...in my reality. When the curtain was pulled back, we saw what a mess things had been for years."