“Who is Unity? As best I can recall my name is Angeline Pipt.”
Awesome joke! And subtle, too, in a way only a reference to a hundred year old book can manage. Seriously, I saw this, thought “Wait a minute…” and after looking it it up got it and had a good laugh.
Why is this funny? Well, to begin with Unity is often referred to as an analogue of one of L Frank Baum’s characters; Scraps the Patchwork Girl. For those of you who haven’t read The Patchwork Girl of Oz, Scraps was made from various scraps of fabric (hence the name Scraps) by an old woman, Lady Margolotte so she and her husband Dr Pipt (the inventor of a magic Powder of Life) could be free from the burden of doing housework and be waited upon hand and foot. Lady Margolotte had intended to call Scraps “Angeline,” a name Scraps was thankful not to have been blessed with.
Also, I can’t help but hear Unity speaking in a sort of Armenian accent here.
I’m reading through the archives a third time and I can’t believe I missed this the first two times. Dunno if I’ll comment again, so I’d like to say great work, Shaenon and Jeffrey! Skin Horse and Narbonic are two of my all-time favourite stories.
“To begin with…” Sorry, that should be “It’s because Unity is often compared with Scraps.” I’m having trouble with the keyboard and spellcheck on my phone, it makes writing anything coherent a bit of an exercise.
“Who is Unity? As best I can recall my name is Angeline Pipt.”
Awesome joke! And subtle, too, in a way only a reference to a hundred year old book can manage. Seriously, I saw this, thought “Wait a minute…” and after looking it it up got it and had a good laugh.
Why is this funny? Well, to begin with Unity is often referred to as an analogue of one of L Frank Baum’s characters; Scraps the Patchwork Girl. For those of you who haven’t read The Patchwork Girl of Oz, Scraps was made from various scraps of fabric (hence the name Scraps) by an old woman, Lady Margolotte so she and her husband Dr Pipt (the inventor of a magic Powder of Life) could be free from the burden of doing housework and be waited upon hand and foot. Lady Margolotte had intended to call Scraps “Angeline,” a name Scraps was thankful not to have been blessed with.
Also, I can’t help but hear Unity speaking in a sort of Armenian accent here.
I’m reading through the archives a third time and I can’t believe I missed this the first two times. Dunno if I’ll comment again, so I’d like to say great work, Shaenon and Jeffrey! Skin Horse and Narbonic are two of my all-time favourite stories.
“To begin with…” Sorry, that should be “It’s because Unity is often compared with Scraps.” I’m having trouble with the keyboard and spellcheck on my phone, it makes writing anything coherent a bit of an exercise.
Thanks for the information!