“Bro watch this”

[everyone in the room dies horribly over the course of several days]

He became less racist later in life, but didn’t, to my knowledge, express remorse for his previous racism.

No, we can excuse lack of refinement in talent, but not racism.

I love Lovecraft’s work, but fuck is he incredibly racist.

A-one, a two-hoo…!

[CRUNCH]

“The raven is bringing you an abortion!” - countries with women’s rights and universal healthcare

Here in the US, we have to pay for that raven to make a visit, smh.

“Like all Greeks, I know everything.”

Me, who read a lot of books as a kid but never remembered to take the quizzes on the computer

Is Greenland hiding something?

Joke’s on you, I gave up long ago!

What’s ‘offline’?

“No new models, but if you have a lifetime warranty we can help!”

There’s one I haven’t heard in a while.

You’re doing God’s work - an Appalachian

YEE-HAW, I’m the FASTEST BOW IN THESE HERE WOODS

You meet a bedraggled old paladin who beseeches you to just and righteous action by the following words…

I heard it was Southern English which was closest to Elizabethan English.

In any case, reality doesn’t matter. Perceptions matter. Britain is an old country, and America is a new country - so in ‘translating’ an accent to a past period, we tend to see the accent of the ‘old country’ as more appropriate.

American accents sound too ‘modern’ because American English wasn’t a thing until the Medieval period had long passed, and most fantasy is medieval or medieval-adjacent.

I’m all for broadening the use, though. I love that the Witcher games gave Geralt and the other Witchers of the School of the Wolf American accents. And Dragon Age (back when it was good) giving the dwarves American accents.

Okay but have you read Shakespeare? Or, for the Roman graffiti you referenced, Plautus? Or Suetonius if you want some good tabloid fodder? They’re similarly crude, and while there is a much higher level of literacy and wordplay, it’s… not that much different at its core. Even that graffiti, funny enough, has an example in the other direction - there are instances of graffiti in Pompeii which demonstrate a knowledge of classical literature amongst the urban masses.

My point in the end is simply that history is written by writers, and writers are not necessarily less insane, less gullible, or less prejudiced than the general population.

Previous generations had the advantage that their most asinine, pigheaded, and ludicrous ideas were filtered by history, since the more serious minds didn’t record in documents how a sizable portion of us were the absolute worst.

You may be overestimating ancient writers and texts.

No, but without knowledge, you don’t get to choose whether you believe reality or not. Reality is just hidden from you.