Shakespearean scholarship tends to accrue a lot of weird bullshit: When you’ve got thousands of PhD candidates desperately looking around for original and unique thesis material there’s a mass tendency to just throw stuff at the wall and hope that something sticks. Unfortunately, some of the stuff that sticks is basically a scholastic urban legend: Dramatic, catchy ideas that are nevertheless without any basis in reality whatsoever.

For example, the recent theatrical release of Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing has prompted quite a few mainstream articles talking about the double meaning of the title. “Nothing” and “noting” were homophones in Elizabethan England, which means that the title is effectively a pun — the play is both about “nothing” (i.e., about things which are not true) and “noting” (i.e., spying and eavesdropping). But the claim is also frequently made that “nothing” is a double entendre which meant “vagina” in Shakespeare’s day (i.e., “no thing” or that there is literally nothing between a woman’s legs). Thus the title of the play can be understood to also mean Much Ado About Pussy.

The problem is that, as far as I can tell, it’s not true.

The modern tradition of asserting that “nothing” means “vagina” in Shakespeare appears to date back to Stephen Booth’s 1977 edition of the Sonnets. But Booth doesn’t appear to give any evidence that “nothing” was actually used that way in Elizabethan slang. His claim is based almost entirely around “wouldn’t it be nifty if this sonnet said ‘pussy’ instead of ‘nothing’?” (He also maintains that “all” means “penis” because it sounds like “awl” which looks like a penis. And that “hell” also means vagina because… well, just because.)

This little “factoid” has become popular because it’s so delightfully dirty and you can use it over and over and over again. (Shakespeare uses the word “nothing” more than 500 times in his works.) But it doesn’t seem to have any basis in fact. (If someone can actually cite a primary Elizabethan reference to “nothing” being commonly used as slang for “vagina”, I’ll happily stand corrected.)

It reminds me of the claim that “nunnery” means “whorehouse” in Shakespeare, so that when Hamlet tells Ophelia to go to the nunnery he’s really telling her to become a whore. No. He isn’t. The only Elizabethan references to “nunnery” meaning “whorehouse” are in a comedy where a whorehouse being referred to as a nunnery is a joke specifically because a nunnery isn’t a whorehouse.

Claiming that this means “nunnery” was common slang for “whorehouse” is like watching Monty Python and claiming that “go”, “selling”, “sport”, “cricket”, “games”, and “photography” are all common slang words for sex.

(Although, to be fair, I think we all know that Understanding Exposure: How to Shoot Great Photographs is totally pornography.)

If you’re trying to figure out what the credit line should read as next to “Creator of Roleplaying Games” you’ve got two options:

(1) Dave Arneson, for creating the fundamental gameplay in his Blackmoor campaign

(2) Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax, for co-authoring D&D

You’ll notice that neither one of these is “Gary Gygax all by himself”. That’s because there is no functional argument or logic by which Gary Gygax gets that title to himself.

I recently watched Oblivion, which is a mediocre science fiction film starring Tom Cruise. It features a soundtrack which was apparently written by someone who watched Inception the night before and just couldn’t get it out of his head. So when I came out of the theater that night, I decided that I needed to watch Inception to clear both the mediocrity of Oblivion’s hackneyed score and the mediocrity of its hackneyed science fiction.

This, in turn, resulted in me diving inadvertently back into online discussions concerning the “true meaning” and “hidden depths” of the film. Some of this stuff is basically people saying “you may not have noticed that Rosebud is a sled” and some of this stuff is people saying “you may not have realized it, but Rosebud is actually a shapeshifting alien from the planet Vulcan”; but some of it is actually interesting insight into a movie which is not particularly complex but is remarkably rewarding in its depth.

Something that appears to have been completely overlooked, however, is the true nature of Cobb’s spinning top: Cobb describes this as his “totem”, but it notably doesn’t work like any other totem in the movie. There’s a theory that Cobb’s real totem is actually his wedding ring (which would presumably have some feature on its inner side that only he knows the feel of), but whatever his real totem is (if he has one) is largely inconsequential to the issue of the spinning top.

The short version: Cobb is not using the top as a totem in the same way that everyone else in the movie is.

See, a totem tells you if you’re in someone else’s dream. If you’re in someone else’s dream, they (or their architect) can’t properly realize your totem within the dream and you’ll be able to spot the inconsistency. (Saito does the same thing, albeit inadvertently, with a carpet near the beginning of the film.)

Cobb, however, is not using the top to test if he’s in someone else’s dream: He’s using it to test if he’s in his own dream. He’s not afraid of being hijacked by another dream team; he’s afraid of losing himself in his own personal Limbo. A traditional totem doesn’t help you with that because if you’re lost in your own dream you know what your totem feels like and you’ll simply create it for yourself. What seems to be true in the movie is that both Cobb and his wife have created a subconscious compulsion for themselves (probably using techniques similar to those which militarized Fischer’s unconscious): If they’re dreaming, their subconscious will cause the top to spin forever without falling over.

To sum up: When the other members of the team use their totems, they’re checking to see if they’ve been hijacked into another person’s dreams. When Cobb uses the top, he’s checking to see if he’s gotten lost in his own dream.

In my review of the Magic the Gathering Official Encyclopedia yesterday I mentioned how Magic cards can be used to great effect as a quick source of inspiration. Here are a couple quick examples of this from my own campaigns.

ARBORETUM GROTTO

“Clay Golem” – Magic the Gathering: Fourth Edition

• A thick, tiered cleft. Magical lights clinging to the ceiling seem to cast daylight down onto the thick pleats of overgrowth choking the miniature, underground veil.
• SPINDERS: 8 spinders roam through the overgrowth. (These can be found in the Book of Fiends, one of the best bestiaries ever produced.)
• STATUE OF LIGHT: In the middle of the grotto sits a squat statue of clay clasping a bowl which seems lit from within. (See visual handout, above.)
  • LIQUID LIGHT: The bowl is filled with liquid light. Anyone touching the liquid will cause it to flow up over their hand (or hands). From that point forward, their hands will permanently glow white — producing the effects of a daylight spell.
• ALCHEMY (DC 25): Recognize that most of the plants growing here are actually valuable alchemical ingredients. 6 hours harvesting could yield 5,000 gp of raw ingredients.

THE GLASSWORKS

“Urza’s Power Plant” – Magic the Gathering: Antiquities

• A twisted morass of glass piping filled with flowing fire.
• THE ARTIFURNACE: Near the center of the twist labyrinth of glass is the Artifurnace. Eight large valves run around its circumference . (See visual handout, above.)
  • CRACKING THE ARTIFURNACE: If all eight valves are released, the Artifurnace can be opened.
  • HELM OF FIRE ELEMENTAL CONTROL: Suspended within the Artifurance is a helm of fire elemental control (crafted from brass and gold). But it doesn’t work: One wearing the helm can summon a Large fire elemental, but anyone wearing the helm will instantly provoke rage from any fire elemental.
• FIRE ELEMENTALS: If any of the glass tubing is broken or the valves of the Artifurnace opened, the fire elementals trapped within the tubing will break free in a rage.
  • 1 Huge Fire Elemental, 2 Large Fire Elementals, 16 Small Fire Elementals
• DM BACKGROUND: The idea was to create a magical item through entirely sympathetic rituals (by controlling the fire elementals physically, imbue an item with the ability to control them). Instead, the item became imbued with the rage of the imprisoned elementals.

So in the realm of utterly bizarre realities, I offer you the Deep Storage Project. The simple gist is that someone is going to load up that crazy, multi-pronged modern art piece with tissue samples from thousands of volunteers and then lower it into the Marianas Trench so that if an apocalyptic disaster should occur the samples would be preserved and could be used to repopulate the species.

Nothing about this plan makes any sense: DNA samples that will decay into uselessness within mere years placed in a location that we would have difficulty retrieving them from now (let alone after an apocalypse).

But what I can’t help noticing is that this bizarre repository bears a truly uncanny resemblance to what an Elder Sign would look like if you extruded it into three dimensions. And that’s true whether you’re talking about the Lovecraftian original (on the left) or the Derlethian derivative you’re probably more familiar with (on the right):

So, hang on a second: They’re sculpting a dimensionally-extruded Elder Sign, filling it with offerings of human blood, and sending it to the deepest part of the ocean?

Are they trying to mitigate the Apocalypse… or start it?