this post was submitted on 21 May 2025
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Asklemmy
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My username is actually from a side character in Terry Gilliam's first non-Python movie - Jabberwocky.
The protagonist, Dennis, is a cooper - a barrelmaker (actually he's a tedious putz who can't even manage to make a barrel, but that's another story). Early on, he goes to make his fortune in the big city, where he meets a legendary cooper - "The Wat Dabney?! The inventor of the inverted firkin?!" - who has been reduced to begging because all of the business in the city is controlled by the guilds and they've shut him out.
Curiously, many years later I ran across a somewhat similar character in an entirely different medium who appealed to me the same way. This one is in a manga - The Voynich Hotel, by Dowman Sayman. They have a serious problem with the boiler in the eponymous hotel, so the protagonist sets out on a quest to track down a hermit who's reputed to be able to fix anything - Tepes, the legendary second-rate boiler engineer.
I'm not sure what appeals to me about second-rate legendary craftsmen, but...
Have you ever heard the tale of Ea-Nasir?
No.
(A quick search later)... Ah... yeah A likely two-bit Babylonian copper hustler who through a quirk of fate is a sort of legendary historical figure almost four millennia later.
Yep - that has the same sort of appeal. Thanks for that.
It's something about irony - the legendary nobody, famous for something mundane.