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Mormon Swords

halleyscomet said:
The book depicts a bunch of wealthy farmers and shepherds skittering off with no resources or supplies and no tradesmen of any kind.
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I've heard the Mormon answer to this. Well, a Mormon answer -- I have no idea if it's the official story. While the family was rich, it doesn't specify how they got rich. So the presumption may not hold that they were "farmers" or "shepherds" or, in fact, anyone who would have been expected to be experienced in wilderness survival. In short, they were apparently city boys.

But still, leaving town without bringing guides or tradesmen or whatever is pretty dumb. Even if you're a city boy, you don't get rich by not knowing how to being prepared for unfamiliar situations.

At one point Nephi breaks their ONE bow...
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I remember the story being that one bow broke and the others lost their elasticity, but the point is still valid that if they think bowhunting was the only way to get food then they really were morons by the standards of the purported time and place.

My impression is that the described hardships, which we find fairly noncredible, were added to enable a deus ex machina resolution. Kind of a "Gee, without God's help these people wouldn't have made it. That only proves God was with them."
 
It's almost as if Joseph Smith had no knowledge of life as a semi-nomad, metallurgy, anthropology, history, migration, hunting, or anything except for conning people gullible enough to believe that a guy with a magic stone in his magic hat was a prophet.
Still quite an impressive skill I suppose.
 
JayUtah said:
I've heard the Mormon answer to this. Well, a Mormon answer -- I have no idea if it's the official story. While the family was rich, it doesn't specify how they got rich. So the presumption may not hold that they were "farmers" or "shepherds" or, in fact, anyone who would have been expected to be experienced in wilderness survival. In short, they were apparently city boys.

But still, leaving town without bringing guides or tradesmen or whatever is pretty dumb. Even if you're a city boy, you don't get rich by not knowing how to being prepared for unfamiliar situations.



I remember the story being that one bow broke and the others lost their elasticity, but the point is still valid that if they think bowhunting was the only way to get food then they really were morons by the standards of the purported time and place.

My impression is that the described hardships, which we find fairly noncredible, were added to enable a deus ex machina resolution. Kind of a "Gee, without God's help these people wouldn't have made it. That only proves God was with them."
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That's it.

I'm re-writing the Book of Mormon in the spirit of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Davy Crockett gets blasted from the Alamo to the Nephi family compound. (The Yankee got sent back in time by a wrench to the head, so this is in the spirit of my inspiration.) Crockett ends up caught up in the chaos of the Nephi family drama and ends up tagging along with the idiots. The whole story is told from his point of view, shepherding this collection of the dumbest city-folk he ever did lay eyes on, and a wonderin' how in tarnation he's gonna keep them from ending up dead.

While I'm at it, I'll have whatever it was that blasted his coon-skin cap and himself into the past also land him with a head-full of Hebrew, or just say he "learn't a bit of it in youth," as he "Was a-fixen to be a parson back in those days, but figur'ed there weren't enough fightin' an hollerin' in that life for man like me."

Just to keep him messing things up good and proper through the whole story, I'll have him stuck not aging until he gets back to his own time. "I suppose whatever wanted me here in the first place also wanted me to to expire when I was scheduled to begin with, and din't want the paperwork of a death that happened before the birth with a whole life lived in-between."

And to tie it all off, I'll explain away the anachronisms in the Book of Mormon by having the terms recorded in the Book of Mormon be the ones Davy Crockett gave them. "It weren't no proper horse, but I remembered from my school days there weren't goin' be no proper horses in this here region until the Spaniards came and brought rats, smallpox and measles along with 'em. So I called it a horse, because this sad, furry, spitting, hunk of feeble onrey was the closet I was gonna get for a good hundred score years. Lord all mighty that was a sad thought. At least there'd be bears to kill if I could get these dunderheads to move North."
 
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halleyscomet said:
That's it.

I'm re-writing the Book of Mormon in the spirit of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Davy Crockett gets blasted from the Alamo to the Nephi family compound. (The Yankee got sent back in time by a wrench to the head, so this is in the spirit of my inspiration.) Crockett ends up caught up in the chaos of the Nephi family drama and ends up tagging along with the idiots. The whole story is told from his point of view, shepherding this collection of the dumbest city-folk he ever did lay eyes on, and a wonderin' how in tarnation he's gonna keep them from ending up dead.

While I'm at it, I'll have whatever it was that blasted his coon-skin cap and himself into the past also land him with a head-full of Hebrew, or just say he "learn't a bit of it in youth," as he "Was a-fixen to be a parson back in those days, but figur'ed there weren't enough fightin' an hollerin' in that life for man like me."

Just to keep him messing things up good and proper through the whole story, I'll have him stuck not aging until he gets back to his own time. "I suppose whatever wanted me here in the first place also wanted me to to expire when I was scheduled to begin with, and din't want the paperwork of a death that happened before the birth with a whole life lived in-between."

And to tie it all off, I'll explain away the anachronisms in the Book of Mormon by having the terms recorded in the Book of Mormon be the ones Davy Crockett gave them. "It weren't no proper horse, but I remembered from my school days there weren't goin' be no proper horses in this here region until the Spaniards came and brought rats, smallpox and measles along with 'em. So I called it a horse, because this sad, furry, spitting, hunk of feeble onrey was the closet I was gonna get for a good hundred score years. Lord all mighty that was a sad thought. At least there'd be bears to kill if I could get these dunderheads to move North."
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This MUST happen...

Can we get Bruce Campbell to play Crockett in the movie?
 
Slowvehicle said:
This MUST happen...



Can we get Bruce Campbell to play Crockett in the movie?
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My God. That's brilliant.

I'll start by reading some of the original Crockett stories to get the right feel. His autobiography, "A Narrative of the Life of Col. David Crockett, Written by Himself" is probably my best bet. I'm going to have Campbell in my head as Crockett when writing this. He's the perfect blend of serious and ham for the part.

At some point he needs to have a monologue where it hits him that his younger self will kill some of the descendants of the people he's trying to help. Will he contemplate talking his younger self out of the violence? Will I find a way to make that a discussion of the "bootstrapping" problem in time travel?
 
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