Oh boy, ILX! That's where I'm a viking!..?

Don't libel me like that.

Like why would Ralph dream about being a viking consistently enough for it to be a "thing"? DO ANYTHING THE FUCK THAT RALPH DOES??

Jeez, people, if you are honestly making the argument of "most people don't do this, so why would Ralph?" then you are missing the entire. fucking. point.

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srsly gr8 thrd evry1

seriously amazed at the shitty logic displayed

i hate Anchorman btw. i do take your word for it tho that you bet against the truth yet again.

You have to be willing to accept the idea that "sleep is where" anything whatsoever takes place, which is just odd.

Results 1 - 10 of about 36,700 for "sleep is where". (0.21 seconds)

We have to imagine an unseen series of viking dreams that got him so accustomed to this that he actually gets excited for sleep specifically because he is near-certain he will dream about it again...wtf sense does that make?

if you think it's frustrating or unfunny for a cartoon character to act uncommonly and nonsensically by real life standards, then you're an odd fellow. I mean, a shit ton of cartoon humor hinges on the idea that cartoon characters can not and do not possess real human brains with real human psychological traits. Ralph is funny and absurd because of his logic-defying outbursts, not in spite of them.

in real life, unless you're a hardcore lucid dreamer, you can't will yourself to be a viking every time you fall asleep. it's a psychological lottery — one night you're a cowboy; the next, a blobfish; and the next, a caricature of yourself, naked, on Broadway. all you have to do is go with the flow and play with whatever random persona you happen to inhabit. and it's just as well: dreams are liberating precisely because they allow us to escape the boring, predictable egos we're burdened with throughout waking life. fuck cultivating a persona and being true to yourself when it's possible to be totally unself-conscious for a few minutes w/o any consequences.

in Ralph's made-up mind, the opposite is true. for one thing, in his "waking life" he doesn't have any ego to speak of; he's merely a vehicle for a certain type of juvenile humor that the screenwriters think up. and hey, if you're someone who lacks an ego, then I imagine that the ultimate form of escape for you would be to inhabit a dream world where for once you're entitled to a complex personality and true human motivations. that's exactly what Ralph accomplishes when he falls asleep and gets his viking on without Matt Groening and James L. Brooks directing his every move and utterance. in the solitude of his dreams, he gets to be "unscripted" and "off-camera" & can indulge in all sorts of behind-the-scenes hopes/goals/desires/emotions/axe-wielding/pillaging. it gives him great joy because the dullest viking in the world is way more engaging and fleshed-out than the average cartoon character.

a close comparison here is the Simpsons Halloween episode where Homer follows a wormhole into a 3-dimensional world and totally freaks out a at the surreality of it all. it's funny for us to watch a character for whom 2-dimensional existence is the norm, whereas the 3rd dimension is something out of the Twilight Zone. it's funny because it's so unlike the way we experience reality. if we walked into a 2-dimensional space, we'd freak out for the same reason Homer did, but the circumstances would be the exact opposite. the real world is a bizarro cartoon world, and cartoon world is a bizarro real world. simple.

in a nutshell, the viking gag is a clever play on the real world/cartoon word dichotomy, and he who laughs at it for other reasons is laughing at his own meathead.

unregistered your post works in favor of argument A, btw

Is it normal for non-arguments about obvious things to result in over 1000 replies? (serious question)

this is one of my fave ILX threads ever.

Ralph isn't smart enough to come up with a hipsterish turn of phrase like "being a viking" at some activity. That you're just assuming that the writers all of a sudden decided to retcon his character and have him be smart enough to come up with his very own catchphrase is absurd. He goes to sleep and becomes a viking, that's all he's smart enough to understand.

ARRRRRRRRRRGH

Surely this is a windup?

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l-r: b absolutists

Maybe if CHIEF Wiggum said the quote, I could see the differences in opinion, but this is Ralph for God's sake, the dude has a Nerf football where his brain should be. "Being a viking"=excelling? Tell that to Leif Erikson.

you are sleeping
you do not want to be a viking
you are sleeping

if the teacher told Ralph to go to lunch, and he said "oh boy, the cafeteria -- that's where I'm a viking!" or if she told him to go to recess and he said "oh boy, the playground -- that's where I'm a viking!" would you have laughed? would that have made ANY fucking sense to you? really think about this and be honest.

You forget that sleep is both the place Ralph goes to and a verb describing the action (the teacher asks him to sleep). So "the cafeteria - that's where I'm Viking!" is not the equivalent to "sleep - that's where I'm a Viking!". A better equivalent would be "eating - that's where I'm a Viking!", and that would make sense to me exactly like "Viking of sleep" does.

more comparable if he said, "lunch, that's where i'm a viking," because sleep isn't actually the verb. the verb would be 'sleeping, that's where i'm a viking,' to be grammatically correct (i believe?), whereas 'sleep, that's where i'm a viking,' has to be the place he goes. with the cafeteria example it would be, 'lunch, that's where i'm a viking,' where to be a grammatically correct verb it would have to be, 'lunching, that's where i'm a viking,' (ie: parsing it as: i excel at sleeping, over, i excel at sleep)

Tuomas, you must know some Vikings.
Is there an equivalent reverse phrase used by them when a) they fail,AND/OR b) they dream of being Ralph?

(Speaking the unspeakable: how many of the fans of interpretation A are not native speakers of the English language?)

Jeez, people, if you are honestly making the argument of "most people don't do this, so why would Ralph?" then you are missing the entire. fucking. point.

Indeed. I don't quite get the argument that Ralph wouldn't use Viking in the sense of excelling in things, because it's such a weird use of language... Is Ralph really known as a normative user of English?

Ralph isn't smart enough to come up with a hipsterish turn of phrase like "being a viking" at some activity. That you're just assuming that the writers all of a sudden decided to retcon his character and have him be smart enough to come up with his very own catchphrase is absurd. He goes to sleep and becomes a viking, that's all he's smart enough to understand.

First of all, it's not necessarily a "hipsterish turn of phrase", just a weird way of using language - something kids do all the time. Secondly, IIRC there's been at least one episode where Ralph was indeed "retconned" to be surprisingly smart. It's not like Simpsons characters are always super consistent from one episode to another; the writers often just use them to tell jokes, even if the said joke might be somewhat against what the character was like in previous episodes. For example, in the same "Viking" episode it's also established that Lisa becomes a vegetarian, and whereas most later episodes take that for granted, in some episodes she's still shown eating meat. And it's not like Ralph thinking "Viking" means excelling in something requires a huge retconning of his character... Much bigger retcons have been done to other characters - remember the episode where Skinner was revealed to be a fake?

(Speaking the unspeakable: how many of the fans of interpretation A are not native speakers of the English language?)

― Three Word Username, Friday, April 30, 2010 4:18 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark

I think a more pertinent question would be how many A-siders are recent products of the American public school education system, as iirc grammar is simply not taught anymore in schools. I do admit though that I learned English at school and spoke Chinese at home.

just wanted to talk about the word emphasis after watching it on youtube

ralph says "SLEEP! Thats where I'M a VIking" - I used to hear this pattern all the time with my kids, it indicates that they think they are, or at least are pretending to be something ( I'M a RObot, I'M a COOL girl, I'M a MONster ): equal emphasis on I'm and Viking, implying equivalence.

compare that to the metaphorical use, which would usually be "i'm a MONSTER", "i'm a VIKING", ie all the emphasis on the metaphor.

But Ralph's voice isn't done by a real kid rather than an adult.

Also, remember that the teacher has just criticized Ralph for being incompetent, so his line, and the emphasis, is in response for that. He might suck at cutting worms, but at least sleeping is something where HE'S good at.

"in response to that"

part of the joke is that ralph is so dumb/naive that he doesn't even notice the teacher's dismay and instead is just excited that he gets to go to sleep and be a viking again

in which case you would expect the emphasis to be just on the "I'M", not on the "VIking" too. (xp)

Why? It's the same as saying "That's where I'M the BEST!". That doesn't sound like a particularly weird way of emphasizing words.

it's less usual.

But no so unusual that it would make "Viking of Sleep" interpretation ridiculous - if it would really be that unusual, I don't think 35% of people in the poll above would've interpreted the line as excelling in sleep.

When the argument has gone on this long, everybody is wrong.

But seriously, B is the actual answer, and A is just something enough people have misunderstood as a possibility that it's picked up momentum.

If the statement was "Oh boy, sleep! That's how I get to be a viking!" the Dreamers would have a much better case.

seriously? if you were in the writer's room and someone else pitched the line (with the dream meaning) you would suggest that change? smh

part of the joke is that ralph is so dumb/naive that he doesn't even notice the teacher's dismay and instead is just excited that he gets to go to sleep and be a viking again

― Wir fahren fahren fahren auf der Autoban (Curt1s Stephens), Friday, April 30, 2010 5:04 AM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah to me this has always been the part of it that's actually funny, and his obliviousness I think is reflected in his intonation and facial expressions.

Also, remember that the teacher has just criticized Ralph for being incompetent, so his line, and the emphasis, is in response for that. He might suck at cutting worms, but at least sleeping is something where HE'S good at.

― Tuomas, 30 April 2010 09:02 (20 minutes

The more obvious and simple link & line is that being a viking is something Ralph enjoys, btw, as opposed to being bad at everything IRL.

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^ This too, for all of us. thread is a sinkhole of despair.

i can rescue it, check this out

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that is my summary of this thread so far

still waiting for that to start moving tbh.

Also, remember that the teacher has just criticized Ralph for being incompetent, so his line, and the emphasis, is in response for that. He might suck at cutting worms, but at least sleeping is something where HE'S good at.

― Tuomas, 30 April 2010 09:02 (20 minutes

The more obvious and simple link & line is that being a viking is something Ralph enjoys, btw, as opposed to being bad at everything IRL.

I think Ralph saying he is good at something would be much more directly opposed to the teacher saying he's bad at something. Ralph's line is a direct response to teacher's comment, he even repeats the word "sleep" after she says it. If, like you say, what Ralph means is that he enjoys being a Viking in his dreams, that would not be a direct response to Ms. Hoover's line - enjoying of being a Viking has nothing to do with Ms. Hoover's criticism.

Not a direct response, because the point is that there really is no direct response to somebody telling you to go to sleep.

just wanted to talk about the word emphasis after watching it on youtube

ralph says "SLEEP! Thats where I'M a VIking" - I used to hear this pattern all the time with my kids, it indicates that they think they are, or at least are pretending to be something ( I'M a RObot, I'M a COOL girl, I'M a MONster ): equal emphasis on I'm and Viking, implying equivalence.

compare that to the metaphorical use, which would usually be "i'm a MONSTER", "i'm a VIKING", ie all the emphasis on the metaphor.

― tomofthenest, Friday, April 30, 2010 8:47 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

But Ralph's voice isn't done by a real kid rather than an adult.

― Tuomas, Friday, April 30, 2010 8:58 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

brb, committing suicide

we are now basing our theses on the foundations of ralph speaking in norse metaphors, and the voice actor being just the right type of incompetent.

We are?

no what we're doing is checking the pilot light

Anyway, like I said above "That's where I'M the BEST!" is really not a super uncommon way of emphasizing words. As for the comment about the voice actor: all I wanted to say is that just because Tomofthenest has observed his kids saying things in a certain way doesn't meant the actress playing Ralph would say it the same way - it's not like kids in Simpsons always speak like real kids. More importantly, Tomofthenest's examples are not equivalent to what Ralph says. Like I already explained above, the reason he puts emphasis on the "I'M" is because he is answering to Ms. Hoover's criticism.

(x-post)

I thought you died.

Next week- An analysis of the development of the phrase 'Oh My God- They killed Kenny!' through the years, and the effect it has had on national debt.