This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
From YKTTW
Sci Vo: Interestingly, one of the %u codes in Jonny D's quote of the Thermopylae couplet broke the page. Fortunately, Google led me to FileFormat.Info, where I was able to find the equivalent &# HTML codes.
Tangent128: Credited the entry quote to the guy I got the limerick from.
Ununnilium: Took out the Truth in Television link in the Thermopylae ref, because... uh... it isn't; it shows off just how hard it is to get such things to sound right in English.
I removed the entire current comics section:
Comic Books
- The Green Lantern oath ("In brightest day, in blackest night/No evil shall escape my sight/All those who worship evil's might/Beware my power, Green Lantern's light!") was made up by Hal Jordan and ended up being used by most of the Corps, who used Jordan's oath to honor him. Some other Green Lanterns use different oaths, but they also rhyme. Interesting in that while the oath doesn't have to rhyme, it does need to keep the meter: the oath is a timing device used by the Lanterns to measure out the time it takes for the ring to fully recharge.
- This is a bit of misunderstanding: each planet has its own version of the oath, fitting its background and history.
- Originally, they DID copy Hal Jordan's tradition. However that was established in a Pre-Crisis story and may have been Retconned by now.
- No love for Rot Lop Fan?
- Another DCU example: the spell spoken by Jason Blood to transform into (or summon, when they were retconned into separate people) the demon Etrigan. ("Gone, gone, form of man/Rise the demon Etrigan!") Later, Etrigan started not only speaking entirely in rhyme, but sometimes in iambic pentameter. In fact, "Rhyming Demon" became a specific rank in The Legions of Hell.
as neither example fits the trope at all. They're not prophecies; they're not translations of ancient texts into English. They're just things that happen to rhyme.
Took out the
not only rhyme, but use a similar rhyme scheme part because with the examples given (Homer, Virgil, Beowulf), there is no
rhyme scheme to copy.
