Ep. 343 - The Invention of Teabagging, with Esper Quinn
Editor Esper Quinn hosts the best panel in video games looking at the legacy of Halo, reactions to Summer Game Fest, and the origins of rude crouching. Hosted by Esper Quinn, with Frank Cifaldi, Tim Rogers, and Brandon Sheffield. Edited by Esper Quinn, original music by Kurt Feldman.
I’ll listen later this morning. This is from the patent of teabagging, US723287A, 1903, by Roberta Lawson and Mary Mclaren (whom I dub the OG teabaggers):
Heretofore it has been common to prepare tea–the infusion so designated–by putting a quantity of tea-leaves in a pot and pouring hot water thereon, thus providing a considerable supply of tea, from which a cup of tea was to be poured or drawn off for individual use. This practice involves the use of a considerable quantity of tea-leaves to prepare the desired supply of tea, and the tea, if not used directly, soon becomes stale or wanting in freshness,and therefore unsatisfactory, and frequently a large portion of the tea thus prepared and not used directly has to be thrown away, thus involving much waste and corresponding expense. To obviate this, our object in the present invention is to provide means whereby a small quantity of tea, so much only as is required for a single cup of tea, can be placed in a cup and have water poured thereon to produce only a cup of tea fresh for immediate use. By this means only so much of tea-leaves is used as is required for the single cup of tea, and thereby a cup of fresh fragrant tea is prepared and the waste occurring by preparing a larger quantity is obviated; but to put the tea-leaves in the cup in which the infusion is prepared and from which it is to be drunk requires that the leaves shall be held together against separating and being dispersed through the infusion to be drunk up, which would spoil the pleasure of the drink, and yet the leaves must be so held together as to be exposed fully to the water poured thereon in the cup, so that their qualities shall be freely given off and taken up by the water to produce the desired infusion. It is also important from a financial standpoint that the means for thus holding the tea-leaves in the cup shall be inexpensive as well as convenient for ready use. Our invention is directed to secure these objects.
So the next time you offer a teabag to a friend, an enemy, an acquaintance, a stranger, or some other fellow sojourner, utter a silent prayer, as you bestow the teabag, to they who have provided the pleasure of the drink.
my favorite shooter memory is one time in Battlefield Bad Company where i was hiding in a barn, then all of a sudden a tank breaks the wall behind me and i run for my life. there’s also another one in BF4 where i stalked a guy around a warehouse in a map and successfully stabbed him.
also, cursed halo is hilarious and had me belly laughing
Goofy Halo thing from my life:
I once saw the Halo multi player narrator (DOUBLE KILL… TRIPLE KILL)
play Mushnik in a stage production of Little Shop of Horrors!
Halo was listed under his credits in the booklet!
Unfortunately he wasn’t using the Halo voice in the performance.
Halo 2 ruled! That was THE GAME at my high school. I have so many fond memories of LAN parties at friends houses and then hopping online when we got home. I was never into first person shooters until Halo 2 came out. If we weren’t in matchmaking, we were messing around in custom lobbies, looking for glitches like super jumps to get outside of the maps. There were online communities dedicated to modding the game as well. Entire tool sets were built for modding halo 1 and 2(DotHalo). The music and sound effects are still burned into my brain and live there rent free.
I’m kind of a proponent of teabagging in the modern age, to be honest.
For me, it’s pretty much divorced from the grotesquery of actually “teabagging”.
With the fall of voice chat, and since I’ve never vibed with in-game quick chat or emojis (especially on console) , it’s one of the only ways to send a message to an opposing player, to remind them that a human being is controlling the character. It’s just a silly “non-game” action. I guess you could just punch the air or something.
The only time I ever played Halo, it was co-op with my Mom’s current-at-the-time boyfriend’s 14 year old son. I was much older than 14 and did not have very much fun.
Re: the discussion about Master Chief and teabagging, you don’t play as Master Chief (John-117) in the multiplayer. So canonically, Master Chief may not have ever teabagged someone.
There was a period of time there where I loved Halo. The first one didn’t click until I played it coop. After that, the sequels were constants in my friend group’s in person and online gaming. For about 17 years now, a group of us hope online on a Friday night and hang out. For a good chunk of that time, we played a lot of Halo 3, ODST and Reach on 360.
Rather than the war crime propaganda of COD and Battlefield, Halo feels way more innocent. Action figures of simple charicatures bashing against into each other. It is really simple stuff but some of the big moments and cheesy lines still get me. Good wholesome fun.
Bungie’s first instance of dual wielding* was pistols in Marathon, in 1994. Marathon 2, 1995 introduce dual wielding sawed-off shotguns (please don’t ask me about how that actually works - it’s quite fun even if it makes zero sense). Bungie’s introduction of dual wielding in Halo 2 is just following a solid company history.
*I’m pretty sure it was only 1 weapon at a time in Pathways into Darkness, but I don’t have much experience with the game, so please school me if appropriate.
All of my memorable multiplayer shooter moments have been in Halo games. Throwing a grenade across the map and getting an impossibly lucky bank shot off the ceiling of the stage to land exactly in the enemy spawn point for their base and getting a triple kill. Shotgun spree under the snow level bases due to the most extreme level of concentration I’ve ever felt playing a game. Or, my favorite, spending hours in forge mode, showing my friends, and they all immediately recognized “woah you built the cable car level from 007 Nightfire!”
(preface: am aware this was only mentioned in the episode in passing and wasn’t intended as an exhaustive critical analysis)
The teleporting enemies in halo 4 weren’t at all the kind of teleporters that input read your shots or instantly began harassing you after repositioning, they were more like “youve shot me several times in the past few seconds, so I am going to initiate this teleport and reappear a very limited distance away from where I was with a fairly long recovery time”.
It wasn’t a particularly common or dangerous behavior, but it also wasn’t particularly interesting, so I understand why it became so infamous.
In halo 5, the only enemies that can teleport (not counting the teleportation spawn animation that all of this faction uses) are the new class of smaller humanoids, and their “teleport” is more of a small invincible dodge move where they turn into light. it lasts about a second and they rarely use it when you’re shooting at them on the same level, it’s more of their equivalent to a jump.
They actually totally redesigned the original teleporting enemies so that they function more how they were originally pitched for halo 4: they have weak points that can be broken off if shot enough. breaking one off stuns them for a second, and breaking both opens up a weak spot on their back, which also makes them vulnerable to backstabs.
I enjoyed a lot of things about the new enemy design in those two games. One of the reasons I couldn’t get into Destiny is because it seemed to want all their general enemy factions to be really basic in terms of behaviors, so the player could just focus on the “simple joy” of shooting them. I am not interested in that.
Haven’t played Infinite. Am sure I will find it interesting, just don’t really play video games much these days.
