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The Berenstein Bears: We Are Living in Our Own Parallel Universe

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Dreez

Member
We all saw -stain back then. It's just over the years as we see only names with -stein our old memories get warped when we recall them. It's how the brain works, it doesn't make perfect copies of memories.
 

The Real Abed

Perma-Junior
This is wrinkling my tiny brain. I seem to remember it as Berenstein, but now that I know it can be Barenstain it has me wondering if I ever saw it as stein. I don't think I have those books anymore. I need to concentrate really hardly like Ashton Kutcher in Butterfly Effect and try to transport myself back in time to when I was a kid going to Christian school. I used to love these books. Especially the one about money with the image of Papa Bear being actually made out of money. I'm pretty sure it became a meme a while ago too.

Edit: Even Google autocompletes it as stain. And shows no suggestions for stein. And suggests stain if you type stein. When did I enter that portal into this timeline??? And should I make us all black goatees?

bears-02.jpg


Edit again: I think Dreez is right. I think it was always stain. But for some reason my child mind didn't accept it and thought it made more sense to be stein so it repressed the memory of when I first discovered the truth.
 

Disgraced

Member
So let me get this straight—the only currently conceivable changes made by this universal overlap are 1. the motherfucking Berenstein Bears' spelling 2. that painting and 3. Nelson Mandela's time of death.

Lame! I would've thought there'd be more exciting differences.

Obviously, I'm on #TeamBerenstein, but you 'stainers seem alright for now. Just don't get creepy, okay?
 

GorillaJu

Member
I remember taking a dump and seeing a book on the floor of the bathroom and being very confused by the name, having never taken a good look at it. It's Berenstain and always has been.
 

ENM89

Neo Member
Another example of this is "dilemma vs dilemna". I heard about it on the podcast WireTap. The episode is called "The Dilemna Dilemma".
 

morningbus

Serious Sam is a wicked gahbidge series for chowdaheads.
I sincerely love that nerds created some grand sci-fi story to explain away misremembering something from their childhood.
 

Boss Mog

Member
Or, you know, just maybe, people read it wrong....

-stein is a common suffix for last names. And we don't read by sounding out every letter, we recognize whole words and patterns. I'm sure we've all seen these online:

PS_1093W_DIG_BICK.jpg


PS_0911W_LINE_WRONG.jpg


It's just the same phenomenon.
 

Fireblend

Banned
So we merged with an alternate timeline and all we got was a goddamn misspelling for a TV show/book franchise no one remembers?

WE COULD HAVE HAD AIRSHIPS.

YOU HAD ONE JOB SPACE TIME CONTINUUM DISRUPTIONS.
 

Gridman

Neo Member
So we merged with an alternate timeline and all we got was a goddamn misspelling for a TV show/book franchise no one remembers?

WE COULD HAVE HAD AIRSHIPS.

YOU HAD ONE JOB SPACE TIME CONTINUUM DISRUPTIONS.
I'm afraid if something like Sliders happened in real life this is what the result would be. All the different parallel worlds would be comprised of small changes like this.

That being said, someone get to work on sliding technology so we can get back to the E universe.
 
Boss★Moogle;173465775 said:
Or, you know, just maybe, people read it wrong....

-stein is a common suffix for last names. And we don't read by sounding out every letter, we recognize whole words and patterns. I'm sure we've all seen these online:

It's just the same phenomenon.

What's this called? Trying to find similar examples.
 
The weirdest part of all of this to me is the "Beren" part of the name. If you had asked me before this thread about the books I read when I was a kid, I would've confidently typed "Bernstein".
 
I always heard it read, "Bear-en-steen Bears," but I'm open to the A spelling. It looks correct. The problem is if I was reading the word today, I'd say, "Bear-en-stain Bears," a phrase which never was uttered around me in my childhood, even in hushed tones.
 
Really? How did you pronounce it when you were a kid?

Burn-steen

I never saw the show or anything, so it's probably something I just did as a kid who was just learning to read.

I was also someone who turned Hermione's name in Harry Potter to "Her-moine", and didn't know any better until it was explicitly spelled out phonetically during one of the books.
 

ethanny2

Member
I was born in 95 and read these books when I was 5 or 4 and always remember it being the Berenstein bears, wtf is a Berenstain bear
 
What is this fuckery? Somebody is trying to tell us something. This book is the key to everything.

Oh, and I remember the title originally as Bernstein. Not Berenstein, and certainly not Berenstain.
 

M.W.

Member
Yeah, that's how I pronounced it too.

Just looked at one of my books from 1978. It says "Berenstain Bears Go to School." So that's that.

I was born in '88 but grew up with this stuff.

Yeah, because NOW we've crossed over to the A universe. Of course it's STAIN.
 

railGUN

Banned
Kind of funny how the title of this thread will automatically give you a preconception of its spelling when you come in. Clever girl.
 

zer0das

Banned
Another example of this is "dilemma vs dilemna". I heard about it on the podcast WireTap. The episode is called "The Dilemna Dilemma".

I don't think this is the same at all. There's always been a hard double m.

The thing that really gets me is people insisting since Stein is a more common name, we'd replace Stain with that. But stain is a memorable word and usually not in surnames, so that seems rather improbable to me. It's not like you encounter Stein a lot as a kid, and the pronunciation everyone used for Stein sounded more like Steen to me. Wouldn't it be more probable that since Stein is a more common name the Stain would be the alternate universe? Who the heck has Stain in a surname? And how would people not immediately recognize that as weird?
 

commedieu

Banned
I don't think this is the same at all. There's always been a hard double m.

The thing that really gets me is people insisting since Stein is a more common name, we'd replace Stain with that. But stain is a memorable word and usually not in surnames, so that seems rather improbable to me. It's not like you encounter Stein a lot as a kid, and the pronunciation everyone used for Stein sounded more like Steen to me. Wouldn't it be more probable that since Stein is a more common name the Stain would be the alternate universe? Who the heck has Stain in a surname? And how would people not immediately recognize that as weird?

...


WITCH!!!
 

jkanownik

Member
I remember it vividly spelled stein and pronounced steen. This is weird. I don't know of any reason why I would be biased away from stain and the word/letter play tricks in this thread don't explain the pronunciation.
 

Sobriquet

Member
I remember it vividly spelled stein and pronounced steen. This is weird. I don't know of any reason why I would be biased away from stain and the word/letter play tricks in this thread don't explain the pronunciation.

No need to explain; it was always pronounced stain.
 

Evo X

Member
OH SHIT!

I just realized that this guy might have crossed over from the timeline where Superman IS actually called Suparman.

He holds all the answers GAF. We need to track him down before the government does.

Untitled-134.jpg
 

TheYanger

Member
This thread is blowing my mind. I had episodes of the cartoon on video, I had TONS of the books. It was absolutely 100% E as a child. I can even picture the fucking theme song and title card in my head, the words aren't pronounced remotely the same.
 

EulaCapra

Member
I saw some of their books last year while flipping through children's books. I always thought it was "Stein" since childhood and saw "Stain" and went WTF. Didn't the show pronounce it as "Stein"?

I am not about to get a parallel universe convergence nosebleed from something so small.
 

M.W.

Member
"...When John Titor traveled back to 1975 to obtain the IBM 5100, he caused some kind of Divergence. We were -supposed- to have Endured a Catastrophe in the form of the “Y2K Bug” (remember how it was a forgone conclusion?) … But he went off-mission, Changed something, and we Avoided It…

…To me, this BerenstEin (which it WAS, and was supposed to have remained) Phenomenon is an Echo of Proof that OUR World-line was Affected by the Time/Dimensional Traveler, John Titor. Maybe he wasn’t in Our Specific World-line in 1975, but whatever he did There (or Then) caused Ours to be Created as a Branch-off from that point. But he was CERTAINLY in Ours in 2000-2001, as we have the Posts to prove it.”
 
"...When John Titor traveled back to 1975 to obtain the IBM 5100, he caused some kind of Divergence. We were -supposed- to have Endured a Catastrophe in the form of the “Y2K Bug” (remember how it was a forgone conclusion?) … But he went off-mission, Changed something, and we Avoided It…

…To me, this BerenstEin (which it WAS, and was supposed to have remained) Phenomenon is an Echo of Proof that OUR World-line was Affected by the Time/Dimensional Traveler, John Titor. Maybe he wasn’t in Our Specific World-line in 1975, but whatever he did There (or Then) caused Ours to be Created as a Branch-off from that point. But he was CERTAINLY in Ours in 2000-2001, as we have the Posts to prove it.”

Seems legit.
 

mattiewheels

And then the LORD David Bowie saith to his Son, Jonny Depp: 'Go, and spread my image amongst the cosmos. For every living thing is in anguish and only the LIGHT shall give them reprieve.'
Creating a navelgazing creepypasta out of a name being spelled funnier than it usually is, yep sounds like the internet.
 
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