genderless burger experience

doors | matt johnson

'cause it gets harder to see me the closer you try to look

tw: suicide, guns, violence

love and rhetoric contrapuntal

(a rosencrantz and guildenstern poem)

"The hearts of men are easily corrupted." Wake Up Dead Man (2025) & Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

Bonus for @mykingdomforasong:

dghda s1 is about literally so much oh my god but if i were to pare it down to its barest bones and try to describe it in one word, i’d say it’s about duality. the duality of fate and free will, which is arguably the one of the main ideological engines driving the entire series. the duality of how different people react to similar traumas, as shown by the constant visual and narrative paralleling of characters (dirk and todd/ken and bart, todd/suzie boreton [she’s s2 but that one in particular is interesting enough that i’m gonna include it here lmao], etc.). and most notably to me the duality of the self — specifically in terms of what it means to lie to other people.

all the members of the agency trio are characterized in a way that’s inherently contradictory. dirk is an inner pessimist whose goals in s1 require a facade of borderline grating optimism. todd’s most defining traits are both his dangerously fierce loyalty and his past lying. farah spends pretty much the entire time trying to hide her weirdness/anxiousness under rigid plans and combat skill. and ALL of their arcs have a core moment in which they acknowledge that they have effectively created multiple versions of themselves via their inauthenticity, which serves as a major catalyst for their character growth.

anyways all of this to say. IT’S A SHOW ABOUT HOW LYING FORCES YOU TO CREATE MULTIPLE VERSIONS OF YOURSELF. AND THE MAIN SCI-FI MECHANIC IS LITERALLY SWAPPING SOULS WITH OTHER PEOPLE.

the villains are people who cannot reconcile with who they are and instead become addicted to pretending to be other people, and its ultimately their unwillingness to let that go that leads to their downfall. the people that swap their souls too many times take on an uncanny demeanor, because to continue lying about yourself is to lose your humanity. and the element of time travel further emphasizes this. patrick spring creates multiple versions of himself by time traveling because he’s traumatized and he cannot move on, and he dies by another version of himself. him creating multiple versions of himself inadvertently forces his daughter into a false version of herself. and when dirk and todd go back in time, they walk away learning that you can’t fix everything. splitting yourself up does not free yourself or other people. rather, much like the other lies they’ve told themselves and other people, it leaves you permanently stuck in a loop of self-destruction.