The Pentagonâs recent revision to its list of Christian religions has reignited a long-standing debate about whether The Church of Jesus Chr
The leopards are out gnawing on faces again!
Basically, the Pentagonâs started drastically reducing a list of officially-recognized religions within the US military (from 200 down to just 31, split between various categories including âChristianâ, âJewishâ and âOtherâ: many varied religious denominations such as Baptists have been merged under a single umbrella, and faiths such as Unitarian Universalism, paganism and atheism have been deleted outright), with unrecognized religions having a harder time obtaining religious exemptions or receiving services from a chaplain of their faith. Obviously, I imagine most folks on Tumblr wonât care about this, considering this solely impacts members of the US military, but it once again shows how the Trump administration is trying to forcibly rework the United States into a christofascist theocracy.
However! The two senators from Utah â Mike Lee and John Curtis, both Republicans and Mormons â are pissed about this for unrelated reasons. Wanna guess what theyâre mad about?
See, the Mormons are not one of the groups thatâve been deleted from this list: theyâre actually listed under the largest denominationâs full legal name, The Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. (I imagine that the other non-LDS sects of Mormonism have probably been deleted, though.) But the Mormons are listed as part of the listâs âOtherâ category, not as part of the âChristianâ category, and thatâs what these guys are mad about.
Iâm of two minds on the subject. From a purely logical sense, I think that theyâre technically justified to be mad about this: most Mormons view themselves as a Christian sect, and if the whole point of religious freedom is respecting peopleâs sincerely-held personal beliefs, then youâd think that the faith would be categorized based on the beliefs of its practitioners and not its detractors. (Itâs also always been a little silly to argue against the Mormons being Christian, considering they consider the Bible to be scripture and have the name âJesus Christâ in the religionâs name. In my mind, itâs like arguing that Chick-Fil-A doesnât count as a chicken restaurant because their food and politics â I donât like them one bit, but they are technically meeting the bare qualifications of ârestaurant that mostly serves chickenâ!)
On the other hand, as somebody who was raised in a Mormon household and has since tempered my childhood faith against my love for studying history⌠I sorta saw this coming ages ago. See, the Mormons AP have historically been a cultural enigma in the United States â theyâre arguably the nationâs most prominent homegrown religious cult, but much of the faithâs culture is about wholeheartedly embracing Americana in a frenetic desire to NOT be considered an âOtherâ to the US. If you know your American history, this makes sense: the Mormons were driven out of the Eastern US via an extermination order that was only officially lifted in 1971, and after the assassination of founder Joseph Smith much of the faithâs practitioners wound up under the leadership of historical rat-bastard Brigham Young, who basically transformed the Mormons from being an Amish-like group of pacifistic polygamous vegetarians into being violent marauders and slavers crusading throughout the western territories. After the Mormon War ended with Utah being officially incorporated into the United States, the Mormon leadership dedicated themselves to a decades-long effort to rehabilitate the faithâs image, largely out of that same sense of self-preservation that drove them to the West to begin with. The modern stereotype of Mormons being clean-cut young men with short hair and crisp white dress shirts? Thatâs fully intentional: the LDS leadership have cultivated that (supposedly) nonthreatening image because itâs less scary than the bearded Mormon zealots of the 1800s.
By far the biggest irony of Mormonism is its reticence to change: despite one of its core tenets being how the âliving gospel of Christâ allows the religion to grow alongside its followers, the modern religion is deeply conservative, with much of that being linked to that cultural obsession with mid-century Americana. This, coupled with how Mormon indoctrination encourages followers to not question authority, makes the faith very appealing to Republican politicians and governments. Mike Lee certainly knows this â heâs giddily cozied up to Trump in the past, comparing him to Mormon mythological figures such as Captain Moroni (an anti-monarchist, pro-religious freedom figure) and decrying Joe Biden as a modern Korihor (a strongman Antichrist who leveraged religion to deceive and exploit the working-class). The Republican Mormons desperately want a Christian nation twisted to suit their desires, because they think theyâll get to reap the rewards for their treachery, but theyâre too stupid to understand what the rest of us can plainly see: the other Republicans will never view them as Christians. Theyâre too weird for that.
The Mormon paradox is one of the religionâs own making: theyâre simultaneously too much of a religious minority to be accepted as a Christian faith, but theyâre too devoted to being considered a Christian faith to be able to find solidarity with other religious minorities. Meanwhile, the religionâs hemorrhaging membership due to its repressive policies and culture (as I used to joke with my friends back in college, the easiest way to lose your faith in Mormonism is to study it closely), and these days it seems like theyâre only ever in the news because of Republican idiocy, blowhard assassinations (rot in piss, Mr. Kirk) and Lego-based corruption scandals (give âem hell, Ben!)
The Pentagon responded to Leeâs complaints, but not by revising the list to include Mormonism as a Christian religion: after all, that could risk rankling the feathers of the real Christians, and the Republicans canât risk that! No, instead they simply removed the categories entirely, so that no faiths would be listed as âChristianâ at all. Thereâs something kinda funny about them preferring to sacrifice the entire elitist Christian category over risking letting the Mormons eat at their fancy tables. Youâd think this would give the Mormons more room for reflection over their treatment of minorities, and whether or not they themselves have been so focused on scouring the eyes of others for motes of sin, that theyâve failed to perceive the beams jutting out of their own corneas⌠but sadly, I donât think theyâll think too hard about it. Thatâs not the way theyâve been taught.
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While rewriting the ship lore, I've also been thinking about adjusting the timeline, placing the duo's meeting between the Halloween special and the fighting game. (some ramble under line so I can revisit this later)
What this means is that Puppy Love's introduction ("Sugar and Spite") would just be about them (and other characters trying to deal with them), as opposed to the duo bonding through pulling tricks on each other about 2/3 through the story, and ending with them showing up to take revenge on those who tricked them into having a prank war. This would flesh out Puppy Love as an antagonist a bit more, instead of immediately tying them to another character.
The other characters would only find out the two knew each other later on, and their shared history would be shown through a simple flashback including their meeting and their collaboration in hijacking or simply sneaking onto a soul-transporting bus â yes, that was how Jack got out of the Underworld in the ship's timeline lol! I'm a bit more partial to the hijacking idea though, both for the fun visual and the Jack pun potential... (crowd booing)
Now that I'm probably rewriting it to be something they did together, I think it would be REALLY funny if the two described the same event differently, with Puppy Love's retelling being an overtly romanticized version of what actually happened.
The "bonding through prank war" thing can stay since logically it doesn't really matter whether it took place in the Underworld or in the mortal realm â in fact, the biggest reason I had it happen in Endsville initially (after the special AND the game) was that I wanted their meeting and Puppy Love's introduction to be within the same episode, with the intention of sticking to the show's overall lack of continuity.
After giving it some thought though, I think it would work just as well to let Puppy Love have their own episode to themself, and for Jack to call them in when he came back as a recurring character and was thought to still be working alone.
People who watched Puppy's introduction would know this was a previously established character, but those who watched the show out of order also wouldn't need more context than "these two met off-screen and are now working together".
It was quite silly of me to act like everything about Puppy's character had to be contained in one story, haha. At least I can always go back and edit things! It's something I need to be braver about.
âTo rule forever, it is necessary only to create, among the people one would rule, what we call...Bad History. Nothing will produce Bad History more directly nor brutally, than drawing a Line, in particular a Right Line, the very Shape of Contempt, through the midst of a People,-- to create thus a Distinction betwixt 'em,-- 'tis the first stroke.-- All else will follow as if predestin'd, unto War and Devastation.â
Listen, I know about the Baader-Meinhof frequency illusion. But sometimes I really do think I just have good timing by pure coincidence, because I knew nothing about Thomas Pynchon until after I took the personal dive in over the middle part of 2025, and then suddenly, it felt like everyone is talking about him. Suddenly I was seeing The Crying of Lot 49 on the front tables in every bookstore, everyoneâs talking about Vineland because of One Battle After Another, I have since read Vineland and was a bit disappointed by it compared to the movieâbut I chose, because of the feckless and inscrutable commands of The Lists, to start with the one about the old-timey surveyors.
Specifically, of course, itâs Robert Lanham again. Mason & Dixon (always with an ampersandâ thatâs important, because like a border, itâs a singular symbol that represents demarcation and connection bothâ thatâs why itâs blown up to big print on the cover) came out the year I was born, and would have, like me, been six years old by the time Lanhamâs Hipster Handbook codified the term for our new century. For context, a novel published six years ago today would be, er, Piranesi, for example, which does still feel like a ânewâ book, but then again, my perception of time is loosening at my geriatric 28. Hereâs what Lanham said about Mason & Dixon, to ground us in the ever-important question (here specifically) of Why Itâs Hip:
âThrow out your American History 101 textbooks; Pynchonâs reimagining is much more hip. Hipsters like the Caffeine Theory, which suggests that drinking coffee and smoking can create a more frank and honest world. Conspiracy theorists who try to decipher hidden meanings about masons and the number 23 are pretty fin.â
Recall that âfinâ means âlame, uncool, unhip.â Allegedly. I think Lanham was fucking with us a bit on that one.
So, what do I now know about Pynchon? Well, as a member of the general public, I know what heâs seen fit to tell about himself to the general public, which is zippidy-doo-dah and a bit of shit-all. Pynchon is a mystery. He was born on the day of his birth, married on his wedding day, and lives in his place of residence. The only confirmed photos of his face date back to his high school days, the better part of a century past. His voiceâand this is extremely funnyâhas only been heard from guest starring in The Simpsons, in which he played himself animated with a bag over his head, making terrible puns about his own books.
In summary, this guy makes Salinger look like John Green. Pynchon thereby, by his own design, becomes the poster child for Death of the Author, even as he keeps publishing books, as recently as two weeks ago as of writing (that wonât be true by the time this is published, but know then that I finished Mason & Dixon and wrote this whole bit just after Shadow Ticket hit shelves.)Â
All there is is text.
So below the break, letâs look at the text.
From the first sentence, which is, letâs count them, 122 words long, it became clear that I would be in this novel for the long haul. A fair bit of my life has kind of fallen apart and shifted about and been rebuilt anew since I cracked that first page and read âSnow-Balls have flown their Arcs, starr'd the Sides of Outbuildings, carried Hats away into the brisk Wind off Delawareâthe Sleds are brought in and their Runners carefully dried and greased, shoes deposited in the back Hall, a stocking'd-foot Descent made upon the great KitchenâŚâ (thatâs not a close approach to the first landmarking Period, not by a long shot) but never mind that collapse. We carry on the Project. You may notice in that Excerpt that there are a great many Letters of the Capital Variety. Apparently this was a Trend in real 18th-century Writing, that almost every Noun is capitalized for Emphasis on its Importance (Tumblr does this too sometimes.) Apparently I havenât actually read much 18th century writing, because I had to look this up to figure out why the fuck there was so much uppercase. Pynchon throws this style on the reader hard at first, going harder on it than the actual documents heâs emulating or parodying, and it slowly ebbs. The sim-historical prose gets easier, but thatâs merely an er; Iâd never say it gets easy, but it does get captivating. Reading Mason & Dixon involves a bit of immersion, as the reader must by necessity put aside their modern tastes for the English language and accept a process of compartmentalization, each word understood for itself, assembling into a clause to then be understood, then a sentence composed thereof, a paragraph composed hence of sentences contained withinât, and a page, an assemblage of assemblages of assemblages, takes on the feel of a genuine achievement âpon completion. And there are 800 of the things.
History is a puzzle, a maze of sources that may have nothing to do with modern thinking, and itâs very hard to find a single definitive True Story in all the stories that are told. Thatâs a major theme of Mason & Dixon, and thatâs why we start with a frame narrative. That wintery scene of the first sentence brings the reader into a cozy family Christmas in the early years after the American Revolution. The children gather around the chair of their favourite uncle and storyteller, the Reverend Wicks Cherrycoke. Pynchon loves his funny names. Rev. Spritecranberry here has told the children stories about âthe escape from Hottentot-Land, the Accursèd Ruby of Mogok, the Ship-Wrecks in Indies East and West,â all of which I would also like to hear. But this snowy afternoon, the youngsters ask, why havenât you ever told a story about America?
And so Rev. Vanillarootbeer begins a story about America, not in America. In fact we remain not in America for a long time, not in America for a quarter-thousand pages. First we must meet our two America-makers, figures whose names echo through the Statesâ divided history and culture unto its contemporary sundering, but whose lives are known to history only really in outline, allowing Pynchon to sketch characters within the lines.
Iâve never seen the Mason-Dixon line. Odds are that I wonât, anytime soon. I donât have much of an impression fixed in my mind of how the eastern states are shaped in their precise borders. This is to say, I didnât know that it was a straight line, perhaps the first border to lie perfectly east-west along a parallel for hundreds of miles. I did know, although I havenât known it for especially long, I didnât learn it in school or anything, that it divided the slaving South from the nominally liberated North; I did know that it was the line along which the meth lab downstairs was sliced in twain in its deadly civil war; and I did know that it remains the line roughly demarcating a crowd of populism, simmering racism, and lingering resentment, currently being exploited by the villains of our day to tear open and bleed the sutures of that scar.
I didnât know that it took its name from two English surveyors, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, who laid out the line to settle a dispute between the Penn clan (aha!) of Pennsylvania, and the Marylanders who donât seem to equally be named Mary, in the years before the Declaration. Pynchon chooses to cast Mason as the pessimistic, gothic widower, a somewhat dismal character to follow as he is literally haunted by his lost love, but one necessary to the contrast of any great bromance. To the point of that contrast, here comes Jeremiah Dixon, a Quaker, whom we as modern folk are inclined to think of as gentle yet conservative oatmeal-box Amish types, forgetting that the original Society of Friends were universalist, progressive, anti-slavery, anti-monarchy, anti-hierarchy pacifist radicals. In fact, with their deck retro hats, Iâd hesitantly say that the Quakers of Dixonâs time could be called a sort of pre-GĂŠnĂŠration Perdue proto-hipster. Pynchonâs Dixon, then, is a bit of a party animal, hitting the town wherever the pair of friends may go, to cavort and sing and drink in taverns and learn all there is to learn of fun in the 18th century. A good chunk of the fun dialogue, once the reader can figure out what the fuck theyâre actually talking about, contrasts Masonâs gloom with Dixonâs cheer. The two will amicably argue over anything, too: wine or beer, coffee or tea, and further even more philosophical arguments.
Where they go, by the way, is first to Portsmouth, where⌠hang on, a fucking talking dog?
Yes, a talking dog, a sophisticated and intelligent Learnèd English Terrier, hanging out in a showroom at the back of a Portsmouth tavern and singing for meat. Thatâs a strange aside into surrealism that seems totally out of place in the early chapters, although weâll come to learn that the magical and unscientific and impossible is pretty important in this hipper version of history. Weâll return to that. Remember: per the frame story of Reverend Gingerale, this is a story told to entertain a motley family crowd by the fire in dark post-solstice days. So our narrator might just be adding in some silly stuff for entertainmentâs own sakeâright?
From Portsmouth, the pair trauma-bond when their ship, bound for Sumatra to observe the transit of Venus over the Sun, is fired upon by a marauding French frigate. Rather than Sumatra, the royally contracted astronomers (not yet surveyors, not at this moment at least) land in Dutch Cape Town. Here we see colonialism at its worst: morally bankrupt Dutch townies keeping slaves from beyond their walls while never venturing to discover if there might be any beauty or worth to that further country. In this walled isolation, slaves and children seem to seek pleasureless sexual sadism because what else is there to do when youâre too afraid of the land youâve stolen and raped to actually venture into it?Â
This admittedly harder to read early section builds to the Transit of Venus itself. Something is made here, I think, of how planets alone in the sky are deified points seemingly glowing from their own light, sources of magic and zodiacal force through all preceding human history; but in front of the Sun, the deity becomes a solid, dark, earthly sphere. The pursuit of science grants objective knowledge, but is something of the magic lost?
After South Africa, we sail to remote St. Helena, not yet the site of the yet-unborn Napoleonâs exile, where the relentless wind drives men insane. Then itâs back home to London, where thereâs frankly somewhat dull politics and family drama.
But thatâs where we are, thematically, when the contract arrives for Mason & Dixon to lay out the borders of the fledgling American colonies. Weâre thinking about colonialism and the relationship of the colonizing class to the colonized land; weâre thinking about science in the Age of Reason and its imposition in a way on the preceding world of medieval magical mystery; weâre thinking about the worlds of the maddening wild vs the dull political civilized.
And off we go.
In Philadelphia there are some fun meetings with figures of later importance. Benjamin Franklin is of course a hipster magician-scientist, playing with electricity and eels. Even Pynchon canât make George Washington all that interesting, if Iâm being honest, although thereâs some emphasis on his slaves. And Dixon gets a âSay that again?â moment with Thomas Jefferson.
And then, we come to it at last: the line, the line! Chains stretched between marked theodolite-sights, following the stars to find a perfect latitude, and a swath of trees chopped down around it in a perfect âvisto,â at first through farms and flatlands, and thenâ look at those ripplesâup and over the forested ridges of the Appalachians.
Hereâs where the weirdness starts to creep into the story in force, and the book really takes off for its unpredictability. I donât want to spoil all the delightfully surreal aspectsâthe aliens and anachronistic technology and impossible botany and geological revelations and secret colleges. The Swedish lumberjacks are not what they seem. It makes sense, looking back, that this would come in here. Even if it is Reverend Pineapplefanta adding in some storytellersâ liberties, it meshes well with our Surveyors and their ever-growing-and-then-dwindling camp of followers pushing into the wilderness beyond the coastal plain, passing over the mountains they never could in South Africa into the world of the wild, the uncivilized, the unscientific past.
Oh, and the invention of Star Trek.
Into the travelling party, as the ridges grow wilder, comes then a Chinese mystic to lay down some feng shui truth: an unnatural straight line is a conduit for bad energy, and the longer the line, the stronger its power. All of nature follows contours, but our surveyors are cutting the very representation of enclosure and geometric determinism into old, mystic mountains, dividing them, cutting it all in half like a fine-honed razor over the great turtleâs throat. The journey takes them into realms of magic, but its purpose is to slice it into civilized monotony, and so the mystic becomes tragic as its observers can only see it in bringing about its end.Â
Maybe thatâs the American tragedy.
I give this hipster book four miles, three chains, and seven links.
Project Hipster is a futile and disorganized attempt to dive into the world of things that the internet has at some point claimed "are hipster," mostly through ListChallenges search results.
This review comes from the sixth result for "Hipster," "Hipster Lit: If You Haven't Read 'em, Pretend You Have;" which is to say, the list of books printed in Lanham, R, The Hipster Handbook, 2003.
âPosh cunts telling thick cunts to kill poor cunts. That's the Army for you.âÂ
We remain, for now, inâŚ
(Your Hipsterologist here recalled that this movie is set in Northern Ireland, and he was about to make a connection to having just reviewed Bronson, which is set in various bits of England. However, Your Hipsterologist would like to avoid any noministic geopolitical situations. The UK? Technically, at the moment, and at the more or less concurrent moments of each moviesâ setting, yes, but⌠the British Isles? Thatâs also a loaded termâŚ)
We remain for now in the islandy bits off the northwest part of Europe, with â71, a movie set in its titular year in the city of Belfast (which is also the name of a Kenneth Branagh movie that is, I think about some of the same stuff.)
Now hereâs the caveat that will get me cancelled for daring to opine on a sensitive historical subject: I really donât know much about Northern Ireland or the understatedly-called Troubles. I guess I know the basics. A nominally British-governed chunk of the island of Ireland, which many Irish think is weird because, well, yeah, to look at a map it kind of is, erupts into civil violence over that status. Itâs something to do with the religious denominations of the Irish, Catholic or Anglican, which is such a weird concept to me coming from a country where for all living memory most churches have their denomination in fine print at most. But I suppose historically there was some stuff around Quebec being Catholic with a minority language within an English-ruled federation, so mĂŞme chose.Â
â71 isnât expecting you to know the deep, nuanced cultural history though. That may even be one of its flaws, as Iâve seen angry Irish Letterboxd reviewers write that itâs too sympathetic to the English side of the conflict. Well, about twenty minutes in, we start to see British soldiers beating random civilians on the street and the cinematic language very much turns to that of occupation, oppression, and resistance. I suppose what âtoo sympatheticâ means is any acknowledgment of the human stories within the ranks of the domineering nation. I can see how, if you had a personal connection to the conflict, you wouldnât want to be following a British soldier for the main thrust of the plot. I donât have a connection, so I have no problem with Gary Hook, our young naive army recruit protagonist played by Jack OâConnell, who was apparently also in This Is England, but I donât recognize at all here. Heâs a decent chap who kicks a football around with some kid (his son? A brother? An orphan heâs looking to adopt? Itâs unclear) and looks remorseful when his squadmates start beating up Irish civilians. And thatâs all weâve really got; heâs a sympathetic enough audience surrogate to lead us through the action, more than a particularly distinct character. From Hookâs perspective, itâs clear what the movie assumes the default audience perspective to be: English lads who believe, generally, in the goodwill and peacekeeping purpose of the army. Make no mistake, that illusion is shattered, and Hookâs disillusionment makes for probably the best character throughline of the movie.Â
Hook is separated from the squad as night falls and tension breaks out into actual violence on the worn-brick Belfast streets. Here weâre into shaky cameras following characters at speed down tight alleys, and low shots lit by bursts of fire from molotov cocktails. There's a sparse, tense, synthy score. All of this is more or less the visual language youâd expect a 2014 movie to use for this sort of thing, but itâs well directed all the same, with coherent, claustrophobic action that conceals a tight budget.
In the night, Hook meets a radicalized young boy whoâs sworn himself to the Loyalist side of the conflict. You know it, you love it, maybe youâre a bit tired of it after a decade, itâs the lone wolf and cub plot. The angry young lad calls the other side âCatholic bastardsâ or âFenian bastards;â from an ignorant Canadian perspective, this latter is funny because that word is here most associated with a meme-level flop of a 19th-century rebellion, so itâd be like calling someone in the late twentieth century a fucking Decembrist. Then thereâs the boy's people, a little Loyalist sect that heâs somehow connected to (his uncle is among them?) and that also has some connection to the army itself. The theme of corruption and the immorality of guerrilla tactics within nominally oneâs own country would probably hit harder if I could figure out who was who. Because then thereâs a little gaggle of Republicansâ howâs that for a word thatâs been corrupted on an international scaleâ including Barry Keoghan, an actor I always enjoy seeing but who isnât given a ton to work with here. Keoghan plays Sean, a family teen âconflictedâ (you can tell heâs conflicted because he stares into the middle distance a lot) about getting wrapped up in the escalating violence. Then thereâs an already disillusioned ex-army man, and his daughter, and all of these factions have vague connections between various largely indistinct characters. Itâs trying to be a sprawling interconnected thing, but aside from the boy, the father and Barry Keoghan, none of these many side characters are really distinct enough to hold their own in the little screentime given to them. In showing the complexity and tension of a city torn apart by politics and religion and history, and the human cost of violence, it sells it, but at the cost of every character individually. For that reason itâs hard for me to say the cast should be trimmed down, but hard for me to think it needs everyone it does. With stronger filmmaking throughout, maybe â71 could wield its big cast into being a proper big Scorcesian epic slow-burn. As it is, two hours is definitely enough.
The plot does build tension as the factions converge for an inevitable showdown in an apartment complex that sort of works but doesnât give too much to really show off as a big final set piece. Heading into this climax, the movie transitions unfortunately into the olive drab colour grading that plagued movies of the period. The ending and resolution isnât anything too surprising for Hookâs character as itâs set up, but it works alright. Really thatâs what you could say about â71 as a whole: it works alright. Maybe my personal disconnect from the subject matter hindered my engagement with this movie, or maybe it helped.
Why is â71 hipster? I donât really know. The thing about these lists is that I sometimes have to take someoneâs word for it. I suppose because itâs a decently crafted movie thatâs not a mainstream billion-dollar blockbuster. Sure.
I give this hipster movie a rating of 71%
Project Hipster is a futile and disorganized attempt to dive into the world of things that the internet has at some point claimed "are hipster," mostly through ListChallenges search results.
This review comes from the inaccurately titled sixth result for "Hipster," âIndie Films That Your Hipster Friend Watches.â You can tell that a Brit made this list because (a) they say âfilmsâ and (b) it has a movie about Northern Ireland.
Up next: the book I spent much of last year on, my first from an author of note.
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For the character ask, the guy of all time ERIK FROM ROCHESTER
(SMILING LIKE A CHIMP) OOOFFF COOOOOUURSEEEEEE. send me a character and i'll...
favorite thing about them - MAN SO MUCH. LOOK AT ME. i only recently started using it as my kin blog but i had the url @silencetheidol from the moment the trial's name was revealed, i was already REALLY excited for it by virtue of being a kress twins enjoyer and lover of the tv studio concept and then the actual trial just blew me away thematically. also the uncanny valley of his mask is a great visual.
least favorite thing about them - i have a weird relationship with it because in concept it's an aspect i find really interesting and one i still think about a lot, but in practice i think the implications of sexual abuse between him and the kress twins kind of take away from the main point of the trial and erik's character. it's not that i think they wouldn't, honestly i'd think they would even if it weren't actually implied, but i think silence the idol(+project judas overall) is really intensely and specifically about pushing the reagents' limits and making the player feel more culpable in senseless atrocity than ever and it accomplishes that so well that giving erik more to suffer over from an outside source kind of detracts from that in my eyes
ALSO IS IT VANIER OR VENIER?!?!?? I STILL DON'T KNOW
favorite line - he has so many. it's simple but i cannot describe the way my heart sank when i first heard "i'm from rochester, the doctors said i'm an imbecile but i can work, i can do lots of stuff" and i realized what we were in for this trial... i also really like "don't let's make more tv shows", the clunky grammar really gives the impression his brain is kind of shutting down from shock and it's really saddening to me
brOTP - saying the kress twins feels cruel but there is so much to pick at about their relationship i absolutely adore it. i also have a self-indulgent world in my mind where a lot of the trial victims are picked from the same sleep room and so have had to watch their reagent group's numbers dwindle over time.
OTP - HIM AND DAWN <333 ME AND THE WIFEY <33333 MY BEAUTIFUL BEAUTIFUL WIFE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! TRIAL VICTIMS BEAUTIFUL WALK ON BEACH HUG AND KISS FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! so much GORGEOUS art of them they're so tragic and it feels like my SOUL is getting SQUEEZED. obviously i like just smushing them together with the surface level "they're the Most Tortured victims" however i think their differences in personalities/circumstances are REALLY REALLY interesting.
they're both objectified to a nebulous Group of people by their prime asset (dawn being trafficked, erik being made into a "star"), dawn in the literal sense of being treated like a plaything to be bought while erik is more objectified as the handsome and pointless "bob vanier", erik is devastated by what's being portrayed in the "story" of the trial to the point of silence the idol feeling more like a humiliation ritual than anything ("i don't wanna be on tv!"), while dawn's only focus is what's tangibly happening to her and has no delusions about liliya protecting her, erik wants the kress twins to help him and for them to stop the reagents, dawn is begging the reagents to kill her no matter how slow and painful it has to be because it means her death is out of liliya's hands
also really cute imagining a woman with a bag fastened over her head and a man with a plaster human face bolted over his trying to kiss. Ok. Let me have that.
in general i really like pushing the trial victims together like barbie dolls, platonically or romantically, i also like him and the politician in this way, sort of the kresses' two "pets" being allowed to sniff eachother under the door
nOTP - kress twins is an obvious pull but also iv seen one(1) fic about him and gooseberry that was just as weird about his Everything as you would imagine.
random headcanon - worked at a factory pre-murkoff, snack of choice is glazed donut holes, he collects stamps, in general has a lot of little hands-on hobbies to fill his free time as i don't think he has much of a social life, dare i say asexual...
unpopular opinion - one of my biggest fandom pet peeves overall is when people get really stuffy and contrarian about an overblown bad take that only like 2 teenagers really had and people are so goddamn annoying about this with erik. i think everyone rubben their yellow legs about how the woke progressive tiktokers are trying to #Cancel red barrels for going Too Far and killing a disabled guy when its not even that bad guys literally why are you such sensitive snowflakes about it!!111!!1!1 is not only annoying but DEEPLY insulting to the work red barrels put into making this trial hit hard in the way it did. like sure i think the other victims are tragic too but i don't think erik stole their spotlight for any more than, like, a week lol. if anything he made people appreciate the other victims more, and i think acting like silence the idol isn't designed with intention and people are just sad about it for no reason or because they wanna be progressive is really stupid
song i associate with them - i have a few but one i especially like is a most successful formula from dispepsi
favorite picture of them - the tv studio poster is obvious but LOOK AT IT. LOOK AT THE BEAUTY OF HIS SMILE. LOOK AT THE COLORS. LOOK AT ITTT ITS SO FUCKIGN PRETYYYY OHMYGODDDDD THE PASTELS ON THE KRESS TWINS THEIR #AESTHETIC HEAD STITCHES THE WAY THEIR COOL COLORS MAKE THEM LOOK UNCANNY AMONG ALL THE YELLOW AND GOLD AND ORANGE AAUUGHHHH
also i like this shot from the project judas trailer because i don't think we see him super up close ingame like this, and because the trailer-only shot of him surrounded by CORPSES in the news room is both so hype moments and aura and really funny in that we dont get anything even resembling that ingame
talk about georgie barker to meeee (for the character ask game) :>
OF COURSE! ty for the ask!! send me a character and i'll...
favorite thing about them - well i kin her, which is a pretty high honor, so jot that down XD she means a lot to me. if i had to pick one thing it's how often she tries to be the bigger person. i feel like people think her cutting off john in s4 came out of nowhere but i think it's more accurate to say she always felt this hesitance around him and just deemed that less important in the moment than helping out a friend in a rough situation. she's willing to sacrifice a lot for him (she lets him stay in her house with basically no questions asked out of NOWHERE up to lying to the police for him!!!) until the point where she can't anymore, and i both respect that kindness and her valuing her own boundaries like that haha. Also podcaster do ad reads funnie
least favorite thing about them - i think people are way too hard on s5 and i've spoken at length about how georgie and melanie have way more interesting going on in it than people think, but all the same i do wish we got more of them in s5 if only because i think there's so much awesome to dig into there and i think the fact i needed a longass post to be like "Guys this is actually good" is sort of telling about something lacking in canon.
also i'm biased as someone writing about her postcanon (expect me to bring it up a lot #myemotionalsupportwip) but while i'm sure it's cool i don't have too much interest in tmp and perhaps selfishly fear my headcanons getting debunked lol
favorite line - SO many but i think "Jumping on a grenade is only heroic if you werenât the one who actually threw it." is just such a perfect little capsule of john as a person she read that man to filth. also their last scene in mag199 lives in my head rentfree
brOTP - unfortunately her only significant relationships i can think of are with people i would more accurately describe as OTPs (or martin who i like that she doesnt get along with), unless you count, like, the admiral. which i do really like her and the admiral in s5 and wish there was more angst of that because the situation is so sad but i also understand people's hesitance to touch pet loss as a topic, especially as tma as a whole largely doesn't either
OTP - wtgfs and johngeorgie my beloveds <3 melanie is imo the best character in tma and her relationship with georgie is such a good cherry on top of it, and johngeorgie are so juicy and dramatic i love em.
i also have a fondness for helen/georgie in the way of helenie where helen is trying to drive a wedge between them by seducing georgie and filling her head with lies about her intentions with melanie hehe.
nOTP - wtgfs and johngeorgie my beloveds but not at the same time. it's not that i think melanie isn't attracted to men (though i do see why she's most often interpreted as a lesbian i personally see her as bi with a preference) as much as i just cannot in a million years see a world where johnmelanie is romantic and i prefer my ot3s all mutual, plus i think the appeal of these individual relationships is that they're at odds with eachother in a way i don't think could ever coexist. melanie is a john who can accept help.
random headcanon - she's short, shorter than melanie who's average and definitely shorter than john who's Tol
unpopular opinion - she is one of the most rational, level-headed people in the series and is completely justified in almost everything she does, and she gets treated so unfairly in this fandom it's a crime. people take her and especially her relationship with john in such bad faith it's saddening. specifically my hot take though is that she gets worse in s5, returning to smoking, starting a fucking cult, and regretting the boundaries she set with john, but i feel like i see it interpreted in the fandom as "wow she's so humble now she understands him<3" which. Well let's not forget she has the web lighter known symbol of life-ruining addiction now. but that's for me to write about hehe...
song i associate with them - i have a playlist for both johngeorgie and for my postcanon georgie wip that will see the light of day someday i hope, but in terms of individual songs THEEE wtgfs song to me, as you can tell by the fact i've drawn art of them with it twice now, is vivica by jack off jill - in general i associate wtgfs with jack off jill
favorite picture of them - well here's the thing about audio dramas. again. take a picture of my build a bear of her, which used to play the what the ghost intro when squeezed, but i think the little speaker is broken now. she may be the most well-loved plush i own and soothes my nerves a lot. silly to say but i like to think her fearlessness rubs off on me when i need it đ
