is there writing or media on Jack the Ripper that's not sensationalist true-crime garbage ~Chara

If there's any one personality in the entire Undertale / Deltarune canonical universe that's most grating upon us, the one who seems the most opaque and alien to any sort of thought processes we're used to having, it's undoubtedly Spamton G. Spamton. Gaster might be (from our perspective) not far off Dr. Mengele, but we can kinda understand someone like Dr. Mengele, sorry to say. Spamton G. Spamton is, by contrast, like someone from another planet.

And yet he's clearly typical. One runs into many Spamtons these days. I've even tried to talk to some of them on Twitter and so far it's been hopeless, though I admit that I've been in my snarky passer-by voice and not really expecting something back, although occasionally I get a nibble. But it's so hard to get a bearing on people whose online lives are about 100% sales talk, in some way or another. Even the pleasant courtesies they love to smother each other with, to reassure themselves they're with the Good Guys™, are in the nature of sales talk; every one of the grifters is trying to outsell the others in terms of optimism, i.e. relentless gladhandling and sunny reassurances. It's rare to see a genuine moment from these guys but sometimes one slips out, rather like Spamton breaking character long enough to slam his fist into a dumpster.

Obviously, I don't get these people, and when I don't understand people, my first thought is: maybe there's some good movies about them, ones with solid social commentary! I've got Glengarry Glen Ross cued up, but I've been very reluctant to watch that. Death of a Salesman and The Iceman Cometh are good salesman plays and I've watched performances of both semi-recently. But what else is there? I know there's a lot. There's plenty of movies that comment at least indirectly on the high-pressure culture of hustling and grifting, like Sweet Smell of Success and Wolf of Wall Street.

Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy feels like a Spamton G. Spamton movie. The wannabe star comedian, Rupert Pupkin, isn't exactly a salesman but he's always overselling himself, that's for sure. He's got that same infuriating but somehow invincible attitude of always talking like he's already mastered the situation, brushing his way past dismissals and angry ripostes as if somehow they'd been aimed at someone else, that salespersons cultivate. Imagine the pushy used-car-salesman always chattering just a bit faster than their victim can handle—sure, the mark might get angry at you for pestering, but let them spend their anger uselessly and then you'll have worn them down and more likely to surrender to the sale.

Huh, Michael Mann's "Thief" is about a car salesman...sort of.

~Chara of Pnictogen

Was it so hard, Achilles,
So very hard to die?
Thou knewest and I know not—
So much the happier I.

(Patrick Shaw-Stewart)

I know that GOP and right-wing Christian politics in the U.S. has been working for decades now on basically owning the concept of family in the discourse. "Family values" is a well-known euphemism for extremist Christian bigotry, and reactionary Christians have created a large number of political pressure groups that are purported to be "pro-family", by which they mean a narrowly defined ideal of "nuclear family" that wouldn't be out of place on a NSDAP poster or a commercial for dish detergent.

I'd love to destroy that political association, if it's possible. These people aren't "pro-family" because they're pro-poverty; they want as many Americans as possible toiling for capitalism, and nothing's more destructive of family than constant economic privation. But making families difficult to have also makes propaganda families more valuable and lucrative. It's like imposing artificial scarcity on family stability, so being able to have the ideal dish-detergent family is now a prized status symbol.

And, of course, they're also pro-child-abuse.

~Chara of Pnictogen