i want you to imagine you’re at a dinner party, and for dessert, your host is serving apple pie. now, you’re not really an apple pie sort of person normally — you like it from time to time, but you’re awfully picky about it, and if it’s not done just right, it’s not for you — so you pass on taking some when it gets passed around. but then everyone else starts exclaiming about how delicious this pie is, how crisp it is, how flavorful, how amazing it was in star trek, so you take a piece just to see what all the fuss is about. and sure enough, it’s delicious. it’s so delicious, in fact, that you start asking questions about it, bothering the host for the recipe, paying a lot more attention to what a well-made pie it really is. and then it turns out the pie studied english literature at berekely and sometimes gets photographed reading to small children, that the pie regularly walks around in hilariously failtastic hipster-douche plaid and engages in ~intellectual competitions~ with other pies it knows, and the more you learn, the more the taste of the pie starts to curdle in your mouth. it’s so delicious that it’s TOO delicious, and probably you’re going to have cravings for this pie now whether you want them or not and you don’t, you don’t want those cravings, you don’t even LIKE apple pie. so you try to tell yourself you don’t like it that much really, that it’s not that good, that it’s probably the sort of pie that’s a total dick in real life and not in the endearing way like it comes off in interviews either, but it doesn’t help. it doesn’t make the pie any less fantastic, it doesn’t make you enjoy the pie any less, and you become consumed with your frustration at this fact — how dare this pie come along and make you hunger after it? how DARE this pie be so crisp and flavorful and fantastic in star trek? HOW DARE THIS PIE GO TO MUSIC FESTIVALS WITH A SALT AND PEPPER BEARD?? — until eventually you are standing on a table in front of the whole party, an empty pie dish held over your head, screaming “WHY WOULD ANYONE EVEN MAKE THIS PIE”
manchester: gays. you will probably get mugged, way better than london though, also known as madchester, because best nightlife and britpop
liverpool: like manchester, but less gay. you will definitely get mugged. notorious for stealing wheels
newcastle: probably quite good for canadians as exists in permafrost and has never left the 90s.
leeds: it’s a lot cheaper than london
bradford: leeds but awful
nottingham: gun death capital of the uk!
derby: intense rivalry with nottingham, literally no one else in the country or world gives any fucks about this.
hull: violently resist anyone who attempts to take you here
leicester: i’m not sure this is a real place
york: this is an illustration from the top of a christmas biscuit assortment
birmingham: NO.
brighton & hove: more gays. is only a pretend city. mild to moderate chance of mugging. contains some deeply annoying hippies. basically if san francisco was british.
portsmouth: there is literally nothing here.
southampton: exactly the same as portsmouth but smells of off milk
bristol: you have a 1 in 10 chance of ending up in a bbc recording. everyone sounds like a farmer or bob marley.
cardiff: you have a 1 in 5 chance of ending up in a bbc recording, and a 1 in 3 chance of being glassed.
plymouth: post apocalyptic wind tunnel full of drunk sailors pissing on depressed hookers. do not enter.
penzance: everyone here is from london now.
london: no one from london is actually from london and even breathing is expensive.
cambridge: windy and full of equal amounts of homeless drug addicts and public schoolboys. the junkies are nicer.
oxford: same number of cunts as cambridge but easier to escape from due to all-night bus to london
edinburgh: a goth turned into a city. basically london but slightly more scottish.
glasgow: it is impossible to tell whether people are angry or happy.
aberdeen: las vegas at the point when vegas starts crying uncontrollably
belfast: do not order “an irish car bomb” OR “a black and tan” here.
wolverhampton: really, really don’t.
norwich: count people’s fingers. mutations walk here.
coventry: like plymouth, bombed flat in ww2. like plymouth, failed to take the hint. like plymouth: do not alight here.
sheffield: everyone talks like sean bean or alex turner, still better than london
Hot Take: We are actually living in a “gasoline punk” alternate universe, where technology continued to develop along the lines of hydrocarbon combustion, even though nuclear energy has been available for decades.
Well that explains the comically exaggerated, dystopian nightmare setting that appears to be a very badly concealed metaphor about oppression. Someone tell the sixteen year old writing me that they don’t have to kill off every cool character.
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