Deadpool
Article
Deadpool is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between June 03, 2022 and July 22, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as “e.g. Juggernaut, Spider-man, the Incredible Hulk, Deadpool”; “He’s a bespectacled Deadpool, breaking the 4th wall of the simulation”. It most often appears alongside Astralcodexten Com, China, United States.
Metadata
- Category: People
- Mention count: 2
- Issue count: 2
- First seen: June 03, 2022
- Last seen: July 22, 2022
Appears In
Related Pages
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- Astralcodexten Com (2 shared issues)
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- China (2 shared issues)
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- United States (2 shared issues)
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- YouTube (2 shared issues)
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- 18th century (1 shared issues)
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- 2020 election (1 shared issues)
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- 2022 book review contest (1 shared issues)
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- 2122 (1 shared issues)
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- A Eunuch’s Dream (1 shared issues)
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- Afghanistan (1 shared issues)
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- Africa (1 shared issues)
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- AI (1 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
In the Weird Studies podcast episode which serves as the namesake of this review, University of Indiana Musicologist Phil Ford traces the origin of the modern day mutant archetype back to the castrati, those eunuch singers produced in Italy from the mid-1500s to the mid-1800s. In support of his analysis, Ford cites the numerous similarities between the castrati and what is perhaps the most well-known fictional example of the mutant archetype: the X-men. While X-men are born as mutants, a number of X-men-adjacent superheros are so-called “mutates”, individuals who received their powers through some externally-mediated transformation (e.g. Juggernaut, Spider-man, the Incredible Hulk, Deadpool); similarly, the castrati were not born as mutants but became “mutates” by undergoing castration before puberty. Like the X-men, the castrati spent their childhood sequestered in special academies where they honed their superhuman (singing) powers with rigorous training. The mutant status of both groups made them objects of both fascination and scorn, awe and fear. In a plot twist reminiscent of X-men lore, some castrati managed to rise above their outcast status and obtain great influence as diplomats or more clandestine political operatives (i.e. spies). The X-men comparison (whatever its validity) speaks to the stranger-than-fiction quality of the castrati’s story, a story told by University of Chicago musicologist Martha Feldman in her 2015 book titled simply The Castrato. Feldman jumps around between the different aspects of the history (the biology, the music, the fame, the fortune, etc.) and I will do the same here, but we will begin, as tales of mutants and “mutates” often do, with an origin story.
He’s a bespectacled Deadpool, breaking the 4th wall of the simulation. And he keeps it coming.