TV Tropes in the Bible

Thanks to everyone for making the last edition of Modern Relics by far the most liked post ever. Um, do it again please? 😇

This week I read Hussein Kesvani’s 2019 book Follow Me, Akhi, about British Muslims online. It’s a great snapshot of pre-pandemic internet culture viewed through the lens of (mostly young) British Muslims. I spoke with Hussein this week for an upcoming episode of Soul Search, about how things have evolved in the years since. I’ll let you know when that conversation is published.

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TV Tropes in the Bible

If you have an evening to burn scurrying down a mad rabbit hole, I suggest clicking around on TV Tropes — a great repository of extremely weird and niche pop culture ephemera. You might realise your favourite TV show has something in common with several dozen other TV shows.

But it doesn’t just focus on TV shows. Anything at all with a fandom is covered on the site — including the Bible.

There are hundreds of tropes in the Bible listed here, described in deliberately weird terms. Some of my favourites are how the many Herods (plus Herodias) and all the Marys in the gospels violate the One-Steve Limit. Or how the destruction of Jerusalem in Lamentations is a good example of Scenery Gorn. And Samson? TV Tropes deems him Too Dumb to Live. Truly the original himbo.

Quite rightly, the Bible is acknowledged as a source of many plots and tropes:

Due to the Bible's sheer size and literary value, in addition to the fact that it is in the public domain … it is often used as a goldmine of stock plots and characters for modern writers. [But] when they take caution to avoid controversial subjects like a specific religion, it can degenerate into such phenomena as Jesus Taboo, Crystal Dragon Jesus and No Celebrities Were Harmed.

You’ll never read the Bible the same way again.

She’s right!!

Here at Modern Relics we affirm that all cats are Muslims…

…and all dogs are Christians

The Devil’s in the phone booth

Moose found the Urantia Book

Two weeks ago I pointed to an article revealing how the Celestial Seasonings Tea company (makers of Sleepytime Tea) was founded by a devotees of a UFO religion inspired by The Urantia Book.

Reader Moose wondered if his local library had a copy. It did.

From OpenMoose’s Substack, :

I was not prepared for the SIZE OF THIS BOOK! What the picture doesn’t show is that it’s printed (with a serif font) on that really thin paper that they use for some Bibles, which is to say that in addition to being a LARGE book, it is also a LONG book.

Read his whole post about it. He confirms the book is unfortunately very racist.

Good tweet

Disagreeing with ChatGPT

Thanks for sending this to me Marty!

Huge news

Oh my Father that outfit is just sinful

I’ve had a pretty busy week so it’s just a short one this time. Don’t forget to like this post!