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@lanodan @harbeau Yeah, that sunk in for me when I saw a comment on an Artificial Dream in Arcadia video where someone was just realizing for the first time that all these songs and anime girls are from the same place lol. I guess that’s kinda like what diving into Arthur felt like for me - I started with a vague image and ended up knowing more than I thought existed.

I’m now remembering a comment I saw online regarding the (excellent, underrated, everyone should give it a shot tbh) game Deceive Inc., a multiplayer spy game with a strong 70s spy swag kind of aesthetic. It was a teenager saying “This game reminds me of the classic spy movies like Despicable Me.” Immediately I thought “Wait a moment, this person has seen Despicable Me, but has never seen James Bond” - his internal reference for what spy fiction even is was based on parody, on a derivative of the original.

But that’s the same for Arthur isn’t it? That’s what happens when a person is vaguely familiar with the image of Arthur but nothing else - or even if they’ve just read a bit of The Once and Future King. It’s the same for everything. Our entire expectation of what a novel is can be traced back directly to a handful of early ones like Tristram Shandy.