Want to know what the weak point of a mech is?
| Fan Art | |
|---|---|
| Title: | want to know what the weak point of a mech is? |
| Artist: | mixxavii |
| Date(s): | Jan 29, 2022 |
| First Published: | |
| Medium: | Digital art |
| Genre/Style: | |
| Fandom: | Friends at the Table, Ratatouille |
| External Links: | Tweet by @mixxavii Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
want to know what the weak point of a mech is? is a piece of Friends at the Table fanart by mixxavii. Inspired by the weak point of a mech, a popular piece of fanart by Annie Johnston-Glick,[1] it borrows Glick's framing and uses the same quote from Friends at the Table canon but depicts characters from Ratatouille, implying that Alfredo Linguini and the rat Remy are mech and pilot.
Canon Context
Like Annie Johnston-Glick's original, mixxavii's fanart references a moment in Friends at the Table's Road to PARTIZAN mini-season that has, since its airing, become iconic in the fandom as an emblem of the themes of war and brutality in the canon's sci-fi seasons. In the episode in question, player Jack de Quidt fails an important roll as their character Smack Talk and says to GM Austin Walker:
JACK: Hey, Austin?
AUSTIN: Yeah?
JACK: You wanna know what the weak point of a mech is?
AUSTIN: Yeah, what’s the weak point of a mech?
JACK: The fucking pilot.
[...]
AUSTIN: Jack, if you want to artfully describe this, please.
JACK: Yeah, no, I have a description. It’s three shots. It's, uh... Inside the cockpit, Smack’s jaw closing on a cigar. It’s outside the cockpit, that shot you described of the hammer coming down scene. And then it’s just a wide shot of, like, birds taking off suddenly in flight.
Annie Johnston-Glick rendered this scene in the weak point of a mech as mech pilot Smack Talk being shot through the cockpit of his mech with a stylized laser beam. mixxavii's humorous take instead depicts the talking rat Remy being shot through the hat of hapless chef Alfredo Linguini.
Response
The piece was not only popular among Friends at the Table fans, it also broke containment, receiving thousands of retweets and spreading across Twitter to people who were unfamiliar with the Friends at the Table origin of the quote. Many people who replied and quote-retweeted the art misidentified it as fanart of anime series like Neon Genesis Evangelion or Attack on Titan.[3] By October 2023, it had more than 31,000 retweets and nearly 200,000 likes.
References
- ^ @mixxavii (Jan 29, 2022). framing obviously inspired by annie’s beautiful original, just. a stupider version (Tweet). (archive link)
- ^ The Road to PARTIZAN 07: Beam Saber Pt. 2 (Nov 15, 2019). Friends at the Table. Podcast episode. (archive link)
- ^ @mixxavii (Jan 30, 2022). I have never watched aot or evangelion, anyways listen to friends at the table an actual play podcast, (Tweet). (archive link)