That deepening and widening has definitely happened with Sopranos. "Much of pop culture is now interpreted through mimetic formats and mimetic communication. It has a hold of pop culture," says Idil Galip, a doctoral researcher in sociology at the University of Edinburgh who runs the Meme Studies Research Network. And they’re merging, forming the kind of multiverses only possible in an era when even a show as vast as The Sopranos can be reduced to the images of it that circulate online. At a time when it's become increasingly impossible to separate cultural artifacts from the memes they generate-just think of the bizarre afterlife of The Simpsons’ steamed hams-meme universes are now canons unto themselves.
They’re also slyly brilliant, a neat encapsulation of how pop culture gets metabolized in the 21st century. Pertinax (and his imitators) have a sketch writer's knack for pulling two worlds into surreal contrast: Their videos are hilarious, like sitcom crossovers. Mama always said you’d be the Dragonborn." For a very particular kind of fan, it’s a glorious time to be online. You'll see comments like "Woke up this mornin’, got yourself a sword. You'll see Tony in his dressing gown, fleeing NPCs through the streets of Whiterun.
On his channel, you'll see mobsters hunting the elusive White Stag and critiquing wailing tavern bards. It’s the work of YouTuber Pertinax, who for the past year has been plucking Sopranos characters from their New Jersey milieus and setting them loose in Bethesda's landscapes-mostly Skyrim, but a little New Vegas, too.
If you don’t, that’s probably because it never aired. Do you remember that scene in The Sopranos? You know, the one where Tony and Johnny Sack have made up in the snow and are just about to get back to discussing murder over plates of luncheon meats, when over the horizon comes just about the worst thing a gangster can see when parlaying with one of the heads of the five families: a rampaging, level-30 Frost Dragon?
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