"Broke Patrick Bateman"
is a Character Blog on Tumblr that provides a Setting Update for American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis which recasts Serial Killer Patrick Bateman and friends as millennial hipsters in 2016.
Examples
- Actor Allusion: Reaches Absurdity Ascendant levels around the time of Paul Owen's murder. While Paul was represented once on the blog with an image of Drew Moerlein (who played him in the Broadway musical), the analogous character (renamed Paul Allen) was portrayed in the film version by Jared Leto, who also played The Joker in Suicide Squad (2016). Paul halfheartedly cosplays as the Joker the day he goes to see Suicide Squad and is killed shortly after washing off the body paint. On top of that, Patrick himself (Paul's killer) was played in the film by Christian Bale, who also played the Joker's greatest enemy, Batman, in The Dark Knight Trilogy.
- Bread Milk Eggs Squick: Patrick's typical posting style, especially when letting readers know he's just killed someone.
- Celebrity Paradox:
- Patrick mentions watching Hannibal, which had the title character once don a clear plastic raincoat as a prelude to murder as an homage to the film adaptation of American Psycho,
- He also mentions watching Dexter, which has the eponymous hero once use the alias "Dr. Patrick Bateman".
- He also mentions admiring Christian Bale's performance in The Dark Knight Trilogy. While Patrick is visually represented with a small photo of Benjamin Walker, who played him in the musical, it opens the question of which role Bale played in this universe that pushed him into a high enough profile to be considered for the role of Batman/Bruce Wayne in the first place.
- Eat the Rich: Being less financially advantaged himself has done nothing to improve Patrick as a person.
- Gross-Up Close-Up: Inverting the ludicrous Take Our Word for It descriptions of food in the novel, Patrick occasionally posts pictures of food that actually sounds quite appetizing in description, but partially eaten already and taken so close up that they look repulsive and uncomfortably biological.
- Hidden Depths: Luis and Courtney, just barely compared to the rest of the cast and their original incarnations. They share an apartment and rent as a couple, and generally are implied to be deeply flawed but reasonably functional people surrounded by human garbage fires.
- Hipster: Most of the cast, as a modern counterpart to their original yuppie selves.
- Monster Fangirl: Tumblr user Dionysiade, Patrick's "internet girlfriend", a real blogger who started interacting with Patrick in the persona of a "screaming hybristophilic fangirl" (her words, out of character). Intersects with Real Life Writes the Plot and
Throw It In!. - Mythology Gag: In spades.
- Patrick despises Wall Street and Donald Trump as much as his original counterpart idolized them, and for reasons that are exactly as shallow and petty.
- He's not in finance himself because his father, who gave him his cushy job in the novel, almost went to jail in the Bernie Madoff pyramid scheme scandal, and Patrick claims that's not what he wants to go to prison for.
- Patrick mentions admiring Christian Bale for being able to hold his own as Batman opposite Heath Ledger's Joker.
- Hamilton is as ubiquitous on the blog as Les Misérables was in the book. Taken to a rather meta level considering American Psycho's own musical adaptation opened on Broadway the same season as Hamilton and actually competed against it in one category in the 2016 Tony Awards.
- Patrick's inability to get a ticket also parallels the original novel and film's Running Gag about his being unable to get a reservation at Dorsia (complete with the box office attendant laughing at him when he calls to ask about available tickets).
- Noodle Incident: Patrick has tried to figure out how to shoplift chainsaws six times.
- One True Threesome: Luis' solution to his, Patrick and Courtney's Love Triangle. Courtney thinks it's a great idea. Patrick not so much.
- Real-Person Cameo: Paul Owen's post-Tony Awards party somehow ends up at Lin-Manuel Miranda's apartment. Miranda doesn't know how they got there and kicks everyone out.
- The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: Unlike his canonical counterpart, 2016 Patrick despises Wall Street and all it stands for, though mostly because he doesn't benefit from it in this continuity. Participating in Occupy Wall Street gives him a free opportunity to beat "capitalist sheeple" with baseball bats.
- Setting Update: From 1989 to 2016. In fact, blog!Patrick would have been born in 1989.
- Shout-Out:
- Jean's favorite movie is Heathers.
- Patrick is slightly neurotically preoccupied with getting the group together for Suicide Squad (2016).
- Stalker with a Crush: Patrick tends this way toward Taylor Swift.
- The Stations of the Canon: To some extent. While American Psycho only barely has a plot to begin with and the blog is a Setting Update, Paul Owen's murder unfolds just a few details short of identically to in canon and is given similar narrative emphasis.
- White Man's Burden: Evelyn keeps herself busy doing frivolous, exploitative overseas charity work, like "teaching impoverished orphaned African schoolgirls how to exfoliate."
