"You're probably wondering which is the boy and which is the girl. I won't give it away, but I will tell you this: the knife is a whore."
—Mitten Squad, Can You Beat Skyrim with only a Fork?
Mitten Squad (or Paul) was a YouTube creator who is most well known for his videos on challenge runs of various video games submitted by fans, such as but not limited to beating The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim by only using a fork or beating Fallout: New Vegas on hardcore mode without eating or drinking. While the content might sound typical on paper, his bizarre commentary paired with the surprisingly well-written scripts makes for a unique experience. In other words, he's a Chaotic-Neutral Cloud Cuckoolander with a penchant for committing virtual atrocities through the many unorthodox means at his disposal.
Around 2022, Paul posted a public update that his channel was going on indefinite hiatus due to his struggle with alcoholism. Sadly, it was confirmed in early December 2023 that Paul passed away from his condition.
Tropes:
- Ax-Crazy: If Mitten Squad can get away with wiping an entire city off the map, he will do it. Even if it's an impossible task, chances are he will attempt it anyways.
- Blatant Lies: A frequent source of his humor is making a casual Suspiciously Specific Denial or other kind of claim, as the shown footage contradicts him completely.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: Paul will casually commit mass-murder one minute and rescue shopping carts from drowning the next, or decide that not having ammunition for sale is punishable by death.
- Breathless Non Sequitur: Paul is an absolute master of this, and it's very likely for any given line to take a bizarre turn.
- Cuckoosnarker: It's one thing to have a surreal script, it's another to say the surreal script while attempting to complete an absurd challenge such as beating Skyrim with only telekinesis.
- Deadpan Snarker: Paul hardly ever raises his nasally monotone in his videos regardless of what he's currently doing, even as he's blowing the pants off of everyone he comes across in the Mojave.
- Exact Words: In "Can You Beat GTA 5 With Only A Pistol?", Paul mentions taking the bus to a character's house. The video shows him driving said bus to the front door.
- Makes Just as Much Sense in Context: Some bits and throwaway lines are so bizarre, even with "context", that nobody really knows what exactly he's talking about (like the page quote). Paul being Paul, he usually moves onto something sensible with no comment or pause.
- Refuge in Audacity: A Mitten Squad video without any black comedy is like a children's hospital without any children with leukemia. Crime sprees, trash-talking NPC's, hating virtual animals, having a decade-old jar of putrid cheese lying in wait for his one-million subscriber special, betraying whoever he can, turning the game into a glitched-out hellscape, slut-shaming eating utensils, and otherwise attempting to decrease the average lifespan of the nearby area are par the course.
- Running Gag:
- The cheese jar. For some god-forsaken reason, Paul has in his possession a container with a piece of cheese that has practically dissolved into crude oil. It's horrifying, and his fans won't let him forget it due to frequent requests for him to open it upon him reaching one-million subscribers.
- In the The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim videos, constantly referring to Lydia as "donkey". He pretty much never calls her Lydia otherwise. One of the times he does is in a video that isn't about Skyrim, where he's hauling goods for someone and remarks that he had to "act as someone's Lydia".
- Also from his The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim videos, calling the "Become Ethereal" shout some variation of "Become (word that starts with E)", such as "Become Ethical" or "Become Earl".
- Save Scumming: Relies on this a lot to get through challenges. One of the exceptions is in the "Can You Beat Fallout: New Vegas With Only 1 Life?" video, where, to make the run more challenging, he opts to never reload a save unless the game crashes.
- Self-Deprecation: Paul occasionally jokes about him not knowing how to count higher than four and lamenting that he should have completed Elmo's Letter Adventure.
- Self-Imposed Challenge: The bread and butter of his channel. He'll find ways to make the game hard, such as not attacking anything, restricting himself to only one weapon, not taking any damage, and other esoteric means, like growing or shrinking every few minutes.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: It's hard to find a video where he isn't swearing. The videos where he bleeps out every swear just highlights it even more.
- Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: For some bizarre reason, Paul absolutely hates Grandma Sparkles from Fallout 3, making it a point to murder and/or torture her in every single playthrough of the game.
- Would Hurt a Child: Played for laughs. Although you can't technically kill a child in most videogames, he most certainly would love to—or at the very least give all the children in the Wasteland a concussion.Mitten Squad: Bethesda and Obsidian were smart, they made it so you aren't allowed to kill children in Fallout 3 or New Vegas. However, with a weapon that inflicts fatigue damage, you can knock out all the children.
