To celebrate his birthday, I drew the life of Tweek if he was born in 1903. When seeing the some of the prompts were 1920s and technology, I immediately knew that I want to do something related to Alan Turing (computer science student anyone? anyone? please?) lol
So here we are: Tweek Tweak was born in upstate New York, and moved down to NYC to pursue a better education. He got admitted to Columbia as a Math major, and went there for undergrad. During his time here (the Prohibition era), he went to Harlem and hung out in speakeasies quite often. One night, he met Craig Tucker — another Columbia student in Physics department — who then become his “roommate” ever since.
After graduated from undergrad, with his contribution to Math, Tweek then pursued his PhD in Princeton, under Alonzo Church. In here, he became a good colleague with Turing; to the point that Turing even had him over Bletchley to improve the Polish bomba kryptologiczna for deciphering German messages in WW2. Tweek was invited to stay in the UK to work with Turing in cryptography, but he rejected and returned to Princeton to be a professor there. Later, the US Army had him to recreate Turing’s Bombe machine, which he worked on alongside his professorship until the end of WW2.
His “roommate” Craig was also a professor who had his PhD in Physics at Rutgers, and he was hired to work for NASA under Wernher von Braun when the space race with USSR started. During those time, whenever Tweek took his sabbatical, he came to Kennedy Space Center to visit Craig. After the 1969 Saturn V launch (which carried Apollo 11 mission), they both retired. They then settled down in South Park, a random town in Colorado, where they ran a coffee shop together. Craig had to go to back to Cape Canaveral for two more times to deal with Saturn V problems, but Tweek and Craig had been cozy together ever since then.
Some small details I included in those quick sketches and some discarded ideas I had:
- Day 1: The book that Tweek was holding is “The Gay Science”, written by Nietzsche. The alternate theme for day 1 is apocalypse, and I originally wanted to portray the “apocalypse” in belief after WW1. The statement “God is Dead” made by Nietzsche is perfect for this situation, but it is hard to portray this theme. I ended up going with fashion and have him hold Nietzsche’s book instead.
- Day 2: I was debating if Tweek’s origin should be from US or UK (like Turing), but made him born American is significantly easier for him to work for US Army in WW2 later. Also, it has to be NYC, where the gay culture thrives the most. I could have him studied in Harvard, but I don’t think Boston is that symbolic in term of a “new change” compared to the Liberty.
- Day 3: Harlem was notable for having plenty of safe places for queer people back then, and it is just around 20-minute walk from Columbia. At first Tweek just wanted some cocktail, but visiting some speakeasies that happened to be queer ones made him realized his sexuality.
- Day 4: The machine behind Tweek is Turing’s Bombe. I originally wanted to draw Tweek working on Turing machine, but if that was the case it would just be Tweek helping Turing on his thesis. I do like the Bombe and cryptography idea way better now though.
- Day 5: The book that Tweek was holding was “The Calculi of Lambda-Conversion” by Alonzo Church, Turing’s (and Tweek’s) advisor. Tweek’s PhD thesis was also about Entscheidungsproblem and lambda calculus — or how else he could have Church as his doctoral advisor?
- Day 6: Laying on the background was the Saturn V. I had A LOT of idea for this day; notably Craig got drafted and return from WW2 after 1945, Tweek griefed Turing’s death, or Craig worked in Manhattan Project. I would definitely get cancelled on Twitter if I drew any of those, and Craig working for US in space race during Cold War is clearly more suitable for Craig than any of those lol
- Day 7: Their “wedding” rings are not matching, and they wore them in two different hand. After almost 70 years of life they kinda wanted to leave their science identity behind and just be together, but queer people were not still welcomed in late 1960s. So what happened was they both pretended to have married with someone who die early, and they were bonded over the grief of loosing their wives. It is easier to fabricate a new identity in a random town in Colorado after all.
Another person that I also considered to have Tweek’s life based on for this event is J. C. Leyendecker, but I do not know about Leyendecker’s life as much as Turing’s. Another idea for free day in Day 6 was Tweek had his studio and drew Craig as a homage to Leyendecker, but I scratched that as it is not that related as I wanted the timeline to be.
Anyway, happy birthday my beloved Tweek! I might draw something similar to this for Craig’s week, but for now I will return to draw middle/late adolescent Creek for a while lol
(bonus art that I meant to post tomorrow, but hey; welcome Dr. Tweek Tweak, Professor Emeritus of Math department of Princeton lmao)