oisinwrites

[oisinwrites]

No.8 of my own top eight fan theories. Warning: this is about suicide in relation to persecution! (also may contain spoilers for mortal kombat) The Simpsons are in two universes, a brighter one where they do have conflict but always resolve it while learning wholesome lessons and a darker one where they are oppressed by evil TV networks!

Here I am also guessing at what the intentions of Matt Groening and his crew might be as well as examining what’s happening in-story. Since only so much can fit in one episode and different episodes satirise different things, the result is that episodes which satirise networks and corporations are darker, more disturbing and have more neck-strangling, while episodes which stay off those topics are actually wholesome, even when they poke fun at other serious issues, because they are dealt with in a way that’s actually sensitive, while also making it funny.

It’s like in LOST, where in one universe, they are dead and in hell, while in the other, they are all living happily ever after, but this is a less literal version. In the darker universe, the same family are in a living hell with the curse of being famous, being persecuted by so-called “reality” TV and Bart is trying to escape by killing himself, no longer caring whether he ends up in heaven or hell! Whether it’s jumping the Springfield gorge or using the worst kinds of junk food to become obese while putting himself through herculean amounts of physical exertion, the networks and corporations enable his attempts because they’re good for the ratings, making sure his attempts fail but cause the most damage possible to him or anyone stopping him without releasing either of them from living hell! In the brighter universe, it’s not that they don’t have problems, but there is less network persecution, more learning and growing and the only neck-strangling that ever happened was Erin strangling Krusty, but the episode this happened in actually had touching father-daughter drama and that story about dealing with the consequences of your impulse-acts as well as how the special-forces changes people. I just don't know if Erin in the Simpsons was inspired by Sonya in mortal kombat.

What also suggests they are in two different universes is the inconsistencies of the characters. Lisa is known for being a “nerd”, but while her bookishness and perfectionism are typical for a little girl, she should be a “jock” as well. She’s very health-concious and aware of the american obesity problem, so she should be into sports, especially women’s sports, because she’s also a passionate feminist! Her mastery of the saxaphone shows she can get good at anything with time and practice, so why not sports? In fact the contradiction is that this HAS sometimes been the case. In the brighter universe, Lisa tends to see things in black and white, which is developmentally plausible for an eight-year-old, but seeing other sides of issues is part of how her character develops. In the darker universe, they all seem to have fake TV personalities.

They’ve also been on some very unethical game-shows, not just the cruel Japanese “happy smile family wish” show, but even a show where Homer was tricked into thinking he was being sentanced to death by the electric chair! They were also once on a show where they were living like people in victorian times, but their victorian house was picked up and moved. They were being abandoned in the middle of nowhere, but they teamed up with the outcasts who failed the challenges of survivor island, also having been abandoned there and rose up against the evil TV network! There have also been some fourth-wall-breaking moments, suggesting that they are, in fact, TV stars! The social worker talks to Marge about her love of cooking and she replies, “At six’O’clock, we go live!”. This episode began with them all strangling each other! Another fourth-wall-breaking joke was Homer being in the centre of a group hug. He then looked at his watch, saying “There’s still time, lets hug again!”, so they hugged again just before the credits began, but this was a more wholesome episode.

In the universe the darker episodes are set in, the only reason I can see why Homer uses cruel and unusual punishments on Bart is because that’s what the networks want. At least Kagome treating Inuyasha like a dog makes sense, even if that’s patronising, because he is half a dog-demon, but chaining bart to the post next to Santa’s little helper? Also, what prop department did he get a spiked ball-on-chain from? And the neck-stranglings, they all look staged! Maybe it’s an excuse to make people feel uncomfortable by talking about disgusting things being done to children instead of any real issues like the ones Lisa likes to bring up, while also misinforming viewers about domestic violence and even tricking native Americans into promoting what appears at first sight to have proper historical context, but upon closer examination, is really racially insensitive filth and only loosely based on history. It's just hard to say whether movies like Calamity Jane or Movies like the education of little-tree are worse. Pocohantas seems to have been Disney's apology for Peter Pan, which was from an earlier time. There could be someone who needs us to believe their real abuse stories, but it's just as important to be aware of the harm caused by fake reports!

If this is how the darker Simpsons episodes are satirising the networks, it is absolutely spot-on and shows how much Matt Groening really understands! I don’t know if parents in families who appear on television are being told that they need to take discipline to ludicrous extremes to get ratings, but it wouldn't surprise me much. It also seems that they edit footage to make it look like a parent was "smacking" their child, since this can also be seen in videos of mother cats and their kittens, or panda moms and their cubs, but it still looks fake. There is one thing though.

It is historically plausible that Japanese soldiers did discipline children with blows to the head. The modernised Japanese army had lost the bushido of their more honourable samurai predecessors (well, there’s also record of some samurai being rapists, but thats another story.) who’se pride meant they had to protect women and children and they faced their own possible deaths with honour. Now it was about blaming people for being cowards instead of dying. In hand-to-hand combat, this was a good offense, as it could deal significant impact in one single blow, they could do it right where someone is standing and it gave them a cowardly advantage over small children. (yes, there may also have been this hypocrisy about cowardice.) Although it’s uncertain whether army members and veterans are still behaving like this in Japan today, it can’t be entirely ruled out either. It could also be that because there can be collective, generation-lasting trauma as well as individual trauma, the mental image has become firmly rooted in the Japanese public conciousness, so that it is now what giving a child friendly nudgying can be mistaken for in Japan. Also, while this trope in manga and anime is correct in terms of martial arts and combat realism, it may often be incorrect in terms of the situations and reasons behind it. For example, it wasn't done because a child raised by wild pokemon said something iappropriate while looking at Misty's breasts.

This one has not been made fun of in the Simpsons, perhaps because Matt Groening knew that one isn’t ridiculous. Principal Skinner wishes the board of education would let him use a paddle, but he is one of the American army veterans, so this is satire about how having been in the military REALLY changes people. I just don’t know whether he’s going to use the paddle on the school bullies, because they’re the delinquents, or put the bullies in charge with paddles. Other jokes in the Simpsons seem to be suggesting that corporal punishments never really existed, or that reports about them are fake news. Well, these are old cliches, which may have a grain of cultural or historical truth in them, but may have also faded into obscurity so that they BECAME hogwash. It could also be that what's really going behind these reports is something similar to what happens in the classic "to kill a mockingbird" : a black maid pulls one of the white children out of the dining room and doesn't quite give her a smacked bottom par'se, but says "he can have as much gravy as he likes, y'hear?" and then pushes her back into the dining room from behind, so her hand is briefly near, but not right on the little girls bum. it wasn't sexual, but the story is also about the trail of a black man accused of raping a white woman and a white man trying to prove him innocent begins a cross-examination to see if he was really PHYSICALLY CAPABLE of the act.

In one scene, Homer threatens Bart with... a belt? Jackie Chan used chairs and even step-ladders as weapons, so why didn’t he use a belt? When Sub-zero came to kill Liu Kang with his magical freezing powers, why did he splash him with a bucket of water, instead of using his belt? Perhaps the real child abuse here is that Bart is being trained, through classical conditioning, to fear being attacked with useless weapons and what he doesn’t realise is that trembling is what leaves him open and vulnerable enough for even something that's really too slippery and slack to be much use as a weapon to hit the right spot, or perhaps he knows you can't actually do that with a belt and Homer made the mistake of letting him suggest his own punishment because he's not very bright. The thing is, I don't think your belt would be much use against any fighters from street fighter or mortal kombat and they’ve highlighted two particular reasons this wouldn’t work: kids, being kids, are going to trick their way out of it and there is also a risk of your pants falling down, which is much more dangerous to you than whoever you’re attacking! In defence against a belt attack, there are two things to remember: rather than trying to catch it by reaching out or clapping your hands, it’s better to just twist your wrist and never splay out your fingers! If your hand is in the shape of a duck’s foot, then even an empty bottle will hurt your hand, but in the exact second before they have time to let go of their belt, it is actually the force of their blow that enables you to throw them down! I think a child, with their eyes closed, using their finger, could do this, but I don't think it really is belts that are used in domestic abuse scenarios, so this is mis-informative.

Are we being lied to about whether belts are physically capable of being used this way? There were two particular moments in the Simpsons where it showed the childhood story of one of the adult characters, which seemed to suggest that discipline with spanking never really existed. In Homer’s childhood story, his father, Abe, didn’t like him hanging out with hippies and dancing naked in the mud, so he said the most ridiculous thing ever, “put some pants on and then take’em down for a spankin’.” bcause that's what old-school parenting must have been like. Giving mixed messages about public nudity. Then there was Ned’s childhood story, which seemed to suggest that there are two things logic dictates for this to have been historically real: there must have been a time when it was still a brand-spanking-new, experimental practice and it must have been developed by doctors specialising in behaviorism.

There must have been a behaviourist who just sat there, all day long, all year round, spanking the same child, who remains completely fixed in place, until he looked at his watch, gave one more spank and said, “aaand were done. Still feeling any of that anger?” because that must have been part of what happened in the swingin' sixties. Actually, behaviourists invented cruel and unethical methods of ignoring a child and being emotionally detatched from them. Butt-smacking is a rude form of slapstick that was developed by cartoonists or at least that's part of the story. It also could have been done to make babies stop crying, which Julius does in "Alices orphan", but that still comes down to butt-humour in cartoons. Example of unrealistic spanking scenes go as far back as classic Bat-man and has continued as recently as the third live-action sonic movie. It does sometimes happen that a sumo wrestler manages to defeat their opponent with a pushing-slap to the buttocks, the rump is actually the area where it's the most difficult to aim and land a proper blow, but be warned: there are some spanking scenes which are not goofed and are disturbing even for mature audiences! One is in a banned episode of Pingu and while penguins are not normally this aggressive, a larger penguin could use it’s flipper as a paddle on a helpless chick while using its leg to keep it stuck in the belly-slide position without going anywhere. The larger penguin could also move faster. Another is in the 1934 comicolour “Jack Frost”. While mama bears are unlikely to use this on their own cubs, and I'm not exactly sure whether anthropomorphic cartoon bears are meant to fight like humans or like bears you should never turn your rear to a bear and this could be one of their mauling positions! Anyway, it looks like a proper catch followed by a proper hold-down and it's the correct wooden stool that won't fall over so easily. Then there is the illegal pirate version of the nineties Blinky Bill movie. (If you’re Australian, you’ll know Blinky Bill. If not, he’s a cheeky little koala.) In the legitimate version, his mother hoists him and brushes the dirt off his pants while tut-tutting about the state they’re in. In the much fuzzier illegal pirate version, it seems to be a baby koala stuck to the hip of a morbidly obese adult koala who’se crushing his pelvis. These examples are more disturbing than the nightmare Liu kang is waking up from at the beginning of the nineties mortal kombat movie, because even though Liu's nightmare also has the effect of a helpless child being tormented by an evil figure, it has nothing sexual. Some couples do things like this as a game, but realistically, you have to be leaving your bum exposed, either by mistake or because you enjoy it.

If a child’s buttocks have been touched inappropriately, then yes, we should address this, but I think it would be misleading to call it a practice. Actually, the original Blinky Bill classics by Dorothy Wall are also about spanking, but koalas, which are animals with sticky-out rumps, do sometimes have slap-fights where they often get each other on the rump. It also says somewhere, “Mothers don’t do those things, but she wanted Blinky to think she did.” The truth is, there are multiple possible origins behind this cliche which make it more confusing by coinciding with each other. Sticking to humans, one plausible record I could find of spanking from before the time of Dorothy Wall, Walt Disney or Ub Irewerks was to do with an unusual relationship between Jean Jacque Russeau and Mme De Warens, but this was a passionate embrace, so perhaps spanking was not seen as a punishment back then. Historians believe that his autobiographies, “the confessions” are so heavily dramatised and the chronology is so confused, it’s really a load of rubbish. I think the same can be said about Roald Dahl’s “BOY: Tales of childhood”.

Okay, so sticks and rulers WERE used to correct posture and attention in class, but the children would have been jabbed, not truly beaten. It could be that the children didn’t like being jabbed, or they were jabbed when being made to sit in the corner, probably for something they didn’t do, but you see, I was able to explain the problem without making it disgusting! Another goof is highlighted when Bart is in catholic school, run by Irish catholic nuns. A teaching nun says to Bart, “We don’t use the ruler, WE USE THE YARDSTICK!”. This is a slightly disturbing scene which depicts graphic violence towards children, but it might be highlighting another popular goof in terms of combat realism. If you’re going to be cruel to children, at least be competent enough to do it properly! Using rulers to beat children is actually far more dangerous to you than to the children! In fact, the more vigorous the beating, the LESS pain the recipient feels, because those are slow, heavy strokes instead of fast, accurate ones, but rushing with a ruler in full momentum is generally a silly thing to do. The child takes no liability for what role their natural reflex actions played in your injury.

This is actually from one of the more wholesome episodes, where we see things escalating between the Catholics and the Protestants, but they become friends in the end. Whether its set in the brighter universe or the darker universe, they still seem to be trying to point out the goofs about corporal punishment, but it’s the networks especially that play a large role in the spread of this mis-informative and disgusting trash! The good news, though, is that while this is spot-on, it is quite un-likely for network persecution to lead to suicide. I actually recommend both the nineties Blinky Bill movie and the nineties mortal kombat movie, as they are both better than their re-makes and both have better endings than E.T. ! Mortal kombat might not be as “family friendly” as Blinky Bill, but all the martial-arts action is done correctly and there is no spanking. The most hilariously incompetent martial arts movie is Kill Bill, and the biggest goof is where “the bride” who should be either dead or arrested by now, gives a katana-spanking to someone who only has to flip her over and that’s not even what a samurai sword is designed for. I also recommend the young Indiana Jones chronicles, which is one of the good historical dramas, but doesn’t seem to have anything about corporal punishment. It seems the good historical dramas aren’t about that kind of thing.

[oisinwrites]

No.7 of my own top eight fan theories. Warning: toilet content! sonic the hedgehog is using Chile dogs as a laxative because of his extreme, fast-paced life-style!

I have also heard of a theory that Darth Vader is wearing nappies and a theory that Luke was wearing a nappy inside the bacta tank. They both sound crazy at first but make sense when you think them over. Fans sure do speculate on all kinds of things. Even I have been thinking about something like that. Video game characters seem to be going a long time without bathroom breaks while performing high levels of athletic activity. Its possible they could be wearing adult diaper's, but Sonic the hedgehog, who is probably the most athletic of them all, doesn’t wear pants, so we can definitely see there is no nappy! I used to find it strange that he eats so many Chile dogs when a fitness fanatic like him would surely know to avoid too many of the things that would give him bowel trouble, but then it hit me. It could actually be because he is the only one who doesn’t have the luxury of toilet-time being any time, so he may be using some kind of laxative so he can zip in and zip out. After all, he is the only one who seems to eat any Chile dogs. Tails can fly, but he mostly just tinkers around with machinery. It would be sensible to go before getting into a jet-plane, but overall, Tails still has the luxury of not needing to be very regular. Knuckles is the muscle and, well, the knuckles, but he mostly just has the odd digging or smashing-through job. Even shadow, who was created as a superior clone of sonic, just has the odd battle with him. Sonic is basically first-responder and special forces. The forces of Dr. Eggman could attack at any time. Sonic is also being sucked into other worlds, full of people begging him to save their world from evil. Sonic can also be seen having naps, but can immediately wake up and leap into action at any sign of distress. He might be like that single mother in “wolf children”, dropping off whenever he gets a moments peace. I also used to find it weird that a hedgehog eats hot dogs, but they could be vegetarian ones. Should he really be eating bugs? I don't have a full theory on any female game characters being on their period, but I can kind of imagine Lara Croft in a tampon commercial. Then again, they could be so athletic, they haven’t had their periods in a long time and princess Kitana has already endured 10’000 years of ageless immortality. Could this be one of the reasons she agreed with Sonya when she asked her, “this will probably sound silly, but do you ever miss just being a woman?”? No matter how moody Amy the pink hedgehog can get, though, its not her period. We humans are among the very few animals who have periods.

[oisinwrites]

No.6 of my own top eight fan theories. Warning: dark theory! the smurfs are Gargamels imprisoned test subjects in cruel and scientifically meaningless experiments.

One strange thing about the smurfs is that they live in a village with each one having a distinct trait. Its almost as if it's a social experiment to see how they’d interact with each other if they were carefully selected and put together in a prison camp. Its cleverly arranged so that every single member of the entire group is in the minority at the same time, but I don’t see any scientific value. Another strange thing is that their village seems to be in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by dense forest all around, but its close enough to Gargamels castle for him to observe. The series doesn’t explain how they all got here, so it could have been through kidnapping, unless they were artificially created through strange scientific or magical means and this is the living-space given to them upon creation. Gargamel appears to be a warlock dabbling in medieval-ish sorcery which blurs the lines between science and magic, but if he didn’t create the smurfs himself through a mixture of science and magic, he could still be interested in them because they are magical creatures. Gargamel and his pet cat also seem to be trying to catch and kill the smurfs without ever succeeding, but what if they’re only pretending? By tricking the smurfs into thinking they are in a life-threatening position and training his pet cat to pretend to be hunting them like mice, he could be observing how they react and perform under the pressure. When the smurfs manage to escape, he appears to be throwing childish tantrums, but what if he’s really fascinated by their ingenuity and those are tears of amazement? I think I’ve heard of a theory that smurfette had sex with big papa smurf and produced a whole village-ful of smurf off-spring in time before smurfette reaches menopause, which the males don’t have, but I’m more inclined to imagine that as part of the experiment, a single female smurf was placed in a village full of male smurfs and a single elderly smurf(who is also the only smurf wearing a different colour) was placed in a village full of young adult smurfs. There’s even a single smurf with narcilepsy and a single smurf who’se ultra-athletic! There are still other things they all have in common, but Gargamel could still be planning to introduce a new smurf who’s different in one of those exact categories. This has sometimes happened, but they didn’t become regular characters. Its already made clear that Gargamel is “the bad guy”, but could performing unethical experiments with little to no scientific value be what really makes him evil? Even if he is actually trying to kill the smurfs, that still means generations of children have grown up with cartoons that are actually pretty dark when you think about it.

[oisinwrites]

No. 5 of my own top eight fan theories. Warning: this is to do with a series which portrays emotional abuse! (also may contain spoilers for mortal kombat and looney tunes) Shippo the fox is not actually a child.

Don’t get addicted to Inuyasha. Its because of being already addicted to this manga/anime series that I have avoided Twilight. Its actually both really good and really bad, but lets look at the japanese folklore its based on. Shippo is a KITSUNE(fox-demon) and like the TANOOKI(raccoon dog), they are also shape-shifters, but the kitsune are more manipulative. When Shippo joins the adventuring party, he appears as a poor orphaned child, but as it goes on, he reveals a more sophisticated and cynical side. His wise-cracking remarks show a bizarrely keen understanding of social situations, but he will also get out of sticky situations by being cute and pretending not to understand, while knowing full well that he’s betraying Miroku by doing this. He knows what “crocodile tears” are, probably because its what he does himself. (in case you don’t know, it’s to do with manipulating through fake tears, because it’s really the nasty crocodile who’se behind it.)

He even once tried to enroll in a shape-shifting college. You have to be either a Kitsune or a Tanooki to enroll, but college? Already? It could also be that Shippo is an even bigger pervert than Miroku. The persona of a cute little kid suits him because Kagome will hold him close to her breasts and he’s allowed join the women in hot-spring skinny dipping! The only reason he hasn’t gone around all the women asking “will you bear my children?” like Miroku could be because that might give it away that he’s not a child. He's also seen Miroku reaching for Sango's butt and how she whacks him every time, to which he remarks, "Does he ever learn?" If Shippo really is a child, then they shouldn’t be involving him in the business which is also the plot of the series, but he also seems to be oddly capable of consenting!

He is also capable of getting Inuyasha accused of hitting a child. I am aware that portrayals of children being disciplined with blows to the head are not too uncommon in manga and anime, (I just don't know whether this is real in Japan.) but in this example, it could still be friendly nudgying and there is absolutely nothing else Inuyasha has done to him.(well, except in one episode where a lust-demon actually turned Inuyasha gay and made him begin to molest Shippo, but once the spell was broken, it never happened again and Shippo's reaction was more like that of a "horny" adult who just wanted something else rather than this. He never really acts the way a genuinely traumatised child would.) In fact Inuyasha has often rescued children, while his demonic powers, martial arts prowess, clawed hands and magical sword make him capable of doing much greater harm, but he saves those for the real battles against much mightier foes who don’t apppear to be children. Wasn’t it Inuyasha who once said “How dare you involve Kagome and Shippo in this?” to an enemy in battle? I still think how Super Mario has beaten up Bowser Jr. is much more cruel. The big red lump and eyes becoming spirals could also be Shippo’s shape-shifting. Even if Inuyasha is hitting him for real, it could be because he knows that’s not a child. If he is fooled by the disguise, then friendly nudgying could be what he usually does to children, but he has also protected Kagome while Kagome is carrying Shippo.

This still doesn’t stop Kagome from saying the magic word “sit” which makes the “beads of subjugation”(yes, that is actually what the irremovable collar of beads is called) light up and Inuyasha will fall flat on his face, wherever he is, up a tree or on a delicate bridge. Neither did it stop Shippo from slapping Inuyasha in the face and sneering at him. This could be like the episode of Mortal kombat: Defenders of the realm, where they thought they were helping a child, but it was really the sorceror Quan Chi in disguise and the “token of gratitude” was really an evil item bearing a terrible curse. Or the time when Bugs Bunny was stupidly mistaken for the baby Mr. And Mrs ape ordered from stork deliveries but had fun being able to walk all over Mr. Ape, because he can always go crying to Mommy.

What makes Inuyasha like twilight is that there are so many things going on that seem like “red flags and gaslighting”, but are also so open to interpretation that it leaves its fans to have heated debates about it. While I admit there are still some blanks I cant quite fill in, my opinion is that Shippo is having lots of fun pretending to be a child and crying like one so he can watch Inuyasha being punished, Inuyasha is a hero who is not only unappreciated but outrageously disrespected and Kagome is incredibly ungrateful for all the times Inuyasha rescued her. He’s already an outcast because of being half-human, half-demon! Don’t get hooked on this “chick flick”, but it does have some of the most amazing rescue scenes and musical scores!

[oisinwrites]

No.4 of my own top eight fan theories. Super Mario was once an extremely bad gangster, but his womanising ways actually led to him becoming a better man, who will only revert when an old rival appears.

Despite the contraversy over video game violence, its often overlooked that Super Mario is actually quite violent and even some subtle sexual innuendo can also be found. Except, that is, by a few angry youtubers who have ranted about Mario being evil, but this is not a rant. It’s possible Mario could be from an Italian mafia background and there is evidence of him having been a womaniser, but I believe things are not all black and white here. The rivalry between Mario and Bowser is an intense one, but there is fault on both sides. Mario has killed Bowser in a particularly gruesome way: stamping on a floor-button which opens up the floor underneath him, sending him down to a pit of lava. The ways he has defeated Bowser jr. Also means he has hit a child, as well as having killed this Childs father, before Bowser jr. Eventually resurrected him by throwing all his bones into a magic cauldron.

On the other hand, Bowser has also been involving Bowser jr. In his dispute with Mario, which puts Bowser jr. In danger, because Mario is someone who might hit a child. Bowser has also attacked the castle and kidnapped princess Peach. Now, let’s have a look at Mario’s dating history. Pauline is the first girlfriend who can be traced back to and she does sort of look like a “bimbo” for the “bad boy” to drive dangerously around with in a fancy sports car while shouting insults and disrespecting everyone. This might have been when Mario was a cruel ringmaster in an Italian Mafia-run circus. Eventually a certain ape became so enraged by cruel treatment that he kidnapped Pauline and started throwing barrels around. Mario then lived out his sexual fantasies by coming to save the “hoe” from this “foul ape”, because she really needs a strong man who, by using violence, can become the greatest threat to anyone threatening her.

Anyway, they then split up because a relationship which is all sex and no feelings doesn’t tend to last very long, but change is gradual. This lesson didn’t immediately change him into a gentleman, but it was the beginning of a turning point, because he was a womaniser who always wondered what the way to attract a woman is. In the game “Super-Mario-land” which is on the old game-boy colour, Mario goes off to rescue Princess Daisy. At many points during the game, he thinks He’s found her and say’s “Oh, Daisy!”, as if in love with her, but she turns out to be a monster in disguise and scary music plays. Eventually, he finds the real Princess Daisy and says “Oh, Daisy! Daisy!”. They then go up in a rocket-ship and we see the credits roll as it moves through the clouds, but we don’t see what happens IN the rocket. It could be that he pressured her for sex, but she became the first girl in his love life to ever say “no”, or tell him that’s inappropriate, setting boundaries Pauline didn’t.

Luigi then got extremely lucky and hit it off with Princess Daisy. They lived happily ever after and there is even a track in Mario-kart dedicated to them. The thing is, Luigi wasn’t a “bad boy”. And so, the womaniser who always wondered how to attract a woman slowly figured out the real secret which is a bit like this: not every girl is going to behave like a whore to fulfill a guy’s fantasies. Some do, but those girls aren’t ready for a mature relationship, so they’re not the ones to go for. All sex and no feelings doesn’t work in the long run, because if you haven’t focused on the feelings, then you haven’t dealt with the underlying problems. Also, those belonging to the fairer sex may be repulsed by things of a sexually explicit nature. The trick is to find a woman who is ready for a mature relationship, hold off on sex for the time being, (she MIGHT eventually agree to sex, but on her own terms, when SHE is in the mood.) and focus on what those belonging to the fairer sex will find beautiful, by showing you’re a man with a sensitive side. After figuring this out, Mario found Princess Peach and tried to show her how much he cares about protecting the mushroom kingdom, but she was kidnapped by the one who also happens to be an old rival.

The kind of rivalry Mario and Bowser have looks a lot like a gangland rivalry. Is Bowser really the king of a country or more of a gangland king? (yes, I know he has a crown, cape, sceptre and castle, but they could be property of a very rich and powerful gang.) Kidnapping a princess could be part of gangland politics and this rivalry may have already developed over such a long time, with grudge already so deep, even having figured out that being a gentleman is the way to attract a woman is not quite enough. Wario and Waluigi also appear to be gangsters, so the whole thing could be a gangster story. A gangster story can also be about a pair of twins.

There is a legend that where there’s a pair of twins, one is good and the other is evil, but maybe its not so black and white. Luigi might be the naive and innocent twin who doesn’t realise he’s surrounded by gangsters, while Mario could be the twin who has a dark past and may still revert to his former villainy due to unsettled scores, but they are both heroes. Come to think of it, that makes them like Xena and Gabriel, except that Mario and Luigi are also related. I think if Luigi was around more often, he’d stop Mario from using violence and suggest more hippie-ish alternatives. You see, its true that Mario has done terrible things, but it doesn’t have to be a rant. We can acknowledge that not everything in a video-game is always kid-friendly, but we can also acknowledge that it is portraying all kinds of moral situations. Mario has also been accused of yoshi abuse, but I think those are graphical glitches.

[oisinwrites]

No.3 of my own top eight fan theories. Hagrid is an alcoholic.

It has now been confirmed that dumbledore is indeed gay, but for this one were going to have to go into some of the big questions about the effects of alcohol and exactly why its dangerous. What kinds of things can alcohol impair judgement of? Hygiene and cleanliness? Safety and risk management? Personal appearance and self-presentation? What one should or shouldn’t say in conversation? What difference does it make exactly HOW drunk you are or how many drinks you’ve had? If a proffessor or an expert on a certain subject is drunk, how much of what they usually know can they correctly remember? If it’s the subject of something dangerous, is that why drinking is dangerous?

Australia has lots of dangerous animals which Australians often know the most important facts about and I think you’d want to keep your wits about you if a venomous snake is approaching. What if the drinker does remember information but they forget it is top-secret classified information and can chattiness also be a symptom of drunkenness? Or weepiness? Or talking in a slurred voice? The wizard world also has lots of dangerous creatures including, but not limited to, venomous giant snakes which can also turn you to stone, giant man-eating spiders and fire-breathing dragons. Even a dainty unicorn could stab with its horn, but unicorns aren't normally aggressive. Harry was also lucky not to get his hands singed by Dumbledores pet pheonix. It is Hagrid who is the monster expert.

He does seem capable of remembering the most important facts about them, training them well and keeping under control. From Hagrid we get such gems of wisdom as “the trick with any beast is to know how to calm it” (also sounds like good advice with toddlers to me), “never insult a hippogriff, it may just be the last thing you’ll ever do” and “that monster book of monsters, just stroke it gently along the spine”. He also seems capable of nursing owls back to health and many other jobs around the area of hogwarts. He can be trusted with a cross-bow and knows that knockturn alley is dodgy.

On the other hand, he sometimes forgets how to do spells or his spells go awry, like the time he turned Dudley into a half-boy-half-pig, he has accidentally stabbed Proffessor Flitwick on the hand with a fork, he tried to raise a fire-breathing dragon in a wooden house, (he also got its gender wrong.) he’s been nagged by Hermione over unhygienic habits and what was he thinking, introducing a pack of wild hippogryffs to students? In fact it was Hagrid who got the forest next to the school infested with giant man-eating spiders. On more than one occasion, he told Harry, Ron and Hermione about the goings-on of hogwarts before saying “shouldn’ta told yer thah!” and one of the things they found out was how Hagrid got a three-headed dog which is tiny as a puppy but grows up to be gigantic from the pub. This is the same place he always gets a new baby monster to raise and it must be from dodgy dealers. Ron also remarks that someone got him drunk to get something from him. Brandy has also been found in his house, which he says is for medicinal purposes (which it could be, but it could also be just an excuse for drinking.) His messy hair, shaggy beard and the same drab mole-skin overcoats also show that he has no idea how he would look in front of guests.

Its possible that an alcoholic may still have some of their wits about them, while subtle clues that they’ve been drinking are also present. It may be that Hagrid has only had one Butter-beer or he has only had two fire-whiskeys. If he was EVEN MORE drunk, he would be totally incapable of anything except causing accidents and would have to be kicked out of hogwarts because of the danger he poses. He has also had two major weeping moments, one was when the baby dragon was taken out of his custody, (it could be because of his drinking problem that he’s unfit to raise it and it will now be raised by professionals) and the other was about Buckbeak, before Harry and Hermione went back in time to save Buckbeak.

Then again, sorrow can also be the reason behind drinking (it could also be that everything will come out when you’re drunk, because you’ve lost all self-reservation.) and Hagrid was wrongly expelled when he was a student at hogwarts for something Tom Riddle, who would later become lord Voldemort, was really responsible for. Its unclear whether he had started drinking yet at the time, but it seems he was already messing with monsters. He may not have become an expert yet, so maybe he just didn’t know better at the time. Hagrid may be the kind of man (or half-man, half-giant) children who are still unaware of his bad reputation love to hang out with because of his personality but grown-ups who are aware of his bad reputation look down on because he may be a drinker, a gambler or someone who doesn’t pay back borrowed money. Anyway, J.K. Rowling is an author who likes to play little games with her readers and I would also like to say “hats off!” to Neil Cicergia’s “potter puppet pals” parody series, especially the episode “Rons disease”, where there is not only a reference to Dumbledore being gay, but also a hilarious Hagrid puppet who certainly looks like he’s been drinking! After all, what makes potter puppet pals so funny is being such a spot-on parody.

[oisinwrites]

Number two of my own top eight fan theories. Mr. krabs is the mentor bikini bottom needed, but he has also been corrupted, leading to its post-war society falling apart.

Spongebob Squarepants is another cartoon I grew up with which I am now looking at differently. There are a few things about it I had been analysing separetely until I finally managed to come up a theory that fits them all together, with Mr. Krabs in the centre. He is known for his greed, selfishness and love of money, but has also sometimes shown a sweeter, more sentimental side. However, he has also sometimes been seen in meetings with some very corporate-looking fishie's, who appear to be offering enormous bribes. Its obvious that his daughter, Pearl, is adopted, (at least this explains how a whale can be a crab’s daughter, but I still can’t explain how there can be an underwater beach with underwater water.) but what if Mr. Krabs is a veteran of a previous war and had found her in a war-zone without any family?

She is known for getting very excited and jumping up and down, causing everyone and everything to jump up and down with her, but they are exactly the kinds of things I imagine someone who grew up in a war-zone be excited about! Her taste in decor and interior design is also very hippie-ish, with bright colours and flower designs, and teddy bears can also represent “peace’n’luuuvv!”. Back when Mr. krabs was sergeant krabs, he may have been so depressed by the awfulness of war that he went out to get himself killed but postponed his suicide when he heard a little girl crying and investigated. The joy of having a child of his own in spite of having never married may have cured his depression and raising her gave him reason to go on living. He also may have started a modest burger business as a means of supporting his daughter, but unfortunately became a target for much bigger companies to corrupt.

Meanwhile, Squidward appears to be a traumatised war-veteran who Spongebob and Patrick are always triggering, especially in that episode with the cardboard box. Squidward has peaceful hobbies which don’t remind him of war, while Spongebob and Patrick’s hobby of jelly-fishing is all about strategically ambushing your prey in the fields, which means first having located them and tracked their movements. Sometimes they march with the upper ends of their nets resting on their shoulders and sometimes they even run around wildly with their nets held sideways above their heads going “woo-la-la-la, woo-la,la,la!”. Spongebob also has a laugh which is like a machine gun. I’m not sure if Patrick is really responsible, since he clearly has a severe intellectual disability. Its Spongebob who’se the bad influence, but it’s not all black and white.

He’s also been the best friend of someone with a severe intellectual disability who has taught him the art of burger-flipping, a skill which helps him get a stable job in the burger-business. Since they live close by each other, its also possible that Spongebob had rented out a home near his own home for Patrick, so that Patrick can be almost, if not completely, independent, but why hasn't Mr. Krabs praised him for this, or had a talk with him about traumatised war veterans? Why hasn't he told Squidward his moving story about having once been a depressed and suicidal soldier and then finding new joy by adopting a baby whale who had no family? Isn’t he in just the right position, being the manager in the place where Squidward, Spongebob and Patrick all work? I think even the way Spongebob eventually drove Mrs. Puff insane could have been prevented with better mentoring and Mr. Krabs might be able to explain about traumatised war veterans in a way that Patrick will understand. Honestly, I could go on forever about the chaos and mob madness in Bikini bottom, so I think I’ll finish up with just a few more notes.

He still shows his more sentimental side when pearl is around and there is one episode where he REALLY showed it. In this episode, Mr krabs agrees to a deal with some corporate fishie's where they take over the Krusty Krabs so he gets an early retirement and they give him a massive sum of money which will cover his retirement pensions for a long time. He then comes back because he has learnt, to his horror, that the Krabby patties are being made by machine with synthetic ingredients! He actually insists that a krabby patty is made by hand with love, care and only REAL ingredients so that each one is unique and the eater is tasting magic! Like all Spongebob episodes, it ends with things going back to the way they were before, but the fact that Mr. Krab's is demanding to be put back in charge of the Krusty Krab's means he’s also rejecting the huge sum of money they gave him, because that and the early retirement are both part of the same deal. He actually cares about something else more than he does about money and it’s something of a sentimental nature! Perhaps this is the real secret ingredient which is why business at the Krusty Krab's is always better than at the chum bucket, but plankton is too cynical to understand. Beneath his selfish ways and capitalist greed, Mr Krab's does have a more tender side which still shows sometimes. Whats truly sad about Bikini bottom is that there is one crab who has the power to heal its troubled community and the only reason he hasn’t done so already is because he’s been corrupted by the corporation.

[oisinwrites]

Number one of my own top eight fan theories. The granny in looney tunes is an eco-warrior who has been raising orphaned baby animals for release but Tweety chose to stay as her assistant in conservation.(may contain spoilers)

This is mostly based on the baby looney tunes series, which I remember seeing when I was little, but am looking at differently now. However, this theory still fits with most of the entire looney tunes franchise and explains the lack of parents. I have also heard of a theory that there are multiple loony tunes universes and this theory attempts to explain all the inconsistencies, but my theory is still mostly consistent, with a few inconsistencies, but only very few. It also fits with “Tweetie's high-flying adventure”, which is a parody of the classic “around the world in 80 days” and has a very similar plot to the original classic. Tweety travels around the world collecting the paw-prints of 80 cats in a stamp-book, in order to win a high-stakes bet about whether cats or canaries are smarter. The prize is a massive sum of money which is enough to save a park from developers! Granny even says to Tweety, “I don't want to overburden you.”, to which Tweety replies, saluting, “I’d do anything for you, granny!”. This means that granny has actually made sure that the animal is consenting. Not only that, but it fits with another movie where the greedy Daffy duck starts a business charging people to make wishes in a wishing well and granny says, “I’d like to help animals, can you make me a nurse?”. She then becomes a nurse in an animal hospital! The adult versions of the other looney tunes characters who are shown living in grannies house in the baby looney tunes series are now living in their natural habitats, so Tweety might have been making the most difficult choice he’s ever had to make, but he believes it is the right choice: sacrificing his own freedom for the freedom of all other wildlife, but he does get a taste of freedom in that round-the-world trip. In the baby loony tunes series, Grannies house appears to be a humane place to raise them with lots of open space and toys to play with, granny seems to be raising them with lots of love and nurturing and there is one episode where they get a phone-call from auntie, who asks how the little ones are, so she could be another member of the animal welfare organisation who granny is in touch with. Of course she doesn’t always get it right when raising them, but she always owns up to it when she gets it wrong and even once had a talk with baby Daffy about how “sometimes grown-ups make mistakes.”(his reactions are also hilarious!). This also explains the affection that can still be seen between granny and the adult versions of the looney tunes. They sometimes see her again after being released, so they may be expressing gratitude. The way they say “Hello, granny!” does seem like a very friendly greeting and she often appears to be traveling, having ridden planes, steam-boats and even an elephant, so she could be on some conservation business. On the other hand, Lola does have parents in the modern series “the loony tunes show”, whose fur coats indicate that they are her biological parents, the version of Daffie’s past shown in the Christmas special “Bah humduck”, is inconsistent with the baby looney tunes series (so is the version of Tweetie’s past shown in an episode of the looney tunes show) and in one of the old classic episodes, bugs bunny is in the middle ages. However, these are still only very few inconsistencies and Lola could still be the only one was seperated rather than orphaned. Anyway, the baby looney tunes series is hilarious, especially the episode where they’re all scared of the toilet and the episode where they go to an extremely repetitive children's music concert which the baby loonies all go looney over, but their baby-sitter is driven completely looney by how bad it is! All that child psychology he’s been studying still hasn’t prepared him for this!

[oisinwrites]

The batman and Scooby-Doo mysteries: review.

This un-numbered Scooby-doo crossover comic contains six exciting stories, the first of which involves time travel and switches frequently between past and present. They are travelling back in time to investigate a gap in Batmans memory and to find the authentic version of a pair of gloves which have been replaced with a fake pair on one of Batmans suits. In the past, an Alfred who doesn't recognise them chauffers them to an abandoned warehouse belonging to wayne enterprises. In the present, they restore plans to the building and then enter the bat-marine. In the past, they think they’ve discovered a zombie inside the warehouse. In the present they’ve come out of the bat-marine in their diving-suits and are attempting to dig through an underwater wall. Ripples in the water tell them it’s time to move and and explosion from above clears the wall for them, allowing them to enter the building, where they meet robin, who had found some spare explosives. In the past, batman sees them as the “zombie” chases them out of the building. Belma works out that it was really a henchman working for professor stryker and batman then starts talking to them when they’ve arrived at the professor’s house. At first, they are fighting over the special purple gloves bat-man has, but then Alfred steps in. After all the explanations, the gloves are kept in a special time-box. (like a time capsule, but smaller.) In the present, they discover that “the juice was fine” is the phrase to undo Batman's self-hypnosis where he removed part of his own memory and find the box with the real gloves. Although they all have lots of plot twists and elaborate double-crossing, this was the one I found most confusing and didn't really make any sense. The ending just made me wonder what was the point of all that in the first place?

The next adventure begins in the jokers house of fun, where they have just defaeted the joker and they are taken to the bat-cave. The location is so top-secret that they have to be blind-folded and let robin drive their own mystery machine. When they reach the bat-cave, it appears to be haunted, but they soon work out that its all holograms and batman discovers a holo-projector inside the trophy of the joker. Since the trophy is being taken inside the batcave, its the only way they could’ve accessed such a top-secret location. Soon the joke is on the joker and his whole gang of clowns when they move the trophy into a different cave and fill it with traps. They then keep the trophy after removing the tracking device. This one was the funniest, not just because it had clowns, but because of how those bozos were outsmarted.

The next one begins with a battle at the airport with “the baggage bandit”, who steals luggage. After defeating him, scooby and the bat-hound give autographs to all the dogs at the airport, which are in the form of inked paw-prints. They then recieve a bat-signal which takes them to an aquarium, where they find a pamphlet with two seahorses. Their trail then leads them to the coin museum, where they discover that the baggage bandit has a twin who steals coins. Batman now believes the real culprit is two-face and all this was just buying time. They then visit the dog-show, where bat-man tells them the manipulating lawyer who convinced the authorities to release both twins must really have been two-face in disguise. Scooby and ace are competing in the dog show where they become another example of two-faces obsession with pairs, while belma catches another crook who batman also believes is one of two-faces goons whose job is to buy some time. Scooby and bat-dog outsmart two-face by pretending to be each other. The judge picks up scooby, who is wearing bat-dogs cape and Scooby takes off the mask, revealing two-face, who is promptly arrested. This one took “double-crossing”, to a whole new level and it was actually pretty cool, but the funniest part was at the start with the “baggage bandit”, because he was such a ridiculous villain.

The next adventure begins at a sweet-shop, where they’ve just un-masked two “monsters”, who were trying to rob the sweet-shop. They then discover more “monsters” outside, but then nightwing and bat-girl show up, saying batman and the current robin (nightwing used to be a former robin.) are busy. This town is getting ready for the big carnival, but mythological monsters are coming alive! Or they appear to be mythological monsters coming alive, but they go “clang” when hit and are as hard as steel, so they are really robots. They manage to swipe the remotes from some of batmans enemies and turn their own monsters against them. They then un-mask them, but one turns out to have a genuinely warped face (it looks like a black skull) and the other unmasks himself and turns out to be batman. The idea of mythical creatures appearing to come alive was very creative and I also liked seeing an appearance of Nightwing as well as Bat-girl.

In the next story, they learn that batman has teamed up with the daughter of Raz’al’gul, who is also an enemy of batman and they travel in a private jet. They arrive at a carnival and make their way into the Egyptian desert where there is a secret lair. Inside, they find themselves under attack by a berserk mummy for a while, but after the mummy disappears, batman examines a torn-off piece of mummy wrapping sees that its fake. They venture even further underground and batman discovers Bane, but he disappears immediately when Batman throws a batarang. After examining the substance which the batarang has landed in, they discover it is not the same substance Bane uses to make himself super-strong, so, for whatever reason, someone has disguised themselves as Bane. They then leave the secret base and track down where the Bane imposter is holding his hostage: Raz al ghul! He interrogates about something called the “lazarus pit”, but Raz al ghul insists it doesnt exist. The bane imposter is then attacked by Batman while the others surround him and Belma swings a rope around his legs. When he is grabbed and unmasked, he turns out to be a wrestling star called “the mad Mummy”. The mummy they encountered earlier had also fought like a wrestler in show-business and used a chair as a weapon. Just before the Bane imposter was un-masked, he proved a worthy opponent even for an experienced vigilante like batman by fighting like a professional wrestler, but with the scooby gang on Batman's side, he was outnumbered and brought to justice. It was interesting to see the daughter of Raz Al Ghul defying her father, as well as batman rescuing his own enemy and a professional wrestler from show-business having become a criminal.

In the last but not least part of this comic, a flashback reveals why Bruce wayne in his earlier years had difficulty becoming a crime-fighter: the same Scooby gang were already selected as apprentices by the worlds greatest detective! This was when Bruce who would later become the Bat-man was presumably a teenager and the Scooby gang were little kids, so the final part of the collection is an episode of “a pup named Scooby-doo”, which I also remember seeing on TV when I was younger and it was even more cartoonish than the original cartoon which it is a spin-off/prequel to. They didn't know it was Bruce Wayne at the time since he was wearing an eye-mask, but to his disappointment, the worlds greatest detective agreed to let him babysit while the wee ones solve the mystery. Their investigation begins at an art museum, where a painting was stolen and a massive hole in the wall left behind revealing a set of giant footprints, which leads to the “monster man” who is still in the act of loading the painting into a van. The crook gets away because Daphne's butler got in the way of Bruce and the worlds greatest detective. All three were trying to stop the thief but, ironically, they tripped over each others feet. Luckily the worlds greatest detective found a clue: a piece of torn clothing reads “Gambi custom-made clothing, we sew what we say, see?”. They arrive at that shop and discover that it also tailors disguises and then Harris the tailor brings them to the secret hideout, where the “monster man” is a goon for auction. They reveal themselves, but the detective has brought backup and the whole gang of crooks are tricked into running right where the police are and the “monster man” turns out to have been dressed up as a giant with stilts and giant shoes, explaining why the footprints were deeper at the back of the foot, since thats where most of the pressure is. It was a ruse to sell the monster formula that is not yet perfected, but the proffesor promises it will be soon. The flashback ends with the seller and the goon being brought to justice and the book ends with their reflections of the past. Being even more cartoonish than the original cartoon always makes an episode of “a pup named scooby-doo” funny, especially in this one where Belma produces a magnifying glass bigger than herself to examine a footprint and there are generic goons with balaclavas, neanderthalic features and sweaters saying “thug#1” or “thug#2”.

So that was the Batman and scooby-doo mysteries, from DC. All in all, it’s an enjoyable comic and I think its suitable for just about all tastes. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find any more of these books in store, but I’ll be on the lookout in case I ever do. Scooby-doo and DC superheroes always make a good cross-over.

[oisinwrites]

              Bad Panda Mom

This is fan-fiction. I do not own Zootropolis. All rights go to Disney and Pixar. This fan-fiction was based on real facts about pandas and may contain spoilers for the movie.

“This is wrong!”, said Officer Judy Hopps, looking at the street vendor, where so many tabloids and gossip magazines all showed the same large, rotund, middle-aged panda in bright pink flowery clothing. Apparently, she was the worst mother in all of Zootropolis, but Judy didn’t think this was possible. Then again, if she hadn’t known better, she wouldn’t have thought it was possible for the media to be this unbearably harsh. It was bamboozling to her. “I’m not so squeaky clean myself, but having two cubs, only loving one and abandoning the other, that is very outrageous.” Said Nick Wilde, who was just flicking through his smartphone. “you’re a parent too, aren’t you?”, asked Judy. “I thought you had figured out by now,” answered Nick, “He’s not really a cub, He’s an adult of a different fox breed much smaller than me who pretended to be my baby as part of a con, which you fell for, because you were a rookie cop.” “It’s not like she was a cannibal trying to eat her own cub,” stated Judy,” it’s obvious she was just carrying him in her mouth, so we’ve both fallen for a con.” “Maybe I should have been more careful,” Nick admitted, “you can’t always believe what you read in the papers, but I know about con’s and this is technically more of a hyperbole than a con.”

At the station, Judy wondered if it was the same Panda that she was now seeing as an equally large  panda in the same pink flowery clothing entered the building, followed by cameras and wiping her eyes with a tissue. This was confirmed by the thunderous voice of Chief Bogo. “Mrs. Panderson, you are here for questioning in relation to your cubs!”, he boomed. Officer Judy, Chief Bogo and Mrs. Panderson withdrew to another room and began the questioning. Chief Bogo’s imposing demeanour and quick temper made him perfect for the role of “bad cop”, while Officer Judies soft heart and sympathy towards mothers made her more suited to being “good cop”. “You may introduce yourself”, permitted officer Judy. “Hi, I’m Pamela Panderson, I am a mother of two, they are twins, but unfortunately have not been able to maintain custody of both cubs.” Answered Mrs. Panderson, still sniffling and wiping her eyes. Chief Bogo raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really”, he said, skeptically, “Why ever not?”. “I’m sure there’s a good reason.” Said Officer Judy.” Mrs. Panderson raised a paw and gestured towards her chest. “Well, I was able to get it going in here but…” “Argh, you’re on a tangent about breastfeeding!” interrupted Chief Bogo, “get to the point!” “No that’s okay,” said Officer Judy, “It’s a natural thing that all moms do or have done at some point, go on…”. Mrs. Panderson was already sniffling, but now she was really crying. “It was only enough for one cub! Their names are Fuzzy and Wuzzy, so I had to choose between Fuzzy and Wuzzy and have the other taken into care.”

“You had the choice no mother wants to have!”, exclaimed Judy. “Yes, but doesn’t Fuzzy have the right to know he has a twin brother called Wuzzy who was separated at birth?” asked Chief Bogo, “and are you aware that Fuzzy is obese?” “Panda cubs are supposed to be getting fatter and fatter,” said Judy, “I’d be worried if a panda cub wasn’t becoming a roly-poly blob of dough.” “Did you burn him alive by pouring barbecue sauce all over his body and lick it all off him?” asked Chief Bogo. “Why in blazes would I do that?”, exclaimed Mrs. Panderson, “then I’d burn my tongue!” “But did you lick him?”, he went on. “Well, that’s our culture,” answered Mrs. Panderson, “licking is a form of affection, it’s pretty much our equivalent of kissing and we panda moms lick our cubs all the time, but especially potty time, when we lick their tummies.” “So, you weren’t trying to eat him?” he asked. “what? No, of course not!”, Mrs Panderson spluttered. “Did you bite his ear off?” Chief bogo asked next. “That’s ridiculous! Ear-nibbling is also a form of affection among pandas and it’s a gentle bite”, she answered. “You’ve been accused of so many ridiculous things, they can’t all be true!”, stated Judy. “But we have found out one that is true,” replied Chief Bogo, “I would like to ask one more thing, did you sit on top of Fuzzy and crush him?”. “Well, yes and no”, answered Mrs. Panderson, “Thats another thing we Panda moms do, but it’s just a way of keeping them safe and we’re very careful not to crush them. I suppose it might seem strange to those outside of our culture, but in the panda communities its normal for mothers to squat down with their bum over their cub. It also signals to those nearby to watch out for those little cubs and please be gentle.” “Does that mean it was just a load of exaggerated nonsense all along?” asked Chief Bogo. “I think you’re a wonderful mum!” said Judy. “Thank you, but it’s very clear that Mrs. Tigerson does not agree.”, answered Mrs. Panderson.

“Who is this Mrs. Tigerson?” asked Judy. “I think it’s time to wrap it up”, said Chief Bogo, “We’ve found out what we needed.” “Well, she’s another mom, but she’s not a panda mom like me, she’s a tiger mom and I tend to avoid her.” Chief Bogo stood up. “You’re free to go.”, he said loudly and clearly. “Wait, I want to hear the rest of this!”, enthused Judy. “I Don’t bring fuzzy to the same pre-school where she’s around,” Mrs. Panderson went on, “or the same creche, or the same playground, okay, I think you get the picture now.” “I get that picture, but tell me more about why you avoid this other Mom?”, asked Judy. “I think the two of you can discuss this on your own time,” said Chief Bogo, “Its time for her to come back out of the station and you will probably be seeing her on parole.” Mrs. Panderson left the way she came, followed by cameras, journalists and officer Judy. She was still sniffling, but this time she was also thanking officer Judy in front of the press. The media had been incredibly harsh, but one particular Bunny had cut her some slack.

It was mostly Nick who she was seeing and talking to on parole and they were still arguing about whether Mrs. Panderson was really a “bad mom”. “When you put a cub into care, you make sure it’s the right place.” argued Nick. “let’s look at this logically for a moment.” began Judy, “She probably would have been very careful about where this cub ended up, you can’t just ASSUME!” “I am looking at it logically!” answered Nick, ”bottle-feeding is an option.” “Yes, but you see, it’s not a complete formula.” Explained Judy, “what do you know about babies anyway? He wasn’t really a cub, he was an adult of another fox breed smaller than you pretending to be your baby.” “So, you admit it, you were just a rookie cop!” snapped nick. “Yes, it was a rookie mistake and you can call me a dumb bunny, but do you have any experience with actual cubs?” “Alright, I don’t know much about cubs”, nick admitted, “but was that the only reason she had to choose between two cubs?” “There could have been more, but chief Bogo cut it short.” complained Judy. “I don’t think he was really all that interested in the whole mother’s story. He didn’t even want to hear about breast-feeding.” “Well, all that sounds dumb to me too.”, said Nick. “Goodness, That Mrs. Panderson really is a disgrace!”, butted in a rather intimidating mother tiger who was holding onto her cub’s paw.

“Are you Mrs. Tigerson?” asked Officer Judy. “Yes, I am Tiffany Tigerson and this is my daughter Tia, who I am raising properly!” roared Mrs. Tigerson, “I haven’t had the police involved!” Judies heart melted when she saw into Tia the tiger Cubs large, round eyes and Tia the tiger cub looked into hers. ”Hellooo!! I’m officer Judy!”, she said as she began slightly bending over before the little cub, with her paws on her hips and her legs arched outwards. “Er… Hewwo officer Judy!” Tia the tiger cub answered politely. “she’s just adorable, have you any other cubs?” asked Judy, “Er, no, just the one.” Answered Mrs. Tigerson. “Then how can you judge a mother of two?” Judy continued. Mrs. Tigerson became speechless. “Ha! You can’t answer, can you?”, Judy smirked. “That’s some solid policing right there.” Nick muttered with a slight hint of sarcasm. Finally, Mrs Tigerson was able to answer, but she was still coughing and spluttering. “Is it wrong for me to judge other mothers?”, she asked, “but when you’re a parent, you have to get your affairs in order, her life is a mess!” “Isn’t everyone’s life a mess?”, asked Judy, this time roaring back with passion, “If you don’t share another moms load, then you’re only contributing to the same problems you’re complaining about!” “Wow, where is all this fire from!?” gasped Nick, “You sure are sharing a mothers load, but you’re not actually a mother!” “I…I don’t know,” answered Judy, “something just took a-hold of me!”

“I… I never thought about it like that before at all!!”, Mrs Tigerson choked, “My whole life I’ve been roaring at everyone, It’s the first time anyone had the guts to roar back at me and it’s changed my entire universe! As for that Mrs Panderson, how will I ever make it up to her after having been treating her like this for so long?! Come to think of it, I don’t see her that often anymore, is she… avoiding me?” “I don’t weally see Fuzzy panda or her mommy anymore.”, added Tia the tiger cub. “I’m sorry Tia, you should have a playmate like fuzzy panda,” Said Mrs. Tigerson, “but you haven’t, because I drove a wedge between his mother and me, pushing us further away from each other.” Now it was Nicks turn to become speechless. He had no idea what to make of what he had just witnessed. After the tigers left, with officer Judy and Tia the tiger cub politely waving goodbye, Judy then said to Nick, “I’d like to meet Mr. Panderson, I wonder if he’s a family man? You know all the ladies love that kind of man! They go crazy over the domestic types who are fully committed to being the best husband and father!” “That’s not their culture, Judy.” Sighed Nick. “What do you mean, that’s not their culture?”, asked Judy. “Let’s get real here.” Snorted Nick, “A male bunny doing all that domestic stuff? Yeah, I could Imagine that, but a male panda, pull the other one!”

The next day, they did get the chance to meet Mr. Panderson at the tram-stop. A very sleepy-looking panda in work-clothes got off the tram saying, “What a day at work, I’m exhausted and a little peckish, I really want to munch on some bamboo and then take a nap.” “Excuse me, you’re not under arrest,” Judy addressed him,” But there’s been a case of a mother panda who had one of her two cubs taken into care, are you by any chance the father?”, “Er.. I think so.” Yawned the sleepy panda. “What do you mean you think so?!”, Screeched Judy. “Are you Mr. Panderson?”, she asked. “Yup, I’ve got my work-badge here, Peter Panderson.”, He yawned. “See, I told you!”, said Nick. “Even though it would make the girls go wild?”, asked Judy. “What are you talking about?” asked Mr. Panderson. “Well, you are a girl, so I won’t argue with you there.”, Nick backed out. “But what is this about making the girls go wild?”, asked Mr. Panderson. “Oh, you know, being involved in the childcare and stuff like that.” Judy answered. “You mean women just love being in childcare so much?” asked Mr. Panderson, “Are they really that crazy?”. “Nooo… they GO crazy over a MAN being involved in the childcare!” Judy explained. “You mean that’s the kind of man that’s irresistible.”, said Mr. Panderson. “Yes!”, answered Judy. “Uh-oh, that’s not very good news for me!”, said Mr. Panderson. “This is the good news, you just heard it too late, but better late than never.”, Said Judy. “I sure hope that’s not what they want from a man, that’s really scary!”, panicked Mr. Panderson.

When Judy saw Mrs Panderson at the station again, not only were Fuzzy and Wuzzy there, meeting each other for the first time, but chief Bogo also announced another visitor who was there to see her. It was Mrs Tigerson, who had also brought her daughter. Judy couldn’t help crying when, in front of all the reporters and all the cameras, the two mothers hugged one another. “I disrespected you and I’m sorry.” Whispered Mrs Tigerson. “I had much more favourable circumstances to be a mom in and I didn’t think about it being a lot harder for other mothers, but now I see that the cubs should be allowed to have playdates with each other and for that to happen both their moms need to be together as friends.” “If we are going to arrange a playdate, that would make it up to me.”, answered Mrs. Panderson. “I forgive you.” “I, too, feel that I owe you an apology.” said Chief Bogo, “I think its these adorable baby pandas that are bringing out the worst in us and I allowed my emotions to interfere with my judgement, which isn’t very professional for a chief of police.” “what’s wrong with police being emotional?”, asked Judy, who was still honking into a pink, lacy handkerchief. “Well, I mean when it’s getting in the way of logic and reason.”, explained chief Bogo. “Hey, you should have been there when I managed to convince Mrs. Tigerson to make up with Mrs. Panderson!”, laughed Judy, “It’s strange, I don’t have children of my own, but there was a new fire in me unlike anything I had ever felt before, yet I still think I was able to see rationally at the same time. If I may say so myself, I must have been able to come up some good arguments to get her convinced like this.” “Well, even when you get to be police chief you’re still learning and from now on I will try harder to look at things in a more objective and detached way.”, answered Chief Bogo. “Things aren’t all so black and white, there are fuzzy areas.”

“Hey, I think the tabloids have shifted their focus!”, said officer Clawhauser, who was showing the magazine he’d been reading. “They used to be obsessed with Mrs. Panderson being a bad mom, now they’re all about Mr. Panderson being a dead-beat dad, but some bits are in his own words, so we can see that he’s at least making an effort, even if it is driving him crazy because it’s so far out of his comfort zone.” So, I have a long-lost twin brother who was separated at birth and you are that twin.”, said Fuzzy. “The police have helped me find my real family”, said Wuzzy. “And your mother was there, though you may not have known it.”, said Mrs Panderson. “I always Thought my mom was checking on someone, now I really know.”, said Fuzzy. “If I had to give up one of my children, I wanted to make sure they’re being treated humanely wherever I’ve left them.”, answered Mrs. Panderson. The next day, Judy met Nick again at the same street vendor and Nick was swiping through everything on his smartphone, as usual. Just like officer Clawhauser had said, the tabloids had shifted their focus, so now the new pandemonium was about Mr. Panderson being a deadbeat dad. “Wow, what a lazy father!”, remarked Nick. “Oh, come on!”, replied Judy, “He’s not mom, but he’s doing the best he can!”

[oisinwrites]

                                                                                               Benders one-night stand

this is fan-fiction. I do not own Futurama. All rights belong to Matt Groening and the fox network.

It was a usual day at the planet express delivery headquarters when there was a buzz at the electronic door and the professor answered it. It was a fem-bot who was accompanied by a little bot-child in a pink tutu. Leela and Amy thought the little bot-child was adorable, but Bender seemed nervous. “hi, I’m Grace”, introduced the fem-bot, “and this is my five-year-old daughter, Petunia.” “oh, what a beautiful name!” gasped Leela. “I’m looking for someone named Bender”, the fem-bot went on, “ I believe he is the father.” “Er... Bender’s not here.”, answered Bender, as he began slowly walking backwards out of the room, until he had walked backwards into Fry’s outstretched hand. “That’s you, Bender!”, said Fry. “well, she really likes ballet dancing,” she continued, “but she’s expected to develop more slowly than other kids.” “does she have special needs?”, asked Fry. “Fry, I’ll cut you some slack since you’re from the year 2000,” corrected Leela, “but we don’t say that anymore, its no longer politically correct.” “Then what can you say?” asked Fry. “The proper term is differently neuro-developmentally or cognitively associated.” Answered Leela. “but that’s too long and hard to say,” complained Fry,” besides, what is there to stop any smaller parts of that from becoming the next playground jeer?”. Bender thought it would be funny to stick out his leg while the little bot-child was showing off her ballet dancing skills and trip her up onto the floor. The others didn’t think this was funny and she was now crying after falling face-first onto the floor. “I’m very disappointed in you, its your own flesh and blood.” Said Leela, her massive single eye glaring with disgust. “I don’t have flesh and blood.”, corrected Bender. “ Well, that was an awful thing to do your own circuit-boards and wiring.”

Ever since then, Bender was having a recent falling out with Fry and things got ugly when they were cleaning the star-ship. “You used to be cool, now you’re giving me the silent treatment!”, roared Bender. “All you think about is yourself!” yelled Fry, as he sprayed bender with the hose. “No, don’t, I’ll rust!” screamed Bender. “I hope so!” hissed Fry." and I hope you get bent!" “gentlemen, please!” snapped the professor, “this isn’t good for morale!”. “but its fun!” said Dr. Zoidberg, “Bender said you're so ugly your face makes babies cry and Fry said your mother was a floppy disc drive!” “professor, I suggest you let me talk to bender about Fry”, proposed Leela. “anything to shut them up!” agreed the professor. Leela brought Bender into another room to have a very private discussion. “Do you consider Fry your friend?”, she asked him. “That’s the point, its Fry and Bender, best friends and he had to ruin it.” Answered Bender. “friendships are important, they’re also about feelings.”, said Leela. “you know I’m not good with that stuff.”, said Bender. “you’re not perfect, but you can learn.”, said Leela. “but I swear I did nothing to hurt him.”, said Bender. “If its not what you did to him, perhaps its something he saw you do to someone else.”, suggested Leela, “can you please rack you’re brains...” “I don’t have brains.”, interrupted Bender. “whatever, rack you’re motherboard and think back to everything that happened recently.”, urged Leela. “don’t tell me its because he thinks I’m a bad father, that doesn’t excuse it!”. “It doesn’t, but sometimes things like that do mean there’s something you need to see,” said Leela.

After that talk, Bender started doing all kinds of father-daughter things with Petunia. He played with her dolls, attended her pretend tea-party and even wore a pink tutu while Ballet dancing with her. “oh, I don’t like this new side of me.”, moaned Bender. “why not?”, asked Leela, “this new side of you is very sweet!”. “I’m not sweet, I’m Bender and I don’t give a damn about anything!” “You’re doing the right thing!”, praised Leela, “If you wait any longer before spending quality time with your five-year-old daughter, how much older is she going to get?”. “Good news everyone!”, announced the professor. “oh no!”, the planet express delivery crew all groaned in unison. They had all learned by now that whenever the professor said “good news everyone!”, it was seldom anything good and now they were all wondering if this was a minor inconvenience or a cosmic-scale disaster that could threaten the fabric of space and time itself! “Its been decided that today is bring-your-daughter-to-space day and the next delivery will be delivering yarn to the cat-people on planet meow-meow!”, the professor went on, “the planet meow-meow is home to a race of cat-like humanoids known for their refinement, sophistication and love of rich, creamy, warm milk. It is also home to a race of dog-like humanoids who appear to be in a different evolutionary state, at least the cat-people think they are more civilised than the dog-people, anyway.” The planet express delivery crew all sighed with relief. The good news wasn’t so bad this time and Little petunia was excited about this. However, they were in for a shock when they entered the star-ship.

They were already in space when they discovered that a picture had been pinned up of Bender smoking a cigar in an oil-bath with lots of fem-bots and it didn’t take a genius to figure out who put it there. “look Fry, we all know about your recent falling-out with Bender.” Sighed Captain Leela, “I order you to take it down!”. “what’s the big deal, its just a photo?”, was Fry’s response. “As captain of this vessel, I object to crew members sharing intimate imagery of other crew members.”, she stated, ”now take it down.” It was actually Bender who took it down. “In hindsight, smoking a cigar in a tub full of oil was not such a smart idea.”, he reflected, before crumpling it up, opening the big door on his front and throwing it into the incinerator inside of him. He then used the dustpan and brush, cleaning the ashes from inside himself and dusted it into the bin. “I’m actually glad someone put it there,” he added, “it gave me a wake-up call that I didn’t know I needed until now!”. “really, it did?” considered Leela, “well I still don’t condone that.”

When they arrived on planet meow-meow, they found themselves honoured guests at a very luxurious banquet unlike anything on earth. They were asked to sit down on giant floor-cushions while being served goblets of the creamiest warm milk, dishes of fish and trays of cat-biscuits. Leela got into a heated debate with the cat-people about whether the dog-people are really “primitive”. “they do have a proper language,” argued Leela, “it just sounds like growling and barking to you because its intonations are so different from yours that your ears can’t pick them up! The same technological progress is just happening at a different rate, but even if their still making and using tools from stone, that still gives them a lot to talk about. There are so many kinds of rocks and they need to find ones that are exactly right, then make them into exactly the right shape. they’d be teaching each other these things and that means they have relationships that make a society, at least there’s the relationship of a teacher and learner anyway.”

Meanwhile, bender was being served nuts and bolts by a lovely fem-bot who winked at him and asked him to see her in private. She then led him into a bedroom and shut the door. “I’m Liz, what’s your name?” she asked him in a soft, seductive tone. “I’m Bender and I’m really just here to make a delivery.”, he answered. “oh Bender, I’m so lucky they asked you to come and make this delivery,” she whispered as she through her arms around him, “can’t you stay a while longer?”. “No, I’ve had enough one-night stands already.”, he objected. He turned the handle on the door, beginning to open it, but she closed it again. “oh please, stay with me!”, she begged him. “No, my whole life I’ve been taking on too much responsibility yet never wanting to be responsible for anything I’ve taken on!”, he answered. Suddenly, it was little Petunia who opened the door. “Daddy, Daddy, there you are!”, she cried. “okay, daddies sorry he disappeared and left you wondering where daddy was,” apologised Bender, “now how about a jockey-back ride?”. Bender dropped down, hoisted his daughter on his back and left, being very careful not to either drop her or bump her on the way out the door. “well, there goes the best dad I’ve ever seen!”, Sighed Liz as she watched the little bot-child riding away on Bender, like a little cow-girl riding away on her horse.

The rest of the crew were carrying the packages of yarn and were just beginning to wonder where bender was when he came in whooshing his daughter through the air and then putting her gently down. “Daddy has some packages to deliver now.” Said bender. “where were you?” asked Leela. “oh, a certain fem-bot led me into a bedroom.” Answered Bender. “but were making a delivery, there’s no time for that.” Said Leela. “well, I left her because I’ve already had so many one-night stands, I’m not having another one!”, he answered “that’s great, bender!”, praised Leela, “I knew there was good in you!”. “ Captain Leela, I was wrong to share that kind of picture.”, apologised Fry. “Its not me you should apologise to”, answered Leela. “Bender, I can’t really say this,” sighed Fry, “the kind of apology I’m trying to make is beyond words.” “Well, neither humans or androids are perfect.”, said Bender. “No, they’re both capable of getting sucked into cycles of robot-like behaviour.”, said Fry. “I was being so childish when I have a child!” admitted bender. “I was being so childish by deciding you’re a bad father and that justifies anything.” “As captain of the vessel, I command the two of you to shake hands and call it over.” Said Leela. They did so, much to Dr. Zoidberg’s disappointment. “aw, watching them fight was so much fun!”, he sighed, “Ah well, hopefully some other friends will have a falling-out and next time I will prepare some popcorn for the drama.”

Bender helped with the carrying until all the packages of yarn had been delivered and it was time to head back to earth. After that delivery was done, Dr. Zoidberg was pleasantly surprised to see the two of them going again. “You may be sorry, but I’m more sorry than you’ll ever be!” roared Bender. “What planet are you on? I am clearly more sorry!” retorted Fry. “stop it both of you!”, the professor snapped. “Yes, please put it on hold while I prepare my popcorn!” asked Dr. Zoidberg, who had just started working the microwave. “Hello, I am actually making it up to you by changing my behaviour!”, yelled Bender. “hang on, my popcorn’s almost done!”, cried Dr.zoidberg. “Like I can’t see that, captain obvious! Oh, and I’m actually apologising for being sarcastic!” Fry screamed. “wait, I’m just adding butter, okay, here I come!” said Dr. Zoidberg, as he came running out and sat down on the couch in front of them. “Why the hell are you apologising for being sarcastic? As if I even had any problem with that!” asked Bender. “Okay that does it, I’m putting myself in time-out!” Fry snapped. “Hello, its me who should be in time-out, because the problem is entirely to do with my reactivity and not at all to do with you!”, retorted Bender. “Are you thinking straight, because that just means were both in time-out, it doesn’t have to be only one of us?” asked Fry. “Fine, were both in time-out!”, concluded Bender, as they both walked away from each other, in opposite directions and left the room. “that was great, but it was over too fast!”, commented Dr. Zoidberg. “Its a start, professor,” said Leela, “full resolution doesn’t happen overnight.” “Yes, I suppose we’ll have to be patient.”, said the professor.

[oisinwrites]

Scooby-doo team-up: volume 5

The first story in this volume see’s the gang arriving at karma corners, (population: were all one!), a town built on hippie culture where this culture which is past its glory days elsewhere survives and thrives, or it did until it began to be haunted by the ghosts of the hippie’s parents who are getting to them with something worse than fear: guilt! My complaint about the last issues has been the absence of green lantern, but finally, in karma corners, mystery Inc. Are meeting green lantern!

In true Scooby-doo style, half of the ghosts are caught in a giant green hand from green lanterns laser ring and the rest are caught with a special arrow which, when fired, its head opens up and a net comes out, leaving them to be un-masked by the Scooby gang. It turns out the hippies were their parents, who ran off to this hippy town and never came back, so they pretended to be the ghosts of their parents parents and began nagging them to come back. But its not over yet.

The psycho-pirate has come to poison everyone’s hearts with hate and now a new argument has begun between green lantern and green arrow, but psycho-pirate made the mistake of announcing himself when two super-heroes are angry and their anger became directed at the villain. The spell was then broken by the black canary with her canary cry, after the psycho-pirate had just been taken down. This was a story with lots of fun plot twists right after each other, but the funniest part was the argument between  green lantern green arrow, where they called each other things like “ring-toting fascist” and “arrow-slinging socialist” and with Fred’s reaction “Its worse than a presidential debate!”.

The next story begins with the crew being attacked by fire-breathing dragons, while Fred and Daphne use extinguishers. Belma calls Hong-kong Phooey, a Kung-Fu fighting dog and while they are waiting, Daphne notices that while the other dragons are attacking, one dragon is rushing into stores. when Hong Kong phooey arrives, he is only performing Kung-Fu poses without actually touching  the dragons. When some dragons are smashed,(but not by Hong Kong phooey, he just thinks he smashed them.), they realise they are robots, so Daphne speed-reads the Kung-Fu manual and then smashes all the rest with only the one going into shops remaining.

Daphne then threatens to smash the dragon coming out of a store, but he shows he’s not a robot by un-masking himself! He confesses that he is a robotics scientist who couldn’t get funding, so he resorted to shop-lifting, but the mystery gang suggest he get funding from Hollywood by letting his robotics be used in film-making, because Hollywood will pay a fortune for this!

This was different from the usual Scooby-doo style and Hong Kong phooey does prove useful in the end when he accidentally knocks out the dragon coming out of the store. It was really thanks to his cat friend who tripped up a robot dragon which smashed on the floor while pretending to be asleep and pointed at the gong to make Scooby and shaggy think to hide behind it. though the latter turned out not to be such a great idea when a dragon struck the gong, he was still more the hero than Hong Kong phooey. He does this with ninja-like subtlety, without anyone knowing who the real hero is, while a possibly fake Kung Fu master takes all the credit.

The next story introduces us to a fortune-teller and a superstitious man who is terrified by the idea that he is cursed. They also meet the elastic man, who is capable of stretching his body in all kinds of ways but is vulnerable to cold temperatures, which make his body harden and become too rigid to move. They all enter the tarot shop on suspicion of her being a crook and they were correct In their suspicion, but had also made a big mistake!

It turns out the “fortune-teller” is an old enemy of the elastic man who has come to outsmart him by disguising herself as a fortune-teller and setting up shop in a former meat-plant, so what looks like a tarot shop is really a giant fridge! She is known as “the granite lady”! Fred gently pushes the freezing Elastic-man out of the giant fridge and they all run, with the granite lady following closely behind. They then trick her into following them to the back of a cement truck, where Daphne pulls the lever and she becomes cased in cement! The team are then rewarded with a free meal at an all-you-can-eat buffet, but of course its shaggy and Scooby who threaten to put it out of business!

This one had a very satisfying twist and also some funny bits, such as Daphne telling shaggy that its still not polite to comment on a woman’s weight, even if she is the granite lady, or the superstitious man panicking because of a bomb and elastic man assuring him, as he promptly throws it out the same window it came in through, that this is only because its Tuesday, not a sign of a curse. Annie the anarchist always plants a bomb in the FBI headquarters on Tuesdays.

The next story is set in the wild west, where there are rumour's about a monster, but the mayor doesn’t want a railway-building tycoon to hear the gossip, because he might not build a railway in this town. They then meet a bounty hunter with half his face disfigured but the other half normal who forces Fred to Duel him, but the duel is interrupted by all the local ladies in this town arguing over which of them he’s going to marry.

Suddenly, the town is under attack by a large blue, goblin-like creature in a poncho. All bullets are useless against it, frying pans and a bucket of cold water turn out to be more useful. when they manage to un-mask the “monster” (they also remove the poncho, which was hiding the steam-vent, but now the cold water has overloaded the system.) ,it turns to be a man in a steam-powered suit. The mayor recognised him as J.P Lackawanna but hadn’t suspected that J.P. Lackawanna would scare everyone away from the land in order to buy it cheap.

It was fun to see the Scooby gang in the wild west and all the local ladies wanting to marry the bounty hunter even though half his face was disfigured was pretty funny too. In the next story, they have just arrived after a call from officer Dibble, because of rumour's about “hoagies ghost”. They also meet top-cat and the whole gang of alley-cats. At first they encounter a few “ghost’s” who turn out to be alley cats. They then encounter two estate agents who aren’t technically breaking the law but are corrupt. They are then scared away by another “ghost”, who then reveals himself to be officer Dibble!

This was a great plot twist, because this time it was actually a good guy who was scaring away the crooks! Our last story begins with the mystery gang teaming up with “the challengers of the unknown” and a strange gnome-like creature. They go diving underwater, meet the “sea devils”, net a sea monster they were under attack by and enter a dry cave.

They then find themselves under attack by what appears to be a giant mutant super-rat, but the creature is scared away by the emergence of a mole-machine. Out of the mole machine comes another team who investigate mysteries underground. Next, they all together fly to a hidden base, where the challengers all unmask themselves and reveal that they are not the challengers, they are the secret six! The “gnome king” also reveals himself to be a villain called “multi-man”! they were planning to trick them into handing over the elixir, but made the mistake of revealing themselves too soon, before the elixir was handed over, so they were quickly outnumbered and defeated.

They then met another team from the future who had sent the distress signal to all those other teams and Belma figured out that “the mockingbird” is really Durant. This one I found the most complicated, as there were so many different teams and I wasn’t familiar with any of these characters. There just seemed to be a lot of teams with different uniform colour's. Anyway, this was another great Scooby-doo crossover comic, with lots of different stories and lots of fun.

[oisinwrites]

OisínWrites turned 2 today!

[oisinwrites]

Happy holidays, Springfield!

 A piece of Christmas/Hanukah-themed Simpsons fan-fiction by Oisin O’Reilly. I do not own the Simpsons. All rights go to Matt Groening and the Fox network. Contains mature content.

It was beginning to look a lot like Christmas at Springfield mall. There were lots of candy canes, toys in every store and the notorious crook named “Snake” was on his annual robbing spree, followed closely behind by Chief Wiggum and officer Lou. The mall at this time of year was full of all kinds of parents whose children had just finished their wish lists and Snake had a child of his own too. Meanwhile, old grandpa Simpson was wearing the special suit and sitting on the special chair of Santa Claus, with all the children queuing up to meet him. “let’s make this quick,” Said Nelson’s mother, “I have to get back to the stripper bar. That’s where I’m working.” Krusty the clown was just walking past this queue on his way to the bank machine when Nelson pointed at him and taunted, “Haw-haw, you don’t get to have Christmas!”. “Well, the jokes on you,” retorted Krusty,” you don’t get to have Hanukah! hoohoohoohahaha!”. 

It turned out that the children had rather violent ideas about what they wanted for Christmas. Ralph wanted a toy pistol so could be like his daddy, who was police chief. Nelson wanted a BB-gun so he could put coins on the ground and when people bend over to pick them up, he’d shoot them up the bum and say “haw-haw!”. Milhouse explained that he came alone unaccompanied because both his parent’s lost custody and what he really wanted for Christmas was for them to get back together so they can be a family again, but a remote- control assault helicopter with ultra-realistic firing sound effects would also be pretty cool. All this was bringing the aged veteran back to his army days and he began another of his long-winded stories about World War 2, which he never finished because he always fell asleep just when things were starting to get interesting. Now, all the children were looking into each other’s faces and wondering two things, what to do when Santa Claus has fallen asleep and did Santa Claus really fight Nazi’s?

 While he lay snoring, Snake ran behind him and got into the sleigh. “Haw, haw, so long suckers!”, Snake laughed smugly. These were real reindeer, not wooden props and as soon as they heard the whips crack, they leapt into action. Ralph and his mother also waved to daddy. “Hiya Ralphie”, said Chief Wiggum, “Well, dang, he got away, but we have caught another crook. You’re under arrest for impersonating Santa Claus! Take’em away, boys!”. The mall Santa had just woken up to find himself being strong-armed by the police. Seeing that his chances of escape were gone, he decided that if he couldn’t resist arrest, he could at least have a go at the police Chief’s mother. “hey, what the dickety?!”, he cried, “I didn’t do nothin’, your mother is a hoe-hoe-hoe!”. “Er.. chief?” asked officer Lou, “aren’t they all impersonators? Many men have been the Santa Claus.”. Chief Wiggum was shocked at this. “whaaat?! Are you telling me Santa Claus isn’t even a real person?” he gasped. Lou explained that it must have been his wife who left all those presents at his house each year.

 Snake was now driving a deer-drawn sleigh haphazardly around a crowded shopping mall, but miraculously no-one was hurt. One very posh lady complained about how rude it was as she had just stepped back and narrowly avoided being run over. However, there seemed to be a curse on all teachers and staff from Springfield elementary, because they all got swept up by the Reindeer’s antler’s and hung by the scruff of the neck. “Schools out for Christmas and now this!”, cried the music teacher, who then produced a tiny fiddle and played a melancholy tune. “No-body knows the trouble I’ve been,” he sang, “no-body knows my sorrow.” “HA! As if we teachers ever get a break!”, scoffed Miss krabappel, who still went on smoking even while being hung from a Reindeer’s Antler’s. It seemed as though she could go on smoking even if she had fallen out of a boat. She would probably be just finishing her smoke by the time she was dragged out on the beach and resuscitated. “There are nine reindeer, which means eighteen antlers and thirty-six hooves, yet still only one red nose,” calculated Principal Skinner. “Och, how can ye be thinkin’ o’ math at a time like dis?” growled groundskeeper Willy.

 Krusty was now finished at the bank machine and had begun his lonely way home. On the way, he saw the Christmas tree section, where homer was struggling with the newly selected tree. First, he shoved it in the back of the car saying, “Come on, fit in, will you?”, while marge and the kids were all inside, being squashed by the tree. “Way to go dad, you’ve made room for everything but yourself!”, said Bart. “Doh!” answered homer. “Hmmn, I think were supposed to strap it to the roof.” Said marge. Once the tree was strapped to the roof, homer got in the driver’s seat and the car got going. “Doh!”, he said again, when the tree flew off the front of the car, hitting another car and setting off its alarm. Krusty could see that this was going to take forever, but at least these gentile-folks had family. He made his way to his lonely apartment, up to his lonely master bedroom and sighed. It was his job as a children’s entertainer to be happy on the outside, while his adult life lay in tatter’s and he was a clown who had just realised that the joke was on him. It looked like he was going to spend this Hanukah just like he had spent every other Hanukah: alone. He did have a child of his own, a daughter named Sophie, but he also had an ex from special forces named Erin whose mission seemed to be to keep his daughter as far away from him as possible. His own father was a serious, self-respecting rabbi who was very disappointed in him for becoming a silly clown. He showered, climbed into bed and watched some news followed by some stand-up comedy on his bedroom Flat-screen before switching it off and drifting off to sleep.

 That night, at the Burns mansion, C. Montgomery burns had just woken up in his four-poster bed from a particularly vivid dream and Smithers came to check on him. “Are you alright sir? Was it a nightmare?”, asked Smithers. “Not a nightmare per’se, but a very powerful vision.”, answered Mr. Burns. “I was visited by three spirits, I was shown my past, my present and one possible outcome for my future where no-one mourned my death and I saw so much wickedness. What made it so haunting is that it was all MY wickedness! Now, I want to change my ways!”. “Well sir, you can change if you have discipline.” Answered Smithers. “By the way, tell all my employee’s that yes, they can have Christmas off!”. “Will do, sir!” Answered Smithers. 

The next morning, krusty lit a cigarette, went down to get his morning paper at the doorstep and was pleasantly surprised to meet his daughter right there at his front door. “They delivered me here, though I’ll probably only be here for this morning.”, she said, “well I didn’t want my pops to be alone on Hanukah and I got you a card, it says happy Hanukah!”. “Wow. my daughter remembered me on Hanukah and got me a card. That’s great.”, groaned krusty, not looking at all pleased that his daughter had remembered him on Hanukah and got him a card. He didn’t express it well, but he was sincerely overjoyed that he wasn’t doomed to spend Hanukah alone like he thought he was. However, he also regretted that he hadn’t gotten properly dressed and made himself more presentable before opening the front door. Now his daughter was seeing him smoking a cigarette while still in his underwear, slippers and dressing gown, but he hadn’t suspected that anyone would come calling at this time. “You know, for a clown, you don’t look very happy.”, commented Sophie. “Anyway, I really hope were seeing Grandpa, I’m looking forward to that.” Well, are coming inside?” asked Krusty. “Can I come in and make a phone-call?” asked Sophie, I want to talk to Grandpa!” “Sure, knock yourself out!” groaned krusty. Sophie ran to the phone and dialled for the rabbi. “Hey Grandpa, are you coming to dinner on Hanukah? Okay, that’s great!” she put down the phone. “Well,” she told krusty “he said he would like to come if there is a special dinner on Hanukah, provided there are no silly antics and nothing too clownish. Not sure what he means by that, though.” “Er… you do realise I’m a clown, right?” , Krusty pointed out sarcastically.

Meanwhile, Mr. burns and Smithers were going somewhere they had never been before: the Kwik-e-mart. Mr. Burns was actually shopping with commoner’s and he got talking to Milhouse’s mom. “Well why don’t you apologise first?” he suggested to her. “What, but clearly he’s the one who’s wrong.” Answered Milhouse’s mom. “Does it matter who’s wrong?” asked Mr. Burns, “what about all the good times you’ve had as a family?”. “You know, I never really thought about it that way.” She answered. After that, they went to Moe’s tavern, where Mr. Burns got talking to Milhouse’s Dad. “Why don’t you apologise first?” he asked him. “But clearly she’s the one being stupid.”, answered Milhouse’s Dad. “But wouldn’t you rather spend Christmas with all three of you than spend it alone, just because one of you is stupid?” said Mr. Burns. “That would make me the stupid one!” gasped Milhouse’s dad, “Thanks, I never thought of it like that before!”. “I must say wow, sir,” remarked Smithers, “you really have changed!” “Ah yes, I’m really feeling the spirit of Christmas and boy was I fool for not seeing it earlier.” Mused Mr. Burns. “Seeing what earlier?” asked smithers. “Why, all that Christmas is about!” answered Mr. Burns, “It’s the season of giving, of peace on earth and goodwill to men, but you see, Smithers, not everyone celebrates Christmas, some have other customs.” “Nothing wrong with that, sir.” Said Smithers. “Oh no, of course not,” said Mr. Burns, “but whether its Christmas, Hanukah, or Ramadan, I want it to be the best it can be for whoever celebrates it!”. “Wow, am I dreaming?” asked Moe.  “Where is the real Mr. Burns and what have you done with him?” shouted homer. “Well, er, we do have some residents in Springfield who are Jewish,” murmured Smithers, “Would you like to invite them to a traditional Jewish dinner?” 

When Homer got home and Marge heard what had been suggested at Moe’s tavern, she thought it was a great idea. “We can throw a surprise party for Krusty!”, she said. “But mom, what about Krustie’s ex?”, asked Lisa. “Good question”, answered Marge, I don’t know whether inviting his ex would be a good idea or a bad idea.” “Well, there is some hope they can settle it like adults.” Said Lisa, who considered herself to be very mature and grown-up for an eight-year-old. “We’ll have to make doubly sure she’s ready for that.” Said Marge. Meanwhile, Milhouse’s Mom and Milhouse’s Dad had had just turned up in front of each other on the snow-covered street, where all the streetlights were hung with mistletoe. “Hello, I’m sorry.” Said Milhouse’s Mom, her breath frosting as she sighed heavily and hung her head. “No, I’m sorry.” He answered. Their faces were close to each other now, under the mistletoe. “I was a jerk.”, he said. “Yeah, you were, but I shouldn’t have let your bad habits become my excuses.”, she said, “like they say in Japan, Gomenasai.” Their faces were even closer now, under the mistletoe and they kissed. “We haven’t kissed like that in a long time.”, She said. “That’s why we should never have split up.”, he said. 

When Krusty came back to his apartment that day, he found it pitch black, when suddenly… “surpriiiiiise!!!!”, the lights turned on, the room filled with the noise of party-blowers and confetti went everywhere. “May I have your attention please!”, announced Lisa, as she tapped an empty Wine-Glass with a dinner-knife, “As Springfield’s youngest Buddhist and on behalf of my protestant family who aren’t really that religious, it is my great pleasure to wish you a very happy Hanukah and Mazel tov!” “Mazel tov!”, they all echoed in unison. The dinner-table was laid just like a traditional Hanukah feast and Homer was already helping himself to bits and pieces. “Hey Marge, we should do this more often!”, said Homer, “It’s a great way to get free dinners! Mmmn, caaaandlllles!” “Homer, he hasn’t said Jewish grace yet!”, snapped Marge. “

Wow, you’re all here!”, said Krusty, “The Simpsons, Mr. Burns and smithers, my Papa, my daughter and HOLY SCHNITZEL IT’S MY EX!!!”. “Oh, relax, I’m not going to ruin Hanukah just because I’m your ex.” Answered Erin. “Look, I know it’s kinda my fault you got discharged.”, said Krusty. “Well, no, you did what you believed was right.” Said Erin, “It may not have been what agreed with the army, but that’s not your fault. Splitting up might have been a good thing, because it gave me a chance to think, but now that I’ve thought long enough to realise that I was wrong to involve Sophie in any dispute between us and that there’s so much I’ve been holding onto that I needed to let go of, I think it’s time to get back together again.” “Well, I’ve had time to think too,” said krusty, “and I’ve decided that from now on I’m having no more one-night stands. Now, are we heading to the dinner table?” “Ah, but first, are you going to perform for us some delightful clown tricks?” suggested the rabbi. “But Papa, I thought you said you didn’t want any silly antic’s or anything too clownish.” Said Krusty. “Oh no, god gave us clowns so they could give us laughter,” argued the Rabbi, “just remember that there are times for solemnity as well.” Krusty rode around on his miniature bicycle, jumped onto the coffee table, rode from one end of the coffee table to the other and jumped off the other end, landing in a big “ta-daaahh!”, which was met with applause. “Great, now we can eat!”, said homer. 

When they had all taken their seat’s and placed their napkin’s, krusty bowed his head, joined his hands together and began speaking solemnly in Hebrew. After that, they all began to dig in. “This is courtesy of Mr. Burns and Smithers, who did most of the cooking!”, said Marge. “Wow, that’s awfully nice of you, Mr. Burns!”, said Lisa. “Ah, yes, I know I haven’t always been very nice,” answered Mr. Burns, “but you see, recently I have had a life-changing vision!”. “He was, er, visited in one night by three spirits.” Murmured Smithers. “Well, thank you Mr. Burns,” said krusty, “And thanks to all of you who came. I really thought I was going to spend yet another Hanukah alone.” “And I would like to thank you, Smithers!”, said Mr. Burns. “Thank me? What for?”, asked Smithers. “Well, I knew I had to change my way’s, but I also needed someone to support me. You were by my side all this time and you’ve helped me go from renowned corporate devil to totally transformed man!”. “Oh, well, then you’re welcome, Mr Burns,” said a very bashful Smithers.

 When it came Christmas morning, Lots of happy children were getting up, rubbing the sleep out of their eye’s and coming down to see what Santa Claus had left for them. Milhouse got his Christmas wish of his parents getting back together and being a family again. He also got a remote-control assault helicopter with ultra-realistic firing sound effects. Nelson got his Christmas wish of his papa returning. He also got a BB-gun so could put coins on the ground for people to pick up and say “Haw-haw!” as he shot them up the bum while they were bending over. Since he was feeling the spirit of Christmas, he let the nerds have a go at this as well, so the bully and nerds alike could have a good laugh at someone else’s expense. their best reaction was from bumblebee man, who clenched his buttocks and cried “aye-ee-aye-ee-aye, that was not a butterfly!”, but the joke was soon on Nelson when Ralph got him with his toy pistol and giggled with glee.

 Bart got a Limited-Edition Radioactive Man action figure and Lisa was told that the extra-large gift was for her, so she was now tearing an extra-large amount of wrapping. it was a gymnastic jumping-horse with a feather-duster attached to one end. On the other end was a bucket on a mop and on the bucket was a crudely-drawn face of a pony. “Well you’ve always wanted a pony!”, said Homer. “Hmmn, it’s not as exciting as a real pony,” commented Lisa, “but I’m glad Santa Claus didn’t push a real pony down the chimney, or wrap a real pony in wrapping paper, as that would have been animal abuse!”. “Oh no, of course not!” said Marge. “The world’s kindest man would never do that!”.

 Sometimes, grownup’s got toys at Christmas too. Homer chuckled to himself as he unwrapped a gift labelled “to me, from me” and produced an unusual figure of Santa Claus. It had the usual red pants, big black boots, big black belt, red bobbled hat and full white beard. It also had a cigar in its mouth, sunglasses and a sleeveless white vest which revealed lots of Christmas-themed tattoo’s. It was on a toy motorcycle and “HO HO HO”, was written across the left arm. Homer giggled like a school-girl as he pulled the string on it’s back to hear phrases such as “When I say ho-ho-ho, I’m talking about your mother, she’s a TRIPLE HOE!!” and “Hey, I may not be very nice, but just your face alone puts you on the naughty list FOR LIFE!!”. “Oh my, this toy is totally inappropriate for young children!” gasped Marge. “Oh, it’s not meant for young children, Marge!” Chuckled Homer as he snatched it away from Maggie, who was just crawling along her father’s lap. “That’s for Daddy!”, he said loudly and patronisingly, “this is for baby!”. He gave Maggie a new talking, alphabet-teaching froggy. And that was the story of the holiday season in Springfield. It had been a very happy Christmas and a very happy Hanukah.

[oisinwrites]

Aggretsuko review #6

I was planning to review all six comics in this series, and now, this is it. In the sixth and final edition of the Aggretsuko comic series, there is an office sports day. It is one of these ‘’team-building’’ things. They didn’t have a day out for paint-ball, but they were divided into teams, team Retsuko, team Tsunoda, team Ton and team Warabida, who competed in office versions of sports.  The cover has a very competitive vibe to it, showing them on the three winners platforms with medals, though this was not the result in the comic.

Each team is a trio and  the trio of Retsuko, Haida and Fenneko are the three main characters in this comic. First, there is rubber band archery,( targets: red balloons.) followed by paper-work weight-lifting, then the paper plane javelin, then speed typing, then paper football, then jar opening and then waste-paper basketball, all right after each other. before the final event, Retsuko and Tsunoda both took a bathroom break and discussed what they would do with the prize paid-day-off while rinsing they’re hands. ( Retsuko also washed her face.)

Tsunoda wants to go shopping followed by a spa break, which sounds healthier compared with what retsuko envisages. Retsuko wants to stay at home binge-watching Netflix and eating an entire tub of chocolate ice-cream in her PJ’s.  The only person she will have any social interaction with is the pizza-deliverer. Tsunoda thinks this  is a daft idea and indeed it doesn’t sound healthy. I think a spa would be great, but I wouldn’t want to Instagram everything like Tsunoda would.

we then see the final event, swivel chair racing. Retsuko had already won the paperwork weight-lifting and the wastepaper basketball,  both of which she won  by focusing her rage, while Tsunoda had won rubber band archery by having the most well-rehearsed technique. She throws gracefully and gets it completely right, always being the goody-two-shoes. However, it is still Retsuko’s twisted face as she lifts the paperwork that stands out to me the most. This seems to be instead of a death-metal rant, as this is the only issue which doesn’t have one of those.

The swivel-chair racing event is very reminiscent of Mario kart. Tsunoda even uses the banana peel trick! Tsunoda was just about to win, but got overtaken at the last minute by someone from team Warabida so neither Retsuko or Tsunoda won. It was such an intense rivalry, but then they were both beaten by those guys from the other end of the office who they don’t even know the names of. Results were: team Warabida, 1st place, team Tsunoda, 2nd place, team Ton 3rd place and that leaves team Retsuko 4th  and last.

I don’t know which team I’d like to be on, but I would like to be on any other team seeing team ton’s reactions. There’s something satisfying about seeing the team with all the office superiors and suck-ups to the boss being crushed. I'm not sure sure what I would be best at either, but I know I'd be willing to put my best into it.  This sort of ending makes it seem like its meant to be a lesson about how it doesn’t matter if you win or lose. However, Retsuko deciding to ‘’train for next year’’ under the instructor who only says ‘’protein’’ makes it seem like no-one has learned anything and it gives this comic a more cynical feel, which is my only complaint about such a fun-filled comic.

And that’s it, the review of this entire comic series by Oisin O’Reilly. I hope you have enjoyed reading these reviews as much as I have enjoyed writing them. However, it is not truly the end, as there are more series’ of Aggretsuko in comics, which presumably will also be six-parters. There is Aggretsuko: meet her friends and Aggretsuko: meet her world. I encourage you to read these new releases. The shops may not be open at the hardly-normal time of writing this, but they can be ordered online. I keep getting online notifications about them from what was my normal comic-book shop anyway.

[oisinwrites]

Aggretsuko review #5

Book five of the Aggretsuko comic series is the one I was the most excited to review. We are introduced to a new character, Mr. Pen the penguin, who does not appear in the anime, but is a loveable character and brings so much fun to the story. He was shown on the cover which my issue had and my cover did show what happens in the story, unlike most other issues which have more generic punk-rock covers. they have a lot of the same comics with different covers.

It begins with Mr. Pen delivering the new computers while Retsuko hears her co-workers commenting on how strangely cold it has been lately. Fenneco, who is the main gossiper, tells her that it’s a status symbol. It proves how rich the company is, when Japan is naturally warm. What Retsuko doesn’t expect to happen is that this escalates, so that it gets colder each day until the office forms frost & workers are coming to work in anoraks.

Other workers, such as the boss, Mr. Ton, are doing the exact opposite. They stand in line, dancing in shorts, and brag about not feeling cold, while the mean lizard lady who always overworks Retsuko is being preserved in a chunk of ice and the bins have contained fires burning the rubbish. They claim to  have ‘’muscle's’’ which keep them warm, but this doesn’t seem to make sense medically. Mr. Ton had also forgotten the passcode for the now frost-covered thermostat and an apologetic Haida caves in to peer pressure to join in with the dancing.

Out of all the comic art, this tearful image of Haida rising and bowing at the same time (he is getting up from his desk, but his head and arms are bent down in submission) is what stands out to me the most.  Another funny image is the hyena and prairie dog crying anime tear-floods while doing this next to Mr. Ton.  It seems they are too weak to just tell the truth and be frank about it.  Weakness seems to be a theme in this issue.

At the karaoke bar, Washimi the eagle argues that it is weak to deny your pain and let others suffer with you.  Retsuko begins a death metal rant which also counts as her point in the debate; ‘’the AC is too high! We're all about to die! Frozen waste of my tiiiiiiiiime!’’.  Although Gori did think Washimi’s statement was a bit too dramatic, she was convinced by something even more dramatic. They then put their heads together to solve the mystery, now that Mr. Ton has been ruled out as the suspect.  They try to figure out who would know the passcode for the thermostat, and want the office kept extremely cold...? The next day, the three enter the culprit’s office in their best winterwear.  Retsuko secretly wishes they would do this without her, because she hates confrontation.  Retsuko does, however, find the courage to speak up and say ‘’its time to answer to your crimes... Mr. Pen!".  

Mr. Pen apologises and reveals his side of the story. It turns out that he never meant to hurt anyone, but his workspace was too hot for him to concentrate and whenever he turned down the thermostat, someone turned it up even higher, so he code-locked and made it accessible to only himself.  He just hadn’t seen what was happening in the rest of the office. And so, Mr. Pen gives everyone free ice-cream as compensation, a new air-cooler is installed in his office and all is forgiven.  

Retsuko had already vented things in a shocking but beneficial way at the downtown karaoke bar, so she didn’t have to abuse her co-workers. This was a story about forgiveness, resolution and proper anger management.  While there was some conflict, there was no true villain in this comic.  Even Mr Ton did not seem as mean as in the other issues, more "silly" than "mean".  The mystery-solving element also made it fun and it doesn’t have to be as dark as a typical detective novel, where the culprit is truly evil and the crime is usually murder.  I think this was the best issue in the comic series, and I think it was pretty much the best way for the stories conflict to be resolved.

[oisinwrites]

Aggretsuko: book 4, review

The cover of book four is another generic cover of Retsuko singing death metal, unlike the last one where the cover is specific to what happens in it. Book four of the Aggretsuko comic series begins with Retsuko just realising that she has overslept. As is common in Japanese art, there is much humour in her expressions, especially her eyes. From the frazzled look of someone who is even sleepier after over-sleeping to the shock at seeing the time on her alarm clock, it humorously illustrates a generally relatable ‘’bad day’’.

She begins her hurried way to the over-crowded tramline shown in the Netflix series, wearing shoes that are ‘’office-appropriate’’ but not very practical. Not exactly high-heel's per se, but clomping shoes. In the Netflix series, she panics when she realises she has come to work in flip-flops and tries to distract co-workers from looking down at her feet by doing ‘’this weird arm dance’’, which really just makes things more awkward. She is in such a hurry that she doesn’t notice a crack in the pavement and trips over it, badly injuring her right arm, since this was the arm that was raised.

Like something out of MORTAL KOMBAT X, it gives us an x-ray view in a red back-ground, showing her arm damage in all its grizzly detail. If it had been in this game, it would say ‘’ flawless victory! The floor wins! Brutality!’’. Although there is no fatality and no-one dies in this cartoon, I can imagine the sounds of Retsuko screaming like Mileena and her bones crunching. It then skips to next day and the opening line is ‘’so that’s why you weren’t here yesterday, bummer’’. This is Haida the hyena and Fenneco the fennec fox examining her cast. It then goes through what is a normal work-day for Retsuko but with the one significant difference of her right arm in a cast.

Some workers treat her differently but others act as if there is no cast. Haida the hyena makes tea for Retsuko just to be nice. Tsubone, the rotten lizard lady, is still dumping piles of worksheets on her head and demanding them returned today. Mr. Ton makes a very piggish joke about how he used to ‘’play hookey’’ in his younger days, but was still not as ‘’reckless’’ as an ‘’incompetent woman’’, which Komiya the prairie dog laughs at just to suck up to him. Tsunoda, the sweet little deer, finds this piece of new's exciting and thinks Retsuko should have everyone sign her cast.

As is shown in the Netflix series, she goes into a toilet cubicle to vent things with a mike. In comic-book format, this is illustrated with skulls and symbols appearing outside the door of the women’s bathroom. She then comes out saying ‘’I’m fine, everything’s okay’’, while a smallish arrow saying ‘’denial’’  presses so hard into her head that it is bulging around the arrow, as if she were a plush toy with a soft head. My favourite part though, was when Washimi the eagle and gori the ape finally got real spotlight, which is a first in the comic series. In the previous comic’s, these two only appeared as background characters, they were just two more of "the infected" who Retsuko bounced over in book one and Tsunoda was more the secondary protagonist and rival to Retsuko. Now they’re in real glamour and Tsunoda has only appeared once in this issue. There is another hint at the problems with ladies footwear here. Gori complains about her shoes giving her a bad back, to which Washimi replies, ‘’we must not show weakness at work’’.

Gori and Washimi are the experts at office survival. it’s like a video game to them, like a big Zelda dungeon. That would make Retsuko a beginner player who they are helping. Washimi enters the office of the president elephant who is in the middle of what he claims is preparing a presentation but is really playing with handmade puppets, one for everyone in the office. He was just making the puppet of Washimi tell the puppet of himself that he is doing such a great job. Washimi wants to talk about the sick leave policy. She shows she means business by threatening to burn his puppets with a lighter and karate-kicking the desk so that it splits down the middle in half. She makes sure to bring the official papers so she has some authority to her argument. Washimi gets quite a reaction from him, but more importantly he agrees to raise the sick leave.

For once, the comic series is finally showing these two more like the way they are shown in the anime, because every detail there is exact. Even hiding the pain of their shoes, or any weakness. After moving away from the main character for a while, it is now back to Retsuko who is working overtime for her rotten office superior Tsubone.  it is mostly an empty office at this hour and the workers who are still present are just getting their coats on  switching off what is electrical. It is AFTER, not DURING her exertion that she feels pain, so she thinks she can go ahead typing frantically and feels the punishment when she is finally finished her overtime. She then goes to the downtown karaoke bar and starts a death-metal rant about her job causing her emotional and physical pain.

Again, she feels the punishment AFTER having been all puffed up. ‘’my arm is brittle and so is my patience’’, is soon followed by ‘’ooh, ow-ow-ow-ow’’. It was her worst day in the series, but she is in for a pleasant surprise next morning. Lazily answering her smartphone in her messy apartment, she finds it is Komiya telling her she does not have to come to work today, due to recent changes in sick leave policy. She also hears Mr. Ton yelling ‘’Hey Komiya, where’s that tea?’’. It sounds like Komiya is filling in for Retsuko, who usually makes tea for Mr. Ton and does a lot of fluttering around. Her eyes water, her background is replaced with lots of pink flowers and she says ‘’this is the best day ever!’’. I think we can all relate to Retsuko here (not just some of the ladies who have worn really bad footwear),  both the worst-ever days and the best-ever days. On days when it is a day off and a chance for a lie-in, it does feel like your surrounded by pink flowers. We can also relate to the many moods Retsuko has which, in manga and anime, are often shown very expressively.