MiSTed: Jaded Views, Part 4

Last time in Stephen Tramer and Thaddeus Boyd’s late-90s Sonic the Hedgehog fan fiction Jaded Views, we saw the Knothole Village Gang, plus a bunch of characters from other people’s fan fictions, puttered around someone named Kabuki and everyone agreed they had individual tragic backstories. Not appearing yet: Boyd and Tramer’s new characters of Jade, Maxl, and Tracker.

The whole of the MiSTing of Jaded Views should be at this link. I’ll talk about things that need explanation at the end of this week’s installment.

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>
> Chapter 2 The Letter

CROW: The inside story of "R".

>
> "Kabuki’s room is ze peegsty!" came a voice from somewhere
> under all the junk.

BOTS: [ Snickering ]

JOEL: Yes, folks, that’s really French.

>
> "Tell me about it, Ant," Sonic muttered.
>

CROW: OK, Uncle.

> "Why do I have to do this?" came a third voice.

TOM: Because we don’t like you.

>
> "To find out what’s wrong with Kabuki, Rack," Sonic replied to
> the unmistakable voice.

JOEL: She’s actually a character from another show, is the problem.

>
> "Not ‘Rack’," the voice replied testily,

CROW: Rack and *pinion*.

> "Amaroq.

JOEL: And Ahm a hard place.

> Am-uh-rack
> Ka-pyu-jin. Amaroq Kapugen,

TOM: I repeat that after carefully enunciating it for all those who missed it the first two times.

> meaning ‘the great black wolf’."

CROW: That’s such an inspiring name. I’m going to change my name to "Quro T. Rowbot," meaning, "the cute yellow robot."

>
> "Whatever you say, Rack," Sonic replied.
>
> The black wolf growled angrily.

TOM: So, his parents looked at him, noticed he was a black wolf, and decided to name him "Black Wolf." Got it.

> "Why should we be helping that
> cat, anyway?"

JOEL: The most incredible leader of the pack?

CROW: He’s the chief, he’s the pip, he’s the championship.

>
> "Any enemy of yours has to be a friend of mine, mon," Knuckles

TOM: Oh, this just in. Knuckles is also in this story.

> growled from somewhere in the pile. Amaroq had a really weird sense
> of humor

CROW: His elaborate "festival of grasshoppers" left audiences confused for weeks.

> and often insulted his team-members, which made him
> unpopular with most of the Freedom Fighters.

JOEL: A Freedom Fighter with annoying personality traits? How did he slip through the cracks?

> "You are a
> total…hey!"

CROW: A hey? Quit horsing around!

>
> "A total hey?" Tails wondered.

TOM: I’ve just been handed a bulletin. Tails is in this fanfic too.

>
> "Whuzzap?" Sonic asked. "Find something?"
>
> "A letter of some sort," the echidna replied. "Yecch…it’s
> all greasy."

CROW: That’s what happens when you recycle hair gel into wood pulp.

>
> "What does it say?" Sonic demanded.
>
> "The handwriting’s awful, Sonic," Knuckles observed, "but I

> think I can make out what it says:

JOEL: Or I can make something up that’s just as good.

>
> Deer Cabookee,
>
> I want you for my bryd. i’m comInG 4 u.

TOM: Oh, great, the story’s being invaded by IRCers.

> Uh-oh! It’z 4 in the
> Afternon! I don’t kno what that meanz,

CROW: Except that I’ll probably have to eat at a ‘Breakfast served anytime’ sort of place.

> but I guess I’yd better stop
> writhing this letter!

TOM: How does he read the letter aloud so you can hear the misspelled words?

>
> -The WaNDring SyKKo

JOEL: The leader of the evil Renegade Go-Bots is after Kabuki?

>
> "Either that, or something about rabbits and mosquitoes in the
> cheese."

CROW: This passage included because mosquitoes and cheese are hilarious words.

>
> "Who’s this…wandering…what’s-his-name?" Tails asked.
>
> "You born on a farm, son?" Amaroq asked.

TOM: Or just raised in a barn?

>
> "I’m not your son," Tails replied,

JOEL: That’s the plot twist for the *next* story.

> "and please answer my
> question."

CROW: African or European?

>
> "Uhhhh…I don’t know either," Amaroq replied.

TOM: Aaaaaand he gets green slimed.

> "I just felt
> like saying that."

JOEL: Hey, Amaroq, if you’re not going to advance the plot any, could you at least have an annoying accent so we know we can ignore you?

>
> "Hey," said Sonic, who was now standing behind Knuckles and
> reading over his shoulder,

CROW: Sonic gets to be the leader ’cause he teleports from place to place.

> "what are those things taped to the
> letter?"
>
> "Hmmmm," the echidna said, "they appear to be tickets to see
> an opera."

TOM: The opera.

CROW: Just because they’re trapped in a desperate struggle for survival against a crushing worldwide war machine doesn’t mean they can’t maintain a very active theater community.

>
> "Ze opera?"

JOEL: Mr. Gottlieb, Mrs. Claypool. Mrs. Claypool, Mr. Gottlieb. Mr. Gottlieb, Mrs. — I could go on like this all night, but it’s tough on my suspenders.

> Antoine asked, clapping his hands. "Magnifique!"
>
> "Since when have there been operas on Mobius?" Tails inquired.
>
> "Before you were born, mon," Knuckles replied.

TOM: So that’s, like, what, two years?

> "Before that
> ol’ Robuttnik took over. The one decent thing he ever did was ban
> them."

CROW: So the great form of civil disobedience on Mobius is the opera?

>
> "Not too great, eh?" asked Tails, rhetorically.
>
> "You got it," said Amaroq.

TOM: Oh, we gotta go, guys.

JOEL: [ Picking up TOM ] Good for us.

[ To continue … ]

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I’m not proud to show off my old ignorance of Amaroq (or Amarok), the great wolf of Inuit mythology. I’d probably have avoided Crow’s and Tom’s riffs coming dangerously near making fun of the word if I had. The riffs also show how I never heard of Jean Craighead George’s children’s novel Julie of the Wolves, which is probably where the last name “Kapugen” comes from.

IRC was — and still is — a real-time synchronous text-only communications medium. It’s something like if Discord wasn’t spying on your conversations with friends and feeding them to advertisers and LLM word sausage grinders. It had a reputation in the 90s for being fast and loose with orthography, much like the rest of the Internet.

The leader of the evil Renegade Go-Bots was named Cy-Kill, which is why that riff is logically formed and therefore funny. He was a motorcycle. Do you get it?

“Just because they’re trapped in a desperate struggle for survival against a crushing worldwide war machine doesn’t mean they can’t maintain a very active theater community” was a favorite riff of many people and I recall it being nominated for a “best riff of the year” when Web Site Number Nine did its MiSTing awards. What can I say, people like the slightly-too-much riffs.