MiSTed: Jaded Views, Part 8

Last week in Thaddeus Boyd and Stephen Tramer’s late-90s Sonic the Hedgehog fan fiction Jaded Views, a jolt of electricity brought Kabuki out of her coma. She reveals that it was the note from The Wandering Psycho that made her lose consciousness. Also that the Wandering Psycho was really a badger and a shadowy figure named “something like Maxwell” and “the Tracker”. How will this interact with our … heroes? … of Maxl and Tracker? We can only hope to learn soon.

The whole of my MiSTing of Jaded Views should be at this link. I’ll talk about things needing explanation at the end of this week’s Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan fiction segment from the even later 90s..

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>
> Chapter 5 The Kindness of Strangers

TOM: I have always relied upon this chapter.

>
> The vision appeared blurry at first,

JOEL: [ "Hitting" the screen ] Somebody jiggle the antenna, please.

> but then slowly began to
> resolve,

CROW: The story proudly announces this is the year it’s losing those 15 pounds.

> and then sounds started coming up. Soon, even though it was
> green,

JOEL: It did not reflect the great taste of lymon.

> the Freedom Fighters watching could make out every color
> through some enchantment.

TOM: That is to say, it was not green.

>
> The picture showed a badger, running into a tree repeatedly.

CROW: Discount Sisyphus. When you don’t have time to push a rock up a mountain for *all* eternity.

>
> "Fool!" he screamed in a feminine voice.
> "You’re…oof!…going to get …oof!…us all…oof!…killed!"

JOEL: If you make it angry the tree’s going to pull a knife on you!

>
> "Lay off!" he said in another voice, male with a New York
> accent.

TOM: Ooooooh.

JOEL: I get it *now*.

CROW: Yeah… what?

> "I’m…oof!…goin’ fo’ a new…oof!…record!" He checked
> his watch.

TOM: Nope, nobody stole my wrist while I wasn’t looking.

>
> "We’ve been running…oof!…into the tree
> for…oof!…twenty-five minutes now!"

CROW: Somehow I empathize with him.

> he said triumphantly, this
> time using the same male voice, only without the accent.

TOM: The accent is added for clarity.

> "Excellent!"
>
> The figure of a Siamese cat approached silently from behind.

JOEL: I wonder if she’s connected to the other Siamese cat in the story.

> It was clearly Kabuki. "Ummm…what exactly do you think you’re
> doing?" she inquired.

TOM: Practicing for the Presidential election.

>
> "Making…oof!…new…oof!…records!" the New York accent
> replied.

CROW: Dealing with your student loan people, dramatically represented.

>
> "Stop…oof!…this at…oof!…once!" screamed the female
> voice.
>

JOEL: It’s like watching a Red Sox fan.

> "We’ve…oof!…already made a new…oof!…record!" the
> normal male voice pointed out.
>

TOM: I understand being in the military is just like this.

> "Fine. I’ll…oof!…stop!" The badger stopped abruptly.
>

JOEL: This is how I felt at every business meeting I ever attended.

> "I want control of the body next!" the normal male voice said.
>

TOM: I wonder if that’s Mel Blanc’s missing thousandth voice.

> "No!" the female voice replied. "You’ll just do something
> stupid like Maxl! I should have control!"

CROW: I think we do have to admit. Guys are just dopey.

> There was a tremendous
> argument.
>
> "Schizophrenia," Kabuki murmured to herself.

TOM: As presented in the movies, anyway.

> "Maybe I should
> put the poor thing out of its misery…" She drew her katana and got
> ready to strike,

CROW: The Rudy Giuliani approach to psychiatric care.

> but just before she would have made the killing
> blow, the ring on her finger started to glow.
>

JOEL: Hey! No fair flashbacking inside the flashback!

> "What the bleep?!" Kabuki gasped (she commonly used the word
> "bleep" when she felt like swearing).

CROW: It’s just a little thing she does.

> "It’s that gem the fox

TOM: The one whose name I can’t think of for no readily apparent reason.

> gave
> me! It’s…it’s possessed!"
>
> An eerie green glow emanated from the ring, and shone on the
> badger.

JOEL: I think this badger’s a ringer.

> Its eyes grew big,

TOM: And when a Mobian’s eyes are big, you know it’s big.

> and the green light grew so bright that
> no-one could see a thing.

CROW: The truth behind LASIK surgery.

> When their vision was cleared, they saw
> that there was no longer one badger, but three.

TOM: And this is progress?

>
> One badger looked the same as before, only a bit dirtier, and
> was wearing weird clothing.

CROW: Man, it’s like we’ve known him all his life.

> "What’s goin’ on?!" he asked in the New
> York accent.

JOEL: We wuz headed fur Canarsie an’ dis cabbie pulls up onna curb.

>
> "I think…we’re…finally…free," contemplated a dark-clad
> badger with a hood hanging down from his outfit,

TOM: [ Awed ] The birth of Orko!

> in the unaccented
> male voice.
>
> "Finally," sighed the female badger, who was not only wearing
> green, but whose fur was green to match.

CROW: [ Calling out ] Hey, Kabuki! Jiggle the ring again!

TOM: Yeah, any robot babes in there?

> "I’ve had to put up with
> running into trees and other stupid stuff of the like for years
> now!"

JOEL: It’s particularly frustrating because she could have a meaningful life of sneaking into Robotropolis to commit vague and pointless minor acts of sabotage or to steal precious supplies of canned beets.

>
> The green badger contemplated for a moment,

TOM: [ As the green badger ] Why aren’t couches named something tougher?

> then growled, "And
> it’s your fault!" She struck at the normally-colored badger.
>
> "Maxl! Get down!"

CROW: Get funkalicious!

> shouted the dark-clad badger, and threw
> himself into Maxl to knock him out of the way.

TOM: Freedom Fighters Moe, Larry and Curly.

>
> "You’ll pay for that, Tracker," hissed the green badger, eyes
> narrowing.
>
> "No prob, Jade," said Maxl. "Will you take cash…or credit?!"
> With that, he pulled a credit card out of his pocket,

JOEL: Even armageddon can’t stop you from getting pre-approved credit cards in the mail.

> and threw it
> at Jade, breaking her fingernail. "Don’t leave home without it," he
> said.
>
> Jade screamed in outrage.

CROW: *And* peanut brittle.

> "I’ll destroy you for that!!!" she
> shouted.

TOM: Jade has some issues with rage to work out.

>
> "Not so fast!" Kabuki said, leaping in Jade’s way. "Name’s
> Kabuki Ninomiya.

CROW: [ As Kabuki ] No, really! Stop giggling!

> Normally, I’d sympathize with someone who got their
> fingernail broken,

JOEL: A fingernail once saved my life.

> but I’m against the slaughter of dumb animals!"
>
> "Yeah!" Maxl chimed in. "Hey, wait a minute…"

TOM: [ As Maxl ] Goldfish don’t retire! My parents lied!

>
> "We’re not dumb!" Tracker said. "Listen: Two times three
> is…umm…six!

CROW: Our authors, ladies and gentlemen.

> Four times eighteen is…umm…not six! So there!"

TOM: Maybe we could slaughter them a little?

>
> "Go!" Kabuki commanded. "I’ll take care of this bleep!"
>
> Tracker and Maxl started running.

JOEL: Help! Jane! Stop this crazy thing!

> "One good turn equals
> another!" Tracker said mathematically.

CROW: Remember, kids, adverbs make sentences longer, but don’t mean anything themselves.

> "You’ve saved us…we’ll save
> you some time in the future!"

TOM: It’d be kind of hard to save her in the past.

>
> After checking his watch,

CROW: Not even half past the story… dang, I gotta stay.

> Maxl shouted, "Kabuki! I’ll be back
> for ya!" and blew her a kiss. For some reason, a lightning bolt
> appeared a second later.

JOEL: Can Freakazoid come over? Can Freakazoid come over?

>
> "Hmmmf…must be a storm brewin’," Jade observed. "I hate
> storms! They ruin my hair!"

TOM: Ever since I replaced my hair with paper napkins.

>
> Kabuki ran after Jade, but the badger turned around and
> clicked her tongue.

JOEL: Is she calling the Oompa Loompas?

> "You will forget about me," she said. "In fact,
> you will forget about this whole occurrence!"

TOM: It was the only compassionate way to help Captain Kirk overcome the pain of losing Rayna.

> Kabuki’s jade ring
> glowed again, and Kabuki fainted.

CROW: If Kabuki had gone straight to the police, this would never have happened.

>
> The vision ended.
>

[ To continue … ]

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Explaining jokes: Believe it or not, we thought the 2000 Presidential Election was just the worst. The line about Mel Blanc’s missing thousandth voice references one of the minor Looney Tunes, one full of spot jokes about performers. The man with the thousand voices was short one and couldn’t think what.

The Rudy Giuliani joke is original to the late 90s; before he was known for being like … you know … all that he had the reputation for wanting the New York City police to be more pointlessly cruel to non-white people.

“Can Freakazoid come over?” references this Cartoon Network advertisement where the 2 Stupid Dogs kept on asking can Freakazoid come over, and don’t notice when Freakazoid joins in the question. You had no way, or reason, to know anything about this.

Rayna was this immortal robot that Captain Kirk met in this one episode where the Enterprise was frozen in time and shrunk to tabletop size by Merlin, who’s building robot women in his spare time but having trouble getting them to love. Everyone talks about the episode where alien rocks make Kirk and Abraham Lincoln wrestle a Klingon but they never mention this. Anyway she dies of plot and this hits Kirk harder than everything else in his life before and after, and Spock mind-melds Kirk so he can get over it.

This installment has another appearance of my misquoted Woody Woodpecker riff.

When I wrote this MiSTing I had never seen A Streetcar Named Desire and was just riffing on a line I’d picked up from cultural osmosis. I still have not seen A Streetcar Named Desire. I hear it’s got some lines in it.