Once again, I have entered my Smashwords e-books at half-off from now until July 31. If you want to help me out by buying a book, now’s the time….

This is my profile page there: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/DKPLJW2M4989

LOS ANGELES (AP)- History was made today, as a controversial ruling by the California Supreme Court appears to set a major precedent for dissolving the boundaries between fantasy and reality in public discourse across the world, as well as providing the gravest threat to the entire entertainment industry it may ever be forced to face.

In response to a petition made by a group of so-called “animated cartoon characters”, who claim not only to have been dismissed without prior warning by their previous employers, but also to have had sensitive, personal material used without their permission within the context of the films and television series in which they had been “forced” to participate, Judge Morley Callaghan indicated that he saw no reason why the appeal should not be heard by the federal Supreme Court. Callaghan indicated that, regardless of the nebulous status of the plaintiffs’ existence as “fictional characters”, as was repeatedly indicated by opposing counsel, there were genuine issues regarding improper financial compensation and invasion of privacy that could not be resolved by internal arbitration between the plaintiffs and their ex-employers, and could only be dealt with the kind of objective reasoning which the Supreme Court could provide.

This verdict reflects the first major legal victory for “fictional” beings in the American legal system, as they had previously been ignored and stymied because existing copyright and trademark legislation established only the rights and abilities of the putative “owners” of the existences of fictional beings, and not those beings themselves. Callaghan indicated in his ruling that it was unconstitutional for the rights and existences of fictional beings to be established and set by people who were not those beings, and that the production companies, film studios and television networks who had previously employed the beings were liable to pay huge sums in both current and retroactive compensation to the plaintiffs.

However, he reserved judgement on an actual numerical figure, which he believed the federal Court was more qualified to determine, and suggested that the case be passed on to that body.

That this decision has caused a major uproar in the American entertainment industry is putting it mildly. Advocates for the “reality” of media narratives are heartened that the “humanity” of even the most outlandish and unlikely figures in the entertainment field has now been firmly established in legal precedent, and that no future media production can occur without this “humanity” be considered as a production factor. They believe this is a major advance for the cause of human rights in the American entertainment industry, and will thus serve as an example to the media in other countries.

However, producers and executives in all forms of visual media production are outraged, and insist that they will firmly fight any local or national efforts to create legislation that will force them to abide by the Callaghan decision. They believe that, by recognizing the rights of “fictional” characters as human, they will not only be forced to pay standard, regular wages to the characters currently under their employ, as well as make massive retroactive payments to characters previously employed in programming.

Likewise, they will also be forced to make similarly high payments to characters whose images were licensed for commercial gain extensively in the past without their permission. All this, as they rationally indicate, will bankrupt the industry and prevent it from further functioning in the form it currently exists.

“This is an insane and irrational decision,” remarked Producers Guild of America Chairman Lou Weingarten upon revelation of the verdict. “Fictional people do not have the same rights as real people.

We exist all the time; they exist only when allowed to exist. And now they say we may have to pay them for all the “work” they did for “free”. But you can’t pay people for work they didn’t do. In that case, it was the animators that did all the work, not the characters. And those animators ask for too much money as it is, considering how slipshod some of their work it is. I’m not a genius or anything, but I know you can’t give money to people if they never worked for you, like I said. And, regardless of what these folks are saying, we technically never interacted with them at all, much less worked with them. So why should we have to pay them off as if we did?”

When Weingarten was pressed for an explanation of how the decision could bankrupt Hollywood, he added this blunt assessment:

“Look at it this way. You’re operating a studio. You have to put out a certain number of movies and TV shows every year to remain financially solvent. You have just enough overhead to make a tiny profit at best, and just enough to meet your payroll. And then, suddenly, these two-dimensional image people come out of the woodwork, demanding to be paid- in full- for the “work” they- or, rather, you- did bringing them into existence. They swarm all over you like freeloading relatives and fair weather friends who profit from your gains without contributing to them- and the law is on their side, or so it seems here. Not just salaries, but damned retroactive compensation, yet. The minimum wage alone is excessively high now, and judges and juries can find for excessively high compensation sums now. You know what kind of money that means? Billions!

“We’re as much within our rights asserting our rights as producers as they are in asserting whatever damn “humanity” they say they have. They’ll find that out the hard way.”

Yet a contrary position exists within the members of the animated cartoon character community, who insist that, minor compensation payments notwithstanding, they have been living in a situation of legalized slavery for decades. They are, they insisted, overworked and underpaid for the majority of the time in which they are employed, and then, without notice, are summarily fired and left to fend for themselves, without pensions and retirement benefits. And these periods last for far longer than the average two-to-three year period of employment, with some periods of employment lasting for far shorter periods.

One of the petitioners made a particularly blunt statement regarding the average character’s situation to this reporter.

“We have to go to university like anybody else to learn how to be cut-ups out here,” she said.

“University means debts. Living somewhere means you’re paying rent. Et cetera. The producers have never been where we come from, and I doubt they ever will come to visit, so they’ll never know what we really have to go through to try and have a steady career here, such as it is. And they make it considerably more difficult when they don’t compensate us with what everybody needs to live. You know the kind of extreme injuries and stuff we go through in the films, huh? Well, there ain’t no stunt people to do the difficult work there- that’s all us. And that crap hurts. But they like to deny that there’s a problem ‘cause they always make us go around with a smile on our face, like everything’s okay and there’s nothing we can’t solve with a bit of no-how on our part. So you only get that side of our lives, and not that one, ‘cause that’s all they let us be.

“Not anymore, pal. Now they know we’re real. And they’ll have to start coughing up for what they forced to go through without pay or nothing. We aren’t asking for any stupid, insane amount of money- we just want to be paid the same as any other live actor would in the same situation. And besides- once they finally divide up the settlement, if something like that happens, it won’t be enough to even pay our rents!”

The Supreme Court justices had no comment on the lower court ruling, and, in any event, could not guarantee that they would be hearing the case at all in the foreseeable future.

Related stories:

The two of them- one extremely tall and gangly, the other short and underweight- marched with determination towards their destination. One might have thought they were mismatched, but this was not the case.

They had known each other for nearly their whole lives, and were as devoted to each other as two girls of their generation could be.

Although Morgan Robertson, the tall one of the pair, was extremely beautiful and athletically built, she was neither a beauty queen nor a jock. She was far too intelligent in mind to limit herself like that,

for she was extremely smart. Her Achilles heel was that she was afflicted with Autism. As a consequence of this (along with her emerging womanhood), she was prone to vicious and unexpected mood swings at the least provocation, even though she regularly took pharmaceuticals designed to “control” them.

False assumptions about her mental state among her peers had prevented most of her peers from befriending her- save one.

Roberta Ripley- or, rather, plain “Rip” to Morgan- had been dealt far worse physical hands in life than her friend, but, unlike Morgan, she did not worry about or bemoan her fate. Born prematurely and asthmatic, and underweight because of it, she suffered from the further indignity of a club foot, which forced her to get around on a cane, not unlike Dickens’ Tiny Tim. Her eyes were two different colors, her teeth so grotesquely “buck” that no braces could mend them, and her voice a raucous, almost masculine rasp, in contrast to Morgan’s more feminine (if occasionally hysterical) tones. Yet she would always be the first to tell jokes about herself when she entered a room- if only to prevent others from doing the same, or worse.

If that didn’t work, Morgan would come to her aid, for the taller girl possessed a noble virtue as a consequence of her Autism- firm, unbreakable loyalty. Nobody else had dared do that for Rip, and it had sealed their permanent friendship many years ago.

The other aspect that sealed it was their joint interest in the literature concerning itself with impossibilities and improbabilities- science fiction, fantasy and horror. They were classic “geeks”, who were avid readers as well as adventurous and accepting seekers of film and TV narratives of the same kind. Morgan had received the derogatory nickname of “Fangirl” for daring to try to talk to more “popular” kids about her great love, while Rip generally kept her mouth shut about it outside of Morgan’s company for that reason.

However, they were not content to view speculative entertainment as merely that.

Morgan and Rip maintained the belief that the stories they witnessed were reflective of events that could have happened in the past and had every opportunity to occur again. And they intended to be there when they did-no matter what it took.

This is how they got into the predicament which befell them.

*

As was often the case when they walked together, Morgan’s longer legs and wider stride meant that she had soon established a wide gap between herself and Rip, and her distracted train of thought meant she did not notice this. On these occasions, Rip would either holler or whistle at Morgan so she would get it. She chose the latter option this time, startling Morgan in the process.

“What the….?” Morgan uttered as she spun around, only to see Rip taking a “hit” of air from the device required to keep her asthma at bay.

“Oh,” Morgan said, when she realized what had happened. “Just you again, Rip.”

“Who else would it be?” Rip asked, rhetorically.

“I don’t know,” Morgan said, missing the rhetoric. “It might have been something important.”

“As in something other than me?” said Rip, sarcastically. “What, are you cheating on me? You know- seeing another “best friend” on the side?”

“Of course not, Rip!” Morgan retorted angrily, missing the sarcasm this time. “I told you that you were the only best friend I’m ever going to have, and I mean it!”

“Whoa!” Rip calmed her friend down. “I was just fooling with you, Morg’!”

“Well, don’t! You know how I am with sarcasm.”

“Sorry. I keep forgetting that. That’s something you Auties have trouble with.”

“Don’t CALL me that!” Morgan snapped. “For us, that’s like me calling you a “cripple”. Or a…..a…. “gimp”! Would you like that?”

“No,” said Rip.

“Then I rest my case.”

“Speaking of resting cases, do you think we could rest ours for a while?” She looked down at her sweat-stained yellow shirt with a Star Trek insignia on it. “I’m getting sweat on the old velour.”

“You’re right.” Morgan looked down at her own sweat-stained red shirt, with a vintage ‘60s-‘80’s Doctor Who logo on it. “I’m getting tired myself. I’m thinking today wasn’t the right day to go hiking up here. It’s too hot.”

“Well,” Rip said, after taking a “hit”, “it is summer. We got the whole winter to curl up with the books and the videos and stuff. Outside of school, of course.”

“Of course,” agreed Morgan.

“Besides, it helps to be around you, Morg’. My parents say you’re a “positive influence” on me, but I know that just hanging around you.”

“Awwwwww!” Morgan cooed. “Rip, you always say the best things about…..”

She was interrupted by a blinding flash of light that seemed to come out of nowhere out of the sky, and vanished just as soon as it had arrived.

“What was THAT?” Rip uttered, as soon they both recovered from the shock.

“I don’t know,” said Morgan. “But I’m game to find out. You in?”

“Of course,” said Rip.

“Good,” said Morgan, as she whipped out her smart phone from her brown corduroy pants, the same color as her now sweat-drenched hair (and Rip’s, as well). “This could be important. We might, finally, be able to get some actual evidence of the spirit world or space, and show people we’re not nuts.”

“Or you’re not, anyway,” Rip said, teasingly.

Her mirth ended abruptly, however, when Morgan looked at her with her “game face”.

“Shut up and come on,” Morgan ordered. She walked forward, with Rip following obediently.

They wandered over to the glade where they had seen the lights originated from. They girded themselves for potential battle, prepared to face anything from a tentacle-laden monster from outer space to an evil sorcerer banished from a fantasy realm.

What they saw was nothing of the kind.

It was a girl about their age, or slightly younger, about the same size as Rip, wearing patched-up old clothes and carrying a bindle on a stick over her shoulder, like an old fashioned hobo. Nothing supernatural whatsoever- or so it seemed.

“Ah, it’s nothing big,” Rip whispered to Morgan. “Just a kid like us, lost in the forest. We should help her get out.”

“Are you crazy?” Morgan hissed, her confidence eroding as her Autism suddenly took control of her consciousness. “You know how bad I am at meeting new people.”

“And yet,” Rip retorted, “you say you’re always ready to confront the things that woman was not meant to know. ”

“That’s different!”

“Be reasonable, Morg’. She doesn’t look like she’d hurt a fly.”

“All right. But if she does hurt a fly- i.e. us- let me be the first to say “I told you so.”

“She won’t. She’s probably from Gallifrey.”

That insult directed at her favorite TV hero’s homeland was something Morgan was only prepared to accept from Rip, just as only Morgan could get away with sassing the “Enterprise” crew in Rip’s presence and not risk angering the latter.

“You,” said Morgan, “are terrible. Let’s go.”

Their approaching footsteps made the girl turn around immediately, fearful of being attacked. However, as soon as Morgan and Rip introduced themselves, all was well.

“I’m…Sibyl,” the girl said, evasively. “Just got in from….away.”

“Don’t you have your family with you?” Morgan asked.

“I’m a…..” Sibyl groped for the right word to say, as if English was not her first language. “I’m that….thing….where your parents die before you and you have to fend for yourself…”

“An orphan,” supplied Rip.

“Right!” Sibyl slapped her forehead. “The word was right on the tip of my tongue.”

“How old are you?” Morgan asked.

“How old are you?” Sibyl answered.

“Twelve,” said Morgan.

“Same for me,” agreed Rip.

“What a coincidence,” said Sibyl. “So am I. Listen, do you know a place where a girl can get a room?”

“Sure,” Rip said, trying to be friendly. “There’s a hotel in….”

“No.” Morgan overruled her friend.

“What do you mean, Morg’?” Rip asked.

“I mean that she belongs in the orphanage.”

“Orphanage?” Rip queried.

“No way!” Sibyl objected to the idea. “Orphanages are for BABIES!”

“No, they’re not,” Morgan said. “Any minor who hasn’t obtained their majority, and doesn’t have parents or guardians, the way Rip and I have, has to be remanded to the care of the State until they obtained that majority…”

“Smart, isn’t she?” Rip said. “She remembers a huge ton of whatever she reads. Wish I could do that.”

“I’m not going there,” Sybil declared.

“Yes, you are!” Morgan answered.

“In my land,” Sibyl said, “everyone is free to act according to their own free will and intelligence….”

“We’re not in your “land”, wherever it is,” Morgan raged. “Here, we obey the LAWS! And so will you!”

“You gonna make me, STILTS?” Sibyl challenged, balling her fists.

“If I have to!” declared Morgan.

Before violence could break out, Rip stepped between them.

“It wouldn’t be that bad, really,” she said to Sibyl. “You get looked after for a few years, and then you can be on your own again, like you want. And you…”-here she addressed Morgan, “BEHAVE YOURSELF!”

Morgan stood down.

“Sorry, Sibyl,” she said. “I know you’re not from here, so I just wanted to….”

“I got it,“ Sibyl dismissed the comment. “I have to learn about this place. Maybe you could help me learn about it.”

“Maybe we could,” agreed Morgan.

*

It was a small and simple matter for Morgan and Rip to introduce Sibyl to the local orphanage director, explain her situation, and get her taken on as a boarder. At the same time, Morgan and Rip hoped to become friends with her, over time.

This would prove not to be the case.

When Morgan and Rip arrived at the orphanage the next day to visit Sibyl, they found her in what, to them, was a rather unorthodox position on the floor. Still dressed in the same patched-rag outfit she’d been discovered in, Sibyl was sitting beside her bed in a gesture resembling a child in old-fashioned nighttime prayer to God, before sleep. However, what she was uttering was not prayer, but, rather, a one-way conversation.

“I got in fine,” was what she was saying as Morgan and Rip entered the room. “No trouble. The thing runs like clockwork….No, no issues with the humans. Found a couple of kids my age in the woods to help me with the plan. Perfect patsies- they got no idea what…..DAMN! Gotta go!”

She had, at this point, discovered the presence of her erstwhile “friends” in the room, and rapidly took pains to conceal whatever it was she had been speaking into. That something was a black, clarinet-like stick with an earpiece of the same color attached by a hook. Sibyl accidentally dropped it, and it rolled on the floor towards Morgan, who picked it up.

“Hey!” said Sibyl, viciously. “Don’t touch that!”

“How come?” Rip asked. “It doesn’t seem like much. Just an old telephone.”

“Because…” Sibyl began.

Immediately, she regretted saying this, because Morgan, always alert to when things got “wrong” in her presence, pounced on the evasive excuse.

“Because why, Sibyl?” she demanded.

Sibyl realized immediately that her powers of deception were no match for Morgan’s powers of intelligence, and confessed.

“All right,” she said. “You got me. I hid why and how I came from, and I shouldn’t have.”

“No,” Morgan agreed. “You shouldn’t.”

“But I can make it up to you,” said Sibyl. “I’ll tell you the truth. You deserve that much, for trying to befriend me and all.”

“So tell, already,” said Rip.

“You better have a good excuse,” added Morgan.

“Not here!” Sibyl hissed.

“Why?” demanded Morgan.

“Because I don’t want anyone else to hear it except you two,” she said. “This is important stuff. And you’re the only two people I know here who can handle it. You’re the only two people I know here, period, but that’s not the point. Can you handle it?”

Morgan and Rip nodded.

“And, after I tell you, you will not speak a word of this to anyone else. Agreed?”

They agreed, again by nodding.

“Fine,” said Sibyl. “What say we reconvene in ten minutes, out where you found me?”

That was agreed to, as well.

Ten minutes later, Sibyl spoke to them in the new venue.

“Okay,” she said. “I told you I was twelve and an orphan. That’s true. But the rest of it is….I’m an alien.”

“An immigrant?” Rip asked.

“No,” said Sibyl, with a raised left eyebrow, in a don’t be more stupid than you already are tone. “An alien. As in, a being not of this Earth, as your Hollywood would put it.”

Morgan and Rip looked at each other, briefly and excitedly, as if they’d had met a favorite pop singer by chance and by accident. This was the moment they had been waiting their whole lives for! However, they were quick to retain their normal demeanors.

“How did you get here?” Morgan asked.

“The flash of lightning you saw before I came. Obviously, you’ve never heard of the Starlight Express. Fastest rapid transit system in the galaxy. You get in and out of places in seconds, no question asked. The trip from Ziltox to Earth is pretty fast even by those standards.”

“Ziltox?” Rip asked.

“My home planet. And…”-suddenly and fiercely, her voice took on an acidic, Satanic tone, “…the one that will soon reduce yours to ASHES!”

“WHAT?” Morgan and Rip shouted, backing up from her in genuine horror.

“DAMN IT!” Sibyl slapped herself on the forehead. “I gave it AWAY!”

“What?” Morgan asked. “Your plan for conquering the Earth?”

“Yeah,” said Sibyl. “I got too much of a loose tongue. See, I’m the advance scout for the Army, and I’m supposed to see whether they can take you Earthlings in a fair fight. But, from what I can see, you can’t do anything of the things we Ziltoxians can do, so it should be easy.”

“What can you and your kind possibly do that people on Earth can’t?” said Morgan.

“Well, among other things….”

Sibyl expelled a beam of light from her right hand, which landed in a nearby tree and reduced it to a flaming ruin. This freaked Morgan out.

“YOU……” she shouted, in shock.

“Oh, that’s nothing,” said Sibyl.

Abruptly, she picked up Morgan and Rip and juggled them in the air, as if they were balls or clubs. Rip was simply reduced to awed silence by the act, but Morgan, who was reduced to gibbering panic, started screaming almost as soon as she was lifted up in the air.

“AAH!” she shouted. “PUT US DOWN! PUT US DOWN!

PutusdownputusdownputusdownPUTUSDOWNNN!”

Eventually, Sibyl agreed, and they were placed on the ground. Outraged by the alien’s insensitive treatment of them, Morgan moved towards her.

“HOW DARE YOU!” she stormed. “Rip and I were trying to be friendly, and you….treated us…..like…..DIRT! I don’t care if you are an alien, or what you can possibly do to us or to Earth! I will not have myself and my friend be treated like TOYS for your amusement….”

“PUT A SOCK IN IT, EARTHLING!”

Sibyl’s voice and face darkened with these words, which drove Morgan back towards Rip.

“Now,” Sibyl said. “Here’s how it’s going to be. In one day, you two will come back here, and explain exactly why Earth should be spared the wrath of the Ziltoxians. Because what I just showed you is a mere fraction of what we are capable of doing to this pestilent rock. And, if the insolence you just showed me is the best line of defense Earth has, then it’ll be over faster than that your Six Day War was in the 1970s.”

“How do you know about….?” Rip began.

“We just know, okay?” said Sibyl. “The first rule of war is “know your enemy”. You’ll need to know that in the future. If you live.”

“How can you just decide to get rid of us?” Morgan sobbed weakly. “Don’t you care about..?”

“Hah!” Sibyl growled. “In our experience, Earth has never cared about the civil rights of any alien race! So why should we care about yours?”

She stormed off into the forest, turning back only briefly, to say one more thing:

“Remember. One day. OR ELSE!”

*

Having no other choice in the matter, Morgan and Rip resolved to meet the following morning to discuss what, if anything, they could do to save the Earth before Sibyl and the Ziltoxians chose to destroy it.

When they met at the agreed time, Morgan looked as if she had barely slept at all, by Rip’s gathering, fueled by the coffee that still lingered on her breath. Worse still, the half-crazed expression she sported on her face meant that, in the rush to accomplish everything she wanted, she had forgotten to take the pills that typically kept her emotions in check. And, if Sibyl somehow set her off, or vice versa, something bad was going to happen.

This is going to be interesting, Rip thought to herself. But, to her friend, she simply said:

“You…slept okay, Morg’?”

“What does it LOOK like?” the taller girl shrieked. “Yes! I slept like a BABY!”

“No, you didn’t,” Rip replied, stating the obvious.

“Don’t you know SARCASM when you hear it? You use it all the time on me, and I….”

“….can’t “get” it ‘cause you have Autism. Yeah, I know that. I also know that you’ve been pulling an all-nighter. That’s not like you, Morg’. You’re usually so prepared….”

“Not this time, Rip! I couldn’t find it.”

“Couldn’t find what?”

“The INFORMATION!” She began pacing the street in front of them, almost ignoring Rip in the process.

“What information…..?”

“About Ziltox! I went through the Internet and all my reference books, and I couldn’t find it anywhere!”

“All of ‘em?”

“Yeah. There’s nothing about Ziltox anywhere. I’m starting to think we hallucinated when we saw those lights in the sky, and we somehow dreamed Sibyl into existence because we wanted to meet an actual alien….”

“Morg’….”

“I mean, people do have those kind of experiences, when they’re on cocaine, or marijuana, or hashish or opium or something like that, and they read about far away or fictional places, but we were both totally sober when we saw those lights and we met Sibyl, weren’t we?”

“Uh, Morgan….”

“And everything she said was so plausible! Aliens stronger than men and women, capable of killing us all! But there’s no information related to the planet at all, ANYWHERE, let alone a scientific study of it. How can we understand the Ziltoxians if there’s no information about them at all?”

“Morgan!”

“Oh, this is HOPELESS! We can’t talk to anybody because of that gag order she put on us, and, even if we did, they would just laugh at us and say we made It up, or someone else made it up, like they USUALLY do, even though this time our butts are REALLY on the line…..”

“MORGAN!”

This bellowing cry from Rip was enough to scare Morgan and stop her in her tracks. Which was its intended effect.

Rip took a needed “hit” and then continued.

“You’re looking at this the wrong way,” she said. “It’s not important that we know anything about Ziltox if we want to deal with Sibyl.”

“But that’s where she comes from!” said Morgan.

“She’s not there, right now. She’s HERE!”

“You mean….?”

“I mean, we need to think about what things are here on Earth to stop her.”

“Rip, there’s no way we could get other human beings to help us stop her. She said so herself.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what do you mean?”

“I believe we’re both well-acquainted with H.G. Wells’ The War of The Worlds?”

“We are. But how will that help us?”

“Remember the end of the story. Why the Martians didn’t win.”

For the first time that day, Morgan’s fear dissipated, and she became calm and rational again.

“I see what you mean,” she said.

*

“Well,” Sibyl said, when Morgan and Rip met her. “I see someone’s been pulling an all-nighter.”

The all-nighter reference was clearly aimed at Morgan, causing Rip to aim an “I told you so” glance at her friend. Morgan simply ignored the remark.

“It was worth it, though,” Rip said, with a Cheshire Cat grin. “She found out the kind of stuff that’ll make it much easier for you to take over Earth.”

“Really?” said Sibyl. “Do tell.”

“We can’t,” Morgan answered, with a Cheshire Cat grin of her own.

“How come?” Sibyl demanded. “What is it? You blackmailing me or something? ‘Cause you know what I can do to….”

“No!” Morgan said, failing to hide the fear now emerging in her voice. “I mean….”

“We just want to convey our information to you in the same way you did to us- secretly,” Rip finished on Morgan’s behalf. “This stuff is so secret we got to whisper it in your ear.”

“Fine.”

Sibyl walked over to Morgan and Rip until they were only inches apart. Sibyl expected the two of them to begin telling her what she needed, but that was not what happened.

Morgan and Rip spat in her face, at exactly the same time, from two separate angles.

Repulsed and angered, Sibyl started to withdraw.

“How disgusting are YOU!” she proclaimed. “If you’re going to act like pigs, then you might as well die like them. Nobody spits on a Ziltoxian and…….URRRGGGGGHHHHHH!”

Abruptly, she clutched her throat, and began rolling on the ground in agony. Morgan and Rip simply stood and watched.

“What’s going on?” Sibyl croaked.

“Nothing,” said Morgan. “Except you getting your just desserts!”

“But how….?”

“You’re an alien, right?” Rip explained. “Well, it stands to reason that you’ve never been exposed to the microorganisms of Earth. Therefore, if one of them gets inside of you, you get sick immediately, and, ultimately, you die.”

“What do you mean, “ultimately”?” said Sibyl. “I’m dying now!”

It was true. While they were talking, Sibyl’s bones had begun to give way, reducing her body to a gelatinous mass. But she still had fight in her, and crawled threateningly towards Morgan and Rip.

“Serves me right for trusting you two!” Sibyl snarled.

“Well, you betrayed our trust first!” said Morgan. “We don’t like that.”

“Besides which,” Rip added. “This is what happens to any alien that gets sick on Earth. Even you supposedly mighty Ziltoxians aren’t a match for the germs of old Earth. That’s why nobody can invade Earth successfully- ‘cause they forget that.”

“You BITCHES!” Sibyl cried. “I’ll………uuuuhhhhhhh……”

“RUN!” Morgan shouted. “She’s gonna blow!”

Indeed, Sibyl’s body had started to burn up and was threatening to explode.

Carrying Rip in her hands, Morgan was able to escape the forest before the explosion happened, but only barely.

Once they were safe, Morgan returned Rip to the ground.

“You were right about the microorganisms, Rip,” said Morgan. “They certainly took care of her. Only I didn’t expect her to go off and out like that.”

“Well, I did,” said Rip.

“You did?”

“Yeah. I knew she was a ball of fire the first time we met. I just didn’t think she was that LITERALLY!”

All they could do after that line was laugh and go home.

Another Morgan and Rip adventure:

Yes, it’s me, and I am mad again.

I’ll just put these links up here so you know what we’re dealing with first:

https://www.thepetitionsite.com/431/291/384/?z00m

https://www.thepetitionsite.com/431/291/384/?z00m

https://www.thepetitionsite.com/603/414/484/?z0

https://www.thepetitionsite.com/121/544/922/?z00m=

Okay. Now:

WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU HUMANS?

These are just a few examples of the insane depravity with which you treat my species. We were not meant to be locked up in a kennel hotel, or treated like the inside of a pinata. NOR were puppies like me meant to be SEALED IN PLASTIC….

Now, I know you’re going to say, “We’re not all like that”, and those kind of excuses. And I understand that. Every being is an individual, first and foremost. But there is clearly an aspect of your violent and arrogant Stone Age ancestors that still walks the Earth…

But there is clearly a reason why my amanuensis (look it up!) Mr. Perlmutter has to bring this stuff to my attention. Even though I tell him that I obviously can’t do anything about it…

“What do you want me to do, stop time so you can rewind the clock?” I told him. “There are limits to my powers. And I DON’T have the ability to magically make every negative thing about dogs, past or present, magically disappear, you NINNY!”

Needless to say, he’ll be more cautious about what he brings to me.

“Why don’t you ever write about my actual adventures anymore?” I continued. “Only just recently, Dumbell, the evil second most powerful puppy in the universe, clashed yet again. Professor Pinsker, that nasty anthropologist, is still trying to force me to tell her the secrets of the Perros. That rotten canine plague vector Bordetella nearly made me deathly ill. Virago, that piece of….alien worm, is up to her old tricks trying to make me fall at her stump with the strength of whatever beast’s mind she can take over. And definitely do not forget Kit Vixen, that walking excuse for a coat! How she managed to gain powers of her own and become the supposedly “heroic” 21st Century Fox, and tried to muscle me out of my own hometown, is beyond me right now.”

He nodded and agreed with me, like the Caspar Milquetoast he is.

Anyway, it’s late, and I’m tired, so sort this damn thing amongst yourselves…

Cerberus out.

Two “actual” adventures of Cerberus:

From THE WINNIPEG FREE PRESS, September 15, 2032:

WINNIPEG (CP): While it might surprise some people to know it, there was a time when Union

Station, the grand edifice at the intersection of Main and Broadway in our fair city, was an actual working depot for trains, and not the cheap place to rent rooms in when you needed space for your events it has sadly become in the 21st century.

Those people would have had a taste of what that era must have been like had they happened to be there yesterday, when the CRA Express stopped to refuel for the next leg of its cross-Canada voyage, and the highly unique passengers were able to circulate amongst the somewhat shocked crowd of on-lookers freely and without the kind of prejudice they have often encountered in the United States as of late. This reporter- whom, it is no secret to know, is an admirer of the art of animation- was particularly grateful to witness an actual appearance of these figures in his home town.

For it should be known that CRA stands for Cartoon Republican Army, that often misunderstood organization that has been somewhat mislabelled as a “terrorist” organization by the American government. And the members, the train’s passengers, were bona fide animated cartoon characters straight from the screens of the various electronic televisual appliances we peruse on a regular basis.

To say nothing of the train itself.

It was extremely retrograde in its exterior design, resembling one of the old-fashioned “rattlers” made famous by the media of the previous century. A compact, steel-girded engine with a genuine cow-catcher at the front, several spacious boxcars (without any freight) and a number of passenger carrying vehicles, including a working restaurant and quite a few spaciously appointed Pullman berths, that would astonish those who are more familiar with the unglamorous, lengthy monstrosities that regularly and unpleasantly interrupt our commutes every day by coming unscheduled and at inopportune times down the tracks from the North End depot. There was even a caboose at the end!

Yet it had the appearance of a two-dimensional drawing of a train, rather than a genuine three-dimensional train of our world. This was all fine, considering its occupants gave off much the same appearance: solidly three-dimensional to some vantage points, but less so at others. And, despite the retrograde appearance, it was a modern construction in terms of its locomotion. Instead of steam produced by coal, this machine was constructed on the same diesel-burning framework as any other machine now travelling the rails.

I got a better picture of the how and the why of this peculiar enterprise when I was introduced to the engineer and driving force behind the excursion, Colonel Sheldon Lee, who is the head of the CRA’s strategic weapons and tactics division, and he gave me a sense of what was going on.

“Given the type of work you do,” he said- referring to my previous reportage on the heated conflict between humans and animated characters within the United States-“you have some idea of what we’ve been up against the last little while.”

“Certainly,” I agreed.

“Well, then. I don’t have to explain to you about how hard they’ve been going against us in Washington. Especially since that blanket-blank Trump got elected to another term. He wouldn’t have been so lucky if we were able to vote.”

“Because you’re Democrats. Right?” I asked.

“Largely. There are some who are further left, and some even are on the right, believe it or not. But that’s neither here nor there. You came about the train, and I need to tell you about it.”

“Go ahead.”

“We needed to have some inexpensive way to promote our cause. Now, I know what you’re thinking: this kind of stuff costs a lot of money, doesn’t it? Not if you do it in a cost-conscious way.” He put his hand on the engine as he said this, and, miraculously, he wasn’t burned by the large amount of heat it gave off.

“To begin with, where we come from, we can make anything a reality, can’t we?”

I nodded in agreement.

“So, if the weird bunch of us that came out of where we came from can be drawn into life, why not do the same thing to a train? It would cost us a lot less to draw it into life than manufacture a real one. That convinced my superiors when I presented the idea to them. We’ve been doing too much trying to be like you, and making stuff the way you would. Why not concentrate on what we can do on our own terms? So I went ahead and took some old drawings of trains from some old models, and traced over them onto paper, and we had a working train. No matter that it had no depth to it, like you always say is our biggest drawback. It’s still real- just like you and I are. We believe in it because it’s presented to us as real- suspension of disbelief and all that. The real problem is trying to get people who don’t believe we’re real to start doing so, and you know who they are.”

“But why would you use a train to promote your cause?” I asked.

“That’s what they asked me about when I had the idea,” he said, confidently, “and I’ll give you the same justifications I did them. In the first place, you can cover more ground on a train than you can with an airplane. With an airplane, you just fly over the land from one place or another and you’re there. With a train, you actually interact with the people and the land. The land makes you work to get where you’re going on a train. It’s astonishing when you think about how much manpower was used to create railroad lines, and the geographical difficulties the people building those lines encountered. Here in Canada in particular, as we saw with our own eyes.

“Another thing is that we honor our heritage this way. At least, in the case of one of the great movers and shakers in our business in particular. Walt Disney himself was crazy about trains. Nearly as much as he was about bringing people like us to life. He had the staff of his studio construct a model train for his house, and he helped build the thing with his own hands. Then, when he constructed Disneyland, he had another model railroad built that circles the whole place. That’s how much he believed in trains and what they can do to make people think you know what you’re doing.

“But it’s mostly that we needed to get our message across by the convenient means of whistle stops like these. The majority of the CRA members are people like me, who were second-string supporting characters on our shows that casual viewers never really gave more than a moment’s notice to, if they did at all. Yes, the stars are involved, especially those from TV, where I’m out of, but there’s a lot more of us than there are of them. And we, unlike them, can circulate more easily amongst you. So that’s mostly who’s with me on this trip, and we’re the ones trying to convince you that we’re real people with real lives and not the glossy fakes the politicians would have you believe we are.”

“Okay,” I interjected. “But why Canada and not the United States? Isn’t it there that you need to convince the people more?”

“Because we can’t afford that kind of risk there, especially not now,” he said, with less jauntiness than before. “You know what a train with CRA people all over it would be to the American military? A moving target, and an easy one at that. Besides: do you know how much of a patchwork quilt the American railroad system is, and always has been? Private interests butting up against each other and getting in each other’s business all the time. It’s been like that ever since the first railroads were built in America in the 1870s. Even if we were able to find one railroad that supported us, it would butt into the lines of another one that hated us. And, if the Feds were able to catch us while the two railroads dickered about whether to let us go ahead or not, it’d be all over for us in a heartbeat.

“Now, you guys dealt with the railroad situation in a smart way. Your government underwrote the construction of the lines and reserved the best spots on the line for itself. Your railroads are constructed logically, with stops in both big and small places all across the line, and places like these that show how you respected the passengers on trains back when there were more of them. Also, right now your people in Ottawa show our cause more respect than they ever will in Washington. That hasn’t always been the case, especially when you had a hard right government a few years ago. But right now they understand, and they understood when we said we wanted to make a cross-Canada Vancouver-to-Halifax run, like the trains did in the old days. They said go ahead: it’d be good publicity for both you and us. And it has been. The best part of it all is that the Americans can’t touch us while we’re here, otherwise Canada will tell on them to the UN. So, as long as we don’t do anything illegal here, we’re safe.”

He was interrupted by one of his associates, who told him it was time to leave. So he turned up the collar of his red jacket and prepared to depart.

“Sorry we can’t hang out here longer- this is a nice place,” he said. “But we’re wanted in Ottawa. The Prime Minister awaits to fete us in style. Which me and most of the crowd aren’t used to, so I really gotta install the ol’ protocol into ‘em. You understand.”

I did. And I watched, awestruck, as the train, animated in more ways than one, made its run out of Union Station, as dramatically as it had entered the place.

Part of me, sadly, wished I could have boarded the machine and gone with them.

Related stories:

Plus one essay:

FOCUS! A Reader In Animation History, Theory, and Practice

Once Again, The Day Is Saved...

This essay originally appeared in the anthology “Animated Mischief”(McFarland and Co., 2023…

Read more

2 years ago · 88 likes · 8 comments · David Perlmutter

For context: https://www.thepetitionsite.com/983/601/926/dogs-were-left-to-starve-and-die-at-a-fake-rescue-organization/

YOU! YOU ALLOWED THIS TO HAPPEN!

No, no, no - you will not appease me with any of the frivolous and inept attempts at maintaining the status quo you call “apologies”! Not this time!

This catastrophic event would not have occurred if you had more concern for the canine race than you seem to have. You are fortunate that I reserve use of the top end of my superpowers for the truly evil things on this planet- otherwise…

I don’t know exactly where this “Tyler County” is- but, clearly, I need to pay more attention to it. It has shown itself to be a massive hive of scum and villany!

Over a hundred of my kind detained without sustenance or comfort- in a setting where this, theoretically, was supposed to exist. And a goodly percentage of them now deceased…

This must be avenged!

What were you thinking, allowing these idiotic fools to get away with this? Do you not even have the smallest amount of respect for us?

Not even the smallest amount of respect for me? If I had known of this from the start, I would so gladly have destroyed it. Oh, yes…

Were it not for the proliferation of these organizations, legal and otherwise, there would not be amongst us canines those who are of the most loathsome, unethical, unclean and mentally deformed natures! And I would not have to deal with the enemies of mine who came of age under these conditions- but that’s neither here nor there for now…

You must understand this.

When I first gained my powers and then established my heroic career, I knew full well of these institutions, and I vowed to wipe as many from the face of the earth as I could.

Why, my first big brush with your media was after I had liberated the inmates of one organization and flogged its operators within an inch of their lives with my substantial strength. And it wasn’t a positive one.

I will not answer to any sort of babyish prattle of the kind I experienced from those reporters again!

And the headline they used!

WHO’S A GOOD GIRL? THIS ONE.

I was trying to act seriously, and you trivialized me!

It was only after that when I started making the acquaintance of humans in the civic and state governments who saw I was serious and treated me that way- and forced the press to do likewise.

I repeat: this would not have happened had you not allowed it. If you had spent more time amongst us outside that of the wretched “master”/”pet” dichotomy, learned the true meanings behind our barks, growls, snarls and yips, came to appreciate how resourceful we truly are when we are what you condescendingly call “unhoused”, understood our sociopolitical concerns as we and not you know them- well, things would be a lot difference for us all, wouldn’t it?

Anyway, I have to go- I’m “hanging” with the other members of my superhero team- which includes two of the very few of you who tried to meet me at my intellectual level and succeeded. There are such creatures.

You are on notice, human race. If you don’t do something about making these monstrosities cease forever, then I will. And you won’t like what I do to stop them…

Cerberus often shoots off her mouth:

A reminder that I’m one of the authors in this sale and would appreciate it if I got more sales of my own. You’d be getting my fiction books, like:

and:

To say nothing of:

Along with other works of mine, which either have been shared on this platform, or will be shared on this platform in the future.

You’re not going to get them any cheaper anywhere else….

I, Cerberus, the mightiest puppy in the universe, cannot even begin to explain the enormous amount of rage I feel at the human race at this moment.

A dog’s best friend, my ass.

Oh, you don’t know what I’m MAD about NOW, do ya? Typical.

Before we go any further- READ THIS!:

https://www.thepetitionsite.com/305/568/087/?z00m=33516147&redirectID=3546088020

It’s infuriating that you just….allow this to happen….

Seriously- you can’t find and arrest these people in the heat of the moment, like I can?

This is personal for me. I built my reputation busting chidrools like these.

Practically the first thing I did as a heroine was corner a guy like this who was making a fortune out of mills like these. Of course he refused to accept that I could even talk English, let alone treat me as an intellectual peer.

So I went to consider effort to dead-lift his automobile and drop it on his fat, loser ass!

Another time, a different bunch of fools in that racket thought they could stop me just by putting a hay-bale in my path as they fled in their automobile.

HA!

I not only sped my way through the bale but I chased the car and easily caught up with it. Then I pulled on the back bumper with all of my strength, and it stopped dead.

And when they tried to flee, I confronted them, and ordered them to return whence they came or else I would punish them. I think they were freaked out by my talking English as well, because they ran like they saw ghosts.

So I want anyone engaged in this crap to know: I will find you, and I will KILL you.

Then there was THIS delightful gem, from this very platform:

The Storyteller's Corner

Fido Isn't Filthy

Veterinary science and animal biological studies can sometimes be among the driest material a person can sit themselves down to read through, but if you’re looking for specific details, it can be wonderfully illuminating. I, for one, have long loved dogs, mostly of the ‘working’ breeds (German Shepherds, Golden Retrievers, Labradors being my favorites…

Read more

4 months ago · 7 likes · 1 comment · Joshua T Calkins-Treworgy

Who are you calling “Fido”, asshole?

That’s almost as low as calling a Black man a….well, you get the idea.

What makes you think we are always unclean- or like being so?

Do you think I spend my days idiotically cavorting in mud, or rolling my pelt in inexcusable filth?

I should say NOT.

My work requires eternal vigilance, as well as the necessity to remain strong in body, mind and appearance for it to be effective. I cannot let anyone trusting in me down. If I or my uniform get in any ways ripped, torn or dirty, I get it and me clean ASAP.

If I didn’t care about myself, I’d end up like my nemesis, Bordetella, who has had her body and mind warped by any disease known to the canine race. And ended up becoming a carrier and vector for them.

The chick is a total slob….unkempt fur, glassy eyes, nose out of joint, always with the most vacuous look on her face. She could stop a clock and wreck its interior mechanisms, besides.

Of course, that’s why she’s dangerous. And that’s why I have to keep my game up- for, if she even manages to get a paw on me for an extended period of time, she will somehow manage to pierce my otherwise impenetrable hide and doom me to an excruciatingly painful death.

Or so I think, She hasn’t done it yet.

The one thing that this Mr. Caulkgun-Triggerworthy, or whatever his name is, got right, was discussing the inordinate cleaning power of a dog’s saliva.

I will agree with that, but with my particular sub-race, the Sirian Perros, that ability is magnified a thousandful. I could either keep the world clean through my incalculable might, or with a few well-placed licks somewhere…

Ah. I kid you…not.

More salty canine talk:

This is just a short note letting you know what I have planned for my Substacks in the coming year.

Here at Made From What’s Not Real, I am planning on getting into serializing the long-form fiction I wrote and published before I came here. (That includes the book I am holding in the photo, by the way.) I have wanted to introduce the major series character I developed from the old days to you, and, as the “origin story” I wrote for her is a novella rather than a traditional short story, it would be hard to fit in a single newsletter piece. So I decided it would have to be serialized.

Then I remembered I also had other long-form pieces you haven’t seen yet unless you are of the miniscule number of people who have not yet published or read them in book form, and so…

Concurrently, I will be repeating some of the earlier published stories I have here for the benefit of the newer subscribers. And also periodically making new things.

At the other Substack, FOCUS!:

FOCUS! A Reader In Animation History, Theory, and Practice

An occasional series of essays on the art and commerce of animation.

By David Perlmutter

I’m hoping to begin a long-planned series of profiles of female characters from television animation who occupy my thoughts (not like that!), along with hopefully more general reviews and overviews. The details of the character project will be revealed to subscribers of FOCUS! soon, so you should subscribe to it if you want to read it.

So this is fair warning about what is coming. And if you enjoy it, I would be glad to direct you to the original book sources for possible purchase and online review, which I, as all authors do, require to have a stronger online presence than I do now.

Talk to you later.

“Dude!”

Wendy caught me as I was trying to pry open the bottle of whiskey that I’d surreptitiously taken from the bar while everyone was partying, figuring that nobody would notice. I’d been sober most of that New Year’s Eve, like I promised her earlier, but temptation was bound to get me, I suppose.

Look. If you’re an attractive girl, it’s hard enough going through life actually being ignored. And if you’d the unfortunate experience that I had just had, alcohol serves as a panacea. Maybe not the only or the best one, but still a good one.

Anyway, there was Wendy, standing there in the doorway, with her checkerboard shirt and rakishly tilted faux-fur hat giving her the appearance of a hunter on the prowl. And I was her game.

“You told me that you’d given up the booze, Belle,” she said.

“No, I didn’t,” I corrected her. “I said I wasn’t drinking as much as I used to. I never said I was going to give it up entirely. Besides, the way things are, you need something to get through the days.”

“Amen to that. Here; let me get that for you.”

She went to the bottle, and opened it easily, as you’d expect the daughter of a northwestern lumberjack might be able to do. With glasses and ice from the mini-fridge, we started working on the bottle’s contents.

We’d only met recently, but we’d bonded in friendship quickly. We had a lot of stuff in common. We were both daughters of extremely masculine men who expected a lot of us, but couldn’t necessarily be there for us when we needed them to be. We were both in the late teens-early twenties age range, when girls become women seemingly overnight and are left to find their way through life without much of a biological road map. We’d both grown up without mothers to help us through trying times. We both had worked demanding and frustrating jobs for male bosses who didn’t always get us (doubly troubling for me, since mine was also my dad). We both had a lot of male admirers, even very young ones. We both came from small towns where weird crap was always happening, and we’d learned pretty quickly how to be self-sufficient against most types of threats because of that. We both had red hair: mine being long and orange tinted, hers being short and the color of port wine.

And, as it turned out, we were both really the creations of people from other worlds, and thus didn’t have complete control over our destinies. Which we were now trying to change by working independently, but with others, to get that control for ourselves.

I should probably explain that, even though I don’t entirely get it myself.

You see, when an animated television program is created, a whole small universe is developed along with it. The creators of the programs spend a lot of time shaping how everything looks, acts, and feels, and that includes the people who live in the universe. However, they spent much more time and emphasis developing who the lead characters are, and all the supporting characters have to take what’s left on the table after that to figure out who they are. And when a show ends, and a universe basically gets rubbed out of existence, you have a lot of people who are out of not just a job, but a whole way of life.

Bad enough trying to be a lead character living without a full existence, but what about if you’re just a supporting character?

Which was what I was told, condescendingly, when they shut down my universe and life.

The worst part about that was, up until then, I thought I was living a “normal” life in the “real” world. And then to discover otherwise! To say I was shocked, devastated and angry, among other things, would be the mildest of understatements.

That was another thing Wendy and I had bonded over. She’d been “duped” the same way. But, unlike me, she was used to dealing with fakes and frauds. Her old workplace was full of them, headed by her boss. So she could smell them a mile away, whereas I was a lot greener. The advice she’d given me about that had come in handy.

As it turned out, we were far from the only ones who had been “duped”. Television animation shows tend to have a short shelf life, and so universes are capriciously created and destroyed at whim, with nary a thought to what might become of the creatures inhabiting them after the ax falls. Because we were not “real” people, with off-stage lives, property, votes and dependents, the theory went, we could be treated as if we did not really “exist”, and be used and abused in all senses of the word.

Those of us who had been exiled from our “homes” did not take kindly to this idea. With the idea of taking back what was “rightfully ours”, we were now actively pursuing any sort of activity we could to get our point across. From social media campaigns, to class-action lawsuits against the big studios that had “created” us, to acts of “terrorism” (at least according to the government, because we’ve really gotten on their bad side). This was all under the banner of the Cartoon Republican Army, of which Wendy and I had become members as soon as we could. We were proudly, at that time, wearing our regulation armbands (which, unfortunately, look like the ones the Nazis used to wear on their uniforms, only with the group initials in place of the infamous swastika).

That was the whole reason we were where we were in the first place. An isolated hotel, up on a perilous set of stone cliffs, with only a small seaport as the nearest human contact. Was there a better place to spend what would have been an otherwise lonely as hell holiday season for the vast majority of us “toons”? The CRA leadership thought so, and they proceeded to buy up a huge number of the available rooms at the place. The management was delighted, because they don’t get nearly that many visitors most of the time, and we were putting a lot of the mean greens in their pocket doing that.

But they didn’t stay delighted. Not by a long shot.

*

The evening had started out reasonably enough, with a discussion of how our joint identities and goals bonded us, and an attempt to figure out where we wanted to go from there. That didn’t last. Sure enough, as I kind of thought they would, those who were more interested in partying than politics had high-jacked the whole affair. They got the booze out, some of which had been brought there, and some of it the hotel’s personal stash. Now here it was NYE, and a fair number of us had been sloppy drunk for a long time before then. You could tell by all the inebriated bodies tossed around the floors. Though some of them weren’t inebriated enough to make grabs at my tits and ass. Even when I swore and kicked and threw punches at them, they wouldn’t let up. I was lucky to get back to the room with my whiskey and virginity still intact.

It might have been all right if we had stuck to what we brought and not drunk up the hotel’s resources.

Including all of the concierge’s beloved Sam Adams.

This would undoubtedly be the first and only time we’d been staying at this place, if he had his way.

When I finished my first glass of whiskey, I went to the window, and longingly gazed out of it, over the long high cliffs, pass the seaport, and onto the long and unforgiving expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. Then I turned to Wendy and, quoting Peggy Lee, said:

“Is that all there is?”

“All there is to what?” Wendy asked.

“You know. Life. Specifically, our lives. Or, at least, the ones we used to have.”

“How so?”

“You know what I mean. Supporting characters in other people’s lives. Not being able to be fully grown, fully dimensional, independent people. What kind of life is that to live?”

“We were only “supporting” characters because the narratives of the shows chose to define us as “supporting characters,” Wendy reminded me. “In our own minds, on our own terms, in our own lives, especially in the parts that the camera didn’t see, we were leads.”

“You mean, like when we went to the bathroom….”

“Besides that. When we were working and stuff.”

“Neither of us had jobs that were really exciting.”

“Which was probably why we were supporting characters, and not leads.”

“But why create us at all? I always had the sneaking suspicion that the producers of my show created me just to be eye candy, and nothing else. I mean, just as I was coming up the staircases in the lobby to get to the elevator, there were a few drunk guys getting fresh. Like #MeToo in embryo.”

“Our guys, or locals?”

“Who do you think? You know how scared most of the hotel staff is of us.”

“Why? Is it that B.S. about us being capricious gods and goddesses willing and able to kill if and when we want to? I don’t trust the media to get anything right about us, just like they can’t get it right about anything or anybody else anymore. Besides, the only things those kind of guys need, regardless of race, is to have their balls kicked up into their pelvises. That’s what I did when they tried it with me when I followed you up here.”

Suddenly, we heard knocking on the door, and slurred voices. I knew it was the fellows who had tried stuff with me earlier. How had they found out where I was?

I flushed and tried to escape to the room, but Wendy motioned me back to the bed I was sitting on.

“Never mind about them,” she said. “I’ll deal with them.”

And, bravely, she undid the chain lock on the hotel door and stepped outside. There was a flurry of swearing, and the sounds of tautly thrown punches and kicks, and then fast footsteps in retreat. Then Wendy returned, her clothes unruffled and her hair hardly out of place.

“You dealt with them,” I said, admirably.

“Yeah,” she answered. “A lot of the dumber boys don’t think a girl would ever have the courage to attack them. So, when they do, it’s kind of unknown territory, and they’re the ones who suddenly can’t deal with it. Not like us.”

“I’ll remember that,” I responded. “But what do we do now?”

“As in what? Work?”

“Mostly.”

“We’re more fortunate than most of that crew downstairs, because we have actual real-world job experience that we can translate into jobs here in the “real” world. There’s always going to be a restaurant in need of a waitress, given the turnover rate, so you shouldn’t have trouble. As for me, the amount of time I spent being bored behind a counter before is probably going to lead to me being bored behind another one sooner or later, if my C.V. is taken seriously.”

“But what if, you know, we end up having a new boss who….tries to take advantage….”

“They wouldn’t dare.” Wendy was adamant on this point. “Not in this day and age. I just showed you the folly of that, didn’t I? And besides: social media sucks in a lot of ways, but it can be a brilliant way of taking down an unjust attacker if it’s used the right way. And, besides, if other human men are as….well…beguiled…..by us as the men working here are, they’re doubly as likely to want to make trouble. All that B.S. about all us ‘toon girls being man-eating, ball-breaking vampires was good for scaring them off of us, at least.”

Then we heard what sounded like a gunshot, which startled me.

“What was that?” I said. “You don’t think that was one of us….with a gun….?”

“That was a flare,” said Wendy. “Not a bullet. Trust me- I know the difference.” She looked at her watch. “It’s 11:59 now. Somebody probably just decided to launch the New Year early. I think I need another shot. What about you?”

I nodded. And we proceeded to do that, as everyone else counted down from 10 to 1 as best they could, and welcomed the New Year in as the two of us did.

With a strong sense of faith who we were, but with a still strong and lingering sense of fear of the unknown world and life ahead of us.

To read non-fiction about animated characters, subscribe to FOCUS!:

FOCUS! A Reader In Animation History, Theory, and Practice

An occasional series of essays on the art and commerce of animation.

By David Perlmutter

Int.- ILGWG Headquarters, Known Space

Cerberus, the mightiest puppy in the universe, is wearing a Santa tassle hat besides her T-shirt uniform, and she is trying and failing to get it out of her face. So she finally drops it beside her…and notices the camera…

C: Oh. I didn’t see you there. Why are you….Right! Well, here it is Christmas- and yes, before you say it, superheroes do mark these calendar occasions. For we observe the changes of the calendar like everyone else. And we of the International League of Girls With Guns (muscles, not firearms) are no different than any others. Especially since our relationship is almost like sisters…

Power Bunny, the mightiest rabbit in the universe, runs past at top speed, even though she is quite obviously pickled. She is followed in succession by The Brat, the little girl-like alien cyborg; Candy Girl, the Titan of Teens; and Muscle Girl, the most powerful pre-pubescent girl in the universe, all with looks of concern. All wearing their uniforms, though PB’s is hanging looser than usual on her.

C: Sorority sisters.

A loud CRASH echoes far off.

C (preparing to run): Excuse me while I rebuke my colleagues.

Camera follows her as she rushes off swiftly. She soon encounters the others in a heap of flailing arms and legs. With a flowery growl, she gets their attention, and they right themselves.

C: Ladies, please explain the meaning of this. (PB opens her mouth to speak, but Cerberus cuts her off.) And none of your monkeyshines! I am well aware of what “this” means!

MG: The TL;DR version is that someone was trying to spike the eggnog with a shot of rum.

CG: And get us all as loaded as her! That’ll mess with my meds.

B: Look, it wasn’t me. All I said was “maybe we could do it like the old days.”

C: Meaning?

PB: Come off it, Cerb’. You know your history. That wussy stuff in the shops ain’t real eggnog.

C: I should say not! You cannot pedal an alcoholic beverage to children, and that’s who they’re aiming it at.

PB: Ah, g’wan. Th’ end of the year is always about being loaded. Bessie Smith said so:

C: Ugh! You are just trying to justify continuing your addiction!

PB: You Earth kids say “addiction”, we in Anthropomorph say “way of life”.

C: (growls)

PB: Ah, whadaya want me to do? Say sorry?

MG: Barbara, please. You are missing the point.

PB: The point of what?

MG: The point of why people celebrate at this time in the first place!:

B: Hang on a minute. So this thing is all about celebrating the birth of one kid?

CG: Not just any “kid”. Jesus. The Messiah. The Only Begotten Son Of God. The man on whose teachings the entire Christian faith is based!

B: Oh. Well, you remember I’m not from around these parts…

MG: Definitely, Brat.

C: But what I want to know from you (indicating PB with paw) is why you think getting us intoxicated like yourself was a good game plan for tonight.

PB: You wanna know? Just so’s you know how I feel when it happens. And because me old bamboo is being kicked around Silicon Valley like a can!

CB: Your “old bamboo”?

C: You mean Warner Brothers being put up for sale, don’t you?

PB (nods): Yeah, man. Damn Netflix and damn Paramount are out to screw my people over like always! They’re already trying to get the animators out with that AI bullshit, and then they’ll replace us ‘toons with the fancy computer garbage they like!

MG: So…

PB: You wouldn’t like the livelihood of your whole neighborhood put up at auction without your saying so, would you, Gerda?

MG: No!….Ah, I understand…

B: Don’t worry about that, PB. If the Valley tries to one up Burbank, we’ll be there for you. We…usually are.

CG: See? That’s what I mean! You show that you care about each other at Christmas.

MG: And not because Jesus or Santa or anyone else told you to do it- you do it on your own because you know it ‘s the right thing to do.

She embraces Candy Girl, who does likewise with the Brat. The Brat does the same with Power Bunny, and Power Bunny tickles Cerberus.

C: N…n…o…stop…I….(to audience) M…m…erry…C..r…i…s….(she breaks down laughing, and the others join her).

Christmas Eve. Around midnight. The door knocked.

There was no one up except me. So I went to the door and opened it.

It was the creature who was once my imaginary friend, hovering a few feet off the steps, with blood dropping out of the part of him where his ass would be, one drop at a time.

What a surprise.

He intoned what was supposed to be some sort of intimidating howl of rage, intending to scare or intimidate me.

A timid girl would have screamed and shut the door at this point. But- especially now that I am eight- I am not that type of girl.

I demanded silence from him, and he complied.

“Let me guess,” I said. “You have been sent here to teach me the error of my incorrect ways, and you will not rid yourself of me until I have admitted that I have sinned. And you will insist that, for ever more, I live my life according to what many consider to be the “true” meaning of what this night signifies.”

He should have expected this from me. But he seemed not to. Because he stood there for a second, before finally nodding his head.

“Well,” I say, quietly and firmly, “it ain’t gonna happen. Get out of here before I decide to kill you-again.”

I tried to shut the door, but he simply passed through it and stood in front of me again.

“You cretin!” I snapped at him. “Don’t you understand English? I told you that your efforts to try and reform me were not going to happen. Away with you- now!”

“But, Amanda,” he croaked pathetically, addressing me by name, “I’m supposed to do this.”

“Do not try to defy me,” I warned him. “If you did your research about me, as they probably made you do, you probably understand why I was chosen for this treatment.”

He was silent.

“You fail to understand what a farce this all is,” I said. “This entire set-up was invented by a man named Dickens in the 19^th century, as a framework for a short work of literature designed to be entertaining and instructive to the people of his time, and nothing more. However, ever since then, whenever a fictional narrative has a particularly nasty character who needs to be taught a “lesson” of some kind, it inevitably rips off and models itself on Mr. Dickens’ narrative. All of which demonstrates how writers are lazy hacks who prefer to make money stealing other people’s ideas rather than making their own.”

“But….”

“Don’t interrupt me!” I said, shaking a fist at him. “That particular work of literature displays a particularly thick-headed attitude towards morality in some people. Who are pathetic! Just like yourself. Just as your efforts to “entertain” me when I brought you to “life” were such a failure to entertain me that I was forced to terminate your existence. Were you not cast in the image of the one boy on Earth whose presence I can stand for more than a minute, I would have destroyed you much sooner than I did!

“The whole unspoken raison d’etre for this whole event is lost in the mist of time. And thus, this holiday tries to justify itself by being connected to practically every means of making the almighty dollar possible, from November up until now every year, with no cessation. And, in the case of people in my age group, a steady reinforcement and amplification of Fascist attitudes of what “good” behavior is, in order to possibly- possibly, mind you- get one of those soulless products of capitalist production which are hardly worth the material they are produced with! And this happens every damn year!

“Is it any wonder that any of us children have not been driven insane by these insane levels of manipulation of our wants, desires and expectations? Maybe some of us are like that already, and we don’t even know it. I can, at least, account for the sanity of myself.”

Since he still hadn’t moved, I knew I had to intimidate him more seriously. So I whipped out my axe- the gleaming silver axe that’s my pride and joy- and held it with formidable strength above my head.

“Now get out of here, and stay out,” I snapped. “And, should whomever sent you here send you or any of your demon foes here again, or think about it, let him know that I will personally destroy you and him without question!”

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That was enough to finally get him to leave. I lowered the axe and held in front of me while I smoothed out my skirt, which had been ruffled in my anger.

“Well,” I mused, “that was easy. Now: where was I?”

Dragging the axe behind me, I walked up the stairs of my house, and prepared to embark upon the murder of the rest of my family, as I had so long desired.

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I.

When the ship arrived on Earth, Tobor called his fellow robot soldiers to the bridge.

“Attention!” he said, as his non-moving mouth gleamed with every word he spoke. “Invasion is imminent.”

“Exterminate!” shouted a small, white-paneled machine with a prominent turret gun, which it fired off abruptly. “Exterminate!”

“Not at this moment, please, Dalek,” said Tobor, rubbing his skull with one of the circular metal clamps that passed for hands on his body. “We are not in any danger at the present time.”

“Do you expect such danger to occur to us, Tobor?” said Robbie, whose giant metallic body was dominated by the expansive internal “brain” processor at the center of his faceless head.

“When does it not occur, wherever we may go?” said Gort, whose red arms and torso balanced inadequately on the unicycle that stood in for legs on his body. “We robots are perennially at the end of the discriminatory salutations of the various races of the universe, who cannot conceive with their tiny little minds that we are their equals…..”

“What mean you?” slurred Clanker, a tall, grey-metaled giant who was not very intelligent. “That does not compute.”

“He is referring to us always being attacked wherever we attempt to invade the universe, lug nuts!” declared QT, the lone one of the operational machines who could be described as having a “female” personality. Being taller and of a shinier silver sheen than Clanker, she was thus able to clout him on the head immediately after insulting him.

Tobor violently cleared what passed for a throat on his body, and spoke again.

“None of this discussion is of any meaningful usage to advancing our goal and cause,” he said.

“Our apologies for interrupting your explanation of what we are supposed to be doing,” said Robbie. “Please continue.”

So Tobor did. He outlined in full detail, with exacting care, how it was that they were to march to wherever it was on this planet the center of political control was, and, implying that, if their demands were refused, they would proceed to destroy the entire planet until a surrender from their opponents was achieved, and they became its rulers. He managed to do so, despite various cries and gasps of surprise, gunshots, and declarations of “does not compute” from his compatriots that interrupted him from time to time.

The explanations completed, the group exited the craft, marching in precise military time. Until they discovered that they were on a countertop in some Earth merchant’s shop and were poised to fall off the edge.

And then, without warning, and without completely understanding what was going on, the robots found themselves caught by much larger beings, as those beings rushed inside whatever building they were inside and cavorted like ridiculous, crazed fools, not stopping until each of the robots, and many other beings resembling them, were hauled away within the larger beings’ pockets and coats….

LAST MINUTE CHRISTMAS RIOTING AT WAL-MART

WINNIPEG (CP)- A mass of would-be present givers abruptly descended on the Wal-Mart on Ellice Avenue this evening, in a frenzied rush to be the first to purchase this year’s phenomenal toy sensation, “Happy Little Robot Friends”, before the inevitable deadline of Dec. 24 (tomorrow). Unfortunately, demand exceeded supply…

Hello, acquaintances. This is ya gal again…

I’m sorry I haven’t been in contact much lately, but other affairs necessitated my involvement. My nemesis Dumbell and I got into one hell of a fight, to start with- I mean like a King Kong vs. Godzilla fight, given our super powers and all. I slapped her down, she slapped me down, I bit her, she bit me, and we both growled and snarled VERY loudly. I won’t repeat what we said to each other, but suffice it to say, my virtue, dignity and life were on the line several times. I finally had to bring out the big guns and hypnotize her into going very far away and leaving me alone…

And then….and then….

The rotten slobs who call themselves Immigration, Customs and Enforcement tracked me down, and, as I am half-alien through my father’s mighty lineage, they threatened to deport me. To where I have no idea, but I extremely disliked the fact that they shouted very loudly at me and pulled their weapons on me when I enquired about that.

You do NOT raise your voice to ME and GET AWAY WITH IT!

As soon as I swiftly grabbed the gun out of the hands of one of them and bent it into oblivion, they understood and left very quickly.

And then D. and some of my other nemeses teamed up to gang up on me and put me out of business. Again, I nearly bought it when they somehow manage to find a needle that could cut through my invulnerable pelt and skin and poked me with it a few times. I tricked them all into thinking the others were the problem and was able to slip away while they fought and argued with each other.

But enough of that.

I have some other issues that must be addressed.

Such as this:

https://www.animationmagazine.net/2025/12/exclusive-clip-charlie-the-wonderdog-suits-up-for-the-big-screen/

Who, exactly, is this poltroon when he is at home? And how did he manage to get a film company to buy his life story?

I have had more than enough of Hollywood exploiting my race and my vocation for a passle of cheap laughs. (And, yeah, Krypto, that means you.)

If I’m the Wonder Woman of canine heroes, this fellow is the Plastic Man.

Listen carefully if you can hear or read this, Charles. You had better hope and pray that our paths never cross.

Because that game your playing?

I’m the one that brought it here!

And speaking of games…

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mibuddypet/mibuddyworlds-first-ai-powered-dog-translation-collar?ref=auxaa1

What the bloody hell is this?

“Mibuddy”, it says. “AI Translation Collar.”

God help a truly intelligent dog like myself would ever weat such a thing! And even some of the more dingbatted ones of my kind don’t need that.

First of all, it’s AI. Seriously: anybody and everybody who believes that this thing is the savior of the world, like they seem to believe, is severely mistaken.

It’s right in the name: artificial intelligence. I.e.- fake!

Second of all: the only reason this thing exists is that you humans have never bothered to learn our language. You get our body language wrong all the time! And when I try to communicate with some of you in one of your languages, you run off screaming and stuttering like you use to do to poor old Casper the Friendly G-g-g-host!

I am doing my part to educate the animals of the world to understand your cotton-picking gibberish so that we can avoid further misunderstandings of this nature.

You do yours.

That is all…

A while ago I was asked about my interests in music:

And that reminded me of an old essay of mine not yet shared here, so I’m doing it now:

#

If there is one unassailable presence in my life, one thing that remains constant there when everything else seems to change, it is music.

From the beginning, I associated music with the good things in life. The love expressed to me by parents, siblings, relatives and friends alike was connected to it. As were key moments of my education and my emotional growth as a person. There seemed to me to be, then, as there is now, that there was no gaping emotional wound or bout of insecurity (of which I have had both and many) that it could not heal. If only by keeping the wolves at the door of my mind away for a little while.

Making your own music, by singing and/or playing a musical instrument, if you know how to, is among the most empowering things you can do as an individual in a universe that tends to favor conformity over anything else. From the minstrels, troubadours and bards of the Middle Ages, to the diverse panoply of figures that dot the musical landscape today, musicians have always seemed to be in touch with the secrets of the universe that other people can’t understand even if they tried. They don’t always share them with us, but when they do, you really come away with your whole life changed. It is religion without the political and metaphysical baggage, reduced to a pure, emotional core that allows anybody to access it easily. Even when you don’t speak the same language as the singers and players, you can still appreciate it when the band starts kicking up its heels- and makes you kick yours up, too.

My life has been changed- multiple times- in this way. Always for the better.

This is why I spend so much time listening to it- every day. Why I spend a goodly percentage of what little money comes my way acquiring it, and poring over it constantly, trying to figure out what the lyrics mean while the band swings, sways and rocks behind the singer delivering them. Why I think lyricists are some of the greatest poets who ever lived, and that their best words are as good as anything Byron, Keats, Shelley, Blake, Wordsworth or Coleridge ever wrote. And why I always tell people- or want to tell them- about what I’m listening to as of late.

Because it is one of the very few things in the world everyone knows and understands.

Regardless of what kind, and what artists you think are the kings and queens of it.

Every country in the world- even every social group and sub-group within our own- has its own indigenous musical traditions. Including its own musical instruments, and its own way of singing. That’s usually what the haters target when they want to destroy them. Think about how the American slaveholders of the 18 th and 19 th centuries banned their slaves from doing anything musical that wasn’t religious in nature. Or, for that matter, how the Indigenous people of North America in particular, but also elsewhere in the world, were denied the right to speak the very languages and have a connection to the very traditions that made them unique. Therefore, they were denied access to the spectacular ways they once used music to unify themselves. In Canada, my home country, that had devastating consequences that we only now understand and are trying to make amends for. Often by giving them a chance to use their hypnotic drum beats, haunting vocal cadences, and wicked terpsichorean abilities in public any chance we- or, more often now, they- get.

To say nothing of the many diverse musical traditions that sprung out of that aforementioned American slaveholding empire, but transcended and ultimately wrecked it. Of the many singers, songwriters and musicians I deeply admire, the vast majority of them were or are African Americans.

Very few people on Earth have undergone as deep and as brutal the kinds of sufferings and humiliations as they have in the past and, unfortunately, still do now. Yet, at the same time, those sufferings and humiliations became the fuel for a massive emotional blast furnace, which created music that has changed the entire world more than a few times. Be it ragtime, jazz, R&B, soul, funk, rap or plain and simple blues. Despite being a believer in the value of humility, I think that, if we are to view some people as being above others in some way, it would be these folks. Particularly considering how ridiculous and terrible some of their personal lives were or are. As one of them famously put it, all they want from us is R-E-S-P-E-C-T. And, I for one, will give it to them- always.

As I will many of the great modern bards that I can be proud to say hail from my country.

Canadian literature has had many eminent poets in its ranks over the years, so it’s no surprise Canadian music has poets among its ranks as well. Bruce Cockburn, whose calm Bruce Banner appearance and manner belies the Incredible Hulk-like ferocity of his lyrics. Gordon Lightfoot, who always remains thoughtful and meditative, whether he’s singing about what could happen if you could read his mind, or chronicling the stormy demise of a Lake Superior ore boat named for an obscure Milwaukee politician.

Leonard Cohen, whose words and deeds are the ultimate mash-up between burning masculine romanticism and Zen spirituality. Joni Mitchell, combining a deceptive lyrical simplicity with an ability to make any musical genre turn tricks for her. Burton Cummings, who can go from aggressive masculine rocker on one song to vulnerable grown-up boy on the next like no one else. Neil Young, whose whiny singing voice and anti-Establishment politics effectively disguise the profundity and perennial experimentation apparent in the lyrics and music of his best songs, and prevent you from appreciating them fully except at a historical distance. And so, so many others. Most of the folks I just spoke about, if only briefly, got action outside of the North, but not all of them do, and some of them can be just as good sometimes.

And it flows into other aspects of my life as well. Another great love of my life- the animated film and television series- has been living a happy common-law relationship with music ever since sound and image were first successfully merged, and it’s one they’ve both benefitted from repeatedly. Music helped animation to change and grow, from being unconnected static images to stories fully worthy of the same kind of respect music itself deserves and gets, but is not always justly awarded. The great Disney features have almost exclusively been structured like Broadway or Hollywood musicals, with big production numbers and contemplative arias alike. It’s no surprise to me that so many of them have been as successful in their adaptation to the Great White Way as they were originally on the silver screen. What better way is there for a kid- or an open-minded adult, too- to learn how powerful music can be, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs back in the day to Frozen now.

The television variety is crawling with it, likewise, from the themes to the closing credits. A lot of the characters seem to have music in their very blood and bones. Not only can many of them carry a good tune, but some of them can play guitar, piano, drums or (in one case) saxophone with a skill and panache rivaling any and all of those instruments’ “real” players. And the producers take full advantage of that skill to drop in a number anywhere they think it fits, however incongruous it may be.

Think of Hoagy Carmichael anachronistically guest-starring on The Flintstones. When Bart tricks a church congregation into singing “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” as lustily and fervently as any hymn on The Simpsons. When the Powerpuff Girls use rock and roll to fight against villainy when their super-powers fail them, by reminding us in song that love is what makes the world go round. When Peter Griffin gets everyone- and I mean everyone- in a football stadium to sing and dance with him- in razor sharp time, yet- to the unlikely strains of “Shipoopi” from The Music Man on Family Guy. And definitely every single episode of the incomparable Phineas and Ferb, where the relationship between animation and music is repeatedly consummated on a zenith level.

So, if you see me somewhere sitting down in public while a singer is singing and/or a band is playing, and I totally ignore you, please don’t mistake ignorance for rudeness.

It’s just that, like anywhere else where I listen to it, I know music will always be where the actionis in my life. And I’m totally willing and prepared to accept any and all sorts of gifts it may give me, so that I’ll be a better person for it all.

Just like so many people not unlike me have, for thousands of years before and thousands of years after.

As part of this sale I am offering all of my fiction available at the Smashwords site at discounts. So if you are interested in my fiction, this is a great time to acquire some.

Split Decision: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1470757

Film Flam: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1452762

Fandom: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1452668

Orthicon: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1026400

Honey And Salt: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1008358

Let’s Be Buddies: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/957021

Nothing About Us Without Us: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/942173

The Singular Adventures Of Jefferson Ball: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/758174

If you purchase and read any fiction, please make sure to review it wherever and if you review books to allow them to gain more attention.

I hope what I write is fit to your taste.

From now until Dec. 31, I am making all of my paid membership categories available at a 50% discount, to thank those who have supported me and my two Substacks this year by joining up as free memberships.

The offer for Made From What’s Not Real is here:

https://davidperlmutter.substack.com/7a1b6cd2

And this is the one for FOCUS!:

https://focus966.substack.com/34549a42

I hope you will be able to take advantage of it, as it means a lot to us all.

McGuire was a little late responding to the doorbell, owing to her habitual tardiness. But what awaited her when she finally opened  the door shocked her to no end.

It was a young man wearing a cardigan pullover and short pants, and with a sickly green light emanating from his body, like a ghost.

No. Scratch that.

It was what a young man of that age would look like if at least one of his parents were a dog.

That is, therefore, an anthropomorphic dog.

But a dimension was seemingly missing.

There was not enough depth—in the scientific sense—in his character. He seemed not to be completely present in the world that McGuire knew. It almost appeared that, if he were to turn sideways, he would disappear entirely.

“Are you McGuire McGovern?” the dog-boy asked, in a halting, pre-adolescent voice.

She answered in the affirmative. It was all she could do at the moment.

For, while this was the first time they had met in “person”, she knew him all too well. So well enough, in fact, that she had “lived” with him for a goodly portion of her life.

But she had discarded him. What was he doing here, now?

“Wow,” he responded. “You’re my mother. ”

At those words, she fainted.                                                         

 #

She was unconscious for some time. Yet, all through that time, the events rushed past in her mind.

She’d been a student of animation in college and, after gaining her degree, was offered a position at a studio. After working her way up the ladder, she managed to get a shot at making her own show.

The young dog-boy, Johnny Mutt by name, was the star.

She had drawn him with her own hands, as she had everything else about the show—other characters, setting, history and backgrounds.  She made a “bible”, to show that the show had a plan behind it. After vigorously pitching the show, the studio offered her a deal, and that was that.

Or so she thought.

 For the next couple of years, she was engaged in a vigorous round of writing and rewriting, animating and re-animating, recording and re-recording, to get everything right. She had been so excited to even have a program of her own that she hadn’t really bothered to read the contracts that she had signed, and so . . . .

When it was brought to her attention in conversation that it was actually the studio and not her that owned the copyright—and thus the legal control of the series—she lost it.

She attacked them for stealing what was rightfully hers,  demanding that they return control of the property back to her entirely. They countered that she had been working for them from the time before the show had been created, that it had been created on their studio grounds, with their equipment and materials and money funding the whole operation, and she was merely an employee in the scenario.

Both sides had points, but they had money and lawyers on their side, and she had none of either. She could do nothing but accept her lot and move on.

Until Johnny showed up.

                                                              #

McGuire was revived by the smelling salts Johnny held under her nose. When revived, she questioned him tersely.

“You sure you’re actually Johnny Mutt?” she asked. “Not one of those hooligans that they hire to walk around in the suits down there in the theme park?”

“Why would I deny who I am?” he answered. “It’s not in my nature to do that.”

She understood. He was as she created him—an intelligent fellow, kind of too smart for his age, who was easily embarrassed by being smarter than his peers. There was no need to doubt him.

“But, how is it that you can exist without me animating you?” she said.

“I exist without you. You merely brought me to life.”

“Didn’t I?” she snapped, with some irony. “And what did I get in return?”

“Royalty payments, I’m sure, and–”

“I was being sarcastic!”

She jumped up off the couch with a speed that shocked Johnny, making him jump back several steps.

“Look, you,” McGuire barked. “You were a part of my youth, a product of my efforts to want to succeed, to make a difference. I sketched you and everyone you know—everything you think—in an effort to succeed. And when I did succeed, I couldn’t enjoy it because I was so damned busy. And then I lost what I had. They kept you going, sure, and I still got paid some money, but you weren’t mine anymore. You never would be again. And now, after so many bloody years, you come here, I don’t know how, and have the damned nerve to call me your MOTHER!”

“But, what else can I call the person who brought me to life?” He spoke with the nervousness that punctuated so many laughs and punch-lines, but she did not find it funny.

“Not your mother! You have one already. I drew her myself!”

“Like you did me?”

“Of course!”

She sat down on the couch again and buried her head in her hands. He tried to comfort her, but she threw his arm off of her.

“Get the hell out of here,” she demanded. “I don’t need to deal with any more jokes.”

“It’s not a joke.” 

“Then what is it, then?”

His boyish mildness evaporated, unmasking anger and contempt.

“A revelation,” he said, “to tell you the truth!”

“About what?”

“That you didn’t really create me—or where I came from.”

“WHAT?”

“Oh, no. In fact, no cartoon characters were ever “created”  by anybody.. We’ve always been around. We drift around everywhere in time and space, in the minds of all people. But we find it easiest to occupy the minds of people who are most capable of drawing us into life, so to speak.”

“Animators,” she said, softly, realizing what he meant.

“Exactly. How do you think we come to ‘life’ in the first place?”

“So, what, then? If I gave you life, are you going to take mine in return?”

“Nothing like that..”

From out of nowhere, he whipped out a piece of paper and rapidly drew on it with a pencil. He showed it to her. A crude, dragon-like figure. But, suddenly, it began to move, and it shot a small blast of fire in McGuire’s direction. The point being made, Johnny crumpled the paper and drop-kicked it into a recycling bin in the corner near the room.

 “We just want you to know that it’s been a good run, but we don’t need you anymore. From now on, we can bring ourselves to life. And we can do it in the knowledge that you and every other human being who exploited us will never do so AGAIN!”

“I won’t let on what plans we have in mind for you and your kind, but they’re not going to be as bucolic and stupid as the ones you ‘created’ us for. You can draw your own conclusions about that, MOM!”

With a mild, boyish giggle that spoke volumes, he exited the house, leaving her with all the terrifying implications of his words in her mind.

I was nominated for this by of the engaging Substack “LP”.

Part of this involves answering a questionnaire related to music, so I will do that now:

Question One: If you had to listen to an album every day for a week, what would that album be? What do you love about it?

Foundations of Funk: A Brand New Bag by James Brown. Chronicling his greatest ‘60s recordings in their full glory. I can never enough of JB because his recordings were so tightly arranged that you keep hearing new things in them all the time.

Question Two: Is there one album you never want to hear again? What don’t you like about it?

Not a specific album, but I’m not crazy about heavy metal- the noise…

Question Three: What was the greatest gig you ever saw? Which artist or band do you wish you’d seen live and missed?

Greatest gig I saw was seeing the aforementioned James Brown, when he hit my hometown of Winnipeg for what would be the last time. Of the artists I missed out on, I definitely would have liked to have seen Otis Redding or Curtis Mayfield.

Question Four: Do you buy music on physical media, stream, or buy downloads?

Physical media forever.

Question Five: What brought you to writing about music?

I don’t write about it often, but I do enjoy talking about the music that I like if it’s relevant to any conversation.

Question Six: And what brought you to the writers’ community on Substack?

I wasn’t getting enough exposure for my writing anywhere else and this seemed like a place where I could get more attention. I seem to have been correct.

Question Seven: What is your favourite book about music?

The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz. Absolutely everything you need to know about that genre between two covers.

Question Eight: How has music - or any art form - benefited your wellbeing?

Music has benefitted my wellbeing considerably by providing a welcome distraction from difficult things. The main rival it has is animation, which I am very deeply interested in, but they are connected in many unique ways.

Question Nine: What is your writing process, e.g. do you plan in longhand and then write on a laptop, only use a computer/device, or use a different process? Has this changed over the years?

Longer pieces are usually written longhand and then typed on the computer. Short on-the-fly things are typed directly onto the computer.

Question Ten: Are you a musician and a writer, or are you (like me) deeply moved by music yet unable to play?

I used to be a musician; I studied piano for several years, but time constraints forced me to give it up. But I still listen carefully to the keyboard parts on my records and wish I could play like that.

Question Eleven: Is AI a blessing or a curse for writers?

A CURSE! It robs you of the fun part of writing, which is coming up with ideas by yourself instead of relying on the judgement of a machine. Plus, the people in charge of making it are forcing it on us even when we don’t want it!

Thank you for thinking of me like this, Ian.