If ever in your life you are faced with a choice, A difficult decision, a quandary, Ask yourself, "What would Edgar and Ellen do?" And do exactly the contrary.
A series of children's books by Charles Ogden*
actually a pen name used by multiple authors
that was adapted into an animated series. The title characters, a pair of 12-year-old twins, are notorious pranksters who cause mischief and mayhem in the town of Nod's Limbs. The two of them live in a thirteen-story house on the edge of town with their pet (named 'Pet'), a strange creature that vaguely resembles a one-eyed, hairy mop head. Their groundskeeper, Heimertz, lives in a shack near the house, never says a word, and wears a perpetual Slasher Smile. There is also a junkyard near the house where the twins get parts for the many unlikely contraptions that they build. Nod's Limbs itself is an overly cheerful town run by the inept Mayor Knightleigh. His daughter, Stephanie Knightleigh, is Edgar and Ellen's main rival in their quest for amusement.The books and the animated series start with similar setups, but soon diverge. While the book series moves into an overarching plot, the animated series focuses on day-to-day hijinks.The books so far are:
Rare Beasts (2003)
Tourist Trap (2004)
Under Town (2004)
Pet's Revenge (2006)
High Wire (2006)
Nod's Limbs (2007)
Hot Air (2008) *
The first book in the Nodyssey sub-series
Frost Bites (2008)
Split Ends (2009)
Additional material includes: Mischief Manual, Hair 'Em Scare 'Em (a pop-up book), and Graphic Novelty (a comic collection).
The books and TV series provide examples of:
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Tropes shared by both
Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Explained in the books. First, they're the storm drain variety of sewer, not the sewage kind. Second, they were originally built so that people could take leisurely, well-lit strolls in them, but gradually fell into disrepair and had the lighting grates paved over.
In the animated series, the "Heimertz Family Album" segments serve to reveal bits of Heimertz's past this way.
Gadgeteer Genius: Both of the twins to some extent, but especially Edgar. Exaggerated in the animated series, where they build much more elaborate contraptions.
Girl Posse: Stephanie has one in Cassidy Kingfisher and Pepper Poshi, mostly in the TV series due to the books' lack of school scenes. The books mention a couple of others too, but these two seem to be at the top of the pecking order.
Our Founder: A statue of the town's founder, Augustus Nod, sits in the middle of the park.
Parental Abandonment: The twins' parents apparently left years ago on an around-the-world holiday, and haven't been heard from since. The twins never really questioned this, oddly enough.
Thirteen Is Unlucky: The twins' house has thirteen floors, and their mere presence is certainly bad luck for the rest of town. In a sort-of aversion, though, only eleven of those stories are above ground; the other two are basement levels.
Balm apparently has this effect on people; the condition is known as Mad Duke's Disease.
Family Unfriendly Death: Uta Glögg, in her madness, leaping and falling to a fiery death, though it's not actually "seen" as Ellen looks away at the last minute.
Gold Fever: The town eventually succumbs to this in Nod's Limbs, after many days of working on the treasure hunt together finally wear down their spirits.
Humiliation Conga: Rare Beasts. Not only was the twins' scheme a complete failure, they get blasted with hoses and left lying in the mud, while all the kids they wronged get some payback as they walk past by insulting them, kicking mud at them, pulling their hair, etc. Oh, and a jar of fire ants from earlier broke, so they're swarming all over the twins and biting them. You can't say they didn't deserve it, though...
Idiot Ball: Edgar in Split Ends. He goes a bitunhinged in his isolation and ends up derailing his plans for some needlessly complicated personal vengeance, which both fails and lands him in deeper trouble.
Immortality: Regularly consuming balm will grant Type II. This is how Augustus Nod survived underground for 200 years.
Kubrick Stare: The Mayor in an illustration in Nod's Limbs.
Laser-Guided Karma: Rare Beasts puts the twins through a Humiliation Conga at the end, and Tourist Trap—despite the twins having far more sympathetic goals this time around—ends with them getting caught in a rain of pigeon poop.
In "Rare Beasts" the twins cause untold misery when they steal all the pets in town. In "Nod's Limbs" they are desperately trying to save their own.
Stand Alone Book: Rare Beasts is unique in that it has no direct ties to the rest of the series. It basically serves as an introduction to the life of the twins.
Story Arc: The 'original' series has its own. The Nodyssey books are the start of another.
Something Else Also Rises: In one of the "Heimertz Family Album" shorts, one of the young Heimertz's suspenders pops open after he receives a kiss on the cheek from a woman he just saved.
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