Stories 1-4
written by garfieldodie
written by garfieldodie Stories 5-8 written by Swing123
The episode is comprised of eight smaller tales, each centered around a character. As such, individual recaps and tropes are contained in their folders.
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The Tale of Hobbes
Hobbes finds himself very hungry, and after a good deal of searching finds himself unable to procure any tuna. He then realizes that today is grocery day, and as such he takes things into his own paws.
Hobbes finds a nearby pond filled with hundreds of fish, and he swiftly devours them. Not too long later, he rests on the riverbed with a noticeably larger stomach. He decides to check if there's any more fish and finds that they're after him, and he barely manages to make it back into the house... upon which Calvin arrives back home with more tuna.
Tropes:
- Balloon Belly: Hobbes gains one.
- Greed: A major factor in Hobbes' motivation.
- Trademark Favorite Food: The narrator explains Hobbes' love for tuna."Yes, Hobbes is a great lover of tuna fish, or any fish for that matter. He loves them all. He could eat it for hours upon hours. And it is this love of fish that keeps this story going."
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Also remarked upon by the narrator:"Hobbes, as we all know, is Calvin's closest friend, and not just because they have to share a bed. Despite a truckload of arguments and disagreements, Calvin and Hobbes are both dependent on each other. Calvin sometimes to bring Hobbes back down to Earth when he gets too overconfident and Hobbes needs Calvin to keep his life interesting. Oh, and he also needs Calvin for tuna."
The Tale of Andy
Andy is playing a video game in his, but is interrupted by the phone ringing. On the other end is a Puerto Rican man who wants his opinion on a television program. He gives a heavily sarcastic remark about it, and returns to his game. Shortly afterwards, however, he sees a man outside yelling to himself like a lunatic. He heads outside and finds that the man is actually just holding a conversation on a BlueTooth, giving a small lecture on the stupidity of said device (and drawing a comparison to Lando Carlrission's right-hand man) right before heading back to his game.
Tropes:
- Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch: Remarked upon:"Good evening, sir," a voice said. It sounded Puerto Rican. "We would like to know what we can do to improve the show Dance War."
Andy hadn't actually watched the show, but he had heard of it. It was possible to loathe such things without actually seeing them. - Did Not Do the Bloody Research: The white-collared man in Andy's short shouts "IT'S A CONSPIRACY, I TELL YOU!! IT'S A BLOODY CONSPIRACY!!" Do note, however, that both authors (particularly garfieldodie, who wrote this short) are particularly fond of British media, so this may have been intentional.
- Future Imperfect: Parodied by Andy."…Imagine…It is four hundred sixty-eight thousand years in the future, and humanity has left the Earth. It's a derelict planet, abandoned and quiet. Only the artifacts of a long-ago civilization remain. But suddenly, an archaeological ship from a far away empire pierces the atmosphere and lands! Among the ruins of massive cities, they search for clues of this once-great culture and people! And they find it! A sublime, beautiful TV recording: Dance War: Bruno vs. Carrie Ann!"
- Pac Man Fever: Yes, somehow a text-based medium manages to play this trope straight to a tee. Andy's portable game is about a plumber trying to save a princess from a wizard and getting power crystals, and he does the standard "button mash and squint" thing as well.
- Rouge Angles of Satin: It's Lando Carlrissian, not Lando Carlrission.
- Take That!: It becomes increasingly clear that garfieldodie isn't really fond of video games or BlueTooths (moreso the latter).
The Tale of Sherman
Sherman concocts an experiment to create an intelligent mold, which is successful. Too successful, in fact, as it grows quite big and attempts to attack him! Sherman manages to squash it with a dictionary, creating quite a mess.
Tropes:
- Gone Horribly Right: The mold monster.
- Insufferable Genius: Remarked upon by the narrator:"Sherman J Hamster is a genius, and with all that genius comes a great big honkin' ego. His heart's in the right place, but it only stands to reason he'll need to show off his brain once in a while. I mean, it's like having a new car, and you've just got to show it off to your friends because you know that they don't have this car."
- Intelligible Unintelligible: Sherman has little difficulty understanding the mold monster's groans.
The Tale of Dr. Brainstorm and Jack
Just an average day in the Brainstorm household: Jack gets some soda and helps Brainstorm stop his hair from burning.
- Incendiary Exponent: Brainstorm sets his hair on fire.
The Tale of Calvin
Calvin waltzes down the street in bright red sunglasses peacefully, when suddenly the ground bursts, revealing three black creatures. Calvin identifies them as parasites that can come to any point in time and space and feed off whatever they first see, thus giving them more energy to travel through time and space. Calvin gushes about them for a bit before realizing they're trying to eat him and escaping. He manages to vanquish them with mustard, as it contains vinegar, which can eat away at interdimensional energy cells.
Tropes:
- Chase Sequence
- Cool Shades: Calvin has a pair.
- Dark Is Evil: The creatures are all black.
- Humanoid Abomination: The creatures.
- Nightmare Fetishist: In a manner not unlike the Doctor, Calvin gushes about the black monsters."You're parasites that travel through time and space. You come to any random point in the entire void at any random time and you feed off of whatever you first see when you arrive. And that's what gives you the energy to go through another interdimensional loop to feed on something else. Isn't that right?"
"And now you've come to Earth and you're gonna eat me. This.... is so... AWESOME!!! I love you guys! You're so COOL!! Interdimensional and time travel without any kind of capsule! How cool are you?!" - Weirdness Censor: The narrator explains:Calvin raced down the sidewalk, dodging people as he went. The people he past, however, took absolutely no notice of the monsters, seeing how they either blinked, yawned or turned on or off their bluetooth cell phone when they past. Of course.
The Tale of the MTM
The MTM is alerted for its annual self-checkup. He tests everything - his megaphone, time travel device, and interdimensional hard drive. The latter, unfortunately, has a huge hole in it!... that is repaired very quickly. With nothing better to do, the MTM looks into tomorrow to see what's going on, providing quite a bit of foreshadowing in the process.
Tropes:
- Anti-Climax: A few of them.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:The only difference from a regular portable CD player and this one, is that the MTM can talk in a British accent, has a witty personality, can travel through time, and do a whole bunch of other things that CD players can't do. The best part is that he can play CDs, too.
- Delayed Ripple Effect: See below.
- Foreshadowing: A very blunt form of it."Hmm, Let's see, That Brainstorm bloke is going to attack us, again, A couple of meteors are going to collide with the Earth, and some mutated flesh eating disease is going to spread across the entire planet and turn everyone into a bunch of night dwelling blood drinking zombies. Darn, I was hoping for something interesting."
- Our Zombies Are Different: The zombies the MTM describes are more like vampires than anything.
- Temporal Paradox: Narrowly subverted by the MTM - he travels back to the present before he causes the universe to implode.
The Tale of Sheila and Jacqueline
Sheila commands Jacqueline to get down to her lab, as she's invented something that will help her destroy her brother's lab - a powder that transforms plants into vicious killing machines! She tests it on a small red flower, and it grows into a human-like figure, which Jacqueline finds cute. Unfortunately, it can't move from its pot, rendering it useless as a weapon. Nonetheless, Jacqueline takes it into her custody.
Tropes:
- Didn't Think This Through
- Grotesque Cute: Jacqueline thinks so, at least.
- Humanoid Abomination: The mutated plant.
- Ludicrous Precision:Sheila: IT'S ABOUT TIME YOU GOT HERE!! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW LONG I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU TO SHOW UP?!?
Jacqueline: 2 point 349 seconds. - Super Serum: Sheila invents one for plants.
The Tale of Socrates
Socrates gets ready for a prank-filled day, and focuses on his first target - a small boy no older than eight. However, the kid unexpectedly dodges his first trap by ducking. Socrates is infuriated by this and declares war on him.
His next attempt goes similarly awry, and his final attempt appears to work... but then he realizes he caught Calvin instead. Socrates lets him out, at least satisfied that he pranked someone.
As Calvin rounds the corner, however, a shadow appears in an alley, watching him...
Tropes:
- Caught in a Snare: Calvin.
- Foreshadowing: The shadowy figure showing up at the end.
- Innocuously Important Episode: This episode seems just comedy at Socrates' expense, but it sets up a part of Our Solemn Hour pt. 2.
- Major General Song: Socrates sings a somewhat butchered version at the beginning.
- This Means War!: Socrates declares something similar after the child dodges his first trap.
Tropes shared by the shorts:
- Lemony Narrator: Perhaps the only thing tying the shorts together is a narrator that remarks on the characters' personalities.
- Non-Indicative Name: Only two of the shorts, The Tale of Hobbes and The Tale of Socrates, actually are tales of tigers.
- Shout-Out: Andy's game in his short involves has a plumber for a protagonist."I'm all for variety, but really."
- Andy also compares the growing BlueTooth phenomenon to Lando Carlrission's right-hand man.
- The closing line of Jack's short:
"Now then, what's happening in Bikini Bottom today?"- The MTM's short ends with him sleeping, having stayed up all night watching a Whose Line Is It Anyway? marathon.
- Vignette Episode
