“Okay, I’ll admit when I’m wrong. That was fucking cool. The water seeping up and the pool forming for Lord Motow to spring out of? Very foreboding. I really like that. Lord Motow is an artifact from the early stages when we discussed doing a pirate girl adventure show and for some reason the guys clung onto the idea after we shifted focus to Avara. I maintain that the frog guys look stupid out of context. I know that frogs don’t live in the ocean but you know what I mean right? The whole water thing makes no sense unless you happen to be by a river or something. It’s a decent design but I think my idea to rip off the Garthim from Dark Crystal would have been way better. You ever see the Dark Crystal? Forty one million domestic on a twenty-five million budget sucks but they had good creature designs.”
The peasant I was talking to, I know he’s a peasant because he’s wearing a peasant smock sack, I bet he doesn’t even have a name, responded by shrieking and running away awkwardly when the barrel he was hiding behind was dissolved by the black acid-goop the Crabbem were randomly spewing around.
“Boring conversation anyway” I said to no one as I found an overturned cart to sit on, overturned on a guy’s head with blood and other stuff squishing out, which if you ask me is going too far. This show isn’t for little little kids but it’s not super gritty bloody squished head kind of show either.
“My baby! Where’s my baby!” screamed a peasant woman from a second-floor window from which she was leaning so far out she was on the verge of falling and breaking her bloody neck.
I shook my head “That’s too much. You can’t have tweens thinking about dead babies.” I pointed “See, this is what I’m talking about, they gave Pikkewyn a slingshot. What is this Bart Simpsons Dennis the Menace bullshit. A slingshot is not a weapon! I don’t care what Wolf says about David and Goliath, it’s not even the same kind of sling from the Bible. I wanted her to have a bow. I wanted Avara to have a battle-axe too, not a sword. I thought that would be more badass, more aggressive you know, I mean look at that fucking thing. It’s as wide as my sister’s fat ass. It’s like one of those things you shove into a pizza oven.”
“Please! My baby!” she shrieked.
I flexed my jaw, doing that thing where you try to fix your ear after a flight “Jesus lady, calm down, you’re going to split the vocal chords that you don’t even have because you’re not real. It’s that high-pitched, squealing tone that really messes with my tympanic membrane. I wonder if that means someone is screaming in my ear in the real world. I haven’t figured it all out yet. Remember that opening scene in T2 where the guy licks Linda Hamilton’s face? I hope they didn’t put me in that kind of mental place. Although I think I read there was only one facility like that in the country that didn’t have allegations of sexual assault in them. It’s pretty fucked up when you think about it.”
The ground practically shook when Martialla She-Hulk jumped right next to me with her battle-mace in one hand and a baby cradled in her other vintage Schwarzenegger-esque arm, I swear her bicep was twice the size of the kid if not three times. And she was so tall that she was able to hand the baby up to the woman in the window.
“Thank you, thank you” screeched the woman like a teeny-bopper in old Beatles footage.
“Ela we need your help!” Martialla gestured with her spotlessly blood-free weapon of face destruction.
“You see this is what I’m talking about, I wanted your character to be muscular and athletic and I know that certain liberties have to be taken in animated shows but this is ridiculous. Those are like balloons under the skin of your arms, or like they have you muscle-boobs or something. Have you seen a manhole cover around here? Wasn’t there a movie where a guy, I think it was Matt Damon, who was hallucinating that he was in a mental institution, like an old timey one, and to get back to the real world, to break the delusion I mean, he went through a tunnel? Maybe it wasn’t a sewer maybe it was something in a boiler room.”
Martialla was about to implore me for help again when Lord Motow used a fire-hose plume of water from his octo-mouth to typhoon an ox-cart into her and bear her to the ground in a wave of mud and busted wood. He stomped, squished, galumphed, slithered his way to take her place standing before me.
“At last we meet again for the last time” he stank his ultra mega tuna fish breath onto me.
I choked back some vomit “Man, I had no idea that delusions had smells to them. That Darth Vader voice has to change, you can’t steal that, it’s iconic! Plus, that’s some clunky dialog, sounds like it’s from Spaceballs or something AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH shit-fuck! Shit-fuck! Shit-Fuck! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
That last part is what I said when he grabbed my arm with his pincer and lifted me off the ground. He was monologuing at me but all I could hear was the fog-horn of pain blasting in my ears. Playing college basketball (division one thank you) I got knocked around some, took the occasional elbow to the face, once I got a couple teeth knocked out, but I’ve lived a pretty pain free life. I never had kids which is the big hurt for ladies generally. I was not prepared for the sensation of feeling radiating waves of agony like that.
Why didn’t I pass out? I wanted to pass out. Can you pass out in a delusion?
How can something that’s not really happening hurt so much?
