prstorm-blog1

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After the reveal of my favorite Mario character being confirmed as an 'echo character' to Peach in Super Smash Bros. Everyone -- I mean, Ultimate, I pretty much had to draw Daisy, finally, to celebrate the occasion.

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Not much else to say here. I just wanted to draw Princess Daisy. She's so pretty, so beautiful. She's one of my favorite characters in all of gaming. And now she's confirmed for Smash! Awesome!Post in the comments below what you think of this.

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#princess daisy #super smash bros #super smash bros ultimate

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Harper's Idiocy by PhoenixOfGrunvale

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Grunvale: Chapter 4 - And now for some others from elsewhere in the town...

The town of Grunvale was named for the place it was built in, a green valley between two mountains. To the west, there was the rocky-tipped Mount Hatcher, which stood half a mile high, at an average slope of sixty degrees on its eastern-pointing side. At the base of the mountain, was a middle-class neighborhood, of average bipedes, living average lives, in houses of sedimentary rock and other materials that were found lying about. You know this place already, it's the neighborhood where the Grimes lived. So, let's move on to some parts of the town you don't already know. The lower half of Mount Hatcher, was popular place for daredevils to go skiing in the winter. While it of course had many other trails for skiing down, its most popular was the steep incline of the mountain, a triple-black-diamond course nicknamed 'Devil's Drop', both for its difficulty, and the forest of pine trees that covered the bottom... approximately six hundred sixty-six feet of the mountain. Every year, there was someone getting injured or killed, trying to ski down Devil's Drop. Which was why it was advertised as being only for the real pros. And those that have an insane death wish. No, seriously. That was exactly what was carved into the boulder marking the trail at its top. 'DEVIL'S DROP, ONLY FOR THE REAL PROS AND THOSE THAT HAVE AN INSANE DEATH WISH', it read, left-aligned, in big text for the name, smaller text for the description, and three black diamond shapes painted next to the name. Kind of weird they would advertise how deadly it was, huh? Anyhoo, the top half of Mount Hatcher, was much rockier, and housed the indigenous chiropteran tribe in its many caves. That was pretty much the only thing the Grunvalians knew about the top of Hatcher. That the chiropterans lived there. They were a very secretive tribe, so secretive they didn't allow any bipedes within range of their territory. Well, apart from the occasional talpines, but that was only because they couldn't see anything. To the east of Grunvale, was the lushly forested, more gently-sloping Mount Yonderpine, which peaked at a third of a mile high, and served as the border between the counties of Albaneigh and Skunektady. The trees of Yonderpine were mostly pines, because of course they fucking were. The mountain was called Yonderpine, after all. But aside from the pines, there were also a few birches and beeches. Which, thankfully, nobody was dumb enough to name the mountain after. Because 'Yonderbirch' and 'Yonderbeech' sound way to close to one another. And also to 'Yonderbitch'. Could you imagine, somebody naming something 'Yonderbitch'? Anyhoo, within the forest on Yonderbitch... erm, Yonderpine, was another neighborhood, that had houses made of mud, sticks, vines and cobbles, built among and around the trees, and sometimes into the ground. Like the one near Mount Hatcher, it was a middle-class neighborhood. However, the biggest difference it had, was that it was nearly invisible from above, obscured by the forest canopy, while Hatcher's was under open sky, save for a few houses like the Grimes' that were built under and around trees. At the base of Yonderpine, though, was a third neighborhood, the upper-class neighborhood, where all the richest bipedes in town lived. There was the country club, of course, just like there is in every upper-class community, the mayor's house, a 6500-square-foot mansion made of marble and gabbro that got a great view of the town from the edge of the forest, and right off Twin Mountain Avenue, just to make all the less-wealthy Grunvalians jealous of them, the gated community of Malick Park. Malick Park had ten circular roads within its walls, with rows of the apple trees they were named after, running down the center of all of them. The outermost road was Jonathan Circle, and it was on the odd-numbered side, house number 11, where the Lowry family lived. A mephitine, right around forty, stood at the base of the staircase, in the foyer of 11 Jonathan Circle. He stood a towering six-foot-four, with a dark grey body, with a giant white stripe going down his mole-ridden back, and up his bushy tail. And he couldn't have looked more like a nerd. Curly ochre hair, thick black glasses, denim pants, red-and-brown plaid overshirt, vintage Rush T-shirt from their Counterparts tour. Yep, pretty much full nerd. And in his right hand, he carried... an air horn. BRAAAAAAAAAAP! "UGH!" a couple of voices from upstairs shouted, in an unmistakably and rightfully annoyed tone. "Good mornin', all o' ye!" Uncle Gerry chuckled. "Thoot ye kiddos micht need a wee bit help gettin' oot o' yer scratchers fer school!" The groaning upstairs continued for a few more seconds, and was followed by a stretch of silence. And following that, were the sounds of a pair of footsteps. They were the footsteps of twins. Fraternal twins, Gerry's eleven-year-old nephew and niece. As all twins do, they looked pretty similar to one another. They had the same dark grey hue to their bodies, the same bushy tails, the same chocolate-brown hair, the same pointed chins, the same pink noses... they were even of similar heights, both just around an unusual five-foot-eight. But of course, they did have features that set them apart. The boar had prominent freckles dusting his cheeks, big eyes that looked like two eggs leaning towards one another, and his hair was cut short, except on the top of his head, where it was left long and wavy. And the sow had a rosy complexion, big round eyes, and her hair went past her shoulders, in neat, old-fashioned-looking waves. Gerry could tell that the twins were preparing to coordinate the colors of their outfits with one another; the boar was dressed in a dark cerulean polo and khaki pants, and the sow was wearing a spaghetti-strapped, knee-length dress, to go with her brother's shirt. She carried a few makeup brushes in her left hand, as she followed her twin down the stairs. "Mornin', Augist... erm, A.K." Gerry uttered to the young boar. "Uhhhhh... morning," August mumbled. "Please, don't do that again." "Duly noted," Gerry replied. "An' mornin', April." "Mornin', Unkie," April replied, in as cheerful a tone as she could manage. She stopped to rub her eyes with her right hand, before continuing. "Quite a way tae wake us up, 'at was! But ah agree wit' Auggeh thar. 'at was tae much." "As ah said to yer brother," Gerry replied. "Duly noted." The twins continued to make their way to the kitchen, where August grabbed two bags of bagels, a plain and a blueberry. He grabbed one from each bag and prepared to grab a second plain, before his twin sister April spoke up. "Nah, nae bagel fer meh t'day," she said, grabbing a Frosties bar from the cabinet. "Tae many carbs, ah'll break oot." "Okay then," August replied. August put each half of the plain bagel in the two slots of the nearby toaster, and the entire blueberry bagel in the microwave. He nearly set the microwave for thirty seconds, before somebody grabbed him firmly by the tail. "I want it raw," the raspy squeaker said. TFFFFFFFFFFT! August... did... that, startled from having his tail suddenly yanked. He turned his head back to see his other, younger sister, an overweight girl with freckles, bobbed-looking blonde hair, and the baggy pants, hoodie and backward-facing baseball cap of a 1990s stereotype, trying to fan away the stench. "Dude!" she exclaimed, disgusted. "Grody!" The little sister grabbed the bagel from August's hands, and went to the silverware drawer for a spoon, then to the fridge for a brick of... uh... Noof-shau-tel? Noo-haw-tle? Noof-chat-tle? Eh, whatever, that French cream cheese nobody can pronounce right. She set each half of the bagel next to each other on a white porcelain plate August had laid next to the toaster for himself, and got to scooping from the brick of French cream cheese nobody can pronounce right. "Um, Abby?" August said, in a quiet, undemanding tone. "I was... kind of gonna use that plate." "Well, then you kind of should've got to it before I did," Abby replied. Abby spread the unpronounceable cheese over the thicker half of her bagel. As she moved on to the thinner half, August quietly grabbed another spoon from the drawer. He tried to sneak a small bit of the cheese from the brick, before Abby blocked off his spoon with hers. "Wait your turn, you sneak!" she snarled, in a snotty tone. "Gob, you're irritating!" Abby made one more little stroke with her spoon on the bagel, before mashing the two halves together and taking a giant chomp into it. She dropped the plate and the spoon into the sink, before taking another big chomp into her bagel and walking off. "Mmm... tastes good," Abby remarked, mouth full of bagel and cheese. She stopped to swallow a piece of her bagel, before continuing, as she wiped a loose smear of cheese from her bottom lip. "Now, it's your turn." August looked back at his little sister with disbelief as she walked into the living room. "I'm irritating?" August muttered to himself. PCK-DINNNNNG! The halves of August's bagel popped up like whack-a-moles from the slots of the toaster a crispy brown, perhaps a bit black around the edges, and with dark, crunchy crusts. He grabbed the thicker half of the bagel, and smeared an average-sized chunk of the unpronounceable cheese all over it. Not a large chunk of it, though. He was quite a weirdo when it came to cream cheese; he was part of that weird minority that didn't like seeing it peek through the hole of the bagel. Anyhoo, he then slapped the thinner half over it, washed the spoon off in the sink, and then took a bite out of his bagel. As he chewed it down, he looked over to his twin sister April, who was at the mirror, applying thin, slightly-winged strokes of navy eyeliner to her lids. She looked like she was preparing to cosplay as some water spirit or something. "Looking pretty as usual, April," August remarked, smiling as he gave a thumbs-up. April let out a faint giggle as she finished making the wing-shape on her right eye. "Why, thank ye," she replied, as she capped the eyeliner and grabbed her tube of mascara. "Always want tae look mah best when ah'm goin' oot." August scarfed down the rest of his bagel and walked back upstairs to take care of everything else he needed to do. Brush his teeth, put on deodorant, gel and comb his hair so that it was parted to the left in a wave, the way he always liked to style his hair. He then looked in his backpack, which was sitting right by the foot of his bed, to check to see he had everything he needed for school. Folders? Check. Binders? Check. Pouch full of pencils? Check. Wallet? Yep, got Davis Junior High school ID in the small middle pocket, and two Abe Lincoln notes in the money pocket. So, check. Android phone? Belongs in the right pants pocket with the wallet. Check. Both essays that needed printing for Language Arts class? Oh! Not there. Either of them. August specifically remembered printing out both essays the night before. He figured he must've left them sitting out on the printer overnight. "I specifically remember printing out both of them last night," he said to himself. "I must've left them sitting out on the printer." Seriously, you too, August? Uh... anyhoo, as he zipped his backpack back up, he heard April shouting from downstairs. "Ah, dang it!" she exclaimed. "Ah jist got mah mascara oan mah cheek!" August slipped his feet into a pair of white Nike socks and black Converses, strapped his backpack over his shoulders, and headed back downstairs. He could hear April continue to growl and utter some mild swears as he made his way down. Probably smearing the makeup all over her cheek trying to wipe it off, he guessed. So once he got to the bottom of the stairs, he decided to look at April's face, and... yep. Guessed right. "Get something wet and wash it off," August said, as he continued into the living room. August walked past Abby and Gerry as he made his way to the printer. They were watching some cartoon with a robot and a green... thing, on an HD television. As August picked up and sorted the essays into two four-page piles, he decided to listen in on his sister and uncle's conversation. "Ah don' ge' it," Gerry said. "Why is t'is funneh tae ye?" "They repeat the word 'waffles' over and over," Abby replied. Gerry was still confused. "...an' hoo is 'at funneh?" "It's not," August answered, as he lined up the papers of each essay. "It's pathetic. Like the show itself. Big shame, too. Because the original show has a really funny line involving waffles. It's almost as if this show is intentionally dumping on it." "Puttin' it 'at way," Gerry replied. "Ah wouldnae be surprised it was!" "Yeah," August added. "I mean, if there's an opposite of polishing a turd, this is it." "Shittin' oan polish!" Gerry exclaimed. August and Gerry shared a mocking laugh, like they were Statler and Waldorf or some other famous riffers. But Abby didn't find their mocking so funny. She loved this show, and would defend it like a rabid fangirl. "Make fun of this show again..." Abby growled. "What?" August said. "We were just saying that this reboot is... a piece of the crap! Shamalama --" Abby gave her big brother a hard, Paddington-style stare as she raised her bushy tail up. It wasn't subtle to him at all what she was threatening to do, and he didn't have the time to shower. So he made a run for it. "I'm gonna go now," August said, as he sprinted out of the living room and out the front door, both essays in his hands. April was still a few minutes from finished getting all ready for school, so he decided to sit himself down at a small, glass table on the porch, and read both of the essays he held in his hands. The seat and the table were cold and wet from the storm the night before. He didn't mind the back of his pants getting wet from the rain (it was just the back of his pants, after all), but he did turn his seat away from the table, so that the papers of the essays wouldn't get wet. The essays were both on the same topic and had the same title; The Themes of Gulliver's Travels, Part 3. But only one of the essays was his own; the one written in Times New Roman and had the words 'by August Kenneth Lowry' written under the bold, underlined title. The other was a essay, in Arial, of a friend of his, that he had edited heavily and even wrote parts of himself, and had the words 'by Margo Hynde' written under an italicized title. He sweated just reading the author credit of the latter. "Uh, anything for a... a friend," August uttered to himself, shakily, nervously. His eyes darted around the porch, before he got to reading the essays themselves. He got to skim through his twice and Margo's once, before April finally came through the front door. Her makeup was now neat and fully done, she had her backpack strapped over one shoulder, and, along with her cerulean dress, was now wearing a black wool cardigan, black heeled shoes, pink nail polish, a light blue neckerchief, pearl stud earrings, and... August couldn't tell for sure, but he thought he could also see a subtle pink lip gloss on her lips. August could tell that his twin was going for a 50s-inspired look with her outfit. Also that she was wanting to wear white gloves with the outfit. But they both knew that he was looking after her. They both had the common sense to know that, if she went out wearing gloves to anything but a costume party or perhaps some real fancy event, especially around other middle schoolers like them, she'd get mocked relentlessly. Not to mention they've been out of mainstream, non-winter fashion for like 50 years, unless you're a cartoon character or Michael Jackson. Anyhoo. "Ah, there you are," August said, as he sat himself up. "Got everything?" "Aye, ah do," April replied. "Checked a'thin' twice. Bot' the makeup an' a'thin' in the backpack. Even the Gulliver essay. Hard read, is it nae?" "Not really," August answered. "You're just used to only the first quarter of the book, like most are. The entire story together, tells the tale of a surgeon-turned-sailor who comes to hate the world after his voyages to several unmarked lands. It's also a satire of 18th-century politics and the travel genre as a whole." April's eyes grew huge and anime-looking, with surprise and awe at her brother's analysis. "Wow," April remarked. "All ah was able tae get oot o' it was 'at Lilliput an' Brobdingnag are opposites. An' 'at the Laputans are a bunch o' bampots." "You got a pretty good grasp of it then," August said. "A basic grasp, but you get it." "Hey, why dae ye have two?" April questioned. August looked back and forth at both essays, and blurted out the first thing he could think of. "Uh... I always like to print two. Just in case I... uh... lose one." "Fair enouch," April replied. The twins walked off the porch, and to the road of Jonathan Circle itself. On their way to the gate of Malick Park, they took note of everything that was drenched by the rains of last night's storm. The grey concrete roads, the lush green grass, the apple trees, the roofs of the houses, the flowers in the gardens... and no fat and disgusting procyonine anywhere in sight. But there were three leporine triplets their age, coming from further towards the center of Malick Park, up the road leading directly to the gate. The triplets were two does and a buck. All of them were much shorter than the Lowry twins, and had light peach tones, long floppy ears, small cottony tails, tiny bronze noses, dimpled chins, and most striking of all, bright, carrot-orange hair, that could be seen as bright as a gleaming torch from a mile away. The buck was the tallest of them, at five feet even, wearing glasses, blue jeans, black hi-tops, an AC/DC For Those About to Rock T-shirt, and wore his hair similar to August, short on the sides, but curly instead of wavy on the top. He didn't have any distinguishing marks visible on his face, aside from light freckles on his forehead that were barely visible under his curly bangs. One of the does was just shy of four-foot-eleven, wearing a salmon-colored dress, hot pink flats, white bracelets, white hoop earrings, and her hair was thick and long, going down her back past her shoulders. She had all kinds of pink makeup on her face, and a small, dark mole below her mouth, on her left cheek. And then there was the shortest of them. The other doe, standing a short, dwarfish four-foot-nine-and-a-half. Her outfit was just about as opposite of her sister's as it could have been, barely feminine at all. She was wearing red, knee-length shorts, a black Anthrax T-shirt, white and red Air Jordans, and had thin, messy hair, that she wore in a high, loose ponytail. She had hundreds of light freckles all down her arms and legs, and dozens of darker ones dotting her face. And as soon as she laid eyes on August, she beamed, giving off a huge grin of crooked, grey teeth. "Hi, Kenny!" she called, as she dashed over to the brown-haired boar. Before he could prepare himself, August could feel the leporine girl's arms wrap around him, in a tight, constricting squeeze. He could barely breathe, but he didn't mind. He enjoyed any hug that came from this girl, no matter how tight. And he didn't even mind her calling him by his middle name. He affectionately patted her on the back as he managed to get a few words out. "How ya doin', Margo?" he said. "Good," she replied, as she released August from her grasp. "You sure look handsome today." August chuckled as he let out a flattered smile. He nervously scratched his back, feeling the hairs sticking up like they were up to some magnet being held behind him. "Thanks," August replied. He paused to look back at his and Margo's siblings, before turning back to give Margo 'her' essay. Quietly, he said, "And here's your essay." Margo skimmed the... essay that had her name on it, to see what August had done to her essay. Mm-hmm, she said to herself, nodding at every typo of hers he had corrected, every punctuation mark he had added in, every new piece of information written in that he knew and she didn't. It did stop for a moment, though, when a puzzled look came to her face, at the sight of an inconsistency she noticed. "Um, Kenny?" she asked. "Is it 'stuldbug' or 'struldbrug'?" "'Struldbrug,'" August answered. "The immortals on Luggnagg. Why?" "Because I wrote 'stuldbug' here," Margo replied, pointing to the words. "But then you wrote in this little thing here, where it says 'struldbrug'." "It does?" August grabbed the page from Margo's hand, and looked it over. And sure enough, there was Margo's typo. 'Stuldbug'. And right before the sentence where the made-up word was written correctly, too. But hey, it's not like word processors think either is a real word in the first place. This narrator wouldn't even see a red squiggly line under it if it was one! "Eh, it's just one little typo," he said, as he handed the paper back to Margo. "I don't think Mr. Lane will notice." "Okay then," Margo replied. She continued skimming through the last bit of the essay, before letting out a small smile and a thumbs-up. "Really good essay! Thanks!" "Anything to keep you eligible for volleyball," August said, rubbing his leporine friend's mangy orange hair. "C average or D, DJH needs someone like you on one of the teams. Perky, athletic, a real go-getter..." "Aww, thanks!" Margo flashed a bigger, more tooth-filled smile as she looked up at August. She could feel her cheeks flush, turning pink behind the mask of freckles on her face. "Can down a Subway footlong in less than a minute!" August added. Margo blushed harder, averting her eyes and trying to hid her face, as it turned even redder. "Okay, okay," Margo said, bashfully. "You don't need to remind me of every way I'm amazing." "Hey Margo!" Margo's nerdy-looking brother called out. "You coming or what?" "Uh... yeah!" Margo replied. "Coming, Paddy!" Margo put the essay into her backpack as she and August ran to the gate, where their other siblings and August were already standing. Margo stopped next to her brother Paddy, and August next to his sister April. One look at April's smiling, 'you like Krabby Patties' face told him everything. He knew that she saw at least part of what was going on, between him and Margo. "Ye know she's got a crush oan ye, richt?" April said, quietly as she leaned towards her brother. "Dae ye no' see it or somet'in'?" "Nah," August replied. "Girls are like that at this age, going crazy over boys and stuff." "Yeah, girleh girls," April said, pointing at Margo's girly sister, who was digging for something in her backpack as she stood in front of a small door right next to the gate. "Like Molleh o'er t'ere!" August continued to listen to April, as he watched as Molly pull a key out of her backpack. "Girleh girls goo bonkers o'er boys. Margo? She's a tomboy! Tomboys only gae after boys 'at 'ey really, truly like. Find cute, attractive, handsome. Have lots in common wit'. An' above all, like the way 'ey treat ladies. Ye've got cute freckles, an attractively tall build, handsome-lookin' hair. Girls like 'at. The two o' ye share a love o' movies, an' a love o' subs. Girls like 'at, too. An' ye treat ladies as equals. Ne'er believed in cooties. Look after meh an' Abby when ma's gone workin'! Girls love 'at!" Molly inserted the key into the door and turned it open. "Ah t'ink ye shood take notice," April finished. August stopped, trying to think of a reply. He was silent long enough to overhear a bit of a conversation between Margo and Paddy. "I heard you talking over there, Margo," he heard Paddy say. "You're not cheating in Language Arts so you can get on the volleyball team, are you?" August's face twisted into a grimace and his pupils shrunk to the size of marbles, as he felt a drop of sweat going down his back. Oh shit, he thought to himself. "Auggeh?" April said, with a tone of concern. "Uh... yeah," August replied, shakily. "I-I'll take notice. I promise." PCK! BRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG! Molly pushed the red button to open the gates, and then they began to open, outwards, into the rest of Grunvale. The Lowrys and the Hyndes both walked through, and were pleasantly surprised to see that their bus was already coming up the hill for them, from the south. "Oh, look at that," Paddy remarked, pointing towards the bus. "There's our bus right there!" "No ya don't, bucko!" a voice shouted from behind. The five of them heard loud footsteps coming, closer and closer towards them, and then... WHACK! Some big thing plowed into Paddy and Margo at running speed, knocking them off their feet and to the ground. They were in a daze for a few seconds, before they looked up to see what knocked them over. "Oh gob..." Paddy remarked. "Not her." 'Oh gob, not her' was right. The Hyndes and the Lowrys both knew that prickly back of an overweight, chestnut-haired sow from anywhere. And they all utterly despised the girl that prickly back belonged to. She was "Harper Madera..." Margo said, almost growling with rage. "I hate that stupid spineback." "What was that, you carrot-headed little BITCH?!" Harper shouted, turning back to get her face up in Margo's. Harper was an erinaceine. And 'spineback' was one of two things you did not want to call her. The other of which we will get to later. Her entire back, from the bottom of her neck to her tail, was sharp and spiny, and her hair, too, was spiky, coarse, and sharp to the touch, both the hair on her head that came down to her chin, and her thick eyebrows. Her face always looked menacing, no matter what face she was making. She had a chipped tooth that looked like a bat fang, and the blue of her eyes looked hot, like a fire right at the wick of the candle. And with the look of rage on her face, she looked like she was so angry, she was ready to burn Margo's head off, with eye lasers or something of the sort. So Margo did what anyone with a shred of common sense would do when given a death glare like that. "Uh... nothing," she said, as she stood up and backed away from Harper. "Yeah," Harper replied, continuing to stare the leporine tomboy down. "That's what I thought." The bus finally stopped next to the curb, somehow managing to get its doors right in front of Harper. It was like a shot right out of a Wes Anderson movie, with how perfectly it stopped and how centered the doors were. Harper stepped onto the first step of the bus, before turning back towards the Hyndes and the Lowries. "Don't even think about going after my seat!" she shouted, before progressing back up the steps. "We weren't even going after your seat," Molly called back. She and the rest progressed into the bus as she continued. "Besides, it's got a giant rip in it. Why would we want to sit in a ripped seat? That would be like if I wore a ripped dress. Which I wouldn't do if you threatened to gauge my ears!" The Hyndes and the Lowries all made sure they weren't sitting in the seats next to, across or even diagonally across from Harper, as they took their seats on the bus. August and Margo actually ended up sitting towards the back, with the seventh and eighth graders. As the bus started moving, August heard a small sniffle coming from Margo, as she wiped something off her cheek. "You're not a bitch," August said, touching the leporine's shoulder. "Harper is." "I know," Margo replied. "I hate her so much." "I hate her too," August added. He then noticed that he had his right hand over a lone Cheeto. "Hey, look, a Cheeto." "Eh, I wouldn't eat that if I were you," some squeaky-voiced girl said. August and Margo looked up, and saw an ovine leaning over their seat. "Oh hey, Scarlett," Margo said. "I saw somebody throw that Cheeto from one of the city buses," Scarlett continued. "Some funny-looking lemurine with real good aim. It's probably got germs or something all over it. Wouldn't eat it. You could get poisoned or something. Also, I agree with the both of you. Harper is a bitch." Margo's eyes widened as she stared at the Cheeto. She gently plucked it out of August's fingers, and then she looked around the bus. "Are you actually gonna do it?" August asked. Margo stared silently at the Cheeto for a while, thinking about how she was gonna answer. Yes? Hmm... No? Hmm... Later? Hmm... Now? Hmm... and that was her thought process for about the next forty seconds. Staring silently at the Cheeto, wondering if it would be a good idea. And then she turned her head to August, with her answer. "Yeah." CRUNCH.

The school day at Davis Junior High got off to a pretty smooth start, with Language Arts class. Everyone, August, Margo, the rest of the class, submitted their essays on part 3 of Gulliver to Mr. Lane. Some had a real basic, simplistic understanding of what Jonathan Swift was saying, others had a more complex analysis of what everything in and around Laputa was meant to represent. And, of course, the class began reading part 4, detailing the voyage to the country of the... uh... Hoy-hun-hims? Woy-en-hims? Hoo-ee-nims? Eh, whatever, intelligent horses that live with savage bipedes called Yahoos. August knew how the rest of the story would play out, and even if he didn't, he had a good idea just by memorizing the patterns the story was taking. Gulliver saw the Lilliputians as vicious warmongers, and the king of Brobdingnag saw Gulliver's kind the same way. Gulliver saw the Laputans as a bunch of unreasonable idiots, and that meant the horses would see Gulliver that same way. "Yep," August said to himself. "Got this in the bag." But then came the rest of the day. After Mr. Lane's class, came gym class for August, and music class for Margo. How did they play out? Well, let's just start with the gym class. The boys' locker room... yeah, it was disgusting. There really is no nicer way to put it. It was gross. It looked bad on its own, and it smelled even worse. Tiny little ants crawling on the marble-tiled floor, dirt on pretty much every surface but the ceiling, and the perpetual smell of body odor hanging in the air. It was like an unclean toilet. Except several hundred square feet bigger. To the right of the entrance was more or less a bathroom, with toilets and sinks, typical bathroom stuff. To the left, were hundreds of small, teal lockers, stacked in rows and columns from the entrance to the hallway, to the entrance into gym area itself. August, being one of the tallest kids in the school, of course had his locker on the top row. He opened it and started to prepare for class, as about twenty, maybe closer to thirty, other bipedes his age, got dressed into their gym clothes around him. He managed to take off his polo and khakis and put on a pair of black sweatshorts, before -- "GOB-FUCKING-DAMMIT!", one of them shouted, making the entire locker room jump and look his way. August looked over at the source of the yelling, and saw, squatting at one of the second-to-bottom row lockers, an eusuchian, with blonde, somehow green-looking hair. He was early bloomer, sporting acne all over his scaly, shit-green face, and was taller than most of the other sixth graders (although still not quite as tall as August), with a deeper voice, sounding more teenage than preteen, to match. He was wearing blue jeans, a black Panic! At the Disco T-shirt and black Adidas sneakers with white stripes. And this narrator doesn't think it even needs to be said that he looked pretty fucking pissed. He snarled as he stared at the door of his locker, baring all his sharp, yellow teeth. "Uh, Alan?" August said. "What's going on?" "Uh, Alan, what's going on?" Alan replied, in an exaggerated, nasally, mocking tone. Alan pointed to his locker door as he continued. "THAT! That's what's going on! This fucking thing!" August slid his way through the others in the locker room and took a look at what exactly he was pointing out. It was a word, a single word, written in black ink. "Scaly," August read, frowning once he said it aloud. "Oh no, another racial slur." "Where does she even get off calling me that, anyway?" Alan said. "She?" August questioned, with a look of confusion on his face. "Oh, don't act like you don't know who wrote this," Alan said, standing himself up. "It was that snobby sow Madera!" "Okay, seriously, brah?" August replied. "Even Harper knows better than to go into the boys' bathroom for any reason." Alan laid his scaly -- oh. That's right. Slur. Uh... green, hand, on August's shoulder, and continued to speak. "Does she, though? Does she really? I happen to know how she bullies. She likes throwing around slurs. 'Polecat' for mephitines like you, 'shit panda' for procyonines, 'feller' for castorines... she even called my friend Wendy 'nutmuncher'. And now she writes 'scaly' on my locker!" "Alan," August said. "I've seen vandalism all over the bathroom walls in this school. F-bombs, slurs, doodles of penises. The boys here do this all the time, think they're being funny, too. Maybe whoever wrote that thought he was being funny." "No, no, no," Alan said. "She wrote that because she wanted to see me react! She wants a reaction? I'll give her a reaction!" Alan pushed August aside, and stepped around the other boys in the locker room, making his way to the gym. He was determined to get even with that spiny bitch. Nobody called him 'scaly' and got away with it, no sir. "You know," August called. "You're not being any better calling Harper 'spineback'! My friend Margo called her that earlier, and --" "Oh, I wasn't gonna call her that," Alan replied, stopping in his tracks, turning back towards August. "Well, that's a relief," August remarked. "I was actually gonna call her a --" BLEEP. Only there wasn't anything bleeping out what Alan said. What Alan did say, though, was the other thing you wouldn't want to call Harper. The worse thing. A slur worse than any this narrator can actually write themself. A slur that made everyone in the locker room, jump and gasp with shock. "Dude!" August shouted. "You can't call her that! She's a Minxican! She'll kill you! And if she doesn't, she could have you expelled!" "You really think I give a fuck?" Alan replied. "She has it coming. Someone has to do it. Right to her face!" Alan turned back, and continued towards the gym. August ran over to try and stop the angry young reptile from going through with what he was planning, but by the time he set foot outside the locker room, he had already locked eyes on Harper. "Madera!" he shouted. "Get over here, you little snot!" August looked on in disbelief as Alan ran over, filled with rage towards the spiny sow. He knew he was about to say... the worse slur. Thankfully, he turned back towards his locker before he could watch the entire situation unfold. "I can't watch this," he said, sounding legitimately sick to his stomach in anticipation of what he would have to walk in on. The rest of the locker room got dressed in their gym clothes. Some were rushing, eager to see the whole Alan and Harper thing unfold, but others, especially August, were slower to get ready, not wanting to see any of it. August himself took a lot of time, to put on his gym shirt and Skechers, use the urinal, and get a drink of water from the fountain. Took him about five minutes, in all. Much to his relief, he missed out on most of the debacle. But he wasn't too happy that he had to walk into the gym, and see the tail end of it, with the coach handing Alan a red-dyed hemp slip, as Harper looked on with a stupid, evil-looking grin on her face, and everyone else in the gym looked on, with an entire spectrum of faces ranging from excitement to cringe. Pretty easy to guess where August falls there. "That's a detention, Mr. Veeder," August heard the coach say. "That language is unacceptable!" Alan growled at the chuckling Harper as the coach walked off, baring all his sharp and pointy fangs, looking like he was gonna take a giant, triangular chomp out of her. August didn't have it in him to react with anything but a palm to his face, in disbelief that the reptile actually said what he said. But what about wherever Margo is, you may be asking? Surely whatever's going on over there is at least somewhat better than the drama in gym class, right? ...not really, no. As August had his gym class, Margo had her music class, and oh, was it a bore. The desks were all arranged on steps, the bottom row for taller students, the top row for the shorter ones. They were all positioned towards the front of the room, where a giant dry-erase board hung on the wall, and an old piano sat on the side. Margo was so short sitting in her seat, that her feet were just barely grazing the ground. Anyhoo, guess what song the teacher was playing on the piano, and what song the class was all singing? Something catchy and fun that the kids liked, right? Nope! They were all singing one of the most bland songs ever written, by one of the blandest musicians ever to see the light of the popular music scene. "You've Got a Friend" by Carole Sounds-Like-She's-Bored-Out-Of-Her-Mind King. Well, most of them were singing it, anyway. The girl sitting next to Margo on her right, couldn't be more bored. She was a sciurine, not quite as tiny as Margo, but still not cracking five feet. She was gray, with a bushy tail, black hair and freckles, and was wearing a Ramones Road to Ruin T-shirt, a red plaid skirt, black boots, and had a blue hoodie tied around her shoulders. And she also had heavy purple eyeshadow, two helix piercings on both of her ears, and fuchsia-streaked bangs that were draped over one eye. Her backpack was laying against her seat, a can of Rockstar visible from one of the open pockets. The emo sciurine may have been bored, but she wasn't about to let herself fall asleep. So as the rest of the class was singing that snoozefest of a song, she decided to reach into her backpack and slowly pull it out. If only the music teacher, Mr. Ebony, wasn't a leporine, though. Because those big ears of his allowed him to hear the absence of the sciurine's raspy voice, and the barely-audible noise of her energy drink can clanking against the zipper. Without even looking up from his piano, too. And he stopped right in the middle of the song just to call her out. "Wendy!" he said, stopping right before he could get to the chorus. "You sing with us!" "Um, no I don't," Wendy replied. "I only sing real music. Carole King doesn't make music. She eats paper, drinks ink, and craps out auditory feces." The entire class burst into laughter at Wendy's crude and... quite frankly disgusting statement, as she nonchalantly popped up the tab on the Rockstar and took a sip. "Wait a second, I thought this song was by Jim Tyler or... whatever he's called," she could hear Margo saying through the laughter and her lips slurping up the drink. Of course, Mr. Ebony wasn't too amused by the remark. He just stood there, offended, jaw dropped, waiting for the laughter to die down. Wendy got quite a big thrill looking at her teacher's face. She wanted to see just how he'd respond, to her crudely-worded opinion. Once the laughter quieted down, she slouched in her desk chair, and let Mr. Ebony have at her. "Excuse me?" Mr. Ebony said, standing up from his seat at the piano. "Not real music? Auditory feces? Where do you get off talking to me like that, Miss Wyler?" "Because I preform real music," Wendy replied. "Real music's about drugs. Faraway lands. Going through stuff. Stuff in life that's a load of crap... like that song you were just singing. Seriously, nothing Carole King ever wrote or preformed was good. Well, aside from 'The Locomotion'. But only the 1974 cover of it by Grand Funk, and maybe the 1988 version by Kylie Minogue." Mr. Ebony wasn't having any of it from Wendy. He was not about to be talked down to by a punk girl who barely even came up to his chin. So he climbed the steps, past the desks of his students, and stopped right in front of the rebel sciurine's desk. Wendy didn't really care what her teacher had to say to her, but she decided to act like she did, as much as she could. She looked up, emotionless, at Mr. Ebony's face, as he looked down upon her, with crossed arms and a frustrated scowl. "Who are you to tell me what's real music?" Mr. Ebony said. "I've been teaching since before you were born." "And I've learned nothing that I didn't already know," Wendy replied. She took another sip of Rockstar, before speaking again. "What you teach isn't music, okay? It's boring trite. Never during this entire semester, have you even come close to connecting with me, and I bet several others that you teach." "Wendy," Mr. Ebony said, trying to interrupt. "I'm inspired by real musicians, okay?" Wendy was completely unfazed by her teacher's attempted interruption. "Neil Peart, Keith Moon, John Bonham, Stewart Copeland, Phil Collins, Dave Grohl... oh, and how can I forget? Gina Schock, living proof that a doe like me can make it to the big leagues as a drummer. I'm in a band that I formed with my friend Alan. Also inspired by real musicians. Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Pete Townshend, Mark Knopfler, Slash and Tom Morello, just to name a few." "Wendy!" "Everyone in my band, is inspired by real musicians. Not manufactured electronic garbage, not folk music we were too old for three grades ago, actual music. Preformed by real musicians. I mean, seriously, you could make a lecture. A lecture on the history of music, how music is written, how to read music, anything like that. And that would be more interesting than making us sing along to... whatever... that crap you just tried to shove down my throat! And hell, we'd actually --" Wendy coughed into her hand, before continuing. "Learn something! Other than how to sing, which... anyone who talks, knows how to do!" "WENDY!" "But by the way you teach? I can teach myself music better, and actually learn it! It's infinitely more productive than being taught by some... untalented, tone-deaf moron!" Heheh... yeah, that was what did Wendy in. Everyone in the class was shocked by Wendy's statement. Some went bug-eyed, others' jaws dropped. Some were silent, others gasped. But all of them were in disbelief, that Wendy actually said that right to their teacher's face. Wendy's eyes darted around the room, at all her peers, before, finally, she looked back up at Mr. Ebony, to see him writing on that dreaded red slip. She knew right at that moment, that she done fucked up, done fucked up bad. "Oh, uh..." Wendy stuttered, realizing she. "I didn't, uh... mean it like that." "Yeah, you did," Mr. Ebony said, as he slapped the slip onto Wendy's desk. "You've just earned yourself a detention." Mr. Ebony walked back to the piano without saying another word to Wendy. The emo girl just stared at him for a few seconds, before turning her eyes to the red slip. She took another sip of Rockstar, as she read the words that were printed upon it. The cursive writing from Mr. Ebony was a hard-to-read rush job, but Wendy was able to make out that the whole thing read: 'Wendy Wyler is to report to the principal's office for after-school detention at 2:30 this afternoon, for the violation of disrespect towards faculty. Signed, W. Ebony' "I probably shouldn't have said that," Wendy sighed to herself. "Probably?" Margo replied, with a bug-eyed grimace. Wendy didn't have it in her to respond with anything but a groan, as she rested her head on her desk. More than probably indeed, Margo. More than probably indeed. Carole King may be shit, but still... geez. And oh, how this narrator wishes the day got better for either Margo or August. But school ain't no amusement park. Anyhoo, after those stressful classes passed by, the two of them met up at their lockers to get their stuff for their next class. Margo couldn't help but notice the stressed-out scowl on August's face, as he took a binder out of his backpack. "Hey, Kenny," Margo said. "Let me guess, something about Harper." A short silence between the two of them followed, before August finally answered. "Uh... yeah," he said. "Let's just leave it at that." "Ye've got tae be kiddin' meh!" a voice shouted from down the hall, about thirty feet away. August knew that thick brogue anywhere, it was that of his own twin April. "Oh geez," August said. "What's happened with my sister now?" August may have been stressed, but couldn't just hang his sister out to dry. He was too good a brother to do that to her. He always felt the need to be there for April when she was upset, wanted to try to make her feel better any way he could. "I'll hold your binder for you, Kenny," Margo said. August handed that bulky thing over to the orange-headed tomboy and ran over to his sister. "Uh... hey, April," he said, as he placed his hand on his sister's shoulder. "What happened in History?" April just stood silently for a few moments, with a sour-looking frown on her face. She was squinting her hazel eyes, which were hard for August to see through that heavy mascara and eyeliner. It looked like a bunch of ants or ticks were gathered around her eyes. Actually, scratch that. She'd freak at that comparison. It looked like hundreds of tiny black fingers were growing from her lids and trying to grab her eyes. Heheheh. But anyhoo, in all seriousness, April was very obviously pissed. She let out a bitter sigh, before uttering a single question. A question that was hard for her to get out, and even harder for August to hear. "Dae ye know what detention's like, Auggeh?" "Oh no," August responded, shaking his head in dismay as he brought a palm to his face. "What did you do?!" "Tried gettin' 'roond th' teacher's phaine policeh," April replied. "Was it another makeup thing?" August asked. "You gotta get over that, April. You don't need to check your makeup on the camera app every five gob-dang minutes, it looks fine! Besides, even if you did, that what mirrors are for." "Nae, not a makeup thing," April replied. "A lookin' somethin' up oan Google thing." "What were you looking up, a makeup tutorial?" August replied, in a half-joking tone. "Nae, who wrote Th' Art o' War," April answered. "Dinnae know th' answer, soo ah thooght ah'd look it up oan mah phaine." "Sun Tzu," August replied. "You should know that already." "I dinnae thoough," April replied. "Sae while we were grouped up, ah thooght ah'd look it up. Dinnae wannae bother lookin' 'roond fer it in the chunky ol' textbook. But teacher told meh tae pit mah phaine away, told me 'why dae ah always have tae deal wit' ye an' yer phaine, ah'm sick o' it'. Sae ah told 'im tae scram. An' next thing ah know, 'e's sayin' ''at's detention' an' slaps 'is ol' red slip oan mah desk." Apostrilphe -- eh, uh... April, held up her red slip for her brother. He took it out of her hands and read it for a few short seconds, before responding. "On one hand, at least you didn't get in trouble with your phone for something ridiculous this time," he said. "On the other hand, seriously, April? You seriously can't put your phone away for one hour-long class?" "Who e'en uses textbooks nowadays?" April replied. "'ey're rubbish compared tae the web! An' because 'is place is wank, o' course 'ere's nae Wi-Fi! Ah mean, seriousleh, why does 'is school nae have a Wi-Fi connection? E'en our gran's hoose in Scotterland 'as Wi-Fi. 'is school can afford color ink fer th' printers, ah'd like tae think it can afford a bleedin' Wi-Fi connection as well! I shooldnae have tae use up mah data in a public place, let alone a school!" "Okay, that I can agree with," August said. "The fact this school doesn't have a Wi-Fi connection really is ridiculous." "Hey, twins!" Margo called. "You gonna finish that conversation over there? I can't hold onto these things much longer!" "Coming!" August called back, running over to grab his binder. April followed as August as he continued his thought to her. "But seriously, you need to put that phone away. Look what trouble it's caused you." August grabbed his binder from Margo's arms, and checked to see if he had everything he needed. Papers? Check. Pens? Check. Everything in order? Check. Yep. "Anyways, Margo and I'll be heading off to our next class now," he continued. "And you head off to yours." "Okay then," April replied, before walking off. "See ya at lunch!" "And stay out of any more trouble!" August called down the hall. And then... an electronic CLICK. "The following students report to the principals' office immediately," a masculine voice sounded over the intercom. "August Lowry and Tabby Hynde." CLUNK. Oh shit, August thought to himself. Son of a bitch. And oh shit, son of a bitch was right. Being called to the principal's office is rarely a good thing... and never when the word 'immediately' is thrown in there. That word 'immediately', it's always a bad sign, the sign of coming discipline. What could possibly be awaiting him and Margo in the principal's office? Detention? Suspension? Explusion? Nah, they were too good of kids to get expelled. They weren't thugs like Harper. But detention or suspension! Insert drawn-out or slow-motion 'no' here! August felt a drop of sweat trickle down his forehead. He looked over towards Margo to see how well she was taking it, and saw that she looked ready to blow like a... not a volcano. She was too tiny. But blow like a bottle of soda full of Mentos, yeah. She looked so angry, all that was missing was steam blowing out those big floppy ears of hers. "It's Margo, you nitwit," she growled. "Not that stupid first name, the middle name only!" "Vent later," August said. "Let's just head over to the principal's office. Hopefully it's nothing too serious." Except again, it always is when the word 'immediately' is thrown in. Anyhoo, the two of them began to make their way to the principal's office, nervously dreading whatever trouble may have been awaiting them. But hey, at least the walk over there was somewhat easy. They didn't come across anyone that gave them a hard time -- Of course they did. "Hey! Polecat! Carrot Top!" Harper called from the top of the stairs in front of the principal's office. August and Margo looked up to the balcony at Harper, and as soon as they saw what she was holding in her hands, they swiftly lept over to the bottom of the steps, where she couldn't see them, let alone target them. A tomato fell onto the path where August had been walking, and a breast of chicken in Margo's path fell next to it. The tomato landed with a messy splat on the step third from the floor below, and the chicken breast bounced down to the step below. "Harper can go screw herself," August remarked, as he looked upon the splattered tomato. "Agreed," Margo added, as she looked upon the dirty breast. The two of them got up from the floor, and August opened the door into the principal's office. And as soon as he did, he wished he just decided to grab Margo by the hand and run, because neither him nor her liked the what they walked in on. The principal was sitting in a black swivel chair, with his hands folded on his desk, and Mr. Lane, the English teacher, was standing next to him, arms crossed, carrying a bunch of papers in one hand. They were both staring, emotionless, at the young mephitine and leporine, and two empty, black chairs were placed in front of the principal's desk. August gulped at the very sight of it all. Yep. That 'immediately' meant trouble, alright. And he had a pretty good idea what the trouble was. "Hello, Mr. Lowry and Ms. Hynde," the principal said, pointing at the empty chairs. "Why don't you have a seat right over there?" "Uh, sure, Mr. Hansen," August replied, nervously.

August and Margo sat in the empty seats. And before they could take the whole situation in, Mr. Lane began speaking. "I trust that both of you have submitted your essays on part 3 of Gulliver this morning, yes?" he asked. "But of course I did," August replied. "I always submit my work on time." "Yeah, me too," Margo added. "Very good," Mr. Lane replied. "Very good. Now let me ask one question." Mr. Lane turned his head to Margo, staring her down with a hard squint, a squint that subtly read disapproval. Disapproval of what, Margo didn't know. But August did. August knew very well what. "Tabby," Mr. Lane uttered. "Margo," Margo replied, scowling. A short pause followed, before Mr. Lane began speaking again. "Does this sentence sound familiar at all to you?" Mr. Lane sorted through all the papers he was holding, before finding the exact page he was looking for. It was a page from the essay that bore Margo's name. He read it aloud, for her, August and Mr. Hansen: "'On the island of Luggnagg, Gulliver comes across...' and I say this how you wrote it, typo and all, 'these old farts called 'stuldbugs.''" "Uhhh..." Margo moaned. Her eyes nervously darted around the room, at August, at Mr. Hansen, at the papers... at things in the room that weren't relevant to the conversation. August told me he wouldn't notice that, she thought to herself. She continued looking around the room, thinking of an excuse for her mistake, anything to cover up that embarrassing flub. And then she blurted out the first thing, the best attempt she could think of at that moment, to try to excuse her mistake. "Oh, it's not 'stuldbug'?" she asked, playing dumb. "Then what is it?" "Struldbrug," Mr. Lane replied. "In fact, the very next sentence in your essay reads, 'The struldbrugs', written properly this time, 'are a deconstruction of the idea of immortality being a blessing; rather than possessing eternal youth, they age normally, developing all the ills that come with old age.' What about that one? You remember that sentence, don't you?" "Uh, yeah," Margo replied, softly nodding. "Of course I do." "Of course you do indeed," Mr. Lane remarked. He shuffled through the papers again, until he found the exact one he was looking for. "And it just so happens that it's the exact same sentence that August wrote on his essay." Oh dear, Margo thought to herself. Mr. Lane had found her out. She looked over at August, with a nervous look on her face. August had the same look on his. His hands were shaking and his sweat was leaking, in anxiety over what was about to happen. And Margo was reacting the same way. Except it was her feet and not her hands shaking. They stared at each other for a few seconds, before Margo, once again, slipped out the first thing she could think of to protect her innocence. "Uh... coinky-dink," she said. Unironically, if you can believe it... insert facepalm here. "A lot of things use the same sentences, don't they?" "That's not the only sentence," Mr. Lane replied. "You also wrote on your essay: 'Through the context of the strulbrugs, it can be inferred that Swift sees immortality as a fate worse than death. A sentence nearly identical to one in August's fifth-grade essay on Tuck Everlasting." Mr. Lane held up a copy of August's Tuck essay, for Margo, August and Mr. Hansen to see. Margo, however, was only left scratching her head in confusion, left wondering, what does Tuck Everlasting have to do with Gulliver? "What does..." Don't you dare say it, Margo. Don't you dare. Don't you -- "...Tuck Everlasting have to do with Gulliver?" DAMMIT! "You tell me," Mr. Lane responded. "You're the one who copied that sentence. Just replacing 'Tuck family' with 'struldbrugs' and 'Babbitt' with 'Swift'. And this most recent essay of yours isn't the only time you've copied August's work, either. You also did it on your essays on Lilliput and Brobdingnag." "Well --" Margo tried to speak, only to be interrupted by Lane continuing his thought. "And, your book reports earlier in the year, on Louis Sachar's Holes and Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time." Oh shit. How was Margo gonna excuse her way out of this one? She thought about lying, denying that August had anything to do with her essays, that it was all some one-in-one... Saganillion occurrence that their essays happened to be so similar. But all the essays were right there in Mr. Lane's hands, every word as clear as day, in black ink against white paper. He had read them all, and so had Mr. Hansen. So there was no point in trying that fib. Now Margo's whole body was shaking, shaking violently, like an earthquake just hit the town Grunvale. And she was spreading profusely, like a shower head that wasn't properly turned off. If she told the other lie she was thinking of, that she just copied off of August all on her own, she could spare her tall, brown-haired friend. If she told the truth and said that August wrote it for her, both of them were getting slammed with detention. But she knew for a fact, that there was no way she'd be leaving the office without that dreaded red slip. "You do realize, Tabby," Mr. Hansen spoke. "That the Grunvale School District has a zero-tolerance policy on cheating and plagiarism. Do you not?" Hot tears were now streaming down Margo's face, passing through the freckles on her cheeks and dripping onto her shirt. She propped her legs up on the chair and wrapped her arms around them, as if to hug them for comfort. She let out a soft whimper, before finally speaking. "...yes." she uttered. "Then let me ask you this," Mr. Hansen responded. He opened up a laptop on his desk, and moved his finger around on the touchpad. "How did you even get access to his essays?" Margo saw the soft glow of the laptop shining on Mr. Hansen, and heard a few clicks. To which pages, she couldn't see. But she knew it was something she didn't want to see. She whimpered even harder, as some more tears trickled down her face. And then she broke. "Kenny writes them for me!" Margo shouted. "Kenny wrote my essays for me because I'm a total dummy, okay?! I'm so ashamed of myself!" August looked over at Margo as she buried her tear-drenched face in her hands and sobbed. And then he turned over to Mr. Hansen and Mr. Lane. They were both nodding expressionless at each other. "That explains it," Mr. Lane muttered. "Yeah, it does," Mr. Hansen replied. August slid his chair over to Margo's, and wrapped his arm around her back, in a comforting hug. The ginger leporine wiped her eyes on the mephitine's bushy, striped tail, before wrapping her arm around him and continuing to leak her tears, onto his chest. Margo even pulled her scrunchie out, so that her ponytail would come undone and her hair would fall over what the teacher and the principal could see of her guilt-racked face. "Sorry, K-Kenny," she said, in a barely-audible whisper. August looked over to Mr. Hansen and Mr. Lane, who were now staring at him with a disapproving glare. "Is this true, August?" Mr. Hansen. "You were writing essays for Tab-- uh, Margo?" "Well..." August muttered, pausing for a moment to think of how to answer the question. "Sort of. She... she writes the first draft of the essay, and then she basically shares the document with me online. And then I'd basically edit it to bring it up to par." "And in the process," Mr. Lane responded. "You were, basically, aiding cheating." Mr. Hansen was now on the page he was looking for on his laptop. The disciplinary page. He clicked on the bubble reading 'Detention' next to the words, written in capital letters, 'HYNDE, TABBY MARGO'. And then a drop-down menu appeared, with a decently-sized list of possible offenses to choose from. "Only because I wanted to see her get good grades," August replied to Mr. Lane. "I mean, she needs at least a C-minus average to be eligible for spring sports sign-ups, doesn't she? And she's been looking forward to being on the junior volleyball team all year. It's the only sport she likes that this school offers, since you don't have anything on wheels like roller derby, and... competitive eating isn't considered a sport. It would crush her to be denied." Mr. Hansen clicked the option reading 'Cheating' from the selection, and in the box below the menu, he typed in the words 'Submitted August Lowry's work as own'. He then scrolled down to the words 'LOWRY, AUGUST KENNETH'. "And you thought it would somehow help her to submit your work?" Mr. Lane asked. "I know you want to help her succeed, and I commend that. But this is just about the worst way you can go about it. If anything, it's teaching her that she can have success handed to her, like she's a Kennedy or a Trump." Mr. Hansen clicked on the 'Detention' bubble next to August's name and the 'Cheating' option from the selection just as he did for Margo, and wrote in the box, 'Aided Tabby Hynde in cheating on homework'. Finally, he scrolled down, and clicked on the button reading 'Save Changes'. "And I know you two know better than to use your family's name as some kind of easy pass through life," Mr. Lane continued. "Agreed, Mr. Lane," Mr. Hansen said, pulling out a pen and a packet of those dreaded red slips. "Here's a different kind of pass for them." Mr. Hansen signed the two slips, and handed them over to August and Margo. Margo didn't even bother to look at those things, since she was so broken inside, so racked with the guilt she felt, that she didn't have it in her to do anything but cry into her arms. At this point, her face was as drenched with tears as grass in the dew of morning, and her eyes were bloodshot and puffy red. It was an ugly mess, the kind of face you'd run from. Anyhoo, since Margo was so overcome by her shame, August decided to take both slips. "Both of you are to report to detention in the library at 2:30 this evening," Mr. Hansen said. "And I'll be calling both you kids' parents." "As for myself," Mr. Lane spoke. "Well, you too, Tabby." Margo took her wet, red face out of her arms, and turned to face her disappointed teacher, as he continued his thought. "I think it should be obvious that I'm marking this Laputa essay of yours as a zero." Margo sat motionless, staring at her teacher as a few more tears streamed down. She finally responded after nearly half a minute, with a silent, shame-ridden nod. "And as for the both of you," Mr. Lane continued. "I can promise you one thing. I find out there was any cheating between the two of you on the Horse country essay, and both of you are flunking my class this quarter. Got it?" "Yes, Mr. Lane," August responded. Margo's response was another silent nod. "And that'll mean no volleyball for you, Tabby." Mr. Lane added. "No sports league wants a cheater. I expect good work from you, all from you, editing and all, on my desk, next Monday. Do not let me down, or you won't be doing volleyball. No pass, no play." Margo gave one last nod, this time, managing to get out, a single, broken, quiet syllable: "Y-- yeah." "Well then," Mr. Hansen remarked. "This meeting is adjourned. Remember, both of you. Library. 2:30 PM, not a second after. See the both of you then." "We will," August and Margo replied, Margo a bit shakier. And then they finally stood up from their seats and walked out the door into the hallway. What did this narrator tell you. 'Immediately' always means trouble. But hey, at least August and Margo didn't have any more shit to endure when they walked out of the principal's office -- Of course they fucking came across that stupid bitch Harper again. She came in jumping from a doorway like a ninja emerging from the darkness, carrying that same dirtied chicken breast and... the splattered remains of the tomato, from like ten minutes ago. Well, give her a point for that. She's not one to waste food, despite what a spiny shitbag she is. "Round two, losers!" Harper shouted, letting out an evil-sounding laugh as she threw that filthy chicken breast. But August was not in the mood. He caught the breast in mid-air with his right hand, before walking over and shoving the dirty breast into Harper's mouth like a bar of soap. He and Margo looked on as she coughed out the breast and all those grains of dirt. She was left coughing for a while, before she finally looked up at August, with a face bearing such exaggerated-looking anger, it looked like her head was about to spontaneously combust into a blazing fireball. "Fucking polecat!" she screamed. "I HATE YOU!" And then she ran off like a stupid little coward. The whole sight was enough to finally make Margo happy again; she gave out a soft chuckle, and then she hugged August, bearing a cute little smile on her face. "That was funny, Kenny," Margo said, wiping away her tears. Seeing his tiny leporine friend happy again, was enough to bring a smile to August's own face. It was as if the two of them hadn't been slapped with detention at all. "Funny indeed, Margo," he remarked, hugging her back. "Funny indeed."

#P.R. Storm's Grunvale #Grunvale #Chapter 4 #gilda grime #Margo Hynde #August and April Lowry #August Lowry #April Lowry #Wendy Wyler #Alan Veeder #Harper Madera

[prstorm-blog1]

Gilda Grime - Three Different Formal Outfits by PhoenixOfGrunvale

Three different ideas I had for what Gilda's formal outfit would look like. ----- This is basically just concept art again. Three different formal outfits I imagine Gilda wearing at different times of the year. All inspired by different things. The winter formal outfit is inspired by prom dresses (especially those of my ex-girlfriend with whom I've been to three different proms) and that famous blue dress of Cinderella in the 1950 Disney film, the summer formal outfit has a seaside theme and is inspired by dresses I've seen at various other formal semi-formal events, and the spring/autumn formal outfit is inspired by womens' fashion of the 40s and 50s. The winter formal dress is my personal favorite of them. The light blue color, the updo, the diamond earrings, the minimal makeup... it just works for her. Not that she doesn't look nice in the other two dresses, though. I personally imagine that winter dress is the one she has from the beginning; the spring/autumn dress would be designed for her by April, and the summer dress would be designed by one of Wendy's sisters. The sparkle effect on the winter dress took a while to get right, as you could guess. But you know what was also hard? Getting the rose on the autumn/spring dress right. I had to use a lot of overlaid grayscale layers to get it the color I wanted it. You'd be surprised how long I spend trying to get just one aspect of a drawing right. Anyhoo, that's all for this one. Post in the comments below what you think. DON'T FORGET TO FOLLOW ME ON OTHER PLATFORMS: Tumblr: prstorm.tumblr.com/ Patreon: www.patreon.com/phoenixrstorm Twitter: twitter.com/StormTheArtist YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCEtCO… Discord: Contact me by my tag (Phoenix of Grunvale#1752) for an invite to my server. ----- Grunvale is owned by me. This concept art was made in 1.78:1.

#grunvale #gilda grime #phoenix of grunvale #pr storm's grunvale #P.R. Storm #Gilda #Formal #1940s fashion #1950s fashion #Cinderella #summer fashion

[prstorm-blog1]

Weirdness in the Flesh (w / Speeddraw) by PhoenixOfGrunvale

WATCH THE SPEEDDRAW HERE: www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxhm2V… ----- I wanted to draw a human version of Gilda Grime. So I did. ----- Ever wondered what Gilda would look like as a human? Well, here you go. And she... yeah, she really DOES look ugly as a human. She looks cute as a procyonine/raccoon, but the big nose, chin and eyebrows do not translate well onto her humanized self. Which is kind of the point. She is regarded as ugly, after all. Not gonna go into much detail here because I'm making a speeddraw of this thing, but I will say that I did decide to make human Gilda's skin tone slightly darker than what I usually do for white characters, to reflect her half-Italian (well, the Grunvale-iverse's equivalent of Italian... Istallion) ancestry. Kind of like what I did when I drew TheFreshKnight's OC Holly, when I went with a light brown tone for her skin, taking a (correct) wild guess that she was Hispanic. Except this time, I was certain what race/ethnicity Gilda is. And then I drew in human Gilda coming across raccoon Gilda, and the weird looks on their faces when they see each other. I like how this turned out. Anyhoo, post in the comments... you know the rest. I'll provide a link to the speeddraw when I post the video to YouTube. DON'T FORGET TO FOLLOW ME ON OTHER PLATFORMS: Tumblr: prstorm.tumblr.com/ Patreon: www.patreon.com/phoenixrstorm Twitter: twitter.com/StormTheArtist YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCEtCOh2aqvSuoXL11yTSY5gt Discord: Contact me by my tag (Phoenix of Grunvale#1752) for an invite to my server. ----- Grunvale is owned by me. You can draw the characters in it without my permission, but if you do, please credit me as creator. This artwork was made in 1.85:1.

#grunvale #phoenix of grunvale #pr storm's grunvale #gilda #gilda grime #raccoon girl #raccoon

[prstorm-blog1]

Oh, did this take a while. Anyhoo, another Grunvale drawing! ----- Margo Hynde's favorite sport may be competitive eating, but she's also into other sports as well, including volleyball. In fact, she's on one of the volleyball teams, namely the Junior Sapphires, at her school, Davis Junior High. However, being on the volleyball team means two things for her. One, she's pressured by her teammates to wear her hair in French or Dutch braids (Margo's pictured here with French braids), a traditional hairstyle among female athletes in the Grunvale School District, and a hairstyle she hates for several reasons (listed here). And two, she's unfortunately on the same team as Harper Madera, an erinaceine (hedgehog) who bullies her for her short height and meat allergy. Harper is the big bully in DJH's sixth grade. She's incredibly arrogant, often acting like she is the team, and trying to pin her issues on those she preys upon. And just to rub salt in the wound, since the Maderas are such a wealthy family, and have connections with the mayor's family, she frequently gets away with her bullying. Which is part of the reason nobody stands up to her. Harper will be making her debut in chapter four. Chapter 4 sees the Lowry twins and Margo (as well as Wendy Wyler and Alan Veeder) getting detention for various reasons; I'm gonna have Harper mocking both April and Margo, and calling the latter a lot of cliche short-people insults. Alright. Now to the work itself! ----- The other bipedes in the image are (from left to right, excluding Harper and Margo): Piper McGinty, an eighth-grader kangaroo/macropodine; Hazell Cameron, a seventh-grader beaver/castoridine; Scarlett Olivier, a seventh-grader sheep/ovine; and Vanessa Zander, an eighth-grader fox/vulpine. Harper and Hazell are actually supposed to be of color; the former is Hispanic, and the latter is black. I do plan for Piper, Hazell, Scarlett and Vanessa to appear in Grunvale as well, eventually. Unless I'm mistaken, this is the biggest file of art I've ever posted to DA, at nearly 8MB. I was going for a cinematic approach for this; not only is this work in 2.35:1, but there's also a grain filter over it (which is what most of the file's size owes to) to give it the feel of being a film still. There's also a lot of layer effects. Most of them went into the egg, but I also used layer effects to create the acne on Piper's face, the cheese puff dust on Hazell's fingers, and the blush on Margo's cheeks. The background is a tinted photograph of the brick wall in my basement (same wall from this thing) that I mirrored and stretched to fill the entire frame, and the lighting was accomplished with a gradient formatted to match the lighting of the background. Scarlett seems to love being in the light of the camera's flash, doesn't she? Anyhoo, that's all I got for this one. I'll be making a deluxe WIP for Patreon. In the meantime, post in the comments below what you think of this! DON'T FORGET TO FOLLOW ME ON OTHER PLATFORMS: DeviantArt: phoenixofgrunvale.deviantart.com Patreon: www.patreon.com/phoenixrstorm Twitter: twitter.com/StormTheArtist YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCEtCOh2aqvSuoXL11yTSY5gt Discord: Contact me by my tag (Phoenix of Grunvale#1752) for an invite to my server. ----- Grunvale is owned by me. You can draw the characters in it without my permission, but if you do, please credit me as creator.This artwork was made in 2.35:1.

#Grunvale #P.R. Storm #P.R. Storm's Grunvale #Volleyball #Margo Hynde #bullying

[prstorm-blog1]

Grunvale: Chapter 3 - 'Hello, boys! I'm baaaaack!' ...oh wait. That's the wrong Randy.

...CLICK. "Wakin' up in the morning with KGCH / 99.9 The Stage!" "Gooooooooood morning, my lovely listeners! This is Jack Casey, broadcasting live at KGCH in Grunvale, New Pork, to all you bipedes in Albaneigh and surrounding counties! It is 6AM on a gah-lorious Monday morning. And how better to start off a Monday morning by playing one of the gah-reatest songs of the 1960s, quite possibly the best song there is about our least favorite day of the week! It's 'Monday Monday' by the Mamas and the Papas, from their hit 1966 album If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears. On 99.9 The Stage!" Gilda slowly opened her eyes as the opening vocables of the song that made Mondays a little more tolerable, sounded from her alarm clock radio. The first thing she saw as she awoke was her old CRT TV, whose screen was blue and filled her bedroom with cool-shaded hues. And below it, she saw the Criterion LaserDisc for Time Bandits, ejected from the player. Must've fallen asleep as the credits were rolling, she thought to herself as she slowly slid herself out of bed. She knew she was awake for the whole movie. She remembered seeing the ending; that bizarre mindfuck of an ending. This narrator won't spoil it if you haven't seen the movie for yourself, but be warned that it's the kind of ending that'll have you questioning to yourself, 'what the fuck just happened?!' Anyhoo. Gilda took the LaserDisc out of the player and back in its case, and put it back with the rest of her collection in its rightful, alphabetized place. With that done, she unlocked her bedroom door, and made her way across the hall. Her bedroom was next to her brothers', and she knew that they were gonna wake up angry at her no matter what, for the GOLL incident the night before. But waking up to the sound of her footsteps on top of that? Gilda might as well be going up to a mirror and saying 'candyman' five times. So Gilda made damn sure as she tiptoed across the hall, that the floorboards would not make a creak, and betray her to those sleeping beasts. Tip... toe... tip... toe... tip... toe... And then her toes felt the shag carpeting of another bedroom. A master bedroom with a bed big enough for two, but for five years, only knew the touch of one. Gilda's mother, the nearly perpetually exhausted, trashy mess of a procyonine that was Gretchen Grime. Gilda looked into the bedroom as she took her first few steps in. She first laid eyes on a bronze, eight-inch-by-six picture frame, that contained a photograph of the entire Grime family, about a half-decade before. They were all smiling in the photo, and looked virtually unrecognizable from what they would become. Gilda was about a foot and a half shorter than her current five-foot stature, missing her two front teeth, and was wearing a giant pink bow in her hair, along with a pink T-shirt, denim dress and black slippers. Terence looked almost the same, but his blonde hair was more of a mop than a mullet, and he was just over half a foot shorter. Truman, while still visibly overweight, was thinner and less disgusting-looking, not having any belly showing under his shirt, or any acne on his face. Troy looked like a raccoon version of Chuckie Finster. Like... spitting image. The same messy red hair, the same glasses, almost the same clothes even. Minus the Saturn on the shirt. And Tom was just an innocent little baby, sleeping in Gretchen's arms. Gretchen looked almost exactly like Gilda. Well, aside from being thirty years older. She had the same big nose, same blonde hair, same muzzle, same eye shape... the only differences she had were a pointed chin, hazel eyes and thin eyebrows. And quite surprisingly, considering her striking resemblance to her mercilessly-bullied daughter, she actually looked pretty beautiful, enough to compare with actresses like Reese Witherspoon or Drew Barrymore even. This narrator bets that furries would push Rouge the Bat aside to get to Gretchen Grime, she looked so beautiful in that photo. And then there was a seventh Grime, who stood next to Gretchen with his hand on her shoulder. He had curly black hair like Truman's, a thin mustache like Terence's, and the same chin dimple, green eyes and bushy eyebrows as Gilda. And he looked pretty nice too. Like a mix between George Clooney and Matt Dillon. But his looks could not cover for his actions. After looking at the photo for a while, Gilda turned her head to her mother Gretchen, who was lying across her king-sized bed, passed out, her hair a mess, and her left arm dangling over the side, hovering over a few cans of Rockstar Energy drink. An unfinished, abstract-looking painting hung on an easel near her feet. It looked like some mix of the styles of Dali and Picasso. Imagine something like The Elephants, except mostly blue. And with an obviously half-painted background, that had pencil marks denoting which colors were supposed to go where. It looked pretty weird. But hey, seeing art in its work-in-progress phase is always awesome, so what's there to complain about? Anyhoo. Finally, Gilda turned her head to some movie posters. They all depicted the same black-haired, green-eyed boar from the photo, although some of the more obviously recent ones showed his face beginning to wrinkle, his hair beginning to grey, and his mustache looking more like the Tom Selleck or Burt Reynolds than the John Waters or Clark Gable. On all the posters, the name 'THEODORE GRIME' was written in giant capital letters, sometimes next to or above the names of whoever his co-stars were. Gilda glared harder and harder at these posters with every second she stared at them. "Why, Dad?" she whispered to herself, as she turned her attention back to her passed-out mother. "Why?" Gilda went over to her mother, and crushed one of the energy drink cans with her foot. It let out a loud, crinkling metallic sound. Nearly instantaneously, it had Gretchen mumbling and opening her eyes, shaking her head as she sat herself up. "Huh... what... what's... what's happening... huh... must've fallen asleep... what... uh... huh... what's... what are you..." Gretchen rubbed her eyes as she sat herself up. As soon as her eyes adjusted, she noticed her daughter Gilda standing in front of her. "Gilda, what are you doing in here in the middle of the night?" she said, sleepily, obviously not yet fully awake. "It's 6AM, Mom," Gilda replied. "You must've had an energy drink crash or something. Anyways, it's time to go to work." "Wha... what? Really?" Gretchen replied. She looked at the clock in the front of her room. Sure enough, it read, in blue digital font, '6:04 AM'. "Oh... so it is. Alright then. Thanks. You go get dressed too." As Gretchen got herself up from off her bed to get ready for work, Gilda went and got ready herself. Brushed her teeth, put on deodorant, and got dressed into one of her signature outfits: light green polo, dark green plaid skirt, and white knee-high socks. She also braided her hair into two cutesy, shoulder-length pigtails, secured with black elastics and accessorized with emerald-green ribbons tied into bows, the way she always styled her hair when she wore this outfit. Gilda looked closely at her pigtails in the mirror to see if she got them even, adjusting one of her ribbons slightly before letting out a huge, cute, toothy grin, so big that she saw dashes of pink glowing on her cheeks. However, that smile quickly disappeared once she realized she forgot to turn off her alarm clock radio. Not that it could wake up her brothers, oh no. They were sleeping pretty deep. It was just that the next song that Jack Casey decided to play over at 99.9 The Stage was... um... well, to hint at the artist and song that played, how sweet it was for him to be hated by Gilda. "Aww, hell no," she whispered, running over to turn the radio off. "How sweet this song isn't!" If anything positive came out of being exposed to those few seconds of he-whose-voice-is-so-bland-it-sounded-like-white-noise, it was that it reminded Gilda to put together a selection of cassettes for her Walkman. So she got out her backpack and went to her cassette collection, to look for cassettes for the road. There were seven albums... actually, eight cassettes, already in her backpack, six of which she felt like might be worth listening to for the day, Road to Ruin by the Ramones, 1978; Signals by Rush, 1982; Sports by Huey Lewis and the News, 1983; Cosmic Thing by the B-52's, 1989; and the double cassette Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness by the Smashing Pumpkins, 1995, and two of which she felt like she had carried around enough for now, the studio album Working Class Dog by Rick Springfield, 1981; and the live album All Night Long by Sammy Hagar, 1978 (both of which Gilda had listened to several times in the past few weeks, particularly for their respective versions of "I've Done Everything For You"). She put the Springfield and Hagar albums back on the shelf, and replaced them with four cassettes of different types: one studio album, City to City by Gerry Rafferty, 1978; one live album, Stop Making Sense by the Talking Heads, 1984; one greatest hits album, The Very Best of 10cc, 1997; and a cover album that she owned ironically and loved for how stupid it was, The Return of Bruno by Bruce Willis3, 1987. 3: ...yeah. THAT Bruce Willis. In fact, he also had two other albums. "Bruce Willis singing..." Gilda chuckled to herself, rightfully amused that a respected actor-turned-punchline would actually have a musical career. "Because I always thought that Die Hard would be better as a musical. Same with The Fifth Element. And Death Becomes Her. And Bonfire of the Vanities! Heheh!" With all the cassettes she wanted in her backpack, Gilda checked for everything else. GameBoy? Check. GameGear? Check. Walkman? Check. Headphones? Check. Wallet? Belongs in the right skirt pocket. Check. Brick phone? Yeah, it's got about twenty minutes of a charge, that's way more than enough. Check. Yep, everything was accounted for. So with everything checked and accounted for, she slid her feet into shiny, black mary jane shoes with silver buckles, strapped her backpack over her shoulder, and headed down the stairs to wait for her mother. After about two minutes of waiting, Gilda decided to pass the time by getting an orange out of the fridge. As she stepped out of the kitchen, she saw her mother coming down the stairs. And she couldn't help but cringe at the way she looked. ...did this narrator said Gretchen Grime looked beautiful? Eh... heheh. No. That was when the photo was taken. Now in her early forties, Gretchen was a plastic surgery disaster, with cartoonishly big hooters, fat-looking Melanie Griffith lips, and an unnaturally small, post-rhinoplasty Jennifer Grey nose. If it was a choice between who was uglier, Gretchen Grime or Tori Spelling... well, Tori Spelling would still be uglier. But Gretchen Grime would be uglier compared to any other lady! Well, except if whoever she was being compared to had some extreme body modification like a lip plate or full-body tattoos... ah, never mind. You get the point. Plastic surgery ruined Gretchen really fucking bad. And the outfit she was wearing wasn't helping matters. Despite being in her early forties, she dressed like she was in her twenties. Denim jacket, tight red pants, high-heeled sandals... black shirt that exposed her cleavage and midriff, mascara that made it look like her eyes were turning into spiders, shiny pink lipstick that made it look like her mouth was melting off, and way too fucking much gold jewelry. Gilda wanted to say to her face that she looked ugly, but she didn't have it in her to outright insult her mother, even if she did deserve it. Well, since this narrator's outside of the story, no problem saying it here. Gretchen was as ugly as everyone else thought Gilda was and then some. She looked like an inflatable sex doll cosplaying as Joan Van Ark. ...'s melted wax sculpture. Anyhoo, let's just get to the dialogue exchange between Gilda and Gretchen. "You sure you're dressed for work?" asked Gilda, with a suspicious, slightly disgusted look on her face. "That's a bit... colorful for just a photoshoot." "Yeah, well it's not just a photoshoot," Gretchen replied. "It's also the first day of shooting a movie. It's my first time directing." The suspicious look stayed on Gilda's face. "Is it one of those --" "No, no," Gretchen interrupted. "It's not one of those movies. It's a thriller. That does have a lot of gross imagery in it." Heheh... yeah. Gross imagery. Gretchen's got ya covered there, movie she's directing. "How gross we talking?" Gilda asked. "On a scale of one to... oh, I don't know, Pink Flamingos?" "Eh... Basic Instinct." Gretchen replied. "You know that movie?" "1992, directed by Paul Verhoeven, starring Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone." Gilda replied. "I know the movie... haven't seen it though. I do know that it's controversial. But, why again?" Gretchen leaned over and whispered into Gilda's ear, a description of the... um... scene, that made the film so controversial. This narrator won't describe it here, but when Gilda listened to Gretchen's description of it, her jaw dropped pretty hard. Probably would've fallen right to the floor, too, if it wasn't secured to her skull. "They got away with that in a mainstream movie?!" Gilda said, shocked. "Gross!" Gilda unpeeled her orange, and popped a slice into her mouth as Gretchen opened the door outside. When her teeth hit a seed, she spat it out onto the front lawn, still drenched from the heavy downpour the night before. "But whatever," Gilda added. "It's your movie." Gilda and Gretchen walked together down the stepping stone walkway, which led to the concrete of Elm Hill Road. As they walked, a question popped in Gilda's mind. A question she really needed answered. So she went ahead and asked it. "Hey, Mom?" Gilda said. "Yeah, Gilda?" Gretchen replied. Gilda paused for a moment, trying to think of how to word what to say. "Why..." she said. She got the first word out. As Gilda popped another orange slice into her mouth, the rest of the sentence came to her. "Why do you let my brothers be such... pardon my language, but, dickheads?" After this question, followed a long silence. The only sound around the two of them were the chunky, inch-high heels of Gilda's mary janes and the stilty, four-inch heels of Gretchen's dull brown sandals, clacking against the road. The silence was so long, that Gilda noticed how damp the road still was, how cold it felt even through her shoes. She almost turned her attention back to the road, before Gretchen managed to get it back with a reply. "...I never let them." Gretchen said. "You know I've never let them. But they always find a way to go above me." "You could always try to be more forceful on them," Gilda replied. "Punish them somehow." "I have," Gretchen said. "They always find a way to get out of being punished. They're like cats... felines. No matter how many times you tell them 'no', no matter what you try to enforce that 'no'. They always find a way to... well, get their way. No wonder the Eggyptians4 worshiped cats... the cats took control of them. Just like your brothers took control of me." 4: Not a typo. 'Eggypt' (pronouced egh-ipped) is the Grunvaliverse's equivalent of Egypt. "Like a four-headed Scar," Gilda said. "What they need is a Simba to overthrow them." "Your father would've made a great Simba -- uh, Mufasa." Gretchen replied. "He wouldn't have just overthrown them, he wouldn't have even let them take over and overrun you and me. Your brothers actually respected your father. They saw how he'd get on movie sets when he had an issue with anyone. You did, too, that one time, when you were just a little thing. Remember that incident with Mr. Smithee?" "About the plot hole in the script?" Gilda remembered the incident. It was some serious shit, she recalled. "Of course." "Yeah, he could easily get that way, with anyone on the cast or crew he had an issue with. Costars, directors, writers... even craft services. And the crew was quite frightened, worried he'd take his anger out on them. Your brothers were, too. They'd never piss him off, ever. But when your father left... it felt as if your brothers told him 'long live the king', pushed him out, and... well, you know the rest. You did see it happen, after all." "And got a taste of it last night, too." "Oh dear," Gretchen replied. "What've they done this time?" "Well..." And then she went on to describe everything this narrator already described last chapter. Which you've probably already read. If you're reading this chapter without reading the first two, then that's pretty scummy of you. You're not experiencing it the way it's intended, the Gravity Falls way where it's best experienced knowing as little about it as possible going into it. So go back and read those. Otherwise, if you are all caught up, then let's fast-forward through this bit of Gilda describing everything from Truman calling her an ugly sow behind her back, to the Grime brothers getting a taste of Lemonzilla-tainted GOLL. "...sorry I got into your beer, Mom." Gilda said. That was the part she was really concerned about. "I felt threatened, I couldn't think clearly." "Honestly, at this point, I'm surprised they don't do worse," Gretchen replied. "They'd probably be threatening you to get them vodka and tobacco cigarettes if I bought them." "Yeah. And don't worry, I'll find a way to get you a Coors and a Samuel Adams. Maybe I can convince Mr. Chromos to help me... it'll be pretty risky, though. For obvious reasons." "No, no. You don't need to do that. Besides, you don't want to put Chandler in prison." "Which is why I said it'd be risky. And on second thought, since I said that out loud... yeah, it does sound like a bad idea. But I still want to make up for it somehow." "That's sweet of you." Gretchen and Gilda finally came up to the intersection of Elm Hill Road and West Pine Drive, the bigger road that it branched off of. On a wet patch of grass, Gretchen gave Gilda a squeeze. Gilda normally didn't mind her mother hugging her, but like many over the age of, well, it varies from bipede to bipede, but let's say... six, she was always embarrassed when she did it in public. It was like she forgot that Gilda wasn't still that little girl with freckles and hair ribbons that liked citrus fruit, hated sports, and was a closet fan of a pony cartoon. She was a big girl now. With freckles. And hair ribbons. That liked citrus fruit. And hated sports. But hadn't exactly been a fan of that pony cartoon since the season five finale left a sour taste in her mouth, with the way it redeemed a villain she and some other fans called 'Wild Berry Pop Tart'. Anyhoo, Gilda didn't like her mother hugging her out in the open. She felt she was too old to be treated like that in public. So she hung her arms by her sides as her cheeks turned bright red with embarrassment. And then Gretchen stopped hugging when a blue Toyota Prius pulled up. "Well, that must be my Uber," she said. "See you when... I get home. Hopefully the shooting day won't go past seven." "Bye Mom," Gilda said, raising her hand that wasn't still holding the orange slices. "Bye," Gretchen replied. Gretchen sat herself down in the Prius. It drove off pretty much the exact second she closed the door, and, just seconds later, was so far down West Pine Drive, that it looked like a Micro Machine. Now alone, Gilda popped another two orange slices into her mouth, and dug into her backpack for her Walkman and a cassette, to prepare for her ride, a bus leading to the town and right near Chandler's. She was in the mood for something 80s-defining with one of the greatest voices in the era's rock music, so she decided to load Huey Lewis' Sports. Not only did it have one of Lewis' best-known songs, "The Heart of Rock and Roll", as the opening track, it also had several other well-known tracks. "I Want a New Drug", "If This Is It", and Gilda's personal favorite on the album and third favorite Huey Lewis song overall (behind "Do You Believe In Love" from Picture This and "Jacob's Ladder" from Fore!), "Heart and Soul". A great album to play, especially on a bus that only ever plays radio stations that play modern, poppy garbage. As Gilda inserted the cassette, she took a look at everything around her, at everything that was drenched by last night's storm. The roads, the grass, the trees, the houses, Truman, the flowers -- ...wait, Truman?! Coming up Elm Hill Road towards her?!

Gilda stared at that fat tub of lard for a few seconds, trying to make out if it really was Truman. Let's see... five-foot-tall 200-pound-plus body, XXL-sized clothing, black hair that looked like pubes... crooked bandage on his head. Yeah, that was Truman, alright. Complete with glowing chartreuse eyes and foamy froth at the mouth. ...wait, what the fuck? Over the years, Gilda got to know Truman for a lot of weird disguises and outfits, all of which he used to mess with her. Some with fake mustaches, some that involved cross-dressing, some that involved makeup to make him look like a totally different race. And all of which Gilda easily saw through. Though she did admire the detail Truman put into all his disguises. He wasn't above using contact lenses to make his eyes look a totally different color, but the froth... the froth looked gross, like something other than spit. Did Truman not spit his toothpaste into the sink or something? Whatever this disguise was, it really freaked Gilda out. Especially the look on Truman's face, the look of a crazed, rabid, predatory animal, hunting down its prey. Gilda was not about to associate the great music of Huey Lewis with running away from the Pillsbury Doughboy's mutant dingleberry. "The Heart of Rock and Roll" was not gonna be the 'getting away from Truman' song. So Gilda put her Walkman back in her backpack and started running. Truman was the same five-foot height as Gilda, but twice the weight, and thus, in normal circumstances, he had only around half her running speed. But with the heavy, fragile (and priceless) load in her backpack, not to mention the heels of her mary janes making it a bit more difficult to walk, Gilda was slowed down a bit. So the only choice she had, was to run as fast as she could, from her obese, bully brother. Gilda was about a hundred feet down West Pine Drive before Truman made his turn from Elm Hill. He grabbed the pole that held the green signs reading 'ELM HILL RD' and 'WEST PINE DR' on its top, and leaned to his side towards the ground as he looked eastward down West Pine, at his pigtailed, green-clad sister. "Ah ne'er realished how mucsh ah'm like a hippo... potamine." Truman said, lisping through his mouthful of foamy froth. "Ah'm a fat thing, who'sh about to shpread a piecshe of shit all o'er the placshe! HAAHAAAAA!" Truman continued to charge down the road towards Gilda. It was... well, actually quite an uneventful chase, from a cinematic standpoint. Gilda was running pretty slow, and Truman was running just about as slow, if not slower. It felt more like a level from a video game, a video game adaptation of a movie, that watered down one of its most intense scenes into something... not really cinematic at all. You probably wouldn't have even been able to tell it was an intense chase, had it not been for the terrified look on Gilda's face as she ran from Truman, and Truman himself making... every single over-the-top villain face you've ever seen. With foamy froth melting from his lips, falling into the wind and onto the ground. The faces were worthy of their own comedic montage, preferably set to 'Yakety Sax'. That would've been golden. Anyhoo. After running so many hundred feet, Gilda was slowing down, her legs tired from running. So she took another slice off the remaining orange, and popped it into her mouth. She chewed it once, twice, three times... felt its sweet juices touch her tongue as she swallowed. Oh, how those juices tasted so good. Almost good enough to make her forget she was running for her life. And then... BUMP. Gilda's foot hit something, and she fell. Oh crap, Gilda thought to herself. She couldn't afford to trip on anything. Truman was right behind her! So she got herself up from off the ground, and... it wasn't there? What? Gilda became very confused at the absence of the feel of the ground. So many questions were running through her mind as to what was happening. Why does the ground look like the tops of trees? And why does it look so far away? And why does it look like it's coming closer? And why is there such a strong wind coming at me from below? Wait a minute... Oh no, Gilda thought to herself. She still had no idea what was going on, but she was pretty sure she was falling. Where, she had no idea. But she was pretty sure she was falling, straight to her doom. She closed her eyes and started to scream as what she thought were treetops came closer and closer to her. However, the next thing Gilda felt, was a flat surface against her feet. She felt her feet skidding, then she felt them running, slower and slower. Gilda opened her eyes to see what was happening, and was perplexed to see that she had ended up towards the end of West Pine Drive, near the bus stop at Twin Mountain Avenue, the circular road that surrounded the main town. She may have been far away from Truman now, but... what even just happened? Was she caught in a daydream? She had a tendency to get caught up in psychedelic thoughts when she listened to music, but... that felt more real than usual. She didn't remember running down the road. And she especially didn't remember a road sign coming right up to her face -- BONK. Gilda hit her big nose right on the pole of a speed limit sign. "Oh, my nose!" she did... not say, because she wasn't Marcia Brady. However, she did grab her nose, which, by this point, was heavily bruised, both from getting roughed up by her brothers, and now from running into a sign at five miles an hour. A few drops of blood came loose and dripped from her nose. Nothing that made her have to clog it again, but enough to make her groan in disbelief, that she was bleeding from her nose once more. "For gob sake, seriously?" Gilda said to herself, noticing the grass below her had been painted red at its tips from the drops of her blood. But she wasn't interested in that right now; she was just trying to figure out what just happened. She looked back to the part of West Pine Drive she had run down. She stared down the road for a few seconds, thinking she could make sense of it all. But all she could think to utter, was a one-liner, a pun too clever for that fat thing that was probably still chasing her, to think up. "That was... quite the trip." No, this narrator isn't doing the CSI reference again. If you want to do it, go play that part of 'Won't Get Fooled Again' for yourself. Anyhoo. As she turned her head around, Gilda noticed, out of the corner of her eye, a giant black... something, lying against a tree, on the very outside of the forest next to West Pine Drive. Was it a compost bag that somebody dropped on the way to the farm? Or was it left there to nurture the trees of the forest? Whatever. It didn't matter to Gilda, since decided not to mess with it. It was probably rotten, and would give her all kinds of nasty diseases if she touched it. Besides, she wasn't about to give into the procyonine stereotype of getting into others' waste -- Just kidding. That would've been boring. Of course she went up and grabbed it. And then she attempted to take the compost bag into the nearest compost bin she could find. And this narrator says 'attempted,' because... well, Gilda thought it was a compost bag. It turned out to actually be someone's foot. "That would be my foot, you klutzy sow," the bipede said. "A closet foot fetishist, are you now?" Gilda jumped, startled at the sudden sound of the bipede's voice. She froze for a few seconds, before taking a closer look at what she had grabbed. It was a male bipede, clad in a black sweatshirt and sweat pants, who seemed to be just about her age and height. His hair was a black mop top, that made him look like one of the Beatles. Well, at least what they looked like before the drugs and Yoko Ono. Anyhoo, the bipede also had really big ears, big black eyes, prominent nostrils, prominent fangs, wings on its back... It's a chiropteran5, Gilda thought to herself. 5: Bat. Gilda and the chiropteran stared at each other silently for what felt like forever. Gilda's look was one of surprise and confusion, the chiropteran's a deep gaze. Slowly, slowly but surely, however, the look on the chiropteran's face morphed, into one similar to Gilda's. Before either of them knew it, the chiropteran's face also bore a look of surprise. "Holy smokes," the chiropteran said as he stood himself up, still keeping his eyes on Gilda. "Can it be? Is this one of the children of Ted Grime before me?" Gilda scowled at the mention of that name. "Say his name again," she said. "And I shove a garlic bulb down your throat." "Well, excuse your hate boner, ring-tailed lady," the chiropteran remarked, put off by Gilda's reply. "Was that threat of a hate crime really --" The chiropteran was interrupted, by the feel of Gilda pulling his wing and the sound of her stern voice. "Excuse me?!" Gilda said, with an angry, fiery look in her eyes. "Hate boner?! Do I look like a boar to you?!" The chiropteran froze as his cheeks turned pink, embarrassed to have been called out. He fell silent for a few seconds, before speaking again. "Sorry, Grime hater," he said, as he brushed away Gilda's hand from his wing. "Didn't mean to trigger. I get it. I lack tact. Must work on that, I figure. Anyways, a citrus fruit lies in my sweats pocket. Behind you, it came following, like a jetting-off rocket." "I had a feeling I was missing something," Gilda said to herself, quietly. She knew she still had her backpack and wallet on her; she felt the wallet in her skirt pocket, and could feel it hitting her right thigh with every step she took. And the backpack? She felt the weight of it on her shoulders and brushing against her back, how could she miss it? But the orange! She knew she had three slices left on that thing. And now she knew exactly where they went to. The chiropteran held out the three missing slices in his right hand, and Gilda of course picked them up. She didn't care that they came from a pocket full of lint and who knows what else, it was citrus fruit. And just about nothing could keep Gilda away from her beloved citrus fruit. Gilda and the chiropteran began to walk to the bus stop. If Gilda had any shred of negativity still visible on her face, it vanished as she got into the orange slices. The corners of her mouth turned upwards as she chewed one of the orange slices, and then she flashed her pearly whites in a huge grin as she swallowed. They were so white, one could almost see a cliche sparkle effect coming from them. "I love oranges," Gilda said, in a cheerful, food mascot-like tone, with sparkling eyes, rosy-hued face, and keeping that big smile on her face, as she looked the chiropteran in his big black eyes. "Thanks for sparing them for me... uh..." "Randy Haggard of the chiropteran tribe of Mount Hatcher," the chiropteran said. "Bet you didn't thing a winged thing would be a good catcher. Now, the Grime mother had four boars and a sow, I recall. You're the one named after the Rita Hayworth movie. What's it called?" Gilda's face turned a bright, grapefruit-pulp red as she popped another orange slice into her mouth. She grew up exposed to the world of cinema a lot. Even if the title wasn't already, literally her first name, how could she possibly not know what it was called? Or Randy for that matter? Gilda frequently heard it cited as one of the best film noirs of all time, and it was featured prominently in The Shawshank Redemption, a movie considered one of the best in the prison genre as well as all time. "Gilda, of course," she said. She paused to swallow the orange slice, before continuing. "1946, directed by Charles Vidor. Starring Rita Hayworth, as you brought up, and also my other namesake, Glenn Ford. 'Glenn' is my middle name." A short pause followed, as a look of intrigue formed on Randy's face. "Yeah," Gilda continued. "Gilda Glenn Grime. I've heard my father gave me that name because he was a fan of the movie Gilda. Also, he thought it sounded like a cartoon character's name. Like 'Bugs Bunny' or 'Woody Woodpecker'." Oh, for fuck sake, Gilda! Don't say that name in front of males! They just end up snickering like a bunch of immature idiots! Speaking of which, 'snicker like an immature idiot' Randy did. Because of course he did. Because trusting a male Randy's age with a name like that is like trusting the Three Stooges with pies. "Woody Woodpecker," he said, with a stupid-looking grin on his face. "Three names for a penis. As one, they're the only name more phallic than the guy from Venus." Randy continued to laugh as Gilda rolled her eyes. "Oh, grow up," she said. "Walter Lantz knew exactly what he was doing there," Randy said. "Now, let's get back to you, before I take off to the air. Your name is quite pretty, it's a name that means gold, a precious mineral since the days of old." "Aww, that's so nice of you," Gilda said, smiling. "I don't hear many nice things said about me. That, coming from you, means a lot." Randy let out a small smile, before suddenly stopping dead in his tracks. Gilda walked a few steps further, before she stopped and looked back at the chiropteran boy, with a puzzled look on her face. "Randy?" she said. "You... heading out now? Going out to fly?" Randy remained silent as he held his head down. Uh oh, Gilda thought to herself. Randy was obviously feeling something. And whatever it was, he was not liking it. "What's wrong, Randy?" Gilda continued to ask, walking back towards Randy. "Did I say something that offended you?" "You're sweating," Randy replied, in a monotone voice. "And it's not a normal sweat. From a hideous beast you've run, I'd bet." Gilda chuckled at Randy's statement. "Well, I was running from my brother Truman," she said. "He's a real bully, real hideous too. Two hundred pounds and hair that looks like pubes! Beast, though? Well, that's one way to describe --" Gilda paused as Randy reached out to touch her forehead. He gently touched his middle and index fingers to just above Gilda's left eyebrow, and slowly dragged it past the widow's peak under her bangs. Gilda felt a bit uncomfortable being suddenly touched by someone she'd just met two minutes ago, but decided not to speak, out of fear of offending Randy. As the chiropteran boy released his fingers from her right eyebrow, Gilda saw her sweat shining at the tips of his fingers, a single drop falling to the ground as he pulled his fingers closer towards his face. Randy then began rubbing his thumb against his sweaty fingers in the shape of an infinity symbol. He made about six laps around his fingers, before a look of fear came to his face. "Oh dear," he said. "Oh dear, oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear... ¡joder!" Whoa... that's a way to rhyme. Anyhoo, Gilda was silent for a few seconds, initially only reacting to Randy's fear with a couple of blinks. And then she let out a few chuckles. She found it amusing, endearing even, that Randy seemed so afraid of Truman, not only not knowing him at all, but was afraid based on how she was sweating, of all things. And to be fair, who can blame her? If someone used something as ridiculous as sweat to judge something, you'd probably laugh too. There's the butterfly effect, and then there's... 'toast jelly side down means devil's near'. And to Gilda, this was a superstition in jelly-side-down territory. Even if she did agree with Randy that Truman was just the worst. "What does... my sweat, tell you about my brother now, Randy?" Gilda asked, in a tone that was every bit as mocking as Gilda tried to make sound serious. Randy looked at Gilda, fear clear as glass in his eyes. And then he spoke. "Your... your brother may live with you, under the tree of elm," he said, shakily. "But beware. He is a monster, not of this realm. Get too close to him, and he will attack. I suggest you run from home." Randy paused as he put his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants. "And don't. Come. Back." As Randy finished his sentence, his wings spread out like the arms of a scarecrow in a cornfield. Then he started to flap them, harder and harder, raising himself higher and higher above the ground. Gilda craned her head upwards to keep her eyes on him, as he ascended, ten, twenty, thirty feet and higher than the ground she was standing upon. Before she knew it, Randy was as high up as the tip of a limousine, balanced on the nose of a giraffe, standing on the back of an elephant. ...holding on to the top of a grand fir tree. "See ya," Gilda whispered, as she looked up at Randy. She thought she saw him waving back, but she couldn't tell for sure. At this point, Randy was practically a giant black dot to her, he was so high up. All she could tell from ground level, was that he then flew westward, back to his tribe on Hatcher Mountain. Gilda kept her eyes on Randy the dot as she popped her last orange slice into her mouth. "Wow," she said to herself. "I knew my brother was a bully, but I didn't know he was a monster. Heheh." Gilda turned back towards Twin Mountain Avenue. She paused to swallow the orange slice, before continuing talking to herself. "A monster, not of this realm!" she said, in a joking tone. "Run from home, don't come back! Rhyme rhyme rhymety rhyme rhyme rhyme! Seriously, that was an awesome description, though. I oughta convince him to write a poem about monsters not of this realm. Like Truman! Heheh. And here comes my bus." Sure enough, Gilda's bus into town pulled up to the sidewalk. It was a blue bus, a few seats longer than the school buses she'd seen around town, with the logo for the Albaneigh County Transportation Association written in a yellow, Futura-looking font towards the top, and an advertisement for some lawyer-looking business on the side. Well, actually, Gilda didn't really pay attention to what it was advertising. She only saw a clean-shaven vulpine tod in a grey suit, and naturally assumed it was something for something boring, like a law firm or realtor or something in that vein. Nothing an eleven-year-old would ever take interest in. In fact, nothing this narrator takes interest in even. Sorry that attention was even brought to it. Let's just get back to Gilda, and away from Dully McBlandbore Esquire. Gilda stepped onto the bus, took her ACTA card out of her wallet for it to be scanned, and then made her way to the back of the bus, past the old ladies, the blind moles, the disabled bipedes, and those who just didn't like driving. As she walked down the aisle, she heard, sure enough, like always, modern crap. More specifically, Pitbull's "Feel This Moment" featuring Christina Aguilera, a song she hated, not just because it was manufactured electro-garbage, but because it so blatantly and shamelessly ripped off the keyboard riff from A-ha's "Take On Me". "Yep," she said, cringing at the sound of the eighties getting murdered. "Definitely listening to Huey." Gilda finally arrived at her preferred seat, the one on her right, one row ahead of the long seat in the very back. She saw a lone Cheeto lying on the left of the seat, presumably left by a porcine or some other kind of messy-eating bipede. So she picked it up, set her backpack on the seat, and then scooted over to the window to sit herself down. Finally, at long last, Gilda took her beloved Walkman out of her backpack, strapped the headphones over her ears, and pressed play, just as the bus began to move. As the opening beats of "The Heart of Rock and Roll" sounded from the magnetic tape of the cassette and out of her headphones, Gilda closed her eyes, leaned back and smiled contentedly, moving her right pointer finger and the toes of her left foot, in tempo with the song. "Ahhh," she said. "I deserve this." And she did. And she listened to rest of the album, too, as the bus made its long commute on the way to Chandler's. Gilda will return in chapter five. Sjcy hmfuyjw, fs jrt lnwq, f wjuynqj, f sjfy kwjfp, f ytrgtd fsi f ljjp, ljy ymjnw ifd ns ymj qnrjqnlmy.

#Grunvale #Phoenix of Grunvale #P.R. Storm #P.R. Storm's Grunvale #Gilda Grime #Gretchen Grime #Randy Haggard #Chapter 3 #Chiropteran

[prstorm-blog1]

I was having some fun mixing the sisters from loud house

[prstorm-blog1]

I’m so proud of my trans sports daughter

[prstorm-blog1]

Cartoons + Golf

[prstorm-blog1]

Grunvale: Chapter 2 - Gilda’s a nice girl. Her brothers, on the other hand...

514 Elm Hill Road was built, where do you think? On a hill of elm trees, out of stone and mud. It was built just on the edge where the grass meets the forest, so close to the edge in fact, that the house actually got to be built around one of the forest's trees. Of course, the elm tree gave the house quite a peculiar shape. A normal, two-floor house, with a bunch of branches and leaves sticking out of the top. The roots grew below the house, and turned into the bark in the ground floor's kitchen... then finally branched out on the top floor, in the bedroom of Gilda Grime. The town of Grunvale was in the middle of a thunderstorm. And was it ever a big storm! Across the span of the length of the entire Godfather trilogy combined, lightning had lit the sky fourty-seven times, and the rain on the ground had accumulated to be two inches deep throughout nearly the entire town. Good thing the houses of Elm Hill Road were at an elevation, though, because had the cul-de-sac been on flat ground, its houses, including that of the Grimes, almost surely would be flooded. Gilda decided to use this thunderstorm for a thing she liked to do whenever a thunderstorm came to town: go to one of the top floor windows and use the falling rain as a substitute for her shower. So she did. After getting dressed in green-and-white striped pyjamas and pulling out the scrunchie that had held her blonde hair in a ponytail, she went to her cassette collection, looking for a good, rain-themed song to play as she prepared for Poseidon's fury to help clean her head. "Hmm..." Gilda muttered to herself. "What's a good song about rain?" She pulled the first cassette from her shelf. "Hums of the Lovin' Spoonful by... well, the Lovin' Spoonful. 1966. Contains 'Rain on the Roof' as Track 1 on side B. Eh... no. Too slow and flavorless." Gilda pushed the cassette back into the shelf, and pulled out a second one. "Pendulum by Creedence Clearwater Revival. 1970. Contains 'Have You Ever Seen the Rain' as Track 4 on side A. Great song. But not exactly what I'm looking for," She pushed the cassette back into the shelf. "And, no, Cosmo's Factory. Don't try to attract me with your 'Who'll Stop the Rain'. I don't want the rain to stop." Gilda pulled a third cassette from the shelf. And as soon as she saw the cover, she revolted at the sight of it. And rightfully so, because it happened to be one of the worst musicians popular music had ever known. Someone who couldn't sing worth shit. "Sweet Baby James!" she exclaimed. "Ew! Gross! No! How'd this no-talent freak end up in my collection?! Blegh!" Gilda chucked the cassette into a nearby garbage can that stood against the elm tree corner of her room. "Fire and rain, alright. That cassette deserves to be set on fire and doused in acid rain! James Taylor gives everyone with bushy eyebrows a bad name!" Going back into her cassette collection, fourth time proved to be a charm, as Gilda found a cassette that stood out to her, with a song about rain that was just perfect for the moment. "Ah, here we go," she said, as she pulled it from her shelf and held it in her hands. "Horizon by Eddie Rabbitt. 1980. Where better to have the best song on the album than as Track 1 on side A... 'I Love a Rainy Night'." Having chosen the perfect song, Gilda took the cassette to a shelf next to her bed, where her most prized possession stood. It was a carousel of a cassette player that could hold twenty cassettes, and play them in their entirety for up to three days. Or on a loop if it was set to. The technical name for it was the Panasonic RS-296US, but Gilda just called it 'the Russ' for short. Gilda slid the Horizon cassette into slot number 20, wrote the words 'EDDIE RABBITT, HORIZON' on a sticker next to the corresponding button number 20, pressed said button down, and then finally pressed 'Start'. As the Russ loaded the cassette, Gilda ran into the bathroom to squirt some lemon-scented shampoo into her hair. She squirted at the exact moment the song began playing. With the citrus-smelling, yellow pool of shampoo in her hair, Gilda opened the window and leaned out for the rain. As the rain fell upon her head, she rubbed the shampoo around in her hair, creating a thick, cleansing foam that washed away onto the roof and disappeared into the night's darkness. BRGRGRGRGRGRGAAAAAHHH! The storm let out its forty-eighth lightning bolt, this one only a few hundred feet down Elm Hill Road. The sky was lit a blinding white for a split second, and oh, the sound. It was a bang that sounded like a rocket ship blasting at light speed into space, and it startled Gilda something fierce. Almost sent her sliding down the roof. Thankfully, she was far enough back that all that happened was that she bruised her hip and ended up hitting her left hand against the shingles, making them sting a bit. Nothing major. Just a couple boo-boos. ...what the fuck? Boo-boos?! This isn't a baby book! Hmm... just a few fuck ups. Ah. There we go. Much better term. Anyhoo... Gilda propped herself back up, her hair soaking and dripping from the rain, and still a bit sudsy. She went into her room, where the Eddie Rabbitt song was finishing up on the Russ, and dried her hair on the robe hanging on her bedroom door, before falling backward onto her bed. As 'I Love a Rainy Night' faded out and '747' began to play, Gilda wondered what to do next. "I wonder what to do next..." she said to herself. Fucking copycat. "I could listen to some more of Rabbitt... then again, among 80s country artists, he's not as good as Juice Newton. Eh. I'll still leave it open." Gilda sat herself back up and scanned around her room. At her Russ, her cassettes, her records, record player, TV, CDs -- wait, TV! "Hmm... TV." she said to herself. "Tempting." But what do with it, she wondered. Watch TV? Nah. TV can't provide real entertainment. Play some Nintendo or Sega? Fun, but still not quite what she was looking for. Watch a movie... yes! Perfect! But the format? "LaserDisc," Gilda said to herself. "No question about it." Gilda didn't have anything against the modern formats. She acknowledged and accepted that DVDs, BluRays and streaming... in fact, all modern formats of any medium, had their place in the world, and that they were the popular option for anyone that wasn't a major retro aficionado like her. But since she was a retro aficionado, her preference would always be for the older formats, in this case, VHS, Beta and especially her favorite, LaserDisc, the format that saw the genesis of ideas that DVD would make more accessible, including letterboxing widescreen films and audio commentaries. And what better LaserDisc to watch than one from the company that pioneered these ideas, Criterion. Gilda went to her LaserDisc collection, and took only a few seconds to sort through the old discs and find the exact one she was looking for. "Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits," she said to herself, pulling out the LaserDisc from the shelf. "From the Criterion Collection, the company VHS and Beta weren't good enough for." Gilda noticed that she hadn't yet turned off her Russ, as Horizon was still playing, fading out of '747' and into 'Driving My Life Away'. So she set the LaserDisc down on her bed and went over to do so. "Sorry, Eddie, but you've been beat," she said as she pushed the 'REJECT' and 'POWER' buttons on the Russ. "And by a masterpiece of a movie, too." Gilda picked the LaserDisc back up as lightning bolt number forty-nine lit the sky outside. For a moment, she imagined herself being lit like the Supreme Being. "Rrrrreturn what you have stolen from me!" She said, quoting the movie with a big, goofy, devious grin on her face. "Rrrrreturn the map! Iiiiit will bring you great --" "DAAAANGAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!" screeched a voice from downstairs. Oh, for fuck sake, not these bastards... anyhoo, Gilda knew that voice way better than she or just about anyone else would wish to. And it made her cringe just hearing its ugly sound. "Oh deity..." she said. She was annoyed at the sound, and hated that she would have to deal with the source of the noise. "Of all the nights Porcine Wrestling had to fall on..." Gilda set the LaserDisc down once more and headed down the stairs to the source of the obnoxious voice. A few other voices joined in, and started conversing with one another. "Barbara Q. going against Danger Chops!" said the surfer voice of a douchebag athlete. "This could go either way, bros!" "My money's on Chops," said the raspy voice of a young delinquent. "I bet triple C-note against some boars, so I better not lose this!" "Well, I don't know," said the nasally voice of a bad comedian. "He could just end up pulling a ham! HAAAAA!" "That's an unlikely case," said the monotone voice of an arrogant genius. "These are professionals. They know what they're doing. Also, I bet on Barbara Q." "Barbara Q.?" the raspy voice said. "Why the fuck do you bet on Barbara Q.? She's not even heavy like Chopsie is!" "She may not be heavy," the monotone voice said. "But what Barbara Q. lacks in size, she makes up for in the power of her legs. She could break the fangs off Chops with the strength of her kicks. Plus, anyone willing to fight in high heels, in mud, is a major plus in my book." "High heels or not," the nasally voice said. "Chops has got them." "Huh?" questioned the raspy voice. "You dumbass!" the nasally voice replied. "It's a pun! Get it? He's got chops! HAAAAA!" "But wait a minute," the raspy voice replied. "You just said he could pull a ham! What side are you on?" "Ewe?" the nasally voice joked. "There are no sheep in Porcine Wrestling! Hell, the only good ovines are in sport are when they're being herded! HAAAAA!" "Dude," the surfer voice said. "Answer the question. Barbara Q. or Danger Chops?" Standing in the foyer in front of the stairs, Gilda could hear the surfer-voiced one's fist pounding against his other hand. She knew he was doing it to threaten the nasally-voiced one. She also heard the idiotic stutters of the nasally-voiced one. She knew from this, that the sources of the other three voices were ganging up on the nasally-voiced one. "Barbara Q.!" the nasally voice shouted nervously. "Of course Barbara Q." "Really, brah?" the surfer voice asked. "'cause if you go back on your word, I will beat your fat, Fred Flintstone ass so bad, you'll be too sore to take your foot-powered car back to Wilma!" Gilda chuckled at the stupidity of that nonsensical pop-culture reference. Like, seriously? As if Will Smith's Shrek reference from Bright wasn't stupid enough, this Flintstones reference just made it look like 'Who's On First' in comparison! "Yes," the nasally voice said. "Barbara Q." "So, it's an even split," the monotone voice said. "Terence and Tom, you're rooting for Chops. Tom, I hope that three hundred note of yours is safe." "It better be," the raspy-voiced delinquent Tom replied. "And Truman and I bet Barbara Q.," the monotone voice continued. "You made a good choice, there, Big Teej." "I mean, of course, Troy." the nasally-voiced comedian Truman replied. "You're right. Barb may not have the size, but damn, does she have the legs! She's pretty sexy for a pig... a sow. Then again, she's the only sow I'd consider beautiful!" Hearing this comment, Gilda's face wrinkled into a scowl1. Wanting to hear more of the so-called comedian's offensive rambling, she walked over and into the living room, to see all the action going on. 1: Female raccoons are also known as sows. "Oh yeah?" Troy replied to Truman's comment. "Why do you say that?" He, Terence and Tom were looking at him with shit-eating grins, anticipating what he was gonna say next. "Well, isn't it obvious?" Truman continued. "I mean, the sow we were all unfortunate enough to have as a sister, is so ugly, she could pass as a convincing troll! HAAAAA!" The four brothers all laughed hard at Truman's joke. But Gilda wasn't laughing. She became angrier and angrier, getting broken further and further with every comment that Rosie O'Donnell of a brother made about her. "Yeah, with her big ugly nose and her big ugly eyebrows... also, her freckles! She's Nature's living proof that freckles can make someone ugly as sin! They make it look like her nose is so big, it's exploding on her face and leaking ugly juice! HAAHAAAAA!" Truman slapped the arm of the couch he was sitting on, mere laughter not enough to contain his amusement from his own jokes, and the other three brothers laughed nearly as hard. At this point, Gilda was so hurt, that tears were forming in her eyes, and she could feel her cheeks turning the most unattractive shades of pink and red. She wanted to go up and punch that zero-calorie Chris Farley in his fat ugly face. But all she felt like she had in her, was to stand under the living room arch and listen to every jab Truman made at her, and the ensuing laughter from everyone else in the room. "And I mean seriously, she's into cassettes, like that makes her a cool hipster or something! Like, what the fuck? I feel like going up to her and saying, 'Newsflash, toucan face! Cassettes are bullshit! Get yourself a fucking smartphone like a normal bipedal being! You look like a fucking twat with your Walkman!'" Gilda's usual response to being insulted like this was to just run away crying, but sometimes she'd try and land a blow on those who tormented her, even if she'd always miss, or was to much of a wimp to hurt them. But with her brothers so seemingly oblivious to her presence, and Truman just feet away, he was right in her range. So, with all the emotional and physical strength she could gather, she lunged towards him, grabbed him by his curly black hair, and threw him head-first against the table he had been resting his dirty feet upon.

...damn, this narrator wishes Yes' 'Roundabout' was playing on something right there. That would've made an awesome Jojo reference. Anyhoo. Holding the bleeding wound on his head, Truman stood himself up to see his furious younger sister, who looked so angry she might as well have had steam coming out her big black nose, like something out of Looney Tunes or a cartoon like that. "C-c-care to rep-repeat that, pube head?!" Gilda said, shakily, angrily, and with tears falling from her face, now red as wine. Truman looked at his bloodied hand for a moment. And he did not like the sight. Not the part that he was bleeding, he wasn't a fucking pussy. He liked getting a little bloody from time to time. It built character. But this was not blood he'd wanted to bleed. This was a blood of weakness. Gilda was actually trying to stand up to him! He couldn't have one of his and his brothers' favorite things to mock, turn on him and tell him she wasn't gonna have it. Because if she turned on him, she could turn on the other three Grime brothers as well! And without Gilda to mock and bully, their relationship would just fall apart. Which would be terrible for them, and cathartic as fuck for the rest of us seeing this horrendous dysfunction play out. So Truman said the first thing that came to his mind. "Uh oh," he said. "Looks like the toucan followed her nose downstairs. Well, I've got news for you, Gilda! They're ain't no Froot Loops down here! Just a Hawaiian Punch!" Truman let out his signature 'HAAAAA!' as he landed punch onto Gilda's stomach, and, as she kneeled to the ground, a harder one into her nose. As Gilda fell over in pain, Truman and the rest of the brothers started laughing. "Heheh, right in the nose." Terence said. "Never gets old." "Ain't that the truth," Truman replied, as he put his hand over the cut on his head again. "Anyways, I gotta go get some bandages. I'll deal with clown nose when I come down." Truman chuckled to himself as he walked out of the room. "Heheh... Hawaiian Punch." "Are you kidding me now?" Gilda said, standing herself up. "I come downstairs to see whatever this is you're doing... watching Porcine Wrestling like a bunch of idiots, and I find you all talking crap about me behind my back?!" "Well, Gilda," Troy said, with a smug smile on his face. "You are a sow. Literally. And seriously, nobody uses cassettes anymore. Not even hipsters. You seriously don't know that?" "Yeah," Terence added. "Cassettes aren't cool, sis. They're a waste of space. Like you." Gilda took her hands off her nose, letting the blood flow freely down her face with her tears. Outside the house, lightning bolt number fifty struck close by. Its light lit the room, and the thunder captured the rage Gilda felt inside, as she stood in front of her oldest and two younger brothers, fists clenched, face drenched in tears and blood, and giving the three brothers a hard, Paddington-style stare. It was the kind of scene that, if Roger Deakins or Emmanuel Lubezki was around to film it, the shot would be praised as another highlight of their already amazing work. But then again, the Grime brothers wouldn't know a cinematic masterpiece if they were put in straitjackets and had their eyes forced open as they watched all of Stanley Kubrick's films back-to-back. But back to the action. The Grime brothers were completely unfazed by the anger their sister clearly showed in her face. In fact, at this point, their eyes were back on the Porcine Wrestling match on TV, watching Barbara Q.'s pre-match interview. Troy scooted over to Terence's right, while Tom sat himself up on the arm of the couch. "Hey, Terry," Tom said. "Gilda's nose is bleeding. You gonna do the thing?" "The thing?" Terence replied. "Oh, you know," Troy replied. "The thing you like to do when this happens." ...uh oh. Not that thing. And Gilda was thinking the same thing, as her eyes widened in fear. She knew exactly what thing they were referring to. "Oh yeah," Terence answered. "The teapot thing... heheh. Yeah. But not now, bros. Let's just watch the interview. Speaking of which... Gilda! Get your ugly ass out of here!" Gilda got her ugly ass out -- goddammit, now he's got this narrator saying it! Fuck you, Terence! Ahem. Gilda walked out of the living room slowly, keeping her gaze on Terence as she made her way out. The instant she took a step into the foyer, she heard a door close upstairs, followed by footsteps. When she looked up at the top floor, she saw Truman making his way to the stairs. Oh no, she said to herself. Here he comes. As the poor man's Sam Kinison came closer and closer, Gilda got more and more panicked on the inside. With every footstep he made down the stairs, she became shakier and shakier, her tail became more and more stiff, her heart was pounding harder and harder... and the blood came out of her nose faster and faster. Gilda didn't want to faint from the blood loss, so she held her nostrils shut, and leaned to her right against the wall. At this point, Truman was already two-thirds of the way down the stairs. "Alright," Truman called. "I'm back. Now let's watch this match!" As Truman took his final step off the stairs, Gilda noticed something odd about Truman's bandages. He had one, just one, on his forehead, that wasn't placed very well. It was at a crooked angle, barely covered the wound completely, and his blood showed clearly through the pad. It was as if he didn't use a mirror. Or he just had really bad coordination. This narrator bets on the latter, because Truman has proven himself complete scum so far... and we haven't even seen the worst of it. But the one on his head wasn't what was odd. What was odd, was that he was holding a second bandage in his hand. What's going on? "Uh... T-Truman?" Gilda said. "W-why do you have two bandages? You ob -- you obviously only needed one for your head." Truman turned towards Gilda. He grabbed the other bandage with his other hand, and looked at it for a few seconds, before speaking. "Yeah, I did," Truman replied. He was holding the bandage at pretty much eye level now, squinting his eyes as he did. "...I did only need one." "So what's... what's the second one for?" Gilda asked. Truman looked at Gilda for a moment. As the thunder from lightning bolt fifty-one rolled overhead, his expressionless face morphed into an evil-looking grin, the kind the Grinch would give when he gets a wonderful, awful idea. As the thunder fell quiet, Truman uttered a single syllable. "...you." Before Gilda could react, Truman slapped the bandage over Gilda's mouth, grabbed her by the collar of her pyjamas, and threw her back into the living room. "All yours, brothers," he said, as he tossed his sister onto the carpet like an old rag, and stood himself under the living room arch. Terence stood up from the couch, and rubbed his hands together, looking upon Gilda with a devious grin. "Now?" Troy and Tom asked Terence. "Now," he replied. Gilda tried to run out of the living room, but before she was able to even stand up all the way, Terence lept across the footrest table and grabbed Gilda by her tail. As he picked himself and her up from off the floor and table, Gilda realized she wasn't holding her nose closed, as she saw drops of blood falling from her nose and onto the carpet. As she tried put her fingers back to her nose to stop the bleeding, Terence grabbed her arm away. "There ain't no shitty-smelling skunks around here," he said, quietly but sternly into Gilda's ear. "What are you doing pinching your nose?" Terence, now holding Gilda upward, was now all set to do his signature method of bullying, the 'teapot thing' he liked to do whenever Gilda's nose started bleeding. Every time without fail, it would always make his brothers laugh, and leave poor Gilda a tearful, broken mess. It's as cringeworthy to describe for this narrator as it most likely will be for you the reader. I'd tell you to read the next part at your own discretion, but since you've already decided whether or not you want to read it, I can't stop you now. So... "Ohhhhh..." Terence said, in a singing tone. "I'm a little teapot, short and stout..." Terence jammed Gilda's left hand against her bruised hip. She winced as the pain she felt from getting startled from the thunder just over ten minutes before, was revitalized by the sting of the slap. "Here is my handle!" Terence grabbed Gilda by the nostrils, holding her nose up to make her nose look like that of a pig. Gilda could feel the blood leaking from her nose as her brother's fingers felt like fish hooks jammed up the edge of her nose. "Here is my spout!" With the bandage blocking her mouth and Terence's fingers up her nose, little if any air was able to enter her body. Fearing for her life now, Gilda screamed as loud as she could through the bandage. Thinking nothing of Gilda's pain and his brothers only finding amusement in it, Terence used his sister's screaming as a segue into the next part of the performance of the dismal ditty that drove Gilda deranged and demented from the damage at the dirty digits of her dickheaded brother. "When I get all steamed up, hear me shout..." Finally, Terence let go of Gilda's nose, but only to pick up Gilda and hang her upside-down by her legs, letting the blood from her nose pour right onto the floor. "Tip me up and pour me out!" Terence shouted, laughing as he watched the blood fall. He hung Gilda upside down for about ten seconds, letting himself and his brothers absorb the moment and laugh, before dropping her back onto the floor. "Okay, that's enough," Terence said, as he and Truman walked back to the couch. "The match is about to start. Let's do this, bros! Barb vs. Chops! And I bet Chops!" Gilda stood herself back up, propping herself up from off the ground with her right hand, and ripping off her bandage with her left. "You're a bunch of sadists, you know that?!" Gilda rightfully shouted, her face now shiny and red, thanks or not to the tears, blood and sheer rage that had built up over the past few minutes. Her face was so red, in fact, that Simply Red opening for Sammy Hagar at a concert by the Red Sea sponsored by Coca-Cola in promotion of their cherry flavor... with Mr. Krabs as CEO of the company, wouldn't be as red. "Fuck off, nosey," Truman said. "Why don't you go and do something useful to us for a moment? Like... oh, I don't know, getting us something to drink?" "Why don't you get it yourself, you unfunny John C. Reilly wannabe?" Gilda replied. "Get us something to drink!" the four brothers shouted in unison. "Is the smack-talk necessary?!" Terence added. Gilda walked out of the living room angrily, without saying another word. "And it better be something delicious!" Truman called. "Or you're getting us another beverage!" Troy added. "And if Chops wins, you're getting me one of Mom's beers," Terence added further. "And me!" Tom added further still. Gilda froze in her tracks at Tom's statement. Did her first-grader brother seriously just say he wanted a beer? What the flying hell?! "You dummy," Terence replied to Tom. "You're only six. You can't drink beer." "Terry," Tom replied back. "When there's no cops around, there is no legal age." "How do you not know that, Tall Teej?" Troy added. "Oh yeah..." Terence replied. "Righteous thinking, Tommy!" ...yeah. The Grime brothers really are that stupid. Feel free to facepalm, just like Gilda did hearing that stupid statement. Not righteous thinking. Idiotic thinking. This narrator wishes they could just go right in there and slap all four of the Grime brothers. As she walked into the kitchen, Gilda heard a bell chime sound from the TV, signalling the beginning of the match. As the idiotic chants of 'CHOPS! CHOPS! CHOPS!' and 'BARB! BARB! BARB!' echoed from the living room. Knowing that the match would be over in about five minutes, Gilda turned on the kitchen light, and pretty much went right to work. "They want something delicious?" Gilda said to herself, as she grabbed a bag of tissues. "Oh, I'll give them something delicious." Gilda stuffed a few tissues up her nose to stop the blood from pouring out, and then went over to open the fridge. She went through all the stuff they go through on those old Sunny D commercials. Soda, orange juice, purple stuff... and when she laid eyes on the Sunny Delight, she knew exactly what she wanted to fix. "Delicious indeed," she said, with the first smile she managed since she was upstairs. The thunder from a fifty-second lightning bolt just over a mile away rolled overhead, as she paused. "Delicious... to me." YEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAHHH!

...heheh. There we go. Not missing the chance for that reference, no sir.

Gilda stared at the Sunny Delight for a few seconds, before making her decision. "But not the real Sunny Delight, of course," she said to herself. "They actually like that." Gilda kneeled down to the floor and opened the fruit compartment, stuffed to the brim with her favorite kind of food. A huge grin came to her face as she looked down upon those delectable rounded Nature's candies, the size of baseballs and wrapped in peels the colors of the sun. She picked up one of these fruits, a juicy-looking lemon that looked so delicious she could practically see the flavor oozing out of it. "Citrus fruits," Gilda said to herself, with a smile so big it made her cheeks hurt. "The greatest thing Nature ever blessed upon the world... aside from maybe cannabis." Gilda peeled the skin off the lemon. She looked down the hall into the living room as she pushed the tissues away from her mouth, and then chomped into the juicy yellow orb of sour... flavor... yeah, on second thought, maybe just 'lemon' is good enough. Over years of eating citrus fruits, Gilda had built up quite a tolerance for their taste. Of course she knew that lemons tasted sour, and grapefruits bitter. But by the time she hit double digits, she'd eaten so many of the fruits, that her taste buds barely felt it anymore. They'd pretty much become numb, from hundreds of times of being subjected to painful aftertastes. Most of what she felt from citrus fruits now, was the flavor, the delicious flavor that nothing could compare to. She could bite into half a lemon's slices all at once, and still barely notice how sour it was. Just as she did with this one lemon. The lemon's juice dripped from Gilda's mouth as she verbally declared to herself what she was gonna fix for her brothers. "Time to fix the GOLL," she said. The one advantage Gilda had with her numb tongue was the ability to enjoy the drink she created from combining the juice of a grapefruit, an orange, a lemon and a lime. She called the drink the GOLL, because 'Sour Punch' was already taken by candy she'd often seen at movie theaters. Gilda had always wanted to serve the drink in a punch bowl (hence the name she wanted to call it), and she would've done so already, had she had a lot of friends or at least knew others, that liked being subjected to unrivaled, juicy flavor, along with an assault of bitter and sour tastes to the tongue. But tonight wasn't about serving the GOLL for others to enjoy, was it now? It was about serving it for her to enjoy... from more than just drinking it. Knowing that her brothers would be calling her back for their drinks any minute now, Gilda got working as quickly as she could. If only you could see it with fast-paced cuts between shots set to tense, uptempo music. Because that would've been awesome. Anyhoo. Gilda got out an electric citrus juicer from the cabinet under her kitchen's counter, and plugged it into the first outlet she could find. She then got out the punch bowl from the counter cabinet, a mixing spoon from the spoon drawer, and nine cups, four big ones for juicing each citrus fruit and five little ones for herself and each of her brothers to drink out of, from the cup cabinet over the counter. Then she went to the fridge to get all the fruits needed to make enough GOLL to fill a punch bowl. Three grapefruits, three oranges, three limes, and two lemons. ...wait, two lemons? But Gilda was sure she had more than three lemons in the fridge! Including the one she just ate half of, of course. It wasn't the GOLL without an equal number of every fruit. And if she only used two of every fruit... well, it wouldn't be enough to fill the punch bowl! So what was she to do, she wondered. PLUNK! BUNK-UH. Gilda looked towards the source of the sound, a single lemon that had suddenly appeared next to the elm tree in the corner of the kitchen. And it looked just slightly off from a regular lemon. It was the size of a regular lemon plus half of one, and its peel looked more golden than yellow. But as if this lemon's sudden appearance wasn't odd enough, she then heard the window slam. What? When was it ever open? Gilda looked towards the window thinking she could spot whatever closed it, but whatever it may have been vanished into the stormy night. She thought she saw something glowing green or yellow, perhaps with a little bit of red, but even if she did, it disappeared before she could even attempt to figure out what it was. Gilda picked the lemon off the floor with a puzzled look. Despite its slightly unusual size and color, she was pretty sure nothing was wrong with it. But just to be safe, she took out a knife from the knife drawer and cut the lemon in half, to see if there was anything weird about it on the inside. Nope. Nothing suspicious. And then Gilda prevented herself from getting hit with the same stupid stick a lot of characters in media get hit by, and quit while she was ahead and didn't even think about eating the lemon. Next chapter! ...or at least it would be if that was what actually happened. But no, she got hit with that stick too. Gilda dug into the juice sac of one of the halves, and put her fingers to the first drop of juice that came out. Slowly, she brought the drop closer and closer to her lips. Then stuck her tongue out ever so subtly for the juice. Then began to retract her tongue back into her mouth... then... Gilda found herself gasping for air as her lips puckered and her eyes squinted. That one little drop managed to make itself felt by her tongue, big time. It was too sour even for her mostly taste-blind tongue. Gilda panted through her puckered lips as she went for her cup, fanning her face with her hands on the way there. Still panting and squinting, she put her cup to the fridge's water dispenser, and took a drink once she managed to get it full. Gilda started panting again, although lighter, once she had managed to spit out the water into the sink. "WHOA," she said to herself. Gilda set her cup down and walked over to the two halves of... well, let's call it Lemonzilla, because that's the best name this narrator can think of. "That is wicked sour!" Gilda picked up the half of the lemon she hadn't dug into, and wondered if it was even a good idea to use it. "I wonder if it's even a good idea to use it," she said to herself. Goddammit, Gilda! ...ahem. She then heard from the living room, her brothers being obnoxious twats. "OH! WHOA! What's happening?!" Terence shouted. "Seems to me Chops is gonna pin Barbara down," Troy remarked. "Oh! Here it comes!" Tom shouted. "Down she goes! That three hundred note is as good as mine!" "And on beer we chug," Terence added. A silence came, and then the cheering resumed, from all four brothers in unison. "One... two... three... four..." Another brief silence. "OH!" "Maybe Barbara won't be another loser sow," Truman said. "Unlike the one in the kitchen! HAAAAA!" Gilda managed a dirty look as Truman and the rest of her brothers started laughing. "Yeah, it is a good idea." she said to herself, as she went to juicing. And then she started to do an... odd thing, she had a habit of doing when she was alone. She knew she had a habit of doing it, but had a hard time stopping herself, as most of the time, she wasn't even aware she was doing it. She did it only absent-mindedly, thinking it was staying in her head. But the important thing is, she did it. And it was... well, let's just see it play out. Gilda cut up the rest of the fruits as she began to do the... thing. "Here you go, guys," she said. "How's this for delicious? A punch consisting of all four of the great citrus fruits. Grapefruit, orange, lemon and lime. I call it... the GOLL!" Gilda brought six halves from three grapefruits over to the juicer, as she pushed her hair back behind her ears to resemble the blonde mullet of her oldest brother Terence. "Whoa, sis," she said, in a voice that she tried to make sound like a surfer, but only made her sound like Cree Summer or Pamela Adlon. "What is this crazy thing?" As Gilda juiced the grapefruits, she shook her head around to get her hair messy, like the dark perm of her fat brother whose jokes were so bad even Carlos Mencia wouldn't steal them, Truman. "It's citrus punch," she said, in a voice that made her sound like a fat Fran Drescher. "She must be bitter and sour towards us! HAAAAA!" Gilda grabbed a bowl from the same cabinet as the punch bowl and juicer and put it on her head, mocking the bright red bowl cut of her nerdy brother Troy. She would've mocked his glasses by putting her fingers in ring shapes over her eyes, but she was already using her hands to juice the fruit, and the Porcine Wrestling match was minutes or sooner away from over. So the bowl was the best she could do. "Well, maybe it's actually worth having," she said, in a monotone voice that made her sound like a stoned Jessica DiCicco. "After all, citrus fruits are high in vitamin C." Finished with the grapefruit, Gilda dumped the grapefruit juice into the punch bowl. As she moved onto the oranges, she took the bowl off her head and pushed her bangs over her eyes, to make fun of her youngest brother Tom. "As long as it actually tastes good," she said, in a raspy voice that sounded pretty close to that of Ashleigh Ball. She stuck her top two teeth out as she did impression, to mock Tom's buckteeth. "I don't give a fuck what kind of vitamin is in it!" Gilda continued making the GOLL, dumping the juices of each fruit into the punch bowl as she finished with them. As she continued making the concoction, she continued absent-mindedly imitating her brothers, altering her appearance accordingly with each impression. "Vitamin C?" 'Truman' questioned. "Sounds pretty average to me! HAAAAA!" "No, you fat slob," 'Troy' 'replied'. "Vitamin C is a nutrient found in a lot of foods. Do you really not know that?" "I've heard the name," 'Truman' remarked. "I guess I just always assumed vitamins A and B were better, because I'm a worthless, idiotic D-student! HAAAAA!" "It may sound inferior," 'Troy' 'replied' 'back'. "But it's been known for nearly 300 years that vitamin C, especially from citrus, prevents scurvy. You don't want weak bones or bleeding gums, do you?" "Brah, I chew tobacco," 'Terence' said. "My gums bleed all the time. Sure, I might end up like that Gruen guy, but you think I care? I'm Terence Grime, brah! I don't care what smoking and drugs does to me!" "Yeah, and fuck my health, too," 'Tom' 'added'. "I may be in first grade, but that's not gonna stop me from fucking up my body with drugs too! Oh shit, I'm a fucking six-year-old swearing like it's some kind of fucking Tarantino movie, which Mommy lets me watch because she doesn't know how to be a responsible parent! I hope that bitch doesn't put Lifebuoy in my mouth like I deserve!" "Lifebuoy?" 'Truman' 'replied'. "Well, you get caught swearing, you better run for your life, boy! My puns suck! HAAAAA!" "Bros, bros, bros," 'Terence' said. "Let's just drink this most bodacious think our little sis just fixed up for us. I'm sure it's totally radical! Is that not enough exaggerated slang for y'all? Well how about 'tubular'? Has anyone ever said 'tubular'? Well, I'm saying 'tubular', because apparently that's some gnarly word of slang, bros2!" 2: It's not. It was never. It's to the 1980s what 'eh' is to Canada. "Yeah, let's all drink!" 'Gilda's three brothers' 'added'. "Citrus pun! HAAAAA!" 'Truman' finished. Gilda paused for a moment, to scoop up some of the GOLL from the punch bowl, which at this point had everything but a third lemon, with her cup. She squeezed two of the remaining wedges from her half-eaten lemon from a few minutes earlier, into the cup, and chugged down her entire cup. Despite it being unfinished, she loved the taste of it, just as she always had. But for the sake of what she was already in the middle of, she faked a face reacting to the sour taste of Lemonzilla as she juiced the dug-into half of the lemon. "Whoa!" 'Terence' said, 'reacting' to the GOLL. "WHOA! WHOA! WHOA! What's in that thing?!" "That's not just sour," 'Tom' said. "That's burning my fucking mouth! Somebody get me a fucking water, preferably cleaned out with and still has the suds of Lifebuoy on it!" "Ow, my mouth..." 'Troy' said. "Somebody call 911! Or maybe I can get my pain relief serum!" "Orange we stupid for thinking Gilda was just fixing us a regular drink..." 'Truman' 'attempted' to joke. "HAAAAA-OWWWWW!" "I knew I shouldn't have done the teapot thing on her..." 'Terence' 'moaned' in 'agony'. "Troy, Tommy... why did you tell me to do that?" "I didn't think she'd react this way!" 'Tom' 'replied'. "How could we not have seen this coming?!" 'Troy' 'cried out' in 'anguish'. "How could I not see it coming?! I'm the pretentious genius!" Gilda got her hair back to normal as she dumped the juices of half of Lemonzilla into the GOLL, and stirred the drink around with the mixing spoon. "Losers!" she imagined herself saying to her brothers. "You thought you could make me into your little punching bag without me punching back? Well, think again, you twats! You're all my punching bag now! HAHAHA! My revenge has been fulfilled! Hey, why do I still have these tissues up my nose?" Gilda finally broke out of... that thing she did... yeah. Told you it was weird. Anyhoo, she pulled the bloodied tissues out of her nose and threw them into the recycling bin. From the living room, she heard her brothers, her... real brothers, unfortunately, cheering again. "Oh? Oh! OH! OHHHHH!" they all shouted in unison. "Down goes Chops," Troy said. "And Tom's three hundred note!" "Shut your fucking mouth, Troy!" Tom replied. A brief silence. "One... two... three... four..." Gilda quickly put the stuff she no longer needed away. The juicing cups, her drinking cup and the mixing spoon into sink, the fruit peels into the compost bin, and the unused half of Lemonzilla in the freezer. The only thing she didn't put away was the citrus juicer, and even that she unplugged. Had the countdown gone down to ten, she wouldn't even have had time to put it away, since her brothers would be demanding her back as soon as the match was over. "Five... six... seven..." Another brief silence. "OH!" "Yeah, that's right, Chopsie!" Tom shouted. "That three hundred note's mine, dammit! MINE!" Gilda breathed a sigh of relief as she went to get two cans of Samuel Adams from the fridge. Knowing that getting everything for her brothers would require three trips back and forth between the kitchen and the living room, Gilda decided to take care of the beers first. Even though she really, REALLY didn't want to do it. She ran to the living room with the cans, and set them on the footrest table. Terence looked down at the table, and picked up one of the beer cans. When he saw what brand it was, a scowl came to his face. "Samuel Adams?!" he said. "Yeah," Gilda replied. "Take it or leave it." Terence threw the can at Gilda, hoping to hit her again. However, she jumped out of the way. She wasn't gonna take any more physical shit from her oldest brother, no sir. "You take it and leave it!" Terence said. "Take it back to the fridge and leave it in there! You know Truman and I like Coors!" Gilda rolled her eyes as she picked the can up from off the floor. Terence was such a petty fuck. She felt like throwing the can back to him, and telling him to stop acting like a little twat. But she wasn't gonna let a fight break out in the living room, let alone let her be apart of it. So she decided to do take the can back anyway, and give into her brother's stupid little demand. Fuck you, Terence... why are you not in jail for the stuff you do? Gilda put the can back in the fridge and pulled out a can of Terence's oh-so-beloved Coors, because it so fucking mattered what kind of beer was given out. She then stacked her brothers' cups for the punch on top of one another, and carried them and the Coors into the living room, setting them on the table with the Samuel Adams. Finally, Gilda made her third trip to the kitchen, to get the punch bowl. She picked up the last two lemon wedges with her mouth as she grabbed the bowl, and devoured them as she made her way to the living room. "Hope you guys like this," Gilda said, as she set the punch bowl down. She had a slightly... devious-looking smile on her face as she spoke. "It's punch! I made punch!" "Punch?" Terence questioned. The four brothers looked at the punch bowl silently for a second or two, before they all nodded in agreement. "Yeah," Terence continued. "That's a pretty good drink. I love punch!" "Yeah, good thinking, Gilda!" Troy added. "I'm sure it'll pack quite a punch of flavor! HAAAAA!" Truman joked. "Can't wait to try this with my victory beer," Tom remarked. "Yes," Gilda said, squinting her eyes as she nodded. She almost let a chuckle slip out, but was able to hold it back before it went heard by her brothers. "I'm sure it'll taste good with that beer. Real good." "Hey, speaking of victory," Terence said, pointing at the TV. "Here comes Danger CHOOOOOPS!" The other three brothers turned their attentions to the TV, and started to cheer when they saw what was happening. Danger Chops was just about ready to ram into Barbara Q., and pin her down. And since it was so late into the match, they knew this was the finish, the move to end the match. Even Gilda took notice of what was happening, and knew that was her cue to get back into her room quickly, before the brothers noticed what she had put in the punch. "Okay then," Gilda said, making sure to keep any hint of suspicion out of her voice. "Hope you like the punch!" Gilda kept her eyes on her brothers as she took a few small steps to the side out of the living room, and then ran as soon as she knew she was out of her brothers' field of vision. The instant she set foot on the top of the stairs, the light of the storm's fifty-third lightning bolt shined though the house, and the Grime brothers were all counting in unison as they witnessed Danger Chops pin down Barbara Q. On television. "One..." Gilda had set her eyes on her bedroom. "Two..." She started running into her room. "Three..." She made the step into her room. "Four..." Gilda was now completely in her room, and turned around to face the door. "Five..." The thunder from the lightning bolt sounded overhead. "Huh, so it's a mile away," Gilda said to herself. "Six..." Gilda grabbed ahold of her door. "Seven..." Gilda slammed the door shut. "Eight..." Gilda locked the door shut, and kicked a wedge under it to make even more sure her brothers couldn't open it. "Nine..." Gilda turned to her bed, smiling upon the LaserDisc she had left lying upon the sheets. "Ten!" Gilda picked up that awesome Criterion LaserDisc of Time Bandits as she heard the sound of muffled cheering downstairs. She didn't hear exactly what they were saying, but she was able to make out what Terence was saying. "OH YEAH! OH YEAH! WHOAAAAA! OHHHHH! Chops wins! Chops wins! Terry-dactyl time! REEEEE! REEEEEYEAH! REEEEE!" Gilda knew Terence had his arms wide open, holding a blanket behind his back to resemble a pterodactyl's wings. She hated witnessing this bit of cringe with her eyes, but it didn't matter to her now, because she wasn't around to witness it. She was just focused on her LaserDisc, ready to pop it in right into the player. "Hello, you underrated masterpiece of cinema," Gilda said to the disc cover, which depicted a ship on the head of a giant. Having seen the movie so many times, she knew that giant from one of the film's most iconic scenes, the one where he steps on a house. "Sorry I took so long, I had some brothers to deal with downstairs. Speaking of which." Gilda put her ear to her bedroom door, and listened for the sound she wanted to hear. For the first few seconds, it was just the sound of her brothers rambling. But then, after half a minute, the rambling turned into pained howling and screaming. Gilda could tell that the howls were mostly that of Terence, Troy and Tom, and the deep, nasally screaming was coming from Truman. Since Truman was such a glutton, it was pretty easy to guess that while the others had merely a sip of the Lemonzilla-tainted GOLL, Truman had drank down an entire cup full pretty much in one gulp. Gilda chuckled to herself as she heard Truman's pained, psychotic shouting as the GOLL burned like hydrochloric acid in his mouth and throat. "Fuck you, Gilda!" Truman shouted. "I'm gonna kill you... kill ya... key... uh... babbabbabbabbab..." Well, fuck you too, Truman. This narrator and anyone reading this knows you deserve it. All your brothers do. So fuck off, fatass. With her mind finally off her brothers, Gilda turned her TV on, put the LaserDisc into the player, and laid herself down on her bed as the movie began. "Hand Made Films," she said, reading the opening title card. Truman is... dossuqueecyuiee.

#grunvale #gilda grime #chapter 2 #grime brothers #terence grime #truman grime #troy grime #tom grime #entirety #all three parts together #pr storm #pr storm's grunvale

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Grunvale: Chapter 1 - Once upon a... insert whatever the fuck you want here...

Most preteen girls are known as social butterflies obsessed with their reputations. And most raccoons are known as sneaky, garbage-loving thieves. But as with every stereotype, there are exceptions. Some stereotypes having more than others. But 'stereotype' is just about the last word in the dictionary, that could be used to describe Gilda Grime. 'Exception', on the other hand... Gilda was not the social type. She was weird to most on the outside with her looks, and even more awkward on the inside with her personality. Being a raccoon was already several points against her. Dark brown rings patterned her thin, snaky tail, and a dark brown mask over her eyes made her look shady, like a burglar in an old silent movie. And she was cursed by several other unattractive features, that made her look ugly even for a raccoon. A dimple in her chin that made it look like she had an ass on her face, freckles that looked like rabbit shit scattered across her cheeks, eyebrows that looked like dozens of hairy caterpillars glued to her face, blonde hair that had an unattractive brown tint to it, and most damning of all, a big, bulbous, black honker of a nose, that was twice as big as it should've been. But if being an ugly procyonine on the outside wasn't enough, Gilda's personality mixed with everyone else's as well as ammonia mixes with bleach. She wasn't the social media type. Didn't say stupid things online, didn't post embarrassing selfies, didn't make hashtags trend. In fact, the wasn't even big on using the internet for anything other than shopping online, on a laptop several years out of date. Indeed, most of the technology she owned were old electronics, that were outdated even before she was born. A VCR, a LaserDisc player, cassette players, record player, CD players, and old computers and video game consoles from before the internet, as well as the things the devices were built to play, were prominent features in her bedroom. She even had a CRT TV right in front of her bed, and her room was decorated with posters for a lot of old movies and rock bands. And whenever she'd go out anywhere, she'd take her old portable devices with her. Everyone else had the smartphones they carried in their pockets, Gilda had her Walkman, GameBoy, Game Gear... and even a brick phone, that she carried in a backpack. She liked playing on the GameBoy and GameGear when she got the chance, and the phone was always useful for when she had to make a quick call. The Walkman, though, was the thing she treasured the most. She'd be listening to that Walkman whenever she was headed someplace, and carry upwards of ten cassettes in her backpack at any given time. Whether what she was listening to was hair metal, new wave, prog or good old-fashioned rock and roll, Gilda loved listening to the music stored on the magnetic tape in those old cassettes. And she was not ashamed about living this way, not in the slightest. While most of the world was out embarrassing themselves on social media, Gilda barely went on the internet at all, instead opting to live on the old-school electronics she loved so much, unironically, unashamed. She was the beholder, and the beauty of these retro relics were in her eyes. Of course, being such a homely-looking geek, many others saw Gilda as a ripe target for bullying. There were the names, of course. Among numerous others, 'troll' and 'goblin' were tossed around a lot, for her unattractive face. 'Dork' and 'nerd' were also among the insults, for how much useless knowledge she had. There was also 'bandit', 'ugly', 'hag', 'cavecoon', 'trash rat', 'shit panda', 'slum cat', 'piggy', 'eyebrows', 'nose girl', and for seemingly no reason other than someone wanted to make a dated joke about her nose, 'Jimmy Durante'. But what others would do to Gilda, was even more hurtful to her. Throwing food at her as she ate, stealing her belongings, pulling her hair, dumping garbage on her, or even throwing her into the trash. She never got used to this shit happening to her, no matter how much it happened. She'd run off a mess of tears, as those that tormented her continued to shout insults at her. It was because of this torment, that she generally avoided interacting with anyone, or even be around anyone she didn't trust. But even with all the bullying, Gilda still had her wide collection of media stored on old physical formats, as one of her comforts in the world, a way to escape every shit thing going on in her world. With cinema and video games, she could imagine herself as the protagonist of whatever she was watching or playing, sometimes gender-bending the characters in her mind when she felt she needed to. And with music, she could drift off and picture in her head, colorful and at times surrealist imagery, inspired by music videos and album covers from the days of American Bandstand, The Midnight Special and MTV's golden age. This narrator assumes you've read enough descriptions of Gilda, and you want the story now. Yeah. Let's get to that... If you can read this, you don't need glasses. Or you're already wearing them so you could read this. Either way, you found a way to read this. Good for you. Now stop stalling go read chapter 2 already.

#grunvale #gilda grime #chapter 1 #pr storm #gilda #prstorm's grunvale

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More Leni doing the raptor hands thing. These aren’t even all of the screenshots I took of her doing it. She does it so often that it’s pretty much her signature pose. You can even catch it in some crowd shots.

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While I was dormant on Tumblr, I revealed a character I created back last year, an anthropomorphic raccoon named Gilda Glenn Grime, resident of the town of Grunvale (name meaning “green valley”). She loves citrus fruit and old technology, and has four brothers that love to beat the tar out of her.

I decided to experiment with a traditional drawing, with this concept art sheet of Gilda Grime at four different ages: age 2-3, age 4-5, age 8, and her age in the present day in Grunvale, age 11. ----- Descriptions: Age 2-3: Gilda around the time her second-youngest brother, Troy, was born. Because Gilda had two brothers, Terence and Truman, come before her, her parents thought that she would grow up to become a tomboy, and thus gave Gilda her brothers' hand-me-downs for her to wear, thinking she'd hate wearing dresses. She wore Terence's old overalls and green T-shirt, and Truman's sneakers. However, she also wore her hair in high bunches with ribbons, just so it was clear to others that she was a girl. Age 4-5: Gilda around the time her youngest brother, Tom, was born, and her father abandoned the family to pursue his acting career. When it turned out that Gilda ended up a bit more girly than her parents thought she'd be, they started getting more girly clothes for her, including a pink T-shirt, a denim dress, and black flats. This was also the age her freckles began to appear, and she lost top two front teeth. Age 8: Because Gilda didn't get to go to public school, she ended up having to take a job working at an entertainment store at a mall, spending some of the money she earned on clothes for herself. However, she didn't exactly have that great a sense of style. Her hair was always messy, and she wore colors that didn't mix well with each other. Here, she's wearing a pink dress and bracelet, and a yellow jacket, mary janes and hair ribbon, holding her hair in a ponytail. Around this time, her permanent lateral incisors were growing in, and she had her ears pierced. Those pink studs were her first earrings after her starters. Age 11: Gilda in the present day, in the outfit I most commonly draw her in, and even commissioned JTrexe to draw her in (result present in my current avatar). After growing out of her phase where she wore those loud and colorful outfits, she settled for more monochrome outfits like this one, consisting of a light green polo, plaid green skirt, black mary janes, and green ribbons holding her hair in braids. This is pretty much her signature outfit at this point. It captures her personality as a dorky outcast pretty well. And yes, that is a glass of lemonade she's holding. Remember that citrus fruits (lemons, limes, oranges, grapefruits, etc.) are her signature food. Bugs Bunny has his carrots, Paddington Bear has his marmalade, Garfield has his lasagna, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have their pizza, Sonic the Hedgehog has his chili dogs, and Gilda Grime has her citrus fruits. Not enclosing how I got that paper-looking background. It's ArtStudio Pro Magic. Anyways, post in the comments below what you think, and don't forget to follow me on other platforms:

DeviantArt: https://prstorm.deviantart.com/

Patreon: www.patreon.com/phoenixrstorm

Twitter: twitter.com/StormTheArtist

Discord: Contact me by my tag (PRStorm#1752) for an invite to my server.

----- Grunvale is owned by me. You can draw the characters without my permission, but if you do, please credit me in your works as creator.

#grunvale #gilda grime #procyonine #raccoon #citrus fruit #old technology

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I’M BACK!!!

I’m relaunching this dormant Tumblr after six months. :D

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#StayLoud

#StayLoud

#StayLoud

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A message to all Loud House fans

#StayLoud. The controversy does not make me think less of the show. And it shouldn’t for you, either. #TheShowIsNotTheMan.

#StayLoud