Author's Note
Some real names and celebrities have been altered out of respect for the epxy they are meant to be, all real people mentioned in this work are used in a fictitious, comedic and PARODY nature.
So...it's come to this?
October 10th, 2010.
The ink and paint club had seen better days, sixty something years ago, the place would have been alive and well with so much, now it was a dank and dull stink hole. The long stage and catwalk that once held the hottest of starlets, now was fit only to gather cobwebs and dirt. The bar held what one could call the washed up ones. The humans only rule the place had was long abolished, but while that may have been a sign of progress so too was the wasted toons at the bar. The barman placed a glass of Captain Morgan and Jose Curevo in front of two patrons, the Captain Morgan went to the solid white patron dressed like it was the 1700's, the Jose went to the blonde with the camera around is neck, both of them looked into their glasses with sunken hollow eyes, the barman knew their type, out of work toons. He could sympathize with that...he was out of work (good honest work) too.
"So what's your story fellas?" He asked them before taking a glass from the rack and wiping it with his white rag, sure it was already clean but it felt...right to listen to the dreck's sob stories while doing it. The blonde with the camera downed his shot and coughed before starting.
"Name's Gillie, I was one of the kids on Gobber and the Ghost Chasers back in 73." he said with a sense of lost pride in his work. "those days eh phantom? going into the studio every Saturday, Mr. Hanna and Mr. Barbera would always panic because we where about to go live? Why those two opted to go live for all those years is beyond me." Gillie took another shot and his face went rosy punch drunk red. More and more booze was no way to drown the past, but whether you got five fingers or four...it helps to have your senses dulled for a few hours. Even if it meant waking up with your skull on fire in the morning after.
Studio 83: Six hours ago.
"Let's go everybody...or should I say...Everypony." The director Mr. Rezeti said as his trope of actors got into place. Six months of developing them at Flash labs, it made the old process of drawing and inking the toons of yesteryear completely obsolete.They were on the sets for the show he and his team where making for the launch of the new network, HUB network. It was launching in six hours and the pilot episode for the final show in the line up was still behind its final scene. Rezeti was surrounded by a battalion of pastel colored ponies for the new show, My Little Pony Friendship is magic. The sets where hand built representations of the locations all over the shows setting. Equestria, they as well as the trotting actors he lead onto their position on set were from the mind of his friend and the wife of his long time confidant in the animation bussiness, Craig.
A light purple unicorn mare used the "magic" in her horn to make the folded up script float in front of her, the world would soon know her as..."Twilight Sparkle? That's my name in this show?" She said with a slight look of disgust. As a red haired woman made a few last second strokes to her mane.
"It got through legal sweetie, It was going to be Twilight Velvet, just like when you where just a toy in my bedroom as a little girl." The woman said before squeeing happily and hugging the unicorn tightly. "ohhh I feel like my girlhood dreams are finally coming true! You're just like I remembered all those years ago." Twilight looked to her "creator" and then to the other five mares that would be her costars on the show. One a light blue pegasus with rainbow hair was angrily tossing her script at the redhead and glaring at her angrily.
"RAINBOW dash!....RAINBOW DASH!" Ms. Faustian, have you forgotten what year this is?! and what that symbol has come to mean!?" The pegasus said flaring her wings in anger.
"Dashie I'm sorry but, A: You were originally supposed to be a magenta pony with blue hair named Fyre-Fly, but Mr. Wheat-ton the sci-fi writer copyright claimed it, and B: Rainbows are still a staple of femininity and girlhood as much as it is...well what you're implying." She said as she gently stroked the pegasus wings to calm her down, just as she always imagined she liked as a little girl.
"But my character is a take no nonsense tomboy that isn't afraid to get dirty...If I put on a routine like that, people will think I'm a Patty Hearst type lesbian." She said huffing and lowering her head and ears, "Or Velma Dinkly." Faustin didn't know weather to laugh or be taken aback.
"First off, neither of those two where or are lesbians Dashie. Secondly, you are a part of the childhood I still cherish to this very day. I was like you in some ways as a little girl and I never saw it as being...like that. I saw it as being a girl, being a person, being my OWN person. Not what someone wanted to mold me into or what I'd been ostracized into. You helped me grow as a girl and a person Rainbow Dash...now I've brought you to life to do the same for generations of girls so they might be inspired to do the same." She hugged her tightly and Rainbow Dash only smiled and reread her lines again.
"My very own patented...Rain blow-dry!" She said to Twilight trying to imagine her mane puffed and mussed up from the hot air.
"How was that?" She turned to Ms. Faust and asked her happily.
"Oh it's just like I always imagined it was Dashie, it really is."
The Ink and Paint.
"Fucking kids these days!" The funky phantom Jonathan Wellington "Mudsy" Muddlemore, said as he downed more Captian Morgan, The TV in the bar had been tuned to an episode of Adventure Time, the show that at that very hour millions of kids around the world was watching and enjoying a lot more than him. "I swear if I wasn't already dead...and a fucking toon, I'd have hanged myself rather than see this goddamn age." His ghostly cat boo only shrugged and lapped at the White Russian that the barman had mixed in a saucer for him.
"Hey pal calm down, I think you're taking this a bit too hard.'' The blonde "teenager" (though since he was drawn in 1973 he was technically thirty seven) said taking a swig of his own glass of Coors. Mudsy only turned his head to Finn and Jake as they battled the "Gut grinder." It was the season finale and it was a hit even a full two weeks later.
"I'm taking it hard?! Look at what passes for entertainment these days Blondie."
"You know...I personally came to terms long ago that...maybe our Saturday morning hi-jinks...while still...enjoyable as products of their time, maybe weren't the apex of creativity in our line of work." He said as they watched, A large man with a husky build and red shirt sat beside them, followed by a man in a white Roman toga who ordered.
"A pitcher of Pinot please good man." He said before banging rudely on the table.
"Hey hey hey, it's not nice to be loud when your out and about."
"AWWW Shut up you bloated slob! We haven't have to be preachy with forced obligatory morals in forty fucking years!" Mudsy said in his drunken stupor. "Look at us! we're getting shit faced while watching the bastards who replaced us hog all the glory now and forever!" He said before hiccuping violently, the barman got a trash can ready in case of toon puke.
Studio 83.
"Take a note Spike," the large white Allicorn (though it would be a while before that word would refer to her breed) with the ethereal spectrum mane said to the purple dragon. ". I, Princess Celestia, hereby decree that the unicorn Twilight Sparkle shall take on a new mission for Equestria. She must continue to study the magic of friendship. She must report to me her findings from her new home in Ponyville." the pony actors let out one loud cheer as the purple mare Twilight said her lines.
"Oh thank you, Princess Celestia! I'll study hard, I promise." She said emoting as hard as she could to capture the emotion of being excited at the news.
"CUT! CUT! CUT!" Mr. Rezeti said taking the script in his hand.
"What the fuck was wrong with that take!" The midnight black Princess Luna now out of her Nightmare Moon armor said as she trotted over to her costars.
"Nothing with you Luna, nothing you were perfect, it's Twilight she keeps blowing her damn lines. Twilight read the script!" He said tossing the paper to her. Twilight read the pages in her purple aura. "Your line is: Oh thank you, Princess Celestia! I'll study harder than ever before." He said face-palming himself.
"I'm sorry Mr. Rezeti, I'm just so nervous with his being my first role and all."
"We go on the air in three hours, we've been shooting for six and the boys at editing only have twenty two minutes of material together."
"Wait!" A white unicorn with a lovely purple mane said at hearing this. "Did you say they have a half a cartoon of footage edited?" She said as her and the others trotted together beside the Princess Celestia.
"Yes, but the pilot is an hour long movie premier, It's what I promised to deliver." Rezeti said checking his watch.
"Darling please get a hold of yourself, don't you see the answer right in front of you?" The generous but quite intelligent unicorn said placing a hoof on his shoulder, "Just slap a to be continued card to the end of the footage the boys in editing have put together, we'll re-shoot the ending to perfection, and they have a whole other week to get the second half together as episode two."
"What?!" The golden yellow farm mare Applejack said with a scoff. "Rarity that idea is just..."
"Genius!" a Pink Party girl said before bouncing around like a hyper little kid. "It's just what we need to be able to have something to show the network while still asking for more time to work on our finished project. everypony wins!" Pinkie Pie said before blowing a party horn to celebrate.
"Well...It's really the only choice we half left...Friendship is magic will air tonight, but it'll be a two part-er continued next week."
"Celestia help us all." Fluttershy said whimpering softly.
"What do you want me to do about it?" The real Celestia asked sarcastically.
The Ink and Paint
The TV had been tuned to The new hub Network, just as the credits to the new show began rolling. The patrons saw it all, the storybook opening, Celestia's narration, and the new actress Twilight Sparkle as she spoke for the first time.
"Hit me again barkeep...I want Turpentine in it!" Mudsy and Gillie said almost in unison as the show broke into commercial.
"Turpentine Fellas? You're old ink and paint toons, that stuff will kick your asses come morning...need I remind you what that stuff at one time was used to make?" The barman said as old memories of a helpless Acme Squeaky shoe shrieking in pain as he was lowered into a highly toxic mix of turpentine, acetone, benzine...calls it "the dip."
"I said hit me now fucking HIT ME!" He said slamming his hand down on the bar as the barman poured a shot of equal parts Whiskey with some pure pine oil turpentine into a glass for Mudsy. He swigged it all in a single gulp as his eyes went dark red, his face bloated, and not unlike another patron nursing a martini at the other end, He flew into the air letting out a loud howling scream as the Turpentine burned his insides of ink and paint before they mixed and dried up inside him, the shriek was so loud several glasses shattered from the sound.
"Hah! Amateur!" The Rabbit at the other end chuckled and resumed drinking.
"What I wouldn't give to dip HER!" Mudsy said as he recovered from his burns, he didn't truly mean that, it was the mix of anger, guilt and sadness that made him say it, but deep down he knew, the days of his kind where officially over and their was no going back. The patrons watched the episode as it aired, every scene that took Twilight Sparkle around Ponyville, a few awws went out to this scene:
but some like the green vanishing Gobber only felt contempt for the show, he lapped at some Budweiser in a dog bowl before saying. "Was it entirely our fault we weren't as good as them? WE had no budget's back then, AND the rules choked the fucking life outta us! Limiting what we where allowed to do. Hell I couldn't be saying words like this if this was...just another episode of one of our cartoons."
"I guess...but we still tried our damnedest...didn't we?" Someone cleared their throats before handing Mudsy a tablet open to a YouTube page, the hand at the other end hit play.
"Oh shut the hell up." Was all he could say when the video ended.
The Golden Oaks library; the new Equestria district of Toontown.
The Mane Six gathered around the TV set up in Twilight's new apartment, it was a replica of the set for the show they planned on being in that the developers of Toontown had been working on. The Equestria District matched the show it's inhabitants where staring in to help them stay in character and adapt to balancing their two live on and off the camera properly. A lot of the Town's long time residents had taken just as much a liking to the place as the ponies did. Pinkie squeaked happily as her part was coming up.
"Surprise!" The TV and the real pinkie said in unison as the party in the show library unfolded. "Oh I just loved shooting this scene." The girls were almost completely identical to their personas they had to maintain while on camera, aside of course they knew off camera they could say words the HUB execs wouldn't let them use. Twilight trotted back into the room a tray of celebratory champagne on her back which she floated on the magic of the two unicorns. They clanked the glasses together and took long sips of the bubbly. Again something the actual show they would never be allowed to openly do.
"Do you think I was too on the nose with my personality?" Rarity asked remembering how she pulled the scene off.
"The writers have a few episodes planned out to show you're than a one trick...pony." Rainbow said prompting them all to break out in laughter at her pun.
"I kinda wished you hadn't looked at me that way on that, "Best of friends you an I" line, It borderlines creepy and accidental innuendo." Twilight said, "even if it is true." She said smiling with the bubbly warmth spreading to her haunches. "To Friendship is magic!"
"May it last forever! And EVER!" Pinkie said taking a big gulp of her champagne before belching loudly making them all laugh again.
The Ink and Paint.
"It not last week." A very hairy caveman with A big club said as he downed some Turpentine again in spite of the risk of killing him it possessed.
"Eh easy with that stuff buddy boy, and you might just end up eating your words along with it too." Another less hair and more mentally sound cave man said with another blonde one beside him.
"Aww shut the hell up Fred, I think I could for some of that shine myself eh?"
"Fine Barney boy, but I'm not hauling your rock drunk ass home to Betty this time."
"Oh will you two can the Acme damn puns!?" Albert said before collapsing into a haze of drunkenness, the has been gang was drinking their sorrows away, while the ponies were celebrating the dawn of a new day.
Five months later
"Okay time to show you still got it old boy." Mudsy said adjusting his overcoat and reaching for the painted stage door. It was five months since that little outburst at the ink and paint and for him and most of the others there hadn't been doing so hot. Gobber and co still pulled rent by being stage hands for that blue jay and raccoon show, the two never once asking for their autographs as if they would even know who they are, and old Mudsy himself? He'd heard that the only one of his colleagues still working after all this time was doing a new episode of his new show, so called in, and asked if there was any openings for the crew. Yeah when your a toon out of work there really aren't a lot of options on what to do when nobody finds your wacky antics funny and you cant over haul your shtick to the modern times, so most of those like him got by helping out on the new shows, its not the most pleasant thing to do seeing what replaced you right in front of your dot eyes, but its not as depressing as dipping yourself.
The show Mudsy was appearing on was Scooby Doo's new show mystery incorporated, he had received the call some time ago after asking about the stage crew openings, while they didn't have any left, Scooby did mention how he read the seasons script in advance, and at the risk of being reprimanded for it, told Mudsy they'd be open casting for old toons like him to appear in one episode for the first season.
"Don't blow it old boy, this could be your chance to show the world you've still got it." He said smiling with his head held up high. "There even doing it live! just like Mr. H and Mr. B." He said as he reached for the knob of the stage door.
The Marvin Acme Memorial museum. (formerly the Acme warehouse)
"A lot of history here you know," Laura Faustian said to the alabaster unicorn that trotted beside her. They looked from the wax sculptures of various cartoon characters over the years. "Hey look! Lickety Split!" Laura said as Rarity trotted beside a G1 pony with a pink coat and pinkish withe mane. Rarity's big expressive eyes gazed into the wax glassy and small ones of Lickety, she grimaced a bit at her, if only for how jarring it was to be looking into what quintessentially was your great 3X grandmother's eyes.
"I can't believe our predecessors looked like this...I mean I know they were your Childhood, creator. It's just...it's so odd to see how so much has changed since the days of yore. Rarity said in a semi dramaric way, a hoof over her mame holding it back in a bit of mellow drama.
"I'm not going to lie." Laura said as she gazed up at two sculptures of He-man and She-ra. "I'll never forget the great characters that where so close to my heart as a little girl, but as a grown up woman, I see now that even the characters made with...the best intentions, almost all of them were soley done to shamelessly market to us youths. Even the people who's hearts were im the right places in the industry still had a job to do, and that job was to make money."
Rarity may have been relatively young by toon standards, she had been animated at Flash Drive labs only a year ago, but she had as much knowledge about the world as her creator did. "Come now dear, the past is past, and we've moved on from all that." She balanced on her back hooves and patted Laura's back softly. "Remember it for the good amd let the good embrace the future, remember everything you see here for good and bad, is built on the foundations of the past.
It was no coincidence they were clearing the 80s room and entering the Marvin Acme memorial. It was in the large room they stood in where once the props and equipment of the biggest toon stars of the golden age, kept evey trick in the book. Now it was empty of all that as a monument to the tragedy that befell the man who created toontown, Marvin Acme. Killed sixty years ago on this day by Judge Doom aka Baron Von rotten, in a convoluted ploy to turn toontown into a freeway. A bronze plaque to him embedded in black stone, etched with his forever smiling face read: For Marvin Acme, a mad genius of comedy and the best human we toons ever knew R.I.P,
Rarity and Laura looked at his plaque solemnly, he died long before Laura was born, but his toons and their antics rerun even in her child hood, was like the gift of a distant generous uncle she never knew. The same could be said for the other plaques in the room, one was to arguably the greatest, man in animation who ever lived, Uncle Walt Disney himself. His kind, and trustworthy face, like that of a relative that always has a hug and a new toy for you whenever he comes to vist at Christmas or even Thanksgiving. Like a headstone in a cemetery, it listed his life and death. December 5th, 1901-December 15, 1966, and a quote, "Keep moving forward..."
They looked to the next one, the face of a man who had an air of creativity and innovation. It was the memorial to Joe Barbera.March 24, 1911-December 18, 2006. It had been only four years since the world lost him yet it was a less funny one without him. His long time friend and partner William Hanna was beside his memorial.
"I never knew any of them personally Rarity," Laura said gently patting her creation's mane as her eyes began to flood with tears, as if Saddness and her blue aura had seized control of the switchboard to her emotional control. "I only hope I...and everyone who grew up on their hard word, dedication and passion for cartoons, made and will continue to..make...them. she sobbed softly and hugged the soft and warm coat of her pony creation, her girlhood dream made real, and she cried. Only now it was like the bond of Saddness and Joy working together.
"Proud darling?" Rarity said soflty nudhing her maker's head like a pet comforting its owner.
"Yes, wherever they are, I only hope they look at their successors, both me and others like me, with pride for keeping their dreams alive, oh Rarity may...I have a moment alone?" She said turning to the memorial to the old masters again.
"Take as long as you need darling, I understand how you feel, oh and crea....Laura?" Rarity said, at long last feeling equal to the woman who gave her life.
"Yeah?"
"Im sure the old masters are swelling with fatherly pride at you, me, and all the toons living today." Rarity trotted out the side door and Laura was left alone. She didn't see the big hulking frame of the two statues in the 80s room blink, didn't see them get off their platforms and nod at each other in agreement. A big and badly dressed warthog with a dripping snout, and a bad tempered rhino with a steaming nose in a beige tank top and cameo pants. The hog handed the the rhino the pieces one by one to assemble a big, man stopping M60 machine gun.
Although high speed 556 millimeter rounds would have been more painful, their notorious for turning sideways on entry and shattering, ripping muscle tissue and severing blood vessels on impact. The rhino kissed the belt of 7.62 bullets he loaded the gun with, pulled the bolt back into place and smiled to the hog.
"For the boss right?" He said quietly as Laura placed a hand on William Hanna's plaque.
"And for the forgotten." The Warthog said as the rhino took aim, Laura was at a halfway point of medium and point blank range, and the M60 was not a sniper's weapon, but it didn't matter. He pulled the trigger and Laura Faustian barley realized the big bore bullets were tearing holes in her body before the world began to fade.
As the bullets hit her and tore through her flesh, blood spraying and splattering the floor, her clothes and the bronze plaque, her intestines spilled from the openings the hot lead had turned her inside out with. They wriggled and fell into her hands, she choked on her own blood as her punctured lungs filled up with it. The rubber guts in her hands felt like holding sickly wet rubber tubes. She collapsed in a sitting position too choked up by her own blood and the searing pain as the sweet release of death was the much need relief from it all.
"Well Bebop, I'd say our work is done." The rhino said giving the hog a high five.
"Id say so Rocksteady, killed in the memorial hall...aka the same spot old man Acme got kaked in 47, shell casings all over the hall of the failures of our time. This is all according to the boss big plan, hah hah hah!"
"Shut up ya porker!" And put our dummies back on the stands and lests get the hell outa here!" He said slinging the gun over his shoulder. 1987 Bebop and Rocksteady quickly put their wax replicas back on the stands and left the body to be found by the hysyerical janitor to call the police. No eyes but our own witnessed it, not just the killing but something else.
The wax pony Lickety Split seemed to see the tragic end of the girl who admired her all those yeas ago in 1984, and as her cold, stiff eyes stared at the bloody carnage, it was amost as if...a single tear dripped from the beady black eye.
