Cloud Strife (Final Fantasy 7) vs. Alex Trebek (Jeopardy): When You're Bored, Swing a Sword

 

Calcobrena from Final Fantasy IV vs. Garrison's Autism (a Common Opponent These Days)

 

If anybody has a problem with my shirt, I can always take it off...slowly...with "Pump Up the Volume" playing in the background. Get your dollar bills ready and make that shit rain.

The Necromancer from Diablo II vs. Diamond from Diamond & Silk: No Rest for the Wicked

 

Mr. Green from Clue vs. Toad from Super Mario Brothers 2: The Key to Victory Is...the Key to Victory!

Jayden McCameron, Gamer and Funko Pop Collector from "Virtuous"

 

Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII vs. Stephanie Turner (Stephiroth)

 

Professor Chesko vs. Heel vs. Babyface (I swear it's not a triple threat match)

 

Phanto vs. Nick Sandmann

 

He can't sue me, because I'm taking advantage of my free speech rights. Suck it up, churchie!

Mario and Luigi

 

Luigi vs. Rufus Buckley from A Time to Kill

 

Lucia Morgan from Final Fight 3 vs. Jordan Peterson

 

Two-Sentence Horror Story: These Colors DO Run

An internet troll asked the gamer girl, “What color is your thong today?” She answered, “Brown and yellow, with some tinges of red thrown in there.”

Final Fantasy IV and Stupidity

When people ask me about my favorite videogames, Final Fantasy IV is somewhere in that Mt. Rushmore...of more than four heads. Why wouldn’t it be? It’s got magic, science fiction, creepy puppets, and…unfortunately, it also has stupid characters. Cecil has to travel the world to protect the elemental crystals from Golbez. But every time Cecil and his friends touch one, Golbez is right there to take it from them, almost like the protagonists are just leading him to the crystals. There’s even one instance where Cecil had to exchange a crystal for his girlfriend Rosa. He gives Golbez the crystal and, surprise, surprise, Golbez reneges on the deal and tries to kill him. And then there’s the dragon knight Kain, who is supposed to be one of Cecil’s allies, but he keeps getting brainwashed by Golbez…over and over again! And what does Cecil do? Welcomes Kain back into the party every single fucking time the brainwashing wears off. Tellah, an old mage with powerful magic, has to sacrifice his own life to cast Meteor on Golbez, which doesn’t kill him, but forces him to relinquish control of Kain…for a little while! And by the way, Golbez is no better. He’s an all-powerful wizard knight who could kill everyone and everything in his path with just his magic alone. There’s even a time when he leaves Cecil and crew laying on the ground…and doesn’t kill them! If Golbez is that powerful, what the fuck does he need elemental crystals for? He could just lightning bolt the world out of orbit if he wanted to! Zip-zap, done! End of story! I’m not saying I’ve never had stupid characters before, but holy shit, they’re not THAT dumb. Now that I’m looking at Final Fantasy IV through a critical lens and not a nostalgic one, where does that rank it on the Mt. Rushmore of my favorite videogames? Hmm…

Sammy Marshall: Holy Warrior

Most of you know by now that I like to randomly choose my characters’ names. But in the case of playing Diablo II with my brother, cherry-picking was the better option. Otherwise, I would have ended up with a paladin named Sammy Marshall. Not happening. Sammy Marshall is the kind of guy who will organize a union strike. Or if you need a football coach, Sammy Marshall can do that too. But if you give him a footman’s mace and send him into the Den of Evil, he’s going to get his shit pushed in by Corpsefire the zombie boss. On normal difficulty, no less. It’s the same reason why nobody will believe that Meg Ryan’s character from When Harry Met Sally had mind-blowing sex with a guy named Sheldon. It’s also why The Bastion Booger never became WWF Champion. Or why Taserface was laughed out of every scene he was a part of in the movie Guardians of the Galaxy 2.

FF DOT: The Pixel Art of Final Fantasy

BOOK TITLE: FF DOT: The Pixel Art of Final Fantasy

YEAR: 2018

GENRE: Picture Book

SUBGENRE: Videogame Art

GRADE: A

As someone who spent most of my childhood playing Final Fantasy games left and right, this collection of artwork was nostalgic heaven for me. The first game in the series was basically a D&D campaign brought to life and the character and environmental designs reflected that. Even though my favorite classes to use were physical combatants, I got a kick out of seeing the magic users as well. I could just imagine these brave warriors fighting monsters and crawling through dungeons all over again. The rest of the games in the series gave me a nostalgic boost as well. Cecil was a stud as both a dark knight and a paladin, wearing the finest armor and swinging the mightiest swords. Sabin could be WWE Champion today if he wanted to with his brute strength and intimidating presence. Bartz could put on samurai gear and throw money at his opponents like he was more powerful than Elon Musk and Bill Gates combined. Whenever your creative well is running dry like mine was, this book will power you back up again. You don’t even have to be a fan of the games to get enjoyment out of this; the art is simultaneously a history lesson and a shot in the arm for anybody wanting to flex their creative muscles. What more is there to say other than this book gets an easy A out of me?

It Was All an Adventure to You

 “He’s right this way, Princess. Watch your step. He’s been lying here all day, it seems.”

Princess Marle knew who that male pronoun was meant for, but she didn’t want to say it out loud. She didn’t want his name associated with the grape-scented wine wafting through the forest. She intentionally slowed down, not because she didn’t want to step on her royal white dress, but to prolong the answer. She could have moved at a snail’s pace despite the urgency of her squad of knights, but this part of her future was inevitable. As a former time traveler, she knew something about grim futures.

The knight captain raised a branch so that Marle could pass through. Some of the leaves got in her otherwise perfect blond hair, but hers wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the young boy lying against the trees in front of her. Defeated, drunk, disheveled, and demonized. Four D’s, one shell of a former human being. It was indeed Marle’s ex-husband Crono, his eyes glazed over, his clothes a stained mess, his spiky red hair even messier than usual. All life had left his once bright eyes, numbed by the genie lamp-like bottle dangling in his right hand.

With her knights firmly behind her, Marle tiptoed toward her ex and took a whiff of the offensive air that poisoned not just the forest, but an entire human body. “Did you bathe in Genie’s Delight, Crono?” No answer, just drool, tears, and snot. Marle yanked the bottle out of his hand and sarcastically took a sip. “Mmm! You have fine tastes…despite the fact that you’re not even old enough to drink alcohol. Still…you have very nice tastes.”

Marle threw the lamp-like bottle against a nearby stump, the shattering noise jostling Crono around a little bit, the only sign of life he was capable of showing. Not even his ex-wife’s scowling contempt was enough to wake him up from this depressive stupor. “Arrest him.”

“It was all an adventure to you…”

The knights couldn’t proceed any further as Marle held out her arms like a barricade, wanting to give her ex-husband a chance to speak his mind…or whatever was left of it. “Come again?”

Crono spit a wad of blood onto a nearby patch of grass, as if that would be more effective at deforesting this area than his alcoholic miasma. “Time travel is supposed to be fun, right? We were all having a good time going through all those worlds…all those dinosaurs…all those dragons…all those bony old men looking for something to eat in a fucking factory…” He spat again. “I’m glad you had a good time, Marle. I’m happy all those lighting bolts and fire bombs didn’t scar you in the least. I was worried being in constant battle would take its toll on all of us…” He hiccupped.

“Crono…let me make something perfectly clear. Those battles were not my idea of fun. Nobody was having fun. We fought all of those monsters because it was necessary. We saved the world. Isn’t that something to be proud of? Isn’t that something you want to be remembered for?”

Crono burped.

“Answer me!” Marle’s arms folded like she was ready to make her final judgment upon this poor bastard in front of her.

Crono burped again. “I’m sure it’d be nice to be remembered as a savior. But that’s not how I remember it. All I remember was being burned alive and slashed to pieces.” Tears welled up in his eyes, much to the dismay of his ex-wife. “I died, Marle! I literally died! And before that I almost had my head chopped off by your kingdom! They were going to give me the guillotine for a fake kidnapping charge! The guillotine! To a little boy! That’s all that capital punishment is, really: state-sanctioned murder.”

Marle calmed down somewhat. “I agree.”

“I don’t,” said the knight captain, who earned himself a slap on the arm from her highness.

“You were cleared of all charges, Crono.”

“Tell that to the townsfolk. You think I don’t hear them talking? They still think I kidnapped you. They don’t buy that time portal explanation. Nobody does.” He pointed at an empty field. “Even that guy won’t stop talking about it. He wants me dead, just like everyone else.”

“Crono, who are you pointing at? There’s nobody there.” The weight of what Marle just said caused her to suck in a deep breath. Almost holding her hand to her mouth, she whimpered, “Are you delusional? Are you…hearing voices?” Her only answer came in the form of a weak shrug. “Is that why you drink so much?” He nodded. “You ruined our marriage over a few bottles of wine for this? Crono, why didn’t you tell me?”

He laughed like the madman he was becoming. “How am I supposed to bring that up in conversation? Oh, honey, these mashed potatoes are delicious! By the way, I’m hearing things that aren’t there! Your knights would have given me the guillotine just for that. I guess there’s no better way to relieve head trauma, am I right?” He chuckled at his own form of gallows humor.

Marle’s breathing became more erratic and jittery as she fought back tears that she never wanted her loyal knights to see. “Crono, if you would have told me, I wouldn’t have judged you for it. I would have helped you through it. We all would have.”

“I wouldn’t have,” said the knight captain.

“SHUT UP!” yelled Marle, an order that was quickly obeyed. “Crono…we married each other…we shared moments…and you threw it all away with that disgusting wine! You could have told me what was going on!”

“Not even your healing magic would have done me any favors, Marle!” Crono snapped back. “You want to help me? Reach inside my head, pull the demons out one-by-one, and throw them away for good! Can you do that? Can anybody do that?!”

“…No…I can’t…” Marle’s tears were slowly eroding away her royal toughness.

“Look…if you’re going to arrest me, then do it already. I’m beyond help at this point. Those combat memories won’t go away on their own. Those chatty bastards won’t stop spreading rumors about me. And I’ll never get the taste of Genie’s Delight out of my mouth. Ah, who am I kidding? Everything tastes like blood nowadays. I’ve been stabbed so many times that I can taste it every day. I’ve been burned so many times that it tastes like crispy black scabs. Just arrest me or kill me, okay? I don’t care what you choose, just do something.”

Marle wiped her eyes on her arm glove before using her arm like a barricade once more to stop the knight captain from arresting Crono. “I’ll handle this. Take the rest of the day off, Captain. You’ve done enough.”

“But Princess, I…”

She lifted a finger to her lips. “Not. Another. Word. Let me handle this. Go.”

The knights hesitated for a while before marching back to the castle, leaving Marle to wrap Crono’s arm around her back and hoist him to his feet. His dizzy equilibrium made him harder to carry, but she was still willing to do it. He was so slippery that she just decided to carry him baby style in her arms. He seemed comfortable in that position from how easily he closed his puffy eyes. Marle didn’t even have to struggle that much to hold him, suggesting to her that he hadn’t had much food to go with his copious amounts of alcohol.

Marle carried the remains of her ex-husband through the dark forest, the one where they used to “level up”. The one where they escaped from the castle guards by traveling to the future, the future of broken down factories, skinny survivors, constant hunger, and dark skies. Maybe there was some validity to Crono’s trauma.

She carried him like the mother she originally wanted to be. She climbed many castle stairs, receiving dirty looks from the guards along the way. She didn’t care. She climbed more stairs. And more. And more. And then she introduced Crono to a room he thought he hadn’t seen before. “This doesn’t look like a drunk tank…”

“That’s because it isn’t. It’s our old bedroom. The bed is a lot softer here than in a drunk tank.”

A little bit of life returned to Crono’s eyes as he looked around the old bedroom he shared with his now ex-wife. Marle took it in as well. The stained glass windows, the bookcase full of knowledge and wisdom, the beautiful artwork that was a mirror image of the battles they fought together, and more importantly, the bed that felt like laying on a cloud of vanilla ice cream.

“I think you’d be more comfortable with your shirt off.” Sure enough, Marle stood him up and removed his wine-scented tunic, revealing visible ribs underneath. She elected to leave everything else on his body in order to keep it PG. She hobbled him over to the bed and laid him down on his stomach, face first into the silky eiderdown pillow. He was asleep almost instantly, snoring like a coffee grinder and snorting like a pig.

Marle gazed down upon her once beloved with watery eyes. She threatened him with arrest back in the forest, but she knew in her heart she could never carry out such an order. He was so irresponsible, but he was also hurting. She couldn’t leave someone like that alone in the forest at the mercy of conservative knights. He looked almost as pained as the starving twigs from the future. He looked like a corpse ready for his permanent dirt nap. He was drunk out of his mind, yet he clung to life all the same. She knew he wasn’t ready to surrender.

Knowing full well he was knocked out from the drunkenness, Marle climbed on Crono’s back and gave him a massage anyways. She didn’t want to squeeze too hard out of consideration for his visible bones, but she squeezed just enough to hopefully put some better memories in his traumatic nightmares. If the gentle touches weren’t enough, she leaned into his ear and whispered something she wanted to say, but couldn’t get through to him during their crumbling marriage: “Crono…I never stopped loving you!”

Pee-Wee Herman On Crack

VERSE 1

Baldheaded puppets, intestines for strings

They’ll cut off your head, hollow everything

A present for the darkest of dark lord knights

Not bad for a bunch of freaks who look like

Pee-Wee Herman on crack

Never get your serotonin back

Pee-Wee Herman on crack

Childhood is under attack

VERSE 2

They’ll play you a nice little waltz lullaby

Not in hopes you will sleep, but want to die

Infinite loops until your sanity goes bye-bye

Not bad for some monsters who look like

Pee-Wee Herman on meth

Pray for the quickest death

Pee-Wee Herman on drugs

Intestinal noose fits nice and snug

VERSE 3

My guitar is made from puppet strings

When I open my mouth, the demons sing

When I strike the mallet, funeral bells ring

When the puppets dance, you’ll start to think

That they’re Pee-Wee Herman on acid

Schizophrenic voices bring the traffic

Pee-Wee Herman on pills

Getting their bloodthirsty thrills

VERSE 4

When you beat them down, the trauma remains

Making lemonade out of your melting brains

All the Xanax in the world won’t help you now

Neither will the simple phrase, “I disavow”

Pee-Wee Herman on heroin

Cool off your superhero arrogance

Pee-Wee Herman on crack

Once they’re in your mind, there’s no going back

Pee-Wee Herman on crack

Pee-Wee Herman on smack

Pee-Wee Herman unpacked

From a body bag, goodbye to your sack

Food-Mindedness and Body Horror

In case it wasn’t already abundantly clear from my 300 lb. belly, I’m very food-minded. Almost everything in my life reminds me of food in some way. Hell, the word Life will conjure images of the oat square cereal swirling around in milk. The word swirling will remind me of frosted cinnamon buns, keyword being frosted, as in enough frosting to cover the whole fucking thing. At least those words make a modicum of sense, but then there are names of people that remind me of food for no reason at all. Marcus reminds me of hotdogs and mustard. Brad reminds me of French bread. Rachel reminds me of apple juice. Erick reminds me of birthday cake-flavored milkshakes. How did this happen? Was it the constant advertising? Was there some trick of the brain during childhood I wasn’t aware of?

Already, my relationship with food is off to a rocky start. But then there are the things I find disgusting in life and how they find their way into my food. Not literally, but I imagine that they do and my imagination is powerful enough to make me vomit in some cases. For example, if you’ve ever seen the movie Clerks, the View Askew Productions logo at the beginning will serve as nightmare fuel to haunt you at every stage of life. There’s nothing wrong with men dressing in fishnet pantyhose, high heels, and leather thongs…even if they do have grotesque body hair. But it’s the unwanted sexual attention and creepiness of his flirtation that makes it such a traumatic logo. After seeing that logo for the first time, I kept involuntarily picturing his hairy disgusting body in pieces of my lunch meat. Every time I take a bite of ham or turkey, I imagine I’m taking a bite out of that man’s body. My stomach is aching and my fingers are convulsing just thinking about this.

But that’s just one example. If that was the only one, then I wouldn’t have been inspired to write an entire essay on it. What about the Calcobrena Puppets from Final Fantasy IV? You know, those creepy leotard-wearing dolls with buzzed heads, bloodshot eyes, zombie movements, and murderous intentions. They look like they could be Pee-Wee Herman’s children based on their buzz-cuts alone. Pee-Wee Herman once taught his audience how to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on his show. Therefore…all of my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches will taste like the bodies of the Calcobrena Puppets. It’ll be like eating right off of their skulls, head lice, fleas, and maggots be damned. It’ll be like giving French kisses to each and every one of those dolls…while passing pre-chewed sandwiches back and forth! Again, my stomach is boiling and rotting while I’m typing this.

And what about the Simpsons from their Treehouse of Horror Episodes, particularly the ones where they turn into pale zombies. They chew flesh, they lose limbs, they groan like exhausted monsters, and did I mention that they have pale skin? You know what else is pale in color? Pasta covered in white sauce, whether it’s American cheese or Alfredo sauce. Every bite that I took of those macaroni shells made me believe I was eating pieces of the zombie Simpsons. I took a long time to swallow knowing that zombie flesh was going down my throat and was going to poison me to death. The macaroni turned to mush in my mouth, so when I finally swallowed, I gagged and brought up a little bit of bile with it.

If I rattled off every example of food-related body horror, then we’d be here forever and a day. I could talk about the faceless masks from Pink Floyd the Wall reminding me of melted cheese. I could talk about the diarrhea blasts in The Human Centipede reminding me of chocolate ice cream (that one’s too obvious, though). I could talk about dead flies reminding me of Butterfinger ice cream. How did this all happen? Why are these disgusting things finding their way into my every meal? Am I so linked up with food that every trauma will remind me of such? Suppose I was more inclined towards Legos instead of food. If I touched a Lego piece that had three holes in it, would it remind me of the Pink Floyd masks? What if I was geared towards clothing? Would the View Askew drag queen’s body hair remind me of a wool sweater that’s literally hugging my chest?

I can already hear fatphobic assholes using my food horror as motivation for me to lose weight…or is that just my schizophrenic voices? Nah, I’m pretty sure someone has thought of exploiting me at one point or another. To those fat-shamers, I say watch the Human Centipede and eat a bag of shit and then watch Pink Floyd the Wall and eat an entire McDonald’s Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese (there has to be cheese in it, no exceptions). Unlike drugs and alcohol, food is actually necessary to survive. A cheeseburger will carry you over into the next day. A pack of cigarettes will not. A pepperoni pizza will give you the nutrition you need, even if it’s bad. Alcohol will not. If I gave up all of my favorite foods due to the body horror I’ve witnessed over the years, I would die of anorexia. Imagine that: fat-shaming actually hurts people instead of helping them find motivation. It’s almost as if people are only fat-shaming to satisfy their sadistic urges and are just using motivation as a cover-up for their shitty behavior. Bullying never went away; it just adapted to the new world.

I could tell you all that I’ve found the perfect counter for body horror-induced trauma, but I haven’t. Yes, I’m still alive and eating like a pig, but that’s only because the trauma went away on its own. I eat ham sandwiches whenever I damn well please even though the View Askew drag queen lusted on me through the TV screen as a kid. I eat stuffed mushrooms despite the fact that it feels too much like I’m eating Phanto from Mario Brothers 2, the evilly-smiling little bastard. Trauma going away on its own is not a typical outcome for most people, especially if schizophrenia is a factor like it is for me. Sure, you can take away the stimulus and hope for the Law of Diminishing Returns to kick in, but it doesn’t always do that. I have no solutions for your body horror trauma. As a matter of fact, I may have given you some of that as I described examples of how they make their way into my food.

Sometimes I think I’m the only one who experiences things like this until I Google it and find entire communities full of people who share my problems. But that’s assuming I’m not too lazy on any given day to use Google. It’s such an easy thing, yet I find myself too lazy sometimes to type words into a search engine. If you’re out there and you’re as food-minded as me, I’m sorry I can’t provide solutions for you other than the occasional animal picture and some digital hugs. You know who can provide more than that? Your therapist. They can talk you through your trauma. They can encourage you to face your food-themed fears. They can be there for you when you feel like others would laugh at your plight. Yes, therapy can be expensive at times, but it’s worth every penny if it means you’ll be okay in the end. If you’re not okay, it’s not the end. Life is better alive. It’s a dumb thing to say, but the truth won’t wane away. Okay, now I’m just ripping off quotes and lyrics. I should stop doing that before I get sent to prison for copyright infringement and have my vanilla pudding remind me of my cell mate’s semen. Uh-oh! More body horror!

Why I Don't Believe in Aliens

I don’t want it to seem like I’m breaking a longstanding oath to the Jedi order, because in order to do that, I’d have to acknowledge the slim possibility of Jedi knights being real. I’d have to watch Star Wars and Star Trek like they’re documentaries. I’d have to play Starcraft like I’m reviving Kriegspiel. These things that I’ve mentioned are labeled as science-fiction, keyword there being fiction. If they were nonfiction, our world would be fucked, even more so than it is now in the year 2020 with Corona Virus and governmental tyranny. Okay, so we MIGHT have a Jabba the Hutt look-alike in the oval office right now, but that’s as close to admitting the realness of aliens that you will get from me. That’s right. I can’t believe I have to say this, but I’m going to anyways. My name is Garrison…and I don’t believe in aliens. Never have, never will.

Aliens do make for some interesting creative fuel, I’ll admit. I played the hell out of Starcraft from 2000 to 2001. I slashed the shit out of everyone with the Protoss zealots’ photon blades. I ate space marines alive with the Zerg’s blade-fanged Ultralisk creature. Every piece of fiction I’ve ever written during that time period was basically Starcraft thievery, which I would get defensive about because I didn’t want to get stuck in a frivolous copyright lawsuit. But let’s be real: Zerglings, Ultralisks, Hydralisks, Protoss dragoons, Protoss carriers, Protoss templars, they can only be enjoyed on a fictional basis. If these biological monstrosities existed in the real world, they would ransack the shit out of earth and we’d be completely defenseless. How’s that Space Force working out for you, Mr. President?

I know I’m going to hear the argument somewhere down the line, “Well, Garrison, are you so arrogant that you believe earthlings are the only ones who exist in the universe?” Until I see otherwise, yes, I am. Where are all these lizard people that I keep hearing about? Where are the goopy Martians with their slime-covered bodies and bug eyes? When is Darth Vader going to destroy the world with his Death Star? I don’t see any of these things. I don’t pick up on them with my other senses either. If I can’t sense them in any way, I’m not going to believe in them just because there’s a small chance they MIGHT exist outside of the Milky Way.

I treat extraterrestrial life with the same amount of skepticism that I do religious deities, which is to say I’m an atheist through and through. If I don’t believe God, Allah, or Shiva exist, why would I suddenly believe that aliens exist? Religion and alien culture have the same amount of proof to convince me, which is to say none at all. This is just my take on it, though. If other people want to practice religion or believe in wacky ideas, I’m not going to try and stop them. Me personally? I refuse to believe in something I have no proof exists. And as long as we’re crossing gods and aliens off the list, where’s all the zeal for other fantasy and sci-fi creatures? What about ogres? What about goblins? Or elves? Or dragons? Or big ass tarantulas? How come the people who put so much stock into aliens don’t believe in those things as well? “Are you so arrogant that you believe elves don’t share this world with us?”

Like I said before: aliens should be treated as fictional characters in enjoyable science-fiction. They should not influence politics on any level. We should not have radio show hosts and podcasters spouting conspiracy theories about aliens poisoning our drinking water or shoving rods up our asses. We shouldn’t have conspiracy theories about anything else as well, whether it’s Obama being from Kenya, the earth being flat, pizza shops being safe havens for pedophiles, or COVID-19 being a hoax designed to derail conservatives. The silliness alone seems harmless and can even be explored in filmmaking or story writing, but the minute people start dying in the real world over them, that’s when I have a problem. Hundreds of thousands of people have died from COVID-19 because the public and its politicians aren’t taking it seriously. What does this have to do with aliens? I don’t know, but I bet their existence could be shoehorned into these theories to gain political leverage. It’s happened before and it’ll happen again.

You know what I really love about alien culture? This idea of anal probing, which was made popular by that season one episode of South Park where Cartman gets a metal rod shoved up his ass. Later in the episode, the rod expands into a satellite dish that communicates with extraterrestrials. Please tell me you don’t think South Park is nonfiction. Just laugh at the comedy. Don’t take it too seriously. Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of the show, don’t take life too seriously and they would encourage their audience to follow suit. Nobody’s going to shove a glowing metal rod up your ass. If they do, you’re probably stuck in a BDSM dungeon. Or the pawn shop from Pulp Fiction, one of the two.

I know I’m ranting and raving over here, but I actually have a message to go along with this aggression. If you’re going to believe in something, don’t use that as an excuse to hurt others. You can believe in Jesus all you want, but don’t beat up LGBT members because of it. You can believe in aliens all you want, but don’t use that as an excuse to influence world politics and radicalize already unstable people. Do whatever you want to do as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody else.

Nobody will mind if you watch Star Trek: the Original Series and be blown away by the philosophical nature of it. Nobody will mind if you enjoyed all nine episodes of Star Wars instead of just episodes four through six. Nobody will mind if you play Starcraft until your ass is sore from sitting for so long (and not because the Protoss shoved a photon rod up your anus). If we could all just agree to get along and not hurt each other, the world would be a better place. Write that sci-fi novel. Write that lizard man movie script. Put together a videogame about venomous blobs of goo from Jupiter and Saturn. Do what Nickelback did in the song “Million Miles an Hour” and travel through the galaxy after taking that “everlasting pill”. Do what you want and don’t be a dick!

If you have anything you want to add to this conversation, speak now before the UFO comes to my house and pulls me onboard with their tractor beam! Ooo, I know! Why do UFO’s have to be circular disks? Why can’t they be any other shape? How about a cylinder? How about a trapezoid? How about a pyramid? Imagine a pyramid-shaped vessel that could spin in circles like a drill and mine our precious resources from the depths of the planet. Now that’s a hell of a novel prompt! Don’t worry, I’m not trying to stir shit up and make you even more paranoid than you already are. But just imagine the possibilities of a spinning pyramid ship helmed by elven warlocks and dragon necromancers. Imagine that they’re harvesting our oil to fuel an even greater weapon to use against the ogre and Protoss alliance, crushing their oppressors once and for all! Now there’re no excuses for a blank page!

It Drops the Key

Throwing turnips at Shy Guys and Ninjis left Princess Peach’s arms limper than spaghetti. Pulling vegetables out of the ground was never her forte and it showed with the aching pulses in her muscles and the kinks in her back. Why couldn’t she just jump on the enemies and flatten them like any other Mushroom Kingdom hero? Because this wasn’t the Mushroom Kingdom. This was Subcon. This was a world of grassy fields, stone temples, bees with lances, birds on flying rugs, and Shy Guys. Lots and lots of Shy Guys, whether the little red-robed, creepily-masked goblins appeared out of nowhere or filed one by one out of a magic jar.

Sweat glistened down from Princess Peach’s forehead, her long blond hair sticky and stale. Her royal pink dress had some dampness here and there, though it still served its purpose of allowing her to float through the air during a long jump. Her skinny bones flared up with pain after so much heavy lifting. Gardening was not her strong suit, nor should it have been. She hunched over and noticed the locked door in the side of a grass mountain. She had a vague idea of the next lifting job required of her, but didn’t want to entertain it too much lest there be even more sweat and aching. And anxiety. And chills. Lots and lots of chills. She gulped a wad of acidic saliva as she leapt down one of the tube-like vases.

Peach descended to the sandy surface at the bottom of the pit with grace and poise. The magical pink dress came in handy yet again, otherwise she’d be doing her heavy lifting with a broken ankle, soft sand aside. And in the middle of this pit was the ultimate test of strength, not only of her arms and chest, but of her intestinal fortitude. The massive golden key shined brightly enough to illuminate the dark pit. Plenty of rocks jutting out for Peach to make her escape. Dexterity wasn’t the issue. Evilly grinning golden masks were what caused Peach to tremble and sweat the most. They surrounded her in a half-circle, motionless, yet menacing. Their dark, curvy eyes gazed upon her with judgment and sadism, daring her to take the key.

She swallowed yet another lump of cold, salty saliva and inched her convulsing hand towards the golden key, yanking her hand away and flinching in anticipation. After some more futile attempts, she forced herself to grow a backbone and snatched the key from its resting place. On cue, one of the Phanto masks’ eyes glowed bright red and a deep-voice laugh echoed throughout the sand pit, causing some dirt to sprinkle below. The mask said, “It drops the key…IT DROPS THE KEY!”

Princess Peach shrieked in terror at the dehumanizing pronoun and leapt from stone to stone on her way out of the vase. She couldn’t believe her own speed. More importantly, she couldn’t believe her own strength. She had the balance of an athlete and the endurance of one as well. Sweat flew off of her face, but there would be a better time to wipe it away. She needed this key. She needed victory. And then…Phanto rammed his face into the back of her head and knocked her off one of the stones. The sand pit cushioned her rapid descent, but Peach held her skull and moaned in pain.

“It drops the key…IT DROPS THE KEY!”

As soon as Peach regained her vision, Phanto’s hideous face came into focus and she screamed in a high pitch death howl once again. She scurried into the corner of the pit with the golden key still in hand and curled into the fetal position, shaking, whining, whimpering, and doing her best to avert her ocean blue eyes from the monstrosity floating in front of her. She covered her face in her arms, but felt the warm air of Phanto breathing in her ear. The longer she held onto the key, the deeper the breaths became. Some of these breaths were accompanied by growling sounds. And then…Phanto spoke again…

“Rape vans…if they were called surprise vans, more women would get into them, because everybody loves a surprise…”

Peach screamed yet again and crab-walked towards another corner, the key still in her possession. Her heart thumped in her chest loudly, threatening to explode like a hand grenade. It slowed down just enough for her to ask a question. “Wait a minute…you…how can you…you know?”

“I can still use my mouth!”

Peach yelled.

“And my eye sockets!”

She yelled again and tried to escape by scratching and clawing the dirt walls. She got a few feet at best, but slid down on her royal pampered butt every single time. Giving up was her best option as she sat down and allowed tears to pour from her eyes.

Phanto floated over to her and started breathing in her ear again. That air. That warm, thick, horny air. “If it makes you feel any better…I would have chased you even if you didn’t have my key! Ooooooohhhhh, my!”

Peach sniffed in between ellipses. “You’re…you’re disgusting…you’re so gross!”

“I’m not the one who’s shagging a fat plumber in shit-covered overalls!”

As Phanto laughed at his own remark, Peach’s face boiled red with anger, her arms trembling for different reasons than physical labor and traumatic fear. With the ease of a bodybuilder, she chucked the key at Phanto in hopes of smacking him between his frightening eyes. The key passed right through him like the ghost he was and he laughed some more. “Was that supposed to hurt? You really shouldn’t have let that key go. It doesn’t vibrate…but it can still keep you company for when the fat man can’t save you…”

“Eww, yuck!” Peach dry-heaved on the sandy floor while Phanto continued to chuckle at her. Once all the bile was cleared from her throat and the snot drained from her nose, she scowled at her nemesis, folded her arms, and said, “You know what? I’d rather get killed than listen to another one of your bad jokes! Are you going to kill me off or are you just going to laugh at me like a moron?!”

“What do you think?”

“You know what?! Forget Subcon! Forget King Wart! I don’t need this key anymore! I wouldn’t go inside that grass mountain if there was a blizzard outside and my melons fell off from frostbite!” She marched over to the key and wielded it like a club.

Phanto snickered again. “Young lady, you already tried that and I’m still here. I’ll always be here. I’ll always be in your darkest dreams. I’ll always whisper in your ear and tell you how lovely you are. I’ll always give you kisses that don’t smell like fire flowers and mushrooms. I’ll always…”

“Screw this key!” Peach tried to break it across her knee, but to no avail. Instead she danced around holding her bruised knee in pain while Phanto laughed at her some more. She then threw the key on the ground and tried to break it with various rocks she picked up.

“Young lady, what are you doing? Stop!”

Peach didn’t listen. She pounded the key with stones larger than the last. The golden key flashed and flickered, but wouldn’t break. Instead of seeing the brilliant golden colors, Peach saw dark red. She smashed more rocks…and more…and more….Muscles bulged from her arms, her strength further encouraged by Phanto’s pleas for mercy. The key illuminated and deluminated over and over again…until it cracked and the brilliant light was no more. A deep-voiced death wail echoed across the sandpit and Phanto dropped to his doom, smiling no more, glaring no more, and shining brightly no more.

Princess Peach wiped the sweat off of her forehead with her white gloved arms and plopped backwards against the wall, breathing a heavy sigh of relief. Her heart slowed down. Her skin cooled off. Her sweat dried up and formed a sticky residue. “You know…” she whispered to nobody in particular. “Maybe there’s a way I can pick the lock. Or maybe I’ll just kick the door down. Or maybe I’ll throw some more vegetables at it.”

“Or maybe you can work out a deal with me!” Phanto glowed back to life and grew bigger in size, laughing louder, laughing longer, and laughing powerfully enough to create a cyclone around him, kicking up sand and dirt everywhere. Peach screamed once more as she held onto a jutting stone, her high heeled shoes flying off and into Phanto’s growing mouth, which now had a snake’s tongue and vampire fangs protruding from it. He grew larger…and larger…and his eyes burned with red neon. He opened his mouth in an attempt to chow down on his victim.

Phanto’s gigantic fangs clamped down over Peach’s hips, causing her to sit up in bed and gasp for air. Even after finding out this was all a nightmare, her heart wouldn’t stop thumping and her sweat made her feel like she was being water-boarded. Nonetheless, she plopped on her back and breathed a sigh of relief, provided she could catch her breath in the first place.

She turned her head and smiled at the man laying next to her: a chubby Italian plumber who would never hurt her, who always rescued her when she needed it, and who loved her unconditionally through thick and thin. She patted Mario on the shoulder and kissed the back of his head. “Goodnight, sweetheart.”

Mario rolled over to face Peach and said, “Goodnight, babe!” in a familiar deep voice. And then came the familiar glowing red eyes. And the familiar golden mask. And the familiar evil smile. Mario was wearing Phanto’s face like the Halloween costume it was and Peach’s heart finally couldn’t take it anymore. She rolled off the bed and went into cardiac arrest. As her vision faded to black, Phanto floated over her and said, “What was that you said about killing you instead of making jokes? Oh yeah…I remember…” He gave her a “goodnight” make-out kiss just as she passed into the abyss.