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A historical tour through the CrazySugarFreakNeighborhoods! of the Parodyverse ... Monday, 10-Jan-2000 05:00:21
Arkham, Massachusetts, was indeed the childhood home of sisters Melanie and Olivia Hastings, who were raised there by their parents, Commodore Thomas S. and Vivian Hastings. Melanie ran away from home at 17, but Olivia stayed on to attend Miskatonic University, meeting her future husband, Irish exchange student Khrys Constantine, during their Freshman year of courses. Khrys left Arkham in the summer following his Junior year, but Olivia once again stayed behind, to finish her degree in Psychology, and graduated with top honors. She returned to Miskatonic shortly afterwards as a professor in the Psychology department, eventually earning not only her doctorate, but also tenure and seniority, two things that are traditionally rather difficult to come by for women in the Miskatonic faculty. In addition to teaching undergraduate courses in Psychology, Olivia also maintains a private practice off campus, where she specializes in treating troubled teenagers. Arkham is also where Olivia Hastings' nephew and Melanie Hastings' son, Dreamcatcher Foxglove, lived between the ages of 7 and 14, when his mother moved back to Arkham after being abandoned in their then-home town of Twin Peaks, Washington, by her husband and his father, Louis Laughing Fox. Dream also met and befriended his future love, Isabel Shapiro, during recess in the playgrounds on the very first day of elementary school, and as with Olivia, Izzy was left behind to continue on with her life when Dream and Melanie went back west to Washington, to Seattle this time. Despite repeated run-in with both bullies and school officials, Izzy managed not only to graduate one year ahead of schedule, as a 17-year-old Junior, but also to enter her chosen college of Miskatonic University with enough credit hours already accumulated to qualify for Sophomore standing. Izzy had selected Miskatonic for its highly-ranked Psychology department, that being the field of study she hoped to major in, and in particular for the opportunity to study under Olivia, whom she knew of by reputation as an esteemed member of her field, despite the handicaps of A) being a woman who had been forced to break into the "old boys' club", and B) being an outspoken woman to boot, who had fought to retain her occupation as well as her reputation in the face of being "outed" as a Wiccan - a witch, in other words, in the heart of Puritan New England. Although perhaps dubious of Izzy's brand of brashness at first, Olivia soon came to recognize the occasionally outspoken Ms. Shapiro as one of her first-tier students, eventually treating her with much the same respect and regard as she'd accorded her favorite former protege, Lee O'Callaghan, a Cape Cod native who had gone on to work as forensic profiler for the F.B.I. and various other law enforcement agencies after graduating from Miskatonic University. Twin Peaks, Washington, is yet another town that, like Arkham, has been transplanted whole into the Parodyverse, complete with all the events surrounding the murder of popular high school student Laura Palmer. Twin Peaks also happens to be where Dreamcatcher Foxglove was born, and raised until the age of 7 by his mother and father, Melanie Hastings and Louis Laughing Fox. I doubt that much else needs to be said about what Dream's upbringing must have been like in that particular haven of strangeness, other than to note that, for all its dysfunctional home-spun quirkiness, Dream was almost always happy in Twin Peaks, and he definitely preferred its eccentricities to those of Arkham. This should clearly communicate how truly twisted a community Arkham must be by comparison. As for Seattle, it exists in the Parodyverse in much the same form as it does in the real world, with one or two significant differences. In the Parodyverse, Seattle happens to be the home not only Dreamcatcher Foxglove, who has been living there since the age of 14 and is currently attending yet another semester at the University of Washington, but it is also the headquarters of Odyssey Opportunities, a globe-spanning, multi-national, vastly powerful conglomerate of corporations whose diversity of interests is virtually all-encompassing. But for all of that, Odyssey Opportunities basically consists of three simple divisions, each one so large that they are regarded as practically being independent companies in their own right, and the majority of those in the public, the media, and even the government fail to realize that these three sub-groups are actually all part and parcel of the same whole. Odyssey Opportunities' three branches are: Argus Advisors (named after the hundred-eyed sentinel who watched over Hercules at Hera's bidding in ancient Greek myth), a network of advertising and media consultants who track societal trends by analyzing the output of popular culture; Daedalus Discoveries (named after the brilliant architect, who was fabled to have devised the Labyrinth of legend to contain the Minotaur for King Minos II of Crete), a trust of scientific minds and education funds that seeks to increase discovery by investing in those who could show academic promise or could advance the frontiers of human understanding, if only they had the patronage to carry on their studies; and Icarus Innovations (named after Daedalus' nephew, who flew too high on the wings his uncle had constructed for him out of wax and feathers, and thus melted off his borrowed wings when he flew too close to the sun), which uses the knowledge gleaned from Daedalus Discoveries to improve technology, in an effort to make the cutting-edge prototypes of today into the more efficient, more accessible, and more affordable tools of everyday life, for everyone. The founder and still-reigning CEO of Odyssey Opportunities is Mr. Book, an affable yet soft-spoken and somewhat press-shy figure, who nonetheless remains outwardly committed to his policy of "corporate openness", and has earned praise for his institution of numerous charities devoted to the causes of nearly every definition of disadvantaged and disenfranchised, but also for his companies' aggressive equal opportunity employment policies, along with a workers' compensation package that include extras such as on-site child care for two-income families, and even pay bonuses for single parents. Moreover, thanks to the Daedalus Discoveries college scholarship program knows as Ulysses Undertakings, Odyssey Opportunities has even given the city of Seattle, as well as the world at large, its very own superhero, by giving Dreamcatcher Foxglove the change to stumble upon the Impossibilityium he would use to create his SillySuit, thereby becoming the wired wonder known as CrazySugarFreakBoy!, who also acts as Odyssey's unofficial (and largely unwitting) advertising mascot and public relations spokesperson, thanks to the positive press that his presence as a "home-town hero" generates indirectly for Odyssey. In return for the favorably friendly and appealingly personal smiley face that CrazySugarFreakBoy! lends to the already admirable yet imposingly impersonal and faceless image of Odyssey Opportunities, Mr. Book has compensated Dream by serving as his corporate patron, supplying him with all of the facilities, equipment, personnel, and political influence an up-and-coming superhero team could ever hope for, and then following it up by furnishing Dream with his very own superhero team to accompany it. Most agree that Mr. Book's public support was the deciding factor that contributed the passage of the controversial "costumed criminal parole program", which allowed the initial test batch of ten former super-villains to join Dream's Goofball Gauntlet as part of their community service, in order to commute the remainder of their sentences. Popular opinion remains mixed on this subject, but at least in Seattle, the Goofball Gauntlet is regarded favorably by a majority of civilian citizens, a great deal of which is no doubt thanks to the unconditional enthusiasm of CrazySugarFreakBoy! in endorsing and vouching for the valor of his still-in-training team of would-be superheroes. Before visitors leave Seattle, they should consider stopping on by (after leaving the wife and kids behind at the hotel, of course) to see the night's headline attractions at one of the many fine-quality "Deja Vu Showgirls" brand line of gentleman's exotic dance clubs located throughout the Pacific Northwest. If you're lucky, you might even get to see Dreamcatcher Foxglove's mom, Melanie Hastings, a.k.a. Meggan Foxxx, Action Figure, a long-time favorite who finally responded to her fans' pleas and came out of retirement just a few short years ago, to once again grace the stage and screen of the adult entertainment industry with her ageless presence. There are other locales, such as Doctor Phobia's University at the End of the Universe, which we have only seen glimpses of, and hints of even more unbelievable realms lurking in the far reaches of the Parodyverse's reality, such as the plane of existence where Impossibilityium is whispered to have come from in the first place, but for now, it's best to leave some places unexplored, so that we might take the time to plumb the depths of their mysteries more fully later on. A companion piece to the Hooded Hood's Where's Where of the Parodyverse, by CSFB! |
| A historical tour through the CrazySugarFreakNeighborhoods! of the Parodyverse ... (A companion piece to the Hooded Hood's Where's Where of the Parodyverse, by CSFB!) (10-Jan-2000 05:00:21) |
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