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& the Seven Journalers |
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sometimes you don’t work at all, So if you’re not on the fritz, Tell me who gets all the hits.” -Queen Kymm
Once upon a time, in the far off land of Journalia, there lived a beautiful queen named Kymm, who reigned benevolently over the land. Or so everyone thought. In actuality, Kymm had a sinister reason for making everyone who entered Journalia register with her. After spying on them for several months by the use of her magic mirror, Kymm quietly killed off all those who opposed her. (Recently, she killed off almost 500 dissenters, smiling all the while.) For some time, Queen Kymm had been watching a young princess named Mo White. Mo had a relatively small portion of the land in Journalia, but every once in a while she would begin to talk about her “inevitable” overthrow of the royal palace, quite alarming Queen Kymm. The Queen soon decided that Mo White would have to be destroyed and so sent her trusted assassin, Dave Van, to dispatch the young princess.
When the knock came at her door, Mo White was busy counting her population. This was an occupation which she liked to indulge in quite frequently, although she never admitted it. Hurriedly shoving her census books under the desk, she whipped out the letter she was writing to her royal sister, Princess Kate, and called out, “Come in!” She was surprised to see the famous Dave Van in her castle, but not alarmed. Other people might have been afraid of Dave Van and slammed the door in his face, but Mo White was a brave young girl, and invited him in for tea instead. Disarmed by her courtesy, and not used to meeting someone who didn’t instantly dislike him, Dave Van put his sword down and put a couple of lumps of sugar in his tea. They began talking about recent happenings in the land of Journalia, until Dave Van was quite charmed by Princess Mo. “I cannot kill you,” he said sadly, “although Queen Kymm will probably have my head for it.” Mo White promised to flee to a distant corner of Journalia, sparing both Dave Van’s life and her own. As she ushered him out, she asked, “Why not give this all up? Go back to Canada?” Dave Van smiled mischievously. “I rather like the assassin business,” he said. “And I’ll let you in on a little secret. I’ve never killed anyone. Somehow, whenever I try, the person just gets stronger and stronger. If I really want to make someone ‘disappear,’ I just ignore them.” Mo White was amazed. “Wait. You’re telling me that the most feared assassin in the land has never actually killed anyone?” “Nope. Oh, people still fear me of course,” Dave Van answered. “But basically, it’s all a big scam.”
Within an hour, Mo White had packed up her belongings (and her census book) and hit the road. She was headed for Princess Kate’s kingdom, halfway across Journalia. Night fell before she got there, however, and she found herself in an unfamiliar forest, miles away from her destination. Being a resourceful girl, she curled up on a bed of moss and fell asleep. Mo White awoke to the sounds of birds chirping, and opened one eye halfway to find someone smiling shyly at her. Not a morning person, Mo opened her other eye and muttered, “Whaddaya want?” This sent the person, whoever she was, scurrying away in the direction of a small cottage. Mo White was curious about this odd cottage and walked boldly forward. Soon, she was close enough to see the names on the mailbox. “A lot of people must live here!” she exclaimed to herself. Indeed, the mailbox read, “Welcome to the Home of Bashful, Doc, Grumpy, Sleepy, Happy, Dopey, and John Scalzi.”
A big black dog bounded out to meet her, and Mo White took a step back. She was not a dog person, and although this particular specimen looked friendly, he also seemed a little too enthusiastic about it. Following on his heels was a girl who seemed to belong to him. “Doc, stay!” the girl said, and the dog stopped his excited approach. Mo White smiled. “Oh, Doc is the dog,” she said. “I thought Doc was a person.” “I am,” the girl said with a smile. “We’re both named Doc. But if you really want to, you can call me Beth.” Mo White and the girl shook hands. “Come on inside. I’ll introduce you to the others.” The cottage looked deceptively small on the outside, but Mo White could see that it was actually quite large. Steps led down to a subterranean level, several spiral staircases reached upwards, and the cottage seemed to extend much further back into the forest than Mo had originally suspected. Looking around, she saw various other people engaged in a wide variety of activities. Doc pointed to a girl in the corner who was sweating and contorting her body at an almost inhuman pace, screaming “Do it to me, Billy!” over and over again. “That’s Happy,” she said. Ignoring Mo White’s extremely skeptical look, she turned towards another corner of the room, where a person, apparently named Grumpy, was typing on a keyboard and muttering lines of C+ code to herself. She stopped to wave at Mo White and apply some mascara before returning to her previous activity. Doc next pointed out someone named Sleepy, who had dark circles around her eyes. She was rocking a bundle back and forth and talking on a cell phone to someone named Darin. Mo White caught snippets of the conversation, including, “Come home now, goddamnit” and “I haven’t slept in twelve days!” Mo was soon distracted once again by someone sitting in the corner playing with bendable figurines. “Who’s that?” she asked Doc, who rolled her eyes. “That’s Dopey.” The person on the floor looked up, grinned and said, “Hey! I finally found the Shark Man Bendo! Isn’t that great?” Mo smiled and nodded, but Doc just rolled her eyes again. The shy girl that Mo White had seen before turned out to be very Bashful indeed. When Mo White complimented her on her striking green eyes, Bashful blushed and headed out to the backyard to blow bubbles with a small person that was waiting there. “But where’s John Scalzi?” Mo asked curiously. “Oh, he has a deadline,” Doc declared. “We NEVER see him anymore.”
A week or so later, Dave Van decided to go pay Queen Kymm a visit. Since Mo White had run away (and the Duke of Valvis had decided to move away) the kingdom had been awfully quiet. He decided he wanted to stir things up by admitting to the Queen what he had done. He found Queen Kymm sitting in her throne room, looking over the list of potential threats to her reign. With a little smile, he informed her that Mo White was still alive. “WHAT???” the queen shouted. “You will pay for this, Van!!” Dave Van said nothing. The fact that the assassin was merely standing there smiling made Queen Kymm seriously pissed off. “I mean it!!!” she screamed. “I’ll get you!” “I’m the only assassin in the kingdom,” Dave Van pointed out smugly. “Who’s gonna kill me?” The Queen smiled. “While you were away, my team of mad scientists created an evil beast named the Chuck monster. It has been programmed to rip your throat out.” Dave Van caught a glimpse of a snarling creature through the bars of a cage, and the smirk was wiped off of his face completely. Queen Kymm sat back. “I’m giving you thirty seconds, Van,” the Queen announced. “Start running.”
It was a Monday, and Mo White was lounging around the house, eating grapes, while everyone else was busy running their own, incredibly massive, kingdoms. Except for John Scalzi, of course, who Mo White had not yet met. Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. Mo White got up to answer it and found nobody there. A basket had been left on the doorstop with a note attached to it reading, “For Mo White.” The basket contained an apple. “Thanks but no thanks,” Mo White muttered, and tossed the apple aside. It was only then that she saw something underneath it—a chocolate bar. Her eyes lit up and she snatched up the bar. “Yummy!” She had barely swallowed the first bite when her eyes suddenly fell shut and she sank into a deep sleep.
“I’m jealous,” Sleepy muttered, looking down at Mo White. “She looks so well rested.” Mo White’s friends had returned from their respective kingdoms to find Mo White in a sleep so sound that none of them could wake her. Bashful tried gently shaking her, and Grumpy even kicked her a few times with high heeled boots, but to no avail. Happy picked up her cat and scratched him behind the ears. “What do you think of all this, Taylor?” she asked rhetorically. “Mon dieu,” the cat (rather surprisingly) responded. “Zis requires zee handsome prince, of course!” Happy snapped her fingers. “Hey! I know a handsome prince,” Happy said. “Thanks, Taylor.” Happy pulled out a cell phone and speed dialed the number of this month’s extremely popular Playprince centerfold, stee. Soon, she had convinced Prince stee to come by and see what he could do. In anticipation of his arrival, everyone in the house ran off to do their hair. Except Dopey of course, whose hair was, by all accounts, a lost cause.
Prince stee and his entourage arrived the next day. (The trumpets and fanfare did not wake Mo White, but it did elicit a “Shut the hell up, I’m trying to work here,” from the elusive John Scalzi.) Happy, Sleepy and Doc ran up to the popular prince and batted their lashes. Prince stee smoothed his hair. “What do you want me to do, sexy ladies?” stee asked. “You want me to kiss this chick? Dump ice water on her head? Do a monologue from Twelfth Night?” The girls looked at each other. Doc answered, “Um, no. We just wanted you to get in the jacuzzi with us.” “Oh, hey, rad,” stee said. “Sounds like fun.” He let the girls lead him in the direction of the hot tub, Grumpy and Bashful following close behind. “You wanna see my Bendos float?” Dopey asked, running after them. Suddenly, a lovely figure emerged from the entourage. “I think I / will kiss this princess / named Mo White,” the girl said. “Maybe then / she’ll go to the prom / as my date.” She planted a wet one right on Mo White’s lips, and Mo’s eyes fluttered open. Mo White smiled at the pretty girl. “Will you go / to the journal prom / with me, babe?” the girl asked. “Of course I will,” Mo said. “That was one hell of a kiss.”
Without her assassin or her evil monster, Queen Kymm decided to forget about revenge against Mo White and be benevolent after all. She was astonished when she discovered that the magic mirror was actually a television set, and that the goings-on in the forest cottage was actually a broadcast of the latest season of The Real World. Grumpy finally finished her code. To celebrate, she dressed to the nines and went out for a night on the town, cheering up completely. Her high heeled shoes were eventually auctioned off on mtv.com for $349.00. After staying up for a record of 32 days and finishing twelve screenplays, Sleepy used her newfound fame to become a successful producer/director/writer in Hollywood. Spike Jonze sold her crystal meth at a discount, and she never slept again. Doc and Doc broke into the Bunim-Murray production offices and stole the infamous hot tub footage. They got caught, but Doc avoided conviction due to a legal technicality. The tape “disappeared” and has not been seen since. Bashful decided she didn’t want to be famous, and went back to her own kingdom to live happily ever after. Prince Stee decided to move into the house as her replacement, and the ensuing sexual antics caused the program’s ratings to skyrocket. Happy and Taylor formed a comedy team and got their own NBC show, a high-concept comedy called simply “Tail-or.” Happy was written out in the third season, but the show went on to launch a successful spin off, “Meh.” Dopey never found the Shark Man Bendo, which caused him to have a nervous breakdown. He was taken in by Dana, who had him committed to the UFred mental ward because she “thought that shit would be pretty ironic.” Once he was released a few years later, they had a good laugh about it over a couple of pints. The evil Chuck monster is still chasing Dave Van around the kingdom, but hasn’t caught him yet. As for Mo White, she went to the prom with Mar, the lovely maiden who had rescued her. They fell madly in love, moved into a castle on the border of their two kingdoms and wrote lots of fan letters to Joss Wheedon. And everyone
lived (more or less) happily ever after.
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