The Original Underground Government-Suppressed Version of Brother Grimace’s Classic Daria Fanfic,

 

“THE SUN WILL COME OUT, TOMORROW”

 

 

As Re-Written by the Ghost of Ed Wood

 

 

With a Little Help from The Angst Guy (theangstguy@yahoo.com)

Daria and associated characters are ©2006 MTV Networks

 

 

Feedback (good, bad, indifferent, just want to bother me, whatever) is appreciated. Please write to: theangstguy@yahoo.com

 

Synopsis: A sad example of what happens when a fanfic writer takes a well-known opening scene from another fanfic writer’s story and mucks it up, abusing other fanfic writers in the process. There ought to be a law. However, since there isn’t, you may as well read the story.

 

Author's Notes: Derek came up with an Iron Chef in early March 2006, called “Behind the Glasses IV: A New Blooper.” The challenge was to write a blooper or outtake from a Daria fanfic, “in the spirit of the old ‘Behind the Glasses’ fics on Outpost Daria.” Brother Grimace gave permission to, um, alter his work, so I did. Before you read this, you might wish to read the real version of BG’s epic, “The Sun Will Come Out, Tomorrow,” which is well worth your time. Great stuff, or it was until this happened to it.

       Ro-Man, of course, comes from the awful sci-fi movie, Robot Monster (1953), often voted one of the worst SF movies ever made—but here, completely at home.

 

Acknowledgements: Thanks to Derek for the challenge, and thanks to Brother Grimace, The Bug Guy (Richard Lobinske), Kristen Bealer, and the others lampooned here for being such good sports and not suing me or having me buried in a shallow grave somewhere. It’s all in good fun, right? Right? Hello?

 

 

 

 

 

*

 

 

       Even before the door to her room closed and locked on its own and the shades drew shut against the cinnamon toast and burnt-orange marmalade of the early evening sky as if by remote control over a light breakfast, only it was too late in the day for breakfast, Daria Morgendorffer looked up from the pillow that her head had touched moments before, giving her pillow-hair that would have made Stacy Rowe swoon, and she knew that she was about to have one of those experiences. One of the weird ones. One of the ones you couldn’t pass off as being caused by stress, or eating Ethiopian food, or watching a White House press conference after the Vice President had shot someone. One of those really over-the-top experiences that made you wonder if you shouldn’t just wake yourself up—but then you realize that you already ARE awake, but you still think that if you could just open your eyes, it would be all over, but it isn’t, so you don’t know what to do next or whether you’re awake or asleep or something else, and neither did Daria.

       “Miss Daria,” purred a strange voice in her room. “I trust that your day went as usual: boring, unfulfilling classes that don’t challenge you or engage your full potential, an environment that provides little in the way of motivation, and persons of all ages who shun you for a myriad of reasons, persons like parents, sister, schoolmates, teachers, people in general. . . . God, I envy you.”

       Daria turned to the nondescript yet well-dressed man with forehead horns and a pitchfork leaning against the wall behind him as he sat idly in a corner, the few wisps of light able to enter the room avoiding him at all costs as he ate a bowl of Count Chocula cereal with Tabasco sauce. “No,” the man continued, crunching away as smoke came out his ears, “your day had a few extra helpings of some filthy wino’s Night Train to spike the usually bland fruit-flavored Hawaiian Punch on the table of the Sweet Sixteen party of your suburban life, filling your hours with sweet, sweet angst with all its insanity, revelations, death, and pain—yes, pain, wonderful pain, in physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual flavors, too. Ah, yes: Lawndale, 5:45 in the afternoon: Hit me, baby, one more time.”

       The man stood and tossed aside his cereal bowl, splattering Daria and the wall behind her with its contents. “Now it’s time for some fun!” he said. Turning on the tape player and checking the cassette, he began to sing, using one of Daria’s hairbrushes as a microphone. “How was I supposed to know that something wasn't right here? Oh baby, baby, I shouldn't have let you go! And now you're out of sight, yeah—show me, how you want it to be, tell me, baby, ‘cause I need to know now what we've got!”

       As he went into the chorus, Daria picked up the cordless phone by her bedside and punched in a phone number as she dripped streams of brown but flavorful Count Chocula cereal on her blanket.

       In another universe, far, far away, Brother Grimace sat up in bed, accompanied by Helen Morgendorffer, Michele Landon, Ashley-Amber Taylor, and Linda Griffin, all with a blanket pulled tastefully up to their shoulders for a PG-13 effect, riveted by the movie on the TV set at the foot of the bed.

       “Earth Ro-Man,” boomed the Great One, “you violate the laws of plans. To think for yourself is to be like the Hu-Man.”

       “Yes!” Ro-Man said, “to be like the Hu-Man! To laugh! Feel! Want! Why are these things not in the plan?”

       BG, Helen, Michele, and Linda all nodded in sympathy, their eyes wet with unshed tears after hearing Ro-Man’s desperate plea. Ashley-Amber was flossing. Then the phone rang.

       “Damn it!” BG paused the movie with the remote as Helen, Michele, Linda, and Ashley-Amber fell back on the silken pillows, lost in thought. BG picked up his cell phone with a sigh. “Strategic Air Command,” he said. “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight—”

       “Daria here!” Daria raised her voice to shout over the next set of verses from the horned man singing into her hairbrush. “Code Crimson! Something’s gone wrong with one of your fanfics!”

       “I’ll be right there!” Brother Grimace hung up, then turned to the left and right to find a quick way out of bed. Unfortunately, his four companions had effectively boxed him in. Sighing heavily yet a second time, he redialed his cell phone.

       In the secret hidden unseen South Miami lair of Bee-Man, who by day was known as the mild-mannered entomologist Richard Lobinske, the Crimson Phone rang.

       “I’ll get it, Bee-Man!” cried his faithful-even-at-minimum-wage assistant Perky Possum, known by day as Kristen Bealer, who came from a place in Iowa no one could normally find without satellite photos. Perky picked up the phone and cried, “Lobinske’s Bugs ‘N Stuff! Will this be take-out or home delivery?”

       “This is an emergency, Kristen,” said BG in his most no-nonsense voice. “Tell Bug Guy to get the Roachmobile ready for action. Someone’s messing with my fanfics!”

       “We’ll get right on it, Bro!”

       “Don’t call me that.” BG hung up and turned the movie back on with the remote, settling in for the dramatic conclusion of Robot Monster with Helen, Ashley-Amber, Linda, and Michele cuddled at his side, shivering with anticipation.

       Kristen hung up and dashed into Bee-Man’s Sanctum of Solitude, where she found Bee-Man sitting on the Lounge Chair of Solitude, engrossed in a TV movie.

       “You are an extension of the Ro-Man, and a Ro-Man you will remain,” intoned the Great One on the TV. “Now, I set you into motion. One: destroy the girl. Two: destroy the family. Fail, and I will destroy you!”

       Lobinske shook his head. “That bastard! Ro-Man never gets a break!”

       “Richard! I mean, Bee-Man! Brother Grimace called, and someone is screwing with his fanfics!”

       “It takes a sick mind to want to meddle in another person’s fanfics,” said Bee-Man Lobinske, getting to his feet and adjusting his deely-boppers. “To the Bee Hive!”

       “Can I go, too?” cried the semifaithful Angelboy. “I’ve finished cleaning the Roachmobile and waxing the atomic batteries and I even fluffed the dice hanging from the rear-view mirror!”

       “I’m sorry, Angelboy,” said Bee-Man, clapping a hand on the lad’s shoulder, “but this is a job for experienced heroes who know what they’re doing.”

       “So you’re gonna call the Radioactive Roentgen and let him handle it?”

       “Uh, no.”

       “Doc Mike and his Lawndale Stalkers?”

       “No.”

       “The Mighty Deceleraptor?”

       “Look, go clean some toilets while we’re gone, okay? And the electric bug pulper needs a wipe down.” Bee-Man turned to Kristen, but the Perky Possum had already slid down the great Honey Dipper to the secret Bee Hive, leaving Bee-Man to take the stairs.

       Five minutes later, Bee-Man Lobinske and “Perky” Bealer jumped in the Roachmobile and buckled in, just like on their syndicated TV show. “Atomic batteries to power,” called Kristen. “Turbines to speed!”

       “Let’s go!” cried Bee-Man, and they drove away from the curb and got caught in rush-hour traffic near Coconut Grove, at the intersection of 27th Avenue and South Dixie, until 11 p.m. that evening.

       Meanwhile, the unidentified man in Daria’s bedroom had finished his second set and was relaxing in his dressing room—actually, Daria’s bedroom—before his next performance at midnight.

       “I’m going to play a hunch,” said Daria. “You’re either an escapee from the ‘house o’ jackets that make you hug yourself’, or you’re Angelinhel in male drag, about to deliver some ‘tough love’ on how I need to change my ways and be a better person. Please say it’s the former.”

       “Not into tough love. Squishy love, yes, squishy like the Spongebob, but not tough love. Don’t like tough. Just did my nails.”

       Daria shuddered, then reached over to pick up a pen and a small notebook. “Today’s the worst day that I could have for this dream to happen,” she said while writing. She then tore off the note, stuck it to the leg of a carrier pigeon, and threw it out the window, then threw it out the window a second time after opening the window first. “Give me a moment. I’ll dust off my boots, and then you can show me how I’ve still got a chance, if I’ve got the courage to take it.”

       “Remarkably intelligent,” observed the devilish man, taking a swig from his Evian. “You’ve an astounding sense of clarity regarding the world about you, and you're possessed of a cynical outlook, with sarcastic displays that register on the Fujita scale. I’m glad that you’re so calm about this—it makes the dénouement all the more…um, makes it all the more, oh, it’s some French word I can’t think of at the moment. No, not dénouement. Oh, forget it. After I’m finished, we’ll be on our way.”

       “On our way? Where would that be?”

       “Downstairs, to the kitchen,” was the reply. “I need to rinse this bowl out—just leaving it up here would attract bugs.”

       “TOO LATE!” cried Bee-Man, crashing through Daria’s bedroom door. “UNHAND THAT FANFIC PLOTLINE, FIEND!”

       “How the hell did you get here so fast?” asked the unidentified man with the devil-may-care attitude. “You were trapped in rush-hour traffic at the intersection of 27th Avenue and South Dixie in Miami, weren’t you?”

       “We used the Roachmobile’s awesome Atomic Helicopter Wings and got as far as the Tamiami Trail, then went west to 826 and north to the Interstate,” said the faithful Perky Possum, pushing her way through the door behind Bee-Man. “But we had to abandon the Roachmobile when the Atomic Pile melted, so I-75 is closed for repairs between the Palmetto Expressway and the turnpike for the next six hundred years. We took the carrier pigeon back.”

       “Curses!” cursed the satanic intruder, who sprang to the window. “You’ve not heard the last from me! I’ll be back! I shall return! Wild ponies thundering over the plains couldn’t drag me away! You’ll hear from me yet! One day, you’ll look back on this and—AAAAHHHH!!!!”

       Daria finished pushing the intruder out the window and dusted off her hands. “Brother Grimace’s greatest fanfic is safe once more, thanks to you guys,” she said.

       “Wherever evil rears its ugly butt, we’ll be there to give it an enema it won’t soon forget,” vowed Bee-Man.

       “So, who was that horned man with the pitchfork, anyway?” asked Daria.

       “Angelinhel in drag,” said Bee-Man. “It always is. And now, back to the . . . oh, right, the Roachmobile . . . yeah. Hmmm.”

       “Anything on the tube?” Kristen asked Daria with a gleam of hope.

       So the evening drew to a close as Daria, Jane, Bee-Man, Perky Possum, and the Waco Kid, who was delivering pizzas, sat on Daria’s bed in front of her TV, captivated by the seductive glare of the ancient cathode-ray tube, the empty popcorn bowl and discarded pizza boxes forgotten between them.

       “I love this part,” whispered the Waco Kid, leaning close, transfixed.

       “I cannot—yet I must!” said Ro-Man in his most famous movie soliloquy, waving his gorilla arms about his diving helmet. “How do you calculate that? At what point on the graph do ‘must’ and ‘cannot’ meet? Yet I must—but I cannot!”

       “Whoa,” said Kristen, shaking her head. “Just like The Odyssey, in that scene with the horse. Deep.”

       And in a universe far, far away, Brother Grimace watched the same scene, surrounded by his snoring, sated entourage, and secretly wiped his eyes, hoping no one saw him in his moment of weakness. His heart went out to poor Ro-Man, but there was still hope. Tomorrow—despite his tears, BG knew the sun would come out, tomorrow. He bet his bottom dollar that tomorrow, there’d be sun.

 

 

 

 

Original: 03/05/06, modified 06/01/06, 10/06/06, 12/18/08

 

 

FINIS