This choice: An animated fantasy show with a cheesecakey fantasy-raced heroine and lame hero. • Go Back...Chapter #4An animated fantasy show by: grumbus   A cel-shaded figure sashays across the LCD screen, wrists precipitously limped, bell-curve hips pivoting wildly. She’s clad in a pink dress that’s an odd mix of clingy and poofy with a neckline that practically plunges to her navel and a hemline that barely reaches her thigh. Two large masses of ballast practically yank her forward with every swish, and the long pointy ears that stand out against her long mane of blonde currently are flattened against her head like a scolded dog.
You sigh in disgust, but you continue your scrutiny of the animated figure. Your ethos of general parent-scorning insists that you avert your gaze and maybe throw a sneer your dad’s way, but your teenage libido insists that your eyes remain on the screen.
Out of the corner of your eye, you can see your dad in a similar state of observation, streamers of drool practically hanging from his mouth. You’re not particularly sure why he’s so engaged; he must’ve seen this a thousand times.
The show is ‘Legend of the Hallowed Lands,’ a kitschy pulp-fantasy cartoon-anthology series made primarily to sell toys, and the voluptuous elven figure on screen is called Princess Allaria, a functionally useless twit of a ruler.
Well, not that useless; her voluptuous figure and vague wisps of clothing were probably the only reason the show has lasted long enough in the public consciousness to be purchased by Wondertainment.
The on-screen princess is currently overcome with emotion, slamming her tiny fists against her ornate fluffy bed, big blue eyes teary and her chest heaving like a roiling sea. You frown; you’re normally all for watching a billowing bosom, but only if it’s an earned chest-oscilation. According to the subtitles, all Allaria had been through so far was a snide comment on her dress.
Your mental grandstanding is almost immediately contradicted as you affix your eyes on yet another bouncy fit of hysterics, the busty elf covering an exaggerated gasp with a dainty hand while the twin mountains on her chest wobble like puddings. She’s received a letter from an admirer and her demeanor has switched from soul-crushing-despair to tittering jubilation.
“Does she ever stop?” you moan, a bit of your breakfast from five hours ago nearly escaping your stomach with another jolt of the plane.
Your dad rolls his eyes in response. “Clearly someone doesn’t understand the perils of court life. The wrong choice in dress could mean a lifetime of obscurity in the decadent courts of Tyr.”
“Yeah, that’s why you watch this show,” you retort. “The gripping political intrigue.”
Your argument is interrupted by the on-screen princess mincing over to her anachronistic modern walk-in closet and unlacing her corset, the curvature of the orbs visible from behind her back—
And the scene abruptly cuts to some generic teen hero swording and sorcery-ing a horde of knobbly-kneed goblins.
“How did this air?” you ask, after overcoming the staggering sense of disappointment.
“Times were different back then,” your dad sighs wistfully. “Less rating agencies and board of executives, more passion and dreams.”
You raise your eyebrows at the remark, but let it pass unretorted. Better to let him reminisce rather than suffer through a tirade of how her bi-episodic kidnappings are central to her character arc.
The plane screen flickers and your stomach spins in circles as the plane banks to the left. You rest a hand on the window and stare fervently at it to stave off the worst of your motion sickness, but are only greeted with something that makes you sicker. Just, uh, ideological-wise.
Large swathes of fluffy green coat the ground, interspersed by small smatterings of houses, varied in size and roofing choice. Small antlike wagons clatter along dusty roads from larger settlements, each wildly different than the others. One is built on a lagoon, each building separated from the other with reservoirs of clear blue; another is hewn out of stone, with small squat prisms of rock presumably serving as houses. The entire mass of land is so big that it extends beyond the narrow aperture of your window.
It looks like a Luddite’s wet dream, and you might be able to muster a few seconds of widened eyes if it was hand-built. But this is Wondertainment, after all. The trees are nature-defying constructions of concrete with tarpaulin leaves; the lagoon-city doubtless scented with tonnes of chlorine and artificial blue coloring; the entire mountain citadel a dun mass of plaster.
This is WonderKingdom, a branch of WonderWorld that decided to crib a fair bit of its InterStoryStructure™ — God knows what that means — from tabletop games and RPGs, with a dizzying array of guilds, good-guys, and baddies of conflicting themes and allegiances, with some quest-based system to put some extra confusion in the mix.
In short, it’s a nerd’s paradise, which means your dad is beyond amped to be here, judging by the leg adjacent to you that’s practically vibrating. You discreetly follow his gaze to a particularly large tree, one that you can recognize from a brief establishing shot on his TV screen.
Huh. At least you might get some topheavy elven eye-candy on this waste of a spring break.
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