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The adventures of Rusa in Toontown (the seventh instalment)

My dear Silly Reader

In the “Silly Billy meter” section of the previous instalment, I explained a bit about Toontown’s Silly Meter, & said this:

I don’t have a Silly Reader yet, but maybe we should get one next time.

Well, it’s time. The Silly Reader ToonTaskline is a good bit of fun, which is probably the single thing that I like most about the Silly Meter’s addition to the game — which also includes the addition of Loony Labs, & of course, the Silly Meter rewards themselves! The first part requires riding the Trolley:

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Collect: 75 Tokens in [the] Maze Game, on the Trolley, in the Playground. 0 of 75 collected.

Wot da? A ToonTask to ride the Trolley…? Yep! Let’s just hope that I get the Maze Game early on in my random Trolley game rotation!

Nope. Toon Escape doesn’t count.

I was joined in my Trolleying by a deer named Remmy, & so I got to do the Maze Game as a duo!:

Wow. I got 203 whole Tokens in one game. Wild.

That’s nearly thrice as many as I needed, so my ToonTask is done. But how can I resist the allure of the Trolley game?

Nice!! That’s a duo perfect clear of the Toon Memory Game! And speaking of duo perfect clears, we got “group perfect” on the Ring Game:

The Ring Game basically means positioning yourself to go through rings of a specified colour, as your Toon is pushed forward at a constant pace. A group perfect is when there are two or more participants, all of whom get a perfect. And a perfect just means that you didn’t miss any rings. So a group perfect is pretty dang good.

The Cannon Game is also playable with multiple Toons, but it ends as soon as anyone lands in the watertower:

Better for multiplayer is the multiplayer-only Ice Slide game, which is kinda like ice hockey, but without the hockey:

^[1] EDIT: Okay, it just occurred to me that we forgot the sticks, uniforms, and puck. I’ll tell you what we do have, though: Truck tires, a few barrels, and some dynamite that we used to blow the rink out of the ground. If that isn’t enough for a game, I don’t know what is. So change of plans: Hop on the Trolley and play Ice Slide!

Each round of Ice Slide has exactly two turns, & after the second one ends, you’re awarded points based on how close you are to the target in the centre of the ice rink. The first turn is shown in the image above, which is why you can see us going for jellybean barrels, instead of being concerned with landing in the centre. Ice Slide is honestly pretty difficult, as the physics are not super intuitive for most people.

The orange arrow indicates the magnitude of the impulse that’s to be imparted upon you before you’re forced to relinquish control for the rest of the turn (i.e. until your Toon eventually grinds to a halt). But I have precious little intuition for how much impulse corresponds to a given arrow length…

Silliness suckers, asininity sappers, & tomfoolery slurpers

The next ToonTask is to confiscate some very serious Silliness Suckers from any Cogs, anywhere. This is a pretty trivial ToonTask, so I took it as an opportunity to train that brand-new Trap I just unlocked! Trap starts with the humble Banana Peel, which is not really a useful gag, but it is funny:

Before long, I advanced to Rake status:

Much like the Banana Peel before it, the Rake is not very useful, but it’s difficult to resist a slapstick classic:

And there we have it: Marbles!

There’s nothing particularly special about the Marbles, but this is where it stops being a good idea to grind Trap XP solo, I think.

24 Minutes du Mans

Needless to say, I had plenty of Silliness Suckers by this point, so it was time for the next Task.

I think this is the only Task in the game that requires racing! Oh, right… racing.

You see, at some point, TTO added what’s essentially a half-arsed version of Mario Kart^® [マリオカート] into the game. I’m not really going to defend it, because racing might actually be my least favourite activity in Toontown, but it is what it is.

First, I have to buy a kart to race with:

There are two other kinds aside from the Cruiser, but they’re way too expensive, so I have no choice. Racing uses its own form of currency (viz. tickets), so my jellybeans are no good here. There are also different paint colours, & a whole host of various accessories that can be added to your kart… But they’re all just for show.

Racing is designed to be multiplayer, & even features goofy gags that can be used to thwart your opponents. But I just need to participate in one (1) race, so I’m gonna just solo it & be done with it:

This is Airborne Acres Rev, & true to its name, I am indeed airborne in the above image, which is why I look so large relative to the road.

TTR has made some tweaks to make the controls less of a pain in the bumhole, which now implies that racing could potentially be a “relaxing” mindless activity. In combination with the other kind of racing fun — viz. that of playing a few multiplayer rounds with friends — this could support an argument that racing isn’t as much of a wart on Toontown’s game design as I think it is. That being said, I think that anyone would agree that it leaves something to be desired.

I chose the above image because it was the most visually-appealing of the racing screenshots that I took. After all, if racing is to have any “æsthetic” appeal^[2], it’s going to come from the visuals & the audio. The problem with the latter is that racing is always going to sound like dookie^[3]: the sounds of combustion engines blaring, mechanical clanking, & rubber screeching against stone. Kind of a vibe killer — & an impressively loud one, at that. Obviously we’re not going for strict realism here, so the aforementioned aural elements could stand to be toned down considerably. This could perhaps allow for a more interesting palette of other sounds (ignoring music for this purpose, as the music is non-diegetic), e.g. those of fauna.

The visuals would seem to be in a happier state. But racing around Airborne Acres, what I actually get is mostly a whole lot of empty. It’s sad, because I do like the general vibe of the “rural” tracks (the other being Rustic Raceway), but the above image is, by far, as good as it gets. I wouldn’t be surprised if the one 3D-rendered house on the right-hand side was added by TTR, because almost everything else are 2D raster graphics that’re just the wrong combination of too repetitive, too low-resolution, & too sparse. There’s a great deal of natural beauty to be had in sparsely-forested hills, and even artificial beauty in sparse cottages & farmhouses, but Goofy Speedway manages to capture very little of all that.

The result is that, even if we put aside any gameplay flaws, Goofy’s world still disappoints anyway. With little more than a handful of pixels, the skyboxes promise us a story of mellow skies, rolling hills, colourful grasses, & vibrant foliage, all dotted by quaint & varied homesteads. What we actually get is sterile & underdeveloped, a technical demo or proof-of-concept soundtracked by the interminable roaring of internal combustion.

Oh, would you look at that. I got a qualifying time on this little practice race:

That’s… not a particularly good time, but it is, technically, qualifying. And that’s what matters. 🙂 Time to report back to Doctor Fumbdound:

Wow! Howsoever did he know that I thought that we thought that I was ready? Loony Labs must be working on a mind-reader or something!

In any event, that means that I’ve a Silly Reader now!:

As you can see, this Silly Cycle has only just started, so we still need nearly the full five million Silly Points to fill the thing, & I haven’t generated a single one yet! Hopefully Double Trap Experience wins, as I could really use it…

Footnotes for “My dear Silly Reader”

1. [↑] Sir Max (Joey); “Daily Alpha Update: Ice Escape” (archived); 2013-11-04.
2. [↑] Artificially excluding ludic elements from the consideration of “æsthetics”.
3. [↑] Pardonnez my French.

The weald of yore, in field of hoar

Now that I have successed^[1] mine own little Silly Reader detour, it’s time to get back to the main ToonTaskline. MML is done as heck, so I’m moving on to the next neighbourhood: The Brrrgh. As its name implies, The Brrrgh is dedicated to all things frosty: snow, ice, sleet, hail, polar zones, polar climates, tundra, skiing, snowboarding, sledding, etc.

The name itself appears to be a pun on brrr /⁠bɝ⁠/ [ʙ̩ː] “onomatopœia of shivering due to coldness” and borough (or burgh) /⁠ˈbʌ.ɹə, -oʊ̯, bɝg⁠/^[2] “town”. The ⟨-gh⟩ of borough & burgh was originally /⁠x⁠/ prior to EModE, but was lost, thus allowing this pun.

Fittingly, my first Task to visit The Brrrgh is to visit perhaps its most iconic location: The Blizzard Wizard.

The Blizzy Wizzy is operated by none other than Lil Oldman (more commonly known as simply LOM), one of the few Toontown NPCs well-known enough to get their own nickname or epithet. LOM is an enigmatic figure consciously modelled after the Mr. Miyagi character of The Karate Kid (1984), except… more eccentric. LOM is as strange as he is wise, & pulls no punches when it comes to mentoring Toons with the promise & perseverance to come to him for training.

After defeating ten of “the strongest Cogs” (level ≥8 ones), LOM has a different kind of Task for me:

O—okay. I’ll go fish them out, then…

Of course… What’s a bullock cart without some fuzzy dice in the mirror…?

Well, now LOM wants me to defeat some 4- or 5-storey Cog Buildings, so it’s time for some more ToonHQ surfin’.

Who does LOM think I am? Does he really think that I don’t already spam Cog Buildings all dang’d day?? PFFT

🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔

Just kidding, I don’t need to do any walking of the earth to figure this one out. Being the final gag training, this is where the player’s fate is truly & irrevocably sealed. So it’s kind of a big deal. However, I’m in the habit of already knowing what character build I want prior to even making the Toon, so the choice offered to me by LOM is actually the easiest one of them all:

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• Drop gags are powerful, but not very accurate.
• Sound gags affect all Cogs, but are not very powerful.

Of course, the irony is that my build is centred most closely around Drop out of all gag tracks, & yet, due to the choices given to me along the way, I’ve actually made it my last track. But it’s alright… I’ll get that org Toontanic eventually, right?

Footnotes for “The weald of yore, in field of hoar”

1. [↑] Oh, what’s that? Success is not a verb, you say? Explain this, then.

   PIE *speh₁ “[to] succeed, [to] prosper” > … > PWGmc *spōdi */⁠ˈspɔː.di⁠/ “hurry, rush; success, prosperity” ↦ *spōdijan */⁠ˈspɔː.di.jɑn⁠/ “[to] cause to succeed” > OE (ġe)⁠spēdan /⁠(je)⁠ˈspeː.dɑn⁠/ “[to] have success, [to] succeed” > MidE spēden /⁠ˈspeː.dən⁠/ “to succeed, to manage to do successfully; to prosper; to avail, to be of benefit; to do/accomplish [smth.]; to come or go swiftly” >

   • Yola zpeed /⁠zbiːd⁠/ “to speed; [etc.]”.
   • EModE speed /⁠spiːd⁠/, as in “celerity” but also “to succeed, to prosper; to assist; to wish success to [someone]; to hasten to a conclusion, to expedite”, e.g. may God ſpeed you, or more morbidly, “I am pepperd for this vvorld, I am ſped yfaith” (R&J; act III, scene i).

   Senses very closely related to “to accomplish [smth.]” were already mostly lost by EModE, & by ModE, senses unrelated to celerity are mostly lost in general, excepting fossilised expressions like e.g. Godspeed.

   This evolution from no more than “[to] succeed, [to] prosper” all the way to just “celerity” was made possible by the learnèd borrowing of Latin successus /⁠sʊkˈkɛs.sʊs⁠/ “course, flow, succession; outcome; success” in the 1530s, originally with the expected neutral sense of “end result, outcome” (obsolete by the 18^th c.). Then “accomplishment of desired outcome” from the 1580s, & from 1882 we have “thing or person which succeeds” (see: the Etymonline entry).

   So what are we waiting for? It’s been 440 years, & it’s time to simply embrace a random unrelated Latin word displacing most of the senses of spēden. Success it rn. You know you want to.

2. [↑] See also: the hurry–furry merger.

Conceal’d no more, reveal’d ’smy chore

Now that I’ve got LOM’s initial training out of the way, it’s time for a whole heap of The Brrrgh ToonTaskage. Although the shop names in MML are great, pretty much every other part of MML blows cheeks. The Brrrgh’s Tasks should be a lot more enjoyable, beginning with… Chicken Boy (of Pea Soup Café on Walrus Way).

Those two-faced ball-thieves…

Chicken Boy’s Task is very simple, & I suppose randomly getting the Two-Face version of the Task ain’t a bad roll.

Next up is Perspirin’ Peter Sweaty Pete of Heat — Get It While It’s Hot! on Sleet Street. His ToonTask begins with a concerned Toon HQ officer:

Oh, dear… Okay, off to Sleet Street.

Sweaty Pete is sweltering it up, but he needs a cog gear from the Micromanagers so that he can fix the plumbing for his shower.

Notice how, in the above image, there are two Micromanagers patiently waiting behind the one that’s getting absolutely smacc’d in the face with a Whole Cream Pie. This is a mechanic that goes beyond the usual 30-second battle timer, encouraging players to pick very quickly, so that they can get in a round of attacks before more Cogs join the battle. Although picking this quickly is never mandatory, it has enough strategic utility that there’s a very real pressure to pick ultra-swiftly in most such cases.

Okay, well the good news is that Sweaty Pete can fix his shower now.

Oh… I see. It’s time for more ice fishing.

I yield, adore; bastille’d ’smy roar

The Cog Buildings around The Brrrgh make Sweaty Pete nervous, so I’ll be doing some more of those. But I also need an upgrade to my jellybean jar, so I accepted that ToonTask as well:

Vidalia VaVoom runs Snow Bunny Ski Shop over on Sleet Street, so I headed over there. At first, I thought that her name might be fanciful, but I found out that va-va-voom is actually a slang phrase meaning “lively, sexy, passionate, exciting”. I learn something new every day. Her first name I’m less sure about; maybe she’s named for the onion cultivar, or maybe it’s a slight alteration of Вита́лия ⟨Vitálija, Vytályja⟩, of East Slavic origin (but probably ultimately Ancient Greek).

In any case, it looks like the love letter that she wrote was snatched up by a Mingler (maybe the Minglers are jealous??):

Welp. Looks like I’ll be doing Sellbot Buildings!

…And almost focking dying in the process, apparently!!:

I mean, it’s been a long time coming that I get the dang Pixie Dust (the level 5 Toon-Up gag), but deer lord. You shoulda seen it, I was at like 6 laff at one point.

Oh, and here’s what this new gag looks & sounds like:

Good thing I don’t know anyone who’s allergic to Pixie Dust. I might not have any way to critically save their life in a dire battle situation! …And hopefully it’s not like that kind of glitter that gets everywhere & can never be fully disposed of.

In my Cog Buildingventures, I encountered a formidable duo of cosplayers: Cheshire Cat & Haremione Granger.

Cheshire Cat has based their look on the depiction in Disney™’s Alice in Wonderland (1951), which in turn is based on the 1865 novel by Lewis Carroll. Here’s what the cat looks like in the film, for reference:

It’s a pretty convincing cosplay if you ask me!!

And Haremione Granger is a jackrabbit-based pun on Hermione Granger, a fictional character in the Harry Potter (1997〜2007) series of novels. I’m not sure how much detail the series puts into describing her appearance, so I dunno if it counts as cosplay, but it definitely counts as a sweet pun. So there.

I did a handful of buildings with these two, in which we learnt of the power of magnets, friendship, & magnet friendship:

It’s technically not true — Lure hit-chance, like most hit-chances, caps out at a maximum of 95% — but with the power of friendship, we came up with the extra five percentage points.

Eventually I recovered that letter, & so Ms. VaVoom asked me to do the delivery this time:

The most handsome dog in question is, of course, Snooty Sinjin of the St. Bernard Kennel Club^[1] on Walrus Way.

Wow. That’s what he really looks like, too…

In any case, Snooty Sinjin appears to be living up to his name at first, as he has no time for our trifling letters. His wiener doges are on the loose, so I have to recover them from the Cogs…

I appreciate the eggcorn of reindeer as *rain deer, & now that I think about it, it’s not even the only obvious eggcorn of this word. *Rain deer is perhaps from the notion that reindeer are associated with geographic areas of high precipitation. But it can also be argued that *rein deer (two words) is a kind of eggcorn itself — or rather, a folk etymology.

Modern English reindeer comes to us via ON hreindýri /⁠ˈr̥ɛ͜inˌdyː.ri⁠/ = hreinn /⁠r̥ɛ͜inː⁠/ “reindeer”^[2] + dýr /⁠dyːr⁠/ “[non-human] animal, beast”. The first component is ultimately from PIE *ḱerh₂ “head, top; horn”, which is also the source of cervid, horn, procrastinate, cairn, cervix, cerebral, hart, etc. The second component is equivalent to Modern English deer, both inheriting PGmc *deuzą */⁠ˈdeu̯.zɑ̃⁠/ “wild animal, beast”. But this sense in Modern English is now obsolete except in the fossil phrase small deer “critter (usually a small quadruped)”, having been supplanted by the narrow sense “(member(s) of) the family Cervidae”.

Thus, analysing the word etymologically, we hear rein “reindeer” + deer “wild animal”. But the Modern English speaker instead likely hears rein “rope used to control a horse” (in this case, the rope that Santa Claus uses to control his flying reindeer!) + deer “Cervidae”. But for better or worse, modern rein is via Anglo-Norman (cf. modern French rêne /⁠ʁɛn⁠/), ultimately from Latin retineō /⁠rɛˈtɪ.nɛ.oː⁠/ = re- + teneō < PIE *ten- “[to] stretch” (> English retain, tenuous, etc.).

Phewf. I think that’s enough *ḱerh₂, or *ten-, or whatever for now. I’m all PIE’d out for sure. Unless the “pie”s are Whole Cream Pies, in which case I’ve plenty of those left.

Although this ToonTask started with Snooty Sinjin living up to his name, presumably not planning on requiting VaVoom’s somewhat desperate love, things have turned around since I brought back the Dachshunde. Sinjin wants to give VaVoom an engagement ring!! But I’ll have to get that ring from Creepy Carl of Ice House Jewelry on Walrus Way…

I thought I could get away from the Tolkien references by coming to Toontown! I guess not!!

Le sigh. I guess I will just oblige Gollum’s Creepy Carl’s request.

In the pursuit of yet more Cog Building spammage, I became educated in the ways of the Grand Piano — the level 6 Drop gag.

Mmmkay, it’s time to start another Brrrgh ToonTask. Like one to make it so that I can hold even moar ToonTasks. This one begins with Hysterical Harry of Snow Big Deal! Crisis Management (a pun on [it]’s no big deal!) on Walrus Way.

True to his name, Harry is constantly freaking out. I ended up having to defeat almost every tier-7 Cog species out there, just because Harry was so worried about them: ten Minglers, ten Corporate Raiders, ten Loan Sharks… But nothing helped his hysteria. So it was time to do some drugs instead.

Our local drug dealer was to be Dee Frost (a pun on defrost) of Dropping Degrees Diner. She needed some sardine whiskers for her potion-brewing, which is definitely a real thing that sardines have. Either that, or it’s flapper slang alongside some similar phrases that managed to survive the era — & many more that did not — e.g. bee’s knees, cat’s pyjamas, cat’s meow, canary’s tusks, flea’s eyebrows, & of course sardine’s whiskers. I imagine Dee Frost’s distinctive choice of headgear is probably supposed to be flapperesque as well.

Be a deer? I’m already a seasoned professional at that! 🦌

Footnotes for “I yield, adore; bastille’d ’smy roar”

1. [↑] St. Bernard is a dog breed named for the saint Bernard of Menthon, founder of Great St. Bernard Hospice high up in the Pennine Alps of what is now the border between Italy & Switzerland. The breed was bred specifically for the cold weather (hence the reference here), to act as guard dogs, & later as rescue dogs. In popular culture, they are depicted as carrying brandy around their necks to bring to stranded travellers, although this is mostly mythological.
2. [↑] OE already had hrān /⁠(h)⁠r̥ɑːn⁠/ “reindeer” calqued from ON, as virtually the West Germanic equivalent of hreinn.

Now heal’d ’smy sore, afield explore…

I took the “calming potion” back to Hysterical Harry, & it seemed to do the trick. At least, at first.

Hysterical Harry: That tasted awful!
You know what, though? I feel much calmer. Now that I can think clearly, I realize that…
It was the Legal Eagles that were driving me crazy all this time!!!

🤦🏽‍♀️

The good news is that the ToonTask stars seem to’ve aligned:

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1. Recover: Some Yarn from Lawbots, in The Brrrgh.
2. Wanted: 5 Legal Eagles, Anywhere. 0 of 5 defeated.
3. Recover: An Electric Keyboard from Legal Eagles, Anywhere.

Nice.

In my search for these lawful birbs, I encountered the use of an SOS Toon for the first time! Remember how I said that Mr. Freeze is mostly known for being the 4-star Cogs Miss SOS…?

Whoa! Thanx, Mister Freezer! I’ll be getting some SOS Toons of my very own, once I start V.P.ing!

At the tippy-top of this Cog Building, however, disaster struck. I mean, it was fine, but also, we were trying really hard to lure a row of four Cogs like three or four times, & all of our attempts failed‽

Transcription of the chat bubbles in the above image

[yellow duck]: omg

[teal dog] [SpeedChat]: That’s kooky!

Rusa: deleting my toon

Madz: rigged

Don’t worry, I got over it. Rusa was not deleted…

In fact, I unloct the gosh heckin’ darned rootin’-tootin’ Birthday Cake (the level 6 Throw gag)??:

Wow! Cool!

For Lounge Lassard’s ToonTask, I had to recover some Platform Shoes from Big Cheeses:

They’re certainly a rather… pungent Cog, let’s say. 😅

And so far, The Brrrgh ToonTasks have been a lot of fun!! Here’s what I’m working with now:

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1. Defeat: 5 Four+ Story Cog Buildings, Anywhere. 2 of 5 defeated.
2. Wanted: 45 Cogs, Anywhere. 40 of 45 defeated.
3. Defeat: A Cog Factory, at the Sellbot Scrap Factory.
4. Wanted: 90 Lawbots, Anywhere. 0 of 90 defeated.

I wouldn’t’ve picked up the Sellbot Factory ToonTask (it was a randomly-generated one), except that Madz offered to do some Factories with me — & then dipped… So I’ll be doing that Scrap Factory next time, I guess.

Stay Toon’d!! 🧡

沒

The above “The Brrrgh” poem, inline

The weald of yore, in field of hoar.
Conceal’d no more, reveal’d ’smy chore.
I yield, adore; bastille’d ’smy roar.
Now heal’d ’smy sore, afield explore…