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The adventures of Rusa in Toontown (the fifteenth instalment)

Donald’s Dreamland gets some well-deserved beauty sleep

The “Donald’s Dreamcube” section of the previous instalment served as a little DDL-themed teaser for this substantial update to the playground that we all know & love:

As I’ve exprest many times now, DDL is the best. So, naturally, it was the target of the first instalment of “Toontown Remastered”, or whatever they’re calling it these days.

However, I suspect that the real reason for targeting DDL first is to pave the way for really new Tewtow content that TTR has in the worx: Clear Coasts, a brand-new fully-fledged neighbourhood that takes place after DDL in the classic neighbourhood progression that we’ve had since 2003 or so.

Although Clear Coasts has yet to be released, & presumably won’t be released for at least another year or two (being optimistic here), we already know the basis for its theme: the Italian Riviera, which is basically just a coastal region in Liguria. The appeal is easy to see: the Italian Riviera is known for its status as a premier tourist destination, its colourful buildings, & its natural beauty.

Still, I wonder how necessary it was to partially duplicate DDock’s nautical theme — up to & including the focus on lighthouses. Surely there were other options, right? We’ve already known about Funny Farm, we have Rustic Raceway, and Airborne Acres… Perhaps a Funny Farm, rural, or Wild West theme would’ve made more sense? Plus, it would give the opportunity to make more interesting streets that don’t just have to be… you know, straight-line streets.

But I digress. Clear Coasts it is, & I’m sure they’ll figure out some ways to differentiate it from DDock. Plus, the location of the unreleased street that will lead from DDL to Clear Coasts starts at the top of the DDL bed’s pillow:

Maybe this location is symbolic: Clear Coasts exists within the dream of whoever’s sleeping in DDL’s bed. It would be a pleasant dream, after all.

In the “A brief primer on the Earthly consequences of CBHQ (& LBHQ, & BBHQ)” section of the fourth instalment, I mentioned how Pajama Place was in a similar state prior to the release of CBHQ — & we all wanted to know what was on the other side!! TTR have done a good job of replicating this for whatever this new street is to be called (Berceuse Boulevard? Crepuscular Court?? Sopor Street???), which is pretty cool. I just hope they can deliver!

And speaking of CBHQ, it got something of a makeover as well. But I haven’t CFO’d yet, so I’ve yet to see it myself.

It’s difficult to convey the extent of the remastering here, other than by showing the new head of the DDL bed. However, one of my favourite changes has to be this one:

This “1 ton” weight that has fallen through an awning exists at the front of every gag shoppe in the game. However, DDL’s remastering has made the DDL gag shoppe the only one that doesn’t have invisible walls around it! Now you can chill out with the 1-ton weight!! In addition to removing those pesky invisible walls, they added new collisions for the two wooden poles that support the awning, & of course for the weight itself. Very cool.

*énouement

This is yet another one of my trademarked linguistic sidebars, but I promise that it’s relevant to Tewtow too. Behind every linguistics is a sociolinguistics, & this is no exception.

The name of the above-pictured Toon is clearly French: é- /⁠e-⁠/ “away, away from; out, out from; (INTS) thoroughly” + nouer /⁠nwe⁠/ “[to] knot; [to] tie, bind, fasten” + -ment /⁠-mɑ̃⁠/ “-ly; -ment”. But note that the first letter is incorrectly missing its acute accent; it should be énouement /⁠e.nu.mɑ̃⁠/.

The presumed sense, then, would be something like “[an] unknotting, unknottedness”. Whatever that might be used for!

Indeed, as far as I can tell, there simply is no such word. Just to be absolutely sure, I checked all the following dictionaries:

• Wiktionary (in French, and in English).
• Le Dictionnaire de l’Académie française.
• Le Grand Dictionnaire terminologique.
• BabelNet.

Not a single hit. Not even one (1) occurrence.

Of course, this is a Toon name, so we should expect ad hoc words a significant amount of the time, especially to produce wordplay & the like. But I’m not sensing any puns here, & if this player formed the word themself, then we’d expect its spelling — acute accent included — to reflect that. So what gives?

Le dictionnaire des chagrins obscurs

Searching the WWW for énouement yields, as expected, precious few results. However, the results that are yielded (yolden!) all seem to agree on the meaning of this word:

n. the bittersweetness of having arrived here in the future, where you can finally get the answers to how things turn out in the real world — who your baby sister would become, what your friends would end up doing, where your choices would lead you, exactly when you’d lose the people you took for granted — which is priceless intel that you instinctively want to share with anybody who hadn’t already made the journey, as if there was some part of you who had volunteered to stay behind, who was still stationed at a forgotten outpost somewhere in the past, still eagerly awaiting news from the front.

The above quotation is taken from an eleven-year-old Tumblr™ post which is the presumed source of all other (frequently unattributed…) copy-&-paste versions of the same thing that can occasionally be found scattered about the rest of the WWW. The Tumblr blog in question is The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, which is operated by John Koenig, who turned said blog into a fully-fledged book by the same name (I promise that neither Koenig nor anyone else is paying me to say this…) in late 2021.

Based on Amazon™^®’s previews of the book, there are plenty of other words just like énouement in there (in addition to énouement appearing on the first page), & to my pleasant surprise, there appear to be at least brief etymological explanations for some of them. Although the English-orthography-based respellings are painful to witness…

I don’t mean to be directly critical of Koenig’s work! But my understanding is that this is a whole genre in itself: coining or digging up slightly-exotic-sounding (for the Anglophone, in any case) words, not to be used for purposes technical or general, but instead to be loosely attached to transcendent-sounding supposed meanings. The actual range stretches from real words or phrases that are used with at least some frequency in non-English languages, to various hapax legomena that have been rather crudely extracted from their original — & for hapax legomena, crucial — contexts, all the way up to nonce words like énouement.

At its worst, this approach to lexicographic writing actively perpetuates linguistic pseudoscience (pseudolinguistics):

• That dictionaries generally inform language, rather than the other way around; that lexicography is an autonomous discipline.
• That languages only express, or are only capable of expressing, those things for which they have words (or other lexical items, like phrasemes).
• That “other” languages (foreign, exotic, &c.) have so many words unthinkable to us, as a result of some supposèd special property of said languages. This is basically patterned on the often-debunked “Eskimo words for snow” myth.
• That translation can, in general, be performed without any context, on a word-by-word basis.
• That words have meaning apart from how they are used.
• ⋮

These fallacies are particularly likely in the context of listicle-style journalism (more typically pseudojournalism, perhaps…) that purports to “enrich” the reader’s vocabulary and/or linguistic understanding with either “10 incredible words you’ve never used” or else “10 untranslatable words”. “Untranslatable”, you say…? I suppose that means you won’t be able to gloss any of the words, & will have to be content with simply listing the words, & then lamenting that noöne (who doesn’t already speak the source language) will ever know what the words you’ve just listed mean…

But at its best, I expect that the reader of The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows isn’t expecting a work of lexicography in the usual sense at all. Instead, the lexicographic veneer is little more than a framing — a literary form or medium — for the exploration of human experience.

Les élites

Choosing the Toon name Enouement (diacritics be damned…), along with other stylistic choices like playing a cat Toon, wearing a particular outfit, &c., all consciously invoke a particular social archetype of The Élitist.

I think it’s a weird, & perhaps even futile, sort of thing to attempt to explain to someone who doesn’t already — as a result of having played TTR for so many years — know what I’m talking about. Does Tewtow really have cliquey weirdos & social stereotypes? Well… yes. And to be part of the club, you have to get your Toon name from a listicle or an eleven-year-old Tumblr™ post. If it doesn’t scream “I know this word, & am therefore smarter than you”, then you’re not hip enough.

🤷🏽‍♀️

In the event of sleepiness

The history of Toontown Japan is an intriguing & unique one, but not one that I’m positioned to tell. I do, however, very occasionally run into a Japanese speaker or two on TTR. Naturally, I am consistently imprest by the perseverance required to speak a language through a strict chat-filter designed for a completely different language!

But how difficult is it, really? Well, for starters, Japanese doesn’t use the Latin alphabet — in fact, it doesn’t use an alphabet at all. Although the entire history & linguistics of the modern Japanese writing system is out of scope of anything less than a full-length book dedicated to the subject, suffice it to say that Japanese uses something like a thorough mixture of Sinographs (borrowed long ago from Literary Sinitic) with its own syllabary called hiragana (平(ひら)仮(が)名(な)).

Although logographs might seem more difficult to penetrate than a syllabary^[1], the reality is that there’s a common denominator: Japanese phonology. Because hiragana can capture basically all phonological distinctions in the language — with the notable exception of the pitch accents present in most, but not all, dialects — every Sinograph (called kanji 漢(かん)字(じ) in the context of Japanese writing) has a reading — or in some cases, multiple readings — that can be represented in hiragana.

The phonotactics of Japanese are quite tame, & the phonemic inventory is modest. Hiragana can encode almost the entirety of Japanese phonology with only four dozen or so characters — indeed, some Japanese poetry is written entirely in hiragana, even in cases where kanji would be expected. So if we had a way to map from hiragana to Latin-letter sequences permitted by TTR’s chat-filter, then we could speak Japanese through the filter just like that!

Of course, there are some subtleties here. For instance, we might get ambiguities: imagine we had a hiragana map to ⟨A⟩, another map to ⟨B⟩, & yet another map to ⟨A B⟩. Now, when we see ⟨A B⟩, we don’t know how to read it. Nonetheless, the basic idea is useful, & perhaps it’s better to think of it as being a mangled wāpuro rōmaji:

I don’t know any Japanese, but with the power of the WWW, and my own cumulative knowledge from researching countless essays & etymologies for my MapleStory diary, I think I might be able to read this. Very, very slowly.

original	ne	mu	i	to	k	i	ne	ta	hoo	ga	i	i	w
Hepburn	ne	mu	i	to	ki		ne	ta	hō	ga	ī
hiragana	ね	む	い	と	き		ね	た	ほう	が	い	い
Japanese	眠		い	時			寝	た	ほう	が	い	い	（笑）
pronunciation	ne̞	mɯ̟ᵝ	i	to̞	ki		ne̞	tä	ho̞ː	gä	iː		[laughter]
gloss	sleepy			event_of			sleep	it’s.best.to					LOL
translation	It’s best to sleep when you’re sleepy. LOL

You can hear eSpeak NG read the full sentence (minus the laughter…) here.

Whew! To be honest, when I took this screenshot, I had no idea what this was going to translate to — nor was I sure that I could translate it at all. But now that I’ve done it, I’m glad I did, because it brings to us eternally relevant advice: if you can sleep, then you should. 😴

Footnotes for “In the event of sleepiness”

1. [↑] See the “A harlot? Sure. But a traitoress? Never!” section of the twelfth instalment for more on logography vs. ideograms.

Car(2)nival

Cartoonitasks & TokenTasks

If you’re accustomed to the exhausting constant stream of ridiculous serverwide events characteristic of, say, a MapleStory implementation like MapleLegends, then you might’ve been wondering wherem’st the fluff the Tewtow events are! Well, here in Tewtow, we don’t feel the need to have a constant stream of serverwide events, because the game itself is already fun to begin with! Instead, once per year, at the same time every year, we get a 30-day event called Cartoonival.

Actually, the fact that the in-game event was renamed from *ToonFest to Cartoonival is a testament to how IRL events take some priority: ToonFest is now exclusively the name of the IRL events hosted by TTR, & they happen even more frequently than the in-game one!

But I digress. What’s there to do in-game? Well, I’ve seen my fair share of Cartoonivals in the past, but I didn’t really participate in last year’s (2023’s), so the addition of TokenTasks was new to me:

I just so happened to be in MML at the time that the event commenced, but there are two Token Taskers in each major playground.

In any case, a TokenTask is just a randomly-generated ToonTask for Cartoonival token rewards:

Transcription of the above image

• (Expires in 30 days!) Minigolf: Play 12 holes of Minigolf at Chip ’n Dale’s MiniGolf. Reward: 100 Cartoonival Tokens
• (Expires in 30 days!) Wanted: 3 Robber Barons, Anywhere. Reward: 50 Cartoonival Tokens
• (Expires in 30 days!) Wanted: 3 Big Wigs, Anywhere. Reward: 50 Cartoonival Tokens

Many TokenTasks ask for Trolley games to be played, although there happen to be no such TokenTasks represented in the above image. The Trolley ones seem the most worthwhile to me, especially if you can do like four at once!

Also new to me were other, more special Cartoonival-exclusive ToonTasks:

Transcription of the above image

• (Expires in 30 days!) Visit: Banker Bob, Toontown Bank, Playground, Toontown Central. Reward: 5 ‘25 tokens’ Unite Phrases
• (Expires in 30 days!) Visit: Flippy, Toon Hall, Playground, Toontown Central. Reward: Fluffy Doodle Pack

Pretty cool!! I’m not incredibly interested in the rewards, given that the Fluffy Doodle Pack is a cosmetic that I will likely never wear, but it’s cool to see more written-out (read: not randomly-generated) ToonTasks added to the game!

Flippy’s ToonTask revolves around a special something that he’s making for his long-time Doodle friend, Fluffy. At least, supposèdly. Early on in this Task, Flippy let it slip that the “piece of fine art” that he was commissioning was actually for me! Well gee whizz, golly gosh! Then again, maybe he really did just misspeak…

In any case, these Tasks (yes, both of them) involve picking up some mysterious floating packages at the Cartoonival Grounds:

This is the same way that all packages look, & we’ll hopefully be seeing more of them later. Basically, these things show up for everyone, even though only the PC who made them spawn — by being in the map & having the relevant ToonTask incomplete — can actually pick them up.

By the end of the Task, though, Flippy admits it:

Awwh. 😊 I appreciate it, Flippy.

And the other Task… Well, I actually didn’t finish that one, although we won’t see why that’s the case until later. It starts with Banker Bob:

Ruh roh!! That’s not good news. I mean, jellybeans work fine enough, I guess, but chocolate is a whole other affair. I get sick after eating just a few delicious jellybeans (I prefer the savoury kind of beans, myself), but if you put a sufficient quantity of chocolate in front of me, I will happily eat away until I’m 1⁢ mg of theobromine away from the grave!

Rigmund Q. Marole? News to me…

Cavalcade

Anyway, there’s yet one more part of this year’s Cartoonival that’s totally new to me: the Cartoonival Cavalcade! This parade starts on a seemingly random street, at a seemingly random — other than always occurring on the half-hour (of the form HH:30:00) — time, in a given district. The announcement comes only five minutes prior to the parade starting, & when it does start, Riggy comes out of the void to lead the float in his own special kart:

I’m not sure how it works, but I guess you can also join the karts at the front of the float if you want:

But the main attraction is the float itself. You have however much time it takes for the float to get from the beginning to the end of the street to “interact with the float” (that’s what the NPCs tell you to do). I super did not understand this at all in my first one or two Cavalcades, but I later realised that the actual goal of the Cavalcade is to keep all the float’s candles lit as often as possible.

This can be done by throwing cakes (with the Del ⌦ key, by default) at the candles, & for this purpose, you’re given an unlimited number of throwable cakes for the duration of the Cavalcade.

Keeping the candles lit means that you get more rewards, which basically explode out of the float, & are given to anyone sufficiently nearby (basically like a big Unite). Not every reward is of the same kind: some are Cartoonival tokens, others are racing tickets, & yet others are just Silly Points. Plus, I think you can occasionally get jellybeans. Not sure.

Keeping the candles lit is also nontrivial. On its own, it more-or-less just implies that you have ≈1 or so PCs per candle, each PC actively throwing cakes at their assigned candle. But because there are so many PCs in attendance, & because they tend to be busy griefing rather than trying to help, it’s frustratingly common to get constantly knocked about, making it difficult or even impossible to physically position oneself in a way that allows throwing cakes at a candle. Moreover, if you attend a Cavalcade in a district that isn’t already super busy with active Cartoonival-goers, you’re unlikely to have enough Toonpower to keep those candles well-lit.

In any case, once the float reaches the end of the street, it goes back into the void whence it came:

Emotional

Strictly speaking, however, this isn’t Rusa’s first Cartoonival! Wayyyyy back in the “Rusa is born” section of the first instalment, I mentioned that I made Rusa to grind for some Cartoonival cosmetics, with the intent of probably eventually actually playing her. However, this largely consisted in the same ol’ Cartoonival grinding that I was used to from previous Cartoonivals, followed by a lot of buying hairbows & such. And that’s it. So that’s why the other stuff is new to me!

As a result, this Cartoonival more-or-less marks Rusa’s 1^st birthday. Although that’s not a super meaningful birthday considering that I didn’t play her until long after Toon creation, it is meaningful for at least one purpose: her Cattlelog.

You see, there’s a special end-section of the Cattlelog that doesn’t meaningfully change from one issue to the next. Amongst other things, this section contains a decent chunk of the game’s emotes. But there’s a catch: these emotes can only be purchased if your TTR account is sufficiently old! The final one is Laugh, which can only be purchased (& for 550⁢ jellies, at that) if your account is ≥360⁢ days old. So…

…Looks like I finally have all the emotes in the game!:

Wait a sec. Where’s Cringe? Oh, my lord… it’s the only one missing! Am I not allowed to Cringe, just because I’m the source of so much cringe myself?!? Rude…… 😑 C’mon, everyone knows it takes one to know one!

Har(l)e(y)…

In other news, I managed to trick convince Harley (IGNs Harlez, Gock, VigiI, Murhata, &c. in MapleLegends) into trying out some Tewtow!! Finally, someone to share my anthropomorphic-cartoon-animal-themed suffering with!!!

And I do mean Tewtow in general. Harley was vaguely aware of the existence of the game, but had never actually played it. So, naturally, we started at the very beginning: the Trolley.

We were joined by one Honeyloop, which resulted in some Toon-vs.-Toon Tug-of-Warfare!:

Harley didn’t manage to win that round, but it’s understandable. It was her first time playing, as opposed to myself, who’s been Trolleying since roughly the time of exiting the womb.

When we played another game, though, the tables turned: it was now Honeyloop & Harley vs. me, at Doodle Roundup:

Now I no longer have the advantage, because Doodle Roundup wasn’t releast until April Fools’ of 2021! Gah!!

…and Teal Dog…

It would be a little awkward if I started playing alongside Harley just like that, though. Rusa has basically already finished the entire main ToonTaskline, maxed six gag tracks, & done a lot of other stuff! Meanwhile, Harley is new to the game & still has like 15 maxlaff!! It’s okay, though, because I had something already in store for the occasion: meet Teal Dog.

Oh, yes, yes, yes. If you’ve perhaps read my MapleStory diary on occasion, then you’re already accustomed to seeing me trot out yet another random stinky pp pupu character that I made, every other week or so. Teal Dog’s role is similar, but, you know. The Tewtow version.

…Wait a second. Teal… D—Dog?? Dogs aren’t deer!! Am I having an identity crisis‽ Have I finally snapped‽‽‽

No! Not quite. We’re getting there; but for now, I just felt like making a doggy character because I think they’re cute. That’s… pretty much the entire line of reasoning.

Like Rusa, I created Teal Dog quite a while before playing her at all. But now that Harley is starting the game, I have the perfect excuse to actually play my colourful dog Toon!

I know it’s a bit æsthetically eccentric, but I do insist on making all my Toons be like five different colours at once. It’s like a chord, but with colours! Teal Dog is considerably less pastel than Rusa, however, so her colours really “pop”.

Starting a new Toon is a lot like making a new MapleStory character, in some ways. Starting over with just the basics, experiencing the game in its original state, all within our favourite regions of the game-world — it’s refreshing!

But of course, there’s another commonality as well: a new character means a new opportunity to try yet another terrible, no-good, very stinky character build. Oh yeah! Now we’re talking.

It may be difficult to impress upon the reader for just how much time I’ve played Tewtow. Although Tewtow character builds are more-or-less fundamentally different from those of MapleStory, they’ve still quite a bit of variety — especially if you’re willing to play the exotic ones. And I think we know just how much willingness I have to do that. 😉 So at this point, dozens of Toons later, I’ve played almost all the builds that I’m actually interested in.

Key word “almost”! I’ve still at least two or three floating around in my otherwise-empty skull, & that’s where Teal Dog comes in. In particular, Teal Dog is going to be a 3-track Über with Toon-Up, Throw, & org Drop.

If you’re not already intimately familiar with Übers, then you should read the “The Earthly consequences of SBHQ” section of the fourth instalment — in particular, the paragraph that begins with “As an historical aside” — as well as, more importantly, footnotes № 4, № 5, & № 6 of the “Factorial” section. Those footnotes begin with:

This is no more than footnote material until I eventually cave to my impossibly longstanding (you don’t want to know…) Über instincts & make an Über.

Well, I caved. And those footnotes flesh out the basic ontology of Übers & some other exotic builds that are thought to be related. It’s a surprisingly subtle subject, & I have occasionally considered the possibility of just writing a *Guide to Toontown builds, or something like that.

In any event, the basic idea is this: Teal Dog will have exactly & only the tracks listed above (viz. Toon-Up, Throw, & org Drop), will have a base maxlaff of exactly 34, & at her most mature — that is, with a level 50 Sellbot Cog Disguise — will have 34 + 5 = 39 maxlaff.

O, TTC…

Where were we? Oh, right. TTC Tasking! Let’s Flunking go!! 😤😤😤

And speaking of Flunkies, they’re a little easier to find if we just peek out from the end of Punchline into Barnacle:

As always, there aren’t many Cog buildings in TTC. But we stumbled across one that had King Skip Wildspeed & Green Mouse waiting outside, so we decided to simply embark upon our very first Cog-buildingventure!:

Dang. Pretty cool. This was just a single-storey building, though, which left Harley with a “that’s it?”. So I had to convince her that Cog buildings can indeed be more substantial! We’ll get there!!

You may’ve noticed that, when I enumerated Teal Dog’s future gag tracks, I didn’t include Squirt. That’s coz yr grrl Teal Dog is Squirtless as hecc! And that afforded me more ability to focus on my Throw…

Whole Fruit Pie already! Not bad.

I did Will Wiseacre’s ToonTask when it came to TTC teleport access, & got some time-traveller vibes from this rather vertically-challenged mouse:

And, after a whirlwind of street-fights & goofy li’l ToonTasks, we both finisht the TTC Taskline, thus unlocking our first hard-earnt gag track!

Thanx once again, Dr. Pulyurleg.

…on the Trolley…

It’s Trolley Tracks‽‽‽ O boi o boi o boi o boi…!

…in a Cog building…

But now that we’ve transcended TTC, we’re totally stronk enough to just start doing Cog buildings as a duo, right…?

This building tried to scare us off by throwing a Head Hunter at us — but little did it know, jazz–funk fusion doesn’t scare me anymore!

The second & final floor put my newfound Feather powers to the test:

But it also put my laff to the test, & I only just barely passed:

Thankfully, that singular remaining laff point was enough to take me through the rest of the building:

You’re welcome, Billy Budd’s Big Bargain Binnacle Barn!! 😤

…down in the dumps…

Not all of our Cog building attempts were such shining successes, however. We tried an almighty three-storey building alongside a certain Cap’n Leroy Crunchytail, and… well…

…We both friccing dyed. At the same time.

See that dialogue box in the above image? Yeahh. Get used to seein’ that, ’cause it’s an Über’s lyfe fer me.

For Harley, however, this was much more of a shock. She was so new to dying that she asked whether it was even possible to be at −1 laff whilst also swimming underwater.

By this point, the Cogs had begun openly taunting me. This Number Cruncher had the absolute nerve to take over a building just as I was about to enter it!:

Rood…!

Nevertheless, we tried replicating our previous success with duoing a two-storey Cog building; but this time, with a Lawbot one. Of course, I should know better than to test my luck with the almighty bots of law, but we gave it a shot anyway.

Wowza. We got that level 8(!) Spin Doc real good! And although it was a close one, we managed to clear with just four (4) of my laff remainin—

Oh, you gotta be kidding me. Another one‽

Then we… tried another two-storey Bossbot building, and, erm…

Phooey! I wasn’t expecting to get foiled by a Corporate Raider this time!

…goofing off…

I gooft off a little bit with some JFF Tasks, & ended up with the Smol Toon cheesy effect:

Some more goofs & laffs resulted in throwing ourselves at the walls of Teal Dog’s house until we came out the other side:

Transcription of the chatbubbles in the above image

Harley: where should we go

Teal Dog: (:

…and ascending to Daisy Gardens

And a sufficient additional quantity of goofing off later, we found ourselves at the final ToonTask of DDock! This is where I get to meet my archnemesis, Admiral Hook…:

Transcription of the chatbubbles in the above image

Admiral Hook: Here you go: one large spring for Ahab!

Teal Dog: curses upon you, admiral hook

You might wonder where the animosity comes from, & the answer is simple: Hook wants my Squirtguns. If it weren’t for the Admiral, I’d be on my way with a fat zero (0) Squirt XP, as befits my Squirtlessness! Squirtlessness is my choice, not yours, Monsieur Hook!!

Oh, well. I’ll just have to settle with a cool 50 total Squirt XP…

Of course, this ToonTask culminates in having to defeat not just any Cog building, but one with two or more storeys! I ain’t scared, though…

Now all my gag trax are ready to be trained! Kewl kewl.

白面狐狸精

I mentioned that I created Teal Dog a while before ever playing her, so you might be wondering why that is. It certainly wasn’t for Cartoonival purposes, so…?

The real reason is that I wanted to get a name approved. After coming back to the game on Rusa & noticing that other players had IGNs containing non-ASCII characters, I started to become envious. Considering that the majority of names that I’ve showcased in past instalments have used non-ASCII characters in… questionable ways, I wanted to show that this newfound technological power could be used for good.

Of course, I couldn’t possibly assume that said “non-ASCII characters” extended outside the Latin alphabet^[1]. Although Unicode has supported plenty of other writing systems since late 1991(!), the real problem is font support. It’s always font support. And given that TTR uses at least two dozen or so fonts that I know of (judging by this page, plus fonts for Cog stuff & building fronts, &c.), it’s unlikely that there will be considerable non-ASCII support across all of the game’s fonts. Plus, out of the seven l10n regions that TTO ever serviced^[2], only one (≈14%) of them — viz. Japan — used non-Latin characters for the language of choice.

So what I was really looking for was an excuse to give myself a name written entirely in the Latin alphabet^[1], but with at least one — ideally, more — diacritic. And I also wanted it to be a doggy name!

What I initially settled on was 狐(Hú)仙(xiān) (or perhaps 狐(Hú)仙(xiān)娘(Niáng) or 狐(Hú)仙(xiān)娘(Niáng)娘(niáng)). By taking the MSM reading & rendering it in Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, I would get exactly what I wanted: a name entirely in basic Latin letters, but with a few diacritics sprinkled on top! More importantly, the name is just really cool (taken from English Wikipedia):

Húxiān (狐仙 “Fox Immortal”), also called Húshén (狐神 “Fox God”) or Húwáng (狐王 “Fox Ruler”), is a deity in Chinese religion whose cult is present in provinces of North China (from Hénán and Shāndōng northwards), but especially in Northeast China, where it can be said to be the most popular deity.

This fox deity is almost certainly still widely worshipped in the aforementioned regions, but information (outside of Northeast China itself, of course) is scarce. I suspect this is mostly due to “Chinese folk religion” (so to speak) not having all that much to do with Western ideas of religion, such that those embedded within the culture do not think of it as “religion” per sē, but rather, as an ordinary part of daily life in the place that they live. Thus, making information about such “religious” practices available to outsiders is certainly not the job of its “practitioners” — if anything, it would require a lot of anthropological fieldwork. This is perhaps an ordinary (or even the ordinary) state of human spiritual practice, but the past sixteen or so centuries of Christianisation have largely expunged these things from the collective mind of Western Europe & most of its former & present colonies.

Although these considerations make for an “interesting” — or at the very least, extremely unlikely — Toon name, any doubts that I had about Húxiān would be swiftly reïnforced by the behaviour of the game itself:

Transcription of the above image

Sorry, your name ‘Húxiān Niángniáng’ cannot be approved for the following reason(s):

1. Your name cannot contain the character ‘ā’

For more information, head to toon.town/names for our naming guidelines!

I was surprised to receive this message, but upon reflexion, I realise that my surprise was unwarranted. Of course, although it would be nice to have broader support for Latin writing systems, the non-ASCII support isn’t a matter of “a subset of Unicode that includes solely ASCII plus some diacritics”; instead, it’s simply ISO-8859-1 support. Ouf.

Although this is clearly unfortunate for my own use-case, perhaps the real misfortune is the resulting inability to properly Romanise both Japanese & Arabic, either of which are even more likely to be used for Toon names than Hànyǔ Pīnyīn is. Then again, for Japanese in particular (to say nothing of Arabic…), long vowels can use circumflexes rather than macrons, as in Nihonsiki (which is superior to Hepburn anyway — don’t @ me). For pīnyīn, however, the diacritics are for tones, so ISO-8859-1 is simply unserviceable.

Or is it…?

Restriction to ISO-8859-1 eliminates two of MSM’s five tones:

• The 1^st tone (high–level tone), represented with a macron: ⟨ā⟩.
• The 3^rd tone (falling–rising tone), represented with a caron: ⟨ǎ⟩.

But that still leaves the other three:

• The 2^nd tone (high–rising tone), represented with an acute accent: ⟨á⟩.
• The 4^th tone (high–falling tone), represented with a grave accent: ⟨à⟩.
• The 5^th tone (neutral tone), represented with the absence of tone markings entirely (but not necessarily an absence of diacritics in general): ⟨a⟩.

Obviously, this is indeed unserviceable for actual writing. But I’m not doing actual writing! I just need a name. Just one (1).

This opens up the possibility of using alternative names for Húxiān, like Húshén or Húwáng. But mayhap this is a sign that I should just pick another name.

Indeed, I submitted a different name — albeit still written in Hànyǔ Pīnyīn — & waited. And waited. And… waited some more.

I accumulated some level of mild guilt for having submitted the name at all. Although it’s nice to use non-ASCII characters for good, & neato to see a name that isn’t in any of the usual languages of Tewtow, submitting such a name is also very much a test for the poor folks who volunteer their free time for the purpose of game moderation — including, of course, name approvals. I considered emailing support — who’ve been quite responsive to such matters, in my experience — & simply politely asking them to reject my name.

But just before I actually got around to doing that, I was surprised to log in & see this:

It was a long time in the works, but they actually approved my name‽ From the time that I created the Toon & thus submitted the name, to the approval, was 88 days in total. Nearly three whole months of namelessness! Then again, perhaps this particular choice was intentional; after all, 88 is a very lucky number indeed in Chinese culture!

Good auspice aside, you might now be wondering what the heck this name is. Long story short, 白(Bái)面(miàn)狐(Hú)狸(li) is a minor villainous character in Journey to the West (西遊記). She’s a vixen spirit who is the adoptive daughter of the “White Deer Spirit” (白鹿精). In the story, she’s transformed by her father into a beautiful woman who seduces a king into marrying her, so as to facilitate the deer’s weird villainous plot. You can read English Wikipedia’s synopsis here.

Naturally, the association with deer, and being a fox name & all, was enough to sell me on this name. Although the character is basically evil — or at least facilitates evil — I think that it’s a more fitting name than that of a fox deity: Journey to the West features plenty of anthropomorphic NHAs & the like, & is largely written in a comic tone. I think that that’s at least a little bit closer to the Tewtow vibe.

In any case, in addition to the listenable eSpeak NG reading above, it’s worth at least glossing the full name of this Journey to the West character:

original	白	面	狐	狸	精
MSM reading	Bái	miàn	Hú	*li	jīng
MSM pronunciation	päj˧˥	mjɛ̝n˥˩	xu˧˥	*li	t͡ɕiŋ˥
morphemic gloss	white	[literary] face	fox	[literally] Prionailurus; Nyctereutes	spirit
lexical gloss	white-faced; pale-faced		[colloquial] fox
			fox-spirit, húlijīng
translation	white-faced fox-spirit

It should be noted that TTR has no dedicated “fox” species, leaving the “dog” species as the closest approximation. TTR’s (unchanged from TTO’s) dog species is clearly — both visually & aurally — based upon Disney™’s original dog characters Goofy & Pluto, which are cartoon (& in Goofy’s case, anthropomorphised) members of Canis familiaris.

The biological groupings referred to by the English word fox are paraphyletic, & thus the word has no real biological basis. Nonetheless, the most restrictive biologically-valid grouping that includes all referents of said English word is the family^[3] Canidae, which also happens to include Canis! On the other hand, in its strictest sense, English fox may refer specifically to the genus Vulpes.

These (non-figurative) senses of English fox align with the modern (non-figurative) senses of 狐 or 狐狸, including being more or less narrow depending on the context. Moreover, members of the family^[3] Canidae are broadly referred to in English as dogs, in addition to the more narrow sense of dog meaning “C. familiaris”.

As one final remark on nomenclature, note that English vixen descends from PGmc *fuhsaz “fox” + *-inī “[suffix for a female individual]” = *fuhsinī “vixen”. *Fuhsaz became Modern English fox, whereas *fuhsinī underwent a dialectal alteration during the Middle English period that *fuhsaz did not, resulting in the /⁠f-⁠/ becoming /⁠v-⁠/ (the expected modern form would be *fixen). Or you can just say *bitch-fox, if you want. I don’t care. 🦊

Footnotes for 「白面狐狸精」

1. [↑] The particular notion of “the Latin alphabet” that I have in mind is really “ISO basic Latin alphabet + diacritics”. But note that, in general, Latin-based writing systems are not at all limited to this notion. A few examples of other Latin letters include:

   • ⟨Ŋ, ŋ⟩ “eng”. Used in the writing systems of various modern languages, including various Sámi languages, languages of Africa, North America, &c., in addition to its use in the IPA.
   • ⟨Æ, æ⟩ “ash”. Used in modern Kawésqar, Icelandic, Faroese, Danish, & Norwegian, in addition to its use in some languages for loanwords, in the IPA, & in historical uses.
   • ⟨Œ, œ⟩ “ethel”. Used in modern French & Lombard, in addition to the IPA, & historical uses.
   • ⟨Ð, ð⟩ “eth”. Used in modern Icelandic & Faroese, in addition to the IPA, & historical uses.
   • ⟨Þ, þ⟩ “thorn”. Used in modern Icelandic, in addition to historical uses.
   • ⋮

2. [↑] See the “History” section of the first instalment.

3. [↑] For comparison, consider that the family Cervidae is the referent of the (Late) Modern English word deer.

Back to our regularly-scheduled dying

So anyway, it’s too bad I can’t literally have a white dog Toon, right? I guess teal is close enough — after all, the matching SpeedChat colour is nigh-indistinguishable from white…

Now that I have a name (R.I.P. Teal Dog…), it’s time to go back to doing what I do best: foccing dyeing.

As an Über, DG is just not for me. I like to call it The Great Über Barrier™, because DG offers a bunch of maxlaff (amongst other things), but without any progress on gag track acquisition! Fricc!! Still, those “other things” can be useful, so I shopped around for ToonTasks that were still doable for me (read: that don’t award any maxlaff).

By far the most important is Detective Lima’s (of Spill the Beans Detective Agency) ToonTask for a 35-gag bag! This one just involves slaying a few bots in SBHQ, which is no problem for Báimiàn:

This gag bag expansion is crucial, because although I “only” have three gag tracks, those tracks are gonna be maxed — thus giving me level 4, 5, & 6 gags of each track to choose from — & are expected to take me through entire runs of long Factories, V.P., &c.. So I’m still stretcht pretty thin!

Speaking of getting stretcht thin, you’ll never guess what a Bloodsucker on the final floor of a three-storey Cog building did to me…:

The inter-Cartooniva-lude

For me, the Cartoonival is basically just for cosmetics. Delicious, delicious cosmetics. (Yum!) But admittedly, it’s a little bit more than that.

Of greatest interest to me would be the Merry Multipliers, which are basically just 2× EXP cards. Remember how retail versions of MapleStory had those? Yeahh… Luckily, TTR’s version of “2× EXP cards” is not just a ploy to emotionally manipulate players of all ages to give Neccxs0n™ a notionally unlimited amount of money so that they can, personally, break right through any pretence of game balance; instead, it’s just a way to make gag training more efficient during the times that the Cartoonival is in town.

Rather than paying real-life smackeroos for 2× EXP cards Merry Multipliers, they can only be purchased with Cartoonival tokens. However shall I get those? Well, I certainly know how I used to farm them in past Cartoonivals…

It’s very simple: either the dunk-tank target is active, or it isn’t. In the latter case, I try to activate it by throwing pies (I like to use the Fruit Pie Slices) at the Cog-themed scarecrows that randomly pop out of the ground at certain locations within the Cartoonival Grounds:

In the above image, you can see that there’s a mapwide announcement informing everyone that I’ve… sped up part of the Cartoonival Tower. Huh?

So, most of the time, when hitting a Cog scarecrow does something, it’s not a very useful “something”; there are just some spinning rings around the tower at the centre of the grounds that can have their speeds adjusted by this process. Still, any time that I personally trigger something, I get a bonus 20⁢ tokens — so I’ll take it.

The thing that I really want to trigger, however, is the dunk-tank. Or… duck-tank. Basically, we’re trying to dunk Cleff (who’s a duck), as revenge for making Throwless non-Über Toons train all the way up to Whole Cream Pie. Although the cause is righteous, it ain’t easy. The target likes to move around willy-nilly:

Eventually, with help from — ideally — many other Toons, Cleff will be dunkt. This is the point at which I get the majority of my tokens, because everyone who participated gets tokens in proportion to how much they contributed to Cleff’s humiliation.

But the word “ideally” is doing a lot of work here. You might’ve noticed that I’m rather lonely in the above image, in spite of the duck-tank target being very much active. I thought that this was pretty weird, as I definitely made sure that I was in the most active district, & to my memory, I never had any problems finding teammates in past Cartoonivals.

Then, I realised that the bulk of the PCs in the duck-tank area were in… The Cartoonival Pit Of Unconsciousness:

My understanding is that pit-goers are hoping to take advantage of the initial wave of ToonTaskers: as people do the “five 25-Token Unites” Task, the Pit Of Unconsciousness is the obvious place to dispense said Unites, in much the same way as the pit similarly formed on the DDL bed is the obvious place to dispense jellybean Unites obtained from the C.F.O.. Thus, pit-goers can sporadically have their unconscious bodies showered with riches, without having to so much as lift a finger. (Except to keep their session alive — if even that.)

So that’s a little strange, & definitely new to me. But rather than drooping my own unconscious body into the pit, I decided to just generate tokens the old-fashioned way. Oh, & get some from Cavalcades.

The “Cartoonival Grounds at night” inter-interlude

Merrily Multiplying myself

In the end, I generated more tokens for the purpose of Merry Multipliers than I actually needed, by a pretty long shot. But to find that out, I had to actually use them.

Because Tewtow has no notion of “inventory”, Merry Multipliers are not really “cards” in the MapleStory sense; instead, when you buy one, it is instantly “used”, thus starting its countdown. I only used 60-minute multis, but in general, they go all the way up to 48⁢ hours! They’re not too difficult to use, though, because when you buy one, it adds onto any time that you may have remaining from previously-purchased multis.

Anyway, it basically went down a little like this:

1. Wait for a useful Cog Invasion to show up on ToonHQ.
2. Log onto Báimiàn & Rusa, if not already logged in.
3. Start grabbing a Merry Multiplier & scouting for a five-storey Cog building. I usually only buy a multi if I already have a five-storey available to me, because they can sometimes be hard or impossible to find.
4. Self-duo my way through the building, training Báimiàn’s gags on the way up.
5. Train Toon-Up on the top floor by repeatedly allowing Cogs to attack, & then Tooning Rusa up whenever she goes below 100% laff.
6. Finish up the building.
7. Find a new building, if I still have more than 20⁢ minutes or so left on my multi.

…Rinse & repeat…

No doubt some of these Cog buildings were quite dangerous for Báimiàn. But Rusa is plenty stronk (including, for example, having maxed Lure), & I know exactly what I’m doing. I can even look up the exact damage dealt by the Cogs’ attacks on the TTR wiki!

In the end, Báimiàn actually had zero (0) deaths in all the many five-storeys that I did, & the only special resources that Rusa used were like two or three SOS Lures (none of which were 5-star)! Admittedly, there’s a little bit of luck in there; there were a few situations where I had my mouse pointer hovered over a 20-laff Toon-Up Unite, waiting for a Cog to deal a little too much damage to the wee fox. But I never actually used one.

Duoing Cog buildings with myself is pretty chill, honestly. There’s noöne else to whom I have to pay attention, since I’m just coöperating with… myself. So although I did many a Cog building, it ultimately went by pretty fast. Also, part of the speed is just a result of having trained many gag tracks on many Toons in the past — like I said, I know exactly what I’m doing.

In polar opposite fashion to Rusa — with whom I didn’t “cheat” by multi-Tooning — Báimiàn’s first maxed track was actually Toon-Up!:

Naturally, Throw was the next to follow:

And a few more Cog buildings later, Drop was all wrapped up:

Bish, bash, bosh! Those are some maxed gag tracks for the fox pup!!

We love to see it. But Báimiàn still has plenty of progress to make yet! Not only do those Drop gags need to be a lot more organic, but I haven’t even begun to assemble my Sellbot Cog Disguise!!

Scrappetite for Cogstruction

Let’s change that. Somewhat surprisingly, I managed to pick up the 80-jellybean-jar ToonTask, so I’m off to speak with Coach Zucchini of the Squash & Stretch Gym:

Alright! Let’s friccing do it.

Transcription of the chatbubble in the above image

Báimiàn Húli: we are strong en[ough i] reckon

This was Harley’s first exposure to Skelecogs, & she were shooken to her core:

Transcription of the chatbubbles in the above image

[Telemarketer Skelecog]: Take a memo on this!

Harley: these are terrifying

Báimiàn Húli: medium [route] is superior

It’s okay, though. They’re basically just ordinary Cogs. Inside of every one of us is a spooky scary skeleton! Cogs included!!

This was also Harley’s first exposure to Trap gags. So here’s Harley activating a Trap gag (a Trapdoor, in particular) with her Lure for the first time!:

This is our first Factory, so, you know. A lot of “first”s to be had. Including Harley’s first experience getting entirely flattened by giant metal crushers that yeet from the skies:

You just have to get used to the timing. If you’ve your sound effects on, you can hear the hemiola!

Because Harley needed Skelecog kills, we opted for a long route, & so we got to see almost the entire Factory. And I nearly ran out of gags!

But we did it. In fact, by the time we made it to the Centre Silo Control Room, the Foreman was so terrified of us that he just pist himself & ran away. That was easy!

With my first Sellbot Cog Disguise part in hand, I returned to Coach Zucchini with the good news:

Oh, I will.

Inexplicably, more ToonTasks

Well, I wasn’t expecting to be able to do the 35-gag bag Task and the 80-jellybean jar Task, so… maybe I can weasel my way into doing some other non-maxlaff DG Tasx‽ But for that, I’ll need to do some Task-shopping.

Luckily, ToonTask-shopping is pretty easy & effective (relatively speaking) these days in TTR. That’s because all Task-giving NPCs (or at the very least, HQ Officers) have their PRNG seed freshly regenerated at the top of the hour, every hour (a time of the form HH:00:00). This means that, even if you’ve already checked a bunch of the easy-to-check Task-givers — typically, the HQ Officers located in playgrounds — you can check them again the next hour (which may be in anywhere from about 60 to 0⁢ minutes from now), & get a completely fresh set of die rolls!

If you’ve already checkt the playgrounds, & the hour hasn’t rolled over quite yet, you can still resort to the streets. NPCs in Toon buildings will give Tasx as well^[1], & of course every street has its own Toon HQ.

I am the amused

I walkt Loopy Lane, visiting various Toon buildings along the way, & visiting its Toon HQ as well. Toward the end of the street, I entered News for the Amused, where I was surprised to be faced with not one, but two NPCs!:

Moreover, these NPCs are a deer & a bear, respectively, both of which species were releast well after TTC was: bear was releast on 2005-12-09, whereas deer didn’t even exist in TTO, having been releast by TTR on 2017-09-01! So what gives‽

Unbeknownst to me, on 2022-08-06, TTR v3.4.4 was releast. As indicated by the version number having no zeros in it, this was a quite minor release:

• Terry Prompter and Daisy Nusecaster have escaped Kaboomberg! You can now find them in News for the Amused!^[2] in Toontown Central.
• Fisherman Fife has taken over for her sister in Minnie’s Melodyland.
• Toon Building interiors in Welcome Valley will now appear identical to those in other Districts.
• Addressed an issue that could cause the Rewards Screen after Cog Battles to end abruptly.
• Fixed various client crashes introduced in the 3.4.0 game update.

Although the last two items are uninteresting (but important!) bugfixes, the other three are of some interest:

• The reference to Kaboomberg concerns a whole area of game content that I have yet to even touch in this diary, so we won’t get into it. But the question is: did News for the Amused have a shopkeeper before this change?

  The answer is yes: Fanny Pages! This is obviously a pun on funny pages, meaning the cartoons in the humour section of a newspaper. I was going to create a TTR Wiki page for this removed content, as I believe that wikis should keep that kind of information around — it certainly would’ve made my research easier! I only got info on Fanny Pages — including that she existed, was a light blue rabbit, &c. — thanks to her existence in TTO, & thus documentation on the TTO Wiki. But we’ll see why I didn’t do that.

• Fisherman Fife replaced Fisherman Fanny, which is a replacement that I like, mostly because it fits the MML theme better. Fanny has nothing to do with music, as far as I can tell, whilst fife retains — & even enhances — the alliteration, whilst also being the name of a musical instrument.

• The Welcome Valley change is technically a bugfix, of course, but it’s kind of a funny one. What the hecc was different about Toon building interiors in Welcome Valley‽ Welcome Valley was already a kind of bizarre, liminal, almost creepy “shadow district” that is technically a set of distinct subdistricts that are kept hidden by the UI… It’s just very strange to begin with, & this is compounded by its typically eerie emptiness. I don’t even know if Welcome Valley still exists — at least, in a way that’s actually used — in TTR today. Anyway…

What’s “clever” (albeit not skilfully so) about the patch notes for this release is that, with almost no detectable circumlocution, they manage to conceal their own intent. Of the five items, three (a healthy majority) are minor bugfixes that were simply lumped in. The real changes are in the first two items, which — although they make no indication of this — are actually the same change: expunging the word fanny from the game.

And I get it: fanny is yet another slang term meaning “vulva”, so it’s not really on-brand for Tewtow. I think that TTR did a superb job finding suitable replacements, although I have harsher words for the conduct of the TTR Wiki editors.

In particular, the TTR Wiki has expunged all reference to these changes — even to the changes themselves! Not only is any use of the word fanny (as a proper name or otherwise) against their stated policy, but if you didn’t know any better — which is presumably the case for the vast majority of TTR Wiki browsers — then you wouldn’t even know that the NPCs had changed in any way whatsoever from their pre-v3.4.4 (& TTO) counterparts.

Maybe this behaviour is justified in the case of something truly horrific, but I just can’t see these two (2) NPCs named Fanny as horrific. Fanny is clearly being used as a given name in both cases. In English, this given name is female, & originates as a diminutive of Frances, ultimately a Latinised form meaning “Frankish”^[3]. The slang sense of “vulva” has an essentially parallel etymology with the use of dick to mean “penis”: Dick is a diminutive of Richard, a male given name Latinised from Frankish *Rīkahard *⟨ᚱᛁᚲᚨᚺᚨᚱᛞ⟩^[4] */⁠ˈriː.käˌxärd⁠/ “[a personal name]; [literally] brave king, brave ruler”^[3]. Yet we don’t typically consider it crass to use the phrase Tom, Dick, & Harry, because Dick is clearly a diminutive of Richard in this context.

Moreover, these Fannys have been in the game since somewhere around 2002〜2003, meaning almost exactly two (2) decades at the time of v3.4.4’s release. If they were really that horrific, then they wouldn’t’ve been put in the game in the first place, and wouldn’t’ve survived through a decade of Disney™’s oversight & a decade of TTR’s.

But whatever. Who cares about wikis being informational? Probably just me, in the case of TTR’s…

The beginning of the end of Tasking

Eventually, I got exactly what I was hoping for. First, the ToonTask to increase ToonTask capacity to 3, which basically just has you defeat some ≥2-storey Cog buildings, & then some ≥3-storey ones. Remember how I did countless five-storey buildings & maxed all my gag tracks? Yeahh…

But the crown jewel was surely this:

Gee whizz, golly gosh! Teleport access to DG on an Über‽ Heq yeah!! I guess whatever changes TTR made to the ToonTask system must’ve removed some dependencies!

Ordinarily, this Task is somewhat notorious for being difficult relative to its position within the game. But Minglers? Girl, I am an Über. I eat Minglers for breakfast, lunch, & dinner! So this Task will simply complete itself eventually, even if I completely ignore it.

In other news, Harley had already long since moved beyond DG & onto MML.

Emboldened by our ascension (or rather, Harley’s ascension) beyond DG, & my trax being maxt now, we took on a Cog building of four(!) storeys wif some randos on the street:

Aaaand… it was good! Noöne dyed — that’s nice. And we friccin’ beat ’em. Teal Duck even friended me afterwards!

But there were an insufficient quantity of Minglers to get my Task done. That being said, there is one other Task that I still haven’t started: the Silly Reader ToonTask! This Task is a little “hidden” insofar as it can only be started by talking to one of the Scientoons, who can only be found in Toon Hall, & who normally don’t offer Tasx. So Harley was completely unaware of this one!

We started the Task together, which meant doing the Maze Game together:

And doing our first race together!:

Transcription of the above image

place	name	time	reward
1st	Báimiàn Húli	3′45″32	40⁢ Tickets
2nd	Harley	3′55″13	40⁢ Tickets

Now, I did end up winning; but Harley gave me a run for my money, in spite of it being her first time ever racing! Then again, maybe that says more about my general lack of racing ability than anything else…

Footnotes for “Inexplicably, more ToonTasks”

1. [↑] My understanding is that some particular shopkeepers will — if you get the right “roll” — offer non-randomly-generated ToonTasks (read: written ToonTasks that are generally mandatory for progression through the main Taskline), whereas others will not. But I don’t have any sources for this assertion, & it’s typically easier to just use HQ Officers anyway.
2. [↑] Sīc. The exclamation mark is in the patch notes, but as far as I can tell, appears nowhere in-game. It was probably transferred from Toon News… for the Amused!, which it serves as the namesake of.
3. [↑] See the “*Lewis?” section of the third instalment, for more on Toontown’s use of Frankish names.
4. [↑] Note that vowel length is not indicated in runic inscriptions (Elder Fuþark, in this case).

In which I am not very smart

With Silly Readers now in our pockets, Harley & I continued duoing various Cog buildings. Naturally, we managed to get ourselves into deep doodoo:

Now, clearly I took the above screenshot intentionally. Yet, in spite of this, I failed to grasp in the moment what it really implied. It can be clearly seen that all three of my level 7 gags are in my inventory, ready to be used. So… I used one… right?

Wrong. I am very dumb.

I’m so used to the rewardless playstyle that, unless I’m in a situation that, in more-or-less ordinary circumstances, will sometimes plead with the player to use rewards (read: ultra-hard content), I just… won’t even think to use them. It didn’t even occur to me! Much less did I consciously make the choice to not use them!!

I’ll have time to regret this habit of mine later; but for now, I dyed:

To be totally fair, the chance of the Cog building being retaken — that is, with either or both of us still alive — was actually not terrible, assuming that the Big Wig & Double Talker were the last Cogs of the building (i.e. there were no Cogs still hiding in the elevator). As can be seen in the above image, we took out the Big Wig in just one round, with Harley stunning it, & me using a Grand Piano. At that point, it’s mostly a matter of what the Double Talker decides to do in that same round.

There’s no particular reason why the Double Talker would target one of us rather than the other: it’s still at 100% HP, & so has no “aggro”, so to speak. Given that Double Talkers also have no group attacks (i.e. they only have single-Toon attacks), that implies a 50% chance that I’m targeted at all. Furthermore, out of the 6 attacks available to it, only 4 of them (viz. Buzz Word, Mumbo Jumbo, Jargon, & Double Talk) actually deal ≥5 damage when used successfully by a level 7 Double Talker. Even furthermore, all 4 of the deadly attacks have a nonzero probability of missing entirely.

As an aside, we can fairly easily calculate the probability of me surviving that round, given that the Big Wig is successfully taken out (which it was). Note that this is not the same as the probability of retaking the building, which is far more difficult to calculate (& depends on strategy, obviously); nevertheless, my surviving this particular round is a decent indicator of a likely retake.

Data sources

The relevant data for TTO can be obtained directly from …/toontown/battle/SuitBattleGlobals.py. Because this is TTO data, we cannot generally assume that it’s totally accurate for the current version of TTR, particularly post-UNM. However, the data on the TTR Wiki, whilst incomplete(!), is totally consistent with the TTO data for Double Talkers specifically. Thus, TTO data is the best thing that we have to fill in the gaps. Moreover, it’s unlikely that TTR has made any changes to Double Talkers (except at level 8+, of course), given that they’re relatively low-tier & part of an otherwise classically powerful department (viz. Lawbots).

With that out of the way, we can see that the probability of the Double Talker choosing one of its deadly attacks is 90%. But what we really want to know is the probability of it picking a deadly attack that actually hits. As it turns out, all 6 of a level 7 Double Talker’s attacks have an accuracy of 90%, so this is just (90%)² = 81%. Returning to the assumption that it has no reason to target either one of us in particular (read: TTO mechanics), we obtain a Báimiàn-surviving-this-round probability of 100% − 81% ⋅ 50% = 59.5%. Not terrible, but… Yeah, probably shoulda used my Wedding……

Unfortunately, although revenge is sweet, it was only possible because I was already “0 to Go” on my Throw track. Dying the first time did indeed mean losing all three (3) of my level 7 gags, which was a sore reminder that I can actually lose something important now when I die!

And with that, Harley noticed something suspicious:

Transcription of the above image

harley: why is there a star over my head now

deer: youre wanted by the toon patrol

harley: did i do something wrong

deer: hahaha

Did I say “Toon patrol”? Sorry, I meant Toon Platoon. Easy mistake to make.

Transcription of the above image

Toon Platoon

star	floors	name
spinning bronze	20	Kailia
spinning bronze	20	Kai McSqueak
bronze	19	Báimiàn Húli
bronze	19	Harley
bronze	18	Prince Moe Fumblecrump
bronze	18	Mouse Trap
bronze	18	Alexandre
bronze	15	Rainbow Flower Girl
bronze	15	Ryan
bronze	13	Sir Knuckles

And in yet another building, we were joined by Chicken Nuggets, a fellow Über! Or… something like that. She had kind of an awkward half-build, so it’s hard to tell.

In any case, Chicken Nuggets was Toon-Upless, & so was Harley, so Chicken Nuggets felt bad when I ended up taking the brunt of the Cog damage — I’m the only one who can’t be healed! But Chicken Nuggets proved that that was very simply not true, by graciously using a Madame Chuck for me!:

Transcription of the above image

Madam Chuckle: Hi[,] Chicken Nuggets! Glad to help!

Báimiàn Húli: tysm

Thankee!

Minnie’s Melodyland, not mine

So now that we’re in MML, I have the chance to complain about one extremely minor detail that literally doesn’t matter even a little bit: the order of the street tunnels.

Although some of the text is cut off, careful inspection clearly reveals that the order of the tunnels, from left to right, is:

1. Tenor Terrace (connects to DDL).
2. Baritone Boulevard (connects to The Brrrgh).
3. Alto Avenue (connects to TTC).

But all three street names are voice types, which have a natural ordering: by pitch. In ascending order, that would be:

1. Baritone.
2. Tenor.
3. Alto.

The first two are switched! And it doesn’t matter if you go left-to-right, right-to-left, ascending, descending, or any combination thereof — it doesn’t work!! AAAAAAAAAAA!!!

Ahem. I get it; alphabetic order triumphs. I still think it’s dumb.

I’ve been following Harley’s progress through the MML ToonTaskline closely. Perhaps a bit too closely! That’s how I ended up OOB on Alto Avenue:

As I’ve explained, character progression in Tewtow is not really linear (although it is perhaps multilinear…). Although I suggested on occasion that Harley might want to train her gags in addition to Tasking, I think we all know what the winner is: ToonTasx. Yum.

That’s why Admiral Hook is villainous — to the Squirtless, at least — & so is Cleff to the Throwless. But with Cleff’s ToonTask, it’s actually quite likely that you haven’t a Whole Cream Pie by the time that you get said Task, assuming that you’ve not trained your gags at all. So… that’s exactly what happened.

Thus, it was a little extra cause for celebration when Harley did eventually unlock it, after quite some time of that ToonTask slot being stuck:

As the snow falls, The Brrrgh calls

With Cleff’s Task out of the way, it wasn’t long before Harley had cleared MML entirely. Clearing MML means moving on to The Brrrgh, moving on to The Brrrgh means meeting LOM, & meeting LOM means electing her final gag track. Oh, & it also means Harley meeting her long-lost leporine father.

Optation

But gag tracks are more important than family (duh), so this choice presented the gravest difficulty.

Transcription of the above image

harley: i think im gonna go dropless

deer: OOO
we r mortal enemies now

harley: i know

deer: oil and watr [sīc]

😔

I’m only kidding. There’s nothing wrong with being Dropless! Except that you don’t have Drop (which is the best gag track (except for maybe Toon-Up (but maybe not anymore, since TTR removed half of its mechanics (great, now I’m crying 😭)))).

Coöptation

I think it’s a good pick for a first-time Tewtowner, & I’m confident that Harley will have fun with it. She exprest some regret about not having gone Soundless — a choice that was unmade so early on in the game that she couldn’t possibly have known “better” — but I was, for this potential reason (amongst others), intentionally careful not to bias my later explanations toward any particular choice.

What I mean is this: I will always recommend going Soundless, & that remains true even as a 6-tracker in post-UNM TTR. Although things have changed immensely since the days before SBFOs (read: pre-v3.0.0), this has really only changed the nature of my “pitch” (if you will) in favour of Soundlessness: although the old arguments still apply in many ways, in the cases where they don’t (mostly endgame), I can still say with confidence that Soundless 6-trackers are simply extremely “strong”. Their access to both “big damage tracks” (viz. Trap & Drop) puts them above the most common builds (viz. Trapless & Dropless), whereas their access to both “damage control” tracks (viz. Toon-Up & Lure) puts them above the rest. In the most difficult situations, þͤ olde “blindly pressing the Foghorn button” simply isn’t going to cut it, & that is where the Soundless Toon’s extraordinary versatility shines.

But with that being said, it would feel unfair to directly suggest the Soundless route — or really, any route — to a complete newcomer. Part of the game’s design consists in how it guides the player — explicitly, implicitly, & most frequently, unconsciously — & I think that the folks at Disney™ who workt on the original incarnations of TTO thought about it a lot. In an MMOG like Tewtow — & to an even greater degree, MapleStory! — we do violence to the game itself when we impose our own normative ideas about the game onto noobs of any kind.

Note that this does not include non-normative ideas! Describing how the game really works (especially mechanically) is something that can & should be helpful to newbies — at least, when they’re receptive to it. One person can only sit there for so long whilst I explain the entirety of my understanding of the game’s mechanics & strategy……

Moreover, with Soundlessness in particular, I couldn’t be held responsible for a complete newb intentionally — but ultimately not quite informèdly — going this route. As much as I would never pick anything else, it’s also a considerable psychological burden. Unlike absolutely any other 6-track build, I am constantly made aware of my Soundlessness, in spite of years of experience being completely accustomed to playing exclusively Soundless Toons. This awareness quite literally, & not infrequently, is the difference between me deciding to join a piece of game content, & me deciding that I don’t have enough energy to deal with people potentially being not-Soundless at me. (Not to even mention that I cannot join many groups, as they’re listed specifically as “Sound” runs…)

Fire & fo’c’s’le

Well, whilst I’m here in The Brrrgh, I may as well watch the fireworks. The Cartoonival is coming to a close, & so here’s the finale:

But it’s not over quite yet, & likewise, neither am I finisht forgetting that I have level 7 gags to lose:

Oh my lord. Alright, Spin Dox. Prepare for my nautical revenge…

The Brrrgh is my home sweet home

Actually, come to think of it, there is something special about The Brrrgh for Báimiàn — in spite of it being essentially irrelevant to her, game-content-wise.

That’s right! In The Brrrgh, I am not teal! I am the mfing white-faced fox!!:

It’s sad that it only lasts for 60⁢ minutes — & worse, only operates when I’m in The Brrrgh — but at least it makes for a good screenshot! A quick trip to my gorl Paula Behr is enough to hook me up with 60⁢ minutes of the Polar Toon cheesy effect. 😊

Die Übershenanigans

Hey… This isn’t The Brrrgh! Humph. Well, even better: I can advance my progress towards a full Sellbot Cog Disguise!

And if I perhaps got a few Minglers along the way, I wouldn’t complain…

Nice!

That’s crazee. I’m gonna be making use of this teleport access quite frequently!

You know what else I’m gonna be doing quite frequently? You already know, don’t you…

Although Harley isn’t doing any proper DDL content, & certainly not any proper CBHQ content either, the insatiable thirst for high-level NoCos that drives every Tasker eventually brought Harley directly to the source.

I came along, but when I tried going through The Big Door™, I was rudely rejected!:

Ah, yes… ToonTasks in Donald’s Dreamland. Something that any good Über does at some point in their life.

More seriously, that is nominally a thing. I say “nominally” because these builds are quite consistently referred to as Cashbot Übers in name, but they’re “Übers” in neither the classical, nor the neoclassical sense. That being said, I call them Cashbot Übers just like everyone else, & I don’t really see why not — they are the logical extension of Übers to CBHQ, to the extent allowed by the game mechanics. So…

Anyway. Ya like trains?

Me too. They make all the Cogs go boom. (:

There is this one weird thing about Trap gags, though: they hate each other. So much so, that they literally cannot even exist in the same spot at the same time. If, at any given time, two Trap gags are laid such that their target sets overlap, they both instantly go poof!, & that’s the last you’ll ever see of ’em.

But the game never explicitly tells you that…

…And so we learn the hard way. And that’s okay.

Speaking of learning things the hard way, you’ll never guess what happened when a 133-maxlaff rabbit trioing a Cog building with Harley & me refused to use their maxed-&-organic Lure, even after I politely requested it through SpeedChat…

…Okay, you probably guest it. It’s always “me dying”. That— It’s always the answer.

Mr. Quackintosh

But what if there were another way?

Silly ol’ me, always waltzing about with my measly 34 maxlaff! We already have a solution: just make a tank Über! Sure, much like Cashbot Übers, they’re not (neo)classical Übers, but hufa kin kairs? It looks cool when you have really high maxlaff & yet no gag trax unlockt beyond Throw & Squirt:

On the one hand, tank Übers really do play like “Übers but with more maxlaff”, because their game content is basically restricted to SBHQ, & because their gag track choices are extremely limited.

On the other hand, unlike Cashbot Übers, tank Übers are not natural extensions of (neo)classical Übers: whereas the core of the “Über” is to have low maxlaff & high gags, the tank Über intentionally makes their maxlaff as high as possible — that’s where the tank comes from! Naturally, this removes most of the danger that defines the Über playstyle.

Tank Übers certainly seem like they can be fun to play, & they make for a great “goofy” build, so I really love seeing them around. That being said, I will be launching just one line of actual criticism against the notion itself: from a 3^rd-person perspective, the notion of “tank Über” hinges on the fact that checking someone’s gag loadout with the Toon info window allows for 3^rd-person observation of the difference between “being Tless” & “having not unlocked T at all” (where T is any given gag track). In reality, there is no limit — excepting the global max maxlaff of 140, of course — to the maxlaff that a Throw-&-Squirt-only Toon can have. Thus, without the ability to make this rather unnecessary 3^rd-person observation, there’s no way to tell the difference between a tank Über & an otherwise normal Toon who just happens to be a particular sort of 2-track semi.^[1]

In this sense, the tank Über is inherently a kind of “vanity” build: it’s only fully coherent insofar as it looks cool in the info window, whereas other builds can be fully coherent by being defined in terms of their actual capabilities (basically meaning effective gag tracks & maxlaff). Being a vanity build isn’t a bad thing for the purpose of just playing the game, but I think that it’s a serious problem for the idea that different character builds are meaningfully different.

Anyway… where was I? Oh, right. Mr. Quackintosh.

We met him in a Scrap Factory, & he was pretty nice. He noted that although he was indeed a tank Über, he was pretty new, & was still missing out on a lot of maxlaff — even ignoring maxlaff from SBHQ. I friended him afterwards so that maybe we can do Über stuff together sometime!

Footnotes for “Mr. Quackintosh”

1. [↑] See also: footnote № 6 of the “Factorial” section of the fourth instalment.

A mere confidence trick!

Alright, alright. Now the Cartoonival is really ending. If I wanna do that ToonTask for five 25-token Unites, then I’m gonna have to do it now. I figure it’s kinda funny to have access to Unites as an Über (see: Crash Cashbot), so I decided to do it on Báimiàn.

Getting further into this ToonTask, I found myself faced with Luciano Scoop, reporter for the Tenor Times Newspaper (which is ironically headquartered on Alto Avenue, rather than Tenor Terrace…):

Yes, he actually talks like that the whole time. I don’t see any camera crew, but I guess Luciano is just that used to being in front of one.

After some Cog-smashing in & around MML, I arrived at the final leg of this Task: visit Honey Haha at The Laughin’ Place.

What‽ Haha wants my beans‽‽ One thousand of them‽‽‽ Sorry, but I’m not giving up my beanz for some now-useless Unites! 😤

Admittedly, an anticlimactic way to end an event, but there you have it. Until next year, Cartoonival — maybe I’ll have yet another pp pupu garbo Toon for you then.

再(zài)见(jiàn)！

Well that was a lot of fun!! I hope we’ll see some more Báimiàn × Harley Toonventures in the near future, & I think that Harley will be playing right alongside Rusa sooner rather than later! I also look forward to relocating my dying to Sellbot Towers…! :P

Until next time, tschau, sampai jumpa, 再见！ 🧡🤍🧡🤍🧡

Sunday funnies

Funny papers (crossword puzzle not included)