taxonomites | Ta-ta-ta-taxon! Where everything is sweet!

The sun rises on Taxon, but this is a different sun. It's brighter. Yellower.

Lemony-er.

Specifically, it's a big slice of candied lemon, shining through pink and white drifts of cotton candy clouds. Wherever the golden light of dawn lands, surfaces are left sticky with a thin glaze of honey. Mercifully, this soaks in quickly.

The buildings are different, too, made of gingerbread and decorated in icing. Windows are panes of glassy sugar, shot through with wavy bands of bubbles.The streets are paved in hard candies, and, for alien reasons, the sidewalks are pancakes, light and fluffy and squashy underfoot. Inside, furniture is made of chocolate, and the faucets dispense everything from lemonade to simple syrup. The homes of all the real people of Taxon have been gathered together and arranged into a cheery little village set a short distance from the sugar-glittering city. Everyone is neighbors now, and isn't that great!? They can all borrow cups of sugar from each other!

The changes have extended to the citizens, turning the Extras into a pastel rainbow of sugar people. Off to the east, there is a new bit of landscape: a mountain made of massive slabs of cookie and cake. A river coils down from it, shimmery pink and foaming with scoops of rainbow sherbert.

Everything is bright and colorful, over saturated and – this is a telling detail – outlined in heavy black lines that are always at the edges of objects, no matter how you turn your head. In such cheery surroundings, surely the newly candied people of Taxon will wake with joy in their hearts and a snazzy group song on their lips.

Look, the Extras have already started.

“How do you say good morning
To a hundred different friends?
How do you give a good wish
That never ever ends?

Ta-ta-ta-taxon! It's the city that can't be beat!
Ta-ta-ta-taxon! Where everything is sweet!
Ta-ta-ta-taxon! Making friends is work that's never done
Ta-ta-ta-taxon! Where learning can be fun!

And for five disturbing seconds, bubbly, cheerful credits flick across everyone's vision. Your chief writer for this episode is Tinae Crice, Taxon.

LOGO! The word Taxon flares, then vanishes in a shimmery puff of sugar crystals and tumbling candies. Another beautiful day in Taxon has begun, so let's all get to learning, sharing, and just plain having FUN!!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

If he knew, Horst would be pleased by the assertion that he didn't deserve to be made of trash (and of course, vain creature that he is, delighted by the assertion that he's attractive). Unfortunately, Horst can't read Metody's mind, nor even recognize that the person calling out to him is Metody Greeen, so he settles for something more neutral.

'More neutral' is snatching his own (smaller, mailbox-flag-sized) lollipop out of his wooden mouth and hiding it behind his back guiltily. No, he's not eating his own home. Definitely not. He definitely would not do that.

(Johannes is going to have a fit when he sees. Actually, where is Johannes? This entire candy situation is absolutely going to slay him, and come to think of it, Horst would very much like to see that.)

The effect of Horst's candy consumption is immediate, even if Horst himself can't see it. Having slightly rebuilt his precious corn syrup levels, a small amount of ice cream has begun to form on his face, shaping itself into facial features. Melty facial features, probably not yet recognizable as Horst Cabal, but at least a slightly less unnerving face than the one that had only been stained onto a flat wooden stick.

"Hello! It's Horst -- I was the tall fellow helping to lead the meeting? I'm afraid I can't tell who you are."

Speak of the devil. Well, think of the devil. "Horst!" comes a recognizable shout out of a window in the gingerbread house. Then in German, "Are you eating the post box?"

At least somebody's got their priorities in order.

The person that comes storming out of the frosted doorway is also recognizable, and more's the pity, because he'd really rather not be. Johannes Gumball seems to be a cute, gummy, bright yellow version of himself shaped from gelatin with two bright blue gumballs attached to licorice-string frames instead of eyes or glasses: which might be a little disturbing to think about, on further reflection, but he has other things on his mind. Notably, he's also dusted up and down with a fine powder of sour sugar, which he keeps irritably trying to brush off himself only to watch it accumulate.

He sounds bleary. He may also sound hung over, but it's hard to tell, given that he's made out of gelatin. "Look here, I don't even know about this shit any more--" he continues in German, making a sweeping, infuriated gesture at the world that scatters a bit of sour sugar, "and frankly I don't see the goddamned purpose in goddamned asking, at this point--I just--can't you ever just not?"

He makes an aggravated noise that seems to be directed at Horst, the house, and the state of his life and life choices at the moment, all of which are channeled through Horst. Of course Horst is eating the house. Horst would be eating the house.

"Are you even a--" Johannes throws up his hands. "--you know, I don't know. Why do I even bother."

He doesn't seem to have noticed Metody.

Edited 2013-09-03 15:14 (UTC)

"Oh - H- H- " Sure, yeah, the traces of a face might be less eerie. If you didn't just watch then slurp out if the innocently painted wood. Metody stares up at the sky to settle her stomach, then us completely distracted by what looks suspiciously like blue sugar. Those clouds are definitely puffs of merengue; she can recognize and envy the perfectly formed and perfectly browned droopy tips. She'd never mastered those, though it would have helped if her oven hadn't been an ancient piece of crap.

She looks back to Johannes and points up."The sky is candy, too, if you count m-"

And Johannes interrupts. If her moment of observation hadn't been enough to still her fears, Johannes' appearance is. She states in mute delight, pressuring one delicate mitten like sugar hand to her mouth, crystal eyes glittering.

"Jo - oh- oh - " She hastily turns her back to them, shoulders shaking. "I'm s-s-ssorry - the sugar is - m'stomach is upset - " and she certainly isn't stifling a laugh. Be nice, be nice, egos are delicate things. She gulps some sure, and brushes away a glassy tear if mirth. It shatters on the sidewalk, and shes not going to think about that right now.

"I'm Metody. What did they do?"

"Was?" Johannes sounds disoriented at being addressed, now with his gummy hands pushed despairingly into his gummy hair, which just has the effect of dimpling the hair, which is after all not so much hair as a piece of his gummy head melted into the vague shape of his tidy haircut.

He stares at Metody for a moment or two through his gumball spectacles. Then he heaves a sigh--of course you're Metody--that seems to express his ambivalent feelings on the seeming omnipresence of Metody Green in his life these days.

"They made us candy," he says dully in English. "They candied us. I am not very interested in inquiring further." But the nagging voice of That's No Way To Greet A Lady, Johannes! is twittering away vaguely, and while he usually greets that voice with an iron-toed boot, he makes a (gummy) face and buckles, glancing at Metody: well, candy's certainly treated her well. Better than Horst, anyway. Horst is not looking pretty at the moment. That's got to be rankling him.

"Hello, Miss Green. You look very," Johannes says vaguely. "Sugary."

"Lovely!" Horst says, elbowing Johannes out of the way with a big ice cream smile. "He means you look very lovely. My brother's English isn't so perfect sometimes."

Horst shoves the half-eaten lollipop into Johannes's sugary hand without so much as a warning glance, nor any acknowledgement of his brother's accusation of eating the post box. Oh, he certainly has been eating the post box, it's true -- but the whole neighborhood doesn't need to know that.

"Do we have any idea what's going on here yet, my dear?"

"Yes. They made us candy. All my bones are pretzels, and I don't have any in this body. But I think I have a filling." Her voice has become a bit distant with horror. She finally lowers her lollipop club gives a little shimmy (even if she weren't candy, she is far too slender for it to be exciting), then grimaces as well as her stiff face will allow. "I can feel it moving."

"I am really very pleased with how calm I'm being about this. I wonder why we're not all the same kind of candy."

Ta-ta-ta-taxon! Where everything is sweet!

Re: [Location: Candy Taxon village]

Re: [Location: Candy Taxon village]

Re: [Location: Candy Taxon village]

Re: [Location: Candy Taxon village]

[Location: Candy Taxon village]

Re: [Location: Candy Taxon village]