Review: "Futurama Guy"

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Gulliver63
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Review: "Futurama Guy"

Post by Gulliver63 » Thu Oct 03, 2013 5:02 pm

Anyone who is even slightly familiar with my writing knows that I love a good mash-up. This summer I wanted to know what it would be like if the Futurama gang somehow encountered the family we all know and love from Quahog, Rhode Island. The plot is fairly simple: little Stewie Griffin somehow makes contact with an Omicronian warship as it passes by Earth in the year 2013. And, as you'd expect, this has consequences for the Planet Express crew many years later. The story was fun to do, as was the artwork. So, sit back and enjoy the "Futurama Guy"...
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"We are today's creatures, locked in tomorrow's double feature..."
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c_nordlander
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Re: Review: "Futurama Guy"

Post by c_nordlander » Sun Oct 06, 2013 9:42 pm

Typoes: "Quahog, Rhode Island" should have a comma after the state; "an any rate"; "Padowan" should be "Padawan" (of course, Leela might not necessarily know how to pronounce it); you have "Brain" instead of "Brian" at one point; "suddenly vanishes" should be "vanished"; the dialogue line "Right in the heart of Quahog" is missing quotation marks at the start, and also comes after a blank line that shouldn't be there; "we're might be related" should be "we"; "you're money" should be "your"; it's spelled "Wernher von Braun" with an H in "Wernher"; it should be "here's Johnny!", not "Johnnie".

Why is there a Starbugs in the 2010s? Also, not a typo, but "She moved her eyeball around on that large eye of hers" doesn't really make sense.

Quite an enjoyable story. The plot is fairly straightforward B-movie stuff, but works well, and I really liked how you tied it in with
Spoiler
The bit with the fashion store was nice. I liked seeing Meg getting some support. The very ending of the story was a nice twist, too.

Characterisation is great. Especially Stewie's dialogue is spot-on, but Leela, Bender and Lois are also excellent. Heck, nobody is out of character. Peterson was a pretty well-drawn new character.

The humour of both shows works great together. In fact, the jokes are the best part of this story. I particularly like the cutaway gag, and some of Stewie's snarky lines (particularly "I guess the ears work too"), and Johnnie using the D&D monster manual for the imaging. Also, I find the line "his pet robot, Yevgeny" unbelievably amusing. The interaction between the characters from the different shows works well. Also, I really enjoyed Denomicos' speech at the start.

There are very few problems with the story. The plot, like I said, is a bit standard, and it feels like a lot of the story goes by without much happening other than the characters hanging out and having fun. But those are minor quibbles.

Finally, I like the title. Simple but great. The artwork is, of course, very good: my favourite is the reconstruction of Leela's face, with the cover art coming in at second place.

My score: A-

EDIT: I agree that Denomicos was a bit of wasted potential. He seemed like a fun character.
Last edited by c_nordlander on Tue Oct 08, 2013 10:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Gulliver63
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Re: Review: "Futurama Guy"

Post by Gulliver63 » Mon Oct 07, 2013 12:49 am

Thanks! This story started off as an experiment to begin with. At first I really didn't know if writing a cutaway gag would even work, as they are such visual things. My only real regret was that
Spoiler


A few giveaways; The Linehouse was a wonderful restaurant where my family and I had clam chowder in York, Maine, and is sadly not open anymore. I picked up the "directionals" bit from a radio talk show in Rhode Island, where someone was bragging about putting on their directionals" before they turned; no one here in Indiana would know what that word meant.

The U.S.S. Eisenhower was my second choice for a carrier, after I learned that my first choice was no longer in service (wiki is a beautiful thing).

Leela's line of "That's what we did...when we did what we did" was very loosely based on the conversational styling of Cajun chef Justin Wilson, who used to twist his sentences up in a pretzel like that. That has to be one of my all-time favorite lines that I've written.

A large part of this story was written, including the scene in Wong's department store, in a grocery store as I was waiting for my car to be repaired - just give me a wall outlet, and I'm good.

I was originally going to have
Spoiler
"We are today's creatures, locked in tomorrow's double feature..."
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