OMFG

Dudes... I'm watching a cartoon on Disney called Filmore! It's very cute. Basically the format of a cop show complete with chases and mysteries and such, but it takes place in a middle school. Total parody genius. Catch it if you can.

Anyway, I'm watching this episode where these two girls (Tori and Terri) are competing in the #1 fan contest for a series of books called "Vampirella". She's a vampire astronaut who constantly battles with some werewolf congressman or something. There are 11 books in this series so far and a new one coming out. Winners of the contest get to be characters in the book. The two girls come up with ll these different ideas for winning the contest but their stuff keeps getting sabotaged. The chief suspects are two other kids who are involved with different fandoms (yes, they use that word) and hate the Vampirella fandom. They think the books are badly written, etc.

In the end it turns out that it's one of the girls making the cool stuff to win the contest who is really the saboteur. (Terri, I think) Why? Because her cousin works for the publisher that puts out the books. He gave her an advance reading copy of the book because she was such a fan and the book turned out to be so, so, so bad that she became disillusioned and sad. Very sad. Terri couldn't tell her friend Tori because she'd promised her cousin, but she also didn't want to be a character in a crappy book. So she wrecked things. One of the suspects knew that she had done it but promised not to tell the Safety Patrol (cops) because when he came upon her ruining the glass Vampirella statue, he saw the pain in her eyes. "I know that pain well. This is my fourth fandom."

The final confrontation takes place at a horror bookshop where the author herself is presiding over this #1 fan thing. Tori forgives Terri and asks if the book was really that bad. Terri says something like, "YES! Beyond the bad grammar, spelling, and punctuation, Vampirella tells the secret of the [something] to [bad guy]." Tori gasps. "NO!" Terri continues, "AND guess what? She's also DATING him!" Tori nearly faints from rage. "Dating him! She can't date her genetic blood enemy! That's totally stupid!!! They're mortal enemies."

At this point I was laughing so hard I was wetting myself. Whoever wrote this episode was either totally ripping on Laurel K. Hamilton or there is some weird harmonic convergence in the universe. If Vampirella isn't the middle school version of Anita Blake then I'm on more crack than I thought.

Then the author comes over and says something like, "It's just a book, get over it. I wrote it on the plane to Malibu." Tori then tells her that she is the worst author ever for not knowing her own character well enough to know that she would never date her genetic blood enemy. She also tells the author that she has failed in her duty as an author by not being true to her characters, her fans, or herself, and just writing schlock. You go, Tori.

My tummy hurts from all the laughing. During the second act of the episode I was starting to think that the whole Vampirella thing sounded a lot like Anita Blake, but that final scene sealed it. And what was also funny, one of the other minor characters was also reading the Vampirella books, but was only on #8 and, as he put it, hadn't had time to become disillusioned yet. Hee!

You know it's pretty fucked up when Disney channel cartoons are making fun of you.