Not my circus, not my monkeys

Imagine you are Cecil.

One alien touches down on Earth and lies about being there to protect the planet. That’s already bad enough and then like a week or two later ANOTHER ONE TOUCHES DOWN!

This one is older, bigger, scarred from battle, and…arguing with Omni-Man about whether or not this planet is Earth or Urath.

Ok. Weird. But it’s not the kind of argument that escalates to cities being destroyed. Take your wins where you can.

Then Omni-Man calls YOU down to PERSONALLY settle the argument.

After the longest helicopter ride of your life (so far) this alien beefcake has the AUDACITY to say that he doesn’t believe that you know the name of your own goddamn planet. 

Still, the meeting ends civilly enough so crisis averted on that front. Right before you leave you ask this alien’s name and he responds with the worst answer he possibly could: 

Conquest.

FUCK. That name is so many red flags that it’s doing semaphore spelling “GET OUT!”

In a moment of inspiration you give potentially the most terrifying being on the planet the name Carl.

He’s Carl Quest now.

Shit’s fucked. But not fucked beyond repair.

You learn that Carl Quest likes fighting things. That’s ok. There’s a lot of things that need fighting.

You give him a job offer, he declines. Something about not working for anyone who can’t hand his ass to him. He doesn’t phrase it like that but you get the gist.

So instead you offer him an earpiece. Offer to let him know when there’s something that needs punching. Which he’s more open to.

Little do you know that the “Call Carl” button will produce highs and lows of astronomical magnitude felt only by yourself and Las Vegas’s most desperate gamblers.

Because sometimes when you hit the Call Carl button he arrives right away and cleans house. I mean just absolutely DEMOLISHES whatever he’s facing. 

Half the time the villain ends up no more, expired, meeting their maker, bereft of life, resting in pieces, ceasing to be. Stone cold dead.

And that’s just capital! When you call Carl it’s not cause you’re being diplomatic!

Whenever he brings the partially alive, totally dead, or otherwise limp body back to the GDA like an overgrown cat you compliment him. Because he does what you ask without lip and has a success rate of “always.”

(Also when you compliment him he gets this surprised look on his face. Like no one’s ever said anything nice to him before. Some little human part of you that hasn’t been stamped out yet finds it cute)

But on the other hand.

Sometimes things are FUCKED. REAL FUCKED. You need someone to take care of this NOW. You call Carl to open up a can of whoop ass and he just goes “LMAO that sucks!” AND HANGS UP!

Nolan is assigned Earth while Conquest is assigned Urath.

Nolan arrives as usual. Conquest takes a wrong turn and arrives a bit later.

the two bicker about whether or not the planet is Earth or Urath for a couple hours. Even when Nolan makes Cecil intervene and say that yes in fact this planet is Earth: Conquest refuses to leave.

Right before they leave, Cecil says:

Cecil: never got your name.

Conquest: Conquest.

Cecil: that’s not a real name.

(Conquest pauses)

Conquest (a little sad): it isn’t.

Cecil: can’t you be Carl?

Conquest Carl: I’d like that.

How does Conquest justify remaining on Earth and not conquering it to Nolan? By simply remarking that they’ll outlive everyone who poses a threat here. They’re in no rush.

Debbie (doing her best to make conversation): I love the spaghetti in Italy—

Conquest: what is…love?

BUT HIS NAME IS FUCKING

SHAMROCK!?!?!

Shamrock like the goddamn clover? Really?

Shanks and his evil twin Shamrock is something that’s going to keep me laughing until the day that I die.

it’s ridiculous.

it’s perfect.

I learned just now that there are multiple species of plants and a few birds called Redshank(s).

this one is the prettiest plant in my opinion. (Persicaria maculosa aka lady’s thumb)

but the part that has me giggling and grinning to myself is picturing the first

“Yes I know that he’s my ex but can’t two people reconnect?” So on and so forth, as him explaining it to Alvida, Mr. 3, Cabaji, and Mohji

and the second

“Yes I know that he’s my ex” (you get it)

as him explaining it to Mihawk and Crocodile, who for two VERY different reasons are somewhat livid that Buggy slept with Shanks.

Esoteric

adjective

adjective: esoteric

intended for or likely to be understood by only a small number of people with a specialized knowledge or interest.

Eh, still counts.

Years ago, when I was between 8-11, me and my parents went to Paris.

We were going to check into an AirBnB,

We flew in, got into Paris, it was 7 in the morning. We all feel pretty alright. Sun is out. Cloudy sky so there is no real sunlight.

The Host Guy wasn’t ready or wasn’t awake or possibly both. So we had to wait around for a while.

There are NO PEOPLE on the streets. The streets were just devoid. The only signs of human life were cars that would sometimes pass by, even then you couldn’t see the drivers very well.

It was like a zombie apocalypse. At 7 AM. With daylight.

Nothing was really open...except for this one Café. It is sparse but not to that weird of a degree. Across the street was a bunch of posters on a wall, one of which was a sad clown which scared the shit out of me as an 8-11 year old.

I heard two men arguing, at first I thought they were arguing over the radio (for some reason) but I think they were arguing in the back? I have no idea what it was about.

There was a T.V. Screen playing Katy Perry’s Dark Horse music video.

Just the music video, no music. There was no music at all, just the ambience of two unseen French men arguing.

Across the street I kid you not at one point soldiers marched. I think it was just a drill to do in the wee hours of 7 am to practice but it was just really strange when layered on top of everything else.

I don’t think we were even served any food at the Café.

I am from a ‘Murican City™️ that is pretty around the clock in terms of wakefulness. Generally I was not used to the streets being vacant at 7 am.

Europe is not America and this isn’t me going “oh those Europeans should get up at 7 in the morning, or fuck it: AT MIDNIGHT!”

It was just weird to see Paris empty.

All the other factors-soundless music video, unseen argument, creepy ass clown, soldiers-made for the esotericism of that block of time.

Hello, can anyone help me find this show?

This took place in colonial times I believe, a lot of the characters had powdered wigs. It was all live action, and British I believe. At the very least it was supposed to be set in Britain. It might’ve been on BBC or PBS, or Masterpiece.

There were these two wizards: one was old and worked for the British government I think, the other was young and had a wife and wanted magic to be widespread.

The young one wrote a book on magic and in one scene the old one made all of the books disappear with a spell. I’m going to call them Old Wiz and Wiz Jr. respectively, I’ll be giving everyone nicknames so it doesn’t get confusing.

Scenes and plot points I remember, in poor chronological order:

Old Wiz made a fake galleon out of water to trick the French.

Evil Fairy Man who dressed in Rococo fashion (I think) had the hots for this girl-whom I’ll call Eliza. Asshole Fairy Man (AFM) took her away by night to dance with him in a ballroom, and by day returned her. Eliza was unwilling to participate and unable to speak about her experiences. She was called mad and was confined to her bed via leather straps.

There was this African English butler (I’ll call him Butler) to the aging King, Butler was considering killing the King to become the King himself.

AFM tries to make Butler kill the king. He goes on about how Butler has no name and Butler’s like “yes I do it’s Butler!” And AFM shows him a memory of his birth, where he is getting separated from his mother as a newborn, Fairy is like “here’s the part where she says your name,” and the mother is crying and thus doesn’t say his name. Butler is like “damn.”

There was this old guy with a long beard that was kind of a dick. On his body was tattooed a bunch of prophecies.

AFM convinces Butler to hang prophecy guy. AFM says roughly “look there, it says your gonna be king.” I don’t think it did say that.

Old Wiz is called in by Eliza’s parents to “cure her madness”, she is not happy about this and yells roughly “I don’t have any freedom when I’m asleep, can I not have it when I’m awake?”

Wiz Jr’s wife (I’ll just call her Beth) gets stolen by AFM. Unlike Eliza she does not get returned during the day. Beth is also hypnotized, which does not happen to Eliza for some reason?

Since Eliza cannot share her experiences she makes a tapestry. Wiz Jr comes over, wondering where Beth is and then he sees the tapestry and realizes everything. AFM’s existence, Eliza and Beth dancing with him, not being able to talk about it. It was one of the most satisfying scenes of the show.

In the ballroom AFM asks which of the gals wants to dance with him (thereby being trapped forever probably), hypnotized Beth is about to say yes when Eliza steps in and takes her place. What a Chad. Wiz Jr finds the ballroom and manages to dance with Beth who does not recognize him. This makes AFM very mad.