I hate my job at The Nest!
If you aren’t particularly into The Nest’s zany universe of Shelf Critter Theatre, then this post probably isn’t for you. Go ahead and read something else if it’s not your thing!
As someone with an overactive imagination and rather weird sense of creativity, I’ve always been fascinated by the inspiration process. If you roll back the chain of factors that led to how anything came about, you’re likely to find some rather odd, random and even ironic elements that, if taken away, would have unraveled the entire thing. For example, if it wasn’t for a daring act of theft in the middle of the night at the store I work at ten years ago, the chain of inspiration that gave me Buster Possum would have stopped dead in its tracks. No TV thief, no Buster to amuse you with his penchant for dying…
This little drawing took Buster from concept to actual character. Thanks, shady criminal guy!
So I try to go out for walks on my days off… nice, hour long treks that give me a little time to get some fresh air and un-ass the chair in my computer room. I took my walk last Thursday right after putting together last week’s Share Your World post, where I nominated the red heart award to be given to those who were subjected to a Zeeba attack. Zeeba’s blood lust has become her signature gag, and I started thinking on how that came about. Zeeba and her sister Bearcat literally hatched in the middle of the final SCT episode of 2017… and I spent much of the next year working them into episodes trying, largely unsuccessfully, to figure out their place in the gang…
Watch out, everyone…. you’re fucked now!
It finally clicked for Zeeba in the second to last installment of my “Gizzard of Blahs” epic in late October 2018…
That was supposed to be the final installment, but it ran too long and I needed something to end the “movie” with for next week. So before I sent Mitzi “home,” I had ES in his “studio” with his two helpers implore my readers for suggestions on how to finish things. Zeeba, perched on the mouse (She liked getting “rides” on anything), campaigned for a bloody ending. When Draliman, Pam and Trisha all backed up Zeeba’s suggestion, even mentioning her by name, I let Zeeba be the architect of the completely fucked up gory conclusion. Then when I had her reprise the role a month later in the set up post for the Buster Death Advent Calendar, it cemented the little hellion as the Queen of Blood…
A star is born… and co-stars must die!
Now, I already knew that… and there really isn’t anything all that fascinating about that backstory except to a nerd like me. But what if we take another step or two back? Why did I have Zeeba and Bearcat assisting ES in the first place? They already had roles as the Lullaby League in “Gizzard”… so there was no need to work them in again…
Welcome to Buttmunchkin land! Have a dildo!
That was a callback to an episode I did on January 26, 2018 titled “The Cutting Room Floor,” where I had ES host a montage of fake bits that were supposedly cut from past SCT stories. One of the subplots of that episode showed Zeeba and Bearcat helping ES process images on his computer, with Zeeba again on the mouse as they added blood to the iconic picture of George the unicorn goring Buster…
Gotta love cheap child labor…
That episode was directly inspired by the TV display that was set up at Mecca at that time right in front of the area I was working in every night. It had a DVD on loop which drove me nuts with its incessant replay. But the main menu, which like most DVD’s has an option to view “deleted scenes” from the movie, got the gears in my head turning to make a deleted scene episode of SCT! So following the chain….. without that movie playing every night, Zeeba’s just a regular dingbat and not the bloody psychopath you know and love!
Thank goodness for that!
So, you’re probably curious what that movie was. When my wandering brain got the chain back to that point, I about died when I realize what we have to thank for Zeeba’s serial killer tendencies! You’d think Zeeba’s personality would come from a movie like Terminator or Rambo or The Lost Boys….. but no, the movie that helped turn Zeeba into a bloodthirsty killer is nothing other than…………………
Was that your mom I saw hanging around with that purple chick?
Bambi!!!
Yes, without Bambi, Zeeba doesn’t become the blood obsessed critter you know her as! I wonder what Walt Disney would think about that?
I’ll ask him as soon as he’s done pushing lemmings off of cliffs…
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
howlelujah… finally blood yay!… the best is we haven’t to guess whose blood is on da dancefloor ;O)
It’s murder on the dance floor
You better not kill the groove
Hey hey
It’s murder on the dance floor
But you’d better not steal the moves🎶
🤔 Always interesting to unravel the creative process with all of your characters. Go figure.
Yes…. just like undressing the bandages from a 2,000 year old mummy. And what you find smells about the same as my creative process…
Umm…okay. Why did I all of a sudden smell something musty? Are you a sorcerer?
Could be that Buster just coincidentally walked by. Did you hear a death scream at the same time?
🤔 Come to think of it…
I found this whole chain of events enthralling. A little back story for the characters I’ve come to know. But it did raise a question that might be self-evident to older viewers and participants in Nest iconography (it took work to get that word in there I’ll tell you!) Why is it that George and Mitzi never do the rumpy-pumpy? They’re the same species, the same size, he’s a male, which from my experience is like ginseng or raw oysters to Mitzi. In fact, I’ve never heard mention of George until today I don’t think; but I’ve seen him in the background sometimes. Is he one of the actors who doesn’t get paid because he has no lines? Or is George one of those fastidious unicorns who doesn’t get down with ‘friendly’ female unicorns like Mitzi? Am I overthinking all this? Where’s Zeeba? Was there enough blood and gore? Cue Buster! He apparently has infinite blood, which is a good thing. Who knows where Zeeba’s energies might have gone, were it not for the ‘lucky’ possum?
George is one of those characters I thought would be big back in the formative days, but he didn’t quite stick…. probably because there was only room for one pink unicorn in SCT. Kind of the same thing happened to little Scrat once his big brother stole the show… though he at least found his place as Santa’s squirreldeer. Here’s an SCT factoid for you…. George appears in the very first scene in Episode #1 of Shelf Critter Theatre, and it contains the only speaking lines he ever got. Maybe one day he’ll get another break…
I think Big Scratt is the father.
He’d have to be tapping more than Snuggle’s ass then…
I’m sure there’s some bloodshed…
Hi, ES! It’s nice to see you’re still doing critters and bloodletting. 🙂
Goldfish! Yes, still madness and mayhem…. just a new bunch of victims!
If I had to watch Bambi on a loop I’d turn into a blood-crazed killer too.
I’ll keep that one in mind when the authorities catch up with me…
Never trust a baby deer…..lesson learned!
Pam
Really! Now I need to have Zeeba do her thing through some of those “wholesome” old Disney cartoons. First up would be that annoying Jiminy Cricket!