User blog:Dorkpool/Creepypasta Riffs: Dead Bart

I really hate Creepypasta stories that are only able to scare you based on a picture. I don't mean something like "Smile.dog", in which the story builds up to the picture and creates fear about the picture itself. No, I mean something more along the lines of the picture in "Jeff the Killer", which is there for no other reason than to mildly creep you out. To me, stories that do that cheat. If your writing isn't creepy, then having a creepy picture there just shows how desperate you are for a scare of any sort. Now, why am I bringing this up? Two reasons: first, I've wanted to complain about this for a while and second because I'm Riffing "Dead Bart."

"Dead Bart" is one of the earlier Creepypasta stories, and helped create the clichés that are prevalent throughout bad lost episode stories. And, of course, it has that creepy as all hell picture. It's a honestly a story that I should've Riffed a while ago, since it's pretty popular and not all that good. Don't believe me? Well, let's dye our skin yellow, and Riff this bitch.

You know how Fox has a weird way of counting Simpsons episodes? ''There are a lot of things about Fox I consider weird. That is not one of them.''

They refuse to count a couple of them, making the amount of episodes inconsistent. Sheesh, are they that bad?

The reason for this is a lost episode from season 1. I thought the reason was plot. Finding details about this missing episode is difficult, Which is why you’ll reveal all the information about said episode in this story. no one who was working on the show at the time likes to talk about it. From what has been pieced together, the lost episode was written entirely by Matt Groening. “Matt was drunk at the time, of course.” During production of the first season, Matt started to act strangely. “He started wearing a tin foil hat, and said satellites were reading his brain.” He was very quiet, seemed nervous and morbid. Mentioning this to anyone who was present results in them getting very angry, and forbidding you to ever mention it to Matt. You know that after this pasta became popular, he got a lot of questions about this.

I first heard of it at an event where David Silverman was speaking. “He was saying that Family Guy sucks and The Simpsons was way better.” Someone in the crowd asked about the episode, and Silverman simply left the stage, ending the presentation hours early. “This person was later beaten to death by angry fans.” The episode's production number was 7G06, ''Not 666? Go figure.'' the title was Dead Bart. The episode labeled 7G06, Moaning Lisa, ''Wait, “Moaning Lisa”? Is that another Creepypasta story? Is Lisa a ghost in that episode? I’m confused.'' was made later and given Dead Bart's production code to hide the latter's existence.

In addition to getting angry, asking anyone who was on the show about this will cause them to do everything they can to stop you from directly communicating with Matt Groening. “If you won’t let me talk to Matt, then you must watch Superman 4, Spider-Man 3, Batman and Robin, Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, and Epic Movie in one sitting.” “You cruel bastard.” At a fan event, I managed to follow him after he spoke to the crowd, That’s kind of creepy. and eventually had a chance to talk to him alone as he was leaving the building. “I talked to him about our Lord and Savior, Jesus.” He didn't seem upset that I had followed him, probably expected a typical encounter with an obsessive fan. ''Really? Because I’d be pretty upset if I was followed by some random person.'' When I mentioned the lost episode though, all color drained from his face and he started trembling. TREMBLE IN FEAR OF THE LOST EPISODE! When I asked him if he could tell me any details, he sounded like he was on the verge of tears. ''Dude, it’s an episode of a TV show. Grow a pair.'' He grabbed a piece of paper, wrote something on it, and handed it to me. ''“It said, ‘ALWAYS WATCHES. NO EYES.’”'' He begged me never to mention the episode again. “Naturally, I tried engaging him in conversation about the episode.”

The piece of paper had a website address on it, ''That website was normalpornfornormalpeople. com, in case anyone was curious.'' I would rather not say what it was, for reasons you'll see in a second. I entered the address into my browser, and I came to a site that was completely black, except for a line of yellow text, a download link. I clicked on it, “and it sent me to a video of ‘Never Gonna Give You Up.’” and a file started downloading. Once the file was downloaded, my computer went crazy, it was the worst virus I had ever seen. Have you seen a lot of viruses? System restore didn't work, the entire computer had to be rebooted. Before doing this though, I copied the file onto a CD. I tried to open it on my now empty computer, and as I suspected, there was an episode of The Simpsons on it. “Well, my computer is basically fried, but at least I got an episode of The Simpsons.”

The episode started off like any other episode, but had very poor quality animation. No, that’s just the first season of The Simpsons. If you've seen the original animation for Some Enchanted Evening, it was similar, but less stable. I have not, so I’ll take your word for it. The first act was fairly normal, but the way the characters acted was a little off. “Homer was eating fruits.” Homer seemed angrier, Marge seemed depressed, Lisa seemed anxious, Bart seemed to have genuine anger and hatred for his parents. ''In all defense, his parents ripped up his Radioactive Man comics before the episode started, so genuine anger and hatred is understandable. Hell, if my parents ripped up my comics, I’d end up being an orphan.''

The episode was about the Simpsons going on a plane trip, near the end of the first act, the plane was taking off. ''A plane took off in an episode involving a plane trip? Gasp! What a shock!'' Bart was fooling around, as you'd expect. I actually expect him to engage in a snappy dance routine. However, as the plane was about 50 feet off the ground, Bart broke a window on the plane and was sucked out. Oops.

At the beginning of the series, Matt had an idea that the animated style of the Simpsons' world represented life, Which is why everyone is yellow. and that death turned things more realistic. ''Have you read a comic? Death means nothing.'' This was used in this episode. The picture of Bart's corpse was barely recognizable, ''If it’s that creepy-ass picture you show on the page this pasta is on, that’s actually not Bart. Yeah, it’s from some Treehouse of Horror episode where Homer’s face melts off. I think there was some Photoshopping done, but that’s basically Homer.'' they took full advantage of it not having to move, and made an almost photo-realistic drawing of his dead body. Well, photo-realistic is better than hyper-realistic, but not by much.

Act one ended with the shot of Bart's corpse. What a positive note to end on. When act two started, Homer, Marge, and Lisa were sitting at their table, crying. “D’oh,” Homer sobbed. The crying went on and on, it got more pained, and sounded more realistic, better acting than you would think possible. ''Ok, either this story stole the whole “realistic crying” thing from “Squidward’s Suicide”, or “Squidward’s Suicide” stole that from this. Either way, something was stolen. Oh, bad lost episodes, your incestuous plagiarism will never cease to fill me with amusement and annoyance.'' The animation started to decay even more as they cried, and you could hear murmuring in the background. In case you’re wondering, the background murmurs said something along the lines of, “Wow, this animation is really getting bad,” and “Why did we make this episode again?” The characters could barely be made out, they were stretching and blurring, they looked like deformed shadows with random bright colors thrown on them. What’s funny is that critics said the same thing about the animation style of “Food Fight.”

There were faces looking in the window, flashing in and out so you were never sure what they looked like. ''Which was a good thing, since they actually looked like Jeff the Killer’s physically deformed cousin. (Insert any jokes about Jeff spinoffs here.)''

This crying went on for all of act two. What a very boring act.

Act three opened with a title card saying one year had passed. Homer, Marge, and Lisa were skeletally thin Well, at least Homer lost some weight., and still sitting at the table. There was no sign of Maggie or the pets. ''They went to a farm upstate. Except for Maggie. She’s dead.''

They decided to visit Bart's grave. Springfield was completely deserted, Wait, so because Bart died, Springfield ends up being deserted? and as they walked to the cemetery the houses became more and more decrepit. They all looked abandoned. ''They weren’t abandoned, actually. People were just too lazy to fix their houses. The Springfield Home Owner’s Association died with Bart.'' When they got to the grave, Bart's body was just lying in front of his tombstone, looking just like it did at the end of act one. ''Really? No one thought to bury it?''

The family started crying again. Eventually they stopped, and just stared at Bart's body. “How come we never buried his body?” “We need to make this episode creepy.” The camera zoomed in on Homer's face. “That was a mistake.” According to summaries, Homer tells a joke at this part, “Looks like Bart was in grave danger!” but it isn't audible in the version I saw, you can't tell what Homer is saying. That last part was completely unnecessary.

The view zoomed out as the episode came to a close. The tombstones in the background had the names of every Simpsons guest star on them. Some that no one had heard of in 1989, some that haven't been on the show yet. ''Ok, so Matt Groening wrote this episode, right? Did he dictate whose names would be on the graves? Or did the animators do that? And how did they know?'' All of them had death dates on them.

For guests who died since, like Michael Jackson and George Harrison, the dates were when they would die. The credits were completely silent, and seemed handwritten. Was it neat handwriting? The final image was the Simpson family on their couch, like in the intros, but all drawn in hyper realistic UGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGH, lifeless style of Bart's corpse. A thought occurred to me after seeing the episode for the first time “Wow, this episode sucked.”, you could try to use the tombstones to predict the death of living Simpsons guest stars, ''Oh, that sounds fun! I love a game of “sit through a bad episode of The Simpsons to predict the death of a celebrity!”'' but there's something odd about most of the ones who haven't died yet. “Rather than dates, the phrase ‘Who Watches the Watchmen?’ was on there.”

All of their deaths are listed as the same date. ''Ok, then the dates aren’t accurate. Leonard Nimoy guest stared on The Simpsons (RIP Spock), and if we assume that that’s the date on the graves (Leonard Nimoy was alive at the time the story was written) then they’re wrong, since other celebrities – Lady Gaga, James Earl Jones (he’s the voice of Darth Vader), George Takei, Danny DeVito and so many more – have guest starred on the show, and they’re still alive. I call shenanigans.''

I do not like this story. It's just not that scary, and very cliché. Now, some may argue that at the time, this story wasn't very cliché, and that's true. But this story has not aged well at all. The clichés are glaring ("Main character of a show dies", "Characters act out of character", "Hyper-realism" (Ugh), "Person who found and reported on the episode is unable to provide a link to said episode", etc.), and the story itself is not that scary. So Bart dies, there are dates of death for celebrities, and the animation sucks? Um, ah? I'm sorry, I'm not scared by this. "Squidward's Suicide" was scarier that this. Yeah, despite all the fear being blood and gore based, it was still scarier in my opinion. Now, that doesn't mean "Squidward's Suicide" was good, but it was a bit better than this.

Now, to "Dead Bart"'s credit, the spelling and grammar are pretty good and...yeah, that's really the most I can say. It's not scary, stuff isn't explained (how were the dates on the tombs somewhat accurate? How did the writers/animators/whoever know who would end up on the show? Never explained. At least some of the stuff in "Squidward's Suicide" was later explained in the sequel, which I'll have to Riff at some point), and it's very cliché.

What do you think? Is the story good? Is my Riff good? Do you wish I'd get sucked out of an airplane and die? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.