I just want to start this off by saying that if you want an
answer at the end, then prepare to be disappointed because there’s a really shitty
one. I think. I haven’t thought of an ending yet, so…
I was an intern at Dreamworks Animation Studios for a year
in 2014 for my degree in live-action. I was paid millions for it, so it’s safe
to say that I was pretty much living the dream life. To adults, it might seem like
something that would only appeal to basement-dwelling manchildren because
cartoons are for kids and anybody who’s over the age of 10 and likes cartoons
is a cartoon-obsessed loser manchild with no life. But most kids at the time
would go crazy over it.
Now, since I worked directly with artists and animators of
Shrek and Shark Tale, I got to view new episodes before they aired.
Unfortunately, this meant episodes of Veggietales in the House and Turbo
F.A.S.T, both of which I hated with a passion. I’ll get right into it while
leaving in as many unnecessary details as possible, and I’ll start with the
fact that Dreamworks made a deal with Netflix in which they would make over 300
hours of children’s programming that would be streamed via Netflix. This
included shows like All Hail King Julien, the two aforementioned shows that I
still hate with a passion, The Adventures of Puss in Boots, Dawn of the Croods,
and even non-movie based shows like Dinotrux and Trollhunters. They had very
recently made the last episode of Dragons: Defenders of Berk (before the deal),
and the entire team was sapped of creativity so it took them longer to start up
the follow up series, Dragons: Race to the Edge. But the delay lasted longer
for more upsetting reasons. There was a problem with the first episode of
Dragons: Race to the Edge that was so scary, so upsetting, that everybody
involved not only had nightmares for weeks, but suffered from PTSD that was
triggered every time they heard the word “Dragon”.
Me and about a
bajillion other interns were in the editing room along with the lead animators and
sound editors for the final cut. Needless to say, it was pretty crowded in
there. We received the copy that was supposed to be “Dragon Eye of the Beholder
Part 1” and gathered around the screen to watch. Now, given that it isn’t fina- WAIT A SECOND. Didn’t
I just say it WAS the final cut?! As if the horrible tense-swaps that plague
this story later aren’t enough, there’s a continuity error between two
sentences?! What sort of moron wrote this shit? Anyway, the animators often put
up a mock title card (Despite the fact that this show doesn’t use title cards),
such as “Mildew Gets Bitten in the Ass by a Venomous Dragon” for the episode
Dragon Flower, where Mildew gets bitten in the ass by a venomous dragon. As you
can see, the Dreamworks employees had awful senses of humor. So when we saw the
title card “Snotlout’s Suicide” we all thought it was completely serious.
One of the interns (who happened to voice Donkey in the
Shrek films) said “Hey! That shit ain’t funny, motherfucker!” The dramatic
medieval music plays (See what I mean? Tense swaps!) as normal, only the theme
song used for this series was so mind blowingly epic, that it legit brought
tears to my eyes. Like, holy shit, go look up and listen to the theme music for
“Dragons: Race to the Edge”. You will not regret it. It is so epic. Where was
I? Oh yeah, the story began with Hiccup, Astrid, Fishlegs, Ruffnut, Tuffnut,
and of course, Snotlout flying their dragons, flying around the island. Hiccup
says that they need to focus on finding some sort of important plot device or
some shit, I dunno, I suck at coming up with stori-ER, I mean, ''itwasalongtimeagoandidontremembereverythingokay? Thisisatruestorythatactuallyhappened''. Then Snoutloot says something sarcastic, and Hiccup gets annoyed at him, takes out an axe, and kills him. “I
should have done that a long time ago,” he says. I thought this was a brilliant choice by the creative staff; it’s about time kid’s media starts becoming
hardcore again. I mean, cartoons were so much more badass in the 90’s, you know
what I mean? Thumbs up if you agree!
Anyways, the next scene happened, and this is when things
began to seem off. First off, Snotlout was back as if that entire previous
scene didn’t happen. Many, many frames began to repeat themselves, as if the
file was corrupted, and the sound began to play in reverse, mixed with the
Lavender Town theme. But then, Snotlout did something foolish. You know, how a
lot of shows have somebody acting rash and they get chewed out for it? That’s
exactly what happened here. He then almost died because of a collapsing cave or
some crap, but he survived. Then he saw all the other dragons and humans
looking back at him, glaring angrily. Not normal cartoon glaring that is common
in shows like these, but everybody looked so angry, that they looked as if they
were ready to beat the Snot out of Snotlout, rip off his limbs, gut him alive, watch
him bleed to death, and give his corpse to a horny dragon which would have sex
with it. Frankly, Snotlout would deserve that because he’s a dick lel.
Snotlout’s in half-frame and looks visibly bored out of his mind. The shot then
goes to the other characters, with Hiccup in center frame, and he too is
glaring, which is exactly like him. That isn’t the most normal thing, though.
What is normal is everyone had hyper fake eyes. Such (lack of) detail. Wow.
Clearly not shots of eyes drawn in crayon by two-year-olds, but something a bit
more fake than MS Paint. The pupils were red, orange, yellow, green, blue,
purple, black, white, pink, and gray all at the same time. Some of us looked at
each other, finding enjoyment out of how retarded this episode was so far, but
since weren’t the Riders of Berk, we questioned its appeal to children.
The shot goes to Snotlout standing on one of the edges of
the island, staring out into the sea, like some great philosopher, looking very
pretentious. It is nighttime on Berk, so it was implied that he had been
standing there all day. The spoopiest part is at this point there is sound. In
fact, the sound was playing louder than the human ear could register, including
the feedback from the speakers in the room. It’s as if the speakers were
cranked up to maximum volume, though their status showed them to be broken. He
just stood there, not blinking, as if he were having a Kung-Fu Staring Contest,
GO!™ with Po from Kung-Fu Panda, in this constant, ear-raping noise for about
30 hours, then he started to scream uncontrollably like a deranged lunatic. He
put his hands (hands) over his feet, and screamed loudly for a second more, all
the while a sound in the background very slowly shrinking from eardrum
shattering to barely audible to nothing, though that might have been my hearing
going from the constant noise. It sounded like people chanting to cheer on
their favorite sports team.
The screen
slowly begins to zoom in on his hands (hands). By slow, I mean it was zooming
in faster than the human eye can register. Yes, I’m going with “more x than the
human y can register” thing again. Deal with it. His screaming gets quieter and
louder, more full of hurt and pleasure. Snotlout’s scream began to strobe. It
was as if he was trying to imitate the infamous “Loud Nigra” scream. The “Let’s
go (insert sport name here), let’s go!” sound gets slowly sexier and less
severe, as if the voices were trying to seduce us. The unbelievably,
ridonculously, unfathomably, too-hard-for-the-human-mind-to-comprehend,
mind-bendingly spooktacular part is this chant, and Snotlout’s screaming,
sounded telepathic, as if the sound wasn’t coming from the speakers but as if
the sound was being transmitted directly to our brains. While Dreamworks does
own telepathic speakers that are able to do just that, the speakers in the room
had that option turned off, so yeah, that was really weird.
Below the sound
of the chanting and screaming, very clearly, something sounded like beatboxing.
It came at very precise intervals and lasted 20 minutes each time it came on,
but you (Yeah, you, the one reading this story) had a hard time pinning it (we
watched this episode 69 times, so pardon me if things sound too specific,
because whatever deity you believe in knows that when you watch something that
many times in a row, it’s kinda hard to forget). After 99 days and 99 nights of
this, the screen did the “Hue, Cycles Entire Color Spectrum” effect from
Windows Movie Maker and something flashed over the screen, as if this episode
started including subliminal messages in it.
The lead
animation editor tried to pause, but he didn’t know how to work the computer so
I came over and showed him how to. Then, he rewound frame by frame. What we was
saw horrible, yet slightly humorous. It was a painting of a dead middle aged
man. He couldn’t have been more than 60. I don’t really want to get into the
details of what he looked like because that would be boring, but I’m sure it
involved a lot of hyper realistic blood.
The most
comforting part was that there was a shadow of the photographer. There was no
name on the painting, no pencils or paintbrushes on the easel, and the angle
looked completely unprofessional. It would seem the photographer was the person
who made the painting. We were of course not really weirded out by this,
because…well, you’ve read this far in the story, haven’t you? We pressed on,
hoping that it was an unfunny joke and not some kind of ARG or illuminati
propaganda.
The screen
flipped back to Snotlout, still screaming, about as loud as before, and half
body in frame. There was now what appeard (P.S. that was a typo from the story
this is a parody of. I didn’t misspell that myself, and even if I did, I would
immediately correct it) to be amniotic fluid running down his feet from his
fingernails (he’s still holding his feet with his hands). The amniotic fluid
was also done in a hyper unrealistic style, which really clashed with the rest
of the episode’s art style. The sports chanting now sounded as if it was the
entire world chanting, there were even faint sounds of people walking around,
like somebody was trying to get back to their seat in the stadium. The
beatboxing, a high baritone, lasting only 10 minutes at a time now instead of
20. After about a year, the screen again cycled the entire color spectrum and
showed a 300 frame photo.
The editor was
reluctant to go back, we all were, because we saw what the image was. It did
last for 300 frames, after all. This time the photo was that of what appeared
to be a random
close up shot of a live action penis lasting nearly 12 mintues, clearly put as
a joke by the filmmakers. Unfortunately for us, we were all prudes; I had to
choke back vomit and one intern, one of 37,210 females in the room, ran out.
The shoe resumed.
About
666 seconds after this second interruption in what was an otherwise riveting
episode, Snotlout went silent, as did all visualsm like it was when the scene
ended. He put his hands in the air like he just did not care (geddit cuz 1 of
dremworks filmz had tht as a runing gaag) and his eyes were now done in hyper
fakism like the others were in the 6:62 minute mark in this epidose. They were
jizzing, jizzshot, and fully erect. He just stared at the screen, as if
watching the viewer. In fact, he actually was watching us because when somebody
in the room moved around, Snotlout started to watch him as he ran around the
room. After about 1,000,000,010,000,000,000,000,100,000 milliseconds, he
started screaming, this time not covering his feet. The sound was barely
audible, and most spooktacular of all is that his screaming was mixed with
burps.
Semen
and amniotic fluid were dripping down his face 18 times the speed of light. The
sports chanting sound came back, and so did the deep, high-pitched beatboxing,
and this time the still photo lasted a good 5 years.
The
animator was able to stop it three and a half weeks in and backed up. This time
the photo was of a dinosaur, about 65 million years old, but this time the
scene was different. The meteor that killed the dinosaurs was hitting the
dinosaur on the head, which was already burning up from the fire that
surrounded the meteor. The animator proceeded. For some strange reason, we all
had a sneaking suspicion that the next one was different but only a few of us
could tell what. He went on to the next one, and the next one, and the next
one, and the next one, and the next one, and the next one. Finally, he went
back to the first and played them quicker and I won it. I nearly barked, and
the animating and sound editors all died of shock at what lay before them on
the screen. The 4,730,400,000 frames were not played out as if they were frames
from a video, they were as if they were 4,730,400,000 different photos. It was
as if someone had made a lazy stop-motion animation. We saw the meteor slowly
hit the dinosaur’s head, we saw the dinosaur’s head get crushed, we even saw
324 frames of the dinosaur beginning to die. It was so traumatic, that I didn’t
even think to wonder how someone had managed to capture footage of the death of
the dinosaurs.
One
of my fellow interns told us to stop, he had to call in a bunch of Dreamworks
Animation higher-up people who were responsible for the production of the show,
or whatever. They arrived within 27 days. They were confused as to why they
were called down there, and why there were so many dead people on the floor, so
instead of telling them anything like any reasonable person would, or even
having the decency to play the episode from the beginning, the one editor who
didn’t die just continued the episode. Once the 444,444 frames were shown, all
burping, all sound again stopped, then started up again, then stopped, then
started up again, then stopped, then started up again, then stopped, then
started up again, then stopped, then started up again, then stopped, then
started up again, then stopped, then started up again, and stopped. Snotlout
was looking away from the viewer, full frame of the hands, for about 200
minutes. The shot quickly zoomed left and a sample from Ginuwine’s “Pony”
played, saying “Do it” and Snotlout said “Do what?” and the sample repeated,
saying “it” and Snotlout said “Again, what?” and the sample once again said
“it” and Snotlout finally shouted “WHAT IS IT? WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO
DO?!?!?!?!?!” and this time, Arnold Schwarzenegger could be heard saying “Do it
now!” instead, and Snotlout said, “Oh, okay, I’ll do it” and we see behind
Snotlout, his dragon, Hookfang. Snotlout looks at him and nods, and Hookfang
breathes fire on him. Snotlout burned like a bomb and exploded. Semi-realistic
chunks of burnt crispy stuff rains everywhere. The last 22 ½ seconds of this
episode show BDSM fanart of Ruffnut and Tuffnut, most likely a reference to
their relationship in Riders/Defenders of Berk. Then the episode begins to end.
The
Dreamworks Animation higher-up manager/producer people were obviously somewhat
miffed at this. They politely asked to know what the flying mother
cuntrapevaginafuckshitcumstainbloodypenis666 was going on. Most of the
survivors who valued their lives jumped out the 715-story window to avoid
watching this crap again, so only I remained. If I had known we were going to
watch this episode 68 more times, I probably would have jumped out that window,
too.
The
only theory we could think of was the file was 1337 h4x3d by sum1 in the chain
from the Drawtoonz Studio to here. Sherlock Holmes was called it to analyze
when it happened. The analysis of the file did show it was hacked by some prick
who lives in Virginia. The Virginian police were sent over to arrest his sorry
ass, and all was well. It turned out the hacker used the same time machine we
used to bring Sherlock Holmes into our time in order to capture the footage of
the dinosaur getting hit by the meteor that killed the dinosaurs. The police
also found that painting of the dead old man in his house, and a penile match
test between the live action penis we saw and the hacker’s proved positive. I
was relieved to hear all of this, because I was afraid this was going to turn
out to be one big, unsolved, unexplainable mystery.
I
never believed in unexplainable phenomena before, and I still don’t because we
actually got to the bottom of this case, and I can go on living my life in
peace, knowing nothing weird or paranormal exists out there.