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karmacomecalling) wrote2021-01-13 10:45 am
Stats
Obnoxious. Attention seeking, hyperactive, sarcastic, melodramatic, never shuts up, extra handsy, has zero concept of personal space. Slow to anger, eager to joke, loves a crowd. Perfectly at home manhandling people twice his size, will often jump into their arms or onto their shoulders, back, or chest to address them face to face. Speaks with broad gestures, breaks into song and dance on a whim, may perform acrobatics instead of walking. Can behave normally but only if he feels like it. Rarely exhibits animal tendencies. Will not attack unless suitably provoked or the target is rude or morally corrupt. Prefers mockery to violence, but delights in both. Will help most people who ask, and at his core is an upright, affectionate, loving person.
His fur is short, sleek, and soft, his eyes are pure black, and he has sharp canines. Under his gloves his hands are covered in black fur, but his feet are white. His tail is monkey-like but may wag like a dog's or swish like a cat's on occasion. Yakko tends to stand with an exaggerated forward lean, craning his neck up. In the dark he partially disappears, only his nose and the white parts of him are visible. He is able to alter his appearance and clothing at will but always looks like a version of himself.
THE ORIGIN STORY
In 1930, Warner Brothers animation director Weed Memlo was struggling with the latest "Buddy" cartoon, a milquetoast character with uncertain footing in the Looney Tunes roster. He berated the animator Lon Borax over the feature, demanding that he fix it before the tomorrow's showing for the producers. Borax was forced to work overnight and at 2:43am suffered a psychological break while drawing three new characters: Yakko, Wakko, and Dot Warner. He fled the building and was institutionalized thereafter. Memlo found the cartoon the following morning but there was no sign of Borax. He had no choice but to show the cartoon to the studio's young CEO, Thaddeus Plotz. The three new characters were irreverently violent and weird, but the studio decided to give them a try regardless.
Though initially successful and even taking Buddy's place at the studio, unleashing the Warners proved to be a lapse in judgment. Within the Buddy cartoons, they were reckless with mallets. Within their solo features, they were too maniacal to follow a plot. Off screen, the Warners were hellions. Though they made fast friends with plenty of entertainers, being fond of a good time and a hoot at parties, they soon made several enemies. Yakko made sport of heckling Milton Berle, and the trio pantsed Jimmy Cagney. The boys harassed attractive women, Dot harassed attractive men. They all but decimated the studio lot and caused property damage wherever they went. People began to flee at the sight of them. Eventually Plotz decided to lock them away. The trio were captured, thrown into the studio water tower and imprisoned for sixty years. The studio kept hush about the existence of the Warners, and outside the odd fumigation or a quick series of cheap loan outs to other cartoons in the sixties, the trio were neither seen nor heard from for decades.
THE GREAT ESCAPE, 1993-98
In 1993, the unthinkable happened. The Warners found a way to escape their prison. The tower had become their home and efforts to contain them within it were futile. Thaddeus Plotz, having remained the head of the company and remembering the horror of 1930, demanded that the studio psychiatrist Dr. Scratchansniff keep the kids in line. While the Doctor attempted to give them therapy, it was all in vain. The Warners tormented him for fun, making mockery of his practice and crashing his downtime off the lot. In spite of this, there was some fondness shared between them: the Warners would constantly hug and kiss him and declare their love for him (against his will) and even defended him in court (also against his will) when he was given an unjust parking ticket. Scratchansniff would take them on field trips and chaperone them at events and outings, as well as speak on their behalf when Plotz went too out of line punishing them. Of all the staff, he was the most understanding about their status as kids first, and public menaces second.
Also subject to the children's whims were the studio nurse and security guard, Heloise Nerz and Ralph T. Guard. Heloise was a comely blonde assistant to Scratchansniff who was addressed exclusively by the Warners' catcall, "Hello Nurse." The boys were constantly trying to kiss her and comically ogling her every move. Ralph was a dim-witted but sweet man, charged with capturing the kids with a net whenever they broke loose, with moderate to dismal success.
During this time they were permitted to film cartoons again. Usually they featured either historical figures receiving "help" from the Warners, or rude people or villains being harassed into complete breakdowns. They also performed several parodies of popular genres, tv shows, and films. The show had a large cast of other cartoons, who appeared to know each other but rarely interacted in significant ways. The most memorable of these were Pinky and the Brain, Slappy Squirrel, the Goodfeathers, Rita and Runt, and the infamously unpopular Chicken Boo. Their original foil Buddy made a brief reappearance as well. Hopelessly bitter and blaming the Warners for his being fired, he rigged a podium with explosives to kill them at their 65th anniversary gala. However when the Warners took the stage they attributed their success to Buddy in a heartfelt speech. Touched, the hapless toon rushed to take the stage, and was blown up by his own bomb.
Though generally a nuisance, the Warners pulled through for their studio several times. They secured foreign funding by livening up a party they were prematurely kicked out of, bullied Plotz with A Christmas Carol hauntings into rehiring Ralph after he fired him, and even forced the studio rehire Plotz himself after he refused to make the Warners' first full length movie, costing the executives potential millions when the film went on to be a record breaking hit.
The good times soon came to an end, however. The show was cancelled after five years, and the Warners disappeared without conclusion or explanation.
THE REBOOT: 2020-????
In 2020, the impossible happened again: the Warners were revived for a reboot of their 90s series. Their whereabouts in the interim were unknown, but they were neither locked up nor conscious of the events between the 1998 and 2020. Upon returning to the lot and reclaiming their tower, they were brought by Ralph to the new CEO of Warner Brothers, Nora Rita Norita, a no-nonsense, driven woman with little care for the siblings's antics. She showed them a smart tablet, which Yakko swallowed and gained the sum of all human knowledge — at least until that point in time. After catching his siblings up with the state of the world, the trio ventured forth into the strange new era...