The Metafictional Meddler (short story)
The Metafictional Meddler was a Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids short story written by Hector Fenwick with a cover illustration by Aristide Twain. It was a brief, comedic vignette featuring an appearance by an in-universe version of Fenwick, and was the second of three contributions in total made to the series by Fenwick as a guest writer.
Contents
Plot
On a “rather boring” day in the Cupid Homeworld, Juliet-178 is killing time by digging holes with Diggy-292, and Larrikin-1029 and Pessimist-242 are killing time by watching them do so, when an unknown Void Ship suddenly appears. The capsule turns out to contain a grandiloquent but unremarkable-looking human man called Hector Fenwick, who soon reveals that in his home universe, he is an unsuccessful writer who has occasionally contributed to a prose series whose events, due to multiversal happenstance, happen to perfectly mirror the history of the Crew.
After Fenwick explains that he wants the Copper-Colored Cupids to give him a supply of Cupid Arrows and Cupid Love Potion with which to turn himself into a beloved, successful writer back on his home Earth, he is taken before the Cupid Parliament. There, he makes himself even more of an irritation, nagging the Parliamentary Cupids with a series of non sequitur questions on various topics — with even the famously sanguine Patient-039 raising his voice. Before he knows it, the writer finds himself the subject of the burlap sack running gag he himself knows so well.
By the time Lord Thymon arrives in the temporary Parliamentary Hall with a stack of reports mailed by the Department of Applied Contrafibulation, Fenwick has been stuffed back into his capsule and sent back to his home universe, where the capsule has been rigged to self-destruct as soon as its occupant has walked out of it. Just to be safe, Larrikin gives Thymon a photo of Fenwick and asks Thymon to disintegrate him on sight if he comes back; although the Cupid dignitaries chastise the reckless violence of the sentiment, few of them disagree with the spirit in which it is made.
Back in Fenwick's universe, the writer decides to get the last laugh over the Cupids the only way he can: by writing up the day's events as a new entry in Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids series and ending on a scene of himself laughing at his own trick, right here in the attic where he plies his writerly trade.
Worldbuilding
Universes
- The story takes place in the Cupid Homeworld.
- Hector Fenwick comes from a universe in which the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids is the subject of a webfiction series.
Other
- Diggy-292 is noted to share his brother Digger-291's passion for digging holes, but, in his case, to have turned these talents to the work of helping the Department of Construction with digging the foundations for new warehouses.
- Aphrodite is mentioned offhand in narration as part of the phrase “Aphrodite knows where”.
- Hector Fenwick's nagging questions on various topics include:
- asking why “the Lion King's father was killed when his brother shoved him off a cliff” if cats always land on their feet;
- asking why, in the story of Aladdin, Aladdin didn't get around the three-wishes limit by asking for more lamps containing more genies;
- how the sorcerer in that cartoon with the blue people knew that he'd like the taste of the latter, given he had never successfully caught one before;
- whether the offspring of a blue dragon and a red one would be purple, striped, or polka-dotted.
Continuity
- Pessimist-242 and Larrikin-1029 previously served as co-protagonist of PROSE: The Toymaker's Labyrinth.
- Digger-291 was introduced in PROSE: The Resurrection of the Wellsians, which also established the idea that Clockwork Cherubs with consecutive serial numbers consider themselves to be siblings, as illustrated here with Digger and Diggy-292.
- The running joke about the Department of Construction constantly building absurd numbers of useless warehouses was introduced in PROSE: Acquaintanceship-982 and the Missing Mail Mystery.
- Though she is not acting as such, Juliet-178's status as a member of the Department of Problem-Solving is referenced, as per her introduction in PROSE: Lord Thymon and the Department of Problem-Solving.
- The Cupid Parliament meets in a “temporary Parliamentary Hall”. The destruction of the Cupid Parliament occurred in COMIC: Professional Endorsement and was then discussed at length in PROSE: The Cupid Parliament Destroyed?, where Foreman-964 was commissioned to build a new Cupid Parliament building, making “no promises” as to whether it would resemble one of his beloved warehouses. Whether the temporary Hall is the result of this attempt, or a different building the Cupids are using while Foreman works on the former, is unclear.
- It is noted that the Cupids are reluctant to use a Cupid Arrow on Fenwick because it might result in him sticking around the Cupid Homeworld indefinitely out of newfound loyalty to the Crew as occurred when they tried that on another intruder, Lord Thymon; this occurred in PROSE: Lord Thymon and the Department of Problem-Solving.
- The burlap sack running gag was last seen in an unconventional form in PROSE: A Copper-Colored Christmas Carol. Here, Fenwick, who becomes its object, also becomes the first character to lampshade its status as a running gag.
- The Department of Applied Contrafibulation was off-handedly mentioned in PROSE: The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids.
Behind the scenes
Read online
The story can be read for free on the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids website.
