Joe

To Fuzzy Lumpkins, Joe was his best friend, his soul mate, his constant companion. True, there were his nephews Buzzy, Wuzzy and Scuzzy, along with his three close relations Furry, Fluffy and Hairy, not to mention his several dozen cousins. But the thing was, none of them were with Fuzzy all the time.

Joe was also a means of stress relief. Whenever anyone dared to touch his property, or those accursed Powderpuffs beat him up for "crimes to the community," he could only relax himself by playing tunes away on Joe, be it for just a minute or a half-hour, or longer.

Yeah, Fuzzy supposed, Joe was just a banjo. And almost everything Fuzzy did own meant something to him, be it his pipe, his straw hat, and especially his musket, which he somehow managed to retain despite losing it multiple times. Even Fuzzy himself couldn't quite pinpoint exactly what it was that made Joe as special as he was...

What else did Joe provide? Well, thought Fuzzy, he supposed that Joe helped him relax simply by being there, even if it was just as Fuzzy rested in his rickshaw chair on his porch, or inside his cabin, or even as he drifted off to sleep after a long, tired day. Even if he was just taking a bath, strumming a few major chords (yes, Fuzzy did have basic music knowledge) ensured his brain did not go off into a mad frenzy. Except when someone got their hands on his property, of course. Nothing could stop Fuzzy getting angry when that happened.

Yeah, he supposed Joe was just a banjo, a banjo that, like most of his belongings, he found scattered somewhere in Townsville forest. Fuzzy couldn't quite remember how he came across Joe, or even how Joe came to mean so much to him, although Fuzzy wasn't very good at remembering much full stop.

It didn't really matter either way, Fuzzy finally shrugged. Perhaps Fuzzy's brain wasn't his most developed of organs, but it was good enough to realize that Joe meant the world to him.

And that was all that really mattered.


Theme was 'Something Uplifting.'

Joe was more of an afterthought, compared to Maria, an entry which I put more focus on. It probably was a bit lazy of me to have a second story about a character's relationship with an object - for the same contest, even. Not to mention that it's really just thoughts and reflection. Still, Fuzzy is awesome, as he's among the rarest villains we see anything of (only the Amoeba Boys would be rarer). It was kinda a shout-out for more of him in a way. Also, knowing his voice would be difficult to write, I wrote it in 3rd-person, compared to 1st-person for Maria. But, like Maria, this has enough heart and character for me to rate it higher then Relations. While I originally considered Maria superior to this, I would now consider then perfectly equal to each other. This also gets a B in overall performance.