(Disclaimer: I don't own the Titans, but I'm using them anyway. I'm kind of a jerk like that.)
-Chapter Three: Sooo Depressing…-
"Ladies and gentlemen! It's time for the Kinda Late Show!" the announcer called over the loudspeaker, and the crowd began to clap and cheer uproariously. When they had calmed down a bit, the announcer continued. "Now, give it up for the man with the plan, the host with the most—Chet Bupkiss!"
The crowd went into renewed hysterics as Chet took the stage, jogging on from backstage and running on the spot for a moment, laughing like a buffoon the whole time like it was the most hilarious thing he had ever done. Knowing some talk show hosts, this was a distinct possibility. He stopped as the crowd settled down again and got right to business.
"Hey, hey, everybody! We've got a great show for you tonight, folks, but it's a little different than usual," Chet exclaimed to a ripple of applause. "Now, usually we have a few guests who we call out one at a time, so by the end of the show we have a couch full of celebrities, but tonight we're going to be doing things a bit differently. You see, our guests tonight kind of come as a group—no, no, it's not ABBA, thank God—and quite frankly, I'm very excited about this. How about you, Gary, are you excited?"
"I'm nearly crapping my pants over here I'm so excited, Chet," replied Gary, the show's music director, from behind his keyboard. "That little orange one is hot."
"Ha ha! She's also, like, sixteen, you perv! And legal issues aside, I don't think she'll be too into you if you actually do crap your pants!" Chet retorted, to the inevitable amusement of the audience. "Anyway, I'd like you all to give a big Kinda Late Show welcome to…the Teen Titans!"
The crowd once again dissolved into hysterics as the Titans made their way out onto the set, and each Titan's reaction to the attention said a lot about their individual personalities: Cyborg had a big grin on his face, and waved to the crowd; Robin sported a small smile, but was otherwise calm and businesslike; Beast Boy ran up to the audience and started high-fiving everyone in the front row; Raven just walked over to the guest couch as quickly as possible and sat with her hood up, stoically tolerating the incessant noise of the crowd; and Starfire just stared wide-eyed at all the people watching her, totally overwhelmed, and Robin actually had to physically drag her over to the couch. Robin sat in the spot nearest to Chet's desk—the team had decided that he would be the spokesman, as usual. The crowd's cheering and applause continued for quite a while after the Titans had all sat down, and Chet actually had to calm them down before he could start the interview.
"Heh, heh, you guys are pretty popular, it seems!" he said with a chuckle, but Robin only shrugged nonchalantly.
"Hey, we're just doing our job," he said, then smiled at the crowd as they began cheering again.
"I love you, Robin!" someone screamed.
"And what a job it is, too!" Chet continued. "The five of you are superheroes, defenders of the entire city! You've saved it on countless occasions from pretty much any threat a city could face, barring lawyers."
"Yeah, that's true, but we're still just teenagers, really," Robin replied. "When we aren't fighting crime, we have to deal with issues that every teenager has to face at some time or another."
"What kind of issues are we talking about, here? Parent stuff?" Chet asked.
"Well, not so much that, although I guess you could say that the Justice League kind of acts like our parents sometimes—I was thinking more along the lines of self-discovery, getting to know ourselves," Robin explained. "You know, like figuring out where our personal boundaries are, feeling out our limitations, coming to terms with who we are as people—that sort of thing."
"I would assume that friendships would come into that," Chet said, and Robin nodded.
"Yeah, absolutely," he agreed. "Learning to deal with other people, making friends, that's all part of it, too."
"So, most kids get that from going to high school, but you five are getting it from fighting crime, it seems," Chet pointed out.
"I guess so," Robin admitted. "The biggest difference, I think, is that in fighting crime our lives are constantly on the line, and while I trust in the team to pull through, the danger of getting seriously injured or killed is always there. That kind of danger kind of focuses things, makes everything a little more intense, or at least seem that way."
"Do any of you ever have trouble dealing with things?" Chet asked. "I mean, does it ever just become too much to handle?"
"Oh, yeah, definitely," Robin said. "I mean, suicide is absolutely rampant on the team."
There was a brief pause as Chet processed this statement.
"Wait, are you saying that you guys have tried to kill yourselves?" he asked incredulously.
"No, no, that's attempted suicide, I'm talking about just suicide," Robin clarified. "Most of the Titans actually have killed themselves."
"Most of the Titans actually have killed themselves?" Chet repeated incredulously.
"Yeah, it happens all the time," Robin said airily. "We go through a lot of Ravens that way."
"You go through Ravens?"
"Yeah, it keeps the cloning vats pretty busy," Robin replied. "You have no idea how much it complicates things that she's half demon, too."
"Hang on just a minute here, this is a lot of information all at once—you guys have cloning vats?" Chet asked.
"Of course. We live in a giant tower—did you think it was all video game rooms or something?" Robin said, arching an eyebrow.
"Well, I certainly didn't think it was cloning vats," Chet admitted. "So, are you saying that the original Titans are all dead and you guys are clones?"
"No, no, I'm still the original Robin, since my rigid, anal-retentive discipline and obsession with catching Slade would never allow me to commit suicide, and Cyborg is still the original Cyborg, although he's been rebuilt a few times," Robin said. "But Raven, Beast Boy and Starfire are all clones."
"Dude, you're not supposed to tell them that, dude!" Beast Boy cried.
"Raven was the first one, which makes sense since she was pretty dreary to begin with, but then Beast Boy hung himself in the bathroom because he was tired of always being the dumb one, and Starfire—well, she kills herself every once in a while if she thinks I'm not being romantic enough. I think it's a Tamaranean thing," Robin explained. "We keep about twenty backups of all three of them, just in case, and let me tell you, the turnover rate is just phenomenal, especially with the Ravens. I'm actually thinking of bumping her up to fifty backups."
"This is pointless! I want to go home!" Raven whined. "Let me go home or I'll kill myself again! Life is stupid anyway! I'll do it! I swear! I'm angsty, pay attention to me!"
"What the hell?" Chet exclaimed, and Robin sighed resignedly.
"Sorry about that, it's one of the side-effects of repeated clonings," he said. "Their personalities start to degrade after a while, so now Raven's gone from being a self-possessed but rather introverted young woman to being a whiny, narcissistic little bitch who likes dark colours. Beast Boy hasn't been cloned quite as much, so he only says 'dude' more than usual…"
"Dude!"
"…and Starfire, well, she was kind of a simpleton even before getting cloned," Robin finished. "Needless to say, things have only gotten worse for her."
"I'm from another planet!" Starfire cried with a big smile.
"She's using contractions now, though, so I guess it isn't all bad," Robin admitted with a shrug.
"My daddy is pure evil and I hate him!"
"Dude!"
"Flowers are pretty!"
"Why won't anyone love me?"
"Dude!"
"I like horsies!"
"Black is my favourite colour!"
"DUDE!"
"Let's be friends!"
"I'm so alone!"
"DUUUUUDE!"
"I wuv you, Wobin!"
"Okay, this is just disturbing," Chet said, mercifully interrupting the tide of stupidity. "And you jackasses are superheroes? We're all going to die."
"Hey, Robin and I can still kick ass!" Cyborg protested indignantly. "We can protect the city, just the two of us!"
"We're all going to die," Chet repeated, putting his head in his hands.
"Hey, I was trained by Batman, I can…" Robin began, but Chet interrupted him.
"GET OFF OF MY SHOW!" he screamed, and the Titans quickly retreated from the set, although Robin had to run back to grab Starfire, who had gone back to staring blankly at the crowd. He carried her over his shoulder as he made his way through the mess back stage towards the T-Car, surrounded by the other Titans.
"I think that went well!" Starfire chimed in from where her head hung near the small of Robin's back.
"Nothing ever goes well," Raven complained.
"Dude!" Beast Boy cried.
"Oh, just shut up," Robin muttered. "Batman is going to kill me for this."
-End Chapter Three-
Author's Note: I'll try to keep this short to match this chapter. I'm not so sure about the quality of my writing in this chapter, but hey, I'm poking fun at two different things so that makes up for it, right? Anyway, one of the banes of my existence (yes, there's more than one) is when people take fairly well-developed characters like those that appear in Teen Titans and don't even seem to make an attempt to give them any depth in their stories. I know that I probably don't do all that great a job lending the characters I write real depth, but at least I try to do them justice—turning a complex character like Raven into a one-dimensional teenaged angst machine just isn't right, and neither is making Beast Boy a completely clueless idiot or Starfire a naïve lovestruck moron. I mean, if a kids' cartoon can give them some depth, why the hell can't fan fiction authors? Why is Raven always so depressed? Why is jealousy the only emotion Starfire is capable of feeling in two thirds of the stories I've read? Why can't Beast Boy ever do anything right? Didn't he single-handedly defeat an entire alien invasion? I'll admit, it was in kind of a dumb way, but that still takes at least some competence. God dammit!
The whole character suicide thing bugs me, too, although I know that there's a lot of serious non-fan fiction out there that deals with suicide (e.g. "Paul's Case", by some lady whose name I've forgotten). I suppose that's more of a personal thing, but those kinds of stories are so widespread in fan fiction now that I think they deserve some spoofing. I'd like to see a tally of the number of times Raven has killed herself in fan fiction—on this site alone, I'm sure it would be well into the triple digits by now. I mean, if it were done as a kind of "don't fall into the same trap as Raven did" cautionary tale that might be okay, but most of them seem to be her just saying "I'm a Goth, I'm depressed" and then popping some pills or something. Argh! I suppose I can see some literary value in that kind of depressing story, but most of the time they just come off as overly angsty fan fiction authors having self-indulgent little "oh, wouldn't they miss me" suicide fantasies.
I should probably get off my soapbox now, before this turns into a three-page rant or something. So much for keeping it short.
To My Reviewers:
IwuvMyKenshyPoo: You know, I would try to do one of the impossibly bad grammar ones, but I don't think I could ever do the worst of them any justice. And my action scenes are pretty crappy as it is, so that I don't need to work at. Aside from working to make them better, of course.
Overactive Mind: Ooh, pie! That's much better than a cursed monkey hand!
TheSkeet: Thanks. Hopefully I'll be able to get back up to par with my writing for my next chapter—I have some ideas…
Mint Dragon: Um…thank you. Gee, I don't think anyone's ever thanked God for my existence before. Or my parents, either, for that matter.
Xyteron: Come now, one should always judge one's betters! Keeps the bastards on their toes!
TwilightSoulTaker: As long as my stories make someone, somewhere, laugh so much they get odd looks from their friends and family, I have no need for monetary reward. ZOMG SEND MONIES! HOW I MINE FOR FISH?
i feel awfully random: I feel random as well, as my last review response may indicate. We have much in common, it seems.