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Plaid-F β Naptime for Boober and Waggleby
Published: 2013-01-06 13:36:58 +0000 UTC; Views: 1791; Favourites: 26; Downloads: 10
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A (late) gift for a friend
It's Boober Fraggle and his doglike cave creature, Waggleby! I do so
dogs. Waggleby only shows up in the Fraggle Rock Weekly Reader book series from the 80s, but he's pretty great. Full of energy and trouble. I like the whole idea of a character like Boober interacting with a troublesome pup!
Waggleby looks a little bigger here. Ah well. He's eatin' up all Boober's kitchen supplies when he's not looking.
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Comments: 22
Sweet. The waggleby appeared in 2 books. It was in a cardboard Boober cookbook thing from a different series too.
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Oh wow! Never knew! 
Is that cardboard one very easy to find? The only "Boober cooking" one I've ever come across was "Danger: Boober Cooking"!
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Hmmm... I think it shows up on eBay from time to time. There's a doozer book similar to it. It doesn't refer to the creature as the waggleby, you just hafta know. It may be about soup. I'll hafta check. I have an old display sign of the book in question as well.
Oh wait! Amazon! * checks * It's there and for cheap. 1-cent cheap actually. It's called Boober's Colorful Soup.
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Wow, I have NEVER seen that one! Thanks for the tip!
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I have some of those books. Do you have Mokey and the Festival of the Bells? The artwork is amazingly good for weekly reader books.
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You know, it's funny you ask that because you have no idea at all how badly I've been wanting that particular one! I don't have it yet, but have coveted it if only because of the cover art! (I also adore Mokey 
(Amazon, here I come!)
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I just checked Amazon, and they have it. You can get it new for $159.76, or used for $0.27. Used books for the win!
The artwork is great for the most part. Characters look like themselves. However, I can tell that the artist 1) relied too heavily on reference pictures and didn't watch The Bells of Fraggle Rock, as the costumes were spot-on, but only above the waist, and 2) recycled characters too closely in making background characters, so you could see many recolors of the Fraggle Five and even Cantus milling around. But I can forgive that because you can see the other four Minstrels in one panel, plus one of the Eminent Council of Sages.
The writing...well, it's OK. I wish that writers wouldn't treat Cantus like Dear Abby. He's a guy who wanders in, playing music and spouting mysical gibberish that only makes sense on retrospect. Why would you go to him with your troubles? Isn't that what the Trash Heap is for?
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Haha BOUGHT. Thank you for checking there, though! ($159.76? PFFT. Uh-huh sure.)
Now I really look forward to seeing the artwork for that one. That's really interesting that the artist can be exceptionally skilled but then get lazy when it comes to creating "Fraggle whatnots." But the ECoS?! The four other Minstrels?!
Totally agreed on the whole writing Cantus bit. But then, that's probably their solution for a children's book version of him, you know? Not many people could write him correctly at all, and that could totally make or break a story depending on how important he is to it (and well, he's Cantus so naturally he's usually important). Plus...I would totally be a *little* intimidated to write Cantus. Not all writers are so brave
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I don't think the artist was being lazy. I think it was more a case of wanting to get things juuuust right, and being afraid to ad-lib new Fraggles that might look wrong. Many of the Fraggle Five head patterns were reused for other character, so the recolors make sense, but do all Boober recolors also have to have Boober hair and no eyes? Do all Gobo recolors have to have a similar costume? Did the Cantus recolor have to have a beard?
Cantus is a tough character to write if you don't know what's going on in his mind, and good luck figuring that out. I gave that a lot of thought before I ever put him into a story. My current fic, The Minstrel's Path is about him, and shows my version of where he's coming from. Is it believable? Heck if I know, as only two people are reading it.
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Hahaha I have totally planned on reading that one myself 
That's a very good point about the artist "wanting to get things juuuust right," too. I wouldn't have thought of that.
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Please feel free to write feedback for my fics! I like to know how my stories come across, and that means the good and the bad. If I don't get any reactions, how can I tell what needs improvement?
That artist really did do a good job on the main characters, especially Cantus, who can be a pain to draw. (In the book his nose is a bit too round, but that's a minor quibble.) Most Fraggle books have rather careless, sloppy art, which makes this book all the more impressive.
A few other books I'd recommend:
Boober Fraggle's Ghosts: Boober is haunted! What do the ghosts want with him? A nifty little story that makes sense in the end.
Marooned in Fraggle Rock and Wembley's Egg: Both based on TV episodes, and done well. I'm surprised they based a book on Marooned, and even more surprised they didn't dumb it down. Boober and Red still discuss the very real possibility of death.
Meet the Fraggles: A guide on what to do if Fraggles or other denizens come to visit you. What kind of house guests would Fraggles and Doozers be? (Don't ask about Gorgs!)
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YAY! 
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A lot of the small, square books are...well, not worth searching out. The stories are often kinda "who cares?" At worst they show a lack of understanding of the series, especially among the artists, who either draw them sloppily and off-model, or fill the scenes with oversized humn props to make them look like mouse-sized Borrowers.
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Haha, at this point I actually have a LOT of the square ones. I agree, in some cases the art and stories are disappointing if you look at it from the perspective of canon. But I'm really easily amused
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One of the bigger books is really weird, in my opinion. In Wembley Fraggle Gets the Story the Fraggle Five invent the newspaper, then four of them promptly slack off, leaving Wem to go bonkers doing it all by himself. Huh? Why invent the newspaper? Where do they get the paper in the first place? What's the point of writing about things rather than just doing them? Why does Wembley stick with the task like it's a contractual obligation rather than dropping it too and playing with his friends? The premise just doesn't make sense. Compared to that, treating Cantus as a cryptic Ann Landers is a small oversight.
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Yep, I've seen the cover for that one and it did absolutely confuse me. He's even wearing a weird plastic visor-looking thing, which I found un-Fraggley (though I'm sure the show's done stuff like that occasionally, can't recall anything at the moment though)
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