Fraggle Rock Fic: The Princess and the Pickle

Plaid Fraggle

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(The title is super dumb because I have no idea what to call this little thing)

Hey guys! This is my first fan-fiction in at least...four years :crazy: After reading some of Slackbot's pieces recently and charlietheowl's awesome Boober and Wembley fic last night, I really wanted to try and write a Red and Gobo story. Not sure how satisfied I am with it, but I wanted to share it with fellow fans and see what y'all think! Here you go! :smile:

WOOSH! She whiiiirls around the boulder, and what is this, folks? It’s Barebranch Tunnel! Thinking fast as the winding, gnarly plants threaten to whip at her face from the left and from the right, she boldly dodges each plant, faster than the wind that whips through this turrrbulent wind tunnel! Woooohoohoo!

Red Fraggle loved the thrill of the wind cutting past her in Barebranch Tunnel, and got all the more charged when she cheered herself on with an internal play-by-play. Her mind was clear, her legs were speed itself, and Gobo was—

“Hey Red! Why’d you have to choose this tunnel?”

“Gobo?!”

He’d caught up! Matter of fact, he was right behind her!

Panting, Gobo too tried to keep a clear head as the branches intertwined above him and at his side, scratched and poked him mercilessly. He had nearly caught up with her, and it was a good thing, too, because the wind was becoming deafening as they coursed down Barebranch Tunnel, one of the windiest caves in Fraggle Rock. Red needed to get her head out of the clouds, and knowing her, she wasn’t likely to change her focus easily.

“How’d you catch up so fast?!” she shouted.

“Red, listen to me, this is important! We need to get out of this tunnel, it’s too dangerous!”

“What? I can’t hear you!” The wind was howling madly past her, so she lent herself to the challenge of the wind resistance—it was exhilarating!

Oh no, Gobo thought. It should never have gone this far. “RED! THE WINDS ARE TOO STRONG AND THE BRANCHES ARE WAY TOO LONG THIS TIME OF YEAR! WE NEED TO TURN—"

“AAAGH!!”

“Oof!” Gobo ran straight into Red from behind at full speed. After a dazed moment, he backed up and gasped.

Red had been halted by her hair—almost all of the hair flowing from her tightly tied little pink bows was entangled in the overhead branches.

Gobo gasped. With each squirm, Red was getting her hair more and more mangled in the branches!

“Don’t do that, Red! Stop!”

“I can’t, or it won’t come out!”

“You’re making it worse!”

“I’m trying to—”

“RED! Will you stop and listen to me for once?”

She froze. Wrenching her right shoulder around just slightly, it was clear that she was trying to turn to Gobo. Unfortunately, even the slightest, slowest movement made her painfully aware of how entangled her hair had become. And Gobo couldn’t circle around her to face her from the front, either—the branches on the sides had them much too closed in.

“Gobo…” Red sniffled. She winced and gnashed her teeth.

“Here. Let me help,” he told her just loudly enough that she could hear. With several careful pulls and tugs, it became clear to Gobo that no matter how strategically he went about trying to untangle Red’s hair from the sharp branches, the wind would whip the newly freed hair right back into the mass of twining branches.

Gobo stepped back and looked pitifully at his friend. “Red…I have to get you free. It’s getting really cold in here.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she called back hastily, shivering. “I got this”—she reached up and tugged her hair just once, and—“OW OW OW OW OW!”

Gobo flinched. There was only one thing to do. He looked to a sharp rock among some branches snaking along the edges of the tunnel floor.

“Gobo? Gobo! GOBO FRAGGLE, WHAT ARE YOU DOING!”

Before she knew it, she was freed—but her ribbons had fallen to the ground. Looking up, she saw that they no longer had any purpose in keeping her hair tamed.

***


“Gobo!” Wembley cried. “You guys must be starved! Where’s—”

Boober and Mokey fell silent at the lunch spread behind him. There, approaching the Fraggle Pond at the very center of the Rock, was Gobo and a frighteningly quiet Red, who was carrying one pink ribbon in each tightly clenched fist.

Shocked at their friends’ disheveled appearance, Wembley, Boober, and Mokey all hurried toward them. Boober stopped immediately upon spotting the tears in Gobo’s shirt sleeves and vest.

“Oh Gobo, this will take hours of sewing!”

“Gobo, what happened?” Wembley asked.

Only Mokey was brave enough to approach the silent and obviously shell-shocked Red.

“Red dear? Where…” she gulped, “is all of your beautiful hair?”

The rest of the Fraggles all turned their gazes slowly towards the girls.

Red, looking down fixedly, tightened the grip on her ribbons before answering. “Where…is my hair…? TRY ASKING GOBO. I THINK HE CHOPPED IT OFF AND GAVE IT ALL TO A BUNCH OF NASTY PLANTS!”

“There was no way you were budging from there, Red!” Gobo snapped. “If I hadn’t cut it off, you’d have been hanging there for hours while I went to get help! And I can’t stop the wind, okay? It blows like that all summer long in Barebranch Tunnel! That’s why the branches are all bare there anyway!”

“Oh, Barebranch Tunnel!” Mokey chimed. “The branches toward the top of that tunnel all grow intertwined with each other, as if they are trying to warm themselves with a giant hug.”

“While the ones stuck to the sides just protrude out there, looking alone and particularly dead,” Boober nodded.

“GRR!” Red fumed. “I am not dealing with this! Gobo Fraggle, you cut off all my hair without permission! Do you know how long I’ve been growing that hair? Mine was almost the longest in the Rock!”

“Well maybe if everything wasn’t such a contest to you all of the time, you’d have stopped before you approached the windiest tunnel around! It’s nearly impossible to run in there, and y’always get scratched up!”

“You just can’t stand the idea of a real challenge, can you?” Red shot. “’Oh, I’m Gobo, and I’m gonna adventure as long as I get to follow the ruuules’—"

“You were desperate for a way to win and you were scared and you’re just too afraid to admit it, and that’s why you’re upset that you lost your hair. You wouldn’t have even had to lose it if you didn’t panic and get it so badly tangled!”

Red blinked rapidly. The rest of the Fraggles stood on edge just a ways away. “You chopped off. All of my. HAIR! And you didn’t even ask me!”

“Well, maybe you’re just gonna have to learn to deal with things as they come instead of clinging to your stubborn attitude, princess!”

She pursed her lips. “What…did you call me?”

Gobo steadied himself, his friends standing silently to his side. “You’re being vainer than a princess.”

Red’s entire body grew stiff. She blazed a trail to hers and Mokey’s cave, her jaggedly cut short hair whipping out behind her.

Gobo felt his heart sink as he watched her run out of sight. Boober took a great exhale, and then he collapsed lightly into Mokey’s arms.

“There, there, Boober,” she sighed. Wembley tried fanning him frantically with a napkin by their lunches, and Mokey turned to Gobo. “We were all just expecting a quiet afternoon after you and Red had your game. How did you end up in Barebranch Tunnel?”

Sigh…it was just tag, and she just came up with the brilliant idea of running where it’s ridiculously hard to run in the first place. Probably figured I’d never be able to catch her there.”

“Wow! That is brilliant, Gobo!” Wembley chirped. Boober, now collected, caught Wembley’s napkin mid-fan and nodded a thanks to his friend. Wembley beamed back at him.

“No, Wembley,” Gobo corrected. “It was not brilliant. It was really, really stupid.”

“Oh, gee…yeah, it was pretty stupid,” Wembley agreed.

“Why don’t we all sit down?” Mokey suggested. “Our food is already cold, and after all this work Boober’s put into making it!”

“Oh, it’s okay,” Boober told her. “Everyone appreciates a nice game of tag out of absolutely nowhere and a good old-fashioned ego clash over a nice, warm rutabaga pie, I understand. It makes all the sense in the world.”

***


Hands cradling her head, Red toyed numbly with her newly short fiery locks as she lied in her hammock. “Sigh...stupid Gobo, that jerk.” She glanced down at her stomach, where she’d laid the pink ribbons. “No use for those anymore.”

“Rarrrgh!” Lanford growled.

“I might have a use for them yet!” Red sprung up. “If you so much as whimper at me one more time, Lanford, I’m gonna knot these ribbons ‘round your mouth for eternity!”

Mokey’s pet deathwort held its snarls in the back of its throat, rumbling angrily to itself.

Red threw herself down once more with force onto her hammock, rattling the whole thing. “But I could never tell Gobo he’s right…I did think of my hair like it was an achievement. It’s kind of embarrassing, when I think about it that way…” She scanned the room, and set eyes on her beloved Tug-o’-Tails trophy.

“Well then you might want to stop thinkin’ out loud,” Gobo suggested from the entryway.

“Ack!” Red floundered a moment in the hammock and sat up. She glared at him and quickly turned her to face the wall, nose pointed directly to the ceiling. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, Red, I came to apologize,” Gobo said. “You were right back there. I really had no right to just go ahead and do that to you without your permission. That’s why I just couldn’t say you were wrong, far as that goes. And I can understand it being kinda shocking after all this time with really long hair, all of a sudden it getting short like that.”

Red lowered her gaze a bit, and then propped her head up with her hands. She just sat in her bed, legs crossed, and said nothing.

After a moment, Gobo inched forward a bit and asked, “Can I sit there with you?”

She met his eyes and nodded.

After crawling into the hammock, he sighed. “Listen, you really should just loosen up a bit. About the your hair being an—”

“Don’t say that,” Red interrupted, flustered.

“…achievement…” Gobo continued anyway, “I think that sounds like an awful lot of pressure to put on yourself. Everyone faces things when they least expect them, and sometimes you have to learn that sometimes things you once thought were really important will have to pass or change. And it’s really not all that bad when you take a step back.”

“Don’t talk to me like I don’t know that,” Red snapped. “I’m just angry. Aren’t I allowed to be angry for once?”

“For once?”

Red crossed her arms, buried her face in them. “I look ugly.”

Gobo hesitated. “Nah, Red. You look cute.”

She stared straight at him, and backed away from him in a jolt. The entire hammock rattled. “WHAT.”

“I said you look cute! It’s about time someone looked different around here for a change!” Gobo asserted, his face blushing slightly red. “Gee, I’m the only one who’s thought to build a hat collection or something, put some fun into things. Besides…your new hair looks mature.”

Red settled a bit and fought a smile. “Well…least I’m not ugly as Lanford,” Red snorted. The plant sneered at her from its pot.

Gobo smirked. “Well, I just wanted to know before I went off to my room for the night that you were okay.”

She couldn’t help it. She smiled. “I am.”

“Good.” He leaped off the bed. “Well, I’ll be seein’ yeh, Red.”

“Yup. See you tomorrow.”

They waved goodbye to each other, still grinning.

After he’d left, Red lied down, knowing nightfall was well on its way. “Oooooh!” Lanford cooed teasingly.

“Shut up, Lanford.”

***


“Ohhhh!”

Boober had just nearly beaten Wembley at pickle balancing, and all of the Fraggles watching were astounded.

“Oh Boober, that was inspiring!” Mokey cheered.

“Yeah, Boober, you must have been training pretty hard to beat a nose like Wembley’s!” Gobo called out jokingly. He elbowed his best friend playfully in the ribs.

“Aw, Boober, great job! Wow!” Wembley said. “Wanna go again? Huh?”

The crowd closed in more tightly around Boober and waited for the next bout.

“I-I don’t know how I did that! It was a fluke!” Boober stammered. “Stop watching me!”

“Well you can all watch me instead! I’ll beat ‘em all next round!” a voice called from behind the crowd. Their faces turned to see.

“Who is that?” said Large Marvin. He squinted his eyes a bit more.

“I’m Red, silly!” she called. Her friends all looked at her, blinking. Her hair, cut unevenly and frazzled the entire day before, was now straight as a Doozer stick and very clean, thanks to Mokey.

“What? Red?” Large Marvin gasped. “Your hair, you look so…different!” The other Fraggles agreed, and they all moved toward her.

“Yeah, well, you know,” Red sniffed. “Sometimes you need a change. Besides, you’ll never believe what happened, I’m lucky to be alive! No big deal or anything…”

“Well, no matter how tough you were when it got chopped off, looks like you got it cut and cleaned to look like a princess!” Gobo called out.

Everyone turned to face him. They gasped and were whispering hurriedly to each other. Uh-oh…
The crowd watched intently as Red stared at Gobo for a few moments.

“Pfft…Hahaha! Yeah, sure, okay! The Princess of Pickle-Balancing!” She tossed two pickles onto her nose at once, and the crowd cheered. “Let’s start this thing!”

Gobo grinned. She had matured—but could still balance a mean pickle.

***

WOO! FIN! :big_grin: Thank you for reading it, friend :excited:
 

The Count

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Hmm... Intereschting. There's a dynamic there between :excited: and :smirk: that could be expounded upon. But still, the funny side comes out when Red just shrugs off the "princess" comment, dubbing herself princess of pickle balancing at the end.

Nicely done, thanks for sharing with the crowds here.
 

charlietheowl

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Oh man! Love it! I definitely like the dynamic here between Red and Gobo, how Red has to react when presented with a situation that she can't change for herself in losing her pigtails. And I loved the little scene with Wembley fanning poor Boober. Thanks for sharing!
 

The Count

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*:sigh: at the lack of my Merge Threads mod ability.

Apparently, some posts were left behind after the thread's title got changed. Please post here in this thread if your previous posts got deleted. Sorry for the inconvenience.
 

Ruahnna

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I am still mostly un-introduced to Fraggles--it's on my 2013 plate once I get some writing obligations out of the way--but I know enough to enjoy this story.

My favorite part? When--instead of backing off--Gobo brought it right to Red.

Thanks for sharing!

Ru
 

Hubert

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I like this. I like this a lot. I think you did a wonderful job with Gobo and Red and the chemistry between the two friends/enemies. This really kept my interest throughout. I can almost see this as an episode of the show, it has such a nice feel to it, with a moral lesson thrown in. :excited::smirk:

My only nitpick, if any, would be that it felt like the first part with the hair tangling and the hair cutting was a little bit rushed. That's probably only just me, but it felt like it could have been fleshed out a bit more.

Now...mind if I pinpoint some specific things that I absolutely loved in this?

She pursed her lips. “What…did you call me?”
I'll give you a standing ovation for this part. I love this part. It's simple, yet perfect. First, she PURSES her lips. She doesn't tighten her lips, she doesn't do anything else with her lips, but she purses her lips. It just shows this sense of frustration. Right there, even before Red talks, we can see exactly what Red is feeling.

And then, you put this perfect line after. You orchestrate it so well that I really can just feel this line happening, I can see it happening. I can pick up the exact tone that she says it is not only because of the pursing but also because of Red's reactions within the show. You add in a pause, which I'm normally not a fan of using in fics, but you use it perfectly, to really show the exact manner of speech, without even using an adverb. It's great.

“Sigh…it was just tag, and she just came up with the brilliant idea of running where it’s ridiculously hard to run in the first place. Probably figured I’d never be able to catch her there.”

“Wow! That is brilliant, Gobo!” Wembley chirped. Boober, now collected, caught Wembley’s napkin mid-fan and nodded a thanks to his friend. Wembley beamed back at him.

“No, Wembley,” Gobo corrected. “It was not brilliant. It was really, really stupid.”

“Oh, gee…yeah, it was pretty stupid,” Wembley agreed.
Perfect depiction of Wembley here. Accidentally disagrees with Gobo, and then when Gobo corrects him, he changes it. Just shows the amount of impression that the other characters have on Wembley, and truly shows his character. :coy:

And on the note of Wembley, I love all of his lines in this.

Red settled a bit and fought a smile. “Well…least I’m not ugly as Lanford,” Red snorted. The plant sneered at her from its pot.
I love Lanford's presence throughout this whole story. You always have him there in the background, and really showcase he and Red's continual "battle." I especially love this line. Once again, perfect thing to put in Red's mouth at the moment. I can see it, hear it, feel it.

And also, I love your inclusion of my favorite minor Fraggle Large Marvin.

Would love to see more fics from you in the future. :smile: (And this sudden outburst of Fraggle fics is making me want to go write one :stick_out_tongue:)
 

Slackbot

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Now this was a fun fic! I could see this happening--and, being the left-brained person I am, figured they'd have to make at least one, if not two, custom Red puppets for this story, one with the hair tangled in branches and one with short hair. Or if the pigtails are detachable, one custom with two "wigs."

I like how you have not ignored any of the Fraggle Five. They may not all be in the spotlight, but they're still present and being themselves. Although I can't figure out how Boober consented to join a pickle-balancing contest in the first place. Maybe there's a story in that, eh?

This story is missing one thing, though, and it's a pretty glaring, painful omission. It's missing art. I know you can draw, so what's Red look like with her hair cut short? Is it standing out like a normal Fraggle puffball, or is it hanging down? Don't hold out on me now!

In closing, thanks for posting this, and I look forward to reading more from you.
 

Twisted Tails

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I have been reading this story a few times and I love it. I know Red & Gobo had the spotlight, but having Boober, Wembley, and Mokey in this story made me smile a lot.

Boober took a great exhale, and then he collapsed lightly into Mokey’s arms.

“There, there, Boober,” she sighed. Wembley tried fanning him frantically with a napkin by their lunches, and Mokey turned to Gobo. “We were all just expecting a quiet afternoon after you and Red had your game. How did you end up in Barebranch Tunnel?”
What a great description you did for Boober's reaction when things got that bad between Gobo & Red.

“Wow! That is brilliant, Gobo!” Wembley chirped. Boober, now collected, caught Wembley’s napkin mid-fan and nodded a thanks to his friend. Wembley beamed back at him.

“No, Wembley,” Gobo corrected. “It was not brilliant. It was really, really stupid.”

“Oh, gee…yeah, it was pretty stupid,” Wembley agreed.
That is SO Wembley and Gobo! You nailed the Fraggles perfectly, Plaid.


“Oh, it’s okay,” Boober told her. “Everyone appreciates a nice game of tag out of absolutely nowhere and a good old-fashioned ego clash over a nice, warm rutabaga pie, I understand. It makes all the sense in the world.”
You are sooo good at writing Boober.

Thank you for reading it, friend :excited:
Well Plaid, like I said, I read it and it was a great fanfic. You should keep writing and I will keep reviewing.
Until then, weeba weeba and have a good Fragglish day... or it could be a good rest of the day.
 
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