#implacableterriblemen

[thetoadwholivedalone]

Bring me some plantains, brother

WOULD YOU RATHER:

a) No longer have to (or be able to) pay for any food, clothing, prescription medicines or household consumables, but in order to acquire them you'd have to ask the air and then Hulk Hogan would come lumbering into wherever you were, mustache-first, eyes bulging, glistening with sweat and not speaking a word, and arduously, with a lot of roars and heavy breathing, poop it out. It would come out dry and for all intents and purposes clean, although if it was an individual item over $20 it would come out in a moist pink membrane that you'd have to take apart with your bare hands. The things would vanish after 24 hours, and they would be useless to anyone who didn't witness them come out of the Hulkster's butt. If you attempt to apologize or explain he beats you up.

OR

b) Live in a world where at the end of every rain dollar bills of various sizes and your favorite food served the way you like it come fluttering gently down from the sky, the Republicans continue to exist but their attempts to affect public policy and federal law never last for more than a day before it fizzles, and every time you go outside you're guaranteed to see at least one instance of an interspecies animal friendship. BUT. You are married, forever, to Donovan and Matthilde.

Donovan is a 29-year-old white dude with a beard and a bun who grew up in Menlo Park but talks with a fake cowboy accent and dialect. Matthilde is a 22-year-old who grew up in Portland but decided she wanted to have an Icelandic accent. She wears nothing but flowy dresses that are basically giant loose tank-tops/pillowcases with arm-and-head-holes adorned with birds or flowers. She dropped out of art school when a teacher tried to encourage her to draw or paint things that weren't birds or flowers, and while hitch-hiking through Humboldt she met Donovan, who was touring the coast with his guitar, crashing parties to explain feminism to college freshman women, and it was love at first sight.

They have a band which has gone through many incarnations and been retitled with many different Thomas Pynchon quotes- the two of them have remained the only constants, with their egocentrism and inability to handle criticism constantly alienating different bassists, drummers, accordionists, etc. Donovan writes the dumb, faux-philosophical lyrics; Matthilde mostly takes some molly and then dances along with her eyes closed, sometimes uncoordinatedly banging a tambourine, and maybe once an album she sings a song. Your parents love their music, and it's pretty much all they want to talk about when you see them. Their surprising wealth of fans (which keeps them financially afloat, so they never have to work) views you as a parasite and regularly send you e-mails disparaging your looks and your perceived lack of worth.

In conversations Donovan gets huffy when accused of being privileged, and regularly rants about how being an artist and a dreamer is harder than being POC or queer or trans because there're no parades or hashtag movements for people like him. Matthilde eerily echoes his various talking points. If you try to argue or debate with them about anything Donovan reacts as if you're frothing at the mouth and constantly tells you to calm down, whereas Matthilde just gives you a condescending smile and then boops you on the nose or pats your hair.

They will never have sex with you without your consent, but if you try to so much as kiss anyone else you will be pulled away, like a disinvited True Blood vampire, and the only sex they'll have with you is Handmaid's Tale-style while Donovan whispers his lyrics in your ear as poetry.

They smell, at all times, like old, cold TV dinner curry.

[thetoadwholivedalone]

Sic Itur Ad Astra

WOULD YOU RATHER:

1) Have a team of space explorers remotely (via skype) at your command- you cannot go into space and they can never come to earth- who regularly send you beautiful and thoughtful but functionally useless gifts. Kalan-Xyr, their commander, frequently accidentally calls you "mom"/"dad". But the only way to financially support yourself is by working as a telemarketer for a broom company. Most of the people you call are senile. You share a cubicle with Curtis Washerman, who constantly eats makeshift casseroles of Cheese Whiz, hardboiled eggs and diced Slim Jims. He bonds with customers over the phone through bigotry- his favorite words are "cuck" and "beta"- and whenever he makes a sale he does a dance routine to "Here I Go Again", most of which is making karate moves in your direction while he glares at you. He will never leave or die.

2) Each day a team of 4-5 horses of various sizes, colors and breeds silently attend to you, carrying out any of the following tasks (and naught beside) on your behalf: filling out financial forms, playing the piano, feeding dwarf hamsters, and preparing cold half-sandwiches. They are never the same horses. In their idle moments they give you a look of vague disappointment. Every 15-30 days there will also be a mule with a bow-tie who can help you get dressed and deliver anything to your work that you forgot at home. Your friends and family will all talk about the horses in uncomfortable euphemisms and snide quips, the way people in mainstream 90s shows talked about homosexuality. Once a year an acquaintance who you'd rather not interact with will have a breakthrough where they give a heartfelt speech about how they've come to realize that the horses don't make you a bad person, just an inferior one, and then one of your other friends, touched by their compassion, will start dating them and eventually marry them.

[thetoadwholivedalone]

Mutability and Eternity

WOULD YOU RATHER:

-have the ability to shapeshift into any nonhuman form, but everyone in the world becomes an obsessive Limp Bizkit fan, even birdsongs sound like their music, and within twenty years a dystopian Durst-governed world-state takes power OR

-be impervious to age and disease, and be able to share that with up to three people and two animals of your choice, but whenever you're physically intimate with someone an indestructible, inescapable apparition of Ted Cruz manifests to stare at you and grin, unspeaking (although if it goes on long enough he starts to emit a febrile, whimpering giggle), close enough that you can feel his wet, hammy breath on your face. The others you have gifted immortality also share the Cruz visions when they are intimate with anyone.