Tag: #GastontheIncredible

The Rise & Fall of Gaston the Incredible: Part Four

A War in Pantoland

After the election Gaston and Barry Bollywood took their bromance to the next level. They went everywhere and did everything together. Gaston still hadn’t delivered the free toothbrushes he had promised, but Bollywood was sure he’d just forgotten.

During the bad medicine years Gaston had printed hundreds of billions of dollars to fund various ideological indulgences, and Barry Bollywood’s Diet Soviet Party had rubber stamped all of them in return for being allowed to pretend that he was also emperor.

Gaston had awarded his friends the contract to manufacture the lollipops given to children after their government injections. The original cost for this project was estimated at $230 million, but after a year the cost had ballooned to $1.7 billion, and they still hadn’t decided on any flavours. It was the same story repeated across every Royal government department, and the amount of money being spent by the emperor was now larger than anything the people of Peopleland had ever seen before.

Gaston and his Laurentian nobility were getting very rich. However, all of this money printing had caused a strange new phenomenon that neither Gaston nor Barry Bollywood had ever encountered before, called ‘Inflation’. The price of everything had started rising and neither of them could explain why.

Some elder advisors tried to explain that expanding the money supply had led to this thing called Inflation, but Gaston would hear none of it. He argued that because the things he did with the money were good, nothing bad could happen and so he had them thrown in jail as heretics.

However, the higher food prices rose, the louder the people complained; and the worse the suffering got, the more it looked like there was something wrong with Gaston’s magic. 

Gaston & Bollywood decided to take a tour of the country together to see what all the fuss was about. They rode on horseback through every town & village in the land accompanied by a caravan of circus performers to reassure the people of Gaston’s goodness.

The Official Circus Caravan for the 2023 Imperial National Tour

Gaston’s horse wasn’t actually a real horse, but a pantomime horse called Sophie played by two people who identified as horses. In Gaston’s new inclusively diverse Trans-Islamic Republic of Peopleland this was the same as a real horse, and saying otherwise would land you in prison with the people who believed in inflation.

Bollywood rode a golden horse called Rolex, which he was very proud of. It wasn’t really a golden horse; it was a pony that had been spray painted gold, but no one dared say anything. Royal state media pretended that both horses were real, and even suggested that both should be made Senators in the upcoming reshuffle.  

Every village they entered the people would emerge from their homes to hurl rotten vegetables and shout obscenities at Gaston & Bollywood. After one particularly awful reception, Bollywood announced that he had an idea.

 ‘I know’ He said… ‘Let’s blame the rising prices on the merchants in the market who sell the food. We can tell the people that it is their greed that is causing prices to rise.’ ‘Awesome idea!’ declared Gaston.

So with the help of the Royal state media, they declared that the rising costs were the fault of greedy merchants, not government spending at all. They hauled the merchants into the main square and held a humiliating public trial during which they were asked to explain why prices had risen. Of course, it was Gaston & Barry Bollywood who were robbing the people through money printing, but for some reason the majority of people were not able to understand this.

Meanwhile their neighbours to the south – the ones they’d chastised when they had elected Gaston as Emperor, had crowned a new king: King Donny the Tremendous.

King Donny had been king before, but had been exiled by the evil nobility of his country after a coup backed by the Reptile Club. Now, with the support of the people, he was back and he meant business.

Unlike Gaston, King Donny was no slight-of-hand magician borrowing from tomorrow to create illusions today – he could do real magic. He could create wealth just by breathing on markets; stop wars by simply talking, and bring down foreign governments just by staring at them. It also was rumoured that King Donny’s urine was 84% Ivermectine, and had been used to cure Trans kids.

The nobility who made money from wars and misery had tried to kill him many times, but failed. In short, King Donny was a proper king who had been tested by fire, and he certainly had no time for Gaston’s fart lighting tricks or fake magic.

King Donny surrounded himself with warriors and innovators. His chief minister was a Marvel scientist called Tony Tesla who had invented everything from crazy string to interplanetary timeshares.

King Donny & Tony Tesla set about bringing the now unpopular and weak rule of Gaston to a humane end for the sake of the suffering people of Peopleland. King Donny dedicated seven minutes a day staring at Gaston’s Trans-Islamic Republic of Peopleland silently mouthing the words ‘51st State’, whilst Tony Tesla pulled back the media curtain on the madness and cruelty of Gaston’s hermit kingdom for all the world to see.

The world was shocked at the perverse failure Peopleland had become under Gaston’s ten year reign. Peopleland should have been a rich country, but it had been materially and socially collapsed for the sake of Gaston’s utopian ideals, and now everyone could see it. Peopleland was broken, but instead of trying to fix it, Gaston now offered state assisted suicide to anyone who was unhappy or poor.

Barry Bollywood and members of the Gaston regime began to sense that the supreme leader was becoming a liability. He was now hated so much both inside and outside the country, that being associated with him was harmful. They tried to suggest that Gaston had achieved so many wonderful things that it might be time for him to consider ending his reign, but Gaston would hear none of it – there was still much work to do; he still hadn’t managed to fully impoverish the people, and there were still political enemies to destroy.

In an act of self-preservation, Barry Bollywood declared that he would no longer support the Gaston as leader, but true to his cynical nature, when offered the opportunity to remove him as emperor, declined to do so.

Eventually it was left to Gaston’s Royal ministers to replace him with a new Emperor, but when informed of this decision, he refused to attend meetings with them and instead began hiding in various rooms of the palace in an attempt to evade both them and his fate. Finally, after four days of upstairs-downstairs Benny Hill capers, they found him in the Royal wardrobe hiding in the dressing up box covered in boot polish, and softly sobbing his childhood favourite, Al Jolson’s ‘Mammy.’

The Rise & Fall of Gaston the Incredible: Part One

The People of Peopleland

For generations the people of Peopleland had been happy in their beautiful country. It was a peaceful country – crime was low, the standard of living was high, and they had everything they needed – lots of water, land and resources.

The people of Peopleland were sensible, very sensible and a little bit boring. They liked to keep themselves to themselves, but would be the first to help others if they were in need. Peopleland was a good country, everyone liked them and their societal model was the envy of every other nation.

The problem was that people of Peopleland had a deep-seated insecurity about their identity; they worried a lot about what other people thought of them. Their international reputation was the most important thing to them; they guarded it night and day and celebrated it at every opportunity, but this insecurity was about to get them into a lot of trouble.

They were ruled over by a grey man called Brian, ‘Brian the Boring’ as he was known, who came from a long line of leaders, all called Brian and all very boring. Brian was as sensible and boring as his name suggests – he had weepy eyes, grey Playmobile hair and dressed like a suburban realtor, but he was sensible with money and made sure Peopleland remained safe and stable.  

During the reign of Brian, the people came to believe that their society was so safe and stable that practically anyone could run it. They were also bored of being safe and grey; they wanted some excitement. They wanted a leader who reflected who they would like to be, not who their parents were.

The new leader of the opposition party was called Gaston Dubois – or ‘Gaston the Incredible’ as he was to become known; a good looking young man who spoke in a magical language and of new ideas like ‘inclusion’ and ‘diversity’. Plus he could also do cool tricks like walk on his hands and juggle jelly.

Gaston promised to make Peopleland better than good, he promised to make it awesome. He told the people that ‘diversity was strength’ and that under his rule it would become even more valuable than gold.

And so at the next election, in an attempt to make their country even better than good, the people decided to cast off their safe boring leader who could do maths, for someone who reflected their desire to be exciting and edgy.

Some voted for Gaston because he could do cool tricks, others because he was handsome and believed that having a good-looking young leader would improve their international reputation – it was mainly the women and gays who did this.

“Gaston is our leader!” they would shout over the fence at their neighbours to the south, which made them feel superior and gave them a warm glow inside. They had a leader that was young and handsome, and full of modern ideas – what more could a people want from a leader?  

Yet, despite his father, Pierre the Bastard also being leader, Gaston was not really qualified for the position and responsibilities that came with ruling a nation. Instead of studying economics at university and running his own business, Gaston had been to clown school in Montreal where he had taught kids how to light farts. Then upon graduating he was recruited by the Reptile Club based out of Davos, Switzerland to be part of their international travelling circus, Globo-Gimps.

In the early days of Gaston’s reign, the world media marvelled at this new brand of leader who looked and smelt good. He really did represent a new breed of leaders for a social media era – one based almost entirely on the dermis of a manicured image.

Gaston entertained the older more experienced world leaders at important summits with tricks he had picked up in circus school. He  challenged the elderly leader of Germany to a press-up competition, and the Communist Party Chairman of China to a game of ping pong.

At home the people loved it! The royal state press in Peopleland fawned over his every antic. State media loved Gaston and he loved them back – the more money he gave them, the more nice things they wrote and said about him.

‘Has there ever been a greater leader?’ they opined as they penned endorsement after endorsement at the awesomeness of not just Gaston, but the moral superiority of Peopleland over other less advanced nations who were still trapped in outdated ideas such as family, gender and God.

‘We are truly the greatest people who have ever lived’ they scribbled daily as Gaston increased their funding yet further.

Eventually, even Gaston started to believe all the great things he paid the royal media to say about him.

‘Am I beautiful?’ He would ask them, to which they would reply ‘Sire, a beauty more beguiling dare not exist… for you are the emperor of all goodness, and beauty lays a carpet of petals before you.’

If there was one thing that Gaston liked above all else it was to dress up. He loved to dress up so much, that when he visited a foreign country they would have to hide the dressing up box. ‘Bring me the dressing up box’ he would demand. ‘Is this your national dress?’

Then he would ‘bless’ & ‘honour’ his hosts by dressing up and dancing around in their national costume for his royal media back home. 

One of Gaston’s new ideas around this time was to replace People Day – the day when people came together to celebrate Peopleland – with Gay Day. He declared People Day ‘racist’ and Gay Day awesome.

He attended the first official Gay Day in the capital dressed in a tight fitting pink linen shirt, but got so carried away with all the excitement that he let go of the stroller carrying his children as he rushed to embrace a clutch of drag queens.

This act of letting go of his own children in order to embrace glorious degeneracy became such an iconic image of Gaston’s reign that he had a statue of the event built in the central square where the childless went to walk their dogs.

It also heralded the start of Gaston’s ‘Divine Ministry’ years, during which Gaston performed many secular miracles which defied all reason – he turned boys into girls, and girls into boys; he declared the religion of perpetual violence to be the religion of peace, and announced that Peopleland could spend as much money as they wanted to because… ‘the budget would balance itself.’

As time went on the miracles of public policy got more elaborate, complex and dangerous. He announced that the religion of perpetual violence and people who did not know if they were a boy or a girl would live harmoniously side by side in the utopia he was building – that they would tolerate and respect each other despite them being completely incompatible because they respected and loved him.

Gaston changed the word ‘mankind’ to ‘peoplekind’, and renamed Peopleland:

‘The Democratic Trans-Islamic Republic of Peopleland.’

The people marvelled at Gaston’s ability to perform such impossibilities. Not only was he an awesome leader, but he was also a magician who could cast spells that created alternate realities that existed outside of natural law, reason or precedent. These were the glory years – the peak of Gaston’s popularity and power. From here on in, the road that Gaston and his people would travel would become more congested.