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Cquote1

Candace: "So Carly...What Are You in For?"

Carly: "Actually, I was hoping someone could tell me. But...no news, the mugshot wasn't even clear, nobody has come looking for me yet..."

Janet: "What are you, Ermac? A glitch in the universe based on a confusion with someone else?"

Carly: "Maybe. Got a better theory?"

Cquote2


Camelorum Adventures is a sit-com series being proposed as a possible TV show, but also a set of piece-mail comic strips hosted on DeviantArt, drawn by the user BulldozerIvan. It is an adaptation of The Tale of Emily Barnes and the Two Jens by Chad "Prodigal-Gamer" Patterson. The original art for the short story consisted of Chad's commissions to Hungarian artist Karina MacGill and Romanian artist / glazier Irina "AnirBrokenear" Anghel. Due to lack of communication amongst artists initially, Negative Continuity was everywhere. Not all artists could agree on what counted as canon or what didn't.

When BulldozerIvan agreed to make his own version of the series for the team on DeviantArt, primarily utilizing The Sims 4 as a machinomic art base for concept panels, he merged the characters and settings with his own Grillitan Diner and Trapezoid Kids premises to form the Dromedeverse, a universe within the greater Dozerfleet Megaverse family of continuities. This would later result in a crossover with Cagegirl by Hungarian artist Adam-00.

The basic premise of it is a comedy series based in a co-ed prison (though it's population is mostly female.) While rumored to have the capacity to hold up to 250 inmates, the central focus is on a handful of the most popular entries who are regularly put on a chain gang - as well as the bizarre and sometimes outright supernatural misadventures they find themselves on while doing community service.

These central characters are mostly in for "being criminally clumsy," though not outright malicious. In spite being in a prison, the 20-something regulars tend to behave like (very culture-savvy) high school students. While serving their time and plotting their futures, they also seek to discover why reality appears to be unraveling all around them - and do something about it. A few of them inadvertently get turned into superheroes as the series progresses, battling both quasi-serious villains and some outright comedic ones while the nature of their very existence is constantly scrutinized.

Initially, the series revolved around two girls named Jenny Jane and Jenny Kay, who were in for destroying a fountain in a drunk driving incident. Chad's own secondary characters of Samantha Garner and Emily Barnes quickly became Breakout Characters on DeviantArt, with numerous other artists taking a particular interest in their interpretations of Emily. As this made its way to BulldozerIvan, the need to find comedic-cartoon-slapstick-theme-appropriate explanations for how the various characters became involved at Camelorum Correctional led to several backstories that introduced an ever-growing cast. Some of them based on a simple joke, others being shout-outs or obvious parody/homages to other works. Each of them has their own shtick/agenda, often colliding, leading to increasingly convoluted situations.

Basic premise[]

After the evil Xomian alien Xiboruty gets involved at Purview Labs near Dromedary Heights in Delaware, a lot of weird things begin happening. These are further complicated when a bizarre energy wave dubbed the "Percolation Wave" begins randomly causing an increasing number of universes to have crossover events. Various incursions, dubbed "Percolations," both invade the Dromedeverse and get abducted from the Dromedeverse to invade other worlds.

After this and "Xomification" lead to a man becoming a comedic demigod calling himself the "Master of Offscreen Dark Matter" (M.O.D.M.) upon becoming a Reality Warper - but at the expense of not being able to stay in one universe for any real length of time - MODM's rich uncle Stan Woudean vows to find a way to save him. This gets muddied when a need to save other Xomifieds - and find a way to study them and understand them better amidst a legal system terrified of them and obsessed with locking them up - results in Stan becoming a prison warden. He uses the position to his advantage to gather as many anomalies as he can, and study them. He makes sure to lobby for them to get "reasonable" sentences for their "crimes," and keeps most of their labor limited to very simple community service assignments. (Letting the especially empowered/dangerous ones sometimes become mercenaries.)

This scheme comes to a head in the early spring of 2016, when several new mishaps lead to him acquiring a slew of new crazy inmates and Hilarity Ensues. As actual villains start popping up left and right, Stan allows some of his prisoners to become mercenary superheroes to help the city fight back. He also finds ways to take their strange talents and render them beneficial, while also teaching them control and addressing their deepest concerns. In addition to lobbying for their rights while also keeping them prisoner, Stan must lobby for the right of his own institution to exist - in spite numerous entities questioning its right to do so given the comedic mishaps that have occurred there (and the prison's being a Weirdness Magnet for things from Another Dimension way too often.) This is so that those inmates he needs don't get sent to meaner, duller, (more realistic) prisons.

An additional subplot is introduced early on, as a young woman named Carly Rancine finds herself a Reality Warper with no control over her powers whatsoever. After nearly destroying the city one evening by accident, she is sentenced to Camelorum (by a judge she turns into a giant flamingo.) She spends the rest of the series finding love, learning to be a hero, and trying to solve the mystery of her origins after (almost) all evidence of her ever previously existing has been completely erased somehow.

Meanwhile, Candace "Lemon Witch" Mason (in for accidentally turning a security guard into a lime when he attacked a friend of hers) is scheming to rescue her father from the evil aliens and expose Purview Labs, and is using the situation she is in to further her own goals. In spite this, she does form genuine friendships with others inside Camelorum. (Even though she only lobbied to get sent there instead of any other jail they were about to send her to because she wanted to follow a lead that Bonny "Gummibabe" Boggidy (who killed a poodle) might have dirt on Purview Labs.)

Emily "Semaphore" Barnes (in for fleeing the scene of a crime and being drunk in public) develops precognitive color-changing hair, with patterns that only make sense when she is wearing gloves (and early on, her hair color changes randomly, and at times for seemingly no reason.) Whatever she wears on her head changes color with her hair. She starts out as the scared new girl; but is quickly accepted by the others and becomes a hero in her own right.

As if this didn't make things complicated enough, Stan is asked to take four giant iguanas into custody - after they fail to stop a man dressed as a spatula from knocking a building over and framing a news reporter for it. And a sea monster eats three members of a five-man band of private detectives. And two of them are taken in on drug charges. And the sea monster now thinks Stan's prisoners taste delicious. And an Asian supervillain (and her new accomplice) have just been sent to Camelorum. Along with a girl that can blow up ferrets by being within 200 yards of them, a girl that seems to magically cause planes to crash just by flying over her head, a human bouncing ball, a talking pig, a talking bear from Another Dimension, and a teenager condemned for manslaughter arriving from another dimension and getting turned into a bullfrog! All in a day's work?

The series premise has been (some would argue, unfairly) compared to the premise of Superjail - in spite a much more sympathetic cast and much more reliance on surrealism, puns, and slapstick as opposed to grotesque humor. Some have also referred to it as "the almost-G-rated Suicide Squad."

Tropes[]

Tropes used in Camelorum Adventures include:


  • Alice Allusion: "How Do You Like Me Now (Cheshire Pig Edition)" implies that the Cheshire Cat, which somehow became a pig, can't tell the difference between Carly and Alice. How much of his words to Carly were meant for Alice or were true of Carly, are unknown.
  • Alternative Character Interpretation / Depending on the Writer / Depending on the Artist: Everyone. But Emily Barnes is a frequent subject of this. Carly, Annie, and a few other female inmates exist in the Dozefleet panels largely due to a lack of communication among other artists regarding which character Emily was, and what she looked like. Depending on who is running the panels, Emily is either a blonde or a brunette. She is either brutally mistreated by staff, or allowed to slack off to a completely unrealistic degree. She's either a hardcore, tall, 30's-something criminal with a heart of ice, or a short, immature, early 20-something with more bad luck than anything else and otherwise completely sweet. Her periodically-shifting hair color is acknowledged, though most of the other changes are disputed.
    • No two artists or forms of media can agree on Candace's age either. Nor on exactly what the uniforms at Camelorum look like. Depending on who's making the panels and in what medium, the inmates can be wearing classic Institutional Apparel or a modern variant, striped or none. Simple orange with tag numbers are most common in Dozerfleet panels, which use The Sims 4 to render most screenshots.
  • And That's Terrible: Taken to the alcoholic equivalent of Slut Shaming extremes, with Come to Gawk being frequently invoked in Irina's panels. Subverted in the Dozerfleet panels, as the girls are more interested in surviving the latest incursion of the surreal into their everyday routine than worrying about public opinion. And public opinion tends to sway in their favor the more times they are allowed opportunities to be heroes. After the Camelry are formed to fight Xiboruty, some of the convicts even become celebrities - with fans cheering and lobbying for them to receive an early release.
  • Avengers Assemble: Lightning Hobo recruiting Jackie "Laney the Laughable" Regg from the circus, followed by Candace "Lemon Witch" Mason, Barry "Ion Boy" Navoz, and Janet "the Glob" Joblin.
    • Carly "Maddening Rod" Rancine, Emily "Sempahore" Barnes, and Bonny "Gummibabe" Boggidy get to join later, to stop the Rampage of Utkitroll.
  • Author Appeal: Jenny Kay was based on Chad's wife in real life, Jenny.
    • Emily was made blonde in the Dozerfleet panels by BulldozerIvan largely in honor of the artist's deceased real-life ex-girlfriend, who was naturally a blond (but frequently dyed her hair other colors) and who also had some legal troubles in her life. That same artist also knew a woman named Carly around the same time period, and crushed on her heavily when they were in high school together one year. Hence, Carly Rancine bears a striking resemblance to the real-life Carly. (And even has the real-life Carly's teenage angst and cynicism.)
  • Badbutt: Most of Carly's swearing is heavily censored, and characters in the Dozerfleet panels are rarely allowed to do anything realistically violent or bloody. The Judo Iguanas, of course, combine this with Totally Radical.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Candace is totally outgoing and friendly...until you do something that frightens or annoys her. Then, the "witch" part of her "Lemon Witch" nickname shines through. And you're (grape jelly on) toast!
  • Black and Gray Morality: A band full of convicted criminals (some of them innocent, but most of them not) are the main protagonists, the majority of which are trying to earn their freedom while protecting their town from various creatures and supernatural phenomena that are much more dangerous and evil than themselves.
  • Breakout Character: The premise was originally about Jenny Jane and Jenny Kay. Emily and Sam were the first breakout characters to begin stealing the spotlight. Then came Katrina and Melinda. Then came Barry "Ion Boy" Navoz, and Lightning Hobo. Then came Laney the Laughable. Carly was intentionally supposed to be this. However, Candace "Lemon Witch" Mason has by far become the most popular Dozerfleet contribution. Emily remains the most overall-popular character elsewhere.
  • Captain Ersatz: Many, many, many of them!
    • Lightning Hobo is inspired by Hobo with a Shotgun, but made PG-friendly and with lightning.
    • Laney the Laughable is basically a reimagined Harley Quinn; except she becomes a clown to escape a life of crime.
    • Barry becomes "Ion Boy," in reference to Ukinojoe's Irod Bad 2 video where Iron Man misspells his name as "Ion Man" on a tax return paper.
    • The 20s Altered Judo Iguanas are...well, you know.
      • Wycliffe ≈ Leonardo, Huss ≈ Donatello, Calvin ≈ Raphael, Zwingli ≈ Michelangelo.
      • That includes June O'Reilly, Shrapnel, Spatula, Beat-Drop, and Eurodance.
    • Beatrice and Luin are essentially Pinky and The Brain, reimagined as human female convicts.
    • Janet goes by "the Glob" or "Globule," but is based on Marvel's Blob.
    • Lemon Witch is named after Scarlet Witch, but has a more-limited and more-specific set of powers.
    • The Flooby Don't Gang barely even hides what they are.
  • Chaotic Evil / Chaotic Stupid: Most of the truly villainous villains and convicts are this; but the Mauve Puma takes the cake when he murders Phil Funzel for no discernible reason whatsoever. He also likes to drop pianos on everyone.
    • Rita Rigatoni embodies Chaotic Stupid. Like the time she snuck up behind Bethany and superglued a carousel crown to her head. Nobody knows how "Twisted Noodle" even manages to find these things!
  • Disneyfication: The Dozerfleet takes on Camelorum Adventures are essentially this, erasing most if not all of the implied rape humor, X-rated torture themes, and other deviant things in usual DeviantArt artist depictions with Lighter and Softer slapstick, puns, pop culture gags, music numbers, and cartoon silliness. Even the chain gang work is airbrushed to make the guards less (intentionally) cruel (and more clueless).
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Regardless of all the murder, kidnapping, and other forms of mayhem that Xiboruty admits to, he claims his saving grace is that he's not Planned Parenthood, and would never sell his victims' organs for profit.
  • Evil, Inc.: Purview Labs is accused of being this, especially due to creating Beat-Drop and Eurodance.
  • Flanderization: Inverted with Carly, who has mellowed a bit since her introduction. Played straight with Candace, who goes from an awkward and shy high school grad whose favorite food is kangaroo jerky and who has only recently learned she is the Lemon Witch; to becoming totally obsessed with fruits and cracking jokes about it all the time, getting completely lost in her new identity. Emily's hair color discrepancies were merely seen as a strange coincidence. Now, her hair magically changes color on a regular basis, but to communicate some message nobody can understand.
  • Girls Behind Bars: Much like with Sodality, the expected Prison Rape, Prison Riot, and similar tropes are surprisingly toned-down or absent entirely. Even though Camelorum is co-ed, there are very few men kept there. Though, they are able to interact freely with female prisoners. Weirdly enough, Camelorum is still one of the most G-rated prisons this side of...much of anything in that genre, typically being even less violent than the SCALLOP prisons in Sodality. The girls do still bicker about things though, but usually prefer to fight with words rather than fists to see who can out-wit the other.
  • Gosh Dang It to Heck: Swearing is rare, and it's usually censored this way.
    • Carly (toward Xiboruty): "Featherplucker!"
    • Carly (toward Cheshire Pig): "Oh, pork off!"
    • Carly: "Freaking frog snakes alive!"
    • Katrina: "You pastel!"
    • To be fair, Carly does get to refer to the Cheshire Pig as an "assclown." He also comments back on how Alice "made the flowers pissy."
  • I Hate You, Vampire Dad: Xiboruty gave most of the Camelry their powers. By sucking on their faces. Those powers have done much to ruin their lives. When seeing what Xiboruty is doing - and that he failed to install proper mind control presets in them, the Camelry understandably rebels and makes it their goal to undo the menace.
  • Insane Troll Logic: Any time the Cheshire Pig tries to explain himself, there's a chance this will happen.
  • Institutional Apparel: Prisoners usually wear orange suits everywhere, complete with ID numbers - some of which are actually Product Placement, so Camelorum has an additional way to pay its bills.
    • Katrina's numbers, spelled out with the numbers converted to letters, read: Taco Bell, LM (Live Mas)
    • Melinda's numbers, spelled out, are 877-Cash Now.
    • Candace's number is the phone number for the Slap-Chop.
  • Intercontinuity Crossover: Naturally a result of multiple artists being involved, and wanting to pepper it with their own work.
    • In the Dozerfleet panels, the Percolation event that copies most of the Dozerfleet Megaverse to the world of Marvel Avengers Alliance also creates copies of some Earth-G7.2.1 characters in the world of Camelorum Adventures. This allows for Emily Barnes to meet Emily Cormier, in what can best be described as a "very awkward exchange."
    • Zoe and Jessie Jain are Ragadabah OCs that tend to get percolated a lot, so that there's a version of them theoretically capable of existing in nearly every cartoon universe. The former is a dimension-hopping bounty hunter, while the latter is an art thief that just seems to always exist in some form or another somewhere.
    • There is a quasi-canon crossover with Adam-00's Cagegirl in the episode "Cagegiggles." Which affects Camelorum events, including in the "Percolation Warriors" saga, but the events of which are never referenced even one time in Adam-00's proper Cagegirl materials. Xira and Suncore help out the Percolation Warriors briefly, but are quickly sent home after one episode. (To limit copyright strain.)
    • A parody of RWBY is planned.
    • Anna Ford is cloned and turned into a frog at the end of "17 and Amphibious, Part 2." The 2-part "17 and Amphibious" episode involves Candace being sent to stop Rita, who has invaded the world of a graphic novel being read by Melody Trank called Teen in Terror Life. It is a blatant parody / knock-off of 17 & Life, the graphic novel counterpart to The Asylum's Jailbait.
      • After the clone is turned into a frog, her chances of merging with the original are vanquished. It's assumed the rest of the timeline in Teen and Terror Life resets itself to resemble what it is a parody of. The frog gets a job as Stan's new secretary.
  • I Take Offense to That Last One: Several times, but especially notable in "Scripting 101: Don't Eat Your Friends."

    Cameraman: "Come to think of it, why do we want the Lemon Witch endorsing our message?"
    Commercial director: "She's a nutritionist!"
    Cameraman: "Maybe we could dress her up so she doesn't look like a hardened felon?"
    Candace: "Objection! I'm not hardened!!!"

  • Kangaroo Court: It doesn't take a whole lot to get convicted by the court in Dromedary Heights.
  • The Men in Black: Jenny Jane and Jenny Kay briefly become parodies of this: The Jen in Black, to help the Camelry fight Xiboruty. Mostly by stealing some uniforms and some of Xiboruty's own weapons and then using them against him when he least expects them to.
  • Motive Decay: Tobey used to have some very specific reason for targeting one specific toilet at one specific resort to pop out of and eat his victims. Over time, he just pops out of any body of water and eats anyone he pleases, for equally unexplained reasons. Given the intervals between meals, it seems likely he doesn't need to eat human flesh. So his motives are never very clear to begin with.
  • Mushroom Samba: One possible interpretation of what happens to Carly after Rita poisons her food and the Cheshire Pig appears.
  • Non-Ironic Clown: Laney the Laughable, a discount Harley Quinn but heroic in nature. She's actually Jackie, who escaped from Camelorum because she was tired of being treated like a slave. After joining the circus, she reinvented herself to the point that nobody recognized her as Jackie.
  • The Rival: Several. Luin and Spatula are particular examples.
  • Satire, Parody, Pastiche: Everywhere. Not even Alf is spared, as he is parodied as "Belf" (Bear-like Extraterrestrial Life Form.)
  • Shout-Out: Enough to make a separate page out of it.
  • Story Arc: Several intertwine, but the most obvious ones are Carly's quest to control her powers and learn who she really is; as well as Candace's quest to prove that she can be a true hero - and rescue her father from wherever Xiboruty took him. The warden has to justify his facility's bizarre decisions to the mayor frequently, while balancing wanting to be a father-figure to the inmates with being a "proper" warden. Luin has to overcome her daddy issues, and discover a path in life that makes her happy regardless of whether or not she can ever achieve world domination. Barry learns to be a more-graceful and more-confident version of himself, able to assert himself better and stand up to The Gnat. Most of the others merely focus on how to survive their sentences.
  • Stop Helping Me!: The Worcestershire Pig tries to be helpful to everyone, but is oftentimes a complete failure at offering useful advice.
  • So What Do We Do Now?: Being at Camelorum has so radically altered Carly, Emily, and the two Jens, that they have a difficult time figuring out what they want to do with their lives once out.
  • Status Quo Is God: Most efforts by Carly to solve the mystery of her origin will get frustrated before the end. Any effort by Luin to keep a refrigerator in her cell will end in failure/disaster. No matter how many times the Camelry save the day, most of them will end up back in prison and not pardoned by authorities, regardless how popular they get. Similarly, the Judo Iguanas will never get the respect they deserve outside of Camelorum's walls.
  • Teenage Mutant Samurai Wombats: The 20s Altered Judo Iguanas, who even have their own theme song.
    • Wycliffe in brown leads, Huss in gray knows logistics. Calvin (in yellow) is skeptical but cool; Zwingli in white acts like a total fool.
    • They are Weirdos Having Long-Tails. Tongue-flick Power.
    • Calzones!!!
    • Their mentor is named Shrapnel, and he's a cockatoo. Their arch-enemy is the Spatula, along with minions Beat-Drop and Eurodance.
    • Their befriending of June O'Reilly only gets her in constant trouble.
  • Throw the Dog a Bone: Defied and played for sadistic laughs in the Cheshire Pig's Tobey Keith parody:

    The dog's thrown no bone, you can never go home! And I'm glad to hear that you're appalled!

    • In other words, he refuses to give Carly/Alice a single thread of good news, and will be a dick to her no matter what.
    • Played straight with Candace, who gets to move to Georgia and run a peach tree farm when her sentence is up. And work as a nutritionist at a local college health center.
    • Remains to be seen if Carly and Emily will get this from anyone, ever.
  • The Power of Rock: MODM is especially fond of using song and dance numbers to hypnotize and distract adversaries.
  • Wardens Are Evil: Stan defies this trope at every turn. He wavers amongst being a Reasonable Authority Figure, The Wonka, and a Clueless Boss, mind you; but he is never more than slightly underhanded. He takes pains not to be cruel to the inmates, not even Rita (the button pusher). The 2nd floor powered ones that are well-behaved, he even treats as friends (but within reason.)
    • Played straight with Theodore Leenvie of the rival Llamalorum Correctional, which is a Hellhole Prison rather than a slapsticky madhouse.
    • Also contrasted with the staff at Alpacalorum Asylum, which is run by Beleaguered Assistants.
    • And Moscarum, which only uses its inmates for the prison sports league and doesn't care about them otherwise.
  • The Wonderland: Camelorum Correctional inmates and staff tend to see things happen in and around their facility that make little sense any place else, and barely even make sense there.
  • Where the Hell Is Springfield?: In the Dozerfleet panels, Dromedary Heights is explicitly in Delaware. However, other artists have depicted the inmates in various other states, from Alabama to Florida - with an emphasis on southern states. One artist even outright depicted Emily as having initially wound up in the Floyd County Jail. Because of this, Emily is stated in the series to have been born in Floyd, Virginia. However, it was later revealed that there is a Floyd County in Kentucky that Chad intended to be the reference - based on some friends of his in the medical field who had unfortunately found themselves in the Floyd County Jail in Kentucky (for very minor offenses.) The cartoon Emily is still relocated to Virginia in adaptation, and then sent away to Delaware after her debut episode to join the main cast.
  • Will They or Won't They?: Barry Navoz has a crush on Carly. She seems hesitant about returning her affections, as she is too busy most of the time being bitter with the whole world about her predicament. By the second season, she warms up to Barry.
    • However, Barry nearly embarrasses himself by trying to ask Carly out too soon - which leads to Candace turning him into a horseradish for five hours to protect him from the pain of rejection. (He eventually forgives her.)
  • Working on the Chain Gang: Literal in most artist pieces, though the Dozerfleet panels subvert this heavily by turning the inmates into guinea pigs for various mental/social experiments - rather than torturing them physically with grueling hard labor. When they do get community service, they are often seen on a "tether gang" instead, using S'Poling technology in case they get abducted. (And there are lots of parties that want to abduct them!)
  • Working Title: Was formerly known as The Dramedy Sour Power Hour.

External links[]

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