theloreofmandy

[theloreofmandy]

@maxwellatoms This is a sequel to the Mother's Day-themed picture that I drew last month. Happy Father's Day! It's obvious by now who Mandy's true father seemingly is.

[theloreofmandy]

Where did curlines come from and how did they evolve?

@maxwellatoms Maybe you'll understand even better why Mandy wanted custody of the grim reaper, why she almost never smiles, why she hates humanity, why her hair is shaped like literal demon horns, why she often walks in the dark, and why she doesn't have nose.

About 40 million years ago, there the ancestor of the Carnivora family tree split into three distinctive groups… The Caniforms… The Feliforms… And the Calviforms. Of the three groups, the Calviforms were the least successful. Most of the Calivforms eventually went extinct, due to their hostile environments, fierce competition, and limited diets, being strictly carnivores.

However, there was one Calviform group that survived by adapting to a more omnivorous diet and began developing advanced ways of communicating through a series of barks, roars, and growls, much like the Pokémon Houndour, but far more complex. These were the ancestors of the curlines. Over a few more million years, mutations in their DNA caused the ancestors of these curlines to split into two distinct groups… The ones that kept their facial fur… And the ones who lost it. The former group most likely went extinct for unknown reasons, while the latter continued to evolve and thrive.

The ancestors of the furless-faced curlines historically had very strong senses of smell, but it weakened over time, due to them losing their rhinarium (wet nose). Instead of using a wet nose to help them detect scents, they developed tiny, specialized nostril hairs to do so. As a few more million years continue to pass, their elongated snouts begin to shrink in size. Nowadays, most curlines don't even have a visible snout, and only possess a tiny pair of nostrils as part of their visible olfactory system, giving them a noseless appearance.

The first proto-curlines had fairly sharp teeth, that further dulled and flattened as they began to consume more foliage, flowers, and citrus fruits as part of their diet. As a result of consuming fruits rich in Vitamin C, their bodies stopped producing it en masse. Today, curlines are the only animals under the Carnivora order that are completely unable to produce Vitamin C, much like humans. Their teeth are also very human-like in appearance, with their back molars being slightly more pointy and sharp and their fangs slightly longer. They also developed specialized thin lips around their mouths that mimic human lips for some odd reason as well.

The fur on top of the heads of curlines shaped like demon horns is also a bizarre phenomenon that developed as they evolved, giving them a devilish appearance. These "hair horns" were not present in their ancestors and may have developed or grew this way due to either diet, how they fought in combat, using headbutts, or a combination of the two. Scientists are still not 100% sure. They are not bony like deer or moose antlers and are instead part of a strange hair growth pattern. The "hair horns" are harder than the rest of the fur on their body, but can still be brushed down. However, this does not stop them from forming and growing back into that shape. Specialized keratin excreted from the tips of hair roots at the base of their skulls is how their head fur grows this way.

As curlines evolved, they became much more intelligent. Even smarter than most of the average humans. Humans saw these talking quadrupeds as a threat to their intelligence arms race, so they hired the grim reaper to kill hordes of them, keeping their populations small and in check. The earliest recorded instance of the sight of the grim reaper slaughtering curlines was around the first Crusades period. As the curline populations dwindled, they were forced to flee and build their own civilizations deep underground away from humanity. As the centuries passed, they developed technology that was seemingly far more advanced at the time at the dawn of the human Industrial Revolution. With this advanced technology, they slowed down the encounters with the grim reaper and only the stupidest curlines ended up getting slaughtered by him as a result.

Today, curlines are fully capable of mimicking human speech and walking on two legs, even though they very rarely do the latter. However, they are very bad at mimicking the emotion of human happiness. Most curlines are not able to emote happiness the way humans do, by smiling and laughing. However, despite most of them not able to smile properly or laugh, they do experience the emotion internally. A curline can smile, but almost none of them can laugh. This is why curlines are almost never seen smiling, as it isn't an emotion that they normally express. While most other super intelligent non-human species have successfully mastered smiling and laughing to the point where they do it all the time, curlines have not, with very few exceptions.

[theloreofmandy]

@maxwellatoms As Mandy puts it, sometimes you gotta be the someone or something you hate the absolute most in order to get your way. In this case, disguising yourself as a human if you're not already one, which 99.99% of internet posters are. (Unless, there are already a bunch of robots among us cleverly faking being humans, but we can't even detect them.)

[theloreofmandy]

@maxwellatoms

It wouldn't be a true Mother's Day, if we didn't see both Mandy's real mother and her fake one. And of course, since this is such a significant event where Claudia gets her daughter back from Claire, she's smiling!

[theloreofmandy]

What exactly are curlines?

@maxwellatoms Here's in-depth analysis of what curlines are.

Curlines are quadrupedal, sentient, sapient mammals with furless faces with no noses and small nostrils. They are from the order Carnivora under the suborder Calviformia. Calviforms have the distinctions from Caniforms and Feliforms for lacking a rhinarium (a wet nose).

The ancestors of the curlines used to have very pronounced snouts and visible noses. Their teeth were much sharper, but dulled over time and are now only somewhat sharper than a human's. Their shift from eating primarily meat to a more balanced omnivorous diet caused their teeth to become less sharp. Instead of taking a liking to eating fruit and vegetables, they took a liking to eating flowers.

Why does Mandy have a pink dress with a flower on it? It's not because she's a girly girl, it's because flowers are her favorite food! She eats them in secret in her bedroom when nobody is looking. She has also been a menace to General Skarr by stealing flowers from his garden. However, she's very smart when it comes to sneaking flowers out of his garden, so he doesn't know a thing! Billy is just as much as a culprit, obviously, but he hangs out in Skarr's garden for other reasons.

When a flower is offered to Mandy as anything but food, she will question it. Also, she prefers fresh flowers. Not ones that are wilting like the one Irwin tried to give her once.

Their iconic "hair horns" didn't initially exist. They developed over the course of evolution. There are no bones that shape the fur on their head to that shape. They have specialized keratin in their head fur, which allows the fur to grow that way. The head fur can be temporarily brushed to where a curline will lose its "hair horns", but it will always grow back in that shape regardless.

Because curlines are under the order Carnivora, they breed in litters, like most mammals under the order. Their litter size ranges from 2-5 puppies, but rarely goes beyond that number. Conversely, a curline having a single puppy is quite unusual as well. Their gestation period is also longer than most Carnivorans, being about 6 to 6 1/2 months long. As a result, curline puppies are born being able to open their eyes at birth, even though they're almost always closed.

Like many species of animals, curlines have distinct sex differences. The male curlines have larger, pointed ears like elves, while the female curlines have smaller, rounded ears. The males are slightly larger than the females.

The ancestor tree for curlines is quite interesting too. You can see over the course of tens of millions of years where scientists think curlines came from. There was data on a mutation that occurred where there was a group of curlines that kept their facial fur and a group of curlines that lost it. The fur-faced curlines died out and eventually went extinct. There is little-to-no information on fur-faced curlines, hence the question marks. There is also no clear evidence whether they truly went extinct or not either.

[theloreofmandy]

Curlines and smiling

@maxwellatoms Here's an in-depth analysis as to why curlines almost never smile.

Smiling is a very rare phenomenon that most curlines experience at least once in their lifetime. About half of them smile multiple times sporadically throughout their entire lives. It usually takes a very important or dramatic event for them to even crack the slightest of smiles.

A female curline by the name of Mandy has been observed smiling in video footage before. All of which was filmed when she was disguised as a little human girl. Most people have only watched a handful of the footage caught of her and never saw her smiling once. Obviously, this footage was from "Grim & Evil" and "The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy".

There was one occasion where someone edited existing footage as an homage to "2001: A Space Odyssey", where they made it look like her smiling for the very first time in her entire life broke the fabric of reality and put them in a completely different dimension reincarnated as completely different characters. This person obviously did not watch all of the footage of Mandy and assumed that she never smiled in her entire life before, even though she did.

A natural response to happiness for most curlines is a neutral look, with a wagging tail similar to a dog's, which is the equivalent of a human smile. While curlines have the facial muscles in their faces to smile, it generally takes quite a bit of effort to force one. There are curlines that do smile when they're happy such as Caleb, but it is pretty rare to find a curline who emotes happily like a human.

The first documented case of the curline named Mandy smiling was when she beat the grim reaper at a game of limbo. It was a very dramatic event that filled her with joy. This instance of her smiling was after the grim reaper's skull said, "I loathe you" to her as she was laying in bed reading a book.

Most people didn't watch the parts of the footage where Mandy smiled sporadically, hence why they claimed that she never actually smiles. The human boy named Billy that she hung out with almost never saw her smile and also claimed that she never did.

So all-in-all, not every intelligent creature expresses its joy through smiling or laughter. A curline smiling may not actually indicate happiness sometimes, as rare as it is. Much like a hyena laughing doesn't mean it's actually laughing or finds something funny. It's most likely expressing frustration or anger.

[theloreofmandy]

The reveal of Mandy's true parents

@maxwellatoms Here's one of my ideas of revealing Mandy's actual parents, while involving her fake parents. No AI was used and the idea may be subject to change.

(We see the silhouettes of two quadrupedal creatures running amongst a bunch of trees)

(They make it to Endsville and are seen slowly approaching Mandy's house)

(Cut to the inside of Mandy's house where we see her parents Phillip and Claire making out on the couch to some romantic music)

(All of a sudden, there are loud intermittent banging noises that startle the both of them)

(Phillip approaches the front door very slowly in fear as Claire stays seated on the couch)

Claire: I don't think you should be opening the door up this late at night, dear.

Phillip: Well, I don't think it's a robber. I think it might be a lost child or something.

(Phillip slowly opens the door to reveal two angry quadrupedal animals with no noses, furless faces and hair shaped like demon horns)

(They growl angrily at Phillip before proceeding to attack him)

Phillip: Claire! Run!

(Claire gets up off of the couch and starts running upstairs)

(The animal with the brown fur knocks Phillip down and pins him to the ground, then proceeds to slash him with his forepaws)

(The animal with yellow fur chases after Claire and follows her into the master bedroom)

???: Where is our daughter?!

Phillip: Daughter?! You can talk?!

???: Of course I can talk! Not all animals that walk and run on four legs are dumb, you know! Now, where is she?!

Phillip: I-I… Look, we don't have any animals in this house besides Saliva. Maybe you're looking for your son and not your daughter?

(The brown-furred animal angrily swats Phillip across the face with one of his forepaws)

???: Her name is Mandy!

Phillip (Gets angry): Mandy?! Hey, that's our daughter, not yours!

(The brown-furred animal roars in Phillip's face, gets off of him, then heads upstairs to look for Mandy)

(Cut to the inside of the master bedroom where Claire is being cornered by the yellow-furred animal)

Claire: P-p-please don't kill me!

???: Where is our daughter?!

Claire: Aah! You talk?! I must be hallucinating!

???: Where is she?!

Claire: I-I… I don't know!

???: Don't play dumb with me, human! I smell her scent all over here!

Claire: C-can you please me w-what her name is?

???: You already know, idiot! It's Mandy! Duh!

(The brown-furred animal shouts from the hall)

???: Claudia! I think I found her!

Claudia: What?!

???: Come here quickly!

(The yellow-furred animal revealed to be named Claudia quickly runs out of the master bedroom and heads out into the hallway towards the brown-furred animal standing at Mandy's bedroom door)

Claudia: Did you find her, Phineas?

(The brown-furred named Phineas animal sniffs at Mandy's bedroom door)

Phineas: Maybe. Her scent seems to be the strongest here. I'm gonna open this door.

Claudia: I highly doubt she's in there, love. She would've definitely came straight to the door by now after all the ruckus that just happened.

(Phineas sniffs the air again, exits Mandy's house, leaving Phillip and Claire traumatized, and looks over at Billy's house)

Phineas: Claudia! Get out here quickly!

(Claudia runs out of Mandy's house and meets up with Phillip)

Phineas: Mandy's scent is even stronger over this way. She has to be in that house for sure.

(Claudia sniffs the air, also looking towards Billy's house)

Claudia: I think you're right! I can definitely smell my little girl in there. What do we do now? I don't think we can just barge into another house again.

Phineas: We're not going to barge in, Claudia. We're both going to shout for Mandy at the top of our lungs. She'll definitely hear us for sure.

(Claudia's face becomes more determined)

Claudia: Okay. Let's do it!

(Claudia and Phineas run towards Billy's house and slowly approach the front door)

Phineas: On the count of three… One… Two… Three…

Phineas and Claudia: MANDY!!!

(Cut to inside of Billy's house, where Mandy is sleeping in his bed, and Billy is sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag)

(Mandy is immediately woken up, while Billy sleeps through it)

Mandy: Ugh! Did I just hear my name being called?

(Phineas and Claudia shout her name again coming from outside)

Phineas and Claudia: MANDY!!!

Mandy: Okay! Okay! I'm coming! Ugh!

(Mandy walks up to the front door and opens it with a very surprised look on her face)

Mandy: Mom?! Dad?! My actual mom and dad?! What the heck?!

(Claudia quickly proceeds to hug Mandy)

Claudia: Oh, Mandy! My little angel! You aren't hurt, are you?

Mandy: No. What are you two doing here? You were supposed to stay underground until--

(Sounds of Gladys angrily waking up interrupt Mandy's conversation with her actual parents)

Mandy: We all need to get out of here. Now!

(Mandy and her parents quickly run away from Billy's house into a surrounding forest)

(Cut to the forest)

Phineas: I will say, Mandy, you did a pretty good job convincing those humanfolk that you were one of them.

Mandy: Yeah, yeah. Whatever.

Claudia: When do you think would be an appropriate time to declare war on the humans?

Mandy: Once I find a way to properly put everyone within a 100-kilometer radius into a perpetual trance. I've been secretly collaborating with a group called "The Anti-Human League" in order to build a device that does such. It's still a huge work in progress. But once it's finished, it should only work on humans and nothing else.

Phineas: The definitely sounds like the ultimate revenge plan. I like it.

Claudia: Me too.

Mandy: Well, don't get your hopes up. There's about a 50-50 chance that this plan won't work. If that's the case, then I'll return to my actual home underground with you guys and my sisters and brother and start working on hacking every human server on the planet so that they won't be able to use their weapons against us.

Claudia: Sounds…complicated.

Mandy: Well, duh. Did you really think that taking over all of humanity was going to be such an easy task?

(Claudia and Phineas nod "no")

Mandy: Of course not. But ever since I tricked the grim reaper himself into being my eternal servant, it should be a whole lot easier for us to mobilize against those awful humans, since he will no longer be slaughtering our kind willy-nilly like he used to.

By the way, this was all typed out by me. Again, no AI was involved in the making of this.

[theloreofmandy]

@mra1f If this was Mandy's true form, would Adam and Minnie also have quadruped bodies hidden under their human skin?

[theloreofmandy]

Here's some pre-Grim & Evil artwork from Maxwell Atoms that is currently up on eBay for sale. His name is Gr1mbot. Bid on it while it's still hot!

Also, guess what? He actually drew Mandy smiling next to a proto-Eris!

[theloreofmandy]

Why "My Fair Mandy" is the most controversial episode of "The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy"

Let's get the Fred Fredburger out of the room right now. This episode has the unfortunate implication of Mandy being the only cartoon character in history who can never smile ever. (Even though she smiled at the end of the fucking pilot!)

If we were to apply the logic of the episode of "My Fair Mandy" to "The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy" from the very beginning, the show as we know it wouldn't even exist. (Or at least the three characters will be Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup knock-offs.)

Nobody brings up the ending of the episode "The Halls of Time", even though it was more impactful and dark than the ending of "My Fair Mandy". (Seriously, the characters reverse-aging out of existence might just be the most messed up ending the show ever put out.)

Had this happened to a one-shot cartoon character in an episode of a television series, where they destroyed the fabric of reality by smiling, it would've been perfectly fine, since said character would most likely never appear in another episode ever again. But it just had to happen to a main character. That character being Mandy. In other words, the concept of a character destroying the universe by smiling is brilliant, but it shouldn't happen at the expense of a main character doing it.

Yes, Mandy almost never smiled in "The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy". The only times she felt like smiling were the times where she fell in love and became lovesick. Mandy developed a crush on a boy named Piff in the appropriately named episode "Crushed!" Irwin also used the magic from Grim's scythe in "Scythe for Sale" to force Mandy to fall in love with him. The first time she got hypnotized by his magic, she sported a broken smile.

Can someone show happiness without smiling? Yes. But it's generally frowned upon. Pun intended. Most people want other people to smile and act happy. They also want to draw smiling cartoon characters to sell their products. Mandy would not be a good poster child for selling merchandise. That's why Grim or Billy would be used instead because they can smile and appeal to kids, unlike Mandy.

I found it really funny that the unsmiling Mandy said, "Smile, tomorrow will be worse" in one of the opening couch gags. Oh, the irony.

Main characters in animated television shows that never or very rarely smile are an anomaly for sure. The only other cartoon characters that even come close to rivalling Mandy for smiling so little are Huey Freeman from "The Boondocks" and Mai from "Avatar: The Last Airbender". Runner ups would be Gaz from "Invader Zim" and Raven from "Teen Titans" (2003).

TV Tropes puts them all under the Perpetual Frowner category for Western Animation. However, plenty of other cartoon characters who smile all the time are put under the category such as Squidward Tentacles from "SpongeBob SquarePants", Lucy Loud from "The Loud House", Moe Szyslak from "The Simpsons", Edward the platypus from "Camp Lazlo", and Buttercup from "The Powerpuff Girls".

The rule for being an actual Perpetual Frowner, according to my logic, would be that the character will only smile once or less in all of the screentime they get in an episode featuring them. Squidward, Lucy Loud, Moe Szyslak, Edward the platypus, and Buttercup all immediately break this rule. Therefore, they are NOT Perpetual Frowners.

Buttercup makes the least sense out of all the characters listed because plenty of her official artwork features her smiling. Smiling or a neutral attitude are her default expressions. Sure she's got a ruff and gruff attitude, but she's still an overall happy person.

Hell, I'm more of a Perpetual Frowner than Buttercup. I've been told to smile several times by my father because of how little I smiled at times. Sometimes, I would try to smile, only for my dad to tell me I'm forcing one.

When I'm around a group of laughing people sometimes, I almost never laugh. The happiest I tend to get is a slight smile and that's it.

The bottom line is, if a cartoon is episodic and not continuity-driven, who cares if the characters act one way in one episode, but completely different in another? Mandy, believe or not, once upon a time had a less stoic and more emotional demeanor, even though she almost never smiled. In the first half of "Grim & Evil", which aired in 2001, she smiled about eight or nine times throughout the six episodes. (Some of the smiles are super quick and brief that you have to pause the episode to see them though.) The image below of Mandy smiling while saying "agony" is a blink-and-you-miss-it moment. Whether this looks like Mandy is smiling or not is up for you to determine.

So, in conclusion... Who cares? Maybe one day, there will be a Billy & Mandy reboot where Mandy has a character arc where she opens up and becomes more jovial as the series progresses. Maybe it'll be live-action and not animated. Maybe, it'll still be animated, but Mandy's appearance will look completely different from her previous incarnations. Who knows?

There are plenty of artists, cartoonists, and animators out there who never watch an animated television series and only look at the artwork for the characters. Let's not forget this funny gem of a Cartoon Network Christmas poster that someone drew.

All-in-all, how you decide to draw Mandy from "The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy" is completely up to you. (Even if it's wildly out-of-character.)

P.S.: The episode of "My Fair Mandy" will officially be turning 20 this year in July, and I'm going to draw Mandy smiling and flipping the bird on that particular day, signifying that I don't give a fuck.

[theloreofmandy]

This is exactly what happened the moment Mandy decided to trek on up the surface world where the humans reign supreme for the very first time. Mervin, her childhood friend and future husband, tries to stop her and convince her to stay down in the caverns. Mandy stubbornly declines and heads towards the surface anyway.

After all, the only way Mandy could get proper revenge on humanity is to secretly study their habits incognito, then disguise herself as one, trick the grim reaper into being her eternal servant, and finally subjugate all of them into poorly-treated second-class class citizens. What she's doing is morally evil, but she still doesn't care. It's all about revenge to her.

[theloreofmandy]

Finally! A proper reference sheet of Mandy's true mother Claudia. Surprise of all surprises...she doesn't smile. And of course, I threw in Mandy herself in her true form as a puppy. She will grow up to be just as big as her mother if not bigger, so watch out!

[theloreofmandy]

@mra1f @clownsrcrying @billysnose Mandy was never a human. Why was it that she was the only "human" character who didn't have a nose? Here's your answer. She also can smell without one because of her nostrils.

[theloreofmandy]

@mra1f I hope I'm not bothering you too much with these posts, but here are two rare occasions of Mandy as her true four-legged self as an adult smiling. Mandy was very unhappy with disguising herself as a little human girl. (It was part of her evil plan so her species could take over the world after all.) She became much more jovial after she took off her fake human skin, threw it away, and started walking on all fours again.

[theloreofmandy]

@mra1f Forget Phillip and Claire. They are not Mandy's real parents. Phineas and Claudia are. She would NEVER brainwash her real parents EVER. Mandy gets her scowl from her father and her blonde fur and looks from her mother. Why does Mandy never emote like a human being? Because she was never human to begin with. Hoss Delgado was onto her not being a human in the episode "Bearded Billy".

When Mandy starts growing up, she will shed her human skin and show her true self. She will revert back to her natural quadrupedal body shape. But because she already taught herself to walk and run on her hind legs, she'll still be completely capable of doing so.

[theloreofmandy]

@mra1f What do you think of this version of Mandy? Grim already knows about Mandy's true form. Mandy eventually reveals her true form to Billy, and he thinks she's a puppy. She's actually something called a curline. It's a noseless, quadrupedal, sapient race of mammals not known for smiling much at all.

[theloreofmandy]

Apparently, I just realized that I hadn't posted any new pics on Mandy on this blog this past year. I've drawn some related to her true form.

Anyway, this was this year's Valentine's Day picture. Irwin is truly passionately in love with Mandy, even after she revealed her shocking true form to him.