“I see,” said the Narrator drily. “I didn’t include an inventory in my game,” he added as an afterthought. “I thought it would be too derivative.”

He winced as the Repairman began ripping up pieces of duct tape. The sound of the adhesive was, somehow, even worse than the staple gun. “By the way, what is a ‘Toon’ and why do you feel the need to capitalize it?”

“Hope Stanley never had to carry anything,” the Repairman muttered as he began taping cracks in the Fourth Wall.

“Oh, a Toon? Well…”

He pulled a projection screen out of his toolbox, with a noticeable vzzt sound. Despite the lack of a projector, the whirring of film could be heard as the screen showed a muted clip of Steamboat Willie.

“A Toon,” the Repairman began, “is a drawn, rendered, or animated character.”

The projection changed to reveal the word “Toon.”

“The word Toon comes from ‘cartoon,’” the Repairman continued, the screen continuing to change in time with his small lecture. “It’s capitalized so it can’t be confused with ‘toon, or cartoon. But make no mistake, video game, comic book, and other drawn or rendered folks are Toons as well.”

The projection flickered off, and the screen slid back into his toolbox. Well, that was how he understood it, at least. It would explain how some Toons he encountered weren’t traditionally…Toony.

Not that he cared whether it was “Toony” or not. He had a job to do, so he went and taped up some more breaks as if he hadn’t just gone a bit over-the-top.