Dog Sees God
Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenaged Blockhead is a 2004 play by Bert V. Royal. A Darker and Edgier take on the Peanuts universe, the show starts with the death of Snoopy and Woodstock, and somehow only manages to get more depressing from there. Due to copyright and trademark issues, none of the characters go by their official Peanuts-verse names.
The main characters are:
- C.B.: Charlie Brown. Probably the most well-adjusted character (until the plot happens).
- C.B.'s Sister: Sally
- Van: Linus gone pothead. When C.B. and Van's sister burnt his security blanket, his response was to mix it with weed and smoke it.
- Matt: Pig-Pen. In the years since Peanuts, he's turned into a germaphobe and a homophobe.
- Beethoven: Schroeder
- Marcy: Marcie
- Tricia: Peppermint Patty
- Van's Sister: Lucy
Tropes used in Dog Sees God include:
- Abusive Parents
- Adults Are Useless: Lampshaded, specifically the traditional muffled-trumpet Peanuts voices.
- Affectionate Parody: Just about every single cliché from various earlier "Darker and Edgier" pariodies of the comic show up here in some form, from Snoopy getting rabies to Peppermint Patty and Marcie having a huge lesbian subtext going on, and everyone is generally foul-mouthed, drug-abusing and sex-obsessed—but despite all this, the comic's ideals and themes are upheld and honored (if stretched a little), and the final scene, with the letter from C.S. (aka Charles Schultz) is full of heartfelt words of encouragement to C. B., telling him that he is a good man when all is said and done... and, depending on your interpetation, that his friend, dog and bird are happy in the afterlife.
- Alternative Character Backstory: Matt gets one hell of a Freudian Excuse, making him seem very much The Woobie- at least in terms of his comic counterpart.
- Berserk Button: NEVER call Matt 'Pigpen' Beethoven makes this mistake at the end of the play, and his life.
- Black Comedy
- Break the Cutie
- Butt Monkey: C.B., obviously.
- Bury Your Gays: Alas, Beethoven! We hardly knew ye!
- Catch Phrase: Most of those in Peanuts are lampshaded.
- Comedic Sociopathy: Van's Sister is in an insane asylum for setting the little red-haired girl's hair on fire.
- Coming Out Story: For Beethoven and C.B.
- Cloudcuckoolander: C.B.'s sister. Three words: "Cocooning into Playtypus."
- Van also fits the mold pretty well.
- Crapsack World
- Darker and Edgier
- Driven to Suicide: Beethoven
- Erudite Stoner
- Fingore: When Matt breaks all of Beethoven's fingers over his piano.
- Forceful Kiss
- Also "Shut Up" Kiss
- Fridge Brilliance: Pen pal, C.S. (Charles Schulz), since the play is set in the Peanuts universe, is God, and the letter C.B. receives is an answer to his questions about what comes after death and an assurance that Beethoven, C.B.'s dog, and the bird are happy somewhere.
- Alternatively, C.S. is Charles Schulz, who C.B. had been writing to all his life. Schulz used the letters C.B. sent him as the basis for his comic strip (Schulz at one point said that the Pen-Pal may be the person who felt the most sympathy for Charlie Brown in the original comics) and has played a sympathetic ear. Now that Schulz is dead in real-life, he writes C.B. one last letter from heaven, where he sees Beethoven.
- Full-Name Basis: Averted: even though C.B. is Charlie Brown, he is never called by his full name. Though his sister does refer to him as "Charles", and Van "Chuck B."
- Only one production used his full name at any point in the production and they were sued because of it.
- Hey, It's That Guy!: A 2005 reading at the Westside theatre featured William Miller, Kim Pine, Stephen Stills, Moritz Stiefel, Dawn Summers, and Rogue. The Off-Broadway premiere featured Faith Lehane, Ugly Betty, Boone Carlisle and Finch.
- Ho Yay
- Incompatible Orientation
- Jerkass: Matt.
- Karma Houdini: Matt.
- Kill the Cutie: Beethoven.
- Killed Off for Real: Snoopy, Woodstock and Beethoven
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: "Do you ever feel like you're not a real person? That you're the product of someone's imagination and you can't think for yourself because you're really just like some creation and that somewhere there's people laughing every time you fall?"
- Les Yay: Tricia and Marcy are accused of this at once point, and are horrified by it.
- Mushroom Samba
- Never My Fault
- Ordinary High School Student: C.B.
- Shout-Out: To Peanuts, obviously.
- Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: Peanuts was never the most idealistic comic strip, but this slides it waaaaay over to the cynical end of the scale.
- Invisible to Gaydar
- Their First Time
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Matt's compulsive cleanliness.
- Writing Around Trademarks
- X Meets Y: It's Peanuts meets Spring Awakening.
- Yandere: Matt is implied to be a closet one for CB.