A group of young adults living in the big city and trying to get by, except the city is the capital city of Islopia, a nation on a world where magic exists alongside modern technology.

Righ Tarnage

Righ is a druid working for the Islopia Parks Department. It’s his job to keep the parks in the capital city nice and healthy. His job is nice work, which contrasts sharply with the mess he’s made of his home life. After being dumped by his longtime girlfriend, he has had to move in with his brother until he can get back on his feet. But Righ is a nervous wreck and navigating the world of a newly single young man in Islopia is not easy for him.

Vick Tarnage

While the Wizard King of Islopia has a team of super-powered enforcers to act as his police, he also has an army of normal law enforcers, known as the Purplewearers, who serve as law enforcement on a more mundane level. Righ’s big brother Vick is one of those. Unlike his brother, Vick is stubborn, rigid, and stupidly brash. He is very actively social and has relationships come and go without letting it bother him at all.

Carlane Hearing

Carlane lives in the apartment above the Tarnage brothers. She works in an advertising firm downtown and makes enough to live on her own, even in this nice neighbourhood, but she constantly feels like she doesn’t belong there and that everyone hates her, even though it isn’t true, and most of the neighbourhood’s denizens don’t even care that she exists. She has an on-and-off relationship with a man at work, but Righ has a thing for her, and there’s a definite will-they-won’t-they thing brewing.

Nyss Forests

An apprentice wizard in the city’s science labs, Nyss is Vick’s best friend since they were in school together. She is impressed that he has taken in his little brother, and mocks them slightly less than she mocks everyone else. She is constantly conniving ways to get out of work so that she can hang out with her friends all day.

Hem Gredley

Hem Gredley is a server at the trendy tavern down the road from the apartment building. He never really found Vick to be all that nice a guy, but has taken a liking to Righ since he moved in, and now he’s part of the gang. He’s a bit dumb, and very vain, but overall Hem is a nice guy.

Lisa Moros

Lisa is a musician who is trying to get a job in the music industry. In Islopia, that industry is all about singing ballads about historical figures, so musicians are basically history nerds. This is definitely true of Lisa, but she overcompensates by trying to appear cool, and it backfires every time.

The high concept of this show would probably wear itself thin pretty quickly in our world, but in a fantasy world where these are relatable characters, this show would air for years, I tell you, years!

The setting of Islopia first appeared in two Supernatural Sunday posts, here and here, and the planet Islopia is on in another one, here.

It’s a typical family sitcom, except that the father is an inventor who keeps accidentally altering the timestream.

Don Reed-Owens

Though Don is a super-intelligent genius, he works as a mechanic and he is happy to do it. He saves the superscience for his own free time. He tinkers with a time machine in the garage, but he has no idea that he has actually got it working dozens, or even hundreds of times, because he always winds up altering the time machine such that he doesn’t remember and has to do it again.

Tammy Reed-Owens

The family matriarch is, in stereotypical sitcom fashion, the glue that holds the family together. She’s the one who deals with all the problems that crop up while her absent-minded husband makes a fool of himself.

Janice Willow

Tammy’s sister is an acid-tongued minx who likes to show up for a few minutes a week and deliver some one-liners.

Jake Reed-Owens

The oldest of the Reed-Owens children, Jake is in high school and is dealing with all the typical problems of adolescence.

Emily Reed-Owens

Thinking of herself as the ignored middle child, Emily is actually the one who gets the most attention, since she’s always complaining about something.

Oscar Reed-Owens

Oscar is the only family member cognizant of the ways that the timestream is constantly being altered. For some reason, he is the only one who notices that Jake and Emily have to keep learning the same lessons every week like they’re caught in a time loop. When his aunt Janice stopped appearing, Oscar was the only one who even remembered that she existed. And he’s the only one that noticed that he seemed to grow from an infant to a four year old over the course of a summer. As a kid, he takes this stuff in stride as best he can, but his best isn’t very good. He’s stressed out and it is only ever getting worse. More than anything, he wishes he could figure out why some weird thing always happens for 22 minutes every Thursday at 7:30.

Obviously this whole thing is a setup to mock the typical things that go uncommented on in regular sitcoms. I don’t know if it’d catch on, but if it were a real show I’d hope it lasts long enough to see Oscar progress into a complete and total wreck.

Almost certainly a real television show called Family Time has existed. I refuse to google it to find out because it is the ideal name for this show. I threw on the word “It’s” just to hedge my bets. The Reed-Owens surname is because it sounds like “Redoing” and it is quite a reach.

Due to an eccentric relative’s eccentric business deal, two sisters are legally required to run a store that sells costumes, magic tricks, and pranks.

Ellen Kane

Ellen is the more sensible of the two sisters, Ellen is the one who does most of the actual work around the store. Her more serious disposition makes her an unlikely fit for the store, but she excels at the business part of the job.

Minnie Kane

Minnie is more impulsive and fun than Ellen, but she has no interest in the store. She’s only there for legal reasons, since the eccentric deal that has them working there requires her to put in at least twenty hours a week. She is taking the opportunity to needle her sister, hoping to get her to loosen up.

Cedric Holmes

Cedric is a regular customer at the store who has been coming there for years. He knew the sister’s eccentric relative better than they did. Now, he’s developing a crush on Ellen that he’s using as an excuse to show up even more often, trying to be helpful, but mostly making an ass of himself.

Ned Wilks

Ned Wilks is a teen boy they hired to help around the shop. He’s kind of good at keeping things clean, but little else. He is completely baffled by magic tricks and can’t explain them to customers at all.

Jenny Kane

Jenny is Ellen’s daughter. She loves the store and gets to run around saying cute catchphrases and appealing to the audience.

I don’t know. I like the idea of someone being legally required to own a store, that’s amusingly stupid, but could it sustain itself very long? Maybe if we let the plots get crazily outlandish as it goes, adding in ghosts and real magic and unmooring itself from its original tone, like Family Matters did, except we say it is all part of the mysterious dead relative’s plan.