"RANFREN (Randal's friends)"
Date	January 31 2015
Website	https://ranfren.neocities.org/

RANFREN (Randal's friends)

Randal's friends, often abreviated to RANFREN is a slice of life and dark comedy webcomic hosted on Neocities created by captainhowdie in 2011^[1], starting as only short comic strips, animations, and drawings. Longer comics called "Lucids" started being created in 2015. The plot follows the surrealist life of Randal Ivory, a young cryptid boy who lives with his brother luther and their "human pets" in the canadian suburbs^[2][3]

Summary

RANFREN tells the story of Randal Ivory, a young antisocial very human like cryptid that is described as "The enigma of one sided friendships"^[4] and "a bit of a hated person"^[5], through the entire comic he is searching for friends, all of the people he deems as "friends" are either forced to be friends with him^[6], they're imaginary^[7], or dolls. Since he almost never leaves the house, most of the comic is ambientated inside the ivory household or in desolate places until lucid 21, the last chapter of the first volume of RANFREN. From lucid 22 to the present the lucids take place in a little camping spot where the ivory family is currently vacationing.

Main characters

Randal VI Ivory

Randal is a timeless ginger cryptid that is usually depicted wearing a makeshift gakuran, thick black squeare glasses and white gloves^[8] that hide his lack of nails^[9], his main interests are romance manga, dolls, anime, visual novels, retro videogames and his human pet Sebastian. He is shown interacting only with old pieces of technology.^[10][11] He is able to distort reality, transform his body into whatever he pleases, use dark magic and create relatively stable worlds in his dreams along with creating semi conscious forms of life^[12]

Sebastian De Tomato Smith Chicken Legs

Sebastian is a young ginger man in his early 20's that was adopted and given to Randal in his 15th birthday, his life before joining the Ivory family is a complete mistery with the only detail that was mentioned being that of him being a pizza delivery boy in his past life. He is the only person in the whole comic that is aware of how weird everything is^[13][14][15], suggesting that things were different before.

Luther Von Ivory

Luther is a brown haired humanoid that is said to be Randal's brother, his age and full range of habilities are unknown, he has two pairs of eyes but keeps the second pair closed most of the time unless he needs to take a close look to something^[16] he is usually seen wearing a tucked green button up shirt with his usual brown pants. His behaviour is unpredictable, but he controls himself to appear more human, he likes to spend time in his personal garden, to drink tea^[17] and to spend time with his family.^[18]

Nyon

Nyon is one of Luther's catmen, he is of russian origin and almost never speaks in the comics, he appears shy and innofensive, everyone usually steps over him because of his uneasy nature^[19]. He has white hair with blue hues styled in the same haircut as Luther and is usually seen wearing a yellow sweater with the text "OK ½" paired with blue jeans and black earmuffs mimicking cat ears. There is no information about his past other than the fact he's russian. He likes to smoke marihuana, read Fyodor dostoevsky novels, and to play with tissues.^[20]

Nyen

Nyen is another catmen of Luther's, he is of American origin and highly dangerous, he hates everyone he interacts with except for his master Luther who he always seeks to please. He has white hair with pink hues styled in the same haircut as Luther and is usually seen wearing a black knitted hat mimicking cat ears, light brown pants^[21] and black sweater with the word "Nevada" in it, possibly a reference to Natsumi Tsuji, most known as Nevada-tan. In the more recent lucids his sweater has been changed to say "Nirvana" instead of Nevada. He likes Judge judy, romance manga, killing and the band Nirvana.^[22]

Present day problem Takeuchi Robert

He only appears in lucids 17 to 21 along the four other ratmen which he shares consciousness with.^[23]

Satoru tsukada

Satoru is a dream entity created by Randal and introduced in lucid 23 "The hermit and the moon". He was accidentally created by him after dreaming about an anime boy and everytime they kept encountering each other Satoru gained more consciousness starting to remember the dreams and Randal, his best friend. Satoru is the only person in the whole comic who considers Randal a friend and who actually likes him, a tragicomical thing considering Satoru is literally just Randal imaginary friend who can't even hate him. ^[24]

Satoru wants to gain more consciousness to spend more time with Randal, but if he does so he will start having his own individual thoughts that could affect his friendship with him, despite this he desesperately wants to switch places with Sebastian in lucid 24 "Breaking kaleidoscope pattern", planning on trapping Sebastian in the dream space to spend more time with Randal ^[25]

Satoru's last appearance is in lucid 24.88 "A hermit in dreamland", where he has a mental breakdown while thinking about how he's stuck alone in a dream and how he would love to exist in the real world, the lucid ends with him slashing open his throat while the fake Randal licks the blood off his neck ^[26]

Nana

Nana is another pet of Luther, she is a snakewoman and went through a redesign in the middle of the comics, her old design showed her with blonde hair, a hat, a beard and an eyemask. Her actual design shows her having luscious long white hair with little screaming faces in the tips, no facial hair and monolids, she likes showers, baths and good digestion.^[27]

Kitty carpet

Kitty carpet was first introduced as one of Luther's pets in 2014, when lucids didn't exist yet so the comic where she appeared was lost in captainhowdie's deleted deviantart account until howdie archived it on the RANFREN website, she is a blonde chubby woman wearing a cat onesy with kneecaps protectors, she gained conscience in "a wonderful cat like person" and after that she had an identity crisis and convinced herself she was a carpet, sinking down and becoming a part of the ivory household. She is usually depicted as a tail coming out of a piece of carpet, and is one of the less recurrent characters.^[28]

Story and content

Lucid 0 "Ice cream truck"

The comic starts with "Ice cream truck"^[29] this lucid introduces the protagonist of the webcomic, Randal VI Ivory, a 14 year old very human like cryptid^[30] interacting with his brother Luther Von Ivory, a humanoid of unknown age^[31] and one of his "catmen" called Nyen, we are told his other catman, Nyon is currently missing. Randal asks his brother for money to buy icecream with his scarecrow friend, a character that only appears in this lucid due to being kidnapped by "cowmen" at the end of it to test taste new ice cream flavours, where its discovered that Nyon, the missing catman was also kidnapped by the cowmen.^[32]

It is of note that after "Ice cream truck" Nyon appears in every other lucid and his kidnapping is never mentioned again

Lucid 1 "Only my cats understand me"

Randal founds a furby called Coco on the side of the road and it gains sentience, while his brother is sleeping with his two catmen Coco transforms randal into a furby himself. ^[33]

Lucid 2 "I need you"

This lucid continues the plot started in "Only my cats understand me". As Coco gains the power of thinking he wants to turn everyone on the ivory household into his slaves, randal fights with him and manages to beat him but hes badly hurt himself so his brother takes him to his coffin where he regenerates after some minutes. After breaking free from his cocoon he searches for Coco and finds him powerless and almost dead, Randal is sad because of his apparent death but Coco wakes up again and tells him he "Was never alive so he can never die"^[34]

Lucid 3 "Human pet for the dark prince"

In this lucid Randal gets gifted a human pet by his brother for his 15th birthday, naming the human "Sebastian de Tomato Smith Chicken Legs" he's a young ginger man in his early 20's that is forced to wear a jester costume.^[35]

This lucid stablishes that the adoption of humans to be turned into pets, even unwilling ones is normal and socially acceptable^[36]

Lucid 4 "Sebastian's dinner"

The ivory family tries to eat a human corpse, but after they discover that it was still alive they let him go home and instead go to a canadian diner called "Smile diner" where Randal and Sebastian get forcefeed, as they get restrained and hooks latch to their mouth to force it open randal comments on how good it feels.^[37]

Lucid 5 "Inside Nana"

While Sebastian tries to escape from Nyen he hides in the basement and stumbles uppon Nana, a bearded snakewoman who devours him whole, Luther tries to rescue him but he also gets swallowed. In the end Randal and the catmen rescue them, but Sebastian is visited by the Quacker oats man, a chaotic entity that appears every once in a while^[38]

Lucid 6 "Take care"

Randal wants to play with Sebastian but his pet is utterly terrified of him and ignores him, so Randal decides to play "Make a mess out of Sebastian" but Sebastian punches him in the face out of fear, Randal gets a nosebleed and is visibly excited by the violence, asking him to keep going but Luther interrupts and suggest they play a more friendly game, they settle for "Jim Carrey goes to the dentist", a game were they have to remove Jim carrey's teeth and if he screams they lose, everyone does it perfectly but luther, who triggers him to scream. The scream echoes through the whole house, making Randal's ears literally bleed, to this he remarks how great it felt and how fantastic his day is going. After losing they play Jim Carrey's revenge, a game were Jim Carrey attacks them. ^[39]

Lucid 7 "Pepped up peppies"

Sebastian calls 911 and asks for help without knowing the telephones in the ivory household are alive and don't serve any practical use, Luther catches him and thinks he is sick so he checks on him, Randal gets mad at this and kicks his brother, arguing he wants to take care of his own pet. He spoonfeeds him a medicament called "Peppy lol" which doesn't has any effect on Sebastian, but if Randal takes it his legs become long, Luther dislikes this and Randal calls for his dolls to cut his legs. After he amputates his feet both Randal and Sebastian go to sleep, preparing for a school day tomorrow. While they're in their room Luther browses the internet for a "Training suit" for Sebastian.^[40]

Lucid 8 "Go to school"

Randal is sleep deprived because he spent all night bothering Sebastian and he becomes slightly upset he can't take his human pet with him to school because Luther wants Sebastian to test his new training suit that just arrived. Randal goes to school despite not being accepted there before, as he enters the school he enters the wrong classroom, finding what he deems "fake people", after entering the right classroom he gets restrained by real humans that trap him inside a cage, theyre concentrated on randal until "the people with painted on eyes" start attacking, kidnapping and "replacing" them. The fake people don't attack randal because they know he isn't human, instead they use him as a "test subject for their science class" and dissect him.

Reception

In october of 2020 the RANFREN neocities website had 1 million hits^[41], there is no record of any other actual numbers

RANFREN appeared in the 1st and 2nd volume of FEECO magazine^{[42][43][44][45]} and in The Dream's Interval from Children Of ROYGBIV magazine^[46][47]

RANFREN had a fandub, although it is discontinued. 7 lucids were voice acted before the proyect came to an end^[48]

References

Category:Webcomics Category:Canadian webcomics Category:Surreal comedy comics Category:2015 webcomic debuts Category:Surrealist works