THE DETECTIVE (screenshot story)

"Hermione: 'I'll take the job-- but only for fifty green ones an hour.'""Lucy: 'I've only got purple and teal jellybeans, but they're great for parties.'""Hermione: 'When given the chance, I'll take the lime.'"''-- exchange in "THE DETECTIVE: Scrap 4." Here, Stephens mocks the game's usage of multicolored, but equally valued, jellybeans as currency while implicating Hermione's hedonistic lifestyle.''

THE DETECTIVE" was a screenshot story created by Cameron Costin Clevenger Stephens, and was a direct sequel to his previous story, "THE DIP." The first segment began in May 2005 and the story concluded five months later in October.

This story was initially posted on a separate thread on the "Toontown Central" forums, but was ultimately merged into the initial "THE DIP" thread in order to consolidate the increasing web traffic.

"THE DETECTIVE" became a popular screenshot story in its own right, even though it barely even referenced the tar-like DIP from the first installment. It instead focused on Hermione Katze as she reopened her private investigator practice after a slew of disappearances plagued her neighborhood of Toontown, including the sudden vanishing of her younger brother.

The story was one of two story-length sequels to "THE DIP," the other being "THE UNITED."

GENERAL INFORMATION
"THE DETECTIVE" utilized the same unique presentation and style that "THE DIP" had used before it.

FORMAT
Similar to its predecessor, "THE DETECTIVE" was posted in incremental portions, again labeled "scraps," that continued the story from where the last scrap left off. This time, each scrap included roughly forty to fifty images, but the frequency in which they were posted was noticeably reduced.

PLOT
The story no longer revolved around the thick, black acid known as "DIP," and the events of the previous story were only mentioned in passing. In "THE DETECTIVE," main character Hermione Katze reestablishes her Private Investigator offices (which had been mentioned to be neglected for some time prior the events of "THE DIP"), after a number of toons go missing under mysterious circumstances, including Hermione's younger brother.

The events of this story become even more surreal than those of "THE DIP," and a lot of the narrative appears to take place within Hermione's imagination, such as her finding an apparent Elysium (through a teleportal found in an "shticker" book) that ends up revealing itself as a hellish reality. Also, a fair amount of the story takes place in Hermione's dreams, which become more surreal and deranged as the narrative progresses. These dreams do end up being relevant, however, as they help her solve the disappearances case.

The story concludes with Hermione confronting the toon behind the kidnappings, a literal "fat cat" that was trying to expand his successful hypnotherapist business by testing mind-altering techniques on kidnapped victims. After a violent struggle, it is implied that Hermione drowns the cat in the lake beside her home. She ultimately rescues her brother, but he is now severely mentally damaged.

COMMUNITY
Fans noticed that this story played up the psychosis angle from the first installment, now focusing on a villain that has a business in "correcting" the mentally ill. Most people enjoyed this diversion from the original "THE DIP" storyline, but some were disappointed that the "DIP" itself was not more relevant to the story. Despite the name change and lack of the "DIP," fans still maintained the name "Dippers" and included the story in what they dubbed THE DIP SAGA.

"THE DETECTIVE" TODAY
Unfortunately, following a flame war and spambot attacks on "THE DIP" thread (which also contained "THE DETECTIVE" and "THE UNITED") that followed Stephens' abandonment of the series (see this article), he requested that the "Toontown Central" moderators lock and delete the entire story, including all pictures and fan comments. After community interest in the story spiked and new forum members began a desperate search for the deleted story, Stephens uploaded a comically terrible revisiting of the story, seemingly created in Microsoft paint, and had moderators immediately lock the thread. This way, curious TTC members would instead find this awful version of the story when searching the forum's archives for "THE DIP" or either of its sequels, and community interest would eventually subside.

Besides the occasional screencap of the original forum posting, no copies of the original story are known to exist. Before the site overhaul of 2015, c3sabertooth.com had a small section dedicated to "THE DIP SAGA," in which Stephens revealed that he is no longer in possession of the original screenshot story files.

TRIVIA

 * In total, "THE DETECTIVE" was slightly longer than "THE DIP," and was released over a larger timeframe.
 * Stephens admitted that he was still working on the story's conclusion as he was nearing the completion of the story's posting, making the timeframe a struggle.
 * Although the first installment serves as a prequel to the Toontown Online storyline, this one takes place soon after the Cog invasion of Toontown, and is therefore no longer a prequel.
 * "THE DETECTIVE" sees Hermione's return to her former occupation as a private investigator, a job she never fully quits for the rest of the series.