PE proposal: Sloan and Bree Blackburn

What's the Work?

The Wild Thornberry's are a nature themed cartoon series from Nicolodeon. It was about a family called the Thornberry's, who host a nature documentary show. However, the youngest daughter among them, Eliza, has the power to talk to animals, which was a reward for saving the life of an African Shamen. The show ran it's course, but as it neared it's end, it decided to end with a bang. And thus was born The Wildthornberry's movie, which includes these scumbags as it's villains.

Who is the Candidate? What did they do?

Sloan and Bree Blackburn are a married coulple of poachers who are first encountered capturing a cheetah cub called Tally, who was a friend of Eliza. In her failed attempt to rescue, she noticed that Sloan carried a specifically crafted knife, however the sun was in a position to cast shadows over the poachers faces, so Eliza was unable to see their faces. Due to her inability to identify the poachers, the Blackburns escaped and there was little to no police investigation.

The Blackburns are later encountered near the climax where they pretend to be Zoolologists helping an injured rhino that they had shot earflier. (who had earlier warned Eliza that the poachers were nearby, and that they intended to slaughter an entire herd of elephents with an electric fence. (but was also unable to indentify them) It's there that they meet Eliza and her chimpanzee friend Darwin. Fearing that she is a a witness, they invite her to stay in their camp with the intention of either kidnapping or killing her, but they warn her not to enter their RV. Of course Eliza and Darwin do enter the RV and find that it's full of tracking equipment, high tech weapons, lethel hunting traps, and Tally.

The poachers catch Eliza and reveal their true nature as poachers and reveal that they had captured Tally with the intention of making a coat out of him. When they learn that Eliza knows of their plan, they take her hostage. Before they can interrogate her, her older sister Debbie shows up, looking for Eliza. Sloan takes her hostage and threatens to kill her unless Eliza tells them where she learned of their plan. She tries lying about how she knows of their plan, but Sloan knows the deception when she reveals that explosives were involved in the plot, when he never mentioned explosives.

Out of options, Eliza relucntantly tells them that she knows of the plan because she can talk to animals. However, the terms of her power forbid her from telling anyone of this ability, or else she will lose her power. With the terms broken, Eliza loses her power in a supernatural storm that causes the poachers to flee.

Later, the poachers execute their plan to cause mass murder of a large herd of elephants during a solar eclipse, and use explosives to stampede towards an electric fence that will kill them all. The plan was initially successful as the elephents were driven into a spampede, but fortunetly despite having no means of warning the elephents, Aliza managed to steer them off course and into safety. Enraged, Sloan tried to kill Eliza by throwing her into a river, and attempted to kill the Elephants himself. But the elephants grabbed their chopper with their trunks and downed the criminals just as the eclipse ended. The Blackburns were then arrested by the park rangers, and Tally reunited with his mother.

Fraudian Excuse

They have none. Like all criminals, poachers are motivated by one of two things, desperation, or greed. And the Blackburns fall under the latter. We're never told where they came from or why exactly they choose a life of illegal hunting, but from lines of dialogue that say that they make animal products such as fur coats and objects made of ivory, it can be assumed that they either work for or are in cahoots with crime syndicates who sell animal made products. And crime syndicates like these exist in real life, and are prone to hire poachers to get their goods.

Heinous Standards

Villainous poachers are nothing new, but I've never encountered villaonous poachers who are willing to slaughter an entire herd of elephants just to sate their lust for money. And since Elephents are an endangered species, wiping out an entire herd could cause irrepreble harm to the species. Also, they were willing to kill a cheetah who was not yet full grown, just to sell a coat made from his pelt, and they even lied to Eliza about the rhino they were pretending to help, but had really shot. It's a zoologist's nightmare.

And if crimes against nature and animal life were not enough, they show no qualm about harming children and teenagers if they think they are in their way, or are onto them. And harming children and teenagers is a crime I NEVER forgive unless the individual who did it feels remorse for it later. But these two show no regret or remorse in their actions.

Final Verdict

While I can live with them getting a PE rejection because of the fact that they are fairly generic villainous poachers, I see them as the worst of that category. They are guilty of kidnapping, illegal use of high tech weaponary and tracking tech, harming children, attempted child murder, attempted mass murder, etc. I say that they are PE.