Well, this is it, Twinsanity’s final blog entry for 2014. We do have some new stuff in the works, but right now we’re swept up in the holiday season (i.e., getting fat, getting drunk, putting up with annoying relatives and cashing our Christmas money), so long story short, we won’t be blogging again until January.
First, the boring, gushy stuff: thanks large to everyone who’s been following this blog for these past 4 now going on 5 years. We hope that you’ve been enjoying reading the tomfoolery here as much as we’ve been enjoying making it. 2014 has been a good year for Twinsanity content-wise, and we hope to continue doing it for a good while.
Which brings us to where we go from here. Time to let our readers and followers know where things stand on the blog and our general web presence, and what changes may be coming your way.
We alluded to this last year, but as the months progress and our visions for content here continue to expand, it seems to be becoming clearer and clearer that a mere blog may not be conducive to the web presence we’re looking for. While a blog does serve a useful purpose as a “hub” for making all of one’s work link together (fun trivia fact: the segments Nerdvana and 2 Funny were originally going to be separate blogs, but we decided they worked fine as recurring segments on Twinsanity, as we’d rather keep all of our online content together as opposed to folks having to search for it across various places), there are things we’d like to do, vistas we’d like to explore that may be more than the blog format is able to contain (just like how we created this blog so we could do and say things which weren’t apropos or permeable to message boards; circle of life), and we’d like to expand Twinsanity into something profitable (perhaps via Patreon or something similar) and we will consequently be spending less time on message boards, as they’re getting a tad tedious for us and we enjoy the freedom and variety of expression we have here so much more, so we’re in the process of enacting a plan to take our general web presence to a whole new level. This plan is extremely beta right now, but nonetheless it’s something we’d really like to do.
Right now it looks like this: come 2015, if all goes well, we will begin producing online videos; we’re presently still learning the ropes of editing, acting, graphics and the like, baby steps and all. We will then purchase a domain name and extension (it’ll likely be a .co or a .xyz or something similar, since it always seems that the names we want to use have already been taken by someone else) and find a web host, preferably one who offers reasonable rates, and once all that is in place, this blog will go away and be replaced by a full-blown site (EDIT: It is possible to simply modify a blog to resemble a conventional website by purchasing a custom domain, redirecting it to a new homepage and banishing the Blogger look, so we’ll more likely be doing that as opposed to shutting this blog down; a blog IS a website, after all) featuring original videos by us, cartoons, riffs, clips, reviews (if such a term can even be applied to what we do; the closest things we have to reviews are the TV Special Showdowns and of course the Reviews on the Run, and even those are mostly just us riffing and making jokes, with only the occasional glimmer of bonafide analysis) and other assorted fun stuff, though there will still be a pronounced blog/news feed component (the stuff we’ve already done here–the stuff that’s worth holding on to, that is–will most likely be archived and will be able to be accessed via a hyperlink somewhere on the site). We were originally going to start a YouTube channel, but we recently felt launching our own site might be better since then we wouldn’t have to put up with their persnickety copyright issues; we don’t want our videos to just be 2 people talking to a camera, we plan to incorporate video footage, animation clips and cutaways into them, and we don’t want our channel getting suspended and/or shut down because of that. All of the current Twinsanity segments will still be around, but many of them will be in video form instead of blog form. While we did type a few diary style entries here at the beginning back in 2010, as soon as we switched to the current Twinsanity/Twin Factor format, we’ve always thought of Twinsanity as more of a show than a blog, and many of the segments and entries that we’ve created and done on here since then we typically envision being presented in a show-style format.
Our site may also serve as a home base for another project we’ve been dying to embark on: original webtoons and animation. Aside from comedy and writing, our chief goal has always been to one day make our own all-ages friendly cartoon show or write and illustrate a series of children’s books. We’d like to do toons a la Homstarr Runner, the Polly Pocket shorts or Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse. Again, this idea is also extremely early, but we’re ready,willing and able to learn the ropes. We have ideas for cartoons in our heads, we just need to learn the technological know-how to get them onto the screen.
But in the meantime, we will continue to bring you our unique and twisted take on animation and geek culture. Expect to see more Star Brothers’ madness come 2015.
We shall return…with gusto!
Twin Images 
Just out of curiosity's sake, will this site be like TGWTG or NormalBoots, where there will be other content creators, or will all of the videos on the site be you guys only? And will there be more than just videos? Like forums and user blogs?
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Well, right now we're at a very early stage. Ideally, it would be great to have a site like Channel Awesome, but that's a pretty huge goal to shoot for initially. Realistically, It'll probably be closer to Normal Boots or Black Nerd Comedy. We'd definitely like for there to be videos on the site. That will likely happen once we get the appropriate software for it. A lot of it will be the same stuff that we're writing about here, only in video form.
As for content, it'll most likely be just the 2 of us, unless we find some other people who want to and are able to contribute.
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The new site (whenever it launches) may contain a blog section; we have considered keeping a blog of sorts open for site news, information and updates, and of course, if we get enough members/followers, they can use the blog for themselves if they so choose; there probably won't be a forum since neither of us particularly want to maintain one. I've also given some thought to creating a Facebook page for The Twin Factor; I'm not normally one to embrace social media per se, but I could see giving The Twin Factor some sort of social media presence in order to attract more people to the site and again to keep folks abreast of what's happening on it, like when a new video or something is going to come out. As I mentioned in the article, we're also considering joining Patreon for more supporters once the videos get going.
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As previously stated, there probably won't be a forum, but we are planning on having a comment section for the material. The same rules and regulations that are in play here will likewise be in effect on the new site as well.
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I enjoy Channel Awesome, but Channel Awesome is a HUGE site with many contributors. There's no way that Silverstar and I could ever create something of that magnitude. We're not making Nostalgia Critic money, at least not yet. Like I said before, our site will probably be closer to Normal Boots or Black Nerd Comedy.
Anyway, as much as I like Channel Awesome, I neither need nor want to be that big. A giant site like Channel Awesome would require a tom of work to maintain, and keep in mind that I am lazy. No, as long as we're doing what we enjoy. We don't have to be giant size. I'll settle for medium sized.
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Yeah, we don't need to be Walmart or Macy's; I'm OK with being Big Lots.
UPDATE: I've been reading up on the subject, and it is possible to simply alter your blog to make it look and feel like a conventional website (you can do this by removing labels, tags and such, so as to remove the 'bloggishness' ), and I know that you can upload videos to a blog since I've seen it done, so we could just modify this blog instead of shutting it down. That might be easier.
We'd still have to purchase a domain name from an outside source (so the site's URL will be a '.com' instead of a '.blogspot.com') since it's no longer possible to purchase a domain name directly from Blogger.
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