Howdy, y’all.

Just wanted to keep you guys abreast of where we are in the big Twinsanity makeover, and give you a little hint on what to expect when Twinsanity re-emerges as a vlog/video channel.

To start with, in our time off from blogging I’ve been starting to draw again (I used to draw a lot, but my time/life schedule hasn’t always been accommodating) and we have some non-Twinsanity related writing projects on the back burner which we’re starting to get done. That’s a good thing.

Scripts and concepts for the videos are currently being written and developed. Many of the stuff we have planned are some of the things we’ve previously done as blog posts but in video form (indeed, a lot of what we’ve published in the past few years were originally conceived as videos, but had to be modified to fit the text format; this is one reason for the change, we’re not thinking and conceiving concepts in the blog format anymore. Several of the blog posts that we’ve made will be remade as videos, as they were initially conceived), while others are things that we simply don’t want to do or can’t be done as text posts.

As Jason has noted previously, when we start producing videos regularly, we will also be upgrading the site’s look and theme, something I’ve been wanting to do for some time, however the site’s URL will remain the same; unlike before when we moved from Blogger to WordPress, you guys won’t have to memorize a new address. We’ll still be at twinsanity.co.

Here’s a brief run-through of what to expect from the core video segments. Keep in mind that everything is in an early stage right now, so names and things are still being decided; these concepts could undergo a dozen changes before reaching their final forms:

• For some time now, we’ve wanted to do a video series reminiscent of Allison Pregler’s Movie Nights or Bob Chipman’s In Bob We Trust/The Big Picture or Brad Jones’ DVD-R Hell. This segment will most likely be Cartoon Country. The transitioning of Reviews on the Run (remember that?) to Cartoon Country was very similar to Allison’s revamping of Obscurus Lupa Presents to Movie Nights; like before, Cartoon Country will not be formal, scene-by-scene, blow-by-blow reviews, but rather more laid back and casual, like a couple of friends just kicking it and talking about their favorite cartoons. As before, Cartoon Country need not always be an overview of an entire series, it can just be about a single episode of a show or even just one scene from an episode.
• The other animation-centric segments, such as Talkin’ Nerdy, Beyond the Background, The Retro Bin, The Cartoon Couch, TV Special Showdown, Unpopular Opinions et al, will remain basically the same, they’ll just be done in video format. Regarding TV Special Showdown: one thing in particular that we’d like to do with that is do more Saturday Morning preview specials. Kind of a tricky thing because few of them exist online, but nonetheless it’s something we’d like to do.
• Regarding What The Funny, Pop Dream and Brain Candy: I regret pulling the latest installments of these out so early. Our original plan was that we were going to continue blogging through the remainder of the year, but in short order even that became questionable. If we had known that the Blog Burnout was going to occur so soon, we wouldn’t have busted out with these this year. I feel sorry for Brain Candy; it’s a good idea, but it had the unfortunate timing to be born at a time when the blog format was really starting to run dry. We have other Brain Candies in the works, and they will be presented, but all the subsequent Brain Candies will be done as videos rather than text posts. Same deal with the Regular Show What The Funny and the Animal Jam Pop Dream: we did the first installments of each in text form, and we do plan to continue each, but the remainders of those will be videos. Also, when Pop Dream and What The Funny make the transition to video form, we won’t be numbering them any longer.
• No offense to Doug Walker (The Nostalgia Critic), Lewis Lovhaug (Linkara) or Eric Rodriguez (The Blockbuster Buster), but we won’t be incorporating stories, sagas or ongoing narratives in our “reviews” (I put this in quotes because I don’t consider what we do to be reviews in the conventional sense, what we do isn’t so much reviewing something as it’s just us goofing around, geeking out, nitpicking, cracking wise and making jokes, but we call them “reviews” because that’s the language people use; I don’t know if there is a proper term for what we do); those guys are good at what they do and it’s cool that they’re doing what they want, but our videos don’t need to be mini-movies nor do we need or want to be intergalactic superheroes saving the internet from the multiverse or whatever. If we want to do fiction or stories, we’ll do them as their own separate thing. Indeed, we considered doing original comedy sketches and miscellaneous skits, which would be the new format of 2 Funny.
• We will also be continuing with Toon Adjacent, which was inspired by (and will be a sort of hybrid of) Phelan Porteous’ Bootleg Zone/Miraculous Merchandise Zone and Tony Goldmark’s Some Jerk with a Camera and State of the Parks. Like before, on Toon Adjacent we’ll be spotlighting toys, collectibles, merchandise, theme park attractions, stage shows etc. which are based on cartoons. Jason and I used to buy collectibles and action figures a lot, and have been thinking about starting up that hobby again, so why not make a video series out of it?
• Videots will also be transitioned into video format. There may be some entries reminiscent of Ryan Molina’s Awesome Video Game Memories, but they will mainly be video versions of the later Videots installments focusing on video game aesthetics such as Favorite Stages, Favorite Levels, Favorite Power-Ups, Favorite Game Music, etc., as I’m particularly proud of those. One new video game theme segment we have planned was inspired by a pilot that Bob Chipman made called Game Watch; Bob (so far) uploaded 2 of these, and I don’t know if he has any plans to do more, but we like the idea and plan to do something similar. In it, we watch a playthrough of a game, during which we joke, comment and display trivial facts about said game and other stuff. We’re calling this segment Geeks on Games. A new (sort of) video game themed segment I have in the planning is something I’m calling Engrish Lit. Inspired a segment of the late series X-Play called Shocking! with Shad Grimgravy, on Engrish Lit I will be reading Engrish mis-translations of game cinemas, street signs etc. as though they were Shakespearean monologues. I want to emphasize that I am no way trying to make fun of Japanese people with this segment, I’m poking fun at the Engrish being lost in translation, the segment is not meant to be a knock against Asians. Engrish Lit will be short, filler videos to tide folks over while we work on the bigger stuff. Another possible filler segment I have planned is me reading Rufus quotes from Street Fighter 4, similar to the Videots I did years ago called The Wit an’ Wisdom o’ Rufus, but unlike that, I won’t be reading them all at once, as that would just get boring, instead I’ll read one quote per installment. (Ironically, that post was one of the first signs to me that maybe the blog format wasn’t the way for us to go; I never felt that came off properly as a text post.)
• A new segment we’re working on is a riff segment, though it won’t be presented in the traditional MST3K style, with the film playing and our voices heard over it; ours would be done similar to the openings of Mike Jeavons’ Infomercialism: show a clip of something, cut to us making a joke about it, cut back to another clip, cut back to us joking, repeat. Right now we’re calling this segment Laff Riot. Like with Nerdvana, The subjects of Laff Riot can be anything: a cartoon short, an episode of a TV show, a short film, a commercial, anything. The only thing I’d like to avoid riffing on is 50’s educational films, because everybody riffs on those.
• We’re also kicking around the prospect of doing a segment inspired by the YouTube channels Defunctland and Restaurant Rewind, in which we look at retail chains, stores and ad campaigns of the past. We don’t have a name for this segment yet.
• Another new segment idea is inspired by some of Andre Meadows (Black Nerd)’s videos, in which we go on location to a particular spot or attraction and engage with said spot. We’re tentatively calling this segment The Sweet Spot. (The only other name we have for it is Coolopolis.)
• Finally, we plan to have partially unscripted vlogs called Beware the Bros, in which we just ramble and talk about stuff of interest. These are inspired by the Walker Brothers’ Sibling Rivalry and Greg Sepelak and Trent Troop’s Under the Table.

When will these videos come out? I can’t say for certain, but ideally I’d like to for them to be ready for viewing by 2019, first quarter 2019 preferably.

How often will we be uploading videos? Again, can’t say for certain, but ideally I’d like to put up a minimum of 1 video a month or at least every 2 months. I realize that videos take longer to produce, as they have to be written, recorded, edited and uploaded, but I’m going to try to not get locked into the whole YouTube algorithm thing. I’ve even considered creating a Patreon account.

Bear with us, folks. I know it’s annoying just slogging through these text posts; I know you’re wondering “When are they going to post something entertaining, with visuals, jokes and stuff?”. When we upgrade the site, we plan to have a blog section, which we’ll use to archive all the stuff we’ve done up to now for those who wish to revisit those, but going forward the funny stuff with jokes and images and clips will be videos and vlogs, not text blog posts. Future blog posts will mainly just be stuff like this, site news and updates. This is where Twinsanity’s headed. It’s work, I know, but the blog format just isn’t doing it for us anymore. We both feel like we’ve hit a wall with the blog format; it’s become too limiting and restrictive for what we want to do creatively, and although we tried to bounce back after returning from our self-imposed hiatus, we can no longer escape the feeling that we want to express ourselves in a different, more vibrant way. Twinsanity as just a blog has run its’ course; neither of us wish to stop working on Twinsanity, we just want to continue doing it in a different medium.

If I tried to do an ‘old-style’ blog post now, it wouldn’t be very good ’cause I’m just not feeling it, the enthusiasm just isn’t there anymore, and I’m not going to phone in that kind of blog post just for the sake of putting something up here. We have to do what we want to do creatively. It’s like JG Quintel said, you have to make the stuff you want to see, not what you think other people want to see. It’s way too much work making something you’re not even into.