Category What Up?

New Stuff ‘n’ Stuff

silverstar Leave a comment

 

were-remodeling

Pardon our dust.

As you’ve undoubtedly noticed, we’re experiencing a bit of a down time here lately. It’s not that we’re burned out, it’s just that right now there’s not a whole lot going on in the world of animation that’s really grabbed us enough to want to blog about it. During this little sabbatical, we’ve been kicking the idea nut around and are in the process of developing possible new segments for Twinsanity.

dartboard

We’re throwing stuff at a dart board and seeing what sticks.

No, this doesn’t mean that the other regular segments like Ad Nausea, Beyond the Background, The Cartoon Couch et al are done; they will continue, just at the moment we haven’t been inspired to do any new installments of them lately. The only segments we’re actively trying to avoid doing are the Highly Opinionated segments; we’re trying to move away from the ranting posts, and we’re no longer doing the 2 Funny, Toons & Tunes or musical Nerdvana segments as actual posts; they will only be used as fillers, placeholders and buffers to separate 2 installments of the same segment like they were originally intended to be.

The What the Funny and Pop Dream segments are an indicator of what to expect with the new material we’re working on: these new segments will be more reminiscent of those in that they will be more detailed and will focus on one specific subject and will extend across multiple posts as opposed to just being one-offs done in a ‘grab bag’ fashion like the Cartoon Country, The Retro Bin and the like are. At this stage I’d actually prefer doing ongoing multiple blog posts, since that will keep us working on something for a weeks, possibly months to come.

(Speaking of Pop Dream and What the Funny, there will be more of these segments; it’s just that we’ve only recently finished the first installments of those and we’d rather not start the next set so soon afterwards. We’d prefer to do something else first. Part of what makes those segments special is that you don’t see them all the time. We don’t wish to get burned out on them.)

Now, onto the new stuff currently in development. Keep in mind that all of these ideas are extremely early, and they could go through a number of changes before reaching their final forms. Also, none of these new bits are named yet; we’ll just be giving them working names for the sake of calling them something. Names are a tricky thing right now since the segments themselves are still being developed, so they too are subject to change. Also, the overall theme of Twinsanity isn’t going to change; Twinsanity’s central focus is, always was and always will be cartoons, comedy and geek culture. Got it? Good.

The first new segment I’m working on was originally going to be a Videots listing my favorite Sonic the Hedgehog Zones; I may still do that at some point, but I’ve already done a favorite stages post in early February, and as much as I enjoy doing those, I don’t want to get into a rut with them. A while later James Rolfe and Mike Mattei did a James and Mike Mondays on Knuckles Chaotix…

knuckles_chaotix

...So for a while I was considering doing something along those lines. Then while researching for that, I began reading up on general Sonic lore and considered doing a piece on Knothole (or a place which resembled it; which I also still may do at some stage), and that evolved into a general overview of a planet similar to Mobius. Then finally, I decided to make a series of segments set in a Utopian future. It would depict day-to-day life in an amazing, wonderful high-tech future complete with spaceships, flying cars, robots, aliens and the like. This segment will combine some elements of “Superhero City: A Visitor’s Guide” and “The Future Rocks!” and will feature places and things mentioned in both of those, but will go in greater detail and unlike “Superhero City” and “A Touch of Magix”, these entries will  more closely resemble a narrative structure rather than just being travelogues and will star actual characters for the readers to experience these things through. Right now I’m calling this segment Startopia, Startropolis or Coolopolis. 

I’m also working on something akin to Tony Goldmark’s State of the Parks vlogs or Allison Pregler’s Movie Nights or Bob Chipman’s G.E.M.s (Good Enough Movies), but for cartoons, cartoon episodes and possibly cartoon merch. I’d like for it to capture the essence of CN’s Cartoon Planet or The Hudson Brothers Razzle Dazzle Show, with quick jokes, bits and self-aware inanity. My big concern with this idea is that it may smack too much of Cartoon Country, so this may just become another branch or aspect of Cartoon Country, which would also be cool, since one of the goals we both have for this year is to get back into producing Cartoon Countries on a regular basis.

The final new segment I’m working on started out as a piece I had planned to do on Marvel’s Inhumans. 

inhumans

Two things I like about the Inhumans are 1) that they’re not superheroes, despite meeting and teaming up with them on occasion and 2) the central characters are a family. This evolved into a general ongoing segment about a quirky and kooky yet loving and functional family, something I’ve wanted to do for a while now. However, I don’t want them to just be an ordinary family; I’m not trying to do something like The Family Circus or Fox Trot, that would be boring; this family will have some kind of unique cartoon hook, gimmick or twist of some kind. Presently I’m calling this segment Family Fun, but that won’t be its’ final name. 

For a little while now, I’ve been interested in Cyborcat’s recurring segments, The Game Den and The Film Den, respectively. I particularly liked how Dena split them off into two separate segments, but they’re still connected in terms of theme and approach.* Also, I’ve been watching James Rolfe’s reviews of monster movies such Godzilla and King Kong, as well as James’ two part “Power Rangers: A Noob’s Guide” video, and I’ve been thinking about doing something along those lines, only bigger and wilder, with the usual jokes and nonsense attached to them. Nothing is final as of yet, but here are some of the themes that I’m considering going with:

I thought about tackling the tropes and character archetypes of domestic comedies, similar to the Nerdvana segment, “Making Family Fun”, only more detailed and specific. Currently, I’m calling this segment The Family Factor. Also, I’ve been trying to do something with the idea of the kidcom with the sci-fi twist (which I’ve been wanting to do for a little while now), something along the lines of Wake, Rattle and Roll, Johnny Test or Out of Jimmy’s Head, only good, so this segment could possibly tie in to that idea.

The other segment was originally going to be me talking about toys based on cartoons or toy franchises, but I wasn’t coming up with a lot of ideas for this, so then I thought about just talking about merchandise based on cartoons and franchises, similar to the late TLC show (back when TLC stood for The Learning Channel) called Neat Stuff. In this form, I’ve been calling the segment The Toy Factor. One thing possibly preventing this idea is that concept-wise, it’s not far enough away from Nerdvana. Of course, any ideas for this could easily lead to more Nerdvana segments, which I wouldn’t mind at all, so I just might approach the idea this way instead of making a new segment. We’ll see.

I’d also like to do something along the lines of Doug and Rob Walker’s Sibling Rivalry/Real Thoughts segments mixed with Trent Troop and Greg Sepelak’s Under the Table podcasts mixed with The Sifl & Olly Show; quick little jokes, quips and thought bubbles about subjects that aren’t major enough to devote an entire segment to.

I also thought about focusing on the art and settings of video games, but that might be too similar to Videots. Of course, I could always do those as Videots segments. OK, so it seems evident that I don’t actually have a particular subject in mind for either of these connected segments at this time, or anything other than the desire to do them (although this may change when I find something new to “groove” on, as I mentioned back in “Twinsanity’s New Groove”).  In hindsight, it’s not really me doing an entirely new segment so much as approaching the established segments in a slightly different (and better) way. In any case, if this happens at all, I want there to be 2 of these segments and both of the segments will have similar themed names, as with Cyborcat’s segments*.

*Inspired by this, we’ve decided to rename the Retro Box and Wild World of Shows segments, since they too are connected as being opposite sides of the same coin. One segment roasts past cartoons pulled out of the trash bin, while the other turns an appreciative spotlight on obscure cartoons which have fallen into the couch cushions. So henceforth The Retro Box shall be known as The Retro Bin, while the Wild World of Shows is now The Cartoon Couch. The content of each segment is still the same. ‘Kay?

Twinsanity’s New Groove

goldstar 2 Comments

This is a sort of addendum to what was discussed in the 2016 Yearly Wrap-Up. I just wanted to explain where where at as far as where this blog is going and (hopefully) will be going in 2017.

dont-panic

This won’t be in any way cryptic or final. However, I may ramble a bit, which I plan to address a little later on.

Both Damon and myself will explaining our plans for Twinsanity’s future, so to avoid confusion, after this passage, Damon’s thoughts will be posted in blue, while mine will be typed in purple.

First, let me say that overall, I don’t plan on making any dramatic changes to the blog. Twinsanity will still be comedy focused. It will still be animation focused and it will still be geek culture focused. None of that will change. However, I’m going to be taking a vacation from typing stuff about comic book super heroes for a while. I just feel like I’ve been talking about that particular subject far too often and I just want to to blog about other subjects besides that. I haven’t written a Cartoon Country in a while. I was on a roll there for a while, then I just kind of stopped. Not to boast, but since I pretty much saved that segment from oblivion, I really would like to get back into writing those. They’re enjoyable.

A couple of years ago, I planned to start a 2nd blog that I was going to call The Mash-Up, in which I would basically blog about whatever was on my mind at the time. Some of the current segments here, such as Toons & Tunes and Nerdvana were originally planned for that blog, but I decided that it would be easier to simply write the stuff that I planned for The Mash-Up here at Twinsanity, and that worked fine for the most part, except that as of late I feel as though far too many of my posts here have just been me picking a subject and giving a series of random thoughts about it, as opposed to Damon, who pitches TV show pilots, imaginative settings and mini synopses for animated movies and franchises. The random thoughts posts are OK, but I don’t want that to be the main thing that I’m known for doing because I know that I can be more creative than that. The random thoughts posts were only intended to be filler segments to keep the blog active while we were working on something bigger or for when each of us has an idea for the same segment in the works and we don’t want both of them appearing back-to-back. I fell into complacency with the random thoughts posts because they’re so easy to make, but they don’t require a lot of creativity, so from now on, I’m going to put a limit on the amount of time that I post the random thoughts posts. The 2 Funny, Toons & Tunes and musical Nerdvana posts won’t disappear from the site entirely; I’m still going to do them, but now they’re only going to be utilized as filler, the way that they were originally intended to be.

On a semi-related note, in regards to that Talkin’ Nerdy installment titled “What the What, PPG Reboot?!?” that I did a few months back, I hope that you enjoyed that, because that’s the last time that I’ll be talking about Powerpuff Girls 2016 on this blog. I haven’t been watching PPG 2016 after the initial 2 weeks of it’s debut, and after dedicating three posts to the show, I’ve literally run out of things to say about it. I’m tired of talking about that damn reboot!  Plus, I was never a PPG fanboy to begin with, so please stop asking me what I think of it.

This year, I’m going to find some new subject matter to focus on (hereinafter referred to as the “groove”) and these will among the main things that I’ll be writing about this year. I don’t know what it is is that I’ll be grooving on as of right now, but I’ll know what it is when I find it, or more accurately when it finds me. The What The Funny segments that I started last year is an indication of what’s to come (incidentally, I’m not done with those, not by a long shot. I’m going to cover two more Rocko’s Modern Life shorts before moving on a to a different show or franchise. I wasn’t able to write WTF #4 last month the way I had intended to, but it will definitely be written in January). The more imaginative posts take longer to make, but they make for a better end result.

So to sum up: I plan for my 2017 posts to be more focused and creatively driven. The random thoughts posts will kept to a minimum and only used as filler segments and no more comic book super hero stuff, as least not for a little while. Maybe after I’ve done a sufficient amount of other stuff, I’ll revisit that subject, but only afterwards.

Finally, with luck, 2017 will be the year that we finally began the process of transitioning Twinsanity from a blog to a website. It feels like we’ve been talking about doing that forever, but I’m hoping that this year we can at last put those plans into effect.

I’ve already outlined several of my plans for Twinsanity 2017 in the Yearly Wrap-Up, but nonetheless there are a few specifics which I feel I probably missed that need addressing.

Like how Broadway types feel about theater, I view Twinsanity as practically a living, breathing entity, something which needs to be nurtured and cared for in order for it to be its’ best. While I don’t wish to lose sight of Twinsanity’s overall focus–a site wherein Jason and I joke about, goof on, examine, comment on, analyse and generally geek out on animation and geek stuff–I’ve been wanting to expand this blog, its’ range of subject matter, its’ style and my own personal contributions to it, for some time. There are things I’d like to do more of and things I’d like to do less of.

While 2016 was notably not a very good year for me (not just for the reasons it wasn’t a good year for the planet as a whole, but for my own personal reasons as well), there were some bright spots: I don’t like to toot my own horn, but some of the posts I made in the last year or so that I’m particularly proud of were ‘Superhero City: A Visitiors’ Guide’, ‘A Touch of Magix’, ‘Hero: 108 – Fast Forward’, my recent Videots entries, the Cartoon Country I did on “Mysterious Mayhem at Mutant High!”, the TV Special Showdowns on Tabitha and Adam and the Clown Family and Nickelodeon’s Thanksgiving Fest and of course the Pop Dreams. (And no, I haven’t abandoned those: I still have 2 more Barbie Sisters Pop Dreams left to do, the former I plan to put up sometime this month, and the latter hopefully in February, after which the plan is to launch another series of Pop Dreams but center on a completely different show, franchise and set of characters.) I would like to do more posts like those aforementioned (again, I’m itching to “GO BIG” this year), realizing that the more detailed posts take time, so it may be at the risk of reducing the number of posts that I make in an average month, but that’s OK if it results in a better quality end product. Like I’m always saying, Quality over Quantity. I’d be fine with only making 1 post a month if said post kicked a lot of ass; I’d rather be brilliant and infrequent than forced and regular. (It also helps that there are 2 of us contributing material to the site, if Jason does a post a month and I do a post a month, that’s still 2 posts, which is the minimum number of posts we try to make.) Also, I haven’t done a Cartoon Country in a while, I’d like to get back to doing more of those.

Second, you may have noticed that I haven’t put up a 2 Funny, Toons & Tunes or a music video embed (hereinafter referred to as a Musical Nerdvana) in a while; my last Toons & Tunes was in September and my last musical Nerdvana was in October; this is intentional. Over the past years or so, I feel that I’ve become too dependent on those, a trap that was easy to fall into since those are so much simpler to make, so I would frequently posts those just to keep the site active and keep post counts high, but no more. I will no longer just be putting up video embeds with minimal descriptions and passing them off as my content for the month; those segments were intended to be filler segments between the bigger posts and a way to prevent 2 of the same segment from being posted back-to-back, and that’s solely how I’ll be utilizing them from now on. Expect less of those in the future, except as buffers between larger segments.

Finally, if there’s one thing I’m genuinely disappointed with myself about is that so far I haven’t been able to escape doing posts about superheroes, despite my wanting to expand my horizons from that. Last year I made a post called “The Animal Factor” which I had planned to be a tad more ambitious, sort of a Hero:108/Littlest Pet Shop/Animal Crossing kind of thing with a sci-fi twist, but it ended up being yet another superhero-wanking post. (I may make a 2nd attempt at “The Animal Factor” if I can properly get my thoughts together on it.) This coming year I’m going to make a conscious effort to reduce the number of superhero-themed posts I make; as of this writing, I’m taking a self-imposed break from superhero posts, effective until ????. I may do another one somewhere down the line, but right now I’d like to branch out and explore other subject matter. Ideally, I’d like to get a comfortable backlog of non-superhero posts, say, about 3 to 4 months worth, before I do another superhero themed post.

As a sidebar to that, as of this writing I won’t be devoting any more posts to DC Super Hero Girls. I still like the show and I’ll continue to watch it, but I won’t be doing any more blog posts about it here. As previously stated, I’m trying to expand my subject matter beyond superheroes, plus I’ve given that show enough free publicity already; I was starting to feel like this was becoming a DCSHG fan site, which was never my intent.

I’d really like to find some new, interesting subject matter to make decent posts about, i.e. a New Groove. As of this writing I don’t know what the new Groove will be, but I’m hoping it can help take Twinsanity to an all-new level, which has been my overriding goal for a while now.

Yearly Wrap-Up 2016

silverstar Leave a comment

2016

Let’s face it; 2016 kind of sucked.

danvs_skywardscream

“TWENTY-SIXTEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN!!!!!”

With the general tumultuous atmosphere, the huge ideological divide and the many, many, many beloved celebrities’ passing, this really hasn’t been a great year.

kenobi-guiness-starwars

“The suck is strong with this one.”

2016 hasn’t been much kinder to us, either. I know you’re all probably less than thrilled about the general lack of output here on the site; we’re not happy about it either. This year there’s been a lot of craziness and distractions going on in our offline lives, so regrettably we haven’t been able to spend as much time focusing on Twinsanity as we’d have liked. The latter months of this year our work here has been particularly sporadic; fall and winter seemed to have been the Seasons of Medical Procedures: nearly every member of our household has had to deal with some sort of procedure (nothing life-threatening, thankfully, but enough to keep us away from production for a good while). Then of course came the unstoppable juggernaut that is the Holiday Season, which only slowed down production even more here. We’re hoping that once all this stuff chills out, we can get to business as usual (0r unusual) around here.

There have been some bright spots, though. I haven’t really been able to bask in it too much due to the melange of crap that I’ve also had to deal with this year, but 2016 marks the first anniversary of our departures from Toon Zone, and looking back I have to say that splitting from that place was one of the smartest moves I’ve made in recent years. TZ just wasn’t a good fit for us; looking back, I can’t believe we stayed there as long as we did. There were too many inmates running the asylum and too many giant egos drunk on their tiny bits of power taking what’s supposed to be a fun past-time far too seriously. Long story short, the atmosphere over at TZ had become toxic and I couldn’t picture myself staying there for another 12 days, let alone 12 months. So no, I don’t regret that move even a little, but we’re all about looking forward not back, so I won’t sling any more hash about Toon Zone anymore. As far as we’re concerned, TZ is part of our past, and it’s time to embrace the future.

We also managed to launch 2 of our “passion projects” this year: What the Funny and Pop Dream. We’re aware that you’re all waiting for us to continue with those; as of this writing there are still 2 Pop Dreams and 2 What the Funnies left to be presented; again we just haven’t been able to devote as much time to Twinsanity in general this year, especially during the latter months, but rest assured we will be finishing both of those, after which the WTF and Pop Dream segments will continue, but each will focus on different characters and shows. The idea behind each is that we’ll do about 4, 5 or at the most 6 (depending on the franchise) entries for one show or franchise before moving on to another one. I had planned to do the 4th Pop Dream this month, but as you can see I wasn’t able to, maybe it’ll come out in January. Similarly, Jason is hoping that the 4th What the Funny will be done some time in January; it seems unlikely that there will be any major blog entries this week. Also, this probably doesn’t need to be said, but the other segments like Videots, Wild World of Shows, Cartoon Country, Beyond the Background, Unpopular Opinions and the like will still continue; we won’t cease to work on them just because we’re planning to continue Pop Dream and What the Funny. Plus, segments like PD or WTF are meant to be special; the plan is and has always been to sprinkle them throughout the blog as a special treat to look forward to among the other regular segments.

Also, remember Twinsanity Toons, that fiction blog that we attempted a couple of years ago but folded after just a few weeks? Well, there’s been the on-and-off thought about taking another shot at that. Don’t get us wrong. Twinsanity is a variety blog, as it’s always been. We’re not going to split it up into 2 blogs. If we do indeed embark on this, it would be more of a side project. Jason has said that the only way he’d do a 2nd blog is if it offered something different from the current one, and we don’t generally write fiction on Twinsanity, so this would be something different. We’re discussing some possible ideas for setting, characters, etc. I don’t want to reveal too much until it looks like we’re actually going to do it, but we definitely won’t be calling the fiction blog “Twinsanity Toons”. We can be more creative than that. The plan is for the fiction stories to focus on one specific set of characters in one specific setting, rather than the ‘grab-bag’ formula that this blog embodies. Again, I’d rather not reveal too much too early, since we’re still playing around with characters, ideas and concepts, but if anything connected to this idea becomes solid, you’ll here it here first, and we’ll provide you with the new URL should it come to that.

Two words keep resonating through my head whenever I can get a free moment to sit down on try to concentrate on Twinsanity: bigger and wilder. Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of what we’ve been doing here; our work starting from 2013 and up (IMO) has been quite good, but I guess every artist has their own personal Mount Everest that they want to to climb; I just can’t help feeling like I could be pushing the envelope even further. I’d like to really start making some extra-good, super-wild stuff in the coming months. That’s one reason why we’re pushing to transform this blog into a full-blown site; there’s so much we’d like to do that goes beyond the confines of a mere blog. We have been moving away from the ranty stuff and that’s good, ’cause I wanted to take Twinsanity in a more positive direction, and when we start producing videos, I plan to keep things more fun and positive. It’s like playing that fortune cookie game where you add “in bed” to the fortune; a lot of the things we plan to do are similar to what other YouTubers and content creators are doing, only Bigger and Wilder. For example, I’d like to make videos similar to Jill Bearup (aka Sursum Ursa)’s Stuff You Like…only Bigger and Wilder. What the Funny was born out of Jason’s desire to make something similar to Chris Stuckmann’s Hilariocity reviews…only Bigger and Wilder. My latest Videots installments were meant to emulate Ryan Molina (of Battle Geek Plus)’s Awesome Video Game Memories…only Bigger and Wilder. You get the idea. Plus, there aren’t a ton of other producers who cover animation extensively aside from Rebel Taxi and TheMysteriousMrEnter; I’ve only seen assorted bits from the former and how we cover cartoons is NOTHING like the latter. Sorry to any fans of MrEnter, but we’re not going to do what he does at all. First off, the dude’s a freak; the guy over-reacts and rants and screams like a maniac about cartoons starring pastel-colored talking horses; he takes My Little Pony more seriously than any sane adult should. Second, Enter is obsessed with heart and emotional moments in animation, and while I can appreciate fine art, for the most part I don’t have time for the touchy-feely stuff. Enter takes these silly cartoons way too seriously, and this is coming from someone who one day plans to forge a career making silly cartoons. Someone’s gotta focus on the laughs, goofiness and the fun side of cartoons and cartoon culture, and that’s what we do. It is my hope that our videos and future installments will be both like stuff you’ve seen before and like nothing you’ve seen before.

In short, no need to panic; we’re still alive and we’re still working on Twinsanity. Here’s hoping that 2017 will be bigger, better, wilder, more productive and more fun than 2016.

2017-no-2

Heck, it couldn’t get much worse.

State of Twinsanity Address – August 2016

silverstar 3 Comments

The following is a State of the Site Address, discussing the present and future events for Twinsanity.

2 Logo

Salutations, y’all.

Just thought I’d give our followers a (fairly) little heads-up as to what we’re working on currently for the site, and what to expect from us in the upcoming weeks and months.

First off, I realize that the output these past 2 months or so has been a tad sporadic. This has been kind of a roller-coaster summer for us; nothing really serious or dramatic has happened, thankfully, but a lot of dumb and inconvenient things have been going on in our everyday lives, and as a result, we haven’t been able to devote as much time to making stuff for the site as we’d like. Hopefully, things will calm down a bit in the upcoming months so we can devote more time to production. Also, currently we have a lot of ideas and potential ideas in the works, just not a lot of them are ready to be presented yet. Quality takes time, and again, things have been kind of nuts offline, so bear with us. Creativity is like running a marathon: when you run 10, 15 or 20 mils, you have to stop and walk for a little while before getting back up to speed. We’re in a walking period right now.

Here’s what you can expect in the immediate future, i.e., the next few weeks or by or around next month:

  • I’m working on a Videots similar to Favorite Fighting Game Stages, but this time it’ll be just for 1 game specifically, Marvel VS Capcom. I’ll be giving my thoughts and feelings on my favorite stages from that game (or maybe I’ll just do a personal breakdown of all the game’s stages, since there are only like 8 of them in total).
  • Jason is working on a Cartoon Country for the syndicated animated series, Bionic Six.
  • I may be doing a Why (Blank) is Awesome! for the character Videl from Dragon Ball Z. NOTE: this entry won’t feature any references or allusions to Dragon Ball Super, because I don’t watch that show.
  • On the subject of Dragon Ball/DBZ, Jason may be doing an Unpopular Opinion about Ch-Chi from DBZ.
  • We have 2 future TV Special Showdowns in the works: one for The Charmkins, a syndicated special based on an 80’s toy line, and another for the Tiny Toons Spring Break Special. Both of these will ready at ??? (the TV Special Showdowns in general take longer to produce than the average segments, since they’re one-and-done specials rather than on going series so they require more digging for proper information, images and clips), but we already have some material for each.
  • I have a possible Commentary entitled “Stuff We Just Don’t Dig”, in which we list some of our least favorite story lines, tropes, character types and cliches; however, I seem to have a hard time getting motivated to actually write it. I’d much rather spend my time and energy geeking out about things I enjoy rather than ranting about things I don’t. I prefer to simply ignore the stuff I’m not fond of, which is probably why this particular entry is taking so long to do; I prefer the positive stuff.

Also, there will be considerably less articles about superheroes in the upcoming months. Why? In the wake of the big superhero boom, we’re both kind of Caped out, and we’ve been wanting to focus more attention on our first love: comedy, so future installments will be more focused on comedy cartoons and toyetic cartoons. Earlier this month I did a Nerdvana entry on the Animal Factor, which, while not bad, wasn’t really what I wanted to do; I really didn’t want to go all superhero-ey with it. I had another Nerdvana about the Tech Factor which I still may do one day, but that one will not be so superhero focused. (I may also take another shot at the Animal Factor, if I can do an article for it that doesn’t feature superheroes so heavily.) Maybe we’ll get a renewed interest in Supers once the next big comic book movie comes or or when Justice League Action premieres next year, but for now, look for the primary focus of Twinsanity to be comedy over superhero stuff.

Now, on the more distant stuff, the things which are presently (as of this writing) still on the back burner. Jason has mentioned that he is planning to do a mini-series of articles of sorts,  the subject of which will be more specific than say Cartoon Country or Wild World of Shows. These would be devoted to a single show, studio or genre in particular instead of being about cartoons in general, such as Rocko’s Modern Life or Chowder or something along those lines. These will likely be split into multiple parts (multiple in this case being about 3 or 4 posts instead of one long one).  Right now, he’s calling it something like ‘Humorosity’, ‘What The Funny?’ or ‘Laff Riot’, but that may not be its’ final name. Also, this mini-series will be done in addition to the regular segments, not instead of them.

By an amazing coincidence (great minds think alike, after all) I too was thinking about typing a multi-part side-segment to run alongside the usual segments: inspired by Digi Valentine’s Who Dat?, originally it was going to be in-depth analyses (with jokes, of course) of my favorite characters, sort of a more detailed Why (Blank) is Awesome!, but that was too general and not far enough away from what we already do here–I wanted to do something even more specific than that, so now it’ll likely be a series of posts about characters from a particular franchise or studio, like a series of entries on each Barbie sister or a series on each one of the Alpha Masters from Animal Jam, something like that. Right now I’m calling this idea ‘Pop Dream’, ‘Pop Dreams’ or ‘Pop Dreaming’, but its’ final name and what it’s going to about remains to be seen.

Finally, look for some more original fiction ideas in the upcoming months. Last year I thought of doing an entry which was basically my take on Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse, centering on a toyetic toon girl, her unique home and her family. (Earlier I had tried an article called “Family Business”, about a family of adventurers a la the Fantastic Four, the Bionic Six or the Secret Saturdays, but the less said about that, the better; I’ve been driven to make up for that previous terrible entry by making a better one, this one with no association whatsoever with superheroes.) While that idea was still in development, I did the articles “Hero: 108 – Fast Forward” and the Videots/Wild World of Shows for Viva Pinata, and began grooving on National Geographic’s Animal Jam, which put me in the mood to do something tropical: my researching of the Viva Pinata game in particular (specifically the bits involving the human family and their garden) reminded me of stuff like Harvest Moon, Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley, but with a tropical island theme; in addition, each of us enjoyed Jason’s “The Future Rocks!” Nerdvana so much that we’d like to do a follow-up entry in that same setting, only focusing on a specific set of characters this time. Presently the Dream House idea has grown a little to fit those parameters; it’s now sort of Meet the Robinsons mixed with Swiss Family Robinson. I can’t say when it’ll be ready, but I have more for it now that I did before.

Similarly, Jason likewise has a previously written sub-par article that he’d like to improve upon. It was “Build Your Own Watterson Family” and it was so unmemorable that he didn’t keep it on the site. He plans to take another stab at this idea, but do it right this time. He has some ideas with the same basic premise; a toon kid and her quirky but lovable family, but now this will take place in a distinctive setting and it will have a sci-fi/fantasy twist of some kind.

If by some miracle these OC articles blossom and grow into full-blown stories and we get into a groove in which we start producing them on a fairly regular basis (say, about one or twice a month), then we may launch a separate spinoff blog for the original fiction. As always, Stay Tooned.

Yearly Wrap-Up 2015

silverstar Leave a comment

This is earlier than we usually do the annual Wrap-Up, I know, but since it’s Christmas Eve and I honestly don’t know how often I’ll be able to post in the next couple of days and weeks, what with the holidays and all, I figured I’d do the yearly summation now while I’ve got all my thoughts together.

First, let’s address the elephant in the room…

elephant-vector-clip-art-3279552

‘Sup, ‘yall?

Those of you who know us from Toon Zone may have noticed that neither Jason nor myself have made a post there since November 10th (yeah, we marked the date); that’s because we’ve both basically retired from TZ, and message boards in general. I don’t wish to drum up a lot of high-school mud-slinging BS–we don’t do that here, not anymore–so I’ll spare you the ugly details; the short story is that we’ve been unhappy there for some time and for the sake of my own sanity and happiness I needed to make a drastic change in my life and daily routine; most of the people who we came to know as friends and allies on the boards have since moved on, either started other venues, gotten busy with their own lives and responsibilities in real life or just plain left, and I was really getting tired of having the same debates with the same people over the same subjects again and again, and I’ve gotten far too many slaps on the knuckles from people who at this stage in my life I really don’t feel like I should have to be taking guff from. I’ve had to bite my tongue so much over there that it now looks like a dog’s chew toy. When I got raked over hot coals just for pointing out a few spelling errors, I knew my time on Toon Zone was over. Something had to change, and the Powers That Be over at TZ made it crystal clear that they were never going to change, so I had to change myself. I knew the day when I separated myself from message boards altogether was coming, and I couldn’t have gotten a bigger sign if it had been blazing on a burning bush. It was just time for me to move on.

The More You Know

And now you know.

Now on to more pleasant news: thankfully, we don’t have any major changes in the works for Twinsanity at this point; 2015 has been a good year for the site and the content we’ve been producing now has been pretty good, if I do say so myself. I’ve had a lot of fun posting here this past year, and I’ve really enjoyed the style and subject matter we’ve been tackling. There haven’t been that many Highly Opinionated articles this year, and I for one am glad; don’t get me wrong, schooling the ignorant, ill-informed, confused and unwashed can be cathartic, but I’d be upset if that were all we were doing. I never wanted the rant posts to become what this site is known for. I’ve always wanted Twinsanity to be a fun place where we can geek out over the cartoons and media that we love and share that celebration with like-minded individuals, and that’s the path I want to stay on.

This is another reason why I’m currently not on any message boards: I’m really starting to get tired of the same rants from people who cry that the sky is falling  (“Oh noes! Warner Brothers is dying!” “Cartoon Network is dying! 2D animation is dying!!”) whenever they don’t like certain shows or movies or when something they do like gets canceled, when these things happen on TV and movies all the time. It always just degenerates into the same people nostalgically pining away for “the good ol’ days” instead of actual intelligent discussion. Over time, I’ve come to realize that I/we don’t have to respond to every single insane statement or opinion that someone spews out; no matter what you do, some people are always going to remain stubborn, some people choose to remain secured in their tiny bubbles of ignorance, and these people are simply beyond help. Some people just want to bark at the moon, and those people are best ignored. If a topic or opinion grinds our gears significantly enough to inspire a Highly Opinionated, then we’ll post one, but I’m no longer actively seeking those out, I’ve stopped doing that a while ago; I really don’t have the passion for or interest in those sort of topics that I used to. I just plain enjoy the humorous and creative posts more, and in 2016 and beyond I plan to continue doing more of those over taking fools to school. These days I’d rather spend my time geeking out over things I enjoy than snarking about things I don’t.

This is probably the only time you’re going to get a sports metaphor out of me, so you might want to mark this day on your calendar: I think Jason (Goldstar) should be named MVP of Twinsanity this year. It was his decision and machinations that led to the resurrection and restructuring of the defunct Reviews on the Run segments and the subsequent renaming of that segment to the much better Cartoon Country; this will go down in the annals of Twinsanity as one of the single best moves either of us have made here to date. The Cartoon Countries both pop and rock, and I actually look forward to doing them as opposed to Reviews on the Run, which I dreaded having to do and would have to practically fist-fight myself to research and type them. I enjoy these new non-reviews, abridged reviews and quasi-reviews far more than I ever did the actual reviews. Now that we’ve come to realize that we don’t have to review every new cartoon that comes down the pike, now that we only cover shows that we’re genuinely interested in, now that the subject matter need not be about a new show, or even a currently running show, that they can be just about a single episode of a show, or just a single scene or act from a particular episode of a show, we can do a lot more with Cartoon Country; it covers a lot more ground, it’s far less repetitive and it allows for shorter, less essay-like content, which I just plain do much better and enjoy much more. The numbers speak for themselves: there have only been 7 Reviews on the Run (not counting the early ones we did on Blogger which were so bland and uninspired that we didn’t feel the need to port them over to WordPress) and to date there have been 23 Cartoon Countries in just the one year since we started doing them. Overall, I’m enjoying the free-form style we’ve been doing here lately, and in 2016 I plan to continue going this route with the articles, only bigger and better.

I’ve started some (very) rudimentary attempts at videos; the webcam I have now sucks, so I’m going to get a better camera as well as more professional lighting. I don’t half-ass anything; when we’re ready start making videos for this site, I want them to look as good and be as professional as possible. So, yes, that’s happening.

Finally, you may have noticed that this year in the articles we’ve been making the odd foray into original characters and premises here; this is most evident in the ‘Flip the Script’ articles (which is actually reminiscent of an idea for a segment I had a few years ago called “If We Made It”, where we would entail our spins on already existing shows) and miscellaneous articles such as Superhero City: A Visitor’s Guide. This ties into and may hopefully lead to something that I’ve wanted to do for some time: post original works of fiction, complete with original illustrations. If all goes well, Twinsanity could start boasting some original works of fiction, in fact both of us are currently working on ideas (which could possibly become a single idea depending on what happens) about a family unit who reside in a unique residence in a toyetic cartoon world; each of us have been wanting to do something with a kooky family and a crazy house for some time….well, it’s a work in progress; hopefully something will come of this idea sometime in the next year.

So that’s it. Expect no major changes to occur on Twinsanity, just for things to get bigger and better and for the production values here to increase. The ultimate goal is still the same: for Twinsanity to to expand and shed its’ blog skin and emerge as a full-blown website. We’re tentatively calling this dream project TWINSANITY 2.0.

Oh, and one more thing: by January 14th, the URL thetwinfactor.com will expire, and twinsanity.co will become the only URL that directs you to this site. If you haven’t done it already, make sure to bookmark us as twinsanity.co, because that’s going to be the site’s only URL very shortly.

Nothing else to say, except Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Holidays, Happy Winter Solstice, Happy Festivus for all you Seinfeld fans, Happy New Year and we look forward to you joining us for more nonsense and nuttiness next year.