Let’s face it; 2016 kind of sucked.

“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.

“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.

Heck, it couldn’t get much worse.