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Yearly Wrap-Up 2017

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End of 2017

We’re approaching the end of the road…

It’s that time again: our final blog post of the year, where we offer up a brief summation of the site’s activities and our plans for Twinsanity’s future.

As 2017 winds to a close, if I were to try and sum things up in a single term, it would probably be:

Roller Coaster

ROLLER COASTER.

To say that 2017 had its’ fair share of ups and downs is an understatement. 2017 seemed to be the year of Delays and Distractions, as a lot of this year’s planned blog posts had to be pushed back or rescheduled for various reasons. If there’s one thing we’d both like to see happen in 2018, we hope that production will pick up here; we’d really like to get back to a pattern where we’re producing new material here on a fairly regular basis once more. Here’s hoping.

This time there aren’t a lot of new things to report for next year; as of this writing we don’t currently have any new segments planned (aside from the ones which will be made as videos*), rather we simply plan to make more and better entries of the current roster of segments. At the moment we have 4 Cartoon Countries in the works, a couple of Toon Adjacents, a Videots and a Retro Bin. I’d like to do another Cartoon Couch and Jason says he’d like to do another TV Special Showdown, but in order to do either would first require a subject.

We would’ve liked to have done something holiday themed this year, but it just never happened, partially because so many other blog posts had to be pushed back. I had considered doing a Toon Adjacent for Beetlejuice’s Rock-n-Roll Graveyard Revue, but I didn’t get the idea to do it until after Halloween, and by then the entries I had planned for September got pushed back to October. Similarly, Jason had considered doing a mini Cartoon Country of the MAD sketch “Fantastic Four Christmases”, but he was also so busy working on the posts which were delayed from September and October that Christmas came and went before he got to do it. Maybe we’ll get to do those next year.

Top priority right now is to get out the final entries of the current Pop Dream and What The Funny miniseries, so that we can embark on the next series of each, which will most likely be around February or March. In each case, we know what the next installments of each will be focusing on, but we don’t want to reveal them just yet. You’ll have to wait until the current miniseries are finished before we make the official announcements.

We’re still on extended vacation from superhero themed posts, and expect that to continue in the upcoming months. While there may be the occasional cape post turning up once in a while (like the Toon Adjacent “X-Men Infinity??” or the Nerdvana “The Tech Factor”, which was mostly about superheroes), Twinsanity’s primary animation focus will still be comedy cartoons and toyetic cartoons over the action-oriented titles. We prefer comedy over action, that’s just how we roll.

*Regarding some of those aforementioned video segments, among them will be a new incarnation of 2 Funny. It’s still the same basic idea: comedy sketches, only this time the skits will be written and performed by us instead of us just embedding someone else’s works. Another video segment we’re considering is called The Couch; in it, we sit on a couch, watch something on TV and make fun of it. There are other video segment ideas we’re kicking around, but there will still be the familiar animation-themed segments you’ve come to enjoy, such as Cartoon Country, The Retro Bin/Cartoon Couch etc., only in video form. The basic theme of the Twinsanity video series will be cartoons, fun stuff, funny stuff, stupid stuff and geek stuff”.

2017 to 2018

So as always, we’d like to give all of you who’ve been following Twinsanity, liking us, commenting on our nonsense and all a big thank you for sticking around, and we wish you all a Happy Holidays and we look forward to entertaining you with more animation and geek culture themed things in 2018. In the meantime, relax, kick back and pop open the bubbly, ’cause we already have.

sparkling-wines-on-New-Years-Eve

See ya next year.

State of Twinsanity Address – August 2016

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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.