Don’t Turn Around!

Right now, you’re probably looking at the heading on this page and are now thinking…

“Must’ve taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque!”

Wait! Stop! Don’t leave! You haven’t clicked on to the wrong site! Allow me to explain…

Yes, we’ve recently changed the name of this site from The Twin Factor to Twinsanity. However, those of you who have been following us back when we were on Blogger already know that Twinsanity was the original name of the site (actually, it’s very first name was Astral City, but let’s not be anal). We felt that we had to change it since there’s already a twinsanity.blogspot.com, as well as a twinsanity.wordpress.com. In fact, one reason why we left Blogger in the first place is because we got tired of thinking of a name that we both liked and then discovering that said name was already taken. However, thanks to a wonderful invention known as “.co“, we found out that we could use the name Twinsanity if we wanted to, which we do. So we’ll be calling this site by the name Twinsanity from now on. Even if you click the previous URL, you’ll be redirected to the site with it’s current name, but do make a point to memorize the site’s current URL, though, because at the end of the year, the previous URL will expire and if you try to click it after that, it’ll just take you to an error screen. After December, twinsanity.co will be the only URL that will direct you to this site. Remember: it’s twinsanity.CO, not .COM.

This is the last time that we’ll change the site’s name. We promise.

Yearly Wrap-Up 2014: The Future, Plans and a Possible Rebuilding

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!