(no subject)
I don't know where my talent went. It worries me.
I'm not going to say I was any such Lord of The Dance or anything remotely close, but at least I could dance. I could learn dances and I could follow the steps and I could enjoy myself. Something's happened over the summer that botched all such progress. My feet are the main problem. They don't listen to me when I tell them to go and they refuse to believe that the counts in a song mean anything. They just grudgingly travel along the line and grumble when I tell them to cross or hop or any other sort of move. My small smurf of what you could call 'talent' for Israeli Dance has clumsily left the building.
There's a good chance that it has something to do with my recent loss of passion. You heard me, you virtual stalkers, I, over the course of the summer, have misplaced my passion for what I do. I tried putting it all into my web cartoon, Thomas and Darwin. I started cramming all my energy into a single project that I'm not truly happy with. I've tried redesigning, reassembling, retconning, reassessing and restarting the cartoon in hopes of improving it. But I've had no such luck. I simply do not like Thomas and Darwin. I think it's stupid.
The only way I could see to possibly revive it and make it into something worth while is to actually change the characters. I've had this looming problem hovering over me ever since I started the cartoon. One of the main characters is stupid. He laughs at penis jokes and does his best to appeal to the lowest common denominator. And when I say "lowest common denominator" I'm speaking of a certain audience that I have gone out of my way to analyze, despise, and insult in that order.
I am talking about the audience of Zoey 101, which has been conveniently directed to a cartoon that appeals to them. Here's a direct quote from the T&D forum:
"sue d nym sounds a lot like pseudonym. or maybe it's just me.
and pseudonym is probably the biggest word i have ever used in my life."
I do enjoy how easily the audience of Zoey 101 is baffled. It's actually quite amusing. What bothers me is that they encompass some 90% of our fanbase. As much as I love going over people's heads and using big words that they don't know (It's not even that big of a word!), I would appreciate it if someone understood the casual little references I put in. Be it a MacGuffin, a Shakespeare quote, a loving homage to Calvin and Hobbes, or whatever. These people just would not get it. And the only reason they keep coming back is because of the jokes in between. The jokes that, recently, have taken over most of our cartoons. Sex jokes, fart jokes, sexIST jokes, stupid jokes, and joke like material. Jokes that I admittedly laugh at, but in no way appreciate. I hate the people it attracts and I hate the kind of people it creates.
[Revision: Thus begins a rant about Zoey 101. If you don't really care, just skip down to the asterix (*).]
Lets take, I dunno, a random example of a show. Zoey 101, let's say. While the new season was running the show was the number one watched in that prime time slot for 7-12 year olds. This is the age right after kids learn basic reading and writing and right before they start dealing with the real life that is sex, drugs, and rock and roll. This is not only where their creative minds develop, but where their problem-solving skills should be constructed around real life problems that they can face. While I think it's nice that they can watch the whacky escapist adventures of Chase going after his never-love Zoey, I do not think that little girls, who cannot separate fantasy from reality, should be exposed to this.
The show is too far from real life and too close at the same time.
The problems, I will concede, are reasonable enough. Someone will like someone they're not supposed to, something gets stolen, someone is spying/stalking someone else. Whatever. Okay. These things happen. It's the way that problems get solved in the show that bothers me. Zoey will be a genius and put everyone in perspective or they all put together an over-elaborate scheme (that works, which is what bothers me), or Quinn might pull out one of her deus ex machina inventions to make all their conflicts go away.
The difficulties they face are superficial, their solutions they employ always work, and no one is ever wrong. That last one is not entirely correct. The characters, often enough, will be incorrect. They will say something not entirely true. But never, and I mean never-ever, do the people in the show differ in any sort of moral basis. They all think the same things are right and wrong and they all like the same music and and they all are the same exact character with minor inconsistencies. Logan's the arrogant jerk, Lola is an actress (and an ethnicity), Chase is the clumsy good guy, Quinn is smart, and Zoey is perfect. It's like those old 80s college movies where every character was a plot device. Except there's less sex. But they all get along perfectly. Quinn never feels out of place for being smart, Logan is included in all their activities despite being hated, and no one is envious of Zoey's perfection. It pisses me off every time I watch.
The kids who watch this start to think that that's how life is. They start believing that if they all conform and start listening to the same music, obsess over boys, pretend your parents don't exist (except for their money), and attend a pretentious boarding school, that their lives will be easy and all their problems will be solved in a condensed thirty minutes.
*I kinda got off track from my original point. Basically what I did just there was compare Zoey 101 to Boy Meets World. But these kids don't know Boy Meets World and probably never will. These kids will never learn how to solve life's problems and end up running away to their computers and mySpaces and fansites to avoid any real conflict. And it bothers me.
I actually ranted all of this to my mom and she told me to stop whining. She told me I should start thinking about what I could do about it and that this was all just an opportunity for me to write a better children's show. Sure. I would actually like to do that. One day. Not today. Right now I want to figure out what I can do about Thomas and Darwin.
I think this whole "team work" thing has brought me down. I would be happy if I could just sit down and write all the episodes and then record them and then animate them. I would be ecstatic if such a process were possible. Admittedly, it is. I would only have to get rid of one minor obstacle to the creative process. Sean. Basically, at the moment, if I'm going to write any joke it has to go through Sean. He has to 'get' the joke. And, in reality, he doesn't always get the jokes I put in the scripts. Either he doesn't know why it's there and I feel I have to take it out, which isn't really a common occurrence, or, more likely, we go to record and he just missays or skips over what he doesn't understand. And so I am obligated to write material he will understand. This material has been recently dubbed as " Gabe humor."
And so I am at a crossroads. Either I continue writing episodes I am not proud of or T&D gets discontinued. And those are not very pretty options.
Luckily, I've just considered a third option. I'm going to try to write around Sean. I will do my best to explain my jokes to him. He's not a bad person, after all. He's not any less or worse of a person than I am. He is simply... less versed. And so I will try to verse him. And if all else fails...
I don't know how to finish that sentence.
I was going to write more, but I'd be lucky if any of you read this entire thing. I won't torture you with any more of my ratings or introretrospective blabber. Though I am going to try to LJ more. I'm just making up for lost time.
I'm not going to say I was any such Lord of The Dance or anything remotely close, but at least I could dance. I could learn dances and I could follow the steps and I could enjoy myself. Something's happened over the summer that botched all such progress. My feet are the main problem. They don't listen to me when I tell them to go and they refuse to believe that the counts in a song mean anything. They just grudgingly travel along the line and grumble when I tell them to cross or hop or any other sort of move. My small smurf of what you could call 'talent' for Israeli Dance has clumsily left the building.
There's a good chance that it has something to do with my recent loss of passion. You heard me, you virtual stalkers, I, over the course of the summer, have misplaced my passion for what I do. I tried putting it all into my web cartoon, Thomas and Darwin. I started cramming all my energy into a single project that I'm not truly happy with. I've tried redesigning, reassembling, retconning, reassessing and restarting the cartoon in hopes of improving it. But I've had no such luck. I simply do not like Thomas and Darwin. I think it's stupid.
The only way I could see to possibly revive it and make it into something worth while is to actually change the characters. I've had this looming problem hovering over me ever since I started the cartoon. One of the main characters is stupid. He laughs at penis jokes and does his best to appeal to the lowest common denominator. And when I say "lowest common denominator" I'm speaking of a certain audience that I have gone out of my way to analyze, despise, and insult in that order.
I am talking about the audience of Zoey 101, which has been conveniently directed to a cartoon that appeals to them. Here's a direct quote from the T&D forum:
"sue d nym sounds a lot like pseudonym. or maybe it's just me.
and pseudonym is probably the biggest word i have ever used in my life."
I do enjoy how easily the audience of Zoey 101 is baffled. It's actually quite amusing. What bothers me is that they encompass some 90% of our fanbase. As much as I love going over people's heads and using big words that they don't know (It's not even that big of a word!), I would appreciate it if someone understood the casual little references I put in. Be it a MacGuffin, a Shakespeare quote, a loving homage to Calvin and Hobbes, or whatever. These people just would not get it. And the only reason they keep coming back is because of the jokes in between. The jokes that, recently, have taken over most of our cartoons. Sex jokes, fart jokes, sexIST jokes, stupid jokes, and joke like material. Jokes that I admittedly laugh at, but in no way appreciate. I hate the people it attracts and I hate the kind of people it creates.
[Revision: Thus begins a rant about Zoey 101. If you don't really care, just skip down to the asterix (*).]
Lets take, I dunno, a random example of a show. Zoey 101, let's say. While the new season was running the show was the number one watched in that prime time slot for 7-12 year olds. This is the age right after kids learn basic reading and writing and right before they start dealing with the real life that is sex, drugs, and rock and roll. This is not only where their creative minds develop, but where their problem-solving skills should be constructed around real life problems that they can face. While I think it's nice that they can watch the whacky escapist adventures of Chase going after his never-love Zoey, I do not think that little girls, who cannot separate fantasy from reality, should be exposed to this.
The show is too far from real life and too close at the same time.
The problems, I will concede, are reasonable enough. Someone will like someone they're not supposed to, something gets stolen, someone is spying/stalking someone else. Whatever. Okay. These things happen. It's the way that problems get solved in the show that bothers me. Zoey will be a genius and put everyone in perspective or they all put together an over-elaborate scheme (that works, which is what bothers me), or Quinn might pull out one of her deus ex machina inventions to make all their conflicts go away.
The difficulties they face are superficial, their solutions they employ always work, and no one is ever wrong. That last one is not entirely correct. The characters, often enough, will be incorrect. They will say something not entirely true. But never, and I mean never-ever, do the people in the show differ in any sort of moral basis. They all think the same things are right and wrong and they all like the same music and and they all are the same exact character with minor inconsistencies. Logan's the arrogant jerk, Lola is an actress (and an ethnicity), Chase is the clumsy good guy, Quinn is smart, and Zoey is perfect. It's like those old 80s college movies where every character was a plot device. Except there's less sex. But they all get along perfectly. Quinn never feels out of place for being smart, Logan is included in all their activities despite being hated, and no one is envious of Zoey's perfection. It pisses me off every time I watch.
The kids who watch this start to think that that's how life is. They start believing that if they all conform and start listening to the same music, obsess over boys, pretend your parents don't exist (except for their money), and attend a pretentious boarding school, that their lives will be easy and all their problems will be solved in a condensed thirty minutes.
*I kinda got off track from my original point. Basically what I did just there was compare Zoey 101 to Boy Meets World. But these kids don't know Boy Meets World and probably never will. These kids will never learn how to solve life's problems and end up running away to their computers and mySpaces and fansites to avoid any real conflict. And it bothers me.
I actually ranted all of this to my mom and she told me to stop whining. She told me I should start thinking about what I could do about it and that this was all just an opportunity for me to write a better children's show. Sure. I would actually like to do that. One day. Not today. Right now I want to figure out what I can do about Thomas and Darwin.
I think this whole "team work" thing has brought me down. I would be happy if I could just sit down and write all the episodes and then record them and then animate them. I would be ecstatic if such a process were possible. Admittedly, it is. I would only have to get rid of one minor obstacle to the creative process. Sean. Basically, at the moment, if I'm going to write any joke it has to go through Sean. He has to 'get' the joke. And, in reality, he doesn't always get the jokes I put in the scripts. Either he doesn't know why it's there and I feel I have to take it out, which isn't really a common occurrence, or, more likely, we go to record and he just missays or skips over what he doesn't understand. And so I am obligated to write material he will understand. This material has been recently dubbed as " Gabe humor."
And so I am at a crossroads. Either I continue writing episodes I am not proud of or T&D gets discontinued. And those are not very pretty options.
Luckily, I've just considered a third option. I'm going to try to write around Sean. I will do my best to explain my jokes to him. He's not a bad person, after all. He's not any less or worse of a person than I am. He is simply... less versed. And so I will try to verse him. And if all else fails...
I don't know how to finish that sentence.
I was going to write more, but I'd be lucky if any of you read this entire thing. I won't torture you with any more of my ratings or introretrospective blabber. Though I am going to try to LJ more. I'm just making up for lost time.