Writing Inspiration

Got a crazy amount of TAPAS stuff ready for this week... I don't want to give any of it away here, it's insider information... so, after I've composed this blog, I'm gonna compose a big list of all our accomplishments and upcoming goals for the team!

Creating is a funny thing. Characters, world, theme, sometimes it's the easiest thing in the world, other times you strain and struggle with it and it feels miserable. But my oh my, we are crawling ever closer to some goals...

Had some thoughts about literature a couple weeks ago... shared them on Facebook at the time, but screw it, they'll last longer here.

Like a lot of people, I grew up with Harry Potter, and of course it inspired my own writings, though it never made its way onto my official list of inspiring things that I'm currently running down on the TAPAS podcast. And, you know, that's a bitter thing to look back on these days. Not only is remaining a fan of Harry Potter impossible to separate from being anti-trans, but people are looking more critically at aspects of the story that, well, always drew odd looks from people, and in retrospect are clear signs of Rowling's true nature.

There's house-elves; Hermione realizes midway through the series that their situation is in all senses slavery, and this defines most of her motivation from then on. At no point does any other character begin to consider she has a point; house-elves are happy with their lot, after all. Marietta is permanently disfigured for an act of schoolyard betrayal. Generally, the atmosphere and the sense of justice are all rather mean-spirited. And Harry... while we all connected to him, seeing him as a nerdy underdog and a revolutionary, on second glance he's clearly a trust-fund jock who never fights the status quo because it doesn't make any difference to his life.

So, the messaging was faulty, but what about the quality of the writing? I think the lasting impact it had there was related to the fact that for many readers, both children and adults, it was their first exposure to many of its standout features as a work of literature. The character names had tangible meaning derived from myth and history, the creatures were a wild combination of the mythical and the original, tiny atmospheric elements came back as huge plot developments later to reward you for paying attention, and the characters were both diverse in a real-life sense and examined diversity from a fantastical perspective.

And the reason most readers noticed these things? Well, that'll be because they were done with all the subtlety of a big red sledgehammer to the face. But the damage was done, in a good way: people thought about these tropes, and how neat they were, and took note when they were done more subtly, and better, elsewhere. No one can deny that Harry Potter is responsible for the current generation of readers, yeah? Readers who, in a dizzying display of irony, learned a better grasp on literary tropes and social issues from Rowling's writings than she herself ever has.

In short: her success was because she had an approach to literature that looks extremely clever if it's in the first book you've ever actually read - leading us all to a greater understanding of stories of all sorts, to grow beyond where we began.

Time

Today is the 4th anniversary of TAPAS and Stuff Productions! ...And it's very late at night, so there's no way I'm actually finishing this post on the anniversary. Ah well. Didn't really have anything planned for today. I just spread around last year's anniversary special. Very fun Jackbox game video.

Lots of topics for today! Let's see...

Well, there's my EMDR, that's progressing nicely. I've always known that it's like, I watch my therapist's fingers going back and forth as I think about stuff, and it imitates REM sleep allowing me to process my traumas and anxieties. What I didn't expect was how it's developed into me pretty much having waking dreams and trying to process those.

We spent six weeks working on my executive dysfunction, my feeling of being trapped inside my own head, unable to drive my body... so we held onto that image. I placed myself in my brain, and... just let things play out from there, with some instruction from my therapist.

The first time, I was really trapped in my actual brain. The only way out was to make my brain disappear a little bit at a time, freeing first my arms, then my legs. This left me in despair - free to move, I was now in a dark cavern with no exit. My therapist encouraged me to find a door, and so we encountered a piece of imagery that's remained ever since: the cavern, always representative of the inside of my skull, now had two bright lights where my eye sockets were, and a door in the vicinity of my nose.

Weeks went by, and the dream was always different, but it held on to a few recurring themes. Always I started at the back of my head, now a huge empty cavern instead of a small room. Always, it was difficult to make my way across, and boy howdy did I have to fight like hell against the door to get so much as a glimpse of the meadow beyond.

Some weeks, I made it into the meadow, and in time the meadow stopped being lush and green, but all black. No more leaves on the trees, no more water, just black grass beneath a black sky - but the grass still felt dewy and alive even though it looked burned to a crisp.

Beyond the blackened meadow, everything changed from black to yellow - an endless desert with some sort of light off in the horizon. And it was a struggle to cross that boundary as well - unable to walk, I could only get into the dirt by crawling - not pleasant, as I don't like dirt and dust on my hands...

For about six weeks we worked with that. It was nothing more than dreams to me; like all dreams, it was meaningless, frustrating, out of control... but it helped. Only when my therapist spelled it out to me did I see the metaphor applicable to my life: getting out of my head represented exactly that, the meadow being my ability to finally achieve tasks, which I had been able to do every day since first reaching the meadow.

The difficulty reaching the desert beyond? Well, that represents a much longer-lasting problem: how after achieving a single task each day I mentally shut down for the rest of the day - the proverbial "one spoon" I possess. Being able to get back to doing one thing every day is incredible - but I want more.

As much as I'd like to see what lies beyond that desert, what that light on the horizon is, and hope that it does indeed lead to the pathway in my head to being useful for more than an hour each day - that may not be what I have to look at right now. The one thing, that might have to do. Beyond this, I need to address my fear - why, when I approach any application, any paperwork of any kind... why it feels like an insurmountable burden, and why I can't emotionally cope with any sort of burden.

Seeing myself collapse under the weight that everyone else is taking, I feel weak, unworthy... and feeling that way just makes me hate myself more, it's all cyclical. Part of me doesn't want to fill out applications because I know, with absolute certainty, that it will amount to nothing, that I will not receive any of the calls or services I'm applying for. It's my crippling fear of wasting time and growing old - and in being crippled by it, I do nothing else but waste time and grow old.

Suicidal ideation is when the pain grows beyond our ability to cope. Everything brings me pain beyond my ability to cope. Everything that's ever happened to me, everything I've ever done or thought about doing, has traumatized me. Why am I so weak? What can be done about it? I don't know. I can't imagine. But that's the foundation I laid at my last EMDR appointment, for the next one... which just presents another problem. One hour a week I'm in therapy, and so I can't help but feel like all the other hours of every week are a complete waste of time or worse.

~0~0~0~

Something I definitely thought would be informative for the blog: last week's newsletter! Er, week before last's, at this point. It just seemed to be a good update that ultimately should go here now too!

Well, during that week, I got together with Mason and AJ and we successfully started our gaming series Grease, Gum, and Mud, so that's officially in production, I'm beyond excited, it's been many years that I've been itching to get this particular flavor of gaming videos made. Taking a little break from it now while Mason works crew on Mame.

I've recorded two guest segments for the TAPAS podcast, one with AJ and the other with Stacy and Casey... and I really gotta work on finishing those episodes, that's... hard stuff, man.

And I also finally got the photoshoot for the Keys & Kingdoms teaser done, and I've tasked everyone on the team who can hold a pencil to start working on some concept art for the characters and creatures in these stories! Hm, need to figure out something similar for set designs. Still working on my procedural bible for putting the stories together, and prepare for what's waiting in the wings, like songs and sound design.

Also sketching some cover art for Grease, Gum, and Mud... prepping the "Best of Phase One" video, I've gotten a little way into that... and yeah, taking those photoshoots, turning them into pre-animations for the final product of the teasers...!

For myself, I have five big priorities... hm, what were those again? Well, there's podcasts 55 and 56... more Best of Phase One... plenty of IRF things counted as one; the photoshoot, the songs, more audio editing... much proceeding with the making of the procedural bible... oh, and the final The Little Mermaid retrospective, dear God, that's been left hanging for an eternity.

The Keys & Kingdoms fundraiser has ended, and reached its $500 goal. Got five hundie from the fundie! Now... what am I gonna do with that $500? Largely just hang onto it and try to save it for when it's time for finalizing the art, gotta pay some freelancers for that.

Also, I had a birthday party for my cats, I made a video out of that and it was adorable, I'm gonna release that real soon.

Stacking agenda

Things are going pretty darn well, I gotta say. With my EMDR therapy, I've been able to break out of my head and actually, like, do stuff.

The first thing I did, well... I knew I'd need help in organizing all the stuff I'd fallen behind on in my projects. So I made a video which I called "The Stack" which listed it all. It took me three days, but it got done, I finished it, it's private for team eyes only... and that's how things have been going in general, things are taking a while, but I am very much working on things, which is an incredible improvement in the way I just kinda... don't do things? Unless somebody makes me?

That was kind of the subject of the video, wanting everybody to be in on what it is I'm trying to do, and getting everybody on board my schedule, trying to take it more seriously. I did over-extend myself a bit, I scheduled too much at once, fell behind, but... yeah. Falling behind by a few days each week feels so much better than just doing nothing month after month. It's been an amazing shift. Like... I can suddenly think.

So, what have I been thinking about? Well, there's assets that go beyond the teasers! I made a presentation about all the new characters we need for the pilot episodes, we're gonna prepare some pencil-sketchy concept art for them and then move on to their real designs.

Naty, Kenzie, and I have had a lot of fun putting together designs for background characters, and I started realizing, well, we probably need to think about designing some important characters too if we're gonna have any hope of getting stuff done after the teasers are done! So I put together a list of all further characters in the pilots, and tasked everyone on the team capable of holding a pencil to pick some characters and get to work on 'em!

But those are just characters, we need sets and props too. And, well, I'm starting to realize how ambitious it all is! But not so much that we can't fulfill my plan. As far as Irregular Fantasy!, I know I want a teaser out real soon and something, something, out on the last day of this year, this New Year's Eve being the 20th anniversary of Irregular Webcomic! - and at this point, I've given in and said to myself, okay, the six character shorts that come after the teaser? The first one will be what premieres on the 20th anniversary. It's not too ambitious, it's surely doable. And then with that cool milestone out of the way, we'll just... proceed. As we do.

Having finished the screenplay for the pilot, we did a reading of it last week! It was awesome. Sadly, we didn't have time to stop and discuss it scene by scene, I sure as hell hope we can do that sometime. I definitely want feedback before I go ahead and start producing the thing.

And just the other day, started working on a gaming series I've been dreaming about for ages - Mason, AJ, and I met up to get it started. Making gaming videos isn't at easy as you might think, as I learned several years ago when I attempted to assemble all the right hardware and procedures myself; last week, we were prepared for the possibility that we didn't have all the equipment needed, and we indeed did not, so we ordered some more, we'll check in again next week.

Quincy Community Theatre is doing Mame now - when the cast was announced, I made this little thing, spotlighting everyone who's on the TAPAS team, hehe.

When I first put this picture out, Jessie was quick to tell me that I didn't circle her, I circled someone else entirely. I quickly raced to fix the picture... got her now... what a feeling. Fee fi faux pas! She assured me it was okay, and I'm sure it is, but oy, a faux pas like that sticks in the back of your head for the rest of your life. XP

And the killer thing is, I was sure for the whole time I was working on this image that I hadn't gotten the right person, that I'd mistaken someone else for Jessie, but, well, that's exactly the kind of thing I'm always anxious about, so I didn't really take that thought seriously. For once, it was true. That's the sucky thing about anxiety - if you're scared of everything and always sure you're doing something wrong, how are you supposed to know when your instincts are correct??

Anyway, I'm still working on the stack and things are going pretty well for TAPAS. I'm trying to keep to important mantras: My grounding techniques. Working to audiobooks and playlists instead of new videos - I need background noise but I gotta have the self-control to use the kind that's familiar and not distracting instead of always searching for new and novel ones! No article reading or other distractions, just always on task. And overall, the message I try to tell myself when I feel like my next task is too much to handle: "Do it anyway." I don't really know where to put all those messages, there's not really any place that I look all the time where I'd see them...

So, yeah, overall, things are going at a terrific pace. I still can't focus all the time... if I could, this blog would have come out last week, but let me tell you, that there are times when I can focus? That I've been consistently productive every day for like three weeks? Freakin' phenomenal.

So... now what...?

So, as far as Irregular Fantasy... been working on some concept art for various enemies and background townies, just havin' some fun there before we start thinking about some additional real characters, heh heh...

As far as its status, David Morgan-Mar is basically giving us full creative control, but we can't crowdfund anything or otherwise generate revenue from the property... so it'll basically be a very expensive fanfic! That's all right with me. It's the story I want to tell. Granted, that's kinda the opposite of what I hoped, I would have wanted to work with David on it, get his input, and then... you know... money.

But this works too. We'll just have to make sure its sister series, Keys & Kingdoms, stands on its own well enough that people are willing to pay for it! That's a challenge I'm willing to meet. And now, er... well, I suppose now there's no need to release both of their teasers simultaneously, that simplifies things a bit. We're free to, like... finish one.

By all rights, I should be prepared for such a thing, but I'm having a frustrating time, overall, getting myself in gear, moving forward with any aspect I have to do on my own. Week after week, I just kinda sit around, struggling to get more than a paragraph of actual production out there. I have to claw my way out of my own brain to get my fingers moving. I don't know why it works sometimes and doesn't other times. It just is what it is and I take my victories where I get them.

This week, though, I did record with my partners a nice long segment for the 54th TAPAS podcast, the 53rd having come out back in August, so... I certainly hope I can finish the rest of it so they can see what they contributed to!

Tiger

Better Yet? is now available in audio podcast form! Why now? I'm not sure. I got the master file of the audio-only version some time ago. I looked into how to release it as a podcast, but decided I was too tired at that moment to complete the procedure and set January 18th as the date I would do so. I can't remember why I chose January 18th, I imagine some sort meeting or announcement took place regarding the show on that day last year, but, uhhhh, I don't really know.

Find it... well, here, for now, on Spotify. But Spotify is under fire right now, after such legends as Neil Young and Joni Mitchell gave them an ultimatum, telling them they must deplatform Joe Rogan and his disinformation, and... they chose Joe Rogan. So, yeah, that's shitty, I don't want my podcast there. It's on Anchor, in theory allowing me to release it on other platforms, so, I'd sure like all the good people leaving Spotify to be able to find it! And if removing the show from Spotify is an option, might do that as well. So, that's a thing I gotta look into, bit of a pain in the ass, only just released it as a purely audio thing, now I gotta seek out somewhere else to do so, but that doesn't sound like too much effort...

This week has been off to a tragic start, with the loss of one of the Jenfjord family cats, Tiger. 15 years old, he suffered a brain hemorrhage. The family gathered around, put him in his favorite sweater and blanket, and he was treated like a prince as he passed, happy and purring. My fiancee and her family are devastated, and I'm pretty shaken up too. Soft old boi. Naty's loss has brought her to some profound thoughts I hope I always remember. Soon it'll stop stinging quite so much, but it's not that time yet.

Getting excited for the end of this week... guess I'll know by the time this blog comes out if it all comes to pass, but what I'm expecting... is that Naty, Mason, and I will get together to finish writing the pilot episode for Irregular Fantasy! - if so, I'll be converting it to a proper screenplay by the time I release this blog. Very exciting~

Hmm, what have we here? It's a title page! Just finished it.

Er, the screenplay, that is. Not the title page.

In my typical style, I got super excited about an upcoming task and was like, well, we finished Part 1, I'll just write up a screenplay. Fortunately, unlike most things, that did not take a ton longer than I thought it would. And the meeting, as of this writing, is in one hour. All that remains in Part 2 is two climactic fight scenes - and they're outlined pretty thoroughly, I hope only to sift through them with both of my co-writers and see if we can't brainstorm a few extra jokes, lines of dialogue, character moments, and awesome fight moves. Might have a full two-part screenplay written by the time this blog post drops. Meanwhile, I continue to work on converting the results of the photoshoot into plans for the teaser's final art.

Meanwhile, we're working on concept art, on presentations - how to combine storyboards, photoshoots, and assets to start assembling the final art? - and series bibles, for guidance on how to write and design every bit of our two fantasy projects going forward. The fundraiser is also going very well, we've got nearly $300 now tucked away in my PayPal to up the art budget! Not entirely sure how far that'll get us in a process like this, but... somewhere for sure! It's wonderful to have donations.

And we did indeed finish the screenplay. Woo-hoo! Nope, not putting out anything more than the title page. Spoilers, you know! Want this story to be experienced properly, when it's done. So, I'm just gonna show the cast and invite them to a big reading party. If the script is satisfactory... I'm still piecing together how to move on from there, the aforementioned bible, but I tell ya, once I have plans like that organized, we'll be unstoppable.

Photoshoot

I've been meaning for weeks to fire up the first blog post of 2022, but I haven't really figured out what to say here, in spite of how active TAPAS has been since Beauty and the Beast ended, shortly before the previous post; we've been moving forward quite nicely. In general, I don't want to reveal too much that's in development; it's simply not as impressive as something polished and finished.

But today we had a super-fun photoshoot and I thought I'd discuss the process! Especially as I'm now a member of David Morgan-Mar's Discord server, and for the first time I've presented his fans with the concept of Irregular Fantasy!, our adaptation of his comic, Irregular Webcomic! They're a quiet bunch, but it's still pretty cool.

So, here's the story of what we're working with so far. We're making a teaser! It's fun. For myself, I'm getting a little tired of watching it over and over as we continue adding elements, but that's doubtless a natural part of the process. New people with new enthusiasm always help remind me that the material is fresh and solid!

Voice actors Allison Hutson, Mason Ellison, and Aaron Joseph Schmitt

served as the models for the same characters they play: Alvissa, Mordekai, and Dwalin.

AJ also modelled Lambert, while production manager Dominic Regner

posed as Draak and Kyros.

All are posing for this frame in the storyboard,

in which the heroes are first seen!

Sadie Allen was the teaser's storyboard artist.

And these reference photos should help us produce the final art that replaces the storyboards, with the artists using the poses and the model sheets to turn our crew into the characters for the final animated comic.

Every character has a model sheet like so.

Stacy Lord did our final character designs.

We rented a bunch of props from the theatre for use in the shoot. Not all of which we needed! For starters, we only shot one character at a time, so we really only had to rent one sword. So... I regret spending like 10 bucks for two extra swords, but these things happen sometimes. We also didn't need the theatre's axe, for AJ came to the photoshoot having crafted himself an exact replica of Dwalin's!

The equipment sheets, displaying the design of the heroes' weapons.

He also made a version of Draak's club, but he made it actual size; we instead had Dominic wield the rented scepter so that he would look as massive as Draak. And of course, AJ attached the wings from Dwalin's helmet to his woolly hat, so hopefully that'll help with drawing those wings from different angles. I forgot to put a cape on him for modeling Dwalin, but he doesn't jump around much or do anything that would require elaborate cape physics, so the artists will probably be fine.

Draak warns Kyros not to kill-steal.

Dominic models both sides of that exchange, with AJ as his stand-in.

Height charts like this will be made for every scene, so that the artists

can scale the characters to each other perfectly. The heights have no

basis in the comic, I just picked some relative sizes that I liked.

Since Alvissa is very tall and Allison is not,

Mason tortures his knees to give her an eyeline

as Alvissa glares at Mordekai disdainfully.

And when it's time to shoot Lambert, Mason stands on a box

so that the halfling can be seen to look up at his colleague.

Lambert chides Mordekai for speaking for the entire group.

This moment of Mordekai clapping a hand on Lambert

was the only time we had two characters model at once...

...AJ kneeling down to halfling size

so Mason can lean on him.

Alvissa's acting at the very end of the teaser is especially good,

as Sadie whipped out a digital posing mannequin to help her in

the final stretch. Said she wished she thought of that earlier!

In the future, no posing mannequins will be needed: we'll storyboard with pitiful stick figures, then do a photoshoot, then storyboard properly.

Allison performs Alvissa's final statement. You know, in that getup

she looks like if Black Widow had gotten her hands on Captain

America's shield before her solo movie.

Alvissa's shield in her model sheet would appear to be somewhere between the little one in the storyboard and the big one in the photoshoot... shouldn't be too hard to get it sized right in the final product, hehe.

It was important to make sure we had facsimiles of the characters' weapons for the models to wear, as we had no model sheets for that, they were improvised for the storyboard: Lambert with his sword on his hip, Alvissa wearing her sword likewise and her shield on her forearm, Kyros hanging both his orb and rod from his belt, Mordekai with his sword and bow crossed on his back beneath his cloak, and Draak and Dwalin simply carrying their weapons in hand.

From the looks of the photoshoot, it all works. I wasn't sure it would, but everyone looks awesome. We needed to use a lot of tape, so it's not exactly practical, but it's neat. Movie magic! It was important to me to feature all the weapons in the teaser so the audience knows these are genuine adventurers, but all the same, I wanted them to be able to act with their hands, swiftly proving themselves more emotive than they are in the comic. So we storyboarded them with their weapons like so... honestly, in the show I figure they'll just pull their weapons out of thin air when they need them. Easier to draw that way.

The temporary Hall of Dworin background art, used for

promotional images, and a super-high-definition version

to serve as the real background for the teaser, which takes

place entirely through King Dworin's eyes as he looks

down upon the adventurers.

For this teaser is not precisely canon. I mean, we might keep the weapons onscreen, we'll see if the characters can stay dynamic that way. But the real Hall of Dworin will be much more extravagant than this, and the circumstances under which the characters learn of their quest will be slightly different. Indeed, the directions to the Golden Citadel, lifted directly from the comic here in the teaser, will also be slightly expanded in the adaptation to give us more world to explore!

The comic mostly ran on jokes, so I'm building a world and story from its foundations which will ultimately be a little different. I compared it once to an 80s action cartoon with a thin plot being rebooted in the 2010s by people who were fans of the original as children, and make the writing deep and epic. Not that I think Irregular Webcomic! is "thin" - it's a comic strip, and a brilliant one. But for whatever reason, the inspiration struck me, and I'm turning it into more of a comic book.

Promotional renders of the characters.

So it's some combination of adaptation and, like, creator-endorsed fanfic. A story which, incidentally, will take some aspects from all corners of Irregular Webcomic!, not just the fantasy world that takes up a slight majority of its pages. As it's set in the fantasy world, some themes will have more prominence than others.

The Irregular Fantasy! logo - or, optimistically, its first iteration,

featuring some imagery which will be significant in the early story...

We've also been working on finishing up the audio and music for Irregular Fantasy! and its sister series, a TAPAS original, Keys & Kingdoms: The Choices. We hope to release teasers for both simultaneously. The Choices is a story to unveil the Keys & Kingdoms universe, a longtime project of ours which is meant to combine, well, the two places we spend all our time: the endless realms of Dungeons & Dragons, and the faraway land where Disney fairy tale musicals take place.

The cast announcement for The Choices.

Well, reannouncement, we announced the cast a year and a half ago,

but we mean it this time, hehe. Really gonna finish the thing.

Or at least a teaser.

Recently-released character profiles for The Choices.

We're doing a fundraiser currently. It's a Keys & Kingdoms fundraiser, nominally, though, you know, we'll probably dip into it a bit to finish both teasers, because... they go together. Different universes, different styles, but they both represent the next phase of TAPAS, to debut... at worst, this year.

I especially hope that Irregular Fantasy! breaks out big this year, for the final day of this year happens to be the 20th anniversary of Irregular Webcomic! I'd love to commemorate that with a release, and I do so hope that it's the release of something bigger than the teaser.

100 subscribers

So, this happened like a month ago! Er, apparently I started writing this post like a month ago and I forgot about it, hehe.

Doesn't quite feel right, I must admit. I have absolutely no idea who any of these 100 subscribers are, because aside from five or six actual members of the TAPAS crew, none of them ever post comments, and only about a quarter of them actually appear on my list of subscribers. Why do I have so many completely anonymous subscribers? It's really unsettling.

Anyway, let's see, just finished the first week of Beauty and the Beast performances. Will have finished the entire run by the time this blog is posted. It was very rewarding... I always get super-depressed after a show is finished. It's over and it was all I had to live for, for a time.

I think I'm gonna be okay this time. As soon as it's over we're having a big meeting, everyone at TAPAS, to discuss getting the teasers done for our fantasy projects! All of it as soon as possible, allowing for a little holiday break.

Let's talk about theatre dreams! I always have a few whenever I'm doing a show. The most common is the one that comes very early in the process, where it's opening night even though we've only just started learning the show. Later, it's often followed by one in which a slight wardrobe issue results in me being sent onstage to perform naked. Ain't that always the way in dreams? Anything happens to the clothes you're wearing, you go about your day naked. You'd think there would be more reasonable solutions. Finally, a strangely specific dream sees me being asked to take over for another actor; it goes well for a time, until at one point I realize that in a few minutes, the character I was playing before is supposed to be onstage at the same time as the one I'm playing now, and that I'm still expected to play both roles even though that's impossible. And the terror starts to creep in, and I wake up the instant before I learn what the solution is.

Now that I think about it, being expected to do something logistically impossible is probably the most recurring theme in my nightmares, actually. I'm legitimately terrified of that. It's why I always try to give detailed explanations for my circumstances - and nothing triggers me more harshly than the accusation that I'm making excuses. Yeesh, just typing the word made the anguish and rage bubble up a little. Hm... I wonder where that comes from. Bits and pieces of it have been around for much of my life. I might have to think about that.

There's a thing been going around Twitter where you share four fictional characters who mean the world to you! I took some time to sleep on it, and thought what I wrote about them was neat enough to maybe take it beyond Twitter into a more readable location such as this~

Let's talk about these dudes! Much elaboration on top of what I said in the original Twitter thread:

Goliath: The lead character of Gargoyles... just a great hero, who, like the show itself, wasn't afraid to be melodramatic, dark and brooding and gothic in the old-school sense, on the Disney Channel in the 90s of all places. I have fallen very, very far behind on releasing videos, I recorded a whole series of Gargoyles videos nearly two years ago now, which I still haven't gotten around to releasing. Anyway, I do so love Gargoyles and its universe, a world where the fair folk are quick to point out that "all things are true" - while Disney in general inspired the Keys & Kingdoms universe, quite a bit of its atmosphere and concepts come directly from Gargoyles, and what Gargoyles could have been. Maybe it still could be; its creator, Greg Weisman, is enjoying some success currently running a revived Young Justice, but he's always hoping to revive Gargoyles... no sign of Disney giving him a shot at it, even though it's one of the greatest properties they're sitting on. Damn shame. A tweet in that thread where I complimented Weisman on the show and actor Keith David on his performance as Goliath was immediately spotted and retweeted by a Gargoyles fan account within five minutes, despite the fact that I did not tag Weisman or David in it nor use any Gargoyles-related hashtags, and subsequently blew up into what's probably safe to say is my biggest tweet ever. Not a big tweet, mind, we're talking four retweets and fourteen likes, but... that's big attention for me!

Discord: My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic debuted in 2010, developed by well-regarded cartoon creator Lauren Faust, who sought to turn the brand away from the frilly, conflict-free slice-of-life it had been for a couple of decades, back toward the fantasy adventures she created in her childhood. She saw only middling success in that goal, and the Season 2 premiere was the last episode of the show she personally worked on before sensing she was losing creative control and deciding to quit while she was ahead; and what a premiere it was. She sought to introduce Discord, an imprisoned chaos spirit who can command reality itself, defeatable only because he often chooses to toy with the heroes instead of break their minds immediately. When she explained to the producers that the character's concept and dark-comedy style was inspired by Q from Star Trek, they were amused enough at the notion to actually hire John de Lancie to voice the character, in a show with an otherwise low-budget Vancouver-based cast. Cut to me, the following year, having heard that the new My Little Pony series was known for its wit and depth and was attracting an audience well outside the target demographic. Intrigued, I tuned in, on what was by shocking coincidence the day the Season 2 premiere first aired, thus hammering me instantly over the head with the realization that yes, this show had more meat and potatoes than you'd ever expect from the My Little Pony name. And so I rode that brony train! Er, not all the way, I fell behind after a while and never did get around to watching the ninth and final season of the show. Still, look at that: Faust's creation lasted nine years even if she only stuck around for the first one. It was quite a phenomenon.

Incidentally, my first time checking out Star Trek: The Next Generation was pretty surreal; I chose an episode I knew prominently featured Q, and it was weird to listen to a bunch of Gargoyles supporting characters being antagonized by Discord. Though I guess it's supposed to be surreal, just in the opposite direction, you're supposed to recognize those voices from TNG...

Drizzt Do'Urden: A Dungeons & Dragons character originating in the various novel series of R.A. Salvatore. Added to Salvatore's first novel at the last second when the D&D executives asked for the barbarian hero Wulfgar to have a sidekick, Drizzt thoroughly stole Wulfgar's spotlight and the novel series, over 30 years and well over 40 books in, now bears the title The Legend of Drizzt. Drizzt was a dark elf ranger, and when he debuted in the late 80s that was an inherent contradiction, as rangers were always good and dark elves were always evil - Drizzt's race prevented him from being respected in his chosen profession. Inadvertently, Salvatore had drawn attention to the odd politics behind fantasy "races", and as the years go by, D&D and its fellow fantasy worlds start to get better and better at a fair depiction of all sorts of different sapient beings living together and discovering their individuality. It's good stuff! Drizzt's story has had its ups and downs, but Salvatore doesn't regret a bit of it, he just seeks to take the parts he did badly and do them better next time, which is a stance I wholeheartedly agree with, much better than erasing the past. And how influential is Drizzt to me? Well, I start dual-wielding like a ranger every time I find myself with an oblong object in each hand; Salvatore is quite the choreographer and chose the coolest possible style for his hero. And... I initially intended to launch TAPAS with a Legend of Drizzt musical. I still hope to finish and produce it someday.

Minsc: Another D&D character hailing from the same universe as Drizzt, the Forgotten Realms. Minsc debuted in the Baldur's Gate video games which were made from 1998 to 2001. The Baldur's Gate "trilogy" (technically only two games, with the story concluded by a very lengthy expansion pack to the second; last year's Baldur's Gate III is no relation to the originals story-wise) is the standard by which all computer RPGs are measured. They're brilliantly written and balanced, and Minsc is their most famous attribute! He is an insane and violent barbarian warrior... and simultaneously one of the noblest heroes in the world. He unleashes that berserker rage on those who harm the innocent - "butt-kicking for goodness", as he calls it. To put it another way: sure, he thinks that the hamster he carries around with him is from outer space and talks to him, but he's also clearly very good at keeping a hamster healthy on his travels. It's also worth mentioning that he was voiced by Jim Cummings; being some of the earliest video games to feature a substantial amount of voice acting, the divide between cartoon voice actors and video game voice actors wasn't quite there yet. The realization that all of the actors in Baldur's Gate were also a constant presence in the Toon Disney, Nickelodeon, and Cartoon Network reruns I watched every day fascinated me, and my obsession with voice actors is, well, the other half of my life, the first half being D&D-style high fantasy, and I owe both to Baldur's Gate. D&D recently released a Forgotten Realms supplement meant to continue the story of the original Baldur's Gate games, presented as being derived from Minsc's own journals as he explored the Realms, and I absolutely adore it, it's great to see where some of my favorite characters ended up 100 years in the future, and when the book ended with a dedication in Minsc's own hand to the memory of Khalid and Dynaheir, I started crying. A wonderful tribute to my entire childhood and who I became because of it.

In conclusion... well, Beauty and the Beast indeed ended its run yesterday. It's bittersweet, but I'm very much prepared for what's next. Which is... a big TAPAS meeting to decide what's next. "At dawn... we plan." Lots of ideas to gather, including perhaps the creation of a "Best of Phase One" video to celebrate those 100 subscribers. Woo-hoo.