Difference between revisions of "Wikihood/arc/commentary"

Latest revision as of 18:45, 16 September 2019

Disclaimer

Noxigar started most of this descriptive hogwash. He, and others, were children when this trainwreck of a show idea first started. We've taken measures to improve as writers; while we're all violently embarassed by what's been kept in this Archive, we do still have a use for MOST of it and thus it stays unless we get bored of it or something.

The History Behind Wikihood Redux

Wikihood was a fanfiction project conjured up by other people, its goal being to mimic RoosterTeeth's The Strangerhood.

However, the project had a lot of rocky starts. It started on the Homestar Runner Fanstuff Wiki; as it did not have enough Homestar Runner content in it, it was quickly eliminated. Then, they moved it to the Wiki User Wiki for the first round. However, this iteration of Wikihood also did not last long, due to the site's upkeep costs. The Wiki User Wiki had to be reanimated twice, and in both instances Wikihood was a project that kept getting blown up. The original authors decided to attempt to go back to the Homestar Runner Fanstuff Wiki, with what they called Wikihood II. However, Wikihood II would not survive what happened next, either. One of the Admins got tired of the fanfiction quality of the Homestar Runner Fanstuff Wiki being "low," so he (Its Dot Com) had the site Purged, something other Admins and Sysops all readily agreed to helping with. However, the Purge took multiple years to restore "the Gravy Boat" of good fanfiction anyway, so most of the people who worked on Wikihood moved on to the Wiki User Wiki you see now, and tried to make something of themselves. Their version was Wikihood III, whilst one of the original authors helped us make our own Wikihood, which we call Wikihood Redux.

Wikihood Redux has a lot of issues, but we still have some really good concepts and Episodes we've honed and perfected, enough that even Wikihood Prime is still serviceable to some degree.

Archive Theme Song

Dr. Stangehate, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Temporal Rip - Widely considered the best episode in the entirety of Wikihood Redux.

Special Episodes

As we were fans of Homestar Runner, we attempted to perform a concept similar to them: Special Episodes. These would have something unique take place. Only early Wikihood Redux ever attempted them.

None of them were ever fully completed, and one of them had been deleted (Wikihood Origins) before we started Wikihood Prime, so it could be worked on. We might revisit the ideas, for Current Wikihood, though it is otherwise uncertain what would be done with episodes that didn't even have that many lines to them.

Wikihood: Origins - A new subseries of Special Episodes, showcasing the origins of the main characters. Before Wikihood
Non-Canon Cannon: Redux - Oh, no. The infamous neverending Wikihood session, that lasts forever. Alternate Timeline
Wikihood:Redux & The Several Plotholes - Answers to all the good questions that started plotholes. Anyone who has left one, please add on. During Episodes 21 and 22
Thirteen Organs And A What now?(working title) - A special episode that looks into the pasts of Joseph, Sephiroth, and Noxigar way back when in the Organization XIII days. Before Wikihood
Davros's Evil Council - Just like in the Abridged Series, Davros unites all the popular villains, and not so popular villains, in a council meeting. Between Episodes 28 and 29
Dive Into The Heart - Joseph, Davaros, and Oiracul are re-introduced into the Wikihood universe. During Episode 37

Anti-Episodes

One of Wikihood's problems was that it was trying too hard to be like a different webtoon entirely - Bonus Stage. Bonus Stage has aged worse than milk, due to the author hating his own work and his own fans. His hatred escalated, to the point of deleting everything he worked on and to the point of not being particularly kind to his fans - though some of them probably deserved it, if they threatened the author's life.

Once a Season of Wikihood Redux, except for the soft reboots, an Anti-Episode would be made. In Bonus Stage, Anti-Episodes were Episodes that were essentially just massive shitposts, that didn't have any canonical validity to them. In Wikihood, two of the Episodes were edit conflicts made manifest in the direction of a particular arc crashing and burning, and only Redux Season 3's Anti-Episode can be considered a proper one.

Disregard The Preceding - Season 1 Anti-Episode!
Another Quest?!? - Season 2 Anti-Episode!
And Now For Something Completely Different... - Season 3 Anti-Episode!

Because of the bad history involved with some Anti-Episodes, Prime did not make any effort to construct one. Likewise, Current Wikihood aspires to not have any Anti-Episodes in it.

Incomplete Episodes

Redux had Episode ideas that were massively incomplete. At least one of them was because one author insisted on writing it themselves, but never got fully around to it. At least one of the soft-reboot seasons is marred completely by Episodes not being finished.

We had some okay ideas from at least one, that have made it into Current Wikihood through indirect means.

If Black Dynamite Can't Get Away With It...

One Episode had a shitty synopsis because we had attempted to use terminology that was acceptable during the beginning of the Civil Rights Era in the 1960's. Thanks to the goddamn alt-right, for stealing words and actively making them fucking harmful, we had to remove the synopsis from it. We were not initially aware of this fact, until our outside peers brought it up. The authors of Current Wikihood have since corrected their behaviour, and removed the synopsis from this Episode in the hopes of not fucking up again.

Cue the Fanfare

"Tea & Crumpets"

Another solid Wikihood Redux Episode exists, but it is tainted by our memories of edit conflicts that happened during the first few Episodes, which as a result caused a massive continuity snarl.

"Tea and Crumpets?"

"Tea and Crumpets?" was the fifth Episode of Wikihood Redux. It established Redux's tone, in a way, and the concept of time travel was always something a Wikihood sibling project included, more often than not. However, the main reason this Episode was any "good" would be more because of the fun had whilst writing the Episode at-large.

We would attempt to revisit the concept of an "early-generation" Wikihood, in Prime. The previous generation's Noxigar was initially going to be an ex-Soviet scientist, who happened upon two residents of San Cristobal (the equivalents of Lex & Chaos). They would proceed to do something cool in San Cristobal, establishing themselves as a gang. This was meant for Prime Season 2-onwards, and had not been written yet before Prime's cancellation.

For now, the concept of a "first-generation" Wikihood group has been jokingly explored by Garfield, in Current Wikihood.

Story Exploration Through Multiple Perspectives

The Path I Believed In

"The Path I Believed In" was the third Episode of Wikihood Redux. To be frank, the Episode was already starting to get massively dated even before the tail-end of Redux Season 3.

However, a concept from this was adopted into Current Wikihood. There were initially supposed to be two mini-groups made, that eventually culminated into the Wikihood Krewe of the here-and-now. One group was known as "The Vagabonds" - and would have had Leigh, Current Remolay, be the central figure of the Vagabonds group. As this was indirectly scrapped, a particularly odd episode had to be heavily beefed up in order to ensure Leigh was still regarded as a main character, since this was planned the entire time. Likewise, Chaos wasn't supposed to be the only main protagonist of his group, and so a Garfield Episode was made. This Garfield Episode would have easily been the Worst Current Wikihood Episode ever, had it not also been massively beefed up in order to help him (Garfield) not be a "glorified secondary character at best."

Early Current Wikihood Episodes were restructured to be "the same day but from three different perspectives," which was basically an indirect Spiritual Successor of what this Episode wanted to do. On top of that, only a few courtroom jokes - Ned being a lawyer, Chaos "getting the book thrown at him," and Jules attempting to make a metaphor out of "cross-examining the parrot" - were necessary to be a symbolic indicator of this.

Issues With Power Creep: Mostly A Redux Season 1 Thing That Kind Of Trickled Over Everywhere Else

Was Chaos Supposed To Be The Big Bad? (Probably Not)

Wikihood Redux early on suffered from power creep. A lot of it had to do with trying to determine who was the central Big Bad of the first Redux Season. Originally, it was assumed to be Chaos, as evidenced by partial foreshadowing done in the beginning. However, things took a gradual turn for the worse...

Zharanakuva, aka We Accidentally Something Semi-Original

We decided on a Giant Space God From Nowhere as an agreeable Big Bad, after some decisionmaking.

Not long after, Chaos would try to retake the Big Bad title. He would most assuredly fail.

The First Chaos

Legend has it that there was a Chaos BEFORE our Current Chaos, which is supported by an alien race known as The Sharothians. Though well-meaning, the Sharothians ultimately wound up causing doomsday for our intrepid heroes / side characters, until... oh who am I fucking kidding we pretty much wrote ourselves into a corner and not even a Point Card could stop The First Chaos from nearly wrecking all of our collective shit.

Attrition is at least a solid Episode in its own right, and concepts from it have survived to Wikihood Prime / Wikihood Current a lot more gracefully than anything else from Redux.

"Dinner And A Movie"

During Redux Season 1, occasional reminders cropped up that we were supposed to be similar to a forgettable The Sims machinima made by people who would later become abusive Demons.

Even during Redux Era, most of us were much more adequate at action scenes. This Episode was an attempt by one of the authors to attempt a "slice of life" approach to a Wikihood Episode. Even this wasn't particularly great, but a lot of inspiration for future projects this one author had eventually derived from what this episode wanted. Even other Wikihood authors seem to have been indirectly inspired by what this Episode wanted to do, such that we gradually became less action-intensive and became more "sitcom"/"slice of life" in how we arranged our storytelling.

Redux Season 2 allowed us to tone back down the immense power creep that Redux Season 1 had unfortunately created.

Dinner and a Movie

We've also learned what NOT to do, as a result of this Episode. This includes "Waifu-ism Is Serious Business" being something we actively avoid. If possible.

The Idea Of Everything Being A Simulation

We entertained ideas of "everything was a simulation" at some pointe, if only because it was an idea derived from Bonus Stage. I think, after a while, the idea of alternate and parallel universes came up instead.

The Glabal

The Glabal were originally a group of aliens not too different from the Sharothians. They were mostly antagonistic to Wikihood!Sephiroth (with FF7!Sephiroth gradually lessening in appearance), but they proved to be adequate Big Bads in their own right.

These are Episodes which featured the Glabal, or had problems indirectly caused by The Glabal. Both Adel and Davros were Glabal higher-ups, who would be named Big Bads.

An enormous problem with Season 2 was keeping a consistent main antagonist going; the Glabal were the most consistent out of all the antagonists introduced, but unfortunately... they barely even got to do a lot of active harm to the Wikihood protagonists.

Oh, And I Guess An Attempt At Making A Heartless Version Of Noxigar's Somebody Also Happened

There was an attempt to bring back the First Chaos, which started out as just a Doppelganger Fight gone completely wrong. Arguments about whether or not the First Chaos - who was the direct result of enormous power creep issues in Redux Season 1 - needed to come back were forcefully solved vis-a-vis making there be an answer to "How come Noxigar's Doppelganger isn't here alongside the others?"

Swiftly, a Heartless was created by the name of Deathbringer, who was more-or-less similar to a Defense Of The Ancients Hero - Lesale Deathbringer, aka the Venomancer. With the Venomancer Heartless made, there was a goal of "attempt to wed a Princess of Heart (Kairi) in the hopes of becoming King of Hearts." Funnily enough, most of Venomancer's gimmicks were more useful elsewhere:

"Positive energy hurts Venomancer, negative energy heals him" - that would be utilized by a different character outside of Wikihood entirely.
"Local villain wants to marry someone to rise up in social status" - this would come into play later in Redux Season 3, and was almost a plot point in Prime before it was scrapped.
"Fights that aren't just "beat faster" but require tactics to win, so we don't have to powercreep ourselves into a corner again" - this would be a happenstance later in in Redux Season 2, and Redux Season 4 would attempt this. At the time, we wanted someone with less sheer power than the First Chaos, in order to deal with them. There was still an issue of needing the fight to not be made a complete joke at the antagonist's expense, but this was corrected with some dialogue and stall tactics which proved to help.

Eventually, a joke was made that Deathbringer/Venomancer was nicknamed "Edgymancer," which wound up being the only lasting part of his legacy that made it to Current Wikihood so far. Since then, I (Noxigar) have been trying to rework Venomancer/Edgymancer to be modernized for Current Wikihood use, to minimal avail. Aspects of Venomancer/Edgymancer essentially transferred to other characters, in various shapes.

Wikihood Prime: Proto-Season 1

When we worked on Wikihood Prime, we had decided to start from scratch. Much like Wikihood Redux, however, we had massive conflicts of creative differences which needed to be reconciled. As a result, we only ever got around to ALMOST finishing one Season, before we would attempt to redo everything, fail, and then end up getting inspired to do Current Wikihood later.

At least we had a year of the Wiki User Wiki being down for us to get by through other means. :9

Episodes Rendered Obsolete By A Single Current Wikihood Episode

Basically, we had concepts from early Prime that translated far better as a more sitcom-oriented Episode. Current Wikihood boasts an idea initially made for Prime's rework - No Hall Like Town Hall - and had reformatted it after firmly establishing Current Wikihood's tone, in direct contrast with what was presented in Prime.

Episodes Rendered Obsolete By A (Different) Single Current Wikihood Episode

These Episodes were climax Episodes that featured the Wikihood Gang outsmarting Debonair D'Arque. As Debonair himself was once replaced by his living counterpart, Xavier D'Arque, these Episodes would not have held up well. At the very least, they also are spiritually succeeded by various things happening in Current Wikihood; most notably, the concept of a climax Episode has already taken hold therein, in Fundraiser Heist: 6 of Wands.

Episodes Rendered Obsolete Due To Prime's Cancellation Rendering Them Unfinishable

One Episode was being reworked as Prime was cancelled, and another Episode was going to serve as the Final Episode of Prime Season 1. They are both aggressively incomplete.

The Token Good Wikihood Prime Episodes

Sympathy for the Devil's Son

This Episode is good for entirely the wrong reasons, but its usefulness is acknowledged. It would later establish an arc intended to be in Prime, known as the Lou Cypher arc - Raiku would atone for his misdeeds done to Lex (and others - but the main recipient of the apology is Lex) after someone even more devilish than Raiku winds up taking over Townindale - the eponymous Lou Cypher. Lou would be immune to the responses of non-Raiku Wikihood members, making it so that Raiku would have to be the one to defeat him.

Current Wikihood intends to reference it, from what's been inferred in conversation.

The Midway Tourism Board Presents: Living Life, The Midway Way

This Episode is where at least one of the authors presumably had the most fun. It establishes Prime's initial tone near-perfectly.

Townindale Talks

Townindale Talks was a presentation of minor characters reacting to the escalating war between Rosenberg and D'Arque. Additionally, while some minor character concepts were here and didn't make it into Current Wikihood, re-examining this episode gave us context clues to improving ourselves as authors, such that it officially earned a spot in the "Token Good Prime Episodes" section.

RIP Edwardo (whose overall gimmicks seem to have transferred to Garfield's Latino side of the family tree, and to a gaggle of hipsters who are common Surreal Cereals guests)
RIP The Kangs (whose function was rendered obsolete due to an argument about what kind of living quarters the Wikihood Krewe should start out with, and whether or not they could even have neighbours as a result)
RIP Garzel (though the name Garzel Carradine lives on as an alias assumed by Garfield Wiggins, with the joke being that Garzel as a name hasn't aged well past 2007)

Parts Versus Parcel

This Episode was a good climax Episode, that built up a lot of things going on. The next Episode was presumed to help give payoff for all of the buildup done here.

The Token Tea & Crumpets Prime Episode

Of Tea and Big-Lipped Alligators

The importance of this Episode, no matter how thoroughly mediocre it has become, is such that it's listed here as what basically cements the introduction of a lot of concepts. I highly doubt Sephiroth will allow Fritz & Lang, a pair of RosenBorgs, to re-appear in the state Prime left them in. However, we do have different versions of Stephanie Young, Rosenberg Industries, and even D'Arque himself - they all exist in Current Wikihood, through different means. This Episode is at least noteworthy for introducing a lot of Prime Season 1 on its own terms, and what it would entail from hereon out.

Though no time travel is involved, this iteration of "Tea and Crumpets?" is solid in its own right... even if we'd like to forget some of it.

The Idea Of Remolay As A Main Character

City That Never Sleeps

This episode was supposed to help Remolay catch up to other Wikihood members as a main character, but failed to do its job correctly. Part of this was because another character - Oiracul - was also largely underdeveloped during Prime Season 1, and the intent was to have all main characters be well-rounded before Prime Season 2. This kind of just blew up in our faces later on, and I would consider the Episode an Anti-Episode, if not for the fact those were unofficially discontinued during Redux soft-reboots anyway.

At the very least, Remolay's ascension from "glorified minor character" to "actually a main character" is something Current Wikihood accelerates the process of, through its own means.

Other Proto-Season Episodes

The Next Episode — After a hostile kidnapping from the likes of Rosenberg, he finally manages to "convince" them to join him to bring glory back to Midway.
Better Late than Living — D'Arque's up to no good, but leave it to the Sea Hitmen to make sure word gets out.
Ghouls Just Want To Have Fun — The Wikihood and Rosenberg must try and breach D'Arque's defenses before he can succeed in creating an undead utopia.
Abracadaver — After assembling a citizen militia to take Townindale back by force, the Wikihood run into a more reoccuring problem, named Droll.

The Remainder Of The Gold Mine

Season -1

We made it this far? - The team escapes the ruined Universe to get their aid as Adel moves his new super-army out to the farthest reaches of the galaxy.
Race to the Finish! - A war begins on mars, possibly the biggest one yet. Included is a race between Alphamon and Adel to save Joseph.
Payback Is Payback - Noxigar confronts the Beast to avenge Xaldin, while Leo is introduced as a Sephiroth replacement. Some cloaked figure comes with some distemper towards Noxi, and he apparently brought a "friend" along.
The Drugged Truth - The action takes place next in Twilight Town. The truth is then revealed the least coherent ways imaginable.
Poke-PHAIL and the Sephifake Movie Marathon - Noxigar goes Roxas hunting, and is put into Pokemon Gold version, whereas Leo, Cloak, and Dagger must watch the memories of Sephiroth, who apparently got mangled up badly in the explosion.
Adventures in Complete and Utter Stupidity - Cloak, Dagger and Leo all try to leave Traverse Town via a darkness portal, while the wargoers fight like crazy before Universitas comes and ends everything imaginable
The World of Anti-Climacticy - Noxigar faded into darkness, the Ark is broken, Adel is powerless, Chaos has no body, Sephiroth isn't anywhere to be found. As they return to earth, who knows what's in store.

Season 0.1

Another Whitewashing — Namine gets tired of the downhill path everything is going. She decides to clean things up by remaking Wikihood. Again.
...In a Row?! — More happenings occur in the Wikihood house. Residents from the Criminally Insane and Clinically Despressed House of has-been Video Game Villains escape and cause mayhem. And someone named after a trigonometric function is manipulating everything...
The Exterminator — After the house gets an outbreak of insects and rodents, the crew are forced to move out for a few days. More of the previous Wikihood's story is re-established.
Sine, Cosine, and Tangent — Noxigar meets and confronts Space Allen while observing his surroundings.

Season Ψ

Another Bloody Reboot? — Sometimes we wonder how logic gets demolished. This is our story of how the phoenix dies again, and the egg takes its place.
Trouble Has a Name — The objective is clear. Getting there is never so.
AVENGERS, AWAY! — With some kind of plan and some kind of group formed, the real story can now begin.
I Once Was a Teenage Paradox — Lots of pointless plot development occurs as Chaos and Tannenbaum enjoy a light brunch.
"Run, Run, Run! I Hunger!" — Both Joseph and Jacques deal with mazes. Joseph's maze has a rampaging parody of Greek mythology, while Jacques' maze has a time limit of 8 hours. Who will get their maze done the fastest?
"Find the Computer Room!" — More backtracking to worlds mentioned, next being the House universe. Meanwhile, more plot progression for the protagonists.