Wikihood/arc/commentary

Disclaimer

Noxigar wrote almost all of this hogwash exposition; he, and others, were children when this trainwreck of a show idea first began. As such, the initiative proposed is that they salvage whatever episode concepts possible, and scrap the rest completely whilst making a Movieum of sorts to consolidate the good which came from Redux and Prime, as well as commemorate how far they have come to being halfway-decent writers all across the board.

Wikihood Redux: The Gold Mine Of History Most Of Us Would Probably Prefer To Forget

Wikihood Redux was a pet project that has been tinkered with a lot of times.

Originally, Wikihood was a fanfiction project meant to replicate RoosterTeeth's The Strangerhood, done so by a multitude of different authors on the Homestar Runner Fanstuff Wiki. It was taken down from the HRFWiki, due to not having enough Homestar Runner content within it to be considered a Homestar Runner fanstuff. With this in mind, the authors have attempted to put it on the Wiki User Wiki twice, only for that Wiki to shut down each time. In the advent of the second shutdown of the Wiki User Wiki, it was moved to the Homestar Runner Fanstuff Wiki, as Wikihood 2. However, Wikihood 2 would not last long either. The Homestar Runner Fanstuff Wiki underwent a fanfiction purge, and only kept what was assumed to be "the best of the best." Even this Purge did not take effect for a long time, which left many users from the HRFWiki stranded to parts unknown. With Super Sam's help, the Wiki User Wiki was re-instated, and the original Wikihood author took full advantage of this. Chances were given for a new Wikihood to come forth, and hopefully stay this time. As Wikihood essentially became the breath of life for most of the WUW's third go at being a functional website, many copies of Wikihood exist across the realms.

Redux had roughly 35 episodes spanned across three Seasons, before we attempted to soft-reboot the continuity twice. Even each of the soft-reboot attempts never got particularly far. A lot of our creative ambitions were marred by edit conflicts with a guy who had a different idea of what defined "Wikihood" than us, as well as the one of the original Wikihood authors getting violently fed up with his creation getting constantly moved around and rendered incomplete. Most of the current authors, and their associates, have assumedly let bygones be bygones with all parties that clashed with us.

The first Redux season had 15 Episodes, the second had 12, and the third had 8. Each of the soft-reboot attempts did not make it past 7-8 Episodes. In total, we had almost 51 Episodes, one of which was kept in spirit as the theme song of this archival exposition. Some episodes never got finished, before we decided to just remake everything with a bit more of our personal touch. Most of Redux still gets used in Current Wikihood, but in a downplayed form compared to what even Wikihood Prime would have been doing with it.

Wikihood Prime: Proto-Season 1

At one point in Wikihood's lifespan, we decided a fresh start with more customized, more original ideas and concepts would give us the inspiration we needed to continue onwards with this series. In a way, we were correct on this front. Much like early Redux, however, there was a lot of creative clashing between multiple authors. To be able to have everyone agree on everything, we ended up revamping a good majority of Prime before we even finished the first Season of it. In stark contrast with Redux's maxim, we rescinded a "No-Preplotting Rule" that had been as much of an obstacle as pre-plotting had been for pre-Redux iterations of Wikihood, if not moreso.

That said, our modifications of Prime eventually culminated in the creation of Current Wikihood. Well, after a break caused prominently by the Wiki User Wiki being down for almost a full year. :9

Archive Theme Song (Originally Wikihood Redux Episode 43 - "Dr. Strangehate, Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Temporal Rip")

(Yeah, the episode was just an embed of a Dissidia meme. It was obviously the best Wikihood Redux episode ever.)

Special Episodes

Long ago, an attempt to spawn "Specials" came across.

During Redux, the idea was that we had them to be somewhat amusing things, to look back on fondly. However, for the most part they are now considered entirely redundant with "sibling projects" such as Everything You Know Is Wrong and Ben & Alex Visit The United States of America. On top of that, while we most certainly all still enjoy Homestar Runner, our fandom interests deviated strongly from concepts that would have been considered "Homestar-like," and Special Episodes were made only once in a blue moon.

The only Redux Special Episode we've sincerely completed was one where Noxigar, Sephiroth, and countless others faffed about in Castle Oblivion. We had largely intended for it to be backstory on the existence of multiple Redux characters as Organization XIII members, even if only covertly and for the express purposes of humour. As we had been trying to soft-reboot Redux after three seasons, it is likely assumed this Episode would have been BALEETED along with most other Special concepts, even if it wasn't horrifyingly outdated.

In Prime, only one Special Episode was ever devised: a Festivus Episode. Chaos would try to recreate a Seinfeld holiday, with Noxigar going to have Christmas dinner with the Belluccis. This Episode never came to be, as Prime was cancelled.

Current Wikihood has yet to perform any Special Episodes, of the Homestar Runner kind.

Incomplete Episodes

Roughly 6 Episodes - 2 in Prime, 4 in Redux during the soft reboots era - were just plain incomplete. At least one of the Redux ones was left behind due to mandating that only one particular author work on it, and then one of the Prime episodes was being retooled before Prime's cancellation outright spelled its doom.

Keeping any of these around would have been a waste of KB space better saved for something better.

Anti-Episodes

Before Wikihood Redux, I would argue that Wikihood's biggest flaw was that it was trying too hard to be like this other webtoon that was out, called Bonus Stage. Bonus Stage was made by a guy who deeply regretted his decision to animate it, and overall aged about as well as milk. One of the gimmicks taken from Bonus Stage was the concept of an "Anti-Episode," which was of course used in Wikihood Redux.

In essence, an Anti-Episode was just an Episode whose overall canonicity was incredibly dubious at best.

The Anti-Episodes were once a Season, for the first three of Redux's lifespan. Two of them were essentially propagated entirely as the result of massive edit conflicts, and the third was probably the closest to what an Anti-Episode should have been. However, none of them would have been able to be functionally remade within the contexts of Prime or soft-reboots.

When we worked on Prime, one of the ways we divorced ourselves from Redux was not bothering with the construction of any Anti-Episodes at all. Current Wikihood also aspires to not have Anti-Episodes.

{OOC: gary this is not what i had in mind when i said movieum - somebody, probably}

Wikihood always started out with OOC brackets. They functionally served as a means of communication betwixt people who may or may not have wanted to explain a reference without needing to do so on the Discussion page of a particular episode's script, or to give a "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" wink and nod to other authors/co-authors.

At some point, Wikihood Redux did away with them and instead attempted to use footnotes/endnotes to communicate ideas and concepts to people. More often than not, however, this was just used to explain jokes. This especially was the case, when footnotes had been used in Wikihood Prime.

Current Wikihood doesn't use either OOC brackets or footnotes, anymore. They got intrusive, when it came to re-reading the scripts. Ultimately, we are better off without OOC brackets by far, though I'm not sure if we're better off without footnotes.

Soulja Boy (Originally Wikihood Redux Episode 36 - "Another Whitewashing")

As a joke, it would appear one Episode of Wikihood was entirely dedicated to singing a specific Soulja Boy song - Crank That.

I considered, a few times, acknowledging the Episode by allowing for a musical number for multiple Soulja Boy songs. The problem with this is that the only ones that even remotely fit for Current Wikihood - based on tone - are Kiss Me Thru The Phone and Hammer. On top of that, it mostly just facilitated edit conflicts when first done, and simply serves as us trying to make the best of a really bad memory/really bad Redux episode.

This is mostly a reminder of Noxigar's dumbassery in an idea being functionally scrapped to never be invoked for Current Wikihood. To rub salt on the wound, not even Wikihood Prime considered singing a single Soulja Boy song.

"First Generation Wikihood" (Originally Wikihood Redux Episode 5 - "Tea & Crumpets?")

Wikihood Redux did a lot of things wrong, one of those things being that it had a really bad foundation set up. This was due to continuity snarls. However, we had the most fun during Wikihood Redux Season 1, with an episode that focused on a specific idea: what if the Wikihood Gang existed throughout multiple time periods?

While it may not have been initially responsible, "Tea & Crumpets" did enable the possibility of there being a First Generation Wikihood gang in Prime. It is not entirely remembered how it would have gone down, but we did have a version of Lex, Chaos, and Noxigar for the 1980's specifically. One was an ex-Soviet scientist, and the other two were residents of San Cristobal. I believe this was later retooled to be part of an Ur-backstory involving a glowing tree, Spook Cliff, and the existence of parallel universes all across the board.

An episode in Wikihood Prime was attempted to be named after "Tea & Crumpets," incidentally the 5th of its kind: "Of Tea and Big-Lipped Alligators." Current Wikihood has not made an attempt to name an Episode after "Tea & Crumpets."

As the "Tea & Crumpets" episode was tainted by our memories of mass edit wars going throughout the very beginning of Wikihood Redux, it and other associated episodes have effectively been scrapped, save for the concepts inside most of them being decently recovered and revamped in their entirety.

Lou Cypher (Originally Wikihood Prime Episode 2 - "Sympathy For The Devil's Son")

An episode of Wikihood Prime actually managed to be good. It was for the wrong reasons entirely, but it managed to be good.

Well, plans to retool it in its entirety have yielded what can be assumed are good results. The eventuality was to replace Raiku Samiyaza as a Big Bad Wannabe with someone more... devilish. Enter Lou Cypher, who would be a more malevolent version that Raiku himself would've had to stop. It would involve a castle, a means of incapacitating other Wikihood members, and a chance for absolution. It is not known how we would begin to rework the Lou Cypher stuff into Current Wikihood, but Sephiroth always has a way and he's usually fairly good about these sorts of things.

As with most ideas in Prime, this never could be executed in a fashion, owing to Prime's cancellation and the WUW's being shut down for a whole year. At least one reference to it exists in Current Wikihood, so far.

Multiple-Perspectives Episode (Originally Wikihood Redux Episode 3 - "The Path I Believed In")

There was a courtroom episode in Wikihood Redux, which featured the same events panning out but under multiple perspectives. It wasn't entirely good, but the potential for it has currently been weaponized enough that I'm willing to add it to the Hall of Notoriety portion of the Movieum.

While not appearing intentional, Current Wikihood has somewhat kept the same spirit going in what is known as the Pilot Trio: three Pilot episodes, one each centered around a main character. Initially, there had only been two of these - one for Chaos, one for Leigh - but then one was custom-made for Garfield so as to move an episode idea backwards in time. Through the Pilot Trio, a solid foundation was established, without needing anything involving a courtroom save a throwaway line about cross-examining parrots (made as that's the only lawyer joke I know that doesn't make them appear sleazy).

Dank Naminade (Multiple Wikihood Redux Episodes, Though The Best Among Them Was Wikihood Redux Episode 16 - "Dinner And A Movie")

Once upon a time, there was a Somebody. He turned into a Heartless, which inadvertently created the Nobody who calls himself "Noxigar." His will was so strong; it was enough to create an alternate universe with its own version of Naminé, who wound up being completely cooler than her original version from the "Kingdom Hearts" universe. This Naminé was also a fragmented projection of the Somebody's will, and wound up being half as much an OC as others in Wikihood. However, she still had some fierce limitations which needed to be removed.

Basically WUW Naminé was a Noxigar-ism that was given a lot more leeway with what she could get away with, compared to other characters. Even so, when it came time for her to possibly make her debut in Wikihood Prime, she was turned down by Chaos and Lex during character auditions. One of the best Wikihood Episodes (16 - Dinner and a Movie) featured her and Noxigar going on a dinner date in Giuseppe's restaurant. A majority of Prime Wikihood paid partial homage to this one - Giuseppe's Pizza Cabin - as well as its owner, Giuseppe - are examples of such.

WUW Naminé is essentially in Current Wikihood, through multiple proxies. Naminade is a mixed drink created by Garfield Wiggins, with unknown properties giving it likeability to all who consume the contents. On top of that, his iconic costume from his wanted poster is essentially a Naminé costume with two custom red beam scimitars. The blonde wig portion of the costume was ruined, during a fight with a character emblematic of Katawa Hearts - a Sephiroth-made sibling project which coincidentally has a Naminé Kirigiri in it.

If Not Even Black Dynamite Can Get Away With It... (Originally Wikihood Redux Episode 47 - "Cue the Fanfare")

One Episode had a shitty synopsis. We found out not long after its production that specific terminology - that was harmless during the 1960's and 1980's when it was popularized and made mainstream - was no longer useable because alt-right chucklefucks appropriated it and made it into an insult towards the people whom first made the terminology for themselves. We were not initially woke to this fact, and had to be told about it by our peers. As a result, we have corrected our future behaviour so it does not lend to a bad first impression.

Fuck the alt-right. Fuck transmisic Nazis. May I hope they get scalped.

We Essentially Amalgamated The First Few Episodes Of Wikihood Prime

1. From Idiot Scrapes (Wikihood Prime Episode 1) we had the idea of Chaos going out and giving Town Hall a beating off.
2. From Currents and Recurrence of Currents (Wikihood Prime Episode 3) we tried to introduce the main characters and their primary antagonist, D'Arque. We've done more of a major overhaul to the overarching storyline than that, but so far this Episode was outmoded by Current Wikihood being better anyway.
3. From The Root of Lawful Evil (Wikihood Prime Episode 4) we tried to get Chaos to pay a specific bill, by talking to the Mayor. This was changed from the power bill then, to the utility bill now.

The Current Wikihood Episode that does the best in amalgamating these Episodes of Wikihood Prime is No Hall Like Town Hall. No Hall was going to be the new Pilot, before alternate ideas came into the heads of the writers. Remolay is awesome.

Issues With Power Creep (Multiple Wikihood Redux Episodes, Namely Wikihood Redux Episode 15 - "Attrition")

Power creep was a problem Wikihood Redux had.

A lot of it boils down to temporal anomalies rendering people trying to one-up each other, in various edit conflicts.

During its first Season, Wikihood Redux tried getting an overarching final boss established. In doing so, The First Chaos had been created and seen as better than Zharanakuva. Essentially, he was a Generation 1 version of our current Chaos, but with a lot of power as the result of an alien race known as The Sharothians. The battle escalated, until all the good-aligned characters fused to form a phoenix - a signature, exotic bird emblematic of Wikihood's entire life story in a nutshell - and blew up The First Chaos once and for all.

Season 2 tried to come up with someone as cool as The First Chaos. The first attempt as a Muffin of Doom, who appears to have been just a comic relief warm-up boss. The second attempt was "Noxigar's Heartless," a Defense-of-the-Ancients themed monstrosity who called itself "Deathbringer the Venomancer;" aside from ripping off WarCraft III, Deathbringer's signature gimmick was that positive energy hurt him, whilst negative energy healed him. He was also trying to wed a Princess of Heart so that he could become the King of Hearts, a plan which ultimately failed. The third attempt at a central Big Bad for Wikihood Redux Season 2 came, in the form of The Glabal's very own Davros, who amped up his game by possessing Sephiroth. After Davros' defeat, Sephiroth went to receive more training.

Season 3 went to maybe conjure something more consistent. Ultimately, a bad guy named Adel was conjured up... and everything blew up as a result of the on-going fight with him, including main characters.

The first Soft-Reboot Season tried to get something going, but with more-than-half of the Episodes unfinished and it nearing time for most of us to become adults, we kind of forgot where we were going. The only things that looked to maybe have held to something were:

• Three dimensional beings - Sine, Cosine, and Tangent
• The Criminally Insane and Clinically Depressed House of Has-Been Video Game Villains, which included Garland, Sky Pegacion, and Exdeath. They all escaped, with Exdeath at leastmaking an ExMart that has since become Current Wikihood's HappyMart.

The second Soft-Reboot Season tried to introduce a Voidspawn - Tannenbaum - as the main Big Bad. He would manipulate Noxigar, who was essentially trying to get rid of problem worlds so that the entire universe could be remade anew, using Psycho Mantis and other "ally characters" that were also manipulated. Other Big Bad contenders included several coloured Dukes - White, Black, Red, Grey - all of which were themed after famous musicians and all a couple degrees separate from Mass Effect 2's The Illusive Man. They all sent bounty hunters to either help or hinder Noxigar, while Sephiroth and Chaos followed the now-anti-hero protagonist in order to try and set things straight.

It can be assumed, from the state of Current Wikihood, that Noxigar had succeeded with his plans, with some heavy help from Chaos, Sephiroth, and Remolay.

Other Concepts

Most of the other concepts from former Wikihood Redux and Wikihood Prime Episodes have, more-or-less, been retrofitted into Current Wikihood through differing means. There were golden nuggets of potential from Redux and Prime, which have been mined by seven Dwarf Hellriders and used to beat the shit out of a bigoted taxi driver.

Otherwise, all the old Wikihood Episodes are gone because we would've eventually euthanized them.