#shannon is an excellent writer and she’s going to do cool things with this book i promise

[justmossyall]

y’all i understand it’s not ideal for the non-team-keefers but it’s going to be okay omg 😭🫶

[tobyjones]

OK KO! Episodes 17-20

Know Your Mom

It was time for another good Carol episode! This one came together for us very quickly, and ended up being a very simple and sweet story about KO and Carol's relationship. It was originally written with Rad and Enid as KO's sounding boards, but we thought it would be fun to bring in Brandon and A Real Magic Skeleton for a little change of pace. I love the way Ryann and Parker expanded their appearance into a funny running gag that ended up helping to further cement their personalities moving forward. In the outline we handed out, the Kactus Krew were not given a lot of specifics. We had figured they would have an old school mob/organized crime type theme (but cactus). When we saw the first pitch with Succulentus portrayed as a nu-metal character, I was shocked. I remember being literally on the floor laughing,  a visceral physical reaction to how unexpected this take on the episode was. It was another situation where I was so unsure- can we do this? It is too insane? Is it "on-show"? All we knew for sure is that we all laughed, so we decided to go with our gut reaction and support it 100%. Jonathan Davis coming in to do the voice was another amazing development. He was the nicest guy in the world, and such a pleasure to work with! This especially felt great after my parents wouldn't let me see KoRn in concert when I was in 7th grade. Take that, mom and dad! 

We’re Captured

We aren't the first show to do a play on the sitcom "double-booking" trope with a villain, but we knew it would be super funny with our heroes and Lord Boxman. This was an incredibly enjoyable episode to write the story for. I remember hanging out in the writer's room with Ian, Dave and Erin just cracking ourselves up with how silly the episode starts and it just continues to escalate in ridiculousness from there. This was around the time we were first conceiving of TKO, so it was a helpful reminder that the show was in no way backing down from comedy. The concept for this story was shared with the board artists after the premise stage (I think in a big writing meeting, but it could have just been during lunch or something), and Ryann immediately took an interest in Professor Venomous. She then shared with us some early design concepts and ideas for Venomous (and his minion, who we'd later call Fink), and we were able to integrate them into the final outline. As with Know Your Mom, we knew the role Venomous was going to take in this episode and the series as a whole, but he was really given life thanks to the strong and specific POV of the board artists working on the episode. This was also a great early display of Boxman's family dynamic with the robots. Darrell and Shannon weren't even originally in this story, but Ryann and Parker REALLY wanted to include them. Parker pitched us the "daddy? may I wear my costume?" scene, which is something he observed in his real life. We were unsure, but we were willing to give him a chance to sell it in their pitch. I'm definitely glad we did! One final thing to mention about We're Captured is that our heroes lose in this episode. Isn't that fun?  Ryann Shannon on We’re Captured

Face Your Fears

Face Your Fears was conceived as a crucial stepping stone toward several key mid-season episodes, but it actually ended up being produced after TKO because we needed Dave and Haewon to tackle Legends of Mr. Gar first. This was the luxury of knowing that OK KO! would premiere with a month of episodes. We were working so far ahead that we could produce some episodes out of order and then make sure they aired IN order. (More on this in a future post...) Anyway, this episode provides a ton of important character development that ties to our big "mid-season finale" episodes, Plaza Prom and TKO. Gar manages to speak a sentence to Carol, which he repeats in Plaza Prom, and we get another hint of some darkness within KO. Among many other things! The concept of hopping through a bunch of character's linked fears in order of their plug-in connection is pretty complicated, but the board artists did an excellent job making it feel exciting and cool. Dave and Haewon were very excited to tackle something with this level of depth, and it shows in every scene. Figuring out how much to reveal in this episode was a challenge, and I'm very happy with the final result. Special regards to our design team for their work on this episode. All the different fearscapes are so distinct and so gorgeous. I was stunned when I started seeing these designs come in. In my opinion, this was the most impressively designed episode so far! Of course, since this episode they've continued to top themselves many times over. :)  Dave Alegre on Face Your Fears Everybody Likes Rad?

I've alluded to this before, but we took extra care to make sure that all the episodes  leading up to TKO were very balanced in terms of subject matter. We mapped out the whole half-season in advance, with many episodes simply listed as "ENID 1",  "CAROL 2" or "PLAZA EVENT" before we knew exactly what the stories were. We knew that Enid and Rad would have an equal number of episodes, and Everybody Likes Rad is "Rad 3". Much like "Enid 3" (You Have to Care), this is one of the first times we allowed an episode to spend some real time without KO as a main focus. This episode is a combination of two ideas. The first half comes from a pitch by Erin, and the second half derives from a concept Ian and I were sitting on from the previous summer. Neither "Rad's Viral Video" nor "Rad Goes Hollywood" felt like they could sustain a whole episode, but we realized there was a story to be told about how one could lead to the other. It worked! We ended up with something I'm really proud of. Geneva and Mira did a fantastic job making a hilarious episode that deals with sophisticated themes in a nuanced way. At every stage I was impressed at how far we were able to push this episode into unexpected tonal territory while still being 100% "the show". I especially love the melancholy-but-warm final scenes, which have caused "volcanoing" to be a term I commonly use in conversation. Geneva Hodgson on Everybody Likes Rad?

[mermaidsirennikita]

July 2017 Book Roundup

In July, I read eight books--most of which were unfortunately mediocre to poor.  However, there were a couple of standouts, and one of them was fantastic.  My favorite book of the month was Riley Sager’s Final Girls, a thinky thriller that deconstructs the concept of a final girl, while at the same time embracing the best parts of slasher movies.  If you love Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, you have to try this book.  

So--below is the good and the (unfortunately, moreso) bad or fair to middling.

Dividing Eden by Joelle Charbonneau.  2/5.  After the assassination of the king and crown prince, the kingdom of Eden is left in turmoil.  The crown would go to the king’s widow, but after she goes mad, that’s not an option anymore.  That means that twins Andreus and Carys are left to battle each other for the throne--or else give up their family’s rights to the kingdom and endanger their own lives.  Aaaand that’s pretty much it.  There are romances thrown in, but the book moves incredibly slow for its length.  The assassinations--events that we know occur because that’s the plot--take forever to actually happen, and for that matter once it does happen it’s really fucking nothing.  It’s super predictable, the villain can be spotted from a mile away, and that makes Carys and Andreus seem super stupid.  Also, Andreus is cursed or something and Carys has a magical drug addiction.  The other issue I have with the book is that so much is made of how close the twins are--and a brother-sister twin relationship is such a cool topic to write about--but the fact is that they aren’t close.  If they were, they wouldn’t be ready to stab each other in the back at a moment’s notice.  Not the smartest book.

The Shark Club by Ann Kidd Taylor.  3/5.  As a young girl, Maeve was bitten by a shark.  The event sparked a lifelong passion for the creatures, and at thirty she’s returning home to her grandmother’s hotel as a successful shark researcher.  Recently, she’s sparked the beginnings of a romance with fellow researcher Nicholas--but back home, she runs into former fiance and childhood love Daniel, now the chef at the hotel and the single father of a young girl.  Maeve’s feelings for Daniel return as she bonds with his daughter, the situation further complicated by an illegal shark finning operation nearby.  This book is well-written, and while it didn’t thrill me in any way, it was pleasant.  It’s very much a “finding yourself” story, and I think that a lot of people would like it--you could call it a thinking beach read.  At the same time, however, I found certain plot points to be rather predictable.  But I appreciated the focus on sharks, animals that I love, and the ongoing threat of finning.  

One True Loves by Taylor Jenkins Reid.  3/5.  Emma married her high school sweetheart, Jesse, with whom she was madly in love.  The day before their first wedding anniversary, he went missing, and was presumed dead.  Three and a half years later, Emma is engaged to her new love, Sam, when she receives the news that Jesse has been found alive.  Now--who does she really want to be with?  I gave this three stars because I read it over the course of a day and it was certainly engaging, and Reid writes romance in a really lovely way and many people have and will love this.  But this was no Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.  It actually kind of infuriated me.  It’s painfully obvious what Emma’s choice will be, the first half of the book breezes through each romance in a way that makes it difficult to get attached to either one, and the latter half is largely Emma dithering and treating each guy like shit.  The thing that irritated me most is that--well, look, I felt condescended to.  The old Emma loved to travel and see the world, and it’s implied that this was all a part of her youth and now she’s more mature and values the Real Things.  She’s Mature.  And I’m like, bitch you’re just kinda boring now.  There’s a scene where she’s basically like “I don’t like to fuck on kitchen counters anymore, I’m not in my twenties anymore I’m in my thirties”.  BITCH YOU ARE THIRTY-ONE HE HAS BEEN MISSING FOR 3.5 YEARS NOT TWENTY.  Like I respect her moving on and have no issue with that time frame, but Emma acted as if Jesse had been away for decades when he just hadn’t.  Sigh.

The Incarnations by Susan Barker.  4/5.  Beijing taxi driver Wang begins receiving mysterious letters from a stranger that claims to be connected to him through their past lives.  Detailing their different lives together, the stranger clearly also knows a lot about Wang’s current life, including his troubled marriage and his young daughter.  Desperate to find out who his “stalker” is, Wang becomes obsessed with the letters, and in the process confronts his own troubled past.  This is a dark fucking book, and it isn’t for the faint of heart because it honestly has a little bit of everything--to the point that I couldn’t give it a 5/5 because I did find some points a bit too disturbing.  Not in a gratuitous sense--it was the right choice for the book, just not always for me the reader.  But it is so well-written, and really original, and interesting in a way that so many reincarnation books aren’t.  It goes to some very interesting places, and was incredibly gripping.  For that matter, you get to see a number of different periods of Chinese history, which is always fun to read about.  Highly recommend if you’re looking for something really different.

Because You Love to Hate Me, edited by Ameriie.  3/5.  This anthology--featuring authors like Renee Ahdieh, Marissa Meyer, Susan Dennard, and more--focuses on villains.  Each story is actually a response from the author to a challenge given by a different writer; the challenger follows up the story with an essay, reacting to the story and discussing villainy.  Many of the stories are takes on classic villains--Moriarty from the Sherlock Holmes series, The Little Mermaid’s sea witch, the Erl-King/Queen--while a few others are completely original.  As with almost any anthology, this was a bit of a mixed bag.  A few of the stories were really excellent.  “Marigold” was the first thing I’d read from Samantha Shannon, and now I’d really like to see something else from her.  “Jack” was one of the few stories I found actively gruesome, and “Gwen and Art and Lance” was a pleasant, different surprise.  “Indigo and Shade” and “The Sea Witch” were also interesting.  However, a few of the stories weren’t for me just because of their style or content, and a few more seemed to fail at really being... well, about villains.  I felt like I was reading a bit too much about sympathetic villains, you know?  And the essays weren’t really for me--they felt like Tumblr posts.  But with that being said, it was enjoyable, and I think a lot of people would love it.

Final Girls by Riley Sager.  5/5.  At nineteen, Quincy Carpenter survived a massacre at Pine Cottage, during which all of her friends was killed.  As the only survivor, Quincy was immortalized by the press as one of the “Final Girls”, the other two being Lisa Milner and Samantha Boyd, who survived similar such massacres.  Ten years later, Quincy is shocked when Lisa commits suicide, and the mysterious Samantha shows up on her doorstep immediately after.  If you’re a fan of slasher movies, I highly recommend this book, which not only deconstructs the “final girl” archetype but tells a hell of a story.  It shifts between the present and what happened to Quincy on the night she survived, and both stories are equally compelling.  Quincy is a remarkably complex and flawed character, as is Sam--I was enthralled by both.  While I had an inkling about one of the twists, I certainly didn’t predict all of them.  It’s not only a great story, but an important one--while few of us experience traumas as horrible as Quincy’s (thankfully) the way she dealt with hers was very familiar to me, and the Sager does an excellent job of examining the difference between being fine on the surface and being fine in reality.  A must-read.

Every Last Lie by Mary Kubica.  2/5.  Clara, mother to a four-year-old daughter and a newborn boy, has her world shattered when her husband is killed in a car wreck.  What is written off as a tragic accident becomes more complicated when their daughter, Maisie--who was in the car with Nick when he died--insists that her father was being chased by a “bad man”.  Becoming obsessed with what happened to Nick, Clara begins to trace the last few months of her husband’s life--while, in alternating chapters, we see the truth unveiled from Nick’s perspective.  I gave this book two stars instead of one because I do think it portrays grief well--Clara is irrational to the point where she becomes unhinged and obsessive, and this does ring true to me, especially since she’s probably suffering from postpartum depression as well.  But the ending.  UGH.  THE FUCKING ENDING.  It ruined the book for me, as did the fact that we were clearly supposed to sympathize with Nick when he was a complete dirtbag.  Spoiler alert: Nick wasn’t cheating on Clara like you might initially think (he keeps going on and on about her pregnant body, and I was like wait are you into this or are you resentful of it idek) but he was keeping a million things from her.  An ex-girlfriend showing up in his life again, a kid that was possibly fathered by Nick before he met Clara, a malpractice suit, the fact that he’s apparently the worst dentist on Earth and deserved the malpractice suit...  God.  I should have known that I would hate Nick as soon as I realized he was a dentist.  Clara isn’t much better.  She idolizes Nick, jumps from one conclusion to the other over the course of a couple pages, and honestly doesn’t seem to have any kind of life outside her husband and kids.  Drop this, read Final Girls.

Close to Shore by Michael Capuzzo.  3/5.  In 1916, the Jersey Shore experienced a series of shark attacks that would really be the first attacks in American history to capture the public’s imagination.  They remain pretty distinct, as they occurred in a short period (from July 1 to July 12) across both the ocean and a nearby creek, and four people were killed and one injured by what seemed to be a single shark.  I read this in honor of Shark Week and because I’ve always been seriously fascinated by these attacks, ever since I was very young.  Capuzzo does a good job of describing the shark’s potential life and the attacks themselves.  But he also spent a lot of time fleshing out the lives of people who often weren’t even the attack victims themselves but their loved ones, which like.. fine, I’m sure that worked for a lot of people, but I’m here for the attacks.  I also feel like more time should have been spent on discussing theories regarding shark behaviors and what made these attacks so unique--and were they really unique at all?  Capuzzo seemed to be very set on the idea that this was a juvenile great white, that it was attacking for these reasons, etc.  And not all scientists, at least from what I’ve read, agree with him--even a discussion of outlying, unlikely theories would have been nice.  Capuzzo also didn’t seem to explain why he was so set on the great white theory, when a bull shark would be another likely candidate--some would say more likely than a great white, especially during the creek attacks.  With that being said, if you’re interested in the topic it’s a quick read and nicely informative.  To paraphrase Jon Snow, I like the shark bits.