Gen Zed will be the opposite. It will not dare make a joke outside of the Progressive Approved guidelines. It will play it safe and only make jabs at acceptable targets (White America, Christians, Right-wingers) and spout their beliefs freely. They're not edgy at all. They don't even know what "edgy" means. The Breakfast Club wasn't edgy. Weren't they supposed to be a bunch of losers and outcasts who found friendship in each other?
Yeah, no kidding. Tumblr culture is ripe for parody--otherkin, ten million made-up genders--but the histrionic defectives that make up that crowd can't bear to be laughed at, even if its "we're laughing with you, not at you."
One "genderfluid" joke and ten million socially maladroit white teens will be
And self-diagnose themselves with PTSD; their digital screeching will overload Twitter's servers. Jesus, Hayden Black, I know you think you're tapping into a new market, but are you really sure you wanna deal with these hopeless spergs?
Also, they are still not trying to sell the fucking show on its merits.
First trans VA in a LEAD role! We have that editor from Futurama! Ergo, we must be awesome. Because trans VAs are awesome, and Futurama is/was awesome.
Tell me more about the show.
And I once shook hands with Jean Reno. That makes me awesome.
Also, they are still not trying to sell the fucking show on its merits.
First trans VA in a LEAD role! We have that editor from Futurama! Ergo, we must be awesome. Because trans VAs are awesome, and Futurama is/was awesome.
Tell me more about the show.
And I once shook hands with Jean Reno. That makes me awesome.
If Shona really wants to be a stand up comedian, she's really, really, going to have to do better than complaining about Twitter.
How the hell is "born too late for all the good Twitter handles" a joke? Twitter was created in 2006, which means that Shona (26) would have been 17. How the hell is "born too late"?
So she would've been 10 when twitter was first created. Still though, the joke isn't very funny because most people's twitter handles are either some variation of their name/a username they have on another site or something related to their favourite character/movie/tv show/et cetera, so it shouldn't be THAT hard for her to think of a twitter handle.
But anyways, after watching the Gen Zed promo and reading most of this thread, I've managed to assemble my thoughts on this ~modern classic~.
First of all, Alex Bradley's demo reel seems to indicate that animation wise, he can do better than... this. Personally I thought he did come off as a bit smug in that demo reel but perhaps it was more of a joking bravado than anything else. But anyways, the storyboards look more nicely drawn than the actual show which I don't think should normally be the case. I feel like this could be because Bradley was rushed, and animating in a style that's not his forte (the demo reel seems to indicate that he prefers the "classic" cartoon look over mid 2000s "edgy" animation). Other people in this thread said, his demo reel work, while not technically bad, wasn't particularly original-- this gives away his inexperience, because animators generally have to learn how to animate in other people's styles before really developing their own if they want to work in the industry. So I do agree that if this was a project with a decent budget, he'd be on the animation team but not the head animator.
Onto Gen Zed itself-- Hayden Black argues that being trans isn't her defining character trait, but if that was really the case, why are all the posters in her room trans women? Shouldn't an aspiring comedienne also have posters of her comedy role models as well? Also, when she does the "edgier than the breakfast thing", she highlights that she's a trans girl and not a comedian. The line just as easily could've been "an A.I. lover, an asshole, an aspiring comedienne, and an airhead" or something like that. Speaking of Cameron the "A.I. lover", he's the character whose personality shines through the least in the promo. All we see that he's bad at rapping and that Huey treats him like shit. There's nothing at all that shows that he's a computer geek.
Considering how Hayden Black is fond of rape jokes, drug jokes, and other gags that most of his target audience wouldn't (or rather, shouldn't) find funny, I initially believed that perhaps, he originally just wanted to make a show that made fun of "today's youth", and that Shona was originally a more flawed character. But then he noticed how transgender people were the topic of the now and he was like "Hey everyone is talking about this trans thing, I should make the show focused on the trans girl! And I'll have her voiced by a trans actress to really bring in the crowd!". And so, he haphazardly rehashed the show into what it is today, but left most of the distasteful jokes in because he rushed the production. After all, if it took too long, then the hot topic social justice issue could be some else by the time it's done and that wouldn't be good for any creator trying to make money of social justice bloggers. Alas, my theory has been proven false by his anecdote about how he thought of Gen Zed... I guess I was just too optimistic.
(I'm gonna join everyone in re-writing/re-designing the Gen Zed cast, but this post is getting long so I'll probably do it later)
Look, Hayden; it doesn't matter if Shona's the leader of the crew, you still have established a four member group - or an ensemble, if you will - as your main cast and focus of your show. You didn't say "This is a cartoon all about Shona and her misadventures with her side character friends" or something less literal. You repeatedly used the words "they" or "they're" meaning all four characters are as important to the introduction of the show as your trans selling point character, therefore they are all lead characters. Now, unless you go through the effort of rewording your sodding promo, people aren't going to let this go.
I'm getting the feeling that there's a better cartoon that's been in production that has a trans VA lead actress. Somehow this information was leaked, and Haden quickly threw everything together so he could claim he made history first!
If Shona really wants to be a stand up comedian, she's really, really, going to have to do better than complaining about Twitter.
How the hell is "born too late for all the good Twitter handles" a joke? Twitter was created in 2006, which means that Shona (26) would have been 17. How the hell is "born too late"?
It's been speculated that this is a show that takes place in the near future rather than right now, because of the fact that the characters are calling themselves Gen Zed which seems to be the young-children-of-the-now group. If that's the case, Shona's joke kind of makes more sense. But in that case, why do the writers think the pop culture references Betsy's spouting will be relevant in the intended time period? Hell, they won't even be relevant two years from now. )And even though they are relevant now, they're not funny because it's obvious they're just shoe-horned in and will immediately be dated. The best comedy is timeless.)
There are ways that the characters could develop to make them, you know, interesting.
Shona constantly mentions and reminds people of her status as trans out of serious insecurity and as a way to pretend she's completely at peace with herself. But she actually has severe body issues and is seriously hurt by the fact that she was born as the wrong gender, which people bring up a lot, so she acts like she's defined by the fact that she is a transwoman as a shield. Through her experiences with her new roomates, she eventually comes to peace with herself and accepts her past, but is looking forward towards her new life as a woman.
Cameron is a withdrawn introvert that is in his comfort zone when direct contact with people isn't required and prefers to work with technology, to the point where he works at home. He eventually makes friends over some online gaming and decides to man up and live with them as roommates. He starts off as very quiet and would mostly keep to himself, but being forced out of his comfort zone eventually results in him coming out of his shell and he begins to regularly interact with not only his roommates, but other people as well.
Huey has severe anger management problems that has landed him in a lot of trouble in the past. Someone recommends that he uses video games as an alternative to taking out his anger on people. Because his long rap sheet makes employment difficult, he eventually resorts to moving in with three other people he met over online gaming. While he only moved in with them out of necessity, he starts to warm up to the other three and his misanthropic tendencies become less prominent, resulting in him evolving from a dangerous asshole to a slightly jerkish, but still likable guy.
And the trustafarian is basically Amy from Futurama, so she could basically go through her character arc or something.
It's been speculated that this is a show that takes place in the near future rather than right now, because of the fact that the characters are calling themselves Gen Zed which seems to be the young-children-of-the-now group. If that's the case, Shona's joke kind of makes more sense. But in that case, why do the writers think the pop culture references Betsy's spouting will be relevant in the intended time period? Hell, they won't even be relevant two years from now. )And even though they are relevant now, they're not funny because it's obvious they're just shoe-horned in and will immediately be dated. The best comedy is timeless.)
But now we've uncovered a new problem: they're making present day references to things that, in their time, would have been outdated.
It's like a comedy show today making jokes about Vanilla Ice, Princess Diana and Eiffel 65. It would come across as weird anachronistic.
I could have sworn she was 26 or something. She was "the ass end of Gen Y". I read it in this thread somewhere but I can't find it now so I guess it doesn't matter.
