Continued from:
https://archive.is/HImea
HAN: Ain’t this like her third hot chocolate in less than twenty-four hours?
SHAYERA: Yeah, but when has she eaten or drank anything that wasn’t loaded with sugar?
ESME: Well, her breakfast actually isn’t loaded with sugar, but you guys are gonna love what it is.
HAN: Dare I ask what it is?
ESME: French fry pizza.
HAN/SHAYERA: (stare)
ESME: Okay, yes, I know French fry pizza exists in real life – people put all sorts of crazy toppings on pizza – but this feels like yet another instance of Enter yelling at the reader, “Look, look, they’re KIDS! See all the junk food they’re eating? That’s because they’re KIDS!”
SHAYERA: Besides, a lot of kids love regular pizza with regular toppings.
KIDS DO THIS, RIGHT?: 71
HAN: Also, I don’t care if some kid magically made sugar healthy – if you eat stuff like that all the time your cholesterol’s gonna skyrocket and you’re askin’ for a heart attack.
ESME: Sally gobbles up three slices of pizza in two seconds because again, Enter can’t write transitions to save his life.
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 202
She asks if Robert and Linda are at school and Timmy tells her ”don’t you worry, I made sure they went in their grounded costumes.” Sally’s in the midst of asking why, but she’s interrupted by the doorbell mooing again and they both freak out that the party guests might be showing up early. Why they think that, I don’t know, but Sally goes marching to answer the door, declaring that ”If it was time to face the music; I’d do it with strength and courage.” But not with properly-used semicolons.
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 203
Also, every sentence in the paragraph of Sally answering the door begins with “I.”
CONJUNCTION JUNCTION, THAT’S YOUR FUNCTION: 544
Anonymous
SHAYERA: Well, turns out it’s not early party guests; it’s April and her siblings, showing up to help Sally get ready for the party and get Sally all dollied up and I’m already getting Alice Cullen vibes. Oh, April’s also wearing the ugliest outfit in the world. She wore a vivid green dress with several frilly layers of hem. A black-and-white striped tie made the perfect stylistic belt, matching well with the blue-and-orange polka-dot knee socks. All of this was accented with the brightest red shoes – light-up ones; the only kind you could wear at a party. And to top it off, she wore a crown with the finest plastic jewels. She’d be the second coolest looking kid at my party after I was in the dress that Sarah carried along. HAN: (groans) Yes Enter, kids wear ridiculous outfits cause they’re KIDS, we get it! KIDS DO THIS, RIGHT?: 72 ESME: Also, “second-coolest” should have a hyphen. FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 204 And I’m sure you all noticed how the brat’s ego is back. YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 183 April and Sarah lead Sally upstairs to dress her and make her up and they’re done in two seconds. Again. FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 205 HAN: And now we get the overdramatic cliché of Sally bein’ led downstairs to draw out the Big Reveal of how she looks in her party wear. Seriously, it’s got Bella-in-her-wedding-dress vibes. “Woah …” was the first thing that I heard. From Timmy. ESME: Again, that might mean something IF TIMMY HAD ANY PRESENCE IN THIS BOOK. Sally begs April to let her see how she looks and then this happens. April rolled her eyes and pulled a compact mirror out of her purse. I almost touched my face, but April grabbed my wrists once more. HAN: Wait, she’s holdin’ up the compact mirror and grabbin’ both of Sally’s wrists at the same time? Does she have three hands? SHAYERA: Maybe she’s grabbing both of Sally’s wrists with one hand? ESME: Or maybe Enter and the “editor” fucked up again.
Anonymous
>>118014293 FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 206
I couldn’t help but curl my glittery lips into a smile with what I saw. The sparkly fingernails that I could see before had already gotten me excited, but April had gone the extra mile with everything.
They had painted a green star across my right eye and woven glow wand clips into my hair, lighting my face up like the night sky. All of this compounded with the stellar dress itself to make me feel like Princess of the World.
HAN: Yup, definite Bella vibes.
ESME: Well, Robert enters the room and says “My favorite part is the buttercup in your hair,” which means another buttercup from their garden is guaranteed to get destroyed soon.
SHAYERA: Wait, Robert’s here? The school day is over just like that? That makeup job took ALL DAY??
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 207
HAN: This really IS Bella’s wedding!
ESME: Sally asks where Linda is, Robert says she’s heading inside, and we get yet another instance of the “editor’s” failure.
“There you are Robert!” April said. “We have to get you out of that costume and into your party outfit after I’m done with this one here.”
She turned toward Timmy.
“What about me?”
“Your face, dolt. You haven’t even painted it yet,” April said.
I have no idea why “She turned toward Timmy” has its own line and I actually had to reread the passage in order to figure out that it was Timmy saying, “What about me?”
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 209
ESME: Timmy asks if April can paint battle scars on his face and . . . wait, battle scars? BATTLE SCARS??
SHAYERA: Yeah, battle scars. What about it?
ESME: (takes deep breath) You guys need to let me ramble, okay?
HAN: (shrugs) Fine, I got a feelin’ something really bad just happened.
ESME: Yes, it did. All of Enter’s claims that this isn’t a dystopia are now officially BULLSHIT.
SHAYERA: We knew that.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118014281 >Part 2 AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAa
Anonymous
>>118014322 ESME: Yes, but this is worse than anything else this book has told us. Even worse than all the abuse – I’m dead serious. This just revealed the absolute worst thing about this horrible world.
HAN: What do you mean?
ESME: Well, think about it. Kids do all of the adult jobs in this world. Timmy just said he wants battle scars painted on his face.
He wouldn’t have a concept of battle scars if this world didn’t have wars.
Which means . . .
KIDS ARE FIGHTING IN WARS!!
HAN/SHAYERA: (eyes bulge)
ESME: And don’t tell me they aren’t like regular wars – you don’t get battle scars from throwing pies or squirting water pistols. No, kids are fighting in actual wars. CHILD SOLDIERS ARE GETTING WOUNDED AND KILLED IN FUCKING WARS!!
HAN: Damn . . .
SHAYERA: I have no words. Even on Thanagar we don’t send children into battle.
ESME: (gestures wildly at the book) Well there it is! CHILD SOLDIERS! THIS WORLD’S WARS ARE FOUGHT BY FUCKING CHILD SOLDIERS!!
Let me repeat that.
CHILD. SOLDIERS!!!
Yeah yeah, I’m sure Enter didn’t mean to imply that, just like how Meyer didn’t mean to imply the whole EATING BABIES thing in Breaking Dawn, but just like in Breaking Dawn, THE IMPLICATION IS STILL THERE. TIMMY WANTING BATTLE SCARS COMBINED WITH EVERYTHING WE KNOW ABOUT THIS WORLD LOGICALLY POINTS TO IT. FUCKING CHILD SOLDIERS! CHILDREN ARE FIGHTING AND GETTING KILLED IN WARS!
Enter, you can take you claims that this isn’t a dystopia and SHOVE THEM UP YOUR ASS!!
MISSING PIECES: 113
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 91
Anonymous
Anonymous
>>118014348 MISSING PIECES: 113
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 91
Yes, ten points each. I just . . . I can’t . . . this is . . . God . . . CHILD SOLDIERS! CHILD SOLDIERS! CHILD SOLDIERS!
SHAYERA: Okay, they hear you.
ESME: (takes deep breath) I know, I know, but . . . THIS IS WHY YOU NEED TO THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU’RE WRITING, ENTER!! INTENTIONALLY OR NOT, YOU JUST CREATED A WORLD WHERE ALL THE WARS ARE FOUGHT BY CHILD SOLDIERS!! I think that’s worth TWENTY points for this particular count.
WHIMSICAL MY ASS: 120
ESME: Okay, I’m coherent enough to continue now. Let’s try not to think about the fucking child soldiers and move on with the chapter.
Instead of the battle scars that implied the whole CHILD SOLDIERS thing, April wants to paint lightning bolts on Timmy’s face ”and maybe a heart on your cheeks.” Don’t ask me how she’s going to paint one heart on both his cheeks.
HAN: Maybe it’s a huge heart that covers his whole face.
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 210
ESME: Timmy’s horrified at the idea of a heart on his face and April says, “I am only jesting,” and I’m required to give that a point.
KIDS DO THIS, RIGHT?: 73
And now, we get to see how the Sally and Linda issue gets resolved and we’re going to spork the whole scene.
HAN: Again?
ESME: Yup. This scene has a more subtle level of fail than other Sally and Linda scenes, but it’s still full of FAIL that you need to see.
I bolted outside. There Linda was, walking toward the house in her grounded outfit. The one that I made her wear. I closed my eyes as she got closer, and I waited for her to get really, really angry. I waited for a shout or a yell or a bellow, but they never came. Instead, I heard a crunch. I opened my eyes. Linda was eating an apple.
ESME: First off, choppy paragraph is choppy.
CONJUNCTION JUNCTION, THAT’S YOUR FUNCTION: 552
SHAYERA: Forget that, I’m wondering how the hell Linda can eat an apple while wearing an ELEPHANT TRUNK.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118014348 >take you claims >you claims $500 editing!!!
Anonymous
>>118014393 HAN: Maybe she’s awkwardly lifting the trunk with one hand while holdin’ the apple with the other?
ESME: More likely that Enter just forgot about the elephant trunk.
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 211
“Where’d you get that?” I asked. “I didn’t think that Timmy would have given you an allowance this week because – “
HAN: Because this society sucks.
SHAYERA: Well, at least Linda finally gets to eat something that isn’t smothered in sugar.
ESME: (groans) You won’t be so happy soon.
“Ms. Kathy gave it to me. She thought that I came up with this getup myself. Gave me an A and an apple for being so creative,” Linda said.
ESME: Read that carefully. The humiliating way Sally treated Linda in the last chapter got Linda REWARDED!! And by extension, Sally got rewarded too because she’s been wanting Linda to get better grades.
HAN: Well ain’t THAT a lovely message? Humiliate people for their own good cause it’ll get them rewarded in the end!
SHAYERA: Okay, between this and the child soldiers thing I’m now REALLY uncomfortable. I’m starting to think that if any of the many supervillains we’ve fought who want to take over the world actually took over the world, the result would still be an improvement over THIS.
WHIMSICAL MY ASS: 121
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 92
HAN: I know we said it before, but if Enter didn’t create this universe, he’d be damn horrified by it.
“It’s kind of funny, but I think I’ll get changed now.”
“Into your magician outfit?” I asked.
“No Sally,” Linda said.
ESME: No Sally, wouldn’t we all love there to be no Sally?
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 212
She climbed the stairs, trying to move as fast as she could without it looking like she was trying to move as fast as she could.
HAN: So she’s climbing casual.
I saw that look in her eyes. The very one that I had.
Anonymous
>>118014448 ESME: (grinds teeth) Yet again, unless she’s looking in a reflected surface, she shouldn’t be able to see that they both have the same expression.
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 213
She was waiting for me to explode and get angry.
HAN: So, business as usual then.
SHAYERA: Seriously, when has Sally ever not been angry at Linda?
YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 184
“I’m sorry,” I said. Linda stopped immediately.
“Sorry?”
“I’m sorry that I was so mean. Robbie told me everything. Mom … why didn’t you tell me that you had stage fright? I would have listened!”
HAN: Why’s she suddenly callin’ Linda “Mom”?
MISSING PIECES: 114
ESME: Forget that. Enter wants us to take this at face value and think Sally’s learned a lesson and she’s oh-so-mature now.
Except she hasn’t.
Look at that apology. Did Sally apologize for constantly abusing Linda, threatening outrageous punishments, ruining her painting, and overall making her life a living hell? No, she only apologizes for not understanding about the stage fright issue. Saying “I’m sorry I was so mean” doesn’t even BEGIN to cover all the horrible stuff Sally’s done to Linda.
HAN: Moreover, she still shifted the blame back to Linda when she said Linda should’ve just told her about the stage fright thing and then none of this would’ve happened.
YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 185
ESME: Hold your explosions, everyone – there’s more to come.
Linda turned to me and gave me a good long stare. Her lips bounced, and she kind of hummed to herself. She almost spoke, and then she stopped. She opened her mouth, and then she stopped again when nothing came out. When she opened her mouth once again, she looked away.
SHAYERA: (raises eyebrow) Did that paragraph have a point?
HAN: Yeah – to waste our time.
ESME: I guess it was meant to show Linda’s hesitation, but it actually adds NOTHING except padding.
CONJUNCTION JUNCTION, THAT’S YOUR FUNCTION: 557
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118014281 LESS GO BABYYYY
Anonymous
>>118014487 “I didn’t want to disappoint you. Robbie told me everything to. That you tell everyone you meet that we’re the best parents in the world.”
SHAYERA: Again, we’ve seen her tell a grand total of ONE kid that, and even then she was trying to one-up that kid’s family like the bitch she is.
HAN: Also, doesn’t this scream “battered adult”? Linda STILL feels guilty for bringing the abuse on herself even after her daughter-mother makes a minor apology.
WHIMSICAL MY ASS: 122
ESME: Oh, and don’t think I didn’t notice “to” where “too” should go.
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 214
And again, hold your explosions – there’s still more.
“Not just the best! The bestest! And that’s because you are! You know … most of the time,” I said, rubbing my arms. “When you’re not lying and getting bad grades and hiding stuff from me.”
ESME: Annnnd, we’re right back to the victim-blaming.
HAN: Linda’s the best mom except when she’s lyin’ and gettin’ bad grades? Hasn’t she been gettin’ bad grades for a while now?
SHAYERA: So she’s the best mom ever – except for most of the time when she isn’t.
YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 186
ESME: What were you saying about how much you hate victim-blaming, Enter?
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 93
Linda sat down on the porch steps, and we looked at each other eye-to-eye.
“I am sorry for doing that. Robbie and I. We’re not perfect people. But we try to be, for you and Timmy. And sometimes, I guess it backfires.”
SHAYERA: (uncomfortable) Can I fly in and rescue Linda? Please?
“Linda, you don’t have to be perfect to be the bestest,” I said, giving her a smile. “Just do the bestest you can. That’s all I want. That’s all anyone wants.”
ESME: YOU FUCKING LIAR! YOU’VE MADE IT CLEAR THROUGHOUT THIS BOOK THAT YOU DON’T WANT LINDA TO BE HERSELF AND YOU WANT HER TO BE AN OVERGROWN CHILD STEREOTYPE! YOU JUST WANT HER TO DO THE BEST SHE CAN MY FUCKING ASS!!
Anonymous
>>118014541 YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 187
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 94
“Not Ms. Kathy. Got an A on the outfit, got an F on the spy assignment. Um … you don’t hear any ringing do you?”
HAN: Oh right, the spy assignment. When was the last time that was mentioned?
ESME: It fell into the bin with the missing comma.
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 215
SHAYERA: Incidentally, we still don’t know how this grading system works. As far as we know, Linda didn’t even do the spy assignment, so logically it should get the lowest grade possible – and we saw in Chapter 2 that the lowest possible grade is Z, not F.
MISSING PIECES: 115
“Uh … no. Not yet at least,” I said.
ESME: I think these commas are running away from the story.
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 216
“You know, if you tried as much doing your classwork as you tried running from it, you’d have graduated by now.”
ESME: FUUUCCCCK YOOOOOOUUUU!!!!
Again, Linda is the problem. Linda is the one who needs to change. It’s not that her oppressive society has no place for an adult who simply wants to be an adult – it’s that Linda needs to become an overgrown child.
HAN: Well what’d you expect? Did you really think Enter would acknowledge how fucked-up his world is?
YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 188
“Yeah, I’ve done the math,” Linda said.
ESME: And what IS the math, pray tell? How long is an average adult education before they graduate?
MISSING PIECES: 116
SHAYERA: That also can’t be right, since Robert’s still in school and his grades seem to be fine.
HAN: Well, maybe Linda’s a lot older than Robert?
ESME: Given that in this universe you want to pop out a kid before you turn eighteen so you’ll have someone to “raise” you when society forces you to give up your job, that’s unlikely.
MISSING PIECES: 117
HAN: (sighs) And I guess askin’ what happens after graduation is out of the question?
ESME: Of course it is.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118014281 >archive.is The other thread was still in our archive, OP.
>>117963774 Anonymous
Quoted By:
>He made another thread
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118014281 >Round Two Yay!
Anonymous
>>118014567 She took another bite from her apple. “But I told you. I can’t – “
“Then I’ll help you. I’m sorry that this party stuff snuck up on me, but next time for real,” I said.
ESME: Annnnddd we’re right back to the beginning of the book. Linda still needs to change. Linda still needs her little abuser’s help in order to function in this idiotic society. Linda still can’t be herself.
YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 189
WHIMSICAL MY ASS: 123
Anyway, Sally gives Linda her phone back and tells her she’s ungrounded, and now that we’re done with this “resolution,” let me tell you a little something about Enter. One of his least-favorite movies of all time is Disney’s Chicken Little, which he reviewed on YouTube.
And one of the things he hates the most about it is pic related.
Buck is a bad father who is basically embarrassed about his son. The movie does have him apologize at the end, but Enter called it “too little, too late.”
But here’s the thing.
Buck Cluck never threatened to feed his son roller skates.
Buck Cluck never splattered his son with paint.
Buck Cluck never ruined his son’s painting in the name of “helping” him.
Buck Cluck never relished in his son’s misery like he was getting off on it.
Buck Cluck never forced his son to wear a humiliating outfit to school.
And finally, when Buck Cluck apologized, he fully acknowledged that he was COMPLETELY in the wrong. He didn’t follow it up with how Chicken Little was really the one who needed to change – no, he realized that he was the one who was wrong.
Enter, I’ve got a little something to tell you.
Sally Dunn is a worse parent than Buck Cluck.
HAN: Whaddaya think, ten points?
ESME: Ten points.
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 104
“You might want to call Janet. I hear there’s gonna be a hot party tonight, and everybody’s gonna be there,” I said.
SHAYERA: Wait, JANET? Who the fuck is Janet??
Anonymous
Quoted By:
I tried to read this but Jesus fuck this is pure unadulterated autism. And I mean you OP.
Anonymous
Reminder that OP is just posting from
https://das-sporking2.dreamwidth.org/1482225.html , and he's not nearly as autistic as he'd like you to believe.
Anonymous
“Well, she’s a little busy tonight, so I don’t think she can make it. SHAYERA: Again, WHO THE FUCK IS JANET?? Is she Linda’s friend or Linda’s imaginary friend or Sally’s imaginary friend or what? ESME: We’re not gonna find out. Enter just dropped this name on us and didn’t tell us anything more. MISSING PIECES: 118 But … thank you Sally.” HAN: Don’t thank Sally. Never thank Sally. Sally is a worthless piece of shit who NEVER deserves thanks. “Don’t mention it. Now … change out of that ridiculous outfit, and um … paint your face. Can’t go to a party looking like that.” SHAYERA: Maybe Linda doesn’t WANT to paint her face, bitch. YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 190 ESME: Before Linda goes inside, Sally tells her to save the apple core because she’d like to plant an apple tree in the garden, adding that ”You can get some good ideas at school.” HAN: Real subtle about how Linda’s gotta do what her fucked-up society tells her or else. YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 191 SHAYERA: That’s also ironic, seeing as how Enter hates school. HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 105 ESME: Maybe he wishes that real-life schools only taught things like paintball and food fights. Anyway, Sally and her friends start getting ready for the party and then before we know it, it’s time for the party to start. FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 217 A huge crowd shows up at the door and Sally’s all amazed as she points out that ”Some of them must have been surprised that there was even a party to be had. They must have been waiting for me to fail. I even heard snickering in the background.” SHAYERA: Look, Sally. If people really thought you weren’t going to have a party, they wouldn’t have bothered showing up. HAN: And why’re you so convinced that the whole town’s out to get you? ESME: Sally invites the guests in and Enter once again shows us what a boring writer he is.
Anonymous
>>118014688 I stayed calm, and I kept my smile. It worked. As soon as I stopped talking, the guests poured into the party. They eyed the video games and my music player as if they were afraid to touch them. This was a bad sign. I ran to the kid by the stereo.
HAN: At this point, I wonder if Enter’s tryin’ to bore his readers to death.
CONJUNCTION JUNCTION, THAT’S YOUR FUNCTION: 563
ESME: Sally asks the kid, ”Do you think that a grownup owns that thing or something?” because we have to shit on adults over and over.
YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 192
A ”little kid” turns the stereo on to a moderate volume and Sally’s response is to roll her eyes and say, “Oh come on, I can still hear myself think!”
HAN: Why does Enter think we should like her?
YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 193
I was a respectable kid, and any respectable kid makes sure his or her stereo was turned up to 11.
SHAYERA: Nice, now everyone will go deaf.
KIDS DO THIS, RIGHT?: 74
YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 194
ESME: Incidentally, everyone starts dancing without the narration actually saying that Sally turned the stereo up.
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 218
Sally also mentions that the stereo ”hopped up and down.” Did it come to life or did Enter forget that he wasn’t writing a cartoon?
HAN: I’d guess the second option.
FIVE HUNDRDED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 219
It made my ears ring, but if a little hearing loss was all that it took to make my guests happen, then all of this would be worth it.
ESME: If Enter were reviewing this instead of writing it, he’d say that this was role modelling to kids that it’s okay to destroy their eardrums.
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 105
Oh, and “make my guests happen.” I think I’ve exhausted all jokes about the “professional editor” at this point.
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 220
Sally goes to the kitchen, where some of the kids are enjoying the snacks, but she doesn’t think the party’s exciting enough, so look what she does next.
Anonymous
>>118014674 He made another thread dedicated to this shit. Yes OP is definitely this autistic.
Anonymous
>>118014724 I grabbed a cream pie and tossed it. The kid it hit stared at me.
SHAYERA: Could a pie-in-the-face possibly be written ANY DULLER?
CONJUNCTION JUNCTION, THAT’S YOUR FUNCTION: 559
ESME: Does it even cross Enter’s mind that NOT ALL KIDS ENJOY GETTING FOOD ALL OVER THEM? Some kids break down in TEARS if they spill food on themselves – I’ve seen it happen.
HAN: Sides, don’t the kids want to EAT the snacks?
KIDS DO THIS, RIGHT?: 75
ESME: Sally hands some cupcakes to a couple of other kids and ”I knew their grins – those were grins of a head filling up with ideas.” Apparently these two kids share a single head.
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 221
So the kids run out to the backyard – presumably to have a food fight – when another guest rings the mooing doorbell. Sally goes to greet the newest guest and DUN DUN DUN it’s Talula!
SHAYERA: WOOHOO! She’ll give Sally what for!
HAN: Hey, I just realized somethin’. This is Talula’s first in-person appearance since she got introduced.
SHAYERA: Huh, you’re right – the other two times we’ve seen her since then have been on TV screens, but the other characters won’t shut up about her being a mean doodie-head, so that must mean she is one, right? That’s totally how you build up a compelling villain!
ESME: Sally is downright SHOCKED that Talula came, but Talula tells her that ”I think that I have just as much a right to be here as anyone else. Especially if I want to make sure that a little rule breaker is filling her obligations.”
SHAYERA: YEAH! GO TALULA!
“I swear to Santa, if you use that pen again – “
SHAYERA: Swear to Santa all you want, I’ll still cheer her on if she uses that pen again.
“Relax silly,” she said, and she flicked me in the forehead.
ESME: And thanks to the missing comma, it sounds like she’s telling Sally to relax in a silly way.
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 222
Anonymous
>>118014746 FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 222
“I’m here to enjoy myself. Maybe I’ll sit back and enjoy the magic act.”
SHAYERA: (grins) Oh BOY, Sally’s in deep shit!
ESME: Sally’s all freaked out and then she notices Charmichael ”by her side,” and I don’t know if that means Talula is holding Charmichael against her side or she put Charmichael down next to her or what.
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 223
“Oh, I see that you’ve noticed my good friend Charmichael,” she said. “He’s been such a well-behaved little lizard lately, I thought that it would only be fair if I treated him. I hear that he’s quite the party animal.”
HAN: Ya know, if Charmichael were alive, he’d probably be happier with Talula than with the bitch who sticks him in chocolate popcorn and hits him with suction cup darts.
She giggled – at her stupid pun or my expression, I couldn’t tell.
HAN: Oh, Enter’s really one to talk about stupid puns. “Americandy,” anyone?
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 106
ESME: Well, the chapter’s over. Next chapter, we get to see the epic face-off between Sally and Talula, but more importantly, it’s the LAST chapter!
HAN/SHAYERA: WOOOHOOOOOO!!!!
COUNTS
KIDS DO THIS, RIGHT?: 75
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 223
MISSING PIECES: 118
YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 194
WHIMSICAL MY ASS: 123
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 106
CONJUNCTION JUNCTION, THAT’S YOUR FUNCTION: 559
Anonymous
Has anyone even read these walls of text? I get discouraged immediately.
GROWING AROUND - CHAPTER 11
Previously on Dumbing Around, we got a not-satisfying-at-all resolution to the Sally and Linda conflict, the party started, and the chapter ended with DUN DUN DUN Talula showing up at the party. What will the final chapter deliver? ESME: Here we are, guys! We’re finally at the last chapter! Just one more chapter and we can kiss Sally Dunn goodbye! HAN/SHAYERA: YEAH! ESME: The big climactic final chapter begins with this incredibly dull paragraph. I sat on the couch, watching Talula as she walked among the crowd. She talked with a kid, probably hyping up this magic act to him. Charmichael swung back and forth in her arms. I couldn’t stop staring. He was right there. I had to run up and rescue my poor little friend. Before I had the chance, the kid broke away from the conversation and ran toward me. Sally, you don’t sound very worried about your toy when your writing is so monotone. CONJUNCTION JUNCTION, THAT’S YOUR FUNCTION: 566 “Sally! Sally! Is the magician really going to explode into stars!” she asked, bouncing up and down. HAN: Wait, wasn’t the kid a boy last paragraph? SHAYERA: Yeah. Maybe he got a thirty-second sex change operation. ESME: (facepalms) Scammer editor or not, this is just plain embarrassing. This is Charlie Swan’s magically transforming breakfast level of embarrassing. FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 224 And another point for the lack of a question mark. FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 225 Sally distracts the kid by pointing to a bunch of other kids playing ”Turbo Kart,” which I’m guessing is one of those cheap, sucky Mario Kart knockoffs. SHAYERA: How do kids learn how to code video games when they don’t go to school? HAN: The same way they learn anything else – BECAUSE. ESME: She starts trailing Talula again, but she bumps into a boy and causes him to spill his soda. Since this is Summerway, where people apparently say hello by throwing food at you, the boy socks a brownie into Sally’s face.
Anonymous
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stop this autism this instant
Anonymous
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>>118014734 But not as autistic as actually writing this himself.
Anonymous
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>>118014674 It’s honestly hard to gauge whether the real esme amelia or the OP copypasting her spork is the more autistic (to say nothing of Mr Enter and us anons reading or replying), but I think OP wins.
Anonymous
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>>118014885 I’ve skimmed a few posts, but I dunno if I could do a whole chapter straight.
Anonymous
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I'm going to die if I keep reading this.
Anonymous
Just imagine the sequel to this if OP wrote and posted his own spork about The Secret of Neevah.
Anonymous
When will the horror end?
Anonymous
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>second thread Fuck yes.
Anonymous
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>>118015817 OP’s on chapter 11 out of 11, so maybe soon? Depends if he’s gonna do the 5 or whatever segments after the chapter reviews, and on how long those are.
Anonymous
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>>118014281 >aw shit, here we go again Anonymous
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>>118014885 I tried but it's just nonsensical.
GROWING AROUND - CHAPTER 11
>>118015697 What's secret of neevah? Is that another Enter "novel"?
GROWING AROUND - CHAPTER 11
>>118016243 Oh shit never mind guess I should have finished reading first.
>>118014898 Chasing down Talula at that moment would have been incredibly rude, so I made my way into the kitchen and found the nicest piece of cake I could. Just as the kid was about to sit down, the cake found its new home on his head.
ESME: And everyone loves getting food all over them, right?
KIDS DO THIS, RIGHT?: 76
YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 195
And you know what? I really didn’t want to have to mention this, but Enter’s forcing my hand; this is especially bad when it’s coming from a writer who has autism. I know, not all people on the spectrum are extra-sensitive to sensory overload, but a good portion are. I’m also on the spectrum, and while I don’t have the hypersensitivity that some people on the spectrum have, I am sensitive to things like loud music (I went to a Bob Dylan concert once that was literally painful) and as I said earlier in this spork, getting food on my face or clothes when I was a kid absolutely grossed me out.
So yeah, this is just plain weird. Enter has autism, and I know he’s talked about being sensitive to things like the smell of newsprint, so he’s definitely aware of how some people on the spectrum have that extra sensitivity – and yet he creates a world like this where you apparently can’t go to the movies or to a party without getting food dumped on your head.
Life for autistic kids in this universe must be absolute hell.
WHIMSICAL MY ASS: 124
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 107
Anonymous
>>118016243 You're posting this shit and not even reading it
It's an ebook by one of the sporkers they shill in the last section
Anonymous
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>>118016263 >I'm also on the spectrum GROWING AROUND - CHAPTER 11
>>118016263 SHAYERA: Daaaammmnnn, the more we talk about this universe, the worse it gets.
ESME: The kid sprays Sally with chocolate sauce in retaliation and chases her out into the backyard, where she hides in a bush and ”wiped my face off with the shirt of my dress.”
HAN: The shirt of her dress? I ain’t a woman, so maybe I’m stupid about this stuff, but I’ve never heard anyone call the top of a dress “the shirt of the dress.”
SHAYERA: I am a woman, but I’ve never heard that either.
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 226
Talula was in front of Robbie, holding a balloon animal. She inspected it with both of her hands. Charmichael sat in her purse. Talula remained impeccably clean despite the chaos. There wasn’t even a piece of candy or a single chocolate chip on her.
SHAYERA: Wait, when did Robert learn how to make balloon animals?
ESME: Eh, maybe he learned on the internet. I can swallow that better than most of the stuff in this story. Instead, I’d like you guys to focus on how Talula is being demonized for being CLEAN. OH NOES, TALULA’S NOT PARTICIPATING IN THE FOOD FIGHTS, THAT MUST MEAN SHE’S EVIL!
HAN: Well whaddaya expect after Linda got a Z grade for not wanting to participate in a food fight?
YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 196
ESME: Also, can’t forget the choppy writing.
CONJUNCTION JUNCTION, THAT’S YOUR FUNCTION: 571
Talula tosses the balloon animal on the ground, ”where some kid could easily step on it and force it to pop.” Or, you know, maybe some kid will FIND it and pick it up.
Sally asks why Talula told Gender-Changing Kid that the magician would explode into stars. Talula fakes innocence and says the magician at the last magic show she saw did that.
SHAYERA: Sally never did tell the guests that the magician was a no-show, did she?
HAN: Nope. Hopefully that’ll blow up in her face.
ESME: If only.
Anonymous
>>118016243 >>118016263 >OP isn’t a robot Holy shit.
Anonymous
jesus geraldo christ what the kentucky fried fuck is going on
Anonymous
Anonymous
>>118016421 >I’m also on the spectrum He kind of is!
Anonymous
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>>118016572 Esme said that and OP pasted it. We’ll see what OP says if he decides to take a curtain bow when he’s finally done.
Anonymous
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Are we going to have to call the after party the After Party Panic?
Anonymous
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You can do it, OP! Fight on!
Anonymous
>>118016355 >one of the sporkers There’s only one. The other two are voices of popular fictional characters she is puppeting to talk to herself. Han is Han Solo and Shayera is Hawk Girl.
There may be a larger sporker community on dreamwidth that reads and writes this stuff, but this is probably all esme amelia.
GROWING AROUND - CHAPTER 11
>>118016386 Talula asks Sally when the games start and here’s where things get hilarious. In addition to Gender-Changing Kid, now we get this.
“Games?”
“Pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, musical chairs, freeze tag. It’s something that everyone can enjoy,” she said. “A kid who doesn’t know what a game is. How quaint.”
My face flushed red. I hadn’t thought of them. I just assumed that everyone was going to do whatever they wanted on their own.
ESME: You hadn’t thought of games? Funny, the last chapter says something different. Remember this?
With piñatas dangling from the ceiling and games hung on the walls it would be perfect for any party – except for the one that promised a magician.
Enter, did you reread your draft at ALL? Cause we all know your “editor” sure didn’t.
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 227
Sally says the games will start soon and goes looking for April. She finds April engaged in a ”heated” conversation with Sarah – no, we don’t find out what the conversation is actually about or why it’s “heated.” In fact, this is the last time we see April for the entire book.
MISSING PIECES: 119
HAN: Well, least we don’t have to put up with her stupid fancy talk anymore.
Sally decides to talk to Molly instead, and though Molly says that “Well it ain’t Talula’s party, now ain’t it?” Sally responds that “No – but she is kind of right. It’s not going to be the bestest party in Summerway without games! I don’t have a pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey set, and I don’t have enough chairs for this many kids.”
HAN: So pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and musical chairs are the ONLY games you can play? Hell, Talula just suggested freeze tag, and you don’t need any fancy props for that!
SHAYERA: There’s also Simon Says, charades, Blindman’s Bluff, hide-and-seek, duck-duck-goose, I-Spy, leapfrog – this is a non-issue!
GROWING AROUND - CHAPTER 11
>>118016755 ESME: Molly suggests using a water-balloon fight to distract the guests and buy Sally time to think of a game.
I gave her the okay, and Molly and Robert took the balloons to the hose.
SHAYERA: Wasn’t Robert just making balloon animals?
ESME: Yeah, but he apparently teleported over to Molly. Also, I’m not sure if “the balloons” are the ones he was using for balloon animals or other balloons that they pulled out of their asses.
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 229
Sally rushes back into the house, where the party is in full swing and no one seems to care that there aren’t any games. In an attempt to escape the chaos, she heads up to Linda’s room, where Linda’s reading a book and I have to stop again and wonder what kinds of books adults read in this universe.
SHAYERA: Well, she had a math book for some reason earlier.
HAN: And we still don’t know where the hell it came from.
ESME: Yeah yeah, I know. The point is, if adults can’t be authors, do adults have nothing to read but kid-written books? Are all the books in this world like the unedited crap pre-teens post on the Pit?
HAN: Given that the teachers in this world don’t even know how to spell “school,” that wouldn’t surprise me.
MISSING PIECES: 120
I saw the concern in her eyes, but then I noticed something more. Linda had painted up her face just like I asked her to, despite not even going to the party.
HAN: Oh look, Linda’s learned her place and now she obeys Sally without question. Nice.
SHAYERA: Yup, this is the cumulation of the whole Linda subplot – Linda’s lost her free will and will now do whatever her little twat of a spawn tells her.
WHIMSICAL MY ASS: 125
YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 197
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 108
GROWING AROUND - CHAPTER 11
>>118016780 HAN: The hell? This is like if my movies ended with us decidin’ the Empire was right all along.
SHAYERA: Well, Linda’s humiliation got both her and Sally rewarded, remember?
HAN: DON’T remind me!
“The mayor – Talula is here! And she’s got Charmichael! And she says that I need to make up a game, and – ”
HAN: She never said you had to make up a game, idiot! She just said you had to have games!
SHAYERA: Does anyone else get the feeling that Enter just gave up at this point?
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 230
ESME: Linda tells Sally to calm down and Sally claims that Talula demanded games ”to humiliate me again.” Sally, after the way you treated Linda, you have NO right to talk about humiliation.
YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 198
“I need help! After what happened at town hall and what happened yesterday on the news, I can’t let that happen to me again.”
ALL: Oh BOO HOO, YOU LITTLE BRAT.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0lzqRVuRqN0 Anonymous
What is this autism? I saw part one of this thread and I still don't know what's going on.
GROWING AROUND - CHAPTER 11
>>118016817 “Here me out,” Linda said.
ESME: Here her out. I think Enter did give up. I’d say his “editor” gave up too, but that would imply that said “editor” ever got started.
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 231
And look at what Linda’s last lines are. Her final lines in the whole book show how she’s become a good little slave.
“Do you know why being forced to wear that costume every day didn’t make me do my magic act?”
“Because of your stage fright,” I said, looking away.
“Yes, that was a part of it, but … you were going to make me wear that outfit today no matter what. Who would really care about it if I wore it on Monday, if I already wore it today.”
ESME: Well first of all, for the period where a question mark should go:
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 232
And second, notice the wording. Sally was going to make Linda wear the outfit no matter what. Even if Linda did agree to do her magic act, her daughter-mother still would have humiliated her.
YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 199
SHAYERA: Hey, am I the only one confused about exactly what Linda means here? Sally threatening to make her wear the outfit every day didn’t convince Linda to do the magic act because once she wore the outfit one day, no one would care about it the next day? What?
HAN: I think it means that the outfit wouldn’t have mattered after the first day, so that threat wasn’t worth anything. What that’s got to do with Talula wanting games, I have no idea.
ESME: Well for some reason, that gives Sally ”a beautiful idea,” so she teleports outside and instantly finds Talula.
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 233
Oh, and say goodbye to Linda – she’s never mentioned again.
HAN: Bye, Linda. You come over here and we’ll rescue ya from your situation. I’ve got the Millennium Falcon and I ain’t afraid to use her.
ESME: Talula asks Sally when the games start and Sally says, ”Right now.”
Anonymous
>>118016753 >The other two are voices of popular fictional characters she is puppeting to talk to herself. GROWING AROUND - CHAPTER 11
>>118016829 SHAYERA: Wait a minute. Wasn’t Sally freaking out because she promised everyone a magic act that wasn’t going to happen?
HAN: Yup, she was. She thought the whole town was gonna retaliate with wedgies.
SHAYERA: So, are the kids gonna retaliate?
ESME: Nope, everyone seems to have forgotten about the magic act - including Talula, seeing as how she’s just demanding games now.
SHAYERA: So that entire magic act conflict was just dropped? Enter just wasted our time?
ESME: Sure looks like it. Enter threw that conflict away Meyer-style.
HAN: (facepalms) And he complains about sloppy plots in cartoons.
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 234
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 109
ESME: This is really feeling like he just wants to rush to the end. You know what, I get that excitement you feel when you’re at the last chapter and almost finished, but guess what? After you’ve finished the chapter and the rush of finishing the book settles down, YOU GO BACK AND EDIT IT TO MAKE SURE IT FLOWS SMOOTHLY AND THE LOOSE ENDS ARE RESOLVED! And you certainly don’t flush five hundred dollars down the toilet rely entirely on your “professional editor” to fix everything for you.
Moving on. Sally’s big game idea is to challenge Talula to ”a daring contest,” and I’m sure you can all see where this is going.
HAN: Oh boy, we get to see more of Sally bein’ a bully, what fun.
“I see that you’re still just a silly little girl living in a fantasy land,” Talula began. “How is a game between two kids supposed to be one that all can enjoy?”
SHAYERA: Don’t do it, Talula, don’t take the bait!
“Well, I thought that the kids around us could give us some suggestions, and we both do the dares. Whoever does more of the dares, wins. How is that enjoyment for everyone?”
SHAYERA: No, Talula, DON’T!
ESME: Sally’s asking how that’s enjoyment for everyone? It sounds like she’s questioning her own game.
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 235
GROWING AROUND - CHAPTER 11
>>118016851 “I’m not getting involved in this.”
SHAYERA: YEAH! GO TALULA! SHOW SALLY YOU’RE THE BIGGER GIRL!
ESME: What do you know, Sally actually describes herself pretending to be disappointed in Talula’s refusal ”snapping the trap.”
HAN: Shit, Wing Lady’s RIGHT.
YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 200
“I mean, we’re all going to miss the chance to see our mayor do silly things … like the rest of us. Maybe she’s just too good for us little people.”
SHAYERA: Run away, Talula, RUN AWAY FROM THAT TWAT! SHE’S NOT WORTH IT!
HAN: But you know she won’t, since Sally’s got author protection and Talula’s the Designated Villain.
ESME: There’s a long paragraph of Talula looking at the kids who have apparently gathered around, looking nervous, smirking, and smiling, and it ends with, ”Her smile said that she’d be happy to do it if it could save everyone’s fun. Her eyes said that she had been had.” A simple “but” would have made those sentences flow better, Enter.
CONJUNCTION JUNCTION, THAT’S YOUR FUNCTION: 573
“Maybe if someone didn’t say how great these games were going to be, these kids wouldn’t be so excited to see something happen,” I said.
HAN: But . . . she didn’t. She didn’t bring up games at all until a few minutes ago, and as far as we know she only discussed ‘em with Sally and no one else.
SHAYERA: What she did hype up was the magic act, which everyone forgot about.
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 236
I stuck my tongue out for good measure. I could feel the anger as Talula clenched her fists.
ESME: First off, Sally, we hate you.
YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 201
And second, “AND.” IT’S A PERFECTLY DECENT WORD.
CONJUNCTION JUNCTION, THAT’S YOUR FUNCTION: 574
Talula finally caves to the pressure and agrees to participate in the contest.
SHAYERA: NOOOOOO!!!
GROWING AROUND - CHAPTER 11
>>118016871 ESME: (ignores her) Molly shouts out the first dare, which is to act like a chicken – excuse me, a “chick’n.” Sally immediately starts clucking and pecking, but Talula doesn’t, then ”I took a pause between a squawk and shot her a smirk.”
HAN: How do you pause “between” a squawk?
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 237
ESME: And of course, I want to wipe the smirk off that little brat’s face.
YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 202
“Is this your plan to humiliate me?” Talula asked.
HAN: Yes, it is, so don’t fall for it. You can still get outta here with your dignity.
“Plan? What kind of plan would I have? I’m just a silly little girl living in a fantasy land, remember?” I said. “Then again, maybe I’m not the real chicken here.”
SHAYERA: Oh, FUCK YOU, SALLY!
ESME: Do we really need to say anything about what an awful person Sally is at this point?
YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 203
But just look, it gets even better.
The crowd laughed, and it was the best kind of laughter, too. They were laughing with me. The tables had turned. I saw the beads of sweat running down Talula’s face.
ESME: Read that carefully, guys. I want you to really look at that.
HAN: I’m lookin’, and I’m seein’ that the “best kind of laughter” is when you’re laughin’ at someone else’s humiliation.
SHAYERA: Yup, they’re laughing “with” the twat at someone else. Bullying is fun so long as you’re not the target!
ESME: There’s no way around it – Sally is a bully. She’s done far worse stuff than Talula throughout the book and even better, she thinks everyone laughing at Talula is the “best kind of laughter.” Moreover, Enter, I don’t think most parents would appreciate you teaching kids that the best way to deal with a bully is to be a bully right back to her.
YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 204
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 110
Talula starts acting like a chicken since I guess she’s like Marty McFly.
Anonymous
>>118016824 Ok, I’ll try to condense this
>Mr Enter is a cartoon reviewer >Mr Enter writes a novelization for his cartoon pitch, Growing Around >Esme Amelia reviews Enter’s novel, using a format she calls a “spork” >OP is storytiming the entire spork Anonymous
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I hope these literal days worth of autism end with everybody walk the dinosaur or some shit
Anonymous
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>>118016915 Oh and the link to the original spork is here
>>118014674 .
Anonymous
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OP when you’re done, I’d really like it if you told us why you’ve done this. It’s okay if somebody else started this and you stepped in and finished it for them at some point, I just wanna know.
Anonymous
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Are you done, OP?
Anonymous
>>118016845 Well, it could be possible that I’m wrong on that point, and that this was a collaborative effort between esme and two otherkin who identify themselves as Han Solo and Hawk Girl, with esme supporting their delusion by introducing them as such. I dunno if that’d make it better or worse.
But I’m pretty sure it’s all esme.
Anonymous
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>>118017460 someone linked to a video from Esme's youtube account where she used JL Hawkgirl as her "avatar" (just rotating through pictures of the character as she spoke, like a low-rent version of those arms-crossed fursona avatars). I think it's all her.
Anonymous
Anonymous
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>>118014281 mrenter rocks!
Anonymous
>>118017548 The act of making fun of a bad fanfic.
Anonymous
>>118017624 Is it exclusive to an extremely specific internet community or is it a widely used term that I've somehow never heard before until now
Anonymous
>>118017548 I’m honestly unsure. From what I gather skimming this spork, I guess it’s a format in which an author reviews a novel or other work, by writing a script in which they roleplay as multiple characters reading and riffing on the novel. Kinda like MST3K, in text form, I guess. Also in addition to the main novel and review, there are supplementary segments like an introduction, character bios, about the author sections, etc.
And she’s doing this weird count thing where she painstakingly tallies instances of specific criteria she holds against the novel, which she has silly names for and introduces at the start if the spork.
I still have no idea how much of this may or may not be unique to esme amelia herself or if it exists outside of her, and I am scared to pursue that any further.
Eventually this is gonna end in a plug for esme’s own fantasy novel.
Anonymous
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>>118017648 I would say exclusive to an internet community. The name alone gives off the impression that this dates back at least to the early 00's.
Anonymous
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If someone actually read all of this autism I can't tell if he's mentally retarded or ironically based
Oldfag
>>118017744 MSTing bad fanfics was funny and required staying in character. This is nowhere near that, it's just pretending to be the same person but 3 of them.
Anonymous
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>>118016421 I don't think he's the original.
Anonymous
>>118016845 You really think the person who wrote this has friends to help her do it?
GROWING AROUND - CHAPTER 11
>>118016893 Meanwhile, Sally makes sure to tell us that everyone’s laughter ”swelled” and ”The camera flashes were all too satisfying.”
HAN: If Luke were here, he’d probably have somethin’ to say about revenge not bein’ the Jedi way, but it’s apparently Sally’s way.
SHAYERA: I think Superman would say something similar.
YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 205
ESME: Guys, I’m not gonna lie, this is uncomfortable. I was bullied pretty badly as a kid, but guess which of these characters reminds me most of the bullies? Hint: It’s not Talula.
The brat decides to make this even more humiliating and points out that chickens need feathers, adding on, “I’m just so silly sometimes!” She tells the other kids that April (for some reason) brought a bag of feathers to the party. No mention of where April is, but the other kids apparently know exactly where her feathers are and start tossing them at Sally and Talula, presumably without April’s permission.
YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 206
I kept squawking with excitement, forcing Talula to do the same. As long as I was doing it, she could not stop.
HAN: Tell me Sally, how’s this any different from Talula writing those words on your forehead?
YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 207
ESME: Talula finally suggests going to the next dare – with a stutter in her voice, I might add, which just makes Sally look even worse. Yes, I get it, this is supposed to be the scene where the bully gets her comeuppance. It’s an age-old trope that’s been used in children’s stories for decades, but here’s the thing: it doesn’t work when your protagonist is an even worse bully than the designated bully character. I’m not just talking about this scene – I’m talking about the entire fucking book. Sally was bullying and abusing her mother before Talula was even introduced!
GROWING AROUND - CHAPTER 11
>>118018086 Why am I telling Mr. Enter of all people this? After he’s talked about protagonists who are bigger bullies than the designated antagonists over and over again, you’d think he’d be able to recognize the trend he hates so much when it shows up in his own writing.
YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 208
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 111
Anyway, we have one page left, and we’re going to spork all of it.
HAN: What??
ESME: Sorry, but everyone needs to see how damn sloppy the ending is.
Timmy shouts out the next dare and it’s a doozy.
“I dare you two to pour chocolate syrup on your hair!” Timmy shouted.
SHAYERA: (groans) More food on the head, why am I not surprised?
HAN: Does Enter have some kind of fetish for food fights, or does he really think kids always wanna cover themselves with food?
KIDS DO THIS, RIGHT?: 77
“Wait, that’s not fair! Sally’s hair is – “
ESME: I’m guessing that Talula was going to say Sally’s hair is brown, much like how Sally apparently didn’t care about getting chocolate in her hair in the first chapter since her hair was already brown. Once again neither Sally nor Talula nor Enter seem to realize that chocolate in your hair is going to FEEL fucking gross no matter what color your hair is.
KIDS DO THIS, RIGHT?: 78
Kids grabbed us by the arms and pulled us down to chairs. Talula struggled to escape, but it was to no avail.
SHAYERA: So Talula’s now literally a captive. (grinds teeth) Hey, I’m ALREADY sporking ONE book where the good guy’s a kidnapper – I don’t need another one!
HAN: (glares at her) Don’t you DARE mention that book to me, Wing Lady!!
I smiled to her
ESME: TO her.
HAN: DON’T. MENTION. THAT. BOOK!!
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 238
as Timmy carried along two buckets, dripping with chocolate syrup.
SHAYERA: That . . . he just had lying around for some reason?
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 239
GROWING AROUND - CHAPTER 11
>>118018110 “Relax Talula,” I said. “It’s just chocolate, and we’re at a party.” I gave her my “ferocious” look. “You don’t hate parties, do you? Oh yeah, I forgot. I’m the only one around here who hates parties.”
SHAYERA: Oh yay, Sally one-upped Talula, everyone cheer her on, throw confetti, yay.
YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 209
The chocolate drenched us in a delicious gooey mess.
HAN: Congrats Sally, you just ruined that fancy dress that April’s sister worked so hard on and you described in purple Meyer fashion. Not that you’re gonna care about that, of course.
YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 210
Talula took deep breaths and wiped her newly dyed hair away from her face.
ESME: Initially I thought that meant that Talula had actually dyed her hair recently, but no, it means that her hair’s been “dyed” with chocolate. It would probably be a stretch to give it a Five Hundred Dollar Editing point, but it still could have been worded better.
She turned to me, and I almost fell off of my chair. She tried to use her freeze ray eyes once again, but smudged makeup and the chocolate stains and the hair in her face made her look too ridiculous to take seriously.
SHAYERA: Hear that, kids? If you spill food on yourself or have some sort of other accident, no one will take you seriously because you just look too ridiculous! GREAT message!
YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 211
HAN: Damn, we’re handin’ these out every other sentence.
SHAYERA: By the way, Sally, YOU just got chocolate dumped on you too! You look just as ridiculous as she does, so by your own logic, you shouldn’t be taken seriously either.
“Sally Dunn,” Talula said, scowling. “You are never going to get that stupid lizard back as long as I am mayor.”
ALL: YEAH! GO TALULA!!
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118018073 Friends might be too strong a word for it
GROWING AROUND - CHAPTER 11
>>118018139 ESME: Come to think of it, where is Charmichael right now? Is Talula still carrying him? Did he get drenched with chocolate too?
HAN: If so, congrats Sally, you also ruined your favorite toy.
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 240
The crowd and the camera flashes disappeared. I was alone in a void. I took a step back, and Talula noticed. She smiled. The silly little girl had finally had a taste of reality. I wasn’t the only one she would do this to. Some of the other kids brought stuffed animals to this very party.
ESME: OR, in less-choppy writing and with actual emotion:
The crowd and the camera flashes disappeared, leaving me alone in a void. My heart raced, causing me to stumble backwards, which Talula was quick to notice. Her smile drove into my mind, showing me that I wouldn’t be her only victim. I felt my breath speeding up as I looked out into the crowd, seeing how other kids were cuddling their own stuffed animals. They loved them every bit as much as I loved Charmichael.
CONJUNCTION JUNCTION, THAT’S YOUR FUNCTION: 581
Also, she “took a step back” when she’s seated in a chair.
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 241
“Then someone needs to run against you,” I said, through clenched teeth and with clenched fists. “And that someone is going to be me.”
HAN/SHAYERA: NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!
ESME: I weep for the citizens of Summerway if THIS bitch is going to be their new mayor.
SHAYERA: Everyone, MOVE OUT OF SUMMERWAY! MOVE OUT BEFORE SALLY’S ABLE TO LORD OVER YOU!
Talula’s eyes widened in an instant.
“Y-you must be joking. If … no, when I win, I can do anything to you. I can jinx you for life if I wanted!”
HAN: Yes, DO THAT! BEAT THE BITCH AND GIVE HER WHAT SHE DESERVES!
“And that’s why I have to do this. You’re only mayor because you scare kids. But I’m not afraid of you anymore. Talula Heartly, I challenge you for Mayor of Summerway. I hear that the election will be in one month, from tonight.”
GROWING AROUND - CHAPTER 11
>>118018163 ESME: We’re supposed to be cheering her on here. This is supposed to be Sally’s big moment where she realizes that the bully needs to be taken out of office and replaced by a more benevolent leader.
Except that we know what Sally’s like. If she wins the election, Summerway will just be trading one bully mayor for another. In fact, Sally would arguably be a worse mayor than Talula. Sally has no respect for the law – when she’s not allowed to drive like a maniac and gets a ticket for driving in the wrong lane, she just whines about the scouts being OH SO MEAN to her. When she witnesses a car crash, she feels nothing for the people actually involved in the crash and instead uses it as an excuse to whine about Talula some more. And do I even need to mention how she treats Linda?
WHIMSICAL MY ASS: 126
YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 212
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 112
HAN: Also, why does she get to choose that the election will be a month from tonight?
SHAYERA: I’m guessing that when someone challenges the mayor, the election is held one month from the challenge.
ESME: Forget that – Enter’s sloppy writing shows again. It should be “the election will be in one month” or “the election will be one month from tonight,” not “the election will be in one month, from tonight.”
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 242
For the rest of the party, everyone had moved from screams and shouts to whispers and gossip. I don’t remember moving from that chair for the rest of the party.
HAN: So I guess she peed herself.
I had a hard time processing that someone was running against Talula Heartly. And then I had a hard time realizing that I was that girl. Just me, Sally Dunn.
SHAYERA: Just you, the FUCKING BITCH.
HAN: Okay, so what happens next?
ESME: Nothing.
HAN: Wait, what?
ESME: Nothing happens, that’s the end of the book.
SHAYERA: That’s the END? Sally challenges Talula for mayor and then the book just ENDS? That’s not a resolution!
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>this has been going since the wee hours of the night Saturday morning Which I guess is late Friday night for some of us
Anonymous
The silver lining of this is that if the mods do nothing this thing will be recorded in the archives for future reference and use for Enter memes
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118018746 First thread is already archived, so it’s too late, even if the mods do delete this one.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118018525 >That’s the END? Sally challenges Talula for mayor and then the book just ENDS? That’s not a resolution! Oh shit this could be the last one. Again. But maybe for real this time.
Anonymous
Anonymous
Quoted By:
OP I want you to go all the way, but I also understand if you‘re tired and wanna call it quits here early while you can. Either way please tell us when you’re done and don’t abandon us completely.
GROWING AROUND - CHAPTER 11
>>118018525 ESME: No, but what it is is hypocrisy. Enter hates cliffhangers. He’s listed them as one of his biggest pet peeves in fiction and even written an entire essay (which will be sporked later) saying that cliffhangers should NEVER be used.
And yet he ends his own book with an incredibly abrupt cliffhanger.
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 113
But wait, it gets even better. Enter was pretty obviously planning on writing a sequel. In fact, on Amazon, the book’s full title is “Growing Around: Party Panic (Volume 1).”
Well, it’s been three years and there’s been no sign of a sequel, nor has there been any sign of a sequel coming. Enter seems to have completely abandoned the idea of a Growing Around book series, which leaves this book dangling unfinished. Seriously, I haven’t seen such an abrupt, never-resolved cliffhanger since the end of the Golden Compass film adaptation.
But at least The Golden Compass had the excuse of being a big-budget movie that flopped tremendously and didn’t make its budget back (plus, the book trilogy is complete, so people who want to know what happened next can just read the books). What’s Enter’s excuse?
HAN: Maybe he gave up on the books because people didn’t rush to buy his book like he expected them to.
ESME: That’s possible, but it’s still worth a second point. For all of Enter’s talk about how writers should finish what they start, he doesn’t practice what he preaches.
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 114
SHAYERA: Well hey, at least the book’s over.
ESME: Yup, but we’re not done. We’ve still got the blurb, select Amazon reviews, some of Enter’s own words about Growing Around and responses to criticism, his disastrous Growing Around Indiegogo campaign, and Final Thoughts, so join us next time when we get started on the bonus material.
HAN: I’d better bring food.
Anonymous
COUNTS KIDS DO THIS, RIGHT?: 78 FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 242 MISSING PIECES: 120 YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 212 WHIMSICAL MY ASS: 126 HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 114 CONJUNCTION JUNCTION, THAT’S YOUR FUNCTION: 581
Anonymous
>>118017624 But Growing Around isn’t a fanfic.
GROWING AROUND - BLURB AND SELECT AMAZON REVIEWS
GROWING AROUND - BLURB AND SELECT AMAZON REVIEWS Mon 28 Sep 2020 21:38:33 No. 118019401 Report The Growing Around book is over, but the spork isn’t. Now that we’ve read the story, let’s see how the cover and blurb try to sell it to us, along with what some people on Amazon say about it. SHAYERA: So, we’re looking at the blurb and a few reviews? Shouldn’t be too hard. ESME: I don’t know, you’d be surprised how much fail can go into a blurb. Anyway, before we go into the blurb, I’d like to take a look at the cover art (pic in OP). Cover art is important, especially for a self-published book, and doubly so when you’re self-publishing a book aimed at kids. Kids like pictures, after all. Now let me ask you, if you saw that cover, knowing nothing else about the book, would it entice you to click on it? SHAYERA: Nope. It’s just a cartoon girl in a neon spotlight. Nothing special, nothing interesting. ESME: Another weird thing: an illustrator is credited on the cover, but aside from the cover art, the ebook version has NO illustrations whatsoever (and no, I’m NOT buying the paperback version just to see if it has illustrations). Anyway, on to the blurb. Sally Dunn HAN: Is the most horrific little brat since Veruca Salt. is your typical eight-year-old SHAYERA: Your typical eight-year-old BULLY, you mean. in a not-so-typical world – one where kids rule and adults get schooled. HAN: And that’s where potential buyers think, “This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of.” It’s fun to be in charge, but it’s never easy. ESME: Yeah, your mother-daughter might OH NOES want to eat something other than sugar! When Sally goes shopping, she needs to buy the right toys to make her whole family happy SHAYERA: Why is that part of the summary? Sally only went toy-shopping in Chapter 1, and that scene had absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the story. (and her parents never seem to like her choices). ESME: What? That wasn’t part of the story AT ALL. Enter, did you read your own book?
Anonymous
>>118019334 It's a fanfic of a failed disney short
Anonymous
>>118019401 When Sally goes driving,
SHAYERA: She whines about traffic laws existing.
she needs to try her best to not bump the other kids too hard.
HAN: So it’s okay to bump other kids with her car so long as she doesn’t do it too hard? Great.
WHIMSICAL MY ASS: 127
YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 213
And she makes sure respects
ESME: Makes sure respects. MAKES SURE RESPECTS!!
HAN: Uh-oh, here comes English Major Mode.
ESME: (takes deep breath) I’m not giving it a Five Hundred Dollar Editing point since Enter probably didn’t send the blurb to the “professional editor,” but LOOK AT THAT. That’s in the BLURB. The thing that’s supposed to entice people to buy the book! Enter’s showing his butt to potential buyers BEFORE THEY EVEN BUY THE BOOK!
SHAYERA: I think this book should be used as an example of 101 Ways Not To Self-Publish.
everyone else’s choice of pets, whether they be a tiny little dog or a huge elephant.
SHAYERA: That wasn’t part of the story either! Sally ran into one kid who had a pet kangaroo and that was IT.
ESME: Moreover, Sally DOESN’T respect everyone’s choice of pets. She HATES the pony dealership with a passion because it means she can’t drive in the pony lane and she doesn’t give a shit about the kids who are happy with their ponies.
All of this becomes more difficult when Sally gets a Party Duty letter and is forced to entertain the entire town.
HAN: How does a Party Duty letter make it more difficult to respect other people’s pets?
Even with her friends by her side, it’s going to be more difficult when the mayor seems to have it out for her
ESME: IN for her. The expression is “have it IN for her!” Moreover, the mayor wouldn’t have given a shit about Sally if Sally hadn’t disrespected the law in the first place.
in this enticing adventure
HAN: (snorts) “Enticing.” Sure.
where the people are Growing Around.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118019429 No, it’s at best a ripoff of the short.
Anonymous
>>118019447 ESME: That’s the end of the blurb, and it seems like a good time to ask this rather important question.
What does the phrase “Growing Around” actually MEAN?
HAN: . . .
SHAYERA: . . .
HAN: Uh . . .
SHAYERA: Er . . .
HAN: It means . . . growing in reverse because you go from havin’ a career to bein’ a slave to your kids?
SHAYERA: It means . . . you don’t really grow up because you’ll lose your rights once you become an adult?
ESME: See? The entire book has no answer, even though that’s the fucking TITLE.
MISSING PIECES: 121
One more thing about the blurb: look at this photo of the back cover that’s on Amazon.
HAN: What the hell? You can barely READ that!
SHAYERA: Check that, this book can be used as an example of 102 Ways Not To Self-Publish.
ESME: Anyway, now we’re going to spork a few of the book’s Amazon reviews. We won’t be doing all of them since a good portion of the positive reviews are just a sentence or two long. We’ll just do a few of the more memorable ones.
Let’s start with what I consider the most memorable positive review – and it’s not memorable for the reason you think it is. The subject line is “Interesting but not for everyone,” and it gives the book four stars.
Anonymous
>>118019503 Dystopian. As I was reading this book, that was the word that kept coming to mind: dystopian.
SHAYERA: Yeah, it kept coming to our minds too.
This is not a complaint, just to be clear.
ESME: I just find that amusing, given that Enter keeps insisting over and over and over that his world isn’t a dystopia – and yet even this POSITIVE reviewer thinks it’s one.
There's not a whole lot of background given--one is not bogged down with exposition--so I was left to wonder how the world ended up this way.
HAN: BECAUSE. That’s always how Enter answers difficult questions.
Or if the world was always this way somehow.
HAN: Again, BECAUSE.
I found myself wondering why the children were in charge--does something happen to the adult brain that makes them incapable of taking care of themselves? Linda and Robbie (Sally's parents) seem more or less on the ball, and they even dispense some good parent-y advice at times.
SHAYERA: Yeah, which is why it’s COMPLETELY ILLOGICAL for them to be bowing to their kids.
Other questions that occurred to me: Where are the parents' parents? Do adults not live long enough to be grandparents in this world? Considering the food described and how little of it seems nutritious, I could believe it!
ESME: Looks like this person missed the line about how some kid magically “made sugar healthy.”
One of the characters has a lot of siblings, so how is that handled with children in charge?
HAN: Your guess is as good as mine, seein’ as how we never even SEE April’s parents.
And do gay or single adults just have no one to care for them, or do they get adopted by parentless children?
SHAYERA: Yeah, we were asking that question too, and the logical answers involved either teen pregnancy or adult orphanages.
Anyway, that's just me over-thinking (as I'm wont to do)...
ESME: No, that’s you asking logical questions that Enter refused to answer.
Anonymous
>>118019536 The story over-all is interesting, and I don't regret reading it. I was frustrated a bit with how Sally treated her mother (who seems to have some kind of imagination disability)
HAN: She DOESN’T have an “imagination disability” – she’s just bein’ treated like crap by everyone!
but the resolution of that was satisfying.
ESME: You mean the “resolution” that involved Sally only being sorry for not knowing about the stage fright thing and still ended with Linda being the one who needs to change?
As a stand alone piece, it reminds me of a Twilight Zone episode. And there's a moral about becoming involved in your local government, so that's good.
SHAYERA: Yup, you shouldn’t respect reasonable traffic laws, great message.
If one has a visceral disgust for descriptions of food ending up in hair and on faces, this book isn't for you. If one is sensitive to emotional abuse, this might not be for you (Sally is, unsurprisingly, not a great parent to her parents). If one is sensitive to bullying, proceed with caution. If those things aren't deal-breakers, it's worth a read if the premise interests you.
ESME: Look at that review. A whole lot of it is similar to what we said in our spork. This person seems to honestly think that Enter meant to create a dystopia and meant to make Sally an abusive twat, which I just find hilarious.
Now we’ve got a more ass-kissing review that swallows everything Enter says at face value. The header is “I figured even if I didn’t like it, I still want him to keep doing…”
HAN: In other words, this person only bought the book because Enter wrote it.
I've been a fan of John Enter for a while now, both on youtube and deviantart, and I bought this book to support his work. I figured even if I didn't like it, I still want him to keep doing what he's doing!
HAN: Yup, that’s exactly what I just said.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118019401 >The Growing Around book is over, but the spork isn’t. Anonymous
Quoted By:
>still going Fuck
Anonymous
>>118019566 It should be noted I haven't finished the book yet, but I have read enough to get a good sense of what this book is like.
SHAYERA: So you reviewed the book without even finishing it? Seriously?
First off: trigger warning to any adult readers with OCD or OCPD. The world of this book is extremely unorthodox, even alien, to the point that I myself was confused and stressed out at first (we'll get to why in a minute).
ESME: But since you’re an Enter ass-kisser, you won’t consider that a flaw in his writing.
However, I feel like that's partially the point of the story; it's a really crazy idea, which emits a very strong emotional reaction, and also makes you face your sensibilities. If, be you child or adult, you can abandon those sensibilities for a while and accept the internal logic of the setting,
HAN: There IS no logic in the setting!!
you'll be in for a really creative, incredible experience.
ESME: Funny, I don’t usually consider facepalming at every other sentence a “creative, incredible experience.”
Growing Around is a fantasy, in every sense of the word.
SHAYERA: Including the sense where you check your brain at the door.
Much like the show Codename: Kids Next Door, the world of this novel is primarily governed by child-logic. However, while KND was mostly a science fiction/action adventure series, this book is, again, much more fantastical.
ESME: I only saw a couple of KND episodes while babysitting, so I can’t comment on that, but the “child logic” in this book is “child STEREOTYPE logic.” Big difference.
This is a world where chocolate and cake are healthy,
HAN: Because some kid just waved a wand and made sugar healthy.
stuffed animals are alive,
ESME: No they aren’t! Where the fuck did you get THAT idea?
SHAYERA: Maybe from the movie theater charging for stuffed animals? That’s all I can think of, since Charmichael is obviously NOT alive.
imaginary friends exist (and *do* get away with everything),
Anonymous
>>118019641 ESME: Did you actually READ the book, or did you just skim it? The kids have imaginary friends, but they’re still imaginary! Or did you just take everything Sally said at face value?
trading cards are currency, boy and girl scouts are the police, architecture is designed like a fun house, and kids take animals such as kangaroos and elephants as pets.
HAN: Because kids can domesticate wild animals, totally makes sense!
Most central to the story is the idea that kids are in charge of society, and take care of their parents, who go to school in curriculum sets which include finger-painting, laser tag, and food fighting.
ESME: And if you don’t like food fights, you’re screwed.
Here's where it gets interesting, and even a little profound.
ESME: (groans) I just sporked the entire book. NOTHING in it is profound.
This isn't like Benjamin Button where people start out old and then grow younger as they age. No no, humans still age normally, are born young and grow into grown-ups. However, when they grow up, they start to lose that which this society and this universe thrives upon; creativity, fun, imagination, and light-heartedness
SHAYERA: NO THEY FUCKING DON’T! They’re just MADE to think that they’re losing those things because their little child dictators manipulate them into thinking that!
These are what grown-up school is designed to fix; to get grown ups back in touch with their childhood innocence. The moment where I realized how profound this really was, was around chapter 3 or 4, when Sally's mother, Linda, is failing in school.
ESME: Ho boy, here we go.
She got an F on a finger painting of a starry sky, because it "didn't include aliens or monsters or anything"! During a "child-teacher" meeting later that day, Linda breaks down finally faced with her failure. "I have no imagination anymore!"
SHAYERA: So this reader actually BUYS Enter’s malarkey that LINDA is the one “failing”??
Anonymous
Quoted By:
OP's actually doing it God bless.
Anonymous
Ohshit. The spork is reviewing reviews of the novelization of the not-cartoon written by a cartoon reviewer now. There are so many goddamn layers. I feel buried in these layers.
Anonymous
>>118019804 HAN: Looks like it. It doesn’t even seem to enter this person’s head that there’s NOTHIN’ WRONG with painting the night sky.
Woah. What's this?
HAN: Crap, that’s what it is.
Now, much like KND, we're presented with an allegory about the human condition, in a book said to be intended for kids age 7 to 11!
ESME: Hmmm, well I guess Linda’s situation could be seen as an allegory about how your society will beat you down and not give a shit about you and give you hell for just being who you are, but neither Enter nor this reviewer meant that.
Suddenly all the confusion and stress on my part about the adults being forced to do chores involving playing with their kids, and having to eat chocolate-covered everything for dinner every night, suddenly washed way.
HAN: Because of Linda bein’ abused? Is this person for real?
At this point, I was able (and this was early on in the book btw) to fully appreciate the relative utopia this world exists in.
ESME: Utopia. This person actually thinks this universe is a “relative utopia.” Instead of exploding, I’ll simply show how big a certain count got.
WHIMSICAL MY ASS: 127
I rest my case.
Thanks to the enthusiasm and imagination of children, in this world, humans have not only been to the moon, but colonized Mars.
SHAYERA: Yes, ALL you need to go to Mars is enthusiasm and imagination. Not, you know, EDUCATION or anything silly like that.
Everyday transactions and small talk at the story is enhanced with store-sanctioned "shopping races". This is a world where most people (the kids) are *not* horrible to one another,
ESME: ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?? Is your head SERIOUSLY so much up Enter’s ass that you didn’t notice what an AWFUL person Sally is???
HAN: Looks like it.
and society is heavily invested in keeping adults as much like that as possible.
SHAYERA: By abusing them and treating them like absolute SHIT.
Anonymous
>>118019715 >>118019926 So if you can just accept the idea that it really is ok that they're eating nothing but junk, because in this reality junk is what's healthy, and vegetables *un*healthy,
HAN: Does this person think that the kid who made sugar healthy also made vegetables unhealthy?
and stuff like that, then I think you and your child would be really enriched by this kind of story.
ESME: Don’t let your kid read this. Seriously, don’t.
It's not perfect, of course, as there's plenty of spelling and grammar errors,
ESME: Which is UNACCEPTABLE in a published book, especially when you paid a “professional editor” FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS to fix it.
but as for the actual story, from what I've read so far, it really is an amazingly imaginative work!
SHAYERA: Did this person read the same book we read?
ESME: I think this person had Enter goggles on when reading. Anyway, let’s spork one more review before calling it a day. This one has “Excellent Children’s Book!” as the header.
HAN: Oh, great.
Growing Around: Party Panic took me back. It reminded me of being read bedtime stories as a kid, and watching Fairly Oddparents.
ESME: Fairly OddParents? Well, I guess that show’s abusive babysitter Vicky resembles Sally quite a bit.
Growing Around is 100% a wish-fulfillment book where kids can picture themselves in a world where they rule the world, and it feels exactly like that.
HAN: It actually feels more like Enter’s wish-fulfilment where he can get back at the adults who wronged him, but let’s not open that box again.
It speaks to kids on their level, with easy to follow prose
SHAYERA: Well, BORING prose could be called easy-to-follow.
and imaginative worldbuilding, as well as characters that are very easy to sympathize with.
ESME: Yeah, Sally’s almost as easy to sympathize with as Veruca Salt and Dudley Dursley.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118019641 >>118019715 For a second at a glance, I thought that Hawk Girl and Esme were fighting, and I became worried for Esme’s sanity.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118017971 Fair point, but this one could just be poorly written.
Anonymous
Well, I just wasted most of my day on this thread (thus far) and its predecessor, so it's only appropriate that I respond. These two threads are easily the strangest, most mind-bending, yet interesting displays of autism on /co/ that I've seen. For the record, I'm on the spectrum myself. High-functioning Asperger's, legitimately diagnosed, and on a gluten-free, dairy-free diet to ensure that I'm capable of getting along with normal people without risk of ostracization. Even then, my autism still leaks out in the form of my endless fascination with watching anime and giving them TV content ratings aligned to a mix of my personal standards and those of Turner Standards and Practices, sometimes to the point of making screencaps (and recently, video clips) showcasing said ratings as if they were being broadcast on [adult swim] or one of the other Turner stations. Honestly, the events of these threads easily eclipse even my especially specific brand of autism. The decision to copy-paste the sporking post for post and the unasked for second thread are all on you, OP, but the sporking itself has quite the amount of autism itself, what with the author (Esme) sporking it "alongside" Han Solo and Hawkgirl of all people and all the English-major flaunting when attacking the story's grammar. Seriously, all the bitching about figurative language as if they were literal and attacking every little lack of a conjunction makes me think Esme graduated college with Cs in all of her English classes, but won't admit it because she's just that egotistical. Still, it was fascinating and oddly entertaining, reading between the total breakdown of the only written work by the infamous Mr. Enter (whose videos I have never seen) and all the reactions of the flabbergasted anons in-between. I don't think I've been this enthralled in a /co/ thread in a long time, and whatever your reasons for even doing this were OP, thank you for doing this.
Anonymous
>>118020557 >unasked for second thread Confirmed for not following the first thread closely enough to spot all of the anons expressing a desire for a second thread. Get on my level, Anon.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118019804 AUTISM
WITHIN
AUTISM
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118020668 Oh right, must've forgotten that. I must've said the wrong word trying to convey that OP made the second thread without linking it at the end of the first, like an /aco/ bondage general.
But yeah, I was hoping for a second one too, $500 proofreading fail aside.
Anonymous
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118020866 It's a good thread.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
Every day, every post, we stray further from GOD.
Anonymous
Anonymous
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118022746 We must protect the thread while he slumbers, or until a new OP arises from the ashes.
Anonymous
>>118019963 Enter doesn't hold your hand for any of it either - while there are many scenes showing off the environment, you're put right in the middle of the world straight from the start, no exposition or fluff to hold up the story.
ESME: You know, there’s a difference between not holding your readers’ hands and flat-out refusing to explain anything about your universe’s lack of logic. Guess which one Growing Around is?
We're learning how the world works the whole way through, while following eight year old Sally Dunn as she copes with the balance of having so much power, and being sympathetic to her parents who she's in charge of.
SHAYERA: Sally Dunn. Sympathetic to her parents. This person seriously thinks Sally Dunn is sympathetic to her parents.
ESME: I can destroy that argument in one word: LINDA.
Being someone with a niece and nephew, it was refreshing to see such a well-written child protagonist.
HAN: I got nothin’.
She's selfish, she's mean, she's over the top and sarcastic -
ESME: Yes, I can attest to that.
but she also cares for her family and wants her parents to succeed.
SHAYERA: By threatening and abusing and giving over-the-top humiliating punishments, you forgot that part.
Watching her come to an understanding with her mother throughout the story was very sweet.
ESME: Stage fright. That was the one and only thing Sally “came to an understanding” with – STAGE FRIGHT. Everything else went unquestioned and Linda was still seen as the one who needed to change. I’ll repeat that until it gets through people’s thick skulls.
Anonymous
>>118023234 I will admit, Growing Around isn't likely to grab a lot of adult audiences.
HAN: It ain’t likely to grab a lot of audiences that don’t already have their heads up Enter’s ass.
It asks you to sit back and imagine this fantastic world that bends a lot of rules that we have in our world.
ESME: It also asks you to just accept the COMPLETE LACK OF LOGIC and ignore how it CONDONES ABUSE.
Everything is through a child's perspective and a childish lens, and I would imagine a child being much more invested as they pictured the huge treehouses and castles that are treated as homes and schools in this universe.
HAN: If you wanna read a book about school in a castle, read Harry Potter.
Sitting back and viewing the book through that perspective, I enjoyed the book immensely.
SHAYERA: So this person pretty much admits that they turned their brain off while reading.
Not going to lie - I'm excited to see where Growing Around takes us next, as the book sets up the cartoon series perfectly as a prequel.
ESME: Well have fun waiting for the theoretical cartoon that has a 99.9% chance of never happening.
If/when the pilot goes up on another indiegogo project, I'll certainly be backing it, and I regret not doing so before!
SHAYERA: And have fun wasting your money.
Whether you're picking up Growing Around for your kids, or whether you want to revisit that world of imagination for yourself, I think it's well worth the read!
ESME: Nope, there are plenty of much-better children’s books that I can pick up for my kids if I ever have them.
HAN: I sure as hell ain’t gonna be readin’ this book to my kid.
SHAYERA: (shifts eyes) Yeah, you really don't want to be subject to your kid's every whim.
ESME: I think we’re done for now. See you for when we spork Enter’s own blabbering about this book.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
COUNTS: KIDS DO THIS, RIGHT?: 78 FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 242 MISSING PIECES: 121 YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 213 WHIMSICAL MY ASS: 127 HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 114 CONJUNCTION JUNCTION, THAT’S YOUR FUNCTION: 581
Anonymous
>>118023264 >ESME: I think we’re done for now. Promise?
Anonymous
Growing Around - The story behind Growing Around: Party Panic
Writers love to talk about their books, and Mr. Enter is no exception. Of course, since the Growing Around book sucks ass, a lot of the stuff he says about it sounds downright nuts, since he continues to insist that it’s so deep, thoughtful, whimsical – you know, all those things the book ISN’T. The first thing we’re going to look at is a little essay he wrote about his experience writing the book. Prepare yourselves for Meyer-style rambling.
HAN: Can’t we leave yet?
ESME: Nope, I don’t think I could spork Mr. Enter’s words by myself without going crazy.
SHAYERA: But you DID already! You even used me as your avatar!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6SyqLgxWNgs ESME: (sighs) Okay, yes, I did that, but that was in video form. However, even though I could have worded some things better in that commentary, it’s probably still a good idea to watch it, seeing as how Enter’s original vid rambling about Growing Around and how he can’t stand criticism and doesn’t want to explain things about his world is no longer online, so my commentary is now the only evidence of its existence.
Anyway, today we’re talking about Enter rambling in text form about what a brilliant author he is. This was posted shortly after he published the book, when that rush from finishing a novel is flowing through you and you just want to shout it to the world. Yes, I’ve felt that rush too, it’s natural and it feels really good.
But it doesn’t make the book any better. It also reveals quite a bit about why the book is as terrible as it is (along with what a gigantic ego Enter has).
SHAYERA: It seems so wrong to step all over a man’s pride in his accomplishments . . . (picks up mace) . . . but it feels SO GOOD!
HAN: I’m with Wing Lady. After I’ve had to spork this turd for over a year and get flashbacks to my time in the White Worms, I’m ready to tear Enter a new one!
Anonymous
>>118023375 As I sit here, I am only a few days away from receiving the first physical copy of my first real novel.
ESME: I wonder what it was like to open that book and realize the hard way that his “editor” was a scammer and did nothing to fix the book.
Incidentally, I’m self-publishing a book myself in a couple of months and my OWN editor is doing the work first BEFORE I pay her. Piece of advice, Enter – if an “editor” asks for five hundred bucks up front before doing any work, that person is probably a scammer.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=emb_title&v=LIcbf4fiFuE HAN: I’d almost feel sorry for the guy havin’ to learn that the hard way – ‘cept for the fact that his book would STILL be terrible even if all the errors were fixed.
It wasn’t the first novel that I’ve ever written. When it comes to writing, I’ve been writing stories since I could, at the age of six years old.
SHAYERA: So why are you still so bad at it?
ESME: I wrote stories when I was little too. In fact, I used to make “books” with my mom, where she would write down the story I dictated to her and I would draw the pictures and then we would staple the pages together. I think she might still have a few of them. Most kids like making up stories in one form or another – you’re really not unique there.
I distinctly remember my kindergarten teacher giving us these little blue paper journal books. I don’t remember exactly what we were supposed to be writing, but I wrote stories about a dog just doing everyday dog things. I distinctly remember that this wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing, because I refused to show my teacher what I was writing because I wasn’t supposed to be writing that in the book
HAN: Wait, first you say you don’t remember what you were s’posed to be writing in the books, then you say you weren’t s’posed to be writing in the books at all? Which is it? Were you or were you not s’posed to write in the books?
Anonymous
>>118023405 (EDIT: It was pointed out to me that Enter said he wasn't supposed to write "that" in the books. My bad.)
When it comes to actual novels, I’ve taken many cracks at it all throughout my adolescence.
SHAYERA: So you’re still an adolescent? That’s what that sentence sounded like with the “I’ve.”
When I was in eighth grade, I was 13 or 14,
ESME: Oh WOW, when you were in eighth grade, you were... the same age most eighth graders are. Any reason you had to tell us that?
I wrote these stories about a young girl who learned that she was turning into a literal monster. They don’t classify as novels because, despite each of them having chapters, the longest ones were around 12,000 words. I wrote about six of these, and rewrote them and reworked them to various extents.
HAN: A book series about a girl turnin’ into a monster sounds more interesting than Growing Around.
SHAYERA: Yeah, I’d read something like that.
And when i was 19,
ESME: You finally learned to capitalize “I.”
I wrote my first attempt at what you could reasonably call a novel, Little Cassie. It’s something that I am no longer interested in, and I don’t really care about it.
ESME: He has that story posted on his DeviantArt page, in case anyone was wondering. I haven’t read it, so I don’t know if it’s sporkable, but anyone who wants to try sporking it is welcome to do so.
I started writing Growing Around - Party Panic
SHAYERA: (cocks head) You seriously don’t know that the title of your OWN BOOK has a colon, not a dash?
when I was 23 (finished at 24), and that was after two years of building and constructing the world which it takes place in and the characters which it uses.
ESME: And yet the world still has more holes than Meyer’s science behind her vampires.
I state all of this because I want to put things in perspective. It’s romantic to think that the first thing that you’ll write is a full-on novel, or worse yet, a full-on series of novels.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118023315 Fuck no. It doesn’t stop until the foretold self published fantasy novel is plugged.
Anonymous
Great thread in fact of course. "This thread is of very high quality in fact of course" anonymous said in fact of course
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118014281 Mr Enter created a new genre of autism.
Anonymous
Anonymous
Anonymous
Anonymous
>>118024181 >star wars fan Haha. Boy, would’t it be weird and scary if THAT was esme amelia, and that tiny exchange was the whole reason for her sporking Enter’s stuff? That’d just be a trip. Good thing that’s not what really happened, though.
Anonymous
>>118024224 If only she had a Hawk Girl avatar instead of a Jazz one, I would call it practically confirmed.
Anonymous
>>118024243 his icon used to be frankie foster
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118024294 So we know he’s got a thing for redheads? I dunno if that’s evidence one way or the other.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118024224 THERE'S an idea that deserves a fanfic
this fanfic would spawn its own spork thread, of course Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118019401 >The Growing Around book is over, but the spork isn’t. Anonymous
Quoted By:
>THE RIDE NEVER ENDS
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118023375 >>118023405 >>118023425 Okay, so I decided to buckle down and try reading this segment because I was hoping there’d be some references to this Secret of Neevah or whatever fantasy novel thing. And holy fuck, you guys weren’t kidding. The grammar nazi-ing and general autism is out of control.
Also:
>HAN: Can’t we leave yet? >ESME: Nope, I don’t think I could spork Mr. Enter’s words by myself without going crazy. >SHAYERA: But you DID already! You even used me as your avatar! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6SyqLgxWNgs [Open]
>ESME: (sighs) Okay, yes, I did that... I can’t tell if this is an uncomfortable attempt at self deprecating meta humor, or if she is actually off her rocker.
And lastly
> I’ve had to spork this turd for over a year I-is that how long she spent writing this? I guess in a way it’s sorta better than banging it out all in one go for an entire weekend straight like OP’s storytime, but still, jesus.
Anonymous
Might as well throw one of my own complaints in while we're waiting
>>118019447 >Even with her friends by her side, it’s going to be more difficult when the mayor seems to have it out for her >ESME: IN for her. The expression is “have it IN for her!” Uhhh, "have it out for her" is also a valid expression, you stupid bitch. Like I said, English major with all Cs.
Anonymous
I'm in awe at the display of sheer autism in this thread
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118025115 Yeah, I’m not even gonna begin to pick apart how many “dude, chill” moments I get while reading. And she still keeps going on all the minor errors even after her “five hundred dollar editor” tally doesn’t apply anymore.
Don’t get me wrong, Enter’s not worth defending and certainly far from perfect, but esme is doing that usual shitty “comedic” reviewer thing where she devoting too much focus on all the wrong problems.
MG
Quoted By:
>>118025281 LAYERS
AND LAYERS
OF AUTISM
Anonymous
Anonymous
>>118023425 ESME: The first “serious” thing I wrote was a short story for a magazine contest (which I didn’t win – thank God, the story was terrible). This isn’t unique insight.
In any medium, people will always tell you to start small. Fiction writing isn’t much different. That doesn’t mean “don’t start by writing a novel.” It just means, don’t feel discouraged or disappointed when you don’t succeed at that prospect on the first time around.
HAN: Does that mean he subconsciously knew that the Growing Around novel was crap?
Because, even if you fail at hitting your goal, you will be better off in skill and experience.
ESME: Yeah, I think I read that on a poster at a school a few dozen times.
At the start, that is more valuable than anything that you’ve written before. And it’s not like you can’t reuse old ideas or plots, or even rewrite older stories. In fact, that might be the smart thing to do.
SHAYERA: Are you gonna actually TALK about your book, or are you just gonna keep spouting out cliché-as-hell writing advice while thinking you’re so profound?
Creative scenarios and stories come much easier to people when they’re younger, to the point where even our own childhood writings don’t make much sense to us.
ESME: When I was a kid, I once made up a story with my Legos about a woman in a beach outfit having to save her island from a hurricane by holding up a cup of tea and singing a song to the tune of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.”
SHAYERA: Whoa, do you think you’ll ever turn that into a novel?
ESME: Not on your life.
A lot of people, including those close to me, have asked “how do you write a novel?” which is not at all a simple question.
HAN: Shit, he’s still goin’ on about this?
I mean, asking me “how I write a novel” is a lot like asking me how the sun rises. It’s not something I could not do.
ESME: (looks at the grand total of one book that Enter has published) Uh-huh, yeah, I totally believe that.
Anonymous
>>118026471 SHAYEREA: Isn’t most of the writing he posts on his DeviantArt page in the form of SCRIPTS, not prose?
ESME: Yup, but he thinks scripts and prose are totes the same thing and have the exact same rules.
I grew up knowing that I would write books, and it had a sort of deterministic value around it. It was something that was going to happen with a matter of time. A lot of career writers, I would assume, are the same way.
HAN: Is there a handbook titled “Things To Say When You Want To Sound Like A Deep, Smart Writer”? I think Enter’s usin’ it.
The question is more accurately “how do I write a novel?” which can also become “can I write a novel?” as those two questions are often interlinked into the same statement.
Can anyone write a novel? I don’t know, can anyone run a marathon? Writing a novel takes a lot of discipline and a certain kind of temperament and a lot of patience.
ESME: You know, you keep calling Growing Around a “novel,” when it’s actually a novella. It’s around 35,000 words long – it’s a stretch to call something that short a “novel.”
It’s not easy, and at no point am I going to pretend that it was easy to write a novel - regardless of the novel’s quality.
SHAYERA: Or lack thereof.
There were definitely easy parts, but there were a lot of parts that were not easy that just made me want to quit.
ESME: And then after this book came out, you DID quit.
So, “how do I write a novel?” That’s not a question that I can answer, with any kind of good faith.
HAN: Are we gonna get to a POINT any time soon?
There are many types of writers, and even more types of people.
SHAYERA: Thanks, Captain Obvious.
Anonymous
>SHAYEREA I thought it was "Shayera"? $500 editing!!!
Anonymous
>>118026531 The most stereotypical rebuttal to that question is “do you have a story to tell?” But even that is wrapped up in many misconceptions. Story doesn’t have to come first, and sometimes it shouldn’t when planning.
ESME: Yes Enter, I know story doesn’t always come first. Sometimes the characters come first, sometimes the world comes first, etc. But guess what, it’s still a good idea to think about the story when you’re in the planning stage, even if you don’t have the whole plot in your head yet.
In general, there are two places that writers come from - there are the ones that get so inspired by a work, that they want to do something similar to it.
ESME: They also want to learn how to properly use commas.
This doesn’t have to be a story. It can be characters, a concept, or an emotion.
HAN: Or in Enter’s case, a shitty short.
The other type is the writer who wants to create something specifically because it doesn’t exist yet. It’s the story that they want to read, or similar.
SHAYERA: You know what doesn’t exist yet? A GOOD BOOK WRITTEN BY MR. ENTER.
One of the reasons behind Growing Around: Party Panic is that I wanted to create the kind of story that I’d love to have while growing up; the type of book that I’d want to be a part of my own childhood.
ESME: Well that explains the revenge-fantasy aspect of the book. Again, I don’t want to go too much into Enter’s childhood, but he really seems to have issues with authority. His parents were abusive – he resents parents. He had a shitty time in school – he resents teachers. So he wants a world where kids can bully adults however they see fit and put them in their place.
HAN: And now I’m uncomfortable.
ESME: Me too, let’s move on.
On the other hand, I do get inspired by other things - the flaws of certain works.
SHAYERA: Do you even realize how pretentious that sounds?
Anonymous
>>118026726 “This story would be so much cooler if it took place in space” or “this character is such an asshole. What if they were the villain?” for a couple of examples.
SHAYERA: Good idea, let’s write a story where SALLY is the villain!
The former type of inspiration seems a lot easier to come by and a lot easier to work with, but that’s just me. Party Panic came from a lot of that, even though it was a concept that’s rarely done - especially to this extent.
ESME: Enter, everyone knows that Growing Around came from you wanting to one-up a dumb short – you don’t need to disguise that fact.
I can think of television episodes, books, or movies that had the idea of kids taking or having power. It was usually sudden though, and almost always dystopia. And I watched them all in preparation of doing this.
SHAYERA: Confirmation – he DID steal the underwear-flag from the Jimmy Neutron movie!
A lot of people are afraid of doing something like this because they feel like they’ll accidentally plagiarize, but this is a necessary step. It’s like studying. You see what works, and what doesn’t. What you like and what you don’t. What you can change and what you can’t. And you can see the areas that have become cliche, or when you can chance things differently.
ESME: And yet he advises people that reading too much hurts your writing because it will make your writing style too similar to other people’s.
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 115
HAN: Ah, but he wasn’t reading, he was watching! Why read to prep yourself for novel-writing when you can just watch cartoons instead?
I decided long ago that this wasn’t going to be a dystopia story, and I’ve been insistent and anal about this, and at times hostile.
ESME: Enter, buddy, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but there’s a little fact about your book that you insistently, anally, and hostilely try to deny.
YOUR BOOK IS A DYSTOPIA!!!!
Anonymous
>>118026771 People lose their rights when they reach a certain age. Adults are supposed to just put up with whatever abuse their kids dish out at them, and kids can dish out whatever abuse they want at their parents with no repercussions. In fact, the kids have the adults so tightly in their fists that they have the adults brainwashed into thinking this is normal and they deserve it. The text even flat-out says that a “good kid” is supposed to be “angry and intimidating.”
HAN: Hell, it’s even dystopic for kids. You get charged extra for bringing inanimate objects to the movies, you can’t go anywhere without gettin’ food dumped on you, if you refuse a dare your reputation gets ruined forever, you get FORCED to throw parties for strangers who have no respect for anyone else’s property, the winner in an election can do anything to the loser, and there’s so much chaos everywhere that you can’t hear yourself think.
SHAYERA: And that’s just the stuff spelled out in the text. That’s not even mentioning the unfortunate implications – like teenagers being pressured to get married and pregnant so they won’t be put in adult orphanages when they turn eighteen, who-knows-how-many kid casualties that result from kids driving and building skyscrapers and whatnot, and CHILD SOLDIERS!!
ESME: Your world is a fucking dystopia. Maybe if you actually dealt with that instead of wildly denying it, your book wouldn’t suck so much.
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 116
That’s because that’s what the project was. Anything without that concept was not the project.
HAN: I agree. Anything without dystopia isn’t this book.
It would be like taking Star Wars out of the galaxy far, far away.
HAN: (grinds teeth) LEAVE MY GALAXY OUTTA THIS!!!
ESME: Oh, you’re gonna love what he says about your galaxy in the next essay we spork.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
I think I see a lot of Shayera specifically being the one ranting about Enter’s inclusion child soldiers, and now that I think about it, I kinda don’t see why Hawk Girl would mind that. From what I remember of her cartoon, she struck me as someone from the kind of spartan culture that would be very accepting of or even embrace the concept of child soldiers. Maybe I’m wrong, I wasn’t exactly obsessed with that cartoon or character. I get that it’s all Esme and that Esme is so far up her own ass about using Hawk Girl as her hawksona that she straight up forgets she is supposed to be a separate entity from herself and not just a clone of her in a different hat sometimes, but it’s still a little weird.
Anonymous
>>118026811 If someone says that there's no way a concept can work, you should take their advice with a grain of salt. A talented person can make any concept work.
ESME: Again, Enter, sorry to break this to you, but you’re really not as talented as you think you are.
For example, an Animal Crackers movie sounds like the stupidest thing I've ever heard, but upon reading the synopsis - the type of cracker a person eats turns them into the animal, it reveals a lot of hidden potential that most wouldn't think of at first glance.
SHAYERA: That sounds like it would make a more interesting story than Growing Around.
ESME: Okay, yes, a stupid-sounding concept can be done well with the right amount of thought and imagination. For example, a lot of people were skeptical about The Lego Movie and thought it would just be a stupid toy-based cash grab, but then the movie turned out to be full of clever writing, lovable characters, and genuinely emotional moments.
Growing Around has none of that.
SHAYERA: Well, it does have one sympathetic character.
HAN: Yeah, and Linda exists to get abused and shat on.
It confused a lot of people, and I can understand that.
ESME: And yet you whine whenever people don’t just accept the premise at face value.
It’s a premise that takes a lot of suspension of disbelief, which is one of the main reasons that it has to be a children’s story.
HAN: Cause kids don’t ask questions, am I right?
I’ve dealt with a lot of works and shows and people who say that they can make things that are stupid and vapid because it’s for kids and they tolerate stupid stuff, so they don’t have to try.
SHAYERA: And Growing Around joined the pile.
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 117
ESME: Watch how Enter tries to convince us that he’s TOTALLY different from the people who dumb down their kids’ works because kids are stupid.
Anonymous
>>118027222 The reason that this perception is the way it is, is not because kids have a lower standard of quality, but because they have a larger suspension of disbelief. They can buy more fanciful concepts, without concerning too much about the implications.
SHAYERA: Wow. Just, WOW. Enter just flat-out admitted that he made it a kids’ book because kids aren’t gonna think about the implications of his universe.
HAN: So he just used a fancier version of the “kids are stupid” argument that he hates so much. After all, kids ain’t gonna think about how people lose their rights when they grow up!
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 118
They’re able to buy a magical wardrobe that takes them to Narnia, without caring where it came from or why it’s there.
ESME: Well someone’s never read The Magician’s Nephew. Yes, I know that book came out after The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, but that doesn’t change the fact that Lewis DID give an explanation on where the wardrobe came from and where freakin’ Narnia came from.
SHAYERA: It wouldn’t surprise me if he hasn’t read any of the Narnia books and just saw the movies.
ESME: Also, Enter, comparing your work to classics like The Chronicles of Narnia doesn’t make your work any better.
The skill of “taking criticism” is more than just listening to people without going hostile on them.
HAN: Enter said that. Enter, who gets hostile when people criticize him all the fucking time.
ESME: Enter, who fucking BLOCKED me when I gave him criticism on his first draft of the GA book.
SHAYERA: Enter, who sticks his fingers in his ears and goes “lalalalala!” when people point out the horrible implications of his world.
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 119
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118027241 >Enter, who fucking BLOCKED me when I gave him criticism on his first draft of the GA book Oooo. That’s a fun detail to learn.
Anonymous
>>118027241 You need to analyze what’s a good idea, what’s a bad idea, and when someone says one thing, but it really means another.
HAN: (points at Esme’s commentary vid) Or if the criticism is from someone you don’t know personally, just assume the person is trolling and that none of their points are valid.
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 120
When people said “this concept can’t work” what I had to do was make the concept work better, or at the very least pull off the illusion of it working better.
ESME: I’ll respond to that by showing how big a certain count got.
MISSING PIECES: 121
I more or less had to do the exact opposite of what was suggested to me to make things work.
SHAYERA: Wait, what? You listened to criticism by doing the opposite of what people suggested? What?
HAN: That just feels like Enter thumbin’ his nose at his critics, honestly.
I bludgeoned the reader with the first chapter, giving them more or less an overdose of what they were in for.
ESME: You admit that you “bludgeoned the reader” in Chapter 1. You know that Chapter 1 contained almost nothing but PURE FILLER and yet you didn’t have the good sense to cut it.
It better set up the tone, and completely established the concept with no ambiguity.
HAN: It also WASTED OUR TIME.
We see that kids have gone to space in the very first scene. We see some of their culture - having races and food fights sporadically, drawing on public walls being seen as benefiting the community, that kids have managed to domesticate very strange animals, and that some of them are a part of the traffic system.
SHAYERA: Almost NONE OF WHICH had ANYTHING to do with the plot.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118027581 But that wasn’t enough. Two lines became the most important in the first chapter, and they removed every last piece of confusion that I couldn’t just from explaining the concept:
HAN: Really? I don’t remember any lines about why the fuck adults put up with givin’ up their freedom once they grow up.
“‘Are you leaving,’ asked a kid in his teens, the usher. ‘You’re going to miss the best part’”
In production, I got a lot of questions about how teenagers are treated in this world. And while Talula is 13 or 14 years old, I needed to make it more clear and more clear immediately. The fact that Sally calls the usher “a kid in his teens” showcases that teenagers are treated exactly like kids in this world.
ESME: And as I pointed out in the spork, TEENAGERS HAVE DIFFERENT NEEDS THAN KIDS. They are biologically different from kids. Enter, have you ever heard of PUBERTY? Giving them the same rights as kids doesn’t make them the same as kids.
SHAYERA: Hey, speaking of which, what happens when a girl gets her first period in this universe? Are there little kids who sell pads and tampons without knowing what the hell they are? Since kids don’t get any education, do girls wake up one morning with a bleeding vayjay and have no idea what’s happening?
HAN: Whaddaya know, another can of worms.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
WHO GIVES A DAMN?!
Anonymous
Quoted By:
WHEN WILL WE BE FREE OF THIS HELLSCAPE?
Anonymous
Quoted By:
Been falling asleep. Keep the thread warm while I’m gone, lads.
Anonymous
>got done with the book >still sporking or whatever the fuck >actually not really. now she's just rambling about her own writing Jfc. If by any chance that Esme/Asme reads this comment: please don't communicate with anyone ever again. And that includes posting stuff online, even if it's in your own shitty website. If there's any chance any other living thing can become aware of it, don't post/say/write/draw/act/sign/ express it in any way.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118029080 She’s actually not saying all that much about her own writing. She moved on to reviewing an essay Enter wrote about his writing process, after she ran out of his book, and all that junk is her just copypasting his words.
Anonymous
How is it that anyone related to Enter, be it his fans or detractors, seem to fall deep on the autism spectrum? Like, CWC historians are still the kings of autism but this is still pretty fucking bad.
Anonymous
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118029657 Normal people who value their mental health a) know to stay away and b) wouldn't get interested in the first place
Anonymous
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118029657 AUTISM
WITHIN
AUTISM
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118030594 >when the intro lasts longer than one millisecond Anonymous
Anonymous
I overslept. Did OP die for real this time?
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118032340 Could just be sleeping, but for now it appears so
Anonymous
Or maybe he stopped because someone spoiled Esme's final thoughts rundown (and the fantasy novel plug) in the last thread.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118033317 Just double checked, and that’s still skipping three and a half sections. Last night OP stopped in the middle of the Enter’s essay on writing section, and I think early ending spoiler anon only did the final thoughts section.
Anonymous
>>118027581 MISSING PIECES: 122
The other line was this:
“‘’My dear live a little. You’re not gonna be a kid forever.’ [said April]” This line here showcases that kids age normally, which could have been a very big point of confusion. And it was, in certain circles.
ESME: But you don’t get that aging normally comes with a whole can of unfortunate implications. There was a reason why people aged backwards in Flip-Flopped.
This also puts some weight on the scenario. For perspective, Sally is 8 years old - less than half of her childhood has gone by, and there’s already emphasis put on it.
SHAYERA: Yes, in just ten years, Sally will lose her rights.
The first draft was not written in first-person, but the more that I think about the final draft, the more I realize that the story always had to be.
ESME: WRONG! (points at her video commentary again) You flat-out admitted that you made the story first-person SOLELY so you’d have an excuse to not explain stuff about the world.
I had to do a lot of research on child psychology for Growing Around and what really makes kids and adults different, beyond the physical stuff - their way of thinking, their perception of the world, and how they tend to behave in a vacuum.
SHAYERA: And . . . what does that have to do with the book being in first-person?
ESME: Also, seeing as how the kids in the book are walking, talking stereotypes, guess what, Enter, it takes more than just reading about child psychology to write believable child characters.
HAN: What did his “research” entail, anyway? Did he just type “child psychology” into Google and click on the first thing that came up?
SHAYERA: Whatever his “research” entailed, we know for sure that it didn’t involve spending any time with ACTUAL KIDS.
Anonymous
Fuck it. You gotta fight autism with autism. And there's no one who can beat Chadkek in a fight. Your time has come, spork-poster.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
M-make it stop!
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118034564 Save us Chadkek!
Anonymous
>>118034512 The most obvious one is a child’s perspective of time. When you’re a kid, things take… a really long time. Hours and minutes may go by fast, but a month is “literally forever.” If our childhood ends at age 18, and we die at age 80, by a trick of perception, your childhood is a great deal more than just one fourth of your life. It’s at least a third, and at most, half of it.
ESME: Yes Enter, I KNOW that kids perceive time differently from adults. It’s simple logic – for a five-year-old kid, a year is a whole fifth of that kid’s life, while a year is a thirty-fifth of my own life.
The more you get older, the faster time ticks. That helped define the world a little bit more. It’s (one of the reasons) why a kid world would have more holidays - to mark time more efficiently.
SHAYERA: They have more holidays than we do? Well we never saw any of that in the book - the only references to holidays were hearing that Robert dressed as a clown for Halloween and Sally praying to Santa Claus.
It’s why mayors and politicians can be challenged at any time, instead of needing to wait for a specific election day.
HAN: Or you could, ya know, have elections every six months or somethin’ like that.
The are more important aspects that I do need to know that the audience doesn’t, because Sally doesn’t. One of the biggest challenges in writing is deciding what not to tell the audience.
HAN: And for some reason you decided not to tell us what adults do after they graduate from school. BAD IDEA.
SHAYERA: You also decided not to tell us how the fuck kids learn how to do their jobs when they don’t have any education. BAD IDEA.
ESME: And you decided not to tell us why adults stand for any of this in the first place. BAD IDEA.
Anonymous
>>118034617 For example, kids spending a lot of money. If they were to stop that and actually start spending responsibly and saving money at great enough numbers, their economy would crash. Everyone gets encouraged that they’ll get plenty of money doing their jobs, which encourages them to do their jobs, and the money leads to stuff. It’s good to know for future plots and stories, but by no means does the audience have to know that.
SHAYERA: So these kids spend money like the CULLENS? Really?
ESME: Maybe it’s a good thing that the later books never got written – he’d have probably had enraged parents accusing him of encouraging kids to be careless with money.
HAN: Hell, Enter himself would probably complain about that if he didn’t write it.
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 121
However, one thing that the audience needs to know that Sally doesn’t, is that when you’re a kid - everything is big. I don’t just mean in size and stature, although that’s a part of it. Talula towers over Sally, making her intimidating. What I mean is that scenarios are bigger and more extreme. The first heartbreak you experience feels like you’re crushed and you’ll be miserable forever and you’ve never hurt so badly before. The first anxiety attack you experience feels like you’re going to die.
SHAYERA (Enter): “LOOK HOW MUCH I KNOW ABOUT KIDS! I AM SO SMART!”
If I were to write this in third person again, a lot of what Sally goes through and what’s described about her would seem melodramatic.
ESME: It’s still melodramatic in first-person.
HAN: Not to mention that we’re forced to listen to that little twat talk on and on about how awesome she is and how everyone’s out to get her and how adults are inferior.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118034617 >while a year is a thirty-fifth of my own life >35 years old and doing THIS What the Fuck.
Anonymous
>>118034646 Sally does blow a lot of things out of proportion. They’re not as big as they seem. But to her, they seem enormous. That’s because she’s never experienced them before, or anything like them before. The frustration of something as simple as being required to perform a civic duty when she had something - to her - more important planned, feels as if it’s an outright attack. The flaws of a parent shining through become outright betrayal. A laugh at your expense becomes the world out to get you.
SHAYERA: Is it just me, or does this sound like Enter’s trying to talk his way out of Sally being a bitch?
So, back to the concept at hand, because obviously one child is different than a society run by them.
HAN: Yeah, a society run by kids involves a lot more kid casualties.
How children see themselves can be very different from how children actually are.
HAN: Yeah. For example, Sally is really a BRAT.
Most kids - unless they have some kind of disorder - believe they are unambiguously right; that the good guys will always prevail; that things will turn out okay. At least until they first time the facade breaks. Then they wonder if all good guys will fail, or if things will ever turn out okay again.
SHAYERA: You can still convey that without making your protagonist an absolute BITCH, though.
ESME: Also, what was with the insertion of “unless they have some kind of disorder”? Was that ableist or just . . . I have no fucking idea.
I think that most kids would think that they could do a good job running the family.
ESME: Maybe it’s just me, but when I was a kid, I didn’t WANT to run the family. You know why? Simple: I’m the oldest of three and my two little brothers were constantly driving me crazy. Why the hell would I have wanted to be in charge of keeping THEM under control? Let Mom and Dad have that headache.
I think that most kids think that a society run by kids would be good, even if a lot of the kids they know are assholes.
Anonymous
>>118035182 ALL: LIKE SALLY!!!!!
The book and the world, it runs off of wish fulfillment. That was always planned on being one of the main draws.
ESME: And wish-fulfillment is worth sacrificing all logic for, right?
Of course, everything’s not perfect in the book, that would be boring.
HAN: Awww look, Enter thinks his book ISN’T boring! Ain’t that hilarious?
Hit them with the fantasy in act I, then hit them with the reality in act II.
ESME: You mean the “fantasy” of Sally abusing the fuck out of Linda?
Act I, Sally is in charge of her family.
HAN: And she’s treatin’ Linda like shit, but I guess that’s part of the “wish fulfillment.”
Act II, it’s not all sunshine and buttercups as she needs to make tough choices and deal with society.
SHAYERA: Tough choices like . . . what, exactly? Seriously what are these “tough choices” that Sally has to make?
HAN: Uh . . . she chose to throw the party? She chose to let April be her fashion consultant? She chose to be an ass to Linda?
Act III is her solving this.
ESME: What did she SOLVE, exactly? She gave Linda a minor apology, but that just restored the status quo of Linda being the one who needs to change because her society has no place for her. She challenged Talula for mayor, but there’s NOTHING in the story that suggests that Sally would be a better mayor than Talula. In fact, as I said in the spork, there’s every indication that she would be a WORSE mayor than Talula.
Books 2, 3, and however many are most likely going to follow that three-act formula.
HAN: (snickers) Hear that? He thought he was gonna write a Book 2 and Book 3 and however many more!
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>This fucking thread
Anonymous
>>118035213 And I managed to use the flaws in the concept, to build and strengthen it.
If you’re a bad mayor, literally anyone in town can run against you at any time, and you have a month to do this.
ESME: OR a brat might run against you because she’s butthurt about being punished for BREAKING THE FUCKING LAW.
And whoever loses this election, the winner can inflict any punishment or humiliation on the loser, which keeps both the politicians in check, and it prevents kids from running for office on a whim.
HAN: You mean like how Sally ran on a whim?
SHAYERA: How does that keep the kids in check? It encourages the winner to ABUSE THEIR POWER!
The scouts - which are the police force - must give “scout’s honor” that what they are doing is good, just, and truthful. If it’s revealed that what they did is not any of those things, they’re fired forever.
SHAYERA: Well now it sounds like a story about a scout would be more interesting than a story about Sally.
ESME: Just about anything would be more interesting than a story about Sally.
Some of this stuff didn’t make it into the book. It didn’t fit the narrative, or the characters didn’t know about it.
SHAYERA: And I REALLY don’t care.
This is why I’m hesitant to say “start with the story.” I started with a world, and then I got the characters, and then I tailored the story to them.
ESME: There’s nothing wrong with that process in itself, but in this particular case, the actual story is incredibly weak.
HAN: Yeah, we got a shit-ton of filler and the ending just cut off and Sally learned NOTHING – should I go on?
They pushed the narrative along. It took some rewrites, but I like what I’ve done better this way. It gives it a kind of… charm, that can’t really be matched by doing it through another method.
ESME: “Charm.” Enter thinks this story has “charm.” Well let me just show you how much “charm” this story has by reminding you how big two certain counts got.
Anonymous
>>118035228 YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 213
WHIMSICAL MY ASS: 127
No, Enter, your book is not charming.
That’s just me though. That being said, the narrative has final say.
SHAYERA: Are you done yet?
ESME: No, he’s FAR from done.
The most difficult - and for realsies, the most difficult part - is deciding what stays and what has to go.
ESME: You’re not saying anything profound here, Enter. You’re just repeating what millions of much better authors have said before you.
In every draft except for the last one, there were these scenes that took up 2 chapters going into Robert and Linda’s backstory of how they first met that I really loved and really wanted in the novel.
HAN: So make the story about Linda instead of the little shit Sally.
I had to cut it out and write around it because it was just… so jarring in perspective, and so impossible to make it fit with the first-person perspective.
SHAYERA: No, it’s NOT impossible. Have a scene where the family looks at an old photo album of Linda and Robert when they first met and have the parents reminisce about that time. That way you could tell the story while still keeping it in Sally’s first-person.
HAN: Yeah, but Enter doesn’t read a lot, so that didn’t occur to him.
The rule is - if it’s not important, cut it out.
ESME: Uh-huh, Enter, I have two words to say to that: CHAPTER ONE.
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 122
Now, there’s a very easy trap to fall into. It’s very, very, incredibly easy to make something “important.” Oh… I can’t cut this scene because it reveals that Linda is a magician, so I need to keep in what’s weighing down the book. No… no. There are simpler ways for Sally to learn that fact, which doesn’t require a two chapter detour. I mean, sometimes you can bludgeon it enough so that it fits, but not always.
HAN: This is freakin’ hilarious! He’s lecturin’ us on editing while at the same time he thought everything in Chapter 1 was TOTALLY necessary.
Anonymous
>>118035255 HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 123
Not everything I wrote here actually made it into the final draft of the novel. I couldn’t put it in every little tidbit, or the book would have been bloated as hell - and I already needed to split the thing in two.
HAN: He says that like the book ain’t ALREADY bloated.
I would have loved to say that the Growing Around calendar year begins in March (because that makes sense - September becomes the seventh month; October becomes the eighth; November becomes the ninth; and December becomes the tenth; all the while the year begins in spring, which represents birth), but since the book takes place in May there was no reason to.
SHAYERA: Or in less (ahem) bloated language, the first month of the Growing Around calendar year is March.
I was able to state that Sally’s middle name is Serenity though because her parents really, really suck at names.
ESME: (groans) Even when babbling about the writing process, he STILL shits on Linda.
HAN: Wait, did he ever mention Sally’s middle name in the book?
ESME: Yeah, once, when Sally read her name on the Party Duty letter’s address.
Because I really, really suck at names.
SHAYERA: I dunno about that – at least you haven’t named anyone Renesmee.
As an aside, Sally, Timmy, Robert, and Linda were originally placeholder names… that were placeholders for a little bit too long to be changed. I am terrible at naming people.
ESME: Seriously, there’s nothing wrong with those names – they’re all perfectly normal. If you want to say you’re “terrible” at something to do with writing – well, we’ve got a long list of much more important grievances than the names.
Sally’s friends were originally April and May, instead of April and Molly because of that reason.
Anonymous
>>118035286 SHAYERA: There’s nothing wrong with naming a character “April.” There’s nothing wrong with naming a character “May.” But when you’ve got the names April AND May in the same story, then people are gonna start groaning.
HAN: At least Enter had the sense to realize THAT.
If I were to give Sally a new name at the end, it would be Serenity because I think ironic names are kind of funny, but it’ll have to suffice as her middle name until the end of time.
ESME: Oh Enter, Growing Around will be dead long before the end of time.
A lot of lot of people say that Robert is my self-insert character, which is stupid.
HAN: Wow, way to insult your fans. That sure won’t discourage people from buyin’ the book or anything like that!
My artist drew him looking like my avatar, but besides that, we’re incredibly different. For starters, Robert is a very outdoorsy person - he grew up on a farm and gardens and spends a lot of time outside. He’s also well, really put together and knows what he’s doing and is easily able to take things in stride. It’s hard to get to him.
SHAYERA: You forgot about how he kisses up to his daughter-mother so she won’t unleash her wrath on him.
That being said, when you write, you do put something of yourself into all of your characters.
ESME: (looks at the book’s characters) You know, that doesn’t really speak well of you.
But, the character who comes most to a self-insert has always been Timmy.
HAN: So... you identify most with the bland, boring lump who doesn’t do anything?
I think that I’ve said this before, but a lot of Timmy comes from the kind of kid that I used to be, while Sally comes from the kind of kid that I wanted to be.
SHAYERA: Okay, so you were the bland, boring lump who doesn’t do anything, but you wanted to be the abusive, selfish, bitchy little twat.
ESME: (uncomfortable) I don’t want to get insulting, but saying that you want to be like Sally REALLY doesn’t speak well of you.
Anonymous
>>118035319 Timmy’s main character traits happened to be his overprotective big brother thing and his fear of growing up, both traits that I had growing up.
HAN: (cocks head) Timmy’s afraid of growin’ up? Where was that in the book?
ESME: It wasn’t. In fact, nothing in the book even hinted at that.
SHAYERA: Course, given how this world is organized, any sane kid would be afraid of growing up.
And both traits that I kind of still have, just the fear of growing up morphed into a fear of death. And there will be a lot of analogies between the two, and I’m glad that that subplot was delayed into the second book because I don’t really know how to deal with it yet.
SHAYERA: He equates growing up with DEATH. I . . . really don’t have anything to add there. Does anyone else?
HAN: Nope, ‘cept that since you lose your rights when you grow up, some people really MIGHT think it’s like death.
ESME: Well I have something to say. This is all speculation, but it’s possible that Enter “not knowing how to deal” with Timmy’s supposed issues about growing up might have something to do with why the second book was never released. If Enter really, truly dealt with Timmy’s fear of growing up, he’d be forced to admit that his world is a dystopia where people lose their rights when they grow up, and as we all know, he absolutely refuses to do so.
Again, that’s speculation, but it makes sense.
Even so, Timmy has a lot of traits that I do not have - his frugality, for instance. Timmy isn’t one to spend lots of money.
HAN: I thought you said kids were SUPPOSED to spend a lot of money. That’d mean Timmy ain’t bein’ a good citizen.
And like Robert, he’s well together, and (usually) has a level head. He knows how to lead and take charge.
SHAYERA: Really? In the book he was basically just sitting in the background while Sally did whatever she wanted.
He didn’t really get to do much in the first book,
HAN: Understatement of the decade.
Anonymous
>>118035352 but like I said, his subplot got delayed into the second book.
HAN: Yes, the second book that’s totally gonna exist!
ESME: Enter, you know what? Even if Timmy was a supporting role in this book, you still could have made him interesting. You claim that he has all these personality traits, but none of them made it into the book! There’s a reason why I didn’t take any of your scripts or supplemental material into consideration with the MISSING PIECES count – because the book is supposed to stand on its own. Delaying Timmy’s subplot until the theoretical second book doesn’t mean that he had to be boring and devoid of any personality in the first book.
I think things work much better if I tackle the family members - more-or-less - one at a time. The first book really dealt with Linda, the second one will really deal with Timmy, and the third one with Robert.
HAN: Hear that? He’s DEFINITELY writing a sequel AND a third book! He ain’t gonna leave this story dangling unfinished! Trust him!
Sally’s character… was interesting.
ESME: If by “interesting,” you mean “abusive little twit,” then yes, she’s very interesting.
Basically the arc words that she gets a lot is that “she’s a silly girl living in a fantasy world,” and while that might offend her, it is true.
HAN: “Arc words”? What the hell are “arc words”?
ESME: I’ve . . . never heard that expression before, and I’ve taken a lot of literature and writing classes.
Also, Enter, MAKE SURE YOUR SINGULARS AND PLURALS MATCH!!
Not just because she literally lives in a fantasy world.
ESME: But also because she uses sentence fragments!
She spends a lot of time up in her head, as she creates worlds on the spot, giving Calvin (from Calvin and Hobbes) a run for his money.
ESME: (grinds teeth) Enter did NOT do that. He did NOT just compare his shitty book to Calvin and Hobbes, one of the most brilliant comic strips to ever exist.
Anonymous
Told you OP was just sleeping.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118035395 I apologize for doubting him.
Anonymous
>>118035377 >HAN: “Arc words”? What the hell are “arc words”? >ESME: I’ve . . . never heard that expression before, and I’ve taken a lot of literature and writing classes. It's official, she's never gone on TV Tropes in her life, which is amazing for someone who admits they're on the spectrum.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118035933 She's apparently never heard of Google either.
Anonymous
>>118035377 HAN: Sorry sister, but it looks like he did.
ESME: FUUUCCCCCKK!!
LOOK Enter, Calvin can imagine CIRCLES around Sally on any given day! Moreover, I know Calvin’s a brat, but his creator is FULLY AWARE that he’s a brat, and he can be a brat in a likable way, UNLIKE SALLY. Oh, and Calvin’s relationship with HIS favorite toy is actually GENUINE AND TOUCHING, unlike Sally “I dump my favorite toy in chocolate popcorn for no reason” Dunn and her stupid lizard.
ALSO, thanks to the monotone writing style, Sally never sounds like she’s actually having fun when she’s pretending. Take this passage from Chapter 2, for example.
I tossed my bags onto the couch, making it swing back and forth, and I crashed into the ball pit. I grabbed a nice green one and started tossing them around the room. I hit the television. It bounced off the plate used to protect it, and I won five points. I knocked the rocket ship floor lamp onto one of the beanbag chairs. That was another five points. I wanted a challenge. I looked to the closet door. My old drawing of a dog was waving back at me. If I could hit its paw I would get 50 points. I threw the ball, and it hit the ropes holding the couch to the ceiling. It rocked back and forth and the bags spilled out into the ground. I had lost all of my points.
See? Sally just sounds BORED.
HAN: Are you done yet?
ESME: For now, but Enter will probably say something that makes me explode soon.
So, what are those traits that I “wished I had” growing up?
SHAYERA: Again, if you wanted to be like Sally when you were growing up, that really doesn’t help your image.
Well, her ability to go right out and talk to people. She’s always making friends.
ESME: Really? She’s pretty damn rude to most of the people she talks to. She blows a raspberry at the usher at the movie theater, she throws food at people whether they want it or not, she has a hissy fit when a kid calls Charmichael a stuffed animal – she’s a general ass.
Anonymous
>>118036876 She’s always willing to try something new. Every day is a new adventure. She’s constantly taking risks, and she very rarely lets her inhibitions get in the way.
HAN: She’s also got no inhibitions about abusin’ her mom.
Of course, I had to give her flaws to match.
SHAYERA: Oh Enter, Sally’s BIGGEST flaws are the ones you DIDN’T mean to give her.
Her willingness to make friends comes with the absolute fear of being alone. It’s one of the reasons that Charmichael is so personified in her mind. If he’s this living, breathing creature to her, she doesn’t have to spend one moment of the day alone.
HAN: Sounds like she could use a kid therapist.
New isn’t always good, as Sally can easily run into a terrible situation. With little inhibitions, she can come across as headstrong.
ESME: Enter, some of my favorite characters are headstrong. (points at Han) He’s headstrong. (points at Shayera) She’s headstrong. Sally, meanwhile, is a BITCH.
And risks have the possibility of hurting her, or those she loves.
And that leads us to Linda.
HAN: (sputters) Are you seriously tellin’ us that Sally loves Linda? After all the shit Sally dumped on Linda, you expect us to believe that she LOVES her?? Well if Sally loves Linda, then Proxima must’ve loved me! I guess she had the shit beaten outta me on a regular basis to show how much she LOVED me!!
She was… one of the more difficult characters to write, because all of the reasons that she is the way that she is is long and complex and needs pages and pages of backstory to really figure out. She’s basically been defeated by a long complex string of events. More than was just in the first draft of the book. It’s more of the stuff that I don’t get to tell until later.
SHAYERA: She’s been “defeated by a long complex string of events” and yet Enter still uses her as the butt-monkey for abuse.
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 124
Anonymous
>>118036898 At first, Linda was going to be the straight man, a comedic foil, but that’s a fine line to walk.
SHAYERA: So you decided to make her the character who gets needlessly tortured instead.
It works much better in shorter stories, but it’s hard to keep that interesting for an entire novel. Linda ended up tying into the main conflict of the novel, and its moral, in ways that I didn’t expect.
HAN: WHAT moral? I didn’t see any moral other than “it’s okay to abuse those under your power” or “traffic laws exist only to ruin your fun” or “revenge is the best way to take care of a bully” or “you’re worthless if you try to be yourself.”
The entire series has many messages - that being in charge isn’t easy, for starters.
ESME: But if being in charge gets hard, then you should threaten and abuse those under you.
The main message of the first book revolves around lying. I could say it’s simply “lying is bad,” but the message is a lot deeper than that because lying is a lot more complex than that.
SHAYERA (Enter): “My story is so DEEEP! It’s so deep and complex and DEEEEEEPPP!! Believe me, I IS A DEEP WRITER!”
Talula lies repeatedly to intimidate Sally… into doing something good, her civic duty for the town.
ESME: (sputters) W-what . . . bu-but . . . ah . . . but . . . what . . .
HAN: (patting her back) It’s all right, sister, I’ll say it.
TALULA DIDN’T “LIE REPEATEDLY”!!!
She only lied once in the entire book, and even her sayin’ that Sally got the Party Duty notice “days ago” might’ve been Enter bein’ sloppy and not an actual lie! When Talula said Sally might not be havin’ a party, she BELIEVED that Sally might not have a party – THAT AIN’T A LIE!
SHAYERA: I think Talula should sue her creator for libel.
Linda lies about her flaws and failures to keep up her appearance to her family,
Anonymous
>>118014281 >the mods allow this to continue I know I shouldn't expect much of /co/ mods these days but come the fuck on.
Anonymous
>>118036911 HAN: AND to avoid her daughter-mother’s wrath. Again, given how Sally treats Linda, I DON’T BLAME LINDA FOR LYIN’! I used to lie to Lady Proxima all the time to avoid gettin’ the crap beaten outta me! Course, she usually saw through the lies and I got the crap beaten outta me anyway . . .
ESME: (hugs Han) It’s all right, Han, those days are over.
and from the very first chapter, it’s stated how highly Sally thinks of her family - that she thinks they’re the best in the world.
ESME: She says that to one kid. ONE. KID. And even there, it’s in the context of wanting to one-up HIS family.
SHAYERA: Apparently Enter expects us to only listen to what Sally tells that one kid and proceed to ignore how Sally treats her mother.
HAN: Tellin’ one thing and showin’ another – like Meyer.
And at points, Sally comes to think that maybe she was lying without even really meaning to. It’s not a moral or message that I went in with; it just sort of rose up organically, but it works. And it’s going to play great into the message that’s going to happen in the second book.
HAN: (snorts) Yup. Second book. Totally gonna happen.
SHAYERA: I wonder what sort of “message” Enter would have failed to convey in the theoretical sequel.
One thing that suffered in splitting the book up into parts, I think was Talula. When we take the entire series as a whole, Talula is my favorite character. Not so much here. The original concept of Talula, two years ago, is what would a girl bully be like in this world. Timmy also had a similar antagonist - this world’s boy bully - that was gradually removed from the series, due to lack of attention, interest, or necessity.
ESME: I don’t know what’s weirder: Enter implying that this world only has one girl bully and one boy bully (or, I guess, just one girl bully now) and no other bullies, or Enter saying that the bully is his favorite character.
Anonymous
>>118036930 However, I don’t think that Talula is a bad character in this book. Maybe a bad person, but not a bad character.
HAN: She’s the Designated Villain that everyone hates just cause she’s the Designated Villain.
She’s a decent villain, and a little bit strange in that regard. She’s not totally painted as over-the-top evil, at least from an objective perspective
ESME: She’s introduced with LIGHTNING STRIKING BEHIND HER. How is that NOT painting her as over-the-top evil?
Sally definitely ends up thinking that she’s an evil bully, but throughout the book I made sure to keep the audience on their toes about her.
HAN: A few moments of lip-service ain’t keepin’ the audience on their toes – it’s tryin’ to cover your butt for when people say you made Talula over-the-top.
Talula gets a pony dealership into town, which causes many traffic incidents. That’s the first thing that we hear about her. Before we even see her, Sally gets a party duty notification specifically with her signature. Neither of these things are really evil, but they show that Sally already has a disliking for her.
SHAYERA (Enter): “LOOK HOW COMPLEX MY VILLAIN IS! SEE HOW SHE’S SO FULL OF SHADES OF GRAY? AREN’T I A BRILLIANT WRITER?”
Then Sally has her first confrontation with Talula, which is… one of my favorite scenes of the book because of the intricacies that I needed to write.
ESME: Yes, all the intricacies of Talula hamming it up like a James Bond villain.
On one hand, Talula calls Sally out for the way she’s been behaving - like a spoiled child, refusing to do her civic duty and then barging into the mayor’s office without an appointment, and throwing a temper tantrum.
SHAYERA: And that’s why we all like Talula better than Sally.
On the other hand, she bullies Sally by writing on her forehead in a pen that can’t be removed by water, and confiscates Charmichael.
HAN: Which Sally TOTALLY DESERVED.
Anonymous
>>118036962 Then Talula basically says exactly what Sally did on live television - that she wanted to get out of this Party Duty. Talula is the kind of character who wants to do good, but will do anything in her disposal to do that good. And that’s very prevalent here.
ESME: Enter, morally ambiguous villains are fascinating, but they have to be written well. And oh yeah, if you’re writing a morally ambiguous villain, it also helps if your hero isn’t a little shitball who’s a much bigger bully than the Designated Villain.
Of course, Sally’s the one (or at least, she feels like she’s the one) being screwed over.
HAN: No, the one who’s truly bein’ screwed over is LINDA.
Then after all of this, we learn that Talula made the morning comics free and instituted a program on the news where someone reads those same comics to the kids watching, teaching them to read.
ESME: That was mentioned ONCE and then promptly forgotten about. You don’t get to pat yourself on the back about writing such a complex villain when your lip-service moment is just dropped and might as well not even exist.
This kind of behavior is going to become a lot more prevalent in the rest of the series.
HAN: Again, the sequel’s TOTALLY happening!
Surprisingly, my favorite character in the first book became April, which is something that I didn’t expect.
SHAYERA: Me neither, seeing as how she’s super-annoying.
If you read the scripts, for so many of them, April and Molly/May were… after thoughts.
ESME: So they came after you thought, or did you mean AFTERTHOUGHTS?
It took me awhile to come up with any of them because I focused on the wrong people and the wrong places. Their first appearance is like on script 12, and it’s more or less a cameo.
HAN: I really don’t care about your shitty scripts for a cartoon that’s likely never gonna happen.
Anonymous
>>118036984 Here, they’re both in there in the beginning. April and Molly at first, kind of seem to be stereotypical characters. At first, April seems to be the over-the-top fashionista, and Molly seems to be the tomboyish mechanic. What a lot of people will do, and what people should never, ever do when writing “the two female friends” is make one super girly and one super tomboyish, like femininity is on a spectrum.
SHAYERA: So Enter’s telling people to NEVER do . . . exactly what he did?
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 125
Molly may be a mechanic, but she’s also a sucker for romance stories and finds it sweet.
ESME: The only indication of that in the book was when she thought Robert and Linda kissing was sweet.
I’m still debating what the theme of her room and house is going to be, but it’s not going to have say… a race car theme or a pirate theme.
SHAYERA: Well what if you find out that she likes race cars or pirates?
Beyond that though, she’s incredibly level-headed and takes things in stride. If you dared her to say… eat a bug, she wouldn’t do it, especially not because she’s just a “tomboy.”
ESME: Even though you yourself said in the book that refusing a dare is socially unacceptable and ruins your reputation forever.
HAN: I’m startin’ to think that Enter didn’t actually reread his own book.
She might even be a little bit shy, although her character wasn’t explored much in the first book.
ESME: Big understatement there. She only had maybe four or five lines before the pier scene where she suddenly started talking like Hagrid.
Why is she a mechanic? Because it keeps her mind occupied and her hands busy, and she’s really good at understanding interlocking parts.
HAN: I don’t fucking CARE.
Meanwhile, April started from her stereotype. She was always in on the greatest fashions and overly melodramatic… because.
ESME: You know, it’s usually not a good idea to just throw in a stock character type because.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118036913 Anon, these are the guys who allow /co/ superheroes threads. Do you really expect quality control?
Anonymous
>>118037008 Then I decided that she had 12 siblings, at least that was the number “the last time that she counted.” She isn’t the oldest or the youngest either.
HAN: Yeah, she’s got twelve siblings, but only one of those siblings does anything important and we never see her parents at all.
Then it all came together with a phrase that she says to herself a lot: “make a scene, or don’t be seen.”
ESME: As I said in the spork, April’s situation could have made for an interesting story, but it doesn’t reach any of that potential because we’re stuck with SALLY.
In the later drafts, April became incredibly overshadowed by her siblings who seemed to be living more famous, more exciting lives than her. She ends up wearing these ridiculous outfits because magazines say that they’ll help her stand out… and I’m sure you see the irony of that - the magazines just make her one of many, by adapting to someone else’s style.
SHAYERA: Given that everyone in this book, fashionista or not, wears ridiculous outfits, it’d make April stand out if she actually dressed NORMALLY.
At one point, she even asks Sally, “Do you think that I dyed my hair blue because I think that it looked good?”
ESME: Yeah, and we the readers had no idea that she had blue hair until she said that – when we were over halfway through the book.
On top of that, April is one to hide her true emotions. She almost never lets anyone, even her closest friends, see if she’s crying. She’ll be loud and boisterous at the best of times, but when things are going bad, she’ll close up and inward.
HAN: Don’t care, don’t care, don’t care, don’t care, DON’T CARE.
ESME: It’s like Enter has all these personality characteristics for his characters, but he forgot to put them in the actual book. We saw April trying to keep Sally from seeing that she was crying ONCE, but that doesn’t indicate that she ALWAYS wants to hide her feelings.
None of this was planned, by the way.
Anonymous
>>118037034 ESME: You know, it doesn’t speak very highly of you when you didn’t PLAN to make April anything other than an annoying stereotype.
It all came together with the pieces set in place by earlier drafts, and I can’t wait to see how my characters and my world unfolds to me even more.
SHAYERA: It will “unfold” into making even LESS sense than before!
What’s next? I keep asking myself.
ESME: Abandoning any plans for a sequel, more shitty scripts, a handful of shitty commissioned comics, a failed Indiegogo campaign – basically, a whole lot of NOTHING is what’s next.
I keep trying to delay myself with other projects.
SHAYERA: So he was actively trying to DELAY writing the sequel? I’m beginning to figure out why the theoretical sequel never got written.
ESME: (facepalms) Like I said, I’m self-publishing a book myself soon and it’s the first book in a trilogy. The rough drafts of both the sequel AND the third book are already written and guess what I’m doing while in the final editing stage of the first book? WORKING ON THE SEQUEL!
Trying to make a video game,
ESME: Which, as far as I know, never happened (no, I’m not counting that stupid RPG demo he made when he was a teenager).
trying to see how my old works hold up. It’s odd - things that I thought were really good are showing their age, so to speak.
ESME: Yeah, that happens to all writers. It’s something you deal with.
Throughout the process of writing a novel, I’ve gotten so much better. I can’t just write one if I’m better than when I started my first one.
SHAYERA: If he thinks the Growing Around book is “so much better” than his older stuff, I REALLY shudder to think of what his old stuff’s like.
I mean, it’s not an issue of time. It took me roughly five hours to write this post, and we’re at the cusp of 5,000 words.
HAN: Holy fucking shit, it took him FIVE HOURS to spout out all this word diarrhea?
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118037058 At this rate, I could write the first draft of another children’s novel within a week.
ESME (Enter): “LOOK HOW FAST I CAN WRITE! LOOK AT ME! LOOK HOW SPECIAL I AM!”
I’m at a crossroads, I guess. I want to continue with these characters and this world that I’ve grown to love so much, but I’m a man of ideas.
HAN: And most of those ideas never go anywhere.
I know that I have other worlds to explore, deep stories and characters that will grow.
SHAYERA: Oh GOD, PLEASE stop going on and on about how DEEP your ideas are. You sound like fucking MEYER.
HAN: And Growing Around’s about as deep as a water puddle on Tatooine.
Who knows what “what if” scenario could spark another passion project from me.
ESME: Like, what if you forgot to use a question mark?
There are many tropes and plots that I want to use - time travel, groundhog day loop,
ESME: Groundhog Day is CAPITALIZED! You think you’re such a brilliant writer, and yet you make such amateur mistakes as that.
dream apocalypse, body swap. Who knows, I might find a way to make hypnosis unique and interesting.
SHAYERA: Don’t you just LOVE how he implies that no one’s ever made hypnosis interesting before and the world of fiction NEEDS ENTER TO DO IT BECAUSE NO ONE ELSE CAN?
HAN: Hey, my father-in-law and his padawan once fought off MIND-CONTROLLING PARASITES, that was pretty damn interesting. And creepy as fuck.
ESME: Well, that’s Enter’s long, LONG essay where he says . . . basically nothing. Next up, we get to tear apart an essay where he whines about how people don’t just accept his idiotic universe at face value.
HAN: Oh, that’s gonna be fun.
COUNTS:
KIDS DO THIS, RIGHT?: 78
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 242
MISSING PIECES: 122
YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 213
WHIMSICAL MY ASS: 127
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 125
CONJUNCTION JUNCTION, THAT’S YOUR FUNCTION: 581
Anonymous
How long does this go on?
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118037093 until the tard's wranglers locate him
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118037093 At this point, until it ends.
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND Tue 29 Sep 2020 19:31:42 No. 118037626 Report We’re back again for more of Enter’s madness. Last time, we sporked an essay where he boasted about what a great writer he is and how deep the world of Growing Around is. Now, ho ho boy, now we get to look at how Enter tries to argue for Growing Around’s idiotic premise and how people who don’t just accept everything at face value are meanies who want to ruin the magic. Strap yourselves in – this one’s a doozy. ESME: As shocking as it may seem, a lot of people didn’t just instantly warm up to Growing Around’s premise like Enter wanted them to. HAN: Gee, I wonder why. ESME: I know, people actually asked questions about the universe and pointed out that it didn’t make sense. Imagine that! SHAYERA: Oh noooo, how DARE they not be good little sheep who just accept everything at face value! ESME: So, eventually, that inspired Enter to throw a tantrum write a long, looooong essay about how his world totally makes sense and other people write fantastical stories too and that makes it okay for him to have a world full of holes, so there. Oh boy, this is special. Seriously, I’m talking “You are interrogating this text from the wrong perspective” special. HAN: Okay, now I’m curious. ESME: I’m sure everyone else is too, so let’s release the insanity. I think that it’s finally time to put this debate to rest. SHAYERA: Isn’t it cute that he actually thought this big rant would “put the debate to rest”? If you don’t know, one of the biggest passion projects that I’ve been working on for the past… two and a half years(?) is a series called Growing Around. ESME: I seriously wonder WHY you chose to expend so much time and energy into the project that’s so nonsensical and full of disturbing implications. I know you’ve had other ideas – why didn’t you put energy into THOSE instead?
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>this whole thread
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118037034 >Actually devolves into rocking back and forth waving her Han Solo doll while screeching “Don’t care, don’t care, don’t care, don’t care, DON’T CARE.” Just when I thought things couldn’t get more autistic.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118037626 FOUR MORE TO GO!
You can do it, OP!
Anonymous
Quoted By:
We're all rooting for you, OP!
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118037626 >That image How ironic
Anonymous
By the way, Enter's semi-decent editor Cerra (who did the Lion King video) quit. Leaving him, I believe, with Star (who can't edit for shit) as his only one.
Anonymous
>>118039494 Source and reason?
Anonymous
>>118039527 Source:
https://twitter.com/Cerracrossing/status/1310023311217262594 Reason: Hell if I know. Maybe they still feel bad about the Discord thing.
Anonymous
>>118039572 >conflicts in philosophy "Enter's a fucking asshole."
Anonymous
>>118040067 I'm betting it's either his Covid views ("masks don't work, lockdowns are worse than the virus, etc."), the Discord thing, or both.
So basically what you said, yes.
Anonymous
>>118040111 For a guy who loves his grandparents so much, I don’t get his stance on that.
Anonymous
>>118039572 >>118040111 Didn't he partially debunk the discord thing recently anyway? He's still an asshole though
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118040144 I mean I kinda get his lockdown stance from an economic point of view, how governments have handled the lockdowns (Covid patients being forced into retirement homes that proceed to infect the residents, exemptions to lockdowns based on political protests, people in lockdown not getting basic dietary requirements when in hotel quarantine, locking down until a vaccine is made etc.) and the fact the lockdowns were supposed to flatten the curve so hospitals weren't overwhelmed instead of until the virus is gone.
Regardless though, the points he actually argues is retarded instead of the actual concerns people face during these times.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118040150 Kind of. However, his attitude in that video is still very detestable.
>They knew the rules, so fuck 'em. I'm blunt with everybody. If he weren't so cold to everybody and were willing to take input from people outside of his inner circle, he'd be at least a bit less hated.
Speaking of which, when is this spork going to continue? There's a part picking apart one of Enter's journals.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118040144 He has autism, anon.
He can't think outside himself.
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND Tue 29 Sep 2020 22:30:59 No. 118040724 Report >>118037626 It was planned to be an animated series, and that’s still going to be its true form,
HAN: (snorts) Yup, this cartoon’s still gonna exist, believe him, it’s gonna exist!
but in the meantime I’ve been writing a series of books and stories surrounding it.
ESME: You wrote ONE BOOK. One book ain’t a series. Or did you still think the theoretical sequel was happening when you wrote this?
Ever since the beginning though, the biggest criticism levied at Growing Around has been the concept.
SHAYERA: You know, that really should be a sign that the concept is poorly developed and full of holes.
ESME: Not for Enter, though. For Enter, it’s a sign that people just DON’T GET HIS WONDERFUL WRITING and they’re MEAN TO HIM FOR NO REASON!
The concept is a simple role reversal story - the world is more-or-less designed by kids, and the adults go to school.
SHAYERA: “Simple”? There’s nothing “simple” about a concept THAT COMPLETELY DEFIES ALL LOGIC.
A lot of people have said - and still say - that they have a hard time buying this concept.
HAN: Yeah, and we’ve said our reasons why throughout this spork.
I’m sure that some of this is my fault.
SHAYERA: Given that you’re the one who wrote it, I’d say ALL of it is your fault!
The first scripts that I wrote for this series weren’t fully fleshed out; I personally have a reputation for liking more narrative-based down-to-earth type stories, and have heavily criticized more fanciful stories; and I’m not exactly the best businessman in the world. I have a hard time “selling” things in brief.
ESME: And the excuses begin.
But putting myself aside, I haven’t really been able to buy the arguments against the concept alone.
HAN: He can’t buy the arguments that a society where people are forced to give up their freedom once they grow up IS dystopic? Seriously?
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND Tue 29 Sep 2020 22:32:05 No. 118040745 Report >>118040724 I mean, I understand where some of the criticism comes from. The idea of “kids having power” is in a weird place where it’s been done before, but it hasn’t been done enough to explore all of the ways that it could be done. Most stories like this… are dystopic.
SHAYERA: Including YOURS! GET THAT THROUGH YOUR THICK SKULL!!
Something in society has gone wrong and that’s resulted with kids in power - usually a disease of some kind kills off all of the adults. Or, kids getting power was the thing that caused society to go wrong.
ESME: Or in the case of your world, the kids have the adults sufficiently brainwashed into giving up their rights.
Almost every work like this is on the level of Lord of the Flies. This is because most of them are influenced by Lord of the Flies. And, truly I find that an odd example, for two reasons. The first is that Lord of the Flies wasn’t a critique on child competence, but the competence of humanity in general. It chose children because they are “baser” to the animals that humans are.
ESME: Ah, no, you’re not exactly right there. While it’s true that Lord of the Flies IS making a statement about humanity in general, it is ALSO making a statement about how innocence can easily be corrupted and how people need to be TAUGHT right and wrong in order to have a functioning society. When the boys first get stranded on the island, they start panicking because there are no adults around to protect them, but then they think they can make their own society; however, that goes horribly wrong because guess what? They have no idea how to run a society. They try to establish order with a conch shell, saying that whoever is holding the shell gets to speak, but of course the shell inevitably breaks and with it, so does their sense of order. When these kids start killing each other and hunting each other down, it is meant to represent loss of innocence.
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND Tue 29 Sep 2020 22:33:08 No. 118040762 Report >>118040745 It’s also a deconstruction of another genre that’s very popular. The book was a response to The Coral Island about more-or-less a more optimistic take on the premise of Lord of the Flies. When children create, or are given, their own societies in fiction, they tend to end up like Children of the Corn or Rule of Rose. I understand that, and I understood this going in.
SHAYERA: I have to wonder, did Enter actually read Lord of the Flies, or did he just look it up on Wikipedia?
ESME: It wouldn’t surprise me if he didn’t actually read it.
Anyway, contrary to what Enter seems to think, the concept of kids-in-charge-without-it-being-a-dystopia HAS been done before and done much better.
Let me introduce you to Kidville.
Kidville is from The Easter Bunny is Comin’ to Town, one of the lesser-known Rankin/Bass holiday specials. Kidville is a small society of orphans who have banded together and created their own community. They each have their own jobs and they work together to protect themselves. And sure, it has a few plotholes (where did the buildings come from, for example), but it is FAR more believable than Growing Around.
Why?
Well, first of all, it’s not the entire world being run by kids – it’s a small group of twenty to thirty kids. Second, they’re all orphans, so there’s a REASON for them to be on their own instead of “well, people just give up their rights when they grow up BECAUSE.” Third, THEY DON’T TREAT ADULTS AS LESSER BEINGS. Two adults eventually end up living in Kidville – one is Sunny, the baby bunny the kids find and raise and who grows up to be the Easter Bunny (animals can talk in this special), and the other is a hobo named Hallelujah Jones. Both of them are treated as equal citizens and they both contribute to their society.
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND Tue 29 Sep 2020 22:34:13 No. 118040777 Report >>118040762 So yes, Enter, a Rankin/Bass special managed to create a non-dystopia kid-run society that is far, FAR more believable than yours and unlike your world, Kidville is genuinely not a dystopia – it doesn’t have the super-disturbing implications that Growing Around has.
Do I think that the kind of society created in my novel could work in the real world? No. In the same that I don’t think the kind of society created in the novels of Harry Potter could work in the real world.
ESME: Well no shit, Harry Potter has MAGIC.
SHAYERA: Enter, seriously, don’t compare yourself to Harry Potter. You’re not Rowling, you’ve never been Rowling, and you’ll never be Rowling. She actually DEVELOPED the wizarding world almost to the last detail and DEALT WITH the problems in its society instead of whining that “You all just don’t get it! You’re being unfair with your criticisms! It’s fantasy, so that makes it okay for everything to be implausible!”
HAN: Come to think of it, there’s another fantasy author that Enter resembles much more than Rowling (pic related).
I frequently use that series of books to defend my own,
ESME: Which only makes you look foolish.
so to try and avoid being cliche, I will be using a very wide reference pool of children’s literature and animation - the two mediums which my series is meant to be in.
HAN: And we needed you to tell us that why?
Let’s start with one main fact - Growing Around is a children’s series.
Anonymous
So... how long does OP have left?
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND Tue 29 Sep 2020 22:35:27 No. 118040804 Report >>118040777 ESME: Uh-huh, yeah. Tell me, how many actual kids are fans of your book? On Amazon, a couple of Enter fans mention something like “I read the book to my niece and she loved it” in passing, but those are really generalized comments. In fact, the one and only Amazon review that gives a detailed description on how a kid reacted to the book is, you guessed it, a negative review. The person bought the book for an eight-year-old cousin and said cousin quickly got bored, restless, and confused while they were reading it together. I highly recommend going to Amazon and checking out that review – it’s an eye-opener and it proves what I’ve been saying all along that Enter knows nothing about actual kids.
I’ve been very harsh on people using the “it’s just for kid’s” excuse to write crap because there seems to be a large misunderstanding between adult entertainment and children’s entertainment. The main difference is that children are more willing to accept fanciful concepts, and they’re more willing to suspend their disbelief for less down-to-earth stories.
SHAYERA: Yes, because adults never enjoy fanciful stories. It’s not like my show had a big adult following or anything!
HAN: Or my movies!
ESME: Or Harry Potter, or The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings, or Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra, or any number of superhero movies, or Disney and Pixar movies, nope, adults can’t suspend their disbelief for those stories. Hell, even Sesame Street has a substantial adult following. SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS has a large adult following, and that show’s as nonsensical as they come.
Enter, the problem isn’t that adults have trouble suspending their disbelief – the problem is that YOUR BOOK SUCKS ASS.
One of the most popular children’s books of all time is about a 6-foot anthropomorphic cat in a candy-cane colored hat walking into the house to teach kids about how to have fun. In what’s presumably otherwise the real world.
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND Tue 29 Sep 2020 22:36:31 No. 118040825 Report >>118040804 SHAYERA: Great, now Enter’s comparing himself to Dr. Suess.
If we want to get older than that - a six year old girl gets psychic powers one day. Five kids go to a candy factory that bends the laws of reality and four of them get scarred for life, some even disfigured. An eight-year-old finds a book that has the power to hypnotize others. An eleven-year-old boy becomes a wizard. Four children find a wardrobe to a mystical land.
ESME: Enter, please, you’re only embarrassing yourself by comparing your shit work to all these classic stories.
The most popular cartoon in the world is about a talking Sponge that lives in a pineapple under the sea, and despite what Truth or Square advertises, no one really did care how a pineapple got to bikini bottom.
ESME: But we DO care about how you’re ignoring the rules of capitalization.
Oh, and long BEFORE the “Truth or Square” episode aired, the Season 1 episode “Home Sweet Pineapple” showed SpongeBob’s old pineapple house getting eaten by nematodes, who only left behind a seed. SpongeBob planted the seed, and what do you know, a new pineapple house grew. So yup, we already knew where his current house came from – if you’re going to complain about a kids’ show, at least get the facts right.
HAN: And SpongeBob never gave a shit about continuity anyway.
When we talk about the real world even, many kids are willing to believe in things like Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, monsters in the closet, and the Easter Bunny.
ESME: (mutters) Until they learn that their parents lied to them about the whole thing.
SHAYERA: What?
ESME: Nothing.
Does this mean that children are stupid? No. But there are differences in how kids approach the world. Adults tend to need a justification for something fantastical to happen, while kids can be assumed to automatically want the mystical to happen.
HAN: Enter, there’s nothin’ “mystical” about Growing Around.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118040783 4 segments:
This one
One about the Indiegogo campaign
One where they discuss a journal about Enter's difficulties with criticism
And their final thoughts
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND Tue 29 Sep 2020 22:37:33 No. 118040841 Report >>118040825 ESME: Also, why does Enter assume that adults “need a justification for something fantastical to happen”? Enter, I’m an adult, and fantasy and sci-fi are my two favorite genres. I’ve probably read a hell of a lot more speculative fiction books than YOU have, in fact. I don’t need a “justification” for magic to exist in Harry Potter or for dragons and zombies to exist in A Song of Ice And Fire/Game of Thrones or for daemons and witches and talking polar bears to exist in His Dark Materials.
But I do need a justification for people to stupidly surrender their freedom once they grow up.
Most of the most popular children’s works have some kind of fantastical element within them. While I am sure that some children want more down-to-earth stories, speculative fiction always seems to be of peak interest.
ESME: My favorite books in grade school were the American Girl series, which are historical fiction. No fantastic elements whatsoever. In fact, I didn’t become the fantasy geek I am today until I was older.
HAN: I didn’t read a lotta books as a kid. Course, after my parents died and I joined the White Worms, I wasn’t allowed to read much.
As a child, when you don’t know exactly how the world works, it lets your imagination go to strange and fanciful places. Also, kids can be very logical.
SHAYERA: And yet your book isn’t logical at all.
All milk comes from cows. Chocolate milk is brown. There are brown cows and white cows. Therefore, chocolate milk comes from brown cows. This is one of the most common things that kids believe growing up.
SHAYERA: To quote Wikipedia, CITATION NEEDED!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xwhAq3F8NCE GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND Tue 29 Sep 2020 22:38:42 No. 118040858 Report >>118040841 ESME: (sighs) Look Enter, there are probably some kids who believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows, but I don’t remember ever believing anything like that and I don’t think I’ve ever met a kid who believes that.
HAN: Well where I come from, brown banthas give BLUE milk, so I guess that must make kids’ heads explode.
ESME: Moreover, there’s a THIRD kind of milk that kids drink these days: STRAWBERRY milk.
I’ve never had it and I frankly think it sounds gross, but it was served in the cafeterias of almost every school I worked in when I was a substitute teacher. So how do you think these kids explain strawberry milk? Do they think there are PINK cows?
KIDS DO THIS, RIGHT?: 79
In a way, it’s as logical as it can be with what they understand about the world. Most children don’t know about the actual production of chocolate. Or at the very least, milk is easier to explain.
ESME: Yes, after all, Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup totally isn’t sold in every supermarket and kids never use it to make chocolate milk because stirring chocolate syrup into regular milk is just too sophisticated a task for kids. Nope, these poor kids are stuck knowing nothing about how to make chocolate milk and thinking it just comes from brown cows!
Also, Enter? You’re talking about LITTLE kids. A five-year-old who might think chocolate milk comes from brown cows will have learned that it doesn’t by the time he turns seven. That’s ANOTHER problem with your work – you make all these blanket statements about kids without taking into account that kids CHANGE a lot as they age. While there might not be much difference between a 32-year-old and a 36-year-old, there’s a LOT of difference between a four-year-old and an eight-year-old and they’ll BOTH be very different from a twelve-year-old.
KIDS DO THIS, RIGHT?: 80
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND Tue 29 Sep 2020 22:40:05 No. 118040889 Report >>118040858 Oh, and one more thing. NOT all milk comes from cows! Haven’t you ever heard of basedmilk?
SHAYERA: Also, what the hell do cows have to do with anything?
ESME: It’s Enter trying to show off how much he thinks he knows about kids.
Kids are fully willing to build a world like that in their heads. Kids tend to want to believe in fantastical worlds.
HAN: They want to build a world where brown cows give chocolate milk? Guess these poor kids get traumatized when they learn how chocolate milk is made.
On some level, adults do too. The world of Growing Around doesn’t pretend to be anything more than fiction.
ESME: Oh, now Enter’s using the “It’s FICTION, dammit!” excuse.
HAN: Oh hi, Meyer!
It’s not a blueprint for a real-world society. What it is, is escapism.
SHAYERA: Well Enter, by your very own logic there, you now have no right to criticize ANY work of fiction for being illogical or making no sense because DUR HUR IT’S FICTION!
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 126
Just like an action movie about a musclebound hero highly trained in everything destroying all of the terrorists, which also couldn’t happen in reality. It’s just like a picture-perfect romance where they find that perfect partner who looks picture perfect and is everything that the main character wishes for, which also isn’t going to happen in reality.
ESME (Enter): “Look, see, this stuff couldn’t happen in reality either, so my work is exactly the same and you shouldn’t criticize it!”
Enter, you don’t understand the difference between “this couldn’t happen in reality” and “this couldn’t happen in reality, but the author still works to make it believable.”
SHAYERA: Plus, he’s missing the point about his world being a creepy-as-fuck dystopia underneath its candy coating.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118040889 >Post gets fucked by the filter kek
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND Tue 29 Sep 2020 22:41:14 No. 118040919 Report >>118040889 The main argument against Growing Around’s concept is that “it’s unbelievable.” I think that most of the conflict that I’ve been having is that “unbelievable” can mean so many different things.
HAN: At this point I’m startin’ to think that Enter’s actively trying NOT to understand why people don’t buy his concept.
Here’s my first reaction - a world where kids are in control is as unbelievable as faster-than-light travel, bringing the dead back to life, magical spells, or a wardrobe that takes people to another world and halts their aging process.
ESME: WRONG! The wardrobe didn’t “halt” the kids’ aging process! They grew up in Narnia and even FORGOT their previous lives for a while! They changed back into kids when they went back through the wardrobe because TIME MOVES DIFFERENTLY IN NARNIA THAN IT DOES IN OUR WORLD. That’s not “halting” their aging process.
I can go on all day because the point of speculative fiction is to showcase worlds that do not exist.
ESME: (grinds teeth) Enter. Buddy. People don’t hate Growing Around because it’s fantasy. They hate it because it’s POORLY DEVELOPED AND IS FULL OF HOLES AND UNFORTUNATE IMPLICATIONS. My God, thinking that people hate Growing Around only because it’s fantasy is like Meyer thinking that people call Twilight sexist only because Edward rescues Bella.
SHAYERA: Maybe we should’ve done a “Mr. Enter = Stephenie Meyer” count.
My next reaction is to think of the implications - that having adults go to school is way more unbelievable than muggle parents who do not believe in magic sending their children out of a school where they learn reading, writing, and arithmetic, to go to a castle to learn spells for seven years in an environment where they could be (and nearly are) killed, almost constantly in a place that remains hidden from our muggle satellites and other high-tech measures of detection… 100% of the time, without any fuss whatsoever.
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND Tue 29 Sep 2020 22:42:33 No. 118040940 Report >>118040919 SHAYERA (Enter): “See, SEE? Harry Potter has a plothole, so that makes it okay for my world to make zero sense!”
ESME: Except that it’s not really a plothole. Given that Dumbledore went to explain things to Tom Riddle in Book 6, it’s fair to assume that Hogwarts professors also visit Muggle parents to explain Hogwarts and the wizarding world to them. Also, while Harry’s years at Hogwarts were indeed dangerous, that was during a very dangerous time for the wizarding world in general – Voldemort’s quest to rise again and his subsequent reign of terror. I don’t think Hogwarts is usually as dangerous as it is during Harry’s years there.
No one has really been able to explain this dissonance to me, beyond “yours is more unbelievable” which is just a matter of opinion.
SHAYERA: And now he’s using the “it’s just a matter of opinion” excuse. Maybe we should get out the Suethor Bingo cards.
ESME: Enter, you want me to explain the dissonance? Fine, I’ll explain the dissonance, even though you blocked me when I tried to explain it to you earlier.
Number 1: Your kids are able to become business owners and politicians and fucking astronauts without ANY EDUCATION WHATSOEVER. They don’t even go to elementary school, yet alone however many years of college/specialized education that would be required for some of their jobs. Now, if all your kids were, say, born as supergeniuses, then we might could buy it better, but they’re not – they’re no more intelligent than kids in our world. Sally thinks carrots were invented, for crying out loud. Guess what, learning how to do jobs takes TIME, and your kids don’t seem to have ANY time to learn the skills necessary for their jobs (not to mention basic skills like reading and writing). Hell, there’s a two-year-old fashion designer – how the everloving FUCK did she learn how to be a fashion designer when she was still learning basic speech and potty training?
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND Tue 29 Sep 2020 22:44:02 No. 118040963 Report >>118040940 Number 2: The adult school only teaches frivolous skills that they should already know since they’ve already had their kid careers. They don’t get amnesia when they turn eighteen – if knowing how to finger-paint is such an essential skill for whatever the fuck they do after they graduate, they should already know it since they’ve BEEN in charge of society already. Do we make people repeat fifth grade in order to get into college? Of course not! Sure, some students need to take remedial courses in order to get a refresher, but not everyone. If you get a good score on your SAT/ACT/general placement test, you can just waltz right into college-level courses because you KNOW what you need to know. Moreover, since you don’t tell us what the hell the adults do after they graduate, it’s impossible for us to get involved with how important their education is.
Number 3: Your entire concept relies on people SURRENDERING THEIR FREEDOM when they grow up. THAT’S the biggest problem people have with this concept – you insist over and over that it’s not a dystopia when anyone who isn’t a sufficiently-brainwashed Enter drone can see as plain as day that the adults are being oppressed as fuck (and if the way Sally treats Linda is any indication, this society also condones ABUSE, yes, I’ll yell it over and over). Enter, there’s a certain river in Egypt, and you’re full of it.
And you know what? I’ve mentioned that I’m publishing my own book soon. It takes place in a fantastical world with fairies and mermaids and vampires and the like and at first it seems like a fun place to live, but guess what? IT’S A DYSTOPIA. Even though the characters aren’t aware that it’s a dystopia at first, the fact remains that it is one. Without giving too much away, let’s just say that the queen of the land has everyone ensnared in her grip.
Anonymous
Did Esme specify what got her blocked? Was it that commentary she did?
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND Tue 29 Sep 2020 22:45:13 No. 118040981 Report >>118040963 I had a lot of fun building the world, but it’s still a dystopia, I’m aware it’s a dystopia, and I worked with it being a dystopia while writing it.
HAN: Are you done yet?
ESME: Yeah, let’s move on.
Luckily, some people have been able to ask more specific questions - how do kids get their jobs, what are adults training to do in school, what do they do after, how are teenagers treated? Some of the questions I’ve answered - teenagers are not their own category in Growing Around. That may sound “unbelievable”, but in the real world, teenagers haven’t even been considered an age group for one-hundred years. You were either “working” or “too young to work.”
SHAYERA: There was also child labor. You know, like how your book is full of child labor.
ESME: Yes Enter, I’m fully aware that the term “teenager” has only been used since around the 1940s, but once again, you don’t acknowledge that children still CHANGE DRAMATICALLY AS THEY GET OLDER. PUBERTY, ENTER, HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF PUBERTY??
However, sometimes the answers come later. I feel like… if I was writing a mystery story, people would be complaining that I didn’t give away who the culprit was in the first sentence.
HAN: Is he serious? He’s actually comparin’ people pointing out the holes in his world to WANTING TO KNOW THE CULPRIT IN A MYSTERY STORY ON THE FIRST PAGE??
SHAYERA: I think you’re right and he really doesn’t want to get why people have problems with his concept.
Speculation is fine, and even encouraged, but I don’t really buy needing some of the answers to “accept” what’s going.
HAN: Well why the fuck should we care about Linda’s failing grades when we don’t know what the hell she’s s’posed to do after graduation? Hell, why doesn’t Linda just QUIT school since as far as we know, she ain’t goin’ for any good reason anyway?
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND Tue 29 Sep 2020 22:47:10 No. 118041015 Report >>118040981 With the Narnia example, we didn’t learn how the Wardrobe came to be, until six of the books were written.
ESME: Oh, so you DO know about The Magician’s Nephew? Then why were you acting clueless about its existence in the last essay we sporked?
And we didn’t learn that the Force was caused by the Midichlorians until the prequel movies.
ESME: (eyes twitching) Guys, I need you to hold onto me – I’m about to explode.
HAN: Uh, okay. (takes her arm)
SHAYERA: I think I know what’s about to happen. (takes Esme’s other arm)
ESME: Thank you. Now I can explode.
THE FORCE ISN’T CAUSED BY MIDICHLORIANS, YOU IDIOT!!!
I’M SO FUCKING SICK OF PEOPLE JUMPING TO THAT CONCLUSION! WATCH THE GODDAMN MOVIE AND ACUTALLY LISTEN TO WHAT QUI-GON SAYS!! “THEY CONTINUALLY SPEAK TO US, TELLING US THE WILL OF THE FORCE,” THAT’S WHAT HE SAYS! MIDICHLORIANS CHANNEL THE FORCE – THEY EXPLAIN WHY SOME PEOPLE ARE FORCE-SENSITVE AND OTHERS AREN’T, BUT THEY ARE NOT ACTUALLY THE FORCE!!! IF YOU’RE GOING TO WHINE ABOUT THEM, THEN GET YOUR FACTS RIGHT FIRST!!
HAN: Shit, I ain’t even Force-sensitive and I used to not even believe in the Force, but even I know that.
SHAYERA: Okay, can we move on?
ESME: (takes deep breath) Yeah.
I bring these examples up in particular. There are three ways in which an explanation can harm a product - if it just moves the same question one step forward (as in the Magician’s Nephew), if it doesn’t actually answer anything, or if it’s incredibly convoluted or contradicts previous information..
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND Tue 29 Sep 2020 22:48:48 No. 118041057 Report >>118041015 HAN (Enter): “So to avoid all that, I’m just not gonna explain anything and then whine when people ask questions.”
In the Magician’s Nephew, it’s explained that the Wardrobe was created by a tree planted by a seed from Narnia. To get this seed, a ring was used to hop in between dimensions. Great… we know where the wardrobe came from, but how did the ring come into existence?
SHAYERA: Does anyone else get the feeling that someone pointed out The Magician’s Nephew to him when he made that last post and he only THEN read it or looked it up on Wikipedia?
First of all, this explanation doesn’t make the events in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe easier to swallow. Secondly, it probably wasn’t thought up, as that book was written.
ESME: I don’t know if it was or wasn’t. I’m not Lewis, I wasn’t there when he wrote it, but even if it wasn’t, that doesn’t make The Magician’s Nephew a bad book. Moreover, the story isn’t just about where the wardrobe came from. The titular magician’s nephew is the professor that the kids stay with in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and The Magician’s Nephew is his story.
And hell, the One Ring wasn’t the One Ring yet when Tolkien was writing The Hobbit – it was just the prize in the riddle contest, but then Tolkien’s imagination took off and we got Lord of the Rings. If Tolkien had just thought, “Eh, this might make an interesting story, but we don’t need to explain where the magic ring came from,” we wouldn’t have LOTR and the world of fantasy literature would be a much poorer place.
Thirdly, the book doesn’t suffer for having a lack of it. But, did the question ever really arise to how a Wardrobe could take kids to Narnia (where these children become rulers, by the way).
SHAYERA: Yeah, they become rulers and they DON’T get dethroned once they hit eighteen.
HAN: Plus, they got friends like Tumnus and the beavers to advise them.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118040783 I dunno, depends on how long the euthanasia scheduling will take
Anonymous
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>>118040762 I’m impressed that this thing actually mentioned The Coral Island, but disappointed that Enter, and then Esme, just barrel on right past that mention without giving any thought or research into what The Coral Island actually is or what its existence really means to Lord of the Flies and the ensuing dystopian subgenre that Lord of the Flies influenced. Like, Enter just drops the tidbit that Lord of the Flies was written as a response to The Coral Island, but immediately thereafter says that most fiction of this nature leans towards being like Lord if the Flies, which is only sorta true for everything that came after Lord of the Flies. It forgets that, before that, there’s a shit ton of formerly popular fiction more like The Coral Island. And then Esme also sorta ignores all that.
Im disappointed when people bring up Lord of the Flies and make it clear that their highschool english classes really failed to make them understand the importance of that historical context.
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND Tue 29 Sep 2020 22:49:57 No. 118041077 Report >>118041057 ESME: Also, Enter is really missing the point here. He seems to think that the only reason you would explain anything in your fantasy/sci-fi world would be to hold your reader’s hand through any possible questions they might have. Not to actually DEVELOP your world or make it feel more concrete and believable or anything like that. Nope, if your readers are asking questions, clearly the fault is with them for wanting to know more and not with you for poor worldbuilding.
Then there’s the midichlorians,
ESME: I can already tell I’m not gonna like this . . .
which have kind of become shorthand for bad worldbuilding.
ESME: I was right – I don’t like this.
HAN: (pounds fists on the table) Enter, my universe can worldbuild GALAXIES around your universe! LITERALLY!
ESME: Moreover, they’ve only become “shorthand for bad worldbuilding” because people like you confused “midichlorians channel the Force” with “midichlorians ARE the Force” and the Star Wars fanbase is so notoriously whiny that they’ll lose their shit over one thing they don’t like (and misunderstood) and ignore how AWESOMELY DETAILED the rest of the SW universe is and if midichlorians had been mentioned in the original trilogy, no one would have given a shit . . .
HAN: Lemmie do this, sister, since this is my universe he’s talkin’ about.
ESME: Knock yourself out.
HAN: (clears throat) Enter, look at what all my universe has.
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND Tue 29 Sep 2020 22:51:20 No. 118041102 Report >>118041077 We got lightspeed travel. We got sentient droids. We got a huge variety of planets inhabited by all sorts of different species. We got lifelike holograms. We got a whole shit-ton of different starships. We got laser blasters and lightsabers. We got technology that can rebuild a guy as a cyborg after he’s BURNED ALIVE. And of course, we got the freakin’ FORCE. And guess what? ALL OF IT IS DEVELOPED! There are encyclopedias about our starships and planets! BACKGROUND CHARACTERS have names and backstories! Hell, go to a little website called Wookieepedia and you’ll see that SO MUCH THOUGHT AND CREATIVITY went into creatin’ our universe and everything in it, but you’re just concentratin’ on ONE THING that you got wrong in the first place and callin’ it bad worldbuilding.
And you know what? Sure, the audience doesn’t need a full-out technical lesson on how Vader’s suit functions while watchin’ the movies, but the fact that the information still EXISTS shows how much people care about makin’ our universe as real and believable as possible – and guess what, they don’t whine about people askin’ questions about how our universe functions.
SHAYERA: Okay, can we move on now?
HAN: Sure.
And I do understand that a lot of people are using it to deflect questions about their own mysteries.
ESME: Like YOU did in the video I made a commentary on.
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 127
For instance, the producers of Lost used them to justify not explaining anything, and then when the series ended and they didn’t explain everything, it pissed a lot of people off.
ESME: Never watched Lost, but I’ve heard about how people were angry about the ending. Course, Enter is just going to use this to further his excuses.
On the other hand, the midichlorians did explain everything, and it pissed a lot of people off.
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND
GROWING AROUND - ARGUING FOR THE PREMISE OF GROWING AROUND Tue 29 Sep 2020 22:53:15 No. 118041136 Report >>118041102 ESME: They explained ONE THING, Enter. ONE. THING. They explained why some people are Force-sensitive and some aren’t – THAT’S ALL. This Star Wars geek isn’t going to take you seriously when you don’t know what you’re talking about.
HAN: To hear Enter talk, you’d think our entire universe sprung out of midichlorians.
SHAYERA: Well, Qui-Gon does say life couldn’t exist without them, but I think that means because they channel the Force through everything. Personally, I think people mainly lost their shit over them because they have a funny name.
ESME: And the SW fanbase is so easily pissed off anyway.
Lost is a mystery series. It was about finding an answer. To give an example more closely related to Growing Around - to not give an answer about the island in Lost would be like not explaining who wrote the journals in Gravity Falls.
ESME: Never watched either, so I can’t comment there.
In Star Wars the characters know about the Force, so the audience doesn’t have to - beyond what they can see.
ESME: I can comment on THAT, though.
Enter, even taking the midichlorians out of the equation altogether, did you miss that part of A New Hope where Obi-Wan EXPLAINED WHAT THE FORCE WAS? Yeah, Luke didn’t know what the Force was and Obi-Wan explained it to him - he didn’t go, “welp, the audience doesn’t need to know about the Force beyond what they can see, so I won’t explain what it is.”
Also, why do you think all those Star Wars character/planet/vehicle/whatever guidebooks and websites like Wookeepedia exist? Because people LIKE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT FICTIONAL UNIVERSES THEY LOVE. You’ve heard of nerd culture, right? Worlds like the Star Wars universe, Middle-Earth, the wizarding world, the world of Avatar/Korra, the Game of Thrones world, the Star Trek universe, the many worlds of the His Dark Materials books, the futuristic world in the Lunar Chronicles books, etc. are so appealing BECAUSE they’re so detailed and expansive.
Anonymous
You know, I think this thread is the natural conclusion to all the Enterspam over the past few months. There's really no place to go after this. This is the peak. The limit. The magnum opus of autism. Well done.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118024181 Does anyone have the comic version of this?
Anonymous
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>>118041057 Neither of these dummies knows dick all about Narnia.
Anonymous
Between the Covid things, Nick-O-Rama, harassing the Roar staff, the Discord thing, and losing two of his editors, it's amazing that Enter's channel might just survive this year.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118041146 After this, we’re not gonna be talking about Enter anymore. We’re go na be celebrating this thread.
Anonymous
>>118041291 >harassing the Roar staff That's a surefire way to get him blacklisted from the animation industry forever.
Of course, he never had a chance in hell in the first place, he's a cartoon reviewer with a series called "Animated Atrocities". That alone is like poison to the industry types. Anonymous
Quoted By:
And even when you set aside his controversies, he usually makes one video a month, two at best. How is he not bleeding subscribers?
>>118041392 Considering Enter wants to independently develop GA to avoid network demands, that's not a big issue. Except he's anticipating an indie animation boom that probably won't happen.
Anonymous
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I'm glad the beat thread on /co/ survives.
Anonymous
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>>118018746 No one will use this for memeing,
because everyone will forget this fanfic review exists as soon as it ends
because no one can read more than a few lines before emptying their mind of all thought
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118041136 >autist defending midichlorians >has discussion with her sporksonas about the nature of midichlorians Anonymous
And here I thought this was just another Mr. Enter roast thread...
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118042117 It's not too late for that.
Anonymous
what the hell is this thread
Anonymous
Give me the quick rundown on this Enter guy and why he sucks I'm ignorant of all this but morbidly curious.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118042192 Someone decided to post a commentary on Mr. Enter's book to make fun of either him or the person who wrote it (or both).
Anonymous
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>>118042206 Stubborn and thick-headed animation reviewer who tends to make an ass out of himself with his caustic videos or uninformed opinions.
He was also inspired by a lousy pilot to make his own cartoon that's mutated into a strange mix of Kids Next Door and Bojack Horseman. This book was (he disowned it) part of it.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118042206 Untreated autist who thinks his weird obsessions are unquestionable laws of taste. His most notable work is his idea for a cartoon, "Growing Around" which is a shameless trip deep into his magical realm
Anonymous
>>118042192 Allow E celeb talk so that this autistic shit never happens again
Anonymous
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118042681 E-celeb talk is already allowed.
Anonymous
what the hell does this chick do all day nowadays? I can't imagine wasting your time like this. I mean, if it was a video I'd get it, at least you get a few ad bucks, patreon, and maybe a sponsor
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118043632 Apparently the fantasy novel was the first of a trilogy, so she’s probably working on that, at least.
Anonymous
Anonymous
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HE'S STILL GOING
Anonymous
Anonymous
>>118044202 haha funni word
Anonymous
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>3 enter threads
Anonymous
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>>118044217 it was a different time
Anonymous
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>>118041057 Weren't the rings made from the ashes of an atlantean box Uncle Andrew inherited from a fairy?
Anonymous
>>118014674 Considering that he's been posting this shit with only seemingly taking breaks to sleep and occasionally eat something, I would say that he's still very much fucking insane
Anonymous
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>>118044202 Apparently the term comes from wanting to "Poke your eyes out with a spork"
Anonymous
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OP, please, you need to stop this. Think of your parents
Anonymous
>>118044830 I think there have probably been 3 or 4 OPs by now, with each new one picking it up when it’s apparent the former one has stopped.
Anonymous
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>>118045001 That seems more plausible, but for the sake of entertainment value I really want this whole carnival to be the work of one really dedicated guy
Anonymous
Quoted By:
Esme is almost a worse writer than enter and mayer
Anonymous
Growing Around is not a mystery series, at least not at present. There are no characters trying to figure out whodunnit. There’s no tell-tale signs of an ancient conspiracy. Characters may be frustrated with their lot in life, but not in any profound way compared to the real world. HAN (Enter): “Hear that? ONLY mystery series need to be thoroughly developed! If it ain’t a mystery, then don’t bother explainin’ anything!” And then there’s the final way I can interpret the “unbelievable” argument - that characters wouldn’t act this way, even if it was the society that they’ve grown up into and the only thing that they’ve ever known. ESME: So if you’re living in an oppressive society that forces you to give up your rights when you grow up, you should totally just bow down to the oppression and not try to change things because it’s the only thing you’ve ever known! I guess women and minorities should never have fought for equal rights since hey, being oppressed was the society they grew up in! WHIMSICAL MY ASS: 128 I guess that’s fair. It’s why they killed Gilligan after the twelfth time they got the islanders stranded. It’s why Wile-E Coyote ordered that pizza and stopped chasing the Roadrunner. It’s why Mystery Inc calls the police every time that they find that a monster is attacking them. It’s why Brain stopped being friends with Pinky. It’s why Squidward didn’t wait eight seasons to get a restraining order, and why he called the police and got Patrick and Spongebob arrested. It’s why Dexter’s father noticed an extraordinarily high electric bill the month after Dexter started up his laboratory and... SHAYERA (Enter) “See? SEE? These shows use Status Quo is God in order to be funny, so that makes it okay for the adults to be oppressed! Never mind that I’ve complained about Status Quo is God in my reviews!” HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 128
Anonymous
>>118045458 But, I’ll play ball. Let’s pretend that this fictional story that doesn’t take place in your reality actually takes place in your reality.
HAN (Enter): “BAWWW, PEOPLE WANT LOGIC IN A FICTIONAL STORY!”
“Why would people give up their job and basically rely on their kids?” I dunno, why do they do it in the real world, just forty-years later. I mean, that’s what real-world retirement is, isn’t it? Quit work because of old age and rely on your kids to provide for you (or any money you’ve saved up). In the real world, at least in the United States, most people hate their jobs and want to give it up well before 18 years.
ESME: Wow, talk about strawmanning the argument. Enter, are you really this dense or are you actively trying to not get it? Your adults don’t just give up their jobs – they give up their RIGHTS. In our world, retired people can still drive and vote and, so long as their health and finances allow it, live independently. My mom is retired and I’m not taking care of her because she’s still perfectly able to take care of herself. Oh, and guess what else? When/if the day ever comes when I DO have to take care of her, I sure as hell won’t be threatening to feed her roller skates or making her wear humiliating outfits.
SHAYERA: Also, I LOVE how Enter just inadvertently made his universe even worse by implying that the kids hate their jobs so much that they can’t WAIT to be subservient to their own offspring.
“How do kids get their own jobs?” There’s a city-sponsored career day where all businesses offering jobs open their doors and try to recruit any new kids in. Isn’t me answering this question interview style so much better than me integrating it into the plot where it can naturally flow? And yes, if you’re wondering that is the correct answer.
SHAYERA: Oh BOO HOO, people had a question about your world, how fucking TERRIBLE.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
MAKE IT STOOOOOOP!!!
Anonymous
Anonymous
>>118045633 Either that or OP 5 has been activated
Anonymous
>>118045513 ESME: And a career day doesn’t really answer the question either. I wasn’t wondering how they get their jobs so much as I was wondering how they learn the skills required for their jobs – some of which would normally take YEARS to learn – without ever going to school.
“Why do adults have kids in the world of Growing Around” and “why do adults listen to their kids?” are questions that come up a lot. They have very complex answers. Well, I mean… except for the first one. The answer is… humans are animals and animals have a natural inclination to… wait, this is a kid’s show.
HAN: Yup, cause humans are sex-addicts, they’re totally gonna make themselves into slaves to their offspring for the sake of good old sex!
ESME: And it’s not like homosexuality exists! Or oral, anal, handjobs, vibrators, or other kinds of sex that don’t result in pregnancy! Or hell, nobody’s capable of timing sex around periods so it won’t put a bun in the oven! And even if kids never invented condoms or contraception in this world, if having kids means being subservient to them, I think ADULTS would invent condoms and birth control pretty quickly.
And shit, if getting pregnant would result in me being subject to my spawn’s every whim, I think I could abstain for the rest of my life.
SHAYERA: Moreover, Enter, your society pretty much FORCES people to have kids whether they want them or not so they’ll have someone to take care of them in this world where they have no rights. Enter, YOU’RE ASEXUAL. If you lived in your own universe, you’d be in an adult orphanage.
“Why do adults listen to their kids” because kids probably know how best to navigate a kid-run society.
HAN: Which only begs the question of why kids are runnin’ the society in the first place.
ESME: Wow. Seriously, wow, way to make your dystopia even MORE terrifying.
If you don’t get it, then let’s try altering that sentence a bit.
Anonymous
>>118045758 “Why do women obey their husbands?” Because men probably know how best to navigate a man-run society.
“Why do slaves obey their masters?” Because white people probably know how best to navigate a white-run society.
Do you get it NOW, Enter?
HAN: Shit, the adults in this universe are so brainwashed that they’ll put up with any abuse cause the kids “know best.” THAT’S why Linda can’t fix her own meals or choose not to participate in food fights or refuse to wear a stupid grounded outfit?
SHAYERA: (sings) “Daughter knows best, listen to your daughter, it’s a scary world out there..."
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hTJvlsHlSpo WHIMSICAL MY ASS: 129
ESME: And this is the same guy who got angry at a Family Guy episode for promoting the idea that people in abusive relationships should stay in those relationships in order to preserve the status quo.
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 129
And if you think that’s not true, watch any adult try really, really hard to appeal to “the youth.”
SHAYERA: You mean like when Mr. Enter tries to write a kids’ book?
And there’s the general idea the parents in the world of Growing Around want to see their kids succeed as much as possible - how they do it in the world of Growing Around is different than in the real world, but it’s the same human desire.
ESME: They put up with abuse because they want to see their little brats succeed.
HAN: Oh I get it now! Me and the other scumrats let Proxima beat us and starve us cause we wanted to see her SUCCEED! Makes perfect sense now!
WHIMSICAL MY ASS: 130
I mean… this brings up some philosophical questions about having kids in the real world. If you look at any media portrayal (not aimed at kids), any comedian, or anyone talking about kids that aren’t there’s, you’d wonder why anyone would have kids in the real world either.
Anonymous
>>118045811 ESME: (facepalms) Enter, I don’t have any kids and given my age, the chances of me having biological kids are dwindling, but when I was in college I babysat a friend’s daughter for pocket money, and she was the sweetest, most adorable little girl in the world. I absolutely CHERISH that time. Then after college I worked as a substitute teacher for several years and yes, sometimes the kids drove me crazy, but I still really enjoyed it. Point is: I like kids, even if they aren’t my own.
Oh, and in the real world, people who don’t want kids can choose NOT to have them and still live perfectly fulfilling lives WITHOUT needing a kid to take care of them.
“What do adults do when they graduate?” Do you really want me to spoil the ending of one of the character arcs? Wouldn’t it be more satisfying to actually see a graduation within the story and what takes place during/after it? Or would you rather me, right now, tell you that this guy Voldemort has these things called Horcruxes and Harry Potter is going to destroy one of them in the second book because he accidentally had access to one of the correct weapons.
SHAYERA: God, STOP COMPARING YOUR WORK TO HARRY POTTER! YOUR WORK IS NOWHERE CLOSE TO HARRY POTTER AND YOU’RE ONLY MAKING YOURSELF LOOK PRETENTIOUS!
ESME: And as I said in the spork, knowing what adults do after they graduate actually IS important to the Linda subplot. We’re supposed to be worried about her bad grades and concerned about what she’s going to do later, but given that we DON’T KNOW what the adults normally do after graduation, we’ve got no reason to care about Linda’s grades. Hell, for all we know, the adults are just going to school for no good reason.
Anonymous
>>118045842 Moreover, some of his early scripts actually DID reveal that adults worked as consultants of sorts after they graduated, coming up with ideas for stuff kids could make, but I’m guessing that Enter dropped that idea, probably because it essentially meant that old people were the ones truly in charge of society. Still, it makes no sense to say “No no, I can’t reveal this now, it’d be a SPOILER!” when he already DID reveal an early version of it.
HAN: How much do you wanna bet that ENTER doesn’t know what they do after they graduate now and is just usin’ this spoiler thing as an excuse?
SHAYERA: You know what else?
ESME: What?
SHAYERA: Okay, the adults are going to school to do some vague something or other after they graduate. Point is, they’re going to be doing SOMETHING. That means that in this world, people go to work when they’re as young as two, then when they turn eighteen they’re forced to go to school whether they want to or not, then after they graduate from school, they do whatever the fuck they’re supposed to do after graduation until they die.
This world has NO RETIREMENT. No retirement and no real childhood – just work, school, and then work again.
WHIMSICAL MY ASS: 131
HAN: Also, if you’re expected to go to work when you’re two, then how come Sally was able to get outta gettin’ a job? Did she just decide that she wanted to mooch off of her brother without any trouble?
MISSING PIECES: 123
Remember that Adventure Time didn’t come swinging out of the gate talking about the Mushroom War, and Steven Universe didn’t talk about Rose’s rebellion on episode one (or even on the first episode the show really took off). When distant from graduation, people don’t tend to think what happens after it.
Anonymous
>>118045884 ESME: Except Sally DID think about what happens after graduation in your stupid book. When she worried about Linda’s bad grades, she thought “What was she going to do?” after graduation. She’s thinking about what happens after graduation, but she’s refusing to tell the reader about it. That’s not maintaining a mystery – that’s just bad writing.
I can’t promise that all questions will be answered in time, but I’d like a little faith that I will answer the questions that need to be answered.
HAN: You mean in the sequel book that’s totally gonna happen?
Is “why are the kids in charge”? A question that needs to be answered. Yes, and no. I think that it doesn’t directly need an answer, but it needs to be answered in context. The premise has to justify itself.
SHAYERA: Well the fact that so many people don’t buy it shows that it DOESN’T justify itself.
On one level, I think it does with the child fantasy escapism aspect.
ESME: Again, how many actual kids are fans of your book??
Growing Around easily sets itself up for parody and satire of adult society as a whole. The second novel is about two children running for a political position with real power, trying to impress voters that are children.
HAN: The second book that’s TOTALLY HAPPENING!
SHAYERA: Trying to impress voters that are children. Well, there’s confirmation: adults can’t vote.
WHIMSICAL MY ASS: 132
It just screams possibilities for political satire, which gives the premise merit. By shifting who is in charge, a writer can easily shine a light on aspects of real-world society and how they might be. Beyond that, it’s entertaining.
SHAYERA (Enter): “My dull-as-fuck writing style is ENTERTAINING! Believe me!”
The concept has already proven that it can produce enough individual plotlines to support something like an actual show.
Anonymous
>>118045903 ESME: Enter, your having written a bunch of dull scripts doesn’t mean the concept has “proven itself.” The fact that there don’t seem to be any Growing Around fans who weren’t already Enter fans shows that the concept HASN’T proven itself.
This debate has just frustrated me to be honest, as it goes back and forth, and it’s one of the criticisms that I will directly say is unfair.
SHAYERA: (looks at the Suethor Bingo card) Hmm, “Other people do this too!” “It’s FANTASY, dammit!” “It’s FICTION, dammit!” “That’s just a matter of opinion!” and now “Your criticism is UNFAIR!” BINGO!
ESME: And yet Enter gets onto cartoon directors for being immature about criticism.
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 130
I’ve come to learn that some people do have a harder time suspending their disbelief to fanciful concepts, but Growing Around was originally envisioned to be animation. And if you haven’t noticed, animation has some interestingly strange concepts.
HAN: Shit, he’s not done with the excuses?
Remember that the most popular cartoon is about a Sponge who lives in a pineapple under the sea, and no one questions why these sea creatures can talk and have built their own society. Or why they used a kitchen sponge instead of a sea sponge. I myself haven’t questioned that either. Do I complain about the logic in Spongebob? Absolutely, but the problems in the story - not the concept. I don’t question why a Sponge can talk; I question why he’s stalking and tormenting someone when it’s been established that he’s a nice guy
ESME: And we question why Sally is abusing and tormenting Linda when she allegedly thinks her family’s the “best in the world.”
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 131
Anonymous
>>118045938 Then there’s Fairly OddParents, which is probably the best indication of what I’m trying to avoid. Fairly OddParents has added so many impromptu rules to its universe and such a convoluted canon that they can do literally nothing without contradicting everything that they’ve done. I don’t question that a kid has magical fairies that can grant his every wish. I question it when they go against the rules that they themselves have established.
ESME: Admittedly, I slacked away from watching FOP soon after Cosmo and Wanda had their baby, so I’m not up to date there, but when I did watch, I don’t remember “Da Rules” getting contradicted too much. But again, I’m not up to date, so things might have changed since then.
HAN: Sides, what does FOP goin’ overboard with “Da Rules” have to do with Enter’s world bein’ a hole-filled dystopia?
What about Gumball, which is a mish-mash of every single kind of being that all live in relative harmony. I don’t question why Hector doesn’t destroy the town every single day, or how the T-Rex doesn’t cause traffic jams just going to school. If we’re talking about the competence level of kids in general, have you seen cartoons like Kids’ Next Door or Phineas and Ferb? Honestly, in most shows aimed at kids, it’s a wonder that kids haven’t taken over, in shows like Fairly Odd Parents where every adult is a moron and kids have magical fairies
SHAYERA: Interesting that he uses FOP as an example, seeing as how there WAS an episode where Timmy wished that kids ruled the world and like most of his wishes, it didn’t turn out very well.
ESME: And while I haven’t seen much of KND, in Phineas and Ferb, the kids usually use their skills to have fun, not ENSLAVE ADULTS.
And then there’s BoJack Horseman where half of the characters are animals. Never given an explanation, and it doesn’t serve any in-story purpose. It’s not like say… Roger Rabbit.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118045708 They seem to last less and less each time.
Anonymous
>>118045955 If BoJack were a human, his story would be the same and equally as depressing. And that show is for adults.
There is a reason that BoJack Horseman is a horse and half of the characters are animals. It’s to give a first-time onlooker the impression that it’s a silly cartoon with talking animals to blindside them even more with the feels. But in-story… no, there’s no reason. And they don’t even really do anything with that until season 2’s “Chickens” and season 3’s “Fish out of Water.” In fact, BoJack Horseman goes out of its way to make its world seem… well, normal, like the way that things are.
ESME: I’ve never watched BoJack Horseman, but yet again, talking animal characters isn’t in the same category as PEOPLE BEING FORCED TO GIVE UP THEIR FREEDOM ONCE THEY REACH A CERTAIN AGE AND THE STORY NOT REALIZING THAT IT’S A DYSTOPIA. How many fucking times do I have to repeat it??
From the beginning, this argument has just confused me. I legitimately do not get it, why so many people go after Growing Around for its fantastical concept, while so many other concepts that have similar “problems” seem to be given a free pass.
HAN: I think it’s clear by now that you don’t WANT to get it cause that’d require admitting that you created a dystopia.
Especially when I started by making it an animation, the medium most open to these out-of-left-field concepts. I could name so many other shows that have logical inconsistencies in their main premises. I mean, you don’t have to accept the premise of Growing Around, but it’s not that different in how strange some series actually get.
SHAYERA: The Enter doth protest too much, methinks.
ESME: Notice how Enter never even considers that people might actually have legit points. Nope, it’s all “this so and so show has a ridiculous concept too, so you have no right to point out the holes in my world!”
Anonymous
Anon this has to be near over right?
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118045811 Who knew Hawkgirl liked Tangled.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>it's another WHIMSICAL MY ASS point
Anonymous
Quoted By:
You utter fool. Being given a chance at living by Chadkek, only to waste it. Some parts of these threads were amusing, and I was busy raping Hal Jordan. Around 12 or so hours I gave you, and yet you kept going. Whether it's just a singular retard, or some weird cult that's keeping this autism going, it doesn't matter. Plans I made, and plans for the back-ups of those plans. I prepped and didn't prep, in every complex multiverse and in every timeline. This board I frequent often, it's quite amusing to see jordan's feud with a shot. Still, even the regular autism can get to be too much at times. And yet here you are, creating a seismic eruption of all types of shit. E-celebs, drama, fanfic, god-awful writing criticism, tumblr-tier ocs, and more. I'm aware of this endgame. A shameless plug for a fantasy novel that would make the worst 14 year old Tolkien plagiarizer vomit. But no more. You will not reach that point. Because I AM CHADKEK. THE DARK KNIGHT WHO LAUGHS. THE PREP TIME PERPETRATOR THE UNBEATABLE UNABOMBER THE RAPER OF HAL JORDAN A god amongst gods, omnipotent above omnipotence. I defeat all who challenge me, and force those who submit to be my slaves. I AM THE FORK THAT STABS SPORKS THE JUDGE WHO CRITICS AUTISTS AS THEY LAY DYING THE WRITER WHO ENDS STORIES OF DELUSION THE DEMON WHO DEMEANS THE HERDER WHO WHIPS SHEEP THE KNIGHT WHO KNIFES NON-BIS THE UNSTOPPABLE THE INDOMITABLE THE TRANSCENDENT The train that runs over trannies. The grill that roasts girls. The eater of asme ass meat. THE KING THE TERROR THE SAVIOR OF /CO/ THE BIG D OF DC I proclaim, by the provinces granted to me by my titles, that all who posted in these threads the autistic ramblings of a delusional thirty-something who has to "spork" to be relevant, be sentenced to death. The execution of which take the form of rape followed by a public death battle match. May all join the spectacle, and witness how the feeble attempt at defying The Batman Who Laughs inevitably ends.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118045984 Growing Around is a children’s (low) fantasy series that takes place in a world that was built from the ground-up by kids, in a role reversal story.
ESME: Hate to break it to you, Enter, but Growing Around isn’t technically a fantasy. There aren’t any supernatural elements and your entire premise results from the adults being completely illogical and surrendering their freedom because reasons.
I’m just confused about why that’s so much harder to buy than some of the other out-there concepts, like I’ve discussed here. Like Gumball, Spongebob, BoJack Horseman, Matilda (in the movie version, they don’t explain where she got her psychic powers), Fairly OddParents, etc.
HAN: BECAUSE YOUR WORLD RELIES ON ADULTS SURRENDERING THEIR FREEDOM AND IT CONDONES ABUSE. You really DON’T wanna get it, do you?
ESME: Enter claims he’s so confused by the criticisms, but I think it’s obvious from this essay that he doesn’t want to answer people’s questions and doesn’t want to understand their criticisms. He’d rather stick his fingers in his ears and victimize himself.
SHAYERA: Well, that’s the end of the essay, so what’s next?
ESME: Next, we’re gonna take on the Indiegogo campaign where Enter tried unsuccessfully to get his show funded. That’s gonna be . . . interesting.
COUNTS
KIDS DO THIS, RIGHT?: 80
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 242
MISSING PIECES: 123
YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 213
WHIMSICAL MY ASS: 132
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 131
CONJUNCTION JUNCTION, THAT’S YOUR FUNCTION: 581
Anonymous
Are sporks normally this long?
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign Wed 30 Sep 2020 03:52:15 No. 118046460 Report Last time, we saw Enter lose his shit over people (gasp) having questions about the Growing Around universe and pointing out the flaws in the concept. Today, we’re going to take a look at the thing that made Growing Around even more of a laughingstock than it already was. Yes, it’s time for the Growing Around Indiegogo campaign.
HAN: So lemmie get this straight. Even after the shitty book’s less-than-stellar reception and even though he never wrote the sequel, Enter still thought Growing Around would make a great cartoon?
ESME: Yup. Moreover, he thought everyone would just be so damn impressed by his idea that they’d fork over a shit-ton of cash to get it made – and when I say a shit-ton of cash, I mean a SHIT-TON of cash.
SHAYERA: How much are we talking about here?
ESME: Three hundred and fifty THOUSAND dollars.
HAN/SHAYERA: (both collapse)
ESME: Yup, that was my reaction too.
HAN: (gripping his head) Damn, I could’ve paid off Jabba with that kind of money.
ESME: Oh, and that was just for ONE EPISODE. This whole campaign is JUST for the 22-26-minute pilot.
SHAYERA: (eyes bulge) I got nothing. Seriously, I’m speechless. How the FUCK do you get so deluded that you expect people to hand over that much money for your insanely stupid idea?
ESME: Well, Enter’s not the only one – just watch the “KickScammers” series on YouTube and you’ll see what I mean.
Anyway, let’s get started with the campaign’s introductory video.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zjPrILxRVFk Do you remember what it was like being a kid?
ESME: Well, my dad died when I was thirteen, but before that I had a fairly decent childhood.
HAN: I had an okay childhood until my parents died and left me alone to scrape for myself and then I joined the White Worms and (shivers) let’s move on, okay?
Do you remember how you had to wake up early, sometimes even before the sun had come up
SHAYERA: Because no adult ever has to get up early to go to work, right?
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign Wed 30 Sep 2020 03:55:23 No. 118046519 Report >>118046460 ESME: (sighs) Those are the words of someone who’s never had an actual job in his life. Enter, most of us don’t get to bitch about cartoons for a living. For many of us, getting up early isn’t a childhood memory – it’s something we STILL DO BECAUSE WE HAVE TO GO TO WORK.
to get ready to go to school, a place that you’d come to dislike as the years rolled on,
ESME: (groans) Enter, just because you had a shitty experience in school doesn’t mean everyone does. As a kid, I liked learning. I still do as an adult – that’s why I went to college and later on went to grad school. Hell, I’m probably going to go back to school soon to get ESOL certified.
Does that mean I never found school boring? No. Does that mean I never had days when I didn’t feel like going to school? Of course not. Does that mean I never found schoolwork frustrating? Definitely not. But overall, I enjoy learning. I did as a kid and still do as an adult and I don’t appreciate you making this blanket assumption about me.
a place where they put information in your head you couldn’t care less about.
HAN: Hey Enter, your bitterness about school is showin’.
SHAYERA: It’s not really the best idea to display your issues right off the bat when you’re asking people for money.
Your only reprieve during the day was a brief bit of recess, which was a luxury that was ripped away little by little as they wanted to prepare you for more and more tests.
SHAYERA: Yeah, even if I knew nothing about Enter before watching this video, I’d be able to tell that this guy REALLY has issues with school just from the first thirty seconds.
ESME: Okay, yes, the American education system needs work. I used to teach in it – I saw things firsthand that need work, but you’re supposed to be SELLING YOUR CARTOON IDEA, not bitching about how awful your school experience was.
In these times, it seemed like imagination was all that you had to carry you forward to the next day.
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign Wed 30 Sep 2020 03:57:04 No. 118046548 Report >>118046519 ESME: And at this point in the vid, Enter thought it was a good idea to plagiarize SpongeBob’s “Imaaaaaaginaaaaation” rainbow.
HAN: Plagiarism, great way to sell your idea.
You were able to make the world so much more exciting in your head.
HAN: Yeah, like I can imagine stuff a LOT more exciting than your stupid book.
You’d be thinking up schools for learning magic over math.
SHAYERA: Schools for learning magic – GEE, I WONDER WHERE HE GOT THAT IDEA FROM!
Those dishes that you hated cleaning, they’d become the centerpiece for a game of baseball.
ESME: And then playing baseball with the dishes resulted in all the dishes breaking.
And that bedtime that your parents saddled you with, what if that was their bedtime?
HAN: First issues with school and now issues with bedtime? Yeah, I get that kids’ll get fussy about bedtime, but I dunno if sendin’ parents to bed is a big part of a lotta kids’ fantasy lives.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118046358 If they are, then I want autism to be classified as a disease.
Anonymous
>>118045995 I think there's like 3 or 4 sections left. So at this rate maybe one more thread.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118046575 >3 threads of this Good god, imagine if we could weaponize all these layers of autism
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign Wed 30 Sep 2020 04:09:40 No. 118046767 Report Quoted By:
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign Wed 30 Sep 2020 04:10:41 No. 118046778 Report >>118046548 ESME: Also, the picture that accompanies this line makes me want to smack the kid’s face off – probably because I’ve been spending too much time with Sally.
Then maybe you’d think, what if you were the one in charge?
SHAYERA: You could send your parents to bed, what FUN!
I want to bring that thought to life with a show that I call Growing Around.
HAN: I STILL ain’t sure what the title means!
It’s planned to be a cartoon about an energetic and wildly imaginative little girl obnoxious and abusive little bitch named Sally Dunn
ESME: There, fixed it.
Anonymous
>>118046575 I don't know about that. Isn't the limit currently 500 on /co/?
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign Wed 30 Sep 2020 04:12:08 No. 118046802 Report Quoted By:
>>118046778 SHAYERA: (looks at the picture) “Shenanigans Magnet, You’ve Been Warned”? Well that TOTALLY doesn’t scream “trying too hard.”
as she navigates issues of family, friends, and her typical daily life
HAN: “Issues of family” – I ain’t got the Force, but I can sense when Sally’s gonna be abusin’ her mom some more.
in a world where kids make all of the rules.
ESME: I know we’ve pulled apart the worldbuilding to death, but it’s STILL stupid.
They run the schools, the homes, the towns, and the countries.
SHAYERA: At this point, any sane person would be asking how and why, but Enter’s not gonna give us any answers. After all, it’s not like he expects us to give him money or anything!
HAN: It’s pretty damn baffling that even after who-knows-how-many people pointed out the problems with his world, he STILL expects people to be so impressed by his concept that they’ll hand over thousands and thousands of dollars.
It sounds like it would be a world of fun and games
ALL: NO IT FUCKING DOESN’T!!!!
ESME: We’ve talked to death about how this world is a candy-coated dystopia, but as that last essay we sporked shows, Enter just REFUSES to get it.
and some days, it is
ESME: Only in your mind, my very young apprentice.
as Sally helps her parents with their homework, like getting the highest score on the latest video game
ESME: Getting the highest score on the LATEST video game? Really?
HAN: How many games these days even HAVE a points system anymore?
ESME: Very few. Of course, there will always be a market for retro and retro-style video games, but for the most part, points are a thing of the past.
SHAYERA: I could forgive this if Enter didn’t know anything about video games . . . but ENTER’S A GAMER. He should KNOW that most modern games don’t have points systems and most gamers don’t give a shit about points anymore unless they’re competitive gamers.
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign Wed 30 Sep 2020 04:13:17 No. 118046815 Report Quoted By:
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign Wed 30 Sep 2020 04:14:57 No. 118046834 Report ESME: Sure, there are some modern games that still use points systems, but a large majority of modern games don’t – and even ones that do like Smash Bros Ultimate often use points as a currency that you can trade for game items or extras. Points for points’ sake is a rarity nowadays. But whatever, Enter’s such a kid expert that he thinks kids will care more about scoring points than about beating the game or completing missions. KIDS DO THIS, RIGHT?: 81 or creating the absolute best superhero identity, HAN: Oh whaddaya know, we get a pic of Sally torturing her mom, complete with Sally goin’ “MHAHAHAHA!” and a hashtag of #PleaseNONotTodaySally. Cause, ya know, abuse is FUNNY! ESME: (sighs) Apparently Enter STILL thinks that Sally tormenting Linda (well, she got renamed Autumn by the time this campaign launched, but she’s STILL the butt-monkey) is LOLFUNNY. No matter how many times we point out Enter’s hypocrisy here, I still have trouble wrapping my head around how Enter can be so fucking BLIND to how his own work condones abuse. HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 132 Moreover, anyone not already familiar with Enter’s work would be wondering WHY THE HELL ADULTS GO TO SCHOOL IN THE FIRST PLACE. HAN: Hell, I read his whole book and I’m STILL wonderin’ that. but even a world of fun and games isn’t always fun and games. HAN: Is Enter actually gonna ADMIT that his stupid world’s a dystopia? ESME: (gloomily) No. Childhood is a time of extremes, and Growing Around takes these fantasies and removes the safety brakes. SHAYERA: If you were REALLY removing the safety brakes, you’d end up with a world full of DEAD KIDS.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118046789 Depends on how frequent OP updates and how long each section is.
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign Wed 30 Sep 2020 04:17:21 No. 118046863 Report >>118046834 A simple game of tag could drive an entire city into the apocalypse.
ESME/HAN/SHAYERA: (stare)
After all, if you want the game to end, you’re probably just the person who’s it, and is tricking them into being tagged.
HAN: Okay . . . now Enter thinks that kids NEVER get tired of playin’ tag. The ONLY reason you’d wanna stop is if you’re it – not, ya know, cause you wanna EAT or SLEEP or, well, do ANYTHING ELSE.
SHAYERA: I don’t know whether to laugh at how dumb the idea is or point out that there was a movie called “Tag” about a never-ending game of tag between three friends that coincidentally opened around the same time that this campaign ran or just roll my eyes at how oblivious Enter is to what actual kids are like.
KIDS DO THIS, RIGHT?: 82
Growing Around builds the world that kids would create if they did have the power and just runs with it.
ESME: You know, if you want an idea like that to work, it might help to LEARN WHAT ACTUAL KIDS ARE LIKE first.
In this world, if you want that new top of the line toy that’s being blasted out on all the commercials, you can buy it. In fact, you’ve gotta buy it.
HAN: Great, now we’re teachin’ kids to be spoiled, greedy brats.
After all, your boss only wants to promote the coolest kid in the building, and let’s just say he’s been having a few tantrums about it as of late.
SHAYERA: So if kid workers get promotions based solely on whether or not they have the coolest toys, then HOW THE HELL DOES ANYTHING GET DONE? Unqualified workers are being promoted JUST because they bought a cool new toy and they now have no idea how to actually DO THEIR JOB.
MISSING PIECES: 124
A brother and sister start fighting over a cereal box toy. With no parents to break them up, they do the only logical thing they can think of:
HAN: Share?
go to court!
HAN: Oh, of course, how stupid of me.
At its core, Growing Around is a show about growing up,
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign Wed 30 Sep 2020 04:18:25 No. 118046876 Report ESME: In a world where doing so means losing your rights. NO WE WILL NEVER, EVER LET THAT GO! and growing up is difficult, we all know that. SHAYERA: Then we don’t need your stupid show to teach us that. You learn that even your best friends sometimes move on and move away, that the people in charge don’t always have your best interests in mind. ESME: Yeah, like how Sally NEVER has her mother’s best interests in mind. It’s a time of self-discovery as you come to terms with your direction in life, your identity, and your place in the world. Growing Around is a show that tackles these issues without sugarcoating or kids’ gloves, HAN: Is this guy for real? He ACTUALLY THINKS that he ain’t sugarcoatin’ when he REFUSES TO SEE WHAT A DYSTOPIA HE’S CREATED?? HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 133 but it needs your help to come into existence. ESME: Nope, I’ve got better places to put my money. This show is a culmination of four years of work. I’ve been at it writing dozens of scripts and fine-tuning the world and the characters to perfection. SHAYERA: “Perfection,” right. That’s why you couldn’t answer half the questions asked in the Growing Around livestreams. However, there is one hurdle that is yet to be crossed, HAN: That’d be LOGIC. and that’s the financial one. ESME: You still haven’t given me a reason to give a shit whether this cartoon ever exists or not. I’m dirt poor, so I don’t usually give to crowdfunding campaigns anyway, but even if I did, this video wouldn’t get me wanting to give to this one. Growing Around is a series that isn’t going to be afraid of touching any issue. SHAYERA: I’ll believe THAT when you have the episode about the adult revolution.
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign Wed 30 Sep 2020 04:20:41 No. 118046903 Report >>118046876 Topics of sexuality, gender, existential crisis, cultural identity, death, regret, they will all be subjects of episodes.
HAN: Death. Enter actually believes he can tackle DEATH with this idiotic premise.
SHAYERA: Well, MY show had several deaths in it.
ESME: Your show also had competent writers.
Look, I’m all for kids’ shows tackling mature themes. Some shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra, Gargoyles, (points at Shayera) and of course, Justice League, can tackle mature themes on a regular basis because they have an overall mature feel anyway. Even shows aimed at younger audiences than Avatar or Justice League can still tackle mature themes with respect. For example, over the years Sesame Street has taken on various difficult topics such as death, incarceration, deployment, physical and mental disabilities, homelessness, racism, tragedies such as fires and hurricanes, etc. Even though the show is usually fun and lighthearted, its writers are still able to sensitively handle difficult topics.
Growing Around, meanwhile, is NOT smart enough to handle such topics. When the writer is in such wild denial about how horrifying and dystopic his concept is, I’m not going to believe that he can pull off using said concept to talk about mature themes.
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign Wed 30 Sep 2020 04:22:00 No. 118046919 Report >>118046903 Hell, even if I didn’t know anything about Enter or Growing Around before watching this vid, the sample plots he’s giving sound along the lines of a SpongeBob SquarePants-ish nonsensical cartoon. Look, I love SpongeBob (at least pre-Season 6 SpongeBob) as much as anyone else, but I don’t think anyone truly wants to see it tackle serious issues. The most serious SpongeBob episode I can think of is “Have You Seen This Snail,” in which SpongeBob’s pet snail Gary runs away. That episode gives a pretty realistic portrayal of the heartbreak that comes with losing a pet (along with a lot of humor, of course), but of course Gary comes back at the end and everything is fine. When people die on SpongeBob, it’s either for a gag (like in “Bubble Buddy” or “Sing a Song of Patrick”) or the person isn’t actually dead (like in “Nasty Patty” or “Squidward the Unfriendly Ghost”). If SpongeBob ever truly attempted to tackle death, it would just feel awkward because it wouldn’t fit with the show’s usual nonsensical tone, and judging by this video, I would think Growing Around would have a similar problem even if I knew nothing else about it.
The freedom from executive control is paramount to making this show work the way it was intended to be.
HAN (Enter): “My show is too SMART for networks! Please believe me! I said it would talk about MATURE ISSUES, which means I’m totally better than the greedy NETWORKS! Now give me money!”
This is why I am planning on using Indiegogo.
SHAYERA: Well, nice of you to tell us that you’re planning on using Indiegogo . . . in your Indiegogo video.
This particular crowdfunding campaign will be for the pilot episode, entitled Max’s Many Birthdays.
SHAYERA (Enter): “Hand me more than a quarter of a million dollars to make ONE EPISODE, people!”
After it’s produced, I am going to give the series Growing Around its own Patreon to keep it going.
Anonymous
Anonymous
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>it's still going this is getting dangerously based
Anonymous
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We live in a timeline where this shit exists, but not an MCU Nova movie. Fuck
Anonymous
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2020 is a weird year
Anonymous
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Just a few more sections It's been an honor, gentlemen.
Anonymous
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> this is still going i was foolish to think OP would somehow give up after the first thread.
Anonymous
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I feel asleep and this whole thing is still going, just like the thread before. You are a crazy bastard OP.
Anonymous
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>>118046948 Don’t worry, we have all but confirmation that OP hasn’t even read it, only mindlessly copypasted. We’re all just skimming and sometimes running into a few jewels.
Anonymous
Anonymous
do NOT let the thread die.
Anonymous
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign Wed 30 Sep 2020 12:52:39 No. 118050912 Report >>118046919 SHAYERA (Enter): “And guess what? You get to KEEP giving me tons of money for more episodes, isn’t that great!”
ESME: (facepalms) He was going to rely on Patreon to keep the show going. Enter, you SERIOUSLY overestimate how much people want Growing Around to exist. At the time when you ran this campaign, your OWN Patreon was making less than $500 a month (and most of the fans of your reviews don’t give a shit about Growing Around), so how exactly did you think Patreon would keep Growing Around alive when you wanted $350,000 for ONE EPISODE?
HAN: Even if his Growing Around Patreon made as much as his regular Patreon, it’d take almost SIXTY YEARS to make enough money for a second episode!
ESME: Seriously Enter, most webtoons don’t reach RWBY levels of success. This was NOT going to work.
The money that’s being raised is going to go entirely into the show,
ESME: Except for the $20,000 that would have gone to “Discretionary,” but we’ll get to that.
mainly the animation budget. In return for your donation, we have many great rewards available. We have t-shirts, show art of the main characters, posters that I will personally sign, art of you and your characters in the style of the show, and many, many more perks that you can check out on our Indiegogo page.
ESME: Oh, we’re gonna talk about those rewards soon, believe me.
To clear up any confusion, if this pilot does get funded, I am not going to be putting it behind a paywall or anything. The pilot will go up right on my YouTube page and on my website.
SHAYERA: Okay, at least that’s good to know. Not that the pilot’s ever gonna exist, but it’s nice to know that he wouldn’t have put it behind a paywall if it did.
My dream is in your hands now,
HAN: Well MY hands ain’t handin’ you money!
and thank you for listening.
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign Wed 30 Sep 2020 12:54:08 No. 118050922 Report >>118050912 ESME: As a side note, Enter’s avatar is FUCKING TERRIFYING. He used to use an avatar that was a cartoony representation of his face, but then for some reason he decided to change it to a creepy drug dealer-esque thing, and as a result we end the vid with THIS nightmare-inducing image.
HAN/SHAYERA: AAAAAAAAH, GET THAT THING AWAY FROM ME!!!
ESME: Moreover, this video has NO test animation and NO actual artwork from the show. Someone knowing nothing about Growing Around will think that the (crappy) art used in vid will be the art style used in the actual show. Not smart.
Anyway, now that we’ve seen the video, let’s move on to the actual Indiegogo page.
Growing Around is an arcing-continuity web cartoon that focuses on a world where kids are in charge of adults,
HAN: Annnnd here’s where I click the Back button!
tackling both simple and complex issues with humorous, effective and nuanced stories.
SHAYERA: And we’re just supposed to believe you about that.
This campaign is for the pilot of this series. Any extra raised will go to additional episodes, or other GA media (like comics for instance)
HAN: Ain’t it cute how he thought he might make MORE than the $350,000 he was askin’ for?
ESME: Not only that, but the period ran away. It’s only the first paragraph and Enter’s already showing that he didn’t care enough to proofread.
I am Johnathan Rozanski, better known as The Mysterious Mr. Enter on YouTube.
SHAYERA: Except that your YouTube name is actually “TheMysteriousMrEnter,” not “The Mysterious Mr. Enter.”
I'm known for reviewing animations, which I've been doing for years now, learning what works in the medium and what doesn't I'm ready to make my own series now, or at least the pilot.
ESME: (grinds teeth) And ANOTHER period went missing. Enter, WHY THE FUCK SHOULD I GIVE YOU MY HARD-EARNED MONEY WHEN YOU CAN’T EVEN BE ASSED TO FIX SIMPLE MISTAKES LIKE THAT???
Anonymous
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we're back ladies and gents
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign Wed 30 Sep 2020 13:13:56 No. 118051091 Report >>118050922 HAN: He sure ain’t lookin’ professional – and when I say that, you know it means somethin’.
SHAYERA: Yeah Vest Boy, you’re not exactly known for being professional.
ESME: Also, Enter saying he’s ready to make his own show because he watches a lot of cartoons is like me saying I’m qualified to be a gourmet chef because I eat a lot of food. Enter has no animation or filmmaking degrees, he’s never taken a single class in animation or filmmaking in his life (in fact, he’s never taken any college classes at ALL, but he’s still convinced that college is a waste of time and money), and the ONLY credential he mentions is that he reviews cartoons on YouTube, which is something that literally anyone with an internet connection can do.
Again, why should I give him my money?
I have been planning this series for years, building onto the world, and writing dozens of scripts.
HAN: And Meyer wrote four Twilight novels, plus the Bree Tanner novella and the unfinished Midnight Sun novel and whatever the hell Life and Death should be called, but that doesn’t mean her work is any GOOD.
I feel that Growing Around can truly be an amazing cartoon,
entirely creator driven, and free from network control; a show that tackles harsh themes with good humor.
ESME: (groans) But it doesn’t know how to use semicolons.
HAN (Enter): “Like I said, my show is WAY TOO SMART FOR THE GREEDY GREEDY NETWORKS! Give me money!”
ESME: Anyway, next Enter shows a pie chart of where the theoretical money will go, saying ”Here's a pie chart as to our budget allocation,” which should be “here’s a pie chart OF our budget allocation.”
SHAYERA: Forget that, let’s look at the pie chart.
HAN: Well, least he was gonna pay his staff.
SHAYERA: Ten thousand dollars just for storyboarding a cartoon that’s less than half an hour long? I’m no animator, but that just sounds a bit steep.
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign Wed 30 Sep 2020 13:16:25 No. 118051117 Report >>118051091 ESME: He apparently expected his webtoon to reach Disney quality animation for that kind of money, but the part that weirds me out is “Discretionary,” which takes up TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS. Not only is Enter expecting people to shell out more than a quarter of a million dollars, but he’s not even TELLING us where $20,000 of it will go. For all we know, that 20K will pay for Enter to go to Disney World. Enter, $20,000 is a WHOLE LOT OF MONEY – if you want people to give it to you, then TELL THEM WHERE IT’S GOING.
Anyway, after the pie chart, Enter lets us know that ”This is a fixed funding campaign. If we either meet our goal or we don't get a cent”
SHAYERA: And . . . what happens if you either meet your goal or you don’t get a cent?
ESME: (groans) Enter didn’t proofread. Again. Enter, if you don’t care enough about your campaign to fix the embarrassing errors, then why should I care enough to back it?
Anyway, now we’ve got some sample episode plots.
The pilot episode is about Sally's brother Max, turning twelve.
HAN: So, I guess Enter changed Timmy’s name?
ESME: Guess so, though the name “Max” personally makes me think of dogs.
Like Prince Eric’s dog. Or Goofy’s son. Or if it’s not making me think of dogs, it makes me think of Max Rebo.
He knows that next year he's going to be a teenager and starts becoming more and more worried that he's getting older and won't be in charge anymore.
SHAYERA: I thought Enter said teenagers don’t have their own age category in the Growing Around world.
ESME: Forget that, Timmy-slash-Max is worried about growing up and “not being in charge anymore.” Not losing his RIGHTS, not being subject to his kids’ every whim, just “not being in charge anymore.” Further proof that Enter REFUSES to truly look at his world’s implications.
HAN: Now, if Timmy-slash-Max decided to start a revolution for adults’ rights, THEN we could get something interesting.
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign Wed 30 Sep 2020 13:18:19 No. 118051135 Report >>118051117 Meanwhile, Sally's attempt to give him the best birthday ever no matter how many tries it takes isn't helping.
SHAYERA: Enter DOES know that the “many birthdays” plot has been done in plenty of other shows like Jimmy Neutron and Sofia the First, right?
ESME: Probably, but I’m sure he thinks he can do it better. Anyway, let’s see if the next possible episode sounds any better.
When Sally and Max both grab a cereal box toy at the same time, the only way that they can solve the issue is by going to a court, run by kids.
HAN: Haven’t they ever heard of Rock-Paper-Scissors?
SHAYERA: If siblings go to court every time they fight over a toy, then DAMN, can you imagine how busy the courts must be?
ESME: Well, maybe the NEXT plot won’t sound so stupid.
Sally comes across a town that's been driven into a post-apocalyptic state because the kids in charge don't want to stop a never-ending game of tag.
HAN: In other words, a town full of REALLY STUPID KIDS.
ESME: Well . . . maybe the NEXT plot will deal with those supposed “harsh themes with good humor.”
Sally starts a pet-sitting service and bites off more than she can chew when she's forced to pet sit for everything from komodo dragons to kangaroos.
ESME: Oh, fuck me.
SHAYERA: Hey, we’re STILL wondering how kids managed to domesticate all these wild animals! Do you plan on giving us an answer?
HAN: Course not, cause explainin’ things too much ruins the magic, remember?
ESME: Well, four sample plots, all of which sound stupid at best and trite at worst, and NONE of which tackle those supposed difficult issues that Enter’s bragging about. But we’re not done with Enter’s bragging – nope, now he’s gonna talk about the show’s impact.
Growing Around is a series that can resonate with all ages - it has something for everyone,
SHAYERA: Well it has sporkable material for us, so I guess that’s technically true.
Anonymous
Anonymous
If this can keep up all the way til saturday morning, we can celebrate the one week anniversary of this starting. And I can give you guys an update about my job.
Anonymous
>>118052367 ITS BEEN ONE WEEK?
Anonymous
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NO FUCKING WAY
Anonymous
>>118053981 No, it’ll be a week come saturday morning. It’s been 5 days. So, only the length of a business week.
Anonymous
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign Wed 30 Sep 2020 17:17:52 No. 118055198 Report >>118051135 where it be teaching you a lesson, making you feel, or just making you laugh -
ESME: “WHERE it be teaching you a lesson”??? (facepalms) Enter, you’re REALLY pissing off my English Major Mode here.
HAN: Maybe he paid that same person five hundred MORE bucks to edit THIS.
SHAYERA: Forget that. If his oh-so-amazing show is anything like his book, then it’ll teach me what NOT to do when writing, make me feel irritation, and make me laugh at its incompetence.
all through its immersive storytelling.
HAN (Enter): “I’m such a great storyteller! Give me money!”
Each episode will focus on a story, sometimes complex and sometimes wonderfully simple.
ESME: Complex? I didn’t see anything complex about the sample plots you gave.
Each episode can introduce something - make a major change to the dynamic of the series - or even completely change how you view a character.
SHAYERA: And exactly how will the episodes do that? How are you gonna make me think Sally is anything but a little shit?
Topics such as death will be interwoven into the story, as to not just bring them up, but to handle them respectively
ESME: The topics will be handled in order? Or did you mean respectfully?
HAN: Enter, if you’re gonna brag about how your series is gonna deal with DEEP TOPICS, you might wanna show us HOW you’re gonna deal with ‘em. Just sayin’ your show’s gonna deal with death doesn’t mean it’s gonna do it WELL.
and guide you through them.
ESME: NO, I don’t need Enter to hold my hand through death. I already lost my dad in what might have been an accident or might have been suicide – I think I know quite a bit about death, thank you very much, and I frankly don’t trust Enter to handle it well.
Complex issues are handled with nuance, and often the answers given don't turn out as black and white as you'd expect.
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign Wed 30 Sep 2020 17:18:55 No. 118055214 Report >>118055198 SHAYERA: If you want to sell your “complex issues,” then maybe your sample episode plots should include some of those “complex issues.”
Each episode is an immersive experience with a story for everyone.
HAN: Cept for people who actually have brains.
ESME: All right, let’s move on to the Risks and Challenges.
Provided the pilot gets funded,
SHAYERA: Which is a BIG if.
every single episode is going to be its own little miracle.
HAN: The miracle is that anyone actually thought this show was a good idea.
I don't know how well Patreon and ad revenue from existing episodes will continue the show after its pilot.
ESME: Well here’s a hint: it probably WOULDN’T have made you another $350,000.
In turn that means there will be no filler episodes.
SHAYERA: Pray tell, how is an episode about Sally pet-sitting a bunch of exotic animals NOT a filler episode?
While not every single one will move the overarching plot in some significant way,
HAN: There’s an overarching plot? Mind tellin’ us what it is?
ESME: He won’t.
MISSING PIECES: 125
every episode will have some kind of importance.
HAN: It’s SO IMPORTANT to visit the tag-apocalypse town!
This episode will most likely take longer than the typical nine months that it takes to make a cartoon episode as we try on different animation styles.
SHAYERA: You don’t know what animation style you’re using?? Isn’t that something you should decide BEFORE asking people for thousands of dollars??
This is my first cartoon. There is no way around this. I've never done this before.
ESME: Well, at least he’s honest about that.
However, I am placing my future on this.
HAN: What now? He’s stakin’ his FUTURE on his stupid cartoon idea?
SHAYERA: I don’t normally like crushing people’s dreams, but there are better things to do with your future than expecting people to shell out thousands upon thousands of dollars for your idiotic cartoon.
Anonymous
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>>118054832 >It’s been 5 days. Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign Wed 30 Sep 2020 17:20:26 No. 118055240 Report >>118055214 I need this to be the best show that it could possibly be, or else this first cartoon will be my last.
ESME: If you need people to give you more than a quarter of a million dollars for just ONE EPISODE, it would probably have been your last anyway.
Anyway, now Enter tells us about other ways we can help his oh-so-brilliant cartoon exist.
Not everyone has the ability to donate, but there are other ways that you can still help this project succeed.
HAN: Thanks, I’ll make sure to NOT do any of ‘em.
The most important thing to do is get the word out there.
ESME: Oh Enter, the word got out there. Believe me, the word got out there and it got people laughing at this campaign and at Growing Around in general. People who hadn’t bothered with you for years were suddenly tearing apart your campaign and your cartoon and your book. Hell, if it weren’t for this campaign, I wouldn’t have ever bothered with the final draft of your book – it was because of the stream reading your book that I decided to take on this spork and the stream ran because of this campaign.
Even a little bit goes a long way in this case. Tell people on any social media you have, or even in the real world.
ESME: See above.
You can join the Growing Around DeviantArt group, which will allow you to keep up to date on our current artistic decisions. We appreciate the support
ESME: Well I DON’T appreciate the lack of a period.
And in case you were wondering, I cut out the link to the DA group because I don’t want to risk sending trolls over there to harass the artists. I’m also cutting out his links to the scripts and model sheets, but I will say this: Enter, things like the art and model sheets should have been IN THE VIDEO. Prospective backers shouldn’t have to go to DeviantArt just to see what the show will potentially look like.
Anyway, now we’ve got the FAQ.
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign Wed 30 Sep 2020 17:21:28 No. 118055260 Report >>118055240 HAN: Lemmie guess, he doesn’t answer questions like, “How the everloving fuck can you say this ain’t a dystopia when people lose their rights once they grow up?”
ESME: Nope, he doesn’t answer that one.
Do perks come with previous rewards? Yes, except for limited rewards, all previous rewards come with lower-tiered rewards.
SHAYERA: Isn’t that pretty standard practice in crowdfunding campaigns?
ESME: I think so, not that I’ve backed a lot of crowdfunding campaigns myself. I think maybe I’ve backed two or three campaigns for indie game developers and that’s it.
How long will each episode be? Every single episode is around the 22-26 minute range, including the pilot.
SHAYERA: Again, he’s asking for $350,000 for LESS THAN HALF AN HOUR OF ANIMATION!
What style will the animation be? The show is going to be 2D Animated, like the model sheets and the poster.
HAN: You mean the model sheets you DIDN’T SHOW IN THE VIDEO?
ESME: Also “2D animated” doesn’t say SHIT about the animation style. You DO know that there are many, many different 2D animation styles, right? AS AN ANIMATION CRITIC, YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT!
Do people age backwards? No. People are born babies, grow to kids, grow to teenagers, and then to adults.
SHAYERA: He could have just said “people age normally,” but I guess he thinks we’re so stupid that we don’t know how aging works.
What do you mean by continuity-driven? Everything in every episode continues to the next episode. People keep and retain their experiences, lessons, adventures, and consequences.
HAN: Why do I feel like this is Enter takin’ a shot at shows that don’t give a crap about continuity?
ESME: I wouldn’t be surprised.
Do the adults act like kids, or vice-versa? The adults act like adults, and the kids act like kids.
ESME: No, the kids act like STEROTYPES.
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign Wed 30 Sep 2020 17:22:38 No. 118055275 Report >>118055260 If you get more than you ask for, where will the extra money go? It will go into additional episodes. If there’s not enough, it will go into other GA media, like comics/graphic novels, pieces of art, etc.
HAN: Meanwhile, you might get a second episode in sixty years.
Why is the animation budget so big? Because “animator” is one of the most tedious jobs, drawing the same characters (usually not even your own) over and over, for hours on end. And for a project this big you would require a studio or a team.
ESME: I think Enter was hoping for network-quality animation in his webtoon. While that’s a nice idea, it’s not very realistic. Hell, even the first season of RWBY has pretty choppy animation. The animation got better later on because they had more money after the show had an established fanbase.
HAN: Ya know, it might’ve been smarter for Enter to make a short before settin’ out to make a series. A lotta animators got their starts from makin’ shorts, after all.
ESME: Yeah. Even many professional animators who went on to work for places like Disney and Pixar started out making shorts. Even Pixar itself started out making shorts. A good animated short can get you attention.
SHAYERA: I think Enter said a couple of times that the Growing Around stories were too long to compress into shorts, but he COULD have had a smaller campaign for a short that wasn’t related to Growing Around. If that had fallen through, then he would have actually had something to SHOW when the time came to pitch Growing Around.
ESME: Anyway, let’s have a look at the rewards. The first reward is for donating a dollar.
Your name will appear on the backer page of
MysteriousMisterEnter.com 's Growing Around section, on top of that you will be entitled to weekly updates when the campaign has concluded. That's right - an update each and every week, barring medical reasons or other unforeseen circumstances.
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign Wed 30 Sep 2020 17:23:41 No. 118055295 Report >>118055275 SHAYERA: So, I’ve got a dollar. Which do I buy: a candy bar or my name on Mr. Enter’s website?
HAN: Go for the candy bar.
ESME: Here’s what you would have gotten for five dollars.
People who donate at this tier will be able to see the pilot episode a week before it airs to the general public. Comes with all previous rewards.
HAN: Sorry, five bucks can buy me lunch instead.
ESME: Here’s what you get for ten dollars – for some reason Imgur won’t let me upload the pic, but it’s of Sally posing selfie-style in front of a camera.
For the very special backers who go above and beyond, we're making a very special thank you video + giving you your name on the credits page, and weekly updates.
SHAYERA: I didn’t know ten dollars was “going above and beyond.”
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign Wed 30 Sep 2020 17:26:27 No. 118055335 Report >>118055295 ESME: For twenty dollars:
At this tier, we're going to give you a digital file for the pilot episode's soundtrack. This perk comes with all previous rewards.
HAN: Eh, since I dunno how good the music would’ve been, I dunno if that’s a decent reward or not.
ESME: Oh, and Enter? DOLLAR SIGNS GO BEFORE THE NUMBERS!!
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign Wed 30 Sep 2020 17:27:36 No. 118055352 Report >>118055335 Anyway, for thirty-five dollars:
5 Exclusive trading cards of the Growing Around characters + all previous rewards
SHAYERA: Enter, since you’re having this much trouble just getting the cartoon made, you might want to wait on tie-in merchandise until after the cartoon actually exists.
HAN: If it ever exists.
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign Wed 30 Sep 2020 17:28:42 No. 118055364 Report >>118055352 ESME: Here’s what you get for fifty dollars, which is the “featured” tier.
You will get a 24x36 poster, signed by me "Johnathan 'Mr. Enter' Rozanski", plus all previous rewards. Shipping not included.
HAN: Nice to know that you think your autograph’s worth fifty bucks PLUS shipping.
SHAYERA: And oh look, the poster features Sally tormenting her mother again. How fucking nice.
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign Wed 30 Sep 2020 17:31:23 No. 118055404 Report >>118055364 ESME: Now for the ninety-dollar tier, which is the one I REALLY want to talk about.
At this tier, you get a T-shirt in Max or Sally's style. Shipping not included. Comes with all previous rewards.
ESME: Great, for NINETY FUCKING BUCKS (plus shipping) you can get either a t-shirt with a heart or a t-shirt with a tie. Nevermind that you can probably get a shirt in either of those styles made for about twenty bucks at your local t-shirt printing place – Enter’s ego is so big that he expects people to give him NINETY DOLLARS for shirts with these EXTREMELY GENERIC DESIGNS.
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign Wed 30 Sep 2020 17:32:24 No. 118055424 Report >>118055404 Oh, but that’s not all, look at what you can get for $140.
This donation will let you get both the Sally and Max t-shirts. Shipping not included. All previous rewards included.
SHAYERA: Great, you get both the heart AND the tie!
HAN: Well, least you also get all the other great rewards too.
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign Wed 30 Sep 2020 17:33:33 No. 118055441 Report >>118055424 ESME: Anyway, here’s what you get for $200.
We will put your name, or a short message or something similar somewhere in the actual pilot. It may be some graffiti, or on a list, or it could be a background drawing.
HAN: Wait, a PONY? There’s a fuckin’ PONY in this show? I thought Sally hated the pony dealership!
ESME: (gloomily) She did in the book, at least, but in the scripts, the family gets a pony because of course. Enter, it’s fine to be a brony, but you don’t need to stick ponies into everything.
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign Wed 30 Sep 2020 17:34:37 No. 118055459 Report >>118055441 Anyway, the last tier is for $500.
We will animate you or your OC in the background of the pilot episode. Keep in mind that it has to fit in the world of Growing Around. This comes with all previous non-limited rewards.
SHAYERA: Well, that’d probably be fun – if you cared enough about Growing Around to actually shell out $500.
HAN: OR you could use that money to pay a scammer to not edit your book!
ESME: Okay, okay, last thing is Enter’s closing statement, which was made when the campaign was coming to a close and (surprise surprise) it was far away from its goal.
So, it looks like we're not going to make this goal. I admit that I was very ambitious in this endeavor.
HAN: Try delusional.
However, Growing Around isn't going to end with this.
You can find my final thoughts here, and learn where we're going next:
ESME: He then links to a DeviantArt journal entry and in case you were wondering, no, I’m not sporking it because frankly it’s not very sporkable. He basically uses a lot of words to say, “oh well, I tried” and that he might could adapt his scripts into comic form.
SHAYERA: Well, are we gonna spork the Growing Around YouTube streams?
ESME: NO! They’re much, MUCH too long and disorganized to get a decent spork out of.
HAN: Yeah, I ain’t sittin’ through ‘em. Bad enough sittin’ through this shit.
SHAYERA: Okay, but you guys still have to see this little graphic he posted during the streams.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118055424 >little boy crossdressing Of course.
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign Wed 30 Sep 2020 17:36:07 No. 118055480 Report Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign
Growing Around - The Growing Around Indiegogo Campaign Wed 30 Sep 2020 17:37:38 No. 118055506 Report >>118055480 ESME: (eyes bulge)
HAN: Uh-oh . . .
ESME: (body starts shaking)
SHAYERA: She’s gonna blow . . .
ESME: ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME??????????????????
HOW FUCKING DELUSIONAL ARE YOU??? HOW THE EVERLOVING FUCK CAN YOU SAY WITH A STRAIGHT FACE THAT ADULTS AREN’T OPPRESSED??? YOUR ENTIRE FUCKING CONCEPT RELIES ON ADULTS BEING OPPRESSED!!! IF YOU DON’T BELIEVE ME, THEN LET’S ALTER YOUR LITTLE GRAPH A BIT, WHY DON’T WE?
Men: In Charge
Women: Not In Charge
Women aren’t oppressed; society is freer in general.
DO YOU THINK WE’RE FUCKING IDIOTS?? DO YOU REALLY EXPECT PEOPLE TO BELIEVE THAT ADULTS AREN’T OPPRESSED JUST BECAUSE YOU SAY SO?? YOU LYING, DELUSIONAL SACK OF SHIT!!! FUUUUUCCCCCKKK YOOOOOUUUUU!!! (explodes)
HAN: (sighs) I knew this’d happen sooner or later. (Keyboards up the dustpan and broom) Guess we get a break?
SHAYERA: (hold the dustpan while Han sweeps up Esme’s remains) I think we were going to look at some of Enter’s other responses to criticism next, but since Esme’s currently exploded, I’m not sure what we’re doing now.
COUNTS
KIDS DO THIS, RIGHT?: 82
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 242
MISSING PIECES: 125
YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 213
WHIMSICAL MY ASS: 132
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 133
CONJUNCTION JUNCTION, THAT’S YOUR FUNCTION: 581
Anonymous
>>118055506 I can’t believe Esme fucking died.
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism Wed 30 Sep 2020 17:50:05 No. 118055709 Report As we’ve seen previously, Mr. Enter can get . . . weird about criticism, especially criticism of his beloved dream project Growing Around, so what better way to wrap up our Growing Around bonus material than to dive into Enter’s Suethor cries about criticism? ESME: (rematerializes) Ugh, I’ve got a headache. HAN: Yeah, that happens when you explode. ESME: Right, right, that happened. We’re still NOT sporking the livestreams, though. Anyone braver than me who’s willing to take them on is welcome to do so. Instead, we’re taking on how Enter handles that ugly word, criticism. HAN: I can hardly wait. ESME: Yeah, but before we start, I think we should set some ground rules for both us and the comments. SHAYERA: Ground rules? Seriously? ESME: Yes, because we are about to dive into some messy territory. Enter and criticism do NOT get along and Enter is famous for feeding trolls, which has of course had the effect of attracting trolls to him. So here are some things we’re NOT going to talk about. *We’re NOT going to talk about his editor (his video editor, not the scammer he handed five hundred bucks to) getting doxed. No matter how you feel about Enter, doxing is NOT OKAY and we are not going to get into it because that’s just asking for trouble. *We’re NOT going to talk about Enter being called a pedophile. He’s not a pedophile – you don’t need to make shit up about him in order to criticize him. There’s plenty to criticize as it is. *We’re NOT going to talk about the times when he’s been genuinely harassed. Again, that’s just asking for trouble. *We’re also NOT going to go over every time he’s ever complained about criticism because then we’d be here all day. We’re just going to pick out a few of his more memorable times. Got it? HAN: Sure. ESME: Okay, let's dig in.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
One unfortunate thing about this, is that I’m not sure if there’s any way to condense all of the highlights, or even just the ones in the first thread, down into an easy to post collage that could properly summarize it all. I know I can’t at least. I’d still love it if somebody took a crack at it, of course. But after looking over the first thread, I doubt it’ll happen.
Anonymous
Who knew Enter could inspire so much material.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
This is ironically legendary
Anonymous
>>118055198 How many times does this girl have to tell me she's an English Major? If anything, it only makes her overlong, autistically literal reading of a failed children's book look even worse.
Anonymous
>>118055736 Who knew it could be so much worse than his own stuff.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118055364 >And oh look, the poster features Sally tormenting her mother again. How fucking nice. >pushing her forward is tormenting You're REALLY reaching there, Hawkgirl.
>>118055404 >Great, for NINETY FUCKING BUCKS (plus shipping) you can get either a t-shirt with a heart or a t-shirt with a tie. Forty bucks. The other $50 is for everything that came beforehand
>>118055595 If only she'd stayed that way
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism Wed 30 Sep 2020 18:07:01 No. 118055985 Report >>118055709 The first thing we’re going to look at is a DeviantArt journal entry where he gives his excuses for not taking criticism from people he doesn’t personally know.
SHAYERA: Oh, this should be fun.
People say that I have trouble taking criticism.
HAN: And they’re 100% right.
And enough people do that it definitely makes the argument at least worth looking into. So what do I think?
ESME: You think you have a million excuses.
Do I personally think that I have trouble taking criticism? It’s not a simple answer.
HAN: Last I checked, “yes” was a pretty simple answer.
You want a simple answer, it’s both yes and no.
SHAYERA: Enter’s about to ramble and ramble and ramble, isn’t he?
I frequently think (not just say, actually think) that some of my critics are trolls.
ESME: And as you’ll see, Enter is really, really really paranoid about trolls.
And I’m dismissive to a lot who don’t come across as trolls.
SHAYERA: So work on NOT being so dismissive.
ESME: What, WORK on a character flaw and try to improve it? Why would anyone do that when they can just make excuses instead?
The thing is…these people are strangers, over the internet.
HAN: Yeah, and? That’s how it works on the internet – if you post anything at all, strangers are gonna read it and give their opinions on it.
People who I know, and trust, like the people who work on Growing Around with me,
ESME: Some of whom ended up walking out on you, but let’s not get into that.
I can easily take criticism from them—but that doesn’t always mean I agree with them.
HAN: Uh-huh, yeah, I totally believe that based on how well you handle people criticizing your precious pet project.
SHAYERA: Nice alliteration, Vest Boy.
Here’s the thing about me, I need to be able to trust someone before I can take criticism from them, or compliments for that matter. Or opinions about me in general.
ESME: (loudly grinds teeth)
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism Wed 30 Sep 2020 18:08:35 No. 118056014 Report >>118055985 The term is called mind-blindness. I hate blaming my conditions for my faults, but it’s a symptom of Asperger’s.
ESME: (screams) No, no, no, no, no, no, NO, you are NOT going there! You’re NOT blaming your diagnosis for your unwillingness to take criticism!
SHAYERA: It looks like he is.
ESME: (yanking at her own hair) FUUUUCCKK!
Look, I’ve mentioned that I’m on the autism spectrum too. Granted, my own autism is a mild case and Enter’s probably much further down the spectrum than I am, but I also have bipolar disorder. I’m prone to having emotional breakdowns over little things, and even thought my meds help, they can never get rid of my disorder. But guess what? After I have a breakdown, I work to do better - I don’t go around using my diagnosis as an excuse for things.
Also, mind-blindness is NOT exclusive to autism and it’s actually much more complicated than “I need to trust you in order to take criticism from you.”
HAN: Hey Wing Lady, we might wanna get out the dustpan just in case she explodes again.
SHAYERA: Way ahead of you.
It’s usually known as “lack of empathy” (which is misleading), but can also be known as “mind-blindness” (which is also misleading). What does this mean?
ESME: It DOESN’T mean you have an excuse to disregard all criticism from people you don’t know.
Difficulty, like intense difficulty reading intentions. It’s hard enough in person. Through the internet? Good luck, you’re going to need it. More importantly, you need tact.
SHAYERA: Enter, you’re really not one to talk about tact.
Let me explain how this might surface, because it does surface. A person nearby keeps writing on something. When I get close, they try to hide it. The reality is that they’re just writing something personal they don’t want anyone to see. My thoughts will interpret this as “they’re probably writing something about me that they don’t want me to see
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism Wed 30 Sep 2020 18:09:54 No. 118056033 Report >>118056014 ESME: (takes deep breath) Okay, I don’t know if I have mind-blindness per se, but I’ve had experiences like this. For example, I might be in a public place, minding my own business, and a group of people pass by, laughing their heads off. My mind might instantly jump to thinking that they might be laughing at me. It probably has some roots in me being bullied as a kid and it can suck for my mind to automatically think like that, but it doesn’t give me an excuse to not listen to criticism.
Neutral actions are frequently interpreted as negative. And in particularly annoying cases, even positive actions can be interpreted as negative.
HAN: Okay, so you know you’ve got this condition, but you can also tell yourself that people ain’t always out to get you.
Now, obviously this doesn’t happen automatically.
SHAYERA: You just said it did.
My mind makes connections based on actual experiences. I tend to think I’m being excluded or people are going to take advantage of me because those things have happened in the past.
ESME: And I have a tendency to think I drive people away because I’ve been bullied in the past. A lot of people have trust issues, but again, it’s not an excuse to brush away criticism.
Actually, I don’t think I want to call it “thinking.”
HAN: (twists mouth) Nah, the joke’s too obvious here.
If I said that, it would imply that I have some choice in the matter. How I react to these thoughts are definitely my choice
ESME: (mutters) Is, not are.
SHAYERA: What?
ESME: Nothing.
even though it sometimes gets ahead of me.
ESME: Enter, there’s this really great thing about the internet. Unlike in real-life conversations, on the internet you can step back from the computer before posting something. When someone says something on the internet that rubs you the wrong way, you can exit your browser, take a deep breath, count to ten, and think about how you want to respond – or even if you want to respond at all.
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism Wed 30 Sep 2020 18:10:56 No. 118056050 Report >>118056033 Sometimes the best thing to do might be to not respond at all.
Again, I have (mild) autism AND I have bipolar disorder, and while I won’t pretend that I’ve never said things on the internet that I regret, I’m STILL capable of stepping back from the computer when someone rubs me the wrong way AND SO ARE YOU.
There are people with legitimate criticism, even legitimate harsh criticism.
ESME: And you block them.
Unfortunately the internet is full of dickweeds and assholes.
SHAYERA: Some of which are your fans.
People in general have a hard time telling the difference between abrasive critics and trolls or haters. Imagine that difficulty times ten.
ESME (Enter): “It’s HARD to tell the difference between critics and trolls, so I’m not gonna try!”
Shit, I’m sorry, but this is sensitive territory for me with my bipolar disorder. It went undiagnosed and unmedicated for YEARS and that time was ABSOLUTE HELL. I hurt myself and my family and guess what? Saying, “Well, it’s hard, so I’m not gonna try fighting it” WASN’T AN OPTION. Even now that I have my meds and my situation has improved, the fight against my disorder (and yes, it’s something to FIGHT, not cater to) is ongoing. Is it hard? Hell yes, it’s hard, it’s hard as fucking hell, but I still need to fight it every damn day.
HAN: (pats her shoulders) It’s all right, sister, we’re here.
SHAYERA: Yeah, it’s okay. We can all take on Enter together.
ESME: Thanks, guys.
Every critic who comes at through the internet is a stranger that I’ve never met who may find themselves using language similar to assholes that I’ve faced.
ESME: But DO THEY HAVE VALID POINTS? That’s what you should be asking when you get criticism. For example, your last sentence had a missing word. That’s a valid point no matter who’s giving it.
Do I listen to criticism? Of course I do.
SHAYERA: Suuuuure, you do.
I listen to critics of people I’ve gotten to know.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118055775 Part of me hopes at least some of it is for the sake of the bit.
For example, I think if she were watching/reading another cartoon thing that she didn’t have a beef with, and if she didn't dedicate a year-long writing project into ripping into it, that she wouldn’t give as much of a fuck about asking how children domesticated a kangaroo because she found out a kid has a pet kangaroo.
But at the same time, it is clear she is very passionate about some of it, maybe most of it. Like that huge stick she has up her ass about where commas go.
Anonymous
Anonymous
Quoted By:
TWO MORE SECTIONS LEFT, BOYS! JUST TWO MORE!
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism Wed 30 Sep 2020 18:16:47 No. 118056146 Report >>118056050 ESME: So . . . you listen to people who have criticized people you know?
It’s largely a trust issue.
HAN: Uh-huh, and the fact that your ego’s as big as a Death Star has nothing to do with it.
Someone has a criticism for one of my projects that seems a little out of left-field.
SHAYERA: And as we’ve seen, you see people WANTING LOGIC as an unfair criticism.
My mind frequently jumps to “they’re saying this because they want it to fail.” Why does it do this?
HAN: Cause you’re paranoid.
Because there are actually people on the internet who want my projects to fail and I’ve gotten to know them.
ESME: (sighs) Enter, Enter, Enter. While there may be some people who give bad advice on purpose to get someone to fail, most trolls and flamers want to look SMARTER than the people they’re trolling/flaming, especially if they’re picking apart bad writing. That means that if you strip the name-calling and cursing, there will usually be solid points under it all. If a flamer says something like “a four-year-old could spell better than you,” that usually means that the story itself IS full of spelling errors.
HAN: Hell, look at all of us at this comm. We’re snarky, we yell, we call names, but we still do our best to make valid points.
Does it sound like paranoia?
ALL: YES!
It’s not.
SHAYERA: And after all, if Enter says something, it must be true! He said adults in Growing Around aren’t oppressed, so that means they aren’t oppressed, dammit!
Paranoid people frequently get comfort in their paranoid delusions.
ESME: Paranoid people also don’t usually think of themselves as paranoid.
If everyone’s out to get you, then you’re someone of importance. If you think that your friends don’t want to spend any time with you, then you’re… well the exact opposite.
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism Wed 30 Sep 2020 18:21:24 No. 118056207 Report Quoted By:
>>118056146 ESME: I’ve actually known quite a few people who are addicted to pity (coughMYEXcough). If nobody likes you and people are out to make your projects fail, then you get to wail about it to everyone and then your echo chamber will pat you on the back and tell you that the people who criticize you are mean doodie-heads.
Remember, these thoughts come out of past events. Because one person hurt me in this particular way, someone else might be trying to hurt me in this particular way.
HAN: Hate to break it to ya, buddy, but THAT’S PARANOIA. You’re thinkin’ that since someone hurt you one way in the past, that must mean anyone who criticizes you is out to hurt you that same way.
That I feel this way isn’t my fault. How I react to them is my choice.
ESME: And you’ve chosen to react in some pretty damn childish ways.
And my choice is to listen to people who I know that I can trust. It has nothing to do with the other person, and entirely to do with me.
SHAYERA: Which is why you wrote that long essay whining about how people’s criticism of Growing Around is UNFAIR!
I understand that only listening to people
ESME: As opposed to what, listening to both people and animals?
has a larger chance of limiting world-views and has less of a chance of catching mistakes, but it’s largely better than going off the handle at innocent strangers or going into a paranoid panic or completely ignoring my inhibitions and actually go with destructive advice. I’m not paranoid, we all know that trolls and assholes exist on the internet.
ESME: Enter, you’re focusing way too much on “who is giving the criticism?” instead of “what does the criticism SAY?” Even assholes who are trying to bring you down can still have valid points.
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism Wed 30 Sep 2020 18:22:49 No. 118056231 Report Quoted By:
ESME: I’ve actually known quite a few people who are addicted to pity (coughMYEXcough). If nobody likes you and people are out to make your projects fail, then you get to wail about it to everyone and then your echo chamber will pat you on the back and tell you that the people who criticize you are mean doodie-heads. Remember, these thoughts come out of past events. Because one person hurt me in this particular way, someone else might be trying to hurt me in this particular way. HAN: Hate to break it to ya, buddy, but THAT’S PARANOIA. You’re thinkin’ that since someone hurt you one way in the past, that must mean anyone who criticizes you is out to hurt you that same way. That I feel this way isn’t my fault. How I react to them is my choice. ESME: And you’ve chosen to react in some pretty damn childish ways. And my choice is to listen to people who I know that I can trust. It has nothing to do with the other person, and entirely to do with me. SHAYERA: Which is why you wrote that long essay whining about how people’s criticism of Growing Around is UNFAIR! I understand that only listening to people ESME: As opposed to what, listening to both people and animals? has a larger chance of limiting world-views and has less of a chance of catching mistakes, but it’s largely better than going off the handle at innocent strangers or going into a paranoid panic or completely ignoring my inhibitions and actually go with destructive advice. I’m not paranoid, we all know that trolls and assholes exist on the internet. ESME: Enter, you’re focusing way too much on “who is giving the criticism?” instead of “what does the criticism SAY?” Even assholes who are trying to bring you down can still have valid points.
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism Wed 30 Sep 2020 18:25:01 No. 118056278 Report Quoted By:
For example, let’s say you post a story on the internet and you get a review that says “You suck” and nothing else. There’s absolutely nothing constructive about this review and the best thing to do is ignore it. HOWEVER, if the review says “You suck, Sally is an abusive fuckwit, your story is full of grammar errors, and why the fuck do the adults put up with their kids just abusing them?” THEN you’ve got a review that might have valid points. This person wants to bring you down, but they’ve still got valid criticisms. Or what if the person went even further? Let’s say you get a review that says “You suck, you don’t put a comma after an ellipsis, you moron! Fuck off and stop writing, you fuckface!” This person is being an ass, but that doesn’t change the fact that commas don’t go after ellipsis! If you refused to listen to this person and just kept putting commas after ellipsis, you’d just be making yourself look foolish. And you know what? I can actually attest to this from experience. One time, a person kept commenting over and over on one of my fanfics, talking about how much it sucked and how I was an idiot for writing it. But guess what? The person STILL had some valid advice. He said the story was getting too repetitive – and I looked the story over and decided that it WAS getting repetitive, so I worked on making the rest of the story fresher. This person was likely trying to bring me down, but I was STILL able to use his advice to make the story better. Doesn’t that make me a hypocrite though? ALL: YES! A BIG FAT YES! ESME: We even have a count that attests to how much of a hypocrite you are. If anything it makes me a glass cannon. HAN: So when a hypocrite denies that he’s a hypocrite, is that double hypocrisy? HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 134
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism Wed 30 Sep 2020 18:26:16 No. 118056297 Report Quoted By:
Do I expect anyone I criticize to listen to me? Not unless they directly ask me, no. SHAYERA: Most of the people you criticize probably don’t even know you exist. HAN: And why would they “directly ask you” for criticism? You’re a YouTube cartoon reviewer, and people who review stuff on YouTube are a dime a dozen. Considering some of my earlier, more abrasive reviews, there are some people who shouldn’t listen to me. ESME: That would be true. Giving criticism and taking criticism are two different skill sets. ESME: Also true, but if you’re going to post literally anything on the internet, you’re going to HAVE to deal with criticism sooner or later. Again, you can step away from the computer and THINK about what you want to say before posting something. SHAYERA: Moreover, since Enter feeds trolls so much, making a post full of excuses to not take criticism might actually make him MORE of a target for them. If you want to criticize me, fine. ESME (Enter): “I’ll likely block you anyway.” I’m not going to say that I don’t care, but unless you’re someone who I personally trust, it’s going to be very difficult for me to listen. HAN (Enter) “Go ahead and criticize me, but I won’t listen.” SHAYERA: Yeah, that TOTALLY sounds like he’s fine with criticism. ”Why don’t you just take the extra time to figure out someone’s intentions” ESME: And why don’t you use question marks? Because I deal with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people every day. SHAYERA (Enter): “I have SO MANY FOLLOWERS, it’s just SO HARD!” People I don’t know, all with their own unique intentions. ESME: Again, their intentions aren’t as important as WHAT THEY ARE ACTUALLY SAYING. If someone has a valid point, they have a valid point.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118042206 Autistic asexual guy known for making judgements on cartoons based on morality (he's where the 'this cartoon is too meanspirited' meme comes from). Hypocritically calls out cartoons for not having creativity and having plot holes when he puts all his effort into making Growing Around, an opposite day type show/script/book thing about kids ruling the world and adults as kids which is what's being discussed here. Notoriously handwaves criticism and has angry tangents and pretty poor quality videos initially. Best known for 'Animated Atrocities' series with his hot takes on animations he considers bad.
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism Wed 30 Sep 2020 18:28:22 No. 118056336 Report Quoted By:
A lot of the things that I’ve regretted came from within, personal decisions that I came to on my own. That being said, a lot of people saying the same thing gets past the trust issue, people with a positive reputation can get past the trust issue, so I don’t completely shut out what people say to me on the internet. ESME: Uh-huh, yeah, I TOTALLY believe that. After all, when a lot of people said the same thing about the Growing Around universe not making sense and being full of horrible implications and how Sally is an ass, you totally listened to them and absolutely didn’t pitch a fit about it, right? HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 135 Is it cowardly? ESME: Okay, all together now! ALL: YES!! YES! A HUNDRED TIMES YES! I don’t know. Al I know, is that it’s safe. ESME: Enter, I hate to break it to you, but THE INTERNET ISN’T SAFE. If you want to wrap yourself in a cocoon that shields you from criticism, then the internet ain’t the place to do it. When you post stuff on the internet while at the same time saying, “I won’t listen to your criticism!” you’re only asking for more and more people to troll you and making yourself look like the giant hypocrite you are. I’m not going to lie, I do have some problems taking criticism. What people have to understand though is that it’s not a pride issue, it’s a trust issue. HAN: Yup, I totally believe that your ego’s got nothing to do with it. The fact that you think Growing Around’s gonna be the best cartoon ever and so much better than those shows the greedy NETWORKS make TOTALLY has nothing whatsoever to do with it. ESME: You know what the most amusing thing about this essay is? SHAYERA: What? ESME: It was first posted shortly after Enter’s “Return of Slade” review – in which Enter bitches about how the makers of Teen Titans Go! can’t take criticism. HAN: Well, do we even need to say anything there? Seriously, do we need to say anything? SHAYERA: We can say this.
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism Wed 30 Sep 2020 18:31:22 No. 118056386 Report Quoted By:
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 136
ESME: Anyway, that was Enter making excuses. Now let’s move on to Enter being an asshole. This is an infamous incident where a person studying animation in college PM’d one of the people who was at the time working with Enter to develop Growing Around (I don’t think the person is still working with Enter). Enter’s friend forwarded the PM to Enter and, well, you can see both the original PM and Enter’s oh-so-mature response here.
https://imgur.com/b2x1kQh SHAYERA: Not gonna lie, I’m feeling a bit sick inside.
HAN: Me too. I mean, shit, I’m startin’ to see where Sally gets it from.
ESME: Yeah. Let’s get to sporking.
1.) Being in college does not mean you’re in the industry, or know anything about the industry.
HAN: It probably means that he knows more about the industry than YOU, though, especially seein’ as how he’s gettin’ ready for internships.
ESME: Brace yourselves – Enter REALLY has beef with college, or any kind of education, for that matter.
SHAYERA: But... he never even WENT to college.
ESME: That doesn’t matter – he’s still totally an expert on how awful college is and how it’s just a big waste of time and money!
Being in the industry means that you’re in the industry, and college is filled with out-dated techniques.
HAN: I love the way you just assume that his school must be “filled with outdated techniques,” O Expert On College Who’s Never Been To College.
By saying you’re in college is claiming to credentials that don’t mean anything yet and damages any of your claims in my eyes.
SHAYERA: And yet Mr. College Expert Enter thinks reviewing cartoons on YouTube is a totally valid credential – a much better credential than actually studying animation in school.
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 137
2.) We have done this frequently. We have taken plenty of breaks.
SHAYERA: Well... good for you?
3.) We only have two types of feedback in a following as large as mine:
Anonymous
Quoted By:
I am the Milkman, My Milk is delicious.
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism Wed 30 Sep 2020 18:34:00 No. 118056420 Report Quoted By:
an echo chamber or trolls who hate everything I do. SHAYERA: Enter’s a tad obsessed with trolls, isn’t he? ESME: Just a tad. The middle is a minimal group, and they too often resemble either of the other two categories. HAN: So the best thing to do is stick his fingers in his ears and go “LALALALA, I’M NOT LISTENING!” SHAYERA: And block people. Don’t forget blocking people. No it’s not okay to scrap months of work. That is never okay. ESME: Yeeaah, you DO know that writers/artists/filmmakers/whatever sometimes scrap months or even YEARS of work in order to start over and make something better, right? HAN: But the mighty Enter says it’s NEVER okay, so that must mean it’s never okay! There is almost no situation where you can’t get more out of something from finishing it than scraping it and starting over. ESME: Enter, for an animation reviewer, you seem pretty damn clueless about how the animation industry actually WORKS. In the animation industry, work gets scrapped all the fucking time! Scenes, characters, and even entire movies that people worked long and hard on sometimes end up on the cutting-room floor. And you know what else? That’s NOT always a bad thing. For example, let’s look at The Emperor’s New Groove. This movie had a really, REALLY troubled production. It was conceived as a grand South American epic titled “Kingdom of the Sun,” but the filmmakers had a lot of difficulty getting the story they wanted to tell right. Finally, they scrapped almost everything and started over. They decided to change their grand epic into a simple, nonsensical comedy – and it WORKED. Of course, we have no way of knowing if the original Kingdom of the Sun would have been better or worse than the movie we got, but the movie we did get is funny, charming, and full of clever writing and memorable characters, and the movie has a dedicated fanbase even to this day. Or look at The Jungle Book, which is considered a classic to this day.
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism Wed 30 Sep 2020 18:35:18 No. 118056447 Report Quoted By:
Much like The Emperor’s New Groove, it was originally conceived as much darker and more complex than the movie we got, but then everything was scrapped except for one song, “The Bare Necessities.” Again, we can’t know if the original version would have been better or worse than the movie we got, but the movie we got is considered one of Walt’s great classics. SHAYERA: Moreover, Enter’s really one to talk about how scrapping work is never a good idea, given that he’d later on completely abandon his book series. HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 138 5.) Stop making assumptions about what we’re doing. HAN: Oh THAT’S rich, seein’ as how Enter just assumed that the other guy’s college must be “full of outdated techniques.” HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 139 6.) “I can’t see anyone picking this up.” ESME: Oh yeah, this was back when Enter thought he could sell his idea to an actual TV network. SHAYERA: I thought networks were GREEDY GREEDY AND WE NEED TO BE FREE OF NETWORK CONTROL! ESME: Yeah, it’s almost like he decided that AFTER he realized that his show would never be picked up! HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 140 HAN: In any case, I think I can say this again. That’s pure opinion. SHAYERA: Should I get out the Suethor Bingo card again? It might be critique, but it’s not helpful unless you can substantiate that. SHAYERA (Enter): “You’re wrong, my show totally WILL be picked up, so there! Nyah!” 7.) “It’s very stale.” This is hard to know because you haven’t substantiated your claims. ESME: Well I did, and then you blocked me. How much into this have you gotten? Have you read more than one script, or have you just looked at the storyboards? SHAYERA (Enter): “I’ll bet you didn’t even READ the scripts! Nyah!” 8.) “You don’t know how this world works.” Says who? We know pretty much all we need to know. HAN: Which is why you whine so much about the concept of explainin’ anything, right?
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism Wed 30 Sep 2020 18:36:37 No. 118056471 Report Either you haven’t looked deeply enough into what we’re doing and you’re making assumptions based on fuck-all ESME: Or maybe, just maybe, YOU haven’t developed your world very well. SHAYERA: I love how he makes assumptions that the other guy must be making assumptions. HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 141 9.) “You’re more interested in the way the world came to be” And I’m sure that a cartoon about Spongebob’s life that led him to Bikini Bottom would be more interesting than the cartoon we have now, HAN: And . . . what does SpongeBob have to do with anything? or how the Fire Nation conquered the world would be more interesting than the Avatar we got. SHAYERA: Actually, I’d totally watch a show about the Fire Nation conquering the world. HAN: Sides, I got a movie about how I won the Falcon and teamed up with Chewie – and it was AWESOME. ESME: And none of that actually refutes the guy’s claim. Enter’s using his same old tactic of “see, this so and so show does this thing, so that means my show is totally the same!” 10. I’m sure there are plenty of references, but I’ll find them on my own. ESME: Enter’s so whiny about criticism that he won’t even LOOK at the references that the other guy so graciously shared. Please enjoy your college education that’s going to saddle you with mountains of debt that some people cannot afford and does not guarantee you a job when many other people with your same credentials have more people skills or ambition than you. SHAYERA: Wow, what an ASSHOLE. ESME: Well, I can’t speak for the other guy, but I most definitely DID enjoy my college education that saddled me with mountains of debt, thank you very much. I went to college not just to get a job, but also for the EXPERIENCE, which was amazing and I don’t regret it one damn bit. And oh yeah, when I worked as a substitute teacher, I got paid extra simply because I had a bachelor’s degree.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
I wish I still had the video of that guy explaining the "water my dog" joke for like 40 minutes. Someone reuploaded it but it seems to be gone again
Anonymous
Is this what this dude does when he isnt telling people to get back to work and not wear masks? Jesus
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism Wed 30 Sep 2020 18:48:16 No. 118056670 Report >>118056471 While you may think college is worthless in your little bubble, in the real world it DOES have plenty of value.
HAN: Shit, I stopped goin’ to school when my parents died and I later got kicked outta the Imperial Flight Academy, but even I know education’s got worth. I damn well would’ve LIKED to have gotten a chance to finish my education, but I couldn’t do that cause MY PARENTS FUCKING DIED AND LEFT ME IN THE STREETS!
Or maybe you’re trolling. With critiques like this that say “Scrap everything” or “don’t even bother” it’s hard to fucking tell.
ESME/HAN/SHAYERA: (collective facepalm)
SHAYERA: Someone’s paranoia about trolls is showing.
ESME: Anyway, yeah, anyone who sees Enter as an innocent victim of heartless trolling, here’s your evidence to show that he ain’t innocent.
But oh, we’re not done. Nope, now we’ve got a ranty journal entry he posted soon after his Indiegogo campaign failed, when he was fed up with everything and decided that screaming to the public would be a good way to make the trolls disappear.
HAN: Oh yeah, THAT’LL totally work.
ESME: Now, we’re not going to spork the WHOLE entry since it talks about things like his video editor getting doxed, so we’re just going to pick and choose parts to spork. One part we’re not going to spork is his introduction. He talks about trolls and comments that say things like “you should kill yourself,” and let me say right here that NONE OF US should support comments telling people to kill themselves. Critiquing is one thing and harassment is another – and Enter not knowing the difference doesn’t change the fact that telling people to kill themselves is NOT OKAY.
And now he goes into a lot of things people say about him and attempts to refute them. Emphasis on attempts.
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism Wed 30 Sep 2020 18:49:19 No. 118056690 Report Quoted By:
>>118056670 ”You take cartoons too seriously.” I get this one a lot. So, a cartoon reviewer takes cartoons seriously. In videos talking about cartoons. When most of his audience only cares about what he has to say about cartoons. That person takes cartoons too seriously. Maybe he should start making some videos about interpretive dance. That seems like a perfect idea. I’m sure this would benefit everything involved.
SHAYERA: So Enter thinks people say he takes cartoons too seriously JUST because he reviews cartoons.
HAN: Kinda like how people hate Growing Around JUST because it’s fantasy.
I agree that I used to take them too seriously when I was insulting people over writing bad episodes.
What I do now is put aside a bunch of time to watch through them, put together a script to articulate my points, and try to make it entertaining. Maybe that might be because it’s my job now. Maybe it’s something called “passion.” Something foreign to the disaffected who take nothing in their life seriously. I wonder if Weird Al takes music too seriously. I wonder if George Carlin took comedy too seriously. I know that I’m not as talented in cartooning as either of them are in their respective field, but if “taking something too seriously in and of itself is a problem, then you need to have a problem with anyone who ever had any success in anything.
SHAYERA (Enter): “You just don’t like ANYONE who’s been successful in ANYTHING!”
HAN (Enter) “And you don’t know anything about PASSION, dammit! I AM PASSIONATE AND YOU AREN’T!”
ESME: (groans) He has to be TRYING to not get it. There’s no other excuse for someone to be this ignorant.
Anonymous
>>118056591 To understand what’s going on here, it’s important to understand that a portion of these big posts aren’t Enter’s words. He didn’t write the script part with Shayera or Han Solo or the other chick. That stuff is the one chick reacting to Enter in between copypasting stuff he said.
Anonymous
>>118056749 And he's too autistic to reformat Enter's words as greentext.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118055816 Autism attracts autism.
Anonymous
I want a commemorative t-shirt for surviving this thread.
Anonymous
>>118056767 That’s because she wrote it on dreamwidth, here
>>118014674 . She’s not literally here, writing it now- this was written two years ago.
Thank god the OP storytiming this shitshow isn’t obsessed enough to take the time reformatting it all for us. We’d be here for a month.
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism Wed 30 Sep 2020 18:56:46 No. 118056830 Report Enter, people don’t say you take cartoons too seriously just because you review them. They say it because you frequently act like the mere existence of stupid cartoons is the worst thing ever and offends your very being. Seriously, there are times in your videos where you sound absolutely devastated by these cartoons existing. HAN: Also, you pick apart JOKES for not making sense and you throw tantrums over nitpicks – and not in the comical way. ESME: And yes, Enter, TONE MATTERS. The Angry Video Game Nerd throws tantrums over video games all the time, but we can tell that they’re over-the-top on purpose to get a laugh. When he makes videos just as James Rolfe, he’s much more mellow and approachable. You, on the other hand, throw tantrums even when you’re not in your reviewing persona. Like you’re doing right now. SHAYERA: Hell, you once used an ENTIRE REVIEW to throw a tantrum about getting requests. ESME: And if you want to look at an animation reviewer who does a much better job than Enter, let’s look at Phelous. He reviews some absolute bottom-of-the-barrel cartoons, but people don’t accuse him of taking cartoons too seriously. Why? Because he HAS FUN reviewing them. He invites his viewers to LAUGH at how stupid they are instead of acting miserable that they exist. I do feel sorry for a lot of trolls, yes, in a condescending view. They tend to attack someone because somebody cares about something. Something that they’ve lost along the way. SHAYERA: Is Enter seriously trying to psychoanalyze internet trolls? HAN: Looks like it. Some of them are disaffected teenagers who are out on the edge, but some of them aren’t. They’ll never be able to like something among their peers, because it’ll be defaced. They’ll never feel passionate about anything because then they’d be taking shit too seriously. HAN: Or maybe they just wanna get a laugh and the internet’s an easy place to shit on people and see how they react.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118056014 >but I also have bipolar disorder. I’m prone to having emotional breakdowns over little things You don't say.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118056670 >Shit, I stopped goin’ to school when my parents died and I later got kicked outta the Imperial Flight Academy, but even I know education’s got worth. I damn well would’ve LIKED to have gotten a chance to finish my education Thanks, Han Solo.
Anonymous
>>118056814 >>118056767 Looks like on dreamwidth, Enter’s words are highlighted in bold, to differentiate them from the rest. But it doesn’t convert well with OP copypasting it.
Anonymous
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118056869 You know, that small detail does a lot towards it not reading like a schizo's ranting, unlike this thread.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118056471 I have to confess that I have avoided consuming a lot of Star Wars content basically my whole life, and for this entire thread, I had Han Solo confused with Boba Fett, and I’ve only just now realized I was picturing the wrong character the entire time.
Anonymous
>>118056790 I kinda want to buy a tshirt for anyone willing to compose the screencap.
Anonymous
These threads are some of the worst things I've seen in my entire life and yet I cannot stop looking at them.
Anonymous
>>118057042 It would be like the Bee Movie script, where you’d have to condense it so hard, no one could read it.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118057911 I’d be fine with a highlight reel that cut more than half this shit, but I think that’d still be too big.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118057752 Addictive, isn't it?
Anonymous
>>118057042 You'd have to publish the screencap as a book, at this point
Anonymous
>>118058136 >A shitty autistic book gets a shitty autistic written commentary that gets a shitty autistic copy-paste on 4chan which then gets turned into a book that can be used as a case study on autism And so, it all comes full circle.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
I wish I had this kind of drive.
Anonymous
>>118058364 We’ve come full circle half a dozen times at this point. This isn’t a circle anymore, it’s an infinite downward spiral.
Anonymous
Quoted By:
>>118058436 It's like a matryoshka.
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism Wed 30 Sep 2020 21:25:56 No. 118059401 Report >>118056830 ESME: And Enter, guess what? YOU’RE PLAYING THEIR GAME. YOU’RE PLAYING RIGHT INTO THE TROLLS’ HANDS.
And life’s not meant to be taken seriously. We’re meant to live, do whatever, and then die. It’s all pointless man. They’ll never even be able to try anything without being fucking hypocrites because they’ve attacked people just for trying.
HAN: Uh-huh, yeah. And what the fuck does any of that have to do with you takin’ cartoons too seriously??
While we’re on the subject. “Just block the trolls.” Proxy accounts, sockpuppets, throw away emails, and oh yeah… attacking other people I know. It makes it a smidge difficult to block someone.
SHAYERA: Maybe it wouldn’t have gotten so bad if you hadn’t fed trolls so much.
Literally the only way to stop trolls from trolling you is to bore them.
SHAYERA: So BORE THEM. Do you really think giving the trolls exactly what they want is gonna make things any better? You’re practically holding up a neon sign that says, “TROLL ME, I WILL GIVE YOU AN ENTERTAINING REACTION.”
And making it harder for them to get a rise out of you.
ESME: In other words, the exact opposite of what you’re doing right now.
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 142
Some of them just see it as a challenge. Once again, I’ve been a content creator for half a decade. I have experience in this shit.
ESME: Well I’ve been posting my creations on the internet since I was sixteen – meaning almost twenty years. Have I experienced trolling? Of course I have, but I’ve learned that the best way to deal with trolls is to NOT ACKNOWLEDGE THEM. Again, Enter, people troll you because they know you’ll give them what they want.
SHAYERA: Oh, and if you really care about them attacking people you know, then maybe don’t keep feeding them. You’re putting the people you know at risk for further trolling.
”You can’t take criticism.”
HAN: Oh boy, here we go again.
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism Wed 30 Sep 2020 21:27:11 No. 118059418 Report >>118059401 I love this statement, even if we’re not talking about me. “You can’t take criticism” is what we call a kafka trap. A kafka trap is something that you can’t fight without well, proving the criticism right.
Seriously, go up to anyone and say that they can’t take criticism.
ESME: Okay. (looks at Han) Han, you can’t take criticism.
HAN: (cocks head) Am I s’posed to say something?
ESME: I dunno, Enter just told me to walk up to someone and tell them they can’t take criticism.
They’ll either not try to fight back, thus proving the statement right.
SHAYERA: Or they just think you aren’t worth their time.
Or, they’ll try to fight it, proving that they can’t take that criticism, proving that they can’t take criticism.
ESME: Or, they might want to have a DISCUSSION about the criticism and see if it’s valid. Enter, believe it or not, you DON’T know everything about human nature and not everyone is as paranoid and immature about criticism as you are.
Whether it’s true or not, it’s just weak and you’re going to need to do something better than that.
SHAYERA (Enter): “Your argument is WEAK! WEAK, I tell you! WEEEEAAAAAKKKK!!”
Maybe I can’t take criticism.
HAN: You’ve already shown that you can’t.
I don’t really know, because I don’t exactly want to listen to those videos that focus on calling me an autistic sperg or even worse.
ESME: There are actually quite a few videos on you that DON’T call you any names. Mine would be one of them.
SHAYERA: Hell, even in this spork, the worst we’ve called you is a moron and an asshole.
I mean, should I dignify them?
HAN: I dunno about dignifying them, but you’re sure givin’ ‘em power over you.
Here’s me dignifying them – fuck off.
ESME: Yup, they’ll definitely listen to that.
Also, hope you find good fortune with the community that you’re in – the commentary community.
Anonymous
Are sporks normally like this? Lengthy, multiple characters (including fictional), etc.?
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism Wed 30 Sep 2020 21:29:39 No. 118059461 Report >>118059418 HAN: Ain’t Enter technically part of the commentary community too? Sure, he ain’t commentating on YouTubers, but he commentates on people’s animated works and does the same stuff commentators do – go through the work and point out what’s wrong with it – so doesn’t that count?
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 143
Just make sure that you’re absolutely perfect forever and ever and never make any mistakes ever, because the second that you do, every single one of your peers is going to race to commentate on you. At this point, I’m considering being the first.
SHAYERA: You hate commentators, but you’re considering commentating on them.
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 144
And true, I do tend to lump these people in with the trolls.
ESME: Is there anyone you DON’T lump in with trolls?
But it’s a step up from asshole drama whore, in my opinion.
SHAYERA: You’re calling them drama whores? Well hello there pot, this is kettle.
HAN: If this isn’t bein’ a drama whore, I dunno what is.
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 145
Also, get gud son – literally every one of them is shit I’ve been hearing for three years mixed in with a nice spritz of insults.
ESME: Again, I point you to MY commentary. Either you haven’t watched it or you’re asshurt that I dared to criticize your precious Growing Around.
The reason why nobody respects the commentary community is because they all say the same damn thing about the same damn people, even when one of their complaints is that “he don’t shut up about that thar Sponge show”
SHAYERA: Stay classy, Enter.
ESME: Anyway, we’re skipping the next thing he rants about, since it deals with the government and internet censorship and that’s asking for trouble.
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism Wed 30 Sep 2020 21:31:55 No. 118059503 Report >>118059461 ”Your indiegogo was a disaster.” Yup, I started an indiegogo project that didn’t make its goal. It’s not like I hit four times my budget, kept my backers in the dark, made an insulting trailer, neglected to give anyone backer rewards, and then delivered a mediocre project that looked worse than the concept art. Yup, my indiegogo was an absolute disaster. Because it didn’t hit its budget. Like 44% of crowdfunding campaigns.
ESME (Enter); “You’re criticizing my Indiegogo ONLY because it didn’t hit its budget! That’s the one and only thing that went wrong – I totally did everything else right!”
It’s the hindenburg of crowdfunding campaigns. They’re going to talking about this for years and years in the book. Future crowdfunders are going to look specifically to this case and learn everything that they’re not going to be able to do. And that’s going to give them literally all of the knowledge that they’re going to need.
ESME: (sighs) Given that we just sporked the Indiegogo campaign in full, I don’t think we need to repeat ourselves, but not hitting its budget is NOT the reason why people criticized the campaign. They criticized it because you clearly had no idea what you were doing and because Growing Around is full of holes and unfortunate implications that you refuse to acknowledge.
”Your miserable because your crowdfunding campaign failed.” No, not really. A little bit annoyed that some dipshits get satisfaction from dancing on the ashes, but just a little bit.
SHAYERA: Uh-huh, I believe that almost as much as I believe that Meyer’s totally fine with the Breaking Dawn “controversy.”
On my twitter rant, someone replied to it with a post asking questions about Growing Around.
HAN: Uh-oh, QUESTIONS about Growing Around! Cue Enter to lose his shit!
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism Wed 30 Sep 2020 21:34:02 No. 118059533 Report >>118059503 Which is fine, people ask things at awkward times all the time. But, it’s the wording that was what managed to annoy me. There were a bunch of questions. The one asked was this. “5. (this is a question you can’t just avoid) what happens if some kind of sexual crime occurs?”
HAN: Hmm, what DOES happen if some kind of sexual crime occurs? Hell, what happens if an adult commits ANY kind of crime and refuses to let the kids take ‘em into custody?
SHAYERA: You’re not seriously expecting Enter to answer, are you? He only brought up this question so he can whine about it.
You tell me “this is a question you can’t avoid” or “you need to answer this,” unless it’s like against a serious accusation, the answer you get is “fuck you, I’m not talking to you.”
ESME: (sighs) Enter, people sure aren’t going to feel guilty about criticizing you when you act like this.
Yeah, I need to answer that question because it’s something brought up in each and every piece of children’s media. This is a question that must be brought up in Narnia, Hogwarts, Willy Wonka’s factory, and Cinderella’s castle.
SHAYERA: Actually, a sexual crime DOES occur in the Harry Potter books – Merope uses a love potion to essentially rape Tom Riddle Sr. That didn’t end well.
ESME: And Enter? You brought this one on yourself. You yourself said Growing Around wouldn’t be afraid of touching ANY issue. Hell, you even specifically used the word SEXUALITY when bragging about how your show would tackle such deep issues. Not sexual orientation, sexuality. When you say any issue, you’d better be prepared for people to ask you about ANY issue. So yeah, this one’s on you.
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 146
I don’t know, maybe it’s karmic. Maybe because I “take things too seriously” people absolutely need to take my thing too seriously. Oh wait, I thought that I was the hypocrite. I get that one a lot too.
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism Wed 30 Sep 2020 21:35:27 No. 118059559 Report >>118059533 But, no, it’s bad when I take things too seriously, but everyone else is allowed to take my thing too seriously.
ESME: Thanks Enter, you just demonstrated EXACTLY why everyone calls you a hypocrite. You take other people’s work seriously, but you don’t want other people taking YOUR work seriously.
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 147
HAN: Even better, he ain’t even aware that he just demonstrated his hypocrisy.
”Kids can’t really rule the world.” I get this one… surprisingly a lot.
SHAYERA: He’s sure saying that he “gets this a lot” quite a bit. Maybe there’s a REASON why he “gets things a lot.”
You guys must really enjoy other works of fiction.
SHAYERA (Enter): “It’s FICTION, DAMMIT! FIIIIIIICCCCCCTIIIOOOOOONNN!! FICTION DOESN’T HAVE TO MAKE SENSE, SO YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO ASK ME ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT IT!
Yes, kids can’t really rule the world. And do you know what? Animals can’t talk and rabbits can’t be police officers.
ESME: Zootopia? You’re seriously bringing up Zootopia to defend your shitty work? Enter, guess what? If a regular rabbit from our world somehow ended up in the Zootopia universe, that rabbit couldn’t be a police officer either – and not because of racism. It couldn’t become a police officer because it can’t talk or reason like the Zootopia animals can. The Zootopia animals are able to have a human-like society because they’re EVOLVED. They even say so IN THE FREAKIN’ MOVIE.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=emb_title&v=9jNRkLpFhlg Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism Wed 30 Sep 2020 21:37:17 No. 118059599 Report Quoted By:
>>118059559 That’s another reason why people have problems with your concept. The makers of Zootoipa and other fiction that features anthropomorphic animals know that animals would have to be DIFFERENT in order to run a society like ours. Meanwhile, you keep insisting over and over again that the kids in Growing Around are exactly like kids in our world (well, they’re actually stereotypes, but let’s forget that for a moment). If you’re going to say the kids in your world are exactly the same as kids in our world, then people WILL tell you that kids can’t rule the world because their bodies and minds are still developing. Not to mention that they get NO EDUCATION, so how do they learn how to function in society, let alone RUN it?
”Have you read Lord of the Flies?”
ESME: Yes, I actually have. Have you?
Huh, not only do people think reality and fiction are the same, but people think all fiction exists in the same universe.
HAN (Enter): “You guys are so DUMB! If you say my stuff doesn’t make sense, it’s cause you think reality and fiction are the SAME, dummies!”
Now here’s the thing about Lord of the Flies - it wasn’t really about… kids. It’s philosophy was that
ESME: “Its” and “it’s” are interchangeable.
not just kids, all mankind is doomed to savagery without the correcting force of society. The main characters are just children because they have the least influence from a society. Even adults, according to the text and the themes, would end up like the boys. And it’s something that I fundamentally disagree with. If humans were doomed to become wild without the correcting force of society, then society couldn’t spring up in the first place.
ESME: I already talked about Lord of the Flies when we sporked your tantrum about people having questions about your concept, but, ah, I noticed that you didn’t actually answer the question. HAVE you actually read Lord of the Flies?
Anonymous
Quoted By:
This is accomplishing one thing: it's reminding me how insufferable Enter can be when he defends himself.
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism Wed 30 Sep 2020 21:38:27 No. 118059626 Report SHAYERA: It wouldn’t surprise me if he hasn’t and he just got this stuff from Wikipedia or somewhere else. But seriously, people like throwing Lord of the Flies at me like it’s a documentary. It’s kind of humorous. HAN: So is this tantrum. Number one, it’s a piece of fiction. SHAYERA (Enter) “FICTION! FICTION! YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO QUESTION THE LOGIC IN FIIIIICCCCCTIIIIOOOOONNN!!” There’s no guarantee that that’s how kids really would act. Two, all fictional universes are different. How the characters get from planet to planet is different in Star Wars & Star Trek, for instance. HAN: Again, LEAVE MY GALAXY OUTTA THIS! Thirdly, Lord of the Flies was a deconstruction story. It only exists because there were many, many stories about the scenario within happening without a hitch. So get educated dumbass. ESME: (stares) Sooooo . . . you hate college and school, but you’re telling your critics to “get educated dumbass.” HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 148 HAN: And this is s’posed to make people feel guilty for criticizing him how? SHAYERA: Does he really think saying “get educated dumbass” is going to win him sympathy? You want me to accept your criticism you need to show me that you actually understand what I’m going for. ESME: Oh Enter, I understand what you were going for. I understand that you were going for a whimsical escapist fantasy, but what you actually got was a horrifying dystopia. I understand that you were going for Sally being a flawed-but-lovable quirky kid character, but what you actually got was an abusive little prick.
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism Wed 30 Sep 2020 21:39:28 No. 118059644 Report >>118059626 This is something that I try to do in my own reviews. Also, I need to know that you actually want the project to be good.
SHAYERA: Right. And I’m sure you wanted Norm of the North to be good. I’m sure you wanted Drawn Together: The Movie to be good. I’m sure you wanted The Emoji Movie to be good.
HAN: For fuck’s sake, his show’s called Animated ATROCITIES. Sure, he’s got Admirable Animations too, but Animated Atrocities is much, much more popular and has many more episodes. Don’t tell me he doesn’t go lookin’ for bad cartoons expectin’ them to be bad.
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 149
Let’s just say that I’m used to hearing “this sucks. Quit, and go kill yourself.”
ESME: Again, telling people to kill themselves is DESPICABLE, but you’re lumping all your critics in with the “go kill yourself” bunch.
Skipping the next part because it’s about Butch Hartman’s crowdfunding campaign and I don’t know enough about it to make intelligent comments.
There are other things that I want to talk about, but I don’t want to start drama, believe it or not.
HAN: And you really think everything else you’ve said WON’T start drama?
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 150
I’m just venting. I’ve heard that that’s healthy.
ESME: There are other ways to vent that don’t involve screaming to the entire internet and encouraging people to troll you EVEN MORE.
Snipping a bit of Enter talking about the length people go to to hurt him and people he’s close to – again, we’re NOT talking about the genuine harassment.
”Maybe you should get off the internet, dipshit.” I don’t think I can. I mean, if an employer searches through the lies and shit about me, they ain’t gonna like it.
ESME: Or maybe, just MAYBE, they’d see the tantrums YOU’VE thrown like this one and they won’t like THAT.
So, because of your shenanigans, you’re stuck with me.
I ain’t ever leaving.
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism
Growing Around - How Mr. Enter Handles Criticism Wed 30 Sep 2020 21:40:29 No. 118059667 Report Quoted By:
>>118059644 SHAYERA: So you take zero responsibility for your own actions. Nice.
ESME: Well, there are many other instances of Enter being childish about criticism, but I think we’ve made our point here.
HAN: Yeah. The guy’s makin’ me sick.
SHAYERA: Me too.
ESME: Me three, so I think we can declare this section over. All we have left is the Final Thoughts and then we can kiss Enter goodbye – for now. Han, Shayera, you’re dismissed – for now.
HAN: I don’t like this “for now” stuff. (leaves)
SHAYERA: Well, this spork has definitely been . . . interesting. (leaves)
COUNTS
KIDS DO THIS, RIGHT?: 82
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 242
MISSING PIECES: 125
YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 213
WHIMSICAL MY ASS: 132
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 150
CONJUNCTION JUNCTION, THAT’S YOUR FUNCTION: 581
Growing Around - Final Thoughts
The spork is finished, which means it’s time for one last post before we can say goodbye to Sally Dunn (WOOHOO!!) I was an avid reader as a kid (and I still am as an adult). The library was (and still is) one of my favorite places and I would always check out so many books that I’d have trouble carrying them all. Sometimes I’d spend entire afternoons in the big armchair with a book. That said, I don’t think I would have liked this book as a kid. Hell, I might have lost interest in Chapter 1 when Sally was just wandering around town and talking to random extras for a million years, but if I kept reading after Chapter 1, Linda probably would have been the character I identified with, not Sally, and I probably would have been damn frustrated with how she was treated. In fact, I imagine that a lot of children who have experienced bullying would identify most with Linda. As a personal note, when I was a kid I hated it when movies/cartoons/commercials portrayed adults as idiots because they had committed the crime of being adults. Yes, sometimes I felt powerless around adults, but I didn’t want to bring them down – I just wanted to be respected on their level. Hell, I usually got along better with adults than with people my own age. So yeah, this kind of book would have left a bad taste in my mouth.
Growing Around - Final Thoughts
>>118059702 PLOT
The main plot is simple: Sally and her party. You’d think a plot like that would be easy to write, which makes it pretty baffling how sloppily the plot is executed. Chapter 1 is almost all filler that has nothing to do with anything else. The Party Duty letter doesn’t arrive until we’re over a third of the way into the book and there’s nothing that hints at it beforehand. Even after that, the story meanders, taking its sweet old time to its unsatisfying conclusion. The big conflict about the no-show magician is just DROPPED in a manner that makes Breaking Dawn look competent, rendering it pointless. In fact, the entire last chapter feels like Enter’s in a hurry to get to the end and doesn’t care how sloppy things get, not to mention that Sally challenging Talula for mayor isn’t satisfying because it doesn’t feel earned. In fact, since it comes in the context of Sally humiliating Talula, it just feels like a bully wanting to one-up her victim. And of course, it ends teasing a sequel that was never released. While this sort of thing happens all the time in Hollywood and TV networks, where the decision on whether or not a TV/film series continues is often out of the actual directors’ hands, this is a self-published book. Self-published, meaning there’s no one to blame but Enter himself.
Then there’s the Linda subplot, which seriously made me uncomfortable. We’re supposed to feel sorry for Linda because she’s lost all her imagination and wonder. Well, I do feel really, really sorry for Linda, but not for that reason. I feel sorry for her because her society is so oppressive and dictatorial that it daily tries to force her to become something she’s not. The book pretends that Sally and Linda reach a big breakthrough with the stage fright thing, but the stage fright is a big nothing when compared to Linda’s situation as a whole.
Growing Around - Final Thoughts
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>>118059723 The “understanding” that Sally and Linda come to is just a restoration of the status quo where Linda, the abuse victim, is the one who needs to change because her society won’t let her be herself. Sally saying “I’m sorry I was so mean” also holds no water when the humiliating outfit that she forced Linda to wear actually gets them both REWARDED. Sally really learns NOTHING from the whole ordeal, and she’s the same bitch at the end that she was at the beginning.
CHARACTERS
Ho boy, the characters. Enter thinks they’re so appealing and three-dimensional, but they . . . aren’t (with one exception, and you all know who that is). Let’s take a look at them.
SALLY DUNN
I’m not kidding when I say Sally is one of the most thoroughly unpleasant protagonists I’ve ever read about in a published book. While she’s not quite on the level of Bella Swan or Patrick from American Psycho, she’s still in the top ten. I compared her to Veruca Salt several times throughout the spork, and I think that’s a pretty appropriate comparison. Hell, at least with Veruca, you can argue that her being a spoiled brat isn’t her fault because her parents gave her everything she wanted and never taught her self-control. Sally, meanwhile, is just a bitch, and she’s a shining example of why kids SHOULDN’T be in charge of the world.
I know I talked about it to death in the spork, but Sally is an absolute bully. She is constantly taunting complete strangers, blowing raspberries at them, and dumping food on them. If this is Enter’s definition of “constantly making friends,” then who needs enemies? Hell, she even pushes one of her actual friends in the lake. And do I even need to say any more about how she treats Linda? Not only does she repeatedly abuse and humiliate Linda, but she also enjoys it - constantly. Sometimes she seems to make it her life’s mission to make her mother’s life a living hell.
Anonymous
Growing Around - Final Thoughts
Enter wants us to believe that she learns a lesson when she learns about the stage fright thing, but as I pointed out in the spork, that is bullshit. The stage fright is the one and only thing she apologizes about while all the other abuse goes unquestioned. It’s ten levels of ironic that Enter complains so much about mean characters in cartoons when his own protagonist is such a horrible little bully, but the Hypocrisy count existed for a reason. Even the supposed quirkiness and imagination of her character fails. As we discussed in the spork, Enter seems to spend zero time with actual kids and relies on stereotypes to figure out what they’re like. Her “imagination” mainly consists of just doing random shit like making “mud angels” or throwing balls against the TV and her “quirkiness” consists of such WTFuckery as putting cheese fondue on cake or putting chocolate sauce on spaghetti (to show that HEY LOOK KIDS LOVE SUGAR THEY LOVE SUGAR HAVE I MENTIONED THAT KIDS LOVE SUGAR?) that just grosses out the readers instead of charming them. In short, I hate Sally, I hate Sally, I hate Sally, and I’m glad to be done with the little shit. LINDA DUNN Linda is the Leah Clearwater of this book – the character that the universe heaps so much shit on for no good reason that she ends up being the most sympathetic character by far. She’s a low-key adult who’s fine with being a low-key adult, but that means that this dystopia has no place for her. She gets shamed just because she paints the night sky or loses a paintball game or doesn’t like food fights – and the story sees nothing wrong with this. Enter thinks that if he repeats enough times that poor Linda has lost all her wonder and imagination and needs Sally to help her find it again, then the readers will believe it, but what he actually SHOWS us is a battered abuse victim who’s so beaten down by her oppressive society and abusive “guardian” that she’s internalized their sentiment.
Anonymous
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>>118059702 >The spork is finished Growing Around - Final Thoughts
>>118059780 Moreover, Linda isn’t actually imagination-disabled or whatever you want to call it. She paints the night sky, which is a perfectly good subject for a painting, despite the little shit Sally being unable to appreciate it. We learn that she made Charmichael, which indicates that she likes to make toys – which requires creativity. She used to be a professional magician and can still do her tricks on the fly, which, you guessed it, takes creativity.
Speaking of her magic tricks, why does she suffer stage fright now? That’s the only thing that the little shitball apologizes about, but we never learn why a professional magician developed such a severe case of stage fright. The stage fright seems to come out of nowhere just so Sally will have something to apologize for without actually apologizing and it gets no development. As such, Linda ends the book where she began: in an abusive situation where her world shames her for wanting to be herself and since the book (and its author) refuse to acknowledge how awful her situation is, that makes things even worse.
ROBERT DUNN
There isn’t a lot to say about Robert. I mean, he likes gardening, but it’s pretty obvious that he’s being written by someone who doesn’t know a lot about gardening. Seriously, someone who’s so into gardening should know that buttercups are wildflowers and that they won’t last long in a kid’s hair. Then there’s the more disturbing side of Robert. On the surface, he looks like a fun parent who enjoys acting silly with his daughter, but when you look at the world he lives in and the way his daughter treats her mother, the darker implications shine through. Suddenly he looks less like a doting dad and more like someone terrified of punishment who kisses ass and lies low in order to avoid it. The fact that he helps Linda hide her bad grades from their abusive daughter is further evidence of this.
Growing Around - Final Thoughts
>>118059814 He’s fully aware of what a vindictive little cunt Sally is and he’s doing his best to avoid her wrath.
TIMMY DUNN
Enter claims that Timmy has all these personality traits that he identifies with . . . and we’ll have to take his word for it, since he forgot to put any of those personality traits in the actual book. I’d say Timmy’s character suffers from an extreme case of “tell don’t show,” except Enter didn’t even TELL us about Timmy’s personality traits in the book. You could remove Timmy from the book entirely and nothing important would change – except Sally would actually have to get a job. He never takes the initiative, he rarely speaks, and even him owning a restaurant has nothing to do with the story. Also, I don’t think he ever directly interacts with his parents – instead he just talks to Sally about them. I said quite a few times that he only seems to exist so Sally won’t have to get a job, which says a lot about the “escapist” part of this so-called escapist fantasy. The alleged appeal is supposed to come from kids running the world, and yet the main character doesn’t have a job and gets to goof around doing whatever the fuck she wants all day. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see what Enter’s real idea of “escapism” is.
TALULA HEARTLY
We cheered Talula on because she gives Sally what she deserves and we all hate Sally, but as an actual villain, Talula fails. Enter claims that she’s this multi-dimensional villain, but the moments of lip service are exactly that: lip service. The scene with the reading program does nothing for the story and is never mentioned again, so it might as well not even exist. Meanwhile, the other characters are constantly talking about how awful Talula is, even characters who have no apparent reason to hate her.
Growing Around - Final Thoughts
>>118059837 All the characters are constantly talking about how much Talula lies, even though we only see her lie once (and that one “lie” could be the result of sloppy writing instead of an intentional lie). Sally even blames Talula for a car accident even though she has no proof that it came from Talula’s pony dealership. As a result, the “comeuppance” Talula gets at the end doesn’t feel satisfying since we’ve been told a lot but shown very little. Sure, we see her write the words on Sally’s forehead and take Charmichael, but that’s a big nothing compared to how Sally treats Linda, so we don’t have a reason to feel sorry for the little cunt and we DEFINITELY have no reason to think she’d be a better mayor than Talula. As such, the big face-off where Sally “triumphs” over Talula just feels like Sally being the bully that she is.
APRIL MORRISON
In a better book, April could have had potential. Yes, all her over-the-top fake-fashionista talk was super-annoying, but her situation of having twelve famous siblings could have worked. In a better book, a photographer who brags that she gets to hang with the cool kids but is hiding a desperate desire to be one of the cool kids and jealousy of her many famous siblings could have been an interesting character, but April just plain doesn’t live up to her situation’s potential. It’s an interesting idea, but the book just . . . doesn’t do much with it. She apparently has issues with her parents ignoring her, but since we never even see her parents, it’s hard to get involved with said issues. Plus, we don’t know how the role-reversal even works when there are thirteen “parents” and two “children.” So yeah, April is annoying most of the time and the rest of the time she’s just lost potential.
MOLLY
Okay, uh . . . what’s there to say about Molly?
Growing Around - Final Thoughts
>>118059864 She didn’t do much except serve as a mouthpiece for how Talula is the Most Evil Evil Who Ever Did Evil, and we never even learn why Molly hates Talula. She does basically nothing until the pier scene in Chapter 8 – when the story is almost over - and then she’s suddenly giving advice in a jarring Hagrid drawl. Yeah, that was a pretty WTF reveal for when we’re nearing the end of the story. I’m fine with characters in books having accents, but show the accents early on, not when the book’s almost over. We hear that Molly has “no experience” in “raising” parents, which implies that she’s an orphan and causes a WTF exclamation, but once again, the book does nothing with this.
WRITING STYLE
Okay, yes, this book is meant for kids, and most kids’ books aren’t going to use a lot of fancy words or have overly-complicated sentences, but that is not an excuse for the writing style to be so bland and lifeless. If you look at a lot of children’s books that are considered classics such as Alice in Wonderland, The Hobbit, The Chronicles of Narnia, the first few Harry Potter books (the later ones can’t really be called children’s books), pretty much anything by Roald Dhal, etc., many of them have lively writing styles that engage the reader. This book . . . doesn’t. I talked a lot about this in the spork, but even taking away all the horrifying implications and unlikable characters, the prose is just plain dull. Most of the time, it’s just a list of what’s happening without any actual emotion or flow - “I did this. I did this. I did this.” It really shows that this was conceived as a bunch of scripts and Enter thinks a book is just a script in prose form. Even if you forget about the abuse and horrifying implications, it’s hard to feel the whimsy that Enter wants us to feel when the writing style is so boring.
Also, the first-person perspective really fails.
Growing Around - Final Thoughts
>>118059878 First-person is harder to write than it looks, and like Meyer, Enter’s first-person tends to forget that it’s first-person. Several times, Sally references the expressions on her face when she shouldn’t be able to see them. There are some points in the story (such as when she talks about the party dress), where she starts talking in over-the-top purple prose and sounds nothing like the eight-year-old girl she’s supposed to be. Moreover, since the writing style is so monotonous, Sally herself sounds monotonous, making it sound like she’s bored most of the time. There are different reasons to write in first-person, but making your story first-person so you’ll have an excuse to not explain stuff about your world? Yeah, not a good reason.
We made a lot of jokes about the how the scammer posing as a “professional editor” took the five hundred bucks and ran, but Enter falling victim to a scam is not an excuse for the book to have gone to press with so many errors. When I published my book, I sent the manuscript to my editor, she sent it back with marks and notes all over it, I made changes and corrections and sent it back to her, she sent it back to me with more notes, we had a dialogue going, and even when the final version was ready to go to press, I STILL checked it over for errors one last time, which is what Enter should have done. Would it have been embarrassing to realize that he flushed five hundred dollars down the toilet? Sure, but it would have been far less embarrassing than publishing the book full of errors like he did.
WORLDBUILDING
Yes, this gets its own section since there are few works with as much worldbuilding fail as this one.
I’ve read a lot of dystopic fiction – 1984, Animal Farm, Fahrenheit 451, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Circle, The Hunger Games, I could go on and on. Good dystopic fiction will produce a kind of visceral horror at the very idea that humanity could end up like this.
Growing Around - Final Thoughts
>>118059910 And guess what? Growing Around produced a similar kind of horror. In fact, it’s arguably worse than the above examples. At least in typical dystopic fiction, the author is fully aware of how awful the world they created is and the whole point is to horrify people.
However, the world of Growing Around is a dystopia that doesn’t even KNOW it’s a dystopia. Enter honestly thinks this is a whimsical escapist fantasy. That’s the scariest part. I know I yammered about this to death throughout the spork, but it still BAFFLES me that this universe where people LOSE THEIR RIGHTS once they grow up is supposed to be a whimsical escapist fantasy. And no, escapist fantasies don’t have to be perfect. Most of us would love to visit the wizarding world or the Star Wars galaxy, but the societies presented in these universes still have major problems. However, the creators of these respective universes are fully AWARE of their societies’ problems, which Enter isn’t. It’s like if Rowling insisted that the Ministry of Magic wasn’t corrupt or Lucas portrayed the Galactic Senate as being in the right when they blindly follow Palpatine.
In fact, there’s another type of fantasy that this feels like: a revenge fantasy. I’ve tried not to talk too much about Enter’s childhood, but it seriously feels like he wants a world where he can get back at the adults who wronged him and put them in their place – and he’s projecting that on all adults. It honestly gets really uncomfortable at times.
Moreover, he never satisfactorily explains why the adults give up their freedom without a fuss once they turn eighteen and proceed to put up with their children bossing them around and inflicting whatever abuse and humiliation they want.
Growing Around - Final Thoughts
>>118059938 No, the malarkey of “it’s how society’s always been” and “they want to see their children succeed” doesn’t fly. Are we seriously supposed to believe that NO adult in the history of forever has ever rejected the idea of giving up their rights? Guess what, adults are much bigger and stronger than children. One would think they might, you know, REALIZE that, especially since the adults seem completely rational and able to take care of themselves. Why wasn’t there an adult revolution ages ago?
The only logical answer is that every adult is so thoroughly brainwashed into believing that they must submit to all the humiliation and abuse because, in the words of Sally, they’re “lost without a kid around to guide them.” Every. Single. Solitary. Adult. Is brainwashed. Into giving up their rights. Not a SINGLE adult questions this.
Enter, that’s not a whimsical escapist fantasy. That is fucking HORRIFYING.
And even if you overlook that, this world makes no sense on a basic level. Enter talks about it as if it’s no different from other (much better) fantasy universes, but in actually, the premise fails on a fundamental level.
Enter seems to think that kids having authority over adults is no different from adults having authority over kids, which is bullshit. Let’s imagine, say, a three-year-old is playing with a ball, and the ball goes rolling into the street. The kid’s going to go running into the street after the ball because he hasn’t yet learned about how dangerous the road is and he wants his ball back. He’ll need an ADULT to stop him from going into the street and possibly getting injured/killed.
Adults don’t have authority over kids for shits and giggles. Adults have authority over kids because kids are new to the world and it takes years for them to learn how to function independently in it.
Growing Around - Final Thoughts
>>118059964 Yes, there are parents who are scumbags who abuse and mistreat their kids, but we generally see that as a BAD THING (unlike how Sally flat-out says that a “good kid” is supposed to be “angry and intimidating”). Hell, we have resources to help rescue kids from unfit and abusive parents in our world – they’re not perfect and they don’t always work, but at least we HAVE them. As far as we know, the Growing Around universe has NOTHING of the sort.
Moreover, the kids in this world are supposed to be no different from the kids in our world – and yet they’re able to have careers without a single day of education. They’re able to go to MARS and domesticate wild animals because . . . I have no fucking idea – Enter just thought it would be cool. That’s literally it; Enter thought it would be cool and didn’t bother thinking beyond that. After all, it’s FICSHUN, and fiction doesn’t need to make sense, right?
Then there’s the adult school. Why are the adults going to school? They already had their kid careers and they should already know the stuff they’re being taught. We hear about graduation, but since the book can’t be assed to tell us what actually happens after graduation, we can’t be assed to care about it. Plus, the adult school isn’t actually teaching adults how to be creative – it’s teaching them to “be creative” according to what the kids want and helping to brainwash them into being good slaves to their kids.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YR5ApYxkU-U Ironic, Enter thinks this song is what real-world schools are like, and yet the schools in his universe are much, MUCH worse.
Moreover, Enter’s extreme resistance to explaining things indicates that he might not know the answers himself.
Growing Around - Final Thoughts
>>118059983 He constantly uses the “it’s FICTION!” excuse and seems unwilling to acknowledge the holes in his world (often resorting to pointing out how this story or that story has a fantastical premise too and that makes it okay for his world to have more holes than Swiss cheese, so there).
Let me show you how that excuse doesn’t fly.
This is the famous painting “Girl with a Pearl Earring,” painted by Vermeer. You’ll notice that it doesn’t show the girl’s whole body – it just shows her head and shoulders – but we the viewers don’t see it as a painting of a chopped-off torso. We know her whole body still exists – we’re just not seeing all of it. The picture feels complete as it is.
Growing Around - Final Thoughts
>>118060009 Okay, does the picture still feel complete? Yes, some weirder artistic movements like Dadaism might make a picture full of holes like this, but it would still be meant to draw your attention to the holes. That’s what the Growing Around world does - draw the reader’s attention to the holes. Unfortunately, as we saw in the bonus material, Enter just refuses to get it, meaning he just keeps showing his butt to the world.
OVERALL
This book is sloppy, and that’s putting it nicely. It’s sloppy in the macro sense with its hole-filled worldbuilding and in the micro sense with its errors and dull writing. Enter hates it when people say kids don’t deserve quality entertainment because they’re too stupid to tell the difference, and I agree there. Kids deserve much better books than this one. If Enter didn’t write it himself, he (and his fans) would pick it apart to death. Books like this give self-published authors a bad name.
Well, that’s IT for Growing Around.
FINAL COUNTS
KIDS DO THIS, RIGHT?: 82
FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR EDITING!!: 242
MISSING PIECES: 125
YOU LITTLE BITCH!: 213
WHIMSICAL MY ASS: 132
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS ENTER: 150
CONJUNCTION JUNCTION, THAT’S YOUR FUNCTION: 581
Hey guys, it’s EsmeAmelia speaking out of spork. Just letting you guys know that my novel, The Secret of Neevah, is out. The first book in a planned trilogy, it tells the story of Katie Peck, a dancer who lives in a magical world full of fairies, vampires, and other supernatural creatures, but one day she makes a discovery that could change everyone’s lives forever if revealed. The book is available in both ebook and paperback format here.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0825GKLZG Spreading the word about the novel would be greatly appreciated. In addition, I’ve also started a blog where I play various Star Wars video games and share my experiences playing them, found here.
https://lieselstarwarsgames.dreamwidth.org/ Thank you and have a great day!
Anonymous
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Is... Is it over?
Anonymous
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I love you autism-anon this was a hell of a trip
Anonymous
By the way, the author still does videos once in a while.
https://www.youtube.com/user/EsmeAmelia/videos Anonymous
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WE MADE IT BROS
Anonymous
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it's over. our long, collective nightmare is finally over.
Anonymous
Anonymous
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>>118060153 its a fucking /tv/ poster I knew it
Anonymous
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I don't think I'll ever be the same again after this.
Anonymous
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I hope someone does a dramatic reading on YouTube.
Anonymous
Again, is this ordinary for a spork?
Anonymous
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Holy fuck it's actually over
Anonymous
>>118057042 Here ya go, Anon. Wear it proud.
It's been a nightmare, and a privilege.
Anonymous
Anonymous
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>>118060789 Do you truly survive or do you just so happen to live for another day?
Anonymous
So who's gonna be the one to story time the novel?
Anonymous
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>>118061042 What's the point?
Anonymous
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I just want to say that you guys are autistic and I hate every single one of you.
Anonymous
WE DID IT, EVERYONE!!! Let the After Party Panic begin! Please proceed to post your reaction images and dance gifs.
Anonymous
Anonymous
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>>118060760 I have no fucking idea, man. You can go over to
>>118014674 and ask the sporkers over on dreamwidth, they’ll know.
Anonymous
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>>118014674 >You're about to view content that [community profile] das_sporking2 has advised should be viewed with discretion. To continue, you must confirm you want to view this content. Anonymous
Anonymous
Anonymous
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>>118060059 Thankyou so much OP. You have been a true inspiration to us all.
You should step out and do a closing speech! Tell us: why have you done this?
Anonymous
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>>118061042 I aint giving that fuck my money.
Anonymous
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>>118059702 >The spork is finished Anonymous
>>118061042 Fuck it, I’ll post the description at least
>Description >Neevah is a land of magic, where vampires, fairies, and merpeople freely mingle with humans. Nobody ages, nobody dies, and Queen Amera keeps all her subjects happy. >Katie Peck is a happily-married dancer who enjoys her life in Neevah, except for the fact that she has recurring nightmares that she can’t get out of her head. Then one night, she discovers a passage to another world and learns that Neevah is not all it seems to be. Now she must choose between the security that Neevah offers and the uncertainty of the truth. >The first book in the Neevah Trilogy, The Secret of Neevah is a fanciful, mysterious, and entertaining tale with memorable characters. Anonymous
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>>118062221 After all of the shit she gives Enter, THIS is something she is personally proud of and wants people to pay her for.
Anonymous
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>>118061517 You earned it OP.
Anonymous
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Explain yourself, OP.
Anonymous
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>>118060789 >>118060811 It's all I wanted and more.
Anonymous
Anonymous
SPEECH SPEECH SPEECH SPEECH
Anonymous
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>>118061517 What a ride, man. I've been here since the beginning, and I'm almost sad to see it end.
Anonymous
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>>118062221 >deviantart tier cover kek
Anonymous
>>118062221 This is like a food chain of autistic garbage. Enter dunks on other people's work and then makes a mediocre book and now this literal who is dunking on Enter while making a mediocre book. Who's next?
Anonymous
>>118062221 And of course she turns out to be the exact same autist as Enter: unnecessarily critical of everything and also unable to produce anything that's even a hair better.
Anonymous
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>>118062221 I hope it was the author who drew that cover.
Anonymous
Anonymous
>>118062485 Us, obviously. We’ve been dunking on Esme this whole time.
If anybody is brave and unafraid of ridicule, I invite you to plug your own writing pieces here, to continue the cycle.
Anonymous
Anonymous
>>118061517 I guess I have to spend all reading both threads since I was busy all day.
Anonymous
Someone here has gotta have a self published novel here, or one they’re working on. Heck, I’m thinking of starting the one idea I’ve had bouncing around in my head and always said I’d do but never did.
Anonymous
>>118062677 >thinking of starting instead of just starting it Never gonna make it
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>>118062652 Anon, I have been here on and off almost the whole time, and I am pretty sure nobody has been trying to read it end to end. I don’t think OP did, even.
Anonymous
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>>118062716 Yeah, I know that’s how it is.
Anonymous
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>>118062509 Is it wrong that I suspect Secret of Neevah might not be as bad as Griwing Around? I mean, I want to hate it to be spiteful. But if I think about it fairly, “generic fantasy novel where the main character discovers a terrible secret about her world,” is just too vague and boring to be worse than “kids and adults are reversed!” I think there’s a chance it was safe enough that it’s just mediocre instead of bad. But I just do not want to go as far as to find out for sure.
Anonymous
>>118062580 >>118062677 I'm just gonna start a /lit/ thread for this, hope it doesn't get taken down
>>>/lit/16480593 Anonymous
Anonymous
Anonymous
Anonymous
>>118062580 Should I post mine here or in the /lit/ thread?
Anonymous
>>118063486 If it’s a link, both!
If you’re gonna storytime, probably there. We’re about to hit the reply limit.
Anonymous
>>118063486 I'd go with the /lit/ thread, we've only got so many posts before the bump limit.
May the spork thread rest in peace.
Anonymous
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>>118063590 >>118063597 Alright, I'll drop it there, then.
Anonymous
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>>118040974 I’d kinda like to know this too, but I didn’t stumble on her going into it and I haven’t been reading closely enough to see whether or not it’s in here.
Anonymous
God dammit. I should be celebrating that it's done. But no, I'm not. Cuz my fucking brain got the better of me: "Anon, you suffered through this spork. And you write about your fantasy world everyday. Why not take this opportunity? A spork of this wack fantasy novel by the person responsible for your misery. Admit it, you want others to experience the same. You want to vent and trash this esme person to shreds. Give in, anon. Do it. DO IT." God damn I mean look at the above. That's already autistic. And yet idgaf about how retarded I reveal myself to be. The only thing I want is for this hypocritical, smug, delusional, moronic enough to major in English asshole to eat shit. Fuck esme amelia, fuck the anon who did these two threads, fuck enter for doing Growing Around, fuck fuck fuck.
Anonymous
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>>118063765 cool story bro
Anonymous
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>>118063765 Anon, I kinda wanna encourage you to take this another step further and do it.
But realistically, these threads were lightning in a bottle. It’s a miracle they happened. And I think if you tried to spork esme, there’s a good chance almost nobody will read it and you’ll feel like it’s a waste of effort.
But it’s on you.
Anonymous
>>118063010 Wait, is somebody gonna post the secret of neevah link over there, or is that not allowed because we’ve only got the amazon link?
Anonymous
>>118060789 I dunno when I’m ever gonna use this image, but I’m saving it.
Anonymous
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>>118064317 I saved it too, just to prove that I was here.
Anonymous
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>>118063961 Keeping it to pure fanfics, I guess. That seems like a thread all its own.
See you in the archive. It's been fun.
Anonymous
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I’ll miss you all, bros.
Anonymous
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I was in special ed for years and even I've never seen a spergfest of this magnitude
Anonymous
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>>118062400 >no speech Awww. Well, rest well anyway, man.
Anonymous
This is the jobanon that was blogging about my shitty days at work in the last thread, giving you my final update. Just letting you know I’ve still been checking in. I started posting in the first thread 8 in the morning Saturday, when I was having coffee before my shift. It is now amost 9:45 Wednesday night. We’re on page 8 again, and it’s time to say goodbye to you all. I’m glad to be moving on from following these threads and hopefully onto healthier endeavors. Just giving one last thankyou to OP and everybody for doing this and for being here. It’s been a ride. Heck of a way to enter October.
Anonymous
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>>118063765 It's contagious.
Anonymous
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Somebody’s gonna archive this for posterity, right? Post it in the /lit/ thread please.
Anonymous
>>118065011 Don't forget your T-shirt, friend
>>118060789 Anonymous
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>>118065205 Thanks. I’ll look at it when I’m on shift and need a pick me up.
Anonymous
Anonymous
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It's been swell
Anonymous
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Fuck the Mysterious Mr. Enter.
Anonymous
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Good night anons and remember to NEVER underestimate the power of autism
Anonymous
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Meh the podcast was better.
https://terriblebookclub.com/episodes/episode-47-growing-around-party-panic-by-john-s1!c66a8 Listening to the two people who never associated with enter before that video make sense of his cartoon world is crazy to hear once you’ve been desensitized to internet drama.
Anonymous
Anonymous
Anonymous
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Sleep well, anon.