Falling with style

Co-director/lead writer/Fan on Inanimate Insanity

[brianfallingwithstyle]

Happy 5th Anniversary, Alternate Reality Show!

Hard to believe it’s already been five years since Lightbulb and Test Tube built themselves a new reality. It warms my heart to see how much this episode has resonated. I know I often find myself coming back to it, and that’s without the aid of a time machine!

Here’s some fun facts about this episode to celebrate!

Alternate titles included...

Lightbulb’s Curious Venture through Time (and Not Really Space)

Baxter the Future

What Makes You Tick

Back to the Drawing Board

A new time travel adventure is first foreshadowed in S2E1 when Fan asks Marshmallow why she doesn’t ever use her time machine anymore

January 2015 is when I started the earliest rough draft I can find for the episode

The earliest version of the story kickstarted with Fan and Test Tube asking Marshmallow to borrow her time machine so they could research Cobs. Marshmallow wouldn’t give hers away due to concerns about universe-destroying paradoxes... and she also liked how it looked next to her other remotes. This prompts Fan to say...

Fan: *sigh* I guess you'll have to make your own, Test Tube.  And it's gonna take at least five minutes.  Five minutes I can't ever get back. Test Tube: ONCE I FINISH YOU CAN. Fan and Test Tube: *in unison* AAAAAAAAAAA!

At one point, Taco secretly tagged along on the journey to the past

Another version of Paintbrush was originally going to be in the alternate timeline. This one would act a lot more like Lightbulb! Perfect, right? Alas, no...

Some of the Infinity contestants were voiced by our wonderful Kickstarter backers!

The Just Like Me reprise was nearly cut from the episode, but saved via a last-minute addition to the credits

It originally would have played during the end of the elimination, but there was too much onscreen action and dialogue for it all to blend together!

We didn’t record Michael saying “pfft!” as Lightbulb so that’s actually me

[brianfallingwithstyle]

Ok so in the newest ii comic with Fan vs OJ in OJ trivia, at the end we see Salt challenging him, so I can assume they had OJ trivia round 2. Who do you think would have won round 2?

Haha great question!  Perhaps my favorite creative contribution to the comics so far was saying that Salt should dramatically emerge from the shadows and challenge Fan at the end.  That stemmed from me wanting to find a payoff to the premise that was less obvious than Fan beating OJ at OJ’s trivia which seemed like a foregone conclusion haha.  BUT TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTION... I think Fan and Salt would eventually enter a seemingly never-ending tiebreaking round that would last far beyond the point of anyone caring or even staying around to watch and give the illusion of caring.  Paintbrush would continue to begrudgingly moderate.  The questions would cover a wide array of OJ-related topics including his grocery bag preference, favorite hour to sleep each night, and most hated window.  Then we would come to one important question.  And that question would be, “Can we please stop?”  And Fan and Salt would both tell Paintbrush no.  Then Fan and Salt would go on for several more hours and eventually come to the final question.  And that question would be, “Can we please stop?”  And Fan and Salt would say OK.  Then Paintbrush would yell, “WE HAVE A FORFEIT!” because Fan said OK just slightly first and Salt would win.

[brianfallingwithstyle]

Ok so back in s2e12 when they traveled back in time they were able to change the past and make a brand new future, but then they were also able to put everything right again and recreate the present, so is time travel in the ii universe on a closed loop system, or is it more of a parallel universe thing happening? Also why did Test Tube bother making a time machine when she could have just gotten one from Walmart like Marsh did in s1?

Thank you for asking this question, cause now I get to talk about TIME TRAVEL!  Yeah, it’s not a parallel universe situation.  In time travel in the II universe, the future CAN change.  But Lightbulb and Test Tube couldn’t stop their past selves from interfering with Episode 1 in the way that they did, because otherwise they wouldn’t continue down the path to stop themselves from interfering in the first place, thereby creating a major paradox!  So the premise of Inanimate Insanity actually presented a really unique solution that I hadn’t seen before in a time travel storyline- since II is a filmed competition show!  So if Lightbulb and Test Tube still LET their former selves interfere and leave, and THEN create a reason for the affected portion of Episode 1 to be refilmed and proceed as it initially did, it both avoids the paradox and gets the timeline back on track!  I was very proud of that actually.  It both checks out on a kooky time travel level and, on a thematic level, showed off what Lightbulb and Test Tube can accomplish when they put their chaos and logic together! As for Marsh- I had originally wanted to reference Marsh’s time machine again in s2e12.  The seeds for time travel to be used again can actually be found as early as s2e1 when Fan asks Marsh why she doesn’t use her time machine anymore.  In older versions of the story, there weren’t any more time machines being sold, and Marshmallow refused to give up hers, warning something along the lines of, “I won’t let you have it!  Time travel can result in serious consequences that can change the fabric of our world as we know it!  Plus I like how it looks next to all my other remotes.”  But by the time we got to this storyline, Marshmallow had just gotten out of the game, so this detail couldn’t really work anymore.

[brianfallingwithstyle]

Love the show, thanks for all the heart you put into it- real quick, I kinda wanted to ask about the reverse concept that was mentioned in the QnA. The thought of Fan being reversed and becoming this critic who keeps pointing out imperfections is really interesting to me. Because it’s not a complete reversal, it’s more like what he is at his core is being warped. Going from passionate and loving to critical and hateful. So I’m wondering what did you guys have in mind for the other characters?

Thank you so much!  This reversal concept is a Taylor original so I encourage asking him for more details, but I remember that it would have been shown affecting both the contestants in the game as well as the Hotel OJ gang.  You can probably fill in the gaps for how most of this would have went down, but the idea that was most interesting to me was Taco being flipped to act like her Season 1 cover.  So, kind of like Fan, as you said, it’s not a complete reversal but more of a “warp,” taking into account what we know about the character’s history.  We talked about Taco being flipped before Mic and Knife so they’d both have to deal with her shenanigans.  Innocent Taco would have been completely willing to jump out and reveal herself to everyone else on the island, and with her randomness in full swing, it’d be hard for Mic and Knife to predict what she’d do next.  It was a fun idea! I can tell you that one of the main reasons that we didn’t end up going with the idea was the desire to keep the contestants active throughout the adventure in this episode.  We don’t have a lot of time left with them, so we really need to take advantage of every little bit we have left, so kinda “writing them out” of the story would have been counterintuitive.  Plus, an abduction presents some high stakes- it would be a shame for the characters to not react accordingly so that you could feel those stakes as opposed to it being a more comedy-based premise.  So the idea didn’t make it into the outlining stage, but it definitely floated around for a few years earlier!

[littlestpetsh0p-deactivated2021]

Ive been holding this in for weeks why does fan know about golf is it his side hobby was ot an old special intrest?? It's beem made a point that he isnt sporty so was this just an improvised line why does he say this????

[brianfallingwithstyle]

It was improvised.  Fan isn’t sporty but 1) golf isn’t an aggressively sporty sport and 2) Fan is interested in weird scoring schematics like that

[littlecatninja]

You know, the whole ordeal with Cobs wouldn’t have happened if Tissues didn’t sneeze on Mephone

Like, just think about it

Tissues was the reason why Mephone’s battery shorted out and that they went to Mecloud and met Cobs and that may have given Paintbrush the idea of making the Cobs painting which triggered Mephone’s memory which leads up to now.

[brianfallingwithstyle]

Hehe, I love putting in little setups for subsequent episodes.  Tissues’ sneeze has got to be one of my favorites since it’s such a silly little action with serious, MAJOR consequences.  It’s a good lesson especially these days- don’t spread your germs OR ELSE!!!

[snapsicle]

i honestly hope inanimate insanity never changes their theme song because the sheer contrast of the scene before the theme and the theme itself is just about the funniest thing in the entire world

[brianfallingwithstyle]

Haha, we pride ourselves on the mood whiplash here!  I think it’s the perfect representation of how far the show has come.

[brianfallingwithstyle]

I asked Justin this question, and I need your opinion on it. If II ever had teams where it's like a hero vs villains sort of thing, who would consider the heros and who would you consider the villains?

Interesting.  I think inherently that this is a bit of a reductive question, since it implies an opinion that certain established characters are objectively either moral or immoral.  It’s the kind of categorizing that can send a fandom into a war very quickly!  But it should be kept in mind that, as Justin said, I think this might be how MEPHONE would organize it, and MePhone is not exactly a reliable or impartial source. MePhone’s Heroes Team: OJ Marshmallow Suitcase Microphone Paintbrush Lightbulb Paper Test Tube Fan Box MePhone’s Villains Team: Taco Nickel Trophy Knife Balloon Cheesy Cherries Apple Bow (Important reminder: MePhone doesn’t like her!) Dough (He doesn’t like him either!) Yin-Yang would not be allowed on either team as a cohesive whole, and Test Tube would refuse to give them the splitting potion again due to the crisis from last time.  This would result in Yang beginning a smear campaign to get Test Tube placed on the villains team, which MePhone would eventually comply with since he finds it funny.

[brianfallingwithstyle]

Brian, I was in a server with some friends and we were mentioning that we managed 2 get Justin and Taylor in the server. I said “If we get Adam and whoever voices fan in the server then we’ll have the whole crew!” I had forgotten ur name. I then said “what was his name? Was it Josh?” And then I was corrected and now me calling you Josh is an inside joke in the server

LOL.  I will say, I did always fancy myself as more of a Josh than a Drake.  So I guess it’s accurate in a sense!  Let me know what the server is haha

[thetgrodzblog-deactivated202208]

So I was theorising, and I thought, is “A Party” based on taco?

Good theory! You’re kind of correct!

I know that when we were coming up with the idea for a song at the end of Ep 10, we wanted it to have a typical pop song vibe that has rather redundant lyrics, but a handpicked few lyrics actually resonate with some of our characters. 

I know that the “I was alone but she made me feel like I wasn’t” is specifically a tie to Marshmallow and her guilt. “She made me see that I needed her” is also specifically for Microphone seeing that she “needs” Taco, and thus goes forward with her deal. Fan points out earlier in the episode how the song is about companionship, and Mic (ironically) disagrees with the idea.

Is there another hidden message in the song? … that’s for you to find out!

[brianfallingwithstyle]

Anonymous, you have no idea.  I put way more thought into the lyrics of “A Party” than anyone could ever consider remotely reasonable.  Pay close attention to some of the visuals shown during the lyrics in the Episode 10 performance.  For instance, Suitcase and Balloon share a brief nice moment illustrating how they make each other feel like they aren’t alone.  But yes, the Taco/Mic relationship is surprisingly integral to this weird little satire of pop music.  The song, in its own ridiculous way, touches upon dependent relationships in which we “don’t know what to do” until our partner is “right beside” us.  Pop songs often do that kind of thing- a singer describes loving their partner, OR moving on from them, OR-... and here’s the crazy part, often both!  No matter what, it’s clear that the relationship has become pretty all-consuming.  Gives a lot to think about!  :O

[brianfallingwithstyle]

How did derek get to voice act box-like i was just on the website and it said BOX WAS V O I C E D BY D E R E K how is this possible i need answers-

The character of Box required a very specific kind of performance that you can’t get from just anyone.  Box is just as quietly tranquil as he is willing to intensely project his emotions in a courtroom.  It is a duality that is hard to find in a person.  It is for that reason I am convinced that Derek was the only person who could have conceivably brought Box to life.  That definitely should answer your question.

[brianfallingwithstyle]

So I was in a skype call with some friends and we were talking about Breaking Bad. This got me thinking about what Inanimate Insanity characters would play which Breaking Bad characters. Have you put any thought into this? Which Inanimate Insanity characters would play which Breaking Bad characters?

I worked together with Justin and Ben to carefully create a full cast list.  I am very pleased with the results. Walter White: Test Tube Jesse: Lightbulb Skyler: Salt Marie: Pepper Hank: Trophy Gomez: Tissues Walt Jr: Baxter Saul: Cheesy Gus: Cobs Mike: Knife Tuco: Taco Lydia: Soap Todd: Bomb (both commit an abrupt vile act of betrayal in a desert) The Cousins: Cherries Hector: Box Jane: Microphone Donald: MePhone4 Wendy: Bow Gale: Fan Huell: Dough The married couple from the ATM machine episode: MePhone5S and 5C Badger and Skinny Pete: Yin-Yang and Pickle Elliott and Gretchen: OJ and Paper Ted: Baseball Brock: Suitcase Tortuga: Apple  Victor: MePhone6 Tyrus: MePhone6+ Uncle Jack: Nickel

[brianfallingwithstyle]

Thank You For 9 Years!

I wanted to thank everyone for all their Happy Anniversary Inanimate Insanity wishes yesterday.  I got so many nice messages and beautiful fanart.  I will continue to acknowledge/respond to as many as possible.  And yes, in case there was still any doubt, now that it is April 2, you can be absolutely sure- the trailer is no fool!!!

[justin-chapmanswers]

Visit Original Link

Ta-da!! Ryder requested I sing this as Knife recently and I decided to record it! Figured you all deserved a lil special-somethin for another year of being’ wonderful!

Hope you all enjoy the lovely holiday season!! 

Big wuv!

[brianfallingwithstyle]

The line is “garlic in your soul.”  The thought of garlic being in the Grinch’s NOSE was just appalling.  You have to rerecord this.

[ohnoiyo-yoyle]

Objectober Day 11: Ghosts

[brianfallingwithstyle]

In a ghost fight, who would win, Bow or Dough?

Family should never fight!^That’s what Dough would insist.  So Bow would just happily deny any relation to him and win by default.  Dough would then proceed to selflessly throw a party congratulating his sister.  This would most likely lead to another fight.  The cycle repeats.

[brianfallingwithstyle]

Yo I know you probably won’t get around to answering this ask for a while bc you’re currently Not On Tumblr, but how do you feel about people headcanoning ii characters like Fan as autistic? There’s a lot of evidence to back it up, and I know that there’s a lot of people in the fandom who are on the spectrum (I’m one of them), and your input matters a lot to me.

Well, Fan is a character with a hyperspecific special interest who has difficulty socializing and also very much appreciates routine.  I certainly can see why someone would have the headcanon that he’s autistic, and more power to them.  That wasn’t something I personally thought about when I started writing the character, but I can see it in retrospect, and of course it’s by all means a valid interpretation.  I hope that answers the question.