A Barbie AU where the Kens decide, in order to get some recognition, to get individual names.
Steve, who’s just a Ken very good with kids, is having an identity crisis after his Barbie, journalist Barbie, broke up with him.
Not even picking a name as unique and special as Steve, so much different than Ken, managed to cheer him up.
Everyone keeps saying he should be happy about the change, and discover who he is outside of Barbie’s orbit, but he can’t see what was so wrong in their relationship. He loved waiting all day for Barbie to look at him, even if it was for a brief second.
As if going through an existential crisis wasn't enough, he has to do it under the constant mocking of his archnemesis, Ke- Eddie.
Eddie, with his long curly and annoyingly gorgeous hair, who has a sense of style he would give all of his rollerblades for, and who's always there to notice whenever Steve makes a mistake.
Eddie even has his Barbie still by his side, cheerleader Barbie, and every time Steve sees them together he gets a sick feeling in his stomach, like a tummy ache. Doctor Barbie visited him a couple of times and found nothing wrong with him, he imagines he's a little jealous of Eddie for being with a Barbie.
Steve talks about this with Polyglot Barbie, his best friend, annoying her to death.
"Why are we talking about Ken, again?" she interrupts Steve's retelling of his last encounter with Eddie.
"It's Eddie" Steve corrects her.
"Right," she nods. She's very supportive of their silly-name-thing (how most Barbies call it), but she still has trouble remembering all the names, "why are we still talking about him?"
They're hanging out at the park, sitting under a tree, Barbie's leg on top of his, and they're holding hands. It's nice. Steve is happy to have a best friend like Barbie.
Steve looks up, meeting Eddie's gaze. He's sitting at one of the picnic tables not far away from them, doing nothing besides glaring at Steve.
Barbie squeezes his hand to get his attention back, and Steve looks away.
"Because he keeps tormenting me! he's even glaring at me right now, I'm gonna get stress wrinkles!" Steve finally replies, in a distressed tone.
"You're being dramatic," she says, matter-of-factly, "Eddie isn't so bad with you. You know, he kinda treats you like his Barbie."
If Steve had a beating heart, it probably would've stopped right at this second.
"What?"
"You know, he's always looking for you, he is always giddy whenever you give him a crumble of attention. He hangs out where you hang out... why do you think he's sitting all alone at a picnic table, just staring at you?"
"Maybe he's waiting for his girlfriend" he suggests.
"Are you talking about Cheerleader Barbie?" she giggles, "she's not his girlfriend, trust me."
"But he picks on me! all the time! Like this morning, I tripped and he made a comment about my legs!" He gestures at his legs with his free hand.
Barbie tilts her head to the side "you mean this morning at the beach when he held you in his arms for ten minutes to prevent you from falling and Barbie had to tell him to let you go?"
"… yeah” he manages to say. He hadn’t realized how long Eddie held him in his arms, he was upset about almost falling in front of him, but he also liked the feeling of his arms around him.
Everything feels different now.
Barbie's look softens "How does this make you feel?"
"I don't know" he answers, honestly "I just can't stop thinking about him."
A loud noise at their right startles them off of their conversation. They turn around to see Eddie lying on the floor, a trash can at his feet.
Steve doesn't give himself the time to realize that Eddie has probably heard their entire conversation and has tripped on that trash can because of it, he just rushes to Eddie's side to help him out.
Eddie stammers while Steve pulls him back up, not making much sense.
Steve is used to see Eddie as an intimidating guy, someone to compete with for Barbie’s attention. He never realized how much he liked to have Eddie’s attention instead, nor how he loved to give that attention back in equal amount.
“Nice legs” he tells him, repeating the same words Eddie told him that morning.
Eddie stops his incoherent stream of words when he hears him “what?”
“You heard me” Steve says.
“I did” Eddie admits. He pulls the trash can back up, to have an excuse to not look at Steve when he asks “you can’t stop thinking about me?”
For some reason, that’s the easiest question Steve has ever had to answer to “yes, I can’t.”
Eddie jolts back up startling Steve, the trash can falling out of his hands and hitting the ground once again.
“Cool” he says, using all of his willpower to hide his excitement by keeping a relaxed face, failing miserably.
“I guess” Steve grins. Knowing he has that effect on Eddie is making him the most confident he has ever felt in his life.
“So, since you can’t stop thinking about me…” Eddie repeats, in a tone that Steve would’ve mistaken for a mocking one until few hours ago “…we could hang out on the beach later. I’ll bring my guitar.”
“I’ll bring mine too then” Steve replies immediately.
Eddie panics “We can’t both have a guitar!”
Steve crosses his arms on his chest “who says that?”
Eddie opens and closes his mouth a couple of times then mutters, defeated, “fine.”
“Great!” Steve takes a step forward and gives Eddie a peck on his cheek “I’ll see you later.”
Eddie, who makes a face again trying to hide his excitement, nods and turns away “cool.”
He walks away slowly, towards the park’s exit. Right by the gate, he throws himself into an hedge. Steve can clearly hear him when he screams words along the lines of “FINALLY”, “I HAVE A DATE” and “SUBLIME”.
Steve turns to Robin who has witnessed the whole thing, while Eddie is still screaming random words from the bushes.
“I think I’m in love.”
3K notes
·
View notes
so I’ve been gaining a lot of insight into the animation industry recently, especially in regards to pitching & the creation of new shows. There’s a few ways to go about it.
First, there’s pitching to a studio. When you pitch, it has to be SHORT and CONCISE. You may write a lovingly detailed pitch bible that perfectly breaks down episodes and characterizations, and it might barely even get read. First impressions, first impressions, first impressions!
Most peoples’ first projects don’t get picked up. I’ve heard a few stories from directors that said they tried pitching a story they’d had for years, which got rejected, to then spend a week or even several hours in their car coming up with a new idea, only for that to get greenlit.
But that’s not the end of it. Just because a show gets greenlit, doesn’t mean it will ever get finished. There’s lots of things that can happen. Sometimes, unexpected major world events (like… a global pandemic) can cause projects to get chopped. Sometimes, a CEO change or studio merge means a single person can decide a project “no longer fits with the company’s brand.” Sometimes, the one producer that was rooting for your project gets laid off, and no one else cares enough, so it gets shelved. Sometimes, a streaming service decides to create an animation department, and then they decide they don’t want it anymore. Sometimes, the studio will be simultaneously be developing another project that was too similar to yours and they just didn’t think to tell you until they decide yours is the one with less potential.
On top of that, almost everyone in the industry is saying that “studios just don’t pick up original content anymore.” Studios want something they can franchise, something that will bring in money. New content is risky. Established fanbases are safer.
However! Studios can still be a very good thing. They can be unionized. They can provide better benefits and resources. They can have connections and infrastructure and a larger volume of workers. At a studio, you can divide the labor and produce more in less time. Longer episodes, longer seasons, more consistency in quality.
But this comes with all of the disadvantages of having more in the kitchen.
The alternative is indie animation.
With indie animation, you have total freedom. Full artistic control. It doesn’t even matter if your idea sucks ass, because there’s no one to tell you you can’t make it. You could make it anyway, and you can make it whatever you wanted.
The thing is, making animation is hard. In my production class last semester, the average maximum animation one person could make in that timeframe was 30-60 seconds, and that’s not even counting background design, sound design, or cleanup/color. To make a 5 minute animated short, you should probably have at least 5 people.
And it is CRUCIAL you have a production manager. Ideally someone who’s not already doing art for the project. Most projects without a production manager will fall apart pretty quickly. Once the adrenaline and impulse-fueled motivation wears off, you need someone to hold you accountable and enforce deadlines and proper time management.
Speaking of time, that’s also hard to get. The more people you have, the more likely schedules won’t line up. Most people will have school, or other jobs.
And it costs MONEY!!!!!! You either have everyone work for free and volunteer their time & energy, or you establish a business as a proper indie studio, with people who may or may not have experience on how to handle paying someone else’s salary. And the money has to come from somewhere, so you have to rely on crowdfunding like patreon or kickstarter. (This, by the way, is why I could never fault an indie animation for releasing merch with their pilot.)
And like, maybe you wanna do a series, and all your friends agree to volunteer their labor and time to make the first episode, but it was unanimously not sustainable. Deciding not to produce a second episode until you can raise enough money is not being suddenly greedy, it’s attempting to compensate people rather than expecting them to be continuously taken advantage of.
You have to consider your output as well. There are some outliers like Worthikids, who afaik does all his animation himself, and afaik can work on it full-time thanks to his patreon subscribers. And he still has only produced a total of 30 minutes of animation (for Big Top Burger specifically) in the past 4 years. This is an IMPRESSIVE feat and this is with using a lot of 3D as part of his pipeline!!
Indie animation also has the complication of being more accessible for fandoms. When you’re posting your Official Canon Content on youtube, it doesn’t look a lot different than the fandom-created video essay in the sidebar next to it. What’s canon vs what’s fanon becomes less distinguishable. The boundaries are blurrier. When the creator is just some guy you follow on twitter, it’s easier to prod them for info regarding ships and theories and word-of-god confirmation. They don’t have a PR team or entire international tv networks to appeal to. And this is when creators get frustrated that their fans snowball and turn their creation into something they don’t recognize (and no longer enjoy) anymore.
So it’s tricky.
Thankfully, the threshold to learn animation is fairly low nowadays!! There are TONS of resources online to learn it on your own without forking over a couple hundred thousand to a private art college. There are conventions and discord servers and events where you can network, if you know where to look.
I know it can seem discouraging in the face of capitalism, but I think that’s all the more reason why it’s so important to BE DETERMINED about animation!! We’re already starting to see the beginning of an indie animation boom, and I think it’s a testament to humanity’s desire to tell stories and create art. Even if there’s no financial gain, we do whatever it takes to tell our stories anyway.
2K notes
·
View notes