One Year Of Crimer Show
March 29th, 2014.
One year ago today, I posted the first tweet in the saga that is Crimer Show. On Monday, the third “seasonries” of the show will begin. A lot has happened in the last year. Here are some things of that. The show - Crimer Show - is a show-within-a-show, namely the show “Freints Show”, which is another show I write. It took off really quickly. I even had to lie down and think about it. What on Earth is happening, I asked myself. I have no idea, I answered. Well, thanks for the chat, I concluded. By then, I was sick of talking to myself, as I’m terrible company. I wandered off to get away from myself and had a cup of tea (official Barry Gibb tour mug). |
It was my first taste of (admittedly very minor) success and its attendant bummers – rude swearwords, bad manners, baffling parodies, the lot. Soon enough, the complaints came in: Why do people like this crap? Why do I have to see this crap on my timeline? Why am I following people who like this crap? Who is the idiot who wrote this crap? My heart went out to those people. I, too, was asking the same questions, except the last one, obviously. It was great that so many were enjoying Crimer Show but I felt bad for those who hated it. Occasionally, if someone did a really good hate on it, I’d take a look at their other tweets, and oh boy were they consistent! It was a very rare thing indeed to find someone who both Hated the show and was A Nice Person On Twitter. That sounds biased, but there you go. Either way, it’s not my place to respond or to engage someone in a debate about their taste – everybody should be allowed to express their opinions on Twitter. Good for them, I say.
Three things did get to me, however:
a) People who reckoned "it was funny for about five tweets but then it sucked forever". Pity they didn't stick around after the basic premise was established. Should they ever change their minds, I've got a sprawling crime epic waiting for them.
b) Confusing it with "lolspeak" (I hate lolspeak). And no, internet kids, I'm not "butthurt" - pull your trousers up.
c) The idea, flung about by a few people who clearly didn’t have the time or inclination to engage beyond a cursory glance, that there was something “twee” about the show, or at least the language therein. But hey! We lead busy lives! Who am I to judge?
Three things did get to me, however:
a) People who reckoned "it was funny for about five tweets but then it sucked forever". Pity they didn't stick around after the basic premise was established. Should they ever change their minds, I've got a sprawling crime epic waiting for them.
b) Confusing it with "lolspeak" (I hate lolspeak). And no, internet kids, I'm not "butthurt" - pull your trousers up.
c) The idea, flung about by a few people who clearly didn’t have the time or inclination to engage beyond a cursory glance, that there was something “twee” about the show, or at least the language therein. But hey! We lead busy lives! Who am I to judge?
This is what I took from the general reaction to Crimer Show: nothing. Nothing I didn’t already sort-of know, at least. Some people are going to hate what you do. Some of them are people you know. Some of them are people you never will. I resolved to continue writing to the best of my ability. I make every effort not to let whatever standard I’ve established slip. In fact, I can say with confidence that Crimer Show has improved with age. Because I made it so. I figured there would only be one chance to get it right and I wanted it to raise the bar. Conveniently, I was the one who made the bar in the first place, with Freints. So I’ve approached everything else in the same way. I’m particularly proud of Terbil Draems and Goggl Serch. Still waiting for The Book Of Flim and History’s Moments to find an audience, though…
On Twitter, you’re free to create. Think about that for a moment. Free. To create. The only constraint is the character limit, and as a catalyst for invention, it’s a pretty great one. All that really matters is the idea. And if you believe in an idea, all you need is the means by which to present it to the world. (Some ideas are rubbish, though. I’ve heard a few in my time. I just had one after I finished that previous paragraph.) Having experimented with Twitter for a few years, I began to see opportunities for fun here and there. I’d laid the groundwork with Freints so Twitter made perfect sense for Crimer. |
The mechanics of it are another matter. Writing Crimer Show is a full-time job. An unpaid full-time job, which I can only do when I get home from my real full-time job. Each seasonries is planned, from start to finish. Storylines are drawn out, locations mapped, twists detailed, dialogue written and rewritten, characters introduced and developed, the usual stuff. There are usually five eppasods a week, each with its own “storyboard”. And I try to fit as many jokes as possible into every eppasod. There’s no slacking off - I won’t allow it. So if you still hate it, at least you know I put an enormous amount of work into making something for you to hate.
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It’s been worth it, though. I got a wonderful agent. Crimer was mentioned in a TED talk and nominated for a Stuff Award. I was interviewed on websites by people and written about. I now blog for the Huffington Post UK. I got some early offers to turn Crimer into other things, which I felt weren’t right for it. And who knows, maybe this time next month I’ll have even more news.
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With Freints, and more so with Crimer, I created a form of English (“Englesque”, if you forced me to put a stupid label on it) that I felt suited the ridiculousness of the content. Is it a dialect? Maybe. I dunno. I just work here. As the year trundled on, I used this “dialect” for other Twitter accounts such as Frasser Show, Goggl Serch, Terbil Draems, Trousured Mamories, A Insane Men and - for the Crimerfans - Crimer Buke, The Citey Poste and The Newes-Tiems Gazet. If you like it, you like it. If you don’t, you don’t. There’s nothing I can do to change that, so let’s get on with our lives and think about something like the Hubble Extreme Deep Field instead, for crying out loud. Plenty of my Twitter accounts use Actual English, so if you’re a fan of that, then dig in, because why not. They include The Book Of Flim, History’s Moments, News For Babies and Doctor Whomn’t. I created the Friday Night Disco website. I also represent Yannick from One Direction. I have 25 accounts now. Too many? Almost certainly. It’s been great to see Terbil Draems and Goggl Serch taking off, and I hope some of my other stupidities catch up eventually.
After S2 of Crimer Show ended, on Christmas Eve, I took a break from it. I had too many projects to work on and Crimer is mind-breaking work (for me, anyway). Here we are, three months later, and what have I got to show for my “time off”? Well, I’ve spoken with various publishers about the joke book I wrote. (Still not published, sadly.) I set up various Twitter accounts, some Facebook pages ( Crimer Show / Astonishing Sod / Freints / Terbil Draems ) and a few websites ( Crimer / Freints / Terbil Draems ). Plenty of writing. Script stuff. Video stuff. Secret things. So many things. Oh, and I was elected President of Twitter, after an intense month-long campaign. I established the Department of the Arts, The President’s Awards and the Welcome Zone. I take my duties seriously, you know. Who knows how much of this would have happened had Crimer Show not been a success?
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So it’s time. Crimer Show is one year old today. S3 begins on Monday and there’ll be another 50 eppasods. If you don’t want to know about it, maybe you can mute “Crimer” in your Twitter app. If you’re new to it or not quite up-to-date, you can watch the entire boxset for free on crimershow.com. If you think you know your stuff, you can always take the quizzes ( S1 / S2 ). If you’re a big fan (hello! thanks! click here! join the fanclub!), you can get some merchandise (Crimer-related or otherwise) in the shop, Haunted Box. I do all of this for free, remember!
If you’re in the mood to celebrate Crimer Show’s 1st birthday, then feel free to get in touch, tweet about it, blog about it, post on Facebook about it, tell someone about it, draw a picture of it, send a photo of your Crimer hoodie, make a song about it, contribute to the Crimerfans page – have fun! |
Thank you so much to everybody who’s supported it and/or all my other output over the past year.
And to the haters: Let’s dance.
James Thomas
(Astonishing Sod)
March 29th, 2014
And to the haters: Let’s dance.
James Thomas
(Astonishing Sod)
March 29th, 2014