Sunday, October 11, 2015

A note on the future of this blog

Hi guys. How ya doin'?

Many of you are carryovers from Christian and Sean's Girl Meets World Reviewed blog. A few of you, those who were there since the beginning, might remember that in a few weeks Christian put up an post about how he was ready to give up on Girl Meets World early in its first season run and give up the blog.

Well, this blog hasn't been in operation for even half a month yet and already it's clear that there needs to be major changes. 

As much as I hated Invisible Sister (I haven't had a chance to rewatch it yet) it was a lot of fun going over it with Mike and all of you commentators, so I appreciate you guys coming along for the journey. But it's very clear things need to get streamlined, or change, or something. And a part of that may just be having someone else take over for me. As it stands right now there are two Friday Disney Channel show premieres, three Nickelodeon Saturday premieres, three Sunday Disney Channel premieres, and two Nickelodeon Wednesday show premieres - and that's not counting I Didn't Do It and Jessie which are both ending Friday and W.I.T.S. Academy which just because of its intensive daily schedule is impossible to review individually. That's a lot of stuff to blog about individually. I know that Christian and Sean devote a lot of time to GMWReviewed and that's just one episode a week or even every other week. Doing all the Monstober premieres was completely overwhelming.

Furthermore, I am getting very sick and tired of Blogspot eating drafts into oblivion and having to often write large chunks of text twice, having to remember what I even wrote, rewriting it in a less clever and enthused fashion because all my energy has been sapped watching all the initial effort get pissed straight down the drain like yesterday's coffee, and wondering if people will eve notice or care about the text I just had to add again. 

In short, the whole review blog thing isn't quite as fun as I thought it would be, and infact it's getting kind of tedious beyond what's worth investing in, time and personal effort-wise. 

So, I want to discuss three options here. The first is that I basically go into semi-retirement already. I'll chime in for stuff I want to chime in about but I'll no longer feel obligated to cover all the big shows on both Disney and Nick. I've already found someone, a very enthusiastic and knowledgeable person, who is ready to come in and take my place. When I first envisioned this blog it was mostly to cover Jessie anyway, so when that show's finally done Friday there'll be a lot less I really feel needs to be covered. Girl Meets World already has a whole blog dedicated to that, the blog that inspired this one in the first place. Ever since the end of the very crappy first season Liv and Maddie has been a consistently very superb sitcom, and there isn't much that really needs to be said beyond what would probably amount to a bunch of cheerleading and fanwank on a weekly basis anyway. From all the stuff show creators Ron Hart and John D. Beck tweet, it seems like the show's only going to get better and better and they're really paying attention to fan input, much more effectively than Micheal Jacobs and the aging and nepotistic team he's surrounded himself with. Austin & Ally is, like Jessie, a shell of its former stuff for exactly the reasons Mike had touched on a little earlier, and it's ending with only a few handful of episodes anyway (going back and looking at reruns is probably worth it though). Best Friends Whenever is more gag-driven than plot-driven, and successfully blogging a show like that is like trying to successfully explain a joke. K.C. Undercover has so far, with few exceptions, been rather consistently bland and it's getting to the point where I'm starting to wonder if its main selling point is supposed to be the eye candy supplied by Zendaya and Veronica Dunne, which, well, isn't what a tween/teen show really should be going for (Kamil McFadden, Kadeem Hardison and Trinitee Stokes have excellent comedic timing and delivery though, and they are by far perhaps my most favorite actors on the whole network). That leaves just Bunk'd (and Girl Meets World) as the two shows with the most entertaining review potential. Thundermans, Bella and the Bulldogs, and even the new Schneider's Bakery shows have potential too but...eh. Mike has already proven himself to be a capable reviewer, and so has the potential new guy, and I wouldn't mind seeing what they have to say and just adding on.

And, here's the thing, in the interest of full disclosure: I've been in extremely poor health lately. I've been having near-daily headaches and sleepless nights shortly before officially launching this blog. I might just need to take a step back from this - and everything - for a while and figure out what's happening to me, physically.

The second option, and the option I'm most leaning to, is abandoning Blogspot altogether and migrating to a new site because really, I hate Blogspot. It's a pretty seething hatred really. The format, interface, and primitive memory/save features would've passed muster a decade ago but not in 2015. Compared to what's the norm today Blogspot represents a few notches above blogging by hardcoding HTML into Wordpad, which in 2015 beyond any hobby or self-teaching purposes is stupid. I've found a few Blogspot alternatives, mainly Wordpress (which I suppose is a little better) and a little thing called Kinja, which is so infuriatingly stupid it might make installing an Everlast punching bag next to my blogging chair a wise idea but it still have the key advantages of 1.) being something I'm already familiar with through my blogging and contributions at Jalopnik and Oppositelock (yes the Gawker Media guys) and all of my account info is therefore already set up, 2.) having a number of features that are less clunky and better-tuned towards building a community, including letting commentators make their own blog posts(!), and 3.) it's still a hell of a lot better than Blogspot which is even more infuriatingly stupid to the point where learning how to repair fist-sized holes in drywall might be a desired skill. 

The third option would be simply doing all of the above. We migrate to Wordpress or Kinja, I swoop in about oooh Jessie Jessie it was such a good family show it's way better than that overrated Girl Meets World crap ooh Jessie I love that red hair I wish Debby would go back to red hair and marry me why won't she return my Twitter DMs and other creepy stuff while Mike and New Guy turn this into something people actually want to read.

So, that's pretty much it. I'll at least see if I can try to get a Jessie The Fear in Our Stars (there I finally said it now) and some other things I really need to get to. Hey Mike, what do you think?

I feel like "You Dropped a Bomb on Me" by The Gap Band is playing in the background as I write this. But wow. Dude, I had no idea the blog was taking such a toll on you. If you feel the need to get away from it all and only do stuff on a semi-regular basis, I don't have a problem with that. You put this blog together and you gave me the opportunity to write in the first place about one of my favorite things so you deserve time to sort things out. Plus, you put a lot of work already into your blog posts. That kind of work ethic just reminds me of the fact that my own blog could use some attention. This is not the easiest job in the world.

I recommend WordPress since my television review blog is there and you do get some nice design choices. I want to know how this new guy is going to affect the quality of this blog since I was really getting used to working with you, but I guess we'll have to see. He might have to handle more of the load since school and some other background stuff take up a lot of my time. I'm just hoping things don't start getting crazy around here. But yes, you really should take some time off for yourself. 

2 comments:

  1. Speaking from expereince, Wordpress is pretty good. Any problems i have are my fault, really. As for adice...really Mike and the new guy can carry things. I think you should allow guest posts sometiems. (I'd love to help out with that, by the way)

    If you are running our of shows, there's always Disney Xd. If you are behind, i am help out there, or you can just run in blind. While Lab Rats is wrapping up, it has some materiel still. Gamer's guide is kind of bland so you might be out of luck, but Kirby Buckets is always interesting to me.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm not running out of shows, in fact too many shows is the problem. Thanks though.

    ReplyDelete

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