Help Us Write The Trapezoid Kids Script

[Lemon]

Okay, we’re going to make The Trapezoid Kids¹ a reality, and you’re going to help! These is is how this is gonna work…

This is a link to the living script for the project on Google Docs. Request access to this document and then start collaborating with the other writers on a script. Every person with access will be in “Suggest” mode, where everything you write will need to be approved by either Portaxx or myself. This is our first time trying this method, so it might be a little weird, but I think we can make it work.

HERE’S THE GOAL: We are going to make a “parody” cartoon of the Trapezoid Kids. It will be no more than five minutes in length. It will look like garbage. And you will be partially to blame for this.

Please play nice in the document and prioritize brevity. This is not The Secret of NIMH. This is Trapezoid Kids. So give it the respect it deserves.

We’ll keep this thread updated as things progress.

_{1: That is, a “parody” of the Trapezoid Kids, using The Dozerfleet Founder’s own definition of what “parody” means.}

[eldritchhat]

Now, what I am concerned with is this: how much like the muppet babies will this be? (I.E. shall we contain some sort of geometric baby sitter figure?)

[Lemon]

Let me know if the access is weird. We haven't tried doing something with this suggest mode thing yet.

[Down10]

I can trust you guys to create a hilariously inept script.

All I ask is that the character designs and shapes involve as few pen nodes as possible, say six or eight at the max. Everything should look boxy and clunky and sub-South Park level that only the worst kind of year 2000-era Flash animation can deliver.

[Gyro]

If there isn't an "acute" angle pun I'm going to be upset.

[moooo566 (taylor's version)]

There better not be a single actual trapezoid.

Are you going to kickstart this? Will there be a patreon?

[znarf]

When can we have the even worse spinoff the Trapezius Kids?  Or is that already a documentary on childhood steroid use?

[Zekka]

Sorry for all the long heavy stuff -- I don't know if I'm particularly funny, but I try really hard all the time and I'm bad at turning it off.

I think a lot of the jokes people are suggesting are potentially funny, but because they're based on references, memes, puns, etc., I know how they're going to turn out as soon as I see them. If I'm a viewer and I know what joke I'm being told and I have to wait for it to end, I'm likely not laughing very much at it.

There's also humor where the fun is in relating to other people who are involved in the jokes -- The F-Plus is about this, Candid Camera is about this, "It's Always Sunny" is about this, but I'm not sure you can make catharsis happen in a five minute cartoon.

I think we need to figure out what we want to say about Dozerfleet, then how we can make it surprising to a viewer who already knows the stuff we know about Dozerfleet. Some themes I see a lot in what people are suggesting:

- the plot should be that Dozerfleet is really unlikeable, and his friends desert him
- we should reference something the F-Plus did
- we should reference something I like personally
- we should do something absurd, like have dinosaurs on unicycles or have everyone speak English really badly

I think you could turn each of these into something pretty good, but you have to not deliver it exactly as written. Evidence suggests those are the jokes everybody already expects, so when you start one everyone knows what's going to happen and it's probably only going to be mildly funny. I think we should throw in plot events that people won't expect, after those things happen. For instance:

- Dozerfleet is happy to be alone and have no friends, because he can write his own friends on his wiki. Only for some reason they hate him and he can't stop them from hating him.

Even after you do something like that, you can't really get complacent. It's probably not enough to just say "his wiki friends didn't like him, the end" -- you have to follow that up with something funny too, like "one of his wiki friends starts a rival wiki about how much Dozerfleet sucks." Even if you've already told a joke -- once you've told the viewer what he's going to see and you're giving him that, no twist, I think you've turned things into "wait for the joke to be done, mildly amused" instead of "this is hilarious, I had no idea this was going to happen." (This was a pain in the ass for my Liberal Crime Squad topic, because people kept requesting specific things and getting mad that they didn't see exactly those specific things.)

I think to make this stuff work we need to figure out what we're going to say about Dozerfleet Founder, and then take that unsurprising stuff and come up with plot points that convey it in a surprising way. When we present this guy, the audience won't know much about him, so if we present evidence that vaguely suggests he's not Dozerfleety in a particular dimension, then reveal it in an event the audience wasn't expecting, I think that will be a surprise.

Example (from doc, by me, sorry): imagine Dozerfleet Founder getting demoted to last chair in band. That's unsurprising: we kinda know his work ethic is bad. But then he finds out that the other guys who are last chair in band are now his friends, and they're into revenge and stuff too, and suddenly he likes them.  I think that's actually a surprise: we would have expected him to shut himself off from those people because they're different from him, and he's sheltered and anxious. Characterization-wise, this conveys that he has a similar personality to people we think he doesn't like. We probably knew that, but weren't thinking about it, because the rest of the story set us up to think he was going to be miserable and alone. I think a surprise like that could be pretty funny.



Oh yeah, the other thing -- I think that a lot of this reference humor and stuff will look a little desperate, especially since spoofs and stuff are very style-over-substance when you don't write them into the plot. I think that if you do a few things that look desperate, everything else looks desperate too. If you do a lot of stuff that's not relevant to your main humor source, I think you just get people into a frame of mind of expecting things to go nowhere. Think of how much good humor you've seen that would legitimately be improved by adding a dinosaur. (don't give the snide memey "dinosaurs make everything better" kind of answer -- actually think about whether the joke is still funny)

Even look at really goofy comedians like Monty Python: substitute a velociraptor into "Self Defense Against Fresh Fruit" or "How Not To Be Seen." Those are both skits about hypocrisy/sanctimoniousness, where something absurd happens too. If you throw absurd things in that don't involve hypocrisy/sanctimoniousness, I think those skits are much more difficult to interpret.

Hopefully this helps dudes who have similar opinions on humor to me, and doesn't offend dudes who don't.

[A Meat]

I think whatever script is written, should be put through google translate a few times so it's less legible. Preferably, each character is translated into different languages from each other

[moooo566 (taylor's version)]

How faithful are we being to the source material? Google translate is a fun idea, but I feel like dozerfleet isn't actually that bad at english. His writing is probably terrible, but he can spell and construct a sentence.

[Zekka]

I think whatever script is written, should be put through google translate a few times so it's less legible. Preferably, each character is translated into different languages from each other

This is the sort of thing that I think is funny, but it's a different joke. You could do a funny "this cartoon was horribly translated" cartoon, but I think it would be super different from the Dozerfleet cartoon.

[A Meat]

I think whatever script is written, should be put through google translate a few times so it's less legible. Preferably, each character is translated into different languages from each other

This is the sort of thing that I think is funny, but it's a different joke. You could do a funny "this cartoon was horribly translated" cartoon, but I think it would be super different from the Dozerfleet cartoon.

There could be some sort of evil foreigner trapezoid who talks like that, because that's what Dozerfleet would do.

[Zekka]

There could be some sort of evil foreigner trapezoid who talks like that, because that's what Dozerfleet would do.

Yeah, I think you could turn that into something. I think just having that character would not be super funny by itself. It feels to me like less of a joke, more of a punchline or part of the setup to a joke.

Maybe Dozerfleet goes to a Chinese place and he's super scared because there's a Chinese flag on the wall, xiaolongbao on the table, other really unfamiliar stuff like that. The waiter starts talking like a badly-translated fortune cookie and then Dozerfleet bursts out crying. "Oh, I'm sorry. Most of the customers really like it when I talk like that," the waiter apologizes. He switches to normal English instead, then brings out some burgers, fries, and barbecue ribs. (Only the ribs are too sticky, so Dozerfleet can't cope again.)

This stuff doesn't feel funny enough to me that I would immediately act on it, but if you thought about it a lot I bet you could come up with some material.

[Sherman Tank]

Considering what a long-winded, obnoxious, ideologically-deranged bore The Dozerfleet Founder is on his wiki, I think the best thing to do is just take the most ridiculous/horrifying chunks and put them in the mouth of the "leader" character of the Trapezoid Kids. Because that's what he'd do if he ever actually wrote this shit.

EDIT: Yes I edited this post because I forgot a comma, what of it?

[Aljonso]

Idea for the plot:
The Trapezoid Kids are randomly hired by a Dozerfleet human stand-in to be stars for his media. Most of the trapezoids immediately come under the same delusions of grandeur that Dozerfleet has, but one (maybe the girl one, as it would allow for exploration of Dozerfleet's casual sexism and also she's only one who's an actual fucking trapezoid) is suspicious of Dozerfleet and tries to convince the others that Dozerfleet is only going to make them look like idiots. As the rest of the trapezoids become more and more like Dozerfleet, the lone trapezoid finds Agents Spitz and Mutters (characters from the "movie"), who reveal that Dozerfleet has been running this scheme before and for a long time. A talking pen accompanying the agents recounts how Dozerfleet pulled the same trick with his group of friends, and how they all got arrested for "felony douchebaggery" after Dozerfleet groomed them. The lone trapezoid rushes back to save her friends, but finds them and Dozerfleet all dying, after Dozerfleet refused to let any of them use a condom to protect from a rampaging STD monster. Dozerfleet dies, and the remaining trapezoids survive, though emergency surgery means they had to become squares.