Revisiting A 00Carter Christmas

We’re changing up the order this week and revisiting our special Christmas episode, “A 00Carter Christmas.”  We’ll be back next week to repost and blog about Episode 10: “Catch Her If You Can,” and then the following week we’ll be ready to debut our brand new episode, “Mr. Body Beautiful!”  But for now, here’s our blog about “A 00Carter Christmas,” written by yours truly.

 


It’s a 00Carter Christmas! I don’t remember exactly when we got the idea to write a Christmas episode of 00Carter, but I know it was at least a couple years before we actually finished writing it. We’ve always planned this story in “episodes” and “seasons” like a TV show, which goes back to my first team collaboration, Code Blue, which Rose was also a part of. Most TV shows have holiday episodes, so it made sense to do a cheesy Christmas special episode. We even planned it to be a “special episode” so we could change the format to include the introduction and interludes with Nick and Drums reading the poems we wrote. Because of that, we have debated over whether this episode should be considered “canon” or not, which we will discuss more below.

We wrote the two poems first, parodies of “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” and “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” Rose wrote the former, and I wrote the latter. Then we wrote the prose around those. (Hey, that rhymed!) We aimed to have this episode done by Christmas 2011, but not everyone had finished their parts by then. Another year passed, and when it looked like we might not have it ready in time to post around Christmas again, I finally put my foot down and basically said, “You’ll either have your part done by this date, or I’m writing it myself.” I ended up writing two extra parts, which was probably the final nail in the coffin for 00Carter as a big team collaboration. But hey, we posted it on Christmas Eve, so… mission accomplished?

Despite the drama, I thoroughly enjoyed writing this episode and love the way it turned out. It’s cheesy and chock full of Christmas parodies and references – everything you’d expect out of a 00Carter Christmas episode. We didn’t know when we wrote it that it would be our last episode for almost a decade, but it was a good one to go out on.

 

This episode spoofs quite a few Christmas books, movies, and specials. Which was your favorite parody to read or write and why?

Julie: I’m really proud of the Home Alone II parody! That is one of those ideas that sounded really good when we came up with it in a chat but was a lot harder to actually write than we had anticipated. It’s difficult to take something so visual and translate it to words on a page. Kudos to the Home Alone screenwriters! The whole section of the episode where Nick is at the toy store was not supposed to be my part originally, but I ended up writing it when one of our other writers left the story. It was definitely one of the most challenging scenes I have written for this story. All we had really planned was that Nick would set up a series of booby traps inside the toy store like Kevin in Home Alone, but we never worked out what exactly they would be. Between repeat viewings of Home Alone II and research about F.A.O. Schwarz, I came up with all the details and hopefully described them well enough that readers could picture Nick’s plan playing out in their heads. I’m happy with how it turned out!

Rose: I love the Grinch parody. It fits right into Dr. Rough as a character and it still cracks me up. I reread this one last night for another refresh and I’d forgotten how much I love the K-Bot too. Just imagining a giant K shaking its metal boots in a turtle dance to Christmas songs? I still giggle.

Dee: I didn’t help write this episode, so it was fun to just read along. I love both of the poems/stories interspersed with the prose. I laughed so hard every time it cut to one of them. I don’t know if that was the intention or not, but I sure had a good time!

Julie: The poems were so much fun to write! They were definitely meant to be funny, so I’m glad they made you laugh! Dr. Rough as The Grinch was great, and so was the K-Bot and K’s reaction to it!

Rose: Yes! I cracked myself writing the Twas The Night… parody prose. Talk about creating skills I didn’t know I wanted, parody poetry!

 

We didn’t give this episode a number and consider it a “special” episode, but do you consider the events that happen in it part of 00Carter canon? Why or why not?

Rose: We actually had to figure this out in the new episode we’re posting this year. And I guess, sort of? Like obviously the interludes can’t be and the missions are out there even for 00Carter. But we reference Drums’ new hand. I don’t know, lol. Yeah we had a talk about it and we still don’t have a solid answer.

Dee: I think we said, yes it’s canon? Unless tv shows are doing an “It’s A Wonderful Life” type parody, all of their holiday episodes are canon, so why shouldn’t 00Carter’s holiday episode be canon too? These answers don’t sound very sure one way or another, lol. But all the “Christmas magic” leaned tech, so I’d still call the missions believable.

Julie: I think the majority of us felt that the events described in the poems should be considered canon, even if Nick and Drums didn’t really sit down and read them in front of a live studio audience of children. Dr. Rough trying to steal Christmas sounds right up his alley, so I don’t think the missions were too out there for 00Carter at all. This is the same man who wanted to evaporate all the oceans with his giant “laser” and installed a weather machine at Disney World, after all! Blowing up a giant Christmas tree and robbing a toy store is actually a lot more realistic.

Dee: A little too realistic for Dr. Rough… Hmm…

Rose: While true it also sounds a little too small potatoes lol. He wants the world to know his name! But I suppose you’re right, it’s a yes lol.

 

This was the last episode we wrote before our unofficial hiatus, so let’s start with the obvious: Why such a long hiatus, and why bother coming back to 00Carter after almost a decade?

Rose: Life. People dropped off cause they weren’t updating, and slowly it became just myself and Julie. And her and I talked for years about just saying screw it and doing it ourselves, but it seemed daunting for just us. But we never let it go either cause we have a special soft spot for it. I still wrote fic but not the way I used to, cause again… life keeps happening. But Dee returned, and honestly, it lit a fire under our asses. We’ve already finished three pretty large episodes, and we’ve given each other space cause of the holidays (and in my case, chasing Nick around cause he keeps doing events in or close to Vegas lol). But next year we’ll be back at it, and it’s got me excited. I missed this. But basically, the point of this ramble is we never let go of 00Carter. We write this one for ourselves and basically hope someone finds it funny with us.

Dee: Feel free to hold me responsible for my own departure, but I had nothing to do with anything after that! That’s my way of saying, I can’t say why the hiatus was so long. But I came back and Julie talked about how she and Rose had tossed around continuing 00Carter over the years and how can you not continue such a fun story? If nothing else, everything you write has two built-in and invested readers plus two other authors to bounce things off of, so it’s always a good time!

Julie: Oh no, no one holds you responsible for the hiatus, Dee. You were just one of several writers who departed over the course of the last few episodes. Like Rose said, I think life just got in the way for a lot of people, and their interest in fanfic waned. I never stopped writing fanfic altogether, but I did slow down while I was getting my master’s and embarking on adventures in homeowning. It was hard enough to find time for my own stories, let alone 00Carter, so I decided if no one else cared enough to keep writing, I wasn’t going to keep pushing people to write their parts. But whenever it came up in conversation between Rose and me, we always said we could see ourselves going back to 00Carter someday, even if it was just the two of us. We never did until Dee came back and expressed an interest in it, too. I’m really glad we resurrected it because it’s been fun revisiting it and writing it again.

Rose: Yeah no we don’t hold you responsible for that, Dee! And hey, if anything, you’re why we’re back.

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