Alright, stop! Collaborate and listen! Ice is back with my brand new invention. Something grabs a hold of me tightly, flow like a harpoon daily and nightly. Will it ever stop?
Yeah — I’m done. I just can’t resist rapping a lil Vanilla Ice whenever I see the title of this episode. Episode 4: “Ice Ice Baby” is back and better than ever! Rose wrote the blog about it!
Oh, “Ice Ice Baby.” I think this was the episode where we started to hit our stride. Looking back at one of the sole Yahoo Group chats that survived after it got shut down, everyone pretty much chimed in on this idea. And I honestly still think of this as one of my favorite episodes. We dive more into Brian’s character, give Opal her first appearance, and my favorite minion MJ comes in! And why is he my favorite? Because he’s black and white and does the moonwalk!
Yes, that joke still makes me laugh over a decade later. By this point all the introductions were pretty much done and our world was established. Because let’s face it, the first three episodes were basically world building. This episode has some very 2007 jokes, I mean this was back when we thought throwing in that old duo Tatu would be funny. Does anyone else remember them? I did like their songs. But I’m getting off track.
This episode was probably the most cohesive when our writing team was still massive. And It’s a bit surprising that it is. But I think most of us were on the same page in this episode mostly. One thing that cracks me up is in reading the chat that plotted this, everyone’s throwing out random ideas and I was (for once) the one who strung them all together and made them make sense. Usually I let Julie do that LOL.
In doing our edits this episode really didn’t need that many, confirming that somehow this was one of the stronger episodes that we did. There’s just so many good elements to this. Brian and Nick antagonizing each other, FANS in all their over the top glory, Brian realizing there’s more to Nick deep down… I just love it all.
Let’s talk about Brian and his relationship with Nick. How do you feel about our decision to make him an outsider (as part of the CIA rather than HimTak) and more of an adversary than a friend to Nick in this episode?
Rose: That we predicted the future? Lol. I’m kidding though the infamous “Don’t be a dick” argument popped in my head. I think it was my idea to make him CIA and it’s cause I knew that they’d have liaisons to other governments. And I felt like it needed to be a Backstreet Boy lol. Brian got the “All American Boy” stereotype the best. As much as they argue, they bring out the best in each other I think.
Julie: It’s almost like we wrote their relationship opposite of real life. In the story, they start out hating each other, but (spoiler alert) eventually become friends, whereas in real life, they used to be closer friends than they are now (not that they hate each other). It was fun to make them enemies at first just because that’s not something we’re used to seeing with Frick & Frack in fanfics.
Dee: I agree! I know I trend toward “Team Frick & Frack forever,” so it’s always fun exploring different dynamics when the opportunity arises. Plus, how unfair would that be to Howie if everyone was in HimTak except him? No wonder Dr. Rough hates them so much, lol. 00Carter is probably the closest anyone will ever get to reading an “enemies to lovers” plot from any of us. Of course it would be Frick & Frack that would have it! In our editing, I’ve enjoyed that we’ve added a bit more of the “teasing” dynamic to Brian and Nick. It was pretty one-sided in the original run. But there’s plenty of Frick & Frack to come where we can discuss their ever-changing relationship!
Where in the world did moonwalking penguins come from?!
Julie: We have a copy of the group chat in which we planned the majority of this episode out. I just reread it recently, and it was so interesting to see how our ideas came about. We came up with the idea for a stolen weapon first, and Dee suggested Dr. Rough use it to take over Antarctica. That seemed pretty random until Kelly said he could use the weapon to melt the polar ice caps — then Antarctica made sense as a setting. Of course we started talking about penguins, and I suggested Dr. Rough could create genetically modified, evil minion penguins. We picked rockhopper penguins because they look the most evil. Some of them have red eyes! Then Rose and Dee started talking about dancing penguins like in Mary Poppins, but we never got as far as moonwalking in that chat. That must have come up in a later chat that we don’t have. I don’t remember who actually came up with the idea to make them moonwalk.
Rose: I don’t remember either, but it’s my favorite thing EVER lol. Also fun fact – Mary Poppins is one of my Top Five Disney movies. Not surprised that came up lol.
Dee: Antarctica just seemed like the perfect place for Dr. Rough to take over! It is the “forgotten” continent, after all. And we’ve already established, 00Carter ideas just have to make sense eventually, not out of the gate, lol. I wish we had copies of more of these chats saved, it is really fun to see where the ideas came from. I think that chat also has the seeds of “we need a mission where it’s just the girls” (“Bunnies in Black”), “the FANS minions break out in song, much to the annoyance of Dr. Rough,” (“It’s A Small World”), and “what if Dr. Rough made some biochemical weapon” (“FANthrax”). I think of all these random ideas, my favorites are the ones involving weird animal minions. In a “future episodes” outline, we have one about manatees that has a random Nick quote attached to it out of context (to be honest, the whole idea doesn’t really have much context at the moment) and it makes me laugh hysterically every time.
Julie: I also love Dr. Rough’s random animal minions! That is one of the reasons I’m excited we’re finally writing this story again — so we can eventually use some of the other ones we thought of! Stay tuned!
