"Fear", and His Much Vilified Little Adoptive Brother: "Actually Attempting Things in Real Life"

Before I became an animation screenwriter professionally, I used to be very afraid of writing for animation. “I don’t understand the logic. How do I structure someone else’s world in a medium constructed of artwork?” I would ask…until I wrote what is now documented by Historians as The Most Original and Complex Animation Script Ever Written in the History of the Medium, based on my own idea. After a while it was “Hey! This isn’t so hard! I don’t know why I never tried this before! I’m great at this! As an animation writer, I’m amazing!” And now I’m a screenwriter, when I’m not a novelist or a cartoonist. It’s always harder, or looks harder until you try it yourself. Then it’s quite literally the easiest thing in the world. 

I’m a writer who just happens to write for animation too. I write the ideal brand of animation for adults and mature adult audiences. Something not so childlike, infantile, simple, humorous, or traditional. I write about all sorts of topics that would be taboo in a children’s program, which is why I don’t write those. I write about subject matter I either appreciate or understand. And things I find cool and that apply to my own life. Topics that fascinate me, or that come from my subconscious, which would therefore make it all me. 

In the world of Adult and Mature animation writing, I've come to realize that for all innovators in the field of adult animation, the subject matter and topics you write about (and what form you take to write about them in), ultimately comes down to one question, if it's innnovative and not terribly stereotyped. That question any mature write must ask is "What does it mean to be an adult? What is being an adult really about? Is it about mindless sex and booze and working. Or is it about being a real, chivalrous, honorable masculine man? Or is it about the meaning of life and culture and society and politics in general? Only you, the writer and author of the screenplay, will determine that. It's an existential challenge. If you're truly going to write great adult animation, one must first decide and determine just what exactly it means to be an "adult", and not a child, which is a type of person who could never truly write an adult script, because they're not entirely in that state of mind (adulthood) yet. Adult animation writing needs to be written...by adults. Not teens. Not kids. Adults.. I’ve always felt the best mature animation is about more than just the alleged fanboy fundamentals: “Curse words, sexual content, drugs, blatant sadistic violence, and a snarky attitude.” In other words, 80-90% of what we see nightly on Adult Swim, sans the former anime lineup  they did some years back. Adult animation was originally just intended to be vulgar and offensive. I strive for something that is at least a little complex and deep in content, story, and form. But yeah. Way back in the early days of the first pioneering American Adult Animation in TV and film, it was one big party - sex, drugs (both on screen AND off), violence (pretty much only on screen, if not completely), and rock and roll. Stuff like Ralph Bakshi, The Simpsons, MTV Animation, South Park. It was primarily animators and storyboard artists (writers), and a few Actual Writers, doing things...because they could, a primal reaction, that the censors previously wouldn't allow, because it had previously been targeted at families and kids, and you don't want kids seeing that stuff, let's be honest here. It was censored initially for a reason, because the older audience demographic wasn't there in America in the very beginning, just in Japan, which led to sophisticated animated things like Ghost in the Shell, and Akira. Which influenced more sophisticated American Adult Shows like Batman: The Animated Series, Spawn, Adult Swim, The Boondocks, and Star Wars: The Clone Wars, along with some equally sophisticated children's shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender on TV, Code Lyoko, Oban Star-Racers, Toonami, and Thundercats