Why is there a gimmick account about Real-Time Fandub... run by Real-Time Fandub?
Real-Time Fandub Out of Context is a Twitter account that I created on June 2021. Originally meant to be a Gravity Falls fan account with the sole purpose of tweeting out every single sentence from the show in chronological order until it was finished. I quickly got tired of the experiment because I realized it would take a long time and that it would be pretty boring until the end when I reached it. It wasn't an appealing premise, especially not visually. So I flipped the bitch.
(Animation from Clone High, via MTV)
I flipped this account to something else so I wouldn't get bored. For context, alongside the two Until Dawn fandubs from SnapCube, there were two original Real-Time Fandubs of anything that year — our fandub of the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and our fandub of the first episode of The Owl House. To this day I think they could've used some extra attention, and I got really tired of seeing just the SnapCube fandubs get all the praise and glory. And so one day in university, I got inspired by those "out of context" type videos online and on Twitter, and wanted to make my own. After all, isn't the appeal of the show all of the twists we bring to the source material and how batshit crazy it can get?
On November 1, 2021, Real-Time Fandub Out of Context was truly born. A second birthday, not unlike when a trans person celebrates their coming out as a separate birthday from their actual birth. The motive was a bit selfish and spited but I considered giving the show some extra attention wouldn't be a bad idea, since we were recovering from a two-year sabbatical off improv fandubs and were still proud of some of the jokes in retrospect. Granted, I realized I'd be dealing with quite the warts, so I wanted to approach it from the perspective of a fan instead. Yes, I began tweeting out as a "fan". Post clips anonymously so that it looks like a genuine fan posted them, and then reveal to the cast that I was behind them. It was a fool-proof plan to get interest in the original series back up to the levels of 2017.
can you guess how long it took for the cast to realize it was me?
it took Niya and Charley a month. it is only when I started editing clips together to make a supercut of thematically related moments that it was clear and obvious I was behind it. My editing style was too distinct for the people whose dialogue I'd been editing for over five years at that point. I tried to play dumb in the internal RTF chat, but eventually realized I wouldn't be able to deceive them, so I admitted to being behind the account and then it was known among the cast!
"we both know you forever, of course we'd know"
"you joker, you prankster"
At some point, the folks of ClownHouse also found out about it being me (V JBHYQ ABG YVXR GB UNIR NAL ORRS JVGU L'NYY, V NZ FBEEL SBE ORVAT NAABLVAT, V UBCR LBH HAQREFGNAQ), at which point I tried to give both the SnapCube show and the original show equal amounts of attention. Of course, knowing their audience, those clips always got more popular. By mid-2022, Sonic clips boomed with retweets, likes and replies. The Shadow the Hedgehog dub came out after that, the Twitter account hit 1,000 followers days after that. 2,000 followers literally 24 hours later. 4,000 followers within two weeks. And the rest was history. The Shadow dub actually happened to coincide with an experiment of mine, where I tested putting open captions (subtitles) on the clips for people to be able to watch the clip while muted (haha get it?) or to take screenshots and use them as reactions online. I can safely say that that experiment was a success, bringing all clips to more people more quickly and making them more accessible. They were also useful once the Subspace dub came out and it was my job to decipher extra overlapping dialogue. That was fun. NEVER DOING THAT AGAIN.
For the years to come, I wanted to decipher what made RTF so special to people, and what kind of viewers we were working with. I also wanted them to broaden their horizons so that the other projects from RTF's cast get to shine. I put together these infographics to help guide folks towards other projects. Well Abridge Me, Princess was something Charley and friends had been putting a lot of effort into. Penny had recently put out an EP. Everyone else had a podcast or an alternate project they wanted eyes on. A guide made sense. I made the Roadmap. I'd made four versions of it, updated every few months so that it guides people to the most current project tangentially related to RTF. People responded well to it, and I liked making it because I always got the funny looks on people's faces, like "WAIT THEY'RE IN THIS TOO???" Makes me smile every time.
The latest version at time of writing. Previous versions can be seen here, here and here.
Three years on, I have now tried to move over 5,000 folks off of Twitter and onto Tumblr and Bluesky. For Tumblr, it's gone massively well. For Bluesky, well I'm still waiting on the results back from the lab.
In March 2022, a supercut I made of Charley themed around their pirate persona made it onto an episode of the show on our birthday, and it was then when I revealed to the general public that I was behind the account. It was a feeling of relief.
To be honest, my entire time on the show was characterized by my conflicting feelings around being a fan of these creators to suddenly getting involved with their creative endeavors and becoming friends (or at least good acquaintances, in a lot of cases). I wasn't good with one-on-one but I was better in the group setting, so it helped demystify the air around these wonderful people, some of whom I had only learned about through being on the show, and some of whom I'd been watching for like... forever. It's a wildly different experience. However, helping with the logistical and creative side of RTF also made me become its biggest fan and cheerleader, even when other cast members felt unsure about their improv. I didn't know that much about improv, but I knew what made me laugh and that was enough. This was the true purpose of the gimmick account: to share my love for the thing we made, and to help other people find that joy. I found that cutting out the context helped give it new meaning, because your brain does some work to fill in the missing information and most of the things y'all will imagine will either be funny, confusing, or both. Ain't that cool?
I hope that RTF has entertained you. I hope SnapCube's RTF has entertained you. I hope it inspires you to do funny things. We always look forward to seeing the joy you find in our stupid little goofing off sessions.
Thank you for indulging in all of it. It means the world. And don't forget: no matter what you do, never rewrite the Constitution!