Charm Agony's April Fool's Takeover

I'm a big fan of pranks - thus April Fool's Day is a great day for me. I mean, I'll pull pranks any day of the year, but having a day where it's expected of me? Hell yes.

With the advent of the Internet, the possibility for pranks became endless. Of course, no prank will ever beat the amazing "Spaghetti Harvest Documentary" by the BBC in 1957 - but I digress.

In March, I began writing a script for a 2-part video sketch in which Charm Agony took over my YouTube channel, Twitter, blog etc. And as it was Charm and she's dumb, she acquired it in a bit of a dodgy way - by me leaving it to her in a will. 

Now obviously I didn't expect anybody to believe this prank - the main goal was to confuse, amuse and potentially annoy. And I reckon it did that - but I had more than one message asking if I was actually changing my Twitter into Charm's... wut?

So step #1 was to record and post Charm's takeover video - "This Is MY YouTube Channel Now!" - a semi-scripted Charm Agony rant-style video complete with "previews" of what Charm intended to do with the channel now it was hers. Around half of the previews were genuine clips from videos that are in post-production or scheduled storage - the others were random ad-lib bits and pieces that I recorded just for this.

Step #2 was the re-branding of the Twitter and the YouTube - as you can see, I designed a basic pink and white banner for Charm, gave her a tagline and included a nice graphic of Cat Chaos' face with a no entry sign over it. Also, glitter. To complete the ruse I also altered the bio, changed the link to specifically go to Charm's page on this blog and changed the birthday to Charm's - June 10th, 1997.

Step #3 was to keep up the ruse by posting tweets as Charm and even sending DMs to people in the persona of Charm - which I admit I enjoyed way more than I should have. Incidentally, as I signed all of Charm's tweets as "- CA" and a kiss emoji - I now have the means to tweet as her on my own Twitter whenever I like, really. I may do that on occasion. The ruse had to continue until part 2 of the video sketch was completed, so it went on for 3 days...

The biggest obstacle in the way of getting part 2 of the video completed was a) Easter and b) the weather. I'd ordered some black gunge to use in place of the "tar," as I can pretty much make any colour of gunge... except black. It's really difficult to make a really thick and opaque black - so I bought some instead. This was delayed massively by the frigging Easter post - or more accurately, the lack thereof. The Royal Mail fucks off home on Good Friday, Easter Sunday (well, it's shut Sunday anyway) and Easter Monday... Also - the weather - it's April and thus it feels the need to piss down constantly. Filming the outdoor scenes was a nightmare.

(This video was flagged and removed by YouTube for "nudity and sexual content" - which we all know is complete and utter bullshit, so now it's uploaded to Vimeo so you lot can still watch it...)

But eventually it was all done - I uploaded the 2nd part of the sketch and returned my branding back to normal - Charm's little joke was over - but I personally will be a little sad to see it go. It was a lot of fun - and really gave me an opportunity to explore new aspects of Charm's character. She's really starting to grow on me - unfortunate perhaps for her detractors, but great news for her fans... yes, believe it or not, Charm has her own little fanbase. It's weird.

Now I can do my own make-up for Charm, I can more or less play her whenever I like. I'm now exploring different styles of content I can make with her - like the Charm Plays videos - somehow I can ad lib and maintain the accent 99% of the time for over 10 minutes of gameplay! I know, I'm impressed too. Charm now has a real name and a legitimate food allergy in the form of aubergines (or eggplants, as she calls them) - it's hard to flesh out a character like Cat Chaos whose facial expression never changes, as he's a mask... but with Charm I have a lot more freedom.

I'm also having lots of fun writing scripts and recording the skits - in addition to the usual slapstick routines and the "comedy" bits, I also want to try to see if I can do a scared Charm, a sad Charm - maybe even see if I can still do stage tears... We shall just have to wait and see. :)