Yensid Productions - A New Voice
A.P. Shillinson and Seth Cashwin
At Edgeverse, we are at the very forefront of the latest sci-fi and movie-related news. We shilled pretty hard and were given a scoop from new studio, Yensid, who are working on a number of properties, many ripe for reboots – who doesn’t love a reboot?
Yensid is a conglomerate formed of the best new talent meshed with the wisdom and experience of seasoned professionals, they say. It’s kind of like Luke pairing up with Obi-Wan only nobody is getting their arms cut off (although nobody would go on record to say categorically that arms were absolutely definitely not going to get severed.)
To keep male toxicity at an absolute minimum, CEO Johnny Johnson has agreed to have non-gendered bathrooms, wear a rainbow pin at all creative meetings, and have his penis surgically removed. Diversity hire, J.J. S (who identifies as the shadow of a rare kind of Tibetan horse) has a lot to contribute. Johnson commented, “Once we figure out what language they/them speak, we’re totally convinced that he/him/she/her/it/they’ll be able to drive our vision forwards, etc.”
So let’s have a look at the latest projects of our favourite new production company and see what this fantastically progressive studio is planning.
Johnson said, “We feel that the time is right for another Spiderman reboot so we’re in negotiations with Sony and Marvel to acquire the rights to the character. We sent a box of muffins to both companies, so we’re pretty confident of our chances.”
We said, “That sounds great!”
Johnson nodded. “We’re taking it right back to an origin story because there just isn’t enough of those. We feel that the character lacks sufficient diversity, having only been represented as a White male of various ages, a female, a young man of colour and a pig. We think it’s time to smash the glass-ceiling and finally embrace modern views of diversity and do something genuinely new. It’s time for Spiderman to be represented by equality itself.”
We didn’t understand this and said, “Wow. That sounds perfect!”
“Through the new reboot there will just be a Spiderman suit – perhaps made by actual spiders – that’s both small enough for a normal person and large enough for a an equally normal person of gigantic normal proportions and would be ideal for males, females and the whole spectrum of people who don’t understand the basic tenets of human biology. Finally, Spiderman is truly diverse because he can be anyone.”
“But won’t he really be no-one?” we said.
Johnson just shrugged and said, “Diversity!
Who doesn’t love science-fiction, huge character-driven stories set against a background of subtle effects that convince the audience that they are looking into a different world?
Yensid is in negotiations to bring Arthur C. Clarke’s classic story of discovery of alien life, ‘Rendezvous with Rama’ to the small screen. Johnson said, “Obviously the toxic White male crew will be replaced with a more diverse representative conglomeration of blended miximacation. Nobody wants to see accurate depictions of stories anymore so we will change it to fit into more modern modality of post-progessive neon-corporate champion progressive virtue sausages.”
When pressed he would only say ‘miximication’ several more times and chuckle to himself.
He also said, “We’ve got strong ideas about how to represent our visual visionary vision on a television budget ,which will include, inclusively the use of cardboard cutouts and Vaseline on the lenses of the cameras on our phones. After the success of ‘Game of Thrones’, we’re also going to throw in some swords and naked women. Diversity. Minorities. We’re also considering moving the setting from a gigantic alien spacecraft to a forest in Arkansas. We feel it’s what the audience really wants from us in these modern times.”
We asked, “Would a woman be in charge of the ship? Ideally a woman of colour, preferably with a differently abled ability to able differently? And she really should be a lesbian.”
Johnson smiled slyly and said, “That’s all been done. We’re going further still. What social group is more neglected that any other? Yes, that’s right, ginger people. We’re going to make every character ginger, even – and perhaps most excitingly – the bald ones.”
It sounds amazing!
Johnson said, “Yes, we’re all dreadfully excited about this one. The Batwoman television show has made great strides in pushing the genre to the very edge, but we can go even further.
“We don’t have the rights to the really actual Batman but we’ve made out own version of the character who’s distinctly unique for legally legal reasons. We’ve taken the iconic elements and we’re bringing to the screen our own uniquely distinct version.”
As we were counting our bribe we said enthusiastically, “Tell us more!”
“I will tell you more,” Johnson said. “The problems with Batman are the ‘bat’ and the ‘man’ elements. We’ve factored those out to craft a new hero for the modern age. We got rid of the whole ‘bat’ symbol as we felt it was racist against anything that wasn’t a bat and we had him represented by a more progressive symbol. Our hero now uses the symbol of a small piece of cheese. We considered a cucumber but it was considered too masculine because of the shape, although the colour tested well. The genius of the cheese is that everyone likes cheese. Just to be sure, we’re using mozzarella because it’s bland and tasteless, just like ‘Batwoman’.
“It goes without saying that we can’t have a man because men offend everyone that isn’t a man. We went further and decided it couldn’t be a woman because that might offend men who want to be women. In the end we came up with an elegant solution.”
We needed to know more. “Tell us more!”
“Our hero is simply cheese! We factored out the bat and the man and simply had a block of cheese as our central character. We even made it supermarket mozzarella, none of that fancy stuff made from real milk because that’s problematic to vegans. This is basically just a lump of plastic.
“It doesn’t use violence to solve crimes, it just sits by, acknowledging that it’s the socio-economic situation that causes the disparity between overt aggression and victimhood so it makes the world a better place by just listening.
“Like Batperson, it has special gadgets. It’s got a utility belt stuffed with tools, such as smiling emoticons and the ability to really listen to the opinions of diverse voices.”
“It sounds thrilling,” we said while stuffing the money into our pockets. “What else are you working on? Do you have anything original?”
“No!”
Johnson said, “We have another glass ceiling to smash. We’re working on a detective in a wheelchair. They have to solve crimes without the use of their legs. It will be like no other that’s ever been seen before.”
We replied, “Like Ironside?”
Johnson shrugged and said, “Our detective will be unable to walk due to massive healthy obesity. They won’t catch criminals because that’s offensive these days, in fact we’re looking at making them an ex-police officer who lost their job to defunding in a glorious Socialist utopia.
“Instead they’ll get to the root of crimes, like how it’s all the fault of a particular group of people whose great, great, great grandfathers heavily invested in terrible crimes against humanity.”
We frowned and said, “Wouldn’t that be anti-semetic?”
Johnson frowned at us. “Of course, we’re shedding off the horrible imperialist, colonialist ideas that a detective has to be intelligent, because that’s not progressive. Intelligence sure as heck didn’t get us where we are today! Our detective is just a detective because they want to be. What could be more inclusive that that?
“In fact, that’s why I’m a CEO of a production company!”
“So it’s just a morbidly obese person eating ice-cream?” we suggested with a shrug.
Johnson nodded. “It was going to be sticks of butter, but I like the way you think.”
So, new studio Yensid has some great ideas about how to push things into the next century, even though MIT is predicting the end of civilisation within the next 20 years. But who cares, if we can watch really quality programming like this?
Bring it on, Johnson!
