What the hell is "Fancy Falls"?
A little explainer for the world I'm building on Substack
You may have noticed a post with a short comedy sketch on Halloween that was set in a place called Fancy Falls. Then there were some ads from Fancy Falls TV. And most recently, poor Kate who was abducted by aliens from her home town of Fancy Falls.
Fancy Falls will be a place you’ll get to know a lot better if you keep reading my Substack.
You may have noticed my Substack is called Two Things - I think an improvement on the previous name, which was Filmboyslim is Writing, an ultra-generic and quickly chosen title that makes me sound both teenage and pompous, of which I’m definitely only one.
Thing One of the Two Things is a regular weekly recap of what I’ve watched on a screen and then felt compelled to write about. This is under the banner of “The Televigion Week”, Televigion being my pre-existing blog and podcast that combines the words television and religion into one word that confuses people and can be hard to Google -
“Did you mean television?”
It’s basically reverence for the form of visual media, or things related. This means that podcasts about TV shows or films are allowed, music and fiction novels probably aren’t - at least until I change my mind or justify it in some way. It is intended as a conversation, and a way to produce something slightly more tangible from my voracious consumption of TV.
Thing Two of the Two Things now has a banner, “Fancy Falls”. I want somewhere for my tone and style of comedy to live. It will include sketches, monologues, script and prose works-in-progress, ad parodies, and eventually audio recordings of the sort of comedy I love. Heightened realities, plenty of genre tropes and settings, and a love for the rules of TV.
It took me quite a while to come up with a placename that suited what I have planned, including the following terrible ideas
TVTown - that’s a TV review site, right?
Jamestown - it sounds like I’m rebooting the Pocahontas story
Spookyville - too seasonal, and too tied to horror
Get Out Quick - this one was an outlier as it’s not a placename, but it appealed as it is about escaping monsters in a genre world, and efficient sketch writing, i.e. it means two things (wink)
Once I’d found the name Fancy Falls, I sent it to a highly rigourous focus group of three other people - my best comedy friend who is also my comedy best friend, my wife and my mum- who all seemed to like it and understood what it was trying to be.
Fancy Falls will be variously a small village, a mega-city, a country, a magical realm and a TV production studio, as is required by the writing and posts that week. I suppose it is my mind palace, but filled with silly jokes and wordplay instead of shopping lists or murder clues.
I have long imagined my career in comedy to take off after every time I focus and actually achieve any of my intended creative goals. This has not happened yet, and though my hope remains, I have revised my plans for (entertainment) world domination to something slightly more achievable. I would love to build a small following of people who want to read what I write, laugh at what I find funny, and understand what I care about. Fancy Falls is the place to do that.
If you ever enjoy a post set in that strange little town, please share it with others who might like to find out more. Or talk to me about collaborating on something that would fit there!
I would love to build up more than just the written word, with audio sketches, short films, and Kickstarter TV pilots that inspire a bidding war between channels and streaming services from around the world. Achievable.
Oh and of course, Fancy Falls is a terrible pun on the word fanciful, or more directly fancifuls, which isn’t even a real word. That’s the best part. It means Two Things.