Hey, kids. I'm feeling a little nostalgic and I wanted to talk a little bit about an old user from way back in 2019. In the great words of Galadriel, "Much that once was is lost, for none now live to remember it".
It began way back in the summer of 2019. I was eagerly waiting for Enter The Florpus to release on Netflix, and I was also getting new carpet put in my bedroom as well as getting it painted, which meant I had to spend about a 3rd and a half of that summer sleeping on a bare mattress in my sunroom next to a pile of laundry. Since I couldn't use my computer in my room anymore, I had to set it up at the dining room table so I could continue working on my animations. At the time, I was working on my first attempt at an animated series titled Tom and Jon, which was more or less a blatant rip off of Invader Zim (though I refused to tell myself that until after I created Popper and Stevie and had been messing with those characters for a handful of months. In fact, one of the earliest blog posts I made here was an announcement for Tom and Jon!) and I was deadset on making it a reality. But because I didn't really know how to do, well, anything regarding making an animated series, I would sprinkle little teasers throughout my animations until I was actually ready to start making the series. One of these animations was a reanimated version of the "kick gum, chew ass" video, which is still up to this very day. On the same day I uploaded that animation, I recieved a message. I think it was actually my first message from another actual user on the site and not just P-Bot begging for up-doots.
That message was from a man named Chad Cooper.
The message was a strange, garbled mess of words with a very loose description of an stick fight animation collab entitled "Darkness Uprising" with purple robots shooting lasers or something to that extent. He also ended just about every message with a winky face emoticon (y'know, the ;) thing) which threw me off just a little bit to what his actual intentions were. Keep in mind I was still new to Newgrounds and didn't quite get the culture yet, and "stranger danger" was a thing on my mind. Anyway, I could at least understand to a degree what he wanted me do to after asking some questions (what I asked, I don't know. All the chatlogs have been deleted since) but what I had in mind was something I deemed a little too difficult for my skills at the time. And while I did get what he was saying a little bit, I didn't really understand the full picture. So I just took what I could, which was robots and fighting, and ran with it. I went on to animate Tom, from the previously stated Tom and Jon series, fighting a group of robots in a bar called "Robot Rage". I submitted it here to the lovely world of Newgrounds and it actually performed pretty well. And Chad seemed to enjoy it just fine.
But then I decided to look a little deeper into this collab. Y'know, see what everypony else was making. Not only have there been at least thirty or fifty other animators working on this collab, but it wasn't even the first collab called Darkness Uprising. And Chad Cooper had like ten alternative accounts, all of them spamming more or less the same comments on nearly every animated video or animation for his collab. It was for lack of better terminology a strange sight to see. At first I thought it was just a weird kid trying to start a collab with some animators on the internet and didn't really know how to do it yet. And what was on display here was pouring gas on the fire. I quickly lost all interest in being associated with the "collab" and pulled my submission from YouTube and Newgrounds, and went on with my life for about a week until I saw Hatena360's video on Chad. I then scrolled down to the comments to see a comment from Chad's brother explaining what was actually going on and apologizing for what had happened. After fully reaching an understanding, I took my leave and went on to keep the memory of Chad Cooper in the back of my mind for years to come.
Then one day, about half a month ago, a little inkling in the back of my head echoed words I hadn't heard in a long time. Words I recognized but didn't fully understand. The words "Greatest collab in history". I searched YouTube for it, and scrolled until I once again found Hatena360's video on the long forgotten legends of Chad Cooper. I watched it, feeling a wave of bitter sweet nostalgia for that one summer back in 2019. I then once again scrolled to the comments, and saw one I never saw before. It was from another brother named Brad talking more in-depth about Chad. Apparently, Chad wasn't a kid at all! He was in fact a fully grown man who unfortunately was diagnosed with autism, but really loved watching Hyuns Dojo stick fight animations ever since their heyday. The comment goes more in depth, but I'm not going to list anything else from it. But it really goes to show you that even when you think a story is done, or you know everything about it, you can still find new things about it years later! And even though this was a very weird first experience with collaborating with another person on a project, I still enjoy looking back on this little memory. And I feel nostalgia for that summer in 2019. Occasionally even some longing to go back to that summer even if it were just for a couple hours.
So thank you, Chad. Keep creating, but try not to do that way again.
UPDATE: It would seem that legends never die afterall. I can't say for certain, but it seems that Chad continues to walk among the forums of the Hyuns Dojo website under the account Lovesng25. Now time will only tell if Ziora's evil army will finally be defeated (whoever the hell that is lmao i dont watch hyuns dojo)
