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About Creating
BobsWorld
the origin of the BobsWorld universe
by Setcheti
Disclaimer: I do not own Bob the Builder. I just love him a
whole lot and want him to be happy – isn’t that how fic usually happens?
About BobsWorld: The BobsWorld universe is based on the premise
that the Bob the Builder characters are real people, living in a real
world. To find out more about BobsWorld, please go here.
Christmas 2006: Stopping at the video store on my way
home from the grocery store, I was trying in vain to find something
Christmassy for the kids to watch – they may be teenagers, but they like
sentimental holiday kid stuff as much as I do. I mean, we OWN our own
copies of almost every Rankin Bass holiday special ever made, including the
sucky Rudolph New Year’s one, and they’re all showing lots of wear.
Well, anyway, I’m looking for something to take home
from the video store, and everything is completely picked over. What’s
left isn’t anything I’m willing to pay money to watch. So I just start
going down the shelves in the kiddie section, one row at a time, hoping to
find something worth taking home. The word Christmas jumps out, way down
on the bottom row, practically on the floor. It’s a Bob the Builder
Christmas video. I figure, why not. At least we haven’t seen it before. I
find and snag a copy of a Hallmark movie absolutely no one will end up
watching, and off home I go.
A week later, back at the video store: two more Bob
tapes going home. We watched the Bob Christmas vid 3 times, and that was
just the first day we had it. My daughter says she thinks Bob and Wendy
got married at some point – turns out she’s been watching Bob on weekend
mornings and not telling anyone about it. Go figure.
Two weeks after that: I just rented every Bob DVD
Blockbuster had on the shelf. We’re all obsessed, having arguments about
why no one has killed Spud yet and dissolving into helpless laughter over
Farmer Pickles ‘remembering’ he just happens to have a giant hole in his
roof in the middle of winter. The kids are starting to throw story ideas
at me. “You should write this down, Mom.”
So I did. BobsWorld was born.
A few stories later, we have a problem: Bob is actually
something about one less-than-lifelike step over from Claymation and Rankin
Bass. I have a real universe for Bob and Wendy to live in, I have real
reasons for all the stuff on the show that only happens because Bob isn’t
real (like them riding on the side of the machines, not in them), but I
don’t have sufficient mental ‘visuals’ yet to plot out Bob & Co running
around like real people. It’s casting time!
I realized that Farmer Pickles already had an actor; I’d
been picturing him as John Ratzenberger without even realizing I was doing
it. Dr. Johnson, Mr. Dixon and Constable Rickey were next, but it was
fairly easy to find actors for them since I had a pretty good mental
picture of what I thought they looked like too. But Bob…I could not find
anyone for Bob. I mean, I know what Bob looks like, but as far as actors
went no one looked like Bob. No one talked like Bob. I found a few
potentials, but none of them were quite right, none of them were perfect.
The Search for Bob ground to a halt.
So I called on Tex, who has an uncanny knack for finding
actors. I described Bob to her in great detail: a little on the short
stocky side, dark hair, brown eyes, open face, nice friendly smile.
Cheerful, never loses his temper, gets embarrassed easily, kind of clueless
around women. Has a twin brother, although that obviously isn’t a casting
issue.
Tex said, “I know just who you want.” She said his name
was Nicholas Brendon.
I said, “Who?”
She said, “He played Xander on Buffy the Vampire
Slayer,” and I made a rude noise. I’d had one experience with Buffy
the Series, which involved seeing a bitchy little blonde getting told off
by a room full of her friends. It wasn’t anything like the movie, which I
happen to love with all my heart, so I’d never deigned to watch any more of
it.
Tex said, “No, he’s perfect, let me show you,” and
e-mailed me a picture…of Bob, hardhat and all, as played by Nicholas
Brendon. Dark hair, dark eyes, nice smile. Real live identical twin
brother thrown in as a bonus, and said once in an interview that what he
really wanted to be remembered for was being a nice guy. Welcome to
BobsWorld, Nick! I went out the next day and rented Season 1 of Buffy, and
watched it just for him. Got hooked on that too, or at least on trying to
fix it, but that’s another story – or actually about ten of them, but I’m
not counting.
Wendy was not so easy. Tex, for all her magical casting
genius ability, could not find a Wendy. I found a pretty definite Jenny
and thought that would narrow it down some – I mean, they’re sisters, just
find someone who looks a little like her, right? Wrong. Problem was,
Wendy has to be nice too. As in Bob-nice. You tried finding a nice,
non-slutty blonde blue-eyed actress in Hollywood lately? Especially one
who doesn’t look like a strong wind could blow her away? I finally spotted
a relatively wholesome-looking one in a movie preview who looked a lot
like my mental image of Wendy, decided she wouldn’t look too bad with Nick
as Bob…and then saw some non-movie pictures of her. Can we say bitch? We
can, yes, and we did. Oooh, I don’t think so – only the best for Bob. All
bitches go to the Mavis casting down the hall.
I gave up – temporarily, anyway. I still had a Jenny, I
had most of my other main actors, and in my head I knew what Wendy looked
like so she could wait. So after a couple of months spent finishing more
BobsWorld stories, I went Wendy hunting again. Two days, no luck. I had a
folder full of pictures of potential Wendys, and there was something wrong
with most of them. Too old. Too thin. Too…seductive. Most of them
looked like they’d eat Bob alive. But I still had a couple of potentials
left, and I went back to the search engine to look for more. Nada. Found
a pouty strawberry blonde that I liked, but couldn’t find the right picture
of her. Found a bunch more slutty Hollywood blondes – I think I may be off
blondes now for the foreseeable future, ick. Gave up again, and decided
that maybe Wendy just wasn’t going to have an actor anywhere but inside my
head.
And then, a miracle occurred…okay, it didn’t, but I just
had to use that one. You see, at our house we all love to re-watch things,
so we have videos of every TV show we’ve ever liked. One of the most
popular for the past six months or so has been our DVD set of Kitchen
Confidential. This was a truly great show which should have stayed on
the air, it was so good that it was actually a chef who recommended it to
me as something well worth watching. And having it on DVD, we of course
have favorite episodes. I’m surprised we haven’t worn a hole in the DVD
where “Teddy Takes Off” is at, and “Rabbit Test” is a close second – that
one has the Cutest Bunny in the World in it, and I have a theory that said
bunny was never together in a shot with any of the actors because one of
them would have stolen him and taken him home. But anyway, here we are
watching Teddy take off for the twenty-sixth time when the blonde,
blue-eyed restaurant hostess marches into the kitchen and gives the head
chef a piece of her mind. Wait a minute. Blonde, blue-eyed, looks good
with Nick – yes, he was in Kitchen Confidential playing Seth the
pastry chef, although he looked nothing much like Bob at the time. Oooh.
Jaime has a sweet smile and big blue eyes. In heels she’s taller than
Nick, but that works because in heels Wendy is taller than Bob too. She
isn’t anorexically skinny, and her ‘serious’ voice was just right. I went
looking for pictures. Wonder of wonders, even when she’s doing the Hollywood starlet pose Jaime doesn’t look like a maneater, a slut, or a bitch. And she
looks just enough like my Jenny actress that you could believe them as
sisters. Yay me!
Following success with Wendy, the quest for Lucas Lewis
as aided by Tex turned up a handful of tall, slender, intense-eyed men, and
David Wenham ended up with the role. Mr. Bentley was not so lucky, all the
contenders for his actor have so far looked too mean and crabby, or else
they’ve been too tall and thin – we can’t have Aaron being taller than Bob,
it just wouldn’t look right. And Tex started to make some of her wonderful
pictures for the individual stories, including a neat picture with the
machines for the BobsWorld index page. Some days I’m still amazed there is
a BobsWorld index page, and that BobsWorld is online. I mean, I looked
around one day and realized I’d been working on BobsWorld continuously for
a whole year –there wasn’t a week that went by where I didn’t do something
with one of the BobsWorld stories during that entire time.
Of course, that kind of obsession leaves its mark: I
probably own more Bob-stuff than is strictly decent for a person my age. I
have tiny little die-cast models of most of the machines, I have models of
Bob and Wendy, I have a near-life-size stuffed Pilchard that sits on my
desk. I’ve got Bob tea mugs and a lap tray and several lunchboxes – yes, I
do carry them to work. I have and wear a Bob wristwatch and carry a Bob
umbrella when it rains. I accidentally got hold of a handful of Bob
iron-on patches and made a Bob jacket – no, that one doesn’t go to work,
only to Wal-Mart. And of course, I own a shelf full of Bob videos and
DVDs, as well as two Bob video games, three Bob music CDs (two with
karaoke!) and a Bob card game. What can I say, I love Bob. And luckily Tex, who is unfortunate enough to be sharing this Bob-filled living space with me, does not
find all of this annoying or disturbing in the least and in fact has a
tendency to encourage my habit. Who do you think went to see Bob the
Builder LIVE! Spud’s Big Mess with me?
So that is the story of how BobsWorld came to be, and
how it will probably keep going for a long time to come. At the time I’m
writing (and posting) this, I’m still trying to finish Bob’s White
Christmas, Bob’s Dance Lessons, Scary Spud, Mr.
Dixon’s Missing Mail and finally Dry Rot, which is the end of
the first series. Yes, that does mean there’s going to be a second
BobsWorld series, just as soon as all of the stories in the first series
are done!
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