Making Fiends

Once there was a little girl, a girl who could make fiends.
She kept the whole town terrified, the girl who could make fiends.
Then there came another girl who wanted to be friends.
Vendetta can not stand her, so she plots her end!

Making Fiends is an animated television series, created by Amy Winfrey. It is a spin-off of an online series of the same name that aired on Nicktoons Network on October 4 - November 1, 2008. The show revolves around the life of Charlotte, a sweet, innocent little girl who is the new girl in the town of Clamburg (she used to live in Vermont, according to the first webisode). Charlotte is also incredibly naïve, and is unable to think badly of anyone around her. Charlotte quickly makes "friends" with Vendetta (or so she thinks), a horrid little girl who makes monsters, or fiends, through baking. Vendetta cannot stand Charlotte's happy-go-lucky nature, and will often go to great lengths to destroy Charlotte (or at least get her out of the way for a little bit). These attempts inevitably backfire, usually resulting in Vendetta doing great damage to herself. When they do succeed, Charlotte can only see the bright side of her situation and will become more annoying than usual. Everything is back to normal by the end of the episode.

Vendetta, due to her fiend-making abilities, appears to have the entire town at her control. As such, Clamburg is a bleak, dark and forbidding place. Mr. Milk, who has gotten the misfortune of teaching Charlotte and Vendetta's class, is incredibly timid and never gets around to teaching due to his fear of Vendetta's reactions to his lessons. Charlotte's classmates include Marion, who speaks quietly and is fearful of Vendetta; Marvin, who starts each sentence with the word "my" and has his property vandalized by Vendetta in various ways (which leads to such exclamations as "My banana!" and "My ice cream!"); Malachi, who speaks in Shakespearean phrases and consistently warns Charlotte against messing with Vendetta (to no avail); Maggie, who has resigned herself to depression and dreams of someday escaping, and Mort, an earnest little boy who often spouts nonsensical advice (or so it's claimed- he hasn't spoken once in the show's run.)

The show was cancelled after only six episodes, with Nickelodeon running re-runs until October 2016. The show's creator has stated that she made seven more episodes, but those were not aired or included in the DVD release.

Big Bunny is another web series by Amy Winfrey. It never had a chance of becoming a TV series, for various reasons.

Tropes used in Making Fiends include:

• Adults Are Useless
• Alphabetical Theme Naming: All of the main human characters besides Charlotte and Vendetta have names that start with "M" (Marvin, Marion, Malachi, Mr. Milk, Mrs. Minty, etc).
• Amazing Technicolor Population: Every human character is basically a stick figure filled in with one color. Usually blue, grey or purple.
• April Fools' Day: The Bulgarian Episode. As in an episode spoken completely in Bulgarian.
  • The Bulgarian Episode, while is is spoken entirely in Bulgarian, recieved a lot of complaints for being impossible to follow -- so Winfrey added subtitles that were intentionally mangled and gramatically incorrect.
• Art Evolution: From the web series to the TV series. Houses and backgrounds are heavily detailed, and the characters are geometric rather than scribbly.
• Big No: Vendetta's usual reaction when her plans go awry.
• Break the Cutie: Averted.
  • Although played straight in the TV episode "No Singing", when Charlotte hears a very sad poem and falls into a depression. Being Charlotte though, she does get better rather quickly.
• Born in the Wrong Century: Malachi.
• Butt Monkey: Marvin is always having his property forcibly taken from him by Charlotte or Vendetta, and according to his bio on the Nickelodeon Making Fiends page, is also tormented by eight younger siblings.
• Catch Phrase: Ooh, a puppy!"
  • "So, she wants a [noun]? I think I will make her a [noun], a very special [noun]!"
  • "I will destroy you....destroy you with FIENDS!"
  • "My [noun]!"
  • Teehee!
  • "[Person Charlotte likes] is THE BEST!"
• Cats Are Mean: The Giant Kitty
• Cheerful Child: Charlotte.
• Crapsack World: Clamburg is a pretty crappy place to live, although it is implied that it used to be a nice town before Vendetta showed up.
• Creepy Child: Vendetta.
  • Possibly Charlotte, depending on your definition of creepy.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: Mrs. Minty is voiced by Peter Merryman, the same guy who voices Mr. Milk, Marvin, Malachi, Mort, Grudge, and various townspeople and fiends.
  • Amy Winfrey, the show's creator, plays Charlotte, Grandma Charlene, Giant Kitty, Marion, Maggie, Buttons, and Mrs. Millet. Producer and director Dave Wasson, voices Vendetta's father, Viktor, and Mr. Gumpit. In fact, Aglaia Mortcheva is the only one not doing double duty, playing only Vendetta.
  • Hilariously, the April Fools' version of the sixth webisode replaces all the spoken dialogue with a text-to-speech computer voice. All of the voices used are male.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Charlotte.
  • Mort also seems to be this way, at least according to his Nickelodeon Making Fiends page bio (since he hasn't spoken yet.) In "Smash", he shows up to marching band practice with two drumsticks and a cardboard box labelled "drum".
• Deal With The Toupee: The Toupee Fiend promises to get Mr. Milk the life and Ms. Minty he always wanted, so long as Mr. Milk kills Charlotte. He doesn't go through with it, leading to a Downer Ending.
• Development Hell: The show had been in the planning stages for years and there were promos made for it ages before it actually aired on tv, only for it to get a shaky under promoted start and then tossed back into development.
  • The second season has been this. Six episodes in, the series stopped airing episodes. The last episode was in 2008, though the creators has season 2 episodes.
• Downer Ending: Two words: Toupee episode.
• Dumb Is Good: Charlotte, Charlotte, Charlotte.
• Drama Queen: Vendetta
• Economy Cast
• Emotionless Girl: Maggie.
• Enfante Terrible: Vendetta, although without the Devil in Plain Sight part.
• Expository Theme Tune: the web cartoon's is shorter and it's total lyrics have less details, but both fit
• Extreme Doormat: Mr. Milk.
• Family-Friendly Firearms: Played with in a bit of dialogue.

Charlotte: But Vendetta, what can I do if a kitty is stranded up high and I want to get it down?
Vendetta: You could shoot it...(long pause)...with a water gun.

• Flanderization/CharacterExaggeration: At the beginning of the web series, Charlotte wasn't nearly as stupid and as much of a Polyanna. Vendetta arguably qualifies as well.
• Fluffy Tamer: Charlotte.
• The Fool: Charlotte.
• Friend to All Living Things: Charlotte. Even Vendetta's fiends can't resist her.
• Funny Foreigner: Vendetta's parents.
• Gag Sub: The April Fools' web episode, which was originally written in Bulgarian.
• Genki Girl: Charlotte.
• The Glomp: Mr. Huggles' entire purpose.
• Has Two Mommies: "Mama Vendetta"
• The Heartless: Vendetta's fiends are a subversion, as they can become tame when influenced by Charlotte.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Charlotte.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The web animations used to come in available DVDs with many alternate versions and character commentaries of the webisodes. Since Making Fiends is licensed by Nickelodeon, the creators can't sell any of its merchandise, even what they made independently. All of the DVD was uploaded by someone on YouTube at one time, but he deleted his account over a year ago. The only way you can get a DVD of the webisodes is if you win the Making Fiends Art Contest.
• Licked by the Dog: Charlotte likes Vendetta despite all of the horrible things the latter tries to do to her.
• Lighter and Softer: To a slight degree. In a first few episodes of the web series, there were posters in the back of the classroom that weren't very kid-friendly, such as a cat being hanged, and a poster that read "A is for Alimony". When Nickelodeon licensed Making Fiends, these were removed. You also wouldn't hear "Tempt not yon hellcat", "I was going to play in traffic and drink bleach!" , or "and your eyeballs would fall out!" in a typical modern Nicktoon.
• Mad Libs Catchphrase: Marvin's is "My [noun]!"
• Mad Scientist: Vendetta.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Charlotte, except without the mopey boyfriend, or any boyfriend for that matter.
• Meaningful Name: Vendetta. Charlotte could arguably be a reference to the band Good Charlotte.
• Me's a Crowd: Charlotte in "Puppies! Puppies! Puppies!"
• Misplaced Kindergarten Teacher: Mrs. Minty in "The Substitute Teacher". Oddly enough, Mr. Milk seems to have a bit of a thing for her.
• Mega Neko: The Giant Kitty.
• Never Say "Die"
• Non-Human Sidekick: Grudge, the giant hamster.
• Oh Crap: Vendetta's reaction when the Canary Bombs she tossed off a cliff learn to fly and make a V-line straight for her.
• Parental Abandonment: Charlotte claims that her parents are on a space station (it is implied that they died); Vendetta keeps her parents in a hamster cage.
  • It's also worth noting that in "Parents", Vendetta and Malachi were the only kids to show up to the parent teacher conference with a full set of parents.
• Pet the Dog: Strongly averted in Vendetta's case. Just tell yourself that any time it looks like Vendetta's actually doing something nice for somebody, there is always a sinister ulterior motive. ALWAYS.
• The Pollyanna: Charlotte, to the extreme. Though there's always the possibility that she's not as happy as she seems.
• Real Men Wear Pink: Grudge, the presumably male giant hamster, once donned a frilly, pink apron while cleaning Vendetta's house, and was shown to be very good at neatly folding clothing.
• Rodents of Unusual Size: Grudge
• Short Runners: The TV show lasted six episodes.
• Shrinking Violet: Mr. Milk is a rare male example, often finding himself unable to speak to people outside of his class.
• Slasher Smile: Vendetta got a very scary one in "Super Evil".
• Snap Back: Used in many of the web episodes, but subverted in episodes 18-21, when many events lead up to Clamburg being rendered uninhabitable by fiends, forcing everyone in Clamburg to board a large boat and search hopelessly for dry land.
• Sorting Algorithm of Evil: In a fashion. Vendetta and Charlotte both took the quiz in Vendetta's evil magazine. To her horror, Charlotte's score indicated that she was more evil than Vendetta. This led to Vendetta studying Charlotte and attempting to learn from her.
• Spanner in the Works: Vendetta's birthday party of DOOM for Charlotte is undone by her sheer stupidity and general niceness.
  • Actually, most of Vendetta's plans end up undone by Charlotte's stupidity and general niceness, in both versions.
• Stealth Pun: In "Mama Vendetta".
  • "Look Vendetta! They're forming a 'V'! For you!"
• Talking to Himself: The voice cast for the TV series consists of just nine people, including the director and the composer. Only three of these nine people voice regulars. The web version had even fewer voice actors. Seriously.
• Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: The clothing of the human characters is barely detailed other than that the girls wear dresses/muumuus and the boys wear shorts. Also, for some reason, all the male characters have ears and none of the females do, even if they're wearing earings.
• Too Dumb to Live: Charlotte again. Even the others admit it:

Charlotte: I wish Vendetta could be here.
(Happy music stops)
Maggie: Charlotte's dumb.

• • Subverted for the most part that Charlotte always seems to avoid certain death. Her clones in the episode "Puppies!Puppies!Puppies!" on the other hand, plays this straight by riding a slide right into the gaping maw of a huge fiend. It takes the very last clone (after HUNDREDS) to realise what's going on, only to have the fiend's jaw snap shut on her.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Vendetta and clams.
• Unlucky Everydude: Poor Marvin.
• Vanilla Edition: The DVD of the TV series.
• Verbal Tic: Marvin beginning almost every sentence with "my" and Charlotte's "tee-hee".
• Vocal Evolution: From the web series to cartoon the two main characters voices deepened.
• Web First
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Though it's implied that the birthday cake Vendetta made for Charlotte is poisoned, we never do find out what's in it (besides strawberries and clams).
• Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: Malachi's dialogue consists exclusively of this. When asking Marion what Charlotte was doing with a giant hairbrush:

Malachi: Whither doth yon cheery one go with yon titan implement?

• • Even lampshaded once, where after Malachi is done talking Charlotte says, "...What?"