Chapter Text
NORMAL LAND/THE REAL WORLD:
The world of America’s Suitehearts, both “Normal Land” and where our beloved characters live (name pending) seems to take place in some alternate version of earth. We can see this through how many of the interior decorations that are shown when it pans to children watching have a stereotypically very 1950’s design, but the fashion that we see, like with the blonde woman at the start and the brunette woman we see at the end, are more akin to the fashion of when the video was released (2009).
When we get Donnie the Catchers character card and are shown the house with the all green interior, we see a small tv that shows a nuclear bomb detonation, plus the weird green goop we see can just be written off as nuclear waste. This connects back to the weird 1950’s aesthetic it seems to sometimes have with this fear of nuclear disaster.
But, it seems that in general, when in the real world or “Normal Land”, the same kinds of general laws of reality and world functions or events of our own. The only variations seem to be with the aesthetic and potentially political time bleed with the 2000’s and 1950’s, and the fact that people can pass through TVs when watching America’s Suitehearts.
SUITEHEARTS LAND/WEIRD LAND/THE REASON WHY YOU'RE HERE:
America’s Suitehearts is an in-universe show, but also an entire world. The show itself seems to be a cartoon marketed towards kids. There seem to be two types of people in the show. Paparazzi and Celebs. Now, there are probably some exceptions. There’s a little old lady that gets hit by a guy on a segway who is drawn in that same paper doll animated style we see what will be referred to as “Celebs” in.
This distinction is caused by the fact that we do see fully live action paparazzi, and when people are brought in, they’re normal until they fall into the goo. And we see a couple of different magazine shots of when they get their fun little outfits with both the blonde woman and the guy who ends up kinda looking like Fanoli from that one episode of Very Important People.
FUN FACT: This guy is referred to as Brook “The Cowboy”.
Plus, when we cut to the blonde woman’s magazine, it falls on top of another one, but we don’t see the full cover. So, it’s safe to say that people who show up and fall into the goo become Celebs, while those who don’t for some reason or another become Paparazzi (and their seemingly over excited/crazy behavior when new people show up can be linked to the fact that anyone in such an overstimulating and nonsensical environment would lose it)
The logic in this world is much more skewed. Of course there’s the fact that people fall into goop and become these disproportionate, eccentrically portrayed versions of themselves that look more like boardwalk caricatures than people. And some of them seem to possess powers. They can range from cartoony antics (like the cartoonishly buff man we see bouncing two pinup-like women on his bicep) that are just part of the exaggerated visuals and physics of the world, to more genuine powers like that we see with the band members. But even those have ranges.
Notably H. Shoe Crab with his assumed luck or Donnie being able to…catch, all the way to Mr. Sandman, who seems to possess more tangible/physical powers that can and will be used for shenanigans.
So to recap, the other world exists as some sort of cartoon, but is a real actual world that can have portals/gateways opened through TVs that can bring real people in. The world has more cartoon logic physics, and people only seem to be in this bizarre artstyle when in context of the cartoon, but not in the actual world. There are two types of people (species? Who knows what that goo does to your DNA) being Paparazzi and Celebs.
Paparazzi are groups of ordinary people dressed in plain colors and ordinary looking clothes. They seem to travel in smallish mobs, with some tending to linger by the entrance to their world to get the “freshest scoop” on the new future Celeb. I’m guessing then when someone hasn’t gone in for a while or for those groups who don’t linger around the entrance, they get “filler stories”. Things like what we see as blurbs on the magazine covers. Pregnancies, sex scandals, extreme body changes (things like a celeb going through a crazy diet or plastic surgery), and other kinds of things that you would expect to see in things like People Magazine at the time.
Celebs are just that. Each one seems to have some sort of gimmick that they play off of (Like Brook “The Cowboy”) that adds to their appeal or relevance. They tend to have fairly normal hair, with everyone we see having natural hair colors as their primary shade. But it’s commonly styled to be quite big. It’s not uncommon to see things like hats though if the person’s hair is more plain. Clothes are almost always vibrant and complex. They’re people who have come through and been submerged in the weird green goo.
There are also most likely ordinary people who don’t fall into either category. We can speculate this because we see many people in the art style, but with ordinary clothes, hair, and faces (ex: normal looking makeup). These could either be Celebs who are no longer that relevant, people who come into contact with the goo but don’t get the same seemingly fame hungry eccentricities Celebs get, or some secret third thing being that the music video is from the perspective of it being a cartoon. Paparazzi are boring, live action, and uninteresting, but everything else is wacky, grotesque, and colorful.
WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THE CARTOON?
So why is the band fully just…guys? They’re not, at least to people who watch the show. When we see the little girl in the green house, her screen display’s Donnie as a cartoon. Now, we do see a few other shots of kids watching the show and we see them as live action. Why is this? They’re clearly not Paparazzi, and they get their own little title cards, and are singing the song. So what’s their deal?
I think it’s because this is a music video with no real lore. But from a world view, I believe that in the other world, everyone is live action/like how we see the band. But everyone, INCLUDING the band, appears 2D animated (except for Paparazzi) on the show. This can maybe be also explained through the show kind of being a Wild Kratts situation. Where we have live action segments and then the main 2D segments. The live action stuff may just be for the intro of the cartoon each episode. Since we see at the beginning each band member's animated version.
So what kind of cartoon would this be? My guess is that it would kind of be a kid and time appropriate Smiling Friends OR a boy targeted kind of MLP:FIM. In the sense you have a main group of characters (the band) who have many episodes helping people, and then a good amount of episodes that would then break this format to do one on one or smaller dynamic-focused plots. This would mean that I think the average episode is someone coming in, becoming a Celeb, but not knowing what their niche is. Kind of like the Cutie Mark Crusader episodes from MLP, or the basic formula of Smiling Friends. The band then helps them find their gimmick in a “Character of the Week” format. But, as seen with the overstimulating and sometimes grotesque visuals, the focus on green goo, the main cast being all male, and much of the humor we see being cartoony slapstick, this would very much be marketed MOSTLY towards boys, but still maintain a somewhat prevalent girl viewing percent through what we see with the girls watching Donnie and H. Shoe Crab.
Things that would go out of the “Celeb of the Week” format would be things like character backstories, retouching plot points with past Celebs, episodes contained to the core four members, and most likely holiday specials.
SPECULATION ON MAIN SETTINGS/OTHER THINGS THAT KINDA FIT THIS CHAPTER BUT NOT REALLY:
Obviously, we see stuff with the Carousel and the general Hollywood Hills/Big City landscape. But I’d like to think, seeing how there’s this kind of carnival/fair theme with the band, they have a little section of the city dedicated to them. Donnie has his baseball field, Dr. Benzedrine has his “office” (torture dungeon?), H. Shoe has his lake (his was the hardest to figure out where we were but since each character is mentioned in a song of Folie, we can assume “something something uhh the lyrics in “The (Shipped) Gold Standard” mention catching a horseshoe crab”, I’m just gonna say he has a lake?? Even though that doesn’t make much sense and when I flesh out his character, might not be the BIGGEST THING EVER in his lore), and Mr. Sandman has his haunted forest/graveyard. They’d be located towards the edge of the city due to the sheer amounts of forests two of the members have some sort of claim over, plus an entire baseball field and graveyard. But at the center of it would be the Carousel or potentially surrounding fair where they’d perform/hang out.
I also think that within the show universe, the band would all be fairly popular Celebs, but not THE MOST POPULAR EVER kind of thing. Both through a mix of the show being kind of mean spirited so their odd quirks could/would be easily made fun of, plus I can definitely see potential plot points where some bigger Celeb is doing an event or needs help and it’s some big deal. But they’re popular enough to have their own part of town. Potentially, there are different districts within the fictional in-show Hollywood that have Celebs with similar gimmicks, though that kind of brings into question what all the band members have in common that warrants a whole part of town dedicated to them.
I feel like their area would be the "Miscellaneous/Outcast Celebs” where people who don’t have a very common gimmick go. Or, the other areas could be very elitist on the level of skill you have with it/type of skill you have with the broad gimmick. There very well could be sections for Popstars/music centric Celebs, Actors, Dancers, Artists, and people who are famous “Just because” which would be like the nicer version of the band’s area where people whose gimmicks get labeled as “unique” instead of “niche” get to go. Potentially there’s a rival kind of group that are like “omg they have a doctor who doesn’t commit medical malpractice, they have a guy who’s really good at throwing” kind of thing to have just a consistent low stakes group of parallel antagonists
Of course, this can cause problems with H. Shoe Crab whose things is being the luckiest man alive, so his rival would either need to be luckier, maybe be skilled in things due to hard work so it’s talent vs. hard work, or he’s the unluckiest man alive and somehow that made him cool enough to go to the “Just because” area (though that’s unlikely). This can also potentially cause problems with Mr. Sandman since throughout fanon and how I’m going to write him, Mr. Sandman seems to be this special almost deity within the America’s Suitehearts universe. Now, even though these foil characters will probably never be super relevant (unless they’re being used as plot setup for a fic), this doesn’t matter, but I’m having fun.
Either Mr. Sandman DOESN’T have a foil and he just chooses to stay behind until later in the episodes when going head to head because he has something better to do, or he DOES have a foil. If we go down the “doesn’t” path, I kind of see him as the “one emo one” in those old Gacha Life fandom or boys vs. girls singing battles where there’s like one mysterious edgy one (or if it’s a boys vs. girls, there’s two but they’re exes BUT FOR SOME REASON THEY ALWAYS GET BACK TOGETHER?! LIKE THAT ALWAYS KINDA PISSED ME OFF AS A KID BECAUSE WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU SUNG A NIGHTCORE SONG AND HE SUNG A YUNGBLOOD SONG AND NOW YOU’RE BACK TOGETHER AFTER HE LIKE CHEATED?!) who ends up winning the battle and is super cool. Mr. Sandman would hang back, bored and not wanting to engage, but would help his friends out in the end.
Or, if we go down the “does” path, Mr. Sandman would be something like the “King of Nightmares” instead of just dreams and stuff, and his foil would be someone who gives good dreams/some sort of “Mr. Sandman is in charge of the night while the other one is in charge of day” and they’re both kinda deity thingies and can both pass through the normal world and their own.
I don’t have really any more things about the physical world, but if I do, I’ll dedicate an entire chapter to just loose ends/random things to give the world more life, kind of like how that last section was just about potential location and character ideas, plus explaining some basic shallow stuff about where in fics and the cartoon where the characters hang out.