Bother Me

Origins and Dedication (Thank you!!)

The original concept for Bother Me was created when I, Amber Fowler was at the age of 11. I wanted to create a cute and funny TV show-styled skit with my best friend at the time, and thought of how it might be funny to create it about two girls who either didn't know each other or were completely different. I decided I liked the idea of having a roommate that's the exact opposite from the other, and I knew all sorts of crazy shenanigans could occur between them.

When I first began writing the story, it was all completely done through scripts. And I didn't even know how to write scripts; I was 11. But I created a teaser/trial episode so we could try out some recording and editing to see how it would turn out. I wrote down the scripts, played the character Natalie Harper, used my (terrible and cheap quality) tablet to record, edited the videos, and sent them out to my friends who I thought might enjoy it. Of course, most of the episode ideas came from either myself or my friend, and Bailey was played by her.

I've never really looked at myself and thought I was all that "good-looking," but I knew that I was pretty creative, and I've been artistic pretty much my whole life (with tons and tons of practice, trust me). I decided to create the character Natalie to have the same type of personality as myself. She would be witty, artistic, and caring, but also very sporty and musical. Eventually, during the creative process, I decided to make her more individual than basing her off of how I viewed myself. I kept the artistic character trait, since I didn't like the usual "Nerd versus Chick" conflict that happens in a lot of high school related shows.

I ended up designing Natalie to be creative but also critical. She can be pretty judgmental at some times, but she also thinks things through mostly, and when she doesn't, that can sometimes end in some sort of problem. Even though she cared more about artwork, specifically drawing, she still was a great friend to anyone she knew and she would do what she could to help in any situation.

Bailey's design was based off of my best friend who helped me complete the series. She's always been good with looks and knew a lot of the trends on social media. She was certainly not as selfish, however as Bailey's personality is. She is such a great person, and she was always there for me whenever I needed to rant or laugh.

I absolutely love the idea of a snobby, stuck up and kind of idiotic personality that I often see in shows, so I wanted to add that kind of personality to her character. Even though she wasn't that kind of person at all, my friend was able to play the perfect Bailey Thia. That's one reason I never ended up re-filming the series with anyone else; I didn't know of anyone who could replace her, she was like the perfect actress for the job.

Overall, the story is supposed to add a spin on the difficulties of living away from home, while also adding on the trials and issues that opposite people can face, all while trying to make it funny and relatable. I wrote up to Season 3 for this series, coming up with all sorts of new ideas and plots throughout our time of recording and acting, however we were never able to finish up even the first season. We ended up completing up to episode 19 of the first season, and part of episode 20. It was going to be the last episode of the season before we started the next, but we unfortunately had some issues and never ended up completing it.

The series was just a fun little experiment I decided to play around with, and my friend was so exited to do it with me. Although we never finished, I had so much fun while it lasted. It took tons of tries to figure it out, but by the end of it, we absolutely loved the outcome, even though it was extremely unofficial and very unprofessional. But we loved it anyway.

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I want to give a special thanks to the people who supported us while we were making the original skits, and to everyone we showed the embarrassing and slightly questionable videos to. I don't know if we would have continued making them if it wasn't for those who watched and laughed at it.

A huge thanks to the people who helped create it as well and helped me come up with some of the episode ideas, as well as being patient when it came to editing. I was very bad at sticking to due dates.

I want to dedicate this book (and possibly series) to my old friend, Natasha Bifolchi, who agreed to help me create Bother Me in the first place. She helped me set up the scenes, come up with plot lines, and play probably the best character in the series, Bailey Thia. I was definitely not comfortable with asking anyone else to play or participate in the making of Bother Me, and I am so glad that she helped make a weird, nutty series and crazy fun memories.

Thank you to my parents who set up a bunch of "play dates" so Natasha and I could record this whole thing.

And an absolutely ginormous thank you to the readers and viewers of this series. It's no where near official in any way, but I have so much fun sharing a series like this and I'm absolutely so grateful for the people who enjoy reading/watching it.

Maybe one day I will be able to record Bother Me again and publish it in it's skit form as it was originally planned to be, but for now, those videos remain in my possession, only shown to my close friends who all helped us make the weird videos and who originally enjoyed the slightly pathetic series.

Thank you again for reading, and I hope to write season two and maybe more on Wattpad.