Evolution

[bloodyrosemccoy]

He's right, you know. Kids movies now are much smarter than they were back then. But I'm going to add something to this. A lot of people will respond that the shows of yesteryear were damn good, and a few of them were, but I submit to you that the reason other shows, like, say, Transformers, were augmented a great deal by our own imaginations.

I think this is part of why the generation that grew up on these shows now makes such good shows themselves. Presented with really bare-bones stories--say, the Super Mario game plotlines, or the sort of characterization that could fit easily on the side of a toy package, kids filled in the blanks. Either with those toys or just in our own minds, the really basic threads could be woven into really complex stories, sometimes much more impressive than anything a TV writer would come up with. Except now those kids ARE TV writers, and the memory of that rich created world influences what they write themselves.

But yeah, it also serves as a reminder--never assume that there's no story there just because you don't see a story. If somebody loves something that you don't see anything in, don't forget that they might be adding to it. Kids are more complex than you think.

Alsok yes, I still have to start watching some of these. Anybody know where I can see Steven Universe?

Comments

[westrider.livejournal.com]

Seriously. So much good stuff coming out now in kids' programming. And yeah, a bunch of that old stuff that so many people remember fondly is just terrible. I remember when a friend of mine got a boxed set of the G.I. Joe cartoon that he'd been really into as a kid, and we managed to sit through a single episode before the rest of us were just "Dude, either put the Futurama DVD back in, or we're going to have to hurt you, because this is hurting us." :P

I need to get back into Gravity Falls. That's an amazing show. It just hits some social awkwardness points that I don't really have the spoons for right now.

Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated was also fantastic. Such a great job of breaking down and analyzing and reworking that formula.

Steven Universe sounds really cool, but I haven't gotten into it yet.

Both Avatar series were awesome. I liked Korra better than Airbender, especially the last half of LoK, but that's just extra praise for LoK, not a knock on AtLA.

EDIT: Almost forgot. watchcartoononline is my go-to for animated stuff that I can't find a legit source for. If you're willing to deal with the sketchyness of bootleg sites, they've got a pretty good selection.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I admit I'm dragging my feet on Steven Universe partly because its fandom is obnoxious. But that's fans. It doesn't mean the SHOW isn't brilliant.

I gotta finish Korra. But I think Zuko's arc is the most pitch-perfect redemption cycle ever written. In a KIDS' show.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

Zuko's arc was great, but he still annoyed me on a personal level. A lot of why I like LoK better actually is just that the kids in the Gaang are young enough that they're still at the point where I tend to find kids in general annoying, whereas the Korra characters are more at the age where I can start to get along with them better.

Also, seasons 3 and 4 of Korra had two of my favorite antagonists ever.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Hee! Fair enough. For some reason I like Zuko as his whiny twit self because I can see past it, but hell, I can't stand Harry Potter, so

I'd better keep watching Korra!

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

The first half (or third?) of Steven Universe is available on Hulu Plus; otherwise, if you don't have a Cartoon Network subscription, you'll probably have to go on a YouTube hunt with an episode guide in hand. The first several episodes can be watched in any order but they get more continuity-based as they go on.

[beccastareyes]

I bought mine on iTunes. That's generally what I do for shows on cable.

(I remember the original creator of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic was explicit in being inspired by her own childhood experiences with the franchise.)

One thing I like seeing in media 'for kids' is layers. Like, the base is a satisfying story, but there's stuff that adds to it if you get it. It's hard to pull off, since you need to make sure the extras don't subtract from the base by not knowing them.

(Also, kids are the ultimate re-watchers. If you can throw in details, they might pick them up just because they have watched it a million times.)

[sofish-sasha.livejournal.com]

I was internally shouting about MLP while I read this post, cos this is what Bronies don't get. They keep going on about how ponies weren't cool before FiM, but I remember the games I used to play with my ponies as a kid, and they were fucking _brutal_! There was Escaping From Slavers, Mad Scientists, Ghost Hauntings, and, in the winter, Falling Through The Ice.

Anyone who claims that everything that came before FiM is unimportant and uncool because it was all cakes and flowers and "not made for dudes" (as if FiM is!) is deeply ignorant of how little girls' imagination works.

[beccastareyes]

I collected stuffed animals and Stacie and Skipper sized dolls, not ponies, but the games were much the same. There was Going to Space/the Starship Enterprise or Desert Island (which was usually combined with Survive the Hurricane) and all sorts of other ones.

(I also recall author Seanan McGuire describing her perception of 1980s My Little Pony as 'Gormenghast with hooves' somewhere, which leads me to think that she also would have been fun to play with as a child.)

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Stacie and Skipper and their gang hung out with the Polly Pockets, who were fairies. There were often pirates in their adventures.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

I picked up a bootleg*cough* DVD set of Bionic Six at a comic con, then resisted watching it because I remembered the show as being really cool and was certain that re-watching it would reveal that it was actually crap. When I finally did watch an episode, it turned out...to be pretty good.

Inhumanoids, though, sucked. Despite being the closest '80s Saturday morning cartoons got to H. P. Lovecraft, it was terrible.

It's funny that, when I think about it, I can barely remember any of the plot elements of some cartoons I know I watched religiously. Like Transformers. Autobots & Optimus Prime good, Decepticons & Megatron bad, Starscream was always trying to usurp Megatron and failing, Soundwave had a cool vocoder voice. When I look up stuff on TFWiki (blame David Willis) I'm always finding things that were important that I don't remember at all. Like Blackrock, an oil company that was allied with the Autobots, was apparently a big deal. No recollection whatsoever.

Not all though. I have large swathes of Robotech memorized. But that had an actual continuing story (and I re-watched it years after it was off the airwaves)

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Transformers is one specifically where my knowledge consists pretty much entirely of what you'd find in a wiki intro/on the side of a toy package, and also that one time Megatron got drunk because that was goddamn hilarious. (Although I now think that the Starscream/Megatron dynamic is one of the most wonderfully ridiculous in cartoon history. It makes NO SENSE. I decided that Starscream was Megatron's little brother and their mom MADE Megatron take him along, which fits in with Lindsay Ellis's point that the Transformers were appealing to kids because while they're supposed to be alien warrior robots, they ACT like little kids.) For some reason I have a really good memory for episodes of My Little Pony and Gummi Bears, though. And a lot of others, like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or DuckTales, are just below the surface--show me an episode and I'll say something like "I don't think I remember this" and then be able to quote it line for line.

I was pleasantly surprised back when I revisted Batman: TAS and found it was damn good, and it's taken me 20 years to get most of the jokes on Animaniacs. There were other shows that were okay, but those are the two I'd say still really hold up.

(Dave Willis drew the image that I made into this icon! HOORAY!)