Just a little market research:
What drove you crazy when you watched Saturday morning cartoons as a kid? Was there anything cartoons did that you found especially patronizing, or disappointing, or off-putting back then? Is there anything you'd wish they'd do, that they never did? Were there any cliches that you noticed even back then?
@LexYeen Oh god, HIJINX, yeah. Plots that could be solved in ten seconds by just gently patting one of the characters on the head and taking the proverbial "Idiot Ball" away from them...
@LexYeen @zebratron2084 Cartoons *still* have not solved this.
@Balinares Oh! Right! For you, probably nothing. :) I have no idea if the Saturday morning corporate broadcast-network cartoon block was a _thing_ or not in your area of the planet. :)
For your purposes, consider all cartoons targeted at an <18 audience appropriate for this question. "Saturday morning cartoons" is just so evocative of a certain time and place in the USA, saying it all as one phrase is a bit of a reflex.
@Balinares Oh, we sort of had those too, but those were kind of more of a Sunday morning thing? Instead of NBC, CBS, and ABC blasting SUPER DUDES in our faces, local stations would often devote the morning to some absurdly long block of cartoons, hosted by a local celebrity, ideally a mild creepy one. :) Those tended less towards 11/22 minute narratives like the Saturday morning cartoons, and more towards shorts and oldies. (This is basically what Krusty the Klown and Itchy and Scratchy parody.)
@zebratron2084 ... I was probably supposed to be learning important lessons about friendship and teamwork and asking my parents to buy toys, instead of trying to reverse-engineer fantasy weapon systems. Wasn't I. >.>
not weaponizing friendship with your toys?
@zebratron2084 @001zlnv "I think we all learned a valuable lesson here today." "A Care Bear Stare of five or more bears can can melt steel if focused to a point of half an inch or less, and reflections may be strong enough to flash ignite paper and polyester. Use proper Personal Protective Gear and never gaze directly into the unshielded Stare."
@zebratron2084 @001zlnv @Austin_Dern
Why did Jill or Max never get to wear Monster's cuffs in My Pet Monster?
Does everyone have tapes, and Ruxpin alone is cursed to know of the buttons?
When Tex Hex threatened to turn Judge McBride into a Dingo, a)did you abruptly wonder why you hadn't any female dingomorphs in the series and b)start rooting for furry tf?
@Momentrabbit @001zlnv @Austin_Dern
> Does everyone have tapes, and Ruxpin alone is cursed to know of the buttons?
*does not sleep for a week*
*is haunted by visions of a Those Characters From Cleveland reboot of Videodrome*
@001zlnv @Austin_Dern @zebratron2084 There are tapes, of course. And then... there are _tapes_.
"Come dream with me tonight-" "Don't you understand, Ruxpin? SHE NEVER SLEEPS."
the Fisher-Price PXL2000 video camera could record a short, grainy, black and white video to a standard audio cassette.
not a long message... but long enough.
the well
the caterpillar
the cliff
the dreamship
the horse
the record button
the ring
7 nights then teddy's
@001zlnv @Austin_Dern @zebratron2084 @acetone_kitten *blushes deeply* You honour me. n.n
@zebratron2084 the lack of consequences for cute sidekicks. if orko nearly ends the world with magical incompetence, no one ever brings it up again.
@zebratron2084 totally understandable, though I always think megatron and soundwave when I hear welker
@zebratron2084 technically, the way that I wasn't permitted Saturday morning cartoons. My parents thought they were awful and they weren't wrong *but*.
@Austin_Dern You know what always drove me crazy: characters who swapped voices when they swapped bodies. HOW ON EARTH DID YOU BRING YOUR LARYNX WITH YOU?
@zebratron2084 @Austin_Dern secretly, that was never their natural speaking voice, they are just an extremely talented vocal mimic!
and the non evil applications of "evil devices" (Dr. mindbender has liquid doppelgangers!? why is he only using them to troll a sailor)
@001zlnv @Austin_Dern Agreed, and I think we can all include this as part of the greater "Reed Richards Syndrome?" :)
@zebratron2084 The inclusion of "in today's episode..." morality lessons at the end of every show, even though I laugh at them now.
... also, the continued appearance of Scrappy.
@JulieSqveakaroo @zebratron2084 GOD YES. BOTH OF THESE uuuugggghhhhh "ha! ha! ha!" where the visual clues that the characters are laughing is 1. they have a smile on their face 2. their chest is heaving rhythmically.
@zebratron2084 Also, it mucked with my head whenever a recognizeable voice from one show would suddenly be voicing a character in a different show with no alteration in the voice and a completely different personality. I could not parse the flip-flopping of a familiar vocal pattern from bad guy to good guy.
@JulieSqveakaroo @zebratron2084
especially if it is someone super recognizable like Chris Latta
@zebratron2084 one thing that is particular to me is that dragons were always presented either as evil or goofy or both.
I mostly hated the "episodic" nature of the shows--how no matter what happened in any episode, everything would get completely reset to "normal" (usually with a little "laughing-with-the-Scrappy" moment in the last 20 seconds, Ho! Ho! Ho!) by the end of the episode. even then I understood why, but I still hated it.
@zebratron2084 I also disliked that female characters were rarely present, and when they were they were almost always "THE Girl," complete with being pink and wearing a bow because OTHERWISE HOW WILL WE KNOW IT'S A GIRL.
I *also* disliked (heh) how little thought was usually put into the background. like, in their *entire world*, only *one guy* in the *entire species* of lion-guys was named "Lion-O"? and only one panther-guy was "Panthera?" COME ON.
is that the catboy equivalent of naming a man "guy"?
@001zlnv @zebratron2084 yeah, basically. which come to think of it there's already "He-Man" so...
@001zlnv @zebratron2084 at least "Hiro Protagonist" had a clever explanation. XD
@green Remind me to give you my "precocious gender warrior" spiel about Jenny from Bucky O'Hare when I see ya. :)
@zebratron2084 I will *endeavor* to remember that. :D
@green Yeah, um... I'm pretty sure we can be trusted to fix the dragon thing for Parallax. :D
In fact, thank you for reminding me both teams need more dragons. n.n
@zebratron2084 eeeee *dances* :D
@zebratron2084 The lack of threat in fighty cartoons. Very few were the toons were anyone was actually taken out of commission for more than a partial episode.
In contrast, both Voltron and X-men mortally wounding/taking out one of the introduced main characters very early in the series got me far more invested in the cartoon.
@zebratron2084 Characters who act dumb or illogical simply so a problem is created that the rest of the plot can be devoted to fixing. Also, characters screwing up their mission in obvious ways as a cheap way to add dramatic tension.
@zebratron2084 This is not just a cartoon issue: it also ruined the entirety of #TLJ
@zebratron2084 Laser rifles never ejected casings or needed ammo refills or recharging. I could see an argument for retconning/reusing the M16 hardware, build high-densisty chemical batteries into the magazines or clips and turn the entire bolt assembly into a single resonator gas laser assembly (CO2, trace elements argon for good side, neon for bad side for the glow effects), but just hang a lampshade on it or something!