I have to keep reminding myself that this is a cartoon that Selkie watches. This is some pretty deep stuff to be laying on kids. I have to think that it’s more of a testament to how smart Selkie is because this isn’t the kind of material I’d think most parents would consider “age appropriate.”
This isn’t a criticism. I’m just trying to imagine the reaction of parents (in this world) to this obviously popular (there’s an adjacent clothes line, in Selkie’s world) cartoon.
I think it’s been said this doesn’t actually match up one-to-one to the cartoon Selkie watches. The cartoon probably has more were-elephants and random baddies of the week and less backstory.
Until later, when it does like Steven Universe and Adventure Time and brings in nuclear weaponry. Mwahahaha.
The only major differences between Sue and Kathryn the comic and the Sue and Kathryn TV show Selkie watches in her canon is that (1) Selkie watches it in color and (2) comic-medium jokes like the Bringer of Dawn standing outside the panel borders or yelling at me about being put in character tags aren’t there. In a TV show format, the Bringer of Dawn would be making meta-references to that instead, or reaching “off-camera” to adjust the focus, etc.
I’m glad you mentioned Steven Universe and Adventure Time, because they are two shows I try to keep in mind as a model for Sue and Kathryn. Programming that would have been too subversive to make it past the pilot phase just a few years ago, which finds ways to work in episodes about things like senial dementia in a kid’s cartoon. My primary self-critique on it is that I may be pushing just a touch too far with this arc and the whole “parents” thing. I could see this being one of those “banned episodes” whose removal makes following the storyline in syndication impossible.
honestly? quite a few cartoons have some grisly and /or deep, hidden morals underneath the colourful funstuff. just look at the smurfs, they´re constantly hunted by a dude who wants to cook them alive in some alchemic ritual – not exactly kid friendly either. or as i shocked my teacher of religion once, the conflict between optimus and megatron is totally the same as between abel and cain…..btw, she burst out in tears when she couldn´t find a flaw in my argumentation 😉
so yeah, deep moral stuff in kids shows? not unheard of…and poor todd was already shocked more then once at what selkie is watching (eating brains? killing the president?!)
I was always more partial to the Dinobot saga in Beast Wars / Beasties. That was some pretty deep and dark stuff for a television show marketted as a 22-minute Hasbro toy commercial. And then there was end of Season 2 of Reboot straight through until the mini-movies.
You can get away with a lot on children’s television if the characters are distinctly not human, partially in Canada, it seems.
Not to mention Care Bears fought the actual Devil and had kids that were trying to commit suicide, the Smurfs fought a dragon taking people through a fiery inferno to hell in their Christmas special. Rainbow Bright strangled someone with her color belt as a toddler rescuing babies left out to the elements in a hell-like setting to just die. Ah – gotta love 80’s cartoons.
Oh man, I forgot about the Care Bears and Rainbow Bright! I’m gonna need to track those down and watch them again.
Let it never be said that “adult” themes in “children’s” television has not always “been a thing.”
Compare this to classic, “child-friendly” fairy tales.
The witch wants to fatten up Hansel and Gretel so she can eat them.
The wolf eats Grandmother and Little Red Riding Hood alive, and then the Huntsman cuts the wolf open to pull them out.
And so on and so forth.
They tell these stories to kids a lot younger than Selkie is.
um…in his last bubble, shouldn´t it be ‘in fact’? anyway, playing on peoples paranoia to get them to destroy each other sounds like something the devil would totally do. to horribly translate a saw from my country: sheep running for safety from the butcher – right into the slaughterhouse. i shudder to think what ‘evil’ harmless people he tricked kats parents into smiting aka killing.
Honestly, Kat, you work with the Laser Priests. You’ve seen how this works with them. Two of them “accidentally” forgot to tell a newly manifested wraith who saved their butts about what she needs to do to avoid getting busted. Though it can’t be easy to see it happen to your own parents.
I have to keep reminding myself that this is a cartoon that Selkie watches. This is some pretty deep stuff to be laying on kids. I have to think that it’s more of a testament to how smart Selkie is because this isn’t the kind of material I’d think most parents would consider “age appropriate.”
This isn’t a criticism. I’m just trying to imagine the reaction of parents (in this world) to this obviously popular (there’s an adjacent clothes line, in Selkie’s world) cartoon.
I think it’s been said this doesn’t actually match up one-to-one to the cartoon Selkie watches. The cartoon probably has more were-elephants and random baddies of the week and less backstory.
Until later, when it does like Steven Universe and Adventure Time and brings in nuclear weaponry. Mwahahaha.
The only major differences between Sue and Kathryn the comic and the Sue and Kathryn TV show Selkie watches in her canon is that (1) Selkie watches it in color and (2) comic-medium jokes like the Bringer of Dawn standing outside the panel borders or yelling at me about being put in character tags aren’t there. In a TV show format, the Bringer of Dawn would be making meta-references to that instead, or reaching “off-camera” to adjust the focus, etc.
I’m glad you mentioned Steven Universe and Adventure Time, because they are two shows I try to keep in mind as a model for Sue and Kathryn. Programming that would have been too subversive to make it past the pilot phase just a few years ago, which finds ways to work in episodes about things like senial dementia in a kid’s cartoon. My primary self-critique on it is that I may be pushing just a touch too far with this arc and the whole “parents” thing. I could see this being one of those “banned episodes” whose removal makes following the storyline in syndication impossible.
Wait – I thought Selkie mentioned BoD yelling at you when she was at Christmas?
She sorta did.
http://selkiecomic.com/comic/selkie863/
(I don’t know the formatting this uses so…)
honestly? quite a few cartoons have some grisly and /or deep, hidden morals underneath the colourful funstuff. just look at the smurfs, they´re constantly hunted by a dude who wants to cook them alive in some alchemic ritual – not exactly kid friendly either. or as i shocked my teacher of religion once, the conflict between optimus and megatron is totally the same as between abel and cain…..btw, she burst out in tears when she couldn´t find a flaw in my argumentation 😉
so yeah, deep moral stuff in kids shows? not unheard of…and poor todd was already shocked more then once at what selkie is watching (eating brains? killing the president?!)
I was always more partial to the Dinobot saga in Beast Wars / Beasties. That was some pretty deep and dark stuff for a television show marketted as a 22-minute Hasbro toy commercial. And then there was end of Season 2 of Reboot straight through until the mini-movies.
You can get away with a lot on children’s television if the characters are distinctly not human, partially in Canada, it seems.
Not to mention Care Bears fought the actual Devil and had kids that were trying to commit suicide, the Smurfs fought a dragon taking people through a fiery inferno to hell in their Christmas special. Rainbow Bright strangled someone with her color belt as a toddler rescuing babies left out to the elements in a hell-like setting to just die. Ah – gotta love 80’s cartoons.
Oh man, I forgot about the Care Bears and Rainbow Bright! I’m gonna need to track those down and watch them again.
Let it never be said that “adult” themes in “children’s” television has not always “been a thing.”
Now . . . where did I leave my Beta Max VCR?
. . . oh god. These did not age so well in the last 30ish years.
Reboot and Beast Wars / Beasties are still awesome, though (after season 1, in each case).
Compare this to classic, “child-friendly” fairy tales.
The witch wants to fatten up Hansel and Gretel so she can eat them.
The wolf eats Grandmother and Little Red Riding Hood alive, and then the Huntsman cuts the wolf open to pull them out.
And so on and so forth.
They tell these stories to kids a lot younger than Selkie is.
As a side note, I’m now wondering if part of that clothing line includes “Bringer of Dawn” t-shirts. 😉
um…in his last bubble, shouldn´t it be ‘in fact’? anyway, playing on peoples paranoia to get them to destroy each other sounds like something the devil would totally do. to horribly translate a saw from my country: sheep running for safety from the butcher – right into the slaughterhouse. i shudder to think what ‘evil’ harmless people he tricked kats parents into smiting aka killing.
Man. I feel so bad for Kat right now. DX
This is turning into a show I’d watch when I was a kid. :3 Neat!
Honestly, Kat, you work with the Laser Priests. You’ve seen how this works with them. Two of them “accidentally” forgot to tell a newly manifested wraith who saved their butts about what she needs to do to avoid getting busted. Though it can’t be easy to see it happen to your own parents.
The Bringer of Dawn looks like Todd from the back. Will Selkie notice and get scared?
fact, not act