Western Animation - Discuss American, Canadian, and European cartoons here (or just bitch about wokeshit, I guess)

I was going to make a thread on this, but then decided against it as I don't want the attention. So here it goes.

As much as I hate wokeshit, I am staring to wonder if they are just a symptom. The real cause of everything in entertainment going to crap is just the natural course of things. That is everything has a beginning and an end.

Perhaps everything going to crap is simply us not accepting things have to end, and us unnaturally expanding their life span.

It's just that when an author has already told everything they wanted to say, it has to end.

Don't get me wrong. I do believe it’s possible to do new things in old settings, pass the torch. Get new blood to continue. Sometimes as a reboot. Sometimes as an expansion. Sometimes introducing new characters etc.

That's why franchises like Spider-Man and Batman are still popular. People keep adding new things to them, or new interpretations. Spider-Man both is, and isn't the same character Stan Lee and Steve Ditko started with.

Sure woke idiots purposely tried to sabotage everything we loved. But maybe they just hastened the inevitable. Perhaps it was naive of us to think we could have more of what was indefinitely.

If it wasn't wokeshit it would have been mediocrity instead the real killer. Everything has to end one day.
 
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.Basic Blonde Boy said:
Catwoman is the best of the pack being the first and how her whole appeal is that she could be Bruce’s lover.
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But only as Eartha Kitt or Julie Newmar, the rest sucked. Even Michelle Pfeiffer, although it wasn't her fault, they didn't give her anything to work with.
 
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A Grey Cat said:
At first you'd think they would keep the "make men simp for me then hang them out to dry." Aspect of the character to maybe be a satire on simping and how the whole men these days will do any thing for a pretty face." Cliche never really went away, but oh no that would be a hurtful stereotype about women and wouldn't be "empowering enough. "


So instead let's make her into a whiny skank, and a needy best friend who's always dtf. Trade one outdated stereotype for another.
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From what I learned from Reddit even the stuff that they want to see more of in storytelling that surpports their narrative they don't like actually seeing it portrayed.

For instance Lefties hate Blondie despite it portraying what they constantly asked for.
 
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Vyse Inglebard said:
View attachment 4418780
I thank God Kipper the Dog came out 20 years ago instead of today....I cringe at the mere thought of an emotionally unstable "adult" fanbase around this nostalgic preschool favorite of mine, because you KNOW they would blubber all over it.
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And then you imagine today's autists drawing porn of that ragdoll girl from Jamie and the Magic Torch.

On that note, I'm wowwed at how much stuff the UK got. I just now found this Youtube channel and its amazing how much of his stuff is listed as being from a UK DVD.

What the fuck even is "Evolution: The Series?" Seriously you guys know what a sped I am (fuck I just dropped a reference to Jamie and the Magic Torch, a show that never even aired in the USA) and I've never heard of that one!
 
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The female Batman villains just suffer from no one knowing what to do with them, and them not having much character. I am by no means a Batman expert, but here are my overall thoughts:

Catwoman - She has the issue of being a bitch and some commentary on class. Catwoman should be a thrill seeker that gets Bruce to lighten up, maybe end the crusade. The fix is to make her fun again and not make narratives where she is doing this for the abused women, or kids, or some shit. She likes dressing up, stealing and toying with Batman for the thrill, no need to add much more complexity.

Ivy - She has the issue of being defined solely by her power and sex appeal. Content like Arkham makes her more of an obstacle with a fine ass than a real character. It is always the same obstacle too, with plants sprouting out and an army of simps, rinse and repeat. She is just there because of the name being iconic or to be commer bait.

Harley - Fuck…. Stop making her into a lol, so wacky piece of shit. They need to stop raising her on a pedestal where she gets away with everything. She also needs an off button.
 
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Commander X said:
View attachment 4418492

I thought this was a joke but, no. Apparently not.

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Capture.PNG
 
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I miss when Harley was the more rational but loyal foil to the Joker. I'm not the first person to say this, but it's like they made her the less-violent and less self-aware version of Deadpool. The more stories are done with her, it's getting harder and harder to believe that she has a PhD.

I will also say during the era where Tara Strong started voicing her, her obnoxiousness shot right up (surprise, surprise). It's a fitting voice for the modern incarnations, but it's still obnoxious.
 
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The problem with Modern Harley is that writers tie too much of her character to the Joker, taking all her accountability, quirks and personality and tying it to the Joker, meaning that when they take her away from the Joker all that's left as a character is a blank slate that has a PHD. They think that if Harley never met the Joker she'd have just been a friendly psychologist helping Arkham Asylum patients, ignoring that a lot of her origins still maintain that she came to Arkham Asylum to exploit the mentally ill for money and fame: most likely a Harley who never met the Joker would just be a villain in a more mundane capacity. Like the 2004 The Batman version of Harley who, even before meeting the Joker, was a trashy talk-show host who cared more about exploiting other people's misery and getting bullshit gossip about celebrities than letting Bruce raise awareness about the latest charities* he feels aren't getting enough funds.

*Bruce investing in charities? Everyone knows that Bruce would never do that. He's too focused on beating up the poor, poor metally ill super terrorists burning the city down instead of talking to them! /sneed

A Grey Cat said:
Normally id prefer joker one of 3 ways: a murderous psycho that unrepentantly stacks bodies like cordwoood, a goofy prankster as played by ceaser Romero, or a lone anarchist who sees the world and especially life itself as nothing but a joke and the only way to respond to a joke is to laugh at it.

If the harley show has done one good thing it's convince me you can diverge from these formulas if you know how to make them funny, unique, or endearing.
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I still wanna give a shout out to the Telltale series' interpretation of Joker who flips a lot of traditional Joker elements on their head ,but does so to develop an genuinely interesting dynamic as he comes closer and closer to becoming the more recognisable Joker (if you choose so). They make him really likable and makes his tragic downfall the one 'Bruce's friend falls from grace' the two games did that actually struck a chord (both because they actually spent time developing the relationship and because both outcomes for Joker are based on taking inspiration from either Bruce or Batman), leading to two different Joker stories in the final episode that both worked.
 
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.Basic Blonde Boy said:
where she gets away with everything
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I remember watching the Injustice movie, only knowing the vague outline of the original story. I was baffled when Harley helped Joker nuke a city and then just...getting off with no punishment. No time in jail or Arkham, no physical punishment, she just hangs around with the good guys and they shrug it off.
 
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TheAmbiguousLurker said:
ignoring that a lot of her origins still maintain that she came to Arkham Asylum to exploit the mentally ill for money and fame: most likely a Harley who never met the Joker would just be a villain in a more mundane capacity. Like the 2004 The Batman version of Harley who, even before meeting the Joker, was a trashy talk-show host who cared more about exploiting other people's misery and getting bullshit gossip about celebrities than letting Bruce raise awareness about the latest charities
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I cant help but wonder if bruce and timm based this aspect of Harley on a minor character in the dark knight returns. That comic also had a "pop psychologist." Which were a thing at the time who believed he had cured the joker but clearly the guy was doing it to make money selling snake oil self help to suckers.

Big difference between him and Harley? Joker didn't kill Harley on national tv then host and the studio audience.

Love this movie by the way. Casting Peter Weller as bruce/batman was genuis. And while the best animated joker will always be Hamill Micheal Emerson doing a paul lynde impression perfectly matches this incarnation. Who even in the original comic was campy and flamboyant, but still just as dangerous and unpredictable as the best of them.
 
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SecretMagicalGirl said:
I was going to make a thread on this, but then decided against it as I don't want the attention. So here it goes.

As much as I hate wokeshit, I am staring to wonder if they are just a symptom. The real cause of everything in entertainment going to crap is just the natural course of things. That is everything has a beginning and an end.

Perhaps everything going to crap is simply us not accepting things have to end, and us unnaturally expanding their life span.

It's just that when an author has already told everything they wanted to say, it has to end.

Don't get me wrong. I do believe it’s possible to do new things in old settings, pass the torch. Get new blood to continue. Sometimes as a reboot. Sometimes as an expansion. Sometimes introducing new characters etc.

That's why franchises like Spider-Man and Batman are still popular. People keep adding new things to them, or new interpretations. Spider-Man both is, and isn't the same character Stan Lee and Steve Ditko started with.

Sure woke idiots purposely tried to sabotage everything we loved. But maybe they just hastened the inevitable. Perhaps it was naive of us to think we could have more of what was indefinitely.

If it wasn't wokeshit it would have been mediocrity instead the real killer. Everything has to end one day.
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I agree. Most of the franchises of today are getting older, and probably should have ended while they were ahead. Even Batman and Spider-Man are falling victim to rut after so many years.

I don’t think woke is necessarily the problem with entertainment or especially animation. Corporate overreach is a much bigger concern and is why so many dead franchises continue to this day.

In animation, the medium was dead once the 2000s kicked in. The obvious sign was the writer’s strike of 07, which created a talent void. My understanding is that companies gained more control over creations, taking out individual rights. This in turn created less care for creators to do well as their creation’s didn’t mean anything long term anymore. A Star Wars character could have been liked and used by many artists later, giving the original creator more money later, but now Disney owns all creations, thus, no point in making it good.

Then you have companies like Nickelodeon which were franchise pumping and dumping all throughout the 00s. If a franchise didn’t debut to SpongeBob numbers, it was dead on arrival. The most notorious example of this was Making Fiends, where Nick bought a series from a female indie creator, then sabotaged it by not running ads, moving it to the less viewed NickToons, and airing it at bad times. Despite it all, the show was a success, but Nick didn’t want it so trash it went.

The above just lead to many creators exiting or not pursuing the industry as companies were shit. Now we have nepotism running rampant, mainly in CN and Disney, as they just keep hiring friends of friends, of friends of the Flapjack crew. If they fail, companies don’t take it as a sign to move out of the group, but rather to go back to creators they likely fucked over prior to 07. Nothing truly changes as it is the same blood being pumped, because why take the risk on newbies? Hell, why take the risk on new IP?

Woke was a natural occurrence given the circumstances. Any smart individual would have seen animation as a terrible career decision given the actions taken. For those who did get in, well, they happened to have the worst politics and infected the industry as companies wouldn’t hire outsiders.
 
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