Sometimes I wonder what it'll be like when Big Media mines half-recalled IPs of the '90s and 2000s

MissUtilis

you know it's gonna happen

Obā-san

when is the dubstep revival gonna happen

MissUtilis

the 2030s/40s maybe

Obā-san

im thinking 2025-2028

MissUtilis

also related, though I wouldn't call it half-recalled

I wouldn't be surprised if, were the new PPG to be a hit, Nickelodeon announced they were bringing back Rugrats

Obā-san

man i hated that show

because i hated babies

Obā-san

like, they wear things that they shit in why would i want to see that

c'mon

Odradek

Miss Utilis said:

also related, though I wouldn't call it half-recalled

I wouldn't be surprised if, were the new PPG to be a hit, Nickelodeon announced they were bringing back Rugrats

Yay!

MissUtilis

Cadpig never pisses or shits herself ergo Cadpig > Lil or Phil

also you seem to think about fecal matter a lot more than people usually do (e.g. horses being "poop factories")

Obā-san

i was joking

babies are still weird tho

Obā-san

also i wanna point out that the horse thing was originally pointed out by Forsythe

MissUtilis

oh

Tachyon

Rugrats was ok

pretty good, actually, or at least, it seemed that way to me when i was a kid

MissUtilis

I keep wanting to (re-)watch the 1991-1994 episodes, because I've always heard that most anything that came after the show got uncanceled (1996-2004) demonstrates a creatively dying show that was only still on because Nick needed to keep their pre-SpongeBob cash cow alive

Odradek

Anything after Season 3 is mostly just okay, anything after season 6 isn't even trying anymore

Tachyon

relatedly, which seasons of spongebob were good, if any?

Odradek

I don't think it's as bad as people say nowadays.

I mean, unless you believe Eugene Krabs is history's greatest monster.

MissUtilis

Even when I was younger, I hated Zombie SpongeBob

SpongeBob's voice started to sound "wrong" (this started with the first movie, though), the mood of Bikini Bottom abruptly shifted to a place where everyone was hostile towards him and literally the only people who were nice to him were Patrick, Krabs, and Sandy...

Tachyon

it was on usually before i got home from school, so i didn't watch it often enough to notice anything like that

sunn wolf

naney said:

when is the dubstep revival gonna happen

whenever this kid grows up

Yarrun XIX

Tachyon said:

relatedly, which seasons of spongebob were good, if any?

Odra's remark works well here too. Quality dropped after the third season and the movie, after which the original creator, Stevie Hillenburg, jumped ship and Nickelodeon gradually ran it into the ground.

The point where I stopped watching entirely was around the beginning of season 6, with the whole toenail thing? You remember the toenail thing, right guys? Remember how messed up that was? 

Tachyon

i know that there was a toenail thing and from what i heard it was graphic but i have no idea what it was

Yarrun XIX

There was a protracted scene where Squidward drops a couch on his tentacle and Spongebob inadvertendly tears off Squidward's inexplicable toenail while trying to get the couch off. It was as gory as you can get with a Spongebob episode

Tachyon

ah, good old animated comic slapstick violence

MissUtilis

Tachyon said:

ah, good old animated comic slapstick violence

it looked like something from Happy Tree Friends though

Yarrun XIX

It wasn't even funny though, that's the thing. The timing's not quite on point and the music is worryingly nonchalant about what's happening

It was just horribly graphic and gross, to the point that they even showed the gristle and nerves still attached to the toenail, and it didn't fit with the tone of the rest of the episode at all.

Yarrun XIX

Timing. If there's one thing that Zombie Spongebob couldn't get right, it was timing.

If there's two things, it's timing and proper use of stock music/sound effects

Yarrun XIX

For reference, this is how you torture Squidward in a way that's actually funny

Tachyon

(i was being a little facetious)

Princess Alice

It was always weird to me when SpongeBob's writers ignored that the show is set underwater instead of playing with the underwater setting

Tachyon

i watched the toenail scene

it was much less horrifying than i expected . . . happy tree friends is generally too much for me and i kind of have to steel myself to watch it

this was less disturbing to me than ren and stimpy, at least

Tachyon

Central Avenue said:

It was always weird to me when SpongeBob's writers ignored that the show is set underwater instead of playing with the underwater setting

i always figured that was part of the joke

like when they had fires underwater, or the way everyone just stands around on the seabed

kind of extreme anthropomorphism

Klinotaxis

let's be real, that one joke with patrick and the fire was the best one in the show

Odradek

The Ugly Barnacle is an exemplary tale.

"Once"

The very first sentence displays the author's unwillingness to compromise the timelessness of his oeuvre. The story's setting and rough time period are only referred to as "once". Where is the ugly barnacle? When does the barnacle kill everyone?

Those questions are irrelevant - this is a story detailling the unneeded struggle of the unlucky in a society obsessed by an arbitrary beauty ideal. Attaching a specific time and place would simply dilute the message and weaken the reader's empathy toward the barnacle's plight.

"there was an ugly barnacle."

Thusly is our protagonist introduced.

Who is the ugly barnacle? What is the ugly barnacle beyond this shallow description? How is he ugly? All questions lesser minds would ask, completely missing the point of the tale.

Say what you want about Patrick Star, but he doesn't fuck around. Whereas so-called "talented" authors often bore the lectorat with unneeded descriptive, Patrick sticks with the basics. The main character is a barnacle. He is ugly. For the purpose of the story, that is all you need to know. Anything beyond this point is space-wasting fluff.

The so-called "Beige" description also has the quality of bypassing the reader's suspension of disbelief. A more detailed description, no matter how abject, would cause one smartass to spout "That doesn't look that ugly !" or "You're exaggerating dude". Simply labelling the barnacle as "ugly" causes the reader to apply his own standard of homeliness, skipping unneeded subjective concerns.

"He was so ugly everyone died."

Unexpectedly, tragedy strikes!

The climax of the tale is a superb case of subverting the reader expectation. Usually, this kind of story will features the main character going on an adventure to "fix" his appearance and conform to the society ideal, or finally accepting his physique and reconfort himself in the saccharine ideal that appearance alone doesn't matter.

Not here. Not only did the barnacle did nothing to resolve his predicament, but said inaction causes his surrounding macrocosm to die. The tale satirize both society's obsession with physical appearance (as the presumably shallow, straight-thinking citizens are conditioned to be killed by violation of beauty standards) and the inaction of the homely, as the main character's unjustified lack of initiative causes negative and oh-so-very real consequences to himself and his surrounding.

"The End"

Patrick Star walks triumphant and doesn't look back. There was a barnacle. It was ugly. Everyone died. Blam.

Corvina

I never liked Rugrats

PatchAwful

Even as a kid I was always confused as to who Rugrats was supposed to be aimed at

Odradek

PatchAwful said:

Even as a kid I was always confused as to who Rugrats was supposed to be aimed at

The Ugly Barnacle is an exemplary tale.

"Once"

The very first sentence displays the author's unwillingness to compromise the timelessness of his oeuvre. The story's setting and rough time period are only referred to as "once". Where is the ugly barnacle? When does the barnacle kill everyone?

Those questions are irrelevant - this is a story detailling the unneeded struggle of the unlucky in a society obsessed by an arbitrary beauty ideal. Attaching a specific time and place would simply dilute the message and weaken the reader's empathy toward the barnacle's plight.

"there was an ugly barnacle."

Thusly is our protagonist introduced.

Who is the ugly barnacle? What is the ugly barnacle beyond this shallow description? How is he ugly? All questions lesser minds would ask, completely missing the point of the tale.

Say what you want about Patrick Star, but he doesn't fuck around. Whereas so-called "talented" authors often bore the lectorat with unneeded descriptive, Patrick sticks with the basics. The main character is a barnacle. He is ugly. For the purpose of the story, that is all you need to know. Anything beyond this point is space-wasting fluff.

The so-called "Beige" description also has the quality of bypassing the reader's suspension of disbelief. A more detailed description, no matter how abject, would cause one smartass to spout "That doesn't look that ugly !" or "You're exaggerating dude". Simply labelling the barnacle as "ugly" causes the reader to apply his own standard of homeliness, skipping unneeded subjective concerns.

"He was so ugly everyone died."

Unexpectedly, tragedy strikes!

The climax of the tale is a superb case of subverting the reader expectation. Usually, this kind of story will features the main character going on an adventure to "fix" his appearance and conform to the society ideal, or finally accepting his physique and reconfort himself in the saccharine ideal that appearance alone doesn't matter.

Not here. Not only did the barnacle did nothing to resolve his predicament, but said inaction causes his surrounding macrocosm to die. The tale satirize both society's obsession with physical appearance (as the presumably shallow, straight-thinking citizens are conditioned to be killed by violation of beauty standards) and the inaction of the homely, as the main character's unjustified lack of initiative causes negative and oh-so-very real consequences to himself and his surrounding.

"The End"

Patrick Star walks triumphant and doesn't look back. There was a barnacle. It was ugly. Everyone died. Blam.

Calica

Klinotaxis said:

let's be real, that one joke with patrick and the fire was the best one in the show

"All the ink on this invitation is smeared?  Don't they realize we're underwater?"

"Oh well, nothing we can do, might as well use them as fuel for the fire."