Does anyone else think "The Multiversers" would be an awesome idea for a Saturday morning cartoon? "Follow the adventures of Lauren Hastings and Derek Brown as they verse The Verse battling monsters and villains of (literally) every shape and size." Occasionally, they meet up with the wise Architect, or the foolish Whisp, as they travel in search of wrongs to right. You could have action figures and everything.
(Doing Therapy)
Now that I think about it, not really. You just know some idiot kid out there would kill himself thinking he would verse out. You can't exactly put a disclaimer on a Saturday morning cartoon. Cool in concept, not in reality.
(Doing Therapy)
Yeah, I'm not really sure, on a couple levels.
- Saturday morning cartoons have to fit the twenty-two minute story structure, and they have to follow the expectations of their audience. I'm reminded of Star Wars: you know that at some point in the story R2 is going to tap into some computer and save everyone, 3PO is going to get in trouble, and there's going to be a Jedi light saber battle. If it were Lauren and Derek, they'd have to travel together, and you would have to limit their abilities so that the viewers would know what they could do. Lauren can't suddenly reveal that oh, she can open a door to hyperspace so you can walk from here to somewhere else; either she would have to do that in nearly every episode, or you would have to create the story such that it is part of the "unimportant" opening events of the episode in which it later matters. Ultimately the main characters are forced to become limited in their abilities, because the casual viewer has to know what can be done.
- This in turn means you can't really do much that is deeper with them. For example, a good part of Lauren's "adventures" in Philadelphia in Verse Three, Chapter One included
- coming to understand the concept of using faith to work miracles;
- expanding her psionic abilities by experimentation;
- being taught martial arts by Raiden;
- buiding relationships with Father James, Annuda, Bethany, and others who would be part of her battle against Horta;
- Complicating it, you display an attitude that is typically American and problematic for serious animated features in general: you automatically assume that "cartoons" are for kids. I suspect most "kids" today already know that this is not true--the Japanese adult (in all senses of that word) movie industry is very dependent on animation, and "anime" exports are strong in the thirteen- to thirty-year-old demographic. That would be the target audience for a Multiverser animated series. Yet the attitude of Americans is that if it's animated, it's for children. (This is patently ridiculous--there is nothing "appropriate for children" in Ren and Stimpy or Beavis and Butthead, and it is at least questionable whether The Simpsons, Family Guy, or Futurama should be viewed by the prepubescent crowd.) Thus an animated Multiverser feature would have to be aimed at an older audience, but would be criticized for being inappropriate for the younger audience who largely comprise the cartoon viewing public in America.
As you might surmise from this, we've given the matter a lot of thought.
--M. J. Young
The idea was significant to me, simply because I realized how bad it would be and stopped posting. A year and a half ago, this would have been two dozen posts long with concept ideas for episodes partly fleshed out, just to end with you telling me that kids would commit suicide. Therapy is working, and the proof is right here.