ever notice that cartoons never depict the behavior of school aged or younger children correctly? They almost always act much older than they should. >Arthur Arthur and friends are 8-9ish, but act as though they are closer to 13-15ish and D.W. class are in pre-school, but act 8-9ish
>South Park They act like late high school, early college
>TMNT acted like toons more so than any age
>TMNT 2003 Are 16-17, but act like they are in their mid-twenties except Mikey
>TMNT 2012 Act like their age surprisingly
Rise of TMNT Act early college age rather than supposedly 13
>Simpsons Lisa acts like late highschool- mid college on an episode when on a tangent. Acts like 14-15 otherwise. Bart and class act 14-15
The list goes on, no one seems to accurately potray the age group that the characters are intended to be.
because realistic children are unpleasant to watch
Thomas Gomez
ie, caillou
Gabriel Morales
Because you always compain about it when they do.
See Okko.
Jackson Campbell
your ideas of maturity at different ages are bafflingly wrong and you should feel wrong
a quartet of warriors raised by an asian martial arts master are going to seem more mature than some street thugs that went to an inner city public school. get a clue.
Zachary Brooks
because you want t show kids, so the kids can relate to them, but you can't them act like kids because kids are stupid and not funny, user they're not interesting and entertaining to watch
Kevin Lee
early south park was 100% elementary school-aged.
Blake Bennett
Nah, b. Donetello is acting as mature as stockman in the 2003 iteration.
In the newest one, he doesn't act his age whatsoever despite training.
Also in the 2003 version in the flashbacks of when they were ten or so they acted like kids.
Thomas Smith
How far back are we talking? Even in the movie the concepts of relationships elude children of that age group. Also no one was swearing and sneaking into movies at 10 idk man.
Julian King
...they really were. 8-11 year olds are the ones all about sneaking into movies.
James Lee
how? They had no money to get in.
Logan Peterson
they got creative.
then there's stuff in seasons 1-3 like hating baseball but being forced into it by parents, picking on one kid for no real reason, being gullible idiots...
Wyatt Lewis
but claiming girlfriends and cursing as much as they did ? I mean common.
Chase Allen
That’s not true!
Angelica pooped her pants in Rugrats Go Wild at THREE years old!!!!
I doubt if I’ve ever done it since I was one like Tommy.
man, I had childish crushes as far back as second grade. I remember my foster mom gave me a bag of candy lego to hand out on valentine's day in third grade, and I gave my crush nothing but pink ones.
Ian Allen
Clarence did a decent job.
Lincoln Mitchell
She sure looks different in this picture with that nice little “slimy, squishy” mess in her pants, like she described the squid in her song.
Compare these two different pictures of Angelitiki the Island Princess taken by Susie on the same day. In the former, she is telling the babies not to poop their diapers (no making smells). But by the latter she had made the biggest stink in the bathysphere, lol!
yeah, that's fucked dude. There is no way in that's a two year difference
Adam Hill
I think the Rugrats were amazing because each main child character did at least one poopie in their pants!!!!!!!
Dil — first movie, every other episode thereafter Tommy — first birthday, little dude, daddy’s helpers Phil & Lil — daddy’s helpers, many more Kimi — daddy’s helpers, Finsterella Chuckie — daddy’s helpers, curse of werewolf Angelica — Party Animals, Clown Around, Rugrats Go Wild
Alexander Adams
We do not want to see Susie do it!
Jordan Anderson
Also, inversely, ever notice how strangely childish adults and parents in particular act in cartoons?
>Also no one was swearing and sneaking into movies at 10 idk man. I was exactly 10 years old when Bigger, Longer & Uncut came out and me and my friend tried to sneak in. The kids were always swearing because you just heard that from older kids/adults and when I told my "whore mom to go fuck herself" I was grounded for life.
The later South Park seasons are understandably more like high school kids because Matt and Trey grew up, but the early seasons were very much like life of elementary school kids in small town. It was common to smoke and get drunk for the first time when you were around 11-12 years old.
The most mature South Park kids have always been the ones who show some kind of empathy, because that is what real kids do lack. Otherwise they're little shits who do bad things.
Adrian Howard
If it’s about shït, I never forget!
Brayden Ortiz
Sweetness and Lightning was here. You're an idiot.
Aiden Edwards
...unless they’re so realistic that they shït their pants!
Cameron Peterson
...unless they’re sooooooo realistic that they shït their diapers/pants!
(Assuming they’re not black, of course.)
Mason Gomez
It’s not as exciting to see an already brown a$s covered in shït as it is to see a white one.
Chase Jackson
I just love poop! Always have, always will! One of my favorite things to do as a little girl slightly older than Angelica was to put a brown bead necklace in my doll’s panties. She even had blonde pigtails like Angelica, so perhaps that’s why I love such episodes!
Jace Watson
I said, “Mama, my doll pooped in her panties,” and she said, “Well, she must be constipated.”
Elijah Long
My favorite color of play doh to make has always been brown. This can be achieved by mixing red with green, blue with orange, purple with yellow, or all three primary colors together.
Lucas Fisher
I call it “poo doh” and like to feed it to a Baby Alive. I wish they made such a doll of each Rugrat— especially Angelica!
Anthony Parker
I wish I could be Drew in this picture.
Ryder Morgan
Well, this is upsetting.
Elijah Walker
Caillou
Ryan Rodriguez
>no one was swearing and at 10
???????? T. Never hung out with kids before you had no friends
Alexander Myers
Or Charlotte at this moment. Angelica would have looked soooooooo cute in a scene where she is in the bathroom floor being changed after this. Then they should have put her in the shower.
Thomas Johnson
Upsetting because the thread's been derailed or because user's acting like a genuine basket case?
Camden Peterson
Imagine her being on the floor of a cruise bathroom with a towel under her. Imagine slowing removing her diaper (or cutting her panties with scissors) and using the front panel to scrape most of the mess off of her. Then destroying a white towel to clean her with soapy water so she can more easily be showered. Then putting her in some brand new clothes, making her wash her white sailor dress by hand during her shower as punishment.
This happened with my sister almost every single day when she was eight and I was seventeen. Mom never wanted to bring her to a doctor and lived in denial that she could have encopresis.
Colton Ramirez
It’s a fascinating medical condition wherein a child ignores the call of nature until it becomes impossible and does it in their pants frequently. That’s exactly what Angelica, or Angelitiki, did in Rugrats Go Wild. She hadn’t pooped since she left her house a day before and ate like a hog.
As long as you make it about anyone besides us, we’re cool with it.
Jacob Powell
Stop replying to yourself you demented psycho
Colton Wood
>in thrift store on Sunday >girl about 7-8 is walking around carrying a large stack of cookbooks and saying cheerfully "I'm gonna learn how to cook!" >her grandmother is like "Oh goodness no we're not getting those books." And there you have it. IRL 8 year olds are nothing at all like Lisa Simpson. They don't sound like her or think like her or act like her.
Rewatch early South Park and you can see they actually acted like children. A lot of their adventures or troubles involved their childhood innocence. Remember when they kept getting kicked out of stores because they needed an erection for Kyle’s dad? They thought it was something you bought. Cartman playing with the Antonio Banderas doll thinking it’s a toy
Leo Allen
I'd argue the Simpsons never really had that after the first four or so Season 1 episodes. By Moaning Lisa, the idea of the kids acting like kids was already about dead.
Benjamin Barnes
I think only Bart remained a kid till at least the end of S2. By S3 he slowly became Homer’s sidekick
It's the same reason why Misaka Mikoto is 14, despite acting like a fucking college student. Age is only used to make the character more relatable for the target audience, everything else is written however the author wants. And grown-ups usually don't even remember how children see the world in general, so when push comes to shove, they have to guess.
>girls were weird until 8th grade brah What in the fuck? Dude, I used to make towel tents and hide under them so I could make out with a girl at summer camp when we were both 6, where the fuck did you get that idea from?
Xavier Myers
Different children mature in different ways. For many characters it depends on the writer.
Henry Thomas
This was the defining feature of Beavis and Butt-head: Mike Judge is the only writer that knows that kids are pretty much idiots, and even the "smart" ones have intelligence but not wisdom.
(dammit, my only b&bh pic is from 2011 and /mlp/ related. why am i even on this hellsite. i need to get up and go to work)
Carson Perez
>no one was swearing and sneaking into movies at 10 idk man. when I was 10, swearing and sneaking into movies was kind of the only trouble me and my brother got into. and also software piracy.
I was pretty sheltered but still got into some shenanigans. I'd call BBSes with my modem and learn more swears than everyone else. When I read the word "dildo" for the first time I couldn't stop laughing for 10 minutes and my mom came in and saw what I was reading in giant 40-column letters and took away my computer for a month.
growing up probably changed dramatically in the 1990s though.
the average kid is braindead until they become 12/13 before that we pretty much all acted like Calliou. Actual children are really wacky, impulsive and simple. If you want to see accurate children in cartoons watch all those toddler shows like franklin the turtle, calliou etc. where they only learn how to interact with the world
David Adams
Why were my posts removed?
Nathaniel Allen
The older we get, the more we forget what we were like when we were kids. Ugly fact imo.
Dylan Perry
That's because there is no "correct" way to do it.
Evan Collins
I liked Clarence.
Kayden Taylor
>the average kid is braindead until they become 12/13 Actually at 12-13 they're still braindead as fuck.
Thomas Lewis
Calvin and Hobbes probably did a better job than anything of balancing out the "Child character as the writer's mouthpiece" and "Child character acting like a child" traits.
Oliver Cook
Nobody in cartoons act like real people. Real people tend to be quiet, keep to themselves, act without thinking or intentions, sometimes screw up and say the wrong thing, and have no clue what anyone else is thinking. People in cartoons (and entertainment in general) express their insights and understandings, verbally if necessary. They'll either have a good grasp on the situation or the situation will intentionally be designed to show that they've misunderstood. They have a good idea of what other characters mean (except in misunderstanding) and address the topic directly. And they always say and do with intent, not stumbling around doing stupid shit or making a bunch of mistakes.
This is because it's fairly boring to watch somebody behave like a person. People don't want to watch somebody act in a confused manner and then attempt to guess and intuit what they are actually thinking after the fact. They have enough co-workers who already do that. They want to be able to see, understand, and emphasize with the character to get an understanding of why they are doing things. This is why characters behave so much not like people. People are confusing, and it's hard to understand why they are doing something. Characters are easy to understand, so the audience can follow what's going on and why. (and why it matters)
Child characters are much the same way. They don't act like children. More specifically, they act in ways that allow an audience to understand them and follow what they are doing. Nobody wants to watch a show of a bunch of toddlers acting like toddlers; they want the toddlers to act in a way that they can relate to. So you have toddlers who act like a group of grownups, not because that's realistic, but because that lets people relate to the characters.
Owen Adams
There's also another aspect. Most cartoons with child protagonists are aimed at children. A lot of children want to be more mature than they are, or to appear more mature than they currently are. So they're going to prefer characters who look like how they want to appear: characters who are similar to themselves, but act or behave more mature. So you'll see teenagers who think and act and have responsibilities like adults, or pre-teens who have independence and freedom like teenagers, or grade school children who are able to do things on their own and aren't told want to do by everyone. Those are the characters most appealing to those age demographics, so it shouldn't be too surprising that those are the ones which end up most popular.
I'll also note that when half your examples involve mutant reptiles who lived in isolation for their entire lives not "acting their proper age", then you might want to reconsider the examples you are giving.
David Jackson
I think the problem is that a lot of writers are childless hipsters who don't understand how children operate. If you watch the Simpsons, you clearly notice how writers who are parents handle Bart and Lisa differently from ones who aren't.
Bentley Bailey
South Park makes sense for the kids to act far beyond their actual age.
Personally I'd have used "All Grown Up" as an example. The kids are 10/11/12 years old or so, but they act well into the teen years, maybe mid- to late-high school.
Zachary Rogers
We already established why that was. They planned originally for the kids to be high school aged in AGU (hence the name) but Nickelodeon rejected that idea because they were insistent that keeping the characters as middle schoolers was more relatable to the audience. Problem was, the Rugrats crew were dead-set on the kids being 16-18 instead of 10-13 so they wrote them as 18 year olds anyway.
Mason Harris
I think having siblings growing up is a factor as well. Writers who were only children or didn't have siblings close in age growing up tend to have a harder time with this, especially in understanding how sibling dynamics work.
Nathaniel Lopez
It's not uncommon to have crushes in grade school and even practice kissing. Curiosity about the opposite sex develops early on.
Evan Baker
Not that that's a bad thing.
Brody Stewart
I doubt this. The original AGU episode was made for the tenth anniversary of Rugrats, and aged the kids ten years as a result.
For some reason I remember the original commercials.
TOMMY WITH HAIR?!
CHUCKIE WITH BRACES?!
Kevin Torres
These meager victim-sicles need the heat of my release.
Not true! Most people who have shat their pants even once will remember the date like Tuesday, September 11, 2001.
Andrew Myers
Childhood and youth are actually the most memorable parts of the lifespan. Old people are more likely to forget their recent past than what they did when they were young.
Matthew Ward
Wait, why am I suddenly on /r/existentialism?
Joshua Martinez
I've actually heard about that in some science studies. As in, people will more clearly remember what happened when they were young because it was a more distinct time in their lives. But it's harder to remember what you ate yesterday or ate last week because there were SO MANY last weeks in your adult life, and the longer it goes on the more it all blurs together. So people will typically remember their childhood and teen years well, will remember being a young adult fairly well, and the older years get vaguer and vaguer outside some very distinct, memorable moments.
It's why so many old folk get surprised when realizing just how long ago their childhood is. It doesn't seem much further away when you are 25 than when you are 40.
Samuel Hughes
Whst the fuck was it?
John Garcia
You mean normie children
Jaxon Hernandez
no faggot, I mean you
Gabriel Stewart
>Also in the 2003 version in the flashbacks of when they were ten or so they acted like kids. yeah that's my fucking point by the time they got to 15, they're adults like any civilized people are. like everyone was before today.
Ian Adams
JUST IMAGINE
Parker Thomas
this is bunk and easily refuted because most childhood memories are the more strong, distinct ones. nobody remembers boring stuff like shopping for groceries with your grandma or sitting doing homework after school.
Lucas Howard
This, if you want realistic children, just go out to a public store. It's helpful for reminding myself why I don't want children.
Easton Gutierrez
This. Adolecence is a fairly recent thing. Up to a bout a century ago once you went through puberty you were considered an adult and went to work.
Oliver Phillips
That’s inconceivable.
Landon Hill
one thing to watch out for is the age of 10 where they learn sarcasm.
I mean, they can parse sarcasm a little before then, in the same way that boys kind of know whether they like girls but don't know why. But there must be some kind of sarcasm hormone that goes off because all of fourth grade was all "Uh, DOY!!!" "So funny I forgot to laugh!" "hey, that shirt is SO COOL. Almost as cool as URKEL!" it got fucking weird
Justin Allen
>youth is 70% of a person's life
I don't think this chart is accurate
William Cox
>People don't want to watch somebody act in a confused manner and then attempt to guess and intuit what they are actually thinking after the fact You just explained why Let's Plays always suck
Mason King
When you're a kid and something clicks you just want to hit that novelty button over and over again, especially if it can increase social statuses that you are also learning.
Lincoln Powell
are you talking about being a kid, or seeing memes on facebook?
Bentley Howard
The Caillou thing is a meme that’s run it’s course.
He’s not that bad.
Ethan Diaz
>It's helpful for reminding myself why I don't want children. I'm sorry your grandpa did those things with you when you were 6.
Robert Carter
>no one was swearing at 10 How incredibly naive
Blake Gutierrez
To be fair, Wendy was kind of implied to be freakishly tall for a girl her age. But yeah, Puberty must be ridiculous in Gravity Falls-verse. You literally gain 2-3 feet in the span of as many years.
Mason Nguyen
I think that’s because half the time when Calvin is on a tangent and he seems to be the author’s mouthpiece for a moment, the last couple panels change the entire meaning of the tangent and show that it was really just Calvin rationalizing something incredibly childish.
Bentley Lee
>he doesn’t have a natural lifespan of 33 years Look at this nerd living into middle age
Brody Nelson
Watterson explained this. He said many readers were puzzled by Calvin's florid vocabulary, but it helps to understand that most of the time he's using big words to describe what are ultimately stupid or childish ideas.
