This furious-looking Charmeleon is named Sour. He is Charmander's older brother. He may be soft towards his little brother, but on the other hand he is angry and furious, especially towards kids' TV fully embracing the algorithm.
Unexpected, horrid twists and turns involving the Pokemon franchise are enough to send him blowing his nobbly top. The most recent incident happened to involve the one channel we all hate to love:
CBBC.
How, exactly? Well, when CBBC struck a deal with Nintendo to use Pokemon for their side of the algorithm, Sour was so furious he attacked CBBC with threats and emails to take Pokemon off the air once every month, in fear it might infringe copyright with the makers of Mario and Link.
Charmander always tells his hotheaded older brother than kind, gentle persuasion is the key, but he just ignores it entirely. He believes CBBC is cheating and betraying its viewers by neglecting storytelling and just focusing on algorithm. Computers are the true enemy, not Team Rocket, and they along with Ash and Pikachu have been kidnapped and used as torture machines multiple times by the horrible horrendous terrible tremendous British kids' channel.
And you know what? Sour's multiple protest-related actions have a good point. He is known by PACT and Ofcom to charge through the doors of the BBC TV Centre and fight off every single star, presenter and cartoon character, often with an army/mob of Digimon in tow, with Charmander following close behind.
He believes Pokemon should have a place on CITV, Cartoon Network and Sky One rather than something as horrendous and loud as CBBC. And guess what?
I think he's right about that!
Sour's Profile Of Favourite Things:
Age: 15
Favourite colours: Red and orange
Favourite song: 'Fight For Your Right (To Party)' and 'Sabotage' by Beastie Boys
Favourite TV show: Dragon Ball Z
Favourite film: Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen (oh dear, dare I say it now...)
Favourite food: Spicy chicken wings
Favourite game: Playing at being a dragon with Charmander
There's a Tweenie inside each and every one of us. You'll realise you're Bella if you like to boss people around and want to be queen someday, you're Fizz if you're creative and love to make a sanctuary for you and your favourite things, you're Milo if you're full of energy and a love of exciting adventures, and you'll know you're Jake if you are shy, timid and a bit of an introvert. As for the ones being Doodles, Max and Judy...who knows what you might find from them inside your peers.
Hauls are more than just the result of binge buying for the spoilt, yet gifted only child. With every single item you buy with your birthday money, you are realising that happiness doesn't just come with the punishment of overspending, it comes with something much greater: the rewards you get when you've worked through the many trials of life.
Embrace the weird, Danger Mouse style. The '15 series takes out all the weirdness that made the classic series so enjoyable for fans old and young, but the classic version's Daliesque tone, blend of slow and fast pacing and stream of conciousness slapstick comedy feel is a representation of how we view the extraordinary colour in the everyday dullness.
Meet my newest friend - his name is Dipdap, and he's a delusional 3 year old analogue of a stick man who is always persuading the artist to try to give him the situation he wants. You're going to meet him...NOW!
If you find writing stories too much for your mental static and mental burnout, try some maps with zones based on your favourite feelings and aesthetics, like the one Pibby used in her full length pilot animatic, or use a table on GSheets to label and code for your party plans, renovation ideas and Barbara Ann Kipfer style list books, whether it's by the amount of letters in a word, your favourite characters in your favourite shows, or your favourite colours or aesthetics or concepts or themes.
Clean Break? More like 'Dirty Mend'. Clean Break is the ultimate trigger for intrusive thoughts, so creating a Comfort Soundproof Playlist of natural sounds, ambience from natural environments and calm music and audiobooks works a treat.
Attention kids' TV lovers! I've just read Anne Wood's article about the uncertain future, and the bad news is: TV companies are finding content for the algorithm much easier to produce, wheras now everyone finds British kids' TV shows which define creative risks hard to do with so much money out of the bank!
*Crowd gasps in horror*
But don't worry, some classics have managed to defy the creative risks in different and amazing ways, from those classic dramas families can enjoy together to gentle, kind preschool shows that'll calm young viewers today. 10 of these, for example, defy these risks, and here they are in person:
1.Teletubbies, as seen above, manages to mix a boundaryless world of fun and learning with a sense of calm and relaxation, allowing toddlers to grow and develop at a calm steady pace. The show uses a mixture of giant costume puppets, animatronic robots, real life documentary footage and CGI to enhance the entertainment, and the learning experience.
2.Filmfair's Paddington series took British children's animation a next step forward by mixing one stop motion, cuddly teddy from Darkest Peru with paper cutout backgrounds and characters.
3.Brum, the '90s series, has an animatronic model car as a character, and uses silent human characters and miming, accompanied by gentle, motherly narration, to surprisingly touch the hearts of toddlers watching with their parents.
4.Thunderbirds may look like an average British '60s marionette series, but its combination of proper English dialogue, diverse range of accents - most notably American accents for the Tracy Brothers, Brains and Jeff Tracy, truly British accents for Lady Penelope and Parker and Malaysian accents for Tin Tin Kyrano and her father, simply named Kyrano - and mind-blowing special effects by Derek Meddings made it a low-stimulating yet high stakes classic, enjoyed by kids and adults alike.
5.The BBC's Narnia series defied how all classic children's book adaptations should be made, not with CGI or expensive special effects, but with a mixture of puppets, live actors and traditionally animated creatures - something Disney dared not do when they made their adaptation.
6.Spot, based on the books by Eric Hill, took out the high stakes and action-filled, problem-focused narratives and just focused on stream of conciousness stories focusing on the life of a boy Spot's age as he goes around playing new games and meeting new friends.
7.Kipper, another cartoon dog, took the low stakes, soothing narratives to a whole new level in the late '90s, combining slice of life stories and chilled out characters with some rather surreal and fantastical storylines that don't just rely on quests and high stakes, as mentioned with Spot. Instead, it relies on exploration and discovery, something all preschool shows should inherit, including Bluey.
8.The 2002 version of Andy Pandy brought back the storytelling formula long forgotten by kids' TV back then, making the visualised characters silent in order for the narrator, Mr Tom Conti, to express what they're saying to the young viewers watching and describe how they communicate in their world without speaking at all, proving even in the early 2000's, art is a simple form of communication for children who are deaf mute.
9.The Wheels On The Bus does what Cocomelon does, only in a slow paced, low stimulating, truly British manner. Its smooth, lesser detailed CGI and enjoyable songs, plus gentle narration by Dawn French and enjoyable eye candy, provided an entirely different way for kids to enjoy their favourite nursery rhymes while enjoying some originally written songs.
10.And last but not least, we have In The Night Garden, a soothing bedtime experience for children which mixes giant costume puppet characters which the youngest target audience can see themselves in with stop motion and inflatable prop characters and digitally enhanced CGI and special effects to demonstrate to even weary parents the transformative power about how play and toddler development can wind young children down at the end of a busy day. And during the time it was made, Ragdoll was as successful with that as it was with Teletubbies years ago.
But now...it's all gone.
With algorithm making shows easier to produce and kids' TV drawing kids' attention rather than telling them stories, with a demand for more overseas programmes to get them watching channels as a cow produces babies to produce more milk or our cornflakes.
And if today's loud, overstimulating overseas shows are a cow's babies, kids of today are the milk, once pure and fresh, turning stinky and curdled with every single attention-grabbing channel, show or Youtube video they watch. So those baby calves who are making the ratings plummet need us. They need us to get the BBC and ITV to make more programmes that'll nurture kids' minds in the low stimulating, risk-defying format and styles we've so long lost to CGI and special effects.
So, in honor of this, we give this risk-defying, calming, collected era a minute's silence. Cue the music, please...😢
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