this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2024
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Eh, its all part of the curve. Sokka and Cartman are both descriptions of immature characters prone to egoism. Family Guy / South Park is just more exaggerated. I can see people reading Sokka as hack or shock-jocky and I can see people reading Cartman as simply childish and rude.
Either way, these characters exist as a foil to the primary characters in a Goofus and Gallant dichotomy. Sokka exists to bring Aang's naive virtuousness into sharper relief.
Yeah, except, South Park’s Cartman is a static, unchanging character, who’s actions, no matter how horrific, are made implicitly more acceptable by the constant mockery of everyone else, which gives the impression that the writers actually don’t care about Cartman being a serial killer or whatever and just think it’s funny
I mean, a staple of the setting is a character that keeps getting killed but never dies.
South Park is also created by libertarians who enjoy edginess so Cartman acts both as a strawman and straightman depending on the plot instead of being an overall insufferable chud
They call themselves Libertarians, but they're not xenophobes and Christian fundamentalists. They're more secular smug centrists.
Which, yes, sure bad. But scratch the prevailing political views at Nickelodeon and you're not going to find much better.
He's literally stood in for Bugs Bunny in certain scenes. The character is supposed to be insufferable but not entirely unlikeable.
Sure, that's Mr Garrison the Trump loving gay Republican public school teacher with an enormous chip on his shoulder.
Another obnoxious but ultimately sympathetic figure who routinely gets swept up in the hype to comic effect.
The biggest difference between Sokka and Cartman/Garrison is the degree of grossness in the humor. Sokka will get caught up in a fit of machismo and embarrass himself in front of some girls. Cartman will get caught up in a fit of machismo and end up in a giant ball of poop and piss and jizz and clouds of farts.
Libertarisn always pivot rightways when scratched though in the same vein as liberals, I mean just gotta look at their stances on LGBTQ issues or climate change to realize it's at best "hurr both sides suck" to just tacit acceptance of shit status quotes. Thing is it wouldn't be as bad if it didn't draw a similar fandom as Rick and Morty by filling in for nerds where a personality should be with apathy and cringe.
Honestly from Nick? No, Avatar was lightning in a bottle for them they've been unable to replicate as they are unwilling to embrace new trends in animation storytelling and instead stick with short form narratives. Tbh Avatar is still a very good 'babies first propaganda' and 'babies first introduction to warcrimes' without forcing your kid to watch something like 'Come and See' or do an analysis of 'Babylon Berlin' and what it says about nascant fascism.
They walked that back a decade ago.
You can find plenty of cringe in every fandom.
It's a very classic Hero's Journey and thick with liberal tropes. Popularity-wise it was a struggle to reproduce in large part because everyone was reproducing it. As soon as they tried to extend the themes of the original, people got mad because it wasn't their original cast doing the original story.
The episodes on transgender athletes would say otherwise on them "walking it back a decade ago", also ngl fash and fash adjacent always have a habit of "oh it's just a joke BRO, I'm sorry I hurt your feeling for realsies" as they backpeddle when attitudes change.
Some fandoms are worse than others and have a Venn diagram of who they attract as the most rabid fans. For instance anyone wanna be in the room with a bunch of Sopranos fans that openly celebrate the mob and don't understand the show is meant to be a depressing take on toxic masculinity.
Most cartoons rendered as progressive are just diet liberal (I'm not expecting Disney or Nick to put out a Maoist think piece), still be hard pressed to find one during that period that did discuss propaganda and imperialism within it's limited context. As for copy cat shows I really don't remember any either because they also never got the lightning in a bottle effect or just fizzled out from lack of fudning (not being supplied enough seasons or time to properly "cook"). The hate for Korra was, at least from what I saw an issue of the themes being very off at times, most apparent with the clear workers/underclass strife vs benders brought up by Amon (who more or less acted a revolutionary expy) and never dealt with again (also Korra more or less becoming a cop for that book). Also the spirits arc was interesting but executed weirdly.