Re: To Feral or not to Feral, that is the question.

From: chance <chance_at_unix.infoserve.net>
Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 08:14:04 -0800

>
>Well, out of all the SWAT Kats characters, I think that the character that
>I can relate to myself is probaly Steel (Or is it Steele?), since that I
>act (almost) just like him, and when chance (Andy Hill) told me that Steel
>is the sorta guy that has no friends, I became more certain that there is
>some connection between me and Steel.

That's one thing I've noticed about any animated effort that I watch repeatedly:
you're able to kind of "get into the character's head" a bit and understand what
makes him tick, and even predict how the character would react to a situation
in advance of the writers. That's also what I find defines the better scripts for
things like the 'Kats as well. The writers take the characters and build the stories
around *them*, as opposed to some of the competition who come up with a
standard type of ac/adv story framework and attempt to somehow deform the
characters in order to "fit". The last season of TMNT springs to mind.

Steel's cool because I think there's so much more to the character than the
2D "asshole" image projected in WODK, and at the risk of lapsing into
kidspeak - "they should have used him more". In fact, all the "baddies"
in the kat-toon wind up being semi-sympathetic because you look at the
actions of the Pastmaster, the Metallikats, or even Steel, and ask yourself
*why* they do what they do rather than accepting them as the obligatory
black-hats to the Kat-guys white. This kind of stuff was infectious to the
viewers and writing staffers alike, but seems valueless to an outfit like Tedco
who seek to define such things as a function of the "subtotal" key on
Atlanta's cash-register. That can work too - it just helps if you plug it in.

  
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"Dedicated to the indomitable spirit of the sled dogs that relayed
 antitoxin six hundred miles over rough ice, across treacherous waters,
 through Arctic blizzards from Nenana to the relief of stricken Nome in
 the winter of 1925. Endurance, Fidelity, Intelligence." -- "Balto"
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Received on Mon Feb 12 1996 - 12:39:50 PST