Subject: I... didn't really have this.
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Posted on: 2019-04-20 01:43:00 UTC
Late 90s, early 2000s, but we never had satellite TV growing up so Cartoon Network &c was extremely very off the cards. I only remember one specific cartoon from my childhood, and not for good reasons: the aptly named Butt-Ugly Martians. It was a very early 3D-animated series about... I'm not quite sure exactly. Humans and Martians living together and this causing, uh, shenanigans? Somehow? Maybe? Eh, whatever. The point is, it was stupid and had a horrible theme song and the character design was ugly to the point of actively poisonous. My childhood's cartoons kinda sucked.
What did not suck, however, was the live-action stuff. Shoebox Zoo, Black Hole High, Aquila, The Ghost Hunter, Bernard's Watch, those are the things I remember. I mean, I might even count Raven, even though that was technically a game show (think high-fantasy obstacle courses with the presenter who made me realise I was into men). This was my childhood, and I think it stuck. Sure, I watched a ton of my dad's Supermarionation stuff, and even looked up some myself; sure, I watched my mum's favourite kids shows, like the works of Oliver Postgate and Small Films. I love them, and they formed me. But the weird, short-lived live-action shows on CBBC and CITV in the early-to-mid-2000s? Those were mine, in a way that the others weren't. They'd been... pre-owned, in a way. Examined and vetted and sanctioned for consumption. The live-action shows, for all their (very, very many) faults, were something I got to first. I loved them all the more for that, and a part of me always will love them, as long as I live.
Oh, and they brought back Raven with Angela Toussaint as the second Raven (with James Mackenzie's iconic character and capital-L Look being kept on as the Raven Of Old), and I am EXTREMELY HERE FOR IT. Extremely. Here. For it.
Do you understand now.