We wrote so many words on the Dot and Line. So, so, so so so many words. And at the risk of sounding high on our own supply, a solid majority of them were good words. But many of them were a bit…foolish? Perhaps…silly? Maybe even bad! In this entry of our farewell package, we’re here to tell you that it coulda been a heckuva lot worse. We coulda published the words below!
What we have here is our ideas dump: every headline that probably would have become a blog post* at some point if we didn’t choose to blow up our blog this week. These were culled from a panoply of sources too akin to dirty laundry to speak on with any modicum of propriety. But what the hell, we’re having fun here, so we’ll tell ya anyway: we grabbed ’em from spreadsheets, unpublished WordPress drafts, Trello card titles that were never cleared out, odd Google Docs, and emails from unwitting contributors. And as an added treat, our cofounders and editors-in-chief, John Maher and Eric Vilas-Boas, have undertaken the dubiously amusing task of annotating the suckers for you. Enjoy!
*or, more likely, sat in our ideas bank in perpetuity, forever, as we forgot about it
D+L Headlines Eric Pretended He Was Going to Write But Never Wrote But Put in the Story Calendar Anyway, Annoying John to No End
—the original title for this piece, before Eric realized he was not the only scribe of abandoned headlines, and before John realized he didn’t want Eric to get all the attention
A Beginner’s Guide to the Works of Satoshi Kon
—although this king never got enough love from us, we had intended to spew thousands upon thousands of words explaining his body of work, but alas…
An Oral History of the Warner Bros. ’90s Animated Godhead
—this was John’s white whale, and it ate him
A Brief Ode to ‘Bebop Face‘
—like Spielberg Face, but better, because Cowboy Bebop
Ask Scratchy: Shinji from Neon Genesis Evangelion
—our longest-running column was eventually going to address animation’s most fucked-up young man, and yet…
At Some Point, Every Good Shonen Just Becomes Dragon Ball Z
—John, uh,,,,,,should still write this
Cool How A Bug’s Life Was Just The Seven Samurai With Bugs LMAO
—to be fair, this has been covered
Get High and Pretend Alice In Wonderland Was a Good Movie Day!
—do it, come on, you’ve got the time
Hordak Is Hot
—Rebecca Long was ready to force us all to confront uncomfortable truths
How Much Time in an Animator’s Life Is Spent Animating, Charted
—this would still be a good chart, but we never really had the resources for this kind of research
How The Great Mouse Detective Sleuthed Out Disney’s Secret Sauce
—hint: it wasn’t Szechuan Sauce
How the Horse Episode From Adventure Time Is Basically a Classic Short
—due credit to Sarra Sedghi, whose eye was spot-on here
I Demand More Toys!: Are Cartoons for Kids or Consumers?
—a valid question, especially where the ’80s and ’90s are concerned
Marlon Brando’s Last Movie Is an Unreleased, Probably Bad, Hand-Drawn Cartoon
—look, it looks bad, but Eric never watched it, so he never blogged it
MusaSHIT! A History of Glorifying Bushido In Anime
—a stroke of genius from Kevin Conway that required way too much work
Podcasts You Cartoon Nerds Should Be Listening To
—most of them, shockingly, are quite bad, but not this one
The Superbook Reboot Puts a Toony Flourish On Christian Imperialism
—uh, like…
The Most Unspeakably Evil Samurai Jack + Aku Feature in the Universe!
—OK, so this one actually merits earnest explanation. This is an idea for a piece that Eric and John wanted to co-write for a website like the AV Club or Vulture or one of the other large pop-culture sites out there that were actually covering cartoons vaguely seriously in 2015. We had a reporting plan and a few sources and everything, outlining who we’d talk to and how to create, like, a huge oral history–style take on the show. When we couldn’t get it assigned, we realized that we needed to start our own site to publish stories like it. We wound up covering Samurai Jack often here at the Dot and Line, but we never did this story in the form we wanted. Still, it’s basically one of the factors that launched the site and cemented our editorial partnership on this project, while ALSO making us realize how interconnected all the artistry above and below the line is for the animation medium. Good shit.
The Anime Scores and Soundtracks That Launched New Genres Unto Themselves
—honestly, we just wanted an excuse to write about Nujabes
The Case for Animations: The Golden Age of Animation Has Been Here for 30 Years and You Idiots Missed It
—this ain’t it, chief!
The Dadtagonist: An Animation Analysis
—neither of us are sure where Eric was going with this except that alcohol and specifically Clay Puppington of Moral Orel fame were involved
The Hunchback of Notre Dame is Not a Kid’s Movie
—Charlotte Dow was right!
The Little Mermaid Before Disney
—the one to check out is the Russian one from 1960, and seriously. why didn’t we bloody write about this!?
There Was a Real Hajime Saitō. His Name Was Hajime Saitō.
—Eric and our beloved Wyatt Erchak making John finally watch Rurouni Kenshin yielded lots of great material
There Was a Real Oskar Kokoshka. His Name Was Oskar Kokoschka.
-—this is what we call mapping out the six seasons before the first one airs
The Sublime Sweetness of Pingu, Everyone’s Favorite Stop-Motion Show About a Penguin
—watch and heal
This Is How We Get to Space: Cartoons
—Eric fully cops to being out of his gourd when he wrote these words down, cackling as he did so
Was Johnny Bravo Avant-Garde? An Investigation
—yes
Why Stop Motion is the Perfect Animation Style for Kids’ Horror
—Gravity Falls and Marley Crusch were right
Why the DCAU/Cadmus Arc Is Great
—this was Eric’s white whale, and it ate him
Was Steven Universe Born of Amethyst: Princess of Gemworld?
—can someone actually write this one, please?
WTF is The World of David the Gnome, and Why? An Investigation
—WTF indeed?
Yes, That’s Really New York City In “Garbage In, Garbage Out,” from Aaahh!!! Real Monsters
—Deirdre Coyle insisted that Rudy Giuliani was in this episode, even though he was not Juuling
Which Homunculus Am I, Anyway?: An FMAB Quiz
—an idea aborted from our Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood package because John was too lazy to deal with it
You Can Thank Steven Universe for Bisexual Lighting
—and you should, too
Fuck the Smurfs!
—it’s Eric’s opinion and he stands by it
Thanks for reading The Dot and Line, where we’ve written about animation of all kinds for more than four years. We’ll miss you! If you’ll miss us too, show us some love on Twitter and show our writers the money on GoFundMe. Read our goodbyes here: That’s All, Folks!
