Cartoons aren’t (necessarily, just) for children.
They’re also not people, nor realistic depictions or close analogues of people. Being sexually aroused by them seems to me more comparable to an object fetish.
I think he wanted to see just how out there an older and more mainstream group would respond, and I guess he got his answer. Shit can get echo chambery on the internet, there are boards where if you orgasm at the sight of a Matroitska doll you have the most pedestrian sexuality there.
It reminds me of how a gay guy told me if unsure of how people he was stuck dealing with would take hearing he was gay he would make jokes or hints just to see how they would respond before coming out to them.
(Before someone accuses me of it no I am not equating anything with anything.)
Humans are the intended audience, and it sounds like the intended purpose includes arousing them. That’s gotta count for something.
When Bricker Jr. started watching (and playing) Pokemon, he was six and the Advanced Battle series was just ending in the anime, with Diamond and Pearl coming out roughly contemporaneous with the release of the eponymous NDS games.
So I watched those shows along with him – and added them to our in-home video on demand streaming file server, which means that not only am I hip to the characters and plotlines, but I can tell you episode names.
This is true for earlier shows of interest; I can discuss the mechanic that stops Swiper from swiping stuff and name the various construction machines that are Bob’s companions.
But Pokemon is of special interest, because he became such an aficionado that I helped him set up on-line battles with some Dopers…and got me interested in playing. Inasmuch as Pokemon games tend to have an “A,” and “B,” version (Diamond/Pearl, Black/White, X/Y) he and I have played every game at the same time.
So, yeah. I know my Pokemon these days.
That’s the easy part. Next we have to tackle “horses are for masturbation.”
Thanks, Bricker. I appreciate the explanation (and Drunky’s too). Didn’t think about younger posters, on the one hand, and parents of young children on the other.
Even if I had, I might still have made my post, 'cause damn! When you get balls delivered over the plate like your and Drunky’s posts were, you smack them out of the park.
No worries!
It’s funny, because both my wife and I watched all the shows our son liked, and discussed them with him, from the beginning. So we’ve had some frighteningly in-depth analyses of Thomas the Tank Engine’s life on the Island of Sodor. 
How do you feel about Mega Rayquaza being totally broken for online play?
…and to the extent I can defend my interest in the video game, let me just say: it’s amazingly complex.
The game itself isn’t. It’s very straightforward, no real challenging puzzles or feats. The complexity, and interest, comes with constructing a team of your own Pokemon to battle other real live people who have constructed their own teams.
Pokemon come in various types: fire, water, grass, electric, steel, and so forth. Battles are turn-based series of attacks and defenses. Each Pokemon can learn a set of moves, a set which differs among the Pokemon species. Moves also are typed, and so we get a sort of meta rock/paper/scissors situation: fire moves are highly effective against grass targets and not so effective against water; water is in turn highly effective against fire but vulnerable to electric, and so on. There are eighteen types, hundreds of moves, and tens of thousands of variants in how you can buttress the base strengths of your Pokemon by augmenting its battle ability and defense in various areas.
Mastering this kind of strategy game is not trivial.
I think this is a big part of all of it. Todays under 40 adults grew up on cartoons and video games and so they still enjoy them as adults and many enjoy them with their children. I think that’s great and it can be a bonding experience.
When I grew up my parents thought cartoons were only for kids and then only for Saturday morning and video games pretty much the same. When I babysit my brothers kids were watching cartoons and playing video games because we all enjoy those things.
I think it’s the same with fanfic and especially fanfic porn. When I was in high school I was friends with a girl that wrote Star Trek: TNG fanfic. There was some erotica but it wasn’t hardcore and she had other friends who also did the same with other shows. They liked the shows and they liked writing so it just seemed to me like that was just their hobby. The internet went mainstream while I was in high school and we were discovering we could find other people around the world that shared our likes and we could talk about it. I think that’s when fanfic really took off as people found out they weren’t just the weird kid who liked fanfic and would get made fun of by the other kids but that there were lots of people who also liked it. So my peers, the under 40 adults, don’t think fanfic is a big whoop and can be cool. And everything gets turned into porn because of the internet so fanfic porn is no big whoop either for us.
You also have an excellent working knowledge of the Thomas the Tank Engine corpus, your inability to admit that slavery underpins the economy of Sodor notwithstanding.
Sapient magical ponies aren’t “beasts”, so no.
Is Lois Lane indulging in bestiality if she has sex with Superman? He’s not human either after all.
Wow, you’re right. Hell, might as well get Krypto in on the action.
“Lois! You’re cheating on me! With him!?”
“Don’t look at me like that, Clark! I know what you get up to when you’re alone with those Superman Robots of yours. French maid outfits and maple syrup ring a bell?”
According to Batman (and/or Alan Moore), yes, she is.
I recall that coming up on another forum, when talking about a comic where Swamp Thing junglified Gotham and rampaged through it because the authorities arrested his girlfriend/wife because he’s not human.
Just to be clear, you think this would be less weird if he were writing porn about real ponies?
Precisely the cite I was thinking of.
I admit that I was being a bit flippant with my response. In context of that issue, Batman was speaking ironically, and was clearly arguing for the acceptance–or at least the non-condemnation–of such relationships.
They screwed up. They created a Mega that doesn’t need a stone – so he can Mega-evolve AND carry an item like Life Orb, which boosts his Attack even further. The combination is, as you suggest, so powerful it basically walks over even the most powerful counters. Life Orb Rayquaza smashes everything that isn’t Fairy to pieces, and running V-create he can put a serious hurt on even a Fairy – neutral damage from a 180 base power attack is crazy. And if he gets one turn to set up Swords Dance, then forget about it: he can reliably one-hit or two-hit KO anything in the game.
It’s a shame – I like Rayquaza, but he’s so powerful he’s useless in battle. (This may seem paradoxical to casual readers, but a moment’s thought will reveal that any game that has a single reliable winning strategy for anyone who uses it becomes useless. I alluded above to Pokemon battles being like giant games of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Mega Rayquaza adds Atomic Blaster to the game, and Atomic Blaster beats Rock, Paper, and Scissors every time. Boring game now, isn’t it?)
I absolutely reject that premise! Sir Topham Hatt is a benevolent coordinator, not a slave master. Indeed, the engines appear to be motivated solely by the desire to be Really Useful engines. Thomas sought additional responsibilities of his own accord, and his desire to emulate bigger engines like Gordon – not because of any pernicious influence from Hatt.
Now, it’s true that as a train engine, Thomas is somewhat limited in striking off on his own. But he can – and does – go wherever his whims and the available rails take him. That’s not the behavior of a slave. At best, he’s a duped member of the proletariat, unable to see how his hard work inure to the benefit of the bourgeoisie.