Getting Scared Off Of Good Stories

Welcome to the cKotch.Com blog. I’m Christopher Kotcher, and these are some moments which scared me off of good stories.

Setting the Scene

October has begun. Halloween approaches. Time to finally make some of the spookier posts I have been waiting a year for.

Since my blog started in December last year, this will be my first big batch of Halloween content, and I am ready to get writing.

I have decided to start the festivities with a look into three experiences from growing up. Three times where something spooky scared me off of some good stories for years to come.

For this post, I will focus on cartoon episodes that scared me as a kid. Cartoons were some of my first exposure to storytelling after all.

I will explain the episodes which scared me along with the effects they had on me. Then I will share how the episodes affected my wider experience with their related series.

Maybe see how all that shapes the way these works inspire me today.

Running from Ramses

Anyone who grew up watching Courage the Cowardly Dog will already know this episode right away.

“King Ramses’ Curse” was the kind of tale which could fuel nightmares for years. The kind that makes you run to the TV and turn it off.

On paper, the episode seems normal.

Something swarms some grave robbers in the opening scene. The show’s starring canine Courage then digs up an ancient slab outside his owners’ farmhouse in Nowhere, Kansas. A museum would like the slab to be donated to them.

Courage’s farmer owner Eustace refuses despite his wife Muriel’s feelings. Eustace wants to get rich off the slab. He could get even get new lawn chairs with that kind of money!

So, where does the sheer, unrelenting horror seep in?

Well, that would come with the curse on the slab. The man in gauze himself, King Ramses, delivers three plagues to whoever keeps the slab from him.

You have your standard plagues here. Locust swarms, flooding, annoying record players.

Courage saves his family from everything, and Eustace gets his just deserts for hording ancient treasures and risking his family’s lives.

So, what exactly scared me so much?

That would be Ramses himself.

Showrunners wanted Ramses to look out of place. Something that does not belong in Courage’s hand-drawn world. Makes sense considering he is a vengeful spirit.

Ramses is made with primitive computer graphics. His movements are purposely stilted to show he should not be in Courage’s world.

Seeing it now, Ramses is probably one of Courage’s most creative monster designs.

As a kid? Cartoons can seem like real worlds to you. Seeing something so janky and out of place sends shivers down your spine. You feel something horrible is infiltrating your world.

I could never get through the full episode.

Every time Ramses showed his poorly rendered face, I would turn off the TV and wait eleven minutes for something else to come on.

I was already attached to Courage as a show at this point. I still saw most episodes and handled a few lighter scares. Found a few touching stories of abused rabbits running to freedom and star-making squids falling to Earth.

Still, I let Ramses scare me out of one of the most creative episodes of the show. Returning to the episodes years later, I found smart jokes and clever gags. Some of them even came from Ramses himself.

Something to Do with Bug Robots

Now we get to the stuff that made me quit whole series for years to come. Here is the episode which made me avoid anything to do with Disney’s Aladdin.

Or, rather, here is the character which did that.

My go-to Disney movies growing up were Tarzan and Hercules. My main exposure to Aladdin was its animated series.

I remember watching a few episodes here and there. I probably thought it was pretty good.

Then there came an episode with some weird scientist guy. He had an army of robot bugs.

I can barely remember what scared me so much from the episode. Was it the inventor or his machines? I just remember never wanting to watch Aladdin again.

Any time I heard the show’s theme song after that I would run to change the channel. I did not want to risk seeking the bug robot guy again.

I tried looking up some details on what could have happened in this episode. What scared me so much.

Unfortunately, the inventor seems to have been one of Aladdin’s most common foes.

I guess the guy’s name is Mechanicles. He is supposed to be an arrogant Greek inventor trying to conquer the world. Starting with Agrabah rather than Greece for some reason?

Honestly, his episode descriptions sound so similar, it could have been any one of them which scared me off.

For years, my main exposure to Aladdin would be a crossover episode on Hercules’ animated series. I felt fine watching that since Hades and Jafar were the villains instead of Mechanicles.

Although, I suppose it is somewhat ironic that the Greek Mechanicles was not the villain of that crossover. Guy never even appeared once with Hercules.

Either way, I also ran into Aladdin in the Kingdom Heart video games. Agrabah was always one of the early Disney worlds you could explore.

Silicon Screams: Another Robotic Scare

Here we have our last episode of the day. This is the episode which scare me off of Batman for years. This is “His Silicon Soul.”

The episode is a sequel to a previous episode in the classic Batman: The Animated Series. It was also one of the first episodes I saw of the show.

In the earlier episode, Batman had defeated an evil supercomputer called H.A.R.D.A.C. The machine had wanted to replace all humanity with robotic duplicants. Fellow machines perfectly following the computer’s directives.

In “His Silicon Soul,” criminals accidentally activate a Batman duplicant made in H.A.R.D.A.C.’s final moments.

Like all duplicants, this one is programmed with a perfect match of the original human’s personality. But the late activation also leaves duplicant Batman confused.

Duplicant Batman struggles with his existence. He begs to be the real Batman trapped in a robot body.

That gets disproven when the real Batman ambushes him.

At this point, what remains of H.A.R.D.A.C. overtakes the duplicant. And this is what terrified me as a kid.

This is where the duplicant tears its head open to reveal robotics. This is where the duplicant’s broken body reveals exposed, crackling circuitry.

I could not take the sight of that ugly machinery poking out of otherwise human skin.

I left the episode. Left it before the robot could turn itself around. Left before it chose to be a good Batman and sacrifice itself to destroy H.A.R.D.A.C. forever.

That was a great story with a somber end. Something to make you think about humanity’s beginning and end.

And I refused to watch it. I refused to watch it for years. I refused to watch any Batman story. I feared they would all be as terrifying as “His Silicon Soul.”

My only exposure to the character was in appearances on other DC shows. Superman, Static Shock, Justice League. Just not his own shows.

Years later, I took a chance to watch Batman: The Animated Series. I would relate more to the audience here, but that experience honestly deserves its own post.

For now, I will say I grew to love the series because nearly every episode was as deep and as human as “His Silicon Soul.”

And That Would Be All

There you have it. Three episodes which horrified a younger me and scared me off of good stories for years.

If I could choose any lesson for you to learn here, I would suggest the importance of returning to our early fears. Especially the fictional ones.

The fact a story could scare you so much speaks to some kind of power in it. Maybe that something reveal something important upon returning to it.

Courage and King Ramses gave some good laughs and great examples of comedic writing. Batman led me to examine deep stories of human nature.

I have not really returned to Aladdin in the same way, but I am sure it could lead to something good too.

All this being said though, I have to admit I have never been one for horror. I wonder how I can align this post’s lessons on fear with my general avoidance of horror entertainment.

I suppose that would be a good cliffhanger for next week’s post.

Kotcher’s Call to Action

If you like my content and wish to see more, then you have a few options.

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