Welcome to Saturday Morning Cartoons, a segment where four artists take turns delighting you with their whimsy, facts and punchlines on Saturday mornings! Our esteemed cartoon critters are Cameron Glavin, Anna Bongiovanni, Megan Praz and Yao Xiao. Today’s cartoon is by Megan!
Megan Prazenica is an animator/artist from Pittsburgh, PA. She now lives LA and life has been interesting ever since. When Megan isn't making art comics, or video games, she can be found wrecking havoc on the ultimate frisbee field as her alter-ego, "Bacon." Catch up with her on her website, her tumblr or tweet @MeganPraz.
Megan has written 42 articles for us.
I would give my past self stock tips…
1999 me would be mightily confused for about 10 minutes, and ultimately be more surprised about the existence of time travel than the fact I’m a woman ;)
1999 me would probably be more excited about that than the time travel.
This is great! If it were me, id have brought back Steven universe :)
OK, I will admit now, that that strip actually made me think quite a bit… specifically, I started to wonder wheter or not 1999 Megan would have the means to read those discs. Since at that specific year I was like 6, finding out required some research. The results were unfortunately inconclusive ( partly because some of this info is suprisingly hard to find, and partly because I have no intention of spending several hours looking for it :P ).
Firstly, the hardware aspect. Suprisingly, I failed to find any information on when did the DVD drives became available. What I did find is that the first DVD players appeard in 1996 in Japan, while their US debut was in 1997. Initially extremely expensive ( going for over 1000$ ) the price rapidly decreased to about 100$ around the end of 2000. Even if we were to assume that dvd drives popped up at the same time, assuming that 99!Megan’s computer isn’t brand new, it would probably be pretty costly for her to have one installed. “Probably”, since, as I have mentioned, I failed to find much about early DVD drives specifically, so it’s technically possible for them to have appeared way earlier, and at much lower prices, than DVD players. Perhaps someone who wasn’t a preschooler at the time may iluminate the issue :P
The second potential issue is the software used. Generally, the DVD movies are saved in .vob files, so it’s reasonable to assume that OitNB would be as well. The last few formats used for streaming by netflix wre all created later that the action of the strip (VC-1 and h.264 in 2003), but I doubt they would use those on DVDs meant for DVD players. Once again, I have failed to find any information about origins of vob format (I’m starting to notice a pattern here). That said, it would be reasonable to assume, that the format predates the devices that use it, namely the DVD players, which, were it true, would mean that vobs were created before 1997. So, suprisingly ( 16 years is like several eras in computer science), the software probably would not be a problem.
So yeah. 15 seconds of reading the strip, an hour of research, and I don’t really have much to show for it. Sounds like a time well spent!
This is brilliant how you’ve sewn potential gaps in the seams of the space time continuum between 1999 and 2015 all for the best reasons too!! (AS, pushing the frontiers of quantum physics since… 2009)
Oh god what a dick not proofreading. It said “gaps in the seams” and should be “seams in the gaps” – I’ll let myself out.
Hello! I edit Saturday Morning Cartoons and when I read this strip, I also researched this. I came to the conclusion that she actually would be able to watch the DVDs, but she probably would have had to install the DVD player in her computer herself if it wasn’t brand new. Given the level of nerd we all are here in the Geekery vertical, I figured she probably did that. As for the software aspect, old DVD players still play new DVDs. So I’m also going to say yes on that one. But AV isn’t my strong suit, so other people may prove me wrong!
Y’know, I really need to sit down and watch OitNB one of these days. People keep recommending it to me, and I’ve just never gotten around to it.
2015Megan, bless you.
But would it have really killed you to grab the last three seasons of Buffy and the last season of Xena while you were at it?
Just Imagine!
If I could travel back to 1999me, I would tell myself that Ellen turned out to be a superstar, that Gillian Anderson dates women, as well, and I would give myself, little old me, who was SO hung up on Jadzia Dax, a big old hug.
Then I’d probably shove a pile of South of Nowhere CDs, the Person of Interest collection and The 100 into my arms and an ereader with ALL of the Harry Potter books!
Also, I’d tell myself to enjoy eating more and not worry about my weight so much.
Oh, and that I should totally talk to the girl I’m going to crush on in college, because she really is bi.
But honestly, it’ll mostly just be hugs.
Thank God for growing up.
Such a great comic! And it definitely made me think … I would’ve been a much happier kid if I’d known about being bi, poly and non-binary, so I’d probably give my younger self some literature on that.
Oh, the books I would bring back if I could…No issues with technology there.
I’d probably just say,
You’ll find love, darling,
don’t worry.
Would those dragon-y things from Doctor Who show up if I gave little me hug? She really needed one I promise.
1999 was the beginning of NEW bad things so I don’t think saying “It gets better” would cut it without some hugging.
This is awesome and I think 1999 me would have also reacted with similar disinterest in TV and also terror of getting in trouble b/c how would I have explained to my parents where I got DVDs??