The 1980s Saturday morning cartoonathon always began early in the morning for me, starting with the Smurfs. They are a very early childhood nostalgia, because as I grew a little older, they started adding new characters and became increasingly annoying at around the same time I started seeing the value of sleeping in. Coincidence? Who can say.

Every once in a while I take in some old smurf viewing (never the modern day movies, obviously) and am always caught off guard by how much they seem to swear just because they insert the word “smurf” in specific ways. What else could “smurf off” mean? Also smurfberries were a very fine drug and also I saw one where a white powder made them all act in risky behaviors. But this post isn’t about that.

I dreamed up a far better version of the Smurfs this morning where Gargamel was not the problematic villain who was always trying to turn the smurfs into gold sometimes, and other times just wanted to eat them. Instead, we have a whole series of cartoons, in my mind, where Garbomel stays in her castle, isolated, sorrowful. She is constantly hounded and harassed by her many fans, the tiny blue smurfs, who are in love with her mystery and beauty. She wishes to be left alone, but then there would be no plot.

Azrael still exists, completely unchanged.