Let me tell you about... Norm the Genie

Spoiler: why i made this weird-ass thread in the first place

so, in the validation thread, i mentioned how i'd like to be able to sperg about norm the genie to people and how i didn't feel like i was able to do often. then, @albedo suggested that i create a norm the genie thread on kintsugi. which, while probably unlikely to find people that knew about him (other than, well, @Deresto), could at least find people who would be willing to check him out. which initially was a suggestion i worried about but then i was like, "fuck it! people say it'd be cool and maybe it'd make me feel better."

and i'm explaining this 'cause, haha, i need validation and i want you to understand why i made this thread. like, "why the fuck is this thing that barely anyone knows about taking up forum space on here?"

now, where should i start...

norm the genie is a minor, reoccurring villain from the fairly oddparents, a kids' cartoon about timmy turner, a boy with 2+ fairy godparents(1) who grant his wishes - provided that they adhere to da rules. genies, however, don't have to go by that rulebook. the wishes they grant are rule-free.

unfortunately, for the genies, however, they are confined by something even worse than da rules. they have to grant three wishes to everyone who rubs their lamp. after their master has their three wishes, they have to return to the lamp - and stay there till the next person rubs it. which norm the genie is pissed about. 'cause, well, it's basically slavery.

Spoiler: genie meanie minie moe (first norm ep)

so, naturally, he tries to find a way to escape his lamp. and when not doing that, mess up the wishes his masters make. which is what brings him into conflict with timmy turner in genie meanie minie moe, his first ever episode. mostly 'cause his escape-the-lamp plan involved doing a bad thing to timmy turner's fairies. and yeah, timmy defeated him 'cause ~hero~ and ~villian~ on a kids' show, that's usually how it goes, you know...

Spoiler: back to the norm (second norm ep)

anyway, after that, in back to the norm, his lamp ended up in the hands of timmy's fairy hunting teacher, denzel crocker. that excited norm, since they both were timmy's enemies, though norm cared more about revenge and crocker cared more about catching timmy's fairies. anyway, crocker's wishes were outrageous and useless, when it came to getting revenge and catching timmy's fairies. which norm pointed out a lot. didn't stop crocker from making them, though. finally, norm found out a way to leave crocker and get timmy's help, with which he got revenge on crocker for refusing to listen to him.

haha, yeah, i ship norm/crocker a lot, though from that summary, you probably couldn't tell, like, at all. actually, i ship norm the genie with pretty much everyone, but i have two otps: norm/crocker and norm the genie/jorgen von strangle. the latter, which i have a very sentimental reason for.

Spoiler: fairy idol (the third norm ep)

so, where were we? oh, yes, fairy idol. in which norm the genie, reading da rules, discovers that if (a) fairy godparent(s) quits, any magical creature can replace them - provided that they win a singing contest, which is basically a parody of american idol. so, norm, by manipulating chester mcbadbat, one of timmy's friends, into making certain wishes, in order to get timmy's fairies to quit. timmy turner's fairies quit.

the singing contest, fairy idol, happens. norm wins, by cheating a bit, and becomes chester's fairy godparent. chester makes ridiculously useless wishes in an attempt to help the world. then, he sees timmy is sad and gives norm to timmy. norm offers to give timmy his fairies back if timmy sets him properly free. timmy does not take the deal, and instead makes a counter-offer that requires norm to be chester's godparent again and give him his fairies back. norm doesn't take that offer, though he pretends to. instead, he quits, which allows chester to wish him back into his lamp and unwish his wishes. timmy gets his fairies back as a result of that. and norm, defeated, suffers a rather embarrassing fate.

and that's his last episode. unless season 10 or a season after that brings him back.

so, any questions, guys?

-

1. timmy turner started with cosmo and wanda, a married pair of fairy godparents. then in season 6, they had a baby named poof. later in season 9, timmy and his fairies adopted a fairy dog, sparky. the majority of the fandom hates poof and/or sparky, thus 2+, not 4. that and butch hartman might decide to give timmy another magical creature later - he likes adding characters to fairly oddparents, even when the old characters are barely used.

 

... interesting. So are 'da rules' intended primarily to protect the wishmaker, or to protect the world itself from Crazy Wish-Related Disruption?

It is interesting that what's basically a humorous kids' show ends up getting into pretty dark social issues. :\ I mean, they're played for humor, but... it's reasonable and sympathetic that someone who's trapped in a lamp and forced to obey wishes would be capricious and trying to escape.

Why Jorgen Von Strangle? Crocker makes sense, since they're similarly obsessive and interact on-screen, but I'm curious about the sentimental reason there.

 

@albedo i dunno. i think a bit of both. plus a bit of jorgen just having whims and putting them in there 'cause he likes having power. like, some of da rules only make sense as that last thing.

yep
and as you said, with the humourous part, the writers and such do seem rather tone-deaf when it comes to how dark it really is
like they sure imply a lot of dark stuff... then the narrative is, like, "he's the villain! screw him, anyway!"
in one fairy idol scene, cosmo and wanda say he's treating them "like slaves" and that's clearly shown to be a bad thing but... norm the genie implies the very same thing about how people treat him and the narrative is like, "but norm deserves it... he's an evil genie and there's nothing wrong with letting them use him as they will"

and another interesting thing about that is how norm the genie seems very... poc, specifically middle-eastern coded
i mean, if you look at some of the screenshots on the wiki, you might get what i mean
and i feel awkward about it, with tumblr and being a white person, but yeah... he does and it's interesting
especially since the other two especially discriminated against species in the show, the pixies and anti-fairies, are whiter (though there is a clearly white genie in the show, she just doesn't really do anything [goddamn that sounded 2000s fandom misogynic the way i worded it but trust me, look at Genies on the wiki and you'll see exactly what i mean])

let me introduce you to three wishes (tw: dubcon, noncon, bashing of one female character, surprisingly romantic despite those warnings, trust me tumblr would hate this fic but i love it and think the characterization and stuff makes sense [other than the treatment of the tooth fairy]), the fic that introduced me to slash and got me loving it
if it wasn't for dagger, the author of this fic, heck, i mightn't have discovered kintsugi even (in a very indirect sense)
and my crush on her was important when it came to realizing i was queer
like this fic was damn formative for me
damn formative
most formative thing ever, other than norm the genie himself, of course

also norm does interact with jorgen on screen in fairy idol, though the ep aired after the fic was written /spergy nitpick

man, will anyone actually read this?

 

(Yes, just heading to work so I'll be a little slow.)

 

wasn't even talking about that in particular, more just a general worry, but thanks! 'cause it does feel almost unbelievable that people are reading this at all and like it could collapse at any moment.

 

Ah, yes. Now I remember Jorgen's control issues. Hm.

Yeah, I can definitely see where fic and headcanon would play a big role there - it brings up interesting things and then never addresses them! And wow, how has Tumblr not had a field day with 'institutionalized slavery of POC'? :P That is really interesting.

At work, as mentioned, so no reading of nsfw stuff here, but later.

 

@albedo
yep. like fop has a lot of potential but... it just drops it. like, a lot of the time. not just here. literally everywhere. like, the pixies are a fascinating species, for instance. they think "boring" (which manifests as a grey businessman aesthetic + rapping, plus the obsession with child safety and tweeness and education at flappy bob's learnatorium [which may or not count 'cause it comes off as different than the Pixie aesthetic, mentioned 'cause highly influenced by the pixies) is fun and want everyone else to think that. and the fairies hate them. and like, it's assumed that it's biological, in their inherent natures or something, generally, though maybe... cultural, who knows? and it's just not explored - pixies are pixies and that's that.

and anti-fairies are really great too. like, the opposites of fairies, imprisoned 'cause of a compulsion to cause bad luck and 'cause for fairies, Literally The Opposite Of My Kind = Bad to them. and also - anti-fairies mean canon Seelie and Unseelie Courts. and i don't even know if that's deliberate or a happy coincidence!

also, most fop characters ping as some kind of brainweird to me. some, like crocker are canonically brainweird (though i can't get a handle on which kind, since magic was involved that question might be irrelevant, though). timmy might be canon adhd. i ping norm the genie as (mild?) adhd and i don't know quite why - it doesn't seem necessary to explain him but i can't stop myself from it and i started before disability headcanons became popular so i wasn't following a trend.

and i think it hasn't had a field day with it 'cause it mostly doesn't take fop seriously as a fandom. instead, it's usually just 'this show i watched as a kid and am now Nostalgic about' (it's still fucking airing, folks!) and so... people tend to just repeat their fave quotes and pictures on the tags (screenshots and stolen art), as well as liberally stealing people's gifs. and posting about the uncanonical things they'd do if they had fairies + "why don't i have fairies?"
and "do you remember when?"s.
and very Male Gazey porn things with random woman from the series.
and deliberately edgy pics like Timmy Turner Hardcore, which has been stolen so many times, no one even knows who originally made it.
and norm the genie's most famous line on tumblr is the one about him wanting to destroy Canada - which after genie meanie minie moe, was something he never brought up again - and seems to invite the types of interpretations of him i hate the most. least fave norm the genie line ever and not 'cause i live in Canada - though i live there. (goddammit do i sound like cronusamphoraa here? like, "i'll liberally ignore and hate this line from my fave 'cause they're my fave and it doesn't fit the image i have in my head of them, even though everyone else likes it the best." just guh... )

besides, i've avoided making big posts about it on tumblr 'cause i know how far it could be taken if tumblr woke up and started considering fop more seriously. like, discussion? i don't think I'd get discussion there.

i get that. heck, i wasn't even expecting people to read it, no matter what i thought of it, considering how triggery and Problematic it has the potential to be/actually is/i dunno.

 

@unknownanonymous Jeez, that's frustrating. :P Good fodder for fanfic, anyway!

The question about Seelie/Unseelie courts, I guess: Does that make Jorgen Oberon?

Huh. Brainweird character headcanons are interesting; kids' works in general tend to play very much to 'lol random', because that's the developmental point that the target audience is at, but... huh. I hadn't considered that at all, before; I was only looking at it from a literary/target audience perspective, rather than an in-universe one.

Yeah, Tumblr's not great with actual cogent discussion, sadly. :P And oh my god, why does everyone have to Male Gaze everything. Nngh. Something about that particular kind of objectification tends to creep me out.

Nah, you don't sound like caa to me. His trouble is that he ignores a major/defining character trait, reverses it, and then yells at anyone who disagrees with him for being Problematic and abusive. The ICness of characters isn't the issue, nor is the 'making villainous characters more sympathetic' - it's that he's a jerk to everyone. But even outside of that, this is a single line, and in a humorous show like this, it could easily be parsed as a joke or as a fleeting whim rather than a defining obsession. You're not saying that Norm isn't a villain, and you're not saying that he hasn't done jerkish things, you just don't like that one piece of characterization. No big deal. That's what fanworks are for, anyway - making stories that are more like the stories you want to see and read.

Thankfully, from what you've said, that doesn't sound triggery to me. I'm just running slow, like I said. I've been going at least partially nonverbal pretty much every afternoon this week, for work reasons, which means I'm having a really hard time reading or responding to anything long. Sperg topics are easier, as always, but. Yep. Bleeeeh.

 

@albedo yep.

and jorgen oberon? funnily enough, nope. oberon is an actual canon character. from one of the video games, which might him questionably canon but still, canon enough that jorgen is not oberon.

yeah, i definitely know that's a thing. though it does seem more like brainweirds or quirks than pure randomness. like, jorgen is consistent in being really invested in enforcing da rules, crocker is canonically brainweird and focused on fairies, cosmo being an idiot is very important to his characterization, timmy's short attention span has been mentioned in many episodes, norm the genie is one of the least random characters in the show (adhd headcanon was created as a result of very subtle things he does, not blatant randomness or whatever) and so on...

also, i have a feeling that quite a few of the characters would have stuff that they'd wanna post on the is it abuse forum. so like, brainweird isn't even the only thing in this vein i'm going in.

and goes onto another similar thing: trans headcanoning... one thing i headcanon in this category (like, in a "IT'S SO FUCKING OBVIOUS! WHY DON'T YOU GUYS GET IT?!" way) is that magical creatures don't need hormones and/or surgery to transition, since they are essentially reality-warpers and da rules - and all the other confines on magic - have been shown not to limit that kind of stuff. so they'd view the current human tech used for transitioning, well, the way modern day people view bloodletting or something. like, they would not want to use anything like human tech, since they can do it better and quicker with magic. i have no idea how that would affect what they think of trans people, though. and it makes me wonder if their concept of 'trans' would be anything like the human concept of trans.

which makes headcanoning magical characters as trans hard.

i don't get creeped out, really. i'm just like, "why are the proportions all fucked up? why do your choices of people seem so random? why are your plots (when they exist) so underdeveloped? why don't you guys care about fop things that aren't the women you wanna bone? why? why does it seem like you put barely any thought into it?"

thank god!
when i was, like, 12 and on tvtropes, i did say norm wasn't a villain and didn't do jerkish things. but luckily, i grew out of that and wasn't a jerk towards the people who disagreed with me. still, it is very easy for me to pick up on the superficial traits of caa, like his character interpretations, more than it is to pick up on the mentality that makes it a problem. i mean, i know what it is but... CONSENT and pumpkin spice lattes are more memorable, for some reason. more memetic, basically.

 

My memories of Fairly Odd Parents mostly consist of how much I hated Timmy for never making proper use of practically-unlimited fairy magic, but I remember liking Norm. (And the pixies. The pixies were great! Like if the Auditors had a sense of humour. ...I really love magical bureaucracies to a quite ridiculous extent, okay.)

I have a soft spot for the jerkass genie trope, and my sympathies are always with the genie because why the hell would I not sympathise with the enslaved party. Even if they're being an asshole, I think it's understandable to want to ruin as many things as possible in that situation just so you can pretend you have at least a little power - basically, "I wish you free" should be the bare minimum anybody does for a genie.
Yet the jerkass-genie story always tends to be "oh no this genie keeps breaking my wishes and here i am completely blameless for everything, how dreadful" and usually treats reconfinement to the lamp as reasonable comeuppance because I guess slavery is totally okay if the person you're doing it to is a dick? basically what the fuck.

The Norm-and-Crocker episode was p. hilarious, though. I do love the dynamic of "Sensible Guy tries to explain to Batshit Guy why his plan is terrible and will fails, gets dragged into terrible failure shenanigans anyway".

(...I'd probably find that fic far less worrying if I knew how much of it was intended to be worrying. I don't think Stockholm sets in that quick? Don't really recall. Tooth Fairy was great, though. You go, Tooth Fairy! You leave the hell out of that abusive creep! Take over the world while you're at it! What a great character arc that was.)

 

@sicknastyspades you've basically summed up my feelings on that trope, yeah. :D like, timmy's supposed to be the good guy and he's doing this shit?

(uh, i'd say, "not much." based on what I've picked up from talking to dagger and reading the author notes when the thing was on affn [adultfanfiction], she was going for norm falling in love, not getting stockholm syndrome. and she genuinely hated the tooth fairy back when she wrote it, so the tooth fairy taking over the world thing was basically meant to be really creative character bashing, not the tooth fairy leaving an abusive guy.

yeah... and i love that fic, even knowing that stuff. and interpret it more in light of the author's intent than anything, haha.)

 

I admittedly don't have much to add to this discussion itself, but can I just say that it's kind of a relief to know I'm not the only one here who spergs out over specific characters? Like, take me and the Aries trolls, for instance--granted, Aradia is a pretty major character, but the Handmaid and Damara are both only major in the had-an-impact-on-the-plot sense, and Damara is probably mostly a joke character anyway. And yet I get so goddamn emotional over them and have this real fixation on them. I guess it's like my Special Interests are tiered, in a way? Like, my main SI is cartoons and comics, with Homestuck being a subcategory and the Megidos being a sub-subcategory and all of them being of equal importance. *shrug*

Sorry if I'm hijacking, I'm just excited that there's someone else who fixates on specific characters the way I do. <3

 

@Acey it's cool. after all, your comment does bump my thread, haha.

and yeah, i feel the tiers thing. for me, it's like norm the genie > fairly oddparents > sci-fi/fantasy in general. something like that, anyway.

also, honestly, if you think of anything at related to this discussion, just say it here, even if you don't think it's much or that great. i welcome new perspectives on this stuff and opportunities to sperg on it. yeah...

 

Y'know, I might have to rewatch the show now. It was a favorite of mine as a kid, and it'd be interesting to rewatch it from an adult perspective. And Norm definitely seems like a more interesting character than I ever gave him credit for!

 

@Acey i'm glad my thread perked your interest in him. :D

and yeah, fop is an easy show to write off, as i discussed back up thread with @albedo, re: the fop tags on tumblr. like, people nowadays mostly are turning it into an icon of 90s kid nostalgia (the original fop oh yeah shorts were aired in 1998 but the actual show started in 2001 and the actual show is usually what they were talking about, so... they should really get their time periods right), focusing on how they think it has went downhill in recent seasons, creating edgy things for edginess' sake (Timmy Turner Hardcore, timmy wishes for 9/11, for example), and drawing porn of arbitrary female characters with really bad anatomy and an impression of "not much thought went into anything but causing boners" (though it is hard to believe that Male Gazey porn turns anyone on).

 

Never watched many cartoons as a kid, but I feel like this applies to a lot of the shows I saw. I mean, I was sort of amazed when Avatar: The Last Airbender came out because - worldbuilding? over-arching plot? character development that's not just tied in with single episode of moralising about a single topic like bullying or lying? in a cartoon for kids? (Actually, I remember a few others that were like that ... Xiaolin Showdown had an over-arching plot. So did Teen Titans. But neither to the extent that ATLA did, I think.)

So I'm wondering, if you were going to rewrite FOP and turn the potential into reality, what would that look like?

 

@Elaienar now that's a tricky, tricky question!

i mean, i know i'd put more norm the genie in there, 'cause well, i'm me. and hmmm, i'd try to eliminate all the little - and not so little - inconsistencies and try to make them make sense together, be less inconsistent. norm the genie's annoying, fucking "destroy canada" line that tumblr loves would probably have to go, 'cause it seems to get in the way of people understanding him as something other than a 2D villain and it never really matters, anyway (i mean, in conjunction with his lamp being sent to crocker's uncle albert in canada, it is a bit funny and kinda matters, but...). and yeah, i'd just try to make him being sympathetic into a thing that's deliberately conveyed by the narrative, instead of an interpretation that results from the writers using tropes in a tone-deaf way.

the decline of the cosmo/wanda romance, in the seasons after season 4, would either:
a) not happen
b) be portrayed with more depth and as an actual story arc, not a source of jokes that everyone hates

let sleeper dogs lie would burn! or maybe not burn, exactly, even though it's the only fop episode i've ever outright hated. (fop has 152 eps and most of the fandom has a hate-on for the seasons past the fourth - or the sixth - one, so that says something about me, i think.) anyway, let sleeper dogs lie would get a really big overhaul. after all, i figure the premise could be good if actually handled by someone who remembered the stuff from the previous seasons.

anti-cosmo and all the other anti-fairies would not vanish soon after the introduction of foop, or if they did, i'd work in a reason why.

those are the things that immediately come to mind, anyway!

 

I watched Fairly Odd Parents when I was a kid, and eventually I suppose I just grew out of it. Towards when I stopped watching it, Timmy just seemed a whiny annoying baby, wishing for things that I knew wouldn't end well.

I would love some fairy godparents of my own though xD

 

@Emma there are definitely times when i'm like, "this is gonna end badly," haha

and yeah having fairies would be awesome

 

Yep, just slow. :) Thanks for the ping.

Huh. Neat that they actually brought in the Shakespearean mythos, I wasn't expecting them to actually get into that. And it's rather amusingly reminiscent of actual Britain for the rulers to be figureheads.

Oh, yeah. That definitely sounds like brainweirds, above and beyond the level of humor, in-universe. How is Crocker canonically brainweird? I don't recall; it's been a long while.

Yeah, seems likely that reality warpers would be able to decide how they look/feel. Unless they were prevented from transitioning by social pressure, instead of actual logistics, at least when they were younger. E.g., parent goes 'MY BEAUTIFUL LITTLE GIRL' and dude-child feels unable to transition because it will be Disappointing them? That's reflecting another aspect of rl transition that really doesn't get a ton of press, that social pressure can be as real as the actual logistics of money and doctors.

Yeah, sensible enough. Ugh, male gazey stuff.

That's just how twelve-year-olds are, they haven't grown into their empathy yet. Totally normal; that's why so many annoying people on Tumblr are so young. You're doing just fine.