Animated Street Rats

He was a boisterous, pallid, nimble, wide-awake, roguish urchin, who looked both lively and sickly. He would come and go, sing, play pitch and toss, scrape the gutters, steal a little, but he did it cheerfully, like the cats and the sparrows, laughed when people called him a brat, and got angry when they called him a guttersnipe. He had no shelter, no food, no fire, no love, but he was lighthearted because he was free. ~ Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

This is my first collage made using pictures from different shows and movies. The screenshots are from Liberty's Kids, Aladdin (Walt Disney Company), Les Misérables: Shoujo Cosette (World Masterpiece Theater), and Avatar: The Legend of Korra (Nickelodeon).

I’m not endorsing or advocating this as a character archetype, I’m just analyzing and pointing out similarities in fictional characters. They aren’t all or any orphans (if they were, I would have included Cosette, the Freedom Fighters, and the Lost Boys.) Some, like the Thénardier children, have parents who they’ve been separated from, either by circumstance or by choice. They live in urban environments, like Philadelphia, Agrabah, Paris, or Republic City.

Check out this video of a song cut from Aladdin [link]