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[lumbledob]

Have you ever seen someone’s idea for a series and thought “boy, good thing you’re not writing for it”

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Activism was about helping people and being devoted to a cause, but because of social media, it’s feels more like a trend and a pissing content to see who can be the bestest most morally superior person ever

It’s gotten to a point where we have strikes and boycotts being announced less than a week before they start with end dates and no clear and established goals/demands

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Can somebody please explain why people keep treating a list of the top 100 ships on AO3 like it’s somehow a litmus test for representation and diversity or something

People are saying it’s misogynistic that most of the fics feature m/m ships, while others are pointing out most of the people making those fics are women themselves

Like, I don’t think someone’s necessarily racist/misogynistic for preferring a certain ship over others (not to say it can’t potentially be a factor), I also don’t get why people act as if creating & consuming fanfiction is somehow a form of activism

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There’s nothing worse than when you find a game that has a great story, characters, and/or overall gameplay, but it also has/revolves around NSFW content so you can’t really talk about it with most other people without getting weird looks

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I like indie media, but NGL, it feels like people put it on a bit too high of a pedestal. I think it’s nice that these people are able to create things with as much freedom as they want, but there’s also some other things I just wanted to get off my mind

When it comes to games, people always talk about how indie games are so much better than AAA ones, when the only indie games they play are the super popular ones (Undertale/Deltarune, Balatro, Celeste, etc). There’s probably a sea of the indie game equivalent of shovelwear out there, but it’s less noticeable because the people making them aren’t as known as the AAA studios.

When it comes to animation, there’s a few things I’ve noticed:

People act as if going indie is somehow some solution to unemployment in the animation industry. People have told them “just go indie”, because studios like Spindlehorse and Glitch Productions became successful, which just reeks of survivorship bias. I’m not even sure how many indie animation studios besides the aforementioned to there are that can sustain themselves without having to rely on crowdfunding.

There’s also the fact that people forget that people aren’t obligated to like or support something just because it’s indie. In addition, people seem to forget that just because some indie studio is in some big corporation doesn’t mean they’re above criticism, let alone unable to do things such as overwork or underpay employees or perform shady practices

Tl;dr: while it’s great that people are able to make indie stuff, it isn’t inherently flawless, not everyone will like it and that’s OK

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Imagine if there was a superhero universe made by someone that took every common superhero media criticism or thing people hate about superhero media, and exaggerated them

-Main team of heroes are a not-too-diverse collective rich white men and government/military employees united in their goal of defending and upholding the status quo (fans in universe think they’re a found family when they’re coworkers at best)

-Costumes have muted colors, with lots of unnecessary lines and panels

-Characters are constantly making jokes and quips, regardless of the situation

-Battles end up doing a ton of damage their surroundings, with a battle with a low-threat villain destroying as much as three city blocks 

-Teenage heroes/sidekicks are straight up child soldiers

-Mutant-like group of people with powers and sometimes nonhuman appearances exist, people in universe think it makes sense to be afraid of them because of their powers, others think that it’s dumb they’re discriminated because some happen to be white (even though it doesn’t matter to the robots sent to hunt them)

-Mutant-likes create their own island where any and all mutant-likes are welcome, including Dr. Holocaust, who’s only allowed on a technicality (he injected himself with mutant-like DNA)

-Characters die and come back to life so often that they’re apathetic at best and nihilistic at worst 

-Multiverse stuff gets introduced, introducing lots of not too original variants a bunch of conflicting, contradictory multiverse rules that are somewhat of pain to keep track of

-Culminates in a big crossover event that ends with the universe resetting, only for the new continuity to either be drastically different or not different enough

It would be like The Boys, but if it were written by a 20-something year old video essay fan instead of Garth Ennis

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Somewhat snarky sounding sarcasm aside I think we need a bit more diversity when it comes to diversity (as in, having characters of certain identities not fall into the same common character traits/arcrtypes)

Also just saying it won't hurt to include more people of color on production especially on the writing/character design team

This new cartoon Tumblr users like is so refreshing and progressive! We’ve got a female protagonist (usually quirky and hyperactive), a black character (usually nerdy and somewhat tokenized), a couple gay characters (usually someone’s dads that serve as ancillary characters) and even a nonbinary character (usually feminine or androgynous, but never masculine)

And who can forget the (usually botched and mishandled) racism/discrimination allegory?

[lumbledob]

This new cartoon Tumblr users like is so refreshing and progressive! We’ve got a female protagonist (usually quirky and hyperactive), a black character (usually nerdy and somewhat tokenized), a couple gay characters (usually someone’s dads that serve as ancillary characters) and even a nonbinary character (usually feminine or androgynous, but never masculine)

And who can forget the (usually botched and mishandled) racism/discrimination allegory?

[lumbledob]

Also not a huge fan of whenever somebody says that they “fixed” something because, chances are, they might’ve ended up doing the equivalent of removing a load-bearing wall to add more space for eyecandy furniture

Everyone talks about how the fans always do better than the original (ie, RWBY, Miraculous Ladybug) but not how they could do so much worse (Sonic Omens, Spider-Man Lotus, Transformers Prime: Galvatron's Revenge)

People keep forgetting that not only do fans not have to deal with things like time constraints, budgets, and esc studio mandates and executive interference, but that they also have foresight (ie, being able to see reactions to things, events happening that the creators couldn’t have guessed, etc)

Also, in general, fans have a lot more control over projects in general. They can make their fanprojects as mature as possible without having to deal with a show’s 8-13 age rating. They can introduce or remove as many concepts and characters as they want. They can even completely change the tone itself.

Also not every fanmade decision is necessarily good or needed. For example, in Fixing RWBY, the creator decided to give the Faunus (a race of human-like beings with animal features) heat cycles.

[lumbledob]

Everyone talks about how the fans always do better than the original (ie, RWBY, Miraculous Ladybug) but not how they could do so much worse (Sonic Omens, Spider-Man Lotus, Transformers Prime: Galvatron's Revenge)

People keep forgetting that not only do fans not have to deal with things like time constraints, budgets, and esc studio mandates and executive interference, but that they also have foresight (ie, being able to see reactions to things, events happening that the creators couldn’t have guessed, etc)

Also, in general, fans have a lot more control over projects in general. They can make their fanprojects as mature as possible without having to deal with a show’s 8-13 age rating. They can introduce or remove as many concepts and characters as they want. They can even completely change the tone itself.

Also not every fanmade decision is necessarily good or needed. For example, in Fixing RWBY, the creator decided to give the Faunus (a race of human-like beings with animal features) heat cycles.

[lumbledob]

The state of cartoons aimed at girls in 2025

Recently, the trailer for Winx Club’s reboot came out, getting a less than warm got a less than warm reception, with fans being unhappy at things such as bland/ugly character designs, subpar animation, as well as AI most likely being used during production, among other things. While looking at people’s responses, I’ve thought about other “girls” shows like it.

Miraculous Ladybug has been a punching bag for years as the butt of many jokes and the topic of many rants/video essays, to the point where people joke about how “even the fans hate the show”.

Totally Spies came back for another season after over 10 years, some people talked about the initial announcements, but when the new season actually came out, practically no one talked about it.

MLP and Monster High fans seem to not really care for the newer incarnations of their respective series made after 2020, with the former being mostly ignored and the latter being hated, likely for being so different from what came before (meanwhile TMNT and Transformers fans got new movies in the last few years that were distinctly different takes on their series they enjoyed a lot).

I’m just genuinely wondering, as a guy, what causes this phenomenon? Every “girly”cartoon released in the last 5 or so years seems to be overlooked and forgotten, or is somewhat to incredibly disliked. Why is this? Is it overwhelming nostalgia? A lack of quality? People’s tastes changing in general?

I guess I just want female audiences to have something better, or at least something they’ll enjoy more.

[lumbledob]

How to create a popular piece of media in 202X

Greetings, fellow Millennial/Gen Z’er/person born after 1988! Have you wanted to make your own potentially popular piece of media, be it a video game, webcomic, webnovel, visual novel, animation, or otherwise? Well, now you can! Just follow these easy steps:

1. Create a bunch marketable, merchandisable characters made for the purpose of being shipped, headcanoned, self inserted as, and/or used as fanfic material. Don’t worry about giving them personalities, you can just use archetypes found in other media popular with the audience you want to attract. Make sure your characters are as quirky, shippable, and/or interestingly designed as possible!*

2. Include as many popular tropes/archetypes as possible. Tropes are the number one thing fans look for a series, after all, even more than things like “plot”. If it worked for romance writers, it can work for you!

3. Have shippable characters, even if your media isn’t romance-driven.

4. Add moments meant to be shared on social media to bring attention to your series. These can include references to other media, potential meme material (that may or may not come off as forced), and hype moments just for the sake of it. The more likely to be talked about, the better!

5. Did we mention having characters for people to ship? There’s a huge market for shippers, you know. You don’t have to pander specifically to them, but it would help if you did.

6. (Optional) Have good writing.

Bonus points if your project is indie. As we all know, all indie media is inherently good and better than non-indie media, no matter what.

Congratulations, you did it! You now have your own series. It might be so popular or gain a huge and dedicated fandom!** Enjoy your newfound success!***

*Warning: some designs may be a pain to draw and especially animate. But who needs to be practical when you can be distinct?

**Fandom may be a melting pot of constant drama and discourse that attracts weird and unsavory people. But at this point, what fandom isn’t?

***Side effects may include attracting people outside of the target audience (to varying degrees of discourse and dismay), fans getting mad their favorite ship isn’t canon, being driven crazy by fans, and possibly having to deal with a crew member getting an expose Google Doc made about them.

[lumbledob]

Seeing how online discourse can be, maybe “people are dying” or at least “there might be more important things to focus on” isn’t such a bad response sometimes

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Same goes for non-western governments

God forbid that you point out that people in marginalized groups are capable of being mean & rude & discriminatory & can do bad things without people thinking you’re a bigot or attracting actual bigots

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White people are too scared and timid to punch nazis irl so instead they’ll just ratio them on Twitter instead

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You know times have changed when people actively like and want to see a DC movie while Marvel acknowledges the Fantastic Four’s existence

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God forbid that you point out that people in marginalized groups are capable of being mean & rude & discriminatory & can do bad things without people thinking you’re a bigot or attracting actual bigots