#children's media

[theprocraftinator]

by kickdrumheart_

#embroidery #kickdrumheart_ #pop culture #children's media #blue's clues

[somethingmissingthiswaycomes]

There's some special quality to stories made for a child audience by people who are also clearly making it for themselves that other types of media I think just don't get very much. Not that children's shows are like... "better" than adult oriented film, but I get something very different from Steven Universe, Gravity Falls, and Miraculous Ladybug than from, say, Bojack Horseman, Star Trek TNG, or Everything, Everywhere, All At Once.

Something about the serious topics being contextualized with lightheartedness and darkness being less explicit. Something about the story empathizing with childhood and showing the world from the pov of not yet being intertwined with expectations of adulthood—and when it is, it's inherently an injustice. Something about admiring the lessons you know kids are being taught from it and feeling good about their future. Something about it helping sometimes to process your own childhood in retrospect.

Though I'd like to make sure I note here that I'm not doing the whole "kids media is better than adults media" thing. I think it's weird when people do that. I just feel something special about this context of storytelling.

Yeah...

I'd maybe like to write a children's book someday.

#children's media #steven universe #Miraculous ladybug #Gravity falls #I won't tag the other shows since they're not the topic #But you know. Everything everywhere all at once did manage to capture a lot of what I mostly find in children's media that appeals to me #The hopefulness and the silliness and the absurd creativity #I'm very tired and rambling lol #Storytelling

[tetsunabouquet]

Ruby Gillman and what its reception showcases what's wrong with children's media today

Here is the link to the specific reblog that contains both a production fantheory about Chelsea and my initial review for anyone interested in that: https://www.tumblr.com/tetsunabouquet/722833498719879168/alright-considering-the-massive-heat-of-the-past?source=share Alright, as an aspiring children's author and as someone studying writing classes with children's literature as the particular focus, I have made a couple of posts about my issues with children's media already, or rather, the problems with the people making and critqueing it. Ruby Gillman's reception, like the reviews from critics and people who dislike the movie alike, actually showcases multiple examples of what makes so many movies/shows aimed at children or the family, poor nowadays: Ruby has been critiqued for being 'too cute', and that they should just 'embrace the monster'. Only this doesn't work when young children are also part of the target demographic. There's a reason to why bad guys are written to be ugly, and why good guys are written to be good looking: It's that the brain of the average child isn't developped enough to understand nuance. The younger the child, the more you have to REMOVE nuance. That's also why, when Queen Nerissa/Chelsea becomes all-powerful, she becomes ugly. It's because she's the bad guy in that moment. It's why she lacks a sympathetic backstory, as we see with a lot of villains nowadays. It's because, again, the more nuance there is to the character, the less a child will actually understand the character. It's why the Gillmans claim they're from Canada: because I've seen enough of American media to know Canadians are practically treated like another species. To a child, this explanation would actually somewhat work, especially to a 6 year old or younger The adults screaming about that and how anyone can see Ruby isn't human are thinking too much like adults. They don't try to see it from a child's perspective, and that's the main core to all the problems behind children's media nowadays: They don't 'dumb' themselves down enough to the perspective of a young child. When watching the movie, I definitely felt like the Gillman family was also close to its ideal target demographic: families with daughters ranged between 10-13 and younger siblings of about 5+ years old. And it did well for a movie aimed at such a group. It lacked enough nuance for young kids to understand, and the theme of womanhood would speak to pre-adolescent girls. Also, the way the media keeps comparing this to Turning Red because they were both magical metaphors for womanhood and female puberty and speaks of the generations of womanhood is annoying. Are you telling me that with the shitload of movies that America produce per year alone, they never produced 2 animated movies dealing with coming of age and manhood in the span of 16 months? This speaks once again, of how men have difficulty relating to female struggles and will hate on a movie centering girls growing up, opposed to how women have little to no difficulty symphatizing and relating to movies of boys growing up. Boys only want male protagonists, whilst we women can care less. The moment we get even more then one animated movie dealing with the idea of female puberty in the span of two years, the press immediately descends to pit one movie against another. Oh my god, imagine being that pathetic. That wouldn't be me.

#ruby gilman #ruby gillman teenage kraken #ruby gillman #children's media #children's brain #what's wrong with children's media #child's perspective #this movie was well written for its intended audience #these movies weren't made with adult brains in mind #allow children to have their thing #allow girls to have their coming of age movies

[k00lkat2001]

even tho it is children's media code lyoko is such a good show like.... the storyline is whatever but the pacing of the show, the environment and especially the characters are so good like i want to TALK w the person who came up w them cause thats peak character design, and im not even joking

#code lyoko #morning thoughts #thoughts #children's media #i hate children

[paddysnuffles]

Comparing the Avatar live-action actors and their cartoon counterparts (3/?)

Suki

Azula

Mei

Ty Lee

Jet

| Part 1 | Part 2 |

#avatar the last airbender #avatar #avatar netflix #netflix avatar #netflix atla #netflix series #children's shows #children's media #atla #atla netflix #atla live action #atla jet #atla mei #atla azula #princess azula #ty lee #ty lee atla #suki atla #ty lee avatar #suki avatar

[thatoneidiotyoulovesomuch]

Let me tell y'all something. I HATE HATE HATE those scary children's tv shows/movies theories. Or at least some, some can be cool. Like I just find them lazy. Almost all of them consist of, they were actually dead, they were all high on drugs, or this whole show/movie was a dream. Or some variation.

I saw one that was like, "Danny Fenton actually died in the accident. He's actually a ghost"

Another one I saw is The Backyardigans were all hallucinating and that's why they were having those adventures.

Baby, can we please be serious for once in our short, short lives? Please I'm begging you.

#please be so fr #danny phantom #blues clues #dora the explorer #the backyardigans #the powerpuff girls #kim possible #children's media #childhood shows #theories #writing #y'all are annoying #please

[let-us-cultivate-our-garden]

Isn’t it funny that any perceived shortcomings of Steven Universe’s writing was always blamed on the crew rather than executives and shortenings that were compromised to allow an openly queer wedding, but when you so much as utter one mildly negative thing about The Owl House, you’ll hear nothing but “THE SHORTENING” from stans and any writing flaws are always deflected onto executives? And TOH is always held up as the most important queer show ever and people willingly overlook its flaws with queer and minority representation, while Steven Universe was bashed by people constantly overanalyzing the hell out of it?

It certainly is ironic. I wasn't in the SU fandom so I missed all the Drama™ but I've heard second-hand about some of the absolutely bat-shit takes. I'm also unsure if fans knew how extensive the executive meddling was from Cartoon Network, which could explain why they defaulted to blaming the crew (I could also be completely wrong here). However, TOH stans take it too far in the other direction and blame everything on Disney. It seems like they don't like to hear any criticism of the show regardless how valid so they immediately point to the cancellation as the reason for the show's faults.

Now to be fair, the cancellation did not help at all and it's completely insane that the crew had to wrap everything up in three long episodes instead of a full season.

I don't blame Dana Terrace at all for never wanting to work for Disney again.

But in the end, we should remember that no show is without fault and that representation is not a zero-sum game; one show will not have the Best Representation Ever, it all builds off one another. Steven Universe broke new ground and paved the way for more explicit queer rep which allowed executives to even green light shows like The Owl House in the first place.

It does everyone a disservice to pit queer media against one another; shows like this need to be supported, not drowning in Discourse.

#asks #the owl house #steven universe #queer representation #media #children's media #fandom #fandom shenanigans #toh critical #toh criticism

[sam-keeper]

Wrote a new article on children's media and how we talk about it critically!

I liked this one enough to not paywall it, so please feel free to check it out.

#children's books #criticism #cartoon #literary analysis #children's media

[genderdevelopment498]

Gender stereotypes in children's media

A study done in 2020 found that in children's animated films, physical attractiveness of a character was associated with having more friends and receiving more affection among male characters, and negatively associated with weight status among females. This content analysis also found that wearing close-fitting clothes was associated with attractiveness among female characters and their popularity, while muscularity and strength associated with attractiveness among male characters and their popularity. However, being muscular, stronger, and taller was associated with less intelligence among male characters.

This research suggests that media's stereotypical gendered appearance are extremely prevalent in children's media, which can have a significant impact on children's development of body image and gender roles. This study highlights the importance of being media literate and being able to critically analyze media representations, especially in children's content, to promote more diverse and realistic portrayals that don't reinforce harmful stereotypes.

(Gonzalez, M. P. L., Infantes-Paniagua, A., Thornborrow, T., & Jordan, O. C. (2020). Associations Between Media Representations of Physical, Personality, and Social Attributes by Gender: A Content Analysis of Children’s Animated Film Characters. International Journal of Communication, 14, 6026-6048.)

#gender development #children's media #gender stereotypes #gender issues #gender stereotypes in children's media #gender stereotypes in animated films

[norsecoyote]

I do not as a rule read a lot of fanfic. This is partly because I don't get much time to read, period, and partly because I still have a bit of a cringe reaction to the whole concept, but also because I will get turned off a story quickly if the author gets something wrong either about a character (which I gather is common) or about the broader themes or point of the original story.

This is by way of saying that, now that I've thoroughly outed myself as an unironic fan of French children's animated superhero show Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Chat Noir, I want to do what I believe is the next required step on tumblr.com: complain about something the fandom gets wrong.

Fair warning: this is not a meta-post about fandom or fanfic generally, this is 100% me, a nominal adult, bitching about People Being Wrong About Miraculous On The Internet. You stand at the Cringe Event Horizon; read on at your own risk.

So: the central interpersonal tension that powers the show is the "love rectangle" between the leads, where Marinette loves Adrien and Chat Noir loves Ladybug but neither knows the other's secret identity. The obvious solution is absurdly simple: reveal their identities and collapse the quantum superposition of crushes.

A ton of fanfic about the show does exactly that: contrive some scenario where they accidentally discover who each other are, they kiss, they live happily ever after (plus or minus one maniacally obsessed supervillain). And I get why, I think -- the show absolutely looks like it's going to keep this will they/won't they tension going forever, since it's one of its two central narrative motors, and a whole ton of early episodes play with one of the two trying to get closer to the other, failing, and returning exactly to the status quo. Given that, it makes sense why fans would want to just write the goddamn resolution already; it isn't until S3 that the two start making any real progress towards being together.

But. The problem, on many levels, is that the show's writers are smarter than that. Like on the very basic one, the show makes clear from very early on that the old master who gave the heroes their powers explicitly forbade them from revealing their identities, because doing so would let Hawk Moth find and defeat them. And this isn't like an arbitrary concern: Hawk Moth's whole deal is corrupting random people and getting them to work for him, so if he ever happened to even accidentally akumatize someone who knows their identities, that's more or less the whole ballgame. If you're writing a story where Ladybug and Chat Noir learn who each other are but they haven't defeated Hawk Moth yet -- and there are a bunch of these -- you have missed something rather crucial about why they couldn't just do that already.

(The first half of S5 -- which to be fair only came out a year ago -- does a very clever thing where it systematically explores basically every possible workaround to this issue, considering every new power or possibility opened up by events from across the previous four seasons, and methodically rejects each one by showing how it wouldn't solve the actual central problem. I bring this up not to throw shade on any fanfic authors, most of whom were writing before S5 released, but to credit (again) the show's writers for the depth of their understanding of what makes the show tick.)

More fundamentally -- and this is an insight very much stolen from that CJ the X video -- on a character growth/emotional level, Marinette and Adrian aren't ready to be in a relationship yet. Like, sure, they will be perfect for each other, but (at least for most of the series to date) they aren't yet. Marinette starts out with an extremely adolescent crush on a literal fashion model, and Adrien at first is clearly much more in love with his unexpected new freedom as Chat Noir than anything specific about his new partner. They are, to put as blunt a point on it as the show itself repeatedly does, kids.

And, critically, the show understands that they both need to learn to accept themselves first. From an adult perspective it's just duh that you can't have a mature romantic relationship without a solid sense of self (and self-confidence), but that's not remotely obvious to kids at the age of the show's target audience and it's genuinely refreshing to see it acknowledge and reflect that obstacle. One of the few active benefits of the show's extremely episodic pacing is that the writers have time to show both protagonists' slow but genuine character growth, Marinette building up her confidence in her own abilities and decisions and Adrien forging an identity separate from his father's business asset, until when they finally start building something real together in the fifth season it feels genuinely earned.

This emotional arc, in other words, is baked into the show's structure from the very beginning. Fanfic that tries to shortcut this process has, again, fundamentally failed to understand the characters it's nominally telling a story about. Like, I get wanting to experience the emotional high of seeing your favorite characters get their happy ending, but -- the fact that they can't just get that is kind of central to their entire characterization! Are you even writing about the same characters at that point?

#miraculous ladybug #chat noir #children's media #fanfic #stupid petty bullshit #there is plenty of actually good stuff out there of course #but man it's frustrating when an otherwise good story ends with this shit #like it's an afterthought #anyway I'm done posting about this kids show now #we started watching Avatar with her yesterday and she immediately declared herself to be a firebender/waterbender combo #so that's off to a great start

[theprocraftinator]

by emilyvassar

#embroidery #emilyvassar #No_Efficiency1004 #pop culture #barbie #movies #children's toys #children's media #decorated hoop

[emma-is-swaggy-and-epic]

POV: it's the early 2010's and you're about to find your new favorite book at the scholastic book fair

#scheduled #artists on tumblr #digital art #art #digital illustration #babymouse #babymouse book #children's books #children's media #2010s #2010's nostalgia #babymouse fanart #fanart #nostalgia #black and white #pink #books #nostalgiacore #ngl i'd genuinely be surprised if the narrator from babymouse wasn't considered a tumblr sexyman #mouse #mouse character #man i miss being 9 years old...

[maniacwatchestheworld]

The more I think about it, the more that I believe that rich, posh, English people really have earned the right to be the go-to villains in media partially or entirely targeted at children. :p

#maniac muses #children's fiction #children's media

[neurodivergent-media]

9 year old Elliott Garcia won the role to play Bruno the Brake Car, who will star alongside Thomas the Tank Engine as the show's first autistic engine. Garcia, who is autistic himself said when he first won the role he "imagined that it was a dream, but it wasn't".

Mattel said it appreciated one animated character "could never encompass the real-life experience of every autistic person".

But it said it had "carefully curated Bruno's character to ensure an accurate fictional representation of autism".

#actuallyautistic #autism #thomas and friends #thomas the tank engine #thomas the train #autistic representation #autistic characters #tv #children's media

[radarsteddybear]

I have a lot of feelings about children's media

#Bear in the Big Blue House #Elephant & Piggie #Mo Willems #children's media #homemade memes #original post #my stuff

[this-is-where-i-hide-my-bullshit]

Every now and then I'm reminded of this animated short that was featured on the Ice Age dvd we had when I was a kid. It was animated by Blue Sky, and it's called Bunny.

Watching it made me feel a bit disturbed and sad, but the ending always felt bitter sweet.

Warning, there is death in this, so if that's not something you can handle then I wouldn't recommend watching. But if you can handle it, then I'd recommend giving the short a watch.

It's an interesting and somewhat dark piece of children's media that I've never seen people talk about before, and I think it deserves to be remembered and discussed. The musical score is also worth mentioning.

This is definitely one of the first pieces of media to give me an existential crisis as a child, it's up there with Fleetwood Mac's Landslide on the list of things that made me confront my own mortality in elementary school.

There are is no spoken dialog in this short, and yet it helped me understand death in a way that words never did at an age before I lost anyone or anything.

#dark cartoons #forgotten media #obscure animation #ice age #children's media #animation #animated shorts #blue sky #bunny #existentialism #Youtube