The Problem With Protesting For Shows To Be Revived (Ft. ROTTMNT & Milo Murphy's Law)
Hi, I'm here to brain dump about something I've been thinking about a lot lately, which is about how people arrange protests to save cancelled/paused shows, specifically with ROTTMNT and Milo Murphy's Law.
As someone who LOVES Rise of the TMNT and Milo Murphy's Law, two shows that were cancelled before their prime, I obviously want both of them to be continued.
But what I've noticed with both of these shows, is that when people are trying to get them revived they default to protesting on the socials of the companies (Disney and Nickelodeon in this case) or bombarding the creator with questions.
What most people might not realize, is that these big companies won't pay much attention to the protests and that creators can't control whether the show gets continued or not.
Big companies like numbers and statistics, they like have solid proof that if they continue the show it'll make them money. Unfortunately, protesting and making trending tags aren't solid statistics for them, it won't tell them anything about whether reviving it is worth it.
What companies do pay attention to is WATCH NUMBERS.
They pay attention to how long and how many people are watching the show, the statistic that determines whether or not they'll earn a profit.
So what it comes down to, is that protesting won't really work.
I'm here to say that if we really want paused shows (for me specifically these two shows) to get revived, WE HAVE TO MAKE WATCH NUMBERS SPIKE.
So instead of protesting, I'm inviting everyone in fandoms of shows that were cancelled before their time to watch those shows on repeat on their respective channels (for this to work right you cannot watch them on third party services, it has to be directly on the streaming service).
What I mean by this is that you need to put the show on every chance you get.
You're making dinner or doing homework? -> Put theses shows on in the background.
You're watching a different show? -> Put these shows on your phone on mute while you watch something else
Exercising? -> Put the show on while you run
Drawing? -> Put the show on while you draw
Writing? -> Put the show on while you write
You get the point right?
If enough people have these shows running constantly, the watch hours and audience numbers spike, catching the attention of the companies and showing them enough people are interesting that it would be profitable to revive the show.
This goes for every show cancelled prematurely, not just ROTTMNT and Milo Murphy's Law.
More examples would be Invader Zim or Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle (which was only recently paused, so it has more of a chance of being saved).
Long story short, GO PUT THESE SHOWS ON IN THE BACKGROUND.
SPREAD THE WORD, EITHER BY REBLOGGING THIS POST OR MAKING YOUR OWN POST!!
Companies want numbers and statistics, not their DMs and comments being flooded with protests.
Anyways thanks for coming to my Ted Talk :)
My subconscious is telling me to tag people so this spreads faster and actually gets out there but my anxiety won't let me.
ALSO FUN UPDATE!!
I reblogged it, but in case you haven't heard there's going to be a second "Open the Floodgates" for ROTTMNT!!
Here's the link: https://www.tumblr.com/zee-rambles/801591397510725632/resources
^ This method of spamming them during two days would also work better than normal protesting, because everything being dumped on them at once makes it impossible not to notice :)
As I'm sure many of you know, X-Men '97 is officially returning this summer for Season 2.
And the reactions have been......pretty mixed.
More so than when the series was first announced.
Now there's several reasons as to why that's the case.
But one I want to focus on is the fact that people are starting to worry X-Men are gonna be doomed to nostalgia.
I mean, when it first came out, X-Men '97 was a big deal since this was the first non-movie or comic piece of X-Men media we had gotten in OVER A DECADE!
The last piece of that was with the X-Men anime and X-Men Destiny, which both came out back in 2011!
Not helping was how for most of the 2010s, Marvel notoriously forbid any use of The X-Men outside of the comics, due to their pissing contest with 20th Century Fox, who still held the film rights to the team.
For God's sake, it was this case of corporate theatrics that KILLED Marvel vs. Capcom!
But ever since 2019, The X-Men have been making their way out of The Shadow Realm, following The Walt Disney Company's acquisition of Fox.
And while it was cool to see The X-Men back in animation again, this was not the way to go.
X-Men '97 is a revival of a show that had ended almost 27 years prior.
And on a good note!
So this does beg the question.
If you're gonna make a new animated series for The X-Men, why make it a revival of a long-ended show with a satisfying conclusion?
Which also ties into why a revival for X-Men: The Animated Series specifically?
If anything, X-Men Evolution and Wolverine and The X-Men were more deserving of revivals.
Now X-Men Evolution did have a satisfying conclusion, but famously, there were plans for a fifth season.
It would've saw a major timeskip, seeing the team now as adults.
Plus they would've gotten new members in the form of Iceman, Colossus and X-23.
The season was also gonna see their own adaptation of The Phoenix Saga.
Introduce The Hellfire Club, as well Emma Frost and Psylocke as new major characters.
Magneto would've turned over a new leaf and become a new mentor to The New Mutants.
And Mr. Sinister was gonna make his debut and presumably become the main villain of the season.
And there's Wolverine and The X-Men, which infamously only lasted one season.
The reason why is because while it did do very well critically and in the ratings, it was cancelled due to budgetary reasons, as the show had just become too expensive to continue.
And the reason for that was because one of the show's main investors had pulled out of the project.
While the identity of this investor hasn't been revealed (as far as I know), it's been heavily speculated that it was none other than Fox, since they still own the film rights to The X-Men.
And given when Season 2 would've been in production, Disney would've just bought out Marvel Comics.
And since Disney and Fox were major competitors, it all starts to make sense.
But anyway, Season 2 would've seen an adaptation of Age of Apocalypse, with the eponymous warlord being the main villain of the season.
There would've been two plots.
The first focusing on The X-Men having to stop Apocalypse from conquering the world in their own timeline, and the second focusing on Xavier ending up in the AOA timeline and having to aid the X-Men there.
In terms of new notable characters.
Colossus would've returned to the team, alongside his little sister Magik.
New heroes like Cable, Sunfire, Havok, Jubilee, and Deadpool (who would've definitely been voiced by Nolan North) would've been introduced.
As well as new villains like Bastion, who would've served as the secondary villain of the season.
In the AOA timeline, the characters were planned to sport their looks from the comic.
Speaking of looks, Cyclops and Jean Grey would've gotten new outfits that were essentially modernized versions of their iconic 90s suits, as well new hairdos.
On the topic of Cyclops, Season 2 was planned to finally do him and Storm justice and have them be the leaders of the team again.
And while not much work was done for Season 3, the overall plan was for it to be an adaptation of House of M.
And even then, for a new X-Men series, why not do a new take on the characters.....like most other new animated series based on superhero franchises do?
Now the main problem with X-Men '97’s existence (besides it really having no reason to exist) really arose just today, as it was announced that the series would be receiving FOUR SEASONS!
I thought X-Men '97 would’ve had two seasons and just be over with!
But no, it’s gonna be around for a long while.
And that’s gonna be a major issue.
I’ve noticed that after Season 1 finish airing, people have been way more critical of '97.
And on rewatch, it’s not hard to see why.
The horrendous pacing and just trying to do too much at once, the mishandling of many major characters, questionable writing choices, and glaring continuity issues when considering the original animated series and the much larger 90s Marvel animated universe.
Now a lot of this was the result of…..he who shall not be named.
But there were other major factors like the 10 episode count.
And even with HIM being gone, the second season is very likely still gonna have ten episodes, and possibly still feel bloated.
And that’s a major reason as to why I’ve seen a lot of people so mixed on Season 2.
Now there’s always a chance that things will improve, but you never really know.
But yeah, we’re gonna be stuck with 90s X-Men for years to come.
And let’s be real, there’s only so much 90s X-Men one person can take before it starts to get old……
And me saying that The X-Men are gonna be doomed to nostalgia isn’t just because of X-Men '97 existing and running on much longer than it has any reasons to.
There’s also the fact that the team have yet to receive any new official versions in The Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The only ones we’ve seen are from the Fox Universe.
This has become especially a point of contention since in Avengers Doomsday, which will be coming this holiday season, it was revealed that they’re bringing back the entire team from the early Fox films.
Or at least some of the team.
Which begs the question why are they stalling on introducing a new version of the team into the MCU and just relying on a previously existing version from a different iteration?
It’s been 7 years already!
There’s nothing really holding you back.
You did with The Fantastic Four.
Why can’t you do with The X-Men?
To wrap this up, I wanna leave this little poll right here.
Which X-Men cartoon is more deserving on a revival?
OMG I'm such a dumbass I knew you did one on the GR Yaris before too, and I love her ALSO, but I actually meant the GR Supra 😳🫣 (slip of the tongue)
Gotcha.
Since I managed to take some two weeks to answer this (got distracted both by real life obligations and other posts that were meant to be very quick to make. Meant to.) y'all may have forgotten, but our dear friend of the blog had asked for opinions on the GR Yaris, hinting to its controversial status. Turns out the GR Supra is what that request, and thus that hint, was actually about - so let's talk about the car and the controversy that engulfs it.
In 1993, Toyota launched the fourth generation of its rear wheel drive sportscar (well, arguably a bit of a Grand Tourer, i.e. something more oriented to cruising than a sportscar) the Supra - which was born a quarter century earlier as a more upmarket, six cylinder version of the Celica, graduating from Celica Supra to its own dignified name with the third generation I talked about that one time I forgot to check what blog I was reblogging with.
But this time, things would be different.
Most notably because the inline six the Mk4 Supra came out with was an absolute MONSTER.
Remember how I talked about the GT-R's RB26 engine being one of the greatest, most coveted production engines to ever come out of Japan? Well, the 2JZ-GTE is the other.
It was larger at 3 liters, no less powerful, and to reduce turbocharger lag it used two of them sequentially: first air goes in the smaller, more responsive turbo, then gradually some of it gets sent to the bigger turbo to make it start spinning, then when it gets going the two are finally used in conjunction. (Imagine the big turbo as a hung husband that takes a while to get it up and the small turbo as an eager stepson ready to take over until the hung one can join in for a spitroast. Or something. I don't watch porn with real people, but from what I gather the plots seem to resemble how sequential turbos work.)
It even at one point got Variable Valve Timing, i.e. the ability to vary the time in which the valves open depending on engine speed, which allows to optimize tuning for performance and efficiency! (Cool thing to go over in detail if y'all want me to.)
And also, the kind of things that engine is able to take make me wish I hadn't used up my porn analogy quota.
See, to chop off eons of nuance, an engine is just a big block of metal with a lot of bits attached, and the two main measures of an engine's potential are the slope of the line in the Bits Fiddled With / Power Output graph and how far up (It's up, right? The second axis you specify is the vertical one, right?) you can take it before the block becomes the weakest link - with another important point being when you need to start messing with internals, i.e. the components inside the engine, e.g. pistons (the things the boom pushes down), camshaft (the thing the pistons spin) and connecting rods (you can guess).
So for instance, just to make the point that an engine can be beloved without having much overall tuning potential, in one of Toyota's most beloved engines, the 4A-GE four cylinder illustrated above (yes, the one from that white and black car in all the eurobeat videos), some pin the block's limit as low as 250hp. The 2JZ, tho? It can take 800hp without even messing with the internals, and once you get your grubby hands on those you can keep pushing the line to some 2000hp. That is two Bugattis. That is 40 times my car. That is well above the power level where "tires that will at any point grip" and "tires that are in any way road legal" stop intersecting.
I am not in the slightest exaggerating when I say that this and the Skyline GT-R are widely regarded as the top of Japan's 20th century automotive production. The Messi & Ronaldo of the Japanese Domestic Market. It is absolutely no coincidence this was the hero car in The Fast And The Furious.
And then in 2002, as all things, its production ended, and given the abysmal sales and catastrophic recession, Toyota decided that would be that.
And then, years later, The Teasening began.
I want to stress, almost half of my conscious life (I choose to believe the stretch from birth to kindergarten is just run-up) the world was in some state of getting teased with talk of a new Supra. The trademark on the name was renewed in 2010. In 2014 they dropped the FT-1 concept, and of course that became speculation about what the production version would look like.
Because come the fuck on, it's not gonna look like that.
Or was it?
Only five entire years and much more teasing later would we officially get an answer, when after seventeen years, the Toyota GR Supra (and for those wondering what GR means, y'all should've clicked the Yaris link >:C) hit the streets.
You know what, good enough.
Good enough to earn itself a sea of words of praise, Jason Cammisa's "The most punch-above-its-weight sportscar ever made" just some among them.
It did have its share of problems at the start, like its power being 335hp and not 382, a lack of manual transmission, and the inability to spec it with a less powerful 4 cylinder engine - well, I don't know who considered that last one a problem, but Toyota's updates solved that one too.
The Supra has a much bigger problem than those though, one no little update can solve. That red car in the background.
See, the new Supra is actually a joint venture with BMW, who made a new model of its Z4 roadster out of the platform. And unlike with the other joint-venture sportscar Toyota sells, people are big mad about that. Why?
See, the interior is engulfed in BMW switchgear and the drivetrain is all BMW (the manual gearbox took until this year to come out because BMW did not have one for that engine so Toyota had to modify another BMW transmission to fit), giving people the impression that this was less of a joint venture and more of a BMW project that Toyota tacked its design on top of, which is a problem whether true or not.
See, a range-topping sportscar is supposed to represent what the brand is capable of - having it done by someone else (or so the criticism goes) is a bit like performing Hallelujah in playback.
Actually, a better musical analogy: You know "I'm back bitch" singles? When a humongous artist drops a new record with a humongous lead single about absolutely nothing but reaffirming they're the biggest fucking deal in the universe? Without Me, Bad, Gimme More, so on. Well, think of SexyBack - one of the most monumental phenomenons of its decade, most incontrovertibly proving Justin Timberlake sat atop the goddamn world. Now, imagine if, after all the years that went by between that record and the next, when he finally came out with Suit And Tie all the verses were Jay-Z. Going from a humongous statement about having the power to reach the top of the game and stay there to having to get absolutely carried by what in this logic is essentially a competitor. Basically, that's the critics' complaint: the supra went from 2JZ to too much Jay-Z.
And therein lies the other problem of the Supra: the Supra.
See, any time you evaluate something, you do so relative to its context - and when you give it a nameplate, you make that context include where else that nameplate has been. An undeserved name may not just be stupid, but even outright kill the car in some's eyes, see the case of the Dodge Dart, or get me to talk about the Ford Capri prototype recently spotted if you want to find out what I'm like when I lose my cool. (I'd liken this phenomenon to undeserved Grammies but I already used my music analogy quota too.) So the Toyota Supra does not just need to be good, it needs to deserve the name. And some argue it doesn't.
But why? This thing is no less powerful, no slower, hell it's not even any bigger or heavier and we've gone over how rare that is these days!
So is it the lack of backseats and a targa version? No, no one gives a crap about those. It's something deeper.
Sometimes, the problem with a revival is people base their expectation not on what the original was like in the context of its time but what it's like in the context of today (for example, I've heard people call the latest GT-R "too computerized, too assisted, far from the pure driving experience of its predecessors", when its predecessors had some of the most technologically advanced driving assists of their time and could only be called "pure" and "analog" by comparison with cars decades newer). But of course, that'll only be some people - so if what the original car looks like to modern eyes and what the original car represented at its time are two different enough concepts, any revival will receive some criticism for not being one of the two.
But for the Supra, this compounds with another problem: the original Supra (as in the previous generation, since no one gives a crap about the first three), to modern eyes, looks like a thousand-horsepower flame-spitting beast, because that's what all Supras have been turned into, and that's why you know of Supras in the first place (it sure isn't because people bought it!), and that, consciously or not, exacerbates the problem of misplaced expectations to a level akin to hearing an NBA player is about to have a brother and expecting the baby to be a 6'4" three-shooter.
But I wasn't asked about the controversies, I was asked about my take. And my take is: no realistic expectation of what a Supra would look like today was disappointed - at least not by where the car stands today. Well, unless the expectation involved backseats.
"But it was made by BMW" and so? This is a new Supra, and a good one - what does it matter how it got here? Especially when this is an upgrade over the Z4 in every way - looks way better, drives better, and now has a manual that the Z4 doesn't.
Okay, almost every way: the Supra's roof won't get out of the way.
If only though, if only. Could you imagine a Toyota product that looks this good, sounds this good, goes this fast, and has a drop top? ...and maybe backseats?
Well, I can.
Yes, the badge and core concept may have some people consider it from midlife crisis mobile to old man's car. (though we know it's not a car bought by old men because if that was the case someone would be buying these). But just try to imagine sitting in this thing.
Take a couple of seconds to take in that picture and truly immerse yourself. You're in a Lexus LC500 Convertible, with a V8 at your right foot's command, its spectacular sound ready to battle the perfect sound system serenading you with your fanciest CD, because of course Lexuses still come with CD players.
Are you immersed? Okay:
Someone just called your Lexus a midlife crisis car.
See? You don't give a shit either, do ya.
Automatic only though. The pain.
Oh, and it kind of costs as much as two Supras. But, you know, neither of those Supras will be convertibles!
Links in blue are posts of mine about the topic in question - if you liked this post, you might like those!
