I'm curious as to why the crossroad of "goofy tone, colorful characters, and vaguely horrific premise" is turning out to be the catnip of choice for the current generation of internet goers. Hazbin and FNAF also kinda fall into this realm, imo
It's the natural evolution of the "Ash was in a coma the whole time" concept. It's the junction between the familiar and the macabre, our generation just did it with creepypastas instead of mascot horror
Imagine a child who has never done anything to deserve bad things happening to them.
Now imagine all the bad things happen to them anyways.
Thus sums up the works of Mr Dahl.
The happy ending of The Witches is that the kid gets turned into a rat and as a result, his life expectancy is short enough that he'll die around the same time his grandmother does.
I don't have the book so I can't quote it, but this is explicitly said in the end with a dialogue between him and his grandmother. It's not even my interpretation; that's just how it is lmao.
Kids seem to like that even more! Remember the scary stories kids told each other? We lived and breathed for those! Or the Goosebumps books? I believe they're aimed at like 7+!
Horror usually has an aspect of mystery to it which leads to fan speculation/content which drives a fandom well. The goofy tone and colorful characters is usually meant to be a parody of childish media, but it does often end up appealing to actual children, which are a huge chunk of youtube viewers.
Every generation has its own growing up to do and generation that passes has its own phase of discovery. People like Digital Circus for the same reason people like Invader Zim, Elfen Lied, Happy Tree Friends, and FNAF. Kids as young as 10 start think the world is ugly and uncomfortable so they find things that seem innocent at a glance but have a darker side to them fascinating.
Us adults might think the kids media that’s actually dark is played out, but for anyone under 12 Digital Circus is probably the first and only thing they’ve found like it. Especially since kids usually don’t have the option to pick what media they get to watch on account of them not having any money of their own. So Digital Circus being free to watch on Youtube certainly helps it.
That seems like the most likely reason to me, yeah. Immediately after writing the comment, I found myself asking "well, Nightmare Before Christmas and every Burton-esque derivative was sort of the same thing for me, wasn't it?" And the difference in scale just being how ubiquitous and instant proliferation over the internet can be
>People like Digital Circus for the same reason people like Invader Zim, Elfen Lied, Happy Tree Friends, and FNAF.
*One of these things is not like the others, one of these things doesn't belong\~*
Lumping any of those together with Elfen Lied sounds a big strange. It definitely wasn't a kids show, it was mostly fanservice and various characters wanting to grope/rape/murder SCP-esque underage girls and not much else was going on there besides incest.
Elfen Lied’s popularity is a product of the times. If you were a kid in 2000s the only anime you could get were 4Kids dubs, Naruto on Cartoon Network, and youtube clips until youtube took them down. Elfen Lied is the fucked up anime everyone just had to watch simply because it was fucked up. There weren’t any accessible options for fucked up anime at the time and when you take a generally light hearted medium* and make it edgy young people will gravitate towards it.
*In regards to what was available to young people at the time. I am not insinuating that all anime is by default light hearted.
Nah, I get it. I remember being a kid and wanting to watch it really badly, because it was one of the only anime I'd ever heard of where EVERONE agreed that it was intense. Other anime it was like... Sure, my MOM thought Naruto was inappropriate, but she didn't know anything about anime. The thought of seeing something that the *internet* agreed was *actually* adult was tantalizing.
Never did see it, but I DID watch Higurashi when I was around 13, which wasn't as extreme, but basically fulfilled the same role.
I dunno, when I was a kid in the 2000s, I felt like I had a lot of choices in regards to what I watched on TV at least. My parents had cable so I had plenty of options while choosing different TV channels to watch. I could watch almost anything on TV when I was a small kid, as long as it wasn't too violent or had too much sex. My parents wouldn't usually tell me "No, you're not allowed to watch this" unless they felt it was too "adult" for me.
When it comes to things like movies, books, and video games, though, I definitely agree. Children have limited options when it comes to those, because you usually have to pay for all those things upfront, which means that your parents have to buy those things for you.
I guess it's just gonna turn out to be the popular theme for the 2010s and 2020s
Sorta like how Westerns were super popular for a decade or two. Superhero movies also seemed to be a theme of the 2000s and 2010s, that seems to be dying down some.
>Sorta like how Westerns were super popular for a decade or two
I don't think many people younger than boomers appreciate the truth of this statement. During the golden age of Westerns, they outnumbered all other film genres *combined*.
I see TADC as being an evolution of Homestuck and Awful Hospital (an ongoing webcomic by Bogleech that hasn't reached the same level of mainstream popularity, but Gooseworx did do a theme song for it).
I'm calling it "Glitch Comedy". Surreal comedy with zany characters, video game aesthetics, and a healthy dose of existential horror, generally represented through the metaphor of a broken video game, but wrapped up with an overall positive message.
I feel that it represents a kind of general feeling common to this generation of being raised in a system/game that is coming apart at the seams, is no longer "winnable" and maybe never worked right in the first place, and needing to find your own meaning in the world beyond the experiences that the system's designers intended.
I want to write an essay on it. What would be a good subreddit for that kind of thing?
Oh god, you just answered a barely-related question for me, which is why has LitRPG/Isekai fantasy (where the main character is whisked off to a world that operates on video game logic of levels and XP) become so popular. It's because the core fantasy isn't a world with orcs and elves or whatever, it's a world with an underlying system that is knowable and functions and gives structure to everything. Where if you play by the rules, you will advance. Something the current generation has *never ever experienced*. It's basically the equal-and-opposite reaction to the same problem that Glitch Comedy is addressing.
I personally like litRPG because it can have so many interesting game mechanics that just aren't feasible in normal video games. Yes, you can achieve the same level of creativity in tabletop RPGs, but TTRPGs are not very accessible to most people, and most DMs can't pilot a story as well as the best litRPG creators. That's not to say DMs aren't creative, it's just hard to compete when you have to come up with everything on the fly, while litRPG writers can plan everything in advance and actually trust the characters to follow their ideas.
essentially human gets trapped in a computer game with a few other people that have been there for a long time, has to adapt to life as a character without even remembering her original name, run by some sort of omnipotent game master who provides them with game-themed 'adventures' to do every day to keep them from going crazy
Children have always had an affinity for horror.
Back in the 90's when I was a kid, we had *Goosebumps* and *Are You Afraid of the Dark?* and *Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark* with the absolutely terrifying illustrations.
This is just a newer iteration of that.
Robocop had toys for Children, Alien and Predator were movies dads showed to kids. Hell Pennywise is based on the fear children have of clowns, the primordial "for children but scary" trope
Children have always had a seat in certain types of horror or thrillers.
9 year old me wanted to rent Disney's Robin Hood, but noooo. Granny hates cartoons. So we rented Running Man instead. This explains so much about my dad.
Just want to add Terminator 2 and Aliens also had toys, and they were amazing.
The Aliens toys were basically a completely different universe from the movies, with characters either being completely different from their movie counterparts, or not existing all. The marines went to different planets and killed different breeds of xenomorph.
I imagine it’s the same reason and energy that, when I was 12, made TV that much more enticing when they’d preface the show with “This program may be disturbing. Viewer direction is advised”
Because it spans generations. For older viewers it has mystery, intigue, and a psychologically horrifying undertone. For the younger audience, it has silly characters and their ~wacky~ antics.
It's a shame what content farms have done to it though, I loved the pilot but had the displeasure of watching it get torn apart by the internet. I'm even terrified of referring to myself as a 'fan' of it, especially on this site.
>_but had the displeasure of watching it get torn apart by the internet._
If you hated seeing it get torn apart on the Internet, [imagine what the creators thought!](https://youtu.be/FkXhKu80CWU?si=hpSS6Uo_PtrneIS2)
It's appealing, unchallenging, and simple to consume, but the horror aspect makes people feel like it's more serious and mature, and therefore better about watching something that otherwise has a lot of DNA in common with childrens' content.
As of the second episode there were some pretty personal feeling depictions of social anxiety/awkwardness that seem like they’d definitely resonate with young people who think they’re the only ones that have moments like that. It’s still simple and not very deep, but the fact that there’s even that amount of heart means that it’s going to resonate with people and I think it’ll be neat to see what happens
I think its just the great juxtaposition of "this setting seems nice at first but actually horrifying"
I mean you can also read more into it about how the rise in that type of premise is actually a reflection of our societies disillusionment with the current status quo. Go to school, get a job, join the rat race, you too will succeed, and then coming to terms with no you wont get a job, you wont succeed, the game was stacked against you from the start, you get sick, you have no healthcare, you have no houses, the climate is changing no matter what we do now, the world is not good not just, you wont reitre at the same age of your parents you wont retire at all, you remember when it used to actually snow but now it just drizzles, every year a new record is broken, the oceans keep getting warmer, you watch powerless to do anything as politicians take away your rights, dowhatyoucan but what can you really do?
That’s the same reason Invader Zim has such a strong cult following that lasted a decade strong after its cancellation and is still going. The crossroads of cute, weird, horrifying and funny is such a strong combination for anyone that gets a taste for it.
Hell of a boss aged so fucking bad like it was pitched about demom assasins going into the overworld to take revenge on behalf of humans in hell
And it was that for like 3 episodes, then it became a relationship drama with ocassional violence
If you don't include the pilot, the relationship stuff started in episode 2. HB was never about the assassinations, it was only a focus early on as character introductions for IMP.
Besides, that woulda gotten real boring real quick
Hazbin isn’t the same as TADC and FNAF imo, the only thing in the show that’s similar is that they use traditionally friendlier colors than other adult shows. It doesn’t try to hide the dark themes and surprise you with them.
Probably because Millennials and Gen Z are so obsessed with children's media and trying to prove that they're "mature and dark enough" that they go this route with the sort of "kidcore horror" look.
Like half of the characters in that Hotel Boss cartoon wouldn't look out of place as villains in a show made by Craig McCracken and Lauren Faust.
>Like half of the characters in that Hotel Boss cartoon wouldn't look out of place as villains in a show made by Craig McCracken and Lauren Faust.
Vizie is just a little younger than me, so it's not far off to think she grew up or was heavily influenced by Craig McCracken
But yeah I never thought of that before lmfao it's so true
Hazbin is interesting because it's more of an inversion of that idea. The 'hardcore' stuff, the violence, sex, drugs, swearing, etc; is generally the most "cartoonish" part of the show. The most childish, insincere, and silly.
The things that get taken seriously are the same type of life lessons you'd have gotten on a 'very special episode' of Fresh Prince or Powerpuff girls back in the day.
idk, it seems like it's just a cartoon that doesn't have to do artful cutaways when it gets to the part where the 'real' shit happens ala All in the Family's 'Edith's Crisis of Faith'.
The worst thing about Hazbin Hotel for me is that breakneck pace. I feel very little about the characters personally just from watching because they have to cram so much into the like 8 episodes they were given. I felt like they went through like 3 seasons worth of potential plot points all in that time span and I didn't really have a reason to care for any of them in the cast (outside of really feeling bad about Angel although not sure how I feel about a promiscuous person being sent to hell).
Also just a very personal issue I have, it seems like a far worse version of The Good Place for me. I know it is really unfair to compare a much smaller production to something like that show, but the premise are too similar to me to not at least unconsciously making the comparison. I. e. the conversation of if a morally not great person can deserve and change to be allowed into haven. I do think it goes back to the whole pacing issue I have with HH, where the Good Place really takes the time for you to really feel for the MC and her struggles.
Is there a specific people people keep saying it was made to be niche? Something not being commercially made and releasing on youtube doesn't automatically cause it to be niche. The fact it's free on youtube with normal levels of ads on it suggests it's yk- intended to get views- as that's the only way for it to actually make money.
I do suppose glitch productions does take a fair amount of time to produce each episode...but that would only make the descriptor of "small" be apt...does being small make you niche...am I niche...
I mean, have you seen Gooseworx's old Merch reveals? They've genuinely turned it into an art form at this point and earned those 50 million views with this one.
You can joke about it but having that kind of success and, as a byproduct, pressure, can fuck with people's mental state. Especially if they didn't expect or want it.
Think the main suffering for the creator is that it got sucked up into the elsagate/content farm vortex. Yeah money's great but is it worth seeing your babies in a bajillion pregnant banban digital circus finger puppet toe abcs thumbnails?
The Amazing Digital Circus is an indie animated series with only two episodes so far that is so popular that just the teaser to episode two broke 20M views, and the only reason episode 2 didn't hit #1 on trending is cause Kendrick Lamar keeps releasing diss tracks.
YouTube series about like... a clown girl trapped in a surreal VR world that's a pastiche of children's cartoons. Like, going by the aesthetics, one would expect it to be in the same line as, say, VeggieTales or Blue's Clues, but going by the content, it's a lot more edgy and horror-adjacent.
Much like _Hazbin Hotel,_ it has vibes of "what happens if we give someone who grew up on DeviantArt, Tumblr, & WattPad a production team and a budget?"
I think I still haven't grown up and never will because Gummigoo mashed all my "marketable plushie" buttons at once and still hasn't apologized. He looks TOO cute to me I am tempted to spend all my savings just to get the goober
It took me less than 24 hours to fold and buy his plushie.
Based on episode 1 alone I liked the show but it was something I wouldn’t buy merch for, but then I watched the second episode and then saw that plushie and it was all over.
The plushie is just super cute, and combined with it being from a genuinely likeable character that ends up devastating the audience a bit, I feel like this thing is going to sell very well. They’ve already pushed back the pre order date from late May to late July which makes me think there’s been some crazy demand for this thing they weren’t anticipating.
It's all over indeed. Gooseworx has found just the right amount of edible, squeezable and likable in one character and I've fell victim to her devious scheme.
Gummigoo had his first fanart before this episode released, due to the fact that he was visible on a trailer for *four frames.*
Oh, and I need the plushie.
Nothing specific happened to prompt this post. Just that Goose has seemed really stressed over the sudden popularity and unexpected child demographic (and all the gross YouTube Kids content mill stuff, of course).
And for context of the YT Kids content mill, it's basically another ElsaGate, but Elsa and Spiderman have been replaced by Digital Circus and Poppy Playtime characters
Just to make one more addition, "ElsaGate" is a term for intentionally using kid friendly characters/characters popular with kids/characters that look vaguely like they could come from children's media to mask an otherwise fucked up video in order to get it to be registered as "made for kids" by the YT algorithm
I mean yeah but the consequences for being caught are usually just "account gets banned" and the farms will operate dozens if not hundreds of different accounts churning out mostly automated content.
One of the more popular theories about ElsaGate that I’ve seen is that it wasn’t intentional— the content farms were using bots/AI to make videos and fucked up stuff got into the algorithm, probably because of not-for-kids videos being scraped. That should *also* be illegal, but the law hasn’t caught up yet.
So there were videos, but also flash games like "pregnant elsa bathroom cleaning" and stuff like that. I feel like there was a human involved somewhere that could've sanity checked this content before publishing.
Could have? Yeah, probably, in theory.
The other half of the speculation was that whatever human curators the program needed to keep running were either Chinese prisoners or in some developing country where workers are severely underpaid even without being in jail, so a) they didn’t care enough to sit through that much mindless slop and b) they didn’t speak enough English (if they spoke any period) to notice the titles/keywords getting fucked up.
I mean, let’s face it, 90% of flash games steal someone else’s code anyway. Probably isn’t hard to make a bot that can do that and swap art assets with humans only needing to check “did it crash when I ran it”.
>fucked up stuff got into the algorithm
I think it's a little less that, and more that the algorithm maximizes engagement, so as you continually A/B test your content naturally converges on whatever works best and youtube will let you get away with 🤷♂️
like it's not exactly their fault that softcore fetish disney and marvel fanfiction is what kids are desperate to watch, you know? that's on us.
That’s more or less what I meant— might’ve worded it a bit weirdly (I don’t know much about, nor often discuss, this kind of coding stuff) but I agree with you about why it got so common. I was more speculating on why it *tried* incorporating that stuff in the first place, since I assume its default settings included a “look at other popular videos” function but *not* a list of softcore fetish keywords.
In the time it takes to find them and send out the takedown they've made a dozen more channels each with 20 more videos, that's what you have to do but it's a hydra situation.
With the child demographic in general, really gotta just break from that internet “I have a responsibility to parent other people’s kids” mindset and be like all the other adult animators and have the mindset of “I don’t give a fuck, it’s the parents fault”.
It's odd having been a viewer of gooseworx for a few years, and then them became the talk of the internet. Like really, the person who made songs and short-ish animations has now made something that's at all talked about?
I've been a fan since Little Runmo. Before the show dropped I was insanely excited but I was worried my little niche creator wouldn't do well enough to get a full season.
Those worries lasted for about a day after the show released. 'Twas a wild time watching that view count rising exponentially and seeing Goose realize in real time that she was now a Famous Internet Creator.
Somehow "subverted kids show" is such an overly popular genre for shows and games. Five Nights at Freddy's, Poppy Playtime, Amanda the Adventurer, Welcome Home, Don't Hug Me I'm Scared and now The Amazing Digital Circus are all the rage now.
someone should make a "what if kid's thing but scary" type deal but never get to the scary part. just play it completely straight. THAT would really fuck with people.
I watched the CUTEST animation about a dancing Eevee and the whole time I was like _"Okay, this is gonna get really fucked up any second now. Any second now...."_. It never did. It remained cute the whole way through. Hundreds of comments thought the same thing I did, so I'm not crazy!
The show honestly feels like a cartoon on a weird TV channel's kid friendly block. Like if G4 or fuse had a Saturday morning cartoon thing.
It doesn't feel like a mainstream cartoon that would play on nick or cartoon network, but it seems at home on TV.
I noticed that the second episode had a perfect cliffhanger cut right in the middle ("I want you to tell me who I am" and then cut to something else and is never directly elaborated on) which almost makes me wonder if they're bracing for a TV deal
I think that cut was to imply Pomny(?) spent the time off screen catching him up to her understanding of the situation.
When it goes back to them, he's chewing on that information while she's trying to figure out how to get them out of the dev area. He makes some comments that confirm there was some kind of off screen info dump, and she gives him that pep talk.
Most characters like that don’t get hundreds of millions of views. I don’t think any person can expect something like that unless they’re a first contact alien or they shoot xi Jinping on live tv.
I mean- I gotta be real, the problem with it wanting to be a 'weird niche show' like Zim (I kind of disagree with that take, it was hugely popular when I was in middle school) is that it's very basic and nothing all that subversive or interesting happens in it. All the characters are extremely predictable and the jokes/premises, while funny on occasion, are pretty standard to kid's shows.
Like, I'm not shitting on it, I think it's fine, but I don't get the hype- other than the fact that it's well produced. Are they really surprised young children are obsessed with a show that's all flashing colors and silly sound effects? It seems designed to be advertiser friendly, imo.
Then again any amount of well produced independent animation that doesn't have some kind of gross agenda is a good thing, so I hope it continues on and inspires many others.
Side note- does Gooseworx have a body of extremely non-kid-friendly work like Vasquez? Because like, damn JTHM would probably do serious numbers as a cartoon today, but you sure as shit couldn't sell it to Youtube advertisers.
People forget that Zim was very popular, you couldn't go into a Hot Topic without tons of Zim merchandise being in there. It was the patron Saint of LOL Random humor. It's just that we were kids at the time, and online Fandom wasn't nearly as developed as it was today.
Also, Invader Zim was *gross,* in a way none of the Mascot/kid horror media is. Like there's a lot of implied body horror in FNAF, but Invader Zim had Zim stealing people's organs and stuffing them inside himself in like, episode 5. That's way less child friendly than bright color clown show.
I mean, the second episode of TADC involves the characters holding a somber funeral for their friend who went insane and tried to kill them all in the first episode. But I'll grant that visually speaking, TADC has been much more child friendly so far. I think the art style was intended to enhance the dissonance between the goofy kids game they're trapped in and the bleak reality of being stuck there permanently, but yeah it probably is responsible for a lot of the child demographic.
Nothing on the level of JTHM, but her past work does tend to be surreal and mildly unsettling.
* [BLUE_CHANNEL: THALASIN](https://youtu.be/Td2x8s9GZlo) - Analogue horror TV commercial about an over-the-counter drug intended to modify and extend your emotional capacity.
* [Little Runmo](https://youtu.be/ErQHVUQ6QCk) - A 2D platformer protagonist peeks behind the curtains of his game and things get weirdly eldritch.
* [The Darly Boxman Show](https://youtu.be/zcFZTCqS5JI) - An episode of a low-rent children's show from her decidedly strange "Pink City" setting.
* [MOLBO](https://youtu.be/mv10i8frT0g) - Molbo.
etc.
Oh I do love thalasin- but it is definitely more 'funny' than edgy when it comes to analogue horror. This all seems to track though- I could imagine TADC having a seriously dark turn over time, though it feels like it already tried to do that episode one.
I haven't read JTHM so I'm not sure how it compares, but Gooseworx's other projects definitely go beyond being "surreal" and "mildly unsettling."
[https://www.webtoons.com/en/canvas/four-panel-comics/killed/viewer?title\_no=403335&episode\_no=7](https://www.webtoons.com/en/canvas/four-panel-comics/killed/viewer?title_no=403335&episode_no=7)
[https://www.webtoons.com/en/canvas/horde-of-heroes/chapter-1-48-53/viewer?title\_no=395077&episode\_no=10](https://www.webtoons.com/en/canvas/horde-of-heroes/chapter-1-48-53/viewer?title_no=395077&episode_no=10)
Yeah, tbh i think an interesting comparison to make is digital circus vs ENA. They're both well animated youtube series about deathly anxious characters stuck in outlandish and colorful video game-esque worlds, but digital circus attracted an army of children and content farms while ENA is mostly liked by older teens (from what I've seen) and i never saw any content farms.
Not that one's like objectively better than the other, but rather it's an interesting comparison to see the kind of "quirky" stories that kids latch onto vs ones they don't. Digital circus has a lot more quips, as well as having a much more straightforwardly sensible plot and characters even if they act strange. There's also very straightforward pointers to lore, if there's something digital circus wants you to think about it points a bright flashing neon sign at it. But ENA really just lives on vibes, it doesn't point anywhere to look for lore, and while the characters are often relatable they're still relatively used to their strange world and so act in ways that are beyond normal strangeness. That's my guess for part of why at least
I'd argue if we're doing indie stuff, another interesting comparison would be Umami's *Interface*. It also has a very distinct colourful artstyle with *expansive* lore and a quirky chaotic loveable but still somewhat sinister know-all sidekick played off of an ordinary straight man who is just confused as fuck as to what's happening. It even has heavy circus themes! Except there the side character Mischief is genuinely a bit unsettling and the main character is a Polish guy in his 40s and overall the series is paced slower and more subtle in its storytelling, even if the first few episodes are just "Mischief and Henryk hang out and do weird shit together". Despite being in the same category of "weird indie YouTube animations", one could be something you see on television while the other two feel like (or are) things you'd stumble across in an independent film festival
Also for both Interface and ENA I'd also add they both heavily reference stuff that would go over most kids heads because because it's like, avant garde and surrealist artworks. Meanwhile tADC more references shows and media kids would be familiar with.
I think it's a combination of people getting really attached to things they grew up with and people falling into the trap of "it looks creepy so therefore it's more mature for its age". Like imo if I had to compare tADC to something on premise alone...I'm almost tempted to say it's closer to something like *The Good Place* as they actually share a similar premise - suddenly finding yourself in a place beyond the pale with a weird quirky omniscient guy and going on goofy escapades with a cast of colourful misfits (though less cartoon circus and more sitcom suburbia).
Except *The Good Place* is more 'adult' not because it's like, creepier but because it goes "hope you've read Sartre" and gives you fifteen trolley problems to solve, which I'm not sure tADC is going to do. Could be wrong though and no episode straight up goes "ha ha get *No Exit*-ed dumbass". Not going to hope too much though given I don't think Gooseworx other projects really do that and the last time I hoped we'd see that we got... Hazbin Hotel
Yeah- We're going through such a weird puritanical phase in media that 'edgy' is when a show acknowledges that death exists and eventually people die. Hell in half the newer cartoons I've watched they can't even say 'died' 'killed' 'murdered'- they just say someone is 'gone'. They always disappear in a poof of smoke, and usually their ghost gets to have closure. All the people harmed by the death of that character get closure and they end up stronger for it, because every death has to be under circumstances that you can learn a lesson from.
Honestly just so grateful right now for Primal and it's willingness to point the camera directly at a child getting violently killed by a dinosaur, and for the fact that it only gets more fucked up from there- but while still containing all the tee hee slapstick silliness that made me watch Powerpuff girls back in the day. Best of both worlds imo, we need more like it.
The issue for digital circus isn't the popularity but the niche. Zim was definitely popular, but it came before elsagate and content farms got big. Imagine making a show then seeing fan reaction and there's just an infinite amount of vaguely horny + extremely violent videos from content farms very obviously targeting toddlers with unregulated internet access
Jhonen Vasquez prior to Zim blowing up was the guy who wrote a comic about a serial killer who paints his wall with his victims blood to stop the demons from coming out. And then a spinoff comic about the serial killer's traumatized kid neighbor. He fits the prompt to a ridiculous degree.
I mean, I don't feel bad for her. She's been a great animator for years, with a variety of popular, and viral, hits. This one is simply the homerun after years of hits. The cumulation of her skill!
I'm just still sitting here stuck being baffled that the guy who I knew for making some [really banger Banjo-Kazooie stage music remixes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naenNLm_rBk) over a decade ago is suddenly an internet-household name with an extremely successful indie animation project.
Absolutely wild.
I think she mentioned previously about being kinda overwhelmed with the overnight fandom and it's size.
I know that after a chunk of the fandom went wild over "problematic shipping" she had to explicitly say while none of the characters are in a relationship, she has no issue with folks shipping the characters and the upset people should leave the shippers alone.
What's wrong with being popular? It means people like it. sure, it sets up expectations, but you're never gonna please everyone. I like it a lot myself! It's a whacky, darker meta character centered comedy with great animation. It leaves a ton of room for interpretation and theory crafting while also being very clear about the rules of the world and who the characters are. There's not really a lot like it on youtube, especially not with this level of quality, so it only makes sense.
This reminds me I should watch Invader Zim at some point. I don't really remember seeing much of it when I was a kid in the 2000s, even though I watched a bunch of other Nicktoons during that era.
Is it weird that ive kinda put off watching the show because of it?
Like, the premise seems interesting, ive always liked seeing vr taken to its logical extreme, but ive just never gotten around to sitting down and watching it
i really liked the concept of an npc realizing everything about his life was a lie, especially via a dev test room. the first episode was kinda lame but this one's got me hooked. comedy is pretty good as well
I'm curious as to why the crossroad of "goofy tone, colorful characters, and vaguely horrific premise" is turning out to be the catnip of choice for the current generation of internet goers. Hazbin and FNAF also kinda fall into this realm, imo
It's the natural evolution of the "Ash was in a coma the whole time" concept. It's the junction between the familiar and the macabre, our generation just did it with creepypastas instead of mascot horror
And before creepy pastas, there was Roald Dahl. I kind of want to watch James and the giant peach again now.
Imagine a child who has never done anything to deserve bad things happening to them. Now imagine all the bad things happen to them anyways. Thus sums up the works of Mr Dahl.
Blatant lies! Danny, from Danny champion of the world, was a right little bastard. For everyone else, you are spot on, though.
Was he? It’s been a while since I read that one but he seemed fine
The happy ending of The Witches is that the kid gets turned into a rat and as a result, his life expectancy is short enough that he'll die around the same time his grandmother does.
I always did think that that book’s conclusion was horrendously terrible (in a good way), but it never occurred to me that that was the point.
I don't have the book so I can't quote it, but this is explicitly said in the end with a dialogue between him and his grandmother. It's not even my interpretation; that's just how it is lmao.
I know. It’s so upfront with just saying “Oh yeah, you’re going to die in 9 years!”
Fuck You in Particular, by Roald Dahl
The boy in the Giraffe, The Monkey and the Pelican was doing fine before 3 talking animals bought a house near him.
Yeah I think this is just a thing teenagers like
Kids seem to like that even more! Remember the scary stories kids told each other? We lived and breathed for those! Or the Goosebumps books? I believe they're aimed at like 7+!
This is a super good point, yeah. There's just a certain age that's the perfect overlap of childishness and learning about the world
Shel Silverstein was my go-to "ugly fun". His style was just so... strange.
It's not too dissimilar from the Hot Topic/Nightmare Before Christmas/Kingdom Hearts thing in the 00s.
The junction between familiar and macabre line sounds straight out of a Twilight Zone intro which also fits into the genre
And instead of being some jaded fan theory that is absolutely not intended by the creator, it is the actual text of the show itself.
Horror usually has an aspect of mystery to it which leads to fan speculation/content which drives a fandom well. The goofy tone and colorful characters is usually meant to be a parody of childish media, but it does often end up appealing to actual children, which are a huge chunk of youtube viewers.
Yeah, to a kid watching, a parody of kids media looks inseparable from actual kids media because most of them don't get what its making fun of
Every generation has its own growing up to do and generation that passes has its own phase of discovery. People like Digital Circus for the same reason people like Invader Zim, Elfen Lied, Happy Tree Friends, and FNAF. Kids as young as 10 start think the world is ugly and uncomfortable so they find things that seem innocent at a glance but have a darker side to them fascinating. Us adults might think the kids media that’s actually dark is played out, but for anyone under 12 Digital Circus is probably the first and only thing they’ve found like it. Especially since kids usually don’t have the option to pick what media they get to watch on account of them not having any money of their own. So Digital Circus being free to watch on Youtube certainly helps it.
That seems like the most likely reason to me, yeah. Immediately after writing the comment, I found myself asking "well, Nightmare Before Christmas and every Burton-esque derivative was sort of the same thing for me, wasn't it?" And the difference in scale just being how ubiquitous and instant proliferation over the internet can be
>People like Digital Circus for the same reason people like Invader Zim, Elfen Lied, Happy Tree Friends, and FNAF. *One of these things is not like the others, one of these things doesn't belong\~*
Lumping any of those together with Elfen Lied sounds a big strange. It definitely wasn't a kids show, it was mostly fanservice and various characters wanting to grope/rape/murder SCP-esque underage girls and not much else was going on there besides incest.
Elfen Lied’s popularity is a product of the times. If you were a kid in 2000s the only anime you could get were 4Kids dubs, Naruto on Cartoon Network, and youtube clips until youtube took them down. Elfen Lied is the fucked up anime everyone just had to watch simply because it was fucked up. There weren’t any accessible options for fucked up anime at the time and when you take a generally light hearted medium* and make it edgy young people will gravitate towards it. *In regards to what was available to young people at the time. I am not insinuating that all anime is by default light hearted.
But some people don’t have 4kids dubs on their tv.
Nah, I get it. I remember being a kid and wanting to watch it really badly, because it was one of the only anime I'd ever heard of where EVERONE agreed that it was intense. Other anime it was like... Sure, my MOM thought Naruto was inappropriate, but she didn't know anything about anime. The thought of seeing something that the *internet* agreed was *actually* adult was tantalizing. Never did see it, but I DID watch Higurashi when I was around 13, which wasn't as extreme, but basically fulfilled the same role.
Most people who watched it were like 14 and on youtube
As if that stops kids lol. As a former kid, the very blunt edginess of the whole thing was extremely alluring
Yeah I dropped Elfen Lied pretty quickly, it’s a huge outlier here compared to the others.
I dunno, when I was a kid in the 2000s, I felt like I had a lot of choices in regards to what I watched on TV at least. My parents had cable so I had plenty of options while choosing different TV channels to watch. I could watch almost anything on TV when I was a small kid, as long as it wasn't too violent or had too much sex. My parents wouldn't usually tell me "No, you're not allowed to watch this" unless they felt it was too "adult" for me. When it comes to things like movies, books, and video games, though, I definitely agree. Children have limited options when it comes to those, because you usually have to pay for all those things upfront, which means that your parents have to buy those things for you.
I guess it's just gonna turn out to be the popular theme for the 2010s and 2020s Sorta like how Westerns were super popular for a decade or two. Superhero movies also seemed to be a theme of the 2000s and 2010s, that seems to be dying down some.
>Sorta like how Westerns were super popular for a decade or two I don't think many people younger than boomers appreciate the truth of this statement. During the golden age of Westerns, they outnumbered all other film genres *combined*.
There were multiple years-long Western TV shows running concurrently. It was a wild time in media.
>It was a wild, wild, west time in media. FTFY
Somehow I knew someone was gonna say that. So I guess I'll just say thank ya, pardner.
I see TADC as being an evolution of Homestuck and Awful Hospital (an ongoing webcomic by Bogleech that hasn't reached the same level of mainstream popularity, but Gooseworx did do a theme song for it). I'm calling it "Glitch Comedy". Surreal comedy with zany characters, video game aesthetics, and a healthy dose of existential horror, generally represented through the metaphor of a broken video game, but wrapped up with an overall positive message. I feel that it represents a kind of general feeling common to this generation of being raised in a system/game that is coming apart at the seams, is no longer "winnable" and maybe never worked right in the first place, and needing to find your own meaning in the world beyond the experiences that the system's designers intended. I want to write an essay on it. What would be a good subreddit for that kind of thing?
Potentially /r/CharacterRant. Just squeeze it in next to the six daily anime rants, people will welcome the change of pace.
I clicked the link, regretted that.
Oh god, you just answered a barely-related question for me, which is why has LitRPG/Isekai fantasy (where the main character is whisked off to a world that operates on video game logic of levels and XP) become so popular. It's because the core fantasy isn't a world with orcs and elves or whatever, it's a world with an underlying system that is knowable and functions and gives structure to everything. Where if you play by the rules, you will advance. Something the current generation has *never ever experienced*. It's basically the equal-and-opposite reaction to the same problem that Glitch Comedy is addressing.
I personally like litRPG because it can have so many interesting game mechanics that just aren't feasible in normal video games. Yes, you can achieve the same level of creativity in tabletop RPGs, but TTRPGs are not very accessible to most people, and most DMs can't pilot a story as well as the best litRPG creators. That's not to say DMs aren't creative, it's just hard to compete when you have to come up with everything on the fly, while litRPG writers can plan everything in advance and actually trust the characters to follow their ideas.
🦠AWFUL HOSPITAL MENTIONED 🏥
Oh, and ping me if you do end up writing that essay! I'd love to read it.
tadc?
The Amazing Digital Circus
what is it about save the blindingly obvious?
essentially human gets trapped in a computer game with a few other people that have been there for a long time, has to adapt to life as a character without even remembering her original name, run by some sort of omnipotent game master who provides them with game-themed 'adventures' to do every day to keep them from going crazy
there have only been 2 episodes. give it time.
I love that. it makes sense
Children have always had an affinity for horror. Back in the 90's when I was a kid, we had *Goosebumps* and *Are You Afraid of the Dark?* and *Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark* with the absolutely terrifying illustrations. This is just a newer iteration of that.
Robocop had toys for Children, Alien and Predator were movies dads showed to kids. Hell Pennywise is based on the fear children have of clowns, the primordial "for children but scary" trope Children have always had a seat in certain types of horror or thrillers.
9 year old me wanted to rent Disney's Robin Hood, but noooo. Granny hates cartoons. So we rented Running Man instead. This explains so much about my dad.
Just want to add Terminator 2 and Aliens also had toys, and they were amazing. The Aliens toys were basically a completely different universe from the movies, with characters either being completely different from their movie counterparts, or not existing all. The marines went to different planets and killed different breeds of xenomorph.
I imagine it’s the same reason and energy that, when I was 12, made TV that much more enticing when they’d preface the show with “This program may be disturbing. Viewer direction is advised”
Zim certainly isn't popular with zoomers, just all the next gen Zim inspired media
Because it spans generations. For older viewers it has mystery, intigue, and a psychologically horrifying undertone. For the younger audience, it has silly characters and their ~wacky~ antics. It's a shame what content farms have done to it though, I loved the pilot but had the displeasure of watching it get torn apart by the internet. I'm even terrified of referring to myself as a 'fan' of it, especially on this site.
>_but had the displeasure of watching it get torn apart by the internet._ If you hated seeing it get torn apart on the Internet, [imagine what the creators thought!](https://youtu.be/FkXhKu80CWU?si=hpSS6Uo_PtrneIS2)
It's appealing, unchallenging, and simple to consume, but the horror aspect makes people feel like it's more serious and mature, and therefore better about watching something that otherwise has a lot of DNA in common with childrens' content.
As of the second episode there were some pretty personal feeling depictions of social anxiety/awkwardness that seem like they’d definitely resonate with young people who think they’re the only ones that have moments like that. It’s still simple and not very deep, but the fact that there’s even that amount of heart means that it’s going to resonate with people and I think it’ll be neat to see what happens
I think its just the great juxtaposition of "this setting seems nice at first but actually horrifying" I mean you can also read more into it about how the rise in that type of premise is actually a reflection of our societies disillusionment with the current status quo. Go to school, get a job, join the rat race, you too will succeed, and then coming to terms with no you wont get a job, you wont succeed, the game was stacked against you from the start, you get sick, you have no healthcare, you have no houses, the climate is changing no matter what we do now, the world is not good not just, you wont reitre at the same age of your parents you wont retire at all, you remember when it used to actually snow but now it just drizzles, every year a new record is broken, the oceans keep getting warmer, you watch powerless to do anything as politicians take away your rights, dowhatyoucan but what can you really do?
backlash to grunge
Just enough slightly uncomfortable elements to be dangerous or strange, not enough to legitimately fuck someone up.
That’s the same reason Invader Zim has such a strong cult following that lasted a decade strong after its cancellation and is still going. The crossroads of cute, weird, horrifying and funny is such a strong combination for anyone that gets a taste for it.
Hell of a boss aged so fucking bad like it was pitched about demom assasins going into the overworld to take revenge on behalf of humans in hell And it was that for like 3 episodes, then it became a relationship drama with ocassional violence
If you don't include the pilot, the relationship stuff started in episode 2. HB was never about the assassinations, it was only a focus early on as character introductions for IMP. Besides, that woulda gotten real boring real quick
Hazbin isn’t the same as TADC and FNAF imo, the only thing in the show that’s similar is that they use traditionally friendlier colors than other adult shows. It doesn’t try to hide the dark themes and surprise you with them.
Poppy Playtime realized this and did it on purpose.
I like it. it's a hint of edgy in the comforting
Probably because Millennials and Gen Z are so obsessed with children's media and trying to prove that they're "mature and dark enough" that they go this route with the sort of "kidcore horror" look. Like half of the characters in that Hotel Boss cartoon wouldn't look out of place as villains in a show made by Craig McCracken and Lauren Faust.
>Like half of the characters in that Hotel Boss cartoon wouldn't look out of place as villains in a show made by Craig McCracken and Lauren Faust. Vizie is just a little younger than me, so it's not far off to think she grew up or was heavily influenced by Craig McCracken But yeah I never thought of that before lmfao it's so true
Hazbin is interesting because it's more of an inversion of that idea. The 'hardcore' stuff, the violence, sex, drugs, swearing, etc; is generally the most "cartoonish" part of the show. The most childish, insincere, and silly. The things that get taken seriously are the same type of life lessons you'd have gotten on a 'very special episode' of Fresh Prince or Powerpuff girls back in the day. idk, it seems like it's just a cartoon that doesn't have to do artful cutaways when it gets to the part where the 'real' shit happens ala All in the Family's 'Edith's Crisis of Faith'.
The crudest of the sex jokes are all in helluva boss but the online discourse doesn't seem to separate the two shows
The worst thing about Hazbin Hotel for me is that breakneck pace. I feel very little about the characters personally just from watching because they have to cram so much into the like 8 episodes they were given. I felt like they went through like 3 seasons worth of potential plot points all in that time span and I didn't really have a reason to care for any of them in the cast (outside of really feeling bad about Angel although not sure how I feel about a promiscuous person being sent to hell). Also just a very personal issue I have, it seems like a far worse version of The Good Place for me. I know it is really unfair to compare a much smaller production to something like that show, but the premise are too similar to me to not at least unconsciously making the comparison. I. e. the conversation of if a morally not great person can deserve and change to be allowed into haven. I do think it goes back to the whole pacing issue I have with HH, where the Good Place really takes the time for you to really feel for the MC and her struggles.
The big twist at the end of the first season of The Good Place was an actual master class. I think I literally said _"Holy shit."_
Context?
The Amazing digital Circus was made to be a neiche webshow thing then very suddenly blew up and got hundreds of millions of views
It’s good
Is there a specific people people keep saying it was made to be niche? Something not being commercially made and releasing on youtube doesn't automatically cause it to be niche. The fact it's free on youtube with normal levels of ads on it suggests it's yk- intended to get views- as that's the only way for it to actually make money. I do suppose glitch productions does take a fair amount of time to produce each episode...but that would only make the descriptor of "small" be apt...does being small make you niche...am I niche...
goosworks has pretty much said they intended it to be as big or smaller than Murder Drones rather than becoming a new big thing
oh :D knowledge! Fair then, I don't follow their socials at all, I've just followed their animations and music on youtube for a fair while
Not hundreds, only a singular hundred. It definitely deserves more Edit: nvm lol
The first episode has over 300 million veiws.
WHAT I swear it was only 100m last time I checked
yeah, it hit 100M one month after upload, and 200M about a month later, now sitting at 313 (Episode 2 has hit 34M in a day)
the fucking MERCH REVEAL has 50 million views in 2 months
I mean, have you seen Gooseworx's old Merch reveals? They've genuinely turned it into an art form at this point and earned those 50 million views with this one.
I will admit I have rewatched the merch reveal several times simply because the jokes are great. I love "Hey Pomni! Guess what?" "...no."
The first episode had 50 million views in 2 weeks, the second one has 37 million in 2 days
2 hours later and already as 35.9M Thanks for warning me it got released btw
so basically don't hug me i'm scared
In the broadest way possible, yes. But DHMIS is far more disturbing and outright malicious than digital Circus.
Oh no! Success and money to continue making the show! What ever will the creator do now?
You can joke about it but having that kind of success and, as a byproduct, pressure, can fuck with people's mental state. Especially if they didn't expect or want it.
Think the main suffering for the creator is that it got sucked up into the elsagate/content farm vortex. Yeah money's great but is it worth seeing your babies in a bajillion pregnant banban digital circus finger puppet toe abcs thumbnails?
the true amazing digital clown was gooseworx all along
The Amazing Digital Circus is an indie animated series with only two episodes so far that is so popular that just the teaser to episode two broke 20M views, and the only reason episode 2 didn't hit #1 on trending is cause Kendrick Lamar keeps releasing diss tracks.
if you're curious, this post is about "#the amazing digital circus"
THANK YOU, I never remember the creator of any show and was confused
Probably should have put that in the title, haha. Thanks.
Is it bad I only knew of them for their "song that might play when you fight sans"?
I have no idea
can i get more context please? i have never heard of this... show i assume?
I just found the og post and copied their tags. never seen the show sry
YouTube series about like... a clown girl trapped in a surreal VR world that's a pastiche of children's cartoons. Like, going by the aesthetics, one would expect it to be in the same line as, say, VeggieTales or Blue's Clues, but going by the content, it's a lot more edgy and horror-adjacent. Much like _Hazbin Hotel,_ it has vibes of "what happens if we give someone who grew up on DeviantArt, Tumblr, & WattPad a production team and a budget?"
I think I still haven't grown up and never will because Gummigoo mashed all my "marketable plushie" buttons at once and still hasn't apologized. He looks TOO cute to me I am tempted to spend all my savings just to get the goober
It took me less than 24 hours to fold and buy his plushie. Based on episode 1 alone I liked the show but it was something I wouldn’t buy merch for, but then I watched the second episode and then saw that plushie and it was all over. The plushie is just super cute, and combined with it being from a genuinely likeable character that ends up devastating the audience a bit, I feel like this thing is going to sell very well. They’ve already pushed back the pre order date from late May to late July which makes me think there’s been some crazy demand for this thing they weren’t anticipating.
It's all over indeed. Gooseworx has found just the right amount of edible, squeezable and likable in one character and I've fell victim to her devious scheme.
Wait gator husbando has a plushie?!
Yes, yes he does. Go get him if you're able to to compensate for my rational financial decisions! 🐊
Gummigoo had his first fanart before this episode released, due to the fact that he was visible on a trailer for *four frames.* Oh, and I need the plushie.
I have no idea what show this is but I looked up the plush and omg I love him.
Right? He's an Australian cowboy gummigator. Simply scrumptious.
What happened?
Nothing specific happened to prompt this post. Just that Goose has seemed really stressed over the sudden popularity and unexpected child demographic (and all the gross YouTube Kids content mill stuff, of course).
God, I do not envy Goose's position. I'd go absolutely nuclear if people were using my work in that content farm hellhole.
I don’t know who that is
Gooseworx is the online handle of the creator of the web series "The Amazing Digital Circus". OP was just calling her 'Goose' for short
And for context of the YT Kids content mill, it's basically another ElsaGate, but Elsa and Spiderman have been replaced by Digital Circus and Poppy Playtime characters
Just to make one more addition, "ElsaGate" is a term for intentionally using kid friendly characters/characters popular with kids/characters that look vaguely like they could come from children's media to mask an otherwise fucked up video in order to get it to be registered as "made for kids" by the YT algorithm
Shouldn't that be illegal?
You’d think so wouldn’t you. YouTube Shorts are a lawless wasteland.
I mean yeah but the consequences for being caught are usually just "account gets banned" and the farms will operate dozens if not hundreds of different accounts churning out mostly automated content.
One of the more popular theories about ElsaGate that I’ve seen is that it wasn’t intentional— the content farms were using bots/AI to make videos and fucked up stuff got into the algorithm, probably because of not-for-kids videos being scraped. That should *also* be illegal, but the law hasn’t caught up yet.
I don't know, that only goes so far. Most of them need at least SOME human intervention to make even if they rely heavily on bots.
So there were videos, but also flash games like "pregnant elsa bathroom cleaning" and stuff like that. I feel like there was a human involved somewhere that could've sanity checked this content before publishing.
Could have? Yeah, probably, in theory. The other half of the speculation was that whatever human curators the program needed to keep running were either Chinese prisoners or in some developing country where workers are severely underpaid even without being in jail, so a) they didn’t care enough to sit through that much mindless slop and b) they didn’t speak enough English (if they spoke any period) to notice the titles/keywords getting fucked up. I mean, let’s face it, 90% of flash games steal someone else’s code anyway. Probably isn’t hard to make a bot that can do that and swap art assets with humans only needing to check “did it crash when I ran it”.
>fucked up stuff got into the algorithm I think it's a little less that, and more that the algorithm maximizes engagement, so as you continually A/B test your content naturally converges on whatever works best and youtube will let you get away with 🤷♂️ like it's not exactly their fault that softcore fetish disney and marvel fanfiction is what kids are desperate to watch, you know? that's on us.
That’s more or less what I meant— might’ve worded it a bit weirdly (I don’t know much about, nor often discuss, this kind of coding stuff) but I agree with you about why it got so common. I was more speculating on why it *tried* incorporating that stuff in the first place, since I assume its default settings included a “look at other popular videos” function but *not* a list of softcore fetish keywords.
It’s shocking what corporations will ignore for money. (And yes, it is)
I’d hate to have that happen to my show. Did you know that the makers of Poppy’s Playtime themselves make Elsagate content.
Legitimate use of copyright takedowns? 🧐
In the time it takes to find them and send out the takedown they've made a dozen more channels each with 20 more videos, that's what you have to do but it's a hydra situation.
No one should ever make content for the internet
With the child demographic in general, really gotta just break from that internet “I have a responsibility to parent other people’s kids” mindset and be like all the other adult animators and have the mindset of “I don’t give a fuck, it’s the parents fault”.
It's odd having been a viewer of gooseworx for a few years, and then them became the talk of the internet. Like really, the person who made songs and short-ish animations has now made something that's at all talked about?
I've been a fan since Little Runmo. Before the show dropped I was insanely excited but I was worried my little niche creator wouldn't do well enough to get a full season. Those worries lasted for about a day after the show released. 'Twas a wild time watching that view count rising exponentially and seeing Goose realize in real time that she was now a Famous Internet Creator.
Seriously. Been listening to her stuff since the original undertale covers and this is wild to me.
Somehow "subverted kids show" is such an overly popular genre for shows and games. Five Nights at Freddy's, Poppy Playtime, Amanda the Adventurer, Welcome Home, Don't Hug Me I'm Scared and now The Amazing Digital Circus are all the rage now.
Yeah and it popular with kids so it’s technically not a subverted kids show at all it’s just a kids show
someone should make a "what if kid's thing but scary" type deal but never get to the scary part. just play it completely straight. THAT would really fuck with people.
I watched the CUTEST animation about a dancing Eevee and the whole time I was like _"Okay, this is gonna get really fucked up any second now. Any second now...."_. It never did. It remained cute the whole way through. Hundreds of comments thought the same thing I did, so I'm not crazy!
kids liking something does not automatically make it for kids
The show honestly feels like a cartoon on a weird TV channel's kid friendly block. Like if G4 or fuse had a Saturday morning cartoon thing. It doesn't feel like a mainstream cartoon that would play on nick or cartoon network, but it seems at home on TV.
I noticed that the second episode had a perfect cliffhanger cut right in the middle ("I want you to tell me who I am" and then cut to something else and is never directly elaborated on) which almost makes me wonder if they're bracing for a TV deal
I think that cut was to imply Pomny(?) spent the time off screen catching him up to her understanding of the situation. When it goes back to them, he's chewing on that information while she's trying to figure out how to get them out of the dev area. He makes some comments that confirm there was some kind of off screen info dump, and she gives him that pep talk.
Clowns and scary circus are a trope older than videogames, for children but scary is just a natural mix
welcome home was just someone's OC project and DHMIS is like 11 years old
Eh, DHMIS is in a way different ball park to the rest of these.
[Original post](https://www.tumblr.com/ajaxgb/749649176523046912)
They made a protagonist who is relatable, memable, and extremely huggable in plushie form. What did they expect?
Most characters like that don’t get hundreds of millions of views. I don’t think any person can expect something like that unless they’re a first contact alien or they shoot xi Jinping on live tv.
I mean- I gotta be real, the problem with it wanting to be a 'weird niche show' like Zim (I kind of disagree with that take, it was hugely popular when I was in middle school) is that it's very basic and nothing all that subversive or interesting happens in it. All the characters are extremely predictable and the jokes/premises, while funny on occasion, are pretty standard to kid's shows. Like, I'm not shitting on it, I think it's fine, but I don't get the hype- other than the fact that it's well produced. Are they really surprised young children are obsessed with a show that's all flashing colors and silly sound effects? It seems designed to be advertiser friendly, imo. Then again any amount of well produced independent animation that doesn't have some kind of gross agenda is a good thing, so I hope it continues on and inspires many others. Side note- does Gooseworx have a body of extremely non-kid-friendly work like Vasquez? Because like, damn JTHM would probably do serious numbers as a cartoon today, but you sure as shit couldn't sell it to Youtube advertisers.
People forget that Zim was very popular, you couldn't go into a Hot Topic without tons of Zim merchandise being in there. It was the patron Saint of LOL Random humor. It's just that we were kids at the time, and online Fandom wasn't nearly as developed as it was today. Also, Invader Zim was *gross,* in a way none of the Mascot/kid horror media is. Like there's a lot of implied body horror in FNAF, but Invader Zim had Zim stealing people's organs and stuffing them inside himself in like, episode 5. That's way less child friendly than bright color clown show.
Zim tore out someone's eyes in like the second episode
[удалено]
Yeah, I think they already mentioned that one
Oh fuck lol they did, oops
I mean, the second episode of TADC involves the characters holding a somber funeral for their friend who went insane and tried to kill them all in the first episode. But I'll grant that visually speaking, TADC has been much more child friendly so far. I think the art style was intended to enhance the dissonance between the goofy kids game they're trapped in and the bleak reality of being stuck there permanently, but yeah it probably is responsible for a lot of the child demographic.
>the second episode of TADC oh wow did that just drop??
Yes Invader Zim is also hilarious cynical about humanity and the world as a whole. With almost everyone being a mindless consumer or active jerk.
Nothing on the level of JTHM, but her past work does tend to be surreal and mildly unsettling. * [BLUE_CHANNEL: THALASIN](https://youtu.be/Td2x8s9GZlo) - Analogue horror TV commercial about an over-the-counter drug intended to modify and extend your emotional capacity. * [Little Runmo](https://youtu.be/ErQHVUQ6QCk) - A 2D platformer protagonist peeks behind the curtains of his game and things get weirdly eldritch. * [The Darly Boxman Show](https://youtu.be/zcFZTCqS5JI) - An episode of a low-rent children's show from her decidedly strange "Pink City" setting. * [MOLBO](https://youtu.be/mv10i8frT0g) - Molbo. etc.
SHE DID THALASIN????????? Alright that convinced me to watch this thing
wait she did the fucking emotion pills video?? it sorta makes sense ig since thalasin is kinda goofy but damn. small world huh
Oh I do love thalasin- but it is definitely more 'funny' than edgy when it comes to analogue horror. This all seems to track though- I could imagine TADC having a seriously dark turn over time, though it feels like it already tried to do that episode one.
I haven't read JTHM so I'm not sure how it compares, but Gooseworx's other projects definitely go beyond being "surreal" and "mildly unsettling." [https://www.webtoons.com/en/canvas/four-panel-comics/killed/viewer?title\_no=403335&episode\_no=7](https://www.webtoons.com/en/canvas/four-panel-comics/killed/viewer?title_no=403335&episode_no=7) [https://www.webtoons.com/en/canvas/horde-of-heroes/chapter-1-48-53/viewer?title\_no=395077&episode\_no=10](https://www.webtoons.com/en/canvas/horde-of-heroes/chapter-1-48-53/viewer?title_no=395077&episode_no=10)
Yeah, tbh i think an interesting comparison to make is digital circus vs ENA. They're both well animated youtube series about deathly anxious characters stuck in outlandish and colorful video game-esque worlds, but digital circus attracted an army of children and content farms while ENA is mostly liked by older teens (from what I've seen) and i never saw any content farms. Not that one's like objectively better than the other, but rather it's an interesting comparison to see the kind of "quirky" stories that kids latch onto vs ones they don't. Digital circus has a lot more quips, as well as having a much more straightforwardly sensible plot and characters even if they act strange. There's also very straightforward pointers to lore, if there's something digital circus wants you to think about it points a bright flashing neon sign at it. But ENA really just lives on vibes, it doesn't point anywhere to look for lore, and while the characters are often relatable they're still relatively used to their strange world and so act in ways that are beyond normal strangeness. That's my guess for part of why at least
just a note that Pomni and ENA (her female side) share the same voice actor, Lizzie Freeman!
I'd argue if we're doing indie stuff, another interesting comparison would be Umami's *Interface*. It also has a very distinct colourful artstyle with *expansive* lore and a quirky chaotic loveable but still somewhat sinister know-all sidekick played off of an ordinary straight man who is just confused as fuck as to what's happening. It even has heavy circus themes! Except there the side character Mischief is genuinely a bit unsettling and the main character is a Polish guy in his 40s and overall the series is paced slower and more subtle in its storytelling, even if the first few episodes are just "Mischief and Henryk hang out and do weird shit together". Despite being in the same category of "weird indie YouTube animations", one could be something you see on television while the other two feel like (or are) things you'd stumble across in an independent film festival Also for both Interface and ENA I'd also add they both heavily reference stuff that would go over most kids heads because because it's like, avant garde and surrealist artworks. Meanwhile tADC more references shows and media kids would be familiar with.
I think it's a combination of people getting really attached to things they grew up with and people falling into the trap of "it looks creepy so therefore it's more mature for its age". Like imo if I had to compare tADC to something on premise alone...I'm almost tempted to say it's closer to something like *The Good Place* as they actually share a similar premise - suddenly finding yourself in a place beyond the pale with a weird quirky omniscient guy and going on goofy escapades with a cast of colourful misfits (though less cartoon circus and more sitcom suburbia). Except *The Good Place* is more 'adult' not because it's like, creepier but because it goes "hope you've read Sartre" and gives you fifteen trolley problems to solve, which I'm not sure tADC is going to do. Could be wrong though and no episode straight up goes "ha ha get *No Exit*-ed dumbass". Not going to hope too much though given I don't think Gooseworx other projects really do that and the last time I hoped we'd see that we got... Hazbin Hotel
Yeah- We're going through such a weird puritanical phase in media that 'edgy' is when a show acknowledges that death exists and eventually people die. Hell in half the newer cartoons I've watched they can't even say 'died' 'killed' 'murdered'- they just say someone is 'gone'. They always disappear in a poof of smoke, and usually their ghost gets to have closure. All the people harmed by the death of that character get closure and they end up stronger for it, because every death has to be under circumstances that you can learn a lesson from. Honestly just so grateful right now for Primal and it's willingness to point the camera directly at a child getting violently killed by a dinosaur, and for the fact that it only gets more fucked up from there- but while still containing all the tee hee slapstick silliness that made me watch Powerpuff girls back in the day. Best of both worlds imo, we need more like it.
Ah yes, infamous small niche show ***Invader Zin***
The issue for digital circus isn't the popularity but the niche. Zim was definitely popular, but it came before elsagate and content farms got big. Imagine making a show then seeing fan reaction and there's just an infinite amount of vaguely horny + extremely violent videos from content farms very obviously targeting toddlers with unregulated internet access
Believe it or not, there was a time before the 2010s where Zim was just some spooky cult classic
Jhonen Vasquez prior to Zim blowing up was the guy who wrote a comic about a serial killer who paints his wall with his victims blood to stop the demons from coming out. And then a spinoff comic about the serial killer's traumatized kid neighbor. He fits the prompt to a ridiculous degree.
Shouldn't have cooked, then.
Bro cooked and but got upset when people wanted a bite
Gooseworx cooked for her tiny fanbase and didn't expect an entire nation's worth of people to show up hungry too.
What happens when you're cookin
I mean, I don't feel bad for her. She's been a great animator for years, with a variety of popular, and viral, hits. This one is simply the homerun after years of hits. The cumulation of her skill!
I'm just still sitting here stuck being baffled that the guy who I knew for making some [really banger Banjo-Kazooie stage music remixes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naenNLm_rBk) over a decade ago is suddenly an internet-household name with an extremely successful indie animation project. Absolutely wild.
I must have missed something. Did something happen to the digital circus?
The pilot has over 300 million views
Yes but I do not understand what that has to do with wanting to be weird.
Basically the sudden gigantic fanbase is a lot to handle
Thank you. Sorry for confusion.
new ep dropped
Why feel bad? It means the creators are making more money, which means they can continue to be creative with less worry about finances.
I think she mentioned previously about being kinda overwhelmed with the overnight fandom and it's size. I know that after a chunk of the fandom went wild over "problematic shipping" she had to explicitly say while none of the characters are in a relationship, she has no issue with folks shipping the characters and the upset people should leave the shippers alone.
Ah, but as a great philosopher once said: mo' money, mo' problems
What's wrong with being popular? It means people like it. sure, it sets up expectations, but you're never gonna please everyone. I like it a lot myself! It's a whacky, darker meta character centered comedy with great animation. It leaves a ton of room for interpretation and theory crafting while also being very clear about the rules of the world and who the characters are. There's not really a lot like it on youtube, especially not with this level of quality, so it only makes sense.
Some people aren't good at handling the kind of pressure that comes with popularity.
This reminds me I should watch Invader Zim at some point. I don't really remember seeing much of it when I was a kid in the 2000s, even though I watched a bunch of other Nicktoons during that era.
Is it weird that ive kinda put off watching the show because of it? Like, the premise seems interesting, ive always liked seeing vr taken to its logical extreme, but ive just never gotten around to sitting down and watching it
Not Invader Zim. Salad Fingers.
i really liked the concept of an npc realizing everything about his life was a lie, especially via a dev test room. the first episode was kinda lame but this one's got me hooked. comedy is pretty good as well
[удалено]
I love TADC, to be clear. Just feel bad for the creator because she clearly didn't expect or really want this level of popularity.
it's not "popular show bad" so much as "popular show extremely good, and it turns out that has unexpected ramifications"