reminder to worldbuilders: don't get caught up in things that aren't important to the story you're writing, like plot and characters! instead, try to focus on what readers actually care about: detailed plate tectonics

Jeremy Adams: I need to... fujo out... like Geoff Johns would want...

merry christmas lu guang!! praying you get your happy ending next year 😭😭😭

I’ve been waiting all year to post this.

There is always a fandom discourse about how fandom is too much about shipping and romantic love, but my beef is actually with people being too fond of the idea of a family as the purest form of love and the strongest unit.

Starting from pople tending to turn every story about siblings who are not besties into this huge tragedy instead of awknowledging that maybe, sometimes, people are not close with their siblings. Or that people are so weird about mothers.

But what irks me even more is the tendency to decide that two people who are close in canon have a "sibling coded relationship" which suddenly also means that shipping them together is wrong. Or if a character has an older person in their life whom they look up to - well that is their parent now!!!! They can't fuck their parent!!!!

There is this underlying idea that elevating characters into a familial bond is above such concepts as romantic love or sex. Which sucks because that is not what the concept found family means - it was meant to describe the queer experience of finding your people and community from outside of your blood relatives, and it was never meant to say that there can't also be romantic relationships within that community.

And it is not even always about the fact that I want to ship my blorbo with everyone who comes near him (although I absolutely do), but I think that sometimes there can be meaningful dynamics that are not about family. I want my blorbo to have friends, lovers, partners, mentors, neighbours, a trusted older person who they can call to but is not their parent.

Maybe some of this rises from the fact that family for me is something complicated and sore and not as important as my friends and community. But also the idea of a nuclear family as the pillar of society is such a conservative talking point and it is weird that people keep throwing a fit about romance and dating as societal standard but don't seem to notice this one.

Looking at the donghua situation for 2026 in Dec 2025, this next year may not appear as thrilling for the Chinese animation industry as 2025 looked in Dec 2024 (and proved to be very early on), but that doesn’t mean we didn’t get a lot of cool announcements!:

Quite a few of these don’t have release dates yet though, so I’ll just announce their titles only, since as any Chinese media fan knows, Chinese media are quite flexible about release dates ahaha. They often drop soon after they announce a release date, so quite a few don’t have one for some time.

But I don’t mind it since it prevents rushing and guarantees they release on the release date they finally announce. 😆

Now onto the new donghua!:

Call Me Lord Eerie Bailiff:

Hana no Kunlun:

The First Frost (yes, this is in fact a donghua adaptation of the novel which the popular cdrama of the same name is based on!):

False Memory (yes, it didn’t release in 2025 but that’s okay; they’re aiming for 2026 now and either way, I don’t mind them taking their time!):

Action Monster Big Movie:

Crowned in a Hundred Days:

Wonder Drug:

Last Word of the World:

Bai Yao Pu movie (your eyes do not deceive you—this has different designs from the Bai Yao Pu donghua series adaptation!):

Shang Shan (ironically if this is based on the manhua I think it’s based on, I already included the manhua in my donghua and manhua recs list without even realizing it’d get a donghua adaptation 😮):

And speaking of my donghua and manhua recs list, of course I have to leave that here too ahaha:

We also got trailers for returning series where they got a new season, alongside new trailers for old announced donghua series and films like North Wind: Broken Time, but I have a limited amount of YouTube videos I can include in one post otl. As such, this post focuses on the newest yet-to-be-released titles of donghua we haven’t seen before.

Other all-new donghua that released late in 2025 so I didn’t shout about them much include Guwei Nanting, Release That Witch, Lonely Hero, So You’re Raising a Warrior, Forbidden City: Imperial Cat Study aka Paws and Palaces, and Under the Three Rivers! I also didn’t focus on Who Made Me a Princess, but that’s also a donghua (specifically a donghua adaptation of a manhwa). ^^

This post is also missing the announced upcoming 3D CGI donghua, although I don’t think they’ll necessarily come out in 2026. I might make proper posts for these later, but the standouts for upcoming 3D donghua are Paper Pride, Dao of the Bizarre Immortal, and Abyssal Embers (the author of the novel this donghua adapts is apparently friends with Cuttlefish, the author behind Lord of [the] Mysteries!). Oh and some of you may have missed it, but I’d recommend keeping an eye out for Evil to Live as well~

Either way, we have lots to look forward to still! 🫶

Do you guys remember when mob psycho, a story about kids with superpowers, stepped up to the mic and said that actually children don't have a responsibility or obligation to fight the battles of adults. Remember when self proclaimed psychic Reigen Arataka said that its actually ok to run away. In a show about kids with superpowers. Do you guys remember that

bound

Local comic store employee calls me “the Wally west fan”…. Am I in too deep

11 link click songs on my top 100 how am i supposed to explain this to my irl friends 😫

lotm song made it on there too

AU where Garfield Logan mauled Donald Trump to death in the 80s