Despite tumblr's hivemind-esque love of all things SJW, beyond a certain point they're capable of smelling bullshit (yeah, that's rich considering the Arkh Project and dashcon and the average "I'm an oppressed self-diagnosed autistic trans womyn" donate button , but I like to hope that tumblr is learning).
For one, the trailer is unfunny. Like
genuinely unfunny. For two, tumblrinas love pretty "kawaii" art that they can draw cute fanarts of... and this art is. Well. You know. What
@scorptatious said. Crappy animation, ugly character designs, etc. [[Insert amateur art sperging I really need to figure out how to use spoiler tags and promise to edit this later]] -- Someone who's a better art student than me oughta help redesign them. The designs have potential, and there's none of the dreaded same face syndrome that tumblr hates (looking at you, Disney) -- but there's something about them that's unappealing. The (occasionally very) lifeless eyes. The wonky angles. In some of the shots the eyes don't even line up, which is... worrying. The color palettes aren't terrible and the backgrounds are actually pretty okay, but there's a bit of clash that could be worked out.
So you've got unfunny "comedy" show, "totally not kawaii" art, and a lead writer that could/would be described as "a problematic white cishet man" by much of tumblr.
Steven Universe is God in tumblr's eyes. Why? Because it gets a decent amount of giggles out of its audience, it has some pretty nice character design/color work, and Rebecca Sugar isn't "a problematic tool of the patriarchy".
Finally, Shona is white and thin. This might be good enough for the tumblrinas if this was a show that didn't reek of pandering and problematic head writers, but the lack of oppression/representation points just helps sink it further into the mud for them, at this point. Even the gender ratio of the main cast (3 girls to 1 guy, as far as we can tell, and this is just assuming the writers don't throw curveballs at us for shits and giggles) isn't gonna help out.
Tumblr rejected it because it deserves to be rejected. I've seen student animations and shitty webcomics that have more love and effort put into them.
Meanwhile I'll be watching it ironically, in all likelihood, if only to see how bad it is. Gotta say I'm very morbidly curious as to what the hell these people are gonna do. Hopefully it'll be so bad it's good.
