I honestly love the clothing styles of each of the turtles in this show and I love how these styles really incorporate their personalities as well.
Like, obviously Donnie has the best sense of style, yeah? Think that’s something pretty agreed upon here. Everything we see him put together is very meticulously crafted and clean. That goes with his personality because Donnie is a very meticulous person in general, and he knows what he likes very, very well, and knows how to flaunt it in turn. Him commenting on colors he enjoys or disapproving of outfits that the others see no problem with also shows how he just generally has an eye for this kind of thing. He doesn’t just know what looks good on himself, but also what looks good on others - and I think this ties into his love of gift giving too. Donnie also has a flair for making sure that his things have his “mark” on them, and his clothing is no exception. All that he wears and how he wears them screams “Donnie.”
Mikey is really fun because his styles are honestly a pendulum between super simplistic and incredibly out there. And often, you’re going to see a lot of color or patterns to both. And in my opinion I think that all reflects really well on Mikey’s character - he’s got a colorful personality but even more than that he’s incredible sure of who he himself is. Mikey’s style, I feel, is less what looks good as clothes and more what sparks joy in Mikey himself. His bright stickers he wears are a testament of that! He’s comfortable in his own skin and his style reflects this perfectly, whether he goes for a more out-there look or a more toned down one.
Now, for Leo. Okay, I think I’m actually in the minority here I feel because Leo’s style isn’t really that bad? Hear me out- if you actually look at what he wears, try taking out, like, one accessory. Suddenly, that outfit works! He even manages to put together many good outfits in the series, but his “bad” ones are the ones that tend to stand out, alas (just like how his mistakes tend to be big ones oop-) Basically, my personal look at him is not that he’s inept at styling at all, but that he has a “too much” gene. And like everyone else, this sense of style is completely like him, too. Going too far to impress when all he needed to do was slow it down some to think things through. (And funnily enough, a lot of his outfits take random aspects from his brothers too - “nothing without them” huh?)
For Raph, I feel bad for him since pretty much all of his clothes are inevitably going to be ripped, but he makes them work pretty much each time. Like Leo, Raph tends to go more sporty with his looks, but I also noticed that his stuff often goes in that in between of comfy, cool, and cute. His pajama suit in particular comes to mind in terms of “cute” as it’s more something you’d see younger children in rather than older kids, and I think it can be a subtle nod to the fact that for all Raph tries to seem older, he’s still just a kid too.
I could probably go on, but these are just all off the top of my head - I love how the boys’ personality’s come out in so many different ways.
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Can’t sleep, daydreaming about a first kiss with Ukitake.
This was intended to be just a short little set of headcanons but once again turned into a whole scenario.
Picture this: spending the evening drinking tea and snacking with both Ukitake and Kyoraku (who would be drinking sake…), after an a major event like Byakuya or Kaien’s wedding by having your own little intimate celebration/after party together.
Fireflies are dancing around, the full moon is out and the gentle chirping of crickets and other insects accompany everyone’s laughter as Ukitake wins yet another round of Shogi - making Kyoraku pout. It’s been a good day for Ukitake, not a single cough or feeling of unease, so he intends to make the most out of every second.
Kyoraku stands and stretches, yawning loudly, “Well, that’s probably enough for me tonight. I’ve got work to do in the world of the living tomorrow, so I can’t really risk a hangover.”
You smirk, “You’re not leaving because you’re sore about losing are you?”
He chuckles, “Naaaah. Lisa will have my head if I stay too much longer. I don’t want to risk being scolded.” He smirks, a twinkle of mischief in his eye, “Plus the eyes you two have been making at each other all night is starting to make me feel a little intrusive.”
Ukitake chokes on his tea, spluttering and coughing as you feel your face heat up, even as you quickly move to his side to rub his back, hoping this hasn’t triggered a coughing fit, “What do you mean “eyes your two are making?!” What eyes?!”
He laughs loudly, “I’ll leave you two alone to figure it out. Goodnight!” And then he’s gone, disappearing right in front of you as he uses his shunpo to leave.
Once Ukitake has recovered, he straightens himself up and takes a sip of tea to clear his throat, a wry expression on his face, “Cheeky bastard.”
You laugh, “Has he always been so shameless?”
He sets the cup down and huffs a laugh, “In our academy days, yes. But he’s never really teased me so brazenly over…” he shakes his head, taking another sip of his tea.
Your heart quickens, and suddenly you are keenly aware of how closely to two of you are sitting.
“Over…?” You have a feeling that the two of you would eventually have this conversation - you’d been flirting with each other over the past few months, mostly just lingering gazes during meetings, lingering touches when you pass things to each other, and more compliments than usual on each other’s appearances that could be interpreted as mere friendship. Today was no exception: you’d sat next to him the entire evening at the wedding celebration, and over the course of the night the two of you had gravitated towards each other, your sides eventually touching. And neither of you had made to move away or mention it. And as he helped you stand up - ever the gentleman - he did not let go of your hand, running his thumb over your knuckles, and looked as though he was about to say something. Then Kyoraku had appeared suddenly from out of nowhere and suggested you continue the celebration together. You didn’t miss his shoulders slumping over in obvious disappointment as he let go of your hand and lead the way to his quarters.
Now, the soft light from the fireflies and the moon illuminates his handsome face. You notice that his cheeks have darkened noticeably as he turns to face you. His gaze seems a little conflicted as his lips are drawn in a thin line. That same expression from earlier, but more determined.
With a soft sigh, he takes your hand in his and gives you a small smile, “Is it not obvious?”
You move a little closer to him, your eyes searching his face, “Maybe, maybe not.”
His face moves even closer to yours, his eyes half lidded and glancing rapidly between your eyes and lips. His lips are mere inches away from your own he whispers, “Allow me to make things a little clearer for you, then…”
He closes the short distance between you and delicately brushes his lips across yours, enough for it to barely be considered a kiss - it’s like he’s gauging your reaction, preparing to pull away if he senses the slightest amount of discomfort. When you don’t pull away, he pushes his lips against yours ever so gently and brings a hand up to brush his knuckles against your cheek, so soft it feels like a butterfly has landed on your face.
It would be such a slow, tender, intimate kiss. With him gently and rhythmically guiding your movements. It wouldn’t get too heated. It would be one of those kisses that makes your heart ache with longing, but neither of you would want to ruin the sweet and tender moment by giving in to your baser instincts. It would be more about intimacy and being close to each other.
It would turn into an opened mouth kiss and there would be tongues involved - because intimacy and being as close as possible to you is a huge thing for him and he wouldn’t be able to help himself - but only very fleetingly. The second your lips shift to openly glide over each other’s, he’d shakily sigh into your mouth, maybe even whisper your name.
He would only really swipe his tongue over your lips as he moves. Not venturing too deeply, nothing too tame, but somewhere right in the middle. He’d alternate between caressing and cupping your face with one hand to gently cupping the back your neck and slowly stroking your hairline. The other hand would be splayed across the small of your back. He wouldn’t be forceful at all. His hands wouldn’t be pulling you in; it would be more like he’s wanting to enjoy and appreciate the feel of your skin/body against his. Just relishing the intimacy of the moment.
It wouldn’t be a short affair. He wants to take his time with you, and his sweet yet sensual kisses are addicting. Ukitake would slowly glide his lips over yours, letting out little sighs, gasps, tiny moans and even some breathy chuckles if you decide to playfully tease him by giving him soft pecks, retaliating by kissing the corner of your mouth occasionally.
He’d eventually pull away with a shuddering breath before pressing gentle kisses to your cheek, overcome with emotion. He’d kiss the tip of your nose and forehead before resting his forehead on yours, nuzzling your noses together.
If you cup his face, he’d nuzzle into it and kiss your palm, then take your hand in his and kiss down to your wrist before intertwining your fingers with his.
There’s be no words after. There would be no need. Just gentle gazes, smiles and touches. It’s pretty clear that you both feel the same. He’d eventually move you around to sit in front of him with your back against his chest and him holding you from behind, alternating between slowly running his hands up and down your arms, wrapping his own around your waist and taking your hands and intertwining them as you watch the fireflies together, enjoying each other’s presence. He’d occasionally press kisses to the top of your head, and if you lean back and rest your head on his shoulder, he’d kiss your temple too.
He’d walk you back to your room, and kiss you goodbye in the same way. Slowly. Tenderly. Longingly.
He’d kiss you on the back of the hand and give you a soft look (much like the accompanying screen cap for this post), his soft brown eyes shining with happiness, before saying a simple “goodnight” and using his shunpo to leave.
Your lips tingle for hours afterwards, your heart still racing, wondering if he, too, is laying awake, overcome with emotion.
And you’d be right.
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Restorative or Transformative?: Homoerotic Subtext, The Closet, and Ciphers in Pop Culture. The nature of commercial art is that it’s sometimes bad and inconsistent. Notably it’s also misogynistic. One way in which audiences try to reconcile massive plot holes or gaps in character motivation is by reading secrets or hidden information into a plot.
Commonly, male characters are interpreted as closeted gay or bisexual to reconcile the absence of women from commercial narratives with the generally stunted and poorly-written male characters that form the focus on said texts. This reading has become especially common among a non-heterosexual milieu. Rather than transforming the original text into some radically different new form, this closeted interpretation seeks to make the original text stand on its own as a story rather than a Swiss cheese of dumb writing decisions.
This interpretation only works for a specific type of pop, usually genre fiction. Any story in which tortured male leads eschew women in favour of male-male bonds (because female characters are constantly killed off, written sparsely, or written out, because the production team keeps casting their male buddies, because actors demand to keep having scenes with their bros, whatever) can become a sounder structure if you put one of them in a closet.
The gay interpretation is the natural consequence of shoddy misogynistic writing from ventures like Supernatural, Naruto, all the biggest hits. It’s also the natural consequence of more benignly misogynistic writing like The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes or The Lord of the Rings, where women aren’t necessarily rejected but are simply absent from the worlds of the protagonists. When the emotional crux of the story falls on male-male interactions, this reads as romantic because society at large priorities (definitively heterosexual) romance as the pinnacle of human connection. Two forces are in conflict, the primacy of heterosexuality (read as: romance) and the primacy of men.
Anyway. All that is to say that the typical gay or bisexual reading of male characters in pop fiction comes from a very real place. But, in some places, that’s the default interpretation. Angst, insecurity, secrets, double lives, fatigue, disappointment, restrained passion, stunted personal growth, anyone living in the closet can tell you that it impacts and defines your whole life to know that you live in a way fundamentally incompatible with The Proper Way that life is structured around down to tax law and superstore prices (which assume a heterosexual nuclear family unit). Characters in fiction also tend to have personal problems because that makes them interesting and tasty.
If you’ve grown up on stories with the specific type of misogyny that can be papered over with a closeted interpretation of the male leads, carrying this interpretation over to any male character will make sense more often than not. Even a bit of angst or insecurity? Well of course that makes sense if a character is closeted.
Except that’s hurt a normal part of fiction, and sometimes the closeted interpretation takes away from the point of a character. If a male character is on another axis of marginalization, the closeted interpretation imposed by the slash reading community downplays or trivializes the effects of that marginalization in the plot by overwriting it with another type of marginalization. Alternately, sometimes a character’s heterosexuality is a part of the story. There are some sorts of critiques or investigations of misogyny or masculinity that don’t work if the character has an ‘opt out’ of the cisheteropatriarchal perspective. Not that gay/bisexual men aren’t except from misogyny, but misogyny masculinity and heterosexuality are so tightly linked that it sort of defeats the point if you interpret that character outside of heterosexuality.
All that is to say—the closet interpretation is a quick and easy spice to apply to the weaker parts of action-adventure genre fiction to make it taste better. It draws from a large enough sample of art that it’s pretty widely applicable. Because of that, it’s part of some people’s [my] default interpretation package just because the semi-dull macho show at least gets less dull if you imagine there’s a reason for there to be no girls besides simple hatred. That then forms its own problem where the interpretation that works with your average genre work gets then blanket-applied to all genre works and obscures the places where the closet interpretation doesn’t fix the work, and actually makes it less interesting.
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Random Elliot headcanon inspired by this drawing done by @jewe1some
Anyways I am now thinking about how fun it would be for Elliot to struggle sometimes with characters he can’t relate to. One day after having a particularly tough time writing a widow accused of killing her husband, he gets the brilliant idea to play out the scene himself. He orders the clothing she would have worn when told the news of her husband’s untimely demise.
Carefully he sets the scene in his little shack and walks through the scene as his poor “distraught” widow, and he opens the front door only to find the farmer.
“I can explain,” he offers but the farmer grins and compliments the fact that the man was born to wear red.
The farmer is eventually invited to play out the scene with him and this absolutely solves the problems he was facing formerly.
Additionally, the farmer suggests asking the other townies for help. A giant murder mystery, perhaps, based on his book. Or even a murder mystery to celebrate its publication.
After the success of that first novel, Elliot began to cosplay his own characters, and he began to be highly praised for how realistic they feel in his works.
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