My pronouns are they/them ‘cause I’ll never be HER💕

Saw this comic by @mushtoons and their outfit designs has been living in my head rent free ever since

LO fandom stop being victim blamey challenge FAILED

We need to talk about DCs obsession with giving all their characters daddy issues

running around in circles. nimona and ballister. do you get it. she wakes up from a nightmare and immediately calms down when he comforts her because she trusts him. he quite literally jumps off a balcony because he knows she’ll catch him. she tells him what shapeshifting feels like. lets him bandage her leg. he’s absolutely overjoyed when he sees her again at the end. he goes from rejecting her to accepting her to begging her to come back to rejoicing when she does. not only does she come back to life but she comes back to HIM. to her HOME. SHE FINDS HIM AGAIN IN ANOTHER LIFETIME. SHE GOES BACK TO HIM ON PURPOSE. DO YOU GET IT.

Thinking about the Don Suave scene and what it means in terms of LGBTQ+ representation because my brain does nothing if not torment me with random topics to ramble about on the regular.

Anyway, I just wanted to ramble about why I like the scene but to get it out of the way - the scene can very easily be interpreted in so many different ways, and all of them are valid. I personally see it as Leo having at least some attraction to a man. And the following is an explanation of my own interpretation and thoughts on it and what it means especially for Leo’s portrayal in the grand scheme of things.

Long-winded interpretation under the cut!

Now, to start with, it’s important to me that in the scene Leo looks at Don Suave in the very beginning and then for the entirety of the rest of the time the man is on screen, Leo’s eyes are closed. Yet, in the end, he is still visibly enamored with Don Suave, happily cuddling up to him as he’s being carried away.

You can very easily interpret this as Leo being spellbound and that’s honestly super valid and I believe he likely was at least somewhat in the beginning, but considering how fast he looked away and how he never looked again, I personally think it makes more sense to read it as Leo just finding the man attractive, at least somewhat. (For the record, I personally headcanon Rise Leo as bisexual with a heavy preference for men, but I want to be blunt when I say that any interpretation is valid. Literally any. Ace, pan, gay, bi, none of the above or a mixture of something new literally all of it is more than okay and fair. Hell you could even interpret this entire scene as more romantic attraction than physical and it would still work. Anything goes!! Don’t bother people, guys, really.)

The main reason I take this scene to be at the very least LGBTQ+ adjacent isn’t just because of how it’s portrayed, but because of who Leonardo is. Not in terms of Rise of the TMNT, but in terms of the entire Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles™️ franchise.

Leo’s a character who, while changing with each iteration, has still at his core been around for decades upon decades as “the blue one”. One fourth of the team. He’s the one most are going to look at as the Leader, and oftentimes he is the one closest to having the title of Main Character. Not to say the others aren’t just as important, but Leo’s presence in the A plots of basically all TMNT media is often something very main character-esque.

And that’s very, very important to note. Here we have a Main Character of a prolific and decades long-running franchise distributed by a children’s television network. You can play around with his and his brothers’ characters all you like, but there is always going to be challenges to dodge around, especially since this was still in 2018-2019.

For example, you can play around with their designs so long as they’re color coded turtles, but their sexualities? Now that’s tricky.

“But what about Hypno and Warren?” Not main characters and also they’re Rise originals. They have a lot more room to play around with than a character like Leo does. But even talking about main characters in the franchise, you could arguably have an easier time playing around with Donnie or Mikey’s sexualities than Leo or even Raph, as (unfortunately) the former two tend to get more B plots, so they’d likely have had a little more leeway (still not a lot though.)

So, where does this leave us?

It leaves us in a place where outright stating and/or showing undeniable proof of Leo’s attraction to men is very, very difficult. So, workarounds!

Workarounds like the entire Don Suave situation.

To be honest, as left up to interpretation and lowkey and deniable as it is, this whole scene means a lot to me because of who Leo is as a character. It’s just nice when we get so see even the bare bones of representation with characters that have been such a large part of pop culture for decades, y’know? Even if more would be so much nicer, this is better than I thought we’d ever get for these boys.

And, again, literally nothing I’ve said is the only way to interpret it, I’m more than happy when people interpret media on their own honestly, it’s just something I’ve been thinking of lately and I was wondering if others felt the same way.

Whatever you think when you interpret this scene or Rise Leo as a whole, I just thought this would be interesting to think about, even if it was ramble-y, haha.

When i think about how Van Palmer was developed in a lab to get me in a goddamn chokehold.

You got a lesbian. You got a butch lesbian. You got a comedy-prone butch lesbian. You got a comedy-prone, movie-obsessed butch lesbian. You got a comedy-prone, movie-obsessed, haunted-by-a-rough-childhood butch lesbian. You got a comedy-prone, movie-obsessed, haunted-by-a-rough-childhood, hidden-pragmatic-depths butch lesbian.

You put that lesbian in survival hell situations. You put that lesbian in survival hell situations with her girlfriend. You put that lesbian in survival hell situations with her girlfriend as the romantic heart of your show. You put that lesbian in survival hell situations with her girlfriend as the romantic heart of the show AND make them both unkillable.

You put that lesbian in two timelines. You put that lesbian in the storyteller role. You put that lesbian in scars and silver rings. You put that lesbian in a position to explore the darkest side of loving someone. You put that lesbian on my screen, and you cast Liv Hewson. You put that lesbian on my screen, and you cast Lauren Ambrose. I mean. I mean.

Any ONE of these things would have been enough, and yet. Here we are. Watching the unkillable, complex-ass, funny, scary, heartfelt, fireproof lesbian get her face torn off by wolves, commit cannibalism, fall in love, move to fucking Ohio, and come back for more?? And you expect her NOT to move into a penthouse apartment in the very center of my heart? Be serious, dude. Be so serious.

i will be totally honest with y’all i can’t see Hobie (ATSV) in a romantic relationship ever. like, i can’t see him seeing anybody ever as “the one” or even having multiple partners or anything. I can barely see him having friends outside of the ones he already has. I can somewhat see the “are we dating or are we not dating” thing being something he gets involved in, but not really. i think a lot of people either don’t know or just forget that he’s probably homeless and that his world is shit rn and that stuff he needs isn’t easy to come by 😭😭 and a lot of homeless people just don’t have time/energy for shit like romantic relationships and the stuff he’s doing canonically because they’re so focused on trying to survive. That’s why when I make posts about him casually flirting or whatever it’s never serious, it never goes anywhere, because honestly! Between music shows, trying to find your next meal, fighting the power, trying to find a shelter for the night, helping other homeless people and others in need as both a civilian and Spider-Man, dealing with dimensional threats, trying to find a place to get clean, i just don’t think Hobie has time to even consider it. Sure, maybe there are facilities in the HQ to make it easier, but after that stunt, i think he’d avoid using them as much as possible. do you see what i mean??

Feeling a certain way about that latest bsd interview concerning Akutagawa and the treatment he suffered

(that way is bad.)

The 180 switch I had between laughing at Fabian’s emotional response to Gorgug leaving the Owlbears-an admittedly low stakes, low consequence decision- to then being heartbroken that Fabian is so affected because it was the one place he could hang out with his friends and not have the world on his shoulders…

Something that bugs me about a lot of writing advice is the assumption that writing is linear and therefore a writer’s skill will improve and improve and improve.

This is not true.

There are days when the words don’t come, when the “great writing tip” that saved a previous work becomes claustrophobic in a current work, when everything seems more difficult than it used to even though nothing on the outside has changed.

Yes, some of this is higher expectations as we improve or try more ambitious works.

And some of it is just being a writer who, like everyone else, has good days and bad days.

It’s okay.

Writing is an art.

And art isn’t linear.

i made her laugh today she smiled and looked at me and spoke to me I can’t stop thinking about it i’m so fucking stupid Why am i on my knees

I know this has already been discussed a bit, but the pacing in Blades is still kind of fucked imo. And before anyone accuses me of purposely looking for things to criticize 🙄 I do think the last two chapters picked up and were a lot of fun. The book overall is definitely improving gradually, with today’s chapter arguably being the best we’ve gotten. But while we had kind of a slow start to the action, I feel like they’re still flying through all of the emotional moments, friend interactions, and developmental opportunities at breakneck speed.

Like Mal taking a blade for us? That’s a huge thing and could’ve been a very poignant moment even though we were in the middle of a battle, and especially for those of us who are romancing him. And having the opportunity to check in with all of our friends after making it through the portal? Imtura apologizes for giving up on us, Mal says he was running/doing things out of guilt instead of living in one breath then brushes it off in the next, Nia and Tyril still barely acknowledge what was really going on with them throughout the year we were gone…. yet we don’t get more than 2 seconds to respond to any of that?

They’re not even giving MC the chance to react to what happened to her internally. Like it’s one thing for us not to be able to outwardly express how we’re feeling to our friends. But it’s another when even the narration doesn’t portray any sort of introspection on MC’s part. For example in the elite skill scene with Tyril, I purposely had my MC focus on being trapped and restrained in Valax’s lair because I expected to get at least a little insight on how that’s affecting her presently. And yes, we did get a couple of sentences saying we were thinking about fear, helplessness, and confusion. But it would’ve been so much better if they described MC actually reliving that moment and those emotions.

Basically, all I’m trying to say is that they really already have everything they need to make certain scenes more impactful. They just need to set them up and let them breathe, so we, the readers, can feel and appreciate them as well instead of having to fill in the blanks for everything

it’s actually wildly funny that amethar’s epithet came about because he was the only person in his family not horrifically murdered. imagine if every single one of your relatives got stabbed and from that point on everyone called you “johnny no-stabs." that’s amethar’s life

ptsd is being such a bitch to me tonight guys. your girl is not doing well.

watching ofmd and thinking about the potential parallels between ed and izzy’s relationship and astrid and eadwulf’s. the leader and the dog that follows them around. the one all the good guys reach out to, who they make a connection with, and the one who represents everything they want to leave behind, who’s only really allowed to stick around because you can’t just ask a person to give up their shadow. the way eadwulf always looks to astrid, always follows her lead in the end even if he disagrees. “i have love for you.” the way astrid doesn’t notice wulf dying on the ground. “i loved you best i could.” two people who have watched each other being molded into what they are now, who have been through hell together, who love each other as much as they hate each other as much as they don’t know how to be anything else to each other, who can’t stop hurting each other can’t stop betraying each other can’t stop running back to each other, who are fused to each other like a cauterized wound.

hate hate hate the feeling of turning in a part of an assignment and being hella embarrased abt how it is :3 like, feeling someone’s just gonna email me like ”hey?? what the fuck ??? what are u doing here this is garbage” like yeah dude i dont know what to tell you, things did not go well this week