I love thisss the glow of his markings and the portal being made by the skate’s blade is amazing!! Great work aaa ⛸️❤️
I am once again reiterating that Leo could and should be a figure skater because what are ice skates if not twin blades? What is dual blade swordsmanship if not a dance-like performance? Using the skates as blades themselves could let Leo make portals be his ice rink no? I rest my case. ⛸️
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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.
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Something really just. Nice that I noticed with the bros is that each of them has shown off some pretty interesting skills.
Raph is the one who fixes April’s ceiling fan for her, Mikey takes on half the work when making the new puppy rescue for Todd, and Leo is outright able to reprogram Shelldon’s AI (he messed up, but the fact he was able to do this at all is like??? Raph and Mikey were there too did they know Leo could do that because they were not surprised-)
Of course, this is nothing compared to Donnie’s own immense talent and skill for inventing and science in general, but it shows that the others are not incapable of assisting in his field if need be.
What I like to think with all of this is that they listened to and likely helped with Donnie’s various ideas growing up. Sure they may not get the specifics, and complex science talk goes right over their heads, but in a pinch they’d be able to get Donnie the right tool or set a wire back in place. It’s not as necessary now that Donnie is much more independent when he makes things, but it’s cute to imagine there being a time where the others had to pitch in and learned some stuff because of it.
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Okay I might be wrong but I'm pretty sure Leo has the most episodes that are mainly focused on him, which is interesting
This was a very interesting question and I wondered if that was the case! So I went and tried to take a look.
What I found going in is that Leo seems to be in the most non-Ensemble episodes, and the episodes that focus on him stand out more since they tend to not have the rest of the cast (as in, Hueso stands in as his other focused character, rather than one of Leo’s family members like most everyone else gets.)
Leo’s focused episodes also tend to have the entire Ensemble as supporting characters, again rather than the one or two other main characters that his bros and April tend to get. What is most notable I think is that while other characters have just about as much focused episodes, Leo’s (and Donnie’s) in particular seem to focus on their personal struggles more rather than just an outside conflict, so they stand out more than others in that way too.
Honestly going through the episodes it’s pretty amazing to see how overall even things are? Like even if some got more focus than others, the range is under 8 points for the four bros, which is nice to see.
Below is a messy and hard to read culmination of my research which undoubtedly contains mistakes here and there. Fair warning that this is based on my own memory and of episode synopsis and the like, and I didn’t include the movie but that one is pretty obvious. It’s also fairly subjective what one may consider to be a “focus” or not. I tried to take into account what happens within the episodes, so hopefully this is fairly accurate? Beware it’s long so I’ll put it under a read more-
Notes to take into account before the scores-
Full Focus means that a lot of time is spent with the character and they’re one of the “focuses” of the episode outside of an ensemble way. Example of this is Minotaur Maze which is both a Leo and Ensemble episode, but Leo gets the Full Focus while Ensemble in this instance gets-
Partial Focus just means that the characters are present in the episode and have enough focus put on them to differentiate them from the Ensemble. They have a notable part in the episode but it is not about them, and this can even include when they are directly involved in the conflict. And example of this is Donnie’s Gifts which is an Ensemble and Donnie episode where despite Donnie being the driving force, Ensemble gets the Full Focus and Donnie gets Partial Focus but-
Main Character is the scoring which takes into account whether the episode centers around a specific character or characters. Note than even if a character has Full Focus, it’s possible that they’re not the Main Character, and even if the character has Partial Focus, they can still be the Main Character. Main Character scoring does not add into how I calculated the-
Overall Score - aka the culmination of both the Full and Partial Focuses. Full Focus gets 3 points, and Partial Focus gets 2s.
Here is the scoring-
April - 3 2 3 2 3 3 3 2 3
Full Focus: 6
Partial Focus: 3
Main Character: 5-6
Overall Score: 24 (range 23-25)
Raph - 3 2* 3 2* 3 3 3* 3 3 3 3*
Full Focus: 9*
Partial Focus: 2
Main Character: 9-10*
Overall Score: 31 (range 30-32)
Donnie - 2 2* 2 2 3 3 3 3 2 3 3 3 3 3
Full Focus: 9
Partial Focus: 5
Main Character: 8-10
Overall Score: 37 (range 33-37)
Leo - 2 3 2 2 3 2 3 3 3 3* 3 2* 3
Full Focus: 8*
Partial Focus: 5
Main Character: 8-9
Overall Score: 34 (range 33-37)
Mikey - 2 3 2 3 3 3* 3 2* 3* 3 3
Full Focus: 8*
Partial Focus: 3*
Main Character: 6-8*
Overall Score: 30 (range 29-30)
Splinter - 1 3 3 3 3 3* 3 3 3 3
Full Focus: 8
Partial Focus: 1
Main Character: 9*
Overall Score: 28 (range 27-28)
-!Bonus!-
Draxum - 2 2 3 3 3* 3 2
Full Focus: 4
Partial Focus: 3
Main Character: 4-5
Overall Score: 18 (range 17-19)
Casey (Sr) - 3 2 3 2 3
Full Focus: 2
Partial Focus: 2
Main Character: 3
Overall Score: 13 (range 12-13)
Ensemble - 3 2 2 3 2 3 3 3 2* 3 1 3 3* 3 3 3 2 1* 3 3 1 2 2 2 3 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 2 3 3 3 2 3 2 2 2 2 3 3 3
Full Focus: 25
Partial Focus: 17
Minimal Focus: 3
Overall Score: 112
*’s (it’s not very easy to decipher what asterisk leads to what, sorry):
*1: Mascot Melee is pretty ensemble, but Raph does quite a bit in it
*2: Stuck on You is majorly ensemble but Raph is still focused on quite a bit
*3: Hot Soup: The Game has ensemble qualities, but is mainly Mikey and Casey Sr
*4: You Got Served can arguably be a 2 as well since major focus is also on Hueso
*5: Turtle-dega Nights: The Ballad of the Rat Man can arguably be considered more of a Donnie and Splinter episode so Mikey will get a 2 here
*6: Repairin’ the Baron - same as above sorta. All three of Mikey Raph and Baron have big roles to play in this episode but as they share them with each other, it’s arguable whether these 3s should be 2 1/2s.
*7: The Hidden City Job - despite Leo being the only main character really present, the main focus is more on Hueso and his brother
*8: Finale can be considered high for both Raph (he had a lot of great focus) Casey Sr. (she was a major part of the finale AND we learn her name) and especially Splinter (literally everything he did tbh)
Main findings for this are than Raph and ESPECIALLY Mikey deserve more episodes tbh. I hope I didn’t miss any episodes, but it was a bit difficult to keep track of everything haha.
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i want to reblog literally all of your posts I LOVE THEM AHH I AGREE WITH ALL YOUR TEXT POSTS and especially the trans leo and kendratello ones like yes good i agree mhmhmhm. so yeah if you just got an influx of notifications about someone liking your posts ITS ME IM NOT A BOT PLEASE
anyways you are awesome and i love your art and your thoughts (that sounds creepy but like in a non creepy way)
That’s so sweet of you to say thank you so much!!! I’m glad you enjoy my rambles haha, I’ll be the first to admit that they can be a mess at time but I’m happy that you like them ❤️❤️❤️
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