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saltysirensongss · 7 months

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Meaningful Childhood Media: a Reflection

The ocean and I have always had a love-hate relationship. From a young age I was obsessed with the water, from swimming classes to lakeside day trips, I simply couldn’t get enough, my fingers in a permanently wrinkled state. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly where things went wrong but if I had to guess I would blame the Persian New Year. Every spring I was allowed to choose out a half a dozen live goldfish from the store to bring home and display on our Haft-Sin. As per tradition (which no family member could explain) the goldfish is meant to do a little roll at the beginning of the new year. And roll they did… I witnessed an insurmountable number of goldfish pass in varying degrees of horrific ways from slow fades to suicidal leaps onto the living room floor. Before I knew it I had developed a fear of goldfish which slowly but surely evolved into an irrational fear of all fish. I stopped eating fish, I stopped walking by the fish sections of pet stores and I forced our family to switch to plastic fish for our traditions. What I couldn’t shake however, was my fascination.

A traditional haft-sin table setup

I remember the day we downloaded netflix. It had become available to stream on the Wii in late 2010 (Nintendo) and I, aged 8, convinced my mom that it was absolutely necessary. I was told we would only have it for a month, meaning as long as it was free to us. I don't remember what options were available to me at this time but being a little water obsessed kid I was drawn to two particular shows which some could argue represent the two ends of the media spectrum: H2O: Just Add Water, and River Monsters, both of which as their names imply were ocean related.

I consider H2O: Just Add Water one of the most influential shows of my childhood. H2O tells the tale of three Australian teens who unknowingly find themselves cursed with the ability to turn into mermaids. Cleo, Rikki and Emma were forced to navigate their highschool years without ever touching a drop of water which as you can imagine put them in plenty of high stake situations. Situations that I would recreate both alone and with friends. This show provided us with endless hours of imagination fodder both in and out of the pool. This was a show that all my female friends and I watched avidly, but my friends didn’t all have netflix so it became a show that they would come over to watch. My permitted screen time was restricted to two episodes a day so the selection of which episodes we would watch would become colourful debates in themselves where we would discuss the show in depth and advocate for our preferred storylines.

Just three mermaids hanging out

My minute amount of screen time paired with the fact that we were one of the few families I knew to be subscribed to an SVOD makes me believe my parents were better off than they let on as both are common traits of higher income families (Rideout et al.) which is probably why they let us keep Netflix after that first month.

On the other hand, my parents have a small friend group of three couples that they’ve had long before me that all together managed to produce a sum total of six children, all roughly the same ages. Within this group I sadly found myself to be the only girl. Growing up with a group of boys at arm's length played a heavy influence on the type of media I was exposed to. While my school friends would come over to watch fairy cartoons and mermaid shows the first thing the boys convinced me to watch on netflix was River Monsters. River Monsters hosted by Jeremy Wade was not nearly as terrifying as the name suggests but still a complete 180 from the content I would have chosen for myself. River Monsters was a docuseries which followed host Jeremy Wade as he travelled around the world to remote locations where legends of river monsters prevailed. He would then interview locals about recent incidents and anecdotal experiences with the supposed monsters and would explain the potential species who could be responsible. As scary as this sounds Jeremy Wade is a lovely man who treated every case gently and worked hard to demystify these “monsters” with a sense of positivity I could only hope to one day achieve. Watching this show on an SVOD again played a huge role in how we consumed the material. The eldest of the boys would get to pick which episode he found most intriguing and we were all made to watch it.

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Jeremy taking a dip in a piranha infested tub to prove their innocence

While this show may have had less impact on me socially, as my school friends were far from interested, it did start me on a path of being very interested in biology. When I tell people that I like this show they often feel the need to blame it for my Ichthyophobia, however I would argue that it serves more as a form of exposure therapy. My mother in particular was adamantly against me watching the show as she considered it “not for kids”. This always confused me because my parents would allow me to consume a great deal of heavier topics so long as it was served in cartoon form, like the movie, Grave of the Fireflies which my mom brought home from the library one day having not checked the rating or synopsis, or Coraline which I was dragged to see against my will. I soon learned that what my parents perceived to be appropriate was based on “their view of childhood, rather than what children would choose themselves" (Steemers) which to them meant I was to be watching animated features. While these shows are clearly marketed to vastly different audiences I enjoyed them equally and consider both to have had great impacts on my life. I do believe that they’re not as opposite as some might believe, afterall, being a teen mermaid is pretty much as scary as swimming with piranhas. I think another interesting thing the two shows have in common is their accents. River Monsters was filmed largely in South America and H2O was filmed in Australia so I got to hear the classic Australian as well as British (Jeremy’s accent) accents on a day to day basis. Both shows gave me a glimpse of what life was like in other parts of the world which in river monsters often looked very different from my own. Television is a great resource for children such as myself to be exposed to other cultures, giving me a chance to reside in what Marshall McLuhan would call a global village (Lemish).

#childhood media #rta950 #Youtube

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caandlelit · 5 years

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this is a post dedicated to my favorite todoroki natsuo bc he deserves so much

none of his siblings have ever called him natsuo

he’s natsu

its only fuyumi when shes in a scolding mood or touya when hes mad at natsu for not giving him the wii controller even though nATSUO MOM SAID ITS MY TURN TO PLAY WITH THE WII-

and endeavor calls him natsuo

but he would hate it if endeavore even thought for a second that hes fucking allowed to call him by a nickname after all he has fucking done

god he hates endeavor

out of all of the todoroki siblings, while touya is the one who was abused by him and hated him so much he left, and shouto is the one who has been hurt the most and cut off from his siblings, and fuyumi is the one who tries to push her feelings aside because shes so desperate for some pathetic semblance of normalcy for her family,

natsuo is the one who is the most bitter

because of endeavor, his big sister buckles under the pressure of basically being a teen mom for shouto, his big brother had something so fucking terrible happen to him that it still keeps natsu up at night, his little brother barely interacts with him and when he does its stilted and awkward because shouto isn't used to having a family

and his mom is in a mental hospital and he barely gets to see her

and when he does hes always crying

and hes the only one who even mentions touya

shouto probably only remembers him as a heartbreakingly bittersweet memory

fuyumi cant stand mentioning him because she was his twin and feels like her other half is gone

which is why she better be the one to bring touya back or istg

and natsu

is the one who is plain fucking angry

that his big brother is gone

and he blames endeavore entirely

and loudly

and rightly so

while he

is another endless source of disappointment for endeavor

because he has a water quirk

not ice, not fire

nope

natsu has a mix of his parents quirks

and its actually not powerful

he cant move oceans or create tsunamis

but he doesn't care what his dickhead dad thinks

hes a fuckin’ waterbender and hes fuckin’ proud of his quirk

right, when they first watched avatar when endvore wasn't home

natsu literally let out a screech of excitement

and touya was yelling out loud in shocked happiness “oH MY GOD NATSU UR IN THIS SHOW!!” and fuyumi was jumping up and down like !!

uhh he plays volleyball??

im not sure if this is canon actually

but well it was in one of those first page of the most kudos filter dabihawks fics and I watch haikyuu so im shoving myself onto the volleyball player natsu bandwagon

hes a wing spiker and hes the ace for his team!!

(for the people who dont watch hq, a spiker is the one who jumps and yeets the ball over the net and an ace is the best third year spiker)

hes rly good

as you all are painfully aware

hes the sporty sibling

but hes not gay

*someone* are you gay

*touya wipes away a tear in the bg while natsu clenches his teeth and says manfully* no tragically I am heterosexual

so he likes sports and hes buff and drinks protein shakes and wakes up early and does push ups and makes breakfast for himself and fuyumi when hes at home

hes college aged??

hes a fratboy

on campus he exclusively wears snapbacks and tanktops with lame slogans on them

its why he and hawks hit it off so well !!

he calls him hawks-bro

big bro touya who is also an ex villain brings home his bf who is the number one hero a month after the end of endthevore and while fuyumi is skeptical of this hawks guy

only bc shes the elder sister!! so shes the one who the shovel talk duty falls upon

shes legally obliged to hate hawks its in the elder sibling rulebook

natsu thinks hes the shit

hawks enters their house and looks at natsu and natsu looks at him and they point at each other like in the clone spiderman meme

they are wearing the same snapback and the same hoodie and have the same expression on their faces

#its love babey

dabi just stands there staring at them yelling about naruto and questioning his decisions in life so far and fuyumi passes by and hands him a shot glass and a ‘same’

shouto thinks hawks is super cool but he wont admit it over his dead body

natsu chugs milk straight from the carton

the first time he did it

fuyumi was at the kitchen counter and choked on her toast

made a strangled sound

he looked at her straight in the eye and chugged it all down

she stares for five seconds then points at the door

‘out. get out of my house’

hes terrified that hes too much like endeavor

its his biggest fear to end up like him

and when hes angry he feels like him

and stops yelling and breaks down sobbing

he looks in the mirror and stares at his mothers eyes in his fathers face

he stares at his fathers nose

his fathers face shape

his fathers build

and wants to scream

but he knows that hes never gonna be like him

hes going to be a better person

he wouldn't be able to live with himself if he didn’t

shoutout to natsu. he deserves it

#natsuo bnha #natsuo todoroki #dabi #fuyumi bnha #todoroki shouto #dabihawks #endeavor #//endeavor

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