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#RUFFLING MY FEATHERS
turtleblogatlast · 22 days
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No but like every time I think about Splinter and what he had to go through just to keep the boys alive, my heart hurts for him so badly. Is he perfect? No not at all, but none of them are and by god does he love his sons.
The fact that all of them are alive, and grew to thrive despite the circumstances surrounding them is a testament of how much Splinter loves his boys. He raised four babies following the most traumatic time of his life, all alone with nothing but the sewers to house them (to hide them.) I feel like he’s not given the credit he deserves for all he’s done.
And I get that it’s easy to hold up his flaws and faults when it comes to parenting, I myself like looking into them because flawed characters are super interesting and said flaws make them more realistic and engaging, but he tries, and again, so many others would have given up on the boys or failed along the way but Splinter didn’t.
He’s their father, for all his faults he did his damndest to make sure they survived.
#rottmnt#rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles#rottmnt splinter#rise splinter#he’s not perfect as I’ve said#and he’s got a whole slew of flaws and faults#but he’s a person - we are all flawed#he loves his sons dearly dearly dearly even if he struggles along the way to show that#parenting is not easy! especially as a traumatized mutant who is forced to do it alone#side note but I think this is one of the reasons why it kiiiiiinda ruffles my feathers to see so many people assign parentification to Raph#and in turn make Splinter out to be way worse and way more distant than he is in canon?#like idk I just don’t see what so many others see ig but maybe that’s just me#i guess my thoughts are like- let parents have flaws without villainizing them?#they’re still parents even if they mess up?#we can discuss the repercussions of a parents actions on a child while not casting that parent as an awful person#parents are peopleeee#I could go on but yeahhh#idk it bothers me seeing splinter’s efforts undermined when he’s been through so much#idk if ppl realized this by now but I love me some flawed characters#tho I do think in this fandom the ones whose faults are discussed the most are like#Splinter mostly then Draxum then Leo#of the main cast#and in Splinters case in particular his faults are made to cover his good qualities which makes me sad#because he is SO INTERESTING#they’re all flawed characters and tbh so interesting because their flaws are ALSO their strengths in many aspects
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lesbian-sunshim · 2 months
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see art up to the day before or leave a tip!
rare pairs for your consideration - princess cadance x cheerilee
happy heart's and hooves day!
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acursedhalo · 10 months
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"She [Tifa] is the only childhood friend that Cloud can open up about his true feelings to, so we made it that you only see a certain unguarded aspect of his personality when he is interacting with her." - Motomu Toriyama (Co-Director of Scenario Design)
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doctorsabedoria · 3 months
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For the record, I don't consider Harris' video to be part of Drama YouTube. He (and Todd) was just playing the part of an investigative journalist bringing a story to light. Everyone else parroting and reacting to the video is contributing to Drama YouTube though. Some of it is necessary like some videos calling out James' apology video as the BS that it is and others just wanting to jump on the bandwagon. A good rule of thumb is if anything of value is actually added by the video being made. If yes, probably not Drama YouTube. This is also a good rule of thumb to help you stay out of a pyramid scheme or crypto.
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rendevok · 6 months
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how do you feel about bratfeen??
I like them!
Though there aren’t any canon interactions (that i know of..?) to go off of, I imagine they’ve got a volatile dynamic, which i find fun and full of potential. Taking a moment to Recall Them As They Are:
Edgeworth is probably at the top of his cunt game. This man is fresh off 10+ years of Von Karma’s teachings and certain he’s hot shit. Also he’s fucking 20. So. Repressed, stuffed full of twisted dogmas, sporting a fucked up ego, and equipped with an unhealthy conviction and ability to send wrongdoers directly into the fires of hell. He is an Experience and most probably not a good one, but one you will never forget.
>Enter Player 2: Phoenix f*cking Wright, also a bitch, but WORSE- he is a bitch BABY. No, he’s not a child or a sweet little baby boy. His emotions are still on full display while also being just about the most stubborn fucker you could ever meet. If Dahlia- DAHLIA -couldn’t gasboss gatelight girlkeep a goddamn necklace off his neck, then there is no hope for the rest of us. He saw a picture of Edgeworth at his Peak Cuntliness and a headline accurately describing said cuntitude and more or less said “I can fix him anyway”.
So basically to me they have the delightful dynamic of immovable object vs unstoppable force. I want to see them clash and cause comical chemistry lab explosions that singe their eyebrows and come out of it furiously making out.
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cannibalhellhound · 2 months
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I did this
Because Sli deserves more love
And I'm trying to get used to the pain of coloring wings
Nothing else
*cough*titties*cough*
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bonus gosling making a sand castle with his dad's sunglasses
Ron's big ass wings are good sunblockers
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smilesrobotlover · 8 months
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Why is Sidon the most gayest straight character ever
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astronomodome · 8 months
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Tumblr Poll Tournaments & MCYT
So a while ago I made a post expressing my frustration with the way a lot of tumblr poll tournaments seem to exclude mcyt characters- or if they are included, people in the notes are rude about it. The first situation of these- the poll organizer including rules against submitting characters from mcyt- is something I can easily quantify. I've crunched some numbers in order to find out two things:
How common is this phenomenon, really?
Why does this happen in the first place?
A note before I start: I'm not blaming the poll organizers for this, and I don't want anyone to get angry at them for excluding mcyt. At the end of the day, it's up to them to curate what they want their poll to be, and if they don't want to deal with the toxicity that often comes with letting mcyt characters run (or if they just don't like it for whatever reason), that's their decision. Trust me- poll organizers have to put up with a lot of shit already, and I don't want to add to it, regardless of their opinions on mcyt. If any poll organizers recognize their own words in the later part of this overview, they can contact me and I'll remove it. This is also why I have chosen not to identify the blogs from which I took the examples- I mean no harm to any poll organizer. They are a symptom of a much larger problem and they haven't done anything wrong except be a little misinformed at worst.
Excluding mcyt characters from poll tournaments really isn't that big of a deal on its own- though it is frustrating- but it does speak to the larger attitude of the general tumblr population towards mcyt. While not without its flaws, this can be used as a metric to measure the extent of this attitude and maybe get a hint of why it exists.
...Please note, also, that most of these polls date back to around March-June 2023, when poll tournaments were a big thing on Tumblr. Not super outdated, but I still should note that opinions might have changed since then.
Also also, be warned that there are examples below of some organizers being pretty toxic! It's not a whole lot, but if you don't want to expose yourself to that, maybe pass on this post!
With that out of the way, let's get started.
Part One: The Numbers
The first thing I decided to do was figure out a rough percentage of how many poll tournaments have a rule that excludes mcyt characters from being submitted. To get a sample batch of poll blogs, I used one of the blogs that pits the winners of tournaments against each other and checked each blog included in that. This ended up being a more tedious process than I had thought, since there's a lot of variation in the way poll organizers, well, organize. I ended up with 123 blogs sorted into three categories.
The first category included tournaments where a rule for or against mcyt characters wouldn't really make sense, for a variety of reasons. Most commonly, the tournament was between letters of the alphabet or animo acids or government agencies, not fictional characters, so I counted them out. There were also a handful of blogs where the contestants were determined by the organizer, not by nomination at all. Combined, blogs that did not fit my criteria made up 60/123 of my samples.
The second and third categories were the blogs that either had a rule against mcyt characters, or didn't. Most of the blogs I looked through had rules I could find, and some were more thorough about it than others. For my purposes, I counted the blog as a no only if they explicitly had a rule against mcyt characters, or clarified later that they weren't allowed. Most poll blogs didn't mention mcyt at all. (This will become relevant later.)
Of the 63 blogs that fit my criteria, 11 (17.5%) of them had a rule against mcyt characters, while the remaining 52 (82.5%) did not.
To me, this seems like pretty good news! I had honestly expected the percentage of blogs that excluded mcyt to be much higher. This is definitely a good sign! But I wouldn't really jump to assuming that mcyt characters would actually be accepted in all of these blogs. I will explain this in the next part of my research.
Part Two: The Examples
The second thing I wanted to find out with this research was why organizers end up having rules against mcyt in the first place. Is it just the bad reputation the mcyt space has (largely a result of one green man in particular)? Let's look at a few examples of poll rules against mcyt characters. Some of them are from my sample blogs and some of them aren't.
Type 1: Not understanding the difference between real people and characters in mcyt
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The majority of the rules against mcyt I saw were of this type, and honestly, it's pretty reasonable. It's a pretty major debate in the mcyt community over whether mcyts' characters are separate enough from their content creators to count as fictional. However, there are a considerable number of mcyt characters who are explicitly stated to be different from their cc in the same way as a character in a movie played by an actor is different from the actor playing them. Excluding all mcyt characters for being 'real people' is just incorrect, though I can kinda understand where the organizers were coming from with this one.
It should also be noted that the vast majority of poll blogs had a rule against submitting real people. There's a possibility that some poll organizers might have lumped mcyt characters as real people even if they didn't specify it explicitly. Therefore, an attempt to actually submit an mcyt character into one of these tournaments might be against the rules based on what the organizer thinks. I have no way to quantify this, which is why I said earlier that the results of my initial test might not be accurate.
Type 2: 'Problematic fandom' (toxicity warning for some of these)
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This type of rule is usually broader than just mcyt, but lumps it in with other fandoms known for being associated with bigotry (often hp, which is... yeah i'm definitely not going to argue in favor of harry potter but yikes. really? we're as bad as terfy potter? really.) At least one of them let dsmp characters in with the exception of dream, which is a lot fairer than... some of the others.
If we want to give the organizers benefit of the doubt here, we can say that these rules are made to keep the poll less toxic than it would be otherwise... but to be perfectly honest, some of these might be more about that phenomenon of purity culture that has had a habit of popping up in fandom spaces since forever. That's a whole other conversation I'm not ready to have now, but it comes as no surprise to me that mcyt has become a little taboo in some places (likely to a large extent because of dream and all the drama he's generated). There's also no telling whether the poll organizers in these cases even know that there are other smps besides dsmp... but that's besides the point, since there are other dsmp characters that aren't associated with dream at all. Excluding them reveals a misconception about the mcyt genre anyway. And of course, I think we can all agree that some of these are just pretty rude.
Which brings us to our conclusion.
I feel like a lot of the toxicity towards mcyt as a genre and mcyt characters boils down to people either not really understanding what mcyt is (i.e. mcyt -> minecraft youtubers -> real people) or hearing stuff about dream and assuming the entire mcyt space is reflective of that. Of course, it's a frustrating issue that some people think this way. I think it's nice to be reminded, though, that this sort of thing isn't very widespread. Alongside the bad examples, I saw a lot of organizers confronting their preconceived notions: one organizer let in an mcyt character after admitting their 'unfamiliarity with the source material', another allowed mcyt characters 'on the condition that you can explain how they are a separate character' and a few others fiercely defended mcyt characters against toxicity in their polls. Every day we grow as a community and we can't let a few people with misguided notions of what we are keep us down. Keep watching, keep creating, and as Zedaph once said, It's okay to be silly!
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bowerywilliam · 1 year
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you know what annoys me of the taylor swift album release cycle? the incessant, unnecessary comments the general public and even some people in the fandom make about how taylor "always victimises herself for no reason", or how she "loves to play the victim when she's just a rich popstar without real problems", and more recently that she "shouldn't use words like intrusive thoughts, trauma, and emotional abuse to talk about what's happened to her or her experiences with anxiety because she doesn't know what that's like". it fucking infuriates me.
taylor swift acts and writes like a victim because, quite simply, she's been made one, point black, end of the sentence. she should be allowed to write about her experiences with abuse, any type of abuse from any source, without people deciding for her if it was actually abusive or traumatic, or policing her choice of coping mechanism.
people's unwillingness to accept and acknowledge much of what taylor has gone through during her career as abuse and trauma is baffling to me because i honestly can't think of a term that describes it better.
she has been made fun of and ridiculised by the media since she was a child for doing things children and teenagers do (be naive about love, write about boys, go on dates, dress age appropriate), she's been slut shamed by everyone on the internet for dating a less than average amount, she's gone through public humiliation on a mass scale twice now (the first one when she was just nineteen) by a much older, well respected, established male artist, she has been abused by men both professionally and emotionally, she was made an example of what girls ought not to do or be lest you end up just like her, she's been isolated since childhood because she never felt she fit in with the rest.
she's gone through all of those things while at the same time being gaslighted (and i'm using this word in its original clinical meaning and not the internet meme one) into thinking none of that was as bad as she's making it out to be and she ended up okay so it can't have caused her real trauma because nothing happened, it was all fine and a joke. these are things we recognise as hurtful, abusive, and traumatic in other people but as soon as they're experienced by someone who copes with it through writing music she then sells for a profit then suddenly it's not and she's exaggerating it for attention.
she talks about herself in the same hyper-aware, hyper-vigilant, anxious way victims of abuse and survivors of high stress situations do and that's why her music resonates with so many of us who have been abused in the past as well, because she's putting into words things we experience on the daily and i genuinely don't think it's because she wants to. no one wants to go through those things and then go through a new cycle of humiliation every time you talk about your experiences just to make a few dollars.
it's maddening that the attitude most people take when discussing her trauma is to minimise it or straight up deny it because she was able to transform some of that pain into a #1 single
i don't ask people to sympathise or feel bad about her but to accept that we have agreed that online bullying and dog piling on a mass scale is abusive and traumatic, that women being taken advantage of by the male superiors is traumatic, that women being slut shamed for enjoying their sexuality is abusive and traumatic, that being in relationships where your partner is volatile is traumatic, that being coerced and manipulated into relationships with older men is abusive, that being retaliated against in public after revealing you were sexually assaulted is traumatic; so why should none of that apply to her? why is she not allowed to be vocal about being in all those situations without someone telling her she's not gone through actual trauma? why does everyone gets to decide for her whether or not she's actually been abused and if she can or cannot claim victimhood?
accepting taylor's abuse and her victimhood does nothing to take away from yours or that of others. accepting that she's allowed and entitled to discuss her experiences doesn't silence you. you don't have to like her but to dismiss her is disrespectful because when you do that you're not only dismissing her own experiences with abuse and trauma, but that of people in similar situations who empathise and identify with her.
TL;DR: taylor doesn't write about being a victim nearly as much as the people trying to discredit her work say she does, but if she did she would be entirely justified in it because she has been in a lot of situations where she's been victimised and abused by people who knew what they were doing to her and you don't get to decide if she was sufficiently traumatised by them or not. recognising taylor's experience with abuse does nothing to minimise or invalidate yours, two people can be abused in two different ways and doesn't mean one is less entitled to compassion. it's not a competition.
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masezace · 8 months
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little off topic for my blog, but i started watching a new show since a friend mentioned it was good and i'd heard positive things about it, so i just wanted to talk about it a little bit (probably never again after this since this isn't a fandom blog, but it's the only one i have rn so idc it's going here)
the show is Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous, and just going on looks alone, despite my love for dinosaurs and the Jurassic Park franchise i never would have considered it. it appears to be very much for kids, and as i'm in my late twenties now i'm not particularly interested in especially kiddy media. however a friend my age enjoyed it and mentioned it has a canon lgbtq+ couple in it among the main characters, so of course i just had to watch it. i had already been hearing that despite its initial appearance and premise, it was surprisingly good for a kids' show, so i had already been curious, but i was even more keen after knowing there were queer characters, and not even the adults, the kids themselves (in a kid's show?!! what a time to be alive), so i finally sat down and watched it.
[spoiler warning, both minor and major, for the rest of this post btw, so continue reading at your own risk if you haven't seen it yet/are still watching]
the show overall
okay so firstly, i am coming at all of this from the perspective of a writer, so my observations are from a technical standpoint more so than just as a fan of the show. and honestly, it really is a well-written show as a whole. is it geared towards kids? definitely. there are plenty of jokes/gags in it that just don't appeal to me as an adult, but beyond that, there was plenty to appreciate as an adult.
the writing is actually phenomenal? there were several points in the series where i just sat back and mulled over the way a scene went, what the thought process behind writing it was like, how well it was executed, and how important it was to the characters and overall plot.
the suspense is spot on, nothing gets dragged out too long, and i will admit there have been a few scenes throughout that actually got me; i jumped! it's actually scarier than i expected a kid show to be, but i'm so glad they went where they did because it really elevated the experience.
the pacing overall is very good, adequately engaging for kids' short attention spans (and us adhd adults 🥲) but not too short either to a point where things felt abrupt or unfinished. plot arcs are well developed and tied up nicely. also, as a bit of a dinosaur nerd, the array of dinosaurs in the show is super broad and satisfying! very fun stuff.
character element
imo the real gem of this show is the character development. honestly it's just *chefs kiss*
the characters grow and change so much and so realistically over the course of the show, it's honestly so much better and more satisfying than the character growth in most adult fiction/media recently.
the growth in ben (who btw was def my favorite character by the end of s1) and kenji in particular were my favorites and, in my personal opinion, the most interesting. the way ben started out anxious, cowardly, and rule abiding to a fault, then grew into a brave, confident, adventurous little pyromaniac gremlin, then had that stint later in the series where he regressed a bit-questioning himself-until eventually ultimately striking a great balance and really coming into himself was just... peak character writing.
kenji started out overconfident, lazy, and overly concerned with money/status. but that arrogant overconfidence and laziness slowly turned into responsibility, and a desire to protect his found family, and the realization that it's the people in your life that really matter most.
honestly what i mentioned only scratches the surface in terms of those two characters, there's certainly more that can be said about them (as well as all the others) but i'm not really in the mood for a deep dive character analysis atm. just trust me tho when i say these characters are so well done and each one of them have arcs that are super satisfying to watch play out.
queer representation
and as for the queer couple? yasmina and sammy are PERFECT. it was so beautiful watching their relationship grow from one-sided to mutual friendship, to loyal devotion, then to love. they were set up incredibly well and incredibly naturally. i have like, no complaints when it comes to them. i don't even know if there's anything i can say that would add to things, they were just a really awesome couple to watch become canon, they're the beautiful and painfully needed representation we all beg for in tv and movies.
shipping, chemistry, and intent
but oh goodness... probably my only real complaint about the entire show would be how benji (ben x kenji) and kenji x brooklyn (kenlyn? brookji? idk and idrc) were handled. because for all that this show did SO much beautifully right, they really screwed the pooch here, sadly.
i'm gonna start by saying that the writing in this show, as with most, is deliberate. what i mean by this is that despite having no clue who it would be because my friend thankfully did not even spoil me as far as the genders of the queer couple, i clocked yas and sammy as the would-be queer couple as early as season one (actually it was between them and benji, but more on that later). i could already see the chemistry, because it was deliberately written in.
shipping is subjective. anyone can ship any character, and in most cases it's pretty easy to see how there could be (romantic) chemistry between fan pairings based on their personalities, their arcs, etc. and that's okay! ships don't even have to have any canon support to be valid, because shipping is for the fandom, and it's for fun (i have a few rarepairs and crack ships across different media that i just love).
but onscreen/written romantic chemistry is a lot less subjective (to clarify, it is subjective whether or not the chemistry is good, but it's not subjective about whether or not it exists). there are literally scenes written with the sole purpose of building the romantic tension and/or chemistry between planned couples (some of which even have absolutely zero plot relevance, which usually is not advised tbh, and most of which are the cliches/tropes you see in literally any romance ever written, some are just disguised a little better than others. but make no mistake, it's all the same set of cliches. there is nothing new under the sun), as well as intentional, key moments within scenes that have other purposes. they are essential to establish romantic pairings.
and typically, the foundations for these couples are laid VERY early on. always within the first or second season (well, at least they are when the writer actually knows what they're doing and has at least a rough plan/outline for the entire series & characters. this is usually a large part of what separates the good chemistry from the poor chemistry. an author who knows who the couples are going to be and has a plan from the beginning to build them up is going to be more successful in creating a believable relationship with good chemistry. one who does not plan, or makes last minute plans will almost certainly fail, and the couple is just going to suck). when the set of characters you're working with are going to stay the same for most or all of the story, you start immediately.
i don't mean to toot my own horn, because i think it's because i'm a writer so i just pick up on narrative patterns very easily, and pretty much always clock the planned couples within the first few episodes of any series, and by the end i am right like 9 times out of 10.
that being said, do you know whose deliberately written chemistry i also clocked in jwcc? ben and kenji's.
kenji and... brooklyn?
no offense to people who like/enjoy kenji and brooklyn, you are free to love them, but the way their romance was written is... quite possibly the weakest point of the show. it felt like they were just trying to appease the upsetto heteros in charge, because there was definitely another het pairing that had a lot more potential than kenji and brooklyn (hello darius x brooklyn aka darilyn, you would have actually made sense because your relationship had amazing buildup and multiple standout scenes from s1 on. dgmw, i love that we got a m/f strong, supportive, purely platonic friendship out of them, i live for those and we really need more of them. but we could have had that with kenji and brooklyn, or darius and sammy, or ben and yas, literally any other pair instead).
kenji and brooklyn as a couple came out of absolutely nowhere. i honestly think they decided to shove them together last minute, and had no actual plan for them until they were working on s4. because their development barely started at the VERY end of s3 (the abruptness of him caring about her being held hostage so much more than literally anyone else in their group despite them having like zero buildup to that point gave me whiplash), but honestly didn't really even become "meaningful" development until s4, over halfway through the series. the two spend the first 3 seasons basically not particularly gaf about each other individually, only as part of the whole group and on an equal level with everyone else. they otherwise have no deliberate narrative foundation. it just starts in s4 with no prior hinting. which makes their development rocky and difficult to believe. the funny thing is their characters literally have dialogue (in s4) trying to draw comparisons/parallels between them to say that they especially have a lot in common and like??? no? they really don't? not any more so than any other two kids in the group. their relationship just, really falls flat.
it was disappointing to see it take such a massive spotlight in the series for almost all of seasons 4 and 5, overshadowing the friendships that have been the focus of the show and should have remained so, to the point where at times it just felt like i was watching some stereotypical het highschool romance. genuinely, it made s4 & 5 more of a drag to get through. yasammy and ben and yas' growing bond (which by the way was so sweet, it had the strongest queer solidarity vibes good lord, i sure wonder why yas chose ben out of everyone to come out to first, hmmm) were some of the few things that kept me invested, otherwise i would have dropped it if it had leaned much farther into becoming the kenlyn show than it already was. especially when it was that pair so much of the focus was given to, even though we had so readily and perfectly available, the pair that could have, should have been: benji. which finally brings me to:
ben and kenji
benji's foundation was laid in s1. their interactions, the situations they found themselves in, were deliberate (on the writers' part). i'm even gonna go out on a limb here and say the pairings were fully established in s1e3, even with parallels between yasammy and benji (sammy clinging to yas and ben clinging to kenji throughout the episode), and darilyn gets the beginning of their development too.
even though they bicker a lot in the beginning, they clearly care about each other? kenji protects/helps ben multiple times, and there are definitely some looks ben gives kenji at times. at the end of s1, the one who seems the most deeply effected over ben's "death," other than darius (understandably since he's the one who failed to save him), was kenji! immediately after it happens, we get two close up shots, darius and brooklyn then yasmina and sammy. after which, we go back to the whole group with kenji in center frame, the focus is intentionally on him. it is only kenji who drops to his knees at the loss, and then we get a close up of just kenji. he was saved for last, and he was alone in frame (tbf bumpy was in frame too, but i'm talking humans here), which implies his feelings are especially important in this moment. that is the reason for solo close ups.
after ben's "death," kenji takes to always wearing ben's fanny pack, and up until bumpy--who ben cares VERY much about--got separated from them, kenji was the one who (however briefly) took over her care, ensuring she got off the monorail with them, and he's extremely distraught, more than pretty much all of them, when they can't find her, and he's last to leave when they decide to accept that ben's gone. even when they do leave, he's distant and distracted and his mind is clearly still on ben.
other than darius, kenji is the only one (if i'm remembering correctly) to mention ben/say his name after they lost him, upset because he was actually trying not to think about him. he has clearly thought about ben, probably a lot, because it's hard not to be reminded constantly when you wear something that belonged to a deceased loved one. and frankly, he appears to be the only one who dwells on him that much.
when ben reappears alive (which btw he found the group again because of kenji's butter knife, hello), the frames literally purposely focus on kenji's reaction. he's the one in the foreground every time they show him and brooklyn in that scene. he is the first one to say ben's name, the first one to go to him and hug him, and the scene takes special care to highlight kenji's strong emotions at ben's reappearance, lingering on his teary face as the focus for a bit even after brooklyn enters the frame to hug ben (because she is not at all an important element in the scene at that moment). just like when ben "died," the way this scene is written and shot HEAVILY suggests that ben holds significant importance to kenji, specifically. because again, the focus here is on kenji and ben almost exclusively, with brooklyn as only an afterthought lol. and quite frankly literally everyone else's reaction to him being alive was pretty lackluster compared to the special attention they gave to kenji on this.
and then in s3 we have the infamous hat scene, where darius and ben are in the limo and ben sees and mentions kenji's sailor hat, looking sad and sounding like... longing?? then directly after we switch to kenji realizing he forgot his hat?? the scene has no real significance tbh other than to draw a connection between ben and kenji. like, it acts as a transition to switch to the pov of the group on the boat, but it was entirely unnecessary? why not just have darius say something about the others and then show them on the boat? if there were no special relationship between ben and kenji, it would have made far more sense if they really wanted it to be ben to say something, that he sees the hat, and sadly says something along the lines of "i hope the others are okay/doing better than we are right now/etc" which implies that the hat made him think of everyone, their whole group. rather than what we got... which very much implies that he was mostly just thinking about kenji 💀 and then kenji thinking about the hat at the same time ben's looking at it and thinking of kenji. like, this is.... a very blatant connection being made by the writing/directing here.
all of that. so many deliberate connections made between ben and kenji, they had a very solid foundation laid for a romance to develop, and by all intents and purposes one already WAS developing according to the show's own subtext. which was why up until s4 obliterated the idea, i was positive the queer couple in the show was either going to be yasammy or benji. it was extremely obvious imo. but as soon we started getting the typical, loud, cliche "we are going to pair off these characters" scenes for kenji and brooklyn, i knew we were getting yasammy and not benji (to be clear, i'm not at all upset about yasammy, they're beautiful and i love how their relationship was done, i wouldn't have had it end any other way for them. but i do personally prefer benji, i just like their personalities and dynamic more. and i feel they had so much potential that got wasted to make way for a far less interesting pairing between kenji and brooklyn. why can't we have 2 queer couples, huh? and if we really needed a minimum of one hetero pairing to appease whoever needed appeasing, darilyn was right there).
but then??? their like entire bond just gets dropped (honestly ben himself gets pretty heavily sidelined for almost all of the last two seasons, which is criminal imo). mostly so that a rushed kenji x brooklyn can be established. like there are still a few small moments here and there in early s4, and one episode in s5 (ep 10), but from early s4 till pretty much the end of the series we hardly see them have any meaningful conversations or interactions, meanwhile literally every other combo in the group does.
it's so weird? why build up benji so deliberately over the course of multiple seasons just to like, fully discard it for a pairing with far less chemistry, even after the chemistry-building scenes they shared, some of which literally had no other purpose than to affirm their connection? even though they were very sparse, the moments benji had were just so blatant (kenji leaps into the rock crevice right onto the back of a saber tooth to save ben?!!?? like he literally was just willing to exchange his life for him like that?? he basically says that he wasn't really thinking, he just did it. so he moved out of what, emotional instinct, that's what we're meant to intuit from that series of events? implying that he specifically has strong emotion and doesn't think things through when it comes to ben? because he doesn't do that kinda stuff for any of the others in the group! even better, this parallels when sammy jumped on the nothosaurus to save yasmina. and then the way benji look at each other after it's over??? hello??? and then how kenji pulls both brooklyn and ben in for that hug a couple minutes later... side eyeing the writers for that choice. they knew what they were doing there and they were evil for it). i just can't see any reason to have dropped them like they were, after all the development they shared for 3 seasons. confounding. biggest disappointment of the series.
i know this probably reads to some as just "wahh, my ship didn't become canon" nonsense. but that's not why i'm bugged. this wasn't just a ship i liked and wanted canon despite no actual narrative support, as most ships tend to be. this ship did have narrative support. there was intent behind many of their scenes together, lingering looks and little things that matter narratively and are always used to signify a stronger/special connection. and it led nowhere, for no good reason. that bothers me. writing that implies and promises something, but never delivers on it. like a person who never finishes their sentences (think Dr McPhee from Night at the Museum). ultimately it's not a HUGE deal or anything, at the end of the day it's just a ship and just a kids' show. but as a writer, it's just irritating to see something like that be done. what can i say 🤷
conclusion
even despite the wasted potential between certain pairings, and even though i do think the first three seasons were superior to the last two, overall i really enjoyed the show, and for what it was, it was really well-made. the overarching focus was of course on found family and friendship before anything else, which i absolutely love, and it was masterfully done. out of 6 kids, all of them had at least one or two meaningful bonding moments one-on-one with another in the group, so every possible combination had their moment to build strong, believable friendships with each other. i'm just so surprised by how good it was as a whole honestly, good enough to binge over the course of a week. i will happily recommend jwcc to anyone willing to give it a watch regardless of age, because i definitely think there's no age limit for a good story, no matter the medium it's told in. :)
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elliesbelle · 6 months
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i wanna say something about what i believe is canon in regards to ellie and abby’s dealbreaker preferences in a partner, but i don’t wanna get canceled
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kiwisandpearls · 2 months
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adding onto my last post (linked here), and maybe this is a hot take, but honestly:
homura taking madoka’s powers and rewriting the universe was a morally gray action. Not totally justifiable but also not totally irredeemable. She’s justified in the fact that if she hadn’t, kyubey probably would’ve used madoka in order to bring back the old magical girl system with witches. It’s not totally justifiable though because she goes against madoka’s wishes and desires.
“But madoka was lonely being a god.”
that’s correct. She was lonely and wasn’t fully happy being a god (displayed in the lyrics of the first ending). Even then though, she weighed her options and chose this one knowing what she would sacrifice. And objectively (key word being objectively. It does not matter how you view this scene this is what homura is objectively doing by taking Madoka’s powers) homura kinda invalidates that.
this isn’t something irredeemable on homura’s part but it does mean homura’s action is a very complex and a morally gray one that can’t just be boiled down to being a good thing or a bad thing. It’s a mix of both.
and even if homura’s action was an entirely good thing, homura’s action does nothing but prolong the inevitable. Her world is kinda falling at the seems, with how easy it was for madoka to nearly gain her memories back.
that doesn’t mean her actions are totally evil either. She didn’t do what she did to “have madoka for herself”. Frankly anyone who believes that that was any part of her motive to do what she did didn’t pay attention when watching the anime and movie. She does strongly (and I use strongly very heavily here lol) love madoka but she’s not a yandere who isolated madoka from those she loves to have her all to herself like some people act like she is.
It’s just…I really do wish people would understand that her actions as a whole and specifically in rebellion don’t need to be seen as exclusively a good or bad thing. In the some way as how I said in my previous post that homura just wanting to protect her loved but also doing some morally questionable actions aren’t as mutually exclusive as the pmmm fandom pretends they are.
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patchworkcloud · 1 year
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Horikoshi really made his design as bird like as possible, didn’t he? Feather motifs everywhere.
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mysunfreckle · 10 months
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I've been getting nice spam comments on AO3:
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I've blocked out the names, because while they are all guest comments, the names that have been filled in all belong to real, active AO3 users. Just not ones that are at all connected to the fandom this fic is for. So whatever the hell this bot/program/demon is doing, it's stealing user names for it
It genuinely took me a couple of days to get suspicious because these do sound very nice! The tone is a bit off, but I figured it was non-fandom culture folks. But when the fifth one came in it occurred to me how generic they are. No character names, not a single story or fandom specific detail. And some of this stuff is just wrong.
Action and suspence? In an Austen fic? Start to finish? It isn't finished! Plot twists? In an Austen fic??
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krokonoko · 5 months
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losing brain cells by reading online discussions about Blue Eye Samurai
if it was just people online showing their entire transphobic asses, saying people are derailing, and watering down, and fetishizing?? for interpreting Mizu as nonbinary or transmasc?? or anything other than a cis woman?? that would already give me enough of a headache.
but the way the creators are talking about the whole thing so far feels way too much like the Pixar Luca situation all over again: using our imagery, our pain and our stories - without committing to the bit.
tho I'm trying to hold back my judgement on the latter part and give the creators and the show itself the benefit of the doubt. mostly because Mizu is just too fantastic a trans protagonist, and I can't believe this is supposed to be not real.
cause if it isn't, this has been the biggest exercise in trans baiting? I have seen thus far.
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gaynfl · 6 days
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no saying shit saturday today, I'm going to the ocean 🫶🏻
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