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#Teenage Mutant Leelas Hurdles
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idk if i ever talked about this but leela’s behavior in “teenage mutant leela’s hurdles” vs her parents’ behavior fascinates me so much. like she immediately jumps to trying to be a Normal Teen Girl because she never had that life, while her parents don’t really understand why she needs that and barely give her any restrictions. 
and it’s funny, but it also kind of makes you realize that the way leela sees her parents and the way her parents see her are totally different. leela did not grow up knowing she was loved, and she came out feeling alone and desperate to prove herself as a normal, capable, independent person. but her parents kept an eye on her as much as they could, so they knew she was safe and loved. they also convinced themselves there was no way she would ever be happy with them in the sewers and that knowing the truth would embarrass her, so from their POV, she had the happier life. why would she ever want to come back and live with them? there’s no way anything she faced on the surface would be worse than their lives right? (”less than hero” also doubles down on this because they assume so easily that she’s ashamed of them and won’t be upset when they die. brutal!)
also, while morris offering her alcohol and not setting a strict curfew and such could just be because they still see her as an adult, i also headcanon the sewers have a different sense of what’s normal in raising children. we don’t see many children down there, nor even many families besides the turangas, and since it’s obviously a very insular community, i imagine most kids would be free-range, sort of raised by the community. everybody has adapted to the environment, so as long as you stay underground (and away from crocodiles), there’s probably not much from which you’d need to keep kids safe. and with the extremely low budget you can’t be picky with what kids eat and drink and watch and read. from what we know of mutant culture, vulgarity is pretty normalized cuz like... you can’t help it there, it’s what “polite” society sends underground.  
so i think this all adds new layers to later episodes where morris and munda don’t always understand why leela is upset about being forced into anger management, mutating uncontrollably, and infamously the munda/zapp thing. as much as they love her, they assume her life will always be better on the surface, because they gave her up specifically for that purpose. (given that munda is implied to have a lot of repressed disdain for her living situation, i think she might have even wanted to live a bit vicariously through her daughter, while morris seems more attached to mutant values -- even their reaction to lars supports this.) i don’t think leela is willing enough to be open about her trauma to address this, and i think it really upsets her to think that her family, after all this time, would be imperfect, which is probably one of many reasons she’s so upset in “zapp dingbat.” 
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tuzinator · 4 days
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Little Kumiko with her parents
Inspired by this shot from an episode of Futurama «Teenage Mutant Leela’s Hurdles» S4e9
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Besides, I imagine Michiko as Amy's mom, just a little kinder
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just-timewasting · 9 months
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In the new episode of Futurama, I noticed a lot call backs or references to previous episodes, so I've tried to list them all:
Obviously, the "Avenged!!" opening caption is a call back to the "Avenge Us!" from Meanwhile
In the cold open the Professor says Fry and Leela were "suffering from an extreme case of old", which is similar to when the youth-a-sizer says the professor has a "serious case of old" in Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles. The youth-a-sizer also gives the professor a botulism treatment to tighten face muscles, and in The Impossible Stream The Professor's head explodes after using wrinkle cream, and then he wants to discuss "explosive botulism".
In the opening credits, Bender is stuck to the ship's magnet, a reference to The Series Has Landed, where Amy uses the magnet to save him from the moon.
The calendar which reveals they are in July 3023 has a similar picture to the calendar which reveals they are in July 1947 in Roswell That Ends Well.
Fry's Fulu passcode was 1077. Which, as we know from A Fishful of Dollars , was the price of a cheese pizza and a soda at the pizzeria. Also ,his PIN number.
Humourbot 5.0 also did a stand up show in That's Loberstertainment.
We saw that Slurms MacKenzie is still partying, even after we all assumed he was dead in Fry and the Slurm Factory.
Calculon was still robot hell after dying in both The Thief of Baghead and Calculon 2.0. The robot devil is still very happy to resurrect him as well.
Leela uses her megaphone backwards, much like Fry did in The Day The Earth Stood Stupid. Although unlike her boyfriend/fiancée (Wonder which one it is? Hopefully they address it in a later episode), she corrects her mistake pretty quick.
To get Calculon to redo the final scene, they had to claim it wasn't a second take. He said he never does a second take in Bender Should Not Be Allowed on Television and seemed utterly confused by the concept in Calculon 2.0.
They were the ones I caught (or saw someone post). I hope there are plenty of these across the new season, because it's fun to try and catch them.
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fagsex · 1 year
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teenage mutant leelas hurdles is easily one of my faves though
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^^^look at them
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leela’s nightmare (fic)
a fanfic i’ve wanted to write for a while, and have crossposted on ao3 and ff.net, but since tumblr hates external links now, i figured i’d post it here too <3
set during “teenage mutant leela’s hurdles” while leela’s de-aged and living with her parents, and has bad dreams about her past.
Leela woke up in an empty concrete room, with no memory of how she’d gotten there.
She hadn’t reverted back to adulthood. Her clothes still felt loose around her teenage figure. But she’d fallen asleep in her parents’ house, in a room they’d built decades ago, months before she was born. The bed was built with discarded pipes and the sheets were stiff and sewage-stained, but she’d slid into it feeling like she belonged.
In this new mystery room, the lighting was considerably better. The structure seemed a bit more stable. No cracks, no leaks, no unholy smell.
This wasn’t right.
She rubbed her eye, but the surroundings didn’t change. The girl stood up and got a better look. Not much to notice besides concrete, until she turned towards the fourth wall. Or rather, where she assumed a fourth wall – and maybe a door? – would be. Instead, parallel lasers stretched from wall to ceiling, leaving no room for even a teenage girl to slip through. Leela reached a hand out, but a familiar voice echoed, “I wouldn’t bother if I were you.”
Fading in seemingly from nowhere, an older man appeared on the other side of the bars. Gray suit, gray hair, kind eyes that may have once reassured her, but later became synonymous with bad news. Her old warden. “Unless you want to get stunned. In which case, go ahead.”
“Mr. Vogel?” Leela asked. “Where the hell am I?”
“Hey, watch your mouth there!” Mr. Vogel scolded. “It’s already an uphill climb for you to get adopted without adding a nasty attitude to the pile.”
“Adopted?” Leela could hear her heartbeat in her ears. “Are you senile? I’ve been out of the orphanarium for years .”
“I had legal jurisdiction over you as long as you were a minor. And, due to recent events…” The warden gestured to her body. “...you’re technically a minor again. So we took you back while you were sound asleep.” The room suddenly shook, though Mr. Vogel stood oddly still. “The cargo ship’s on its way to the Orphanarium as we speak. Should be there within the hour.”
“But I already found my parents!” Leela shouted. “Parading me around is just pointless!”
“Technically speaking, you weren’t re-adopted. In order for that to happen, your parents would have to visit my office and file some paperwork, but they’d be arrested the second they stepped on the surface.” He shrugged and frowned. “Sorry, Leela. I don’t make the law, I just tell you about it. This hurts me as much as it hurts you.” The ship hit turbulence again, throwing Leela roughly into the concrete ceiling, then back onto the floor. Vogel remained perfectly still and grounded.
“I won’t stand for this!” she yelled from the ground. “I’ll get a lawyer, or a letter from my boss–”
“You don’t have anybody. You ran away cuz you thought you’d get your life back. Kind of stupid if you ask me.” He threw a small juice pouch through the bars. “Anyway, here’s some Capri Sun to keep you from starving. They’ve upgraded the pouch and straw for maximum fun and flavor. Have fun re-living your adolescence!” He waved and then walked into nothingness.
Leela stood up, shook herself off, and stared hard at the laser bars. They seemed closer than usual. Had the walls closed in on her? Didn’t matter. No way she was wasting four more years as a ward of the state. Maybe this was all a bluff?
She took a sip of her Capri-Sun for energy (mmm, strawberry-kiwi), then took a few steps back, and ran towards the lasers. When the time felt right, Leela raised her leg to try and jump-kick her way out. “Hi- yah! ”
Then her whole body went stiff and she fell to the ground, stunned. The lasers were active, and she was not strong enough.
Her parents were trapped underground, unable to help her. Her warden wasn’t willing to fight for her. And her friends probably had no idea she was in danger at all.
She was alone. Just like she always had been.
As Leela lay unable to move, trying her best not to cry lest her prospective foster family notice the tear marks, the Capri-Sun straw extended towards her mouth, allowing her to take some refreshing sips. The delicious sweet taste of real fruit juice was probably the only silver lining of her situation. She heard another voice echo through the small cell:
“Even if you’re all alone, let the flavor be your friend! Capri-Sun, now made with 10% real fruit juice and extendable straw technology!”
And then Leela woke up in a smelly dank room, under a stiff comforter sewed together from discarded fabrics with no regard for style.
What?
***
Thank God.
She was still in her younger body. Maybe that’s why she felt more nervous and sweaty than usual. Logically, she knew her dream was just that – a dream. Usually she could shake off her orphanarium nightmares and go back to sleep (with the help of a night-night pill if she was really having trouble relaxing). But there were too many uncertainties with the new house and the new body. She didn’t even have Nibbler to cuddle.
This time, Leela didn’t just feel young and vulnerable again. As far as some people were concerned, she actually was . What if her fear came true?
All she wanted was one simple thing.
***
“Mom? Dad?”
Leela slowly crept into her parents’ room, heart still racing from her dream. She hoped she was going about this the right way.
“Leela?” Turanga Munda’s eye flickered open, focusing on the small figure in the doorway. “Is something wrong?”
“If you need rat poison for your room, it’s under the couch,” Turanga Morris added as he slowly stirred.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Leela said. Her mom patted the bed, presumably a sign that it was okay for Leela to step inside and stick around. “I had a nightmare, and I just…” She sat down at the end of the bed. “I just wanted to see you. Just to remind myself that I’m still here with you.”
“Oh, sweetie…” Munda stroked Leela’s bangs. The feeling of her slimy tentacle on her face was all Leela ever wanted. “Would you like to sleep in here?”
“Really?” Leela reeled her excitement back in. “I mean, is that weird? I thought fourteen was too old to sleep in your parents’ bed.”
“Well, you’re not gonna get any younger, right?” Morris said. “At least, I don’t think so.”
He and his wife scooted towards opposite sides of the bed, making room for their little girl. Leela carefully crawled under the musty blanket, settled onto the grimy mattress, and let her eye close. Within seconds, she felt her mother’s tentacle on her shoulder and her father’s hand on her hair.
Leela felt like a little girl again, but for once, it wasn’t scary at all.
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quinnmorgendorffer · 2 years
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billy west’s voice acting work in every futurama is spectacular, but GOD does he just fucking kill it in “teenage mutant leela hurdles”. like, portraying both fry and the professor at all those ages so well?? god he’s too talented.
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mika-c0re · 1 year
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Drew theses instead of playing volleyball in gym today (all based off of teenage mutant leela hurdles)
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bussterj · 7 months
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I'm watching Futurama 5x07 "Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles"
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ishowerwithcats · 4 years
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fynewnewyork · 6 years
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on fry, leela, and the baby carriage (pre-hulurama)
aka “jen infodumps about her freela parenting headcanons for a very long time”
i think about this a lot. other people in the fandom think about this a lot. if fry and leela do get permanently married and settle down... would they ever have kids? could that work in the narrative, somehow?
this is, in my opinion, a complicated question, but one that i think would be utterly fascinating for the show to address. and to explain it, i’m going to talk about leela and fry’s individual trauma surrounding family, the struggles this would cause them in trying to have kids, and whether they would want to give it a shot anyway.
this is going to be a very long post.
leela
i’m gonna be honest. leela has mom energy. i think this is the inevitable reality of any character played by katey sagal, but the show itself has leaned into this characterization several times -- bender sarcastically calling her “mom” in “fry am the egg man,” and of course “2d blacktop” making an entire joke about her suddenly acting like a soccer mom (though her character writing in that episode is a bit weird... i think it’s the Written By Men of it all).
but despite this, leela has a bit of a complicated relationship with the idea of motherhood. there are two episodes where she’s been convinced to conceive a child under the guise of repopulating her species. i obviously don’t count these instances towards her wanting to be a mother because A) it was out of obligation and she never suggests otherwise and B) she didn’t properly consent to either situation. 
her excitement to start a family with adlai gives a bit more credence to the idea she would genuinely want kids. in fact, she even gets the idea to adopt because of her own experience as an orphan.
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however, this is complicated by how superficial her relationship with adlai was. was she genuinely excited to be a mother at this point? or was she just happy that her very normal childhood crush wants to start a nuclear family with her? is it about her actual feelings, or is she just doing what she thinks she’s “supposed” to do?
there’s also the fact she has no emotional connection (so far) to her biological offspring with kif, consistently calling them “her DNA” rather than “her kids.” this is because culturally, they’re amy’s kids, and i like that she (and the narrative) respects that they came from kif and amy’s love. it’s almost guaranteed that the tadpoles will return and i think it would be very interesting to address leela’s relationship (or lack thereof) with them. after all, part of her connection to motherhood in several of these situations is that it’s what’s expected from a committed, loving, normal relationship -- if she has a loving husband and good kids, it means she proved that she’s a lovable, capable woman after all. her accident with kif doesn’t mean any of that. 
despite these nuances, it’s clear leela is an extremely caring, dare i say maternal (no matter what her sims 3 counterpart says) person. it’s a core trait that she will do anything to take care of what she perceives as a helpless animal, probably because she spent decades without anybody to take care of her. she coddles nibbler like he’s her own baby boy, and the way he refers to himself as the “object of [her] misplaced affections” is primarily about her lack of a boyfriend, it also kind of leans into him as her substitute baby, especially since she seemingly has this hover pram thing already set up:
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she was good at babysitting the de-aged coworkers in "teenage mutant leela's hurdles." she also obviously connects very strongly to the kids at the orphanarium and wants to be a good role model to them. she connects with the young jrrr and even outright says she hopes he always sees her as his mama (before he drops the detail that his species eats their mothers). 
in “the bots and the bees,” she’s the only one who isn’t fully repulsed when bev gives birth, jumps up to help her out, and is generally the most interested in bender’s journey through fatherhood. while this is because she’s a naturally helpful person with a lot of personal hangups about parenthood, i just think it’s worth noting here.
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she also gushed over the nannybot back in the fox era!
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even in “meanwhile,” despite a later joke that i’ll discuss later, her response to the unexplained glimmer is “if it keeps bugging us, we'll either kill it or adopt it.” literally right after their wedding, i love it so much.
i also have to bring up the futurama comics because, while they are only debatably canon, there are multiple instances that pretty much confirm that leela wants kids. issue #26 (my favorite comic hands-down) sets up leela being forlorn about the fact she isn’t close to falling in love and having a family, playing on the “biological clock” trope.
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however, after the harrowing ordeal of raising her own infant and teenage selves (god i love this comic!), she stops obsessing over her biological deadline and just lives in the moment, appreciating herself. i love that! 
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even more explicit is issue #62. this comic sets up that leela wants to be a mom despite the rest of the crew not thinking she’s sensitive enough to be one. (personally i think it’s kind of shoehorned dialogue and that fry is OOC to talk to leela like this at this point in their relationship, but it is very, very comics-canon that leela wants kids.)
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the plot of the comic is basically she gets amnesia, zapp claims her and convinces her that she’s his wife and they have three teenage robot kids. it’s a bit of a weird plot and it’s a weak zapp characterization imo, but it does establish that leela works well taking care of the kids and they get very attached to each other to the point she wants to have a biological baby of her own. 
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she’s not in a fully lucid position though and she could very well just be leaning into the tradwife role because she doesn’t know anything else until later. however, when she does get her memory back, she obviously rejects zapp violently, but she is genuinely endeared to the robot kids to the point of crying. so this probably goes beyond just leela wanting to prove she can do something she was told she can’t do.
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(granted the comic does have this as the punchline but it’s pretty clear that as caring as leela is, she’s got a lot on her plate which would get in the way of her being a mother in her actual working life)
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there’s also an extremely cute comic where everybody becomes a scout leader and leela leads a bunch of mutant scouts and it gets me feelsy. it’s literally the issue right before the mommy leela one. something on the writers’ minds i guess.
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so does this mean leela should be a mom? honestly, i would like to see her accept that she doesn’t have to be a mom to have worth in her life, but she still wants to be, once she feels ready to do so. a lot of leela’s arc is learning that she doesn’t have to fit someone else’s idea of a perfect woman, or a perfect family, or a perfect love life, just to stop being lonely -- she needs to lean into what makes her feel confident and happy. if she feels fulfilled taking care of a child, then she should go ahead and do it. not out of obligation towards the universe or towards the “good, respectable woman” mold -- just cuz it would make her happy. (this is why, if her role as “the other” really is referring to her needing to be a mom to fry’s child for some sort of Chosen One prophecy, i really hope they don’t play that straight, because i very much want leela’s autonomy to be a focus of any arc dealing with her being a mother and i do not want her to be forced into it after multiple other episodes where she almost gets tricked into conceiving a child.)
i can see her struggling with perfectionism about it, though. we see in issue #26 that she struggles to calm her baby self and communicate with her teenage self and i think not knowing exactly what to do would put a lot of stress on her because she’s so used to being the one who has everything together. i think she might have to reel herself in from lashing out and then feel guilty about not being an “ideal” loving mother.
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“teenage mutant leela’s hurdles” shows her deliberately trying to live out what she thinks a “normal” teenage youth entails because she never got that as an actual child, and i wonder if she would project these same ideal expectations onto her own child, particularly if she had a daughter. (i do think fry is good at helping her outgrow this desire to fit a particular mold, though, as are her parents.) she’s also really obsessed with being a good role model (”a leela of her own,” “yo leela leela”) and i can see her worrying that any fault of her child is a reflection of her “failures” as a parent.
it’s interesting to think that leela probably never expected to have biological kids due to being the last of her kind (though i do headcanon she once had a pregnancy scare with sean). but i also headcanon that mutants don’t have a lot of kids, as we don’t see many, if any kids in the sewers (barring an issue or two in the comics where mutant kids show up). it would make sense because A) a lot of mutants don’t want to bring kids into their life situation, B) they can mutate enough to live for very long times so reproducing isn’t as needed, and C) i don’t think a lot of them want to or even can have sex with each other, ha ha. i can see there being a lot of pressure from her parents, because they probably also want to live vicariously and actually be able to raise a baby like they always wanted to, especially on the surface. 0′)
i don’t think her being a “strong independent woman” is at odds with this arc, either, as long as it’s not treated as an obligation. bojack horseman has a great example in princess carolyn of a character who still wants to have a family despite being a career woman who is incredibly attached to her work, and she doesn’t have to give either of it up if she has people to support her. i think it helps that we have amy to contrast, as she didn’t want kids (despite ending up with them, though i suspect kif will be the one taking care of them). 
(also, female writers. that goes a long way in making an arc like this not come across as a derailment.) 
fry
there is much more to say about leela than fry because they haven’t done as much with this subject when it comes to him. sure, he has a son, technically, but y’know... it’s his dad, and he never sees that as anything but a weird sexual encounter he had in the past.
but i do think fry would want kids with leela, especially if that’s what she wants. there’s a one-off line that implies he’s not opposed to this in “the cyber house rules,” though this is before he (knowingly) sees leela as anything more than an attractive coworker and doesn’t care much about long-term goals yet. it’s really more a joke about fry just being extremely persuasive (especially given how he gets roped into bender’s mass adoption scheme). 
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but the actual biggest thing that makes me wanna see fry as a dad: he is so, so, so attached to taking care of things, usually in the context of animals in need. he saved seymour from starvation, brought the orphaned leelu out of depression, and protected mr peppy at the risk of his own life. creatures are naturally drawn to him for some reason, probably because he’s got such a big heart and lacks the reservations most people have. he connects to animals at their level and doesn’t have the confidence to act superior most of the time. i think this can easily be applied to kids as well. 
“fry am the egg man” is probably the most glaring example of this, because he immediately latches onto the egg when he learns the egg has a chance of hatching. (which kind of raises some “pro-life” questions that aren’t necessarily contradictory to fry’s political upbringing, but i think He Could Outgrow That in the right situation, ideally.)
his initial plan is to eat it but he does genuinely get so attached and protective and it’s sweet to me. he does drop it at the end and quickly detach but i think this at least shows that he has a real sense of love even if his sense of responsibility and focus can slip sometimes. (this is where i remind the audience that leela lays eggs according to “leela and the genestalk” so fry being good at raising eggs could be very useful there)
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fry grew up with a very inconsistently-affectionate, often emotionally neglectful family. like leela, he doesn’t have a really clear reference point of what a good family unit entails, but he isn’t self-aware enough to seek it out. he can be reckless and indulgent, and that often puts whatever he’s caring for at risk, but he is loving. we know from his behavior towards leela (and bender, and even a few of his other girlfriends) that he will put his life on the line for what he loves. and i think if he had a baby with leela, it would mean so much more to him, because he loves leela so much i don’t think he would want any child of hers to be in danger. he just needs to be able to recognize what danger is.
one of the comics i didn’t bring up yet is issue #32, which introduces us to the closest thing we have to a canon freela baby: leelan von fry-bot, a hybrid clone mixed with fry and leela’s DNA (so not the result of nookie😔) that also takes over a bender copy’s body and overthrows humans for oppressing him like a boss. anyway my point is that fry’s initial reaction to having a kid isn’t more than “oh cool this means leela and i have sex” (and thus getting slapped bc their dynamic is still kind of like that by this point in the comics), but when leelan gets apprehended, he straight-up forgives the little genocidal maniac. 
i don’t think fry really thought of himself with kids before leela. pre-canon, i don’t think he expected to settle down or have any committed relationship that didn’t exist for the purpose of mooching and surviving. i do think, if he did have a child, fry always saw himself with a son (again, not counting yancy sr). there’s a joke in “the route of all evil” that is analogous to him wanting a son (”i hope it's a lager, so I can take it to a ball game”), and in FATEM, he specifically wants the egg “to blossom into a beautiful young man, like [he] did as a baby.” it’s just easier for him to project that way and i think the culture of his house (i.e. the persistence of the yancy fry name) would put a lot of expectations on the boys to have sons. i think not having a son would surprise him but he’d still get so excited. he’d probably expect his daughter to be an action hero as much as leela does (though i think his expectations are way lower). 
we also see in later episodes that while he represses it, fry really does miss having family and gets very quickly attached to the family he does have ("near death wish," "game of tones") so i think having a kid, especially biological offspring, would shake him to his core in a way he didn't expect could ever happen. it helps solidify to him that leela truly is his family now.
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there’s also a gag early in the comics when they need to get more humans on earth and it’s implied fry asks leela to repopulate the planet but otherwise idrk if there’s much specifically with him and kids. 
there’s the other joke in “meanwhile” where he implies it’s good they didn’t have children because they might get violent with them (and admittedly they have gotten a bit aggressive with kids in the past, i.e. leela trying to hit cubert), but personally i don’t think fry would do that, even if it’s been implied domestic abuse was uncomfortably normalized for him. leela might be tempted but i think she can reel herself in. and the reason i think they didn’t have kids in the meanwhile timeline is just because it would be too risky to bring a child into a universe where nobody else is sentient and able to help them out, especially after fry and leela die. 
so my conclusion is that fry might not be knowledgeable on the traditions and necessities of healthy parenting right away, but i think he would try to learn. he clearly tries to learn for the people he loves, even when it’s hard, and making leela happy is his top priority. he doesn’t want her to get stuck with all the hardship (even if she’s still gonna be better at organization and the like). and i think he has such an earnest, unfiltered sense of love that he can connect to his own children immediately. and i think they’d sense that.
here’s a fry kid dogpile for extra cuteness
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the narrative potential
fry and leela having kids has been thrown around the writers’ room a lot, according to commentaries. now most of this information i’ve gotten secondhand as i haven’t listened to most commentaries or read older interviews as much. there is an interview/commentary (i forget specifically which) where the writers joke that fry and leela would not be good parents because they’d either be dragging their kids with them on dangerous space missions all the time or leaving them home for long periods of time. (edit: there's also this 2010 bit where DXC says he doesn't want them to "[have] a baby and [move] to the suburbs" or anything for the show's sake lol)
this is an extremely understandable reason not to give fry and leela kids. it’s already bad enough when you overthink where cubert and dwight are during farnsworth and hermes’ various adventures, and fry and leela both work so this is an obstacle. there are ways around this practically -- get leela’s parents or even nibbler to babysit, or get a hologram or something as a proxy, or even have fry stay home at times. but it changes up the dynamic of the show in ways that might be hard to adapt to, especially if they’re already doing something similar with amy and kif. plus, they probably don’t wanna make fry and leela too domestic -- i know they worried about that back in season 6 which led to all the on-and-off stuff, but i think now their concern is just staying sci-fi and not simpsonsy.
but they’ve also, reportedly, teased the idea before, and i think the changing landscape of adult animation (a bit more room for serialization and more serious story elements, which futurama always dabbled in even before other shoes did). rumor has it that the original plot of “law and oracle” involved fry and leela’s son coming back from the future (and i think talking backwards or something???), but it was scrapped for i believe being too dark. i think a time traveling child is a great way to avoid the status quo shift of raising a child, even though it would be pretty big and tragic for fry and leela to meet their child and then watch them go knowing they won’t exist for several years. it’d be funny to see their child try and ensure their conception, or maybe even prevent it in some sort of twist on the trope. (this is one of my theories for “the temp.”)
we’ve seen hints of them as parents in “the route of all evil” where they both get hype about bender’s analogous pregnancy with beer, though they’re also excited to... have beer, lol. also some of my friends read a lot into the way they look at tonya in “stench and stenchability” and i do not blame them for that.
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this concern about the status quo is also where adoption can come up again, as i can totally see fry and leela adding some wayward teenager to their family, someone just self-sufficient enough to not be too much of a detriment to the crew. i know the orphanarium kids are all adopted (though they could easily go back on that) but ideally i’d like them to adopt a mutant kid; i think it would mean a lot to leela for obvious reasons. maybe an alien or a robot, even. it doesn’t need to be formal adoption -- i can see them just picking up some lost little outcast guy because they feel bad he has nobody to raise him. maybe not for the rest of the series but even for an episode it’d be funny.
however, i think the idea of them having biological kids is utterly fascinating. is there precedent for a mutant breeding with a normal human? if leela “occasionally lays an egg,” what other weird stuff happens with her reproduction system? having an egg to carry could be another way to make the baby plot easier without incapacitating leela and fry too much after all. (and like i said before it’d be so cute to imagine fry carrying around an egg all protectively... like the dad in harvey beaks.) i think more people should take advantage of leela’s mutant genetics and give their offspring a bit more of her latent mutant traits, or traits from her parents’ side. more tentacles and tails and sheddable skin! hell, give them three eyes like leela’s grandma!
(but i think leela actually being pregnant would be interesting too. you know she’d be even more emotionally fucked up than usual on hormones, and would get so stubborn about not being incapacitated and not needing help even though fry keeps wanting to dote on her. also i wonder if mutant pregnancy would be different at all? radioactive morning sickness? fun! it would make some aspects of the show harder to work around though, like i do not know if she could fit behind the wheel while pregnant without making weird adjustments, and i also worry about the infamy behind the whole MWC pregnancy arc, but i don’t think that same uncomfortable and traumatic risk translates to animation.)
and what about fry’s genetics? does his child inherit the lack of delta brainwave? this comes up a lot in freela baby talk, especially with the “chosen one” theory, that fry’s brain thing and leela’s mutant thing might combine in some world-saving combination. again, i’d rather this be deconstructed, because nibbler trying to coax fry and leela to have babies for the sake of the universe is amusing but also pretty fucked-up, and we know fry doesn’t like being used and leela has already had this kind of deceptive thing happen to her before. i want them to do this because they want to, not out of some debt to the universe. that’s way too much pressure on them and their kid.
even putting that aside, i can see both fry and leela having insecurities about having a child, especially biologically. leela of course has her mutant/cyclops trauma and aforementioned perfectionism, but i think fry would be worried too about “ruining” their child with his own mental issues. i can see a sitcom type of story where they try to conceive (maybe with some weird sci-fi assistive technology) but start panicking when it doesn’t work and blaming themselves. one of my theories for “parasites regained” is that fry only takes the worms again when he’s trying to get leela pregnant, because he knows leela loves him for him by now, but he still wants to make sure their child is as perfect and healthy as can be. (i could even see a twist with leela also taking the parasites due to having these same issues.) honestly them getting pregnant on accident (and you know fry’s pullout game weak) would also throw them for a loop.
there’s also the complicated drama and fun of bender getting jealous of fry putting his attention towards not just his wife, but some smelly brat he put inside her. bender sometimes has the vibes of being fry and leela’s bratty teenage son so i love him interacting with their kid like a bitter older brother.
even if they don’t give fry and leela a kid, i could see them bait-and-switching the audience cuz they know it’s such a big deal to some people. like leela seems to have pregnancy symptoms but it’s really just some weird facehugger possession or womb horror. or they catch a glimpse of their future and think they see themselves with a kid but it’s out of context. or they knock fry up instead cuz they love making the guys pregnant instead. i have this joke idea for when the kif babies come back that leela seems to get baby fever really bad, but it’s a literal fever she contracted from the amphibiosian swamp and it’s only cured by the insanity of babysitting the kif babies. 
honestly if they decide they’re not ready to have kids, if they’re not emotionally stable enough or they don’t have a good place to live or if they’re worried about bender or their careers, i’m fine with that. i’d actually love them communicating and deciding on that together! i think it’s just an interesting subject to explore and i really hope the revival does something with it. :)
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captainfreelance1 · 2 years
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Fry and Leela run into a familiar looking couple.
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sner2000 · 3 years
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No context here. Just another example of how whenever one of the Avatar characters says “bending” I just think of Futurama.
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alecsv · 6 years
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renlikesstuff · 6 years
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It's nice to have that spelled out.
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quinnmorgendorffer · 2 years
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Teenage mutant leela hurdles - the why if fry - the sting
all in a row????
That’s too many perfect episodes of television in a row!!!
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