#anyone else feel like this sometimes...

[derpinette]

i have this "alter ego" that only exists in my head where essentially i am a fat sloppy drunk old fisherman with no loved ones living in misery & isolation & i often imagine myself as him especially in moments of patheticness

#& he is always a fisherman not a farmer not a fisherwoman either ( too badass... ) #past life ?! caus my ♯azn side was all fishers & stuff like my grandfather ETC but like all of them looked anorexic instead of fat so #also i imagine the guy as kind of vaguely mediterranean looking so maybe not because that side of my family are mountain farmers #when i read the old man & the sea ( i hate hemingway BTW ♯NotPete ♯ActuallyMikey ) ( uhm sorry about that... ) #i was like this is my life/future if it was better... 🚬 But that was a good while after i was already thinking of myself like that #closest thing i felt to a kin moment is when we analyzed miss brill like wow me & i am not even old that is genuinely just my life #as a (at the time) seventeen year old. & also carol ledoux from repulsion literally 100% only i am an ugly freak instead of beautiful #i pretty much never think of myself as myself in my head & actually never when i was younger up until age 9 i remember vividly #& i just had this thought while making my lazy “bite sized” onigiri ( bowl of seasoned rice +tunamayo +vache qui rit +avocado +spoon ) #but even when i make the non lazy version i get so overwhelmed & irritated & SLOPPY i feel like a drunk old man with nothing to #live for #anyone else feel like this sometimes... #if any of you weeaboos judge my terminology by the way i will kill myself just FYI #IDCCCC about the actual name you know what i mean. quasi poke bowl but each “component” has its own dish. whatever OK...

[lady-harrowhark]

For me, the thing is that "confusing" just... isn't the right descriptor for my experience reading the Locked Tomb books. I wasn't "confused," I just didn't have all the pieces of the puzzle yet, and I was aware of that fact. I feel like I generally knew what I was meant to know, as a reader, at the point in the book where I was at. And for a very significant portion of the series, what the reader is meant to know is, "not much." I was less "confused" and moreso "searching for the explanation that will connect everything." This is absolutely a series on the very high end of the "unknown quantities" spectrum. They're an intellectual escape room.

But the shorthand way to convey that is just that yeah, no, these books are super confusing.

#also to be clear: this is absolutely NOT a dig at anyone who feels like 'confused' IS the right descriptor for their reading experience #sometimes things are confusing! being confused is a very normal thing that happens to people in general! #mainly i'm just ruminating on the connotation of 'confusing' as opposed to... whatever else #tlt #the locked tomb #tamsyn muir #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #nona the ninth

[somerandomdudelmao]

@tapakah0

This little bunny means the world to me

#I can write a thousand word dialogue about someone else’s feelings #But I can’t fuckin express myself #However #Tapakah I want you to know #that you have absolutely huge influence on me and my art #You are so fucking important to me #too #important to mee too #yes I saw your ask #no I’m not showing it anyone It’s my personal treasure #I have a special folder on my tablet #it called (keep going mate) #It is strait up what it sounds like #my collection of the reasons to keep making art #to keep improving searching creating fighting reading writing #literally…uh #I’m sure you got the idea #you are in this folder too #because sometimes when I feel like I don’t have strength to hold my pen #I go to tumblr and search for you #And everything becomes a bit easier #thank you♡

[sun-e-chips]

Friendly reminder that your art makes someone happy, even if it’s just for yourself.

It is ok to make “messy” art, what matters is you got to have fun creating something and that in itself is wonderful!

#I’m not the best with words but wanted to try and portray this #sometimes I feel like I can’t draw because I hold my art to a certain standard #and i feel like if I don’t have the time to illustrate it to that standard then what’s the point in drawing it #it is important to want to improve and make art that your proud of but it is also important to just draw to make you happy #hope I’m wording this right haha #a lot of this is self reflection but I hope this helps anyone else that feels like they can only make and post (clean) art #this is a fantastic community and I wish all artists a very spectacular day/night! #crunch art #sb daycare attendant #sb sundrop #sb sun #sb moondrop #sb moon #sb eclipse #dca community #dca fandom #dca fanart

[annabelle--cane]

say it with me everybody: personal health is completely immaterial to morality, including mental health. leading a mentally unhealthy lifestyle (or what you perceive as a mentally unhealthy lifestyle) does not a bad person make. no one has to socialize, exercise, have healthy coping mechanisms, or lead (what you perceive as) a fulfilling life with fulfilling hobbies in the same way that no one has to go to the doctor to get a broken bone reset. both of those types of management of personal health are likely to be beneficial to the individual, but they are in no way moral requirements or debts owed to society. they do not actually say anything about a person's principles, personality, or actions towards others. additionally, people know themselves and their own situations better than you do. maybe a person judges that the physical and financial toll of going to the doctor outweigh the benefit of getting their bone reset, maybe a person just does not have the capacity to develop healthy coping mechanisms at this point in their life, and yes, maybe a person feels like they are totally fulfilled by "media based" hobbies alone and would feel no difference in their life if they picked up a loom. just like. let people be sick without accusing them of being representative of the lazy, degenerated state of modern society.

#marina marvels at life #there's a way people on here have been talking about ai/tiktok/movies/anti intellectualism/media hobbies/self care that all jives together #that just. really icks me out. #sometimes it comes through pretty transparently with people claiming that you must have regular sex to be a healthy/good person #or conversely that people are more sex crazed now than they've ever been and it's destroying literacy or whatever #or that cheating at school is scandalously immoral and only 'soft brained' bad people would do it #or that collectivism means you have to dress the right way and feel the right way and talk the right way #because your actions affect Others and you might upset someone or give off bad messages if you wear a crop top or are too sad #but a lot of the time it's just this strange plausibly-deniable tone I keep encountering that crept up some time in like 2021 I think #like. am I going crazy here or has anyone else been feeling this?

[greelin]

“if you’re eating meat substitutes why can’t you just eat meat again” Because I Don’t Want To. thanks

#like. idgaf what anyone else does but it’s been 15 years man. i miss it Sometimes in theory #but in practice? makes me feel nauseous

[turtleblogatlast]

Headcanon that the boys were first introduced to Lou Jitsu through Splinter scrounging up an old movie to watch through a grainy projector. Splinter wanted to hype himself up at the time, to see a version of himself - however fictional - succeeding and being happy.

He watches, and smiles, mouthing along to the dialogue and outright whisper-shouting “HOT SOUUUP!” whenever it comes up.

Nestled in his lap are his four new sons, still learning the world around them and heavily reliant on their new father. They watch with wide eyes how lively their guardian looks, how happy he sounds, and they turn to watch the movie closely. Because, for as young as they were, they could recognize the source of their father’s joy.

So naturally, they come to associate Lou Jitsu with their father’s smile, and in turn, they feel happy themselves. To them, Lou Jitsu will always be a source of joy, and always make them smile, even if they forget why as they grow.

They’re not just movies for the four of them - they’re the distant memories of a warm lap and a smiling face.

#rottmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rottmnt headcanons #rise splinter #rottmnt splinter #I’m in a turtle tot mood #the babiessss #I know a lot of people like to criticize Splinter’s parenting and like yeah he’s not the BEST #but despite his mistakes I genuinely think he did better than what could or should have been expected of him #like anyone else would not have been able to do it #he can be a little negligent and hurtful at times but I don’t think he was as absent a parent as a lot of you say he is #his flaws are there true but again - he loves his boys so much #that being said it’s no excuse for his mistakes and he should be rightfully called out for them #but sometimes I feel like people really overblow his flaws

[butchviking]

i hate being a mentally ill adult actually. i hate that there’s always groceries to be bought and housekeeping to do and work in the morning i hate that we have no space to feel it all i hate that we walk around acting normal. there are so many people i know who are clearly deeply unhappy with their lives and we make silly little jokes that allude to it but sometimes i want to grab them by the shoulders and scream ‘i know you are miserable!! we can’t keep living like this!! this is why people break!!’ im sick of this drudgerous apathy i want us all to be dramatic like when we were teenagers i want us to sob together and scream bloody murder at each other and tell each other we want to kill ourselves not as a funny post-ironic joke but because we all feel like that sometimes!! i want us to get fucked up on god knows what til we can’t open our eyes i want us to take care of each other instead of always taking care of ourselves i want us to be vulnerable i want us to hold each others hands in the ambulance!!

#don't get me wrong there are happy and beautiful times! there is wonder and fulfillment!! #but how do u share in the one if u can't share in the other? #i can't walk into work and say #'yesterday all i could think about was which of you would cry if i died #but today i saw a kid pick a flower and it felt like the most beautiful thing that had ever happened' #i don't even talk to my friends like that! it's all 'haha yeah been having a rough week. u know how it is. hbu?' #i feel like im going crazy but i dont believe that! aren't we all feeling this??? is anyone else feeling this??? is this fucking normal???? #am i just emotionally closed off?? is everyone else having these conversations am i the stunted one who doesn't know how to talk about it?? #i KNOW im living with mental illness but so are a lot of people! im sad sometimes but im not losing my mind! i know other people feel this!!

[trilliath]

It's a lot, sometimes. When you finish a story, a show or book or fic or whatever, that is one of those ones in your heart that's like. Real. Real, not in a "i'm out of touch with reality and can't separate it from fiction" sort of way but in a "it doesn't really matter that the material is fictional, I was subsumed enough in it that I felt deeply - and my emotions, my love for these characters, my experience and memory of these events in their story, are still real regardless" sort of way.

And like. The tragedy of it is that in the end, you are alone in it, in the grief of the story itself, or the ending of it, because they're not real. The people you shared the experience of the story with are not real, and so you have nobody to feel that with but your own mind.

Hell of a thing.

#Fandom is sometimes a salve when you can share those feelings but like #sometimes it's a little canadian show that's over a decade old #and the fandom is mostly gone or never was in the first place #and even then would anyone else really get it #would they really ever understand it the same way you did #being human and having an imagination strong enough to do this is such a wild thing sometimes

[princsstwilightsparkl]

saying "if aroace people can date, then can lesbians date men?" is absolutely aphobic narrative btw!

#sorry just have to say this lol #so tired of people generalizing all aroace people as romance averse #its absolutely erasure of the rest of the spectrum #the top tweet isnt so bad depending on who theyre talking about #if a character ACTUALLY is canonically romance/sex aversed then yea its weird to erase that #but if they're canonically AROACE and you go 'erm that character cannot date or have sex🤓☝️' ur being aphobic as fuck #the 'shown no attraction to anyone' part kind of throws me off there #i hate when people say 'well this character didnt have feelings for anyone in the one year time span of the show so theyre romance aversed- #and nobody can ship them or else i'll harass u and subtweet u!1!!' #like. a characters life may not involve sex or romance at all fucking times. that does not make them aroace. #ur headcanon- even if you think its based on a logical conclusion- is not reality #sometimes yall just be making shit tf up #complaining about 'fanon' as if ur not the one pretending ur hc is real and treating everyone else like theyre the bad ones #but if that tweet is just saying that IN ADDITION to theyre canon identity then yea. thats valid. #their* </3 #obviously the reply is fucking disgusting #i couldnt reply directly cuz my twitter is priv #people will say this kind of shit to ME- AN AROACE PERSON #u preach about aro/ace erasure but when an actual aroace walks in you tell them their way of being aroace is wrong #not everyone is the fucking same. #non-partnering aroaces deserve more rep but telling partnering aroaces that their way of being aroace is wrong is genuinely horrific #like actually fuck u #aromantic #asexual #aroace #arospec #meowing (yapping)

[transmasccofee]

Unrequited mikosai hits diff sometimes

#I think its healthier than any other unrequited saiki ship #Cause I don’t think Mikotos feelings would ever affect her too significantly #But they would inform some of her decision making #Yk #i like the idea of her idea of her wondering why shes in love with someone so different #And with so much baggage #But sticking by him bc that sure as hell won’t get in the way of their genuine friendship #But just sometimes being so frustrated in a way she isn’t with anyone else #Shes so well adjusted generally and on top of things #So I like the idea that hes able to push all her buttons without even meaning to

[idolomantises]

there's something so comforting about artists you admire talking about their own struggles and insecurities

#txt #was watching supereyepatchwolf's video on chainsaw man again and listening to fujimoto express regret about things he didnt learn #and how he's clearly envious of his peers is so... comforting? #i think about my own strengths and flaws and often times i get so frustrated with my shortcomings #im not good at drawing feet; my backgrounds are purposefully simplistic and lack a lot of detail; sometimes my designs have a tendency to #overlap or feel very 'safe' in terms of what i really want to do #its why; despite my love for clowning on media and animated works. i never want to feel like its from a place of malice #the joy of art is always seeing those little mistakes and nuances. its also noticing the achievements other creators have made that you #still lack #even for a certain hell-based show i love to poke fun at for its many. many issues. its undeniable how incredibly passionate the work is. #and i do respect anyone who is willing to get their flawed media out there (myself included) #i see stuff about people calling me their inspo or how flattered they are when i compliment their work and its like. gee. i hold myself at #such a high bar and even still im always surprise when people tell me how much my work moved and changed them #i really love writing just little fun things that i just dont really see anyone else touching and its kind of fun how despite my own #personal grievances with my own flaws and mistakes #people really do find things that they love within them. #anyways I know this is getting long but I’ve just been getting sentimental abt the creation of art #sometimes people make fun of me for love of drawing women and lesbians and bugs and so on #and while I will never let me deter me from my process. sometimes it does get to me #but then I remember that I love doing this and could ever see myself holding back #and knowing despite how other people feel. I have so many followers who resonate with my weird ass shit #that it’s all worth it. ya know?

[time-is-restored]

btw not to make everything about My Fucking Guy but i honestly think one of the things that seperates q!phil out from the other islanders is the approach he takes to dealing with the lack of agency + control all the islanders have over whatever the fuck the federation's doing.

it shows up most prominently whenever tubbo is excitedly telling him about the 'progress' he's made with cucurucho or various investigations (ie: trapping him into a corner with the 'do you have free will' questions), and phil always shoots it down w an immediate 'that doesn't mean anything. curucuho will say anything to mess with you. you can't take anything he says as true.'

and it's not that phil is... a paticularly pessimistic character? he's just EXTREMELY practical. like, he's yet to give up on anyone EVER finding ANY answers (he was the one who initially gave the federation that one week ultimatum w the cage for a cage stream), he just doesn't trust the idea that curucuho is ever going to voluntarily give them. they're uncontrollable + senseless - you might as well argue with the weather.

and like, if that's how he sees the one (1) and only point of contact the islanders HAD with the federation for months, it explains a lot abt his characters lifestyle! ofc he sits on the wall all day, talking to his kids, and keeping his head down. he believes that the federation wants nothing more than to drag the islanders into sick games + tasks just so they can fuck with their head (ie: curucuho revealing he was the one cellbit gathered all that information for). and while he can't totally PREVENT any of that from ever impacting him, he can make sure his kids are well fed, well protected, and as happy + comfortable as he can manage. this is objectively not a perfect situation, there is a guaranteed amount of suffering + fear that he can't mitigate, but he can at least account for it.

like, he REFUSES to engage. whenever curucho shows up, he treats them with total ambivalence. he's not going to get riled up by anything they do, he's not going to get super attached to the guy, he's just gonna laugh it off and irish goodbye it when things drag on. the ONLY time he's strayed from that general guiding principle has been since he's lost his eggs, and can no longer afford to let the federation's fuckery go: those are his fucking kids.

hence the completely unprecedented levels of outward rage and sadness and terror he shows throughout the birdcage streams - almost all directed directly to cucurucho. it's all a completely fair + proportional response to the horror the islanders are being subjected to, but it feels so different bc until now, q!phil has been so dedicated to not reacting, and not giving the federation any sign that they're actually getting to him.

#qsmp #q!phil #LIKE. does anyone else think this! i genuinely believe its like one of the major #traits of his character i feel like u can trace it through Everything. #the man lives with the constant knowledge that sometimes all it takes is a tempting ravine and a badly timed creeper to end a life #whether that life belongs to a stranger or someone you love more than anything else in the world #you COULD rage against that. you could scream and shout and tear your hair out and grieve for the futility of it all #but what does that change? the days march on. death waits either way #and that's not to say he's a laizesfair kind of guy. anyone who's seen him stress out abt chayanne's risk taking + freak out #whenever his kids don't have enough autofeed grist can see that he cares DEEPLY. which resolves into his very distinctive #defensive + protective playstyle. the goal is not to win the fight the goal is to *survive* the fight etc #but the only way that mindset doesn't spill out into unchecked paranoia + complete agoraphobia is with acceptance #'shit happens: the philza minecraft story' #i also think it even manifests in the nightmare sequence w his last words to chayanne? 'they didn't want us to live. we were never supposed #to survive' or whatever the exact wording was #he is FURIOUS and deeply hurt and sad abt the deaths he says so explicitly later #but at the time the first thing he reaches for is. exhausted acceptance. it wasn't their fault. it wasn't his fault. they did their best. #they could only do so much in the face of the federation's Overwhelming Hostility. y'know? #mine

[hephaestuscrew]

Pan-Pan, Boléro, and Minkowski's different responses to loss

I want to compare two key lines of Minkowski's which indicate very different responses to grief:

In Ep29 Pan-Pan, Minkowski breaks down and says "Doug Eiffel is gone! There was nothing we could do to save him. It wasn't anyone's fault. It's horrible, and pointless, and it just happened."

In contrast, after arriving at the funeral in Ep46 Boléro, she says "[Lovelace, Hilbert and Maxwell are dead] to make the fact that we're not gone yet important. They're gone... so that we never forget how important it is that we're still here." 

TL;DR: In Pan-Pan, Minkowski expresses her unprocessed grief through despair and hopelessness. Whereas in Boléro, she is able to find hope in the loss and lead her crew in trying to move forward. I suggest a significant reason of the difference is the presence of Eiffel to force Minkowski to confront and process the sense of loss.

Pan-Pan: "It's horrible, and pointless, and it just happened"

In Pan-Pan, the whole episode is full of anger and despair, but Minkowski speaking about the horrible pointlessness of losing Eiffel is one of the most painful and hopeless moments. It doesn't feel like she's really speaking to the others. She's focused on her internal despair (as suggested by the fact that she goes on to talk about the cracks, which Lovelace and Hilbert aren't supposed to know about).

The only potentially positive thing Minkowski says here is her recognition that "it wasn't anyone's fault". When Hera and Hilbert have been blaming Lovelace, and Minkowski has been blaming herself, it's significant that she acknowledges that sometimes a horrible thing just happens without there being anyone to blame. 

But in this context, and in the tone of voice Minkowski uses, even the lack of blame doesn't really feel like a positive thing. If Eiffel becoming stranded was just pointless and random, if there was nothing any of them could have done to save him, then the next tragedy might be just as unpredictable and unpreventable. Minkowski strikes me as the kind of person who can sometimes fall into the trap of subconsciously wishing that the awful thing is her fault because then at least she'd have control over something. In her train of thought here, the lack of blame is followed by focusing on how horrible and pointless what happened to Eiffel was. The only conclusion she can draw is "it just happened". There's no sense of hope in those lines. Eiffel being stranded just happened, and so do the cracks, and the crew are at the whims of brutal fortune with no meaning to any of it.

Boléro: "They're gone... so that we never forget how important it is that we're still here"

In Boléro, Minkowski can't even say that the tragedy wasn't anyone's fault. For each of the deaths, someone pulled a trigger. There is blame, and some of it lies at her feet. She didn't want to come to the funeral because at first she didn't know what she could say about the deaths she feels responsible for.

Yet even so, this time she finds something reassuring she can say to her crew, a grain of hope she can provide without attempting to diminish the loss: "[they're gone] to make the fact that we're not gone yet important. They're gone... so that we never forget how important it is that we're still here."

In another show, or another context, this kind of line might have had an 'everything happens for a reason' tone, which is something I deeply dislike as a response to other people's loss. But it doesn't feel like that's what Minkowski is saying here at all. She isn't trying to make any grand philosophical statement about the ultimate beneficence of the universe, or about how mortality gives meaning to human life. What she says here is working on a much more personal level. It's more about finding something other than despair that the crew can take from what has happened. This tragedy may still be horrible, but it provides a reminder that they are still alive in a context where that's far from guaranteed. Minkowski emphasises that the fact the survivors are alive matters - her crew matters. I'd argue that this contrasts with the 'it just happened' outlook discussed above. 

I don't know how much Minkowski fully feels the importance of them still being there in the moment, but it's something that she can offer her crew, something that she can say in a situation that words can't grasp. I think the moment when she joins the funeral is such a key moment of her leadership. In the end, despite her doubts and struggles, she's there for her crew. Eiffel brought them together for a funeral, but he doesn't know what to say when Hera asks why they have to be gone. Minkowski enters just at the right moment to support her crew and she provides an answer to Hera's question. It's not a perfect answer, but it allows the funeral to move forward. It allows the crew to move forward (even if that emotional movement is somewhat thrown off by a dramatic change in the circumstances). Minkowski starts off the eulogies; she leads her crew in the acknowledgement of what's been lost.

Why such a difference in responses?

There's lots of ways you could interpret the difference between the outlook of these two moments, and there's probably more to say about it though the lens of Minkowski's character development than I'm going to say here. But for me, the main difference between these moments is that, in Pan-Pan, it feels like no processing or recognition of grief has really occurred. When Minkowski says "Doug Eiffel is gone!", it almost feels like the first time that Minkowski has fully confronted and acknowledged the loss. Eiffel has been lost in space for 116 days, but it's only at the end of this episode that Minkowski brings herself to say in her distress calls that he is "presumed dead". Whereas in Boléro, she's already eulogising the dead and thinking about what can be learned from the loss, not even a full day after the mutiny.

Obviously there is much less ambiguity to a body bag (or least there would be, if not for alien interference). But I can't help thinking that the difference between the attitudes towards loss which Minkowski displays in these two quotes is less about the difference in the kind of loss, and more about a situation that prompted and enabled the processing of emotions in Boléro: namely, the funeral. After Eiffel was stranded in space, I think Minkowski probably went months without looking her grief in the eye. But after the deaths of Lovelace, Hilbert, and Maxwell, Eiffel's suggestion of a funeral forces Minkowski to confront her complicated emotions and provides a space in which she can offer direction to her grieving crew.

This is a good illustration of how I think Minkowski and Eiffel complement and support each other in a really valuable way. On his own, Eiffel couldn't provide the leadership that the crew needed for the funeral to work. But without Eiffel, and his determination to recognise the emotional weight of the three deaths, the funeral would never have happened and Minkowski would never have been in a position to provide hope and direction to her crew. When Eiffel was the one the Hephaestus crew were grieving, Minkowski couldn't offer much emotional direction to her crew beyond despair. But when Eiffel is beside her in the grief, saying that the grief deserves to be felt, then Minkowski can find a way for them to move forward emotionally. It's not the deaths that remind them how important it is that they are still here. It's the grief. It's the ability to confront that grief together.

#Wolf 359 #w359 #Renée Minkowski #Renee Minkowski #Doug Eiffel #I know that this is a lot to say about two short-ish quotes but I think they are symbolic / indicative of broader patterns #Also some of this probably contradicts things that I've said at other points #about how Minkowski dealt with Eiffel being stranded in space #But it's complicated. okay? #Sometimes I want to think about her grieving him and what that would look like #And sometimes I want to think about how in his absence she's much less able to process her emotions at all #Either way I'm emotional about them #This wasn't even initially meant to be a Minkowski & Eiffel post tbh #I just had this thought as I was writing this #It also wasn't meant to be 1000 words but these things just happen #Btw when I say I dislike the idea 'everything happens for a reason' #I fully respect if people find that a useful approach for their own personal misfortunes #but as soon as you start saying it to anyone else who is suffering #it feels distasteful to me #Maybe everything happens for a reason but sometimes the reason is shit etc #Eiffel & Minkowski #w359 spoilers #Wolf 359 spoilers #the empty man posteth #tw death #tw grief

[redrobin-detective]

Shout out to the fics you read years and years ago, fics you found on a whim late at night and read and moved on and yet their stories haunt. Pour one out for those fics you stand no chance in hell of finding again and yet even long after you read those words, you still find yourself affected by them. Here’s to the stories that exist without name, author or even words but just the gentle impression they left on you long ago.

#I read so much DP fic back in the day on FF that I'll never see again #I still remember one of the first I read where Danny had his accident became Phantom in front of sam and tuck #and then then fled hid from everyone for years and was in college when he hears of trouble in amity and returns #i read that like 18 years ago like just a random ass fic I read at 2am and yet #I think about it sometimes out of the blue how it made ME feel as a young 13 year old about the idea of abandoning everything to run #idk if the author cares about this story #if anyone else remembers it #it passed in and out of my life in less than a hour and yet a full childhood lifespan later I am making a tumblr post about it #there's something a little bit magical about that I think

[turtleblogatlast]

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

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

Long-winded interpretation under the cut!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, where does this leave us?

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

Workarounds like the entire Don Suave situation.

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

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

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

#rottmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rottmnt headcanons #rottmnt leo #rise leo #rise don suave #rottmnt don suave #I lied I’m back to ramble because I’m just #so bad at keeping my mouth shut #or uh #not typing word vomit #anyway- yeah this is my personal interpretation #I believe Leo was legitimately mesmerized by Don Suave’s powers…in the beginning #but even the series’ creator says it was ‘at least PART of what was going on with Leo’ so #idk it’s something that’s been on my mind and I was wondering if anyone else felt the same?? #may delete this later who knowssss #pleaaaase feel free to disagree I just like to talk lol #but yeah sometimes I look around at how much media has LGBTQ+ rep in it now and it honestly makes me emotional?? #(we always always ALWAYS could use more but) #we did not have even a crumb of this as kids #but also like most of that rep is new properties #and I just was thinking about what that could mean #idk man idk #once again please don’t take this as facts it is VERY MUCH NOT #man I was looking around for good images to use and found jack all #anyway tho did you know Donnie often has bi colors around him and Leo is often dressed in the colors of the trans flag- #okay anyway back to the caves I go this comic won’t draw itself #I gotta spray myself with water any time I go to type long winded essays because they’re not great for the mental health fr