aristaspark

[aristaspark]

Notice how Darius didn't look at Brooklynn's arm?

It's not me who's saying this. That's a conversation that's happening in the fandom that I wanted to talk about because I find it truly...idk, kind of icky, and of bad taste.

I decided to speak about it after having stumbled once again upon a post using Darius' lack of "notice" of Brooklynn's arm as an argument for the ship, but it's far from being the first time I've seen people bring it up.

Don't get me wrong, my problem isn't that they're supporting the ship, even though I believe Kenlynn to be endgame, I can admit that there are elements that could point towards dinostar possibly being endgame, my problem is with this argument specifically, because it looks like the ones using it are purposefully being obtuse, and are missing the point. To me it's a really disrespectful outlook on the work of the writers and their handling of Brooklynn's disability.

For context, Brooklynn explains to Soyona that she doesn't like the way people look at her ever since she has lost her arm. I love this scene. We get an insight into Brooklynn and her struggles, into how she is still adapting to the way people perceive her now that she's "different". The loss of her arm isn't brushed aside, it has lasting consequences that the writers don't shy away from. They consulted people with limb differences to make sure that they'd show an authentic representation of their expericences, and you can see the care that they put into telling that aspect of Brooklynn's story.

Now that we established that, yes, Brooklynn is struggling with the way she is perceived, let's talk about why I hate what the fandom makes of it.

There are two characters who react to Brooklynn's arm: Ben and Kenji. And from Brooklynn's reaction, we see that she feels some type of way about it, even though she has very different reactions to the two of them, because the two interactions are VERY different.

During the scene with Ben, we can see that Ben's gaze, despite himself, is drawn to her arm. That's mainly because he had no idea that she'd lost it, but since they were both very stressed and there were millions of other more "pressing" matters he should have focused on, it hurt Brooklynn that his eyes kept ogling at her arm. Neither of them were in the right mindset. He was slightly insensitive in the way he approached the subject, which caused Brooklynn to react negatively. But it's never shown as a black and white thing. Ben apologizes and afterwards, Brooklynn is able to focus on something else because she's an actual intelligent and social being who's aware that simply because Ben looked at her arm didn't mean that he thought of her as less than. It was a human interaction, realistic, and in no way was it implanted to say something about Ben and Brooklynn's relationship, to imply that Ben having a reaction made him a bad friend somehow. This is simply realistic.

Now, Kenji. He first notices her arm when she's talking to Ben, and we can see that he focuses on it for a hot second, before looking up at her face. Needless to say that in that moment there's a million things going through his mind. Brooklynn is alive, she's there, Ben knew Brooklynn was alive, she has lost a limb... We can see he is hit by all these informations which are way too much for him to process. It's NORMAL, EXCPECTED that he'd have a reaction to seeing her missing arm. Any other reaction would have been stupid. It's as if your lover left for a few days, came back with a missing limb and you said nothing. This doesn't happen. Them writing this into the show says nothing about Kenji's status as a love interest, he shouldn't have to ignore it to be considered a suitable partner and I find it kind of disgusting that people imply this. His lover has lost a limb, of course it will have an impact on him.

Now, the second time he looks at her arm is when he's finally reunited with Brooklynn. But simply reducing this interaction to "Kenji looks at Brooklynn arm -> Brooklynn scared -> Bad = Darius better" is a thought process I'd expect from a pre-schooler.

Kenji spends a very long moment staring only at Brooklynn, at HER FACE, expressing his emotions (beautiful scene by the way). Then he WILLINGLY looks at her arm. Kenji's aware that she's looking at him and he has already seen her arm, the only reason he looks down at her arm is because he wants HER to be aware that he has seen it, and one shouldn't have to be a genius to understand this. And he looks incredibly sad because, I know that's crazy, but as someone who love(d)s her, this impacts him. And Brooklynn has a reaction, I know that's crazy. But unlike with Ben, she looks scared, not mad. I won't spend too much time on this because I already did a brief "analysis" of this scene, but I took it as either she was scared that he'd see her differently, either it was the manifestation of all the hurt she's suffered (yk, often when you open up about something, you feel the emotions as you tell the story, and to me this could be Brooklynn allowing herself to show someone she's suffering for the first time, as if a silent conversation had taken place. Kenji asks what happened to her arm with his eyes, and all the hurt comes flooding back as she's reminded of everything she's been through).

Now, some people use the fact that Darius didn't even glance at her arm as, idk, a good thing, patting him on the back for it (which, on its own, is incredibly weird to me). Yasmina and Sammy didn't look at it either, but since they're not shipped with Brooklynn most don't care, it's not about disability but about somehow gaining points in the battle for Brooklynn.

But I'm like, you have to purposely being obtuse to use this as an argument. If I was Brooklynn and I was presumed dead for a long time, and when I came back I had a limb missing (implying an immense amount of suffering) I would absolutely want my partner and my friends to notice it ??? ESPECIALLY the person I love?? Actually, if he didn't notice I would straight up hate him because that would just mean that he DOESN'T CARE.

Implying that strangers looking at Brooklynn's arm and her loved ones reacting to her evident trauma are the same thing is wild, but using it as an argument for shipping is worse and, to me, an insult to all the work the writers have done to tackle the subject of disability. There isn't some checklist of people who looked at her arm and people who didn't, Darius (as well as Yaz and Sammy) don't deserve a cookie (or Brooklynn's love for that matter 🙃) because they didn't look at it. Ben and Kenji reacting to her arm doesn't mean that they somehow care less about the fact that Brooklynn's alive or that they love her less than the others, and Darius isn't "special" for not having looked at her arm, because Sammy and Yaz also didn't. It simply means that they are well written characters who react to things in their own, sometimes clumsy way.

What bothers me is that these scenes clearly weren't implanted for shipping matters, but are part of the characters' journeys with Brooklynn's disability, and her own journey. Them being present doesn't somehow put a definitive stain on Brooklynn's relationships with Kenji and Ben, things don't work like that. If anything I find Kenji's scene with her to be very touching, because you can just see how devastated he is for her, and how frightened she is.

It's not the fact that people look at her that hurts Brooklynn, it's the reason and the manner in which they look at her.

Idk to me it's kind of disrespectful to the work the writers did because it's implying that they tried to say Darius was the one for Brooklynn simply because he didn't care for his friend's severed limb. I think there are better arguments to make for dinostar, and less insensitive, than to reduce this very important topic to shipping.

Anyway, thanks for coming to my ted talk 😭

[aristaspark]

What do you think about the "he... wants me to be someone that I'm not" (S2E3, flashback in Darius cabin)? Here we see how Brooklynn ties her interests, work and identity and how she connects it to why she and Kenji breakup.

Also the "I don't like the way people looked at me back home" (S2E5, when Sayona was painting Brooklynn).

I really want to see how you, a Kenlynn shiper, see it

Well, she's wrong 🤷‍♀️

We know she's wrong, and that she's in the wrong. We know that Kenji didn't "want her to be someone else", all he wanted was to spend time with his lover, lover who started neglecting everything in her life that didn't relate to her work, including their relationship.

He had no problem with who Brooklynn was when she was present, the problem was that she was NEVER present.

So why would Brooklynn say that? Because that's the only reasoning Brooklynn was able to come up with to explain why he'd break up with her.

Brooklynn, in this moment, is so deep into her investigation, is so blind to how unhealthy her relationship to her work has grown that she's physically incapable of making sense of the reason why Kenji broke up with her, so she tries to rationalize it, and this is the only explanation she's able to come up with.

We even have the confirmation of this in the dialogue when she tells Darius "I've been a LITTLE distracted with work". I've seen a lot of people come at her for lying to make Kenji seem like the bad guy in the relationship, but that's not at all what she's doing 😭. What's happening is that she's so disconnected from her life and from reality that she truly believes that she was only a little distracted. And since to her, in her broker-obsessed mind, the cause of their break-up didn't exist since she was only a little distracted, then Kenji had no reason to break up with her, unless he didn't really love her.

One thing that I think is important to understand is that the show isn't trying to frame pre-fake-death-Brooklynn as being misunderstood but, on the contrary, as being the one who doesn't understand sh*t and is wrong about everything, and this scene is simply one of the many instances when it's shown to us.

This was one of the many instances when we were shown just how much she was in denial.

And so, because I think it needs to be adressed, Kenji's problem wasn't that Brooklynn's work was of great importance to her. She had always been like this, even back in cc, he fell in love with that part of her. It's not some mysogistic thing where the dude can't accept that his partner is career-driven. The problem was that there was a clear shift in her behavior after she discovered Dark Jurassic, a shift that, as I touched upon in on of my posts, was everything but a natural evolution of her character because she closed herself off to everyone. The lesson is not that she can't be passionate about her work, the lesson is that there need to be a healthy balance between her work and her life, a balance that completely got off the rails when she got on Dark Jurassic, and we got to see the consequences of that balance being thrown off: Kenji broke up with her because she was in denial, Darius didn't show up because it hadn't even crossed her mind that his fiasco of a confession could affect their relationship and their plan to meet up, and finally her arm got eaten because she had gone about everything the wrong way, thus ending up alone and traumatized.

I totally got off topic, but consider the first few paragraphs my reply, the rest in bonus, as per usual 🤣

Oh, and of course, narratively speaking she also said that to allow our dear Darius to bounce back on what she said, leading to the infamous confession. It was because she said that that he started rambling on about how he couldn't fathom wanting her to be someone else because she was so perfect, bla bla, the rest is history. So it's also partly there as a set up to allow for Darius' character to accidentally confess in the most awful way I might say 😂.

And about the second question I'm not sure I understand what you're asking me, sorry 😭 Is it about Kenlynn or simply Brooklynn ? Because Kenji's not in that scene. I don't think you're asking me what Brooklynn meant because I think it's pretty easy to get that people look a certain way at people who look different, even if they don't mean to, and that it's bound to hurt.

[aristaspark]

I was thinking about the possibillity of Darius and Brooklynn getting together.

What do you think would happen to Kenji if that happens?

It would be really sad for Kenji😭😭

Well, I'm sure that if the writers decided to go that route they would have Kenji somehow be ok with them being together, realizing him and Brook are incompatible now, so him being sad isn't really a worry I have.

But what I would hate is that it would simply be terrible writing and anyone should be able to see this. There's no universe where the relationships btw Kenji and Darius, and Kenji and Brooklynn wouldn't be destroyed by Brooklynn and Darius getting together, and the way Kenji feels about her doesn't change a thing. Actually, this is one of the MANY reasons why I believe Dinostar is simply a plot device and is not meant to be shipped.

We have to keep in mind that they made Kenji and Darius actual brothers, and that Kenji and Brooklynn dated for years while he was leaving with the Bowmans.

Even if Kenji realized he didn't want to be with her anymore, it doesn't change the fact that it would be straight up treason on both Darius and Brooklynn's part.

Yk, Kenji was quite understanding when Darius confessed he had feelings for Brook, and d*nostar shippers loooove to use this fact as proof that he'd be ok with them dating, but I'm sorry, no?

The only reasons he was "ok" with it was because, one, Brooklynn was DEAD, so there was no point in getting mad anyway, and two, having feelings for someone is not something you can control, and Darius was entitled to his own feelings. But having feelings for someone and ACTUALLY be willing to pursue someone are two VERY different things. Fortunately, as far as Kenji knew, Darius only did the first one (on this note, Darius is lucky Kenji didn't get to hear his *bold* confession).

What those shippers like to forget is that Kenji looked infinitely less sereine when he asked Darius if Brook loved him back, because unlike Darius, SHE had been in a relationship with him for years while being best friend with Darius.

If Brooklynn reciprocated Darius' feelings this would just send all these years of relationship down the drain because that'd mean that at any time during these 6 years Brooklynn could have fallen in love with Darius had she spent some time alone with him. And people somehow want that? 😭

Brooklynn was one of Kenji's most important relationships in his life for years, he went from a teenage boy to an adult while in a relationship with her, and they think he'd be okay having that being turned to dust upon learning that during all this time there was a possibilty she could have fallen in love with their SHARED best-friend, HIS ADOPTIVE BROTHER who he trusted to be around his girlfriend?

He would simply think about all the times the three of them had been together, feeling like he was once again the unwanted one. That as soon as he broke up with Brooklynn, breaking his own heart in the process because he just loved her that much, she got over him and immediately fell in love with Darius, if she wasn't already in love with him.

I understand liking d*nostar in jwcc, but in jwct it's waaaay too shady for me, and I'm surprised most of the fans are willing to ignore this simply because they liked them before, or simply because they still want Kenlynn to be destroyed because they hated them in jwcc.

Like, how could Kenji trust anyone EVER again, or even love anyone ever again, if the two people he loved the most did this to him? He had already suffered for years from his father treating him like a disposable son who didn't matter, there's no way he would be ok with Brooklynn and Darius doing the same thing to him, and if they wrote that in the show I'd actually be pissed.

But as I said many times, I truly think Darius and Brooklynn isn't happening, so this isn't to say that the writers are bad, because I'm like 99% convinced they didn't write this 😂

[aristaspark]

How high do you think the chances are that Kenji and Brooklynn will get back together ?

I really hope they will 🍀🩵🩷

Well, I'm everything but objective when it comes to them and it's quite a hard thing to quantify, the most I can say is that I personnaly believe the writers made them endgame in chaos theory 😭 I can only speak for myself so it's hard to give you a number, because if you were to ask someone who ships another ship the same question they would give you a completely different answer. Just gonna say that to me the chances are decently high, but that everything's still possible and that I only know as much as every other fan about what's to come (so, nothing) 🤷‍♀️

[aristaspark]

Looking through the storyboards (specially from S2E3 and S2E10), do you think Kenlynn still has chances to happen? 🤔

I know, what's truly important is what we got in the actual show. But those small details still play a interesting role in the characters and were planned to them

I can sorta see where you're coming from but to me the storyboards don't contradict anything that's in the show. We might see more of Darius in some of them, but it doesn't prove anything to me 🤷‍♀️. Brooklynn and Darius have a LOT of things they need to deal with so her having a strong reaction to his presence or the focus being on them/Darius isn't proof it's romantic. If they had shown another version of the confession scene where Brooklynn didn't look like she had just swallowed the most bitter pill ever I might have changed my mind, but they didn't 😂. Them interacting doesn't mean it's romantic and it doesn't go against my previous observations. There's one of them where we don't even see the moment Kenji grabs Brooklynn, so we don't even know what we're comparing it to. And if you're thinking about the fact that in a deleted scene Brooklynn is the one who ends up breaking up with Kenji, it also doesn't change anything to me. In that deleted scene she ends up doing it because her and Kenji can't see eye to eye and she feels attacked because she's in denial when it comes to the way she's been behaving. In her book, Kenji's only looking for a reason to break up with her because she doesn't realize that he's actually right, so she "frees" him out of spite. It's more a couple argument that ends badly than a real break up, we can see she's pissed when he leaves.

I was already aware of the storyboards when I explained my theories, so yeah. Sorry my answer is boring I don't really know what I can say 😂

[aristaspark]

As someone who loves to write but has never written in a group setting I find this SO fascinating 😁 Really, my dream job.

As part of a writer room, since it's a collective work, do you sometimes have to put aside your "real" self from your "writer" self? The wording is horrendous, but for example, when it comes to shipping, you like the trope of a certain ship and would like for them to happen, but as a writer you know that it wouldn't actually make sense for the characters? It just seems so hard to me to have dicern "good" ideas from selfish baseless wishes so I wonder how it's managed in a writer room.

Ooooh, a craft question! I love these.

So, basically, yeah, you DO have to set aside what you want from what is right for the story, because those are often not aligned. At the end of the day, if the Nublar Six were real people, I want them to all be happy and healthy and live conflict-free until forever. But that's not good story.

When you're in the room trying to tell the most interesting and meaningful/emotionally resonant story for these people, you can't do what you want with them -- you have to do what the story demands thematically. That's why we have writers rooms: we're constantly discussing not only what's cool, but what makes sense, both logically and emotionally. Thankfully for our room, we were all very aligned with what we thought the story was from the very beginning. There definitely some pitches I fought for that maybe weren't right for the show and we more based in what I wanted to have happen -- but that's part of the job. Discerning between ideas you like and ideas that make sense and ideas that make sense but are also surprising is a very tough muscle to work out, but that's all it is -- a muscle. That's why a good writers room will have long discussions about practically every choice to see if it actually works and means something for the story and the characters. It's also my favorite part of the process. And I like to think I only got better at this throughout our time in the room together, and that I'm continuing to get better at this on the new show I'm on.

Philosophically, I believe that, VERY often, what we want to see happen in stories are and what should happen in them are complete opposites. We don't necessarily want our favorite characters to be in conflict and find opposition -- but the problem is that without all of that, the characters don't shine their brightest or learn their lessons, and therefore neither does the audience. It's something that I wish chronically online fandoms would understand better so that they don't turn around and throw hate at people who are trying to tell good stories. Like, trust me, you don't want an entire episode where the characters just talk and laugh and have a fun little barbecue with their dinosaur friends. You'd be bored to fucking tears and your favorite characters wouldn't be people, they'd just be... I dunno, cardboard cutouts of the ideas of people.

Maybe it's not even about separating the two sides of yourself, but about acknowledging both sides within the scope that stories are not just a series of cool or nice events. Stories all come down to conflict, especially conflict between people, and the puzzle of writing a show is determining which conflicts mean the most and allow for emotional reactions and revelations, etc. If you're just watching the show for the dinosaurs (and I know some do), then you're missing out on all of the more important aspects of the story that was being told.

I think I got a little off-track there, but thanks for coming to my TEDTalk.

[aristaspark]

Can you talk about Kenji and Brooklynn love language?

So, I'm going to try to remain as close to their canon personnalities as possible 🤣

Kenji: His main love language is sharing what he loves with Brooklynn. Amazing views, a new food he likes, a new show he discovered... He loves to share his excitement over the simple things in life with her. Also physical affection (duh). He's super clingy and loves to kiss her (the picture in her appartment 🥹), to hold her close (we all know his favorite thing to do is to lay his hand on her shoulder).

Brooklynn: (She was a little harder to figure out but I eventually did). We know that Brooklynn is kind of a lone wolf, an independant person. She doesn't mind doing things on her own, it's actually easier for her because she sucks at... well, at socializing. So her main love language is doing activities with Kenji. Yk, doing things with him as a pair, because it's not something that comes easy for her, but she does it because she loves him. She always loved "unboxing" new things, but now she no longer does it alone. So everytime Kenji had something new he wanted to try, she gladly accepted, because she loved that it made him so happy (which is why it was such a deal breaker when she started becoming obsessed with the broker and stopped doing that 😭). The contrary is also true, everytime she discovered something new she no longer wanted to do it alone, but with him. And of course, physical affection (she becomes incredibly cringy, as we saw with the baby talk, face touching etc... and she can't keep her hands off of him 😂). Also, words of affirmation, since she knows Kenji lacks confidence even if he wants everyone to think the contrary. We kinda saw it back in camp cretaceous when she said that he wasn't like his father or that he deserved the good things happening to him. She wants to uplift him.

One thing that struck me when I watched season 2 is how clingy and flirty they were EVEN in their friends presence, as made apparent in the facetime scene where Brooklynn was literaly all over him, flirting right in front of their faces. I know that if I had been in the others' places I would have been like, 'are we interrupting something?' 😭☠️

They're totally the annoying couple who are way too demonstrative and refuse to tone down their 'displays of affection', even if it means making people around them uncomfortable 😂.

I realize their love languages are strangely similar to each other but I think that's why they worked so well 😂 (sorry if you were expecting something a little more original).

[aristaspark]

Brooklynn has a ao3 account... do you think she writes fanfics? Probably from her favorite show, but what your hcs abt her fics?

I wasn't going to include Kenji here, but you think he also reads fics?

Actually, sorry to disappoint, but she doesn't strike me as a fanfiction writer AT ALL. She's always been way too busy being out into the world to put her time into writing fanfics or to really engage with fandom activities. But reading them? Yeah, absolutely. She finds comfort in her favorite shows but since they all eventually stop she started reading fanfiction. Yk, not only does she get to choose what she wants to read but it's also free and easily accessible on her phone so she loves to read them. Often it's before she goes to sleep. She gets so excited she always leaves comments sharing what she liked and her theories to the author (as a AO3 fanfic writer I just love those type of readers).

And I actually could picture Kenji writing fics, but being extremely bad at it 😭 It's just that everytime he watches something he has thousands of ideas, different scenarios that come to his mind and he thinks they're too great not to be shared with the world but he's simply terrible at writing so they kinda flop 😭 And you know, he's posting a chapter once every 3 months when he remembers it so that doesn't help. Of course he mostly writes about Esther Stone (the first fic is about her complicated relationship with her father).

Once in a while he gets encouraging comments so to him it's worth it 🫠 (most of them are Brooklynn's and Sammy's, but he doesn't know. And of course the one reader who always calls him out on his typos or plot holes is Yasmina, but he doesn't know either 😂)

[aristaspark]

I can't wait 😆

😏 ehe

[aristaspark]

Kenji and Brooklynn seem to be very incompatible right now. So why and how will their relationship work if they're so different? In jwcc those two were similar, but now, not even their hobbies aren the same.

Can u tell us what in common they have in CT?

I think this argument is flawed and might be influenced by your dislike of the ship (i assume you don't ship them).

Because we literally don't know ANY of the Nublar 6 hobbies, only their jobs. We never got to see them in their everyday lives before everything went down. Like, would you be able to tell me what Ben's hobbies were before he started invastigating Brooklynn's death? Or Darius before he started hunting down the allosaurus?

The same could be said about Yaz and Sammy. Like, from what's in the show, would you be able to tell what they have in common, their shared hobbies? No, because it's not integral to the plot, the only thing we know is that they love each other and that's all we need to know.

Because the show isn't a romcom about the romantic/everyday lives of six friends, it's a show about the lives of six friends who have to deal with deadly dinosaurs and corrupted human beings ruining their lives. So that's normal that we don't really know what their lives look like when everything is "normal", because it's not what the show's about.

And I actually think that the show is telling us that what broke up Brooklynn and Kenji was anything but a compatibility problem.

They were together for 6 years, and in the few flashbacks we have, we're shown that they were nothing but happy together during these six years. They went on picnics, on hikes, lived together, the only picture Brooklynn had at her secret appartment was of them (printed and framed, on her desk, where she spent most of her time), she had cute cringy videos of them on her phone, they still looked smitten with each other in the few scenes we got...

Neither of them actually wanted to break up.

But I can see the point you're trying to make, in that Brooklynn's investigation could be considered a "hobby" like any other that'd make her incompatible with Kenji.

But it's clearly not. It's not explicitly said, but it's in the subtext that things only started going awry when she started working on the Broker case after Ben introduced Dark Jurassic to her (she said it to Kenji, "I've been all over the place lately, I'm just working on something super important").

Before that, it seemed she had a healthy balance between her personal life and her work.

This shows that this is not a "Kenji and Brooklynn are not compatible" problem, but rather a "Brooklynn developed an unhealthy obsession with catching the broker" problem. The proof of that is that she didn't neglect only Kenji, but all her friends (as shown in the facetime), not even doing the bare minimum anymore to maintain her relationships (weekly facetimes).

At that point Brooklynn wasn't compatible with ANYONE, but that was because she lost herself and started neglecting herself by neglecting her personal life. We're shown times and times again. She's devastated when Kenji breaks up with her but the bag of money from Daniel is enough to make it instantly disappear from her mind, same with Darius' confession, she hears that her best friend is in love with her, that should be a life-shattering news, and yet immediately after she goes back to her investigation as if nothing even happened and expects Darius to do the same and still help her with her investigation. This is not normal, this is not healthy, and this is not who we are told Brooklynn was during these six years.

Her obsession is not shown as a "natural" evolution of her character, as part of her normal behavior, it's something that happened to her and that basically ruined every aspect of her life. There's a lesson she needs to learn. She's not supposed to still be this Brooklynn at the end of the show, because it's not the real Brooklynn.

So I think that when she manages to get out of that self-destructing obsession, she'll be able to repair her relationships, she will want to. And, as I said, a lack of compatibility was never a thing for her and Kenji. They were compatible before she "lost herself", and they loved each other.

I think she already got rid of her unhealthy obsession, but is now continuing solely because she thinks she doesn't have a choice. That she already sacrificed too much to stop before she achieves her goal, that what awaits her if she was to get back to her loved ones now is too scary for her, and that she genuinely does it to protect her friends because she knows that now, they're in the Broker's radar because of her.

As for what they have in common...as I said, we don't know that about any of the characters.

[aristaspark]

Howdy, Heidi! You said that some fans picked up things that were done on accident… Were there more scenes like that? Also, were there scenes that you guys made on purpose but fans didn’t pick up / were aware of them? In shipping terms (hihi) and in general terms. Thanks!

I think in every type of media you will inevitably see versions of 'authorial' intent vs audience interpretation that overlap and differ from each other in many ways. (Authorial intent in quotes because in collaborative mediums like film and animation every single person on the pipeline who touches the work probably has a slightly different personal interpretation they're contributing to the final work, even under someone like a showrunner or a director).

Humans are smart and it's in our nature to look for connections and find explainations to questions, so most of the time if someone is putting something down, someone is going to pick it up, so to speak, and a lot of things ARE on purpose.

But this same phenomenon can also lead to us seeing connections in places that even the 'authors' might not have originally thought of while creating the work, and I think that can be pretty neat actually! I don't necessarily think reading alternate interpretations of works is wrong-- it can be very healthy to explore multiple reads of a narrative or a character/character dynamic. On Chaos Theory there were definitely times when we were like 'fans are probably gonna ship this even if it's not the text' haha. Sometimes fans latch onto headcanons you really have no control over. Sometimes things were animated slightly differently from how they were conceived (which is also a natural part of things).

But yes, sometimes I have seen a few other things that were interpreted in slightly different ways from how they were directed or written verbally, but I'm personally of the opinion that it's more fun to leave some things visual and open to a little interpretation rather than beating the words over the audience's head and having the characters constantly announcing 'I'm feeling this because of this!' And going 'this is the only way to interpret the show and the characters and if you don't you're wrong!'

It's usually not a huge deal. I think even as we were working sometimes I'd make connections to myself that weren't necessarily spelled out to us and go 'oh, this is a throughline for this character actually!'

Like for example- if I remember correctly, the original direction behind how Kenji reacted to Ben's apparent death was that it was supposed to the first time he'd ever seen someone he really KNEW seemingly die right front of him, and being unable to do anything about it deeply affected him. Ben is a very important turning point in his character development regardless of which way you read it.

And I think this is actually something that just continued to stack onto his character throughout both shows whenever any of his friends lives are seriously in danger. In Camp when he's still unable to do anything but comfort Sammy while she's poisoned, to deciding it's too dangerous not to trade Wu's laptop for Brooklynn, to eventually throwing himself between the spinosaurus his dad is about to kill Darius with and choosing his friends over his own father and being willing to die with/for them... and then in Chaos Theory it kind of reboots all over again with Brooklynn dying and then his dad dying right in front of him, and his complex of not wanting to be useless and trying to do whatever he can at the expense of even himself to keep the loved ones he has left safe is kicked into overdrive.

I think there are a lot of things like that where the intent is not always verbally spelled out, but the more important thing is that it's still (hopefully) making you feel something.

[aristaspark]

How do you think Kenji's process to forgive Brooklynn will go? Because he said: "I'm not fluent in betrayal" and "once you lose my trust, you lose it. Forever"

Ok, I'm going to go off on a little tangent here (as I always do) because your question just made me think back on a moment of clarity I had recently, and it has to do with the reason they had Brooklynn and Kenji break up in the first place. But it'll make sense I swear.

But if I had to summarize my "argument": I think Kenji won't have to "forgive" her because she's not actually betraying him (any of them for that matter) and he knows it. He doesn't see what she's doing as a betrayal.

Now, the long thought process, grab your pop corn.

(Sorry, I had a lot of thoughts and it's a mess but who's surprised?)

You see, I was asking myself, if they're gonna make Kenlynn endgame like I think they are, why have them break up in the first place, taking the risk of making them messy in the process? It didn't make sense to me at first, it was one of the only things I couldn't get behind.

And then the answer, like, revealed itself to me and it was so evident I wondered how I didn't click before 😂

If they wanted to make Kenlynn endgame, breaking them up was the ONLY option they had, the only way they could do it.

Let me elaborate. In an interview Scott Kreamer more or less said that when Chaos Theory was greenlit, one of the first "storyline" they "baked" for the show was Brooklynn's (her faking her death). So they kind of had to articulate all of the other storylines around that.

Which leads me to my point.

Kenji would have NEVER been able to forgive her had she done all this while still being his girlfriend.

That's straight up treason. That's choosing a life of misery over his love. That's not telling your partner who's suffering and grieving you that you're alive. That's choosing your investigation over him when you finally reunite. That's torturing him. That's like EVIL.

But that's not what happened. Because Kenji broke up with her. That changes everything when we think about it, it changes the status quo.

She wasn't hiding the fact that she was alive from her partner, she was hiding it from her ex who was probably better off without her in his life anyway since he broke up with her.

She's no longer choosing a dangerous life of misery over him, because she doesn't even have him.

We have to keep in mind that she has no idea whether Kenji still loves her or not. She most likely thinks he doesn't (he broke up with her and after that she was "dead" for six months).

So she really got to choose between two evils:

Going back to her friends and being forced to deal with everything she didn't want to have to deal with : having to face Darius after everything that happened (confession+abandonning her), having to deal with the consequences of her actions on her relationship with her friends (feeling like she no longer belongs in the group), but above all having to deal with the fact that she'll be alone for the first time in six years (having no idea what her and Kenji have anymore). Idk, I'd be Brooklynn I wouldn't want to come back either.

Or, continuing her mission. Sure, it's lonely and dangerous. Sure, it'll hurt her friends. Sure, it'll make her miserable, but so does the other option. Choosing to pursue Soyona makes the most sense for her. She sacrificed too much to stop midway (her arm, her relationship(s), her place in the world (she literaly faked her death). If she stops before it's over it would all have been for nothing. And sure, she'll be miserable, but at least it gives her the opportunity to do good (getting rid of the threat on her life and on her friends' lives, saving innocent dinos).

So now, what about Kenji in all that? As you said, he made a point of saying he doesn't forgive easily.

But the thing is, I'm not even sure Kenji has to "forgive" her.

He broke up with her and after that they never spoke again because she died, their relationship remained "unresolved".

She's not "abandoning him" by doing all this because he was the one who abandoned her first (don't get me wrong, he had every right to break up, but it was still extremely violent and painful for Brooklynn).

I think there's so many layers to their relationship, but the fact is that they're the ones who have suffered the most out of all the camp fam.

And Kenji's aware of that (at least he will be when he'll know everything that happened to her). There's a scene which already kind of hints at this, where we can see Kenji been hit with the realization/fact that she must have suffered more than he could ever comprehend, empathizing with her.

I saw some people putting Kenji in the same bag as Ben and Soyona when it comes to them noticing Brooklynn's arm, but as I touched on in the "analysis" I did of that particular scene, the scene with Kenji is very different from the other two. Kenji does not look at her arm because he can't help looking at it. He's consciously looking at it and wants her to be aware that he's looking at it, he's asking a thousands questions with his eyes alone. It's a look of sadness, of compassion, of hurt. He's hurting for her.

He doesn't get mad at her for her "betrayal", never confronts her, never makes it about him, because it's not. Although he doesn't know why she's doing what she's doing, he knows that she suffered at least as much as he did simply by looking at her arm.

I think that Kenji will try to understand her, not to forgive her, because as I said it's not a betrayal. His reaction to her leaving doesn't look like the reaction of someone who feels "betrayed" and who's rightfully mad at the person. It looks like the reaction of someone who's hurt, sad, heart-broken, regretful, lost, but never mad.

I don't think Kenji sees any of what she's doing as a betrayal because she's not actually doing anything to him. HE was the one who removed himself from Brooklynn's "considerations". This isn't another instance of her neglecting their relationship (or him) anymore because with where things had been left off, as far as she knew, they didn't have any kind of relationship anymore. Not a romantic one, not friendship, nothing, just a big question mark. Kenji most likely still loves her and regretted breaking up with her, but she's not aware of any of that, only Kenji is. To her, it's too late, a lost cause.

So, she's not doing anything to Kenji. It was the case when they were a couple (when she neglected him), because when you're in a relationship you sorta become one with the other person and your every action impacts them, so you must take that into consideration everytime you do something. But as I said, Kenji took himself out of the equation.

She's not doing anything to Kenji, if anything she's doing everything to herself.

I think a lot of people who see Brooklynn as *almost* irredeemable also underestimate everything that happened to her and the role other characters also played in her "demise". Kenji broke up with her, Darius abandonned her. They also hurt her.

She's the one who caused the chain of tragic events that happened to her by giving in to her obsession with her investigation, sure, but that does not mean that she was prepared for any of what happened to her.

My argumentation is a little all over the place sorry 😂.

But, yeah, my main take away from this is that Brooklynn's not betraying any of them. She's following her own path, one they don't understand or agree with, sure, but she doesn't owe them anything. She's her own person, living her life the way she wants to live it, making her own choices. The only one she would have "betrayed" is Kenji, but as I said, that was when they were in a relationship. I think he might get mad at her for having kept so many secrets, but he will eventually forgive her if she's willing to change, if she owns up to her faults (and I feel like after everything she went through she will be willing to). After all, although he said he never "forgives", he forgave Darius.

Congrats if you made it to the end and if you somehow managed to understand 😂

[aristaspark]

The way I was ALWAYS confused as to why so many of the fandom shipped them when I read every of their interactions as a big brother/annoying little brother dynamic but people kept insisting they had been set up 😭 When in reality you had no idea people were gonna ship them 🤣

for those who missed the stream- here's the panel I drew from Camp Cretaceous that still haunts me to this day lol-- Meg Lloyd did the rough staging thumbnail and I finished it.

I do feel a little bad how often fans read this shot as 'oh no, Ben is heartbroken!' because the original intention was for Ben to have more of a 'wtf, some of us are dating now? You have time to date? And of all people it's you two???' reaction here asdfafsd

But this was actually boarded before the show had even premiered, and nobody knew fans were going to ship Ben and Kenji haha. This is a prime example of how sometimes... fans pick up things that were done on accident.

[aristaspark]

Do you believe Brooklynn has feelings for Darius?

Hellooo, I really don't think she does! (who's surprised honestly?) No but fr I need to stop writing essays on this topic 😂 Thank god i'm an insomniac.

I know people are convinced she loves him back because she didn't *actually* reject him and instead said "I'm not really ready for..." but if you look closely at the sequence, the way they animated her body language and facial expressions is much more telling than her words (at least to me), and it led to me agreeing with Darius' recollection of this moment (she tried to be nice about it but it was clear she didn't feel the same).

Like, I don't see how anyone can see that and think she's in love 😭 THAT'S the face of love according to this fandom???? She looks horrified at the mere possibility that Darius could feel anything other than friendship towards her.

Also important to note that she started saying "I just don't think..." before changing her choice of words, and to me it's a clear sign she was about to reject him more directly, but couldn't do it, so instead she went for an answer that would spare his feelings.

And when you add the shot of her putting distance btw them by moving her feet away from him as if she suddenly felt uncomfortable with their proximity... Why would you physically recoil as the person you *supposedly* love confesses to you?

To me if the writers had wanted to indicate that deep down she wanted to be with Darius, but couldn't in this moment because it was too soon (as she said)/for Kenji's sake, they would have had her say the same thing, but have her body instinctively move closer to him as a physical manifestation of her "true feelings" (...which it is, but it moved away, you do the math).

Also the fact that right after that she still asks him to meet with her for her investigation. I don't know, I think that if she felt anything towards him she would have been as embarrassed/uncomfortable as him, but here she brushed it off as if it was nothing. She had no problem with the idea that she would see him later that day, as if to her there was nothing more to be said/this "incident"/chapter was closed.

I already talked about the look during the plane scene so I'm not going to do it again.

From a story standpoint, it would be really questionnable writing if she suddenly fell in love with someone a week after her partner of 6 years dumped her.

And I absolutely cannot see them throw the "she was in love with Darius while dating Kenji" excuse at us, like, that's straight up character assassination. I know they made Brook morally grey but you can't come back from that 😂. Also, it would go against what they showed in the two first seasons because she looked really in love with Kenji (how devastated she looked when he broke up, how happy they were on the video on her phone, how physically affectionate she was with him in episode 3, the picture of them in her secret apartment...).

And this.

I didn't think my biggest evidence for Kenlynn would be some scribbles on a notebook, but oh well 😂

Like, one simply cannot explain this away. This was her attempt at telling them she was alive, and she only wrote to Kenji, not Darius. And it's not like she had to censore herself or to, idk, force herself to write to Kenji to keep up the appearances because those are only, as I said, scribbles on a paper, her raw feelings and thoughts, something she was never going to send anyway.

Like, if they want to make dinostar canon, why post that? Why not take this opportunity to add content/substance to the ship they *supposedly* want to make endgame? Having that letter addressed to Kenji only serves the purpose of showing us that Kenji's the one on her mind, because otherwise that was unnecessary. They could have had her write to the whole camp fam, but instead they decided to show us that she wanted to tell Kenji she was alive above everyone else, including Darius, the one who confessed to her right before her "death" and who Brooklynn most likely knew felt incredibly guilty for not showing up/for her death (Ronnie probably told her).

If she was in love with Darius she would have adressed the "letter" to him, I can't see any argument against that. Or maybe it's more that if she wasn't in love with Kenji anymore, she wouldn't have written to him, but to all of them.

Honestly, the most I can see them giving Dinostar as far as Brooklynn's feelings for Darius go is to have her admit that she used to have a little crush on him when they were on Nublar but that it completely disappeared once she started getting coser to Kenji. I have nothing to back up this theory, but I don't know, I thought that much wouldn't be too far fetched.

(oh, and I almost forgot but this goes without saying... pretty sure her getting attacked, alone at night, mauled by a dino and loosing her arm partly because he set her up would have killed any potential blooming feeling in her).

[aristaspark]

Hi, it's me again... since you answered my last question about Kenlynn so well, I'm going to ask you one more, because I'd like to know if you've thought about it. I've never seen anyone come up with the answer to this: why does Darius know Brooklynn's password and not Kenji? We know that B stayed at Darius' house for about a week, but still, Brooklynn trusted him enough to give him the password - but not Kenji. Why would the writers put this in if it's not going anywhere?

I actually thought about it and I have two theories (as well as some thoughts):

- She didn't actually give it to him. But since he was constantly watching her and she was constantly on her phone, he couldn't help but come to know it even if he didn't mean to.

- She gave it to him in a casual manner. For example she was busy but needed to check something on her phone so she asked Darius and gave him her password.

Like, I can't picture anything other than that. That'd be hella weird if she sat Darius down and told him "Listen, Darius, I'm going to give you my new password. Why, you ask? Well, as a proof of my trust in you, of our amazing relationship. What do you do with it? I don't know, I didn't think that far ahead." That doesn't happen, you don't give your password to someone without an actual reason/a necessity.

I understand why some might think it means more, but we need to take a few things into consideration.

Brooklynn was never the type of person to be secretive about the contents of her phone, quite the contrary actually. In camp cretaceous everybody used her phone all the time.

And it's not because she somewhat trusted Darius more, because while she was with Kenji, he knew her password too, despite all the shady stuff on it (I hope it was because she knew Kenji would never actually snoop on her phone, because if not she's just a terrible investigator 😂). People knowing her password was never a big deal to her, even with the shady stuff.

I think I need to adress it but I really don't think she changed her password before Kenji broke up with her/to hide her investigation from him. Her investigation was a long one, it took months, so I think Kenji would have noticed if she had suddenly changed her password out of nowhere since the fact that they knew each other passwords in the first place implies they had no problem using each other phones, it was a casual thing they did during their relationship.

And I mean, Darius knew her new password, but knew nothing about her investigation either, so she didn't give him access to anything Kenji didn't have access to when they were together. And the fact that it didn't even play a role in the flashback with Darius kinds of confirms that it wasn't an important plot point.

I think what happened is that she changed it out of spite after Kenji broke up with her because it was a date relating to their relationship.

Now, why was it in the show in the first place?

This scene had a purpose. Until that scene (and the one right before where both Kenji and Darius try to grab the phone), Darius' feelings had never been outwardly teased, only left to interpretation (his grief could still have been the result of a man mourning his best friend).

But with this scene, we were shown that Darius felt guilty about knowing her password (not because it meant anything deep, but because it reminded him of the fact that he'd spent enough time with her to come to know it, and to "fall in love" with her).

But more importantly, we were shown that Kenji didn't like the fact that he knew her password, which was the first sign to the audience that something weird was going on, since even Kenji was jealous.

They needed scenes to lead up to the reveal that Darius liked Brooklynn, and the password one was one of them. You know, setup/payoff.

And as always... I might be totally wrong since I'm not a mind-reader and can't see the future yet, so chances are season 3 will make me look like a clown... no, the whole damn circus. Like, it's highly possible the writers of the show are reading my posts thinking "girl, you deserve some credit for trying but I beg you to stop embarrassing yourself" 😂. Just to say that these are merely theories.

[aristaspark]

What if Brooklynn and Kenji adopt a cat/dog (maybe both)? I need someone to do hc's abt what would happen---

No need to ask me twice.

- They're DEFINETLY dog people (especially Brooklynn) so when they decide to get a pet they immediately agree on a dog. (I wrote that as a headcanon then remembered that Kenji told his dad he's always wanted a dog in season 5 😂).

- Brooklynn hates small dogs, they irritate her, so that wasn't even an option.

- They hesitate btw a few breeds but eventually agree on a Saint-Bernard since they live near montains and love its big bear appearance.

- When they went to choose which puppy they wanted to adopt, one of them peed on Kenji when he picked it up, so Brooklynn insisted they chose this one, and strangely enough Kenji agreed (he took it as a sign the dog liked him).

- It's a female, of course they name her Esther.

- To mess with the camp fam they told them they were having a daughter, so for a whole week the others thought they were having a real baby. They hadn't predicted Sammy would send them a year's worth of baby clothes by the mail.

- At first they tried to get the puppy to sleep on the floor, but gave up after the first night because it wouldn't stop crying, so she slept at their feet. But after a few months she'd grown so much that she barely fit inside the trailer anymore, so they made her a huge kennel right next to them (it reminded them of when they built the camp on Nublar). They often joke about the fact that the kennel is fancier and more comfortable than their trailer.

- They put a camera (baby monitor) inside the kennel because they were so worried the first night she slept inside that they didn't sleep at all.

- Kenji wanted to take dog training classes, terrified of the idea that they might be doing anything wrong, but left before the end of the first lesson. He hated being told that his daughter wasn't perfect.

- Brooklynn, as the independant queen she is, predicted Kenji would be the one petting the dog all day but turns out she can't keep her hands off of it's furr for more than two minutes, and Kenji teases her about it all the time. He can't help but be endeared when she talks to Esther with her baby voice.

- Brooklynn has thousands of pictures of Esther on her phone and can't stop showing them off to everyone they know.

- They celebrate her adoption day every year with a cake with candles for them, and fancy dog biscuits for Esther.

- Kenji often takes Esther with him on his hikes, and of course when Brooklynn has the time she joins them.

- He sometimes also takes her with him when he teaches rock climbing. She has her own little spot and gets to be pet by his students.

- They're the annoying proud dogs parents who won't shut up about it.

- The funny thing is that they tried to make other dog-owner friends but found them annoying and overbearing as heck.

- During summer they often take her to the river near their trailer and play in the water with her.

- Everytime they had their weekly meetings with the camp fam she tried to get on the table to see the screen so they started putting the computer somewhere she could see, that way the others could also get to see her.

- She has a habit of stealing Brooklynn's phone when she's not looking and hiding it.

- Kenji's absolutely incapable of scolding her so Brooklynn always has to play the bad cop. Everytime she scolds her because she misbehaved, Esther goes to Kenji thinking she will get away with what she did which annoys Brooklynn to no ends.

- Brooklynn always teases Kenji, telling him that Esther reminds her of him (too much energy, loud, drooling when they sleep).

- They often argue over who they think Esther likes the most, but always end up agreeing on the fact that she'd pick food over the both of them any day. Or uncle Ben.

[aristaspark]

I'm calling her Brooklynn Kon...🫢

Do we just not have a last name for Brooklyn? Like we know the last names for all the other nublar 6, but not B??