#brainzaps

[bnkbgvbzbuf876986387nogj]

when people your age talk abt highschool...

[muckyschmuck]

ugh. clothes waster

[yellowhollyhock]

Why do people think it’s mean? I am referring to your tags on that 2003 post. I thought the humor was funny I dunno I guess I am not understanding what the meanness is. They are teenagers teens can be jerks.

post and my tags on it were 03 season 6 and 12 season 1 but I'm answering about 03 because I've watched it more recently and more often

First thing: it isn't a criticism of the characters (who are fictional and would be very pointless for me to nitpick their behavior) but a comment on the writing

And specifically how the writing is different because it's from that era. Mean-spirited humor is always a thing, but it was popular and mainstream at that time in particular (and having been a teenager at the time who didn't find it funny or participate and was therefore labeled as--well, mean, I guess in a way, or at least a stick in the mud, I have some strong feelings and biases against it).

(That said, not being a teenager anymore and having a bit more media literacy, I do want to add, humor changes, what's socially polite changes, it's not the end of the world, and by saying I hate what the writers did, I don't condemn them as people, we were all there together and we move forward together. Personally I still find season 6 enjoyable, just have certain issues with it. Which is what I will be focusing on since it's what you asked about)

So, the point: in earlier seasons the boys are mean to each other in ways that are believable, match their maturity level, and serve a purpose in the story to show them responding to stress or teach us about their characters. Sometimes they cross lines simply making fun of each other, but there are always underlying story beats. It isn't just the writers saying 'look this one's dumb let's laugh at him'

Season 6, especially with Mikey and Raph, feels like the writers are using them as comic relief in a very mean-spirited way. Sometimes that's reflected in the way Splinter, Leo, or Donny treat them, but it's also sometimes just the way the plot moves to exaggerate and poke fun at their flaws, ignoring character growth from past seasons.

When Raph used to call Mikey shell for brains and Mikey called Raph ugly, they were being teenagers. It was a thoughtful piece of characterization showing that being close friends doesn't make them perfect, being isolated is hard and they lash out at each other sometimes. Mikey was especially hard on Raph when he was having to share his space with April; it served a story purpose of showing the difficulty for the turtles in letting another person into their life (not something they've had to do often). I'm blanking on times Raph was harder on Mikey but the point is that he wasn't needlessly mean, sometimes it was played for a joke but it also had a purpose in the narrative.

Season 6? Oh it's sooo funny how no one wants to go watch wrestling with Raph, something he has literally wanted his entire life, btw don't forget he hates the future, isn't it fun to watch the angry turtle be homesick and isolated? Like Leo and Don are certainly less interested and helpful in that scene than they would be in earlier seasons, but the point is that the writers are being mean. We aren't supposed to understand Raph's brothers as being inconsiderate, we're supposed to laugh at him for being sincere and excited :/

Mikey's intelligence is also a huge example. Mikey is extremely clever and competent, but in season 6 they just constantly make him either pick on Raph or obsess over video games and forgot the rest of his character. Okay, so they flattened him a little, that happened to everyone. But it's worse because his apparent lack of intelligence is constantly made fun of. Donny makes a lot of just completely unnecessary comments that don't serve either of their character arcs, and come across much more as him speaking for the writers (and the audience, supposedly) to mock the dumb turtle.

I hate that extremely.

My brain is not in a good space for more examples. But the principle is that the type of humor popular in that era (which the op referred to) (2007ish to like 2014 I think) is, idk the best way I can describe it is emotional slapstick? mocking a character's emotions or lack of intelligence, almost creating a 'straw man' to beat on. Of course that type of humor has always and will always exist but it was a real mainstream popular thing; we don't usually call it 'literary movements' when it's shows and movies instead of writing but idk how else to explain it.

It's very much a thing in early 2012 writing as well, but I feel that sort of worked better because it landed at the beginning of the show instead of the end, so even though it may or may not have been deliberate (I honestly don't know 12 well enough to say), it worked well to play into their growing up arcs. As opposed to the 03 situation where their social maturity from the first five seasons just evaporated (and after a slow believable buildup too 😔)

tldr: the writers' humor is what I refer to as mean-spirited, not the characters. And yes I do think it's mean to mock the act of having emotions or not knowing enough information or struggling with discipline or being homesick (all things Raph and Mikey were mocked for, not just by other characters but by the narrative in a variety of ways)

[satyrradio]

microdosing on the electric chair by forgetting to take my meds

[spicyliumang]

I’ve been trying to get Enya’s y8 lore down for the last 3 days but all I’ve managed is to stare at this blank draft KSKDKSKS😭

[piplupod]

me when my suicide pills come in handy and save my brother from a medication emergency

∑ദ്ദി˙◡･)

[sixeye-sketch]

[bitegore]

10. tell me about TexAid in Transmissions from Cybertron. I know you ship them like fedex, I'm not asking why you write TexAid, but what are they doing there, other than making out and providing us loads of comic relief, that I deeply appreciate :)

Alright, so this is actually a major element of the plot LMFAO. First Aid fucking Vortex is the literal mechanism by which the entire plot happened.

In order to get the Combaticons onto a planet that only the Autobots know about, I had to have two things happen. I had to have someone who was poking around in classified Autobot files, and I had to have that person also be someone who would tell the Combaticons about it.

So, no Soundwave; no non-naive-AF Autobots; most other members of spec-ops are also banned; if Vortex came up with it during interrogation in the base it would've been logged and I don't think that that would've worked for the fic, and anyway why would he believe that it would actually be useful in that situation; and most of the Autobots who might've been dumb enough to be convinced don't have classified clearance anyway. First Aid is like basically the only option if I wanted it to come from an Autobot.

Secondly, I wanted the Autobots to show up to cause a diplomatic incident, because I need Torianyx NOT to become an Autobot or Decepticon superweapon and if the Decepticons were the only ones on there they'd have just been like 'yeah come back to the nemesis with us' eventually and then that would've ended badly. So I did need an Autobot to get wise eventually. It made more sense to also have it be an Autobot to send them there in the first place because otherwise why wouldn't the bots just like. nuke them from orbit the second they got on the surface of the planet lmfao

So it had to be an Autobot who liked them. First Aid is also basically the only option.

Third i like TexAid and you can't stop me from doing what I want :P BUT for the structure of the fic as it stands, as soon as I decided what the Combaticons were there for and who knew about this place, I knew that it wasn't actually optional for me to put TexAid in. There was really only one reasonable way for them to have gotten this information in secret and acted on it the way they did.

I'm pretty sure it's explicit in the fic that First Aid was the one who told them about Torianyx and then was like "don't go there though" and then they did. so even within the text of the fic, the reason for texaid showing up in there is "so that the narrative makes sense and the way everything happened has a logical past element" lol

[smileymoth]

Ccrryyyinngggg i forgot ti take my meds w me so now i had to buy another perscription out 😭😭😭😭 my monneeyyyyyy

[rnysterydisease]

Lexapro withdrawal is a hell of a drug

[elizabethmasen]

very obsessed with the fact that Stanza is the italian word for Room- so in POEMS its as if the sentences each have their own little bedrooms thats so cute are you shitting me

[transmutationisms]

i think it's easy to feel a sense of special moral urgency when people are spouting horseshit or lies on social media because it's like, we still have a tendency to conceptualise these platforms the same way we do legacy mass media like newspapers and tv: as a one-way broadcast that has power to sway 'public opinion' en masse and create material change as a result. in reality (and leaving aside the question of how well that model even applies to the old media forms—ie, to what extent they create material conditions vs reflect them), i don't think social media really functions the same way. it often feels like "everyone" is on there and "everyone" is hearing whatever potentially dangerous nonsense, but like. most people are not actually users of any given platform, and even if they are, most of them are not following any one specific creator lol. posts and videos get circulated, but in such a massive and fractured conversation, as opposed to a unilateral broadcast model, that i think stupid bullshit on social media is more akin to stupid bullshit people say to each other in line at the bakery or whatever than it is to some kind of mass-converting propaganda brainzap emanating from the tv. which is again not even really an accurate understanding of the state of information and mass politics even in the case of like, legacy media forms in the 20th century imho. none of this means it's, like, good when people are walking around saying lies or getting paid for doing so. but i don't think it's really helpful to keep playing this one-upping game of morally inflected fact-checking, and if it were it presumably would have yielded some result in between now and like y2k

[soup-in-my-fly]

I can’t…. Stop thinking about…… thramsay… but I’m out of things to think about….. so it’s just brainzaps……… help… girl help……..

[keskeaa]

I have been withdrawaling from my antidepressant bc I couldn’t find my pill bottle. Brainzaps, flu like symptoms, nausea, emotional volatility- you name it, I’ve been feeling it. Symptoms start after 1/2 days, and I’m on day 7. I’ve torn apart my room looking for this dumb bottle for the past week.

TODAY I FOUND IT!!!!

and where was this bottle you may be asking? Besides my bed is my desk. Wedged between my desk and the wall was a cup. The bottle was IN. THE. CUP.

All this time I’ve been a wreck, wishing I had my medicine while it was not even a foot away from me. I had assumed things that fall off my desk will be on the floor. I had not considered there might be a CUP.

[morganpdf]

i have such bad brainzaps rn. ohh my god.

[kaiisens]

wandering around ikea with the zoloft induced brainzaps listening to young couples pretend they aren’t arguing