#i usually don't do tldr because I just end up rambling all over again

[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)

[mamadarama]

Omg it's ok yumeshipping is basically just "I don't like this plot so imma insert myself and change the narrative. Sort of."

So yume me was a student at Yumenosaki and an underachiever idol, affected by the war I try to jump off yk the usual, and Madara who was sick and tired of seeing the bodies pile up, rushed to save me. From then on yume me gets greatly indebted to Madara and decided to live so I can make a better world for all idols, never wanting the war to happen again. Madara, is happy to support and stay by my side for that.

One thing after another, they grew together over the years as solo idols. Madara helped him train and taught him how to realize his dream: to have enough power to stop any future disaster from befalling the idol industry that he loved so much. It's thanks to this that yume me becomes a member of P-Association as well as solo idol. This position gives him a good bird's eye view over ES, as much as P-Association wants to stay neutral. He uses this to his advantage, having an "eye" in every agency so he can keep tabs on all happenings. And Madara becomes something like his right hand man.

At first it was an empty title, Madara didn't think of him as anything like special, just another person who needed his power and protection. That's what Madara thought he was to yume me, but he was dead wrong when I fell in love with him. Stubbornly going out of my way to come help him and stay by his side every time he runs off, scold him when he does something rash, but still keep him in his arms. Even going as far as getting involved in darker business for Madara.

That dark business would only get deeper once Kohaku and DF joins the picture. Ofc, yume me is willingly diving headfirst into this. Madara didn't urge him to anything, he's willingly soaking in blood so he can be with Madara, and that's incomprehensible to him. He always wanted to keep that shining pure people away from this business, but seeing someone willingly follow him there...

He tries to push him away later on, but they can't stand being apart either. It's a back and forth of trying to detach but ending up finding each other again. I insist, I'll always be with him whether he liked it or not. Because I'll never let him suffer alone and think all he's good for is being my tool. I love him, he is worthy of love, I want to marry him, whatever. And he's just stunned, no matter how far along we get, he'll still question and he's unable to believe it every day. But the alternative would be to never have me again in his life and he can't stand that either.

At this point even Kohaku has seen how homoerotic these two are, and now there's two shorties aggressively showing their love for him. Two tiny guys who are by no means weak, and they don't need his protection either, so it's clear they have nothing to gain from loving him. Two tiny guys tying a giant like him down...

Someone to knock that sense into him, to make him listen. I'll keep doing it no matter what it takes, that's just who I am. I'll keep insisting and telling him even if it takes another 10 years for him to understand that I love him, he's not my tool, he's my partner both in crime and life. My dream started with him saving me and I'll keep saving him time and time again, that's only fair. I genuinely believe someone who'd take a bullet for him is just out of his mind.

Anyways my yume love for him is genuine and I will knock a rock into his brain until he understands. That's it basically help I rambled.

Tldr Madara saves guy and guy decides he wants revenge on Eichi and to never let the war happen again. He ended up being a member of P-Association with Madara as his right hand man in the shadows, and later Kohaku as well. Madara trusts him bc of his genuine heart, only to unexpectedly find that genuine heart to love him as well. Cue push and pull and oh the aNGST

- Madara yume anon 🍀

HDJSJBDBBBD AW THATS RLLY CUTE I LIKE THAT ..... you could totally drag that out into a slow burn too cuz madara is stubborn as hell and it would definitely take awhile to get it through his thick skull that youre not joking or just saying that when you say you love him . (especially with his tendency to start speaking in riddles before physically running away if you get too real with him.... youre gonna have to pin him down for that one lol)

[quackle]

Based on the last post, it looks like you have a pretty mixed feeling about how they write Nichelle.

What’s your opinion on Nichelle this season overall?

gonna ramble again. per usual lol. but tldr: yes, my feelings are mixed lol.

overall, s2 nichelle was... hm.

i can't really comment about the canon writing we have of her because we didn't get much outside the whole "take that hollywood!" shtick. it's not lazy writing at all; it's just surface level. but that happens when a character isn't the main focus. as disappointed as i am about that, i also get it. the cast is much too big and the episode time slots are much too tiny to give every character some depth. nichelle got one of the shortest ends of the stick for both seasons.

on one hand, i would have loved to see more about her this season. one of my biggest issues is her training off screen. i get that that's the point—it shows nichelle's desperation to be the action star she previously lied about being in order to secure her spot back in hollywood—but at the same time, because it was off screen, we (the audience) didn't see that growth. also, she only seems to grow physically. mentally, she's still very cocky and not so much of a friend to a lot of the contestants. so when she's doing cool stunts and taunting hollywood over and over without building any emotional bonds with any of the other campers, it gets stale. so of course she leaves pre-merge. what else was she gonna do, flip and curse out hollywood some more? they could only pull that joke so many times (and even then, they kinda pulled it too much).

on the other hand, i kind of like looking into implications that come with nichelle's character after this season in particular. like wow. she's kind of... bad at making friends? i'm going on a whim here when i say that she probably never had friends before, so she has no clue how to go about it. look at the lack of reaction from her teammates when she quits in ep 5. they really didn't care much, because while she was a great asset to the team in challenges, she didn't bond much with any of them, so why would they get upset at her being eliminated?:

and it's also a bit sad thinking about nichelle as a whole. she trained for months in kung-fu, parkour, and gymnastics, just so she could get a slim chance of fame again, even though she also tried her best to not admit that while also pretending she did it more for herself than anyone else. it's almost like she doesn't know who she could be except a big actress from hollywood, because that's what she's probably used to being. when you take all that + her vow to not quit last season + her quitting this season after getting tricked by julia... it makes me feel for her, i guess. she's a product of hollywood and it's devastating to think about 🥲

i don't know. i just find her very interesting still, even more so after this season, so i can come up with a lot of potential substance for her character. then again, i'm also upset we didn't get much about her canonically due to all the off-screen growth she went through. so, yeah. mixed feelings for sure lol.

[calidrisminuta]

A bit of a personal ramble...

This might be the last time I use this place as a rambleblog, but I just wanted to get some things off my chest. Honestly, it's a bit personal, so the rest of it is under the cut. Mind the tags, though.

Maybe it's because it's been the holiday week, and the darkest end of the year here in the UK, but I've been struggling a bit lately. This time of year is always pretty bad for me (hello, seasonal affective disorder), but I've become aware of a new contender for disrupting my mental balance, and it's the perimenopause. This is nothing new to me, as I've been going through it for at least five years now, but it's never tag-teamed me with SAD before.

Everyone knows about the moodswings part of the menopause, but the anxiety it generates is bad, too. Not to mention that it can affect your confidence as well. It seems to amplify the worst of my existing issues, and I start second guessing *everything*, from friends' actions to my own behaviour. I don't like it, but all I can do is ride it out. I'm not going to take anything for it, either. I'll get through it. The worst of it usually fades in a couple of days.

The thing is, though, it's making fandom *hard* for this introvert. When you're used to feeling like you're on the outskirts of a fandom anyway, that seems to get amplified when my perimenopausal issues are acting up. I don't feel like I have anything to contribute, and it makes me sit back from conversations, too. That's been fine in previous years, but I'd never been as active back then in fandoms as I am now. I don't want friends to think I'm ignoring them or that I don't want to join in or anything - I just can't, at times.

Like I said, I'll get through this. The hormonal waves will calm eventually, and the seasons will turn again, and I'll feel better, but I just wanted to explain if I seemed odd or anything.

TLDR: Seasonal affective disorder + perimenopause playing up = an overwhelmed Em who sometimes misreads people's actions/words and loses what little confidence she has. I'll get over this: I just hadn't been aware before of what this particular combo could do to me.

Sorry for waffling, and thanks for reading if you got this far. It's not something I really feel comfortable talking about too often, but it needed to be said, if only so people understand if I'm quiet or absent, or seem different than they're used to. I'll get back to normal soon. Whatever that is. :)