#my reps look great

[andy-clutterbuck]

The Ones Who Live premiere in Los Angeles | 2/7/24

[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.

[haze-acnh]

pretty quiet night coming down the mountain on Polybius.... 🏕🌌🌿✨️🌱🌃🌴

[cowchickenbeefpork]

every day without fail I pace and talk to myself like I’m fucking gollum thinking about how much the Isabella arc could’ve been a amazing arc where Edward goes through a scenario deeply similar to what he did to Kristen if given the right buildup (aka making him slowly get to the mental state where he would date a girl who looks exactly like his first girlfriend no questions asked)

it’s not just the fact Oswald killed Edward’s lover to get to him just what Ed did to Kristen. It’s also the power dymantic, how this was the first person they truly felt like cared for them deeply, the exception. It’s about how they both have power above that emotional investment (Edward being psychically stronger than Kristen, Oswald having financial power over Edward since he is his boss and Edward also lives under him). It is about how they both decided to keep a part of them after the fallout whether it be Edward with Kristen’s glasses or Oswald with Edward’s frozen body. A perverse trophy. IT IS ABOUT HOW BOTH FALLOUTS WERE TAKEN AS A LESSON ABOUT LOVE TO JUSTIFY WHAT THEY DID.

I’m so mad that they fumbled this arc on both sides. I am in deep unspeakable agony as I type this. Honestly their first mistake was writing Isabella to be someone who matched Edward’s freak since they quite literally had that with Oswald. But whatever I don’t care for this mid show

[artem1sc0re]

If I had a nickel for everytime I redrew this scene, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice, right?

BUT WHATEVERRR, ITS JOSH!!!!

(I got given a compliment whilst drawing the first one so that’s cool :D)

[triaelf9]

sees a post that's like "LOOK, LOOK AT ME I HAVE TERRIBLE MEDIA LITERACY LOOOOK AHAHA ISN'T THAT FUNNY"

Checks bio

"I'm 21"

Ah, yes. You're in the age group to have been hit by the resurgence of purity culture. I'm so sorry.

[goldensunset]

ayyyyy it's the art year in review post with my best work from each month

[chotachica]

Watch me make Pluto transgender mentally canon to ME

[tweedfrog]

Look I get that they're probably just more relevant to the Northern plot of the story but I just find it weird that Allyria is betrothed to a marcher lord and there's no mention of Ned being invited to the water gardens....also Ned being named after the man who KILLED Arthur.....there is so much anger at and within that family GRRM explain....

[official-english-major]

Not really an artist (this is my first attempt at digital art) but I was not seeing nearly enough fanart of Odysseus on Calypso's island

[feline-evil]

Dethvanity is really funny to me conceptually as an episode because you can see how little they had to make the characters insecure about for the bit. They swing for obvious lowblow choices with Pickle' baldness and Nathan's weight and even those require some suspension of disbelief because ok. Sure. Nathan '(said extremely proudly) never skipped a meal in my life!' Explosion is insecure about being a big man now. Nathan *guy who everyone thinks is smoking hot 99% of the time* Explosion is a tiny bit larger than usual and is insecure about it now. Lol. Lmao even.

But anyway then we hit Skwisgaar and Toki and there's like NOTHING to swing for, you can see them going uhhh ok Skwis doesn't sleep he probably drinks a lot of coffee, and Toki? Shit, what does Toki have to be insecure about with his looks. He's perfect, he's adorable, he's ripped. Um. FUCK IT, HE'S DOING NOTHING BUT EATING LEMONS. WE GOT NOTHING, WE GOT NOTHING, JUST GIVE THE BOY CITRUS FRUITS.

WOE 🍋 BE UPON YE

I'm sure i could make some smarter points about the attempts at applying vanity in this ep and how outside of this and a few other moments i do actually like that the show rarely takes pot shots at things like Nathan's weight, but you see Nathan has shirtless scenes in this one and so my intelligence is impeded when all the blood rushes out of my head and into my-

[lilac-nites]

.

[stellerssong]

got a good grade in my voice lesson tonight, lads

[whiskeyswifty]

.

[arospecsyourblockdudes]

When it comes to queer rep in media, I have what I like to call the Grandma Test. If my grandmother sits down to read a book or watch a tv show/movie and can come away from it understanding fully that a certain character is queer, then it passes as decent representation for me. If she doesn’t understand it fully, then it could still count depending on the circumstances but usually I won’t think highly of it

[the-casbah-way]

i need to get out of my ugly era and i fear the only way to do that is to get more piercings but i'm still mildly traumatised from all the facial piercings i had to take out