#once again i talk of will with powers

[abstractfrog]

Happy 1 year anniversary to Mr Sherlock Holmes! Here's a litttleee celebratory comic from me

[ivanttakethis]

I could definitely see Till getting angry at Ivan for what happened during Round 6 and choking him as some sort of payback.

Only for Till to be horrified by the realization that Ivan would just let him do it…

[breadandblankets]

duke, google search like: "is a future version of yourself hugging you a symptom of depression?" "is time traveling just for physical affection a sign of depression" "how do tell my coworkers that i have the most drip in every future state" "best popped collier jackets" "minimum number of minutes needed for taking breaks"

[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.

[captainofthetidesbreath]

I spoke about this in a reply, but it's worth unpacking more in its own post: I don't think Colin holds anything against his grandfather Lucas Fontina or feels Fontina responsible for his suffering. I don't think he sees his father's murder as a consequence caused by Fontina, nor considers himself collateral damage of Fontina's political games. I don't think he places Fontina's decisions and ambitions as the root cause of any of it. I think he sees the harm to him and his father as a result of the political decisions made by the ruling family of the Islands. He is not necessarily critical of ambition, or even power; he is critical of cruelty and apathy to harm to pursue and keep power.

Colin is never negative about Fontina: "My grandfather tried to lead the people of the Dairy Islands against some royals who were putting their boot in the neck of the people. And for a while it seemed like he might actually make a difference, but then everyone turned on him. And in the middle of Lacramor, he was melted down, screaming." In Colin's words, Fontina was a leader of the people, a rebel against an oppressive sovereign, a champion of meaningful change, a man betrayed, a public execution carried out with extreme cruelty.

From all that, I don't get the sense he condemns Fontina for leading a coup nor for having ambition and vision, and I don't get the sense he sees Fontina as having callously risked the lives of others for gain. I think Colin understands Fontina's motivations; I wouldn't surprise me if he even admires Fontina's cause, as he describes Fontina fighting to remove the royal boots from everyone's throats.

Colin doesn't really hate ambition, and I don't think Colin really hates power either—but that's to unpack elsewhere, because this is so long. Simply: he does not discourage Raphaniel from ambition only trying to achieve too quickly, he walks away from Deli not for being ambitious but for being a kind of leader he cannot support, Colin becomes a knight for enough power to pursue an ambition to stop the Sanctus Putris. What moved Colin is murdering the banana man and the fungus person. He objects specifically to pursuing power with a disregard for harm caused, especially to the powerless.

It is not my sense that Colin sees his suffering as brought on by Fontina's ambitions nor sees him as having a disregard for those around him in pursuit of his political goals. I think Colin places responsibility with people who will do anything to keep power, not with a man who fought those abuses in—as Colin himself frames it—defense of people being crushed by royal power. Colin blames those who remain so angry at (or so afraid of) Fontina for challenging their authority that they choose to assert their power by going out of their way to brutally openly murder anyone they imagine as a threat to make a point to everyone else.

Colin knows that a power that is willing to do harm is oppressive and will not stop at anything in the pursuit of protecting itself. It wasn't Fontina who killed his father and put him in danger; it was a royal line still angry decades later at Fontina for challenging them.

Colin is not suffering the passive consequences brought down by a man of failed political vision. Colin is suffering the active decisions of a tyranny that will brutalize anyone to maintain its power.

[winepresswrath]

Armand's simpering little "and I never have" has taken on new dimensions for me. Technicality king and also I think very in keeping with his whole malign fairy creature deal. You can tell him not to hurt the bae, but you should really specify what "hurt" entails. Is chopping someone's hands off really hurting them? If they have annoyed you very much I mean.

-questions Armand might pose to Lestat that inspire him to leave the country

[sableeira]

okay but does anyone except for Mori and Fukuzawa know that Yosano is exempt from the ADA member switches to PM deal? Because if Fukuzawa kicks the bucket and nobody knows about the true conditions that could cause some real problems for the future.

[beaulesbian]

[ghost-bard]

I feel like every time i hear about solavellan its talking about like “oh when they reunite and solas and ooooo” or like. Something angsty like one of them dying or something.

Anyone elses lavellan wanna just kill him like straight up

And i dont mean this in a hating solas way (irl) but at least in my lavellans case they went through hell and back in inquisition, and finding out solas wants to tear down the veil, effectively destroying the world as they know it, was the final straw. As in they were barely keeping it together before, and this caused them to spiral. Like a mental break happened. And that manifested in a very uh. Violent and hunting down solas at all costs kinda way.

[wonder-worker]

"[Elizabeth Woodville] was the only member of [Crown Prince Edward of Westminster's] original 1471 council not already on the king’s council and her name headed the list of those appointed as administrators in Wales during Edward’s minority. [She remained on the council after it was expanded in 1473 and granted significant new governing and judicial powers]."

"In 1478 Prince Richard [of Shrewsbury] married the Mowbray heiress. Like his elder brother he had a chancellor, seal, household and council to manage his estates. His council, like that of Prince Edward, comprised the queen [Elizabeth Woodville] and a group of magnates and bishops, few of whom were Woodville supporters [...] It was Elizabeth who mattered, for Richard resided with her and Rivers treated his affairs as their own."

-J.L. Laynesmith, The Last Medieval Queens: English Queenship 1445-1503 / Michael Hicks, Richard III and his Rivals: Magnates and their Motives in the Wars of the Roses

[ethannku]

i think my main issue with tsats is that it doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

we know nico. he has a backstory that we have seen and character growth that has been fought for over 15 books, give or take. we’ve seen him interact with so many different characters and react to so many different situations, so we have a pretty good idea about who he is as a character.

we (kinda) know will. he wasn’t given too much screen time until toa, but from what we’ve seen, he’s a nice kid with a sassy streak and a desire to help people. literally the first substantial scene we get is him coming straight from delivering a child to running out on the battlefield. he not only stood by while octavian was blasted away, he also acknowledged that sometimes, death is necessary.

so my issues with tsats come from them warping these established traits to manufacture plot and character conflict. the “he would not fucking do that” meme has never applied to something more than tsats. sure, nico and will are kids, sure, they can make mistakes... but they are also characters in a book series, characters who have faced similar situations in the past and reacted completely differently, or characters who have shown us no reason to act the way they act in tsats.

i really didn’t want to make a tsats critical post but i felt i had to because the reason i don’t like tsats has nothing to do with the representation or ships or characters used or whatever else. it is simply because this is a bad book in a well-established series that i care about, and it disappointed me deeply because i loved nico and will and wanted their book to be amazing. 

[itspileofgoodthings]

I don’t even fully know why but “what do I do when I miss you so much?” / “Just wait, and pray desperately” was a knife to my heart in the best way.

[arolesbianism]

Welcome to the “they’re just like me fr (derogatory)” club featuring no color because I would rather die than draw Sif with color

[transk0vsky]

Look I’m not a fan of Burakh/Dankosvky for personal reasons but holy fuck there’s no heterosexual explanation for this

[shikai-the-storyteller]

Aypierre just said his mods will ban any idiots in the chat being stupid about the QSMP situation, lmaooo. Absolutely based, get their asses.

[superdummymags]

Tumblr refused to let me upload the video so I had to upload it to Youtube instead. Ah well! Anyway, I found a secret boss fight in the Renegade Route.