#fr reps

[magpie-sphinx]

my collection of thematically opposite element primal reps is finally complete!

[trashno0dle]

short king

he cannot reach high places

[tinygryphon-58570]

Happy New Friend Day! \o3o/

[fulgurbugs]

Live laugh paldea friend group

[talentisntgenius]

oh my god you guys....

THIS

is because of THIS

[the3rddenialist]

What is wrong with him

[laz-kay]

They’re in their bestie era I’m screaming😭

[wanoboywednesday]

its so awesome that sanji has jinbe on the crew now so they can share their love of gaudy hawaiian shirts

[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.

[piki-miki]

[chvoswxtch]

blondie really clowned the fuck out of us

“we’re getting rep tv!” “no the red herring error code means it’s debut tv!” “she’s gonna fake us out and drop karma!”

nope

she said surprise bitches have some sad poetry

[bruciemilf]

Huge loss for the dark haired and bisexual community

[genderkoolaid]

tbh its not entirely fair to paint all blatant rep as poor in comparison to queercoding (altho i do love some good queercoding). i think the reason so much blatant rep is Like That, while queercoded stuff feels so much more meaningful and real, is because the blatant rep we often experience is made to Market To The Queers. while it may have queer creatives working on it, the reason its created is to make money off of queers. its trendy. so just write a fairly surface level fluffy movie about white queer teens and get some cash! its blatant, which means it will be treated as a groundbreaking queer media especially by liberals.

while queercoded media on the other hand (intentional or not) cant or wont just slap two conventionally attractive teens on screen and make them kiss and get those rainbow dollars. its an expression of queer silencing, the quiet thats left when you arent allowed to say what you desperately want to. when you cant spoon-feed your audience queerness you have to. yknow. actually think about what it means and how to express that artistically. you have to show and not tell.

thats all to say, there is blatant queer rep that is good. but you probably aren't gonna find it on amazon prime. that kind of rep is being made by queer artists making indie films. i promise you its not either "blatant queerness that feels shallow" or "deep queerness thats not allowed to be blatant". theres a secret third option and its "capitalism will never liberate you and you need to actually support indie queer artists and actively reject queer capitalism to experience the breadth and width of what queer art is capable of being and doing."

[tinygryphon-58570]

They're both having a really great day right now ^^

[lillazyboithings]

To whoever made the "Trevor and Richie are twins" headcanon, I will love you forever and ever

[mangk0]

WIP - A Son's Path