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.
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Losing my miiind the way Sword of the Stranger does parallels and foils and contrasting characters. You can spin this movie around in your mind like a diamond and keep finding new facets to it. The most obvious one is Nanashi and Luo Lang, eternal outsiders in what is (likely in Luo Lang's case and definitely in Nanashi's) the only culture and country they've ever known.
But I've been thinking about Nanashi and Itadori lately. Despite everything that's going on, they never run into each other at any point in the movie or even know that the other guy is there, but Itadori does mention Nanashi when he's talking to his wife. He holds his son in his arms while he calls Nanashi a coward for vanishing after he executed two children. He was there, he knows exactly what happened, but it was such a non-issue to kill a conquered country's young heirs that it doesn't even bear mentioning.
Nanashi is riddled with guilt over killing two children, while Luo Lang doesn't care if it costs the life of a child to get the fight he wants, and Itadori sees the death of another child as little more than a background event as he pursues more power.
It's also very funny that Nanashi ends up being a better dad to the child he accidentally acquired literal days before than Actual Father Itadori.
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Authentic Story of the Shining Force - Saint Fencer Max - Chapter 4
Translation notes:
This is the last boob joke. We're free at last.
Here's the retranslation of every scene with the Spring of Recollection in the game. Overall, her speech here is fairly close to what she says in Waral in-game, with a few details from her final appearance sprinkled in, like her care for Cain. It does misses a few nuances though, like the Legacy being more than just Dark Dragon.
I don't think I've ever seen art of the Spring, but notably, she gets a portrait in the GBA version, and it looks a lot like the manga design, with the slightly wavy hair and especially the blank eyes.
Obviously, the manga rushes through the plot since it's short, thus a lot of places are skipped. I didn't even feel like pointing them out before. However I will point out Waral not being here this time, because Waral happens to not be in the beta map either, and it has very contradicting lore between the ASCII guide and the World Book, meaning it might have not been well developed. Besides, Chapter 5 is very weirdly structured. You get two ship battles that are basically the same, you get to Waral by accident, you advance the plot by going to Ring Reef for no reason and everyone telling you it's off-limits while letting you waltz in anyway, and hardly anything happens in the shrine besides you hearing about the Manual, which is not even a big deal because you get to Rudo by accident later (two ship accidents!! why repeat this plot point!!) and would go to Dragonia anyway to help Bleu.
Basically, I obviously can't prove it, but it wouldn't surprise me if the ocean shrine was initially thought off as only a plot scene, and the battles/town added much later for gameplay reasons.
Perhaps worth mentioning, the GBA version also makes a point to mention that Max got lost in the shrine alone, and everyone was worried about him, which does remind me a lot of the ship scene here.
uh oh. i hit image limit for the first time and i don't wanna remove either of these pics. more notes on a reblog later.
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👫?
Send a 👫 and I’ll write four headcanons I have about our muse’s relationship
Contrary to Walter, it's Rorschach that took Khare some getting used to? She met him before without the mask but his brusque manner of speech soon made her more at ease around him just like she does around Walter. She also finds his mask fascinating, how the patterns shift and morph in tones of perfect black and white. She soon picks up on Rorschach's mood, not by asking him what's wrong but by observing his mask, how rapidly it changes and which patterns make themselves present.
Absolutely does little things for each other! Whenever Walter trudges into the diner with nasty cuts or broken fingers, Khare will offer antiseptic and bandages if only to keep infection at bay. In return, Walter checks out the routes she uses going to and from home to ensure nobody's waiting to pounce on unsuspecting passerbys. He's gotten rid of at least one serial attacker whose body was later found floating in the sewers by Killer Croc. Khare doesn't know about this and Walter is perfectly content to keep it that way.
Knows each others secrets yet keeps their lips sealed. Walter found out about Khare's condition at precisely the same time Khare found out he was Rorschach, the hero jumping in to prevent her getting bundled into a car by a group of thugs. Rorschach fought them off but sustained a head injury during the incident while Khare received minimal injuries during the struggle. She hid his hat, mask and coat from the GCPD, claiming it was Walter who had stopped her from getting kidnapped by the group. He noticed the eyes glinting in the darkness, his suspicions confirmed upon noticing her injuries were long gone when he came to retrieve his belongings later that day.
Do these two talk shit about the government? You better believe they do. I bet these two could talk about conspiracies all day long, a sentiment which is not helped when Khare tells Walter what she knows about Prometheus and her experiences at their hands. Rorschach somehow becomes even more violent towards kidnappers. Khare might even help him out, holding them down with a smile while he brutally extracts important information.
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tw: discussion of catholic views on abortion, allusion to unprotected sex, religious trauma, religious guilt
today i had a conversation with my brother (conversation is a very kind word, he strong armed the entirety of our discussion to validate his christian persecution complex) about birth control. his take is that it's questionably moral with two exceptions: condom use in married couples, which is always morally correct, and morning after pill use, which is always morally reprehensible.
i've been wondering, since then, what he would think of me if he knew i'd taken a plan b pill recently. his faith has taught him to believe i'm a murderer for using "abortive medication."
i've been laughing and joking about it with the partner from that hookup, mainly for two reasons: the information leaflet and the packaging for the pill was clearly marketing it toward women, and considering the fact that i'm a non-binary trans guy we find that entertaining. also, she knows i've got religious trauma and that sometimes the best way to cope with it is through some pretty niche humour. after all, if you can laugh in the face of the threat of hell, which of you is stronger, the man who hides behind his scriptures, or the man who turns his back on the word?
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