¯\_(ツ)_/¯ is an eternal mood

And they agree that yes, they do know how to eat, in theory. The problem is the watermelon. Surely, if they figured out where to start, they'd figure out how to do it, but they have no clue how to get started with it.

This goes back and forth. No, it's not an emotional issue, they're not afraid of the watermelon. They can eat any other fruit, other sweet things, and other watery things ("it's watery?" they ask you). Is it the colour? Do they have a problem eating things that are green on the outside and red on the inside?

"It's red on the inside?"

Wait, they've never seen the inside? At this point you have to ask them how, exactly, they eat the watermelon. So to demonstrate, they take a whole, round, uncut watermelon, and try to bite straight into it. Even if they could bite through the crust, there's no way to get human jaws around it.

"Oh, you're supposed to cut it first. You cut the crust open and only chew through the insides."

And they had no idea. All their life this person has had no idea how to eat a watermelon, despite of being told again and again and again that it's easy, it's ridiculous to struggle with something so simple, there's no way that someone just can't eat a watermelon, how can you even mange to be bad at something as fucking simple as eating watermelon.

https://drmaciver.substack.com/p/how-to-do-everything had a nice list of additional examples like this, with (non-)obvious major insights with regard to opening stitched bags, cleaning your bathroom floor, using a search engine, catching a ball, pinging somebody, proving a theorem, playing sudoku, passing as “normal”, improving your writing, generating novel ideas, and solving your problem.

If you’d asked me six months ago how to get better at something, I’d probably have pointed you to how to do hard things. I still think this is a good approach and you should do it, but I now think it’s the wrong starting point and I’ve been undervaluing small insights. [...]

Every time he tells me this story, his frustration by this point in the story, years later, is evident. He still sounds frustrated by it, despite all the time that passed. Teachers had been giving him crap for years because he hadn't been making much progress with the instrument.

When he got to the private instructor, she acknowledged his frustration, and asked him to try to play for her. He did, and she saw all he was doing. She then did something no one else had done before. She asked him to put his mouthpiece on a different clarinet and try to play the same notes. Like magic, it worked. She looked at the clarinet he had been using and found that the school's clarinet needed it's pads replaced.

He went from last chair to first chair nearly overnight, having been taught far more techniques than typically taught at that age just to overcome the broken instrument preventing him from making noise.

We can tell youth that they are basically “rapists waiting to happen” (anti-rape initiative), or we can tell them that we know they would intervene if they saw harm happening to someone and we want to help empower them to do that (bystander intervention). The kids jump in with both feet for the latter! It was amazing to see children (and young boys in particular) excited to do this work and engage their creativity with it. Also, studies show that not only do they go on to intervene, but they also do not go on to sexually assault people themselves. Bystander intervention also takes the onus off the person being targeted to deter rape and empowers the collective to do something about it. It answers the question in the room when giggling boys are carrying an unconscious young woman up the stairs at a house party, and people are not sure how to respond and are waiting for “someone” to say or do something.

He is also surprisingly bad at being a well-behaved inmate and he has absolutely no problem with making promises he does not intend on keeping, especially when he is making them to the prison wardens. The Ninja ended up in Kryptarium Prison two times in total throughout the entire series - once in season 6 and once in Crystalized and BOTH of these times Lloyd, very specifically:

- has immediately gotten into a fight with another prisoner,

- has sworn to not cause any trouble or try escaping to someone in charge of keeping him there...

- ...and has caused trouble and/or tried escaping not long after.

Twice now, this exact scenario has played out so similarly, that it's striking.

In season 6 my boy has immediately assured the Warden that he will in fact not be causing trouble like a liar he is.

Then, when the Mechanic started picking on him he promptly escalated the conflict by talking back to him

And then he conducted an entire SUCCESSFUL prison escape of 7 people in total, one which included finding and freeing a prisoner trapped in a different cell, disabling prison cameras, conducting multiple emergency plans to slow the possible chase party in case they are noticed and somehow predicting the most likely route to the prison's sewer system.

Also, I'll have you know that this little shit has smuggled a fork to his cell after a fight in the cafeteria and managed to lockpick his vengestone handcuffs with it, to complete astonishment of all the other Ninja.

The devious little smirk, look at him

Like, clearly he learned a thing or two from Darkley's despite the teachers claiming that he was rather bad at villainy. No way he wasn't getting straight A's on prison escape excercises.

I am even more convinced after going a little foreward and seeing him found in the exact same scenario in Crystalized, I am not even joking, how similar the pattern is.

We've got, again, in very quick succession:

Lloyd arguing with another prisoner, this time with Ronin, just about ready to square up with him then and there

...then mere seconds after they are broken up he ends up promising to the warden that he won't cause any trouble

And then literally not a minute passes before he is conducting a one-person spontagneous prison escape stopped not even because he got cornered, but because in that case escaping wasn't really a goal. In this very much impriovised stunt, Lloyd has managed to seamlessly steal an access card from the prison guard, slow the chase down by destroying the access panels as he went to avoid immediate capture, get free from a dozen of officers pilling up on top of him and jump down the staircase all the way to the first floor without injury.

Also, just saying, didn't even break a sweat. Perfect complexion, perfect hair, getting cuffed down like a true diva.

It's just...Lloyd is a sweetheart. He is soft and forgiving and gentle and kind.

And he is also the son of a warlord who spent most of his childhood wanting to be a villain. He went to a school that was meant to raise him to be one. And I really like the subtle ways the show explores that side of him, that side that Lloyd himself probably rarely even thinks back to nowadays, but one that did stay with him despite it all in some way. It's the little things. The way he isn't afraid to talk back to thugs, they way he plays dirty during battle or plays little tricks on the enemy he's fighting

...or the way he acts in prison.

Little things that I like about his character and that I think the show handled very well.

happy 20 year anniversary of Neil banging out the tunes!

though every rat is special, it's a wonderful and unusual thing for their accomplishments to be remembered and cherished by so many people so many years later. we're all so fortunate to know about the rat who banged out the tunes!

thank you to all the people who sent me reference photos of their beloved rats for this piece!!! credits under the cut!