gay little face stripes

i keep forgetting that leo canonically is the biggest father figure hoarder in canon because he FEELS like the type of person who should be distrustful of men, like one of those mean parrots

to rectify this i think he would hate the cultural concept of The Boyfriend. if anyone he was close with started dating some guy he didnt know and constantly talked about bringing him over and including him in everything he would have pleasant blissful dreams every night of mauling him like a wild animal

actually i know its a very small thing but theres this weird thing when talking about tenna as a parent specifically where people immediately point out that hed be actively manipulative or somehow psychologically abusing towards the kid when this is..... not a trait he actually has. i feel like people point to him "guilt tripping" the fun gang before his game to get them to play but a) this is part of the ACT he is joking at his expense and b) man i really do just think hes that sad. Like any guilt tripping in that i dont think was done on purpose he is just That desperate for approval and he was excited and wanted the kids to play his game. and re: his talking about his own "sweet talking" when we know hes rather unreliable as a narrator. idk the 'manipuative parent' thing feels like a trait people are assigning him arbitrarily. i dont think he could successfully manipulate his way out of a wet paper bag man

tenna's "emotional abuse" towards a child is him whining if the kid doesn't wanna go to the zoo or some shit and sniffling in his bedroom about it for like 30 minutes before he goes back downstairs or whqtever and they watch a movie together

basically the best thing any character can do is decide they don't want to be afraid anymore - in fact they never want to be afraid of anything ever again - and take action so drastic they fail to realise that this too is a decision motivated by fear. or to account for the Consequences of that.

[with obvious perverted intent] hey. don't you want to release the safety catches on that character. don't you want to flip off all the switches holding them back and let the control rods go.

saying this as a freak and a pervert but at some point it does really get exhausting and infuriating how a creative cannot write/draw, like, detailed body parts or characters with sexual desires or 'unconventional' fixations/happenings/etc without being accused of having some sort of fetish they're projecting into their creation. Artist a little good at drawing feet? Clearly a fetish thing. Writer factually mentioning things like characters having body hair or other not often mentioned traits? Obviously it's because they're into it. A character expressing sexual desires/preferences in character? Well of course it's just the creator channeling their own kinkd/whatever into it. Aren't you guys tired? the world becomes such a beautiful place when when you realize that sometimes things can just be and you can look at them for what they are and present, and it'll turn you into a better creative too to internalize the fact that you can write things that are not a reflection of your own personal desires and feelings.

AND ALSO!!!!! even if it WERE a fetish/kink/reflection of the creators sexuality, so what? Does that take away from the art? Does it make it less impactful if someone wrote it while feeling slightly randy? Would your perception of something you perceive as beautiful/deep/whatever change if you knew the person who created it might have committed the crime of being horny? Or do you just use sex as a shield so you won't have to confront what a piece of art is actually getting at? Something worth thinking about