Writings and Ramblings

This isn’t a stupid question, but it’s simply because the characters don’t talk. They need visual storytelling in place of verbal storytelling. He probably wouldn’t wear one in an AU, though.

For example: Flippy only wears white shirts and black gloves because the color of his own fur is a trigger.

Why? Because the color green is deeply ingrained into the army. Think Camo, night vision, tanks, grenades etc. it’s all green, though of different hues. He doesn’t even look at himself while he showers because it’s so bad.

Thing is, it’s worth noting that Flippy’s house is LOADED with weapons. On top of that, we know from a couple episodes that Flippy carries at least a knife and one grenade on him at all times, with “Random Acts of Silence” even confirming he’s fully aware he has those weapons (tbh I doubt Fliqpy could smuggle them without Flippy noticing, plus Fliqpy rarely uses regular weapons for his kills). Yet none of those things seem particularly triggering for him.

This also works! I assumed his house has weapons because he is beyond paranoid, and wants to protect himself at all times.

About the tags: it’s okay, I didn’t think you said my “headcanon” wasn’t valid. Also I wouldn’t call it a headcanon; instead an AU since headcanons are things unconfirmed by the source material, that don’t change the storyline, that you assume about a character, and we can clearly see Flippy wears his military vest. How patriotic of him! I’d also like to say thanks for being the least aggressive person I’ve ever had any “disagreement” about media with. (Though this isn’t a disagreement, we both agree that the actual reason he wears one is visual storytelling, you just seem to disagree with my AU[?] which is fine.) That’s why I love tumblr lol.

Anyway thanks for not being rude! Complementary Flippy for your troubles

My bad about calling it a headcanon instead of an AU. I tend to view personal interpretations of a character as headcanons rather than AUs, even if said interpretation isn’t entirely canon-compliant. So since your post is specifically about one character and what he wears, I glossed over the mention of your AU. But again, that’s my bad! 😅

This isn’t a stupid question, but it’s simply because the characters don’t talk. They need visual storytelling in place of verbal storytelling. He probably wouldn’t wear one in an AU, though.

For example: Flippy only wears white shirts and black gloves because the color of his own fur is a trigger.

Why? Because the color green is deeply ingrained into the army. Think Camo, night vision, tanks, grenades etc. it’s all green, though of different hues. He doesn’t even look at himself while he showers because it’s so bad.

Thing is, it’s worth noting that Flippy’s house is LOADED with weapons. On top of that, we know from a couple episodes that Flippy carries at least a knife and one grenade on him at all times, with “Random Acts of Silence” even confirming he’s fully aware he has those weapons (tbh I doubt Fliqpy could smuggle them without Flippy noticing, plus Fliqpy rarely uses regular weapons for his kills). Yet none of those things seem particularly triggering for him.

and then makes it something almost sinister.

cavendish never asked to be loved this way. he never wanted dakota to sacrafice himself but it goes even further than that.

cavendish very explicitly wants to be a hero, that's his main motivation. and i think the root of that is, he can't accept love until he feels like he's earned it, so dakota's unwavering devotion is TERRIFYING for him. dakota loves him for who he is, but that comes with the price of dakota not wanting him to be more. dakota didn't believe in the ufo. and metaphorically that ufo was cavendish's chance to be more than this. so the fact that dakota doesn't believe in it and wants him to stay with him and be a glorified garbageman is essentially the worst kind of love he can imagine.

i mean. dakota saw him die hundreds of times, how humiliating must that feel? and his explanation? "he's cavendish, what're you gonna do?" it's WOULD be romantic to anyone else, but to cavendish it just means there's no reason to do this other than devotion to him. it means if dakota didn't love him, he'd be nothing. it means he hasn't earned this. note that one of the first things cavendish does after finding out about the island is try to sacrafice himself for dakota. and as much as this is romantic, it's even moreso a desperate attempt to earn dakota's love.

Like let's be honest, Professor Time's identity isn't a big mystery until the episode it's revealed, and the character role of struggling with knowledge of doing something great in the future and deciding to come back to the past to save everyone once it happens could feasibly be filled by anyone. I'd say it just went to Doof because the episode was a crossover and he's a scientist. But it still feels kinda weird for him to be all "that's a lot of scientific mysteries I'll have to figure out somehow" when 1) he's figured out a lot of stuff that's probably even more difficult, and 2) he's already built the time machine, he just needs to find time juice.

Take Perry and Diogee, they’re both smart but Perry is clearly more intelligent, he uses actual critical thinking skills, he can read, write, understand human language, and basically has human-levels of intelligence.

Diogee, on the other hand, is smart enough to track down Milo by using various methods of problem solving, but he still doesn’t fully comprehend human language and he still indulges in basic dog behavior, like rolling around in muck. Diogee only understands one human phrase and it’s “go home”, similar to how pets in the real world learn certain phrases.

So like I said, it’s flawed but fun. If you’re looking for a show that’s well-written, well-paced and with satisfying and logical character decisions and resolutions, you’re not going to have a good time. Even by “episodic show” standards, you can find better series out there.

But if you simply want to see characters you like being themselves and having fun and cute interactions with genuinely funny jokes, it’s a great show for it and I highly recommend it!

To be a bit more specific in my praise for the show:

- I was very surprised at first by how comedic Gantu is, but honestly it quickly grew on me and I absolutely love how much of a boyfailure he is. And looking back at the first movie yeah I can see where it comes from.

- Ruben is a delight of a character I love everything about him!

- In general I really like how all the main characters are written, with my main issues being how the narrative uses them rather than how their own personalities are done (*cough* Pleakley *cough*).

- I was pleasantly surprised by the aunt/niece relationship between Pleakley and Lilo. Was not expecting it to be this cute, with Pleakley really leaning into that parental role including working with Nani from time to time which is great to see!

- The relationship between Jumba and his experiments is also adorable! I love the way Jumba is smiling everytime he describes an experiment no matter how deadly it is. And also how when an experiment is nice there’s a high chance Jumba pets it (also that one time he bought a hot dog for the shapeshifting experiment <3).

- As quickly mentioned earlier I really like the comedy of the show (outside of some of the Pleakley shenanigans and obviously the “2000s bigotry” moments, most notably the fatphobia). The vast majority of the jokes land very well which really makes the show enjoyable despite its writing flaws. On that note the voice acting (at least in the english dub) is really good which truly makes the jokes land well!

- Might be a weird thing to focus on but I love how this is one of these shows that care about small details. Like in one episode Stitch is scared of the snow (bc it’s water) and sticks to the ceiling of the place he and Lilo are at, and when Lilo comes home Stich is using her backpack (or whatever she was holding earlier) to shield himself from the snow, making sure none is getting on him. Or the different experiments returning from time to time, including in that same episode a fire experiment going to Jumba due to the heat affecting him (yes I know they show the experiment because they want to use him later on but still, love the detail and cute interaction).

Another example is how when a character wears a new outfit they keep it for the rest of the episode unless they have a good reason to remove it or some time passed. For example at the beginning of “Frenchfries”, Pleakley wearing a new outfit when driving Jumba to the airport and then still having that same outfit for the next scene when coming home. Again, random but I love when shows care about those things.

- Finally I’m a huge fan of how Stitch was written. They really leaned into the idea of “well he didn’t go against his programming in the first movie, he just developed a brand new one” and it works very well! I love seeing him remain somewhat chaotic and causing trouble for no reason, like making a house out of breadsticks and destroying it, going to a big city and feeling the need to destroy it, getting pissed he’s not served a drink and jumping angrily on the table to drink the whole jar, putting literally anything in his mouth in general tbh, or attacking Heckler for talking shit about him, stuff like that.

I feel like Stitch still being imperfect also works incredibly well with the way the other experiments are handled, with them not changing their programming but instead having what they were made for be used to give them a purpose. Since none of the experiments are forced to change besides being nice, it makes sense Stitch would go the same route.

Also looking at the first movie I couldn’t help but see Stitch as a bit of a bug in the way he walks (I mean he does have six arms/legs in total) and started to headcanon him crawling around a lot, so imagine my delight when I started watching this show and noticed Stitch constantly crawling around on walls and ceilings!

With all that being said, on a more negative note:

- The overall writing (besides character personalities and comedy) isn’t all that strong. “Phantasmo” for example has a five minutes court scene that serves no purpose, has Stitch stuck outside for a while before Jumba does a check on him instead of doing the check immediately, and the experiment finding his one true place is incredibly rushed.

I will say though I do really like how Scrump is in the picture from the get-go, Pleakley is just hiding it with his finger due to how he’s holding the picture. Again this show is great with small details.

And outside of this episode, you have several instances of rushed plot resolution or characters making the wrong decision for seemingly no reason.

- There’s a couple episodes in which Jumba is affected by his experiment stupidly, most notably the amnesia one (like seriously why the fuck was he looking at it when knowing what it does???).

- There’s at least two episodes in which Lilo and Stitch see an experiment, something causes Stitch to be ill, they go back home to ask Jumba about the experiment without paying attention to Stitch, go back to find the experiment and fail due to Stitch’s condition, and go back home so Jumba can check on Stitch when he could have done so earlier had the characters paid more attention.

- I will say tho, I don’t have any issues with the villains sometimes still being affected by an experiment at the end of the episode, like Gantu still being a baby in “Baby-fier” or him tricking Hamsterviel with the amnesia and love experiments. Compared to other issues I have with the writing, this is the kind of stuff that goes into “episodic cartoon” logic so I’m fine with it.

- Pretty early on you realize that Lilo doesn’t really have a reason to be there to catch the experiments as Stitch does it on his own. Like obviously Lilo is the one with the empathy and imagination to find the experiments a home, but why aren’t the adults more concerned about this seven years-old going into those fights?

- I’d argue the way the crossovers where handled was a bit clumsy, with the exception of the Proud Family one in which they made great use of the bed-and-not-breakfast to justify them being here (+ the issue with their luggage justifies Lilo showing Penny around the island).

- The way Lilo is completely fine with letting Gantu capture some of the experiments because they’re deemed useless or annoying is...a choice (reminds me of that video essay from a guy noticing how a lot of movies with a main child protagonist deemed “different” has a moral of “people will like you as long as what makes you different actually makes you useful/fun!”).

- And finally, they clearly had no idea what to do with Pleakley, and instead of just writing him out of the episodes, they gave him some random shtick that’s often just cringy and unfunny.

The only times those worked for me was in the first half of season two as not only did they manage to tie them to the main plots but also gave Pleakley a few wins which was nice to see (the therapy for the experiments reforming the porcupine, the comedy routine being a success, the deodorants being the cure for the pollution experiment, stuff like that).

But yeah outside of those moments I wasn’t the biggest fan of how Pleakley was handled, with him constantly being the butt of the joke. Which is sad because I do really like his personality and how he interacts with the others. As said earlier the issue is with the narrative, not the character.

On that note it’s good that, as often as Pleakley is treated as a joke, at least the vast majority of those jokes have nothing to do with his gender presentation. Most of the time he’s allowed to dress however he wants with no-one commenting on it. Hell there’s even two instances of Lilo using she/her pronouns while talking about Pleakley to someone else! Also shoutout to “Yapper” in which Pleakley is wearing full drag the entire time and the episode doesn’t mention it once, writing Pleakley no different than usual.

Like don’t get me wrong there are absolutely transphobic jokes in this show and on that note the valentines’ episode can go fuck itself, but most of those jokes feel pretty far and few in-between, which is pretty impressive for an early 2000s show. It’s still very far from perfect but also the bar is in hell when it comes to “man in dress” jokes so I’ll take what little positive I can get.

(On that note full offense to “Stitch Has a Glitch” for being full-on transphobic in its portrayal of Pleakley, with him only crossdressing as a disguise + how over the top he is everytime he does so + the jokes of him trying to be an attractive woman to make Nani jealous. Btw from what I’ve heard one of the reasons this movie was made was because Disney didn’t like the direction the show took the franchise in. Was “being somewhat respectful of trans women all things considered” part of the things they disliked about the show?)

I could probably also comment on the ridiculous amount of fatphobic jokes this show has towards Jumba, which makes me realize that I don’t think the original movie was fatphobic towards him? But yeah this goes without saying that this is a negative. I guess pointing it out can be a warning for those who want to watch the show so they know what to expect?

Ultimately, this is the kind of show where, if I have to rewatch an episode, I’ll only watch a couple scenes, skipping over some parts to get to the interactions between the main characters which are an absolute blast!

^^^ SPEAK THE TRUTH OP!!!!!!!!!!! FINALLY SOMEONE ELSE SAYS IT.

Personally I do like the Valentine's episode of the show because I expected it to be so much worse. Instead what we get is a whole episode where Pleakley's subplot is wanting to be viewed as an attractive woman, which is more evidence to stack on top of my pile for "Pleakley is a transgender woman." The end where she gets so delighted that someone actually thinks she's beautiful... that's gender euphoria right there!

Unrelated to Pleakley transgenderism, I agree that the crossover episodes kinda suck. ESPECIALLY the Kim Possible one tbh... girl kept acting like she knew more about the ocean surrounding Hawaii than the actual Hawaiian kid did, and she mispronounced both Pleakley and Stitch's names constantly. STITCH IS A WORD! HOW DO YOU FUCK THAT UP!!!

I’m also really not a big fan of the scene at the beach in which Pleakley asks a bunch of men for help only for them to leave when her wig falls off. While I definitely appreciate that the guys agree to help her before her wig falls, showing they agree that she’s an attractive woman, the scene as a whole still pisses me off bc by the end of the day it’s still a transphobic joke.

And while both Keoni’s crush and Pleakley being deemed an ugly woman aren’t exclusive to this episode, the fact they both show up here on top of the beach scene does give me a very negative opinion of this episode. I agree with you that it could’ve been worse, but looking at the show as a whole I feel like it also could’ve been at least a bit better. Granted I also don’t like the episode all that much to begin with, regardless of Pleakley’s plot.

All that being said though I do 100% agree with you in how Pleakley herself handles the situation and what it says about her gender! There’s definitely something inherently queer in just how much she cares about being perceived as an attractive woman and how much joy she gets out of it at the end. Like no cis guy cares this much about a “disguise” looking not just convincing but actively attractive to the point of going around town to prove it. I’d even add that the beach scene to me is proof that she’s attracted to guys given how she’s specifically seeking out male attention to get validation on her looks.

For the Kim Possible episode, it’s actually pretty funny you bring it up while talking about Pleakley’s gender bc my favorite scene in it is when Kim first shows up to the Pelekais house, and part of it is because of Pleakley being fully seen as a woman by both Kim and Ron! But yeah outside of that I agree that the whole thing with Lilo and Kim isn’t handled very well.

And regarding Jumba, what I consider as fatphobic is mostly some of the visual humor with him, like how when he sits on the couch more often than not he bends the whole thing, same with how his bed looks, or small moments like in the Halloween episode where at some point he falls on his back and his costume pops out showing his belly.

So overall I believe this is what you mean by the comedy being due to his species, it’s just that I see those moments as fatphobic because I can’t shake off that feeling of the writers being like “get it? The couch broke because he’s fat!”

Then again it’s a bit weird because in the first movie during the Rollercoaster Ride you have that moment where he hops off the palm tree causing it to straighten up and send Pleakley flying, but for some reason I don’t see it as fatphobic despite being the same kind of joke the show often does. Maybe it’s because they do it more often in the show or something? And maybe since they do it more I just assume the worst due to how rampant and normalized fatphobia is. 🤔 Plus like you mention with Gantu there's some fatphobic jokes unrelated to Jumba, which probably doesn't help either.

For Jumba, I can't defend the Halloween episode thing, that one's definitely 😬, but as for his bed bending and the couch bending-

So like I said, it’s flawed but fun. If you’re looking for a show that’s well-written, well-paced and with satisfying and logical character decisions and resolutions, you’re not going to have a good time. Even by “episodic show” standards, you can find better series out there.

But if you simply want to see characters you like being themselves and having fun and cute interactions with genuinely funny jokes, it’s a great show for it and I highly recommend it!

To be a bit more specific in my praise for the show:

- I was very surprised at first by how comedic Gantu is, but honestly it quickly grew on me and I absolutely love how much of a boyfailure he is. And looking back at the first movie yeah I can see where it comes from.

- Ruben is a delight of a character I love everything about him!

- In general I really like how all the main characters are written, with my main issues being how the narrative uses them rather than how their own personalities are done (*cough* Pleakley *cough*).

- I was pleasantly surprised by the aunt/niece relationship between Pleakley and Lilo. Was not expecting it to be this cute, with Pleakley really leaning into that parental role including working with Nani from time to time which is great to see!

- The relationship between Jumba and his experiments is also adorable! I love the way Jumba is smiling everytime he describes an experiment no matter how deadly it is. And also how when an experiment is nice there’s a high chance Jumba pets it (also that one time he bought a hot dog for the shapeshifting experiment <3).

- As quickly mentioned earlier I really like the comedy of the show (outside of some of the Pleakley shenanigans and obviously the “2000s bigotry” moments, most notably the fatphobia). The vast majority of the jokes land very well which really makes the show enjoyable despite its writing flaws. On that note the voice acting (at least in the english dub) is really good which truly makes the jokes land well!

- Might be a weird thing to focus on but I love how this is one of these shows that care about small details. Like in one episode Stitch is scared of the snow (bc it’s water) and sticks to the ceiling of the place he and Lilo are at, and when Lilo comes home Stich is using her backpack (or whatever she was holding earlier) to shield himself from the snow, making sure none is getting on him. Or the different experiments returning from time to time, including in that same episode a fire experiment going to Jumba due to the heat affecting him (yes I know they show the experiment because they want to use him later on but still, love the detail and cute interaction).

Another example is how when a character wears a new outfit they keep it for the rest of the episode unless they have a good reason to remove it or some time passed. For example at the beginning of “Frenchfries”, Pleakley wearing a new outfit when driving Jumba to the airport and then still having that same outfit for the next scene when coming home. Again, random but I love when shows care about those things.

- Finally I’m a huge fan of how Stitch was written. They really leaned into the idea of “well he didn’t go against his programming in the first movie, he just developed a brand new one” and it works very well! I love seeing him remain somewhat chaotic and causing trouble for no reason, like making a house out of breadsticks and destroying it, going to a big city and feeling the need to destroy it, getting pissed he’s not served a drink and jumping angrily on the table to drink the whole jar, putting literally anything in his mouth in general tbh, or attacking Heckler for talking shit about him, stuff like that.

I feel like Stitch still being imperfect also works incredibly well with the way the other experiments are handled, with them not changing their programming but instead having what they were made for be used to give them a purpose. Since none of the experiments are forced to change besides being nice, it makes sense Stitch would go the same route.

Also looking at the first movie I couldn’t help but see Stitch as a bit of a bug in the way he walks (I mean he does have six arms/legs in total) and started to headcanon him crawling around a lot, so imagine my delight when I started watching this show and noticed Stitch constantly crawling around on walls and ceilings!

With all that being said, on a more negative note:

- The overall writing (besides character personalities and comedy) isn’t all that strong. “Phantasmo” for example has a five minutes court scene that serves no purpose, has Stitch stuck outside for a while before Jumba does a check on him instead of doing the check immediately, and the experiment finding his one true place is incredibly rushed.

I will say though I do really like how Scrump is in the picture from the get-go, Pleakley is just hiding it with his finger due to how he’s holding the picture. Again this show is great with small details.

And outside of this episode, you have several instances of rushed plot resolution or characters making the wrong decision for seemingly no reason.

- There’s a couple episodes in which Jumba is affected by his experiment stupidly, most notably the amnesia one (like seriously why the fuck was he looking at it when knowing what it does???).

- There’s at least two episodes in which Lilo and Stitch see an experiment, something causes Stitch to be ill, they go back home to ask Jumba about the experiment without paying attention to Stitch, go back to find the experiment and fail due to Stitch’s condition, and go back home so Jumba can check on Stitch when he could have done so earlier had the characters paid more attention.

- I will say tho, I don’t have any issues with the villains sometimes still being affected by an experiment at the end of the episode, like Gantu still being a baby in “Baby-fier” or him tricking Hamsterviel with the amnesia and love experiments. Compared to other issues I have with the writing, this is the kind of stuff that goes into “episodic cartoon” logic so I’m fine with it.

- Pretty early on you realize that Lilo doesn’t really have a reason to be there to catch the experiments as Stitch does it on his own. Like obviously Lilo is the one with the empathy and imagination to find the experiments a home, but why aren’t the adults more concerned about this seven years-old going into those fights?

- I’d argue the way the crossovers where handled was a bit clumsy, with the exception of the Proud Family one in which they made great use of the bed-and-not-breakfast to justify them being here (+ the issue with their luggage justifies Lilo showing Penny around the island).

- The way Lilo is completely fine with letting Gantu capture some of the experiments because they’re deemed useless or annoying is...a choice (reminds me of that video essay from a guy noticing how a lot of movies with a main child protagonist deemed “different” has a moral of “people will like you as long as what makes you different actually makes you useful/fun!”).

- And finally, they clearly had no idea what to do with Pleakley, and instead of just writing him out of the episodes, they gave him some random shtick that’s often just cringy and unfunny.

The only times those worked for me was in the first half of season two as not only did they manage to tie them to the main plots but also gave Pleakley a few wins which was nice to see (the therapy for the experiments reforming the porcupine, the comedy routine being a success, the deodorants being the cure for the pollution experiment, stuff like that).

But yeah outside of those moments I wasn’t the biggest fan of how Pleakley was handled, with him constantly being the butt of the joke. Which is sad because I do really like his personality and how he interacts with the others. As said earlier the issue is with the narrative, not the character.

On that note it’s good that, as often as Pleakley is treated as a joke, at least the vast majority of those jokes have nothing to do with his gender presentation. Most of the time he’s allowed to dress however he wants with no-one commenting on it. Hell there’s even two instances of Lilo using she/her pronouns while talking about Pleakley to someone else! Also shoutout to “Yapper” in which Pleakley is wearing full drag the entire time and the episode doesn’t mention it once, writing Pleakley no different than usual.

Like don’t get me wrong there are absolutely transphobic jokes in this show and on that note the valentines’ episode can go fuck itself, but most of those jokes feel pretty far and few in-between, which is pretty impressive for an early 2000s show. It’s still very far from perfect but also the bar is in hell when it comes to “man in dress” jokes so I’ll take what little positive I can get.

(On that note full offense to “Stitch Has a Glitch” for being full-on transphobic in its portrayal of Pleakley, with him only crossdressing as a disguise + how over the top he is everytime he does so + the jokes of him trying to be an attractive woman to make Nani jealous. Btw from what I’ve heard one of the reasons this movie was made was because Disney didn’t like the direction the show took the franchise in. Was “being somewhat respectful of trans women all things considered” part of the things they disliked about the show?)

I could probably also comment on the ridiculous amount of fatphobic jokes this show has towards Jumba, which makes me realize that I don’t think the original movie was fatphobic towards him? But yeah this goes without saying that this is a negative. I guess pointing it out can be a warning for those who want to watch the show so they know what to expect?

Ultimately, this is the kind of show where, if I have to rewatch an episode, I’ll only watch a couple scenes, skipping over some parts to get to the interactions between the main characters which are an absolute blast!

^^^ SPEAK THE TRUTH OP!!!!!!!!!!! FINALLY SOMEONE ELSE SAYS IT.

Personally I do like the Valentine's episode of the show because I expected it to be so much worse. Instead what we get is a whole episode where Pleakley's subplot is wanting to be viewed as an attractive woman, which is more evidence to stack on top of my pile for "Pleakley is a transgender woman." The end where she gets so delighted that someone actually thinks she's beautiful... that's gender euphoria right there!

Unrelated to Pleakley transgenderism, I agree that the crossover episodes kinda suck. ESPECIALLY the Kim Possible one tbh... girl kept acting like she knew more about the ocean surrounding Hawaii than the actual Hawaiian kid did, and she mispronounced both Pleakley and Stitch's names constantly. STITCH IS A WORD! HOW DO YOU FUCK THAT UP!!!

I’m also really not a big fan of the scene at the beach in which Pleakley asks a bunch of men for help only for them to leave when her wig falls off. While I definitely appreciate that the guys agree to help her before her wig falls, showing they agree that she’s an attractive woman, the scene as a whole still pisses me off bc by the end of the day it’s still a transphobic joke.

And while both Keoni’s crush and Pleakley being deemed an ugly woman aren’t exclusive to this episode, the fact they both show up here on top of the beach scene does give me a very negative opinion of this episode. I agree with you that it could’ve been worse, but looking at the show as a whole I feel like it also could’ve been at least a bit better. Granted I also don’t like the episode all that much to begin with, regardless of Pleakley’s plot.

All that being said though I do 100% agree with you in how Pleakley herself handles the situation and what it says about her gender! There’s definitely something inherently queer in just how much she cares about being perceived as an attractive woman and how much joy she gets out of it at the end. Like no cis guy cares this much about a “disguise” looking not just convincing but actively attractive to the point of going around town to prove it. I’d even add that the beach scene to me is proof that she’s attracted to guys given how she’s specifically seeking out male attention to get validation on her looks.

For the Kim Possible episode, it’s actually pretty funny you bring it up while talking about Pleakley’s gender bc my favorite scene in it is when Kim first shows up to the Pelekais house, and part of it is because of Pleakley being fully seen as a woman by both Kim and Ron! But yeah outside of that I agree that the whole thing with Lilo and Kim isn’t handled very well.

And regarding Jumba, what I consider as fatphobic is mostly some of the visual humor with him, like how when he sits on the couch more often than not he bends the whole thing, same with how his bed looks, or small moments like in the Halloween episode where at some point he falls on his back and his costume pops out showing his belly.

So overall I believe this is what you mean by the comedy being due to his species, it’s just that I see those moments as fatphobic because I can’t shake off that feeling of the writers being like “get it? The couch broke because he’s fat!”

Then again it’s a bit weird because in the first movie during the Rollercoaster Ride you have that moment where he hops off the palm tree causing it to straighten up and send Pleakley flying, but for some reason I don’t see it as fatphobic despite being the same kind of joke the show often does. Maybe it’s because they do it more often in the show or something? And maybe since they do it more I just assume the worst due to how rampant and normalized fatphobia is. 🤔 Plus like you mention with Gantu there's some fatphobic jokes unrelated to Jumba, which probably doesn't help either.

Lilo and Stitch is an extremely good children's movie. I've been working at a daycare for over five years now, and out of all the children's movies I've shown to an auidence of twenty or so school-age kids (i.e. between the ages of 5 and 12), the only movie that's held their attention as well as Lilo and Stitch is The Emperor's New Groove, and the only one that's held it better is An American Tail. Of those three, Lilo and Stitch has won the vote of "what movie we will watch" the most. It not only entertains kids, but emotionally captivates them from start to finish, because it very thoroughly understands how to engage children on their level. It's a smart, tightly written children's movie.

The feat of story-telling genius it pulls of lies in its ability to reach both where children's imaginations want to go and where their lived real-world experiences lie - most children's movies focus on one or the other, but Lilo and Stitch dives deep into both. On the imagination side, there's Stitch's whole plotline of being a little alien monster being chased by other weirdo aliens onto earth because they want to stop him from running amok and causing havoc (which, of course, happens anyway in fun cartoony comedy/action spectacle). On the real-world side, you have Lilo's plotline of being a troubled little girl who has an abundance of very real problems that, like an actual child, she struggles to comprehend and deal with, as well as the many adults in her life that care about her to some degree but all struggle to fully understand her. Kids want to be Stitch and run amok and cause cartoony havoc. Kids, even the least-troubled kids, relate to Lilo, because all of them have been in a similar situation as her at least once in their lives.

Balancing these two very different stories, with very different tones and scopes to their respective conflicts, is a hard writing task, but Lilo and Stitch manages to do it in a way that seems effortless with one very powerful trick. The two plots are direct mirrors to each other, complete with the characters involved in each having foils in the respective plot. To break it down:

Stitch, the wild and destructive alien gremlin who everyone has labeled as a crime against existence, is Lilo, the troubled young girl who's viewed as a "problem child" by all the adults in her life. In both plotlines, Stitch and Lilo are facing the threat of being "taken away" from the life they know because they act out, and in both plotlines, we see that this is an unfathomably cruel thing to do to them and will not actually solve the problems they have.

Dr. Jumbaa, the mad scientist who made Stitch because making monsters is what mad scientists do, and who had no intentions of ever being nurturing or parental to anything or anyone in his life, is Nani, Lilo's older sister whose parents died when she was young and now is forced to act as a parental substitute despite not being mentally or emotionally prepared for that responsibility yet. Both Dr. Jumbaa and Nani are trying to get their respective wild children in line with what society wants them to be, and both are struggling hard with it because they in turn have a lot of growing to do before they can actually accomplish that.

Pleakley, the nebbish alien bureaucrat who ends up being assigned to help Dr. Jumbaa despite being mostly uninvolved in creating the whole Stitch situation, is David, the nice but mostly ineffectual guy who's crushing on Nani and wants to help her but doesn't really have much he can provide except emotional support. Ultimately Pleakley and David prove that said emotional support is a lot more helpful than it seems on the surface, as they give Jumbaa and Nani respectively a lot of the pushes they need to become better in their parental roles.

The Grand Councilwoman, who runs the society of aliens that is trying to banish Stitch forever for his crime of existing, is Cobra Bubbles, the Child Protective Services agent who is in charge of deciding whether or not Lilo needs to be taken away from her home forever for, ostensibly, her own good. Both are well-intentioned and stern, with a desire to follow the rules of society and do what procedure says is the most humane thing to do in this situation, but both lack the understanding of Stitch/Lilo's situation to actually help until the end of the movie.

Finally, we have Captain Gantu, the enforcer of the Galactic Council who is a mean, aggressive, sadistic brute but is viewed as a "good guy" by society because he plays by its rules (well, when he knows can't get away with breaking them, anyway), who is the counterpart of Myrtle, the mean, aggressive, sadistic schoolyard bully who is viewed as a "good kid" by other adults because she plays by the rules they established (well, when she knows she can't get away with breaking them, anyway). Both Gantu and Myrtle are, in truth, much nastier in temperament than Stitch and Lilo, but are better at hiding it in front of others and so get away with it, and often make Stitch and Lilo look worse in the eyes of others by provoking them to violence and then playing the victim about it - in fact, both even have the same line, "Does this look infected to you?", which they say after goading their respective wild-child victims into biting them.

The symmetry of these two plotlines allows them to actually feed into each other and build each other up instead of fighting each other for screentime. The fantastical nature of Stitch's plot adds whimsy to the far more realistic problems that Lilo faces so they don't get too heavy for the children in the audience, while the very real struggles of Lilo in her plotline bleed over into Stitch's plot and make both very emotionally poignant. When both plotlines hit their shared climax, they reach children on a emotional level few other movies can match - the terror of Lilo being taken away from her family, and the emotional complexity of that problem (Cobra Bubbles pointing to Lilo's ruined house and shouting at Nani, "IS THIS WHAT LILO NEEDS?" is so starkly real and heart-breaking), is matched and echoed in the visual splendor and mania of the spectacular no-way-this-is-going-to-work chase scene where Stitch, Nani, Jumbaa, and Pleakley all team up to rescue Lilo from Gantu.

The arcs of the characters all more or less line up. Nani confronts her own failures to be a guardian and parent to Lilo and resolves to do better and learn from her mistakes. Jumbaa, who through most of the movie protests to be evil and uncaring, nonetheless comes to not only care for Pleakley, but more importantly for Stitch too, and ends up assuming the role he never wanted but nonetheless forced himself into from the start: he is Stitch's family. Hell, the moment that reveals this is really clever - Stitch goes out into the wilderness to try and re-enact a scene from a storybook of The Ugly Duckling, hoping, in a very childish way, that his family will show up and love him. Jumbaa arrives and, coldly but not particularly cruelly, tells Stitch that he has no family - that Stitch wasn't born, but created in a lab by Jumbaa himself. But in that moment Jumbaa is proving himself wrong - because Stitch's creator, his parent, DID show up, and did exactly what happens in the story by telling Stitch the truth of what he is. It can't be a surprise, then, that later in the movie Jumbaa ends up deciding to side with Stitch, to help him save Lilo, and to stay on Earth with his child.

David and Pleakley go from being pushed away by Nani and Jumbaa respectively to essentially becoming their partners in the family. The Grand Councilwoman and Cobra Bubbles finally see how cruel their initial solution of isolating Stitch and Lilo from their family would be, and bend the rules they are supposed to enforce to protect and support this weird found family instead of breaking it apart. Gantu and Myrtle are recognized for the assholes they are and face comeuppance in the form of comedic slapstick pratfalls. And most importantly, Stitch and Lilo both get the emotional support and understanding they need to thrive and live happy lives as children should be allowed to do. It's like poetry, it rhymes.

It's a very precise, smartly written movie. It's a delicate balancing act of tone and emotions, with a very strong theme about the need for family and understanding that hits children in their hearts and imaginations. It's extremely well structured.

...

from a design perspective, even though he's an alien, he has so many little anatomy quirks that make him a more believable fat character than many fat human designs in other media. I love the realistic sag and layering of the fat on his arms, the lack of neck definition, the rim of chub around his face and upper back, the way his back is rounded. his clothes pull taut and pinch in anatomically accurate places (e.g. shoulders are firmer = smoother outlines, the sides and back are squishier = bumpier outlines).

and he's stylized so well! all these great details boiled down to some simple shapes and pen strokes. IMO the Lilo and Stitch art style is extremely appealing - it's warm and clean and visually pleasing, but every character is super unique. Jumba isn't supposed to be pretty, but even though he's a very large, very fat, bald older guy who spends most of the movie in crop tops, the way he's stylized and staged makes it clear the audience is supposed to find him interesting to look at, and variably intimidating/cool/powerful/capable. he's often funny, but the physical aspect of his comedy is derived from being so hefty the other characters struggle to prevent him from barreling ahead and doing whatever he wants; being fat makes him come off more in control of the funny situations he gets into, not less. also, because the art style is what it is, a lot of his character acting also just makes him look kind of cute ... though that's universal across the cast

I also really like the fact that his size clearly gives him both realistic advantages and realistic disadvantages. along with having a stronger sense of agency in the comedic scenes, his size in combination with his impulsivity also makes him a more intimidating antagonist. you never know what he's going to do, and his size makes it difficult for other characters to stop him when he's made up his mind. at the same time, it seems to take him longer to catch his breath, he sometimes grunts when moving around a lot to imply it takes more effort, and he clearly struggled to find clothes that fit him when putting together his disguise. I think it's awesome that the character's size impacts how he interacts with the world so much, and again, in relatable ways

and personality wise, it is ALWAYS great to see fat characters portrayed as intelligent - not only is Jumba an accomplished scientist, he's also crafty and witty! a few quiet scenes imply a philosophical side, as he ponders on Stitch's existence and feelings as a living weapon. with Stitch explicitly being made in his own image to an extent, I'd argue there's even room to interpret some of the things he says about Stitch being hints to how he sees himself; we never learn much about Jumba's past, but it's clear he's a social misfit and strongly defiant. I don't think it's a stretch to assume some of what he said to Stitch about being a monster who can never belong anywhere was intended to read as projection (which makes it all the more heartwarming when both of them find a place to belong on Earth)

it's also a nice twist that toward the end, Jumba is the one who is unexpectedly compassionate toward Nani, while Pleakley tries to urge him to ignore her. again alluding to a level of emotional depth and intelligence that is often missing from even well-intentioned depictions of fat people. his character isn't even fully explored, and yet he's one of the most dynamic and interesting supporting characters in a movie full of fantastic characters. the audience is expected to find him fascinating and even sort of mysterious, and he is!

the sequels and spinoffs were more merchandise-driven franchise fluff for kids than the artsy direction of the original movie, but even so, I remember Jumba went on to become Lilo's lovable, amoral uncle figure, which I also thought was so fun as a kid. I love that they committed to the fact that he was more caring and compassionate than he seemed. not only was he a cool evil mad scientist character, but he was also eventually ... a friend ...