I'm So Emotional About Season 1 Nya..... Like Here She Admits To Spending Hours Trying To Find A Plausible

when you slow down this scene, there's a little detail that–while not really noticable–arin's reactions are a little later than the rest, and his facial expressions shift alot moreso than the others, showing how he's probably pretty unfocused

and with that detail, kai seems to be the one who's the most focused, as even nya and lloyd's expressions occasionally shift (lloyd being the most out of the three of them), while he stayed unchanged the entire time

Who wants to overthink legos with me? No? Too bad, here goes

Okay so do you ever think about how the circle is (accidentally) a recurring motif in Ninjago? A running list of examples:

Ouroboros, the snake eating its own tail, which is commonly represented in a circular shape and represents infinity with endless return. Thats how they defeat the Great Devourer, actually, by getting it to bite its own tail

The original shape of Ninjago before the FSM pangea'd it

Spinjitzu is essentially the process of weaponizing circular motion. Airjitzu is similar, and even creates a sphere of air/light around the user

In the earlier seasons, Lloyd's main attack involved creating balls of energy

The light from portals - time vortex, Traveler's Tea, the Blind Man's Eye, the Realm Crystal - tend to resemble vortexes

Dragons often have to spin in order to traverse realms

All the circle imagery in the Temple of Light

Jay and Nya's yin-yang badges

Yang's whole "close the circle" shtick

The dust circle that swirled around the ninja at the end of Skybound when Jay said his final wish and all of time was undone

Zane's old house is circular/cylindrical, and the camera spiral-zoomed on him when his memories returned

The architecture on Chen's island

The Celestial Clock

Flower petals circling around Lloyd when he met the FSM

In that flashback when Mystake was telling the story of the Oni and the Dragon, with the FSM creating a circular yin-yang symbol to represent the combining of both light and dark

This is a bit of a stretch, but Zane's notably circular power core

Kryptarium is a panopticon style, which is circular in design. On that note, the s8 Lloyd v Garmadon fight happening at Kryptarium. Lloyd was familiar with the usual procedure of saving Garm, only for that typical cycle of saving and losing his father as Garmadon throws him through the wall and out of the prison

Lots of fights actually have the camera pan in circles around the fighters

That little hand paint collage they all made at the end of season 10

The spiraling bioluminescence surrounding the FSM's corpse

Actually, lets take it a step further. Cycles of violence. Sins of the father. History repeating itself. Harumi and Loyd's backstories causing, opposing, and reflecting one another, with her ending where Lloyd began and vice versa. The inheritance of elemental power, something endlessly recursive. Generational trauma.

Not to mention theres a heavy emphasis on either breaking cycles or perpetuating them. Lloyd saying "I wont let it do to me what it did to you." Harumi saying "i want you to feel the emptiness i feel." Morro saying "I make my own destiny." The Overlord possessing the Great Devourer so it would bite Garmadon. Lloyd wanting to be like his father but then being a hero instead. Nya quoting her mother in her final moments. Again i repeat. Generational trauma.

Theres just. This overwhelming sense of recursion and cycles throughout the entire series, and im mad bc im like 90% sure the writers didnt do that intentionally. Im not smart enough to put it into words but if i think about this for too long im gonna start biting things

I admit I'm not the best at EYEBROWS. I messed up Kai's a lot in that one comic. Mainly because I didn't check my references. I pray the spelling is alright. 🙏

Idk if yall have had the chance to look at this ninjago book at the Barnes and Noble but these pages really tickled me. Like????? is Zane okay?????? canonically????????????????

Even the publishers can't resist emperor-posting

hot take: lloyd in crystalized was not out of character. my reasoning for this is... actually there's a lot of reasoning. one of the biggest complaints people have about crystalized lloyd is how he treats his father in comparison to early seasons lloyd and to that i say: early seasons lloyd had not been disowned nor had he been beaten half to death by his father. i don't think i would be as willing to work with my father had that happened to me. his reasoning (garmadon being oni) may have been flawed, but i also think he was putting his own personal reasonings (being disowned and almost killed) behind, and attacking the thing that didn't include how he was treated.

i understand why people would be mad about lloyd attacking the oni side of his father, given the fact that mystake was amazing and also sacrificed herself for him, but when people are trauma responding, they tend to forget the good things and focus on the bad. lloyd didn't want to bring his own feelings into it, because he has invalidated his own feelings. therefore, he attacks the thing that has nothing to do with him.

DISCLAIMER: i am not attacking nor am i intending to invalidate people who think that lloyd suffered "character assassination" in crystalized. i just feel the need to give my own opinion about it. i will most likely talk about this topic again because i am so passionate about it.

Ninja's art skills from canon:

Kai

Nya

Cole

Zane

Jay's paintings from Farewell the Sea(I couldn't find good pictures of them)

Arin

Sora

Now we only need Lloyd,Wu,Pixal and Wyldfyre

The Explorer's Club is one of the funniest episodes because it's basically a session of DnD where Nya decides she's Done Roleplaying 5 minutes in.