LDS | 25 | She/Her | Ace | Youtuber | Writer | Pixal Stan | Call me Kitten :)
I’ve seen a LOT of attempts at human Frak designs, and I just have to say, I don’t think hanging on to the green in his skin/hair is the key distinction, I don’t think mimicking his head scales with the slick back or the mohawk does it, I think what you really need to do is just lean into the fact that as a human, he would be the most severely ginger man on the planet.
Just stupidly bright curls that are a new flavor of messy every time you look at him, freckles so ubiquitous it looks like an optical illusion, a chipped tooth, and just the instantly flushest skin any time he moves even remotely strenuously.
More so than Cole being absent for large stretches for the show, I think this moment right here is the most disappointing thing Dragons Rising did with Cole’s character for me:
Hi!! Really loved your video about Frak (Honestly he’s a really overhated character somehow) and I was thinking about Techtontic
If (Not saying this is the route I would want but if) they wanted to go the route of Sora not accepting Frak’s feelings it could be something along the lines of that she does like Frak but she doesn’t want them being together end up with one or both of them getting hurt
If we think about the relationships around Sora I mean, Nya has been distraught over Jay for 2 whole seasons and when she finally gets him back he has no memories and doesn’t really care for her, Pixal was missing for 2 seasons and as soon as he found her Zane had to be rebuilt, Roby keeps almost dying because of the seasons villain three times in a row, if you want to count Skylor we don’t even know where she is.
Why would Sora want to be in a relationship if she is able to see that being a Ninja means one of you will be hurt! This also doesn’t even bring up her whole situation with Arin which while not romantic it still was a strain on their friendship. She already knows the affects of being a Ninja and what it can do to her relationships with others.
This could end with Sora learning that, yeah, these types of things can happen but that shouldn’t stop her from pursuing something if she does really want it. Realizing even though Zane got hurt he and Pixal are still together and love each other deeply, Roby and Wyldfire are still together even though they’re not even in the same place most of the time and all this crazy stuff still happens. Or something along the lines of that. And then she and Frak can get together
This is good. No matter what, I do really like the idea of Sora having relationship hang ups either because of those around her or her past or both- no matter the reason, I definitely think she would be hesitant to jump into things, and her learning to open up and allow herself to make new connections is a no brainer character arc for her I feel.
It would be kind of interesting to see this character who was so adverse to becoming a ninja at first, now so dedicated to the mission that she’s actively denying herself any form of personal life. And while I think the whole Arin/Sora plot is supposed to affirm the importance of their personal relationship, it would be a really cool story move for Sora to conclude from everything that’s happened that her driving Arin away wouldn’t have happened if they weren’t so close to begin with, and her following Arin because she cared for him so much led to her almost being pushed into a murder pit, so clearly the best way to succeed in their missions is to distance herself emotionally from everything. And that would force Frak to open up and be the emotionally vulnerable one to try and snap her out of things, which is something he obviously struggles with, like it makes for some great built in character development for both of them.
Plus, I certainly would like this plotline to be a slow burn, so any (reasonable and interesting) bumps in the road they have to work through would be greatly appreciated.
Hold on, cooking up some new techtonic shenanigan ideas-
What if you combine wingman Arin and the tragic misunderstanding plot? Frak decides not to confess to Sora because she obviously doesn’t like him back. Arin notices he’s sad, asks him about it, and he confides this in him. Arin’s trying to convince him to shoot his shot anyway, but Frak can’t get past the potential embarrassment if he gets turned down. Meanwhile Sora’s slowly falling for Frak, she confides this to Arin because she’s never had a crush on someone before, and he’s certainly the only person she can trust to talk about it with. At first Arin is delighted, because he sees what’s happening and the beautiful inevitability of it all. But then Sora keeps going on about how she thinks Frak must hate her guts because he’s been ignoring her a lot recently, and she had been pretty judgemental of him for a while. And Arin’s just sitting there, watching it all fall apart like “no, no, no, you need to tell him!” But Sora won’t be convinced because she’s too scared of the potential rejection given all her self confidence issues.
So Arin is just caught in the middle slowly going insane watching his two best friends refuse to let themselves be happy. He tries everything he can think of to get the two of them to organically confess to each other, but they both seem to be impervious to all his attempts. He tries to rant to Lloyd about the situation, but Lloyd refuses to make any kind of comment on the matter given his romantic history.
Eventually it all culminates in Arin being boarderline furious at the two when they finally do confess their feelings like “look at that! Was that so hard?! I told you! You can’t say I didn’t, because I TOLD you!!! Now if you don’t kiss soon, I AM going to murder one or both of you.”
I thought I would come on here and mention my thoughts on the whole ‘lesbian sora’ angle of the techtonic backlash since so many people are mentioning it in the comments of my most recent video. It is something I thought about while making it, but ultimately decided not to mention it, as it was already long enough, my points didn’t really build towards the main argument, and I don’t know how much weight my thoughts on this matter even should be given. You can probably tell, but I am not in the wlw portion of the queer community, so the last thing I want to do is lecture those who are on how they should feel about matters of their own representation. Romantic problems surrounding female representation in general, and ace potential specifically is something I feel very confident in expressing my opinions on, so that’s what I covered. Sora was not a particularly ace-coded character, and blaming Frak for personally ruining some imagined quota on unattached women is dumb. Sora’s gay coding on the other hand, I am much more torn on.
Just a love letter to/defense of my favorite little snake boy that weirdly had to cover a lot of complex topics. If you’d like to give it a little algorithm push, now is a great time :)
Sora knows Frak likes her, and maybe even likes him back, but isn’t willing to engage unless he has the guts to just admit it to her. I have… proof? i have nothing close to proof. I have some overanalyzed frames and voice lines after binging all the show’s Frak scenes, but what the heck.
All of our moments where Frak shows his hand a bit too much, Sora gives him the opportunity to double down and make his feelings known, every time he backs out, and every time she gets progressively more annoyed with him. The first time with Zane she sounds genuinely surprised, so we can assume this is where she realizes he might have feelings for her. It’s kind of ridiculously hard to miss.
Sora is in a funk about it for the next couple episodes as she works through her feelings about it, leading to the two of them bickering non stop, and Sora finding every excuse possible to be annoyed by him, almost like she’s overcompensating for something…
The next time Frak slips up, Frak says he was losing sleep over her, and her voice sounds almost hopeful? If they wanted to make it clear Sora wasn’t going to have interest in him, you would probably want to go with a more confused delivery, like she thinks it’s weird this new guy is losing sleep over her. But it’s not that, it sounds more like she thinks it’s sweet and maybe hopes this could make for a genuine moment between them- but Frak slams that shut just as quickly as he opened it.
This is followed by a string of episodes where Sora is again increasingly annoyed with Frak, leading to his confession in the final fight, and him bringing up ‘some huge pressing confession’ (boy wonder what it could possibly be). In the heat of battle this annoys her to no end because like, really? You’re gonna do it now? After all the other opportunities we’ve had to do this? But after he makes his confession, her voice again has a bit of that hopeful tone, and the animation even makes a point of having her smile for the first few moments, before shifting to the thoroughly confused and disappointed look a moment later.
Like, her lips are so pointedly upturned for a second that it shows up even when her mouth is rounded- almost like she was expecting to hear something else, which makes her happy, and then processed what he actually said, and was severely disappointed. She thought that he was finally going to confess his feelings, even if at the worst time possible, only to get the biggest backtrack yet from him.
I don’t think any of this is accurate to the show’s intentions, I think they are almost certainly going to go the clueless Sora route. There are several very clear indicators they give us that Sora has no idea, and I don’t think there’s much that can outweigh that. But I do think the dynamic of Frak being a scared fragile little soul, and Sora being perpetually annoyed that he won’t ask her out is fantastic. Like, their hypothetical confession scene should 1000% be an argument between the two of them where they’re both genuinely mad about how stupid the other person is for not confessing their feelings earlier.
Not that I think he deserved it or was the most skilled person there or anything, but I think it would have made for some compelling drama, been a great way to establish his character more fully, get a better look at his value judgments, and make a great transition point to make his joining the team a little clearer.
He still chooses to not shatter his goodness in his battle with Sora, but ends up winning regardless. Frak thinks this is great, but once he gets down, Ras still berates him for not doing as he was told, telling him he’s on his last straw (because ultimately he needs Frak under his COMPELTE control if he’s going to be a useful piece of his plan).
This means there’s even more pressure on Lloyd’s whole battle situation, and when he loses you get an honest to goodness low point because the whole ninja team is out of the tournament. The final match up is now between Frak and Nokt, and he’s under orders to lose to Nokt so Ras’s plans can follow through.
You can have another scene between Frak and Arin, or more of the ninja team. Maybe Sora and Lloyd are there too. Idk. But the ninja try to convince him not to let Ras get what he wants, and Frak leaves the interaction extremely conflicted. We don’t know what he’s going to do. And as we enter the final fight it’s not a question of who is more powerful, it’s a question of where Frak’s morals are going to fall- which to me is a much more interesting conflict.
And of course he decides to make the big dramatic choice to put up a fight. The ninja are cheering him on from the sidelines, Ras is freaking out a bit, the world gets turned on its head for a moment, but of course it doesn’t matter. Nokt still ends up winning, and it plays out similarly from there. But this way Frak has a little more agency, not just making a decision which inadvertently gets him kicked out of Ras’s circles, but making the decision to walk away from Ras on his own terms. It also aligns him with the ninja more directly rather than just no longer with Ras.
And once he ends up winning by default he gets this neat little piece of validation after seeing himself as letting down both teams he’s been a part of. Idk, currently he just sort of disappears when he loses to Sora, and then pops back up in season 3 as part of the team, and that’s a bit of a shame. I think this would make his transition to mainline ninja feel a little more earned, give him a much more dramatic character arc to introduce us to him, and really solidify his moral stances. It also makes for a much clearer mirror to Arin’s flip this season, the two of them having equally prominent moments where they switch places.
I was thinking about Techtonic and I was wondering about why would Sora have feelings for Frak so I'm asking what you think would be the reason since I don't know who else to ask regarding this topic
There’s a lot of things in could say here, but ultimately what I think it comes down to is that he’s a good guy, and he likes her.
To him she is important enough to love, in this particularly vulnerable way, and that’s not a feeling she’s been on the receiving end of before. She was denied love for a good chunk of her life, she has a hard time loving herself, and if your frame of reference for yourself for most of your life has been that you’re unlovable, being on the receiving end of romantic love can be extremely validating. Just the fact that he sees her as special makes him special to her.
But you know, he’s also stupidly friendly, extroverted, confident, honest, open (<- all of these are things she struggles with, you’ll notice), and can relate to her extremely personally on some of her biggest life issues surrounding her family. For better or worse, there’s never a dull moment with him around, the way he tries so hard that he trips over himself is endearing, it’s kinda cute the way his tongue always flicks out of his mouth, and all his little freckles…
I love fanart of Frak where, despite being so lame dork coded, he’s just absolutely JACKED. Strongest of the new ninja in raw muscle strength BY FAR. Like yeah, he may have the least natural charisma of any of the folks here, but we all know this kid has never once skipped leg day–
