u/jamie_uwo

i'm slowly but surely getting through all the old PC games because i want to experience them all. i owned all of the CD-ROMs except 123 time activities, treasure hunt and preschool and tbh i have clearer memories of playing the games than i do the show

so far, my favorite from childhood to this day is still blue's art time activities(blue's clues was also my first artist's inspo, thanks to the tank clue lmao). i seriously would buy a full-fledged game of JUST the recycle town where you gather the recycled items and make dioramas and unlock more content as you progress instead of it capping at 6 dioramas and 2 screens of items. i did them all in one sitting 🥹 my definition of a cozy game really is just click and drag crafting and following basic instructions. and it would have to look the exact same so it feels familiar (this would never happen but a girl can dream)

i also really like the color mixing board game in the backyard and getting the ribbons. funny that this game taught me the tertiary colors before joe did in the actual show 😭

i realized the tuxedo jacket is the same pattern as the thinking chair. he skinned the thinking chair he murdered the thinking chair cold blood-

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episodes shown: dress up day, the story wall, blue goes to the doctor(but also seen in up, down all around and bedtime business), & i did that!

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i do love that joe occasionally shows his teasy, playfully mischievous side (the great joe's clues chase, stealing the thinking chair, etc.) but there are even specific episodes of him just making these little faces on the second "think" that caught me by surprise omg. this entire man has layers 😭

the one from "i did that!" got my attention and had me skimming through all the season 5 and 6 episodes to find other ones and these are my faves. most of the time he's all smiles but i have made some pretty unidentifiable sounds seeing some of these. and most of these particular ones are unique to their episodes

i know steve usually has like a "thinking face" when he does it but it's that face the whole time and he looks away, with joe he's actually giving you a look with eye contact and all.... gawdddd 🫠🫠🫠

another related thing to add and gush about: i don't think any take of "play blue's clues" with joe wearing purple has ever been repeated, at least with the thinking chair part cause that's the only part i checked. i think it's really cool though that purple got pushed more towards the end of the series and also used for blue's room season 2 intro and then became his permanent color. he is the only host internationally to wear purple and it's the only situation where he has a globally-exclusive color, at least based on everything that is publically known to this date. not even kevin wears purple when he was doing the joe episodes(which wasn't even that many). but yeah. joe is the specialest so he gets his own extra special color only for him :))) 💜💜💜

i just really feel this water clue in my soul... i remembered quite a few season 5 episodes fondly when i first rewatched but not these two as a whole, though these sounds alone really hit me. actual ear perking sounds

PERSONALLYYYYYYYY i just hope donovan releases his audition tape from 2000(?). according to him he recently got it converted into digital format and it includes his audition with him and steve both doing the christopher walken impressions [timestamp: 25:59 - 27:38], and the best part is that to him their acting is god awful LMFAO. but in another interview or video i think he said he hopes he'll one day get to share it with the world, somewhere along those lines.

but in general, with steve having done his viral shoutout video he did for the 25th anniversary, i feel like it's donovan's turn to celebrate with us, but in his own way. also with joe being the present guy, it's very "in character" :p he probably knows even steve fans who still resent him for taking his place would appreciate it. and i don't say this in the way that sounds like i am or any of us are entitled to it, but because donovan truly deserves his own recognition and spotlight for once

because i love them both so much and i would die for them, and this is before even getting into individual frames!!

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also the "COME ON, JOE!!!" coming from sprinkles is hilarious

if they DID ever bring back sprinkles for BC&Y!, personally i would have wanted him to be adopted by joe (as they're both baby brothers) and he would hang out in the present store while joe was working.

also very self-inserty here but i imagine with sprinkles being shy in "meet blue's baby brother" he would be changed to have selective mutism (like me) because there's like zero SM representation in children's media despite it being so common in young children(only 1 in 140). i see it as him only speaking(or barking) to joe and blue, but otherwise freezes up when anyone else visits the store, but gradually gets comfy with josh and other characters enough to respond nonverbally and then eventually whisper and speak/bark at full volume.

but my new favorite part of this headcanon is if joe outgrew boris and passed it down to sprinkles to use as his emotional support stuffed animal in order to feel less anxious and i loved it so much i had to draw it :3

also i'm just starting season 2 of blue's room so i don't know how the canon dynamic looks like yet but i STILL LOVE IT!!!!!

this might be pretty obvious but as someone who had to adapt to left-handedness due to a brachial plexus injury on the right side at birth i appreciate the extra consideration <3

also i understand w the kazoo it gets confusing cause it's behind the kazoo but the other alternatives are having the hand cover more than half or the whole kazoo or making it look like a right hand from the viewer's POV. so it's still a left hand to me :p

(this doesn't apply to when he was holding the handprints in the beginning of the ep, or in the blue's room segment with the little floating pictures of the hands where one of them was a right hand. imo they should have kept it consistent but whatevs)

i was genuinely curious of why horace and boris were named as such. only semi-related, but as a splatoon fan, whenever i hear the name "boris" my brain instantly goes to how the splatoon fandom nicknames the king salmonid, horrorboros, as simply "boris" or "horis boris," and horrorboros is based on the ouroboros symbol of the serpent eating its own tail. and i can't help but find this coincidence extremely interesting.

for context, horace and boris are already symbolic of their owners. like steve, an anteater is slower, quieter, kinda strange-looking, and i mean steve being strange in his behavior, how steve burns says he got "uncomfortably close to the camera" during his audition and traci and angela thought he was strange, but obviously in a way that was too mesmerizing. it's like you the viewer were the ant about to get eaten by the anteater. boris is more self explanatory... a (yellow) duck is an icon that points directly to childhood, because usually only baby duckling are bright yellow, and we associate it with the yellow rubber duck, a children's bath toy. ducks are louder and fast-moving in that they quack and flap their wings. joe is more childlike as he is the younger brother, the literal baby duckling, talks louder and is more expressive and energetic, calls the things he does "wacky" and "quacky" in the joe show. just sort of the opposite of steve, even to a smaller extent in early season 5. very straight man and funny man trope

+ these qualities specifically apply to the plushies themselves, but boris is bigger(joe is taller), floppier(more movement), button eyes are different sizes(chaotic), and horace is smaller(steve is shorter), stiffer(more serious), and eyes are the same size(orderly).

ANYWAY back to ouroboros, i don't know really anything about ancient symbols but surface level interpretations (death and rebirth) appear to match up with steve's passing of the torch to joe.

horace (ouro) being the "tail" that gets eaten and dies (which is like how steve leaves for college), boris (boros) being the "eating" snake head that its replenishes energy from the tail and takes its place (which is like how joe became the new host and changed the shows formula, realigning their target audience back to early gen z preschoolers instead of late millenial kids who grew up with steve). you could also reach and connect the endless cyclical nature of the symbol to the theory that "blue is just this immortal magical being that endlessly gets passed onto new owners forever" since we now also have josh, and blue is a storybook character that never ages.

he's about to play blue's clues to figure out how to make a krabby patty (how blue managed to get the secret formula is beyond me)

so i have been thinking a bit about joe.... as always. i also do a bit of comparison with steve but i havent watched the reboot yet so there's no comparison with josh yet. will probably circle back after i do. i also get a bit anecdotal :p

in 2019 i obv haven't watched blue's clues in a long time so at the time i didn't get the reasoning behind joe working at the present store but after rewatching after i get it now. pretty sure someone somewhere has highlighted this before, but the whole theme of gift-giving really is so abundant during the joe era, whether he receives something or he gives or makes something for you, the viewer.

like even from the beginning... first joe episode - BOOM! have this picture steve and i made for you. second joe episode - BOOM! have a notebook from blue. third joe episode - ACTUALLY!!! JUST TAKE THE WHOLE HOUSE!!! IT'S YOURS!!!!

then shortly there's the episode with his birthday where he gets a surprise party and a birthday present

then at a certain point after being spoiled with so much he starts giving back, and showing his appreciation instead of always explicitly telling you. when the show started going through its changes there was less time for joe ti make time to listen to the viewer to the extent that steve did (ex. during talking clues, basically skipping the routine post-clue dialogue). this was obviously to squeeze in the blue's room segments in season 6, but that lost time is made up through these quality gestures such as setting up the playdate stage and making the song for it, he set up the joe show all by himself AND set up joe's clues, he scrambled together a love day card and tells you he loves you, dressed up as santa in blue's room and gave out presents (although to other characters)

there's also miscellanous examples such as the 100th episode that celebrates you finding 300 clues (though if steve only shot just a few more episodes this wouldn't count), and legend of the blue puppy where blue is gifted the ability to talk to you, which in a way is a gift to you too. and in such a shorter time frame.

all of this compared to steve where it's not only much less frequent that he "gives" you gifts but usually he needs help picking out gifts for people (for mailbox, blue, joe) via asking you what the best choice for a gift is, or playing blue's clues. but with joe he's just kinda natural at it and is confident that you'll LOVE what he has just for you. and this may be reaching, but it's like he's always preparing for your visits while you're away because he's always thinking of you. always working on some big large scale project with blue to include you in, like the skidoo adventure, alphabet train, the big book about us, that big picture in colors everywhere.. that story on the wall with the rabbits.. the gift of fresh new experiences

for context i was born in 1998, i wasn't even 4 yet when joe became the host, but i liked blue's clues before i gained consciousness so i do remember a time before joe. my preference as a child was for the most part evenly split

joe doesn't exist to be a steve 2.0 and i believe it's because joe simply embodies a different parasocial love language entirely and excels at it in his own right. steve makes you feel heard and listens to you, while joe makes you feel special and pours into you. before factoring bias or birth year, both are valid needs that do get unmet in childhood and even in adulthood, one is just more common or more important to most than the other. surely most of us feel both to some extent, i know i do. at least that's how i interpret it as someone who hyperfixates on people and/or habitually pours into them even if they wouldn't do the same for me, just always doing all the work in relationships only for them to pour into others instead. been on the receiving end of it for the past several years and gave up and it's been lonely. so watching joe is a breath of fresh air for me, even if it's not "real". and it hits harder if you grew up watching the show by yourself as a only child like me who watched it alone in awe without interacting with the hosts at all, and that attention isn't shared with anyone else in the room. also unrelated i always love the silly goofballs, both in fiction and in real life :p

gawd when is donovan gonna do a shoutout for the joe homies like steve did for his people in 2021</3 i hope he does this year and also releases the infamous joe audition tape for the 30th oughh i'd cry

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TLDR; i have cracked the code. unwrapped the present, if you will. joe have BEEEG history with present, he persue present career. grass is green i know. i also feel like i'm pulling half of this out of my ass ngl

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EDIT: I COMPLETELY FORGOT there's also something about joe's schtick about just popping up out of nowhere or from unexpected directions at times. he's like a jack-in-the-box in human form which is very surprisey.. and gifts are surprises. he even does this in the "blue takes you to school" CD-ROM whenever you gift someone a painting and you visit them so they can thank you. then you go to the main classroom and joe just POPS out from the side to tell me they gifted a painting back and put it in your cubby. i didn't know that's what triggered the action til after playing a bit so he legit scared me more than once 🫪

i simply adore that even this entire goofball has his own soft and sappy moments

i bought the AYN thor back in april and it arrived mid-may. i intended on theming around another interest but it's dead to me now so it's joe & blue themed and i love the purple and blue 💜💙 :3 and i got almost every game in my backlog to work, including the steve-era CD-ROMs (bc as someone who prefers joe, it's pretty clear that humongous entertainment made the best games in the blue's clues franchise. i wish they still made them during the joe era)

such a sweet ducky :3

they gotta get the pawprints back together

(also the stripes and squares one was too funny i had to do that too)

cause they don't plan on leaving my brain anytime soon and i love them both so much. not brothers but BROS. like my new headcanon for joe is that when he was a kid he would be asked who the best brother ever to him is (expecting him to say steve) and he would pick josh over steve even though they're cousins 💀

i'm in the middle of rewatching the original blue's clues and i didn't have a super strong preference between steve and joe as a kid (other than maybe a mild crush on joe when i was 3-4), but now joe/donovan is starting to grow on me again real fast :p

i just started season 4 and literally can't wait for the joe episodes so in the meantime i'm becoming fixated on specifically joe and josh's cousin dynamic 😭💞✨️ i made a short compilation of clips from &you because i wanna prove a point but that'll have to wait cause i can't post images and vids in the same post. but it's like the two least popular hosts just decided to team up and become a duo so powerful even The OG™️ gets third-wheeled (no offense steve 🙏)

hope i'm not the only one here :'D