I've Only Had Arlo For A Day And A Half

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About

I've Only Had Arlo For A Day And A Half is a memorable quote from Brooklyn Nine-Nine 's character Rosa Diaz expressing her deep bond with her newly acquired puppy. The statement she made in this occasion has been used various times by internet users as an immediate and intensively positive reaction to a new character, and has sometimes been used as an exploitable depicting fictional characters' reactions to a new character or thing.

Origin

In January 19th, 2016, the 12th episode of the 3rd season of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, "9 Days",^[1] was broadcast on Fox. In this episode, one of the subplots consists of Rosa Diaz trying to help Charles Boyle cope with the loss of his dog Jason. At some point, she gives him a puppy named Arlo as a replacement, which Charles refuses, leaving Rosa with a dog. Near the end of the episode, the subplot reaches its outcome when Rosa organizes a surprise funeral ceremony for Jason, and gives a speech explaining how adopting Arlo made her truly realize the reason for Charles's mourning:

When Jason died, seven days ago, I didn't give a rat's ass. Because I didn't understand why people care so much about their dumb dogs… until I got a dumb dog myself. I've only had Arlo for a day and a half, but if anything happened to him, I would kill everyone in this room and then myself. Charles, I'm sorry. You don't have to get over it. Take as long as you want.

The oldest still-existing source for this speech on the Internet is a TVGag page^[2] with four MP4 videos from Jason's funeral, the last two of which containing the infamous quote. The oldest image containing the full sentence is a Gif from a now deactivated Tumblr account^[3].

Spread

The oldest parody of the scene dates from March 23rd, 2017, when user Madame Pererine, on the website Oro Jackson, a site dedicated to the shonen One Piece, posted the quote as two subtitled shots, with Sir Crocodile's face photoshopped on Rosa's^[5], as a reference to the opening illustration of the chapter 860.

Starting from 2017, several Tumblr posts started using this quote to describe the relationship between two fictional characters. On March 31st, inspired by a now deleted post^[6] from the Tumblr blog Incorrect BHNA Quotes, Tumblr user help-how-do-i-name-my-blog posted a photoshopped version of the scene with Todoroki Shouko as Rosa and Midoriya Izuku as Arlo^[7] (shown below, left), commenting: "their post competition relationship in a nutshell". On July 21st, Tumblr user Conejos uploaded a similar fanart^[8] of Fat Gum and Kirishima Eijirou, still from the shonen My Hero Academia (shown below, right).

On July 28th, 2017, Tumblr user crystalzenaida uploaded a version of the scene^[9] with Feh, an owl who appears in the video game Fire Emblem Heroes, appearing as Arlo, with this comment: "They gave the Borb a voice. She must be protected." This is the first of many occurrences of this meme where Arlo is the only one photoshopped as a fictional character, and the uploader is implied to relate to Rosa. This is how the meme was mostly used popularly with the announcement of Pokémon Sword and Shield in 2019. For example, Tumblr user pixelpulp made art with Scorbunny after the Ppkémon was announced in the style of the template, gaining over 900 notes (shown below, right).

In March 15th, 2018, a picture featuring 4 subtitled shots of the scene was posted on Reddit^[4] in the subreddit r/brooklynninenine. It reached a score over 2900, with 97% of upvotes, and generated 32 comments.