#reciprocity asks

Sorry that I'm answering this like...a month later 😅 Please enjoy this little "dream room" scene below the cut from the upcoming Chapter 22!

I WON'T EVEN LIE, IT WAS 100% A FIST PUMP MOMENT LOL

There were there SO many little things in season 2 that had me like

Thank you so much!

I see the 2012 comparison since Reciprocity Casey is also the same age as the turtles, but 2012 Casey is probably the Casey I'm least familiar with 😅 I do love 1990s Casey, though! He's definitely one of my favorite versions of the character!

I think I'm mostly drawing from IDW Casey. The IDW comics have one of my favorite depictions of the Raph & Casey friendship in any TMNT iteration. They meet each other when they're both at an extremely low and vulnerable point in each of their lives, and their bond is just really something special because of this.

IDW Casey is a college student on a hockey scholarship, so he's not dramatically older than Raph. This makes him feel way more like Raph's peer imo. IDW Casey also just seems to have a lot more emotional intelligence than a lot of other Casey iterations lol. He's just a very contemplative guy and a good dude.

There's some other elements of IDW Casey and his backstory that I'm bringing into the fic, which I'm sure any IDW readers have already picked up on 👀

I gotta be honest, I don't really plan chapters out that much 😅

I mostly just have a general idea of where I want the story to go. I said this in an answer for a previous ask, but most of these major plot moments are already written. Everything else is just me trying to get from Big Moment to Big Moment and aren't necessarily planned out in huge detail...which is why I thought he parade flashback would be 3 chapters and is now 7 😬

So the most I have in the way of "planning" is random scenes or even just snippets of dialogue in a "master" Word document that's about 200 pages long, with everything (more or less) in chronological order. I work on a new chapter in a separate Word document and pull relevant pre-written scenes from the master doc if they happen to fit into whatever chapter I'm working on.

I have absolutely zero idea how many chapters Reciprocity is going to be. I know the overarching plot and themes, but I discover new ideas and details as I'm writing. It's just way more fun for me that way 🤷🏼‍♀️ I like giving myself the freedom to pivot or go on a bit of a side quest if a new and interesting concept reveals itself along the way.

I'm sorry if that's not helpful! My sister @sugarpasteltmnt had all her chapters for The Neon Void very meticulously planned out and I'm always SO jealous of how organized she is. Her chapter outlines were like, a work of art in themselves haha

This is a fun question, thank you for asking!

Mutant Mayhem came out on August 2nd 2023 and the first chapter of Reciprocity was posted August 20th 2023. I knew right away that I wanted to write a MM fanfic because there were a lot of questions I had, especially about Splinter, Baxter Stockman, the Mutanimals, TCRI, Cynthia Utrom, and the Shredder.

Fanfiction is fun because if you choose to take the original source material as 100% canon and don't change anything, especially when that source material leaves so much unanswered, I think the limitations that creates forces you to be even more creative!

I came up with my own backstory for how to answer these questions that doesn't contradict what we already know from MM. Then I asked "if this backstory I came up with was true, how would it impact the turtles?"

I was just getting back into the IDW turtle comics at the time MM came out. There are ideas/themes/plot lines in there that I thought would be interesting to see in the MM universe, too. The Astral Plane is the most obvious so far, and was a big inspiration for the mindscape abilities, but I'm also incorporating some other things from IDW that haven't been fully revealed yet...

The mindscape/mind meld was also heavily inspired by the ninja mind meld from Rise! I know I don't post about Rise much, but I'm also a huge Rise fan and it's what helped get me back into TMNT after so long!

There were also small snippets about the MM turtles that I found really interesting. I can't find the original tweet, but there was some tweet from the official Paramount account that was a picture of Leo and said something like "Double swords. Double Anxiety."I really loved MM Leo having anxiety and how he has to battle that in order to be the leader, but I wanted more of it.

I was also really intrigued by the description on the back of the Raph figure box that says he's "a sensitive turtle looking for someone to talk to". I loved this idea, but I don't think we got enough of it in the first movie and wanted to explore that more.

So...I settled on these main ingredients for the fic:

Answering the biggest unanswered questions I had at the end of MM

Incorporating elements from Rise & IDW like the ninja mind meld/Astral Plane communication, [redacted], and [redacted]

Focusing on Leo's anxiety vs sense of responsibility & Raph's anger vs his desire to connect with people on a deeper level

Then I think I did what every fic writer does came up with some key scenes. Most of these major plot moments are already written. Everything else is just me trying to get from Big Moment to Big Moment and aren't necessarily planned out in huge detail...which is why I thought he parade flashback would be 3 chapters and is now 7 😅

I've also tried to do the whole "write what you know" thing and draw from my personal experiences or knowledge to help flesh things out and make it feel more real. For example:

I did some live TV broadcasting work in college, so I draw from that during the parade and Shredder's broadcast hacks

I have experience with live events and parades, which I used to make the remembrance service and the parade more detailed

I've done crowd control at theme parks/ski areas/live events, some OEC training (Outdoor Emergency Care training for people who work in outdoor recreation industries), and mass casualty incident simulation training, so I drew from those experiences for the parade attack

We had a school shooting on campus back in college, and I pull from that for a lot of the actions characters make during the parade incident, as well as the emotions & psychological repercussions in the aftermath

I have a pretty big interest in consumer electronics, the history of the video game industry, and postwar Japanese economics...which will play into the story here very soon 😉

So on and so forth...my point is, you can use things you've done/experienced/learned to really round out your stories and give them more depth!

I mean I feel like I shouldn't really be giving advice, because I really didn't think it would take me this long to get like...only halfway through the fic. And who knows! It might be more than halfway, or less! idk lol! I have a famework in my head and most of the key moments already written, but I don't have each chapter perfectly outlined.

Just wanted to take a second to reiterate that Reciprocity is NOT abandoned. I wasn't even technically on hiatus with it, because I never thought to myself anything like "I am intentionally taking a break from this". It's just been slow going due to work/life and just generally not feeling super creative because of real world events.

HOWEVER

There's recently been this huge influx of new readers and new fanart, and holy crap has it been SO motivating. I feel like I'm back on the horse, so to speak. I've written more in the past couple weeks than I have in months!

I don't think there are going to be any canon ships in Reciprocity. I think I talked about this before, but I'm just not super into shipping or writing ships 😅 I don't mind if people read Reciprocity through a shipping lens for Raph & Casey or Leo & April, though!

If anything, I think it's more "pre ship" for Leo & April. I think Leo just hadn't made a move before he was kidnapped, so things between him and April were never really addressed.

The story will be focusing a lot on Leo's mental & physical health in the post-rescue recovery arc. I do plan on touching a bit on his crush on April then, but Leo will have a lot of other things to overcome before he has the mental & emotional bandwidth to seriously think about pursuing a romantic relationship...

That's not to say that I think Leo's crush on April isn't important! I think the fact that Leo's desire for a romantic connection like that is a really critical aspect of his character. The turtles want to connect with other people, and that drives the whole plot of the movie. As for Irma...