#rin does fandom

Mostly because dark stories can still be written badly. They can still be written in a "shallow" manner and have flat characters, weird pacing, or questionable build-up between events. A writer can still get so caught up on the idea of being "dark" and "mature" that they neglect the actual elements that make up a story and churn out something crappy as a result. Just as an example, does anyone really want to argue that All-Star Batman and Robin is on the same level of storytelling as Batman: No Man's Land?

Conversely, stories we might think of as lighter and softer, or even silly can still be used to explore "deeper" themes. Sometimes couching your ideas in a more light-hearted story can even help the point come across in a way that you maybe couldn't have done in a more "serious" work. Just off the top of my head, Return of the Caped Crusaders could be argued to explore the idea of a darker and edgier Batman from a narrative and framing perspective, asking the question of whether there is a point at which a hero's actions stop being heroic, and yes, you absolutely could explore that narrative in a darker Batman story, but in this case, the comparatively light-hearted narrative allows for greater contrast between his actions before and after being dosed with the "Batnip."

The 2019 anime has the expansion of Mio’s character, depiction of Hyakkimaru’s soul sight, and the introduction of Kaname, while the stage play has this amazing use of suggestion (such as how the monsters are often represented by people in black with ribbons or cloth) and nonverbal cues, as well as pulling off some impressive emotional gut-punches with its characters, while the movie has Dororo’s character arc and excellent use of queer themes while also pulling off several emotional gut-punches, the game has Tahomaru’s arc and uses a scrapped idea from the manga in a cool way (and also emotional gut punches in a different way than the above versions), the manga has this great juxtaposition of comedy and horror, 1969 has Nota (and yes there are other things too, but dudes, Nota), and while I’m admittedly not far enough in Den to say for sure, it seems to be doing a lot of interesting things with character interactions in a way that hasn’t really showed up in previous versions. 

The main problem is really that old habits die hard, and so when I start thinking about checking out some episodes, my brain tends to go, “Oh, hey, remember that time Mikey and Donnie pretended to be bigfoot?” or “Remember that clip show episode you liked so much?” or “Hey, you should rewatch XYZ story arc because reasons” or even “Remember this episode that caused you to develop XYZ headcanon?” and it’s like

So I don’t have a fanart ready in time for Mikey Monday, and I can’t write a fic that fast under pressure. So instead, here’s a blurb about my appreciation for Mikey being my youngest sister’s favorite Turtle.

I need an excuse to ramble about Turtles. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to find a challenge here on Tumblr, which I’m sure is probably more related to Tumblr’s crappy search system than anything else, but on Google I did find a picture of some prompts that seems to have come from Amino, so I’m going for it.

Day 1: Favorite Turtle

It’s Donatello, of course. Though as I’ve gotten older, Leonardo has become a close second.

Though I’ve used a picture of the 2003 series, my first exposure was actually an arcade game called Turtles in Time, and I originally played as Raphael. The girl next to me playing as Donatello absolutely hated the mechanics of the bo staff, and I was having a hard time using Raph’s sais without taking damage from being too close, so we switched and Donnie became my main ever since.

Then I got into the 2003 series on Cartoon Network. At the time, I didn’t realize they were two different adaptations, or that the cartoon I was watching was a new one. I don’t think I fully grasped the concept of series having different adaptations that weren’t in the same timeline until I was about 13 or 14. (It’s part of why I took so long to branch outside of Cybertron with Transformers, because I didn’t understand that things like Beast Wars were separate continuities and not just continuations or prequels that replaced all the characters for no reason).

But of course, even without my understanding of separate continuities, I instantly became attached to my former main. To some extent, I wonder if I would have turned out as nerdy as I did if that hadn’t happened, but I definitely already had some predisposition to get attached to the nerdy characters in a given series even before that. I went through a phase where I had to tinker with things, and I think I still have the circuitry and motherboard of an old DVD player I took apart. 

For the character of Donatello and my own nerdiness, I think it’s kind of a chicken-and-egg scenario, because I don’t think I would have been as drawn to the character if I hadn’t already shared some of his traits, but I also don’t think those shared traits would have become as pronounced as they are if he hadn’t been my favorite character.

Donnie’s enthusiasm for the stuff he built and tinkered with also proved to be a bit contagious, and the only thing I couldn’t really relate to was his general lack of artistic skill, which I attributed to lack of interest since his tech stuff took up so much of his time. But I can get that. When you have access to the thing you want to do, it’s easy to hone in on it and lose track of everything else, and since he had access to all kinds of technology, well, it’s pretty easy to see how that would end up.

Though actually, as I’ve gotten older, I can definitely appreciate that he goes ahead and draws a crappy stick figure. Some engineer-types I’ve met in real life still attempt to draw at the same level of someone with 15+ years of experience, while somehow mathematically calculating the perfect angles and shading, and just end up frustrating themselves by comparing their work to that of someone with more experience. So I definitely appreciate Donnie being like, “Well, a stick figure’s the best I can do” and then just slapping that thing down on the paper. You don’t have to be perfect, and I appreciate that he gets that.

I think his having a softer voice helped things, too. When I was younger, a lot of things sounded like shouting to me even when they weren’t, so his voice was a lot easier to handle even in scenes were he actually was shouting.

Hmm....I’m trying not to get too far into later prompts, because there are a few others that could be answered with Donatello, and which may overlap with what I might say here. But anyway...

Donnie was also one of the characters who helped me to learn to understand sarcasm. Between Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Transformers: Cybertron, I started being able to pick up on it, where before I just thought that people were being peevish and snapping at each other for no reason, and it didn’t make sense why they would say something like that and the other person wasn’t getting upset. But for Donnie (and really, Raph as well, even though his short temper sometimes made it harder to tell) it was generally pretty obvious that he didn’t mean it maliciously. At least part of this could be attributed to his voice, since the softer tone kind of blunted his sarcasm a bit, but I think in the Ninja Turtles series, there was also usually something of a change in vocal tone when they were being sarcastic which didn’t exist in some of the other series I watched, where the sarcastic voice was virtually indistinguishable from a character’s normal voice, or their behavior was consistent with it enough that I couldn’t tell they weren’t serious. The Turtles, but especially Donnie, were usually pretty obvious either in vocal tone or like, the kind of body language they were using. 

Though admittedly, as I’m rewatching the episodes, there actually is at least one Donnie moment I can think of where I didn’t understand he was being sarcastic. That one’s in “Tales of Leo,” when Donnie is telling the story of losing his car, and in the end, asks, “What, you didn’t get the car?”