30 Day TMNT Challenge: Day 1
I need an excuse to ramble about Turtles. Unfortunately I wasnāt able to find a challenge here on Tumblr, which Iām sure is probably more related to Tumblrās 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 Iām going for it.
Itās Donatello, of course. Though as Iāve gotten older, Leonardo has become a close second.
Though Iāve 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 Raphās 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 didnāt realize they were two different adaptations, or that the cartoon I was watching was a new one. I donāt think I fully grasped the concept of series having different adaptations that werenāt in the same timeline until I was about 13 or 14. (Itās part of why I took so long to branch outside of Cybertron with Transformers, because I didnāt understand that things like Beast WarsĀ 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 hadnāt 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.Ā
For the character of Donatello and my own nerdiness, I think itās kind of a chicken-and-egg scenario, because I donāt think I would have been as drawn to the character if I hadnāt already shared some of his traits, but I also donāt think those shared traits would have become as pronounced as they are if he hadnāt been my favorite character.
Donnieās enthusiasm for the stuff he built and tinkered with also proved to be a bit contagious, and the only thing I couldnāt 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, itās easy to hone in on it and lose track of everything else, and since he had access to all kinds of technology, well, itās pretty easy to see how that would end up.
Though actually, as Iāve gotten older, I can definitely appreciate that he goes ahead and draws a crappy stick figure. Some engineer-types Iāve 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 withĀ more experience.Ā So I definitely appreciate Donnie being like,Ā āWell, a stick figureās the best I can doā and then just slapping that thing down on the paper. You donāt 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 werenāt, so his voice was a lot easier to handle even in scenes were he actually was shouting.
Hmm....Iām 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 TurtlesĀ 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 didnāt make sense why they would say something like that and the other person wasnāt 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 didnāt 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 didnāt exist in some of the other series I watched, where the sarcastic voice was virtually indistinguishable from a characterās normal voice, or their behavior was consistent with it enough that I couldnāt tell they werenāt serious. The Turtles, but especially Donnie, were usually pretty obvious either in vocal tone or like, the kind of body language they were using.Ā
Though admittedly, as Iām rewatching the episodes, there actually is at least one Donnie moment I can think of where I didnāt understand he was being sarcastic. That oneās inĀ āTales of Leo,ā when Donnie is telling the story of losing his car, and in the end, asks,Ā āWhat, you didnāt get the car?ā
I think in part because I was used to an obvious change in tone whenever Don was being sarcastic, and because of how Leoās head turned with that expression immediately after, I didnāt realize he wasnāt being serious until I was about 18. So really, even characters I think I understand very well can trip me up at times.