#robotsandturtles

Then Splinter is blackmailed into facing Shredder in order to save April. He follows through, but for as long as he can Splinter wears his hood and keeps his face covered, only revealing himself to Shredder as sort of a visceral admission at the moment of confrontation. Then, when Shredder mocks him for his appearance, it visibly hurts.

This suggests Splinter showed his face not because he sees his appearance as a part of who he is, but only because if he intends to kill Shredder then he wants his face to be the last thing Saki sees before he dies.The fight goes on, and Shredder reveals that Splinter’s daughter wasn’t truly lost in the fire, and that instead she’d been raised under him in the footclan, fed lies about her origin so that she’d end up hating him. It was then… on the edge of defeat… that something in Yoshi snaps.

Shredder goes in for the finishing blow, and Splinter proceeds to finally use those rat teeth of his in combat, performing what should be considered the coolest blade catch in the history of forever.

And as far as using the advantages granted to him by his mutation go, he doesn’t. Stop. There.He goes the full nine yards, leaning into his rat form with full acceptance for what I can assume was the very first time.

But that’s old news right? Splinter was forced to face his own fears, and through it he learned to accept his new state of being.

But then again, maybe the lesson of “learning to accept yourself” would’ve be simpler if it was purely an image issue. I’ve mentioned in a previous post that Splinter has a problem with reliance on other people, how a need to be needed has an unintentional connection with his sense of existence which… with the introduction of his mutation… has led to the presence of a feral state that he retreats into when he’s alone.It’s possible that the barriers Splinter built for himself in season 1 were out of self-preservation. Maybe he misjudged what it was that fueled his animalistic impulses, and figured that he just needed to try harder to hold it together… try harder to be a human.I can’t say for certain.

What I do know is that Splinter’s attitude does change after this encounter with Shredder. I won’t go into all of the details, but I think that everything can be summed up by comparing monologues from season 1 and season 2

I, Monster:

“Everything I know I gone. My wife… my daughter… my clan….… even my humanityYou four are all I have left.”

The Lonely Mutation Of Baxter Stockman:

“I am content with what I have becomeI have no place in the human world anymore.This is my home, and you four are my family.”

He seems to have achieved a new point of view about his situation, as well as a willingness to put himself out there and enter stressful situations. He’s not perfect, he’s still a bit of a recluse that’ll only fight if help is directly requested, but you can see him slowly improving over the seasons until it seems like he’s completely content with his appearance. 

Then we get “Darkest Plight”…

Hoooo boy Darkest Plight.In the events leading up to his unfortunate situation Splinter had not hesitated to fall back on his rat instincts, crawling up walls on all fours and biting his opponent in order to defend himself. However, when he’s horribly injured and suffering from a fever all alone in the bottom of a pit he has some hallucinations, and those hallucinations are extremely telling when it comes to Splinter’s deepest insecurities.

“There is no escape. We are trapped… like rats. But here, in the darkness, you belong to me”

“So noble. You think that makes you more than a beast? Spend enough time with me here and you will see you are nothing but an animal”

“See? this is what you are! A monster! A freak! An animal!”

“You can not rid yourself of me! I will be with you always, in the darkest parts of your mind. I am your teacher! I am your master!”

These bits of dialogue would be one thing if this was The Rat King Splinter was speaking with, but you have to remember that none of this was real. In the midst of Splinter’s steady recession into his feral state he had been having an argument with his own mental breakdown.

I have a theory:Maybe in his feverish state, Victor Falco had become a literal incarnation of not just his mutation, but the dangerous aspect of his rat side; the part of him that drove him to madness after The Invasion, the part of him that blindly attacked Casey Jones and couldn’t recognize his family. Splinter has mostly accepted who he is, but there has always been a part of his mutation that is mindless and dangerous. But this time he succeeds in overcoming it. He leans back on his memories of his family and his wife and regains the upper hand, staving off his descent into madness.

TL;DR: It’s complicated. After season one he seems to better accept his appearance, but what he looks like and the animalistic impulses accompanying his mutation are hard to completely separate. Overall, however, in struggling to overcoming his internalized hardships, even the worst side of his mutation has become a teacher of sorts…