#shredder!raph

Short answer: “Inheriting the rage of a centuries-old demon" is a dope-ass idea, so if you’re a writer I would definitely encourage you to use that in your own stuff. But I think that if Raph’s temper worsens throughout the show, it should be because of his own character development and not a magical effect. However, a Shredder!Raph scenario could contribute to said worsening temper by inflicting emotional/psychological damage instead. :)

Long answer ahoy!

Looking at “Many Unhappy Returns” from the Shredder’s perspective makes it very clear why he does what he does. Like, he’s been dead for five hundred years, and then something went wrong with his resurrection. He’s waking up with no idea where he is or what’s going on and oh shit those guys are pointing weapons at him, that’s a threat!

Note that he doesn’t even bolt for them immediately, he does a warning stomp and screech (back off!) before starting to approach.

Those other guys are yelling, that’s also a threat,

and they’re closer so he’s gonna attack them first, actually. (None of the Foot wind up even comically injured, suggesting that flailing them around was an intimidation tactic rather than genuine Murderous Intent.)

And then the first group attacks, so of course he’s going to retaliate.

And then suddenly he’s somewhere else, with other threats (the animatronics), and then the first group that attacked him is back, so he’s gonna fight them again.

And these jerks just keep following him? He’s not going to ignore that. And WOW that’s a lot of bright lights and loud noises, which are also threats, what the fuck is going on?!

And then this tiny human girl chucks a giant metal box at him, holy SHIT?! Sure, the Shredder is a dangerous antagonist, but at this point I wouldn’t call him a “bad guy”, he’s literally just responding to what’s happening to him.

In summary, the Shredder was stressed tf out because he didn’t know where he was or what was happening, he retaliated against perceived threats, and quite possibly wouldn’t have attacked the turtles in the first place if they hadn’t just rushed in without understanding the situation.

Gosh, doesn’t that sound familiar?

So yeah, I’m waiting for Rise to give us that good good Shredder!Raph content.

As for the possibility of Leo taking over afterwards... no, but also yes, sort of? On the one hand, we know that Leo does have leadership capabilities, and it would be a waste for the narrative to not explore that. On the other hand, Rise has broken from the status quo in many ways, and it would also be a waste for the show to do a complete 180 and return to Leo Being The Leader™.

Consider how the “leader” role has influenced Leo in past iterations: his perfectionism wears on him and his brothers, any failure tanks his self-esteem, he feels isolated from the rest due to taking on such a large share of responsibility, being an authority figure grinds everyone’s gears, etc. It’s just bad for his mental health.

No doubt all this responsibility will also wear on Rise!Raph as the story progresses and the stakes get higher. It will be bad for him as well. But if Raph steps down, Leo will once again suffer from the weight of this role. So if neither option is quite correct, if neither brother can shoulder the burden of leadership alone, then the solution is just... for neither of them to shoulder the burden of leadership alone. Sure, Raph will probably remain leader in title and in spirit, but Leo taking on a sort of “deputy” role makes sense from a strategic standpoint, and would be good for his character development.

Here’s how I think it could go down:

The Shredder!Raph scenario will be different from the Shredder!Draxum scenario. The Shredder was starved for mystic energy the first time around, so he immediately chewed Draxum up and spit him out. But Raph could be compared more to a battery than a meal; it will take a while for the Shredder to drain him. And at this point the Shredder could be back in “evil samurai” mode, and thus will understand the value of holding Raph hostage.

Y’all who have followed my blog for a bit know about my “Raph is a system” theory; that when he was little, he got separated from his family and pursued by some cryptid hunter. This trauma formed Savage Raph, who is able to handle “being lost/alone/threatened” when Host Raph cannot. “Pizza Puffs” didn’t give us a lot of info about who I’m calling “Red Raph”, but he made his presence known when Host Raph was sort of... "emotionally alone”? In that his brothers were dying a little bit and too stoned to care.

So if Raph is trapped inside a living cage, scared and helpless and hurt and exhausted, his family unable to help him... he’s not going to be able to handle it.

Or, rather, Host Raph isn’t going to be able to handle it.

These two can, though.

I’m imagining a scene in the mindscape where the Shredder says something like “Your pathetic family cannot bear to strike you down, and so there is nothing that can stand in m- wait, why are there three of you OW FUCK-” Red and Savage will mentally kick his ass long enough for the other turtles to rip off a chunk of the armor so Leo can portal it into another dimension or something. Shredder gets K.O.’d since he’s not whole anymore, and the battle is won.

Since the armor didn’t drain Raph as severely as it did Draxum, he won’t become as weak as Draxum did. However, it will still take him some time to recover. Raph trusts Leo in serious moments as of “Many Unhappy Returns”, and he already took charge when Raph wasn’t available back in “Man vs. Sewer”. So Raph will be like, “Hey Leo, can you handle the Mad Dogs for a bit? Just long enough for me to get back on my feet.” And Leo will be like, “Sure bro, I’ve got this.”

He does not, in fact, “got this”. Leo’s ego has caused trouble before (”Shell in a Cell”, “Minotaur Maze”), and being in charge will no doubt go to his head. This has the potential for both comedy and seriousness, leading to wacky mishaps and genuine danger. Being the leader is hard work and it’s not always fun, but someone has to do it and Leo will have to put the others before himself for it to get done. Once Leo realizes this, he could bond with Raph by asking for his advice on leadership. Sometimes Leo will follow the advice and sometimes he won’t, sometimes that will work out and sometimes it won’t, laying the foundation for the idea that there are situations where it will be better for one or the other to lead, rather than having one lead all the time. But that will only happen for a few episodes, because Raph will heal quickly and he’ll be the leader again and everything will be fine!

Everything will not, in fact, be fine. Raph is the strongest in the family, the tank, the one who can take a hit so the smaller ones don’t have to... the idea of being hurt, of being weak, scares him because his family is also in danger if he’s unwell. So I don’t think he’ll acknowledge to anyone, not even himself, that getting possessed hurt him emotionally as well as physically. And when a wound isn’t acknowledged, it doesn’t get tended to, and when a wound isn’t tended to, it gets worse.

That he’s a system will add another layer of complexity to this. The Shredder!Raph incident would make all the alters aware of each other via mindscape shenanigans, but it would also leave them with the fear of not being in control, so I think they’ll come in conflict with each other for a bit. They’ll argue with themselves, switch, and lose time more often, enough that it impedes their ability to function and the other characters start to notice something is wrong.

Host Raph will convince himself that Everything Is Fine and try to get things “back to normal”, which probably means he’s just straight-up not going to acknowledge that he's a system. He’ll rationalize that he’s always “gotten weird” from time to time, so it’s nothing to think too hard about... right?

Savage Raph will be on high alert because they just survived a near-death (a near soul-destroying) experience. He’ll probably take the front and go overboard fighting some villains that Host Raph could have ordinarily fought on his own. It might also take a while to convince Savage Raph that these “sewer monsters” who keep following him around really don’t mean him any harm.

Red Raph will get snappy (pardon the pun) about the more social aspect of “not being in control”; that Host Raph asked Leo to be in charge and then Leo started being an egotistical dumbass. And when Leo does make the right decisions, Donnie and Mikey might side with him over Raph, and that will also grind his gears.

Mix all that together and you have a recipe for a capital b Breakdown.

So yeah, I can definitely see how the Shredder!Raph incident and its aftermath would worsen all three of their tempers, trauma will fuck up your emotions real bad. Perhaps Host Raph loses faith in himself and tries to step down and get Leo to replace him as leader... only for Leo to be like “Bro I cannot do this full time I will one hundred percent have my own Breakdown if that happens.”

The life lessons here are that Leo learns to offer support by sometimes taking the leader role; not to benefit his own ego, but because he wants to help Raph. And Raph learns to accept support by letting Leo be in charge sometimes; not because he’s weak or incapable, but because he can’t always be a Staunch Immovable Rock and he needs to let himself rest by trusting Leo.

And then the Raphs can work on communicating, cooperating, letting their allies know about them, digging into their trauma, etc. now that they have some breathing room.

Chapters: 3/3 Fandom: Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Cartoon 2018) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Characters: Leonardo (TMNT), Raphael (TMNT), minor Donatello (TMNT) - Character, minor Michelangelo (TMNT), minor Splinter (TMNT), minor April O’Neil, minor Shredder (TMNT) Additional Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Injury, Coma, Possession, Brotherly Bonding, mental traps Summary:

The dark armor is a trap, designed to ensnare it’s host both physically and mentally. Unfortunately for it, the trap was only ever designed to hold one person, not two turtles, however that doesn’t mean that it’s going to let them go without a fight.

This story is based on/a continuation of the excellent comic made by @omgiamwish which was inspired by a post by @davids-cartoon-corkboard (formerly david-yells-about-cartoons)

1. “E-Turtle Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: The turtles must enter Splinter’s mind when a powerful foe returns.” 

The Shredder doesn’t have the mind-control collar on in the gif DVE posted on twitter. And it looks like he’s saying something, instead of just making animal screeches. He’s officially back in Evil Samurai mode, y’all!

Splinter actively ran away from the “destiny” the Hamato clan foisted on him. All those starlets he dated and discotheques he danced in were probably attempts to forget his austere upbringing. Now that he actually needs information about the Shredder, he just can’t consciously remember it. So what will the turtles do to look into his subconscious? The prefix “e-” usually stands for “electronic”, like in the word “email”. Donnie’s the “e-turtle”, and the one who most needs to develop his mystic abilities. Perhaps his first step will be to combine some machine with the already established “mind meld” technique, allowing them to sift through Splinter’s memories? We’ll definitely see some scenes from his childhood, though I’d also like a look at some moments with Big Mama or the turtle tots.

2. “Shreddy or Not: The Turtles find a new ally when they meet Splinter’s distant relative.” The episode title sounds like “ready or not (here I come)”, referencing the game of hide-and-seek. Soooo yeah, the turtles and co. are all going to be running/hiding from the Shredder. Fun! 🙃 But how does Splinter’s “distant relative” factor in?

Splinter destroyed the scroll that let him contact the Hamato clan ancestors. It wouldn’t make sense for a new character to show up with no foreshadowing. Therefore, the relative must be the woman who allegedly defeated the Shredder five hundred years ago. (I’m assuming her name is Karai because, once again, you can pry the theory that Foot Recruit is Casey Jones out of my cold, dead hands.) But I don’t think the turtles will be actively searching for her. It’s a little hard to meditate onto the astral plane or whatever while a world-ending demon is actively hunting you down. And I don’t think Karai will be actively searching for them, either. Otherwise she would have shown up with the Hamato ancestors when Splinter used the scroll, or manifested in somebody’s dreams, or used ghosty powers to knock stuff over in the lair until someone took notice.

I think the Shredder swallowed Karai’s soul five hundred years ago. I think she’s been trapped alone inside the Armor this whole time. I think she’s given up.

I don’t know if the Shredder will need to take a new host, but it could be a useful way to hold one of his enemies hostage. Y’all know I’m banking on Raph: he’s the biggest, he’s the strongest, he’s the leader, he’s the eldest son. But if that happened... Karai wouldn’t be alone anymore. She’d have someone with her to fight the Shredder. She’d have hope again. And hope makes someone a valuable ally indeed.

3. “Anatawa Hitorijanai”, according to Google Translate, means “you are not alone”. The Shredder is going to have a hard time containing two souls at once, so he’ll pull some mindscape shenanigans and try to trap them in memories of when they felt alone and helpless. Karai and Raph will have to help each other stay grounded in the present so they can keep fighting. Karai’s memories would involve her strict upbringing in the Hamato Clan, and how horribly her attempt to become powerful via the Armor backfired. And we know something awful happened to Raph to give him such an extreme fear of being alone. He straight-up has dissociative identity disorder, which only forms after a young child undergoes serious long-term trauma. The Shredder forcibly digging up painful memories that probably only “belong” to Savage Raph and spilling them out onto the rest of the alters is probably going to have some negative consequences on down the line. But in the short term, such a strong mental shakeup could awaken every alter (perhaps we’ll even see someone new?) and get them to muster the full force of their soul to take back control of their body.

Occasionally we’d cut to what’s happening on the outside as the rest of the cast attempts to free Raph and minimize damage to the city.,

4. “Rise”. This episode title doesn't give us a lot to work with. "Steven Universe Future" was an epilogue series for "Steven Universe", maybe "Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" is a prologue series for "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles"? It at least sounds like it'll be the end of a story arc! I still don't think the turtles can beat the Shredder in an outright fight, so what can they do to stave him off?

I imagine Raph’s gonna be knocked tf out after they free him from the Armor. And when Raph isn’t available, Leo steps up. He'll create the longest-reaching portal he can, and boot the Shredder out into space (this will set up a future space arc, maybe the Triceratons or the Kanabo find the Armor and decide to check out what else Earth has to offer.)

But Leo would no doubt already be injured from the fight. Perhaps the Shredder straight-up chucked him through a window, as has happened in previous iterations. Creating such a powerful portal would put his body under a massive amount of strain. When Leo said “win at all costs” back in “Air Turtle”, he was being egotistical and selfish. It would be delightful for that line to reprise in a self-sacrificial context. Ironically, the episode titled “Rise” will end as Leonardo falls to the ground, and doesn’t get back up. Cut to black. Roll credits.

“I thought Shredder was an evil samurai dude, not some raging animal!”

Not to alarm y’all, but...

We didn’t really NEED any more evidence that Raph was gonna get possessed, but a little extra foreshadowing is always nice. :,)

In “Shadow of Evil”, Splinter said the armor “swallowed the soul” of its wearer. I think the Shredder was feral because he didn’t actually take Draxum’s soul, only his life force. (Perhaps Draxum keeps his soul elsewhere?) So the true Shredder will return when he eats the soul of his host.

The Foot Clan would naturally target one of their enemies for this. Surely those soft-hearted heroes couldn’t bear to kill one of their own! And since the armor wouldn’t be damaged this time around, Raph would have no time to try and remove it before the Shredder awoke and went after his soul. And also maybe puppeteer Raph into yeeting Leo through April’s apartment window and putting him in a coma. :)

Getting your soul eaten by a demon that’s forcing you to hurt your loved ones isn’t something most people can psychologically handle. And when Raph is in a situation he can’t psychologically handle...

Savage Raph steps in. This “second wind” of resistance should be enough to force the Shredder out of their headspace.

And then he can rip the armor to pieces as the Foot Clan looks on in horror. >:)

Anyway I really want Raph and Savage Raph to start... talking? Communicating? “Man vs. Sewer” told us that Raph knows he “gets weird” sometimes, but that’s a little different from realizing you've got DID.

In “Shadow of Evil”, Splinter said the Kuroi Yoroi “swallowed the soul of the madman who wore it”.

But in “End Game”, it just chewed Draxum up and spit him out. He’s on death’s door, but hardly soulless.

Taking one’s “life” and taking one’s “soul” are two different things. We might still get that angsty possession story arc. And so we ask ourselves the question once again:

Who’s it gonna be?

Which of our heroes is going to throw down with the Shredder not on the battlefield, but in the mindscape?

The one we’ve already seen experience conflict in the mindscape, of course!

Stuck in a cage and devoured by a terrifying beast, no less.

“End Game” had a lot of interesting Raph-centric shots.

None of the others have a close-up like this with the Shredder.

“Shred! Shred! Shred! Shred!”