Sideblog :P

2012 April had so much untapped potential. I'm not sure what the writers were doing with her. It seems like they couldn't agree on anything so she became a messy character. Even her concept art made her more well rounded than the final product? (Concept art is on the wikipedia page btw). It was like she was supposed to be this silly prankster but they never took it there. Concept art of her dancing and making pizza with Mikey? Idling chatting in the rain with Donnie, unplugging his inventions to make him seem like something is broken when its not even on? Where was that April at?

I actually like her better in the later seasons cause I feel like she's chilled one more once she becomes an experienced fighter. I feel like they pushed too hard for her to be the "powerful female" in the earlier seasons in the wrong ways. Her snapping at the turtles for protecting her even when she isn't experienced enough to fight on her own? That made no sense. I feel like once she has her abilities and skills that she is more likeable because now she is "one of them" and therefore doesn't feel like she has to fight her for place on the team.

Maybe a lot of her potential was lost when they tried to introduce her as a romantic interest. Which was fine in the beginning but really should have been dropped later on. The Bigfoot episode in season 2 when Donnie basically says "hey I see I'm making you uncomfortable and I'll stop pursuing you because of that" AND THEN SHE KISSES HIM ON THE CHEEK AND SAYS "oh but you're my mutate Donnie" WHAT KIND OF MIXED SIGNAL IS THAT?

They should've dropped the romance right there and let her focus on her relationships with the rest of the turtles. It would've been a growing point for Donnie and then we could see her hanging out with Raph, Leo, and Mikey more often cause I agree, I really could not tell you how she feels about them. Obviously she cares for them and they all see her as a part of their family but beyond that? No idea. Not to mention we never even see the beginnings of their friendships in the show. They save her and then a couple episodes later its like "Oh yeah, April is our friend and she's been our friend for weeks now" but we never see that happen? She's just there all of a sudden.

Anyway, thank you for coming to my ted talk. Sorry if this was exhausting to read lol

ANON YOU’RE JUST LIKE ME FR!!!!!!

It’s like you took everything I wanted to say and put it here because YES OH MY GOD!!!! Especially the thing about them trying to drive home the powerful girl message when she couldn’t fight yet, that was so frustrating because there’s other ways to show that April is headstrong and not afraid of defending herself, but they just made her sound so damn mean in the end! It drives me crazy because April is very clearly not supposed to be mean. I almost kind of wish they just leaned into her being a bit meaner like Raph, or the prankster the concept art made her out to be. Like, I swear the writers couldn’t write a woman to save their lives unless she was a villain, and even then they still fuck it up.