#1997 raphael

[ultimate-tmnt-showdown]

[wilmvandrr]

the next mutation (1997) tmnt as humans!!

this is such a dumb adaption of tmnt it makes me cackle so much the costumes are elite and did not scare me as a child whatsoever

also venus best sassy lady in town she’s not here bc the series is for the boys

part 1 of all the tmnt adaptions as humans bc the vibe diff is different and i see em all differently

[planetmarxshmellow]

All my homies hate TMNT 1997

[theyhavetakenovermylife]

You’re Also A Musician (Fluff?)

ShellsTourAU!Turtles x reader

A/N: In case any of you are wondering what the hell Thunderdome is, then I can tell you it is a party held in the city of Antwerpen in Belgium, and is very much tied to the grabber culture in the Netherlands. I will really recommend you look up the videos from the 1997 Thunderdome party, and while you watch that video, I would like you to know that, that is how parties at my high school looked like, and I went to high school in 2018 to 2021. The only difference being that instead of buzz cuts, guys in Denmark tend to have what we call curtain hair, and they don’t play grabber, but another hard bass genre called dakke dak, and do the bass arm instead of the hakken dance. Anyway, have fun with this one guys💚

(L/N) = Last name

(B/N) = Band name

Turtles and the reader are around the age of 18.

Warnings: A little bit of drinking, but other than that none💚

Leonardo:

Around the same time Leo and his brothers were getting their first footing in the music industry with their first major single, you had already slowly been making a name for yourself as a solo artist, with at least one number 1 hit in your home country.

You were known for making this sort of upbeat and happy music that many had gotten familiar with during the late 80’s. That meant a lot of synthesiser, drum machines, and a small one word choir.

You and Leo’s first meeting was one of those chance interactions, that only could come about because both of you happened to know someone, who knew someone, and now here you were, finding yourself in a deep conversation, which you both had been missing a lot in your new careers. You meet in a studio, where you happened to be working just down the hall from one another, resulting in you and him falling into conversation whenever you passed each other. It got to the point where Raph had to walk out and drag Leo back into the recording studio, in order to get any work done that day. However you would still find a way to see each other.

You and Leo started to work together on songs. Leo would help write yours and you would give him and his brothers ideas, causing the two of you to be written in the credits of each other’s songs.

It wasn’t long after that Leo invited you out on a date, and before you knew it, you were in a committed relationship. And it didn’t take long for the media to notice that as well, with rumors and questions swirling around, before the two of you had made anything official. It got to the point where paparazzis tried to take pictures of the two of you in secret. All they got from that, was a now infamous picture, of Leo giving a middle finger to the camera. When asked about it, he said he was just pointing upwards.

You and Leo finally made your relationship official, around the time you came out with yet another single that Leo had helped you write. And with that, you and Leo became one of the most popular couples on the front of gossip papers.

Raphael:

When you and Raphael first met, you were no strangers to each other. You were the lead singer in a rock band, which Raph had found himself listening to time and time again. And you had long been listening to Raph and his brothers in TMNT. So when the two of you finally met, you were mildly starstruck, showing a nervousness that was almost uncharacteristic.

Your first in person meeting happened at an award show, where you and Raph happened to have been seated next to each other. And there you sat throughout most of the show, with Raph and his brothers to your left, and the rest of your band to your right. And you had a great time with Raph, both of you whispering to each other, trying your best not to laugh or giggle at the people around you.

The next day you and Raph was a hot topic, with rumors and pictures of you and Raph at the award show in every gossip blotter there was: “Is (Y/N) (L/N)  from (B/N) and Raphael Hamato from TMNT dating?”, “Is there love in the air?”, “Flirting at the award show; is there something (Y/N) and Raphael would like to tell us?” and it just went on and on from there.

You and Raph kept in close contact after the award show, giggling and laughing and at all the headlines you could find, talking about the two of you. But as the two of you giggled and laughed, resting your feet on the coffee table, reading out the headlines and articles, neither of you were ready to admit how you wished the headlines were real. You and Raph had started to crush on each other behind closed doors, and was just waiting and gathering the courage to tell one another.

Then finally, after months of you and Raph meeting and hanging out in secret, you finally started dating. And with you and Raph going out for dates, it was only a matter of time before a picture of the two of you kissing, on your way home from a dinner date, was on the front covers. And with that, you two were out in public as a couple.

Donatello:

You were part of a girl pop group that had been popular for years, throwing out one smash hit after another, sharting number one in several countries around the world. So when Donnie and his brothers smashed through with their first hit and became a world wide name, he very much knew who you were and what you did.

It had long - even before their music careers took off - been a running joke between Donnie’s brothers, that you and Donnie one day would get married. In response Donnie would throw something light at them and tell them to shut up, trying his best to hide the small smile that was fighting to take hold of his lips.

However the first time there ever was talks about you and Donnie meeting each other, was after you and your group did an interview with MTV, where one of your band members had let it slip that you had a celebrity crush on a member of TMNT. That of course caused the interviewer's eyes to go wide with dollar signs, before they asked you about it. And that was when you let the cat out of the bag, and told the whole wide world that you were crushing on the mutant in purple.

The tabloids picked up on the story straight away, asking the all important question; when were you and Donnie going to have your first date? It quickly became this public thing, with a few people even betting on time, day and location.

In the end, a radio show took over while having Donnie and his brothers in the studio. And to the sound of Leo, Raph and Mikey’s calls at a much flustered Donnie, the host called you, so that the world once and for all, could get a long awaited answer to the question.

It was during that interview that you and Donnie agreed to plan out a date in private. And it was that date that would be the start to you and Donnie’s long lasting relationship.

Michelangelo:

You and Michelangelo’s relationship was one of those that everyone had seen coming from several miles away, and surprised absolutely no one when it became official.

You were a somewhat well known rave and techno DJ in the community, often rubbing shoulders with many other well known or up and coming DJs from all over the world. You were especially popular in parts of Europe, with your more experimental music often associated with growing music trends on the European continent.

In 1992 you found yourself as one of the headliners at the Thunderdome party in Antwerpen in Belgium, where you finally came through with some more grabber inspired music. It was here that you met Michelangelo. After your set, Mikey and a few of his friends came up to talk to you and your friends. From here you had a few drinks and enjoyed the rest of the part together.

When it came out that 18 year old and American Michelangelo Hamato from the TMNT had been drinking and partying in Belgium alongside an 18 year old DJ, there was a little bit of a scandal surrounding it, with some righteous parents doing what they do best, and scream up about how the music of TMNT was no longer suitable for their children to hear, and how the four it boys of the US were becoming a bad influence. But the thing more people were talking about, was the question on everybody’s lips. Who was that DJ Mikey had been partying with, before spending two weeks with them in Europe?

People were quick to put two and two together, and came to the conclusion that you and Mikey were seeing each other. However, people were still wondering who you were.

They finally got the answer to that question around a year later, when Mikey was asked about you in an interview. It was here that he officially made it known that your name was (Y/N), and that you in fact was his partner. And to no one's surprise, the gossip papers the next day all read the headline “It was true all along; Michelangelo has a partner!”

[foofynono]

I made these as a gifts to Grey Delisle, Rob Paulsen, and Tom Kenny when I met them at UwU Con, however I didn't get a chance to give it to neither one of them, so I'm posting my sadness here! Maybe next time...

Grey Delisle Characters featured:

Mandy: The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy

2001 – 2007

Emily Elizabeth: Clifford the Big Red Dog

2000 – 2003

Frankie Foster: Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends 2004 – 2009

Daphne Blake: What's New, Scooby-Doo?

2002 – 2006

Wubbzy: Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!

2006 – 2010

Vicky and Tootie: The Fairly OddParents

2001 – 2017

Ice Queen: Adventure Time

2010 – 2018

Azula: Avatar: The Last Airbender

2005 – 2008

Sam Manson: Danny Phantom

2004 – 2007

Yumi: Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi

2004 – 2006

Rob Paulsen

Characters featured:

PJ: A Goofy Movie

1995

Raphael: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

1987

Yakko Warner: Animaniacs

1993 – 1998

Reuben (Experiment 625): Stitch! The Movie

August 26, 2003

Carl Weezer: Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius

2001

 Stanley Ipkiss: The Mask: Animated Series

1995 – 1997

Mark Chang: The Fairly OddParents

2001 – 2017

Augustus Gummi

Adventures of the Gummi Bears

1985

Bommer: The Powerpuff Girls

1998 – 2014

Donetello:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

2012 – 2017

Tom Kenny Characters featured:

Cupid: The Fairly OddParents

2001 – 2017

Plastic Man: Batman: The Brave and the Bold

2008 – 2011

Catdog (Dog): CatDog

1998 – 2005

Hefer: Rocko's Modern Life

1993 – 1996

Spongbob: SpongeBob SquarePants

Since 1999

The Mayor, Snake and Lil' Arturo: The Powerpuff Girls

1998 – 2014

Ice King (Simon Petrikov): Adventure Time

2010 – 2018

Eduardo: Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends

2004 – 2009

Cross posted on:

*traced stock footage used*

[blueiscoool]

Dale Chihuly Raphael Blue Sconce 1997

[doomandgloomfromthetomb]

Willie Nelson - El Rey Theatre, Los Angeles, California, December 20, 1997

Not Dylan, but oh-so-Dylan adjacent. And a nice timeline cleanse ... let's just enjoy this photo for the next three hours or so. The reason for it, well, a couple weeks back, Ray Padgett's ever-entertaining Dylan newsletter published a great new Q&A with Willie Nelson's longtime harmonica virtuoso Mickey Raphael. Mickey, of course, had spent the summer guesting with Bob during the Outlaw tour — mostly on "Simple Twist of Fate" and occasionally on "Ballad of a Thin Man." However, Ray and Mickey also briefly discuss a long-ago Dylan LA club gig where Willie and Mickey popped up (unannounced, I think) to open the show — and were joined by a few members of Bob's band: Tony Garnier and Larry Campbell.

"I remember being so excited to play in that tiny little club," Mickey recalls. "Those are my favorite gigs. It was just going to be Willie and myself, but then we get there, and course we know Tony from way back from Asleep at the Wheel. We said, 'Play with us' and taught him the show like an hour before we went on. Then he had to leave to do Bob’s setlist. We probably got maybe 45 minutes—not a rehearsal, but a discussion about the songs, so they are totally winging it with us."

They may be winging it, but these guys play with Bob Dylan, so they know what's up — and the loose, rollicking performance as captured on tape is a total pleasure, Willie and Trigger leading the way, with Mickey adding his distinctively lonesome sound. A nice, spare feel, as Nelson obligingly trots out some of his hits for the very happy crowd. The highlight has to be "Angel Flying To Close To The Ground," which always gets me. (I think it always gets Bob, too — his version is great). And what about Bob?! His set was sweet, as well.

[dorky-pals]

~My fan iterations characters~

Raphael- BEGINNING

Eldest, 17, Heterosexual, Male (He/Him)

Gemini (6/11/1997)

Most aggressive and dismissive of the turtles

Despite being the eldest he holds no responsibility (doesnt exaclty deal with family fights the best)

Really into cars and diesel mechanics

Avvoidant of his family, doesn't really feel like he should be around them because of the fights they have

Physically the strongest and does weights every morning

When with his friend group (not the other turtles) he's really open and loud

Extremely protective of his family (whenever he hears about his siblings getting hurt he's always the first to show up and help)

Donatello- BEGINNING

Second eldest, 16, Heterosexual, Male (He/Him)

Scorpio (10/31/1998)

Smartest of the turtles

Really really likes chemistry and astrology

Has the periodic table memorized and studies stars as a hobby

Has glasses but only wears them at home

He works at McDonalds, mainly for the health care but also because he can't get a job anywhere else

Influencer on the mutant side of social media mainly for astrology facts and star components.

Responsible for all of his siblings, takes it upon himself to make sure they get a good education (as good as one can get in mutant town)

He's always prepared for anything (mom friend)

Leonardo- BEGINNING

Twin #1, 15, Lesbian, Gender inclusive Male (he/they pronouns)

Cancer (7/3/1999)

Most short tempered and untrusting of the turtles

Short fuse when it comes to annoyances (especially the toothpaste falling off the toothbrush)

Amazingly good at video games (although he watches videos of run throughs while he plays)

He and Mikey are the most active of the turtles

Socially awkward and shy (unless he’s passionate about a certain topic)

Star Wars NERD!

Knows all the random facts

Despite his pronouns he mainly prefers being referred to as a boy

Voice cracks all the time, puberty hits him HARD!

Does weights with Raph in the morning, has a good sleeper build.

Deals with the teams groceries and goes with Mikey

Michelangelo- BEGINNING

Twin #2, 15, Pansexual, Male (He/Him)

Cancer (7/3/1999)

The family stand up comedian, most extroverted of the turtles

Strategist, but never in chess

Has braces and makes the colors match his pride flag (its june!)

Can't deal with mean people shit the second an insult is said the second the ambulance is called (makes the life of the party when people ask for the manager)

Immature and constantly turns the conversation dirty

He's a runner he’s a track star

Family cook and food enthusiast (gordon ramsey of the mutant town)

Most active turtle along with Leo, both have hit puberty without beforehand knowledge

Lavinia- BEGINNING

Youngest, 15, Asexual, Female (She/Her)

Capricorn (1/1/2000)

Most flexible and agile of the turtles

Also a star wars nerd

Loves solving puzzles and riddles and wants to be a cop

Gymnast and in colorguard (which later really helps with her training)

Chaotic good alignment and does things a little too aggressively at times

Acts like a dumb blonde to piss off her brothers

OCD especially about keeping the house clean

Has to have an even number of steps, and if she turns one way she has to turn the other way before she can function again, always spells the last word people say after they talk directly to her, everything needs to be color coded

Doesn't share the same mother as the turtles, her real mother was a wrecker.

[turtlethon]

Reflections & The Road Ahead

ABOVE: The Turtles make a promotional appearance in the UK, circa 1990. These puffy versions of the green teens showed up on TV and in the press often during Turtlemania, and resemble the characters as they were depicted on licensed Hero Turtles items during that era.

I’m old enough at this point to feel comfortable in saying that life is full of periods of awkward re-adjustment, where the world moves around you and it can take a while to find your bearings. You go to school for years and it feels like it’ll never end, then one day you’re just... done. A day job that perhaps you feel like you’ll be doing until you reach old age and keel over abruptly ends for whatever reason, and suddenly your routine is gone, leaving you wondering what to do with yourself. 

Years ago, on a whim, I made the decision to re-watch the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon from the beginning and live-tweet about it over on the birdsite. Things were stop-start in the beginning, but at some point during the pandemic the project began gathering momentum. The threads got longer, my need to point out every weird little thing that happens in any given Turtles episode outgrowing the format of a Twitter thread. And so, almost exactly two years ago, Turtlethon made the jump to Tumblr, and in short order the format for each entry began to take shape: a beat-for-beat walk through a single episode of TMNT, complete with screengrabs and the occasional video clip, and an analysis of why that particular adventure does (or doesn’t) land, typically 2,000 words in length, longer still if it’s really good – or exceptionally bad. 

In time, we settled into a routine: two new entries would appear every week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Sticking with that turned out to be an undertaking that I vastly underestimated the scope of early on, and there were times where the obligation to write about, screencap, edit and post about Turtles became exhausting, but I didn’t want this to be a project I abandoned halfway through. It was of the utmost importance to me to persevere, to get to the end no matter what. 

Now that day has been and gone. We watched Splinter hurriedly declare the Turtles to be his equals, the credits rolled, and honestly it was all underwhelming. Upon further reflection, there’s no doubt there was more story to be told – there's no way Mung angrily telling Dregg he’d gone mad was the intended payoff to him getting pushed around all season – and presumably that’s something we would’ve seen followed up on had the show returned in 1997. But that’s not the world we live in, and so instead, we have to assess Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as it is: the 192 (or 193) adventures that were broadcast, which we can now observe as one overarching body of work. And I guess now all that’s left to ask is... what even was TMNT ‘87? Beyond the obvious and most cynical analysis – that it was initially an effort to promote a line of action figures, before becoming the heart of the Turtles business empire in its own right – what, if anything, was the series about? What was it trying to communicate to those of us who grew up watching it? 

Peel away that initial "toy cartoon" layer of interpretation, and the next observation is perhaps only slightly less world-weary: it’s about communicating the idea that the Turtles are cool, to create adventures that will be compelling to kids, ensure they keep coming back and hopefully convince them to explore the other facets of the franchise too. Early on, the show was successful in these respects commercially, but from a creative standpoint it took a while to find its feet. Through the first three years the Turtles were first and foremost a unit, rarely getting to venture beyond their respective descriptions in the theme song. Leonardo leads, Donatello does machines, Raphael is... not exactly rude but certainly quippy, and Michaelangelo is indeed a party dude, whose pizza fixation sometimes appears to reach “this guy genuinely has a problem” territory. (It’s remarkable how integral pizza is to the first seven seasons of the show, only for it to be abandoned completely in the Red Sky era: I’m sure there must have been a strict “NO PIZZA” edict handed down from S8 onward that explains why the series ended on an ill-fitting popcorn gag instead.) One of the common themes explored in the Turtlethon entries for the golden era episodes is that Shredder, Krang, Rocksteady & Bebop make the show work comedically in the early goings, in part because they’re allowed to be flawed and vulnerable: meanwhile the Turtles are constrained by that need to be super cool dudes, the world’s most fearsome fighting team. 

With the success of the show assured around season four, we finally begin to see a willingness to explore who the Turtles are beyond those base traits conveyed in the theme song. I’d argue that in this incarnation of the series, Leonardo is the member of the group whose personality adheres closest to what the team were when originally conceived for the Mirage comic: he’s a ninja first and foremost, even memorably declaring his intent to finish off Shredder in the first season. Season three’s “Take Me to Your Leader” explores how the burden of leadership weighs upon him but it’s the following year where he’s fully rounded out, the pros and cons of his overbearing strictness explored in “Leonardo Lightens Up”, while his competitive nature turns compulsive in “Leonardo Versus Tempestra”. More than anything, his role is to serve as an anchor, ensuring TMNT stays somewhere in the neighbourhood of being an action-adventure cartoon and doesn’t float off into complete tomfoolery. 

Raphael is the inverse of Leonardo, encompassing everything that makes the Fred Wolf TMNT what it is – for better or worse. He’s the goofball, the one typically given the task of breaking the fourth wall, and if anything is actively pushing against what Leo is here to achieve. With his incessant zingers, Raph is the embodiment of everything that purists who resent the show for not being a faithful recreation of the Mirage comic dislike about it, a situation exacerbated by the fact that the 1987 cartoon version of the character is such an outlier, eschewing the angry, brooding depiction of him seen almost everywhere else. This idea that there’s something inauthentic about Fred Wolf Raph is so pervasive that modern media and merchandise based around the MWS show often skews towards making him “the angry one” instead of the wise guy. It’s an unfortunate bit of revisionist history that loses sight of the fact that 1987 Raph is wildly popular, perhaps now more than ever. The fans who like him really like his witty retorts, outings such as his memorable romance with Mona Lisa, and the entertaining performances from Rob Paulsen that brought him to life. His value is in keeping things light, and in doing so he differentiates TMNT from the earnest action cartoons that preceded it. 

Okay, but if Raph is the fun one, where does that leave Michaelangelo? I’d argue that his depiction as the team’s “party dude” is merely window-dressing, a means to convey what makes him marketable but which doesn’t really get at what makes him tick, in part because as alluded to above, in the early days of the show none of this stuff had been thought out. Anyone watching seasons one, two and much of season three would be forgiven for seeing him as one-dimensional, the cowabunga guy. Pizza, pizza, pizza. Dude, dude, dude. These aspects of him can be... grating, to be certain, when watching the series as an adult. Eventually we start to occasionally see beyond this. There’s a sense that Mikey is the youngest member of the team, even if there’s nothing in the show itself directly confirming this: by extension he’s the most innocent, sensitive, and personable member of the group, the one who’d be most likely to befriend you and invite you into the Lair if you were to encounter him, rather than viewing you as a threat. Michaelangelo is both the most “human” Turtle and the one who displays the greatest longing to live as a human, something seen in episodes such as season three’s “The Gang’s All Here” and the following year’s “Poor Little Rich Turtle”. When it comes down to it, Mikey’s character is easy-going but more importantly, he’s kind. There’s an irony in him being the one whose weapons had to be excised from the show entirely, though if anything I think that only gave him a little renegade appeal over and above even the other Turtles. 

Donatello has always been my favourite Turtle, and not just for aesthetic reasons as “the purple one”: coming in from Ghostbusters as many of us did back in the day, I think it’s natural that if you were on Team Egon, you were likely to be Team Donnie, too. He's the most creative Turtle and arguably the most introspective, two qualities that also make me gravitate towards him. Putting my biases aside, he’s by far the most necessary member of the team for the series to work: his intelligence and ingenuity seem to almost always play into the climax of any episode as the Turtles scramble to stop whatever enormous threat is facing the city, and without him it’s inarguable that Leo, Mikey and Raph would have been majorly screwed countless times over the course of the show’s run. Around the mid-point of the series his accomplishments seem to go to his head, and his abilities make him vastly overpowered relative to the other Turtles. Despite this, Donnie remains the big purple cog that keeps TMNT ticking. 

The show upholds its four main characters above everything, even in situations where this becomes detrimental, and this goes hand in hand with a focus on immediacy: what anyone else is doing isn’t a concern unless it will impact the Turtles somehow, and nothing that’s happened to anyone in the past matters unless if affects the team in the present moment.  There’s an unspoken anxiety at work in TMNT that runs throughout the series, apparent even at its height: a fear that if the Turtles aren’t front and centre, chasing the macguffin of the day, then young viewers will grow bored and switch off. 

These considerations are apparent in the series from the outset, affecting even the origin of the Turtles themselves, who in this continuity go from pet turtles to their established forms in the space of seconds: they’re not allowed to grow into their teenage selves over the course of years for the same reason that only the most barebones information is conveyed to us about the Hamato Yoshi / Oroku Saki feud that led to their creation. This show isn’t about getting caught up in the details, it’s about the Turtles existing in the present moment. 

Yoshi and Saki’s ongoing rivalry is one of the most fascinating aspects of the entire series, and yet one barely explored because the show only cares about the elements of it directly relevant to the Turtles. At some unspecified point in the past Saki framed Yoshi and took control of the Foot Clan because... he was just naturally power-hungry and evil, I guess (later we learned that his mother was also villainous, so there might be something to that). There’s a huge chunk of the timeline which takes place after this of which we know little, covering Yoshi presumably stowing away on a boat and beginning a new life as a penniless refugee living in the sewers of New York. By all rights the story should end here, with Saki having vanquished his enemy and now ruling over his own turf as the head of a criminal organisation in Japan, but his inability to let go keeps things rolling: at some point he follows Yoshi to America, sets up an elaborate network to spy on him, and in a botched attempt to kill his enemy inadvertently mutates the four heroes who will ultimately be his undoing: Leonardo, Michaelangelo, Donatello and Raphael. 

Oh, and along the way Saki happened to run into a disembodied alien warlord brain from Dimension X who had himself been on Earth for an unspecified amount of time, the two bad guys forming an alliance to achieve world domination. None of these events unfold on-screen as the Turtles weren’t involved: instead, Shredder and Krang arrive fully formed, how they met and the circumstances that led to them working together are deemed unimportant. Similarly, Splinter is a wise old man whose exact age is unclear, capable of applying mystical ninja abilities that vary depending on what the plot of the day requires. 

Given how scant the details of Splinter and Shredder’s feud were, it should perhaps come as no surprise that in the end, it was never resolved in any satisfactory fashion. By the end of the series Shredder and Krang were banished to another dimension by the Turtles for the umpteenth time, but the power struggle between Splinter and Shreds over the leadership of the Foot Clan that kicked all of this off doesn’t receive any closure; to make matters worse the final three appearances of Shredder and Krang tease the idea of them becoming... well maybe not good guys, but at the very least neutral figures having been overshadowed in the evil stakes by Dregg. I think by season ten, the viewers would have been ready for that: to have Shredder and Krang perform a heroic act to stop Dregg that definitively concludes their run on the show as villains, then let them ride off into the sunset. If we’re to assume there were plans for a twelfth season, there’s no reason that Karai or another villain new to the series couldn’t take their place. 

I’m going to skip over writing about Bebop and Rocksteady here as this post is long enough as it is, and I covered their contribution to the series in the entry for “Turtle Trek”. The only thing I would add is that if anyone was truly deserving of that elusive redemption arc and/or a happy ending, it was them: this is one of the areas where the Archie TMNT comic got it right, the idea of them living peacefully on the animal-friendly Eden Worlds providing an opportunity to for the duo to move on. 

April is perhaps the most important character in the show other than the Turtles: there are plenty of episodes in the first seven years of TMNT that don’t feature Splinter, Shredder or Krang but none prior to “The Legend of Koji” that don’t incorporate her into the adventure in some capacity. She's interesting to view through a feminist lens: for a character who first appeared on TV in 1987 in a cartoon primarily marketed towards boys, not only is she integral to the proceedings but from the outset she’s her own person, a (somewhat) established career woman who just happens to cross paths with the Turtles and strike up a friendship with them. Because of that need to keep the focus on the green teens we never get to see her grow much beyond this – she likes the Turtles, she likes getting to cover anything that will make for a Great Story™, but that’s as far as it goes. There are a few rare occasions where the show will toy with having a male guest character serve as a potential love interest for her, but it’s not central to what she’s about. First and foremost, April cares about journalism and about sticking up for her friends, the Turtles, and for a cartoon from 35 years ago it’s kind of refreshing that’s she’s allowed to maintain that focus. 

Irma’s introduction to the series feels as if it was intended to play up April’s qualities by bringing in someone who in many ways is her opposite: there’s little indicator that Irma cares about her job or is any good at it in the early goings, and while April only makes occasional references to finding a partner throughout the series, Irma is obsessed. Her desire to find a man to sweep her off her feet in some paperback romance novel scenario is a constant theme throughout the first four years of the show, and I get the sense that part of the intended gag is that all of this would come easily to April if she wanted it, but for Irma – frequently inferred by the show to be frumpy or plain – such things remain perpetually out of reach. 

When it comes to Turtles discourse there sometimes seems to be borderline hostility towards Irma, perhaps in part because she’s driven by a desire for those old traditions, but I think largely based on people focusing on her appearances in those first three seasons (the only ones people tend to pay attention to, especially outside of the fandom) and viewing her on a surface level: April, so the thinking goes, is glamorous and exciting, Irma is merely her gawky sidekick. I’ve consistently gone to bat for her throughout Turtlethon’s run precisely because The Struggle is Real: Irma exists, living and growing as a flawed human being alongside the successful, infallible April and her friends, the ever-valiant Turtles. She messes up, she fails, she frequently ends up being on the receiving end of pure bad luck but through it all she keeps going, persevering in the background while the focus remains on April and the Turtles. As the show continues, we start to see her maturation, both in terms of taking on different roles within Channel 6 and the downplaying of her man-hungry antics. By the end of season seven there’s a sense that Irma has grown into a fully capable person and shed her insecurities, culminating in her brief reinvention as an action heroine and her defeat of Krang(!) in “Shredder Triumphant!” 

There’s an argument to be made that season seven should have been the end point of the series, or at least that years eight through ten ought to be viewed as merely a possible continuation, a look into how things could have continued rather than something set in stone. The truth is that aside from maybe Shredder, the core cast is served poorly by the Red Sky era: the Turtles come across as miserable throughout, April seems adrift after moving on from Channel 6, ultimately losing prominence following Carter’s introduction to the show, Bebop and Rocksteady are robbed of any semblance of personality and Irma only makes two appearances in season eight before being unceremoniously dropped entirely. I’ll freely admit that by the end of season nine, watching each episode for Turtlethon was becoming a deflating experience: by that point the spark was gone from the show, and seeing what it had become just felt sad. Happily, things improved a bit in S10, but I can’t shake the feeling that Shredder, Krang and The Boys riding off in the pick-up truck at the conclusion of season seven would have been the right time for the Turtles to bow out.

TMNT ‘87 was looked down upon from the outset by readers of the Mirage comic who saw it as sacrilege, a mockery of everything the source material was about, and once newer animated iterations came along that adhered more closely to Eastman & Laird’s vision the perception of the MWS version took an even greater hit. Ironically there are a bunch of disgruntled guys around my age – Xennials and the youngest Gen Xers – who will now swear blind that the ‘87 Turtles are the one true faith, and that any deviation from the way the team were depicted then is a disgrace. Click on any TMNT post on Instagram, especially the ones pertaining to Mutant Mayhem, and you’ll find these dudes in the comments pissing and moaning about how much better things were in their day, when the Turtles were real tough guys and manly men, which is an oddly rose-tinted perspective of a show where a significant portion of fights were won with a cream pie or pizza to the face. That’s the thing: at its heart, Turtles is a fun adventure show, one that over its run draws heavily upon martial arts tropes, sci-fi macguffin chases, aliens, monsters, dimension hopping and occasionally time travel: these concepts are all part of the DNA of the superhero comic book, and in that respect, the show is absolutely in the spirit of the Mirage comics which were themselves conceived as both a parody and a loving tribute to that artform. 

That’s it. That’s what the point of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles show is: it’s a fun adventure cartoon that might not aesthetically resemble the Mirage comics, but it has an innate understanding of how to adapt the underlying concepts of those stories into a series that connects with its target audience. 

One of my intended aims for Turtlethon, in pulling apart and analysing every episode of TMNT, has been to dispel two commonly held stances about the show that I see online all the time: 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987) was never good. 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987) was only good for the first five episodes, everything after that was terrible. 

People who take the first stance are harder to reach. Some of them are from that group of Mirage readers who were around back in the day and still hold a grudge, but the majority of those who hold this opinion have a wider disdain for eighties cartoons in general. They dismiss the contributions of everyone who worked on these series entirely because they were all “thinly veiled toy commercials”: to them TMNT and every other show from that era are nothing but sound and fury, signifying nothing. I hope in my analysis I’ve shown how far this is from the truth: even the clunkiest episodes of Turtles occasionally have moments where the animators go above and beyond to create impressive sequences, and when the show was at the height of its popularity during seasons three and four these teams created a lot of television on a modest budget within a short timeframe. On the writing side, over the course of the series Turtles incorporates themes into its stories of environmentalism (including climate change and conservation), how sensationalist media and wealthy individuals in positions of power can cultivate hate movements against marginalised groups, and gentrification, to name just a couple of topics off the top of my head; an entire side season was also dedicated to having the Turtles travel around Europe to be exposed to its arts, history and culture. These efforts are a drop in the ocean compared to what the Archie Comics version of TMNT was doing during this period but are respectable, nonetheless. 

The second position – that the show goes off the rails after “Shredder & Splintered” - is something you’ll hear from viewers who have perhaps purchased the first few seasons or the entire series on DVD and have started watching it, but they’re not engaged with the source material. If you’re only half-watching the show, if it’s background noise while you perform other tasks, then the visual drop-off from “Return of the Shredder” onward combined with the drudgery of the Eye of Sarnath arc might make you wonder if there’s any point in venturing further. Undoubtedly there are stretches of the series that tested even my patience: the ungainly syndicated adventures in season four, the bizarre, sometimes directionless Vacation in Europe arc, and pretty much all of season nine. There’s still great stuff in there, however: the second half of season two is far stronger than the first, season three is full of classics such as “Turtles on Trial”, “The Ninja Sword of Nowhere” and the concluding Big Trilogy, and seasons four through six have phemomenal adventures and character spotlight episode scattered throughout. Season seven – the proper season seven, not the vacation episodes – might be the strongest stretch of adventures in the entire series as TMNT regains its focus and attempts to mature in step with its original audience. There’s so much good stuff in Turtles if you stick with it, and I can’t see how anyone could watch the series in its entirety and come away thinking only season one has value unless your criteria for what makes a good cartoon comes down purely to looking cool and some vague aura of edginess. 

ABOVE: A June 1990 TV Guide cover in which Ariel from The Little Mermaid mingles with Bart Simpson, Donnie, Leo and Raph. Yes, Bart is missing his ear, but also WHY DO THE TURTLES HAVE THREE TOES WHAT THE HELL

I hope that if you’ve never actually sat down and watched the 1987 version of TMNT from beginning to end that maybe the breakdowns of each adventure I’ve cobbled together for this blog will inspire you to do so, and that if you’ve seen the show before they’ll allow you to rewatch it with additional insight. More than anything, the goal of Turtlethon has been to point out why Turtles works, while also acknowledging the times when it doesn’t. It’s lost to history now, but there was a vanishingly brief window of time – pretty much just the entire calendar year of 1990 – where the ascendancy of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in pop culture occurred in parallel to the rise of The Simpsons. The two series were linked by their indie comics origins and their anti-establishment appeal, however Simpsons was able to reinvent itself after the hype around Bart died down as one of the greatest TV series of all time by continuing to up its game and making Homer the central figure of the show. TMNT was never in a position to make that leap, hampered as it was by budgetary restraints, parental backlash and being more overtly targeted towards children, but as a body of work it still has value, and its longevity speaks to how strongly it resonated with viewers around the world. It is, in a word, tubuloso. 

---

When Turtlethon was in its early stages, I gave some consideration to what series I might like to deep-dive afterwards. I reference Transformers all the time on this blog and it’s without a doubt my First Fandom, so there’s a natural inclination for me to want to go back and examine the 98 episodes of that show. Between that and TMNT, Ghostbusters was my second major fixation, and there’s a lot of The Real Ghostbusters to explore too. 

The natural extension of our journey is to move on to Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation, but I honestly doubt it would be fun for me to write or for you to read. I dunno, maybe you want to see me rip it to shreds, but I'm unsure how much financial compensation I’d need to make up for the psychic damage that would inevitably be incurred. (The tip jar is there, if you’re so inclined; let’s just say that Yale could use an international airport.) Moving on to the 2003 version of TMNT would be much more fun, but also a tremendous undertaking that - for now - I don't want to approach. After years of writing about the Turtles, I’m exhausted. I’m also acutely aware that while Turtlethon has been beneficial for me in many ways as a writer – it's allowed me to refine my skills, to learn how to create and maintain a regular schedule, and made me a more effective editor, even if you’d never know it from the length of my posts – the time I’ve devoted to writing about the Turtles would have been better spent working on my own comic series, Corinne Morgan, Corbie, which has been on hiatus throughout the life of this blog. 

[SIDE NOTE: If you want to see me put my money where my mouth is, and if I’ve learned anything through analysing Turtles, read Corbie when the new edition of issue #1 comes out in a few weeks. Its influences are more rooted in the Archie version of TMNT than the MWS series, but if you like cute, light-hearted and socially conscious superhero adventures then I think you’ll soon become a dedicated flocker.] 

I’ve undoubtedly been teetering on the edge of burnout lately, and my workload has been further encumbered by the technical changes implemented by Tumblr that negatively affected the last two seasons’ worth of Turtlethon entries. Behind the scenes, I’ve gradually been making moves to port the blog in its entirety to a stand-alone website where all 193 entries can be enjoyed in the original format. The thinking is that this will allow me to also write about anything else that takes my interest, post my art and generally keep you up to date on the status of all my assorted ongoing projects. With that in mind, I’d like to introduce you to Portertronic, which is now live. The Turtlethon entries for the first two seasons of TMNT have been posted there already, with the rest of the series to follow in the weeks and months ahead. 

This isn’t the end, for Turtlethon or for this account: you’ll still see new TMNT posts from me here, as I have a laundry list of one-off bits and pieces related to the series I still want to explore. The plan is that new content moving forward will be made available first to Patreon and Ko-Fi supporters, then appear on Portertronic, and eventually get posted here too. To kick things off, there’s a pair of upcoming Turtles-related CDs I’ll be looking at as part of a crossover event to introduce Excess Volume, a sub-blog that will cover pop music of the 1980s and early 1990s. I’m not going away, just getting off the treadmill I’ve been on for the last couple of years, and trying to refocus on writing shorter bursts of material while I return to working primarily on Corbie. 

Turtlethon has always had a modest following – there are only so many people in the world who are interested in reading long-form analysis of a decades-old cartoon – but going into it I had zero expectations that anyone would connect with it at all. I’ve never lost sight of the fact that in real life, if a classroom’s worth of people were willing to listen to me talk at length about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles twice a week that would be incredibly edifying, and over time the readership grew to roughly double that. It probably should have been a YouTube channel from the beginning, but the thought of continually being struck down by DMCAs from Lionsgate ensured that was a non-starter, and perhaps that would have defeated the purpose. I like to draw, and I like to write – obviously! That you’ve indulged me in doing the latter and gushing about the Turtles for the last few years means a lot, and I hope you’ll join me – either through Corbie, over on Portertronic or here on Turtlethon – for the adventures still to come. 

[neutrnstarsystem]

Quick source list

Here's a quickly written list of the sources our introjects come from c:

Baldur's Gate 3 (Raphael, Haarlep, the Dark Urge + two OCs)

The Legend of Zelda (OOT Link, OOT Dark Link, Fierce Deity, Ravio)

Stardew Valley (Shane, Sterling, Lance)

Hades/The Song of Achilles (Achilles, Patroclus)

Final Fantasy (Zack, Reno)

Dragon Ball (Goku)

Titanic 1997 (Jack)

Avatar (Jake Sully)

Star Wars (Luke Skywalker)

Back to the Future (Marty McFly)

Sun Haven (Shang)

Under the Oak Tree (Riftan)

Kaamelott (Arthur Pendragon)

Digimon (Weregarurumon)

Pokémon (Hisuian Zoroark)

We might have more but those are the ones I personally know unfortunately I have been frontstuck for long until now and many things have changed so yeah!! Also a lot of our introjects don't identify as their source. And if you ever see Riftan don't talk to him about his source he hates it.

[occult-roommates]

I did write all of the characters birthday on their profile, but it's been a while and I haven't made a profile for everyone so here's a list in chronological order of those who I gave a canon birthday.

Giuseppe Paradisi: September 3rd 1898

Gwenaelle "Gwenn" Lorgnez: August 9th 1904

Tamara Schumacher: July 7th 1971

Yamuna Chintal: December 12th 1971

Raphael "Ralf" Montag: August 1st 1973

Charlie Yi: February 5th 1984

Kino Gurafee: September 22nd 1993

Peneloppe "Paisley" Cox: October 18th 1993

Lilah Silvercloud: February 21st 1994

Antoinette "Toni" Crosdale: June 9th 1994

Audrey Newberry: October 26th 1995

Dawud Sahan: March 21st 1996

Rudder "Rudi" Marron: January 14th 1997

Marisa Magallanes: March 11th 1997

Matteo Rossini: November 25th 1997

Daniele Rossini: June 7th 1998

June Crosdale: November 27th 1998

Akvamareen "Akva" Singh: May 18th 1999

Athena Ramdeen: August 24th 1999

Adem Zaoui: January 9th 2001

Saraswati "Sara" Cox: November 1st 2019

Joseph Gurafee-Silvercloud: April 15th 2021

Bonus: It's been said in a chapter that Ulrikke, Rudi's younger sister, shares a birthday with Tamara. She was also turning 18 that years in 2021, meaning she was born in 2003. Daniele also said the Tenerife airport disaster was on his mother 10th birthday. This plane crash happened on March 27th 1977, therefore we can deduce his mom was born on March 27th 1967. I don't really have a specific birthday for the other character's relatives though some of them have at least an age that has been mentionned in canon. Like Akva said her parents had her at 20 for example. This is because I am a freak and I need my timeline to be super specific and on point even though nobody cares except me.

Dawud is also the only one to have celebrated his birthday in a chapter, twice in fact. This is a clever reference to him being the main character of the story.

[cavalierconvoy]

Our girls Faris and Jinx!

Bonus: our boy Caligo (~Jan 1997-17 Dec 2017 at 21) and our striped Raphael catfish Tiamat and Bahamut being Dramatic™️ because their emotional support log was removed for tank cleaning.

[schoje]

Fotos: Divulgação Os comandos das Forças Policiais de Santa Catarina apresentaram em Brasília, na sexta-feira, 12, aos comandantes da Força Nacional e Forças Armadas da República Dominicana, estratégias e técnicas usadas para que Santa Catarina seja considerada a melhor Segurança Pública do país. O encontro atendeu a um pedido do governador Jorginho Mello, sendo organizado pela secretária de Articulação Nacional Vânia Franco. Os palestrantes do encontro foram o comandante-geral da Polícia Militar de Santa Catarina (PMSC), coronel Aurélio José Pelozato da Rosa, a perita-geral da Polícia Científica, Andressa Boer Fronza, o delegado da Polícia Civil, Raphael Giordani, representando o delegado-geral, Ulisses Gabriel, e o tenente-coronel Túlio Tartari Zanin, que representou o comandante do Corpo de Bombeiros Militar de Santa Catarina (CBMSC) Fabiano Bastos. Pela República Dominicana estiveram presentes o general Juan Guzmán, o diretor do Departamento de Investigações de Crimes de Alta Técnologia, coronel Edgar Volques, o diretor de Cooperação e Relações Internacionais, coronel Roberto García, e o capitão de Mar e Guerra, Abel Romero, que é o adido militar das Forças Armadas da República Dominicana. Participaram também o conselheiro Rafael Trinidad, da Embaixada dominicana. Diferentemente da estrutura brasileira, na República Dominicana não há polícias federal, militar e civil. Lá, as atribuições são todas de uma só polícia, a Polícia Nacional. Durante as palestras, o delegado Raphael Giordani  destacou a história da Polícia Civil e a atual estrutura  hierárquica e física na Instituição. A períta-geral Andressa Fronza mostrou os ganhos do Estado ao adquirir aparelhos que escaneiam projéteis e outros que são capazes de reconhecer digitais e fluídos humanos, sem a necessidade de utilização de produtos químicos. O tenente-coronel dos bombeiros, Túlio Zanin, falou sobre estratégias e parcerias com guarda-vidas civis. Ele mostrou aos dominicanos quais programas foram usados para que Santa Catarina reduzisse drasticamente o número de mortes de banhistas a partir de 1997, até os dias de hoje.  O comandante-geral da Polícia Militar de Santa Catarina apresentou dados que, após pesquisa, mostram que Santa Catarina é o estado mais seguro, com 8,6 mortes por 100 mil habitantes (a média nacional é de 24,9), com a cidade considerada mais segura do Brasil com até 100 mil habitantes, Jaraguá do Sul, além de ter a capital mais segura do país, Florianópolis. “Esse intercâmbio é importante, sempre devemos ajudar um país que quer melhorar ainda mais sua capacidade de Segurança”, disse a secretária de Articulação Nacional, Vânia Franco. Antes do encerramento da reunião, o subdiretor da Polícia Nacional, Juan Guzmán, agradeceu a cooperação, disse que vai repassar as informações obtidas aqui no Brasil ao presidente do país dominicano e parabenizou o governo catarinense. Essa reunião foi uma continuidade da relação entre República Dominicana e Santa Catarina. Na última semana a embaixadora da República Dominica, Patricia Villegas e sua comitiva esteve no Estado e cumpriram agenda construída junto à Secretaria de Articulação Nacional e acompanhada pela secretária adjunta Lourdes Martini e a secretária adjunta de Turismo Catiane Seif. Fonte: Governo SC

[influencermagazineuk]

Mick Fleetwood Hopes for Reconciliation Between Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham

Mick Fleetwood has expressed his desire for a reconciliation between his former bandmates Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. Raphael Pour-Hashemi, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons Buckingham and Nicks, who were romantically involved at the time, joined Fleetwood Mac on New Year’s Eve 1974 after performing as the duo Buckingham Nicks. They remained key members until Buckingham left in 1987, followed by Nicks in 1990. Both rejoined the band in 1997, but Buckingham was dismissed in 2018. In a recent interview with Mojo, Fleetwood opened up about their strained relationship, saying, “It’s no secret that there is a significant emotional barrier between them. Stevie and Lindsey are both very clear about their feelings.” He added, “Personally, I would love to see a healing between them – and that doesn’t have to take the shape of a tour, necessarily.” Buckingham and Nicks ended their relationship in 1976, just before the band recorded their iconic album 'Rumours.' Despite their breakup, they continued to work together professionally. However, after Buckingham was fired in 2018, he told People that it was “all Stevie’s doing,” claiming she gave the band an ultimatum to choose between him and her. Nicks refuted these claims, stating, “I did not demand he be fired. I removed myself from a situation I considered toxic to my well-being. If the band continued without me, so be it.” Read the full article

[kimiteme]

Kasus Kematian Kecelakaan keluarga ROTHSCHILD

Selain kasus bunuh diri, ada juga calon pewaris kekayaan Goldsmith-Rothschild yang meninggal dunia karena kecelakaan. Iris Annabel Goldsmith namanya, remaja perempuan 15 tahun yang meninggal dunia dalam kecelakaan sepeda di perkebunan keluarga pada 2019.kartugg Iris merupakan putri dari pemodal kaya Ben Goldsmith dan mantan istrinya, Kate Rothschild, dikutip dari ABC News.

Ada pula keturunan keluarga Rothschild yang meninggal dunia akibat overdosis narkoba pada 2000. Raphael de Rothschild meninggal dunia setelah ia berpesta bersama teman-temannya di loteng 10th Avenue. Ia meninggal di usia 23 tahun.slotgacor

Setelah menghadiri pesta, Raphael pingsan di jalan, membiru, dan tewas akibat overdosis heroin, dikutip dari New York Post. Kematian Raphael membawa duka bagi keluarga dan teman-temannya, yang tampaknya tak menyadari pemuda ini menggunakan narkoba.

Pada awal tahun ini, seorang anggota keluarga Rothschild lain meninggal dunia akibat serangan jantung di usia 57 tahun. Benjamin de Rothschild meninggal di rumahnya yang terletak di Pregny, Swiss.

Semasa hidupnya, Benjamin memimpin grup Edmond de Rothschild sejak 1997, dikutip dari Associated Press.polagacor

Dalam siaran pers yang mengumumkan kematian Benjamin, grup Edmond de Rothschild menyatakan Benjamin menyukai dunia finansial, pelayaran, mobil, dan anggur. Benjamin juga disebut sebagai pria yang dermawan.