#Raph is usually designed to be 'wide' on the x-axis so of course Donnie would take it upon himself to be 'wide' on the y-axis

[snackugaki]

thinking thoughts about some turtles

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why yes i’ll elaborate, of course, because i wouldn’t be able to fit the commentary in tags like I usually would have done.

fucking 4th time typing this, is2g i’m just gonna bullet point this 

- donnie in his 30s today would be a fucking BEAST, a whole force unto himself

- the little gremlin was probably head deep in Usenet, collecting information on whatever rabbit holes he’d nose around in and then everything within the proverbial 100 ft. radius.

- (I say Usenet because to me, the turtles (disambiguation) are elder millenials, born in the 80s, growing up in the 90s and it seems ‘right’, almost destiny adjacent for Donnie to have been born right at the time technology was going to grow and shift as much as it has between the mid-80s to now)

-he most definitely used his genius intellect to project potential tech applications and come up with Symmetra level “hard light”/Iron Man helmet-integrated HUD 

- but scrounging for spare parts for computer application in the 90s was pretty scarce, marginally better when he and Raph started visiting the underground and black markets. so he made do with what he could get his little hands on. was he a heavy, clunky noisy mess? yes and Leo was so disappointed. (he eventually just tried to trim down what he would bring out on patrols)

- then one fateful night when Mikey lockpicked one of the corner magazine stands, he saw this sweater (twitter link) and OBVIOUSLY, DUH, WEAR the tech! but still! the tools and materials weren’t easily acquired

- then the 2000s started and OH BOY, lots of exciting things were beginning to happen: patents on 3D printers were expiring, the arduino project, and raspberry pi were starting to circulate (Donnie learned Italian just so he could keep up with the Arduino project when he first heard news of it), internet shopping was becoming more of a thing (how did Donnie pay for stuff? ethically... adjacent. I’m fully on the train that having been perusing Usenet and being a mutant in NYC has Donnie’s moral compass.... not gray but something ‘87 Leo would make PSA commercial break pep talks about; which is tl;dr Donnie WOULD download a car [and has, just to see if he could] )

- Then he saw Lexington become That™ in the “Future Tense” episode from Gargoyles scared him straight, he’s morally eggshell - pewter now

- April absolutely found a way to sneak the boys into a few NYFWs with her press pass just ‘cuz they wanted to see; Donnie took one look at Rick Owens and independently came up with his own take on ‘techwear’, and he’s been a menace in LEDs and neoprene ever since.

- he has a tech goggles problem, he is both the enabler and the addict