#and like I said I have no beef with those who purposefully draw him with normal propotions

[zinzabee]

Throwing this out there in case people are working on learning how to draw Raph and need some help. His design/proportions are way different from the other brothers and most of the time I see people instinctually going for normal human proportions with him.

((And you are more than welcome to continue drawing him that way if you wish to do so; this isn't a callout post or anything! /gen))

But for those who want to adhere closer to his cannon design, ya gotta specifically break some of those art school anatomy rules you learned.

Also adding this for the neck muscles from another post I did a while back.

Go forth and draw the big turtle boy!!

[a-menage-a-trois-is-fine]

I’ve been building upon my oh-my-god-why-am-I-writing-Buzzfeed-fanfic-please-murder-me for months now, and it’s VERY slow-going what with work and life and all… but here are some snippets from it just to encourage myself to finish it, on the off-chance someone might read this and be like “HEY WRITE MORE MAYBE” or w/e I don’t know. These are chunks of what I’ve been writing thrown into some lonely corner of the internet. They’re not meant to make sense chronologically.

–

Stories are supposed to have beginnings and ends. Ryan remembers the word denouement from a tenth grade English class; remembers a chalky, arching line swooped across a blackboard:

There is a protagonist, a setting, an “inciting incident” (extra points for alliteration); conflict, struggle, resolution. Open ends are meant to be stitched together cleverly, and characters are meant to return home changed in some stunning, significant way (quadruple points here).

Sometimes he thinks about this when editing. Sometimes he thinks about this when he finally shuts down the computer, is the last to lock up, is the last to count how many black gum-spots it takes to get to his car.

Ryan’s life is nothing like a story. He tries to form it into something streamline, something meaningful, memorable, and marketable—

But in the end it is simply a long string of moments.

–

Siri guides them to Conneaut, Ohio. Which is not Conneaut, Pennsylvania.

Ryan buries his face in the steering wheel. “Fuck me, dude…”

“Well,” states Shane diplomatically. There ya go.”

“How many fucking Conneauts can possibly exist!”

“Two. Two exist.”

“Shut up.”

They’d been in Cleveland to check out Franklin Castle. The mansion had seen plenty of death over the years, was possibly home to Nazis at one point, and was bought by Judy Garland’s fifth husband in the ‘80s. It was found to have a literal skeleton in one of its closets. Well, allegedly. Shane kept pushing that word on Ryan.

It was in the paper, dude! Ryan had argued. In the nineties! This isn’t, like, folklore!

Yeeeaaaahhh, said Shane. People said a lot of things in the nineties.

The woman who owns it now — a pleasant Italian artist in her fifties — had given them permission to film and sleep in it overnight. They hadn’t gotten much rest, as usual, and they hadn’t encountered anything overtly significant. There were the odd creaks and subtle squeaks, but even Ryan had to admit that sort of stuff was to be expected from a house built in 1881. There were a few other things, though… things that could have been whispers (Ryan was eager to listen to the audio recordings, later) and things that seemed to move in the dark (though that could have just been his eyes and brain trying to make sense of the darkness, Shane had purported). Mostly, though, there was a feeling. A feeling that he was being watched. A feeling that they were not alone.

It was fucking frustrating, because a feeling isn’t evidence; not to anyone outside his own head.

–

“Do you think Taco Bell is worse in Ohio?”

“I don’t know. I don’t care. Taco Bell will give you the shits anywhere.”

“See, people say that — but I’ve never had a bad experience with TaBe. I’ve heard they’re one of the healthiest fast food places, actually. I mean, as healthy as fast food can be. They use better ingredients.”

“What the fuck is tah-bey?”

“TaBe. Taco Bell.”

“That’s not a thing.”

“It hasn’t caught on yet. I’ve been working on it.”

In the end, they stop at the Taco Bell the rest stop sign had advertised. It’s nestled among a throng of pine trees, which is just super weird for some reason.

Shane orders a steak Quesarito, but gets ground beef instead. Ryan goes to town on three Supreme tacos.

“I mean, I definitely said steak.”

“It’s probably ‘cause it’s one in the morning, dude. And they’re out of steak, or they just didn’t want to make it.”

“Or because that kid at the window was high.”

“Or because he was high, yeah.”

“It could just be my imagination, but I feel like it’s just a liiiiiiiittle less spicy than in LA.”

“These tacos taste exactly the same.”

“I dunno.” Shane squints into dark of the tall trees that press up against the parking lot. “There’s something… different.”

“It’s ground beef, and you never get ground beef Quesaritos. That’s what’s different.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

They eat in relative silence, going through every napkin they were given. Shane accidentally takes a sip of Ryan’s drink.

“Uuughh, dude.” Ryan pulls the straw out, flips it, and jabs it back in.

“You just dunked all my cooties into your Coke.”

“Yeah, but at least I’m not, like, kissing you every time I take a sip.”

Shane laughs in the gradual, stuttering way he does when something Ryan says doesn’t make sense to him. “What? Okay. You could’ve just taken the top off and thrown it away with the straw. Or you could’ve just sucked it up — literally sucked it up — like a normal person. But, okay. I guess I’m really, really gross. Cool.”

“I like straws.”

“Yeah, you really like straws.”

–

“I hate places with no elevators.”

“It’s an old hotel. You can’t expect it to have elevators.”

“Sure I can. It’s twenty-eighteen. They’ve had years to put one in.”

“You really like elevators.”

“I love an elevator. Almost as much as you love a straw.”

–

“I promise it won’t be weird.”

They stare at each other for a good handful of seconds.

“It might be a little weird,” admits Ryan.

Shane nods. “It might be a little weird.”

They laugh, and Ryan settles down beside his friend.

And it isn’t even a little weird.

–

They bump into each other somewhat purposefully on the sidewalk later. Fleetingly, Ryan wonders at the way he needs to touch Shane when they’re drunk. But they’re just drunk… that’s just what being drunk with Shane is.

Also, there’s something really disappointing about the arrival of an Uber.

–

The house is bleached bone-white by sixty-six years of desert sun.

Ryan feels something at his ankles, and when he drops his chin there is sand weaving in currents at his feet. He tries to get a better look, but the camera strapped to his chest is the size and weight of a bowling ball.

“There’s no door.”

Ryan squints against the daylight; Shane’s right. The house is a bungalow, the kind you’d find on stilts clinging to the Hollywood Hills. But it’s not standing tall, and there’s not a hill or mountain in sight. It sits heavy on the dry lake bed like some weighty thing on its belly. It’s trying to hide, Ryan realizes. It’s been trying to hide all this time, nowhere to run but into the ground. It’s frozen, and it hopes no one can see it.

“There!” Ryan points. He hadn’t noticed it before, he’d thought the front was clean, white wood — but there is plywood tacked on in the unmistakable shape of an entrance.

“How’d they do that from the inside?”

–

“Nice dingle-dongle.”

It’s not like they haven’t pissed side-by-side before. It’s not like they haven’t both seen each other’s dicks, out of the corners of their eyes, so — who gives a shit?

Ryan shrugs, tucks himself back in, and zips his jeans up like a captain steering a sailboat through a storm.

“It’s okay. You— what? What d’you mean, refund?”

Shane leans into the tiled wall with a great thump. He gestures vaguely, eyes trailing lazily to the ceiling.

“Like with… debit cards, if they get stolen, the bank reimburses you. Right? Those are the ones?”

“What?”

“Or is it credit? Fuck. I dunno. There’s, like… one of them, they don’t give you back the money if someone spends it.”

“I gave it to the bar-lady.”

Shane’s eyes roll like little brown marbles down to Ryan. His little lips curl up into a little open-mouthed smirk. “You rogue.”

“You told me to!”

“I know. I forgot. C’mon, buddy. We’re onto micheladas.”

—

They’re at a party blasting “Heart of Glass”, and Ryan thinks he will never be more in love than he is now.

—

“I am very drunk, and there is chicken in my mouth.”

“Well, yeah, you ordered chicken.”

“It didn’t sink in till just now.”

Ryan laughs. “Well, sorry— you ordered chicken.”

“No, I’m not saying it’s bad, it’s very good. It’s just. I forgot. Fuck!” Shane’s knife slips from his hand and lands in a pile of salad. He harrumphs, and picks the knife out gingerly, licking the dressing from its handle.

“Dude we are going to get kicked out of Disneyland.”

“Nooooo,” Shane admonishes. “They don’t knooooow, come on.”

“I am one hundred percent sure the waiter knows we’re drunk, dude. We’ve been waving and yelling at the people on the boats for, like, an hour now.”

Shane suddenly remembers the boats; he gives a funny, unfocused grin and waves a Rosebowl Queen Wave to the boat currently floating past. “They just keep… coming! Hey, Ryan. Do you think the ones with no one in them are haunted?”

“Do you?”

“No, I think Fantasmic is going on, and the pirate business is slow. But I think you think they’re haunted.”

“Actually…” and this is an interesting line of thought, along the way he’s always wondered about the silhouetted cast members he’s seen walking briskly through the backdrop of the Bayou: “I’d always figured there was, like, some reason they had to send a boat through empty? Like, for crowd control, or something to do with, I dunno, like, timing, or maintenance, or security, or something.”

“Ahhhh!” Shane says very slowly, drawing his attention back to Ryan. He acts the way he does when Ryan posits a particularly clever theory on some long-dead murder. “That makes sense!”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah! Ooh!” Shane glances around conspiratorially. “Where’s Disney Police? Disney Police! Arrest this man! He knows too much!”

“Shut up,” Ryan laughs, though he is honestly a little nervous. “You are so obviously drunk.”

“Noooooooo. I am the perfect model of, uh… of propriety. Sobriety Pirate-ey.”

“Sure you are. How are you a bigger lightweight than me? You’ve got, like, six more legs than me.”

“I’m fine. I’m bulletproof. I’m Batman.”

Ryan chokes on his lemonade. The novelty “glow-cube” he’d paid two-fifty extra for flashes several different colors before his eyes. He coughs for what’s probably a full minute before he’s able to say, “You are not Batman.”

“I’m Batman, bay-beeeeee.”

“You are so fucking drunk, dude.”

“I’m not drunk” he says in some unholy marriage of Bale and Keaton, “I’m Batman.”

“Well, god save Gotham, in that case.”

—

Ryan can’t stand to look at him right now, but he can feel him, the way he’s sitting beside him, and he can feel the way his voice sounds: It sounds hurt and hesitant. It might sound disappointed, and Ryan’s brain works itself up into a terrible, sudden frenzy — does it sound cheated? Does it sound like the voice of a man who’s been swindled?

Ryan shakes his head adamantly, which must look strange to Shane. No, Shane wouldn’t feel that way. Shane wouldn’t be like that.

This, Ryan realizes, is how girls must feel all the time.

–

Ryan shakes his head, grinning wetly. “You’re too perfect, you know that? You’re too fucking dumb and perfect.”

Shane looks lost. Ryan is still half-crying, half-laughing.

“Can I hug you?”

–