#donnie just fuming with his arms crossed and raph's just standing there chillin

[qoldenskies]

kicking my feet rn can i ask if you have any liked hcs for how donnie acted as a child including ones you've made yourself. baby donnie is my heart and soul (/p . duh) that is my BOY right there. we never got a lot on the turtletots but speculations can be made yknow??

i like making him a little shy. a deer in headlights type. kind of a crybaby. maybe not sweet (i think he'd still be very blunt and especially bad with social cues, so i think he'd be mostly unintentionally rude) but i think it adds a nice touch of depth to him if his snark was honed a little over time, in contrast to leo who was Always Kinda Like That. leo was the reckless kid intentionally getting to insane situations (hey. what if it was a response to splinter's neglect too. hey hey hey. hi) and donnie was the one covering his eyes and shrieking at him to STOP HANDLING THAT BUG EWWWW GROSS THAT'S SO GROSS STOP!!!!

and donnie was definitely a bit of a tattle. although i do think both of them would band together to keep things from mikey, mostly because mikey as a kid definitely had 0 filter. tell him to keep a secret and he will BLURT IT OUT at the dinner table the same day for no reason. donnie's more like. if you ask him he'll be honest. why wouldn't he be honest? he doesn't get why anyone would be mad at him for it or why leo's calling him a tattle. like ermm DEFINITIONALLY,

i also think it falls well in line with the way he's characterized pretty well, especially with all the crumbs we got of how he was as a really little kid. he's pretty frequently perceived as sensitive by the others and i do think he spends a lot of time trying to beat the allegations now that he's older and better at handling himself. i also like the flavor it adds to his dynamic with raph-- he used to need raph for everything, and then he built technological armor to shield the most vulnerable parts of himself so he could be enough on his own. raph so quickly came to grips with that (in contrast to mikey who he's still struggling to see that way), maybe disregarding the reason donnie felt like he had to in the first place. it means it hits raph extra hard when those insecurities come to light, because shouldn't he have known?

i do like when people make him an angry little baby though. i do think he was still a biter for sure (did he ever really grow out of it...) but that was just his way of asserting his boundaries. splinter had to learn FAST that donnie didn't like being picked up unless he specifically asked for it because otherwise he was GOING to lose his fingers if he kept it up LMAOOO