#including raph... for THE WHOLE THING. brutal...

[istherewifiinhell]

if a had a nickle for every classic cartoon that was set in new york that did a side season taking the characters on a world tour to do a little educational content with mystical plots id have 2 nickles etc etc

[goodlucktai]

I'd love to see some of the events in Give Me Something That'll Haunt Me from some other perspectives, especially Leo's brothers. You're a very skilled writer so we already have some idea as to how each of them warmed up to Usagi, but it would be really cool to see their thoughts on the situation! How April thought Usagi hated Leo at first, how everyone was dealing with a mopey Leo after his breakdown with the farmbotto, Usagi winning Donnie over in like two minutes, all of that stuff!

x

They’re halfway through Legally Blonde when April gets a text that makes her frown. Her attention is fully arrested by her phone for the whole Bend and Snap scene, which attracts her most perceptive brother's attention. Leo is too sore to throw the projector remote at her himself, so he makes eye contact with Mikey. Ever-reliable Mikey snaps a quick salute and lobs the remote at her in Leo’s stead.

“Ow! Angelo!” April snaps without any real heat, returning fire with an empty cup. 

“You’re making Leon feel neglected,” Donnie supplies without looking up from his tablet, like the hypocrite he is. He’s been stubbornly nestled next to Leo for most of the evening, though, so Leo is willing to give him a pass on most things. 

“Aww, Blue, you know you’re my number one man,” she says, to an immediate chorus of “say what now?” from Mikey, Raph and Donnie. “Suna just wanted to know if I’d be able to drop by tomorrow morning,” April adds, which is not quite the truth.

Leo brightens, a sly grin curling across his face. “Is it a date?” 

“No, it’s not a date,” April says. She can’t help feeling helplessly fond when she looks at him. 

All four of her little brothers were equal parts supportive and obnoxious when she and Sunita started officially going out about a year ago, which was pretty par for the course. Splinter demanded to meet the yokai, to make sure that she was good enough for his girl, which was enough to make April tear up even as she joined the boys in giving him shit for being such a typical boring dad. 

But the most remarkable thing to come out of it was Leo approaching her right before she went home, mask tails all twisted up in his fingers in a blatantly anxious display, to say, “You’re a girl, and you like a girl. And it’s okay.”

“Yeah?” 

“So is it—would it be okay to like both?”

And April had hugged him so hard that the pattern on his scutes left faint imprints on her arms, and she kissed him all over his face until he was laughing helplessly, and said, “You can like whoever you want, baby. Whoever treats you right. And if anyone ever gives you shit for it, you come right to me, capisce?”

What April was really saying back then was that she would never let anybody hurt him. And she meant it, of course she meant it, but—god, she failed. 

Leo flung himself into that prison dimension like it was the only thing that made sense, like he wasn’t breaking everyone’s hearts in one fell swoop. The Krang brutalized him and the Leo that Mikey rescued was barely more than a broken shell. He wouldn’t come out, hidden away inside and making these awful-sounding vocalizations that had all three of his brothers in tears. 

Splinter made a hysterical phone-call to Draxum, and the goat-man met them halfway back to the lair at a flat-out run, looking more frantic than April could remember ever seeing him, including that time with the Shredder. 

Leo was put under what essentially amounted to mystic anesthesia, and only then could he be coaxed out of his damaged shell. Raph held him the whole time and made this deep rumbly noise in his chest that April vaguely recognized from the turtles’ much younger years. 

Donnie was so frightened that it looped around into fury, and he snapped at people left and right until he finally just shut down completely. Mikey hadn’t stopped crying once since he started back on Staten Island, since the big brother he so admired wouldn’t come out of his shell, even as he was chirping in distress and bleeding all over his siblings' hands. 

It took Draxum all of ten minutes to decide that the only way to save his life would be to put him into a magical healing sleep, the kind of Disney-movie shit that April didn’t have a ton of faith in. 

“He will just be asleep,” Draxum said, an uncharacteristic softness in his eyes, even if his voice sounded more or less the same as always. “He will hear your voices and know he is home. When he wakes up, all will be well.”

And he was right. The spell put Leo in something like stasis, a glorified coma, and with every day his vitals got stronger, his body inching away from “irreversibly damaged” and closer to “jesus christ what happened to you” towards the ultimate goal of “you’ll never guess where i got this scar. remember that one crazy summer?” 

When he woke up, whole weeks later, he did so with a disgruntled little stretch and a wrinkle of his beak, like he’d succumbed to one of those afternoon naps that dragged on much too long. His eyes were clear and present, if groggy and a little out of it, and when he spotted Mikey drooling on the blanket beside him, he smiled. 

That was the exact moment April could finally convince herself that her family would be okay. 

But it will be a long, long time before she forgives herself for dropping the ball so spectacularly. 

One of her precious little brothers looked death right in the eye and double-dog-dared it to do its worst, because somehow he missed the memo that he was loved and needed and worth so much more than a sacrifice play. 

Her precious little Leon, with a blackened eye and a necklace of grisly bruises and an arm so thoroughly mangled that even the healing coma couldn’t heal it completely, leaving him in a cast for much longer than any of the turtles are used to, with how quickly they usually heal. 

And his shell just broke her heart. It was a source of constant anxiety for his dads, even as they refused to outsource that worry to the kids, who knew that it was bad but not very bad. 

April is the big sister. The biggest sibling, no matter how much taller Raph gets. It’s her job to look after them. Leo almost died. And now that rude bunny waiter from Run of the Mill is bugging Sunita for Leo’s number? That guy who always stares at Leo like he’s trying to work out how it’s possible for someone like him to even exist?

Ohh, April can feel that inherited ninpo in her soul lighting up. Karai’s presence is a faraway and gentle thing most of the time, but she’s happy to lend her strength when April needs it. 

“Woah, April, you good?” Raph asks. His eyes move down to the phone clenched in her hands, and he frowns. “Did someone say something to you? Does Donnie need to doxx another internet troll?”

“Gimme,” Donnie says at once, hands out for the phone.

“Will you stop?” April swats at him. “And Raph, don’t encourage him.”

“I mean, he’s just gonna do it either way—”

“There’s no internet troll! God, I thought we were watching a movie! None of you are paying attention!”

“You started it, texting your giiiirlfriiiiend,” Mikey coos like the little menace he is, then ducks behind Raph with a cackle when April aims another empty cup at him. 

“April’s allowed to text her girlfriend whenever she wants,” Leo says, in his Fearless Leader voice, which he only ever uses to stir shit up. Sure enough, a heartbeat later, he adds smugly, “Don’t be jealous that she’s got game and none of you do.”

Protests break out like clockwork and Leo is soundly booed by everybody in the room. It’s a good thing they’ve all seen this movie roughly a billion times because it’s gonna be awhile before these guys settle down now. 

Leo meets her eyes from the twins’ comfy nest in the armchair and winks. Got your back.

All the chaos gives April a chance to respond to Sunita’s text in peace, asking her to pass this Usagi a message. 

Anyone who wants to get to April’s little brother is gonna have to go through her first. 

[all-pacas]

more reasons golden deer is the best fe house:

equal amount of male and female students, and house with the most commoners

especially since i would argue that the other house’s commoners don’t even count: ashe was adopted by a powerful lord, and will inherit that title, mercedes was born a noble and relinquished her title, dedue is the prince’s close friend and retainer, and dorothea often complains about being the only commoner in black eagles but is a wealthy and famous singer: all lack titles, but all are (presently) wealthy and well connected. (there’s also petra, who the game calls a commoner but is recognized as a noble in universe)

by contrast, the golden deer does have ignatz, who is from a wealthy and well connected merchant family, but also raphael and leonie, both of whom are explicitly stated to be in debt and must succeed in order to provide for their families/village. raphael sold his family’s home and goods to pay for his schooling; leonie’s whole village gathered money for her and she also needed to beg for a letter of recommendation from her local lord.

(it also seems that if cyril has a “canon” house, it’s probably golden deer — most of his supports are in GD, including the lord character, and claude keeps dragging him into cutscenes post timeskip whether or not he’s recruited. cyril is an child soldier turned indentured servant turned normal servant, and a minority: he’s not even allowed to attend the school he works at as a student!)

and, unlike dorothea who is made to be aware of her “lesser” status even though she is wealthy and famous, the golden deer do not fucking care about status. claude is sensitive enough to his own outsider status — the rumor is that he’s secretly a commoner that lord riegan propped up because of his distant blood ties/crest — that his attitude probably influences this, but like. even lorenz, the most class conscious of all of them, is happily interacting with raphael and leonie and ignatz in their c supports: he eats with raph, he encouraged ignatz (and uses his awareness of the class system to, essentially, offer to become ignatz’s patron to give him an excuse to do what he wants), and is not only bossed around by leonie but openly calling them friends. in their c support. none of the golden deer are at all exclusionary or even curious about the backgrounds of their friends!

there’s also the fact that the golden deer are not even a little crest obsessed, which is a leicester thing: of the five ruling lords, ordelia has never had a crest, and it’s not clear if edmund does or not (marianne is adopted, and a distant relative). judith is a legend in the alliance and former great lord, and has no crest — no one in house daphneal has had one for several generations. it also seems to be implied that holst doesn’t have the crest of goneril, given that he foists his weapon off to hilda at first opportunity, and everyone loves holst. but this also means that crest status is pretty irrelevant in the alliance. we never hear of drama like with ingrid or hanneman, both of whom have family histories of arranged marriages and (in hanneman’s case) a sister being more or less forced to have kids for The Bloodline. hell, marianne has a crest and just never mentions it for six years, and no one even cares enough to ask.

the alliance is not class conscious or crest snobs. and you know what else they are? a non absolute monarchy! look at edelgard and dimitri. look at how the moment one decides to go on a brutal campaign of war, no one can stop her, and the moment the other snaps and leads his men into countless losing battles — dimitri on grondor field in VW is just such a tragedy, just a man so blinded and desperate that he throws his and his loyal friends’s lives away; he barely even reacts to their deaths — and everyone is so bound to the ideas of chivalry and absolute monarchy that they just let these wars happen, let human experiments and war crimes happen, not because everyone is ok with it but because absolute monarchies are terrible!

meanwhile in the alliance if claude was like hey let’s go to war at least half the other lords would punt him into the ocean. like literally the first half of VW is claude struggling to get a winning majority in order to be allowed to declare war against edelgard. he spends months, you spend months, running little campaigns to appease the other lords, sending hilda and lorenz and lysithea home to politic, negotiating with merchants, and finally getting a yes vote to fight. and the game frames it as gloucester being a coward and minor villain and i mean, the dude sucks, but guess what! this is good! it should be hard to declare war! “maybe we can have peace with edelgard” might have been gloucester being a coward but should also have been debated!

they’re not a real republic, since it’s inherited titles and limited to five lords, but it’s a biiiiig step in the right direction. (ferdinand is always talking about how his dad is prime minister but that makes no sense as clearly the emperor isn’t at all bound by a parliamentary system, edelgard does whatever she wants). like, i will take a ruling council that actually debates and argues instead of just doing what their leader wants over an absolute monarch every day!

in conclusion: the alliance is not classist, is not beholden to elitist systems, and doesn’t believe in following the orders of an absolute leader, or in one person having the power to make decisions unilaterally, and also in claude’s ending card he isn’t posing dramatically or slacking off in an orchard but hosting still more diplomatic meetings, and this is why he is the best lord and the golden deer are the best house

i will now open the floor for questions

[drummergirl231]

TMNT 2012 - Top 10 “You know... for kids!” Moments

I decided to do a countdown of what I think are some of the most disturbing moments in TMNT 2012. Honestly I’m still not sure about the order I want these in, but oh well. Let the countdown begin!

#10. The monsters in the Monster Arc. (S05E14-17 airing order or S05E06-09 production order)

The mummies in “The Curse of Savanti Romero,” were creepy enough, and certainly giving me some Gibdo flashbacks, but what the heck were those monsters with butts that they had to fight back in the city? Also, mummies through a meat grinder booby trap. Need I say more?

#9 Super Shredder’s Instability (S04E21 - Darkest Plight)

I mean it’s just creepy seeing the limbs of a gross mutant suddenly dangling by a scrawny string of flesh with some mutagen veins.

#8 Mom Thing (S03E03 - Buried Secrets)

Poor April finally thinks she has her mother back after ten plus years, only to see her morph into a giant freaky monster that absorbs her friends. This is what happens when you let horror movie fans write TMNT.

#7 Mikey and Donnie Find Shen’s Body (S03E20 - Tale of the Yokai)

It’s so subtle, but so powerful and heartbreaking. Right after we see Raph drag Yoshi out from under a beam that Leo holds up, we see Mikey move a beam and discover the body of the woman who had hosted and fed them earlier just that day. Never had their father’s loss seemed so real to them. Mikey has to look away for a moment, but I imagine he regains his composure and is able to remove Shen’s body from the burning building (since we see Yoshi holding her outside the building in flashbacks). We don’t see that here, though. Directly after Mikey closes his eyes, instead of showing us her broken body covered in blood, we instead see billowing smoke, red from the flames below it, like a substitute for the bloodbath Donnie and Mikey no doubt witnessed. 

#6 The Chimera’s Nest (S03E07 - Eyes of the Chimera)

When the Chimera takes Donnie, Mikey, Raph, and Casey back to its nest, we see Mikey step on some bones. It’s clear these are human bones, and there are a lot of complete skeletons. Even more disturbing, we know that the Chimera does not come into being until after the team defeats the Speed Demon, so in a very short amount of time, a whole bunch of people went missing and were never heard from again... Not to mention the Chimera survives the episode, and presumably continues terrorizing the region. 

#5 Splinter’s First Death (S03E26 - Annihilation Earth Part II)

You know, I feel this was uncalled for. The turtles already had to go back in time to save the whole planet anyway. Did the writers have to have Splinter get impaled, too? Nothing that makes Greg Cipes have to make crying sounds is okay.

#4 The Rat King in “Darkest Plight” (S04E21 - Darkest Plight (duh))

From Splinter’s crazy hallucination of an almost naked dude covered in rats to the actual fate of the “Rat King” - a skeleton with a few rats crawling on/through it - all this was insanely disturbing. 

#3 Tigerclaw’s Arm Getting Chopped Off S04E24 - Tale of Tiger Claw)

While Eric Bauza did  lovely job voicing Tiger Claw in this scene, I think we can agree this was... geez, I mean look at that arm. On a children’s show. And on a children’s playground, too.  “Mommy, look what I found!” “AHHHH!!! BILLY, PUT THAT DOWN!!!” (Anyone else notice that it looks like his arm is chopped off above the elbow but the arm on the ground just looks like a forearm?)

#2 Splinter’s Actual Death (S04E25 - Requiem)

After this episode (I saw it in Korean, first), I would frequently burst into tears thinking about it. Seeing it in English later didn’t help matters at all.  “Papa...” GAHHHHH WHY MUST THE WRITERS MAKE GREG CIPES DO SAD???? Plus, the manner of death was just brutal. And that first gif doesn’t capture everything. They keep the “camera,” for lack of a better word on Splinter and we watch him die. You see the light leave his eyes and THEN Shredder tosses him over the side of the building. Happy Sunday, kids! Remember when you go to church to ask your Sunday school teacher to pray for the TMNT fandom! 

#1 The Whole Kavaxas Arc (S05E01-04)

How can I narrow it down? It was so dark I could barely watch some parts of it. The creepy chanting demons, the black magic used to basically summon Satan, a dude getting the life sucked out of him, that dude’s corpse, zombie Shredder... Oh yeah, and Donnie almost becoming a murderer. I forgot to include that in the gif.

TMNT 2012 sure liked to push the boundaries of network censorship.