#this has given me some thoughts about ddmg april!

[skeleton-in-a-hoodie]

I feel like the DDMG Turtles are going to be really weird kids. Some of its due to The Horrors TM, because even excluding all the supernatural stuff that goes on in this au, these kids have been through hell. But there's a good chunk of stuff that can only really be explained by the fact they're being raised by a ghost/ rat demon hybrid thing and living in Splinter's Domain.

This ended up being mostly me rambling about how prolonged exposure to domains/ the astral plane can effect humans. Under a readmore cause it got longer than I was expecting.

I think fairy land rules apply here, in that if you enter a ghost's domain, because you've essentially gone to the spirit world, you're not going to leave the same as you went in. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and it doesn't mean someone who's gone into a Domain once and then left immediately is going to turn into a demon or whatever. For most people it just means that spirits and demons can look at them and know this person has been to the spirit world.

But the DDMG Turtles didn't just enter a Domain, stay for a minute, then left and never interacted with a Domain ever again. By the time the Pied Piper of New York ends, at the low end (so Donnie, Raph and Leo) they've spent a few hours in a Domain which is still more than most humans, and at the high end Mikey has been spending at least two hours everyday in a Domain for several months.

After Piper ends, Mikey's brothers will catch up with him hours wise, which means all four kids are spending a lot of time everyday in the spirit world. And they do end up moving in with Splinter and living in the Lair full time. I think it's been a long time since a living human spent so much time in the astral plane.

This kinda means that they're going to be affected by the spirit world a hell of a lot more than someone who dipped in and out of a Domain.

Bare minimum they're going to stand out a lot more to ghosts and demons. Best way I can think to describe it right now is that other human's spirits are like fireflies, but the Turtles' are like suns. Other humans can kinda tell there's something different about them, but the vast majority of people won't be able to figure out what, so most would just assume it was a nd thing they were picking up on. And to be fair the DDMG boys are all neurodivergent, so that's not an entirely wrong assumption to make.

I've not really figured out fully what this means for the Turtles, outside of the fact that death is going to be a bit different for them compared to most people, and that they might end up having cores whilst still being living humans. Like I think all humans in DDMG technically have cores, it's just that whilst you're alive the core isn't fully developed, and upon death it matures. But because the DDMG Turtles have been living in the spirit world and spending so much time around Splinter, theirs might start doing that early. So they're still human, but they've always got one metaphorical foot in the astral plane, and that plane and all its inhabitants recognise that.

This isn't something Splinter was aware of, and I don't think the other ghosts of New York knew it would happen, otherwise they'd have told Splinter... actually, they'd have told Garson, who'd tell Splinter. It's very important to Splinter that his sons get to have as normal a life as possible and this is a man who had his humanity slowly ripped from his fingers over the span of years. DDMG Splinter is intimitately aware of what it's like to slowly lose your humanity and become Something Else, so if he knew being at the Old House would slowly change the boys into something that's still human but slightly to the left, he'd have told them and let them decide what they wanted to do. He loves them dearly, and if the Turtles decided that they wanted to live somewhere else because of what his Domain was (unknowingly) doing to them, he'd accept it and do what he could to help them sort things out.

As things stand, by the time Splinter and the Turtles find out about the effects a Domain can have on a living human, the boys have already been permanently changed and part of them has decided that the astral plane is their home.

And, even if that wasn't the case, I think they'd still decide to stay with Splinter. They love him, he's their father, and they'd much rather live with him and deal with that bridge when they get to it.