TMayNT Day 7: Best turtle gadget

I love the battle shell and would like one for myself if I’m being honest (both to support my shitty back and to help me climb walls like a big ole bug)

Prompt from this:

My dear champions picked another bookwyrm. Temeraire from Naomi Novik's His Majesty's Dragon!

Very veeeery quickly made comic based on that fact that whenever someone says, "You'll have to forgive me" my immediate internal thought is 'You can't tell me what to do 🤨'.

In fairness to King Kong, if I had a tiny adorable primate in my hand I would also be very resistant to someone taking it away from me.

We all assume it was romantic, but maybe when King Kong looked at her he was seeing this:

I love this scene… Raph is being a good big brother and shielding Donnie from shredder’s attacks. Meanwhile, Leo is trying to use Mikey as a weapon, hitting him against shredder 😂

Hi guys !!!

Yesterday and today I was too busy to upload the drawings on time, so today I bring you a double prize.

I hope you like it, I drew them with a lot of passion ;D

Originally I wanted to draw every single Donnie in existence for this installment (because in this house we love and respect all the purple ones!), but unfortunately as time went on I realized that concept was way too ambitious for my current set of skills and energy levels. :Du So instead, here’s my favorite Donnie (2012) having some well-deserved downtime, doodling as he chats with the Donnies from the other main animated series!

[Available on Redbubble!]

Leo casually sees Moses

What I actually came to enjoy more than transmigration stories, actually, was regression. I think I went on a whole binge reading every regression webnovel I could.

Actually, rewind. What I really binged were revenge stories: about characters getting a second chance to re-do their lives and fix their mistakes, and also take revenge on the people who wronged them.

There was specifically one set-up I liked: of the character who dies miserably because of their abusive family life and/or huband's/lover's betrayal.

These are stories meant to provide catharsis, but the thing is, with each one I read, the catharsis was never quite as strong. I began thinking about it too much. What is revenge? I realized that to me, it was meaningless if the characters who wronged the protagonist get punished in the second life for sins they committed in the first, without even knowing what they did wrong.

Then I started thinking even more. Is suffering punishment a vital element of the revenge? A lot of novels didn't shy away from subjecting the antagonists to all sorts of torture and creative death. But I thought, no. Regret was a more satisfying element to me. The characters had to torment *themselves* over their own bad choices. This was not always popular with the audience, who, from the comments, apparently supported physical torture more than psychological torment.

Then the more I thought about it, the more I started questioning what catharsis even was. Which combination of elements actually leads to catharsis? What was satisfying about any of this? How is that feeling induced?

Until, finally, I stopped finding catharsis in stories of revenge and began to understand why revenge feels unsatisfactory to some people. Revenge is a visceral emotional reaction, and by analyzing it intellectually I'd killed it.

i would never want to imply that 87 doesn't have issues writing women, cuz it really does (there's diet jokes, there's misogynistic dialogue, and one uncomfortable ...harem...thing...) but what surprises me most is how actually nicely the women can be written into stories when they show up? like case in point: mona lisa.

first of all, when i looked her up before watching this episode for the first time i had seen one picture and was so nervous to get to this episode like "god a girl turtle so she has hair and a pink scarf, and raphael has to comfort her? great its gonna be cringe" but it turned out i was super wrong. its a one off episode for her, but she captures your attention because raphael has fallen into her story (the same way the turtles as a whole in this series fell into april's story)

she uses raphael as a way to get into a party via hanging off his arm and pretending they're a couple, and then leaves him. the camera doesn't ogle on her, they don't make him infatuated with her, they just have him clearly confused by why a girl took his arm kissed his cheek and then left. and then he sees her acting suspicious so he follows her, sees her hijacking the ship and assumes she's up to no good, cuz this is a turtles episode damn it, shes probably the bad guy!

she doesn't take his shit and tries to tell him to leave cuz he doesn't know what hes getting into and thinks he'll get hurt (she doesn't realize he is a real ninja turtle) before the villain shows up. we get her back story, where we learn she's a physics student who was kidnapped by the villain and forced to work for him, to which she plays along with because she's clever, and she found a way to stop him from the inside. this gets her mutated in the process. raphael realizes hes messed up and assumed this was his story to figure out but it wasn't, he's interrupted her story. raph realizes hes made a mistake and has to help her fix it.

at no point do they actually write this as a romance (despite it being possible to read some dialogue as flirtation, it isn't overt) they're writing mona lisa as someone who isn't taking raphael's sass and is dishing it right back at him and us the audience. the fact its called "raphael meets his match" is so fitting because she's just as much of a character as he is, and the reason it became a ship is on the merit of the way she is written to be a character with her own story and her own personality first, and then as a companion to raphael second

and its kind of sad when i think about 12 mona lisa because, yeah shes this huge alien warrior who fights well, shes not a pretty character, but we don't get to know much about her before her new role in this story is to be the object of raphael's affection. in the end i think its a matter of the (male) writers thinking "well the original mona lisa is too cute and wears pink and she gets helped by the turtles so if we make her a COOL ALIEN WHO FIGHTS GOOD that will make her a stronger character" which is not how that works!

unlike 87, she gets multiple episodes where she shows up, but each time her role is the same. she's raph's girlfriend first and foremost. there's moments of inner turmoil in her, but it always comes down to her fighting for her people vs staying true to raphael. and since this show is about the turtles it puts her place in the story as being about him.

so to me, given the choice between a mona who's story raphael falls into, vs one where she's forced into his, give me the cute pink one any day. that's the stronger character between the two.

TMayNT Day 9: Best Raph

Who needs to be angry when you can be silly instead?

But for real 90% of the reason I love 87 Raph so much is because he’s voiced by Rob Paulsen. Silly, sassy, yappy Raph is best Raph, hands down.

Prompt from this:

Insane to me that the UK government is slowly trying to legislate trans people out of existence and I have not seen a single person talk about it

Single sex toilets are now legally required in all new buildings, the cass review may lead to a complete shutdown of all trans healthcare, single sex wards are being introduced to HOSPITALS and claims that trans people will be treated in private rooms is almost laughable given the current bed shortages, ensuring that trans people will be forced to wait even longer for life-saving procedures. Trans teenagers are being murdered and the government does not care. We are slowly being driven out of all public spaces and all healthcare.

Also in the last few days new NHS England guidance was leaked to the Good Law Project that states that the 6000+ kids on the wait list for NHS gender affirming care are going to be invited to deceptive face-to-face "mental health assessments" with their provider (in some areas starting as soon as 30th June 2024), and if they're found to be accessing transition care outside the NHS they may be advised to stop, and if they don't may face a safeguarding referral to local authorities. We don't know how serious this will get yet, but it's potentially extremely bad. The Good Law Project has said "It's reasonable to describe this as an attempt to force people to detransition".

I'm sorry I haven't seen any actionable steps to take about this yet as it's a developing issue, other than that it's very important you don't tell anyone if you or your child (or anyone else) are accessing gender affirming care outside the NHS.

This article has more details, and the author is a good person to follow for updates, as well as the Good Law Project themselves. Don't forget this isn't a time for panic, but instead to stay informed as best you can, care for each other, and get involved in pushing back against this.

from a certain perspective, raphael's... loss of composure, in Raphael Versus The Volcano, was arguably the pizza oven's fault. for kicking the bucket when it did.

Ever since that "can your fave survive castle Dracula" blog did Stephen Maturin I've been thinking about Temeraire Characters vs. Castle Dracula so here's the breakdown: Laurence: About as good odds as the average Jonathan Harker. He has similar approach to religion (and would probably take the crucifix out of social obligation) and ability to manage the social situation with Dracula. He has experience being prisoner of various groups for various motives, and he has a tendency to accidentally make arrogant tyrants fall in love with him, so he's good on the "keeping Dracula's attention" front. If he managed to get in the baby situation he'd probably die because he'd try to save it (self-sacrificial martyr streak) but it's unlikely he'd end up in that exact spot with the vampire ladies since I think he'd be a lot more military and methodical about any exploring and always return to safe zones up until his actual escape attempt. Anyway if he lives long enough to try climbing he's home free, the man might not be a born and bred aviator but he's been climbing first ships' rigging and then dragon harness his entire life and once escaped a palace that was on fire by climbing down the outside. CAN survive. Tharkay: As a major proponent of “if it sucks, hit da bricks,” Tharkay climbed out the window on night #1. Granby: Granby would take the crucifix and from there it would mostly depend on how much Dracula finds him entertaining. Granby won't be polite about being imprisoned, and is used to Iskierka who will react to his protests by overruling him instead of getting bored and killing him. So i'm inclined to think Dracula would not find him so fun, in which case he probably would kill him early on. That said he could probably make the climb even one-handed. (again, burning palace experience) Could Survive but Probably Won't. Sorry Granby. Jane Roland: I will be honest I do not see any situation in which Jane could be tempted into castle Dracula in the first place, at least not without Excidium also being there on a mission of destruction. She's more of a Quncy Morris type, only she wouldn't die because she'd be on the back of a fifteen ton dragon who will melt Dracula into a horrible goo from aloft. Survives, by virtue of not playing.

Arthur Hammond: I cannot stress enough how fast this man dies.

Temeraire: Is a dragon the size of a frigate with a sonic attack that regularly causes landslides. Castle Dracula does not survive him.

okay but there's a fascinating story in the tangle of manners and morbid curiosity between laurence, dracula, and temeraire. if the count has to entertain and be entertained by laurence while temeraire is hanging around outside the castle asking lots of pertinent questions and starting to suspect there's a hostage situation afoot, everything turns into a REALLY funny excruciatingly polite mexican stand-off.