Thread:Sonicisawesome2448/@comment-995426-20160128044156/@comment-995426-20160202064313

I'm still not sure I can accept Y'gythgba. They still feel extremely unnatural to me, and only time and lots of development (not to mention loads of damage control) can change this. Two episodes full of fan service are not just inadequate, but intellectually insulting. I was originally willing to like her, but I wanted them to treat her more organically, and not try to force anything like they did with Mikey and Renet. Instead, they gave Raph his worst plot when his character development was already at its lowest point. That's a lot of damage that isn't easily just undone.

As for Slash, I think it's more complicated than just seeing him as Spike. You have to remember the way Spike was first introduced.



At first, Raph was speaking very tender, romantic words to an unseen guy. Then it was revealed to be Spike. One thing we have to remember is that Raph was relatively socially isolated up to the this point, knowing only his immediate family, and then at some point, finding Spike. Splinter was Raph's father, and Leo, Donnie and Mikey were Raph's brothers, but Raph's relationship with Spike was a lot more tender. Now consider that Raph was 15 at this point. It felt to me like Raph honestly wanted a boyfriend even then, but could only get so much emotionally out of a non-sentient turtle. This can happen a lot with people who crave romantic companionship but are unable to actually get it. I don't think Raph realistically thought that his love for Spike would ever realistically go further, which is why he never did anything inappropriate.

Spike becoming Slash changed everything for Raph. Spike was already totally in love with Raph&mdash;that much was certain.



After watching "Slash and Destroy", the way Spike looks at Raph and narrows his eyes at the end of this scene in "Showdown, Part 1" gave me goosebumps. When Slash mutated, it did catch Raph off-guard, in large part because it seemed like a fantasy come true for him. Raph had just been served that perfect boyfriend material on a silver platter&mdash;a guy he already loved who already loved him and was now a sentient guy who immediately wanted to be Raph's partner&mdash;and it must have seemed too good to be true. (And of course it was too good to be true because Slash went so insane at first.) For the rest of season 2, their relationship consisted of Raph pining for Slash's return. When he took Spike's photograph as his one most cherished belonging to take to the farmhouse, I don't think it's because Raph only missed the pet&mdash;I think they were the same beloved person in his mind, and he just didn't have a photograph of Slash.

"Battle for New York" felt anticlimatic because one of Raph's greatest lingering wishes had been to see Slash again. So when they finally saw each other again...fist bump? Hardly any exchanged words? No more emotionally-charged affectionate of any kind? It felt like a lame retcon, and I complained about it when the episode was new. (And this series has had significant retcons before, including in the most recent episode when it retconned the Utrom's origins after Bishop first explained them in "Annihilation Earth!".) That one extremely tender moment in "Clash of the Mutanimals" felt like a great big "We're sorry, please forgive us" moment. And that left "Dinosaur Seen in Sewers!" feeling like a great big "Just kidding." That was a lot of mood whiplash for me, and it let Raph at his worst character development by the time season 3 ended.

I just cannot bring myself to forgive the show for what happened next in season 4.

When I watch a show I like, I want to be able to respect the characters&mdash;to sympathize with what happens to them. Instead, episodes like "The Creeping Doom" and "Beyond the Known Universe" gave us plots where most of the characters used unusually poor judgment compared to what we usually expect from them. "The Creeping Doom" had Donnie making the stupid decision to put lots of fragile objects on a shelf that Mikey was sure to recklessly break (Donnie should have more logic than that), and Raph taunting his enemy at just the perfect moment for it to deal him the most damage (Raph should have more battle savvy than that), and Mikey's stupidity conveniently being both the cause and the solution to everyone's problems (a plot already recycled from earlier episodes). And in "Beyond the Known Universe", there was that entire scene in the marketplace, where Raph and Casey casually made some shockingly poor choices just to mess around with random weapons, and I found myself a little disappointed that Dregg didn't just eat Casey and be done with it. XD And there was the earlier mentioned episode with Raph and Zog. When characters keep doing breathtakingly stupid things even at their "best" judgment, how am I supposed to keep respecting and rooting for the characters to succeed? They're a farce. And I didn't tune in to watch a farce.

And on the topic of Leo and Karai, I actually do like them and wanted the best for them. But, being detail-oriented as I am, I should point out that they were never quite a couple. Leo was infatuated with Karai, sure, but Karai never returned romantic affections of any kind. The closest was when she leaned over Leo seductively in that one scene in "Vengeance is Mine", just to unbalance Leo enough to knock him unconscious. (Remember the importance of unbalancing one's opponent?) Historic kunoichi were actually trained to use sex as a form of mental manipulation to accomplish their mission, much like the honeypot tactics in spying. Even Karai kissing Casey in "The Deadly Venom" had the two-fold purpose of unbalancing and poisoning Casey. I think it's ultimately possible that Leo and Karai could have developed something had they been given more of a chance without everything going on, but they didn't. In that sense, I respect the writers for keeping their character development more realistically-paced and not trying to force a miracle that would instantly make them fall in love with each other and kiss...unlike certain later episodes ("Turtles in Time" and "The Moons of Thalos 3") that earned my loathing for doing just that.

When writers do that to characters and then just double-down on it and try to force it to work by trying to contrive the existence of depth, none of it feels natural to me. There's a rule of thumb in writing that helps make for much better writing. "Show, don't tell." When it comes to writing romances, it means that it helps for the entire process of romantic development to be well-developed and show its own believable chemistry. But when characters suddenly say they're in love and then kiss without any believable development, that's telling without showing, and it derails characters by making them more one-dimensional. And when you make forced romantic interaction a matter of fan service, then it's no longer even romance&mdash;it's effectively soft porn for the sake of immature fanboys. If this show had always been about that, it would be different&mdash;then again, I might never have become a fan of that kind of show anyway. Younger viewers may be okay with it, and I excuse them for that because of their age and inexperience. But when middle-aged 1987 TV series fans want that kind of show and it's delivered to them on a silver platter, that's just sad and nauseating.