Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-31255465-20170923034221/@comment-995426-20171128213339

Easol1:

I respect that. You tried it. You aren't really a fan. Too many anxiety buttons pressed. Understandable. I... Heh, I almost said, "TMNT isn't for everyone." XD Like I implied, I tend to view all TMNT through a Mirage frame of reference. But one thing I love about it is that, even with sadness, there's still always room to enjoy life to some degree. Remember, "life at best is bitter sweet." There's often a silver lining even in a difficult life, even if it doesn't readily present itself. And at 37 years old, I can relate to this. Life can be very difficult, full of some very painful stuff that tries to rip you down. But no matter how bad it gets, life...goes on, you know? You internalize your experiences, you learn from them, you grow, you find ways (albeit imperfect) of becoming stronger than that which tried to tear you down. Your happy ending isn't just delivered to you on a silver platter&mdash;you have to earn it on your own. Even then, nothing's guaranteed, and bad stuff can happen that no one really deserved. And still, you press on, and find an ending that, even if not a fairy tale ending, is one you can ultimately continue living your life with.

Mirage is absolutely full of such endings, and it's reflected well in the endings of Mirage stories like the three-part "What Goes Around... ...Comes Around!"-"Silent Partner"-"True Stories" arc, and the 13-part "City at War", and "Darkness Weaves", and "Swan Song". The 2012 TV series partially adapted the "What Goes Around... ...Comes Around!"-"Silent Partner"-"True Stories" arc in the form of "The Invasion" and the following North Hampton farm arc, but in some ways departs significantly from it in becoming more like "The Real World: North Hampton" where teenagers live in a rural frathouse without adult supervision. The Mirage farm arc was a more sober-toned time of pain on one hand, but also of great healing on the other&mdash;not just of physically broken characters like Leonardo (though I rather liked how the 2012 series portrayed Leo's long painful physical therapy over several episodes), but of the entire family of seven whose unity up to that point had been forged in hardship. "True Stories" takes place over several months' time span, from the Christmas April's burned down, through their escape to the, the numb weeks that followed, the rest of winter, into spring, into summer, into...what had actually been transforming into a new lease on life, which had been stabilizing around April, the turtles, Splinter and Casey even as April had been keeping diary entries of the experience. Separately, both April and Splinter reach the some conclusion: "Life is good...  And life goes on."

If you're a young reader, it may just seem like a bunch of pain and drama and it doesn't make sense how characters could lose their home and all their possessions and their sense of security in life (all on Christmas Day, no less) and then still eventually come to that conclusion. But it's...sort of true, you know? It never gets perfect, but it can still get better&mdash;your happy ending just doesn't always necessarily fall in your lap pre-assembled without any effort on your part. Personal growth and adaptation to change are essential, mandatory parts of the overall experience, and actually make a story more engaging in the process.