Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-1255374-20151024145123/@comment-16581186-20151029210027

Gilgameshkun wrote: Facile plot. Shoehorned romance fed to the audience on a silver platter.

This show seems to have abandoned the older trend of long developing relationships characters had to really work for, and replaced them with a plot-lazy form of speed dating that magically results in an instant perfect romance with appallingly few question marks.

If you're going to write a shallow love interest, at least show that there are consequences for rushing in fast. Easy love with strangers is always initially infatuation. It can become more, but that takes time as well as characters really getting to know each other's flaws and rough edges. It's one of those kinds of plot elements that, even in a fantasy setting, works best when it is actually believable.

It would be one thing if this show had made things easy for the audience from day one. But this show used to make the audience sit through multiple episodes of plot development to earn character milestones. There were times it actually made a decent chick flick or guy cry story. You had to see characters' feelings genuinely go through the wringer.

Leo and Karai never quite reached that point. Donnie and April have made some achievements, but they still have a way to go. (Casey is just plain annoying and doesn't make it easy for you to sympathize with him or feel him truly suffering.) Raph and Slash had one of the hardest roads, and then, for the most part, plot crickets as the writers seemed to forget what they went through. Mikey and Leatherhead wonderfully demonstrated how absence makes the heart grow fonder.

By contrast, Mikey and Renet did nothing to earn their instant, easy romance plot. And if Raph and Mona Lisa turn out to be no deeper, it will insult the legacy of what was formerly one of the best developed characters in the series.

However it happens, characters need to go through a crucible that affirms their relationships. Something we can believe and relate to. It's the same reason we like challenging video games, because incredibly easy games can feel insulting to play.

Nick, stop babying your audience with cheap writing. You're looking plain incompetent compared to what IDW has done with the comic reboot and New Animated Adventures and Amazing Adventures, and New Animated Adventures still managed to have some really good writing even while Nick at the time had forbidden IDW from running any stories that risked contradicting the TV show's canon. Yeah, I agree. As hard as I ship Raph and Mona Lisa, I don't want them to just be thrown together in one episode and have the goo goo eyes for each other by the end of it. And for the record, yes. Mikey and Renet is and utter and complete disappointment. They were given no depth at all. Mikey's whole philosophy of why he loves Renet is "She looks pretty" (which she doesn't even) but still. Like you say, I want them to earn each other's trust and companionship over time. Raph should at first try to grasp the fact that he has strong feelings for a girl that he has witnessed in his brothers but he himself never felt before and try to cope with it, perhaps even try to dismiss it to no avail. And Mona should also be hesitant at first as well, know that having feelings for an alien she has never met prior can be dangerous, especially when she is a militant of the Salamandarians. In her mind, Raph could be a spy or operative of the Triceratons. Their relationship should start with bitterness and mistrust that will eventually become love and compassion.

That said, I still have hope for this episode. First of all, This episode is off to a great start in our case if you ask me. As we saw in the clip, Sal Commander respected the turtles and commended them for their courage, but Mona Lisa said, and I quote "They must be destroyed". Secondly, those screenshots I showed were pretty much everything in that book concerning the episode and I'm pretty sure you can skim through that in like 2 minutes at most. We will have 20 more minutes of episode to watch. Anything can happen. Obviously, Raph and Mona Lisa are the hotheads of their teams, which will cause them to get into an unnecessary fight despite them both having good intentions. I'm almost positive that after she takes out the other three turtles, she and Raph's fight will get them into a jam, forcing them to work together to survive the extreme temperatures of a moon of Thalos and dreaded ice dragon that threatens them, all while the turtles and Sal Commander are still looking for them. Surviving a traumatic experience like that with only one person by you can give you intense emotional feelings for that person that are not easy to ignore. Which may explain the way the two were looking at each other in the end when they promise to meet again. Their emotions may have been provoked, but as time passes, they may become more cautious before they become much closer. But that might not even happen in the episode so, it's just my speculation if it does happen

As you can probably tell by my profile pic, I ship BBRae from "Teen Titans" and "Teen Titans Go!" I originally shipped BBStar, but as the show progressed, BBRae seemed more convincing and enticing. And this is mainly because TT built many episodes around Beast Boy and Raven's growing relationship and dealing with each other opposite personalities to the point where they seem to hate each other's guts. But in the later seasons it shows how they have grown as teammates and deeply care for one another to the point where they can't seem to do without. And that made it all thee more satisfying when BBRae became canon in TTG. Because the writers (David Slack particularly have built them up for so long and never just got them together already! So I'm glad that BBRae has it's moment now.

And although Raph and Mona Lisa seem to have the same personalities as opposed to the opposite personalities of BBRae, I still would like a similar telling for RaphaLisa.