Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-1255374-20151111163045/@comment-995426-20160307193853

(I've been sleeping a lot lately. Being treated for a stomach ulcer, and it keeps knocking me out for long periods of time.)

I can see this is already getting off-topic (whether Splinter will come back or not), but I still wouldn't want Splinter to come back to this. He works best as a serious character who brings subtlety and sobriety to every scene. I wouldn't want him to be in a show where his entire family have become nothing but caricatures.

The problem with fast and easy romances is that they're...jarring. The most important thing isn't to have a romance on the show. It's more important to show, over time, trials and tribulations, why it's a worthy romance. (Though it's also important to actually progress with this over time, instead of keeping it forever frozen as if it's part of the status quo god.) Otherwise it's just fanwank porn. I can see that if the viewer is 7 years old, or even just 17, they might not necessarily realize why this is a problem, because of having less experience. But TMNT has always been for adults, and that means even in versions made for all-ages audiences, there are still going to be adults watching. And I don't mean people who grew up on the 1987 TV series when they were 7 and are adults now, because that series maintained an audience of only children, and there's a difference between mature adults and manchildren when it comes to being a fan of TMNT.

You see, one of the biggest problems with the 1987 TV series was how it drove adults away&mdash;not just from the show itself, but from all TMNT at the time, because they were afraid to be seen liking a franchise that was becoming associated with children. The 2012 series was good at first in that it didn't just appeal to children or to manchildren&mdash;it appealed to Mirage fan adults too, in the amount of depth, drama and seriousness it lent to the characters even while still having plenty of comedy. But most of those adults have been driven off since season 3 as the series has fallen into the same rut as 1987.

So Ramona is one of many symptoms of a malaise that has afflicted the 2012 series and made it unwatchable to many TMNT fans. And it has been pretty damn base-breaking. But most of the people who gripe about it are not as likely to rant about it here, where most users are generally fans of whatever's current. I just have a good grasp of the rules (or at least I'd like to think I do), and have a good relationship with the administrators, and I'm not as afraid to occasionally rock the boat if I feel the message is an important one. I just hope I do that in better moderation these days. I say the things I do as someone who was a huge fan of this series, and has wished better for it, and has felt burned by how terrible it has become.