Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-1255374-20160227225840/@comment-995426-20160413034026

(Hm, this post turned out much longer than I intended. I'm not sure what to whittle down, so I'll leave it all in.  Please don't hate me for it. XD If you don't want to read it all, that's fine.  If you want to respond to just a small piece of it, that's fine.)

I can understand extreme stress causing people to become less inhibited. But I'm not sure it would actually cause people to completely change their most basic inclinations. As in, earlier Raph squarely and repeatedly tripped my gaydar, as in not only did he have a lot of male chemistry moments, but he always seemed indifferent to the presence of women in a way Leo or Donnie or Casey really couldn't be.

In fact, other than the time in The Alien Agenda when Raph teased Leo about Karai being "hot in an evil sort of a way" (which can be interpreted either as straight-faced agreement or as just one more chance to rub in how stupid Leo had been that entire episode), the first time there is any possible evidence of Raph showing any interest in women, was season 3's Return to New York when he painted Venus de Milo on the side of the recustomized Party Wagon. And when I saw that, I was thinking, "Wow, that really doesn't seem like him," but my more rational side suggested maybe he's just a decent artist and paints a woman on the side of a vehicle for its retro camp appeal (like paintings of women on the sides of World War II bomber jets), etc. But as the season rolled on, it became clear something more was happening.

After seeing all of the first two seasons and most of season 3 repeatedly (wild horses cannot force me to rewatch the abortion that is Turtles in Time), I've identified a window in which Raphael's portrayal really noticeably changed. It was sometime between the episodes A Foot Too Long and Return to New York during the North Hampton arc. Up to A Foot Too Long, he had more or less all the same subtler personality traits he'd had since the series premiere, and A Foot Too Long was notably also the final of his many "big sister" moments in the series. Since Return to New York, for the rest of the season his character was noticeably different&mdash;he became much blander, and for the large part could only show emotion in a very one-dimensional rubbery way, and his witty catting was just plain gone. The only real exception was that "Slash are you okay?" scene in Clash of the Mutanimals which was an island of rich character detail familiar from earlier seasons, and even the rest of that episode had a very, very bland Raph. Then add his uncharacteristic schmuck bait moments (like in The Creeping Doom), and his unsympathetic jackass moments (like in Dinosaur Seen in Sewers), and his too dumb to live moments (like in Beyond The Known Universe), and Raph was not only nothing like the way he was earlier in the series, but he had reached his worst lows of character decay by the time Beyond The Known Universe had finished airing. After that, he really could have used some renewed life in his personality. Instead, they gave us a chemistry-devoid pairing with Y'Gythgba, so one-dimensional after three appearances that it's finally even beginning to grow on Yoshimickster's nerves, and he actually otherwise likes the two of them together.

I just couldn't see the earlier Raphael ever having a plot like this. It's not only not like him, but it's the exact opposite of what his already stagnating character really needed. If the earlier Raph had been in a similar situation finding himself on the Ulixes and traveling through space, I could still imagine him dealing with enormous stress, and repeatedly acting out in more extreme ways that are reckless even for him, though more in the sense of being willingly reckless rather than merely too dumb to live. But I'd never imagine him doing anything like this. There's a long list of characters I could imagine Raph being paired with before I'd ever imagine him being paired with someone like Y'Gythgba. This is not Raph&mdash;it looks like him, but it feels more like some kind of parallel universe version of him.

And honestly I wouldn't mind such a second clearly different Raph existing, or even being interested in someone like Y'Gythgba...if he were at least an interesting and exciting character in his own right. But if early 2K12 Raph was the most interesting version of Raph ever written, this Raph is the least interesting version of him ever written. Even the 1987 series, for all its sins, had a more interesting version of Raphael than what the 2K12 version turned into&mdash;he at least was a snarky wise ass who still had a good line of dialogue from time to time.