Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26489974-20160315055507/@comment-11362412-20171013020840

Gilgameshkun wrote: Amazoman:

The argument isn't necessarily that Raph is trans. Calling him a "sister" or "bitch" or "gurl" is largely in relation to his personality traits, which can be used cattily in reference to certain flavors of cisgender gay men. (The spelling "gurl" instead of "girl" is especially used in this context.) I have no doubt this Raphael is cisgender, but that doesn't mean cisgender people cannot have queer (in the non-derogatory sense) personality traits. With Raph, it was also his indifference to the presence of women (which his brothers did not exhibit), while also having the most intuitive understanding of a woman's mind (having a unique insight into the minds of both April and Karai). But this is only one way Raph changed after season 2. The other complaints&mdash;his inability to show convincing anger, how easily he's schmuck-baited, how he went from being pleasantly catty to unpleasantly douchy, etc.&mdash;thsse problems were at least as serious in derailing his character development. I never necessarily needed Raph to be queer&mdash;there are other far less queer versions of Raphael who are still relatively well-written. But I wanted him to be a well-written character, and he really stopped being one. Ok. I'll surrendet the trans thing. That was just me not understanding what you ment by certain words. I think that guy you linked to said raph was a tomboy in a man's body and that's where I was thinking about, but i falsley atributed the quote to you in my mind. I guess I just never saw Raphael the way you did in the earlier seasons.

As i've said multiple times, I am just unable to see a change in Raph's personality at the moment you're pointing out. And I think this goes back to the core or our discussion at this point. We both have different expiriences in life, and different expiriences with TMNT, and that is coloring our opinions in different ways that we can't really explain to one another because we are different people. That's good.

I actually think that if the two of us worked together on a version of turtles, we could come up with a pretty good version that could appeal to both sides of the discussion. I agree that the 80's show is unwatchable, but it had some pretty cool characters. Characters like Krang and Bebop and Rocksteady. Characters who are synonymous with TMNT at this point. But they could be made into better characters and the stories around them can be made better. Saying the 80's show added nothing to the mix is like thowing the baby out with the bath water.

Also, Iam not saying that the 2012 show didn't get bad at times, but I would not say that an entire half of the show is bad. I will say that all of the episodes that were in that half of the show, but that's neither here nor there.