Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-995426-20190218144432


 * This post is rather lengthy. But if you wish to comment, I do please ask that you read what I have written here before doing so.

This is a concept that hasn't been used much in the TMNT franchise, at least under this description.

Usually, if a human mutates to be part animal (or plant), or an animal mutates to be "man-like," they haven't usually been considered "humans" in-universe&mdash;"human" being usually considered equivalent to someone who looks like ordinary Homo sapiens. This rule is sometimes waived when a human-born mutant still looks human, such as with IDW  or Ravenwood. Whether or not a "man-like" nature is described, the non-human species always seems to take precedence in how they are primarily classified.

But as long ago as the Mirage continuity, there has been at least one animal-born humanoid mutant who identifies simultaneously as animal and human:, who is simultaneously alligator and human, a result of how the  deliberately mutated him under laboratory conditions to produce this result. Indeed, Leatherhead's article contains Category:Humans because of this. The other Mirage mutants are not similarly categorized, not because they are significantly different from Leatherhead, but because they are never specifically stated to be part human (though they very probably are).

Now, since the Rise of the TMNT episode The Evil League of Mutants, the four are not only explicitly genetically part human as well, but Lou Jitsu is specifically identified as their human father&mdash;whatever original animal parents each of them might have had, or  is raising them now, Lou Jitsu (who may or may not be that same person raising them) is acknowledged as a third biological parent common to all four of them. And just like that, the not-blood-brothers of four different turtle spcies are suddenly genetic siblings again.

I like this storytelling direction in general, as it allows these animal-born characters to self-identify as human (in part) if they so choose, because it is an alienable part of them. They are not just "man-like," but they are (in part) human. Another interesting aspect of this is that they are still turtles, too. Turtlepedia has used Category:Former humans (currently being migrated from Category:Former Humans) to describe many human-born mutants. And yet the Turtles in Rise are "turtles" and not "former turtles." It seems to follow that human-born mutants are still also (part) human and not "former humans."

Why did TMNT writers over the decades seldom acknowledge mutants having, acquiring or retaining a human identity? Personally, I think it comes from the inherent bias of real people being humans and distinguishing what is "human" and "not human" on their own culturally-ingrained terms. If a being looks increasingly unlike any familiar notion of human, it is often not considered human. But this tendency actually has a dark history among real-like humans; when people of ages' past traveled to distant lands and met people who looked nothing like the people of their homelands, there was some reluctance then too to fully acknowledge and respect a shared humanity between them. Basically, it's a sentiment that goes: "My people and I are human.  Are they human, too?" And by many people's perceptions, the answer was a nervous "no." In biology, the term "race" refers to different species or sub-species of a genus, but in human society it also refers to people who merely look drastically different, and this is really no accident, as humans have been experts in dehumanizing one another and rationalizing it since the origins of the species. Now, it's much more easily acknowledged in the mainstream that all Homo sapiens are all, indeed, human, merely coming in very different shapes, sizes and colors. But there is still a thread of human reluctance to recognize humanity beyond the mold of what is known or familiar. Even today, in the example of fantasy fiction, there is a tendency to regard different sentient "races" as not "human," even when they look extremely human-like and can intermarry and have children; no, humans are often only considered to be the races that "look like us," which isn't that different from the real-life attitudes of ages' past where humans were judging other humans they just met.

The kinds of human-identifying TMNT storytelling constructs I'm talking about seem to be daring their audience to challenge the limits of such definitions, and I can only see this as a positive thing because of its real world implications. It's actually the same reason Sesame Street as long as half a century ago intentionally made the then-daring choice to portray its human puppets (Bert, Ernie and others) a variety of colors that don't realistically occur in real humans, to drive home to its viewers that they are all just people no matter their color. It was a concept I could easily understand as a child. I can only speculate the various reasons many TMNT stories in the past didn't take the deliberately humanizing approach, though I think, for the most part, their writrs weren't necessarily trying to dehumanize their characters. And yet these characters may be able to walk and talk and invent high-tech gadgets and do some rad break dances, but heaven forbid they be thought of as "human" instead of walking talking "animals." The weird thing is, this approach to TMNT species classification still didn't change much into the 2000s and 2010s. I remember thinking it especially absurd that the 2012 TV series episode "Newtralized!" had unironically saying, "I'm not people!" Like...seriously? He's not only people, but there's a plausible argument for considering him part human, too. 