Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-28655620-20161117184919/@comment-995426-20171022075448

The problem is, Venus may be very difficult to rehabilitate for a long time to come. Even when the 2012 TV series referenced her, how did they do it? As a pinup figure painted on the side of a van. To remind audiences, once again, that this is her primary reason for existence, and turn what had been one bad portrayal into a recurring pattern. It's not simply enough to reboot her&mdash;one has to completely and successfully reverse the reputation she has accumulated. She has to be a well-rounded character and completely divorced from the legacy of her character design.

Thing is, a design like Artemisia already fits that bill nicely, and she has none of Venus's baggage, and doesn't have the name that conjures all the wrong associations in the TMNT mythos. But take a character like Artemisia and rename her "Venus," and suddenly every mention of her name becomes its own unhelpful disruption, making it all the harder to take her seriously or change what audiences expect from her. Because it was never that Venus is a woman that makes her a bad idea. It's that she's always been one of the most sexist, unflattering ways to portray a woman that makes her a bad idea. It would take nothing short of an ingenious miracle to overcome this obstacle in any reboot of her character template.