Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-1255374-20151024145123/@comment-995426-20151029034152

Nah, it wouldn't be strange at all. I keep saying Raph often thinks like a woman. I suppose it's possible he could be a tomboy "lipstick lesbian" too&mdash;the meaningful distinction from a butch lesbian is that the latter's thought processes are more like that of a man than a woman. But still, then it's hard to reconcile him seeming so indifferent to the presence of women. I'll go with the same conclusion one of my friends proposed&mdash;inconsistent writing, inconsistent characterization, lots of retooling.

You know, this reminds me of something. Over the decades, the novelist Arthur C. Clarke wrote his Space Odyssey books with each sequel making fundamental retcons over the previous book. The first book dealt with a journey to Saturn, but then the first sequel dealt with Jupiter, and treated the previous story as if it had always dealt with Jupiter. (The first film adaptation, 2001: A Space Odyssey, also changed the vents of the first book to take place near Jupiter.) Then the second sequel made even more retcons on the second book, and so forth.

Later, Clarke explained why this happened. Though they were sequels, each story still took place in an alternate universe that had a few select differences from the previous book, and that the entire series represented a multiverse of possible scenarios. Depending on your perspective, it was either a cop-out explanation, or rather brilliant.

Best case scenario, this is an explanation that could apply to Nick's TMNT as it has been retooled over the years.

Or there's Space Dandy's approach, where every episode seems to exist in its own alternate universe, and the series teases that they are indeed separate universes, what with all the main characters dying at the end of the first episode before being alive again in the second episode as if nothing had happened.

But that would require intent in advance. To me it's less likely any of these changes for TMNT were planned from day one, and more likely they represented new directions that someone high up at Nickelodeon decreed the show should go. It happens all the time.

Yoshimickster: Thanks for trying to find common ground. We all must be careful not to turn into this, as difficult as it can be to avoid: