Board Thread:Fun and Games/@comment-24199349-20131121230853/@comment-995426-20141004073752

April seems to be pushing both Donnie and Casey away. Until Kraang Prime revealed himself, I might have guessed she was actually closest to Irma or something (or at least was using Irma as a social shield to deflect Casey's advances). But what does seem certain is that April, Donnie and Casey (and the rest of the turtles, for that matter) are all relatively immature, volatile, hormonal teenagers, as the 2012 TV series likes to constantly remind us in such comedic fashion.

Some of us long-time TMNT fans are middle-aged now, and remember being a teenager as a time when so many things we thought were a lot more meaningful, proved to be more fleeting and impermanent. I mean, the TMNT franchise (except maybe for the never-too-serious Fred Wolf cartoon) likes to deconstruct change and impermanence, with many of the changes not necessarily being for the happier. This April, Donnie and Casey may ultimately not be rewarded with the things they want, but may have to learn to accept the things they're given&mdash;that's part of growing up, after all. Really, of this show's main group of characters, I think the one who has been most successful at getting what he wants, has been Mikey, but he's already naturally talented at seizing the moment for all it's worth.

Also, one moment that stood out to me in, was Casey trying to flirt with April, and April getting annoyed and wanting none of it. She clearly has too much weighing on her, what with losing Splinter, losing Kirby, almost losing Leo, losing both her homes in New York, losing her best friend Irma (if there ever was a real Irma), and many of these events only being possible because of her usefulness to the Kraang in being the perfected half-Kraang mutant specimen herself, of which she is still regularly reminded every time she experiences her psychic powers. I'm willing to guess that entertaining Donnie or Casey is a wee bit too far down her list of priorities right now.

...which would effectively make it all the more convenient for the show's writers to continue tormenting Donnie and Casey for comedy and keep punting this question further down the road. :) But their dynamic may have already changed somewhat since . Casey has to be perceiving a whole lot of mixed messages from April.  And Donnie has gone from infatuated, to competitive with Casey, to now outright fearful about his standing or lack thereof.  April said that talking about their feelings would only make them hurt more; but I suspect Donnie is already hurting, and distracts himself from that hurt by burying himself in work and in the various tasks of helping the group survive.

And yes, I know this has been a long post, but there's one more thing I've considered that would make the equation much more interesting if true. It does seems that April has never been ignorant of Donnie's feelings, but not just because one would have to be denser than Mikey not to see it. Her psychic powers are murky and sporadic in nature, and it seems April doesn't fully understand or know how to command them. If this includes telepathy (as seen with Dr. Rockwell), I think it's very possible or indeed likely that neither Donnie nor Casey's feelings are much of a mystery to her. But if she can read them better than she's letting on, then this exposes both of them rather bare to her, and she may not want to humiliate them with such an uncomfortable revelation. At the same time, having them be no real mystery to her also probably means that neither are all that capable of genuinely surprising her in a romantic interest can. It may also have been why her best friend all that time was actually Irma; April probably couldn't read Irma so easily, because Kraang Prime didn't let April perceive anything but what he wanted her to perceive. If some of April's friends' minds aren't enough mystery to her, then Irma's opacity may have actually made April feel more ordinary, and that made it easier for them to be close. And now she doesn't even have that anymore.

Thus, for now, concludes my longwinded analysis of the whole April-Donnie-Casey situation. :)