#donnie and mikey are cuties when donnie isn't yelling and mikey isn't pranking

[brightlotusmoon]

Anyway I just remembered a dream I had last night. I was playing through a fantasy episode of TMNT 2003 for my AU fic so I could get my scenes right. I started chatting with Mikey and Donnie about philosophy.

We turned a corner, and there sitting on a fire escape were Jung and Kierkegaard, sharing joints, chocolate shroom bars, and a blotter of acid. They were arguing over the subjective morality of projecting one's neuroses on fanfiction characters. We stopped and stared at them.

Kierkegaard blew a cloud of orange smoke our way. "You don't exist," he told us. "Be glad for that."

Jung rolled his eyes. "If you try to pathologize that, I will punch you."

"You can't punch a shadow," Kierkegaard sneered.

"I like these guys," said Michelangelo.

"You would," said Donatello, "you're the creative in the family."

"You should also be the team therapist," I reminded Mikey.

"I can help with that," said Jung, passing the joint to Donatello.

"And now I'm happy," I said. My brain decided that was enough.

[brightlotusmoon]

Autistic Michelangelo

Who else headcanons TMNT Mikey on the spectrum aka rainbow infinity knot of Autism?

I myself am actually autistic and ADHD and epileptic with fibromyalgia, which I gave to Mikey in my all my fanfiction AU series. I also have an autistic OC in the CFR AU, she is psionic Mikey's psionic loveperson and polyamorous and everyone is queer along the Asexual spectrum.

But I am curious about other fic writers, neurodivergent or not.

A lot of the fandom likes to make Donatello autistic (or Aspie, which got merged with autism). I say he and Mike display their Autistic traits in different ways. Donnie with hard science and medicine, Mikey with soft science and culture and a little medicine. He's totally Donnie's assistant as long as he focuses.

Mikey is much more intellectual, wise, insightful, spiritual, emotionally intelligent, and savvy than he is portrayed.

[brightlotusmoon]

*sees a wonderful team up camaraderie scene between Donatello and Michelangelo full of wit and wisdom and depth*

See, why can’t Donnie and Mikey be like this all the time? Why do show writers keep trying to turn Mikey into a childish clown to casually abuse, naive and childlike with no intellectual depth unless it’s plot convenient? Don should be his mentor really. Team Sass.

Prepare for tangent ramble:

I guess I can’t ever forgive the writers of the 2003 4Kids series. Shame. It was one of the best shows ever. It just causes way too much Fremdschamen for me. My joy and pride at seeing Mikey’s rare moments of pure badass awesome with sensitive insight kept being ruined, and at least the 2007 film, the 2012 cartoon, and Paramount films tried to write him as useful and beloved.

Being smacked on the head that often should have had consequences, at least. There are fanfics about it somewhere, I think.

I just have a lot of feelings okay. Fuck you, David Wise, head writer for the 1987 cartoon, for turning a greatly empathic multifaceted creative character into a joke.

[brightlotusmoon]

Here, have the next piece of the chapter because I still need to figure stuff out and I don’t want to say 4Kids Splinter was a jerk but 4Kids Splinter was a jerk.

Mikey butted his forehead against Don’s collarbone and drew in a shuddering breath. “I’m sorry, Donnie, I’m s-sorry, L-Leo…Leo, I’m sorry.”

Leo swallowed and ran his thumb down the side of Mikey’s face. “Sorry for what, little one?”

Mike blinked and raised his head, shifting in Don’s arms until he was facing Leo. He looked miserable. “F-for hurting myself. For ne-never paying attention and never taking anything seriously. And you…you s-still trained me for the grudge match when everyone else abandoned me, even Mas-”

Lightning quick, Leonardo had wrapped his arms around his youngest brother, Donnie’s arms still supporting. “Oh, sweet Mikey. Oh, my gods. No, don’t think about that. Don’t think like that, okay? You’re Mikey, you are our Mikey, and you should never apologize for being yourself. Not to us, not to Sensei, not to anyone.”

Michelangelo was sobbing now, heaving like a child, and Raph was massaging his carapace and pressing his beak to Mikey’s shoulder. Donnie bit his lip and clenched his teeth and lowered his beak to Mikey’s head. Their fault. It was their fault. Michelangelo had been so happy he won the Championship, so fucking proud, and all he ever wanted was their approval, their praise, their love, and yes he boasted and bragged but how else could he explain and express his desperate need to be noticed? His own father didn’t know how to raise him and train him, he couldn’t get access to ADHD medicine and not even the special herbal teas could help completely. Mikey had been left floundering in a family of discipline and darkness, throwing energy and light into shadows that rejected him…no wonder he had clung to the Battle Nexus Championship.

Donatello cried and all his logic and reason drowned in love and fear.

Eventually he heard Leo again. “Mike, no, you were never a burden. You were our heart, you were our joy. Being able to watch you still act young and carefree reminded me that there were more important things than nobility, honor in death, being a great warrior. We were and are still so young and inexperienced. We only have each other. It is like what I told you. I won’t let you fall. We would fall with you. I’m here. I’m protecting you, Mikey. I always was and I always will.”

Don felt Mikey hiccup and tip his head back, so Don kissed his head and pressed his palm to Mike’s forehead. Raph’s fingers were working tense muscles against Mike’s neck and upper back above the carapace.

“An’ I’m with him all the way, Mikey,” Raph said hoarsely. “I’d give my life to protect you.”

“That goes for me as well,” Donnie said between sobs. “We never want to lose you, Mike.”

A massive shudder ran through Mike’s body and for a instant Donnie’s mind screamed seizure! but it passed and then Mikey burst into tears again, moving to Leo again, wrapping his arms around Leo’s waist. “No, no, no, no,” he gasped. “You…you...you don’t get it, that’s not what I want from you. I…I want you to live. I want you all to be with me. I don’t ever wanna lose any of you, ever, don’t you get it? I don’t want you to give your lives for me. It’s better if I go first, I’m the expendable one, I-”

A long, loud growl from Raphael filled the room, as Leonardo’s arms tightened and Donatello gasped in shock.

“Don’t you ever, ever say that again,” Raphael hissed, amber eyes blazing. “Michelangelo, do you hear me? I never want to hear you say you’re expendable.”

Slowly, slowly, Mikey turned and looked at Raph, swallowing. “Are…are you angry?”

“Damn fucking right, I’m angry.”

“I feel it. It hurts.”

“Yeah, it hurts. Didn’t you even hear what Leo said? We all go down. Together.”

“But…Raph, no, I was always the weak link, I was never a great ninja…”

“Mikey, keep talking like that and I will smack you…”

Mike’s body abruptly went rigid, his eyes wide and cloudy, and his breathing became harsh. Donnie quickly locked his arms around his plastron, rested his chin on Mikey’s shoulder, and began to rock him. “Ssshhhhh, Mikey, breathe, breathe, you’re okay, it’s an anxiety attack, you’re okay, Raph’s not gonna hit you…”

Raphael inhaled sharply and Donnie caught the look of sheer horror before Raph scrambled back on his butt, tucking in his arms, staring at Mike.

“Oh god, I’m so sorry, I didn’t…I’m so so sorry, I never…I wouldn’t…”

“You did!” and Mikey’s outburst was sudden and raw. “You hit me and then we grew older and you stopped but you did and I remember and…and I forgive you, Raphie. I forgive you. I forgive you.”

Shaking, Raph crawled back and gripped Mikey’s arm. “But I still hurt you.”

“Yeah. And…and it’s in my head.” Mike looked at him tearfully. “But…you need to know that I forgive you. All of you.”

Raph rested his head on Mike’s shoulder. “I’m such a fucking asshole.”

“But you’re my fucking asshole.”

Leonardo let out a shaky breath, almost a panicky laugh. “Mikey, please tell me you feel even a little bit better about being in the clan.”

Mikey managed a smile. “Yeah. I do. But I don’t know how to talk to M- to Splinter. How do you tell your parent he fucked you up because he didn’t know how to connect with you?”

Donatello huffed, almost a laugh. “You don’t. You rehearse it over and over in your head until you have a whole script and you just never find the courage.”

Mikey turned to him and nuzzled him, purring. “M’sorry, Donnie. Not like he really understood your brain either.”

“He tried,” Don replied easily. “But I’m not sure he really tried with you.”

[brightlotusmoon]

And here I am outlining Chapters Four and Five of "The Brightest Fire" while Chapter Two rolls its eyes and glares.

There will be a psionic OC because of course. However... Gradual romance for Michelangelo or no? There would be squishy demisexual nuzzles and soft kisses, but that would be the telepathy talking.

She is important to the overall plot regardless.

I'm thinking about bringing in Angel and maybe aliens like Y'Lyntians and even Utroms. I don't remember a whole lot.

I encountered at least two other autistics on AO3 who are writing Mikey as autistic. That makes me stimmy flap.

[brightlotusmoon]

Inspired by a chat with @inkyturtle, my writerbrain has once again had ideas without me.

Moar B-Team headcanon! It’s been a while. Hallo, weird o'clock writerbrain. Donnie’s great with hard sciences, Mikey’s perfect with soft sciences. The family engineer and the family therapist have weekly chat sessions in the lab over coffee, which is Mikey’s ADHD medicine. Mikey admits that he doesn’t really want to be looked up to or have his talents acknowledged as extraordinary beyond his brothers, because that would mean he couldn’t fail. In his mind he would forever need to keep up that perfect twice exceptional mentality and it would just make everything come crashing down. So he deliberately holds back and screws up and allows his ADHD-I to disrupt all hopes of focusing enough, except for the stuff he hyperfocuses on, seeing as that can’t be helped, and he just happened to hyperfocus on chemistry, psychology, making up his own katas, and wearing a lifelong mask of Keep Laughing While The World Burns, because at first he really just wanted to spread joy and love everywhere, but now it feels like hard work and smiling is hard sometimes and oh right that was how the first depressive episode happened. Donnie knows that Mikey’s emotional intelligence and interpersonal intelligence are so far off the charts they’re up in space but he also knows Mikey rarely takes himself seriously and would rather be loved for who he is rather than the things he could be if he only focused. Donnie has them both hooked up to brain monitoring helmets and starts taking notes and he starts trying to figure out how to do some sort of technical mind merge so he can get inside Mikey’s head and maybe transfer knowledge back and forth. Joke’s on him, Mikey’s already had that idea and has been drawing up crude blueprints that include pictures of dragons. Donnie starts to wonder what percentage of his inventions were in fact based on Mikey’s bizarre ideas for fun toys from his powerful imagination that can essentially create and destroy universes.

(I think I brought this up in one of the fics already, but I kind of want to make either a CFR Mind Games chapter or another Mikey The Lifegiver fic for Earth And Oxygen where this gets driven home.)

[brightlotusmoon]

Wait, it’s LGBT TMNT week? COOL.

*cracks knuckles*

Headcanon:

gray-asexual aromantic Leo, panromantic demisexual Don, aromantic pansexual Raph, gray-asexual demiromantic April, pansexual genderfluid neurogender demiboy Mikey, trysexual panromantic Casey. Games of Twister are fun.

It took me a while to figure Raph out. To me, he’s not a bubbling cauldron of hormones as much as a nervous pupper needing solace. A reader once asked why Gaia and Raph only had sex in the astral plane since Raph was so physical, and I said that that the point - Raph didn’t want to hurt anyone, no matter how much Gaia assured him about her fibromyalgia and cerebral palsy. In the spirit plane they can be as kinky and intense as they want.

“Apriltello” always made me feel weird precisely because I always see April as on the ace spectrum when not paired with Casey. The reason she was with Casey was because Kevin and Peter didn’t want her with a turtle and the turtles were most likely asexual themselves. But that was Mirage, in the 1980s, and it’s the late 2010s now. 2003, 2012, and IDW have shown that Donatello had a small crush on her. In my stories I very specifically ignored that in favor of pure platonic squishes, but I know it at least used to be there.

In the “Cold Fire Rising” sequels where I introduce my pansexual OC who has my disabilities, I involve Mike and Don in a polyamorous triad with her. Since she’s a telepathic neuropsychologist who is really fucking open about love, therapy sessions involve sex. For Raph and Leo, it’s astral plane only for Reasons. I know people don’t read “CFR 3: Lightning Crashes”, but it’s important to the AU, even with the “OC has sex with all four brothers plus Karai” thing.

Besides, the award-winning “CFR 4: Crossfire” might be a little confusing without it. So much comfort sex.

Ah, shit, that reminds me. “CFR 5: Mind Games” will finally have Mikey come out as autistic after Gaia and her sister Rhea blatantly point it out after Mike helps Donnie with a thing and Gaia’s like, “Guys, he’s autistic as fuck how did you not realize this? Oh right, isolation underground.” I know he (and Don) are aut in “Mikey The Lifegiver” and “The Sunshine Child” but if I’m going to give my OC my disabilities, well, blah blah blah. Fanfiction AU allows for many liberties.

Also I surprised myself with how much attention I’ve been giving Donatello in my fics outside of his relationship with Mikey. Donnie’s the fandom darling so I have my reasons for being so extremely Mikey-centric. But Donnie is growing on me as a point of view character. That means he’s in trouble.