#rottmnt meta

[everythingunderthesky]

Which Witch? 

This moment in "Donnie vs. Witch Town" has repeatedly caught my notice, and I’ve now recovered enough to break it down! 

First off, here’s the list verbatim:

Visitors  Suzy Bannion Heather Donahue Nancy Downs Minnie Castevet Katia Vajda Miss Anjelica Ernst Samantha Stephens April O’Neil

Unfamiliar names plus cursive plus a lack of high-quality stills meant decoding this took a little longer than expected.

I have attempted to minimize spoilers for the mentioned horror movies when possible, but in pursuing two contradictory goals, I have accomplished both imperfectly. C'est la vie!

Please note: I am by no means a film buff, so feel free to add any relevant context! 

Oh, the Horror . . . [films]!

"Suzy Bannion" would be a reference to the 1977 film Suspiria in which Suzy, a ballet student, finds herself investigating a supernatural coven of witches.

"Heather Donahue" is a homage to the 1999 "found footage" movie The Blair Witch Project*, wherein three student filmmakers investigate a legend of a witch in the woods.

"Nancy Downs", from the 1996 R-rated film The Craft, is one of a trio of students rumored to be dabbling in witchcraft.

"Minnie Castevet", on the other hand, hails from the dark 1968 film Rosemary’s Baby (based on the book by Ira Levin), wherein Minnie’s character is suspected of being a member of a coven. 

"Katia Vajda", originates from the 1960 film Black Sunday, (loosely based on Nikolai Gogol’s short story "Viy"). Katia was accused of being a vampiric witch and executed by her brother—but that isn’t the end of her story.

"Miss Anjelica Ernst" simultaneously references Roald Dahl’s 1973 novel The Witches and its 1990 film adaptation of the same name. One member of the notorious child-hating coven is the Grand High Witch, Eva Ernst, who was portrayed by Anjelica Huston on the big screen.

"Samantha Stephens" lives the life of a "good witch" in the 1964 television series Bewitched.

Special Bonus!

"Abigail the Good", founder of Witch Town, may be an allusion to the character "Abigail Pershing" from the 2015 television show Good Witch. 

I’ll go ahead and credit my dad as my research assistant; he described these references as "deep cuts".

And really, what higher praise is there? 

*For more about Heather Donahue, the producer and writer of the sitcom The High Country, check out this article by GQ's Scott Meslow, The Blair Witch Project's Heather Donahue Is Alive and Well!

[fanficmaniatic]

Why does Casey refers to Leo only as "Sensei"?

Also known as: Why Leo doesn't want to be seen as a Father/ Is actually the uncle.

so, this is something that bugged me about the movie (not in a bad way, necessarily), and I couldn't help but overthink it. So I am going to talk about it.

Mild Spoilers for the movie.

It is clear to everyone seeing the movie that Casey looks up to Future!Leo, and it is pretty easy to argue that they have a father & son relationship. That, or at the very least, Casey sees Leo as his father. And this being the ROTTMNT Universe, where Leo very comfortably calls Splinters all the known variations of "Father" (Including said word) I find it curious that Casey only refers to Leo as "Sensei" Or "Master".

Now, I am aware this is a 30 year old franchise, whose characters get twisted and remolded from time to time. So even when the writers hinted at Casey and Leo having a Father/son relationship, they would probably never have Casey calling Leo his dad because there is people who simply wont accept a change in their Idea of TMNT. That being said, lets look at it in a vacuum and ignore real world things and only look at the characters based on what the show and the movie have shown/implied.

Like I said before, Rise Leo, unlike the 2012 counterpart (for comparison) is used to, and more often that not, calls Splinter "Dad" or a variation of that word. Is not surprising, all the turtles do, because in Rise specifically, the focus on the show lays in the sibling & the family relationships. Splinter is their father first, teacher second. The same way that they are brothers first, teammates second.

With this in mind, is really hard for me to believe that Leo (Rise Leo) would see a kid as his own, and would not explicitly call him "his son". Nor that he would not let himself be called "a father". And before I get ahead of myself, let me be clear: I do believe Leo loves Casey as family, as a son even, but I think he is putting up a wall between himself and Casey. This is so that Casey (Or Leo himself) don't see their relationship as a father & a son.

It can of course be argued that Casey is simply being respectful, or that the apocalypse made people hard and cold. But considering that Future! Leo still called Old! Mikey "Little Brother" (So is not like they are super closed up/ distancing themselves from family) I think the reason behind Leo putting up a wall between himself and Casey lies in a different problem.

Leo doesn't want to replace Casey's father.

Look, we might never known how Casey Jones JR came to exist, all we know is that he is Cassandra Jone's son. He might be a baby she found in a dumpster, he might be her biological kid. We don't know. The only thing we know is that he has his mother's last name, so IF there was a biological father, he was simply not in the picture. Whatever the case, I do think Casey jr had a father figure. Not biologically related to him (not necessarily, how you see it depends on you) , but someone who in his early years was the man Casey referred to as his dad.

Besides Casey calling Leo his "Sensei" he also used the word "Master" and "Commander" to refer to Mikey and April respectively. This 3, being the 3 to survive the longest in the apocalypse (We see Aprils body at the beginning of the movie, when the camera zooms out, meaning that Future! Leo and Casey were running away from what just killed Future! April). Similarly to Leo, I believe Mikey and April insisted on their titles being used use as a way to distance themselves from Casey, so that Casey didn't see them as a replacement of his mother and father. Because they all see themselves as uncles & aunt, and so it doesn't feel right to them to fill the hole Casey Jr's parents left.

The only one Casey doesn't refer to using a title is Donnie. "Donnie, you were the most brilliant, innovative mind of all time" This is the only time in the movie Casey refers to Donnie by name, and like I said, there is no title put behind it. I think the reason for this is that Donnie & Casey where actually quite close, considering he also has a bunch of tech he said Donnie gave to him himself. It appears to me to me that Donnie died a long time ago (In Casey jr's timeline), and the way Casey speaks about it is really fond. I would not be surprised if Donnie was who taught him math or how to read, nor would I be surprised if he called him "Professor Donatello."

And honeslty? This could be it, If you like it, you can head-cannon Donnie to be the one that stepped up and raised Casey jr as his son in the kids early years, and that Leo and Mikey put up a wall to not replace Donnie. I wont stop you... But I am not done, and there is a reason why I don't think is Donnie... but Raph.

Like I've said before, Casey calls everyone (but Donnie) by a title, including Cassandra, the moment he sees her he says "THAT'S MY MOM!!" ... Now, the only one he NEVER refers to by name, nor title in the movie is none other than Raphael. When Present! Leo confronts him about knowing that Raph would get captured by the Kraang, Casey's only response is saying "I didn't know, that... that didn't happen in my time" as he looks in pain and lost in though. As if he is remembering that time in his childhood when Raph, his dad, was still there.

I am not necessarily saying Raphael and Cassandra got together in the future (Though you are free to see it that way), but this pair has the potential, based on their scenes in the show, to be a really good friends. Best friends co-parenting is not the weirdest thing to see in a world where aliens have taken over. Besides, and this is really my main point:

Raphael practically raised his siblings. He is overprotective, he is always there for them, looking out for them. And if I am reading well what the show put down.... Splinter is a good man, and he tried, but he was not the best father... Raphael is not just their leader and older brother, they look up to him, and they go to him first when there is a problem.

What I am saying here is, of all the turtles, the one that would 100% look at the fatherless child of his best friend and say "I am a dad now" ...Is Raph. Not Donnie, not Mikey, nor Leo... Not because they don't have father instincts (I believe they all do), but because even if they would've taken on the role, Raph would have beat them to it. He would have just said it first.

Raphael would hold baby Casey jr, look at Cassandra in the eye, and say "Is anyone going to be his dad?" and THEN not wait for an answer.

I do honestly believe that's how it happened.

So, to conclude:

I do think Raph was the one Casey called "Dad" in his early years, due to the fact that he is the most likely to simply decide to parent a baby, and because Casey didn't seem to have any walls put up/ titles with him. However, it appears Raph died when Casey was really young, (I do also think that Cassandra died when Junior was really young) so for most of his life, Leo (Or maybe Donnie before he died) was the one raising Casey.

Leo probably noticed Casey looked up to him as a father (years after Raph's death), and Leo, not wanting to replace his brother, started insisting on being called Sensei. Soon, Master Michelangelo and Commander O'neil would follow Future! Leo's example.

"And so my friends, this is the "How Leo is actually an uncle" "Raphael is actually a dad" & "Casey Jr has lost a shit-ton of people and he just really wants a dad" ... Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. " - Fanficmaniatic.

[los-ninos-tortugas]

Alright maybe I was particularly slow on the uptake but I’ve been wondering to myself for so long what exactly it is that differentiates Leo’s portals from the portals we see other characters use throughout rise? Like, yes obviously the means of making them are different, Leo has his odachi and later his katanas and most everyone else (especially yokai) seem to use those little coin charms/devices to activate portals. So in a world where portals are kinda ubiquitous it seems kinda weird to make that a main character’s power, right? But after watching this I finally noticed the difference (again, was it just me who hadn’t figured this out? 😅).

With the portals we see made with those little coin devices there seems to be some kind of third space or path that connects the two points in space, the starting and end points. So like in the clip, Leo and Splinter start in the hotel lobby, physically fall through this third space, and land in the battle nexus. So A->B->C.

But Leo’s portals don’t seem to have this sort of third space that he travels through. They’re a lot more like, well portals from Portal. Each one is directly linked to to other and allows for instant travel, so A->C, it kinda brings to mind for me the little ant diagram from A Wrinkle in Time

Coin portals seem to follow set paths (which is probably why portal-jacking is a thing. If this space physically exists that means it can be intersected by other paths which would allow portal pirates to steal stuff, so arguably Leo’s portals are probably actually immune to portal-jacking), but just seem to be a speedier method of crossing distances, but you still have to somewhat physically cross a distance using that third space. Whereas Leo’s portals kinda eliminate the distance entirely.

(also seriously go check out @randomrottmntscreenshots blog (hope I’m not bothering you with the ping) I literally never would have noticed this without the video and genuinely a lot of the clips and screenshots from their blog have helped me notice stuff I never would have even on second or third viewing)

[bambiraptorx]

I think one of the parts of ROTTTMNT that makes it so good is Splinter and how complex he is. Yes, he loves his sons. Yes, he puts the world at risk for their sake. Yes, he neglects them (emotionally at the very least) for a large chunk of the first season, and this neglect is heavily implied to be a long-standing pattern. He loves his kids, but he struggles to take care of them. In a way it's like he doesn't realize how much they actually need him, and he convinces himself that he couldn't make a difference in their lives. He sees their relative self-sufficiency and interprets it as them not needing him, while not realizing that so much of it stems from his parenting style. He has generational trauma and doesn't quite manage to break the cycle. He would die for his children. He would kill for them. He isn't a perfect or ideal parent by any means, but he is a realistic one.

[beastenraged]

The Black O’Neil: What making a popular white character POC could have changed about TMNT

I’m not going to lie, before I get into this post, I’m curious if anyone else has put up similar. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find anything myself, only the usual Rise April verses 2012 April nonsense, so if any readers know anything, I’d love to see!

Anyway, down to business. 

I am interested in Rise April not only because she kicks ass, or acts as a sibling to the turtles, but also because she is BLACK.

A POC April where that hasn’t really happened before. 

Why does that matter, you might ask? Well, April O’Neil being black opens up a variety of opportunities to tell stories that haven’t been told before. 

She would uniquely understand why the turtles are so keen on not revealing themselves to the world, on the discrimination they would face for looking different. 

I wonder how many times this fierce girl, raring to protect the people she loves, has been seen as a mere “angry black woman”?

April also reads as very neurodivergent to me, and I have no doubt that she most likely would lack a diagnosis for said neurodivergence due to how many POC struggle in reality to get diagnosed for disabilities such as autism or ADHD.

There are far more stories that lurk within the depths, many I feel need a more experienced hand or personal experience to tell, on the life of Rise’s April O’Neil and the challenges she no doubt faces. 

Of course, due to the writers being made up of white men, I doubt that any of these stories or differences would have ever been explored in series itself.

Also, due to just how fandom is about race, these same stories are not explored in fanfiction as well. 

However, Rise making a very popular mainstay of the series a POC, as well as going into further depth on already POC characters of the series (such as Yoshi Hamato’s backstory), gives me hope for the future. 

May diversity thrive!

[mccoyquialisms]

I’m aware of what Word of God says regarding Donnie and Leo’s ages, but I have decided to remain a Donnie is Older truther for a couple of reasons:

One, I like the idea of steering away from birth order when it comes to appointing the leader. Leo being chosen as leader, not because he’s ~next in line~, but because he’s actually good at it and having that be recognized explicitly! I love that concept! I think having Donnie be Technically Older really reaffirms that. Also, there’s no WAY Leo wouldn’t constantly use Technically Being Older against Donnie. There’s just no way, he’d be so insufferable about it lmao.

Two, the potentially DEVASTATING implications this has for the Bad Timeline. Like yeah, I’m aware that on a meta level Mikey and Leo had to be in the movie for plot reasons, ergo Raph and Donnie had to be dead but HEAR ME OUT

I saw the movie before watching the show and somehow it really sealed it in my brain that Oh Yeah Donnie’s Older. I don’t really know how to phrase this, but the fact that Donnie, not the frontline bruisers like Mikey or April or hell, Todd was the next to die after Raph has me thinking there must have been a VERY compelling reason for him to be in the line of fire like that. and from what I initially saw in the film, Donnie was at his most reckless when trying to protect his little brother (using only his body to shield Mikey from a TRAIN???) which...the implied series of events lord.

Like POV you are Donatello Hamato. You are 20-something years old and the world has ended. You’ve become the de facto head of your clan since your big brother was killed in your defense. Your younger brother is leading an entire resistance and your baby brother is basically turning into Yoda. They are not coping well. Neither are you, but Raph, the rock you all built your lives on, is gone so someone’s gotta step up, might as well be you. You don’t really know how to do that, but hey, you’re the biggest brother now, right? The brother who is biggest? Even if all else fails, if there’s one thing you know, one thing you learned from watching Raph all those years, it’s that big brothers protect their little brothers, no matter the cost. So you do.

[chiangyorange]

I just read the most recent chp of your fic (a superb piece of writing) and got the urge to ramble about it, if you don’t mind. (Feel free to ignore, if you want)

I really enjoy the way you write, and the interactions and characterization is splendid! And you even brought up the multiverse/diverging timeline stuff! :D

It’s such an interesting concept! Like, there’s so much to unpack! If Blue and Casey jr came back, their timeline obviously existed, but does it continue to exist? If it didn’t, would they cease to exist, as well? But if it did, what would be left? What is required for a timeline/universe to even exist?

As you know, CJ goes back in time and alters that past (now his present) so that his past doesn’t happen, and that rules out the theory that the future is unchange-able. So the future can be changed, but that implies that different decisions could bring about divergences (i.e. branches) in the timeline, causing wildly different outcomes (butterfly effect). As Donnie noted, who/what decides what these ‘big decisions’ are? Where do the divergences occur? Why?

Another possibility is that the multiverse exists, and Casey jr went back in time to another dimension (we’ll call it D2), not actually changing his dimension (D1)’s past or future, but becoming part of another dimension where the Invasion failed. (Does this mean D2 would follow the same path of D1 if CJ hadn’t travelled to D2 to prevent it?) If the past/future can’t be changed (alluding to a higher being), but the multiverse exists, then theoretically the dimensions/universes might mirror one another, with varying differences.

A third theory is that the multiverse and separating timelines both exist, and that’s a whole mess I can’t even get my head around rn. Like, do the dimension/universes mirror each others’ branches/divergences? Could separate branches of D1 and D2 converge, creating a bridge of sorts? Would they still be separate universes?

Idk, just lots of theories.

Thank you for sharing you’re amazing fic <3

first of all thank you so much for reading!!! im honestly so glad people are enjoying wmas <3<3<3

AS FOR THE TIME TRAVEL putting this under the cut because hoooooly shit anon i LOVE thinking about it sm

OKAY SO as it stands this is the scenario i think of when i think about the rottmnt movie in terms of actual canon. the invasion timeline was the main branch of what happens in universe and by sending Casey Jones Jr back, it branches off to what we know now as the movie proper.

the main takeaways for this scenario is that the butterfly effect is confirmed and true, but on the other hand it brings up the question; what happens to that future timeline? does it disappear and its linearity is continued through CJJ? or does his presence not affect things at all and the invasion timeline falls into the invasion?

personally i like to think the former, even though the world ""dies"", it still lives through CJJ unknowingly. the events of the invasion still HAPPENED, but its linearity is more like a loop rather than a break.

then theres scenario 2, the dimension theory where CJJ doesnt actually change the past at all, and instead just hops from one dimension to the other.

imo this one is a lot more bleak in terms of not changing the past, but it DOES bring up the interesting aspect where both timelines are just cocurrent, so for example while the rebellion falls in D1, at the same time in D2, the chase for the key is happening.

AND THEN THE THIRD SCENARIO which kinda of builds on the previous, but its also an option to consider. whatever ""master timeline"" is just the encompassing idea of rottmnt i suppose. we DO see in film that events sort of parallel each other (which has VERY interesting implications of fate), but in different ways (ex. f!mikey winking while opening the time gate compared to mikey winking while closing the portal to the prison dimension).

in this scenario, CJJ goes back in time like a loop, but also experiences a sort of deja vu when events from the apocalypse timeline echo and reflect on the failed timeline which ALSO runs on the cocurrent events scenario.

this one MOST opens up the meta of the peepaw multiverse too because it ALL comes from a source and the paralleling events are just the entirety of the f!leo goes back genre lol so i think this one is the most canon to wmas proper.

ack, ack!!!! its all SO INTERESTING to think about!!!!!!

[rainbow-beanie]

I can’t imagine a lot of people liked Casey in this movie, cause he made some….choices that logically he could’ve thought though better, but the thing about that is that he couldn’t really do that, he had literally been given a second chance to save the future (or in this case the past, it’s very confusing) and so he had latched onto the younger version of his teacher, cause in the beginning of the movie he had watched him get vaporized out of existence. And so in his head he had thought that he had got him back, even though the “master Leonardo” he had known in the past doesn’t exist anymore. though I suspect if he continued pushing the current Leo, he might as well have gone in that direction, and the thought alone terrifies me.

Now I don’t hate Casey, I actually think his Characterization is a lot better then his 2012 self, since in 2012 he was more focused on being April’s boyfriend then anything, and thus pissing off 2012 donnie in the process. while rise!Casey was born before or after the kranng attacked, so he had no choice but to grow up faster then he would’ve compared to 2012, so he had no time for any type of romance. But even with this fact to aid him, he’s still a child, a child that upon waking up had seen what I assume was his father figure alive and well and had thought “yes! finally things actually have a chance to change for the better” only for reality to hit him like a truck when he realized that the Leo he knew, and the Leo in the present are completely different people. younger Leo is very unexperienced in the field of war and hadn’t thought of a foolproof plan in his life. and this is when he realizes that he had still lost not just his teacher, but a father as well

And even with this reasoning I can’t help but want to grab him by the shoulders and shake him like “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING!?” Like yeah he’s going through a ton of stress, but he needs to understand that he’s not the only one that is struggling, Leo had just lost his big brother to a villain that is somehow worse then the shredder in both size and might, and he’s doing his best to make things right, even though his mind is a bit clouded by it, and thus didn’t listen to his team or father “this isn’t about you” yeah splinter, I’m pretty sure he knows that.

It’s not that Leo doesn’t care, he cares about his family WAAAAY more then he cares about himself (hence him pushing the leader of the kraang into the portal towards the end of the movie) the truth is he doesn’t know what to do, he’s used to not having a plan and running off to fight, cause he knew if anything went wrong his brothers would be there to help him carry the load. But after his ‘conversation’ with Casey (which was more or less a one sided argument since Leo seemed to have had shut down midway through) he realized that he wasn’t helping his brothers at all, and was actually making things worse. Casey was treating Leo like the “greatest ninja of all time” that he had grown up hearing stories about, cause that’s all he’s ever known. he has no idea that the current Leo that he sees now is different, and he doesn’t know how to act around him. how can you possibly work with someone that looks and sounds exactly like the friend you had known, but in reality is nothing like him at the same time?

[barondraxxum]

I straight up cannot get over the tragedy that is Casey Jones Junior. . .

Like imagine. You're there the day the world ends fully. It started ending before you were born, and everyone else in your life was telling you it could be fixed because they had the experience of a living world to give them hope. But it can't be and isn't, and it's ending today. Which sucks but at least you'll die in good company?

But actually, you won't because your pseudo father figure and his brother are determined to get you out alive with their dying breathes. They die in front of you. They were always going to do this-- but they haven't even done you the courtesy of letting you join. In fact, you've been given a mission on top of it all. You watched the last remnants of your whole family die and you can't even process that, because the sword of damacles won't stop hovering over your fucking neck.

But hey, the past version of your dad is still alive here, right? Maybe you can find him and he can help, even if it'll be weird because you're now the same age and he totally just died in front of you like 5 minutes ago. So you track him down, reach out for him for help, AND HES A PUNK ASS LITTLE BITCH

Justice for my son y'all his life just straight up sucks 😭😭

[blye-flower]

Nobody asked but I wanted to talk about why I changed my mind about Donnie's love language, and what better way to go into it than my blog, so:

I would like to preface this by saying that I think love languages change over time, and I know people often have more than one love at a time. Tbh this head canon could change even before I finish typing this up, but still, I'm still gonna share my thought process from changing Donnie's main love language from gift giving to acts of service.

So, I think the biggest thing for me is that when I was deciding a love language for him, I was going off the episode where he made Raph, Leo, and Mikey tech in Donnie's gift. He clearly loves his brothers, as misguided as the gifts were he wanted to show that cares and is a team player, so he made them their gifts. And that seems like a telltale sign for a gift giving love language, but I think that's just a sign of acts of service.

Of course, it could be one in the same (no one said one act is exclusive to one love language) but when Donnie gave them those gifts, he was thinking that he was helping his brothers with skills that they lacked. It was less of giving them something they wanted/might be interested in, it was more of the case of giving them what they needed.

And also, you can add the upgrades to the lair in the Smart Lair. Even with him being selfish with Shelldon and programming favoritism into him, it was Donnie once again using his tech to make their lives a little better. Another small instant is when he installed the Donnie Blocker on April's phone because he wanted to make sure she didn't install any malware to her phone because of her games. And the creation of the turtle tank and his accommodations to it to suit his brothers (i.e. Raph's seat, the ice cream machine for Mikey).

These moments just tally as acts of service to me. To me, when you give someone/do something out of love, what separates acts of service from gift giving is intention, and Donnie's intention was to make things better for the people he's doing the act for.

Additionally, just taking into account that Donnie as a character is characterized to be somewhat overly reliant on his tech, and also doesn't see the value of himself outside of his tech (See Donnie v WitchTown), it isn't a shock to me that he would use the thing he values the most in himself to assist his family in whatever way he can.

Anyways, lemme step off my soap box and lay down qkheks

[hadestigers]

ngl looking back the rise movie did a lot for me personally it was incredibly good and it provided a shocking amount of development for the boys that were not the focus of this movie. there’s a lot of little things that i constantly go back to and think about. but it’s kind of hysterical the way that it failed for me at showing me a character arc for leo where he came out of this movie as someone who could lead this team. despite that being like the core premise of the movie.

[olibensstuff]

they can’t stand eachother they told me

[los-ninos-tortugas]

Sometimes I really think about the scale of the Hidden City in Rise. In the show it’s definitely depicted as, ya know, big, but we only ever see sections of it, so it’s hard to get a great idea of just how many square miles it actually takes up. But in fan fiction?

Okay lemme preface this by saying that I’m not looking down my nose at anyone just because I’m actually from NYC. However, in fics I can’t help but notice when it’s clear that when someone thinks of “New York City” as the model for the scale of the Hidden City, what they really mean is Manhattan, and just Manhattan. Cuz there’s a bit of a colloquial habit (even just in New York State itself) that people refer to NYC as just “the city” and usually, if you’re not actually from “the city” they mean just Manhattan when they say that. But like, all five boroughs are New York City, so in the show when April says the Hidden City is “hidden deep under New York City” what I hear is that the Hidden City probably takes up about as much of not more or less square mileage as all five boroughs, but a lot of people tend to depict it as just being under Manhattan and not like, stretching possibly as far out as Long Island.

[bambiraptorx]

I've been thinking, what holidays does Casey actually know about? I'd have to imagine that celebrating holidays isn't a huge priority in the apocalypse, when resources are scarce and lives are at risk every day.

How much does he know about, say, Halloween? Did he hear stories about it? Was it something they tried to celebrate, maybe in the early years when clothing was easier to find? When there was hope that the Krang would be defeated?

Or did the people around him decide it was better for him not to know, so he wouldn't miss something he would never get to experience? Maybe he only learns about holidays after he goes back in time. After he's lost everyone.

[beastenraged]

So, just in general, what do YOU think Baron Draxum is? He claims to be a Yokai, yet he doesn't look like any Yokai I've seen in media (and yes I've looked-) He also looks to be a sheep/dog like creature rather than a Satyr. What do you think he is? I always thought of him as a hybrid of sorts. And since you're world(s) are just so wonderfully thought out and beautifully written, I'm curious on whether or not you explored his origins or specifically, what he is. Hope you're enjoying life in the meantime! I love your stories and also hope Oogway is doing well too! (You mentioned him once- hope you don't mind his mention.)

Oogway is doing fantastic, he's just turtling along. :)

Hm, what specific kind of Yokai Draxum is...

Prepare for way too much mythology and a spattering of cartoon/pop culture influenced design thoughts.

Baron Draxum appears to be based on a mishmash of 80s Shredder and Krang design, with more of an emphasis on Shredder. He's very much meant to be a callback to just classic 80s villains in general, what with his evil mad science nonsense, his purple coloring, and plot to take over the world and such. Also, horns.

That, plus how the gargoyles are very imp-ish in design, really leads me to see Draxum as more goat than sheep. Why? Because Draxum's design (and many 80s villain designs) are supposed to be a reference to the Devil. And the Devil is very specifically associated with goats throughout Christian mythology.

That's not even counting how Lou Jitsu' first encounter with Draxum is very much a deal with the devil and Draxum's own devil's bargain backlash with the Foot Clan and Shredder himself.

Yokai in Rise canon are just all under the same Yokai umbrella. But because us fans think it's fun to do more specific labeling, we get stuff like how Big Mama is definitely a jorogumo.

Due to the before mentioned devil symbology surrounding Draxum, odds are decent that Draxum's species of Yokai could be an actual demon of some kind.

I would lean towards "Slavic demon" actually because a lot of those traditional stories about demons from that culture have demons more as a second race that lives alongside humans and can be good or bad, much like the yokai of Japanese culture. Maybe something like a chort, if you need a specific example.

(Though of course that changed as Christianity entered the picture. *shrugs*)

A bit different from the more Christian and modern fantasy leaning that demons are creatures from an alternate plane of existence and are all evil.

In my thoughts on Draxum as it aligns with my own worldbuilding, I think that Draxum would pretty heavily lean on calling himself 'Yokai' instead of his specific lineage because of those negative associations with the word 'demon.'

I also see Draxum as have probably been a pretty heavy wanderer or just been through a lot over the probable centuries before canon happens. It's possible that he wouldn't really have a strong association with his own lineage himself anymore after so long.

[threestripeslider]

nobody parentifies Raph harder than the ROTTMNT fandom