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calliecat93 · 6 years

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Callie Reviews: TMNT 2012 Season One (Part One)

Ever since 1984, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise has gone form a cult-status indie comic to a massive mass market. There have been various comics, movies, video games, merchandise, and of course cartoons. And it’s easy to see why. TMNT’s concept, a group of mutated teen turtles fighting evil in New York, is both incredibly bizarre and incredibly appealing to a mass audience. You have action, science fiction, martial arts, and of course plenty of mutant ideas to make toys out of. The fact that this Fall will be releasing the fourth animated TMNT series and that a new movie series is in production shows that even over 30 years later, this is a franchise that is far from losing it’s power.

As a kid, I of course knew that Turtles as a thing and I even watch parts of 2k3. But I was never really a fan until the day I stumbled upon the 2012 show. I fell in love with it and, since it started when I was just starting this blog, it was a huge focus for me for several years. I have since moved on and while I’m going to check out the 2018 show, I don’t think I’m going to be as crazy as I was with this show (but never say never). Back in 2012, I was someone who... lets say ignored the flaws and defended the show far too passive aggressively to the point that looking at my older stuff makes me want to blow up by blog.

Nowadays, while some of my opinions hold true (like the ‘Donnie is a stalker’ accusations are still bullshit), I am more willing to admit the shows problems, especially now that I can take the show in fully. I also like to believe that I’ve become a better reviewer since I was 19 years old, plus it had been far too long since I went back over the show form the very beginning. So does the show still hold up? Will 25 year old Callie feel differently than 19 year old Callie did? Well we’re about to find out. This is the TMNT 2012 Season One Review!

The Premiere (Episodes 1-2)

Our story begins with a training sequence that introduces us to the titular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello, and Michelangelo. Along with some minor character establishment, like Mikey being the funny one and Raph the violent one, the biggest thing here is one of the shows strengths: the choreography. It’s best exhibited in Leo and Raph’s duel. The movements are very fluid and well-paced. It’s fast, but not too fast, it’s enough to move things along but still let you take in all the impacts. It’s very well done. Raph ends up winning and we are introduce to the boys mentor and father, Master Splinter. Aka, the best written character int he show, but we’ll get to that later.

After the opening theme, we cut to the boys 15th Mutation Day where we get our backstory. Borrowing from the 80′s show origin, Splinter was once a young man named Hamato Yoshi. He had just bought four pet turtles when he stumbled across a shady dealing. Being a ninja master, he was able to fight back, but he ended up getting splattered with a strange green substance. This turned him into a rat, as one brushed his ankle while the baby Turtles become anthropomorphic. Yoshi, taking on the name Splinter, fled to the sewers and raised the four turtles as his own as well as taught them ninjutsu. It’s a simple, but still solid telling of the origin that pays tribute to previous origins, leaves some mystery about the substance and who was dealing it, and is told with use of comic-style panels reminiscent of the original comics.

The Turtles, having lived in the sewers since their mutation, are hoping to convince Splinter to let them finally go to the surface. After some begging, Splinter reluctantly agrees. We then cut to Leo watching a Star Trek: The Animated Series parody where we learn of his desire to become a great hero and leader. This is interesting for several reasons. One, it establishes that Leo isn’t the leader of the group yet, a departure form normal as he’s normally put into that role automatically. And second, ti does a great job at character establishment. In previous versions, Leo is often seen as the boring, overly leader type. Not a bad character mind you, but he lacks the quirkiness that the tough Raph, genius Donnie, and wild child Mikey present. Here? Leo is shown to be an idealistic, naive, but good-intention kid who aspires to be a great hero like he sees on TV as well as give shim some dorky characteristics, like quoting cheesy one-liners to sound more heroic. It helps make him more relateable, funny, and sets up a character arc for when he does inevitably become the leader. Very well done.

The boys finally go to the surface, and are in awe of what they see. They even discover their trademark favorite food, pizza. Given that they only ever ate worms and algae until this point, it makes their love of it all the more understandable. But not all goes well as they soon witness a group of business men kidnapping a red-haired teenager and her father. They attempt to help, but end up only beating each other up and the bad guys get away with their captives. Mikey ends up beating up one and discovers... a brain with tentacles... yipe... he tries to tell the other three, but they don’t believe him. A common trend in the show.

Upon returning home, the boys try to blame each other for the failure before Splinter accepts it for not giving them proper training as a team. While he considers keeping them down below for another year, Donnie convinces him to let them go help the girl due to seeing how terrified she was and how they failed to help her... and because of the crush he developed in a record five seconds. Splinter agrees, but first assigns Leo as the official leader, much to the ire of Raph. They’re eventually able to find the kidnappers vehicle and wreck it, capturing the driver named Snake and they discover a vat of a glowing green substance. A vat that they recognize as the same one that caused their original mutation.

Snake, after Raph threatens to mutate him, leads the boys to the facility where the captives are... and uses the boys bickering as a chance to escape. Leo uses this to trick the crook into thinking that they’re going to plow his van into the place as he conducts a plan to sneak in. All while Roah is an asshole who refuses to listen and outright undermines Leo’s orders. Yeah, Raph is a real jerk during this season. FYI. When Leo shows hesitance about his plan, Splinter tells him of his final confrontation against his rival Oroku Saki, aka The Shredder. It ended in his wife being killed, his house burning down, and his infant daughter nowhere to be found. Well, that won’t be important in any way, shape, or form later! The point being that he lost everything, but gained the boys, easing Leo’s worries about how much is riding on the plan.

So yeah the boys crash the van, Snake gets mutated, the boys break in, fight some guards, and Mikey proves that he isn’t crazy about the aliens.. and then trips an alarm. Smooth Mikey, smooth. They find the captives, that being this version of April O’Neil and her scientist father. Now in most versions, April is an adult woman. Here? She is aged down and is around sixteen years old. We’ll talk more about that later. The bad guys, aka The Kraang, take the captives away and as the boys give chase,t hey are confronted by the mutant Snake... who is a weed monster. Hey, that’s breaking supervillain rules writers! If you have an evil sounding name, that’s what you turn into! Donnie is sent to rescue the O’Neil’s as the other three face Snakeweed... Mikey’s idea, not mine.

The boys eventually defeat Snake via Leo’s direction and mass electrocution while Donnie is able to rescue April, but her father is taken away. April plans to find him however, no matter what it takes with the boys promising to help in whatever way they can. Once home, Leo finds out the complex reasoning for why he was named the leader over everyone else... because he asked. Ming-boggling, right? Well there is actually another reason, but we’ll talk about this in S4. The boys also made the news as their shruriken got found, but come on, what could one tiny news story do that would be bad? Well... being seen by your master’s worst enemy and re-igniting his lust for vengeance might count! Woopsie!

Overall, a solid two parter. It establishes the characters well, has fun fight scenes, the animation is a little dated now but still pretty good, the dialogue is funny, and it does a good job setting up future plotlines while fulfilling it’s own plot. It started 2k12 off on the right foot and was still enjoyable over five years since it’s initial premiere.

The Beginning (Episodes 3-8)

The episodes following the premiere create a steady flow of creating the status quo. You have episodes like Turtle Temper, Metalhead, and Monkey Brains (kinda) that have the boys dealing with the Kraang’s Plan of the Week as they continue their mutagen experiments. It helps with character development and some minor plot progression, such as Raph learning how dangerous his anger can be and Donnie learning to rely on his instincts rather than on his mind 100% of the time. Some are going to want me to comment on the shipping stuff, But I’m gonna save that for later. The biggest issue with these episodes, aside from Monkey Brains, is the Kraang. They are not interesting as villains at all. As great a VA as Nolan North is, the Kraang’s way of talking just gets... annoying. It doesn't help that the threat ultimately becomes either an accidental mutant or Donnie’s robot... well okay a Kraang possessed the later, but it shows that those are more interesting villains than the Kraang themselves and they exist mroe to just have an excuse for a plot. It’s really irking after awhile.

As far as plot goes, it’s mostly your usual ‘Monster of the Week’ stuff. But it has some small things that have a larger impact later. For one, in Monkey Brains, April begins to tap into what looks like some strong emphatic abilities. More on this next season. But due to this, Splinter decides to take April on as a student and train her to be a kunoichi (a female ninja). This will be the largest part of her character for the remainder of the series. April herself... is not utilized as well as she could have been in these early episodes. She’s described as the boys guide to the outside world, and she does serve that in some respects. For example, introducing Mikey to social media in New Friend, Old Enemy to let him make friends without exposing his mutant identity. And in Never Say Xever she takes them to a blind man’s shop so that they can actually experience life topside for once. The issue is we never see April establish bonds with the boys or Splinter after her introduction. In New Friend, Old Enemy she just acts like she’s been friends with the guys for awhile and after showing Mikey the net, doesn’t appear or is even mentioned in the episode again. She disappears after her importance in Metalhead as well, but she is given mroe to work with there at least. I glossed over this when I was watching the show and April does get mroe time with the guys, her relationship with Splinter being one of my favorites. Still, they didn’t do a lot with having April become part of the group or really act on her role as their ‘guide’ and I feel they just wanted to ignore it to get to the other stuff. Which is just a bummer.

So you’re probably wondering about Shredder stuff, right? Well thankfully the Foot Episodes are also the most plot relevant episodes. It starts with New Friend, Old Enemy where Shredder arrives in New York and assigns one of his lieutenants, a famous martial artist named Chris Bradford, to find out about Splinter. The Foot end up encountering the Turtles, with Bradford later using this to manipulate Mikey after accidentally becoming online friends with him. He captures him and use shim as bait to lure out the other three and then follow them to where Splinter is hiding. It fails with the boys using their knowledge of the sewers to literally wash Bradford and his partner, Xever, away. Along with the dangers of meeting people you don’t really know on social media, the episode presents a very unique lesson. In a fight for your life, screw fairness, You fight by any means necessary to stay alive, including fighting dirty. Most shows emphasize on being fair, but this one actually acknowledges that if your life is on the line, you do what it takes to get out alive. It’s a unique message for a kids show and one that I really appreciate.

Next is Never Say Xever where Xever gets to lead the charge. After the boys track down the two and get beat up, Xever receives inlet from the Purple Dragons, who int his version are pretty much a trio of teen thugs. The Turtles fought them off earlier at the shop April took them to, with Leo sparing the leader as an act of mercy. Something that Raph takes umbridge with... as he does with most anything that Leo does in the first half of the series. It’s no surprise that Leo and Raph butt heads, as they do in most series, and it follows their respective arcs. Leo having to deal with being leader as well as realizing that it’s much more pressuring and unforgiving than he thought, while Raph act son his jealousy that Leo got the position even though he’s the better fighter and therefore questioning Leo’s orders or outright just being an asshole for no good reason. But after the shop owner is kidnapped to lure the Turtles out, Leo’s act of mercy ends up saving them as the lead Dragon repays the favor by throwing him back his discarded sword. Which Leo uses to break a water tower to wash the bad guys away again. Angered, The Shredder decides to handle the Turtles himself.

The episodes do a good job in establishing a solid status quo. Bad guy does a thing, one character has their B-Plot to deal with, there’s a clash, the plots intertwine, bad guy gets defeated, and the lesson of the day is learned. A simple routine, but it works here. Plus we get plenty of character establishment and moments which makes you care about them. For example even though Raph is a massive jerk, the end of New Friend, Old Enemy has his comfort Mikey after the deceit and have him see that he’s a good kid who simply got duped as anyone else would. With this being after Raph mocked him wanting to make friends throughout the episode, it helped show that he does have a caring side. Leo frequently has issues with being a leader, such as dealing with Raph and moments like in ITHNiBS where the guys outright refuse to listen to him when he tries to remind them that they’re grounded. Even Splinter has a lot of moments, being a stern but fair parental figure and wise mentor, but is also snarky as Hell. We also see hints to how much the past has affected him, like after April agrees to undergo kunoichi training and leaves the dojo, there’s just a brief moment where he looks down with a forlorn expression. As though wishing that he was telling this to his own MIA daughter. It’s so subtle, but it speaks volumes about his emotional state.

The characters are ultimately what makes these episodes works and what I would say is the strongest part of the series. You are likely going to relate to or like someone from this show and their progression. But now that we have a fully formed status quo, it’s time to shake it up a little bit and have the Turtles experience their first hard dose of reality.

The Escalation (Epsidoes 9-13)

Episode 9 begins as a typical ‘Mutant of the Week’ plot with the guys trying to catch a pigeon mutant that was after April. But when they do, they discover that he was simply trying to deliver a message... from her father. The message warns her to get out of the city due to a mutagen bomb, but she refuses to leave without him. As such,t he Turtles... somehow... find where Mr. O’Neil is and try to save him. While they get him out of the cell and get the location of the bomb, Mr. O’Neil sacrifices himself when the Kraang outnumber them so that the boys can protect April. All while poor April can only watch, helpless to do anything. Ouch...

The Turtles can only go to where the bomb is to disarm it, but things get further complicated when Bradford and Xever attack, wanting payback from before. Fortunately Donnie disarms the bomb and the four corner the two, but Bradford refuse sot go down quietly and stabs the bomb, but all it does is mutate himself and Xever. But ti also washes them away.... again. I should also point out that this point,t he Turtles have gotten incredibly over-confident since they’ve beaten every bad guy so far, feeling unstoppable. So then... Shredder arrives. Yep. And he kicks their shells HARD. Liek he holds no punches, he easily over-powers all four of them and almost stabs Leo int he head. The only reason that they escape is Shredder getting distracted by his now mutated lieutenants. But the boys retreat, badly beaten up and completely demoralized.

The next episode focuses on the fallout. The four are mostly feeling better, but their fears are being escalated by, of all people, Splinter. This is due to the boys nearly getting killed by his long-time rival re-igniting his own trauma and having nightmares over losing them, causing him to again keep them in the sewers and be far more harsh with his training. The only one doing moderately well is April, who gets intel about the Foot planning to destroy the sewers. The Turtles try to stop it, but get pounded by Bradford, who is now a giant dog mutant named Dogpound. This forces April to get the inlet herself, but she gets caught an captured by the Foot. This further brings Leo down, but to his surprise Raph actually encourages him to pull himself together and lead the team. The Turtles manage to both save April and stop the Foot from destroying the sewers with Splinter apologizing for allowing his fears to affect both himself and his sons. Overall, a solid pair of episodes that bring the boys down a bit, finally has all the plots meet somewhere, and deliver a strong message about not letting fear control you or the others around you.

After a filler episode where the only importance is Shredder forcibly recruiting Stockman to his forces, we get some more Kraang stuff with Episode 12. Where we actually show them being dangerous. Shocker, right?! It also introduces us to long-time supporting character within the franchise Leatherhead. Here he is an alligator mutant who the Kraang experimented on and it causes him to have violent fits of rage if he so much as hears the word ‘Kraang’. The Turtles end up saving him when the Kraang try to re-capture him, but find his angry bursts, well... dangerous. But Mikey is able to befriend him and it becomes more clear that LH is actually a rather intelligent, good-hearted mutant who has been put through Hell. He gets run off by Splinter though when one of his trauma-induced bursts causes him to attack the boys, forcing the rat master to intervene. Mikey, and by proxy the other three, give chase to an old subway car where LH reveals how the Kraang took him to their home, Dimension X, and experimented on him. He escaped and also took their Power Cell, cutting them off form Dimension X, in hopes of saving humanity from them. The Kraang want it back and act like a zombie swarm as they break through the car. LH fights them off, leaving the Power Cell in the Turtles care.

While Episode 11 sucks (to put it simply Leo and Raph are overbearing assholes while Donnie and Mikey are just made to be as weak as possible), the other three do a good job at making the villains more solid threats. Shredder was built up as intimidating and powerful, and boy did he deliver. The Turtles face their first major loss and have to deal with the fallout, Leo especially dealing with his first real failure as a leader. Even the Kraang come off as a scarier hivemind and we get mroe stuff on them, like Dimension X and their plans to mutate the Earth. Add that with a strong supporting character like Leatherhead, who is understandably traumatized but is an intelligent being who is trying to prevent others form suffering like him. and it helps make some strong episodes.

The first half of the season concludes with the 13th episodes... that aired as the 14th for some reason. But I’m going in order of my DVD’s and this was after Episode 12, so it’s what I’m going with. It both concludes a lot and opens up a lot for the future. The episode I am talking about is, of course New Girl in Town.

TBC in Part Two....

#tmnt #2k12 #tmnt 2012 #callie reviews

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amorremanet · 7 years

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In celebration of @blackpaladinweek — some Twinganes (i.e., Shiro and his twin brother Ryou) headcanons from the punk band/university/modern setting hot mess AU of But boys spring infernal (as of now: Mature, ~300k, 17 of 21 chapters; main ship is Keith/Shiro, with several past ships & side-ships; this AU’s previous Ryou + Twinganes post) (also dedicated to Saki @bishiro ):

Q: Which one of the Shirogane twins loves Legally Blonde more? / A: Trick question, they love Legally Blonde more or less equally

That said, Ryou doesn’t love Mean Girls as much as Shiro does. Or very much at all, really

It’s not that Ryou minds the movie? But he’s tired of it, and too many Mean Girls references at once will make Ryou want to scream

Shiro may never let Ryou live down his t(w)eenage celebrity crush on Christina Aguilera, but to be fair, Ryou isn’t going to let Kashi live down his still very much alive celebrity crush on Sir Ian McKellan, either

Unlike Ryou, who took some time to arrive at his Bi Awakening, Shiro has known that he’s gay since they were about eight and he got a kiddie-crush on a boy in his class.

Their Mom heard about this when she asked if they had any special Valentines in mind in their class, and while Ryou just said the name of the first girl in class who he thought of as a friend but was mostly non-committal about it, Shiro was very into Cameron Levesque.

Mom and Dad Shirogane talked to Shiro about this first, basically explaining that they love him no matter what and there is nothing wrong with him being gay, but that he needs to be careful because there are, unfortunately, several people in the world who disagree and could try to hurt him

Ryou’s nine-year-old opinion on this was, “Well, if Kashi is gay, then duh, obviously there’s nothing wrong with anybody being gay. How could there be? My brother is the best and anyone who says otherwise is probably just jealous, I will fight them if they try to say that he’s wrong for wanting to kiss other boys”

Excluding snowball fights, Ryou has been in five physical fights in his entire life. Four somehow involved the desire to stand up for his brother. The fifth one, on the other hand, involved Ryou standing up to said brother, and it ended in him and Shiro hugging each other while crying.

From the age of eleven until they were almost 24, Ryou and Shiro had an ongoing debate about which fictional aliens would be the most fun to get abducted by. After Shiro’s time “living with” (read: being effectively held hostage by) Sendak and Haxus, though, that whole discussion stopped being one that he could find any humor in.

Like, if Earth made first contact with the Vulcans tomorrow and Shiro was offered passage back to their home-world, he’d have a hard time saying, “No”? But he’s really lost his taste for, “abducted by aliens” fantasies

One of the biggest disappointments of their childhood was that their Mom and Dad never let them get a cat, but in fairness? Tiny Ryou could be kind of a space cadet sometimes (in that he gets absorbed in things very easily and sometimes needs to be reminded that the rest of the world exists), while Tiny Kashi was either trying way too hard to be Perfect or a mischievous, rambunctious handful who fancied himself a prankster, with very little middle-ground between those two options

—so any cats they adopted likely would’ve been loved by the twins but cared for by their parents or grandparents, instead of functioning as a Lesson in Responsibility That Is Shaped Like A Pet for the twins

One of Ryou’s current disappointments is that he is a financially stable adult who could totally adopt a cat…… but he isn’t sure how Slav and a cat would get along with each other, and as troublesome as Slav can be, Ryou does love his friend/roommate, and he wants a cat? But not enough to risk a situation that could be Not Good for Slav

Ryou is responsible for turning Shiro on to Steven Universe, and Hunk is responsible for introducing the show to Ryou.

The character Ryou most identifies with is Connie (and Shiro can see it but would also peg Ryou as having a lot in common with Sadie).

The characters Shiro most identifies with are Pearl and Lapis Lazuli — and Ryou agrees kinda but he doesn’t like it, especially because:

1. he knows that the episode “Lost At Sea” is a big reason why Shiro loves Lapis as much as he does, and considering that episode really isn’t subtle in portraying Lapis’s fusion with Jasper as an abusive relationship, Ryou’s Protective Brother Instincts get pricked up hardcore;

and 2. Ryou can’t help but be suspicious and concerned about how Pearl and Lapis have character designs that emphasize thinness and physical delicacy, given that Shiro has an eating disorder and body image issues

(which okay, Shiro understands where Ryou’s coming from here, but this is sort of a sticking point because Shiro isn’t sure how he can put Ryou’s mind at ease without risk of accidentally sounding like he’s devaluing his problems

—also, he knows from experience that, apparently, “Duly noted, but I never wanted to be that kind of skinny and that isn’t the real problem with me anyway” is not the right answer)

Neither twin will argue that Hunk is the resident Steven Quartz Universe, like…… They don’t see a case to the contrary, really. And Hunk is totally cool with that.

When they were sixteen, Shiro passed his driver’s test on the first time out while Ryou failed it twice before finally getting it right. These days, though, Ryou is the twin who actually has a car and ever drives it. If you ask Shiro why he’s so averse to driving, he will tell you, “Trying to drive a car in Chicago after barely having my license for six months” and leave it at that.

Anyone who tries to tell you that either Shiro or Ryou is the, “calm, level-headed twin” while the other is the, “temperamental, reckless twin”? ……Yeah, either they’ve only just met the twins or they are lying to you.

Like, it’s fair(-ish) to join Shiro in saying that he is the, “genius twin” while Ryou is, “the twin with common sense” — in D&D stats terms: Shiro has more Intelligence than Wisdom, while Ryou is about even on both but isn’t as off-the-charts in Intelligence as Shiro is

—but… ahaha, no, both of them can be either the, “calm, level-headed twin” or the, “temperamental, reckless twin” at different points and in different ways. Both of them are easily outraged by abuses of power and/or on behalf of other people, but even that, they do differently.

A lot (though not all) of Shiro’s outrage could be summed up as, “People who have power don’t use it responsibly and it hurts the people who have less power, or who rely on them, or similar, and Shiro has no idea why he has to explain that you should care about other people, but he is angry and offended that some people think this is optional, what the Hell, how do you just not care about other people”

However: for all Shiro will (usually) let himself be openly angry about other people’s abuse, pain, suffering, etc., he usually tries to deny, repress, or ignore the anger he feels about things that hurt him. He’s getting better while working on all this with Ulaz, but he has a history of letting that anger build up until he snaps, or only come out in his music and/or when he’s angry on someone else’s behalf.

His typical interactions with Slav aren’t even an exception that prove the rule here. It’s an easy mistake to make, given how short Shiro’s temper is with Slav… but fact is, he simply hits his breaking point with Slav faster than he does with most people.

In the opinions of several people, Shiro’s pronounced bleeding-heart tendencies might very easily be the death of him someday if he doesn’t learn to get better at managing them. Like, most people agree that his compassion, his level of concern for other people, and his desire to help people are at least some degree of admirable — but Shiro has a problem of giving too much of himself to other people.

He also has a problem of getting angry about things that he can’t really do anything about (sometimes genuinely and sometimes because he doesn’t really want to deal with any of the things he can affect any meaningful change over because they’re messy and tangled and being Complicated at him, especially when they’re emotionally complicated)

On top of those problems, Shiro also has the problem where he has trouble with insisting on some of his boundaries and asking people to respect them — and he can sometimes be really, really bad at remembering where his boundaries are when he’s faced with people who need help, or issues that he cares about (though Shiro fixates more on the people affected by those issues than on the issues themselves), or the pain and suffering of other people in general

—Because Shiro wants to help. Shiro wants to make people’s lives better. Shiro is the sort of person who endures horrible pain and trauma and comes out the other end of it, wanting to be the sort of person who would’ve helped his past-self when he was in deep shit (and one of his biggest motivations as an artist/songwriter is wanting to make music that really reaches people and affects them somehow, even if it’s “just” reminding them that they aren’t alone). Which is all great?

……But when it comes to helping people, Shiro has all the chill of a broken freezer (which is to say, “none whatsoever”), and he often shoves his own problems down or to the side in the name of trying to help other people instead, despite how this has gotten him into trouble so many times before

The list of people who have expressed concern about these tendencies of Shiro at one point or another includes but is not limited to:

Ryou

Keith

Lance

Pidge

Hunk kinda sorta, he waffles about it

Matt

Ulaz sometimes

Iverson despite the fact that he also admires Shiro’s capacity for hope and compassion

Shiro’s old roommate Mark and their friend Trevor

Shiro’s old friend Laura (whom he fake-dated when they were in high school so her parents wouldn’t find out that she’s a lesbian)

Acxa (including one incident where she was like, “Look, Lotor is my best friend and has been since we were nine — but he’s a disaster, you two are not working out together, and I know that you want to help him…… but you are probably going to kill yourself if you keep trying so hard to help him”)

Ezor

Zethrid

Narti (through the conduit of Ezor because she didn’t feel like talking to Shiro for herself)

Shiro and Ryou’s Mom

Shiro and Ryou’s Dad

Grandfather Shirogane

Grandmother Shirogane

Sendak (but he meant this less out of real concern and more as a way of going, “Why don’t you give in and just come revel in being a monster with me”)

Slav (but he expressed the sentiment to Ryou because he felt like Shiro wasn’t listening to him, which was accurate)

Shiro’s A.A./N.A. sponsor Robin

David And Miranda From Group

and Lotor, even though he has directly benefited from Shiro’s bleeding-heart tendencies more than pretty much anyone else in Shiro’s life except for maybe Sendak

—Allura only hasn’t expressed concerns like this yet because she only just met Shiro recently

So……… yeah. This is a Thing. People become aware of it pretty quickly, when dealing with Shiro.

Ryou, on the other hand, has some trouble admitting that he’s angry on his own behalf but nowhere near as much as Shiro. In general, he’s far more likely than Shiro to acknowledge that he is angry and then either try to push it aside because “there is something more important to deal with right now,” or start giving people the cold shoulder

(—this happens even if he isn’t angry with them or anyone in particular: Ryou is very much a person who feels a need to tinker with or work on something when he gets angry. He also tends to want space from other people, and unless someone is comfortable enough with him to know better, his cranky tinkering tends to look like he’s shutting people out)

When Ryou gets outraged for other people, it tends to be in a way that’s focused on their boundaries or sense of agency, or things that were taken from them. While Shiro’s outrage tends to be more centered on the pain and suffering and wanting to find some way to alleviate it (usually by doing something and finding some kind of silver lining or a purpose to dedicate oneself to), Ryou’s outrage is about the specifics of what was done unto other people and how it tried to take away their sense of power in their own lives, and then what to do about moving forward (with an occasional side of vengeance and a serious vindictive streak once roused)

He’s also much more likely to get angry about people whom or issues that he cares about personally, rather than emotionally bleeding over everything he doesn’t really enjoy about the world — like, yes, he can get upset about injustices that he has no personal relation to or stake in, and it bothers him that many people in positions of power are manipulative assholes who care more about themselves and their own security than about the people beneath them on the different hierarchical ladders?

But unlike Shiro, Ryou looks at those things and goes, “I don’t like them, but there largely doesn’t seem to be anything I can do to directly change them, and as much as they upset me, I have other issues and troubles that I need to focus on because I actually can do something about them. I’m only human, I only have so much energy and so many resources, and I care about those things? But I have no idea how to affect any meaningful change, so I’m going to go put more energy into something that I can actually do anything about”

Basically, just…… Ryou and Shiro can both be temperamental and they can both be reckless. They can also both be totally calm and level-headed. It depends on the context, since they can get upset about different things, and

True, there are other factors in play as well, but Shiro’s mental health is the biggest reason why Ryou has a longer list of times when he’s gone, “Kashi, NO” than Shiro’s list of incidents requiring a, “Ryou, NO.”

Specifically, Ryou has had to go, “Kashi, NO” more often than Shiro’s done the opposite…… because Shiro has a history of disregarding his own well-being or outright not caring about it, whether this meant, “trying to climb a precarious-looking tree to save his friend Laura’s cat when they were all about ten” or, “mixing up a ‘cocktail’ that is equal parts tequila and cherry-flavored liquid Vicodin, then chugging six of them on an empty stomach”

(disclaimer: please, for the love of god, DO NOT DO THIS. it is a miracle that Shiro lived through doing that to himself, so please, please, please do not do this thing.)

Shiro doesn’t get what Ryou’s deal is about Sven. None of them gets why people think Sven looks so similar to the twins, but Shiro’s bigger sticking point is, “Seriously, why do you act like Sven is such a life-ruiner? He’s a decent guy, just kind of a goofball, and apparently he sounds like the Swedish Chef in bed? Which is a mental image you can thank Lance for, but??? Come on, are you really that jealous of Slav having another friend”

(to answer Shiro’s question: ……well, yes, Ryou is jealous? But it’s more that he thinks that Slav may have oversold this friendship and that Sven thinks of him as a work friend only and doesn’t really care about his problems… but in fairness, Ryou gets to that conclusion by conveniently ignoring certain pieces of evidence about Sven and Slav’s relationship that he doesn’t want to acknowledge because he is jealous of Sven, so……… yup.)

At this point, whenever the twins show off any old childhood photos, they make the jokes comparing themselves to the Sprouse miscreants before anyone else can. They’ve heard it so many times, and it’s always some kind of variant on the same thing — “Wow, you guys looked practically the same until you were about twelve, then Ryou started getting fat and Shiro didn’t” — and they’re fricking tired of it

While the brothers enjoy both Star Trek and Star Wars, there are some party lines here. Ryou infinitely prefers Star Wars (and he will fight people over both the validity of the prequels and whether or not the different Expanded Universe stories are still canon in light of the new trilogy)

Shiro meanwhile thinks that Star Trek is the superior sci-fi franchise (and he will fight people who think he should’ve dressed up as Kirk or Picard or anyone but Uhura for his past Trek-themed Halloween costumes. Because…… what. He wanted to wear TOS!Uhura’s red mini-dress and Mirrorverse!Uhura’s outfit, so he did, what is your point)

That said, there are some photos of the Mirror!Uhura outfit that Shiro would rather not be reminded of. They’re old selfies from around Halloween 2012, he was dangerously unhealthy, and and he sent them to Ryou and Laura for opinions without even thinking about the possibility that their reactions might focus less on how he looked in the costume and more on the fact that: 1. Shiro had amended the costume in certain suspicious ways; and 2. he looked like he was going to pass out at any minute

“Certain suspicious ways” here means: Shiro tried to cite the fact that it was a chilly October as a reason for putting a long-sleeved black t-shirt under the red-and-gold-trimmed bra part…… except Ryou and Laura both called bullshit, because Shiro had worn the proper costume in colder weather before without caring, and they had reason to suspect that he was trying to hide something

Ryou zeroed in on the possibility that Shiro might’ve been trying to hide injuries from Sendak. Laura focused, instead, on the fact that Shiro looked particularly thin and thought that he might’ve been trying to throw people off from noticing this. Both of them were right.

Two weeks after those selfies, Shiro had a fainting spell at work — which would eventually become a huge sticking point for Keith, because he thought said fainting spell made Shiro take his well-being more seriously and made him give more of a fuck about how much his self-abuse and relationship with Sendak were wrecking him…… but Keith was other than right.

I mean, the fainting spell scared Shiro, and it briefly made him take things more seriously…… but that didn’t last

Aside from Ryou and Laura, the only people who’ve seen those selfies are: Sendak (poking through Shiro’s phone without his consent); Ulaz (specifically asked to see them for therapeutic reasons); Lotor (didn’t believe that Shiro had ever worn said outfit for any reason and unfortunately, Shiro realized too late that the first pics he’d found were those ones); and Lance (walked in on Shiro low-key moping and obsessing over those selfies after he’d shown them to Lotor and endured the ensuing awkward conversation*)

*: said conversation was largely awkward because Lotor was concerned and did want to help, but unfortunately, he has very little idea what to do with genuine emotions, which out of a lot of things in his life

—but the biggest cause is the fact that Lotor was raised by a frigid, cruel, emotionally abusive, high-functioning alcoholic chemistry professor and her ill-tempered, bigoted enabler, who is every bit as emotionally abusive as his wife (who is the only person in the universe who he loves, including their son), constantly acts like a character from a Greek tragedy, and high-key hates the fact that certain major social and political events of the twentieth century stripped his family of their ruling position in the territory formerly known as Daibazaal, which means he will never be the King or Emperor of anything

Shiro feels like he would also show the pictures to Keith, Hunk, Pidge, Matt, and maybe Allura, but only if he knew that they were in emotionally okay enough places and if he felt stable enough to deal with how they might react

If Ryou ever challenges you to a snowball fight, you probably shouldn’t accept. He plays to win and he plays dirty. Shiro pretty much only goes along with this because he doesn’t mind when Ryou plays dirty; he thinks it’s adorable and endearing.

“For the love of God, Kashi, just tell him that you like being the little spoon and let him cuddle you. It’s literally that simple. You will feel so much better if you let yourself have this bit of comfort already” — Ancient Ryou Shirogane Proverb.

A lot of Shiro’s inability to keep his cool around Slav has to do with the fact that Shiro is a very compassionate person and tries so hard to understand Slav’s perspective, only for Slav to (generally) refuse any and all attempts at compromise.

A lot it has to do with how Slav has a tendency to treat Shiro’s known stressors and triggers as buttons he can push just to see what happens.

(The usual answer to this is some variation on, “Shiro realizes what Slav is doing, grumpily calls him out on it, and then gets upset because Ryou has asked Slav not to do shit like this and Shiro has opened up to Slav in ways that made him feel deeply uncomfortable, all in the hopes that helping Slav to understand some of Shiro’s problems and struggles might get him to stop pulling stunts like this

“—and yet, Slav continues to do these things and ignore simple requests like, ‘Can you please not kick Shiro in his eating disorder just to see what happens and/or make some kind of point to him, no matter how important you think that point might be”)

And still more of Shiro’s dislike of Slav has to do with how Slav reminds Shiro of himself in ways that Shiro does not particularly enjoy (especially because both of them have some pretty huge and difficult to manage issues with control).

All up, it’s probably a miracle (or possibly a testament to how much he loves Ryou) that Shiro hasn’t given in to his petty impulse to call Slav by his full, given name because well hey, Slav insistently calls Shiro, “Takashi” when he wasn’t given permission to do so (and the only reason he doesn’t use any of the overly familiar abbreviations like, “Taka” or, “Kashi” is that he thinks they sound silly)

—so, if he’s going to do that, then in Shiro’s humble (albeit very biased) opinion, it’s only fair that he gets to call Ryou’s best friend, “Miroslav” even though he knows damn well that Slav hates being addressed by that name and only hasn’t done away with it legally because the paperwork sounds very tedious and Slav doesn’t feel like it

Ryou desperately wishes that his brother and his best friend could get along, but he also understands why they don’t and since Shiro has made an effort while Slav doesn’t get how nothing he’s done constitutes, “making an effort,” well…… Ryou’s solution is to just do what he can to minimize the amount of time Slav and Shiro have to spend around each other

This is going to make Christmas 2017 mildly complicated because Ryou is bringing Slav with him to the Shirogane family Christmas out in California (because he visited Slav’s family last year, and…… uh, no, Ryou is not sending his best friend back to deal with that, especially not alone, and Slav can’t go to Norway with Sven due to a recent failure to renew his damn passport)

But, uh…… at least Slav will have more targets than Shiro?

Also, he will be more tolerable after dropping acid, but that just raises the question of why he thought it was a good idea to bring LSD to Christmas (and Slav’s answer is pretty much, “……Well, I wanted to do it, so I did”)

Another thing that Shiro will not let Ryou live down, ever: the time when they were kids and went to Disneyland with their parents and cousins, and Ryou asked where Anastasia was and come on why had he seen every princess but her.

Shiro is still kind of Not Over the fact that Ryou is a Pottermore-Sorted Slytherin, because Shiro was totally expecting both of them to end up put into Ravenclaw (in fairness, it was close for Ryou. Not so much for Shiro, but Ryou was a Ravenclaw/Slytherin hat-stall).

On the other hand, Ryou is still kind of Not Over the fact that, when he made Kashi get a Pottermore account, Shiro didn’t see his own Sorting into Hufflepuff coming from a mile off (—and okay, Ryou will totally admit that he likes Harry Potter more than Shiro does, but still, Kashi. Come on. How did you think you would ever be Sorted into Ravenclaw).

As much as Ryou means that question rhetorically, he does suspect that there is an actual answer to it and frankly, he doesn’t like it Mostly because he suspects that the answer involves Shiro defining himself as a list of academic and/or creative accomplishments instead of working harder on applying that pesky little, “You need to have a more holistic view of yourself and appreciate who you are as a complete person instead of zeroing in on tiny pieces of yourself as if they alone define you” idea to himself

In fairness to Shiro here: most people do not think, “Slytherin” when they think of Ryou. He’s most often misidentified as a Ravenclaw (whether they get thrown off by the fact that Ryou is an obvious nerd who has a Physics PhD, went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for his undergrad, and always did well in school, or by the fact that Ryou genuinely loves learning), or maybe as a Hufflepuff like his brother (Lance is one of the people who thought so).

The list of people who have correctly guessed that Ryou is a Slytherin is: Hunk (but he’d been thinking Hufflepuff until Ryou heard about a then-recent disagreement Hunk had had with Shiro and went, “Ugh, don’t listen to Kashi, go get Pidge and slash the tires on Lotor’s Maserati, I’ll keep my stupid genius brother distracted and you can go give his pet asshole exactly what’s coming to him”)

Ezor (Ryou’s ex-girlfriend, herself a Slytherin, who most loved the moments when Ryou joined her in being all kinds of petty, judgmental, vindictive, spiteful, grudge-holding, snarky at the expense of people they disliked, and openly frustrated with the things that exasperate them — but who was also like, “But why are you objecting to some of my behaviors so? I don’t think it’s mean to tell this other local band that I think their music sounds like a funeral dirge sung by a chorus of sick cats aspirating on their own vomit. Their music does sound like that. If anything, those pathetic idiot hipsters should be thanking me for messing with their equipment before their set. I made them sound better”)

Slav (who actually doesn’t really care about Harry Potter and only picked Slytherin for Ryou because he knows that Ryou’s favorite color is green)

and Pidge (literally the only member of Galaxy Garrison who guessed Slytherin within a few minutes of meeting Ryou)

Neither of the twins cusses that much, largely as a result of their parents and grandparents raising them not to. Shiro does so more than Ryou, but it’s still not a very common occurrence and more often than not, Shiro is either quoting someone else or using some variant of, “fuck” as a way to differentiate between different approaches to sexual intercourse

That said: Ryou is more comfortable talking about sex than Shiro. To be fair, Shiro can discuss sex perfectly fine when he has some kind of emotional distance with it (like when it was casual sex that didn’t mean that much to him or when he’s giving Lotor recommendations on which weird niche-interest erotica to get Zethrid for her birthday)…… but he gets flustered very easily as soon as he’s emotionally invested in the sex

Ryou, on the other hand? Just doesn’t?? see??? the point???? of that kind of attitude????? Like, if you ask him, sex is best when people are on the same page, and it’s easier to get there if you don’t waste any time on shame and tell people what you like, what you don’t, what you want, and so on

Shiro would like to point out that it’s not an issue of shame, to him?? It’s an issue of, “Feelings are complicated and difficult and often messy, and when sex with someone is important to Shiro or happening in the context of a relationship that is important to Shiro, he puts a lot of pressure on himself not to screw it up”

Sexual shame largely enters the picture whenever Shiro talks about Sendak, but those discussions are messy for reasons that include but also go beyond the sex, and Shiro’s sense of shame there doesn’t really from the sex itself or from the role that BDSM played in his and Sendak’s relationship. It comes more from things like, “Sendak was abusive, and Shiro knows this, but part of him still loves Sendak and he hates this and he feels like he never should’ve loved Sendak to begin with, so yeah, the fact that part of him still loves his abuser is something Shiro is very deeply ashamed of”

This is another of the points where Ryou and Ezor worked really well together, to the surprise of… pretty much everyone but Shiro, Acxa, Zethrid, and Narti. Because neither of them has that much of a sense of shame about sex, both of them were comfortable just telling each other what they wanted or didn’t, and neither of them got embarrassed over things like accidentally knocking something over or awkward about laughing at each other during sex

Lotor was left off of that list for a reason. He really didn’t get what Ezor saw in Ryou at all, much in the same way that Ryou didn’t see what Shiro saw in Lotor. For the most part, Ezor was fine with letting Lotor fail to get it and then periodically vent his feelings about things by being some degree of petty and obnoxious about Ryou

—until the time when Lotor was coming off an argument with his Mother and went, “Honestly, I know that incompatible orientations are an issue for you and Shiro, but how can you even stand dating the objectively less attractive twin? Never mind the boring twin since that is a subjective matter, but why would you settle for the twin who is clearly nowhere near as good-looking as his brother? I don’t get it, does he give you the best cunnilingus that you’ve ever had in your life???”

Yeeeeah, that incident ended with Lotor being held in a very painful headlock until he apologized and promised to back the Hell off and just let Ezor be happy

He was very displeased that Shiro and Zethrid ignored his cries for help, but Shiro was just like, “I’ve told you that I’m done bailing you out when you insult my brother and Ezor has asked you to stop. You earned this”

while Zethrid’s opinion was, “*shrug* She told you to stop. You didn’t. You dug your way in so you can dig your own way out. Plus, watching you struggle was funny :)”

The last conversation that Shiro had with his Grandfather Namesake was before he left for school on the day Grandfather Shirogane died of an unexpected stroke. Grandfather Shirogane’s central point boiled down to, “I know that I have not always made it as clear as I should have, but I do love you, I am proud of you, and it kills me to see you pretending to be someone you are not so that you will earn the approval of your ignorant so-called friends. Your brother, his girlfriend, Laura, and Keith are the only peers of yours I have seen treat you as friends are meant to treat each other. Always remember who you are, and remember who truly matters in your life.”

The last conversation that Ryou had with Grandfather Shirogane was shortly after Shiro’s. Their Grandfather stopped Ryou on his way out the door and the gist of what he had to say was, “Yes, the older brother is usually supposed to look out for the younger one, but… Keep looking out for Kashi. If that boy doesn’t slow down and take stock of his priorities, he is going to destroy himself over the opinions of people who do not matter.”

Neither of the twins particularly enjoys reminiscing about their last conversations with their Grandfather. They have some mixed-but-loving-even-though-they-also-criticize-him feelings about the man in general, but those last chats with Grandfather Shirogane have stuck with them.

It’s been almost 12 years since he passed, and his grandsons still periodically think about those conversations, sometimes rather off-handedly and sometimes in ways that are fairly emotionally intense because maybe they’ve grieved for Grandfather Shirogane more or less healthily, but they haven’t completely made their respective peaces with those last Talks, especially because their Grandfather Shirogane’s points have become recurring themes in their lives

Another thing that Ryou is never going to let Shiro live down: when they were kids and their Dad first introduced them to Star Wars on VHS? ……Yeah, Shiro thought that Han/Leia was just a middle-of-the-story distraction romance before Leia eventually got with Luke, then got his little five-year-old mind completely blown when they got to Return of the Jedi and George Lucas dropped the, “FYI, they are twins” reveal on everybody. Shiro refused to acknowledge ROTJ for three years because he didn’t want Luke and Leia to be twins, he wanted them to get married

Ryou has (half-jokingly) threatened to include this story in his best man speech whenever Shiro finally finds his Prince Charming and gets hitched

About four weeks before Shiro finally got away from Sendak (August 2013), Shiro attempted suicide by taking too much Vicodin with tequila. He survived because Sendak happened to come home early and Haxus, being a doctor, had taught him how to administer naloxone in the event of Sendak’s sweet boy ever overdosing (since Shiro’s drugs of choice were alcohol and opiates, and naloxone would counteract the opiates at least).

Before Shiro swallowed the pills, he called Ryou, hoping that Ryou would have something to say and could talk him out of it. When Ryou missed the call, Shiro took it as a sign and left Ryou what was essentially a suicide note in the form of a voicemail.

Before that incident, Ryou was already worried, but that message scared him more than anything else he’d ever encountered. The next little while of calling and texting Shiro without a reply — the only other time in Ryou’s life that comes close to being a horrible as that was hearing that his parents were dead. He held it together remarkably well while waiting to hear from his Kashi, then cried in relief when Shiro called him back again

—and then the relief turned into more fear and frustration and pain because Sendak was breathing down the back of Shiro’s neck while he called Ryou, and between how Shiro forced himself to keep his voice controlled (and still sounded like he was about to shatter into a million pieces) and the way that Shiro was talking about what happened, Ryou could tell, but it felt like there was nothing he could do to help his brother, the person who Ryou loves most in this world

Ryou hasn’t told Shiro so, but he still has the voicemail. He has saved it despite upgrading his phone a few times since then; any time he gets a new phone, he makes sure to never lose that one. There’s a lot of other stuff on his phone that he doesn’t want to lose, but Ryou’s biggest priority is saving that voicemail

If anyone asked him why, he wouldn’t even be able to tell them. He just feels like that voicemail might be important for reasons other than, “reminding him to keep looking out for his brother.” Ryou isn’t sure when or how or why it’s going to prove to be important, but he is completely certain that someday, he is going to need to have that voicemail

Even though Shiro is in a much better place now than he has been and even though most of the unknown numbers that call Ryou end up being spam, Ryou still freezes a bit whenever he sees one come up on his phone because he’s terrified that someone’s calling him to tell him that something terrible happened to his Kashi

Iverson is a member of the physics faculty at Kaltenecker University, and he so did not intend to become a father figure to a set of loser nerd twins…… and yet, here he is, usually seeing Shiro at least once a week (at their Tuesday night A.A. meetings) and seeing Ryou pretty regularly, despite the fact that Ryou finished and defended his dissertation already, isn’t Iverson’s student anymore, and isn’t working on any projects that fall into Iverson’s area of expertise.

Ryou isn’t yet used to the fact that he has Iverson’s permission to call him, “Mitch” now, despite how he’s had said permission for a little over a year. It still makes him get a bit giddy and giggly, like a twelve-year-old looking up cuss words in the dictionary, because alsjskshsk, this feels so special and borderline taboo.

Shiro, on the other hand, constantly forgets that most of the other characters who know Iverson do not call him, “Mitch” because they don’t use surnames at A.A., so Shiro has literally never called Iverson anything but, “Mitch.” Shiro didn’t even think that his Mitch could be the same guy as Ryou’s, “Dr. Iverson” until Ryou wanted to introduce them and the twins went, “Wait, you already know the cool older guy I respect and admire?”

Iverson, for his part, just kind of sighed and facepalmed and has himself some coffee while the twins got their head around this, because he figured out that the new “Shiro” guy at meetings was the same as Ryou’s troubled but beloved brother Takashi…… the very first time that Shiro came to one of the Tuesday night meetings at the LGBTQ community center.

Shiro and Ryou agree that there is something about Iverson that reminds them of their Grandfather Shirogane (the one after whom Shiro was personal-named), but they have different opinions on what, exactly, that something is.

Ryou, personally, thinks it’s the way that Iverson is blunt and to-the-point but it generally comes from a well-meaning place (if not always a place of concern).

Shiro, on the other hand, can never quite pin down what his answer is because it ends up changing pretty regularly, but either way, he thinks it’s more important for him to remember that Mitch is his own person, not Grandfather Shirogane 2.0

Generally speaking, Ryou feels like he has a pretty good sense of humor, and he isn’t wrong. But he gets pretty sensitive to the “jokes” that his Kashi sometimes makes about death and dying, or that even remotely sound like Shiro devaluing himself, or that feel “too morbid.” Considering Shiro’s struggles with mental health, Ryou is far from the only person who takes some degree of issue with these “jokes,” but he’s one of the people who’s had the most success in going, “This makes me uncomfortable, I know that it’s one of your coping mechanisms, but it’s frankly a pretty concerning one, whether you mean for it to be or not”

At this point, Ryou is the only one of the Shiro-Ryou-Sven triad who Lance has never done anything physical with. Lance has platonically made out with Shiro and has had sex with Sven, and although realizing how in love with Hunk he is has largely helped Lance on from his desire to do something with all three of them, “For Science,” Lance is still kind of annoyed that Ryou never made out with him, “for science.”

Which is totally fine with Ryou, Lance. You can be as annoyed as you damn well please, because Ryou is annoyed that you ignored him telling you, “No” and kept asking until Shiro told you to back off and let it go.

The fight where Shiro and Ryou actually got physical with each other happened in early October 2015. Shiro had stayed clean for six months that time, and getting there had been an Ordeal for him — and then Lotor’s parents wanted to meet their son’s boyfriend. It had taken enough time to get Lotor to listen and accept that, “I am an addict and an alcoholic, for the love of god, my sobriety is important to me”

—and then Zarkon and Honerva offered Shiro a crash course on where Lotor had learned most of his incorrect attitudes about substance about and addiction. They did not listen when Lotor tried to go, “Please stop offering my boyfriend nunvil, I know that it is a cultural thing with Mother’s side of the family but he is an alcoholic” or when Shiro said similarly. Zarkon intimidated and terrified Shiro until he accepted two glasses of the stuff, and Shiro thought that he could have that one forced slip and then keep things under control afterward

Except that things did not shake out that way. He held it together for about a day-and-a-half before he got overtaken by the feelings like, “What does it even matter, I already slipped up, everything’s easier and it hurts so much less when I’m drunk anyway, who even cares” and so on. He ran down his phone’s battery on purpose, playing Candy Crush while out at a bar — which is where Lotor found him

Despite the mutual distaste between Lotor and most of the other people in Shiro’s life, they collaborated on trying to find him. Lotor, Lance, Acxa, Zethrid, and Matt went out searching, Hunk, Ezor, and Ryou were waiting at the Shiro-Hunk-Lance apartment, Narti was waiting at the Lotor + Gal Pals’ house in case Shiro went there, and Pidge was checking her phone for updates all through that week’s meeting of the Neurodiverse Student Union

So, when Lotor got Shiro back to his, Hunk, and Lance’s place, he, Hunk, and Ezor got asked to please clear out so Ryou could Have A Talk with his brother (—which they mostly did, but “mostly” means that they awkwardly waited in the hallway outside of the apartment, in case the “Talk” started sounding like it might need intervention)

Yes, Shiro was drunk, but he wasn’t completely off his own head just yet, and he assumed that this Talk was going to be Ryou being Disappointed in him for slipping up, which made him preemptively frustrated, and he started projecting his own feelings onto Ryou as if they were actually what Ryou was feeling and what he wanted to discuss

—but Shiro was so completely off-base that he might as well have been playing a different game entirely

See, Ryou didn’t like that Shiro had slipped up, but what he really wanted to call his brother out about that night was, “Where the Hell do you get off letting your phone die like that? You always have a charger in your bag. You have one of those spare battery jackets for it. Your phone’s battery doesn’t die like that unless you let it get that low on purpose, so what in the Hell were you thinking, Kashi”

—which Shiro really didn’t want to talk about, so he threw out a mostly bullshit answer about how he genuinely just didn’t notice now excuse him, he’s going to go shower until he quits feeling like such a failure or drowns himself, whichever happens first

Ryou only meant to hold onto him to keep Shiro from going… but he yanked too hard and Shiro took it the wrong way… Being drunk is the biggest reason why he shoved at Ryou but didn’t actually hit back… The physical part didn’t really last that long, given that Shiro was drunk and Ryou was trying to restrain him rather than hurt him

—but both of them wound up on the floor and managed to land a few hits on each other before Ryou successfully pinned Shiro’s wrists and shouted at him that they were talking about this NOW, Kashi, so tell Ryou what the Hell you were even thinking

Voice cracking and eyes tearing up, Shiro snapped back, “What does it matter, what d’you even care, you have a class to teach in the morning, go do that—”

“No! I am doing this, you’re more important than Iverson’s bunch of undergrads—”

“No, I’m not! That’s your life, Ryou, quit throwing it out and over nothing—”

“Says you! How can you of all people right now tell me anything about throwing your own life out!”

“Yours is worth something—”

“So is YOURS!”

“Stop lying!”

“Why would I lie about that, Kashi!”

“You’d be better off without me, Ryou, we both know it! Your life’d be perfect if you didn’t have to take care of your hopeless, fuck-up big brother—”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, you idiot! My life would be miserable without you! I have no idea what I’d do without my brother, no matter what you’re dealing with—”

“……Let me go, Ryou.”

“No! I’m not letting you up until you understand that I love you and I care what happens to you! Even if you don’t give half-a-damn what happens to you, I do! You’re my brother, Kashi. My only brother. I will pin you to this floor until the others pull us apart, I will fight them off to pin you down again, I will keep us here until you get it through your stupid, genius head that I. am not. letting you. fall. the Hell. apart!”

“But why, why keep putting yourself through this when you could have it so much better, and don’t say we don’t both know that—”

“None of that so-called better can replace you, Kashi! Do you get me yet!”

—which was where things very quickly devolved into crying (which turned into ugly crying almost as soon as it started) and incredibly clingy hugging, and Shiro lost most of his capacity to do anything with words for a while. Once he got it back, it was mostly in the form of choking out apologies while sobbing on Ryou’s shoulder

—after Shiro accepted some water and went to take a shower, Ryou called Iverson (for both of them, since Ryou’s idea was to call in sick for the next day and although Iverson isn’t actually Shiro’s sponsor, he is one of the strongest relationships that Shiro has forged with anybody else at meetings).

Once Shiro got out of the shower, he flopped on the kitchen table and talked to Iverson about what had happened while Ryou put the kettle on. Then, Ryou slept over (and swallowed his Sven-related pride to ask him to please go make sure Slav was okay and not trying to burn anything down)

—and that’s the story of the one real physical fight that Shiro and Ryou ever had

One of the many ways that Shiro might have reconnected with Keith a lot sooner than they do in the fic itself: If Ryou had been the TA for Keith’s section of Iverson’s intro physics lecture, then he would’ve recognized Keith and gone, “Kashi, what is your Keith’s last name” (which Ryou has never remembered without prodding; sorry, Keith), and then debated how much he wanted to tell Shiro that his One Who Got Away is the freshman who’s being an unholy terror for Ryou and Iverson both.

Additionally, Keith would have recognized Ryou’s name — because he only knows one Ryou Shirogane, and he’s pretty sure that it’s not the most common name to find in Massachusetts — and tried to corner him after class to go, “What happened to your brother, is he okay, what’s going on, where is he”

Instead, Iverson didn’t have Ryou manning any classes during Keith’s freshman year, so Ryou only heard horror stories from his fellow TAs, about the nightmarish prodigy who doesn’t actually give a fuck about physics (despite being in the intro lecture for STEM majors, not the intro lecture for humanities and social sciences majors) and has apparently developed a personal vendetta against Dr. Iverson

That worked out okay at the time, because it meant Ryou didn’t have to miss a week-and-a-half of teaching at the start of a new semester while he went out to Minnesota to meet Shiro and his old roommate from Chicago, helped talk Shiro into going to an inpatient rehab clinic for a while, and then went with him for the admission because he (correctly) suspected that Shiro might be something of a little shit while checking in

(—and because Shiro wasn’t saying, “Having you there with me would make that process easier,” but mostly because he already felt like a burden. He was definitely feeling that loudly, and getting him to admit that he needed help was enough of a big deal that Ryou was fine with not pushing his brother on the, “Admit to your feelings and admit that you want me to be there with you” point)

……But at the same time, it’s probably better that Shiro and Keith haven’t made this connection yet? Because they already know of enough points where they missed each other instead of reconnecting again, and obsessing over that is really, really not good for either of them

Also, as far as Sendak is concerned, Ryou was teaching freshmen at that time, rather than periodically offering advice when some of them asked for it but mostly handling things like photocopies, mail, proofreading proposals and drafts (which Ryou took to mean, “also please offer constructive criticism,” which Iverson hadn’t meant but was willing to put up with, since Ryou usually asked questions and made points that were actually helpful), and talking to people who Iverson didn’t want to deal with himself

Not that this necessarily matters, because at present, Sendak is out of the picture. But Shiro and Ryou collaborated on a bit of truth-stretching in the bit of time leading up to Shiro getting out of Sendak and Haxus’s place, and according to the not-quite-lies they spun, Ryou was teaching freshmen

Said truth-stretching was necessitated (if you asked the twins) by the fact that Sendak would read Shiro’s texts and emails over breakfast most mornings, and listen to new voicemails if he had any.

The twins figured that if they switched to only talking over calls (and only when Shiro wasn’t in the house, because he was terrified of Sendak potentially putting bugs or monitors around the house), then there were two likeliest outcomes: 1. Sendak looks at the call-log and wonders why Shiro is talking to Ryou only during certain times, and possibly concludes that Shiro is Up To Something;

or 2. Sendak doesn’t look at Shiro’s call-log and it seems like the twins have stopped talking altogether — which would’ve definitely seemed like a sign that something was up, whether he took it to mean that the brothers had had a falling-out or a fight (which Sendak would’ve had mixed feelings about), or that Shiro is very possibly Up To Something and he might well have gotten his brother in on it (which could’ve meant that Ryou had ideas about Sendak and Haxus that could’ve gotten the two of them into the trouble they deserved to be in)

—either way, it would’ve been suspicious for Shiro and Ryou to seemingly stop texting each other. But they also couldn’t text about anything that might’ve tipped Sendak off to the fact that they were definitely Up To Something (namely, planning the eventual escape with their Aunt Satomi and Mark, Shiro’s old roommate)

……so, one of the things that they fake-texted about was the freshmen that Ryou was allegedly teaching

Still another thing that Shiro isn’t going to let Ryou live down: when they were nine, he spent six weeks convinced that John Mellencamp and John Cougar Mellencamp were completely different people

Another HP thing that Ryou has made Shiro consider: the shape that a Boggart would take when facing him. Both of them go back and forth a bit on their answers, but there are some recurring themes.

Shiro’s different hypothetical boggarts generally involve any of the people he love (especially Ryou, their Mom, and Keith) denouncing him as a broken, irreparable monster, someone who’s even worse than Sendak because he tricks people into thinking that he’s a good person when he isn’t, utterly incapable of doing anything good for anybody else ever in his life, and undeserving of love or community or companionship — and well, everyone would be so much better off without you, Shiro

Ryou’s hypothetical boggarts, on the other hand, tend to be more based on things that he’s actually seen or heard: Shiro, looking the way he did right before he checked into rehab, all sick and painfully thinned out and physically wrecked; Shiro, looking how he did the night that they had their full-on fight; Shiro, drunk and soaked through and ugly-crying, like the night when he first slipped off the wagon after rehab; Shiro, looking like he does now but then he opens his mouth to speak and Ryou has to hear the suicide note voicemail that Shiro left him all over again — and then, because this isn’t enough, there’s at least a tacit accusation that this happened to Shiro because Ryou somehow failed him

Yet another thing that Ryou isn’t going to let Shiro live down literally ever: after they first saw the Peter Jackson movie adaptation of The Two Towers when they were twelve-going-on-thirteen, Shiro’s teenage crush on Elijah Wood really kicked into high-gear, and he spent six weeks making a collage out of all the ElWood pictures Laura would let him have from the teenage girl-aimed magazines she was done reading

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satireknight · 7 years

Text

TMNT S01E02 - Enter the Shredder

Can someone explain to me why we get an image of Michelangelo posing with weapons he never uses?

So we open with the least safe bedding arrangement in history: the quadruple bunk bed!

Seriously, they should have fallen over so many times during the night. It’s also a little baffling as a nighttime arrangement, because we saw in the previous episode that they all have their own beds in their own little cubbies. So why would they sleep together?

And yes, Leonardo apparently sleeps with a practice weapon. Because of course he does. Why would you assume otherwise?

So after waking them up, April watches them practice with their weapons, which ends with a grappling match and Michelangelo denting the wall with his back. Then she accompanies them to breakfast, where they either eat sushi (Japanese people do eat other things, y’know. Quite a few) or pizzas topped with breakfast cereal.

She’s raring to go find the Technodrome, which was last seen under the security building that went kablooie at the end of the last episode. But when they get there, all they find is water and giant treadmarks. Of course, the Technodrome is actually a giant white ball-shaped fortress with an eye on top, sort of like a spherical tank the size of a small town. It’s also being driven by Shredder, who is flipping the fuck out.

He’s also got a new roommate: a tentacled brain-thing called Krang.

Krang is very unimpressed by Shredder, his title, his face, and generally everything about him. He apparently has a giant army in someplace called Dimension X, which is ready to conquer the world whenever the fuck it gets here. But in the meantime, he wants Shredder to get his butt in gear and build Krang a proper body. With you know, thumbs and everything. I can see why he wants that.

Shredder’s brilliant retort? Well, he doesn’t feel safe because Splinter and his Turtles... exist. So, that’s his reason for not making Krang’s body, even though leaving Krang bodiless arguably makes them LESS safe. The real reason? He doesn’t trust Krang, and he doesn’t like the idea of the little wad of snuffy-voiced gum possibly being able to take HIM down.

Oh, and Krang lets it slip that the whole reason they were mutated... was because Shredder tried to kill Yoshi with mutagen. I don’t know why he thought it would be fatal instead of... doing exactly what it’s supposed to do.

One thing that happens a lot in this series is that they almost never use the word “kill.” They use words like “destroy,” “obliterate,” “dispose of,” and other words that basically mean the same thing but without the actual K-word. Ah, censorship for children... you can talk about murder all you want as long as you don’t admit that’s what it is.

Oh, and Krang hints that Shredder should create some more mutants on his own side... and really, that’s an idea he should’ve had far in advance. We really see in these episodes that the Turtles are crazy strong, since they successfully pushed a brick wall over in the last episode, and Leonardo can apparently cut through concrete at a hundred feet.

Anyway, April heads up to the newsroom, while Splinter and the Turtles try to track down the Technodrome. For some reason Raphael thinks it’s gonna be hard to find, even though... well, it’s several stories high and even wider. It’s not like it can go anywhere covertly.

And at the zoo, some robots appear and drag down a rhino and a warthog. Goodbye, animals, you’re probably dead meat, given that drop.

“Still no sign of the Technodrome!” Did you really expect it to be under a pile of old boxes?

They finally get around to a giant underground cavern with giant tank treads, but the trail is cut off by a cave-in. Splinter tells them to go around, while he’ll go through. Uh, why not burrow through, and have the Turtles just squeeze in behind him?

Meanwhile, Shredder goes to the gang of thugs who were chasing April in the last episode, and offers them power, strength, and revenge against the Turtles. For some reason, they only really care about that last part.... which is funny, considering that Shredder’s obsession with them later in the series could be classified as a mental illness.

So what’s he doing? Well, he takes two guys, straps ‘em down, brings in the rhino and warthog, and opens a can of sparkly pink stuff. Eek, unicorn spit!

The Turtles, meanwhile, manage to bumble out into an open street in the middle of the day, with no disguises. They are failing at ninjaing.

Also, April’s boss is kind of a douchebag, since he apparently wasn’t concerned that after doing a report on sword-wielding thieves... and after her camera crew openly abandoned her to a gang of murderous thugs... she went missing for days. Did nobody call the police? Nope, he’s just pissed at her for going missing.

The Turtles have somehow gotten new disguises that in no way disguise the fact that they’re bald green animal-people.

Yeah, he’s wearing a jacket and sunglasses. I’m suddenly blind to the obvious.

Also, weren’t they supposed to meet up with Splinter on the other side of that cave-in? Why are they relying on April to find the Technodrome for them? Especially since her main lead is, “Robots stole animals.”

Speaking of which, Splinter finds it... and is immediately abducted by a robot. I bet he wishes he had just told the Turtles to follow him.

“If this hole caves in, we can dig ourselves out. You can’t.” Erm, are you really experienced at digging?

They all drop a few hundred feet next to the Technodrome... and I’m suddenly wondering why nobody has just glanced down the hole and seen what’s down there. Or at least put up some safety barriers. Someone’s gonna fall down there and sue a LOT.

Oh, and to double on “April’s boss is a douchebag,” he refuses to send her a camera crew until she has a story to report.... even though she’s only at the zoo because he gave her a story to report.

Fun fact: if I had ever wanted a career in journalism as a child, this series would have killed it.

The Turtles go inside the Technodrome, where Shredder starts doing the crushy-closing-walls thing that Star Wars made famous. I love that apparently he set up this giant war machine to have booby traps just in case he wanted to do something like this.

So they almost get squished flat, but of course some quick rewiring of a control panel allows Donatello to turn it off. Then robots attack them... and then MORE robots attack them, this time in a manufacturing plant.

Sorry, i just can’t imagine what those things manufacture. What does the giant smiley-faced spider-drone do? Or the cube on tentacles? Or the bipedal claw machine? Or the thing that exists entirely to thump things flat?

“We were trained to fight people, not can openers.” Well, it’s all theory, Raphael. The fact is, the public is way more comfortable with people beating the shit out of can openers.

Seriously, what manufacturing function does that serve? It’s a multi-armed thingy with flying saw-blades.

Also, Michelangelo’s nunchuks are apparently made out of the tree of life, because he can smash right through metal with them. Not just once, either. He does it several times in a row.

Indiana Jones laughs at your pain. Fortunately Donatello happened to pick up a bomb in the last fight, and they can blow the door open right before the thing has a chance to crush them. Again, Shredder apparently set up all these traps... without a particular goal in mind.

Fortunately for the running time, they bumbled right into the chamber where Splinter is hanging from the ceiling, looking oddly sheepish.

But before they can get him down, Shredder comes in and reveals that he’s in fact Oroku Saki, and he wants them to join the Foot Clan. Why should they? Because he was accidentally responsible for them being mutated because he tried to kill Splinter. Which is like saying, “I date-raped your mom and got her pregnant, so you owe me because you exist.” Shockingly, this brilliant logic doesn’t win them over to his side.

Shredder calls in his own mutants, Bebop and Rocksteady, who are strong and intimidating (for now) but are also dumb as a sack of hammers. The Turtles grab Splinter and leave, and head right back up to the surface. Bebop and Rocksteady follow them up, and the Turtles trick them into a zoo cage. April takes some footage of them, since she apparently can’t get any of the Technodrome, and they’re dragged back underground by more of those annoying robots.

Seriously, is someone gonna cordon off the holes in the ground?! This whole place could collapse.

Verdict

This episode was a slight improvement over the first, possibly because they didn’t have to cram in all the backstory. It’s a pretty simple search-and-fight story, with some diversions along the way. I’m still not sure how or why the Turtles bothered to get disguises that didn’t disguise them at all, for instance. And they kinda bumbled out of the sewer in front of dozens of people. But it had minimum silliness, and it kept on its plot pretty well.

The animation is still gorgeous, especially in the fight scenes; sometimes the turtles’ faces can be a bit blobby, but the bodies and motion are absolutely top-rate.

It also introduces us to our secondary villain Krang, who doesn’t really do much in this episode besides nag Shredder and make croaking noises. That seems to be a pattern thus far; the villains don’t do much when first introduced, then the do stuff in the next episode. Shredder’s much more active here, and he’s still pretty intimidating, despite the suckiness of his “join me and we can rule the galaxy” speech.

Gotta mention that this is where I like Bebop and Rocksteady the most in this series. They’re still too easily defeated, but they aren’t the cartoonish buffoons just yet. Ain’t quite up to IDW standards, though, where they’re dumb as hell but also scary.

Overall, a good chapter two to this five-part arc.

Grade: A

#tmnt #tmnt 1987 #teenage mutant ninja turtles #satireknight #leonardo #michelangelo #raphael #donatello

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