Robin: My Biggest Fear Is That Dustin Will Somehow Invent Time Travel And Will Go Back In Time To Stop

Very stupid animation I made based on that 2003 concept art where it says Mikey listens to Jimmy Buffett

Pretty please reblog if you vote bc if there's no interest, I won't go any further with this

This is the best thing I have ever created.

Domino Squad!

Sleepy times with the fam :3 it was originally going to just be April and Leo, but I know Mikey would totally want in LOL and it grew from there. They are just the family ever, and I care for them!!

Imagine having been born in 1905... And all your life it doesn't fucking stop. The Great War, the Spanish Flu, and then you go out of your mind for 7 years. Everyone is traumatised and nothing matters. Then another crash. And then the rise of fascism, and the War to end all Wars didn't and it's 1945 and you're just about still there. You may have fought or ferried the boys from Dunkirk or sabotaged the Nazi occupiers or worked in the factories and put out fires during the Blitz and you're lucky to be alive, because not all your friends made it. But you are and finally, fucking finally, it stops. It stops. You are tough as nails and you can put that strength to work into building something and you do, and people have cars and can buy icecream and you have a pension fund and the kids have money of their own and no nightmares.

I want that for us. I so want that for us. I want to be the generation that has seen fucking everything and is like a MRSA bug and unfazed and when that Cheeto finally dies, I want us to. Plant the gardens and clean the seas because we can and we want to and we remember some joy, some time of trust even when it got broken and we can say to the 20 somethings "let us show you what we can build, how it can feel."

And maybe Gen beta will take it all for granted like the boomers did, but we can give Gen Z and Alpha some peace because we, and Gen Z and Alpha have seen the Dark Times and fuck that noise.

A Turtle By Any Other Name

Because I had a little too much time on my hands: a tally of the names everyone's favourite sewer family uses for each other throughout the first season of TMNT 2003!

Includes all direct addresses, names given to a third party, and names dropped during the the pre-episode narrations.

As you'd expect, a few expected trends jump out immediately - the impact of Leo's close relationship with his sensei, the A-team / B-team pairings, Master Splinter's determination to stick to the full names he chose thank you very much. But there were some interesting little quirks too!

• Leo narrowly wins the prize of being the top turtle on everyone's lips, scoring a total of 96 mentions over 26 episodes. Michelangelo is right on his tail with 94, though - and he does it without any Raph nicknames or a dedicated coma episode. That's talent.

• Leo returns the favour at least, hollering after everyone a whole 135 times. Raph comes in second with a respectable 99.

• Leo names Master Splinter 49 times to Raph's 17 - but fascinatingly, it's Raph who claims the only two references any of them make to Splinter being their father. Overall, the kids keep it respectful - "Master Splinter" or "Sensei" are the preferred addresses by far. Notably, while the older brothers might occasionally drop the Master, youngest Mikey does not.

• Who's playing favourites? Well, possibly Donnie - 52% of the time he's naming a brother, it's Michelangelo. Mikey, on the other hand, is pretty egalitarian, with only a few points of difference separating his bros (though Don's his favourite too).

• When the brothers full-name each other it doesn't necessarily mean they're mad, but they do tend to be making a point of some kind. It's fitting, then, that Leo follows in Splinter's footsteps by being one of the main culprits, and often reserves it for serious moments. Mikey, in contrast, is almost always making a jab ("poor choice, Raphael!" "Leonardo, you got some 'splaining to do..."). The middle children don't really go there at all - Raph drops a Donatello once in a narration, and otherwise makes a sweet gesture in reintroducing the new and improved "Leonardo" to the family following his recovery from Shredder's beatdown. And I have embarrassingly forgotten the context for Don's single Michelangelo... but I'd wager it was chiding.

• Donnie is the standout in having two diminutives that are used often and interchangeably by all his brothers, with only Leo showing a real preference (Don > Donnie). There wasn't any noticeable tone-mapping either; everyone just kind of switches it around whenever.

• There are a couple of Mikes in there too! Again, I don't think it lined up with any particular mood or scenario, besides dropping earlier in the season rather than later.

• Raphie is a rare and precious nickname reserved exclusively for little brothers (and sometimes Casey). As it should be.

• I expected Raph to be more of a nicknamer overall given his colourful speech patterns, but when you filter out all the off-hand 'bonehead' and 'oddball' insults, there's not actually that much going on. A single Fearless for Leo, a couple Brainiacs for Don...it'd be interesting to see if that changes at all as the show goes on. And in retrospect, maybe I should have counted his 'bro's.

• The single 'bud' Leo throws Don's way tickles me. He never does it again, and never does it to anyone else either! Early instalment weirdness?

I know this is going to make me sound pretensions but I have to get it off my chest. I feel an unimaginable rage when someone posts a photo and is like "this picture looks like a renaissance painting lol" when the photo clearly has the lighting, colors and composition of a baroque or romantic painting. There are differences in these styles and those differences are important and labeling every "classical" looking painting as renaissance is annoying and upsetting to me. And anytime I come across one of those posts I have to put down my phone and go take a walk because they make me so mad

Y'all have gotta get more insane about platonic relationships like you are about romantic relationships. We need to get more annoying about them NOW. I need to see more meta and losing our minds over them. Get more annoying NOW. More than that. More than that also.