the last was just in early jan but it was very barebones bc i was absorbed with player plotting and i want to talk about the boys to try and organize thoughts

(mostly organize donnie thoughts)

sorey is still finding his footing and i think i said this last time but im enjoying playing him SO much

i forgot how nice it is to play a straight up Good Boy with a healthy (ish in certain respects) mindset

he's friendly, he's caring, and he's not terrified about either staying in OR leaving folkmore. he's vibing and enjoying his time meeting new people, seeing new things, and being around mikleo

he's a little concerned about maotelus catching any of the weird shit happening there, but he's come to believe that thirteen really does mean well and hey! maybe what she said about reaching his full potential will help purify maotelus even BETTER or FASTER or smth! so he's hopeful

i need to tag out with him more so i'll bop around the TDM some with him and make a TL too mebbe

cloud is doing pretty good actually, with the exception of now trying to figure out this shit with sephiroth. he's not totally emotionally ready to separate miniroth from the grown up thing, but he's decided he's GOING to do that so he's gonna brute force it if he has to

the girlfriend and boyfriend are REALLY good and that's his main motivation at this point. maybe they can usurp thirteen and just live here in peace without that bullshit trial and full potential hogwash and grow old and die together

cloud's mostly given up on him going back home since he's not going back home without zack and aerith

he's still having to deal with his own trauma as triggers pop up, but the biggest trigger of all (miniroth) needs to be dealt with. the kid isn't going away and if there's a possibility he really can take this knowledge back with him and stop from going insane and absolutely destroying people's lives, then cloud feels it's his obligation to help with that

even....if it's not going well

(he's still going to absolutely destroy people's lives he's just intending to be more selective this time)

so what comes first is fully separating the kid sephiroth from the grown up motherfucker and that is very difficult. it's even hard to sympathize with him because in a lot of ways personality-wise, cloud is coming to understand that miniroth is a lot like HIM as a kid and cloud does not like himself at all

SO! working on that is fun

im very much looking forward to when cloud is like "i'm going to call you luca" because that will really help him and represent a turn from begrudging tolerance into something more like semi-neutral affection

sorey.... my beloved son

the sweetest most good and spoiled boy

OKAY /claps hands together

donnie

donnie's motivations and state of mind is a tangled string of xmas lights i am going to attempt to detangle to make sure my own thoughts are in order as i'm tagging with him from here on out. because even if HE is trash at recognizing and processing his own emotions, i cannot be

donnie's motivations for doing the whole gate thing + kidnappings, including rushing it instead of slowly and methodically doing it the 'proper' way, are as follows:

1. need to get family home/get back to family. leo and raph being hurt/killed was very triggering for him even if he doesn't realize it. it put this sense of urgency of get home must fix problem need to be safe back home in him, which he rationalized as of COURSE he has to get them home. first of all that's his job, to fix the problem, and secondly-

"if anybody can do it, you can" was the general consensus. which is a supportive and wonderful sentiment from the family but when donnie is already spiraling (unbeknownst to said family) he took it more as a directive. donnie SHOULD be able to do it, so he MUST do it. creating his own pressure without realizing it, etc etc

the realization that mikey might REMEMBER being in folkmore was sharply terrifying, and solidified his resolve to resort to brute force to obtain the information he needed. the IC anon post was both to see if he could get enough people interested to try and do this volunteering-ly, but also he kind of already knew he wasn't going to

in the end, it's just more justification for him to do things the way he already wanted to. less than 20 people offering just info when he "begged" (his version of begging, sincere for him but didn't really come off as begging to most people) when there is ten times that many people in all of folkmore? donnie's like "why bother organizing volunteers-

-when i can just take. not like i'm going to hurt them anyway" as justification. since his grasp of common ethics has always been shaky, this didn't feel like a stretch even if he would usually either be a) stopped by family or b.) stopped by the thought of family stopping him

in this case, the most important thing is to get his family home and safe. if that means he has to bend some of their mad dogs unwritten rules of heroism, then whatever; donnie's been doing dubious shit for years for the betterment of the family (making lots of wild weapons, stealing the SHIT out of money any time he could, torturing that fae that hurt leo-

-for the sake of learning exactly how best to attach his arm, and THEN killing the fae dead)......like, donnie's not all that conflicted about being not a very upstanding citizen

2. second motivation is fear of separation from the people he's come to care about from other worlds. he's already lost some people very important to him due to powers beyond his control; dr. mckay being one, and tony being the other (tony being DEAD back home). the idea of him having to lose rue (or even power) would be paralyzing if he wasn't convinced-

-that he had the fix for that, namely making interdimensional travel voluntary and reliable for everybody. everybody can benefit! someone wants to see their dead relatives again? boom here's a gate for ya, it does timey wimey shit as well because everything's just coordinates (honestly he's not sure about that but he theorizes and it feels like the next-

-natural step in making this ID travel stuff work anyhow). so sure, his number one reason is to make sure HIS OWN family is safe, but why else do people do extremely difficult things? people just want to protect their own and what they have and that's not weird. (ignoring people who are motivated by the greater good because he's related to some of them and-

-it causes so much fucking stress to him)

3. and while this is a somewhat distant reason in level of importance from one and two, it is in no way an INSIGNIFICANT reason is, he wants to see if he can. one of donnie's core characteristics is him trying to do things just to see if he CAN. he's a scientist through and through and ID travel is like the holy grail of theoretical physics

if he can make that shit PRACTICAL physics then he's going to do something that absolutely nobody back in HIS home has been able to do, with the exception of some individuals with some VERY limited results. he's got both the power of mystic AND science on his side! there's no reason he CAN'T!

AND!!! once he succeeds, it'll do NOTHING but BENEFIT literally EVERYBODY ELSE, EVER!

(he is not thinking very far about how potentially free and open ID could be extremely very bad because he's a teenager consumed with what he wants and what he can do, and short-sightedness is a flaw of his)

/sits here

so those are his motivations; some of them dialed up to eleven by being a Myth, maybe, but also it's not that far out of the realm of what he'd do if he WASN'T being compelled so i'm pretty comfortable with those making sense

as for his state of mind................bro is not doing well

donnie is notoriously bad at recognizing, organizing, and working through his feelings, and on top of that tends to isolate himself with abrasiveness, apathy, or even just literally physical barriers when he's confused or scared or feeling bad, which is a TERRIBLE combination

he's scrungled.....

donnie tends to compress, compress, compress with every bad feeling he has until he literally explodes in anger and frustration, sometimes destructively. we don't see this often in the show and we're also working on taking contextual cues from a show that's largely supposed to be comedy

and since donnie's role (and mikey's too) in the movie was more regulated to support/comedic relief since the dynamic was off for the purpose of the plot (namely leo and side raph, surprise surprise it's a TMNT movie so it's going to be about leo and maybe a little raph as a treat)

(i also want to clarify this does not make me dislike leo the character, it just makes me dislike tmnt writers for being unable to treat an ensemble as a true ensemble. LIKE THE SHOW DID THAT SO GOOD anyway)

(it's probably not even writers lbr there was some studio exec hands in there, i could see their outlines ANYWAYS.)

i am living out my fantasy where donnie shows up all fucked up and skrunkled because of what they ALL went through

its good its perfect buries face in the scrunk

theres a lot to examine!

his motivations are also good just... buddy. this aint it

raph DID sacrifice himself, and leo TRIED to sacrifice himself; whether or not it was the right call, it was very terrifying for donnie and, with casey calling him out during the kidnappings, it's brought to the forefront that the person donnie blames the most for everything isn't actually casey or even leo or raph

it's definitely donnie

donnie views the events of the movie (and even some of the events of the show) and thinks of his own contributions as utterly, completely WORTHLESS

his pods didn't save everybody!! the very thing they're designed to do! leo might've fucked that up by jumping out of his pod, but donnie should've been able to account for that

all of them couldn't save raph before he got infected! and they couldn't get him out AFTER, either! donnie grabs up and carries mikey around for most of the movie, a role usually reserved for leo or raph, because he's just trying to do SOMETHING and it still doesn't feel like enough (because it's not, his brother is still in danger)

it was HIS job to get that ship through the portal, and he didn't manage. it really took that long for the fuckin thing to move? donnie kept crowing about how awesome being a spaceship was the whole time that i can't help but think he was getting distracted, absorbing information and exploring what being a new kind of technology could do for him

i also HC him being ripped out of the ship messed him up a little, like a dude being forced to quit something cold-turkey. very mild but it's an interesting thread to pick at, with no interest in making it anything more serious

it sort of felt like a fair bit of the time they werent letting him or mikey take things seriously and the things that were taken seriously didnt have the time to get explored

(i want a cut of the movie that is 1 hour longer)

yeah, they definitely had time constraints

i don't think regulating donnie and mikey to backseat was INTENTIONAL or MALICIOUS, it's just annoying being a tmnt fan for over thirty years and seeing that same treatment happen every single iteration

there's a reason why PB&J are always referred to as the B team

considering my favs are usually mikey or donnie, i'm especially bitter about it

leo fans stay winning tho, i'm happy for y'all /sincere

SO, DONNIE'S EMOTIONAL HEALTH IS IN THE GARBAGE

he keeps obsessing over what went wrong and what he could've done better, but there's no changing the past! only the future! so obviously the solution is to work harder, fix sooner, identify potential problems with more accuracy, etc etc etc

basically, obsess over working what you're already good at instead of just. acknowledging and processing your feelings

donnie hasn't even admitted out loud that he feels bad for any of this. he watched the video of him getting bodied by krang trying to protect mikey over and over again, desensitizing himself to it just because he was trying to look for the flaw in his ninpo shield assembly

so. going forward

first of all, this clearly did not work

that's going to be devastating for donnie, but i'm checking with the mods. lavender's going to be mind-visiting donnie in his dreams until he fesses up what he actually wants (or even just figures that out himself) and until then, he can't use any lore

whether or not donnie's going to retain anything useful from this whole endeavor is yet to be seen

he's at least going to know what DOESN'T work, but after working on this angle for well over half a year, that's going to obliterate any motivation he has to try something else, at least for a good long while

he's going to have scars on the back of his neck and down his shell from the cables, i have decided

and i'm still considering whether or not he's going to have any permanent mythic characteristics. something not as noticeable, maybe

maybe keep his teeth sharp all the time, that might work

yeahhh and that'll be less icon-fudging also bc i will want to update ALL his icons with that change (the eyes would be. torture. for all of them using MS PAINT for gods sake)

donnie's not going to be using his ninpo for a good long while, and probably won't be science-ing that much either

he is very disappointed that he did all that dubious shit that pissed off a lot of people and didn't even get anything useful out of it. he's very much an 'ends justify the means' type of dude when it comes to his own endeavors, so if he has no ends then his means were likewise pointless

will he feel guilty for what he did? ummm to degrees, yes. he'll feel bad for the people who OBVIOUSLY felt pain during all of that

he's not going to understand the righteous anger or fury of people based on the principle of "do not kidnap and hold people against their will" because like, he wasn't doing it for his personal gratification and he didn't even mistreat anybody (maybe he and his brothers have been held against their will way too often, he's kinda numb abt it)

plus he was totally planning on letting people go! didn't even kill anybody who tried to escape!! like as far as donnie feels, he is the nicest jailer who could've ever jailed for the purpose of the greater good

he's going to be VERY sorry that he doesn't have anything to show for all of that, though. not just as a matter of personal pride (there's that), but because the whole POINT of him doing that to everybody was so he could give all of folkmore a means to see loved ones or escape, if so inclined

that it didn't result in anything to benefit other people means he wasted their time and their energy

so if someone's like "don't you feel bad for kidnapping and holding us all hostage!!!" donnie would be like "i definitely feel bad that i don't even have anything useful to give you for doing that" WHICH I FEEL LIKE MIGHT GET HIM KILLED LMAO

if it does then it does lfg

lmao.....oof....

if u want icon edits ive been having fun doing that lately, i got PS and a tablet itd be way easier

i think an answer like that is def going to get him punched at least lmao

oh at LEAST

lots of hero types "don't infringe on someone's rights or autonomy" folks in folkmore

glances at entire roster

ough this fucked up turt love his "captive georg" mentality about the kidnapping tho, thats so on brand

HE REALLY IS A PROTO-VILLAIN.....shackled largely by his brothers all being very good heroic people and also wanting to be praised by grown ups

someone had to take after draxum i'm just saying

honestly funny that he bonded with the purest sunshine boy instead of his pre-villain child

no see that's why mikey is ALSO donnie's favorite

they could never be each other's favorite..... colleagues at best..... their egos would tear one another apart like two neutron stars ravaging each other

i see the logic its still funny!

anyway i support wherever he goes, v interested to see it

/continues grabby hands as sorey always

not gonna lie, the longer things go the more sephiroth vaguely feels something positive towards donnie. donatello found a problem, he set himself to fixing it, and fuck everything in the way, also it's literally for the greater good. AND. /and/ the cells are -really nice-.

it's this whole parade of 'what if the single type of person you know best, namely scientist, wasn't irredeemably evil and genuinely is trying to make things better'

i had another interesting thought but then i had to do some small chores and now it's been devoured by adhd so goodbye forever, thought

LMAO SEPH

ngl if this means they become buddies i will love that

everybody else like LET ME AT THAT LITTLE FUCKER and seph like "do you want to come over and criticize this documentary with me" and donnie like would i ever. do you like flavorless juice

look he's not saying he'll provide a place for donatello to hide out for a while, but he has a basement he doesn't use.

this is so funny

miniroth, who has only ever been around adults, mostly ones with ulterior motives, his entire life: why do i enjoy being around teenagers more, i wonder

it's like when child actors finally get to go to school and after acclimating realize that being a kid fucking rocks, actually

people his own age! who are. ... just as weird as he is quite frankly

imagine growing up a lil freak and discovering other freaks at the same level

speaking of i was gonna tag his foxi post /puts a pin in that too

he's always wanted a normal life. "normal" has shifted several degrees to the side because average in folkmore is. ... /gestures at the game

normal was never in the cards but......weird with peers.......is attainable

and i think that's beautiful

one day someone may ask him why he's okay with donnie and it's just gonna be 'oh i just really understand the way he operates' and is going to get a long, long stare

new mad dog just dropped 2025

two ethically dubious freaks in the mad dogs and three heroes and their sister

who would like to hold a job

she had one for so long, then donnie kidnapped her boss, ruined again-

she didn't get fired!!!!!!! it doesn't count!!!!

lol

...only vaguely on topic.

late to reading all of this
donnie

yeah leo is absolutely at some point in our new thread going to drag donnie into the feelings closet with snacks and water and they're gonna sit for a while

donnie tries to get up and leave?
sorry, there's a bro hugging you SO TIGHT my guy

LMCFAO OK BUT I LOVE THE AVOIDANCE BROTHERS BEING LIKE i think this calls for the feelings closet

and someone is like do u talk about your feelings in there
leo: mostly we have snacks
donnie: sometimes we cry and ignore it

fjalksjfd LMAO yes exactly

sometimes. feelings closet is for stewing. not pouring.

THESE

TWINS

they love each other so fucking much and are so so bad at being honest about it

idiots

(affectionate)

soulmate twins dont always get along, very opposites, fight so much, can't live long without the other, gets each other on an instinctual level, does not understand that weird motherfucker

twins my beloved archetype

leo's not going to be like "oh so THIS is how you felt about it with the roles reversed"
because leo didn't die for real and he knows that's not equivalent at all and he isn't going to treat it as such so he may not call it out

do you think one day donnie might understand that one reason future leo asked mikey to die for the portal was that his brothers were dead and he was about to die so they may as well all finally be dead together-

spacemoth: idr if i had it in the leo thread or the raph thread but i had a throwaway narration line of donnie being like "oh.......actually being the one who is going to die trying to tell the others really sucks now that im here" SO DONNIE PROBABLY WON'T BRING IT UP EITHER but he'll be thinking it

besides, the dying part is the only commonality

leo over here sacrificing himself to save the world and donnie here dying because his experiment didn't work like how it should

worlds apart

I think it's the raph thread because I don't remember seeing it in ours

april didn't get fired but she sure did quit

also as a leo fan yes I love leo content but there is a part of me that gets louder every time everyone gets shelved going "hey there are more turtles than this can we not"

and also also I can't remember the details but the movie plot was actually gonna be different until nick said "make it more about leo" so you are correct about studio execs

/goes to see if she can find that