#i've heard idw mikey is written really well but idk if i have the energy to go through those given what else i've heard of them

[turtle-titan]

i think i will rant here about how frustrated i am at the way writers handle mikey (my main focus is rise but i can’t help bring up other iterations) 

this isn’t meant as an attack on anyone who has a different opinion from me, i’m just... wishing writers would take mikey more seriously as a character, rather than shrugging him off, cutting out the sub-plots that focus on him, never really delving into intense serious emotions, etc. 

RISE OF THE TMNT: 

inconsistency - his development in Rise was sort of just a bunch of oneshot prompts that didn’t connect at all. he learns to be independent in hot soup: the game, he learns to not tread all over todd in nothing but truffle, he’s competitive in you got served but not at all competitive in lair games. he has some consistent traits like his brutal honesty and fear of horror-esque situations, but it hardly goes anywhere :// 

supporting, not supported - he’s the heart of the team, so he’s often helping others overcome their emotional issues (Donnie in breaking purple, Don/Splinter in turtle-dega nights, Draxum in repairin’ the baron, Draxum/Splinter in hidden city’s most wanted, etc.), so maybe if Rise wasn’t cut short, we could have seen him dealing with his own feelings. not to get too personal here but i’ve been the “therapist” for people before and it is a draining position to be in, especially if you don’t have your own support. he was hardly in the spotlight just as himself - he was often the hype-man, the backup, the therapist helping others. 

unbalanced focus - sorta involving my previous points, but if you were to make a list of all the episodes and sort them by which character they focus on, and if the episode is solely showing you one character’s POV vs multiple, there’s an OBVIOUS imbalance. Donnie has so many episodes focused on him, and many of them are all about him where the other characters only make cameos or are only mentioned. Leo has quite a few episodes that focus on him, and a few where he is the only turtle in sight for the majority of the episode. Raph’s episodes tended to include a lot of his brothers even if the episode was still about Raph himself. Mikey has i think one (maybe two) episodes to himself that actually focuses on him, as opposed to him playing hype-man/therapist/backup. 

TL;DR he feels more like a side character than a main character in rise. i might be nitpicking because he’s my favorite, but he definitely gets less spotlight than the other main characters. 

OTHER ITERATIONS: 

in the 1990 movie, they cut a sub-plot where we were supposed to see that mikey was taking Splinter’s capture really hard. like, so distraught he seems out-of-character, no longer the happy-go-lucky mikey we always see. maybe i’m just a sucker for pushing characters to their limit, idk 

2003 decided to change and make donnie the double-mutated monster in the outbreak/good genes arc instead, when the original script was mikey. and the way they handle reality check - you’re telling me mikey wouldn’t have some level of trauma knowing he killed a version of his sensei, his father?? it’s treated as very lighthearted/comical rather than, oh i don’t know, completely and totally fucked up??? 

2012 is notorious for treating mikey badly, not just in how other characters treat him, but in continuously not taking him seriously as a character (i.e. the “seeing your greatest fears” episode, framing him as a moron unless it was comical or could conveniently advance the plot, like when he accidentally creates a retro-mutagen but can’t remember how to do it, the fact he’s like a “badass” warrior but ONLY in dimension x and ONLY because the dimension is just as illogical as mikey, etc) 

i can’t speak for any of the comics, and i’m not done going through 1987, but like... it’s not impossible to treat your “comic relief” seriously. plenty of other shows have had a more comedic character and treated them just as seriously as the other characters in the show. 

#idk what to tag my ramblings as #i've heard idw mikey is written really well but idk if i have the energy to go through those given what else i've heard of them #and like i know i can't expect much for 1987 but they have an episode called 'what's michelangelo even good for' and im too scared to watch #will i ever shut up about mikey? no