Redraw Of One Of My Favorite Manga Panels!

Why Leo is “Blue”

In the series where each turtle look so distinct from each other, it’s weird that Splinter calls them by colors. Even more so, Leo is a red slider. He has those prominent red markings on his face.

So why is he blue?

Rats, aside from being near sighted, are red-green colorblind. Specifically, red-weak/protanomoly color blind.

Donnie has purple markings, Mikey had orange markings. And Leo?

Well he looks blue to mutant rat man. 🥺

(Raph is probably “Red” because that’s the Hamato color)

A messy sketch of a scene that I felt was missing from the end of the movie.

Mikey seriously deserves some mad recognition for pulling off that stunt!!

turtle tot comfort doodles (mostly self-indulgent but maybe someone else needs this today <3)

We've had a family/murder of crows visiting our garden for years now, and this season the chicks are soooo helpless! They just stand around expectantly with their mouths open as the mom crow eats. Which is what inspired this comic! :)

Stickers-socials-patreon!

Elden Ring, my reading on Marika

Having finished the DLC, I am thinking of this scene. The scene from Ranni's ending, where she replaces Marika as a Goddess and Marika vanishes, finally passing away.

And one of the biggest twists in the game, alongside one of the major unsolved mysteries in the story is the reveal that Marika herself shattered the Elden Ring for some purpose, with the most sympathetic reading being that this was the only way she had to escape from the control of The Greater Will and recover her freedom.

The DLC expands on Marika, giving us an origin for her.

That is, of the horrors her people suffered at the hands of the Hornsent, the same people she would command Messmer to wage War upon them and commit what seems to have been a brutal genocide.

Now, my personal reading is that, after what happened to her people, Marika did a metaphorical deal with the devil. Either The Elden Beast or Metyr arrived to The Lands Between near Marika's village, and she accepted to be a Goddess and a servant of The Greater Will in exchange for her vengeance. and to be perfectly fair to Marika, this was the closest to Justice her people would ever get.

Now, Count Ymir suggests Marika was influenced by flawed advice from Metyr, the Mother of Two-Fingers, who lost contact with The Greater Will. But he also believes the moons are just the closest celestial object to our planet, so he is full of Shit. Because that doesn't yet explain The Elden Beast.

In any case, Marika made that deal and became a Goddess and she got her vengeance. And she fulfilled her duty as accorded, Conquering and expanding and forcing everyone to bow to The Greater Will. Who knows what she felt during this time. If she lusted for power as her empire grew, or if she was horrified and felt trapped by learning what becoming a goddess meant.

Because everything about Marika is always specifically filtered through someone else. Even the closest we get, her very words spoken by her, are filtered through Melina.

The second closest we get is Marika's village, where we see the things she left behind, Specific actions she and she alone did for nobody else but the memory of her village. and I say this because This:

is the closest we ever, ever get to meeting Marika. a broken face of someone who has long stopped being human, he don't see her eyes, we don't hear her voice. Yet you know what I see here?

Marika's Tired. So, so, so, so... Tired.

Was that it? that at the very end, Marika simply grew tired? was she, in her last moments, thinking back and remembering The Grandmother by the tree, and wishing she could be there for one final slumber?

And so maybe, regardless of what The Age of Stars means, on whether it is the "good ending" or not, this is the ending Marika wanted. For someone, any of her children, to hopefully succeed her and let her rest at last.

And what we see is that in the last moments of the Shaman whose entire home village was cruelly massacred (and who delivered blood upon blood onto those responsible and unto the innocent, and whose entire life was now defined to the service of some greater power), she is being cuddled in the arms of her step-daughter (of whom she may be Ranni's biological father), a moment of peace and warm before the end of a long road.

Maybe one of the things the DLC was meant to show us wasn't why Marika did what she did. It was to show us that it was time for Marika to go back home at last

Team Gracefield!

The Promised Neverland, but make it PMD

Why the twins abandoned Draxum

Ok, i promised more Imaginary Friend content, and i am here to deliver!

this is a little more of the plot side of things rather than the shenanigans.

i'll put it under the cut since it's long. again.

Ok, so they sneak out to meet with Mikey and Raph for about three years before Draxum realizes what's going on. (or part of what's going on. He knows they have been sneaking out and the caretaker hasn't been doing his job properly, but he doesn't know they were sneakign out to meet, or even who they were meeting.)

Upon finding this out, the caretaker is fired and Draxum decides that, if they are competent enough to constantly leave the house on their own and come back fine, they are competent enough to be properly trained. This means they no longer have the opportunity to sneak out.

Mikey and Raph try to reach out to them via mind meld, but it's too far for a strong enough connection to communicate, not to mention the twins keep purposefully shutting them out. the twins figure that since they can no longer meet up with them, that It's better to cut themselves off completely now than continuing to long for a time, they believe, is gone.

It's two more years before they meet again, and it's on accident.

When Mayhem stole the emperium, Draxum sent the twins to fetch it, treating it as a test.

They're sent out to fetch the emperium, and, of course, run into Mikey and Raph (and April). It's very much a surprise, especially considering they're standing between them and their mission. They're careful not to hurt their siblings but do get Mayhem away Donnie sending Mikey a quick "do not follow us. it's dangerous" mind meld message before they nope on out through Leo's portal. a portal that both April and the soon-to-be imitation crab man go through before it closes.

They appear right in the middle of the lab so neither of the twins quite realize they have stowaways until it's too late. They recognize April as one of Mikey and Raph's friends and figure it's not a good idea for Draxum to realize she's there, so they hide her in a nearby closet before Draxum can notice, miming for her to stay quiet. once Draxum leaves again, Leo portals her back out of the building (he's aiming for topside but ends up just setting her down on their front porch for Mikey and Raph to find.)

Anyways! Mikey and Raph (and April) show up like canon, and, of course Draxum is seeing stars. It's the other two. He could have a full set once again! but they prove to be difficult to coerce into joining him, so he creates that vine monster to fight them (and test them while they're at it.) He sends Leo and Donnie after them as well, but they linger, choosing halfheartedly fight April rather than their brothers. That is, until Mikey ends up weaponless and the target of an attack that could hurt him.

Then the above happens. Donnie instinctively protects Mikey, which angers Draxum, which causes Leo to portal Donnie behind him so he's away from him, and, then they defect, choosing to get their brothers, April, and Mayhem out of the soon-to-explode lab rather than continue fighting.

but yeah, that's how they get away from Draxum. The power of little brother in peril lol.

(fun fact i'm just coming up with now (but have been thinking about) Draxum was super extra dramatic when he named the twins originally. He named them Thanatos and Somnus. though neither of them really acknowledge those names b/c they so rarely heard them growing up. Literally only Draxum used them. which is why when Mikey asked thier names, they just shrugged. Why is that Draxum beign extra, b/c those are the twin personifications of death and sleep respectively (though Somnus is technically the Roman name. but since Somnus's Greek name is Hypnos, i thought it would be too confusing.) also, according to Greek Mythology, Thanatos and Hypnos are the twin sons of Nyx (goddess of night) and Erebus (god of the dark). SO yes, Draxum was being dramatic AF and named a set of twins he was going to train to be ninja warriors, after the mythological twins born to night and darkness. and who also embody death and sleep. (this also gives me a good excuse to jokingly call the twins the Myth Twins, even though the aus staying named Mikey's imaginary Friends. lol))

Look at them ! thay’re so cute *^* ~

Oracle isn't just a name. It's an identity that is inextricably intertwined with Barbara Gordon reclaiming herself and her sense of agency over her body and life after becoming disabled.

The last 13 years of dedicated activism have gotten us back to a point where Oracle is acknowledged and Babs is portrayed as a competent adult woman, and I'm grateful she finally has her team back. But DC still refuses to acknowledge and uplift her as disabled, undermining the core thesis of Barbara's character in the modern era. And as long as she's not visibly disabled…she's still not Oracle.

Oracle was created because two people (Kim Yale and John Ostrander) saw a horribly misogynistic story and went "no. We can do better. We SHOULD do better." Oracle was a rebirth, a revitalization, a refusal to allow women to be relegated to the sidelines and margins of superhero comics regardless of physical ability.

To refuse to portray her as visibly disabled undermines everything that Babs as Oracle stood for, both in-universe and in real life. It betrays the identity's foundations as a reclamation of agency and heroism. It betrays her creators' intent as an avenue for disability representation and a revitalization of a character summarily discarded because the company saw no further use for her. It betrays the millions of readers who read her stories for nearly 25 years and enjoyed stories brimming with strength, independence, and heroism that depicted a disabled character at their center.

It's doubly frustrating because it's clear that DC is slowly moving Cass back into the "primary Batgirl" role, allowing us to have a semblance of Oracle back, but they seem to think of Oracle as an interchangable identity with Batgirl that Babs would have had even if TKJ had never happened. And outside of Batgirls (which ended last year), they won't even meet people halfway and make Barbara an ambulatory wheelchair user who uses forearm crutches and/or a cane when she's mobile.

Again: I'm grateful that Oracle is being acknowledged again. I'm grateful Babs is back to being a competent adult and team leader who has friends outside of Gotham. But I continue to be frustrated at the company-wide sexism keeping her from fully moving on from Batgirl and the ableism prohibiting her from being shown as visibly disabled.