Tinted By Ghost Color.

Hi just thinking about Splinter who went from a dashing internationally loved superstar to a hideous mutant who has to raise four rowdy boys alone in hiding while struggling with latent trauma from his mom abandoning him, cutting himself off from his family, and getting betrayed by the love of his life. Thinking about how him “letting himself go” wasn’t just written for jokes but from a place of unspoken depression. Thinking about how he never shared any of this with his boys and never projected his trauma onto them but his distance led to them being starved for affection. Thinking about how much they ADORE him even when he’s blatantly neglectful, insinuating that he does pay attention when it matters. And don’t get me started on his movies dubbing his accent over or how separated he became from his own culture, leading to parallels to the Asian immigrant experience.  He’s a flawed parent. He’s an okay sensei. He’s a loving father. He’s a badass family man. ROTTMNT really looked at the boring one dimensional mentor with culturally insensitive stereotypes in past iterations and went nah we can do better. 

And then they made us all cry. 

matching banners i made for me and @glaciermagic in honour of the new content :D [please do not use <3]

developing your ocs is 50% waiting for bursts of divine inspiration like an oracle sleeping next the vapours seeping from fissures in the temple floor and 50% stalking them in your mind relentlessly like a persistence predator until they tire out enough for you to get close and scamper away with the bloody scraps of "eye colour: brown" and "dislikes: people who think they're funny" clutched in your mouth like a hunting trophy

Figuring out a design for my Disembodied Rogue I’m playing for an October only campaign!

I'M BACK, I'M ALIVE, AND I BRING ART! (〜￣▽￣)〜✨✨

Not a super big piece or anything, but I saw one of my roommates sitting like this, but they were asleep, and the only things I could think of was 'God that can't be comfortable', and 'Macaque would totally unironically lay on a couch like this'. So using my magic artist powers, here we are XDDDD

God cripples me by giving me hyperfixations on background/fridged characters and I am in pain

Coherent thought escapes me for a lot of this post so forgive me if the topic jumps around or becomes confusing at times; this was not meant for the public eye initially

Something that strikes me as odd in the following excerpts from episode 2 in The Magnus Protocols are the repeated usage of floral patterns, initially regarding the serpent on ink5ouls' arm and secondly regarding the paintbrush that was tattooed on Daria's skin.

"except that they had an absolutely gorgeous floral serpent design running up their arm and into their neck that was so vivid it looked ready to slither off their skin and onto the chair." (Making Adjustments, E2 TMAGP)

"a flurry of colourful floral patterns entwined with symbols I didn’t recognise. Despite the pain I twisted my arm back and forth to admire the work and those symbols almost seemed to glitter in the light. It was… It was beautiful." (Making Adjustments, E2 TMAGP)

Another, bigger thing but there is a repetition to symbols throughout the entire podcast thus far. The quote above mentions "symbols [they] didn't recognise", that almost seemed to "glitter in the light" (2 TMAGP). The following quote solidifies my resolve that these symbols are going to be an important and recurring subject.

"The photos from the spelunk seem properly gone, but I did find an old wooden thing with a bunch of similar symbols on ... No dice, I’m afraid. Must be something up with my phone camera. Really not helping the whole paranoia thing either. Anyone know anything about photographic distortion?" (First Shift, E1 TMAGP)

RedCanary finds a box in the ruins of the Magnus Institute, and if that's not evidence towards it being supernatural, photos they take of the box turn out distorted. This is curious to me, as not only is there no significance that I recall placed upon small boxes with symbols in The Magnus Archives, but also you can see the repetition of the symbols *again*. These symbols have no weight in TMA, and right now, I can't even remember supernatural symbols.

After making a quick term search, here are the only instances of prevalent symbols in The Magnus Archives.

"The design had always struck me as beautiful: it was silver, an abstract shape of a hand with a symbol on it that I believe was meant to represent a closed eye." (A Father's Love, E9 TMA)

"On each face were thick black lines that formed these symbols that I didn’t recognise, but they were clearly drawn on the faces themselves, not just on the photographs. I don’t remember the symbols in any great detail, I’m afraid, just the faces that they were drawn onto, though they weren’t people I recognised." (A Father's Love, E9 TMA)

"MARTIN: It’s okay. What are you reading?

BASIRA: Introduction to Alchemy. It’s, um, really interesting, actually – you know a lot of the symbols people use come from astrology and alchemy. Like the symbol everyone thinks is the female symbol is actually the old astrological sign for Venus, which means it also means copper in alchemy. Which is kind of… What?" (Absent Without Leave, E95 TMA)

"The other side had a symbol of some kind, written in thick marker pen: a curved line, with four straight lines coming off one side of it. Like a closed eye." (Growing Dark, E25 TMA)

"It’s gibberish – just a mess of symbols and letters, like it was using the wrong characters. Some of them weren’t even ASCII. I didn’t have time to really process it, though, as they were generating quickly, and soon filled the whole screen." (Binary, E65 TMA)

"It’s a good way to visualise these things. Symbols and metaphor… they give easy channels for the Great Powers to flow through. Ready forms for their energy to manifest." (Connected, E197 TMA)

"That was the day we found the stone. Half buried, worn almost completely smooth by time and exposure, but still clearly covered in those same hieroglyphics as I had seen in da Silva’s manuscript ... Jack clapped me on the back and started making some sketches of the symbols." (Dead Horse E133 TMA)

"Grigori had done some work to make sure we were digging over what he believed to be the entrance, and it only took a day to unearth the slab of limestone that covered it. I could see hieroglyphics etched onto the surface, but they were far too worn to read. Large upon the stone was carved the closed loop of a shen ring, the symbol of infinity." (Burial Rites, E64 TMA)

I omitted mentions of symbols regarding the People's Church of the Divine Host, since they seem to be less relevant. Quotes above that caught my eye are the ones from Absent Without Leave (95 TMA) and Connected (197 TMA), though the former much more so than the latter.

"I was meant to be doing a portrait for some generic witchy alchemist character, and it was when I was researching the symbols and stuff that I came across 'Ink5oul'" (Making Adjustments, E2 TMAGP)

This quote specifies alchemy. The only reason I'm so iffy about it is because of the irrelevance to the symbols at hand. Alchemy in the whole of the Magnus universe is only mentioned twice, and I've included both quotes (Absent Without Leave (95 TMA) and (Making Adjustments (2 TMAGP)) in this little monologue.

Connected (197 TMA) catches my eye so much because Annabelle Cane, the speaker, mentions symbols that pertain to the entities. Symbols that allow for "the Great Powers to flow through. Ready forms for their energy to manifest" (197 TMA)). The only setback in this idea of the symbols representing the TMA entities, is that I would presume they depict the entities themselves (e.g Desolation = fire, Eye = eye, Lonely = cloud, etc.). However, RedCanary mentions that the symbols as follows:

"it was like… symbols and stuff and some pretty suspicious stains on some floors. I don’t really know occult or whatever, but I dunno. Felt legit in a way most of it doesn’t." (First Shift, E1 TMAGP)

These symbols are not described in any way other than this. The second episode mentions them almost "[glittering] in the light" (2 TMAGP). Thus far, these are the only descriptions we have of the symbols. They aren't mentioned to be reminiscent of eyes, nor webs, nor bugs, nor any other material concept/thing that could resemble the 14/15 fears.

The reason for the lingering and my pushing on the mention of alchemy not once, but twice in the Magnus Universe is because these symbols are harder to explain. They're less frequent in day to day society, and thus they are more difficult to describe.

TL; DR: There is a weirdly specific usage of floral patterns in episode 2 of The Magnus Protocol. What's more, there is an even more weirdly repeated usage for symbols in The Magnus Protocols that I believe is the basis for the entity system, or maybe the way in which it manifests.

The real reason we’ll never get a another Turtles Forever is because if these three met then they would absolutely destroy everything in their paths.

Also they’d verbally eradicate any villain’s self esteem in like 10 seconds.

What’s something you wish people talked about more with LMK? (Can be silly or serious XD)

Love your designs btw they’re so COOL!!!

First off thank you sm!! I love my designs a lot and I’m glad people enjoy them!!

I wish more people talked about the fact Xiaotian is Sun Wukong’s parallel not Macaque; Xiaotian is TRULY the parallel to Sun Wukong because he is Wukong but he also differs from him as his own person. Macaque isn’t even the other side of the same coin anymore—and he never was! People just assume so since “day/night” is a common trope but when you think about it Macaque isn’t anywhere near the same as to who Sun Wukong is.

The closest parallel of “bad” Sun Wukong is Erlang Shen. Because he is justice he is blind to the actual things that happen in the mortal realm while Wukong is heroism so he strikes justice into those who prey on the weak.

Something about how it’s Erlang Shen -> Sun Wukong -> Qi Xiaotian in that silly little cycle