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The Creature. Part 2/2

Part 1/2

It is always the one who doesn’t want to be near the cat that inevitably becomes the cat’s favorite. It is a universal law

I used to be so scared of my roommates cat before we moved in together, but now the little guy absolutely loves me. He is obsessed with cuddles. He lays on all my stuff. He trips me by rubbing up on my legs wherever I go. He hangs out with me all the time, it’s so cute.

Turns out my man just had a resting bitch face and didn’t want me to leave whenever I would visit, who knew lol

The Creature. Part 1/2

Part 2/2

A little more of Slice, my version of Mikey’s cat!

Inspired by me and my bunk bed, which is more often than not commandeered by the various fuzzy little creatures that roam my own home lol

How old even are you? Part 2/2

Part 1/2

Oh, poor Mikey. According to the good future comic, there isn’t even a reason for you to age like milk. I’m so sorry for your hair loss

I know there’s a lot of angst about the future timeline, but what if they’re all a little goofy silly about it lol

Also I bet that it’d be way funnier if Casey started getting really cryptic about the future. Like imagine how many pranks he could pull. Guy was taught by these ridiculous turtles who in turn were raised by Splinter, half of their lessons are just practical jokes and dares lol

How old even are you? Part 1/2

Part 2/2

That moment when your mentor figure is all of a sudden a gangly and insufferable teenager who follows none of his future advice. Like, what do you even do with that? They all talk and act the exact same but they’re all completely different people. It’s probably hilarious in non life threatening situations tho

The dramatic irony of seeing the adult that scolded you in the future doing the same dumb shit. I once watched old home videos of my parents as kids and it was some of the weirdest and funniest things I’ve ever seen lmao

Good Listener, Part 3

[ 1 - 2 - 3 ]

My brother and I couldn’t be more different in our interests, and if we were strangers I doubt we would find anything we had in common. Even so, he and I talk quite often. No matter how much we might not understand the things the other likes, we care about each other enough to listen and learn.

I feel like Donnie and Mikey would be the same. Polar opposites, but that’s exactly why they get along so well.

Sometimes when I’m confused at how to comfort someone, I’ll ask if they need to vent or if they need advice. I can get really frustrated sometimes when I get unsolicited advice, so it helps me not make them feel any worse if they just need a shoulder to lean on. Sometimes that’s all you need :)

Anyways! My favorite kind of character relationship is one where they can just be comfortable vibing in the same room doing their own thing parallel the other while listening to them talk about it. Great basis for friendship. Very relatable lol

Good Listener, Part 2

[ 1 - 2 - 3 ]

I’ve always felt like I’m inadequate at comforting others, since I find it rather hard to empathize even if I can sympathize. My first instinct is always to try and fix whatever hurt them, but more often than not, things are rarely so simple as to have an easy fix. Sometimes all you can do is offer your support.

So, I’m relating to Donnie in this one! I get so internally flustered when I have to comfort a crying person lol, not that I’m going to let them know that. However, this is also inspired by my oldest brother, who is very similar to me in that way. Even if he had no clue what to do with his little sibling bawling their eyes out over something silly, he still cared enough to sit with me until I calmed down, no matter how confused he was with my dramatics lmao

Mikey might be crying, but don’t worry. He’s a growing boy and he’s got some big emotions to figure out still, but nothing terrible caused this. If anything he probably got some light teasing from the others and it hit a bit of a sore spot. He’ll be alright lol

Good Listener, Part 1

[ 1 - 2 - 3 ]

The third in my comics reflecting on the older brothers’ reminiscing on their youngest growing up.

I absolutely love to hear people talk about the stuff they like, even if it’s usually something I couldn’t care less about otherwise. If someone is excited, I’m excited for them, and it’s fun to have a litany of random knowledge and fun facts from everywhere! There’s so much to learn from listening to people who are passionate :)

I like to think Mikey is the same. He tends to hang out in the background and enjoy the antics around him in the show when he isn’t goofing around himself.

The next part gets a little melancholy, but I swear it’s not actually angsty! Y’all got so scared for Leo last time lmao

Little Shadow 2/2

[ 1\2 ]

When I was little I thought my brother was the coolest person in the world. I wanted to be just like him!

Now that I’m older though, I’ve grown into my own person. Now, my brother and I can stand on equal footing, side by side. Whenever he asks for my help or advice, I will always remember how much he helped me when I was young, and I am immensely grateful to be able to do the same for him.

I don’t know if he misses having a little shadow, but I know he’s proud of me :)

Little Shadow 1/2

[ 2/2 ]

I would mimic absolutely everything my immediate older brother would do as a kid. I’d get his too small shirts, I’d always play as player two, and I’d follow him around and play all sorts of games with him every chance I would get. I was his little shadow all throughout our childhood.

It gets annoying though, to have to entertain your little sibling when you just want to hang out with your friends. As we grew older we formed our own friend groups and got our own interests separate from one another.

I will always look fondly on those days though :)

Finding Draxum

A little comic of Mikey finding Draxum in the street after he got drained by the Shredder suit. The original idea for this storyline was that Draxum would align himself with the Hamatos for a time while The Shredder took over the city, until his ego and obsession with prophesy led him to betray them once more. This time he would get no third chance, and Mikey would be the one to draw the line and tell him so before making him leave the city for good.

I love TMNT for its found family! But having had to cut off irl blood relatives before despite how many chances they were given, I kind of like Draxum as a villain despite him being the creator of the turtles. But that’s just me!

This doesn’t lead to his nice canonical show self in my mind , though it can totally still be read that way :)

Free protein lol

Inspired by 1) my childhood dog, who would immediately start chewing faster if anyone noticed him eating non edible things and 2) my brother, who ate a beetle that one time for no other reason than to prove he could.

We also had a moth infestation once when I was a kid, and every time I went to check if the cereal was covered in moths or not, that same brother would tease me to eat it anyways for the extra protein >:p

My childhood dog was a big ol’ Rottweiler! Lovely dog, so gentle even when my ten year old self was trying to pry paper towels out from between his teeth lol

Since the release of the 40th anniversary comics (and me finally getting my copy lol) I thought I’d share the old ideas I’d come up with for Big Mama’s Assistant way back in 2023 when I was doing a NaNoWriMo challenge with a friend!

I’m not the biggest fan of lost sibling plots, unfortunately, so I had decided to keep Big Mama’s Assistant as an episodic villain with a silly gimmick. Also just cause I wanted to shake things up a little bit lol.

Since Future Mikey has old man hair, I thought, what if that’s simply because of how similar the brothers are to kappa? So, this version of this character is a kappa herself, complete with the hair and the murderous intentions lol. Kappa have a little dish on their heads full of water that has to be kept hydrated otherwise they pass out, generally. Thus, a very dangerous villain with a penchant for silly hats that act as a simple win condition for fun fights!

I wanted her to look scrungly, as is common for characters in Rise which is something I love it for. Her general head shape I wanted to keep as similar to her hood and mask as possible so she doesn’t seem unrelated to her armored character design, and I kept her patterns low key as she wears clothing that’s covers it most of the time. Her name is Jennika, as Jennika uses claw weapons in some of her comic issues I’ve seen and so does BM’s Assistant in the show.

Anyways! This was just a fun version of this masked character I drew up for an story outline challenge with a friend, before I knew she was Frida! Since she’s been unmasked, I thought I’d share :)

Splinter mutation speculation! This one is actually pretty old, I drew it before I did all that research on turtles :)

Fun facts about rats: When they are happy, they do a thing called bruxing and boggling, wherein they will grind their teeth together sometimes to the point where the muscles of their jaw make their eyes wiggle in their sockets. They also don’t have paw pads the way dogs or cats do, but instead have little bumps of thicker skin. Look up happy pet rats, they’re absolutely adorable!

These are mostly just my head canons for Splinter as an old jokester with a messed up past trying to do better for the future. We don’t actually see much of him in the show despite dialogue refrencing his daily lessons and his great ‘embarrassing dad’ comedy, so I wanted to speculate of how he might be when the cameras not rolling, per se. It’s tough being the single father of four teenagers without the help of a community, but the brothers are pretty well adjusted (relatively speaking) and are loving towards each other and open to others.

In terms of his anatomy though, while rats may look chubby, it’s in part because of their curved spine and rodent posture. They can get pretty slim when they stretch out. It may be because of these changes to his skeleton that Splinter seemingly shank so much from his human form, while still having the strength to beat people up despite his age. He also made a vow to stop fighting in the Battle Nexus leading to his eventual mutation, which he does break when his kids are on the line, but could be a reason as to why he avoided many of their squabbles in the show? Who knows!

There’s a lot to work with from little characterizations, and it’s fun to see all the different interpretations of his character!

[General][Raph][Donnie][Leo][Mikey]

Mikey skeletal anatomy! Click for better quality

Box turtles are the kinds of turtles who can fully fit into and close their shells along a single hinge in their plastron, which once closed is extremely hard to break into for any kind of predator especially if they cannot get a proper grip on the dome of the shell. Box turtles are also usually found in plains rather than ponds, and while they need water to survive and keep hydrated and can swim well, they’re not generally considered aquatic. Box turtles do have an interesting adaptation due to their more northern range of being able to survive freezing temperatures for a short period of time by slowing their metabolism outside of seasonal brumation (similar to hibernation, but more of a dormant state) if absolutely needed.

After watching TMNT ‘03 where the turtles meditate to save oxygen and prevent suffocation in a broken airlock, I thought, why not mix their ninja ability to conceal their body heat and breath and mix it with a turtles natural ability to brumate? Perhaps the brothers could enter into a completely dormant state on command with enough training in order to survive extreme situations or astral project in some form. Just a fun thought to tie their strong mystic powers with their physical abilities!

Although I use the term heterothermy to refer to them being able to vary between generating their own body heat while active and relying on environmental temperature while inactive, the intricacies of understanding thermal regulation in animals eludes me. If there’s a term that fits better, go ahead! I’m not a biologist so you probably know better lol

These are all my personal head cannons! You can use em’ as reference or not, whichever you prefer :)

[General][Raph][Donnie][Leo][Splinter]

Leo skeletal anatomy! Click for better quality :)

The way most turtles actually fit into their shells is because their arms and legs are shaped to fit into the loose skin around the openings for their limbs, but on account of their human proportions, I just suspend my disbelief as to how mutant turtles could fit in their shells without the odd configuration to their organs that real turtles have. Real turtles have flat lungs that sit widely along their carapace, which is weird but cool. Turtles shed their scutes (the large flat scales on their shells and plastron) about once a year or if the scutes are damaged. The scutes have barely any skin between them and the bone, which is why turtle skeletons usually have the scutes on still, though they can pop off. The rest of the skin sheds regularly though, instead of in large patches.

For the brothers’, their respiration is much more human than turtle. Therefore, their lungs need to expand and contract with their diaphragm rather than just with their movement, so therefore they must have some flexibility to their chest. Some turtles, like box turtles, already have hinged plastrons, and softshell shells are mostly cartilage, so it’s not too far off to assume that there’s a bit of cartilage just to the upper plastral bones of the hard shelled brothers to give their humanoid lungs room to breathe.

Poor Leo. After the movie, one could assume he’s got a couple broken bones. It kind of made me morbidly curious as to how to describe injuries on a character whose skeletal structure is quite different from a human’s for my own writing!

Feel free to use as reference or disregard, these are just my own little speculations :)

[General][Raph][Donnie][Mikey][Splinter]

Donnie skeletal anatomy! Click for better quality

Alright so softshell turtles right. They funky. It’s a lot more obvious that their shells are part of their ribs, as you can actually see the faint outline of their fused vertebrae and ribs on their shells. The reason their shells are so soft is because the edges and much of the lower half of their shell is actually all just cartilage and skin. Their plastron are weird, because the bone plates are largely separate and pointy, held together by harder cartilage the same way human ribs are attached around the sternum.

Donnie was weird to figure out on account of the cartilage lower half of his softshell, but I tried to compromise with his lower back vertebrae being unfused to still allow for the higher mobility required for his waist. Another fun fact about softshell is that they don’t actually have scutes or scales, but because of the look of his plastron and consistency with his brothers in the show, I’m just going to pretend that Draxum mixed in some DNA to let him grow scales for extra protection even if he has less coverage than his brothers. He can “breathe” water by absorbing oxygen through the skin of his throat, not actually by inhaling it. While most turtles can do this to a point, soft shells can stay quite active while doing so.

Personally I like to think of Donnie’s softshell as both a weakness and a strength depending on the situation! While more vulnerable, his skin can heal faster than scutes, and if he sustains blunt damage to his shell he can more easily disperse the force of it because of the give to his cartilage, rather than have the force crack his shell and cause a much more traumatic injury. Kind of like how seatbelts have some give to them to ease into a stop instead of giving someone whiplash.

Just some personal head canons! Feel free to disagree or expand upon :)

[General][Raph][Leo][Mikey][Splinter]

Raphael skeletal anatomy! Click for better quality

Turtle shells are really funky, and in real life turtles, their shoulders and hips are actually fused to the shell and form immobile shoulder and pelvic girdles. Their scapula (shoulder blades) therefore are pushed almost fully downwards to give turtle arms that elbow up look. Most of their muscles are attached via ligaments to their plastron and limbs, with their large neck muscles reaching back along their spine with very minimal muscles on their sides or back.

Because of how funky their bones are, I tried to find a good middle ground between the brothers’ humanoid shape and mobility vs. their original species limitations. Their shoulders are very human, with their collarbone instead connecting to the top of their plastron rather than a sternum (flat bone in the middle of the ribs) with the addition of their shoulder blades resting much lower than a humans and protecting the open space in the armpit of their shell (rather than being set on their back under their carapace). Their necks can stretch slightly longer than a humans and have some extra mobility, on account of how they usually sit curved and tucked into their shoulders. Their pelvises and lumbar vertebrae (hips and lower back) are not fused to their shell to enable them to twist their torsos some.

As for how flexible the show depicts their shells to be… suspension of disbelief! I like to keep the idea of their shells being turtle like, so even though they’re all bone, I’ll allow cartoon physics to bend them some.

Additional info on Raph: The spikes on his shell are mostly bone. Also (something I didn’t draw because it was only after I finished this that I was able to find a picture of an alligator snapper shell bone without its scutes) there are small gaps between his pleural bone plates (middle of shell) and his peripheral bone plates (edges of shell). The scar on his shell is probably from a bone deep injury, as broken scutes shed away, but because scars don’t grow with a person, the injury is small enough that it probably happened so long ago that Raph can’t even remember it.

This is all just my speculation, so feel free to disagree or expand upon these ideas!

[General][Donnie][Leo][Mikey][Splinter]