I’m gonna be honest, one thing that really bothers me in the Rise fandom is how some people have taken “Rise focuses on found family” and somehow turned that into “therefore romance should never exist.”
And no, before anyone starts, this is not an attack on aroace or aspec people. There are plenty of aroace and aspec fans who enjoy shipping. This is about a specific mindset I’ve seen over and over again where people basically go, “I don’t care about romance, therefore this show should never have romance and nobody should want romance,” and frankly that’s a really fucking reductive way to engage with stories.
I’ve seen people act like shipping the Rise turtles with Mona Lisa, Usagi, OCs, or literally anybody else is somehow disrespecting the show, ruining the themes, or “missing the point.” I’ve seen people insist that the turtles should never have love interests because Rise is about family. But why are we acting like family and romance are mutually exclusive?
The turtles having meaningful relationships outside of their brothers does not suddenly erase the found family aspect of the show. Leo dating someone doesn’t make him stop being Leo. Raph having feelings for Mona Lisa doesn’t suddenly make him stop loving his family. Donnie having a crush (on Kendra because I’m a Kendratello/ Dondra girlie) doesn’t erase his bond with his brothers. These things can exist at the same time.
What frustrates me is that this mindset ends up reducing the characters instead of protecting them. It puts them into a box where they’re only allowed to have one kind of meaningful relationship because people have decided every other kind is a threat.
And honestly, a lot of this feels like an overreaction to TMNT 2012 and the way THAT show handled its romance plots, especially the effects that had on its female characters. I’ll admit, a lot of the romance in that show (with the only decent exception being Raph and Mona Lisa) was pretty ass cheeks, with a lot of them like April and Donnie and the Capriltello love triangle feeling like it was written ON TOP of the plot/main story rather than into it. Those opinions and takes are very valid imo and you can honestly learn a lot about how NOT to write romances and love interests from that show alone. HOWEVER, “some romances were written badly” is not the same thing as nor should the conclusion to that be, “the franchise should never attempt romance ever again.”
If a villain is written badly, nobody says TMNT should never have villains again. If a season is written badly, nobody says TMNT should never have another season. The solution to bad writing is better writing, not permanently banning an entire storytelling element.
What makes this mentality so counterproductive is that it actually limits the franchise’s potential. Instead of asking what interesting stories could be told with these characters, it starts from the assumption that entire categories of stories shouldn’t even be allowed to exist.
And that’s the part that gets me. Because found family, friendship, brotherhood, and general platonic dynamics and relationships are not automatically weakened by introducing romance into the mix, and honestly, if your themes completely fall apart the second a character develops feelings for somebody, then those themes weren’t very strong to begin with.
Rise’s family dynamic is one of the strongest parts of the show. It does not need to be protected from shipping or love interests. Like it or not Rise Fans, the show is not completely perfect as is.
If the turtles are allowed to have friends, family, and mentors, they are allowed to have love interests. Treating romance as inherently less meaningful than every other type of relationship doesn’t make stories deeper. It just makes them smaller.
