Welcome back to Writing Gems, where I share some of my favourite TMNT fanfics that I've read.
I've got a cozy one for you this Sunday
🐢 Fika by redstringraven (sirimiri) 🐢
The 03 boys haven't stopped in what feels like forever. But when Leo starts to get sick, it's time for them all to take a step back and evaluate.
Have I mentioned how much I love Missing Scenes fics? Yes? Well, I'll say it again. This author is an expert at writing stories that seemlessly fit in to the 03 show. The writing flows beautifully, the atmosphere is perfect, and all the turtles are absolutely in character.
does your OC’s name have any significance or reason it was chosen? both from a meta/narrative perspective (why you, the creator, named them) or possibly from an in-world perspective (why their parents named them)? and what’s their relationship with their name like? do they like their name? do they not think much of it? or would they rather be named or called something else?
Isabel's full name is "Isabel Aziza Corazón", and if we're going by full name translation is "beautiful treasured heart", which is just very pretty to me.
In story reasons for her name are a little more sentimental. Isabel is named after her great great grandma, Isabella Corazón-Martinez, who was the family matriarch for a very long time.
Isabella was a rebellious woman for her time, being a working woman, detective for hire, and a civil rights activist in 1920s New York. Especially given she was also a minority, it was risky, but she couldn't stay quiet. Even after a case that revealed deep levels of corruption caused her to flee her home and settle across the country to California, she did not stop fighting for those who couldn't fight for themselves. She is also the one who brought green eyes into the Corazón family line, that a few of her descendants inherited, such as Papa Raymundo and Isabel!
When Aziza was first introduced to Ray's family, she was inspired by Isabella's story and beautiful heart, she wanted to name her expecting child after her. And thanks to a naming tradition in the family, first born children inherit one of their parent's names as a middle name, thus how Isabel Aziza Corazón came to be!
Isabel herself likes her name, though she prefers "Isa" as a nickname over the traditional "Izzy." The Hag Aunt Helena is responsible for why Izzy became a tainted nickname (that bitch knows what she did). With Isabel doing some foreign exchange programs in Japan, she also felt "Isa-chan" has a better ring to it, as well as making her name easier for new friends to pronounce.
On a funny side note of names, Carmon's name is actually the result of a typo on my end. Initially I wanted her name to be "Carmen", but in a moment of dumb, I spelled it wrong. Thankfully, my friend saved my dyslexic butt by telling me she always pronounced her name as "Carmón" and that worked with me!
obligatory valentunes oc ask, with a bit of a twist! for any OC you might want to talk about, note their closest relationships (romantic, platonic, familial, whatever) and assign each a number. roll a dice (any dice will do; the mighty dice app or an online randomizer if this is easier!). whatever result you get, share something about that OC's relationship with the other character that you might not have gotten to talk about yet! doesn't have to be about valentines specifically, just. anything about their relationship, how they interact, their dynamic--whatever you like to share when it comes to a valuable person in their life.
(i.e. for cassia, i might write 1-oliver, 2-esme, 3-don, 4-leo, 5-mikey, 6-raph, and roll a 6 sided dice. i roll a 6, so i share something about cassia and raph's relationship!)
omg a dice game! i love dice games!! <- outing myself as a d&d nerd
Tommy and Raph, literally my favorite duo. i’m mainly talking about 03 here but this is applicable to rise and my personal iteration, with some tweaks.
when tommy first gets mutated, he’s like—a tiny baby but rapidly grows. this is mostly because i wanted the Turtles to interact with a baby at some point and play older brother/uncle. tommy’s growth is significantly faster than “normal”—in the first year he’s mutated, he goes from a baby to the size and cognitive maturity of a 7-year-old. year two is a bit slower and he grows from 7-12ish, and by then fast forward whisks people away. this is sorta important for later.
anyway
when he’s still young, he’s terrified of raph. raph isn’t trying to be scary—he’s actually consciously trying to be more approachable when tommy gets dropped off at the lair (brooke has classes and a job by this point). tommy warms up to leo and don relatively quickly because of their quieter energy, and learns fairly soon just how soft splinter is so he seeks snuggles from him and likes listening to splinter’s stories at bedtime on the rare occasion brooke works late. mikey basically says “you need a playmate. i shall be your playmate” and encourages him to play (mikey has to adjust his play-style since tommy is very much not into scary things like superheroes).
mikey tends to drag tommy into pranking his bros while they’re goofing off and playing—something that raph gets loud and yells about out of habit, which doesn’t exactly help tommy feel comfortable around him. raph’s more mad at mikey cuz raph’s trying to get this kid to stop shaking and clinging to the nearest safe person whenever he walks in.
there’s a few small moments that help tommy slowly open up more—but it’s the fateful day that don and raph go out to get snacks and bring tommy along that really changes tommy’s tune toward raph.
see, on their way there, they get cornered by purple dragons. raph—already hungry and frustrated cuz this is like the first time tommy actually came to him with something, and now he’s been interrupted by these goons—takes his anger out on them. after they’ve run off, he realizes this isn’t a good look (fighting with extreme prejudice?? this kid doesn’t even like fake violence!) and asks how tommy is, expecting the 5ish yo to cower behind donnie.
instead, tommy clings to raph’s leg. raph is now safety. he got rid of the bad guys, for tommy.
their interests don’t often align, but raph slowly loosens up more and feels like he doesn’t have to censor himself or his demeanor since tommy has it in his head that raph only hurts bad guys. tommy loves just observing, which now applies to when the guys practice ninjutsu. and he eventually asks to learn how to flip, how to block, how to throw a punch.
raph’s also the only one who never really,,, i don’t wanna say “used a baby voice,” but like—kids can kinda tell when you talk down on them. the others all have their moments, and it’s not meant to be condescending, but raph’s the only one who doesn’t do that. raph gives it to tommy straight, every time. sometimes it’s slightly censored for young ears, but it’s still truth.
so when the guys get whisked away to the future and it’s just tom, april, casey (and an OC my sister made that i don’t have time to get into dhshdsh)… tom takes it hard.
after they get back, though, tom’s a preteen. he’s not a kid anymore! and nobody seems to see it!…
except raph.
everyone else is still stuck in the mindset of tom being a child. brooke has an entire arc of accepting it, since that’s her baby. but raph? raph gets home and notices right away and says “thank god. i can swear around you now, right? we can watch pg-13 movies at movie night again??” and tom appreciates it.
—
Brooke: ok i’m not gonna lie i got very excited to share how her and Mikey’s dynamic works because ive had brainrot for the both of them for... literal years. mind you, i ship them, but to me they’re both on the aro- and ace- spectrums. there’s definitely some projecting here.
Brooke was extremely sheltered, didn’t have a lot of friendships. she meets the turtles very briefly and gets excited because HELLO ALIEN MUTATIONS THATS SICK AF but the turtles are busy saving the world!!! so.,.,, she gets lonely, gets in with a bad crowd, becomes a werewolf, yadda yadda… anyway, after all that happens, she’s been rescued by the turtles and mikey is ecstatic. i like to think since he’s so interested with connecting with humans, anyone he has a remotely neutral or positive interaction with, he’s pushing for more. he wants friends. and, let’s be honest, he probably wants a friend his age. as soon as they rescued brooke, he was like “i will make her my friend.”
part of it is the challenge—she’s very quiet and very shy, so getting her to open up is like—what kind of jokes makes her laugh? how do i get her to talk? (there’s a very brief time when brooke’s got her Resting Bitch Face on and mikey wonders if he’s annoying her) but he accidentally stumbles across those Autism Infodump Unskippable Cutscenes and he’s like “finally!!” she explains chemistry and biology to him and when he asks questions, instead of being annoyed, she’s so so excited to explain. so he’s like “wait a sec. i’m not The Stupid One™ to her. i like this feeling.” (not that his bros always reduce him to that, but he has sort of backed himself into a corner playing the role of class clown to lighten the mood for them, and they do sorta enable him to do it more).
so he just dives straight in. “we’re friends now. deal with it.” which is very very good for brooke who’s always needed a literal verbal confirmation for that sort of thing. he treats her like a friend, and she’s never had a good friend role model before, so she assumes mikey’s doing it right and just copies him. oh, he made her some art? she wrote a short fic for him. he asks her about her interests, she asks about his. he treats her as smart, so she treats him the same.
best of all, mikey doesn’t have to fit into a specific perceived role with her. she, in turn, had been playing the role of Perfect Student, Perfect Daughter, So Mature For Your Age, So Smart, Such Potential, and gets to loosen up around mike… it’s more like he literally shakes it out of her. endorses her “cringe” or “stupid” behaviors and interests. he gets her into superheroes and now she’s up all night writing fanfic. basically just helps her be less repressed and more indulgent (to everyone else, they think he’s corrupting her. no. he is helping. and she does help him learn to be a bit more responsible). he calls on her a lot while galavanting as Turtle Titan with his superhero buddies. this doesn’t have to do with anything, i just needed to mention it.
i have like this whole arc planned for a fast forward rewrite that gets… deeper into their relationship and individual characters but it would take too much to write here, haha. i guess the long story short would be: they both go through a bad mental health season in 2105 and lean on each other so much that leo sets them up on a date. and. that’s it. not a lot changes (they do have a brief crisis cuz “how do you relationship??” but also. “do we need to relationship like that or can we do it our own way?”)
and of course, they both bring home every single stray they can find. it drives everyone else nuts.
—
T’Ytian and his MAMA (this is gonna be so fun to write—)
first off—his mama is a well regarded and respected warrior. but she’s also got a strong sense of family—something salamandrians don’t typically have. in their culture, you drop your eggs off to the axolotl-like designated caretakers, and then pick a youngling that shows promise in your particular field of expertise. she didn’t do that. she said “i will let you care for my children until they’re of age to join me on land and then i want my babies back.”
she still takes care to notice what her children are proficient in and has a “tutor” of sorts to help them perfect their technique for whatever career they take. but she also teaches them herself.
she’s always been very encouraging, telling T’Ytian he’s meant to do great things and he can accomplish anything he sets his mind to. she has big expectations for him—of course, he’s her son. T’Ytian is a total mama’s boy in that it’s one of his greatest motivators: make mom proud. (don’t ever make a yo mama joke in his vicinity he’ll tear you apart)
she adores her children to the ends of the earth—all 9 of ‘em. three are older than T’Ytian and have already shown INCREDIBLE precision and expertise in their designated fields (a pilot, a capital guard, and a black-ops soldier). T’Ytian and his twin T’Vekyl are next—so how will they impress her?
the expectations are a bit… heavy, though.
there’s a point when a young t’ytian is upset after hearing his dad died in action, runs off into the wilderness and runs into a particular creature*. he gets cornered in a cave, the thing attacks and he barely makes it out alive, covered in blood from both his own injuries and the creature’s. he goes home and just sobs into mama’s embrace and explains what happens.
and. his mama cannot understand why her boy is crying if he won the fight.
*that particular creature, no one really expected a youngling t’ytian’s age to… survive. so he graduates as a protégée to the next level because everyone, but mostly mom, was so impressed he took it out.
she does specify that his emotions are likely inherited from his father, and that while she has no issues with him expressing himself… the rest of the salamandrians probably won’t understand. and a lack of understanding in their culture usually means being ostracized. so she “encourages” him to keep them in check.
T’Ytian is in training to become an escort—a job consisting of having the skills to protect whomever you’re escorting, as well as basic piloting and a tiny bit of engineering just in case the ship malfunctions. but an escort’s primary purpose is keep the other person alive, even if it means sacrificing yourself. it’s one of the most difficult professions to train since it goes against basic instincts and has so many moving pieces to it. T’Ytian, thankfully, is paired with his best friend. it’s easier to sacrifice yourself for someone you already care about than a total stranger (of course, this ties back to his emotions—the driving force of why he’s so protective of his best friend).
so he’s in the most difficult profession and nailing it? that’s impressive. surely her boy will do great things and help salamandrian society advance in big ways!…
after t’ytian is on earth for a short time and learns from brooke and the other mutanimals, he gets home and everything seems… off. he can’t unsee and unlearn how his mind got opened while on earth. questions start popping up that he digs into and suddenly the answers make him sickened. but the rest of his people don’t seem to care…
including mama.
she always taught him to be true to himself. granted, the “truth” she was talking of was still under the acceptable umbrella of salamandrian culture. but now her boy has been tainted by those filthy terrans from earth.
and t’ytian… he used to go to her with everything. but now some of the things she’s said in the past aren’t making sense—or they’re making a little too much sense, in the worst way possible.
spooky season question!! 👻 your ocs. they're next: do any of them believe in ghosts? are they at all superstitious? or do they tend to be skeptics? is there a difference between ghosts and demons, or are they one and the same? any other spooky details you'd like to share?
Your ask just freaking jump scared me when it arrived. XD (sorry that you were sitting in my drafts for over a month.)
Anyways
Isabella: Does she believe in ghosts? On a scale of one to ten, I’ll give her a five in believability. She’s not too much of a skeptic but something also has to happen for her to believe it more. Same with most people. She does become more of a believer with all the experiences she'll have.
Zeph: He does not really dabble in anything supernatural. He might be more of a skeptic than Isa. Now cosmic horror? He's encountering that when he leaves the Triceraton Republic to search for his mother's origins.
Mei-hui: This turtle lady has dealt with the supernatural longer than either of those two. She's somewhat superstitious due to being raised by a superstitious father. Yes, there is a massive difference between ghosts and demons for her. She's kinda an empath on these things.
spooky season question 👻 your ocs. do any of them believe in ghosts? are they at all superstitious? or do they tend to be skeptics? is there a difference between ghosts and demons, or are they one and the same? any other spooky details you'd like to share?
So sorry to miss this!! Hate that work has kept me so busy!! This is a fun question!! Id like to think they all believe in super natural stuff given the universe they're based in.
Maybe not first hand experience, yet! Haha.
That reminds me of a old au I used to mess around with my tmnt ocs in a bprd style au! It was fun. I need to re-visit that again. 😭
