A wonderful fellow, truly a lovely guy. For those unaware, he wrote a journal; everyone should go read it. Thank you for bringing him up. I do like him quite a bit.
I'm going to say some things about some of the answers from the QNA today because the whole QNA was basically about the lovely jungle adventure man.
The numbering is wonky for some reason sorry. (rambles ahead)
"His (Citrus') siblings aren't in ROI but they're technically talked about in Tshell's journal"
(Side tangents incoming)
So "technically" talked about doesn't mean anything crazy, but it got me thinking about Turtleshell's source of information. I'm inclined to believe he isn't going to stumble into an interview with Morrigan like he did with Warhammer (even though that'd be really funny). Frozen Boba will likely give us a lot of straight information, though within 18 PAGES (see #2) I'm sure he'll learn a lot from a lot of people, and I'd be surprised if he didn't at least get pretty close to object Morrigan. I imagine we'd see her in ROI so it's not like she'd need to be kept secret or anything.
Anyway, I'd imagine "technically talked about" could be vaguer descriptions from those in inner society. (I've been assuming Fort Blanket is disconnected from Morrigan and wild district madness, considering its canonical aversion to monster objects.) I love the idea of folk-taleish ideas about Morrigan and the Morrigans, which could totally happen because all of the lawless kings are really old. I love the idea of Turtleshell running around listening to stories while warming up over a fire.
This is ignoring the fact that one of the few descriptions of Fort Blanket we get tells us it's "unwelcoming towards strangers that arrive without a guide." but Turtleshell is literally so awesome and cool that they'll be super nice to him anyway. Also he has Frozen Boba with him to help. Frozen Boba is a scientist so I imagine she's on board with and aware of Turtleshell's arrival. Although, it'd also be funny if Turtleshell's epic sidekick (I've also been assuming Frozen Boba is the epic sidekick) was not a fan of him. He's so excited about his scientific endeavors and has so many questions about the social structure of the wild districts he wouldn't even notice. Kind of like how Carrot gives Turtleshell his number and Turtleshell immediately assumes this is a professional gesture, he could totally meet an aggressive weapon-bearing Frozen Boba and assume she's acting out of tradition, or really focused on trying to protect him from the dangers of Silent Neverland. At this assumption he'd likely try and explain the conditions he'd survived in Paradise.
Realistically though Frozen Boba is probably pretty chill (ha- ha ha) and I'm all for it.
The Warhammer entry was 6 Google Doc pages and the Morrigan entry is 18 Google Doc pages
YAY :D
300% MORE TURTLESHELL
Pushpin's """"nephew """"" (is the cut off figure in "Out of Mind")
[I don't like this rant anymore but I'm leaving it because past me spent a lot of time on it and would be mad at me for deleting it]
I'm fascinated by this individual, though a tad disappointed that I've been horribly misinterpreting Pushpins description for a very long time. I was somewhat confident that Turtleshell was Pushpin's """nephew"""
There's unfortunately so little Turtleshell at the moment that I've drawn major conclusions about his backstory from small bits of information. That being said, I have epic headcanons because of this.
For my wonderful "Pushpin Fulfills a Cool Aunt / Elder Sister Role for Turtleshell" timeline, Pushpin would be 15ish years older than Turtleshell. I still believe this, as Turtleshell and Carrot seem to be the same age, and Pushpin and Fossil seem to be the same age, and I can't see Carrot as being the same age as Fossil. I've kind of assumed from Turtleshell's paragraph on the hive residents losing their mom on page 3 of his journal that his mom is also not very alive. He has fantastic emotional intuition, and he takes great care to describe Warhammer's tone throughout his discussion with Turtleshell, though Turtleshell only does this empathetic analysis with the gemstone monsters, presumably because he felt inclined to because of personal experience. Paradise is scary, and it doesn't seem unlikely that children in paradise go unattended to because their parents get eaten or something. Children disappearing from the marketplace despite it being "no secret" implies there isn't anyone to watch them anyway.
So I don't think it's unreasonable to suspect at one point in time an orphaned Turtleshell was simply running about, curious about the world as he is today. He's from Reaching Gardens, though I think Marketplace theorizing applies to the Gardens, as they're affected by the surrounding rainforests equally.
Anyway, Pushpin would gravitate towards this creature, and try to keep him occupied with something less dangerous than exploring nature when one lives in the worst possible place to want to explore nature. Turtleshell is invited to speak at Gum's college, which implies something about his level of education, though I haven't really figured that out yet, and object universe rules could be totally different. This being said, I imagine Turtleshell would learn a lot from Pushpin and books she'd let him borrow. There's schools in paradise, though the Rings seem to be very advanced in comparison to other districts. I imagine education in Paradise would be somewhat lacking, as resources need to be committed to fighting back against the wild districts. I don't think elementary schools would be a priority.
Turtleshell eventually makes his adventurous excursions into a career, though I feel that is with the help of Pushpin. Turtleshell is eager to venture out, and Pushpin is protective, and makes an effort to supply him with the materials necessary to survive in the wild. Pushpin uses her own research to justify this.
I feel like this dynamic creates possibilities for a bunch of fun scenes and stuff. I like the idea of Turtleshell being present for the unfortunate progression of Fossil and Push's relationship, though at the same time kind of ignorant toward it. It'd be funny. Also, I've always loved the idea of Pushpin being wholeheartedly supportive of Turtleshell's identity. It makes me so happy that being trans is completely normalized to Turtleshell, and his conversation with Cattail about how its epic and normal and, about how Mushroom can just be a guy later on in life, and it's not something Cattail has to worry about (sorry about poor phrasing here). It'd be cool if it was Pushpin gave Turtleshell that support and was cool like that. (side tangent, this is kind of basic human expectation, but the world sadly sucks so I still consider it very cool)
Yeah. I'll abandon this and think of something new, or keep it. I'm still deciding, and I'm sure after receiving 18 PAGES (see #2) of journal I'll have more material for Turtleshell's backstory.
"In the evening, Carrot reappeared to congratulate us and promptly dragged us, including Cattail’s wife, out to one of his favorite drinking spots—a quaint bar and grill in the nearby town. They dropped off Eden at a friend’s house to sleep over and we spent the rest of the night barhopping– I really needed all of that food and water!"
How does Turtleshell eat?
He has a mouth. It's just hidden by shadow.
He simply puts it in his face hole and it organspaces away.
His entire face hole is a mouth. Those are not eyes.
Absorption.
He does not eat. He needed the food and water for something else.
I keep trying to imagine the start of Turtleshell's adventure in silent Neverland, and I've always imagined Fort Blanket to look like the snow kingdom in Super Mario Odyssey. I played Mario Odyssey one time with my small brother (I was cappy) four years ago, so I might be misremembering, but the idea of a warm and cozy underground Fort Blanket that I think I'm copying from Mario Odyssey makes a lot of sense to me.
Blanket is probably a character, but "Fort Blanket" is also a play on Blanket Fort, so it's decently cozy, I think. Or maybe the point of the name is to suggest that it's incredibly uncozy.
But Fort Blanket is Silent Neverland's inner-society, so it's at least warm in there. Warm enough for hominids anyway (Maple Syrup goes there, and that's maybe normalish. Brandy wasn't super surprised, just really really sad.). Even if it's a spiky evil ice cave, it's a spiky evil ice cave with ambient firelight. Probably soup too. I love soup. I hope Turtleshell gets some soup. It's probably actually not something he eats a lot considering he lives in a tropical forest.
