Why I find Mikey from Rise of the TMNT relatable as a younger sibling
Greetings snails ;)
I’m a bit late to the party on this one, but I just recently finished Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and very much want to write about it, so here we are. I honestly love all four of the turtle brothers to bits, their brotherly chemistry and chaotic energy are lovely to watch, but one turtle who I feel has gone slightly underappreciated is Mikey. Maybe I just haven’t been searching for it enough in the fandom but I feel as though not much content has been released for his character, so in this post I shall make the tiniest dent to that by analysing his character as the youngest sibling and why I as a younger sibling find him relatable. Okay? Okay.
As basically everyone in the fandom knows: Raph is the eldest brother, Leo and Donnie are the middle disaster twins, and Mikey is the youngest. Being the youngest is possibly what gives Mikey some of his charm, since according to birth order the youngest child tends to be highly sociable, confident, creative and charming - which I feel fits Mikey perfectly since he is the artist and heart of the group. Being the youngest, however, sometimes comes with being coddled by overprotective family members (which I’ll discuss in more detail in a moment), being a risk taker and generally seeing the consequences of actions less effectively than other family members due to never being allowed to fail. These are all traits of Youngest Child Syndrome, which I actually learnt about through a youtube video analysing Mikey’s character (https://youtu.be/LU9cGgcv7gU), which I feel explains this quite well. To me, it seems likely that Mikey has something like Youngest Child Syndrome, and since the show focuses heavily on the relationships between the brothers this becomes crucial to Mikey's characterisation and how he’s treated.
As an example, while his brothers do clearly love Mikey, it is also clear that they tend to underestimate his abilities due to him being the youngest. An episode where this is made the focus is in Hot Soup: The Game, as it revolves around him insisting on doing a solo mission to prove to his brothers that he is capable of being independent. Raph is very against this mission and infantilises Mikey in the process. He tries to stop Mikey going on a solo mission despite Raph having gone on one when he was Mikey’s age, says Mikey won’t be ready for a solo mission in 7-10 years (which would make Mikey 20 years old at least, rip) and literally uses a baby voice to speak to him on multiple occasions. I can understand some of Raph’s concerns since Mikey has shown himself to be impulsive and reckless at times (like most 13-year-olds are), but I still believe Raph is being overprotective here. If Raph was going on solo missions at 13 years old, then there’s no good reason that Mikey shouldn’t go on one too.
I do relate to this problem in my own way, though I’m not sure if it’s due to being the youngest sibling or being assigned female at birth (maybe both). I didn’t go out with friends or walk anywhere without my mum or older brother until I was around Mikey’s age, and even then my mum got very anxious when I even suggested it. This was despite my brother having done all of this when he was my age because it was apparently ‘safer’ for him to do so. I don’t want to get too deeply into the topic of AFAB people having less freedom to go outside for fear of a man hurting them, because that’s a can of worms for another day honestly, but what I’m getting at is that I relate to Mikey’s struggle. It’s incredibly frustrating to be denied freedoms, especially when you’ve seen that another person (especially when that person is your sibling) has been granted them. It’s a good sign when many people can relate to a character even when there are so many differences between them and the character, so I think this illustrates how well written Mikey is, which is why I’m writing about him in the first place :)
Another aspect of Mikey that I can definitely see is the traits of ADHD. The writer of rottmnt Ron Corcillo actually tweeted that he believes Mikey may be 'a little ADD’ (https://twitter.com/RonCorcillo/status/1554280734319206401), and as someone who may have ADHD and is currently going through the process of getting a diagnosis, I can definitely see that in Mikey too. From memory, some traits that come to mind are his impulsivity and risk-taking behaviour, being easily distracted, appearing to be restless, talking a lot and general chaotic energy. If I’m being honest, I feel like most if not all the brothers are neurodivergent in some way, since a good portion of these traits could be applied to any of them. Also, please don’t take what I’ve noted as a conclusive list, this is just from my memory of the show and the clips I’ve watched to jog my memory. I would like to rewatch the show and note down every aspect of neurodivergency in the turtles I can find, but I’m not going through that much effort for a rant posted to Tumblr, so this is the best you’re getting.
Overall, Mikey is just a sweet, kind, charming, very loveable turtle who I find relatable - probably because we’re both younger sibling artists who probably have ADHD. He makes for a great heart of the group, who balances out characters like Donnie with his logical way of thinking and brings fun, emotional and affectionate moments to the team. I definitely want to look at the other brothers in the future and rant about why they’re amazing too, but that is a blog post for another day :)
i love my little sibling, but man, do they know which buttons to press to get me far beyond annoyed, and if i finally snap they're only told to lay it off, like, once, while i'm supposed to be the older one and not let them provoke me.
like, yeah? i've tried ignoring them?
but i fucking can't?? they know exactly how to make sure of that??
Protip for all the people out there wanting to irritate siblings: don't go down the path of deliberately mispronouncing things like me because it's been five years since my older sister stopped reacting to it at all and I still pronounce pneumonia with the p, don't even get me started on psychic
