"You've slain your own king! You surrender! We are victorious!"
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Oof! Guess Donnie finally won against Leo... kind of? He certainly won at the mind game Leo was playing at least (whether Omega meant to or not.) Short Arc, but we're getting close to the ending of the first book finally! I'm really excited to show the next update, but it might take a while. Please be patient with me in the meantime!
Arc 7 begins! Wow a Replica update that did not take me months to do?? Unheard of!
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I've had this headcanon for Leo being a better chess player than Donnie for YEARS. It's actually an idea that I've planted and has done its rounds in the fandom in the years leading up to this. I'm glad I finally get to dive into it properly. This is going to be a much shorter story like my early Arcs for Replica but I just love little character studies such as these so please indulge me!
happy pride month!!! lowkey imagined Jackie talking to either Shauna or Natalie for this…..👀👀👀 ignore the shitty telephone i used a refrence so everything looks a little uncanny
Whew, after a breakup, a flu bug, a nasty stomach virus, a car accident, physical therapy, and my vision going bad in one eye, I finally have this next update finished. 2026 has certainly not been kind to me, but I'm hanging in there and hoping to get back to a normal baseline soon. So far it's been about two weeks without something bad happening so I'm hoping whatever AO3 curse struck me down has finally moved on. Thank you everyone for your patience as I try to get all my projects back on track.
Anyways, this was quite a chapter, huh? I'm sure you have lots of questions, and I'm willing to answer some of them, if only because I love character discussion!
So the keen fan might recognize that this whole sequence is a close mirror to Raphael's meditation from the season 1 finale! I always found this segment fascinating and wondered if it had a deeper meaning that was never shown to us due to the show's cancelation. After watching it again some years back I realized how his meditation could not only be an accurate vision, but one that foretold Raph's final moments, the use of time travel to undo their dark future, and his journey into the afterlife with his father as his guide. In the series Raphael had meditated with the intention of "his path being revealed" ...and it certainly was.
The thing about visions is that they seldom make much sense until hindsight can be applied and that's exactly what happened here. Poor Raph thought it wasn't working, but I truly believe that as a creature driven by his heart and instincts he could tap into the spiritual side of the mystic arts in a way similar to Mikey. Where as Leo and Donnie tend to fall back onto logic, the Sunset Duo has always allowed their emotions to be the driving force of their actions. It's why he could easily see Karai when she was a part of April, and why this small meditation session was actually successful. The dum-dumb just didn't put two and two together.
I was originally planning to have the sequence still end with him falling down into the maw of some Krang-like monster but decided that it did not end well with that sort of tone... even if it would have been very symbolic with him being consumed by the Krang. If you want to imagine that happened though, be my guest haha.
Interesting semi-related note, but if you look closely at the back at the giant maw, like a light at the end of the tunnel we see a very familiar blue glow. Something that reminds me a lot of Leo's portals. Perhaps a way out for Raphael that will free him from his own shackles? Funny how this same thing also happened earlier in the series, in which Leo had to use his portals to help them escape the maw of another giant Yokai... albeit it was his portals that got them into trouble in the first place, but that's pretty much exactly how things went down in the movie's plot as well so I find it very poetic...
I just liked having it be a little more symbolic with his final moments being a callback to the series finale instead.
As for the last few shots in the update... I don't want to give too much away, but it sort of feels like maybe Raph's spirit came into contact with a certain someone to help the reignite their ninpo. Hmm... be sure to remember this. It will not be the only occasion!
Yuichi Usagi , a high school student known by himself and his friends for being the most troublesome in the entire institution.In his class is his classmate Hamato Leonardo, he is the best student not only in his class but in the whole school, always talking about rules or helping classmates or teachers.Despite his thug-like attire, he is a friendly person, but very boring if you ask Usagi.
One day, everything changes for him and his friends when they discover monstrous beasts that aren't yokai in the city. They set out to stop them, but are unable to do so when the Hamato brothers confront the creatures. Now, Yuichi Usagi wants to find out what's really happening in the city and perhaps get to know Leonardo better and even become friends.
(If you want to write a fanfic about this, it's all yours, even take the idea and tag me so I can read it hahaha)
I have never done comic stuff before and I'm quite intimidated to even try, I struggle a lot with composition, spatiality and to depict scenes due to aphantasia, I've only been a character designer so far and I don't know where to get enough references without becoming a 3D modeler and how do you know how to use which symbols for movement and all that, plus my perfectionism is driving me crazy, but a comic doesn't have to be perfectly drawn right ? augh.. so this is more or less a test thing I guess.. criticism is welcomed.. And instead of "dac au" I will name it now Anthelion Au.
(Not an ask really) CONGRATS ON GETTING IN THE TMNT AU COMPETITION!!!
THEY HAVE ARRIVED!! @tmntaucompetition
|| Next (Coming very soon)
Real quick, I wanna thank you all for the overwhelming support over this AU. I love you all so much and a read every one of your comments so I'm happy to be in this years competition! I'm running against so many wonderful storytellers and artists and I can't wait to see all the fun we all have!
romaincrisis
titsay
yousharknotpass
turnnoffyourmind
prguitarman
kaledo-art
snowghoul
