Could Venus De Milo Be Brought Back?
 

With Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles coming this year there's been the obvious controversy over making April black in this iteration. We can assume in this day and age it is Nick trying to be progressive but it made me think back to when they added Venus de Milo to The Next Mutation.

Now one of the major reasons that series is disliked so much is because they added a female Turtle. In retrospect we can say it didn't really work due firstly because of the characters controversial origin to the TMNT was a misstep and secondly adding a female Turtle was seen as a gimmick. I mention Venus because in today's entertainment where gender swapping is all the range and adding female counterparts is seen as progressive I wonder what is there to stop Nick from bringing Venus back either in Rise or a future iteration of the franchise?

I guess my question is sooner or later this might happen and what will fans think? Is adding a female Turtle to the franchise progressive or just a political gimmick? But also if the reaction is that of TNM could the fans incur the wrath of mainstream media outlets for not being progressive enough such as understandably Ghostbusters fans and Doctor Who fans have? How would that make you feel?

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It could be either, both, or neither, just some guys trying to dust off ideas just for the sake of them.

I'm just gonna point out how this thread: http://forums.thetechnodrome.com/showthread.php?t=58173
Was still in the top three rows below the stickys before this one got started. I know duplicate topics can be a bit of a problem around here, but this is just laughable.

To me, adding a female turtle is just a decision by a business who thinks that it its what will make money, like everything else done in tmnt or any other franchise.

If I like it, I'll get into it, otherwise I'll be indifferent to it. I am indifferent to anything Venus and Next Mutation related (since I haven't seen it yet aside from a few clips) but I am open to the idea being brought up again in future tmnt versions. Heck, I wanna see Kirby from the the 4th Live Action film that never was, made into an established character.

No, she's irrelevant.

I honestly get the feeling that with how we sometimes get new mutants of pre-existing animals already used before, I would honestly would not be surprised if the next time we get a new female Turtle she won't be named Venus. She'd be someone else entirely.

Yes, she's awesome.

Please re-read my original post since the link you and Candy Kappa have provided has almost nothing to do with what I'm asking.

To clarify I'm not asking whether Venus should be brought back or whether she could work today, I am asking that since sooner or later her inclusion will happen due to the necessary/unnecessary progressiveness of media entertainment today how will fans react and if it's the same reaction as back in the late 90's how will fans react to the mainstream media doing a Ghostbusters 2016 or Doctor Who by labeling us all misogynists when it has nothing to do with that but more creative integrity? Are the purist views of Venus correct today? Would you feel frustrated or angry that the mainstream media would paint the fans in such a way or would you brush it off as "well the mainstream media is out of touch with it's fans anyway".

I don't want to come across as rude here but does my thread make sense?

Yeah, I think it makes sense.

I think I understand your question, but I don't know that it strictly required the creation of a new thread in order to explore it.

There's nothing inherently wrong with a female mutant ninja turtle. There's also nothing inherently progressive about one either. It all comes down to context and presentation. Basically, it's what you do with a character that matters.

For examples from the MCU:
M'Baku and The Mandarin are both racial caricatures that have been given new life, and in my opinion new depth, via their movie adaptations.

I think Venus could go a similar way, but it would depend on how she was handled. I wouldn't trust her to a writer who didn't think a show could exist with more than two female characters on it, for instance.

And I say that as someone who haaaaaaated Venus.

What I'm curious about is what you're specifically asking:
Are you talking about Venus in particular? How she might be viewed from either a mainstream, or a specific audience?

Or are you asking if a character like Venus would have a different reception now, than she did then?

This! But also if fans keeping they're dislike of a female Turtle will lead the mainstream media to start being rude about the fans like what's happened with the Ghostbusters reboot and Doctor Who. Can the mainstream media look past the problem the fans problem of Venus being a female and more that a fifth Turtle is necessary or will we all just be called misogynists?

In Mirage there is... but not in any of the other universes where there is a metric ton of other mutants. Which is... pretty much the entirety of the rest of them, save 4Kids. If there's a million mutants running around why NOT just bite the bullet and make a female ninja turtle?

I think she would have to be an "In Name Only" type character if they ever brought her back. I've thought about her being re-imagined as a villain before.

That all depends on the word choice of the fans in question.
Every Community has its own dialect, for lack of a better term. Words are used in certain fan spaces that are not used in the same way and other places. So I think it's only natural that miscommunication happens.

I also think fandom has a really strong streak of misogyny.
And I say that as a recovering misogynist myself.
Things that are coded for girls and women are seen and treated as less than.

And I fully admit that a good chunk of my hatred for Venus comes directly from the fact that growing up I hated other women and girls.

So if we remove Venus entirely, just utterly erase her from the scene. And say that in this new iteration of the cartoon they added in a female turtle... Yeah, I think people would lose their mind as much if not more then how they're reacting to Leonardo not being the leader.

And that some of this outrage would be misconstrued as misogyny, because it would be linguistically identical to it. Because fandom has its own lexicon.

And unfortunately that lexicon does not excel at conveying the idea : "I don't like this, it doesn't work for me" to people who aren't already fluent.

I had considered the same thing with this question, a female turtle appearing among many mutants. So far as an actual female 5th Turtle, being one of them? No, I don't think they need to do that, female inclusion doesn't have to mean change the turtles themselves. I don't need to see a 5th male turtle either.

I'm actually surprised they didn't do it to begin with as soon as Laird washed his hands* of everything.







*in money

I'd have Venus be an alternate universe Turtle who takes them on respective contests (like the Battle Nexus Tournament or Stump Asteroid's intergalactic wrestling)!

The official TMNT account tweeted about Venus today :D