#Make April O'Neil white again!

[Leo656]

I wasn't gonna bite. But alright.

Frankly, as a Mick myself, I'm super annoyed at the constant and ever-growing trend in recent pop culture to simply overwrite "my" people and their heritage for reasons of "making the numbers even."

"O'Neil". C'mon. She couldn't possibly get any more Irish if she painted herself green and carried a shillelagh. The fewer logical leaps a person has to make, the better.

Just let things be what they are.

[Jester]

I mean it is spelled differently, but still.

Also as a person of some degree if Irish blood, no skin off my nose one way or the other, BUT I do wish she'd be a "Mother Figure" again.

[neatoman]

Originally Posted by Jester

https://ftw.usatoday.com/wp-content/...0&h=600&crop=1
I mean it is spelled differently, but still.

Also as a person of some degree if Irish blood, no skin off my nose one way or the other, BUT I do wish she'd be a "Mother Figure" again.

Wow, I know he probably hasn't been active in decades but Shaq let himself go! I thought that was Kevin Michael Richardson for a moment.

[Coola Yagami]

Originally Posted by Leo656

I wasn't gonna bite. But alright.

Frankly, as a Mick myself, I'm super annoyed at the constant and ever-growing trend in recent pop culture to simply overwrite "my" people and their heritage for reasons of "making the numbers even."

"O'Neil". C'mon. She couldn't possibly get any more Irish if she painted herself green and carried a shillelagh. The fewer logical leaps a person has to make, the better.

Just let things be what they are.

Also, make her old enough to shag. No more of these kids, please.

[Powder]

Originally Posted by Coola Yagami

Also, make her old enough to shag.

Posts like these are why Viacom doesn't cater to our generation of TMNT fans.

[IndigoErth]

I'd welcome the happy medium of sending April back to the age and look of what is by the general public recognizable as being April and give the Turtles a new younger friend, who might be something else besides white. Or better yet, MIXED.


Spoiler since I just started thinking up too much and going too far off the direct topic...

Spoiler:

Just no Carter reboot, okay? lol He's kind of annoying, yet bland. Just need a friend who is a normal and un-annoying kid... no annoying-teen tropes, no Mary/Gary Sue/Stu, no mutation or powers. Just a normal friend. Maybe also consider other ethnic groups that are often even more underrepresented in typical media.

Though if they want to tie together an interesting story with him/her... I suggest a young North Korean refugee alone in the U.S. and weave in some kind of ties with foes from Japan and evil dealing between the Foot in Japan and nearby North Korea. (Yes, I know, but Asians aren't all the same and few in TMNT are actually good guys.)

[IMJ]

Originally Posted by Coola Yagami

So is this the part where you tell us you're not racist cause you have black friends, right Cubed?

See, I think posts like this are the real problem. When you say stuff like this and automatically drive the shallow assumption home that someone is racist on any immediate opinion then you shut down all real discourse. And more and more this is happening.

What I'm saying is that when most people talk about color coming from the white perspective it's become a knee jerk cliche - either out of ignorance or even fear - to assign "racist values".

You can't just go and do this, man. Not unless you are actually trying to be part of the problem or you are terrified to take a solid stand and say "yeah let's be open to different races and cultures, but there's still a real conversation to be had here about what's going on and having that conversation doesn't actually make the speaker racist by default".

Seriously, as a point of conversation, and you aren't going to like this man, but you are the bigger problem going straight to that BS in response to Cyber's -strange- thread than Cyber is for generating conversation about the topic. Seriously man....

Originally Posted by Cryomancer

you don't see any difference in tone between these threads? really?

Okay, so I'm glad you said this. First and foremost to the actual OP's thread - I'm not going to lie, I can't tell if this thread was meant to be valid conversation, or if it's disingenuous or if it's wild sarcasm. Honest to God, I can't tell. But let's pull past that for a second...

To your question - yes I do. I see a bunch of people giving knee jerk reactions instead of just having the conversations and I find those knee jerk reactions to be disingenuous and problematic. So that's the one I see here.

Look here's the simple fact for solving the world's problems here on our lil Turtles forum, okay? If you truly don't want racism to promulgate throughout society, then stop being so reactive to the triggers of any conversation that involve race. Someone here will respond with another lowest common denominator response - "oh okay IMJ, so just ignore it and it'll go away". But that's just more opportunistic reply from people who play at smart. It's reciprocating causation based on a phony premise. Someone has a convo about race, so right away they are called racist thus making the majority who don't calculate life correctly believe "here's another racist! I see 'em in my sleep!" and therefore there is more racism in the world. But if you just had the conversation and didn't assume people with opinions about the content were racists.... well.. then the world quite literally have less racism in it.

Many of you guys are causing the witch hunt and I'll bet you don't even know you are doing it. Maybe you do know and you are virtue signaling, but again I doubt the psychology is actually that you are making your big stand in life.

So just have the conversation until it's actually revealed that maybe someone's observations are born of disdain rather than some kind of contiguous logic or thought.

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by Jester

https://ftw.usatoday.com/wp-content/...0&h=600&crop=1
I mean it is spelled differently, but still.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Always an exception somewhere, sure.

Regardless, this specific fictional character has been most often and prominently portrayed with red hair, fair skin, and (I think) green eyes. Ask 100 people what "April from Ninja Turtles" looks like, that's the description you'd get from at least 80 of them. That should still be okay.

Going in such a dramatically opposite direction with more recent portrayals, well... They know what they're doing and why. Wally West circa 2012, same thing. Partly "representation", and partly because they enjoy the pushback even though they say they don't. They absolutely love the negative reaction whenever they do stuff like that.

[Rooish]

Originally Posted by FredWolfLeonardo

You're so bad at trying to parody Right wingers.

I thought it was chillingly accurate actually.

[ToSte]

Her being black doesnt bother me in the slightest because I dont partake in that turtle series, problem solved.

[The Great Saiyaman]

I had a ball using both incarnations of the Nickelodeon April in my crossover comic "A weird world"

Both April's meeting each other

[lonewarrior20]

i feel like there's one thing i can say to deflate this argument.
every incarnation is an alternate universe/dimension. of course somethings going to be different than another. so Aprils black, Aprils born from a drawing, or Aprils middle name is Harriet.

[ABrown]

Originally Posted by Coola Yagami

Also, make her old enough to shag. No more of these kids, please.

Don't even get me started on the ridiculous age of consent in the state that I reside. Apparently the lawmakers in this state don't realize that this isn't the 1800's any more, so the Nick April should NOT be hooking up with someone who's more than say three or four years older than her.

[CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy]

Originally Posted by ABrown

Don't even get me started on the ridiculous age of consent in the state that I reside. Apparently the lawmakers in this state don't realize that this isn't the 1800's any more, so the Nick April should NOT be hooking up with someone who's more than say three or four years older than her.

Shout out to Alabama?

[IMJ]

Originally Posted by CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy

Shout out to Alabama?

I think he's talking about California. The stuff I've been reading about what those people are doing to their consent laws - I can't believe it.

[ABrown]

Originally Posted by CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy

Shout out to Alabama?

Originally Posted by IMJ

I think he's talking about California. The stuff I've been reading about what those people are doing to their consent laws - I can't believe it.

Indiana actually

[sdp]

Fat acceptance is now a thing, you go to malls and see overweight people in ads. I'm guessing her next appearance will be far more "curvy", April's days of wearing crop top shirts are over.

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

April keeps getting younger in each iteration, she'll be 8 years old in the next one.

[CyberCubed]

April was 27 according to the games:



I always saw her as a mother figure for that reason.

I remember thinking that was "old" when I was a kid...now I'm older than April was in the original toon.

Goddamn.

[IndigoErth]

Originally Posted by sdp

April keeps getting younger in each iteration, she'll be 8 years old in the next one.

Forget all the scary imagery of Halloween...nothing beats the horror of the thought of TMNT ending up on Nick Jr.

[ABrown]

Originally Posted by sdp

Fat acceptance is now a thing, you go to malls and see overweight people in ads. I'm guessing her next appearance will be far more "curvy", April's days of wearing crop top shirts are over.

This is her in the next series. And they do another crossover with the original TMNT:

Original TMNT: "Oh lord, your April got cross mutated with a walrus?"

Next TMNT: "No??? That's April"