the turtles Zodiac/personalities
 

since this started in the Episode discussion and it caused the entire thread to go way off topic.....I decide to put it here.

....
 

umm... whats the topic exactly??

in the new episode discussion thread in the New TMNT section, people went off topic and started to talk about the family order, zodiac personalities, when are the TMNT birthdates....so I put it here. In the other discussion,

http://www.thetechnodrome.com/forums...c&start=80

it became very interesting on what people thought about the TMNT's personalities, family order, and zodiac.

i believe that this is the family order

Leo--Leo??
Don--Aquarius
Raph--scorpio??
Mikey--capaicorn??

Hmm, well I remember figureing out their zodiac signs at some point. I remember I had Don as an Aquarius (an air sign noted for intelligence and creativity), and Raph as a Scorpio (passionate, "dark" and sometimes violent. And very compatable with Libra. *cough*)

I'll have to dig my books out this weekend and go over things. Hmmm, wonder what Splinter's sign would be...

You're right. I remember that! Hmm... I know my brother kept all his old boxes. I just have to find them...

Okay, this is just a repeat, so ingnore it if you have already been reading on the other topic.

There actually several studies out there in psychology concerning "Birth Order" and how it affects your personality. The best source of information on the subject is "The Birth Order Book" or "The New Birth Order Book", which is just and updated edition. Written by a guy named Leman I think. Anyway its very interesting in how different people are based entirely upon where they were born into their family.

I had no idea that the creators had specifically stated the birth order of the Turtles. Leonardo and Michelangelo are pretty obvious ones. I had always debated how Donatello and Raphael, the middle ones, fell into things.

LEONARDO is the spitting image of a first-born. First-borns tend to be the most motivated in families. They are more likely to go to college and become professionals and executives. More doctors, lawyers, etc are first-borns. Nearly all astronauts have been first-borns. And the majority of American presidents, like George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, are first borns. Leonardo fits perfectly. He acts as Splinter's lieutenant and heir apparant. The eldest tends to take after the parent(s) much more than the younger siblings who are actually affected more by their older sibling(s) than they are by their parents. As the leader and the most skilled and discplined of the Turtles, Leo is obviously the oldest (and I'm guessing this was confirmed by Eastman).

DONATELLO is apparently the second-born. Middle children are unusual in that there is little difference in their personality whether they are second, third, fourth, etc, as long as they have at least one sibling older and one younger. The second oldest is most impacted by the firstborn. We can see this among the Turtles. While Leonardo is consumed with ninjitsu and spirituality, Donatello went the opposite way, as is typical with secondborns. Donatello has gone as far from Leo's interests as possible with science, math, technology, engineering, mr fix it, etc. Donatello, unconsiously, knowing that he could not upsurp Leonardo as far as training and leadership, went to find his own path. In additition, Donatello is typically the second most responsibly and mature, below Leonardo.

RAPHAEL has classic middle-child syndrome. He is completely out of place within the Turtles. He has nothing of his own. He isn't discplined like Leonardo, smart like Donatello, or artistic and humourous like Michelangelo. No wonder he's the loner and the first one to go off on his own. Middle children are almost always the ones to move far away from home, if this happens mind you. That said, Raphael seems to upsurped Donatello as the number two Turtle. Raphael also has many big brother qualities, particularly toward Michelangelo. Only Leonardo, Raph's eldest brother, can exercise the least bit of control over him.

MICHELANGELO is as obviously the lastborn as Leonardo is the firstborn. He the baby of the family if there ever was one. Mikey loves being the center of attention and will do anything to get it. With his older brothers having pretty much covered all possible accomplishments, Mike has to work hard to get his cut of Splinter's attention. He's the one who'll get a "booboo" and expect everyone to take care of him. Lastborns are usually the creative, artistic, or funny ones of the family. The majority of actors, comedians, and muscians are the youngest in their family. Michelangelo follows suit.

Yeah, that's something I mentioned earlier. I was asking if that was true. I'm glad I'm not crazy and that really was true. Huh...I wish I still had my boxes. I've got the figures in the attic at home, but I don't think I have any boxes. Maybe somebody else does, or maybe they are on the web scanned somewhere.

Either way, thanks for the info.

Actually under certain circumstances a Leo will have similar personality traits to Raph... Both my younger sisters being good examples (both are middle) And yes... when the turtles came out there were many arguments on who was like who among me and my three sisters... The youngest was to young to say anything so she was always Mikey, And I was always Donnatello...

Actually, this is pretty good insight into their psychology. It really does fit in with what's seen on the show. Now if only we had some sort of psychological model for the relationship between another quartet: Rocksteady, Bebop, Shredder and Krang. Despite the fact that they're not siblings, they still seem like a kind of weird, lopsided family at times.

This topic is flawed since, like people have said, the Turtles are all the same age. After all, they DID come from the same bowl.

ahem
 

No offense to everyone whose put a lot of thought into this topic, but it is all sheer projectionism. People are reading stuff into the TMNT that is, frankly, not there.

According to the "official story", the TMNT are all "born" on the same day (the day they were mutated). Their actual births are irrelevant since they lacked any humanoid personality or intelligence prior to their exposure to the mutagen. And, they were all mutated at the same time.

In any event, and this is regarding the Mirage TMNT and not other versions, none of the Turtles are Zodaic/Godai archetypes to begin with. They are genuine characters that develop, not stagnant cliched archetypes that have been done a thousand times in other formats. That's the catch here. The TMNT are independent unique characters.

For a long time, I tried to "link" each of the Mirage TMNT to one of the four elements via the Godai. I found it to ultimately be fruitless as they were not created on the basis of either the Godai or the Zodiac. The turtles have different personalities, yes, but this is better explained with a deep knowledge of human experience and developmental psychology than using some archaic, empirically-disproven, mythic symbols.

A while back, I did something of a "psychoanalysis" of the "original" TMNT, the Mirage versions (all the other versions are really just later abberations or alterations of the original characters). I found it much more useful to label them in the general preconventional/conventional/postconventional schema, or to use the Spiral Dynamics system. They were far more accurate because they are empirically used to analyze actual personalities and not stagnant archetypes like Zodiac or Five Elements.

It actually come out to the following:
1) Leonardo: conventional/sociocentric, primarily, just beginning to reach the postconventional/worldcentric levels; blue to organge memes.
2) Raphael: preconventionl/egocentric, primarily, just beginning to reach the conventional/sociocentric levels; red to blue memes.
3) Donatello: postconventional/worldcentric, with only a vignette of conventiona/sociocentric remaining; orange to green memes.
4) Michelangelo: full postconventional/worldcentric; green to yellow memes.

I believe the TMNT were designed to reflect realistic, life-like personalities... and not simply be "been there done that" stereotypes or archetypes.

Well, those are my opinions anyway. Laterz.

Re: ahem
 

The strange thing about Birth Order, is that it doesn't really matter that they were "born" at the same time. Twins, triplets, quadruplets, will all develop birth order roles even though they were born at the same time. For instance with twins, if there are no other children in the family, one twin will develop a firstborn personality and the other will develop a lastborn personality. So it doesn't matter whether or not the Turtles were born at the same time or not, they would still, and apparently have, developed birth order roles.

We know that age still affects them, even if they were mutated at the same time. Splinter was older and much more mature than the Turtles at the time of mutation, so that carried over. So if Leonardo had been hatched before Michelangelo and had matured more pre-mutation, then that would have carried over to post-mutation just as Splinter did over the Turtles.

We don't really know when the Turtles hatched, or whether they are actually brothers or not. Seems like on the old toys (not that they are a reliable source of info) the Turtles were not birth brothers. They had different ages and may have even been different types of Turtles.

But if Eastman gave particular birth orders to the Turtles, then that must mean something. I wish I could find where he said that.

Well I have always tought the Turtles hatched at the same time. If you buy 4 babe turtles in a class bowl, wouldn't it be starnge if some would have been there months before other came in... Well who knows.

It's true that the "elemental" system often greatly oversimplifies people and personalities, but in a way, it can still be used to ROUGHLY classify people into groups. And even if it's not the most precise method to get inside turtles' heads, it'll still be brought up a million times over, because its appeal lies in its simplicity of comprehension.

Besides, people have to keep in mind that the primary reason for their character differentiations wasn't to prove one psychological theory over another, it was simply marketing at its finest. In order for the kids to buy each individual toy, they better have vastly different personalities (and colours) so that they could be easily identified. I don't think I need to elaborate on that any more.

But if we are going to liken them to humans, then yes, it is true that even if they are twins or whatnot, they would develop differently. In human siblings, it is usually theor overwhelming similarity that pushes people to act differently and thus become a different person. So even if the turtles were born at the same time, or months apart, the outcome would be the same.

Appreciated.

Well, just because the TMNT were all in the same bowl at the same time, doesn't mean they were all born, errr hatched at the same time. And anyway, even if they were, there's a lot more to a horoscope than the "sun sign" we're all familiar with. Every planet, and a couple moons, and stars are all charted, and change by the minute.

And it makes a BIG difference, believe me. (And no, I'm not charting all four of them out. This is fun, but not THAT fun.)