Would the turtles still be as popular if they were females?

[MsMarvelDuckie]

Originally Posted by Powder

What's annoying is your use of constant use of caps lock, & that it's used in place of italics, though that too, in such excess, would be annoying.

What's really irksome is that you're still blind to the fact that in using his quirks as the baseline for any sort of non-binary persons personality, you're effectively treating them as stereotypes all the same, whether it's being gay or something else. "He's this way, & that's clearly indicative of an issue with gender/sexuality!"

If there's such a thing as giving a microcosm of a rats ass about your fan-fiction, that's what I give. Point is, you're treating real people's often painful circumstances as a fun bit of flare for the "weird" character.

Oh, I'm sorry, was I supposed to be upset by that? Honestly, I don't really give a flying fig if YOU cared or not, but I felt it was relevant to the discussion of turtles as female (since in that fic he sort of is). Donnie being (part) female as a way of explaining some of his traits in THAT version simply seemed like a fun twist to his character, and it added a lot of tension and drama to the story because no one else knew about it. He kept it secret (on Splinter's advice) to avoid awkwardness with his brothers, who he felt would treat him differently if they knew.

It was hardly a stereotype, in any case. His hermaphroditism caused strain between him and Mikey both before and after he found out, and also caused tension with the other two later when he was forced to hide his real reason for not telling them about the favor Mikey had asked him. (He refused, and was afraid Mikey would try to out him over it.) So there was a lot more going on than just some dumb "oh look, he's feminine" crap. Actually, he was neither. But since he was PART female, he had a hormonal imbalance that caused some of the traits seen in the series. How is this a stereotype? It was a medical condition from having two separate genders (as a chimera with both reproductive organs, but no ability to use either one). I just used those quirks as a jumping-off point for the whole thing. Or to put it another way, I looked for things about his character that could fit in with what I wanted to do, that could be considered "feminine" under the right circumstances.

And FYI, I use the caps because it's faster and easier than having to stop and use the italics or bold inserts for emphasis every time I want something to stand out. If it annoys YOU, well, if there's such a thing as giving a microcosm of a rats ass about what you think, that's what I give, too.

Originally Posted by Jester

So what you're saying is you made him "different" via stereotypes, but just didn't go for the super-obvious difference?

It wasn't even a stereotype, actually, it was something subtle that I used in the tale to show why he felt the way he did about certain things and why he wasn't as hormonal as the others; outing himself to Mikey during a tense situation made for a family bonding moment and also later brought more tension when he thought Mikey might hold it over him to get what he wanted. I even used the hermie idea to poke fun at some of the T-cest tropes, by having him pretend to come on to Raph during a sparring match as a way to beat him. (It freaked him out, obviously. Leo too. Mikey just thought it was hilarious, since he already knew and put two and two together to figure out what was going on.) When he then tried the same thing on him, Mikey just tapped out from laughing so hard. Which annoyed Raph, since they were teaming up and it caused them to lose.

But no, it was anything BUT a stereotype in how it was used. Making him more "feminine" PHYSICALLY, gave his character some new dimensions that sent him in a different direction than most fics do, like crushing on April or going full gay, or anything else that has been done a million times. If you mean making him "different" physically, then yes, in some ways, he WAS, due to having a stronger dose of female hormones. Same mentally, though I made little mention of how it actually affected him other than a distinct lack of any sort of libido. The long and short of it was that his hormonal imbalance from being a chimera caused the personality quirks he had in the OT. It had nothing to do with using a stereotype as such, but using an imbalance to explain his differences. If anything, it was based more on a medical condition than a simple stereotype.

Basically, he was asexual, not gay, not feminine, or even bi or trans. He just HAPPENED to have the parts of BOTH. But for what it's worth, I really just wanted him to be the one turtle who was outside the issues that the others were dealing with- namely, mating season. Unfortunately, the best explanation for WHY he wouldn't be affected by that was to make him gay, which I didn't want to do. And since he was BASED on the OT version, that was the obvious choice, but was discarded as too clichéd. So, how to deal with Donnie being so unaffected in the middle of mating season when the others are all acting like (pardon the pun) animals? I did some digging into various disorders, and that popped out as a means of making him TRULY unique among them, as the only one who would never be able to physically experience ANY kind of arousal or romantic partnership. Rather than a simple stereotype (as with being gay), I went with a much more complex and painful situation for him.