I don't really see TMNT as a talking animal franchise, is that weird?

[Leo656]

Actually never saw any of those, but I can imagine.

I couldn't take it if someone did one of those for any of mine (although mine were "Award-Winning", technically ), and that's a huge reason why they're not for public consumption.

I know for a fact that I'm a better writer than most people who dabble in the hobby, all modesty aside. And I can take some heckling, I put up with it every time I put tights on and play-fight people for money. It's just that the heckling is easier to take when you're getting paid for it, I'd be pretty annoyed if people were giving me sh*t about stuff I did off the clock in my free time. I just can't be bothered. Like even if you're not "a bad writer" someone's always gonna try and razz ya.

[TigerClaw]

I see TMNT as a talking animal franchise, With some occasional humans mixed in, Because of this, It inspired a bunch of copycats that are also of the talking animals variety.

[neatoman]

Originally Posted by TigerClaw

I see TMNT as a talking animal franchise, With some occasional humans mixed in

That's... Literally the reverse of what it is, the vast majority of the characters are human.

[TigerClaw]

Originally Posted by neatoman

That's... Literally the reverse of what it is, the vast majority of the characters are human.

The humans are supporting characters.

[neatoman]

Originally Posted by TigerClaw

The humans are supporting characters.

Supporting characters that make up like, what? 50-70% of the major characters? With a significant portion of the remaining characters being alien that either skew towards human in appearance or at least away from a real world animal, as well as some characters being demons, robots, etc.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by Leo656

I encourage people to do whatever they wanna do, creatively. I just missed the whole period where it was a "trend" and only really tagged along on the end of it. So I've never read a "good" one A-to-Z. I'd also rather write stuff than read stuff, generally.

I'm the first one to dismiss the idea that there's no good ones, I always stick up for the genre just in general. Just for whatever reason I've seen a lot of stuff that seems like the person writing it is like, eight.

I haven't read a fanfic in ages. But I mostly stuck to the better written ones. You just need to read the synopsis and a couple of paragraphs of the first chapter to determine if the person writing it isn't illiterate. Also, remember most fanfics seem to be written by teenagers. And English isn't the first language of a lot of those people. So it's not surprising.

Even the best fanfics I read come nowhere close to the quality of a good novel. Neither have I ever expected them to. I view fanfics as a good gateway for aspiring authors to write stories about established fictional characters and universes. But ask any book author for advice on how to write and every single one will tell you to read a lot of books. None tell you to read fanfiction online.

Originally Posted by IndigoErth

Bad fanfic is only good when it's so bad in the right ways that it's accidentally funny.

But YouTube videos of dramatic readings of bad fanfic are awesome.

I didn't know that was a thing but I'm not surprised.

And yes, I've always avoided the ones with "lemon warning" in their synopsis.

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by Prowler

Even the best fanfics I read come nowhere close to the quality of a good novel. Neither have I ever expected them to.

The one I've been working on for the last number of years is actually longer than The Lord of the Rings.

Whenever anyone tells me I take everything far too seriously... I can't in good conscience disagree.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by Leo656

The one I've been working on for the last number of years is actually longer than The Lord of the Rings.

Whenever anyone tells me I take everything far too seriously... I can't in good conscience disagree.

I've been told similar things throughout my life. I tend to take my hobbies and interests seriously. And for some reason, people tend to find that annoying and strange. In HS I was the stereotypical wrestling fan who talked about it 80% of the time and thought about it 24/7. Many other classmates of mine liked wrestling too, but gave me flack for my "obsession" with it. Even though some of them were just as obsessed with football, drinking and smoking weed. I hated being a teenager.

[Leo656]

God, I can hardly even remember being a wrestling fan. I've hated it for so long it feels like another life.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by Leo656

God, I can hardly even remember being a wrestling fan. I've hated it for so long it feels like another life.

I'm not that big of a fan anymore either. Haven't watched a show in a long time. WWE I haven't watched since the pandemic began. AEW? I don't remember the last time I watched it. I've seen nothing from CM Punk and Brian Danielson tenures there. AEW wasn't as bad as WWE but still not so great, so I lost interest.

It's easy as hell to drop off wrestling since most entertainment out there is way better than it. Why sit through a 2 hour long wrestling show when I can just play video games, listen to music, watch anime or a movie?

[IndigoErth]

Originally Posted by Prowler

Many other classmates of mine liked wrestling too, but gave me flack for my "obsession" with it. Even though some of them were just as obsessed with football, drinking and smoking weed. I hated being a teenager.

I hope people are getting over those stupid double standards, esp since after "geek" stuff became cool. I mean, come on, things like football (either kind but esp the U.S. one) are hardly any different to be hardcore into just because it's a sport. Unless you're (general "you") the most boring person on Earth, there's surely at least one thing that you're a total unapologetic dork over. Everyone should have their thing.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by IndigoErth

I hope people are getting over those stupid double standards, esp since after "geek" stuff became cool. I mean, come on, things like football (either kind but esp the U.S. one) are hardly any different to be hardcore into just because it's a sport. Unless you're (general "you") the most boring person on Earth, there's surely at least one thing that you're a total unapologetic dork over. Everyone should have their thing.

Big football fans are indeed very geeky. They know the squads of every club out there and the names of the winners of every single competition throughout history by heart. Not to mention they spend a ton of time discussing tactics and the soap opera aspect sof the sport. Like who's dating which model and which club president is more corrupt.

That sounds pretty damn geeky to me.

[Antoniocafe]

The four turtles and Master Splinter aren't just regular animals that have the ability to talk. The have humanoid forms. Its not as though theyre normal size animals walking around on all fours. They basically live and act as normal humans, well outside of living in the sewer.

[Leo656]

Y'know what was a cool book? Hepcats. Too bad the creator was a flake, I've always wanted to see where that was going.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by Leo656

Y'know what was a cool book? Hepcats. Too bad the creator was a flake, I've always wanted to see where that was going.

Is that about cats that have hepatitis or something?

[Leo656]

LOL no. "Hepcat" is very old slang that basically means someone who's "cool" or "with it".

It's a book about a bunch of college students, one of whom is dating a stripper who's got Heavy Damage nobody knows about, and the book starts off kinda lighthearted but then it takes a hard Left Turn into Very Dark Stuff when the girlfriend abruptly tries to kill herself out of nowhere. They then get into her backstory and it's a whole big thing about her Dad having a psychotic break one day and trying to rape and murder both her and her sister before he kills himself, all for reasons never explained. So she'd run into someone from her past and all the memories came flooding back and that's why she tried to kill herself.

The story never got more than a couple issues past that because the creator had his own personal stuff going on, and he just never got around to finishing it. It's kind of held up as an example of the Good and Bad in independent comics; Good in that it was initially very popular and successful for an indie comic, but Bad in that without any oversight the creator just meandered away from it and so it's forever unfinished, despite having a pretty passionate fanbase. He's apologized a million times and sometimes he even says "Maybe I'll wrap it up one day" but by this point 20+ years since the last time he published anything, nobody believes him anymore.

But yeah, it is very much NOT a "talking animal book" in any fashion, it's just a "slice of life" drama. It just happens to feature an entire cast of characters with animal heads, partly because before he started the comic book the writer had used those characters in a strip for his college newspaper and those things tend to get more attention than strips with Regular People do.

It's a book worth a look, it's very well-written but it literally never gets anything close to a resolution and that's incredibly frustrating.

[Prowler]

Well, that sure is an unexpected plot for a book with such title.

[Leo656]

I think it was carried over from the newspaper strip. I never read the strip but from what I understand it was totally different from the eventual comic, it just had the same cast of characters. The newspaper strip was a standard three- or four-panel humor strip but obviously for an ongoing series the writer wanted to have a completely different approach.

It's interesting because the first chunk gives you NO idea at all what's to come and it's just a "regular" story about a bunch of friends who hang out and are trying to find direction as young adults. Then out of nowhere you open up an issue and the female main character is half-dead in the hospital and the male lead has no idea what happened any more than the reader does, and it's a huge emotional sucker-punch.

I picked it up ages ago after it showed up on a ton of Recommended lists. Definitely earns its reputation BUT at the time nobody knew it was an abandoned work, it was supposedly just "on hiatus" while the creator dealt with some personal problems. Too bad, I think the issue where things suddenly went dark had won some awards or something. People really wanted to see the conclusion but we never will.

[Cowabung-Gal]

I can relate more to a bunch of talking animals than I can to the Eternals.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by Cowabung-Gal

I can relate more to a bunch of talking animals than I can to the Eternals.

I found the Turtles very relatable as well when I was a kid, as I found the Tiny Toons and Looney Tunes characters and Garfield. But I don't think it has to do with them being talking animals. Any fictional character can be relatable to me if it has the right personality. Doesn't matter if they're Eternals, human, ghosts, animals, aliens, robots, etc.