To Anyone Who Likes Venus: Why?

[Konchadunga]

I'm not usually the type who points fingers and calls people out for not sharing my opinion, so I'll try to keep this as un-accusatory as possible...but I hate Venus; passionately. Much as I've come to disapprove of Peter Laird, and his decade of tyranny and exhaustive pessimism, I agree with him 100% on this point, and now that Laird's out of the spotlight, I've noticed an enormous amount of Venus fans coming out of the woodwork. Prompting me to ask again, why?

I gave The Next Mutation a fair chance, and up until Venus came into the story, I actually thought it was kind of funny (though a lot of the humor was unintentional and embarrassing), but this character was far worse than I could have expected. Simply put, Venus seems like an awful fancharacter some hack on DeviantArt invented. She's female, for no apparent reason than to add a female to the team, has breasts, for no apparent reason other than to emphasize that she's female, and most of all, she is absolutely the worst Mary-Sue I have ever seen in a for-profit work, and actually even worse than many Mary-Sues in fanfiction.

Let's look at her introduction; in a total of one episode, she beats up all the real turtles and hangs them from the ceiling, rewrites continuity to make the turtles not siblings, so a romance is possible (and as an aside, this is incredibly stupid, especially because it was unnecessary; they could have made the four males siblings and Venus unrelated), and defeats Shredder just by telling him to fight from the inside, so the creators could put an original villain in the show, too.

I may be prejudging her fandom, here, but I have to wonder if they're the same people who fawn over Turtlecest, and treat Donny X April as absolutely the most important thing in the 2012 series; in short, people who see a need to force excessive romance into an action-adventure-comedy series that never relied on it. Outside of potential for romance, what exactly did Venus add to the series? What is it that makes Kevin Eastman declare that he loves her, when in fact, the bulk of the fandom still agrees with Peter Laird on her?

[Bossa Nova]

I don't rightly know how to answer you on this as I am also not a Venus fan, but I CAN assure you that there is absolutely no correlation from what I've seen of the many many fans who enjoy tcest and/or Turtlexhuman pairings and liking Venus. Actually, I notice those fans who tend to like her also enjoy characters like Mona Lisa which makes more sense to me...they like female mutants being paired with the turtles. Fans who like tcest, well, there's not much of a need for a female turtle now is there, and those who like Turtlexhuman pretty much dig having human characters, so once again, not much need for a female turtle. Besides, as you said yourself, Venus is a flat 1-dimensional, supreme Mary Sue, and as much as you might not like romance in its other forms, not all romance has to be that shallow and boring. Depth and real characterization can take place in these other relationships which just seems much more challenging with a character like Venus.

[Avatar Yuffie]

It's most likely execution. Venus simply made a poor reception to the fans. The second mistake is making her a love interest instead of a sister. And then her Mary Sue-ness.

Ninjara is the new girl and Raph's girlfriend, but I really have yet to meet someone in this forum who rabidly hates her, even though Archie sadly didn't add much to her character (a sidestory about her Japanese family and other adventures before she met the Turtles would actually be nice IMHO). On the rare moments Ninjara and April are having girl talk, they failed the Bechdel test. I am actually glad because people nowadays are snorting on female characters for being "just love interests", and she pretty much escaped unscathed from that.

As for turtlecest, I think they became popular in 2k3, thanks to Leo and Raph's supposed UST (sure, 4Kids didn't mean to, but shippers really like subtext).

[pannoni1]

It provided a chance to show that a five-man band needs a chick and that it provides an extra Turtle to improve their chances of defeating the villains. Venus could have been an orphan who needed to be adopted, but I'm not a fan of these Mary Sues, with so many more questions than answers when written that make you feel lost about her.

[Coola Yagami]

It was simply a matter of FOX demanding 'either add a female turtle or else no new show', and Kevin not making a big deal out of it as much as Peter did. It's not so much that Kevin loves Venus. It's more of a 'shrugs shoulders' yeah sure why not? kinda thing.

[CyberCubed]

She's a terrible idea because she was on the main cast.

Even if she were a recurring character, its still terrible. Girl turtles with psychic powers...is awful.

[Jester]

Just to make sure you're not just being a sexist idiot: What are your feelings about a male Turtle with an incredible new ability to read Japanese?

[ToTheNines]

Next Mutation was awful, and would have been just as awful without her. Venus is the only reason why anyone still talks about TNM.

[Justin]

Next Mutation was crappy, Venus was crappy, the network that created it was crappy and the people whom like Venus make my brain go crappy.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, I think Venus is one of those characters that should be reworked and retooled, similar to how Arcee was in TP. However, those of whom that don't want her in anything else ever may as well continue to believe that, seeing as how there is no interest amongst producers to use her besides one guy.

[Avatar Yuffie]

Kinda makes me wonder if Kirby was in TNM instead, and if people would hate him.

[sdp]

I like Venus.

Now there's a lot of misconceptions about Venus and many of them in your own post.

Why add a female turtle? Diversity, something new. The Turtles franchise was dead at this point and they thought this new extreme 90s version was going to get some of the popularity back.

TNM sucked because of Venus. No. TNM 'sucked' because it was a cheaply produced Saban AmeriToku show and it was extremely slapsticky.

Venus this...Venus that.. Many of these things are not even true. Making Venus a love interest is only implied in the first pilot and never again is it implied during the whole show. Her psychic powers and her being all that also only lasts during the pilot East meets West and in other episodes she isn't a broken character. This isn't that much different than when a new character appears in other shows and they're shown to be so much cooler than anything else we've done, this is especially done in shows like Power Rangers which Saban also made.

Ironically Venus is the best written character of TNM sans East meets West. Most of the fandom seems to just blame TNM on her or just because they have this precious idea of the turtles only being able to be 4. When I was a kid I welcomed the idea of a female turtle, now I don't really care and I'm glad there's only 4 but come on she is far from the worst character in the turtles franchise, way far. I'd love to see her and other TNM characters come back better written in a better show. I actually think most of the hate for Venus is uncalled for, you don't like the character? Ok, to each their own and there's definitely reasons why you might not like her but most of the negative things about Venus are just overblown nitpicks.

[ToTheNines]

Originally Posted by sdp

Ironically Venus is the best written character of TNM sans East meets West.

Ha. A very good point. Most people can't stomach more than the introductory 5 parter and use it to judge the whole series.

[Avatar Yuffie]

I really wouldn't mind having a female fifth Turtle tbqh.

Like mooncalfe's at least.

[CyberCubed]

The best episodes to come out of Next Mutation was the Vam Mi "Unchain my heart" 4-parter. Pretty much the only arc that wasn't entirely painful or dumbed down for kids.

There's also a surprising lot of cleavage in that episode from Vam Mi, especially when the actress bends down for a kids show.

[sdp]

Saban was never shy with their cleavage.

I actually didn't like the Vam Mi arc, thought it was boring though it did give us the best interpretation of Bonesteel. I don't remember very well but IIRC the Shredder episode at the end and the Good Dragon episode were the best episodes the show had.

[miru]

She's cute and reminds me of Blaze.

[Jester]

Originally Posted by miru

She's cute and reminds me of Blaze.

[Cipher]

You know who I'm totally ambivalent about?

Venus.

Fifth Turtle? Whatever. Girl turtle? Fine. Venus specifically? Not a very good character, but hey, no one in that series was.

I'd be hypothetically interested in seeing a take on her one day that wasn't tied to something as awful as Next Mutation, but if that day never comes, I'm not clamoring for it either.

My only deep-set feeling about her concept is that we should never see breast-shaped carapaces again.

[VaughnMichael]

There are quite a few good or fun episodes in the next mutation.
I don't think it's all bad I quite like vami mi, bonesteel, and dr quease.

[Slade]

Guess I'll admit it. I'm not a fan of a female turtle at all. Or a 5th turtle that's a part of the team and as a kid I hated the fact that she came along and all of a sudden the 4 guys aren't brothers.