This Is Your Sign To Yap About Your Tmnt Au

This is your sign to yap about your tmnt au

oh wait i wasn't actually expecting this now i don't know what to say- i'm just gonna. snatch the random stuff i rambled about on discord

full disclaimer that it is. not very developed yet! i haven't really figured out the plot, or the turtles entirely, so i'm mostly gonna yap about random details i hope that's okay (usually i avoid posting au's unless i deem them "finished enough" but uh that's never happened. so.)

so. in this au two of the turtles were made purposefully, and the other two accidentally (all four with the same ooze, but two were like,,, prepped for it beforehand, so the mutation sorta "assimilated" better with predetermined traits, while with the other two it ended up being more random)

read more because im yapping

donnie's a northern long/snake-necked turtle, mikey is an eastern box turtle, leo's a flordia softshell, and raph is a common snapper <- (this is also their height order)

they're used to wearing clothes in this au!! idk it just makes sense to me, that since splinter used to be human in this au and still wears clothes, he'd teach that to his sons, to an extent???

they don't mind being clothe-less (they do not bother with swimsuits), at least around family, because they are Turtles with nothing to see, but clothing allows them to express themselves!! and warmth, seeing as donnie's the only warm-blooded one and runs cold anyway

splinter has taken them to the surface since they were young, only after thoroughly scouting for a mostly secluded place, because the books splinter snatched said that children need things like sunshine and fresh air (or as fresh as new york can get, i guess? i don't know what the air is like there sorry guys. my only guess is that it's better than the sewers)

so they are used to being topside, watching the city from afar, but going to the surface alone for the first time ends up being a big deal for them as teens. that's when they end up meeting april!

they've known casey ever since they were all small, and casey definitely sees the turtles and splinter as his second family. he also calls leo a frog, as an inside joke to what tiny casey originally thought leo was

splinter wasn't a great dad when they were young. (he was sort of struggling with suddenly becoming a rat with four children, understandably) he didn't pay attention to them as long as he could find them when he looked. an incident ended up making him come to the reality that he's they're sole caretaker and he needs to step up, so he stole snatched a bunch of books on parenting and turtles and got way more invested in his sons' lives. current day turtles love their dad

age wise, technically nothing is set in stone for them except mikey being the youngest, since besides him the turtles developed too close together for splinter to figure out an age order. (like,, raph was the first to walk, but donnie was the first to talk, and none of them were really ahead of the others)

so oldest is based on the mood. raph was the oldest when they were tots, but that title slid on over to donnie over the years, and while leo can have older sibling energy, he rarely actually gets to Be the Oldest Sibling.

everybody knows raph has a sweet spot for mikey. he Will still carry him around even though mikey is taller.

if you have any specific questions, PLEASE ASK THEM! i probably won't have the answer, but it'll force me to figure the answer out, yknow? think about things i wouldn't have otherwise

have my first attempt at a mikey design as a thank you for sending an ask!!