#sometimes Krang sneaks up on him and just listens to him talk like ????

[turtleblogatlast]

AU where Leo is trapped in the Prison Dimension for months instead of minutes and the only way he gets by with his sanity intact is through recording himself talking to his wrist comm.

When they finally manage to get Leo back and make him rest up to heal, Donnie can’t help but listen to the recordings left behind.

He’s not sure what exactly he’s expecting, only that his subconscious is screaming at him that it has to be heartbreaking, that it has to be torturous.

Instead, what Donnie is subject to is a full thousand hours’ worth of Jupiter Jim and Lou Jitsu crossover fanfiction. More than one part in the series. Spanning well over a million words.

(The worst part is that it’s actually good.)

#rottmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rottmnt headcanons #donnie keeps the comms going on in the background as he works #when he gets to the end he’s like what the hell…where’s the rest #donnie: leo where’s part nine #leo barely cognizant after not needing sleep for months: whuh- #donnie: you can’t leave it at a cliffhanger. leo. leo where’s the next part. #listen leo has a great memory for his special interests this is CANON plus he’s a great talker so he would totally be able to do this frfr #whenever he needs to be quiet he’s SILENT but otherwise he’s regaling the exploits of his idols to the captive audience that is The Photo #sometimes Krang sneaks up on him and just listens to him talk like ???? #it starts both as leo trying to comfort himself with his favorite things PLUS comfort himself with thoughts of his father #as splinter makes his own crossover fanfiction when sick lol plus he’s Literally Lou Jitsu #and yes krang ALSO gets a bit invested #leo notices the reduction of Ouch but hey more time for rambling fanfic for him 👍 #idk leo’s a damn good actor/liar/planner/schemer and I genuinely think that can pivot into storytelling so well #the literal second mikey’s hands heal donnie zooms to his side with hand stabilizers and a request to draw ‘scene 82 from recording 3’ #mikey’s like what #so obvs now HE needs to listen as he works #he too gets invested #he comes across raph who mentions having trouble sleeping #mikey: have I got the podcast fanfic for you! #it only somewhat helps raph sleep #somewhat bc sometimes he forces himself to stay awake to hear the rest #yes these recordings go to the whole fam and leo is none the wiser #they don’t even mean to hide it it just never comes up lol #it’s only when donnie FINALLY makes it to the end of the recordings that he confronts leo to continue the story #leo: oH YOU HEARD ALL THAT HUH-

[dandylovesturtles]

For the writer ask!

I’m intrigued by all of these but especially the podcast and the class of 2024 ones because they have the least amount of context clues, I would love some elaboration!

Class of 2024 is a one shot I intend to finish... sometime lol, when I have more time to get back to it. Here's a bit:

“If the damn Krang hadn’t invaded, I’d have been graduating in a few weeks.”

“Oh.” Donnie’s typing finally pauses, and he looks at her. Gives her his attention, and she loves him for it even while the practical part of her wants him to get back to whatever surely critical thing he was just working on. “I guess you would be. Assuming you graduated on time and didn’t have to repeat anything.”

She elbows him in the side, and even though she knows it doesn’t hurt him he jerks back. “I would have graduated on time, Dee.”

“I’m only covering our bases! We can’t know the counterfactual, after all.” She elbows him again.

“Donatello Hamato, you are the worst,” she tells him with all the fondness in the world.

His lips quirk up in a barely there smile. One of his battleshell arms extends and resumes typing, but he hasn’t looked back at it himself so she knows his main focus is still on her.

“Would you have gone to graduation?”

“Hm, probably. I mean, I don’t really care, but Mom-” She’d been about to say that her mom wants to go, present tense, and she just manages to stop herself. It’s crazy that it’s been two years, and still sometimes…

“...Mom would have thrown a fit if I skipped it,” she finally says, past tense, and she catches the way Donnie’s eyes cloud because he knows. God does he know.

They’re both orphans. She pushes the thought aside before she can let it erode all her carefully crafted walls.

“As would the rest of us,” says Donnie now, moving them straight past dangerous territory, and much as she hates that he dodges talking about emotions she appreciates it right now. It’s too damn late - or too early - for that. “You know how much fun we had sneaking into your high school graduation, surely you wouldn’t deny us the chance of a repeat.”

“Only if you promised not to bring the air horns.”

“I can’t promise that.”

“Then consider your chance denied.”

As for the Podcast Sep AU, that's an idea that has grown out of this post I wrote awhile back, except I basically just kept "the boys meet online" and changed everything else about it haha. In this version, April and Donnie have a true crime podcast that theorizes about the mysterious disappearance of Lou Jitsu, and the other three listen to it regularly, and then miscellaneous things happen along the way. It's a bit more angsty and less of a comedy than my original idea because I am myself, though it's still largely intended to be lighthearted as far as separated AUs go.

uh I'll just put some of the notes I posted on discord under the cut:

LEO

Leo calls Hypno Papa or Pop and calls Warren Dad, unless he's being a brat then he calls him Warren (this happens daily tbh)

they lived for awhile off money they each individually had saved up (also maybe Hypno's ratty apartment is Rent Controlled) but eventually they had to start having an active revenue stream so they started stealing

Leo loves stage magic OBVI but he's especially good at sleight of hand tricks and close up magic

so he starts using those skills to pickpocket

his dads don't really like him doing this (mostly out of concern for his safety rather than ethics) but they also can't really stop him unless they confine him to the house and they don't really want to do that so v(._.)v BOYS WILL BE BOYS IG

he gives them most of the money but he keeps some for himself for comics or other random things he wants

when Leo was still pretty little Hypno watched some Lou Jitsu movies out of curiosity, he knew who Lou Jitsu was but had never really watched the movies himself

he likes them alright but they aren't really his thing

but Leo came in and was immediately enthralled by it and became a big fan

Hypno knows LJ is Leo's human "dad" but decides not to tell him because he thinks it will just make Leo sad that he got left behind, also Hypno and Warren aren't even sure if LJ and the other three turtles survived

anyway this is what starts Leo on being an LJ fan and why he eventually finds Donnie and April's podcast

MIKEY

Mikey calls Repo "Boss" pretty much all the time, and Repo mostly calls him kid, occasionally he'll call him Mike

Repo taught Mikey how to read and do basic math growing up but that's pretty much it

so Mikey learns a lot of things from the internet and A LOT OF IT IS NOT CORRECT this will drive Donnie crazy later

Mikey learned about Lou Jitsu from stumbling across some old dvds someone threw out and got interested that way

he spends a lot of his time making art in the junkyard when he's not working for Repo

Dr. Delicate Touch still comes out when he is helping Repo

Repo doesn't get mutated until the time he does in canon but when he does get mutated he's just kinda like "shrug" and moves on with life lol

Mikey thinks it's cool though

also Mikey is a little greasy gremlin child 100% of the time, this will also drive Donnie crazy later

DONNIE

initially I thought April's dad would be out of the picture for whatever reason but I decided he's still here he just works overseas/out of town a lot

when April brought Donnie to Mama O'Neil she called Papa O'Neil like "hey I found a baby and I'm keeping him"

Papa was like ????? so she took a pic with a digital camera and uploaded it and sent it to him because that's what we did in 2005

Papa like that is a wholeass frog

she explained the situation and he was like OKAY GUESS WE HAVE A GREEN SON NOW he was chill with it though

they committed light identity fraud so technically Donnie has a birth certificate and is enrolled in online school

Donnie still invents but he doesn't have the space for it like in canon and also Mama will come after him if he sets anything on fire or explodes anything so a lot of his stuff is smaller atm, but he's been scoping out places he can use as a lab in secret for bigger projects recently

he's also a twitch streamer who uses a video filter over video of his own face to make his movements look more stiff and plasticy and he passes himself off as a vtuber this way

he cheats a lot

April also streams and she gets annoyed by this lol

they both became fans of Lou Jitsu when they were younger and they often traded conspiracy theories about what happened to him

then after binging one or two true crime podcasts they were like HEY WE CAN DO THAT TOO

RAPH

Splinter really is trying his best ok

he's SUPER DEPRESSED that he lost the other kids, especially Donnie and Mikey because like Leo getting lost in the lab explosion is one thing, realistically he can't really help that, but he left the kids alone when he lost Donnie and Mikey and that haunts him forever

he told Raph he was the only one who survived the lab explosion but Raph has very very vague memories of not being alone, then suddenly being alone

he doesn't push it with Splinter but he just has a feeling his siblings are out there

even if he doesn't remember it, this had a bad effect on him and he has a hard time being alone now

of course as Raph's gotten old enough to take care of himself, Splinter has become more distant/more depressed, he loves Raph of course but he's also going through it

Raph trains himself a lot with this idea that he's going to go out and be a hero and maybe even find his brothers, but his anxiety makes it hard for him to actually leave the lair for more than to get groceries or things like that

also Splinter and Raph's lair is like way more dilapidated and not very cozy with no Donnie to help with the mechanical side of things

it's like the most bummer bachelor pad ever in here, they have a mini fridge and it's full of sauces

Raph occasionally gets seen by maintenance workers from a distance so there's all kinds of rumors about him and he's the local cryptid, not that he realizes this (the others will be excited when they put this together)

Raph is just really lonely all the time and when he meets the others through the podcast it's the first time he finds community ;w;

#writer ask game #I'm not making up fic tags for these yet either lol #mainly because I don't know for sure what to call them