The Case For Donnie And April

 I know this can be a contentious subject, and I'll cheerfully accept the contempt which is sometimes bestowed upon that species of fan, The Shipper, saving any thoughts about the label and the contempt for some other day. The fact is, in any and every iteration, I think it's pretty likely that Donatello will fall in love with April at some point, and that (dependent on circumstances, temperaments, and - obviously - relative ages) every once in a while he might have a chance. The metatext doesn't lie.

As far as I know, the 2012 show was the first version to explicitly address the idea that our resident TMNT polymath, a character who loves Shakespeare and/or Greek mythology, and gets excited over fractals and Dewey decimal and quantum processors, might actually be quite taken with the brave, intelligent young woman who becomes the Turtles' ally. I appreciated the 2012 take... it was so horribly, painfully, realistically awkward. Donnie had so much growing up to do to transform his attraction from a selfish adolescent passion into something that - whether simple friendship or otherwise - was worth offering, and safe to accept. And April, who seemed to have gotten so used to the attention that she couldn't just leave the poor guy alone when he was trying to get over her... oof. The whole thing was alternately torturous and sweet to watch. But they did grow, and their relationship matured over time, and whether it was patiently traversing ground toward romance, or just calming down into friendship, is still up for debate. To me it always looked more like the former. I could be wrong, but in Season 5 I honestly assumed they were being written as a couple. The very first shot of the two of them in the Kavaxas storyline, Donatello casually sitting at April's feet and eating noodles like it's no big deal, looked to me like a huge neon arrow sign. Because no matter how much of a solid friendship they might develop, the Donnie that I got to know on that series would always be on some sort of chivalrous high-alert around April to avoid making a misstep. I felt sure that the only possible cause for the level comfortable proximity laid out in this shot is that they've been established as a romantic duo... and I'll pay five bucks to the first person who brings me proof that Ciro Nieli says I'm wrong. 

People sometimes get antsy about the idea of the Ninja Turtles having romantic inclinations and lives, but I can't relate to that objection because to me the Ninja Turtles belong to the world of fairy tale. They have all the outer trappings of weird pulpy sci-fi and pop-culture homage, but (to be honest) that's just how we tell our fairy tales nowadays. And we sometimes forget that these kinds of stories used to be inherently dangerous and often turned out badly. That the happiness was contingent, and complicated, and often temporary. That protagonists lost or died, and plans were frustrated. Sounds a lot like the Turtles to me. 

So here we are, with Ninja Turtles and fairy tales, and - like the midpoint twist in a love story - April very suddenly and very distinctly becomes a creature of fairy tale herself. In the 2012 series she's a mutant-alien hybrid. In the 2018 series she's in the process of becoming a conduit for magic and ancestor spirits and ninpo. In Mirage Volume 4, by 2005, she's a living drawing who at any moment might disappear into the dimension of Ebrik, to which the only portal has been lost. Volume 4 Mirage, by the way, sure is something. As much as Peter Laird disclaimed against it for decades, it looks an awful lot like he's setting up the idea of Donatello being in love with April. Maybe I'm just imagining things, or maybe Laird realized that comic books and fairy tales have a lot in common, and he stopped fighting inevitability. 

Let's put aside the crazy coincidental connection that April's warp crystal origin makes between her and Donatello (and, come to think of it, 2012 April also assumed unto herself Don's commonly shown propensity for psychic/transcendental episodes), and jump right into Donatello's dream in Volume 4 issue #31 (available free, on Laird's blog online). In his dream, Donatello wanders along through the countryside in a full-out Robin Hood get-up. He comes to a log that acts as a river crossing, and a huge figure in Shredder-like armour comes out of the forest to stop him from entering into "Shredwood." They fight on the log, trading insults taken right out of Shakespeare, until Don knocks the guy into the river. The man, his helmet knocked off in the fray, turns around and reveals himself to be... April's husband Casey Jones. Casey says something cryptic about April, and immediately afterward Don wakes up to the phone ringing. I love how this scene calls back to the fight in the early Northampton days, when Casey and Don very much did not like each other, and when Casey was rather a jerk in general. But it goes a lot farther than that. To have a dream in which you are innocently going about your business, only to be antagonized and attacked by a faceless villain, to then fight and overcome said villain, who turns out to be the husband of your very lovely friend, and who (after you defeat him) speaks her name to you with an angry look... I'm just saying there's some subtext here, and poor Donatello seems to be in for some personal realizations in the near future. He obviously has no idea yet, because in the next instant he's awoken by a phone call from April herself, and with truly a hilarious and blissfully unaware naivety he goes on to tell her about the weird dream he just had.

So Donatello is arguably undergoing a bit of a romantic awakening here, but whether or not he has a chance with April is a whole other much more contentious question. Keep in mind, though, that the characters' ages are suddenly (and to all appearances totally unnecessarily) clarified in Volume 4 - they're not nearly as far apart as we might have thought. Firstly, Peter Laird goes out of his way in an author's communique to tease that Karai might be younger than earlier volumes suggested. Secondly, in the story itself a box of O'Neil home videos marked '62 (1962) is said to be from two years before April was born. This puts April's birth around 1964, making her 20 years old during her employ with Baxter Stockman, when she met the Turtles. It also makes her as young as she could possibly be while credibly working as a scientist's assistant, and no more than seven years older than the Ninja Turtles themselves... so say between five and seven years older. By the time the Turtles are in their early 30s (as they now are in Vol 4), that's not an extraordinary difference.

April, is married, of course - and although this is no impediment to an unrequited, hopeless love, let's just follow the threads as they exist in the story.

One of them shows the events of Casey getting blackout drunk and waking up in Karai's compound, possibly in her bed, stripped down to his underwear. It's hard to imagine that anything unseemly really happened - it would be too bleak and soapy for the world of the Turtles. But Casey is certainly worried that it did, and Karai doesn't seem in the mood to reassure him. 

So Karai drives Casey home from what Casey fears might be a night of drunken sex (back in the days when a relatively sober person bedding a black-out drunk one somehow seemed less predatory than it does now), and at the same time April unexpectedly returns to town from her long solo journey of self-discovery. 

In nail-biter storytelling fashion, Karai asks Casey if she can use his bathroom, setting up the likelihood that April will find Karai in their house, that Casey will be nervous and weird about it, and that the result might be a huge fight between Casey and April, followed by some serious conversations about their marriage. 

How would those conversations go? In some iterations Casey and April seem like a great fit. In the 1990 movie, and in those few hints from The Last Ronin, for instance. But in Mirage, the two of them hardly have anything in common other than raising Shadow and sharing the secret of the Turtles. The Turtles aren't a secret anymore. Shadow is almost grown. So what's left? Much as they might care about each other, do they even have anything to build on, going forward? And if they do split up, Casey has never been the type to be alone for long. Running around and kicking butt with Karai does seem like a pretty good fit for Casey Jones, instructor in Pain 101. And backing this up, a Jim Lawson FB post from several years ago showed his vision for a possible end to Volume 4, teasing the idea that a woman's figure off in the distance with Casey might just be Karai rather than April. Maybe he was just messing with us, or maybe not. (And sure, as of issue #32 Donatello is still the size of an action figure, but it would only take the flimsiest of narrative happenstance to fix that.)

Getting back to the point - the thing that isn't really clear then is if Mirage April were free would Mirage Donatello have a shot? As far as I can tell, that's partly dependent on April’s own journey going forward. If April learns to be happy with herself, and to feel like there's a place in the world where she really belongs... that her uniqueness is a strength rather than a liability... I think there's at least half a chance. The two of them are already great friends, who arguably have more common ground than most of the other characters. 

And plus, you know... fate.

There's a romance buried in the story that is full on meta-textual. It's bigger than any one iteration, and it's continually evolving, and it all comes back to the Prime World of Mirage, and that's really fascinating. I love fairy tales. I love sci-fi. I love improbable creatures, and the inherent dignity of sapient beings pursuing what is right and true while living lives of usefulness and curiosity. And, let's be honest, I really love love. My own pet theory, wholly unsubstantiated, is that Vol 4 Mirage eventually stopped coming out because its author felt the story building inevitably in that direction, and he was too annoyed to continue it.