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rin-the-shadow · 4 years

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Raphael and that thing with the emotion things

At risk of accidentally completing prompts early, there’s still a moment I want to look at regarding 2003 Raphael in the episode “Tales of Leo.” The moment where he goes from this:

To this:

In a span of about 2 seconds or so.

As a kid, I didn’t understand why he lashed out, but as an older teenager moving into adulthood, I wonder if this was Raph lashing out because he was afraid. I’ve mentioned in some of my other posts that I think he has a hard time verbalizing what he’s feeling at a given moment, and may also struggle with identifying it at times. This isn’t me saying that it’s okay to say what he did, just me trying to make sense of it.

But I think this is one of those moments. He’s afraid that Leo won’t wake up, and probably feeling a bit of responsibility for it because this is 2003 Raph, and 2003 Raph at this point seems to see himself as someone who doesn’t really have a “function” outside of beating the bad guys off his brothers, and since he wasn’t able to do that before Leo was beaten to the point that he doesn’t even know if he’ll survive, he’s pretty obviously failed to do that. It’s become a situation that’s out of his control and he has no idea what to do to make it better. On top of that, the only thing they really can do now is talk, which I don’t think Raph really sees as one of his strong points. He’s basically backed into the proverbial corner, and when Raph gets backed into a corner, he tends to lash out.

“If you ask me, Leo’s not coming back ‘cause he’s afraid.... No, he got his butt whooped, and now he’s too chicken to come back and face it.”

Effectively, he’s afraid Leo isn’t going to pull through. Maybe he puts it onto Leo because he’s not fully able to verbalize it when it’s about himself, I don’t know. But the main reason I think this is because when Splinter talks to him about confronting his fear, Raph immediately counters that Leo’s never been afraid of anything in his life. While it’s probably an exaggeration on his part, it also contradicts what he said before about Leo being the one who’s afraid.

“Well I say who needs you? It’s not like we can’t get on without you playing fearless leader!”

Honestly, in this moment, I don’t think he thinks they can. I know for me at that moment in the series, I wasn’t capable of imagining a version of the show where all four of them didn’t exist. I hadn’t yet conceptualized them as four protagonists equally capable of carrying the show provided at least one of them was still alive. All four were 100% necessary, or else you would lose the entire show, or at least that was the way it was in my ten-year-old brain.

For Raph, I think rather than being completely incapable of imagining it like I was, he’s able to imagine at least a version of it, and he doesn’t like what he’s seeing. This is Raph who throws himself at walls until they either break down or he wears himself out, and that’s what he’s doing in this moment. I don’t know if he’s thought far enough ahead or back to be thinking about this in those exact terms, but on some level, maybe he’s hoping to provoke Leo into a fight. It wouldn’t be the first time it happened between them, and it would be some level of his normal. If he throws himself at this wall of “things are not normal things are not right I can’t fix it” enough times, maybe he can somehow get back through to things being “normal” again.

Again, not an excuse for what he says, but an explanation. At least from my perspective, when things get dysregulated, if there’s anything I can do to try to push it back into my “normal,” it’s probably what I’m going to do. While I’ve always considered myself to relate to Don better than Raph, it’s something that I can at least make sense of experientially.

Immediately after this is when the waterworks start trying to run, and Raph goes into his story. “Back in the day, I always figured I was gonna be top turtle. I was strongest, bravest.” This isn’t something he wants anymore. Even if he thought he was capable of leading, I don’t think there’s any way he can see that happening apart from losing Leo. His story paints himself as hotheaded, impulsive, jumping in with no strategy and completely blind to what he’s up against, while Leo cautions him, tries to reason, then eventually just kind of calmly-ish steps in and fixes everything.

Of course, when he’s finished, he immediately tries to backtrack. “I don’t even know why I told that story, I guess you just... I mean... what I’m trying to say is...” Everyone else kind of wrapped their story up with whatever the “point” was, and Raph isn’t able to put it into words. He doesn’t want “Who needs you?” to be the last thing he ever said to Leo if worst comes to worst, but even just from his portrayal of the two of them in the story, there’s definitely something he wanted to say with that. I don’t think it’s that he doesn’t know why he told the story as much as he just isn’t able to find the words to put to it. But he knows that people communicate in words, and everyone else put their thoughts in words, so it’s something he needs to do, and keeps trying to do even as he is visibly, almost physically struggling with it. He needs Splinter’s reassurance that Leo is able to understand him, even if he can’t word it, even if that part remains unspoken.

And this is the moment that Raph isolates himself. He knows at the very least that this isn’t something he’s good at dealing with, and possibly he’s expecting himself to lash out again if he sticks around. So he goes off to deal with it and put himself back to his “normal” before he can rejoin the group.

The very end of the episode moves things back into his area of expertise. “Hey Leo, if you need anything, I’ll be right outside.” Getting someone an extra blanket or like water or helping them get to the restroom or something? All stuff he can do. The source of his earlier dysregulation, my brother might be dying and there’s nothing I can do about it, is removed, and he’s able to communicate now with actions, rather than words.

And with 2003 Raph, actions speak louder than words.

#and thus the birth of my 'raphael doesn't think in words' headcanon #right now #at this very moment #as i am putting it into words for the first time #if i haven't made it blatant before #i have a slight tendency to obsess over things which are confusing to me or which provoke strong emotional reactions from me #2003 raphael was very frequently the former #rin rambles #tmnt 2003 #raphael #2003 raphael #at the very least he doesn't think entirely in words #and there are some concepts that don't really go into words with him #rin overanalyzes stuff #teenage mutant ninja turtles #though actually now that i think about it #if raph hadn't been close with donnie he might still not make sense to me #since fanfics which focused on their interactions were what made him start to make sense to me #though admittedly that probably should have happened much sooner since i *was* the person who up until grad school #referred to herself crying. getting angry. or otherwise showing strong emotions as 'having an emotional reaction'#like gee rin. maybe raph does the same thing you do? just differently.#long post #i think?

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