sadly Arthur can't make friends with every cute woodland creature he comes across in the medieval countryside I can't believe the setting for season 5 has been out for over a month and I haven't seen a single monty python reference yet I guess I'll do it myself

in the spirit of choose-your-own-adventures here's an alternative timeline

Hi! Ohmigosh, I can’t believe I’m asking THE Sophie Campbell something 😆 I’m a really big fan of your art 😍 I love how your art style has improved over the years (I do like both styles, though) I really like how in your new art style, you perfectly mix cute and dark. Leading on to my actual question, I am so happy that you were the one to draw Raph and Alopex’s first kiss!!! I was sad when they broke up because I loved them together :( Do you ever think that they will ever get back together? Would you have kept their relationship the same as it was? What made you want to do KoyaXLeo? Have an amazing day!!!

Thank you so much!! <3 My original plan was to never break up Raph and Alopex because I feel like too many serialized stories in monthly comics and TV shows always do that, they always FINALLY get the two characters together after however long of will-they-won't-they, and then quickly break them up because the writers don't know what to do with a nice, regular romantic relationship. I hate that!

But after the stuff with Saki being part of the team, I just couldn't reconcile it with Alopex as a character and what she'd gone through with him. Having that drive her away from the Turtles was the only thing that made sense to me. The stuff with Saki becoming "good" was actually an editorial direction thing, I didn't want to do it and I resisted it at first but tried my best to make it work. Alopex leaving the group was also sort of partly a metaphor for my own thoughts about it, a retaliation against the Turtles teaming up with the person who murdered them and abused Alopex. I kinda felt cornered by that storyline and I just couldn't write Alopex staying with Raph (and the Turtles group overall) after that, I felt like it would've been a disservice to the character to have her suck it up. She HAD to put her foot down.

The Leo/Koya thing actually started out as more of a joke on twitter until I realized there were fans who genuinely shipped them, haha. It's still kind of a running gag, I don't think I would ever show them in present day getting together or anything, but having them as a couple decades down the line in the future time period felt like a nice way to cap it off. In my original script Koya wasn't even in that scene, it was going to be a grown-up adult Rahzar, until I decided to add Koya/Leo in there for one particular superfan (hi Paty!!).

Thank you again!!! <3