by Blender Dumbass

Aka: J.Y. Amihud. A Jewish by blood, multifaceted artist with experience in film-making, visual effects, programming, game development, music and more. A philosopher at heart. An activist for freedom and privacy. Anti-Paternalist. A user of Libre Software. Speaking at least 3 human languages. The writer and director of the 2023 film "Moria's Race" and the lead developer of it's game sequel "Dani's Race".

X Agents was a project I had when I was about 10, maybe 11 years old. Which died because of my realization that there is such a thing as copyright. You could call it a fan fiction extension upon the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

The story of the project

It was so long ago and I was so little that I hardly remember any dates precisely.

When I was 7 years old I was already trying to make visual stories. I could not make computer animation because there was no computers available. And I could not photograph anything since the only camera we had was a film photo-camera that would take only still pictures. Later I realized that I can make stop motion animation, but it already was with a phone camera.

Thought I always could draw. And seeing that a lot of cartoons were just drawn frame by frame, drawing was something I could try doing. I remember talking to a teacher in school, explaining a scene that I invented. ( I didn't write it since I didn't think it mattered to write it down ). It was basically a large action scene on a bridge which escalated from a small accident to a complete mayhem. I was interested in a chain reaction of one thing causing another thing. I don't remember the exact scene, but it would be something like this: A car drives too quickly, another car stops for some reason, the fast car slams into the stopping car and due to the momentum it flips and flies off to the bridge on top, where it slams into a passing truck. The truck looses control and drives off the bridge, causing an even larger mayhem. And so on an so forth.

A perfect film for me at that time would be something like this happening for 2 hours. I didn't really care about the characters. I just thought that I wanted shit to go boom.

About the same time TMNT were showing on the TV. I knew what were, but haven't actually seen much of them. So now I could watch a half an hour episode of them every morning before school. It was the 2003 animated series. I know a lot of people grew up with the earlier 80s series. I saw those eventually too. But I grew up with the 2003 version.

If you compare the two versions, in the 80s the cartoons were self aware comedy pieces. In 2003 the cartoons were a lot greedier and serious. And this seriousness made them feel more real. Even though it was still a drawn cartoon. TMNT were the first time I started caring about character. Every turtle has it's own color of the mask. And they all have a distinct personality. For example Donatello is a tech-genius. Michelangelo is a funny dumbass. Leonardo is trying to be your mom. And Raphael is pissed off.

There was not necessarily a lot of character arcs. The turtles had the same personalities through out. But there was personality. And these personalities had impact on the stories. So I started becoming interested in characters.

At about 10 or 11 ( I have no way to check ), I was trying to expand upon the turtles. I had a huge notebook, which was many notebooks glued together to form one huge one. In there I drew comics ( which were a way to realize visual stories without drawing every frame. An in a way which I could show friends ). I started with simple stories of the turtles. But then I thought that I need a fifth turtle. I called him William ( for William Shakespeare ) and her would ware a black mask. Thought I could not just edit the lore. I tried to incorporate it with the current story. So William was a fifth turtle that was separated from the rest. And was trying to live anonymously by himself. Nobody knew about him. He was walking around at night in a human costume. He wasn't a ninja at first. So one day the other turtles find him. Take him in with themselves and Sensei Splinter teaches him Ninjutsu. I don't remember what weapon he would have.

The X Agents themselves

Later ( being a kid ) I couldn't live without being myself in the group of the of turtles. So I written an X-Men style group in the universe of the turtles called X-Agents. The characters of which were my school class kids.

There was a TV show about mutants similar to X-Men. I think it's called "Heroes". There is this Japanese guy that can teleport through space-time. There is this school-girl that can regenerate like wolverine. There was this kid who can talk to computers. And there is this guy who's power is to, kind of, learn powers of the others, if they are near enough to him. So by the end he has all of the powers since he meets all of the other heroes.

I designed the X Agents in such a way that I in the story have this power. Therefor I have all of the powers. The girl I liked from the class would have the regeneration. So she would be un-kill-able. And other kids would have other powers.

The stories were not much stories of fighting evil. Since I didn't really have an evil in mind. Perhaps except of Shredder. So the comics were mostly about hanging out with superpowers. At first they were set in the underground. Because that's where the turtles lived, but then I made a small change.

I remember going with my grand-mother into a building. I don't remember what we did there. I just remember that the building was internally confusing. It was like a 3-dimensional maze. You could get lost in it. And I very liked the concept. I hated immensely, at that time, the layout of Manhattan. It was too grid-like. You could not get lost in it. And most buildings had the same kind of boring repetitive, easy to navigate, layout. This building where we visited was different. It was a maze. And I was amazed by it.

So naturally I started thinking of a maze-like super building. I was drawing a huge construction that would be 4 sky-scrapers wide and one sky-scraper high. And that inside of it, it was all one big maze. Of course with some fun to it.

I didn't just want people to walk around the building. Especially at that scale. So I thought why not make the entirety of the building a small miniature city with small one sited cars everywhere. And so that building became the headquarters of the X Agents.

Since then, I return sometimes to the characters of X Agents and wonder what kind of story could be written to make it interesting. And maybe one day it could be even made into the movie. But I have to remove all of the references to TMNT first.


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