How Leo’s Role As Face Man Prevents Him From Confiding With His Team

the guitarrrrrrrrrrists

lil franken trindle doodle i did!! she is texting abigail while she’s at work tehe

Dude this fic is so brutal but this part had me laughing my ass off

I love it when they do the aggressive POINT 🫵😠

Go check out the author @mutantninjamidlifecrisis

hi is there a "future" in your tmnt au? I MUST KNOW WHAT LEO LOOKS LIKE IN THE FURTURE LEO LEO LEO LEOELEOEO OLD MAN TURTLE PLESZS LEO LEO

ermmM well! i only have designs for their BAD future… where shit just goez wrong and eveyth in gz is just wack!

iiii have very few good drawingz. here is wut leo lookz like! its not rlly cool or anything 😕sorry. still thinking… eh -_-

i will not show his face -_-….he’s insecure

about two years ago

okay so i noticed on reddit quite a few people draw parallels between what the kids are learning in class and the plot itself — frankenstein pops up a lot — but i cannot for the life of me stop thinking about maddie’s s1 essay on orpheus and eurydice ???

“the ultimate romance or ultimately problematic?”

like, that encompasses her plot with simon, no?

simon works relentlessly to bring maddie back from the other side, just like how orpheus works to get eurydice from the underworld, no matter how difficult, how hard and how potentially problematic it is. their love knows no bounds, “its bigger than high school”, but never once has it occurred to him that by laying down his own life, he could be with her again

(which i assume is what maddie is getting at in her essay, as a common criticism of orpheus is that he goes to the end of the world to bring eurydice back, but does not go to the underworld to be with her. however you view this, i don’t think there’s a wrong answer)

perhaps, like orpheus, simon has to venture to the underworld to save her. maybe he, like orpheus, can’t bring himself to not turn around (whether it be out of doubt for the gods or out of his love for her) and fails at the final hurdle. maybe their story is doomed and there really is no saving maddie.

or maybe simon will do what orpheus didn’t. lay down his own life to be with her, rather than fight to bring her back to him. maybe he doesn’t get a choice

whatever the case, there’s just so much to it and it breaks my heart and i love them so much

Consider this a cover for the AU, it still has no name and at this point I refuse to give it one

All the links to the comic and main tags bellow the cut

Asks have been moved to ->> @separatedleoau

Concept

Comic Links:

Animation panels now have a black outline, also the pages with animations are in bold Mystic Mayhem 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 (tw flashing lights) / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15 / bonus Little Warrior (backstory) 1 / 2 / 3 Newsworthy 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 (updating fridays)

(there is more to come, just be patient) (Early comic access on Patreon)

Some other art I consider au canon (these are not in order)

The seed situation / p2 (tw blood/ child abuse)

Golden marks

He has things to say / p2

Stab

Mikey's Taco Bell sidequest / p2

"Leo"

Dr. Delicate Touch

Main tags: #rottmnt separated au #separated leo au

Comic updates: #separated leo au comic

Crossover stuff: #slau crossover / #slau crossover (<- link to askblog)

Asks: #separated leo au asks

Ask blog @separatedleoau

Also I'm using #cw blood and/or #tw blood for the art that has blood just if you dont want to see that kind of thing you can block those taggs, if anyone feels like I also should be tagging anything else feel free to send an ask to tell me

Edit: added tw child abuse and cw child abuse, to some post at request

How Leo’s role as face man prevents him from confiding with his team

Watching throughout the entire series we see Leo constantly keep up with his role as the face man of the group

While on missions he can use his charisma and persuasion in order to get people to go along with his plans without letting people know what he’s really thinking

But he never seems to put it down

•Leos Emotional Guard

At first glance Leo’s entire personality revolves around being lenient laid back and chill, and to everyone else it makes him seem like a very open book, and that’s why the face man role works out for him

But it means that no one is really aware of anything beneath the surface. They never bother to ask because who would need to?

However, this also includes Leo’s family

Despite his chilled back personality Leo is one of the most emotionally guarded ones out of all of the brothers

Throughout the series we can see little moments of vulnerability from each members of the family, digging deeper into their emotions and their insecurities and then go on to discuss said feelings and gain some form of comfort or closure from their family. Most notable ones shown below

Donnie in “Donnie vs Witch Town”

Raph in “Anatawa Hitorijinai”

Mikey in “Hidden City’s Most Wanted”

April in “Always Be Brownies”

Splinter & Donnie in “Turtledega Nights”

•How Leo is Different

Similar to everyone else, Leo is shown to have these moments sprinkled in too but they never occur with his family

The two most memorable moments we have are shown in “Portaled Jacked” with Senor Hueso and during his one-on-one conversation with Casey

Why these two characters and not one of his close family members?

Because it’s easier talking about problems to strangers and people who don’t know you as they have no previous knowledge or connotations of you to fall back on and there’s no feelings of burden or guilt if you believe the topic will never be discussed with them again. There’s less feelings of consequences that comes with being vulnerable towards people who don’t know you well. Because if you open up more to the people who do, the risk that their opinion of you will change gets higher

Then we add in the fact that Leo is already extremely guarded of his emotions. He doesn’t want his brothers to think less of him because he already isn’t confident of his place in the team already and thus doesn’t confide in them

•Deflecting with Humor

And then the two moments where we do see little slips in Leo’s carefully constructed masks that occur around his family, which we can find in “Minotaur Maze” and “Many Unhappy Returns”

He ends up immediately backtracking and deflecting with humor, thus changing the subject and preventing anyone from delving into it further and reacting to the quips instead

“You know it’d really help me if you guys said that I was your champion.” “Just open it!”

“This whole situation was my plan all along. If it wasn’t, then why’d I ask your tailor to make me this outfit?” “So we could both perish looking super fly?”

What makes it worse is that Leo has such a habit of doing it that his family expects it, which  then causes them to believe there’s no underlying issues beneath the surface and thus don’t react accordingly. (with the addition that both parties had valid reasons for being upset with him at the time)

But it causes a situation of Leo internalizing his emotions, and if he doesn’t expand on the topic himself, then his family won’t see a reason to either nor think there’s an issue to begin with

•The Movie

To add onto this point, we see Raph and Leo arguing over Leo’s role as leader. As usual Leo deflects the argument with humor and avoids the situation. But we can see during the argument that how Leo privately lets down his guard and for a second the audience is able to see how he’s really reacting to Raph’s words. However, it is apparent that Raph doesn’t  see this side of him and most likely never really has

“You just don’t get it Leo”

Now as the audience it is very easy to draw to the conclusion that Leo has clear issues with his role as the leader and most likely many insecurities regarding it thus why he acts the way he does. Like any other serious situation, he copes with, he deflects with humor and tries to avoid it

This argument then implies that in the two years since Leo was made leader of the group, he never revealed his internal issues with it and never made it apparent to his brothers either because he hates being vulnerable

The face man role works for him because it requires skillful work in that you can manipulate people the way you want to without ever letting them know what your thinking. And Leo carries that role with him when it comes to his brothers and family as well. But this doesn’t work out for him anymore when he becomes the leader and communication becomes so important to the team. (I talk about this more on a different post)

Thus the events of the movie and why things played out the way they did

Naturally he learns how to trust in his team more when the situation becomes dire enough that he realizes he can no longer keep deflecting

But even after all the traumatic events that he went through. When it comes to the one time we see him really cry. He still only lets himself cry when he’s completely alone within the prison dimension

TLDR: Leo’s role as the face man is kept on both on and off duty as we find that he is really one of the most emotionally guarded out of all of his brothers as he doesn’t want to let them know what he’s really feeling out of fear that they might think less of him as he is already insecure of his placement in the group and would rather confide in people who don’t know him well over his family where he runs the risk of them treating him differently

Honestly, “Mr. Emotionally Unavailable” has some real competition ahead of him

If we were being completely blunt, all of the brothers have trouble when it comes to letting go of their real emotions, Donnie just being out of his depth with them and it being uncomfortable, Raph wanting to be strong for his brothers, and Mikey most likely wanting to focus on his brother’s emotions over his own as the Therapist of the group, but i believe the Leo definitely has the worst case out of all of them.

about to watch the last episode… pray for me