Again, The Healing Hug I Needed To See. Bless You

Again, the healing hug I needed to see. Bless you 🙏🏼😖💙❤️

THeYrE bRoThErS aNd tHeY lOvE eAcH oThEr, Your Honor.

His bones may be broken, but his heart? So light

Can you tell ive been listening to this ost

Ladies and gentlemen may I present to you

A VERY GOOD BOI

like this is so tender? And my heart is healing? 💙❤️‍🩹

the blue one

I really stand with @kathaynesart on this. This is the kind of Leonardo that I see. Yeah he made a mistake, but hey haven’t we all? I think it takes a lot of courage to pick up something when a lot of the time we don’t want it, and I think @kathaynesart beautifully captured what this journey with one’s self looked like.

Remember y’all, hope no matter how fragile she may be, is still a warrior till the end, a ninja’s s greatest weapon.

We can all change, and we can all become better no matter who we were or who we are. We can have change because there is ALWAYS hope 🧡🌱

BEGINNING || PREVIOUS || (NEXT COMING SOON)  

DONE.  I’m resisting the urge to do a whole TED Talk on future Leo.  However, I do want to discuss something on the matter.  To be brief, while I see a lot of people in the fandom emphasizing the pain and self loathing of this character (all of which I am certain he goes through) that is not what I see in him by the beginning of the movie.  Some one who hates himself that much and is so bogged down with regret would not be the type to speak about still having “hope” as their greatest weapon (especially in such a cheesy manner).  I see a man who has gone through the ringer and come out the other end harder and wiser.  But most importantly he appears to have doubled down on his faith in himself and even more so in his loved ones.  He knows it’s not about him.  That he doesn’t have the luxury to be depressed and ultimately must overcome his own mind to achieve his tenacious goals.  Does he still have bad days?  Most certainly, anyone filled with that kind of regret does, but I really think that this is a battle he fights and wins more often than not by the time of 2044.  He is a man dedicated to his cause and family, and while he still has a long ways to go at this point in the story, I feel like this would be the start of him finally forgiving himself.

I’m not into torture porn (though that may surprise some of you) nor do I think it’s healthy to wallow in that sort of pain for an extensive period (fandoms can be a great outlet for this, but it can have a huge impact on your mental and emotional state if not treated in a healthy manner), and I want this to be a story of healing rather than one completely bogged down with sorrow.  Because no matter how bleak things can be, you are always worthy of love, especially self love. 

Please make sure to give yourself a hug and thank you for all your support and kind words.  We have one last round to wrap up Leo’s arch then it’s onto April.

*vibrating at a frequency to shatter glass* Never have I ever loved animatic more than I did after watching this PLEASE GIVE THIS SOME LOVE FOLKS BECAUSE ITS WORTH IT

Hey guys, I DID THE THING>:D

The new chapter of "Odd Man Out" by the @threestripeslider was awesome and as soon as I saw the training scene in there, I thought, hey this is a great opportunity to practice action scenes hehe

Coming outta art block swinging like…

Someone once told me that when dealing with artblock, you gotta take care of yourself first. Because the more alive YOU feel, the more alive your art will feel.

You can break the block, juts give yourself some time.

You CAN do this 🙌🏼🧡✨😊

Special shout out to these incredible ladies who have been in my corner since the beginning @holydoncakes @saspas-corner @anobodyinabog

HOLY HONK MY MIND IS LITERALLY 🤯🤯🤯

Nothing is more fabulous than deep character analysis 😤🙌🏼💙🤌🏼

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.