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comeoutofyourshell · 1 month ago

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Hi!!

Your pinned post is kinda confusing, so I hope this request isn't against anything there!

Could I possibly request Headcannons of the 2012! Turtles with a S/O or friend (your choice) who has trouble going to school due to depression or not having friends???

Have a good Day/Evening/Night!

First off, I am so sorry this took so long to get out! Finals were fifteen levels of crazy, but I hope that I managed to get this out before the school year ended! Thank you so much for your patience, I hope it's still enjoyable! Good day/evening/night to you too :)

Unfortunately, they’re all varying degrees of emotionally constipated, and they all have some kind of “tough it out” attitude. Between struggling to survive for years in the sewers, being raised by a stressed and tired single father who was in turn raised in a traditionally patriarchal Japanese ninja clan, and more recently having to bounce back from any and all emotional issues in time to fight the next monster of the week, they didn’t really get many chances to learn that feeling An Emotion is perfectly normal. If you talk to them about your emotions with any level of vulnerability they’re gonna just kinda stare at you for a bit in confusion or even act like it's contagious, especially if you’re more masc presenting, until they figure out that they’re supposed to be comforting you right now. That being said, they haven’t completely self-destructed under their own problems yet, so they’ve all definitely found some pretty good coping mechanisms they’re more than happy to share.

Leo is a straightforward guy in everything he does, and this is no different. If he sees you looking stressed or tired he’ll awkwardly ask if you're ok, and if you tell him about what’s going on he’ll most likely try to help you find a solution or offer to teach you to meditate, that’s always helped him when he’s anxious. If you go to him first and explain what you’ve been going through, he’ll do his best to listen and, while he will still offer solutions before anything else, he’s much more willing to go with what you’d prefer, though he will quietly push for meditation regardless. Trust him, it works wonders.

On the less ninja-esque side of coping, he’d probably ask if you’d want to watch TV with him. Space Heroes has gotten him through some hard times, so he knows the power a good fandom can have. If you’re a fan in any sense of the word he’s your guy: from rants about characters to theorizing about future reveals to complaining about the new writer, he has been there before and knows exactly how to get you to focus on the media that makes you happy. Fandom is a wonderful way to fight any kind of depression: it’s an outlet for creativity, something that’s easy to be passionate about, and a way to find community, and though Leo doesn’t know the specific benefits he’s more than aware of how special that kind of thing can be. He might not be able to help much with school itself as a problem, but he can at least make your time outside of school as enjoyable as possible.

I’m convinced that since he was a kid he’s had anxiety, the usual kind that comes with being an older sibling, but a lot of the discipline and skills he gained from ninja training became such effective coping mechanisms he never even realized he had something to cope with. Even if any anxiety slips past hours of meditation and training, it’s quickly repressed in classic oldest-brother-mental-issues fashion; as far as Leo knows he’s never had a mental problem in his life. If you start explaining the intricacies of whatever you’re dealing with he might have a few things to re-think, though…

Donnie is even more practical: whenever he has a problem of any kind his go-to is solving it, even when the problem can’t really be solved. If you come to him with stress about your grades, in five minutes he’ll have a study plan for the next month with him as your tutor that will get you back on track. If school in general is stressing you out he’ll just tell you to drop out and learn from him, he can list enough problems with the public school system to fill all your textbooks and either way he’s pretty sure he’s a better teacher than any overworked schmuck your school can find (no offense to said schmuck, he considers teaching one of the most important and respectable professions out there). If you tell him about feeling depressed he’ll get you to engage in hobbies, set up exercise routines, or, if he thinks it will help, even get you some kind of medication if he can find it, though it tends to feel like he’s just running through a list of cures for depression he found on WebMD.

His practicality is, unfortunately, a double edged sword. He’s so hard-wired to find a solution before anything else that, if you don’t want him to just throw solutions at you until the problem’s fixed, he’ll unintentionally steamroll over your actual wants until you or one of his brothers manage to get it through his skull that he can’t just fix this. Once he finally realizes, he’ll run to you apologizing for being an ass, equally upset that his smarts weren’t enough to help you and that assuming they would be ended up hurting you. Once he gets over himself he’ll be much more receptive to what you actually want. If you need a distraction he’ll take you to a military junkyard to find stuff to reuse or explain the intricacies of whatever project he’s working on, but if you want to do something else he’s up for just about anything! If you just want to talk about whatever’s on your mind, he’s willing to sit and listen for hours, doing his best to keep unsolicited advice to himself.

Honestly, asking for something other than an instant fix might do him some good. His strategy for dealing with his own problems is just “find a way to fix it and then fix it”, leaving him with a lot of bottled up frustration for all the things he can’t logic his way out of, and a decent dose of insecurity for not being able to fix them, even when the problem can’t really be fixed. If he sees how much just going out to do something fun or talking about what’s bothering you can help you feel better, even when there is a solution for the problem you could be pursuing instead, it might get him to give himself some grace and not respond to every problem with running himself ragged trying to fix it.

For someone who struggles with his emotions as much as he does, Raph is actually incredibly efficient at finding coping strategies. While his first instinct is to lash out in most cases, he rarely just sits with the anger. Instead he blows off steam beating up a purse snatcher or his punching bag, goes ham on the drums for a while, or vents to spike (pre-slash) or Casey about whatever his brothers did. Depression’s a decent bit different from anger issues, but a lot of the coping strategies are interchangeable. If the stress is getting to you and you just need to hit something, he’ll be happy to go outside with you for a while and drag out whichever Purple Dragon he finds first for you to go crazy at, or he’ll find some abandoned construction site and keep watch while you spend the next hour just breaking shit and screaming. That is, unfortunately, where most of his talent ends on the emotional front.

If you’re dealing with any emotion outside of anger, he’s at a loss on how to help. A huge part of his anger issues is that he habitually translates any negative emotion into anger, so dealing with the non-violent part of feeling upset will be unknown territory. Even if you manage to talk him into letting you vent or just hanging out with you while you study he’ll still be hesitant to get too “mushy”. He figures his shit out eventually, but for a while his best attempt at comfort is the equivalent of an awkward pat on the back. He does make a great study partner when it comes down to it, though, easily noticing when you start veering off course and quick to get you back to work, and he’s happy to give any bullies or annoying teachers “a good scare” if you don’t stop him. Talking and vulnerability will always be difficult for him, but it will always be clear that despite all the machismo he really does care about you and worry when you’re like this.

He definitely understands your school-related worries, though; for the longest time he actually struggled to keep up with his brothers, and he still hasn’t shaken the inferiority complex it gave him. If you’ve already managed to get past a decent number of his emotional walls, he might confide in you about his own insecurities, but that’s a long time coming. In the meantime, he might be a bit of a dumbass about this kind of thing, but he’s a dumbass that cares about you, and at the end of the day he’ll do what he can to help.

Mikey is the mutant turtle equivalent of comfort food, particularly because food is one of the main ways he tries to comfort you. Food is both a hobby, a comfort, and a form of self-expression for him, and in times like these his first instinct is to make you food he knows you’ll love. From hot soups to sweet ice cream to greasy fried food, if you can name it he’ll figure out how to make it and/or find it. He’ll even turn down the Mikey-ness of the food if you really want him to. Even if the food doesn’t taste the best, he’ll put his whole heart into making it look nice just for you: he’ll use sauce or ketchup to make smiley faces or doodles of cats and if you let him pack you lunches for school he’ll always leave cute little notes with cheesy nicknames and compliments galore. When you’re spending time with him in person, he’ll make sure to keep the mood happy and peppy as can be, providing a never ending array of entertainment of all kinds, from TV to comics to jokes to action figures, or even just a nice warm hug (as warm as a cold-blooded teen can be).

However, comfort food is usually only half as healthy as it is enjoyable. Even though he’s much sweeter and mushier than the others can even get close to without cringing, it’s still a very surface-level comfort. His toxic positivity can be really draining without him realizing, and it can be disheartening to have your attempts for genuine connection and vulnerability be met with an awkward smile and “cowabummer”. Thankfully, however, he still has more emotional intelligence than his brothers, and ends up needing much less pushing and prodding before he figures out that he should probably stop just throwing distractions at you and instead take a moment to listen to what you have to say. He’s one of the best at actually sitting down and talking things through, and when given the opportunity he does give genuinely solid advice. The movies he’s seen made him think high school was like some kind of musical, where everyone’s having fun, harmless rivalries last for the 90 minutes it takes the movie to wrap up, and exams are only ever mentioned in the background, so you confiding in him about how difficult school has gotten for you will break his heart more than finding out Leprechauns aren’t real did. However, he most likely has the easiest time relating to your school-based struggles out of all the brothers. He understands not feeling good enough, feeling like the whole world’s against you, struggling to make friends, and feeling like the odd one out in every group. If what you really need is to just talk out what’s on your mind, Mikey is the most likely to really get it.

Out of all of the guys, Mikey is the best at bouncing back quickly from emotional damage. He kinda has to be with how much shit he’s dealt, both as the youngest brother and the show’s designated comic relief. Because of this, he’s not the best at actually dealing with emotions in the long term. When he’s upset it rarely lasts for long, usually ranting to himself for a bit or going on some crazy adventure to disprove whatever ticked him off. Taking a moment to actually address a problem, be it talking it through or even actually confronting it head on, could be a good experience to get him to start standing up for himself in regards to his own problems.

As time goes on and they each learn more about what’s actually happening to you (Donnie’s semi-illegal access to psychology textbooks being a big help), they’ll quickly pick up on what helps the most and spring into action the minute you walk into the layer after a bad day. Leo’s gathering blankets and setting up your favorite shows, Donnie’s taking your things and putting them away for you, Raph’s gently guiding you to your spot in the conversation pit, and Mikey’s carrying over a stockpile of your favorite snacks and videogames. One minute you’re walking through the sewers after what feels like the worst day of your life, the next you’re wrapped in blankets with a hot drink in your hands, your favorite movie on the TV, and four turtles who won’t leave your side for the next couple hours.

#tmnt 2012 #tmnt leo x reader #tmnt raph x reader #tmnt donnie x reader #tmnt mikey x reader #tmnt 2012 x reader #tmnt x reader

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