it's a pet peeve of mine when ppl frame Andrew as hating Aaron and being needlessly cruel to him... bc while yes, their relationship is fractured and strained, Andrew genuinely cares about his brother and wants the best for him, he just doesn't know how to show that in a normal way.
like he might not know how to express it in a healthy manner but Andrew LOVES Aaron, like he truly just wants Aaron to be healthy and safe. It's like, his whole Thing. Aaron is one of the most important people in his life. Andrew wants him around. He'd do anything to protect him.
I guarantee Andrew wants to be emotionally close to Aaron too, he just doesn't have the tools to do that and the thought of letting someone in terrifies him. He also has no concept of what a healthy sibling relationship looks like, so he has no frame of reference to work from.
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Fun little silly thought I had about the Lair Games and specifically Leo deliberately losing is all the reasons he could have for doing so.
My favorite headcanon for his main motivation is that Splinter wasn’t proud of him anymore.
I imagine that, in the beginning, winning the Lair Games was Leo’s opportunity to shine. He wasn’t artistic or the baby of the family like Mikey, wasn’t a tech genius who created amazing inventions like Donnie, wasn’t the eldest who was insanely strong and dependable like Raph. So he had to shine somewhere else- anywhere else- and what better way to get attention than to be a winner? A champion?
And then he won too much. And it wasn’t special anymore. He got too big headed, too cocky, he knew this was his element and he ran with it.
Splinter’s words of congratulations slowly petered out. Suddenly, there was no real reason to win.
Winning feels empty when the only one cheering you on is yourself.
So- Leo schemed. And he’s a great schemer, fooling his whole family (and Donnie did deserve a win- people were way happier when he won.)
He even gave up his prized possession! His room!
Though he knows his brothers probably think it’s a bad prize. A terrible one, even.
Leo doesn’t sleep much as is, though. So Dad’s snores were more comforting than anything. It was reassuring to hear him so clearly alive and close by.
Even if the distance between them was larger than Leo’d like.
He’d just have to find something else, something more to show his dad that Leo was someone to trust, to be proud of, to love.
He gets his chance soon after, when he needs to pull off a plan against Big Mama at his dad’s side. Leo can only hope this victory is one that has a lasting effect when his father looks at him with pride once more.
Victory, for Leo, is a pretty loaded term.
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