Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25614818-20150410170303/@comment-995426-20150423045112

Well, I can say that I've ever heard of any uncles and nephews who sleep together spooned, except for the really inappropriate kind, and this isn't Law & Order: SVU. :) No, Mikey and Leatherhead always struck me as social equals during their times together. Leatherhead always did seem child-like to me, in that he seemed genuinely socially inexperienced and had a great deal of trouble controlling his emotions.  It's just, unlike the relatively playful and enthusiastic Mikey with his relatively happy family life, Leatherhead seems like a tortured, traumatized child torn from a once-loving family who now has deep emotional scars, and Mikey helped him open up and learn to love life again.  He did noticeably mature after his timeskip in Dimension X though&mdash;he always used to lose control of his rage, but afterwards he is never seen losing control, and speaks more often from the heart.  If he had no one but himself during that timeskip, I'd say he owes a great deal of that to Mikey's influence taking root.  In this sense, he actually reminds me of Vash the Stampede from Trigun, who gleans most of his moral lessons from the memories of happy younger days with a loved one he last saw alive many decades before, giving his personality a strange bittersweet mixture of playful child and life-worn old man. This really is one of my favorite versions of Leatherhead so far.

As for Donnie acting like he's the most desirable man in the universe, the key word is acting. :) Especially after Casey entered the picture, he dialed up his efforts to impress April in increasingly ridiculous ways. Donnie's showboating rooftop stunt in  is a perfect example of this kind of comedic pretentiousness.  He isn't really that perfect of desirable, of course, but seems to think he can win April with feigned aggressive confidence.  Donnie did seem to dial this back a bit after, though.

And yes, I've extensively read Mirage, Image, etc. I'm well into my 30s. My other big TMNT fan friends are mostly my age or older. I'm very much aware of Michelangelo's (mid)adventures in romance. :) Mirage/Image Mikey actually reminds me more of 2K12 Donnie in his awkward try-hard approach to romance, with the difference being that Mirage/Image Mikey only overthinks romance after he impulsively acts (like with A Rose Among the Thorns"), whereas 2K12 Donnie overthinks romance before he chooses to act (that Big Bang Theory-esque romantic flow chart).