#[l. s. kennedy; appendage of the enemy]

[theonlyadawong]

Hi! I'm Jupiter! This is my center of operations. My blog. Go ahead and poke around!

black and white • tme nonbinary lesbian • he/she • 25

gore, blood, and other horror elements will be shown here, but they are tagged properly.

[theonlyadawong]

ok, epic leon headcanon is that he has never done drugs and refuses to do so (d.a.r.e. worked wonders on him) and he gets a really big head about it, and he does think he's better than people who do drugs, and the more he started drinking the harder he clung to this idea. so after he gets blackout drunk, he tells himself, "at least it's not drugs, at least this is legal"

[theonlyadawong]

a lot of people tend to think leon is constantly very angry with, or at least frustrated by ada, on account of her lies and manipulation, and while i do believe that feeling of his applies to all of their interactions of re2, i believe this frustration is not that present post re2, and it is in fact is because so many players project their own anger, frustration and even hatred of ada onto leon in the later games, as the more time he spends as a government agent, the more he understands ada and the world she comes from.

leons core tenet is that he wants to help people, so what does he do? he becomes a police officer because he believes cops do the most good (a sentiment that shows he is wearing EXTREMELY rose colored glasses lol), and then he heads to Raccoon City, and while in RC he helps everyone he can. and he is SO good natured that the idea that ada could be lying to him is so far from his mind (NOTE: this is NOT a sign of him being the heavily infantilized man fans make him out to be, and more a sign of general ignorance of the world, as frankly, nobody besides annette has any reason to believe ada would be a spy) because the world of mercenaries and espionage are so far removed from what he believes to be his reality. this is a man who fully believed becoming a police officer was the right way to help people. (and yes im aware of his established backstory where a cop saved him when the rest of his family died due to some crime. this still doesnt make being a cop the right thing to do.)

and so ada strings him along for her own personal gain, and at the end leon learns of her deceit. and the biggest betrayal leon experiences is not from ada, its just that the confrontation scene is the 11 o'clock number for leons half of the game, thus making it stick with us longer, as we the player have also been fooled by her. but no, the biggest betrayal happens when the government decides to cover up the horrors of raccoon city and use sherry as collateral to get him to work for them. and, unfortunately, this is only shown for a few minutes in resident evil darkside chronicles and in the epilogue screens of the original resident evil 3 (re 4 remake might add more to this, but that game hasnt come out as of yet, but heres hoping lol), so we dont fully get to see how he reacted to that outside of these moments and a few other passing thoughts in the series.

but!!! leons entire worldview crumbles after the events of 2, and the next time leon and ada meet in 4, he is wise to the world, and he has seen firsthand the atrocities the united states government is willing to commit under the guise of helping people. and people like ada, people who lie and manipulate and work for evil, greedy organizations (well intentioned or not) are now everywhere. theyre a dime a dozen. they are annette. they are luis. they are krauser. they were his recruiter. they are his boss. they are the president. they are the entire government he was so excited to work for.

ada just has the benefit of being his first introduction to these kinds of people

to be clear, im not saying leon is suddenly okay with her half-truths, but i am saying after he is forced to work for the government, he understands her, or at least, understands people like her, so much more so he knows exactly what to expect. just not when to expect it.

[theonlyadawong]

wesker and ada referring to leon as a dog in 4r is a more succinct analysis of his position as a weapon in the u.s. government than any analysis/meta post any leon fan has made in the past year and im not even joking

[theonlyadawong]

the conversation ada and leon have about change is so hilarious because they've both evolved so much from who they were 6 years ago, and yet they have not changed in ways that matter to the other. leon has gone from a bootlicking pig to someone who is acutely aware of how horrible the united states government is and yet, that doesn't matter at all to ada because what she needs for her mission is the leon that was willing to risk everything to save a stranger, and that leon is still there. ada has grown into her role of international spy, and for a few moments, she has the fate of the world in her hands and she decides to do good, but leon doesnt know that, and so he doesn't care. all he cares about is if she's trying to use him, and she is, and she does, and that cements ada in his mind as a person he will never be able to trust.

[theonlyadawong]

and you know i think that makes his choice to keep the chip in infinite darkness so interesting, because that is HIS choice... yeah he's being blackmailed into working with the government so he's got that looming over him... but it is leons choice to keep that chip from claire, and frankly, it's the wrong choice made for the right reason.

because i get why he does it. he knows what the government is capable of, and he doesn't want anybody to get hurt, especially not claire, yadda, yadda, yadda... but if we ignore the fact that this is leon kennedy and claire redfield... here we have a situation where a united states government worker is knowingly withholding information regarding crimes the united states is committing against its own people all because said government worker is letting their personal feelings get in the way. is this a cold way to see it? yes. is this how people who actually live in the resident evil universe would see it? yes!

and he has that line after claire leaves that hints at him believing he can fix everything from the inside... but he failed! we know he failed! he kept this information to himself and he is fully complicit for any further harm that comes from HIS decision.

[theonlyadawong]

anyways. leon being blackmailed into working for the u.s. and his hatred of the government only means something to us as players, but in the world of resident evil, it means jack shit and he is no different from all the other people who willingly sign up to be agents of the imperial core. he does the same job, collects the same paycheck, reports to the same people, he's the same!

[theonlyadawong]

i am on my hands and knees praying, hoping, begging capcom not to retcon the night leon and ada spent together between re4 and damnation. the idea that either of them would have sought the other out outside of their line of work is so good, and it adds so much to both of them

[theonlyadawong]

if leon was real he would become a double agent and betray the government every day

[theonlyadawong]

that being said leon came from some nowhere town in the midwest. a real wonder bread white kind of man. he was a complete nobody. completely forgettable. you could find ten of him in any walmart at any given time. other than losing his parents at a young age, nothing special ever happened to him. his biggest accomplishment was passing the police academy with flying colors, and after he left, nobody remembered him.

[theonlyadawong]

another person leon met in raccoon city dying would destroy him. and in the case of ada, her "death"... it was very real to leon. so real that he grieved her for 6 years. her life was in his hands, and in his mind, he failed her completely.

but now ada is alive, and regardless of the anger and frustration he has with her lying to him, she needs to stay alive for his sake, for his sanity, so he decides to help her when he can. it's a selfish need that he has to alleviate his own guilt (one we see again when he dkesnt give claure the chip with literal earth-shattering information that could save lives) compounded with the fact that he's leon and he's always going to help someone in need.

and that's why ada is able to drag him along everywhere because he has indebted himself to her of his own volition. and what's fascinating is that i don't think she particularly cares that he dropped her/she fell (however you choose to read that). it was an occupational hazard, and she moved on. but because leon holds onto it, it becomes just another knife for her to twist. a knife that frankly, she barely has to touch it to get him in gear.

leon needs ada alive in the exact same way he needs claire and sherry alive

[theonlyadawong]

[theonlyadawong]

leon has this notion that cops are inherently good. this is clear in the way he defends irons, in what he says to ada in the cable car about the fbi taking down umbrella, and in how he carries himself. so when ada tells him she's an fbi agent, he believes it because there's no reason why anybody would lie, let alone lie on the fbi.

from then on, leon regards ada as a superior and assumes that she too is a morally just agent, just like him. and i think the first time leon has any suspicions of ada is when they're with kendo, and she chooses not to tell him any information that might help him and his daughter. it's not the fact that ada might not have the information an fbi agent should have on the situation that tips him off that something is wrong, but the fact that she is making the active choice to leave innocent civilians in the dark about what's happening, and to leon, that's not something an officer/agent should ever do. they should always be willing to help people, and she's not. and she firmly stands by that decision, not being swayed by leons frustration even once.

and there are small moments here and there where leon is suspicious of ada, but that one is really the first red flag.

so even though he loses faith and trust in the government/police as a whole later on, he was still burned by her lying under the guise of being an fbi agent, and that burn is going to stay with him forever. and it's not just that he was manipulated by a spy, it's that his own belief in the system is what allowed him to be so easily manipulated in the first place.

leon finds out about adas betrayal before he realizes how horrible police and the government are (though im sure he was having some doubts, but based off what he says in the cable car, i dont think the doubts were that serious,) so i wonder if her betrayal hurt him even more because she was lying on the fbi, an organization he held in high regard

[theonlyadawong]

These are what he should be wearing

looking at Leon's casual fit and I know good and well tennis shoes were not that nice looking in 2004