#also ftr because i ran out of text space lmao

[godtier]

i saw this come across my dash and i have Things to add (very tl;dr sorry everyone)

"the first time we see wesker" in the remakes is RE1 remake, which was released on the gamecube in 2002 and subsequently was rereleased on ps4/xbox one. RE1 remake is part of the remake canon/timeline/continuity whatever you want to call it. it should always be considered when it comes to remake characterization.

the wii titles (darkside chronicles and umbrella chronicles) are no less canon to the OG timeline than any other entry. the fact that they're rail shooters is an odd reason to exclude them from consideration when it comes to OG. the only thing i would say is iffy is whenever there's a rehash/revisit of an OG event in a game. anything else shouldn't be brushed off just because it's a rail shooter. example from another series: dead space extraction is a rail shooter on the wii. it's part of the canon for dead space, the events are referenced in subsequent titles and many of the characters are present, and just because it's a rail shooter that nobody but me and one other person played doesn't mean it's not canon. game enjoyment or game genre doesn't determine whether something is canon or not.

"literally no one that Umbrella sent into [Raccoon City] succeeded." huh??? "literally no one?" are we forgetting about HUNK? HUNK was one of the best examples of an umbrella employee that DID succeed in that entire fiasco, and in spades. HUNK was the sole survivor of his squad, he successfully retrieved valuable data and a goddamn sample of the G virus. to say that ada is exempt from scrutiny or given a pass from wesker or umbrella because "no one else succeeded in raccoon city" is an odd way of interpreting those events. especially given that it's factually incorrect to say that "no one else succeeded" in the first place. i would even argue that the fact that HUNK succeeded lends credence to the fact that wesker and ada clearly have an elevated relationship of some kind in remake for that very reason. if HUNK succeeded in the mission (which he did), and a supposed major reason for ada being given a pass is "no one succeeded," your argument no longer holds water.

"wesker doesn't fuck" is just. i don't understand. whether people like it or not, there's no evidence to suggest that he doesn't fuck. just because he doesn't like excella doesn't mean he's averse to sex. excella is a personality. she has a presence that absolutely does not mesh with wesker's vibe. but she was a necessary annoyance. she headed tricell. wesker needed her to get shit done. he had to tolerate and endure her crap until she melted into goo. and bizarrely, to imply that jake's mother basically just... stole wesker's sperm to have a kid??? lmao what???? but implying that wesker just... doesn't do The Sex because excella is annoying and he hated being around her or dealing with her is flabbergasting. did the possibility of preferences cease to exist with wesker just because it's wesker? i get that he's a weird freakazoid of a man but that's what makes him all the more likely imo to fuck people at random. he has an ego.

i have to rant about this in its own point: why would the first thing anyone would jump to about a non-character like jake's mother is that she's a creepazoid obsessive stalker that steals sperm??? from what jake tells us, she seemed like a normal woman who happened to fall in love with the wrong man. if she was that obsessive to steal the man's sperm to have his child, why the hell would she emigrate back to her home country while pregnant and not even tell wesker she was pregnant? to me, given that his mother spoke fondly of wesker and still loved him, it's likely that wesker either lead her on, hit it and quit it, or made up some kind of excuse about his job making it impossible for them to have a relationship. at most, jake's mother has a fault of perhaps falling too quickly for someone, but that doesn't equate to ... stealing sperm. wesker can be charismatic, after all, and it's kinda fucked to assume that a woman would only continue to love him and think fondly of him due to the fact that she must be crazy or have been a stalker. i think jake's mom was just a "victim" of the person wesker never was, much like chris and the rest of STARS were. they thought wesker was someone that he wasn't, they grew close to this person that didn't exist. the difference was that some of them lived to see who wesker really was. jake's mom never knew. that doesn't make her nuts or wesker any less likely to be her baby daddy. i understand that people don't like jake as a character, but speaking about "talking objectively" and then saying some wild-ass shit like that... nani tf and just to reiterate, jake's mother is a non-character. why construct this bizarre assumption when previously, it was stated "wesker doesn't fuck except for [jake's mom]?" very confusing.

also, sidenote: why are we hinging OG wesker's shenanigans to make inferences upon what remake wesker does? they're two separate characters. whatever happened in OG doesn't matter until it happens in remake if we're talking solely about remake.

the rebecca picture is not merely a little cute easter egg for the players. it was put where it was, in wesker's desk, for a very obvious and deliberate reason. i'll explain. back when this game was new, we didn't have the luxury of guides that were released simultaneously with the game. printed "strategy guides" were a thing, but even they weren't always accurate and sometimes didn't release at the same time as the games. in fact, several guides that i own from the ps1 era have incorrect information in them because they weren't written by the development company. they were written by (effectively) fans who just so happened to work for a game guide company. they had to play and discover the games the same way we did. that's why strategy guides from the era of RE2 should almost never be used to point out a possible thing in canon. a lot of them are just fanboys using the space to hawk their own theories or interpretations of the game. anyway, the reason why i bring that up is because when we got a new game, we had to find shit on our own. devs knew this; this was the norm at the time. devs also knew that when players first reached the STARS office, the first thing they were gonna do would be scour EVERYTHING for clues and hints on the story. when you knew that seasoned players were coming off of wesker's betrayal, the assumption would be that said players would be feasibly motivated to smash the "examine" button all over wesker's desk to figure out what else he was hiding. 50 times. you had to do it 50 times before you found the roll of film. again, the motivation at that time (with no way to look it up, remember!) was that he HAD to be hiding SOMETHING there! and he was. he was hiding a picture of rebecca. sure, it's a sort of fake-out joke, but it also makes you wonder why wesker had that roll of film so deeply hidden in his desk. i'll tell you why. it's because he was jerkin it to rebecca. wesker fucks.

"The only time we see Wesker closely interact with a woman is in RE5 where he’s extremely disgusted and visibly uncomfortable." did we miss jill in her skintight catsuit in RE5 here or...? like i must reiterate: wesker put her in that shit. marinate on that. why? because he gets boners from their suffering. that's why.

there are just so many odd takes in this discussion that i had to go over because frankly, some of the information isn't correct. other takes are just weirdly offensive and baffling. i couldn't keep my mouth shut. gomen.

Here’s some RE Separate Ways analysis that isn’t about shipping because I like Ada. I’m happy her DLC actually focuses on her, but some of the takes I’m seeing are Insufferable. Main statements in bold for ease of reading and skipping purposes.

-Wesker and Ada haven’t been working together consistently for the past 6 years. This dripless bitch is calling Ada every five minutes to babysit her. I don’t think that’s the relationship dynamic of someone you’re regularly employed under, and when it is, Ada is not the type of character to tolerate that behavior for 6 years. We know Ada is a contract worker. We can understand she’s worked for Wesker on and off, but she’s a freelance agent period. She must’ve done enough jobs for Wesker that he feels the need to check on her and have this constant reporting in to make sure she stays on task since he’s clearly used to her not always following his orders. He 100% hired her for this assignment because he knew the situation and compared to the other options, she had the highest survival chances. Which, he was right. High risk, high reward.

Sometimes Wesker’s babysitting works: Ada holding Luis at gunpoint when he tries to negotiate saving Leon and Ashley. Sometimes he knows when to step away: “Keep your dog.” All of it is in the effort to get what he wants. Look, he let her live. He worked with S.T.A.R.S for years and wanted them all dead. If he worked with Ada regularly and she pulled this shit with the amber, he would’ve had that helicopter blown out of the sky. There’s always some restraint with personal distance, especially with a guy who thinks so highly of himself.

-Luis is a drama queen. In the regular game, Luis acts cool and under control to the best of his abilities around Leon and Ashley. It’s a part of his newly found hero-complex even though he does still know when to ask for help: “save me prince charming!” In the DLC, we see the real side of Luis. The one who’s scared, and dramatic, and knows when he’s not shooting with a loaded gun so to speak. When Ada tells him to leave her to fight, he does. He wants to help, but his respect for her abilities sends him fleeing like she orders him to. Also, like every scientist, he has zero self-preservation! He ran into a fire that clearly would kill him to get medicine. And the exchange afterwards? “No! Now you’ll all die!” “Make some more medicine.” “Oh..yeah…I can do that. I do have that ability.”

The flamenco dance. “Are you mad at me???🥺 You’re mad at me!😭” This man understands Ada can kill him without blinking, but still can’t keep his composure around her. This is such a fun dynamic to explore in fic for expansion stories and “Luis lives” au’s. The DLC gives him breaks to freak out and panic, whereas the main game holds the “cool persona” moments after Leon saves him. Even his dying words to Ada. This man is bleeding to death and still can’t shut up. I love him.

Okay, that’s all I gotta say about the loser men. Now for the star of the DLC. Ada. :)

-Ada “Sans Undertale go into my eyes” Wong. The methods Ada uses in the DLC are fun and appropriate. It’s not invasive and in your face unlike another agent, but more subtle. She can track footprints, fingerprints, gauge the safe distance required for her grappling hook, and she knows when she needs to fight and whens he needs to run. Her practicality has always been the cleanest of the entire cast due to her being a spy, but this time we actually get to see this trait utilized through her tools.

-Ada is silly and quips her own jokes to get through it. Something I’m not seeing anyone talk about including the aeon people who are claiming anything they can get, is this specific humor parallel between Leon and Ada in the remake. Both of them have gone through the horrors of Raccoon City. Both of them went right back into very difficult military in function style work which always has a body count. I talked about Leon’s humor coping mechanism here [X], but to hear Ada do the same thing? I feel like they went under the radar because they don’t sound as stupid as Leon’s quips, but they are still so stupid. “Nighty night.” “Lights out.” “Bring me a real challenge next time.” “Now look at the mess you’ve made.” “You think that gun will be enough?” She and Leon even share the same “Next,” line!

If I had 80GB to spare on the game, I’d see just how many more I could get out of her. Like, these are dumb as hell. She’s found a method to cope with the horrors she’s witnessing that just so happens to coincide with Leon’s. I’m not saying this as a marker of whatever romance you’ve tossed them in or even to diss any other romances. What I am saying is that they have a similar type of mental illness resulting from trauma, and they ended up using the exact same coping method despite never seeing each other.

Ada fans who hate Leon! This opens a door for you when it comes to character analysis and how Ada deals with her PTSD and/or depression! Run through it RIGHT NOW!

-Ada’s infection pulls a lot more weight than it seems. I’ve seen some people say Ada’s parasite should’ve been removed the same as Leon’s and Ashley’s. (Which is an extremely unsubtle argument to get them all in the same room for your shipping nonsense.) However, something I noticed with the DLC were the parallels to the troubles in RE2. The Black Robe/U-3/Pesenta monster is the first time where we get to see Ada dealing with a stalking enemy. Due to RE4 being so much more plot-lined streamed to maintain the flow of gameplay, these events were not allowed to be random, but the narrative purpose remains. Ada gets to have a stalking enemy in her DLC like Claire and Leon did in RE2 with the addition of a hubris check.

The hubris check? Well, Ada has never been infected until this DLC. In the original games, she can step back and watch people die because she doesn’t know what it feels like. Now she knows what it feels like. The lack of control. The pain. The slow turning. Her job has had her flirting with death for years, but not in a way she can’t fiddle with the odds. A parasite is not something a person can distract with words. The action to steal the amber is backed up via personal experience not just a morality code slapped on. The addition of Wesker’s correction to “billions of causalities” means she’s included in that number and just cements her incentive to flee. She’s not doing this for Leon. She’s not doing this for Luis. She’s doing this for herself, and if it so happens to help other people then it is what it is. After being on both sides of the coin when it comes to viruses, she can no longer function as entirely impartial to the work she’s doing.

-Ada doesn’t ask for permission but asks for forgiveness. Don’t take this phrasing literally. She doesn’t ask Wesker to forgive her. What this means is that she’ll do something before asking, and if it upsets people then she’ll course correct. Her job is not the kind of job where she needs to take orders for every action she implements which is why Wesker calling every five minutes was annoying as hell. In the OG RE4 she kind of argues with Wesker for Leon to live for “his usefulness”, but it’s swiftly shut down until it’s convenient to Wesker for Leon to live. This forces her to sneak around and betray Wesker multiple times to save Leon secretly, and the concept rightfully gets thrown into the garbage for the remake DLC.

The scene in the bedroom where Wesker tells Ada not to become a liability after taking her blood? Ada doesn’t fight to get her shit back. Some people said this was flirting. Wrong. This is Ada seeking forgiveness after the fuck up of passing out in the middle of an active field by letting Wesker walk off with an infection sample. She then makes sure not to fuck up a second time in the same way, and she doesn’t. She learns the signs of her parasite so in case she does pass out again, she’ll be somewhere much less conspicuous. She listens for the changes in her environment and the feelings in her body and prepares herself for what’s next.

-Ada saves Leon and Ashley for Luis’ sake. I stated earlier that Ada’s action to take the amber was for her own sake but ends up helping others. This is the exact situation going on when Luis talks about getting the suppressant. She needs the suppressant in order to do her job and kill the black robe so she can heal. It just so happens that Leon and Ashley need the suppressant for survival reasons too. They are an afterthought until Luis dies.

We watch Ada question Wesker and his plans all throughout this DLC, and she comes to her own conclusions after her experience working with him. She could’ve gotten the amber back and let the whole place blow into smithereens like Wesker intended. Who cares about the president’s daughter? Who cares about another dead federal agent? Luis did. He cared so much he died for it, and just like that other clown in Raccoon City (aka her), she got emotionally attached. If there was anything she could’ve done for Luis to make his death mean something, it was this act.

-Ada sells Leon’s jacket. This isn’t analysis, but I thought this was funny as hell. ACAB! No exceptions! Freeze your tiddies off, Leon! I don’t give a shit!

-Ada’s new outfit is still better than her old one. It’s still not the best they could’ve given her. I’m also not speaking from a fashion point of view when I say this. In the OG RE4 we see Leon in a jacket which is forcibly removed to show off his pecs to the ladies, but it clearly marks a colder time of year. OG RE4 Ada has arms out, legs out, and tits out because a hoe never gets cold. The sweater dress for the remake re-establishes that it’s colder here because even Luis doesn’t lose his jacket. Ashley doesn’t lose her jacket either until they yoink it off her for ritual reasons. I still hate that the thigh high boots have that heel and would prefer the flats, but that’s going to be in the complaint paragraph below.

-Capcom sexism at play once again. I don’t give a shit about rigs and motion capture or whatever, her walk cycle was 2 adjustments from being full Bayonetta, and I hate it. The ass shots? Disrespectful. Her heels didn’t have to be that high. Never heard of a kitten heel? They exist. The people who worked on RE3 Remake and worked on this DLC sure love to make a woman vomit don’t they? Why the fuck was she so clean the entire game? She was being thrown around and tossed in the dirt a lot, but this woman’s skin is shinier than a waxed apple. Either she has some wet wipes on hand, or god forbid women get filthy. Absolutely zero reason she shouldn’t have been looking as rough as Leon by the time she gets on the helicopter! No reason at all!

That’s all they wrote! I love Ada. I loved this DLC, and I loved the dynamics going on here even though I hated every time Wesker was on screen or opened his mouth at all.

As much as I would love to expand this post and go further into the changed Ada and Leon relationship, I frankly hate all the takes I’ve been seeing so much on either side of the Aeon debate. I hate the ongoing conversation around it so much that I don’t know if I want to discuss this at all. The Aeon should’ve gotten this if not for Luis and Ashley side and the Aeon is dead side going back and forth with each other? All of you put on your clown noses! None of you are looking at this situation objectively to see where the lines cross and where they run alongside each other, and frankly I’m tired! I could clear this whole table off so both of you can get exactly what you want based on what you’re not actually interpreting from this media, but I won’t! Kill each other!

[zenlesszonezero]