#literally cannot stop myself from thinking about re4

[desired-misery]

goddamn it, it is 11pm

i got so many other fics to work on and yet now I have to start working on a "luis does surgery on himself" oneshot because FUCK this man is giving me thoughts and feels and I need to get into his head okay

[iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid]

Leon S. Kennedy

14, 20, 29, 30 🥰✨

14. Best storyline they had

okay here's the thing. i've literally only ever played re4 out of all the resident evil games lmao so. i'm gonna have to say re4

20. A weird headcanon

i guess this isn't that weird but it's firmly rooted in my brain: this man cannot cook a decent meal to save his life. absolute dogshit in the kitchen. eats cold beans out of a can at 3am. the only spices in his kitchen are a salt and pepper shaker that came with the apartment. he does not see anything wrong with this

29. How do you think they would be as a parent?

terrified at first. he'll say shit like "i'm not qualified to be a parent" while he's standing there cradling a baby perfectly in his giant beefcake arms and bottle feeding them. talks to the baby like it's an adult person, like, all the time. when the kid's a toddler he checks the closet for monsters, then tells the kid "listen, if that monster comes back, you tell him i'm the scariest thing in this house, and he can either leave on his own or i'll kick him out myself. got it?" and eventually he's the kind of parent where if the kid's fucking around misbehaving he just has to look up from whatever he's doing and they stop immediately. also this man WILL straight-faced threaten a small child for bullying his kid and feel no remorse over it

god. this is making me want to dust off my leon/luis writing. like, what if i threw a baby at them just to see what happens lmao

30. The funniest scene they had?

so much of re4 can be reframed as comedy tbh, but especially the mendez fight. "be careful" "i will be" [immediately gets bulldozed by a 7 foot tall super-powered priest] and then his one liners are INSANE for that fight. "guess your tap-dancing days are over" LEON PLEASE HE'S ABOUT TO KILL YOU

character ask game

[sseizonsha]

Leon and Survival

Motivations and Guilt as an Agent of Death    

  The Biohazard universe requires the audience to suspend disbelief, particularly in regards to the protagonists surviving events where others would have died. One could argue that this is merely protagonist armor for the sake of thrills and playing the game, but if you’ll allow me, I’d like to get a little more symbolic and meta about this fact. 

  Leon is defined most prominently by two things: his tenacity, quick-thinking, and improvisation in the field, and the severity of the loss he experiences when he fails to save people in need. This eventually leads Leon to become the jaded and a little more distrusting version of what he used to be. But what’s most important here is despite this, Leon never loses his penchant for gambling on a snowball’s chance in hell. He never loses his idealism. He never stops believing he can help someone.

    If I could let myself be facetious for a moment: Leon S. Kennedy. Leon Sentimental Kennedy. Leon Self-Sacrificing Kennedy. Leon Serve Justice Kennedy. Leon, ever the Survivor. 

    I have touched on this before in my exploration of Leon’s PTSD, but I really need to stress for anyone and everyone willing to listen: Leon does not take the term “survivor” as a compliment or as something to be lauded, and he prefers not to be referred to as such. At best, he uses it ironically in order to make fatalistic, derisive jabs at himself. The term serves as a reminder of all the people he’s failed and all the innocents he’s lost. This is also why, in Degeneration when defending Claire’s expertise, he omitted the fact that she wasn’t the only Raccoon City survivor in the room.

   For Leon, helping others get to safety supersedes everything, including direct orders from top brass on mission; at the root of it, seeing others get out and survive IS his mission. Take, for example:

The important scene in RE2 leading up to and following Robert Kendo’s death, in which Leon shows serious emotional compassion for Kendo’s family and demands that Ada not keep the truth from innocent people. He explains that helping people is the only reason why he’s even here, that he cannot and will not allow her or anyone else keep the truth quiet. 

 When Leon and Helena are walking through Ivy University and come across the man looking for his daughter. Helena insists that they don’t have time for this, to which Leon responds, “We’re making the time.” 

   There is nothing more important or valuable to him than another’s life. Therein lies the  greatest source of scarring and trauma for Leon: most of the people he stops to help end up dying anyway, and he is left standing over his friends’ and charges’ bodies, asking himself what exactly was the point of it all. 

   One could argue that this signifies Leon being protected by a force greater than himself. But you could also argue that Leon is that very protective force acting upon others. It is a secondary role, certainly, as his main career and role is to protect and serve and keep others alive. But no less important is this one: in which Leon S. Kennedy assumes the role of a psychopomp in the Biohazard universe.

    Greek for “conveyer of the soul,” psychopomps serve a crucial role in most mythologies in that they exist to guide the recently deceased to the afterlife without hitch. It is important to note that many psychopomps do not exist to judge the soul; that they simply guide them to the next stage of passing. They are described as liminal beings: able to pass through both the land of the living and the land of the dead. 

Below the read more I will explore these three defining aspects of Leon as a psychopomp. This is already a long post. Take a breather, maybe. Get some water. Get some sleep. 

Judgement

   One major quality that separates Leon’s character from many of the heroes in the Biohazard universe is that Leon's primary motivation is protecting innocents from villains rather than fighting the villains themselves; his personal stake in this fight is one based on compassion and the need for helping the victims and survivors. He doesn’t waste his time hating the bad guys more so than combating the corruption and greed that they stand for. 

  It is this nonjudgmental quality about Leon that allows him to see the world in shades of grey. He can empathize with motivations even if he doesn’t agree with them, and it’s for this reason why he can work so easily beside people like Ada Wong, Manuela Hidalgo, and Alexander Kozachenko. 

  With Leon as a psychopomp, this grey morality works for another reason: that a number of the characters who’ve died and had an impact on Leon all confessed some manner of sin to him before they died. More than that, they all acknowledge Leon in their own way. Below I will list some notable examples:

Marvin Branagh: Arguably the catalyst for Leon accepting his role in this fight, Marvin is first of many people to die in Leon’s line of service to the cause. When the Lieutenant insists that Leon leave without him, Leon refuses and says there’s still time. It is only when Marvin pulls a gun on him to save himself that Leon relents. Marvin names his guilt: “I tried, Leon. But I couldn’t stop it. We can’t let this thing spread. It’s on you now.” 

Ada Wong: (subverted) Ada Wong is an entire meta post on her own in regards to Leon’s feelings, but she deserves mention here. The pain of her betrayal, “Why couldn’t you just hand over the sample,” was later exacerbated with the knowledge that she chose (allegedly) to die on her own terms rather than allowing Leon to save her. Ada tells him that “It isn’t worth it. Take care of yourself,” before falling to her supposed death.

Adam Benford: The United States President and long-time friend of Leon’s, Adam was prepared to sink the USA’s reputation into the ground for the sake of the truth and taking responsibility. When he tells Leon this confession, Leon responds with surprise but ultimately with support: “Whatever you decide, sir, I’m with you.” Adam validates Leon and tells him, “I’ve always valued your friendship.” I imagine this is one of the last things he says to Leon before he dies by Leon’s hand.

Luis Sera: Did not intend to die by anyone’s hands, including his own, but his motivations for helping Leon and Ashley are driven entirely by a need to repent. “I am a researcher, hired by Saddler....The sample. Saddler took it. You have to get it back.” 

Liminal Beings

   Spiritual guides are so powerful in the fact that they have an uncanny ability to travel between both worlds (living and dead) with ease. The most obvious parallel of this is Leon’s sheer luck in getting roped into outbreaks of undead infections and leaving alive and relatively unscathed. Such an existence is a lonely one. While the psychopomp may have companions for a time ( mission partners or innocents in need ),  a rare few share his ability to travel between spaces; most often than not, those who follow from one destination must remain behind or move on. 

   When the psychopomp travels, it is often within a vessel which few can drive or operate, which is undoubtedly symbolic of the soul’s lack of control. In media and story-telling this is actually a trope known as the Afterlife Express. Leon S. Kennedy is often written and played in tandem with vehicular scenes, regardless of whether he is operator, passenger, or witness: 

The beginning of Resident Evil 2: In which Leon drives his own Jeep (in full control) and ultimately switches to drive an abandoned RPD police cruiser deeper into Hell; it is subsequently crashed into and destroyed by an oncoming semi. Leon is temporarily trapped in Hell and must survive and find another way out (via the endgame train).

The beginning of Resident Evil 4: In which Leon is being driven by someone else into the countryside Pueblo. He is shown to be gazing out the window, contemplating on prior events. It is a recollection of his life’s past---his---but the ones doomed to meet their deaths are the Spanish police, who up until seemed so deceptively in control of the situation. 

RE4: Ada driving the boat to the island. Again, subverted, as Ada does not die but chooses to leave the vehicle on her own terms.This forces Leon to take the controls and steer himself the rest of the way to his next area.

RE4: Mike and the helicopter. He meets and interacts with Leon just long enough to help guide Leon along his path; his death is a subsequent righting of roles. Leon witnessing Mike’s death and promising to honor him posthumously fixes this. 

RE6: The start screen and Lanshiang. Leon rides a train with no known conductor steering the rails. The train is empty, save for himself; then with his companion, then with the soul he is sent to fight (Simmons.) 

RE6: The plane. The pilot is subsequently killed and mutates into a Lepotica. Because everyone on board, with the exception of Leon and Helena, are infected, Leon is forced to take the controls and land the plane as best he can. Leon crashing the plane and surviving with Helena attests to his ability to move between literal spaces; the corpses and zombies destroyed in the plane crash all move on to the next world.

RE Damnation and the tank:  While Sasha drives the tank and steers seemingly to his death against the Tyrant-Class mutant, Leon intervenes.

As a Guide

   Beyond everything else that’s been said---and beyond the obvious that Leon’s primary duties are protective detail and getting his charges where they need to go, Leon's presence serves as a reassuring boon to many of the people he comes across.

   Leon internalizes the deaths of everyone he fails to save. The main issue with this beyond the way it affects him is that Leon lacks the ability to see the reality of hindsight. Events in which an outbreak occurred (Harvardsville, Tall Oaks, Lanshiang) happened in a large enough scale that containment was nearly impossible. Sterilization was more or less the only way to eradicate the issue at hand. With or without Leon’s self-sacrificing and offers to help, the fact of the matter remains glaringly obvious to anyone else: 

   Most of the people caught in the chaos of these events likely would’ve died anyway.

   Leon stopping to help gave these survivors the chance to last longer than they might have otherwise. He took that snowball’s chance in hell and made it count for what it was worth. The truth of the matter is? Although he is written as psychopomp symbolically, he is first and foremost incredibly and literally human. 

   From the symbolic, spiritual perspective, Leon is incapable of realizing that it is not his job to stop all of these people from dying---it is simply his job to be there for them so that they are not alone.