#to give you context like this

[sapphire-weapon]

In re4 it says in the intro:

Specifically want to focus on "protecting the new president's family"

In the OG it's his first time meeting ashley, but would this presumably have meant he was planned to be on the president's secret service? We never really see this in any of the other material following RE4 (I think???), so I'm not sure if he ever follows through with this.

We also don't see it in the remake! So would you say this was retconned, or did I maybe misinterpret this?

Leon also says in the intro of OG:

"Soon after [the incident at the Spencer Mansion (aka the events of RE1)], the news was out to the whole world revealing that it was the fault of a secret viral experiment conducted by the international pharmaceutical enterprise, Umbrella. [...] With the whole affair gone public, the United States government issued an indefinite suspension of business decree to Umbrella."

and yet in RE6 the entire inciting incident that kicks off Leon's campaign is that the president is going to "reveal the truth about what happened in Raccoon City"????

Like???

Literally what is still being kept secret, exactly??

And it bothered me for the longest fucking time until RE4make was announced to be in development and someone went and interviewed Shinji Mikami regarding his thoughts on it, and Mikami's response was (paraphrased) "I support any attempt at a remake as long as they fix the story and give it a better one. We wrote literally the entire story of RE4 in two weeks because we'd spent so much time perfecting the gameplay that we legit forgot to write a story."

And then all the pieces clicked together and it finally started to make sense.

So we really gotta keep in mind what RE4 OG actually was at the time of release. Prior to RE4, the last two major RE releases were REmake and RE0, both of which completely and utterly fucking bombed. Mikami, to this day, considers REmake his magnum opus, and for it to sell like complete and utter dogshit to the point where it almost legit ended his career was literally traumatic for him. In 2013-2014 leading up to the launch of The Evil Within, he would say in interviews that he still had nightmares about how badly REmake performed after he'd poured so much into it.

In those same interviews, he also talked about how RE4 was a make or break moment not just for his career, but for the entire RE franchise. If RE4 underperformed, not only would he get fired from Capcom, but they were going to pull the plug on Resident Evil all together. This is a huge reason why RE4 took so long to come out compared to previous RE titles and why two different completely viable builds for RE4 got scrapped (one became Haunting Ground and one became Devil May Cry) before they settled on the version of the game that was actually released.

It's also why they fixated so hard on the gameplay and let the story go by the wayside.

So, Leon's voiceover in the original RE4 literally only exists for two reasons:

to get players who have never played an RE game before relatively up to speed with what's happened in the story up to this point

to give some explanation to existing fans why Leon is in Spain looking for the game's escort mission when, the last time we heard about him, he was just... nebulously with the government and was working as a point of contact between Claire and Chris in CVX.

Basically, neither Mikami nor Capcom had a plan for Leon's character at the time RE4 was being made. It had already been established in the RE3 epilogues that Leon and Sherry had been kidnapped by the US Government and that the gov't was holding Sherry hostage and forcing Leon to work for them, but... that was about it. That was the only sort of baseline that Mikami and his team were working off of, so they basically were making it up as they went along and taking whatever liberties with his character and the base lore that they needed to in order to make the game coherent and successful.

We also need to keep in mind that Mikami left Capcom in the time between RE4's Gamecube release and its PS2 release (and that's a whole fucking drama all on its own), so he was not at all involved in the writing or creation of Separate Ways.

So, the father of the entire Resident Evil franchise, who developed the whole fucking idea himself, and who created and directed RE4's base game fucking dipped out right after release, leaving absolutely no notes behind because Capcom fucked him over, which left the PS2 team to just kind of fucking... figure it out on their own during the creation of Separate Ways, because Sony wanted exclusive content for their version of the game. So now, in addition to Mikami taking liberties with Leon's character for the creation of the base game, the B-team now had to take even more liberties because they didn't know what the fuck to even do.

Like.

Degeneration is a bad fucking movie and it's a huge shitshow, but I do not at ALL fault or envy the writers or directors of that movie, because I wouldn't even know where to START when it came to working off of the spaghetti plot that RE4 just kind of threw at the wall and hoped stuck.

And there's more I can go into about Degeneration, too, and why that's such a shitshow and how half of it doesn't make sense, but. That's for another post.

So, all of this to say... don't take Leon's voiceover in the intro to RE4 OG too seriously. It was literally just a way for Mikami and his team to really quickly just be like "okay, so, there were zombies and shit in the previous games, but now that's over and Leon's a government agent, and he's going after the president's kidnapped daughter. everyone follow me??? yes??? ok good let's start the game." because the story was a rush job, and the game was developed under extreme duress, and all that mattered was that it made enough sense to not put people off.

Like... does it suck, as a Leon/Ashley shipper, to see in the intro that he was actually, at one point, specifically assigned to her? And that the rest of the series then just ignored that? Yes. It does suck. But, the only reason why that was said in the first place was just as a scene-setter, and, realistically, there was no way to keep Leon relevant in the RE series if he was just assigned to presidential security detail. And of course they were going to want to make sure Leon stayed relevant in RE because of how much of a cultural phenomenon RE4 actually became. They'd have been stupid to not change the role of his character to one that could be used over and over and over again for different stories.

But at the time, Mikami and his team didn't know -- and had no way of knowing -- just how successful RE4 was going to become. It was just as likely that RE4 was going to go the way of REmake, and the series was going to die with its release. So, if it died, at least it ended with Umbrella being defeated and long gone, and Leon having a mostly happily-ever-after in a cushy gov't job protecting the president's family.

We know now that that's not how it went, so things had to change, but. It would've been a fine way for things to have ended, if they did, in fact, end there.

So it just kind of... is what it is.

[canisalbus]

✦ Freshly ordained ✦

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Trapped in a vicious cycle of pining? Try gay sex! (More things to learn over at Tiger Tiger!)

[ravenpureforever]

On one hand, Young Justice is kind of neglected by the actual superheroes that should be looking out for them in a lot of crucial ways and very much failed by the adults around them

But on the other hand Red Tornado straight up hosts a parent-teacher conference where their respective legal guardians all show up, barring Batman who’s in traffic so Nightwing fills in instead because Robin’s dad does not know he’s a vigilante which is objectively hilarious

[lemongogo]

env practice ft the reunion scene

[asavt]

Allow me to be silly for a moment and break my rest from posting online for the sake of being funny because sanflhjskalhKHJKLSFAHUWILRFHWUAGKBSJFAWHURA

Guys Im nomrl im good im fine im normalkfdsafja imasnjfakhawukgawjkawwa the lmab ganmes,anfwkagfh

[stealingyourbones]

I keep seeing the “Constantine is a soul whore” fanon interpretation. It’s fun and enjoyable to read but I do think it’s important to also know the canon and WHY he sold his soul.

he’s only sold his soul to three demons. All of which he did in rapid succession (same night) to trick them into curing his lung cancer because they didn’t want to deal with Satan being mad at them + causing a civil war in hell just because of this fuckers soul being claimed. The message more being that he’s the worlds best conman and less that he sells his soul all the time.

[chloesimaginationthings]

oughh.. your movie william affers design is too silly… love him ❤️

Tbh I haven’t drawn him nearly enough, gotta fix that

[sunnymainecoonx]

Can u guys tell I like setting up different interpretations of the same character together yet

I've done so with swap(he's the most obvious one) and I've done so with horror. And now dusts on that list too. I have had thought of others like ink but, maybe another time

[royalarchivist]

Tallulah: tio pac and fit are so Perfecta by Miranda coded 🥹💕

Phil: This is Pac and Fit? [Dramatically zooms-in on the fanart and makes them "sing" along to the music]

Chat: he's LITERALLY making a ship amv right now

Tallulah: How things got weird 😞

Make sure to show love to the artist who drew this fanart!

[ Full clip ]

[poorlydrawninstarsandtime]

"WHY ARE YOU REFERRING TO YOUR FEET AS 'DOGS', ISABEAU. STOP IT."

[id in alt]

[dirtytransmasc]

hey, friendly reminder, spider's iconic bow shot:

was his almost instantaneous reaction to one of the recom's putting their hands on Tuk. He then has to be convinced by both his siblings to put the bow down and keeps it trained on the recom holding Tuk.

when Quaritch approaches Spider, Tuk hisses at him (hard to see in photo cause they were little baby hisses)

when Jake tells spider to get "them" out of there, spider immediatly calls for Tuk (and grabs Kiri)

now for some cuter snippets

and when Tuk goes to egg on and tease Lo'ak, she hides behind her big brother, and Spider looks amused in the way a big brother is equally amused and tired of their little sisters antics (he's probably defended her, whether she was the one who needed defending or not, many times, especially when it comes to Lo'ak)

and she runs for both Kiri and Spider when the war party returns, making it clear she hangs out with them quite often.

my conclusion? she and Spider are besties, no one puts their hands on his baby sister, I rest my case.

[foxx-queen]

so about the choice in act 3. I feel like the writers wanted to do the suicide mission from me2 AND the companion choice from me1. which clashes at its core because the whole point of the me2 mission was that if you did all the companion quests and worked for it, you could keep everyone alive. and I get wanting the shock of having one of the companions die no matter what, but at this point in the game after the obvious set up, it just feels like one of those haHA surprise! moments

then there's the fact that it's between davrin and harding. the black man and the fan favourite from dai. like it feels so stacked against davrin at that point.

I picked davrin first, and then I went back and picked harding, thinking maybe that was the right choice to keep her alive. and here's where the whole choice gets even worse for me, because harding, instead of using her stone magic, the actual thing that would give her an advantage against ghilan'nain, she climbs up to the exact same spot as davrin, and uses her bow. she tries to use arrows against a giant multi-limbed blight enhanced being. it's stupid! of course she dies!

I had expected that if you picked harding, she would use her stone magic, which would distract ghilan'nain because of the history with the titans, giving lucanis enough time to act. it would have worked really well as a continuation of her character arc, and it would tie into her personal quest in a way that would make it clear that the effort we put into doing that was what makes the difference.

but by not doing that and having her die no matter what, it instead feels like it doesn't make sense. davrin, at least, is just a man with a sword. his death here makes sense because he's against impossible odds.

which brings it back to feeling really bad that the choice was between him and harding. because for this sacrifice / loss to make sense, it feels it should be davrin. for this narrative beat to make sense, it should be davrin dying.

it feels like the writers are saying: the correct choice here is davrin. he's the only companion who should die no matter what. to signpost this at the moment you make this choice, we will have the other choice be the fan favourite from dai. because no one will want to risk her potentially dying.

it feels bad. it feels racist. davrin deserved better.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Laios's three Boy Best Friends. And yes, they hate him.

[roseworth]

based on a convo with my brother

[lazylittledragon]

the thing that i love so much about my relationship is that i feel absolutely zero pressure for us to be in eachother's pockets constantly. not just in the way that we like to have our own space sometimes but that i don't feel guilty for getting fixated on a project and not texting him or leaving him on read for a few hours. we have a system where i just say "i'm so sorry, i fell down the Art Hole again" and he says "that's ok, was the art hole fun, can i see what you did in there?". or if i have a feeling i'm going to draw until late at night i'll be like "pre warning, i might be in the art hole this evening" and when i'm done he's texted me goodnight anyway.

tldr: find someone who doesn't get mad at you for crawling into a hole and instead helps you out of the hole and asks what you saw down there