Have Y’all Heard About This? Nick Apostolides (Leon’s VA) Explains Here Https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmq8KekjVks

i like to call this one “leon s kennedy getting bodied for two minutes”, otherwise known as the resident evil 2 experience 

Leon and Ada’s relationship is not ‘forced’: an essay

Here comes the Resident Evil 2 hype again in the wake of its Remake/Reimagination reveal trailers, and with it, all the most stupid complaints I can’t even begin to properly fathom from the shippers’ fanbase.

“Oh but Leon and Ada’s romance doesn’t make any sense, no one falls in love in such a short span of time”, “Leon and Ada’s bond is unrealistic and forced”…

And blah, blah, blah.

Yeah, sure, let’s talk about lack of realism for the romance sector in the same videogames franchise where you have to gun down giant infected zombie frogs. Seems reasonable.

But even so, despite the lore of the game so very distant from what exists in the real world, Leon and Ada’s connection makes sense in and out of its context. Especially in its context, which is the most important part.

Leon is a rookie cop whom, upon his first day in the force, is faced with a gruesome outbreak that wiped out the city almost completely. There are people, dead people, with their deteriorated human faces, attacking to kill. Skinless-only-flesh-blood-arteries-and-human-brain creatures who were once humans as well crawling the delegacy walls. Dead dogs with exposed fractured bones and popping eyes coming as fast as they can for a bite.

And then there’s this woman. “Civilian” woman who’s stuck in the parking garage. Sure, she’s hella attractive, weirdly mysterious, most certainly hiding a few cards of her game, but all he knows is that he wants to save someone – anyone – a human being instead of just shooting undead with HUMAN faces. He has to. He fell straight into this hell not knowing any better because he wanted to be a cop, didn’t he?!

He spends the next total, what? 4? 6? HOURS (maybe even more, since he entered the city by the very beginning of the evening in 09/29, and escaped with Sherry and Claire by dawn/morning of 09/30) trying any imaginable way to escape that shit hole city. Yeah, yeah, the woman runs off on her own like four times, but you have to remember she doesn’t know him at all. When he lectures her about their chances of escaping being improved if they paired up as a team, she seems a bit more inclined to stick with him. And then he takes a bullet in the shoulder for her because that’s what cops do, right? They protect civilians. After confronting Annette, she patches him up, tells him the boyfriend she was looking for is dead, and that they should get going. Escape.

Now, take Ada’s shoes for a sec. She is a secret agent, a spy, on a mission. To retrieve a G-Virus sample. She’s solely in this fucking place dealing with all this apocalyptic situation and the nightmare material monsters because she’s following orders, trying to do her job. She doesn’t need a cop breathing down her neck, delaying her mission’s fulfilment. Plus, she’s looking for the guy she’s been having an affair with the past few months, she expects he’s the one supposed to help her in this: getting her job done, so what good would do her having a cop meddle in all that?

She does her best trying to dismiss him, evade his “hey, let me help you, I’m a police officer, it’s my duty”, runs off, but he seems very serious about it, and what the hell? Maybe this will help her get to John sooner rather than later. Guy gets shot in the shoulder for her, doing his job. While she, doing her job, got stuck in this nightmare filled with horrifying shit that is going to last probably years in her subconscious. Her job is getting her neck in the line for something that is probably harmful to people and even society as a whole, but she doesn’t care (or at least, she’s not supposed to), she does what she’s got to do. His job, on the other hand, involves saving her life, even if demands risking his own well-being for it.

The two are set on escaping, then. They find this cable car that can get them to descend into Umbrella’s lab. Maybe they can find an escape route there. On their way down she gets attacked by a mutated monster, is severely wounded by said monster, but Leon is still very much concerned with her safety, rejecting her pleas for him to move on without her.

Next time they see each other, even though she’s in Umbrella’s Underground Laboratory now, probably already got her hands on that damn sample she needed and should just LEAVE since, again, she’s severely wounded – she finds the time to save him. She’s grabbed and raised in the air like a doll by this massive creature who doesn’t even flinch at her repeatedly shooting at it. Gets thrown in a metal panel, now mortally wounded, and confesses she fell in love with him. In Leon A route, she confesses she wished she could escape with him from… everything.

No need to say that everything doesn’t narrow down to only Raccoon City and their current situation, right?! But also, what got her there in the first place.

Plus, she helps him one more time with a rocket launcher so he can finally leave. Escape this mess. He asks if it’s her. He hopes it is.

Now, if you ever fell in love, you know that things such as chemistry and attraction don’t need YEARS to happen. It can happen in a matter of few hours, maybe minutes or even seconds. It can happen instantaneously. But now, imagine being saved by the person you feel attracted to. Quite literally. Having your life saved by your “crush”.

It affects you, deeply. Changes you. Changes your outlook on life. Changes what you feel. Ada’s entire identity is shaken by Leon jumping in to stop that bullet. Leon’s entire identity is shaken by those final hours with her – the conflict of having Annette planting a seed of suspicion in his trust that he’s doing the right thing and saving a decent, innocent civilian and then witnessing this same person sacrificing herself to save him from the monster that has been hunting him on and off again the entire night. That traumatic, awful, life-changing night.

That’s why he says she’s like a part of him he can’t let go of. That’s why one and a half decade later, he’s pointing his gun at Chris to protect a woman who looks identical to her not knowing better that isn’t her. That’s why Ada disobeys Wesker express orders to execute Leon and saves him so many times you could say she’s his guardian angel.

They changed each other. In that life-changing nightmare of a night.

You fall in love by much less than that. You can literally fall in love by just an affectionate smile at a loud party. With just a conversation.

Resident Evil is not “unrealistic” with Leon and Ada’s connection. Much like it isn’t with Claire and Sherry’s one, who built a mother-daughter bond that lasts to this day.

That’s it. People should get their shit together and come up with better and more honest excuses for not liking the canon romance for these characters in this franchise.

“Forced” is saying that this other girl who most definitely never showed any romantic interest for him whatsoever is better as his pair because she’s “morally” worthy of him. I’m not even gonna tackle how misogynistic this is, but since when love is primarily concerned with a moral compass? Would be better if it was, sure, but very rarely it is. And Ada is not anywhere near aligned with the bad guys when it comes to moral standards, this is clear in the games.

Cut the crap, really. I’m exhausted. Ship whatever you wanna ship, just don’t be intellectually dishonest and CLEARLY derogatory while doing so.

There are plenty of underdeveloped and forced couples in fiction that mysteriously got the canon status out there to pick on. Ada/Leon is not one of them. Shoo. Get a grip of yourselves and stop replying to all Capcom’s tweets and official social media publicity that features Leon and Ada with those stupid, nonsensical opinions no one asked for. 

PS: Last time Leon appeared in canon he was 36 years old. Maybe even older if we start speculating when Vendetta can be placed in the chronology. He’s a grown man who’s more than capable to analyse and sort things out on his own, not a baby who needs to be protected from that “devil woman”, Ada. Actually, in 1998 he’s 21, not a teen. He’s a man there. An inexperienced one, alright, but an adult man. Stop the misogynistic idiocy of always demanding the female character to be held accountable for everything.

PS2: By the way, the other girl, the more “morally worthy”, has a taste for morally ambiguous baddies herself. So, yeah. Guess she doesn’t want to use her mom instincts in a relationship with Leon.

leon: fighting a huge monster

ada:

obsessed w this bc it means both ryder and jaal are alien fuckers

me, every time baby boy Leon gets bit when I’m playing RE2 cause I’m fucking around too much:

I cannot WAIT to go careening off cliffs in an HD Mako 

Leon S. Kennedy is a bottom, pass it on

What about that one time in RE4 when Ada thought Leon was gonna kiss her

But then he tried to strangle her because he had the Plaga lmao

Ada Wong: Appearances Are  Deceiving

Leon Finds Ada After Her Run-in With Annette:

This scene between them has to be my favorite, even above the kiss scene and the lab scene where Ada falls, because this is the point where you see Ada genuinely trying to convince Leon to leave. Many have already commented on Ada not liking to depend on others when she’s injured, but I’d like to add that the main reason she begrudgingly accepts Leon’s help with her injury is actually because she hates lying to him, taking advantage of his gullibility. It’s a sour taste on the tongue for her, because Leon not only has a good heart, he’s a strong survivor. She eludes as much after the alligator attack. 

Let’s Track Back a Bit:

Directly after Leon’s first encounter with William Birkin, a ladder is cast down and Leon makes the comment about being watched. I hazard to guess that was Ada. Then, we see their introduction to one another and Ada goes out of her way again to offer Leon help, this time saving his life from a Cerberus. She tells him directly to get the hell outta Raccoon. This woman is going out of her way to protect some stranger while she’s got a mission to complete. I won’t state the obviousness of the obvious.

She runs into him again after Ben’s death and tells him a second time to escape. Her following line “Then, we’ll talk.” shows us immediately that she’s interested in him personally, not as someone to use for her mission. Conversely, he’s the one trying to stop her and demand questions. Ada is tangling herself into a situation she knows is bad for her in the long run, yet she keeps helping Leon. She does not immediately rope him in with manipulation. She offers assistance to him twice for certain, then leaves; but like I said earlier, I hazard to guess three times. 

It’s only after he attains the keycard – something she needs but can’t just steal from him, because we’ve already established that Ada has gone out of her way to assist Leon without blatantly saying ‘Hey, I’m FBI and you should help me ‘cause reasons” – that she partners up with him. Ada is acting so foolishly in terms of her mission if you really think about it, because she could have either told him before he needs to assist her, or just outright killed him and taken the keycard. It’s not like anyone would know if she had killed him. It’s the apocalypse. Besides, she’s wasted enough precious time telling him to escape instead of telling him immediately to help her. Leon is obviously not just some pawn.

Back to Leon Giving Ada Aid:

I love how Ada’s expression gives away her true thoughts in this scene. You can tell that she is attempting to talk Leon into leaving one final time and she genuinely means it, because Leon just braved those sewers alone and found her on top of already having taken a bullet for her. She doesn’t know how to act with him now, but she’s also got her mission. Leon has complicated things beyond repair at this point, so Ada attempts one final time to push him away. And in true Leon fashion, he steadfastly refuses. 

Imo, I feel Ada thought she could attain the G-Virus, while also keeping up the facade with Leon and letting him survive Raccoon believing no different. Her dialogue with him right before her fall bolsters my suspicions on this, especially when Leon challenges her to shoot him. Even her final line “Take care of yourself Leon” proves her respect for him. If it were any other time, any other life, these two individuals could work together with no issues of allegiances and make a good team. 

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Opinions welcome.