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[nothingbadeverhappensto]

OOC INFORMATION
Name: QV
Contact: questionableveracity | quodvide @ Discord
Age: 28
Other Characters: None

CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Leon Scott Kennedy
Age: 27
Canon: Resident Evil 4 (Remake)
Canon Point: End of Chapter 15 / Beginning of Chapter 16
Character Information: Wiki
Personality: ( spoilers for RE2 and RE4 )

The most important thing to understand about Leon S. Kennedy is that he desperately wants to believe that people are fundamentally good and that the world is a righteous place. He is, at his core, an idealist, whose greatest desire is to help others and who wants to see the best in the people around him. From an early age, he felt inspired to pursue a career in law enforcement, admiring police officers for the risks they took to protect and serve their communities, and enrolled in police academy as a young adult in the hopes of following in their footsteps.

You can imagine how this went poorly for him.

Leon's first day as an officer during Resident Evil 2 plunged him headlong into the world of government corruption, ranging from the discovery that the chief of police was a brutal serial killer, to the involvement of the city in the development of bioweapons by its corporate sponsor, to the eventual total nuclear annihilation of the area by the US government to both contain the zombie outbreak that resulted from said bioweapons research as well as to cover up its own culpability. Leon struggled with these revelations immensely, confused and in denial about much of what he was confronted with - at one point stubbornly refusing to let a whistleblower out of his cell in the middle of the jail being overrun by zombies because he didn't feel comfortable doing so without consulting the police chief about the accusations first, stuck in the assumption that this was a situation with clear-cut good guys, bad guys, and reasonable explanations for everything. Floundering, he latches on to a woman claiming to be an FBI agent sent to stop the outbreak, insisting on following her around and helping her only to later discover that she was a mercenary seeking to steal the zombie virus and sell it to the highest bidder.

When the depth of how his naivete had lead him astray finally sinks in, it breaks something in him, leaving him deeply jaded and slow to trust. His faith in authority shattered, he finds himself essentially blackmailed into the armed forces, given the choice between joining up in exchange for the continued safety of a young orphan girl he'd rescued from Raccoon City or being quietly disposed of for having seen too much. He chooses the former more to protect the girl than save himself, though he displays very little love for his new employers - at a much later canon point failing entirely to refute the claim that he's merely a dog of the government sent in to mop up the messes they make, simply shrugging it off and saying, verbatim, "Yeah, well. It's a living." He understands that he exists under their thumb, and knows full well that they would be more than capable of getting rid of him if he ever stopped being useful to them.

(He does his duties all the same, of course - often being sent into dangerous situations to rescue as many people as possible, and he wouldn't refuse to do that simply because he didn't like who was giving the order. The belief that he could save just one more person on the next mission, no matter the personal cost, is what keeps him going. He cares deeply about people as individuals, grieving over every life he fails to save and in many cases actively disobeying orders to give up and retreat when it would mean leaving someone behind, even if it means putting himself in considerable danger. If it weren't for the fact that he still cares so much, feeling responsible for every death that happens on his watch, the events of RE2 wouldn't have broken him so badly in the first place.)

Still, those he encounters throughout Resident Evil 4 find him a suspicious and guarded individual. He bristles at nearly everyone he meets, keeping his distance from them as best he can in a way that really comes across as him not wanting to be burned again. Luis Serra bears the brunt of this - a former researcher for the company responsible for the original zombie outbreak, Leon encounters him tied up in a basement early on and attempts to rescue him, only for both of them to be recaptured. During the attempt to escape from that, Leon says very little to him, all but ignoring him until he lets on to the fact that he knows something about the missing president's daughter's whereabouts, whereupon Leon simply commands him to talk. When updating his handler later on the situation, he describes him as having "something fishy about him" and asks her to run a background check, which reveals his former employer and prompts Leon to conclude that he should've left him tied up in the basement to rot, unable to imagine any former Umbrella employee having redeeming qualities after what they did. Even when Luis returns later to help, Leon reacts to him with hostility and aggression - lightening up a little when he risks his neck repeatedly on his and Ashley's (the president's daughter's) behalf, but still questioning his motives constantly.

All that said, remember: he wants to believe that people are good. It just gets harder for him. Certain people are able to break through the walls he's built throughout the game, the first of which being the president's daughter herself. With no immediate reason to be suspicious of Ashley and every reason to try to be reassuring and sympathetic, Leon proves himself as devoted to protecting others as ever, powering through any and every obstacle ranging from the physical to attempts to mind control him in order to come to her rescue. Though he's stern with her at first, it's largely in the service of impressing upon her the life or death nature of the situation, and later on he softens up considerably, cracking bad jokes and giving words of encouragement in order to try to ease the tension of their situation and keep her spirits up. He clearly comes to care for her as more than just a mission objective, willing to prioritize her safety at all times and potentially sacrifice himself in the process, at one point explicitly ordering her to run and save herself if he ever gets overwhelmed.

Luis, too, gets his reprieve from Leon's scrutiny, though it takes Luis using his dying moments to save Leon's life to get Leon to fully snap out of his stubborn refusal to trust him. Despite spending the moments leading up to his death continuing to ask Luis why he was helping with no small amount of obvious suspicion, Leon finally realizes that there was no sinister motive lurking underneath, and sits with Luis through his last breath with the reassurance that he was "a fine knight," calling back to the repeated references Luis had made to Don Quixote and fairytales in general, which Leon had previously ignored or tried to shut down. Though it comes too late to really benefit Luis, this reassessment of his character leads Leon back to some small fragment of the idealism he started the series with, giving even Ada Wong, the mercenary from RE2, a chance when she reappears and lends the occasional hand. He asks her if she's changed since the last time they met, clearly not expecting an answer but reflecting on Luis's last words ("What do you think, Leon? People can change, right?"), and despite her scoffing at the idea and dodging the question, he later lets her go despite her stealing an extremely dangerous biological sample, likely in part because she tells him that Luis trusted her with it. Despite the similar setup to the end of RE2, Leon chooses to trust her again this time, wanting to believe that she's better now than she was before.

Anyway, the second most important thing to understand about Leon is his absolutely terrible sense of humor. This didn't fit neatly into the essay about his motivations and character arc, but it's vital to note that while he often comes across as gloomy and withdrawn or even outright surly - rarely smiling, having a severe case of resting murderface, and generally having a tendency to get pensive and quiet when reflecting on more serious matters - he often tries to put others around him and himself at ease by cracking jokes to lighten up tense situations. They're not good jokes. Sardonic and often characterized by their deadpan delivery, Leon just really seems to like cheesy action movie one-liners, very much trying to come across as cool and witty and not always hitting the mark. At one point when confronted by a pair of women driven to violence by a parasitic infestation and wielding chainsaws, he says, "Ladies, I am flattered, but I'm a one-woman kind of guy." This wouldn't normally qualify as a character trait but half of his dialog is like this. It's how he copes with situations and how he tries to comfort others, also ending a very serious heart-to-heart with Ashley after she was briefly mind-controlled and attacked him with his own knife with, "Just give me a heads-up before you try to stab me, next time." (To his credit, it does make her laugh.)

5-10 Key Personality Traits:

• Idealistic
• Stubborn
• Jaded
• Caring
• Guarded
• Devoted
• Self-sacrificing
• Gloomy
• Sardonic

Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, EITHER, or opt for 100% RANDOMIZATION? Fits, please!
Opt-Outs:

• Slime
• Goblin
• Simulacrum
• Werebear
• Minotaur

Roleplay Sample:

• TDM with Vash the Stampede
• TDM with Barbie