something happening on a mission, something personal that has soap spiralling; panic and rage making him reckless, thoughtless, and ghost has to draw the line
“you’re compromised johnny; you know what that means?”
“you’re not pulling me out,” soap immediately snarls. he turns on him and ghost barely recognises him; venomous fear turning his eyes to unyielding ice. "you're not sidelining me; i need to be in this-!"
but ghost has never been afraid of venom; spat or dripped straight from bared fangs.
he snakes out a hand grip the back of his neck, jerking him in a rough shake. "if you can't think, you can't be a soldier," he growls and he flinches like he's been struck.
his lips quiver as they twist in a sneer and he wrenches, trying to free himself of his hold.
ghost doesn't let him.
"it means you give your body to me because your head ain't fucking attached to it anymore."
soap stills, body trembling beneath his hand as he sucks in shaking breaths.
he tightens his grip, pulling him closer and digs his forehead hard into his. “it means you give yourself to me so i can have the weapon that you are and use you the way you're meant to be used."
the ice in soap's eyes fractures.
ghost’s voice drops to a whisper, spoken only to johnny, not this facade of vengeance and pain, and wills it to reach him through the glaciers.
“so i can keep you safe ‘til it’s done and i can bring you back.”
955 notes
·
View notes
I’m about to vomit out a bunch of thoughts, and I’m not sure any of this is going to make sense by the end, but. I’ve been thinking a LOT about these three lines in RE4make:
“You haven’t changed. You just think you have.”
“You can’t save her. You can’t save anyone.”
“This time, it has to be different...”
I’ve seen people focus in on that Krauser line and tie it directly back to Sherry, which is cool! Even as recently as five years ago, people completely glossed over Sherry’s impact on Leon’s life, and it’s cool that the remakes have had people digging into his character and realizing “oh shit, literally everything that happens to him after RE2 is because of his paternal love for Sherry.”
But... Krauser’s line is about more than just her.
With the remake turning Krauser into Leon’s combat trainer, chances are he knows about everything that happened in Raccoon City. And I don’t mean, like. He read a government file. Leon probably told him.
In OG, Krauser and Leon have this exchange of dialogue:
Krauser: “What is it that you fight for, comrade?”
Leon: “My past, I suppose.”
Krauser: “Hmph. Umbrella.”
It was axed completely from the remake, because it doesn’t make sense for it to happen in the remake. If Krauser was Leon’s trainer, that question was probably asked very early in their relationship. And since they weren’t currently in a fight to the death, and because they weren’t already six years removed from Raccoon City, chances are, Leon’s answer was a bit more involved than just “my past.”
So, let’s back up a little bit. In RE2make, they basically turned Kendo into a completely different character. OG Kendo was literally just there to point a shotgun at Leon and/or Claire and then go “oh my bad you’re not a zombie” and hook them up with some guns before he gets eaten. In RE2make, he’s a desperate and terrified father just trying to spend his last few moments with his infected 6 or 7 year old daughter before she turns. After he shuts the door on Leon and Ada, Leon turns to Ada and says, “Protecting people like that is why I joined the force.”
But Leon doesn’t protect or save Kendo or his daughter. He doesn’t protect or save... anyone. Every single person that Leon comes into contact with and tries to save dies horrifically -- and some, he even has to kill, himself (Marvin Branaugh). The only people who make it out of Raccoon City alive are people who saved themselves (Claire and Ada).
Of course, there is Sherry. But Leon didn’t save Sherry; Claire did. ESPECIALLY in remake canon, since nearly all of Leon’s scenes with Sherry got severely shortened or removed completely in RE2make.
But then, when Claire entrusts Sherry to Leon’s care (on his own insistence, per her RE3 epilogue), he goes and fucks that up, too. Gets her kidnapped and held hostage indefinitely by the federal government, and the only thing he can do about it is do exactly as they say and just hope they keep their end of the bargain and not hurt her.
So, when Krauser says “You can’t save anyone,” he means anyone. Ever. And even up to that point in RE4... Leon got the two officers who drove him into town killed, and he watched Luis die a slow, agonizing death right in front of him. And then, past that point, Leon has to kill Krauser with his own hands. Then he watches Mike die.
Ashley is literally Leon’s first and only success story, up to this point in canon. (And even when you go all the way up to current-day canon, Ashley is one of... three? People? I can think of? Total? Who Leon actually saves?)
So, Leon saying, “This time, it has to be different,” he doesn’t just mean Sherry. He means Ada. He means Kendo. He means Marvin. He means the entirety of Raccoon City. He’s staring down a repeat of what happened back then, not in terms of the bioterror situation, but in terms of his own personal failures. His survivor’s guilt. He can’t handle the thought that he’ll be the only person to walk away again -- and he refuses to be.
And that’s why Ada’s line bothers me so fucking much.
I mean, first of all -- Ada, you haven’t seen this man in six years, and you’ve spent a total of like five minutes with him since meeting up with him again here, so how the fuck would you even know -- but even aside from that...
To be clear: she’s right.
But she’s also wrong.
Leon has changed -- to an extent. In RE2 (OG or remake), Leon honestly believed that if it was lawful, then it was also morally right. He doesn’t believe that anymore. There’s no more “letting the law sort it out” or trusting in the power of authority for him anymore. His moral compass has been boiled down to: “If you hurt or murder innocent people, you’re a fucking asshole, and I don’t really care who you are, I’ll kill you myself.”
RE2 Leon was willing to hear people out and give them an honest benefit of the doubt -- even Annette Birkin. RE4 Leon just tells people to shut the fuck up before opening fire.
RE2 Leon was honest and trusting to a fault, and he felt stronger as part of a team. RE4 Leon is suspicious almost to the point of paranoia, and he just wants to be left the fuck alone to do his job.
These are all things that were really important to who Leon was in Raccoon City, and they’re reasons why things turned out the way they did for him, back then.
But at the same time, Ada’s right in saying that, at the core of it all, Leon is still that kind-hearted, decent guy who just wants the good guys to win and the bad guys to lose. That’s why it hits him somewhere sensitive when Krauser says: “You can’t save anyone.”
It’s just that, now, the way he approaches it is different. His outlook on life in terms of his goals is different. His expectations for it have changed.
So, if Leon had been smarter/wittier, he absolutely could have turned it around on her and said: “No, I’ve definitely changed. You just think I haven’t.”
And not only would that sound threatening as fuck, he’d also be right. They both would be, at that point.
And for all of those major parts of him to have changed and still be facing down the possibility of failing every single person he comes across, especially Ashley...
"This time, it has to be different.”
And this time, it was.
131 notes
·
View notes
hi! how's it going? I am gonna be honest, this morning I was going to you a message saying that, if maybe I don't believe that David and Michael have a relationship or they are in love, I love your blog and I enjoy so much your posts and theories and I really hope that will be true. But then, I watched a video on instagram about Staged and David is saying how he ride michael and... Well... That was quite impressive. I love your work and I enjoy it a lot! Greeting from Spain!
Hello and Buenos días! Aww, well thank you so much for the kind words...I'm truly floored to have readers from all over the world on my blog, and that you have enjoyed what I am writing so much that it made you want to send in this Ask.
Ah, Staged. I know the moment you are talking about very well, and what a day in the fandom it was when that season came out and we all saw that scene...
I think what spun my head the most about this is that I randomly wrote something nearly identical to this (about Michael putting a saddle on his back and having David ride him) on my blog six months before Staged 2 came out. I am definitely not deluded enough to think that any of these people have poked around on my Tumblr (although Michael was doing some serious hardcore lurking in 2019/2020), but I cannot tell you how weird it is to see something you wrote turn up in a TV show--especially something like that.
(Not just any TV show, either...fan fiction that Simon wrote about Michael and David and that they agreed to act in...for whatever reason.)
So yes, "I'm gonna ride you all the way to America, boy" continues to live rent-free in my head even now. This is just one of the countless times Michael and David have fanned the flames of suggestion since 2019, and I highly, highly suspect it will not be the last...
39 notes
·
View notes