I've never seen a writer get leon so in character like you do I'm amazed everytime I read your fanfics..help a girl out what's the secret??😮
please stop sucking my dick please im just doing my best sob
uhhhh more serious answer: I'm terrified of writing characters OOC and personally *hate* reading fics in any fandom going "he would not fucking say that" so I try really, really hard to keep characters as IC as I can. Even in AU's there has to be enough narrative connection for it to make sense to me. Like in Darkroom - I personally headcanon Leon as someone unfortunately straight, but if he *were* bisexual his life would be easier gay men are a lot more open to having random bar hookups like that. Cruising for sex and gloryholes have been a elements of gay male culture since forever, and considering his age and the time period he grew up in combined with DADT I could see that being canon-adjacent behavior for a bisexual Leon.
other than that, boil a character down to how they react in the source material and go from there. Dialogue is the easiest element - people have an ear for a character and will notice if it's off, but if you have their dialogue down you can probably make them do anything without raising too many eyebrows.
In Requiem, Leon clips a lot of his words (excuse me -> 'scuse me) and can be very casual. While it's not written explicitly in subtitles, he says "you" -> "ya" sometimes, "want to" -> "wanna" a fair amount but not excessively so. He also leaves out words (I think I want a second opinion -> "'think I want a second opinion" is what it actually sounds like, with a soft t). He does curse a fair amount but only when situationally appropriate.
(insert Leon's character rant under the cut)
He downplays situations via humor (being interrogated by Victor -> "little tied up", riding the motorcycle in RC -> "potholes" etc), doesn't talk when confronted with something actually terrible (he leaves Sherry hanging in the intro phone call when she asks how he is and she doesn't push him, implying this is normal behavior. When she confirms they have T-Virus infections he comforts her ("at least we're in this together")). He calls things bluntly as they are ("Victor is batshit crazy", "is Grace okay?" -> "No, but I've got her covered") but doesn't linger, getting immediately to the point and what he's going to do about it. He doesn't fill up a lot of dialogue with wasted words and his humor is often one-liners that he's saying to himself, so it doesn't have an off button, though he does use it to get under his opponents skins, too.
He's snarky and a bit standoffish by default (look at how he behaves towards the nurse) but not aggressive, going with the flow even if it might lead to a trap. "Wait and See" kinda guy. He's quick to comfort others (Sherry, Grace, Ashley in RE4R) and effective at it, being a steadying and calming presence with a strong conviction others believe in, and doesn't think less of them for being upset. If he doesn't know if he can do something, he doesn't bullshit ("think you can give me a boost?" -> "guess we're about to find out") but will try something instead of waffling or giving into despair even at death's door. He's clearly smart, but very intuitive and tends to keep his thoughts to himself - there's stuff churning in his head but he doesn't say things until pushed. (You see this a lot in Vendetta where he rightfully points out the seeming futility of the fight against bioweapons and Chris blows him off, lol.) I think (older Leon especially) won't talk about things he can't change until you really dig it out of him. He has a lot of emotional intelligence and empathizes with people easily (listening to Patricio's wife demand to speak to her dead husband in Vendetta makes him look like someone's got him in thumbscrews) but I don't see anyone around him meeting him at that level, so he keeps quiet these days. No one cares, really, what he feels about things, only what he can do about them.
(I haven't finished RE6 yet but I think that's why he was so torn up about killing Benford. That guy clearly had charisma and wanted to do the right thing - he called Leon a dear friend and valued his opinion, and Leon doesn't get a lot of that in his life.)
That's really Leon's major flaw with being in Resident Evil. He's a very self-aware character--he understands just how fucked up things are and how little he can do against them, hence the alcoholism. (He's not even a happy/social drunk though, so I don't think it's escapism for him - he's clearly able to articulate his issues in Vendetta and has spent time thinking about things, ruminating on them, so drinking is more about self-harm, quelling the urge to pace in his cage imo. He's drinking alone, in the morning, and not in a busy bar.) Even outside of BOW nonsense, I think that's why he doesn't reciprocate Ashley's obvious flirting/crush even though he clearly cares for her--there's a part of his brain that cannot/will not forget that she's trauma bonded onto him after everything they went through, she's a young college student, and she's the goddamn president's daughter. He's not getting into that level of potential mess even if her dad loved him and sang him praises. (So for Kennecroft, Leon *must* be aware of that age gap and how things look. He may decide that it won't stop him but he knows.)
Contrasting to RE2 Leon who desperately wanted Ada to tell him what to do and what was going on, RE9 Leon doesn't give a fuck and will hunt down whatever lead is necessary to get the job done. He and Sherry go rogue essentially, and he does the same in Damnation too, where Hunnigan tries to pull him out of the country and he hangs up on her. Leon *is* at the beck and call of the government/DSO, he's never going to quit (might not be able to?) but he will do whatever he thinks is necessary regardless of what anyone says. Calling him a "trained lone wolf" is pretty accurate characterization imo, he can exist in an authority structure but doesn't do great in them, obedient to a point and breaking out occasionally, but always comes crawling back even if it's not pretty. (I think RE2 Leon would have run into trouble with Chief Irons pretty damn fast tbh, even though he was very obedient back in that one.)
Back to the intuitive part - man took a bullet for Ada and then dared her to shoot him at the end when he realized she was a mercenary, accusing her of having feelings for him. He's 100% the kind of guy who does what his instincts tell him to do and he's usually right. I think he's got good people sense (Ada, despite her everything, comes to his rescue quite often) and is thus rattled deeply when Patricio betrays him in Vendetta (due to a threat to his family - not a bad guy, just an impossible situation).
I will say that Leon clearly has a weakness for mysterious women. He's gotten his ass kicked plenty by powerful women, so I don't think it's that he thinks they can't kill or hurt him, but he lets a hot woman get away with not explaining shit for waaaaayyy too long to be rational, so he's either willing to give women in general the benefit of the doubt (benevolent sexism) or just ones he's attracted to. (He's also not prone to machismo at all - he happily hands over guns or weapons to various women throughout the series and trusts them to be competent, he physically fights Ada, and takes Svetlana as a human shield in Damnation. He will throw down against women.) Helena Harper basically said she got the president infected and forced him to kill a guy he clearly cared about and he lets her put off explaining herself for fucking ages, not to mention Ada all the time. Bby Leon could be forgiven - he was 21 and looking for direction, and did eventually catch on - but two is a pattern, lol. note i haven't finished re6 yet
(Clearly he has an attraction to avoidant women specifically. There are a lot of potential fun elements to play with in this regard to his childhood, which is where this sort of pattern would have established itself, but that's an essay for another day.)
Biggest elements in Requiem character-wise are how he's extremely effective at his job (no wasted movements or flourishes anymore, very practical), at the peak of his game though he's exhausted but not showing it, will push through pain until the very end (Sherry's popping pain pills - if they wanted Leon to do the same, they could have shown that and they didn't. He might take them outside of the job but he'll just deal while working imo, and doesn't talk about how he's obviously dying and on his last legs at the end of RE9). He still feels like all he's done isn't enough and is haunted by survivors guilt, he's okay with dying if it means something; I think dying alone at home has him scared shitless (he's a lot more quiet/tense at the crime scene compared to later), like that's a better yet more meaningless end than he deserves, so while he's terrified in the bad ending he doesn't look away from Grace because saving just one person has to be worth it. It's more fucked for her to make eye-contact while he's getting his brains blown out but he needs that connection. Stripped down to the core, that's what matters to him.
Conversely, I do think he could have saved that nurse from the chainsaw zombie. RE2 Leon would have tried. RE6 Leon kept stopping every damn moment to save civilians trapped in burning cars. Sure, cutscene rule-of-cool, but it's more fun to me to imagine RE9 Leon did the calculation and partially thought she had it coming. He's not upset by random people dying anymore - he's too numb to it. ("What a fuckin' waste" I think he says in the blisterhead room?) I think that's why Grace sobbing when he shoots Emily gets to him and he looks noticeably tired when she throws the Requiem back at him, because it's a dividing line - he sees himself in her, but she gives up in that moment, which thematically shows how much he has changed in these past thirty years. He's not normal anymore. She's having the normal reaction, he's the one who's broken in by this horrific circumstance to where it doesn't even register, but her rejection forces him to see it as the tragedy it is.
Re: emotional communication: he doesn't actually tell Grace that much in the trash room. He tells her the emotional heart of it - he felt he couldn't do enough - but not any details, and that's when his body is already in organ failure, so it's almost a last confession if you wanna go with an italian/irish catholic family history. That combined with how he talked to Sherry previously makes me think that getting details out of Leon would be very difficult - he can share what matters, but its in relevant circumstances and narrowed down to the core of the matter, not a long-winded story. He can communicate, but he's very much a man about it, and would suffer in silence before you dig what matters out of him.
Fashion/Car/Aesthetic-wise, he's clearly got a fashion sense and likes nice things. He's always had nice jackets, has kept the same haircut almost for 30 years, buys nice cars and motorcycles and even his new watch is entry level "nice watch" territory. His clothing otherwise in RE9 is very practical tactical/athletic stuff that's high quality but not absurd (I think the shoes are a niche adidas that's like $200) and he continually wears colors that look good on him and tends to look put together, so he's definitely got an eye for fashion as much as men can while not going wild with it. It's probably a fair assumption this ties into anything else he buys - apartments, house, etc - he's got an eye for something, not always hitting the mark (dad rocker looking phase) but very distinct in what he likes and not going to shift it for anyone. he's gonna have furniture opinions is what I'm saying and probably owns the eames chair from herman miller
Anywho, biggest thing I see with people when writing Leon that drives me nuts is making him too soft/communicative/possessive in a generic romance lead way. He's got feelings but good luck getting them out of him the older he gets, he's clammed up hard after getting kicked in the teeth too many times. He can talk, but he'd rather not / will avoid things with humor or drop a firm line that can't be crossed, or just avoid the question and not say anything. You can get an answer out of him by being forthright and direct. He's great at comforting people, but might not have endless patience for spiraling in circles and not doing anything about problems. He's not gonna get in some guy's face about flirting with whoever his partner is - he trusts them to have it handled. When things get tough, he takes charge and doesn't ask permission, but might be more go with the flow than you might expect otherwise.
