i truly believe that leon's time in the special forces was more traumatic than raccoon city.
it's one thing to have to be in the mental space to shoot and kill reanimated people and monsters that are trying to eat you, but it's another thing to be subjected to physical, mental and psychological torture by fully cognisant human beings, ALL BECAUSE you managed to survive a biohazard and wanted to protect a child.
like we see leon come out of raccoon city all cheery with sherry and claire, so wth happened to him in the military for him to be so hardened in re4r? obviously he's still the same leon who cares and wants to help, but he's so emotionally detached to the violence of it all that i'm concerned 😭
i think raccoon city was a shock to his system that he could never shake off, but the military broke him into a shell of a person to be rebuilt into that emotionally devoid, depressed, alcoholic (ik he liked to drink before re2 but it's on another level after re2). it hurts to imagine, but i'm genuinely fascinated by what he could've possibly been subjected to that wouldn't make him blink twice when facing all the las plagas shit in re4.
he had to have been bullied. relentlessly. i mean he wasn't even supposed to be in the special forces in the first place, so i can imagine the other military guys would haze tf out of him for being a rookie and skipping through basic training and all the years of hard work they would've put in to get to the place they were at. and every time he would get better, bigger, earn his place amongst the rest of the men, they would double down; abuse tf out of him and never allow him to fully belong. and you KNOW that they would get away with it too because the government is obviously corrupt.
meanwhile leon was literally blackmailed into joining. like join and ensure sherry was protected, or be killed with all his knowledge of the outbreak and sherry gets tortured. not much of a choice for him.
leon says that krauser was always an asshole, but he never expected him to turn on him the way he did, so it seems krauser was sort of his safe space in the special forces? and yeah they did operation javier together so they had a good level of trust and cooperation before re4, but i wanna know what it was like for them in trainingggg
anyway i’m writing about it on ao3 😁 read Resident Evil - Operation: Collapsed Canopy to find out what happens to leon in the military!
It's sad to see the near-total disintegration of the Free Speech Ethos, even from smart well-meaning people who should know better.
...that's all. No analysis, no clever takeaway. Just a bit of melancholy.
It's bad if the government cracks down on you for your expression of your ideas, and also unconstitutional, even if those ideas are very bad ones.
It's bad if you get fired for your expression of your ideas through private channels, or if you are made to suffer major personal consequences as a form of crowdsourced punishment, even if those ideas are very bad ones. This is not unconstitutional, and in most cases it's not illegal. In a few odd situations I'm willing to go as far as saying that it's practically unavoidable - for example, when you're some kind of paid public intellectual and the core of your job is inextricable from your idea-expression. But it's still bad. Seeing it happen should make us feel like we are failing to be the civilization that we ought to be.
This applies to everyone, of course. It applies to actual-factual Nazis. It applies to people calling for political assassinations. It applies to perverts and blasphemers of all stripes. It applies to people advocating for the revocation of the free speech that shelters them, and the institution of a censorship regime.
Clearly that's not where we are, as a society. Which is sad.
the moon whispered secrets again last night and i swear i almost remembered what it feels like to be known. my heart keeps finding old bruises in the dark. the kind left by words that linger just below the surface, like a name on the tip of your tongue that you can’t quite grasp. i want to kiss ghosts and taste the memory of sunlight. is that too much to ask? 🌙💔
I fantasize about talking to you again. Talking to you and just whispering in a hurt voice "I love and loved you, y'know?" and you just whispering back, softly and without regret; "I know."
104. “I’ve never felt stronger than when you’re with me.” (list can be found here). Since I have used this prompt before I changed it a little bit in this! Hiro was kind enough to give me free reign of the pairing, so I went with MadaGai. Please enjoy my first attempt at writing Gai!
Also @writhingbeneathyou I hope you don’t mind but I borrowed your Ward of Konoha universe!
Madara liked to think he hated Gai with a burning passion the Uchiha were famous for, even if the little voice in his head disagreed with him. Without Zetsu around to corrupt his thoughts, that damn voice sounded a lot like Hashirama; it was just like that fucking Senju to torment him from the pure lands. He was sure at least Tobirama was having a good laugh up there, enjoying how eternal paradise had been denied to Madara, AGAIN. Instead of getting to reunite with Izuna and his other brothers, Madara was stuck in the village he’d already forsaken once; shackled to the very beast that had bested him. That stung his pride worse than the chakra suppression seals tattooed into his skin.
“Your heart is not in our battle my friend!” The booming voice has Madara blinking and starting across the training field at the bane of his existence.
“We’re not friends,” Madara states and sage dammit if that wasn’t the start to half of his conversations with Hashirama.
“Of course, we are!” Gai’s grin is over the top and sends another pang of longing through Madara. “Shall we continue our youthful endeavor?”
Normally Madara would raise to the challenge clear in those bottomless black eyes, but today the Uchiha is stuck in a time long past that he’ll never get back to. “Don’t you tire of this farce Beast?” He asks instead, crossing his arms under the protection of his yukata sleeves, making it clear he’s not fighting anymore.
“What farce?” Gai asks, bushy eyebrows furrowing in confusion as he too stands up straight; Madara suspected the taijutsu master cared more about their spare than his strange behavior but nothing was sure with Maito Gai.
“This,” Madara let’s his eyes sweep over the clearing no other shinobi dared approach, their fear of Madara still too great, before he looks at the youthful green beast before him. “Surely you must grow bored of acting so friendly; I am hardly blind to the fact you surely despise me as much as the others from the war. When will you put me out of your misery?”
“I…I don’t follow,” Gai admits and Madara’s eye twitches in annoyance, “why would I act differently around only you?”
“Must I spell everything out for your puny brain?” Madara growls, wishing not for the first time that Gai’s brain was as strong as his other muscles. “Everyone in Konoha wants me dead, are you so weak that you need to drag this out?”
“Yosh! I’ve never felt stronger than during our youthful clashes!!”
“Of course, I’m a bigger cripple than you,” Madara scoffs, his anger fading as he stares off into the distance. “Everyone wants me dead,” he repeats, his tone far away and detached in a way Gai has never heard as he continues, “I want me dead. You’re my warden Maito Gai, how long will you prolong my suffering? Have I not repented for the lives I took?”
“No one wants you dead!” Gai interjects, a frown marring his usually joyful face, “enough of this unyouthful talk!”
“I am old and so tired,” Madara continues like Gai hasn’t spoken, his unfocused eyes glancing in Gai’s general direction, “I just want to find the paradise Hashirama spoke of. Will you send me there?”
The fist slamming into his cheek hard enough to sending him crashing across the clearing catches Madara by surprise. For a moment he just sits there, brain trying to figure out what just happened.
“You are my friend Madara,” Gai states, his serious tone drawing the Uchiha’s attention, “I won’t tolerate such talk any longer, understand?”
“Look at you Beast, you almost sound human,” Madara taunts, because he wants the other’s anger to back his fists. “I didn’t realize you still had nerves I could strike.”
“I’m not going to kill you,” Gai ignores the other’s words, “nor is anyone else in Konoha, least they face my power of youth!”
“How can you be a bigger disaster than Hashirama was?” Madara asks exasperated, unable to tear his eyes away from the strange man that held no anger at him, despite nearly dying at his hand not even a year ago.
“Yosh! You really think so!?” The honest to sage excitement in Gai’s tone at being compared to the God of Shinobi breaks something in Madara and the Uchiha can’t stop the laugh the breaks free as he finally stands up.
“Hashirama is the only shinobi I could never best,” Madara says as he drops back into his crouch, “a title I won’t allow you to take.”
“We shall see.” Gai’s grin is nowhere near as vicious as Madara’s but the Uchiha knows the youthful beast will do everything in his tremendous power to steal that title from his childhood friend. Madara looks forward to the challenge.
