what he means to me:

it's really hard for me to put how i feel about leon into words. that reads really pathetic and cliche written out like that, but it's the truth. so, because i am realizing i am not a person meant to exist in fandom spaces, i am using this shrine as my dedicated space to put my love for him into the world in a way that caters to only me. while my words here can undoubtedly be taken and twisted into something else by a stranger, at least i don't have to see it happening in real time lol.

leon is a lot of things to me: an inspiration, a crutch, a vessel for me to put all my own shit onto. he's become something like a saint or an angel to me. corny, but it's true.

resident evil (and by extension, leon) has been in the background of my life for a very long time now. even though i came into the series fairly recently (2021?) it's always been there, even if i didn't see it. i'd heard of it of course; a game a friend played in high school, a game i picked up at blockbuster and then put back because it was something my mother wouldn't ever let me play because it had the word "evil" in the title, a series of (bad) live action movies i'd watched with my dad at too young an age. but then, i met my girlfriend. i love telling the story of how i got to know leon because i was "introduced" to him because of my wonderful, hilarious, handsome butch almost 10 years ago.

we hadn't been dating long, i don't remember if we'd even officially put a name to what we were yet. i think we were both afraid of scaring the other off with the word 'girlfriend.'

i do remember making out with dutch in my tiny twin bed in my old room at my mom's for a really long time and then he pulled away and smiled and blurted: "have you ever played resident evil 4?" which, looking back, is a hilarious thing to ask someone you just made out with for nearly 20 minutes. but it was perfect and funny, just like dutch. i laughed and told him no, i hadn't. he bolted up, told me i was gonna love it, and immediately bought it on my ps3.

and he was right, i did love it.

it was absurd and funny and leon was absurd and funny. i fell in love with leon and fell even more in love with dutch.

i didn't play resident evil for myself until later, though. i'd enjoyed watching dutch play it and always will. i randomly borrowed dutch's sister's copy of the RE2 remake and decided it was finally time to jump in. i was relatively new to horror and was scared of Everything. i think i screamed more than anything in that first playthrough. it reaffirmed my love for leon and his frustratingly naive righteousness and his bad one-liners. 2023 rolled around before we knew it, the RE4 remake dropped. there's something about re4r leon that just hits the spot for me. he's a little cocky, a little naive, and a little jaded. guilt weighs him down in a way i don't think he expected it would. it's just perfect. i love original re2/re4 leon but re4r leon is just the best of all of them.

it was pretty over for me after re4r came out, i couldn't get enough. i played through every resident evil i could get my hands on after that. it took me an embarrassingly long time to get the hang of the old tank controls but now i think i love them more than i love modern controls. dutch and i played re5 and re6 together which was amazing fun. re6 is still one of my least favorite games because i hate how it treats women, especially ada LOL. but it was fun screaming at the tv with dutch.

leon is a lot of things. he's too good for his own good. his self-righteousness probably gets him in more trouble than anything else. he's good to a fault and it blinds him to doing the actual right thing a lot. i relate a lot to his survivor's guilt, his struggles with himself and what doing good and being a good person mean. he's human in a way a lot of characters have never been to me before. i love him for it.

all of this to say, i still can't put into words how i feel about him. i just feel. sometimes way too much. definitely way too much. take one look at my website and my diary and i think that's fairly obvious.

he makes me want to be better and i don't think that's a bad thing. even if it is a little embarrassing sometimes.

reading:

CFC Fan-Book CAP! Faux Leon interview

Leon and the Raccoon Incident

Leon's handgun: Silver Ghost

Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness - The Beginning

Is Resident Evil's Leon S. Kennedy Italian? An investigation

Resident Evil: Archives Book II

personal headcanons:

let me start off by saying these are my own personal headcanons. I also think it's important to clarify that I do not see Leon as a man, at all. I personally see him as a he/him butch lesbian. :)

Some of these are silly, some are serious. At the end of the day, none of it is that serious because they're headcanons for a character from Resident Evil. I'll probably add to this as more come to me.

• He's a brunette, not a blonde. i'm a staunch blonde Leon hater, idk why, I just am.
• He is Italian-American. I know people argue the validty of this being canonical but I personally just really like it for him. I can't decide between him originally being from New York or Chicago. I lean more toward New York bc I'm more familiar with the area. Also because I like the Mets. I also like him being from Jersey too so it really just depends on my mood.
• Speaking of the Mets... I think he is a baseball fan. In the Infinite Darkness comic he knew that the Pirates were out of town which means, in my delusional mind, he follows baseball closely enough to know when teams are home/away. I think his favorite teams are the Mets and the Yankees.
• He's a dog person but loves all animals.
• He hates being alone with himself and finds it difficult to look in mirrors.
• He's a movie buff. His favorites are noir and detective movies.
• He was raised Catholic but is an atheist.
• His parents ran with the mob and were killed in a bad deal. (this is based on the faux interview with him that I linked above, I don't think it's considered canon)
• I think if RC's destruction never happened he would've quit the RPD anyway. I think he would've had a hard time working for someone as corrupt as Irons and would've found other ways to help people that didn't involve working for him.
• His noir outfit is a Halloween costume that he wears every year to the DSO's office parties(if he even goes at all).
• He likes cheap beer and cheap food, especially burgers.
• He keeps fit but otherwise takes horrible care of himself.

gallery

a few of my favorite official artworks from various sources. i'll try to organize this as best as i possibly can.

concept art:

re2:

re4:

re4r:

teppen:

Minna to BIOHAZARD Team Survive:

resident evil resistance:

promotional materials:

collection

my personal leon merch collection, both official and unofficial. sources for unofficial merch can be found on my formal collection page!