my main and primary issue w book 2 in the game isn't that leona is at his worst, its that it does a poor job of explaining Why hes acting like that. all the OB crew are at their worst in their respective books - its the entire point - but id argue that everyone else's book does a significantly better job of clarifying the Whys behind their behaviour (and does so without justifying the behaviour itself); leona's book fails at getting into his head in any meaningful way, thus rendering his behaviour in a worse light than the rest despite them all managing to do some truly awful things
(in general, im not the kind of person who's bothered by my favorite characters behaving badly. its part of the story, and how can you have good character growth and effective arcs if the character doesn't start somewhere low?)
this also leads to over-correction by fans to compensate for the poor writing, but (and i genuinely say this nicely) sometimes the over-correction also misses the point. at the core of leona's overblot is the combined forces of the pressure to live up to the expectations he himself has created with his rhetoric (all of savanaclaw is relying on him to lead them to victory, to 'turn the world upside down'), his own preexisting insecurities brought about by the constant comparisons to his much older brother (sidenote: not someone who typically complains abt localizations but i really do hate that the eng loc changed leonas line wrt the way jack talks to him in book 2 from "sounding like my brother" to "talking like hes better than me," it does genuinely remove some of the nuance behind leonas frustrations), and the two consecutive years of failures as captain of the spelldrive team and housewarden of savanaclaw. correcting for book 2's mid writing while still glossing over these factors also does leona's character a disservice: it removes the fact that he does genuinely care. the reason this plan, however poorly conceived or doomed from the start it was, falling apart hits him so hard isn't because he hates malleus in particular or diasomnia in general, its because he cares about the interdorm tournament. he cares about his dorm members and their futures, he cares about the spelldrive team, he cares about spelldrive. these are things he holds dear, things that he's put blood sweat and tears into despite the general perception that he does nothing and is "lazy", and it's the fact that he still comes up against failure despite the genuine effort he's put in at something he cares about yet again that lays the groundwork for his overblot. (the final nail in the proverbial coffin is lilia insulting the tenderest part of his psyche - the heart at the center of the 800 walls hes built up - with an accuracy only seen in pro CS-GO players but this post isn't about that. also i don't even think lilia realized the target he'd hit or what the end result of that would be)
to me, the novel does a much better job of getting into leona's head - the benefits of a different medium, honestly. it spends more time explaining his emotional state (through his "own" words), the anger and exhaustion and, dare i say, hatred he feels towards himself, his desperation to have just this one thing, to be able to achieve this one thing not for himself but for his dorm members, and the hopelessness he feels when it falls apart. there's also more time spent on illustrating leona's affection for his dorm members, how their hope ends up being his hope (this includes ruggie and jack). in all it paints a fuller picture of him as a character and the driving factors behind his overblot
but book 2 doesn't really give you any of that. you get a little, about his childhood, though that's also unspecific and vague. and because of the barebones writing, his behaviour feels much worse (like i said before). it's the lack of balance, the "what" without the "why", that makes it empty
