#tapps ask

The remake made their dynamic so much easy to portray thay as a couple so I don't understand how some people get angry about shipping two adults who did nothing in the game besides helping each other, like? It's the least problematic ship ever, there hasn't been a single moment where their attitudes towards each other have shown any evidence that it's a terrible ship like some claim to be.

It's really funny to see some people saying they're "siblings coded" or "adopted daughter" clearly an attempt to mask parasocial jealousy simply because Leon was clearly nice and attentive to Ashley in the remake. They try to deny with all their might that Leon's flirting answers was ironic, like, bitch calm down, he's not real.

I also understand those who think they don't match, everyone has their own way of thinking, but condemning a real person for a fictional ship is rather weird, to say the least.

The reasons that people hated Ashley is that they only view her as the original RE4 and accusing her of being still annoying even if she's a whole new Ashley in remake, or as I said, parasocial jealousy, or simply because they project themselves into their favorite characters and they get mad that Leon isn't exclusive to that character they glaze over (themselves).

I thought it would be nice to share my opinion with you because after that wonderful fanfic of yours (AC), it would be great to know your thoughts on anything related to Leshley.

heyyya anon. haha yeah it’s probably the most low-cortisol ship for leon. 

now that the honeymoon period has passed for me, i think part of the reason why i gravitated towards the ship is because (1) i like the princess/knight dynamic (granted that the princess does her best with her limited repertoire of skill) and (2) while we don’t have much to work with with ashley character-wise, we can infer from how she behaves (in the remake, at least) — that she has a sense of initiative, follows instructions well, and a sympathetic and resilient spirit — which if leon’s dumbass would pay a second glance, ashley wouldn’t let him down? (also admirable qualities that you kinda know would carry over beyond the canon of the game. ) (3) ashley knows his life but is removed just enough for leon to not feel as though he’s still not away from his job whenever he comes home.  

i’m sane enough that i know capcom will never canonize them. i don’t think leon will find with ashley the thrill he finds with ada, or the longevity of knowing each other and solidity he has with claire. ashley is… if she’s in the running, she’s lagging behind because she statistically has spent the least time with that loser (affectionate). i suppose this is why i often write leshley as…taking their time?

my favorite part about this is the “parasocial jealousy.” HAHA CLOCK ‘EM ‼️ i hope anyone who finds this gives your ask a second read, because i couldn’t have said it better myself. 

 i remember tweeting back in 2023 “‘leshley are sibling coded’ what the hell kind of p0rnghub family tree do you belong to?”

anyone who posits the “siblings” argument isn’t doing it in good faith. “bestie,” probably i would accept — i love them as friends and even besties because ashley would be a breath of fresh air for him, but ugh if you don’t like the ship, you can say it and go. no need to conflate the term “sibling-coded” with “actual siblings” then go “ew incest” when it’s literally not. that’s the kind of room temp IQ discourse in RE fandom (and fandom since 2020 in general) that makes me deactivate my twitter often. and really just makes me weary of even posting opinions — and mind you, i’m not one of those who type their meta analyses and tout them as gospel truth. mostly i post in a structured-argument (thesis-antithesis) and i still got harassed (and the funniest thing is they were flexing their moral superiority for knowing how to take things with a grain of salt in fiction — all the while harassing someone over things that aren’t even real) the sheer idiocy. i perused their tumblr and not a single contribution to the tag of the ship they claim to stand for. i swear, it’s always the useless ones 😂lotta ignorant assholes in these zones. that sounds mean, but i’ve kinda run out of diplomacy. 

so you must be having someone else in mind for leon. if you dont mind me asking, who and why? i know you ship him with ada and claire too, but just like on an objective level, do you think they are more likely than ashley?

heyyoww anon👋 sorry this took a while i forgot i was real lol

i understand the surprise. they'll always be my top 1 but i'm also sane. realistic. i'll make content of them for as long as i'm inspired by them, but i also know that ashley is a one-off character (i hope there will be allusions to her in future installments though), plus i'm well aware of how capcom handles their female characters. i mean look at jill-- jill is the OG female MC and yet capcom hasn't gone out of their way to make her play a bigger role in the REngine non-remake games; the closer we'll get to her new design is in death island. so what chance do you think ashley has?

hi anon! i hope you’re doing well.

the suicide ideation was/is indeed in one of the files in RE6. in vendetta he was severely alcoholic (though not automatically suicidal?). nice thing in death island is he seems to have gotten better/sober though.

yeah leon can be pretty self-destructive but as of recent entries and in RE9 no indication of it 🤔 unsure how you see it, but i see it as more of a timeline—if he were suicidal in 2012, doesn’t automatically mean he still is in 2026.

i’d say he’s jaded, not self-destructive. his most recent iteration, that is. typing this, i remember that one cutscene where he says to sherry when he’s at gideon’s office, “hey at least we’re in this together right”. he’s jaded, but the kind that’s “yeah we’re in an unwinnable situation lol but i’m doing what i can do the best of my abilities, because i might have been through a lot and i might not be able to change the system but someone else is counting on me rn so i’ll keep going” (like how he says to grace when they were limping to zeno that he could at least buy her some time) … not self-destructive. again, i see it as more of a timeline and seasons of the character’s mental state. i’d say “just like how life is,” but to keep things in the realm of fiction, i’ll just say “it means leon is dynamic as a character, and that aspect points to good writing.”

if this is about the snide remark i left in the tags, that was in response to some of the “character interpretations” of leon in *RE9 specifically* where some users insist he was suicidal because of his willingness to go further and go the extra mile to solve his illness. my apologies for not adding context.

personally i live and let live, but the contempt bubbles up when some of these folks, while admittedly attentive to detail, tout their “theories” and “interpretations” as gospel truth. the writing voice in a lot of posts bleeds condescension and arrogance. those essays, in a vacuum, ought to be harmless. they become a hazard when the space is spoiled because those who subscribe to them shove it down other people’s throats or that those who post them villainize outright others who don’t see things the way they do. which, sadly, i’m not without experience of having witnessed this. anyway, my own contempt is for me to deal with. surely no one is going to police me for being annoyed?

you wrote absolutely beautiful and the seccs sometimes hit so hard but at one point i think it's too heavy of a story for me :'( i love long fics but this one is just too heavy on the infidelity that my conservative little brain just cant take it. and i dont mean leon and ash cheating on other ppl with eachother, but leon and ash cheating on eachother with other ppl. obviously that's not true bc they arent in a relationship, but for a leshley fic where it's expected for them to be with one another, i didnt expect to read that during times when they dont do it, they do it with other ppl. and then ash also dates/sleeps with other ppl while she's doing it with leon and when he's celibate, like ughhh it physically pains me 😭😭

but yeah that is my personal feeling and preference while reading fics; i just dont want to know that my favs are getting it from other ppl, im not interested to hear their past and especially not interested in knowing that they still do it in the present. when i read smth i just want the focus to be on them, bc consuming fiction is about comfort and that is what brings me comfort.

a long ask (a long confession more like) but im glad i could be honest and upfront with you. im still super in love with ur art bc like i said i like it when the focus is on them and GODDAMN does your art do that with those preggo ashley pieces uwuu 😚 see you on twitter ♥️ (but you wont know who i am haha 😈)

hewwo again haha thank u for ur honesty :^) first off thank u for reading that thing like at all 😭 😭 also if i sound self-slammy when describing that thing over the course of this answer just know it’s bc talking about that thing elicits in me a certain kind of visceral reaction. makes me really self-conscious 😭 i call it “AC, my son, whom i hate” / flaming horseshit / word vomit brain baby. love that thing though tho

special spot @ the “damn the author of anam cara thinks like this??? but then writes anam cara? smth doesnt add up here 🤔” remark, made me laugh hahahaha ikr!!

anyway hey ME TOO 🤝 my ass hella conservative as well! oh boy you have no idea. every chapter is about 30% pushing through religious guilt aside from going against the common sense of "what decent person would do this". tell you what though, tbh it’s also why it’s in the direction it is taking now: so anyone who’s been made uncomfortable by the entire premise (myself included) and has stuck with the thing would think “ohhh so we weren’t just fucking around…we’re also finding out 🤔”

additionally, though a bit off-tangent but if this helps substantiate the reason why it's "heavy"- everyone i knew who told me they read that thing was only either rooting for them or could only see a make/break dichotomy. whole time i’ve been sitting with the Secret Third Thing which was playing the long game (read: reckoning, among other things. lmao). it’s also why there are bits and pieces of how their respective lines of work have affected the fate of the world in there. ashley’s research, her NGO successfully getting reparations for the relatives of those who were zombified in raccoon city, united nations mention in ch. 21… and on leon's side of things, DSO and BSAA "harmonizing", some throwaway lines about biowarfare in asia, etc. … plot backdrop elements i hope i can write neatly in the ending bc part of the reason why they've been tweaking for 200k+ words is bc of the world they live in. obviously these last few are headcanons and how i’d wish capcom could give cohesion to the overarching world-building. i just care a lot i'm sorry ngahhhh 😭

also re: preference. oh absolutely! i respect it ✊ we consume fanfiction for comfort, not for additional stress. life is already painful enough haha! (just that i wanted that thing to be character-driven that's why they be making "tf is u doing girl??" kinda choices. in my head, them normalizing that they could just sleep with other ppl while being in that godforsaken situationship was also their way of minimizing the gravity of how down bad and doomed they actually are.)

also about the “cheating on each other” thing — i hear ya. though on my end it’s more of.. hmm how to say. you ever read gabriel garcia marquez’s love in the time of cholera? basically it’s a story of two lovers who met when they were young but the woman gets married to someone else for like ~50 years. the whole time the dude sleeps with many (MANY) women but his heart is reserved only for fermina daza (the female mc). i lowkey paid homage to that book when ashley said to leon in ch. 14 “i came, but not in the way that it mattered” (not gonna include the context, this answer is taking too long already) hehe does that make sense

imma Be Real talking abt that fic is lowkey embarrassing ‘cause the way it’s so elaborate you’d think it’s a book 😭 cringe 😭😭 but also like. i gotta answer too as best and honestly as i can in courtesy to you 😭

but all in all thank youuu for just rolling with whatever nonsense i decide to make. oh best believe the art are gonna be weshwii-centric ('cause drawing takes more time to lay out); it's just in the writing that i decide to put them through the worst hehe + i hope my answers here made sense 😭

heyyoow 👋 the way this isn’t the first time i was asked this 😆 i’ve said quite a few times before where i’m from but have decided recently not to give it away much ‘cause i’ve had lowkey racially charged experiences in fandom spaces (not overt and i don’t exactly feel victimized but like.. who likes being condescended upon? lol) (joke’s on them though they will never be as funny as us who have experienced the epic highs and lows of being historically underdogs)

anyway username choice was deliberate (been using it since ~2019 when i was playing pubg though under a slightly different spelling) because we definitely have tapioca here. must be a climate thing, why the root crop thrives. also there are memes of us & brazilians being cousins , so 🤝🤝 hahaah

side bar- i’m so acutely aware of how the internet’s gonna internet that i’m already thinking this might be used as a gotcha moment and i’ll be accused of cultural appropriation or something. good thing i’m not that interesting 😆

hello! you know…. to my great shame the biggest inspo really was just Da Hornz 😂 Pretty Please  by Dua Lipa was the final straw that made me write it. at first it was “leon and ashley boink buddies, but leon actually dgaf about ashley because he’s fixated on his actual love”

 butttt  then when i was writing it, getting into leon’s head,  the story unfolded on its own and little by little, he (they) got my sympathy. ac is probably the only fic that i pivoted from the original ending i had in mind. (though the pivot happened pretty early on, like chapter 4, and i’m glad i didn’t write myself into a corner that i could still finesse my way out of what i had already written from chapters 1-4)

another inspo are the two gays i based powell and   paul delaney on (minus all the cucking lol) they’re each other’s best friend but they don’t think they’re gonna end up together, so i did say explicitly to my beta back in 2023, “this one’s for the gays 😔☝️”

i think the “personal and intense” part you can recognize is a lot of leon’s going-around-in-circles and panic attacks is from my own. hemingway did say “write the trust sentece that you know.” i’ve never been in a relationship, but i’ve been in almost-romances that the person denied eventually, but what i know best is being trapped in your own unhealthy coping mechanisms and believing that you can’t get out. also… you know, being a wide reader helps 😆 grieving your college best friend even 6 years later helps 😆 helps you articulate things better 😆