#shitty things and leon probably does a lot of shitty things that the government orders him to bc it's off topic

[leon-stupid-kennedy]

why do you hate krauser? :/

I hate him for the reasons the audience is supposed to hate him. He's an evil person. He's a villain. He's unkind to Leon. If we get any kind of Operation Javier remake, I may see him in a different light –obviously Krauser's backstory and almost everything about Operation Javier is very, very different in the remake timeline and he very well could have a more sympathetic story– but from DSC, the picture painted is that Krauser is a deeply messed up person and always has been. He's hostile and talks down to Leon, who is actually his superior in that version of events, from the very start while Leon is nothing but kind to him and treats him as an equal even though he has no obligation to. Krauser starts understanding Javier's motivations and admiration for viruses before his arm is injured. The injury is part of why he seeks out Wesker wanting to be infected, but it's clear he was pretty nuts and disturbed even before the only traumatic part of Operation Javier happened to him and trauma isn't the sole reason he became a villain. His whole motivation before even meeting Leon is that he's a mercenary because he hates society and being normal and wants to spend every day of his life in battle just for the sake of battle, not caring about the who or why. There's a pretty good chance that Krauser would have ended up working for Wesker and/or Saddler eventually even if Operation Javier never happened, he never met Leon who told him about Wesker, he never got permanently injured, etc. simply because he was a gun for hire with no morals and he didn't care who was paying him or the motivations behind hiring him. He just wanted to fight.

So I would say that I both hate and love Krauser as a character. I think he's quite interesting and I'm glad that he exists. He's a very good counterpart to Leon, they're great foils for each other. But it's because he is the opposite of Leon. He's not at all kindhearted or selfless. He's not a good person and I can't even imagine the original version of Krauser having a redemption arc. I think that an Operation Javier remake could soften my opinion on him if it shows more backstory and motivations, if we can see that his villain arc was actually the result of tragedy and trauma. (Since, as I said, he appeared to be heading down the villain path even before Operation Javier in DSC, and the DSC version of Operation Javier is also extremely different from what's implied in RE4R, Krauser got his arm hurt but overall the mission was a success and no one died, it definitely wasn't a makes thinking "go find a fucked up guy to shoot you up with a virus so you can turn into a monster to get revenge" seem like a reasonable course of action level of traumatic.)

But ultimately we don't know how good or evil he was on the inside prior to Operation Javier in the remake. Maybe it truly was Operation Javier that sent him down the villain path, but maybe it's similar to the original DSC canon where he was already a little villainous and Operation Javier was just the final straw that tipped him over the edge into full blown working for an evil cult. We just don't know. So currently I see his character as an interesting but not all that sympathetic (or tragic) villain.

All this said I mean absolutely no hate towards people that are huge fans of him and see him in a different light. I personally find him very compelling and write about him a lot (if I truly hated-hated him, I wouldn't make so many gifs of him and write about him as much as I do), but ultimately I do just see him as a villain primarily and will occasionally make hyperbolic statements about hating him, like the tag that I know inspired this ask. I post a lot of Krauser content so I'm of course aware that I have followers who like him and genuinely didn't intend it as anything particularly inflammatory, I figured with the meme phrasing it wouldn't be taken too seriously and as just a general acknowledgement that Krauser is a villain who killed a character I love but is still fun to make content for, not an aggressive indictment of him. I use the phrasing all the time in non-serious contexts, if I wanted to seriously hate on Krauser I promise I would have used stronger words and a full rant instead of an offhand phrase in a single tag :)

And because I've already been falsely accused of hating 𝚖𝚎𝚝𝚊𝚕𝚝𝚊𝚗𝚐𝚘 on this blog once, I'll also tack on that I've literally written plenty of 𝚖𝚎𝚝𝚊𝚕𝚝𝚊𝚗𝚐𝚘 fanfiction myself. I have nothing against the ship or people who ship it. It's an interesting dynamic, (or rather dynamics, since DSC and RE4R 𝚖𝚎𝚝𝚊𝚕𝚝𝚊𝚗𝚐𝚘 have very different dynamics) just not a healthy dynamic imo. If you feel differently, that's totally fine, agree to disagree! I have no interest in fighting over anything like this or trying to sway people into agreeing with me. I just want to explain my own opinions, not declare that I'm correct and everyone else is wrong :) It's all subjective. I myself have a soft spot for a different villain who is also objectively awful, debatably worse than Krauser is, but I'm not going to try to force anyone to like him and think he deserves redemption, I'm not going to try to force anyone to think Krauser is a villain beyond redemption, we can all have different opinions and still be cool with each other I promise 👍