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Yes, Leon has always been the pretty boy that had fans debating about his sexuality, this is nothing new

With a lot of new fans coming into the franchise and dudebro fans being upset about Leon's rather feminine appearance with the release of RE4R, I wanted to do a deep dive into the history of his character design and Capcom's intentions with his character. In short, Leon has always been more feminine because that's how he was designed, that's what Capcom wanted. And despite this being a well-documented fact when looking into that history, dudebro fans will continue to bitch and complain. But, these complaints of Leon being too pretty, too feminine, too "gay," or these "new fans" trying to "pretend Leon is gay" etc. have been going on for decades.

Some of the earliest concept art for Leon depicts him in a crop top with various necklaces-- a choker and a pendant specifically. When designing his character, it was stated that they wanted him to be a foil to Chris and had actually ditched some concept art because they believed he looked to similar to Chris. Hideki Kamiya, Leon's original creator, gave similar statements. Now, keep in mind that while Chris wasn't originally designed to look like he did in RE5, he was still designed to look like the all-American military macho-man. Leon was... not.

Additionally, when creating Leon, they drew inspiration for his appearance from River Phoenix in the 90s. During that time, River was one of Hollywood's pretty boys and was very well-known during that time for playing Mike, a queer sex worker, in the film My Own Private Idaho (1991).

In the notes for the characters and designs for the original RE2, the Research on Biohazard 2: Final Edition made reference to the fact that Leon retained his "boyish appearance" seemingly despite his age. I'll let this screenshot from the dictionary for "boyish" speak for itself.

This isn't the only time this has been acknowledged, however. In the Vendetta novelization, which came out in 2017, Leon is described as being pretty, akin to that of a model. For comparison, Chris was described as looking like he was built from stone.

In RE4R, Krauser refers to Leon as "pretty boy," which at the time was a usually-derogatory term for gay men, or men that were perceived as more feminine. It's a similar story for the original game. If the player returns to the cop cars after Leon exits the vehicle, one of the cops will sarcastically ask if Leon forgot his makeup. Futhermore, in Degeneration, Greg comments on the fact that Leon doesn't "look" military.

This is far from the first time these sorts of comments and debates have been held, either. Looking through old forum posts, LiveJournal posts, and archived comments sections from teaser pictures, people within the fandom were well aware of Leon's appearance and were rather vocal about it at times for better or for worse.

Now, a lot of the comments point to him being gay specifically, but bear in mind that while within the queer community, we all understand that feminine men doesn't equal gay/queer men, straight people do not see things that way, and especially not in the 2000s. The reasoning sites for a lot of these instances was that he "looks gay".

"Fans" weren't the only ones who complained about this, however. In a 2011 interview about casting Leon in the live action RE movies, Anderson (the director) complained about how difficult it was to find someone who could both be an "action hero" and have "floppy" hair like Leon does, since the top action heroes all have buzzcuts.

So, even prior to the new face model for the remakes, newer fans, and whatever other "explanations" people propose, Leon has always had a more feminine appearance, and that was purposeful. I think I've provided a number of examples but there's hundreds of interviews out there and I'm sure this is not a complete list. While Chris was the confident man's man, Leon was more naive and pretty. There seems to be this narrative perpetuated by dudebro stans and people who've never played the games that RE fans are "trying to make Leon gay" and getting pissy that Leon looks "girly" but people have been writing fanfics of Krauser playing hide the zucchini with Leon since the OG game came out in 2005 and Leon's been a "pretty boy" since he was created so... ding dong the incel men are wrong.

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THEY JUST SAID ON A INTERVIEW THAT LEON ISN'T IN RE9 BC WRITING A HORROR BASED STORY WITH HIM DOESN'T MATCH 💔💔

I just got home so I haven't had time to watch it yet but just reading this ruined my day lmfao. (That's not directed at you anon, I appreciate you telling me.) And them trying to say that a HORROR story wouldn't fit with a main protagonist of a HORROR FRANCHISE is fucking hysterical oh my god. If there's one thing Capcom is consistently good at, its fucking up and shooting themselves in the foot.

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He is complete.

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Leon sketch dump.

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Bro it's okay no one wants ur man.

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Wip Leon keychain

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Not every sketch is my favorite but they are still important to me

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Art collab with @sillybrinny

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Leon that I did for Valentine's Day.

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Leon getting a call from hunnigan

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Sketched my oc as a cat 😺

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Leon DmC sketch.

My crappy sketch of dogboy Leon is the only thing getting attention and it's messing with my head.

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Did more nails. One plain set and one Leon set 🫶🎀

Both are practice and are for me only, I'm not selling them because I did also reference other nail sets. 😔

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Drew my OC as Anakin Skywalker. Just a weird idea that I had to draw.

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Dogboy leon. Reposted here from my Twitter.

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U post so much art on so many platforms and it never gets any traction. The most i ever got was on a dogboy leon sketch and I think it was a fluke because it never happened again. Am I doing something wrong??

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Half finished drawing of Leon.