mold-dad

[mold-dad]

wacky woohoo

#this fucking guy (endearingly) #dmc

[mold-dad]

Chris: "Not Like the Other Boys"

Warning: this post contains spoilers for Death Island

While I mostly post about Leon, Chris and Leon are tied for my favorite character in the franchise. I love them both, but recently I’ve noticed a lot of Chris-hate, especially coming from Leon fans. Most of this hate seems to stem from people assuming Chris must be a stereotypical masculine “macho man” because he’s known for being buff, as opposed to a character like Leon who doesn’t fall into most people’s preconceived notion of masculinity (but that’s a post for another time). As such, he often gets labeled as embodiment of toxic masculinity, but the thing is, none of these stereotypes are correct. Yes, Chris is buff, he evidently hits the gym often, but that’s pretty much the only correct assumption made about him.

Chris has never really been the image of the “red-blooded all-American man’s man” people often try to make him out to be. People seem to forget that Chris wasn’t always extremely buff. Back in the time he was with STARS, he had an average build. This continued even into Code Veronica, and it wasn’t until after that that we saw Chris become more muscular. People joke about him taking steroids, but Chris’s bulk-up was because of what happened in Code Veronica. Wesker had Claire, Chris’s younger sister, and nearly killed them both. Bullets didn’t stop Wesker, so Chris decided he would become the weapon and worked out a lot in hopes that he would be able to fight Wesker hand-to-hand as opposed to relying purely on his guns (as confirmed by one of the production staff for re5).

In addition to that, Chris was never known to be patriotic either. RE5 revealed that Chris is pretty strongly anti-capitalist, and being that that is a pillar of American patriotism, especially today, I don’t think Chris is putting an American flag bumper sticker on his unwashed, lifted pickup truck anytime soon. Chris was also discharged from the Air Force, and while the exact details of the situation were never revealed, we know it had to do with him arguing with his superior officers and having had disciplinary actions brought against him.

And despite his buff appearance, Chris really isn’t a “man’s man” either, at least not in the negative way most people portray it as. He’s emotional, physically affectionate, and Capcom even put him in a crop top and booty shorts as an alternate costume in Revelations (yes, that's an actual outfit from the game, not a mod).

One of the core traits of his character is that, much like Leon, he often blames himself for things that are realistically out of his control. When Jill tackled Wesker out the window to save Chris, the BSAA conducted a months-long investigation before officially pronouncing her as killed in action, and while Chris still visited her grave, he refused to believe she was dead. He blamed himself for her apparent “death” and for three years he believed she was still alive out there somewhere despite what everyone else at the BSAA thought. In the end, Chris was right, and he managed to help bring Jill home, but the guilt he felt for what happened to her still remained. As Dylan pointed out in Death Island, Chris loses people on nearly every mission he partakes in, and we know he blames himself each and every time. The promotional materials for DI even specifically stated that Chris treats his teammates like family, and we know from interactions between the characters that Chris cares deeply for them.

He also has the tendency to be tactile and show physical affection as well. He hugs Claire when they’re reunited in CV, and while Claire is his sister, this extends beyond just her. He hugs Jill as well, and even put his hand on her back when she fell in Death Island. He does the same to Claire in the same movie. During the Mansion incident, when Richard is dying, Chris holds his hand. The “hand on the back” comforting gesture made an appearance in Vendetta too, when he was trying to calm Leon down and help steady him. He kept his hand there even while having a conversation with the waitress and Leon was punching Patricio. While this is seen several times in the franchise, another prominent example is when Chris holds Piers’ head while trying to comfort him and tell him that they’re both going to be ok.

(stole the Vendetta and DI screenshots from lightenupcowboy's post)

Now Chris isn’t always the best with his words or his emotions, and I think Death Island did a good job of representing this. We, as an audience, know that Chris is trying to take Jill off of the mission to protect her, because he’s scared of losing her (again) especially with Jill throwing herself into harm's way and being reckless because she thinks she has something to prove. He doesn’t really stop to think that what’s best for him isn’t necessarily what’s best for Jill, and Jill is understandably frustrated. Chris isn’t doing it out of malice, or because he thinks Jill isn’t capable, he’s doing it out of fear. Rebecca tries to help Chris understand that, pointing out that while Chris knows Jill couldn't have stopped it, Jill still blames herself.

It’s similar to the way he acts with Leon in Colorado too– Chris is upset at first because seeing Leon like that reminds him of how he was in Edonia (this was explicitly stated in the canon novelization). It’s easy for this to be misconstrued as anger but he wasn’t really mad, he was upset because he cares about Leon and seeing him in that state hurt him and was still racked with guilt over Cathy and her kid’s death– hence the Vendetta title**. In the movie, he gives Leon a speech about the mission and how they need to keep fighting, but he doesn’t understand that Leon doesn’t want to keep fighting, and he never wanted to do so in the first place. Leon’s trauma extends far beyond the alcoholism into things Chris isn’t privy to, and while his speech comes off as kinda dismissive in the movie, the extended scene from the novel provides additional context. There, he tells Leon that he wanted to quit the BSAA because of the trauma and everything he’d experienced, but he couldn’t because he felt he had to continue on to honor the memory of all those he’d lost in the fight. This ties into Death Island as well where he gives a similar speech to Jill, naming Piers as one of those reasons this time. Those who died are Chris’s motivation, what helped him recover, and while he was trying to extend the olive branch to Leon (and he ended up being successful) he didn’t really grasp that that wasn’t the primary source of Leon’s trauma. While he has bouts of emotional constipation, he’s far from apathetic like some people claim.

Over and over again the series depicts how deeply he cares for those around him– Claire, Jill, Piers, Leon, Rebecca, etc. In Death Island, when he’s locked in the jail cell and forced to listen to Claire slowly die, succumbing to the virus and see Maria nearly kill Leon, you can see the second he loses hope for a moment, before reminding himself that he can rely on Jill. As Claire struggles to breathe, he rasps out her name desperately, feeling powerless because there is nothing he can do to save anyone in this situation because he’s dying himself, and you see his eyes get glossy as his lip trembles. While there weren’t tears rolling down his cheeks or anything, between the physical pain of dying via the virus, the emotional pain of listening and watching everyone he cares about slowly die, and Dylan feeding on his trauma, I think it’s easy to see why Chris was choked up and teary eyed. In a way, it reminds me of the scene in Village where Mia asks where Ethan is and Chris gets choked up, voice cracking as he slams his fist against the wall because he’s frustrated with himself, blaming himself for Ethan’s death.

**The movie also doesn’t do a good job of portraying Chris’s connection to Cathy and her sons, but in the novel we know that Chris and Cathy were fairly close to the extent that Chris bought gifts for her sons (the toy cars in the movie) and spent time with them. 

And since this post is already long enough and the subtle queer coding deserves a post of its own, I won’t talk about it here, but yeah. Chris isn’t really the image of toxic masculinity that people paint him as, especially Leon fans. While Chris and Leon are very much foils, both of them are capable of being nuanced and complex. Leon being emotional doesn’t negate Chris’s ability to be emotional– this isn’t like a pie. Both of them have endured years of trauma and have navigated their experiences in different ways, but it’s unfair to Chris’s character to make him into a toxic stereotype when he exists as the opposite.

#re

[mold-dad]

chris redfield x fem!reader headcanons

he leaves you for a man

#re #so true

[mold-dad]

flirts.

#if they made out it could've fixed them #re

[mold-dad]

CHRIS REDFIELD Resident Evil: Death Island (2023) dir. Eiichirō Hasumi

#my little guy #bring back his vacation shirt #re

[mold-dad]

yea im thinking about eveline again and isn’t it insane that the game’s literal opening theme is from her perspective and lyrically details her traumatic backstory but the narrative still spins it to her being an evil bitch. personally if i was like five years old and was raised in a deep dark hole a prisoner with no parole and they locked me up and took my soul ashamed of what they’d made i’d start blasting too

#I'm a Eveline protector first human second #I love my daughter #re

[mold-dad]

“Is he a loser?”

- “…”

“I see..”

#this fucking guy #re

[mold-dad]

#re #the worst part is he’s so genuinely hilarious #<- for real for real

[mold-dad]

Did y’all miss mullvans posting? No? Okay

#re

[mold-dad]

ETHAN WINTERS pachislot BIOHAZARD village, 2023

#re

[mold-dad]

shitposting

bsky

twitter

#re #REAL

[mold-dad]

they're everything to me.

#re

[mold-dad]

My dealer: got some straight gas🔥😛 this strain is called “Mutamycete” 😳 you’ll be zonked out of your gourd💯

Me: yeah whatever. I don’t feel shit.

5 minutes later: dude I swear I just saw an intruder get dragged into the basement

My buddy Molded #216 pacing: the child has given us a gift

#HOWLING #re

[mold-dad]

Leon Kennedy in Resident Evil 2 Remake

#the pookie #re

[mold-dad]

I watched the first couple of Hunger games movies with a friend and for some reason I can't stop focusing on the fact that Haymitch looks like DMC5 Dante 😭

#same hair besties #dmc

[mold-dad]

#dmc

[mold-dad]

Unforgettable day

#re