#fanon zoe

[joejhang]

fanon neil vs canon neil

god i am so FUCKING done with the aftg fandom mischaracterising neil i'm literally writing fucking ESSAYS about it and pacing circles muttering about it under my breath it's driving me up the goddamn wall so i am going to word vomit brain dump yap about all of it in an incoherent tumblr text post. spoilers ahead continue at ur own risk

i've said it before and i'll say it again I HATE FANON NEIL. istg this fandom LOVES to mischaracterise neil and ykw i think i know why. they take the smallest most unnoticeable parts of his personality and then exaggerate them to disproportionate and unrealistic levels in order for him to fit their idea of a conventional, stereotypical and desirable main character. they smooth out his jagged edges and prick at his "insecurities" to make him more likeable, more acceptable and more conventional of a narrator/main character and in doing so erase so fucking much of his personality and draw as a character that he loses just about all of the flavour that made me love him in canon. and also especially within the andreil dynamic this fucking fandom just loves to tweak neil's character until he's basically unrecognisable just so they can cram andreil into some preconceived socially acceptable clichéd ship dynamic. because andrew is perceived as the typical mysterious, moody and grumpy love interest therefore neil just has to be the sunshiney smiley blushing cute softboy in exchange. yeah because all gay ships have to be grumpy-sunshine and black cat-golden retriever dynamic. i raise you: andreil's dynamic doesn't work because of their differences it works because of their similarities. if u think about it andrew and neil are honestly very similar people in the way they think and process emotions and events and that's what allows them to connect and understand each other. andreil would not work if neil was super sunshiney and a blushy soft mess and andrew was the stoic, never smiling, unemotional stone of a guy the fandom loves to make them. just accept they do not fit into the conventional boxes laid out by booktok for what gay ships look like. i fucking digress.

neil is also just insanely mischaracterised on his own. people love making him very jittery and insanely oblivious and easily flustered with a generous serving of self-esteem issues. i hate to break it to you guys: neil josten is not insecure. i don't think there's a single instant in the series where neil is actually insecure about anything. as a narrator, person and character, neil is very realistic, pragmatic and logical. ruthlessly so. i'd say on this, neil is even more cerebral and unemotional than andrew is. neil is very straightforward and realistic abt himself in his narration and i'd honestly say his opinion and views about himself are one of the only things in the story that isn't affected by his narrator bias. if neil is anything, it's self-aware. i'm now going to present all my fucking evidence.

neil doesn't have a sexuality crisis. literally in the entire series never once does he even question his fucking sexuality. it's implied he's already figured out he's aspec/demisexual from the moment nicky questions him about his sexuality. neil says "i don't swing" and follows up in his narration: it wasn't quite the truth, but it was close enough. and later when he starts his relationship with andrew he doesn't ever question the nature of his feelings towards andrew or even anyone else and is pretty clear about it when andrew breaches the topic: "kissing you doesn't make me look at them any differently" so yeah neil is pretty certain and aware of his sexuality.

neil isn't insecure about his appearance. i feel like this is gonna require a bit of work to explain but hear me out. it is mentioned several times that neil has a complicated relationship with his appearance because he looks so much like his father/abuser. this is obviously understandable; you wouldn't want to look into the mirror and see the man who gave u all ur scars. that being said, neil doesn't have a lot of strong emotions regarding his appearance. most of his feelings of panic tied to when r*ko dyed back his hair is because of how it would be a lot easier for his father to discover him now that he has his original colouring back. i'm also pretty sure neil knows that he's cute. like it's never explicitly stated but i've reread aftg maybe fifty times and trust me i can read between the lines. neil explicitly says that he has a "love-hate relationship with his reflection out of necessity" and while the "hate" part of that statement is obvious: he doesn't like that he resembles his father, i've sort of just accepted that the "love" part of it is that he knows he's kinda fine. it's not brought up by him at all bc neil as a person is not one to linger on people's appearances almost at all. i think the only people to get a decent amount of lines dedicated to their appearance in the narration are allison and andrew. but yeah i genuinely don't think neil thinks he's ugly or unattractive and he's probably definitely been told how cute he is by others enough that he doesn't harbour any delusions about how he looks. regarding his scars, he never expresses any insecurity towards them and how they look, he just doesn't like them on display understandably bc of how acutely they point to his past and childhood that he's trying to hide.

neil is actually very very confident in his own and other people's abilties. this is esp regarding exy. he knows he's good at the game. like he knows. the most distinct example i can think of for this point is when kevin tells neil that he was at castle evermore to try out for the perfect court when they were younger. neil doesn't even doubt for a fucking second that he would've made it onto the perfect court. never does. he skips over the second-guessing and doubt part and just straight up starts daydreaming about the future he could've had playing with kevin and r*ko. like that really got me bc it's easy to assume neil would be super unassuming and have low self-esteem but no like neil doesn't doubt for a fucking second that he deserves to be perfect court. it's just that he doesn't believe in r*ko's delusions enough to play along with it by the time he gets the tattoo. he's also insanely confident about the foxes and their abilities and also kevin by the end of the series. at the beginning he takes a pretty realistic vantage point and says that with the way things are, the foxes will never beat the ravens. but even with that pov he still has the gall to challenge r*ko on LIVE TV and i doubt he's lying when he declares so boldly to everyone that if the foxes were united they'd be an unstoppable force (and guess what he was fucking RIGHT). and by the end, when the foxes are united, he has no more room left for doubt at all. some guy tells neil to kick the ravens' asses and neil just replies with zero hesitation "that's the plan". like he's so fucking on board with it. and he never once doubts that kevin is the best striker in the game. like literally never. at first he considers r*ko and kevin on par with each other (possibly, it's never stated outright) but by the end he literally has no doubts when he says "kevin is the best striker" like goddamn the amount of confidence neil has is so underrated.

neil is a very unemotional narrator. it actually gets me all the time how logical and ruthlessly pragmatic neil's narration and inner monologue is. some of the only strong emotions portrayed in neil's narration are anger, irritation and occasionally grief, which is only ever triggered by major trauma-inducing events (e.g. dr*ke). almost all of his inner monologue is analytical and observing others and dissecting either other people or the situation he's in. and almost all of his decisions and actions are made based on impulse and instinct. neil is a very instinctive person. this is outright stated in the way he plays exy; in theory, he can't give u a lot, but in the heat of the moment he's at his best. this applies to practically all facets of neil's life. he never plans his moves or what he's gonna say (except like that one time when he planned out what half-truth he was gonna tell andrew post-columbia). he's super quick and on the ball and literally does whatever the fuck he wants at any given moment. he's also insanely good at compartmentalising. like it's difficult to explain but while his priorities are obv hilariously skewed, they're also very clear in his mind. things he considers unimportant he simply just doesn't think about. what others look like and what they think of him don't factor into his internal monologue or his thoughts at all he literally just files them away in the back of his mind until they do end up becoming useful or important to him. he barely comments on andrew's appearance at all until andrew becomes someone worth staring at and admiring for him. the only reason he describes allison and renee in the detail that he does is because it's important in understanding how and why he reacts to them the way he does. this man was literally about to lose his goddamn mind at the fall banquet but he specifically reserved his mental breakdown for after the banquet so he could spend his time roasting the fuck out of r*ko. bro fully locked in and was like "clock riko now break down later" and i respect it.

neil doesn't actually have a martyr complex. it's funny because almost all of aftg is him being the absolute fucking opposite of a martyr. he wilfully sticks around the foxes knowing he's putting himself and them in danger. he doesn't "sacrifice" himself until he's absolutely forced to by his father's people. by then, he's already told himself he can't and won't run and he's smart enough to know he'll never get away anyway. and going to evermore wasn't about self-sacrifice or martyrdom it was about protecting andrew and those two are pretty fucking different. he knew he was coming back from evermore and he knew that he wouldn't die there, despite all the shit he went through, so i don't think that can be counted as "self-sacrifice". he was doing what he had to do to protect andrew, the same as andrew would've done for neil or aaron or kevin or anyone else he'd sworn to protect. the kidnapping in baltimore was the culmination of neil's character arc, which isn't really about learning to be selfless and self-sacrificing, it's about learning to stand his ground and stop running. those things r crucially different: neil not running in baltimore wasn't about selflessness, it was about courage. yes, part of it was obviously inspired by the foxes and motivated by not wanting them to be hurt but i truly believe it ultimately was about neil learning to stand his own ground and make his own home and have it be something he's willing to die for. call it whatever u want honestly i just don't think neil is as much of a martyr/sacrificial lamb as the fandom makes him out to be.

[khrysos-karnifex]

My desire for a book even partly about Artemis and her hunters to reignite that part of the fandom and hopefully get some new Zoe and Artemis (and Callisto) fanfics

vs

my complete lack of trust in rick riordan to not screw up everything about artemis even more

[galacticlamps]

I'm going to uno reverse card you and say: for the fic guessing game, 'light'?

lol that's fair

apparently I talk about light a lot (go figure) so have this one that happens to be in the middle of its story's 'Oh' moment:

But perhaps, somewhere along the line, Jamie had slipped, and now . . . well now, standing on the balcony of a palace on another planet, with the Doctor dipping his head nearer just to hide his eyes from the light - nearer, and not farther, which would've been just as easy - no, now he had to admit something was different. When it had changed or whether it hadn't at all and he'd simply been too fool to realize it before he couldn't say, and it didn't matter anyway - he knew it now, and that scared him.

-

And just for kicks, under the cut I'm gonna put a longer excerpt from a totally different fic that came up while I was ctrl+f-ing 'light' in my wips - mainly because it happens to be part of a scene from a longish 'the Doctor & Jamie reunite with Zoe in 6b' story which is nowhere near completion, but feels relevant given the boxset Big Finish released last week (not that I've gotten a chance to listen to it yet, but still).

Zoe sat across from Jamie, her elbows on the table, her chin resting atop her hands - but she wasn't relaxed. She stared at him intently, and actually narrowed her eyes as he watched.

"What?" he asked, already defensive, and following through on an old self-conscious instinct, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. With no mirror in sight, he looked to the Doctor to check if he'd somehow gotten something on his face already, but he looked just as baffled. Zoe hadn't broken her concentration yet.

"I'm trying to figure out if I'm older than you," she announced, still deep in thought.

"Ah--" the Doctor began, grinning wickedly, but whether he was going to answer her or merely tease they never found out, because Jamie shot an arm out lightning quick, as if to hold him back.

"No' so fast, you. Let the girl work it out."

He finished chewing and settled himself squarely in front of her for inspection. She continued to stare. "Y'know, I'm surprised you're having such trouble telling," he taunted. "After all, how old are you now?"

She opened her mouth at first to protest that she was under no obligation to announce her own age while he continued to keep his secret, but she still thought she might figure it out - and if she couldn't, she at least had the Doctor to rely on to make Jamie tell the truth.

So she shrugged. "I'm 41. But everyone here thinks I'm 39. I was born 39 years ago, of course, but counting chronologically from the time I left the Wheel with you in the Tardis, I aged two years before the Time Lords returned me to my own time. That was twenty-one years ago, now," she added, unable to judge if the faint waver of wistfulness in her voice was truly audible, or if it was just her own imagination. Thankfully, neither of them pressed her on it.

"Well, y'see, Zoe," Jamie began slowly, still chewing his last mouthful after she finished her explanation and sat waiting calmly for his reply. The Doctor leaned forward too, seemingly intrigued, though it must only have been to see what answer Jamie would try. "I was born in 1724," he paused and washed down his food with a swig from his glass, and for a moment Zoe had the grace to assume he was just working through his calculations, as she had done. "So I'm pretty sure I'm older than you," he finished, setting the glass back down on the table triumphantly.

All at once she felt a young girl again, a devilish light in her eyes. She wanted to jump across the table and tackle him - but that wasn't what Madam Presidents did. "Why, you--"

"They don't traditionally swear at their guests either, Ms. Heriot."

She turned on the Doctor, shocked. "You read my mind," she began, more impressed than accusatory, but he did at least have the decency to look sheepish.

He coughed politely. "Only to, ah, verify your math. And I'm sure you could feel my presence there, if you think about it."

"I could but I didn't know that's what it was. You've gotten so much better at it."

"Had to," he said simply, and shrugged, his eyes downcast.

Well, there was more to that, clearly, she thought, filing his deliberately nonchalant expression away for closer inspection later - but for now she was not about to be deterred. She snapped her eyes and her attention both back to Jamie.

"Still, we both know the Doctor obviously continues to value honesty and accuracy, so surely he'll tell me how old you are, even if you won't."

"Not if I ask him not to - right, Doctor?"

"Well . . . " he began, noncommittally drawing the word out so long that Zoe actually had time to wonder what his plan was for once he ran out of vowel. Jamie looked so genuinely horrified it was downright comical, and she had to force herself not to laugh at the absurdity of it all.

"We're married, Doctor," he reminded him, indignant.

"Oh, but it's Zoe," he complained, sounding every bit the petulant child she remembered he could be, all those years ago. "And as far as I can remember, none of the ceremonies we ever partook in had anything in the vows about obeying. Although I might be wrong . . ." he added under his breath, scratching his head.

"Charming," Jamie grumbled.

"Well, when we've had as many weddings as we have it can be quite a lot to keep straight in your head. You know, I sometimes wonder if we might qualify for some kind of an all-time record. If we hadn't the need to be covert about so many of them, of course."

"Stop that!" she snapped, and the Doctor turned back to her, the picture of confused innocence.

"Stop what?"

"You're trying to help him without helping him, just by distracting me. Naturally, I want to hear everything about all these weddings of yours, and I will see to it that you'll be having another one while you're here, like it or not--"

"Yes ma'am," Jamie quipped, mock-serious.

"--But first, I am going to find out how old you are, James Robert McCrimmon, and if you force me to use your husband to do it, then that decision is on you."

Jamie mopped his face with his napkin and came out of it smiling. He stretched and dropped an arm around the Doctor's shoulders, perfectly relaxed. Already, Zoe felt her heart sink, but she was careful to keep her composure.

"I'm only pullin' your leg. I'm 44."

"What, really? And you expect me to just believe that?" She raised an eyebrow in challenge but then glanced at the Doctor to confirm, and when he nodded she allowed her facade to crumble, rolling her eyes. Of course she had known when she'd first laid eyes on them that they'd be cutting it close, but Jamie still had quite a bit of that boyishness about him that had made it frustrating enough being his junior the first time around, and she really thought she might genuinely have enjoyed being just a hair older than him, for a change. After all, if you had to be ripped apart from your family and sent to separate timezones to live out your lives forever wishing for an improbable reunion, it might as well be good for something. But Jamie was far too smug looking now to be pretending, and Zoe knew it. "Oh, some people have all the luck," she groaned, dropping her arms and collapsing back dejectedly against her seat.

"Aye," Jamie said, leaning in over the table to follow her, "and some people live 22 years on Earth before they meet a time traveler, then spend 5 years with him before his people erase their memory and send them home to live another 5 before he's allowed to come pick them up again, and then force the pair of 'em to've spent 12 years so far working for them. Some people, eh?" he finished hotly, swiping his glass off the table again and raising it to his mouth in one fluid motion to take a long drink. But even so, his face was not so totally obscured from view that Zoe couldn't make out the amused curl at the corner of his lips, and when she caught his gaze again the glimmer in his eye was all fondness, just as it was with Doctor's and, she knew, her own.

Yes, no matter the circumstances, it was certainly good to see them again.

[muffinmonsterzs]

im still so confused about spy school canon and so therefore we shall fuse everything ever said to create fanon canon fix-its

for context a fanon canon fix-it is what you do to fix authors mistakes when there’s like 3938387373737373 plotholes and recalls and last minute adds

fanon canon timeline additives (aka fancy word for headcannons that should be canon):

trixie and mike are the most annoying couple ever ONGGG (don’t get me wrong I love them but they would piss off everyone else SO bad)

warren is an incel loser because we hate warren he’s the octavian of the spy school fandom

chip is a country boy yes i will stick with this headcannon until the day i die fight me

all of these stupid kids are neurodivergent prove me wrong you can’t

zoe is a lesbian i will NOT take no for an answer

fanon canon timeline fix-its:

zoe and svetlana aren’t dating until like a month after ssgn ends because there’s definitely mutual feelings but they’re not gonna rush into a relationship THAT fast

murray is actually bi and likes both zoe and ben because honestly it makes way more sense he secretly has a crush on them both tbh his type is probably powerful short women and ugly loser men fr

zoe was actually being heavily manipulated by nora taco which is why her character was fucking destroyed in ssr

they’ve all killed atleast one person let’s be honest erica literally shoved a few enemy agents into like fucking ACID once i think??????

ben is an unreliable fucking narrator, except when it comes to his looks sort of because its heavily implied that he’s only average looking but his self esteem is like nonexistent so he describes himself like 10x worse than how he actually looks

okay now for fanon canon description fix-its!!!!!

most of these are just head cannons that i cannot see not being canon

zoe has heterochromia (since she’s described with both brown AND green eyes)

none of them have the ugly slick back hair they got in the graphic novels except ben because he is a mediocre rat I refuse to believe the handsome ben narrative he is 5’1 and has greasy hair and wears collared shirts

zoe is black trust me guys 🙏🙏🙏🙏

also zoe dyed some of her hair pink after ssr again my source is me being awesome and right

ashley had dyed hair and it was way longer DO NOT BELIEVE THE GRAPHIC NOVELS LIES

happy trails shirts are GREEN AND NOT YELLOW BECAUSE THE GRAPHIC NOVELS ARE LIARS SISJSJDJJDJDJ (idk why im mad abt this)

erica has mid length hair guys 🙏🙏🙏🙏

murray actually does have a mullet trust

uhh that’s it add ur own if you want ig

[neum6ns]

little headcanons for vickys powers bc they r so inconsistent it drives me crazy and i’ve made these all up in my head to act like she didn’t die an unfinished character:

after victoria blew up congress in s2, that woman SLEPTTT. we know that blood manipulation in the boys universe is tiring, victoria says it to marie in gen v, so imagine popping 12+ heads one after another… yeah she was exhausted. she literally ran on coffee and energy drinks for the next few days.

she can constantly hear people’s heartbeats and blood flow and it drives her crazy. i feel like she can hear heartbeats the same way cate can hear everyone’s thoughts - that it’s insanely overwhelming. she can definitely tune them out, it just takes a lot of strength and power. her favourite thing is just being alone with zoe, her heartbeat is the only one she can tolerate.

her eyes only turn white when she uses a lot of her powers (blood manipulation or extra durability). because there is no way in hell one of the smartest the boys characters tried to explode homelander’s head on live television - and that her eyes would turn white even though she didn’t succeed? the only reason they did turn white is because she tanked HOMELANDERS LASERS. like that’s an insane feat and ppl don’t credit my girl enough for that smh 😒

i wish we could see vicky with constant white eyes in the hearing scene in s2 but curse you eric kripke!! i love those pretty eyes 😖 (dare i say she has the second best supe eyes in the whole show! my fave is stormfronts, her powers are so cool)

one of my favourite headcanons is that she used to increase her heart rate around homelander to act like she was scared. especially in her first scene in the show when he swoops down and takes the microphone from her. she could’ve popped his head right there, she had minutes to do it, but instead she acted like she was scared - speeding up her heart rate to not give anything away. ugh she’s so smart and perfect.

in my little fanon world vicky did put herself back together after she was so wrongfully killed (😑). but putting herself back together came at a cost and she lost her powers. vicky had always known in the back of her mind just how powerful she was, stan had been telling her that her whole life. she always knew that if something like that happened, she would be able to come back. her body slowly stitched itself back together, making completely new organs and even more blood! her organs were completely made out of her old blood and guts tho, kinda like patchwork jeans! but they work… so they’re good enough for her.

lemme know if you guys would want more stuff like this! i have a whole essay written about how wrong they did her character, how they should’ve done her powers and ended her storylines but… thats the autism speaking

[metamatar]

Hey, that anon message sent to you. They were "surprised" that you spoke positively about Indigenous/Black methodologies and knowledge production. I just wanted to let them know that these discourses of knowledge production are taken very seriously, even and especially within "the Euro-American academy" or whatever for the past twenty-five years at least (so much so that it's very fashionable and influential, not that "legitimacy granted by the academy" must be the end-all measure of validity). It's not just that these ontologies/methodologies are compatible with US/European science, but they are actually actively now at forefront of US/European journals, universities, discourses, discussing environmental studies, coloniality, space/place, intellectual history, etc. You walk through hallways in a liberal arts building on campus and you'll see "Plantationocene" or "Indigenous pedagogy" printed on lecture fliers on the wall (so there are discussions about academia's consumption, appropriation, recuperation of these concepts). But I wanted to back you up, and also offer to that anon some places that might help them, to see not just the "rigorous intellectual method" of Black methodologies, Indigenous pedagogies, Caribbeanist/archipelagic thinking, etc., but also to show that there are whole "traditional" peer-reviewed journals that have been discussing this stuff for years too (from Small Axe, Antipode, and Journal of Postcolonial Writing to more-classic Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers and Annals of the American Association of Geographers). This stuff has been so prominent in "legitimate" arenas that it's been like almost ten years since Zoe Todd famously critiqued "the ontological turn" in academic anthropology.

But three basic accessible introductory resources:

E-flux (e-flux dot com): Specifically their e-flux Journal and e-flux Architecture section, which have published for years, pretty much daily, on knowledge production, pedagogies, epistemologies of space/place/land, historiography, architecture, environmental sciences, discourses within academy/sciences, etc. They also do many special issues, some which focus specifically on architecture of sickness/health; Anthropocene and Plantationocene; Black methodologies; race in European historiography; etc. you'll see mention of (and sometimes whole issues dedicated to discussion of) Achille Mbembe, Fanon, Indigenous ontologies, Eduoard Glissant, Orientalism, Sylia Wynter, Aime Cesaire, etc. Some of these scholars have also themselves written/published multiple essays/articles at e-flux, including Mbembe (necropolitics), Kathryn Yusoff (A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None), Katherine McKittrick (Black methodologies; plantation logic; carceral geography); Elizabeth Povinelli (geontopower). E-flux's site itself has a good tagging system for subjects (plantations; coloniality; postcoloniality; pedagogy; ecology; etc.).

About four journal issues each year from peer-reviewed Antipode Online (a project of Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography). They also have various special issues, lecture series, interventions, workshops, roundtables, etc. about knowledge production, and have separate series for "Right to the Discipline grants" and "scholar-activist projects". (This kind of focus is also shared by the online portal of ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, which also does special issues, roundtables, interventions).

Green Dreamer (greendreamer dot com): Transcripts for over 430 interviews/conversations between scholars, scientists, etc. which mostly focus on knowledge production, methodologies, "troubling the academy", pedagogy, intellectual history, historiography, etc. with specific foci in ecology, history, race, humanities, environmental sciences. They go out of their way to survey Black and Indigenous scholars. And by coincidence their latest interviews (2024) are with Nick Estes (Indigenous pedagogies of knowledge) and Sadiah Qureshi (she authored Peoples on Parade: Exhibitions, Empire and Anthropology in Nineteenth-Century Britain). But they've surveyed so much more.

Some scholars on this kind of stuff: Katherine McKittrick; Achille Mbembe; Pratik Chakrabarti; Macarena Gomez-Barris; Sharae Deckard; Kathryn Yusoff; Jonathan Saha.

But this is a tip of an iceberg.

wow!!! its so cool to receive a message from you as your blog has definitely shaped my perspective and even my style on sharing articles here. and yeah its true that black and indigenous knowledge production is very much on the forefront of liberal arts, esp in the sub fields you've pointed out. i personally perceived anon's critique as one to me bc i have spoken previously about the cynical deployment of decolonial studies as insulation from critique wrt fascist and ethnonationalist discourses like hindutva and i personally traffic in engineering depts that view themselves as immune to even studying their own histories. but these occupations of decolonial studies by high culture is only possible if such studies had currency in the academy! to reject this cynical deployment is not to make a return to euro american business as usual though. i think its a matter of grounding and local context to be capable of as ahmad says "the most delicate of dialectics to disaggregate these densities."

and most importantly, thank you for the bibliography. i have a zotero folder for your recs :)

[rallamajoop]

Resident Evil 7 and Mia's secrets

(Oh, did you think I was done talking about Mia? Not even close! >D)

Coming into this fandom late, I was surprised that popular fanon has it that Mia never does come clean to Ethan, post-RE7. Sure, RE8 depends on Mia not having told Ethan he died in Dulvey, but that has nothing to do with her own past with the Connections (and far more to do with Ethan's own denial, but that's a whole other thing).

Myself, I’d taken it as given that the scene where Ethan learns the truth must have just happened off-screen. Because, disappointing as that omission is, the whole damn game is leading up to it.

And having replayed RE7 lately, I realised there'd be no better way to explain my take than to catalog every time the game spells out to us that Ethan knows Mia’s keeping secrets and wants answers, and that Mia herself wants to come clean.

Heck, it’s just about the very first thing we learn about them.

“Ethan... You were right. I did lie to you. I shouldn’t have, but…”

Ethan's not actually stupid, and Mia's secrecy has obviously strained their marriage for some time. And as soon as Ethan finds her, he’s asking questions.

Here, he’s mostly asking who did this to you; it's way too early for real answers. But then Eveline takes control, shit goes down, and next we see her, it’s in her recorded message from the “Mia” video tape.

“There’s so much you need to know.”

When Ethan finds Mia again under the old house, he’s angry and has every right to be, and he doesn’t pull any punches.

“I always wanted to tell you…”

But Mia’s memory’s still a mess, and Lucas interrupts. Ethan’s next chance to ask questions comes in the boat, and he wastes no time.

“You had something to do with this, didn’t you?”

Mia’s a little more defensive here, but she’s not lying about the holes in her memory. The game’s gearing up for the big reveal anyway, and the writers aren’t about to let her spoil it early.

If you choose Zoe instead of Mia, Ethan spends the boat ride asking all the same questions, only louder.

“I knew Mia was hiding something.”

But in the end, what do we get?

Whoever you choose, Ethan only gets a few brief moments with Mia after she frees him from Eveline’s mould, and no explanations are offered. But if you do pick Mia, then we end with Ethan flying away with her in the helicopter, saying only, “Mia's back and she wants to start over,” and I’m left going, wait, what? Haven’t we skipped something here?

In defence of the fanon consensus that Ethan never finds out the truth, that does seem to be the ‘canonical’ intent ‒ at least inasmuch as there's this one throwaway bit about Mia not wanting Ethan to know buried in a bonus text file only available with this one overpriced DLC for RE8. That’s it, that’s as much explicit recognition as this thing ever gets, one way or the other. And fucking hell, but that's a let down.

Even if we assume that Mia’s desire to come clean goes away once her memory comes back, why would Ethan just stop asking? He’s been asking questions the whole damn game – was clearly asking questions long before the game began! Knowing that Eveline was controlling people doesn’t explain what Mia had to do with it all. Now he’s suddenly all, ‘killed the bad guy, saved the girl, everything’s fine’? Was all that ‘a door closed’ bullshit supposed to be him accepting he’d never get answers? Why?

There are workable ways to spin Ethan never finding out. You could suggest he just accepts that Mia’s memory is gone (hell, for all we actually see of the ending, Mia genuinely might have lost her memory again after Eveline sucked her back into the mould). After all the trauma Ethan’s been through, you could also suggest he’s gone directly into denial, refusing to face anything that might threaten his ‘happy ending’ with Mia. You could even suggest that that bit with Eveline saying 'I can make him love you' is her actively wiping Ethan's suspicions away. There's some lovely, subtle horror in any of these possibilities ‒ I would genuinely love to see all of them explored in fic! But none of them actually come through in the ending we get, and that omission is the single biggest issue that makes that conclusion to RE7 unsatisfying to me.

The whole damn game has been building up to the big confrontation where Ethan finds out the truth and (eventually, if not immediately) finds a way to forgive Mia, so we can still have our happy ending. As much OTT hate as Mia gets, the game is consistent in portraying her as someone who is painfully aware of how bad she’s fucked up, regrets it, and is committed to doing everything she can to protect the man she loves from the fallout of her mistakes.

I cannot overstate how willing Mia is to die to save Ethan, from the very moment she realises she's infected. She does die to save him if you choose Zoe over her. It's so much of why I ship them do hard.

But most frustrating of all, denying Mia the chance to come clean denies her any chance to explain herself. How did she get involved with the Connections? Did she know from the outset who she was working for? Did she genuinely buy into the idea they were finding ways to win wars without losing soldiers on battlefield, that the human casualties of all their work was worth it? If not, why did she keep working there? Was she slowly frog-boiled down to the deep end, did they have dirt on her, did she fear they might kill her if she tried to leave? What excuses did she make to herself as the months or years went on?

It's possible Mia’s the kind of hypocrite who doesn’t care about the human casualties of her employer, just as long as she and hers are okay, but nothing we see from her sells me on that interpretation. And even if she ever was, it's even harder to believe she's still that person after all she's been through.

It aggravates me that the games never gave us answers, not just because I want explanations that cast Mia in a sympathetic light, but because not giving us answers leaves this huge hole in her character. I'd even take explanations that cast her in an unsympathetic light, as long as it all ties together.

It irritates me even more because, even if Capcom wasn’t up for giving Ethan and Mia the big emotional confrontation they deserved, the solution was so simple: let Ethan find Mia’s diary on his way out of the ship. The whole goddamn franchise is filled with diaries and documents where characters lay out their backstories and motivations in ludicrous detail – why does Mia never get one? Just give us a handful of entries dated over the years, laying out her own feelings and anxieties about the job she’s doing. It would’ve been so easy!

It irritates me nearly as much that, even in the few corners of this fandom sympathetic to Mia, no-one seems to be very interested in answering these questions in fic or shared headcanons (and if there are examples out there I don't know about, please do link me to them!) How much did Mia know about what she was getting into when she started working for the Connections? Was it the job she kept telling herself was just until she could find something better, only for that ‘something better’ to never come along? Did she have stains on her record that made it hard to find another job? How much of her lying was a misguided attempt to protect Ethan, and how much was simply about protecting herself? There's so much to explore here!

This is also where I mention that I've already put my money where my mouth on this one, and written up my own take on Mia's backstory, and how Ethan might have found out the truth. You don't have to agree with my version, of course ‒ I mean it when I say I'd love to see other people's ideas too. Heck, I'd even be up for versions where Ethan ultimately can't forgive her, just as long as people come at it from the angle of looking at Mia as a character, not just a one-dimensional-villain.

But of course, I'd still prefer to think about versions where these two do find a way to make it work. It takes a lot to make me ship het this hard, but these two stealth-badasses have pulled it off with style.

[generalluxun]

I started out writing a Zoe/Chloe sisterfic almost as soon as she showed up. I WANTED to like Zoe. I was hoping the show would do so much for her but then they just... didn't. My interest waned 14 chapters in when I realized this girl who fights for her family, who cares for her sister, who is strong and determined... just doesn't exist. She's goodkid #173 who is just there to cheer on Marinette with no deviatoon from the mold. There's nothing deeper, nothing more interesting about her. She'll pop up now and then for some plot or another but she has no purpose, no existence but how how she interacts with Marinette, just like the rest of the class. Zoe was a venom delivery service, and something they can drag out whenever they need to show Chloe-bad for the umteenth time. She deserves more than that.

I still have very complicated feelings about Zoe Lee.

Because she's great! I love her! Why is she there though

[miraculous-lesbians]

2, 7, 21, 26, 27, and 29

2.) Part of canon you think is overhyped

Um…is it bad if i say the Love Square? I think, at this point in the series (where I’m pretty sure it doesn’t matter as much), it’s been overdone and dragged out too much. It would’ve been fine if it got resolved earlier, but I’m honestly sooo tired of it. It’s why I default to every other ship that isn’t the Love Square when I look for fanon content, or making it.

7.) The boring headcanon that is everywhere

Hmm…I actually don’t know, but I will talk about a headcanon I like! Any and all that headcanons that emphasize Marinette’s Chinese heritage. I especially love the cut idea from the movie where she’s Chinese born. That’s canon in my fanon

21.) Ship that did not deserve to be overshadowed by a more popular ship

This is hard because I think most of the underrated ships (in my eyes) get enough attention in the fanon, so none of them get overshadowed? But I’m going to be basic and say…Marinette/Nino being overshadowed by Nino/Alya and Marinette/Adrien. I don’t see nearly as much content for it now, but I think it’s a cute enough ship!

26.) A "He would not fucking say that" moment

Any time Kagami said something to push the Marinette and Kagami love rivalry for Adrien, and anytime she’s on screen with Felix. That is a fucking shapeshifter-

27.) A tag that will automatically turn you off a fic for this fandom

Chloe Salt. As someone who’s a big fan of Chloe, while acknowledging she’s not a perfect character, I get more annoyed at people complaining about Chloe Stans than the actual “obsessive” Chloe Stans. To the point where I just blocked the tag entirely on Tumblr. The show already hates her and she’s already fucking dead, we should give her a break-

29.) A ship or headcanon that clearly exists only to simplify fanon

Zoe/Marinette. They are trying to block us from Chloe/Marinette, but they cannot trick us. They can’t pull the wool over our eyes-

[ilikekidsshows]

About you being harassed by Marinette fans. I don't know if me doing this is weird, but you being open bout that makes me want to open up more too. I've send you 4 anons by now (u probably could already tell they were from one person) because I don't have a miraculous Blog anymore since the hiatus before Destruction because Marinette fans found one of my posts criticizing Marinette's treatment of Cat Noir and her leadership and they went after me for i think almost an entire week. I ended up deleting my blog in panic and fear of it getting worse the more traffic it got amongst Mari stans.

I followed the show and Fandom til now from afar to see if any of my Marinette problems were getting the fixes everyone screamed about season 5 would deliver but I can't say that happened. I wholeheartedly agree that with alot of other people that it only got worse with the doubling down and her gettin less heroic underneath the surface.

So I'm still here and upset that I was bullied out of this fandom for things I was apparently right about to degrees I didn't even knew back then how right I'd end up being....

I found a couple of blogs to follow that share my opinions and you guys have been interwoven alot now so I thought sending anons to dip my toe back into being part of the discourse is a good idea. I hope I didn't cause any Mari stans getting angry at you for it, I've been worried bout that ngl.

I would like to ask bout one of the topics Marinette fans cyberbullied me for but I still think I'm right for questioning:

How much value does Marinette see in being friends with her love interests?

Oc im not doubting that she sees at least some worth in it, but it feels very shallow. Fandom is working the lion's share to take what little canon gives and run with it til they think their fanon is real.

Marinette values friendship, sure, but Zoe is the only love interest of hers for whom that feels right to say

Marinette in Canon has said many times that for her being friends with the one she loves is the worst thing she could possibly imagine. E. g. Psycomedian. And she was rewarded with Adrien being her devoted and desperate prince for her doing probably the most friendship related thing she did in all season 4. She had a basic little convo with him about understanding to have problems and that's where it ended. Where did Marinette ever even try to be rlly Adrien's friend? She said 500x that she's finally gonna put her romance feelings aside for a bit to focus on her job (which I hoped would mean she'd work on her weaknesses in the platonic Ladynoir team dynamic too... Silly me... )

But that never goes anywhere? Weren't Adrien and Kagami the ones literally having been created out of the feeling love or to love someone in particular and even THEY could overwrite their senti programming better than Marinette ever could get over her normal ass feelings for a week? Adrien and Kagami value the friendship with the one they love deeply, is that the difference? That Marinette can't ever move one from loving someone because friendship feels like an awful downgrade and torture to her so she stays the same? What does that say bout her?

Or that Luka and Cat Noir never caused her stalker paranoia to break out that Derision claims she does to protect herself. Why does it only apply to Adrien? And not even Cat Noir, too? In my other anons I brought up how awful I think it is that Marinette seemingly has no interest in leaning anything rlly about the boy underneath Cat Noir's mask, now she barely acts like she remembers that he's real and that they'll one day reveal where he'll then find out how many times she deliberately deceived him with her civilian identity in very hurtful ways.

How does that correspond to her being in love and more important for my question, what does that level of refusal to treat someone like a real person say about her willingness to be Cat's friend? Cause I can't see friendship in Ladynoir anymore. Marinette was the one who killed that in season 4 and then season 5 didn't improve her in much. Friends don't treat each other the way Marinette so easily uses, hurts ignores, silences and deceives Cat Noir without batting an eye.

The only effort she really made was before Kwamis choice. When she thought he was still in love with her and expected that s4 magically caused no damage to his feelings for her. she seemingly thought she could just allow him to dedicate himself to her for an overall easy way to sweep everything under the rug and make him "happy" again without her ever having to really try and do better herself because that was the comfort she was seeking at that time (shoutout to Familyagrestefanblog and erisluna35. I've been paraphrasing them alot and wanted mention that too. Didn't get to write out my own opinion in a while and I agree with them x})

This refusal to face her hurtful actions of s4 quickly developed into her craving for him to give her his easy love and not wanting to take anything less than precisely the endless devotion she wanted from him now. No matter what the price. No matter how much it put him too in danger (what even meant Cat Blanc?), and yet, still no interest in him as a person.

Once she had to take the no, she left and then she never again made a genuine effort in Ladynoir. Any effort to better herself was romance related. Determination may have been the episode where she rlly noticed her changed feelings for him, but she did try earlier than that. But it fully stopped with his no as did her changed feelings vanish as quickly as they showed up. So what does that say about her and how she views their "friendship"?

Season 4 has her already show that she doesn't want Ladynoir to be an actual friendship since she treats him barely better than a magical pet she rarely ever thinks about, which caught her off guard over and over that she isn't being the kindest and adoring person of all time to him. She treats him so much worse than her actual friends and in s5 she isn't trying to build a real connection beyond wanting him to shower her in his devotion and love.

What season 5 shows bout Marinette's view of the Ladynoir friendship is in my most generous reading her not getting to hide behind any romantic feelings from either side that she doesn't know how to be his friend, after she had to learn in season 4 that she was a really really bad one. But even with that generous reading, it would still mean that Marinette then went on prioritizing not having to feel any further discomfort or having to owe up for her actual mistakes in their bond over her finally being the friend she SHOULD think Cat Noir deserves. A friend he desperately needed but never got cause she called it a day with her personal needs being met my having her best friend Alya with her.

Friends don't do that. Marinette denied him any genuine friendship he obviously truly needed as Cat Noir because she personally didn't need it from him anymore cause of Alya. And he rejected her desire to now be adored by him so there was no purpose left anymore for him to fulfill in her life besides the easy partner she made clear cant ask shit from her.

That is so unbelievably selfish... How on earth is that supposed to be FRIENDSHIP?

Srry, for this being long. Last point.

Luka of course needs to be mentioned too. Sure, the show says they are friends. But are they really? Their friendship is built on him being her platonic therapist back-up boyfriend who doesn't ask shit of her either. This is still the same pattern as with Catrien. Luka does all the emotional labor and Marinette just takes and takes and that's what makes her so comfortable around him but she isn't interested in him either beyond what she sees day to day in front of her.

That doesn't count as friendship in my book. For Adrigami you can still feel their friendship after their breakup. But Lukanette is Luka being a platonic therapist boyfriend and Marinette being just as disinterested in him as with Cat Noir while being just as comfortable getting showered in emotional labor that she's unwilling to work on giving back the way she should.

How is that friendship? What value has friendship for Marinette once any romantic feelings are involved from either side and it isn't Zoé (feels like a homophobic backhanded compliment lmao)

That was very long, I apologize. But thanks to writing in anon I started becoming more comfortable with the idea of joining the Fandom discourse again. I've got alot I wanna say after all that time in silence but I'm not sure yet if I should put myself out there again with a blog. With how season 5 ended Marinette stans are gonna be vicious beasts to any criticism they come across and I don't want that to happen again :(

---

I hope this isn't a case of speak of the devil and he shall appear but lately things have been really quiet on the Marinette stan front. The worst I’ve gotten was this really unhinged one, but they were so unpleasant they didn't have any friends so the harassment was very one-note and stopped pretty quickly since they had to run it alone. It could be that now that season 5 confirmed that season 4 wasn't an outlier, that the show’s writing has gotten incredibly sloppy and nasty, the critical side of the fandom has become unified and we add to each other’s posts and kind of back each other up. It's harder for Marinette stans to target us one by one, and their preferred tactic is dogpiling a single blog. A lot of the Marinette stans protesting my posts now shut up right quick when they see more people agreeing with me adding to the reblog chain.

As for the question, I agree with your assessment. It really does appear that Marinette hates the idea of being friends with a love interest. She whined about Adrien seeing her as just a friend all the way back in Riposte. Adrien sung her praises to Kagami, while she spied on them, and she had the gall to whine that the boy she “loves” thinks so highly of her because it wasn't the kind of thinking she wanted.

There was this one thing I said in a previous post that I think is accurate: Marinette part-times being Cat Noir's friend. Even the part of time she acts as his friend, she ignores his feelings, insults him, pushes him away, refuses to give him emotional support in any way and lies to him about anything she possibly can. She only approaches him as Marinette when she wants to complain about Adrien not coming to the date he didn't know was a date, when she thinks she can score a date with him or so that she can practice confessing to Adrien on him. Marinette's “friendship” with Cat Noir is all take with no give when she isn't outright ignoring his existence.

She also ignores boys who have feelings for her in her civilian life. Nathaniel is very suspicious of her in Reverser, having to be convinced that she wasn't planning to humiliate him, implying he isn't part of her friend group since he doesn't know her well enough to know she only humiliates people when they're in her way of getting at Adrien. (Alix makes it sound like she wouldn't do that period, but we know the truth by now.) She also refused to come to Juleka and Luka's shared birthday party if Luka was present after they broke up. I bet if you tried to tell Marinette, or her writers, that your romantic partner should also be your best friend to make a healthy relationship, they just wouldn't compute. 

I don't want to say Marinette doesn't hold friendship in high regard period, because the amount of exceptions she makes for Alya shows that she at least values Alya’s friendship. I think she just doesn't value friendship with boys. I feel like Marinette is the kind of person who doesn't think boys and girls can really be friends, which would explain why she thinks Adrien considering her a friend is worse than anything else. If boys can't really be friends with girls, Adrien using the word “friends” means they aren't even that.

Consider this: how often does Marinette hang out with her guy classmates when it isn't 1) a whole-class outing or 2) more likely that Marinette just wanted to hang out with his girlfriend? Like, in Animan, Marinette had no idea Nino had a crush on her, but she still acted like an outing with him at the zoo was the worst thing ever. I get that she was disappointed Adrien wasn't there, but Nino is one of Marinette’s oldest classmates, yet she doesn't want to spend time with him, unless she's planning to use him to get closer to Adrien, since he's Adrien’s best friend.

Of course, she doesn't really value the time with her other friends for its own sake outside of Alya either. It seems like the only times they hang out together is to plot or participate in her get Adrien quick schemes. The only times the girls do something not Marinette related is when Marinette hasn't called them together, like when they were going to the pool in Gorizilla, something Marinette completely forgot until Alya called her. Marinette has poor memory but, despite her knowing she has poor memory, she apparently gave herself no reminder to hang out with her friends. You bet I write down every occasion I’ve agreed to see my friends specifically because I have bad memory as well.

It seems like, unless you're Alya, Marinette only cares about you for how able and willing you are to help her catch Adrien's attention. I keep saying Marinette treats her Adrien romancing problems as the most important thing going on at any given moment, and it's true for all areas of her life. Maybe that's the reason we didn't see Socqueline for four seasons despite her supposedly being such an important friend to Marinette, and why she never joined the friend group proper; Socqueline couldn't help her get with Adrien so she wasn't worth Marinette’s time.

This is a yet another thing where Miraculous is actually pretty sexist; girls and boys can't ever just be friends and girls care more about getting guys than they do about their friends. Another thing of course is this idea that boys just don't have as in-depth feelings as girls or should bury their feelings and never ask for emotional support, which is why all of Marinette's love interests are her emotional support dispensers whose opinions on anything don’t matter when their job is to simply mindlessly worship Marinette while their feelings are devalued by the narrative every time they dare to try to ask Marinette for some support back. Luka gets Akumatized which convinces him to break up with Marinette when he had emotional needs she wasn't willing to fulfill. Meanwhile Adrien goes through the travesty that is Kuro Neko

“Power of love always so strong” but only when it's Marinette's toxic idea of love and when it isn't platonic love. Unless you're Alya, I guess.

[nullen-void]

Lego Stories

There are times when I've considered the idea of a media of the sort that is so bad, we want to fix it.

You know the type. Miraculous Ladybug, Worm, Danny Phantom--these are works that are really cool in concept, and have really cool moments, and have the potential for truly great worldbuilding and stories... but the execution falls flat. Works that get you angry over what could have been. Works that drive people like me to rewrite them in our heads, where fanon becomes more popular, more accepted, and maybe even more well-known than the canon.

I would like to propose a name for this type of work.

I call them Lego Stories, because if you follow the instructions you make a fun enough little setpiece, but the real fun begins when you take it apart and put it back together your way.

Worm is probably the best example of this. There are so many pieces to it that would make a truly great story, if they were just rearranged a little. Or a lottle. And we, the fanfic authors, are the ones who see the shape we want it to be and work towards it.

Anyone in the Worm fandom can probably name three or more fics they've read that they'd call better than canon. Harry Potter and Miraculous too.

The first example that springs to mind at the moment is @zoe-oneesama's Scarlet Lady comic. It's a retelling of Miraculous that diverges from the moment Marinette recieves the Ladybug earrings, because Chloe steals them instead. Everything that happens in the comic is canon, but a little to the left; all the pieces are there, but put to a better use, in my opinion of course.

Any fanfic does this to an extent, of course. A Lego Story is one that leaves lots of room for fanfic authors to explore. Some works are too tight to squeeze anything new in, and writing fic for it is a constant struggle; instead of Lego, they're a stack of cards that could collapse if you move anything. But that's a conversation for another day.

[river-of-wine]

i agree with ur post abt the RE villians so much… the way people treat the lords is honestly the way people should have treated the bakers 😭😭 who were like actually not even themselves like they were literally being controlled…

donna especially bothers me with how people treat her as a innocent defensless victim that was attacked by ethan when she lured him into her house with a hallucination of his dead wife, OPENED THE DOORS FOR HIM, and then trapped him in there… the end of donnas fight is even more frustrating when ethan was literally forced to stab angie in order to avoid being stabbed to death by a bajillion dolls but people still take it as “ethan chasing her down”

and i 100% agree with ur take on the hcs about karl… there r so many that r taken as fact just to put him in a more sympathetic light which bothers me alot because its clearly not true… u dont have to try and make ur character look better to like them… sometimes u should just accept a villian as a villian! i remember i used to think karl being taken as a child was canon because it was so widely agreed upon and brought up in arguments that i thought it was real 😭😭

and oh brother… dont get me started on the deal… could u imagine how incredibly OOC it would have been for ethan to take that deal? where after fighting tooth and nail and the expense of his own life to keep his baby daughter safe no matter the cost to turn around and be compliant in using said baby daughter as a weapon…?! naw!!! it wasnt on ethan to have to negotiate with karl to make a better deal, especially when ethan turned him down the first time after being rightfully angry at the insinuation of using rose as a weapon. and karl doesnt explain, doesnt negotiate on his side, he kicks his chair down and threatens ethan, he uses fear to try and get ethan to join him

that is not good intentioned!!! and thats ok!!!! hes a villian!!! his ego got bruised when ethan turned him down! so he got mad and kicked him down the propellor hole! thats not on ethan!

i wish people could appreciate the character for who they r… its not karl if u strip away his arrogance and ego 🥲

(sorry for the lomg ask, i really like resident evil and that post u made was so real…)

ALL THIS EXACTLY!! I have been a Resident Evil fan since the year RE7 came out and let me tell you I was baffled when I played RE8 and saw Miss Kill and Maim and Murder and her cocky cowboy brother be treated like the new Jack Baker. He became infected by protecting his daughter from his crazed wife and he doesn’t even hold the events of the game against Eveline when he speaks to Ethan about

The response Donna gets is particularly frustrating because at least with some of the more sympathetic looks at Alcina and Karl, there are HINTS at the fucked up people they actually are. Donna is essentially turned into an entirely different character.

The closest thing I think I can compare Donna’s fanon characterisation to is Eveline, but even that isn’t entirely accurate. Eveline is ten years old and given that fact as well as her upbringing, if that’s what we can call her being raised as a weapon in a lab, I really doubt she understands the gravity of what she has done. She doesn’t understand why people are angry with her and, as we know from both her and Jack, all she wants is a family. But all this in mind, Eveline can still be quite a mean kid. I don’t blame her for this at all, it’s a completely understandable response for her to have as a young child in her situation, but she is controlling the Baker family to be violent murderers, makes Mia attack her own husband and is particularly malicious towards Rose. Eveline has fun with some of her meanness as well. She laughs at Zoe as she runs off to infect her family, she taunts Ethan before he reveals the neurotoxin that he has, she mocks Rose when she tells her the crystal isn’t in House Beneviento. Again, while I don’t really blame Eveline for behaving this way and she was also entirely a victim, Eveline is also not presented as being a naive and palatable villain.

Donna, in canon, is not Eveline. She’s nothing like Eveline. Eveline is a child who can’t comprehend the severity of what she has done to the Baker family. Donna is a grown woman. A mentally ill woman, yes, but we aren’t shown any signs that said unspecified mental illnesses make her into the weak, incapable and naive version of her character that is so spread around the fanbase.

House Beneviento is inaccessible unless Donna lets you in. You cannot get inside if she doesn’t let you, and she intentionally lures Ethan inside with hallucinations of Mia, who he very recently watched get shot multiple times and die. She makes him give her the only thing he has left of her, the photo of Mia and Rose, before he gets inside, and once he’s in there Donna continues to very specifically target fears Ethan has about protecting his family with the hallucinations.

The flowers didn’t just appear around House Beneviento for no reason. Donna doesn’t think Ethan will have fun physically taking a mannequin of his wife apart or hearing her crying voice over the radio. Genuinely, I do not know how people can look at that baby hallucination, a horrifying recreation of Ethan’s dismembered infant daughter chasing him down through narrow hallways and still think Donna had no ill intentions whatsoever.

Donna’s death is jarring and upsetting, it gives a completely new light to what Ethan was doing and just how intense those hallucinations were, but Donna was not just fleeing Ethan unaware of why he was attacking her and Ethan was not just attacking Donna for no reason. Not only is she swarming him with dolls filled with razors and knives, she’s also mocking him through Angie and suggesting that he is a bad, even abusive father.

Donna is the one of the lords who comparatively has the least reason to be attacking Ethan. While I do not think Ethan was unjustified in the slightest, he did trespass on Alcina’s property and kill one of her daughters and he did make Karl mad because he didn’t take his deal. Those are reasons. Donna just kind of fucked with Ethan because??? Like why did she do that??? She’s a fucked up lady that’s why. And that’s what makes her interesting. House Beneviento is insane and scary and watering down the woman responsible for it all is so boring!

Speaking of Karl, I’m not at all surprised he received the response that he did. He’s a conventionally attractive male villain with a cocky demeanour, a fun voice and a backstory with a hint of sympathy. Of course he gets babied and woobified to no end. I completely agree with you about the headcanons surrounding him. For a while I just felt insane and I was convinced that somewhere in my three playthroughs that I had missed something somewhere, like I found his damp cigar but not the document that explains that he was kidnapped as a child by Mother Miranda. There’s nothing that suggests that in his lines or any of the documents about him, and I think people get so blinded by the Heisenberg that they want to exist that the Heisenberg who does exist fades into the background.

AND YEAH! NO WAY ETHAN SHOULD HAVE TAKEN THAT DEAL! ABSOLUTELY NO WAY! To recap what Heisenberg has done to him at this point, he has:

• brought him to the lords and Mother Miranda where he and Alcina argued over who gets to violently murder him

• put him through his little lycan torture tunnel and almost killed him with that spinning spike cylinder

• forced him through another lycan den where he has to deal with them as well as Urias

• suggested using his six month old baby who has already been dismembered as a weapon to further his own goal

Like fuck no! Get away from me! I’m out of here! Ethan’s primary goal was never to kill Mother Miranda, it was to save Rose, why risk both himself and Rose trusting this man who is not only one of the group of people who have been trying to get him killed this whole time and who has also personally tried to get him killed multiple times before now? Ethan’s main motivation is always to protect his family. It’s why canonically Mia will always be the right choice in RE7, it’s why he ended up in Louisiana in the first place, it’s why he’s here, it’s why he’s kept going even after finding his daughter’s head in a flask on the suggestion that he can save her. He’s not going to use her as a weapon because this guy wants to.

Also SO TRUE ABOUT HEISENBERG JUST NOT EXPLAINING ANYTHING!! I hadn’t thought about that but yeah. Yeah! He didn’t explain a thing clearly, didn’t try to negotiate, just got all mad and threatened Ethan when he said no to his deal.

Karl is a total love to hate character for me. Kind of similarly to Lucas, he’s a mad genius type who likes to taunt Ethan over an intercom while Ethan deals with whatever new horror they’ve made for him to face and just doesn’t shut up, and I wouldn’t have him any other way! His huge ego and over confidence is so fun and it’s what makes him as memorable as he is. Same with Alcina! They’re two total show offs who have done incredibly fucked up shit, Alcina more so, and similarly to Jack while he’s under Eveline’s control it’s this cockiness and extreme nature to their violent actions that make them memorable and entertaining villains.

Donna is scary! She’s really scary! Imagine an adversary you can’t even see, who has complete control over what you see and experience, and is using that to force you through some of your deepest fears. Ethan isn’t her first victim either, and the psychological aspect to what she puts him through is deeply unsettling, taking Donna’s very intentional use of Mia and the fears about Rose being unable to be fixed away from her leaves her with nothing.

Why strip these villains of what makes them fun or scary? It’s a horror game! It’s a Resident Evil game! One of the most memorable Resident Evil characters ever is a very tall man in a trench coat and a funny hat. These games are over the top and campy and it’s also a horror game! There’s going to be fucked up people in it and it’s fine to like them if they’re fucked up! It’s weird that that has to be said!

No need to apologies about the long ask!! Resident Evil 7 and 8 are two of my biggest special interests and I love talking about them, especially about a bunch of very interesting characters who get so watered down and woobified it’s basically not them anymore. Thanks for giving me another excuse to talk about it!

[blueberry-bubbles130]

The disappointment of the characterisation of the Bourgeois family in Miraculous Ladybug.

This essay/post will be talking about my feelings regarding the characterisation of Bourgeois family, as I'm doing a rewrite fanfiction of Miraculous and the Bourgeois family plays an extremely important part in my rewrite.

Trigger Warnings include:

TW: Child abuse

Child neglect

Verbal abuse

Emotional abuse

Domestic Violence

If I have forgotten to add any trigger warnings in the post please comment and I'll add them as soon as I can.

Getting this out of the way with now because I don't want to focus on her in this post, and because she won't be in my rewrite at all, I don't like Zoe. In the canon of the show all she serves as is a replacement for Chloe and a wielder of the Bee Miraculous. Unfortunately in the canon show, she is tied to the miraculous and Chloe in such a way that she cannot be talked about with bringing Chloe salt/bashing into the discussion, and has no true character of her own out of just being nice. There are others in the show who already could've filled the role much better. Zoe is far better written in fanon and fanfiction. But I don't want to be beating a long dead horse so there are other posts you can read to see Zoe's poor implementation in the show, and absolutely great fanfictions you can read that gives her a developed character if you like her. With that being said lets get onto the main essay.

Who are the Bourgeois family?

In the show the Bourgeois family are an upper class family that are said to hold a lot of influence. The family consists of Andre Bourgeois; the patriarch of the family who owns a hotel, and is also the mayor of Paris. Audrey Bourgeois; the matriarch of the family and a famous fashion critic. And Chloe Bourgeois; the child of the family and the temporary bee miraculous holder. The Bourgeois family can be considered a large secondary example of Miraculous's wasted potential, and it's inability to truly give a satisfying conclusion to any concept they've tried to execute during it's run. And some will say this is just the end of an arc and season 6 will continue and deliver. But it won't, especially considering Miraculous' record with delivering on expected plotlines it isn't promising in the slightest and I do not hold hope for season 6. Despite this, I'm rather interested in the Bourgeois family, and they are my favourite part of Miraculous making it even more disappointing to see the outcome of the plotline involving them.

Audrey Bourgeois-

I'm doing Audrey Bourgeois first because despite having a lot to say about all the family members, I have the least to say about Audrey.

Audrey is characterised as a harsh fashion critic who has nothing kind to say about anyone around her. Her kind words are only reserved for someone who can truly impress her, examples being Marinette and Gabriel. Marinette being shown to the audience and Gabriel being told to the audience. She is responsible for launching Gabriel into fame as a fashion designer. Audrey isn't even remotely nice to her own family. She abandons them mostly and seems to return only when work arises in Paris. And even then she belittles both her husband and Chloe constantly.

Something I find interesting in fanfiction for Miraculous Ladybug is that before we got any glimpse of who Audrey is. Everyone assumed she'd died and they either called her Simone or Julia, Julie or Juliette. And this gave depth to both Chloe, and Andre. This will be discussed again later.

Audrey's character has at least stayed consistent throughout Miraculous' ever-increasing run, which is a miracle considering Miraculous issues with characterisation, among other issues. However at the same time it's quite odd considering unlike Andre who got more developed regarding his past and what he wants, Audrey remains quite flat character-wise with only glimpses of there possibly something else to her. I think that Audrey despite staying consistent and explaining a lot about Chloe and Andre, she's still wasted potential. In one of the episodes characters such as Gabriel, Natalie and and I think maybe Tomoe are shown watching important story information on a tv. This would seemingly hint that Audrey had something to do with Gabriel. Which is believable considering Audrey's personality and previous appearances with Gabriel. However as of season 5 this has not been expanded upon in anyway whatsoever and like I keep saying I doubt it will be in season 6 or future seasons if they get anymore. This makes me believe that Audrey should've been expanded upon as a villain, she could've stolen a miraculous and possibly became a main villain. She's close to Gabriel, she's got the perfect personality for it; the only thing she needed to be a good villain was a decent motivation and I easily could've believed her becoming a villain if she'd been given decent motivation. She's already controlling and demanding, so Zoe could've never been introduced and you could've had it so she wants ultimate control over Andre and Chloe while placing herself as some sort of evil Queen. And that's all I really have to say about Audrey. Hell! I've already seen a few posts where people state that Audrey should've taken over as mayor after Andre, which makes a hell of a lot more sense then Chloe doing it. It's not exactly the same because she's the stepmother, but something I think Audrey should've been a bit like but far more toned down for the child audience is like Julia Cotton from Hellraiser. She's just so perfect as a example of someone willing to go to extremes in order to achieve their desires. Hell it's already there in her akuma, Style Queen! Just make her an evil queen, it wouldn't have been that hard and then we wouldn't have to deal with that mess we got with them attempting to make Gabriel sympathetic but then being shown him horribly abusing his son with glee at every opportunity he gets. You could keep Gabriel and Natalie sympathetic and make Audrey even more despicable than she is.

Also Audrey is clearly abusive, and in 2023 we should not need to have debates over whether she is because some people say she's just cruel. No she's abusive, it's clearly abuse.

Chloe Bourgeois-

Chloe is definitely my favourite character out of the Bourgeois family and Miraculous as a whole, and while her characterisation post season 3 does sadden and disappoint me, it doesn't anger me like what the writers did with Andre.

Chloe starts the series as nothing more than an obnoxious bully who torments her classmates. When we get to season 2 we get to see Chloe receive more depth as a character and see how her parents helped her in becoming the person she is today. Then season 3 happened and we see Miracle Queen. Now I don't think Miracle Queen is completely horrid, It makes sense that Chloe may begin to regress or backslide into her unhealthy habits. And I've even seen people still redeem her with miracle queen being in their stories. What pisses me off about Miracle Queen, especially when people online talk about it, is that they just seem to forget about Gabriel akumatising Audrey and Andre to use as blackmail against Chloe. Like yes at the end of the day, Chloe still makes the decision to become Miracle Queen and do what she did. But you cannot deny that a fully grown man who should know better, put the two people she presumably cared about the most at this point in danger in order to blackmail her. He cornered her on the balcony and essentially railroaded her into making that decision. Like what was she going to do if she said no, she can't fight Hawkmoth without a miraculous and even if she'd tried he might've legitimately hurt her or her parents to win. Here again we see fanfics just knock the show out of the water, with many people deciding to make Chloe trick Hawkmoth into giving her the miraculous and then she just runs away to get help. Also Marinette shouldn't have gotten involved in Chloe's family drama, like why did she think it was a good idea to do what she did in Queen wasp. Just why?

Something else regarding Chloe's character arc that just genuinely confuses me is that during season 2 it's obvious in episodes like Zombizou, Style Queen, Queen Wasp and Malediktator is that they're written by other writers who have differing opinions on Chloe to Thomas Astruc. And now I think Thomas was busy on a different project while this was was being written, which is fine. But what confuses me is that surely Thomas could've looked over the episode script and maybe said to change it. Instead of just letting a character he clearly does not like get development he also didn't like and then arguing with Chloe fans and Miraculous fans who may not like Chloe but understand her character arc was butchered as well as others, on twitter over it.

As well as this is season 5, I think it's revealed season 1-5 of Miraculous takes place over 1 school year. In France the average school year is about 10 months long lasting from September to late June early July. This means each season could technically take place over about 2 months. This gives Chloe 2-4 months at most to redeem herself. Which is just too much to expect of her to try and completely redeem herself and undo a lifetime of unhealthy behaviours in that short of a timespan. No wonder Miracle Queen happened, she hasn't had the proper support to try and unlearn those behaviours or redeem herself. And it makes Andre giving her over to her mother even more saddening/rage enducing, because Zoe has been around for the same time Chloe was given to try and unlearn her healthy behaviours. So Andre has abandoned his daughter who's he risen for her entire 13-14 year life for some child he's known for about 3 months at best.

Then season 4 and 5 begin the endless parade of Chloe Salt/Bashing in order to prop up Zoe. As well as the butchering of other characters, to continue hammering in that point, such as Andre, but we'll get to him later. Now I'm not saying I'm completely against the idea of evil Chloe, there are some brilliant fanfics out there with Chloe just either hamming it up as an evil villain or treated as a tragic villain, who's fall from grace is a pure tradegy. And I love it both because it treats Chloe with the seriousness she deserves, the majority of fanfics treat the abuse she's suffered with seriousness and not as some joke like the serious does. You want a absolutely brilliant Chloe Bourgeois fanfic read "Float like a Butterfly, Sting like a Bee" on ao3 it's just so good and I can't recommend it enough.

Also on the topic of redemptions Sabrina, Felix, Natalie and especially Gabriel shouldn't gotten redemptions. Gabriel, Sabrina and Felix don't show any remorse for their actions, in fact they all show glee in their actions apart from Natalie. But even then none of them truly face any punishments for their actions and sure Gabriel doesn't get to enjoy Emilie being back alive, but he still gets away with his numerous crimes.

As a final note on Chloe's development, it's been said by some people before it's quite harmful that Chloe doesn't get treated with the seriousness that she deserves and is one of the only villains not given a redemption as well as not being what is considered a "perfect" or "idealised" victim of abuse like Adrien is. And as someone who has lashed out at others due to issues with authoritive figures in the past (not to the extent Chloe has thought, especially with the bullying and wealth, I'm also not French) I do relate to Chloe in a small way. And this makes it harder for me personally, and it really is just harmful because it might give kids who have lashed out like her due to similar or the same issues the same idea that they don't deserve love or a guardian who can actually care for them in the way they need, as children.

I'm not saying give Chloe a redemption, she just should've been treat with the seriousness she needed.

Gettting back on track lets talk about the final member of the Bourgeois family.

Andre Bourgeois-

Oh Andre, where do I begin with him, in canon.

For seasons 1 to 3 he's mainly Chloe's nervous father and enabler. Then we get a bit of depth in season 4 and 5 about him wanting to be a director but not getting to due to Audrey and politics. Then in season 5 he lets Audrey take Chloe.

A deleted part of the script was revealed in which originally he gave Chloe to Audrey which in itself is horrific because he knows how Audrey is. Not only has she subjected Chloe to verbal abuse but him as well. This would be changed in the series to him just letting Audrey take Chloe, which is just as worse. These are just as bad because either way he's trying to absolve himself of any responsibility of what happened with Chloe which he is equally responsible for as he is Chloe's main enabler. And you know I actually had some hope for him in canon that he'd realise it was time to as someone else brilliantly put it "ditch the bitch" and forge a better relationship with Chloe, but that never happened. I guess that's what I get for having hope for Miraculous's canon.

It legitimately pisses me off so fucking much than in canon he gets to wash his hands clean of the whole problem with Chloe.

Now fanon Andre is so much better than his Canon counterpart and thinking about it now, Fanon Andre has always been better than his canon counterpart.

Bringing back up the whole thing about fanfics that pre-date Audrey is that it gives not only Chloe but Andre more depth. These fanfics typically paint the picture that Andre is a man that closed off not only by politics but the death of his wife and because he's not in tune with his own emotions, he can't help Chloe so instead of ignoring her grief like her father, Chloe is lashing out instead.

Even fanon versions of Andre that are more far more closed off, corrupt, and evil are much more enjoyable to read about than canon Andre, and have more depth. Something about Canon Andre just makes him even more loathsome and detestable then his many often better fanon versions. And when he does get redeemed in fanon it's just so good, because the people writing him, understand what makes his character have actual depth to him and make him realise his faults in a satisfying way that gives him a good redemption.

Maybe it was just me projecting the fanon versions of Andre onto the Canon version that made my disappointment and anger so much worse. But either way his overall canon characterisation is disappointing.

Again if you want to a fanfic that has Andre be a good antagonist, read "Chloe and the Bee" by @anxresi it isn't complete but what is there is just brilliant. And If you'd prefer to read a fanfiction where Andre is trying his best to be a good parent to Chloe read "Float like a Butterfly....Sting like a Bee" by Bookmonkey on ao3. They're both such amazing fanfics.

Conclusion-

Overall the characterisation of the Bourgeois family within the canon of the actual show is just a neatly packaged example of Miraculous' many issues such as bad writing, poor pacing, inconsistent characterisation and either attempting to poorly redeem abusers who should know better or just letting them get away without any consequences whatsoever.

I'd like to say thank you for listening to my long feral rambles about the Bourgeois family.

[scepterno]

do you think you could put your favorite ships in a post? i think it’d be interesting to see what your thoughts and opinions are :3

for Total Drama?

my two biggest are alenoah and trustin, but i also like to pass noah around like a baton. he's fun with trent, duncan, gwen, owen, izzy, kitty, and emma. (sometimes cody if i ship it in my own way and NOT the fanon noco way that's been around for a decade. never was a fan of how people characterized noco)

aletyler is cute but i prefer them as friends with like... a one-sided crush on alejandro's part (he just really likes his emotional support himbo). aleheather is iconic although i prefer heather as a lesbian and alejandro as a gay man. tbh i think aletrent could be good too since theyre both so mentally ill and physically fucked from the show.

owen/izzy where izzy is dating eva separately is kino (im all about polyamory)

gwourtney is awesome but i also really love gwent and duncney. those four together being in a super queer not-quite relationship foursome is soooo peak to me.

geoff/brody/bridgette is fun af. harold/leshawna is iconic altho i dont think they'd last much longer after the show, instead becoming like indestructible best friends. lindsey/tyler is canon forever to me.

also i really like mike/zoe/cameron. mike/scott is good too. sam and dakota are cute. bowrajwayne is my fav new gen ship. scary girl/damien could be soooooooo funny next season if they go for it. zombie guy and australian girl are also a good canon couple. i like spud and rock together. the guy from the daters team and the girl from the best friends team would be a nice couple too.

chref is canon

and i think those are all my thoughts!

[danganronpaisbest]

do you have any fav criminal case ships? it can be fanon or canon

Hmmmm

Mary Lou x Riley

Jack x Lars (I hate Angela for betraying the group)

Shawn x Derek

Fabrizio x Tyler

Luke x Fabian

Jones x Zoe

Amy x Russell

Frank x Karen

[generalluxun]

28 and 29 from that ask thing. (The friends a and the ship thing.)

28) Two Characters who should not be friends.

Canon Felix and Kagami. Don't get me wrong, Fanon Felgami is awesome, but seriously. Canon? The girl who values integrity and being forthright above all else and the boy who is *still* lying and deceiving people after his 'turn to good'? The only way their friendship makes any sense is if he has her amok still.

29)A canon ship that exists purely to simplify fanon.

Zoé & Marinette. Fanon has long held Mari being a bit bi. Alyanette, Marigami, Chlonette, you name it! S5 set things up for a marigami confession that would have had actual narrative weight, but then did a swerve and threw Zonette at us as a toothless 'Token Gay ship that has no chance because we've already confirmed adrienette and there's zero angst because these two barely interacted prior'

Zoe being sapphic is fun and fine, but the way Zoenette was done? It was simply to shut fanon up.