We have got to stop assuming malice behind everyone’s actions. I don’t really get why some Cleon fans are upset, but that doesn’t change the fact that feelings got hurt, which sucks! I hate hurting feelings! Still, just because some folks are upset doesn’t mean the Leshley community intended to upset those people. I feel like this whole situation was blown completely out of proportion because people assumed that the Leshley community went out of their way to pick a name that would get under Cleon fans’ skin instead of treating this as the misunderstanding it is.

I don’t really think about other ships when I’m going about my fandom business! Cleon doesn’t factor into my thought process or decision making because it’s not what I’m here for and I would rather spend my time enjoying the things I like than stewing with rage over the things I don’t (not that Cleon makes me stew with rage, I’m just trying to get my point across.) I think that applies to most people in fandom, and I know for a fact it applies to the Leshley fans I’m friends with.

I promise I'm not trying to be flip, but what seems more likely: that all 12 Leshley fans got together and twirled their mustaches and said “hehehehe let’s create a ship name specifically to piss off the Cleon community for no reason” OR a few people started using a cute ship name without really considering Cleon because… they don’t ship it and thus don’t really care? Occam’s razor, y’know? That brings me to my next point, which is:

We need to stop treating ship fanbases as monoliths. Resident Evil is a BIG franchise with millions and millions of fans and it’s not productive to be saying “Eagleones want to do x” or “why are Cleons pressed about y” because in actuality, there are like 5 total people actively posting about this. If you have an issue with an individual, treat it as such! Treating individual posters as microcosms of the shipping communities they engage with is just gonna create strawmen and make ship wars worse, which I don’t think anyone wants. 

Funnily enough, everyone in this argument seems to be saying some form of “I just want to enjoy my ship in peace but THOSE PEOPLE (be they Leshley or Cleon fans) won’t leave me alone!” I think we all need to start putting our money where our mouths are and make more of an effort to curate the online experiences we want. I block and mute extremely liberally, and it has made my time on the internet so much more pleasant. We’re all just trying to enjoy our stupid zombie game. In an ideal world we’d all be nice to each other but this is the internet so we’ll probably have to settle for ignoring each other. In any case,