whycommunismworks

[whycommunismworks]

So, in regards to these tags:

#so basically she just needs positive reinforcement#and therapy ofc

Yeah pretty much.

Chloe's trauma response is primarily "Fight" followed by "fawn "Fawn", then "Freeze" and last "Fleet" & that structure is not well suited for extricating herself from an abusive situation. Or any situation really.

Not that it should be her responsibility to escape abuse, but this is more an observation that realizing what is wrong, escaping or seeking help are really hard things for any abuse victim.

But especially for one like Chloe who has a combination of emotional and psychological abuse and neglect, along with terrible examples and rancid expectations placed on her.

The Fight response is especially hard to handle, because it means the negative response she gets don't teach her anything. Nor do they even inspire things like shame or guilt which act as de-motivators and might under other conditions at least leave her in a somewhat receptive state.

Instead, negativity breeds negativity, anger breeds anger, reprisal begets reprisal. There is no collection of words sharp enough, no defeat complete enough, no punishment heavy enough to change her.

Because her survival instincts just tell her she needs to fight harder.

It is unsatisfying for those who dislike her though, be it in universe or out of universe to realize this fact however. Much like how many people are far too in love with a justice system designed to instill suffering as opposed to prevent harm. They want catharsis more than they want change and so will only accept change on terms & conditions Chloe will not only never accept but can't even comprehend.

oh yep oof

[whycommunismworks]

Does it feel like Chloe's suite at the hotel lacking so much as a mini fridge or the like come off almost like its designed to make it impossible for her to be self sufficient?

Like even ignoring now bereft of personality it is barring one Ladybug rug, the thing she kept her cosplay in and two toys. The fact is, its kind of hard to blame her for being so bereft of a lot of skills people would normally develop given the tools aren't even available.

I could almost see it as Andre wanting that to be the case, because however 'bothersome' he might find Chloe calling on him for things it makes him feel important and means he'd always have the last word if he wanted it. After all, what is she going to do if he's created circumstances that keep her utterly dependent and heavily isolated?

He might not think its what he's doing, hell his reasons may be more petty like enjoying flexing his influence for his emotional Audrey proxy but whatever the case its just... Creepy looking at the suite and wondering how long she's lived functionally on her own. Especially as it'd be hard tp explain to anyone how that is abusive given the wealth on display. Like a psychologist would get it, but a random person, not so much.

I don't think Andre is doing it on purpose. I think he just doesn't care to pay enough attention. There is definitely something to read into how completely devoid of personal touches Chloé's room is though. She clearly doesn't feel 'at home' in it. It isn't her space, it's just a space she occupies. For a child that's really not good. It supports the feelings of insecurity and lack of worth we see hr demonstrate elsewhere.

[whycommunismworks]

I can't stand this fucking guy 😭 like do you know how wrong you have to be for Chloé fans and haters to agree on something

Erm… I guess S2 doesn’t exist anymore. This man will never be likable like seriously what?

[whycommunismworks]

Erm… I guess S2 doesn’t exist anymore. This man will never be likable like seriously what?

[whycommunismworks]

WAIT WHAT. the spouse-ification of chloe?? omg i never noticed this in canon?? PLS expand!!!

@tumblingxelian this is your topic go crazy 🫡

[whycommunismworks]

Do you guys also think she’s haunted when she looks in the mirror

[whycommunismworks]

Just a little observation about Heroes day. Something small in the moment, but fitting the larger theme.

Queen Bee goes down because le no one has her back. Rena and Carapace have each other. Ladybug has Cat Noir. Queen Bee is all alone. (She even goes out of her way to protect Renapace when Rena is hit)

It's definitely fair to say that she has contributed heavily to this fact, but it is still true.

Fighting the world, and no one has her back.

Chloe really needs support from someone whom cares about her and whom she can't hurt. Which SHOULD be her parents, but you know what they're like.

[whycommunismworks]

It's honestly awful what happened to her. I know she isn't a good person but nobody deserves to be disowned by their parents especially when their the reason why Chloe is like that .

Whats upsetting me more is the comments under this post .

[whycommunismworks]

Chloe Bourgeois, daughter to Mayor André Bourgeois and model Audrey Vesperine-Bourgeois, is attending her second year of lycée at Académie Françoise Dupont. Finally her best friend Adrien is coming with her to school!!! Kagami will be there too, but they’re not very close. Maybe they’ll become real friends this year? If only she wasn’t so prickly. Anyways, she gets to spend secondary school with her best friend of all time, and she couldn’t be happier. Here’s to hoping she comes out on top of her grades and is a better student than Dupain-Cheng once again 🥂✨

[whycommunismworks]

A comment from Youtube in regards to Chloe and her Spiral that I wrote and liked.

Honestly, whats more frusterating is Chloe didn't even choose to side with hawkmoth just to get powers. Chloe had agreed, through reluctantly, that she couldn't be queen bee anymore when ladybug finally told her (after Sabrina went miraculer in defense of Chloe) about how since hawkmoth knew her identity that to avoid being targeted she couldn't be queen bee and that it could keep pollen safe as well. Only for chloe to be targeted directly anyways!

Hawkmoth akumatizing her parents and directly TELLING her that he chose to target them because of Chloe...implying he could do it again at any other time!...and then having no way to defend herself, she then went to contact ladybug via signal where she was literally cornered by the bad guys on a roof where they cut off the power to her signal...no way to defend herself or think ladybug would come to her rescue.

Where then hawkmoth, a villian who hardly ever comes out of hiding and a manipulator, dug into her insecurities after making her feel isolated, alone....just for the kicker being that he had pollen and all the other miraculousess! When Chloe had trusted ladybug to keep pollen safe! If Chloe had said no again she would have been left alone with a most likely angry adult man villian with no way to defend herself and he would have kept the miraculouses! He would have kept pollen because LB had failed to hold up her half of the bargain or protecting pollen! and while I understand thinking 'oh she wants to be queen bee again and is feeling entitled' but she had accepted not being queen bee in the miraculous episode before when she had rejected being akumatized and HAWKMOTH the manipulator who knows her even better than usual cuz she is a life long friend of Adrien's pointed her in that direction to point her stress and blame. Plus she still only agreed only after he freed her parents!

I understand Marinette and others in the show assuming Chloe was just being her entitled self but WE the audience literally WATCHED as she was literally cornered into that decision! Watched as she was sabotaged by a adult villian who knows her well!

Why do we brush off others getting manipulated into agreeing to the powers in their lowest moments but we don't give Chloe some leeway when she was literally put into a stage to be manipulated? is it cuz we can't blame it all on the magic? Even though the whole point is suppoused to be a metaphore for how people are more likely to agree to things when they feel isolated and alone from someone who seems to understand how they feel and is giving them a chance to validate their feelings. Not accidentally imply if your manipulated in real life you should still be blamed since you aren't magically compelled! Gabe didn't just take advantage of a separate situation and someone feeling low here...he SET Chloe up for failure so she wouldn't be able to resist siding with him this time.

Even more! Chloe is bad at communicating and feels like she messed up bad because she sided with hawkmoth and it caused all these side heros to be known!

We KNOW Chloe is aware that people don't like her. We know that being good was hard for Chloe even when she was trying...just for all that effort to go down the toilet by siding with hawkmoth! Not only do alot of fans ignore that Chloe was set up and manipulated but the fan will either agree that chloe was already bad or dismiss that chloe was just sabotaged by the creator later instead of seeing the logic to why she reacted the way she did.

[whycommunismworks]

Spoilers for Miraculous S6 Ep.4

I find it so messed up that the redesign for Chloe has honeycombs on her sweater despite her never going to be Queen Bee again. It’s like they are actually flipping us off and twisting that knife they plunged into us back in S3. They didn’t need to add in that design detail but they did anyways because…….why?

[whycommunismworks]

I have been thinking a lot lately about how characters who do not have the knowledge or the language to express themselves, their trauma, and their feelings, and how they might then attempt, through the frustration, to express those complicated feelings through whatever language they have, even if it's wrong and especially the person they are trying to get advice from or seek help from can't understand them

Ive said roughly that same exact paragraph a few times in the past few days about Chloe, I've been seeing a lot of metas about how she doesn't have that framework or that language to talk about or even in some cases process the situations she is in and the trauma the show has had her go through. I know miscommunication is a hated trope but when it comes to media about teenagers it is so important because so often people don't have the tools to express themselves and the most complicated and messy time for that is puberty

I just- that's where my head is at tonight.

[whycommunismworks]

on Chloé Bourgeois and the character psychology that the writers put on screen without meaning to at all

(when the reply is three times longer than the post I'm replying to then someone who didn't deserve it was about to be a victim of the hobby horse, so here it goes instead. For context: Astruc has once again stated that the point of Chloé's character is that she "doesn't want to change" and people who believe it are once again displaying the media literacy)

I'm pretty sure there was an episode or two about Chloé grovelling at her mother's feet for a scrap of attention or acknowledgment and it was made very much a point about how the mother who Chloé so adores is like Chloé herself on steroids and it was real funny until it wasn't because even Marinette looked upset when Chloé's mother told Chloé - in full public - that she was worthless and unworthy of her attention.

So then there was a whole deal about Chloé having stumbled over a miraculous and using it to show her mum that she too was exceptional and how that was a huge disaster and Chloé was summarily humiliated (up to and including her mother insulting her on live national TV)

And I could be wrong but I could have sworn it all ended with a scene where a very timid Chloé asks her mother why she doesn't love her. And that's upsetting, because

a) that's just something no child should ever have ask a parent, no matter how privileged or spoiled or mean they are

b) Chloé's mum has spent the whole episode proving again and over that she's such a toxic influence on everyone around her that Chloé is much better off without her around, even if Chloé - like most children with some degree of normal socialisation - loves the parents who have continually failed her

c) the episode has made a repeated point about Chloé emulating her mother to appease her, which recontextualises Chloé's entire character to the viewer

If we were going to spend previous episodes bringing up Chloé's vulnerable side and connect it to her mum having left the family (I'll drop the sarcasm: "Zombizou" and "Despair Bear"), then this new information about Chloé imitating her mother because she wants her attention is psychologising all of the attitude. Behind the privilege and the ignorance is a child abandoned by one parent and neglected by the other to be raised by the staff, and who has latched onto the most destructive option: Mummy is the strong one, so Mummy is right, and to win Mummy's approval I have to be like her

(and by god, the thesis to be written about how Chloé has first row seats to her mother's abuse of her father and intimate knowledge about how the only way to avoid being a victim herself is to be in Mummy's good books. It is so bloody nasty and the show plays it as a joke)

TL:DR: The show spent a whole bloody two-parter on how Audrey is the source and the fuel of Chloe's poison, ends it with Chloé openly confronting her mother about it -

and then Marinette is there, and our hero, officially the nicest kid on Santa's list, the Big Good, future Best Guardian in History, decides that what Chloé needs is for Audrey to stick around. So Marinette interferes and successfully reunites mother and daughter, who promptly start making each other even worse.

I'd say something about it being the most elaborate revenge ploy the show has seen if it weren't for the fact that it sincerely depicted as an act of selfless goodness, and the ending is framed as funny and not as the goddamn tragedy that it is. And the show that supposedly created a cosmic allegory about child abuse for some reason decided that a recurring theme was going to be "abused children idolising their abusers", an edifying lesson for the six-to-ten audience.

[whycommunismworks]

Adult transmasc Chloe, who is over 190 cm, who is no longer a Bourgeois, after leave Audrey. Now he works for a secret organization and has a very Carmen Sandiego vibe.

[whycommunismworks]

"She was trying hard to emulate her mother so she straightened it more but no it's curly af."

Ye! Type 3 level curly! I was thinking when she was younger she tried straightening it herself. Audrey always kept her hair straight and there is the possibility that Audrey herself has naturally curly hair (or Chloe got a recessive gene or yeah, her non-canon bio parent(s) have curly hair and she got it from them). Either way, Audrey hated the curly hair. But it was a lot of work and Chloe probably burned herself lbr. So she managed to convince Andre to let her get it regularly straightened at a salon. (It didn't take much convincing tbh, she just had to mention Audrey.) Fun thing about this headcanon is that I keep thinking her hair length varies depending on the current level of curliness. Her canon straight hair length would be so much shorter if it went back to curls.

YES

[whycommunismworks]

Felt indulged to at least draw one Pride Month related art 🌈 | Sister bonding time…???

[whycommunismworks]

Every now and then I think about how interesting MLB would have been if Chloe was the main character. She could have gotten her redemption arc learning to be less selfish and learn to stop being a bully but still being the same bougie rich girl. Like she could still be a bitch but just learn humility.

And it’s just the fact that sometimes I like selfish heroes. Like obviously she doesn’t want Paris to fall or whatever but I feel like Chloe would be more into saving the city because the praise and admiration she would get as ladybug. Then this would have been a good way to touch on her neglectful parents and why she would crave attention so bad. And then along the way Chloe could actually learn to genuinely care for the citizen and want to defeat hawkmoth for less selfish reason while still having the selfish thought of being admire as a second thought instead of first.