Confrontation (Patreon)

YO BUT WHY'D YOU CHEAT ON MY DAD YA DINGUS

Fleur not getting "called out" for her affair with Blueblood is one of the more common criticisms of this particular story arc. The complaint always struck me as strange, considering I never saw anyone demand the same of Blueblood himself, who, y'know, deliberately preyed upon the wife of one of his oldest friends. I had people requesting Fleur be abandoned, screamed at, even slapped or hurt. Kind of creepy, all the calls for violence. I don't think it'd solve anything. She's still Vogue's mom.

A more fair criticism (one that nobody ever brought up, but I feel is valid) is that Fleur seems to lack agency. I kinda wrote her as a victim- I have a bad, bad habit of writing female characters as passive victims of circumstance, and then they mostly just sit around feeling sorry for themselves. It's a flaw in my writing, not in the characters themselves. It's time to make Fleur an active character, she's been out-of-focus for too long while we've examined Blueblood and Fancy Pants. Rather than "How should Fleur be punished?", I'd like to ask "Why did Fleur have an affair? How does she justify it to herself, if at all? How will the news of it affect her relationship with her daughter? And how will it affect Vogue's character, moving forward?"