#LetThatBoyAngst!

[rallamajoop]

Twist my arm, why don’t you? XD Well, I did tell you guys to ask!

What the hell, let’s open this one by sharing a few pics from a Sims household created by a good friend of mine, made up of Heisenberg (mad scientist), Mia (secret agent) and Ethan (just really wants to be a dad). The three of them immediately became the most delightful sims-land trainwreck imaginable.

Their neighbourhood is full of werewolves, because you can do that in the Sims. Ethan’s apparently made friends with some of them. But because this is Sims-land, when he and Mia tried to have a romantic dinner together, it ended with Ethan passed out on the kitchen floor while Mia set herself on fire, with Heisenberg running in in his underwear with some passing hippie, and being no help whatsoever. Aren’t Sims wonderful?

Beyond the land of the Sims, though… I mean, let’s be honest, my desire for mithanberg comes from how I ship both Ethan/Heisenberg and Ethan/Mia, and refuse to choose between them. I could see it working either as a proper OT3, or a poly arrangement where Ethan’s involved with both of them, but Mia and Heisenberg aren’t involved with each other (on which note, I also ship the hell out of Mia/Zoe, so Mia is not missing out here).

For the few really mithanberg-ish things I’ve ever posted so far, Follow Me Home is headed for the former category, whereas that other one is more likely headed for the latter. Going for the proper-OT3 option does come with the extra hurdle of trying to figure out how Mia/Heisenberg would work when they’ve never even met in canon, but I am fully up for the challenge.

But there’s way more to this ship for me than just the convenience of ‘why not both’. Seriously, wintersberg fic is missing out on so much by writing Mia off so quickly.

For one, Ethan’s somewhat-complicated relationship with Mia is the best evidence you could ask for that Ethan might actually be up for getting involved with someone as fucked up as Heisenberg (or even Chris, if you’re more into winterfield). Mia has canonically lied to Ethan, (accidentally) drawn him into mortal danger, and (while possessed) sliced off his hand with a chainsaw. Ethan’s still with her in RE8, so clearly he’s willing to forgive.

Fig 1: Apparently not a dealbreaker!

Heisenberg, meanwhile, opens their relationship by stabbing Ethan with a fucking spear-headed fencepost, chains him up, drags him off be put on trial, and ‘rescues’ him only by throwing him into a gauntlet of lycans and spike traps. He later sends Ethan through the second gauntlet that is the Stronghold, before finally trying to make a deal with him. When Ethan refuses, Heisenberg throws him to a chainsaw-propeller-faced monstrosity made of engine parts sewed onto a corpse.

Fig 2: Also not a dealbreaker?

I will make some excuses for Heisenberg, given that he’s been trapped in a repressive cult for decades and seems to have internalised a lot of bullshit about the strong destroying the weak, but holy shit is this guy red flag city (and I love it). And that’s not even touching on all the violent bullshit Chris pulls in this game. You may also note that neither Heisenberg or Chris have Mia’s convenient mind-control or replaced-by-a-shapeshifter excuse for their worst behaviour.

Ethan asks for none of the madness all these maniacs have injected into his life, but goddamn, does he learn to roll with it and come back swinging. Whether or not you assume Ethan ever found out the truth about Mia’s past, she offers us some solid proof that Ethan’s ‘type’ does not exclude covert special agents with a talent for violence, who’ve spent years working full-time for evil bioweapons manufacturers. Ethan may not be ready to admit to himself that he’s got a thing for dangerous people, and Mia may be a lot better at pretending to be normal than Heisenberg, but the fact Ethan’s still with her could say a lot.

Basically, if you wanna ship Ethan with either of these other guys, Mia Winters is the best ally you could ask for!

There are other problems with writing off Mia too quickly so you can ship Ethan with someone else, one being that it makes Ethan look like, well, kind of a psychopath. Fic after fic presents him as the kind of guy who can witness the mother of his child being brutally murdered in front of him, and within a matter of hours, he’s apparently realised he was never that happy with her anyway, so it’s just fine if he’s fucking some other dude. The fact the ‘Mia’ people are so quick to dismiss as an abusive bitch wasn’t even the real Mia apparently doesn’t necessitate any sort or reexamination. It’s basically a meme at this point.

Thing is, even if his relationship with the real Mia was unhealthy, you just aren’t going to make a guy like Ethan process that within hours of watching her fucking assassination. Try and make him face it, and you’ll push him straight into defensiveness. Even at the best of times, Ethan’s just not the kind of guy who could leave the mother of his child without a fuckload of heartache and a few rounds of ‘what does this say about me’ at the very least (and Mia loves Ethan far too much to leave him, except in a misguided attempt to protect him). Even if you're writing an AU where Mia really does die (rather than just suffering the usual round of character assassination), at least let that poor boy ANGST about it! C’mon, people – that’s the juicy stuff!

Of course, the real problem fans are grappling with here is that in the current fandom climate, the idea that Ethan would willingly hook up with a guy who stabbed him in the gut that morning is still somehow more palatable than having to consider that Ethan might be capable of being (gasp!) less than completely faithful to a partner who doesn’t deserve it. So it’s not enough that he thinks Mia’s dead, she’s also got to be a horrible person and a complete non-entity who can be forgotten as quickly as we’ve brought her up, just to get her out of the way – as if that somehow makes Ethan look better.

People are so eager to get rid of Mia that I have legit read multiple different fics where, even after being mysteriously reborn post-game via horrific mould-magic, somehow one of the very first things Ethan wants to talk about afterwards is divorcing his wife. Can we not even give the poor guy a single scene to have a proper existential crisis over not being human anymore before finding a woman to blame for all his problems?

Fig 3: Ethan's actual thoughts on his wife right before his death

On the greater subject of that whole inconvenient marriage poor Ethan's saddled with, I can only say ‒ again ‒ c’mon, people, that’s the juicy stuff! A good story needs conflict, and Ethan having had this weird hook-up with/confusing attraction to an incredibly creepy guy in the middle of an incredibly confusing day and while he thought his wife was dead, only to later discover that she’s alive? GOLD.

You don’t even necessarily have to wrap it all back around to a happy OT3 scenario. An Ethan who's struggling with Mia’s (actual) death, or even the realisation that he truly can’t deal with all her lies, all while telling himself Heisenberg’s just a rebound fling that doesn’t mean anything – that’s all the angst and pathos and opportunities for filthy smut you could ever ask for! Lean into it! Heck, the Duke tells Ethan outright that he can’t go back to his old life anymore – you could have Ethan decide his own status as a mould-creature makes him too dangerous to go back to Mia and Rose. More angst, more drama, more actual material for narrative conflict!

tl;dr: Write Mia off in a sentence, and not only have you made Ethan look like an asshole, you’ve made your story boring. And thus (thank you for bearing with me) ends my tangent about The State of Wintersberg Fandom, and why Mia deserves more love (from Ethan at least, even if the author can't completely bring themselves to join in).

Getting back to the real topic here: if you are up for letting your resolution involve an OT3 scenario, you’ve got some great options to play with.

Mia bossing the other two around is certainly an angle you could go for, but I think I’d prefer watching Mia and Heisenberg working together to drive Ethan out of his mind (not that options like these are ever mutually exclusive, mind!) But I’m broadly more interested in how you get these three together than what it would look like once they get there. In other words, it’s time to talk Mia and Heisenberg.

As I touched on above, these two do have more in common than it might look at a glance. They’ve both been infected by the mould, they’ve both spent years (or even decades) trapped in dysfunctional, cult-like, mould-controlled families, and had to bottle themselves up and hide behind a persona while working for truly terrible people. They’ve both done some truly terrible stuff themselves, probably watched even worse happen to other innocent people, and presumably internalised some pretty awful excuses for themselves along the way. They’re also both madly in love with Ethan (what, is anyone into wintersberg going to argue with me on that one?) In short, there is no lack of stuff for these two to bond over and find common ground.

I can’t see Mia being too hard to convince if Ethan does want to try an open relationship either. Heck, the first thing we ever see from Mia involves sending Ethan a message where she tries to let him go, because she doesn’t think she’s making it back alive. Her guilt throughout RE7 is palpable, and how much she loves Ethan is the same. I don’t think it’s any stretch to say Mia would be willing to contemplate almost anything if it would make Ethan happy (and frankly, she’s pulled enough shit herself in this relationship that she doesn’t get to get judgy anyhow).

That said, I do think she’d have reasonable concerns about Ethan’s new boyfriend being someone like Heisenberg, but then, he’s hardly any more dangerous than what Mia’s brought to the table herself. If anything, your bigger obstacle would be convincing Ethan that he’s sure enough about whatever’s going on with Heisenberg to admit it at all. But then, I don’t think getting Mia and Heisenberg involved with each other too would be too difficult either.

It doesn’t hurt that Mia has a lot of the same characteristics that probably draw Heisenberg to Ethan: a badass survivor, tough and determined enough to be a little sassy even in the face of danger, but still very vulnerably human underneath. That vulnerable side of Mia is a very important part of her to me – it’s the main aspect in play in the longest thing I’ve (yet) posted with any Mia/Heisenberg interaction, where she’s locked up in Miranda’s lab, and has no good reason to trust him. There’s nothing openly shippy going on in that story, though Heisenberg makes no bones about what he wants with her husband. I’m not sure exactly where things are headed in that universe, but you know there’s drama coming on in that front.

The main point there is that Mia’s not too badass to be intimated by Heisenberg, especially when she’s got her back up against the wall. Take them out of the village, though, and I can see Mia being a much tougher nut to crack.

Which is mostly my way of leading into mentioning that the longest thing I’ve written between them that I haven’t posted yet basically flips the previous scenario: instead of Heisenberg coming to tell Mia he’s after her husband, now it’s Mia coming to tell him she knows what he’s after, and he's about to receive some serious grilling about his intentions. What I realised in writing it was that somewhere in the middle of this conversation, Heisenberg goes from seeing Mia as an obstacle between him and Ethan to seeing her as a potential bonus. He’s impressed with her gall and starting to look at her in a whole new light. This is one ficbit that's definitely going places ‒ only problem being the usual one: I’ve still got to write the rest of the damn fic to get to that scene. (I’m working on it! But you know how it goes.)

That isn’t the only way I can see you getting the three of them together, of course. One interesting alternate possibility might be to suggest that Mia and Heisenberg have met before. Mia seems to have met Miranda (they’ve been photographed together, at least), and it’s not completely beyond the realms of possibility that Miranda might have brought along an ‘assistant’ (slash-bodyguard-slash-whatever else she thinks he’s useful for). And if she’s going to bring any of her ‘children’, Heisenberg is by far the best qualified to pass as normal, hilarious as that should be.

I don’t imagine either Heisenberg of Mia would be eager to admit any of their personal reservations about their respective ‘bosses’ to each other, meeting under circumstances like that. But the possibilities are intriguing nonetheless.

For complete AU territory, however, I don’t think you could find a better start point for an Ethan/Mia/Heisenberg scenario than to introduce Heisenberg as Mia’s ex. He’d be back in her life for Reasons, and Ethan would naturally be more than a little threatened by this huge, hot guy with history with his wife, little realising that Heisenberg’s as interested in Ethan as he is in rekindling anything with her.

Or for doing the whole thing on easy-mode, suppose Mia and Ethan have always been in an open relationship from the start – or that they’ve already had that conversation because Mia’s also in love with Zoe (I meant it when I said I ship them too!) Doesn’t mean there’s no angst or drama potential for Ethan getting involved with Heisenberg: he’s still going to be questioning what’s wrong with him that this guy is turning his crank, or whether it’s remotely appropriate for him to be seeing someone new while he’s got a six-month-old daughter at home. But if nothing else, I can promise you that having a third person around to babysit while Ethan’s ‘busy’ could only do good things for his sex life at this point. ;D

So, yeah – those would be My Thoughts On Mithanberg in a nutshell (or possibly more of a nut bowl, I can never resist the urge turn out a full essay on this stuff). If you’ve got any interest in writing mithanberg yourself, please do consider all these ideas free to a good home! Treating Mia better makes Ethan/Heisenberg better for me, and all those possibilities are right there to explore.

But to finish, have some more random Sims!

There are many more of these if anyone wants to see them, though most are less G-rated ‒ the friend running this household has installed ALL of the porn mods to enhance this little trainwreck.

(Also, before I'm done, just throwing a quick tag at @macgyvertape, since I had to screenshot their ask rather than reply 'officially' so I could reply to the both of them at once.)

#mithanberg #wintersberg #mithan #Ethan Winters #Karl Heisenberg #Mia Winters #Resident Evil Village #asks #meta #LetThatBoyAngst! #Mia Winters week