When I joined REtwt, I realized that (back then) if you searched for “cleon,” all that came up were tweets attacking the ship and the shippers, calling them every name in the book as if shipping them were a sin.
Later, one night with my friends, we started looking for alternative names for Cleon, and I came up with ‘rookieangel.’ As ‘Rookie’ Leon being a rookie cop when they met and ‘Angel’ for Claire’s iconic ‘Made in Heaven’ jacket. They liked it, Twitter apparently liked it too, and it seemed like a good idea to me to clean up the algorithm.
So, if you searched for rookieangel, you’d find fan art, fanfiction, and headcanons, and I was happy that my contribution to the fandom was giving it an alternative name that other Cleons could use if they wanted to (and it made me happy every time they used the hashtag #rookieangel.
And I mean, even then I didn't expect other Cleons to use the hashtag. I even said I'd use it even if I was the only bitch in the whole fandom using it LMAO
And now I realize that the Cleons on Twitter are fighting over the name JUST because the Eagleones decided to use “rookieagle” for the RE2 Leon x Ashley ship, and… I don’t know, it actually makes me a little sad.
On the one hand, I kind of saw this coming—it’s not my first fandom, and I’ve been in fandoms way more toxic than RE since 2013 (South Park, Steven Universe)—but damn, the name was meant to erase that negativity, and the fight itself seems absurd and pointless to me.
Thank God I'm 25 and this doesn't get me down the way it would if I were 13, but it still feels kind of sad, you know? It makes me want to stop using the #Rookieangel hashtag.