Fanfic / A little dinner scandal

With a lifetime of being put down by Alma, Mirabel starts to lose her patience. Camilo can't help but notice.

A little dinner scandal is an Encanto One-Shot Fic by SrebrnaFH and it can be read on Archive of Our Own here.

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This fanfic provides examples of:

• Absurd Phobia: Camilo really dislikes sheep and hates it when asked to handle them.
  Camilo: I hate sheep[.] I hate how they look at me, I hate how they smell, I hate the feel of fleece on my fingers, I hate the oil that's covering them...
  Mirabel: Lanolin.
  Camilo: Whatever that is, I hate that, too. If it's sheep related.
  Mirabel: That's the grease they produce.
  Camilo: Then I hate it from the bottom of my soul. And I don't know anything about wool or fleece or how to say which ram has the best one and I'd rather not come within ten feet of any ram, if I can, because they are vicious dumb creatures. So there.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: With Alma being more open for her contempt towards her, Mirabel in-turn has it worse, constantly being reminded and put down for not having a gift. It had gotten to the point where she plans on moving out when she turns sixteen, moving in with the local seamstress who had offered her an apprenticeship.
• Adaptational Jerkass: While Alma was Innocently Insensitive in canon, here she is much less subtle when it comes to Mirabel. When Mirabel offers to wash the dishes at breakfast, Alma thinks that someone "more capable" should do it, causing Mirabel to point out that she is the one doing all of the house chores without a gift. One time, Camilo transformed into Mirabel for the hell of it, only for Alma to go off on "her" for just standing there.
• Calling the Old Woman Out: Alma gets a few throughout the fic.
  • The first time is when Mirabel offers to wash dishes from breakfast, only for Alma to try and keep her out of the way, assuming she isn't capable of anything without a gift.
    Mirabel: I didn't know a gift was now required to wash the plates and scrub the pans. Then I was planning on sweeping the kitchen and the courtyard, but if you have someone around the house with a gift for that, I will obviously hand over the broom to that highly qualified and probably more worthy person. Oh! I forgot. I am the only one doing cleaning chores. Because I have no gift. Unless you wish me to ask Tonio's jaguar friend to lick the plates clean for us, it's still the useless little Mirabel washing them.
    Alma: You are forgetting yourself, child.
    Mirabel: You mean, I'm forgetting I'm the useless giftless hopeless Mirabel, as you so kindly remind me daily? No, I'm not. And you trying to accuse me of some... I even don't know what it is that you wanted. But hey, if I'm not supposed to help Mama, by washing the dishes, I suppose she will have to spend time doing that, instead of cooking and baking all the gift-filled food, but it will be good, because the useless grandchild will not be touching anything important, right...?
  • When Alma tries excluding her from family lunch because she was dirty from her chores, Camilo defends her.
    Camilo: Mirabel doesn't have a room. You can't order her to 'go to her room' if she never had one.
    Alma: Stop prattling, Camilo. She does have a perfectly good room!
    Camilo: Actually, she's stuck in our old nursery, and it isn't 'her room', by any means[.] Does she have privacy there, does the door lock? No. Does she have her own wardrobe, the size for grownups clothing? No. I have more space for my clothes than she does, and I need like one shelf, maybe two. Her bed is too short for her, she has one stupid bedside table, the same as we had when we were babies. And she has had to share with a toddler for the last two years. How fair is it?
• Control Freak: Mirabel surmises that the reason why Alma hasn't just kicked her out despite treating her very presence as an ugly blemish is because she wants to keep total control over her grandchildren. This leads to her going through a logical rabbit-hole where she realizes just how calculated the family's dynamics really are.
  Mirabel: I think she wants me miserable and under her total control. Like everyone else in our generation...
• Deadpan Snarker: Mirabel is proven to be this when her patience runs out.
  Mirabel: I was only going to help Mama...
  Alma: You mother doesn't need your help[.] She works with her gift, and you...
  Mirabel: I didn't know a gift was now required to wash the plates and scrub the pans.
• For Want Of A Nail: The events all happen the day after Antonio's gift ceremony, but it goes entirely different from canon.
  • Since Mirabel didn't get enough sleep, she is too slow to catch Luisa and talk to her, and so, doesn't learn about the prophecy.
  • Instead of following Luisa and venturing into Bruno's room to investigate the miracle, Mirabel helps Camilo with his duties.
  • Mirabel finds out that Isabela doesn't want to marry Mariano all on her own through context clues in her behavior.
• Grumpy Old Woman: Alma seems to use Mirabel as someone to vent her frustrations on, anything Mirabel does or doesn't do breaking out into a lecture.
  Mirabel: It is... As if she was stomping on my toes in steel-capped boots. Every time I do anything apart from hiding in my room, she's on me like a hawk on a chicken. Some days it feels like I'm even breathing wrong. And if I hide, then I'll hear it during dinner, since it means I'm useless and being of no help to anyone.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Camilo has this reaction when Mirabel points out that she was excluded from the family picture.
• Stage Mom: When Mirabel and Camilo realize how much Mariano looks like their Abuelo Pedro, they begin to think that Alma paired Isa up with him as a means of recreating her own marriage vicariously through them.
• Worth It: Mirabel is well aware that Alma is going to ream her out over what happens at dinner, but she decides that saving Isabela from a marriage she didn't want and having Isabela thank her makes it totally worth it.

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