#she has ascended to a higher plane now. farewell.

[dollsome-does-tumblr]

i think i have finally landed upon an interpretation of villanelle’s death that works for me, an epiphany i only came to due to being confronted with a LOT of takes on her death that did not work for me, courtesy of laura neal (villanelle had to die so eve could have a new life where she’ll be happy and thriving, villanelle was happiest when shedding blood and doing violence and therefore would be happiest dying in a blaze of glory, villanelle did not completely disappear but ~ascended to a higher spiritual plane~, etc.)

so for me, i think it works best to just see it as: villanelle killed countless people as an assassin. many of them were terrible people, but many were innocent people who did not expect death to randomly fall upon them in the moment that they died, which was kind of villanelle’s whole schtick as a very creative and flamboyant assassin. they left behind loved ones (”please, i have children!” / “i don’t want your children”), they were snuffed out when they least expected to be.

so in a way, i think it kind of works for us to see villanelle get assassinated by someone else on the order from a higher-up -- the awful suddenness, the lack of having one big last poetic farewell before you draw your final breath (sure, we saw her a lot in the water in a ~poetic way~, but it looked like she was already dead or at least unconscious), the loved ones left behind in agony, the family torn apart.

i don’t necessarily see it as a moralizing “and that’s what you deserve!” ending, as much as just a shitty twist of fate (which is what everyone she killed also met!), but i find it interesting and substantial in a way it hadn’t been hitting me as before. it takes a thing that’s been with us throughout the entire series (which is what i am really desperate to locate in this finale) and reframes it so suddenly we aren’t like “ha ha ha, villanelle, you crazy-talented assassin freak, you! look what you did to that poor bastard!” and instead we really experience what it’s like to be on the other side, because we love villanelle and we love eve and don’t want to have to witness eve losing villanelle.

anyway, that’s the best i can do with this ending, which i think i like much better as just a random (well, as random as something orchestrated by carolyn can be) terrible thing falling on her and eve than “villanelle went out in a blaze of glory because the world was too small and she couldn’t fit in it and she’d never be able to exist in the world and eve deserved a new start without her! eve survived her! yay for eve!” i 100% get the observation that villanelle “couldn’t fit in the world,” but she wanted to so badly and in many ways had been warped and used by authority figures from the time she was a kid to make her not fit or at least exacerbate her not fitting -- what if the only difference between her and eve’s natures is the fact that eve did not grow up neglected and abused?, i think the show begs us to ask (until now) -- and i think that’s a big part of what made her such a relatable and endearing character despite being an unhinged, violent person. we all often feel like we can’t fit in the world. we keep trying anyway when we can. so i think deciding that the only way to end the arc of a character with that quality is to kill them specifically because there’s something about them that intrinsically does not fit in the world is just ... lazy, and pretty unsettlingly devoid of empathy for that character. (disclaimer: i get that villanelle did indeed kill so many people. that’s what this whole post is about! but that never felt like a dealbreaker in the killing eve moral universe.)

that’s all. laura neal interviews, do not interact!!!!!

[diveronarpg]

Congratulations, JULIE! You’ve been accepted for the role of BRUTUS. Admin Rogue: There is always something about the way you write unvarnished truth that gets me, every single time. Boris is not a likable character by any means, but I still find myself curious about him when seen through your lens. You want to make ruin of him, or maybe for him to make ruin of us, and it’s so attractively despicable that I don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t know if we’ve ever had a character this unapologetic, not just to some but to every single person in Verona. Let them try and eat him, let them spit him back out, let them realize he will not be swallowed no matter how much he deserves it. I can already see the way he’ll burn across the dash, a torch-song I want to touch, and I couldn’t be happier to welcome you back to us in this new and exciting form! Please review the CHECKLIST and send your account in within 24 hours.

WELCOME TO THE MOB. 

OUT OF CHARACTER

Alias | Julie

Age | 20

Preferred Pronouns | She/her

Activity Level | Given that I’ll probably be stuck at home searching for a job for the next month, I figure my activity will be okay. The usual reply every other day or so situation, I hope!

Timezone | MST

Triggers | Already listed!

How did you find the rp?  | Two years ago I went diving into the LSRPG tag because I was curious and now here we are. :)

Current/Past RP Accounts | Santino, Loretta, Lucien

IN CHARACTER

Character | Brutus / Boris Kovrov

What drew you to this character? | Brutus, I think, is one of the most human characters in Diverona by default, without development, in the sense that he is so selfish it makes you want to tear your eyeballs out. It’s the same with most people: we encourage each other to take time to themselves, to put themselves first, but can feel rebuffed or insulted when they actually do that. Boris has taken that to the ultimate extreme: everything he does is for himself and no one else. He didn’t ascend within the Montagues because he wanted to further his family’s social standings, he did it because he alone wanted to succeed.

He’s not apologetic about it, either, and that’s what makes him so interesting. At all times, Boris is fully aware he is perceived as underhanded and generally disliked among the mob, but he’s so good at what he does that it doesn’t matter. He returns to Verona with a searing brand of shame in the form of his personal betrayal, and anyone could see that if they just fucking looked close enough, but they don’t. That’s where his talent really lies, and that’s what makes him so weirdly endearing to me: he makes himself valuable, and even when he does the worst possible thing a person could do in a mob, it still doesn’t undercut his worth. He makes himself out to be a friend, lies and lies and lies, and because most people don’t want to make the effort or choose not to, it’s believable.

Some might call him cut-throat, or a coward, a backstabber, potentially even brutal: he’s not ashamed of sprinkling rat poison into the food of his competition if it means he’ll succeed. He’s an opportunist at best and a manipulator at worst, and if there’s anything to be said about Verona, it’s that the manipulators usually come out at the front of the pack. The last sentence or so in his bio are what really sealed the deal for me: “The historians fail to mention that the traitors are the ones who survive, who outlive empires and kingdoms, who lay their sovereigns to rest and spread their ashes like trail markers.” God help him, Boris will come out of Verona alive, no matter how much of it he feeds into and how much of himself he lets it consume.

What is a future plot idea you have in mind for the character? |

• Fly not; stand stiff: ambition’s debt is paid. I’d love to see some real-time consequences for Boris’ betrayal of the Montague family. Others have been ousted for less, but somehow he gets to remain? That doesn’t seem particularly fair, but Boris couldn’t give a shit about fair if he tried. He sold his information to a mob in Russia for the purpose of a safety net. Other emissaries also deal with Russia – it’d make sense that one of them might hear about the dark dealings and try to use it to their own advantage, were they so ambitious. Or maybe it will come from someone higher up, like Castora, who knows more than they’ve let on. Maybe this will lead to his demotion, his death, Damiano’s assassination, the ushering in of a new era – who knows? These things don’t play out without someone paying the price, and I want Brutus to pay in full.

• I kill’d not thee with half so good a will. In my head, Boris has been out of the picture for some time now, working on relations between the American families and the Montagues to keep business booming. I’d love to explore the Verona Boris left a little over a year ago (totally headcanon, by the way! I’m happy to adjust wherever necessary) and how it’s changed in comparison to what it is now. Roman Montague has failed as an heir, the Witches hung in a public trial, all illusions of neutrality or working towards peace have been shot right through the middle. Damiano is unraveling at the seams, and the question of who will lead the Montagues lacks an answer entirely. It’s complete and utter chaos: messy, bloody, exactly the kind of environment Boris thrives in. I want him to wreak as much havoc as possible in his own way, and if he can’t do that, then I’d like to see him secure his seat closest to the throne when the concept of a coup becomes inevitable.

• But hollow men, like horses hot at hand / Make gallant show and promise of their mettle. He hunts Tomas Sabello and Bernadette du Pont because they are the easiest openings into both sides of the mobs. Bernadette is croquettish and manipulative but still naive, in Boris’ eyes, to the difficult path which lies ahead. I could see him trying to sway her to the Montagues if she would only listen. Grace Daly had done it for less, after all. Sabello, on the other hand, is Boris’ favorite target: throat exposed, head leaned back, weeping tears of sorrow over his wife. Boris has experience with the follies of the heart and he can see that Celeste has never loved the man, and frankly, Boris doesn’t think there’s much to the man to love. He’s hollow on the inside, scraped out with a metal spoon. His arrival so late into the act poses some difficulties, but he’s hopeful he’ll be able to pick up where he left off.

Are you comfortable with killing off your character? | Absolutely!

IN DEPTH

In-Character Para Sample:

Valentina Gallo dies a violent death. An inextricable, unforgiving death. An ugly death. When they take pull her body from her brother’s arms, and she is taken in to be seen by Damiano’s own eyes, witness the violence which has laid itself across the barren field of a corpse –

This is when Boris is called home.

Exit, Viola.

Enter, Brutus.

He bids Lorenzo and the rest of the Gambino family farewell that same night over the phone: Lorenzo calls him a bastard for not shaking his hand before saying goodbye, but Boris has other things on his mind: A plane. The brisk cold mornings that give way to blustery sunshine. Damiano greeting him as a member of the family instead of an extension of his long reach, like he had a year ago. He can remember the phone call well. He’d run it through, night after night, dissecting and picking apart intonation and tone and the speed with which Damiano had dismissed him, like a dog begging for scraps hastily shoved away from the dinner table. He lets the familiarity of the conversation wash over him as he settles in his plane seat the night of the twenty-seventh. He’ll be there by morning.

I’ll be there to greet you, Damiano had said. Boris had tried not to read into it too much.

New York was intended to be punishment and apology wrapped up into one. Damiano sent him off to deal with the budding crime syndicates and crush them under the imaginary Montague heel. He would spread seeds of dissent and terror: most fall silent when he enters a room for good reason, and it is in this way that he gets them to listen when he speaks. Most would not expect a man as imposing as Boris to speak so passionately; he’s always been a fan of turning ideas on their heads. By weaving tales of just what the Montague family has at its disposal, he alone would stamp out the passionate flames of greed and light his own small fire of fear.

In his younger years this would have intimidated Brutus. When he’d received the call a year ago, he’d only felt dread.

But he’d done well. It took him five months to chase down every single lead provided to him by men paid under the table, and after that, all there had been to do was clean up the mess and socialize. Shake hands with the shattered fragments of the once-powerful mob families, reach out to the contacts he’d had in Canada and New Orleans, as they were perhaps the most influential, the ones who could sway the boat with weaponry and other fun and exciting goods that still had his heart pounding when he looked at them.

He’d thought about calling Evgeny once, and only once: when Damiano had chewed him out over the phone for something that was not his fault and hadn’t been in his wheelhouse to begin with. Boris knew, that night, what Evgeny would say. Patience, Kovrov. We’ll be here when you’re ready.

When you’re ready. Whatever that meant. For all Evgeny knew, Boris would never be ready. He’d die with Verona just out of reach.

He startles awake as the plane hits turbulence coming into Verona, heading towards the landing strip. It’s a bumpy landing, but he’s never done well in planes to begin with. He thinks, often, of his father, who had marked to Boris that all would be well just before returning to Russia. The flight wouldn’t make it, of course. Damiano had ensured it: Sasha Kovrov had been dead weight long enough. All he could’ve hoped for, Boris thought, was that his son would prove worthy of something.

And he had. He’d crawled on his hands and knees across glass and gravel, waded through blood and sweat, and tears – never his own, if he could help it – to see the Montague family through to the other side. Could he really have been blamed for wanting to ensure he had some sort of future laid out for him, even if it wasn’t in the name of the two old bloodlines of Verona? In return, he’d gotten: a usurpation of a position that should have been his, a pound’s worth of rat poison that he couldn’t use, distrust among his peers and disgust from the one man who should have seen his dedication, and a promise he couldn’t act upon until he was ready.

враки.

He exits the plane, meets Damiano on the tarmac, and just as quickly they are swept away by Damiano’s driver. There is no discussion of previous business, tasks he has completed. Craven is mentioned offhandedly, but Boris had to admit some time in September that whatever illicit ties Everett Craven had to the Capulets when it came to his dealings in America, the man kept them wound up tight. He’d been impressed. Instead, they set their eyes on the future: Damiano speaks to him of the failures and successes, trials and tribulations, and Boris takes note of the way his brow knits together when he speaks.

It is like Damiano cannot bear to look at him, but is forcing himself to anyway. Surely his betrayal had not burned so badly. It wouldn’t have left a mark.

Valentina Gallo died for less. She didn’t give nearly as much away. She’d given what she had to give. Boris had given Evgeny everything, and then offered the grounds of the coffee to Damiano in return.

Boris is lucky to be alive, seated across from a man he might have once considered a better father than his own, who looks at him with poorly-veiled discuss and tells him what to do. Boris had sold his soul – this might just be the devil’s recompense.

It doesn’t matter, he tells himself, watching the city pass them by, nodding where appropriate and watching the sun rise over the river as they drive alongside it. If he gets his way, Damiano Montague will be sooner dethroned, and Brutus will have his rightful place as second-in-command to some poorer, less competent man. If he is anything, it’s stubborn. They drive by the Castelvecchio, and he’s saddened to see it is still a work in progress, not at all the shining beacon it had once been of unity or pride within a place being torn in two, right down the middle. He feels a pang of something hit him in his chest. Homesickness? He’s home, but—

Boris’ flat is small, modest, tucked away in an alley. Close enough to the library that he can be there within minutes just by walking, if necessary. All the pedestrians on the street avert their eyes when they see Damiano’s car pull up outside. He grabs the one bag he’d taken with him on the plane: he’s hopeful the rest will arrive within the week, but that’s an if at best. Before he slips out, Damiano clears his throat.

He stops, and finds a single piece of paper pressed into his hand. He can only assume what it is, won’t open it – it’s deliberately folded closed. It could be anything: a name, a number, a place, a threat, a promise.

“When you’re ready,” Damiano murmurs, like some sort of sick joke, which is to say that it will be when he asks, because Boris ceded any hope at control over his own life the minute he sold all he possessed to the Russian mob, heart and mind and soul, only to crawl back to Verona just after. Some might’ve called him a fool, but he’d only seen the future, then. If only others could see the eclipsing horizon always in his sight.

It’s here that Boris is left: a small alley, out of sight of the rest of the world, the morning sun shining on his face. The future in his hand. He opens it before he has the chance to breathe in again, the vitriol in his heart already beginning to sear out through his ribcage.

Extras: N/A

[marclef]

What happens if I set a cucumber near Eyhm?

goodbye my sweet summer child....