#she's horrible and tragic

[miwkchii]

Tweaked my calypso design just a tiny bit ☆

[zorangezest]

It's pride month Zorange, you know what that means!

What's Deepfreeze's sexuality? Does she know what that is or is she only concerned with ice dispensing and whatever potatoes like to do?

her sexuality is Cool

[deeplyridiculouslyinlove]

Moiraine tells Siuan that the White Tower has to bend the knee to Rand or he will lose the Last Battle. Moiraine says that Siuan *cannot fail again.* So when Siuan gets couped, when she loses to Elaida, she finds a way not to fail. She becomes a mentor to Rand’s childhood friend and creates a new Tower under that girl’s leadership. She finds the person who can not only lead the Tower, who will not only do whatever it takes to win the Last Battle, but who knows Rand and cares for him as only family can. Who will give and take with him, will ultimately trust him even at his worst, as we do with those we love.

Through this Siuan finally accomplishes her half of her deal with Moiraine. She prepares the Tower to follow Rand. She succeeds.

[justabrick]

A place where I can be without remorse...

You know, I've read many a discussion about MGR and occasionally polls pop up that aim to rank the bosses from least evil to most evil. And somehow Mistral frequently ends up in some kind of "misunderstood" or "lied to" category.

I have a couple strong opinions on that view.

I'll start this off with a weird thing – the dwarf Gekko.

Little recon focused UGs that follow Mistral everywhere. Here are some fun facts about them: - they vocalize in high-pitched tone that can be interpreted as childish and cute - when the player gets hit by Mistral, the Dwarf Gekko will either applaud Mistral or laugh at Raiden - in the section where you get to play as one you can applaud the other dwarf Gekko and they'll dance with you - chopping off the upper arm of a Dwarf Gekko in blade mode will result in it briefly pausing in confusion as it searches for its missing limb - Courtney thinks they're cute and compares them to little mice

- there are cute figurines of them made as merch - a lot of fanart features them in adorable chibi forms - they react to pain by wailing and screaming

So, they're little critters, right? They're cute, make cute noises, they display surprising degree of emotion through both sounds and gestures for a military UG. Like little monkeys, or mice, as Courtney put it.

Now how does Mistral treat them? Her pre-bossfight cutscene: Comforts the tripod that Raiden hurt, even holds it's hand tenderly.

To only moments later tear off it's arms and crush it as it wiggles around and squeks in pain.

Comforts something -> hurts it, keep this dynamic in mind for later.

And throughout the fight she tosses them around, obviously killing them in the process. Courtney comments on that too:

You could say that it's all intimidation tactics to get under Raiden's skin, except we get to see Mistral in her downtime in Bladewolf DLC. Boy do I have a lot of details to highlight there.

The very first thing Bladewolf sees as he comes out of VR training

Yeah, that's a freshly killed tripod just laying there, fresh enough to be smoking and throwing sparks still. Remember that "NPC gekkos will dance with you" detail? Yeah, those things are seemingly programmed to be social, and she killed and displays the remains of one of their kin to her "chair". The gekkos composing her chair are constantly whining and moaning as they try to hold up her evidently immense weight. And I mean constantly, all the time she sits in that thing, they shake and make noises. That thing is NOT comfortable or practical on account of said noises, so the reason she does this instead of opting for just a chair is because she loves hurting things. I'll dare to say that she displays more moments of pointless cruelty on screen than Sundowner does, and it's an achievement.

Look at the poor thing on the left hugging itself and rolling around looking traumatized. It jumps up in fear the moment Mistral turns around, too.

She's also not just hurting them, she frequently displays mock "affection" towards them. She does it at two different points to the chair gekkos alone:

Here and here. Let's not forget holding the hand of the Gekko in the pre-fight cutscene.

It can be argued that she does it to Bladewolf in a similar manner, calling him endearing pet names while constantly mixing them with mockery, insults and threats. The whole "shake" scene follows it to an extent as well, Wolf is being tortured while being forced to engage in what should be a friendly and affectionate gesture.

Also note all the gekkos cheering her on and acting like they adore her as it transpires.

So, what we get from all these scenes is that Mistral enjoys hurting cute things she has under her control while constantly flip-flopping between giving them affection and torturing them. Besides that she's casually abusive to every single UG we see her interact with, whether physically or verbally.

Give affection to something that trusts you and depends on you and then hurt it, rinse repeat.

If you know what exactly this resembles, I'm really sorry, if you don't – I'd rather not shatter your hope in humanity. That'd be very dark. Instead I'll just go for slightly less dark.

Look, I'm not implying that this is the pattern of behavior that indicates somebody who enjoys torturing small animals...

I'm telling you in plain text that it's exactly what Mistral displays in overwhelming majority of her cutscenes. She's an unrepentant sadist, one that will take advantage of even allies, and she won't be quick about it either.

And it's not like she's lashing out due to some kind of trigger relating to her past, this crap is done just because she's enjoying it.

Desperado really is the one place she can be without remorse, surrounded by two equally cruel partners whose ideologies only encourage her to indulge in her horrible desires shamelessly and openly. One could even say that all three of them are broken to the point that they're all eternally strangers to any kind of normalcy.

It's not like she's fighting for Armstrong's ideals of mega freedom anyway. Out of the horse's mouth:

Belonging, purpose. That's all she wants, really. Armstrong gave her a fucked up little family she can relate to and some goal to share with them. What that goal is about isn't really all that important.

[lovesickeros]

☆ de fontaine

{☆} characters furina {☆} notes cult au, imposter au, drabble, gender neutral reader {☆} warnings angst, suicidal thoughts, hurt / no comfort {☆} word count 1.4k

This wasn't fair. This wasn't fair. This wasn't fair!

She thought, for one moment, she could put the mask down and breathe – for one moment of daydreaming, she thought she could just be Furina. She thought she would finally get to live the live she should've had in the first place, the life she threw away to play God to an audience who saw her as nothing but a circus animal, dancing to their whims. Furina just wanted to be selfish for one brief and fleeting moment..and it was gone before she could even grasp it in her hand. A comet soaring past far out of her reach.

She can barely keep her hands from violently shaking as she looks down at them – broken and bloody and more a corpse then a person – and she feels so numb she can't even feel the rain pelting against her back. None of this is fair, she wants to scream, why is it always me? But her voice is silent beneath the torrent of rain. She wonders if the ocean would take her if she sank into it's depths – just for a moment, she wonders how it would feel to finally be able to sleep at ease.

Furina is tired.

But Furina is nothing if not useful, isn't she?

So she forces her feet to move, dragging against the stone beneath her heels, and drags their bloodied body into the nearest empty building, letting the rain do the work of washing away the smeared blood following her path. The smell makes her feel sick, the feeling of it sticking to her hands and gloves makes her lightheaded, but she persists. Because Furina is useful, because Furina won't let them die out in the rain, because Furina won't stand by and just let them rot on the streets like some..pest.

Furina wants to go home. She wants to sleep and she isn't she if she wants to wake up, this time. But she keeps going anyway.

Because it's all she's ever done, and the habit sticks.

An Archon she may not be, not anymore, but the expectations of five hundred years still linger like eyes on the inside of her skull. They watch her, pry and prod at her thoughts, mocking laughter and judging eyes following her as she forces herself to dance to the song they weave with glee. Furina never stepped off that stage – she's still there, she thinks, watching the crowd stare at her in disdain as the curtain call looms above her like a guillotine. She still hears Neuvillette deliver her damnation and salvation with a trembling voice, still feels her hair stand on end when electro crackled like the crack of the whip, Clorinde's blade aimed at her like a loaded gun.

She's trapped on that stage and she never left, not really.

She hates it. She thinks she hates them, but it's not their fault. They didn't ask for this, didn't ask for everyone to turn against them, didn't ask for her to save them. Neither did she..yet here they are, she thinks.

She tries to tell herself she's in control this time, though. She can stop performing her part in this horrible, bloody play any time she wants. It makes her feel better, just for a little while, if she convinces herself she's still Furina, painfully human.

And Furina has always been good at lying.

It's the believing that's the hard part.

There isn't time for her to wallow in her own self pity, though. They're still bleeding out onto the dusty, creaky floorboards of some random, broken down house and she's just standing there as the blood stains the wood. She can fix it – she's good at fixing things. She's done nothing but fix things – try to, anyway – for five hundred years. She can fix a little wound, how hard could it be? Her hands are clenched so tight they ache as she kneels down, wincing at the creak of the floorboards beneath her heels– she hesitates just long enough to wonder if she's making a mistake before she peels away just enough of the outer layer of their clothes to see the deep, bloody gash across their chest. She tries not to think about it – it's deep, too deep, and she feels dizzy just looking at it, but she's handled worse, right?

Furina can fix it. That's what she's good at.

She doesn't feel so confident when she tries to wrack her brain for..something. Five hundred years, and a little wound stumps her? No, she had to have learned something, right? She's decidedly not trying to buy time because she's panicking, parsing through hundreds of years of memories like flipping through a book. Furina isn't made for this, not really – she's running on nothing but adrenaline and she's really not sure what she's doing, but she's trying. And just like before, it won't be enough, will it?

She'll fall short again – she'll be too late to fix it before she's alone again.

Furina was an Archon..used to be. What use would she have for that sort of knowledge? Which makes her predicament all the more harrowing and bleak. What was she supposed to do?

Furina had heard it first hand, that vitriol in Neuvillette's voice. She isn't sure she's ever heard him that..angry before. She's not sure he would listen to her if she tried, either. And that scares her more then anything. All of Fontaine was up in arms about this..imposter, yet here she was, staring down at them bleeding out in front of her, and she was trying to save them.

Why? Why is she throwing away her only chance at normalcy for a fraud? Why didn't she just turn them in?

They were dying – that should've been a good thing, shouldn't it? So why didn't it feel like it?

"Why you?" Her voice breaks as she speaks in harsh tones, grabbing the front of their shirt in trembling, bloodied hands. "Why now?" She wants to scream, to demand answers they can't give, to claw back the reprieve she was promised after five hundred years of agony..and all she can do is sob into their chest, pleading for an answer that will not come. "Why me?"

Silence is their answer, and it hangs heavy on her trembling shoulders as she cries.

Of course they don't, she thinks bitterly, no one has ever answered her pleas spoken in hushed sobs. Not her other self and certainly not them.

Furina has always been alone. Furina will always be alone.

Because Furina never left that stage, never left that moment when she looked at herself in the mirror and took up a mantle too heavy for her to bear. She always finds her way back eventually. There's no one on the other side anymore – she stands alone on a stage, waiting for an inevitable end she isn't sure will come.

"Please," She pleads through tears and choked sobs, clinging to them like they are all that keeps her from sinking. "Please don't leave me, too." The words burn on her tongue – how pathetic is she that she craves companionship from the bloodied body of the imposter? Perhaps she's truly lost her mind after all these years..perhaps she's finally gone mad. She must have.

But their presence is like the first feeling of gentle warmth upon her skin as the sun crests the horizon, like the gentle lap of tides along her heels, the sway of branches and leaves as the wind blows through them like an instrument all it's own. They are the soothing sound of rain against the window as she watches the dreary skies in fond longing, the first bloom of spring as color blooms upon the landscape like paint had been spilled across the hills and valleys.

They are like the faint spark she carefully nurtures and stokes, so fragile even the smallest wind could blow it out like a candle. She cradles it within her palms, pleads with whoever will listen – prays that someone finally listens, because if not for her, then for them.

She's failed to protect too much already, let too many people with so much trust in her fall between the cracks of her fingers like grains of sand. She won't let them go – she can't.

If nothing else, if she couldn't be saved when she begged for salvation from that five hundred year long agony, even if she never got that chance..

Furina will make sure they do.

[samaranth-the-fleshweaver]

I often thing about the dawning horror mia fey must feel from the afterlife, as, in the snippets she pieces together from maya and pearl's channelings of her, she realizes that most of the important people in her life have to come to care about and like the wretched little pissbaby she faced off against in her first trial.

[irenespring]

Thoughts on Bertha Russell (Many Thoughts)

I am So curious about Bertha Russell's backstory. We have little snippets:

Her father was a potato farmer.

She has lots of mommy issues. (George mentions her mother said she was the only child "worthy of her dreams" to which Bertha angrily responds that her mother's dreams were worthless because she died with nothing which is A Lot)

She has sibling issues. (George offers to invite her sister to a thing and she refuses)

She and George met when they were both poor, they made the fortune together.

She had a distinct learning curve when they first got to New York. She bought The Wrong House and made The Wrong Friends and had to learn and relearn things over a period of years. (I am especially interested about this time, because she would know Nothing, being the ultimate outsider, but she is a tactical genius and viciously ambitious...I want to see young!Bertha in the early stages of the struggle before she knows how to dress/talk/act).

I hope we will learn more about her because more than any of the other characters she wants things. Things that are nebulous, but she doesn't seem to realize are nebulous, because she has clear goals but they don't satisfy her so she has to make another goal. Loving husband doing well? Not enough. They have enough money to hear the call of the guillotine? It's not enough, they need status. They have status? Not enough, they need to beat Lina Astor. Now they've beaten Lina Astor, but I don't think anyone thinks that's going to be enough. George points out multiple times that he is content where he is and content to let their children marry for love to people of what Bertha considers middling station. She's the sole driving force for continued social climbing. And it doesn't matter how high they get, she wants to go higher, she wants to go "all the way" but there isn't an all the way unless I guess you're Empress of the World. But then the moon starts looking awfully conquerable.

She claims she's doing it for their children, but both children have said her suggestions aren't what they want. And it is heavily implied she just sold her only daughter to the Duke so he would attend an opera performance. She wants Gladys to marry the Duke so that she will be grandmother to English nobility. It's for her. So she is willing to use her children, her alleged motivation, as pawns. They aren't her real motivation after all, even if she may think they are. I do think she loves her children and George. I also think that she thinks she's helping Gladys, but I also think there's a limit to that love because it exists beside the yawning void of hunger within her psyche. George outright asks her if his love for her is enough to make her happy early in s1, because her love is enough for him. She says it's "almost enough" and that's significant and enough for him, which is telling, when usually any answer other than "yes of course" would be taken by a love interest as a searing betrayal. Anyway, the point is, her kids/her family are, at least, not her entire motivation and might not factor into her motivation at all, if she is fully honest with herself.

So, the hunger. The call to Rise. The rage that has her hyperventilating in bed alone after her failed party instead of crying in her husband's arms like most television characters would do. The instinct to look upon a room of people and think you will all bow to me you sniveling mortals. Why is it there? Like...why is she Like This? I think some of it has to come from what we can learn just from George's comment about impossibly ambitious, ruthless, low empathy Bertha being the only one "worthy of her mother's dreams." Which means her mother had dreams that were very important to her and that she never achieved. Her mother also guarded said dreams and judged her children harshly, we know Bertha has at least one sister, who is apparently judged not worthy in the eyes of her own mother. We know Bertha does not like talking about this and tries to dismiss it. Was there pressure on Bertha to be worthy? When could that have started and how did it manifest? Circling back to my interest in young!Bertha in NY, if the social rejection was bad in s1, it was probably worse then, and constant social failures would have made her angrier and more determined to both to become the queen of New York society and to see it burn. This is all stuff I want to learn more about in season 3.

HERE IS WHERE I PRETTY MUCH JUST DO PREDICTIONS (WHICH MAY BE TINFOIL, IDK):

Because I think we will finally get to see Bertha Russell: Season Villain. Every season needs a villain, and Bertha has pretty much vanquished all of them. The first couple seasons the overarching villain has been New York Society with its inequalities and pointless social cruelty, if that holds, Bertha is now the head of that system, having beaten Lina Astor and set herself up as the queen. Additionally, side opponents (not really villains) like Agnes also aren't in a position to make major problems for the protagonists because the Van Rhijn household is now the Forte household and cinnamon roll Ada is now in charge. Unless Agnes attempts to usurp her sister in a subplot (which I don't think will happen except for maybe one episode of hijinx) she's not in a powerful spot. The Society character is indisputably Bertha. And Bertha has been up to some serious villain shit. If she did agree to marry Gladys to the Duke, she's now against All the Protagonists---a sure sign of villain status. She's even against her husband, who swore to back Gladys in her choice of love match, and Gladys doesn't like the Duke. If Gladys wants out, Larry will almost certainly help her. And Saint Marian will help Larry either for love reasons or moral reasons, and hopefully Peggy has better things to do but she will probably get dragged into it somehow and if Marian's involved Ada's also involved and you see where this is going.

Also, show pacing wise, Bertha is due for a loss. I love her and I want her to win everything and be declared Empress of Earth and Moon but realistically that isn't going to happen. In a show where villains lose, it checks out. Gladys isn't going to marry the Duke, and if she does, everyone is going to regret it. One reason I think we will learn more about Bertha and her history is because if she loses she's going to Lose It. Dramatic monologue style. When she had a party and no one came she swore eternal vengeance and spent the night Angry Breathing and presumably fantasizing about the Red Wedding. She doesn't handle losing well. A big public loss after achieving every status symbol she could think of would probably break her mind, and she'll probably tell whoever she's talking to (probably George) enough backstory info that we the audience can fill in stuff. This is also where I would guess she and George would reconcile where he would see she is the person he loves and has not transformed into an automaton, she's just Messed Up, which he always knew and loved so he is Back In.

IN CONCLUSION:

This is who Marina was writing about. She is a primadonna girl, and all she ever wanted was the world. She cannot help that she needs it all, in this case the primadonna life: both the rise and the fall. She also knows exactly what she wants and who she wants to be. This is why she walks and talks like a machine. Unfortunately, she is becoming a self-fulfilled prophecy.

Oh, oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh.

[chasing-faith-and-fate]

Fighting for my damn life to both remember that 3 of trans girlies have not come out yet in the story, and therefore they wouldn’t go by she/her- but I do not wanna call them he/him so I’m just stuck with trying to use their names as much as possible so I don’t have to use pronouns

WHY DID I HAVE TO PLAY SO FAR A HEAD ITS AGONY MY POOR GIRLS ARE TRAPPED IN THE CLOSET AND I KNOW ABOUT IT AND THEY DONT

[lesbworth]

selected moments (mostly gay or countess almaviva or both) from barrie kosky's 2023 production of le nozze di figaro at the wiener staatsoper

[mary34blog]

I love how after several episodes in two whole seasons of anime being The Well Put Together ProffesionalTM Umiri was outed as an absolute failgirl. Love that for her, like, unironically. Best character, 10/10, no notes. I love my pathetic child.

[bacchuschucklefuck]

love thinking kipperlilly spends her afterlife looking for lucy in a familiar forest

[sucremedy]

they have a pink princess 🥺🥺

[thegreatyin]

there is SO much doomed bat yaoi in fallen london it's unreal. the fucked up and evil betrayal-into-cannibalism bat yaoi is happening at (mostly) the exact same time in the exact same building in the exact same workplace as nearly entirely unrelated perpetually bickering divorcing 2 gazillion times per week bat yaoi

[sludgekludge]

theres something pretty funny to me about how you talk a lot about stellas bad writing and how shes demonized for things the men and how she deserves better while not even liking stella. helluva crits bravest soldier

man they deliberately gave her a really annoying voice and mannerisms specifically so the audience would like her less and unfortunately i'm the patented 'nd guy who is incredibly bothered by annoying noises' so i am not immune. will never stop talking about how they did her dirty though...cradles my annoying cardboard...you could've been a fucking character bro....

[yuseirra]

Empty

[aikya-kat-44]

Pallas and Athena

*Shyly drops doodle of Pallas' death and runs away*