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Speculation: Cerebella vs Story Mode

PKStoopKid said:
So one could deduce that Cerebella is the resident bitch?...
As much as I adore Cerebella, yes, Cerebella is a bitch.

Her deep seated desire for familial connection has led her into an unfortunate situation where she is blinded by love for her adoptive family no matter how horrible they are. It's not for no reason that in her story Valentine refers to her as the "Medici's Lapdog." There is no other interpretation of that other than the writers calling her a bitch.

It should be noted that this is a very different connotation of "bitch" than when applied to Eliza. Cerebella is the Mafia's bitch, Eliza is JUST a bitch.
 
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But remember that time she did a cool thing?!
neither do I
 
I wouldn't really call Cerebella a bitch, she's more of an airhead
 
Ain't gonna lie I agree with Magma, the girl is a ditz. I called her a bitch cause everyone attacks her for doing her job. I could only imagine people attacking me for....nevermind, I understand
 
I wouldn't want to call her dumb, per se. Okay, that might just be me being a fan, but still...

She doesn't have much chance to intellectually shine, per se, but that's likely because few of the stories involve shiny smartness. (Big Band's detective work being a refreshing exception.) We don't see what, if any, planning Cerebella has to do for her work because it's not particularly relevant.

Foolish, maybe. "Easily manipulated pawn," sure. Not that she'd take a lot of manipulating anyway, 'cause circumstances. I should replay her story mode at some point... I've been distracted by a rather nightmarish skelley war lately...
 
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In all fairness these are not usually endearing traits one can have. "Easily manipulated by the mob" isn't really something you'd want to put on your resume.

That being said Cerebella is my favorite character not because she's cute or sexy, there's plenty of other characters that equally fit that bill. The thing I like most about Cerebella is that her character strikes me as a fully realized character with serious but believable personal problems, i.e. abandonment issues and the need for family. Other characters certainly have reasonable and believable motivations for the things they do, but as wonderful as the other characters are I can't say any of the other members of the cast are as fully realized as Cerebella.
 
"Bitch" here, "bitch" there. It's an interesting case of how we feel towards a character.

Look at Eliza. How many people hate her? Some - because she killed/slaved their fav character, not because she screwed the world upside down once and is on her way to do it again.
Take Double. She's a manipulative devil that is responsible for both the death of the whole cast in her story mode as well as countless lives lost over the centuries due to Skullgirl activity.

Then we have Cerebella who receives noticeably more vocal hate despite having some positive personality traits and being guilty of incomparably less. I pondered the "why" of it for a bit, and I think this is the reason behind it:

When a character is 100% evil, we don't hate him but just accept that "oh well, that's how he is". He never gave us hope of being good so we aren't disappointed when he doesn't succeed at it nor even try. In a way we even like/admire their ambition and effectiveness as they speak to/represent our darker side, something we all secretly enjoy a greater or lesser extent.

It's different with a character like Cerebella because she represents something we on a primal level despise much more than questionable yet successful conquest - our own human weaknesses.

Naivety, emotional dependency, inability/unwillingness to see the reality of things? We like to think/pretend we never have those traits and when a character displays them, we (perhaps as a subconscious way to reassure ourselves of that) instinctively find it reprehensible and very hard to forgive. Much harder than deliberate evil, which at least (the darker) part of us considers a "positive" trait.
 
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For the most part I agree with Muro here, I'm just really tired of hearing her fanboys call her pure and misunderstood.
I seriously doubt that people would look at her the same way if she were a dude.
 
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Muro said:
Take Double. She's a manipulative devil that is responsible for both the death of the whole cast in her story mode as well as countless lives lost over the centuries due to Skullgirl activity.

I mostly hate Double for "Luger Into Car." Every. Time.

Excellent analysis, though. I think part of it has to do with, "Okay, a villain's supposed to be terrible, so this works out. She is what she's supposed to be. A flawed but good person is just that, flawed. A flaw implies there's something that needs to be fixed, so let's fix it."

At the same time, I can guarantee that if Cerebella were to fully go bad, it'd be utterly heartbreaking and you'd see people want her to go back to the way she was before. Or it'd be a hilarious parody of the Nineties' attempts at making everything "edgy." Either way would be rough.
 
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The Dave said:
At the same time, I can guarantee that if Cerebella were to fully go bad, it'd be utterly heartbreaking and you'd see people want her to go back to the way she was before. Or it'd be a hilarious parody of the Nineties' attempts at making everything "edgy." Either way would be rough.
Reminds me of a headcanon I made around the time I joined Skullheart, that Cerebella obfuscates her current personality. Like I said then, she's the right hand of one of the most powerful and ruthless men in the city, right next to stone-cold assassin Black Dahlia. I suppose I can agree with the fact that maybe she's not, by definition, pure-at-heart. Thus, if the situation called for it (like Vitale dying and having her inheirit the Medici empire), I actually think she'd be a scary effective villain if the cards were played right. For instance:

  • She can actually fight, and has a living weapon at that.
  • She's already famous and well-loved by a lot of people for her time in the circus, and probably already has a better reputation than Vitale or his father.
  • Spending her whole life in the Medici, I imagine she's quite well-versed on the ins-and-outs.
Maybe I'm over-analyzing this. I don't know; I guess I just like the concept of her being more than meets the eye. There's nothing I get more enjoyment out of than seeing a supposedly pure character being corrupted.

I also think the whole "edgy 90s antihero" thing would be more reserved for someone like Peacock.
 
Witchfinder said:
Like I said then, she's the right hand of one of the most powerful and ruthless men in the city, right next to stone-cold assassin Black Dahlia.
No she isn't? She's just the henchmen of the son of one of the most powerful men in the city.
 
If anything, B.D is the right hand, then it'd be Ottomo not saying they can't trust Bella but Ottomo's hit jobs are on a different level then catching cats and breaking legs
 
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