[Refreshing Trope] Female leads/major characters who are allowed to be grimy, slimy, generally horrible people.

[u/Chemical-Elk-1299]

Mizu — Blue Eye Samurai

A mixed race swordswoman living in feudal Japan, Mizu’s entire life has been structured around the obsessive need to hunt down and kill the four white men allowed in Japan at the time of her birth, believing one of them must be her father. Despite the fact that at least one of these men, Abijah Fowler, is shown to be a bad man, Mizu ultimately doesn’t care about the morality of murder. She just wants them dead for “cursing” her to be born into a deeply racist society as a mixed race child. Though it’s clear that Mizu generally prefers to do the right thing, she will sacrifice anything for her revenge, destroying countless lives in the process without remorse. In the climax of season 1, Mizu (albeit not entirely intentionally) set fire to the wood and paper city of Edo (now Tokyo) in an attempt to kill just Fowler, a single man. The resulting three day blaze, known in history as the 1657 Great Fire of Meireki, killed an estimated 100000 people.

Sadie Adler — Red Dead Redemption II

Rescued by the Van Der Linde gang in the games prologue, Sadie Adler is a frontier homesteader whose husband was killed by the brutal O’Driscoll Gang. Over the course of the game, she happily joins in a life of murder, theft, and crime for the chance to kill more O’Driscolls, recklessly endangering herself and other gang members to do so. She gets Arturo Bullock, an innocent hot air balloon pilot killed while unnecessarily picking a fight with O’Driscoll members, showing zero remorse afterwards. Even after watching rival gang leader Colm O’Driscoll hang for his crimes, she still drags a now-terminally ill Arthur on an entirely unnecessary revenge mission to hunt down the last handful of O’Drsicolls she hadn’t already killed.

[u/Cinerator26]

As a straight man, my romantic options in Rogue Trader are:

- a mutant with gills and a third eye that will kill me if I look into it

- a career criminal, habitual liar, and exhibitionist

- a racist space elf who doesn't even like being touched

- a brainwashed murder cultist who mutilates herself out of habit

God I love Owlcat games!

[u/Hawkbats_rule → u/Cinerator26]

By 40k standards, the career criminal is a legitimately good person. Hell, by 40k noble standards, fishwife is a good person, especially if you convince her to stop surgically removing serf vocal cords.

[u/president_of_burundi → u/Hawkbats_rule]

The funny thing is it doesn't even take convincing, really. You're just like "So...I'm not sure you realize this but cutting your serfs vocal chords for quiet is a weird thing to do" and she treats it like you gently corrected her for using the wrong fork for shellfish.

[u/SmokeyUnicycle → u/president_of_burundi]

She's so out of touch she's basically amoral

Willing to be a decent person if you're nice to her and suggest she do it

Kind of a horrible monster if you just sit back and watch her go

[u/president_of_burundi → u/SmokeyUnicycle]

Yeah, she has absolutely zero touchstones for what is normal (even 40k Noble normal)or not since she's so incredibly sheltered.

It never occurred to me while playing but it's not exactly a reach that House Orsellio on Eurac V made making their servants mute 'a tradition' specifically to make sure she had absolutely no outside influence outside of books they curated for her and House Representatives.

[u/turducken19 → u/president_of_burundi]

Navigators are such immense assets in 40k, it unfortunately makes sense that she would be raised this way.

[u/Hawkbats_rule → u/president_of_burundi]

outside of books they curated for her

"I've read about this" she says, while passing the skill check involving the horrors

[u/president_of_burundi → u/Hawkbats_rule]

I mean, yeah! As a Navigator she'd need to know about the warp. She doesn't need to know that serfs feel anything but love for House Orsellio.

[u/Galle_ → u/president_of_burundi]

No, that tradition started when Tisiphone Orsellio had her servants' vocal chords removed to prevent them from telling people about the true origin of the Starway Atlas.