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Apr 10

Franco, Angelina Barbi & the Degradation of Women in a Male-Dominated Society

(Warning: Will be discussing topics involving abuse, rape, CSA, incest/stepcest, and canon-typical language and violence.)

From discussions I've seen online, it's genuinely fascinating how interpretations can be so incredibly different from one another, where one side sees Angelina Barbi as a predator who groomed Franco, while another sees her as a victim who was not only abused by her husband, but aggressively pursued by her dangerous and misogynistic stepson, as well. As someone who subscribes to the latter belief, I wanted to share some of my own ideas on her as a character, the historical context and role of women in the mafia during the 1950s, a timeline of events, how I believe Franco felt towards both their relationship and women as a whole, and a brief look into the way people often create headcanons in order to create excuses and uplift violently misogynistic male characters, often mischaracterizing, ignoring, or demonizing women in the process (So hope you're ready to dive in and endure my long-winded rambling because there is A LOT to go over!)

The Role of Women in the Mafia

Women have historically never been placed in positions of leadership within the Italian-American mafia. According to American investigative journalist Barbie Latza Nadeau after interviewing a number of mafia women, women primarily supported men behind the scenes until the 1970s, typically playing a more social role rather than being directly involved in criminal activities due to the patriarchal structure of the mafia.

The role of a mafia woman was to be a mother figure, and her “whole job [was] to teach your children right from wrong. Things like, ‘It’s okay to get revenge, don’t turn the other cheek.’ Your whole job [was] to raise children to be bad. You tell them to accept that dad is in prison ‘because he was protecting us—he used guns to protect us, he sold drugs to help people.’ The wife is the confidante. She keeps secrets.”

The mafia is a male-dominated society, and there is no disputing that reality. Women cannot divorce their husbands without being killed and “[mafia women] can’t cheat on their husbands without being murdered, but he can sleep with whomever he wants.” Cheating was viewed as a betrayal. And a mafioso wouldn't want to risk a bitter ex-wife running her mouth.

My reason for explaining this is because there are quite a few people I have seen online that seem to be under the impression that Angelina Barbi had power just from being the wife of a mafia boss. The unfortunate truth was that she was just a young woman married to an abusive man twice her age in order to play her role as a trophy wife in a world that did not respect her.

I even saw someone once paint her as some malicious mastermind by saying that “Angelina wanted to get Franco kicked out the mafia and knew she would get away with it, which is why she got involved with Franco in the first place!”, which is blatantly false.

Angelina took on a heavier risk than Franco did by becoming sexually involved with him in any capacity. Reality points to the fact that she was likely murdered after their affair was uncovered by Salvatore. No mafia don would ever accept such disrespect, especially not a man like Salvatore, who had already previously killed one of his wives, according to Franco himself:

One of the most interesting parts of Angelina’s character comes from the fact that while she lived in such a dangerous and precarious position, she involved herself with Franco, even knowing what could become of her.

Timeline of Events: Franco's Age & How This Affects His Relationship with Angelina

I want to start off by saying that I do not believe that there is any evidence supporting the claim that Angelina was a child predator.

1) Angelina did not raise Franco. By his own admission, he had a “new mom every year,” so it can also be presumed that Salvatore hadn't been married to her for much longer than a year, if that. Having an absent mother figure growing up is also one of the leading contributors of his mother complex.

2) Angelina being Salvatore's most recent partner would imply that Franco was already older by this point (old enough to be sent away to handle his father's business operations and becoming an asset to the CIA. I highly doubt Franco would have been underage during this time.)

Edit: I forgot to include this the first time I wrote my analysis, but it's very important to mention as well, especially since I saw a couple people still not convinced lol Franco already being an adult would be heavily evidenced as well by the real-life timeline for CIA and Mafia involvement in Cuba, suggesting that Franco was actually sent away by his father around early-to-mid 1959, given the fact that Franco was involved with counter-revolutionary associates in Florida and that the popular story for his being sent away at the time was that "[Salvatore] sent him to Miami to help our mutual friends with the Cuban situation." You can read more about this below in order to see how this would shape Franco's backstory.

To put the timeline into perspective, Franco is either 25 or 27 by the time he is collected by Murkoff in 1959, depending on if you choose to believe the comic's given age of him being ten upon his first murder or the in-game document “Age Twelve” from Clyde Perry.

I saw someone claim once that he must have been a minor at the time of their relationship because there's no room in the timeline otherwise, which I find a bit silly. There's at least a few years of wiggle room between him being eighteen and the age he was when brought to Sinyala at 25 to 27. The search for him also took practically no time at all. Agency partners lost track of him on September 21 of 1959. Clyde Perry found him in Miami on October 5, and, just like that, he was in Sinyala within the same month. The mafia already had a presence abroad, so Franco was able to swoop in and handle operations from there. So there's nothing suggesting that Franco needed a whole bunch of time to build up a local shadow government in Cuba when Don Salvatore Barbi was already pulling strings there in the first place.

Another curious thing I noticed was that it didn't seem like Franco had any sort of permanent residency at this time and instead frequented motels with prostitutes like Jenny. We could always frame this from the angle that his relationship with Angelina and his being exiled from New Orleans was a more recent affair, and he simply never had time to settle down anywhere after that (Because otherwise if he had been 18 or younger during the Angelina relationship and then exiled from New Orleans, the implication would be that after seven to nine years and up, Franco still didn't have a place that people would have pointed Clyde Perry to upon asking where to locate him?)

Franco being 18+ still leaves plenty of time for the affair with Angelina, Franco hanging around Miami and Cuba for a few years, before finally being caught in October of 1959. I don't believe his work with the CIA lasted very long either due to his lacking subtlety and becoming more trouble than he was worth, as detailed below. So even more reason to believe Franco was older because, again, he was already 25 to 27 when he had been collected by Murkoff.

With all of this in mind, as well as supported by Franco's behavior and upbringing, I don’t believe it's a stretch to presume that he may have been the one to initially pursue her in his grown age. Why wouldn’t he? She was around his age, attractive, and she was forced to be around because she was married to his father. Franco is a man starved for love and attention, and Angelina was a new shiny toy that he could latch onto.

Even if the affair had never happened, it is incredibly obvious that nobody in that situation would realistically have a normal, healthy parent-child relationship when aforementioned parent and child are both within the same age group (It is not talked about enough that Salvatore's wife being practically the same age as his child is a huge red flag, especially during an era where marital rape was still legal!).

Her age also being close to his is important because it plays into the humiliation factor, something that Franco is canonically aroused by. Someone as young as Angelina even being placed into a maternal role over him in the first place likely played into this. Angelina, like I imagine most of Salvatore's partners, were all young women. This would have not have affected Franco when he was still a child because there would still be a significant age gap between himself and his maternal figures. But Angelina showed up when he was a young adult. Imagine it, the idea of someone your age showing up out of nowhere and being called your "mother." It would come off as ridiculous and humiliating for Franco. Based on the age alone, strangers would sooner assume she was Franco's romantic partner than a mother, and that too may have frustrated him.

Because of that extremely close age gap, I don't believe Franco actually considered Angelina to be his "mother", at least not in the traditional sense of the word, and viewed her as just another of his dad's many partners. Even while married to Angelina, Salvatore was likely cheating on her because infidelity and having mistresses ("goomahs") was extremely normalized in the mafia for made men. Franco states that he had a "new mom every year." Which likely would include prostitutes and mistresses Salvatore slept with and dated casually (Because otherwise Salvatore only had four wives, and, considering Franco's age, that would hardly count as "a new mom every year." So this would imply that Franco does, in fact, use the term "mother" to collectively refer to all of his father's partners, even the ones who were never actually guardians or maternal figures towards him.)

Franco also ponders in one voice line that “[he] never knew his real mother.” The sense of loss in this line implies that all of Salvatore's partners over the years were just fakes and substitutes for the real thing, something he knows he can never obtain because his biological mother was taken from him at an early age by his father. Franco recognizes that there's a difference in one who plays the sexual role of “mommy” (such as the trophy wives and prostitutes whose sole purpose was to please his father) vs. a biological mother expected to care for his emotional needs. However, he still longs for both of those things at the same time—the sexual component of the female body and the natural emotional connection between a mother and child. It's a symptom of neglect. He's seeking the care he never received as a child in the form of a lover, blurring the lines between them in the process.

The Sadomasochism of Franco Barbi

Franco is an insecure character that has been abused and mocked his entire life because of his appearance and how he is perceived by others. This is shown multiple times in his outraged reaction towards being called the infantilizing nickname, Il Bambino. (Look at how "Bambino" was not used as a nickname for him during his time in Cuba, and sources instead referred to him as "Lupa" , suggesting that the "Bambino" moniker was not one of his choosing back in New Orleans.)

Yet we can also see that he enjoys emasculating himself and taking on certain behaviors associated with infancy if it is on his own terms, where his desires take priority.

This is often misinterpreted by fans as Franco being inherently submissive when in actuality, he's far more nuanced than that and still has sadistic urges and desires control over others. Franco is a sadomasochist who enjoys hurting others and humiliating them through sexual harassment/assault, physical violence, and torture... But also gets aroused by those that manage to overpower and wrestle control away from him in a sexual context, despite his deadly reputation (And even then, he is still the one in control because the direction of said encounter depends solely on his mood. This can be seen with Jenny, who can be presumed to have taken a dominant role sexually with Franco, her repeat client, and yet her fate was always in his hands. Her being a prostitute already left a power imbalance between them, but he always kept his Lupara with him, as well, during these encounters and he ultimately killed her). In both scenarios, he doesn't want "an easy lay", if his past experiences being dissatisfied with cooperative prostitutes he paid for is anything to go by. Threats of rape and murder are also common from him, and considering he also has a history of necrophilia, it is clear that he thrives off of the power of degrading/intimidating his unwilling victims.

I feel that the way he gets aroused and masturbates to the DA being forcibly pleasured by the mannequins could hint towards this as well (I think some fans forget that the "District Attorney" is just a former reagent like previous victims in other trials, no different from the Snitch or The Mules, making the entire intro sequence of Pleasure the Prosecutor completely non-consensual). While characters like Mother Gooseberry and Coyle completely buy the world that Murkoff is selling in these trials, Franco shows in certain dialogue that he knows where he is and is willing to play along anyway. Not only is he aware that doctors are watching his every move and calls them out on it, but he also knows that Murkoff itself is the company overseeing everything in the facility. He simply enjoys the freedom of being able to indiscriminately kill and maim in much the same fashion as before he was brought to Sinyala (I personally hold the belief that he may have been manipulated and lied to by Murkoff that the mafia is also involved in Sinyala operations, similarly to Cuba, in order to keep him in line since he is so self aware, and he isn't actually in direct contact with his father. But hey, we all have our different headcanons!)

Anyway, my point in bringing up his sadistic personality is that just because one is being called a "mother" by Franco does not mean that they have any power over him in that dynamic, even when he infantilizes himself because the focus is still on what he desires without any consideration for others. Anyone who looks into Franco’s character should be familiar with the fact that he even forces this role of “Mommy” onto his unwilling victims (the reagents being a prominent example), as well. The very idea of motherhood frustrates him, as he tragically grew up without one, and he has the mafia and period-typical attitudes of the times to warp his idea on what a mother's role should be in his life. He believes a mother’s job is to take care of him, not believing them to have an identity outside of their connection to him. By using this title, he degrades a woman into one of his possessions (As evidenced by caged women seen in his trial environments). They become his mother, his property, and their job is to make him happy and prioritize his needs as any good mother should. I mean, what cruel mother would deny her hungry baby breastmilk when he cries for it, right? That's the kind of sentiment he has towards those he labels “mother” and why he gets off on being their “baby”: it's all a sense of entitlement towards a woman's time, attention, and body.

The Madonna-Whore Complex & How it Influences Franco's Behavior Towards Women

I’ve found that a lot of men in the Outlast universe can be associated with the Madonna-Whore complex, which warps their perception of the women around them, placing them into two categories: The Madonna, a woman who is chaste, maternal, and good, or the Whore, who is promiscuous, tainted, and depraved.

(Side note: I'm willing to admit that Franco isn't a 100% perfect portrayal of this compared to a character like Eddie Gluskin, especially since Franco still uses those maternal figures as a sexual outlet anyway, but I still felt it was worth bringing up given what we know so far about him and the obvious juxtaposition of his tone and attitude when addressing "mommy" vs. a "whore." I wish we had dialogue from him on Arora or Liliya, so I could potentially confirm this more and expand on the subject further, but alas...)

I am reminded of this complex with Franco in particular because his language often places women in these rigid boxes of “slut” or “mother.” From his perspective, it makes sense due to his only experiences around women being either prostitutes or Salvatore’s partners, Franco's so-called mothers, over the years. The overlap in these categories is that regardless of what he chooses to call them, there's still that firm underlying belief that women exist solely for his pleasure. Characters like Angelina + Phyllis are examples of those who he places into the "Mother" category, which makes sense when both are taking on the position of a maternal figure that is capable of dominating him.

In the case of the latter, this is evidenced by the fact that Gooseberry refers to Franco as a "child" and "little boy" multiple times, in addition to her taking on both a disciplinary and caring motherly persona when it comes to her quotes, with one even outright stating that she is interested in spanking him. It only makes sense that he would view her from this "Mother" angle. This is fulfilling both his emotional and sexual needs, as he also notably finds her body attractive, and this is generally when he puts himself into a sexually submissive position. Notice how the lustful language towards Mother Gooseberry is a reflection of his relationship with Angelina, given what we saw illustrated of their relationship in the comic: "She'd crush me like a hot little grape" and "I wonder what her shoes look like. I wonder if I could just... just look at her shoes."

I read something interesting once that the idea of the Madonna is just as harmful as the other side of the coin of “whore” because no woman can fully embody that level of perfection, and degradation only becomes a matter of inevitability in this twisted mindset. It is a position of idealization, which in turn causes an unconscious desire to degrade because the idealizer wants to be idealized himself. In Franco’s case, a man of vast insecurities, this is achieved through murder and violence: The idealizer degrades what they first idealized to be above it (This is how a character like Jenny could go from someone getting paid to dominate Franco, who was a repeat client of hers, to then having her corpse ripped open and used by him, turning her into his now submissive victim. Also take notice of how physically strong/large characters like the female big grunts have repeatedly been sexually degraded and killed by him while he also has this quote: "I'm king fucking kong. I'm a hundred feet tall." His eventual violence towards dominant women is a way he battles his own insecurities about his height, masculinity, and sexual submission because he wants to be seen by others as the dominant, imposing figure)

His fantasies and longing for a mother figure ultimately always shifts into objectification—fixating on breasts, breastmilk, and being inside their wombs, even if he has to cut off their nipples as trophies or tear their bodies apart just to climb inside of them or breastfeed. It's dehumanizing, but places Franco in a position of superiority.

For a man raised to view women as lesser and put them into a position of servitude (a mother who takes care of him or a prostitute whose job is to please him), would it surprise anyone that he would be attracted to his own stepmother of his own volition, one that can play both parts when required? And knowing what we do of Franco's character, do you truly believe he would even care about maintaining an "appropriate" relationship with his stepmother? Or would that taboo only fuel his fantasies? And do you believe that he would respect the boundaries of a woman or handle any form of rejection in a healthy manner without resorting to threats and violence? Do you think Angelina was in a position where she could have refused Franco if he were to have forced himself on her in any capacity, knowing the harm he was capable of?

I personally feel as if it's naive and infantilizing to act as though Franco had no agency and wasn't a willing participant in his encounter with Angelina when he already had an extensive arrest record of sexual assault and had murdered many a prostitute before even meeting her. I saw one person claim that Angelina was the cause of Franco's unhealthy sexual behavior, but that doesn't line up at all with what the comic explicitly shows us, as he had already normalized murdering his sexual partners during his teen years without facing any repercussions.

If anything, I'm more inclined to believe that Franco is a monster of Salvatore's making, not Angelina's. Salvatore was the one to groom him into becoming the violent misogynist he is, while likely also exposing him to sex workers at a young age. With the patriarchal attitudes of both the time period and the mafia, as well as the way he grew up witnessing his father treat the women in his life as disposable and to be used for pleasure, it is no wonder Franco grew up enforcing these ideas himself.

This is genuinely what he believes women are: You’re either a mother or a whore, and that’s all there is to it. He has no qualms about killing women that he believes fails at their duties (If he can't get it up, he'd sooner blame and kill a prostitute for failing to give him what he wants than admit to any weakness on his part.)

While there’s no telling the exact details of what happened between Angelina and Franco, I hold the perspective that while it may have been an inappropriate and unhealthy relationship, there is absolutely nothing suggesting in the lore that Franco was SA'd by her. All this illustrates is that she was a femdom who engaged in kinky sex with her stepson, who derived pleasure from it (It's no coincidence that Franco also asks about seeing Mother Gooseberry's shoes. Being stepped on and humiliated by a dominant woman is something he definitely enjoys, even if it may be a guilty pleasure for him! "It's the only thing that works for some guys." Just like being with his maternal figure was taboo, so was the humiliating idea of being a dangerous and macho mafioso who willingly lets "the weaker sex" dominate him.)

While we can only speculate on why Angelina chose to involve herself with Franco, we already know that Franco got plenty out of their relationship. He was able to use her to finally get off after being unable to perform with prostitutes previously. I can imagine Franco might have had feelings for her because this was the first time someone, especially a woman, willingly gave any sort of attention to him without having to be paid first. She also made him feel less broken and more "manly", as this was the first time in his entire life that he was able to get an erection, something he had been insecure about before to the point of countless acts of femicide.

Franco's Relationship with Salvatore, The Oedipus Complex, and How This Affects His Behavior Towards Angelina

I firmly believe that Franco's relationship with Angelina wasn't just about his arousal. I think it is also a reflection of his messy and complex relationship with his father, as well.

Franco likely resented his father for neglecting/abusing him over the years. He was also likely jealous of his father and the amount of wives and partners he had (Cough cough This is where I will also mention The Oedipus Complex, in which a child exhibits a sexual attitude towards his maternal figure, while viewing his father through a more hostile lens, displaying jealousy and a sense of rivalry. Regardless of the legitimacy in the real world of Sigmund Freud's claims, there's no denying that concepts like the one mentioned play a heavy role in crafting characters among writers, and I do believe that this was intentional by Red Barrels when creating Franco's character. This can even be seen in the family structure created by Easterman: Franco, the "child", exhibits hostility towards the father figure, Coyle, while he is attracted to the mother figure, Gooseberry, a parallel with his life before with Salvatore and Angelina. It's even more obvious when taking into account one of the movie inspirations behind Franco Barbi, Blue Velvet, and how this theme is also incredibly prevalent in the film.)

And yet Franco also still put Salvatore on a pedestal and wanted to impress him because his father was both his only family, his greatest role model, and also the don, the most powerful position one can be in a mafia family—the very image of masculinity and strength. In the dialogue below, you can see that he desperately seeks to impress and receive validation from his father.

As mentioned before, there is this idea that by degrading what you idealize, you then can convince yourself that you are above it. Screwing his father’s wife (basically stealing what was considered his father's property) was one such way of reaching that goal and becoming superior to what he considered to be his untouchable and all-powerful father.

This is where I also want to reiterate that if we can all agree that Salvatore abused Franco growing up, then it is no stretch of the imagination to assume he likely abused Angelina and his other wives, as well. The 1950s was an era in which marital rape was still legal, turning sex into male entitlement and female obligation. We’ve already established that Salvatore has murdered his other partners before, including the mother of his only child. If we want to discuss abusive power dynamics in the Barbi family, it was the young woman who couldn’t escape her marriage to an abusive murderer without facing severe repercussions for it.

There's also an even more tragic world that could be painted, in which Franco might have been sexually harassing Angelina after first meeting her, and knowing how violently Franco would take a rejection given his already well-established history of killing hookers, she didn't feel safe refusing him and simply played along with his desires. Or perhaps she did initially refuse him and that was what led to their arrangement? Maybe one day he was sexually harassing her, Angelina reacted with aggression, and that was when Franco first learned that he was aroused by women dominating him.

Such a scenario could even be potentially supported by the illustration of them together where Angelina appears to possibly be naked (Perhaps she was getting dressed?) and Franco, fully clothed, possibly having spied on her inappropriately, was "punished" by her for it (Something similar happened in the movie Blue Velvet, which is again, an incredibly obvious movie inspiration for Franco Barbi that explores the Oedipus Complex: The main character, Jeffrey, hides in a closet and watches Dorothy, a metaphorical maternal figure for him in the film, undress. After catching him, she then proceeds to dominate and humiliate him as payback. While she is initially dominant with Jeffrey, who is the metaphorical "child", Dorothy is a submissive victim to an abusive Frank Booth, the replacement father figure in Jeffrey's mind. Can you see how this sounds familiar to the family structure of Franco, Angelina, and Salvatore?)

Regardless, in both scenarios, Angelina would again be the victim of another man in the Barbi family, risking death from two men—father and son— with extremely volatile tempers.

A Lack of Context & How Easily Two People Can Interpret the Same Line of Dialogue Differently

There is so little official lore info out there on Angelina Barbi and the extent of her relationship to Franco that we can really only speculate, but hey, that's just part of the fun, right?

Speaking of there being little info out there, it would be a voiced line from Franco that is commonly passed around: “She didn't have to laugh at me. She didn't have to do that.” I have seen this line used repeatedly to paint Angelina once again as a mustache-twirling villain that was just being sooo mean to poor Franco.

But the reality is that none of us can be 100% certain that this line even refers to Angelina to begin with. This very well could have been referring to Jenny, the prostitute he also had ongoing relations with. (We still don't know why he killed her either. Keep in mind that it happened while he was still on the run and risked drawing attention to himself. It was probably not premeditated and was done in the heat of the moment. He was likely paranoid about being followed from Cuba, so he intended on using Jenny as stress relief. This was occurring during an already extremely low point in his life after being exiled from the family, turning to murder, alcohol, drugs and prostitutes. All it could take was one moment of being laughed at in a rare display of emotional vulnerability, and he might have snapped on her then and there.)

There is also the possibility that it is simply referring to one of the unnamed prostitutes he killed when he was younger. It's no secret that Franco was insecure about his dick size and inability to get an erection. Imagine if one of the first experiences he had with a sex worker, she laughed at him because of it, and then he killed her out of rage/shame.

And even if that line is connected to Angelina, the important thing to note is that lack of context around what caused the "laughter." She certainly didn't appear to be laughing in the only comic panel that we have of her with Franco.

Just to give an alternate perspective on that same piece of dialogue, I saw someone theorize once that Franco might have asked either Jenny or Angelina to have run away with him, which they laughed off (and why wouldn't they? One was a prostitute getting paid to put up with him and didn't care that he was on the run. The other was a woman who was already married to his father and had no way of leaving said marriage alive). The rejection would have undoubtedly both hurt his feelings and embittered him, especially if these are the only women in his life that have ever managed to satisfy him.

Hell, maybe it wasn't even anything so extreme as that. Maybe Franco simply believed he was in love with Angelina and told her as much. But if their relationship was founded on her merely humoring his desires in order to survive, then yes, she likely laughed at this notion, and Franco's feelings were hurt in the process. This feels in line with the way the line was recorded twice in both an emotionally vulnerable tone and a more irritable one.

Now that's already four different interpretations than the common abuse angle I've seen passed around, and I can concoct even more: Franco's sex life and preferences were still a bit of a sore spot for him, and being submissive still felt like a threat to his masculinity. But maybe Franco finally let himself be vulnerable for once and expressed interest in trying out other things too—Use your imagination, but this was the 1950s so a lot of different kinks would have have likely raised eyebrows—and Jenny or Angelina laughed because they thought whatever he suggested was weird. He got insecure, internalized that rejection as a personal attack on his character, and proceeded to keep thinking, "She didn't have to laugh at me", as in she could have just said she wasn't interested. She didn't have to mock me.

There's fifty million theories one could make based on that quote alone, and frankly, unless we get anything else later in the lore, none of it would be anything beyond a headcanon.

That said, I would suggest that because he is fixated on being laughed at and mocked, as proven previously with his feelings regarding the Bambino nickname, this line has nothing to do with sexual abuse. Otherwise, if it was intended to be interpreted that way by the writers, wouldn't it make more sense for them to have touched on that theme more in his dialogue and chosen something more along the lines of "she didn't have to hit me, or hurt me, or touch me, etc."? Instead, he has another two dialogue lines fixated once again on this insecurity about others laughing at him ("You try to be kind to people, and they fuckin' laugh at you" and "Sometimes you don't sound like you're joking. Like you want to hurt my feelings.") This would fall in line with other quotes from his character, where he expresses outrage at being infantilized or emasculated by others.

I've also seen other people bring up another conversation between Scarfiotti and Easterman in regards to who Angelina is and what she means to Franco. For one, I think it's important to recognize that this is Easterman's interpretation rather than a firsthand account from Franco or anyone else that knew her personally. Secondly, as seen in a number of other documents, Easterman has a habit of projecting his own perspective/feelings onto situations.

(Easterman always views motherhood from a negative lens because of his own mommy issues—Amelia is also heavily demonized, degraded, and painted as a threatening mother figure by him because of it. If he considers himself to be a loving father for the reagents, then the woman opposing him must be a corruptive mother in his eyes. Even when we as the players know that this isn't true.)

But if we do choose to use Easterman as a valid source, let's pick apart what it could possibly mean anyway!

Some have taken this to mean that Angelina groomed and abused Franco, and he is ashamed of what happened.

But I feel that this contradicts one of Franco's only voicelines directly referencing Angelina when he says “The last one… Ooh, she knew how to mother, lemme tell you.” This dialogue also only shows up during Prime Time with Mother Gooseberry, where the rest of the dialogue from him is quite literally him lusting after her the entire time. I feel that it's a fair bet to say that this line was also supposed to be interpreted in much the same way, as the presence of Mother Gooseberry reminded him of the last maternal figure he was sexually involved with.

Angelina being a source of arousal for Franco is obvious enough and requires no explanation. But my interpretation of the “guilt and rage” aspect of what Easterman is referring to with Franco comes down to a few possible different angles:

Franco feels guilty because he wanted to make his father proud of him, and by getting with his dad's wife, he did the one thing that ensured that it would never happen. Having it confirmed to his face that his dad didn't even want Franco to be in the same state as him, much less ever want to see his face again, must have been a huge blow to his mental state.

Franco feels rage/guilt because Angelina was the best thing to ever happen to him (the only woman in his life to actually pay any sort of attention to him), and then his father murdered her for it. Depending on the day, he blames himself for his inability to have stopped it or his father for taking her away from him, just like he did with his biological mother.

Franco feels rage because his father beat him half to death and banished him over a woman, of all things. Franco doesn't think highly of women to begin with, and yet he lost his entire home and life style just because things got messy, and he slept with the wrong broad? I could see him being childishly angry and unfairly placing all the blame on Angelina or Salvatore over how things went down, instead of acknowledging the fact that he's the one who wanted to sleep with his own stepmother in the first place.

Despite what I have heard others insist upon online, there are currently no dialogue quotes from Franco indicating that he was raped or sexually assaulted by Angelina. Not even quotes from other characters indicate as such (only using terms like "affair" and "lover" or merely referring to the fact that he "knew [Angelina] carnally" and "screwed [her].") Sexual abuse, CSA, and abusive mothers is not a topic that Red Barrels has shied away from in the past, so if that was their intention to portray her as a sexual predator, would it not be far more explicit as seen with other characters across the Outlast series? (More on that topic later...)

(Side note: Not that this is canon at all, but I also saw a cameo where Franco's voice actor spoke positively about Angelina. Franco shamelessly thirsted over her, saying he missed and loved her, she was a great piece of ass, along with a “fuck you, dad, she's mine” on top of it for good measure. It was the sort of possessive and pathetic kind of attitude I personally find enjoyable/interesting about the whole Angelina and Franco relationship. I genuinely don't buy into the whole “Franco is a poor wittle baby who feels victimized by her” idea. He may have regretted being caught by his father and the consequences that followed, but I doubt he regretted the relationship in itself. If you ask me, that man is a proud FREAK lmao But ANYWAY… ahem, continuing on.)

Examples of Explicit Parental Abuse in the Outlast Series & How Female Characters are Often Mistreated in Fandom Spaces

I want you to visualize who this character is in your head: A mentally unstable age-regressor who was groomed and sexually abused as a child by the parent they loved and trusted.

Sound familiar? It's not Franco.

That's Mother Gooseberry's backstory, and it's the most prominent part of her character. And yet I've seen more people latch onto and discuss Franco's supposed age-regression and CSA with no evidence, even going as far as to say that they are grateful for the representation... When Phyllis has literally been standing right there since the game came out and has explicit evidence pointing to her abusive and incestuous dynamic with her father.

This isn't some obscure character like Angelina Barbi that we have to use a magnifying glass and stretch out information for and speculate over. There is an abundance of information displaying the horrific abuse she has suffered at the hands of her father (And we can even explore beyond that. There's voice lines indicating that Mother Gooseberry isn't lucid enough to even know where she currently is and it's stated in the comic that she 100% canonically age-regresses to a childlike state of mind, and yet she was also sleeping with two of her prison guards?)

My point in bringing this up is the fact that people are often quick to invent excuses and tragic backstories for violently misogynistic men, even grasping at straws to paint them in a more favorable light… All while completely ignoring the blatant abuse that we actually do see and hear about. I can only imagine that with fan-favorite characters like Dr. Easterman, Leland Coyle, and Franco Barbi, that people prefer to either ignore the uncomfortable aspects of their characters or coddle them in spite of it. I have witnessed many people in this fandom outwardly deny that Easterman and Franco are rapists and that Coyle is a racist, even when the evidence is staring them right in the face, which is incredibly bizarre to me. I do find that a lot of the time it is self-shippers that seem to ignore these traits, presumably because they think it reflects poorly on them for romanticizing these characters. But most criticism towards those fans isn't your attraction to the fictional character, but the inability to also recognize what is harmful about these characters and how their rough and traumatic upbringings do not excuse their actions in the story.

Franco, in particular, seems to be misunderstood a lot and babied within the fandom, to the point that I have even seen people victim-blame the countless prostitutes he sexually assaulted/killed and instead claimed that Franco was a rape victim, which is... insane to me. Because on what planet could any of those sex workers have denied him and been able to survive unscathed? (I also don't know who needs this to actually be explained to them, but minors are 100% capable of raping adults. This is something that does occur in real-life, with those minors alone being charged for the crime, and always assuming that an adult is a perpetrator in EVERY single sexual assault case can be harmful to those that have been victimized by minors. Franco would hardly be the first instance of a male teenager raping a grown woman. This isn't even going into the fact that historically many brothels were mafia establishments that were involved in child and sex trafficking.)

I'm not saying anyone is obligated to like or support Angelina and Franco's relationship, but insisting that she was an evil rapist solely based on her being his stepmother alone is especially silly, given the fact that we have quite literally been presented a canonically consensual incest relationship in the form of the Kress Twins. Is this healthy for them? No. But is it rape? Also no. These dynamics are SUPPOSED to make you uncomfortable, but you have to remind yourself that your morals are not shared by the Prime Assets. Franco Barbi is not the type of person to care that Angelina is his stepmother and would want to fuck her regardless of anyone else's feelings on the matter. No different from the Kress Twins' sexual attitudes/behaviors towards one another as biological siblings.

Now, some might wrongly insist even after reading all of my talking points that "You just don't care about male victims then!" or "You just don't want to acknowledge that women can abuse men too!", when in reality, I'm all for discussing abusive maternal figures in media. But wouldn't Liliya or Easterman's mothers and the evidence surrounding them be far-better suited for that conversation? Hell, even Coyle has more evidence on being a CSA victim who was abused by his mother!

Going beyond Trials, Eddie Gluskin from Whistleblower is another male CSA victim, which can be seen in not only a lore document, but also referenced to by the character himself when he says "[I want] to be the father I never had. I'll never let anything happen to our children. Not like..." and his fearful lines in the intro of the DLC: "Help me! Help me, they're going to rape me!" Additionally, if we are taking unused voice lines into account to showcase the intent of the writers team with his character, Eddie more explicitly states that "The things they did to me when I was small, when I didn't know how filthy, how wrong it was, only that it hurt... Never. Never to our children."

And yet we have NOTHING even remotely close to that from Franco or anyone else regarding Angelina, not even in unused voicelines. With the way Outlast Trials works, all of the backstory we are provided for the Prime Assets is told through their respective comic and dialogue lines, or the documents you collect in-game, making it all the more important what is and is not included by the writers. The only individual Franco speaks of that hints towards a past full of abuse and trauma is his father, Salvatore, and he even expresses intense panic and fear towards him in one unused voiceline ("Dad's gonna be so fuckin' mad at me!"). It is also hinted at in the way that upon hearing Dr. Futterman, who is known for his crude and abusive speech patterns, Franco says that "it's almost bad as my own father," implying that Salvatore spoke even worse around Franco than Futterman does with Phyllis.

As for sexual assault? The only time it's ever brought up with Franco is when he is the one causing it, something we can read about in documents, hear from Franco in the form of explicit threats, and witness for ourselves in all of his Trials environments.

Final notes: You are free to have your own headcanons about Angelina Barbi. But I personally believe her character deserves a lot more nuance, empathy, and understanding from fans, rather than being used as an easy scapegoat for Franco and the way he is as a character.

I don't expect everyone to 100% agree with all of my takes, but I hope my rambling was at least entertaining or informative, if nothing else! Thank you for reading~☆

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