#blorbos tag

[skatingsplits]

bertha russell moments that make me want dive inside her head with a torch and scalpel

[whodoesnataliehave]

Tysm @floralsapphics for the tag!! 🫶🏻

I was tagged to list 9 of my favorite characters :)

Please, ignore how awful the layout turned out 😞

Tagging 💟 @dykexenomorph @lunarzomb @baked-potatoes-rule @haeva @panisfetch @czechtex @daniirosie @erodingsinner @detnylaharper @earlbamber @phasersonstoned and anyone else that wants to do this 🤸🏼‍♀️

[snazzylavenderlady]

Show your blorbos!

Make a post showcasing all of your blorbos and then tag some friends to do the same 🫶🏻

Thanks for the tag @25bohemianmoons ✨

Open tag but I’ll tag @imeatingyourfloorboards and @gorbo-longstocking :)

THIS WAS SO HARD TO CHOOSE ONLY 10 IMAGES HELP

[skatingsplits]

the complex thing about being a Bertha Russell defender is that I do happen to think she's right 90% of the time, which possibly obscures the fact that I absolutely do not care if her actions are morally correct or logical or whatever you people get all heated about. like, I'll defend her if she's right but I need you all to know that I would be defending her twice as hard if she was Corinne Foxworth-ing those kids. I do not give a fuck.

[skatingsplits]

me thinking about how Bertha and Hetty are probably roughly the same age

[skatingsplits]

on my Russell bullshit again and I will just never be over George calling Bertha the belle of the ball at their daughter's debutante ball, you are NOT serious people

[skatingsplits]

Barbara Stanwyck-Bertha Russell

Possibly only @mariusperkins and I care about this but I think about it all the time! Bertha Russell is a Stanwyck character come seventy years too late. Breakdown of Stanwyck movies and the way they relate to Bertha under the cut, because spoilers for some great films that everyone should see.

AU Ideas:

The Lady Eve- conartist Bertha Russell taking a rich guy for everything he's got and being really annoyed to find that she actually likes him because that's not the way she operates? All she's meant to care about is the money? Sign me up.

Double Indemnity- screams GeorgeBertha. Except they'd get away with killing her first husband for the money and use it to start George's business and live happily ever after and never be punished.

Ball of Fire- okay, the way this actually plays out is that the gangster's moll reforms and falls in love with a very nice boring man, but picture, if you will, gangster's moll Bertha just dominating her gangster's business and keeping the nice professors as sort of pets to be nice to her. I have always shipped Stanwyck and Dana Andrews in this movie FAR more than the filmmakers intended.

Christmas in Connecticut: single career girl Bertha scamming the general public with her domestic goddess/household tips magazine column when she can't even boil an egg? Extremely on brand, if you ask me.

Bertha Thoughts

Remember The Night: scrappy Bertha from the wrong side of the tracks who doesn't trust anyone gets caught shoplifting (although would she ever get caught?) and the district attorney prosecuting her feels guilty that she has to spend Christmas in jail so he has her bail paid and agrees to take her to her family home for the holidays. Instead she ends up spending Christmas with his family and experiences love/warmth etc. for the first time, falls in love with him, but doesn't want to enter a relationship because she'll ruin his reputation.

Stella Dallas- a mother giving up her daughter because she thinks she's too trashy and her daughter deserves a better life, even if it means her daughter thinks she doesn't care about her? Kill me.

Baby Face- what if Bertha had never found anyone who loved or supported her and could only use her body and her endless supply of determination to claw her way out of poverty?

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers- I can't even. A child who never had any power grows up into the most power-hungry woman you've ever seen. The only person she ever loved left her so she closed herself off from ever feeling anything again and she's going to make it everybody's problem.

Supplementary "Stanwyck Could Have Played Bertha" Material:

Meet John Doe- scheming newspaper girl trying to find success at any price.

Walk on the Wild Side- older, hardened lesbian brothel madam who only cares about one person in the world.

Clash By Night- restless, bitter, striving self-loathing woman tries to settle for a nice, mundane man in the hope that it'll settle her too. It does not.

[skatingsplits]

My big huge issue with George this season is that he is tuxedo masking the shit out of the Gladys situation.

Personally, I didn’t see (as a viewer) what was the big problem with marrying Gladys off to a Duke. She has been trying to get married or even elope even before she was out, and all of her boyfriends were losers. While I do have A LOT of sympathy to Gladys as a modern woman and it’s a hearbreakign story, she was obviously behaving very dangerously.

And George understands it fully and that’s why he didn’t cancel the wedding - but his ego was wounded by being blindsided by Bertha, so he purposefully fed Gladys with empty promises. He literally sabotaged his daughter’s pre engagement, because of George’s problems, Gladys flat out refused to get to know Hector before the wedding. George himself made zero effort to get to know Hector. Like zero. Because posturing and showing Bertha who is the boss, being the favorite dad, is way more important than Gladys’s wellbeing.

And I’m pretty sure that’s e were intended to see it that way, I’ve been rewatching the first season and Larry said “we must always fall in line with father wants, all of us, me, Gladys and mother”. George is simply punishing Bertha for her first fully successful society scheme.

Lmao, I didn't know that was what that meme was called, but yes, yes he is.

I think, however you feel about Gladys’s situation (I feel bad for her as a character that she was so sad/scared but I'm not interested in writing off everyone born before 1970 as a terrible person and making characters in historical fiction act like they've just stumbled out a wardrobe in 2025) I don't understand how anyone thinks George is doing a good job right now. I've said this before but I think a major flaw in the writing of this season is that they're kind of ignoring that George has the power to do whatever he likes, so he's just doing... nothing. I don't know if I agree that he purposefully gave Gladys empty promises, I think maybe at that point he was deluding himself into thinking he was going to do something, but he didn't.

And you make a good point that I hadn't really considered that actually, if he did decide he was going to let this happen, he could have helped Gladys much more by encouraging her to really get to know Hector and plan and put her best foot forward if this was something that was going to have to happen. Rather than wibbling about and "washing his hands" of the situation and then acting like a hero.

I don't think we're intended to see it quite that way, I think the writers are still trying to frame it as Good Dad George, they're just failing. I've said this before too but it would have been much more interesting if we actually saw him making a concrete decision to put Bertha above Gladys and go ahead with everything, and then have to wrestle with that. I think it would make him resenting Bertha and their breakup much more convincing. But actually, it seems more like he just never made his mind up at all and let everything happen around him, and it makes him look like an idiot.