Sending so much love. Please tell me soft Maura headcanons to make yourself smile ❤️❤️❤️
you’re the very sweetest and i am so grateful that you’re in my life. ❤️❤️
i don’t always feel good about Miss Maura, but here are some soft things about her for your reading pleasure:
every week she and @tommymillers’ max have a little date at the diner in jackson where too much wine is often consumed and maura’s filter dissolves entirely...
she likes to braid tommy’s hair whenever he makes the mistake of putting his head in her lap while they’re watching a movie.
maura loves kids and while she isn’t a mom in canon she wants to be one so badly. babysitting max’s kids is one of her favorite things to do.
the actual joy she displays the first time one of her plants sprouts without becoming dried up and dead is the sweetest thing tommy has ever seen.
her golden retriever lucky is the closest thing she has to a baby and she sacrifices her comfort just to make sure he is cozy when he sleeps with her and tommy at night.
tommy brought home a pig. maura named it millie. she will not be eaten as long as maura has a say in the matter.
she’s fallen asleep at her little desk in the clinic more times than she’d like to admit because she stayed late to keep an eye on a patient. tommy’s found her face down on the tabletop in a puddle of drool before.
maura loves strawberries and gets them at every chance she has. they’re her favorite fruit and she’s always munching on them whenever they’re in season.
most nights, she sleeps curled right up into tommy’s side or with an arm sprawled across his chest. most mornings, she wakes up before him and takes the time to stare at his sleeping face, just so she can memorize every trace of life in his skin.
thank you so much, lovely! sorry this took an eternity and a half xx
PERSONALITY
what’s their alignment?
d&d alignments are not her friend!
having said that, she leans towards neutral or chaotic ( very rarely lawful ); neutral in that she does not attempt to disrupt order for the sake of it and does not prioritize personal freedoms over the general ( what she believes to be ) good, chaotic in that she’s willing to do whatever it takes to meet her goals regardless of legality or acceptability and thinks little of the laws and values of society; she considers herself above the law insofar as she does not respect the law or believes it to be fundamentally flawed, but does not opposite the concept of order on principle ( while, on the contrary, she is an enforcer of order and principles within the context of the project; no one is above the judgement of god, herself included ). her loyalty and unconditional love where she gives it earns her high points in the morality category in traditional d&d quizzes, as does her commitment to her cause ( whether that’s with the project or in her life before, conning or murdering corrupt or vile members of society in retaliation ). practically speaking, though, her methods align her with the evil sector, particularly in regards to the lengths she’s willing to go to; she also gets personal enjoyment out of inflicting suffering on those she deems unworthy, derives pleasure from the atrocities she commits. she is driven by passion more than anything else, and is consumed by rage and loathing, meaning she is never truly neutral; because she gets personal satisfaction from her work as the judge, it can’t be said that she’s acting selflessly in the pure interest of upholding the values of the project, so the merit of her devotion in and of itself isn’t without ambiguity. she believes herself to be a monster, but believes her cause is righteous – it takes evil to know it, judge it, and exterminate it – but she has never once in her life done something #fortheevils or in the interest of promoting ( what she believes to be ) evil for the sake of it; for that reason she’s difficult to categorize based on the traditional understanding of the alignments.
tl; dr: given that she truly is driven by rage & passion and very much wants the world to burn ( at least at a certain critical point in her arc ), and given the depravity she’ll resort to in order to reach her end goals, she’s probably best aligned as chaotic to neutral evil ( though she believes herself to be doing right ).
which one of the 16 personality types do they fit into?
enfp-a; the campaigner.
what are their hobbies and interests? do they have any particular “favorites” (food, books, and so on)?
setting sinners free, anna karenina, fleetwood mac, driving with the windows down, sinner roasts bonfires in the summer & autumn, watching the sun rise.
favorites are answered here ( x ), activities and interests here ( x )
what are they bad at?
bar games & team sports (anything she can’t cheat at, really).
what kind of things do they dislike/hate?
apathy, willful ignorance, obstinate self-deceit, the song oh john.
do they have any vices/addictions/mental illnesses?
she turns to risky behaviors, inflicting pain on herself ( via the provocation of others/combat ) or others ( whom she feels are deserving ). she has flirted with most forms of substance abuse in the past, but never crossed the line into full chemical dependency with anything but tobacco ( more because of using nothing specific habitually than out of moderation ).
what are their goals and motivations?
to do right even if she was born wrong ( she might be a monster, but she’s a monster for a cause, and surely that means something ); to keep what she has ( her family, john ); to fulfill her purpose as the judge of eden’s gate; to cast out the unworthy; to get her family safely to new eden. after the collapse, she simply wants to lead and protect the only family she has left — the faithful — until the shepherd joseph promised arrives and releases her from her duty.
what are their manners like? any habits?
full rundown on her mannerisms here. extremely extroverted, open body language, usually smoking; draws herself up to her full height even when seated. often holding a cigarette, talks with her hands. very animated, but graceful and deliberate. uses eye contact and physical touch to either intimidate or establish intimacy; disregards personal space for the same reason.
what are they most afraid of?
answered here.
becoming her mother. losing john. losing herself to her wrath, to an extent, but she would rather burn herself alive than become isabela. ( that was always more something that she would go to any lengths to avoid than a fate she truly feared, at least before john’s death and the collapse; that was the first time she was actually tempted to numb herself and embrace oblivion, but she never did ).
BACKGROUND
where were they born? what was their childhood like?
lyra was born in the hamptons, but she spent most of her childhood (that she can remember) on nantucket island; early childhood she spent out ruling it herself, on beaches, frolicking with the summer people, still trying to get her parents’ attention, then, still wanting what she saw other families have; not perfect, perhaps, but something.
what’s their family like?
BIRTH FAMILY
lyra maintains, for the most part, that the problem was never with her parents, but with her; she told joseph at one point that the difference between the rest of them is that they might not have been born monsters, but she was; nothing made her that way. the reality, of course, is different; because of the fact that lyra’s abuse was tied primarily to neglect as a young girl and later the emotional abuse, exploitation and manipulation by her father, she does not feel entitled to the trauma she carries from it matched against some of the horrors she’s witnessed. ( of her father’s business associates and the men she would target later in life, lawrence was never the worst of them, and for that, she considers herself fortunate ). she’s very aware of the fact that she had the best education money could buy ( provided it also got her as far away from them as possible ), that she was not beaten or, truthfully, reprimanded; her father never touched her, but that was a universally true statement — the most physical contact or affection he displayed towards his daughter was a hand on her shoulder at galas, steering her towards an associate she was meant to beguile, or lifting her hair to fasten his latest bribe around her neck.
she never, in her entire life, felt more like a whore, not even when she was fucking men she met along the road to rob them.
her mother, isabela, was not inherently malicious; she was extremely depressed and jaded and, as a result, heavily self-medicated; she did not turn a blind eye to her husband’s affairs, or to the way he slowly made lyra her replacement, but she smothered it with drugs. she did not hate lyra, and never expressed open animosity towards her and that, to lyra, was the worst of it; she would attempt to provoke her often, would scream, fight, threaten, sob, but isabela was unmovable entirely. she was dead to the world.
the opposite of love, to lyra, was never hatred, it was indifference, and isabela was completely indifferent to her.
it’s the only thing lyra could never forgive.
she ran away often throughout her childhood, and as her sixteenth birthday neared, she finally left for good; she ensured she wasn’t found. they disinherited her within the year upon receiving notice from the family of one of her highschool girlfriends that she was visiting them ( an unintentional betrayal, but one that prevented her from making the mistake of contacting anyone from her old life again ). they sent her an official letter forbidding her from contacting them or returning home, swearing her off and stating that they did not recognize her as their daughter ( though, since she was a minor at the time, the only legal aspect was her removal from their will ).
lawrence would tell his colleagues and friends years later that he did what was necessary because he was afraid of her, that he truly believed she had the capacity to kill him for the inheritance. it was a ludicrous claim; for all of his insistence that she was like him, scheming, manipulative, opportunistic, incapable of feeling, all she ever wanted was to be loved and accepted by her family. she did not want to be a monster, she was simply told she was one all her life. she began to believe it, and, ultimately, she chose to become it.
still, she would have forgiven lawrence everything, in the end, if he’d ever cared to ask. she loved her parents, and later she hated them, but she could never be indifferent. she could never be like them. that, perhaps, was why they never loved her.
THE SEEDS
she loves her chosen family desperately. faith is her best friend and the sister she never had, and though their form of enmeshment makes them occasionally toxic, they truly do love each other; jacob is her mentor and trainer in her role as the judge, they’re quite close; joseph she has perhaps the most tumultuous relationship with because of his concerns about her intemperance and the way she and john indulge each other, but she respects him and understands him in a way john does not — she does not personally seek his approval or fear his rejection, so she views him more objectively. later, of course, they’re all that’s left, and while john will always be the person closest to her heart and the most important part of her life, joseph is the second.
she does make overtures to befriend ethan, but she is only an amplifier of his feelings of isolation and resentment towards his father; no matter what he does, the loyalty of both the flock and his father will always lie with lyra, and that is difficult for him to accept. despite joseph leaving new eden in his hands, ethan is under no illusions about the fact that lyra stayed behind to watch him, and her presence undermines him at every turn, regardless of her intent — she is the de facto leader, for reasons he will never fully understand, and he resents her for it.
john is her whole heart. he’s her soulmate. having him, however briefly, makes everything worth it to her in the end; she can’t ever regret it, no matter what it cost her; she tells poppy that “god gave him to me, and for that, i forgive [god] all the rest.”
what factions or organizations are they a part of? What ranks and titles do they hold?
prior to hope county, none; lyra is her own contractor and the center of her own networks.
with the project, lyra serves as the judge; she serves as a sorter, an intel gatherer, a judge of the worthy and unworthy, oversees the realm of the damned; she shows those who are submitted to her judgement their true selves and allows their choices and actions to speak to their character and determine the fate. after all, who is she to judge?
post-collapse, she leads new eden in practice, though not in title, in joseph’s absence.
how do they fit into their “story”?
lyra is the judge of eden’s gate and a seed by marriage. she’s a career serial serial killer and conartist come to hope county seeking refuge after a murder gone wrong; she is a damned woman, and the project is her last resort. she’s the sealbreaker, the lamb, and the wrath of god. in terms of far cry 5 canon, she replaces the deputy as the prophesized hell that followed, though she never has any allegiance but to the project; hers is a cautionary tale in that, in their attempts to avoid the fate joseph foresaw for them, the seeds ultimately bring ruin upon themselves. there’s no junior deputy in her canon; they called in sick the morning of the arrest.
where do they currently live? what’s their place like?
before hope county, lyra was perpetually on the move seeking targets, as her lifestyle demanded; after joining the project, she lives at the seed ranch with her husband.
post-collapse she lives in new eden until the arrival of the highwaymen brings joseph back to oversee it. she retakes prosperity and lives in what’s left of her old home until her death.
how do they eventually die?
she and john get hopped up on rads!bliss on their 70th wedding anniversary and put each other into mutual cardiac arrest. yeah, they fucked to death, what about it. this is the only way either of them ever die. shaggy finds them in a final insult to him.
lyra dies at forty-three — seventeen years later than she’d have liked — after taking a knife between the ribs via her nephew. while that’s the wound that technically does her in, the reality is that it was probably survivable; lyra had been dying for a long time, physically and emotionally broken by the holy war, though she put on a convincing front for the sake of joseph and the flock. she kept herself going until she had done her duty by new eden and fulfilled her purpose, bringing the shepherdess that was promised to the flock; she tells poppy that she’s her sacrifice, and she’s finally free to go back to the grave where she belongs. she does, happily; letting go is a relief.
