When Annie came back to the world, she was understandably lost and confused. Everyone was, which is why everyone went back to the Academy, at first. When they got there though, they found Díana treating it like a throne she had inherited from Sparrows... and that rubbed the surviving humans the wrong way after having their world trampled and their friends murdered by said alien menace. Díana was a common enemy for them to unite around, and it did a lot to smooth over personality differences and differences of opinion. For a time, Therese's strictness and mothering felt like exactly what Annie needed, and like she has so many times before: she latched on. She put a lot of her emotional weight on Therese, who bore it because she was good at it.
But then the issue of whether or not the pathos-bearers would come out into the light arose...
Annie sided with those who wanted to stay hidden, because she wanted to stay hidden. It was a selfish choice that had nothing at all to do with the good of the community at large. She wanted things to go back to the way they were, and she very specifically wanted to stay out of the limelight. She already felt burdened by those who saw her as a hero, let alone announcing it to the entire world.
Therese did not agree. She no longer wished to be repressed, as she had been by Sparrows, and Annie's total lack of empathy for this position disgusted her, especially after she had done to care for the other woman. Annie let her down.
So, she left.
Annie had never been outright left by someone before. People had died, she could handle that, act of god, still awful but-- She was particularly bereft to know that she had driven Therese away.
Her infatuation with Therese is mostly in retrospect. She didn't think she loved her when she was around, and took all she did for granted. The only way she can really reconcile how she feels about the way they've split is to explain it as love, because love is dangerous and awful and drives people away when you fuck it all up.
In the end though, she's too weak to want pathos supremacy. She's too tired and too scared. She is, quite honestly, not good enough for Therese, and it's easy to pine after something she knows she doesn't deserve.
Willing to acknowledge she's a loser and a coward: not really willing to acknowledge how she hurt Therese by using her, and encouraging her to stay the same captive to the Academy she had always been.
Annie knew what Sparrows's goals were, a long time before it became apparent to everyone at large that the headmistress was an alien. She went along with it, because she didn't see any other option, and also because she figured they were on the winning side. Some of this was all confirmation bias. She didn't see any other options because she didn't want to see any other options, she believed they were the winning side because she'd always been taught that they -- women, especially women of Cartazonos, were superior. She was as much a victim of Sparrows's brainwashing as anyone else.
She feels stupid in retrospect. She feels guilt, in retrospect, that she supported the being who would eventually play such a major part in destroying everything that Annie ever knew.
Annie never had much appreciation for authority, but is now even more distrustful of everyone who reminds her of Sparrows, which Cathaway absolutely does. She's wary of people who fall into line without questions, wary of those being used, protective of them especially when they are children. She has some very strong opinions about child soldiers at this point, and goes out of her way to insert herself into the lives of younger people to encourage them to just be kids.
That's how Annie has been running the school since she took over as headmistress.
This is another reason she could not possibly support pathos-bearers out in the limelight. She feels as though it can only create demands and strife for the kids, and she wants to give them somewhere safe to learn their powers and just be themselves. There are so many selfish reasons for why she does what she does, but in the end there is this kernel of compassion and hope.
Annie isn't sure what it is Mimi sees in her. A lot of it is simply that she can't see much worthwhile in herself. She's always trying to make up for an innumerable count of sins, endless guilt, so she doesn't know what it is she has to offer. To her, Mimi is a child one full of potential to live a better life than Annie ever did, ever will. Meanwhile, Annie just feels used up and like she doesn't have anything to give when it comes to a one-on-one relationships.
So she just keeps pushing Mimi away for all kinds of reasons, but the easiest is that Mimi is a student and it would definitely not be politically correct for them to get together.
This doesn't really stop Mimi though, and maybe the game of making Annie so uncomfortable is half the fun at this point. Which... while uncomfortable, Annie prefers that motivation to having the girl look up to her.
She may have saved the world, but she doesn't feel like a hero, doesn't see any of the good she has or hasn't done, and just can't stand the idea that anyone might respect her. There's too much pressure in being respected, which makes the act of respectable headmistress even more strenuous.
She's twisted up and Mimi's flirting doesn't help.
Felice was always well known in the school. She started out a Disney Princess, pretty and happy, talking to birds and singing in the hallways. But her happiness and innocence was quite plainly resented by the Battle Tactics instructor, who was determined to bring a killer out in her. She began to harass Felice relentlessly, which lead to her best friend, and love interest, Grace to stand up to the instructor on her behalf.
This got Grace killed.
Most of the girls who were at the Academy at the time remember Felice's hysterical screaming as it echoed through the mansion, and plenty more remember coming running to find the training hall covered in dead birds with Grace smeared across one of the walls.
Felice was never the same, and became a fixture in the more self-destructive circles in the school, of which Annie of course partook. Annie didn't help Felice. She gave Felice drugs and booze and had sex with her when she wanted to and ignored her when she didn't want. It's what a lot of people did with Felice; in her inconsolable grief, it was what Felice wanted, so no one really tried to stop her.
After the Crafters trashed the school and the world, Felice was not enthusiastic to return to the site of so much of her trauma.
This made Therese's off-shoot organization -- one about power and choice -- appealing to her. Felice is a devoted and vicious member of SIRIN, and she hates Annie's guts.
Edited 2017-08-20 05:41 (UTC)
(frozen comment) CW: PEOPLE FARMING | FALLON & DÍANA
Díana was conceived when the alien headmistress artificially inseminated Fallon Pinset, a graduate of the Academy and the music instructor during Annie's own tenure. Fallon and her teammates were the first very promising batch of successful graduates. They were devoted, dangerous, icy, and kept an air of frighteningly, perfect, beauty.
Fallon was the first to be impregnated, and had things not gone so sourly, would not have been the last. Fallon's pregnancy was a source of great discomfort for anyone who was able to put together the concept that it had been done at Sparrows' command, not as a result of any desire of her own.
The dread and discomfort became more pronounced once Díana was actually born.
It took Díana about a year to reach full adult maturity, and her rapid physical and mental growth were regularly unsettling to witness. Physically, she outgrew her skin and bones in nauseating ways. Mentally, she began to develop wild telepathic powers which not only sometimes physically shook the Academy, they also pierced into minds, siphoning facts and emotions to the neverending hunger and curiosity of this little alien bastard.
Even once Díana reached physical maturation, she remained emotionally childlike. Cruel, volatile, self-important. Fallon retreated with her, away from the other students in order to protect them, pandering to her daughter's ego and temper. Fallon herself had once been a haughty, demanding beauty, but she withered under the strain. Her strength leaving her more and more every day, exposing instead someone bewildered and afraid, and shackled to this daughter who demanded a kind of motherhood where she could do no wrong.
When the school was destroyed and the alien headmistress killed, Díana took it as a sign it was now her time to rise up. She rebuilt the Academy with her telepathic powers and set herself up as queen of it, with her mother cowed at her side at all times.
This did not sit very well with the few survivors who returned. She was ousted by a group of students led by Therese and Annie, but her life was spared at Fallon's pleading.
Fallon took the girl, promising to disappear and never resurface, but... Díana herself was not so ready to lay low. They did indeed disappear off into the unknown for a while, but news eventually came that Díana has simply telepathically enslaved a small village in the wilderness who worship her as a queen from beyond the stars, and the true savior of the world.
Her followers are mainly seen as cultists rather than the helpless slaves they really are.
Díana still dreams of returning in full glory to take over the Earth as she believes Sparrows intended.
The inevitable death of this half-breed bitch is one of the few points of agreement Annie and Therese now share, and the guilt of letting Fallon remain enslaved to her is a thick source of tension as well.
All in all, Díana feeds Annie's dislike of the telepathic powers she's now been given. She tends towards calling them stupid and resists trying to master them.
As for Fallon... the guilt there makes her deeply uncomfortable. To know just how deeply Fallon was brainwashed first by Sparrows and now Díana. She never wants to see someone used that way again, and she prays next time she won't hesitate to do something about it.
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sistershoggoth) wrote2017-04-14 10:04 am
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cawaii
(frozen comment) DETAILS
(frozen comment) THERESE
But then the issue of whether or not the pathos-bearers would come out into the light arose...
Annie sided with those who wanted to stay hidden, because she wanted to stay hidden. It was a selfish choice that had nothing at all to do with the good of the community at large. She wanted things to go back to the way they were, and she very specifically wanted to stay out of the limelight. She already felt burdened by those who saw her as a hero, let alone announcing it to the entire world.
Therese did not agree. She no longer wished to be repressed, as she had been by Sparrows, and Annie's total lack of empathy for this position disgusted her, especially after she had done to care for the other woman. Annie let her down.
So, she left.
Annie had never been outright left by someone before. People had died, she could handle that, act of god, still awful but-- She was particularly bereft to know that she had driven Therese away.
Her infatuation with Therese is mostly in retrospect. She didn't think she loved her when she was around, and took all she did for granted. The only way she can really reconcile how she feels about the way they've split is to explain it as love, because love is dangerous and awful and drives people away when you fuck it all up.
In the end though, she's too weak to want pathos supremacy. She's too tired and too scared. She is, quite honestly, not good enough for Therese, and it's easy to pine after something she knows she doesn't deserve.
Willing to acknowledge she's a loser and a coward: not really willing to acknowledge how she hurt Therese by using her, and encouraging her to stay the same captive to the Academy she had always been.
(frozen comment) SPARROWS
She feels stupid in retrospect. She feels guilt, in retrospect, that she supported the being who would eventually play such a major part in destroying everything that Annie ever knew.
Annie never had much appreciation for authority, but is now even more distrustful of everyone who reminds her of Sparrows, which Cathaway absolutely does. She's wary of people who fall into line without questions, wary of those being used, protective of them especially when they are children. She has some very strong opinions about child soldiers at this point, and goes out of her way to insert herself into the lives of younger people to encourage them to just be kids.
That's how Annie has been running the school since she took over as headmistress.
This is another reason she could not possibly support pathos-bearers out in the limelight. She feels as though it can only create demands and strife for the kids, and she wants to give them somewhere safe to learn their powers and just be themselves. There are so many selfish reasons for why she does what she does, but in the end there is this kernel of compassion and hope.
(frozen comment) MIMI
So she just keeps pushing Mimi away for all kinds of reasons, but the easiest is that Mimi is a student and it would definitely not be politically correct for them to get together.
This doesn't really stop Mimi though, and maybe the game of making Annie so uncomfortable is half the fun at this point. Which... while uncomfortable, Annie prefers that motivation to having the girl look up to her.
She may have saved the world, but she doesn't feel like a hero, doesn't see any of the good she has or hasn't done, and just can't stand the idea that anyone might respect her. There's too much pressure in being respected, which makes the act of respectable headmistress even more strenuous.
She's twisted up and Mimi's flirting doesn't help.
(frozen comment) FELICE
This got Grace killed.
Most of the girls who were at the Academy at the time remember Felice's hysterical screaming as it echoed through the mansion, and plenty more remember coming running to find the training hall covered in dead birds with Grace smeared across one of the walls.
Felice was never the same, and became a fixture in the more self-destructive circles in the school, of which Annie of course partook. Annie didn't help Felice. She gave Felice drugs and booze and had sex with her when she wanted to and ignored her when she didn't want. It's what a lot of people did with Felice; in her inconsolable grief, it was what Felice wanted, so no one really tried to stop her.
After the Crafters trashed the school and the world, Felice was not enthusiastic to return to the site of so much of her trauma.
This made Therese's off-shoot organization -- one about power and choice -- appealing to her. Felice is a devoted and vicious member of SIRIN, and she hates Annie's guts.
(frozen comment) CW: PEOPLE FARMING | FALLON & DÍANA
Fallon was the first to be impregnated, and had things not gone so sourly, would not have been the last. Fallon's pregnancy was a source of great discomfort for anyone who was able to put together the concept that it had been done at Sparrows' command, not as a result of any desire of her own.
The dread and discomfort became more pronounced once Díana was actually born.
It took Díana about a year to reach full adult maturity, and her rapid physical and mental growth were regularly unsettling to witness. Physically, she outgrew her skin and bones in nauseating ways. Mentally, she began to develop wild telepathic powers which not only sometimes physically shook the Academy, they also pierced into minds, siphoning facts and emotions to the neverending hunger and curiosity of this little alien bastard.
Even once Díana reached physical maturation, she remained emotionally childlike. Cruel, volatile, self-important. Fallon retreated with her, away from the other students in order to protect them, pandering to her daughter's ego and temper. Fallon herself had once been a haughty, demanding beauty, but she withered under the strain. Her strength leaving her more and more every day, exposing instead someone bewildered and afraid, and shackled to this daughter who demanded a kind of motherhood where she could do no wrong.
When the school was destroyed and the alien headmistress killed, Díana took it as a sign it was now her time to rise up. She rebuilt the Academy with her telepathic powers and set herself up as queen of it, with her mother cowed at her side at all times.
This did not sit very well with the few survivors who returned. She was ousted by a group of students led by Therese and Annie, but her life was spared at Fallon's pleading.
Fallon took the girl, promising to disappear and never resurface, but... Díana herself was not so ready to lay low. They did indeed disappear off into the unknown for a while, but news eventually came that Díana has simply telepathically enslaved a small village in the wilderness who worship her as a queen from beyond the stars, and the true savior of the world.
Her followers are mainly seen as cultists rather than the helpless slaves they really are.
Díana still dreams of returning in full glory to take over the Earth as she believes Sparrows intended.
The inevitable death of this half-breed bitch is one of the few points of agreement Annie and Therese now share, and the guilt of letting Fallon remain enslaved to her is a thick source of tension as well.
All in all, Díana feeds Annie's dislike of the telepathic powers she's now been given. She tends towards calling them stupid and resists trying to master them.
As for Fallon... the guilt there makes her deeply uncomfortable. To know just how deeply Fallon was brainwashed first by Sparrows and now Díana. She never wants to see someone used that way again, and she prays next time she won't hesitate to do something about it.