randomly remembered how deeply i cared about the (canon. canonical.) elias/gertrude dynamic wherein she was his rabid attack dog that he would sic on avatars that stepped a toe out of line. rabid guard dog is a character archetype so rarely if ever embodied by a woman (please do not cite daisy to me daisy never guarded anything daisy never worked in service for anyone she was a rabid mutt but she never had a handler) and it’s just so special to me to have a prim hands-off startched white collar by-the-book bureaucrat elias and a cold, determined, methodically murderous gertrude who nevertheless was dependent on the institute both to feed and to fulfill the sole purpose of her life. a proud prized hound who would, every time until that fateful final time, faithfully be brought to heel by the man she hated and who she owed. that’s insane.
this is an aspect of brutal pipe murder that i find soooo delicious like elias was outsourcing his dirty work for so long because that is what was convenient!! he was sending gertrude to murder people and avatars in cold blood because that is what suited him. gertrude had a unique talent for disrupting rituals, but elias could easily have matched her for raw physical brutality. he chose not to because that wasn’t what worked best for him. he preferred their arrangement.