Problematic because: "this but with crimes"
Propaganda: "imagine you're on trial and the prosecutor asked you why you killed a guy, and you turn to the prosecutor and say "I dunno, why did YOU kill a guy??" and then you pull out evidence that he did in fact try to kill a guy. same evidence proves that he's your dad. and that he was having an affair. and you do all that in a public court room."
Problematic because: "She's Roderick’s twin, Fortunato’s COO, and very much the brains behind a lot of the Usher empire’s colder decisions. She helps Roderick murder Rufus Griswold in 1979 by poisoning him with amontillado and walling him up alive inside Fortunato’s new building, then uses that to help clear the way for Roderick’s rise. That same night, she and Roderick accept Verna’s deal - wealth, power, and legal immunity, with the cost being that the entire Usher bloodline will die before the twins do. Roderick already has children at this point, so Madeline isn’t just gambling with some abstract future family. She knows there are actual kids attached to the bargain and still takes the deal. She’s also ruthless in the present in a way that’s quieter than Roderick’s big guilty confession but often just as ugly. She wants to push Fortunato into tech and AI, tries to position herself as CEO once Roderick’s illness makes him inconvenient, uses Lenore’s data as part of an AI consciousness project, and later convinces Roderick to overdose on Ligodone because she thinks his death might get her out of the bargain."
Propaganda: "Madeline is awful, but I do think she’s the more interesting twin in a lot of ways because she understands the game earlier and more clearly than Roderick. Roderick spends so much time wanting to be loved, admired, forgiven, pitied. Madeline wants power, survival, control, and some version of immortality that doesn’t require anyone else’s approval. There’s something compelling about how little she bothers pretending she’s innocent. And honestly, part of me respects that she sees the family rot without dressing it up in sentiment. She knows Fortunato is a machine. She knows the Usher name is a transaction. She knows Verna’s bargain was a bargain, not a curse they randomly stumbled into. Her horror is that she keeps choosing the calculation anyway. She’s sharper than Roderick, which makes her worse in some ways, but it also makes her less pathetic."
