#but the story beats happen in reverse and result in opposite outcomes due to ct having zero subtlety and being incredibly straightforward

[tvckerwash]

I'm not sure what the general consensus as a whole is these days since ct isn't the most popular of characters, but in my experience she's tossed into the hyper competent archetype more often than not. I understand why this happens, as with the exception of a few outliers a majority of the women in rvb are written as hyper competent, or otherwise portrayed in ways that make them come off as more capable than the men of the series.

because of that some people in the fandom do end up ignoring or dismissing blatant character flaws, and ct specifically is hit quite hard by that phenomenon because she's written in a way where in theory she is supposed to be a complex character, but in practice she's...not really one dimensional, but she exists mostly as a plot device.

you know, an interpretation of ct that I don't see that I personally really love is that she's a fuck up. like yes she's cool and she has some good fight scenes, but a huge part of her character is that she makes mistakes. the mistakes that she makes are ones that on their own aren't the end of the world, but she keeps making these little mistakes, and they eventually add up until she's out of room to make any more.

a really good example of this phenomenon in action is the actions she took leading up to her final confrontation with carolina and tex.

strike one, she thought she saw something in the water, but when asked by the leader what it was, she brushed it off as nothing when even if it had been nothing, it would've been smart to tell him what she thought she saw.

strike two, she didn't sense or notice florida's presence when the leader did, and she looks at the leader twice, once as she pulled out her magnums, and again after she did a scan of the room, almost like she was looking at him for guidance before he finds florida and takes him out with one good axe throw.

strike three, she couldn't convince the leader to leave when they had the chance to get away, and her cheap tricks were not enough to hold off either tex or carolina in a fight. they were only good for incapacitating her opponents enough for her to get away, which doesn't work when she has no escape.

ct is not tex, or carolina, or south. she is not a one woman army who can get herself out of trouble when she's stuck in tough situations. she needs people who can watch her back, she need a team who can cover her when she does mess up, and the leader and his team were not those people. she couldn't bring herself to trust them, and they couldn't bring themselves to trust her, and that cost all of them their lives.