#shes so morally bankrupt but i forgive it allll bc shes hot as fuckkk

[fantastic-mr-corvid]

Thinking about Russos morality and tbh Russo is pretty similar to Tesoro in some of the ways she views the world. Like him she never expected to be able to get out of their neighborhood- or even poverty- at her luckiest she could have worked full time in the garage and learned enough to do more than heavy lifting and do odd jobs to scrape by, probably splitting rent with Celia. That is to say, her attitude to crime and hurting others for success was very much along the lines of i dont really like hurting people but if its me or them then well I'm gonna pick me. though unlike Tesoro it was more of a case by case basis, and she cared little for making people like her to make her life easier, so if injustice did happen shes more likely to call it out, especially if its affecting her friends.

I say was because after the turf war and her facial injury and loss of her eye, she struggled to get any work, legit or not, enough to keep a roof over her head, meaning she ended up homeless quickly. This ended up affecting her a lot, and made her much more vicious and willing to hurt people to not just survive, but get to a point where she could live- but on the flip side, it made her appreciate and treasure acts of kindness even more, meaning that when she turned up on Muros radar again, him putting a roof over her head as well as taking care of her as she recovered meant he earned her loyalty, even more than her past friendship with him had already.

She came out the other end more selfish, willing to not just hurt people for her own gain in the moment, but participate in the very type of organized crime that ruined her life and took the lives of so many of her peers. She tries not to cross the line into being cruel and harming people who did nothing wrong and in ways she doesn't benefit from, but like most of Muro & Co, hurting people in ways that benefit her could be as little as lashing out to maintain her reputation as not to be fucked with.

Beyond her close friends, she does try and look out for some people- as long as it doesn't come back to bite her later- While Muro has a low tolerance for misogyny, Russo is the one with the most day to day interactions with people and she relishes in both supporting the women and girls as well as those who are considered visually or emotionally different, and hurting those who hurt them. for example, if someone was found out to be abusing their girlfriend, if she could get away with it, they would at least get a beating from her, similarly she looks out for the local homeless, especially those who are disabled and have visual differences. while those could be said as good deeds, her motivation is more to make herself feel powerful for being able to punish people and to soothe her guilt, and while its true that helping the unhoused is probably good- helping them by employing them for criminal activity and making them reliant on their group for food and housing is dubious at best, and flat out preying on them at worst