| Gloria Von Gouton |
–Gloria
Gloria Von Gouton is a former actress and former inmate at Thorney Towers Home for the Disturbed. When Razputin first met her, Gloria suffered from severe mood swings and delusions.
Appearance[]
Gloria is a lanky woman with a yellowish skin tone, who looks like she might be middle-aged. Her head resembles a theater mask, and it is surrounded by her most notable feature: her red, branch-like hair, chaotically curling up and out in all directions. One of the "branches" of her hair seems to be partially broken, as it dangles down midway. As a former actress, Gloria still seems to wear a lot of makeup, having thick black eyelashes and dark red lips. She has a mole on the left side of her mouth. She also wears large hanging earrings, uneven in length, composed of multicolored beads.
Gloria is usually seen wearing a long, filthy-looking hospital gown that's been crudely painted on, most likely by Gloria herself, in an attempt to fashion a more colorful costume to act in. The gown is encrusted with dirt and moss at the bottom, and one of Gloria's thorny pot plants has gotten caught on the hem, dragging behind her when she walks in her typical elegant strides.
Personality[]
Gloria is typically a harmless person who, as a former actress, adores the spotlight. However, by the events of Psychonauts, traumatic events in her past had taken their toll on her mind, causing her to suffer from severe mood swings and delusions. As long as she was standing in the light, Gloria was so kind as to be almost saccharine, but when she stepped into the shadows, she became defensive and outright hostile.
After Razputin ventured into her mind and defeated Jasper, Gloria's inner critic that was blocking her attempts at coping with her past by ridiculing everything she tried to do, she seemed to get a healthier grip on reality again, returning to being an overall more balanced person.
Background[]
–Character blurb from the original Psychonauts website
Gloria was raised by a single mother, who was an actress. She never knew her father, who is implied to have left her and her mother when she was very young. Eventually, her mother's manager/boyfriend convinced her to send Gloria away to a boarding school called Hagatha Home in order to better focus on her own career as an actress.
Hagatha Home was run by a vicious headmistress, who trained the girls under her care in the arts of theater, punishing her students with a whip if they made even the slightest mistakes. Amidst constant ridicule, Gloria desperately wished for her mother – whom she still loved dearly – to take her back home, forever waiting for the letters her mother had promised to write to her every day. However, she never received any, and it's heavily implied that her mother's boyfriend/manager deliberately neglected to send them.
As she waited for the letters that would never come, Gloria learned to act well, appearing to have a natural talent for the stage. Eventually, Gloria's mother came to collect her, and she eventually became a very successful, famous, and sought-after actress. The world fell in love with her superb acting, and wherever she performed, theaters were packed with eager fans and spectators. Gloria earned trophies, critical acclaim, and was able to purchase a seaside home, all in the hopes of making her mother proud.
Unfortunately, her mother's own acting career was nowhere near as successful as her daughter's. While Gloria's star continued to rise, her mother became jealous and bitter towards her daughter. This upset Gloria, as she never wanted to be famous, she only wanted her mother's love. Eventually, as implied in one of the plays in her mind, her mother's jealousy got to the point that Gloria grew to resent her mother, disowning her and setting up a tour in Europe to get away from her, despite her mother's pleas to stay. One day, while Gloria was away, she received news that her mother had committed suicide, by throwing herself off the roof of a building.
Gloria was so traumatized, and possibly guilt ridden, by this that she began to doubt her own acting abilities, causing her talents to decline. Critics who came to watch her from around the world both ridiculed and berated her performances, eventually leading to her falling from stardom in disgrace. Gloria, suffering from harsh criticism from both herself and others, began to think she was always on stage, while also developing severe mood swings. This all eventually resulted in Gloria getting committed to a sanitarium.
Psychonauts[]
Razputin finds Gloria in the garden just off the asylum entrance. In the midst of a manic episode, she performs and bows to the imagined accolades of flowerpots with drawn-on happy faces, thanking them as if they are her adoring audience.
Behind Gloria floats a golden claw-like trophy. If Razputin talks to her before retrieving the trophy, she mistakes him for the new leading male actor, speculating that her "eternally young" face is the reason she continues to be paired with such youthful male leads.
However, if Razputin tries to pick up the trophy, Gloria recognizes the object as her old acting award. She at first offers to tell Razputin about how she got it, but upon stepping out of the spotlight and into the shadows, quickly grows suspiciously angry, accusing Raz of trying to steal it because he believes she does not deserve it. In spite of Raz's protests, Gloria takes the trophy away from him, and claims that she never asked to become famous; she only wanted to be loved. She then threateningly advances on Razputin with the razor-sharp trophy, scaring him into retreat.
Hoping to learn the source of Gloria's mood swings, Raz enters her mind, where he navigates stage-plays representing Gloria's childhood memories, albeit strongly colored by her emotions to be either excessively happy and heroic or hopelessly sad and cruel. Eventually, Raz finds his way into the catwalks above the stage, where he tracks down the Phantom that sabotages Gloria's inner theater. He discovers that the Phantom is really her oversized inner critic Jasper, and defeats him, reducing him to a more manageable size. This eases Gloria's mood swings and the inner torment that affected her for so long. Now at peace, Gloria happily leaves the greenhouse, looking forward to retiring comfortably from her acting career.
After Loboto has been defeated, Gloria meets up with the other inmates on the courtyard and decides to finally move on. The gas valve she opened (thinking it was the water supply) reacted with Boyd's thrown milk bottle Molotov, blowing up the entire Asylum. Gloria, Boyd, Fred, and Edgar escaped the island before the explosion.
Psychonauts 2[]
Gloria appears in the Psychonauts recap animation in Psychonauts 2.
Gloria's Mind[]
- Main article: Gloria's Theater
Relationships[]
Edgar Teglee[]
Gloria is friends with Edgar. They escape with the remaining inmates from Thorney Towers before it's destroyed. The full extent of their relationship is up to speculation.
Boyd Cooper[]
Gloria is friends with Boyd. They escape with the remaining inmates from Thorney Towers before it's destroyed. The full extent of their relationship is up to speculation.
Fred Bonaparte[]
Gloria is friends with Fred. They escape with the remaining inmates from Thorney Towers before it's destroyed. The full extent of their relationship is up to speculation.
Razputin Aquato[]
Gloria views Raz as a young stage performer and a fan of her work. If Clairvoyance is used on Gloria, Raz will appear as an autographed picture of Gloria.
Gloria's Mother[]
Gloria loved her mother dearly and was devastated by her suicide. She spent years mulling over it during her extended stay at Thorney Towers.
Crispin Whytehead[]
Crispin is Gloria's fellow asylum inmate. They do not interact directly within the game, therefore their true relationship is up to speculation.
Quotes[]
- "Oh, you must be my new leading man! Aren't you handsome? But, my gracious, you're so young! Tell me why do they keep casting me with such mere babes? I guess that's the curse of having an eternally young face."
Trivia[]
- Gloria herself doesn't appear in her own mind, instead, several stage actors (along with her inner muse, Bonita Soleil) act in mental plays that recreate the story of her life.
- If Clairvoyance is used on Gloria, Raz appears as a picture of herself with a pencil, as if asking for an autograph.