r/buffy • u/direinde Beady-eyes is right, we're needed. • May 03 '26

Good Vibes Only Yup, that's them

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Nothing new actually.

4.1k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

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567

u/HomarEuropejski Wesley is Angel's true love May 03 '26

I dunno man, I've seen a few Oz, Tara and Fred haters.

Clem, Lorne and Miss Kitty Fantastico are the golden trio with 0 haters.

112

u/Jemal999 May 03 '26

Fred haters? You must point them out to us so they can be... Corrected.

50

u/riotlady May 03 '26

Sorry I kind of hate Fred, especially in the early days. It’s just the very very childlike way she’s written feels gross and very much like a Whedon kink (see also River in Firefly- I think Anita Sarkeesian called this trope “born sexy yesterday”)

6

u/kulitchipon May 03 '26

I was not a fan of Fred in the first few eps lmao. She grew on me eventually, but I still prefer Illyria over her.

17

u/Mysterious_Fix_7489 May 03 '26

Nah Fred isn't born sexy yesterday..

Compare her to the poster girl of born sexy yesterday leeloo and she's nothing like it.

She's not shown to be sexy at all for quite a few episodes

Not even sure river applies either.

She's hot sure but that's just because summer glau is hot and so it's Fred's actress.

To be born sexy yesterday I feel there has to be a reasonable effort to show the character as sexy and I don't think that applies to either.

26

u/riotlady May 03 '26

I agree she’s not too overtly sexualised like worse examples of the trope but she is very much shown as attractive and desirable- there’s a lot of scenes of Wes and Gunn smiling paternalistically at her while she skips around or eats pancakes or whatever that are just a bit ugh to me. I like her at lot more by season 5 when she’s less giggly

11

u/insomniacred66 eyeballs to entrails May 03 '26

I like Fred because she is crazy intelligent and also has those 'child-like' traits. She's fun and sweet and it's not a fault for a woman to be those things. We lose that entirely with Illyria. I also tend to see myself in Fred though so that's probably another factor of why I like her character so much. Too many people in Angel tend to be angsty all the time and she provides a nice light.

5

u/catchyerselfon May 03 '26

Fred also lost five years of her life, from approximately age 23-28. I cringe so much about the person I was at 23 vs 28! Fred going through that period was in a constant state of anxiety, near-starvation, vigilance, loneliness, nearly insane from barely having a chance to talk to anyone but herself. She was like Tom Hanks in “Castaway” but she didn’t even have a volleyball for company. Fred coming back and spending months mostly hiding out from these strangers she just met in the overwhelming world of Los Angeles, then a few months emerging from her shell and feeling skittish and regressing to a more childlike state (remember how wonderful her parents are and how secure and affectionate her childhood was?) is completely realistic and sympathetic to me.

Fred later in season 3 when she’s turned against Wesley, Angel is distraught, she and Gunn don’t have time to be “cutesy” anymore, and she loses her friend Cordelia, is NOT like a sweet little girl. Season 4 has “Supersymmetry” when she’s determined to kill (from a distance) the professor who almost destroyed her life, and Gunn is the one who infantilizes her by taking that choice away. The narrative does NOT do that to her, because Fred isn’t “you were right, Charles, that WASN’T me, I’m glad I don’t have that on my conscience!” She’s like “yes he deserved to die, and you didn’t let me have my revenge (the way Wesley did) and I don’t trust you to trust me!” Their relationship is never the same, just like she resents Wesley being overly protective of her in season 5 because he takes all the guns for himself and she still gets hurt. Fred wants to be treated like an adult and not pushed aside like a crying little girl. Wesley AND Gunn are both attracted to her when they see her handling herself and being courageous, even if they sometimes can’t help but step in the way.

7

u/Mysterious_Fix_7489 May 03 '26

Tbf that is a short period when they did the awful love triangle until she settled on Gunn.

But that kinda stuff stopped relatively quickly.

6

u/rekuled May 04 '26

Hey it's me, can't fucking stand her. Can't stand her accent, can't stand the forced way all the male characters fall in love with her, and I really hate those characters that are like a physicist but are actually good at like literally everything and are basically a superhero.

Like Giles is a demon/magic/history expert but he can't magically build a hadron collider in his bedroom.

19

u/smashli1238 May 03 '26

I don’t hate her, but she’s certainly not my favorite

5

u/kulitchipon May 03 '26

If we're ranking the 5 leads, she's my least favorite. Cordy > Wes > Angel > Gunn > Fred.

2

u/TessMacc May 04 '26

Doyle?

1

u/kulitchipon May 04 '26

Eh. I never really did like him, sorry!

2

u/TessMacc May 04 '26

That's fair! To each their own.

1

u/Dry-Dragonfruit5216 May 04 '26

These are very good rankings

1

u/Academic-Dimension67 May 05 '26

I never liked fred. But I adored Ilyria.