Hurrah, I finally found this reply again! I wasn't able to get online for several days after you'd posted it, and then I couldn't remember whose journal I'd read it on. Thank you for the links to your essays! I'll likely get a chance to read them this weekend. :D
I agree with you that ME dropped the ball by turning Fred into a mere prize for Gunn and Wes to fight over, instead of exploring her character more fully. They made the same mistake in Season 5: instead of highlighting her quirkiness, they turned her into a pretty pink princess; instead of displaying her grit and her ability to survive and fend for herself, they made her the resident damsel in distress. It also bugged me that they pushed the "scientist" angle too far: suddenly she was not only a physicist, but an expert in every field of science imaginable, up to and including medical surgery!
kats_meow (Kat Leon on fanfic.net) does a wonderful job of portraying the darker and quirkier sides of Fred's personality, particularly in her stories Good Friday and Binding Ties. (The latter story is incomplete, but still very much worth a read.) Hers is the Fred that I wish had been on the show all along!
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branchandroot
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Date: 2011-03-26 05:00 am (UTC)I agree with you that ME dropped the ball by turning Fred into a mere prize for Gunn and Wes to fight over, instead of exploring her character more fully. They made the same mistake in Season 5: instead of highlighting her quirkiness, they turned her into a pretty pink princess; instead of displaying her grit and her ability to survive and fend for herself, they made her the resident damsel in distress. It also bugged me that they pushed the "scientist" angle too far: suddenly she was not only a physicist, but an expert in every field of science imaginable, up to and including medical surgery!