Things heating up in the Despicable Me fandom

ANGELS WINGS in movies & tv-series :

She is wary of him from the moment she finds out he is a vampire. They have no friendship that could lay the groundwork for Angel even walking up to her in City Of. Angel’s friendship was with Willow. (Theirs was a forbidden love)

My unpopular opinion is Cordelia should have stayed on BtVs and gone to UC Sunnydale and worked her way through college. You know like a lot of people do. Cordelia is smart, very smart she could have pulled it off.

Back to Cangel; their friendship was sweet. It was the support Angel needed. It was like Derek Morgan and Penelope Garcia from Criminal Minds; not as well written but you knew they had each other’s back. Angel had his relationship with Buffy fall apart and then with Darla. He didn’t need another girlfriend. He needed a friend.

It is so irritating watching them get pushed together. Their friendship got sacrificed for nothing in the end. A love triangle with his son? Oh honey. And the illusion in Awakening; like what was the point of making Angel say Buffy’s name. From a shipping standpoint I love that he said it because it proves it is Buffy always.

But from a writing standpoint what were they smoking? They were trying to build this narrative about Cordelia and Angel completing each other; all for him to say the name of the ex who caused him to lose his soul after a perfect moment of happiness and his soulless half couldn’t handle that he still loved her on some level so tried to destroy the world? That ex. Killed the relationship before it even began.

And Cordelia was human like were they never going to run into the same problems he had with Buffy? Going out into light, children etc. because either way you slice it; it makes it look like Angel just didn’t care that much about Cordelia in the long term.

Leaving aside the fact that a female character should have more value than just what she offers to a male character, even if he’s the main character of the show, this complaint always bothered me, because Juliette really couldn’t win no matter what she did.

In season 1, she had no idea what a Grimm was.  That’s on Nick, who, much as I love him, really has a problem with letting his friends and allies know exactly what’s going on even when it affects them directly.  (See also: Hank and Wu.).  So how the fuck was she supposed to be useful if she didn’t know what was going on?

That said, she still managed to be pretty useful when Nick was trying to make the street kids comfortable in Orphan Grinder so he could get information about the one that turned up dead.  She’s the one who reached out to the abused bird woman when they were on vacation together.  She’s the one who noticed the Eisbiebers watching the house, leading to Nick’s confrontation and subsequent befriending of them.

In season 2, she was amnesiac and subjected to a very nasty obsession curse on the part of Adalind.  This wasn’t Nick’s fault, but it was because of him.  That said, she still willingly acted as a Spanish language interpreter, and saved Nick from the Musai’s influence.  So even in this case, she was “useful”.

I remember, by the way, getting into arguments on TWOP and similar forums because I dared to suggest that, as a veterinarian, Juliette’s knowledge and expertise might actually come in handy when it came to dealing with people who were also ANIMALS.  (This was apparently insulting to Wesen, per the people I was arguing with.)

I was vindicated by season three however.  Season three was the season where Juliette actually knew what was going on, and she was useful in damn near every storyline.  She’s the one who figured out how to disseminate the zombie cure in that story-arc.  She helped lie to cover up for Nick once he was cured.  She figured out why the Blutbaden victims’ stomachs were exploding at that restaurant.  She translated again, and explained El Cucuy.  She’s the one who diagnosed the Grauser, who would usually have been killed for being “possessed.”  In the meantime, she regularly assisted in research at the trailer, acted as a sounding board, helped Nick make contact with his mother, helped protect Adalind and the baby (when they appeared uninvited on her doorstep!  After everything Adalind had done already!), and helped Nick with Trubel, housing the girl in her own home.

In season four, Juliette had her own problems.  And don’t get me started on the people who use the fact that she “went dark” against her, when we KNOW how that happened.  Remember?  She was helping to cure her boyfriend, who had lost his powers after being raped by the character these fans tend to like better?!  And hey, repowering Nick ought to count, right?

The thing is, Juliette shouldn’t have to be “useful” to justify her existence.  But if we are looking at that criteria, then during the one season where Juliette knew what was going on and was in her right mind, yes, she was very useful.

Please if you have a chance, report this GoFundMe!

Here’s the Report Fundraiser link: https://www.gofundme.com/contact/suggest/fraud

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Patchnotes:

-All spears are now Charlotte weapons. Alucard Spear acquired at the start, now with additional Holy element!

-No equippable armors are character-exclusive. Feel free to put Charlotte in battle armor and Jonathan in a corset or whatever (exception is sorceress crest since there’s no reason to equip it to jonathan)

-Sorceress’s Crest, which provides Charlotte with higher casting speed, is now found at the beginning of the game

-Charlotte has Jonathan’s movement options like super-jump and divekick and so on (unlocked the same way as in the original game- you don't get them early, to be clear). She also has Richter's slide, which can be used for fun sequence breaks

I appreciate the vote of confidence! 

The main reasons why Cordelia’s so OOC in season 3 are Cangel and the necessity of her becoming a higher being. Instead of the character fueling the plot, the character serves the plot, which means Cordelia’s arc isn’t organically developed: it’s forced in such a way that the character becomes what the writers want it to be, and not what it is reasonable for the character to become. There are always ways to get a character where you need it to go, plotwise, but the writers decided to take a lot of shortcuts and ruined the character - probably because Cordelia could never reasonably become what they wanted her to be. 

The changes to her character are visible from the start. She helps Angel deal with his grief and guilt over Buffy in an absurdly reasonable, serious and helpful manner. Cordelia has helped Angel work through his issues in the past but she does it in an unorthodox, funny, sometimes insensitive way. Cordelia was more calm and mature than it was expected. She also says she misses Buffy which is a load of crap and not something Cordelia would’ve said in season 2. Consider the Cordelia who became Princess of Pylea 3 months before Heartthrob. What happened to turn that spitfire, tactless, dismissive, vain but ultimately good woman into someone who always knows the right thing to say? It’s like her spirit was toned down. She was graver, and less enthusiastic. Even when she said Cordelia like things - in Carpe Noctem or Fredless for example - the cool, adult outfits, and chic haircut, made her sound like an entirely different person.

The writers attempted to create a Cordelia who was more empathetic and less vain. She needed to ascend and become girlfriend material. However, being super empathetic and wearing sweatpants is not Cordelia at all. It’s the opposite. Cordelia always tries to look her best and she’s vain, but it doesn’t mean she’s selfish or unkind. She also lacks empathy some of the time but isn’t without it. In attempting to rectify Cordelia’s flaws, they exacerbated them. Cordelia always cared about her friends, but in season 3, she cares mostly about Angel - whom she hadn’t been close to during season 2. Cordelia was always the first one to say Angel can’t date because of the curse, but she decides to hook up with him without considering that. Cordelia never needed to learn how to fight in order to defend herself, but suddenly she likes swords and guns. 

Cordelia always had this ability to be funny and serious, vain and selfless, observant and shallow. This is what made her such a force of nature sometimes. However, in attempting to perfect her character, she lost her passion, her wit, her selflessness, and her strength. She became someone who cared only about Angel and made big, hypocritical speeches about morality. She became the type of person who genuinely thought she deserved to ascend to a higher plane, and saw giving up Angel as a big sacrifice. Season 2 Cordelia would’ve said she wasn’t done doing good in the world and would’ve asked about her friends. She would’ve been too smart to fall into Skip’s trap. The thing is, Cordelia wasn’t supposed to be smart or herself. Everything from her outfit to her considering dating Angel was OOC. She was only supposed to serve the writer’s bigger purpose, which is ultimately the downfall of season 3.

And *I* have this thing where I always always know when he’s there, because every time he’s not wandering around like the ghost of bob marley and isn’t immediately visible it’s because he’s stopped moving to watch the film from directly behind me, which makes the back of my neck tingle like a dog sensing an earthquake

Which has on more than one occasion resulted in me interrupting the movie to tell him to just sit the fuck down and stop lurking in the shadows, Jesus Christ, it’s like I’m being haunted by the memory of ancient sins

Which has in turn been shortened to just “ancient sins”, every time I feel him doing it again