AtS in review: "Unleased"

[wisdomeagle]

Awwww.



So, like my fellow femslash_minisers, this week I'm rewatching "Unleashed," "Smile Time," and "Power Play" and attempting to get a firm grasp on Nina's character before writing my fic(let).

Only, now I want to end my personal canon with "Unleashed." Because... it's so cute! The ending! Them all in Angel's suite, Fred slightly tipsy, them all being loving-teasing-wonderful, Fred/Gunn/Wesley halfway to having a threesome ("you boys are making me hungry"), Angel thinking maybe he has a chance with Nina... which, awww, he so does.

Nina:
+Looks a lot like Darla.
+Is really, really, really hot, and spends lots of time naked.
+Is cool because she's not vulnerable!waif!girl or strong!kickass!girl. She's just human. Hating what happened to her, refusing to be a victim, not above screaming when she's in trouble.
+Has no metaphor! I don't understand! What's she doing on AtS without her metaphor? She woke up one morning and discovered she [had an STD? Had a crippling disease? was insane?] The STD thing works better because of the guilt/immoral aspect -- otherwise disease-as-sin is not really a Thing. Errr. *confused* Sort of going with the alcoholic metaphor ("You learn to control it. I fight it every day.") but with the "I woke up and realized..." thing. But the endangerment of children, etc, it sort of works.

Fred:
+I'm not a Spike/Fred shipper but aww. I love Fred protecting Spike and trying to save him and not getting all dramatic about it and still thinking after two years that Angel Can Solve Everything.
+is a "standard-issue science nerd"
+Should so have sex with Nina. Really. This episode was making me all "eeee! Fred/Nina!" Because, like Angel/Nina, they're sharing the "I was just normal until something REALLY HORRIBLE happened to me, but, you know, you survive."
+Is wonderful. Just wonderful. She reminds me of Kaylee (omg, why doesn't someone ship them? :p ), with the constant cheerfulness, and she's all stuttery and occasionally awkward but so grr!strong when need be. *loves on Fred*

Wesley:
+Is teetering slowly towards a nervous breakdown and is barely held together with dry wit and his crush on Fred.
+Is love.

Ari:
+Is tired, so no more thoughts! Fellow minisers, have we Nina thoughts to share? *is fretful*

Comments

[lynnenne]

I think inlovewithnight might ship Fred/Kaylee. She adores them both, so I'm sure you could talk her into it. *g*

[gvambat.livejournal.com]

Love the icon. Twisted. Evil. Pretty.

[wisdomeagle]

*g* I think I've convinced a few of my flisters of the prettiness of Fred/Kaylee, but few of them love it as much as I do. :)

[gvambat.livejournal.com]

Thoughts on Nina: She was kinda just thrown in there, as a plot device and love interest and without much purpose, which can work quite nicely (see also: Angel) (see also: Fred) (see also: Oz) (see also: Tara) (see also: Dawn) (see also: Connor...okay, I just squicked myself, nevermind.)

But they needed to use/mention Nina either more or less, to get rid of the random plot device feeling, and they didn't have time.

*swears*

(If we're going over metaphors, what's Fred's?)

[wisdomeagle]

Yeah but I'm not allowed to think that when writing Nina!fic...

Anyhow, the end of the ep with the shippiness is kinda weird, and honestly it feels kind of like a S1 ep? Even the happy, teamy feel at the end is very uncharacteristic for S5. It begins with W+H stuff (and WHY can't David Boreanaz say "Wolfram and Hart"? He's all "woofram" and it's annoying. [/random] Err, but anyhow. There really should've been slightly more Nina bits throughout the season, quite possibly, but since we all know that the pacing of the season is Not Their Fault, that's okay.

Onto more interesting things, Fred's Metaphor! Good question!

I would sort of start by going that Pylea is just a metaphor for the Badness of the Real World and Grad School (one could think for instance about how Prof. Sidel sent her there and imagine it as sort of the endless tedious drudgery and slavery of being a graduate student for a respected professor and having all the idealism stripped away from you by jealous people, etc...) But I mean, I think the fact of the insanity has to point to some sort of mental illness. One could sort of see AUd in a "Normal Again" sort of way, where one day after five years of being stark raving mad she wakes up in a mental institution and starts the long road to healing, and I think one could make "Fredless" make sense in that kind of Non-Supernatural-AU (NSAU).

Or one could do it in a sort of Cordelian fall from grace sense, that she goes to graduate school and falls in with this Bad Crowd who's actually a Good Crowd but a lot less innocent than her upbringing in Texas led her to be and she finally finds a place where she fits in but it's hipper and less square than she was expecting, and again, we could steal Tim Minear's metaphor and say it's Greenpeace, but in the sense of Finding Her Place, that's easy enough to do.

Obviously the really hard part is Pylea and I'm pretty much at a loss unless you just make her insane from weird chemicals in her brain. *shrug*

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

I'm not a Spike/Fred shipper but aww. I love Fred protecting Spike and trying to save him and not getting all dramatic about it and still thinking after two years that Angel Can Solve Everything.

Early S5? I was totally shipping Spike/Fred. I actually ended up writing a ficathon fic with that paiting, and, more along the lines of what you said, an atmospheric line a professor said in class once triggered a mental scene that never made it into a full-fledged fic.