Gunn/fred

Un couple tellement mignon mais de courte durèe,qu'avez vous penssez de leur couple...

Je les trouvais *trop* mignons!!! Un couple parfait. En plus c'était tellement rafraîchissant de voir un couple mixe (de couleur différente je veux dire, lol). D'habitude, on voit rarement un noir avec une blanche (ou inversément).

Mais j'ai détesté la façon dont ils ont rompu

Je les trouve adorables mais moins que Fred et Wesley. Le truc que j'ai à reprocher à ce couple c'est que des fois ils me semblaient pas naturels l'un avec l'autre, je trouvais leur amour un peu forcé des fois, comme s'ils voulaient se forcer à aimer l'autre. Et la manière dont ils se sont séparés je trouve que ça le prouve bien, si ça avait été le big love, ils auraient pas laissé leur relation se dissolver de cette façon, j'ai trouvé ça un peu dommage...

C'ètais mignon oui,mais j'ai bien aimè sans plus..je trouve qu'ils n'ètaient pas fait pour etre enssemblent au long terme...et je pensse comme audy si leur amour avait vraiment ètè fort il ne l'aurait pas laissè se brisè si facilement.

Ils étaient vraiment mignons ces deux là.Moi non plus j'aime pas de la facon dont ils ont rompu.

C'est vrai qu'ils étaient tout mignon ensemble même si ça s'est fait vite et sans signe avant coureur du moins de la part de fred.
J'aimais bien leurs "petit tête à tête" amoureux où ils ne pensaient qu'à se bécotter.
c'est quand même étrange de voir gunn aussi amoureux, ça change du gunn qui veut tout castagner.

Je n'aime pas non plus leur fin. Un épisode, ils sont fous amoureux, arrive le professeur de fred, et c'est finis, leur rupture n'est plus qu'une question de temps.

a.a.k a écrit:

Je les trouvais *trop* mignons!!! Un couple parfait. En plus c'était tellement rafraîchissant de voir un couple mixe (de couleur différente je veux dire, lol). D'habitude, on voit rarement un noir avec une blanche (ou inversément).

Mais j'ai détesté la façon dont ils ont rompu

C'était mon couple préféré après Cordy/Angel.

J'ai beaucoup aimé ce couple !! Vraiment adorables !! Bien qu'au début, j'ai été surprise de la rapidité avec laquelle se déroule le commencement de leur histoire, le résultat n'était finalement pas si mal, même si je trouvais qu'il y avait un petit quelque chose qui sonnait faux (ne me demandez pas quoi, je ne saurais pas répondre). Tuer le professeur à sa place était vraiment un acte d'amour (dans le sens où il voulait l'empêcher de devenir elle-même une meurtrière), mais ça a malheureusement laissé entre eux un certain malaise et une gêne pour l'acte qu'ils ont, dans le fond, commis à deux, et c'était vraiment dommage de voir la cassure qu'il y a par la suite eu entre eux. La rupture allait forcément arriver... tout doucement.
La façon dont ça se termine était quand même décevante, même si on s'y attendait.
Bref, j'ai bien aimé. Surtout les petites scènes et les attentions qu'il avait pour elle, où la façon dont il montait sur ses grands chevaux dès qu'il la savait en danger ou qu'on pensait à lui faire du mal.

J'ai bien aimé...j'ai pas adoré car je voulais Fred avec Wes ^^ et je gardais espoir qu'il serait ensemble mais c'était un couple assez interessant!

J'ai beaucoup aimé ce couple ils étaient mignons tout les deux on voyait bien qu'ils s'aimaient leur séparation m'a fait de la peine mais je l'a préfère avec Wesley.

Citation :

Gunn has never been my favorite character, in part because the writers never seemed to decide what they wanted to do with him. In the first season he arrives very late, as part of the deck-clearing after 1.19 "Sanctuary". In Season Two he is fully integrated into the cast, and his emotional viewpoint is a strong and important counterpoint to Wesley's intellectualism and Cordelia's pragmatism. He is really great, there, but it never feels like his thematic place is settled. Of all the characters, he is the only one to undergo no significant character development in Pylea.

I get the feeling that Gunn eventually drops to the background because the Mutant Enemy staff, comprised entirely of white people, got somewhat uncomfortable writing street slang. I think I've read an interview somewhere along the line to this effect, but I can't recall where so I won't claim to have proof. It's just a gut feeling, in any event, and on some level they should be embarrassed, because the street slang they do write is awful. Just awful. Seriously, I like 2.14 "The Thin Dead Line" as an episode, for example, but listening to those teens and Gunn chat is like nails on a chalkboard to anyone under the age of 30 who has actually met a person of color born after 1980. It gets a little "Excuse me, sir, I speak jive!" up in there, and I don't blame Mutant Enemy for going "okay, we're doing this wrong."

The answer to that issue isn't to push Gunn out of focus, though. The answer is to do some fucking research. Hire some POC writers, maybe, if you are honestly wigging out about writing African-American and Mexican-American people. Instead, they cut Gunn off from the street culture that defined his entire life pre-Angel Investigations, and in doing so they basically tear him out of his context and take away what made him, at the end of the day, so much different and such a unique presence in Angel's crew. Cordy and Wes are upper-class WASPs, and Angel is, in Gunn's own words, "a middle-class white dude that's dead." Gunn is the only regular in the first two seasons to bring a different socioeconomic perspective to the group.

In taking Gunn away from the street, the writers take the street away from Gunn. And honestly, I can't help but feel that his relationship with Fred -- which by its nature ties him more closely to the group and takes him away from his initial context -- is meant to complete this process. How am I supposed to buy that a man who thinks of Cordelia as "stick figure Barbie" (2.03 "First Impressions") finds Fred, who looks like a recovering famine victim -- because she is one! -- in any way sexually attractive. If we put aside her physical appearance, which doesn't seem to be Gunn's type (he basically says as much in 3.18 "Double Or Nothing", or at least it's the first place his brain goes when he needs to insult her), then what about her personality is the draw? Fred is meek, prone to fits of mania, and in need of constant aid in reacclimating to the world.

We have seen the kind of woman Gunn is interested in. 2.03 "First Impressions" depicts Veronica, a self-assured woman living her own life who shares Gunn's background and therefore understands the struggle of the lower classes. "The Thin Dead Line" displays Gunn's familiar relationship with Anne Steele (formerly "Lily", formerly "Chanterelle", formerly "Sister Sunshine", etc), a woman who lifted herself up after constant rejection and self-enslavement to cults and fantasies in order to become a successful, tough-as-nails social worker. She and Gunn share a specific mission: keeping the streets safe for homeless and impoverished youth.

In Season Two, it seems like the writers are positioning Anne as a viable love interest for Gunn, and I think they would have been a stunning pairing that gave Gunn some depth while still keeping him tied to the causes that are supposedly most important to him. Alas, after "The Thin Dead Line" she completely drops off the map until a sudden reappearance as part of Gunn's last day in 5.22 "Not Fade Away", where they have a conversation that basically outlines exactly why they should have been together all along. Argh.

So we must accept that the writers wanted to drop Anne and put Gunn with Fred. But what is it that appeals to Gunn about Fred? She is in a lower income bracket than the other characters, so perhaps Gunn relates to her on a working-class level. Perhaps her struggles in Pylea impress him the way Anne's struggles on the street impress him. But aside from the fact that she's a survivor, Fred just doesn't have the temperament or the physicality of any woman we've seen Gunn regard as a romantic prospect.

Just as importantly, what does Fred see in Gunn? By 4.05 "Supersymmetry" it's pretty clear that she thinks he's kind of dumb; she doesn't even introduce him to Professor Seidel as her boyfriend. Lilah and Angelus suggest that maybe it's about a race kink, but, well, they're evil and both trying to rattle the person they say this to, so eh. That's not to say race kink isn't a potential factor, but those people (especially Southerners) I've met for whom "fuck you dad I brought home a black man" is a thing mostly tend to, well, want to piss off their parents. I just don't think Roger and Trish Burkle would give two shits about the race of whomever their daughter decides to date, so I don't think that's the rationale, and Fred doesn't ever talk about Gunn's race enough for it to come across as an exotic Other thing. So I don't buy that premise.

But if Gunn doesn't stimulate her intellectually, what is it that she wants from him? Her romantic interests in Knox and Wesley, later, totally seem based on a reactionary desire for someone on her intellectual wavelength. I guess Gunn could be seen as a sort of pale reflection (not that he's pale or that Angel casts a reflection) of Angel, Fred's initial crush, and the show did make a point in Season One of painting Gunn as a sort of Angel double. Fred is looking for a hero, and Gunn is definitely the more attractive candidate from that angle when considered against Wesley. Maybe that's it.

Now, this is an entirely subjective point, so it may not hold true at all for other people: I think that part of my problem with figuring out what exactly draws these two characters to one another without just saying "because they're the only ones there" is compounded by the fact that I never, ever buy that Amy Acker is sexually interested in J. August Richards, or vice-versa. I suppose there's one moment -- their love scene at the beginning of "Supersymmetry" -- where I finally buy it. By Season Four they're much better at pretending to be in love, but the Season Three episodes just don't do it for me. Neither one seems all that invested in the other; their body language is kind of static, the enthusiasm just doesn't ring true in their voices... I don't know, it doesn't read for me.

Chemistry or plausibility aside, my most significant problem with this pairing is what it does to both characters. Gunn is a totally fascinating addition to the cast when he first appears, and in Season Two he seems to be approaching some kind of arc. He and Wesley bond in an unlikely-besties-buddy-cop-movie sort of way, and he and Cordelia forge a connection based around her concern at his reckless tendencies and his respect for her altruism and drive.

Suddenly, with the advent of his relationship with Fred, he becomes... Fred's boyfriend. I honestly can't think of a single plot point in the entire tenure of the Fred/Gunn relationship (from 3.13 "Waiting In The Wings" through 4.14 "Release") that is about Gunn without being actually about Fred. Even in "Double Or Nothing", when his soul is due to be collected, there's some nonsense about how Fred's love is what has voided the bargain and yada yada true-love-cakes.

What a reduction. Why would you take a character who was finally starting to formulate his own arc (2.19 "Belonging" is especially poignant, and while 3.03 "That Old Gang Of Mine" is incredibly stupid at least it pushes this plot along) and suddenly toss it all under the bus to make him the new girl's arm candy? It just doesn't make sense, unless the intent was to marginalize Gunn and prop up Fred.

And on the other side of the equation, why does Fred need to be the objectified rope in Wesley and Gunn's game of tug-of-war? She is a fucking trauma survivor, you guys. She has just been through quite literal Hell. She should not be dating anybody, and the way the writers render her as a prize is just really, really gross.

What's maybe most distressing about the Fred/Gunn relationship is the way it derails both characters at its outset and then derails them further at the end. Gunn especially suffers; his conduct in "Supersymmetry" is just awful. Fred is trying to take agency back over her own life and confront the man who is essentially her rapist, and Gunn decides that no, Fred has to remain pure, so he'll be the one to get his hands dirty. What the hell Gunn. I mean I find it to be in-character by that point in his development, but it's just so gross. Then when she is understandably pissed because Gunn has taken that agency away from her, he starts acting like the most petulant child.

Fred, for her part, takes the excuse of Gunn's behavior in "Supersymmetry" as license to behave atrociously towards him, acting the wilting flower and becoming an entirely passive agent by choice. Oh, Wesley kissed me! I didn't want him to! Then stop kissing him, Fred, Jesus Christ. You totally kissed him back, don't give me that shit. She only even tries to reconcile with Gunn after she finds out about Wes's relationship with Lilah.

Oh, and then there's the elbow to the face. God. After Fred and Wesley have their illicit make-out session in Angel's office, Wesley and Gunn get into a fistfight and Gunn accidentally elbows Fred in the face.

I am trying so hard not to emphasize the race thing too much, here, but ugh. Why is it the black guy who has to elbow his girlfriend in the face, Mutant Enemy? Come on. Sometimes the fact that he is the only non-white member of the cast just... is a thing that needs to be addressed. You have to tread lightly when you're a white writing staff depicting an interracial relationship, and "sometimes the black guy gets so angry he accidentally hits the white girl in the face" is just so not the way to go. My two cents. And then in Season Five it's Gunn yet again who is the Judas implicated in the events of 5.15 "A Hole In The World". And while I love that it's him, because it propels Gunn to some seriously fantastic character development, it just feels like him punching her in the face again and again.

So yeah. Mostly I just think that this relationship derails both characters, and they have a lot of trouble getting back up again once it's over. Frankly it's not until Season Five that Gunn gets his legs again, and Fred never really recovers. There's a glimmer of something in the Jasmine arc, but then come Season Five she's suddenly the moral compass for no other reason than 'Cordy isn't here to fill this role', and then she's a sacred Madonna who suffers and dies because she is too good for this cruel Earth. So that's stupid, and I honestly trace all the stupid that befalls both these characters to their initial relationship with one another.

I wish he'd just hooked up with Anne.