The guy was in love with Fred and thought she was good enough to be worthy of inhabiting Illyria. 'Oh sure, I'm in love with her, so I'm going to pick her as the host of an old hell-goddess. Her soul will be consumed and she might disappear in the process, but hey! It's for the greater evil, I'm making her a favour!"
THIS. SO MUCH! AND MORE.
Which, when you really look at all of this in context, it's sort of vulgar and disgusting really and I personally feel like more of the hate and blame that came about regarding Fred's death, should be hefted onto his shoulders a great deal more than Illyria's.
Which, is also another reason why when people argue that both Angel and Spike just "let Fred die," drives me absolutely bloody bonkers. They did not just let her die, they made what they felt was the best decision, at the time. Plus, I believe that the decision they made, is exactly what Fred would have wanted them to do. It was going to kill thousands of people to draw Illyria out of Fred and back to the deeper well and I think if they had chosen to go that route and save her life while killing that many people as a result, would have only served to make her feel not only guilty but come to resent the life she would have lived had it been spared and both Angel and Spike.
This way, she got to die a sort of hero, in a sense. (And I realize this wasn't the point of the thread, but I just had to say that anyway.)
Now, back to our regularly scheduled topic of discussion.
I disliked Fred until...well, I pretty much started loving her a few episodes before she died. But I didn't have any difficulties to like Illyria. Maybe because Fred had too much those "Boo I'm so fragile and innocent" vibes, while Illyria kicks ass since the beginning.
Really? I loved Fred to pieces, probably because she was the character that I best related to, ya know small town girl from Texas who was big on science - that's sort of who I am too a little bit.
But, I never really saw Fred as an "I'm so fragile and innocent," girl. I mean, we're discussing a character who fought for five years to survive in a hell dimension where they treated her kind like cattle and then had to turn around and learn how to re-integrate herself back into the normal real world, which had to be incredibly hard for her to do and not to mention, a tad bit traumatic.
I think there were times in AtS, where she definitely showed that she wasn't some wimp-ling that was always mooning over the big hero of the day that "handsome man" that saved her life. One instance comes to mind when they're all in the bar at Caritas and she'd been singing that Patsy Cline song then one thing led to another and she had that crossbow pointed right at Gunn's boy's jugular. She wasn't some little "fragile innocent" thing then. lol. I thought she was pretty bad ass, not to mention when she built that thing that decapitated that giant bug. That was pretty gnarly.
And of course, her death. I thought she was pretty damn strong and amazing then. She still had to be incredibly scared though, but I loved the fact that she was going to work the case as much as she could to the best of her abilities until she couldn't, because she wasn't going to be taken down by some monster flu since she was better than that.
I just loved Fred in general.
🙂
But, I also definitely love Illyria as well, because in a way she was sort of like Fred in the sense that, she was now stuck in a world that she had absolutely no lover and had to learn how to adapt and find her way. In short, I pretty much agree with just about everything you've said about Illyria.
And I owe her one of my favourite Angel scene ever, in Not Fade Away, when, after conforting Wesley, she stands up as Fred and punches the wizard with a hateful face, turning into Illyria again. That scene was a-ma-zing!
That scene is so freaking epic, seriously. I loved it for everything that it was and wasn't supposed to be. Easily the best scene out of the whole episode for me, anyway. There was just something so beautifully poetic about it. Like, it was both Fred and Illyria at the same time, striking back at the demon who had caused her so much pain.
