User blog comment:Merlaa/What do you think of Freya?/@comment-69.171.172.95-20121017231750/@comment-69.171.172.115-20121018213931

Merlaa, as much as I respect your opinon (and am thankful that you were so supportive of my posted comment), really and truly, I HAVE to protest to your typecasting Freya as a "weak" and "pessimistic" character.

If she truly was a weak person who could not look after herself, how do you explain her having survived long enough to meet Merlin to begin with? That would have BROKEN most people, what she went through. Think about it: her parents are dead, if she had any siblings (which we don't know for sure, though there's a rumour which I don't believe that Queen Mab is somehow her sister) they are apparently dead as well, she's taken away from home (I personally lost my own childhood home at the age of fourteen because of circumances beyond my control, trust me, that much ALONE is enough to weigh on a person's mind, let alone everything else Freya goes through), she's under a cruel, evidently mind-alterting curse because some jerk attacked her (if he'd left her alone she would have never hurt anyone; it's like that story in greek myths where that poor girl got turned into a tree because some loser was chasing her) and she had to kill him to save herself and his mother was a vendictive witch.

Now in addition to that, some moron evidentally betrayed her (her comment: "You can't always trust people") and it resulted in her being Halig's prisoner.

Think about it from Freya's perspective. She has NO ONE; she sees herself as a monster because she can't control killing people at midnight; she has no home; she's in a CAGE; it's raining, she's freezing cold, and her captor can't even be bothered to bring her inside with him, treating her like an animal. Some guy walks by and breaks her out. She doesn't know Merlin's a friend. She's had people trick her before. Of course she's going to be scared. She's wet, has no weapons, she's evidently hungry. I also got the impression that she's a bit YOUNGER than Morgana, Merlin, and Arthur, at least by a couple of years (I could be wrong, but sort of how she conducted herself and acted, I took it that way). Of course she's going to seem like a 'frightened child'.

But before that, there is no mention of her trying to end it all by killing herself, there is no mention of her becoming so broken she loses the will to live, there is no mention even of her becoming 100% submissive to her captors. She's clearly scared of Halig, but we see very little of their interaction; we don't know if there was ever a moment when she was breifly let out of the cage or whatever and tried to escape. Though, actually, it would not be a far-fetched possiblity. Remember when Halig said, "No one escapes from me"? She looked really scared. How do we know this was not a repeat of something that already happened to her previously? Naturally she doesn't want to talk much about her captivity; something had to have happened that intimated her.

Also, when someone is mistreated, treated more like an animal than a person, it's not uncommon for them to go one of two ways. 1) become bitter (Freya, though, was more in personality, like Merlin, which I believe he could somehow sense, aka "It could have been ME, in that cage" upon meeting her, something beyond the fact that they both had magic; not like Morgana, whose personality was 'those who make me suffer will pay dearly'. Personally, I also believe Freya's lack of vedictiveness is not a lack of confidence in herself; she KNOWS she can kill, she's done it before. I think it's that she doesn't stomach it well; her first kill tramuatized her really badly, and then she's forced to kill over and over again, instead of becoming desensitized to it, she lets it make her down-hearted and begins to believe she is a monster). Or, 2) become withdrawn, very inward. (This appears to be the path Freya took, opening up very little, even to Merlin, at the beginning, not even talking about when she was a Druid asking him why he was asking her so many questions).

That is what I find so fancinating about Freya, why she's my favorite Camelot girl. I firmly believe she COULD be a villian, or at the very least she could stand up for herself, but she DOESN'T. She's willing to accept help from others, then is shattered when they let her down.

At the same time, she is unselfish. She doesn't let Merlin's help get to the point of his abadoning his life on her behalf. I don't think this was a lack of confidence either. I don't think this was a Bella Swan (sorry to any twilight fans out there, but you know it's true; Bella's not a strong character) "Oh, I can't live without him, but I'm not good enough for him" sort of deal. She did it out of the best interests of the first person to be kind to her and not betray her. Now, given, the fact that she was scared to let him know she was a Bastet may have factored into that, but I don't believe it was the only factor in her choice to leave him.

What annoys me is that so many people seem to think a woman has to be a certain extreme to be considered 'strong'. Not all woman can be kick-butt illigitmate princesses who can fight with swords and not flinch much at castualites (Morgana), or great horsewomen who can just jump on a horse's back and take off (Elena), or swordfighting smuggler who can hold her own (Isolde, who, btw, I also think is awesome, probably my second favorite camelot girl, but I can't quite choose between her and Gwen sometimes), or shoot a deer from a mile off (Mithian). Nor do all women show their spunk. Some woman ARE quiet and possibly sad in nature. Freya was a nice way to have a woman who wasn't the typcial protrayal of the 'strong woman'. At the same time, it takes a lot to fend off an attacker and kill them, even unwittingly.

Bravery is not the absense of fear. And Freya has a lot of fear. But when it came down to it, she had to of stood her ground or she would have been dead a long, long time before her episode could have taken place.

Also, I think it's nice that she was able to rely on Merlin as much as she came to do. Some might think this makes her look like a frightened child, but mostly it makes her HUMAN. It shows her learning to trust again, to grow as a person. Accepting help, even growing dependant on it at moments, faulty or otherwise, is only HUMAN. If she honestly believed she couldn't survive on her own, when all was said and done, why would she have left him? Aside from an act of sucide, this would have made no sense.

As for being a pestimist. I fail to see that she fully is one. She is graver than Merlin, yes, but she is not gloomy the whole time. She smiles when he makes a rose appear, she is able to laugh alongside him when he asks her to run away with him, she is able to look happy (although breifly) when talking about her home. No one is going to be a ball of jumping joy after going through an ordeal like she did. And even if she does have a slightly more pessitmistic nature, for arguement's sake, in COMPARISON TO the other women of Camelot (through I fail to see how Gwen is not sometimes just as gloomy and passive, if not more so), that doesn't make her 'weak'.

As a matter of fact sometimes pessimists make the best, most loveable characters of all. Why? Because when it comes down to it, in spite of their seemly bad outlook on life, they know how to do the right thing, how to smile at the RIGHT moment, no matter the cost. Think, for excample, of Puddleglum in Narnia. No one was ever more "down-beat" than him; but who freed Rilian without a second thought? Who helped keep Jill and Eustace in one piece through their travels? Who turned out to be a loyal friend and pure of heart?

If you ask me, however you view Freya's behavor, pessimistic or just temporarily sad, which can be subjective from fan to fan, I suppose, when you look at it that way, her character's good points and, yes, strength, really does shine through.