"This teen girl character is annoying and mean and unlikeable" to YOU. I think the annoying mean girl is very funny and likeable and I can't wait to watch her evolve as a person
I probably don't have to even say this but this has turned out to be the most "omg Blorbo from my shows" post I could have made. I have no idea who tf 90% of the people in the tags are but you're very passionate about them.
we will never have true gender equality until we start obnoxiously woobifying female villains. gone girl discourse is a good start but we need to go further. she needs to be like “I hurt people on purpose because I like it” onscreen and the fandom needs to be “she’s so misunderstood 🥺” and write five thousand out of character self-shipping fics. this will fix society
why would cindy want to save Courtney for last and remove all her loved ones so that only Cindy is in her life??
oh what a good totally unprompted question anon 😈 buckle up bc this is gonna be long <3
for starters, we all know that cindy never had a normal childhood. as we learned from recent flashbacks, cindy originally hated and feared her father, and had actually run away from him along with her biological mother.
in between then and present day, cindy had somehow killed her mother (accidentally, most likely, and possibly due to her father) and been brought up to crave her father's validation above all else. however, dragon king saw cindy as nothing more than a failed experiment, and never gave her the love and attention she obviously craved. no matter what she did in an attempt to assist the isa and her father, she never received that validation she so desired and was viewed as a pawn and someone who could never do anything right.
enter courtney, who entered blue valley knowing nothing about it or its residents. cindy saw courtney as a potential friend, and first attempted to "recruit" her through her usual manipulation and aloofness. when it turned out that courtney was not the bitchy popular gymnast that cindy was expecting, at first cindy didn't know what to do with her. she went back to treating courtney like everyone else at the school, until the chemistry experiment scene in shiv part one. cindy was so caught off guard by courtney's unrelenting kindness that she found herself opening up to her, and when she wasn't immediately rejected, brushed aside, or made fun of for it, she softened up to courtney even more.
this led to cindy inviting courtney to hang out homecoming, for once actually believing that someone might want to be close to her not out of fear or desire for power but because they actually liked her. all other relationships in her life (her father, henry, jenny) had been built off of manipulation, but this wasn't the case with courtney, and cindy knew this especially well because she HAD tried that at first and it hadn't worked--courtney had approached her knowing about cindy's misdeeds but choosing to believe that cindy might still have good in her.
this was also likely the first time cindy had felt like she was anyone's first choice: henry was hung up over yolanda and dragon king was hung up over cindy's mom, and she was well aware that neither of them particularly wanted her. courtney, on the other hand, could have chosen many others, friends or potential partners, to go to the dance with, but instead she chose to hang out with cindy.
and so when courtney decided to go with cameron to the dance anyway, the betrayal must have been multiplied by 100. cindy viewed this as the ultimate rejection and confirmation of her fears, and first she reacted with coldness, then grief once she was alone, then rage for her to channel her pain into. she lashed out by attacking stargirl, intending to kill her, but upon finding out it was courtney underneath the mask, she couldn't bring herself to do it (although her fleeing the scene after hearing pat could have been viewed as her being too hurt by sir justin to finish the job, i chose to interpret it differently).
now that she had some leverage over courtney, cindy reverted back to her old view of things in which manipulation was the only way she could get what she wanted. she came to visit courtney knowing the whole time what her secret identity was, but visiting in the guise of friendship. cindy was aware that courtney knew who she was too, so the only rational reason cindy had to visit was to deliver her “threat” and reveal that she knew courtney’s secret identity. that could have been revealed immediately or even just through text or some other means, so my hypothesis is that cindy wanted to spend more time with courtney as friends before she decided her course of action. cindy could have easily killed courtney there given her numerous wounds, lack of her cosmic staff, and barbara’s blindness to what was going on, and indeed, that would’ve been much easier and more convenient for cindy.
when cindy opens up to courtney about how she was hurt by courtney’s cancellation of their plans (“and then cameron asked you to the dance, and you were bailing on me too”), it’s in a moment of vulnerability, and in a way, she’s testing how courtney will react to it knowing what she does now about cindy. when she’s still not met with revulsion or mocking, cindy takes that as a go-ahead, and later on the audience and courtney both get a glimpse of what she wants and is there for when she says, “i think if things were a little different, you’d be a lot more like me actually.” cindy sees both some of herself and the potential for a relationship (in whatever form it comes in) in courtney, and although she knows they’ve been placed on opposite sides of the conflict they’re facing, she wishes they weren’t. as she expresses just one line later, cindy really needs a friend right now, and she wants courtney to be that friend.
at the end of that scene, cindy reveals her knowledge of courtney’s identity, and claims that she’s only keeping this from her father because she doesn’t want to get sidelined (which doesn’t make sense--narratively, cindy has told her father everything she knows out of the hope that it will make him proud of her--and it’s much more likely that cindy just can’t bear the though of courtney dying), and she tells courtney, “i’ll be back. after i kill your friends.”
i believe that it’s only the buildup before cindy says this that convinces her to not turn courtney in or kill her right then and there. courtney is the only person who has been kind to her of her own volition and without any ulterior motives, and cindy still clings to that desperately despite courtney’s “betrayal” and the reveal that courtney is, essentially, her enemy. compared to her reactions to henry, her “boyfriend” who she was forced to date, dying (she literally did not care), and her father, who she tried to gain the approval of for years, also dying (she literally killed him), it just seems.... weird, right? i mean, why would cindy spare courtney when she has no qualms abt killing ppl she has much more of a relationship with? unless.... there’s something more 👀
then, much later, in 2x06, we see that repeated again. when cindy calls courtney to bait her into coming to the school, she says “i want to hurt you. not right away, though. first your friends and then your family. and after you’ve watched them all suffer, then you.” strange that this is repeated right? cindy’s had so many chances to kill or hurt courtney, but she hasn’t really done so seriously since their fight when she didn’t know it was courtney 🤔
which leads me, finally, to my conclusion... i think that cindy repeatedly threatens to kill courtney’s family and friends but not her, and rarely actually hurts her, because all she wants is courtney alone. in her warped mind, she believes that she can make courtney into her friend and ally and possibly more if she just manages to make sure that she’ll never have to worry about courtney turning to someone else..... which she believes she can accomplish by killing everyone else courtney is close to 👀 why courtney, you ask? well, like i said, because courtney was the first to show genuine kindness to her without wanting something from her!!
even when cindy is pulled into the shadowlands, she calls out for courtney--not one of her team members, not eclipso, but courtney, her supposed enemy.
and, as we see in the show, courtney stills rushes in to try to save her. despite everything cindy has done and all that’s happened between them, they are tied together and so maybe, just maybe, cindy wasn’t completely deluded.
maybe courtney would have forgiven her, or at least still tried to rebuild their broken relationship.
omg we haven’t talked in forever anyways i’m testing out colourful asks and just wanted to know what u think of dani burman actually being cast as a vampire 😈😈
OMGGG i forgot to respond to this but i love the colored asks first off- and second i am HYPED i love this development <3 girlboss shit
