Problematic because: "She's a tabloid journalist who keeps wandering into active serial-killer cases like privacy laws are optional and trauma is just content she hasn’t monetised yet. She snoops around crime scenes, posts details that can interfere with investigations, sensationalises Will’s work/mental state, secretly records people, and has apparently been sued for libel multiple times, which tells you a lot about the professional standards at TattleCrime. She pushes herself into Abigail Hobbs’ life after Abigail has survived her father’s murders, tries to turn her into book material, and reveals information that helps Nicholas Boyle find her. Then later, during Will’s trial, she testifies that Abigail told her Will planned to kill and eat her, because of course Freddie’s journalism career has somehow made it into the courtroom too. She’s not a murderer, and in a show full of cannibals that almost makes her look normal, but she is absolutely exploiting victims, suspects, and active investigations for clicks whenever she thinks she can get away with it."
Propaganda: 1. "She is honestly one of the funniest characters to me because she’s awful, but she’s also weirdly necessary. Everyone around her is lying, hiding bodies, protecting institutions, covering for killers, or pretending they’re above the mess. Freddie is not above the mess. Freddie is inside the mess with a camera, a headline, and absolutely no shame. And look, I’m not saying she has ethics. She barely has manners. But in a show where half the respectable professionals are either enabling Hannibal, missing the obvious, or actively making Will worse, there’s something very satisfying about Freddie being this annoying little cockroach journalist who keeps surviving and keeps noticing things she probably shouldn’t. She’s exploitative, yes, but she’s also not wrong as often as people want her to be. Will is dangerous. Hannibal is hiding something. The FBI is a mess. Freddie just has the worst possible way of being correct."
2. "she’s selfish, nosy, exploitative, and allergic to minding her business, but she’s also so entertaining because she has zero reverence for anyone. not will, not jack, not hannibal, not the fbi. if there’s a scandal, she is crawling through the air vents of it with a recorder. also iirc she might be the only person outside of bedelia + the mizumono fiasco hannibal has tried to kill and failed to?"
3. "She is basically what happens when “true crime girlie” becomes a public menace. She has no business being as brave as she is, considering she keeps inserting herself into situations where the murderers are very much still nearby. She’ll break into someone’s barn, find evidence of something horrifying, pepper-spray her way out, and then somehow still have the energy to make it about the article. That’s commitment. Horrible commitment, but commitment. The best thing about her is that she annoys absolutely everyone. Will hates her, Hannibal finds her rude, Jack finds her useful until she’s a problem, Alana thinks she’s awful, the audience is sitting there like “Freddie, please stop” and also “Freddie, please continue, this is funny.” She’s not sympathetic in the soft tragic way, but she’s not meant to be. She’s a vulture with a blog, a legal team somewhere having migraines, and the survival instincts of someone who has somehow dodged being eaten through sheer narrative irritation."
Problematic because: "One word: pedophile. Multiple words: Dean saves Emily Brydd Starr when she is twelve, and says things like: her life belongs to him, he’ll wait for her, he’ll teach her (to write) love talk some day. He is very jealous. Emily as a young adult presents him with her novel which she has failed to get published a few times; he cruelly criticises it despite thinking it could get published (and she ends up burning it)."
Propaganda: "I think the books would be different without him there. Early on, Emily’s talks with Dean are where she feels like she has someone to understand her; she describes them as ‘the salt of life’ (iirc) at some point. Later on, she’s not quite sure what his intentions toward her are. It’s so interesting that the home they build together when they’re engaged is the one Emily is to live in with Teddy. Dean referring to Emily as Star (which always icked me personally) to represent her unobtainability while later breaking off their engagement and saying ‘I will not marry a woman who’s heart is another man’s.’ He’s an intellectual mentor to Emily, but is also a threat to her creativity."
