[Chanting] Freddy Krueger Freddy Krueger Freddy Krueger
how i feel about this character: oh, i’ve come to fucking adore him after a long period of time of not liking him at all. my change of heart is partially headcanon-driven — I randomly sat down one day and thought “what if freddy’s character was approached like This instead of what canon did with him?” — and partially just. accepting that freddy has Always been a really fun character. i realized that most of the disgusting shit the writers tacked onto him was unnecessary. it didn’t have to be there, it didn’t alter his character in any way other than being there to make the audience uncomfortable. and once i began rejecting that, i began to look at freddy in a different light while still acknowledging he’s a villain. and you know what? his villainy is why i like him. he’s just so… dementedly, cartoonishly evil, and i can’t get enough of that.
all the people I ship romantically with this character: i’m a filthy frason shipper at heart, but i’m picky about how it’s approached. i acknowledge it’s a problematic ship and a deeply unhealthy one in the beginning, but with time and extensive character development, i really think freddy — or at least, My freddy — could come to respect jason, which would eventually lead to Other Things. he admits at the beginning of freddy vs jason that there are things about jason he admires, and you KNOW his chaotic bisexual ass was lusting even though he was a complete dick about it. but really, can ANYONE see freddy expressing feelings in a way that ISN’T totally fucked up? i sure as hell can’t. additionally, i ship freddy with @antlercrack’s lovely oc bart — they have a lot of tasty parallels between them, and a begrudging respect for each other — and in a three-way poly relationship with jason and bubba sawyer. just because i love leatherjase too and want a world where jason can have both boys. i also ship freddy/michael to an extent… just because ruben also writes mike and we came to a mutual agreement they’d be into each other. i may also have some thoughts brewing about a freddy/donald thompson crackship, so stay tuned for that.
my non-romantic otp for this character: probably freddy and my own version of loretta krueger, tbh! i have some fanfic in the works for those two and i’m super excited to share it. the way i approach the relationship is pretty different than what most of the fandom is used to, i think, but then again my freddy himself is a very different animal than canon!fred. not so different that he’s unrecognizable (hopefully!) or doesn’t feel like himself anymore, but slightly different in terms of his backstory and how he ended up the way he did. i don’t want to spoil too much, but loretta is someone who’s extremely important to him, and continues to be important to him long after he dies. she’s a driving force in his life and afterlife, and while i stop shipping them romantically after a Certain Point in their arc (more on that in a separate post, one day), it’s still a character dynamic that means a lot to me. i know i’m being kind of vague right now but i promise it’ll make more sense later down the line!
my unpopular opinion about this character: oh boy, this is a tough one, since opinions on freddy are already so divided and varied throughout the horror fandom as is. again, i don’t want to give away any spoilers for upcoming fanfic, nor do i want to delve too deeply into really serious subject matter in any otherwise lighthearted character meme… so for now, all i’m going to say is, i think freddy is a lot more complicated than a lot of his canon writers give him credit for. make no mistake, he’s still a terrible, godawful fucking person — he’s a sadistic, twisted piece of shit — but i think he has certain limitations. i think he sincerely does love his wife and child, and i think he feels a lot of remorse towards his mother and what happened to her, even if he doesn’t handle it very well. freddy may be a cartoonish villain, but i really dislike when people write him as a one-dimensional villain. i think there could be a lot more to him than that, and i hope i do it justice when i explore the meatier parts of him in my writing.
one thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: some sort of resolution with englund’s version of the character would’ve been nice! part of me likes how open-ended FVJ is — the implication that freddy, jason and their rivalry will continue to go on off-camera, which gives plenty of fuel for us content creators — but at the same time, the movie wasn’t written to be The End of those respective canons, you know? i would’ve liked a sense of finality for the OG freddy, whether it’s the implication that he’s going to continue the resurrection-murder-death cycle for the rest of eternity, or that he’s finally going to be put down for good. FVJ is a very fun movie, albeit a deeply flawed one, but it definitely shouldn’t have been robert’s swan song. it would’ve been nice to have gotten an official good-bye for his version of the character before the torch got passed to someone else. i feel like he deserved to have at least one, maybe two or three more films under his belt before putting the claw away for good — and we were supposed to get them! thanks a lot, studio meddling…
