Cordelia Chase (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
letsbe_clear) wrote2013-01-01 10:56 am
letsbe_clear) wrote2013-01-01 10:56 amcanon review } { season 1
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letsbe_clear) wrote2013-01-01 10:56 am
101 ~ welcome to the hellmouth ~ 268 words
It can be a hard thing to do in today’s world. You hear all the time how rife with temptation the world is, and how it’s easy to fall down the path of degradation and bad, and how to end up a loser sleeping in your parent’s basement with really terrible hair. Your actions have consequences. Social karma is very real, and Cordelia does her best to keep her karma up as high as it can go. She only dates the popular boys, always makes sure she’s dressed in the latest trends, and never ever associates herself with undesirables.
In fact, she’ll even go so far as to take the socially awkward and pathetically new under her wing, and show them a whole new world of popularity. It’s the least she can do. Popularity is her gift, but it is also her curse, in which she is obligated to share with the less fortunate.
Regardless, she tries to be a good person. She swept poor, unfortunate Buffy Summers under her wing, tried to show her the error of her ways, and what did that get her? Shoved up against a brick wall outside the Bronze with a hand to her throat and a broken piece of wood aimed at her heart. She may have been willing to give her a second chance after the whole Willow fiasco, but now?
No, now she is officially done.
“Excuse me, I now have to call everyone I’ve ever met.”
Buffy Summers? Enjoy your downward mobility. Cordelia will most certainly not be joining you.
102 ~ the harvest ~ 278 words
Worshiping her, obviously. Gorgeous good looks and charm. A certain amount of … respectability. Essentially it boils down to this: athletes, seniors, boys with cars—good. Anyone else? Not so much. She spends a lot of her time crafting herself so that she can attract quality men. Whether it’s the way she dresses to the things she says, having the right boyfriend is a status symbol—something to even further elevate her above the rest of her friends and drive home the point that Cordelia Chase is the girl to be.
Jesse? Does not fall under any of those criteria.
She never really gave Jesse a second thought, beyond the fact that he couldn’t seem to take a hint. The boy is just not Cordelia Chase material. He never is and he never will be. But for some reason, when he demands to dance with her that night at the Bronze, she lets him. Something about him is different. Something about him has changed.
“Shut up.”
And she does. It’s probably the strangest experience of her life.
Then some guy gets up on stage and starts rambling on about some ‘harvest’ and Jesse’s face changes and Cordelia is starting to think that this change in Jesse isn’t such a good thing. She gets dragged off for someone called ‘the Master’ and Jesse is complaining that she’s ‘his.’ That’s the moment when the spell breaks, and Cordelia realizes that Jesse is still the same whiney little brat he always was.
And he thought she was going to be his? Not in this lifetime.
… But she’ll worry about that after not dying.
103 ~ witch ~ 177 words
She doesn’t know why she did. She couldn’t see. She should have said something to her teacher and gotten out of the exercise, but she didn’t. The world is spinning around her, and she knows that she’s going to crash, but she keeps going.
The wheel feels strange under her hands, foreign. She turns the wheel but she doesn’t know where she’s going. She just hopes she’s going the right way, feeling the way the leather slides under her palms and listening to the screams her of classmates, hoping that she doesn’t get anyone killed.
It isn’t until she feels herself get tackled to the ground (by Buffy? It sounds like Buffy) that she actually admits something’s wrong. By then her vision is complete blackness, and she can’t see anything in front of her. She reaches for Buffy’s arm, and the other girl pulls her to her feet and gets her out of the street.
Cordelia can’t be blind. She hasn’t been crowned prom queen yet.
104 ~ teacher's pet ~ 200 words
It’s not that she doesn’t see the benefits of always being the one to find the body (seven and a half ounces is nothing to shake at), she just really thinks that it’s a far grosser experience than she needs to be exposed to. Especially considering the body was left where she kept her food.
Super gross.
Still, there is always a bright side to everything. Adults bend over backwards to try and make sure she’s getting what she needs, that she isn’t too traumatized. Of course she’s traumatized, she found a body in a freezer. Her parents make her see all the counselors and try to make sure that she doesn’t descend into a life of crime or something equally cliché, and while she’s grateful for the (temporary) attention, she knows it isn’t going to last.
People will forget eventually and things will go back to the way they were. Until then she soaks up the attention while she can get it, and revel in the benefits.
After all, she lost seven and a half ounces.
She’s pretty sure she’s never eating out of that freezer again.
105 ~ never kill a boy on the first date ~ 292 words
There are certain things that she’s always going to have. It’s a benefit of her undeniable popularity and drive. She works for what she wants and makes sure at the end of the day, everything’s coming up Cordelia. The one thing that hasn’t seemed to comply with her accepted view of reality, for the moment, is Owen.
This is not a disaster. Disasters don’t have solutions—or have solutions that could be otherwise avoidable. Shoving Buffy Summers off the nearest cliff may be an easy fix to the problem, but it’s also a messy one. Cordelia is going to have to win this one on the basis of her wits, and if anyone can do it, it’s her. After all, she manages to sneak in a few dances with him when Buffy doesn’t show. That’s laying the groundwork.
The problem is the time when Buffy does show. She and Owen are all over each other, and Cordelia has to wonder what kind of world she is living in. This is a problem in the natural order. It doesn’t matter that Owen isn’t interested in her at all—the real problem is the fact that he’s interested in Buffy.
That level of freakiness should really get you nowhere.
Still, when Salty Goodness walks into the Bronze and just stands there with his shoulders and general level of hotness, Cordelia almost forgets that Owen exists. He is the perfect option for getting a step up on Buffy. She smoothes down her hair, squares her shoulders, and is prepared to make her move until …
… he makes a beeline for Buffy.
Cordelia has officially stepped into the Twilight Zone. Stop the ride, she wants to get off.
107 ~ angel
109 ~ the puppet show ~ 200 words
Her dress is perfect. Her hair is perfect. She’s been rehearsing her song for weeks, spending time making sure the sparklers went off properly, and even if Mr. Giles never let her sing it properly all the way through, she put in the time after hours to make sure it was right. This is her singing debut, her opportunity to show Sunnydale (and the world) the star that she’s going to become.
Brett’s band finishes their homage to punk rock which sounds a lot more like a homage to a car accident, but regardless, the curtain closes and now is Cordelia’s time. Now is the opportunity she’s been waiting for.
She struts her way onto the stage, stopping dead center and looking out over the crowd. Everyone is looking at her with rapt anticipation, waiting to see how she will wow them. And she will wow them. There is no doubt in her mind that she will do the song the justice it deserves. Nay, she may even be better than the original.
She takes a breath, raises her arm and starts to sing. Whitney, eat your heart out.
110 ~ nightmares
111 ~ out of sight, out of mind ~ 260 words
People really don’t understand how much work it is. It’s like playing politics. You can’t just be yourself and damn the consequences. You can’t worry if people actually care about what you’re saying, or how you feel. You just need for there to be people—the right people. You play your cards and hope that at the end of the day, you find what you’re looking for in a sea of not.
Yes, Cordelia can be cruel. Yes, she can be self-centered. But does it make it right to beat up her boyfriend? Or to shove her best friend down a flight of stairs? Or do radical plastic surgery on her face? No. Absolutely not. Cordelia Chase is not some a lesson to be learned. She is a fierce alpha female who will eat you alive if you didn’t play things her way and you don’t make an example out of her without paying the consequences.
This is exactly what she was saying in class: just because you’re oppressed, doesn’t make it okay. Plenty of people are unpopular and weird in high school, and they don’t turn into homicidal maniacs. Take Buffy, for example.
… Or maybe don’t take Buffy, she is pretty violent.
The point is, it isn’t about who is more popular than who. It’s about common human decency and playing the roles you’re given. After all, we can’t all be super popular.
If we were, what would be the point?