Bambikles wrote:Why does everyone seem to assume Dakota's intelligence is somehow subpar ? Seems like fanon to me.
Did you see what she does? How she used mind control to cover her clumsiness in the previous cover up, how the Tacky Wand recruited her.
Technically, we see overeager naivette, lack of foresight, bad analytical abilities, "I know best!" self-righteousness, and extreme clumsiness at deception (without any noticeable reluctance). But how to put this in one word?
Note that her "intimidating dad" routine, while probably laudable from the viewpoint of her magical sponsor, in itself is an entire thick layer of terminal folly. She had a good idea
what sort of people her daughter deals with. There's always a chance that one of Mel's accessory boyfriends turns out to be either immune to her mind control trinket or simply flinchy and very fast - after she turned the encounter hostile. Every single time she did it, there was a mostly needless risk that e.g. a vampire goes bullet-speed and snaps her neck, demon gets "time-out" and beheads her with one of her own swords, or mad scientist cooks her extra-extra-crispy with some "oh, just an upgraded flashlight", and she did not mitigate this risk, but made it as bad as possible. Sure, he would have to apologize to Melissa later ("She tried to move at me with a weapon, so I thought - hey, maybe one of those rumored witch-burners wants to get you and eliminate me as a witness? You didn't say anything about your so called dad being a lady, after all, exactly the opposite, what would you think in my place?..") - but what good would it be to Dakota
or her magical sponsor (who is more important to her)? Even if one of the boys wasn't hypnotized, but pretended to be, he would quietly inform Melissa, and this would get things explosively pear-shaped and flying in Dakota's face in no time.