Do you know a piece of media that is deeply misogynistic and want to see it fight similar media?

Be it a book, tv show, movie, comic, or anything else, have you ever encountered something and been like, "Wow, the misogyny is really jumping out here"? Whether it's sidelining female characters and downplaying their abilities, objectification, sexualization, transmisogyny, misogynoir, fridging, gratuitous sexual violence, women walking boobily down the stairs, or anything else, sometimes the contents of a work are just dripping with misogyny and you're like, "No, stop it! Bad creator, bad! Treat your ladies better!"

And now is your opportunity to see these works fight each other! It's time to go to bat for the ladies who deserved better and decide what is the #1 work we should point to and go, "That. Don't do that. Like anything in that."

Submit the work you want to beat with a bat labeled "Respect Women" here! The form closes December 13, 2023 at 12am EST.

NOTE: You can submit a work and add additional propaganda later when you have more time under the condition that you add "(repeat)" after the title of the work you're submitting.

You can view how many times a work has been submitted here.

NOTE: This is updated manually, not automatically, so there will be a time delay in updating the count.

EDIT: I previously forgot to actually open the form, but it is now open!

RULES:

The misogyny must be in canon, not fandom

Don't submit a single work multiple times, but please submit as many different works as you want!

No terfs or other bigotry

No real people, real groups, or Harry Potter

TAGS:

@victimsofyaoipoll  @tournamentdirectory @girlbosstourney @who-do-i-know-this-man @sciencegeniusgirlshowdown @science-lesbian-swag-showdown @most-fuckable-ff-woman @toxic-mothers-tourney @elderlytourney @retirement-home-rumble @females-fucked-over-tourney @tournament-announcer @wronglymalignedwomenofanime @the-ballerina-battle @gaslightgatekeepgirlbosscombat @look-how-they-massacred-them @horror-lady-tournament @generic-anime-boy-bracket @greengirlfight @purplegirltournament @autistic-anime-girls-bracket @autisticgirliesbracket @girlygirltournament @ultimate-anime-tournament @animemusicbrackets @best-transgender-character @transandautisticswagcompetition @transgenderswagincartoons @tournament-winners-tournament @character-of-all-time @beefy-babe-showdown @homoerotic-shonen-rival-showdown @autisticgirliesbracket @best-female-villain-tournament @princess-polls @worst-mother-throwdown @frilliestmagicalgirlthrowdown @fave-fight @toxicyuribracket

Our victors, everyone! After over two months of polls, we have our winners, our beloved ladies done the absolute dirtiest. Writers, take heed: do not follow in their writers' footsteps! Learn from the pitfalls their writing fell into, and do better! Delightful characters, all three, who were mistreated by the narrative and written with misogynistic tropes that should not be replicated.

In third place, we have Misa Amane from Death Note!

In second place, we have Cordelia Chase from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel the Series!

And finally, in first place, we have Bumble from Warrior Cats!

Stay tuned, everyone, the Misogynistic Media Tournament to determine the series we should replicate least when it comes to writing ladies and beat with a Respect Women bat most will be coming December 5, 2023 at 12pm EST over at @misogynisticmediatournament!

All Submissions and Propaganda

We have come to our end, which means it is time to release copies of the original submissions as well as additional propaganda. I wanted to put the propaganda in one master post, but it's 123k words and I am too lazy to split it into multiple tumblr posts, so you'll have to settle for a google doc link.

Original Submissions Plus Additional Propaganda:

All Propaganda with Content Warnings:

It's uh...not super clear to me who won. Can we get a victory circle or something. I see bumble and Cordelia but also it seems like Misa and asuna were also listed as bracket 128....which I do not understand.

Bumble won, with Cordelia in second, Misa in third, and Asuna in fourth. Bumble vs Cordelia was the final match, while Misa and Asuna had a match for third place. I've edited the bracket photos and the posts to add this distinction, and deleted the 24 hour remaining posts as they lacked the new distinction.

Exit Survey

Now that the results are in and we have our winner, it's time to do a postmortem with an exit survey. I have questions about the mechanics, structure, and posting of the poll, among other things, and you have answers for me. Feedback here will be helpful when I create and run other polls such as the misogynistic media poll, so please tell me your thoughts here:

This survey will be open until December 5, 2023 at 12am EST.

THIRD PLACE

PROPAGANDA

ASUNA (SWORD ART ONLINE) (CW: Sexual Assault, Sexual Harassment, Tentacles)

1.) So the sins with Asuna really become outright in the second arc, Alfheim, where she goes from being an active, main character to being in a coma in the real world and locked away in a literal cage so that finding/rescuing her could be her boyfriend/virtual husband and protagonist Kirito’s motivation for the season. On top of that, the guy who’s trapping her (his name is Sugou) has dressed her in a revealing outfit and is constantly being creepy toward her and then literally sexually assaults her. Have I mentioned that she’s a teenager and he’s an adult? When she tries to escape, she’s also captured by these monsters with tentacles (who are actually just employees who look like tentacle monsters) and held up upsidedown by their tentacles, and there is a whole scene of her talking with these guys with her held like this, and there are multiple shots that are very objectifying. And then at the end of the scene, one of the dudes leaves to do something and goes “hey, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do while I’m gone” and then the other dude tries to sexually assault her with his tentacles, and it is very much drawn in a titilating manner, like the show looks like it’s about to turn into tentacle hentai, with close up shots of tentacles wrapping around parts of her body (e.g. stomach, thighs) and then panning down her whole body as the tentacles are rippling over her. There’s even a shot of the lower half of her face (not her whole face, that might convey too much personhood) where the tentacle moves toward her mouth in a very “oh god, this is a scene from hentai” way as part of the, y'know sexual assault, and, while it doesn’t go in her mouth because she bites it in self-defense and fends the assault off first, it still gets that far. Why is this here? What does it add to the plot or her character? Nothing. It adds nothing; it’s just there for titilization. Similarly, the scene where her captor sexually assaults her includes shots like a close up of him dragging his finger up her bare stomach, and there is no reason for it to be shot like that unless it is for “fan service”, for lack of a better term. Hell, he tears off her shirt, and the shot after he does isn’t her face but Kirito’s, and she spends the rest of the scene shirtless but with strands of her hair covering her nipples. He forcefully kisses her (for a while too, although at least we don’t see that in detail) and tears one of her skirts, and it is horrific, but the focus of the scene is how evil Sugou is and how it upsets Kirito, and we get very little from Asuna. The person who gets an interior monologue about the situation is Kirito. The person who gains the ability to fight on via scene in his mind is Kirito. It transitions into a fight scene, and Asuna is just kind of hanging there off screen, and when it ends, the person who cries is Kirito, and the one who does the comforting is Asuna, and it is INSANE, like WHAT???

2.) She is sexually harrassed frequently. Then she gets abducted, so her love interest can be all “"cool”“ and ”“heroic”“ saving her.

Most infamously, though, she is sexually assaulted, on screen, for the sake of manpain and titillation. She is 17 when this happens btw.

Also I’m pretty sure every female character in this series qualifies, but (for what I think are obvious reasons) I don’t really go here.

3.) Kirito took all of her brain cells and replaced it with two. Actually, , I take it back. King Oberon absorbed all of her brain cells. It will take Asuna a thousand years to regain all of her brain cells.

MISA AMANE (DEATH NOTE) (CW: Imprisonment, Torture)

1.) Misa is treated so phenomenally poorly by the writers of Death Note. She is devoted enough to Kira’s cause to sacrifice half her lifespan for the additional power to see people’s names just by seeing their faces (you need a face and a name to kill someone with the Death Note), and she takes the time to understand everything about it. She, a random civilian, is able to find Kira all by herself by being clever, and she’s very devoted to Kira and Kira’s cause. You would think this would earn her some respect and make her a force in the narrative in opposition both to L’s lawfulness and Light’s god complex (because Misa is a true believer, while Light is some dude with a god complex and a willingness to commit mass murder to further it), but no, the moment she meets Light she falls hopelessly in love with him (not just Kira according to her), pledges her loyalty to him, and agrees to mindlessly follow him, with her sole condition being that he can’t date other girls (and if he tried to, she’d kill the other girl; note how this is not a threat on LIGHT’S life) and has to date her and at least pretend to love her. You would think, again, that these would become problems that potentially fuck Light over, but they are mild inconveniences at best. And, despite her ability to find Kira and only get found out by bullshit trace DNA and pollen nonsense that she, again as a random civilian with no knowledge of forensics that honestly sound SO FAKE (really, trace pollen from something that is super rare and exists near her apartment but few other places? Trace pollen that got in the shit she put together INDOORS? Come on, that’s SUCH bullshit, and SO contrived), had no way of knowing existing. Because she DID circumvent all the ways she’d incriminate herself that a normal person would know about, but because they got her on the SMALLEST SHIT, they’re like “oh, she’s an idiot.” And it’s not in a “oh, look at these guys, underestimating her” way, it’s in an “oh yeah, they’re 100% right, she’s an idiot” way.

EVERYONE in universe regards her as an idiot, both when she’s just known as the Second Kira and once her identity has been found out. The creators in a bonus book rank her knowledge at 3/10 and her creativity at 4/10, which is SUCH bullshit when all of her plans (the few ones they let her have) make creative use of her powers and talents. Like, she sent a video into a tv station that contained a journal entry that had multiple dates on it, with one being clear bait for the police to approach, one being irrelevant, and one containing information that only someone with a Death Note would understand, and she uses this to indicate a time and place they should meet. Except she doesn’t meet him there, she dresses up in a plain outfit and wig that look NOTHING like her and sits and watches the crowd, waiting for someone to walk by who is missing the date of their death above their head (an indicator that that person has a Death Note), and then goes home and researches him online. That is objectively clever! Even if the cops were there, which they were, they would never notice her (and they didn’t) or figure out that she got the information she needed. HOW is that not creative? HOW does that support her being an idiot? Light tricked a woman (Naomi Misora, who deserves her own entry) into giving her his name one time in a way that almost gave him away, and that was regarded as sooooo clever, but this is stupid? Ohba, explain. Matsuda, who I love dearly but also who has never a plan half as clever or interesting as hers, gets knowledge at 4/10 and creativity at 5/10. It’s misogyny, there’s no other reason that makes sense.

And when her anonymous videos that she used to draw out Kira mention the shinigami and notebooks very subtly, in a way the police wouldn’t understand, Light is like “Second Kira, you IDIOT”, but meanwhile, when Light had a victim mention shinigami in a note written before they died for the sole purpose of fucking with L, the narrative is like “Oh, look at him, he’s so clever mentioning shinigami when L has no way of knowing how important and real they are.” The double standard of it all!

Also, ok, so, the reason L dies is because Misa’s shinigami Rem fell in love with her and wants to protect her, even if it results in Rem’s death (which it does because a shinigami dies if they kill someone for the purpose of saving someone else). However, Misa is not involved AT ALL in getting Rem to go through with this. Light manipulates Rem into doing it, and the fact that this also doesn’t bite him in the ass, even though Misa and Rem were friends, is INSANE. Their logic is clearly that obviously Misa would never rebel against Light because it’s not like she has an internal life and feelings outside of devotion to Light, and if she did, she couldn’t do anything because she’s an idiot, so it’s not worth exploring. God forbid she have agency and be a force in the narrative, even though it would make the story more interesting and complex. She doesn’t even need to be super smart for that! The creators THEMSELVES rank her social skills, charm, and initiative at 10/10, and she gets to use them all of one (1) time. They just keep not letting her do things, and it’s at the expense of their story EVERY SINGLE TIME.

Also, after this, she’s gives up her Death Note (which means she loses her memories involved with being a Death Note user) when Light tells her to, and then she’s just written out of the story, with the exception of her looking sexy, being a jealous girlfriend, and being implied to die, even though TWO shinigami died for her and thus gave her their lifespans. Yeah, she halved one of those, gained the other, then halved that again, but she should have gained more than a total of, like, eight years from that! But no, Light’s story is done, so why would Misa survive when he didn’t?

That’s not to mention the weird fetish-y way she was tied up when imprisoned. She wasn’t in her normal clothes that she had been apprehended in, no, she was put in this raggedy, white straightjacket-looking thing, with a blindfold and her arms crossed over her and fastened behind her back. She was kept on some slab and set upright for FIFTY DAYS. Like, look at this shit:

Meanwhile, Light, who was also imprisoned, kept his regular clothes and only had his arms tied behind his back normally. The only difference in the powers they were assumed to have is that she could kill with just a face. So why the weird outfit, huh, Ohba, Obata? And, like, they sell FIGURES OF IT in the real world, people can BUY her in this outfit and DISPLAY it, and it is CLEARLY because they think some Death Note fans would find it arousing. And if the whole show was just fetish shit in all directions, then, sure, fine, go for it, but it is JUST her in this moment! And, like, if it was supposed to show something about L and how he’s kinda fucked up like that, you would think it would, like, come up again or something but it gets a fleeting mention ONCE and then THAT IS IT. Why do this, literally why??? Like, how high did they get off their own misogyny to come up with this?

I just. I can’t with how they treat Misa, I CANNOT. Like, I know they love to jerk off Light and talk about he’s sooooo smart and clever and charming, but this goes beyond putting her down because they want to lift him up. They put her in to cause some chaos a couple of times, pull some fetish shit, provide the method for killing L (but not do it herself or even play any active role at all in it), and then they’re done with her. She’s a convenient tool to the writers, not a character, unlike most of the male characters whose emotional reactions to Light’s bullshit come back to haunt him. For example: the way his responsibility for his father’s death and his dismissal of his father during his big confession lead Matsuda, who had liked Light but had a stronger emotional connection to his dad, to shoot him in a way that stops Light from using his Death Note scrap to get out of being surrounded after being definitively revealed to be Kira. And like, I love that moment for Matsuda, it’s great, my favorite scene in the whole show, but why don’t Misa’s emotions and bonds get to drive her to action in a way that is inconvenient to Light? Fine, she has unending devotion, why not have THAT do anything either? And it’s because this is the same type of treatment all the female characters in Death Note get (although Misa gets it worse by a country mile), being a POTENTIAL to MILD problem for Light and/or a person to use the Death Note in his place but little else, or someone to get kidnapped, it makes it clear that Misa’s treatment here is due to misogyny that infects the whole text, and it just. It rankles.

2.) Despite having the potential to be an interesting character (unhinged death note who doesn’t have excuses for killing people like Light does, actual connection to her Shinigami), she just gets reduced to Light’s plaything and fangirl, literally keeling over backwards for him. She ends up having nothing to do in the story, being reduced to this hollow shell of what she could have been, with her only personality trait being that she’s obsessed with Light, even after he routinely ignores her and even cheats on her. Every woman in Death Note gets put on the sidelines so the male characters can take the spotlight, but Misa easily has the biggest wasted potential of any of them.

3.) Left as flat, annoying, and obsessed with a guy who treats her badly the entire series. Could have had a lot more development but she just gets treated like an idiot at every turn despite HER INTRODUCTION including a pretty clever plan actually. As the series goes on it feels like they make her less and less intelligent just to justify why she’s keeping the exact same dynamic with light. Honestly the more i think about it the weirder that gets.

I don’t think it’s a problem in itself to have a character who isn’t especially intelligent or is easily manipulated or is an obsessive fan, and you can make really interesting stories using characters with those traits. But DN just did not do that, and honestly I think if Misa was written a bit smarter (not necessarily super detective chess nonsense smart, just having actual fucking agency and being able to come up with plans of her own) the series would be way better for it. You get a whole new dimension to the conflicts and scheming if she’s acting on her own terms, or trying to help and doing something unexpected, or just generally having another character with a death note and complicated ties to the main characters and actual human agency. Like even STAYING obsessed with Light she could have been so much more and the specifics of her motivations could be explored in more interesting detail than just making her a rabid fangirl even having spent enough time with the object of her obsession that the dynamic should have evolved.

She’s in a classic of the “so misogynistic it turned out gay” genre and like good for the gays i guess but holy shit she got done so dirty. She deserved better and DN would have been not only better in the “don’t be a jerk towards entire groups of people” sense but also probably better as a drama intrigue situation if the authors had a crumb of respect for her.

Also due to the story events she’s set to die pretty young and this is barely addressed? It’s a sidenote really and a lot of people die but Rem is the only one who gives a shit and their reaction is not focused on for long. I will not start about her and Rem because that will make this much much longer and is relevant more to why i like Misa than to why she got fucked over. (But hey it’s kinda fucked that she definitely did have people who supported and cared for her and they all got stripped away and it’s not even played as fucked up that this woman has no support network save for one guy who would kill her in a heartbeat if he thought it would help him and also that Misa can’t fully see the people who do care about her until it’s too late and this is never played as dark and serious in a series that thrives on being dark)

It’s just really really obvious that the authors do not see or write her as a person.

tl;dr SHE’S THE SECOND FUCKING KIRA and she gets treated like a PROP for most of the story. gets downgraded to scenery actually later in the story

actual tl;dr: introduced with an interesting plan and motivations worth exploring, slowly has her undeveloped personality steamrollered further and is treated like a tool and a prop for the rest of the series.

FINALS

PROPAGANDA

BUMBLE (WARRIOR CATS) (CW: Domestic Abuse)

1.) Back with another Warriors submission, I bet you’ll be getting a lot from other people too LMAO. Bumble is a kittypet (housecat) who befriends the male protagonist Gray Wing’s girlfriend, Turtle Tail, and lets her stay in her house. This gets Gray Wing all pissy because he’s controlling of Turtle Tail and shares most of the wild/clan cat’s proclivity for looking down upon kittypets. Turtle Tail gets pregnant by another kittypet, Tom, who tries to control her by hiding the fact that humans take away kittens after they’re born. Eventually Bumble comes clean about it so Turtle Tail returns to the forest. Some time later, Bumble is found in the forest seeking refuge because Tom has been physically abusing her, scratching her where the humans can’t see. So, she’s CANONICALLY ACKNOWLEDGED as a domestic abuse victim (unlike Squirrelflight who meets all the textbook signs but the narrative and authors deny it). How do you think our good guy protagonists, i.e. Gray Wing “The Wise” and Turtle Tail, respond to an abuse victim seeking refuge? They tell Bumble to go home, thinking to themselves that she’s fat and soft and therefore would be useless in their group. Bumble stands up for herself and asks to speak with the leaders of the group. One of them asks if Bumble could just get along with Tom better (bro???) and when Bumble says it’s not within her control, the leader suggests being nicer to the humans instead. Another rival leader butts in and verbally abuses Bumble again by ripping into how fat and lazy and useless she would be. Despite Turtle Tail having been friends with Bumble and Bumble had helped her through her own hard times, to Gray Wing’s approval Turtle Tail chooses not to intervene as Bumble is forcibly escorted back to her abuser. But that’s not all. Later Bumble is found in the forest maimed and dying, and it seems likely that Gray Wing’s brother Clear Sky, a male with a long history of violence, is the culprit. Rather than mourn the dying innocent cat, Gray Wing’s primary concern is how other cats might be mean to Clear Sky if they think he’s a murderer, and reassures himself that refusing to help Bumble in her time of need was still the right decision.

2.) I have no idea how she managed to be written so horrifically from an abuse victim and woman (/she-cat I guess) standpoint but here we are. Okay so my memory is a bit fuzzy but basically Bumble was a character in Dawn of the Clans and a close friend to Turtle Tail, a major character, as well as a character who lived close to Tom, an abusive dickhead of a cat. Bumble was largely depicted as just a really sweet cat. Turtle Tail was very briefly the mate of Turtle Tail, but once she got pregnant, he became super violent towards both her and our gal Bumble. Tom actively hid the fact that, once her kits were old enough, Turtle Tail’s kits would probably be taken from her, and made Bumble keep quiet about this too, but Bumble eventually told Turtle Tail the truth, Turtle Tail left and Tom became extremely violent towards Bumble because of this, and was extremely abusive towards her. Eventually, Bumble ran away from him to where Turtle Tail and co were and begged to stay, since the wilderness as a whole was genuinely more safe than being around Tom was. Naturally, this meant kitty xenophobia from cats who had only arrived in that area recently, because everybody was insistent than, since she was a kittypet/house cat, things wouldn’t work out, and even her friend Turtle Tail denied her on this, insisted she was too soft to live in the wild and only sent her towards a cat Bumble wanted to convince because she was absolutely certain she’d be denied. Also our good old protagonist Gray Wing got to spend this scene being all upset about this soft cat wanting to join them to escape an abuser and was all bitter about the fact that Turtle Tail lived with her for a short period of time, and he also got to have a sweet romantic moment with Turtle Tail after denying an abuse victim an escape from her abuser. Also as much as I like Tall Shadow usually she sucked ass in the following scene because she was essentially telling Bumble to go find a way to make peace with Tom as if she was not the one being abused (Bumble pointed out that Tom was the one who would need to make peace for it to happen, not her) and that she should just make life better by going back to being a housecat and being spoiled despite the fact that she was actively at risk with her owners because of Tom. Then she leaves after being threatened by several cats there and is called soft on the way out. The next time she appears she is literally dying, and her death is just a plot device to create a stupid little mystery which is solved in a very stupid way. Also her abuser does continue to be a shithead and for some reason is fully permitted to kidnap his own children but he also gets a heroic death and the only reason I will not rant more about him is because this is too long already. Long story short Bumble deserves the world and everybody who decided not to let her escape her abuser just because they thought she was soft sucks

3.) Is nice to the group of starving, feral wild cats that left the mountains so their friends and family could have more food to eat and befriends one of them to the point of opening her home to her after she leaves the group because the guy she likes is too dumb to notice she likes him and keeps falling for his brother’s love interests.

Unfortunately, because Bumble is a house cat who lives in a house with people and not a Wild and Free cat, this is a grave and horrible crime (luring a wild cat into the safety and comforts of domesticity) and is villainized for the rest of the arc, including for things wildly out of her control

I.E.

Her owners taking in an aggressive male cat that bullies and abuses the two female cats already living there

When Bumble’s friend leaves and goes back to the wild cats, Bumble leaves her home (as the abuse as has gotten worse) to see if she could either get help or have her friend return so the abuse isn’t as bad again)

Bumble eventually dies in the wild because the feral cats all hate her for ‘stealing’ their friend and tricking her into becoming a kittypet for awhile and refuse to help Bumble adjust to wild life or even teaching her how to hunt.

They are littl e to no hard feelings at her death beyond ‘good riddance’ but the aggressive tomcat that chased her out of her home is later regarded with good feelings and regret at such a ‘good, heroic cat’ passing when he dies despite him literally never doing a good or kind thing in his life and actually causing trouble for the wild cats right before dying

CORDELIA CHASE (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER/ANGEL THE SERIES) (CW: Pregnancy)

1.) (downs an entire bottle of vodka and slams it back on the table) SO. CORDY. Cordy started off as a supporting character in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. At the start she was your typical high school mean girl character, but as the show went on we got to see more depth to her character: her insecurities, her courage, her capacity for incredible acts of kindness. Then after the third season she moved into the show’s spin off, Angel, where from the beginning she was basically the show’s secondary protagonist. Her and Angel were the two mainstays of the show’s main cast, she gets the most episodes centered on her out of all the characters aside from Angel (and yes, I’ve checked), and we really got to see her grow from a very shallow and self-centered and kind of mean person to a true hero who was prepared to give up any chance at a normal life to fight the good fight while still never losing the basic core of her character. There were some… questionable moments like the episode where she gets mystically pregnant with demon babies and things got a bit iffy like halfway through season 3 where the writers seemed to run out of ideas for what to do with her outside of sticking her in this romance drama/love triangle situation with the main character but overall, pretty good stuff right? THEN SEASON 4 HAPPENED. In season 4 she gets stripped of literally all agency and spends pretty much the entire season possessed by an evil higher power, and while possessed she sleeps with Angel’s teenage son (who BY THE WAY she had helped raise as a baby before he got speed-grown-up into a teenager it was a whole thing don’t worry about it) and gets pregnant with like. the physical manifestation of the higher power that’s possessing her. it’s about as bad and stupid as it sounds and also is like the third time cordy’s got mystically pregnant in this show and like the fourth mystical pregnancy storyline overall (you will be hearing more on that note in other submissions I’m so sorry). after giving birth she goes into a coma, in which she remains for the rest of season 4 and the first half of season 5. SPEAKING OF WHICH DON’T THINK SEASON 5 IS GETTING OFF SCOT FREE HERE. yeah so in season 5 the show just FULLY starts trying to erase cordy’s existence. she gets mentioned ONCE in the first episode and then never again until halfway through the season where she wakes up, helps out Angel for a bit and encourages him in his fight against evil, and then goes quietly into that good night and dies so it can be all sad and tragic. I’d call it the worst fridging of all time but even THAT feels generous because the whole point of fridging is killing off a female character so a man can be sad, and after Cordy dies basically no one’s even sad about it because the show immediately goes back to pretending she never existed. she is not mentioned ONCE in the two episodes after she dies. in the whole stretch of time between her death and the end of the season she gets mentioned exactly four times. again, I counted. anyway the fun twist to all of this is that all of this happened because the actress who played cordy got pregnant before season 4 and joss whedon was so pissed off about this affecting his plans for the show that he decided to completely fuck over her character and then fire her and write her out of the show. so cordy’s a victim of both writing AND real life misogyny!! good times!!

2.) OH SO MANY THINGS they menaced by giving her terrible hair cuts, making her seem like she’d get together with the guy she loves (and who loves her back) but instead she was killed and when she was brought back, she got possessed by an evil entity who used her body to give birth to itself. afterwards she was in a long coma and died. her character was so throughoutly assassinated

3.) She got demonically pregnant TWICE - there was this real sense of a womb/ability to get pregnant as like, a place for evil to get in. She got positioned as femme fatale and evil mother. The actress basically got fired for being pregnant, and when she agreed to come back for a single final episode she specifically said they could do anything but kill off the character. Guess what happened

PROPAGANDA

CORDELIA CHASE (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER/ANGEL THE SERIES) (CW: Pregnancy)

1.) (downs an entire bottle of vodka and slams it back on the table) SO. CORDY. Cordy started off as a supporting character in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. At the start she was your typical high school mean girl character, but as the show went on we got to see more depth to her character: her insecurities, her courage, her capacity for incredible acts of kindness. Then after the third season she moved into the show’s spin off, Angel, where from the beginning she was basically the show’s secondary protagonist. Her and Angel were the two mainstays of the show’s main cast, she gets the most episodes centered on her out of all the characters aside from Angel (and yes, I’ve checked), and we really got to see her grow from a very shallow and self-centered and kind of mean person to a true hero who was prepared to give up any chance at a normal life to fight the good fight while still never losing the basic core of her character. There were some… questionable moments like the episode where she gets mystically pregnant with demon babies and things got a bit iffy like halfway through season 3 where the writers seemed to run out of ideas for what to do with her outside of sticking her in this romance drama/love triangle situation with the main character but overall, pretty good stuff right? THEN SEASON 4 HAPPENED. In season 4 she gets stripped of literally all agency and spends pretty much the entire season possessed by an evil higher power, and while possessed she sleeps with Angel’s teenage son (who BY THE WAY she had helped raise as a baby before he got speed-grown-up into a teenager it was a whole thing don’t worry about it) and gets pregnant with like. the physical manifestation of the higher power that’s possessing her. it’s about as bad and stupid as it sounds and also is like the third time cordy’s got mystically pregnant in this show and like the fourth mystical pregnancy storyline overall (you will be hearing more on that note in other submissions I’m so sorry). after giving birth she goes into a coma, in which she remains for the rest of season 4 and the first half of season 5. SPEAKING OF WHICH DON’T THINK SEASON 5 IS GETTING OFF SCOT FREE HERE. yeah so in season 5 the show just FULLY starts trying to erase cordy’s existence. she gets mentioned ONCE in the first episode and then never again until halfway through the season where she wakes up, helps out Angel for a bit and encourages him in his fight against evil, and then goes quietly into that good night and dies so it can be all sad and tragic. I’d call it the worst fridging of all time but even THAT feels generous because the whole point of fridging is killing off a female character so a man can be sad, and after Cordy dies basically no one’s even sad about it because the show immediately goes back to pretending she never existed. she is not mentioned ONCE in the two episodes after she dies. in the whole stretch of time between her death and the end of the season she gets mentioned exactly four times. again, I counted. anyway the fun twist to all of this is that all of this happened because the actress who played cordy got pregnant before season 4 and joss whedon was so pissed off about this affecting his plans for the show that he decided to completely fuck over her character and then fire her and write her out of the show. so cordy’s a victim of both writing AND real life misogyny!! good times!!

2.) OH SO MANY THINGS they menaced by giving her terrible hair cuts, making her seem like she’d get together with the guy she loves (and who loves her back) but instead she was killed and when she was brought back, she got possessed by an evil entity who used her body to give birth to itself. afterwards she was in a long coma and died. her character was so throughoutly assassinated

3.) She got demonically pregnant TWICE - there was this real sense of a womb/ability to get pregnant as like, a place for evil to get in. She got positioned as femme fatale and evil mother. The actress basically got fired for being pregnant, and when she agreed to come back for a single final episode she specifically said they could do anything but kill off the character. Guess what happened

MISA AMANE (DEATH NOTE) (CW: Imprisonment, Torture)

1.) Misa is treated so phenomenally poorly by the writers of Death Note. She is devoted enough to Kira’s cause to sacrifice half her lifespan for the additional power to see people’s names just by seeing their faces (you need a face and a name to kill someone with the Death Note), and she takes the time to understand everything about it. She, a random civilian, is able to find Kira all by herself by being clever, and she’s very devoted to Kira and Kira’s cause. You would think this would earn her some respect and make her a force in the narrative in opposition both to L’s lawfulness and Light’s god complex (because Misa is a true believer, while Light is some dude with a god complex and a willingness to commit mass murder to further it), but no, the moment she meets Light she falls hopelessly in love with him (not just Kira according to her), pledges her loyalty to him, and agrees to mindlessly follow him, with her sole condition being that he can’t date other girls (and if he tried to, she’d kill the other girl; note how this is not a threat on LIGHT’S life) and has to date her and at least pretend to love her. You would think, again, that these would become problems that potentially fuck Light over, but they are mild inconveniences at best. And, despite her ability to find Kira and only get found out by bullshit trace DNA and pollen nonsense that she, again as a random civilian with no knowledge of forensics that honestly sound SO FAKE (really, trace pollen from something that is super rare and exists near her apartment but few other places? Trace pollen that got in the shit she put together INDOORS? Come on, that’s SUCH bullshit, and SO contrived), had no way of knowing existing. Because she DID circumvent all the ways she’d incriminate herself that a normal person would know about, but because they got her on the SMALLEST SHIT, they’re like “oh, she’s an idiot.” And it’s not in a “oh, look at these guys, underestimating her” way, it’s in an “oh yeah, they’re 100% right, she’s an idiot” way.

EVERYONE in universe regards her as an idiot, both when she’s just known as the Second Kira and once her identity has been found out. The creators in a bonus book rank her knowledge at 3/10 and her creativity at 4/10, which is SUCH bullshit when all of her plans (the few ones they let her have) make creative use of her powers and talents. Like, she sent a video into a tv station that contained a journal entry that had multiple dates on it, with one being clear bait for the police to approach, one being irrelevant, and one containing information that only someone with a Death Note would understand, and she uses this to indicate a time and place they should meet. Except she doesn’t meet him there, she dresses up in a plain outfit and wig that look NOTHING like her and sits and watches the crowd, waiting for someone to walk by who is missing the date of their death above their head (an indicator that that person has a Death Note), and then goes home and researches him online. That is objectively clever! Even if the cops were there, which they were, they would never notice her (and they didn’t) or figure out that she got the information she needed. HOW is that not creative? HOW does that support her being an idiot? Light tricked a woman (Naomi Misora, who deserves her own entry) into giving her his name one time in a way that almost gave him away, and that was regarded as sooooo clever, but this is stupid? Ohba, explain. Matsuda, who I love dearly but also who has never a plan half as clever or interesting as hers, gets knowledge at 4/10 and creativity at 5/10. It’s misogyny, there’s no other reason that makes sense.

And when her anonymous videos that she used to draw out Kira mention the shinigami and notebooks very subtly, in a way the police wouldn’t understand, Light is like “Second Kira, you IDIOT”, but meanwhile, when Light had a victim mention shinigami in a note written before they died for the sole purpose of fucking with L, the narrative is like “Oh, look at him, he’s so clever mentioning shinigami when L has no way of knowing how important and real they are.” The double standard of it all!

Also, ok, so, the reason L dies is because Misa’s shinigami Rem fell in love with her and wants to protect her, even if it results in Rem’s death (which it does because a shinigami dies if they kill someone for the purpose of saving someone else). However, Misa is not involved AT ALL in getting Rem to go through with this. Light manipulates Rem into doing it, and the fact that this also doesn’t bite him in the ass, even though Misa and Rem were friends, is INSANE. Their logic is clearly that obviously Misa would never rebel against Light because it’s not like she has an internal life and feelings outside of devotion to Light, and if she did, she couldn’t do anything because she’s an idiot, so it’s not worth exploring. God forbid she have agency and be a force in the narrative, even though it would make the story more interesting and complex. She doesn’t even need to be super smart for that! The creators THEMSELVES rank her social skills, charm, and initiative at 10/10, and she gets to use them all of one (1) time. They just keep not letting her do things, and it’s at the expense of their story EVERY SINGLE TIME.

Also, after this, she’s gives up her Death Note (which means she loses her memories involved with being a Death Note user) when Light tells her to, and then she’s just written out of the story, with the exception of her looking sexy, being a jealous girlfriend, and being implied to die, even though TWO shinigami died for her and thus gave her their lifespans. Yeah, she halved one of those, gained the other, then halved that again, but she should have gained more than a total of, like, eight years from that! But no, Light’s story is done, so why would Misa survive when he didn’t?

That’s not to mention the weird fetish-y way she was tied up when imprisoned. She wasn’t in her normal clothes that she had been apprehended in, no, she was put in this raggedy, white straightjacket-looking thing, with a blindfold and her arms crossed over her and fastened behind her back. She was kept on some slab and set upright for FIFTY DAYS. Like, look at this shit:

Meanwhile, Light, who was also imprisoned, kept his regular clothes and only had his arms tied behind his back normally. The only difference in the powers they were assumed to have is that she could kill with just a face. So why the weird outfit, huh, Ohba, Obata? And, like, they sell FIGURES OF IT in the real world, people can BUY her in this outfit and DISPLAY it, and it is CLEARLY because they think some Death Note fans would find it arousing. And if the whole show was just fetish shit in all directions, then, sure, fine, go for it, but it is JUST her in this moment! And, like, if it was supposed to show something about L and how he’s kinda fucked up like that, you would think it would, like, come up again or something but it gets a fleeting mention ONCE and then THAT IS IT. Why do this, literally why??? Like, how high did they get off their own misogyny to come up with this?

I just. I can’t with how they treat Misa, I CANNOT. Like, I know they love to jerk off Light and talk about he’s sooooo smart and clever and charming, but this goes beyond putting her down because they want to lift him up. They put her in to cause some chaos a couple of times, pull some fetish shit, provide the method for killing L (but not do it herself or even play any active role at all in it), and then they’re done with her. She’s a convenient tool to the writers, not a character, unlike most of the male characters whose emotional reactions to Light’s bullshit come back to haunt him. For example: the way his responsibility for his father’s death and his dismissal of his father during his big confession lead Matsuda, who had liked Light but had a stronger emotional connection to his dad, to shoot him in a way that stops Light from using his Death Note scrap to get out of being surrounded after being definitively revealed to be Kira. And like, I love that moment for Matsuda, it’s great, my favorite scene in the whole show, but why don’t Misa’s emotions and bonds get to drive her to action in a way that is inconvenient to Light? Fine, she has unending devotion, why not have THAT do anything either? And it’s because this is the same type of treatment all the female characters in Death Note get (although Misa gets it worse by a country mile), being a POTENTIAL to MILD problem for Light and/or a person to use the Death Note in his place but little else, or someone to get kidnapped, it makes it clear that Misa’s treatment here is due to misogyny that infects the whole text, and it just. It rankles.

2.) Despite having the potential to be an interesting character (unhinged death note who doesn’t have excuses for killing people like Light does, actual connection to her Shinigami), she just gets reduced to Light’s plaything and fangirl, literally keeling over backwards for him. She ends up having nothing to do in the story, being reduced to this hollow shell of what she could have been, with her only personality trait being that she’s obsessed with Light, even after he routinely ignores her and even cheats on her. Every woman in Death Note gets put on the sidelines so the male characters can take the spotlight, but Misa easily has the biggest wasted potential of any of them.

3.) Left as flat, annoying, and obsessed with a guy who treats her badly the entire series. Could have had a lot more development but she just gets treated like an idiot at every turn despite HER INTRODUCTION including a pretty clever plan actually. As the series goes on it feels like they make her less and less intelligent just to justify why she’s keeping the exact same dynamic with light. Honestly the more i think about it the weirder that gets.

I don’t think it’s a problem in itself to have a character who isn’t especially intelligent or is easily manipulated or is an obsessive fan, and you can make really interesting stories using characters with those traits. But DN just did not do that, and honestly I think if Misa was written a bit smarter (not necessarily super detective chess nonsense smart, just having actual fucking agency and being able to come up with plans of her own) the series would be way better for it. You get a whole new dimension to the conflicts and scheming if she’s acting on her own terms, or trying to help and doing something unexpected, or just generally having another character with a death note and complicated ties to the main characters and actual human agency. Like even STAYING obsessed with Light she could have been so much more and the specifics of her motivations could be explored in more interesting detail than just making her a rabid fangirl even having spent enough time with the object of her obsession that the dynamic should have evolved.

She’s in a classic of the “so misogynistic it turned out gay” genre and like good for the gays i guess but holy shit she got done so dirty. She deserved better and DN would have been not only better in the “don’t be a jerk towards entire groups of people” sense but also probably better as a drama intrigue situation if the authors had a crumb of respect for her.

Also due to the story events she’s set to die pretty young and this is barely addressed? It’s a sidenote really and a lot of people die but Rem is the only one who gives a shit and their reaction is not focused on for long. I will not start about her and Rem because that will make this much much longer and is relevant more to why i like Misa than to why she got fucked over. (But hey it’s kinda fucked that she definitely did have people who supported and cared for her and they all got stripped away and it’s not even played as fucked up that this woman has no support network save for one guy who would kill her in a heartbeat if he thought it would help him and also that Misa can’t fully see the people who do care about her until it’s too late and this is never played as dark and serious in a series that thrives on being dark)

It’s just really really obvious that the authors do not see or write her as a person.

tl;dr SHE’S THE SECOND FUCKING KIRA and she gets treated like a PROP for most of the story. gets downgraded to scenery actually later in the story

actual tl;dr: introduced with an interesting plan and motivations worth exploring, slowly has her undeveloped personality steamrollered further and is treated like a tool and a prop for the rest of the series.

PROPAGANDA

BUMBLE (WARRIOR CATS) (CW: Domestic Abuse)

1.) Back with another Warriors submission, I bet you’ll be getting a lot from other people too LMAO. Bumble is a kittypet (housecat) who befriends the male protagonist Gray Wing’s girlfriend, Turtle Tail, and lets her stay in her house. This gets Gray Wing all pissy because he’s controlling of Turtle Tail and shares most of the wild/clan cat’s proclivity for looking down upon kittypets. Turtle Tail gets pregnant by another kittypet, Tom, who tries to control her by hiding the fact that humans take away kittens after they’re born. Eventually Bumble comes clean about it so Turtle Tail returns to the forest. Some time later, Bumble is found in the forest seeking refuge because Tom has been physically abusing her, scratching her where the humans can’t see. So, she’s CANONICALLY ACKNOWLEDGED as a domestic abuse victim (unlike Squirrelflight who meets all the textbook signs but the narrative and authors deny it). How do you think our good guy protagonists, i.e. Gray Wing “The Wise” and Turtle Tail, respond to an abuse victim seeking refuge? They tell Bumble to go home, thinking to themselves that she’s fat and soft and therefore would be useless in their group. Bumble stands up for herself and asks to speak with the leaders of the group. One of them asks if Bumble could just get along with Tom better (bro???) and when Bumble says it’s not within her control, the leader suggests being nicer to the humans instead. Another rival leader butts in and verbally abuses Bumble again by ripping into how fat and lazy and useless she would be. Despite Turtle Tail having been friends with Bumble and Bumble had helped her through her own hard times, to Gray Wing’s approval Turtle Tail chooses not to intervene as Bumble is forcibly escorted back to her abuser. But that’s not all. Later Bumble is found in the forest maimed and dying, and it seems likely that Gray Wing’s brother Clear Sky, a male with a long history of violence, is the culprit. Rather than mourn the dying innocent cat, Gray Wing’s primary concern is how other cats might be mean to Clear Sky if they think he’s a murderer, and reassures himself that refusing to help Bumble in her time of need was still the right decision.

2.) I have no idea how she managed to be written so horrifically from an abuse victim and woman (/she-cat I guess) standpoint but here we are. Okay so my memory is a bit fuzzy but basically Bumble was a character in Dawn of the Clans and a close friend to Turtle Tail, a major character, as well as a character who lived close to Tom, an abusive dickhead of a cat. Bumble was largely depicted as just a really sweet cat. Turtle Tail was very briefly the mate of Turtle Tail, but once she got pregnant, he became super violent towards both her and our gal Bumble. Tom actively hid the fact that, once her kits were old enough, Turtle Tail’s kits would probably be taken from her, and made Bumble keep quiet about this too, but Bumble eventually told Turtle Tail the truth, Turtle Tail left and Tom became extremely violent towards Bumble because of this, and was extremely abusive towards her. Eventually, Bumble ran away from him to where Turtle Tail and co were and begged to stay, since the wilderness as a whole was genuinely more safe than being around Tom was. Naturally, this meant kitty xenophobia from cats who had only arrived in that area recently, because everybody was insistent than, since she was a kittypet/house cat, things wouldn’t work out, and even her friend Turtle Tail denied her on this, insisted she was too soft to live in the wild and only sent her towards a cat Bumble wanted to convince because she was absolutely certain she’d be denied. Also our good old protagonist Gray Wing got to spend this scene being all upset about this soft cat wanting to join them to escape an abuser and was all bitter about the fact that Turtle Tail lived with her for a short period of time, and he also got to have a sweet romantic moment with Turtle Tail after denying an abuse victim an escape from her abuser. Also as much as I like Tall Shadow usually she sucked ass in the following scene because she was essentially telling Bumble to go find a way to make peace with Tom as if she was not the one being abused (Bumble pointed out that Tom was the one who would need to make peace for it to happen, not her) and that she should just make life better by going back to being a housecat and being spoiled despite the fact that she was actively at risk with her owners because of Tom. Then she leaves after being threatened by several cats there and is called soft on the way out. The next time she appears she is literally dying, and her death is just a plot device to create a stupid little mystery which is solved in a very stupid way. Also her abuser does continue to be a shithead and for some reason is fully permitted to kidnap his own children but he also gets a heroic death and the only reason I will not rant more about him is because this is too long already. Long story short Bumble deserves the world and everybody who decided not to let her escape her abuser just because they thought she was soft sucks

3.) Is nice to the group of starving, feral wild cats that left the mountains so their friends and family could have more food to eat and befriends one of them to the point of opening her home to her after she leaves the group because the guy she likes is too dumb to notice she likes him and keeps falling for his brother’s love interests.

Unfortunately, because Bumble is a house cat who lives in a house with people and not a Wild and Free cat, this is a grave and horrible crime (luring a wild cat into the safety and comforts of domesticity) and is villainized for the rest of the arc, including for things wildly out of her control

I.E.

Her owners taking in an aggressive male cat that bullies and abuses the two female cats already living there

When Bumble’s friend leaves and goes back to the wild cats, Bumble leaves her home (as the abuse as has gotten worse) to see if she could either get help or have her friend return so the abuse isn’t as bad again)

Bumble eventually dies in the wild because the feral cats all hate her for ‘stealing’ their friend and tricking her into becoming a kittypet for awhile and refuse to help Bumble adjust to wild life or even teaching her how to hunt.

They are littl e to no hard feelings at her death beyond ‘good riddance’ but the aggressive tomcat that chased her out of her home is later regarded with good feelings and regret at such a ‘good, heroic cat’ passing when he dies despite him literally never doing a good or kind thing in his life and actually causing trouble for the wild cats right before dying

ASUNA (SWORD ART ONLINE) (CW: Sexual Assault, Sexual Harassment, Tentacles)

1.) So the sins with Asuna really become outright in the second arc, Alfheim, where she goes from being an active, main character to being in a coma in the real world and locked away in a literal cage so that finding/rescuing her could be her boyfriend/virtual husband and protagonist Kirito’s motivation for the season. On top of that, the guy who’s trapping her (his name is Sugou) has dressed her in a revealing outfit and is constantly being creepy toward her and then literally sexually assaults her. Have I mentioned that she’s a teenager and he’s an adult? When she tries to escape, she’s also captured by these monsters with tentacles (who are actually just employees who look like tentacle monsters) and held up upsidedown by their tentacles, and there is a whole scene of her talking with these guys with her held like this, and there are multiple shots that are very objectifying. And then at the end of the scene, one of the dudes leaves to do something and goes “hey, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do while I’m gone” and then the other dude tries to sexually assault her with his tentacles, and it is very much drawn in a titilating manner, like the show looks like it’s about to turn into tentacle hentai, with close up shots of tentacles wrapping around parts of her body (e.g. stomach, thighs) and then panning down her whole body as the tentacles are rippling over her. There’s even a shot of the lower half of her face (not her whole face, that might convey too much personhood) where the tentacle moves toward her mouth in a very “oh god, this is a scene from hentai” way as part of the, y'know sexual assault, and, while it doesn’t go in her mouth because she bites it in self-defense and fends the assault off first, it still gets that far. Why is this here? What does it add to the plot or her character? Nothing. It adds nothing; it’s just there for titilization. Similarly, the scene where her captor sexually assaults her includes shots like a close up of him dragging his finger up her bare stomach, and there is no reason for it to be shot like that unless it is for “fan service”, for lack of a better term. Hell, he tears off her shirt, and the shot after he does isn’t her face but Kirito’s, and she spends the rest of the scene shirtless but with strands of her hair covering her nipples. He forcefully kisses her (for a while too, although at least we don’t see that in detail) and tears one of her skirts, and it is horrific, but the focus of the scene is how evil Sugou is and how it upsets Kirito, and we get very little from Asuna. The person who gets an interior monologue about the situation is Kirito. The person who gains the ability to fight on via scene in his mind is Kirito. It transitions into a fight scene, and Asuna is just kind of hanging there off screen, and when it ends, the person who cries is Kirito, and the one who does the comforting is Asuna, and it is INSANE, like WHAT???

2.) She is sexually harrassed frequently. Then she gets abducted, so her love interest can be all “"cool”“ and ”“heroic”“ saving her.

Most infamously, though, she is sexually assaulted, on screen, for the sake of manpain and titillation. She is 17 when this happens btw.

Also I’m pretty sure every female character in this series qualifies, but (for what I think are obvious reasons) I don’t really go here.

3.) Kirito took all of her brain cells and replaced it with two. Actually, , I take it back. King Oberon absorbed all of her brain cells. It will take Asuna a thousand years to regain all of her brain cells.

Hey guys, as a heads up, I'll be recovering from surgery next week, so, while I'll try to get the finals and third place polls out on Monday or Tuesday, I can't make any promises

Match Ups - Round 1

Since Tumblr has a link-per-post cap, here is a list of the Round 1 matchups with their links:

ROUND 1

WEEK 2

33.) Kendra Young (Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel the Series) vs Sylvanas Windrunner (Warcraft) 34.) Katherina Minola (The Taming of the Shrew) vs Barbarara Gordon (DC Comics) 35.) Arcee (Transformers) vs Naomi Misora (Death Note) 36.) Orihime Inoue (Bleach) vs Julia (Hellraiser) 37.) Talia al Ghul (DC Comics) vs Amy Amanda Allen (The A-Team (TV Series)) 38.) Britta Perry (Community) vs Grelle Sutcliff (Black Butler) 39.) Athena Cykes (Ace Attorney) vs Carmelita Montoya Fox (Sly Cooper) 40.) Kotori Mizuki/Tori Meadows (Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL) vs Iris Sagan (AI: the Somnium Files) 41.) Kairi (Kingdom Hearts) vs Clarke Griffin (The 100) 42.) Gamora (MCU) vs Sansa Stark (Game of Thrones) 43.) Mary Winchester (Supernatural) vs Konan (Naruto) 44.) Jade Harley (Homestuck) vs Chloe von Einzbern (Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA ILLYA) 45.) Natasha Romanoff (MCU) vs Sylvia (Two Gentlemen of Verona) 46.) Dragona Joestar (JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: The JOJOLands) vs Gwen Stacy (Marvel Comics) 47.) Katara (Avatar the Last Airbender) vs Eve (Paradise Lost) 48.) Jiang Yanli (Mo Dao Zu Shi) vs Cordelia Chase (Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel the Series) 49.) Misa Amane (Death Note) vs Nami (One Piece) 50.) Rey (Star Wars) vs Nezuko Kamado (Demon Slayer) 51.) Tetra (The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker) vs Margaret Houlihan (MASH (Movie 1970)) 52.) Amy Pond (Doctor Who) vs Madison Paige (Heavy Rain) 53.) Casca (Berserk) vs Sweet-P (The Caligula Effect) 54.) Stephanie Brown (DC Comics) vs Aki Izayoi/Akiza Izinski (Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's) 55.) Dahlia Hawthorne (Ace Attorney) vs Ophiuchus Shaina (Saint Seiya) 56.) Hélène Kuragina (War and Peace) vs Laurel Lance (Arrow (CW)) 57.) Sky (Lost in Blue) vs Sonia Hedgehog (Sonic Underground) 58.) Elektra Natchios (Marvel Comics) vs Celica (Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia) 59.) Charlie Bradbury (Supernatural) vs Susan Pevensie (The Chronicles of Narnia) 60.) Mildred "Millie" Knolastname (Helluva Boss) vs River Tam (Firefly) 61.) Allura (Voltron: Legendary Defender) vs Mikaela Banes (Transformers) 62.) Ophelia (Hamlet) vs Momo Yaoyorozu (My Hero Academia) 63.) Amy Rose (Sonic the Hedgehog) vs Alys Brangwin (Phantasy Star IV) 64.) Abbie Mills (Sleepy Hollow) vs Misaki Unasaka (Buddy Daddies)

WEEK 1

1.) Starfire (DC Comics) vs Nya Smith (Lego Ninjago) 2.) Natasha Rostova (War and Peace) vs Gwen (BBC Merlin) 3.) Marwa (What We Do in the Shadows (TV Series)) vs Mikoko Sakazaki (Kaiji) 4.) Azula (Avatar the Last Airbender) vs Jennifer Lopez (John Dies at the End) 5.) Chloe Bourgeois (Miraculous Ladybug) vs Milla Maxwell (Tales of Xillia) 6.) Kallen Kouzuki (Code Geass) vs Chi-Chi (Dragon Ball) 7.) Padmé Amidala (Star Wars) vs Bumble (Warrior Cats) 8.) Irene Adler (BBC Sherlock) vs Leia Organa (Star Wars) 9.) Alex DeWitt (DC Comics) vs Elya Musayeva (Топи/The The Swamps (2021)) 10.) Is (Kamen Rider 01) vs Amber Volakis (House MD) 11.) Marinette Dupain-Cheng (Miraculous Ladybug) vs Throné Anguis (Octopath Traveler 2) 12.) Jane Crocker (Homestuck) vs Jade (Dragon Quest 11) 13.) Leafpool (Warrior Cats) vs Katherine Pierce (The Vampire Diaries) 14.) Holy Kujo (JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders) vs Poppy Pipopapo (Kamen Rider Ex-Aid) 15.) Mikan Tsumiki (Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair) vs Ochette (Octopath Traveler 2) 16.) Lisa Cuddy (House MD) vs Brunhilda/Mym (Dragalia Lost) 17.) Kaede Akamatsu (Danganronpa V3) vs Juvia Lockser (Fairy Tail) 18.) Agent Texas (Red vs Blue) vs Kamala Khan (Marvel Comics) 19.) April O'Neil (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012)) vs Teresa (Maze Runner Series) 20.) Stephanie “Steph” Nocanonlastname (EverymanHYBRID) vs Megaera (Hades) 21.) Ochako Uraraka (My Hero Academia) vs Julia Wicker (The Magicians) 22.) Ran Mouri (Detective Conan) vs Malty S Melromarc (Rising of the Shield Hero) 23.) Magne (My Hero Academia) vs Asuna (Sword Art Online) 24.) Tasha Yar (Star Trek: The Next Generation) vs Yan Hui (Back from the Brink) 25.) Sakura Haruno (Naruto) vs Ada Vessalius (Pandora Hearts) 26.) Hinata Hyuuga (Naruto) vs Niki Nihachu (Dream SMP) 27.) Pyrrha Nikos (RWBY) vs Quiet (Metal Gear Solid: The Phantom Pain) 28.) Lucy Heartfilia (Fairy Tail) vs Pussy Galore (Goldeneye) 29.) Ann Takamaki (Persona 5) vs Mikuru Asahina (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya) 30.) Daenerys Targaryen (Game of Thrones) vs Kes (STar Trek: Voyager) 31.) Flora Reinhold (Professor Layton) vs Agent South Dakota (Red vs Blue) 32.) Deanna Troi (Star Trek: The Next Generation) vs Nemu Kurotsuchi (Bleach)

ngl i kind of love it when i see someone in the tags or replies saying "ohhhh so hard to choose" kind of fuels me tbh

PROPAGANDA

CORDELIA CHASE (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER/ANGEL THE SERIES) (CW: Pregnancy)

1.) (downs an entire bottle of vodka and slams it back on the table) SO. CORDY. Cordy started off as a supporting character in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. At the start she was your typical high school mean girl character, but as the show went on we got to see more depth to her character: her insecurities, her courage, her capacity for incredible acts of kindness. Then after the third season she moved into the show’s spin off, Angel, where from the beginning she was basically the show’s secondary protagonist. Her and Angel were the two mainstays of the show’s main cast, she gets the most episodes centered on her out of all the characters aside from Angel (and yes, I’ve checked), and we really got to see her grow from a very shallow and self-centered and kind of mean person to a true hero who was prepared to give up any chance at a normal life to fight the good fight while still never losing the basic core of her character. There were some… questionable moments like the episode where she gets mystically pregnant with demon babies and things got a bit iffy like halfway through season 3 where the writers seemed to run out of ideas for what to do with her outside of sticking her in this romance drama/love triangle situation with the main character but overall, pretty good stuff right? THEN SEASON 4 HAPPENED. In season 4 she gets stripped of literally all agency and spends pretty much the entire season possessed by an evil higher power, and while possessed she sleeps with Angel’s teenage son (who BY THE WAY she had helped raise as a baby before he got speed-grown-up into a teenager it was a whole thing don’t worry about it) and gets pregnant with like. the physical manifestation of the higher power that’s possessing her. it’s about as bad and stupid as it sounds and also is like the third time cordy’s got mystically pregnant in this show and like the fourth mystical pregnancy storyline overall (you will be hearing more on that note in other submissions I’m so sorry). after giving birth she goes into a coma, in which she remains for the rest of season 4 and the first half of season 5. SPEAKING OF WHICH DON’T THINK SEASON 5 IS GETTING OFF SCOT FREE HERE. yeah so in season 5 the show just FULLY starts trying to erase cordy’s existence. she gets mentioned ONCE in the first episode and then never again until halfway through the season where she wakes up, helps out Angel for a bit and encourages him in his fight against evil, and then goes quietly into that good night and dies so it can be all sad and tragic. I’d call it the worst fridging of all time but even THAT feels generous because the whole point of fridging is killing off a female character so a man can be sad, and after Cordy dies basically no one’s even sad about it because the show immediately goes back to pretending she never existed. she is not mentioned ONCE in the two episodes after she dies. in the whole stretch of time between her death and the end of the season she gets mentioned exactly four times. again, I counted. anyway the fun twist to all of this is that all of this happened because the actress who played cordy got pregnant before season 4 and joss whedon was so pissed off about this affecting his plans for the show that he decided to completely fuck over her character and then fire her and write her out of the show. so cordy’s a victim of both writing AND real life misogyny!! good times!!

2.) OH SO MANY THINGS they menaced by giving her terrible hair cuts, making her seem like she’d get together with the guy she loves (and who loves her back) but instead she was killed and when she was brought back, she got possessed by an evil entity who used her body to give birth to itself. afterwards she was in a long coma and died. her character was so throughoutly assassinated

3.) She got demonically pregnant TWICE - there was this real sense of a womb/ability to get pregnant as like, a place for evil to get in. She got positioned as femme fatale and evil mother. The actress basically got fired for being pregnant, and when she agreed to come back for a single final episode she specifically said they could do anything but kill off the character. Guess what happened

MISA AMANE (DEATH NOTE) (CW: Imprisonment, Torture)

1.) Misa is treated so phenomenally poorly by the writers of Death Note. She is devoted enough to Kira’s cause to sacrifice half her lifespan for the additional power to see people’s names just by seeing their faces (you need a face and a name to kill someone with the Death Note), and she takes the time to understand everything about it. She, a random civilian, is able to find Kira all by herself by being clever, and she’s very devoted to Kira and Kira’s cause. You would think this would earn her some respect and make her a force in the narrative in opposition both to L’s lawfulness and Light’s god complex (because Misa is a true believer, while Light is some dude with a god complex and a willingness to commit mass murder to further it), but no, the moment she meets Light she falls hopelessly in love with him (not just Kira according to her), pledges her loyalty to him, and agrees to mindlessly follow him, with her sole condition being that he can’t date other girls (and if he tried to, she’d kill the other girl; note how this is not a threat on LIGHT’S life) and has to date her and at least pretend to love her. You would think, again, that these would become problems that potentially fuck Light over, but they are mild inconveniences at best. And, despite her ability to find Kira and only get found out by bullshit trace DNA and pollen nonsense that she, again as a random civilian with no knowledge of forensics that honestly sound SO FAKE (really, trace pollen from something that is super rare and exists near her apartment but few other places? Trace pollen that got in the shit she put together INDOORS? Come on, that’s SUCH bullshit, and SO contrived), had no way of knowing existing. Because she DID circumvent all the ways she’d incriminate herself that a normal person would know about, but because they got her on the SMALLEST SHIT, they’re like “oh, she’s an idiot.” And it’s not in a “oh, look at these guys, underestimating her” way, it’s in an “oh yeah, they’re 100% right, she’s an idiot” way.

EVERYONE in universe regards her as an idiot, both when she’s just known as the Second Kira and once her identity has been found out. The creators in a bonus book rank her knowledge at 3/10 and her creativity at 4/10, which is SUCH bullshit when all of her plans (the few ones they let her have) make creative use of her powers and talents. Like, she sent a video into a tv station that contained a journal entry that had multiple dates on it, with one being clear bait for the police to approach, one being irrelevant, and one containing information that only someone with a Death Note would understand, and she uses this to indicate a time and place they should meet. Except she doesn’t meet him there, she dresses up in a plain outfit and wig that look NOTHING like her and sits and watches the crowd, waiting for someone to walk by who is missing the date of their death above their head (an indicator that that person has a Death Note), and then goes home and researches him online. That is objectively clever! Even if the cops were there, which they were, they would never notice her (and they didn’t) or figure out that she got the information she needed. HOW is that not creative? HOW does that support her being an idiot? Light tricked a woman (Naomi Misora, who deserves her own entry) into giving her his name one time in a way that almost gave him away, and that was regarded as sooooo clever, but this is stupid? Ohba, explain. Matsuda, who I love dearly but also who has never a plan half as clever or interesting as hers, gets knowledge at 4/10 and creativity at 5/10. It’s misogyny, there’s no other reason that makes sense.

And when her anonymous videos that she used to draw out Kira mention the shinigami and notebooks very subtly, in a way the police wouldn’t understand, Light is like “Second Kira, you IDIOT”, but meanwhile, when Light had a victim mention shinigami in a note written before they died for the sole purpose of fucking with L, the narrative is like “Oh, look at him, he’s so clever mentioning shinigami when L has no way of knowing how important and real they are.” The double standard of it all!

Also, ok, so, the reason L dies is because Misa’s shinigami Rem fell in love with her and wants to protect her, even if it results in Rem’s death (which it does because a shinigami dies if they kill someone for the purpose of saving someone else). However, Misa is not involved AT ALL in getting Rem to go through with this. Light manipulates Rem into doing it, and the fact that this also doesn’t bite him in the ass, even though Misa and Rem were friends, is INSANE. Their logic is clearly that obviously Misa would never rebel against Light because it’s not like she has an internal life and feelings outside of devotion to Light, and if she did, she couldn’t do anything because she’s an idiot, so it’s not worth exploring. God forbid she have agency and be a force in the narrative, even though it would make the story more interesting and complex. She doesn’t even need to be super smart for that! The creators THEMSELVES rank her social skills, charm, and initiative at 10/10, and she gets to use them all of one (1) time. They just keep not letting her do things, and it’s at the expense of their story EVERY SINGLE TIME.

Also, after this, she’s gives up her Death Note (which means she loses her memories involved with being a Death Note user) when Light tells her to, and then she’s just written out of the story, with the exception of her looking sexy, being a jealous girlfriend, and being implied to die, even though TWO shinigami died for her and thus gave her their lifespans. Yeah, she halved one of those, gained the other, then halved that again, but she should have gained more than a total of, like, eight years from that! But no, Light’s story is done, so why would Misa survive when he didn’t?

That’s not to mention the weird fetish-y way she was tied up when imprisoned. She wasn’t in her normal clothes that she had been apprehended in, no, she was put in this raggedy, white straightjacket-looking thing, with a blindfold and her arms crossed over her and fastened behind her back. She was kept on some slab and set upright for FIFTY DAYS. Like, look at this shit:

Meanwhile, Light, who was also imprisoned, kept his regular clothes and only had his arms tied behind his back normally. The only difference in the powers they were assumed to have is that she could kill with just a face. So why the weird outfit, huh, Ohba, Obata? And, like, they sell FIGURES OF IT in the real world, people can BUY her in this outfit and DISPLAY it, and it is CLEARLY because they think some Death Note fans would find it arousing. And if the whole show was just fetish shit in all directions, then, sure, fine, go for it, but it is JUST her in this moment! And, like, if it was supposed to show something about L and how he’s kinda fucked up like that, you would think it would, like, come up again or something but it gets a fleeting mention ONCE and then THAT IS IT. Why do this, literally why??? Like, how high did they get off their own misogyny to come up with this?

I just. I can’t with how they treat Misa, I CANNOT. Like, I know they love to jerk off Light and talk about he’s sooooo smart and clever and charming, but this goes beyond putting her down because they want to lift him up. They put her in to cause some chaos a couple of times, pull some fetish shit, provide the method for killing L (but not do it herself or even play any active role at all in it), and then they’re done with her. She’s a convenient tool to the writers, not a character, unlike most of the male characters whose emotional reactions to Light’s bullshit come back to haunt him. For example: the way his responsibility for his father’s death and his dismissal of his father during his big confession lead Matsuda, who had liked Light but had a stronger emotional connection to his dad, to shoot him in a way that stops Light from using his Death Note scrap to get out of being surrounded after being definitively revealed to be Kira. And like, I love that moment for Matsuda, it’s great, my favorite scene in the whole show, but why don’t Misa’s emotions and bonds get to drive her to action in a way that is inconvenient to Light? Fine, she has unending devotion, why not have THAT do anything either? And it’s because this is the same type of treatment all the female characters in Death Note get (although Misa gets it worse by a country mile), being a POTENTIAL to MILD problem for Light and/or a person to use the Death Note in his place but little else, or someone to get kidnapped, it makes it clear that Misa’s treatment here is due to misogyny that infects the whole text, and it just. It rankles.

2.) Despite having the potential to be an interesting character (unhinged death note who doesn’t have excuses for killing people like Light does, actual connection to her Shinigami), she just gets reduced to Light’s plaything and fangirl, literally keeling over backwards for him. She ends up having nothing to do in the story, being reduced to this hollow shell of what she could have been, with her only personality trait being that she’s obsessed with Light, even after he routinely ignores her and even cheats on her. Every woman in Death Note gets put on the sidelines so the male characters can take the spotlight, but Misa easily has the biggest wasted potential of any of them.

3.) Left as flat, annoying, and obsessed with a guy who treats her badly the entire series. Could have had a lot more development but she just gets treated like an idiot at every turn despite HER INTRODUCTION including a pretty clever plan actually. As the series goes on it feels like they make her less and less intelligent just to justify why she’s keeping the exact same dynamic with light. Honestly the more i think about it the weirder that gets.

I don’t think it’s a problem in itself to have a character who isn’t especially intelligent or is easily manipulated or is an obsessive fan, and you can make really interesting stories using characters with those traits. But DN just did not do that, and honestly I think if Misa was written a bit smarter (not necessarily super detective chess nonsense smart, just having actual fucking agency and being able to come up with plans of her own) the series would be way better for it. You get a whole new dimension to the conflicts and scheming if she’s acting on her own terms, or trying to help and doing something unexpected, or just generally having another character with a death note and complicated ties to the main characters and actual human agency. Like even STAYING obsessed with Light she could have been so much more and the specifics of her motivations could be explored in more interesting detail than just making her a rabid fangirl even having spent enough time with the object of her obsession that the dynamic should have evolved.

She’s in a classic of the “so misogynistic it turned out gay” genre and like good for the gays i guess but holy shit she got done so dirty. She deserved better and DN would have been not only better in the “don’t be a jerk towards entire groups of people” sense but also probably better as a drama intrigue situation if the authors had a crumb of respect for her.

Also due to the story events she’s set to die pretty young and this is barely addressed? It’s a sidenote really and a lot of people die but Rem is the only one who gives a shit and their reaction is not focused on for long. I will not start about her and Rem because that will make this much much longer and is relevant more to why i like Misa than to why she got fucked over. (But hey it’s kinda fucked that she definitely did have people who supported and cared for her and they all got stripped away and it’s not even played as fucked up that this woman has no support network save for one guy who would kill her in a heartbeat if he thought it would help him and also that Misa can’t fully see the people who do care about her until it’s too late and this is never played as dark and serious in a series that thrives on being dark)

It’s just really really obvious that the authors do not see or write her as a person.

tl;dr SHE’S THE SECOND FUCKING KIRA and she gets treated like a PROP for most of the story. gets downgraded to scenery actually later in the story

actual tl;dr: introduced with an interesting plan and motivations worth exploring, slowly has her undeveloped personality steamrollered further and is treated like a tool and a prop for the rest of the series.

PROPAGANDA

BUMBLE (WARRIOR CATS) (CW: Domestic Abuse)

1.) Back with another Warriors submission, I bet you’ll be getting a lot from other people too LMAO. Bumble is a kittypet (housecat) who befriends the male protagonist Gray Wing’s girlfriend, Turtle Tail, and lets her stay in her house. This gets Gray Wing all pissy because he’s controlling of Turtle Tail and shares most of the wild/clan cat’s proclivity for looking down upon kittypets. Turtle Tail gets pregnant by another kittypet, Tom, who tries to control her by hiding the fact that humans take away kittens after they’re born. Eventually Bumble comes clean about it so Turtle Tail returns to the forest. Some time later, Bumble is found in the forest seeking refuge because Tom has been physically abusing her, scratching her where the humans can’t see. So, she’s CANONICALLY ACKNOWLEDGED as a domestic abuse victim (unlike Squirrelflight who meets all the textbook signs but the narrative and authors deny it). How do you think our good guy protagonists, i.e. Gray Wing “The Wise” and Turtle Tail, respond to an abuse victim seeking refuge? They tell Bumble to go home, thinking to themselves that she’s fat and soft and therefore would be useless in their group. Bumble stands up for herself and asks to speak with the leaders of the group. One of them asks if Bumble could just get along with Tom better (bro???) and when Bumble says it’s not within her control, the leader suggests being nicer to the humans instead. Another rival leader butts in and verbally abuses Bumble again by ripping into how fat and lazy and useless she would be. Despite Turtle Tail having been friends with Bumble and Bumble had helped her through her own hard times, to Gray Wing’s approval Turtle Tail chooses not to intervene as Bumble is forcibly escorted back to her abuser. But that’s not all. Later Bumble is found in the forest maimed and dying, and it seems likely that Gray Wing’s brother Clear Sky, a male with a long history of violence, is the culprit. Rather than mourn the dying innocent cat, Gray Wing’s primary concern is how other cats might be mean to Clear Sky if they think he’s a murderer, and reassures himself that refusing to help Bumble in her time of need was still the right decision.

2.) I have no idea how she managed to be written so horrifically from an abuse victim and woman (/she-cat I guess) standpoint but here we are. Okay so my memory is a bit fuzzy but basically Bumble was a character in Dawn of the Clans and a close friend to Turtle Tail, a major character, as well as a character who lived close to Tom, an abusive dickhead of a cat. Bumble was largely depicted as just a really sweet cat. Turtle Tail was very briefly the mate of Turtle Tail, but once she got pregnant, he became super violent towards both her and our gal Bumble. Tom actively hid the fact that, once her kits were old enough, Turtle Tail’s kits would probably be taken from her, and made Bumble keep quiet about this too, but Bumble eventually told Turtle Tail the truth, Turtle Tail left and Tom became extremely violent towards Bumble because of this, and was extremely abusive towards her. Eventually, Bumble ran away from him to where Turtle Tail and co were and begged to stay, since the wilderness as a whole was genuinely more safe than being around Tom was. Naturally, this meant kitty xenophobia from cats who had only arrived in that area recently, because everybody was insistent than, since she was a kittypet/house cat, things wouldn’t work out, and even her friend Turtle Tail denied her on this, insisted she was too soft to live in the wild and only sent her towards a cat Bumble wanted to convince because she was absolutely certain she’d be denied. Also our good old protagonist Gray Wing got to spend this scene being all upset about this soft cat wanting to join them to escape an abuser and was all bitter about the fact that Turtle Tail lived with her for a short period of time, and he also got to have a sweet romantic moment with Turtle Tail after denying an abuse victim an escape from her abuser. Also as much as I like Tall Shadow usually she sucked ass in the following scene because she was essentially telling Bumble to go find a way to make peace with Tom as if she was not the one being abused (Bumble pointed out that Tom was the one who would need to make peace for it to happen, not her) and that she should just make life better by going back to being a housecat and being spoiled despite the fact that she was actively at risk with her owners because of Tom. Then she leaves after being threatened by several cats there and is called soft on the way out. The next time she appears she is literally dying, and her death is just a plot device to create a stupid little mystery which is solved in a very stupid way. Also her abuser does continue to be a shithead and for some reason is fully permitted to kidnap his own children but he also gets a heroic death and the only reason I will not rant more about him is because this is too long already. Long story short Bumble deserves the world and everybody who decided not to let her escape her abuser just because they thought she was soft sucks

3.) Is nice to the group of starving, feral wild cats that left the mountains so their friends and family could have more food to eat and befriends one of them to the point of opening her home to her after she leaves the group because the guy she likes is too dumb to notice she likes him and keeps falling for his brother’s love interests.

Unfortunately, because Bumble is a house cat who lives in a house with people and not a Wild and Free cat, this is a grave and horrible crime (luring a wild cat into the safety and comforts of domesticity) and is villainized for the rest of the arc, including for things wildly out of her control

I.E.

Her owners taking in an aggressive male cat that bullies and abuses the two female cats already living there

When Bumble’s friend leaves and goes back to the wild cats, Bumble leaves her home (as the abuse as has gotten worse) to see if she could either get help or have her friend return so the abuse isn’t as bad again)

Bumble eventually dies in the wild because the feral cats all hate her for ‘stealing’ their friend and tricking her into becoming a kittypet for awhile and refuse to help Bumble adjust to wild life or even teaching her how to hunt.

They are littl e to no hard feelings at her death beyond ‘good riddance’ but the aggressive tomcat that chased her out of her home is later regarded with good feelings and regret at such a ‘good, heroic cat’ passing when he dies despite him literally never doing a good or kind thing in his life and actually causing trouble for the wild cats right before dying

ASUNA (SWORD ART ONLINE) (CW: Sexual Assault, Sexual Harassment, Tentacles)

1.) So the sins with Asuna really become outright in the second arc, Alfheim, where she goes from being an active, main character to being in a coma in the real world and locked away in a literal cage so that finding/rescuing her could be her boyfriend/virtual husband and protagonist Kirito’s motivation for the season. On top of that, the guy who’s trapping her (his name is Sugou) has dressed her in a revealing outfit and is constantly being creepy toward her and then literally sexually assaults her. Have I mentioned that she’s a teenager and he’s an adult? When she tries to escape, she’s also captured by these monsters with tentacles (who are actually just employees who look like tentacle monsters) and held up upsidedown by their tentacles, and there is a whole scene of her talking with these guys with her held like this, and there are multiple shots that are very objectifying. And then at the end of the scene, one of the dudes leaves to do something and goes “hey, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do while I’m gone” and then the other dude tries to sexually assault her with his tentacles, and it is very much drawn in a titilating manner, like the show looks like it’s about to turn into tentacle hentai, with close up shots of tentacles wrapping around parts of her body (e.g. stomach, thighs) and then panning down her whole body as the tentacles are rippling over her. There’s even a shot of the lower half of her face (not her whole face, that might convey too much personhood) where the tentacle moves toward her mouth in a very “oh god, this is a scene from hentai” way as part of the, y'know sexual assault, and, while it doesn’t go in her mouth because she bites it in self-defense and fends the assault off first, it still gets that far. Why is this here? What does it add to the plot or her character? Nothing. It adds nothing; it’s just there for titilization. Similarly, the scene where her captor sexually assaults her includes shots like a close up of him dragging his finger up her bare stomach, and there is no reason for it to be shot like that unless it is for “fan service”, for lack of a better term. Hell, he tears off her shirt, and the shot after he does isn’t her face but Kirito’s, and she spends the rest of the scene shirtless but with strands of her hair covering her nipples. He forcefully kisses her (for a while too, although at least we don’t see that in detail) and tears one of her skirts, and it is horrific, but the focus of the scene is how evil Sugou is and how it upsets Kirito, and we get very little from Asuna. The person who gets an interior monologue about the situation is Kirito. The person who gains the ability to fight on via scene in his mind is Kirito. It transitions into a fight scene, and Asuna is just kind of hanging there off screen, and when it ends, the person who cries is Kirito, and the one who does the comforting is Asuna, and it is INSANE, like WHAT???

2.) She is sexually harrassed frequently. Then she gets abducted, so her love interest can be all “"cool”“ and ”“heroic”“ saving her.

Most infamously, though, she is sexually assaulted, on screen, for the sake of manpain and titillation. She is 17 when this happens btw.

Also I’m pretty sure every female character in this series qualifies, but (for what I think are obvious reasons) I don’t really go here.

3.) Kirito took all of her brain cells and replaced it with two. Actually, , I take it back. King Oberon absorbed all of her brain cells. It will take Asuna a thousand years to regain all of her brain cells.

(This poll says it lasts one day, but it's actually only until, like, 2:30 EST)

PROPAGANDA

MISA AMANE (DEATH NOTE) (CW: Imprisonment, Torture)

1.) Misa is treated so phenomenally poorly by the writers of Death Note. She is devoted enough to Kira’s cause to sacrifice half her lifespan for the additional power to see people’s names just by seeing their faces (you need a face and a name to kill someone with the Death Note), and she takes the time to understand everything about it. She, a random civilian, is able to find Kira all by herself by being clever, and she’s very devoted to Kira and Kira’s cause. You would think this would earn her some respect and make her a force in the narrative in opposition both to L’s lawfulness and Light’s god complex (because Misa is a true believer, while Light is some dude with a god complex and a willingness to commit mass murder to further it), but no, the moment she meets Light she falls hopelessly in love with him (not just Kira according to her), pledges her loyalty to him, and agrees to mindlessly follow him, with her sole condition being that he can’t date other girls (and if he tried to, she’d kill the other girl; note how this is not a threat on LIGHT’S life) and has to date her and at least pretend to love her. You would think, again, that these would become problems that potentially fuck Light over, but they are mild inconveniences at best. And, despite her ability to find Kira and only get found out by bullshit trace DNA and pollen nonsense that she, again as a random civilian with no knowledge of forensics that honestly sound SO FAKE (really, trace pollen from something that is super rare and exists near her apartment but few other places? Trace pollen that got in the shit she put together INDOORS? Come on, that’s SUCH bullshit, and SO contrived), had no way of knowing existing. Because she DID circumvent all the ways she’d incriminate herself that a normal person would know about, but because they got her on the SMALLEST SHIT, they’re like “oh, she’s an idiot.” And it’s not in a “oh, look at these guys, underestimating her” way, it’s in an “oh yeah, they’re 100% right, she’s an idiot” way.

EVERYONE in universe regards her as an idiot, both when she’s just known as the Second Kira and once her identity has been found out. The creators in a bonus book rank her knowledge at 3/10 and her creativity at 4/10, which is SUCH bullshit when all of her plans (the few ones they let her have) make creative use of her powers and talents. Like, she sent a video into a tv station that contained a journal entry that had multiple dates on it, with one being clear bait for the police to approach, one being irrelevant, and one containing information that only someone with a Death Note would understand, and she uses this to indicate a time and place they should meet. Except she doesn’t meet him there, she dresses up in a plain outfit and wig that look NOTHING like her and sits and watches the crowd, waiting for someone to walk by who is missing the date of their death above their head (an indicator that that person has a Death Note), and then goes home and researches him online. That is objectively clever! Even if the cops were there, which they were, they would never notice her (and they didn’t) or figure out that she got the information she needed. HOW is that not creative? HOW does that support her being an idiot? Light tricked a woman (Naomi Misora, who deserves her own entry) into giving her his name one time in a way that almost gave him away, and that was regarded as sooooo clever, but this is stupid? Ohba, explain. Matsuda, who I love dearly but also who has never a plan half as clever or interesting as hers, gets knowledge at 4/10 and creativity at 5/10. It’s misogyny, there’s no other reason that makes sense.

And when her anonymous videos that she used to draw out Kira mention the shinigami and notebooks very subtly, in a way the police wouldn’t understand, Light is like “Second Kira, you IDIOT”, but meanwhile, when Light had a victim mention shinigami in a note written before they died for the sole purpose of fucking with L, the narrative is like “Oh, look at him, he’s so clever mentioning shinigami when L has no way of knowing how important and real they are.” The double standard of it all!

Also, ok, so, the reason L dies is because Misa’s shinigami Rem fell in love with her and wants to protect her, even if it results in Rem’s death (which it does because a shinigami dies if they kill someone for the purpose of saving someone else). However, Misa is not involved AT ALL in getting Rem to go through with this. Light manipulates Rem into doing it, and the fact that this also doesn’t bite him in the ass, even though Misa and Rem were friends, is INSANE. Their logic is clearly that obviously Misa would never rebel against Light because it’s not like she has an internal life and feelings outside of devotion to Light, and if she did, she couldn’t do anything because she’s an idiot, so it’s not worth exploring. God forbid she have agency and be a force in the narrative, even though it would make the story more interesting and complex. She doesn’t even need to be super smart for that! The creators THEMSELVES rank her social skills, charm, and initiative at 10/10, and she gets to use them all of one (1) time. They just keep not letting her do things, and it’s at the expense of their story EVERY SINGLE TIME.

Also, after this, she’s gives up her Death Note (which means she loses her memories involved with being a Death Note user) when Light tells her to, and then she’s just written out of the story, with the exception of her looking sexy, being a jealous girlfriend, and being implied to die, even though TWO shinigami died for her and thus gave her their lifespans. Yeah, she halved one of those, gained the other, then halved that again, but she should have gained more than a total of, like, eight years from that! But no, Light’s story is done, so why would Misa survive when he didn’t?

That’s not to mention the weird fetish-y way she was tied up when imprisoned. She wasn’t in her normal clothes that she had been apprehended in, no, she was put in this raggedy, white straightjacket-looking thing, with a blindfold and her arms crossed over her and fastened behind her back. She was kept on some slab and set upright for FIFTY DAYS. Like, look at this shit:

Meanwhile, Light, who was also imprisoned, kept his regular clothes and only had his arms tied behind his back normally. The only difference in the powers they were assumed to have is that she could kill with just a face. So why the weird outfit, huh, Ohba, Obata? And, like, they sell FIGURES OF IT in the real world, people can BUY her in this outfit and DISPLAY it, and it is CLEARLY because they think some Death Note fans would find it arousing. And if the whole show was just fetish shit in all directions, then, sure, fine, go for it, but it is JUST her in this moment! And, like, if it was supposed to show something about L and how he’s kinda fucked up like that, you would think it would, like, come up again or something but it gets a fleeting mention ONCE and then THAT IS IT. Why do this, literally why??? Like, how high did they get off their own misogyny to come up with this?

I just. I can’t with how they treat Misa, I CANNOT. Like, I know they love to jerk off Light and talk about he’s sooooo smart and clever and charming, but this goes beyond putting her down because they want to lift him up. They put her in to cause some chaos a couple of times, pull some fetish shit, provide the method for killing L (but not do it herself or even play any active role at all in it), and then they’re done with her. She’s a convenient tool to the writers, not a character, unlike most of the male characters whose emotional reactions to Light’s bullshit come back to haunt him. For example: the way his responsibility for his father’s death and his dismissal of his father during his big confession lead Matsuda, who had liked Light but had a stronger emotional connection to his dad, to shoot him in a way that stops Light from using his Death Note scrap to get out of being surrounded after being definitively revealed to be Kira. And like, I love that moment for Matsuda, it’s great, my favorite scene in the whole show, but why don’t Misa’s emotions and bonds get to drive her to action in a way that is inconvenient to Light? Fine, she has unending devotion, why not have THAT do anything either? And it’s because this is the same type of treatment all the female characters in Death Note get (although Misa gets it worse by a country mile), being a POTENTIAL to MILD problem for Light and/or a person to use the Death Note in his place but little else, or someone to get kidnapped, it makes it clear that Misa’s treatment here is due to misogyny that infects the whole text, and it just. It rankles.

2.) Despite having the potential to be an interesting character (unhinged death note who doesn’t have excuses for killing people like Light does, actual connection to her Shinigami), she just gets reduced to Light’s plaything and fangirl, literally keeling over backwards for him. She ends up having nothing to do in the story, being reduced to this hollow shell of what she could have been, with her only personality trait being that she’s obsessed with Light, even after he routinely ignores her and even cheats on her. Every woman in Death Note gets put on the sidelines so the male characters can take the spotlight, but Misa easily has the biggest wasted potential of any of them.

3.) Left as flat, annoying, and obsessed with a guy who treats her badly the entire series. Could have had a lot more development but she just gets treated like an idiot at every turn despite HER INTRODUCTION including a pretty clever plan actually. As the series goes on it feels like they make her less and less intelligent just to justify why she’s keeping the exact same dynamic with light. Honestly the more i think about it the weirder that gets.

I don’t think it’s a problem in itself to have a character who isn’t especially intelligent or is easily manipulated or is an obsessive fan, and you can make really interesting stories using characters with those traits. But DN just did not do that, and honestly I think if Misa was written a bit smarter (not necessarily super detective chess nonsense smart, just having actual fucking agency and being able to come up with plans of her own) the series would be way better for it. You get a whole new dimension to the conflicts and scheming if she’s acting on her own terms, or trying to help and doing something unexpected, or just generally having another character with a death note and complicated ties to the main characters and actual human agency. Like even STAYING obsessed with Light she could have been so much more and the specifics of her motivations could be explored in more interesting detail than just making her a rabid fangirl even having spent enough time with the object of her obsession that the dynamic should have evolved.

She’s in a classic of the “so misogynistic it turned out gay” genre and like good for the gays i guess but holy shit she got done so dirty. She deserved better and DN would have been not only better in the “don’t be a jerk towards entire groups of people” sense but also probably better as a drama intrigue situation if the authors had a crumb of respect for her.

Also due to the story events she’s set to die pretty young and this is barely addressed? It’s a sidenote really and a lot of people die but Rem is the only one who gives a shit and their reaction is not focused on for long. I will not start about her and Rem because that will make this much much longer and is relevant more to why i like Misa than to why she got fucked over. (But hey it’s kinda fucked that she definitely did have people who supported and cared for her and they all got stripped away and it’s not even played as fucked up that this woman has no support network save for one guy who would kill her in a heartbeat if he thought it would help him and also that Misa can’t fully see the people who do care about her until it’s too late and this is never played as dark and serious in a series that thrives on being dark)

It’s just really really obvious that the authors do not see or write her as a person.

tl;dr SHE’S THE SECOND FUCKING KIRA and she gets treated like a PROP for most of the story. gets downgraded to scenery actually later in the story

actual tl;dr: introduced with an interesting plan and motivations worth exploring, slowly has her undeveloped personality steamrollered further and is treated like a tool and a prop for the rest of the series.

ABBIE MILLS (SLEEPY HOLLOW) (CW: Racism)

1.) Abbie starts out as one of the two protagonists of the show, only to get almost entirely sidelined as early as season 2, getting less and less screen time and allowed no relationships, either platonic or romantic, while the other lead Ichabod Crane has a seemingly infinite amount of them. It got bad enough that her actor wanted to leave the show, which they did by having her sacrifice her soul in the season 3 finale for the male lead to live, and then they ended the show after season 4 anyway, because guess what, it’s a bad idea to entirely sideline and eventually kill off one of your leads!

2.) She was killed by the narrative to advance her white male co-protagonist’s plotline and I’m still mad about it, Abbie deserved so much better. This is an example of racism in the narrative too and it extended to the production of the show, see news coverage:

3.) Look, I only watched the first season but they killed her off the show SHE was a co lead of!! Misogyny AND racism, all rolled into one. I remember seeing the fan reactions and I was so mad on their behalfs. They wrote her off her own show and from what I recall, gave her less and less screentime leading up to that. Truly, she deserved so much better and I will always be upset by this.

PROPAGANDA

KATHERINA MINOLA (THE TAMING OF THE SHREW) (CW: Domestic Abuse)

1.) We had to read this for English my senior year. I got so mad at the way she’s treated. She’s the titular “shrew” of the play. She has to be married off before her younger sister can get married, because that makes sense.

Then the most dogshit man imaginable comes along, and everybody thinks they’re perfect. He literally gaslights her and denies her food and water.

Fuck Petruchio and Katherine Minola deserved better!

2.) Literally the whole play is about how she is so awful that the main guy needs to change her entire personality, which he does as a challenge not because he likes her, and then proceeds to her abuse her for the rest of the play. Yet, he is portrayed as the hero, not a villain and she is shown to have “improved” at the end. People will say, oh it’s open to interpretation, it can be played different ways, it’s satire, but i don’t find abuse funny and there is a distinct lack of commentary in the play to count as satire imo. Taming of the Shrew is a tragedy not a comedy, I will die on this hill. Kate deserves better!

3.) The title isn’t joking, ya’ll. She literally gets broken like a rebellious feral animal and it’s treated as a happy ending.

CORDELIA CHASE (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER/ANGEL THE SERIES) (CW: Pregnancy)

1.) (downs an entire bottle of vodka and slams it back on the table) SO. CORDY. Cordy started off as a supporting character in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. At the start she was your typical high school mean girl character, but as the show went on we got to see more depth to her character: her insecurities, her courage, her capacity for incredible acts of kindness. Then after the third season she moved into the show’s spin off, Angel, where from the beginning she was basically the show’s secondary protagonist. Her and Angel were the two mainstays of the show’s main cast, she gets the most episodes centered on her out of all the characters aside from Angel (and yes, I’ve checked), and we really got to see her grow from a very shallow and self-centered and kind of mean person to a true hero who was prepared to give up any chance at a normal life to fight the good fight while still never losing the basic core of her character. There were some… questionable moments like the episode where she gets mystically pregnant with demon babies and things got a bit iffy like halfway through season 3 where the writers seemed to run out of ideas for what to do with her outside of sticking her in this romance drama/love triangle situation with the main character but overall, pretty good stuff right? THEN SEASON 4 HAPPENED. In season 4 she gets stripped of literally all agency and spends pretty much the entire season possessed by an evil higher power, and while possessed she sleeps with Angel’s teenage son (who BY THE WAY she had helped raise as a baby before he got speed-grown-up into a teenager it was a whole thing don’t worry about it) and gets pregnant with like. the physical manifestation of the higher power that’s possessing her. it’s about as bad and stupid as it sounds and also is like the third time cordy’s got mystically pregnant in this show and like the fourth mystical pregnancy storyline overall (you will be hearing more on that note in other submissions I’m so sorry). after giving birth she goes into a coma, in which she remains for the rest of season 4 and the first half of season 5. SPEAKING OF WHICH DON’T THINK SEASON 5 IS GETTING OFF SCOT FREE HERE. yeah so in season 5 the show just FULLY starts trying to erase cordy’s existence. she gets mentioned ONCE in the first episode and then never again until halfway through the season where she wakes up, helps out Angel for a bit and encourages him in his fight against evil, and then goes quietly into that good night and dies so it can be all sad and tragic. I’d call it the worst fridging of all time but even THAT feels generous because the whole point of fridging is killing off a female character so a man can be sad, and after Cordy dies basically no one’s even sad about it because the show immediately goes back to pretending she never existed. she is not mentioned ONCE in the two episodes after she dies. in the whole stretch of time between her death and the end of the season she gets mentioned exactly four times. again, I counted. anyway the fun twist to all of this is that all of this happened because the actress who played cordy got pregnant before season 4 and joss whedon was so pissed off about this affecting his plans for the show that he decided to completely fuck over her character and then fire her and write her out of the show. so cordy’s a victim of both writing AND real life misogyny!! good times!!

2.) OH SO MANY THINGS they menaced by giving her terrible hair cuts, making her seem like she’d get together with the guy she loves (and who loves her back) but instead she was killed and when she was brought back, she got possessed by an evil entity who used her body to give birth to itself. afterwards she was in a long coma and died. her character was so throughoutly assassinated

3.) She got demonically pregnant TWICE - there was this real sense of a womb/ability to get pregnant as like, a place for evil to get in. She got positioned as femme fatale and evil mother. The actress basically got fired for being pregnant, and when she agreed to come back for a single final episode she specifically said they could do anything but kill off the character. Guess what happened