The Enterprise goes back in time and doesn’t prevent a genocide, but Anika and Liz would like to go back in time to prevent this episode from ever being made. Oh, did the fourth season premiere of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds displease us? It sure did!
“Don’t overthink it!”
This episode provides more evidence for our argument that Pike is bad at his job
Words we use to describe this episode: “nonsense”, “dreadful”, “terrible”, “morally broken”, “anti Star Trek“, “almost clever”
Why does SNW want us to hate La’an?
Leaning into the biological determinism with this Kha’an arc
The Martians and Spock are totally incurious about each other, because this is The Least Curious Star Trek
“Let’s not worry too much about that genocide we facilitated” is … not a great twist in 2026. Or ever.
Skyler White (Breaking Bad) vs. Britta Perry (Community)
Skyler White
Britta Perry
Remaining time: 6 days 18 hours
Propaganda below the cut:
Skyler White:
she ‘got in the way’ of Walt doing murders, cooking, meth, and didn’t respect he was doing all these crimes and emotionally and physically abusing her for the ‘good of the family’. Essentially called her an evil bitch for not wanting to be exposed to danger and thinking her husband is a bad person because he couldn’t swallow his pride and take the cushy job his successful friend offered in order to pay for his cancer treatment and instead decided to cook meth and kill people. Oh and she cheated with an old flame (again because of Walt’s crime and abuse) but that’s worse I guess.
She’s literally just a normal woman who reacts to things the way a normal woman would and people lost their fucking minds about it. Hell she even helped Walt launder the money with a car wash like she set that shit all up herself and he and the fans still hated her.
obvious choice but skyler is ROUTINELY called the worst character in breaking bad and has been since like 2008. any conflict in the show and there will be people insisting she has some fault just because she "is annoying". also an eternal victim of "i don't like her because she reminds me of my mom"
breaking bad is the most fun show ever if you learn to love skyler white. her immediate suspicion of walter and constant attempts to support her family both with and against him are vindicating. she's smart, much more business savvy than him and a better liar. constantly looked down upon in-universe but explicitly uses it to her advantage at every step. she is awesome
Walter white is the worst human being in the entire show and everyone was like “she’s awful for trying to get him to stop manufacturing drugs.” Let’s not even mention the fact that he almost rapes her in the first season while she’s like eight months pregnant and no one ever talks about it ever.
She’s actually pretty cool and has the best line that no one ever quotes: “someone has to protect this family from the man who protects this family.”
She's one of THE poster children for fandom misogyny victims. People reduced her to being Walt's bitch wife as if she wasn't a) 100% in the right in every argument against him b) better at doing crime than him to an extent that's straight up hysterically funny.
As I said, she's actually really really good at doing crime and there's something inherently very entertaining about watching this completely normal housewife/office worker turning out to be really good at money laundering and negotiating with criminals and coming up with cover stories. She has a failed writing career that she appears to be using coming up with cover stories for her husband's meth dealing as an outlet for, which is also really funny. She literally writes a script for him to use. There's also a really hilarious scene where the show cuts to Skyler on the wikipedia page for "money laundering" that made me laugh really hard. We love a wikipedia warrior.
The fandom blames her for all the problems that her husband Walter faces and calls her the worst character despite there being literal nazis and cartel members in the show. They also call her a slut, bitch, etc, even though the things she's done are not even comparable to the horrific actions that the male characters do.
She is smart as hell and strong asf for putting up with Walter's bullshit. Amazing at thinking on her feet. Isn't given enough credit for her intelligence and strength
Famously called a bitch by many brba fans for simply not being cool with her husband cooking meth and killing people
Where to even start… According to fandom, cheating on the husband who refuses to divorce you is magnitudes worse than murder and running a drug empire. Every criticism of Skyler I see boils down to the "nagging housewife" trope. She's not perfectly subservient so she must be evil and terrible. And yet Walt is cool and suave… okayyyyy…
Skyler is literally a human being who reacts perfectly rationally to the situation she finds herself unwillingly facing. That old man should have died in the car wash.
Maybe the most famous victim of fandom misogyny ever. Fandom acts like she was worse than Walt because she didn't want him to make meth.
Skyler wanted what was best for her family. Unlike Walt, she truly broke bad for her family. She made tough choices, not always good ones, but she was an abuse victim in a very unusual position. She is also great at lying and schemes.
goddamn near every single action she took in the show was a pretty reasonable reaction to her husband and his meth empire bullshit (including the affair because he literally refused to sign divorce papers before that started). and also she’s literally raped on screen by her husband who a bunch of bb fans actively idolize
Skyler White has to be the most unjustifiable hated female character. Even some of the actors are confused why she was considered the bitch.
how can Skyler White not win this. or at least come close. she's arguably the prime example in recent widely-popular culture what with the absurd degree she was demonised for acting in an entirely rational manner considering she was an abuse victim and for most of the series blatantly a hostage? I mean we can't possibly illuminate the extent of the (ongoing ad hanc diem) Skyler White misogyny but there are multitudinous video essays on the subject it's a riduculously widespread and rampant phenomenon. but that's not to minimise any of the other instances and Skyler ought to do well enough anyway given the vastness of her situation so. just our thoughts on the subject we'll be voting for Skyler since she's such a ridiculously prime example of misogyny
Skylar White doesn't need propaganda because she is famously one of the most hated female characters on TV, like, ever but wow the misogyny the character STILL faces is absolutely atrocious, to this day ppl call her a bitch for not wanting her (abusive!!) husband to become a drug lord who kills ppl.
Britta Perry:
not only does the fandom loathe her for things the other male characters have done, but the original writers of the show continued to dumb down and flanderise her character to appease misogynist audiences, ruining what could have been a really well made and nuanced character. it pisses me off to no end.
she is literally a pathetic little goober. shes passionate about everything in a way thats sometimes irritating and i love it. she is so stubborn and wants to do the right thing which makes her overbearing in a rly charming way. she's strong but also sensitive and cares so much about other people that she sacrifices everything she has for them OVER and OVER, and yet shes still scared that shes not a good person. she is such an interesting character, and i KNOW its a comedy but if the audience (AND showrunners) stopped treating her like only a joke character we would have room for so much amazing discussion about her depth. the main guy characters get their tender moments in so many episodes! why couldnt she have hers! ok that is all
With Britta Perry (especially in the later seasons) the MAIN "JOKE" with her character is people going "ugh Britta you are the worst" to basically anything she ever does or attempts to do. The show writers keep leaning to a "hahaha she cant sing and cant dance and shes not as sexy as another female character, can you believe she CARES about SOCIAL JUSTICE isn't that cringe????" and you as the audience are just supposed to laugh. And people seem to do so :/ Britta Perry I will love you forever
The hate Britta Perry faces in youtube comments is INSANE. In a show about people who are all fundamentally weird and offputting she will be called the most horrible names for the crimes of um... not always babying male characters around her. caring about her friends. having opinions. She will be attacked for anything and I will not stand for it. Women should be allowed to be a little bit cringe sometimes!!!!!!! Is that too much to ask!!!!!!!!
Hera (Greek Mythology) vs. Martha Jones (Doctor Who)
Hera
Martha Jones
Remaining time: 6 days 18 hours
Propaganda below the cut:
Hera:
the mythology is filled with rapists,unrepentant murderers and other incredibly disturbing content but hera is one the very few characters that is always seen as one dimensional even though she can easily be interpreted with much more depth. if hades and hapastus can get the "they could be that deep" treatment, than so is hera
THE problematic fave, walked so amy dunne could run 💚 hera has always been one of the figures in mythology than intrigued me the most and I am still waiting for a retelling of her as an anti hero that still incorporates her signature traits
everyone always characterizes her as a jealous bitch (usually in tandem with woobifying zeus). it’s literally not her fault that she was tricked and coerced into marrying a serial rapist who holds much more power than her.
like yes. from a modern day perspective, it is pretty misogynistic of hera to punish the women that zeus sleeps with (consensually or not. usually not!!). but ☝️ she is also stuck in a terrible marriage (smth smth goddess of marriage bound by her own domain) and is hurting those that she has power over because she can’t hurt zeus. messy victims my beloved
As a whole, Hera is depicted in the Iliad as a queenly and awe-inspiring figure. She rides in a chariot she drives herself and Athena sometimes rides alongside her. There's also a scene where she physically subdues Artemis:
Apollo, the Far-Striker, did not deign to answer, but Hera, revered as Zeus’ wife, rebuked the Lady of the Bow angrily: ‘You want to fight with me now, do you, bold and shameless as you are? I am no mean opponent, I tell you, if you seek a challenge, even though you wield the bow, and Zeus made you a lioness where women are concerned, letting you kill them as you wish. You’ll find it better sport, though, to slaughter deer and other prey in the mountains, than take on someone fiercer than yourself. But if that’s your idea, to vie with me in strength, then let this teach you who is stronger.’So saying, she seized the other’s wrists in her left hand, snatched Artemis’ bow and quiver from her shoulders and, laughing all the while, boxed her on the ears with the weapons as she writhed, scattering the winged arrows. Artemis fled weeping from her, like a dove, flying from a falcon, which finds a cleft or hollow in the cliffs so cheating fate. She took her tears with her, but left the bow and arrows where they lay.
Martha Jones:
She was the first main Black companion on Doctor Who…I'll just talk about the fandom racism/misogyny itself and not the racism/misogyny in the show itself. She was subject to overt and subtle misogynoir from the fandom, especially since she came after white fan-favorite companion Rose Tyler. People disliked her for having a crush on the Doctor, which Rose also had, and was unfavorably compared to Rose. There's a lot more, but I don't want to write a whole essay.
She's a medical student, and incredibly smart and capable! In her stories, she's incredibly compassionate to those around her, and offers emotional as well as medical assistance. Also, she has incredible style!
Martha gets absolutely shafted by the fandom, most of whom cannot seem to forgive her for not being Rose Tyler. That she dares to leave the Doctor and live her own life is apparently an act more evil than any the Daleks could dream of. A lot of fans insist that Martha's race has nothing to do with why they dislike her. A lot of fans are fucking liars.
Martha is competent and intelligent and screams way less than usual for a companion so she is clearly excellent.
I think fandoms been very racist and misogynistic towards her, relagating her as some spineless woman always pining after the doctor instead of a badass MD who saved the day many times
Not only misogyny but racism too. Martha is an incredibly smart and brave character who doesn’t get half the credit that the Doctor’s other (WHITE) companions get. She gets dogged on by the fandom for a lot of reasons that are overlooked or forgiven when Rose Tyler does a lot of the same things.
She was the only RTD companion who wasn’t given superpowers in order to save the day. Girl saved the world with nothing but gumption and a good pair of walking boots.
I still see hate fics for her in the big year of 2026 please god she's not getting in the way of your ship she walked away from that bum ass alien 15 years ago
So many fans consider Martha a "rebound" companion for 10 and say that she only cares about impressing him or something. Completely ignoring the fact that she was charmed into coming with him! Just like everybody else who travels with the Doctor. She also canonically SAVED THE WORLD by giving the people something to believe in and got to leave on her own accord without something terrible happening to her. She's also shown to be incredibly smart and talented, quickly adapting to situations even if she might be freaked out at first. And after she leaves she gets to work with UNIT (and im pretty sure she also appears in the Torchwood spin-off series) and eventually she ends up with someone who understands what she's been through. Martha is SO MUCH MORE than just a rebound companion or a girl obsessed with the Doctor. Sheis (at the time of meeting her) being trained to be a full on doctor who has incredible will power and a clear desire to help others.
I was part of the crowd who hated her for "getting between" my ship and "replacing" Rose. I even avoided rewatching the season she was in when i rewatched most everything else. (Just to be clear i wasn't part of the fandom during this time and i didn't spread the hate). After seeing her on this blog i started thinking back and reflecting on my opinion of her and concluded that i was being super misogynistic and racist. I decided to rewatch her season and even just a few episodes in i could tell how amazing Martha is. She's everything you could want in a companion, she's smart, capable, compassionate, brave, she balances The Doctor's personality really well. In fact i found myself more annoyed with The Doctor for how shittily he treated Martha, and the writers for not handling the whole thing better. All this to say: Martha get behind me i will defend you with my life and the lives of everyone who has ever hated her
Sakura Haruno (Naruto) vs. Abbie Mills (Sleepy Hollow)
Sakura Haruno
Abbie Mills
Remaining time: 6 days 18 hours
Propaganda below the cut:
Sakura Haruno:
NUMBER ONE MOST HATED FEMALE CHARACTER FRRRR AND FOR WHAT. FOR WHAT! FOR BEING A 12 YEAR OLD (WITH THE EMOTIONAL REGULATION & INTERPERSONAL SKILLS THAT ENTAILS) CHILD SOLDIER WHO WAS KINDA MEAN TO THE PROTAG AND BOY CRAZY???? BC KISHIMOTO CANT WRITE WOMEN?????!?!?!?! Everyone hates Sakura soooo much saying she's useless, doesnt add to the plot, is annoying, etc to the point where even ppl who have never watched naruto know about how hated she is. What was her crime except being a girl in a shounen series and being "underpowered" compared to the powerhouses that are her teammates? She literally still wipes the floor with 90% of the cast let's be real here, she literally got a hit in on a fucking alien goddess but GOD FORBID a woman be emotional bc now she's a horrible person who only knows how to whine and cry and stands by while the heroes fight (even though shes a healer and it makes no sense for her to be a frontline fighter when she's much better used as a support 😭). sakura hate is so goddamned prevalent and feels like the blueprint for a lot of hate OTHER female characters get in shounen series 😭😭😭
Literally theeeee strongest kunoichi to ever exist with no kekkei genkai, clan name, or Anything helping her get a foot in the door. She's civillian-born and still stands shoulder-to-shoulder with her peers who are reincarnated gods (or close to it), one of whom has a sacred bloodline and another who has a tailed beast and also clan blood… In the history of the series only one other person would be comparable in achievement and strength (Minato), and her prowess as a healer 100% eclipses him. She's kind and empathetic and strong and deserves so much more than the slander she got from the fans!!!!!
she suffers from being written by a man who hates women but instead of realising this fandom instead decides that she's evil for being 12 years old. many people forgive dogshit writing choices for their male favs as dogshit writing choices but for sakura no shes an evil bitch i guess
shes literally one of the main characters & thee main characters best friend & yet she's constantly less popular than other male characters or treated in a way thats so incredibly misogynistic. she broke open naruto's chest to manually beat his heart with her hand. she was a fully fledged doctor at like 14 years old. she has super strength. she has a homoerotic rivalry. its not her fault she got miserably heterosexually married to sasuke 'homosexual' uchiha we all need to unite against our common enemy (the author) here
One of the main trio of characters we start and then go through the story with, achieves incredible fits in her own field, yet all the fandom has to say about her is how "useless" she is. Because boys. (Also the fact that the anime apparently added plenty anti-Sakura scenes and people don't care for her actual manga characterization does not help.)
Despite not being as super-duper-special as Naruto and Sasuke, Sakura kept up with them with her own power-ups. She succeeds Tsunade. She becomes an incredible healer. She supports her friends through and through. She believes in best in people and she's loyal to a fault. She lands a punch on a god-like big bad in the final battle, despite many not being able to touch said being. She is, actually, a multi-faceted character, and sometimes being a supporting friend of a super-duper-special hero is not any less impressive and strength-demanding than being said hero. The story wouldn't be the same without her, and that's the point. She deserves SO much better from both the fandom and the anime adaptation.
She's always getting brutalized in fanfics for sasunaru, called stupid and useless etc
In a series that likes to present itself as being about the value of hard work and eschewing destiny she is the only one that’s actually self-made and accomplished. Sakura should’ve been Hokage
she's sidetracked or turned into a homophobe for the popular yaoi, treated as annoying and unredeemable for being literally 12, and straight up ignored by half the fandom while the other just goes "girlboss who has the braincell!!!!" and then does nothing else with her character
She was the strongest shinobi in all of the verse im not taking any objections she did ALL OF IT without ANY HELP FROM ANYONE also one of the most interesting arcs in the anime
I don't even watch the show and I still know that the writer never giving her anything to do and making her lose every fight was interpreted by the fandom as her being useless and widely hated, including seeing her as "getting in the way of" yaoi stuff. Again I don't even go here but she looks cool and sounds nice so I hope she's respected by people somewhere.
sakura has been the butt of "useless" jokes her entire entire life and everyone is so quick to push her aside and give her less prominence when she's genuinely a really interesting character with complex emotions and drivers and of course everyone calls her annoying (derogatory) too as if the other twelve year olds she was introduced with weren't also annoying but sasuke and naruto are considered annoying in a positive way if theyre considered annoying at all. she gets left out of merch all the time thats not the fandom thats like official. and she's a main character!
sakura is genuinely so interesting and has a character arc and has to struggle with not having innate birthright power and being compared to the boys on her team and when sasuke leaves (sorry for the spoiler?) her reaction to it is so interesting especially contrasted to everyone else's like the way she views sasuke's absence is so different and so human and so characteristic! a character doesn't have to be physically strong to be interesting but of course thats the metric shonen fans are going to use and even on that front sakura SHOULD be stronger than she is it is plain misogyny that she doesn't get as many interesting power developments or specific fights. and is shafted aside to be a healer as is the fate of all women in naruto. anyway. but the fights she gets are genuinely really good and dynamic and they all push sakura to be a more self actuated and confident person! i think only so much can be accredited to the authors misogyny because he does take care to give sakura complexity and depth and it's the fandom that loves to scrub it away and blame it on the someone else. also i just find it personally compelling that she sees the actions her loved ones take and even if she understands them objectively she still takes them personally. i think it is very difficult to undergo what team 7 has and not take things personally and it is easy for a fictional character to be purely selfless and noble but sakura is very much selfish and she knows it and it makes her feel ugly inside but haven't we all felt that way!? being ashamed of our own feelings and reactions???
Sakura Haruno is my "In the trenches" character here, and hiding behind the author's misogyny has become a MASSIVE issue over time in the naruto fandom. Initially fandom was perfectly comfortable calling her useless, saying she was the worst person ever, saying she was so stupid for continuing to chase after Sasuke (but also praising the male main character for doing the exact same thing ofc) etc but then it became a lot less socially acceptable on tumblr to say all that openly. So NOW you get people just hiding behind "kishimoto is a raging misogynist and can't write women" to say the exact same things they always were. And look, Kishimoto isn't a great writer and he absolutely has problems with how he writes female characters. But I've come to feel like that's something people are using to completely write the character off without examining her any deeper than that. (and you esp can't escape the shipping discourse with her, it is some of the most accepted "female character is bad because she's in the way of my mlm ship" misogyny I've ever seen in any fandom.)
The Sakura anon who was talking about people hiding behind the author of Naruto's misogyny made a really great point, I think. Yes, in some cases the source material itself is misogynistic towards a character, but that does not cancel out the misogyny from the fans. I've seen a few times people saying a character "doesn't count" because it's the *show* that was sexist, but I think show and fandom misogyny often go hand in hand. Yeah, Kishimoto didn't really care that much about Sakura, but he's not the one who wrote torture fics about her for the crime of "getting in the way" of two boys
Piggybacking off that last Sakura ask/propaganda by saying the fandom not only hides behind the authors misogyny but they also like to hide behind other liking other female characters, that the same sexist author wrote, when they were shown much less than Sakura. Of course Kishi didn't fuck them up or fuck them over. They had the luxury of not being the female MC. Worse yet, ppl also cherrypick when to blame kishi's writing and when not to while pretending to be objective when they do so. They exaggerate the shit out of her flaws & acting like she's this oppressive psycho with the whole cast as her perpetual victims. Any positive thing that is said or constructive criticism about Sakura that doesn’t involve holding her to a different standard than other characters is seen as "erasing" majority of her character. Her flaws define her 100%, but other characters, are allowed to have their redeeming moments/qualities exist alongside their flaws. Or just have them ignored entirely & it's accepted fandom wide. But not Sakura, never Sakura. In fact, when someone says “hey Sakura isn’t that bad” or “okay, maybe she is that bad, but she didn’t write herself. Other characters are terribly written as well” There is a visceral, “burn them at the stake” reaction from people. This fandom gets such a haughty attitude with ALL Sakura fans because they personally don't like the character, so no one should. For any reason. I always thought that Sakura antis got away with being unhinged, and hypocritical it pissed me off. I just had to leave the fandom for good. Sorry about this. I just wanted to rant/vent 😅
I finished naruto recently and tbh I didn't like sakura a lot, but it was because I felt the plot did her dirty, erased potential that she certainly had and displayed (ex sakura vs sasori) and took away a lot of her character traits and development just to make her obbssed with sasuke. I don't hate sakura, I'm js not a big fan of her, and if other people don't like her due to constructive and unbiased reasons, there's nothing wrong with that. HOWEVER. ever since I went into the naruto fandom, ive realized the hate for sakura is insane. Rather than actually critiquing sakura for real writing issues, some fans literally insult sakura for no good reason. I've seen fans hate on sakura a lot for saying the things to sasuke about orphans (I never really considered that a big deal and also I thought that scene was rlly funny lmao) and of course for getting in the way of sasunaru.. (ochaco🤝sakura). The worst thing I've seen tho has to be the people who insult sakura because shes "ugly" and fans who harrass sakura fans by calling them the r slur. This is actually disgusting and has nothing to do with writing any more. Smh
Abbie Mills:
Some fans hated her for threatening the Ichabod/Katrina ship and for being a black woman main character of a genre show.
Abbie Mills was a hero with a great backstory and really fun banter with Ichabod. I have to stop there because if I get into the fuckery that occurred on the show itself my blood pressure will rise.
Black police lieutenant who hesitantly throws in her lot with Ichabod Crane, even to the point of leaving him sticky notes around her house explaining how modern things like indoor plumbing, coffee machines and co.puters work. Gradually they become very close, to the point that when reunited after separation they run to each other and she jumps into his arms. At one point he holds her close, whispering into her hair to remember their bond and that he'd be back for her. Naturally, the primary white fandom basically ignored her in favor of Crane's dead (white) wife Katrina. Around the time it was airing I was cursed with seeing 'racebent' (aka they made her white )art of Abbie because apparently the artist 'couldn't relate to her' as a Black woman. Oh and the series itself did her dirty by killing her off at the end of the first season and carrying on without her for the second. Justice for Leftenant Mills (Leftenant is what Crane calls her, he's British you see.)
The whip-smart second lead who got so shafted by the writing team by season 3 that she was barely appearing anymore (and nearly all the cast were complaining about it, not just her actress) by the time they killed her off for cheap shock value (and some would say killed the show with her, considering the massive ratings nosedive).
Claudia (Interview with the Vampire) vs. Guinevere Pendragon (BBC Merlin)
Claudia
Guinevere Pendragon
Remaining time: 6 days 18 hours
Propaganda below the cut:
Claudia:
She's a young black woman who is constantly ignored over the men in the show and reduced to nothing more than tragic pieces of the mens' life story by many of the fans and sometimes even the showrunners.
Not only is she just the best girl around but she's so incredibly complex---we as the audience still don't know the real and true her. I would die to get to know her but it's shocking a large part of the IWTV fandom isn't the same!
I can't speak to her treatment from book/movie fans but TV fans literally only talk about her in relation to being Louis and lestats "daughter". By the end of her life she's in her 40s and yet the fandom only treats her as their young daughter and she is defined by that instead of her actual character
due to claudia being a black woman who is directly opposed to everyone’s white male pookie (lestat) there has been a lot of misogyny thrown at her in the form of calling her a liar because the events of her personal diary (that was never supposed to be read by anyone) don’t align with lestat’s own account of events. she is seen as manipulative and selfish and someone who was trying to drive a wedge between louis and lestat, and her own classification as a victim of abuse in this family dynamic is undermined by her efforts to remove herself and find her own community. the abuse she faces by other male leads like louis and armand is minimized even if fans are able to see lestat’s abuse for what it is, even though armand staged a lynching for her, louis, and her companion madeleine and lied about it, alongside louis minimizing lestat and armand’s actions against her. the fandom is happy to take all the male characters at face value but as far as claudia is concerned everything she did was duplicitous and self-serving.
claudia deserved better from her “family” and it breaks my heart that her life in the grand scheme of things was cut so short just as she was finding her happiness. she is incredibly funny and the love she finds with madeleine is so beautiful. the struggle of being a woman in a body that is at odds with you and who you really are and what you want to be able to do in the world is very compelling and easy to empathize with from so many different avenues whether it’s by race, disability, and/or gender/sexuality. she is such an incredible character that should be seen as more than just an obstacle and loustat’s dead daughter. her and madeleine are the best lesbian vampires and everyone should be tuning into the yuri.
She's either a horrible and manipulative girl who lies in her own personal diaries for some reason about the abuse she faced from her white father or she's an idiot who got what was coming to her when she was lynched or just a tool to be used to further the relationship between two men. Her story is quite literally never her own, her diaries shared again and again without her consent and picked apart by both the characters in universe and fans.
She's literally so interesting and so well acted by both of the actresses who play her. She has such depth and her life was cut short due to racism, misogyny, and ableism. She deserves more than to be reduced to nothing but a liar or a tragic figure to be used to further the relationship between two men.
even people claim to like her will call her stupid for her actions in season two, even though she quite literally spells out her reasons for being so desperate to join the coven. In season one she's shown trying again and again to turn a person and make herself a companion. In season two she tells Louis (her father/brother who she loves but at this point he had gotten physically violent with her when she tried to convince him to kill their maker Lestat once and for all) that the only vampires she's known are him, their white maker (who beat Louis half to death, threatened Claudia by mentioning her rapist, got violent with her, and tried to kill her), the aforementioned rapist, and her white father's white side piece who he was planning to replace her with. She wants to belong somewhere with people like her, yeah she endures humiliation at first but considering what she'd been through at this point, it makes sense that she can justify it for a while to be a necessary evil. It's also important to note that she doesn't have all the information! Louis does not tell her that Armand threatened to kill him the night she was inducted into the coven. There was no way she could have predicted Lestat coming back or Armand and the coven's plan to lynch them. Why does a woman, and especially a Black woman, have to be completely objective and rational and borderline clairvoyant all the time to be deserving of sympathy?
A major theme of s1/2 (I'm not watching s3 lol) is that nothing is really ever about Claudia. Even when Louis says he's doing something for her, it's not really about her. Even her death wasn't about her, it was about Louis and Armand and the coven's relations with each other. And yet the fandom picks up on this, but does not critically examine it. So in fandom…..nothing is about her. It's about Lestat, or Louis, or occasionally Armand, or Loustat's relationship. Nobody ever puts her first despite her being one of the most interesting characters. It hurts my heart!!!
Another big part of the show is how infantilized she is and how much she hated that. She HATED being seen as a little girl. When she dies, she is in her 40s or 50s. And yet…you guessed it… fandom sees this and is like "aw, Loustat's little daughter" or "Louis's little sister" when she actively fought against being treated like a little girl and has an (amazingly well acted, kudos to Bailey Bass) breakdown in s1 over the fact that her mind will age but her body will not.
Justice for my fully grown mature adult woman!
Guinevere Pendragon:
The vitriol towards her seems to have calmed down within recent years (at least what I have seen) but especially when the show was airing people treated her horribly. Her being a black woman very much played a part in it, as well as the classic fandom dogpiling on any woman who supposedly 'gets in the way' of a m/m ship. They hate to see a woman in power.
She is consistently kind and loving throughout the story, demonstrating bravery and an unwavering willingness to defend and make sacrifices for the people she loves. She is a positive influence in the life of literally everyone she interacts with, even those who eventually betray her. She is emotionally rich and complicated due to her background as a commoner with a close yet strained relationship to the monarchy. She's lovely and she's interesting, and for a show with a fandom that often cares to dissect the relevant queercoding within the text, not nearly enough attention is given to her interactions with other women (imo). She is more than just a love interest, I swear!!!
Made to be an obstacle to the popular m/m ship
Constant sidelining her in favour of that whiteboy ship and reducing her role in the show, either villainising her and calling her misogynistic slurs (how funny that the other characters have also shown attraction to different people but only she is called a slut for having like two crushes and one serious relationship, I wonder why) or refusing to engage with her character on the basis of ‘she’s too underwritten and boring’, also a complete refusal to ever give any weight to the horrendous treatment she got over the course of the show (nearly being executed multiple times, the love spell, the torture and brainwashing, the strange racist plotline where a Middle Eastern-coded character captures and almost forces her to have sex with him??) like it’s so hard to see how over the years she’s consistently been hated and gets the least amount of grace and sympathy than any of the other (white) characters do
Despite the show’s writing failing her often, she’s the sweetest specialest girl of all time and everyone in that show loves her so bad likeee that is QUEEN GUINEVERE OF CAMELOT, and with a much more coherent character arc than fans give credit for, her progression from supporting other characters to do what’s good and right and bring change to the kingdom to gaining the confidence and power to take on an active tole herself, also Angel Coulby is soooo beautiful<33 Honestly my Once and Future Queen<333
In a lot of fanfics she's only there to act as a cheerleader for the popular m/m ship, one half of whom is her husband. and that's if she's even included at all
She is the best character in the show and i adore her. She's funny and brave and kind and does not take any shit from her love interest, but because she's played by a black woman she got shit from day one. Angel coulby has been harrassed, bullied, and treated like absolute shit for the crime of (checks notes) playing a fictional character. It's made even worse bc she "gets in the way" of merthur even though the show is literally based in mythology and we all know that's arthur's future wife. Free my girl /immediately/
gwen propaganda incoming because i genuinely think The Hunter's Heart accidentally proves why Gwen is one of the strongest characters in the entire show.
Because every discussion about this episode ends up being about Arthur, or Morgana, or the love triangle drama, and meanwhile Gwen is over here carrying the entire plot on her back.
She's been falsely accused. Exiled. Separated from everyone she loves. Forced into poverty. Living completely alone. Still heartbroken. Still believing Arthur hates her. Still believing she deserves her punishment. And then she gets captured by raiders.
Most characters would be having a complete breakdown at this point. Gwen doesn't. Instead she immediately starts adapting.
No matter what happens to her, she survives.
Helios objectifies her? She plays along just enough to stay safe. He invites her to dinner? She keeps her composure. She's trapped in an enemy camp? She keeps her eyes and ears open.
And because she's paying attention, she's the one who discovers the conspiracy against Camelot.
Not Merlin.
Not Arthur.
Not the knights.
GWEN.
The exiled servant everyone threw away. The woman everyone assumed was powerless. The woman who technically owes Camelot absolutely nothing at this point.
And what does she do with that information? She risks her life trying to warn them anyway.
Gwen has every reason to be bitter.
Camelot failed her. Arthur failed her. The court failed her.
And yet the moment she learns the kingdom is in danger, her first instinct is still:
"I need to stop this."
Not because anyone will thank her. Not because she'll be rewarded. Not because it'll clear her name. Because it's the right thing to do.
THAT is Gwen.
People talk all the time about Arthur's nobility. People talk all the time about Merlin's loyalty.
But Gwen is just as noble as Arthur and just as loyal as Merlin (IF NOT MORE)
The difference is that nobody ever gives her credit for it.
And honestly one of the most heartbreaking parts of the episode is that Gwen still believes she deserves exile.
Even after everything. Even after being manipulated. Even after losing everything. Even after surviving completely alone. She still tells Merlin that she can never see Arthur again because she got what she deserved.
Meanwhile I'M sitting on my couch screaming: GWEN YOU ARE LITERALLY THE BESTEST PERSON HERE.
She keeps choosing kindness when she has every excuse reason not to. She keeps choosing loyalty when loyalty has cost her everything. She keeps choosing courage when she's terrified.
And The Hunter's Heart is honestly one of the best examples of that.
Because underneath all the weird Helios stuff, the episode is really about Gwen proving exactly who she is when nobody is there to help her.
And the answer is: A hero.
(oh and if you were wondering, no the helios stuff is never brought up again, much like everything concerning gwen)
If you could restart your life from age 15 with all the knowledge you possessed now, so that you COULD go back and fix all your regrets/mistakes, would you do it?
Yes
No
Remaining time: 5 days 13 hours
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i’m sorry but it is absolutely a conservative impulse to believe that an ancient work has some kind of “purity” that can be “desecrated” by adaptation. think about what you are saying. why do you think adaptational change or reinterpretation is an “offense” to “culture” that must be answered for? what could motivate a person or movement to designate a certain story as “sacred”? when you do this, are you conjuring an idealized past? in the same breath, does this position modernity as a threat?
Our video editor called this file "Antimatter Pod Roasts Captain Pike For Two And A Half Minutes.mov", and it has made some men on TikTok rather cross.
i love when people reblog my riverdale cowbell of happiness post and tell me in the tags that they just got to that episode of utena and were like omg just like the riverdale post. already i have influenced so many people's lives with my riverblogging
Some Nahuatl derived words still commonly used in Mexican spanish:
Papalote -> Papalotl: word for “Kite”, though the original Nahuatl meaning is butterfly!
Tamal -> Tamalli: real tamal heads know what’s up here (though original meaning is more specifically “wrapped food”)
Aguacate -> Ahuacatl: though now we know it as “avocado” it originally meant “testicle” LMAO which makes sense iykyk
Chicle -> Tzictli: chewing gum!
Cuate -> Koatli: it’s a way to say friend, but it also means fraternal twin!
Esquite -> Izquitl: originally “corn snack” but now it’s elote preparado or i guess known in english as “Mexican street corn” lol
Itacate -> Itacatl: just another way of saying backpack
Wey -> Huey: now used as “dude” between friends, originally it meant “honorable” or “venerated”, which like honestly still holds up if u love your friends (as you should)
Escuincle -> Itzcuintli: originally it meant dog, now it's a funny way to refer to kids lol
Ajolote -> Axolotl: we now know them as those cute little critters, but originally it meant water monster lmao
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