baseball in essence is a game about you trying to throw your friend a ball but some asshole wont stop trying to knock your ball as far as fuck away as possible because he's a bad person
Sakura Haruno (Naruto) vs. Joan Watson (Elementary)
Sakura Haruno
Joan Watson
Remaining time: 1 day 12 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
Joan Watson:
In Joan's case the fans that attacked her were mostly from another fandom, BBC Sherlock, who were mad that a woman was playing Watson. Sometimes they were racist also since she is Asian.
Joan is the best adaptation of Watson out there and a great take on the character. Never forget when Sherlock smashed a plate in anger and then Joan smashed a plate and was like Well look at that that didn't solve anything. Or when she outsmarted Moriarty.
the level of hatred and disdain people had for the character Joan Watson and the show elementary (which also spilled over to the real life actress Lucy Liu) even though they never watched the show was absolutely wild. And literally the only reason was because they turned John Watson from "white dude with just enough characterization to be gay shipped with Sherlock" into a self-confident, genuinely complex Asian woman. People back then ate up EVERY Sherlock adaptation or AU… but somehow the only adaptation that was considered to be universally hated trash was the one where your fav is adapted as a woman 🤨
I’m so glad I stayed off the internet enough back in the day that I haven’t personally seen any of the smear campaign against Joan Watson my beloved. It’s sad though that I immediately knew it was because of Johnlock and the fact that Lucy Liu is Asian. The bright side is that every single person who I know in real life and online who has watched this show knows that making John Watson into Joan Watson was genius. She’s hated by people that have never watched a single episode.
What’s sad is when I think of a race or gender swap in modern media I think that nobody has done it better than Elementary.
this woman is BRILLIANT. just becoming a surgeon is an incredibly challenging career path!! One that takes resilience and study and not only was she great at it, she was the top of her class.
Elementary never lets her fall into the "woman in a masculine field so she must reject all femininity and softness", Joan is playful and and wholly herself and KIND. And her kindness isn't a weakness. It helps to solve a case literally the first episode, she's not even a detective, just a decent person with a lot of compassion.
And she also had boundaries! They're not always perfect but they're also hers. She defines what works for her and her life. She doesn't ignore what other people want for her (she had a family who loves her, they don't always understand her but their bond is real and important to her and when they're concerned she hears them out), but she also makes it clear that what she wants for herself is what matters. And boy oh boy, her relationship with Sherlock! He's a bulldozer of a human being and she resolutely does not let him pull that shit with her. She changes because she knows him, but it's a change she chooses. And knowing her changes him, too! She's not his nanny or his keeper, what they have is a real friendship with a lot of push and pull.
She goes through a lot of hardship and her grief is given space and compassion. She left her first career because she was devastated by the death of a patient. Her bio father was homeless and mentally ill and his absence was tangible for her. A guy she was seeing died (in a poisoning where she was the target) and that loss changed her.
The source material casts Watson as either bumbling or as the filter through which an 'ordinary' person can understand the 'extraordinary' Holmes. But Elementary lets her be extraordinary, too. Her life is unconventional. She's exceptionally gifted and extremely determined. And she's able to pull one over on the one person that beat Holmes.
Baran Al-Hashimi (The Pitt) vs. Amber Volakis (House M.D.)
Baran Al-Hashimi
Amber Volakis
Remaining time: 1 day 12 hours
Propaganda below the cut:
Baran Al-Hashimi:
Hated by many fans for calling out the main character (Dr Robby) when he's being unkind to staff and patients
Dr Al Hashimi my beloved!!!
She shows up in s2 as the person who’ll be taking over running the emergency department while the previous head (Robby, a white man) goes on sabbatical. While the Pitt intentionally tries to portray complicated characters who have both high and low points, people were going “oh she’s the villain I guess” from minute one (Spoiler: she’s not. She’s just a lady who wants to do her job)
Like I usually stay out of the Pitt tags bc there’s so many bad takes there and I still saw so much “oh she needs to get taken down a peg, she’s going to have a horrific screw up to prove Robby is right about everything, she’s eeeeevil and wants to take over the ED forever” type shit
And she is a very cool and complex character! She’s always watching out for people in vulnerable positions, which includes both her patients and her subordinates; she’s largely a rule follower for better and worse; she’s a very good doctor; she has a really interesting plot wrt her seizure disorder
I Just Think She’s Neat
First of all. I love her. I love her SO MUCH. Second of all let's think about how her day went: she spent months preparing for a new job as an ED head, came up with proposals, emailed current ED head to try and get his take on the proposals and see if they would work since she's never been head of an ED before. He does not read the emails. He does not get back to her. She comes in early on her first day with bagels and to run a practice code to see where the med students are at and get a feel for the place. She politely but firmly guides everyone. She doesn't play favorites and is interested in both patient care and making sure her staff can have a life outside of work. She can do a procedure to save a child's life that nobody else in the ED has even heard of. She worked with MSF (Drs without borders) at a maternity ward in Kabul. (It is implied she witnessed a massacre there). Throughout all this, Dr Robby (WHO IS CHOOSING TO GO ON SABBATICAL! did he just not want anyone running the dept while he was gone??) belittles her, ignores her, doesn't want to discuss suggestions, leaves out crucial information about one of the residents having a history of stealing meds from the dept, tells her TO HER FACE he thinks the place will fall apart without him, literally makes her cry, and she handles it with grace.
But SO MANY people in the fandom are like "wow she's a bitch" or "ugh she's pro AI" (first of all, it's a transcription service so that's on the writers for calling it AI, second of all fan favorite Dr Robby goes on an emotional rampage and yells at a resident having a panic attack and he's still beloved but God forbid she have a flaw) (which comes from a place of wanting her patients to be seen more quickly and her staff to spend less time charting and more time at home! I'm not pro AI but it's not like she's just being lazy!)
Dr Al Hashimi is better than me because if I went through all that on my FIRST DAY of work I would go after Dr Robby with a scalpel. And instead she continues to treat him with respect even when she openly acknowledges he is treating her like a resident, not a fellow attending.
Al-Hashimi propaganda (spoilers ahead): in season 1, a male doctor steals drugs from the ED. A female doctor reports him to the ED chief (also male) and, rather than report him to admin, the chief covers it up. Season 2 begins with the guy returning from rehab. Not knowing the full story, Al-Hashimi is supportive of him and his decision to get help. She asks about his tension with the woman who reported him and he says she doesn’t like him because he was a dick to her (he was and still is in season 2). He makes it sound like she has a petty grudge against him and he’s the bigger person.
Al-Hashimi is angry upon finding out the truth and treats him differently (i.e. doesn’t let him talk over students and the like, but she’s not a raging asshole). I can’t stress enough how she’s still cordial and appropriate with him, she’s just acting in light of new information. She knows he stole drugs, got away with it, and lied to her which made the woman who reported him look bad.
This made her the devil incarnate to his fans. They woobified him and acted like he was an innocent victim in all this. They called her an ableist addict hater (mind you she’s disabled and was kind about his addiction). People were loud and vile about it and I’m sure that if she was the white man and he was the brown woman it would’ve been crickets.
Amber Volakis:
People simulateously dismiss her relationship with Wilson and make it her whole character. They also take her competitiveness from a competition and assume it applies to her in all aspects of her life. For someone who had a major impact on the show she's often ignored.
Amber Volakis propaganda because everyone does my girl SO dirty:
- Her nickname that almost everyone in the show calls her to her face every day is Cutthroat Bitch.
- When she & Wilson start dating there are so so so many jokes about her keeping his balls in her purse & having him whipped & etc etc just bc she’s assertive & confident.
- It is openly discussed in canon how she is basically House in a skirt, but canon & fanon both crucify her for things that barely rate a mention when House does the same or worse.
- & then the whole two-part episode where they fridge her (which is. not quite House’s fault directly but he definitely contributed to it) they make it completely about House & Wilson, & maybe 2% about her. She’s not even in the first half of the two-part finale centered around her death, & she’s only conscious for the last maybe ten minutes of the second half.
- After being fridged, she does show up in later seasons! As a hallucination. She shows back up to be the devil on House’s shoulder when he is hurtling towards a vicodin-induced breakdown. Literally only shows up to steer him into making bad decisions (including almost killing Chase (allergic to strawberries) by inviting him to a party where the stripper is wearing strawberry scented lotion that sends him into anaphylaxis)
I know she is probably going to lose to Al-Hashimi because the Pitt is a more recent show, & from what I’ve seen Al-Hashimi also gets treated horribly by the fans, but my god. free my girl Amber 😭😭😭 she did all of that & she was right
the fandom seems to hate her so much aswell as people who just watch the show and arent involved in fandom. people complain about how much of a bitch she is and how much she sucks etc etc, even though the same behavior she displays is also displayed by House himself and people seem to love him.
part of the hate for her is probably bc "she got inbetween the yaoi" or some bullshit
Korra (Avatar: The Legend of Korra) vs. Carol Danvers (MCU)
Korra
Carol Danvers
Remaining time: 2 days 12 hours
Propaganda below the cut:
Korra:
Fandom picked her apart, called her a b*tch, blamed her for every bad thing that happened TO HER in the plot, disliked that she's loud, disliked that she's strong, disliked that she's confident in her strength, disliked that she's not like their beloved boy Aang. It's been years and you still can't sneeze in this fandom without something starting to yell that Korra is the worst Avatar ever.
She is so so strong. She did her best. She faced down enemies and cataclysms like most Avatars before never did and she fought tooth and nail for both humans and spirits, almost dying in the process, multiple times. Her personal growth and the character arc of such is impressive and well done. She's ride or die for her friends and for strangers too. And the fact that she takes no crap and can punch someone's face in for it is a bonus, not a flaw.
She gets an insane amount of hate for not dealing with everything that happens to her "better", mainly for showing traits considered cool in male characters like being a hothead and choosing violence
My bisexual queen went through the horrors while saving her world four times and she does not deserve the hate she gets, give her a break
She made mistakes and experiences "negative" emotions. People acted like she was the devil incarnate. Meanwhile; those same people fawned over Zuko, who is not only notoriously hot-headed but also literally raided and burned whole villages. People also do not seem to hold the same contempt for Azula as they do for Korra, which I believe is in part due to racism/colorism.
She was trying her best and she had the whole world on her shoulders with very little help to hold it. also, put "korra back muscles" into the search engine of your choice and behold.
She is the next iteration of the Avatar after the original series' beloved Aang. She also is a woman so as you can imagine fans were Very Normal about that. (especially the "it's forced diversity!!" crowd)
It's so frustrating because Korra is a character that the writers tried to make the exact opposite of Aang, presumably to avoid treading the same ground again. And it makes her interesting! and imo a better fleshed out character than Aang. but fandom doesn't seem to like that opinion a lot!
Carol Danvers:
I mean, the entire hysteria around her first movie was ugly and misogynistic as hell. She (and Brie Larson by extension) was called rude, ugly and many other epithets like such. The character was once again too confident and strong and not in need of any man for their liking. She's called a Mary Sue, she was blamed for ruining the MCU. When a cut scene of her breaking a guy's arm for telling her to smile resurfaced, it got worse.
"Strong women don't have to be like this" and yet what if some of them are like this? What if I tell you they should've kept the arm-breaking scene in the movie? What if I tell you she's confident, and snarky, and strong, and so lonely, and so immediately loving towards her found and then lost family even if she doesn't remember them? Carol is dorky and awesome and also did you know that in the book that Mustang she rides is so beat and old the door doesn't open and she has to climb in and out through a window? I love characters like that.
comics carol danvers propaganda, look up the comic avengers #200, that is a war crime. it's got rape, bad friends, and just yuck. thank you chris claremont for saving her from it.
Rose Tico (Star Wars) vs. Piper McLean (The Heroes of Olympus / Riordanverse)
Rose Tico
Piper McLean
Remaining time: 3 days 12 hours
Propaganda below the cut:
Rose Tico:
They harassed the actress off of social media and made burning action figures of her a spectator sport, an incredibly popular YouTuber turned calling fat and ugly into a running gag.
She’s a nice girl who just wants to help and has a lot of anger in her heart because poor people like her are treated like crap!
I mean… we were all there, right? People threw such a big fit about her mere existence that it actually genuinely changed the American political landscape for the worse (and got her basically written out of the next movie)
She literally didn't do anything wrong. Not in an "my favorite character can do no wrong" kind of way, I just mean it's been almost ten years and I still don't know what those dudes were actually mad about. And she's cute and nice and I liked her!
The shit that happened with rose pisses me off beyond belief to this day actually and I don't even gaf about star wars anymore. The fact that not only did she get such a misogynistic and racist backlash to the point of people harassing her actress but that the films themselves capitulated to this and she was completely absent in the next film. Makes me see red fr
Seen as a threat to the finnpoe slash shippers so ofc they lashed out
She was set up like she'd be part of the main crew! She could've been such a fun addition! But fanboys threw a massive tantrum over her character and harassed her actress to the point that Disney caved and drastically reduced her role in the final movie. Disney capitulating to the complaints about her absolutely boils my blood - I don't want to make this too much about the harassment the actress faced, since bringing real people into it isn't fair to the other girl, but it really felt like Disney ended up indirectly endorsing the bullying she received by both not pushing back against it and giving them what they wanted.
Piper McLean:
fandom HATES her for being mildly sometimes annoying. they act like shes killed puppies when her greatest crime is being a girl and a bit annoying. fandom literally adores a man who's actually hurt innocent children but dog piles her for being a 'pick me' just because she is unhappy with the gender roles assigned to her EVEN THOUGH SHE DOES NOT WANT TO BE PICKEDD!!!!!!
Shes my favourite girl ever she's iconic, she steals cars, she's lovely, and she's one of the very few indigenous reps in popular kids books. when my 7th grade class was reading the percy jackson books everyone hated piper but little 12 year old me LOVED her and i'm in super hell forever because fandom hates her too.
If staff reformed the ban system to stop banning trans women and used the resulting good will to re-introduce pornography, this site would become a juggernaut. It would swallow Twitter whole.
i just know rocky was pissing people off when they got to erid. like everyone DROP EVERYTHING and help my weird gross alien boyfriend BUT you have to do it with me hovering over him and biting your arm off every time you so much as poke him because we're codependent. id be mad as hell
Love the soft, curious moments of them sharing about their own cultures, biology, etc. I do think Rocky would have a field day when Grace explains skin as a very sensitive and permeable organ with lots of stuff packed tight on the surface. Since goosebumps are very tactile, I thought Rocky would enjoy hearing those.
Also, bonus.
Because it is endlessly entertaining to me to consider how deep in the trenches Rocky is.
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