Fandom Misogyny Victim Tournament
Round Four, Bracket 4
Katara (Avatar: The Last Airbender) vs. Rey Skywalker (Star Wars)
Katara
Rey Skywalker
Propaganda below the cut:
Katara:
Mischaracterizing her, complaining of her having traits they love in male characters, straight up ignoring her, villainizing her for getting in the way of M/M ships, blatant racism… Katara has seen it all.
She’s literally the last bender in her tribe… put some fucking respect on her name.
Within the fandom, she is frequently relegated to her relationships with male characters. Also, many people simply "do not like" her. I've seen people call her a bitch! I don't think she was ever bitchy. There is an added layer of racism; many people read her as first nations. Native women and girls are always seen as more aggressive by racists.
She is a badass
she's probably in here already but i gotta make sure she makes it. she better win this entire goddamn thing. people act like her being mean sometimes makes her an irredeemable bitch. Jesus christ like she's fourteen and her mom is dead and a war is going on. god forbid she processes trauma differently from sokka and zuko. Like Hello.
Reduced her to the Zutara (fake news) vs Kataang ship war, reducing her to the "mom friend," ignoring her complexity, refusing to let her character exist outside of her relationships with men and eroding it within her relationships with men, ragging on her for being traumatized by her mom's murder, flattening her character as much as possible.
This poor girl gets brutally flattened into either "mom friend takes care of everyone :)))" or "miserable spoilsport who is mean to the boys and always yelling :((("
Literally one of the most nuanced characters in all of tv, she WILL be recognized for her fantastic portrayal of complicated trauma and parentification!
shes a teen girl who has never had space to process her trauma and the one time she let herself be angry everyone decided shes a bitch
Is reduced to one of three things. Either "the mom", "the nag" or "flawless perfect angel" when being bounced back and forth in other people's shipping drama.
Katara is a character with so much complexity. Her kindness underpinned by a trauma, her caring instinct born from being placed into the role of adulthood WAY too early. Having to struggle to be seen as a fighter despite being one of the, if not THE< strongest bender in the group for huge chunks of the show. She has anger, she has bravery, she has purpose and she cares because she CHOOSES to and then has to struggle with the parts of that caring that hurt. Or simply don't come naturally to her. She doesn't grin while cleaning up the boys' messes, she dumps the half empty cooking pot directly on their head and tells them if they're gonna leave it yucky, THEY should wash it (metaphorical but something along those lines) She is more than just Aang's "prize", Zuko's "anchor" or Sokka's "babysitter".
Rey Skywalker:
called a Mary Sue for being competent at a thing that the movie explained she was competent in
Rey was perhaps not the most original character ever, but she COULD'VE been great if only the writing for her hadn't ignored her in favor of the white men around her and forced her into a really terrible toxic romance with the villain for no good reason.
first of all we’re introduced to her as this smart, brave woman. she can fix the millennium falcon. she can fight. she’s guarded. she’s eager to help people she barely knows. she has this intriguing mysterious backstory about being abandoned on jakku by someone implied to be a skywalker. she’s force sensitive. she has a scene where she gets captured and interrogated by the main villain kylo ren, but actually to a good percentage of the fandom, kylo kidnapping her and torturing her friends and mass killing innocent people including his own dad is completely fine guys. bc reylos think kylo ren is hot so it’s fine. and to them, this interrogation scene means they’re in love and he’s just a tortured sad boy who needs a woman to redeem and fix him. which is basically what rey is used for in the following two movies. also we could have had finnrey as a couple and as the two main protagonists (rather than kylo suddenly becoming way more centered) if people weren’t racist and misogynistic af and instead people went so hard shipping one of the most toxic ships of all time that disney seemed to cave and make it happen despite it making zero narrative sense whatsoever. Crimes End of rant!
