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canonmisogynyvictimstournament · 6 months

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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.

#polls #round 6 #week 11 #new #cw pregnancy #cw torture #cw imprisonment

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