❀ time can be rewritten ❀

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/

Mel Medarda:

Reduced to an obstacle to Jayvik. Her character background and nuances are ignored in favor of making her an evil Jezebel who seduced Jayce to turn him against Viktor/the undercity; she’s always getting put in the cuck chair, and even positive depictions of her in fic have her playing Jayvik therapist or yaoi fangirl instead of developing her as a character in her own right. Often excluded from group official art & fan art.

As a character, she has so much interesting canon material to work with that people just ignore. She was raised to inherit a war-loving empire but believed she was discarded as a child for being too soft. She overcame a cold and traumatic childhood to be a champion for peace. There are still traces of this upbringing in her - she’s a strategist who wants the best for the whole, which sometimes means making decisions that come across as ruthless for the individual, but she’s always been just as willing to sacrifice herself for the cause. She’s flawed and has her own blind spots but always tries to operate in good faith. Criminally underutilized in canon and in fan works lol

Because of her interactions with Jay, much of the fandom only saw her as a malignant and hostile obstacle to the Jay/Viktor pairing, using words like 'temptress' and implying a romantic relationship between Jay and Mel is automatically inferior to one between Jay and Viktor. Definitely misogynoir, because the fandom would not have been this hostile to her if she wasn't black.

Mel is a complicated, morally gray character. Initially characterized as a ruthless and cunning politician, but who is torn between being merciful and stopping at nothing to prevent more suffering. Her emotional arc involved getting out of her parent's constricting grasp and living according to her own desires.

Where do I start. Constantly villainized for actions that fully make sense for her character. Ignored in her main relationship in order to ship her boyfriend with a skinny white guy. Sooooo much unchecked fandom misogynoir. The WRITERS don't even know what to do with her, they like never fully nailed down her motivations and just let her Happen. Like. It's YOUR show!! WRITE your characters!!

Smartest woman in the room. Powerful mage. INCREDIBLY tragic figure forced to continue the cycle of conquering and bloodshed. Knows what she wants and how she's going to get it, and sees that plan through. Figures out how to deal with an entire mage cult on her own, outsmarting the leader. I love her. She didn't do half the shit the fandom is mad at her for doing but she would have been fully within her right to do so.

Mel is hated by racist fujoshis for daring to "get in the way" of a non canon gay ship. One of the animators mentioned something about how he pictured the sex scene between Mel and her boyfriend being unimportant compared to Mel's boyfriend's concern for his white bestie. Fujoshis rejoiced, only going to show that they view her as a disposable Black girlfriend character/thats what they want for her. They write fanfiction where she's been killed, too.

Mel is the most interesting character in the show by far. She has a nuanced and complicated relationship with her mother, and its already rare to see this with a mother/daughter relationship let alone between 2 Black women, and its the most heartfelt relationship in the whole show. Mel was abandoned by her mother for being "too soft" and made her own way in the world of politics. She is manipulative, to a degree, but she always means well and its easy to see that she has so much heartfelt emotion in her that she holds back. She stands up for her lame ass boyfriend despite him not deserving her, and she gets cool magic powers in the second season that she uses to save everyone. She is also always dressed impeccably and is inarguably the most beautiful character in the whole show.

Oh, boy. Hoo. There's a lot of fandom misogyny but it is mostly from JayVik fans. I am a fan of the ship myself, but to insinuate that Mel is in the way, and is no good, and that she should leave Jayce alone, or that she manipulated him? Sigh… I am Viktor himself (an IRL/DA. That's not important, I just have to mention incase I get some weird looks). She wasn't in the way at all. You can ship what you wish without constantly finding ways to hate on Mel and insist that she was being a user and a manipulator.

She is a goddess of the Arcane. She's made of pure magic and she looks it. She's golden, glowing and gorgeous. She is politically strong, and got away from her mother's bad influence to make a name and a life for herself. She commands the attention of a room and makes sure not only to be powerful but to be nurturing. She's kind, and whilst she might have been raised as a wolf, she knows when a good leader must be soft, too.

Many people have this idea in their head that she was manipulating Jayce & Viktor and just using them for her own selfish gain. She wasn't. I don't think so in the slightest. She was genuinely intrigued by the research Jayce had done and was nurturing that. Sure, a few of her words may have come across as manipulative, but perhaps it's because she is a flawed character. She isn't perfect, and that's okay!

Someone who genuinely wants the best for everyone and is trying so hard to be a good person, hampered by the fact that she doesn't entirely "get" people and didn't exactly grow up in the best environment for that. While she tries to be different from the rest of her family - being a Pacifist and more of a thinker than a fighter - throughout the series it kind of feels like she's "doomed" to become one of them. She literally gets tortured into awakening her powers and becoming a fighter (and playable character in League of Legends) like the rest of the cast, like she was being forced into a role she didn't want. Despite this, she still tries to use her powers mostly defensively. Her relationship with her mother (Ambessa) is also really interesting - her mother loves her despite treating her poorly, but they just have incompatible worldviews and never really come to an understanding. This is only one interpretation of this scene, but I love Ambessa's line after Mel kills her, "you are the wolf." From Ambessa's perspective, it was probably praise and reassurance to her daughter that she still loved her. From Mel's perspective it was probably one of the cruelest things seh could say. I love her sm and there are so many parts of her character that are under-discussed.

Rose Tyler:

People really hate her idk why so im assuming misogyny

Shes a normal poor shop girl from uk and shes adventurous and beautiful and kind and falls in love and saves the world and whats not to love about her shes just a human girl and shes also the most special girl in the entire universe

During the first season of the revival for Doctor Who it can very much be argued that the main character is Rose. The name of the first episode is Rose and the very first shot once its panned in from outer space is of her. We spend 90% of the time just following Rose, the Doctor just so happens to be there. If you look at any episode they tend to focus more on Rose. Without her as a character the Doctor Who we know today would not exist. And as an aside, when she first meets Martha she is impressed by her- she quite literally thinks that Martha is brilliant! However so many people ignore this and try to blame the Doctor's actions and how he acted towards Martha on Rose. For that- I say free my girl!

Rose is actually currently the most hated female character in the fandom according to one poll here on Tumblr. Reasons for not liking her usually include adjectives such as “bitchy” “whiny” and “catty”. Which are all adjectives used almost exclusively for women. Rose is in many ways stereotypically feminine. She’s soft and sensitive and enjoys girly things. But that seems to cause the fanbase to see her as too ordinary to be considered worthy of being loved by the main character in the way that she is. One huge example is people choosing to completely deny that the main character really meant it when he said that if he believed in one thing, just one thing, it was her.

Rose Tyler fandom sexism example For as long as DW has been a fandom on tumblr, we've gotten fans saying the same thing with different wording: "I really liked Rose - until season 3. I hated her in season 3."The problem is that Rose ISN'T IN season 3. They are literally getting mad at the 10th Doctor (at that point a white guy) and blaming Rose for it.

Rose Tyler is often hated just becuase she’s treated well by the Doctor (her love interest and the show’s protagonist). People frequently complain that they don’t understand why he loves her or why he tolerates her. And they don’t like how much she impacts him. Or how much value he places on her. Or how much he pines for her when she’s gone. These aren’t one off complains. They’re frequent patterns. She arguably the woman that is the most well treated by the protagonist and the fandom hates her for it. It’s misogynistic because the parts of the fandom are actively disgusted by an average realistic woman being treated well by a male presenting character.

Rose fans always praise her as some saint that can never do no wrong, therefore her character should be free of criticism, while Rose haters always ridicule her for literally existing as a person who naturally has flaws, which makes her somehow annoying. But both have a habit of using her as some example as to why she's better or worse for certain people (especially the Doctor) when Rose's narrative and purpose, along with the other companions during RTD1, is that these companions are regular women that are loved for their normalcy AND uniqueness. Rose is 19-20 years old, it's normal for her to be inconsistent, and it's normal to be inconsistent at any age. People (fans and haters) aren't able to separate her character from the writer who has made multiple questionable choices, and from conflated fandom perception. Let Rose be Rose.

the backlash against Rose is very much highly misogynistic in most regards. There are some people who hate her for non misogynistic reasons, and that’s irrelevant here, but often the hate towards her is specifically towards her and not really in defense of any other character. Shes the most realistic woman who is written as a love interest for the Doctor. And she’s also the one he’s happiest around. But people get mad at her just for being a normal girl who is also so beloved. And that really just needs to be said because the misogyny towards her reflects misogyny in real life because she is meant to be so realistic in both her strengths and flaws. There is this expectation that women need to be a male gaze fantasy and Rose subverts that. Which then invites the misogyny. Most hate posts about her aren’t in an attempt to lift up another character. They’re just annoyed that a normal woman dare to be so important.