But where there's hope, while I still breathe, I will believe.

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bisexual bertie songthrush stimboard

i had a vision (w/refs ⏬)

Gilbert Baker added a 9th stripe shortly before his death, with the new stripe representing diversity. He added this stripe in reaction to the 2016 US election. It’s unfortunately not as well known as the 8 and 6 striped versions.

Here’s an image of him sewing together the 9 striped rainbow flag.

In no particular order:

Articles are (by default) written from an in-universe perspective and take the post Season 7 Dark Horse comics (and some, but not all, of the tie-novels) as canon. So it can sometimes be a bit unclear whether an article is describing something that was established as fact within the show or something that is comic- or novel-only. (There are also articles on the Boom! era comics, which take place in a completely different continuity again, but those are usually flagged as such.)

The commitment to the in-universe perspective also makes it very hard for the wiki to describe retcons or places where the show's lore appears to contradict itself. (What is the name of Buffy's aunt, for example? And who are the Order of Aurelius?) That's the right perspective in some cases but can be very frustrating if you're trying to answer a question like "when exactly did the writers decide to make [idea] canon?".

Relatedly, the wiki is quite often very bad at properly citing sources: it will reliably give some kind of source, but often on inspection that source doesn't provide any evidence for the assertion it's supposed to be backing up. Just off the top of my head, the wiki cites Welcome to the Hellmouth when describing the Master as the leader of the Order of Aurelius (but the name 'Aurelius' is not spoken once during that episode; I don't think it was until years later that anybody decided this was the name of the collective group of vampires who followed the Master and it's only used as such in flashbacks on Angel) and cites Grave when claiming that Spike had his soul restored by "Lloyd" in Uganda (the episode Grave does not name "Lloyd", crediting him only as "Cave Demon", and does not give a location for where Spike has his soul restored beyond "a cave in Africa").

Reading the linked article, the name "Lloyd" seems to come only from the Season 7 episode Selfless, when D'Hoffryn offhandedly mentions somebody by that name when talking to Willow, and the suggestion that this is the name of the specific individual who restored Spike's soul seems to be pure fanon. (Indeed I've never even seen it suggested outside of the wiki.)

For yet another example of this sort of thing: the article on The Gift claims that this episode was "originally written to serve as the series finale, and several ideas that were used in the real finale were originally written for this episode" and only then cites a single source (Joss Whedon's audio commentary for Chosen). It's not clear at all which of these two quite distinct claims that source is meant to be supporting (in fact I've checked that audio commentary track and I don't think it supports either one). In general the show's discussion of behind the scenes facts or the real world development of the show is noticeably lacking, at least in part because that's not something the wiki contributors seem to care about as much.

As I've complained about before, the wiki is old enough that it's gained some deeply-embedded pedantic conventions that simply don't make sense to outsiders (which is why there is an article called "Jennifer Calendar" despite no character with that name existing on the show: the wiki adopts a convention that favors 'full names' and somebody has unilaterally decided that 'Jenny' must be a nickname, even though nobody uses it that way and it's never hinted as being short for anything until we get a single shot of Ms Calendar's grave).

This is a form of backdoor bigotry from both normative facts (there are more straight than gay relationships) and well represented bigoted beliefs (men are superior to women).

no real people (obviously there are lots of real life women who are victims of fandom misogyny, but i feel like having those women compete in a poll against each other and also against fictional characters would be kind of disrespectful to the actual real life shit they were put through)

no men!!!! idc if he's like a woman to you, this tournament isn't for him!!!!

obviously, misogyny does not have to be the only factor here, it just has to be one of the factors. if racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, etc. are also part of the problem, do not hesitate to bring that up in your submission! it's highly relevant! the last thing i want is a tournament consisting of only cis straight white women, especially because so many of the hated/mistreated women of fandom are also marginalized in other ways that the fandom hates them for.

idk if this is a rule exactly, but just to clarify, this tournament is about which one of these characters is your favorite. it is emphatically not about trying to quantify which character is the biggest victim of fandom misogyny. that seems like an utterly exhausting and pointless thing to argue about, please don't subject me to that. i just want to see people defend their favorite overly maligned or mistreated girlies in my notes, i cannot stress this enough

characters don't have to be overtly hated to be victims of fandom misogyny. they can also be perpetually ignored in favor of men, or constantly characterized as the wise mom friend who the fandom has apparently decided has no desires or goals or needs besides being a sounding board for their favorite white boy, etc.

there's no time limit on this thing. even if the hatred/fandom mistreatment has died down and the character in question has been re-examined since, if there was ever a period in which they were subjected to fandom misogyny en masse, they count.

that said, don't choose characters who are generally universally beloved and always have been but you saw one person shit on them one time in a misogynistic way and got annoyed. i hate when that happens too, but it's does have to be a trend, not just one annoying guy, even if the guy in question is really annoying.

submit as many characters as you like!

you can submit a character here:

A German regional court has ruled that Google is directly liable for false claims in its AI-generated search overviews. In this case, Google's AI had wrongly linked two publishers to scams and shady business practices. The court treated the AI overviews as Google's own content and rejected Google's argument that users were responsible for fact-checking the results themselves.