hello, it is me, the problematic 2000

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.

Kennedy:

hated for Not Being Tara and being ~soooo aggressive~ pursuing willow when at the end of the day she's simply a different woman! and the horrible killing off of tara wasn't kennedy's fault

Jo Harvelle:

She got killed off because the fans didn't like her

She grew up running a bar when she wanted to be killing monsters. She went and killed monsters when she told her mom she was gambling in Vegas. She got an angel to play drinking games.

Women hated having any possible love interest for the leads so the show killed her off.

Abbie Mills:

Some fans hated her for threatening the Ichabod/Katrina ship and for being a black woman main character of a genre show.

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 🤨

Alicent Hightower:

The fandom favorite is a man who grooms his teenage niece, murders his wife, slaughters innocents, and is an all around insufferable dick. Alicent is way more hated than he is despite the awful hand she is dealt.

Is Alicent the best? Hard to say. Yes, the child bride is a terrible mother. Yes, she nearly stabs her childhood best friend/first love. Yes, she plots against our main protagonist. Yes, she marries her two children to each other. Yes, she is self righteous and hypocritical. I support women's wrongs.

Alicent is a victim of CSA and general misogyny. She resents her children because she was a child bride forced to have them and thus her relationship with motherhood is complicated. She acts out because of all of these things and instead of trying to understand her or offer her any kind of sympathy, people instantly attack her and say she is a bad character. I know you said not to bring up misogyny towards real people but the hatred of the character gets so bad that sometimes people make the actress who plays her uncomfortable which just goes to show how undervalued and disliked Alicent is. Meanwhile the rapist pedophile men on the show are beloved for being hot and sexy.

Amy Pond:

She's said to be a shallow male fantasy character because she likes being sexy and has an unhealthy relationship to sex. Her personality is completely ignored because of her femininity. Her mental health problems are also said to be part of the 'male fantasy' and not valid choices made by the writers

She's mentally ill, she can be rude and abrasive, she's kind, clever, brave, she doesn't believe in herself but she makes a religion out of her friend, she's complex and difficult <3

Sharon "Boomer" Valerii:

To be fair the show does not help because her arc gets weird in S3 and S4. But fandom villainizes her and acts like she is irredeemable even though Athena has done the same things she has done.