Monsters' Queen

ROUND 2 — Match 67 of 138

Margaret Houlihan (M*A*S*H)

Problematic because: "Margaret was raised in a strict and abusive military household. She entered the Korean War as the head nurse because she fully believed all the propaganda she was fed. She used slurs against the North Korean people. She spoke down on the Korean culture. Margaret bonded with the most racist, misogynistic, married man in the camp and engaged in a relationship with him knowing full well he was married and hoping he'd leave his wife for her. Margaret also frequently hooked up with several high ranking generals, as she was heavily attracted to power. Margaret frequently tried to foil Hawkeye's attempts to help people within the camp or the locals do things that went against military regulations, even when there was potential for someone to die." Propaganda: "Margaret has one of the absolute best character developments in all of tv history. The way she grows and changes is so absolutely beautiful. She learns the racist things she was taught as a child are wrong. She realizes she can do better than accepting whatever temporary attention she can receive from married men. She becomes closer to Hawkeye and others within the camp. She begins to help the locals are recognize the harm the US military was doing in Korea. Margaret became her own person, still strong-willed, still comfortable in her sexuality, but now truly separated from her father and the toxic ideas that followed her until then."

vs. Lelouch vi Britannia (Code Geass)

Problematic because: "Uses mind control powers to manipulate and murder people including several of his own family, gain political and military power, and commits a few war crimes along the way." Propaganda: "He’s the most! Has there ever been anyone more dramatic and entertaining to watch? Technically he’s on the right side to free a nation from an oppressive empire but he’s doing it (initially) for all his own selfish reasons. He very much does not care about anything else at first, everything is a tool to be used. Boy literally gets granted mind control powers by an immortal witch and uses them to build up a rebellion all so he can topple the empire that banished him, kill his asshole father, and build a world where he and his disabled sister-girlfriend can be safe. And he would have gotten away with it too if his boot licker cop boyfriend hadn’t figured it out."

“there’s a restaurant two miles from my house called—” nope

“today I learned [celeb] went to my high school—” nope nope nope nope nope

these are all real posts I’ve seen on the internet that allowed me to identify a user’s hometown instantly. if it’s a small town, that’s doubly dangerous, because a bad actor could trace you just by a unique first name or selfie you once posted. in an age where doxxing and stalking are some of the worst I’ve ever seen it, you HAVE to think twice about what you’re posting online.

i once saw a 13-year old post an image they noted as being “a few miles from their house.” it had a theater in the shot with a unique enough name to be local. one google maps search, now everyone knew not only what city they lived in, but the possible neighborhoods in that radius too. and they had a HUGE following…who all knew this was a 13-year-old child.

so yeah. not to sound like a 90s internet safety PSA…but I’m gonna be that PSA for a minute.

if you’re posting an image, there is NO need to say that you live there. you could just be traveling. “saw this in Montana” is better than “saw this by my house!”

before you post about a venue, especially a restaurant or small store, check and see if it’s local—CRUCIALLY if it has only one or two locations. people might travel to arenas or convention centers, but they’re far less likely to be traveling to Bartleby’s Fish and Chips. if it’s an anecdote and you still live nearby, you can honestly just leave the name out entirely.

if you’re sharing a news story, it can just be a story you found and wanted to share. you don’t have to clarify “it happened in my town,” because even if you don’t mention your town name, an easily-googled news article will.

if you’re seeing a concert or meeting a celebrity on a tour that’s stopped locally, wait until they’ve hit a few more venues before you post about it, or at the very least wait until you get home. this is honestly a smart move for any event you attend: unless you’re marketing yourself, there’s no need to advertise your location in real time.

check your selfie backgrounds for anything identifying. this includes city names on venues, school names, street signs, and house numbers.

this stuff is flexible if you no longer live in your hometown, or if your city is particularly big, but there’s STILL no reason to tie yourself to your school, your workplace, or your street. you can call it paranoid, but as someone who’s seen my friends get literal death threats over fictional characters before, the last thing I want is someone willing to act on those threats finding out where they live.

okay. so. this is true, but i also think it's an overly simplistic way of looking at things for a number of reasons.

society is racist and sexist and that affects who gets the funding and the publicity for their art, which is why white men are so overrepresented in the entertainment industry. this absolutely affects how the characters in this tournament were written which sucks. no denying that. with that said, when it comes to tv shows and comic books and other highly collaborative media, it's also a lot more complicated than that.

i'll use an example that i'm very familiar with: joss whedon, famously a piece of shit, was the creator and showrunner of buffy the vampire slayer, and there is indeed quite a bit of misogynistic bullshit on that show despite its supposed 90s feminism credentials. with that said, i think it's inaccurate to claim that the character of buffy summers was "written by a man". buffy summers was written by many people, actually, including women. marti noxon and jane espenson are two of the show's most prolific writers, and marti noxon even became the showrunner in its final two seasons. i think it's really unfortunate and kind of misogynistic to erase these women's contributions for the sake of the simplistic narrative that buffy was "written by a man". and that's just looking at the writer's room which is itself misleading because buffy summers wasn't just created by the writers. she was created by an entire team of artists, including costume designers, directors, cinematographers, make-up artists, composers, set designers, stunt doubles, fight choreographers, etc. and obviously there's her actress as well, sarah michelle gellar. now granted, many of these artists that i just listed were men, but plenty of women did contribute to creating this character.

to be clear, i am really not trying to diminish the clear misogyny in the text or suggest that just because the btvs costume designer was a woman that makes it okay that most of the writers on buffy were men. what i am saying is that we need to kill auteur theory and stop acting like these elaborate productions were entirely the brainchild of one guy. movies, tv shows, theatre, comic books, they're all inherently collaborative, and i really dislike the tendency to attribute everything good and bad about a character or show to one singular writer. it's more complicated than that, and i don't think it leads to very good media analysis.

in any case, i'm also not totally sure how the identity of the writers and creators of these characters is really relevant to this tournament. while misogyny in the source material is certainly relevant in some cases, ultimately what we're about talking here is fandom misogyny, not the misogyny of the creators. i've said this before, but just because the source material is misogynistic doesn't mean that the fandom just has a free pass to regurgitate that misogyny uncritically. and frankly, often the fandom is way more misogynistic than the source material, even in situations where the source material is itself pretty misogynistic already.

for another thing, if hypothetically, i were to create a tournament where the theme was like "girl who has experienced the least misogyny in her source material" (obviously that would be a lame theme for a tournament but bear with me here), i wouldn't be surprised if most of the characters submitted to that tournament were from tv shows with male showrunners, films with male directors, and books written by men. and that's not because men are better at writing women than women are, it's because men, as we've established, are overrepresented in the entertainment industry. historically, most shows have had white male showrunners and most movies have had white male directors, because misogyny and racism are structural and systemic problems.

Instead of a cutesie reference to film censorship it was an explicit statement of defiance of Maryland's criminalization gay sex, which was not repealed until 2002. This wasn't a guy saying "Oh they can't put what I do in the movies according to a completely voluntary industry code" he was saying "The State of Maryland wants to put me in jail for being gay and having gay sex."

The coyote is moving like a dog. Most AI models are trained on dogs so all canines default to dog if you generate something. The dust clouds they kick up don't make sense either, there's not enough dust on the pavement to kick up that many dust clouds. Roadrunners don't run with their heads up like and they don't make that sound either

Here's a short video with the sound they made as an example