#this is going to appeal to a very specific demographic of people

[highladyofterrasen7]

🎵Love the way you hurt me and it doesn’t even cross your mind 🎵

#this is going to appeal to a very specific demographic of people #and I hope at least one person gets it #niall horan #cross your mind #heartbreak weather #flicker #the show #the show live on tour #slow hands #one direction #b99 #jake peralta

[disteal]

"The people who would get pissed off at Duchamp’s fountain are a very specific demographic!!!! Namely fascists!!! Like the implication of a statement like that is actually absurd. who is the fascist in this analogy, 25 year old nonbinary artists??"

"25 year old nonbinary artists" (nice appeal to identity, lol) are literally agreeing with fascists about what constitutes "real art" when they start talking about the "purity" or "soul" of a piece and assigning spiritual value based on the human who created it, yes. this doesn't make them fascists (great reading comprehension!), but it does mean they agree with fascists on a core tenet of their ideology. i really don't understand how you can correctly identify the link between "fascists" and "claiming Duchamp's readymades weren't art", but not understand the link between the latter and disliking Gay Sex Cats. "it's not really art, it was made for them, they just went out and bought it pressed a button" time is a flat circle

what the hell are you talking about. it’s a core tenet of fascist ideology to get misty eyed about art having a soul???

You don’t see how a comparison between violent rejection of degenerate art at the start of the century, the Entartete Kunst and destruction of modern art galleries BY fascists as a direct motivator for the creation of the Fountain, and like, a largely poor, overwhelmingly minority group of workers asking ppl to reject the use and normalisation of a technology that is going to push them out of a job, being more than a little ridiculous???

Like you can say I’m “appealing to identity” all you want but I’m not wrong, and it’s a galling misunderstanding of why fascism treats modern art the way it does. It has always been a reactionary attack on queer, nonwhite, non-european, degenerate self-expression. The rejection of gay sex cats is a call for solidarity and asking ppl to stop being a fucking scab. jesus christ.

#also don’t i know you??? #edit: oh it’s you. #ask #ai art

[404error-accountnotfound]

It's kind of dissapointing seeing how the Transformers fandom is dealing with the movie from both ends. And sure, the dogging on the film is pretty bad, but I've honestly seen worse reactions to film announcements in fandoms like Star Wars.

Truthfully I think the reactions from the people who liked the trailer are bordering on worse.

I've seen so many posts along the lines of "If you don't like the new movie in any capacity you're not a real transformers fan" with so many specifically putting bayverse fans under fire. But like, what is the point of that? Transformers has been so many genres over the past 40 years, its held so many tones. It's a little idiotic to think that every version of Transformers is going to appeal to everyone.

There are people who don't watch the cartoons but like the comics, there are people who quite literally only collect the toys, people who like the bayverse films but not the old ones, people who like the old cartoons but not the bayverse films, people who only consume media from the aligned universe. The fandom is so varied that it is astounding, and it is one of my favorite things about the franchise. There is quite possibly a Transformers iteration for every type of person.

It would be like saying "every Transformers fan who doesn't like the G.I. Joe crossover content is a fake fan because so many continuity things have hinged on G.I. Joe for the past 40 years", a completely idiotic argument.

Also, for the people going "it's not made for you, you're not the target demographic", enjoyment of a media can reach out beyond it's target demographic. Though I don't have doubts that they will take a more adult angle than shown in the trailer, after all Hasbro is very aware of the adult demographic of the property (and that it's definitely not lil jimmy who is buying the Super Ultra Collector's 80-120$ figures), I understand the dissapointment as the initial synopsis did not give any indication of it being a comedy.

So anyways, lets stop sectioning off entire portions of the fandom as bad yeah? Please?

#transformers #maccadam #maccadams #transformers one #coming from someone who isnt even particular to bayverse #and is pretty neutral on the film trailer as a whole

[shieldfoss]

Paul Graham's "Orthodox Privilege"

I've got a list of essays and articles I read that made me go "...oh that's how it is" (more than a few by SSC) but one of them, that I don't hear many people talking about, is Paul Graham's "Orthodox Privilege"

Orthodox Privilege

I'm just gonna fill it in here below the cut so you don't have to go elsewhere to read it but it's good and fast to read (short + well edited)

"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions." -Einstein There has been a lot of talk about privilege lately. Although the concept is overused, there is something to it, and in particular to the idea that privilege makes you blind — that you can't see things that are visible to someone whose life is very different from yours. But one of the most pervasive examples of this kind of blindness is one that I haven't seen mentioned explicitly. I'm going to call it orthodox privilege: The more conventional-minded someone is, the more it seems to them that it's safe for everyone to express their opinions. It's safe for them to express their opinions, because the source of their opinions is whatever it's currently acceptable to believe. So it seems to them that it must be safe for everyone. They literally can't imagine a true statement that would get you in trouble. And yet at every point in history, there were true things that would get you in trouble to say. Is ours the first where this isn't so? What an amazing coincidence that would be. Surely it should at least be the default assumption that our time is not unique, and that there are true things you can't say now, just as there have always been. You would think. But even in the face of such overwhelming historical evidence, most people will go with their gut on this one. In the most extreme cases, people suffering from orthodox privilege will not only deny that there's anything true that you can't say, but will accuse you of heresy merely for saying there is. Though if there's more than one heresy current in your time, these accusations will be weirdly non-deterministic: you must either be an xist or a yist. Frustrating as it is to deal with these people, it's important to realize that they're in earnest. They're not pretending they think it's impossible for an idea to be both unorthodox and true. The world really looks that way to them. Indeed, this is a uniquely tenacious form of privilege. People can overcome the blindness induced by most forms of privilege by learning more about whatever they're not. But they can't overcome orthodox privilege just by learning more. They'd have to become more independent-minded. If that happens at all, it doesn't happen on the time scale of one conversation. It may be possible to convince some people that orthodox privilege must exist even though they can't sense it, just as one can with, say, dark matter. There may be some who could be convinced, for example, that it's very unlikely that this is the first point in history at which there's nothing true you can't say, even if they can't imagine specific examples. But in general I don't think it will work to say "check your privilege" about this type of privilege, because those in its demographic don't realize they're in it. It doesn't seem to conventional-minded people that they're conventional-minded. It just seems to them that they're right. Indeed, they tend to be particularly sure of it. Perhaps the solution is to appeal to politeness. If someone says they can hear a high-pitched noise that you can't, it's only polite to take them at their word, instead of demanding evidence that's impossible to produce, or simply denying that they hear anything. Imagine how rude that would seem. Similarly, if someone says they can think of things that are true but that cannot be said, it's only polite to take them at their word, even if you can't think of any yourself.

Orthodox Privilege

I never noticed, until today, the associated time - July 2020 - an so I never, until today, realized he might be talking about the reactions you saw to COVID.

[olderthannetfic]

I wish people in my fandom wrote more OC x canon character instead of Reader x canon character. The reader is always a white conventionally attractive cis thin person from a middle income background with no interesting relationship history or complicated families, no religion, no unusual hobbies, no personal experiences that inform their actions that are unique to them because then they wouldn't be a relatable, etc. OCs can have all of that and even if I don't "relate" to them, I am substantially more interested in them. I don't want to read about a canon character I think is cool hanging out with someone bland as stale toast. I want to read about them having a relationship with another human being.

And while I'm starting to see some Reader x canon character fic that have trans characters, that still doesn't mean I can relate to them. I'm Kyrgyz American, transfeminine, Muslim, neurodivergent with special interests that aren't cute and quirky but are instead very disconcerting for a lot of people, and grew up in the Midwest surrounded by very polite racism and cornfields. There's nothing relatable about Brunette AFAB Reader #285 lamenting how plain they are while they walk around oblivious to the various facets of social stratification they're immune to (racism, Islamophobia, transphobia, ableism) that I'm not.

I don't have anything against the format using second person perspective. I've read some fics that made me bawl my eyes out that use it. But those fics? Those fics didn't try hard to make the most widely relatable, easy to project onto character imaginable. They came here to write a fic about a specific character from a second person perspective and show you their thought patterns and inner workings as they go through life and cope with trauma. Do I prefer third person and first person? Yes. Is the second person POV the problem here? No.

The problem is writing not with the goal of telling a specific story but with the goal of getting as many hits, positive comments and kudos as possible by appealing to as broad a demographic as you can. It's a kind of writing that doesn't incentivize creativity or taking any risk, however small, because it might get you less fawning comments.

I unironically, genuinely want more OCs. I don't know why people mock OCs as if OC = bad when they at least have something distinctive about them as opposed to Brunette AFAB Reader #285.

--

Those are some of my least favorite fics, but I think a lot of people write them because they relate to an American brunette with no personality and want to bone whomever the canon character is, not just because they want hits.

[genericpuff]

I'm going to try to say this without sounding condescending. But every time I see someone coming into the critical/anti tag to defend LO, specifically the gross maturity/power difference and it's implications, the blog is almost always run by a child. Like, their bio will say 14 or 15, or you can just tell that whoever wrote it is either an actual child or very immature adult. I think it's a testament to the fact that LO very quickly falls apart with any real scrutiny that someone who is immature/young and inexperienced won't apply. And it's also disheartening, because the comic is obviously appealing to a very young audience (mostly young girls), so while an adult with maturity and worldly experience will be able to discern "hey, even though this story is trying to paint such a gap in age and power as something both healthy and romantic, this isn't okay in reality", a child probably won't. It makes me angry with RS and honestly a little sad when I see a comment from a young girl saying that Hades is "goals" or that "Persephone is an adult so it's a-okay". I just have to hope that they have other influences, so if a predatory person comes around trying to be "their Hades", they won't think it's okay.

Not condescending, but definitely concerning. And I say this as someone who's been chronically online since age 14, sometimes the adults around you do have a point when they say "be careful on the Internet". It's not meant to be condescending, it's not meant to be putting anyone down for their age, it's just the reality - there are a lot of shitty things advertised to younger audiences that really shouldn't be consumed by younger audiences. Especially when it comes to things that are easily internalized (like romance, relationship dynamics, etc.)

It's why I've gone on about how LO is basically morally bankrupt at this point, along with many other comics in the romance genre on Webtoons - so many of them are problematic, promote unhealthy relationship dynamics, put a lot of emphasis on normalizing otherwise shitty people and attitudes, and outright objectify women in a very fetishizing if not often sexist way.

Unfortunately WT has figured out that these sorts of stories sell to their main demographic - because their main demographic are made up of literal children who don't know better, and emotionally immature adults who never LEARNED better. It's not a problem that's exclusive to romance webtoons, nor is it one that's solely on RS' shoulders, but it's definitely one Webtoons and RS themselves have capitalized on in a very manipulative way.

It also doesn't help that when you go back far enough in RS' art history, you can see there's a very obvious pattern of her fetishizing innocence and youthfulness, particularly in girls and "little girl" relationship roles (see: she read Lolita and clearly completely missed the point of what it was trying to say). Not enough for me to outright call her a p*dophile, but still enough to make me raise some eyebrows and wonder why she hasn't been called out for it in a more extreme way. I guarantee you if a man were writing this comic, it would have been crucified for its bullshit years ago. Her being a woman doesn't mean her work is automatically less prone to sexism or misogyny or the male gaze than what it would be if the genders were reversed. And I say that as an AFAB creator.

TL ; DR: no, I'm not surprised in the slightest that most of the people defending all the weird and gross infantilization and fetishization crap in LO are literally children. They don't know better, and it's technically not their job to know better because they're children, it's the responsibility of creators like RS to look at themselves in the mirror and ask themselves what the actual fuck they're doing. Unfortunately if the creator herself has internalized and normalized creepy and gross relationship "goals" like this for herself, she's not gonna see the glaring issues in peddling it to children.

#lore olympus critical #lo critical #antiloreolympus #anti lore olympus

[kitkatsudon]

KitKat reads the TKEM Novel: Introduction & Prologue & Chapter 1

Hello all! Those that have seen my account over the past couple of days will know that I have recently come into possession of copies of both volumes of the TKEM novel. I always had the vague idea in my mind that these would contain information that we don’t see in the show, characters’ inner monologues and such like, so as someone seemingly on a quest to find out everything there is to know about this show (how did it end up like this? I’m not going to dwell on that before I start regretting all my life choices), I have taken it upon myself to read these books and share this knowledge with the rest of what’s left of this fandom.

These books, of course, are in Korean, which is a language I do not speak and don’t have any intention of learning in the near future. I definitely couldn’t learn Korean in a quick enough time frame to be able to read these books in a satisfyingly short amount of time, so instead I’m utilising the power of the internet and using two online translation services, and then sort of combining the two with my preexisting knowledge of the show to create a usable translation that feels mostly right. So here’s my disclaimer: some of this stuff could very easily be mistranslated, because I’m embarking on this journey with just the powers of the internet, homosexual audacity, and autism to help me along.

So! Here’s how this is going to work. For every chapter of the book I manage to translate, I’m going to make a new post where I summarise the events of the chapter, share my thoughts on it, and then share any specific new details that we’ve learnt. All of them will be tagged with ‘kitkat reads the tkem novel’ so if you want any of the information in this series for whatever reason, hopefully these posts will be easy to find. In this post I’ll cover the prologue and chapter 1 because the prologue is barely anything at all, but from here on out it’ll be one chapter per post… whenever I finish the next chapter.

Ok then. Shall we begin?

Prologue

The novel starts with a bit of preamble about the show’s lore, not much that anyone who had already seen the show wouldn’t know, but I suppose it makes sense to open like this if they were trying to appeal to people who hadn’t already seen the show? It’s an interesting choice, though, because some of this stuff is information we don’t find out until a little later in the show, for example how the two worlds split thanks to the life/death of Crown Prince Sohyeon. However, without the visual nature of the show to keep it appealing, having a little bit of backstory about the Kingdom of Corea would be nice to have so new readers aren’t totally confused about the setting of the novel when it begins.

The only semi-new thing we really learn from the prologue is that the palace (which I will call Haeungung Palace from here on out as part of my personal mission to spread this information) is located specifically on Dongbaekseom island in Busan. This is something I had pretty much figured out already by being a big nerd and looking at screenshots of the show and comparing those to maps of Busan, but it’s nice to have this for real confirmed by a canon source. Another thing to maybe mention is that the flower symbol of the royal Jeonju Lee family is a plum blossom, but this is also something that you could probably work out beforehand.

In conclusion, this is a good introduction… but a little useless to established fans of the show, who I think would make up most of the demographic of this book. Still, it’s best for them to cover their bases.

Chapter 1: Find the clock rabbit

The first thing to mention here is that “clock rabbit” refers to the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, which the English subs on Netflix call “the white rabbit with the clock” but I’m going to say “clock rabbit” because that seems to be the direct translation, and it makes all Yeong’s lines about “Is it a rabbit or a clock?” make a lot more sense in my mind. This chapter covers four scenes from episode 1 of the show: the scene where Gon is being dressed by his new attendant Park Gyubong and he catches the talismans that Lady Noh put in his room, the scene where Gon and Koo Seoryeong have their meeting after Gon goes riding, pretty much all of the rowing scene sequence from the race to Gon going to chase after the “clock rabbit,” and then Gon very briefly in his study alone, looking at his Alice in Wonderland book.

What stood out to me the most while reading, getting over the fact that they’ve changed the order of the scenes from the show (Cheonjongo in 1994 is happening next chapter), is how much extra dialogue they’ve cut out. Again… I guess it makes sense, if they’re trying to condense a sixteen episode drama into two volumes of a book then of course they’re going to want to get straight to the point, but this is disappointing for me personally because a lot of what they cut out are the fun, familiar conversations that Gon had with Yeong throughout episode 1. For example, Gon and Yeong never have their conversation after Gon finishes his ride where Yeong reveals that there are more talismans than Gon thought, and they also cut out the conversation between Gon and Yeong in his study after the race day, which means we don’t get “are you having fun, Captain Jo?” and we don’t get their following conversation about Gon wanting to find his saviour, and Yeong assuring him that he’s grown up well and he doesn’t need anyone to save him anymore. Which is… fine. It’s fine, but it’s still disappointing. Even without coming at this from a Gonjo angle, their friendship is still very important to me, and it’s disheartening to find out that where the show abandoned it very quickly, the book doesn’t seem to be developing it at all. That’s not to say that there aren’t moments, but it’s not as much as I would have liked.

The other big thing that stood out to me is… well… how do I put this? The book really wants you to know that Gon is perfect and amazing and handsome and the best man in all of Corea and no one else could ever compare and he’s just so incredible and wonderful and everybody loves him so much and every woman is in love with him because he’s just that good. Which is hilarious to me, as a loser (affectionate) Gon truther, because this man exists in my head as an adorable mess of mathematical equations, overthinking, and pretending to be fine, and it’s just… no matter how many times they tell me how perfect and shiny he is, I’m just not going to believe it. Let me give you an excerpt, so you can see the tone of this and know what I’m talking about.

Gon’s body, which he trained to protect himself against any danger, was perfect because his safety was the security of the kingdom. Gyubong was impressed anew by a glimpse of his hard and wide shoulders.

Gyubong glanced at the pride of the Kingdom of Corea before he could meet his indifferent eyes. His sharp nose, smooth lips, and sharp jawline stood out under his straight eyebrows. The third king of the Kingdom of Corea boasted an appearance that deserved the love of the kingdom’s people.

Like— it’s so unserious! They’re really trying so hard to ram it down your throat how utterly perfect Lee Gon is - and in this scene it reads like Gon’s eyebrows may be straight but Park Gyubong sure isn’t. They also mention Gon’s “long legs” when he’s running after his clock rabbit and… wow, does this answer that age old question? Is this what Yeong knows that Gon uses his long legs for - running away and giving Yeong a headache?

So, after all this, what have we learnt so far?

Park Gyubong is either very confident in his heterosexuality or he has a huge crush on King Lee Gon

“The royal courtiers often found the principled Captain of the Guard more difficult than the easy-going king” which… hurts me, a little, to imagine the palace staff bitching about Yeong behind his back. Does it make sense? …yes, to be fair yes, yes it does, it makes a lot of sense for Yeong to rule Haeungung palace with an iron fist as he tries desperately to take care of Gon’s safety, so I just hope that none of the other members of staff are being too mean about our beloved Yeongie :(

Yeong’s naval rank is confirmed to be a Soryeong/Lieutenant Commander! If you’ve seen my post about military ranks in TKEM then you’ll see that this is something that you can see in the show by looking at his epaulettes, but it’s nice to have it confirmed in writing here

Yeong was described as being “born and bred to serve the king.” This is something we knew already, but having it said explicitly here… it’s doing something to me, so it’s getting its own point.

Yeong specifically says to Park Gyubong that “His Majesty doesn’t like other people’s hands touching his body.” It’s not just any touch, he specifically mentions hands. Fanfic nation, do with this information what you will.

Mentioning the moment where little Yeong joined little Gon in crying after Lee Ho’s funeral is something that hurts Yeong’s pride. We can only assume that Gon knows this because he has brought it up in the past and Yeong has got very flustered about it.

On that topic, Gon thinks about that moment after his dad’s funeral after Yeong is like !!!!! when Park Gyubong mentions covering Gon’s scar.

Lady Noh has been noticeably anxious about finding Gon a partner ever since he turned thirty (Korean age). Gon isn’t sure if it was before that, but thirty is the age that he mentions. The Korean word for partner used is 짝, which Wordreference tells me means “pair, mate, buddy.” Interestingly, not necessarily wife, very gender neutral. This is in Gon’s internal monologue so again, fanfic nation, this one’s for you.

It’s also said that Lady Noh is more like a mother to Gon than his own mother was, which again is something we already knew but it’s very nice to have it written.

It’s crossed Lady Noh’s mind that Gon might have a secret mistress and that’s why he has never been interested in getting married, but she figured that this was illogical because Gon is always being watched while he’s in the palace. Thank you for your hard work, Jo Yeong!

The issue of marriage is apparently the only duty of Gon’s that he ever abandons, which… idk, there’s something there.

Gon feels like he’s free of all his worries when he goes riding, especially with Maximus, so riding is basically like Gon’s therapy :D

Maximus is his “favourite horse” which is something else that’s just nice to have in writing

It is mentioned several times in this chapter that Gon “is the favourite of every woman in the kingdom.” It’s giving… heteronormative, but that doesn’t surprise me. However, Koo Seoryeong doesn’t count herself as being one of these women because she can see up close how Gon is putting on as much of an act as she is.

Koo Seoryeong’s ex-husband was not only from a chaebol family but also a conglomerate leader. This is interesting to me because it’s mentioned in the show that he’s the second son so… what happened to the first son? Is he the leader of his own separate corporation? Was he just not as good as his younger brother?

Gon finds the way Koo Seoryeong is clear about expressing her desires uncomfortable because, as the king, he’s never been able to have his own desires or express his own desires freely

“Yeong’s nerves were on edge” while Gon was rowing in the competition, because it was an outdoor event. He finds these things stressful because Gon already came close to death once, and you never know if it’ll happen again

As soon as he hears a gunshot, Gon is immediately transported back to the night of the treason. Even if he doesn’t show it outwardly, it’s crossing his mind at the slightest trigger.

That time at the rowing competition is the first time that Gon has run away during an outdoor event. He runs away often and he knows he causes trouble for the Royal Guard, but this is the first time he’s done it at an event like that.

Gon can recognise Yeong just by his footsteps

Gon leaves his duties in the palace once or twice a year - either because he wants some personal time, or he’s in desperate need of it because he feels too overwhelmed by his regular life. I already assumed it was because of that, but to have it confirmed… fanfic nation, this is for you again

Gon was still thinking about the night of the treason when he got his Alice in Wonderland book out at the end of episode 1, and he could still vividly feel the sticky blood on the soles of his feet, and the feeling of something constricting around his neck. He felt like it could still happen again at any moment. Clearly, Lee Gon needs some better therapy than just going riding with Maximus.

Final thoughts: I’m very much enjoying seeing into the characters’ minds like this, especially Gon, since we’ve had a lot of him this chapter. I like how the book is able to show how often Gon is thinking about the night of the treason, making it and therefore his PTSD a much more present thing than in the show. It remains to be seen whether the currently hilarious Gon-worshipping is going to become annoying after a while, or whether or not seeing the characters’ inner thoughts is going to start annoying me when the main romance plot gets going. If it’s in the same tone as the Gon-worshipping… yeesh. That’ll be an experience.

My main thought so far? Not enough Yeong. There’s not as much Yeong as there was in the show, and there isn’t even much Yeong there. This book could be greatly improved with more Yeong. I suppose we’ll have to stick to fanfiction for that.

#kitkat reads the tkem novel #tkem #the king: eternal monarch #I can’t help but think… if Gon is always being watched by Yeong #and Lady Noh figures that Gon can’t have a secret mistress because people would have noticed #the only person that Gon can be alone with without Yeong being too overprotective is… Yeong himself #idk guys that’s just a silly little thought haha #these posts are of course for everyone in the fandom and not just the gonjo side of it #but I know that most of my audience also suffers from gonjo brainrot soooo…

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/22-23/2023: SMILE (2022) and BARBARIAN (2022) - In Defense of the Tall Gangly Old Lady Monster

I've heard a lot of complaints lately (haven't we all) about the recent emergence of a new horror archetype--the tall, gangly, old lady monster--and I always get the feeling that the plaintiffs are willfully ignoring the context of this apparition. I mean sure, if you feel annoyed with the rapid proliferation of a prematurely tired cliche, that's fair; personally I'm pretty sick of scary clowns, even though some of them are still effective, if your main proposal is a scary clown then you're going to have to work harder than usual to get my attention. But vis a vis the tall scary old lady discourse, as far as I've seen, the objection is almost always the same: This monster is an expression of disdain for elderly people, and a reinforcement of the idea that women are worthy so long as they are considered sexually viable, after which point they deserve only disgust and rejection. And like there will surely be boring, misogynistic representations of this monster that are fair to roll one's eyes at, but the most visible targets of this criticism have been SMILE and BARBARIAN, and I would argue that both films are full of ambivalence and irony, and the specific morphology of the monster is thoughtful and deliberate.

I think that any time you hear a complaint that is based on the assumption that a movie is promoting real-life ideals and ethics, you need to double check that. This is the propaganda model of media analysis, and while nothing is created in a vacuum, not everything has didactic, propagandistic motivations. Certainly some movies ARE doing just that; I see quite a lot of chauvinism and bigotry in action movies, comedies, and (perhaps most of all) romantic comedies, whose content is clearly presented as aspirational. Low-hanging fruit of this kind is found in movies like SWEET HOME ALABAMA, which says that self-made independent career women are just fooling themselves and should stay home and serve whoever gets them pregnant first, or the similarly retrogressive JUNO in which a girl who gets knocked up during high school is universally worshiped and supported by everybody and truly loved by the knocker-upper and there is almost nothing really perilous or concerning about the whole situation, it's all very cute and desirable. Horror movies require a little more investigation. Sometimes the monster does embody some kind of moral mandate, or an unjust injunction against a certain demographic. Hitchcock and De Palma have been accused of transphobia, for instance, and while I don't think we should throw out their movies (which you should never have to do unless you're incapable of critical thought), the charges are fair. But other times, the monster embodies unfinished business, ambivalence, irony, insecurity. It exists not as a symbol of universal evil, but as a foil to the hero. And sometimes the hero is not a hero at all.

All of the following is extensively spoilery, so proceed with whatever caution is appropriate: Zach Cregger's BARBARIAN is a delightfully twisty, prismatic reflection on misogynistic violence and its consequences. It begins with a simple-seeming situation that prods the viewer to guess what protagonist Georgina Campbell should do about the problem of an unplanned male roommate in her Airbnb. Bill Skarsgård is sketchy and intrusive, but charming enough to create a dilemma for the savvy young woman--a dilemma which ends abruptly with the discovery of a monster in the basement. The building itself has its own polar identity: It offers appealing lodging for hip Detroit tourists in a once-desirable neighborhood devastated by racist, capitalist forces. The home's previous owner was a serial killer (the great Richard Brake!) with a penchant for forcibly breeding his female victims, and it is now the possession of Justin Long, a hot shot actor who is so poisoned by his own witless misogyny that he seems genuinely unaware of what constitutes rape. Lurking in the labyrinthine foundations of his investment property is one of Brake's victims: A tall, powerful, barely-human female who has been warped into believing that her captives are actually her babies. While BARBARIAN is willfully disorienting, and that is part of its charm, a bird's eye view shows its careful orchestration of clear spectrum of forms of abuse--from the institutional, to the constitutional, to the unconscious--alongside a polar pair of potential survivors, one final girl and one twisted victim.

Much has been made of the scene in which Justin Long is forced to suckle on the pendulous teat of the maternal morlock. The common assumption seems to be that we're supposed to share Long's disgust and pity his violation. I would question any impulse to side with Long as an innocent victim; certainly you're supposed to fear the monster, but that doesn't mean you can't share in the cathartic delight of a selfish, greedy, destructive, gentrifying rapist getting his comeuppance in the form of unwanted carnal contact with a female who shatters all of his fascist beauty standards. Yes, she is meant to be terrifying, but the all-important question is WHY, on what principle? On any close inspection, the motivation of BARBARIAN does not seem to involve reinforcing ageist, ableist, misogynistic values. And one might add that, in general, it doesn't get us very far culturally or artistically to insist that all oppressed-minority characters are always presented unambiguously as heroes or tragic victims. Sometimes we don't mind grossing you out, as long as we get our revenge.

Much like the dark mother in BARBARIAN, the monstrosity in Parker Finn's SMILE embodies the protagonist's neurotic phobias, rather than making a statement about objective good and evil. Sosie Bacon plays a therapist in an emergency psychiatric unit who makes the unfortunate acquaintance of a transient entity that perpetuates its existence by possessing the witnesses of violent suicides. As the traumatized target begins to perceive the leering entity everywhere, she descends into a self-destructive spiral that will end with her own inevitable death. Bacon makes an especially good victim because, aside from the immediate impact of the horrifying suicide she witnesses in her ward, she is haunted by the childhood memory of having passively allowed her mentally ill, substance-dependent mother to die. As an adult, Bacon has eschewed the challenge of deeper connections in favor of shallow, conditional relationships with people who will not forgive her flaws when they are exposed. The demon exploits her refusal to face herself by incarnating as a version of her mother that is at first pitiful and accusative, then powerful and terrifying. Once again, the dark mother is not here to encourage the audience's prejudices against women who are dysfunctional or physically past their supposed prime; in SMILE she is an avenging spirit who forces the protagonist, and the audience, into a direct confrontation with all that we ignore and avoid.

There is a lot more I would like to say about SMILE, and I kind of feel like I'm stealing from future me by including it in this abbreviated review! But as I have previously stated, I didn't know this was going to be a speed run of Blogtober until I was completely overwhelmed by life and it was too late to curate accordingly. To be honest, I liked BARBARIAN a lot and I think it's sort of deep in spite of itself, but SMILE scared the absolute shit out of me both times that I saw it. I probably found it even more effective the second time. It is unpredictable and beautifully articulated, with a strong visual personality that perfectly serves its psychological purposes. And like, if you happen to be a high-anxiety person with social problems who withers under too much attention or eye contact, and you have a basic daily fear that you don't really know who people are behind their er um uh smiles, THIS IS THE HORROR MOVIE FOR YOU. I got scared again just picking out images for my blog post! So, I reserve the right to revisit both of these movies on future Blogtobers. There is certainly a lot to say just about the emerging horror archetype of the giantess/ogress--other examples that immediately spring to mind include the vampire from Resident Evil: Village and the final (TERRIFYING!) monster in the original [REC], and I'm sure there are more, and I'm also pretty sure some real-deal academic will scoop me on this! Actually, I hope they do. Please holler at me when you inevitably see the relevant think piece.

#blogtober #2023 #horror #supernatural #slasher #mystery #smile #2022 #barbarian #zach cregger #parker finn #georgina campbell #justin long #richard brake #sosie bacon #horror comedy #misogyny #psychological horror

[bonesandpoemsandflowers]

one of the things I think about a lot is how tragic the gap between demographic appeal and personal desire can be. by which i mean

friend 1: personal trainer and jock, first person to show me how to do a proper form skin the cat without fucking up my shoulders. hot. built. super nice and kind and funny but let's focus on the important part here. hot.

friend 2: successful local artist with a horror themed body of work. scary clown persona. mutilated clown persona. does art shows in clown costume. also nice and funny but the point is, Very Goth.

cool, right? two different Types of Guy.

but the problem was that Guy 1, the jock, was super into goth girls. not gym goths. just goth girls. often curvier goth girls. "yeah, and?" and all the curvy goth girls were scared of his biceps and six pack abs and golden retriever like attitude. they expected him to be a judgmental dick, even though he never was, because he looked like somebody's idea of a high school bully and captain of the football team from a 90s movie. he was into a lot of spooky shit, but he didn't look like it. gym bunnies would express interest in him and he'd just not notice because he was busy pining for fishnets and tats barista next door.

the problem with Guy 2, goth clown guy? he was into sporty chicks exclusively. goth girl after goth girl would like, HURL themselves at him and want to fuck him in the clown costumes and he'd just be like whoa whoa whoa! i'm not into that! please be chill! and he would Yearn for a gym girl with muscles and good cardio instead.

and so everyone was sad!

except for me. I was constantly entertained, but I am a sporty goth girl who is extremely married, so everything about witnessing this flavor of suffering was hysterical for me personally.

but the point is, sometimes you want something specific, and that's totally okay! but your life will be easier if you loudly (and often visually) signal what you're looking for. or else people just do assume along very broad lines. should they? no, because people are complicated. but do they? yeah, because people are also just, like, busy. so you can rail against the injustice of it all, and you're right, but ultimately it is easier to go buy a few fishnet shirts or something.

#text #personal

[kanansdume]

Now that Andor has finished, I'm starting to see more of an influx of negative opinions on it and while I don't share their opinion and absolutely loved the show, it's interesting to see that Andor ended up such a polarizing show. People either really related to it and adored it and felt like it was one of the best things Star Wars has ever produced, or it just fell completely flat because of how different its style and structure was.

"It didn't feel like Star Wars," "it was too slow," "none of the characters were interesting/likable" seem to be the biggest frustrations people had with this show, while "It's so new and refreshing," "it's an excellent slowburn that's taking its time to tell a good story," and "all of the characters are morally gray and it's an interesting use of ensemble" are things I've seen people ENJOY about the show. They're the exact same things, but for some people they work, and for others, they... don't.

I get why the slower structure would have bothered people, even as the structure worked really well for me in giving me those mini arcs for Cassian while still remaining entirely serialized and giving impact to past events as the story moves forward.

I get why having the ensemble structure would be frustrating in its refusal to truly focus in on one character's journey above the others, even as it totally worked for me in highlighting what the writers felt was meaningful about Cassian's arc by paralleling and foiling him in the others, partially because Cassian as a character doesn't always make things obvious and partially to just build the world up a little.

And I get why the more serious adult take on Star Wars could have put people off, that this just simply isn't what they enjoy Star Wars FOR and if they wanted edgy serious adult drama they would go watch something else. I get that, even as I deeply enjoyed having piece of Star Wars media that felt aimed at someone my age rather than having to enjoy something that is intentionally written towards a pre-teen demographic even if it's written well. As someone who doesn't tend to do a lot of reading of the novels and comics that have been allowed to be more adult, it's felt like a breath of fresh air in some ways. I like Star Wars a lot and really enjoy some of the more subtle things happening in shows like Obi-Wan Kenobi or Rebels or even Clone Wars and the main films. But I don't think Andor is a show that had a pre-teen audience in mind, I'm not even sure a lot of pre-teens would enjoy it all that much. And I think there can be room to explore an element of Star Wars that CAN be aimed at adults, but that's not going to be something that appeals to all of Star Wars' myriad fans.

I don't go see a rom-com because I'm looking for a political side story. I'm there to see a stupid formulaic nauseatingly sweet storyline that doesn't ask me to think all that hard. There's going to be people who come to Star Wars with very specific things in mind that they want out of it because it's why Star Wars brings them joy, it's what Star Wars MEANS to them, and Andor just isn't going to fulfill that.

Andor did have to grow on me a little and I was someone who already considered Rogue One my favorite Star Wars film and enjoyed Cassian as a character, Diego Luna as an actor, and was genuinely hopeful and excited for the show. And of course the show isn't perfect, it stumbles in places, it can do better with some of its writing choices perhaps. But I respect it a LOT for choosing to really stick to its vision, to do its own thing. I'm someone who's always going to have a lot more respect for someone trying and failing than someone who is just sticking to the proven status quo. Andor had a very particular message in mind that it wanted to tell and a particular way it decided to tell it. For some people, that message worked, for others it didn't, but they took the road less travelled and I can respect the bravery and dedication that took.

#andor #andor show #andor series #sw andor #star wars andor #star wars #cassian andor #not every star war is for everyone

[tomwambsmilk]

What are some of the characteristics of these white middle class men you speak of or how do you know someone is middle class? and why would prestige tv cater to only this dempgrpahic?

This is honestly a great question, and one that's surprisingly difficult to answer in a concise way. I've done my best, but in case you don't want to read, the TL;DR is: HBO (a cable frontrunner who defined the strategy for other competitors who emerged later) intentionally catered to men in its early (pre-prestige) days because they knew the networks were intentionally catering to women. This meant that when it shifted into prestige TV in the late 90s, the existing subscriber base was middle-class white men. It's first big flagship "prestige TV" drama, The Sopranos, appealed heavily to that demo and was wildly commercially successful. The Wire, while airing at the same time with equal critical acclaim, did not appeal to that demo and actively critiqued societal structures which benefitted that demo, and flopped both commercially and in the awards circuit. These two shows came very early in the "Prestige TV era", and execs took note of their respective receptions; consequently, much of the prestige TV which came after was selected with that middle-class white male demo in mind.

Longer explanation below the cut:

I should first clarify that when I say "Prestige TV" I'm using it more in the academic sense, of referring to a specific type of television which emerged in the "Prestige TV era", also called the "Second Golden Age" (around 1999-2020, although the precise end date depends on who you ask). A large range of shows fall into that category, but the common characteristics include heavy serialization (ie an emphasis on long-form storytelling, rather than standalone episodes), morally ambiguous characters, complex plots, diverse perspectives, and "R-rated" content. It's pretty widely agreed that this era was "kicked off" by The Sopranos; if I had to list other key Prestige TV/Second Golden Age shows, I'd probably default to the other eleven Alan Sepinwall analyzes in The Revolution Was Televised, his book about how television changed during the Prestige TV era (those eleven are: Oz, The Wire, Deadwood, The Shield, Lost, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 24, Battlestar Galactica, Friday Night Lights, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad. Not all of those are commonly thought of as Prestige TV, because that label is now so removed from its source that it's only applied to a very narrow subsection of shows, but they are Prestige TV in the proper academic sense because of the impact they had on the era).

Not all of those shows were targeted at middle-class white men, and it wasn't my intention to suggest that every individual Prestige TV show is. But generally speaking, with only a few exceptions, the shows that defined the Prestige TV era and had the most commercial success while airing were the ones which appealed to that white, male, middle-class demo. And that's not a demo HBO picked up accidentally. It was explicitly built into their early strategies to go after that demographic, and so that was the demographic that had access to Prestige TV before people thought of it as Prestige TV, which means their opinions did a lot to influence how it developed.

HBO's primary strategy for survival in its early years, especially before other cable networks emerged, was differentiation. The problem they faced was there was lots of television that people could watch for free on network TV, and there wasn't the same distaste for advertising we have now which might have pushed people to pay for a subscription. Their solution was to try and target the people who a) had disposable income, and b) were dissatisfied with what was on the networks. Studio execs knew that the primary target market network execs had in mind when they were buying shows was middle-class white women, because that's the demo that their advertisers wanted to hit. Obviously, the definition of middle-class is contentious now, but I'm using it to mean people with disposable income, which is what made them attractive; white, because the middle class was disproportionately white, and also because network TV was trying to target a generic default 'American' audience, which to their minds was white; and women because advertisers believed women made most of the household purchasing decisions. HBO also needed people with disposable income, so it also targeted middle-class whites by default. However, the main place it decided to differentiate was by going after men, in an extremely intentional programming strategy developed by HBO CEO Michael Fuchs. Sheila Nevins, who was in charge of documentary programming, developed several documentary series, called, respectively, Real Sex, G-String Divas, Cathouse, and Sex Bytes, intentionally to try and cater to men - and it worked! Subscriber numbers increased in droves. And sure, we don't definitively know most of those subscribers were men. But... anecdotally, and in terms of the extremely limited market data we do have, the evidence for those subscribers and viewers being mostly men is quite strong.

White middle-class men weren't by any means the only group they targeted; another part of HBO's strategy was to create a wide variety of content catered to many different groups of people. But those white middle-class men became the most reliable paying subscribers, so HBO's content strategy leaned heavily on catering to their tastes to bring in funding they could use for "brand projects" - weightier, more artistic projects that improved HBO's brand image. When competitors like Showtime emerged, they developed their own spins on HBO's strategy; they targeted their markets in different ways, but ultimately everyone was trying to appeal to the groups who were unsatisfied with network TV, and everyone wanted the white middle-class male subscriber's dollar because it was considered the most "reliable". That demo essentially became to cable TV what advertisers were to network TV.

To trace cable TV's history from the 70s to The Sopranos would take a while and also involve spending more time talking about boxing and Mike Tyson than you would expect. HBO continued to stick to this strategy of differentiation and slowly achieved more market dominance. Ultimately, that brought HBO a combination of funding and creative respect that allowed them to gamble on The Sopranos, a show that several networks passed on before it was pitched to HBO, who ordered the pilot, only to have it perform extremely poorly in the test screening. So poorly that no sane executive would have ordered more episodes.

Except.

The head of HBO at the time, Chris Albrecht (considered by many to be the 'godfather of prestige tv'), heavily related to Tony Soprano, and he felt that his (very male) social networks also would. He's quoted as repeatedly saying, "The only difference between Tony Soprano and every guy I know is that he's the don of New Jersey." Which might sound like hyperbole, but.... In that history of HBO we skipped over there is also a long and unsettling history of misogyny and violence (including sexual violence) sanctioned and covered up by the network which, even by our desensitized modern standards, I actually found pretty shocking. It's bad, y'all. Chris Albrecht (and his fellow execs) didn't relate to Tony despite the violence of the show and his anger issues - they related to him because of it. The most famous incident concerning Albrecht specifically involves him strangling a female subordinate during a disagreement in her office, an allegation which led to HBO paying her a $400,000 settlement. And that's unfortunately not an outlier. (By the way, Albrecht objected to one of Sopranos most famous season 1 episodes, "College", because he felt Tony strangling another character to death would make him 'too unlikable', and viewers wouldn't be able to 'see his humour and charm').

Of course, The Sopranos turned out to be a massive hit, and deservedly so. But I think it's notable that its first season was only ordered because a small group of male executives steeped in violence, misogyny, and toxic masculinity personally related to Tony. And it's also worth noting that at the time, Tony Soprano was often compared to Mike Tyson, who many consider to be HBO's "first antihero". HBO was very involved in his career largely because the controversy around him brought in that middle-class male demo; Tony Soprano was considered to be a continuation of that strategy.

(To be clear, not all men who liked The Sopranos liked it for those reasons. But if we want to get in the weeds about it, HBO catered not just to men in general, but in a very particular way, to the subsection of men who did).

Another thing to note is that part of the success of The Sopranos was the way it catered to the anxieties of the now-shrinking middle class. When the series aired, the stock market was booming, but a spree of mega-mergers and consolidations resulted in record layoffs. CEO pay was skyrocketing while median family income was dropping, and the "middle class" that HBO had always catered to (bc of the disposable income) was disappearing. At its core, The Sopranos was very much about the anxiety which surrounds a way of life disappearing; consequently, the middle-class demo HBO had worked so hard to cultivate was immediately hooked. And yeah, a lot of them were no longer middle-class, strictly speaking. But HBO was still very much trying to cater to, for example, white-collar workers who recently fell out of that income bracket, rather than blue-collar workers or lower income brackets.

Let's also look at The Wire, a show essentially pitched as an audience bait-and-switch. Creator David Simon wanted it to look like a standard-issue broadcast police procedural, like pretty much every TV network had. But what would make it different is that, as the show developed, it would become increasingly subversive - instead of wondering "whether the bad guys would get caught", he wanted the audience to wonder "who the real bad guys are, and whether catching them means anything at all". In his pitch to HBO, he wrote: "You will not be stealing market share from the networks by only venturing into worlds where they can't; you will be stealing it by taking their worlds and transforming them with honesty and wit and a darker, cynical, and more piercing viewpoint than they would undertake."

While The Wire is textbook Prestige TV, it actually didn't hit that middle-class white male demo. David Simon wasn't concerned with hitting demos or relatability; he wanted to create a far-ranging critique of the police system, neo-liberalism, and capitalism. These were topics that simply didn't resonate with the demographic HBO had built up in its subscriber base, many of whom were quite happy with the police system, neo-liberalism, and capitalism, since they were benefitting pretty heavily from it. The only subscriber demo it did consistently hit was critics, academics, and journalists. And even then - despite its massive critical acclaim, The Wire was heavily snubbed in the awards circuit. The awards snubs are especially telling, given how much the critics claimed to love the show, calling it "Dickensian" - a lot of these people were the same ones voting in the Emmys, so what gives? A lot of people have spent a lot of time trying to figure it out, and what they keep coming back to time and time again is that the majority of the cast of The Wire was black. (It's also worth noting that the original plans for season 1 involved killing off the character of Kima Greggs, a black lesbian, until executive Carolyn Strauss pushed - hard - to reverse the decision, on the grounds that HBO's programming was already too white, male, and heterosexual. Greggs eventually went on to become a particular favourite of the show's extremely small fanbase, which I think is indicative of the kind of demographic the show picked up.) The response was so disappointing that it was nearly cancelled several times; in the first near-cancellation, Albrecht joked that he'd heard from "all 250 of the viewers".

These are just two shows, obviously. But they're two shows that came very early in the era, and so heavily influenced what came after. The Sopranos especially redefined what TV could be; it proved that morally complex, serialized stories with antihero protagonists had a market - and the limitations on network television meant that market could only be reached by cable networks like HBO, which had built up a specific sort of subscriber base. We have to make a distinction between what David Chase wanted to communicate with The Sopranos and why it succeeded the way that it did. Chase didn't set out to create a show that would resonate with white middle-class men, but he did, and it was wildly successful. David Simon's show, while equally critically acclaimed and airing in largely the same time period, did not resonate with white middle-class men, and it never achieved the sort of viewer ratings during its run that other shows of comparable quality did. Studio execs inside and outside of HBO saw that and took note.

Again, the decisions that go into the creation of TV shows are extremely complex, and to say "all Prestige TV is targeted at white middle-class men" is a huge oversimplification. There's a lot more to the history of HBO than just Sopranos and The Wire. But a reliance on that demo, and an active desire to cater to their interests, has heavily defined the kinds of shows which are considered to be Prestige TV, as well as the kinds of shows that cable TV studios are willing to put money into developing. If you want to really examine the context that the "Second Golden Age" is rooted in, you have to be willing to grapple with that history.

#asks #anon #there's a whole history which comes after this as well so. its complicated #I hope this is clear. happy to further clarify any point. I'm trying to condense a LOT of info w/o missing anything important #also belatedly realized you asked about middle class and I focussed on men. I hope it’s clear enough to just say middle class here means #people with disposable income #and #that middle class demo was picked up in the 60s and 70s when the middle class WAS a thing #the financial demo they hit now might not be considered middle class anymore #but it’s still that same demo of white-collar suburbia they cater to #rather then lower income or blue collar demos

[applestorms]

BARBARA

might not go too in depth with this one since i'm a little outta practice writing essays but!! i wanted to get a few notes out of my reaction after watching the barbie movie so here we go ^w^ obvious spoiler warning under the cut, though if you want to just skip the section marked "ending," it probably isn't too bad.

STRENGTHS

1. early jokes

in my head i kind of split this film into two sections that intermingle often but are still pretty separate: the beginning half, which features more of the humor/references to the history of barbie, both in terms of the corporation and the experience of kids growing up with barbie dolls, and the ending half, which features more of the in-depth emotional reflection. while it does manage to delve fairly deep into some existential questions (enough that i think this is quite distinctly a barbie movie for adults), it stays pretty lighthearted overall which seems ideal for this kind of movie.

what i really like about many of the early jokes in this film (and its humor in general) is how they play off of the himbo/bimbo stereotypes of both ken & barbie in such a way that doesn't actually diminish the intelligence of any of the characters involved- specifically, most of the early jokes in the movie are based around the implication that (despite not actually being shown) kids are the ones playing with the dolls and moving all of the characters seen on set, meaning that the limitations on their intelligence are the limitations of the kids dreaming up their world (i.e. the continual references to a lack of genitalia, ken not knowing why he would want to sleep over, pouring an empty milk carton, etc).

what this means is that the movie is able to make a ton of stupid jokes referencing the absurdity of barbies and the dumb shit that inevitably comes up when you give kids access to toys while simultaneously allowing the characters (and in particular, margot barbie) the emotional intelligence necessary for the deeper reflection that shows up in the second half. it's really well done imo, and part of the reason why i think this film genuinely is appealing to fans and haters of barbie, lightly joking about the inherent weirdness and questionable history of the corporation while allowing room for genuine care & excitement on the part of people who care about it as a key part of their childhoods & experience growing up.

2. trauma of womanhood

alright, started off strong with this essay by explaining the joke. now let's talk about the trauma of growing up as a woman.

but forreal, the scene where barbie & ken are first rollerskating around in the real world and commenting on the reactions of other people to their (exactly copied) outfits hit me so much harder than i expected. while i mentioned earlier that this movie really does seem to have a little something for everyone watching, there still seems to be a target demographic of adult women that grew up with barbie & remember them fondly (i.e. gloria, the main mother) and for that group in particular i think this movie really has the ability to hit people hard.

what hits me so hard about that scene is just how real it is to the experience of that jarring transition. i'll write more about this in the section on mothers coming up next, but you can really read the movie as a reflection on the experience of growing up as a girl and hitting adulthood. the distinct stages that margot barbie goes through (mindless happiness -> existential crisis -> inner peace at the gynecologist) in part seem to reflect the experience of growing up as a cis woman (childhood -> sudden yanking into womanhood & being treated like an adult -> more peace with new social position).

in one of my classes on feminist philosophy this guy who i had been talking to a lot made a very significant comment that's stuck with me ever since. we were talking about trans feminism, and he (as a trans guy himself) mentioned how he always found it weird that people were so picky about the transition between genders when something like puberty and the bodily changes that come with that are so easily accepted as normal and barely even treated like a change. in particular, he mentioned something about how harsh & almost violent the transition from girlhood into womanhood can be, how you can be yanked into the role with all of its expectations so suddenly out of nowhere. it's a sentiment that i've heard echoed in similar comments from other trans individuals since, particularly from a few trans men about their own experiences where being a girl was fine, but being a woman was not.

this is honestly one of the areas where i think cis people and in particular cis feminism can really gain some meaningful reflection from the experiences of trans people, if i may say so as a cis woman myself. really, you don't have to be a man for the above sentiment about "being a girl is fine, being a woman isn't" to still kinda fuckin apply!! what resonates so strongly with me about the rollerblading scene is margot barbie's reaction to suddenly being sexualized, the (as she explicitly says) underlying violence of that experience, the discomfort and self-consciousness that comes from it and the distinct contrast of how ken really does not feel the same way. there's something that can really fuck you up about growing up as a girl hardly even aware about most of your body only to suddenly start growing tits and have everyone's treatment of you do a fucking 180.

i have a very vivid memory that reminds me of my own such experience when it comes to this, actually. when i was in high school we were required to take a foreign language for a few years to graduate, so i ended up taking a couple years of japanese to fulfill the requirement. it was one of my favorite classes overall since everyone taking it was pretty much guaranteed to be a nerd interested in anime and/or video games, and it was the one class where i consistently had friends and got close to the teacher. it was still a bit awkward on my part, however, because of one thing- the class was almost entirely made up of dudes, with the 3 exceptions being myself, the teacher, and one other girl who came out as a lesbian a couple weeks into the start of class. essentially what this meant is that i was the only potentially "available" girl in the room (ignoring whether or not there was any actual interest on either side of things) for most of the 2-3 years i took the class. this was fine for the first year or so, back when i was super depressed and only ever wore the same 2 hoodies every single day, but as my mental health improved, so did my clothing habits and with it came a distinct shift in the ways that the other people in the room treated me.

i remember i finally gave in and wore a skirt one day and the shift in treatment was practically fucking tangible. it wasn't that people treated me worse or better necessarily, i mean there were a couple dudes that weirded me out a bit and my relationships with my close friends didn't change a bit, but suddenly it felt like there was all of this additional shit weighing down my interactions with people i had previously felt comfortable with and, frankly, it fucking sucked! it felt like the fact that i had finally outwardly performed femininity suddenly reminded half the class that i was, in fact, a girl and all of a sudden there were all of these complex expectations and reactions that i was forced to shift through out of nowhere and i entirely didn't expect it.

to get back to the point, though that experience wasn't exactly the same as margot barbie suddenly being viciously sexualized by everyone in her path (though certainly, i've dealt with that one too) i think it still gets at a similar idea of how harsh and sudden the transition into womanhood can be and i appreciate how this movie reflected on that, especially in the context of how the shift primarily comes from a change in how other people view you. margot barbie never ages throughout the film, never goes through puberty like an actual kid and has to deal with the changes that come from that, but if anything i think that makes the message stronger- even if she is still fundamentally the same physical being, the external shift in perception is still strong, particularly in its influence on how one views themself.

3. mothers (& patriarchy)

i think it's safe to say that this is, at it's core, a feminism movie, and it explores this through the exploration of two main ideas: motherhood, particularly through the relationships of the movie's main women (margot barbie, gloria, sasha, & ruth handler), and patriarchy as tested by the kens, in particular ryan ken.

imo the movie's demonstration of the transition from childhood -> adulthood through margot barbie's character arc doesn't just focus on her as an individual, but also her relationship with her "creator," ruth handler, who is essentially treated like margot barbie's mother (i believe this is really clarified at the end of the movie, though tbh i forget what exact scene/line made me think that while originally watching). what really caught me off guard about this aspect is just how much it symbolically delves into the topic of grief, specifically through the loss of a mother on the part of margot barbie. i almost questioned if this was intentional at first, since it's quite vague and doesn't really show up very often, but iirc it ended up being quite a strong point. i replayed gris quite recently and i wasn't expecting to come up with the same emotions watching the barbie movie of all things, but i think it works well.

*also, sidenote: while i won't go too in depth into gloria & sasha's arcs since they feel pretty straightforward to me, i do want to add that i really liked how gloria was the girl that margot barbie was originally attached to rather than sasha. feels like the moviemakers really learned from EEAAO for that one, and it's nice to see more older women get put in the spotlight for once.

4. ken

SO. ok i know i mentioned patriarchy above but let's just give ken and patriarchy his own section cause i really liked how his arc was done. ryan gosling fucking killed it here, he knew exactly what needed to be done and did it and it deserves all the praise.

the one thing i wished there was a little bit more of though (keeping in mind that i've got a section on weak points right after this one) is a slightly clearer demonstration of how toxic masculinity/patriarchy/whatever the fuck you wanna call it makes men just as miserable as it does women. i think a part of what made this point weaker in my mind is how separate the barbies & kens were by the end of the movie (more on this in the section on dubious hope), though idk i might be nitpicking a bit too hard there. overall ken is a lovely horse girl with stunning proficiency at beach and i think his arc was incredibly satisfying and beautifully flashy, a perfect balance to the rugged femininity of barbie. you ARE kenough my dude, and i laughed hard enough at that hoodie to almost consider shelling out the 60 bucks for a real one.

5. ending

i started getting nervous right at the end there because as the movie seems to be aware, there are a lot of ways this could've been fucked up. this movie had a very particular message (i.e. women don't have to be extraordinary just to deserve existing in peace) that it was very intent on delivering the right way, and ultimately i think it succeeded. it managed to not shove a last minute barbie/ken romance into the final minutes, it reflected meaningfully enough on what the idea of a barbie really represents, and it let you leave the theater in good spirits with a great dumb joke.

6. no apologies & marketing (barbie can be anything)

actually- let's expand on that previous point a bit! "women don't have to be extraordinary just to deserve existing in peace," is a great message and fantastic evolution off of the classic barbie brand of "women can do anything they set their hearts out to do," and i really liked that the film stuck to this idea the whole way through. there's a potential criticism of the feminism of this film that it tries to tackle too much at once and doesn't give each individual point enough time to stew (aka there's margot barbie's emotional development arc but also gloria & sasha's arc but also ken's patriarchy arc etc. etc.), but i think that in sticking to this one core message it feels cohesive enough that i can't lean on that point too heavily.

i also like how this idea kinda transforms the messaging behind the original marketing for the movie. "this barbie is a [INSERT OCCUPATION HERE]" is great in that it attracts your attention by playing into the "classic" barbie message but also in that the movie seems to fundamentally be about pointing out that the occupation is not what makes those barbies (women) deserving of being treated with humanity and respect. it's just. it's fuckin nice.

7. barbie girl in a barbie world (the SET DESIGN) vs. lovely reality

THE PLASTIC SETS & PROPS WERE SO FUCKING GOOD like we knew they were going to be but AAAAAAAAA. istg god bless whoever worked on making all that shit look like plastic it was so good i was staring wide eyed the entire movie. also: just the right amount of sparkles and incorporation of old advertisements. chefs kiss.

additional short note before we get to the weak points cause lord my hands are starting to Feel It again: i really like that the "real world," for all of its grittiness in comparison to the barbie world wasn't treated like completely disgusting or dingy but instead a different, but still at times lovely place. all those shots of the light coming through the trees really helped i think, it was just nice that while it was different and jarring to margot barbie to see she was still able to see the beauty in it all. that scene where she tells the old lady at the bus stop that she's beautiful is the emotional core of this movie in my mind and i can't appreciate it enough for keeping that all present.

WEAK POINTS

1. what the fuck was up with that smallpox line

as it says! it was weird and jarring and out of place and i kind of wish it was just cut out entirely. this is probably the biggest negative point i have against the movie and since i've actually seen some people talking about this one i think i should try going a bit more in depth.

from what little i've seen of other comments on this, i think one of the biggest criticisms says something along the lines of "it's a bad line because it equates american indian genocide with patriarchy which isn't an equal comparison," and though i don't know if i would agree with that point exactly, i do think the comparison is ultimately a weird one to make and fails to make any meaningful points that aren't tainted by a weird insensitivity to indigenous american history.

it's actually not about the deaths for me, since i think it's ignorant to say that women haven't been killed due to the effects of patriarchy (even if nowadays it is usually at an intersection of more minority identities- cishet middle-class white women certainly aren't the ones being killed for their woman-ness in this day and age, at least in most of america). while fundamentally i think it's always going to be weird to try and compare the experiences of people dealing with different types of bigotry, i think another key problem here is the fact that the things being compared here just don't function in the same way.

take what i say here with a grain of salt since i don't have any direct american indian affiliations myself (rather, i'm mixed white/filipino actually), but patriarchy and the deaths that came from the diseases that originated from the introduction of europeans to the american continent just aren't really comparable, literally apples to oranges in my mind. for one thing, the line takes away from the agency that goes into patriarchy on the part of (cis) men which seems to actively conflict with the actions of ryan ken throughout the movie, and for another, the focus on disease seems to uncomfortably disregard the very real active killing sprees that settlers fairly regularly went on in while violently colonizing the continent. it just- none of it really works! i genuinely don't get why this line had to be included- it's never elaborated on, it doesn't support any of the messages the film seems to be trying to send (if anything, actively going against what it's trying to do), and it's so uncomfortably out of place it actually distracted me from the movie long enough that i had to mentally scramble to figure out what was happening again.

i'd like to hear more of an in-depth criticism from someone more fit to comment on this topic. if anyone would like to respond/link elsewhere to something more sophisticated than these random notes of my own, it would be greatly appreciated. more on this movie and race a bit later.

2. limitations of capitalism

this is one point that i think the movie actually dealt with fairly well, which makes sense since there are so many ways that this movie could've ended up turning into a massive fucking ad campaign for mattel, like even more than it already was. i think it works because it just doesn't linger on it too much- there's only so much criticism of capitalism you can shove into your massively corporate, expensive film before it gets fucking obnoxious and impossible for anyone to take you seriously. frankly i think that for any movie this mainstream at this scale it should just avoid talking about it at all, but the short, vague references they kept in were quick enough that i couldn't complain for too long. in recent years there have been a lot of shows & movies that in their attempt to be woke end up just annoying everyone, the bigots and the people they're trying to appeal to both, but these shorter comments, especially within the context of the rest of the movie's messages & themes, felt at least a little more genuine.

3. white feminism & the lack of introspection w/ race

oh man. this movie is fuckin WHIIITE, which was kind of expected but also yeesh. in all fairness, similar to the above point i think this movie did a decent job at making the cast fairly diverse without being overly obnoxious patting itself on the back about how woke it is (again, i think this is because it had an actual message in mind), but overall i still can't think of this movie as being about anything other than fundamentally white, cis feminism. and to some degree that's fine!! this movie knows what it is and i think it genuinely does give some good direction for a better way of approaching "classic" white feminism (especially considering how much female CEO-type girlboss feminism pandering bullshit we've gotten in recent years), but, y'know. a smidge more depth would've been nice, especially in the relationship between sasha & gloria (though i did find the dad's broken language practice endearing lol white dads =3=.)

4. weird barbie & queerness (cock ring ken)

it could've been so much gayer. it definitely had some hints here and there, like you cannot tell me that weird barbie isn't a dyke, a couple twinks hit on ken during the rollerblading scene, and that final ken dance battle was exactly the right amount of homoerotic, but still. i just wish it was more blunt about it, i feel like a lot of the underlying tension of gay shit underlining all of the intense femininity went over the heads of straight audiences and that makes me kinda sad cause it feels like i'll have to fight to make it seen which we all seem to be getting sick of doing. bring back cock ring ken mattel, i know a shit ton of people (myself included) who'd by the fuck outta that.

that being said, i also like that it didn't linger on romance too much, instead focusing on the mother/daughter relationships that mesh more cleanly with the general themes of growing up and girlhood. ken figuring out how to deal with being friendzoned by coming to terms with his own self-worth was lovely and i wouldn't change that conclusion a bit. i just wish, for the sake of my own tastes, that we could've gotten a bit more time with that line about how you're either a stereotypical barbie or a weird loser, since that definitely resonated with my own experience growing up a queer weirdo loser, or just that side of queerness that often makes you feel like an outsider to the mainstream.

5. dubious hope

...ok to be honest, after writing the rest of this post, i'm not sure i believe this anymore. originally this point was going to be something along the lines of how i thought that EEAAO was a lot more clean in its defense of holding onto hope, and maybe i do still believe that, but thinking back i think this movie does actually do a pretty good job in trying to combat the usual pessimism that drenches a lot of white cishet feminism (and women in general, tbh). mostly this just goes back to the point i made before about how i wish they hadn't separated the kens & barbies so heavily near the end- idk, it just lowkey feels like its playing into this subtle idea that's been going around where, like, men have to be gay in order to have non-misogynistic relationships with women and just. ugh i dunno, i have lots of loaded, complex ideas about that which i will not be elaborating here, ultimate conclusion is that i think we need to figure out a better way to heal the fucked up relationship between straight men and straight women that permeates through patriarchal gender roles so heavily than just "make everyone gay".

6. allan???

allan. needed more of him. michael cera was the perfect casting choice for this and i wish he had more of an arc but also i get it. i get it. uhh anyways

#should've known i'm incapable of writing something short #barbie #astronaut rambles #my hands are fucking dying #i haven't written an essay this long in a hot minute jesus #barbie movie #barbie 2023 #barbie 2023 meta #bonus idea: i like that this movie was self-aware without being obnoxious about it too #like the comment about margot robbie being the wrong person to cast #which was funny but also genuinely helped the message imo

[morgana-ren]

I loveedd the durge fic. I've read a fair bit of dark urge content & haven't come across anything like yours, the brat in me is obsessed!! Always look forward to your posts.

Will there be a pt2? 🙏

Thank you! 💕

It depends!

It didn't do very well here, which is funny, because even bad smut almost exclusively does better than any other kind of writing aside from teeth-rotting, ooc fluff (not insulting it, just making an observation.) That being said, it wasn't exactly smut in the way I used to write it, and it appeals to a very specific demographic of people:

Brats. Me.

I would love to do a second part to it, but it would uhh probably just be exclusively smut unless someone else had any other ideas on where to take the story.

Why the 'didn't do well' is pertinent is because I've been having a rough go of writing, and I feel like when I force myself, my writing is even lower quality. The only way I really have to judge that is by how much people enjoy it.

#morgana and friends

[inoppositionflorien]

Boy I sure do love people failing to understand how the nature of Tumblr creates extremely closed ecosystems, and assuming that they can get accurate data about site demographics with a poll, failing to understand that the bridges out of their ecosystem and into the other various ecosystems are very narrow, probably don't reblog that much, and probably don't realize that they're a bridge in the first place, leading to them deciding "Staff must be wrong about the ratio of queer people to not-queer people on the website because I sure don't see many non-queer people in this closed ecosystem. No, I don't follow tom-doplopsopin, the blog that has essentially no identifying information on it and posts nothing but photographs of furniture and has five thousand followers who reblog from it often, none of whom I follow or follow me because they're dedicated almost entirely to reblogging nature photos or furniture photos and I don't post those."

This is not to make the echo-chamber-is-bad comment, in fact the echo chamber is the intended and actually pretty good effect, but to comment on the fairly low-algorithm nature of Tumblr being actually far more conducive to forming echo chambers than a site that uses more algorithms.

The lack of the algorithm and the large (compared to like, a forum's) userbase necessarily means you're not going to have a great grasp on what the user demographics are unless you can look down from above, which you can't because you don't follow every blog ever, and probably have several blocked!

This is a good thing and what most people come to Tumblr for, they come for the very specific communities they want to join and ignore the others and are almost never exposed to the others, but people are very eager to decide "but what I see on my highly-curated-by-me dashboard must therefore be all there is on the website, because I am not Outlier Georg who should not have been counted, I'm Normal Georg, who should have been counted!" not realizing that the appeal of Tumblr is very much geared towards being a place where you can BE Outlier Georg and find community with other Outliers Georg.

This is why user polls will never be even remotely accurate when they try to get a general picture of the userbase unless they target something that's invariant across the communities it reaches. They have to hop between communities, many of which will never reblog a poll on principle because they're entirely dedicated to like, photography or motivational quotes or something.

The point is Staff is almost certainly correct about the demographics, or at worst, not undercounting nearly as much as people seem to think. It is technically possible that many of the people Staff assumes to be not queer are, in fact, queer and just hiding it for whatever reason, but that's irrelevant because you'd have no way to know either.

Your community is not the world, because you built it, and you didn't want to build the world.

#florien declares war

[hasufin]

Almost Paradigm

I know I've posted about this before, but got to thinking about it again.

my spouse and I went to the mall this past weekend. That used to be a pretty normal thing, but now? Not so much.

I recall this particular mall, oh, a bit over a decade ago. My spouse worked there are the time. It was so very busy. It was so busy, they decided to be open for 24 hours on Black Friday. I made food for my then-girlfriend and their co-workers to snack on.

Today? It's a nice place to go if you want to be left alone. If I were to go there now, during the week, I'd find a place which is "open", but empty. The shops are dire, especially the department stores. I'm assuming there's a legal reason they can't close them down, because it's honestly pretty damned depressing to see what remains of their merchandise spread out the (poorly) give the illusion of a fully stocked store, and to look more closely and see the layers of dust on products which haven't been moved or sold in years.

So what's the problem?

Well... it's not that people don't want to go out and shop. They very much do! People are bored and want to have a reason to leave the house. They want to shop and be entertained and have good food and spend time with their friends.

The thing is, shopping malls as they exist now - and as they existed in the previous decades - didn't really offer that. They were personal experiences which you might incidentally do with friends. They were shrines of endless consumption of very particular products. And as the in-person retail market lost ground to the online market, those shopping malls narrowly focused on very specific demographics: "The Fashion Center at Pentagon City" comes to mind. The stores which might appeal to anyone not interested in buying clothes dwindled. The restaurants closed. And then with Covid, the idea of dressing up to go to work waned.

Simply put, people stopped going to shopping malls because there was no reason to go.

And I'm not lamenting that. I don't feel any need for the companies which own these malls to make money; they are not owed a profitable consumer market.

The thing which I find remarkable is the stunning lack of adaptation. There is very clearly a population of people with some disposable income (not as much as there should be, granted, and that's a separate problem), and their wants and needs are not being met. These people swarm to street festivals and independent coffee shops, they're desperate for connection and entertainment. They're simply not interested in the specific things that shopping malls, and the retail sector in general is offering.

The downtown retail sector is equally dire. "Back to the office" has proven to be - predictably - terribly unpopular and really just a holding action by moneyed interests to retain value in their bad investments. Restaurants which relied on office workers buying lunch; shops which expected people to stop by on their lunch break or after work - are closing. This should come as no surprise, honestly. And anyone sensible would have known for a long time that "clothing which lasts a few months" and "sandwiches appreciably inferior to what you could make at home" are not the backbone of a sustainable business model or a viable economy.

And the realistic answer is, first, to look for new answers. We have real estate. We have workers. We have consumers. We have an economy. It's possible to do something with this.

The only way that can happen, though, is for those people with money to be willing to spend some of it. To take some risks, try to come up with things people actually want to do, and make it happen.

And that's not a thing they're interested in doing. They'd rather let their shopping malls decay, close up the pad sites downtown, take the tax writeoff, and declare the entire situation impossible. While they're the only ones who could actually do something about it.

[urfavnegronerd]

Your argument is that he “fell off.” But considering he currently breaking records for a charting song proves other wise. Thats all I am saying.

tl;dr: i miss when jack harlow was on that dorky white-boy hip hop swag type shit, similar to mac miller, without being disrespectful

music brain rot because i'm teaching myself to learn how to produce music for college application purposes

okay yeah no i completely get that, he's doing really well music chart topping wise (is there an actual word for that idk), it just feels like the quality of music (from my standpoint, and i was also someone who could identify what pac and biggie sounded like before i knew wtf the alphabet was so i may full and well be biased) kinda declined. i feel like we watching a post malone type jawn all over again, like he kinda used the hip-hop sound to get recognition (?) and then kinda drifted into pop???? idk lovin on me is very shopping background music-y idk if that makes sense but that's just what it sounds like. like im saying mans occasionally drops something that has me like 'well... shit i guess white men CAN jump' (im sorry that was a bad joke but very much needed). like that whole luv is dro, already best friends, whats poppin era did him so good and i think that's an era that he needs to return to. like that specific sound did him so good like, he js has that dope-ass white boy swag that we ain't really seen since mac miller and boy do we need that back, and the sounds he was using (bass heavy type shit(i might be dragging it but yk what i mean), light synth kinda). and it could js be 100% that he was working a lot more w/ statik (hope he's doing better)

dont get me wrong i still stream the songs i like but he js isn't as appealing as he was w the records he's currently putting out. and its not to say that people shouldn't aim to express themselves artistically and experiment with who they are, its just (from my standpoint) that by going in the complete opposite direction rather than experimenting with different subgenres of hip hop (there's a lot, s/o my extra credit research paper) he lost a pretty big demographic of listeners

thats all :)

#jack harlow #jackman harlow #rae rants #music #spotify #trending