#DID SHE KILL PEOPLE MATTEL

[inamindfarfaraway]

Draculaura being a vegetarian vampire who takes iron supplements makes sense from a writing perspective, since obviously Mattel doesn’t want a main character in a franchise aimed at kids to implicitly hurt or kill people or animals on a regular basis. But she isn’t just against drinking blood or eating meat on moral grounds. She’s afraid of blood. The spoken word or sight of cooked meat is enough to make her faint. She’s been a vampire for well over a thousand years when we meet her, grown up in the vampire court as Count Dracula’s adopted daughter, socialized with vampires and still has an extreme phobia even by human standards, despite presumably a great deal of exposure. That’s weird. In cultural and psychological terms.

Monster High vampires are never said not to drink blood as a rule. They don’t have to or feel serious cravings; Draculaura is perfectly healthy and has no inner conflict on forgoing blood. But they do seem to have a predisposition to bloodthirstiness. Her vegetarianism is noted to be atypical. Unlike her, her vampire friend Elissabat wears blood imagery - droplet earrings and red accents - and her eating habits are never mentioned, so we can presume that she feeds in a more traditional way.

What about Draculaura? Her remarkably severe and persistent phobia, especially for a vampire, seems most likely to be rooted in some kind of traumatic event. If so, what did she see? Did it inspire it her to impose her dietary restrictions? Did she really have the willpower to swear off blood from the moment Dracula turned her at the age of sixteen? After all, he isn’t vegetarian. He would have shown her the ropes. Maybe what she saw isn’t quite the right question.

What did she do?

[chryza]

Presidential debate SICK ASS REACTIONS.

“The microphones will only be turned on during their turn to speak” thank the lord they finally learned

“VP Harris you and President Trump (sic.) were elected four years ago” I hope to god that it was a slip and not an omen.

Harris coming right out and attacking project 2025 is pretty pog anyway I hope she kills him. I’m still skeptical about her in a lot of ways and I’m not a fan of the continuing imperialist military industrial complex ie genocide. but fuck me she’s not a raving lunatic or a decrepit dude with dementia so like. Fuck man I’ll take it.

he keeps saying “as she knows” to try and ruin her credibility which might be effective if he didn’t immediately then verbally veer off the road and crash into a tree

WHY DID THEY TURN HIS MICROPHONE ON. THEY SHOULD HAVE JUST LET HIM FUCKING TALK TO AN EMPTY STUDIO IT WOULD HAVE BEEN SO FUNNY.

I hope Kamala kills him. I’m obsessed with the way she keeps laughing at him. KILL HIM.

“She’s a marxist” this is the only time in my life I wish trump was right I fucking wish Kamala Harris was that cool.

[on abortion] “When the baby is born they will decide what to do with the baby and they will EXECUTE the baby” i don’t even have a quip to add the quote speaks for itself

Live Kamala Reaction your opponent just said Tim Walz wants to “Execute Babies”

The MODERATOR being like “there is no state where it’s legal to kill a baby after it’s born” is KILLING ME

Harris does sound legitimately incensed about abortion rights which is a massive W for her, I fully believe she would crack down on restrictions to women’s healthcare

Harris “I invite you to attend one of trump’s rallies and what you’ll hear is him talking about fictional characters like Hannibal Lector, how windmills cause cancer, and you’ll see people leaving early out of exhaustion and boredom” YES. BLOOD. BLOOD.

SHE KNEW EXACTLY WHAT SHE WAS DOING HE IS NOW SOOOO MAD SHE IMPLIED PEOPLE WERE BORED OF HIM AAAAAAHAHAHA I AM MAKING TRIXIE MATTEL SEAGULL NOISES RN

Shown: watching Trump take the bait hook line and sinker

My mom sent me memes so I knew about this beforehand but

“THEYRE EATING THE PETS OF THE PEOPLE OF OUR COUNTRY”

*further trixie bird noises*

[Harris] “This is why I have the endorsement of former Vice President Dick Cheney” that’s NOT A GOOD THINGGGGG I don’t know if it’s like trying to be bipartisan but girl this is NOT the way

I need them to stop turning on Trumps microphone. Just leave it off

I TOOK A BULLET TO THE HEAD BECAUSE OF THEM

KAMALA I SUPPORT FRACKING HARRIS EVERYONE

WHAT ARE WE EVEN TALKING ABOUT ANYMOREEEE THIS IS SUCH A SHITSHOW

“Strength as a leader is not about beating people down it’s about lifting people up” Bold words from a woman who is actively delighting in mocking her opponent, to be clear I think it is an objectively good thing, I simply think this is a hilarious thing to say ten minutes post Live Kamala Reaction

“NOW SHE WANTS TO DO TRANSGENDER OPERATIONS ON ILLEGAL ALIENS IN PRISON”

Most of what trump says is just bloviating nonsense but I am noticing that Kamala Harris is very good at making her words sound nice while not actually saying much of substance. This is not a specific indictment against her because it’s a very Politician thing, but she isn’t actually saying much here.

[moderator] So do you acknowledge now that you lost the 2020 election

[trump] No it was obviously sarcasm

[moderator] I did watch all of the videos where you said that and I didn’t detect the sarcasm.

Trump, on Biden: I’ll let you in on a little secret, [Biden] hates her *pointing to Harris*

Okay so Harris is a proponent of a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine and is opposed to civilian mass-murder. I don’t even know how to begin to touch that with a ten foot pole and the whole situation feels so confusing to me in general. Overall she seems Anti-Civilians-Being-Slaughtered in the name of self-defense but then in the same breath assures that Israel needs support to defend itself from Iran so. Wow sounds like a whole mess of colonization practices that have deliberately destabilized a region that can’t easily be nuanced in a single answer

[Trump] “If she becomes President Israel won’t exist within two years” God I wish Harris was half as cool as he makes her out to be.

“I WOULD GET [PUTIN AND ZELENSKY] ON THE PHONE AND GET THE WHOLE THING SETTLED.”

Kamala Harris PUTIN WOULD EAT TRUMP FOR LUNCH put that on a check and take it to the bank I love national television

I love Harris essentially dishing the hot goss on Trump negotiating with the Taliban. Is this the platform to do it? No. But this is practically kayfabe at this point anyway. Do I even care

What a shitshow. Harris has zero high horse here, she refused to answer basic questions about position in an attempt to remain bipartisan, Trump endlessly blathered about nonsense. Kamala Harris won the debate, but to be frank, trump could lose to a mildly literate dog.

[biggestthighestgeminiest]

Here are my combined thoughts about Barbie (2023) as I saw it on the 18th and have had more time to think abt it.

Some good, some bad - overall I very much enjoyed it, laughed my ass off, cried quite a bit, was enthralled by the set and costume design, but left feeling like some things were off and perhaps not accomplished in the best way. This will all be delivered in bullet points in a very chaotic and random way and is NOT ordered in importance omg. Anyways i love media analysis and I will probably not explain this in the best way but HERE WE GO

the casting was fantastic, everyone read the assignment and lived their campiest life, margot robbie was phenomenal and ryan gosling absolutely killed me with laughter, glorious glorious

set design, costume, props,, perfection when it comes to bringing the mattel products to life. bangin'

i had that stupid fucking dog that eats and shits. i lost my mind when he came on hsdgkhakh

the message of barbie being representative of all little girls is still very lost on me. the idea brought up when barbie speaks to the teens, where they tell her that she gave them unrealistic body standards- well this never really gets resolved at all. Yes there was a diverse range of Barbies but they were all still beautiful in a conventional way that adheres to western beauty ideals. every barbie has perfect hair and skin and clothes even by the end of the movie. and yes i guess barbie is supposed to be this "above everything else" sort of divine feminine beauty but is still not representative of most young girls. as hilarious as the line narrator's line about margot robbie is, it sort of knows itself, that it is showing us the most perfect looking women, but doesn't address it at all beyond a simple joke. honestly what will mattel do beyond this? i imagine people will be more than happy with this movie so they won't have to make any big changes. i mean their "curvy" fashionista isn't close to being fat, and i don't believe they will ever make a barbie that isn't conventionally beautiful... so this movie just sort of gets to say it's about accepting yourself without actual real-life substance if that makes sense? it reminds me of that cartoon of all those diverse yet conventionally attractive models, with diverse people who don't fit those standards standing outside that box looking angrily. what's the point of the film at the end of the day when not addressing all those people left out of the conversation? also made me annoyed that cellulite was still the big thing that barbie was concerned about, like really?? it's a bad example as people are coming to embrace cellulite and it's also relatively easy to hide, i don't think they would have margot robbie have like, idk, dark under eye circles or a double chin,, idk someone say this better than me but the cellulite thing annoyed me (as someone who has loads of it!!)

the plot was BONKERS and i for one don't really care about plot holes or cartoon logic. there were some things that made me overthink about barbie lore and then i thought to myself that it doesn't really matter. the campiness of it is more important. im sure it will deter some people but again i dont mind it being silly in that way as long as it delivers on its messages and themes, which it does to a certain extent

absolutely lost it at the you are kenough shirt, ljadhkglkhd

as i said in a previous post i predicted that it was going to be the mom who was paired with barbie. i loved the idea sm and it was very heartwarming

i CRIED when barbie first sat down and watched the humans around her living their life, she was so overwhelmed by so many emotions and it was such a simple moment of show-dont-tell and man did i weep :))

i LOVED the ken bits and i did feel as though there was a bit too much ken. especially at the end. but at the same time i loved the dance sequence. its hard loving it so much yet wanting it not to have been to prevalent. i felt like it took away from the barbies a bit which goes against the whole point of the movie????

um the barbie's plans of distracting the kens was... i guess reminiscent of all these spy or superhero movies where women use their beguiling nature against men to get the upper hand? like i am woman so i will flirt with man to distract while my team escapes and hooho it works :)) it was slightly different and not overly sexy or about flirting but it still had the same undertone. like really? the best way to get the other barbies out was to continue to conform to patriarchal standards and pump the ken's egos? surely there's a better way? yes the kens are idiots and turning them against each other works but it still felt a bit icky. i guess i just find this trope annoying being like... ok i am being taken advantage of men so i will USE the thing they oppress me for against them,, idk surely surely there's another way.

also America's character's plan of kidnapping the barbies and ... using very true and very valuable feminist lines to snap them out of it felt... weird? like what she was saying was 100% true but taking them out of context and almost using them as one liners made them feel less serious???? like making women "wake up" by just telling them about how the patriarchy takes advantage of them is just... idk. like in real life women who are indoctrinated and truly believe misogynistic things won't just wake up by being told such a line. and i know the barbies are brainwashed to forget their powerful feminist backgrounds so it's not entirely comparable to the women i just mentioned but... idk it felt disingenuous. i did laugh my ass off at the guitar scene but it still had that ickiness attached like..

i would watch this movie again, no doubt about it and i will definitely pick up on new things and easter eggs etc

mattel's board did make me laugh, perfectly casted and performed but again- mattel has its name on this. they know what they are doing. they know we will love this movie and not demand any change. it will still be full of men controlling the output of production. it will still put out products that don't reflect all young people's desires. it will still make products that uphold current societal norms. so having these buffoons in the board meeting just gets soured a bit when knowing these people will still be in power in real life....

the ruth bit made me cry and no i do not care that her ghost is just around. i loved it

the marketing team knows exactly what they are doing. the huge push of promotion made me gobble up all their interviews and im sure people will be buying all the barbie products. i am yet another victim of capitalism and i will thank them for it when i inevitably buy their you are kenough sweater

again i loved this movie despite all the bad things abt it. i love being critical of the wider impact of this movie while still enoying it as a piece of media and entertainment. i needed this movie and fuck it i want to go to barbieland so bad. i know i shouldnt. i love ken and think about ken more than i do barbie which is fucked up but the movie also played into it in a way,, as described before. i mean even ryan gosling being so iconic in all the interviews is adding into this lol. how many people are posting videos of him vs videos of the actresses i wonder.

also cockring ken. BUT HE WASNT WEARING THE COCKRING SO WHATS THE POINT EVEN???

the narrator was an interesting choice, personally wasn't a huge fan of it but it did somewhat fit with the rest of the cinematic language of the story so i can't say much about it

mattel knows exactly what its doing with putting its name on this movie. i think greta did a great job despite the constraints that mattel probably put on her,, it's hard to tell if the flaws of the movie come from the corporation's infuence or from the writer and director's creative decisions, most likely it's a combo of both. again i believe that the actors and designers and production team did a fantastic job with what they had, they committed to the bit. i would have loved for the movie to have been better, but it is still a great film in my book. as said before i would watch it again and would still enjoy it despite the flaws. the himbo part of my brain can shake hands with the media literacy one and emerge with an overall positive experience, yet PLEASE do not think this is the ultimate feminist movie, it is a step in the right direction, it could have been better, and i understand if you don't like it at all. but also i dont think it would be right to blindingly love it and call it perfect bc it's not.

[mlobsters]

supernatural s10e21 dark dynasty (w. eugenie ross-leming, brad buckner)

is that like, a play on duck dynasty har har. okay, creeper creeperson, get your hands of this lady's face please. heavy sigh at the threatening sexual assault to then kill the pretty lady and scoop her eyeballs out.

this codex thing with rowena is very kevin with the tablet but without any affection

i dunno if this is all i know him from, but again with the seinfeld tiny part actor being familiar. oh god. and nurses??? definitely watched that show too. sure i haven't thought of it since it the 90s

markus flanagan in seinfeld s9e19 the maid / nurses (1991-1994)

so we got to see hallucination!benny and we have this random dark magic using mafia people in louisiana. completely unconnected. sure. could not care less.

is this the first charlie episode written by not-robbie?

DEAN There's a woman you haven't mentioned? SAM A woman? DEAN Well, I'm just saying. You weren't here when I went to bed last night. You've been running off on your own a lot these past couple weeks. SAM I do that. DEAN You actually don’t. SAM Dean, we don't always do the exact same thing at the exact same time. Remember when you went off and snuffed that vampire nest by yourself? DEAN Have you been snuffing vamps' nests? SAM No, I-I . . . What is that? What are you doing?

smooth, sam. glad dean has noticed and is calling him out on it at least. "we don't always do the exact same thing at the exact same time" L O L

insert perennial complaint about the lying and the hiding

SAME, GIRL. SAME.

SAM Charlie, he's not himself. He's not. He would try and stop me. He's given up. Look, I called in an expert to use the codex, but it turns out it's sort of encoded also, so I thought you might help move things along faster. CHARLIE Behind Dean's back. After Dean told us the stupid book would kick our asses if we mess with it. Is there any part of this that doesn't reek? SAM Did I mention you'll be working with one of the most dangerous witches in the world? CHARLIE I don't know, Sam. SAM As far as I can tell, this is our only shot at saving him. If we don't take it, he's gone.

le sigh

surface product placement #4. think that's the pr0n folder (seen in s9e4) next to FanFic

somebody's grumpy. but i would be too if i was called in to babysit rowena while charlie works, all behind dean-o's back

SAM I can't be here full time to referee. CASTIEL Whoa, whoa. And I can? SAM Yes. Please. Please do this for me. CASTIEL Well, what are the rules? If I'm gonna referee, I should at least know them. ROWENA Quite literal, aren't you? Does he know that the first rule is don't tell your brother what we're doing?

okay that made me laugh out loud

SAM Okay, everyone take a breath. Look, we're up against it, okay? And we've all been up against it before, and we know there are times when every choice sucks. Now, us lying to Dean is the choice that sucks the least. We have to make this work. Please.

CASTIEL Wait . . . Dean doesn't know? Sam, this never ends well. CHARLIE That's exactly what I said.

join the party

CHARLIE Okay, yeah. For Dean. SAM Cas? CASTIEL Okay. For Dean. SAM For Dean. ROWENA I barely know the man.

filling in the crowley-snark void, she does it well

chatty patty, huh. i've only heard chatty cathy

Chatty Cathy is a pull-string "talking" doll originally created by Ruth and Elliot Handler and manufactured by the Mattel toy company from 1959 to 1965. In 1984, Mattel introduced Chatty Patty

learn somethin new every day

CHARLIE Sam and Dean are like my brothers. I love them. ROWENA I know. And that steadfast loyalty will be your undoing, my girl.

depressing because you know it's true. sounds like the kevin foreshadowing (i always trust you and i always end up screwed)

DEAN Yeah. You know, some dark thoughts, creepy visions, violent urges. Same old same old.

okay they toss that out but have we ever actually seen any of that? that surely would be more interesting than half the of the bullshit this season

speaking of, interrogating the whatever dude. sam is being the actual worst at hiding his little codebreaking study group hijinks. could he BE any shiftier

ELDON The real family tree. The name was altered out of necessity. You have chanced upon a lineage with a long and proud tradition and some unwanted notoriety. One of Europe's oldest families. The house of . . . Frankenstein.

think you could hear my eyes roll across the state

they're playing that threatening music again and i don't like it. i get it, he's extra ready to stab something from the mark, i still don't like the implied threat of violence now that he's figured out what sam is lying about

drama, very horror movie

would you look at how fucking tiny some of these little black and green console-ish windows fonts are. ridonkulous

SAM I thought it was our only chance to get you free of the Mark, so I grabbed it. DEAN I made it real clear how I felt. You ever consider that? SAM Dean, listen . . . DEAN And then you pulled Cas into it. And Charlie. SAM Charlie loves you, Dean. We all love you.

well. killing charlie off is really disappointing and unfortunately not surprising.

from the wiki

Robbie Thompson started work on Supernatural in season seven. [...] and created lesbian nerd character Charlie Bradbury whose aliases were comprised of the name of a Stephen King character and a famous science fiction writer. Thompson reportedly fought hard against the manner of her death, in an episode he did not write.

what a hot mess.

[sakebytheriver]

Just saw Barbie and it was exactly what I expected, a fun way to kill a couple hours with a good friend dressing up and getting pink food before watching a fairly enjoyable movie I'll probably never watch again

The cast was great as I expected, the big stand outs for me were definitely America Ferrera, she delivers a speech that a lesser actress could have butchered and made incredibly cringe, but she nailed it perfectly for the movie she was in and also Ryan Gosling, he was incredibly genuine in everything he did, he's a very genuine actor in general, you look into his eyes and you believe him everytime

Yes, I understand why Simu's agent staked their whole career on this role

The feminist messaging was very surface level and extremely broad and in no way encapsulates the entirety of intersectional feminism or literally anything past the idea of "women can do anything men can do" and there was also an insanely cringey part where the teenager dresses Barbie down with a whole bad stereotypical gen Z rant about consumer capitalism that really reminds you this movie is being made by a conglomerate of giant corporations and the "Mattel" company in the movie is just .... bad. Absolutely ruins the entire movie. Will Ferrell tried his best, but there was absolutely no way to salavage a single one of those "Mattel" executive parts, so sorry, not even Daniel Day Louis himself coming out of retirement could have sold those roles, they were absolutely awful, Disney channel level of villainry and writing was put into those guys

I have one last thought about a scene I would have done differently, but it's super spoilery so I'm gonna put it under a read more and say my conclusion here,

It was a fun excuse to get dressed up like a Barbie doll and spend the day with my friend, I went in with super low expectations in the hopes that they'd be beaten and they were, it was better than I thought, but also about what I expected. Your uncle buck will complain about the overhanded feminist messaging, but not the way I do! And if you get high like me you might even cry when you think the dad is dead until it's revealed he's actually just off somewhere sucking at Spanish.

All in all Barbie was a fun movie with absolutely nothing under the surface which I will never watch again 💕🫡

Okay, so for all you bitches who've seen the movie or don't care about spoilers, there is a moment where Barbie has to decide whether she wants to be human or not and a montage of a bunch of home family videos starts playing on the screen in a dreamy haze

This moment was at the very end of the movie and it was also The Best Part. Period. Habds down. End of sentence.

And they didn't even execute it right

The montage moves much too slow and it ends way too fast, it should have been the other way around, make it twice as long and twice as fast, have it start of slow and then ramp up more and more and more getting faster and flashier and the music swells and it's huge and big and there's videos of kids at playgrounds intercut with people at funerals and people watching loved ones dying then cut to a wedding and then to a kids first day of school. This montage should have been absolutely jam packed with stuff and it should have been hitting the audience way faster until the end when it hits the cresendo and we cut back to Barbie and the air feels like it gets physically ripped out of her chest violently as she says, "Yes."

In the movie the montage lasts about as long as it took me to think, "oh this is the best scene in the movie" and there's absolutely no moments of sadness in it, like no one at a hospital, no one getting sick, no one grieving, the whole movie is about learning to love the good with the bad and then this montage just shows you kids being goofy and people at bowling alleys, like where is the fucking heart? And then it ends and we cut back to Margot Robbie very delicately saying, "yes"

And that was it

We move on to seeing Barbie in the human world with her human family and this big climacitic moment that should feel the way you feel when symbols crash in a classical song just fizzles

The last scene of the entire movie however I will say was a great way to cap a live action Barbie movie, Margot Robbie's giant grin as she says, "I'm here to see my

Gynecologist!"

Was good.

Okay the end I'm done thanks for reading 💕

[anonanimal]

ok we watched the barbie movie and i must be ovulating because the emotional levers were successfully pulled and i did cry but i was also mad part of the time.

i'd say i have a few thoughts and questions about the depiction of ruth handler lol but i haven't put it into succinct enough words yet

interesting they'd do the jokes about earring magic ken and growing up skipper and uh whatever pregnant midge was called and do a joke about ruth handler's...tax evasion? did she really do tax evasion? but they didn't touch on bild lilli. maybe they can't

sooo barbie is a god and mattel are her... stewards. lmao? what the fuck is gonna happen in barbieland if god is not in her heaven... whatever. just like in preacher when god goes missing (yes i watched part of the preacher amc series with my mother). i feel like the "barbie is a god, she is every barbie and every barbie is her" would have been the explicit focus of MY barbie movie (what can i say, i love a good story about a god becoming human, it's the christianity i've been steeped in) but they kind of don't do much with it

actually ruth handler = god, barbie = jesus?

ken becomes a ... men's (ken's) rights activist. lmao?

anyone else think the car chase was filmed like a car commercial. like weirdly obviously so? i feel like product placement has come farther than this

they want people to say it's a gay or trans allegory sooooo bad between the birkenstocks and the "you don't get permission, it's something you discover about yourself" they want it sooooo bad ok you win i'm saying it. but i know you wanted me to say it. you won fuck off!!!!!! or maybe i'm reaching because it's easy to read the emotional journey of coming out to yourself in a general coming of age tale. but come on. i'm not that smart so if i'm picking up on someone wanting me to think something, they probably do. the only way this movie could have been gay would have been if the weird barbies led a new society.

so was this their way of saying they're debuting a line of kens with jobs...?

i liked the comedy of 2001 monolith barbie and the barbieland physical comedy stuff. maybe i should have rolled my eyes but i'm easy. rollerblading executives also killed

i liked the little twist that barbie's crisis was precipitated by being played with, not by a maturing child, but her mother. kind of in line with how the movie itself is an ad for the barbie brand for adults. there's quite a few moments that i thought had to be intentional references to the function of the movie itself in the real world, and they all felt weird and bad, like someone screaming "let me out!!!!!" i've forgotten a lot of them now because i'm adding this bit in an edit the next day.

*guy who has only seen south park voice* getting a lot of imaginationland vibes from this

i kind of expected for there to be like a joke about allan being in unrequited love with ken but i now think there probably was in an earlier draft and it didn't mesh with the final product and they had to nix it. or like surely someone floated it at least

you know they tried to save it from being too much about ken by having someone literally say "what about barbie's ending?" and then doing barbie's ending but...it was still kind of more about ken i think. he did a dance number for christ's sake. i almost forgot that barbie got to dance too, but barbie's dance was also mostly about ken wanting her to notice him. "he's just ken" "kenergy" "i am kenough" come on. i think the biggest laugh in the theater was actually the kenough hoodie. biggest laugh for me personally? sasha saying, (and i'm paraphrasing of course bc i'm not bothering to look it up) "are you two shining?"

i got SO close to killing the mood when we walked out by saying "hey lets google mattel factory working conditions right now" but i decided that was too far / probably in poor taste for me to flippantly use in post-movie discussion

the feminism 101 stuff was whatever. it made sense within the setting of the movie since america ferrera as a human had to introduce ideas into barbieland for them to take hold, and ideas just kind of manifest whatever happens in barbieland, but i'm very surprised they didn't do a joke like "gee i wish it was this easy in the real world" like how did they miss that opportunity, it would have worked. or maybe they did and i missed it because i had my hater goggles on

sooo velveteen rabbit?

all in all, as a member of the moviegoing public, i guess i got what i wanted. an experience that left me with something to think and talk about.

p.s. this was, for me personally, an ad for ryan gosling. i didn't find him interesting until now. they really got me there.

p.p.s. obviously any criticism i have of the like existence of the barbie movie is hypocritical because i haven't said it about gundam (yet)

[sassysailorsiren]

I couldn't focus at work because I saw Barbie last night after discussing it with two friends who had seen it, and turns out my fears came true - I hated it - so I needed to write down all my grievances with it (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

I didn’t like the barbie movie and I already feel bad about it because online it seems like if you didn’t like it, you must be anti-feminist.

But this wasn’t any kind of feminist movie, even though it did really try to be. It DID. You can’t avoid being seen as a feminist movie if you’re going to bash the audience over the head with the word patriarchy. It was preachy, and yet it didn’t have much to say about feminism. It had a lot it DIDN’T say while going on and on about patriarchy, and that’s why it reeked of white feminism. Feminism becomes white feminism when it omits certain people and their experiences. When it focuses ONLY on being a woman. And that’s what this movie did with America Ferrera’s speech (which was good, but again, white feminist), and with another moment that I haven’t been able to get out of my head which was when she compared the Barbie world being ruled by Kens to “the 1500s when the indigenous people were wiped out by smallpox” or something to that effect. She then has to explain the joke and say “they were defenseless!”

But that was so incredibly fucking offensive… and I find it really interesting that they gave the “it’s so hard to be a woman” speech AND this horrendously conceived line to the brown woman in the movie… Greta Gerwig and her co-writer are two white people with white points of view and they are very powerful in Hollywood at this point. So they can just get away with espousing their agendas and their views through a brown person AS A DEFENSE from being called white feminist. Well it doesn’t work that way. It was not self-aware; it totally missed the mark. They did this a couple other times like where America Ferrera’s daughter said something like “OK white savior Barbie!” but it didn’t land because Barbie wasn’t being a white savior or any kind of savior… so they were just throwing these lines in there to make it look like they know what social justice is about and to show like they know how to be intersectional. Again, not how it works. And one final time where the same character told her dad “that’s cultural appropriation!”  So unnecessary to the story. So stupid.

The plot was so vapid that I wish they had just let it be campy and stupid ONLY instead of trying to also insert feminist messaging like fighting the patriarchy (the way they bashed the audience over the head with it was exhausting especially because the way they used it didn’t mean anything). The way they threw that word around absolutely cheapened it, and in a way set any kind of anti-patriarchy momentum in the world back. Because now it just seems like a joke. Media that’s going to be seen by millions of people has a responsibility to NOT misinform people and use meaningful words loosely.

But back to the plot. Ken’s subplot was a thousand times more interesting than Barbie’s, so much so that around halfway through it seemed more like the Ken movie – something I resented. By the way, did you notice that all of the genuinely funny characters were male? None of the girl characters were funny at all, they had no jokes. The only time I actually laughed in the theater was when Michael Cera killed that construction worker telling him “shh shh easy easy.” It was just so absurd and unexpected and Michael Cera was hilarious. Will Ferrel and all the suits were kind of funny too, and I liked all the digs they took at Mattel – that was unexpected and I’m surprised they got away with it. So those are my two positive points about the movie.

Ken’s discovery of a misogynistic society was interesting, and the fact that it entranced him so much PURELY because he was feeling unloved… was way more interesting than whatever Barbie’s story was. But I didn’t come to the theater for a Ken movie. It was frustrating watching the Barbie movie turn into Barbie apologizing to Ken. And she wasn’t apologizing for how patriarchy does harm for men as well as women (because that wasn’t the case in Barbieland). She was just apologizing for how she treated him. So… I didn’t need this! Also, they didn’t really change any thing in Barbieland after that, they continued to treat the Kens as accessories – which is fine because they are all just dumb dolls! But then WHY DID WE JUST GO THROUGH ALL THAT IF NOTHING WAS GOING TO CHANGE?

The war of the sexes at the end was so weird and I hated it. Wasn’t it also problematic that the Barbies USED STEREOTYPES OF MEN to distract them and pit them against each other? Hmm... yes very feminist. We just love when stereotypes of women are used against us, so let’s do the same thing to the men? Ugh.

That would have been fine like 15-20 years ago, but with the values of today, I do not find that empowering.

There was such a more interesting version of this movie possible where the issues of Barbie (unrealistic beauty standards, not enough inclusivity or diversity, relying heavily on stereotypes) were MENTIONED, but not sloppily tried to be corrected. (The trans woman playing a Barbie is not representation when her being trans is not part of the story, sorry. There was also zero discourse about being gender non-binary). This is all just shallow diversity, which is what I was afraid of when I saw that this was ANOTHER movie with a white lead and all these POC/other abilities/gender queer in supporting roles.

The more interesting version would have been a story where America Ferrera and her daughter were centered, and Barbie helped bring them back together over the course of the film (which happened, but so quickly that it wasn’t a focus of the movie). There were so many beats missing from THAT story line like… why was their relationship strained to begin with? Just because the child didn’t want to play with Barbies anymore? Nothing was shown except angsty moments between them…

Side note, it was also highly convenient to this non-plot that America Ferrera worked at Mattel.

At the end, the movie seemed like a 2-hour-long ad for Mattel, and that also deeply frustrated me. White feminism is a tool of capitalism, always.

I think that’s it.

[ichisoarz]

Okay so today I participated in Barbieheimer together with some of my roommates and here are some of my hot takes (spoilers abound!):

Oppenheimer is not clear in what it wants to be; is it a biopic about a man who created the atomic bomb, is it a commentary on the US government regarding war, or is it a legal drama? It has elements of all three but not enough of each to satisfy me.

For all that the movie is a biopic, I feel that we spend an extremely limited time actually getting to know who Oppenheimer *is* as a person. What was his youth like, why is he disapproving of Jackie (his brother's wife), why does he continue to bring flowers to Jean, what motivated him to try to kill his professor? We get throw away lines such as "I was homesick", "I was going through a rough two-year period back then", and the sum-up of character traits when he is recruited by General Groves, but a lot of it feels distant, like Nolan just read the novel the film was based on and all the transcripts and did very little else to actually dive deep into the psychology of the man. A lot is implied or inferred of course, but I feel like so much of it is cold and unfeeling. The only good two moments of character work in my opinion were his breakdown after Jean and the whole sequence regarding Trinity, the rest feels very shallow to me personally.

Now when it comes to social commentary, the film puts itself in kind of a weird position. On the one hand it greatly criticises the US war mindset and its cruelty, which I greatly appreciated, but on the other hand it gives almost no sympathy or even acknowledgement of the victims of Oppenheimer's work. The Japanese were hardly mentioned and absolutely no mention was made of any victims of the New Mexico tests, only a throw-away like of returning the land to the natives. Now you might argue that talking about the victims is for a different movie to do, since this is a biopic about Oppenheimer, but to have almost no acknowledgement of the negative impact of his work and the people that he hurt feels weird. We spend a lot more time hearing about what a great scientist he was and much less time hearing about the devastating effects of the atomic bombs that's for sure. Like even a conversation with a survivor of testing in New Mexico that he comes across while riding, to humanise the harm he caused, that would have been great! It might be too unsubtle, but then again Truman's bit was not exactly subtle either.

Finally, the legal drama. I was fine with it when it was just the legal case regarding Oppenheimer, since it seemed to be an important part of his story, but I did not care for Strauss' part at all. To have one of the main climaxes of your story be Oppenheimer's hearing versus Strauss' while having basically the same thing happen in both, as well as Strauss' weird ass villain monologue, just did not work for me. Why did we go from an examination of Oppenheimer and the cruelty of the US war system, to some minister appointment hearing? I guess Strauss was cruel to Oppenheimer, but was this meant as some sort of karma lesson?? What was the point?

Besides those larger criticisms of the film, I also found the cuts of some scenes to just be kind of weird.

Moving on to Barbie, I really liked the movie for being a 2-hour commercial. It was fun, very self-aware (maybe a little bit too much at times), and it was gorgeously designed (set, clothing, cinematography). I have some slight issues with Barbie (much less than with Oppenheimer), but this is a hot takes post so here they are:

Obviously due to it being a commercial some things were treated in very specific ways. The Mattel guys being weird and kind of harmless in the end ("Why don't we just let things stay like this?" "Because I want to make girls' dreams some true!" Also the tickle thing) is quite obvious, along with all the things regarding the teenager.

Ooh boy the teen, poor girl. She made some very good points upon meeting Barbie, all of which immediately become less convincing when she ends it with calling Barbie a fascist. I mean the word does get used too often now by teens, but Barbie herself also only takes away fascist instead of the other very good points, sooo yeah. Also she very quickly approached Disney Channel levels of wholesomeness with her mom after going to Barbieland, she lost her style, lost her meanness and was mostly just smiling happily in the background. All of that felt kinda yikes to me lol.

Finally, I was not fully comfortable with the final resolution talk with Ken, the sheer amount of emotional labour Barbie was doing there when she herself is just discovering these things and him needing to be rejected several times from his advances all felt kinda yikes to me too.

Congrats on reading this big post if you made it this far, feel free to agree/disagree on anything, these are just my thoughts and opinions!

[website-com]

.

if these leaks are all real im about to become soooo fucking annoying

i havent liked anything by mattel in a long time (the redesigns especially. the dolls themselves mostly look great but the outfits suuuck) but these look so cute. the vampire heart especially. i almost lost my mind stumbling onto that, it looks like its basically done so i hope i get to see an official post and price soon. (people are very excited for her online so even if i did decide to buy her i might not be able to get her in time)

i didnt get the mowalola bratz because they were too cute to get one or the other and im not dropping like $140 plus shipping on fucking dolls so maybe i can have one collectors doll. as a treat...

oh! also i got a new antique doll today! let me show u

the one on the far right. if you say they're scary or creepy ill kill you. she has little moulded on curls under her hat <3.

[theangiediary]

people you'd like to know better tag thank youu @deanwinchesterpregnant @dyed-red

Last song: Outta Time - Natalia Kills (really the whole Trouble album) ((it IS a Dean song btw))

Currently watching: I've been having a weird time with visual media recently. Saw and disliked Barbie*, saw and loved Steel Magnolias. Very casually trying to get through late seasons spn.

Currently reading: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. It's good, a little slow. A friend recommended it so I'm trying to get through before I see him in a couple weeks so we can talk about it.

Current obsession: uh. Kink, maybe? Honestly I haven't had a good obsession in a minute, I miss it 😔 but I'm exploring that right now. Went to a waxplay workshop earlier this week, camp later in August (if you're a east coaster and know what I'm talking about... Uh hiii 👀). Getting myself so many presents :)

Tagging: I've seen many moots hit already so taking the lame way out and saying: if you see this, consider yourself tagged!

*Barbie critique (don't read it if you liked the movie ok I'm a hater it will just upset you) ⤵️

It was fine, for an ad. By their own admission Mattel has been struggling as a business, so this- along with the theme park they're building- is to create a "Universe" rather than just physical dolls. The in-movie criticism of Mattel doing things for money doesn't it not true. Look at the sheer volume of collabs, commericals, etc that's happening.

(Same with the "if you want to make this point about not being pretty don't hire Margot Robbie!". Like, cute 🙄. You still did though.)

And as a dyke I was irritated by the treatment of 'weird Barbie'. I had bad vibes from the trailer where Kate offered the Birkenstocks as "truth" and the heels as "ignorance". And the other Barbies calling her "broken" bc she "got played with too hard".... making her only role in Dreamland to "fix" other Barbies while being sooo scary..... ew.

Which leads me to something that really irritates me: people calling this movie "queer"! No! Obviously Weird Barbie (played by a lesbian, and since it relies so heavily on star power/meta it's pretty clear what they were doing) treated poorly, and then Alan.. well. I know some Twitter Gays/Bi love to be "ooh I'm so pathetic and scared 🥺" so great rep for them, but the Kens dance being "homoerotic" after immediately following his rampant misogyny, creepiness/sexualization of Barbie, etc is not, in my opinion, good!

The second half overall was just bad. Ferrera's speech was basic (we've been saying that for 40 years. Happy for you if it you took something from it but did nothing for me). Hated the "Girlbossing through playing a bimbo honeypot" 🙄. Sarcastically grateful that Ken thought the patriarchy was horses otherwise he might have put up a fight! And don't even.. listen I was ready for Barbie not to be Confirmed trans/ace/aro, okay I'm not an idiot, put the final moment being a bait and switch- "is she going to a job interview? NO big bright smile for the gynecologist!" made me so angry. They really said "human womanhood is defined by a pussy 🙂 Please still be pretty, hairless, and happy 🙂". Are you kidding me? #feminism ????

A much better film about womanhood, growing up, and mother-daughter relationships and frankly, queer rep, is Steel Magnolias (1989). Hooo boy. Actually cried. Without spoiling it bc you should watch it, the characters actually had personalities, and conflict, and it felt like you could (and would want to) walk right into Truvy's beauty shop and be part of something. Ouiser was my favorite of course.

[ladyelainehilfur]

Barbie thoughts

Was highly entertained by Michael Cera's character. I think Alan was underutilized, and I really enjoyed his presence.

The best character was Weird Barbie, hands down. I didn't expect much from Kate McKinnon but the delivery of her lines blew everyone out of the water. But then again, she got the best lines.

This is my first time seeing Margot Robbie's acting and it's pretty darn good! I liked her take on Barbie.

LOVED Ryan Gosling as Ken. He looks great blonde, his abs are killer, his outfits are awesome. Really enjoyed his massive beach off with Simu Liu's Ken. Had a giant smile the entire dance break.

This entire movie should've been a musical. That was my thought watching the Kens sing and dance. Or maybe Ryan Gosling is just an amazing singer and I should watch La La Land again (tried and failed to become invested, stream Another Day of Sun tho)

The house dance party rocked and the Kens killed it

I'm somewhat surprised it's so heavily feminist. Like, Disney TV movie levels of speeches, complaints, and revelations. Wasn't a fan. It didn't have to be subtle but the dialogue for these parts was not good.

Bro, I couldn't STAND the daughter character. Edgy characters are only acceptable when they have the background to justify it. The daughter just came off as a privileged brat who had read too many 2018 anti-Barbie articles about her being bad for body standards without forming her own opinions. Calling someone who she believed to be suffering from delusions a "fascist" for having positive interpretations of Barbie....yeah, go away. This movie did not need her.

That car chase felt like a massive commercial for Chevy.

Ken saying he lost interest in the patriarchy when it became about more than horses, REAL.

The scene of the people giving them stares and saying misogynistic stuff right to Barbie's face...I just think it was too much.

Ruth was cool

I enjoyed the narrator interrupting the movie occasionally

John Cena merman >>>>>>

The resolution for the Barbies and the Kens was good, but I don't lean positive towards Barbie becoming human.

Barbie being able to close her eyes and see the past of her human was strangely under explained

I liked the set design of the cubicles in the Mattel building

Will Ferrel and his merry group of business men had almost no role in the story and could've honestly been cut without the story ending differently. Will's acting was great but the company gags did nothing for me.

I'm happy they reused the sets throughout the movie. I hope the individual pieces find good homes.

So much of the humor in this film just didn't work, but I think the biggest stinker was the Justice League Snyder cut joke. My theatre was dead silent.

The singing with the guitar joke was great though, esp for me and the friend I was seeing it with bc the song was one we'd heard over and over at work :'D

But in general, I didn't really like the soundtrack.

The marketing for this movie was nuts. $500M worldwide in a week?? Whew. I don't think it's word of mouth pushing the movie, so the insane marketing is doing all the work here. I don't know if it deserves $1 billion in revenue, but I hope all those who worked on the marketing team give themselves a pat on the back. I went to a refresqueria after the movie and I'm pretty sure Mattel did not pay for this small business to have a pink Barbie-themed and a blue Ken-themed crushed ice dessert.

I'd give it a C+ or a B-. It had its moments, but I wouldn't see it again nor would I tell people to go out of their way to watch it. There are going to be some great compilations on YouTube.

[0rionz-belt]

My experience seeing the Barbie Movie.

So I woke up today at 7 am to go see the Barbie movie at 9 am. It is opening day. I looked like a cross between a teenage boy in a late 80’s blockbuster film and a hot topic coupon freak from Y2K. I arrived at 8, with the theater not opening for a half hour and the mall itself not being officially open for another 2 hours. I headed past the groups of girls clad in pinks of all shades, got my ticket scanned 15 minutes before showtime, took my seat, and waited for my food and what I was expecting to be a silly movie for kids.

Barbie movie spoilers under the cut.

I walked out of that theater a little over 2 hours later and the first words to leave my brain and enter the physical world were not “Eh.” Or “wow! That was life changing!” Or “that was horrible”.

It was “What the fuck did I just watch”. In the absolute best way possible.

I expected the plot to be simple and easy to figure out from the trailers. I expected “oh Barbie is experiencing herself becoming a normal human, so she has to go to the real world to find the cause but our world is so different and the buisnessmen are the main antagonists and she has to avoid being trapped by them the whole movie until she can fix the issue and go home! and Ken is there too I guess.” I expected cliche. It’s a fucking barbie movie, why wouldn’t it be cliche?

But then they busted out the whole “you are actually being controlled by a kid and the kid is sad and it’s fucking you up. Go help your god.” And I was like Ok. I like that, that’s a good way to tie it up. And then you had the reveal of it actually being the mom playing with the dolls which had me going like “I don’t remember seeing her a bunch in the marketing, that’s a really great twist and it makes sense.”

And then. Oh man. And then they have Ken go off on his own and it’s played off in the moment as not a big deal but then you see him learning about Patriarchy. See him react to people paying attention to him in a positive way for once. See him go back to Barbieland. And the movie switches over from being about Barbie trying to escape the CEO of Mattel and find the kid, and into a plot that takes the whole “the real world isn’t as feminist as she thinks” and takes it up to 11. All the stuff where she’s being harassed for being female already engaged the target audience by being something they experience and then it goes in FURTHER with it and you have to realize as the Mattel people get shown less and less that Ken is the real antagonist of the movie.

That part caught me off guard. I don’t see myself as a woman anymore but god damn I felt that. And it was such a well made twist where things from the trailers finally made sense! And the whole thing they did to solve it. Holy shit. But you likely already know about that, so let’s skip ahead.

Here, I’ll give you a moment to breathe. I never saw that initial teaser trailer. The opening sequence was entirely new to me and holy FUCK was I confused. “I have all the genitals” is something I’ll be quoting for a while I think, that killed me. AND MAGIC EARRING KEN??? Oh my god it was amazing. Rest in peace to the 10 little girls sitting in my row, who don’t understand half of my reactions to that movie.

Okay back to the serious shit. I cried 3 times during that movie. Maybe it was my period, maybe it was bc I hadn’t taken my meds, maybe it was just that sad. The two scenes with Ruth and that monologue about being a woman and society’s standards for women got me. Out of the 3, the last scene with Ruth and Barbie made me cry the most. that scene fucking ripped my ribcage open and tore my heart out. It spoke to me. And in all honesty I wish i remembered it better bc I was too preoccupied trying to make sure none of the tween girls in the row noticed me crying.

I went into that movie expecting to relate heavily to Ken, for personal reasons I don’t want to disclose. And by the end of it, I still found myself relating to him somewhat. But moreover, I found Barbie to be incredibly relatable. It was astonishing.

That entire movie was on crack, I spent $70 for a doll and a car afterwards.

[birindale]

I'm curious to hear your overall thoughts on the original Princess of Power.

While Filmation's He-Man had to come to an end, due to TV stations not being willing to pay for TV show episodes beyond 100, it was still a bold move to carry on Masters of the Universe in a girl-centric show.

From some of the interviews you've posted, it doesn't sound like Mattel Marketing had much faith in PoP, saying things like "Oh, she's a flanker brand: she'll succeed, increase gross doll sales, and when she stops selling after a couple of years Barbie will gobble up the increase."

It especially struck me in the interviews about the Star Sisters engineering how much more creativity and tooling money "action dolls" took than fashion dolls. It's a bummer to think of so much heart and intellect was being poured into something doomed to be short-lived.

She-Ra has of course had two limited revivals, in a (predominantly male) adult collector form for MotU Classics, with no action features and sculpted hair, and then as more conventional dolls when SPOP debuted, but being canceled after only a few characters.

So what do you think would be the ideal way to handle these characters?

my thoughts on the original? six words:

capitalism is the death of art.

i wrote like four thousand words about it but ultimately it boils down to Mattel ignoring market research because doing so was cheaper in the short term, which killed the original toylines & had already squashed Janice Varney-Hamlin’s original pitch for an action doll.

the same 1984 FCC repeal which allowed He-Man and She-Ra to have tv shows at all marked a sharp decline in 'gender neutral' toy advertising, which had been on the rise since the early 70s. In 1975, <2% of the Sears toy catalog was marketed to a specific gender. By 1995, it was nearly half--numbers that hadn't been seen since WWII.

By reinforcing binary gender norms, the toy industry is able to capitalize on specific play patterns (what was once ‘homemaking’ is now ‘disney princess’) and condition the market to accept pink taxes, and.

Okay I’m starting to rant again. Reining it in. No death threats this draft. Anyway Mattel killed both toylines by trying to maximize their profits & Filmation was doomed from the moment RankinBass realized it was cheaper to outsource animation to other countries. Hell, from the moment the SCG was formed. It’s so much cheaper to extract value from people you’ve fucking colonized and. uh.

No. okay I’m fine. I’m fine. We’re just gonna move onto the modern toys now.

MOTUC is its own can of worms for me. On the one hand, they didn't have the Filmation design rights until like 2012, so there are a lot of things they couldn't do, but the number of MOTU vs POP figures has always been disheartening. And the bios... it's gotten better since Penny Dreadful & gbagok have come aboard, since they're like human encyclopedia for MOTU lore, but in the early days, when Toyguru was in charge?

I should be nice but i’m still annoyed he’s making me check his youtube channel instead of just answering my questions like a normal person. what does “near future” even mean. When is “soon”??  i am currently disinclined to be charitable towards your lore, Scott! answer my riddles three or i start listing grievances!!!

The Dreamworks toys... honestly, I think the big failure there was marketing. For one thing, I never saw a single advertisement for them until I went trawling through the official Youtube channel (and that video put me off very quickly). And I can recognize that I'm not the intended demographic, you know? I’m like thirty years old & i’ve never been into dolls. Did kids like them?

My ideal toyline would have an emphasis on accuracy. Looking as on-model as possible. When I was a kid my favorite (non-stuffed) toys were those little pokemon figurines; articulation isn't really necessary for me as long as the figures can stand up by themselves. The Super7 toys were pretty good, I just wish they had more of them--or that they were sculpted in more interesting poses. But that line, too, suffered from a dearth of advertising. Who can buy these toys if they don't know they exist? Especially during the pandemic, when fewer people were willing to linger in the toy aisle and happen upon things--that's when you should be promoting shit. hell, put a bumper at the end of the episodes if you have to. as long as it was skippable idt there would be much flak for that, given we all signed up to watch a toy-based cartoon in the first place.

the type of toy i prize above all others, though? the kind of shit i went bananas for as a child & still delight in to this day?

toysets.

give me a crystal castle toyset with a little pocket guide on reading first ones' script. give me castle bright moon (WITH A MAP. PLEASE). a hordak's sanctum set that's the only way to get an imp figurine--kids love evil lairs & adults love collecting. a little Darla set that comes with spacesuits if the toys themselves are still Dolls.

but that’s not cost-effective. so. yeah

[scruggzi]

I have a hard time with this on a personal level because when I was a teenager (30-years ago) my anorexic 'best friend' who bullied me mercilessly for being 'weird' (queer and neurodivergent although I wouldn't understand that for a long time) used Barbie as both her role model and the standard I was failing to reach. Because I didn't want to be thin and femme despite being blonde. It was the body image of a tall, skinny, huge breasted woman as an ideal I could never reach that made me feel like shit. Ponies of all kinds did not have that impact.

I was 11 and so was she.

I'm just saying that whilst Mattel is part of society, and I'm glad it has now calculated a different, more inclusive profit metric to the one it had in 1994, I still have a hard time thinking about Barbie as anything but a symbol of my failure to girl correctly.

Also, it's possible some of those alternative versions made it out of the US if you went to a big enough toy shop but they sure as shit were not marketed at me in 1990s England.

The film looks really cool. But a lot of people have a lot to unpack here. Not least the long blonde hair = hyperfemininty thing which not only won't die, no-one seems at all invested in killing it.

[billcyphersballsack]

I think the most utterly baffling response I saw to the Barbie movie was men being confused or surprised that Barbie outsold Oppenheimer by leagues at the box office. Cuz even ignoring the incredible writing stacked cast great message and overall quality of the Barbie movie it had the nostalgia factor.

Barbie is one of the most recognizable cultural staples in history. She’s a household name, she’s touched the lives of every young girl in America at one point or another in her lifetime weather it be good or bad. Everyone knows Barbie, knows what she’s about and thus had already formed a connection with her before the movie came out. It’s Barbie. There’s gonna be a lot of pink and feminine things and a message about being your fabulous self or whatever, it’ll be something feel good and easy to get into. And even when those expectations weren’t met it was because they were far exceeded, the people who didn’t think Barbie could be complex were pleasantly surprised and those who knew her potential were slightly less surprised. It had a great marketing campaign because it had Mattel branding behind it so everyone knew it was coming and when to go see it and spend all their money on it. Last but not least in a time where women are facing challenges and turmoil like the overturning of roe vs wade, the sudden uptic in the dreaded Men With Microphones genre of podcasts creating an entire new generation of misogynist young boys, and just the general feeling of hopelessness facing young girls right now it just sounds like a much better time to consume media with their experiences in mind, a chance to feel seen in heard in a time where they’re attacked and belittled for wanting the bare minimum

Oppenheimer, in contrast, is a historical retelling/drama. It’s not some whimsical fantasy set in a totally made up setting it’s real life. Gritty and awful real life. The real life story about a man who invented the atomic bomb and went on to test it on civilians in New Mexico before famously dropping them onto even more civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing millions of people in the process. But the plot is about how tortured and sad he is about how he made the bomb, and also a little side story about how he has an affair i guess. Unlike the Barbie movie it doesn’t have the same nostalgia factor because most American high schools do everything in their power to sanitize this event when they do teach it, unlike the Barbie movie it had absolutely no marketing done for it outside of being part of Barbenheimer and that’s pretty much it. Unlike Barbie instead of coming out and creating a safe refuge for women to work through their complex feelings regarding their gender identity and expression and experiences while knowing their not alone in their struggle in a time where they’ve never felt so dejected, Oppenheimer is a painful reminder that the people in charge of the kill everyone in the world weapons did not care. In a time where we’re on the edge of war and it seems as though any moment world war three could start up again and we’d all be doomed for another decade it offers no comfort, only the crushing reality or conflict and what governments are willing to do to win absolutely nothing.

So yeah. No duh a bunch more people went to see Barbie. You fucking clowns

[i-am-brandon]

My life’s story chapter 3

We liked the Pokémon card’s but we didn’t know which Pokémon card’s we wanted. So younger me said the shiny card’s me and all my younger friend’s agreed. I used to go to a day care place, there was a married couple named Bob and Elaine, Bob liked bear stuff, and Elaine liked dolls, I used to sleep over at there house sometimes nothing bad happened, but they had me sleep in the doll room and this 1 doll scared me I don’t know if it had red eyes, but nothing bad happened, but also they had a teddy bear with a dolls face that scared me too, Bob and Elaine used to make me Mac n cheese, but not just any Mac n cheese they made deluxe Mac n cheese, that was good stuff, Bob and Elaine also had a Super Nintendo, I definitely played a Mario game on the Super Nintendo, it might of been called called super mario all stars, this was a Mario game that let you play more than 1 Mario game, Mario is I think an Italian plumber who saves the princess from the evil dinosaur named bowser. People may or may not like it you mostly jump in the game, you may or may not like the game, street sharks was 1 of the coolest toys I had, street sharks was a cartoon show about crime fighting half man half sharks, street sharks was a 90’s cartoon it was trying to be as popular as teenage mutant ninja turtles it did not succeed in doing so, the year was 1994, people nowadays might want to spend $200 on street shark toys in the box they came in for 90’s nostalgia, it was a Mattel toy maybe, as a kid I liked sharks and dinosaurs, super soakers it was a popular toy in the 90’s it’s a water gun it shoots water at people and people were into it I guess, super soakers made a company a billion dollars, mighty morphin’ power rangers made a billion dollars, 1 year my dad bought me the red power ranger costume, and he was the leader of the mighty morphin’ power rangers, but the red power ranger was not my favorite power ranger it was the green one for some reason he was the only guy character with a date, so I used to have a crush on the pink power ranger because she fits a shallow criteria, so I mean the red power ranger isn’t bad but now that I think about he didn’t have a date that sounds bad but accurate to my life because I also don’t have a date and my life is pretty much being single for 30 years and I’m still single so I guess I am kind of like the red power ranger but that doesn’t sound good, bop it, pull it, twist it I had that toy, bop it extreme I think I had that toy too, Mattel helped out Sega a company that succeeded when Atari had to pay 22 million to get the rights to E.T. , they had to pay 22 million to make an E.T. Video game was 1 of the worst selling games, in it you play as E.T. And that part isn’t bad but in the game you fall into holes E.T’s neck goes upward out of the holes and you get chased by someone who wants to kill you but also you have no way to defend yourself that sounds bad but the angry video game nerd talked about it in a positive way but if you don’t know how to play this game they made it confusing to know how to play it the right way, so without knowing how to play it the right way, some say it’s 1 of the worst games ever made, how bad is it, it was said that several E.T. Games were buried in New Mexico so that they would never be found. That game existed in 1983, Atari lost $563 million on this game so yeah it was 1 of the worst selling games probably of all time but for sure the 1980’s. Mattel helped out Sega, so I thought was positive because they succeeded kind of when video games weren’t succeeding, Sega made a cute little hedgehog that was blue and he was the fastest hedgehog alive and he’s the mascot of Sega, he’s a positive symbol of succeeding when a lot of video game companies didn’t succeed like Atari. Pokémon the year of that was 1996.