#I know this doll has a role in a bad part of their relationship
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homicidalbrunette · 2 years ago
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Trixie holding the doll Katya gave her like a little girl kills me
Bonus: the Trixie doll and the Katya doll now happily residing together in Trixie's drag room
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ubeb0nes · 8 days ago
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Things Sevika says as your lover…
❧ ❧ ❧
Let me do it. / I'll handle it. / Don't worry, I'll take care of it.
She wants to take care of you so, so bad. Whether that's opening every door and pulling out every chair for you, or wiping someone off the face of the earth in your name.
She's in her element when she's of service. Deep down, she thinks that as long as she proves useful then your continued affection is almost guaranteed.
Can't do that anymore, my woman/partner said so. / Wrap this up. I gotta get home to them.
She is yours, no ifs or buts about it. And she makes sure everyone knows how fiercely loyal she is, she will not be doing anything to disrespect your boundaries or your relationship.
Obviously her work and her abrasive nature will put a natural strain on some parts of your relationship, but she's never intentionally causing you distress. Loyalty's her most important personal value, and you have the most of hers.
No, get behind me! / I said stay here. / I need you safe, understand?
You're a culmination of everything she's fighting for. All the beauty of Zaun, her reason for sticking her heart in this city, you are all of that personified. So you can't die. You can't get hurt.
If she has to lock you in the house to keep you from following her into a death mission, she will. You'll understand. She's always taken a beating for the ones she loves, the role thrust upon her that she now clings to like a hardy mask.
Stand down. / Down, baby. / I don't care if you don't like it, follow orders.
If you follow her into combat, good luck with getting bossed around like crazy. She always keeps you in her line of sight, preferably also within three feet of you so she can jump in front of you to sacrifice another limb if need be.
She's also absolutely zero nonense while working. She isn't flirting with you or showing vulnerability in front of her crew, but she is relishing in getting to tell you what to do (and she expects you to heed immediately).
'S all for you, doll… / Mm-mm, you're not getting up… / Pretty thing… so warm… love you so much…
She only ever talks like this when she's sleepy, or just waking up. She doesn't say I love you much (outside of when she's leaving for work), as to her, it takes away from the weight of it (WRONG imo, but in character i think lol).
The sweetest sweetheart ever when she's all wrapped up in your arms. Her voice is even lower in the mornings, with a distinct gravel to her tone. She uses it to her advantage, whispering such sweet things in your ear as she "subtly" traps you in her arms to keep you in bed.
She keeps repeating the same things over and over again, praising you and professing her love like there's no tomorrow. Her favorite love language switches to words of affirmation while she's drowsy lol.
So good to me, god you keep me sane. / I'm gonna fuckin' give you everything… / You smell so good, I could eat you (she then does actually try to bite you and you scream and push her off the bed)
Nsfw under the cuttt~
Uh uh, don't run from me. / Stop moving. / You're gonna take it either way, don't whine.
One of your favorite games is to see how long you can hold out being a brat (i.e., closing your legs every time she spreads them, shifting your hips away, etc.) before you make her snap and she just manhandles you.
Her displays of strength are usually subtle, like lifting you steadily off the floor and laying you down slowly on the bed without struggle. But when you do finally get her to snap, she's flipping you over on the bed like a pancake, and holding you up against the wall with just her human arm as she fucks you. She barely breaks a sweat holding you down on the bed, no matter how strong or how determined your bratty ass may be.
I'm never fuckin' sharing you, baby. / Look at me. Don't look away, those are *my* pretty eyes, I wanna see them. / Is that good, doll? Whose making you feel good? Mhm, and don't forget it…
Chances are that you end up being the jealous one in your relationship rather than her. But she is extremely possessive. When she gets especially in a mood, she's intent upon fucking you until your brain melts and you're nothing but putty in her hands, obsessed with her.
She reminds you how good she makes you feel, and how she's the only one that can fuck you that way. You're always extra cuddly and touchy in the days following, and she loves it because she knows it means she's stuck on your mind.
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hootbon · 1 year ago
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Since I saw someone else talking about their fucked up ideas, I am too lol because I suddenly remebered them. But, pretty much just how my lore making brain decides to look at characters.
Kinger: He’s a king chess piece, obviously. He didn’t have to work for that position, unlike the queen, no chess piece can ever become the king, but a pawn can prove itself and become a queen, in a way. Kinger is now forced to be a lowly magician, because he never had to work for anything on his way up. Cracks from pressure, knowing he didn’t do anything, and now has to make up for it, whist his queen, the one who worked to gain that role, is no longer around
Ragatha: A rag doll, something that is quite literally a toy, old, not many people would chose that sort of doll over the newer kinds. Tossed around, ripped, lost, decapitated— so what? It’s a doll. If the doll breaks, you can just sew her back together again. If she does something wrong, you can watch her unravel in front of your eyes until you decide to stitch her back together again, though no one really cares for fixing her. She can be replaced easily, and so easily broken, used and abused by people endlessly, that’s what she’s made for. If she gets too chatty, you can just take out your thread and needle to shut her up
Pomni: A ballerina, she looks quite beautiful when she dances, she is a living ‘doll’, a puppet. A puppet by the strings, not much she can do, but be there helplessly as the ringmaster tugs them. A puppet, also a doll, are just used by someone else’s hand, she has no control over what they might make her do in the circus, and she never will.
Gangle and Aingle: The two sisters, ‘twins’ even if one of them doesn’t actually exist. A false persona, a forever toxic relationship, in a way. Bound to someone who looks like you, is always around you, but acts nothing like you do, wants to be the opposite of you, in a way. With all that ribbon, Caine could really tie the loose ends of the circus, like the abstraction issue for example…
Zooble: Quite handy with a thread and needle if they do say so themselves. Almost like the druggie of the whole group, they let intrusive thoughts kick in one day and than… they could never have enough. Dysphoric, their body never looked normal anyways in the first place, so it didn’t matter if they took parts of those now gone and tried to use them to fill the void of their own ever ending spiral of lack of self-esteem, right? They never liked the person in the mirror, so they change it every day, it only feels normal to be scavenging the halls after hair raising screams of pain can be heard in the hallway, sewing parts together to make something they enjoyed. A bad habit? Of course not, they never see it that way, they are simply making use of what others never appreciated, and now aren’t around to appreciate
Jax: The fluffy murder set bunny, we all love him. His silly little pranks go from sudden silly string ambushes, to agonizingly terrible ways for any mortal being to die— good thing you can’t! Caine would never let you. He’s just a bunny, a sweet little guy who wants nothing else but to put a smile on your face— well, that’s a lie, all he wants now is to satisfy his needs, and out a smile on his face. What is he thinking? You’ll probably never know, ever since Kaufmo disappeared for a few hours and came back, starting to act differently from normal, Jax acts like it’s the end of the world. Silly Jax, it’s just all fun and games! Kaufmo needed some help, so Caine got our friendly twins to help tie up those loose ends!
…Basically random shit, character design analogies and random ominous comments I thought of on the spot for these guys
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No, but can we talk about how, despite allegedly being a "feminist" movie, Barbie 2023 actually mocks the idea of a female fantasy and Barbie being an inspirational role model for young girls?
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It's so upsetting that not enough people bring this up, even the other haters of Barbie, but it needs to be addressed. Barbie was meant to provide an empowering fantasy for young girls. A lot of people have differing opinions on whether Barbie is feminist or not and what she represents. But at the end of the day, Barbie was designed to give girls a role model to see themselves in, to show them that they could pursue any career, that they can be the heroines of their own story, and reach their fullest potential. She was meant to tell girls that anything is possible. And the movie not only shits all over that, it makes that feminist message out to be something unrealistic and bad, and even worse, portrays it as something that oppresses men and makes THEM victims, because everything needs to be about men. And it's fucking disgusting. Allow me to explain how.
(spoilers for the Barbie movie below...I mean, if you even care, lol.)
We start out at the beginning of the movie with an introduction to the magical world of Barbieland that our well-known and universally familiar dolls live in. Barbieland is a feminist utopia, one that many women would be eager to live in. Women have all the power, are well-respected, can and do pursue any career, and support and uplift each other rather than tear each other down over their differences(aside from Weird Barbie, who they do apologize to in the end). They are happy and free in their female-empowering land, they don't fear the leers and catcalls from men as they walk down the streets, they dance together happily late at night, and they are confident in their bodies. There is diversity in the Barbieland. There is a plus-sized Barbie, a transfem Barbie, a wheelchair Barbie, and plenty of Barbies of color. The President of Barbieland is a Black woman. And none of these differences hold the Barbies back from being able to have power and they are not treated any differently from the other Barbies.
Femininity isn't seen as a weakness. Neither is expressing emotion, and in fact the fat Barbie even has a miniature speech about how she can balance her emotion with her logic and this makes her a smarter person, which the other Barbies support. It's a world where women are empowered and have unlimited potential to achieve their dreams and live freely without fear of their oppressors. Stereotypical Barbie isn't even afraid to reject Beach Ken's advances, she doesn't fear being stalked, raped, or killed by him for saying no. She just turns him down, and not only that, but she turns him down in favor of having girls' night, showing that in this world, girls support each other and value their female friendships over heterosexual relationships with guys(I'll touch on this point again later). I don't know about you, but that sure as hell does sound like a world that I dream of living in. Minus the fact that all the food and drinks are fake.
But the story doesn't frame this matriarchy as empowering, like they should. It portrays it instead as something ridiculous and far-fetched, something that the audience is meant to laugh at rather than support, which becomes more blatant as the movie progresses.
And then we get to the "real" world. Where men instead rule over women in a patriarchy, and we see Barbie experience misogyny for the first time. And this was the moment I started fully hating the movie, and realized it for the sloppy, anti-feminist mess that it is. The first part of the movie set in Barbieland was campy and fun and happy and feel-good, providing the exact type of feel that Barbie brings. But the moment she steps into the real world, everything becomes sad and hopeless and cynical.
And I get that the patriarchy does exist and women are oppressed by it every day, but the way the movie executed this was really overexaggerated and cringeworthy. They made it seem as if women are constantly and completely powerless in every aspect of life, like seriously they didn't even show ANY women in positions of power and the only women we did see with jobs besides a female doctor, were Gloria who works an office job at Mattel and Ruth who is already dead and is for all extents and purposes relegated to the fucking kitchen. They made the world out to be a complete and total dystopia where women aren't capable of achieving anything and the only two women of importance who are from the real world are Sasha and her mother Gloria, the former is portrayed as bitter, cynical, and constantly angry, the latter is portrayed as stressed-out, depressed, and somewhat suicidal with her thoughts about death. Is this all that the Barbie movie thinks that women can achieve in our world? Being miserable and frustrated with no hope of achieving our dreams and desires? With no power or satisfaction in our day to day lives? Is this all that this shithole movie thinks that women can amount to?
And the worst part is how Barbie is derided and mocked for thinking that she has provided a female role model for women and girls. The start of the movie mocks Barbie for thinking that it solved all women's problems and completely advanced women's rights/feminism, even though Barbie/Mattel has never claimed that. Yes, she was meant to be a role model. But she was never portrayed as the be-all, end-all of feminism. Even people who look up to Barbie and were encouraged by her aren't naive enough to think that a twelve-inch tall plastic doll is enough to smash the patriarchy. The movie makes this up solely so they can tear down Barbie for something that it never claimed to do in the first place. When our main Barbie leaves to go to the real world, the other Barbies encourage her(as Barbies tend to do) by saying that they bet all the women in the real world will thank her for giving them rights. Which is obviously meant to be an overexaggerated and satirical jab at Barbie once again, for thinking that it has created feminism or whatever, and that sexism is over solely thanks to the Barbie franchise. Cute. Too bad no version of the Barbie brand has ever claimed that in the first place. Again, it's a ridiculous and false claim that only exists to further unnecessarily jab at Barbie and propel this backwards-thinking message.
And then when she gets to the human world she is mocked even more. Sasha and her friends laugh at her when she claims to be Barbie and asks them to thank you for inspiring them, and then when she says she loves and wants to help women, Sasha aggressively informs her that EVERYONE hates women. This movie actually has a pretty nihilistic view of womanhood, when you think about it. The Barbie world is portrayed as an empowering world where women can achieve anything that they set their minds to, and aren't held back by sexism, causing them to have full power, reflecting the female fantasy that Barbie was always supposed to represent. But that's just a fantasy land, and is portrayed as cheesy and superficial. When Barbie gets to the real world, she is confronted with the supposed "reality" of being a woman, and comes to realize that it's not actually about empowerment and being smart and capable after all, but about suffering and never having your voice respected, and never having any power and freedom but instead losing your idealism and optimism as you age, causing her to break down in tears upon realizing how stressful it is to be a woman and that she never actually empowered them like she hoped. Seriously, whose idea was it to make Barbie constantly crying and miserable and incapable of doing anything on her own? Is this the Barbie I know? No, it's a pathetic, nonsensical knockoff. I'm telling you, they were TRYING to tear Barbie down.
This is especially true when Gloria gives her entire speech to Barbie about how contradictory and painful being a woman is, ending it with "not only are you doing everything wrong, but also, everything is your fault!" Come on! What is this? It's such a painful and harsh message to try to send through BARBIE of all things, that the essence of being a woman is just pain, pain, pain and guess what else? More pain! How being a woman sucks because all you do is get hated by everyone and treated as an object worthy of scorn and ridicule. It's just so unnecessarily cruel, how they violently ripped away any feminist empowerment Barbie was meant to possess in favor of forcing her into a depressive world where women have no rights or value, and had the nerve to portray this as "realistic", because obviously more negative automatically means more realistic, right?
Rather than provide a middle ground where women face hardships and adversity but are still capable of rising above their struggles and finding the strength within them to make their voices heard and get what they want in society, they opt instead for a stupid false dichotomy: the world is either a stupid frivolous Amazon utopia wrapped in pink and glitter with girl power up the wazoo or a bleak, heartless, and grey dystopia where nothing good ever happens to a woman and only men can do anything important. And it portrays the second one as clearly more realistic and the "better" option. Which, in doing so, sends the message that a world where women rule and are respected and have power and are encouraged to have ambition and pursue any goal they want in life...is unrealistic and impossible, if not outright deserving of scorn. It's so miserable and aggravating. When Barbie said "the cognitive dissonance required to be a woman under the patriarchy" I had to resist the urge to roll my eyes. THAT'S how badly the movie annoyed me with its nihilistic and negative preaching. I watched the movie in two days and when I stopped watching it on the first day I felt such a frustrated, hollow feeling in my stomach. I felt so unsatisfied. Like, is this it? Is this all I can dream of having as a woman? All that praise this shitty capitalist crapfest received for being so feminist and eye-opening, ultimately led up to this? For real? So disappointing.
But that's not even the worst part. The worst part is when the movie introduces the KENdom, aka, when Ken brings about the patriarchy...and if the movie hadn't already been hot stinkin' ASS, this is when it would've REALLY started to drag, and where it REALLY reinforces the idea that women can never have any actual power and authority and must instead constantly suffer under the patriarchal status quo.
Ken comes back to Barbieland and introduces the other Kens and Barbies to the patriarchy and horses(ig no one told him that horses are a matriarchal animal, but whatevs), and within hours, revamps the world into a patriarchal hell, just like the real world(except it's portrayed as very childish and simplistic because the witers don't actually take the patriarchy seriously and think it's just "boys think girls have cooties".). And the other dolls instantly buy into it? First of all, am I really expected to believe that the Barbies, who have been established as champions of strength, power and dominance, and who have always ruled the Barbie world, would instantly and easily give in to Ken's brainwashing and allow all of their power to be ripped out of their hands, becoming the happy devoted sexy slaves of the Kens? You think they would casually be like "I for one, welcome our new male overlords!" and let the Kens have all the power? Am I really supposed to accept that shit? And am I also supposed to accept that the other Kens in Kenland, including the Asian one who competes with the white Ken over Barbie, would easily leap at the chance to oppress their female counterparts, rather than laugh at Ken for being silly and tell him to sit his ass down somewhere? Really? Don't piss me off.
The only way you could accept this series of unfortunate events as plausible is if you accept the fact that we're supposed to laugh at Barbieland for being a girl power feminist matriarchy in the first place. If we're meant to laugh at the women for being in power and at this imagined society for being so gynocentric and girl-positive, then of COURSE we're meant to laugh at them for getting their power ripped away that easily, as women could never hold power for so long realistically! Eventually the men would realize their true potential and make society work in favor of them! It's natural and inevitable! The Barbie movie said so!!! And so we watch as the intended "humorous" scenes go on and on, of the men happily running around, flaunting their muscles, and chugging down beers like it's going out of style, while the women happily submit to this newfound male authority, massaging men's feet and serving them drinks. Because obviously a matriarchy could never last long, women are so weak and fragile that any sense of power that they think they possess could easily be ripped away from them within a moment's notice. Peak feminism, everybody.
But it's cool, because eventually the Barbies prove me wrong. They DO get their power back, and establish their rights again. But how do they do it? Do they stage a coup and violently and angrily fight the Kens? Do they march for their rights, as real life feminists have done? Do they balance logic and emotion, as fat Barbie praised herself for doing in the beginning of the movie, and reason with the Kens that oppressing the Barbies is not the right thing to do? No, no, they...put on sexy skimpy outfits and pretend to be dumb bimbos so as to lull the Kens into a false sense of security and think that THEY are in control. And later on they let the Kens sing to them a song about how they want to control women, before turning them against each other by pretending to be in love with different Kens than the ones they were originally listening to. Are you kidding me? This is supposed to be a feminist revolution! But instead of actually using their genuine power to put the men back in their place, they instead use their feminine wiles and dumb themselves down so that the men can feel strong. It is literally leaning into the sexist trope that the only weapon women have, especially against men, is their sexuality, and that this is the only way that women can get their way. Despite this going against EVERYTHING that Barbie stands for! She is supposed to be a strong, smart, and capable woman who can do it all and look glamorous while doing it! She is NOT supposed to be a fucking femme fatale, vamp, or sex object!
So not only do they have their matriarchy easily ripped away from them, but they also are forced to abandon their actual female empowerment and instead conform to the patriarchal status quo to get ahead. By using their bodies, stroking men's egos, and allowing men to mansplain to them. Because the only weapons women are capable of using are the ones men gave us. Because women are just bodies. And this is portrayed as a GOOD thing. Seriously, two of the Barbies even high five each other as they trade Kens at the fireplace, as if to say, "go girl, you are doing it!" Like, seriously, are we supposed to see this as a girlboss moment? Because I sure don't. It's giving "weaponized femininity". It's giving "eyeliner so sharp it could kill a man". It's giving "men are visual creatures." It's giving "kill me with a chainsaw right fucking now because I'm done with this shit." Oh, and don't even get me STARTED on how the Kens have a violent manly war, while the women only get to flutter their eyelashes and use their sex appeal. Because men are strong, women are pretty. Of course.
And then the worst part in the entire movie, the part that really infuriated me and let me know that this movie was the antithesis of feminism, arrives...the Barbies get their matriarchy back and are in power again, and everybody cheers and is happy, except for Beach Ken, who runs away to go sulk. And then...Barbie...fucking apologizes to him. She apologizes to him for casting him aside and making him feel unwanted and unvalued, and even says outright, "not every night has to be a girl's night." Why the fuck, movie? Do you remember earlier in this post when I mentioned how Barbie blows off Ken to hang out with her female friends, because it's girls' night, and female friends matter more than a guy? Sisters before misters, and all that jazz? Well, fuck that. Near the end of the movie, Barbie ends up apologizing to Ken for having a girl's night all the time, as if she was a bad person for not seeing how much she owed him and not hanging out with him all the time when she simply didn't want to. Here we have a woman apologizing for putting her girl friends over a man. The man doesn't apologize for making women his and his brethren's personal slaves. The woman apologizes for making him feel the need to go there by not catering to him, by being too focused on herself to the point where she ignores him, by being so empowered and strong that she makes him feel overshadowed, dare I say, emasculated, and thus need to reassert his fragile, threatened masculinity.
Because this isn't a feminist movie, not really. This is an MRA movie. This is a movie that, rather than focus specifically on the women and their problems, brushes their problems under the rug so as to remind the audience that "men matter too" "men have issues too" "men also suffer under the patriarchy!" And other such claptrap. I don't understand why the fuck cishet Reddit incels/conservatives/right-wingers/other such reactionary groups hate this movie and think that it's anti-men when actually it is pro-men and aligns fucking PERFECTLY with their bullshit line of thinking. That feminism oppresses and victimizes men, that men are the REAL victims of sexism/oppression, that women being granted rights is ultimately more harmful to MEN, that women need to be nicer to and pacify men and apologize for having too much power, that we all need to be quiet and listen to MEN and their experiences more. And I FUCKING HATE that. MEN have been listened to ENOUGH. And I am SICK of being forced to include them and their viewpoints more. How about instead of centering the Kens, we focus more on the Barbies and exploring THEIR issues, and using THEM as templates to convey issues about misogyny? Instead of focusing on Ken and his issues and his unrequited love for Barbie??? Instead, it was made all about the Kens and how oppressed they feel because the women are at the top of the hierarchy, to the point where THEY got the fun little dance number near the climax, RATHER than the actual fucking BARBIES that this movie was NAMED after. Because last time I checked, this WAS the BARBIE movie. NOT THE KEN MOVIE!!!
Oh, and don't even get me STARTED on that shitty ass parallel the movie tries to pull between the Barbieland matriarchy and the real world patriarchy. The movie tries to make the claim that the Barbies being dominant and the most powerful in the Barbie world is just the same as men being dominant and the most powerful in the real world, because the Barbies oppressed Kens just like men oppress women in our world. It also tries to raise the point that the Kens felt insecure and overshadowed by the Barbies and were treated as second-class citizens, thus they installed the Kendom. AND I FUCKING HATE THAT comparison for two reasons. The first is that the Barbies never oppressed the Kens or treated them as inferior in any way. They were simply more important because...it's the BARBIE company. Not the KEN company. Barbies are toys meant to be sold to little girls to inspire THEM. So of course the women are going to be the ones in charge! Why is that such a bad thing?
And the second reason is because I haaaaate the dumb fucking trope of "matriarchy bad because woman oppressing man is just as bad as man oppressing woman!" that this movie and countless, endless other pieces of media also try to push. Like, do you know why female-dominated societies(particularly utopias/positively portrayed ones) are so often represented in media??? Because the world we live in is so heavily male-dominated in almost every society and culture, and has been this way for centuries!!! Sure, there are and have been a few matriarchal cultures in society, but they are few and far between. The overwhelming majority of the world is run by men! Sad but true! And this allegedly feminist movie is for real gonna sit down and tell me "okay, but we can't allow ourselves to dream of a world where women are the ones with positions of power and men are not the privileged ones"? Hell no, fuck that. This movie is giving multiple people, both men and women alike, the opportunity to argue that sexism against men is "just as bad".
But women should be allowed to dream of our matriarchy. We should be allowed to fantasize about a world where we are in charge. We should be allowed to dream about a world where we are protected, respected, and catered to, and can live freely and without fear and oppression, without being told to "think of the men." It doesn't mean that men should be abused, mistreated, or oppressed just like women are and have been. But then again, the Barbies didn't even do that either, like I said. This movie, in its shallow attempts to "critique" the matriarchy(lol) ends up reinforcing exactly why the two aren't comparable in the first place. When the Barbies were in charge, they didn't oppress the Kens or treat them as second-class citizens. They simply lived their lives, going about their day and having fun while pursuing awesome careers.
The Kens, on the other hand, actively oppressed Barbies when they were in charge. The second they were given power, they leaped at the chance to treat Barbies like garbage, the same way that they somehow believed that they had always been treated. They treated the Barbies worse than the Barbies ever actually treated them, to be quite honest. They were the real oppressors, not Barbies. It ironically enough sends the accidental message that the world actually IS better off with women in charge. Can you really blame the Barbies for taking their matriarchy back again(I certainly was happy when they did!)? But no. Instead, the movie expects us to sympathize with the Kens, after everything they've done, and tries to portray the idea of a matriarchy as "just as bad" as a patriarchy. And if that's not an EXCELLENT example of a false equivalence, then man, I don't know what is. Don't even get me started on the audacious slap in the face that was "the Kens will one day have as much power as women do in the real world." As if women got rights and seats in high office because they asked the men kindly? Barf.
And then at the end of the movie, Barbie of course leaves the false, silly matriarchal utopia to live as a boring ass regular human in the "real" world. She no longer gets to live in a world where she is fully liberated and empowered and not relegated to a lesser human being with lower status. She now must live in the "real" world, the hopeless, bleak, and oppressing real world where she will be faced with relentless misogyny and looked down upon by men and society. The movie could have had her form a bridge between the Barbie world and the human world, trying to mend the problems in both worlds while still staying true to who she is at her core. But instead, she is forced to say goodbye to her past life, abandon all her female friends and her old home, in favor of living in a world where she is denigrated to a second-class status in society. Because the female empowerment Barbieland trumped? Is a lie. Nothing short of a sweet, comforting lie designed to shield girls from the bleak and cynical realities that womanhood actually entails. Real womanhood is adorned with thorns at every corner.
But it's all right, because at least she gets to see the gynecologist! That's her ultimate ending. Not actually improving life for others and herself and making the world a more equitable place for women with the help of the other Barbies, as well as Gloria and Sasha. It's going to the gynecologist. Because having a vagina makes you a woman. Yay! Some people have tried to reclaim this as a trans metaphor, but I highly doubt a movie as shallow and lacking in intersectionality as this was aiming for anything near close to that. And it's a crying shame that this is what the movie thinks is an empowering and satisfying ending to Barbie's arc. How pitiful, sad, and pathetic.
It's such a shame, as well, because the Barbie movie could have actually had genuine critiques of the patriarchy and how it affects women without making everything out to be pessimistic and dreary, and without trying to center the Kens and coddle their male fragility. It could have discussed beauty standards and the expectations to always be conventionally attractive and perfectly presentable to a tee for women(something that Barbie has oft been criticized for, and with good reason, and has also been brought up in the movie too, but of course got dropped and barely mentioned again). It could have tackled gender norms and compulsory femininity, and showed Barbies who subvert or have complex/unique relationships with femininity(esp women of color and queer Barbies, who have different relationships to femininity than white and/or cishet women), even include some masculine/tomboyish/butch Barbies who aren't portrayed by the narrative as the butt of the joke. It could have used Weird Barbie to portray both of these messages and given her a more complex arc and concrete role in the narrative besides being just a comic relief character who gets called ugly all the time(by both other Barbies and herself, which is just sad, self-deprecation much?) and then at the end of the movie gets an apology thrown at her by President Barbie(and also, who was she before she became Weird Barbie? The movie doesn't say, and that is such a let-down, that we never get to know who she was before.).
They could have showed lesbian and sapphic and aroace Barbies, whose characters could be used to challenge amato/heteronormativity and compulsory heterosexuality. They could have explored what Barbie meant for women of color, trans women, fat women, disabled women, and mayyybe not? Cast a conventionally attractive white cis thin blonde woman as the main/regular Barbie? Especially if they were going to make that joke about how a woman who looks like that shouldn't be casted for a character who cries that she's ugly(which raises unfortunate implications as to what type of woman would be correct to cast in that role...but like every other genuine aspect of feminism in this movie, it gets forgotten about and erased as soon as it's brought up.) But they didn't do any of that. Because this is a white "feminist" movie written by a white woman and created in partnership with a capitalist company for one specific purpose: To sell toys.
Which wouldn't be as much of a problem if they didn't try to slap a feminist message on top of that, and then fail at delivering their message, hard, so hard in fact that they sideways-shuffle all the way into (trans)misogyny. For all the hype this movie gained(from the same people who will then turn around and silence genuine critique of the movie's shallow portrayal of feminism with "it's not that deep, it's just comedy, you shouldn't have expected Barbie to ACTUALLY be introspective and profound despite everyone claiming that it was!"), the actual contents therein gave us NOTHING to chew on. Just an empty parody of feminism that was more about the Kens than the actual Barbies, and portrayed suffering in silence and manipulating men with your looks as the ultimate pinnacle of womanhood.
I can't say I'm surprised. I'm just disappointed.
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sirfrancisvarney · 11 months ago
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So as the show is halfway through, and before episode four drops, I've tried to put together and organize all the information I've gathered so far.
In 2005 (18 years ago), Anders Lund found Tsalal station. Raymond Clark joins. The shots of the website don't show when everyone else joins, but some of them join within the next few years. The source of Tsalal's funding is hidden by several shell companies that link back to Tuttle United.
Seven years ago (or possibly earlier), in 2016, Annie Kowtok insists on joining her friend on her visit to Tsalal station, and immediately starts a relationship with Clark. This behavior is apparently unusual for her. Did she go to Tsalal specifically to meet Clark? Why keep it a secret? Also in 2016, Clark bought a trailer. It's assumed this was used to meet Annie K in secret.
Next year, sometime in spring 2017, Oliver Tagaq left Tsalal for reasons unknown. In April, Annie is killed. She records herself, clearly frightened and afraid of getting caught, on her smartphone in what appears to be an ice cave, saying, "I found it. It's here. I found it, I found it. My name is Annie Kowtok. If anything happens to me please--" she's pulled away from the camera and she is heard screaming. The camera view at the end is on the skeleton of some marine animal encased in ice.
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On April 18, Annie's body is found. She was stabbed 32 times with a star-shaped instrument, ribs and teeth broken. She was kicked after her death and her tongue was cut out. Four days later, on April 22, Clark gets a spiral tattoo that match's Annie's. I don't know how long it takes to arrange getting a tattoo, so I don't know if he already had plans to get it, or if he got it because of Annie's murder.
Time passes. At some point, Clark turns the trailer into a shrine of some sort for Annie. The mannequin in the bed is wearing her cardigan, and there are baby dolls and children's toys placed around it, possibly a reference to her role as a midwife.
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Clark covers his research notes with writing, including repeated phrases and words such as "her eyes her face," "I can hear her coming/moving outside," "cold," "dark," and "her fingers." It's unknown when this behavior started.
Fast forward to the end of 2023. A few weeks before the show starts, Clark's behavior becomes noticeably stranger. At some point before December 17, he obtains Annie's smartphone, which appears to have video of her last moments, and he is assumed to have acquired her tongue. He could have gotten these at the time of Annie's death, or at any point since. If he didn't take Annie's tongue himself, maybe getting them caused his mental instability to get worse?
On December 17, the last sunset of the year, a hunter watches as a herd of caribou get spooked from an unknown stimulus, and flee. It's unknown if this is connected to the events of the series, or merely meant to be symbolic. On the same day, the water in the villages goes bad, for reasons unknown. The mine is blamed. Also on December 17, the scientists at Tsalal are living their lives, relaxing in the evening, doing chores. Anders Lund is going over old data on a whiteboard (no spiral is visible on his forehead). Molina is filming himself making a sandwich, when he sees Clark, shaking or shivering. Part of Clark's hair is dyed blue, and where his hair touched the parka, the dye has transferred. He has clearly been outside in the snow. When Molina asks if he's ok, Clark turns and says "she's awake," which is immediately followed by a power outage that also affects Molina's smartphone.
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On December 22, the delivery guy arrives and finds the place empty. A figure moves inhumanly fast through one corridor, but no other sign of life is present. The TV is playing "Twist and Shout" in repeat. He finds Annie's tongue on the floor underneath a table (several feet away from where Clark had been standing) and calls the police.
The next day, Rose finds the bodies of the scientists. They are frozen together, almost completely buried in the ice, bodies twisted in agony. They are naked, with burnt corneas and blood from their ears. Some have scratched their eyes out or bit themselves. Lund has Annie's spiral drawn on his forehead. Somehow, he is also still alive. (I don't know if this is important, but Danvers had to brush snow away to see the spiral, but Rose knew about it and told Navarro. Maybe it was more visible when she found the bodies and snow covered it before the police arrived, maybe Travis told her.) The scientists's clothes were found folded neatly near the corpsicle. The shoes look like indoor slippers, and it's likely that the clothes match what they were all wearing the night of December 17. A single handprint was taken from one shoe. It appears to be missing part of the ring and pinky fingers on the right hand (or they just couldn't get the print of those fingers).
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Lund wakes briefly. He tells Danvers and Navarro, and I quote, "we woke her. She's awake. And now she's out. She's out there in the ice. She came for us in the dark."
Those are all the relevant facts concerning the main murder case (to my knowledge) as of episode three. I suppose I could have included a picture of Annie's stab wounds, but I couldn't make any kind of pattern out of them, or take a guess at what the weapon was. There's also the snow Navarro hit in the first episode, but I couldn't tell what it is, or if it's anything more than dirt and snow piled on the road. Personally, they do not suggest a microbial origin or cause. Diseases take time to infect, and they don't progress in everyone at exactly the same rate. The scientists were found together, practically climbing over each other. They died at almost exactly the same time, apparently in abject panic. I don't think a disease can kill that precisely. How did Clark avoid getting infected, since he lived with them all? Plus, whatever happened to them happened shortly after the power outage, since Molina' left his sandwich behind. One would assume he meant to eat it, since he went through the trouble to make it. The death of the scientists, the power outage, and the water going bad are all too closely linked in time to be unrelated. I wish I had a map of Ennis. I'd like to see how close these are in physical distance.
I also don't think there are any real clues to be found in the website. Their bios look about like what you'd get if you asked someone to come up with backgrounds for people studying ancient microorganisms in glacial ice. Plus, I think most of the scientists are ultimately going to be unimportant as individuals. Out of all eight men, Lund and Clark are the only ones focused on by the narrative. When interviewed, the cleaning ladies only mentioned Lund (yelled at them for touching his stuff) and Clark (his crying, probably over the brutal unsolved murder of his girlfriend kept them from being able to clean his room) by name. Lund survived (for a while, at least). Clark is missing and is closely connected with Annie's case. Oliver Tagaq mentioned Lund by name when he learned the scientists were dead. (On a side note, I really wish Danvers and Navarro (mostly Danvers) hadn't been so hostile when questioning him. They might have gotten more information from him if they hadn't gone at it like assholes. Granted, that's practically an impossible task for Danvers.) The rest, sadly, don't seem to be important. They are effectively ignored and dismissed, much like how they ignored the cleaning ladies.
So what could have happened on December 17, and how is it tied to Annie's murder? Honestly, I don't know yet. I'm not sure there's enough information given to answer those questions. Lund's speech and the way the scientists died suggest a supernatural explanation, but other details surrounding their murder seem to suggest more prosaic, human causes. There's no sign of a struggle at the station, but maybe someone cleaned up after themselves. The way part of the note at the bottom of the whiteboard is erased looks unusual, like it could have happened accidentally. Maybe someone got knocked against it, or their coat brushed against the board when they were writing the message. It's also possible the murderer was able to make them all leave without a fight. The power had just gone out, so maybe they all gathered together to put it back on? Where's the circuit breaker or generator for the station? Maybe that's where the actual crime scene is. The folded clothes feel like something you'd make a person do right before you execute them, sort of like making your victim dig their own grave. It could also have the opposite motivation: I could see a person not in full possession of their faculties (like Clark, or maybe one of the cleaning ladies in a fugue state) instinctively trying to straighten things up. Both feel like very human actions.
Finally, who is "she"? Is that even the right question? When did "she" wake up? The scientists didn't seem to be doing anything that would trigger her awakening on the 17th, so it must have happened before. I wish I knew more about what made Clark's mental illness ramp up in the weeks before sunset. It feels like there could be an important clue there. Too bad Clark is missing and anyone else who could answer the question is dead.
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geekgirles · 9 months ago
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Your writing of the gods’ interactions and relationships with each other in “The Doll and the Dragon” is so on point that I wouldn’t be surprised if it was revealed that Cra and Sadida have a great relationship with each other BECAUSE OMG CRA SINGS A NATURE SONG IN WAVEN.
She actually sings four songs but the first one called “Nature” is literally just her singing about, you guessed it, NATURE. Something that she isn’t supposed to be talking about, let alone sing, given her role!
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All the songs that she sings are in English by the way. No matter if you change the language when playing, it doesn’t matter. The song stays in English.
She sings how she and the people will be welcomed by nature and be protected by it.
This girlie is literally singing a whole ass song about it!! SHE’S THE ONLY ONE DOING THIS SHE’S OBVIOUSLY FRIENDS WITH THE TREE MAN-
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CRA AND SADIDA HAVING THE CLOSEST FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN THE GODS CONFIRMED ‼️😭‼️😭‼️😭‼️😭‼️💛💚💛💚💛💚💛💚💛💚💛
(I just love the idea that one of the MANY reasons why Cra likes him is probably due to the fact that he might just be the only one in the god group who doesn’t oversexualize her to no end since he’s a literal plant lol)
Hello, again!!
Thank you so much for your kind words and OMG THIS IS AMAZING????
Not gonna lie, one of the reasons I wrote Cra and Sadida as close friends is mostly to reflect canon. Both as a reflection of Amalia and Eva's bond until I get to introduce our blonde bombshell into the AU and also because the Cra and Sadida are close allies by virtue of the Cras stationed in the kingdom back in season one and their use of Sadida wood to make their bows.
It'd just make sense if their symbiotic relationship were an extension of their gods' own friendship, you know?
Honestly, maybe this is me being biased given my love for Amalia and her people, but Sadida is also my favourite god. I'm not saying he is without flaws, since his own involvement in the Lacrima debacle is almost as iffy as Iop's role in it, but he seems to be chill overall?
The fact that all his daughters were literally made by him as opposed to the rest of the demigods, moreover, the fact that he actually wanted them to live with him in Inglorium when most, if not all, other demigods are left to their own devices on the World of Twelve sort of speaks volumes about his true character.
He seems like an involved father for the most part.
Maybe it is because he is indeed a plant, but his not having countless children proves he has less of a wandering eye than most gods. So it'd only make sense that he doesn't hypersexualise Cra, as you said.
In fact, you can see his true nature (pun non-intended) through his people: the Sadida and their powers clearly take inspiration from voodoo which, while far more complex than TV will have you believe, does have a bad rep. And yet the Sadida are the kindest dark magic users you'll ever find. They're a peaceful kingdom more concerned with protecting their forests than waging war.
And I just love that for them.
So yeah, I'm going to be pretty smug if it turns out Cra and Sadida are besties.
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fran-does-things · 8 months ago
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I’m definitely very late to the party, but I’ve finally finished the profile for my @shepherds-of-haven MC! Oh well, better late than never, I suppose. She’s loosely adapted from an old DnD PC of mine from a CoS campaign that I had such a blast role-playing! It took a while to hammer out all the details, but I’m really proud of how she turned out!
Anyway, without further ado, please allow me to introduce you to Cecilia Niriviel, Hero of Haven, and gaslight gatekeep girlboss extraordinaire!
(also, if you saw me delete and then reupload this post like 3 times, no you didn’t <3)
(Warning: The following excerpt contains vague references to events that occur in Chapter 9 of the Alpha build) “On the contrary, my friends, I think this is actually one of the better outcomes that could have resulted from that conversation. As much as it hurts my pride to say this, even I must admit that I’m a bit out of my depths when it comes to all this… old magic stuff. But blackmail?” At this, she smiles; a sharp, predatory smile that would have sent chills down the spines of the toughest of men. “Blackmail, I’m very familiar with. If that woman thinks that she’s the only one capable of playing dirty, then it would seem that her little homework assignment into my past wasn’t as thorough as she thinks it is. Oh, this is going to be so much fun!” - Cecilia Niriviel, in a conversation with her allies at the Sun Court.
Some Additional Fun Facts that I Couldn’t Include in the Original Profile
Chase has a whole host of nicknames for her, including, but not limited to: ‘blondie’ (her hair really is very blonde), ‘doll/dolly’ (owing to her large, round eyes), and ‘princess’ (this one comes up often when he’s teasing her for being particularly fussy/diva-like)
Celia has a particularly tumultuous relationship with beauty, like many women do, I’d imagine. She’s always been regarded as very conventionally attractive, which means that, for better or for worse, her looks are often the first thing (and main thing) that people notice about her. This has unfortunately led to her having developed a sense of self-worth that’s wrapped up in her appearance in some pretty destructive ways. A lot of her behavioural quirks are manifestations of this core belief. One of the absolute worst things that anyone, particularly a lover, could do to her is to make her feel as though her looks are the only thing that she is valued for; I think that would really crush her self-esteem and lead her down a horrible self-destructive spiral.
She loves cats. Or any other cute, small animals, really, but especially cats. If she sees a cat, she will immediately drop whatever it is she was doing to either pet the cat or just coo at it from afar if it doesn’t want to be touched. Her very obvious love of small animals is what helped to endear her to Tallys and Shery in the early days of her joining the order, who either wasn’t too sure whether she could be trusted (Tallys) or found her a bit intimidating at first (Shery).
When it comes to her stance on love, she's what I would describe as a 'closet romantic'. After a string of bad experiences, I think she’s convinced herself that she’s just not cut out for all this love business , but deep down she’s always retained that innocent, child-like romanticism. When she was a little girl, she’s always been fascinated by fairytales about brave knights and princesses, of soulmates, and of the power of true love; and I think there’s a part of her that’s still in love with the idea of love and is still waiting for her one true love to show up! (Just you wait, Celia; little do you know, your prince charming is sneaking up on you like an assassin in the dark ;))
She doubled as a black-market informant during the years she spent working as a courtesan, selling information about her wealthy patrons to anyone willing to pay her a hefty sum. Listen: long story short, the girl was stuck in a predatory labour contract, and she needed to make money somehow if she wanted to get out of it sooner rather than later! Occasionally, she would also take on small jobs like stealing, smuggling things, etc… It helped that she had developed a few contacts in the local thieves’ guilds from her days as a street-child who would go on to help her get her foot in the door, so to speak. This line of work has never really bothered her; most of her patrons were, in her eyes, nothing but predatory, hedonistic pigs, though there are some crimes so heinous that even she’s not willing to abet in it, or some people who she just couldn’t bring herself to harm. This is a time of her life that she looks back on with a little shame and remorse, in her later years. Just a little.
Celia was partly inspired by my own struggles with overcoming trauma. I’ve always been fascinated by the ‘femme fatale’ character archetype, and she is, in a way, my take on a deconstructed version of that trope. I think of her journey from ruthless mercenary to renowned hero as less of a redemption story, or of a battle between the good and evil within, but more of a story of healing and growth. A story of someone learning to overcome their maladaptive behaviours and moving past traumatic life events. Learning to stop being beholden to events that have long transpired and to allow yourself to just live life the way you want to live
Her closest friends in the Shepherds are Chase (twin!), Lavinet (bestie!), Tallys (big sister!), and Riel (co-mastermind for world domination!). She also has a particular soft spot for all the female Shepherd captains. I’d say the characters she has the most interesting dynamic with are actually Chase and Briony, but this is a story for another time!
There is betting pool among the officers on who Celia is involved with. Funny enough, for a very long time, Riel is generally considered the top contender, not Blade, which is just hilarious on so many levels. I think a lot of the officers tend to excuse their more suspicious interactions as just... Celia being Celia (read: a notorious flirt) and Blade being Blade (read: a stick-in-the-mud) and can’t fathom the idea of them getting together. On the other hand, Riel and Celia just play off each other really well, so I can definitely see some of the Shepherds extrapolating a romantic connection from their professional synergy. It doesn't help that they’re often seen together on the off chance that they both have some time off, or that they primarily communicate through cryptic looks and subtle eye-glances. I imagine that once Blade and Celia's relationship becomes official/more public, it would cause a mild panic among the recruits because "I thought she was seeing the other commander? Wtf is going on???"
Bonus: In a pre-relationship crushing stage, poor Blade is probably 4th on the officers’ betting list of ‘who is Commander Niriviel secretly fucking’, right below Chase and Briony. Chase and Celia practically invented platonic flirting, and there many who mistake Briony and Celia’s frequent sleepovers/girl-talk sessions as something far less innocent than it really is. At this point, I’m pretty sure she’s been suspected of sleeping with pretty much all of the captains at one point or another. Being the busybody social butterfly that she is, Celia’s definitely heard most if not all of these rumours, but she really doesn’t care enough to do anything about it most of the time, plus she finds some of these rumours to be so preposterous that it’s actually kind of funny.
I had no idea that Celia was going to be a Blademancer, and yet here we are! I really thought it was going to be either Chase or Red, but I think it just wouldn’t have worked out quite as well. The slow burn comes from the fact that both Blade and Celia currently have their heads stuck far up their asses, albeit in different ways. It takes Blade a while to realize/accept that he's even in love, and while Celia is self-aware enough to realize when she's falling for someone, she's not emotionally mature enough to deal with it in a normal way. There was a lot of screaming and cursing and "this can't be happening to me; I don't fall for people!! People fall for me!!!" They both learn to get over their fears and hesitations, however, when they realize just how much life and vibrancy the other brings to their life. I like to think that Celia helps Blade come out of his shell, to learn to be a little more selfish when it matters and helps him enjoy the beauty in life; meanwhile Blade is a grounding force for her; he sees past her smokescreens, reminds her of her goodness, and makes her want to be a better person.
If you've made it this far, thank you for indulging me in my ramblings about a fictional character! There may be more Celia content coming in the future; I've been thinking a lot about the events of Chapter 4 and might write something on that. suffice to say I've honestly really fallen in love with the game and with its cast of characters. I've found myself with a lot of free time this week (clearly) and have finally caught up to the update, and all I can say is that Celia and I are both currently having the time of our lives watching the drama unfold. Can't wait to see what else is coming next! <3
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emometalhead · 4 days ago
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OH MY GOD DO I HAVE SQUID GAME THOUGHTS
gi hun and front man??? doomed gay nerds from the start. I love them but they will make eachother worse
HYUN JU MY BADASS MARINE QUEEN!!!!!! literally she’s my favorite character. I support women’s rights and women’s wrongs and whatever else she has going on. I aspire to be her. I want her to be my older sister. if (after sae-byeok it feels more like WHEN bc they love killing fan favs) she dies I will be devastated.
season 1 had the better crazy lady because the shaman had NO redeeming qualities
the potato sack type race was interesting mainly because it made me feel bad for that one guy who kept missing the big stone :( it kinda reminded me of the saw 8 shotgun carousel for some reason??? idk just on vibes
gi hun. please. use your brain. your gay lover who you have trauma bonded (?) with is the frontman. never trust player one I thought we established this.
and a question for you because you’re always right: what do you think the next games are??? I’ve heard human chess and monkey bars based on the paintings in the big room with all the beds, and a lot of people are saying the game with the two dolls will be jack and jill?? and someone also suggested like trolley problems based on that railway crossing thing I guess. anyways any and all thoughts appreciated!!!
Hi!!! I am so excited to talk about this!!!!!!!!! I'm going to follow suit and do coordinating bullet points!!
• Gi-hun and the Front Man. OH MY GOD. Toxic and doomed. I'm obsessed with the dynamic. The Front Man is so unhinged. Him straight up killing that guy with his bare hands to save Jung-bae during the carousel game just to murder him in front of Gi-hun was crazy!!! I actually gasped. I wasn't expecting Jung-bae to make it through the show, but it was still a bit chilling for him to die in the way he did. The Front Man slipped back into his role so easily. The dude is frightening. That being said, I am so eager to see more of his interactions with Gi-hun in season 3! I totally agree that they are making each other worse, but I am living for that toxicity.
I need to know what's going to happen if/when the Front Man reveals his identity. I'm really dying to see more from the Front Man. Also Gi-hun is very single-mindedly focused, and I'm curious to see if it will ultimately be to his detriment. I hadn't expected him to coordinate the seize/attack in that manner, and I truly don't know how to predict where things will go from here. The Front Man definitely has an interest/investment in Gi-hun, but I can't determine if/how that will work to his advantage.
• Hyun-ju!!!!!!! QUEEEEEEEEEEEN!!!!!! She is everything!!! The way she stepped up and took charge when the contestants agreed to fight back against the people running the game was so bad***. Her interactions with Young-mi were precious, and Young-mi's death broke my heart!! Also the change in relationship between Hyun-ju and Geum-ja was sweet. Geum-ja went from not understanding to taking care of her. Her reaffirming Hyun-ju's womanhood and inviting her into the bathroom and her stopping Hyun-ju from picking up the guns again at the end were both very sweet, maternally protective moments.
Hyun-ju is so damn cool and impressive. I am rooting for her survival. (Sae-byeok's death hurt so much!! I can't handle this again!!) I'm going to be so upset if she dies. I really really hope she makes it through. If not, you and I can both riot together.
• I hated the shaman!! She's so annoying!! I was lowkey hoping she would die, because I was tired of everyone having to deal with her 😭. I watched the show with my parents and brother, and none of us liked her at all.
• I felt so bad for the guy who kept missing the stone!! That game had me so stressed! Like with Red Light, Green Light, I wasn't overly stressed for the most part since I had a basis for what to expect. That obviously went out the window for the other games!
I had to look up the Saw 8 shotgun carousel. (I know, I'm sorry, but I haven't seen any of the Saw movies.) That was an intense watch! I can kind of get why you felt similar vibes with it. Since everyone in the group had a game to play, their inaction could lead to multiple deaths. Also there's a similarity in being stuck in a game even after seeing others in your situation die.
• Literally!! Gi-hun. Listen to me, man. Do not allow your attachment to 001 and your perceived knowledge of his death blind you. Do not allow this to deter you from your mission of ending these games. The Front Man can't be trusted. Even if the gay trauma bonding has been intense, the dude is the Big Bad you're looking for. I am already on the edge of my seat for season three.
As far as what I think the next games will be, I have no clue. I honestly haven't put any thought into it. I hadn't even taken a second to consider it until reading this ask yesterday night. I think I need to look back on the hints we've been given, and I'll have to really put thought to it. That being said, I definitely couldn't have predicted the games we saw in season two, so I don't feel very confident making predictions about it.
Additional thoughts:
• My heart was breaking for Dae-ho in the last episode. He had tried to be so helpful to everyone throughout the season, and then he was clearly unprepared and overwhelmed for the armed conflict. I was so stressed watching his breakdown/PTSD flashback. I've seen people online very harshly criticize his character for not delivering the ammo, but I am sympathetic to the context of his inability to complete the task. Also he very clearly respected and cared for Jung-bae, and I'm already sad thinking about how it will go over when Dae-ho learns of his death.
• Min-su pissed me off. Se-mi was so kind to him, and he totally betrayed her. I know he fought back when she was attacked, but he did not treat her with the same care or respect that she showed him.
• I'm extremely nervous for Jun-hee. I really hope she's able to make it out. Her plotline is really tragic. Like her deadbeat baby daddy scammed her and then let her believe he was dead!!!!! For her sake, I hope he makes it out too, because by the end when she stopped him from joining the fight it's clear she wants him safe. But like bruh. He better step up and help her out.
Some random things:
• Idk if you watched it dubbed or subbed, but I watched it dubbed. (Subtitles aren't accessible for everyone in my family.) I had no clue until yesterday when my dad mentioned it that Thanos was sometimes speaking in English! I found a compilation on Twitter, but I had no clue while watching! Also like we thought it was odd for him to say "señorita" a couple times, but it makes sense now knowing he was literally just randomly using other languages. Also it's kind of funny that most of the times when he spoke in English, he was cussing.
• All of that being said, he was annoying lol. I kept calling him and Nam-gyu "the drug guy and the other drug guy". I typically used everyone's name, but they pissed me off so they got nicknames lol.
• My brother and I also kept calling the Salesman "the insane guy" which I feel like is self explanatory lol. He was so unhinged, and I could not look away.
Final thoughts to round this out!! I feel like there's things I'm forgetting to say, so I will send you an ask if I remember anything else. I think I have more feelings than actual coherent thoughts about it all, so I tried my best to articulate my opinions instead of just screaming here lol. I'm also like really considering rewatching season one. I didn't do so before starting season two, and I definitely felt out of the loop during the first episode. Plus, it's just so good. Idk when I'll have time to rewatch it, but I definitely want to do so before season three comes out.
If you have any other thoughts or feelings, please feel free to drop by anytime!! I love hearing what you have to say, and it is so fun any time we have a shared media interest to scream about together.
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granulesofsand · 10 months ago
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Subspace with Programming
🗝️🏷️ RAMCOA/OEA, CSA, ACSA, sexual themes, references to EEGs.
TL;DR We’re looking for a way to build healthy relationships with alters who have no base of safe-enough. We think subspace, sexually and not, will help.
We went to a presentation about altered states in BDSM, and they pulled up an EEG of the drop into subspace. This specific one was of a person suspended by piercings, showing the brain activity going up for rigging and suspension, and then dropping from tall yellow to short red as they slipped into the fuzzy subby state.
The presenters talked about a spike a while after the change, and that for this person it was a moment of processing. They had been using their subspace to grieve, and that was the moment they ran a list of important people they’d lost.
We got to talk to the researchers when they finished presenting, and we asked about altered states in people with already atypical states (age regression, developmental delays, systems).
BDSM in Healing
The author of one of the only recovery books about OEA talks about why their CDD clients shouldn’t participate in BDSM, and we’ve taken issue with that for a while. Similar to how autistic people do well with proper BDSM, traumatized systems also benefit from learning negotiation and safer sexual practices.
We’ve spoken to our therapist about the grey areas where it might be better to stay away (if a system has poor communication, if system members will take on sex or pain as a job, if there isn’t control over switching during scenes), and we agreed that there was no one-size-fits-all for approaching sexuality.
Most systems have an absolute boundary of no sexual interaction for littlies. In the book, there were two contrary opinions about that. One was that any sexual encounter resembling what the young ones survived was bad, because there was no way to prevent leakage from whoever was doing it. That was the author, Alison Miller’s.
The other was that sexual NPCs had allowed the young ones to meet their sexual needs from trauma, and the children could then continue their age-appropriate development. That was a survivor story, and they created the NPCs to give safe-enough touch that eventually led into safe touch (with no sexual component).
And I still come at it from a harm reduction standpoint; letting inside kids participate in sexual activities shouldn’t be the first step, or the second or the third, but there’s only so many angles some systems can try before that’s the best option.
After this point, orange paragraphs are details of abuse.
Harm Reduction
Our left sidesystem doesn’t have many obvious littlies. The group we came from didn’t find value in children outside of exploitation, and we were assigned adult identities. It takes several layers of peeling to find the childlike states in most of us, so we didn’t have as much fear of accidentally getting a child in front for sex stuff.
The Left still has programming, but ours is more focused on external presentation (amnesia, silence, reporting), and the traumatized insiders are hidden away.
The right side, however, is child-heavy. They also appear to be adults, but they know their actual ages are younger. The right is where our ‘good’ alters were placed, and that refers to the trafficked and ritually abused kids. The ones who respond to cues, who fit perfectly into the role the perps wanted.
Some of the young ones on the right are the sexualized pets, dancers, royalty. Also worth noting are the clumps of shattered fragments; the organs, the rotting body parts, the broken dolls. The majority of the Horrors (tm) happened to people on this side, and they’re all so heavily programmed that they continue responding when called.
Cues and Triggers
The ‘perfect’ ones, who weren’t shattered, show up at front for themes of bestiality, CSEM, and torturous sex. Since building trust, we’ve discovered who comes out for what (there’s a curtain of mist or smoke when people are hiding). We don’t try to expose them to any of those things, but there are situations that draw them out by similarity.
One of the most shameful events we’ve made front-accessible is when our family brought home the dog they have now. We were maybe 12 when it happened, in our bedroom, and we have the memory because a left-side alter wasn’t fully kicked from front. The dog was a puppy, he jumped on everything before he learned better. He was big enough for our size, and he hit a pressure point that cued out a younger alter. They got into position, expecting there to be adults with cameras to guide the encounter.
We were fully clothed for that, nobody else in the room, and the puppy wasn’t trained to do anything about it. The littlie was confused, the puppy was confused, the left alter was confused, and that was it. The puppy was immediately distracted by a noise outside, so we opened the bedroom door and he took off.
This happens with the littlies we can’t talk to unless they’re in the fronting realm, and who can only stay in the fronting realm while they have an active trigger. We have interventions, but those are focused on the safety of the ones we find. We don’t have a reliable means of encouraging alters to remain safe and work on their behaviors.
We’ve gotten better at having notecards and alarms that redirect them to notebooks and apps, and we have them learn how to summon a few creature alters to talk. More and more of the people on the right are working with us, talking to others and banding together.
Before BDSM
Once they start deprogramming, we look for the structures and controls that prevent them from moving around. After that, we bring them to a safe subrealm of wherever they were, have them decide what changes they want (while the older ones look into what changes they need), and rebuild their area. Sometimes we have to move them elsewhere because of environmental risks or other alters trying to reprogram in their area.
Movement is the easiest for us because we don’t have many low-level alters who care to stay as they were. Once we demonstrate safe communication, they pick it up on their own time.
It comes back to sexuality and trauma. We don’t make anyone do trauma work before they want to (or aren’t resistant to the idea), and that leaves some of us with programmed urges. There are rules specific to every area, which is why some of them are still actively violent, and try to herd people into healthier mindsets for every iteration.
It’s hard. We’ve tried forcing people into therapy (which went badly with every plan we’ve implemented), having them talk with a mediator (it’s apparently subcultural), banning violence (worked temporarily until they found workarounds), and restraining people (we can do it if they allow it, otherwise Big No).
Why We’re Considering It
Some of us (not just the young ones) seek out unhealthy dynamics, or have problems we can’t solve before each person is ready. Once we start, it looks like doing system therapy for that alter’s subsystem, and sometimes for the nested subsystems — which is the same process but on a plane none of us see.
We need genuine cooperation, or at least benevolent deceit. So we’ve been thinking about what that BDSM research would do for us, internally interpersonally and with NPCs. It would be the most developmentally appropriate alters first, seeing how altered states bode with our subsystem switching (I don’t think we can accidentally summon the littlies to internal places), maybe trying to use the university’s EEG equipment.
Then, if that goes well, trying the NPCs with safe-enough versions of what the older ones were doing (aiming to avoid sexual exposure beyond the environmental cues they already know).
There’s so many of us. Probably all of us have young self-states, and there are at least a few hundred actual littlies. The idea is to get the altered state that helps processing, led by another insider (or NPC). It’s harm reduction compared to how they are when we find them and how they remain before heavy healing. This might be a road to recovery without the same pits of previous diversions. Then we can get to the phase of actually educating them and showing them choices in states where they really get to choose.
Thinking feels like catching eels, so I’m gonna end this here. Point is, subspace sounds cool and we want to try it sexually for adults and nonsexually for children. We’ve had progress with pseudo-sexual methods with sexual alters before. Wish us luck.
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abattre · 7 hours ago
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Hi, can you tell us what other characters you like besides Sasuke?💓 (from naruto only)
I love most of the Uchiha's !! They're the most interesting characters to me. I guess after Sasuke it would be Itachi > Obito > Madara.
I know I bully Itachi a lot on my blog, but I am actually really fond of him, I promise. He's just,,, well. There's so much contention with his characterisation and his role in the story that I think being a fan of Itachi has to come with some acceptance that he's a bit of a fascist freak. There's so much to examine in his ideology and actions and the utter hypocrisy in all of it; how it ties in with Konoha's manipulation and the oppressive relationship between the clan and village,,, I want to dissect him. Much to say about how he's the pinnacle example that no amount of practical intellect can save you from the political machinations of those in power and that no one is immune to propaganda no matter how smart you think you are etc etc. Like,, obviously these are all complex issues in a critical analysis of the narrative and it's thematic implications, but for the most part he is my favourite silly conservative flop. Too bad about the whole zealot thing </3
Obito and Madara, I like for more or less the same reasons. I think they have some of the most intriguing roles in the story, and regardless of how much of a mess the last arc was, they were the most enjoyable part of it to me. Characters embodying violent radicalism in response to an unachievable, good-faith desire for peace never gets old. In general, I wish there had been a more nuanced discussion in the story of why both Obito and Madara resorted to brutal extremism in pursuit of their pacifistic goals. Like actually addressing that they had been pushed, justifiably, to complete conviction that Shinobi society was beyond repair and unsalvageable in its corruption because of its abhorrent modus operandi. Their motivations encompass the most compelling aspects of the world-building in the series,, but it's Kishimoto so nothing really came out of that. Every day I think about the matrix arc that could have been if Kishimoto had committed to the Tsukuyomi bit,, but whatever.
Outside of the Uchiha's though, I'd say Suigetsu is probably my favourite of the cast. I think he's such a fun character, and he adds so much to the Taka dynamic. Nothing funnier than him being the only person in that team with any common sense at all,,, poor guy was stressing out 24/7. Also loved how inspired he was by Sasuke's dedication to achieving his goals without unnecessary harm, and then wholeheartedly committed to bettering himself because of that. What a doll.
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addictedtostorytelling · 2 months ago
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team graveyard gsr reveal reactions: lab rats, morgue workers, & ecklie
part iii of this series.
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hodges obviously, the show gives us nothing from hodges with regards to the big reveal, so in the absence of any evidence, i’d like to think he maybe has a hard time with the news of gsr at first, not for any reasons having to do with the relationship itself but rather due to the way grissom and sara go about conducting it.
on the one hand, hodges so hero-worships grissom he probably wants to view grissom’s actions in concealing his and sara’s relationship as justified and even romantic™, but on the other hand, hodges is such a rules-hound he may in actuality have a hard time reconciling grissom’s deception with his perceptions of grissom as the ultimate good guy, and this discrepancy between what he might want to believe vs. what he cannot help but actually feel could lead to some really interesting moments of cognitive dissonance for him.
for example, i can imagine a lab rats scene in which maybe wendy and/or henry might question how someone in a management position like grissom could willingly compromise the integrity of the lab for such a long time, seemingly without thought for the work of his subordinates or even justice itself, while hodges tries to rationalize how grissom went about doing things in the best way he knew how to, though the more he talks, the more obvious it becomes he doesn’t fully believe what he’s saying, until finally he just kind of blows up about it and storms off, because, yeah, the truth is, he secretly feels let down by grissom, too.
that we don’t get to see any of those kinds of reaction from hodges in canon is just a doggone shame! the writers could have really done some interesting character work with him, had they wanted to.
in any case, i imagine after hodges’s initially conflicted reaction, he eventually realizes—perhaps with some prompting from wendy—for all his brilliance, grissom is also human and therefore fallible, but the fact he is doesn’t make him a bad guy. hodges likely comes to accept he did what he did for love.
—at which point i think his main reaction going forward is to pivot the way he thinks not just of grissom but also of sara.
as i talk about here,
of course, the real breakthrough in [hodges and sara’s] relationship seems to come during the events of episode 07x24 “living doll,” when hodges, like the rest of team graveyard, learns for the first time that sara is the love of grissom’s life and finds himself in a position to help save her from the miniature killer. while we don’t see hodges learn the truth about gsr on screen—he’s not in the layout room when grissom drops his famous “only person i've ever loved” bombshell on the rest of the team—one can imagine that the news does a lot to shift his perspective. by this point in his development, hodges not only seeks grissom’s approval because grissom is the boss but because he genuinely admires the man and views him as his mentor and friend. grissom is his hero, so if sara is grissom’s girl, then that makes sara important™ in hodges’s view. from here on out, sara comes to play a more central role in hodges’s internal narrative. certainly, hodges would have worked hard to save sara from the miniature killer regardless—because, as expressed above, for all of his posturing, the truth is that hodges does actually care about other people and is fond of the members of team graveyard (if secretly and in his own way)—but knowing that sara is grissom’s everything does add an extra dimension to the case for him, building on the mythology and imbuing the events with extra meaning from his pov. while hodges never speaks to this new sense that sara is now marked as special because she’s special to grissom, he is noticeably nice to her once she returns to work following her abduction (see, for example, their interactions in episode 08x04 “the case of the cross-dressing carp”).
of course, since hodges is hodges, once he knows the truth about grissom and sara’s relationship and has gotten past his feelings of resentment toward grissom for his conduct, i have to believe, even given the dearth of evidence in canon, he becomes somewhat insufferable about the whole thing, insinuating to his fellow lab rats he actually knew about gsr all along even though such is very much not the case, making obnoxious “we’re two of a kind, as romantic rulebreakers”-type comments to grissom (a la what he does in episode 06x21 “rashomama”), asking invasive questions probably mostly to sara about her and grissom’s sex life, etc. on a more serious note, he may also do some quiet reflection on his own relationship with wendy in light of grissom and sara’s conduct, wondering if perhaps, lab rules be damned, he should take a chance on having a relationship with her, as she, like sara is to grissom, may be his one shot at true happiness.
wendy and the other lab rats again, in the absence of any evidence, i think, for the most part, the other lab rats—wendy, henry, mandy, archie, and bobby—probably react to the news of grissom and sara being a couple with an admixture of shock (because who would have thought?) and minor disgruntlement at the rules infraction, on professional grounds.
in particular, wendy may feel a little miffed, because while she is herself no stranger to having feelings for a geeky, silver-fox coworker, she, unlike sara, has so far denied herself of them out of deference for departmental policy.
they are probably also just generally curious about the nature of grissom and sara’s relationship itself, because—as relative outsiders—they don’t really see the appeal from sara’s perspective, in particular. i can imagine, specifically, henry and mandy maybe speculating, in a lurid way, over lunch about what kind of “daddy kink” weirdness they assume must be going on. the lab rats probably all also collectively play the game of thinking back on any previous exchanges they may have witnessed between grissom and sara over the years which in retrospect might indicate their attraction to each other—with hodges pretending to have known all along, while everyone else rolls their eyes at him, because of course he was just as clueless as they. of course, since the lab rats tend to operate on a different frequency from the field mice, neither their displeasure regarding grissom and sara’s deceptive conduct nor their fascination with the sexual politics of their relationship likely makes its way back to grissom and sara or the rest of team graveyard at any point.
particularly since sara starts working a different shift upon returning to the lab—meaning they see her less than before, and especially less than before with grissom—their curiosity likely dies down soon enough anyhow, until it’s just back to work, as usual.
the morgue workers
i think doc is probably a little surprised, as he seems to be of the opinion grissom has little interest in romance overall (see episode 06x23 “bang-bang”). however, given doc is generally an openminded person, he probably doesn’t have objection to the relationship itself or even much care about the way grissom and sara have chosen to conduct it, as the goings on of the lab proper are outside of his purview. he also probably would never have guessed grissom would go for a woman so much younger than himself because he wouldn’t think of grissom as being “that way.” however, he likely also recognizes there are many parts of grissom he doesn’t know very well. meanwhile, i think straitlaced super dave is more astonished on the grounds grissom and sara would break the rules—he’s a supervisor! and she’s so serious about her work!—however unwilling to be judgmental of them, particularly as he understands wherein lies the attraction for grissom. though he, unlike greg, is long past his crush on sara by s8, he still gets why a guy might want to “wear a clean coat” for her (see episode 01x17 “face lift”), grissom included.
ecklie
ecklie is one of the few characters who does get to show a reaction to grissom and sara’s news on screen, and i think what we see from him in episode 08x02 “a la cart” is pretty much what we get. he’s obliged to insert himself into the situation as an administrator and dole out consequences—by switching sara to swing shift—though in his heart of hearts, he doesn’t want to (and wishes grissom and sara could have just been forthcoming about their relationship from the beginning instead). for the first little while after they come out, he likely is holding his breath, waiting to see if there will be any legal fallout due to their improper conduct. he is also probably swamped with extra work, having to review their old cases and make sure everything there is above board. because he’s ecklie, he almost certainly has also got some incorrect views of the whole thing, and not solely because grissom and sara themselves give him the runaround where the timeline for their relationship is concerned. for one thing, i think he erroneously believes the primary attraction for grissom with sara is her youth. were he in grissom’s place, for him, to be with a woman fifteen years younger than himself would definitely be an ego thing, so he wrongly assumes such is the case for grissom, too, supposing he also is the kind of guy who wants “arm candy.” he probably also incorrectly assumes a) grissom hired sara solely due to his attraction to her, and, b) grissom may have allowed sara to keep her job following the events of episode 05x13 “nesting dolls” because they were already by that time sleeping together. for another thing, he also probably wrongly assumes, on the sara side of things, she’s got grissom henpecked (see his comments to her about knowing where grissom is at all times during their interview scene), as well as that she is interested in grissom for his status. he undoubtedly fundamentally misunderstands the nature of their relationship not only due to his own misogyny and poor romantic instincts—remember, this man has been divorced three times—but also because he doesn’t have a good grasp on who grissom and sara are as people. he ultimately believes their reasons for keeping their relationship a secret are a lot tawdrier than in reality is the case. going forward, i believe he is maybe somewhat smug, because now he has proof “st. grissom” isn’t ethically unimpeachable. for all grissom’s talk about the sanctity of the profession (see episode 01x07 “blood drops”), at the end of the day, he—in ecklie’s view—seduced his much-younger subordinate and carried on a torrid office affair with her for however many years, putting the lab’s reputation in jeopardy for his own selfish reasons. his actions prove he’s human after all, and i think ecklie takes a little bit of personal satisfaction in that “tarnish” on grissom’s character. he also probably, like many others at the lab, carries with him some poorly-concealed fascination about grissom and sara’s relationship dynamics themselves, curious as to what their dynamic is like, as well as what the truth might be concerning the actual timeline for their relationship.
conclusion
suffice it to say, while the show largely glosses over the issue of how grissom and sara’s teammates react to their coming out, i think reactions to both them as a couple and the fact of their deception probably run the gamut from placid acceptance to bitter resentment to deep curiosity to tacit professional disapproval. though generally the earlier seasons of the show do a better job at characterization than the later ones do, this area is one where i think the early writers really dropped the ball, as they not only failed to tell us any stories about how the members of team graveyard react to this potentially earth-shattering news but also, even more bizarrely, tried to pretend there were never any stories to tell to begin with, making out like everyone on the team would respond in the exact same way and on the exact same timescale to both grissom and sara’s relationship and their years-long efforts to cover it up (i.e., by being neutrally accepting of the whole matter by the time grissom and sara returned to work in october). despite having foreshadowed some potential disgruntlement from various team members at the news, they never followed through. my guess is they maybe opted not to due to the looming wga writers’ strike—by october 2007, they may have already realized there was a good chance their season would end up truncated (which did eventually happen)—and jorja fox’s imminent departure from the show causing them to feel as if they “didn’t have the (narrative) runway” to explore any kind of complicated reactions from the team, for fear of not being able to then resolve them before sara was off the show/by season’s end. however, regardless of their reason for not “pulling the trigger” (to speak in term’s of chekhov’s gun), i still feel like opportunity was a missed one, as having such a uniform nonreaction from the team has the probably unintended result of making grissom and sara look silly for ever fearing there would perhaps be negative consequences to them coming out to begin with. if everyone was ultimately just going to be fine with their relationship and even the administration could have in theory accommodated them had they just been forthcoming up front, then why did they ever go through all the trouble of lying to everyone and going to such great lengths to conceal their relationship from their coworkers for over two years? shouldn’t they have had some sense this situation would just be a “slap on the wrist before a pat on the back” kind of deal? but i digress. as should be clear from all of my speculation in this post, i do think not everyone would react in the same way to the big gsr reveal, and i wish we could have seen some more exploration of their various reactions in canon. there was a lot of wasted narrative potential there, i think. anyway, thanks for the question! please feel welcome to send another any time.
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eoin-mcgonigal · 2 months ago
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mota rewatch with subtitles in my native language (swedish), something i have never done before . spoilers™ below
sometimes the translation of the lines are soooo incredibly good like wahhhh
sometimes i cringe because ???! not that swedish is embarrassing, but it's vulnerable to me. i struggle with expressing myself in general, and especially in swedish because how personal it is to use that language.
so this rewatch made me feel soooo many more things than this show usually does. because swedish. i love these boys sm and they came so much closer than they usually do because of subtitles in my mother tongue
every of bucky's gay lines to buck? in swedish? screams into a pillow i love them so much
also fun to think of the swedish equivalent to all the references to places in the us the characters refer to
but ok lets leave the language part behind
bucky's way to change between his personal self (that is partially a performance though) and his leader role. when he starts barking orders 👉👈🥺🫣 im on my knees and so is buck . he can be a good dom and he'll ask buck if he can knock him up because with buck by his side he wouldnt mind having kids. anyway
goes insane about curtbuckybuck btw. it's like buck knows bucky loves him and wants him, he's too repressed to accept his queerness, so bucky finds curt. the two of them love each other, but curt isn't buck, though he's the best bucky can find. and buck and curt respect and care for each other, despite both of them know that bucky is with curt because he can't have buck (though, if he could he would have them both). and buck knows he can't give bucky what he wants, so he has to keep curt alive for bucky's sake, even though it means he partially loses bucky to someone else. but that's how it has to be, he can't. be queer.
and that's another reason why episode two where the buckies work together to make sure curt doesn't get shot down is so good
ALSO the relationship between pilot and co-pilot. pilot and bombardier. trusting another man with your ship. homoeroticism much!!!!
the superstition is. insane actually, i'm obsessed with it.
100% that buck and bucky are raised religious but lose their faith individually from each other and when they arrive in the uk during the war, superstition is all they have left.
everyone says it but bucky's waist.... he's. a unit!!!!! while buck is just an itty bitty ken doll
done with my buckies thoughts, over to ROSIE
my beloved!!!! i wanma write about his grief losing nash so bad. too bad i can't write i hate it here
him humming the chant when theyre the only ones left. darling boyyy!!!!
im also Obsessed with the entire arc he has in episode 6 at the flak house. rejecting he's not ok, trying to find meaning in their stay at the house, solidifying his role as a pilot and a leader after the talk with the doctor. being responsible for the rhythm of the whole band.....
then when he's going to get back into the plane, he's scared!!! he actually is!! he's feeling something, he's not fine! and that's such a huge step for him!!! and then he finds the beat, he gets back into the drum solo a week after he had to stop and he just goes!!!!
rosie's arc in ep 4-6 is Insanely good. that's my fav character right there!!!!!!
the chant starts playing and the cut over to bucky in the stalag... come On one of the best scene transitions. obsessed
bucky seeing his boys, his and buck's kids!!!! crank!!! murph!!!!
only to be reunited with his husband, the mother to his kids!!!!! HE SMILES SO WIDELY HES SO RELIEVED HIS OTHER HALF MADE IT . THAT BUCK'S ALIVE WAHHHH
sorry guys but. this show. i hold it in my hands
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yanderes-galore · 2 years ago
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RomanticYandere!Primis!Tank Dempsey (Cod: Zombies) with Fem!Asocial!Reader? He thinks she’s definitely playing hard to get, but turns out she’s just isn’t interested at all and refuses to socially interact too long with anyone at all. Asocial reader will obviously be useful to the group of course, keeping the zombies off them and is surprisingly helpful with other stuff, but that’s about it and she’ll just casually keep to herself.
Alright, sure, I'll try my best with this :)
Yandere! Primis! Tank Dempsey with Asocial! Darling
Pairing: Romantic
Possible Trigger Warnings: Female Darling, Obsession, Slightly overbearing yandere, Slight manipulation, Dubious relationship, Brief mentions of forced advances, Delusional behavior.
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At first I think Dempsey wouldn't understand entirely at first
Primis Dempsey is calmer and less aggressive than his Ultimis self so he tries to be understanding.
He even wonders if he came off too strong when he tried to flirt or compliment you.
Yeah, he probably wants to believe you're playing hard to get.
He gives you little nicknames, often calling you "Doll" affectionately or "Honey".
It does make him wonder why you're so brief when talking to him.
He may try harder with his advances, trying not to be too touchy but still comes off as overly affectionate.
When you keep turning him down he has to take a moment to think.
Dempsey wonders if it's just him until he actually takes a moment to look around.
You're useful to the team and manage to defend them with your life, but you never talk much to any of them.
It's not just him.
Hell, he actually feels a little bad for assuming you were just playing hard to get.
His intention was never to force his little lady into anything-
Dempsey tries to understand your situation even if it conflicts with his own feelings.
Dempsey wants nothing more than to flirt and make you his girl but struggles with it as he wants to be considerate.
He apologizes for assuming you were just teasing him and tries to lay off a bit.
This doesn't mean he's not interested, however.
Dempsey is still waiting for a chance to make his darling his.
He just needs to try a different approach in order to secure you.
Dempsey will settle for just being your friend and not forcing you into any sort of social situation for now.
In fact he tries to win over your attention by distracting others if you don't wish to talk fo him.
Fine by him, he gets a little jealous around others anyways.
For the most part in his obsession, Dempsey would try to understand how an Asocial! darling works so he can better know you.
He shoves his more intense romantic feelings into a dormant state within him until he knows you're ready.
Then he'll be your man and sweep you off your feet when you open yourself up to him more.
Then there's the other way to write this where he just continues his advances in typical yandere fashion... something more suiting of Ultimis Dempsey but probably what the requester meant.
In that case Dempsey may play a more oblivious role to your situation.
Instead of trying to understand your rejection he lays in intentions on thick.
In this version of events he's heavy on the flirting and affection.
He comments on your appearance, he suggests and implies little jokes or flirty comments, he really shows what he wants with you.
He'd truly believe you are playing hard to get if he was more delusional.
Even with your refusal he just won't get it.
In this case you'd have to make it clear he needs to stop.
After that then he'll try to lay off.
Overall, Dempsey may struggle to understand your cues one way or another.
He'll try to wait until you're ready...
But Dempsey only has so much patience... hopefully you decide to accept his feelings soon before he tries anything.
"Come on, baby... don't tease me like this!"
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dreamsoflennox · 1 year ago
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a little piece on barbie's representation
i really liked the way that queer representation was done in barbie because it was subtle. i also like it when media goes over-the-top with its representation and being absolutely unapologetic about it, but the way that barbie had its representation there for those who needed it without making it feel so bombastic was really great for me.
as an asexual person, seeing that barbie herself was lightly aroace-coded was incredibly nice to see, especially because barbie has come to be the basis for heteronormativity in women throughout the years. they did also make some jokes about how not only barbie herself but the other barbies and kens dont have genetalia, which feels like a bit of trans representation as well. though not as strong as some of the other bits and pieces in the movie, it was really cool to see a joke about how the characters are all dolls become a genuine character device. i have also seen some lesbian shipping of barbie herself online, and while i think it would be a bad thing for them to be canonized i must admit that they are quite cute lol
heres where the sentiments about barbie's representation start to become a little more opinionated: allan and doctor barbie. ive seen a lot of people say allan is gay-coded, nonbinary-coded, etc. and that those associated with those labels see a lot in him. and i totally agree, allan ABSOLUTELY gives off those vibes. but ive also heard a lot of complaints about how he wasnt *confirmed* to be one or multiple of those things, or at least suggestions for future media about him having a boyfriend and things like that. i dont know about anyone else, but i really like how allan's identity wasnt confirmed throughout the movie. it seems like a part of his character to just exist, do his thing, and be himself. he doesnt have to be "non-binary" or "gay" or even in a relationship at all. he can just be allan.
doctor barbie is a bit more of an interesting story to me because she brings in a lot more discourse from the outside world. for those uninformed, the actor who plays doctor barbie is Hari Neff, a trans woman. obviously cool in its own right, because trans people dont often get cast in roles of big-budget movies. but what i think is really cool is that it has absolutely NOTHING to do with her character or the plot of the movie itself. she is not "trans barbie." shes a doctor. shes a barbie. shes a woman. there is no large statement to be had about it, no active push to say that trans women are women. because they already said it, just by her being there. and that is all the representation i need.
having character's identities worn on their sleeves can be awesome, and i love seeing media where those characters are actively proud about their queerness. but i specifically really liked the way barbie's representation just... existed. i could see myself in these characters *because* they are so complex, so individual, and yet they dont make it obvious every facet of their existence. which is a part of what the movie stands for i think. it isnt "blonde aroace woman" "gay nonbinary person" and "trans doctor." its barbie. its allan. these characters are people WITH identities, not identities with characters built around them. and exactly that is why i love barbie so much.
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madraleen · 10 months ago
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Black Butler - Canon Eps Rewatch Commentary (part of season 1, season 3, book of murder & book of the atlantic) (*spoilers for the manga up until now, ch.210)
season 1 -*twirls hair* hiiiii sebastiaaaaan... teeheee -YUUKI KAJI WE MEET AGAIN! finny. -oof lizzie. i miss her -i'm very used to jun fukuyama as blue exorcist yukio and bungo stray dog ango, and hearing his grell voice makes me go "?!?!" -"this person is a hard worker," "that person is a hard worker," lies, all lies, have you seen how hard sebastian is working for his meal -oh dude, i don't remember how we met soma anymore, so seeing him this serious is so odd -is soma really like that? i remember him with more oomph, more pizazz, more... MORE from the manga :(
season 3 -heh, ep1 doing The Most to give us a who's-who -it's... it's the circus troupe... :") -miyano mamoru, miyano mamoru -SNAAAAAAAAAKEEEEEE -doll. -was i conditioned from the beginning to like dazai's voice acting? because i remember liking joker the first time i watched s3. i remember he stood out. was it a predestined path -YES! YES THAT'S SOMA, YES! YES!! -i have a problem and his name is miyano mamoru. HE'S SO ENTERTAINING -yes yes, this is the ridiculousness and playfulness i expect from black butler's sillier moments, thank you! -doll... if i catch you, doll... -WAAAAIT, first there's ciel on vincent's left and then there's ciel on vincent's right, IT WAS THERE ALL ALONGGGG -THERE ARE LITERALLY TWO CHILDREN, HOW DID I NOT NOTICE BEFORE THE REVEAL. the way despicable kelvin's eyes track the two children, the way it SEEMS like ciel's just doing circles around his father and has mood swings, that is insane omg -i love the phantomhive staff. and how ironic, isn't it, that they stay and protect ciel for the same reason the circus troupe stays with and protects their father -this is one of my favorite arcs, if not the favorite. i actually feel bad for the antagonists. they're criminals, but they're more complex than that. they have reason, conviction, a backstory, relationships. they're the villains, but they weren't bad people, only desperate. like, seeing beast's face when she's about to be blown up, seeing joker cry, it actually breaks my heart. also my heart breaks for ciel and his ptsd. and the fact that he chooses to let the children burn, it's so character-defining. i really do love this arc. a painful arc. -seeing ciel laughing at the workhouse, sebastian should be like "my meal is turning gourmet" -yeah, gimme a minute. i need a minute after this, i'm sad.
book of murder -you know what i love? yes, first and foremost sebastian and ciel are demon and prey. but that aside, as they are now, in their roles of master and butler, they're such a team. such comrades. -ciel about to give the performance of his lifetime over "dead" sebastian. and it's a damn good performance, i never tire of it. it hurts. and the staff's reactions are genuine anyway, and they're lovely -ciel to snake is like, "if you stay in the mansion, that's the fastest way to meet joker and the others again," and it's like, yes, yes it is, but not in the way you think -.-
book of the atlantic -dear lizzie. "sure, a man with snakes works for my fiance, no biggie." doesn't bat an eyelash. i miss lizzie. -oh man, seeing ciel protecting lizzie and lizzie trusting him knowing what comes next in the manga makes me tear up a little -i love lizzie. she makes me tear up, her story is so. -how ironic was it that it wasn't even our ciel that told lizzie strong women are scary? -i love this arc too -yes, yes, this, let's not forget that ciel and sebastian are funny together, and sebastian loves teasing ciel, and ciel loves to give sebastian a hard time. -undertaker, if villain why so pretty! -tsk, i love ciel and sebastian. -alright. i'm all ready for the new season :)
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pitxroxas · 2 years ago
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your brain is very large i need to know all of your shukasa thoughts and how shukasa works for uhh reasons (<- definitely might not draw them maybe)
ouuuu ouuuu i went to bed early but i cccould not Stop Thinking about this Ask.
Shukasa could honestly go two ways, it could either be a relationship of comfort or healing. With the fic I just posted though— mostly on the path of healing.
Funny enough, Shukasa emerged from when I first started playing enstars (ENGstars if anyone asks) and I think either 2 weeks in or so, I got Shu’s initial and just shoved Tsukasa and Shu in the same team and my brain took that as a terribly good idea for a ship.
Digressing, Shukasa can take the form of comfort. In this “Kingdoms” AU i desperately want to write but i literally have 0 motivation to write it at all, Tsukasa struggles with loss and sudden responsibility, as he is crowned as King of his very own country— whether he’s ready for or not. Whereas to Shu, who struggles with regret and loss, maybe even grief, either formed by the loss of the King or… Mika. Anyways, shoving the two together and making them slowly find solace in each other has probably been my favorite part of the ship.
ho hum what else… OH YEAH!! THEY SING AMAZINGLY WELL TOGETHER!! Just listen to Endless Vide hollly shiit. I’m also not sure if they have a duet in Heart Aid but if they did im down so hard and bad for it.
As I was writing I realized I also love their motifs with their roles in their units. Like, a young King who was lovingly crowned by his very own Kingdom, and plans to rebuild it to it’s upmost glory. Whereas to Shu— a puppeteer who is slowly letting go of his strings. Not because he feels that they are useless, no, it’s because his very own doll is becoming a real boy— and has no need for those strings once more. And… combining that, you get that relationship from a King and his right hand man— possibly a Royal Advisor. (<- totally not a ref towards my Kingdoms AU hahahah)
And then finally to tie this all together with a lopsided bow:
Shu’s and Tsukasa’s designs just????? fuuwaaahh??? How their hair colors compliment each other, how the eye shapes if anything, tell a story to their own. How they just compliment each other. Shu’s summer clothes and Kasa’s summer clothes follow the same color pattern, almost as if Tsukasa got his clothes knowing that, “maybe this will catch his eye…”
anyways thats all from me waaah tysm rose for asking illyyyyy <333
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