#blank slate feminism

[whinlatter]

sorry i’m the anon from the other day who came to gush all over beasts and i’m back to do more bc i forgot to gush all over the way you write women and about their friendships!!! especially from a series that is narrated by a boy and also just generally dismisses girls as giggly and frivolous far too often, the way you have redefined not only their internal strength but the strength of female friendship! hermione and ginny, the unit they have going on w hannah and luna (the spice girls!!!), the inclusion of hannah abbott who shines for me in your series, pavarti’s speech for lavender at the greyback trial, probs so much more i can’t even think of right now. sorry i know i’m rambling so bad but it’s so flawlessly executed in beasts sometimes it makes me want to cry and i thought you should know!

mate thank you for this fr, that means the world. i am not the first person to point out that female characters, and particularly female friendships, are criminally undeserved in canon, nor the first to try and correct some of that in a fic, but it’s an honour to contribute to the cause and something i care about trying to get right. in chapters 10 and 11 one of the very dumb reasons i wanted scenes with girls getting changed (so the girls before the party, and ginny and cho before their surprise heart for heart) was because i wanted moments of intimacy and vulnerability between female characters, but also because i wanted the reader at this point in the fic to see that the girls are literally changing, trying on new versions of themselves, figuring out who they’re going to be in the next years of their life.

on the female friendships thing — it’s funny because i have found writing beasts that the moments between the girls have been the scenes that have basically written themselves or that have sprung up really organically and easier than when writing other dynamics. because it’s like, oh yeah girls hanging out and having a laugh! and looking after each other! and also bickering and properly arguing and growing up together! i benefit from that every day of my life and have done as long as i can remember and cannot imagine having grown up without it. and i really can’t imagine how i would even begin write a story about young woman coming of age without that being a part of her life (and if you were to write a story about a young woman whose life lacked it, surely the absence of it or the search for it would have to be a plot point). you’re completely right that ofc the series is narrated by a teenage boy, but it seems mad to me for a series that has such a large ensemble cast with meaningful arcs that there are no female friendships meaningfully and substantially depicted on the page (including ones dealing with conflict, or falling apart - it doesn’t always need to be positive, just an arc). jkr’s feminism, which is as bizarre as it is hateful, is so enraging for this (and many other) reasons: she pats herself on the back for her view that women (and exclusively cis women) are better than men, so they don’t need to grow, and for some reason don’t need arcs beyond their relationships to men (ginny changing over her adolescence is a literal major plot necessity and yet entire thing happens off stage?)

got the soapbox out SORRY but basically thank you forever i really REALLY appreciate this. thank god hannah abbott is enough of a blank slate to throw in a 10/10 cutie into scenes to make everyone be a bit nicer to each other!

[gojuo]

First Aegon son of Ellia was erased so he could not overshadow Daenaerys and now Aegon II is almost erased and with less role than a supporting characters so he won't overshadow Maegora. (Both with higher claims,better suited to rule and more nuanced and complex than Dany and Rhae Rhae)

Sapochnik aims this kind of spoiled princess Targaryen's bland self insert which are the only allowed to only riding dragons,the only one allowed to being called "queens" whose crimes and murders are always glossed over.

im bored. im so bored of these type of characters. i just dont care about them. there is nothing interesting about this type of (whitewashed) self-righteous woman. not that i do not enjoy the characteristic of self-righteousness in characters (because God knows i do), it's when this clearly negatively-defined trait is being pushed as something positive by the narrative/unlearned writers that i have an intense disgust for. how illiterate do you have to be to try to turn a story about Targaryen delusions of grandeur and god-complexes and class divide and the dragon eating its own tail to a story where the main focus (and dare i say, the only focus) is 21st century reading of (negative) intersectional feminism?

daenerys i can understand. she has more to her name and person than only self-righteousness pushed by the writers as something good, but rhaenyra? especially rhaenyra in the show? she is literally nothing but a blank slate with little to no personality traits which we're meant to interpret as positive courtesy of the writers' push but are by definition, not. at least in the book i could sympathize with rhaenyra's deep pain over her miscarriage and the death of lucerys which led her to incapacity. in the show? idgaf. let that bland self-insert rot.

[crypt1c-gho3t]

Portal and Feminism

okay because it was 12 years of portal 2 yesterday I thought my first official post should be my thoughts on feminism in the saga 

the main problem is that a lot of the times in the media violence against women is used as a plot device to make a character stronger. it’s not empowering to be a sexually assaulted and/or abused but the media often makes these themes a “phoenix” moment for women.

and while it is satisfying to see women stick it to their abusers, This portrayal often boils women down to their only defining trait being their sexuality and the only real “motivation” for women to be powerful is having that sexuality threatened.  

This abuse also enforces the point that you have to become more masculine and drop feminine traits in order to become stronger and more powerful.

women do not need to go through abuse in order to be considered powerful, being a woman is powerful enough. being feminine is being strong

This is where portal comes into play. I’ll start with what i’m sure you all guessed i was going to bring up first but in the actual games and mods every main playable character is a female (portal 1& 2 and portal mel stories) or doesn’t have a specific gender to interpret( portal 2 multi player & portal reloaded).

in addition to this one of the main “villains” is also a woman. in the first game she is given no redeeming qualities but gets “redeemed” anyways showing fleshed out characters with interesting character development and even though this development get erased (sry caroline) it’s GLaDOS’s choice and not somebody else taking it away or making that choice for her

most importantly the women in this game are influential. The classic comparison of “can this character be replaced by a lampshade” doesn’t apply to the game. whether she’s a villain or a playable character everything is biased off the decisions women make and their influence.

and while there are male side characters(the cores) the portal women are never shown to be dependent on them for coming up with solutions to problems or saving them. In fact the cores are very rarely shown to do anything that isn’t driven by what the portal women do.

the fact the chell isn’t pointed out to be a woman, she is mainly a blank slate except from the player views her through portals, is also a prime example of this feminism because it isn’t calling attention to the different ways that men and women act it forces you to focus on not the gender of the character but of the actual gameplay

now i know nothing about game development and in the mod mel stories it may have been simpler to keep the main character a female when designing. but the choice to keep mel as an olympian and how they chose to portray female olympian instead of a male shows the dedication to having powerful woman “outside” the game and inside the game meaning that she was already strong but was made even stronger by what she went through in aperture.

and yes, they do go through hardships and are exposed to many challenges yet they are never shown to be abused or sexually assaulted. they have their “phoenix” moments anyway

anyways thanks for reading and another great example of this is Ashoka Tano and her journey!

[prettyeyes-pettylies]

Breakdown of an Anti Adoption post I might someday write:

adoption bad

1. feminism

- forced pregnancies & births

- religious themes

2. class issue/ capitalism

- birth family is too poor to raise a child

- adopters crowdfund to pay 50.000 neither the child or first family is going to see. who tf pockets this. literally buying babies

- supply & demand (child trafficking, child kidnapping, illegal adoptions)

3. infertility

- expectations that can't be met because surprisingly children are not just a blank slate they can colour in

4. colonialism/ white saviour complex

- "to get a better life", "poor third world country babies", "aren't you grateful (we saved you)?"

- loss of language and culture, racism

5. actually adopted

- in utero/ trauma of abandonment

- more racism

- no medical history

- I owe my birth mother everything, but I would not be able to recognise her in sea of faces. I do not know if she's still alive.

>> this isn't about whether someone is a good parent or not. it'd about how fucked up this entire system is. and how people just don't care.

[lakesbian]

for the ask game: sy and jessie's relationship

ok finally finishing the reverse unpopular opinion ask game. you all know of the horrors we'll skip reiterating the horrors. i don't think it's pound for pound one of wildbow's better relationships because twig just doesn't have the same richness of character writing as worm or whatever but the early bits of it did fucking Get me. like the character dynamic of "new blank-slate consciousness inside the body of this boy's dead best friend who died of the broken heart he gave him" & "the still actively grieving boy" is just . THAT'S INSANE. THAT'S NUTS. and for a while there it's actually executed in such an interesting way. i seriously think it's one of the most fucked up + evil things wildbow has ever done to any of his characters (positive). it's a feminism loss that jessie's general motives and reasoning for being The Way She Is and doing The Things She Does aren't ever elaborated on outside of framing them as centralized around sy so like. that's a complaint i have about that segment of twig. but the little bits of development in their relationship during the lugh arc where theyre alternating between AGONIZING interactions and it becoming increasingly clear that despite everything jessie is going to be the person who's there with sy at rock bottom and no one else.......yeagh .

[angelinthefire]

Since the Academy Awards haven't happened yet and it's still mildly relevant to talk about the Barbie movie, I've been thinking about it. And yeah, Greta Gerwig was snubbed for best director. She totally should have been nominated for that - and not for best screenplay. imo the screenplay was actually bad.

Obviously, a movie like this was always going to be a challenge to write. Hemmed-in by corporate interests, unable to go too cynical or too sincere. Etc. My first issue with the screenplay is that the feminism is extremely basic. Like, not 101-basic. Derogatory-basic. Like it was always going to be some level of wimpy liberal feminism, given the constraints of corporate interests. So I'm not sure if there was an opportunity for it to have been better politically. Maybe not.

But then there's other problems.

Gloria is the actual protagonist, but the audience doesn't really get to know her on a meaningful level. That on its own wouldn't necessarily be a flaw, if Barbie had a strong character arc. But she doesn't. Barbie isn't driven by internal conflict, she's driven by stuff happening to her, passively. And it's not even interesting to see how she reacts, because she was such a total blank slate to begin with. Ken is actually the character with the strongest internal conflict, and the strongest arc. There's people who make fun of the fact that Ken seems to get an inordinate amount of attention, but he does have the most objectively compelling arc. That is kind of a problem for a movie about Barbie.

Having a narrator was a terrible choice. She does seem to be the product of not trusting the audience, explaining things unnecessarily. The most egregious instance being towards the end when Barbie has that crying breakdown says that she's not good enough and ugly or whatever, and then the narrator comes in to say something about Margot Robbie being a bad casting choice for that scene. And it's like? Isn't that the whole point of the scene? That even someone who looks like Margot Robbie can feel that way? So why undermine the point?

This comes back to the first problem, of the politics being basic, and corporate constraints. Probably that's the same reason why the movie feels quite confused about what it's trying to say. Besides sexism bad. And the movie doesn't really bring anything to the table in that respect. To the extent that I could almost say that the movie doesn't try to justify it's own existence.

And finally: there were three points when the movie could have ended. Almost like she had brainstormed different conclusions for the movie, and then couldn't pick just one.

So yeah, not a good screenplay imo.

[davnittbraes]

A Masterlist, Of Sorts

Nothing fancy, just my silly little fictions all in one place. I’m not an artist but I’ll pretty this thing up eventually. For now, just putting things here so I’m forced to look at them until I feel guilty enough to finish the WIPS.

All are reader inserts with female and AFAB reader, no y/n and a physically blank slate (if you notice a physical descriptor for the reader in any of my works and it’s not noted in the warnings, please let me know!)

Taglist - if you wanted to be added, for any specific fic or for everything, just let me know via DM, comment, reblog, unhinged rambling or whatever way you want, I’m not picky.

The World Is Light, Embodied - series, complete

Unsuspecting Liberty - series, WIP

Snippet

A Study in Feminism - one shot, complete

Snippet

A Piece of Whimsy - series, WIP

Snippet

WIP Game Snippet

I’m Here Universe

I’m Here

Affirmations - Part One | Part Two | Part Three

[pblovesjelly]

Hiii hiii sorry for the long message I wanna rant about mouthwashing and you're the first person I see that even agrees the game has issues.

I think it frustrates me deeply because it could have easily been much better. Replace all the Curly sequences with Anya's point of view and the game immediately becomes much more interesting. But no. Anya is instead just there, and what happens to her is just a catalyst for the rest of the story. It's really annoying because even in terms of story telling she's just a passive narrative tool. She is there to flesh out the men, everything that happens to her is there because we need to see then men's reactions. She doesn't exist as a character.

I've seen people try to argue that's because we play as Jimmy, but that sounds like an excuse for bad story writing. I think imo that the game really just seems to be out of its depth. The devs didn't know what they were talking about but wanted to add those themes to seem deep or have shock value, and so they talked about it in a superficial way. The game really tries to imply it's saying something deeper than it actually is and so the fans roll with it. It frustrated me that the game makes you play as a rapist when it can't even say the word "rape". It treats rape as this vague theoretical concept you can hint at to make your game more deep without actually making the victim of their story a person. I really think playing as both the victim and the aggressor could have been compelling and been used to say a lot of things. But instead we play as two guys and the most the game has to offer is showing that men cover each other's actions.

The public reaction puzzled me too btw. It just gets so much praise when honestly it's not really different from a run of the mill horror game. I really hate that everybody is justifying drawing Anya in love with Curly and with her rape baby honestly. Or that suddenly they're all OK with using feminist terms but it's to remove accountability from the men in the story (like "guys it's the patriarchy that turned Jimmy into a rapist and curly into an enabler they're not bad people it's the system that's bad...."). Just idk the whole topic is blergh and it was cool to see someone being critical of it.

God I feel you because experiencing the game all I could think is "but do we actually know about Anya past her role on this ship". It honestly drives me up the wall how lonely and isolated Anya is, and its just a result of careless writing. Its also frustrating to see elements of the game written well, yet they can't even spare giving Anya a voice beyond tragic plot device. I see fans scrap around saying she has personality but Anya suffers from being the audience's blank slate that people are super eager to fill out and its so...exhausting to see in 2024. There's so many ways they could've just done something to make Anya fleshed out as much as the others...or even that stupid corporate horse. But here we are, watching Curly and Jimmy being bros to the end.

I can't even speak about the fans because just thinking about all the CurlyxAnya or, god forbid Good Guy Jimmy AUs, make me crash out. I just think about how the reactions of the fans does stem from how the writers handled Anya's rape as plot device and I can't help but feel resentful. I'm find with admitting when games just aren't for me but god does this game suffer from "(bad) Horror hates Women" syndrome. I understand the team is indie, I make indie games and its not easy and anyone can turn anything in the game against you but damn is it ass to see this game get written as a masterwork of feminism.

[bottomvalerius]

okay finished season 2 of Bridgerton with my sister on FaceTime last night and my thoughts in no particular order are:

It needs. To be. Gayer. I’m honestly stunned they didn’t lean into the very obvious queer cording of Benedict and Eloise from season 1? They had very obvious hints and nudges that are just completely retconned in season 2; Benedict being “an artist” (to me) read as a way to have him be queer, so them playing it very straight by having Anthony pay to get him into art school, where he then just starts fucking women was very weird to me lmfao

Also Eloise is so painfully a lesbian and it genuinely hurts me to see them give her a male love interest lmao I think it’s slightly impactful that at least there was some sort of class divide that speaks to her resentment for higher society, but it feels extremely shallow to have her “in” to feminism be a man & for it effectively amount to nothing but a “oh you dumb rich girl” in the end

I will say in that vein, it is always VERY refreshing when all of the Bridgertons are reminded that they are incredibly privileged and naive by their staff/people they meet outside of the ton lmao

I think the Featheringtons are an interesting look into how to make compelling, truly morally grey female characters, particularly Portia. She’s honestly one of my favorite characters because she’s absolutely morally bankrupt but also she HAD to be. I think the common thread of “what must (rich, white) women do in a patriarchal society to live and thrive” and it’s 99% plotting, scheming, and lying lmfao but her daughters are her center!! And I think that’s so interesting as well.

In the same vein, Lady Danbury & The Queen are also my fave characters and I will be watching the Queen Charlotte spin off prior to season 3 because she really is. That Girl. She cares about 4 things: Diamonds, Coke, Gossip, and LOVE!!!!

I know the writers could not really do much with this, but Simon was so so so missed this season particularly when it came to Anthony. Their narratives are so similar to one another and it would have been more impactful for Simon to give Anthony advice/to yell at him for being an idiot than it was Daphne (who also I feel downgraded from last season but we also don’t get her interiority like we did with season 1. She still ate the girls up when needed lmao)

I was not expecting to like Edwina as much as I did, but you really see in the end that not only is she Kate’s sister, you can really see that Kate RAISED her with the way she was gobbling these bitches up left and right lmfao

Kate getting the Jane Austin “you have committed a wrong—now experience a near death experience to absolve you of your sins & get a blank slate” was the only way to make that ending as satisfying as it was lmao

I really only cared about her and Anthony this season; the other plot points were much too convoluted and while I enjoyed the ending of the season, I did not always enjoy the journey to get there lmfao

I don’t get the Colin hype. Penelope should be finger banging Eloise. Anyway.

[goblins-riddles-or-frocks]

the ask about female characters made me think of how sometimes even if the story is supposed to be about a female character, about her experiences and journey, it will still be her male love interest that ends up becoming the main focus and she will be gradually sidelined by the narrative cough TVD Elena Gilbert cough ACOTAR Feyre Archeron cough. It's just one of the most frustrating things because there's this female character who has so much story left that can be explored, so much potential and all of it wasted for the man. I'm not saying male characters shouldn't be given attention, I just hate it when it's done at the cost of the female characters.

ACOTAR is such an egregious case of monumentally sexist values being dressed up as girlboss feminism. Rhysand and Tamlin have no functional differences at the end of the day, but Rhysand single handedly invented feminism while Tamlin is the scum of the earth ig. It really doesn’t matter how often Rhysand says “it’s your choice” when he keeps stripping Feyre of choices! In ACOTAR it’s feminist apparently to only have as much power as a man gives you, to be completely beholden to him, and never blink an eye when he keeps. fucking. lying and never admits any wrong doing ever.

And now every other fantasy romance is doing it too! SJM owes me financial compensation. It really proves your point too, that every single romantasy entry features a transparent Rhysand expy, but then the FMC is wildly variable, and often times just a blank slate. Though, Feyre herself is barely recognizable in her initial traits and personality from as early as book three!

TVD, I frankly remember a little less, but it's frustrating because a consistent trait of the books is that LJ Smith was very invested in her female characters' narrative integrity and autonomy! So Elena adaptationally being turned into such a nothing character who only exists to revolve around her boyfriends is such a disservice.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Jon Haidt: As I said, if you sacralize your political ideology's heroes, you cannot think straight, and this is where we are in the sciences.

It's obvious that if you're a social conservative, Evangelical, young Earther creationist, you probably shouldn't be going into a PhD program in biology or geology, okay. It's just going to be really hard for you to deal with reality if you deny evolution and the age of the Earth, okay. You shouldn't go into American history if you say America is the greatest country on Earth and it simply cannot have committed war crimes. We just don't do that. I mean that's-- that should be a disqualification.

But what about on the left? Suppose you had students coming in who deny that IQ matters. Not anymore, but for decades it's just very uncomfortable, because there are race differences in IQ, the general view is IQ is a bad test, it doesn't measure, it doesn't matter, we can't allow that IQ matters. Because IQ is heritable, we can't allow that heritability matters. Environment has to be everything. The left has always believed that environment can overcome everything else so, can you do social science if you deny heritability, you think everything is environment when it isn't?

The left is full of sex difference deniers. Hormones are fine for other animals, hormones affect behavior in other animals, but how sexist of you to suggest that male and female differences could in any way be due to the fact that they exposed to different hormones prenatally? That just is ruled out of bounds. Now it's not that the left denies evolution. That's fine for other animals. But evolutionary psychology? Well, that's almost sexist and racist. No, evolution didn't shape human beings.

And last, the biggest area in my field is the study of stereotypes and prejudice. And we're trying-- it's an important social problem but we try to solve it while not allowing anybody to even mention the largest cause of stereotypes and prejudice. There is a small research literature showing that the reason why people hold stereotypes is because they're accurate. Most stereotypes do correspond to some measurable, observable fact about the environment. Now, there are often misinterpretations, the stereotype often lingers long after the reality changes, so I'm not saying the stereotypes are perfectly accurate. But I'm saying a big part of the story is that people are really good at detecting differences between groups. We're intuitive Baysians. We pick up frequencies. You can't stop the brain from doing this. So, suppose you had a whole group of people coming into social psychology who were the equivalent of young Earth creationists, who say, "I'm going to study stereotyping and prejudice, but I'm going to just rule in advance that there are no differences between groups. And now I'm going to study what's left." That's where we are.

So, my point is that all groups value the truth, okay. Every ideological group believes it values the truth. All groups hold something sacred. And if you hold something sacred then, as I've said, no trade-offs, no nuance. That means that your sacred values are going to conflict with the truth. And when that happens, all groups are the same. They throw truth under the bus and they go with their sacred values. And that's where we are.

So, I hope I've shown you that political homogeneity, now that we no longer have conservatives in some academic Fields, it's a problem. It's bad for our science, we need to clean up our act. We talk a lot about the value of diversity; intellectual diversity is the most important kind of diversity there could be.

--

Full lecture: 2013 Boyarsky Lecture by Jonathan Haidt, PhD

==

What he's describing is faith. Beliefs based on faith. If you think everything is "a social construct" - such as that it's fine for monkeys to choose sex-typical toys and engage in sex-typical activities, but "I aIn'T nO mOnKeY!!1!" - even if you're an atheist, you're dealing in faith.

[bweepp]

Why did you remove the part of your website that talked about influences and manifestos? Am I stupid and its just somewhere else now?

It’s true, I removed those from my site, along with most things… I wanted to return to some kind of blank slate. Maybe it’s a destructive era? At any rate, my philosophy of play has evolved a lot since I discovered those things, and I felt it was perhaps lacking more recent expression on my part.

Anyway, here's what was up there:

10 Years with Hayao Miyazaki

video game feminization hypnosis by princess

Interview with Bill Wurtz

The Future of Capitalism by Yanis Varoufakis

Business Cosplay by Thecatamites

Talk on Paintings for the Cat Dimension by David Surman

Rejecta Manifesto by Pietro Righi Riva

On Trying to Make Idea-Rich Games by Jonathan Blow

Videogames and the Spirit of Capitalism by Paolo Pedercini

Fuck Videogames by Darius Kazemi

[therobishow]

The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley, was recommended to me by one of my English teachers, who was also at one point my theater teacher. She said it was a feminist retelling of the myths involving Moran and King Arthur. So, I am so sorry to say that it is just…rubbish.

Okay, some of the cultural and fantasy elements are interesting. There is genuinely cool world building done tying everything together, whether that be Avalon itself or Camelot.

But...the characters.

Morgan, or Morgaine, at first acts as a blank slate of sorts. She's interested in the culture that surrounds her, and it's through her eyes that we get to learn about the world. That said, she takes a face-heel turn which is just...bizzare. It's like the plot is going "oh wait, we forgot to make Morgan EVIL so she does things people would consider EVIL" even though the plot doesn't necessarily demand it??? There's this one point where she basically goes "actually you know what doing incest with my brother is fine actually. I should have acted like a girlfriend to him after that and manipulated him to do my bidding" and. girl????? And it feels like the whole way the book is trying to justify it? Like, yeah in the original myth there's a sense of betrayal. But not like this?

And Gwen. Gwenhwyfar. Ohhhh my god. Her introduction is kinda neat, since it gives some perspective on how mentally ill women would have been treated back then. It quickly becomes annoying though. She's a religious fanatic. A Christian religious fanatic. Also she threatens to cheat on Arthur in order to bear a child. Also she's having an affair with Galahad. Gwen just...always has something to complain about. And it's not a good experience to read.

Arthur. Hmmm. He's portrayed as somewhat wishy-washy, constantly being pulled back and forth between the opinions of Gwen and Morgaine. Like...this is such a bad thing for a king to be. But he's honestly somewhat chill?

Plus there are just...so. many. unnecessary. sex. scenes. I would have given the author a bag of caramels for half of them to be fade to black moments.

The author is very clearly pro-pagan and anti-christian. I fall somewhat in line with that, not anti-christian but I can understand why someone would be. That said. The author kind of rubs the faults of christianity in the reader's face. Repeatedly. It's not subtle.

Overall, I have read a lot of retellings of different myths. This might just be my least favourite retelling of a myth ever.

Oh god The Mists of Avalon.....

I read this in middle school. It was a mistake. This book is so far up its own ass. I've read a lot of pretentious books, but this one nearly gets the top spot (nothing could beat out The Dream of Perpetual Motion or literally anything by Donna Tartt).

Morgaine becoming evil definitely felt like Bradley suddenly remembered that she was a villain in the legend and hastily shoved it in. She could have easily not made her evil, and just gone with the idea that history twisted the facts. That would have suited the character better, as well as playing into the "feminist" themes since history does often villianize women who don't deserve it.

And I put "feminist" in quotes because this book is like the definition of White Feminism.

Also, Marion Zimmer Bradley was a horrific person. Not joking or exaggerating here, she was pure evil. Epstein levels of evil. Humbert Humbert evil. Look it up if you want to, but be warned that it is genuinely awful and reading about it is pretty harrowing. There's a reason I chose those specific comparisons.

[theskyexists]

Watched poor things

Really enjoyed the sets, the (slight) surrealism, the use of colour, the cgi, the costuming and mark ruffalo's performance. MaxMcandles and Godwin were also exactly right. Emma Stone also did a good job of course. It was I suppose so perfect that I didn't find it remarkable.

Liked how the story took its time. Liked the classicness to her development as a human being - from psychopathy to hedonism to philosophy on self-improvement to empathy to societal improvement (didn't see much of it, so I suppose that said something) to science. Liked the poor and dying babies and her not being able to effect anything because the money was taken by the middleman. Liked the feminism. Liked how she beats paternalism with love. Rakishness and toxicity with emotional independence. The patriarchy with a bullet and chloroform and surgery.

Up until the second part I felt that the treatment of sex in it was....well. hm. It's clearly a feminist and sex positive statement. That a woman/ child of blank slate will simply seek out pleasure and that sex is not inherently degrading like polite society would have you believe. speak plainly about penises! Etc. it's matter of fact, nudity, sex and so to speak 'tasteful'. It actually does a good job of desensitising the viewer to nudity and sex as shocking subjects. Though what the hell she did with that apple I have no clue.

But. I got sick of it. By the end of the whole whoring arc I was like. Damn. This film has been at least half an hour of Emma Stone doing sex scenes and an hour and a half of Emma Stone talking about and dealing with sex. This is the story of a creation becoming a human being. This archetypical story and it's so continuously about sex. Can there really not be a goddamn story about a woman, an ARCHTYPICAL STORY, without it being about sex all. The. Time. I cannot say: this would never have been the case if it had been about a baby grafted into a man's body. Because that is many of the points in the film, and i agree with them. But i am so sick of that. And I am sick of how the film didn't try anything else. And because it is an ARCHTYPICAL story, and there are no other female sexualities really on screen... The story necessitated a super high libido from Bella and for her to be beautiful and it does interesting things with that. But I also resent that. Resent that choice, resent how singular the depiction of a woman's sexuality and resultant statements on it are etc. but still I agree with the statements. But I hate and despise how endlessly sexual(ised) my (archtypical) reflections are.

When she stood still underneath the balcony listening to that woman sing and play the guitar in Lisbon I thought: ah. Art. An essential human pursuit. And the first woman she's ever actually noticed.

But nothing came of it.

[uwusillygirl]

Oh wow!!! Very surprised to hear you didn't like Poor Things... it was so popular in my circle of friends. I would really love to hear your opinions on it and what made you dislike it?

i actually didn't have an answer for why i hated it so much for the first few days after i watched it! it was a really visceral and immediate dislike.

but after some time i think i ultimately am dissatisfied with the end point messaging. the general thought experiment of the film is that bella is a blank slate of a woman, running on "base desire" without years worth of socialization and subjugation, and could end up anywhere. but she ends up in places tidily aligned with such easy to swallow feminism and womanhood.

coincidentally, all of the life lessons she learns and the paths she takes are exactly what the men around her suggest, sketch out for her, and most approve of. the most obvious is her returning home to daddy and deciding to live in his estate with the clean and palatable job of a doctor, aligning with a certain lib feminism that rocks no boat whatsoever (except, i suppose, in suggesting that a sex worker could one day be a doctor). i didn't find that as offensive as her arc with mark ruffalo, which i feel can be most accurately summed up in the way she wants to test out excess in the form of those pastries, he tells her she can't, and then she tries and immediately pukes. all these men are "right" ultimately, even if they're blubbering fools or whatever. (save for the husband, who is a third act add and i don't totally see his purpose)

she's also, coincidentally, the prettiest whore in the brothel, the most palatable fuck, etc. etc. just a bunch of layered up fantasies.

and finally, a lesbian nitpick, but she waits that long to get head from a girl? as a totally blank slate of a person? suspect...

i think some of my disappointment came from how much i love lanthimos' grasp on sex and gender in THE FAVOURITE. this felt like such a one-dimensional, goober, patriarchal thought experiment after that.

ALSO! it's not to say that any of her decisions are bad, they're just so easy. nothing radical, nothing subversive. married to a doctor who uses less tongue with her is the wildest, most liberated thing we could think of.

[chargetheintruder]

Oh, by the way. :D

I finally sprung for it and saw the movie. The _Barbie_ movie. I know, six months-plus later and all that. And . . . . it's an excellent movie. It isn't the best thing ever, but it's hardly as "middling" or "mediocre" as some would make it out to be. It's a comedy is what it is. It is essentially exactly what the narrator tells you it's going to be: take the doll's eye view of feminism and "burst their bubble." And it only seems weird because it's been a while since we've had a comedic farce in movie theaters. Meaning: the idea is to be over-the-top ridiculous enough that you roll with it and let yourself smile and laugh at the strangeness of it all.

The only reason why I didn't get to this movie sooner was because it IS also more than a bit musical. I dislike musicals, but that's just me talking, I've seen a few too many of them, that's all. And in truth, even the musical parts make sense in terms of plot eventually. And so does The Rant (mild spoiler: it's the anti-brainwashing tool, use the cognitive dissonance of how it's a contradiction to BE in, *ahem* that situation in Kendom, how it's a contradiction to even BE a woman sometimes,and *bam*, their minds are back).

Point is: this is the movie we deserved. :) That and . . . it's somewhat in-character for the doll characters to BE airheads, if you think about it much. They're supposed to be blank slates, and suggestible. That's the whole point, the person playing with the toys brings their mind and imagination to the table. The movie is a bit fast-paced with some of the explanations, but it's all in there, it's all explained.

Good movie is good, and it is somewhat shameful that the Golden Globes felt a need to have some walking haterade with a Star Trek Reject name for a host show up and NOT be as funny as the "you're a fascist" line. Yes, it's a First World Problem, but still, who even was that guy, and how are people going to remember that guy's name? =)))) I sure don't.

Okay, I'm sorry I went on a bit, I didn't mean to man-splain or anything. But I did say I was going to get to the movie eventually and well, this is a good solid film, very well done.