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huhhugh · 2 years ago

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Ok, so I see alot of horseshit in the fucking notes of this post and let me just say, although this movie was quite well executed, ultimately the story is that ken was neglected and ignored by literally everyone around him and snapped before getting told to shut up and go back being stomped on, let's elaborate shall we?

In the beginning of the movie it is explicitly stated that "ken only has a good day when Barbie looks at him" and you could, if this were the real world, say that he was basing his life around Barbie to an unhealthy degree, but this isn't set in the real world it's set in Barbieland, a place where ken was made to serve functionally the same purpose as a tote bag, he is an accessory to Barbie by design so I would say he is basing his life around her as much as he was made to, but that she doesn't care about him, at all, not even as a friend (because I think alot of people see this as ken being mad about friendzoning) but the thing is you would not treat friends like she treats ken, for instance take a second to flip the roles of Barbie and ken throughout the movie, and suddenly it's super misogynist, and of course you could say that we only have one day to look at in Barbieland but the things we see are called out to be normal if not constant so I would say it's fair to call it a representative sample, ken is ignored and belittled constantly when he just wants to hang out with someone who, supposedly, enjoys his company (y'know like friends do) but Barbie is constantly patronising to him at every turn she thinks he is lesser and you see it in her every action, and as the movie moves into the real world segment we see her getting harassed instantly which, would not happen realistically because it isn't socially acceptable anymore and you would get in trouble for it, at most you would get quiet leering which while uncomfortable I can say as a woman myself doesn't even make top fucking 25 of my biggest problems that I experience, and frankly if being leered at is your biggest problem I'm putting you into one of two boxes either

A. Leering is triggering to you due to past sexual assault

B. Leering is a big problem simply because it makes you uncomfortable

And if it's A, valid you're chill, but if it's B, go fuck yourself if it makes you scared get stronger I'm sick and fucking tired of people just waiting to be helped, people don't help unless it's convenient, it's the sad truth so if you want something done, if you want to feel protected, protect. Your. Self. And yes this may not work for everyone and yes, I am, functionally telling you to get PTSD and move on but you don't get to look at me, an autistic trans woman with PTSD and DID and say people making creepy comments is The Big Problem Of Society, but I digress. Now let's move forwards a bit to where they get back and ken rules barbieland so lemme start with mojo dojo Casa house is in fact fun to say and I'm sorry you hate having a good time and he does in fact look neat and I am, once again, sorry you hate having a good time, and he specifically says something to the affect of (although I forget the specific wording) 'oh it sucks when it's you huh' because this is how ken was treated, he was the one begging for attention just to feel like he had worth and he was the one who is heavily implied to NOT HAVE A FUCKING HOUSE in the Barbie dream world, and when the Barbie's are being un-brainwashed they talk about various societal expectations (that I will add aren't exclusive to women but I'll elaborate in a bit) that they 'have' to confirm to, but the thing is yeah, it sucks and you end up on the outs but you can in fact break them and live, and I know this because I think all societal norms can go die in a fucking hole regardless of who they're about, if you abide by societal norms that hurt you that is decision you are making and I'm not gonna say that anyone but you is taking your agency. And the societal expectations for men are equally strict, men are (if they want to be considered 'good') expected to be emotionally available but not clingy, and open but not expecting help, supportive and feminist but not subservient, strong but not angry, and there are others but they slip my mind, social norms hurt everyone and, like any good ruling class seek to make everyone think it is everyone else's faults so they can't take a second to take down the actual architect of their suffering, and let me also say the ending where he was crying, if you listen you can hear the Barbie's making sounds of disgust as he goes to cry which let me just say, GO FUCK YOURSELVES, do you how goddamned often the message that '''boys don't cry''' is perpetuated??? FUCKING CONSTANTLY. And then Barbie is so goddamned condescending the whole time she's talking to him up there, its fucking nausea inducing, once again, take one goddamned second to switch the genders in this movie you goddamned blind assholes, and this isn't even touching on how, when you take the way they treat/talk about weird Barbie combined with how they treat/talk about ken shows that they just want conformity, the Barbie's are absolutely the fucking villains of the movie, and the moral the movie perpetuates is that there will always be an abusive power structure but hey, at least you can be top dog now.

In summary ken deserves better than he got, the only good Barbie is weird Barbie, and the true villain everywhere is gender essentialism and idealized normalcy being used to crush those who don't fit.

note: this take actually adresses some sensitive topics, including some that i didn't know how to tag, but may require content warnings - so just be careful

also, i had to post this early because for some reason tumblr kept deleting this specific post every time it was queued or saved as a draft

HOT TAKE TOURNAMENT

TOURNAMENT OVERTIME #182

Submission 527

the Barbie movie (2023) was horrible

[SUBMITTED JUSTIFICATION UNDER THE CUT - PLEASE READ]

Propaganda is encouraged!

Also, remember to reblog your favourite polls for exposure!

Submitted justification:

unfortunately this is a dead serious take of mine. that movie was a story of a horrible tragedy portrayed as justice. and the subtle violent radfem undertones were deeply uncomfortable. my reasons for disliking it are very complicated and personal, so I'm going to try and keep this brief and try to avoid saying anything too charged.

i understand liking it— it was a very fun movie! the way they did the practical effects and props and setting were all genius and very cool!

but.. the way they handled Ken and his struggles felt extremely minimizing, cruel, and violent. I've *been* the reject kid before. I *know* what that's like. I've been humiliated and degraded before for being too much, for having ADHD, for being autistic, for wanting to be included in friend groups that didn't want me.

ken's story is a *tragedy* of a person who dared to ask for love and inclusion, who dared to ask over and over until the only option left to him was to be made into a villain for it. and instead of realizing that maybe, just maybe, this was a cry for help... that maybe, this was the last straw in a long long long line of instances of horribly cruel social bullying and humiliation.... that maybe Ken never wanted to hurt anyone, that maybe he just wanted everyone to see how much he was hurting, that maybe he never wanted power or violence, but empathy instead.... instead of considering any of at, the movie has Barbie and her friends *laugh* at his suffering, and watch him on the brink of tears with the grim satisfaction of a bully that got away with it.

i came away from this movie thinking, what should Ken have done better to avoid this? what could he have done to be truly accepted? what was the "good" choice, if what he actually chose was actually so evil?

and the answer is, nothing. he was spending his entire life serving and worshipping a group that wanted him quiet, polite, and dead. from personal experience, this is the kind of friend group that would probably find it at best a personal irritant, if he had attempted suicide.

this movie was so hurtful. it really felt like they said "people like you are better off dead or behaving like perfect mindless dolls, because when you try to get what you want, you just bother the people around you." conform or else.

i know people get icky when people claim that misandry exists, but.... consider the plot of this same movie, if ken had been one of barbie's girl friends. or if ken had been a trans girl. or hell, even a trans girl egg. i just see people only praising this movie and... no one seems to acknowledge how unnecessarily, brutally cruel they were to Ken, and how little empathy he received both from the general audience and from the writers and Barbie herself.

#barbie movie #hatepost #seriously fuck this movie #i could go on but i wont #the problem is and always has been normalcy #if youve got something against me reblog this post and say it

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questionablecuttlefish · 1 month ago

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Okay Fine Let's Talk Timebomb and Season Two.

I do want to talk about this because I have a Lot of thoughts and feelings and it has been building up and building up, not only based on what's happening in other social spaces, but what people keep bringing into mine despite my best efforts to avoid it.

This isn't any kind of hatepost, I don't think I could hate Ekko or the ship if I tried, I just want to explain my very mixed feelings about the whole thing.

My likely-to-be-very unpopular take on Season Two's Timebomb romance is that it left me feeling uneasy and uncomfortable.

Not with what was in the show itself, I feel like that was perfect. Powder and Ekko sold me completely. They made me feel things. I even liked how Ekko and Jinx's story ended. I think it was beautiful, poignant, perfect...

...until.

'The Discourse' since, the way the fan culture has exploded around it, and particularly some of the creators' commentary on it, has made me sour on the whole thing.

It feels like I'm suddenly part of an increasingly small subset of people who saw what they did with S2 Timebomb and applied our media literacy to what was on our screens and got something very different to what the fandom consensus seems to be.

For context, I semi-shipped TB before this. Though I've always been Team Lightcannon, I had a lot of respect for timebomb, I understood it, I had read a few very good fics, I was just in the space of "Jinx has hurt Ekko too much for him to ever fully forgive her for murdering his friends, they might come to an understanding, and there will always be a silent undercurrent of love beneath the hurt, they may fight together on the same side again someday, but whatever bond they had as kids is broken and they can't go back, and both know it."

I respected, and still do, people who shipped them romantically, but I've always seen them as a broken childhood friendship being a much more interesting dynamic, and being hot for each other lessening that to an extent and not really adding anything to it.

All of his interactions with Jinx in season one are violent; she murders five Firelights point-blank in front of him in her intro scene, and Ekko reacts particularly upset to the pink-haired girl, Eve or Eva, whom Jinx shoots in the back. It's clear this isn't even the first time she's fought them. We don't know how many of Ekko's found family she's put on the Memorial Wall or how close he was with any of them.

Ekko is clearly convinced that "Powder" is gone, and the person who replaced her is a cold-blooded killer who can't be reasoned with. Leading to the Bridge confrontation, and this:

This is the first time Ekko catches a glimpse of "Powder", yes, but more importantly, this is the first moment he recognizes Jinx's humanity. He's hurting her, killing her, and he can't do it.

....and she knows he can't do it.

So, to save him the weight, she pulls a grenade, with the intent to kill them both, foreshadowing quite neatly where Ekko/Jinx (but not Ekko/Powder) is going to go in S2.

Fast forwarding from Season One here, Ekko disappears for 2/3rds of the second season, completely offscreen.

When we catch up with him he's woken up in the S2E7 AU; the Powder Timeline.

Here's where I start to get a little confused by the fandom take. Because, you know, I've seen enough Star Trek and Stargate and Supernatural and Batman the Animated Series and Quantum Leap to know exactly what this is.

This is the 'bottle episode', this is the 'Perfect World' trope, where the protagonists find themselves in an alternate universe - or trapped in a dream - or they've died or think they've died and this is their 'heaven' - where they have everything they ever wanted.

This is familiar storytelling and E2 follows a familiar pattern, the protagonist struggles to adapt to the surreal new circumstances, they are seduced by the illusion, particularly falling in love with someone in the Perfect World, but eventually, they start noticing something incongruous - something isn't quite right - (In this case, it's Vi's death, and Powder holding back her genius and hiding her grief to be support girl for others) - that reveals the Perfect World to be not as perfect as it seems.

And the hero has to choose to go home, because he realizes that this isn't real, it doesn't belong to him, he doesn't belong here.

Which is exactly what happens with Ekko in E7.

Which brings is to AU!Powder and Jinx.

And here's where I really start to struggle with the seeming consensus that the romance between Ekko/Powder automatically leads to Ekko/Jinx, like you can just transfer the one to the other.

I'm sorry, fam, I thought my basic media literacy was telling me that this girl:

Is not the same person as this girl:

....and I am not getting into any debate about "Jinx" vs "Powder" as identities within our current Jinx. I'm talking about Powder in the E7 AU.

AU!Powder is literally a different human being.

She may have been the same person up until the explosion in Jayce's laboratory, but from that fork in the timeline, she becomes a FUNDAMENTALLY different person to Jinx, shaped by different experiences, different relationships, different life events.

Powder's physicality with Ekko, as you can see in those GIFs, the casual intimacy, the clear affection, the way she touches him, looks at him, her awareness of him in her space, is so utterly opposite to the way Jinx interacts with him that if anything, it nailed home to me how savagely absent this kind of feeling is from his relationship with Jinx.

Powder loves Ekko. She leans on him, snuggles into him, touches his hands, dances with him, kisses him.

Jinx cares so little about him she barely makes eye contact and would casually kill him without blinking.

And I thought that was the point.

I really thought that was the whole point of E7. Being in the perfect world, getting his perfect love story with his perfect Powder, the girl Jinx could have been, but can never be, drove home for Ekko that his feelings for Jinx, both romantic and resentful, were tangled up in his illusions of "Powder", and it took living those illusions as a physical reality for Ekko to see his mistake.

To be true to himself, and true to her, Ekko had to let that go and go home.

To face his world's Jinx, and be there for her in her darkest moment, even if it meant giving up the love he'd found with Powder, a love that belonged to a different Ekko, for someone who could never love him back.

To me that was Ekko's most heroic moment, an act of selfless sacrifice. But that's what it was - a sacrifice.

Meanwhile, Season Two Jinx is not aware of any of this. The last time she saw Ekko was on the bridge where she nearly killed him, and for all we know she might have thought she succeeded.

She never talks about, thinks about, refers to, or even has scribble-nightmares about Ekko, not even once.

Season Two Jinx is, instead, having a love story of her own.

And Isha was and is a PUZZLE to me. Because she's more plot device than character, she isn't necessary except as a way to give Jinx a villain-to-hero arc and a way to reconnect to her humanity.

But she could have been Ekko.

If they really, really wanted us to have Timebomb Canon, instead of confining the entire arc to a bottle episode in an alternate timeline with a literally, physically different girl, they could easily have given all of Isha's considerable screentime to an Ekko and Jinx romance.

I'm sure Amanda Overton would have been on board with that. But that's not what we got. It's almost like reading two different fix-it-fanfics for the same character, put into the same show and running in parallel.

I'm not crazy, this is what's happening for Ekko in s2;

While this is happening for Jinx at the same time.

But Jinx's love story, too, ends with a tragic sacrifice.

And here's where the two stories finally intersect.

When Jinx is in her darkest moment, her absolute rock bottom, Ekko comes back into her life, a miracle, impossible, a Boy Savior.

But she's still ready to kill him.

Because she didn't dance with Ekko. She didn't invent a time machine with him. She didn't sit and watch the city lights with him and share a tender kiss and a heartfelt gift.

That was Powder.

Jinx and Ekko are resuming right where they left off on the bridge, right back to "I pull this pin and we both blow up".

They've both loved and lost, but their stories are absolutely unknown to each other. Ekko Doesn't Know About Isha. Jinx Doesn't Know About Powder.

It's only when Jinx (a genius, a reminder here) sees monkeys of her own design inside the Z-drive - recognizes her own handiwork, but knows SHE didn't make those - that, I think, sheer curiosity stirs her out of her darkness.

She has to know what that was about. She hesitates, just long enough for Ekko to speak. And, though offscreen, he tells her his story, and maybe she tells him hers.

And it's enough, just enough, to set Jinx back on her Redemption Arc, to become the hero Isha always saw in her.

Maybe even the hero Vi and Ekko saw in her, too. Her new costume is full of references to all of the people in her life who never gave up on her.

(side note, the yellow stars and crowns puzzle me, though - they're quite prominent, but who are THEY for? Isha? Maybe? Yellow isn't a color associated with anyone in Jinx's life, but that crown's identical to the one she scribbled on Demacia in Fortiche's map, is... this a very subtle future Lightcannon tease? Nah. I'm not that crazy.)

I mean her costume is also almost literally both a Fishbones and a Fiddlesticks cosplay, with her hair as Fiddle's tongue, so take from that what you will.

It's clear Jinx and Ekko war painted each other for the battle, but the Firelights are also similarly painted up, and (with Linke even confirming this) there really wasn't time to develop anything else, guys.

And I am, honestly, fundamentally angry at anyone who would suggest that, even if she'd been in any space to want it, our boy Ekko, one of the most genuinely good men in recent fiction let alone in Arcane, would take advantage of a girl he just talked out of suicide.

Moving on. During the battle, Ekko is knocked out and lying not far from Jinx. She doesn't even look at him, she leaps up to defend Vi instead.

And that's their final interaction on the show.

Instead of returning to Ekko, Jinx chooses one final act of sacrifice.

Ekko's final shot of the show is this.

He's sitting, alone, burning a mourning paper, where he sat with AU!Powder - where he and AU!Powder kissed - a place that has no significance to himself and Jinx, whatsoever.

It's little wonder who he's thinking about here, and which name he's burning on that paper. The girl he truly loved and lost.

For all he knows, Jinx is dead. But it's not only her he's mourning.

Or maybe he does know, or suspect, she's alive.

But either way, he's making one final act of sacrifice, too, with that paper burning into the breeze.

He's letting her go.

He's choosing his own story.

He's staying where he belongs.

Jinx may have become a symbol of the revolution, but it's Ekko who is, and always will be, the true hero of Zaun.

And this is Jinx's final shot.

Because let's face it, we all know she's on that airship.

She's "breaking the cycle". She's "walking away". She knows that Jinx has left too many scars on the people she still loves - on Vi, on Ekko, on the cities of Piltover and Zaun - for her to pick up the pieces.

She knows that if she's going to find out what "Jinx" might stand for now, she has to go very far away from everything and everyone. She has to leave it all behind and find something new.

Maybe even someone new?

And ultimately, that's why I feel the Timebomb we got was perfect, they shouldn't touch it, they shouldn't try to force it to be "Endgame", not because it couldn't have worked, but because that's the opposite of the story they told.

For the rest of my analysis, lol, this got a bit long but i have FEELINGS.

Now, I'm not saying I wouldn't buy Jinx and Ekko as a love story if they had actually told that love story. But they didn't. It had no screen time. They have less interactions in S2, maybe even in both seasons added up, than Vi and Loris. Let that sink in a bit.

We know it's Amanda's favorite ship, so she may have intended more, and may even actually give us all more at some point, but please, dear god, let's stop pretending they fucked or kissed or even held hands offscreen.

That's honestly a bit insulting to both of these characters, to insist hell or high water that this very important milestone in their relationship happened, but they just didn't even bother to depict it. That an entire love story (because it would be a whole one, remember, Ekko and Powder had a romance but Jinx did not experience any of that, she and Ekko are back at Square One) would just be cut for time.

They both deserve better than that.

Let's stop pretending there was some grand, horny, Forever Love story with 60 minutes of cut footage, all of it timebomb content, somehow left on the cutting room floor of an animated show where every single frame has to be deliberately hand painted.

Because if in some insane universe they had written, storyboarded, voice acted and animated an entire 60 minute additional timebomb storyline and then cut it from the show, that would itself be a searing indictment of the quality of the storytelling in that imagined arc, but that's not what happened. Anyone who knows how filmmaking works would shoot this one down, and the showrunners already have, so let's leave it behind.

I know Timebomb blew up hard, and I get it, but what we got on the screen is not confirmation that there is any relationship at all between Ekko and Current Timeline Jinx. If anything, Ekko and Powder's beautiful romance only highlighted the tragic 'never to be' of Ekko and Jinx.

And it's absolutely fine to look at the art book, look at the creator comments, and imagine what could have been. Draw the fan art, write the fanfic, imagine the what-ifs and the fix-its, those are all beautiful and valid expressions and deserve their space.

But don't go insisting it's "the canon" and going after the shippers of other ships for these characters as "not canon" or somehow offensive for existing, especially toward one particular ship that, yes, has been around much longer than timebomb, is uncool.

I think this is mostly people who are New From Arcane, it's Baby's First Ship and they don't know how to share space. The timebomb fans I knew pre-season two didn't do this, at least not often enough for me to notice or care.

But I'll just say to them, if a Timebomb follow up happens and they actually tell a good love story for Ekko and Jinx, I will accept it. Grudgingly, because I think Lux/Jinx is an untold, untapped story full of incredible character dynamics that would complete Jinx's story in ways that as much as I love Ekko, he's too tied to her past, he can't.

But I love Ekko, and I love Jinx, and I will accept it.

But I'll also say to them, if the followup doesn't eventuate, if things take a turn they don't expect, if Jinx's airship is heading for Demacia, maybe they'll have to experience just a taste of what it's been like for Lightcannon fans for ten long years.

And maybe that's healthy. Maybe that's okay. Maybe our endgames don't need to be 'canon' to have value and that's a lesson we should learn.

Maybe there's a new Light on her horizon, and that's okay too. Maybe Ekko won't be alone forever. Don't forget - until Arcane - his story had nothing to do with Jinx, and there was a whole lot of it.

More with the Firelights, maybe bring in the original Lost Children of Zaun from his old stories, his inventions, his parents, all could yet be in his future. Who knows? He might find a way back to AU!Powder - or she might rebuild what they worked on together, and come to him, no matter what butterfly effects that could set in motion...

But if Jinx is heading for a Light on her horizon, maybe Ekko might Explore some of his possibilities. Find a new Spark of connection. Just saying. Jinx isn't his only ship, either 😌

And it is okay for people to move on, and let go. Maybe, for two characters whose themes are letting go of the past, living in the moment, redefining their identities, and moving on, that's what their story should be.

#jinx #ekko #timebomb #league of legends #arcane jinx #arcane netflix #arcane #lol jinx #lux #lightcannon #discourse #fan theories #not a hatepost #shipping #ezko #ezreal #zeri

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