#queer barbies though

[wyvernspirit]

Happy lesbian week take this objectively right Barbie movie protagonist(s) Gay Tierlist ♥️🧡🤍💗💜

[just-a-silly-little-gay]

dudes I went and saw Barbie (for the second time, first with my family and then friends)

and I swear I love it so much

the (multiple) choreographed dance numbers?

ESPECIALLY THE WOMDERFUL I'M JUST KEN ONE THAT WAS THE HIGHLIGHT OF MY LIFE

Sasha calling Barbie a fascist was actually hilarious i don't care what you say

Ken 100% being a horse girl?? unexpected but very much appreciated

also. the outfits?? my god they're amazing

Barbie realizing that beauty is also old women being happy and that life is beautiful was just a great scene too

WEIRD BARBIE BEING THE BEST CHARACTER

also ruth showing her what being human is like?? i cried?? unnecessary to make me cry if you ask me (jokes aside i loved that part)

depression barbie with anxiety and ocd being sold separately literally made my entire theatre laugh i loved it

A L L E N

also Allen is nonbinary and I will not be taking criticism

I need Ken's kenough sweatshirt. now.

the last scene made my entire day (twice)

that is all. everyone go see it. now.

[factual-flittermouse]

Being queer is seeing a post saying “Movie night! We’re watching Legally Blonde because we are secure in our masculinity” and realizing that you actually have fragile masculinity (likely tied to being queer and the stigmas that accompany that) and that your fragile masculinity is why you feel embarrassed to like a musical that’s so aggressively pink… or not, idk

[redshoes-blues]

The book Dream is holding in the leaked set photo (at Wanda’s grave??) appears to be The Marvelous Land of Oz, which is the sequel to The Wizard of Oz

[phsycodesi]

I’ve woken up at 3 am and remembered that I shipped barbie in all her movies with her counter part/best friend in that movie.

Also, anyone remember Raquelle from life in the dream house? I shipped barbie with her more than I shipped the blonde with Ken.

I no longer have doubts that I’m queer. Any time I forget that I’m gonna come back and look at this post.

But seriously tho, Barbie had so much sexual tension with like half the girls she shared main character status with, that I forgot all and any relationships she might have had with other boys XD

Also yes I watched Barbie movies and liked them. Personal favorite: the crystal fairies and butterfly fairies one. That one was so queer coded in my 8 year old eyes I swear-

I need to go to sleep wtf-

[cicada-dyke]

I’ve been planning my Barbie outfit for months and I was gonna patch some hearts on a flaired pair of jeans and we were all gonna dress up but I haven’t been feeling like myself the past week so I don’t have the motivation nor the materials and one of the girls in the group just asked to bring her homophobic boyfriend along so I guess shorts and a band t shirt it is

[non-un-topo]

Lord help me I’ve gotten nothing done on my assignments today but I am outlining a fic that’s more like a bloody novel

[genderfreakxx]

Totally not thinking about how the last day of class means the last day that I’ll probably ever see this super cool dude ever again

Totally not thinking about it. Don’t mind the tags on this post I’m super duper not thinking about it lol

[whim-prone-pirate]

THIS IS WHAT IM SAYING !!! the finales for 11, 12, 13, and 15 were breathtaking. this was not.

mac wrestled with god and faith itself to come to terms with a feeling he'd been pushing down for decades. he sends out desperate cries for help to god over and over, and he never gets any answers.

the gang learns that dennis has what is essentially another gang and he leaves them (it's later revealed that each member of the gang thought they had a bigger part in his goodbye than they did, it affected them mentally no matter how hard they deny it).

mac, even after all the self actualization and learning he's had to do to stop hating himself, still can't be comfortable in who he is because of a man who never loved him and never will love him; he practiced a performance for months to show this man who he is, to help him learn to love his son, and he couldn't make it halfway through—but frank did. frank is who matters.

charlie's two wants in life are the love of the waitress and the love of his dad. he thinks he has that, and it falls apart spectacularly—nevertheless, he carries out the dying wish of his father: to be honored the way the kelly men always have been. charlie tries and tries and he drags that fucking body bag up a mountain in ireland, through heat and rain, losing his friends along the way, but he has to realize that this man in the body bag wasn't there for the little boy he made. charlie now knows his dad, and he might be worse off.

and then there's dennis takes a mental health day. bad. bad bad bad bad. cute for a midseason break-the-formula thing, like making dennis reynolds a murderer or being frank, probably like a 7.9 to 8.2 out of 10 on imdb, but a finale ?? especially with this history ??? we KNOW they can do grand emotional 22 minute sitcom episodes so why did they stop? especially when mac finds his pride got CRAZY press?? there was opportunity and they did not use it when they could have done something monumental.

sidebar, sunny has a history of hit or miss formula breaking. charlie work is the top episode of the entire show. being frank was so-so. i do think that dtamhd was OKAY. but by virtue of it being a finale, the fact that the plot was just okay and it being entirely unrelated to any previous episode tanks it's value. it doesn't mean anything to us because it should have been more.

I think why I’m mad is I just really hope they don’t consider this their Dennis episode like MFHP was considered Macs and the Gang carried a body up a mountain was Charlie’s like I think that’s why I hated this one so much because this was not a dennis catharsis moment and we better actually get one I’m on my hands and knees I’m BEGGING

This is just like… Reddit dennis this isn’t big feelings dennis give me big feelings breakdown dennis

[isaacthedruid]

(spoilers for the Barbie movie)

As a trans-masc non-binary person, I saw myself in Allan. I’m a boy but not a Ken, I'm Ken-like but not quite.

Allan’s role of being awkward, unsure and a little out of his element but still trying to help the Barbies through the chaos and events caused by the Kens, is how I feel as a trans-masc person who is still trying to advocate for women and discuss the issues they face.

I don't identify as a woman anymore but I still grew up as a girl, I lived as a young woman for 14 years, and people continue to be misogynistic towards me when they think I am one-- customers will talk to my male coworkers instead of me, when I’m the person with the answers

I wasn’t expecting to see myself, in terms of gender, in the character often described as Ken’s boyfriend, though it is said in a more playful, joking way rather than any attempt at representation. I’m gay and this version of Allan is definitely queer as well. Yet, that’s a separate story which has already been written, here’s an excellent article about that. [LINK]

Allan isn’t Ken, and he isn’t Barbie either. Allan is simply Allan, an idea with both masc and femme traits. He doesn’t fit into anything specific, he just is. Allan can wear Ken’s clothes but also Barbie’s pink jumpsuit-- but when he's not doing that undercover mission with the Barbies, we only ever see him wearing his own clothes. A set of clothes worn only by him, that iconic striped outfit that is signature to the real Allan doll.

Additionally, notice the horse patch on the front of his shirt, he never changed his clothes unlike the rest of the Kens when they discovered the patriarchy and a new version of masculinity, a toxic and destructive one. Allan only added something to his clothes to “fit in” or act as if he did, but he hated what the Kens did to Barbieland. He also wasn't brainwashed and never acted upon those destructive abilities that were laid out for him. He could've just joined the Kens and broke stuff and drank copious amounts of "brewskis" but he didn't.

Allan is different and it's constantly stated, "there's only one Allan" in this world of Kens (and Barbies).

I will never be Ken nor will I ever be a Barbie again, I’m not happy in either. I’ve tried both, neither is my style (or title). I wear Ken’s clothes as well as Barbie’s, and sometimes I wear Allan’s.

But, I like Allan’s clothes best, they fit me well.

[killrisma]

Okay so I watched the Barbie movie today and just WOW! There is so much to unpack, every choice felt intentional and it was just altogether wonderful. But one thing I wanted to touch on was Allan and how I think he represented growing up queer, especially for trans & non-binary youth.

Allan was always out of place and uncomfortable in every scene he was in, he didn’t fit in with the Kens or the Barbies, he was just Allan. Allan was the only Allan that existed, he even questions why he’s the only one in his opening scene. Another thing I noticed is that they paralleled a lot of Kens pining for Barbie back onto Allan with his longing glances and attempts to get Kens attention. He also doesn’t fit when the Kens create their whole “Kendom” patriarchy. Even though he should be benefiting from it, he’s not, because even though he’s not Barbie, he’s also not Ken.

[thanergetic-hyperlinks]

Tamsyn Muir's writing beyond The Locked Tomb

Y'all, turns out there's lots of imagery and themes in TLT that Muir was already playing with in her earlier fiction. A lot of it is easily available online, in which case I'll link to it. (The short stories that aren't can also be easily read if googled, to be quite honest—that's how I read The Deepwater Bride and Why the Mermaids Left Boralus). • The House That Made the Sixteen Loops of Time (2011)

5K. Short sort-of-cozy romance (?) with (you guessed it) a time travel loop. Explores a very queer potential relationship. CamPal enjoyers might find a similar sweetness.

• The Magician's Apprentice (2012, Lightspeed Magazine)

5K. This is the one that stopped me dead on my tracks. It features an older, male mentor figure called John (a “very ordinary man” with “dark eyes”) who introduces the young, female main character to magic that has a terrible cost—and to literature such as Lolita. This excellent post by @familyabolisher does an incredible job of analyzing the very deliberate intertextual links between TLT and Lolita.

• The Woman in the Hill (2015, Lightspeed Magazine, originally for Dreams From the Witch House anthology of Lovecraftian horror by women)

4K. Possibly my favorite! It's a straightforward Lovecraftian horror, centered on the image of the woman (is it human though?) trapped in an unnatural pool inside a cursed cave. Chain imagery too. It does something different from Alecto, mind, but you can see links, ways of playing with facets of a strong central image. It's fun to consider how reliable the two narrators are. Here's an analysis and afterthought from Reactor Mag.

• Chew (2013) 4K. Zombie abuse and cannibalistic revenge story ft. an uncanny woman revenant, told from the eyes of a traumatized German boy. I was strongly reminded of Harrow's conversations with the Body. Tamsyn gave an interview on the themes and her intentions. Interesting to read in light of Alecto, I think, although I don't think she's going the same route in TLT: “the idea of post-war rebuilding connecting to rebuilding the body of the zombie; a Frankenstein who once rebuilt doesn’t act as planned or desired. […] I love cannibalism […] it’s innately spiritual […] any afterlife she goes to, he’s going too.”

• Apothecia (2014, published on Tumblr and tapas.io)

Short webcomic where an alien monster tries to corrupt the ruthless human girl who holds it captive. Musings on responsibility and murder, mention of child abuse. The alien's speech patterns remind me of a Resurrection Beast. You get wonderful dialogue like “Murder is a profession. Job. Employment, you tiny leg dog. There you are, walking along. Walk walk walk. Now you are a walker. Good job. Special child. Murder is like this.” Art by Shelby Cragg.

• The Deepwater Bride (2015, Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine)

The opening line is: “In the time of our crawling Night Lord's ascendancy, foretold by exodus of starlight into his sucking astral wounds, I turned sixteen and received Barbie's Dream Car.” Need I say more? Extremely fun. A novelette where a young queer girl from a clairvoyant family struggles with an apocalyptic event while being annoyed by another very plucky girl. Lots of descriptions with nerdy marine zoology terms. Close in tone to Gideon. In the background, someone dies EXACTLY like that one death at the end of Gideon, which makes me wonder what happened to make Tamsyn interested in this particular image. I also liked that Tamsyn is aware of Nightwish. No link, but you'll get a PDF immediately if you Google.

• Union (2015, Clarkesworld Magazine)

5.5K. Very weird, extremely Kiwi story about a town that gets sent lab-grown wives by the government, but they're not made the usual way so they're Weird and people have feelings about it. Fascinating and eerie description of non-human (in some people's eyes, sub-human) women (?) who cannot be observed to have recognizable feelings or thoughts, yet have some sort of inner life. Quite touching, very uncanny.

• Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower (2020)

Short novel (~200 pages). Very funny. I was reminded of Coronabeth because the whole plot is “princess finds herself branching out into decidedly non-princess-like activities”, but other than that—this is a fairytale for adults about people who make eachother worse. No particular links to TLT but a very fun read with some gut punches. Extremely Tamsyn through and through, what with the dubious morality and all.

• Why the Mermaids Left Boralus (2021, in Folk & Fairy Tales of Azeroth by Blizzard Entertainment)

Set in the World of Warcraft universe. Haven't read this one yet, will report back lmao. As with The Deepwater Bride, no link but I easily found a PDF of the entire compilation. It's illustrated!

• Undercover (2022, from Into Shadow, Amazon Original Collection)

Haven't read it either. Will edit once I do.

[medusas-daughter]

My favorite part about Weird Barbie and Allan and all the other discontinued discarded Barbies and Kens is that they weren't affected by the brainwash, because of course they weren't. They didn't hold that much power in Barbieland, why would the Kens care about them in the Kendom. They're the queers and neurodivergents and disableds of society, those who don't quite belong or feel like part of the sisterhood, but are still absolutely victimized by the patriarchy. Those who stay loyal to feminism and human rights, even those that don't concern them, because they know first hand what it's like to be on the sideline. The compassion and empathy that Weird Barbie (or lesbian Barbie as I like to call her, we all know why she's always in the splits ✂️✂️) shows all the Barbies even though they call her Weird Barbie behind her back and to her face. The fact that, even though they don't like her, the Barbies know that if they ever need help they can go to her and she will always help them, and they trust her judgment. The symbolism behind the fact that when President Barbie offered her a job, she asked to clean Barbieland. She's essential to maintaining this society that rejects her. Sugar Daddy Ken and Magic Earring Ken and Allan are the epitome of queer men and trans mascs and non binary people. They're not nor will they ever be women. But they'll always reject and be rejected by the patriarchy. The discontinued Barbies are the disabled Barbies, they're angry about their design flaws, and they're right there in the trenches trying to get the leading Barbies to wake up and take back Barbieland. Oh I could talk about this part of the movie and the characters for hours. I love them so much.

[shaylogic]

Queer Experience Watching Barbie - AFAB Masculinity

I started to go into this in tags on another post but I wanted to type this up separately and try to develop my thoughts a little more. . .

Ryan!Ken’s arc in Barbie (2023) has been buzzing in my head for days.

I got fixated on it for a couple of major reasons:

1) We rarely have seen a feminist movie take time to address men with compassion in how patriarchy harms them too.

2) As a trans masc person, I think it hits a specific part of my identity that I don’t consciously let myself think about for too long. Something about being raised in a female world with sisterhood and community. Then being isolated in adult manhood without the tools to prepare you for that. Conscientious of respecting women and being unbothered by feminimity around you, but not knowing your place in the world.

How do I put it?

I know it’s not the direct intention of the film itself, but I’ve seen other trans folks (especially transmasc), reacting similarly to the feeling we get from it.

Ken’s arc feels pretty reminicent of the struggle afab lgbt folks go through when considering masculinity in their identity (butch lesbians, afab nbs, trans men, etc.)

How to make peace with masculine aspects of yourself without losing the women in your life? (One can argue Kate McKinnon’s Weird Barbie has aspects of this as well.)

Of course, then Ken goes off on the adopting patriarchy ride, which IS the point of the movie, and may skew a bit from the transmasc read on it--though I have known a trans guy here and there who avoids being misgendered so hard that they can become somewhat sexist. To which I say: “You don’t need to have a dick to be a man, and you don’t need to BE a dick to be a man.” But I digress.

Something about Ken being comfortable in a woman’s world but not understanding why he’s being shut out from socially bonding with them (in any sense! Romantic, Familial, Platonic Friendship. . .)

The overall theme of the movie for both Barbie and Ken--in an allegory of heavy gender roles harming all--leading them each to have to figure out who they are in themselves, regardless of others. . . 

Trans masc folx can relate to both Barbie and Ken’s arcs.

I don’t want to detract from Barbie’s arc being the main point of the movie.

I think the reason why we get hung up on Ryan!Ken’s character is because. . . we’ve related to the Barbie plot in other movies and shows before, thinking back to our “girlhoods” as children.

I have never seen the arc Ken has in this in any other story!!!!

There are some Man Movies that have attempted to discuss the struggle of Being a Man--but they often come off as too dismissive of feminine experiences, and are therefore as offputting to transmasc people as women.

Because of the nature of the two worlds exhibited in this movie, and Ken’s backround in his setting, personality, and purpose in relation to the Barbies, he’s a Man living with Female Socialization, in a Woman’s World; he’s a male character that inherently admires and respects women in his nature (until the real world influence distorts it).

This isn’t a perfect example of a transmasc experience either, but it’s a lot closer than most of us generally get to see! That’s why so many of us are getting caught up in this.

Please, other trans folx (transfems, too!), I really need us to have a discussion about this. What were your experiences and thoughts around this movie?

P.S. Yeah, we kinda get that nonbinary allegory from Allan (not a Ken, not a Barbie, siding with Feminism in the Gender War), but he wasn’t in significant focus of the plot the way Ryan!Ken was. If I try to read into Allan, I don’t have much to work with.

[alexanderwales]

Turning Off Your Brain and the Critical Lens

Alright, let's start with this: there is a thing called a critical lens. It is a way of looking at a piece of art, examining what it's saying to us about itself or its subject or themes or whatever.

There are many critical lenses. Because this is something that's mostly only taught at the college level, most of them are (in my opinion) mired in academic language and not actually all that interesting in and of themselves: I think if you read a dozen stories through a feminist lens, you really start to think "okay, yeah, I get it". Different readings of different texts through different lenses can be great fun though, and it's one of my favorite parts of media criticism, and something that I wish people were more explicit about.

I'm going to talk about the Barbie movie, because it's easy. The feminist lens is obvious and in my opinion intended: it's the thing that the movie is most trying to be about, and as a consequence, it's something that probably has the most critical meat. But you can also read the movie through other lenses, and ask what it has to say about capitalism, about race, about neurodivergence and queer theory and game theory and a bunch of other things.

Some of these readings are Unintended. The author (in this case, hundreds of people working together on the film) did not intend for you to look at the movie to see what it's saying about, say, American Imperialism. Probably.

I personally enjoy unintended readings. I like teasing apart a book to see what it's saying about different things, and how it's saying it, and what the assumptions it's operating under, and whether this creates anything interesting when I bring a different set of assumptions. I think the writers and actors of Winter Soldier were not trying to say anything in particular about masculinity, but fuck it, let's watch the movie and think about it.

Sometimes people will watch something and recommend that you turn your brain off. Sometimes they'll say this to you just as you're about to start in on some critical analysis of something that definitely was not made with that critical analysis in mind.

Here's how I think of "turning off your brain": it's a critical lens. It's not a critical lens in the sense that academics might use it, but you're looking at this piece of media from a specific viewpoint, and that viewpoint is "omg they're in love" or "fuck yeah" or "no, don't go into the basement!". There are certain pop genres that greatly benefit from being viewed this way, at least in terms of pure enjoyment.

When I sit down to watch a romcom, I can do it with male/female social dynamics in mind, or I can do it with "aw, I hope these kids get together" in mind. One is the intended reading, and I don't think that it should get all that much privilege for it, but I do think generally it can result in better enjoyment. I love media criticism and consider it to be one of my main hobbies, but if you fall in love with one particular way of viewing media and only use that single one, you're going to have a bad time.

I write and generally enjoy rational fiction, which comes with its own lens, which I guess we can call the rational lens. If you sit and view a work through the rational lens, sometimes you can have fun with it: you try to work through the systems as presented and the actions of the characters and think about how you could make everything make sense. The way to do this that's not very fun is to look at a work through the rational lens and conclude that the author is dumb, the characters are dumb, and the worldbuilding is shit. I guess this can be fun if you have a sense of smug superiority, but I personally do not.

One of the things that I love about media criticism is that you can sometimes extract weird and new things out of a work. One of the things that I love about fanfic is that you can take a deliberately strange reading of a work and then write as though that reading was true. You can look at Batman and say "what does this say about income inequality" and then start writing and say "this is about income inequality now". You can look at Winter Solider and find a reading where Cap and Bucky are gay and then write it out.

Where I think people fail in a way that's personally annoying to me is that they take their preferred reading and then loudly claim ("ironically" or not) that this is the One True Reading against which no other readings can stand. Sometimes "that is not The Point of [thing]". I think you get that a lot from the "shut off your brain" crowd, but I've seen it from other places too, and I would attribute it to people talking past each other, sometimes not even realizing what critical lens they're using.

If you're talking to me, you can just say "non-preferred lens" and I'll understand, or maybe I'll say "wat" because I might forget this blog post moments after I write it.

[ripplestitchskein]

I don’t know if we’ll ever get into it, because the show at this point largely plays it off as a joke, but I do wonder if Blitz’s very misogynist language and his association with feelings as being “gay”or for “pussies” will be explored more as part of this. It’s really hard to tell at this point if it’s an issue to be examined in the narrative’s eyes or just Brandon’s particular brand of humor coming into play with no deeper character considerations beyond the superficial “he uses insults and abrasive language to keep people at arms length”.

I mentioned it in one of my episode breakdowns but Blitz’s interactions with women are very interesting. Whore. Slut. Titty Haver. He is exceedingly more aggressive with women he meets than he is with men. Yet Blitz seems to have very much loved, and from the little we’ve seen, had a good relationship with his mother. He seems to get along well with Millie, he takes good care of Loona. Barbie is the only character he hurt he actively pursues to reconcile with. Yet all his interactions with other women he is a lot more hostile and aggressive than in his interactions with other men and that’s present from Murder Family on.

Most of his disguises are him dressing in drag though? If he has to put a costume on he generally defaults to female presenting. He seems to enjoy it as well, based on expressions and animated body language he is comfortable and having a good time. Again, hard to tell if it’s just a bit, but Blitz has been shown as pretty gender non conforming many times for a guy who mostly uses gendered insults. Some of it could be as simple as hiding horns and tail being made slightly easier by a wig and a dress, it could be just the way the writer’s humor trends but it could be a lot more.

Especially when paired with his clear association with feelings = gay. A crux of his post Full Moon communication attempts with Stolas seem to be “Haha, silly feelings, that’s gay, let’s…have gay sex about it again?”. Feelings are for pussies. What you said is gayer than love ballads. Etc. etc. The dude has no issue filling a house party with his conquests from across the gender spectrum though.

It just reads as coming from somewhere else. Cash specifically. Blitz himself seems to default to queerness. He doesn’t seem to care about it from the perspective of his own sexual relationships or gender expression but at the same time he is very misogynistic and associates things that make him feel weak or could be perceived as weak with gayness or women.

We have some scenes from the trailer that could potentially explore his more. His scene with his mom possibly coming out about his feelings for Fizz versus Cash refusing to let him see him at the hospital. Those may just be more “your romantic reveal led to a horrible tragedy” but it could also hopefully give some insight into why he handles the Full Moon fight like a 90’s middle schooler declaring anything that makes him feel squishy inside with a “That’s gay.”