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aro-mace · 3 months
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lol me when my gf gets turned into a god
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aro-mace · 3 months
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madoka magica is sooo crazy imagine being in middle school and your crush dies and you’re so upset that you kickstart a time loop and repeat the same month 100 times over trying to stop her from dying but unwittingly you make her more and more important to the universe’s continuation (because you have effectively created 100 timelines that are dependent only on the survival of your crush) and therefore her death becomes more and more devastating to the world as a whole in every new timeline and finally your crush sacrifices her life willingly to become a god and you’re the only one who remembers her and this depresses you so much that you construct a whole imaginary universe where your crush is alive and you trap yourself and the souls of your friends inside it and then when you realize it’s Not Real, Actually, you pull your crush (who, again, is now god) down from heaven and become the literal actual devil
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aro-mace · 3 months
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sorry for not posting in so long!
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aro-mace · 3 months
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Lesbians doomed by the narrative
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aro-mace · 3 months
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girl with no problems
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aro-mace · 3 months
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aro-mace · 8 months
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Headcanon: Barbie from Barbie (2023) is aromantic asexual!
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aro-mace · 8 months
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you know, one thing that i found extremely refreshing about the Barbie movie is how much it doesn't hate men or masculinity, and instead positions compulsory masculinity as similarly limiting and imprisoning as femininity when it's societally enforced
and i've been really surprised by how many people who have been going "this movie is anti-men, and that's GREAT" when like. it's not anti-men. it's opposed to patriarchy and toxic masculinity, but it extends a great deal of compassion to individual men
not just to magic ken and sugar daddy ken and allan and the other rejected kens, but even to stereotypical ken, who like. causes a lot of the problems in barbieland and leads it. it extends a great deal of empathy for his sense of powerlessness and loneliness
and it would have been very easy for the film to basically just call him an incel and punish him for what he's done by disenfranchising him even further, but it doesn't do that? it says, hey. you need more to your identity than your gender, and there's more to you than being str8
and that's exactly the same weight of the message communicated to barbie, that there's more to her identity than her gender, that there's more to her than her perfect appearance and performance
neither of them have to just be dolls
idk, i enjoyed it as a well-crafted film without finding it like, hugely artistically impactful on me, but that aspect of its gender commentary was incredibly refreshing, and far more nuanced than i'm used to expecting of cisgender creators
and i think it's a real shame for people to interpret that very carefully crafted arc for ken and the other kens and allan as "haha, this movie HATES men and thinks they're STINKY" when like. a lot of work was done to go beyond that sort of very easy reflexive hatred
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aro-mace · 8 months
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BARBIE (2023) dir. Greta Gerwig
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aro-mace · 8 months
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Something I found very interesting about the Barbie movie was the Ken’s mimicking of patriarchy. I’ve seen some comments putting it as a stance of men’s inherent desire to oppress women but would argue it much more reflects the socialization process many young boys experience that encourages them take on misogynistic views. The kens do not resent the Barbie’s. They’ve grown up in a society the Barbie’s run and the adore and love them. I think you could say that reflects the early stages of life for many boys where often the main role models they know are women, their mothers (as they often have a more involved role than fathers) and eventually their teachers, which women still make up the vast majority of early childhood educators.
The Kens also notably lack a sense of brotherhood at the start of the movie. And it isn’t until they’re in the real world our main Ken experiences positive male attention and approval (which is only due to him also being a man). It is that desire for approval from his male peers that initially drives him to believe in patriarchy.
There is of course also the underlying struggle of his unrequited feelings for Barbie, but none of the kens truly resent the Barbies. They don’t actually want them as oppressed servants. Yes they want their attention, but even during kendom we see them happiest on their cheesy guitar playing group date. They begin oppressing Barbie’s not because it’s what they actually want but rather it’s them mimicking the behaviour of men.
And that is why I think it makes such a great ode to the socialization of young boys to be misogynistic. Boys do not have an innate hatred for women, nor is it something they naturally grow into of their own fruition. But rather it’s a patterned of learned behaviours they in most cases initially mimic for the approval of other men or to gain attention, but overtime becomes a very real ideology then adopt and believe in and likely pass on.
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aro-mace · 8 months
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4 years later and STILL nobody wants him
Redraw of this! + separate panels
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aro-mace · 10 months
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LETS GO GAYS!!!
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aro-mace · 10 months
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aro-mace · 1 year
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Someone should invent a word for when you’re jumping and popping
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aro-mace · 1 year
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Alright, it’s less than a week since the Owl House finale aired and as expected I’ve already seen two direct comparisons to Steven Universe’s ending and several more vague-blogs, because one of this site’s hobbies is using other queer shows to put down Steven Universe. So let’s do this, then. Let’s compare the endings of Owl House and Steven Universe, and what each is ultimately trying to say.
Steven Universe and the Owl House are both shows that deal heavily with the clash of individualism and self-expression vs. socially-mandated conformity, and both shows’ final villains ultimately embody this conflict. One major difference, however, is that Owl House approaches this from the perspective of legal/societal structures, while Steven Universe approaches it from the perspective of family structures.
Steven Universe has always been about family–and particularly the ways traumas and biases are passed down through a family–and it has always heavily used the language of metaphor to discuss these topics. The Diamonds are the ultimate extension of this theme, something a lot of bad-faith (or just bad) takes on the ending miss; they interpret the diamonds in their literal capacity as dictators, rather than the way Steven Universe always portrays them, which is as matriarchs, i.e. the heads of a family who dictate and control all the family’s other members. This metaphor becomes more and more blatant until it outright becomes text, with the Diamonds turning out to be Steven’s literal family members, with whom his part of the family is estranged because of their previous controlling behavior.
In accordance with this theme, we ultimately find out that the Diamonds’ toxic ideology, with its rigid standards of perfection, are not only something they enforce on the gems below them, but also on themselves. They are suffering from the system in their own ways, unable to live up to the standards they themselves created. And who among us hasn’t known someone like that? A parent or grandparent who grew up under a cruel, oppressive worldview, and instead of rebelling against it internalized it–who turned around and said “I dealt with this, and so can you”? And so the ending of Steven Universe is the Diamonds realizing exactly how toxic the rigid ideology they’ve spent their lives perpetuating really is, and confronting the fact that their adherence to this ideology is what destroyed their relationship with Pink, and that the only way they’re going to have a relationship with Steven is if they’re willing to commit to changing both themselves, and the family structure they’ve enforced for so long.
Emperor Belos, in contrast, is not suffering from the structures he created, because his rules were never meant to apply to him. He sees the witches (and demons, and so-on) as lesser beings, evil beings, who exist to be controlled, and ultimately, exterminated. And every element of the society he built–the schools, the government, the police force, the religion–he intentionally constructed to keep these lesser beings under his control. The real-world allegory isn’t hard to see, here. And because what Belos represents in the story is, in fact, a fascist leader, the story shows that he can’t be reasoned with in any way that matters, and instead he is ultimately ground into paste beneath the boots of the people he sought to destroy. Different themes, different endings.
Now the usual argument that comes up here is as follows: but the Steven Universe ending isn’t as realistic! Not everyone is going to change, not everyone is going to be able to be reasoned with. Not every older, conservative family member is eventually going to accept you for who you are. And while that is true, ultimately SU isn’t meant to be realistic; it’s meant to be a power fantasy. Rebecca Sugar has come out and said before that they wrote a world in which there was good in everyone, because that’s the way she wishes the world could be. That’s the world they want to be able to believe in. And I am never going to begrudge a person, much less a queer person, for finding healing in writing that kind of world.
But you know what else is unrealistic? What else is ultimately just a fantasy? Grinding your government’s fascist leader into paste under your boot, then taking over and remaking society into something that accepts everyone. Sadly, Trump is not likely to get his ass beat any time soon. And more generally, punching fascists, while ideologically sound, is something most people are not going to get to do, due to real-world consequences such as “getting beat up by the fascist’s angry friends” and “being arrested for assault”. And even if you did depose one leader, our very society is set up in a way that perpetuates all manner of injustices, and systemic change is a complex and lengthy process that almost certainly won’t be completed in our lifetimes. But it’s fun to imagine we could, isn’t it?
Both endings are power fantasies. Both show the way they want the world to be, rather than the way it is. They are very different power fantasies, which fill very different–and at times conflicting–needs. And in situations like that, internet culture really likes to pick one to be the right fantasy, the right way to look at the world. 
But the truth is, both fantasies are needed! Some people need stories about your queerphobic relatives finally realizing the error of their ways and taking the necessary steps to accept and reconcile with you. And some people need stories where you get to grind fascist bastards beneath the heel of your boot. It’s okay if you prefer one type of fantasy over the other! But in the end, both are valuable, and both are important. 
And isn’t it wonderful, for us to have such a diversity of great queer stories? That we can explore both of these deep, conflicting needs? Let’s appreciate each of these fantastic works for what it was meant to be, rather than trying to pit them against each other or make them conform to a single, “best” way to tell a story.
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aro-mace · 1 year
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The Collector plays Undertale
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aro-mace · 1 year
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Hellooo, here have all the Owl House refs I've made ✨ (the heights aren't accurate in the first one, I did what I could with the space I had)
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