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seraphic-saturn · 6 months

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3rd House in Signs : Writing

3rd House in Aries:

Writing Style: Bold, assertive, and action-oriented.

Handwriting: Sharp and quick, with strong and decisive strokes.

Tone in Writing: Energetic, direct, and enthusiastic.

Genre of Writing: Adventure stories, fast-paced thrillers, and motivational content.

3rd House in Taurus:

Writing Style: Descriptive, sensual, and grounded.

Handwriting: Luxurious and deliberate, with a focus on beauty and comfort.

Tone in Writing: Calm, indulgent, and sensory.

Genre of Writing: Romance novels, culinary reviews, and descriptive poetry.

3rd House in Gemini:

Writing Style: Conversational, witty, and informative.

Handwriting: Quick and changeable, with an emphasis on communication and versatility.

Tone in Writing: Playful, curious, and engaging.

Genre of Writing: Journalism, comedy scripts, and educational materials.

3rd House in Cancer:

Writing Style: Nurturing, emotional, and introspective.

Handwriting: Flowing and sentimental, reflecting emotional depth and empathy.

Tone in Writing: Sensitive, empathetic, and nostalgic.

Genre of Writing: Memoirs, emotional fiction, and heartfelt poetry.

3rd House in Leo:

Writing Style: Dramatic, confident, and attention-grabbing.

Handwriting: Grand and bold, with a flair for the dramatic and expressive.

Tone in Writing: Authoritative, passionate, and proud.

Genre of Writing: Autobiographies, theatrical scripts, and bold editorials.

3rd House in Virgo:

Writing Style: Analytical, precise, and informative.

Handwriting: Neat and organized, with attention to detail and clarity.

Tone in Writing: Practical, informative, and instructional.

Genre of Writing: Self-help books, technical manuals, and critical analyses.

3rd House in Libra:

Writing Style: Harmonious, diplomatic, and balanced.

Handwriting: Graceful and balanced, with a focus on aesthetics and symmetry.

Tone in Writing: Charming, diplomatic, and persuasive.

Genre of Writing: Relationship advice, persuasive essays, and romantic fiction.

3rd House in Scorpio:

Writing Style: Intense, probing, and insightful.

Handwriting: Mysterious and intense, with a focus on depth and hidden meanings.

Tone in Writing: Mysterious, investigative, and profound.

Genre of Writing: Psychological thrillers, investigative journalism, and dark poetry.

3rd House in Sagittarius:

Writing Style: Expansive, adventurous, and philosophical.

Handwriting: Bold and free-spirited, with a sense of adventure and exploration.

Tone in Writing: Optimistic, adventurous, and philosophical.

Genre of Writing: Travelogues, philosophical treatises, and inspirational speeches.

3rd House in Capricorn:

Writing Style: Authoritative, structured, and disciplined.

Handwriting: Disciplined and organized, with a focus on clarity and professionalism.

Tone in Writing: Practical, disciplined, and authoritative.

Genre of Writing: Business reports, historical non-fiction, and self-help guides.

3rd House in Aquarius:

Writing Style: Unconventional, progressive, and intellectual.

Handwriting: Unconventional and eccentric, with a focus on innovation and individuality.

Tone in Writing: Unpredictable, visionary, and intellectual.

Genre of Writing: Science fiction, social commentaries, and revolutionary manifestos.

3rd House in Pisces:

Writing Style: Imaginative, dreamy, and empathetic.

Handwriting: Dreamy and fluid, with a sense of compassion and artistic flair.

Tone in Writing: Compassionate, poetic, and evocative.

Genre of Writing: Surreal poetry, magical realism, and spiritual reflections.

#astrology writing #astrology 3rd house #astrology observations #astrology hand writing #astrology #3rd house

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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 months

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How America's oligarchs lull us with the be-your-own-boss fairy tale

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/16/narrative-capitalism/#sell-job

Capitalism is a vibes-based system. Sure, we all know about Keynes's "Animal Spirits" that see "bulls" and "bears" vying to set the market's future, but beyond that, there's just a hell of a lot of narrative.

Writing for The American Prospect, Adam M Lowenstein reviews two books that tell the histories of the stories that are used to sell American capitalism to the American people – the stories that turn workers into "temporarily embarrassed millionaires":

https://prospect.org/culture/books/2024-02-16-stories-corporations-tell-williams-waterhouse-review/

The first of these books is Taming the Octopus: The Long Battle for the Soul of the Corporation, by Kyle Edward Williams, a kind of pre-history of "woke capitalism":

https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393867237

Taming is a history of the low-water marks for Big Business's reputation in America, and how each was overcome through PR campaigns that declared a turning point in which business leaders would pursue the common good, even at the expense of their shareholders' interests.

The story starts in the 1950s, when DuPont and other massive firms had gained a well-deserved reputation as rapacious profit-generation machines that "alienated workers and pushed around small businessmen, investors, and consumers." This prompted DuPont's PR chief, Harold Brayman, to write a memo called "The Attack on Bigness," where he set out a plan to sell America on a new cuddly image for corporate giants.

For Brayman, the problem was that corporate execs were too shy about telling their social inferiors about all the good that businesses did for them: "The businessman is normally reluctant to talk out loud. He frequently shuns the spotlight and is content with plugging his wares, not himself."

This was the starting gun for a charm offensive by American big business that included IBM president Thomas Watson Jr ("I think there is a world market for about five computers") going on a speaking tour organized by McKinsey & Co, where he told audiences that his company's billion dollar annual profits had convinced it to assume "responsibilities for the broader public welfare."

This set the template for a nationwide mania of "business statesmanship" that Fortune celebrated with an editorial announcing "a great transformation, of which the world as a whole is as yet unaware" that put the "profit motive…on its last leg."

Fortune then spent the next seventy years recycling this announcement, every time the tide went out on business's popularity. In 2019, Fortune platformed IBM president Ginni Rometty for an announcement that the company was orienting its priorities to the public good: "It’s a question of whether society trusts you or not. We need society to accept what it is that we do."

The occasion for Rometty's quote was a special package on the Trump tax-cuts, a trillion-dollar gift to American big business, which lobbyists for the Business Roundtable celebrated with an announcement that American capitalism would now serve "stakeholders" (not just shareholders). Fortune celebrated this "change" as "fundamental and profound."

Fast forward five years and corporate leaders are still telling stories, this time about "stakeholder capitalism" and "ESG" – the dread "woke capitalism" that has right-wing swivel-eyed loons running around, hair afire, declaring the end of capitalism.

For Williams and Lowenstein (and me), all this ESG, DEI, and responsible capitalism is just window dressing, a distraction to keep the pitchforks and torches in people's closets, and to keep the guillotines in their packaging. The right-wing is doing a mirror-world version of liberals who freak out when OpenAI claims to have built a machine that will pauperize every worker – assuming that a PR pitch is the gospel truth, and then repeating it in criticism. Criti-hype, in other words:

https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5

Think of ESG: the right is freaking out that ESG is harming shareholders by leaving hydrocarbons in the ground to appease climate-addled greenies. The reality is that ESG is barely disguised greenwashing, and it's fully compatible with burning every critter that died in the Mesozoic, Cenozoic, and lo, even the Paleozoic:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/15/sanctions-financing/#profiteers

The reason this tactic is so successful is that Americans have also been sold another narrative: that American problems are solved by American individuals as entrepreneurs and businesspeople, not as polities or as members of a union (let alone the working class!).

This is the subject of the second book Lowenstein reviews, One Day I’ll Work for Myself: The Dream and Delusion That Conquered America, by Benjamin Waterhouse:

https://wwnorton.com/books/one-day-ill-work-for-myself/

A keystone of American narrative capitalism is the idea that the USA is a nation of small businesspeople, Jeffersonian yeoman farmsteaders of the US economy. But even a cursory examination shows that the country is ruled – economically and politically – by very large firms.

Uber sells itself as a way to be your own boss ("No shifts. No boss. No limits.") – even though it's a system where the app is your boss, and thanks to that layer of misdirection, Uber gets to be the worst conceivable boss, while its workers have no recourse in labor law:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

In labor fights, Uber represents itself as the champion of innumerable "small businesspeople" who drive its unlicensed taxis. In consumer protection fights, Amazon claims to be fighting for "small businesspeople" who sell on its platform. In privacy fights, Facebook claims to represent "small businesspeople" who buy its surveillance advertising.

But large firms are actively hostile to small firms, seeing them as small-fry to be rooked or destroyed (recall that when Amazon targeted small publishers for bankruptcy-level discounts, they called the program "The Gazelle Project" and Bezos told his executives to tackle these firms "the way a cheetah pursues a sickly gazelle").

Decades of this tale have produced "a profound shift from a shared belief that individuals might come together to solve problems, into a collective faith in individual effort." America's long love-affair with rugged individualism was weaponized in the 1970s by corporations seeking to shed their regulatory obligation to workers, customers, and the environment.

As with Big Tech today, the big business lobby held up mom-and-pop businesses as the true beneficiaries of deregulation, even as they knifed these firms. A telling anecdote comes from someone who worked for the Chamber of Commerce's magazine Nation's Business: when this editor pointed out that many of the magazine's subscribers were small businesspeople and asked if they could start including articles relevant to mom-and-pops, the editor in chief said, "Over my dead body."

The neoliberal era has been an unbroken string of platitudes celebrating the small business and policies that annihilate their chances against large firms. Ronald Reagan's dewy-eyed hymns to American entrepreneurship sounded nice, but what matters is that he attempted to abolish the Small Business Administration and refused to address the 20,000 attendee "White House Conference on Small Business."

In the years since, American has sacrificed its small businesses while pulling out all the stops – bailouts and tax cuts and elite bankruptcy – to keep its largest firms growing. New regulations like Dodd-Frank were neutered in the name of saving mom-and-pop shops, even though the provisions that were cut already exempted small businesses.

Today, millions of Americans are treading water in a fetid stew of LLC-poisoning, rise-and-grind, multi-level-marketing, dropshipping and gig-work, convinced that the only way to get a better life is to pull themselves up by their bootstraps:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/10/declaration-of-interdependence/

Narrative does a lot of work here. The American economy runs on bubbles, another form of narrative capitalism. Take AI, a subject I sincerely wish I could stop hearing about, not least because I'm certain that 99% of that thinking is being wasted on whatever residue remains after the bubble pops:

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/

AI isn't going to do your job, but its narrative may convince your boss to fire you and replace you with a bot that can't do your job. Like what happened when Air Canada hired a chatbot to answer customer inquiries and it started making shit up about bereavement discounts that the company later claimed it didn't have to honor:

https://bc.ctvnews.ca/air-canada-s-chatbot-gave-a-b-c-man-the-wrong-information-now-the-airline-has-to-pay-for-the-mistake-1.6769454

This story's been all over the news for the past couple of days, but so far as I've seen, no one has pointed out the seemingly obvious inference that this chatbot probably ripped off lots of people. The victim here was extraordinarily persistent, chasing a refund for 10 weeks and then going to the regulator. This guy is a six-sigma self-advocate – which implies a whole bell-curve's worth of comparatively normal people who just ate the shit-sandwich Air Canada fed them.

The reason AI is a winning proposition for Air Canada isn't that it can do a customer service rep's job – it can't. But the AI is a layer of indirection – like the app that is the true boss of Uber drivers – that lets Air Canada demoralize the customers it steals from into walking away from their losses.

Nevertheless, the narrative that AI Will Change Everything Forever is powerful – more powerful than AI itself, that's for sure. Take this Bloomberg headline: "Nearly all wealth gained by world's rich this year comes from AI":

https://www.business-standard.com/world-news/nearly-all-wealth-gained-by-world-s-rich-this-year-comes-from-ai-124021600006_1.html

Dig in and you find even more narrative. The single largest beneficiary of AI stock gains last year was Mark Zuckerberg ($161B!). Zuck is American Narrative Capitalism's greatest practitioner: the guy who made billions peddling a series of lies, from "pivot to video" to "metaverse," leaping from one lie to the next just ahead of the mass stock-selloffs that wiped out lesser predators.

The Narrative Capitalism Cinematic Universe has a lot of side-plots like AI and entrepreneurship and woke capitalism, but its main narrative arc was articulated, ad nauseum, by Margaret Thatcher: "There is no alternative." This is the most important part of the story, the part that says it literally can't be otherwise. The only way to organize society is through markets, and the only way to organize markets is to leave them alone, no matter how much suffering they cause.

This is a baffling story, because it's so easily disproved. Zuck says the only way to have friends is to let him surveil you from asshole to appetite, even though he once ran Facebook as the privacy-forward alternative to MySpace, and promised never to spy on you:

https://lawcat.berkeley.edu/record/1128876

Likewise, the business leaders – and their chorus of dutiful Renfields – who insist that monopoly is the natural and inevitable outcome of any market economy just handwave away the decades during which anti-monopoly enforcement actually kept most businesses from getting too big to fail and too big to jail.

I'm no champion of market efficiency – especially not as the best and final arbiter of social and economic questions – but when I hear my comrades repeating the Thatcherite claims that all forms of capitalism necessarily degrade into monopolistic quagmires, that there is no alternative, it sounds like more criti-hype.

This is a frequent point of departure during discussions of enshittification: some people dismiss the whole idea of enshittification as "just capitalism." But we had decades of digital services that either didn't degrade, or, when they did, were replaced by superior competitors with a minimum of switching costs for users who migrated from the decaying incumbent to greener pastures.

The reality is that while there are problems with all forms of capitalism, there are different kinds of capitalist problems, and some forms of capitalism are less harmful to working people and more capable of enacting and enforcing sound policy than others.

Enshittification is what happens when the constraints on the worst impulses of companies and their investors and managers are removed. When a company doesn't have competitors, when it can capture its regulators to trample our rights with impunity, when it can enlist those regulators to shut down would-be competitors who might free us from its "walled garden," and when it can fire any worker who refuses to enact harm upon the users they serve, then that company will enshittify:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle/#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel

A company can be made to treat you well, even if it is run by a wicked person who sees you as a mark to be fleeced – that mustache twirler just has to be constrained – by competition, regulation, self-help and labor. He may still hate you and wish you harm, but he won't be able to act on it.

As MLK said:

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, religion and education will have to do that, but it can restrain him from lynching me. And I think that's pretty important also. And so that while legislation may not change the hearts of men, it does change the habits of men. And we see this every day.

#pluralistic #narrative capitalism #oligarchy #temporarily embarrassed millionaires #late-stage capitalism #enshittification #disenshittification #vocational awe #fobazi ettarh #ai #bubbles #bubblenomics #rise and grind #Benjamin C. Waterhouse #One Day I’ll Work for Myself #Kyle Edward Williams #Taming the Octopus #woke capitalism #llcs with mfas

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balioc · 9 months

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Thoughts on the Barbie Movie

Hoo boy. Here we go.

This is long. Spoilers abound.

The movie is not, in any normal sense, a Barbie movie (like this or this or this or whatever). It is not a story of Barbie doing the kinds of things that Barbie does in stories. It is an endlessly postmodern and self-referential movie about Barbie, which is to say, about the Barbie franchise and its role in culture. Which is, at least plausibly, an interesting thing for a movie to be.

You probably knew all that already. But it does give us a baseline of "this movie kind of had to be political and discourse-y, one way or another." Or even, to be more specific: "to some large extent this movie had to be about feminism, explicitly, if it was going to exist at all." How could you talk meaningfully about Barbie's role in culture without touching on that stuff?

The evaluative TLDR:

Barbie is very ambitious, and in many places very fun. It is also deeply confused, and fragmented, about what it's trying to say and do. Often it raises genuinely interested problems/scenarios and then totally fails to address them, or else addresses them in ways that are incoherent. The text knows that it's doing this, and on several occasions kind of apologizes for it; a couple of times it more or less looks into the camera and says "sorry, we're not going to deal with this properly;" but, well, that's not a substitute for dealing with things properly.

There is also a streak of genuine political nastiness running through the film, in a place where the story really cannot afford it. It...doesn't match up, tonally or thematically, with some of the surrounding material. I have no background at all in cinematic stratigraphy, but I would be fascinated to learn about Barbie's editorial history, because I have the vague sense that a more-cogent (and more-interesting) story got hacked apart and then Frankensteined together into something much cheaper and worse.

III

The opening sequence of the movie is wild. You've seen most of it -- or you can, if you haven't, and you want to -- because it is the film's first teaser trailer. Girls are playing listlessly with baby dolls; a giant Barbie appears like the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey; and then the girls enter a frenzy of destruction, bashing their baby dolls' heads against the ground.

I don't know whether I would have found it as disturbing as I did, if I didn't actually have a baby of my own. But speaking from the standpoint of a parent...yeah, wow, it's more viscerally horrific than most actual horror I've seen recently. The narration says some stuff about Barbie providing a new and more rewarding set of imagination games to play, but the visuals by themselves tell a message loud and clear, which is: Barbie will turn your daughters into infanticidal maenads. It wouldn't need any editing at all to be part of a shock-you-silly Reefer-Madness-y moral panic film.

Which is really good! And really interesting! It starts us off on an undeniable thematic note: there is something primal and powerful and very dangerous about Barbie.

The very best part of the movie is probably the part that comes right after the opening, when we explore the movie's depiction of "Barbieland" by going through Barbie's Typical Day, before we get into any of the notional plot or metaphysics. It's joyful and charming in a consistent way. The gags are (mostly) great. The movie is in love with its base premise, and that love is palpable.

This sequence makes one thing very clear:

Barbie treats Ken like absolute dogshit. She is a bad girlfriend.

And it's taken seriously. I mean, it's played for laughs, almost everything in this movie is played for laughs, but...it's not mean-spirited, not here. It's not, like, "ha ha, Ken, what a contemptible loser." He's Pierrot, asking for very basic forms of affection and attention and respect, and getting the door slammed in his face over and over. It's honestly kind of heartbreaking.

That colors everything that comes later.

The movie doesn't forget this, or fail to acknowledge it. At the end, after everything, Barbie does apologize to Ken for her treatment of him. It's a halfhearted and supremely unsatisfying kind of apology, especially in context, but...it's there, in so many words! I'm not making it up! This thematic foundation was laid down, not-very-subtly, right at the beginning!

This movie, which is at least trying to be ambitious, is juggling a million themes. Many of them are dumb at their core, and have no real promise; many of them lack any kind of narrative synergy with the others. But there are at least two which, I believe, (a) are genuinely worthwhile individually and (b) work well together in a story.

One is: What does it mean to be a symbol rather than a person? To exist, not for your own sake, but for the sake of influencing the dreams and culture of entities that you don't know and can't really understand?

The other is: What is the proper ordering of the relationship between Barbie and Ken?

I've seen a number of Takes in which people say, essentially: Couldn't this have ended with the Barbies and the Kens just being decent to each other and treating each other like humans? Couldn't there have been equality and mutual respect, instead of the weird uncomfortable girlboss-supremacist stuff that we got? And I sympathize with that impulse tremendously, but the honest answer has to be: No. We cannot have simple equality and esteem between Barbie and Ken, not in a movie like this. That would be a lie. Because this is a movie about Barbie-as-symbol, and when you're looking at Barbie through that lens, it is true and unavoidable that Ken is an appendage and an afterthought. You can have toys for boys; you can have dolls for boys (even if you call them "action figures" or whatever); for that matter, you can have dolls of boys for girls, so that girls can tell stories centering on male characters; but that's not what Ken is, and never has been. There are no Ken stories, and no one particularly wants them. Ken exists to be Barbie's boyfriend.

(One of the most painful moments of the movie comes during the resolution wrapup. Ken wails to Barbie that he has no identity outside her. She says, basically, "you have to find one, because I'm leaving you." And he...acts like he's had an epiphany, and does a little silly celebration. But his "insight" is just literally "I'm Ken," there's absolutely nothing there, and of course it's the most hollow and awful thing in the world because he really does have no identity outside her.)

The movie's metaphysics are not even slightly consistent. The nature of Barbieland, and the ways that it affects and is affected by the real world, are completely different in every scene. In large part because the film can't ever pass up a gag, whether or not it's funny, no matter how much damage it does to the narrative and the theming overall.

The worst part is that the movie is not capable of saying anything remotely coherent about the real world, because its version of the "real world" is as weird and fake as its Barbieland. Will Ferrell's CEO of Mattel character is more of an absurd cartoon than any of the Barbies or Kens. Mattel HQ is some kind of surreal labyrinth tower out of The Matrix. A random receptionist can handle herself like James Bond in a car chase, for reasons that are [handwaved in a gag].

VII

So. Yes. There is the sequence in the third act where Ken takes over Barbieland with the power of patriarchy. This is pretty much as bad as it can be. And I say this as someone who thinks that the movie probably did actually need a plot thread doing roughly that kind of thing.

Almost as bad as it can be. The wannabe-patriarch Kens are gleefully goofy in a way that you can't help but love, or at least, I couldn't help but love it. Which has something to do with the writing and something to do with the charisma of all the Ken actors. The main Ken, Ryan Gosling's Ken, really seems to believe that being a successful patriarch has a lot to do with riding majestic horses and wearing a giant fur coat without a shirt, and when he takes over Barbie's Dream House he names it Ken's Mojo Dojo Casa House -- that kind of thing.

But. Apart from that, it's real unfortunate. The justification for Ken's ability to conquer Barbieland with patriarchy, instantly and effortlessly, is -- in almost so many words -- they had no defenses against it, it was like the American Indians encountering smallpox. I...don't think I need to spell out the problems with that.

Worse yet, the whole sequence is soaked in, uh, let's call it "2014-era upper-middle-class social-status-oriented feminism." The real bad behavior on the part of the Kens, the stuff they do when they're not being adorably weird, is: mansplaining their extensive opinions about cars and movies, and wanting to show off how helpful and knowledgeable they are to "damsels" who are having trouble using machines or computers. Apparently that's the real problem at hand, the causus belli of the gender wars. The way that you deprogram a patriarchy-brainwashed Barbie is by...ranting to her about the stereotypical social irritations of upper-middle-class women (e.g. "you have to keep yourself thin but not act like you care about being thin," "you have to be a confident leader but also be nurturing and supportive," etc.) [note that the Barbies of Barbieland have never encountered these irritations, at least not at the hands of men]. And the girlboss victory montage consists of having the Barbies put on deceptive manipulative bimbo acts to stroke the Kens' egos, which sure is one way to depict girlboss feminist victory.

But the most unforgivable thing of all is the depiction of the patriarchy-brainwashed Barbies. They're lad-magazine caricatures, endlessly offering their Kens "brewski beers," dressing up as French maids, gazing on in cow-eyed adoration as their Kens mansplain stuff to them.

Barbie does, in fact, have a problematic history with the patriarchy. And it does not look like that.

VIII

@brazenautomaton:

Barbie isn’t someone who had to fight through the patriarchy to be seen as good enough to be an astronaut even though she’s a woman. Barbie’s a fucking astronaut because she’s fucking Barbie of course she’s good enough to be an astronaut.

That is...one aspect of the deep Barbie lore. It is the Barbie-nature that Mattel was trying to push, as far back as my own childhood; it's certainly the Barbie-nature that Mattel is trying to push in this movie. But there is another side to Barbie, even older and even more fundamental than Senator Astronaut Veterinarian Barbie, and you can't make a postmodern movie-about-Barbie without addressing it.

This is Barbie the fashion doll. The Barbie who is an icon of ultra-consumerist teenage girlhood, whose life is defined by her fancy clothes and her fancy car. The Barbie whose most salient traits are her hourglass figure and her long blonde hair and her feet that are always posed to fit into high heels. The Barbie of "math class is tough!" The Barbie who is kinda vapid and shallow and, yes, boy-crazy.

How can you tell a story about Barbie wrestling with the culture of patriarchy, and not talk about that? How can you depict Barbie falling victim to the patriarchy and have it look nothing like that?

...the movie does bring up the specter of Vapid Consumerist Barbie, briefly. When Margot Robbie's Barbie first comes to the real world and meets with the sullen teenage daughter character, she has a litany of That Thing thrown in her face, and it makes her sad. But nothing is ever done with it, and it goes nowhere.

And it could all have fit together so well. That's the hell of it.

You can imagine the version of the story in which Ken conquers Barbieland with patriarchy, because the Barbies are actually vulnerable to patriarchal narratives, because Vapid Consumerist Barbie is the chthonic serpent that gnaws at the foundations of Senator Astronaut Veterinarian Barbie civilization. He successfully makes them all forget that they're senators and astronauts and veterinarians, and turns them into airheaded teenage fashionistas who think that math class is tough.

And this avails him, and the other Kens, nothing. Even within the "patriarchal" version of Barbieland, Ken is still an afterthought and an appendage. He still gets treated like dogshit, just in a different idiom.

Because the thing that has always been true of Barbie, though every age and every phase of her mythos, is: she is the main character of her own story.

This is what the movie was telling us all the way back in the horrific 2001-pastiche prologue, right? Even when Barbie was just a swimsuit model, the point was that she let girls tell stories about themselves (or idealized/aspirational versions of themselves), not about boys or babies. That is a truer, and more powerful, feminist message about the meaning of Barbie than any message the movie actually bothers conveying.

The gag scene practically writes itself: the brainwashed Barbies are sitting around in a giggly slumber-party huddle talking about how dreamy Ken is, and actual Ken cannot get a word in edgewise, he can't even get them to notice he's there, because even Vapid Consumerist Barbie is fundamentally centered in her own life. Her narrative is not about a boy, it's about the experience of being a girl (mostly engaging with other girls) who likes thinking and talking about boys. Which is very much beside the point, if you started out with the complaint that your girlfriend never paid any attention to you.

Patriarchy hurts men too, indeed.

The movie ends, as I've intimated, in a disappointing squidge of thematic confusion. Barbie announces that she never really loved Ken, and leaves him, because...well, because these days the smart-set target audience is allergic to romantic narratives that Produce the Couple, as far as I can tell. Then she goes to the real world and becomes a real girl, a move that means nothing and is nonsensical even by the standards of the Barbie metaphysics, because the storytellers don't know how to end her arc and Becoming a Real Girl is the sort of thing that feels like a meaningful conclusion.

The Kens...sigh...the Kens ask for equal rights in Barbieland, more or less, and get told, "nah, but we'll throw you some bones." And they're happy with this, more or less, because they're dumb and don't really care. The narrator says, approximately, "maybe someday they'll make as much progress as women have in the real world." Haw haw.

It's probably too much to hope for a movie like this to be willing to say something substantive about responsibility and kindness in relationships. It's almost certainly too much to hope for a movie like this to be willing to say something about the nature of love symbols and love narratives. But all the pieces really were there, laid out very conspicuously. The movie could have wrapped up with: Ken doesn't need to be more important than Barbie, he doesn't even need to be as important as Barbie, he just needs to be treated with human decency. And if little girls are going to play with Barbies, and fantasize about having cute guys hanging all over them -- maybe they should have functional models of romance and human connection in which to root their fantasies, and not terrible ones.

#media analysis #barbie

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candylandphotos · 9 months

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Fashion lifestyle model photography apparel glam trendy editorial black african american❤️

"Empowering Elegance: A Trendy Editorial Photoshoot Showcasing Glamorous Apparel on a Stylish African American Model ❤️"

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landwriter · 1 year

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Desperate Measures | Dream/Hob | 1.2K | G v silly and fluffy, literally 90% air, dream attempts a romantic gesture, hob is a sap and forgetful, human au, part text fic

for @domaystic drabbles, Day 6: Under the Same Umbrella

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Dream woke up to 26 texts from Hob. He put on his glasses and began his morning read. It’d replaced Times for him. The editorial quality, he thought, was far superior.

Hob (7:19 am) heading out, gave you a wee forehead kiss and you didn’t even stir. sleeping bloody beauty. love you disgustingly much x

Hob (7:26 am) couldn’t find my umbrella anywhere can you take a look if it’s not too much of a bother? feel like i’ve gone mad

Hob (7:30 am) christ it’s bucketing down!! standing under the eaves just to tell you how much it’s bucketing down

plants will be happy at least so will my goth boyfriend ;) hope your writing goes well today love. extra atmosphere!!

Hob (8:42 am) nevermind don’t look for it remembered that i left it in my office told johanna she can use it since i’m at the archives all day anyway glad i’m not the only one who’d forget their own head if it wasn’t screwed on :) :) :)

Hob (10:11 am) you should’ve seen the look lisa gave me when i showed up had to dry myself off in the men’s w half a forest of paper towels there goes my carbon offset from walking i said christ you’re probably still in bed asleep warm dry!! lucky bastard

wish i could come back already and drip puddles all over you

Hob (10:37 am) if this keeps up i’m going to look like mr darcy in the rain on your doorstep tonight don’t worry i promise not to propose marriage while insulting you xx although i do love you most ardently

...elizabeth

Dream smiled, read them all again, contemplated, and then sent his reply.

Dream (11:01 am) Sir, I appreciate the struggle you have been through

Hob replied moments later.

?? you sound like a customer service agent wait you’re quoting the film you can’t reject me if i’ve not proposed to you!! yet!!!

Dream snorted. 'and I am very sorry I have caused you pain' went the line. They’d watched it last weekend. Hob had cried, and Dream had privately decided that if Hob proposed, he’d say yes. Even if it was poorly done. It wouldn’t be, though. Not if Hob was doing it. He sent a second text.

...and I am very sorry you were drenched by rain.

Then he got out of bed and shuffled into the kitchen. His phone buzzed anew as he made tea and toast. He smiled at the sound. On their first date, Hob had warned Dream that he had a bad habit of annoying boyfriends over text. Dream, on his first date in six years, had wondered what it might be like to be so effusively charming that you could have enough boyfriends to form habits around them at all. He hadn’t known what to say, and Hob had ducked his head, grimacing a little, and said, “Just tell me to piss off, please, if I do? I know I can be a bit much.”

Dream believed it, because the man was telling him about his habits with boyfriends after one date. Not that he minded. And three months in, Dream had yet to tell him to piss off.

Turns out, a bit much was exactly what he’d wanted. Needed, in truth. Someone to tether him to the real world. His phone had become a modern-day lodestone in his pocket, a comforting pull of Hob-ness that would always point him back to life whenever he’d emerge, blinking and disoriented, out of the mire of his work. Work that he loved - creating worlds out of nothing, writing stories that would change people - but, coming on the age of thirty with nothing to show for it but recurring wrist strain and an upmarket flat that never had any guests, work that had also made him spend so much time apart from the rest of humanity that he was sometimes unsure how to rejoin it.

The tipping point had been when his eldest sister had found out that he hadn’t spoken to anyone else in between two of their regular dinners. Which were monthly. It had been mortifying. She’d smiled sadly, which was excruciating enough, and then gotten the gleam of a plan in her eyes, which had been far worse. “I’m setting you up,” she’d said. “I know just the guy. We go way back. I think you’ll like him.”

He had. Now, when his phone buzzed, he found himself frowning if it wasn’t Hob. (An exceedingly rare occasion.) But this time it was, of course. Four short messages sent one after the other:

hahahaha ok fine that was v good enjoy your day x

Five hours later, not even the curtain of rain awaiting him outside could douse the anticipation in his belly. An idea, he knew, was a powerful thing. Dream didn’t have an umbrella - Hob always shared with him, and would’ve apologetically nicked his if he had - so he would make the first leg of the journey as Hob did. He intended to go and get something nice, but once in the cold downpour, his resolve failed him almost at once, and he ducked into the first shop that had umbrellas in the window.

“Hiya,” said the girl at the counter without looking up from her phone.

Dream ignored her, blinking the rain out of his eyes, belatedly registering all the merchandise had a unifying theme and that he’d made a terrible mistake, borne of sheer desperation.

“Would you happen to have any other umbrellas? In black?” he asked. Hidden behind the counter, perhaps. If only you knew to ask.

The girl looked at him with an air of disbelieving reproval only accessible to teenagers and the very elderly. “You could try Boots, you know. It’s just down the street.”

Dream looked out the window. Rain torrented down. Commuters hurried past with their sensibly coloured umbrellas. From places exactly like Boots.

“Or we’ve got rain ponchos,” she added. It sounded like a threat.

“Nevermind,” said Dream quickly. “I’ll take it.”

“Enjoy your visit in London, sir,” she called out as he left.

He stepped outside and flicked open the umbrella with slightly more force than necessary.

Dream waited a few paces outside the archives, wanting to surprise Hob properly. Two separate pairs of tourists had thought he was their London Ghost Tours guide, and he was beginning to regret not holding out for longer, drenching be damned. Then Hob emerged, striding out and immediately stopping to pull out his phone. He was smiling at it. Dream smiled too, in anticipation.

A moment later his own phone buzzed loudly in his coat pocket, and Hob looked up in surprise.

“Oh my god,” he said. Then he said it again.

“I heard you needed an umbrella,” said Dream. He’d had the line already, since he got the idea. It had been very dashing and romantic in his head. It was somewhat undermined by the dreadful costuming choice that had been forced upon him.

Hob looked between Dream and the umbrella, bafflement melting into a happy laugh. He ducked underneath, pecking Dream on the lips. “I’m not sure I needed one quite this badly. Did you rob some poor tourist?”

“Unhappily, I paid for this.”

“Oh no,” said Hob, pulling away and pretending to inspect him for injury. “My poor darling. Your dignity.”

Dream sniffed. “I will recover.”

“Here,” said Hob. “I’ll carry it for you. You’ll only be guilty by association, then.”

They began walking, a bobbing Union Jack in a sea of blacks and greys. After the chief sin of ugliness, it was also a little small for two grown men, but Dream found he didn’t resent that at all, as Hob tucked him tightly into his side to keep them both dry. People gave them a wide berth. Tourists could never be trusted with umbrellas.

“You’ve rescued me, you know,” said Hob, nuzzling into his cheek.

“It wouldn’t do to have you dripping puddles all over the floors,” said Dream.

“Even if I looked terribly handsome, all wet and ardent?”

Dream bit his lip and smiled a little. “Perhaps you can be wet and ardent in the shower. Instead.”

Hob laughed again. It was Dream’s favourite sound. “Much warmer than the rain anyway. Deal.” Rain drummed down on their private nylon ceiling. “I was thinking chicken tikka masala for dinner?”

And so they made their way home, and although the rain never let up, Dream was so content and warm that he might’ve sworn they were walking in the sun.

#dreamling #domaystic2023 #this is DISTRESSINGLY sweet you've been warned #the sandman #three days in a row!#new record for actually doing a monthly prompt thing #continuing to just write about today's weather and call it a fic #my writing #the sandman fanfic

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brightlight-dazzlingeyes · 6 months

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november with you | kylian mbappé (part i/iii)

kylian mbappé x original female character [+18]

synopsis: alice has been living in paris for a year, she found a perfect job and a perfect boyfriend in this city, but the cold of november is bringing back old memories she wishes she could forget. warnings: established relationship; mentions of cheating; angst; smut; domestic fluff; i have never been to france; minors dni.

(this is a sequel to the french exit, but can be read as standalone)

masterlist | next chapter

Part I — Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?

“Tonight with words unspoken

You say that I'm the only one

But will my heart be broken?”

“Don't laugh.”

“Why would I laugh?” Kylian asks, already laughing.

Alice tried to keep a straight face when looking at him, but she only has love in her eyes. Her boyfriend had a boyish smile on his face and it's a look that never failed to soften her heart.

“Alright, get your giggles out… But this is serious!” She says softly, holding back a smile.

The blonde held up her phone, displaying a picture of their cat to Kylian. Then, with her impeccably manicured finger, painted in a beautiful maroon color, she swiped to the next photo, which was nearly identical but featured the cat in a slightly different pose.

"Which one do you think I should post?" Alice asks. Her eyes, filled with curiosity, were fixated on him.

Kylian burst into laughter, reaching for her hand and the phone she was holding. He pulled her onto his lap, studying the pictures more carefully.

“Wait, let me see…” He says. He analyzes the pics with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, his playful smile never leaving his face.

The three of them – Alice, Kylian and Renoir, the cat – were in the living room of their shared apartment, sitting on their spacious, inviting couch. Outside, it was raining in Paris. The soft rain was casting a serene and cozy atmosphere over the home.

"I'm sharing it on my private account," Alice says. She’s staring at her nails as she speaks. A hint of something more weighed on her mind, and Kylian easily understood her unspoken thoughts.

"This one," he decided, "this one's just right."

He handed her the phone, and a smile spread across her face as she promptly shared the picture for her closest friend to see.

When Alice Morgan-Webber started dating Kylian Mabappé, the French media couldn't get enough of her. Once they made it official, it was like every news outlet fell head over heels for the couple. You couldn't escape their faces: it was printed everywhere. It felt as if the entire City of Love was cheering for their romance. Her stunning looks and magnetic charm had Kylian's fans from all over the world captivated.

Being an American socialite, the attention she received inevitably turned into numerous magazine covers and fashion editorial features. Alice, who was already working at a fashion magazine, became a part-time model and a world-wide influential it-girl, all thanks to the apparent modern-day fairy tale she was living.

The thing about people is – they tend to lose interest when they see someone's face as often as the Parisians saw Alice’s. It wasn't long before the rumors began. Even though she knew they would come, Alice wasn't thrilled to hear them. People couldn't stop talking about one thing in her new relationship – how incredibly fast she had moved on after calling off her engagement.

The terms “cheating” and “affair” started to show up more and more in articles written about the couple.

Kylian comforted her, assuring her that the media's attention would soon shift to the next manufactured scandal. He eased her worries, pointing out that there were no witnesses to their supposed ‘love crime’.

"David knew I was seeing someone else…" She admitted, her anxiety rising at the idea of the true story of how they met being exposed.

"Baby, stop stressing about it. That’s not the kind of thing a man shares. He won’t speak to the media." Kylian gently smoothed out the lines forming on her forehead and gave her a soft kiss there.

But that was over a month ago. Now, it’s November, the autumn leaves are falling and the chilly wind is making Alice start to stress over different things.

amorganw98

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the biggest star in this household ⭐

ksml98 love you meow and fur-ever ⤷amorganw98 💀

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"I've been living in Paris for a year now," Alice says to Clara, her coworker and dear friend. "I knew it would take me a while to adapt, but now I feel like I'm back to square one."

They were in the meeting room of the magazine, having just finished a meeting. The two of them were used to staying a little longer to chat before returning to their desks. Working for a prestigious fashion magazine was exciting, but there were days when it felt like any regular desk job.

However, Alice had no interest in rushing back to her cubicle. She was worried. Alice looked out one of the large, modern glass windows in the room. "I feel like just as much of an outsider as when I first got here," she admitted. Her days were blending with the memories of when she had first arrived. Back then, she had a diamond engagement ring on her finger and dreams bigger than what real life could offer. It hadn't taken long for the chill, blue weather of France to affect her heart. It had taken Kylian quite a while to warm it up once again. Now, Alice was concerned that the weather was cooling her spirits. She didn't want to feel blue, not after making so much progress.

Clara nodded, trying to show her support. “But just because it may feel the same, doesn’t mean it is the same. Everybody knows you now, chéri, you’re a celebrity!” Clara hugged her friend, trying to cheer her up. “Let’s have dinner together, you need a girl’s night out!”

Her friend is kind and well-intentioned, but there was a deeper feeling, a sense of not quite belonging, that Clara seemed to struggle to fully understand.

As her shift came close to its end, Alice found herself staring at her laptop, her thoughts drifting away. Kylian was in another country for a Champions League game – a chill ran down her spine as she remembered how David used to leave her alone for days without a word. Now she knew for sure he had another woman. Determinedly, she tried to dispel the intrusive thoughts from her mind. Kylian is working, she knows that. And Clara is right, this time is different. Alice blamed her insecurity and anxiety on her hormones and pushed forward with her day.

alicemwebber

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thank you so much for having me @bazaarfrance 🤍 and thank you to the dream team! En kiosque, ce mercredi 15 novembre.

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"You smell so good," Kylian mumbled with his face buried in Alice's hair. He had just walked in the door and immediately enveloped her in his arms. "Why do you smell so good?"

Alice could barely speak through her giggles. "I smell the same, silly!" She almost missed his reply, his voice muffled as he showered her with kisses.

"Maybe I just miss you too much."

Peaches, Kylian thought. His baby always smells like peaches. It’s cold November but she always smells like his favorite summer memories. They had been apart for no more than 48 hours, but the moment they were finally allowed to hug each other again, they both shared a profound sense of relief.

Alice takes a moment to appreciate her boyfriend. His beauty. She stares at his face, making sure all her favorite details are still there. He’s really a sight to behold, and she couldn't help but feel her cheeks warming. Even after all this time, just the sight of him was enough to make her blush.

When he takes her to their bedroom, their love den, she takes off his shirt in a hurry. She feels an instinctual need to see him – to admire him. She can’t help but reduce his athletic body to its aesthetic. Alice is a first hand witness to the sacrifices he makes to have that physique, but in the moment of pleasure, she could swear he was hand-sculpted by the gods themselves.

“I missed you too…” She confesses in a whisper, like he wasn’t sure of it already.

It’s with devotion that they start to touch each other. With a passion that can only come from a strong bond. Kylian lifts her, wrapping her leg around his hips and finally kissing her on the lips. A guttural moan escapes him – every neuron on his brain was focused on the taste of her lips.

There is nothing in the world quite like coming home to the one you love. And being received with such care, Kylian wondered what he did to deserve this much happiness.

“I love you.” He kisses her again. “I love coming home to you.” Another kiss. He gently lays her on the bed. Alice’s legs are still holding him close, she can feel him growing hard so she pushes him closer to her core. “And I love fucking you.” Another kiss, this time muffling a moan as Alice’s feels herself melting when she hears him say that.

Alice leans back into her pillow, sighing with her eyes closed. She takes a deep breath, feeling her heart pounding, as if it was trying to escape from her chest.

After taking off the rest of their clothes, Kylian crawls over her, placing himself back between her legs – only this time there was no piece of fabric keeping them apart. Flesh on flesh – their bodies were burning. She was wet before, but now the tension between them felt overwhelming. As Kylian moved, she let out a groan.

He had one hand beside her head, supporting himself, and another hand wrapped around his cock, gently rubbing himself on her folds. The sensation was electrifying, Alice wanted to reach down and guide him inside her.

"You feel so good," Kylian murmured between kisses. He leans down, his voice a whisper in her ear, "Do you want me?" She nodded slowly, begging with her eyes, wanting for him to be inside her more than anything in the world. Kylian pushes himself into her – slowly and steady, stretching her patiently.

They both gasped at how amazing it felt.

“Oh my God…” Alice could barely contain herself. Kylian takes the opportunity to take one of her nipples in his mouth, he suckled and nibbled on it, causing Alice to moan and push herself against him.

As he enters her deeper, thrusting into her, Alice cries out in pure ecstasy. She wraps her arms around his neck and pulls him for another kiss. They found a good rhythm and continued like that for some time. The heat, the tightness, it was all too much to bear, Alice could feel herself getting close – she was panting heavily. She reaches up and gently traces her fingers along his face.

“Almost there?” He asks, whispering to her.

“Yeah.”

Kylian doesn't waste any time. He grabbed her hips tightly, his pace became rougher, more urgent and he groaned with each stroke, going as deep as possible, moving faster and harder until they were both crying out loudly, holding onto each other.

They fall side by side on the bed afterwards. Their breathing slowed down and Alice snuggled next to Kylian, with her head on his shoulder.

“You keep getting better at this.” She says, giggling.

“We keep getting better.” He corrected her with a loving smile.

#kylian mbappe #football fanfic #football fic #kylian mbappe fanfic #mbappe fanfic #kylian mpabbé #kylian fanfic #original character

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royal-confessions · 1 month

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“I used to think William was the most sensible one in his family. It’s turning out he’s the biggest idiot. I can’t wrap my head around this downfall. I used to admire him. Wtf is going on with him? I truly can’t believe this. There must be some explanation. I can’t figure it out. Is it really love for another woman that’s causing him to fuck up so badly? What is the reason? That editorial cartoon of him controlling a cardboard cut-out Kate is so embarrassing. KP being declared by AFP as an unreliable source is so embarrassing. This seriously ruins The Princess Diaries 2 for me (lol). I used to think he was the ultimate Prince Charming. Diana’s two sons turned out to be laughingstocks.” - Submitted by Anonymous

“I'm neither British nor American and I'm from a democratic country without a monarchy. I'm a royal watcher though and I've never really liked the british monarchy. At first I supported M&H but as various facts began to surface I shifted back at W&C. Now, however with the recent Kate drama I'm inclined to feel like William might just be the worst amongst all of them. M&H are clout chasers and frankly quite pathetic but William just seems so sinister in a dangerous way.” - Submitted by Anonymous

#Prince William #kate middleton #catherine princess of wales

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meraki-yao · 26 days

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I’ve been thinking today in light of some of the recent press and fan reactions and I’m going to totally use your inbox to spew some thoughts. Feel free not to post but I resonated with some of the things you were saying recently and wanted to share. In terms of Nick’s recent editorials, first I will say these are editorials, clearly not 100% verbatim quotes from Nick and there has been a lot of editorializing included in my opinion. You can argue the motive for that and whose motive it is but that isn’t really my point in this comment. I feel like I can see where Nick is in his career, doors are opening and he has felt pigeonholed into only being cast in certain roles and wants opportunities to expand into other roles and prove what else he can do. I think not wanting to only be cast as the pretty boy vapid Disney Prince Charming or romantic lead is understandable where he is right now. However, having watched as many interviews and interactions as I could get my hands on over the last few months with Nick and the whole RBrW crew, I would argue that Nick really does not see Henry in that Prince/romantic lead category. He himself has talked about what drew him to Henry as a character was not him being a Prince or just the lead in a rom com (although of course RwRB is a love story) but that he saw Henry as a vulnerable, fragile, damaged, lonely person who felt trapped in his circumstances and unable to really be himself and the struggle of that was very clear in how he played Henry even into the happy ending. Matthew has also said in more than one interview that Nick was the one that came and basically convinced Matthew that he was the right one to play Henry and that he understood him and wanted to nurture and protect the character and who he was at the heart, and that Matthew not only bought into that portrayal but they talked about it a lot and he felt “safe” leaving Henry in Nick’s hands and that he knew he wanted Nick for the part before he ever saw the chemistry test with Taylor. That is not just saying hey he’s a hot guy, he’s got chemistry, he looks princely…sign him up. I truly don’t think that Nick, Matthew, or Taylor and the rest of the cast saw or treated that character as just a Prince Charming rom com character. I guess all of that is to say I don’t think Nick is any way dismissive of RwRB or Henry and he’s talked recently in audio interviews about seeing the resonance and support and love for the show and the characters and how much it meant to him for people to see what they did with this movie and it upsets me to see some people taking the editorialized words of a journalist writing that he doesn’t want to play princess anymore and twisting that to say Nick doesn’t care about this story or Henry as a character. Who knows what will happen with a sequel, I have a whole other post about what I think about how Amazon has handled this show and promo/interviews/push for recognition but that is separate for me from whether Nick himself is round of this character and would choose to do a sequel if the opportunity is there. I feel he would and if it does happen he will give it his all to stay true to this character he cares about so much. (whew…sorry)

oh please don't apologize, thank you for sharing your thoughts! And yeah! I agree with what you said!

#anon ask #answered #nicholas galitzine #rwrb #red white and royal blue #rwrb movie #henry fox mountchristen windsor #henry hanover stuart fox

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