Me: All fanfiction is valid!

Also me, gripping my bejeweled chalice in rage: Character x reader is a pox upon the land

Tsuyu Can (Not) Be Trusted: A UA Traitor Theory

So when BnHA 320 dropped a couple days ago, @redblossxmm wrote a very interesting meta post that immediately grabbed my attention. In it, she goes over the chapter cover and the possible symbolism that might be at play. At first when I read it I was like "oh, that's kind of funny, wouldn't it be wild if Tsu was the UA traitor all along". But then I got to talking it over with @rikusoma on Discord and...yeah guys, Tsu might actually be the traitor.

I would just like to say before we get started that all of this is conjecture and based on a lot of admittedly circumstantial evidence. There has not been a lot of heavy handed evidence one way or the other on who the traitor even is (and if we’re being 100% honest, my primary traitor suspect isn’t even a student), but there’s still some fun stuff we can look at that could at least be considered setup against Tsu if that trigger gets pulled.

First off, I want to talk about how weirdly...in focus Tsu has been, especially in the early arcs. So far Horikoshi has only written two bonus chapters for MHA: a 5 page omake included in the character guide that highlights Bakugo's feelings after the 1st semester final exams, and a chapter completely about Tsuyu, her family, and the only friend she had growing up in middle school. Unlike the other bonus chapter though, this one was actually included in Shonen Jump with one of the chapters, and it later reappears in Volume 10.

What’s weird about this is that we ONLY see her family in this little bonus chapter. We actually do get to see a lot of the other families of class 1-A, but we DON’T see Tsu’s family. Horikoshi could have given us Tsu’s backstory and family organically in the story (or in a one page omake, he’s done a few of those, mostly notably in the chapter right before DvK2), but no, she gets a whole short chapter all to herself.

Tsu also gets a whole anime episode to herself (the first filler episode as well) in the vs Stain arc in season 2. What’s weird is that the episode opens with checking in on the other students and seeing how their internships are going, so that momentum could have been continued if they needed to fill time, but instead the entire back half is all Tsu. This should have some payoff later on, or it will have just been wasted narrative space (although since its filler, it could be argued that its empty space being wasted anyway, so it’s not as big a deal).

Now let’s get into some specific things I noticed that we can chalk up to “there are no coincidences”. First, Tsu getting dumped into the water during the USJ attack. Deku attributes this up to the LoV not knowing their power sets, but honestly Tsu is the only one who comes out on top here, compared to the other kids. Deku himself is stuck on a boat, so there’s not a lot of room for him to get going and fight, Bakugo gets blown into the ruins so there’s not a lot of room for him to do things without accidentally blowing himself up, Ojiro is surrounded by fire so he’s also going to have maneuverability issues, Tokoyami’s in the dark so Dark Shadow can’t be used effectively, etc. The low level thugs probably did not know the students' quirks because of how they reacted to Mineta’s goo balls, but if the traitor is a student and told the LoV about the class, then Kurogiri would definitely know. This would be a good opportunity to convince the rest of the class that Tsu was on their side, especially if she was able to be in her element and work as a team player.

Tsu also spends this arc adamantly trying to convince her classmates to call her “Tsu” instead of Asui, a cutesy diminutive of her full first name (like Deku using “Kacchan” for Bakugo, a shortening of Katsuki-chan). It’s interesting that she’s trying to get the boys to call her this too. While it’s fairly common for high school girls to give each other cute names, asking male classmates to also do it is honestly a little bit weird. She also calls everyone “-chan” throughout the story, which is interesting considering she’s once again lumping in the boys and the girls. You could interpret this as her trying to force a connection with the class, trying to be cute to create an air of friendship and intimacy quickly, along with getting them to drop their guard.

Next, let’s look at the Bakugo kidnapping arc. Tsu is not the only person who thinks it's a bad idea to go, but she is the one that most vehemently opposes it, comparing the mission to acting like a villain because you’re working outside of the rules. This is an extremely harsh thing to say, especially to Deku, who just broke both of his arms saving Kota and STILL pushed himself to try and rescue Bakugo and Tokoyami from Mr Compress. Seems to me like she’s very desperate to keep Deku and the rest home, enough to go for the freaking jugular like that. I could also bring up Tsuyu keeping Bakugo away from Deku in chapter 303 (because I’m convinced that if Bakugo had been able to talk to Deku he wouldn’t have run away), but the whole class was on board for that so whatever.

And now let’s get to the big one: Tsu has had two different near misses with the LoV so far. Shigaraki almost grabbed her face during the USJ attack, but it took just long enough that Aizawa was able to save her. Later on, during the Camp Training arc, Toga has her pinned to a freaking tree, but she talks JUST ENOUGH for Ochako to get the drop on her. As a counterpoint, Toga does NOT hesitate at all while trying to go for Ochako’s blood, immediately sticking her and grabbing some before making her retreat. Both times Tsu was put in enough plausible danger to make it seem like she was being threatened, but she wasn’t actually harmed in a significant way.

There are a couple other things we could point to (like how she’s on the cover for chapter 320, along with how weird it is that the chapter just randomly ends on her face, when a more dramatic ending would have probably been when Todoroki encased Deku in the wall of ice), but I think we’ve covered most of everything. To summarize: Tsuyu gets a lot of narrative space given to her despite not really being a relevant character. She is often getting put into danger without actually getting hurt, and Horikoshi has put a lot of effort into making her seem like a gungho team player that will do anything for her friends. Having Tsu be the traitor would make a lot of seemingly unconnected things make a lot more sense, and I think it would be a really good gut punch to have that rug pulled out from under us by her.

Now of course, we have the shakiest part of this theory: what would be Tsu’s motive? Well what little we know about her family is that her parents are often working and therefore she’s responsible for taking care of her younger siblings. It’s possible that she somehow got into some kind of vigilante/mercenary work in the underground in order to support her family. That would go a long way in explaining why she’s always so level headed under pressure (a lot like Bakugo, who also has a lot of experience in fighting, since he used to both bully and get bullied). Alternatively, AFO or the LoV has her family somehow, and she’s being coerced into it. Either way, I definitely think her family would be her motive here.

So in short, Tsuyu is 100% the traitor and clearly this is undeniable. Thank you to Blossxm for making my brain start turning, and thank you Riku for being my springboard the past couple days while I rambled about this ridiculous idea. More meta/theories are incoming, so if you enjoyed my shit post, please stick around and ramble with me about how crazy the last few chapters have been!

Undo my ESC

Good evening, folks! If you saw my first instalment of “Undo my ESC”, the annual feature where I make a year’s Eurovision better for me by making alterations in each country, you might have thought that ESC getting cancelled had dulled my edge, since, comparing to usual standards, I hardly changed much at all there. Well, that’s because, once again, we have seriously uneven semis, and Semi #1 would have been killer, whilst Semi #2 would have been dead. Here is what Í would have done to even those semis up! 🇦🇱 Albania: The Albanian delegation had seemingly done all it could to wash its hands of, well, two years of comparatively excellent results with authentic, melancholically poëtic and qualitative tracks, namely Malland Ktheju tokës. They brought in Byuckman, in whose interest it is for the contest to become as generically “radio-friendly” as possible, and the genius who brought us lyrics like “this is love/rain falls from above”. As judges. Of a serious musical festival. The foreign jurors did as expected, and voted for the appointed “bop”, but were foiled, however, by one of the minority Albanian jurors on the panel who put it  low in her ranks. An actual renowned music professor who got called all the names under the sun for doing so. And so, to an ensuing shitstorm, the classical and powerful Shaj prevailed instead. Unfortunately, the battle was won but the war was lost, because the representative herself took the lessons of 2018-9, threw them down the aeroplane toilet on the way to LA, and ripped the spirit out of the song, reverting back to the previous Albanian trend of terrible “revamps” and laboured translations into English. The result, Fall from the sky, is but a husk of the original. In my ESC, I’d probably simply keeping the original version of Shaj, which was my uncontested #1 of all songs, but part of me would opt for Ajër, which I love almost as well but which doesn’t carry the baggage of hanging over my head like the sword of Democles this entire season. 🇦🇲 Armenia: I’ve more often than not loved the entries of Hayastan, from the joyous Jan Jan to the soaring Fly with me and defiant Walking out. To say they took a step back this year is kind – it was more like a powerful jump backwards that landed them in the nearest ocean, where they sank like a stone. It was one of the most singularly unpalatable NFs that I have ever watched in this era. Rather than retraumatise myself by going into detail about it, I’ll just say, I would have sent Srbuk or Artsvik again to get the top 10 that I feel both warranted!

🇦🇹 Austria: What a journey for Österreich. From Conchita to this guy, a perky homophobe who explicitly said he wished his kids would not turn out to be gay. He comes up with a third-rate impersonator of a third-rate Benjamin Ingrosso impersonator’s third-rate impersonation of a Timberlake b-side. I would throw that in the bin and invite Pænda back from last year for a shot at redemption after her gorgeous Limits got slept on in 2019.

🇧🇬 Bulgaria: Some people had the neck to say to me “who needs Hungary when Bulgaria is coming back?” Well, I do. Hungary were constantly in the top of my rankings, and just quietly and consistently brought quality. Bulgaria has brought me one good thing – Poli Genova’s œuvre – and a tonne of hype. Their song this year was one of the favourites, and I still can’t wrap my head around how other than the force of PR. It’s a bizarre, unsettling combination of passive-aggressive “look how much you’re making me hurt myself” lyrics with Disneyish saccharine accompaniment, topped off with a key change?! For want yet again of a national final, I would bring Poli back – third time even luckier? 🇨🇿 Czechia: The Bohemians (and Moravians) keep it contemporary but superficial for a third year running, although, thankfully, for the first time since they began doing national finals, we finally have a song without a dubious attitude towards women in the lyrics. Not that there is much to analyse in those lyrics. It’s a merely ok song for me, no better, no worse: a superior alternative would have been Barbara Mochowa’s lush and contemplative second effort, White and black holes, or the glorious 90s British indie-influenced All the blood. 🇩🇰 Denmark: Did Denmark confound international monitors into calling it the world’s happiest country by exposing them to the relentlessly cheery songs that they pick for Eurovision lately? And yet – I really do say yes to Yes, To a certain extent, to a limited amount of exposure, and despite the fact that it leans a little too hard into the territory of sounding like a second Little talks. It was one of the few good songs from DMGP – I also liked the 80s shoegaze-ish Den eneste goth– and I feel so mad at DR that they won’t give Ben and Tan a guaranteed second shot to represent their country after they won in front of an empty crowd. 🇪🇪 Estonia: The days of Eesti being Beesti seem like from a distant memory to me, but there was some quality and quirkiness in Eesti Laul, buried under mountains of beigedom, like the rich-voiced Egert Miller’s soulful Georgia, the jazzy Write about me, or the feisty earworm that was Ping pong. Instead, we got a dreary dirge with sub-Hallmark lines about wot luv is, which would have sounded dated in a contest 30 years ago, sung by a repugnant guy who tried to get people to vote for him last year by leaning on the idea that he was the “only true Estonian.” I’d have Egert get his rightful place as Jüri Pootsmann’s spiritual successor. 🇫🇮 Finland: I was one of the few to be jubilant when a bizarre ode to an Italian porn star with a backing track sounding like a violated version of Eläköön elämä came second in the polls to its spiritual opposite: a shy and rather awkward guy singing a quietly moving song about the passing of time. I love Looking back and wouldn’t change a thing. 🇬🇪 Georgia: You never know what to expect from Georgia, except the unexpected, and yet even I was surprised by what they came up with: a close-shaven guy with veins popping in his head screaming “why don’t you love meeeee?” to a rocky, electronic backdrop. Me being me, I actually do like it a lot. “Take me as I am” sounds like a veiled potshot at the big 5 and a vindication of Georgia’s “keep it weird, send what we want” philosophy. I could suggest that the lyrics, that sound like those of a spurned angsty teen, change a bit, but that would be defeating the purpose of Georgia: one takes them as they are. 🇬🇪 Greece: So, somehow, despite S!STERS coming dead last with 0 pts in the televote last year, using exclamation marks to substitute the letter I is now a thing in Eurovision with the advent of Superg!rl. I spent an hour watching folk waffle on in Greek in its reveal show only for them to reveal the song literally at the very end, so after that, it was a little underwhelming, and nowhere near as good as Better love in 2019. I don’t hate it – and the music video’s concept of her being an amazing superhero who can change the world, but instead she’s stopping people slipping over bananas and rescuing cats from trees is weirdly endearing, so it can stay, but I’d improve the lyrics, particularly in the chorus. “I’m a supergirl, supergirl, in a crazy world, crazy world” is not much higher than “this is love, rain falls from above” in historically bad Greek lyrics at ESC. 🇮🇸 Iceland: Daði Freyr came back from near-victory with the delightful Is this love, added a lovely inspiration in his newborn daughter to a similarly funky and playful track, and came out with Think about things. Unlike what usually happens with songs that are a little bit odd, I was positively surprised to see it walk the NF, and become a phenomenon even outside the ESC fandom. This was perfect and joyous from beginning to end. I hope Iceland will not be like the other Nordics, and will invite Daði directly back .🇱🇻 Latvia: I have come to enjoy the bizarre chaötic energy of Still breathing, It’s a hot mess, but I take weird over dull any day. It wasn’t my favourite in Supernova – that would be the effortlessly cool Polyester, an earworm with a social conscience, written about the cost of fast fashion but dismissed by many people as “she luvs t-shirts song lol”. Given that Samanta Tina tried over half a dozen times to go to ESC, finally won and then had the chance ripped out of her hands by the cancellation, I don’t have the heart to remove her from my ideal ESC 2020 though. She stays, but maybe the staging changes? It’s odd to have what you believe is a feminist anthem but then relegate your backing singers to in the distance, their faces shielded away. 🇲🇩 Moldova: Life is too short to follow Moldovan national finals, especially when you know, lately, that whoever is backed by the hilariously inaptly named Dream team will win there. They are like a parasite, sucking out the colour and fun out of a country that once had plenty of both – cross-reference Hora din Moldova or Lăutar to name just two examples. I guess out of an uninspiring lineüp, I’d go for Moldoviţa for having at least a hint of the brassy folk that used to be their calling card. 🇵🇱 Poland: Speaking of calling cards, after a one year hiatus with an arresting combo of white voice and rocky instrumentation, Poland has returned to what it has most often done in recent years – presented us with an absolute dirge, Empires, which seems like it was written by an unenthusiastic English student whose homework assignment (for which they received a generous C-) was to write a poëm with a bunch of metaphors “we’re moths to a flame, birds to a pane of glass, gasoline and a match”. Despite having a big music industry from which to choose many gems, Poland offers me little alternative choice given that there were only three songs in their grand final – one by the Czech representative last year who, as you might guess from what I said literally a sentence up, isn’t even Polish!Horny Elf, who’s contractually obliged to write only creepy lyrics for songs, tried to represent Polska with a song inspired by a true-life situation where he went around Tel Aviv with a cardboard cutout of one of the hostesses of the show. It’s a love song inspired by gallivanting around with a piece of cardboard. Addressed to that actual hostess. And it’s an almighty earworm that hasn’t escaped my mind since. Amazingly, his Lucy would be my Polish representative. 🇵🇹 Portugal: Portugal is another country beloved by me by for dancing to the beat of its own drummer, or perhaps, rather shedding tears to the strumming of its own fado guitar. They struggled being different, they won being different, and for the last few years they’ve struggled again, despite having a lot of support for both O jardim and Telemóveis amongst fans. This year, the televote went for one interesting song, the charmingly Gallic, accordion-drenched Passe-partout, a song about a cultured girl shaking off her boorish ex who could “never even get into Piaf”, whilst the jury got behind another interesting song, Gerbera, an entrancing, arresting and poëtic song laden with metaphor about the idea of music competing itself. This let Medo de sentir,second in both polls, turn silver into gold. It’s a lovely, heart-felt track, but rather unexceptional - I would have had one of the other more singular songs win. 🇸🇲 San Marino: The weird boil on the face of ESC that somehow never pops, SM is back after its bewildering qualification with a tone-deaf dentist wailing to a microwaved disco song… with something actually palatable, sort of. The aptly named Freaky is dated, odd, overly busy, but Senhit has a lot of charisma, and the idea of “break[ing] all the rules, mak[ing] up some new [ones] and destroy[ing] all of them too” and “life goes by too quickly not to be freaking it up”, well, maybe we do get on board. 🇷🇸 Serbia: Serbia is usually a byword for quality at the contest – they won with one of the best 21st century winners hands down in Molitva, and also sent some of the most beautiful compositions in the contest’s history at the hands of Željko. This year, they decided to join in the leitmotif of reliable countries sucking by sending a group that sound like a third-rate mid-2000s girl band from Transnistria when beautiful songs like Cvet sa Prokletija were right there. 🇨🇭 Switzerland: Fair play to the Swiss for not doing a Cyprus and leaning in on their success with their male Fuego, She gat me, and instead going in a completely different direction with this moody effort. I’m not entirely convinced by the teenage emo-ish lyrics or the unnecessary falsetto, but Répondez-moi is a refreshing effort, and has the bonus of being in French too! And the automatic qualifiers: 🇫🇷 France: You’ve heard of France, right? You know, that wee country south of Belgium, north of Andorra, not much of a music industry… or so you’d think, given that the troolee jeenyuss new delegation, who abandoned their brilliant national final which showcased how diverse and qualitative their music scene is despite it being a huge success in the fandom, and instead reached out to the writer of last year’s last place song for the UK and a few other rentaswedes and they produced something that sounds like a b-side that not even Westlife would have recorded, replete with a stock key change. About as French as IKEA köttbullar. A real shame for one of Europe’s most highly esteemed cultural hotbeds. If they wanted to pick Tom Leeb, who seems like a nice guy and has written some lovely music, he could have made his own song and it would have indubitably been scores better than this. 🇪🇸 Spain: I’m going to apply this to all the automatic qualifiers voting on this semi-final: they scrapped a national final for this? OT was not an ideal format as last year demonstrated with its shit show of contestants sabotaging themselves so as not to get picked for ESC – but still. There’s not much I can say about this other than I don’t like it much and I’d rather Spain return to a proper NF. You don’t spend time trapped on a bus where this song with its torturous falsetto was on replay and emerge with fond feelings. 🇬🇧 United Kingdom: Usually, in this space, I can point to a song that the UK should have sent and that I fell in love with – like I wish I loved you more or You. Once again, though, another big 6 nation scrapped their NF after tanking it with a bizarre format last year. The BBC said nothing for months, then were unwilling to spend tv time on ESC this year so just blurted out an announcement of an announcement in  about 40 seconds after some dance show. And then they dropped this song. It’s… passable at best, with an annoying chorus (especially that beat in “my last… breath”) and a staggering amount of repetition in a song that clocks in at only around 80% of the standard Eurovision song length. James Newman surely could have come up with something better. It’s a baby step in the right direction, but one taken at the shore where you need to start running to avoid getting pulled away in a rip.

I'm curious now, if you feel like answering (no worries if you don't): What exactly IS the state of the discourse regarding the Lammily doll? Aside from the posts you just made I've never actually seen anything even remotely negative about them. (I'm not part of the doll fandom though.)

Gonna preface this by saying I don’t own a Lammily and I’ve only heard most of this stuff secondhand, but I know enough to talk about what’s wrong. There are a number of problems with Lammily, really, but let’s start with the biggest one. 

Fashion dolls - like Barbie- are designed to be easy to dress. There’s a reason why Barbie has a wasp waist, and it isn’t just unrealistic standards of female beauty.  Since dolls can’t really bend at the waist (...without some serious engineering and effort) and don’t often bend at the knees, you have to make it so that they can step into their clothes or pull them down over their torso without bending over. This is why Barbie has tiny feet (and why Bratz dolls had removeable feet)- it’s so she can wear trousers. It’s why Barbies have such long necks- so it’s easy to get clothes over their heads. It’s at least as much the structural side of dressing a mannequin as it is a representation of a human body.

If you look at Lammilly next to Barbie...

... You’ll start to see the problem. Because Lammily has a ‘realistically’ proportioned torso, she’s harder to dress. 

It’s harder to get pants to sit properly on her butt, because her butt is one big piece of rigid plastic. (A lot of boy dolls have this problem too- my poor Jasper Cullen has a permanent plumber’s crack.)

(pictures from Toyboxphilosopher.com) 

 It’s harder to get clothes over her head and shoulders, because her neck is so short and her torso is so thick. I doooooon’t think it’s a coincidence that Lammily’s shipped wearing a button-down. 

There’s also... something messed up with Lammily’s hips and upper legs. Maybe it’s just that I’m used to Barbie’s body shape, but it looks like her center of gravity is too low. So her torso looks weirdly elongated and her legs look weirdly stumpy. Not sure how easy it’d be to fix that issue, but it’s certainly a thing. 

Whatever it is, it means that Lammily can’t sit down properly. Her legs splay out wide, and without some serious nudging, you can’t get her to close them. Her knees are articulated, but before looking into her, I genuinely thought they weren’t- it’s very difficult to get her to sit with her legs crossed. She also can’t stand up on her own, but that’s a problem most fashion dolls have.

Personal opinions: I really don’t like Lammily’s face sculpt. I get that she’s supposed to resemble a ‘normal’ teenager, but something about it just looks... gormlessly smug. I also really don’t like that Lammily ships with molded on underwear. 

Second big problem with Lammily- she is not a doll for children. She is a doll for their parents. And because of that, she’s dead boring. Yes, Lammily is designed as, and to an extent marketed as, a playline doll- a children’s toy, not a toy for collectors. Buuuuuuut... let’s look at the selling points for a second.

The big selling point of Lammily- as opposed to Barbie, Monster High, Ever After High/Disney Descendents, DC Superhero Girls, Bratz, etc.- is that she’s a realistic alternative to Barbie. Her tagline is “normal is beautiful”. She doesn’t really come with any special accessories (you can buy fashion packs, stretch marks, acne, period pads, and so on for her, but as far as I know, she doesn’t come with things like purses or hats). She is a (comparatively) short, stout, average-looking girl with a double-denim outfit, and her packaging contains a little story about how she travels the world and likes to meet people. It is all very harmless and nice and safe. 

Kids... do not care what brand their toys are unless their peers care. A kid doesn’t care whether their blonde fashion doll is a Barbie or an Ever After High or a Moxie Teenz or a dollar store knockoff - it’s a doll and they can dress her and have her murder Ken and resurrect him into a zombie army to their heart’s content. ...Unless all their friends have Bratz dolls, and they’re the only one stuck with a Barbie. Or all their friends have Monster Highs, and they’re the one stuck with the dollar store knockoff. ...Or all their friends have Barbies, and they’re stuck with a fucking Lammily. 

Lammily really has nothing to make her more desirable to a kid than the other dolls they could be playing with. I’ll admit that Lammily is not just double denim for days; you can get a mermaid tail, a veterinarian outfit, or a ballerina dress for her- and then unpleasantly surprised to see that the individual outfits are priced comparably to an entire Barbie set. As an example: the Lammily veterinarian outfit is $24.00 and comes with a set of scrubs, a surgical mask, a ‘vitals monitor’, and some cat treats; the Barbie Farm Vet playset is $25 and includes a doll, an outfit for her, and multiple animal friends. And...  I understand that there’s moral stuff at play here; I respect Lamm for deciding to pay his workers what they’re worth and not rely on Chinese slave labour. But in practice, it means that most kids who have a Lammily are not going to have any of her custom outfits. 

So. To make this fair to Lammily, I’m only going to compare her to the more ‘realistic’ 18-inch dolls I had growing up. American Girl dolls actually have a similar body type to Lammily (but- when I was a kid- they got around that by having cloth bodies, so when you dress them they had a bit more give). 

If you were a kid, and you had the choice, would you pick Kat the Time Explorer (who comes with a big poofy pink silk dress, a parasol, and a book about her aunt’s mysterious time machine)... or Lammily? Would you pick Laurel the Wood Fairy (who comes with a flower crown, a long flowing purple cape, and a book about her adventures tricking evil goblins to save her gentle fairy kingdom)... or Lammily? Hell, would you pick Molly (who looks more like you, AND has a book about how she grew up during World War 2 and had adventures on the Home Front)... or Lammily? 

Let me remind you, this is not even getting into Lammily’s actual competitors: you know, fashion dolls you can dress, Disney princesses, superheroes, WWE wrestlers, Harry Potter witches, Star Wars heroes, and Dracula’s daughter. There is literally no contest there. If eight-year-old me had to choose between Hermione and Lammily? I know which one I would pick in a heartbeat, and it sure ain’t the blandly nice world traveler.  

So... Lammily is not a toy that will interest kids at all. But it will interest parents- specifically feminist parents- who are anxious that their kids will play with toys that will hurt their self-esteem. So they will buy this toy for their kids, who are then just disappointed that they didn’t get the Elsa Barbie or the Optimus Prime that they asked for and who will probably never play with Lammily unless they’ve got nothing better to do. 

 Dolls are about stories. The toys you give your kids show them the kind of stories you want them to tell about the world and ultimately about themselves. If you give your son toy guns and GI Joes, he’s less likely to tell stories about things that aren’t shooting. If you only give your daughter plastic dishes and baby dolls, she’s less likely to tell stories about things that aren’t housewifery. A sufficiently determined kid can tell the stories they want to tell with whatever they have available, don’t get me wrong- Lauren Faust and MLP:FIM prove that.

This comes to the crux of why I really, really hate Lammily...and agh, ADHD brain is trying to go in two directions at the same time with this, and it’s making them the Same Thing when they’re two different things; I’ll try to tease them out separate. 

Thing One about why I really hate Lammily: well, there’s this quote I post a lot on here by Ada Palmer: 

Our world is saturated with messages telling people to give up, to settle, to take whatever path will make ends meet, to expect to face a grim job market when we reach adulthood, to expect the hours from 9 to 5 to be sacrificed to drudgery, to expect closed doors. When kids are in kindergarten they're encouraged to say they want to be an astronaut, or a race car driver, or a president when they grow up, but by the time young people reach High School the negative messages have usually won out, that the world is unfair and against them, that dreams are unrealistic, that aspiration is naive, that optimism should be mocked, that cynicism, criticism, and the realism of a pessimistic norm are the smart path. 

I think the best thing we can do to brighten the future is to stop telling people that it can't be brightened, that they can't brighten it. We can all lay down stepping stones in the long road to the stars, but we can lay down exponentially more by telling other people that they can do it too, that they don't have to waste themselves for the present, that there are a hundred thousand paths open to all of us that let us lay the vital stepping stones.

...Lammily is all about the ‘realism of a pessimistic norm’. She comes with stretch marks and acne and period pads. Most of her clothes are sturdy and practical, and the ones that aren’t are ludicrously expensive. Lammily doesn’t have magic hair that glows when she sings, or butterfly wings, or snake hair. She isn’t the daughter of Sleeping Beauty or the Wolf Man or an ancient mummy. She isn’t going to space or fighting evil empires or saving the world. She’s just... an ordinary girl. Who travels, and maybe takes pictures. 

And like... I get that kids need ordinary role models to relate to. I get that you can’t just give your kids a diet of fantasy. But ... if I was gonna try to give my hypothetical daughter a Normal Person Role Model to relate to... it’d be Grace Murray Hopper or Mary Shelley or Annie Oakley. If it was one that came in doll form, it’d be, like... Coraline Jones. Not Lammily.

The other thing. The other thing. and this is the one that makes me angriest. is just how much Lammily’s marketing and messaging and general theme fetishize being normal. There’s this whole line of subtext in the marketing about how Lammily is an average normal girl and those skanky Barbies over there who have unrealistic body proportions aren’t normal like Lammily so they’re bad. 

...And, like... okay. I get that this is most likely unintentional. I get that there absolutely should be more dolls with realistic body proportions, and that having wasp-thin waifish dolls everywhere the eye can see really can make little girls feel bad about their bodies. But at the same time.... 

Okay, let’s talk about Monster High for a second. 

Monster High dolls have some of the most stylised bodies in the doll world right now. (In this lineup, you’ve got a Barbie, a Monster High, a DC Superhero Girl, and a Moxie Teen.) 

...At the same time, though... I’d argue the messaging in Monster High’s doll line is a lot better for kids than the messaging in Lammily. Because the message Monster High sends, with all its packaging and tie-in fiction and design, is “there are lots of different kinds of ways to be a person, and it’s okay and fun and cool to be different. be a freak, be a weirdo, be a monster- no matter what kind of ghoul/girl you are, you’re welcome here.” 

Sure. Monster High doesn’t have much body diversity. They could definitely use to have more. But I think “It’s okay to be different, and the things that make you freaky make you fabulous” is a ... better message overall than “it’s okay to be normal”. It can be a competing access needs thing, don’t get me wrong... but in my experience, most of the time, ‘normal’ is much more restrictive than ‘weird’, and it’s a standard that keeps changing. It’s better to be able to say “yeah, so what if I’m fat, I don’t care if it’s a flaw, it’s part of who I am and that’s okay” than “MY WEIGHT IS OFFICIALLY ‘NORMAL’”. Because what’s “normal” could change at any time, and you might not. 

... I dunno, maybe that’s just my triggers talking. And I’d love to see a decently engineered doll with a more ‘average’ figure. 

But I don’t think that doll’s Lammily. I don’t like the marketing, I don’t like the blandness, and I don’t like the doll itself. And I know there’s plenty of other people who share my opinion, lol.