saw barbie movie as a trans/nb person and it destroyed me emotionally and left me feeling so devastated. idk how to explain it but relating so deeply to the movie and what it was doing, but feeling out of place and distanced. idk you never lose a connection to girlhood and it’s a deeply personal thing. and that movie rly reaches into ur chest and rips that part of u to the surface so u can feel it and cry and cry and cry. and the general message of learning how to become human and growing up developing all these problems in the real world and not knowing what to do. learning how horrible the real world is and choosing to live in it. coming to terms with ur path in life even though you’re not sure what that path is. ken being so reliant and obsessed with barbie and learning to unlearning patriarchy to love himself and have support from his fellow kens. barbie learning what it is to be a woman and being terrified and depressed at the thought. the message of motherhood and the relationship between the mother and daughter. your mother was a little girl with dreams once message 😭 all of it just hits you and hits you. and not to mention the billie eilish track that plays. barbie movie fucked me up. it’s unrelenting and i loved the movie definitely rewatchable if u need a good cry but also a good laugh.
Okay I don’t have the spoons for an in-depth essay about the Barbie movie so here’s my loose thoughts:
The transition from despising Barbie, not for the idea she represents but the ideas that are forced upon her to being a fierce supporter of Barbie is such the quintessential teenage experience.
The beauty of human creativity, how our ideas can change and grow and become even more than we could have imagined.
The themes of motherhood and its beauties and hardships
The depression Barbie came for everyone’s necks?? I just know that’s getting a meme 😭
I love that Ken had a character arc too, going from an accessory to a perpetrator of the patriarchy. Then unlearning misogyny as he realizes, when he places his value in himself, in his being instead of Barbie’s, the fragility of his ego goes away. Great message!
Weird Barbie becoming more butch and the Sugar’s Daddy and Magic Earring Kens living in her weird house, I know what yall are 😏
The mom was so me every time she freaked out about understanding the references of the different Barbies.
I loved the dismantling the Barbieland patriarchy scene, especially the jokes about the Godfather 😭
Will Ferrell’s character was so goofy, I loved that he wasn’t super evil, just a weird guy.
The overall idea of how wonderful it is to be human! The growth, change, joy, sadness, the existentialism! It’s all so wonderful, it’s all new every day all day. It really gave me a renewed sense of being :,)
One thing I feel like we don’t talk about enough is the fact that Haymitch was 16 when he won the Second Quarter Quell, against 47 other children, 12 Careers among them.
We often see him portrayed as a drunk and a lazy bastard, but the amount of skill and cunning it takes to survive THE HARDEST HUNGER GAMES IN HISTORY. No one understands how he’s managed to survive an arena with twice the tributes, or even figure out how the poison works. But Haymitch just doesn’t trust the excess, the berries, the green. And he’s lived with hunger before. He can take it for a while. When he finds his first body in the arena, the perfectly brown nuts still in his hands, he decides not to eat anything but what’s in his backpack. Then, after killing two Careers and being saved from death by Maysilee, they team up and figure out a system to safely drink the rainwater and kill other tributes and scavenge from their backpacks, to make sure that they don’t die from poisoning. And being skilled enough at fighting to pressure the Career into throwing her ax at him. Even with half his guts hanging out she apperently wanted none of the smoke. And not only understanding from previous Games, apperently, that the arena ends somewhere, but using it to his advantage. It is astounding.
Then he comes back and the Capitol kills everyone he cares about. This 16 year old boy is surviving the most brutal onslaught in the history of the Games and comes home, traumatized, hurt beyond belief, both mentally and physically - seeing an ally and friend die in his arms, almost dying from taking an axe to the stomach, having to kill no less than 3 Careers - only to see his family and girlfriend murdered.
And as if that isn’t enough, he has to spend the next 24 years watching his tributes, all of them the same age he was or younger, die in the arena, all alone. There is no one else to help him shoulder that grief. He has the worst district, where no one ever wins, so he sees 2 children he mentors die every year, and the mother of the girl who saved his life in the arena is still around.
But wait! It gets worse! After Peeta and Katniss show fighting spirit and a desire to come back home alive, he has to choose which tribute he will try to help. He puts his money on Katniss, which is understandable, but still heartbreaking.
Then, they somehow both make it out alive. Notwithstanding the roller coaster of emotions Haymitch must have been on when they pulled that last stunt with the berries - getting them both back, then maybe getting neither back- he has no time to grieve for the 23 children who died, but must immediately go to Katniss to try and save her from the same fate he encountered for his own stunt with the force field.
Then he hears about the Third Quarter Quell, which involves Katniss and either him Peeta or having to fight all his friends. And with Katniss begging him to take Peeta’s place when they reap him, all the trauma must’ve come flooding back.
He is also set to lose the two people he cares about - Peeta and Katniss - to the regime, after snatching them from the jaws of death. When he finally has someone else to share the burden of being a mentor, the Capitol immediately takes that from him, forcing him to watch his comrades die one by one trying to protect Katniss and Peeta to keep them alive, all to give Haymitch a chance to pull them out.
We sort of forget about him a little in the third book, but Haymitch loses absolutely everything he has to the regime. Everything. His innocence, his family, his home, and Katniss and Peeta. He has to topple an entire regime and is a member of a far-reaching conspiracy while he can barely function from all the ( additional ) trauma.
I feel like Susanne Collins used him as a mirror to reflect just how gruesome the Games are, and how this spectacle ultimately damages people so badly they become a shell of themselves. Anyone else thinking about celeberty culture?
When looking at him differently, one cannot escape the notion that he resembles a war veteran, too, forced to kill people to come back and then being lauded, but not helped. Especially him saying “there are no victors, only survivors” and the mind numbing substance abuse in order to avoid dealing with the death of two innocent children every year and everything he went through in the arena.
But not only that; he still has the strenght to fight back, organize a coup, be a mentor. Presented with the first real chance he gets to pull someone through the hell of the Games and come back out, he jumps. Even though that means reliving the horrible games again.
Haymitch deserves a lot more praise, and I think Collins presented him really well as an idea of just how evil the Capitol really is. And how wickedly smart Haymitch Albernathy can be, if he chooses to.
I am honestly suprised that he’s still alive and in generally okay condition, despite being a raging alcoholic. Him raising geese and looking after Katniss after they come back from District 13 gives me a little peace.
I’m rereading The Hunger Games rn and i read that scene in the second book where Finnick tells Katniss to scare Peeta with their cream and i was like huh that’s a pretty weird scene right it doesn’t really fit the tone of the Hunger Games. But then i finished the book and after reading how Finnick was crying about Peeta it just hit me, like.
Finnick had to give up his entire childhood due to the games. As being the youngest victor at 14 he was obviously traumatized for life. And then a few years later he has to sell his body to the Capital. And then he gets in the 75th HG and he sees these two kids, man. These two 17 year olds fresh off the 74th game. So of COURSE he helps Haymitch so he could form an alliance with these kids because these are kids around the same age he had to sell himself to survive. And of COURSE he sticks with them. We even see him and Johanna try to talk to them after the “If it werent for the baby” statement before the peacekeepers held them back. The first time he sees Katniss he immediatly acts all sarcastic and jokey with her.
They’re on the beach just him and these kids and they’re so scared and traumatized so he acts all goofy and silly so they can atleast laugh a little bit even if there’s danger up ahead.
We see Katniss on that beach acting like a child again for a few minutes even if most of her life she had to be the adult. We just see something that a normal 17 year old would do.
And he promises himself to protect them but he couldn’t protect Peeta and he’s so sorry and he feels so guilty because he couldn’t prevent his fate :(
I know it’s like obvious but man it hit me so hard 😭
A collection of all the wizards I’ve drawn over the past year or so! Some of them used to have gray backgrounds, but now they’re all nice and colorful 🧙♂️✨
