Misa Amane is conceptually, at her core, a character driven by a need for an emotional connection to another person after the death of her parents. Light is her ideal person to latch on to. Not only is he Kira (her savior) but he's also an attractive charismatic man her age. She asks to be his girlfriend specifically to ensure he stays in her life, essentially to trap him from leaving her, even specifying she's okay if all he does is use her, bc ultimately she just wants to be helpful to Kira. While she hopes that someday maybe he might learn to love her too, she's fine with playing pretend when he suggests he can act like her boyfriend, even if he clearly states he doesn't reciprocate her feelings. The reason Misa is so easily manipulated is because she's already in a vulnerable state of mind. Traumatized and emotionally unstable, she needs someone to depend on, someone to fill the void left after her parents were murdered.
You see the problem with Misa isn't that she's inherently a flat character. The problem is that she's written by a misogynist.
What happened was, the author wrote an extremely interesting set-up for a great female character full of potential depth- and didn't realize it.
So instead of exploring her preexisting characterization or motivation meaningfully, the narrative frames her as purely unintelligent and oblivious, because that's how the author sees her.
Despite her extreme competence at many crucial parts of the story like her emergence as the second Kira, the fact she managed to trap Light in a relationship with her or her contributions to the case during the Yotsuba arc, she's instead used for comic relief or fanservice. She's usually portrayed as dumb and irrational, a nuisance, nothing but a pawn in Light's plan, another woman who fell for his manipulation.
She's not allowed further complexity or to be taken seriously, because the author isn't interested in exploring his female characters beyond the most surface level writing required for the story to make sense.
barbie is not an "anti man" movie at all. it's so obvious to me that the kens were written like idiots not to call all men idiots (well... maybe a little) but instead to show how easy it is for someone to get taken advantage of. it's important to remember that while the barbies and kens are played by and written as adults, they function in the real world and overarching narrative as adolescents that don't know very much about the world.
reading ken as a young boy, he's initially nice to the girls around him (if insecure, lonely, and feeling pretty disrespected) but as soon as he steps into the real world, he sees all these men who feel very secure in their masculinity and self-assured, and he wants that for himself. he falls into the trap of the patriarchy much like a lot of young boys in real life fall into extremist right wing ideologies. but ken's insecurity never really goes away, it just gets covered with faux fur and headbands and country music. it's why he cries and admits to barbie that leading was hard. he never really wanted to hurt the barbies at all, he just wanted to feel confident and accepted by everyone, but especially barbie.
ken was never the problem by himself. he wasn't made into the world hating women. he was manipulated and turned into a misogynist by society.
Before Barbenheimer, there was “Apocalypse in Pink,” the August 1983 theme of fashion/culture magazine SPECTAGORIA. The issue’s controversial imagery of Barbie-esque models attempting to stay gorgeous and glamorous amidst nuclear annihilation sought to, in the words of editor/photographer Sera Clairmont, “revel in the morbid absurdity of the new American condition,” an “anxiety vibrating underneath all our plastic smiles.”
“It’s The Hot Pink Cold War,” Clairmont wrote in her introduction. “It’s ‘Material Girl’ on the radio and ‘WarGames’ at the drive-in. It’s ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ interrupted by the emergency broadcast signal. We’re told to look sexy, dress fashionable, make money, and spend money, but be sure we’re just the right amount of terrified about the bomb. Get that Malibu dream home, keep working on that perfect body, sip cocktails by the pool in your little pink bikini and watching the stocks go up — but STAY VIGILANT! and for God’s sake vote Republican, because that dream home could melt into a pink plastic inferno at any given moment. Just don’t stop smiling as the blast liquefies your skin into bubbling ooze like a Barbie doll in a microwave - it’s bad for the economy.”
---------
NOTE: This is a work of fiction created by me. This alternate reality horror story is part of my NightmAIres narrative art series (visit that link for a lot more). NightmAIres are windows into other worlds and interconnected alternate histories, conceived/written by me and visualized with synthography and Photoshop.
If you enjoy my work, consider supporting me on Patreon for frequent exclusive hi-res wallpaper packs, behind-the-scenes features, downloads, events, contests, and an awesome fan community. Direct fan support is what keeps me going as an independent creator, and it means the world to me.
liar i am a liar
i'm eleven chapters into a weak hero fanfic but i'm not posting it until i can think of a name
“Sorry that it all went down like it did”
it's not gay you guys they are making a biblical reference to the kiss of judas ok there's nothing gay about this
honestly, if Donald had to die for the sake of the plot, the truck was not the way to go. He could've died of internal bleeding from all the hits he took. He could've died of an incidental overdose of his medication because he wasn't put together after the fight. He could've purposefully attempted suicide instead of dying by happenstance. You can tell he wasn't all there when he stood in the middle of the road and refused to move, but still. I don't like it.
I am apparently working on becoming a local cryptid at the store. Talents include:
Monitoring the changing of the seasons via mozzarella
Predicting the weather by picking up a piece of cheese and mysteriously saying “oh, the storm is gonna be bigger than we thought...” just before thunder
Mind reading, e.g. “Can you help me find a cheese? It’s called, uh... [starts fishing out shopping list]” “Gruyere?” “...yes O_o”
i love finding poetry in the mundane, and yesterday i stumbled upon something that just hits that spot
So, my partner has an old phone- It served them for many years now, but it has one issue: Charging it is hard. Their current charger is hanging on by a thread (literally), and can barely do its job. The phone and the charger came together: They've never used another charger for said phone.
Now, they've tried to replace the charging cord several times. But it doesn't matter how much they've searched what damned specific charger the phone uses, none of them work. They finally decided to bring it to a phone shop and ask what should they use.
The guy at the shop looked at the phone for a bit, and explained: "The port itself is broken. The charger you have works with this phone because they've mutually broken each other into the same shape, in a way that no other charger is shaped. The port itself has corroded in a way that only accepts the charger that shaped it like that in the first place."
And while this is of course a frustrating situation for my partner, I feel like there's a metaphor here. I could write a goddamn story about this. These two half-broken old things have been together for so long they've destroyed each other in a way that keeps them from working with anything else. They've hurt each other in a way that barely keeps them functioning together, and have been rendered useless with literally anything else.
This too is toxic yuri to me-