#Barbie: I Can Be a Computer Engineer

[i-was-today-years-old-when]

i learned about the 2010 book "Barbie: I Can Be A Computer Engineer" and that Mattell apologized for the book after extensive online criticism because Barbie had her male friends code the game she was designing and that her male friends fixed Skipper's computer that Barbie had infected with a virus (x)

[barbielore]

Over the years Mattel has really tried to push that Barbie "Can Be Anything" -- there's multiple doll lines with that very branding. But there's been a few missteps over the years when it comes to STEM - "math class is tough", the computer engineer Barbie who needed help from her male colleagues, and so on.

So I thought I'd go back and look at some of the early Barbie STEM careers, to see how she has evolved over the years.

Depending on how you define STEM, the first STEM Barbie may have been Nurse Barbie in 1961. This is a tricky one because I cannot think of a reason why nursing would not be considered a STEM field, except for the fact that it has historically been a female-dominated field since before there was a bigger push for women in STEM. Sexism in action, really. Anyway, here's Nurse Barbie (1961).

The collectors edition rerelease in 2009 shows the same outfit on an actual Barbie.

The earliest STEM career that seems completely unambiguous as a STEM Barbie was astronaut, back in 1965 - making Barbie technically the first American to walk on the moon, but who's counting?

Naturally this was also historic enough to see a rerelease in the My Favorite Career series in 2009.

Barbie explored other fields of medicine in 1973 as Doctor Barbie - who appears to be wearing a surgical gown.

(Note this is also a rerelease, as I can't find a picture of the original 1973 Barbie.)

There were a few more over the years after this but it wasn't really until the 2000s that she started regularly seeing STEM careers in her history. (There are several from the 90s - but the 2000s is really when it began to pick up steam.)

One of my favourites among the more recent is Astrophysicist Barbie, released as a tie-in with National Geographic.

[ktempestbradford]

The offices of Barbie, Barbie & Associates! I mentioned this in my Ruby Barbie modding livestream. I used the credenza in our NYC living room to create this display of toys. Most of these I collected at toy fairs and tech events and such.

The story was that Computer Engineer Barbie and Video Girl Barbie wanted to run a private investigation service because they were good at hacking and getting information from computer systems and surveillance, but neither had much experience starting a business. In comes Uptown Chic Barbie in her fabulous purple suit to organize everything!

CE Barbie built the androids to help her, and had to reprogram the Dalek that followed the Doctor in when he joined the team as "The Guy Who can Get In And Out Of Any Building Somehow". Yoda dropped by to offer sage advice. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy were the clients.

[profound-decay-theory]

Just saw the Barbie movie and was scrolling through content afterwards and seeing all this positive stuff

The movie was one of the better pieces of cinema I've watched. It tried to have meaning, which is more than most other things can say.

It was absolutely gorgeous at parts but still fell short in a lot of places, which I don't see people talking about as much.

Spoilers ahead

This is of course my own takeaway.

The movie was a giant ad. It had to be, if we were going to have a Barbie movie it was going to be full of Mattel. The entire intro for the movie could've been a commercial. I was very apprehensive, and worried that the whole movie was going to be, hey, look at the glorious Barbie™️! It's been progressive since the very beginning. Women were forced to become mothers to baby dolls, but then they got an adult doll! And eventually the adult doll got different jobs! And eventually different skin colors! And eventually even, the "curvy" barbie. Sorry for the body image issues, kids 😔

To give credit to Mattel, Barbie is 100% one of the more progressive brands out there. The entire purpose of barbie is that the doll is supposed to represent, in a way, the child playing with it. This means that the child is more susceptible to being influenced by the Barbie than other toys. Mattel changed the default body mold sometime when I was younger, if I remember correctly, and have all sorts of dolls with disabilities and specialized dolls, such as those with down syndrome or vitiligo. They're also actively attempting to correct mistakes the brand has made in the past, such as Computer Engineer Barbie. Look that up for some... fun.

This, however, doesn't mean that the entire intro sequence being essentially a superbowl commercial is excusable. There are also a lot of random brand placements that aren't throughout the movie, most notable of which being the birkenstock sandal that Barbie is forced to choose when she has to go to Reality. This is supposed to be a movie about being human, what it means, and female empowerment. The random product placement takes away from the viewing experience.

It also undermines the whole "Mattel CEO" plot line that they had. He said something to the effect of "you think I became a CEO just because I care about the bottom line? [money] I care about little girls and their dreams!" This is almost immediately undermined by the fact that he is instantly swayed on the mom's barbie because he was told it would sell really well. They really need to outline this guy's motivations- oh wait. They did. He just doesn't follow them. He's a plot convenient device that is the bad guy only when he absolutely needs to be, but who instantly redeems himself because Mattel can't look bad. And what was up with the box? Would it send Barbie back or not? Why does she remember a box?

The mom? And daughter? Yeah. Those two. Who were they again? The mix up between the two was an incredibly minor part of the story. Again, they were plot convenient. Slightly better than the CEO though. I don't remember the mom's name- did they give her one? Seems kinda important for a woman to have one in this kind of movie, right? Especially if her entire job is to "Bechdel Test" the other women. [After some research, her name is Gloria. They did give her a first name, but not a last name. Did anyone else miss her name?] She's dark and creepy and weird, right? But like not really. She just kinda is a woman. A normal human being. Who has cellulite. (They kinda made that a bigger deal then it needed to be, right??) And her daughter, Sasha. She sure flipped around quick. All of a sudden she loves her mom!! What happened to make her upset and tear others down?? The patriarchy? But that was rampant in Barbieland too. It seems like that would've been more of a "look, even a fantasy land can get corrupted" speech then a "ooh, I suddenly love my mom! Let's fix it!" Besides, what man hurt her? Her dad is demonstrated to be a bumbling idiot. She just kinda took up a cause? They really needed to flesh these characters out more, and maybe spend less time on "Hey Barbie!"

Honestly, it felt like they spent their money on pink paint and ran out of money for character development, except for Margot Robbie (I have nothing bad to say about Margot Robbie). This could've just been a Barbie movie. The feminist empowerment speeches felt like they were taken from the internet then edited by men to be screen friendly, they undercut every hearfelt moment with humor, half the characters were unnecessary, and the plot left you with a billion questions. What was the brainwashing? Where did the Kens sleep?

What does it mean to be a human (woman)? A toy company asks.

This movie definitely had its good parts and bad parts. For me, having seen all sorts of advertising and not really having been a huge Barbie or movie fan, I was still hoping it was really good. Of course, going in with that mindset, I was instantly disappointed when I saw rampant advertising and poorly fleshed-out ideas and characters. Ken's explanation of why he basically enslaved the Barbies at the end of the movie is unsatisfactory, and makes the audience wonder if that was the original plan, or if the marketing went so well that they had to redeem Ken last minute. He would've worked better as the lovesick sidekick that he originally was, instead of attempting to compare men in Barbieland to woman in Reality and then treating them like villians.

The movie split itself between the ideas of being a woman and being human- it characterized being a woman as an awful experience that one is wonderful for enduring, and being a human as wonderful in itself. The CEO of Mattel stood in the way of Barbie becoming human, and the person who played with Barbie, as well as her daughter, helped Barbie understand womanhood. Removing these two concepts, which needed tl be expanded on in a way the main plot of the movie didn't allow for, and allowing Barbie to discover womanhood and being a human as the same thing might have elevated the movie and allowed for some more of the contemplative moments that characterized some of the better parts of the movie. Barbie doesn't learn to love being a woman, supposedly the point of Mattel's Barbie line. Instead, she learns to love being human, in which the pains of womanhood come along with it. A better feminist movie would follow the lines of "love yourself first" that the Barbie movie simply does not.

But why then, is this movie rated so high?

Why have people been ranting about it online, drawing obsessively, buying tickets again and again?

This movie asks questions.

They show the tree leaves rustling, children laughing, a couple arguing. They show Barbie mirroring the emotions of the world around her.

They show Barbie, tears streaming down her face, turning to the old woman beside her and say, "You're beautiful".

The old woman laughs, "I know it."

She is beyond cellulite. She is beyond thoughts of death. She is beyond shame.

She is everything Barbie is afraid to be.

And yet as Ken drags her away, Barbie looks back, face red, eyes wet, not perfect.

There is a reason the content I have eagerly consumed has been positive.

Barbie in the Yellow Dress, on her way to becoming Barbara, is the prettiest I have seen her. I couldn't stop staring at Margot Robbie throughout the movie, as her eyes kept looking so uncannily painted on. But she looked so human right there. Something you rarely see in movies. The red in her face- the blood flowing under her skin. Her watery eyes. The locket sitting against her throat, a sign of memories, of feelings, of caring. Not to mention, the outfit she wore the most throughout the movie was the cowgirl one, which had a bandana covering her throat. Having it exposed now was a sign of vulnerability. Humanness.

The ending, too. We all assumed she was off to get a job. But no, she was going to the gynecologist! At first thought, this was a tacky way to end a beautiful sequence, and the movie itself.

But this ending has layers. It not only recognizes her newfound humanness by acknowledging her... new lack of smoothness, but gynecologists are mostly females. This also is a job that wouldn't exist in Barbieland. A very quick search reveals no gynecologist Barbies, and I couldn't see Mattel making one due to the age range of their target market. I wouldn't be suprised if she wanted to become one, seeing as it's very human. And she'll accomplish something! What she always wanted was to be something important. And here she won't be copying anyone she used to know. She'll be Dr. Barbara Handler, and she'll get used to correcting men and saying it's Doctor Handler, actually, not Ms. or Mrs., and I'm not interested in becoming a Mrs, thank you. Or maybe she'll find something else or someone else.

That's the glorious part of being human.

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Supermassive black hole tears apart a giant star A distant star, dying a fiery and dramatic death, torn apart by a supermassive black hole in a forgotten corner of the sky. One of the most luminous, energetic, long-lasting transient objects didn’t blaze through the night sky inspiring legends and launching civilizations. Instead, astronomers, acting as celestial supersleuths, uncovered evidence of the star’s death throes where it had hidden undetected for years in a mass of computer-gathered telescope data. “It's absurd. If you take a typical supernova and multiply it a thousand times, we're still not at how bright this is – and supernovas are among the most luminous objects in the sky,” said Danny Milisavljevic, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy in Purdue University’s College of Science. “This is the most energetic phenomenon I have ever encountered.” In astronomy, things that are the most luminous are often the most energetic. Milisavljevic, an expert on stellar life cycles – especially star death – noted that the data points to an extremely anomalous observation. The object, like all those observed, was assigned a random name when it was discovered. Its name is ZTF20abrbeie, or, as astronomers affectionately call it, “Scary Barbie.” Barbie for its alphanumeric designation and “scary” because, Milisavljevic said, “It’s so much of an outlier; its characteristics are terrifying!” The object is what is known as a transient – something observed in the sky that either appears and then disappears or changes in some dramatic way over the course of hours or days rather than centuries or millennia. In a new paper accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Milisavljevic, his graduate student Bhagya Subrayan, and their team analyzed the data to conclude that the bright, long-lived transient is a black hole in the process of consuming a star. Subrayan’s research focuses on big data analysis of sky survey data. “We think a very supermassive black hole pulled in a star and ripped it apart,” Subrayan said. “The forces around a black hole, called tidal disruption, pull other objects apart in a process called ‘spaghettification.’ We think that’s what happened, but on extreme time scales: The most massive of black holes ripping apart a massive star. The duration is unlike anything we’ve ever seen before, and it produced the most luminous transient in the universe.” If Scary Barbie is so bright and so notable, how did it just now come to light, even though datasets indicate the first observations occurred in 2020? It hid in plain sight. While it’s bright, it is also extremely far away and in a somewhat neglected corner of the sky. The anomaly was discovered using Milisavljevic’s lab’s AI engine. The Recommender Engine For Intelligent Transient Tracking (REFITT) combs through observations from a number of telescopes around the world, including those made by the Zwicky Transient Facility using the Palomar Observatory in California. “REFITT does big data analysis,” Milisavljevic said. “It combs through millions of alerts and figures out what interesting things we might want to look at closer. This is a great example. Computers are really good at finding things when we can tell them precisely what to look for. But things like this, anomalous objects, the computer often doesn’t even know to look for. It doesn’t even have a template. This is so different from anything else we’ve ever seen that we hadn’t even gotten around to trying to classify it. It's been hanging out in the public data for years.” Once the team and REFITT had identified Scary Barbie as an intriguing opportunity for research, they used data from other telescopes, including the Lick Observatory in California and the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. Spectrographic analysis from those telescopes helped the team put a name to the odd phenomenon the data reported. Scary Barbie is not just orders of magnitude brighter and more energetic than any transient scientists have recorded before, but it is also lasting much longer than usual transients do. Most transients last weeks or months, but this one has lasted for more than 800 days – over two years – and latest available data show that it may be visible for years to come. The actual event itself – the spaghettification of this massive star – may be of much shorter duration, but because the transient is so far away the law of relativity slows down the light as it travels to human eyes, making it seem to last nearly twice as long. “There are few things in the universe that can be so powerful, reactions that can be this long-lived,” Milisavljevic said. “Discoveries like this really open our eyes to the fact that we are still uncovering mysteries and exploring wonders in the universe – things no one has ever seen before.” This research was funded in part by the National Science Foundation. IMAGE....“Scary Barbie” is the affectionate nickname astronomers are calling one of the most energetic and luminous transients ever observed: a supermassive black hole tearing apart a massive star, as in this illustration. (Mark Garlick/Science Photo Library via Getty Images)

[rhapsodybenny]

Two unfinished spiels about CS.

Thinking about what happens when humans apply themselves to computing problems, in two mostly separate spheres:

1) In games, every human usually comes to a set of rules about how to play the game based on the rules of the game itself. For example, take tic-tac-toe. Nothing *says* you have to block an opponent when they have a two-in-a-row — it just seems obvious. Similarly, if you have an opportunity to form a two-in-a-row, it seems like common sense that you should. But beyond these two rules, uneducated humans might as well play at random. Sure, you might guess correctly that the center and corners hold more power than the sides, but at the end of the day, your moves are random, if weighted. I’m interested in these rule sets — they seem like an excellent path to making accessible AI opponents for anyone in strategy games of skill. Take chess — if you’re like me, you probably haven’t won a single match against a computer. That’s because most chess engines which let you scale down the difficulty still let the AI make the best decision based on the information it’s given — it just doesn’t get very much. And there’s a limit to how “dumb” you can go with this approach — if you give it, say, only one turn of information, it’ll focus *way* too hard on short-term gains, taking any piece it can regardless of the damage. Give it two, and it will accept any trade offered to it. Playing against these sorts of opponents is interesting — you learn how to manipulate your opponent into doing what you want, and it’s *very* fun. But they aren’t good opponents — for any given move, you either know exactly what they’ll do, or have no idea at all. But what if

2) Have you ever tried to sort your Christmas list in order of preference? Because when I do it, I notice that I’m very inconsistent — I commonly find sets of items that are non-transitive when I attempt to compare them. Sorting algorithms run on comparisons, so when I try to use one to sort the list, it usually blows up in my face. “Okay, so I want the Barbie Playhouse more than the Crayola Crayon Melter, the Crayola Crayon Melter more than the Ninja Turtle Van, and the Ninja Turtle Van more than the Barbie... wait, what?!?” There aren’t definite values to everything, and our innate senses of comparison reflect this — “better” is subjective. So in those sets, there’s no particular item to rank highest — all of them have a fair claim. And to use another example, consider sports tournament brackets. Each matchup is essentially a comparison — “Which one of these two is better?” If a bracket were filled with simple numbers, you’d get consistent results every time. And if you run a bracket only once, it’d be self-consistent as well. But run a sufficiently large bracket twice, with anything without innate values — players, teams, Pokémon, whatever — you’ll almost certainly have conflicting information between the two — “Squirtle beat Charmander, and Bulbasaur beat Charmander in the first tournament, but then Charmander beat Bulbasaur in their matchup in the second.” These two are the same problem — trying to sort things by comparing them, when your comparisons are inconsistent, results in disaster. What I really want to solve this is an algorithm — a system of setting up tournaments which will provide the necessary information to sort the competitors. More importantly, however, the tournaments shouldn’t be able to create conflicting information — “If A beat B, and B beat C, C and A should never meet,” and possibly “If A beat C, C should never have the opportunity to fight A again.” The problem is that the tournaments

[bearlythere]

i watched barbie last week, and finally came around to writing a review.

this movie validated all women's common experiences in two hours. i just felt so seen. 

we've all be harassed on the street, had a ken who thought we were in love with them, been told that we were "too emotional" for having valid feelings, had our property (intellectual or not) taken over by a ken and used as his, and a ken that thought that he was and could do better than barbie (stereotypical or with a career). 

all the above happened to me within the past year. being a student studying in a male dominated major i felt the effects of it and everytime i said something about it most people just brush it off as me being "emotional" and like it felt really liberating to see the movie actually acknowledge the hardship women face

like in the past year alone i really felt like i felt the full brunt of just males trying to ruin my life just because i try to exist and be a computing barbie 😭so it really felt so. good.

and i broke down realising that ken, like little boys, didn't know what masculinity and patriarchy was before he entered the real world. seeing our lives made him like that. they learn to find displeasure from women who's just trying to live their lives peacefully because that's how the world around them worked. and while it's not an excuse for them to act this way, it probably is the reason why certain men act the way they do as well - nobody has shown them that their actions hurt us, not as women, but as human being with feelings and emotion. 

while some might have been lucky enough to not experience the events barbie's and women experienced in the movie. barbie's aim was never to be a "hell yeah feminism rules" kind of movie, more of a "hey y'all, this is why we have feminism." - and i didn't feel that the movie was supposed to be political. and i think the "harms not portrayed" part some people refer to - barbie literally got her ass whacked by a stranger how is sexual harassment not real, anyways other parts of the movie, the events that happened in barbieland (well, actually kendom), i think was written to be a way where women had some event that happened to them in real life that made them feel the way barbie did. for me it was when ken stole barbie's dreamhouse and made it his mojo dojo casa house, and for me it parallels my ideas for a hackathon getting plagiarised and not crediting me.

some reviews online condem how barbie is shallow by not showing the actual dangerous harms women face (rape, murder etc) just for saying no to men, but i think real and deadly injuries would be hard to portray as well, since mattel probably would like to market barbie to as many people as possible (yes, even kids). i actually think it really did a good job at making people think about their experiences - and if one felt that it was superficial and if it wasn't "real enough", then the connotations and nuances of what females experience daily had just flew over their heads

personally my take on the barbie line was that it was created with good vibes and ideas in mind "girls can do anything they put their minds to! just like boys and literally anybody else in the world!" -- and then it was taken out of context - people started slamming barbie for perpetuating unrealistic beauty standards, being a toy that perpetuated "stereotypical bimbo" stereotypes, and the association of the colour pink with girls because of gender marketing. and personally i went through a sasha phase where i hated barbie and the colour pink because it was associated with being "too girly". so can we then say that society once again, took something wholesome out of hand because we're never satisfied? or was it because barbie and mattel got complacent and stopped improving barbie - creating things like "barbie is a computer engineer that relies on men to fix her code because girls can only design assets" ?

and as the real world is vastly different from barbieland, even though barbie experienced all the horrible things women face in the world, i am glad that the script was written in a way where there was no toxic feminism. barbie doesn't condem the kens or develop hatred for them because of their newfound masculinity (in fact, they were encouraged to find themselves - who they are), which really promotes the real value behind feminism - gender equality where each gender gets equal chances and opportunities and a level playing field. it IS and NEVER WILL BE a battle of the sexes.

[ohchr-news]

Game Developer Barbie

In 2010, Mattel reissued “Game Developer Barbie” after a poor reception to “Computer Engineer Barbie”. In one representation Barbie is presenting her new game, a product that will hopefully reduce internet bullying. Seen here via DistractedMinds and advertising a standing Evodesk, Barbie appears before the United Nations. 🇺🇳

[bansheeoftheforest]

*kisses you* /p

As per my headcanon, Jekyll owns a garden. And I like to imagine that he experiments a bit on some of the plants, ranging from "more colors" "Stonger smell" To "This snapdragon could swallow you whole, but would rather eat raspberries out of your hand like some weird horse"

Jekyll should also own a horse, at the very least every stable in London should know him by name since hes probably too busy to actually take care of a horse 😔. I was about to ask what name Jekyll would give a horse but then I realized he would probably name it after some alchemy person

*slams hands on table* ZOMBIE HORSE. Or ohhhh! Skeleton horse >:3. What would a chuch grim horse look like? Like shadowmere from Skyrim? In fact if shadowmere wasn't made from Sithis Juice™ I'd bet he's a church grim. Theres a stong chance she still could be actually. Shadowmere my beloved <3 hey have you ever played Oblivion? The Khajiits look like the cheeto mascot and being a vampire sucks. But its v fun and I love destroying everyone with that one powerful staff

I think Jekyll would like spiders. They're v cute ::::)

Speaking of, moths are grand and I adore them. I think Luna moths and Comet moths should know each other

Do you like mushrooms/fungi? Do you have a favorite, I adore all mushrooms but I think the Barbie Pagoda, the "Toadstool" Mushroom, and whatever the heck the one that zombifies bugs is called, are my favorites

Favorite video game 🔫

Oh wow I'm really going to try to reply to all of this on my phone Huh.

Anyways! I love that HC and I accept it wholeheartedly, I feel like it would make a lot of sense for him to have a lot of plants bc so many of them can be used in alchemy. Plants are so lovely and I'd like to say that I have a lot but the plants my family have are all like 15 years old and also half dead BC all of us forgot to take care of them. I spontaneously bought a Bride orchid a few months back. It's very dead </3 I'd like to imagine that he has a sun/plantroom in his house and that he would have a lot in the society too, if not for the fact that he doesn't really have time to tend to them, but my version of Jekyll definitely has a lot of plants<3

He definitely should own a horse and that horse is a Clydesdale named Mayhem /j but I like the thought of him having horses. Specifically either those really ragged horses that only farmers use BC they have no better BC he thinks they deserve a good life (and very much will be offended if anyone dares to try to suggest he buys a new horse) or he would have those really, really fancy white purebreeds. Either way he would definitely be a horse girl and one of those that would be obsessed with buying accessories for them. All his horses, tended to by stable boys, hired or otherwise, would all be spoiled rotten <3 (new drinking game; take a shot everytime I use a <3)

I remember watching videos about commanding in skeleton and zombie horses into minecraft and i thought it was THE SHIT when I was a kid! Skeleton horses my beloved!! Henry can have a zombie horse, as a treat. You know Henry with Shadowmare would be absolutely terrifying and so cool... Although I will probably spoil your fun by saying that, at least in folklore, a church grim (of any race or species) would probably just be a black-coloured, ragged looking animal with a slightly ghostly... Vibe to it? Nothing completely demonic about them, they just have That Wrong Vibe and look like a stray/neglected most of the time, I think that’s v fun <3

I’m a fake Elder scrolls fan bc I have only played Skyrim, sadly. I have watched some videos about Oblivion but it was mostly “trying to beat Oblivion with only X” videos and stuff, but I HAVE Seen the khajiits from there and just... Im glad that I’m used to how they look in Skyrim XD

Jekyll would be someone to like spiders and his lab would probably be covered in spiderwebs, not bc he doesn’t clean but bc he would feel bad destroying the beautiful webs. Maybe he would try to genetically enhance a spider to be the size of a puppy? I feel like spiders would be much cuter if they were larger, at least the thicc hairy ones. The spinely ones still freaks me out tho XD

Moths are so fucking beautiful but they are dumb as bricks. A few months ago a moth accidentally came into my room, scared the shit out of me, and then got stuck in the blinds and went back and forth with the length of one of the... Blades of the blinds? Strips? Sounding like a fucking jet engine until my sister caught it and put it outside again. The most common moths I have seen are emperor moths and I think blood vein moths? Very cute when they don’t scare the shit out of me <3

I’m not an expert on them but I think they are cool, as long as I don’t have to touch them most of the time-- fungi, at least, actual edible mushrooms are fine tho. I remember when I was in like... First grade, my class went on a field trip with a lady who owned a funky bus that she used to teach kids about nature and shit, and she taught us a lot about mushrooms and the parts of mushrooms, I think she talked about toadstolls a lot and did the classic “don’t eat the red mushrooms, you will die” speech, and she also gave us speeches about how everything in Australia (which is fun, since we are on the other side of the world) is out to kill you. It was fun <3 ANyways I’m a basic bitch, so I’m going to say that chanterelles and champignon are my favourite mushrooms bc those are some of the only ones I know and they taste v good. I think we are entering chanterelle season here so I’m going to try to convince my parents to buy some to make a stew out off <3<3

It will come as no surprise when I say Skyrim, right? Skyrim and Assassin’s creed Origins/Syndicate. I absolutely love Skyrim and I love AC, I forced my sister to buy Origins bc it was the first AC game I got interested in bc I was in the middle of an Ancient Egypt phase and I fell in love with the franchise. I bought Syndicate premium edition (with all DLCs and extras) for 75sek/7$ bc it was on sale bc it’s such an old game and I absolutely love it, I have been so tempted to make a Syndicate / TGS crossover bc it is basically in the same time period and I would very much like Henry to be the frye twins secret poison supplier. My bff bought me Odyssey when it was on sale for my birthday but I haven’t gotten around to play it yet bc I’m still not finished with Syndicate, and my sister bought me Valhalla for my birthday last year but our computer is a potato and can’t run it. I ruined my Skyrim with too many mods and I haven’t had time to play a lot of games lately, sadly </3

[barbielore]

I never do get sick of talking about controversial Barbies.

Barbie being a computer engineer seems pretty unremarkable. She has been everything from a soda fountain attendant to president; a computer engineer seems like a perfectly reasonable career choice. And in fact, this particular Barbie career was the most popular out of an online poll for Barbie's next career, narrowly beating out news anchor.

So why did I preface this by saying it was controversial?

It had a book released alongside it.

Nothing wrong with being a visual designer rather than a coder. But this wasn't Game Design Barbie. This was Computer Engineer Barbie. And a lot of people thought it was pretty bad optics to have Barbie, "you can be anything" Barbie, have to defer to the mysterious but definitely male Steven and Brian to help her do her job.

And although it's a valuable lesson to teach little kids how and when to ask for help, a woman in STEM having to ask for male help in order to achieve things doesn't really seem like the place to impart that lesson. It certainly didn't to consumers at the time either - here's one funny review I found.

But there are apparently some women who are better with computers than Barbie - the Feminist Hacker Barbie website allows people to rewrite the book in their own way.

[marzipanandminutiae]

When I was a kid, I loved dolls like Barbie but was really scared of antique looking ones because my siblings and cousins had told me a lot of horror stories regarding them. Then in middle school, I watched Rozen Maiden and did a full 180° regarding those type of dolls. Now I love them and even my bjd is styled in a old timey look. So yeah, I'm pretty sure the way we see dolls as creepy or not is influenced at least partially by the stories we hear/see/read.

Absolutely.

And I think the original Uncanny Valley study is more complex than that, like I mentioned in the tags, but that’s how it gets applied by the general public. Which is kind of annoying to me- because if fear of dolls is hard-wired into us, how come so many people don’t experience it? How come it varies across different cultures? How come intricate automata- the “humanoid robots” of their day, which is what the original study covered  -used to be considered amazing, desirable parlor entertainment pieces?

(If you ever want to lose faith in humanity, read the comments on any video of the Franklin Institute’s 18th-century writing automaton in action. A truly astonishing feat of art and engineering, made before computers were even thought of, and all some people can say is “OmG iT’s GoInG tO mUrDeR yOu!!!!!!!”)

(I get that the factors which lead to the development of this fear, especially in early childhood, are often beyond people’s control. But come on. Be just a tiny bit mature if YOU voluntarily decided to interact with this content, please.)

[welllpthisishappening]

Hi there! I hope you're doing well! I had a question for you, as you are someone who writes both fanfic and original content with OCs. You do it all very well. I was curious if you had any tips for learning how to write OCs, in terms of falling in love with telling their story. How do you learn to care about your OCs as much as you care about your favorites from shows, and how to you learn to love telling your original story as much as you love writing fanfic? I hope this makes sense. Thanks for any advice you can give! Keep being awesome!

Oh my gosh, what a question, anon. In that this is both a very nice question and it’s even nicer of you to ask it of me (seriously, how do people cope with compliments?) and a very big question because I don’t think there’s one singular answer, per se.

In terms of falling in love with a story, I’ve been doing that for as long as I can remember, really. Coming up with half-finished plots and overly dramatic character arcs for the Barbies in my parent’s basement was pretty par for the course for my younger self, and spending time on the computer secretly typing up the storylines for those same Barbies and saving it in a folder marked NOTHING was a real thing that I did. (Spoiler: marking it as NOTHING was also like a flashing neon sign to my mother that she should open it, she did not like how much kissing there was.) I think they key, though, is finding something that resonates. When I was a far too romantic nine year old, that was mistaken identities and love conquering all and some really sweeping, if not unattainable, moments of True Love.

Now, though—I think I’ve gotten...maybe a bit more focused. Not necessarily when it comes to falling in love with the stories, though. For me, coming up with something is like dropping into a very deep hole. One that isn’t quite terrifying and has little pinpricks of light that are bullet points on an outline I very likely won’t end up following entirely. Usually, stories start with one of those dots of light and I keep scrambling to find the next one. Often while driving. I spend so much of my time daydreaming while driving anon, you would be scandalized.

So, like, I will give you a for instance. As my father would say. Out of the Park, which is one of the original stories I’ve written, started with a very specific scene in mind. Nick Hopkins (who has always looked like Dansby Swanson in my head) leaning against the ticket booth of the amusement park I worked at when I was in college, with a cup of coffee on the shelf and Olivia Lewis (who sometimes looks Adelaide Kane to my subconscious) sitting behind the window. He tells her, “Take the coffee, Olivia Marie.” And that was it. That was as much of a story as I started with. From the floor of that previously metaphorical hole, though—stuff started forming. Those bits of light started to flicker and ideas started to form.

Why would he call her Olivia Marie? What kind of coffee was it? Did she usually sit in the ticket window that looked suspiciously identical to the one at the amusement park I worked at? Or was she more of a merry-go-round girl? I ran the merry-go-round a lot, so I was especially familiar with that. Why the hell were they at an amusement park to begin with?

And suddenly, the lights are...an inferno, y’know what I mean? Blinding, almost. All these little bits and pieces of characters and personalities. And they start forming, like, constellations or something. Other people. Olivia’s brother. Who is naturally Nick’s best friend. Olivia’s best friend. Nick’s business partner and obnoxious older brother. His teammate from college. How do they all play off each other? What little things make them feel real? Because when writing — and this is true for everything I’ve written, not just OCs — it’s got feel real.

What do I mean by that? The little things.

Olivia drinks blueberry-flavored coffee. Nicky remembers how many sugars she puts in it. No matter how long they’ve been broken up. Erin Spencer cares about everyone and everything more than she’ll let on, so she jokes about all of it. Josh Hopkins being a dick is as much of a defense mechanism as it’s totally true. Luke Lewis bought a polka CD for the merry-go-round because he’s a nostalgic at heart. Rebecca Lewis would do anything to make that amusement park work, including getting her legs burnt on the train engine.

In Blue Line, the Rangers have pre-game traditions. David buys Emma pop tarts when he knows she’s stressed. Emma and Mary Margaret bake things. Will lets Peggy Jones paint his nails for the last four season of his career.

It’s the little things, anon. Those character-specific traits that, for me at least, make all the difference. Because people are not just sweeping archetypes. They’re weird habits and nervous ticks and likes and dislikes. And that gives the reader some insight. Because those little things say things without having to lay them out in black and white. Nick Hopkins showing up with blueberry-flavored coffee shouts from the pages how in love he still is with Olivia Lewis. And that makes me fall in love with her a little bit, too. In the story itself. In those little things that make the story worth telling.

Truth be told, I love writing OCs and original stuff. Because that’s mine. That’s my idea and my characters and making sure they all fall in love with the little things in each other is a bit like falling in love with the little things in real life. Creating something is never easy — even if you are borrowing someone else’s characters, or a plot point. But it’s that opportunity, to make something of your own, that makes it fun.

[kyndaris]

“Not Like Other Girls”

Despite sitting down and having a proper heartfelt discussion about the pressures of ‘continuing the family line’ and ‘finding a significant other,’ my mother is once again hoping that I will somehow befriend a man that I met only twice and exchanged about five minutes total of actual dialogue. Both she and my grandmother are worried about the ticking biological time bomb that is my reproductive system. And while they are also concerned that I’ll die alone, without family or friends, it’s more the former that seems to encompass their thoughts. Why? Well, it’s tradition. It’s the ‘normal’ way of life.

To be honest, I can see where they’re coming from. Yes, it’ll be nice to have a companion besides a body pillow or a strong protector to hold me in their arms...

But I would also like to think that if I decide to go it alone, it should be accepted. Why do I have to fit the mold? Be normal? 

My thoughts have turned back towards this because even at work, one of my colleagues is also hoping to help me ‘settle down.’ Nearing thirty, it’s the ‘expected’ thing to do. And as she strove to support me by offering possible love interests, she also, bless her heart, recounted the days of her youth when she had been a ‘tomboy,’ scarpering over roofs and fixing cars. It was only in her later years that she changed. In truth, it’s hard to envision the woman before me, with her mauve cardigan, loose white blouse, pencil skirt and perfectly coiffed hair as a rambunctious tomboy playing in the mud with scraped knees and elbows.

Growing up, I never could properly fit myself into the ‘girl’ stereotypes that were on TV or in films. There were times that I wondered if maybe I was actually a ‘boy’ trapped in the body of a ‘girl.’ After all, my interests always skewed towards the boyish: playing make-believe as knights, channeling my inner Saiyan and delving into the world of video games like the nerd I am. Lego, rather than Barbie, was what caught my eye. Chess instead of make-up. Pants instead of skirts and dresses. Of course, juxtaposed with these tendencies were my love for books and horses (my second favourite animal behind wolves). 

Unlike those that have taken the step to have their gender reassigned, undergone hormone treatment or have come out about their gender identity, I’ve never felt the intense body dysmorphia that often leads to this realisation. True, I’d prefer it if I had a thinner physique and the inherent ability to backflip or kip-up like those cool people in parkour or martial art videos, but there has never a vast disconnect between who I am and the face I see in the mirror each day.

I mean, what girl hasn’t bemoaned the periods that come every month? Or the discrimination that comes from trying to be the best at sport or hunting or computers or engineering. That’s not to say that dolls and frilly dresses and make-up is a bad thing. Some people are drawn to the prospect of raising a family, of wearing flowery dresses that have no pockets.  But others, such as myself, aren’t as inclined. In fact, my fashion sense is a little more conservative with collared shirts and scoop neck shirts that don’t plunge down to my non-existent cleavage (admittedly, throughout high school, I always hoped that my breasts would never develop and I’d be as flat as a washboard. Alas, it never happened. And the tradition of wearing bras has always chafed. As for the men that go around shirtless...WE DO NOT NEED TO SEE YOUR NIPPLES EITHER! TAPE THEM UP FOR GOODNESS SAKE! Or wear a man bra! Nobody needs to see those pecs. Abs yes. But you can wear a crop top for that).

Unfortunately, in the nearly three decades that I’ve been alive, the toy aisles are still gendered. Though women play video games on an equal level as men, it’s still considered a hobby relegated to angry white men that have the emotional range of a teaspoon. While there have been some strides in evening up the level playing field, I know quite a few people that still echo the sexist sentiments of the past. But, if you don’t want companies to have a quota of female staff, perhaps address the underlying perceptions in the society we live in. 

Being a man or a woman should have no impact on whether one is good at mathematics or the arts. There are plenty of men that would be great at nursing or serving as primary school teachers. Likewise, there are a whole host of women that would be excellent as video game programmers or construction workers.

That said, if a woman doesn’t feel the need to follow tradition and want to forge their own path, that should also be accepted. I’m so sick and tired of being hurried along the hetero-normative corridor, loaded down with the expectation that I should be married by twenty-five and have two children by the time I’m twenty-eight. All, of course, under the guise of love from a worried parent. It’s fine. I’m not lonely. And I’m certainly not something that needs to be pitied. 

There are times that I wonder if there’s something about me that intimidates the men around me. Or maybe they can sense something about me that I haven’t yet discovered. Alas, I can’t be sure. For now, I’ll just fantasise about all my good boys. The question is: do I get a body pillow of Riku (in his Kingdom Hearts 2 attire), Legoshi or best waifu Ignis.

In any case, I’m essentially ‘not like other girls.’ For one, I don’t know how to make-up. What even is shaving legs or armpits. And I like books and video games too much to ever ‘grow out of it.’ If that’s not what you’re looking for, well, please look elsewhere. As for any others that might be possibly interested in a person such as myself, and are looking to apply to be my SO, I have a form ready and waiting to be filled out.

I mean, is there any other way of separating the wheat from the chaff in this day and age? 

Fair warning: my standards are HIGH. And like I said, no nipples. Even Tumblr says ‘no.’

[eamesandbellamyaremyheaven]

Raven Reyes x Owen Shaw 1/?

39. Having a bad day and the other noticing

Owen trotted his way into the compound garage, steadying his pace as the sliding doors opened, and halting it all together at the scene in front of him.

“I said no, Raven” Hobbs spoke tiredly, rubbing his temple, and the girl leaned against the desk, crossing her arms over her chest

“Why not? I’m your best agent, and you know it”

“Because I said so” Hobbs spoke confidently, but the girl seemed annoyed rather than impressed.

Owen cleared his throat as he walked in “Am I interrupting?”

“Clearly” she retorted

“No” Hobbs replied, shooting the girl an warning glance, and she sat down, facing the computer

“Shaw, this is Raven Reyes, our head-engineer. You two will be working on upgrading our combat vehicles...”

Owen looked at the girl, Raven, who stood motionless with her back turned to him, then back at Hobbs, and let out a loud dry chuckle.

“This is not a joke” Hobbs looked slightly peeved

“Oh, I sure hope not, it’s funnier if it’s true” Owen continued “See if I get this one. You want me to help Brunette Barbie in the garage?”

“Nice one, asshole” Raven spoke, sarcastically

“No, I would rather have you rot in a concrete cell where the sun don’t shine, but the CIA thinks your skills are too good to waste in prison, so here we are. But make no mistake, you are a prisoner, my prisoner. A wrong move and you’re back on that dirty hole we fished you out.”

Hobbs walked past him, bumping purposely unto him, but Owen didn’t respond to the provocation. Two can play that game.

“Oh, and Major, Reyes has orders to shoot you, so don’t piss her off”

※※※※

The rest of the day went by quickly, surprisingly considering that neither of them spoke more than a couple of words to each other. She was bothered by his presence alone, and when he called her Brunette Barbie there was no redeeming from that point on. He wasn’t too proud to admit that he went too far with the nickname - at least to himself, he’d be dammed if he said it out loud - but now that the damage was done all he could hope for was that they got the job done fast so they’d never have to see each other again.

“I think we got enough done for today. Let’s call it a day and get back at it in the morning” Raven spoke, stretching slightly in her seat, drawing her legs from underneath the desk. And then he noticed, the metal braces on her left leg.

“Nerve damage, I got shot and the bullet lodged itself by the spine”

Owen looked up at her, and Raven adverted her eyes back to her leg “Can’t feel my leg from the knee down, but the braces helps me move around”

Owen was taken back by her sincerity, which rendered him speechless. He simply nodded at her, and she got up quickly before he could think of something else to say.

“Goodnight” she waved as she walked away, trying to minimize the limping

Owen turned back to the screen, narrowing his eyes as an idea formed in his head...

※※※※

It is already late morning when Raven walked back to the garage. After a shower and a long night sleep, she felt as good as new, even capable of enduring a day’s work with Mr.Nice-Guy. It surprised her to see that Owen was already there, but then she noticed he was seemingly wearing the same shirt from the day before, and she couldn’t help herself from voicing her thoughts out loud

“Did you stay here working all night?”

He turned around from the worktable to face her “Yeah, I’ve been working on something...”

“And what’s that?” Raven spoke as she came closer to him, but stopped dead in her feet as she saw the design on the prints

“It’s an upgrade to your braces” he spoke, as she leaned down to study it “smaller design, directly unto the skin, no one will even know it’s there”

It was impressive, it truly was. In one night he created the most advanced piece of orthopedic support she had ever seen, and the remaining question was “Why?”

He got up, hovering over her “I was feeling generous... and bored”

With that he moved away from Raven, glancing briefly back at her “Now I’m going to bed, this whole being all giving is exhausting”

So, here’s the second drabble, using this prompt list. I really enjoyed writing Raven/Owen, so I’ll defenitely write more of them! Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be able to finish the Sebastian/Maya drabble, and if I feel inspired I’ll look for another prompts for each pairing! If any of you want to help me decide, I’m open for sugestions!  ❤ ❤ ❤