Thinking about Weird Barbie and how she's the very obviously queer outsider of the Barbie world, she straddles the lines between Barbie and the Real World. She's the most aware of the performative nature of it all. She supports Barbie while also gently mocking her panic at losing the hyperfeminine perfection. Her weird house is also home to the discontinued reject weird Barbies, the outcasts (including very gay earring Ken) who never fell into either the original matriarchy or the Kentriarchy brainwashing.
The other more classically heteronormative and beautiful Barbies both pity and fear her, and at first the narrative pities her as well. She's the vessel of girls going weird and crazy and feral on their dolls and that's amazing. Weird Barbie is aware of who she is and how the world sees her and she loves it. She's Weird Barbie and She Owns It.
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i think one of the things the pjo show has understood the best so far is specifically the isolation and insecurities that come with being neurodivergent, and how it reflects onto percy. the book touches on it a lot, but i think rick really wanted to push percy's own internal struggles more obviously to the forefront for the show.
Percy references again and again how inattentive and zoned out he is constantly, and how he blames himself for being stuck in his own world. He feels crazy and misjudged by everyone around him just for having what everyone else presumes is a very active imagination, hyperactivity, and a brain that works differently. and when people do acknowledge his differences, even attempting to spin them positively to him, like Sally and "Mr. Brunner," it only makes him feel worse, because again the only thing they can tell him is that he's "special," inherently other, something he's come to associate with being an embarrassing and shameful thing, with Nancy calling him "special" as an insult. I've seen "special" thrown at nd kids as an insult by their peers over and over again since I was little. So Percy can't help but believe it's a negative thing, no matter what the adults that do support him in his life try to tell him, because it's been internalized that he's just different in a way that's bad and inferior, and that that there's a reason he's lonely and troubled and delinquent. Even if it was a positive thing, like Sally and "Mr. Brunner" insist to him, he feels inherently isolated and confused and wrong in the mortal world for being different, and like there's nothing that can change that or make him normal.
We see Percy break down in front of Sally after being expelled about how he's terrified something's irrevocably wrong inside him now. And his immediate reaction of rage and confusion when the only thing she can tell him, once again, is that he's special. And I think that is really going to resonate with a generation of nd people who've experienced these types of scenarios.
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god the way ghost’s voice drops when he tells soap, “you’ll need to improvise to survive”
before that, everything he says is steady but when he acknowledges that soap’ll have to do something outside his skill set, something he intimately knows to be difficult, his voice wavers. he does the same when he says, “welcome to guerrilla warfare”; it’s sombre and serious in a way he doesn’t act for the rest of the mission. if you read into it enough, he almost sounds apologetic; like he knows exactly what soap’s about to go through and wishes he didn’t have to
he keeps soap going; poking at him and making jokes, giving him tips and asking about his progress. he never lets him stop and take a second to think bc he knows the moment he does is the moment it'll all hit him; the betrayal, the pain, the fear, the deaths, all of it will drown him and if that happens, soap won't make it
he needs him to be a soldier through and through and he knows this is one of the worst kinds of battlefields you could end up on
and the only times he slips is when he acknowledges that fact
it happens again when he says, "tryin' to get you here alive and in one piece". his jovial dark humour facade drops for just a moment when he has to face the potential reality of losing soap. then he tries to pick it back up again with, "one of us has to survive to tell the tale"; completely discounting himself as a survivor to try and rally soap and make him think it’s all down to him
and soap does the same thing
when he's calling out for ghost on the radio, he's tentative, testing the frequency, then when he doesn’t get a response, he grows desperate; "ghost, this is 7-1, do you copy?"
then when ghost answers, he smooths out his voice; he hides the pain, the fear, and no matter what response you give to ghost asking if he’s injured, soap brushes it off (“i’m good”, “what’s the difference?”, “i’m not a medic”). soap decides it’s in ghost’s best interest to hide the extent of his injuries
he doesn’t know where ghost is, if he’s secure, if he has any weapons; he doesn’t even know if he’s in las almas until he says, “there’s a church, i’m headed to it”. for all he knows, he could’ve run in the complete opposite direction. if ghost knows he’s hurt, then his attention would be split between his own survival and soap’s
and soap, who lets himself be poked and prodded towards the church, needs to hide his own doubts. maybe he needs ghost to believe he'll make it so he himself can believe it ("what are my odds?" "don't make me bet against you", "think i'll live that long?" "probably not")
he all but begs ghost to tell him he'll get through it and if he knows just how bad off he is, maybe he'll change his mind. maybe he'll think he won't make it to the church
maybe he'll leave him alone for good
"you injured?"
"i’m good"
"let's find out how good you are"
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