#though i don't fault anyone for being passionate about a particular interpretation

[pikahlua]

Wow, okay, I’ve seen a bit of the translation drama now, and I regret to say a lot of people who very clearly do not know how to speak Japanese are being extremely polarizing about some perfectly acceptable word choices in the official manga. This is precisely the sort of stuff I hoped to help minimize when I started doing my translations. It’s been a while since I had to put out a warning like this, so I’ll do it now.

Be careful about getting too married to a particular word choice in English. A lot of word choices are very much up to a translator’s discretion. Language is fluid, and Japanese lends itself particularly well to puns and wordplay.

For example (and this is a particularly good example to explain my point), let’s talk about this panel:

Re: this post

Which leads into what seems to be the crux of the matter: Toga's "love." I've noted in passing before that having her use the word "suki" to describe this love is very curious. It's just an adjective that means something is the object of your affection. It's not a specific word for love like the nouns "ai (love, but broadly)" or "koi (romantic love)" are. "Suki" is just as often translated as "like" as it is "love."

In the above panel, we have the phrase “suki na mono wo suki to iu” (which I translated as “you tell those you like that you like them.”) The word “suki” is being used as an adjective to modify “mono.” However, there is an interesting nuance that is impossible for me to convey in an English translation!

The word “mono” can mean both “(tangible) thing” and “person.” Usually we can tell the difference based on context and the use of the correct kanji. BUT THERE IS NO KANJI USED IN THE ABOVE PANEL. The effect is that what this “mono” refers to is ambiguous. Is it the “things Toga likes” or the “people Toga likes”? It’s not clear: which means that both readings are correct! In fact, the word is probably meant to include BOTH meanings. “All things or people Toga likes.”

And the reason I can’t properly translate that into English is because I have no word that refers to such a thing. In English, it’s a question of “what Toga likes” vs “whom Toga likes,” but in Japanese BOTH meanings are captured by just one phrase.

The most accurate and extremely awkward translation in English would just be “You say who and what you like.” It’s not really something a person would say naturally, especially depending on the context of the conversation surrounding the phrase.

Additionally, “suki” is a very vague word that can be translated in many ways. It gets translated into English as various words all the time. I just decided to go with “like,” but “love” or “dear” would be just as viable. Like I said, it’s kind of up to the translator’s discretion. (And think about the corollary in English. “Like” may not usually mean “love,” but if you were in high school and told someone, especially of the opposite sex, “I like you,” “like” suddenly takes on a whole new meaning.)

Anyways, the whole point of this is that I just want to caution people against jumping to conclusions about these things, especially as you encounter disagreements about such things by fans in the wild. It may be true that a translator has a particular agenda they’re trying to push that runs counter to the message of a story, but it may also be a much more honest and correct translation than you expect. And if you ever need it, I’m always happy to give my perspective on a specific translation to point out the more charitable and non-charitable interpretations, the potential ambiguities, the nitty-gritty grammar issues, etc. (to the best of my ability, of course--I am not a final arbiter on these things either, just another learner myself).

[hot-take-tournament]

hi, I'm the original Barbie movie hot take submitter. now that the poll's over and with about 80 people agreeing with me in total (which is honestly way more than i was expecting...) i guess... yeah i should probably address some of these comments, because i don't know which are in good faith and which aren't, but like i said at the beginning of my justification, it's something that's really important to me on a personal level and i saw at least a few people expressing sympathy or wanting to understand better where i was coming from. (again I'm autistic and i can't be sure it wasn't just sarcastic remarks, but it looked like at least a few people were willing to listen.)

this sentence here is your warning that I'm going to continue to talk about my experience. if you hated my take and/or were disturbed by it and would be upset to empathize with my point of view any further, this is your reminder to just stop reading here.

...

so first of all, i did hold myself back, writing that submission. i mentioned upfront that i kept it short, but i guess it only looks shortened if you know how much i have to say about it. i didn't even know if it would make it in so i did gloss over a couple things that may have led to misinterpretation (though a lot of those notes felt like a "how dare you say we piss on the poor" sort of moment (reference to a response on a different post, which accused Tumblr users of having "piss-poor reading comprehension")).

....anyway, this is a more comprehensive and thorough version of my viewpoint. it is long.

the first thing i would like to address is that i noticed a lot of people saying i was pulling it out of nowhere and "projecting (derogatory??)". and.... like.... yes. i know that. i basically said so explicitly when i said "I disliked this movie for heavily personal reasons". that's the point of submitting it to a hot takes blog; this is something that i think most people will disagree with me on, because it's nowhere near the "objective" interpretation of the movie, but it's something that a select few might resonate very strongly with. this movie didn't actually say any of the things that I said it did, on an explicit level. but there were undertones of it the whole way through that triggered multiple breakdowns since its release, because of my particular media sensitivities that i didn't know would be in this movie. you can think of it like I'm accusing this movie of having "traces of peanuts" rather than being a peanut dish. if I'm allergic to peanuts it still sucks, and is unsafe for people with my triggers. (still my fault for going to see the movie, it's not like it's immoral for it to have triggering topics in it. I just regret it and am bitter that everyone seems to unanimously agree that it has no problems, that's all.) I also see that a lot of people were not bothered by these same things that I was, and I respect that. And I'm glad that people were able to enjoy it— my intention was mostly "it seems like no one hated this movie but me. did anyone else share this interpretation?".

...honestly, the movie itself, on an objective level, wasn't actually too horrible. it was kind of sad and depressing, but i would've left it feeling kind of mediocre if it weren't for its online boom. everyone seems to be praising this movie for being incredible and groundbreaking and progressive, but like this other anon said (https://www.tumblr.com/hot-take-tournament/724649240320671744/while-everyone-is-already-arguing-over-the-barbie?source=share), it really... just feels like politically regressing, to me. speaking as someone who is various flavors of non-binary (multigender), and who is transgender and intersex, i am extremely passionate about gender rights. and this movie felt the same as really old radfem ideals of feminism that boiled down to "what if we kept the gender essentialism but we made it so (cis) women were good and sacred (but still perceived as weak, helpless, useless, etc.)". I saw many similar sentiments in the notes of the original poll that I agreed with, saying the movie barely was feminist if at all. I especially agreed with someone (don't remember who) who mentioned that it was kind of misogynistic and backwards for all the women to get brainwashed instantly the moment someone suggests a patriarchy. this movie really said "women are just helpless little children that deserve the world, and the men need to carefully watch what they do and be kept in check, because if they get too confident they're naturally inclined to establish dictatorships and be cruel and evil to the women! and of course the women would roll over and accept it if that happened because they're just helpless little lambs that can't think for themselves" like how is that feminist? i thought everyone was on the same page here that women are people. like people with agency that can do things. and the movie just felt extremely.... belittling of women's actual capability to do things, and demonizing of men's emotions. like i thought these were points that we've already been through, societally. but no. "best feminist movie", "so progressive", "groundbreaking".... like... what?? it's groundbreaking because... there was a patriarchy and no one's ever done that before??? like what is this, the feminism version of "Disney's first gay character"??? is it progressive because Barbie had One Conversation with an old lady who was (sarcastic gasp) happy??? (Admittedly that scene was pretty sweet, I'm not actually upset about that one. but like why is that the highlight i keep seeing everyone come away with. like is it groundbreaking for one (1) old person to be happy?? i would've preferred if there were like. you know. just reasonable casual representation for diverse bodies (but that's ok I wasn't expecting something like that from a mainstream movie anyway.))

...and since a lot of people were upset that I didn't address Barbie herself: yeah, ok, I think the existential crisis stuff was pretty neat, I think she genuinely did a decent amount of growing over the course of the movie, I think her character arc wasn't too bad if you look at it from her point of view. but i think, like ken, she needs to be held accountable for the things she did BEFORE that character growth. a lot of people in the notes mentioned her "forgiveness" at the end, and... yeah, I guess I will admit that's "groundbreaking" for a movie this mainstream, but that is not a compliment. it felt so hollow to me, and again that's just "projection" because when I say "it felt hollow", I mean that it sounds exactly like things I was told by toxic friends as a kid. but I think a certain amount of projection is necessary to empathize with a movie, at least the way I watch them. I don't think that relating stories to your own experience is a bad thing.

.... right, back to barbie's whole thing with "forgiveness". to forgive someone is to put yourself in a social position "above" their own. it's unequal by nature— it creates a social unbalance where one party "forgives" (gracious, generous, implied power of judgement over the other) and the other party "has sinned" (in the wrong, by default should be punished, deserves to suffer unless they properly repent). this sort of punitive structure was used against me and some people close to me and so I have extremely personal triggers around disingenuous apologies and forgiveness. (no, I'm not saying that forgiving people is evil, and I'm not saying that Ken did nothing wrong. this is about Barbie now.)

i don't think Barbie should have forgiven Ken. and i don't think Ken should have forgiven Barbie, either (though he was never given the option, because that would be admitting that she treated him like garbage). i think if Barbie was going to "forgive" Ken, if she really wanted to have a real platonic relationship with Ken at the end of the movie, she should have first acknowledged that she had never been a good friend to him, that he was never treated well on a base human relationship level. and i think she should have apologized for it. a real apology where she empathizes and understands how she hurt him and tries to do better, and acknowledges that she was just as lost as he was. and then lets him forgive her, too. but instead she just cuts straight to her own "forgiveness", skipping past any potential accusations of her own treatment of him, to assert her own dominance and center his own wrongdoings. I think they should have either BOTH admitted they didn't know what they were doing and were shitty to each other, or they should have both gone their separate ways bitterly and with their self confidence intact.

like I've seen some people saying, both on my dash and in the notes of this post, this is a tragic movie about two sad lost people trying to figure out how to break social conventions for the first time, trying to understand how to be more than just a Doll with a Role. and naturally, a movie like that has both of them acting shitty to each other within those roles; Barbie from the start of the movie, because she doesn't WANT a relationship with Ken and she seems to hold this against him, and Ken throughout the movie as he tries to understand why he never seems to be enough. Barbie repeatedly condescends upon and belittles him and is constantly aggravated with him and makes him feel small and burdensome and whiny and exaggerative. she makes fun of his fun names and treats him like a stupid and annoying child. and while some of you in the notes are out here laughing and saying "welcome to the real world for women", "that's just misogyny"— and?? is the moral here that misogyny is funny when it happens to men?? because it does happen to men. i know closeted trans men that are subjected to it every day and it just. seems so low to say "misogyny is good" ever. no matter what the end of that sentence is. to imply that some people can deserve misogyny and mistreatment "if they're men" or "if they're annoying" or "if they're clingy" like... this is part of why i submitted this take. i thought we were socially on the page that misogyny is wrong and sucks. and just because this worldbuilding sets it up so that only Kens experience misogyny doesn't make it suddenly just? either it's a human right to be treated with dignity, or you are supporting misogyny. there's no way to say "but it's funny if i can be vindictive about it" without accidentally validating that defense.

...I went on a tangent again. but what I mean is that Barbie herself was an ASSHOLE to Ken. she didn't want him around but felt obligated to support him, and the solution to that should be to make it so he can support himself. but instead she just feels burdened by him and takes it out on him by belittling his suffering and treating him like his every complaint and need were meaningless or annoying. should it have been her obligation to deal with all of his needs? fuck no! but to act like she could, and wanted to, like she was his friend, when she really just wanted to be free of him... that sucks. and it actively kept him shackled to her. and like, she didn't know better, but neither did Ken. they were both lost souls hurting one another by participating in the only thing they knew: an abusive power structure. the only thing Ken did wrong was.... also wanting to participate in that power structure from the "wrong end". it wasn't okay when Ken did it, but it's notable that Barbie did it first. and that they BOTH needed to apologize for treating each other like shit. and they BOTH needed to empathize with and forgive each other, knowing that they're in a better place now and that neither of them knew what they wanted before. they BOTH fucked up and they BOTH suffered for it. if both, or neither, of them had forgiven each other, then this would've just been an interesting and pretty sad movie with at least some resolution.

.... but INSTEAD what happened was that only Ken was shamed and felt like shit, because he crossed the line that Barbie was supposed to have total dominion over. and Barbie was never held accountable for her treatment of Ken, even though it came from the same misguided and hurtful place that Ken's actions did. I'm not claiming that what Ken did was good, or that he's a pathetic little meow meow and everyone hates him for no reason. but Barbie repeatedly condescends and bullies him at the start of the movie to take out her frustration with her situation, and while it's understandable why she's frustrated, that's not okay to do to him, just as much as it wasn't okay for Ken to "turn the tables" on her so to speak. this is kind of an eye for an eye situation. he only did to her what he had already been experiencing himself. and then for her to be the only one to "forgive", implies that it was okay to do to him, and therefore that it's only wrong if he does it.

misogyny is not okay just because you put it in a specific setting or applied it to specific people. and the same thing for pretending to be friends with someone you hate and then bullying them???. it's not "funny" when a woman attacks a man, and if you think it is, that's rooted in misogyny itself. because why else would you not see women as "real" threats or abusers? abuse could only possibly be twisted around into something funny if you think it can't cause real harm, and that's steeped in the sentiments that women are useless, powerless, and helpless, and that men are inherently powerful and able to control their situation. im sick of it. i feel like this movie genuinely pushed back gender equality by like 20 years. not everything is Men Versus Women and if you're centering the gender binary that much like it fucking means that much, you're erasing non-binary people too?? I'm just. I'm just sick of it, I'm sick of gender essentialism and stereotypes and hollow friendships. sighs. ok sorry this paragraph was just a vent.

anyway. this movie would not have impacted me this negatively if it weren't for the way I hear people talking about it. as if it's amazing and the next step in gender rights even though it basically devolved the understanding of gender back into "maybe............. do you think girls could do things? without dating a man..? or is that a little silly.... no wow!! actually yes! women can sometimes... not date!!". (making a spectacle out of obtaining basic relationship agency???) ...and this is mostly, again, just my own triggers, which over the course of this poll I am realizing are real triggers for me, but... yeah. reminds me of my tirf friend group that shamed anyone who was too forward or too masculine. that would nitpick at people's social mistakes to keep them in check and on their toes.

tldr; I'm so fucking tired of gender essentialism and I went to see this movie thinking it was progressive hot shit just to discover it was Social Shaming But It's Funny Because We're Subjecting Men To It This Time. not very funny when I know so many transmascs who are punished for being women when they aren't. and Ken fucked up, but Barbie fucked up too. neither of them were good for each other and they were hurting each other the whole time, but Barbie never owned up to it and then on top of that "forgave" Ken in a way that was just personally triggering for me. (Not evil, not necessarily malicious. but upsetting for me on a personal level because of my sensitivities).

anyway. thanks for reading if you did. I'm probably not gonna check the notes on this one but just know that it does mean a lot, the few people who did agree with me. I wasn't even expecting 80 people, maybe more like 20. I was fully expecting to get 98% ratioed, considering how positively everyone talks about this movie.

(i hope you have a great day too, mod! my apologies for how long and impassioned this got. I hope this take was entertaining for you at least??)

.

[void-dreaming]

Fandom spaces are public and are meant to be enjoyed. I understand why you would have that opinion about Susie and personally don't have a problem with that, which is why I'm not going to block you, spam you, disrespect you, or talk about you behind your back in any way. I intend for it for it to stay that way.

The real problem is imposing ideas onto others when no single interpretation is fully correct. What you said about Susie being scummy might be correct, but you have to keep in mind that she was working for someone else and later told Kirby to destroy Star Dream, and of course there's that Star Allies mistranslation (the English version straight up made up the fact that she was still mechanizing stuff, and the Japanese one says she's bringing back the company to "punish evildoers", with nothing outright evil being stated about her. Nothing wrong with that.). Sure, you may be partially correct about her doing bad things and never getting a true redemption arc, but there's nothing outright proving "nice Susie" people wrong that isn't a head-canon or a very specific interpretation of a specific situation. It's the same thing the other way around.

You're saying that you're not gonna go around crapping on people, but that's basically what you're doing by encouraging people to actively create conflicts. I'd say the main reason why "nice Susie" has become so popular is because people that had the same opinion as you basically went around harassing us. Have you seen a "nice Susie" person harassing the other side? I think not.

Also, hurting people's feelings in general is a bad thing. Notice that, even though I'm criticizing you, I never said anything outright insulting you, and that's because I'm a mature individual that knows if I'm disrespectful to you, you're going to hate me and use that against me. If you're being disrespectful to people who people who have a certain opinion on a children's game by ridiculing them (and yes, it comes off as ridicule), that automatically makes you look bad to anyone who's not on your side. They'll think of you as that person that was immature enough to state misinformation and put out ridicule just to mess with a side of the fandom of a kid's game. That's not a good image.

In conclusion: Never in my life have I seen anyone get mad because someone talked crap about Susie. Whenever I see people get mad, it's because someone who thinks crap about Susie went around harassing them or trash talking them (which seems to be something you support?) because of their opinions.

No hard feelings? And hey, you should probably get into the DMK fandom. If you actually got to know it better, you'd be surprised at how passionate his fans are about him!

Hello, Anon, I appreciate your civility, but I do feel as though you misinterpreted my post to a degree where I felt the need to respond, which I suppose is my fault, I've never been good at clearly articulating my thoughts, so I'd be happy to try and talk though what I meant.

I'm not sure how making a statement is inherently imposing an idea, but I understand why you thought this, so let me be perfectly clear: I'm fine with any interpretation of Susie, what I was speaking on was what was presented in Canon media, but if you have your own interpretation of Susie, that's fine. And sure, I'll conceed that there was a mistranslation, it's not like I'd know right off the bat about there being a mistranslation for that particular quote. I'd like to apologize for not inherently knowing that there was a mistranslation in regards to a quote that I then went on to make a statement about whilst not having all of the facts.

I, however, will not conceed on you last paragraph, because I have seen people going after atleast one creator for depecting Susie as being evil and doing evil things, and while yes its only one who was harrassed to my knowledge, where there's one, there's probably many more, and even one is too many if you ask me. Further more, you're saying that I support harassing people when I stated multiple times that people shouldn't be harrassing each other over dis/liking a character? I am so sorry, but I don't speak your particular brand of reasoning. My post was in regards to those who go out their way to harass people for not depicting Susie in a way that they like, which there are, whether it's by separate people or by one, remains to be seen because I've only seen it occur through anons.

In conclusion, I respect your opinions anon, though I don't agree with your logic and reason to an extent, further more, outright saying (or insinuating?) That I support harassment is just a blatant lie, my post did not call for harassing people, what I did call for was for people to respect each other and not harass each other over differing opinions.