fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #1962 ]

[ SECRET POST #1962 ]

⌈ Secret Post #1962 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

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02.

[Ferris Bueller's Day Off]

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03.

[Community]

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04.

[Big Time Rush]

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05.

[Avengers]

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06.

[The Decemberists]

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07.

[Tim Minchin]

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08.

[The Lizzie Bennet Diaries]

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09.

[Community]

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10.

[The Hunger Games]

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11.

[Nell: The Day Before]

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12.

[Devil Survivor]

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13.

[Homeland]

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14.

[Pippin]

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15.

[Portal 2 & Left 4 Dead]

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16.

[The Avengers, 30 Rock, Psych]

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17.

[FFX]

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18.

[Mad Men]

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19.

[Legend of Korra]

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20.

[Faust: Love of the Damned]

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 020 secrets from Secret Submission Post #280.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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Yeah, when I was a kid, I never wanted to play female characters, either.

When I grew up, I realized this was because of internalized sexism and societal influences. You know, the ones that tell little girls all the time that boys are better than girls and get to do cooler stuff.

actually, they just really like pretending to have powers.

thor and iron man toys make these really cool noises, too. the 6 yo (luiza) has a thor hammer that lights up blue. she goes around hitting shit and saying BOOM! BOOM!

Dude, when you're 6 or 11, the characters with superpowers are just objectively better.

Fair. OC seemed to imply the kids agreed with the OP that Black Widow shouldn't have been in the movie, etc. when the anecdote.. doesn't really seem like it? idk. It's just weird to me.

Anyway, I wouldn't say there's no element of "boy characters are better" going on there, either. :\

I think it's kind of hard to determine such a thing when said boy characters are so blatantly overendowed in comparison in terms of what kids find cool.

Yeah, you're definitely right. I just find it really sad when little girls still prefer male characters even in things with powerful, amazing, well-written and well-acted female characters in them. :\

I find it's sad when it's adults, but again, when you're a kid, the important thing is that she can't fucking fly.

When I was in Wal-mart looking for the rest of the mini-Muggs, there was a mom and her little girl rifling through the action figures. The girl was crying because they could not find a Black Widow action figure or toy. It was heartbreaking.

...this had marginal relevance, I just needed to share it. :/

Is there one? Sadly, a lot of toy companies won't make girl figures.

This, incidentally really fucked over the Avatar the Last Airbender toy line.

Half the main cast, and season 2's main antagonist, being girls and all...

Edited 2012-05-18 00:56 (UTC)

da

Sadly, a lot of toy companies won't make girl figures.

What??? why not???? that's dumb

Cause girls don't buy action figures and boys want to play with boy figures.

This is the thinking. It probably isn't always wrong, lets face it. But applying it universally results can result in problems

Excuse me for going a bit off-topic, but your comment that the industry thinks girls don't buy action figures made me think about my childhood. I enjoyed playing with my brothers' toys, including action figures, more than with most of my own (the majority of them were "girlier"). Yet I don't recall ever asking my parents to buy action figures or toy cars for me... Which is weird, since it means what I liked playing with was not what I asked for in a store.

This.

Why demand that toys come in matched sets by gender? I mean, come on, kids are going to mix those up and play with a wide range of toys. That's the way it SHOULD be; choose your own toys and back stories and characters, not just swallow whatever the toy industry feels like selling that week.

Thing is... the way it should be isn't the way it is. Companies want to make money, they appeal to their audience. And as bleeding notes above, the fact is this exists. The why doesn't matter so much as the simple fact that it does work that way a lot of the time, which means the situation will continue indefinitely.

I remember when I was a kid, I had three, possibly four different version of Princess Leia, including two Moon of Endor ones (I still have one of those).

I also had the princess who piloted the blue lion in Voltron. Her uniform was pink.

Not speaking for your situation or parents, but as an adult woman who quietly peruses the toy aisles listening to parents (research into what drives market trends), I hear a lot of parents actively steering their children in the direction of one toy or type of toy, even after the children fix their attention on something else. Nine times out of ten it's a parent that steers their child away from toys that are not "for" their gender.

The most heartbreaking example was a mother with a young boy (I estimated around five years old) who steered him away from the "pink" aisle entirely. He kept trying to walk down it, and she finally took his hand and actively walked him away from the aisle while saying, "You don't want anything down there. Those toys are for girls."

I regularly see parents walking with boys and girls, and when the boys are perusing action figures, and the girl(s) with them show any interest, the parents (male or female - I haven't noticed much difference) will routinely say, "That's not really your thing. We can look at Barbies once your brother picks his toy."

I have, on very rare occasions, seen better examples. The one that sticks in my mind was a little blonde girl about seven years old looking at toy trucks with her dad. She pulled a huge-ass dump truck off a shelf of toy construction equipment, and her dad was all, "Hey, that's an awesome truck! Is that the one you like?" I so wanted to thank him, but I didn't want his little girl to think he was doing something strange or unusual, so I just mentally applauded him.

There's not an immediate fix for the solution, because it's a cultural issue. It's easy to say, "just make all the packaging neutral and mix the toys (Barbies with action figures, toy trucks with toy vacuums, etc)" but that won't help a lot if children don't see more gender-neutral role models on television, in their home life, and at school.

Black Widow is a good start for marketing, because she has an all-black outfit and is all kick-ass, but then we need women (and men) not putting her down in front of children as being suckier than the male characters, and merch needs to show up in both the "boy" and "girl" aisles - perhaps a tie-in figure with the other tiny Avenger figures for the "boy" aisle, then make a 12-inch figure to go with the other 12-inch Avengers and move all of them to the shelves next to Barbie and Monster High. If a boy walking past the Black Widow/Avengers toys can say, "Hey, this one is cool like Batman!" and not be put down for it, and if a girl likewise walking past Black Widow/Barbie/MH toys can say, "Hey, she's cool and pretty!" and not be put down for it, you've got a start on breaking down some of the gendered stereotypes in our culture.

I am applauding this comment. All of it.

(no subject)

bleeding-dry.livejournal.com - 2012-05-18 23:33 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2012-05-19 01:25 (UTC) - Expand

Aww D: that is really sad. What the hell. I would be really upset if I saw that, too.

I like looking at the action figures and own one (Loki), and I've seen little Black Widows, but they're pretty hard to find. Now I kind of want to go see if my favorite comics shop has one and buy it. :\

I wouldn't say there's no element of "boy characters are better" going on there, either. :\

afaik, they have no qualms pretending to be bubblegum and marceline in adventure time.

It's just weird to me.

is it really weird to you that a sexy, manipulative spy/assassin ISN'T as cool to a 6 yo kid as a god who conjures thunder and blows shit up with his hammer? or a guy in armor who can fly and shoot blue beams? really?

Six-year-olds watch this movie? O.o the plot just seems way too complex for the kiddie crowd to care about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avengers:_Earth%27s_Mightiest_Heroes

eta: and luiza (the youngest) has seen both IM movies and thor. her older brother is a terror and an enabler.

Edited 2012-05-18 00:50 (UTC)

Dude the plot wasn't complex at all. Even if it was, a whole ton of it was "hey check out Iron Man flying around and Hulk and Thor punching everything".

this. and also explosions. lots of explosions

Most of the stuff that was happening in movies that I saw when I was 6 was too complex for me to fully grasp. Batman, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, hell, even Honey I shrunk the kids had some stuff that flew over my head.

I still watched and loved the shit out of all of those though. Because it also had things I did like.

Avengers has super heroes with cool super powers beating bad guys up, and there are explosions and things. You know what a six year old thinks of that? THEY THINK THAT IS AWESOME.

Edited 2012-05-18 00:49 (UTC)

The most "confusion" I heard out of any kids while I was watching the movie happened during my most recent viewing. There was a girl who seemed somewhere around six to eight years old watching it with her family, and when

Coulson died in front of Nick Fury, she asked, "Did he die?" Then, when Coulson was silent and Fury's expression made it clear Coulson was dead, she went, "Oh no, he died!"

She was quiet about it, so it wasn't that distracting, but it was just a subtle reminder that, while we think the little ones aren't getting it, they often actually do.

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