#steven universe meta

[aroarachnid]

"but if it were me, I'd really wanna be, a giant woman"

stevens relationship with gender is so fascinating to me. his entire diamond days arc is a clear trans allegory, but more specifically reads as a transmasc allegory, what with everyone reffering to him as "rose" or "pink" and feminine terms despite his repeated insistence that he is *steven*. and yet he never actually corrects anyone when they use she/her. he only corrects his name. this was pointed out in the tags of that one post youve probably seen:

this post doesnt show it, but steven is delighted when blue said this. obviously you can read this as steven being glad that shes making an effort, even if incorrect, and is just choosing to let the wrong pronouns slide. but its never explicitly stated. and like i said, he never corrects she/her, he only corrects his name. although it is interesting that, by the time the movie rolls around, the diamonds have switched to he/him.

its also interesting to mention how excited he was to put on pink diamonds outfit, and also how quickly he took it off once he got the chance.

of course stevens relationship with his mother and his identity issues are going to play a big part in how he percieves his gender, given that for a large chunk of the show he actually belived they were the same person, at least to some extent. ("im my mom and my sister?! what kind of magical destiny is this?!). how would you define your "agab" when half your family is telling you that you are a centuries old alien called rose/pink who has no sex and used she/her? not to mention all of the various gender identities and pronouns his fusions have.

thats not even getting started on how the gems percieve gender, which is to say, they generally don't. gems are sexless beings and their society has no concept of gender, although after spending a long time on earth im sure the crystal gems have a better understanding (i actually could talk about the gems relation to human gender a lot more but ill save that for another time). for steven, a child raised by gems for a good chunk of his childhood- who use feminine terms as a default-i can see how that would lead to some interesting perceptions on gender presentation.

thats not even getting into stevens gender noncomformity. and while gender presentation doesnt necessarily have anything to do with your gender identity, its interesting to note and i just think its really cool that a male protagonist is so unapologetically feminine

also i could talk for days about connie and stevens knight/princess dynamic, and how it parallels pearl and roses, but in a healthier way that nips the whole "obssesive self sacrifice" thing in the (rose) bud as soon as steven notices it. but then id have to talk about pearl and then wed be here all day lol

so yeah, stevens relationship with gender fascinates me. I mean, does the concept of "cisgender" even apply in the way we usually mean it to, given stevens unique experiences?

#ash rambles #thinkibgggg #su #steven universe #steven quartz universe #steven universe meta #connie maheswaran

[thefreshprinceofjunes]

AND NOW FOR SOME META THATS NOT KH

i was looking through promotional art on the su wiki, and i came across the SDCC 2016 signing card

and i noticed that only four people in the pic have flowers

steven, greg, and pearl have roses, which of course represent rose quartz

while jasper has a hibiscus for some reason?

so i was thinking about why jasper would have that particular flower, esp when almost everyone else in the pic doesnt have one at all

and then i realized

... oh

2016 comic con, huh

#steven universe #steven universe spoilers #su spoilers #su meta #su theory #steven universe meta #long post #image heavy post

[artbyblastweave]

I’m well and settled on the opinion that Steven Universe had to seriously stack the deck in its own favor to prevent the narrative from ending with anyone getting guillotined. I mean, Steven conveniently having a foot in the door with the diamonds because he turned out to be related, sure, but it goes into the characterization and worldbuilding, too.

Rather than cackling dictators, first off, The Diamonds had to be emotionally-arrested overgrown children; the dynamic between them and Pink was always, with context, less of a parent-child thing and more like three twelve-year-olds lecturing an eight-year-old on adult responsibility, they’re fundamentally aping a notion of the right way to be and I think it’s a mistake to view them as fully-realized people at the point where Steven finds them. Gem society, too, is less of a society, with all its messy moving parts, and more of a sanitized dollhouse representation of a society that’s only just starting to morph into the real deal via the rebellion. There’s no genuinely complicated politics to untangle; just gems meaninglessly play-acting at politics. And, crucially, nobody is getting anything out of any of it- gems are a needless society, they expand endlessly because they.... don’t not do that, there’s no material incentive to behave the way they do, no economic reality Steven has to counter in order to make the horror stop. All he has to do is convince three emotional runts to stop being awful.

Now, where I differ in my thinking, I think, is that in contorting the worldbuilding to make sure that the diamond redemption wasn’t something patently insane, they really hit upon an incredibly compelling science-fiction set-up. Three Elder Gods playing “It’s A Good Life” with a tea-party sham of a civilization full of individuals who nonetheless feel real pain, Three Elder Gods who cause harm, and lots of it, but mainly through their lack of moral context and lack of understanding of what even constitutes harm, Three Elder Gods whom you, a puny human, actually have some pretty potent emotional leverage over but no way to overpower if it comes to a fight? A set-up where part of the horror is how easy it would be to pinpoint the source of the horror and make it stop? That’s fucking dynamite! I’d watch five whole seasons of just that! Hell, even in canon it doesn’t even stop- two years later and Steven is still kinda trying to deal with the fact that the Diamond’s good behavior is kinda-sorta dependent on his willingness to keep dealing with them and he has no real way to be sure any of it is sticking! There’s no actual end in sight! There’s no clean resolution! It’s messy and it’s harrowing and it’s specifically because culpability and morality and ethics and all of that is so goddamn sticky when you’re a consequentialist trying to play ball with super-advanced childlike Von Neuman Machines!

#steven universe #thoughts #meta #white diamond #blue diamond #yellow diamond #su #su meta #steven universe meta

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

toxic relationships: intentional vs romanticized

i want to talk about what makes a toxic ship intentional and what makes it romanticized, since a lot of spop fans claim that “of course Adora and Catra's relationship is toxic, they were enemies and they had a rough childhood”. however, it's clear that the writers of spop themselves don't consider this relationship toxic, or if they do, they think that the toxicity is sexy or romantic.

for comparison, let's take Jasper and Lapis from Steven Universe. this was a ship that was clearly written to be unhealthy. these were two characters who did not like each other in the slightest, who both had their own share of trauma that they never worked through and decided to form a fusion instead.

Jasper tries to coerce Lapis into forming a fusion with her, in order to help her defeat the Crystal Gems. Lapis is unwilling at first but later, she relents. whether she did this out of fear or because of her own anger towards the Crystal Gems is unclear at first.

Fusions in SU are a good way of visualising the nature of a relationship. if a relationship is healthy and stable, the fusion is stronger and can stay fused for longer periods of time. if the relationship is unhealthy, toxic or unstable, the fusion might break apart easily or have trouble functioning as one body.

fusions aren't strictly a romantic thing either, there had been a couple of platonic fusions in the series too, like Smoky Quartz or Steg. suffice to say, it was just a creative way to explore different dynamics between different people.

as expected, Lapis's and Jasper's fusion was not stable or healthy in the slightest. Malachite was the biggest fusion we had seen at that point in the series, and she looked more monstrous and unhinged than any of the other fusions we had seen prior.

it is at this point that Lapis reveals that she was just trying to keep Steven safe by fusing with Jasper and forcing the fusion to stay underwater with her.

even right after this scene, it's clear that the writers wrote Malachite as an intentional toxic ship because Garnet immediately remarks that those two gems were “not good for each other”.

after an undetermined period of time where Malachite stayed fused, and while Jasper got more and more angry and vengeful, Lapis got more and more exhausted of holding the fusion together; the Crystal Gems finally succeed in making the two unfuse.

there is some nuance to this ship too, because there wasn't just one person at fault. while Jasper was physically stronger than Lapis and she was the one who initially coerced Lapis into fusing with her, Lapis herself admits that she used their relationship to take out all of her anger and frustration. she admits to hurting Jasper in the process.

Lapis also admits that she misses Jasper, a sentiment that Jasper also seems to share as she tracks down Lapis to ask her to fuse with her again, promising that it would be better this time.

this is not uncommon in toxic relationships where the individuals get so used to the toxicity that they feel empty without each other. they would rather be in an unhealthy but familiar relationship than be alone. and this is the first time i've seen this sentiment be portrayed so realistically in a show. the fact that you can get away from someone who hurt you and still miss them and want them back is something that needs to be talked about.

Lapis does eventually reject Jasper's offer, saying that their relationship wasn't healthy. while i do have problems with how they suddenly made Lapis the victim afterwards (and her whole arc as a whole), i still think SU handled this ship really well.

it was an introspect into a toxic relationship, without romanticizing or sexualizing it, and without justifying Lapis's or Jasper's actions, even though they were both sympathetic characters on their own. they do kind of gloss over Lapis's role in this relationship later on, which i wasn't fond of but in the end, they made the right decision to not let this ship be canon.

this is how toxic relationships should be explored in media. without bias, without excusing or justifying a person's actions. whether the ship separates in the end or not is the writer's wish, but the framing is important.

whereas c//a is framed in a way that expects us to sympathize with Catra, to excuse her actions and to root for her to get with Adora. like Malachite, c//a was not healthy for Catra or Adora (although the conflict there was definitely more one-sided) but the writers of spop seems to think that a vague apology is enough for them to get into a stable relationship.

if you frame toxic behaviour as cute or romantic, your audience is going to accept that. fiction does greatly impact reality. and considering that spop is quote-unquote “a kid's show”, they have a responsibility to not send the wrong message to thousands of impressionable children.

this turned into more of an SU analysis than an SPOP critique post lol but since y'all already know why c//a is not like malachite, i trust i don't have to write more about that.

#lapis and peridot also had an unhealthy and emotionally abusive relationship #and while i hated how they never held lapis accountable for her actions #i'm glad they didn't make that ship canon either #long post #steven universe #steven universe meta #su meta #su #lapis lazuli #jasper #lapis x jasper #malachite #spop critical #spop salt #spop criticism #spop discourse #spop #she ra #anti spop #anti catra #anti catradora #anti c//a #antic//a #anticatra #anticatradora #tw abuse #tw toxic relationship #i also want to point out the language used in su vs the language used in spop #su clearly states that lapis's and jasper's relationship was unhealthy and that they were not good for each other #while spop uses vague terms like “catra is mean” “catra is a bad friend” or “adora's and catra's relationship is complicated”

[they-call-me-haiku]

i'm still not over the intense hate that suf got and how unfair it was.

“suf demonizes mental illnesses because steven turned into a monster! that's not realistic and it sends a bad message!”

first off, it's a fantasy show with sentient rocks. it's not supposed to be entirely realistic. i didn't see this type of judgment when the owl house portrayed eda's disability as a magical owl curse (no hate to toh btw i relate to eda on a spiritual level).

secondly, tell me you don't understand nuance without telling me you don't understand nuance. steven didn't turn into a monster because the writers wanted to demonize ptsd or mental illnesses. he turned into a monster because he felt like a monster.

time and time again in su, it was mentioned that steven's powers depended entirely on his feelings. and during suf, he felt like a monster, he felt like he had no control over anything, he felt helpless. all his life, he was blamed for his mother's actions and even for the actions of the other gems. it's obvious that he would internalize all of this and blame himself. he had been doing that in the original series as well.

but no, i feel like the people who were complaining either did not watch su or they just wanted something to complain about. y'all are dumb asf if you think that suf was trying to portray steven in a negative light. he was a victim, he was suffering from the trauma he had endured in the original series.

not to mention, he actually starts seeing a therapist by the end of the series, unlike other children's shows where a character's trauma is either healed by the power of friendship, the power of timeskip that erases everything or it's just never addressed. even in good children's shows, the ones that i really like, i've never seen therapy mentioned. the best we get is a drawn out character arc that allows the character to take time and heal on their own.

suf did something amazing for its younger audience - it told them that it's okay to seek professional help if you're struggling with mental health. you don't have to deal with it alone, it's not wrong to see a therapist or a psychiatrist. it did the opposite of demonizing mental illnesses, it broke the taboo of therapy that still exists. but y'all still want to misread the entire show so you have something to complain about.

(this post is talking about suf and suf alone. i am well aware that su had a lot of problematic elements and i'm not defending it by any means. i'm just talking about suf's portrayal of ptsd.)

#suf #steven universe future #steven universe #steven universe meta #su #suf meta #rant #tw ptsd #tw trauma #tw mental illness #the whole killing jasper thing #i don't count #because while shattering is the gem equivalent of being killed #since the show had a quick remedy by then #it just felt like steven knocked out jasper for a while. #suf steven #su pearl #su steven #su jasper #su garnet #su amethyst

[stummy-grumbles]

you guys werent seeing my vision so i illustrated it for you

#my pookies #steven universe #spinel #spinel su #spinel steven universe #su #saeran mystic messenger #saeran choi #unknown #mystic messenger #mysmes #ray mystic messenger #ray #kunikuzushi #genshin impact #scaramouche #wanderer #kabukimono #genshin meta #steven universe meta #mystic messenger meta #character analysis

[mymanyfandomramblings]

I was just thinking about Steven Universe, and I was joking about how in Beach City the dads are all mostly used for comedy (except for Greg bc he's a major character, but even he's occasionally used for jokes), meanwhile the mothers could kill a man, when I realised about how well Steven Universe, even with the background characters, deconstruct the 'bumbling dad/hypercompetent mother' tropes.

It's pretty common in TV shows to have absolutely terrible dad characters, who can range from mildly incompetent to straight-up abusive, and it's extremely unusual to see a show where the father is the more competent parent than the mother. Steven Universe, however, shakes up the normal dynamic. At first Greg is everything you'd expect from your bumbling sitcom dad: he looks like a bit of a slob, he's a hoarder, he's far less attractive than Rose, the Gems don't think very highly of him, and he works a rather unimpressive career, having failed to achieve his dreams. But Greg goes on to prove himself not only as a competent parent to Steven, but probably the most competent of any of Steven's parental figures (and we all know if Rose had been able to live, she would hardly have been a wonderful parent either). This is not, however, to say that Greg is perfect--far from it, he has plenty of faults, but no more so than any other character. The point is: Greg may have the outward trappings of a bumbling dad, but subverts the trope instead, by being a responsible, caring and genuinely good parent.

The show also deconstructs the 'bumbling dad's' sister trope--the badass mama bear who is incredibly competent at running their family, and is involved with their children's lives. The mothers we see around Beach City--Barb Miller, Priyanka Maheswaran and Vidalia (as well as the Crystal Gems, who are Steven's maternal figures) all pretty much fit this trope, although certain of them fulfil certain parts of the description better than others. However, the show does display that none of them are perfect parents. Barb would clearly die and/or kill for Sadie and would love to be a part of her daughter's life, but there's multiple episodes dedicated to showing how stifled Sadie feels by her mother's enthusiasm and desire to be involved in her life. Dr. Maheswaran is incredibly competent but is also hyper-controlling of Connie, leading to a breakdown in their relationship. Vidalia is clearly a cool mum who supports all her children's ambitions--which would be great, if one of her children wasn't Onion, who would probably benefit more from discipline, rather than just affirmation of his behaviour--which ranges from minor crime to full-scale mayhem. And this isn't even starting on discussing the Gems and their failures when it comes to their parenting.

I just think it's really intriguing how Steven Universe plays with and subverts the classic tropes when it comes to parents and the roles and expectations of each parent. It's another example of why the show is so good at deconstructing classic character archetypes and tropes.

#steven universe #my ramblings #steven universe meta #greg universe #character analysis

[ceslatoil]

Honestly I think a lot of the discourse around Steven Universe would have calmed down if everyone had taken a moment to

1. Remember that this is a cartoon made by a bunch of millenial weebs who make homages to Evangelion and Disney movies often in the same episode and not an actual academic text on revolutionary politics

2. Took a deep breath and realized their anxieties were being heightened by the rise of MAGA fashies in America and that maybe this was not the battle that needed to be fought for the day

#steven universe #meta #Steven universe meta #su critical

[stevenuniversewatchthru]

People like to claim that season 5 Steven is a wimpy dork that wants to talk-no-jutsu his way out of every situation he’s in

But like. That’s only half-true. Steven doesn’t want to fight unless it’s completely necessary.

For the most part, he’s content with trying to find a way to settle conflicts violence-free, really only saving the bloodlust for when he’s facing down corrupted gems

AND THIS HAS BEEN A THING SINCE SEASON 1.

#steven universe #su #season1 #su meta #whole series #steven universe meta #it’s something I’ve noticed while watching the show #and I’m not even to season 2 yet; I JUST got to The Return #people like pretending that Steven never knows what he’s talking about when he does this #but he’s usually VERY AWARE of the stakes in these kinds of situations #it’s not out of character; he just knows when to cut his losses

[rotationalsymmetry]

Some thoughts on Steven Universe as a fan (bouncing off this post):

I actually think Steven Universe should if anything be less moralistic about individual characters’ actions. There’s space wars! There’s people getting locked up in household items for millennia! There’s intergenerational trauma! There’s ordinary people (well, to the extent that gems can be considered ordinary people) trying to tackle galaxy-sized problems! Of course a lot of characters don’t always handle things great — and it shouldn’t be called out every time, because that’s an impractical way to go through life. Sometimes in life you just gotta deal with people messing up and never apologizing or recognizing they were wrong, even in overall beneficial relationships. Expecting people to rake themselves over coals every single time they do something wrong is actually a lot MORE toxic than having the occasional thing you do wrong that you don’t apologize for and don’t really experience personal consequences for. If nothing else, people are often really bad at agreeing on what’s actually bad behavior and who’s in the wrong in a conflict.

And forgiveness is a central theme of Steven Universe. Not accountability. Forgiveness. Seeing the harm someone else did, or the harm they caused by not doing a particular thing, and taking a reasonable stab at guessing where that came from and realizing you might act the same way under the same circumstances and going “yeah, we’re all people, we all mess up.” Steven Universe doesn’t have a neat division between the heroes and irredeemable villains, it has heroes who are sometimes villainous and villains who can be forgiven, and the primary hero of the early show (Rose Quartz) turns out to literally also be one of the main villains of the series. That’s what this show is about. It wouldn’t make sense in a show like that for every bad deed to get narratively punished. This isn’t Goofus and Gallant. This is about how Gallant is Goofus and Goofus is Gallant and both can coexist.

On that note my main problem with Steven Universe Future is how Jasper was handled, because Jasper had every reason to prefer the previous order over the new one and is a perfect character to illustrate how no way of organizing things is going to be optimal for everyone and how you handle trying to make a better society when not everyone is going to think it’s better, and imo the show should have found a way to keep Jasper not liking things but have that be ok, instead of whatever the fuck actually happened. Steven not being able to tolerate anyone who didn’t fall in line with the New Homeworld program, basically. Which is a huge problem, because The Future is when SU transitions from being a story about scrappy underdogs fighting against evil powers, to a story about people running a new and hopefully better society. And the set of problems involved with being the people in charge — and trying to run things in a way that is just, in a way that is basically good for people, in a way that doesn’t make you the new evil empire — is very, very different from the set of problems involved in fighting the people in charge.

#Steven universe meta

[universallywriting]

I know I'm extremely late on this but I did kind of feel like that whole confrontation with WD was pretty much evidence that I don't think Rose could have convinced the diamonds at all, not to mention how yd and bd reacted after Steven reveal to him that he has pink's gem. It still makes me wonder how she could have convinced them and why people seem to think that what Pearl said was rooted in some biased to defend Pink even though known some stuff that not everybody is even aware about and that's

Do you think it has something to do with the fact that we actually don't know what their full relationship was like and there was those hints that their relationship was actually positive? Even if it was I still don't know if I can say she could have convinced them if they were treating her like a Jester the entire time, even in moments where she kind of gets tired of that

I think a lot of people really struggle with understanding how you can say and do everything right and still be the wrong person for the job. Pink could have done everything exactly the same as Steven and I don't think they would have listened or cared.

Maybe as Rose she might have had a better chance? She changed her identity, she swore off her old name, but there's also the very real possibility that her family just never would have accepted that. I think a lot of people don't really understand transphobia. There are people who are fully transitioned, who "pass" in every conceivable way, and their families still use the wrong pronouns and deadname and are horrified at what the person has chosen to do to their body.

Steven not being Rose is crucial. He is not his mother, there is no way to argue that Rose has picked a new identity. There is no way for White to force Steven into the box Pink left behind because Pink is unquestionably dead by any standard, and by any standard Steven is not the same person.

In a lot of ways, this is the basics of what privilege is. The fact is that people are bigoted, and just by being yourself there will be people who write off everything you say but will believe it when it comes from a different source. Bigotry can be both systemic and individual.

No matter what you do, there's always a chance that your mom will never see you the way you see yourself, and that every eloquent, brilliant point you make is brushed aside but you can watch someone else make the point and she'll suddenly listen.

#steven universe meta #steven universe

[cr4ggy]

bismuth ilysm you dont deserve the way rose treated you im so sorry

i will forever be mad at su for framing it like bismuth was unruly/out of line. it was a WAR. they were ridiculously outnumbered and if she had a way to make things fairer then they should've used it. more people were gonna die. and i'm sure they would've saved more people with her help.

to clarify: rose and steven's reactions made perfect sense, i'm sure rose was still attached to the diamonds, plus she was a top 1% disconnected pacifist. not that pacifism is a bad thing but here it was definitely to the detriment of the rebellion, as sometimes you do have to get your hands dirty in a crazy situation like this. steven is just a very good wholesome boy so his reaction makes sense too! i get it. he's a really good person & also a kid. kids have very hopeful worldviews, at least most of the time.

my issue is more with how the show framed her as 'violent' and 'out of line' and 'uh oh ive got a bad feeling about her.' as if bismuth is like, a naturally violent and dangerous person. it just rubs me the wrong way. she had good ideas. the show should've at least acknowledged that.

edit: okay yes i realize this show is for kids but steven universe hasn't been particularly afraid of nuance before. and they didn't NEED to do this, either. they didn't need the conflict to be about pacifism vs righteous violence if they didn't want to yk? i still absolutely adore su and it's a huge inspiration for me, this is just one of the choices that weirds me out a little.

#bismuth #steven universe meta #steven universe #su #yet another warcrime rose commited >:( #are we surprised

[demonicintegrity]

I’ve been seeing a lot of old su clips on my fyp as well as one of those criticism videos on the movie.

And for a while I’ve been able to look at the show more objectively because time has passed since I’ve watched it. Not that I was like a huge fan to any degree, but still.

My general opinion these days is that “the executives actively made it harder on the crew and definitely were unfair and unreasonable in certain aspects” and “the crew actively fumbled the writing” can be two coexisting statements.

Honestly didn’t form that latter part until I was getting into TOH that I realized some crews can have strong writing still despite executive nonsense. Not to say there aren’t still flaws, but still. A couple of things were messy in SU, and unfortunately they all happened one after another and it was all important plot points that needed to be handled well. And that’s why a lot of us were unsastified with Change Your Mind.

(SU was the last long form tv show I remember. It have five seasons. I can’t help but wonder if such a poor reaction to CYM scared off producers from having any more longer form stuff. Which sucks cuz it was at least in part set up to fail. They shot themselves in the foot.)

The other two coexisting opinions I have of the show was “it wasn’t complete garbage like some people suggest but it’s also not amazing. It’s just kinda. A Show” and “SU is vitally important in terms of what had to be done in order to pave the way for future representation in shows. Bordering on/is historical significant in that way.” I genuinely believe we couldnt have shows like She Ra and TOH without the work Sugar and the crew put in to push back against executives.

(We claim great fame and importance to most if not all Shakesphere’s works. But I can’t help but think at least some people of the time just thought of it as a play. Not a good or bad one, but just a play. Because they didn’t realize the historical significance of it yet. Because there’s this idea that historical significance must be only done by outstanding and shining works. A classroom full of high schoolers reading Shakespeare or Edgar Allen Poe sure would disagree.)

It seems like whenever I look at media I want more out of/see great potential in I just deeply y e a r n for better Creative Commons legislation. I want other people to take a crack at this, see what they could do. I want people to try again and again and again on media, rewriting and reworking and see what we could get from it.

One show could be a seed that blooms a beautiful field of new media, we know this because we see how actively imaginative fandoms are. I just wish there was a way to encourage that into the mainstream a lil more.

#Steven universe #eepy morning rambles #steven universe meta

[artbyblastweave]

 On occasion you’ll see a Who-would-win matchup where people try to get Steven Universe to Talk-no-jitsu a host of “irredeemable” villains, and it really highlights something that I think gets lost in the weeds in discussions of, and perceptions of, Steven’s character. I’d argue that he’s not actually uniquely good at talking people down, he was just uniquely well suited to talking down the handful of people he did talk down.

He had an in with the Diamonds to start, and honestly coasted a lot on the outcome of actions taken before he was born in order to survive the endgame. He never talked Jasper down. He never talked Aquamarine down. Lapis came around but she wasn’t exactly a decisive victory and the show makes a point of how she has to carry herself over the finish line. He never really convinced Bismuth so much as the material circumstances changed and put the two of them in the same camp on their second meeting. Peridot decisively feels like a feather in his cap- he made a lot of right calls in quick succession with her, and they paid off fairly straightforwardly with no backsliding - but the sucess was still super contextual in that they only worked together at all because of the mutual danger posed by the cluster. He talked down Spinel but lost her almost immediately because she (correctly!) perceived him as only having reached out to her because he needed to in order to stop everyone from dying; he didn’t think far enough ahead to realize this was probably going to happen, and honestly he kinda got lucky the Diamonds showed up when they did because they might have been in that cycle for a while otherwise.

The kid’s not a rhetorical genius- his successes in redeeming his enemies are contextual, dependent on immediate circumstances, a lot of luck, and oftentimes on the person being “redeemed” making a personal decision that has nothing immediately to do with any argument Steven made. What Steven is actually consistently good at is providing support to his friends and family, convincing them to do stuff, managing their neurosis, and this is part of why Future hits him so hard- they don’t really need him to do that anymore. Indeed, one thing I really liked about Future is that it highlighted the ways in which Steven can be genuinely emotionally incompetent in ways that don’t pop as much when he’s a kid. I’m thinking of Guidance, Volleyball, and Together Forever in particular. The show actually has a very reasonable grasp of how far rhetoric and fuzzy feelings alone will get you! 

All of this to say that if you’re treating it as a given in your battleboarding that proximity to Steven is going to result in a character being redeemed, you’re doing it wrong. Being on the television show Steven Universe is what results in a character being redeemed. If you want Steven to be why, you’re gonna have to write an actual story. With context for how they met and got stuck together for the long haul. Maybe a plot, too.

#steven universe #steven universe meta #this one might be preaching to the choir #thoughts #meta #su #steven universe fututre #steven universe analysis

[superbeeny]

People complain about Steven Universe, but no subsequent cartoon SU fans tried to get into quite scratched the itch because even when they have cute/gay characters, they simply don’t have as many straight up insane people SU did, and very few fannish types are willing to admit the pairing of the ideals of love and acceptance and the sheer prevalence of insane, fucked up characters doing toxic shit is the appeal.  

(now ANIME is a different story.)

#the 2010's as a decade made people weirdly self-loathing about enjoying media about insane characters that ISN'T punitive #this deserves to be studied #steven universe #steven universe meta #cartoon network #cartoons #anime #meta

[refractionsinreflections]

I remember reading a post a while ago that said that White Diamond probably isn't actually an off-color, because that would invoke the rather harmful "the disabled are themselves ableist" trope, and I'm not sure if I agree with this. I think it's important that White Diamond actually is an off-color, by her own definition.

The Gem society was built around the idea of "purpose", the entire reason for each individual Gem's existence. Gems who were unable to or openly refused to perform their purpose were considered to be off-colors.

And White Diamond? In a sense, White Diamond is 'society'. She represents everything 'society' wants an individual to be and conform to, to fulfill their intended role, and for White and her role as an ideal, any flaw of her being would automatically disqualify her. A flaw makes her unable to perform her purpose, and therefore, she is an off-color, in the most direct sense.

I think White Diamond's character is a metaphor for many things, including the social model of disability and internalized ableism (which is one of the things that makes her so interesting and relatable to me).

#steven universe meta #white diamond su