i survived too much steven universe discourse to have to suffer through a new age of she-ra discourse
unless she-ra personally commits a hate crime, i dont want to see you grown ass adults attempting to philosophically dissect yet another kids show
REMEMBER WHEN PPL TRIED TO SAY STEVEN UNIVERSE WAS PRO FASCIST
but it is??? like maybe they didn’t mean to be pro fascist bc Rebecca Sugar is too incompetent to do anything on purpose but it is like. irreparably pro fascist.
I don’t understand how y’all look at Steven genuinely trying to befriend dictators who’ve committed genocide on innumerable accountsand are intolerant of deviation from the norm unless they can weaponize it, and say that’s not fascism.
Like you can still watch the show and everything (hell I will myself) but. That’s literally the textbook definition of fascism.
Rebecca Sugar probably didn’t mean to write it that way, but the fact is that she wrote a narrative that condonesforgiving people no matter how terrible they are, to the point where it is apologizing for people who’ve willingly committed genocide, which is a hallmark of fascism.
Steven trying to turn the Diamonds to his side is fine. But the point where it crosses into fascist apologia is when she started trying to write the Diamonds as sympathetic. You cannot write fascist dictators as sympathetic and not expect to get called out on it.
You know what? Fuck it. I haven’t posted a single fucking thing to this blog yet, but you cretins have disgusted me so much that I just can’t take it anymore. This is the last straw. I’m not going to argue with you, because there is no argument. You just parroted a really stupid narrative that’s gotten somewhat popular lately, and I’m gonna tell you exactly why it’s stupid.
“Steven is genuinely trying to befriend dictators!” No. Steven is trying to protect his family and his planet, and he’s trying to save all the corrupted gems. His strategy, for now, is to get on their good side and appeal to their emotions by reminding them that they’re family (which they technically are). There has been no indication in the show that Steven likes the diamonds or that he forgives or excuses the atrocities they’ve committed. He empathizes, because he literally has empathy powers and he can’t physically help it. That is not the same thing as forgiveness, or even sympathy.
“Recebba wrote fascist, genocidal dictators as being sympathetic, which is a Bad.” No. You know what’s bad? SYMPATHIZING WITH REAL LIFE GENOCIDAL DICTATORS. Sympathizing with Hitler and calling him a poor, misunderstood artist is BAD! You know what isn’t bad? Fucking giving your fictional villains more than one dimension! Giving them some fucking personality, some damn motivation. It kind of makes for a more compelling story, you know? You might even say that the Diamonds are multifaceted, harr harr. Anyway, I don’t know how to tell you that the Diamonds are cartoon space aliens who are more comparable to indifferent goddesses or queen bees than they are to nazis. I guess calling the sjw cartoon “fascist propaganda” makes for a juicy narrative, which brings me to my next point:
“I’m sure Recebba didn’t MEAN to write fascist propaganda! She’s just too incompetent, that’s all. That
dumb, stupid, weak, pathetic, white, white… uh, uh, guilt, white guilt, milquetoast piece of human garbage.”
This is really what makes me the most crazy. I’m sure that people know that Rebecca Sugar is Jewish (incidentally, this means that nazis don’t see her as “white,” or even as a human being). I’m sure that they know that she’s a bisexual, Jewish, non-binary woman who’s in love with a black man. It’s more like they just don’t care. “B-b-b-but just because she’s Jewish herself doesn’t mean that she can’t accidentally write fascist propaganda! She’s just a bad writer!” Yeah, no. Do you honestly believe that Sugar, who lives in America as a Jew, who uses the internet as a Jew, who has a Jewish family, who is descended from a gotdamn Holocaust survivor, and who (alongside her partner, Ian) has survived white supremacist violence herself, doesn’t know a thing or two about what it feels like to be hunted? It shows so clearly in her work, too. It shows in how desperately the Crystal Gems fight to defend the Earth and their way of life, it shows in how the Off Colors desperately hide themselves for the sake of their survival, and it shows in how miserable and stifled the lower caste homeworld gems are in their rigidly strict assigned roles.
So, why do all the great, critical thinkers of this nightmare hell site call this show “fascist propaganda?”
Because Steven is squeamish about the idea of killing. Because the villains where shown to have a little depth. That’s it!
The fact that so many people are willing to interpret this show in such bad faith really astounds me. If you don’t like the show, then you don’t like the show. Maybe the show makes you deeply uncomfortable. That’s fine; the show is supposed to be uncomfortable. It shows emotion in all its raw irrationality; it puts mental illness on full display and it doesn’t squirm away from showcasing the consequences of trauma. The good guys do fucked up things sometimes, and the bad guys appear sympathetic sometimes. There’s nothing fascist about that, and it certainly isn’t bad writing. In fact, it’s so real that it’s uncomfortable. And that’s a good thing.
Rebecca Sugar is a really good writer. 🙂
this reply is excellent, and it touches on something i love about SU:
it’s SUPPOSED to be uncomfortable to watch sometimes.
did this moment make you uneasy?
or this one?
or how about this?
if they did, congratulations, that’s intentional!
there are so many cartoons that go out of their way to be as affirming and coddling as possible, by making their antagonists so Other that there’s no way you would ever see yourself in them. thus, telling this comfortable lie that people who do bad things are just genetically designed for evil, and as long as you’re not a literal monster, you never need to challenge yourself or confront your own demons.
SU says fuck that.
SU says that people can do terrible things while fully believing that they’re doing what’s best for everyone. SU says that you can be mentally ill, and traumatized, and vulnerable, and downtrodden, and STILL be selfish. SU says that sometimes, people who are on the “right” side in the Great Battle can still be toxic. SU says that sometimes, you don’t have the support network that helps you grow as a person, and the consequences of that can be scarring for both yourself and others.
most importantly, SU says that all of this depends not just on the person, but on how you’re shaped by society. not because you don’t have a choice, but because societal ills can never be cured just by wishing really hard that everyone raised in toxic environments will just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and instinctively know what’s right, without any help from others.
that’s what i love about this show. if it was like most other cartoons, where the “good girls” are expected to be born knowing what’s right, and the “bad girls” (yes, especially girls!) are so inhuman that nobody could ever relate to them, i wouldn’t be watching.
look, i’m not saying it’s for everyone. no piece of media is.
if you want a show to tell you everything’s ok and nothing was ever your fault, i don’t recommend SU. if you want a show where the protagonists’ only flaws are insecurities that they never take out on others, i don’t recommend SU. if you need the women and lgbt+ characters to be safe, heroic role-models who never hurt anyone who doesn’t deserve it, i don’t recommend SU.
but. if you want to challenge yourself, i recommend it.
if you’ve ever felt guilty, i recommend it.
if you’re ready and willing to confront the worst things you’ve ever done, and still keep believing that there’s hope for you, i wholeheartedly recommend it.
Quick little addition: if you write villains as monsters instead of people you create a disconnect between them and the audience. You further the notion that complex people with opinions, families, friends, problems, emotions, and depth can’t also be terrible people. We like to imagine that we’re incapable of doing such terrible actions, only true monsters devoid of any humanity could ever be truly evil. That’s a dangerous notion because people like that don’t exist outside of cartoons!
THAT’S what leads to nazi apologistism, not a cartoon about love and acceptance, but the notion that if a person isn’t a monster and acts more “human” then they can’t actually be bad. That’s what leads to people being forgiving of other’s terrible actions. Because nazis are humans, they have their own personal lives with families and feelings just like us. That’s an uncomfortable thought, but it’s true. And if we want to avoid becoming like them then we have to acknowledge we’re just as capable of these awful things, no human being is incapable of evil.
If we teach children that the only true evil in the world can only exist in heartless monsters they’ll believe they could never be like that. It raises them to be uncritical of the world. It raises believe to believe their buddies who make racist jokes and hate women are alright because they’re not “ACTUALLY bad” because they don’t fit this stereotypical evil cartoon villain archetype of a racist or misogynist.
Writing sympathetic and realistic villains is important, not just because it’s better more realistic writing, but because if we can sympathize with them we can see how easy it is to become them, and how people can do horrible things and be human but that doesn’t mean they should be forgiven. We have to acknowledge this capacity for evil we all have in order to avoid it and think of the world more critically, and not forgive people for their actions just because they’re human.
vganimefanatic 