Whoops Title not found

I’ve had this side blog so long and never titled it oh my gods

[quasi-normalcy]

So...how much of the bad discourse surrounding Steven Universe is just because people were really hoping that the Gems would beat up Andy DeMayo in "Gem Harvest"?

[quasi-normalcy]

I was astonished to learn that there was controversy around this episode, because I felt like it was just kind of a normal children's cartoon about getting along with difficult relatives; and then I looked it up and learned that it had the extremely inauspicious timing of airing right after Trump's 2016 victory, and, yeah, okay, I can understand why a children's fantasy about reconciling with your obnoxious conservative relatives and getting them to accept your alternate family structure would play rather poorly at the time.

[quasi-normalcy]

I think that Rebecca Sugar probably assumed, like most of the world that wasn't my specific flavour of extremely online in 2016, that Clinton would crush Trump and that this episode would maybe help to smooth over divisions; but of course what ended up happening is that an episode about how you should be empathetic towards your bigoted relatives ended up airing just as your bigoted relatives were going around victoriously hate-criming people in the street.

[quasi-normalcy]

Watching it now, though, it ends up feeling wistful more than anything. Like, yeah, sure, it doesn't work like that, and we all know that now...But wouldn't it be nice if it did? It feels like a pleasant dream.

[livingauthorssociety]

Steven Universe is fundamentally a power fantasy—but the fantasy is being able to get through to people and heal things. The power is love instead of strength.

[lilly-kittyeyes]

"Like, yeah, sure, it doesn't work like that, and we all know that now...But wouldn't it be nice if it did?" Yeah....

[storm-of-feathers]

we don't credit rebecca sugar enough for making the episode with the first gay wedding in a kids show extremely plot relevant so it could not be skipped or cut.

[emeraldspiral]

#rebecca sugar has gone on record saying that they knew from the beginning they wanted ruby and sapphire and they put every inch of planning#in to make sure that the studio could not take them out. sugar has said they’d compromised on hundreds of things they’d wanted for steven#so that they had the bargaining power specifically to keep ruby and sapphire’s relationship#and a number of ‘filler’ episodes were created just to establish counter-arguments that might come up when they pitched the wedding episode#the one that comes to mind is the episode about steven and connie getting lost in rose’s room steven’s central conflict about liking their#fave book series’ romantic ending was later weaponised when producer’s were like ‘oh but steven’s a boy he won’t be too interested in them#getting married’ sugar was able to be like ‘no. in this episode it’s established he loves romance and specifically weddings. and in these#episodes it’s shown how much steven cares about ruby and sapphire and their relationship and happiness. you cannot convince me this is not#good and necessary plot development#and they wrapped it up in the season finale and the big climactic point of the diamonds finally coming to attack earth to make the#episode integral to the series no skipping it without confusion. and had ruby wear a wedding dress because international censors took#advantage of her design to give her a masculine va#and sugar made certain that everybody knew This was a queer love story that an entire town supported and admired and that any child watchin#it at home would know they are not alone and that that support is waiting for them out there somewhere#sugar sacrificed the wider story they wanted to tell for that and it was a horrible decision to be given but they made the right choice

[mordicaifeed]

White Diamond by Kelly Kirstein.

[mcuedits]

Oh hey,that’s me! 🤩

[queenofthearcana-deactivated201]

HolySHIT WHAT A GORGEOUS COSPLAY

[birdgodee]

Found this lil suggestion on Pinterest while grifting through random images

I like Pearl :3

[esperilo]

pearl from 2024 inspired by this post

[thattrashbinoverthere]

Steven Universe designs for fun. Experimenting. Enjoy.🩷

[wingdingery]

will die on the hill of “dead dove: do not eat” DOES NOT MEAN “there are various unspecified things in here that might disturb you, so be warned”

it means “i know the contents of this bag (a dead dove) may be upsetting, so i have labeled the outside very clearly with what is inside (a dead dove), and if you look inside, you should not be surprised to find a dead dove, because that’s what the label very explicitly says is inside the bag”

i realize this is a losing battle because enough people have made it mean the other thing as to make the tag totally useless, but seeing people argue over what it should mean gives me a headache because it literally could not be clearer

[nevereacheaven]

venom and rose quartz have the same backstory

[nevereacheaven]

came to earth as the weakest link of four, intent on destroying the planet, instead finds love and joy on earth, changes their identity to go unnoticed on earth, have a malewife

[a-blue-quartz]

Eventually had a child with that malewife

[factual-fantasy]

[earthnashes]

I was gonna type but figured this would be more helpful ;w; Just tossing my 2 cents in!

[olive-man]

I WAS SEARCHING FOR A SU CLIP BUT THIS IS SO MUCH MORE FUNNIER THAN WHAT I WAS LOOKING FOR

[mythalism]

i actually need to know people's thoughts on this because at least in my experience the answer to this has drastically changed since i was on tumblr in the 2010s and its driving me fucking insane

what's the appropriate way to engage with a fandom take you disagree with on tumblr?

voice your disagreement in the replies

voice your disagreement in a reblog addition

shrug and move on

vaguepost and complain about it on your own blog but dont engage directly

send it to a trusted moot and vent about your frustrations about it in private

bald / nuance / see results

Voting ended onMay 29, 2025

*im talking about fandom takes specifically. not someone being horribly evil about a real-life issue or or blatantly factually incorrect. literally just harmless fandom disagreements or differing interpretations of a text/character/etc.

[mythalism]

i need you dorks to REBLOG this if you voted.... i already know my circle of moots and i have the same opinion i need this to spread across fandoms to get a real accurate sample of sufficient size COME ON!!!!!! and love and kisses to everyone reblogging and leaving their thoughts in the tags <3 muah muah xoxo

[imbeccablee]

sighs

[fandomsandfeminism]

Sometimes I think about how and why some people had such a *bad* reaction to the end of Steven Universe, specifically in regards to the Diamonds living.

Even though they no longer are causing harm to others and are able to actually undo some of their previous harm by living, some folks reacted as though this ending was somehow morally suspect. Morally bankrupt, even.

And I think it might be because so many of us were raised on a very specific kind of kids media trope:

They all fall to their deaths.

Disney loves chucking their bad guys off cliffs. And it makes sense- in a moral framework where villains *must* be punished (regardless of whether their death will actually prevent further harm or not), but killing of any kind is morally bad for the hero, the narrative must find a way to kill the villain without the protagonists doing a murder.

It's a moral assumption that a person can *deserve* to die, that it is cosmically just for them to die, that them dying is evidence that the story itself is morally good and correct. Scar *deserves* to die, but it would be bad for Simba to kill him. So....cliff.

Steven Universe, whatever else it's faults, took at step back and said "but if killing people is bad, then people dying is bad", and instead of dropping White Diamond off a cliff, asked "what would actual *restorative*, not punitive, justice look like? What would actual reparations mean here? If the goal is to heal, not just to punish, how do we handle those who have done harm?" And then did that.

Which I think is interesting, and that there was pushback against it is interesting.

It also reminds me of the folks who get very weird about Aang not killing Ozai at the end of Avatar. And like, Ozai still gets chucked in prison, so it doesn't even push back on our cultural ideas of punitive justice *that much.* and still, I've seen people get real mad that the child monk who is the last survivor of a genocide that wiped out his entire pacifist culture didn't do a murder.

[the-nerdy-autist]

Quick question: how do you do "restorative justice" for a man like Frollo who actively tries to commit a genocide?

Hitlers exist. They need killing.

[fandomsandfeminism]

There are other ways to remove a person's ability to wield political and social power to commit genocide than dropping them off the side of a burning building that are all just as effective.

I'd also like to point out that the idea that you can prevent a wholesale genocide by like, killing the RIGHT individual, is a rather...simplistic understanding of what causes genocide.

Frollo, to use him as the example, is a priest (in the book), and a judge (in the Disney movie.) He's not just a bad guy. He's an extention of the Catholic Church/The State (depending on which version you want to lean on here.) His power to do harm comes from his position within those institutions and the power of those institutions themselves. The persecution of the Roma people within France isn't because there was a bad guy, but because of those systems of power being used to kill the people that the church and the government wanted dead. Frollo getting dropped off a building wouldn't stop the persecution of the Roma in any world that isn't, maybe, a Disney film.

In the real world, it's very easy to hold up Hitler as the boogeyman. But if Hitler had died, but the war machine of Third Reich Germany hadn't lost the Battle of Berlin/the War as a whole, the Holocaust wouldn't have magically stopped just because 1 guy died.

Look. I'm not saying that there's never been a situation in the world where killing 1 guy wasn't the objectively best option in a high stakes, immediately dangerous situation. The world is full of Trolley problems and self defense situations and nuance and context.

But this post is about Restorative vs Punitive Justice *systems*, and about how many people, in general, start and end their analysis of Justice with "did the bad guy get killed?"

I would even argue that this mentality, where as long as you are sure in your heart that it will SAVE LIVES, killing people is just and good and shouldn't be questioned because some people are just bad- that mentality? Forms the core of Police killings in our culture. Justifies shooting first and asking questions never. Because once you decide that someone has done harm, they need to die for there to be Justice?

I dunno. I just think maybe as a society, we should be open to...other ideas on the matter.

[mahrahpalestine]

💥#Breaking: Israel halts entry of all humanitarian aid into Gaza as Phase I concludes. The IDF has been ordered to close all entries to Gaza.

Further evidence that the genocide in Gaza is still ongoing: Israel's deliberate suspension of humanitarian aid to Gaza is a genocidal act that violates the ICJ provisional measures & a prosecution of the war crime of starvation, for which the ICC has issued arrest warrants.

Please donate to my family from here to provide for their living needs.

Donate here

[palestinian95]

@omegaversereloaded @sporesgalaxy @sergle @wolfythewitch @charlott2n @arirna @afro-elf @spongebobssquarepants @wolfertinger666 @sergle @extremelycursedimages

[novantinuum]

ah yes, steven universe: skull fracture, my favorite show

[willosword]

things that never fail to bring me unbridled joy: when characters in su spontaneously do a goofy ass walk cycle

[puddeneen]

op HOW could you leave out this timeless classic, this MOST iconic instance of “act natural” in visual media:

[bob-belcher]

[mossbyrn]

actually, I’m not asking

LEAVE

AND

GO FUCK YOURSELF