Reblogging my own response post because I have some thoughts now that I’ve seen more about the original post in context
OP openly, proudly admits to NOT HAVING EVEN WATCHED STEVEN UNIVERSE. Of course they don’t actually know how the representation went down. It’s easier to follow graded charts by someone with a hate boner for the show than to gather your own info.
OP certainly has no obligation to watch SU. Nobody cares. But if you won’t watch it, why pretend you can analyze it? Just say “Oh I heard X and that made me not wanna see it and I would rather trust other people’s opinions than form my own.” Weird, but legit. Until or unless you then think you’re qualified to talk about its contents. Great way to look silly.
OP and supporters of course whine that all of our commentary on their terrible take is ~hysterical~ and aggressive and somehow makes us look bad, mockingly reframing our critique with more bad takes
OP mocks us saying “but there was a wedding episode!” Like … is your problem that the relationship isn’t explicit and ~brave~ enough because they didn’t say girlfriend? Isn’t a wedding really really explicit? Stop pretending this isn’t an example of exactly the specificity you claim the show doesn’t contain.
OP mocks us for saying “you should be grateful!” Yeah that’s not how they said it, but even when there is legitimate criticism for the show largely using non-human characters for its nonbinary and same-sex relationship rep, that criticism can’t be levied by people who don’t actually even know the show or how it presents these things. “You should be grateful for the crumbs you receive” isn’t an appropriate criticism for a show that had an INCREDIBLE selection of queer content, formed on a BEDROCK of fundamentally queer thought process throughout.
OP mocks us for “SU walked so other shows could run!” aaaaand that’s confusing because nobody watches Steven Universe and thinks “bah there just isn’t enough queerness here, it isn’t explicit enough.” You watch THAT and you see WALKING?? The difference is in what they did have to do (especially toward the beginning) to get anything resembling queerness onto the show in a way the networks would approve. It wasn’t “well we can’t do that because we’ll get fired lol.” It was literally doing it over and over and getting kicked back with bigoted notes that literally asked them to turn Ruby into a boy or to tell the story without Garnet’s relationship. The shows that are getting praised by OP literally have their showrunners specifically mentioning Rebecca Sugar, their Crew, and SU as THE reason they know a show with this content is acceptable, celebrated, and popular, and they have all been using it to prove to execs that this content is worth producing.
OP mocks “There’s nothing wrong with subtlety!” but is mistaking the very intentional choices for subtlety. There is NOTHING subtle about the queer relationships in this show. There is literally no homophobic parent watching same-sex kisses, gay weddings, and queer references and saying “oh but this is ok for my kid because they didn’t say ‘girlfriend.’” The language isn’t the metric by which we conclude that the content is what it looks like. And as I mentioned, Gem characters specifically aren’t women. That’s not an attempt to hide their queerness. It’s an expression of how Rebecca felt, as someone seen as female but who didn’t feel female. Queer nerds want gay aliens in our SF shows as well. (And it’s ironic that this person licks Lily Orchard’s ass while promoting The Owl House as authentic queer representation when none of those witches are humans either. Please note that I love The Owl House and think their rep is stellar, though–I’m just saying if you turn up your nose at Gems because they’re non-human, it’s suspicious that this doesn’t apply to explicitly nonhuman witches in The Owl House.)
OP mocks “Sugar fought and risked her job to have gay rep!” but like … I’ll just have to assume OP is as ignorant about Rebecca Sugar’s protracted, years-long battle with censorship as they are about the show itself, because this is literally what happened, and the result was that REBECCA WON. In multiple interviews Rebecca has talked about how traumatic it was to be knocked down in a personal way every time they included wholesome queer content and got told it’s INDECENT and INAPPROPRIATE FOR CHILDREN, and how they kept going anyway because they felt this intentional message toward queer children constituted an emergency. It sure is weird to have a showrunner undergo great personal awfulness to try to bring this to us, have that showrunner WIN that battle and literally have that win converted into Cartoon Network policy that opened the doors for the other CN shows (I don’t mean figuratively, I mean literally, they rewrote, REWROTE policies to say anything straight characters could be depicted as doing, same-sex couples could do) … to have all that happen and then eyeroll it as an excuse from whiny SU stans.
Honestly I’m just amazed that OP would be so ignorant as to pretend SU was subtle about, hiding, obfuscating, or playfully denying the queerness of its characters for “respectability” purposes. And none of the shows being compared as “better” representation would appreciate this kind of mean-spirited, clueless asslicking. I’m glad the OP deleted their post–it belongs deleted–but it sure is boring and whiny of them to insist they deleted it because we’re all wrong and obnoxious. It’s really sad that they didn’t learn anything from this and ran to mommy to whine that people called their ignorance out as ignorance.
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