Daily Archives: Wednesday, September 16th, 2020

Representing Choice

  • Reading time:4 mins read

So no kidding, the key that lodged in the back of my head and led me to recognize my queerness, some 30 years after it would have been useful to know, is this whole scene here—the dynamics of which we’ve all seen discussed in abstract, right? But to see it dramatized like this, and to recognize these thoughts and feelings so deeply…

  • Steven Universe Ongoing #2 (Feb 2017), page 17
  • Steven Universe Ongoing #2 (Feb 2017), page 18
  • Steven Universe Ongoing #2 (Feb 2017), page 19
  • Steven Universe Ongoing #2 (Feb 2017), page 20
Steven Universe Ongoing #2 (Feb 2017), pages 17-20

This is precisely what I’ve felt whenever someone’s gotten close to me, and these are exactly the thoughts that have always run through my head. Even when the relationship lasts for years, that thought hangs there, coloring every single interaction: how long until they see me for who I really am, and then what will happen?

Like… it took a bit of unpacking for me to understand why I identified so closely with this business, based on what I had come to recognize about myself. The first step was recognizing the aroaceness, as reflected in the early interaction here. That wasn’t too tricky. I had empirical data to work with, and had been wrestling with years of browbeating for my lack of sexuality in relationships, which I just sort of interpreted as queerplatonic situations, without knowing the term.

The transness took a little longer to click, but then it was the biggest fucking “oh” in the world. My pan business… well, that took longer still, and isn’t directly informed by this comic, but after everything else it was more of a shrug. Sure, we’ve gone this far. Let’s just collect all the flags. Why not.

I think what really sells it is Steven’s awful, brain-dead avoidance strategy, which… yeah… followed by, “Maybe, instead, we should talk about what we want to do?” 

What we want to do?

…

Oh.

…

OH.

…

oh?

Like, I genuinely never understood that I had a choice. I thought I just had to play with what I was dealt, go along with other people’s expectations for me. When people gave me an ultimatum and told me we couldn’t be friends anymore unless we changed the terms of our relationship and did things I didn’t feel comfortable doing, I had the option to say no, you go coerce someone else. I’m fine here. I didn’t have to actively suppress everything I was in order to make other people comfortable all the time. I didn’t have to deal with abuse. I didn’t have to be who other people wanted me to be, and were angry when I wasn’t.

The autistic masking sure as hell plays into the above as well. like, there’s always this anxiety in the event one manages to “pass” that one is just working one’s self into a bigger and bigger problem, so that when they notice the truth, some real shit is going to go down.

“… what we want to do.”

Like, that kind of shook me. and for several months after I stumbled over the comic, I kept dwelling on it, putting myself in the place of Stevonnie, making analogies to all these scenes from my own past—thinking, what would I want to do? What do I want to do now? Does this apply in a real way? Is it too late? Do I have choices? What are they?

It turns out, yes. I had choices. Choices that I didn’t know enough to make. And then, I did.

Now here I am.

On Fucking Up

  • Reading time:3 mins read

Flaw is character. Flaws are what make us actual people, and not just cartoons. Flaws are what allow for beauty and growth and potential. Without flaw there is no hope. Stories often pay lip service to or structurally apply this ideal. It’s fun to root for the underdog, the misfit, so long as you know they’re in the right all along and they’ll show everyone in the end.

The best thing about Steven Universe is how deeply flawed every character is, how much they hurt themselves and each other as a result, and how committed the show is to showing them compassion anyway, without excusing their behavior, until they can learn to do better.

The thing people hate about Steven Universe is how deeply flawed the characters are, how much that drives the story, and the show’s refusal to pass judgment on them as people no matter how much it emphasizes the damage they do.

Because in our culture compassion is endorsement. To address a thing means to legitimize it.

So when Pearl… does what she does to Garnet, and for all the appropriate horror and weight, the show doesn’t write Pearl off entirely and rather spends this whole arc exploring the fallout of her decision, the peanut gallery chimes in about the show’s problematic attitudes toward rape.

So when, in desperation and to mixed success, Steven attempts to talk down the Diamonds—convince them to use their power to help people instead of hurting them—rather than look for a way to kill them outright, we get two-hour-long screeds on how a bisexual nonbinary Jewish woman is a Nazi apologist.

What makes the show magical is that it will not draw hard lines about people; only about the damage and the growth they cause and experience. It shows that anyone is capable of positive or negative change. It shows how attitudes and behavior are systemic, and how they cause a chain reaction that manifests in cycles far outside one’s control or direct understanding.

It’s a show about unconditional love and hope for change in a world that sucks where people repeat the garbage they’ve learned and don’t know how to do better even if they understand and accept the harm they do. Where the first step often is just accepting the pain and moving on.

And fuck if that isn’t the most relevant message in the world.

But we’re a culture that roars for blood and righteous retribution, where the only people who do bad things are people who are innately bad, and where some people are just more human, more deserving, than others.

Maybe if we had a few more positive philosophical models like this show, our cultural narrative would shift a bit. As it is, it’s a moral outlier. As anything that prioritizes kindness over righteous obedience will be. Because that’s what an unkind oligarchy has taught us is trouble.

Steven Universe is the best TV show ever, seriously, and if you haven’t yet you need to watch it until you understand it.

Which may take a while, as it’s fucking strange, and queer, and neurodiverse, and doesn’t signify or indicate or move or talk or think like any other show out there. But it’ll change your mind, change your life, if you allow it.