fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #4440 ]

The who with the what now?

Which things are you talking about? Because a lot of the things that Vrai dislikes and criticizes are, like...anime about women falling in love with children. It seems to me it's reasonable to criticize those.

Kaiser tends to assume that real women agree with whatever she thinks. If she hasn't looked up the gender of someone whose art she doesn't like, she assumes they're male even if they're not. If she has looked up their gender, she assumes they don't really mean what they're saying. (According to Kaiser, Steven Universe is now outdated, because if it had been written starting now, it would support violent revolution instead of peaceful negotiation. The idea that Rebecca Sugar could currently support peaceful negotiation, with full knowledge of current events, doesn't seem to have occurred to her.)

According to Kaiser, Steven Universe is now outdated, because if it had been written starting now, it would support violent revolution instead of peaceful negotiation. The idea that Rebecca Sugar could currently support peaceful negotiation, with full knowledge of current events, doesn't seem to have occurred to her.

I don't think this is a contradictory thing to say. It might or might not be a correct stance, but I think it's at least coherent. It's an opinion about what the work should do, not an opinion about what the creator would actually do.

I'm not familiar enough with the website or the arguments or the context, I'm just going off the example provided.

if it had been written starting now, it would support violent revolution
So...
It's an opinion about what the work should do, not an opinion about what the creator would actually do.

Protip: read the piece of text you're quoting.

(Oh, and this is nayrt, btw)

I did read the piece. But we're relying on OP summarizing a point of view that they admittedly don't agree with. I did try to quickly look for whatever the original source of this argument was, but I couldn't find it in a quick 5 minutes of Googling.

And I sort of doubt that the argument was that Steven Universe actually factually definitely would support violent revolution if it was made today, because that's an obviously stupid claim. So I sort of thought it was more likely that OP made a slightly loose choice of verb mood when summarizing, because that's the kind of thing that happens literally all of the time.

That was the worst hot take ever. Like, what, we’re not alllowed to be hopeful or optimistic because it’s... what, retro? The world went a bit crap so all we can consume is crap?

According to Kaiser, Steven Universe is now outdated, because if it had been written starting now, it would support violent revolution instead of peaceful negotiation. The idea that Rebecca Sugar could currently support peaceful negotiation, with full knowledge of current events, doesn't seem to have occurred to her.

Can you post the link to this? Thanks!

https://www.themarysue.com/steven-universe-recap-legs-from-here-to-homeworld/

And Steven Universe, it is increasingly clear, is burdened by the era in which it was made—“Gem Harvest” and its unfortunate airing date threw that issue into the spotlight, but the concern has never really gone away. When the show was planned in those first few years, the overall culture was more optimistic. There was a sense, whether true or not, that things were getting better.

It was the kind of atmosphere where a story about an oligarch who grows a conscience and tries to start over, making terrible mistakes in pursuit of making things right, might play—where all it takes to make things right is to reach out with your sincere emotions, because there’s good in everybody deep down.

There were not brazen white supremacists in power when Steven Universe was planned, to put rather too fine a point on it.

But one cannot change course on a show’s core narrative four years in, with so much investment of time and so many hard-working artists working on episodes months in advance—even before we get into the much-lamented indignities on the part of Cartoon Network’s marketing branch. So here it is, and here we are, and it is difficult to know what to do.

. . .

But the pointed emphasizing of Steven’s Special Chosen One status at the end of this episode makes that slow build feel somewhat pointless, particularly as the show has finally turned its full attention to the Diamonds. The cosmic scale, both literal and figurative, of these characters has slowly begun to separate the viewer from those everyday concerns that were so vital to the early days of the show, turning us instead toward a chess game in which being born special is an intrinsically important component.

Chosen One narratives aren’t the worst thing, and Steven is plenty rounded as a character, but it feels like a somewhat tired narrowing of focus that further underlines how unintentionally disconnected the show feels from the current plights of its intended marginalized audience. Bismuth is the character for 2018, and she’s back on Earth.

(For reference, Bismuth wanted to change the Crystal Gems' tactics from largely nonlethal to killing everyone in their way.)

Maybe I'm missing something but none of this seems to really support the claim that "if it had been written starting now, it would support violent revolution instead of peaceful negotiation".

At most, it seems to be saying that the writer of the piece disagrees with the tone of the show, and the writer of the piece thinks that "Bismuth is the character for 2018". But I really don't see where it's saying that Rebecca Sugar definitely wouldn't support peaceful negotiations, or anything like that.

There were not brazen white supremacists in power when Steven Universe was planned, to put rather too fine a point on it.

nayrt: White supremacists have been in power for over 400 years now. The idea that Sugar, who came of age under a white supremacist president when it was common to talk about bombing Iraq and Afghanistan "down to glass" was naively ignorant of age-old debates about nonviolent vs. violent change when creating SU is a deeply stupid take.

Never mind that SU isn't a political manifesto about regime change. It's politics serve as a metaphor for queer family dysfunction.

^This
It seems quite condescending to assert that obviously Sugar would have done it differently today, because any right thinking person will agree with Vrai! Right? Because, like, the debate between the "let's destroy our oppressors by blood and fire" and the "let's explain to our oppressors, in words of one syllable, why being dicks is bad" schools of thought - that's totally new! That definitely came into being within the last few years!
Also, Martin Luthor King and Malcolm X totally didn't spend years talking shit about one another. Definitely not.

I don't think that Tasker is saying that the distinction is new, or that Sugar would have done it differently if the show was being made today. At least, that's not what Tasker says in the piece OP quoted. All they're saying is that the themes of a show are less germane and less appropriate to the specific moment than when the show first came out.

You don't have to agree with them about their political views and the utility of violent revolution but like... the piece just doesn't assert that "obviously Sugar would have done it differently today". If it does, I definitely am missing it.

The idea that Sugar, who came of age under a white supremacist president when it was common to talk about bombing Iraq and Afghanistan "down to glass" was naively ignorant of age-old debates about nonviolent vs. violent change when creating SU is a deeply stupid take.

I don't think that the writer is suggesting that? Rather, they're suggesting that the circumstances in which the show was created are germane to its thematic content. And I don't think they're wrong - Steven Universe would be a different show if it came out for the first time today. Even if the show was exactly the same, it would still be different, because it would exist in a different historical context.

Re: OP

(Anonymous) - 2019-03-03 19:56 (UTC) - Expand

Re: OP

(Anonymous) - 2019-03-03 20:16 (UTC) - Expand

Ah, I see. From what I remember of Vrai's SU recaps (and for the record, Vrai's nonbinary and uses they/them), it wasn't so much that they think SU would support violent revolution as it was that in the current political climate it's a lot harder to be hopeful that dictators can be brought down by being nice to them, which is a pretty common criticism of SU. Vrai isn't saying nonviolence is wrong, just that it's not as easy to believe in it as it was when SU started. I think that's a pretty reasonable stance.

Actually, I went ahead and skimmed through their most recent SU recaps, and came across this one, which I think is what you're talking about? And there isn't anywhere in it where Vrai puts it the way you do. I think you're misremembering. Unless there's some other one where they talk about that.

But... SU is a kids' show. Kids' shows generally emphasize nonviolent ways of solving problems, this is nothing new.

I know, but most kids' shows don't emphasize using nonviolence as a method of ending systematic oppression, which SU kinda does. And that's a harder sell these days.

Kids aren't watching SU and thinking "Oh golly gosh the villains' crime is systemic oppression!" The villains are trying to Take Over the Universe, a very common goal for kids' show villains that usually comes with implications of oppression that go over kids' heads. SU is no different in that regard, so I don't know why people always act like it's the first show ever to do this kind of villain plot and solve it peacefully.

Re: OP

futuresoon - 2019-03-03 02:09 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2019-03-03 03:20 (UTC) - Expand

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futuresoon - 2019-03-03 03:21 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2019-03-03 09:20 (UTC) - Expand

I don't know anything about Vrai's takes on SU, but they'll always be a hypocrite in my book for having an essay about why Word of God is dead, and then using Word of God in their recommendation of Gundam Iron Blooded Orphans because according to Word of God Kudelia and Atra are married at the end and therefore it's a feminist anime. When if you watch the end everyone's going to assume they're just friends raising the child of the guy they were both in love with.

I've never been on Anime Feminist, but I have a irl friend who writes for them. I think the concept is really neat but I'm afraid to actually read anything for fear it's a bit too SJW for me, despite being a feminist (and gay woman) myself.

It is too SWJ, as a feminist and bi woman. Not to mention, one of their other writers is an anti who supported the harassment of the Voltron staff by viewers who didn't like how it handled its LGBTQ representation. And regardless of whether you liked the way the show handled things, a reviewer with a professional image to maintain shouldn't be supporting harassment as a means to fix it.

I don't know the site well enough to pin it on Kaiser alone, but going to there is one of the few things that makes me feel OLD. Their take on feminism is tubmlr SJW paired with the most misunderstood idea of feelgood feminism. I stopped taking them seriously after they panned "Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny-Girl Senpai" because the reviewer thought the MC was a perv and the concept of the show was sexist. He pretty clearly isn't, and "some dude solves problems for girls" is hardly misogyny on the cosmic scale.

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[ SECRET POST #4440 ]

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