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Love Takes Work

@love-takes-work / love-takes-work.tumblr.com

Steven Universe side blog where I like Garnet a lot okay
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faelapis

next to the many silly things about that post, um. i might get pushback for saying this, but i don't really think craig of the creek or the owl house are automatically queerer for saying the literal word girlfriend / wife / etc.

like... this is hard to describe, because it brushes with queerness as opposed to just the lgbt+ acronym, and queerness itself is tricky to define. but steven universe is deeply queer, labels aside.

its certainly good to have more shows with representation, but i don't think any of them really nails the 'queer sensibilities' of SU. everything from how it deals with gender, how the characters themselves relate to the hierarchies and strict social roles of homeworld, and its storylines and the very open secret of the metaphors of things like steven being misgendered and being feminine and the gems not quite understanding human society, even if not strictly 'literal'... there's just a deep well of underlying queerness about steven universe thats extremely hard to replicate, i think.

Very Big Agree. (And disclaimer: I also don’t think those other shows are bad at all or that they Do Queerness Wrong whatsoever--they’re doing great too.) There’s something to be said for absolute confirmation using language, but it’s really gatekeepey to say that’s the only way something queer is confirmed queer. ESPECIALLY for something like Steven Universe in which a) the relevant characters generally don’t call themselves “girls” or “women” in OTHER contexts either (though they don’t object to others labeling them), so use of feminine-term-based relationship language is weird to expect of them; and b) the fundamental, quintessential queerness that the show grew up in is something far more relatable to many of us who also didn’t have language for ourselves but were able to see “us” in this.

Rebecca’s talked about what a journey they’ve been on, and how others were able to use this show to have wonderful conversations with their loved ones even though REBECCA hadn’t been able to get there. She went through denial and grief and a whole heaping helping of impostor syndrome, thinking she wasn’t queer enough because how could you even want to be called bisexual if you were with a man and everyone thought you were a woman, thinking she was bad deep down because the messages she related to and the relationships that resonated with her were branded dirty, inappropriate, or just “not for you” in a way that felt shameful. Out of that came Steven Universe, a show where nobody had to specifically name it to see it, feel it, and recognize it.

These alien Gem characters ALL had the experience of being gendered “woman” and not relating to it but not disliking it enough to specifically say “don’t call me that,” and they were outside human concepts of gender in a way that made space for similar human viewers to say “that’s me.” It’s okay that sometimes the aliens called “she,” the trans allegories that paralleled Steven’s journey, and the same-sex relationships we saw onscreen did not map letter for letter onto real life, because all of us knew what it was inherently, easily, joyfully. It’s so strange that anyone looks at this show and creates a whole new gauntlet for it to run based on a very specific type of “confirmation” and develops asinine rules about what a show should have to do to qualify as legitimately queer. Nobody’s asking for THEIR permission, and nobody agreed that THEIR rules are the recognized measure of queer representation. Not a damn thing was subtle about the multiple queer relationships in the show--and the haters were so fixated on how it Didn’t Call Them Girlfriends that they utterly missed the fact that straight couples were also not described by that language.

This show was SO MUCH. It’s baffling--and laughable--that anyone would create an absurd test structured for This Show to “fail.” 

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Steven Universe: Eh, I don't really feel like saying "girlfriend" or "wife". Maybe they're together. They have a special connection...

(gets violently shoved aside)

The Loud House/Craig of the Creek/The Owl House: Pfft, amateur. "My GIRLFRIEND Sam and I..." "I'm texting my GIRLFRIEND, mind your business." "Luz's new GF showed her..."

Can we not do this thing? Do you realize that Rebecca had to fight for what we got with Rupphire and literally risked her job? and Pearl and Rose. Like, there is no need to knock other shows down because of Lumity.

These kids today, I tell you what. In my day you had to bury your girlfriends under subtext and then end the series when the truth was revealed.

Or have the lesbians be dubbed as cousins....

But anyway, I'm with Raul; can we not? Rebecca fought so we could have these characters outright say it

Right, and also the Gems almost never use gendered terms for each other--I doubt they think of themselves as “girlfriend” or “wife.” They aren’t women.

Ruby and Sapphire DID call each other “baby” and “sweetums” and “beautiful” so it wasn’t unclear. You might also note that Steven and Connie never called each other boyfriend or girlfriend. (One time Ronaldo called Connie Steven’s girlfriend but Steven didn’t use the term himself.) And Vidalia, though she’s married to a man, didn’t use “husband” when she talked about him; she said “It’s just been me and Yellowtail for a while now.” But no one’s confused about whether Vidalia’s ring and her statement confirms that relationship. 

It’s interesting that when someone gets called a wife on Steven Universe, it’s usually part of a misunderstanding or a ruse, like when Greg awkwardly called Alexandrite his wife or when Andy asked Greg which Gem was “the wife.” 

This wasn’t a sidestep and a lack of courage--it was a different approach to talking about relationships in a show that was developed in a political climate within which same-sex marriage wasn’t even federally legalized yet. It’d be super weird to suggest the SU Crew didn’t do enough because they didn’t tend to use those words (for ANY characters, including heterosexual ones). Furthermore, if you talk to the creators of those shows, they have been quoted multiple times crediting the trailblazing of Steven Universe for what they can now do.

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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peridotite

not to be dramatic but what am i going to do when su ends

Feel how you want to feel about it--don’t let people get away with making you feel like you’re being too dramatic or that you don’t have a reasonable reason to feel a loss over something so momentous ending--and as a person who is feeling the same way, I'll just tell you what I'm going to do in addition to feeling sad.

Obviously first off there is still a future in being an active fan of a work that isn't getting new primary material. You can still do whatever you do and I sure know I'll be continuing to make fan comics of it and continuing to work on my podcast about the show with my very own newbie to enjoy it with. That's fun. But. 

For the big picture, I'm going to take what Steven Universe made me feel and do that for someone else.

There are so many feelings, experiences, relationships, and reactions I've seen portrayed in SU that I've never seen represented in media at all before, or haven't seen represented with this particular spin. It's been such a breath of fresh air and a relief to see them, to know that someone else out there wanted this to be there for me to find.

And still, some of the things I'd like the world to have in it aren't there yet. I want that to change.

I'm already established as a writer, but going forward I'm going to put more effort into my in-progress works and put those out there for the next generation of hungry queer folks to find.

I've already had the amazing experience of writing a book and getting published and receiving so many reviews and letters from people who said I helped them feel seen, helped them come out, helped them understand their loved ones, helped diversify the field.

But I'm not done and I have so many other stories that center us. I'm going to keep SU in mind as a wonderful inspiration for what a piece of media can do for so many, and take my own stories forward to reflect an invisible person for possibly the first time.

I've got a story with mental illness, hyper imagination, identity, and love that mixes colors. I've got an ace lesbian artist whose most important relationship is with her art, and a boy [space] friend who doesn’t have to be her romantic partner to be important. I've got a soft boy looking for permission to feel. I've got my own space lesbians figuring out love and tradition in a goddess culture.

I've been super distracted by fandom here because this is such a great show and it's meant so much to me, and I want it to KEEP meaning so much to me--I'm never going to let it go. But as there becomes less to keep up with and less to bounce off of, I also have a little more focus to some of those worlds--a couple of which are completed novels and a couple of which are in progress. I've also got short stories and comics to make and the confidence to know that if I needed to say it, someone else probably needed to hear it.

If you've got any art in you, maybe this can remind you why it matters so much to bring it out.

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