Lady @Lady@cat.family

@noelle i write this having mostly watched and enjoyed steven universe and i don't think it is a terrible show and in the episodes where it is really in its element i think it is probably a pretty good show actually

and i don't, in theory, have a problem with the diamonds having a redemption arc either

however

i did take issue with the broader messaging that it is the responsibility of (queer) kids who have escaped abusive households to return home and make things right instead of staying the fuck away

it shouldn't have been steven's job to fix the diamond family and that kind of thinking is what keeps people trapped in abusive situations instead of gaining independence; to me it felt very much like setting queer kids up for failure by saying if you just return home and try hard your parents will eventually understand, when the reality is that in many many cases they won't

it's like the thanksgiving bit with the one conservative dude where it was like oh if the illegal aliens just give the conservative white guy a chance maybe they can be friends!! it feels like really irresponsible storytelling to me which places all the responsibility on the queer/marginalized people instead of the people who actually are causing harm

the show does this because steven is a schmaltz and those are the kinds of stories he likes and it is very self-aware of that fact but like. just do the stories about pearl being gay then. do the stories about the gems having amazing fusion adventures. don't do a story about fucking parental abuse that's not a schmaltzy topic, that's a topic which will hit some people very deeply and you have to be extremely careful before you even begin to touch

it's like there was nobody in the writing room to say "maybe we are not equipped to handle this story" and i think it led to a lot of things getting put in which were ultimately half-baked and kind of botched

@aescling i think there are ways in which CA drama can be used as illustrative of certain ideas in theory or revolutionary thought or whatever, but the important thing is the focus yk? the focus should be on becoming better scholars and better revolutionaries, and our analysis should always be in service of that or else it is useless to us

@aescling the thing you learn when you have done it enough is that most of the important things have already been said. in that sense it doesn’t matter because you’re really not contributing to human knowledge at all; you’re restating the same things over and over without ever translating into action—except to the extent that you are honing your OWN knowledge and your OWN understanding by thinking out loud, of course

what DOES matter isn’t coming up with new analyses but connecting people to the analyses we have, things which work and are understood, and using that as a base for organizing. this very rarely comes in the shape of a take; takes are counterrevolutionary in the sense that they appear disconnected from a lineage of revolutionary thought and obstruct rather than facilitate deeper exploration and study

@aescling it also doesn't federate right?

@aescling no idea

@alyssa honestly probably the greatest lesson i took from reading derrida in college was the importance of the concept of “worthy of critique”

derrida and the people around him (de man, etc) believed that studying critiques of a text was essential to exposing its meaning (because only in the critique of a critique are you analysing the interpretive process itself, i.e. how meaning is formed or not formed from text)

so critiques, through a kind of double negative, become a really positive force, and something you only really direct at things you really like and want to form meaning around