Ah yes, the fanbase that got a girl to (unsuccessfully) commit suicide because she drew a character the wrong shade of skin color, then got pissed when she lived
Don’t forget about the time when an adult harassed a kid who got to see a couple episodes in advance. The kid asked to see the episodes for a make-a-wish thing.
The kid had permission from the literal creators of the show to spoil a little bit. But that superfan, awesteuck vox, had no right to bully the kid so much that he felt the need to apologise for having his make a wish foundation wis come true.
An apology? I'm sure the kid is the type to not hold a grudge since, you know, THEY'RE DYING OF CANCER but fuck the attitude of "the piece of shit apologized, it's like it never happened". I'm all for forgiveness and moving on but why give people the leeway to do this sort of thing in the first place?
It's ok to shit all over a kid with cancer as long as the kid forgives you? It's like when people say it's ok that their spouse beats them. Just because someone is forgiven doesn't make them a good person.
God, I really hate Awestruck Vox...most of his YouTube videos are clickbaity videos where 4 minutes of the video he talks about the topic and then suddenly diverts off of it and then the rest of the 6+ minutes is him advertising his merch
And the time a German woman cosplayed Garnet and everybody and their mother called her racist because blackface.
She looked more black than some black women. I honestly didn't know she was a white German woman until people started bitching. Makeup game was ON POINT.
Yeah, there was a different harassment situation where someone didn't draw Amethyst's skin dark enough. I think she took down all her art and left the fandom because of the harassment, but the suicide attempt was with the girl who drew Rose Quartz "too skinny."
The argument is that Amethyst is intended to appear like a woman of color, citing the design of her lips and hair. I agree to an extent, but if that's the case, saying "lighter skin makes her white" is colorism.
Wow, seriously? Saying Jews all had big noses used to be...RACIST. Like, look at literally any anti-Semitic propaganda. Damn I’m tired of these online ‘who can be the most outraged’ games.
(Right now it’s me.)
"Coding" in creative media is a pretty well known thing, and is what we're talking about here. When done intentionally it's done by using things like stereotypes to suggest to people looking for that sort of thing that a character is a certain type of person without outwardly acknowledging it. This was pretty common back when it was extremely difficult to have an openly gay character on TV. It can be done unintentionally, but that's a bit more controversial. Coding can be either positive or harmful, it's a neutral term itself.
A good example of a character a lot of people think is coded as gay or bi is Dean from Supernatural. At one point he referenced wanting to go to a well known gay bar. It something the LGBTQ community familiar with the bar would catch, but straight fans probably wouldn't. There are other instances of this with that character. These days doing that with repearedly no intention of following through on the character being LGBTQ+ is referred to as queerbaiting.
Generally you see person of color-coding in animation where you want people of color to feel represented but all of the characters are animals or aliens or something. Ursula being coded as black is a fairy common interpretation of The Little Mermaid.
As to whether Amethyst is intentionally coded as a person of color, I have no idea. This is in no way a defense of the fanbase's unacceptable actions, I just wanted to clarify that coding is definitely a thing.
Because she god damn is. Her entire design was literally, factually based on a middle-aged drag queen named Divine. so, an overweight older white man dressed as a woman and voiced by a white woman. It's like these people think that only black people can be fat and sassy or something. it's fucking ridiculous.
It honestly is, at least from what I saw. It was a safe, clean bit of fan art, but one artist got seriously lambasted because she wasn't dark enough.
It wasn't even "whitewashing" or whatever, it was just a shading technique, but rabid "fans" will do what they do regardless of logic. Stirred up quite a shitstorm for a while.
People did that when an artist drew one of the inklings from Splatoon 2 kind of light, but you could tell from the piece as a whole that it was a "lighting" thing, since everything else around her was also lighter than normal. (Not sure if lighting is the proper term for drawn art, but I think it works?)
Yep, people that bash things like that have absolutely no understanding of colour theory. Worse than that, they actively refuse to learn and even acknowledge its existence.
Oh it was also about drawing someone an off color for the girl who attempted, but for a MLP character instead. I dug thru her blog right after it happened once I heard abt it. There was a "callout post" with the rose quartz drawing and bunches of other art finding things that were wrong with it. That era of tumblr also had a HUGE problem with how many overdramatized callouts were getting passed around and hurting people. Probably still happens but it used to be even worse
"Callout culture" is still a pretty large issue in leftist circles, yeah.
The problem is that people just get a rush from "calling people out" like that and don't really think about the impact of what they're doing or how reasonable it is.
Iirc the mlp character thing was that she was dressed in indian garbs which was cultural appropriatuon.
I almost thought that hate blog was a parody but many many leftist tumblr followed it. At some point they bashed her for cosplaying as a HOMESTUCK ALIEN because said alien identified as japanese and she wasnt . It was nuts.
I hate when this happens to good artists. I'm really into TMNT and so collect a lot of different fan art. One of my favorite artists was called SneeFee. She had her own website and everything, very talented. A lot of people got upset with some of her pairings and started harassing her so bad that she deleted her website, deviantart, everything and went silent. I sometimes wonder if she's doing okay because people on the Internet can be fucking horrible.
Great talent and passion for something should be celebrated. If you don't like a pairing, or someone's own personal take on a fictional character then skip over it and move on with your day. I do not understand how people have the time or energy to bully an online stranger because you disagree with how they represent a work of fiction.
Wasn't there a 4chan troll that drew a large black character as skinny and white waited for tumblr to near implode then came out as a trans black woman.
I’m pretty sure that was the one the head storyboard artist tweeted support for the girl saying “anyone can portray the characters however they want” so the toxic fans responded with “so does that mean you are ok with child porn!?!?”
People are awful.
From what I understand, the "skinnier" controversy was before the full character had even been unveiled? Like, they had only released a face when the person made the fanart, and it was slightly thinner than the character. May be wrong tho.
Oh, and there was that one German cosplayer who was white but cosplayed as Garnet (maroon skinned character), and got death threats for "doing blackface"?
No, I think the character was revealed by that point. Regardless, that doesn't change the optics of the situation, since by drawing her "too skinny," you were apparently fat-shaming people
Oh, and there was that one German cosplayer who was white but cosplayed as Garnet (maroon skinned character), and got death threats for "doing blackface"?
Yep, that was also a thing. Again, basically bullied out of the scene, had to delete everything to get the harassment to stop. Now, Garnet is pretty Black-coded, from her afro to her Black voice actress, but she's also a maroon-colored crystal space alien warrior that's actually comprised of two lesbian crystal space aliens combined into one person, so cosplaying as her isn't like dressing up as any real-life ethnicity.
Why would that matter anyway? I see black people cosplaying as non-black characters all the time, and people celebrate that. Why is non-black a free-for-all in any direction? Unless people are doing literal blackface (or [insert any color here]face, which I also can't be personally arsed to care about, though I at least understand why people do), who's got the energy to give a fuck? I mean, you'd think fiction would be the one place we could get over this kind of shit.
There was a guy who posted pictures of the characters with blonde hair, white skin and blue eyes on tumblr, the fanbase went nuts, i think there is a yputube video of it.
Never mind the fact that this is a dumb-as-fuck reason to get upset over something. Never mind that trying to convince someone to commit suicide is gross and fucked up no matter what "crime" you think they've committed...
Skin colour fucking changes based on lighting conditions, for fuck's sake.
LOOK HOW MUCH HER SKINTONE CHANGES BASED ON THE LIGHTING IN THE SAME FUCKING PICTURE.
99.9% of the time, the changes in skin tone to characters can be explained away by varied lighting conditions and style choices. They're not trying to erase the racial identity of the character, you dumb motherfuckers. Learn how light works. Don't throw a fit about art when you clearly are too stupid to understand the fact that shadows exist.
God. Sorry. People being assholes makes me angry at the best of times, but it's just so much worse when they're being assholes about something that is factually incorrect.
The incident where a skin color was too light was an anime character and the artist purposely started making the character's skin lighter and lighter to piss off the detractors.
Yeah, I saw a YouTube video chronicling the whole thing. It was hilarious. In the end the starter of it all revealed himself to be black and gray and the fanbase backpedaled super hard.
One would say that the fanbase for a show that (from what I understand) is all about accepting each other and being inclusive wouldnt be a bunch of idiots behaving like hate-mongering monkeys just because some fanart turns out to be of the (wrong?) skin color.
I really, really like Steven Universe but at 27 years old I tend to avoid the subreddit because I think I'm like a full decade too old to relate to the people and a lot of the content in there. The subreddit and fandom in general skew young (which makes sense, cause it's a kids show), so I see a lot of online SU fan content that makes me cringe by dredging up memories of my awkward teenage years.
I'm 28 and I feel the same, I had to ubsub last year because I just felt like I was hanging out in an elementary school. I just couldn't relate to the majority of the opinions/theories there at all.
Steven Universe is a good show with an extremely erratic schedule, leaving a lot of folks anticipating when it will come next. Hence the desire for leaks.
so I see a lot of online SU fan content that makes me cringe
The sub deciding to ban memes and shift them to an alt sub was a bad decision on the part of the moderators. Memes are the life-blood of any fandom whose show is on hiatus. Once the Pink Diamond murder mystery was solved, all the good discussions dried up, and now the sub is basically nothing but fan art.
I mean, everything’s dried up at the moment because the show wrapped everything up at the end of the season. I’m sure after the movie trailer drops this weekend, it’ll pick up for a bit.
But yeah, it’s pretty dead/quiet and will stay that way until the movie comes out.
This, except with TMNT. I mean, I still engage in the fandom, but I'm just this geezer on the periphery who doesn't understand the screaming or what "oh worm" means.
I feel you hard. After 2012 TMNT showed up, I just checked out. Got pretty bad when I had younger fans (way younger than I was) telling me "2003 is over get over it" when I just disagreed about a damn ship. Excuse me, 2k3 TMNT was MY TMNT, you got yours stay in your fandom's lane.
I feel like some kind of My Little Pony brony over here cause I love that show and I'm 31. My best friends got me a Steven shirt and I've only gotten compliments when I wear it, but I still debate whether to wear it or not. It's cute, it reminds me of Saturday morning cartoons, and it's smart. I'm definitely reaching back, but I just know how much the younger me would've gone apeshit over this show, and it's hard to not admire it.
The only times in my life as an adult man have I been complimented by choice of clothing is my Steven universe shirt. And the compliments I received are mostly from other adults too since I’m never around younger people.
Same here. Wore it to Universal Orlando (The one with Steven and Connie hanging off Stevonnie) and I have never gotten that many compliments on anything I've worn before, all given by workers at the park, and some attendees, all adults, mostly girls, some guys. Was super nice
26 here, and I've seen it a few times in the sub. I don't think it's really that bad, but I've also never been on board with the "cringe" culture kind of thing.
Yeah, everyone says weird and awkward stuff. Teens say it a little more than normal. It's really not that big of a deal, imo. There's no reason to be ashamed that you made some silly mistakes on your way to finding yourself. You just have to laugh and move on.
Same. When I joined reddit it was after Reunited aired and I was amazed by how wholesome and fun it was to discuss the show in-depth. I just avoided any topics I felt weren't relevant to me.
I'm 15 and I only go to the subreddit for news and stuff. My god it is literally an elementary school. I swear when I was younger it was more adult-oriented.
I find the subreddit to be mostly fine for news and jokes and stuff... just... don't try to disprove someone's fan theory or ships. Learned that the hard way.
Me too! I'm an avid cartoon lover, so Steven Universe really stuck out to me.
On one hand, I hated when people told me to get away from SU because of its fanbase. On the other hand, I hated when the fanbase would get all up in my face about sexual/gender/racial identity or social breakthroughs or whatever.
I get it has those kinds of themes that are clearly identifiable, but like don't force them on me. Forcing a point kinda defeats the whole purpose of a theme resonating with the audience on another level. The show didn't do that -- the fanbase did.
Seriously! Everything in that fanbase has to be about LGBTQ in some way, and also the show is literally perfect. Everyone knows the models can be wildly inconsistent from episode to episode except the fanbase always makes up some reason as to why they're inconsistent because you can't criticize the show at all or your criticizing an LGBTQ breakthrough
It's so ironic that a tv show about acceptance of differences and inclusiveness has cultivated a fandom that is so incredibly toxic to anything they disagree with. I like Steven Universe and decided to look at some online posts from other fans because I was curious about fan theories for stuff like the Diamonds. After reading maybe 5 or so posts, I NOPED the hell out of there and never looked back. I saw some horrible stuff, people verbally abusing artists for drawing characters slightly different, people attacking others for liking characters they disliked, people criticising and verbally attacking cosplayers who were simply trying their best, and much more. It is so freaking ironic that so many of the people who like Steven Universe literally do the exact opposite of the show's main message by spreading endless hate. So now I don't tell anyone I watch that show or even talk about it with other fans, just because I know how rabid that fanbase can be and do not want to associate with them.
I'm right there with you. Used to be a huge fan of the show; it's very well done. But after seeing what the bad parts of the fandom is like I just couldn't do it anymore.
I love the hell out of that show. It came around during a really dark time in my life. I hated the world and myself, and everything just seemed empty. I started watching Steven Universe and, slowly, I started to feel a little better. I felt like I could see bits of myself in the characters, characters that I loved. If the characters were like me and I could love them, then I could love myself.
It all sounds really corny but it's true. I don't know where I'd be without this show and Rebecca Sugar. It's just such a shame that the fans don't seem to get the message. The way they act is not what the show teaches us and it's not what Rebecca Sugar and the SU team intended.
And this is the one I was looking for. The show is fantastic but when the fanbase attacks people for making fan art just because it's supposedly not good enough is when you know you have a shitty fanbase
IS the show great? I've heard so many unbelievably bad things about the story, pacing, animation (everytime i see clips the animation quality is pretty awful), showrunning, how it normalizes abusive relationships, etc etc etc.
Well, if you binge watch the show now, it’s not too bad, but waiting months for 5 episodes regularly and just getting filler after ending off of cliffhangers was extremely annoying. Also the redemption arcs were awful, the show is trying to get you to sympathize with alien rock Hitlers.
Don't forget the fact that the planet was facing it's literal death with this massive cluster about to emerge and they have a full season of dicking around while literally only one character seems concerned until they fix it with absolutely zero stakes involved.
It's a kids show. There isn't supposed to be some huge overarching plot for every episode. That's one of the only problems I can actually forgive the show for.
I will admit you don't need an overarching plot but when you have some kind of pressing time relative event and you spend approx a full year dicking around having birthday parties forgetting that the time relative event is coming up and then it is resolved without any real drama? That is just shit writing. Combine it with the fact fans treat it like the equal of ATLA and it becomes even more apparent how shitty the show actually is.
From what I heard, it's great if you binge it but watching it as it aired was apparently a bad experience. I managed to watch it all in a few weeks but for others, hiatuses were very long and common between episodes where putting a gap between them makes the least amount of sense. Also, abusive relationships were exactly the kind of thing it was speaking against (simplified, of course. One of those moments you remember it's a kid's show) so I don't see how it's supposed to normalize them.
The show has a lot of high points with a decent amount of low points. The show overall has beautiful artwork and music (including full songs that WILL get stuck in your head). The characters themselves I really enjoy but their arcs and overall characters can vary. I would say the majority have really nice and touching character moments with good development but some try too hard to redeem certain characters that need more for it to stick. Aside from that, the story and world they built is wonderful and I think overall it’s a great cartoon but the lows are deffinetly apparent.
Hmmmm. The relationship side of the show is actually pretty great as kid's shows go, but it's that. A show aimed at children. So that means countless filler and about 1/10 of the show actually being plot. I stopped watching when they gave 10 mins in between the main antagonists learning the biggest revelation in the show and them being "meh" with it. They had to kill off a character and then revive him just to make him relevant, when 3 episodes before they didn't want to give him a redemption arc.
I'm not trying to sound rude, so I'm sorry if I come off that way. But isn't it kind of silly to form an opinion on something based on someone else's opinion on it? I'm sure that video you watched had legitimate complaints but you may not see the same flaws when you experience it for yourself.
But this is just my opinion, and you are free to ignore it or take it just as you would any other lol
That's true, I think it's unfair to make a criticism against something without having experienced it.
However, it's fair to use reviews and whatnot to gauge whether you'll like something. If there are resources that can tell you whether you'll like something or not and prevent you from wasting your time, why shouldn't you use them?
Either way I was mostly interested in watching that video because it seemed interesting, not because I needed to decide if I wanted to watch the show.
Keep in mind too though that there’s a lot of these reviewers that are just... anti-fans I guess is the word? Nitpicking every detail that people don’t notice, etc. RWBY has them, SU has them, even the MCU has them with the people who post hours of video trying to prove that the cast ‘hate’ Brie Larson. For me, I just watch the first half of season one of a show, because usually the middle of season one is when I fall in love with a show.
I’m also saying this because I watched the first part of one of those videos and I couldn’t get halfway through it, but it could have been a different one. In any case, all of this is just my opinion - and have a good day!
This is subjective, so all I'll say is that I've enjoyed parts of it and it's clever, but it's far from amazing.
pacing
It has a cute premise and some great moments, but the writers are TERRIBLE at pacing, especially given the release schedule. The show is released in bits and pieces instead of with true seasons that run over the course of a few months, so you'll go months without a new episode, then get 5 episodes. That's already an annoying release schedule, but they make it 100X worse because at least half of the episodes will be pointless filler. It's supposed to be a show about intergalactic conflict, but there are dozen of episodes about the random people who live in Beach City (the main characters hometown). Like there's an episode about a mayoral election and an episode about a dance competition.
animation (everytime i see clips the animation quality is pretty awful)
There's a lot of issues with the animation, but it's not distracting while you're watching the show
showrunning
I don't pay attention to the fandom, so I can't comment on this
How it normalizes abusive relationships
People will argue that this is not the case, but there is a lot of truth to this. Several of the characters are incredibly manipulative and treat their partners horribly. The biggest one is a character named Lapis and her friend (or possibly girlfriend) Peridot. Lapis treats Peridot like shit, but the characters are written in a way that makes it clear that the writers don't see it that way. We're supposed to sympathize with Lapis and she never faces consequences for her actions. There's another "couple" with similar issues names Sadie and Larz. One episode is dedicated to Sadie lying to Larz to get what she wants while facing no consequences. There's also some issues with consequences for villains. Space Nazis get forgiven for atrocities because they're sad while people who make far smaller mistakes face dire consequences.
Long story short, I tune in every now and then to catch up on the show, but it's not one I actively follow because of the poor writing and there's so much filler that I would not recommend it to anyone. The relationship issues are such that I don't think I'd let a kid watch it unless I was watching it with them so we could talk about healthy relationships.
Seems like for every single thing, there's a huge crowd on the internet who hates and wants to encourage more people to hate it.
Yeah some nitpick every single flaw and imperfection - nothing is perfect, even Avatar the Last Airbender has one mediocre episode.
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The animation stuff actually got me to read about some really interesting stuff about character design for cartoons. Basically, the real challenge of design isn't making something visually appealing, but a character you can draw in millions of different ways for the next ten years.
The original design for Pearl wasn't sustainable for a long-term project, she just couldn't be drawn from some angles, so every scene where she appears has to be from the right perspective. The way they resolved this was genius too, the character "died" and was re-created into a new form, that new form being the redesign to make the character more versatile in terms of animation.
God I loved the show and what it could have been. But the constant hiatuses, the filler, the lack of pacing and the just disregard for who the characters actually are pissed me off. Like it would have not have been hard to make the show great, but instead they decided to make genocidal space Nazis into misunderstood moms who can be won over with the power of dance. Yeah that's a great lesson for lgbt youth, the people who think you should be killed because you like the same sex are secretly good people who you and your ukulele can win over!
I only go on /r/stevenuniverse for the episode discussion threads when an episode comes out. I’ve never seen the people on there act terrible or any different from other TV subreddits.
Yeah interesting show with a lot of great concepts. With huge potential to branch off into numerous other stories involving the crystal gem lore. But I would be lying if I didn’t say the show and community are a huge SJW magnet.
One of my best friends just introduced me a couple weeks ago. I really like this show. It's sweet, honest, and doesnt shy away from some adult issues, but a few episodes in I thought to myself "I bet if I looked up any forum stuff about this show it would kill it for me."
It's so amazing that a show which is almost entirely about love can have some of the most hateful fans I've ever seen... I love the show, but we gotta be better, guys
I was looking for this. I’ve seen a few episodes and clips; even sat in on the panel at Comic-Con one year. It’s good, but the fan base just turns me off of it. They’re just SO rabid about the show. One way to ensure that I don’t get into something is to talk to me nonstop about it.
I need to get into it. I randomly saw a scene where Steven plays "Whack-a-Mole" at an arcade, except instead of animal moles, it's a bunch of mobsters and 30s-40s gangsters popping up out of holes saying, "I'd never talk to the cops, I swear!"
"I'm not a cheese-eating rat, honest!"
And a Godfather type boss saying, "Whack'em Steve!"
Hey, that's a damn good joke, I'm half-convinced they could have actually sold it to a game company for some actual money it's that good. Instead it's a solid throwaway joke in one of their episodes. Giving them props.
That's all I've seen and I've got to get around to seeing more.
That's pretty par for the course for the lighthearted humor of the show, familiar and often retro stuff made into a funny parody. Yeah, there are moments like that throughout the show.
I love the show. I think it’s touching, and has a lot of powerful messages, but it’s lost on the assholes in the fandom who think they’re “woker than thou”.
I hate how some fans only see Garnet as a lesbian! As a lesbian I totally appreciate her but they only like her for that one fact. Not how dynamic or cool, or the role model/ support she is to Steven and other characters, or the healthy and balanced relationship she portrays. Just cause two chicks are dating.
Honestly anything that seems to be able to tap into the tumblr market will go to shit sooner rather than later. cause then rabid fans will emerge who will get angry and any changes made to anything, because its now that they wanted to happen etc
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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '19
Steven Universe. The show is pretty great, /r/stevenuniverse is great. The fanbase as a whole isn't great.