#//JOKING my feelings about this character are a lot broader deeper and more complicated than ''coat man sexy''

[acreatureofpureirony]

me, logging onto this blog this morning: i haven’t felt any muse for the marquis in a while but that’s ok, i’ll just sign on to reblog a promo for my new multimuse so that people know where to find me!

me, already having written two replies here, staring at my undone drafts, remembering why this has been my longest-lived rp blog: hrng... coat man sexy

[safflowerseason]

Idk if this is weird but where do you think Amy and Dan are on the sexuality spectrum?

It’s absolutely not a weird question at all! Although I’m not sure I can give an answer as thoughtful as my usual Dan/Amy posts….I’m obviously a major Dan/Amy shipper, lol, but of course I am very aware there are plenty of fans who ship Amy/Selina and Dan/Jonah. And I think it’s especially significant that for the most part, the textual foundations for those ships are actually found in the Iannucci era of the show (and, as usual, my answer to this question is mostly about Iannucci-Dan and Iannucci-Amy). You have Dan, obsessed with the physical/aesthetic trappings of masculinity, who seems to primarily view sex with women as a conduit to professional gain while there is little textual indication he enjoys it on its own merits (except with Amy). And Amy is a ball of ambitious anxiety who can’t unclench long enough to be in a sexually satisfying relationship with a man. Both characters also have fairly intense relationships with other members of the same sex, in addition to one another—Dan with Jonah, although mostly in S2 and S3, and Amy with Selina throughout the course of the show.

If I had to bet money, based on what we see in the show, whether it was Dan or Amy who had a consensual sexual encounter with another member of the same sex, it would probably be Dan, for a few reasons. On a very superficial note, Dan’s absolutely the type of guy who would be in a fraternity, and fraternities are some of the most deeply homoerotic institutions in the United States (there is extensive academic research about this. See also Dan pushing Jonah up against a wall, smashing a burrito in his face, and calling him “handsome.”). For another, his relationship with Jonah in the early years of the show is partly bound up in their competing performances of masculinity, and it’s not a stretch that their sexual hostility toward one another (or Dan’s with another man at some other point in his life) could actually turn, well, sexual. I do not think the show ever means to seriously imply that Dan and Jonah are interested in fucking one another, but the reading of their relationship works that way, if you want to take it there. Reid Scott and Tim Simons do have a particular spiky kind of chemistry that the early seasons of the show very much leans into—I believe that the S1 episode where Dan uses Jonah for intel was originally called “Dan Dates Jonah” or something like that. By late S3, the Dan/Jonah dynamic has faded into the background, and then Mandel takes their energy into this kind of less charged, bro-y territory in later seasons.

As for Amy…it’s harder to evaluate her because Veep is such a male-dominated show. She is presented as more sexually repressed (I find this concept problematic, but the show is pretty explicit about the framing) and also a lot more emotionally guarded…and considering her suburban/slightly blue-collar middle class socialization, I’m not sure she would have ever explored her sexuality enought to really consider sex with a woman. She’s vaguely propositioned by Melissa from Clovis, but the sexual implications seem to go right over her head. Amy’s primary female relationship in the show is with Selina, and while they are deeply drawn to one another for various reasons, personally none of it feels sexual to me as a viewer. As for whether or not Amy would be interested in exploring a relationship with another woman, I think she’d have to go through a lot of intense self-reflection and discovery first, and I’m not sure Amy is primed to ever do that for herself. Of the two of them, I think Dan on the whole would have a more fluid sexuality, whether or not he feels the need to identify as something other than straight.

Does that answer your question enough? I’m not sure I can give you, like, a number on the Kinsey scale, lol, but that’s my inital take on where things might stand. I don’t think Veep isn’t especially interested in exploring the sexuality of its characters insofar as they might differ from privileged heterosexual, cisgendered norms…it's a pretty small-c conservative show in that sense. Most mentions of same-sex relationships/sexual encounters are played for laughs, unfortunately…the way Gary’s sexual orientation is called into question by the other characters in the show is basically a bunch of off-color jokes about how gay men like “feminine” things. And the lack of attention paid to the sexual harassment of women in the workplace is another example of this curious distinterest in using gender and sexuality to criticize the political institutions at the heart of the show. But this absolutely does not and should not preclude a deeper examination from fans. What else is critical analysis and fanfiction for?

As a final sidenote, it has been interesting watching Succession as a Veep fan, knowing the two shows share the same creative DNA. Succession is also fairly small-c conservative, but the writers seem to be more consciously exploring performative masculinity in the workplace (not to mention the intersection of family and power, a intersection that is primarily defined by sex). The Boar on the Floor sequence, just off the top of my head. But even in a broader character sense—the way Tom acts when he’s in the office versus around the Roy family, the contrast between Roman and the other men in the office, Roman and Gerri’s connection, etc. The Succession writers also seem more interested in constructing complicated relationships between male characters that are purposefully sexually ambiguous, like Kendall and Stewey.

[kerapace]

1600 words of me talking about Lapis and Peridot’s relationship

putting this under a readmore even though I’m really proud of most of the stuff in here, it’s kind of an omnibus of a lot of thoughts I’ve had about the series over the past few months. everything before the line break was a summary written before I watched the episode, everything past that was written during/after.

Before I begin, I think it's time to write something of a retrospective summary pf the Lapis and Peridot relationship. (I'm sure the two of them will reconcile in some capacity eventually, but what just happened also seems pretty definite.) For better or for worse, and despite the intentions of the people who wrote for it, it's doomed to be one of the more controversial bits of the show. It was a strange combination of great writing on a micro level between characters whose relationship, from a thematic perspective, was maddeningly underwritten.

That sounds a little mean, and I know not everyone would agree with me on that, so let me explain things a little. Here are some questions I think you could easily answer for almost any major character pairing in Steven Universe: "Why do these characters get along?", "Why might they come into conflict?", and "How do they resolve conflict?". For me, "Too Far" asked and answered all that for me about Amethyst and Peridot's relationship. But as for Lapis and Peridot, even after 5-6 episodes of prominent focus from "Beta" onwards, I never really felt like I got solid and mutually consistent answers. There was a gap, there, between "Barn Mates" and "Beta", that never entirely was bridged. The real issues at hand were being dodged, even or especially when Zuke was writing them as the OTP. I don't have a problem with cute shipping fluff, but Steven Universe has always made me expect a little more than just that.

Maybe this wouldn't have bugged me so much if Lapis and Peridot's relationship hadn't felt like it had to an extent taken over both characters. Some of this is just the fact that I prefer Amethyst and Peridot, but I think the argument scans even without an emphasis on those two. During the Peridot redemption arc, there was a bunch of serialized character development that showed her coming to appreciate all the main cast, and Log Date left us thinking that this was really just the beginning of many strong new relationships that would help define the show going forward. But... at some point during the long string of Lapis/Peridot episodes in Season 4, I realized that Log Date didn't really feel like the beginning of that anymore. It felt like the end.

Although I will admit I'm not the biggest fan of it, I want to say that there is definitely something to like about the two. Even if you grant Zuke nothing else, it's hard to deny that they don't have a talent for making romantic dialogue sparkle, and there are a lot of scenes of the two of them together that probably wouldn't have worked at all if they weren't written by someone clearly so invested in the pairing. The focus on their relationship was a little excessive from my view, but the couple episodes with a coherent message about the characters ("The New Crystal Gems", "Room for Ruby") stood out as highlights in a season whose quality had started to ebb and whose thematic progression had begun to stagnate.

But the thing about those episodes is that they were the ones that felt like they had an interest in who these characters were before they got to the barn, and where they might be going in the future. Where Zuke had a little more influence, it felt like the complexities of the two were being avoided for the sake of portraying a perfect relationship that was a little unbelievable. Judging from the fandom, quite a lot of people liked this decision! But during a lot of Season 4, I got the feeling that these characters were just not *allowed* to have any differences with each other, and that always left me with a sinking feeling when I thought too much about their relationship.

I say all this as leadup to something that would sound cruel if I said it with no prelude: in the conflict over these characters, I'm actually pretty glad Zuke lost. I wish them all the best luck-- in their psychological health and even their creative career if and when they feel stable enough to get back to it. But I think this development is necessary to make the relationship actually mean something in the broader context of the show, to tie it into the deeper issues that were always the real draw for me and I imagine many others. And when talking about this I'm referring to the cute meep-morp jokes and the goofy-as-hell scenes of the two of them yukking it up just as much as I am Lapis saying she's still not used to Earth. That kind of sickly-sweet cuteness means a lot more to me if it's tempered with something else, something more complicated, and I think even a lot of the diehard shippers would agree with me on that.

I'll leave off with something I wrote on my tumblr a while ago, about why I don't like the idea of Lapis and Peridot as this April-and-Andy style odd couple:

"I feel like it’s important to note that Lapis isn’t really like April Ludgate: she’s not a moody teen who accidentally falls into goofy domestic bliss just because she’s never entertained the idea of being sincere about life before. She’s moody because she’s been on the receiving end of a lot of crappy things, and she lashes out partially because she’s been hurt but also because that’s who she is. Sure, Lapis has always had a lighthearted side from as far back as her first episode, but her antisocial tendencies aren’t some shallow pubescent affectation and it doesn’t make sense for them to disappear just because she acquiesced to be Peridot’s roommate."

I'm glad to see this episode. There are so many little things in here that I've wanted to see from the show for over a year, and more impressively it puts them in a context that's really fair to everyone involved.

First, this makes it clear that Peridot still has important lessons to learn, and that her arc is definitely not over. While Peridot's redemption arc gave her a new lease on life and a handful of new friends, it also, in retrospect, wasn't 100% healthy for her. Remember Peridot during her redemption arc? She told Steven and the Crystal Gems that, hey, we might have to work together, but it's on my terms. I'm not going to put up with anything I feel that I don't deserve. The redemption arc trained her to treat others with the same respect, but it's also made her feel, well, that all that time she spent tied to a fencepost with a leash might've been good for her. It's introduced her to guilt, and that's been both good and bad. She's much more considerate now, but it's not hard to say that the Peridot of early season 3 might have been better off had she been a little pissier. How would the Peridot of "Catch and Release" have reacted to Lapis destroying her tape recorder? How would she have reacted to Amethyst trying to throw her tablet in the ocean? Don't you think she would've been a little better off that way?

I think Peridot's arc would ring false if she doesn't come full circle, at least a little bit. It's all gone on in the background, but since she was introduced, Peridot's probably struggled with guilt more than any main character other than Steven. It seems a little weird to associate her with this, given her huge, ironclad ego, but the truth is Peridot wasn't so much immune to guilt as alien to it, and so it took her over because she had no real natural resistance to it. It's honestly hit her pretty hard. She needs help to get over it and get her groove back.

(A little side note here: I think it's generally uncommented-upon that the Crystal Gems aren't all that healthy of a community. It's not that any of them are unremittingly toxic or anything, but they're tiny, and very insular. None of the gems would be even remotely prepared to go out and live their lives in the broader world, and nobody but Steven has many people that they could use as a sounding board. (Maybe Amethyst could crash at Vidalia's, but look at how long it took her to even consider reconnecting during the Week of Sardonyx. None of the gems really have a social safety-net, and this is going to become much more of a problem if more gems decide to settle on Earth.) Peridot doesn't have a community so much as she has a family-- regardless of what they do to her, she doesn't really feel like she has the option of letting them go, and that applies as much to Lapis as to anyone else.)

It also brings to the fore a lot of the weird things about the Lapis and Peridot relationship that made a significant minority of people uncomfortable, while still being fairly respectful towards everyone who loved it so much. Everyone who disliked the sudden characterization of Peridot as this lovestruck submissive in "Barn Mates", everyone who thought it weird that Lapis never really apologized to Peridot in that episode, everyone who wondered why Lapis felt like she was stagnating, all of them are suddenly vindicated as the show reveals that these feelings were part of the plan all along. It also makes it clear that, hey, these people still get along pretty dang well, and it meant something to both of them.

And, most impressive of all, it manages to make it clear that the Lapis of "Beta" and the Lapis that trapped Jasper under the sea are the same person in a way that isn't gratituously mean or out-of-character. Lapis's anger and abuse towards Jasper and her plan to live alone in space with Peridot are very different manifestations of the exact same tendency to isolate herself alone with someone else dependent upon her.