nnikcals

[mars-ipan]

God I feel you on this. There are so many avenues for people to get sucked into bullshit infighting too.

I s2g every time I engage with trans content my for you feed starts serving me a ton of discourse about intercommunity transandrophobia or w/e and like... if people are being weird about trans men that's worth talking about sometimes, but I get the impression there are corners of the trans community that are doing nothing but scream at each other in some pointless transmasc vs transfem war. Meanwhile I'm sitting here on TERF island, transfem people right beside me, hoping our HRT and shaky legal rights don't get nuked in the next 5 years 💀

I feel like a general online discourse rule should be that if you're putting more energy into fighting your own community/policing language/etc than fighting people that materially affect our lives, something's gone wrong and you're at high risk of radicalisation into bigotry. Or might already be there.

ghhrgh LITERALLY….. like .

from what i’ve seen a lot of this transandrophobia debate came up in response to seeing trans women talk about transmisogyny. my theory is that a portion of tme folks saw that people have been discussing transmisogyny and felt that they were having their unique experiences erased. which, like, look . i get it. erasure is something i’ve experienced kinda my whole life. i understand that it feels Bad to have your struggles downplayed. i had that same worry at first. BUT. we GOTTA be able to examine how your own fears and anxieties and biases may be coloring your perceptions!!! bc yes being trans does not make you immune to transmisogyny!! we live in a transmisogynistic world implicit bias is Going To Happen.

like. transmisogyny is a real thing that happens and disproportionately affects transfems. transmisogyny is not something non-transfem people experience unless they are falsely perceived to be transfem. it is a uniquely transfeminine experience coming from the intersection of being trans and female (or female-adjacent). it is not just a unique kind of transphobia, but rather the intentional combination of transphobia and misogyny.

is this to say that transmascs don’t experience their own unique kind of oppression? no! but it’s not an intersectional oppression and it shouldn’t be treated as such. also, the name of “transandrophobia” just gives off. a really uncomfortable energy. you’re not being oppressed because you’re male. you’re being oppressed because you’re trans. i don’t feel like we need to give this type of transphobia a name because it is just transphobia. similar to how misogynoir is a word but we don’t have a word for the specific type of oppression black men face because that’s just racism. just because transphobia impacts you in a certain way doesn’t mean it’s a special type of transphobia, and really why are we playing oppression olympics in the first place? we’re ALL hurting. can we just like… help each other out? can we stop accusing transfems of like…. deliberately trying to overshadow transmasc issues or whatever? and for the love of god if we have to argue can we STOP misgendering and degendering each other mid-argument.

like. at the end of the day this is all trivial shit because In Real Life we’re being targeted by horribly cruel legislation and social movements. it’s like we’re in a burning house and i’m watching my brother and sister argue over black mold. like yes that’s a problem but i think !!!! we should focus on putting out the fire !!!! like i live in texas. lawmakers have been trying to pass anti-trans bills here for ages, and a couple of them have gone through! i remember being sat down in gsa in my freshman year of high school and having the club sponsors tell us that if a bill that was up for ratification mandating that teachers out their students to their parents was passed that they would do everything in their power to keep us safe. i have to be careful about how i dress when i go to certain places. and i’m not even someone who’s transitioning medically— lord knows what kind of bullshit hurdles people on hrt have to go through to get it. and we’re arguing over what we want to call our oppression? we’re all facing transphobia at the end of the day can we PLEASE fix that instead of dividing ourselves into little easy-to-eliminate factions please and thank you

[horrible-monstrosity]

Those last three episodes of Steven Universe: a mini-essay

JUST FUCK ME UP

kevin party, donner party, what's the differenfe

hey guys, remember when lion disappeared? i legitimatedly don't. he ran off with connie or something and even though lars is probably in mortal peril and lion's the only way to get to him... naw don't need him. even though now steven's all worried bout lion he didn't give a shit enough earlier to search for him just for lion's own sake. nothing matters.

the party sadie and co fucked off to in the last episode and the tit-ular kevin party are not one and the same. why not? because none of this matters. nothing fucking matters. just... some stuff happens and none of it ever fucking lines up or amounts to fucking anything. why is this show still airing?

Kevin thinking Steven's name is Clarence is the best if not only joke this show has produced in the last like twenty episodes. Or thirty. How long has this season been going for? How many episodes does this show have?...

kevin is allergic to dog but lion is still here ok. the joke is he think lion it dog but the fact he hasn't like broke out in hives should maybe tell him something?.......

So the crux of this episode is, Kevin gives Steven this patriarchal man male romantic advice which basically amounts to "have a good time and don't be a sniveling soyball" and is entirely reasonable. But since this is Steven fucking Universe, it's clearly absolutely fucking terrible. I mean, maybe it's not the perfect solution for *this* particular situation, but why the fuck would he know that? Is he supposed to read Steven and Connie's fucking minds? Why does the feminist solution to problems so commonly require the male reading peoples' fucking minds? It's a perfectly fucking reasonable piece of general advice, and Kevin even seems to be at least the littlest bit actually concerned about Steven's love life issues beyond getting the cool quantum-tranny Stevonnie at his party... but no, he's gotta be wrong, because he's the designated small-time patriarchal oppressor and 84opposition to the gender revolution.

connie assumes that steven doesn't want to talk to her not because she's been bitching at him and been doing shit like accusing him of being friends with kevin leaving him to wonder what he's done wrong... but because he's friends with kevin, obviously. female accountability and logic at 0%

kevin doesn't know how to friends. are we supposed to hate him or feel sorry for him? ... never mind, both of those options are equally depressing with the way the show treats him.

connie likes steven's maximum soy pink polo shirt, because the way to get grils is to treat yourself like a defective woman who needs re-estrogenizing and soy yourself up. just fucking go cry at her and wear the soy clothes she bought you and drip snot upon her. bitches love snot and then even though steven said kevin had his heart broken and it looks like they have some sympathy for him connie goes "lol ofc he did" and he falls in the pool and they shit on him. fuck this gay earth the rebellion was a mistake homeworld did nothing wrong

So... what the fuck was the conflict here again? Seems like the only thing keeping Steven and Connie from making up was bad timing and mutual awkwardness. Did anyone learn anything from this, aside from Steven discovering he needs to get even more soyful if he wants to inject his gem cummies into a strong big-nosed short-haired minority female someday? Did any of this fucking matter?

Also, I've no idea if this is just fan conjecture or what, but apparently the "Sabina" (because yeah that's a name normal people hsve) who fucked Kevin up is actually the le mysterious pink-haired person mute lesbo who hit it off with Pearl forever ago and probably showed up again at some point in the last X episodes but I don't fucking remember it. You... you... how did you manage to make this even worse? So not only is Kevin terrible and wrong and evil for existing, and for hitting on hot five-gendered quasi-minority manchicks at parties, and for giving reasonable advice... he hit on a thicc pink turbo-lesbo and we're supposed to hate him for that, too. Just... how the fuck do I put this? It's like... stupid fucking cis straight normal fucking a white male, thinking this world is full of other normal people like yourself- the real Earth's population is 99% minority queer demigender faggosexuals, how dare you think you can get into a normal heterosexual relationship with a female of the species? He tried some normal human courtship instead of feminist-approved all-gendered-yet-female-oriented interactions fit only for mentally-deficient degenerate aliens, so he deserved to have his heart trampled on. She's a stryng fymyle fat womyn person, you fucking piece of shit, not some thing for you to treat like (an object/your property/an animal/whatever) by treating her like a normal human being. You're shit, normies are shit, and treating a transcendant gender-goddyss as equal to yourself is oppressive. Or... some fucking shit like that. fuck i don't know whatever

-

c'mon plot it's time to go the fuck back into space already!!! It occurs to me that Connie (probably, I don't fucking know) knew all this time Lars was trapped in spacedanger and Lion was the only thing Steven or anyone else on Earth could use to rescue him, but she decided to fuck off with him anyway. Because why? Because her selfish little emotional snit over Steven valuing her life is more important than Lars' own fucking life? Remind me, why are we supposed to like Connie again? Also why did Lion stay with her this entire time anyway? Usually he just fucks off and does whatever he wants. He never wandered back to Steven?

Connie immediately shows her ignorance and downplays the situation as a fun and funny adventure, steven and connie in space o ho ho! an attitude which hey you know might be conducive to PEOPLE THINKING YOU'RE NOT FUCKING FIT TO HANDLE YOURSELF IN SPACE AND THEY SHOULD LEAVE WITHOUT YOU TO PROTECT YOU... Pretty fucking retarded thing to say after all that bitching about... no, wait a minute, Connie never said anything about being treated like Steven's equal or being coddled, did she? I mean, she barely said anything about anything because this was an underdeveloped aborted fetus of an arc, but the entire crux of this disagreement really was just... #

god fluorite still creeps me the fuck out. She's basically some magna-tranny that's gone through eight different transitions of like three genders each and gained a new fat roll for each one. Is this supposed to make me like "diverse" people? Because it's not working. Every single second of her vocal drone grating across my eardrums makes me want ever more to perpetuate a holocaust against the legbutt people. Eugh. two children are all we need to save lars, don't bother bringing garnet or any of those other fucking main characters we have lying around or anything naw fuckit

On some level I almost enjoy how few fucks Lars has come to give, even doing shit like spouting the aesop he was just given as a kewl one-liner as he (kind of) trounces the bad guy... but still, it's all off-screen development that raises a lot of questions. Maybe it's just the change in environment and the lack of anyone to try and impress (the shitgems sure as hell aren't the cool kids) that's brought this out of him- that almost makes sense, but there's nothing indicating that's the case... or anything's the case, really. Maybe it's just some kind of tangential stockholm syndrome where I'm happy to see something actually fucking happening, I don't fucking know.

also how did they steal the ship? they """explain""" but... they really don't. They're just that good because take our word for it lars is really happy for those clean pants. how much did he shit himself over the past couple weeks

And then shit gets terrible again. Lars is more triggered over sadie than his own parents... because of fucking course he is. No, she wasn't worried sick, she was faffing around whining about having to do your work for you or having to work at all and then fucking quitting her job to go become a marxist rock guitarist. Hey, remember the purple cake incident? Lars was legitimately fucked up over his social anxiety and his inability to hang with the cool kids despite wanting so badly to do so, so Sadie just fucking around with them like it's nothing because she really is barely worried about his wellbeing... yeah, I think that shit's gonna fuck him up a little bit.

But no, Steven basically just... tells him to get the fuck over it. Because, like, he's not there so she can do whatever the fuck she wants, immediately. Fuck is this shit? Like all of five minutes into the episode Steven just starts fucking explaining this shitty twisted aesop to both Lars and the audience. Yeah man, you go die in space, your gf can immediately go do everything you ever angsted over with ease and I'll come rub it in your face and you should just fucking get over it because u totes love her that much, lol. *You* aren't entitled to your own emotions.

Oh and then Steven compares Sadie's faffing to Lars's fucking comandeering a space ship in order to keep himself alive. Because the woman's feelsies are equivalent to the man's fucking life. Guys, what the fuck am I watching?...

I think this is one of those... things... this show does, where it at first vaguely approaches something that would pass for a normal human cognitive outputting, but then turns, farts in your face like that sexy alien from Star Wars and flits off like Tinkerbell leaving you confused and asmellied. Where in an attempt to create an unthought new aesop never before cognizized by mankind it ends up with a bizarre twisted mess.

At the very least Steven maybe shoulda thought twice before bringing some of those photos. "Oh, look how well your abusive not-gf has been doing without you! Befriending everyone you ever wanted to befriend but couldn't because you need a fucking therapist! Yeah that'll make him feel better". Hey, remember when Steven was empathic, you guise? I mean that being thrown the fuck out was part of what defines this arc, but come on...

It also severely hurts the thing that it's played out so fast. Lars is #triggered by the photos, okay, but then Steven immediately gets on his case and REEEEEs at him for... trying to destroy Sadie's something or other, because I don;t fucking know feminism is the radical idea that a man's emotional freedom is so disgusting it'll destroy a pure beautiful deserving woman from a distance of a thousand light-years in a fucking instant- Calm your fucking tits, Steven Sugar, we're in the middle of fucking space, Lars has no way of destroying Sadie's whatever the fuck it was he was supposed to be destroying. Let him have his knee-jerk reaction. Also, all of a week or a month away from your best friend slash romantic interest is enough you should expect she's moved on from you completely. Okay.

... Hey, wait a minute, I thought Kevin Praty taught us that sniveling was the way to get all the pretty wymyn? What might have changed between then and now, a difference of one entire episode? ... No, really, I have no fucking clue. This time, the contradiction is so fucking incoherent I can't even turn it into "because Sugar and feminists like her place female emotions above all else". The only way I can see it is if shitting on certain types of males is equal to or higher than muh womans, as the Kevin Party incident was twisted specifically to work at Kevin's expense. ... It's funny how this runs completely opposite what I'd think most people would find healthy. If the person you're hurt over is nowhere fucking near you then get it out of your system, but don't go dumping all your emotional baggage on them at a fucking party. This show wants us to bottle up our emotions when there's no fucking reason to at all but mainline emotional diarrhea in the most inappropriate of situations. what is this shit?

lol the crew are made so fucking useless just by a single fucking photo phone just take it from him One of the shitgems calls Stevvie "friends"... plural. they aren't a singular "they". SOC JUS FAUX PAS

man i can;t believe stevonnie;s fucking dead to bad the show ended here guys i guess homeworld can just go take over the world now. it's better this way

-

This was apparently some sort of special event called "Stranded", but the stranding only lasts one episode. Oooooookay.

This one is entirely just a nitpick, but I find it so strangely interesting from a writing perspective that I just can't leave it out... The "everything is broken" joke is like three lines long and two lines two long. Stevonnie is like, man what's broken and we're shown the readout from the ship showing everything flashing red, okay... and then she's like, ohhh man wow look almost everything it broken?? who expect that ha ha. And then she says, at least the screen works... and that immediately gets broken. Ha haaaaa. I dunno bout you, but I woulda laughed more if they'd just cut it short- have Stevonnie see the screen and go "oh, everything" or even just "oh", in that high-pitched, slightly breathy tone of voice that says "well, shit". Then crash. Boom, short sweet and to the point and gives you like ten more seconds this episode to spend on the plot of the epi- oh wait

Stevonnie is stranded on spaceplanet because no communications, but... xei have magic. Just... shoot some magic fireworks or start a magic fire for smoke signals. Or a normal fire, even. If the problem is that random new green gem will also find you if you do this... actually mention that. Steven and Connie don't even seem to consider sending a physical signal of any kind, even though it should be an obvious idea.

And then Stevenconnie just... finds a random alien species? And casually eats it? This... this just raises so many questions... Throughout the entire run of this show up until this date, the only alien species we've seen has been the gems. The center of the entire show, something that's been continually developed (if not consistently, coherently or well)- there's a decent amount of thought put into how these lifeforms that're completely unlike anything on Earth function, both in biology and society, with some degree of interplay between the two. The show was kept focused on the effects of Rose's rebellion and events related to it, and we avoided all the extra thought, logic and possible scientific plot holes that would be brought into existence by trying to create and balance multiple forms if alien life from multiple different origins. But now they just... dumped this stuff on in there? Because why

This is at once the first new alien species we've seen since the very beginning of the show, the first organic species, the first animalistic/non-sentient species, and the first found in it's alien habitat... and not only are a fucking bunch of them all introduced at once, they're thrown in casually and Stevonnie fucking eats most of them. What the fuck? There's no thought put into these things either, they're just a bunch of wacky squacky animals mainly comprised of random Earth animal parts. There's no logic to how they work, why they exist, how they evolved like this, they're just... wacky funny animals for no reason. Fuck you. After the series up until this point has focused on developing one species with an entirely different biology, history and culture from humans, with all of those things to at least some degree influencing or connected to each other, seeing these critters introduced just at random with no logic or context is incredibly jarring. This was such a fucking bad idea...

Also Stevonne eats the fucking fruits and animals and drinks the water because all planets just have human-compatible food species and good old motherfucking H2O I guess

stevonnie has more stubble than steven ever did because i hate life and i hate everything. this is disgusting. It's even distributed weirdly; instead of being on ziouir's chin it spreads up either side of zoidrgh's face and actually on to the cheeks. And we just have to see it's fugly little cheekstubble for the entire fucking rest of the episode. gagh

And then we get to this... really weird dream sequence where some really weird writing decisions are made. It starts off in Connie's house with Connie's mom... uh, rising up out of the carpeting, but Stevonnie identifies them as "my house" and "my mom". Stevonnie is both Steven and Connie, but given we're used to Steven being the main character and usual viewpoint throughout the entire series this comes off as though it's Steven saying this is "his house/mom". But, you know, they're not. And for any fan who's not devoted enough to commit to memory which character's household interior this is, it's misleading until Connie's mom shows up and then confusing after that. Why the fuck did the writers decide to write the scene like this? Why not have Stevonnie go "my, uh, your, uh, Connie's house" or some shit? Or just remove this part entirely because it gets really weird when the mom starts talking about EXTERMINATING ORGANIC LIFE and setvonnie notices nothing. Then the mom turns into this... weird brownwashed minority fusion version of YD with a big ol' jellyglob of Conmom's hair slapped onto the back of her head. What is this shit? if you're going to make it a meaningful dream you can't just do random shit like that. stop mixing messages. Just... stop. why did they choose to do this, and with Conmom specifically? If it's supposed to imply PD and YD's relationship is like Connie and her mom's... well first of all, that doesn;t fucking work because PD is nothing like Connie at all. But ignoring that, if it's supposed to imply YD is some sort of a parental figure to PD... why Connie's mom? She's not particularly important, and we don;t know her all that well. If it's not a comparison to her specifically and it's just that she parent... why Connie;s mom? Of all the parental figures in the show, because... I don't know, this is dumb fuck this

Though once that shit stops I actually almost like this dream sequence. Having our main character taking the place of PD in the dream, reliving her memories, it not being clear we "are" PD and that Stevonnie is acting out this memory rather than acting under xfer own will until we get to the mirror scene, where Stevonnie punches the reflection of PD while their own appearance remains the same... that's pretty fucking nice. This might also be a manifestation of that Stockholm syndrome I mentioned earlier, though. PD wants things and is frustrated with her current situation. She tries to get what she wants by bitching at someone else to give it to her, sure, but the way she storms off on her own and punches the mirror implies she wants to change things, there's just something holding her back. She has a trajectory. Apparently the fnadom hates her for being a brat, but I almost like her. ..... bets are open on how long it takes for the writers to completely fuck this up.

and then steven and connie just go home and who fucking cares nothing mattersfuck this show

... It seems the fandom has latched on to PD being an off-color because she's small (because height is a color what the fuck is that term why is it that). Like the rich family that hides their embarrassing retarded offspring in the basement, I guess. (i still crackship lars with kevin by the way)