Ah yeah, so main + art blog is @sparrowlicious in case anyone from twitter fiends me here or whatevs.
Also yes, I deactivated my twitter. I’m also on Mastodon. That’s https://fandom.garden/@Sparrowlicious over there. It’s a nice space where you can have nice conversations about stuff you like without people harassing you. (I’m saying that because on twitter I’ve had people dig up conversations from 5 years ago just to start an argument and that’s not a fun way to spend my time.)
If game of thrones hasn’t normalized incest by now (pulling over 10 million views in the 7th season alone) then a small fandom ship most certainly won’t
Spn ran for fifteen fucking seasons, it ran for over a decade, and wincest was consistently one of the two or three most popular ships. And it had no measurable impact on real world abuse. Maybe you think fandom is uniquely dangerous (why, idk, but this tumblr after all) but a pretty good rule of fandom is that if Spn couldn’t do it, fucking no one else is going to manage it.
There are plenty of things the Murderbot fandom gets right, but I think there is one really critical element of the series that is not well understood or that people frequently overlook. The way I see it, this misunderstanding drives a lot of the disagreements people have over who Murderbot is at its core and what it would/wouldn’t do.
For the entirety of its life prior to ASR, everything Murderbot experienced was done to it. It had no real ownership of its own body, a pretty limited degree of ownership over its mind (especially before the govmod hack), and zero meaningful ability to make choices for itself. Whether it liked or didn’t like something had no real bearing on its reality. Distilled to its essence, Murderbot’s primary trauma is about being enslaved–or, on a slightly more specific level, the constant experience of being helpless without any kind of choice, agency, or safety.
The emotional crux of the narrative spanning ASR - ES drives this point home. Murderbot sets off from Port FreeCommerce in ASR without any clear goals or desires beyond true agency; as it says in its message to Mensah:
I don’t know what I want. I said that at some point, I think. But it isn’t that, it’s that I don’t want anyone to tell me what I want, or to make decisions for me. That’s why I left you, Dr. Mensah, my favorite human.
When the narrative arc concludes in ES, Murderbot once again tests the bounds of the freedom it’s been given by buying passage on a transport; it needs to know how far its agency extends and if there are limits. Once it realizes no one is going to stop it, it chooses to stay and discusses its future with Mensah, concluding:
I had options, and I didn’t have to decide right away. Which was good, because I still didn’t know what I wanted. But maybe I had a place to be while I figured it out.
Murderbot begins the story of ASR - ES not knowing what it wants and concludes it the same way, the critical difference being that it’s starting to trust that the freedom it’s gained is real and significant. These scenes bookend the emotional narrative of the first four books, and make up Murderbot’s primary character arc.
This also leads very nicely into the events and character development that take place in NE. Murderbot is just settling into the idea that it has true agency when something happens that violates this agency: it’s “kidnapped” by ART. Having someone it trusts take away its ability to make its own choices feels like a significant betrayal, and it reacts accordingly. Through the course of the novel, seeing and understanding ART’s helplessness in the face of the Targets and TargetControlSystem softens that sense of betrayal, and by the end of the book, rather than taking or demanding what it wants, ART simply makes a request (that Murderbot will stay with it). The power dynamic has shifted; Murderbot can feel once again that its agency is respected and secure.
People in the fandom often focus on/disagree over whether Murderbot would engage in or enjoy specific behaviors or activities (physical touch, eye contact, socializing, experiencing love or romance, various types of violence, having sex, etc.). I would argue these debates miss the point, because to Murderbot the key factor behind its decision to do anything is the fact that it gets to decide. In Chapter 3 of NE, it explains:
Ratthi came to my cabin. I didn’t have to let him in, so I did.
Murderbot’s ability to choose–and to know there isn’t a “wrong” or unsafe option, that it won’t be coerced or punished either way–is the thread underlying the growth it experiences as a character. The more Murderbot feels secure in its own agency, the more it’s willing to do things that otherwise might stress it out. It opens the door for Ratthi because it doesn’t have to. It hugs Mensah because this is a choice it can make for itself. It agrees to stay with ART because if it wanted to leave instead, no one would stop it. In fact, more than once it admits that these dreaded experiences aren’t “entirely awful” (as in ES with Mensah).
In most cases, I’m not sure there is a definitive canon answer to whether Murderbot enjoys or would do [insert behavior/activity]. Murderbot formed its sense of self in an environment where it was a tool to be used. Its biggest fear is returning to that state and losing the personhood it’s gained. In situations where it doesn’t need to worry about that risk, it’s very much still exploring new experiences and learning about the choices it wants to make. Obviously, there are more books to come, and more of its identity may be solidified by the events of those books. At this point, though, interpretations of Murderbot as enjoying various things are going to be “in character” if they respect its focus on personal agency. Not every interpretation will appeal to every person, but if Murderbot is safe to make its own decisions without pressure or punishment, that depiction doesn’t invalidate the character as established by the source material.
great tags via @unrestedjade who absolutely gets it:
As someone that was there and started blocking the SU Crit tag because of so many bad faith accusations, yeah I think I can say a bit of what happened. Might be a bit disjointed but these are the things that I remember happening.
First thing was the release schedule. The Steven Bombs. Releasing like five episodes in one week and then nothing for months. This was something that CartoonNetwork had control over and might have been something that they tried to use to get Steven Universe to stop being so popular because it was gestures pretty queer.
If Steven Universe was a show that every episode was a stand alone, this wouldn’t have been an issue, but it was a linear story. So major developments could drop; major character reveals/fuck-ups could happen and then the fandom would just sit on those for months. Instead of getting the next part of the story that resolved whatever just happened the fandom could sit there and stew in theories and emotions. So characters messing up would be blown out of proration and the resolution wouldn’t feel like it actually enough effort on the one that messed up end.
One example was Cry for Help. When Pearl tricked Garnet into fusing more often. If I remember right, we didn’t get to Pearl and Garnet actually talking out what happened there until months after the fact. In story not much time had past but for the audience that was plenty of time for people to be offended on Garnet’s behalf and distort what happened.
Anther issue was “Gem Harvest” dropped right around the 2016 election. You know when Trump became president. This was made long before the election, but there were people who took that timing as somehow Rebecca Sugar and the Crew saying stuff that they weren’t. I would also say this was when the discourse really took off. If that episode had aired when the crew thought it would, probably a year or months before then, I don’t think people would have misread it was much as they did. It was about communication and also Uncle Andy is the one that had to realize that the way he acted had caused him to be isolated from his family. This wasn’t Steven had to “make his racist uncle no longer racist all on his own” but “Steven gave him encouragement that it wasn’t too late to change”. But the timing was terrible and the Crew had no control on that. The Steven Bombs made several seasons last for years when they should have been over in some months.
Second, studio interference that fandom blamed on Rebecca Sugar and the Crew. The scheduling, the ending of the show feeling rushed; those were things that parts of the fandom blamed on the crew not the network. There were people that I recall saying that the crew just needed to change how Steven Universe was written to fit with the bomb format better, when the bomb format wasn’t something that the crew ever wanted. That wasn’t the show style that they were telling. The show got axed because Rebecca Sugar and the Crew wouldn’t drop the wedding. They wanted it there because it was important to have in a kid’s show. But because they stuck to their guns the rest of the story had to be speed up, and people thought that the crew should have written the ending better; when that ending was planned to have at least another season, not a week long set of episodes. Steven Universe was set up to be a long term story. One that gave time to each character to unpack their mindset and issues. But they couldn’t do that with the Diamonds.
Third, people not understanding the theme of the show. Steven Universe was about family, emotions, and open communication solving issues. Characters resolved their issues by talking about them. By being open about what the issues were. That was the reason Gem War happened; because open communication because Pink Diamond and the other Diamonds just couldn’t happen. We see that Steven is at his worst when he bottles up his emotions or refuses to talk about an issue that he knows he has. But despite this theme by the time we got to Change Your Mind, people were cheering for the idea of Steven shattering the Diamonds. Which ignores the theme of the show; communication. There were people that wanted Steven to kill the Diamonds when this wasn’t that type of show. Steven always hated when he couldn’t talk to another character and had to bubble them. Why would this kid resort to killing? That goes against the themes of this show.
Fourth, the rushed ending. The events of Change Your Mind, was something that the crew wanted to be its own season. I imagine that if the crew had gotten what they wanted we would have spent more time on Homeworld with Steven getting to know the Diamonds and sorting out their issues. Blue Diamond would have been first since we had set up with her character first. We saw her living with the regrets of losing Pink Diamond and now not doing her duties as a Diamond. But because of how rushed the ending had to be at that point the audience didn’t get that time that they had wanted. Think about how long Lars’s arc was. That was several seasons long. If they had gotten a season with the Diamonds like they wanted people probably wouldn’t have thought that the ending was rushed.
Fifth, bad faith criticism and very toxic fandom. As I said I blocked the SU Crit tag because after a certain point people would take anything and start shoving completely off the rails criticisms at the show and expect everyone to take them in good faith. Like people claiming that Sugar, a Jewish creator, was a Nazi Apologist because Steven didn’t kill the Diamonds. People projected things onto elements of the story that weren’t there. People would take a screen shot and call it lazy animation because a character was off model for a fraction of a second that wouldn’t be noticed without slowing it down. There was a lot of bad faith criticism. Some of it was probably from people that didn’t like how queer Steven Universe was and hid it as saying it wasn’t progressive enough. There were probably people that thought that a kid’s show was actually not progressive enough without looking at everything behind the scenes that the creators were dealing with. There were fans that drove one of the story-boarders/writers off the show because on her own Twitter account she posted shipping art of two of the characters (Lapis Lazuli and Peridot). It was just one member of the crew showing that she liked the dynamic between two characters that was not cannon and people started harassing them. There was a lot of entitlement from the fandom.
All of those things combined just made for a terrible time.
TL;DR: The show schedule being all over the place, studio interference, people not understanding the theme of the show, the rushed ending, and a toxic fandom with bad faith criticisms all led to the show having the worst reputation. I would say that the show schedule and studio interference played the biggest part of it since other parts stemmed issues that those created.
Agreed with all of this, but as a sort of continuation of point three:
The danger of adults watching a children’s show because “It’s so good it could be an adult’s show!” is exactly this. Shows that are literally and explicitly for kids have much simpler messaging. One of my least favourite sentences in the world is when you remind someone who is whining about a piece of children’s media for not doing what they wanted out of the story that it’s aimed at kids and they say “But being for kids doesn’t mean it can’t still be good!”
Bitch it IS good. ‘Good’ doesn’t mean 'Does the stuff adults want so it feels satisfying and fulfilling to adults’. It means 'Does the stuff the target audience wants and successfully conveys to that audience its message.’ Adults are not the target audience. Get a grip and remember you’re a guest. Your enjoyment is not the point. You cannot say “The Animaniacs sucked because there was no character development and they would suddenly sing educational songs - I wanted more world building about what these alien things were and how they got into the water tower and what that means for the fabric of American society” IT WAS A KID’S SHOW THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE FUNNY AND EDUCATIONAL. AND IT WAS. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU
In the case of Steven Universe, Rebecca Sugar once said the aim was to 'redefine masculinity’ for children - the point of the show is that Steven is surrounded by powerful women without ever feeling emasculated, and is properly and healthily connected to his emotions. He’s not afraid to cry. He’s open with his fears. He goes through increasing trauma, and the moral of that is 'Dont bottle up, talk to your loved ones.’
And, crucially, his first and primary response to antagonism is “Let’s talk about this” and not “Let’s punch this.”
It was adults who turned that into a “Talk to Nazis uwu” parable, and then got mad about it; children, the target audience, did not. Children are people who are very much still learning how to process their emotions and handle conflict on the playground. Young boys are learning that they aren’t allowed to cry or have feelings other than anger. Young girls are learning that they aren’t allowed power and strength. All children are being told that a family can only look one way, that love can only follow one path. SU provided clear role models to the contrary and was extremely valuable for that.
And then adults projected real world political allegories onto it because that’s how adult fiction works, and decided that meant it was bad and that Rebecca Sugar, a queer Jewish enby, was actually a Nazi apologist. Just a trash fire of a fandom
For those worried about the crew having to do a whole job just for one person, flight staff only get paid for time they’re in the air; if he’d cancelled, they wouldn’t have gotten paid for zip.
So in other words, he gave them an easy day where they can spend most of it on break, and also airplane staff should unionize.
Also the plane likely has to get to NC somehow so you might as well have fun with it
