Being critical of what you like is a good thing. Just look at the quote in my signature.
edited 5th Aug '16 8:48:55 AM by BlueBlaze64
"The cruelest thing you can do to an artist is tell them their work is flawless when it isn't." -Ben "Yahtzee" CroshawI don't think an action being done without bad intentions means that action should be free from discussion or criticism. Even the best pieces of media mess up sometimes, but we shouldn't take fans pointing out that they messed up as an insult to ourselves or the show's creators.
I'm still pretty bewildered at Steven giving a completely sincere You Are a Credit to Your Race speech about Pearl in "Back At The Barn". C'mon, Crewniverse, Justice League and Teen Titans criticized stuff like that over a decade ago!
edited 5th Aug '16 9:02:16 AM by FawfulCrump
Jasper's not a minor character? :P
If that's directed at me then I'm not taking it as an insult to anyone.
I have an issue with the kind of arguments they're making because the logic behind it is based on appearances, and not any actual message the show is trying to send. The logic behind it is based on superficial and shallow judgments. They're using the same logic that people use to generalize whole groups of people in real life.
edited 5th Aug '16 9:17:56 AM by xanderiskander
Well, Barbara's only appeared in two episodes, and only had a major role in one, so yeah, Jasper has her beat there.
Oh God! Natural light!Well, since it didn't happen at the end of the episode, I wonder what darker context the opening lines from the episode are going to be used in later:
I got that it was one of those "playing up the mundane situation to appear more dramatic" jokes, but those lines seem too perfect to not be used later on in a more meaningful context, like some kind of Final Battle.
I don't know, maybe I'm trying a little too hard to see the foreshadowing coming. But if I'm right...
edited 5th Aug '16 9:22:34 AM by BlueBlaze64
"The cruelest thing you can do to an artist is tell them their work is flawless when it isn't." -Ben "Yahtzee" CroshawWhat about Ruby? She's pretty non-traditionally feminine. Amethyst is small, but she's a likable, sympathetic character that usually prefers to dawn muscular/non-human appearances and this isn't presented as a bad thing at all. There's also Garnet.
This really feels like nitpicking to me.
Anyway, anyone think we should split Steven's character entry as its own subpage to save space?
Let's not go crazy like the FIM character pages and spin one off for everybody, but as the main character it stands to reason he takes up the most tropes.
"I don't think an action being done without bad intentions means that action should be free from discussion or criticism"
Maybe but problem come when you add bad intention of hat can be consider a mistake or even coincidence, I mean yeah beff chararter so far have been more radical and prone to violence, but to said it send a message is really go far because is more one interting that way.
They can do better? yeah, but is that bad as it show? meh.
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"edited 5th Aug '16 9:46:20 AM by xanderiskander
Why does Sugilite count but not Alexandrite? I can see where people are coming from with Jasper and Bismuth, even if I disagree, but throwing Sugilite into the mix really just seems like looking for Unfortunate Implications.
That's my main thing. Like, even with the black person example that person used, no, if there's only one black person in the story (for some reason), I'm not just going to assume that means every black person in the story is evil or a thug or whatever. Especially not if the story takes times to establish the person as an actual person and not just "Haha I'm a gangbanger" or whatever, like the episode clearly did with Bismuth.
I said this before, stuff like this is how you end up with tropes like the Magical Negro.
edited 5th Aug '16 9:49:24 AM by LSBK
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Look at this way - if, for example, all the Asian characters in a movie are criminals, does this mean that all the Asian people that presumably exist in the movie's world are criminals? No, but it is all the movie cares to portray Asian characters as.
edited 5th Aug '16 9:50:19 AM by KarkatTheDalek
Oh God! Natural light!Or the way Hollywood portrays all Asian characters as martial artists and mystics and such. The whole list of light-skinned / dark-skinned characterization conventions.
I do, however, think that in this case that's more generalizing than looking at the cases themselves - especially since in-universe Homeworld associates body types with roles in society, and that's both vitally important to why Jasper and Bismuth do what they do while also causing the two to become what they are in individual ways.
edited 5th Aug '16 9:57:09 AM by KnownUnknown
Something else, maybe the last thing I have to say on the subject, is that it seems to me that people are envision Jasper and Bismuth to be created as "butch women" first where to me, it makes more sense that the characters were created first, an then because they're Gems, they were made female.
Like, the big and buff Blood Knight warrior is a common thing, and the beefy blacksmith isn't that uncommon, either. There are reasons that Jasper and Bismuth each fill those rolls in the story, respectively, for good reason and because Gems, they make them female.
Even ignoring how two examples does not for a trend, it's probably better to look at it from that perspective. Obviously, I can't say this for certain, but it just makes a lot more sense that it works that way to me.
edited 5th Aug '16 9:57:10 AM by LSBK
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That's a very different example from this though, because in that example there's a large pool of characters to glean an intent from. That's not the case here with only a couple of examples, and the second one being largely a coincidence. In Steven Universe's case, it's more of a mental thing, than anything else.
Even then, it would only be intentional in your example if the story gives us a reason to think that's their intent. But more likely than not if there were a film with a large amount of asian characters there'd also be innocent bystanders and heroes who are as well.
edited 5th Aug '16 10:06:25 AM by xanderiskander
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I mean, I never said how many Asian people were criminals in that case. It could have been a large number, but it also could have been just two or three. Either way, they would have been the entirety of the movie's representation of Asian people.
My point is that the problem isn't really the number of them, but the fact that they're all treated the same.
Now, I'll grant you that the situation here is more complicated, and the story is far from over. But I can understand Smokey and others' concern, and I hope that the show can move away from this in the future - in fact, I'm confident that it will.
I mean, this whole thing is a concern that people here have - I think that makes it a legitimate topic for discussion.
edited 5th Aug '16 10:09:03 AM by KarkatTheDalek
Oh God! Natural light!

They probably won't be bad forever, but we don't know that and with uncertainty, we can only go with what's presented right now and while it most likely wasn't intentional it is still the sort of message they're presenting.
One has to understand not everyone talks about these things like we do, in fact most people don't. And there are going to be a lot of kids watching the show and not all of the mare going to have a great grasp on nuance, this is going to be the impression they're getting. Hell most grown adults don't grasp nuance particularly well.
edited 5th Aug '16 8:46:29 AM by MousaThe14
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