Well I dunno if this is racist, but, uh...the nose...maybe...when combined with the general color scheme...ohgodpleasedonthateme
And yeah, Bubbline is frustrating as all heck.
Loves feel-good animation a whole lot.@Pushover Media Critic
Sapphire seems "coded" black to me due to the lips and the VA, but she doesn't exhibit any of the stereotypes to me. And while most of the other characters voiced by black VAs seem it to me, for some reason I could never read Jasper as black either. I always saw her as more white or Native American for some reason. While there are legitimate times when "coding" (as in intentional subtext) is valid, it is often far more subjective than the wording suggests it to be.
@Ruise
At least among my Asian peers, stereotypical white people traits include having a huge bulbous nose (Pearl has half of that), blonde hair and blue eyes, and being really loud. It's not hard cut though, because Sailor Moon and Venus both fulfill a lot of those tropes but are canonically Japanese and meant to be seen as such by native audiences. I've seen some people argue that a lot of characters in anime are "coded" as white by self-hating Japanese ashamed of their Asian features due to globalism emphasizing white beauty standards, but that analysis, while it might be situationally true, fails to take into account the nuance of Values Dissonance and Mukokuseki ("white" foreigners in mainly Japanese settings often exhibit a lot of stereotypical tropes of their own, but differently than Western media).
edited 24th Sep '16 5:42:08 PM by AlleyOop
We've already gone over how this show doesn't fit the definition of discount lesbians. Even then, Rebecca Sugar is bisexual, so why the hell would she have a reason to use the trope when there's already two non-Gem characters who are gay? She'd have to be a fucking idiot to do that! No offense Smokey, but you're wrong on this one.
edited 24th Sep '16 5:42:07 PM by AdricDePsycho
Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?There really isn't anything meaningful to discuss. We'd just end up repeating ourselves, about what we think the characters are "coded" as. And that's just a bunch of BS stereotyping that nobody's going to agree on.
Just a reminder that Unfortunate Implications is an Audience Reaction. It's 100% the product of the audience's imagination, and agenda. It's never intended by the creator.
edited 24th Sep '16 5:41:49 PM by xanderiskander
My mom thinks white people age fast, but other than that, I have no idea what would code someone as white. Other than not having black hair naturally, I guess (which is why, whenever I saw a cartoon character with pale skin and black hair, I'd assume they were East Asian).
When we're done, there won't be anything left.Unrelated to SU but on that topic, I found it hilarious that a recent chapter of Tanaka-kun wa Itsumo Kedaruge has Tanaka treat a blonde-haired boy as a foreigner on first impression when half the cast is blonde.
Loves feel-good animation a whole lot.@Coding: Bismuth is an example of a coded character. She has dreads, she's voiced by a black woman, etc. If you were to make a human AU version, you would instantly jump to "black woman with dreadlocks".
@The discussion being allowed: It's a discussion about the show and it's themes, therefore it's allowed.
@Discount lesbians: Liara from Mass Effect is an example of Discount Lesbians very similar to this show. All female species, technically genderless/sexless, is female in pronouns and appearance, but technically can't be gay because it's an all female species. That applies to the gems too, so no, I'm correct.
basically what ultimatum said
also i kinda find it hard to sympathize when my brain's criteria for deciding if a nonhuman character is coded as a race is "their skin color?? is the same as that race's???"
moved to Oceanstuck because this handle was starting to bother me my tumblrHave to remember there are still limits to what Cartoon Network can show if they don't want to cut the show out of several international markets entirely.
What they've allowed with Steven Universe shows how far things have advanced even this decade.
Again, Clarence had a gay couple and Steven Universe has two explicit gay characters. The international market reasoning is BS made up by Marceline's voice actress to mess with some fans at a con when she decided to troll them about Marceline and PB being a couple (and yes, she was trolling, she fucking tweeted about how she liked messing with fans at cons, so she basically made up a bunch of bullshit to screw with fans).
Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?I like Discount Lesbians just as well so it doesn't matter to me whether they are or aren't.
I guess the 'problem' isn't so much the Gems being discount lesbians, as not having enough well-established-as-gay-or-bi human characters?
Although they are there, they/that part of their character just haven't gotten so much focus.
Loves feel-good animation a whole lot.There's a lot to disagree with in that "0 done right" article, no matter what race you are, but I hesitate to discount it entirely simply because it's a black woman's perspective on the show's treatment of black women and characters coded as black women. I'm not going to say the patterns she identifies are not real. In fact...
When she lays it all out like that, yeah, I can see how the black-coded Gems are nearly always presented as more masculine than other Gems, which is persistent stereotype about black women that needs to stop. There's room for improvement there. There's definitely room for improvement in the makeup of the Crewniverse if it really has no black women despite the show featuring so many black/black-coded, female/female-coded characters. I would rather the shows I love have their flaws pointed out by people in a position to notice them, so they can improve.
That said, I hope the improvements are made and the article writer then gives the show another chance. If every lost viewer is lost forever, no second chances, then there's not much of an incentive to improve upon the things that drove them away.
I agree, and I also think Ruby is coded Asian due to her VA and her sort of "kung fu hotshot" design elements. If we see more of them and this coding is made more explicit, that could be a great basis for improving on the masculine-black vs. feminine-not black problem the author complained about.
edited 24th Sep '16 6:10:11 PM by Karalora
Anyways, my original post still stands. I feel like SU does make a huge effort to be progressive, but it fails in certain areas. I've seen black people I follow on tumblr who are upset at Garnet being a Magical Negro, or Bismuth being a violent revolutionary.
And I have my own discomforts with how Jasper's corruption happened due to how similar it is to AIDS, but is used as a punishment or way to bring down a villain.
I'm not gonna act like the show is perfect or say that the people criticizing it are blowing it out of proportion, but I do wonder how people are gonna look at this show in twenty or forty years and react to it. Will we as a society have progressed to the point where some parts of SU are looked at with Values Dissonance?
Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?I'd just thought of it as ST Ds in general, but yeah it's completely understandable to be uncomfortable with that.
But "c'mere sis" was just beautiful igjiwmoqmtoi
Loves feel-good animation a whole lot.

Yeah. And it was a huge risk too, Nick had not had a hit since forever and the Loud House was their highest rated show in YEARS. Adding a gay, Black and White Male couple having a kid was a huge gamble on their part. And its amazing because the Loud House continued to grow! I love Nick. As a gay man, Im really grateful for them to do this.
Also, Smokey I love you and you do have a point and reason to be upset but that "If people keep bringing something up its true" isnt a good argument.
As long as this flower is in my heart. My Strength will flow without end.