I’ve told this story before but one of the most surreal moments of my life was when my friend’s mother was driving me to pick up her daughter after swim practice. Out of nowhere, she plucked out her glass eye and put it in my hand, then looked at me in the rearview mirror.
“Oh,” I said. “Huh.”
On the drive home, I turned to her daughter and said, “I had no idea your mother had a glass eye!” Turns out, neither did her daughter. They shouted at each other angrily in Turkish for the entire ride home.
To be fair, the glass eye wasn’t exactly improving her vision in the first place. Removing it didn’t affect her sight either way.
Someone straight up thought the glass eye was helping her see
my 8-year-old cousin got a spiderman pinata for his birthday today and he hit it so hard that he removed spiderman’s cardboard head from its shoulders and my cousin’s 11-year-old friend goes, without missing a beat, “I don’t feel so good Mr. Stark” and i lost my shit. kids really are our future.
A common and fair criticism about Steven Universe is that it’s theme of there being ‘no actual bad guys’ and that ‘anyone can change’ is kind of undercut by the fact that the antagonists of the show, Homeworld, practices a lot of fascist policies. Invading other worlds, a strict caste system, the extermination of anything ‘different’ etc. It just seems kind of naive and irresponsible to suggest that a society that commits such atrocities can change for the better simply from a saccharine speech about friendship.
When I sat down to think about it though, I realized that the diamonds aren’t exactly your typical dictators, even by the standards of science fiction. Hitler couldn’t bench press a mountain. Emperor Palpatine never stood 100 meters tall. Between Steven pulling miracles out of his ass gem every other story arc, the amount sheer power Blue and Yellow have demonstrated and the likelihood that the mostly unseen White Diamond is the strongest of them all, it’s not unreasonable to propose that the Diamonds are less tyrannical oligarchs and more an actual pantheon
This adds an interesting dynamic to it all since dealing with gods is a lot more different than dealing with a simple dictator. Sure, the crimes they committed are just as inexcusable as before, but it puts things in perspective. There is often a moral and empathetic disconnect between mortals and gods. The Diamonds as a whole don’t take time to consider the feelings of humans or lesser gems because… well, they’re lesser. Any regime with a ‘master race’ mindset or something of the like are purely delusional malicious racism. With the Diamonds? Their superiority is a bit trickier to refute. As such there is a disconnect between the diamonds and other beings.
This is where Steven comes in. Basically being a demigod himself, he can function as the bridge between humanity/gemkind and the Diamonds. Through him, the Diamonds could maybe understand what they’ve done and that it was wrong.
Of course you maybe thinking that the Diamonds don’t have enough going for them to be considered gods, that they’re too flawed or too underpowered. Well semantics of power levels aside, it only takes one look at Greek Mythology to know that flawed gods are nothing new. The point of most greek myths is that the Olympians are far from perfect and that humanities fate can rest in its own hands. The same can be applied here. The Diamonds flaws wouldn’t make them any less godly. It just gives all the ‘mortals’ a fighting chance. But more importantly, the Olympians adhering to human logic and understanding meant they could be reasoned with.
Bottom line, the Diamonds have committed a lot of heinous actions that lean heavily on the fascist side. However, the fact that they come across less as bloodthirsty tyrants and more as just a bunch of flawed gods means that the angle Steven Universe seems to be going could still work. We just need to wait and see how they stick the landing.
Anyone else getting real fuckin fed up with this guy
to expand on this: as rescue teams were racing to save those kids and their coach, elon musk decided to use the crisis as a PR stunt.
he tweeted about how he was going to send his engineers to Thailand in order to look like a hero. he threw out ludicrous rescue ideas, including a 3 mile long tube and a small submarine, neither of which had a chance in hell of working.
the diver being discussed here is Vern Unsworth. he’s a 63-year-old British caver who lives near and has extensive knowledge of the Tham Luang cave system.
Unsworth is the reason the boys were found: he used his knowledge of the caves and deductive reasoning to pinpoint where he thought the team would be. when rescuers followed his directions, they found the boys only 200 meters away.
Unsworth also called in the British divers who would go on to first locate the team. he didn’t know these boys, but he remained outside of thebTham Luang cave system for the full 17 days in order to assist in their rescue anyway.
he has since rightfully called out Musk for trying to exploit the situation for attention and explained why Musk’s suggestions would never have even worked. Musk responded by throwing a tantrum and, based on literally NOTHING, calling Unsworth a pedophile.
