Cartoons!

[Merus]

Adventure Time is like one of those webcomics that flourished in the early noughties that started out as zany adventures and then moved into drama, but didn't actually know how to tell dramatic stories. A lot of episodes feel like clumsy parables that don't go anywhere or reveals with no significance.

 

Feelin' pretty good about putting off getting into Adventure Time now.

[SecretAsianMan]

The context was pretty significant. We had just had Garnet's song talking in detail about how her fusion was super consensual and super cool. I forget the exact words, but Jasper addresses Lapis and says something along the lines of "You should just let me do this to you, it will make your life easier."

 

Lapis's revenge after that was pretty cool, but that moment was honestly pretty disturbing.

 

The survivor / revenge interpretation for Lapis gets a little messy, given that she has some measure of agency and empowerment, but on the other hand, she's fused with her attacker forever...I guess if you want to get into a really deep metaphorical read that's also somewhat appropriate, but that leads to some pretty complex places. 

 

I didn't interpret it quite as harshly as you did but I see where you're coming from.  To me, Lapis still had the opportunity to say no.  Jasper's words were trying to encourage her rage at the gems so that Lapis would see things Jasper's way (although the last line she said was "Just say yes" which can certainly be interpreted as telling someone to just give in).  Based on the fusions we've seen thus far, it seems like there has to be at least some degree of cooperation in order for it to work at all.  For example, when Pearl and Amethyst tried to fuse to make Opal the first time, they failed because they weren't getting along at the moment, which they quickly overcame when Steven got in trouble.  Jasper certainly pushed Lapis towards it in a forceful way but considering the power Lapis displayed after getting set free from the mirror and after the fusion, I feel like maybe she could have handled Jasper if she really didn't want the fusion.  I will say that Lapis's involvement was possibly not 100% consensual because of her state of mind after being trapped in a mirror for possibly thousands of years and getting press ganged into service.

 

I also don't see that fusion as permanent at all.  I think the fusion is being held together right now by Lapis's force of will but eventually Jasper will get free.

[tegan]

Feelin' pretty good about putting off getting into Adventure Time now.

 

There's a lot of Aventure Time that's absolutely worth getting into, I just feel like it's important to know when to stop.

[BobbyBesar]

I didn't interpret it quite as harshly as you did but I see where you're coming from.  To me, Lapis still had the opportunity to say no.  Jasper's words were trying to encourage her rage at the gems so that Lapis would see things Jasper's way (although the last line she said was "Just say yes" which can certainly be interpreted as telling someone to just give in).  

...

I also don't see that fusion as permanent at all.  I think the fusion is being held together right now by Lapis's force of will but eventually Jasper will get free.

Sure, from the way that fusions have been presented in general, it wouldn't be nearly so problematic. But in the context where we've just seen it re-cast in light of Ruby and Sapphire's relationship, seeing somebody coerced into that same kind of relationship immediately after definitely impacts the way it's going to be received. The way Jasper manhandles her, combined with the delivery of "Just say yes..." was pretty chilling.

 

I don't think it's a super direct metaphor obviously, but it feels pretty deliberate, especially given some of what we've seen in the writing elsewhere.

 

Re: permanence I can be a little imprecise with language sometimes. The fusion wouldn't be any more permanent than any other that we've seen, but it would need to span whatever duration until Lapis pays off whatever plan she had. She mentioned she was imprisoned for 1000 years, I think? so there's the implication that she's willing to keep it up that long. Also, she does explicitly say "I'm never letting you go". While she can apparently maintain the fusion with her force of will, it seems like it wouldn't be a particularly pleasant experience. So, it's hard to really read it as a victory.

[Bjorn]

I'm going to interrupt this string of spoilers to say that I'm still really digging Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated.  We're deep into the second season now, and the overarching mystery is getting clarified. 

 

It's funny, my wife was crazy excited for House of Cards s3 to come out.  But we've been super busy and somewhat stressed over the last few weeks, and watching it just doesn't feel relaxing at all.  But Scooby Doo is kind of perfect to wind an evening down with. 

[Ben X]

There's a lot of Aventure Time that's absolutely worth getting into, I just feel like it's important to know when to stop.

 

When is this? I was planning to keep watching it until the point where Pendleton leaves. (I've finished whichever season it is that ends with the Lich two-parter, and am planning to get back into it once I've finished my Simpsons, Seinfeld and South Park run.)

[SecretAsianMan]

Sure, from the way that fusions have been presented in general, it wouldn't be nearly so problematic. But in the context where we've just seen it re-cast in light of Ruby and Sapphire's relationship, seeing somebody coerced into that same kind of relationship immediately after definitely impacts the way it's going to be received. The way Jasper manhandles her, combined with the delivery of "Just say yes..." was pretty chilling.

 

I don't think it's a super direct metaphor obviously, but it feels pretty deliberate, especially given some of what we've seen in the writing elsewhere.

 

Re: permanence I can be a little imprecise with language sometimes. The fusion wouldn't be any more permanent than any other that we've seen, but it would need to span whatever duration until Lapis pays off whatever plan she had. She mentioned she was imprisoned for 1000 years, I think? so there's the implication that she's willing to keep it up that long. Also, she does explicitly say "I'm never letting you go". While she can apparently maintain the fusion with her force of will, it seems like it wouldn't be a particularly pleasant experience. So, it's hard to really read it as a victory.

 

I can understand that.  At the end of the day we're trying to interpret things someone else created and until we fully understand how it all works I think one person's view is just as valid as the next.

 

I definitely don't see Lapis/Jasper's fusion as a victory.  Really its a stalemate, a way of putting of the resolution until a later date.  I don't think Lapis has a long term plan, I think she's confused and angry and wants to do something about it.  Steven has thus far been the only person to show her any amount of kindness so clearly she's not going to target him (and the Gems by proxy).  And Jasper (or perhaps Jasper's superiors) did force her to come along against her will so she's the obvious target.  I don't interpret her line about never letting Jasper go as literal, it's one of those things you say in that kind of moment.  Jasper's gunning for the Gems since she views them as traitors to their race, probably hates Garnet for beating her in a fight, and has some kind of vendetta against Rose.  Its probably only a matter of time until she gets free.

[Merus]

Finished watching Season 2 of Korra.

 

Ha ha wow that season is a mess. I totally understand why Nickelodeon left the series to die. I counted at least three deus ex machinas, and the big final battle they fucked up any sense of logic or cohesion to have completely wasted its premise.

[Twig]

just watched latest Gravity Falls.

UHHHH

[root]

When is this? I was planning to keep watching it until the point where Pendleton leaves. (I've finished whichever season it is that ends with the Lich two-parter, and am planning to get back into it once I've finished my Simpsons, Seinfeld and South Park run.)

 

I have no idea when or if anyone is supposed to get off the Adventure Time train but I hope it's not prior to the Jake is a Brick episode because that episode is a goddamned treasure.

 

Also the Lemonhope arc.

 

Actually I think the only later ep I didn't like was the life cycle of plants/caterpillars/birds one.  Pretty much any episode involving Magic Man is kind of unwatchable.

[Twig]

In catching up to Adventure Time's last 20 or so episodes,I was at first feeling sort of... I dunno, like tegan, I guess. Wishing they'd end it soon. But then I DID catch up and, well, I still like it. A lot. Not as much as I used to maybe? But it's still really good.

I even liked Jake's kids! The nerdy shut in, in particular! That stuff with the diary was good stuff.

And yeah that brick episode was goddamn great!

(Gonna have to disagree regarding the cycle if life episode, though, if only because my Masaaki Yuasa fandom demands I do so.)

[BobbyBesar]

I'm not as in love with Adventure Time as I was, but I wouldn't be able to point to a specific reason why. I think it feels a little aimless recently, but I think that's an expected consequence of the way that they manage their writer's room.

 

A couple other minor miscellaneous notes on the Steven Universe finale-week:

- During Pearl's reminiscence of Rose, I got a little bit of a Peach Garden Oath vibe. I don't think this was intentional.

- This got lost in all the other stuff, but it was really interesting to me that Greg revealed how much he knows about the history of the gems. You never really get a good sense of the nature of his relationship with Rose, but (assuming that the Gem Wars aren't common knowledge in their world), the fact that she would confide something like that to him reveals that they may have had more of an equal relationship than we usually see, as Rose is generally presented as a nearly mythic figure.

[tberton]

Finished watching Season 2 of Korra.

 

Ha ha wow that season is a mess. I totally understand why Nickelodeon left the series to die. I counted at least three deus ex machinas, and the big final battle they fucked up any sense of logic or cohesion to have completely wasted its premise.

 

Keep going with it. Seasons 3 and 4 are awesome.

[BobbyBesar]

Keep going with it. Seasons 3 and 4 are awesome.

I fell off the Korra train around the end of season 2, for all the well-documented reasons that everybody else had. While I buy that it got better, I didn't believe it got better enough for me to actually make an effort to watch it (vs. my previous method of: set DVR, eventually notice there is a new episode).

 

I'll probably watch the rest of it once it's on netflix or something, which is what I did with Avatar.

[Merus]

Keep going with it. Seasons 3 and 4 are awesome.

 

This is what I hear, which is why I finished watching Season 2 after abandoning it halfway through.

[Bjorn]

We finished Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated this evening!  That was a blast, legitimately the most fun I've had watching television in a long time (since I trend towards watching "serious" television).  The final four or five episodes were genuinely surprising in what they were willing to do to the characters and town, to the point that I was genuinely surprised several times.  Probably the most tragic/weird thing though is the very end:

 

To the perceptions of their families, they would have appeared to become strangers overnight, strangers who distanced themselves and made bizarre choices, abandoning the paths everyone expected them to take to embark on a journey that no one can understand. Of course, their families might always feel like doppelgangers to them, substitutes who look like the parents they knew, but off just enough to be disturbing as hell. It's a surprisingly dark place to leave a group of heroes after they've just saved the world.

I did love that they were headed for Arkham at the end though, another perpetually cursed town.

[Tanukitsune]

I don't what to think of the Steven Universe fandom now.

 

The Crystal Gems are genderless creatures, this has been said by the creators, but the fans are literally shoving genders on them just to have "space lesbians".

 

Isn't shoving genders on genderless creatures the definition of sexualization and pretty much VERY anti-LGBT? Haven't they ever heard of asexual romance?

 

Or am I just being nitpicking with the nomenclature? :\

[SuperBiasedMan]

Well that's an odd stance to take when the gems are very clearly based on feminine looks. I'd personally view them being called genderless as pretty poor world building at best, or an attempt to minimise controversy at worst (ie. No fundamentalist parents, don't worry. They're all just gender less, no lesbianism here).

I also don't think an author can actually have a dictatorship over their work. Interpretation matters a lot, so if the fanbase at large sees it and the representation matches with an under represented LGBT group, why not draw conclusions from that?

[SecretAsianMan]

The gems can presumably assume whatever form they want (Amethyst has shapeshifted several times over the series, the fact that they can fuse shows their forms are not fixed, and even Steven himself has changed form a couple of times and he's half human).  Given that, I think the fact that they've chosen the forms they have isn't a random, insignificant decision.  And I'm pretty sure they refer to each other using female pronouns.  Maybe that's for the sake of convenience but I really don't see how viewing them as "space lesbians" is all that big a stretch.  I've paid zero attention to what the creators have said about the show and that's definitely how I saw it.

[tegan]

The gems are physically genderless (or at least mono-gender), but they pretty clearly identify with and are codified as female entities (and as SAM said, presumably chose those forms themselves). In any case I wouldn't shit all over a group that already gets next to no representation with "uh technically"s when the show's creators are pretty clearly on board with those fans.

 

 

While this isn't the first time I've seen someone pull out the "they can't be gay if they're all rocks" thing, I still haven't seen anyone realize what kind of next-level queerness that would imply about Greg's relationship with Rose.

[Tanukitsune]

I think you guys are reading this in the complete opposite way I intended it...

 

Asexueals are LBGT too and have ZERO representation, so it is kinda frustrating to see an asexual romance turned into a lesbian one. I'm pretty sure some poor kid who identifies as asexual is crushed to hear everybody insist they are actually lesbians. 

 

I'm not sure if I'm simply looking for nomanclature that doesn't even exist yet? I mean, people can't even decide what's the proper genderless pronoun. An asexual couple would be called "in an asexual relationship", right? 

 

I've seen lesbians in cartoons since I was young since I was raised with anime, but asexuals? This would have been a first, which is why I'm kind frustrated.

 

So, yeah, I'm mostly upset because the first asexual couple I knew of is now just another lesbian couple.

[SecretAsianMan]

Ok, I see where you're coming from now and I apologize for reading into your post negatively (although I hope you can understand why that happened).  However I still think what SBM, teg, and I have said is true.  While the creators may call them genderless, the show clearly doesn't depict them that way.  Would that poor kid who identifies as asexual know that the gems are?  Or would said kid think they're female?  Are kids these days aware of what the creator's view is?  That's a genuine question by the way, I have no idea how kids today watch things like this.  All I know is that if this aired when I was a kid, I definitely would not have thought of them as asexual.

[Twig]

I was under the impression that asexuality was a lack of attraction to either sex, but it doesn't preclude romantic attraction? And as others have said, they clearly identify as female. Just because they're physically genderless doesn't mean they don't consider themselves as having a gender.

Listen I have no idea what I'm talking about.

[BobbyBesar]

I feel like a lot of older children's cartoons characters were effectively genderless. Are transformers gendered? I mean, they sort of present as stereotypically male and have male voice actors...but they don't have meaningful gender. (I mean, the show was obviously very gendered, but not the individual characters?)

 

Actually, thinking about it, I watched Transformers before Arcee existed. So maybe that's different-ish now?

 

Similarly, I'd have said the Smurfs were superficially gendered, but effectively asexual, until Smurfette existed. Were the care bears gendered? I don't remember.

 

Man, it's hard to make arbitrary distinctions for non-human characters, especially when there wasn't even a whiff of sexuality in the relationships portrayed.

 

Edit:

Hmm. transformers wiki says:

• In the IDW continuity Transformers were originally treated as genderless but use 'he/him/his' as the pronouns of choice. Arcee would have existed as a genderless robot prior to Jhiaxus' experiments which gave her a female gender, with the issue being her possessing gender in a genderless society. Later issues not only introduced naturally occurring female Transformers but "Onyx Interface Part Three" hinted that dual genders were once a natural occurrence on Cybertron. The issues have approached this retcon as being relatively insignificant in terms of Arcee's character development.

[deleted user]

_