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Janet Elizabeth Aulisio

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See, a lot of people say "Steven Universe is a show about redemption" but that's not really true? Only Peridot and Spinel were really redeemed

Lapis? I mean technically, depending on how you wanna look at it, but her arc was kinda weird. Idk if she was ever really an antagonist, she was kind of an odd character. Maybe an anti-hero I suppose?

Bismuth? Again, maybe. But she reads more of a fallen hero. She never really stops being Garnet and Pearl's friend and her intentions were always heroic and all it really takes is one single conversation to get her back to being a hero.

Jasper? Steven literally murders her and brings her back to life, scaring her into submission. That's not redemption! She's literally terrified of Steven and just does everything he says because she's scared of him! She still calls him Pink Diamond, even.

The Rubies? Steven tries (and fails!!) to redeem both Navy and Eyeball but, once it's clear that the redemption didn't work out, he just gives up and we never see any of the Rubies again.

Aquamarine? Go back to the previous answer.

Emerald? Never heard from again.

Holly Blue Agate? Lost her power and reduced to a joke.

The Diamonds? Steven still hates the shit outta them. Everyone still hates them, they are visibly uncomfortable in their presence. Steven literally tries to murder White Diamond on screen. Nobody likes these bitches. They were convinced to play nice because killing them wasn't viable at the time of Change Your Mind and, now in Future, even though Steven does have the ability to kill them now, he decides not to because they're not really a problem anymore. It'd be kinda weird to kill them now that they're using their powers to help people and he couldn't kill them before because he wasn't strong enough. I've already talked about this.

We could talk about how Rose's arc was a form of self-redemption but that's more complicated.

So yeah, I don't think Steven Universe is really a show about redemption. It's a show about change. Negative, positive and just plain weird.

Every character (the antagonists and the protagonists, even the minor characters!) is faced with having to change. Those who refused to accept change are ultimately forced to change whether they liked it or not and those who accept change are able to have better lives because of it.

That change isn't always redemption, as we've seen, sometimes that change is just Homeworld no longer being a dictatorship and the once-powerful Gems now being powerless and not really being a threat anymore. They're not really "good guys", they're just not dangerous anymore.

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The Owl House vs. Amphibia: BIPOC Representation as a POC Viewer

Okay so I’ve been sitting with this for a while, and as a POC myself, I really want to talk about how The Owl House and Amphibia approached BIPOC representation—because honestly? Amphibia did it way better.

Let’s start with The Owl House. Luz is a Dominican-American girl, right? But it really felt like her cultural identity was just there. Like, surface-level (not saying this is a bad thing but I wish her background was explored more). She’s brown-coded, yeah, but the show barely explores what that means for her. There’s a few references (her mom, her name, the occasional food mention), but it never felt like her heritage shaped who she was or how she saw the world. Luz could’ve been literally any background and the plot wouldn’t change. That’s a little disappointing for a POC main character—it feels like the representation was more of a checkbox than something fully integrated into her story.

Now contrast that with Amphibia. Anne is Thai-American, and it shows. Her culture is part of her character in a natural and loving way. We see her family, we see Thai food, the language, traditions, even a whole episode set in a Thai temple in LA. Her identity isn’t just an aesthetic, it matters to who she is and how she moves through both Earth and Amphibia. It’s never forced, it just is. THAT’S representation.

And I’m not saying Luz isn’t important representation—she is. But as someone who’s always hungry for deeper, more authentic stories about people like me, Anne’s journey just hit so much harder. She felt real. Luz, while a fun and quirky protagonist, just didn’t have that same level of depth when it came to her identity as a young woman of color.

Compared to Anne’s cultural depth, Luz often felt more like a character with BIPOC aesthetics rather than fully realized representation. It wasn’t entirely absent, but for a groundbreaking show with an openly queer Latina lead, the lack of a deep cultural presence was a missed opportunity. The Owl House did incredible work with LGBTQ+ representation, but imagine if Luz’s Dominican identity was explored with the same level of care that her queerness was. That would’ve been everything.

Anne’s story wasn’t about being Thai, but her Thai identity was always present. Luz’s story, however, didn’t integrate her Dominican identity as naturally—it felt more like a label rather than a lived experience. That’s why Anne’s representation felt more effective (to me at least); it was simply part of her, without having to be a grand statement.

Anyway, this isn’t about tearing down one show or putting the creators on blast. Both shows did so much for queer and BIPOC kids in animation. But I do think it’s okay to want more.

Would love to hear what others think.

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Seven years of Badficniverse!! Wowza!!

Hey everybody!! Thanks for still being here with us seven years later!! You might’ve noticed that I haven’t posted a lot of lately and that’s mostly because of real life stuff and me being ready to move on from the blog! 

That said, I still have some submissions left over and some people want to still submit some fics to promote their fic. So while the blog is mostly done, I’ll try to post the rest of the submissions here there and I’ll leave the submission box open for anyone else. Just don’t expect them on a timely schedule, haha. (I know I really dropped the ball on them, life just got away from me. Sorry!)

So! Thanks for joining us!! It’s been great!! You’re a great crowd! Stay safe out there!

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Steven Universe is interesting to me because it’s got the most extreme dichotomy between ideas that would be better fleshed out in a show for adults, and ideas that are interesting specifically because they’re native to an unironic children’s show.

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I know this is topic only I care about. But bro reading people spread misinformation about 80s She-Ra literally makes me sick to my stomach. Do some damn research 😭😭

Like no the designs weren’t just for dudes to wank off to. Watch the Power of Grayskull documentary at the 45 minute mark to get actual insight of the design process. It genuinely makes me so sad that people will spew misinformation and disrespect the hard work, and fighting that went into the female characters. People watering it down to “man want to play with peepee” which it’s not only gross considering it’s a kids show. But incredibly disrespectful to the woman who made sure these characters were more then just pretty, and made sure their voices were heard when they did feel something sexist was brought up.

No She-Ra was not just an after thought created solely to get girls interested in He-Man. It was created because girls were already interested in He-Man, around 30-40 percent of merchandise sales were from girls.

And yes, the animation isn’t the best, but that doesn’t mean Filmation was lazy. They had a policy called “People before Art” which meant the animation was done in-house, rather then sourcing it from somewhere else for cheap labor. Which as a result was expensive to produce, and Filmation would spend more money on animation than any other studios.

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She-Ra, the unifier of the toy aisles!

👸🏼

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Greg Universe Is A Better Dad Than Stolas, But His Actions Are Treated With More Scrutiny Than That Bird Brain

It's funny how the Steven Universe narrative treats Greg harshly for his decisions regarding Steve while Stolas is given "he's doing his best" treatment each time it's apparent he's a shitty dad. Again what really threw of Steven Universe Future is when they rag him for not wanting to bring up his issues with his families for a good reason. The guys were control freaks and he didn't want that for his son. And again he did everything he can to help his kid despite not fully understanding his half Gem status. And funny enough he owns up to his mistakes when his son almost crashes their truck because at least he feels his son was secure enough to stand up to him.

However, that is with contrast with Stolas which the narrative tries it's hardest to absolve him of any wrongdoing even when it's apparent he's neglecting his daughter because of it. The narrative tries to hammer in the idea of how much of a good father he's shilled up as but never shows it in actions. He frequently thinks more of his boy toy than her and often gets distracted by his own petty slights against Stella and obsession with Blitzo. He makes a big deal about how much she means to him but in priorities he's push her aside to fulfill what he thinks is entitled to be happy. If he really loved her then the narrative would give him excuses on him cheating and why it was justified because she was hurt by it and still is. The narrative unlike Steven Universe doesn't seem to care how badly his actions affected her while Greg's actions are put under a microscope in contrast where the Gems seem to get a pass.

I am going to be honest I do think the narrative treats Greg harsher than the Gems who were doing more of the lionshare of baggage but get coddled in a way similar to Stolas. However, Greg is bashed for not taking him to the doctor even who knows what could happen along with proper school. I feel it same with Stolas whose issues are brushed off as just being a result of Stella instead of admitting directly he's the main cause despite the retconning. Stolas is kind of like a worse version of the Gems where their baggage they foist on their child isn't treated as that big but narrative but they project onto another character to keep them from scrutiny. And in so many ways it makes Greg and Stella the scrapegoat of the narrative so that their favored characters have the heap of issues pushed on them.

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you know, i like hordak as a character. he's interesting, he's likeable, he's a good example of an abuse victim who isn't overly infantilized and coddled by the narrative. his relationship with entrapta was cute, his relationship with horde prime was tragic and i like that he at least gets a proper confrontation with his abuser, where he is able to declare his own independence and get some closure from his trauma.

however, there are two main problems i have with his character (some of which i've already talked about but i want to go into more detail):

1. hordak was not an effective villain. heck, he was barely a villain at all.

you cannot tell me that hordak was the main villain of the first four seasons when the majority of his screentime was spent with him either lurking in his sanctum or canoodling with entrapta.. in his sanctum.

at first i thought that hordak was going to be this looming presence that had control over everything and puppeted everyone's every move, and was this evil masterpiece who orchestrated everything behind the scenes but.. nah. turns out he's just an incompetent manchild who needs a literal teenager with no battle experience to plan everything out for him. how did he conquer half of etheria before that? who knows? not important.

hordak also has no meaningful relationship with adora, the hero. there were actually a lot of parallels that could be drawn from hordak and adora both being raised by abusers who valued perfection over everything else. granted, in that aspect, hordak is more like catra but there isn't even that many parallels with him and catra. there are, in fact, more parallels with catra and shadow weaver or catra and horde prime.

and okay, not every hero and villain needs a deep intertwined relationship or complex narrative parallels. but at least give us something? a proper interaction?? the show even acknowledges the fact that hordak and adora have absolutely no connection with each other, when adora asks him why he kidnapped her and he basically replies with "lol who are you again". and then he just randomly remembers her at the end of the finale and it’s supposed to be this touching, emotional scene except you feel nothing because these characters literally never interacted, what are we looking at?

adora is supposed to be fighting the horde, but it seemed like she was just fighting catra most of the time. as the hero who opposes etheria's oppressors, shouldn't adora mainly be targeting hordak, the person who started it all? and shouldn't hordak, as the leader of the horde, be more concerned about the rebellion having an actual god on their side? i guess it doesn't really matter if said god can be easily defeated by a inexperienced catgirl

it just feels like hordak didn't have to be a villain at all. we only know he does horrifying things, because the narrative says that he does. oh, and he tortures catra once and sends her to crimson waste, so i guess that qualifies as being a villain.

the point of a villain is to drive the central conflict of the story. to oppose the hero and to pose an actual threat to the status quo. any character who doesn't do this is merely an antagonist. in hordak's case, i don't even know if he counts as an antagonist. he's like that one edgy antihero with a dark past where he murdered countless people but it doesn't really matter in present time. it’s just there to add flavor and to enhance his tragic past, because war is obviously a fictional fantasy trope and totally not something that has happened in real life. /s

2. like many other characters in this show, hordak's character almost completely revolves around his love interest.

yes, entrapta taking care of hordak and boosting his self-esteem is endearing. yes, hordak breaking his defenses and being vulnerable around entrapta is very sweet. but apart from entrapta, the only characters who have any kind of effect on hordak is horde prime and catra. and.. i guess, imp? but again, imp is mostly just a stand-in for the cute animal sidekick.

i know that hordak was supposed to be a recluse but it's impossible to believe that this kind of person was able to start an army and feed them with false propaganda. again, if you read my post about cults and their methods of indoctrination, you would know that cult leaders are often very charismatic and friendly people. and i know the horde isn't exactly a cult but we are supposed to believe that at least some of the cadets raised there genuinely believed that they were on the side of good, when their leader was a mysterious shut-in who basically didn't do anything substantial and their mentor/superior officer was just actively radiating Evil Vibes™.

i just wish they did more with hordak’s character and actually made him interact with some of the other characters. he doesn’t even interact with shadow weaver that much, and she was his second-in-command. even if it’s not direct interactions, it would have been interesting to see the characters mention hordak more, especially the ex-horde soldiers. apart from the general “oh no he’s evil and wants to kill everyone”, that is.

like we see people talking about shadow weaver. we see adora open up about her relationship with shadow weaver and ponder about whether there’s some good left in the woman who raised her. we see glimmer talking about how powerful shadow weaver is and how she could help the rebellion. we see catra complaining about how shadow weaver treated her in comparison to adora. we see angella talk about how shadow weaver shouldn’t be trusted.

when you think about it, shadow weaver was much more of a looming menacing presence in spop, despite not even being a villain, let alone the main villain.

even when she was on the good side and helping the princesses, there was always a ceaseless feeling of unease and fear, because we’ve seen what she’s capable of. we weren’t just told that “shadow weaver is sooo abusive, she’s bad!” we see how she treats adora and catra, we see how she manipulates situations and people for her own benefit, we see how she slowly starts to get into glimmer’s head. the show actually does a good job with shadow weaver, and i have to give credit where credit is due. shadow weaver was genuinely a well-written character.

hordak is just.. there, most of the time. he acts evil enough to be considered as one of the villains but he’s not actually a villain if you consider it for more than five seconds. he doesn’t really do anything for the bulk of the narrative, he has one kinda cool scene where he stands up to his abuser and then he just peaces out with entrapta.

i don’t really understand the point of taking a main villain of the show and turning him into this. sure, the OG hordak was more of a comedic villain and wasn’t super complex, but from what i know, he still played an important role in a narrative and his humorous moments made up for the lack of a tragic backstory.

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Don't even remember making that reply but honestly? Fair!

Andrew Dobson/Tom Preston’s Top 20 Most Hated Fictional Characters(2/2: #11-20)

#1-10 can be found here

Back in November of 2016, Dobson randomly decided to post a list of his list hated fictional characters. And of course, most of the reasons he gave for hating said characters was very…let’s just say it was very Dobson on him. This is the second of a two-part post with screencaps of his list of tweets along with a small bit of commentary from me on each one.

Dobson absolutely hating the rival/bully char-ARE YOU STARTING TO SEE THE PATTERN HERE?!

Sounds a lot more like you just hate people that you think are like Mater(which apparently are people who voted for Trump) and are just being a colossal asshat to be who are/voted Republican.

You of all people shouldn’t be talking about people looking like tools, Dobson.

Anyway…

Pretty sure he wasn’t popular at all and most people thought he was a dick. You’re not special or unique in that, Dobson. No matter how much I’m sure you think you are.

Rather odd set of characters to apparently have so much vitriol for…

He was a Noid. He tried to steal your pizza. Not that complicated.

The toy freaked people out, Dobson. Not the cartoon character. The toy.

Judging a woman based solely on her appearance? How sexist of you, Dib Dob. For shame…

This one admittedly confused me for a while until I remembered that the Koopa Kids were on that Mario DiC cartoon. And if he got all pissy about the Zelda cartoon not being canon…

There is no #20 because Dobson is even lazy about making lists.

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Jumbled Thoughts: Backstory Doesn’t Matter Like You Think it Does, Featuring Belos from The Owl House

“I grew up in a city where it rained eight days a week. My parents died before giving birth to me so I had to cut myself out of the womb. I befriended the rats until a lack of food made me have to eat them. I can still feels their claws on my skin as I ripped them apart. I- Hey, where are you going?” “I said hi dude. If you’re not going to do anything, I’m leaving.” “But how else will you know why I’m BROODING AND SAD!?” This is the effective paradox of the backstory to many of those who do not understand what the true purpose of a backstory is. To a lot of people, a backstory is one of the most crucial elements of a character. It’s how you can properly understand who they are, their motives etc. like that. Without it, the character is incomplete. Which… is untrue. Just period that it’s wrong. A character doesn’t need any sort of real backstory to be compelling. You want to make a moody rogue who doesn’t like people but goes on adventures? Then they can just be kind of a dick who brushes people off and is always looking for profit out of what he does. He doesn’t need a backstory more complex than “One day, I decided other people sucked and my bank account was what mattered.” And if the story is well written, that… won’t tell you anything that his actions didn’t already. His ethics and beliefs should shine through his actions and who he is as a character, not because the audience is told these things. After all, a backstory is always exposition. It’s always back fill. It’s tell, not show. This doesn’t mean backstories are bad. The reason a lot of shows go into backstories is because they’re open potential space. An adult character isn’t likely to bring up their family unless prompted and that suddenly gives you another set of characters, either the family, the people who hurt, or both, to work with that have a connection to the character you’re talking to. Knowing they come from having been a rebel in another country gives another country for you to explore the culture of but also the ability to send people who still want them dead after them. Now, do these backstories have to line up with the character? Yes, though only to some extent. A happy character can have a tragic backstory and have it just highlight how much they see the world with unending positivity. That when tested against the cruelty of the world, they chose not to continue the cycle of violence and that’s a theme you’re not going to get without going into their backstory. Likewise, if you find out a happy, charismatic character murdered a bunch of people because they wanted to and then committed a war crime to cover it up, you might not be able to see that character in the same way. It’s such a drastic departure from who they are that unless it’s intentional for allowing new stories because the party is officially with a psycopath, you just fucked up a character for no reason. A backstory is a tool. It’s a very powerful tool in the writer’s arsenal but it’s a tool far more than it is a requirement. After all, no amount of backstory will make a boring character into an interesting one. Which leads me to my example. Let’s talk about Belos from The Owl House. Spoilers for the show warning, etc. Belos is the emperor of the main setting for the show, The Boiling Isles. He is also a human who came from the human realm roughly 400+ years ago. He is authoritarian, manipulative and just an overall asshole who doesn’t care about people. In general… He does all of this with fairly muted emotions, standing above people and really not showing up in the show very often while still being the emperor. Philip, when time travel is done, is shown to just be an asshole. Period. An asshole with very few if any social skills who survives by the fact that he’s fucking around in utopia. So you have a main villain who has been simply granted power in one form of himself because the lore states he came to power 50 years ago (and no, the canon explanation does not come across as well written enough to not still be “People followed him because we say so and shut up). In his other, he gets away with shit because people are idiots and overly kind. As an example, he gets someone’s brother/best friend, it’s unclear murdered and the worst they threaten is to burn his journal instead of killing him despite them being mercenaries. And what does he do with his power? Or his trickery? Not much. He isn’t over the top after all. He just likes to look imposing, tell people the nice things they want to hear and that’s the majority of his interactions with anyone in the show for two seasons. That’s not a joke, over exaggeration like that. If that sounds really boring to you, welcome to Belos. This is also why he’s my example. This is a character who has just been evil and skating by for ‘reasons’ for over 400 years. He isn’t entertaining to watch, he isn’t a force of personality, he is mostly just there as the big bad. That’s fine but asking for a backstory about him, something the fandom for TOH has asked for multiple times beyond the crumbs we have… Is pointless. Because if the end result is this boring mush of a villain who you hardly care about anyways, no backstory is going to matter to fix that. Backstory is exposition. It is back fill. You cannot make someone who is unrepentantly evil, cruel, racist, etc. and above all else BORING anything else with exposition. You actually only run the risk of ruining other elements of your story. After all, a villain like this would need a backstory just as cartoonish as his blatant disregard for human life to excuse it. So then you make your primary setting have just done something truly, unbelievably horrible to him as to make him function. Make him sympathetic… But in return you’ve made your main setting come into question if a villain like this is a reasonable answer to the sin. This is what they did with Handsome Jack btw and Pandora was explicitly meant to be a bad, dangerous place filled to the brim with pscyhos, murderers, criminals etc. BEFORE he was even introduced into the Borderlands series. So what’s the best answer for Belos? Just move on. No tool is going to fix 40 episodes of doing fucking nothing and being about as black and white evil as you can get while being exceptionally boring at being that way. Because a backstory is a tool. Ideally for opening possibilities with a character. Who wants to bothering the possibilities in a character that the story itself has put so little effort into? The space there would mean just more interactions with a boring base. And that’s why backstories don’t matter like you think they do. Because you can have an interesting backstory and if the character sucks… They’re just gonna walk and find a different rogue to adventure with.

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Belos would have wanted to have a well-written, cinematic ending that would fit a show antagonist. It's actually a bold choice to hint at the villain being a 3D character and then subvert it. He wasn't born pure evil, but that's what he became by the end. His story and his POV don't matter to his victims, all they see is what he did, so that's all we get to see (portraits aside). Belos doesn't get to die crying and raging as his brother looks down at him; just strangers' feet and then nothing.

Update: So when I originally posted this I thought anon was serious. Turns out they were being sarcastic. My apologies for not catching this! However, I still see similar sounding comments that do mean what they say, so my point still stands. Below is the original post:

Gonna have to disagree with you, anon. Setting up a character to have more depth and complexity that ties in directly with the lore of the show only to "subvert" that is just bad writing. If Belos is just going to represent societal ills, bigotry, etc. then why bother with giving him plausibly sympathetic motivations? If you're not going to bother with exploring how people with good intentions can irrevocably corrupt themselves in the process then why even suggest it? Just make Belos a standard villain like Ozai and leave it at that. The message still remains the same.

Also, Belos was never set up to be a fully-fledged character; his role was the Evil Emperor and it was only in Hollow Mind that we got a glimpse of a deeper story. They then expanded upon that story in Thanks to Them and even showed Caleb's apparition in For the Future. Don't forget Gus triggering Belos' traumatic memories of killing Caleb and trying to recreate him with the grimwalkers. With all this set up, the audience expects a pay-off and there's nothing. Because it's suddenly Bold and Daring to have a villain who is thoroughly evil instead of the standard for most genre stories.

Belos' story may not matter to his victims but it matters to the audience because the show put all those details there and they add up to...nothing.

Sorry, but the idea that hinting your main villain is complex only to say he's not is just weird? What's the point in this?

Don't jerk the audience around like this. Characters are tools in a story; they don't want or deserve anything. But the audience should have a coherent story told and this wasn't it.

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I'm not surprised they killed Belos and portrayed him as pure evil even though I'd have preferred a redemption arc (or even him just hanging around as a wacky morally questionable sidekick puddle of goo). But I AM flabbergasted that there was NO payoff for the Caleb stuff. Like if you're not gonna do anything with it then why include it at all? Just cut out Caleb entirely and Belos is suddenly much more of a symbol and less of a person which is what they clearly wanted him to be.

A redemption arc was definitely not in the cards given his set-up, characterization, and effect on other characters (but it would be fun to explore in AUs!!). But yes, there was no real narrative purpose to Caleb, you could cut him out and it would have no impact on the overall story. The only thing it would impact would be Hunter; without Caleb, the show would either have to think of another reason for Hunter's existence or cut out the character entirely.

Caleb also didn't do anything for Belos' character except make him more evil since we never had a payoff to Belos' apparent guilt over killing him, which is just redundant since the story could just let his current actions speak for themselves. Don't waste time on a sympathetic angle if you're not going to follow through with it. We also never found out where Eda got the portal or even confirmation if Evelyn is a Clawthorne.

And the sad thing is, there was time to do this! Just trim down the Collector's arc since he's just a lonely kid anyway, why waste time giving him a tour of the isles when you could be giving the audience the narrative conclusion to multiple threads you've been setting up all season?

It's just a waste. :/

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One of the popular internet narratives about SU that always annoys me is the idea that Steven changed all the villains'/antagonists' minds by being nice to them and offering them friendship and that this is what makes SU worthy of mockery. Except I'm pretty sure the only person whose mind he changed JUST by being nice to them was Lapis. All the other antagonists, he had to challenge their ideologies and prove them wrong. Or in some cases, they had to choose to change on their own.

Exactly. Steven most importantly, listened to people. He wanted to know why people were hurting and what he could do to help. That's not weakness, that's strength. That's radical empathy. The show isn't naive enough to think that simple hugging someone or offering to be their friend is enough (in fact, I'm pretty sure they make fun of this idea). The Diamonds acted the way they did because they were a dysfunctional family and since they saw Steven as a Rose-proxy, they could open up to him about their feelings. Lapis was traumatized and imprisoned for an incredibly long time so of course she's going to be receptive to the first person who is kind to her. Jasper takes the longest to change and doesn't really do so until she sees the Diamonds on Steven's side.

It's so easy to dismiss someone because they have toxic or even dangerous ideas or because they truly hurt people. But I would argue that doing so is even more dangerous because it allows hateful people to grow in numbers and spread their messages. Only by understanding why people are drawn to bigoted ideas, how they can become enmeshed in one's psyche, and how to break out of that, can change occur.

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