#I interpret Dewey as bi

[memes-against-dark-joker]

Seiya: Goddamn it, the printer broke while printing out Dewey's birthday invitations. Mimina: Well, what are they supposed to say? Seiya: "Dewey's birthday". Mimina: So, what do they say instead? Seiya: "Dewey’s bi". Mimina:

Mimina: Works out either way.

[ayanak-archive]

I went through your dave tag and man, there were at least 2 people who still deny davekat being canon, and what a strange phenomenon. When fandom is big and popular male characters (bi dave, trans/not straight lars/steven, pan rick, doctor who, any ow guy, some popular anime/tv show dude, voltron dudes, etc) have possibility of not being straight/cis male fans start getting mad but don't have the same problems with female characters.

I’m not sure what in my Dave tag this is referring to, but yeah, there’s some deal of deniability with such things from cishet fans. Quick summary of the mountains I write next: female characters often face the same things; same-sex couples are held to much higher standards to be accepted; trans canons are almost non-existent, unfortunately; and headcanons sadly Aren’t canon, though people don’t seem to care when such headcanons are straight/cis.

Now with Davekat, we have something which has been confirmed by the creator as fact, so most of what I’ve seen in terms of deniability has been less people not believing that it’s true and more.. complaining that Hussie went that route, as if he caved to peer pressure and slapped on a gay ending to Dave’s arc instead of more realistically writing Dave as a character whose arc concluded with him moving past compulsory heterosexuality and accepting that he likes men. I think there could’ve been more build-up, but honestly anyone who complained was going to complain anyway, and it was a nice direction to take his character imo. I’ve seen the “it came out of nowhere” argument with many characters (girls too).

Pan Rick/pan deadpool/other canon but more Word-of-God reveals than clear in-canon relationships type reveals fall into the same bucket as Davekat (idk if Rick is clearly with men or not, I don’t watch that show), where same-sex relationships are held to much higher standards to be considered canon, but also it would have been nice if the creators did show us more.

Lars/Steven/OW men/Voltron dudes etc fall into a different bucket where they’re not really canon, they could be left open to interpretation, and they might not be intended to be interpreted that way at all. It sucks that straight/cis characters feel confirmed with no effort, whereas clear clues for lgbt characters “don’t count” unless we have something more substantial. People who don’t want it to be canon spout all day that there is no definitive proof (whereas their side doesn’t have proof either). I have shipped Korrasami since season 1 and I NEVER thought it was gonna be canon. I saw the relationship forming, I thought it was nice that they were at least throwing us a close friendship bone, but I thought they wouldn’t follow through bc at the end of the day, characters aren’t real and no matter how good together Korra and Asami were, without clearer confirmation from the creators, it couldn’t be considered canon (but then it was!!). 

Also, you said female characters don’t get the same treatment but I vehemently disagree. Femslash shippers get hit over the head with “they’re just friends” A LOT. Korra and Asami got it until Bryke confirmed it as explicitly as they could, Tracer and Emily got it despite kissing each other just straight on the mouth, supergirl fans got teased for their ship by one of the actors, even though they’re just having fun with it… my favorite book character is an adult woman who shows no interest in men ever, but when asked by a fan if she is possibly bi or gay, the author responded with “no and I won’t tell her you said that”. :(

When female characters ARE clearly into women- and I say this not to imply bi representation is bad or unnecessary- many people argue that well at least she’s bi, right? bc they still want to ship her with men… Korra and Asami? Absolutely bi, I would never argue that. Pearl, from Steven Universe? Definitely a lesbian, but because she’s never said the world lesbian out loud, people insist she’s bi so they can ship her with Dewey… I saw a discussion about Tracer which was “they said she identifies as a lesbian, which means she could be wrong about it and actually bi” (???). Again, confirmed bi characters are GREAT, but also I want to note that lesbian characters are accepted even less than bi ones tend to be, unfortunately…

Broadly, in my experience, straight men don’t want guys to be anything but straight and want girls to be straight or bi. Straight women either love shipping men together and could care less about women, or want het ships and don’t want either to be anything but straight. Trans issues are a whole nother bucket, where canon representation RARELY exists and cis people get so threatened by mere trans headcanons… this is broad, of course, but I see a lot of it. 

Sorry for rambling, but this is my extensive answer on the subject. 

[love-takes-work]

Rebecca Sugar on The1A

Rebecca Sugar was interviewed on the radio show 1A! You can listen to the entire thing here:

https://the1a.org/segments/2018-07-09-the-mind-behind-americas-most-empathetic-cartoon/

I thought some folks who won’t be listening to the interview might appreciate an outline, so here is an overview and highlights. Please note that there are some descriptions of racism and violence, and other potentially disturbing situations for some folks.

Highlights:

The show is something Rebecca thinks of as "reverse escapism."

Beach City is based on a blend of Dewey Beach and Rehoboth Beach, with an east-coast beach feel.

The Gems are explicitly described as nonbinary and as not thinking of themselves as "women" whatsoever, but do not mind that humans interpret them as such.

Rebecca Sugar is a nonbinary woman herself, and likes that she can express being so through these characters.

She considers her show a "gender expansive" show that is in part a reaction to the unnecessary gendering of shows during her childhood, which was alienating for her.

Doing this show and bumping up against expectations laid by other successful shows has made Rebecca determined to bring many important and historically ignored messages to kids.

Being compassionate is heroic.

The theory behind Fusions on the show was a desire to show how a healthy relationship can also be something cool and exciting.

Rebecca loves having an opportunity to have her characters express really intense, complex emotions that are so challenging to draw and so unusual to see on a cartoon character.

In response to mocking and sneering comments about how the show advocates "feminizing men," Rebecca says it's deeply sad that someone would feel that femininity is negative or that being able to communicate about emotions is weak. She wants kids to learn that it's good to be honest about feelings, and that many of the symbols we associate with power or weakness are arbitrary.

Garnet represents Rebecca's relationship with Ian Jones-Quartey, how they ran the show together like a pillar of strength even though separately they're more like Ruby and Sapphire. They wanted her to have natural hair, and to represent their own interracial relationship.

Rebecca and Ian were once physically attacked by racists who disapproved of their interracial relationship. That incident was influential in her desire to normalize the kind of interracial, gender-expansive relationship that's part of her own everyday life. "Stronger Than You" is about surviving those kinds of awful incidents.

In a way, making Garnet's relationship so cool is one thing Rebecca is doing for people who might otherwise grow up to think like those men. If she provides an opportunity to make relationships like hers seem cool and beautiful, maybe fewer adults will be motivated to attack them in disgust without even thinking about it.

Rebecca Sugar identifies as bisexual and learned to be more confident in talking about it openly through her work on the show and meeting people through it.

Rebecca worried that she couldn't talk about being bi because she'd be thought less trustworthy or as looking for attention. These are worries she thinks she picked up through media.

In response to a question about whether the show really is for everyone even though some identifying as conservative are put off by it, Rebecca claims that her show is honest and that's for everyone; that said, you can't make someone listen if they refuse to hear.

Rebecca mentions growing up on Disney weddings and wanting to show that a relationship like Garnet's could be just as wonderful.

We as a society focus too much on what victims of bullying should do and not enough on how to process feelings associated with hurting someone else. Bullies can be created out of people who make mistakes and don't know how to handle anger or poor decisions.

"Here Comes a Thought" is sort of a sequel to "Stronger Than You"--not just an affirmation of strength, but a peek into how Garnet became and stays strong.

Rebecca originally wanted "Mindful Education" to just be Steven giving kids a mindfulness meditation exercise because it's so vital to have these tools. She and her writers figured out how to instead show a resolution that used the tool.

Overview:

Please read the detailed description below.

The host of the show, Joshua Johnson, introduces the listeners to what Steven Universe is, briefly describing its characters with some audio clips to help. He then introduces Rebecca Sugar, who he points out is doing the interview on her birthday, and thanks her for coming. Then he asks about her background.

Coming from independent comics, Rebecca got her start in storytelling through her zines that she brought to small conventions, but then she had the chance to go to animation school (in New York). She fast-forwards a bit to say she bounced from school to Adventure Time to working on her own show. When asked about the origins of the idea for the show, she says it's a pastiche of everything she and her younger brother loved as kids. She describes the show as "reverse escapism"--that the Gem fantasy characters are interested in the everyday human world, and it's also a coming-of-age story for Steven since he is trying to figure out what this Crystal Gem legacy is.

The host then quotes a couple fan comments and then discusses Rebecca's upbringing. She shares that Beach City is based on Dewey Beach and Rehoboth Beach, where her family would vacation every year. They have to make sure the sun comes up where it’s supposed to with regard to the water on the show, because it's an east-coast beach and that's very different from west-coast beaches. In answering a question about expectations and reactions from the network when she pitched, she says she was invited to pitch something and figured if she got her own show, it would have to be something she would love doing, so she brought it in around her own childhood--enabling her to spend time connecting with that time in her life and helping her figure out what she wanted to say to kids--what she wished she had gotten to hear as a kid.

Rebecca explains how the eleven-minute format works well with what she was used to and how storyboarding works in a board-driven show. Boarders write and draw the episodes themselves, so they get a lot of creative control.

Next, they discuss the Gem family and Rebecca's philosophy behind that--why she wanted their family to be so non-traditional. She says each Gem is a representation of one way she related to her brother as an older sibling, just broken up into different people. As she begins to discuss the Gems being "nonbinary women" who are coded female that the male hero looks up to, the host asks her to elaborate on what it means to be coded female. She says they're more like nonbinary women but appear female, and do NOT think of themselves as "women." They don't mind humans gendering them, though.

Rebecca says she identifies as a nonbinary woman herself, and enjoys having the Gems as nonbinary characters through whom she can express herself. She makes it clear that the Gems being nonbinary is subtle in the show, primarily expressed through the way they interact with each other and the world, but that Stevonnie specifically is more obviously a nonbinary character, while the Gems' gender identity is subtler.

After a break, the themes of tolerance and love are discussed, and Rebecca says she included these in her cartoon because they're part of her life. Diversity in her relationships with others has enhanced her life so much, helping her see different perspectives, and she can't imagine why exposure to these things wouldn't make everything better.

In response to a prompt to discuss the LGBT positivity with regard to any shows that inspired her, Rebecca says there was mostly just an absence when she was growing up. She felt alienated because the cartoons she liked best were aimed at little boys in a heavily gendered world. When she got a chance to make her own show, she of course thought of wanting to make a show that appeals to boys too, because that's what SHE liked, but instead of doing that, she learned she could make a "gender expansive" show.

Then they go into opportunities to create shows like hers, with Joshua asking whether the variety of shows on Cartoon Network makes it easier for her to do such an original take on animation. She says definitively that NOTHING about it has been easy because "easy" is following in the footsteps of something that's already been successful, and that's not what she's doing. Now that she's seen what drives children's entertainment and why characters like the ones she wants to create haven't been included before, she's ever more determined to bring these messages to kids. Most notably: being compassionate is heroic.

Rebecca describes having "hit the ground running" trying to discuss relationships in a way that was cool and exciting to people who don't necessarily want to learn about how to have relationships with others. This of course leads into a discussion of Fusions: "how do you make a healthy relationship cool?" On her show, relationships can be characters. She wants people to get excited about the possibilities, about what it will be like to form a relationship with each possible outcome, but also how awful it is when it's a bad fit.

Joshua Johnson attests that the show sometimes slams into "emotional breaks" where the characters must deal with intense drama like betrayal or family revelations. Rebecca agrees that it gets pretty heavy sometimes and that she didn't want to avoid those topics just because it's kids' TV. Rebecca loves the opportunity to include multi-layered, complicated emotions for cartoon characters, especially since they can be so expressive, and you may not have ever seen a cartoon make a face like this. They touch on Mr. Rogers and how he worked with sociologists to convey messages effectively to kids, and Rebecca says she's started doing that too.

The host then reads some more comments from listeners--some of which are pretty negative. One commenter mocks the idea of "feminizing men" for a cause, and that is countered by another commenter who says being in touch with feelings is not a negative trait, nor is it a bad thing to be feminine. Rebecca responds that this attitude is very harmful. It's so important to see models for expressing yourself, to not stifle it, and that children should not be taught that it's best to hide their feelings. Though the Gems are not women, they're models of power for Steven that aren't typical macho power fantasies. He associates the color pink with his will and his agency. So many symbols of weakness and femininity are so arbitrary.

Johnson reads a message from a single dad who uses the show as a point of reference for dealing with his daughters' questions, and then he reads a comment from a mother of boys about how much she loves the music, especially "Stronger Than You." [They play a clip.] He mentions that a black woman with a big afro in their studio uses Garnet as an avatar picture because she identifies with her, and asks Rebecca to talk about Garnet as both a Fusion and a character. Rebecca describes developing Garnet with Ian Jones-Quartey, with whom she is "together," and discusses running the show together at the beginning even though he now has his own show. They very much wanted to include a character with natural hair, and always knew she was a Fusion who had to run HER "show" while staying together, much like they did.

To Rebecca, Garnet is incredibly important because she represents what she loves about her relationship with Ian. Ian is a black man and Rebecca is white, and with their interracial relationship has come some very frightening harassment and opposition. Once when they were holding hands in 2009, they were attacked--she was pulled away from Ian and held against the wall by three men who mocked her, and she thought about the experience a lot when she was creating characters to represent and normalize her "interracial, gender-expansive relationship." The song "Stronger Than You" is about living through incidents like that and not letting that ugliness deter you from being with who you want to be with.

In response to a question about whether Steven's empathy and Garnet's ability to kick butt are responses to negativity and harassment, Rebecca just says Garnet is a relationship that is cool and exciting. After meeting Ruby and Sapphire and seeing that they make Garnet, you know how right it is because you've already fallen in love with who she is before you knew the finer details. Her way of looking at that assault was largely to figure out what would have made those criminals think her relationship was cool if they'd seen it when they were boys.

Johnson then plays a clip from "The Answer" in which Garnet expresses confusion and happiness surrounding the newness of her relationship, and expresses that he spent plenty of time as a confused gay kid (who is now sometimes a confused gay adult). Rebecca relates as a bisexual person and says she did not come to identify that way openly and confidently until she met people she connected with through working on the show. She learned that her orientation is about feelings, not about the partner she ends up with, and that felt like she carried a secret she couldn't discuss. She feared that identifying as bi might make her seem less trustworthy as a partner since some people think bisexual people need multiple partners by nature, or that they just "want attention." These negative stereotypes were things she learned through media, and she wanted to create a counter, a place where people could identify with what she made and be able to talk about it in the contexts they needed. The show helped her talk about it as much as it helped viewers.

Joshua Johnson then asks a difficult question, bouncing off a comment from a conservative man who says he does not approve of the show. Does Rebecca think the show CAN have something for such a man, or has she accepted that not everyone can handle its messages? She says ideally reaching everyone would be nice, but just like with individual people, you can't expect to speak to someone if they just plain are not interested in hearing you. But Rebecca thinks there's no reason everyone couldn't be a part of the honest messages she's including. She's speaking truthfully about relationships as they are in her life.

Speaking about the wedding episode in "Reunited," which depicts marriage between the two Gems Ruby and Sapphire, Johnson points out that it looks like a lesbian wedding by most standards and wants Rebecca to talk about it. She says they'd worked on it for a long time. Weddings are a centerpiece of Disney movies--almost every movie has one--and she wanted to show Garnet as a wonderful relationship that deserves the same treatment.

After playing a clip from "Mindful Education" where Connie and Steven talk about dealing with terrible feelings, Rebecca agrees you HAVE to own your feelings, even the bad ones. The whole episode was to talk about mindfulness and conveying that concept to kids. People (especially children) need TOOLS to process feelings. Going on from that, Rebecca brings up bullying and how we talk about how VICTIMS are supposed to behave--instead of discussing bullies as an inevitability. We need a conversation about what to do with yourself if you have made an error or hurt someone. If you can express yourself and trust each other, learn to communicate, absorb examples of how to process bad feelings and learn to feel better, you can be a more content person, and Rebecca describes being shocked that this isn't more of a priority in kids' media.

Rebecca ends the interview discussing the original concepts and importance of the episode "Mindful Education," saying the writers disapproved of her original idea about Steven leading kids in mindfulness meditation, so they came up with a way to get viewers invested in a situation where mindfulness meditation helps. Garnet is the ideal mentor for Connie's and Steven's issues, and in a way the song she sings is a sequel to "Stronger Than You"--not an affirmation of strength, but HOW she became and stays strong. Then she performs the song "Here Comes a Thought."

[bookmonstereliz]

I've been asked to be a panelist for a mini comic con style thing at the library. I'm super excited, they want me to talk about fan fiction!!! One of the librarians asked me to write him my thoughts and opinions to narrow down my topic and I wrote a love letter to fan fiction turned accidental essay. Here it is, I'd love your thoughts and opinions! I love fan fiction, both reading and writing it. I've always been a big reader and movies don't usually catch my attention as much as books do, though a good tv show can grab my interest if it has a great concept and characters. I love fan fiction because it takes these characters and worlds that we fall in love with from books and movies and it lets us expound on them. Once my 45 minute tv episode is over I can sit down and elaborate on scenes that were hinted at or I can "fix" what they got wrong. Once the season is over I can still hold onto the joy and excitement by reading and writing about them.  After reading a lot of fan fiction I've honestly become more picky in my reading of published literature. I have a BA in Lit from USF so I hope I can tell good lit from the terrible! A large chunk of fan fiction is steamy stuff, but I think it goes beyond your normal harlequin romance paperback that's a dime a dozen. The tropes are different. The "alternate realities" are pretty formulaic, but they're unique to fan fiction. The most common ones I can think of are coffe shop au, college/high school,  soulmate, alpha beta omega (werewolf), fake married/dating, the list could go on. The characters and worlds are ready made but they're unique and distinct in each retelling. I read a comment recently that said fan fic is so satisfying because it doesn't have to waste time introducing the characters and worlds, most of the exposition is chopped in favor of action. Fan fiction is also interesting in how it's organized. In the library books are categorized by content- youth, ya, fiction and non fiction, and broken down further from there. Thank you Mr. Dewey! Fan fiction is usually categorized in two ways- fandom and feeling. Works are usually tagged as slow burn, hurt/comfort, action/adventure, fluff, or the beloved smut. These are the genres. I could go on about the tag system, but that's a deeper conversation. I think that one of the most important distinctions that makes fan fiction so amazing is the range of diversity. I'm on tumblr a lot and there's a lot of disappointment and anger over the lack of diversity in media, particularly on the screen. I find that fan fic offers a more well rounded female main character.  "Strong female characters" on screen and in Lit are often poorly written pitting strength against femininity. "I'm not like other girls" is a too common theme in mainstream media that can be harmful.  These characters are often two dimensional stale white bread characters. Because such a large section of fan fic writers are women, I think that women are more realistically and positively portrayed. The female characters in most fan fics don't simply want to be desired, they want to be cherished and appreciated as well. They aren't written for the male gaze, they are allowed to feel, think, and act out. I'm a big fan of the Avengers and my favorite fan fics are all in the Marvel universe, and they all center around one character - Darcy Lewis. Darcy Lewis in the movies is a rather unimportant comedic relief character but she can be found in an astonishingly large number of marvel fics as the main character. The most obvious reason is because she's a pretty blank slate, self insert character, perfect for shipping with your favorite male character, or female as the case may be. I've heard her described as the "fandom bicycle," a term which offends a big portion of her fan base. However, she has become more than just a proxy for the common female fan, she has become a beloved character on her own.  The collective fandom has given her a few basic "head cannons" that become a baseline for her character. She's usually pretty self assured, which is true in the movies, but in fics she is more independent. She is usually given the role of care taker and peace maker and in a large number of fics she loves to bake- probably because Kat Dennings role in 2 Broke Girls. She is often written as Jewish, and a whole lot smarter than the screen writers made her. She is not a skinny character, something a lot of women can relate to, and a lot of fics have her go through the journey of learning to love her full curvy self while others have her unapologetically love her curves. A common trope casts her as Tony Starks daughter, and deals with family drama, often having her use her privilege and position to enact positive change in the world. Each author adds their own spin, but she's no longer a two dimensional character, she has relatable feelings, desires, and flaws and usually she has to work to get Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes, Loki, or any of the dozen other males.  Fan fiction allows LGBTQ people to take beloved characters and interpret them as having different sexualities. Too many shows queer bait with their male characters or kill off their lesbian characters, and bi's and aces are rarely portrayed at all. This angers fans and fan fiction provides the perfect vehicle as they take their beloved characters and make them their own, or one could argue, they portray them as they should be. Things are not all perfect in this area of fandom, of course. Some argue that there's too much gay fiction as opposed to lesbian or bi fiction and blame straight girls for fetishizing gay relationships. While this may be true of some works, I think that most m/m or f/f works are born out of the potential chemistry in different character's relationships. Fan fiction takes place in the land of "what if" and plays out the numerous possibilities.  It's been pointed out that people of color aren't often as popular in ships as white characters, for instance some say people ignore shipping Finn and Poe in favor of Kylo Ren and General Hux. Personally, I think that there's room for both ships in the harbor, and I think it's great when people of color are recognised, sometimes inspite of the cannon's white washing. In The Avengers: Age of Ultron the Maximoff twins, who should be Jewish and Romani, are whitewashed and choose to work for Hydra- a Nazi group. A lot of works "fix" this. The same can be said for Harry Potter's Hermione Granger, who can be read in the books as black. Many fans envision Harry as Indian. I think that this is wonderful, because it draws people in as they engage in the medium; it isn't just static mindless enjoyment, it's inspired, thoughtful creativity.  Literature is a mirror for the human condition and fanfiction embodies regular everyday people holding a mirror to their dreams and desires using their favourite characters. It's not tailored for consumption and resell, it's an honest, heartfelt outpouring of love for a person's favorite characters and worlds. Classic literature speaks universal truths that haven't faded through the years. Fan fiction speaks to the here and now, it's fresh and new and portrays our generations desires, or caters to them. While there's a huge amount of trashy Fan fiction, there's just as much if not more that's masterfully written. No matter the level of skill the author has, they're all labors of love.

[memes-against-dark-joker]

Dewey: Wow, this parking is as straight as I am.

Seiya: I know I should be focused on the fact that you just came out, but how dare you insult my parking?