Why I Love Steven Universe's Revelations
I was thinking about Steven Universe last night, and why it’s inspired such a passionate fandom.
I think part of the reason people connect to it is because Steven Universe’s narrative perfectly mirrors the experience of growing up.
One of the smartest Steven Universe episodes is Frybo, five episodes in: Steven, a small child, is being lectured by one of his parent-figures Pearl. There’s a magical crystal loose in the house, and Pearl attempts to explain why the crystal is so dangerous to Steven, starting to discuss the war – but he gets distracted, his own inner thoughts out-narrating Pearl’s, and eventually he nods and agrees because he’s too embarrassed to admit he doesn’t understand.
Which is smart because it makes it clear that none of the Crystal Gems are hiding anything from Steven – well, no more than any responsible parent would keep away from a young kid, anyway. They’re trying to explain to him what they think he needs to know.
It’s just that he’s too young to understand.
So Steven Universe is brilliant at putting you into the head of a young, cheerful boy who doesn’t quite Get It. We, as adults, know there’s more to learn, but we’re constricted by what Steven’s curious about, which isn’t much. And we’re also constricted by the way the Crystal Gems – his parents – are legitimately and responsibly trying to hide some of the more disturbing parts of their existences that he’s not ready for.
So when Steven grows, and starts to understand just how complex his family is, we grow with him. We’re surprised when we discover that what we have taken as our mother-figures are, in fact, individual and flawed people, and sometimes the parents fight and it’s not at all funny, and they have past trauma they’ve never quite worked through but are doing their best to keep it together because they care so much for Steven and, in fact, for this world they’ve chosen to guard.
And I think the reason Steven Universe resonates is that it’s that rare children’s story where we come to revelations at about the same rate that Steven does. In fact, I can’t recall a narrative – book, movie, or television – that unifies our understanding with the protagonist so beautifully. (Harry Potter comes close at times, but when it comes to this aspect of expanding our, ahem, universe, Steven Universe smashes Harry.)
And we’re so eager for new episodes not because of the plot, per se – which is standard space opera translated into splashy Cartoon Network battles – but because for us, each episode is like growing up. With each episode, we take one step into becoming a Steven Universe adult – one where we understand Garnet, Pearl, Greg, and Amethyst as we would understand another grown-up.
They’d all been simplified, once. Now we understand them better.
As Steven grows, so do we, which is why I can’t wait.
Why I Love My Wife
Three weeks ago, I ate at a three-star Michelin restaurant and won the Hamilton lottery. That was a day so good I woke up this morning and went, “Wow, that really happened.”
I did not drag my wife into that experience.
I’m still amazed that I did not drag my wife into that experience.
I am a man of bizarre passions, and I have long grown used to telling people “Hey, I want a beehive!” and having them go, “…what? Why?” I’ve dated a lot of women where I jollied them into liking what I did.
Which isn’t really me – it’s just what happens in relationships. I know that feeling of sitting and listening to a Tori Amos album and thinking this is all right, but the second I stopped dating my ex-fiancee I never put on another Tori Amos album on again.
That relationship-dependent fandom hovers between coercion and true appreciation, but doesn’t deepen into love; you’ll go with this TV show or movie or music or hobby because your partner’s really into it, and it’s got enough stuff you enjoy that you’re willing to tag along, but the relationship-dependent fandom is a fire that needs constant stoking.
And I kept expecting that with Hamilton, my crazy obsession, my wife would just Tori Amos out the moment I was out of the room.
Except when Amal held a sing-along at ConFusion and I had to go do some Author Stuff, Gini stayed and sung the entire first act, leaving because the second act was “depressing.” (It is.)
And she was more thrilled than I was when we won the lottery.
And she and I discussed Hamilton for hours on the way back in the car.
And the three-star Michelin restaurant, I’d feel bad about dropping a rent’s worth of cash on a single meal, except that when I tell stories about it she jumps in excitedly to tell about it.
What I love about my wife is that there’s not a lot of Tori Amosing in this relationship. When my wife jumps on board a fandom with me, she’s every bit the squeeing goon that I am. And we do have our separate ways – she doesn’t really get videogames, I don’t get gardening – but when we connect, her fandom is often fiercer than mine.
It’s silly, and sometimes inconvenient. (Especially when I wind up dragging her into my love of a truly schlock show like Ink Masters, and then Gini doesn’t have the time to watch it with me.)
But what we got? It’s real. And that’s why the Hamilton and Eleven Madison Park was one of the best days: we were in it together.
I love that. And I love her.
On Westworld, Pornbots, And The Decline Of Porn-Centered Technology
Yesterday, I watched Westworld, which Gini proclaimed to be “The dumbest movie I’ve seen you watch.”
I’ll accept that. Westworld is a 1970s film that’s basically Michael Crichton’s precursor to Jurassic Park – we’ve finally invented robots so realistic that you can’t tell them apart from human beings, so there’s a gigantic amusement park where rich people go to live out their fantasies of killing and fucking people. There’s Westworld, Medieval World, and Roman World –
And I know you won’t believe this, guys, but things go wrong with the robots and lots of tourists die when the killbots’ safety switches go awry. (Or maybe you saw the parody in that Simpsons episode.)
What I love about Westworld, I think, is how much it jabs my worldbuilding mode. This couldn’t possibly work, not if there were other humans attending. Sure, the guns are heat-sensitive and won’t fire if they’re pointed at a human body – but what about ricochets or bullets punching through walls? Shit, there’s a bar fight every day where the humans beat up robots, but what happens when a human takes a swing at the indistinguishable-from-other-robots accidentally breaks another human’s nose? You couldn’t possibly maintain a flawless illusion and keep people safe.
Furthermore, the robots – the most valuable thing in the entire park – are actually being shot and stabbed and wrecked every day. The movie shows the absurdly large staff of repairmen who are fixing degrading robots because people are firing actual goddamned bullets into these things. And I don’t know about you, but a business model based on “We shoot up delicate machinery every day” is gonna be more expensive than an amusement park.
No. What that would be used for is military training.
Anyone who follows the military knows that their primary goal is to get soldiers used to the chaos of combat. There’s a lot of debate as to the specifics, but somewhere between 30 and 70% of people will not shoot a person without extensive training to get rid of the reluctance to kill. Even if they’re in mortal danger.
Plus, there’s a lot of shock in combat. Watching your friends die is something that’s hard to train for. Seeing actual explosions that might kill you is hard to train for. There’s a military camp devoted to simulating urban combat right now, and they have an Iraqi marketplace that has real fake grenade launchers that burst in your vicinity and have fake guts laced with a fake smell of lacerated bowels that pop out when people get shot.
Strategic Operations would be all over robots you couldn’t distinguish from humans. And it’d cost millions to get each of ’em working, but the military has lots of cash.
There’d be no Westworld. There’d be a combat zone that gets out of hand.
I ventured this on Twitter the other day, and people said, “Naw, man! You know porn would be the first uses of these robots!” And unfortunately, you guys are behind the times.
Porn’s now the trailing edge of tech.
Time was that porn was the first use of every new technology – hey, VHS, DVDs, streaming video, all porn! But there’s been a lot of factors that have condemned porn to the shadows, not least of which is that credit card companies and PayPal have all decided to choke porn off at the source.
Wanna get paid? PayPal will freeze your account if they discover you’re using porn, and you’ll never get the funds. Most credit card processors won’t work with you. FetLife – the largest kinky social network – actually had to turn off its “paid account” function for several months because they couldn’t source a way for people to pay them aside from sending checks in the mail.
If you’re trying to make cash in porn, you’re starting out behind the 8-ball because America loves porn but hates to be seen watching porn.
And that’s a problem when so much of the leading edge of tech is scale – specifically Big Data and combining billions of bits of feedback to provide targeted results. Netflix’s and Google’s power isn’t in the idea, it’s in how much power they apply to the idea. There were streaming movies and search engines before, but what made Netflix and Google necessary was in throwing hundreds of combined servers into analyzing data and providing feedback that gives you precisely what you want when you want it. Google’s useful because it combines hundreds of factors when you type in “thai seafood” to look through your history and your location and what millions of other people finally clicked on when they looked up those two words to provide you with the best thai seafood restaurant within 20 miles of you.
If you’re a porn site, there’s no way you could afford that. You’d get shut down before you could spin up all those servers. There are a handful of sites that are attempting to be next-gen (Videobox, anybody?), but even their next-gen attempt at porn feels a lot like Netflix from three years ago.
(And that’s assuming that people would pay, when thieving alternatives like PornHub are available.)
Furthermore, the new technologies are much more sandboxed than they used to be. Hey, wouldn’t you think the iPhone would be perfect for new porn technologies? Well, it would be, but Apple won’t approve your app, so fuck off. Wouldn’t Google Glass or the Oculus Rift be perfect for titillating three-D porn? Yeah, but they’re not going to approve your app, either.
Most of the new technologies in place have locked out porn specifically because they know it’ll get their funding cut and/or won’t be family-friendly, and so the porn advance has pretty much stopped. Oh, there’s people out there hacking their vibrators the best they can, but the concept of the porn industry driving technology has run out of gas.
So I hate to tell you: if and when the indistinguishable-from-human-robots come along, they’re going to be spurting blood, not semen.
Don’t like that? Go yell at PayPal.
Be Brutally Polyamorous.
“I’m polyamorous, but my partner’s new to this. They say they’re okay with what I’ve told them about poly, but… I can tell they’re nervous. So I’m going to damp it down for a while just to be kind to them – I’ll go easy on the side-dating.”
Don’t do that.
Your kindness will rip ’em to shreds.
Because if you give someone an artificial trial period, one where you give them the faux-monogamous experience to make them comfortable, then all you’re doing is lulling them into a sense of “Oh, this is what it’s like.”
And when you start up the dating after a while, they’re going to be *even more* panicky. Because *not only* will they have the usual assortment of jealousies and insecurities that come when you transition into a multi-partner relationship, but also they’ll be thinking, “But… you didn’t date anyone for a year! Now you’re looking for someone else!
“What did I do wrong?”
And here’s one of the central truths about relationships: What usually scares people the most is deviations from the established norm. For example, I have a sweetie who’s a swinger: she goes to clubs and gets her itches scratched by all sorts of guys. She tells me about her scheduling problems organizing gangbangs. I think it’s adorable.
But that’s because I met her as a swinger. That’s who she was, and who she continues to be.
If my wife, who’s fairly conservative in who she hooks up with, suddenly started hitting the clubs every night, I would fucking panic.
I’d panic because my wife’s behavior would have changed, and I’d feel like maybe I didn’t know her as well as I’d thought I did, and wonder what I was doing wrong that she suddenly was into freaky anonymous sex. And whereas I know my sweetie loves me thoroughly because “gangbangs” were just part of our background noise when w met, my wife attending ’em regularly would be different.
Not saying I couldn’t get used to it. I could adjust.
But that switch in behavior is what scares people.
Giving them a “trial period” and then dropping the big change of “Oh yeah, I date other people now” is going to hurt someone unfamiliar to polyamory more. Often, a lot more. You are doing them zero kindnesses.
Because what’ll happen by then is that you’ll be so much more attached by the time you find out the other person said they’d be okay with poly, but really, turns out they can’t handle it. It’s not like this happened in the first weeks of dating, when you were soppy with NRE but also shallowly attached – no, it’s been months, you’re both emotionally entangled. To discover after a year that whoops, this whole poly thing is actually a dealbreaker for your other partner hurts way more.
If you’re going to be poly, own it.
Mind you, I’m not saying to go out and date someone you hate to rip off the band-aid! If they’re the currently only person in your life, cool, drift with that. But for God’s sake, if you were dating other people before, keep dating. Don’t give your trying-to-adjust partner the illusion that this is trial period is what they’re signing up for.
They deserve to know what sort of effects dating other people will have on them. Some of them will be every bit as cool with it as they promised. Others will need some adjustment, and hopefully you can fine-tune your caring to give them what they need without selling out your satisfaction. And still others will freak out so much that really, your choices boil down to “be monogamous with them” or “break up.”
All of these things are better to know early on.
So yeah. It seems selfish, but… be brutal. Show them what they’re in for. Polyamory’s not for everyone, and going out of your way to give people the impression that “polyamory” means “occasionally you flirt but really, nothing happens” can demolish ’em once the first dating happens. And if you drop that hammer after they’ve come to rely on your love and support, you’ll be one of those poly folks going, “How could they not know I was poly? I told them! Why are they shocked now?”
They’re shocked because you told them that what you were doing was what they could expect, and it wasn’t.
So keep dating. Give them as much love as you can. Hug them and let them know that your love for them is a unique thing that’s not touched by other people.
But keep dating.
Fare Thee Well, Mythbusters
So I’ve been reluctant to write about Mythbusters since the build team – a.k.a. Tori, Kari, and Grant – were fired. I just didn’t feel like giving Mythbusters any excess cash at that point, and “cash” involved giving PR to the show. So even though I remained a large fan, I kept it on the down-low.
Now it’s over, and I figure mise well have my say on the build team-free seasons:
They were kinda dull.
Now, Mythbusters is like pizza in that even bad pizza is still kinda good. And a show that routinely flattens cars with explosions filmed lovingly in hi-def is never going to be “boring.” But compared to its own canon?
The absence of Tori, Kari, and Grant really changed the energy of the show for me. For one thing, it made the show more monotonous – there were more “Jamie and Adam devote themselves to one huge task” episodes, and I always disliked those because if you found that myth boring, well, the entire hour was boring. Whereas in past episodes, they were more likely to switch over to another myth, even if that myth was like ten minutes total.
(And they kind of had to go with more mono-myths, because as Adam acknowledged, you had to do the same show with fewer hands. There were some builds I suspect took up all the screen time just because working with only Adam, Jamie, and nameless assistants meant it took a week instead of three days.)
But more importantly, Jamie’s not really a presence on camera. I mean, he is, but he’s a stolid guy who cracks the one-liners they give him, and not enough to carry the show. He knew that. This is why even though he basically fired Adam for being too sloppy in the workshop, when he got offered a show, he did his usual engineering math and said, “I’m not good on camera. Who do I know who is? Even though I personally don’t get along with him?”
So basically, sans build team, the “Adam and Jamie” show consists of like 80% Adam -and Adam is only endearing in measured doses. (Particularly in the early shows, before they edited out the friction at Adam and Jamie’s request, you can see why they get on each others’ nerves.)
I get Adam is super-thrilled by things, but the absence of the build team really demonstrated how much of what I thought of Mythbusters was, in fact, a balance. Yeah, Tori was frequently goofy and Kari was frequently cynical, but all five of them created a beauty in the way they interacted that really gave the show depth. All-Adam got grating, at times.
Bouncing back and forth between all of them really made the show magnificent. You didn’t like a myth? Here’s the other one. Adam getting on your nerves? Well, here’s Tori to get on your nerves in a different way!
And without it, well, there were still great moments – I wish the show had had the drone-cameras for explosions right away, and the super-fast cameras capturing shockwaves made for some awesome visuals. The cement-smothers-a-bomb surprise still makes me giggle.
But overall, the last season was comfort watching. Decent. Not great. And given that Mythbusters was slowly descending in the ratings anyway just as they were going with bigger and bigger builds, well, I can see why Discovery Channel did the math.
Still. It’s not dead. It’s like Harry Potter; everyone involved loves it so much, it’s not a question of if it resurfaces, but when. I’m sure in ten years there’ll be a big hubbub about the new Mythbusters and maybe Adam will have died (god knows Jamie can’t, that grizzled cyborg) and maybe we’ll get Kari back or maybe hell, Scotty will decide she wants the spotlight. All of those are good options.
But I teared up at the finale, which was about as good as a finale like that could get. Even with all the complaints I’ve given, I still did not want this to end.
Mythbusters has been a big part of my life with Gini. We became fans together, we loved it together, and now it’s gone. And I’m really glad they brought Kari, Tori, and Grant back for the reunion episode, because really, I think we all know how much they were missed – even the accountants who had to make the call seemed a little sad about it.
The show is too good to go away forever. It’ll be back. But I loved ya, guys.
Always will.
Hey. Thanks For Breaking Up With Me.
It’s been a few months – or is it years? I can’t remember now. All I can remember is that you left, and I just wanted to say:
Thanks for that.
You broke it off cleanly: no texts left hanging in space, no lengthening space between dates. No, you called up one day and said “It’s over,” and so it was.
That was good.
It didn’t make me happy at the time, mind you – if it was something I’d been seeking, I would have broken up with you. But even though you broke my heart, you demonstrated something worth showing:
You protected your happiness.
I had become someone you didn’t trust any more to look after your best interests, and out I went.
Because I loved you, that’s something I can – and should – respect. You weren’t the sort of woman to tolerate me in your life for years at a time, bemoaning all the problems I caused in the faint hope that somehow I’d improve. You gave me time to improve, I didn’t, and it was gone.
And to be honest, I wasn’t entirely happy either, was I? We were both sad and frustrated at that point, circling like punch-drunk boxers in the ninth round, hoping like hell that somehow we’d make it connect –
– when honestly, we never would.
You were strong enough to call it off with me when the goodness trickled low enough that this relationship wasn’t worth harvesting any more. That ending still stings at times, because you didn’t allow me to ride it all the way to the bitter end, wringing out every last droplet of happiness we could have had through long arguments and ugly silences. I’m still fond of you because there was fondness left when you clipped the vine.
Some days I clip the vine. I know how hard it is to look into someone’s eager eyes and tell them it’s over. And I know how much strength it takes to do the quick mercy of breaking up rather than running it into the ground.
Thanks for that.
I still think of you fondly, sometimes, now that the anger’s passed. Some days I wonder if we could be friends, and if that day happens when a reconnection sprouts organically, well, I’ll take it.
But for now, I have faith you’re happy. You were strong enough to guard your happiness when you felt someone else was pulling you off-course.
I support that act of protection. Even when it was me.
Steven's Dad Is Really Kind Of Rad, I Know It Might Be Bad But All I Am Is Steven's Dad
Steven Universe has a devoted fandom, and people choose their favorite character: the unflaggingly bright Steven, cool-yet-tough Garnet, the keenly broken Pearl, boisterous Amethyst.
And once again, I have fallen for my type:
Steven’s Dad.
He’s one of only two main characters in the Steven Universe who’s got no magical powers – and unlike Connie, the gem powers freak him out. He’s not cool – well, not any more. He’s scared a lot, uncertain, doing his best.
And just like Finn in Star Wars and Sokka in Avatar: the Last Airbender, I am rooting for Steven’s Dad so hard that I tear up sometimes.
Because none of these guys, mundane and outpowered as they are, will ever back down when it comes to protecting the people they love.
Look, I get if you wanna power-trip and pretend to be the Jedi Knight or the immortal Gem guardian or the waterbender. But me? I don’t have those powers. I’m barely mortal; my mental illnesses chip away at my sanity, and some days I break under the pressure. I’d like to believe that I was some crazy superhero, but in truth I’m so fallible, stumbling confused through life that the dream seems unreal to me.
But Steven’s Dad?
He’s got nothing. The man lives in a van outside of the car wash. He’s frequently foolish and needy. He has zero powers. Yet every time someone he loves needs him to be a hero, every time, the man steps up. Every time he’s asked to choose between cruelty and caring, the man chooses compassion.
He’s stronger than any of the gems give him credit for, except his wife, who gave herself up for her son. And he’s incomplete without her, yet he perseveres.
He doesn’t want much. But what he wants, he is relentless in fighting for.
And that’s me. I don’t have superpowers. I wasn’t a gifted writer when I started out. I just didn’t know how to stop. And some days I look at all the Gems surpassing me, these brilliant glowing talents, these beautiful creators who seem gifted with a sanity I never had.
I’m still in there, though.
I’m flailing. I’m uncertain. Sometimes I make a fool of myself.
But I will not stop.
And I see Steven’s Dad, and Sokka, and Finn, and they have no reason to be here. The universe was not made for them. They didn’t get the cool powers. They didn’t get to have people’s jaws drop when they revealed their secret magic.
But Steven’s Dad, and Sokka, and Finn, and me: we’ll make our own magic. We prove our worth by continuing to exist. We prove our worth by not becoming bitter. We prove our worth by rejecting envy, by standing tall with love, by supporting the people we can support with whatever strength we have.
I am Steven’s Dad. And I will sing my song for Steven.