Stream of Nonconsciousness

Congratulations to @blindbeholder for your name suggestion winning!

Thank you everybody who voted!

Cartoon Network cancelled the show. They viciously and intentionally fucked over Rebecca Sugar, Ian Jones-Quartey, and the entire rest of the crew. It is documented in the SU art books and in multiple statements from Rebecca Sugar that pushing for the Garnet wedding is what caused the show to get cancelled. The crew had to FIGHT to get any episodes past the wedding. There was supposed to be so much more.

I recognize that the social media team is not the same as the executives making decisions, but holy fucking hell is it a special kind of infuriating. The network won't support the show while it airs, they won't support the crew in their attempts to add queer representation, but the second they can use the cancelled show for corporate Pride promos? Better believe they'll try to take credit for being progressive and queer-friendly, never mind how many queer artists and workers the company fucked over along the way.

Let’s play the biggest game of kick the can on the internet.

Let’s play the biggest game of kick the can on the internet.

The show you like is telling a slightly different story than what you want? Friction is the same as pain so it is hurting me, AAAA!!! Your expectation of what was going to happen to that character you liked didn't pan out? Friction! Friction hurts! You're hurting me!!

But where the Disney Corporation can run a fucking angle grinder across the rash and barely provoke an "ow," indie creators (especially if they are not men), can get nearly run off the internet for things like factually answering a direct question or stating that the story they are writing has main characters.

There's a lot of misogyny in that, obviously, and in many awful flavors, but I think there's also mixed in there a very peculiar kind of consumer-brained entitlement. We expect that the big corporations will fuck us over every two seconds, and we expect to be utterly powerless to do anything about it because all they give a shit about is Line Go Up, but indie creators (especially if they are not men) are expected to be the balm to that infected rash. Where everything else in the world is painful and mean and uncomfortable, independent queer creators are expected to produce the comfortable swaddling bandage that dulls the pain and soothes the sensitivity. This is supposed to be our happy place, our safe place. It's supposed to be ours and belong to us and serve us.

And so they moment they produce friction, any friction, literally the tiniest amount of friction imaginable, well that's a failure! You are failing to live up to your purpose, and that's not just a creative failure but a moral and personal and spiritual failure too. It's a sin, in fact, it is a kind of evil. Friction hurts, and that means you are hurting me!

Which, to be fair? Yeah. That’s normal. Not all art is for everybody. I try hard to internalize this… there’s a really badly paraphrased Mark Rosewater quote about game design I think about a lot:

“Anything specific enough for a person to fall in love with must, by its very nature, be something that another kind of person doesn’t like.”

That’s not a bad thing. Everyone is different and if you try to make something that perfectly inoffensive to everybody, you end up with something mild and flavorless.