I've got a lot of feelings...

A lot of them say to avoid stressful interventions such as group confrontations, avoid confrontations that are too challenging for the client at their current mental state, and avoid direct confrontations with clients who have a history of being physically assaulted because they may instinctively feel like it’s a prelude to being attacked…

… Whoops.

There was a lot of info on how to get people to be open to talking about their trauma and receiving help, and I don’t want to go on a huge tangent about it, but a lot of it was about providing an environment where the person feels safe and building trust with them, and then giving them the tools to express themselves in a way that they’re comfortable with.

It was interesting to read cause I’ve been thinking of how the gems could have done things differently and tried to address the problem without pushing Steven to go nuclear like they did in canon. I’m thinking a big thing they could have worked on was building trust so Steven could feel safe talking to them, since he obviously didn’t, considering what he said in Prickly Pair. Likely due to bad past experiences when they were having their own issues and didn’t always handle it well in regards to him.

And don’t get me wrong, the gems were trying to help him. They did notice that he was struggling. They told him they cared and that he could talk to them. But I think the problem was that they hadn’t built that trust he needed to feel safe doing so. He even had multiple experiences where he tried to open up or seek help but they backfired on him, like with with Cactus Steven, Garnet, and Greg. They ended up betraying Steven’s trust in certain ways, even if it was done unintentionally. Cactus Steven couldn’t maintain Steven’s privacy, Garnet prioritized teaching him a lesson over listening to him, and Greg ended up projecting his own past issues onto Steven in a way that made Steven feel alienated. All things professionals are told to avoid doing. To be fair, Cactus Steven gets a pass because he was just a sentient cactus who was born like two days ago, but that doesn’t mean Steven wasn’t negatively affected by it, and the other experiences would have added to that and compounded the issue. Then after everything that happened in Mr. Universe when Steven was in a really bad place mentally it was followed up by Jasper nursing the idea that his friends and family don’t understand him and can’t help him.

But I think everyone embracing him, accepting him, and loving him in his worst moments, even when he’s literally a giant monster, is a good way to start countering some of that, and it can allow them to start building a new foundation for him to feel safe and supported in the future.

not because the show is bad, but because sadly, many fans seem to have been slowly brainpoisoned over time to kinda agree with the premises laid out by its worst critics, they just think you should give the show the benefit of the doubt anyway. they agree with common bad faith talking points, they just dismiss its seriousness with an attitude that boils down to “c’mon, it’s a diverse kids’ show, give it a break.” 

…which, to the committed hater, kinda makes for a weak defense! 

part of why i consider doing a Great Big Defense Video someday is because i would not meet those ranters halfway at all. i would actually question their premises instead of taking them for granted. i don’t fall for “redemption bad”, or “the characters need to be more traditionally sympathetic to Earn their redemption”, or “too much redemption.” 

if anything, SU should have more redemption, for even more unlikeable people, because it rests on a principle of restorative justice, not on the mercy of / personal, emotional forgiveness of the victims, which can in fact contradict what is best for society and what is moral. you being a victim doesn’t mean your sense of justice is always correct. that is the tough pill to swallow steven experienced in homeworld bound - seeing how the diamonds were 100% doing good for society and improving people’s lives, while also having complex and trauma-induced negative personal feelings about them. 

that’s really good and well-written, actually. and you almost never see it in traditional redemption narratives! those are usually all about the forgiveness of the victims: gaining an individual’s trust. being at their personal mercy. the protagonist’s “choice” over whether to forgive. like how often AtlA is defended by saying it’s about aang’s culture and individual “choice” in whether to kill. or saying zuko’s is a good redemption because he suffers enough to be sympathetic, so we’re attached to him and he’s friends with our protagonists. 

it all becomes personal, emotional, their fates at the whim of our heroes… those individuals given authority to decide that for everyone. there’s no wider sense of societal gain, morality or principle in that kind of of redemption. the moral authority of our main characters is never in question.