Steven Universe's True Power

The titular character of the increasingly popular hit show on Cartoon Network, Steven Universe has a multitude of powers.  These include the ability to form a protective bubble around him and anyone in his particular vicinity, the ability to summon a personal shield, he can alter his physical appearance to however old he happens to be “feeling”, and he has healing spit.  It’s a thing.

Anyway, I was watching a few episodes the other day, and then most recently watched “Nightmare Hospital” when I noticed an interesting trend, and a connection to Steven’s mother.

What we know of Connie’s mother is that she is very protective of her daughter.  She’s a mom, its part of who they are.  However she realizes at the end of “Nightmare Hospital” that Connie’s relationship with Steven will put her daughter directly in harm’s way, but she allows it to continue.  Why?  I’ll get to that.

Connie for that matter has a rather unusual obsession with Steven.  Its beyond friend, it’s beyond girlfriend; she learned sword fighting and was preparing to lay down her life for his protection. What?!

Roll back to “Joy Ride”.  The “cool kids” in town want to hang out with Steven.  These teenagers specifically seek out this 10-12 year old kid and actively want to spend time with him.  Why?  Wait for it…

Let’s look at the various times Lars and Sadie hang out with Steven, even allowing him a certain level of leeway when it comes to his antics, usually with Sadie taking the sympathetic lead.  Lars can be a douche, but he still follows Steven’s call.  Why?  Are you starting to see a pattern?

The family at Fish Stew Pizza, Peede and Rolando’s dad, even Mayor Dewy (the highest elected official in the town), they all will take cues from Steven who, as stated earlier is somewhere in the range of 10-12.  Now this could easily be chalked up to standard kid’s show story telling.  Obviously when you are appealing to a kid’s demographic, you want a kid to be your most important character, but if we turn a corner, we find something interesting.

Rose Quartz.  Pearl is so wrapped up in who Rose was she devoted her entire life to her.  Garnet left Homeworld to be by Rose’s side.  Amethyst, a gem grown on Earth hitched her wagon to Rose’s star even though she was probably being grown to be part of an army for Homeworld.

We find out a very small clue in Jail Break when Jasper says “Nothing is more important than Rose Quartz…”  We know through storytelling and exposition that the Gems have been on Earth for literally thousands of years, that entire time separated from Homeworld, but thousands of years later and still Rose Quartz is a priority.  Why?

Because of Rose, and by extension Steven’s true power; the power to inspire people.

I know that sounds very schlocky, but it’s a very real thing.  That power exists and it’s not within everyone.  Martin Luther King Jr had it.  Martin Luther, during the Catholic Reformation period had it, John F. Kennedy had it, kings and queens across the ages had it.  Ghandi and other holy men across history had it.  It’s a power to draw people to your side, to draw them to your cause, to make them feel like they are more important now than they ever have been and that everything in their lives have led up to this moment, to whatever this cause is.

Adolf Hitler had this power.  Osama Bin Laden had it, Charles Manson had it, David Koresh had it, and they, along with countless others across history had drawn masses to their agendas using this same power. 

That is why, after thousands of years of silence, the very idea that Rose Quartz could still be active sends chills up Homeworld’s spine.  That power, the power to inspire a revolution, is probably the most dangerous power of all.  And it all makes sense when you apply it to Steven.

Why do all these people believe in Steven when common sense and their eyes tell them they should probably get as far away from him as possible?  He’s a target, a trouble magnet, but they follow him into life threatening situation after life threatening situation because he inspires them.  By being next to him, by having him in their lives, they feel they are part of something greater.  To pull a line from Pearl about Rose Quartz, Steven makes them feel like they are “Everything…”

 

Thanks for reading.

What is Love to the Joker?

I recently stumbled on a question on the DC page, and I was going to comment on it, then found myself doing what I usually do, writing way too much for a casual comment.  So rather than do that, I thought I’d address this here.

Question: Do you think the Joker is gay?

At first this is a very “left field” question because just about everyone, even the most causal DC fan knows who Harley Quinn is.  The Joker has to be straight because she’s the Joker’s girlfriend.

Or is she?  In the cartoon it’s all but explicitly stated that the Joker uses Harley as a means to an end, and even when she’s trying to make overt sexual advances on him he pretty much keeps her at a distance.  His relationship towards her goes from playful banter, to neglect, to outright physical abuse at one point nearly killing her.  There’s no indication that they have any kind of relationship beyond that.  He spends at least one episode discussing the “relationship” he and Batman have, but never once addresses his “relationship” with Harley.

Now the problem with trying to pigeon hole the Joker’s concept of sexuality is he doesn’t necessary play by the same psychological rules as you and I do.  Most conventions dictate that for a human to be psychologically sound they need to have a secured source of food, a safe place to take shelter, and a means to let off sexual frustration.  This last part is because there is a huge mess of chemicals that swim through the brain when someone climaxes sexually.  Even the worse of living arrangements are deemed acceptable due to this flood of momentary ecstasy.  But the Joker doesn’t play by those rules necessarily.

The Joker takes shelter in seemingly random locations, usually abandoned factories or carnival locations.  These are not secure or safe.  We don’t really know about his source of food, but he doesn’t strike me as the kind of character to frequent grocery stores or restaurants, especially with a fluctuating income, so he probably doesn’t care about having a secured source of food.  Given that the first two of the trifecta aren’t being met the same way we meet them, chances are he’s given the same kind of attention to the third.

It’s possible that the way the Joker’s brain is wired; these conventions are awkward and uncomfortable to him.  People with Asperger’s or high functioning autism don’t function the same way socially that other people do.

*For the record I am in no way saying the Joker has Asperger’s or autism, it’s just an example.

Physical intimacy for some people is just uncomfortable.  The Joker just appears to have a ramped up version of this where all social conventions are uncomfortable.

We do know one thing that the Joker is always going to return to though, Batman.  He wants Batman’s full attention.  He competes with other criminals and even the Robins to keep Batman’s focus.  So what is a fundamental part of any sexual relationship?  Attention.

We want attention from our partners.  We want to be their entire focus.  Many new fathers go through a period of intense resentment towards newborns because their wives spend so much time focusing their attention towards the baby that the dad goes unattended.  Is this resentment deliberate?  No, it’s entirely subconscious, but it also states what we want on a very basic level.  We want to be our partner’s focus.  That’s what the Joker wants.

So does that mean the Joker is gay?  Not necessarily.  He wants Batman’s attention and it’s likely during the beat-downs, the violence that occurs during apprehension, that the same chemicals that go off in our brains during orgasm go off in the Joker’s brain.  Notice that he always ramps up his crimes, getting bigger and bigger, with a higher and higher destructive toll or body count.  That way the violence will be equal or greater to what he received the last time.  In a sense, the Joker’s crimes are his version of foreplay.  However the real question is, would this be the same if Batman was “Batwoman?”

I theorize yes.  If Bruce had been born Beatrice Wayne and she grew up to be the first Batwoman and delivered the same level of violence towards the Joker, he would have the same response. 

To ask if the Joker is gay is the same as asking if his brain works the same way ours do.  Clearly it doesn’t.  The entire base for his psychology is way off.  Also it’s not like any superhero could replace Batman for him.  It starts with Batman, which is why if Batman were Batwoman, she’d have to be the first hero he faced off against in order to establish that same connection.

Does that mean, since Joker received sexual pleasure from violence, that’s how he sees Harley and when he abuses her that’s his way of having sex with her?  No.  Joker has a clear understanding that violence is violence.  He knows that if he throws Harley or any of his henchmen into oncoming traffic, he’s not having sex with them; he’s trying to kill them.  He doesn’t have sex with violence; he has sex with violence from Batman.  Further in books like “Arkahm Asylum: A Serious House on a Serious Earth” and “The Killing Joke”, he has a clear understand of sexuality, and its corrupted forms such as rape.  He uses jokes and attacks to get a rise of out Batman in these stories, again to illicit the violence he craves.

Well, this certainly has been a dark one.

Thanks for reading.

A Day Worth Remembering, 9/11

Today is not a day of celebration.  Today is not a day of parades and fireworks.  Today is simply a day of remembrance.  I know at least Facebook has called for a moment of quiet reflection concerning today, but what is today…what is so important about today?

It’s September 11^th, 2015, fourteen years to the date of one of the worse acts of war time violence to befall our nation in over a hundred years.  September 11^th, 2001 hijackers affiliated with Middle Eastern terrorist forces came across U.S. borders and high jacked four airliners, each full of passengers.  Two struck the World Trade Center, the very hub of capitalism not just for the United States, but for most of the civilized world.  The third struck the Pentagon, the hub of national security for this nation.  The fourth saw the passengers overrun the highjackers and the plane crashed in a Pennsylvania field, killing all on board.  The total death toll was 2,997.  The number, in the grand scheme of things, doesn’t seem that large, however it was what it did psychologically to the United States that was really damaging.

Some people are just not going to "get it".  This was an act of war that took place in major cities in the United States.  At the time it scared the hell out of the nation, and it should still scare us.  Its evidence that we are not isolated in the world, that the problems that affect the world at large will cross over the ocean and come straight for us if they want to.  It was evidence that our borders are not secure.  It was the worst act of war seen on U.S. soil since the American Civil War.

I was a records clerk working for the Corpus Christi Police Department in Texas some 2000 miles away from the event itself.  I was in the officer's briefing room picking up police reports that needed to be filed when I noticed it was oddly quiet.  There was no cop humor, no jokes, no giving fellow officers a hard time.  It was just quiet.  I looked up at the television situated in the room and saw the second plane hit the World Trade Center.  It was a live feed...I suddenly realized I was watching people die...and there was nothing anyone in that room could do.

We all identified with the brave officers and fire fighters who charged into a crumbling skyscraper to rescue complete strangers, even at the cost of their own lives.

But the difference is, I was old enough at the time to understand what was happening.  I was old enough to realize that the United States' sense of security had just been shattered.

As you go through your day, don't be too mad at people who don't get it, or who willfully make jokes about it...they don't understand what we lost that day.  Maybe they're too young, or maybe they just choose to buy into the pop culture that says everything is fine and that nothing really matters.  Kindly, and I mean that; kindly educate them about what that day meant.  Share your story of where you were when you first found out that freedom has a steep price.

I'm going to leave you with a quote from John Stewart who as host of the Daily Show based out of New York had a very personal connection to those events:

“The view from my apartment was the World Trade Center. And now it's gone. And they attacked it, this symbol of American ingenuity and strength and, and labor and imagination and commerce, and it is gone. But you know what the view is now? The Statue of Liberty. The view from the south of Manhattan is now the Statue of Liberty. You can't beat that."

If you don't get the metaphor, I'm sorry for you, because you've grown up in a very jaded age indeed.

 

Thank you for reading…and have a good day.

How Old is Steven Universe Suppose to Be?

I was thinking about this the other day and I kept looking around for all sorts of information because some things just never added up.  Just how old is Steven?

The common answer I get is “between 10 and 12” based on his physical size and behavior, but there’s a flaw in that logic.  It’s not a crippling flaw, but it is a flaw.  In the episode “So Many Birthdays” we discover that Steven can subconsciously alter his physical age and mental state by “thinking” of himself as being older.  This is likely tied into the Crystal Gem’s latent shape shifting abilities, but it pokes a hole in the theory that his age can be estimated by his physical appearance.

Now skip ahead to “Lion 3: Straight to Video” where we really get to see Rose and Greg together.  This is important; I’ll come back to it shortly.

In “Alone Together” we have a flashback where Greg tells Steven about the first time he witnessed Gem fusion.  In that sequence everything about the attire to the technology available screams “1980’s”.  Later in “Story for Steven” we see in a flashback Greg meet Rose and the Gems for the first time.  Given the limited view of the technology presented in the scene, and the attire adopted by the Gems, this looks to be about the mid to late 1980’s.  So we’ve now seen in flashback the blossoming of Rose and Greg’s relationship and given that there is little to no visual change between the events of “Story” and “Alone” we can assume this took place over a matter of months to less than a year.

Let’s go back to “Lion 3”.  Visually, Greg and Rose don’t look that different from how they are presented in “Story” and “Alone”, meaning little time has passed since those events.  Rose indicates that Steven will be born soon and she is leaving this message on a VHS tape which was the media of choice of the late 1980s to early 1990’s, which would place Steven’s birth right around 1991-1993.

That place’s Steven’s age somewhere in his early to mid 20’s.

Now the obvious question is: Wouldn’t someone in Beach City notice that Steven never ages?

No really.  He hangs out with the Crystal Gems most of the time, and there is no telling how long he was doing that before he ever tried to integrate into Beach City society.  This is however somewhat supported by Greg’s appearance.

Greg looks to be in his mid 20’s during the flashbacks, and probably about 45-50ish in the modern era, which leaves a huge gap.  It’s one thing for someone to change drastically on a physical level between 20-30, but it’s more reasonable for that much physical change to happen over two decades of life on a beach.

I’ll grant that this theory hinges on one major assumption: that time in the Steven Universe reality is concurrent with our own and that fashions and technology have changed and advanced in respect to their era for our time.

Rebecca Sugar strikes me as someone who never wastes space on the screen.  Background characters come to the forefront all the time and little details are put in set pieces for a reason.  So Steven could have lived the last ten years as a pre-teen, a veritable Peter Pan of the Crystal Gems, but looking at the whole, does that really matter?

Yes, I’ve let my mind buzz on the topic, but it really boils down to “How old is Steven?” as old as he feels.  It doesn’t matter if he’s 12 or 22 or if he lives to be 122 because he’s going to be the person he wants to be.  Let’s face it, if you could have lived out a few more years as a pre-teen, wouldn’t you?

Thanks for reading.