faelapis:

i feel like a lot of people are unaware of how they conflate forgiveness with complacency. like. i’ve seen so many su memes and whatnot where what they’re parodying isn’t really forgiveness, but a sense of complacency that doesn’t actually exist in the show. so they have to pretend it exists, in order to have a point about forgiveness being bad.

like. the consequences of allowing white diamond to help you are… good, within the show. it makes good things happen. it’s healing the corrupted gems, and dismantling the caste system in a way the gems beneath them will accept.

Originally posted by chickenwraith

but within the minds of people insisting forgiveness is bad… these things are not considered. there are only negative consequences - the diamonds just “get away with it”, to them. they don’t address how the caste system is dismantled, or how corrupted gems are healed. to them, it’s as if everything is still how it was. it doesn’t matter that the diamonds lose their empire, their purpose, or that their actions led to losing pink… all that matters is that they’re not dead. so they can’t possibly have faced narrative consequences.

it also doesn’t matter how sincere the motivations of these characters are. instead, it’s played like (insert character) is deliberately using steven’s personality to “get away” with it - they beg for forgiveness after committing some atrocity, and then steven just “gives it to them”, and that’s that. that’s all they see.

steven saying stuff like “this is your fault, so you have to fix it”? that doesn’t matter. steven first and foremost striving for a way to heal the corrupted victims, rather than befriending the diamonds? doesn’t matter. the gems in question genuinely changing, so keeping them around is useful? doesn’t matter.

Originally posted by themysteryoftheunknownuniverse

in short… it doesn’t matter that steven isn’t complacent, but strives towards helping as many people as possible. nor how shrewd he is in forging alliances - he doesn’t kill, so he must be a naive simpleton with no idea what he’s doing.

so… how do we talk to those people? because i’m stumped. and i’m tired.