i was reading a baby names site and i have never been more offended in my life #they were referring to the name itself but shh
So I didn't read the whole thread, but I went back a few pages and I noticed people expressing surprise that nobody recognised Steven in Future Boy Zoltron. I would have been more surprised if anyone had. Human characters' reactions to things Steven tells them about himself are consistently at the "oh, yeah, sounds about right" level, even when they really shouldn't be. Peedee and Mr Fryman are weirded out by Steven's catfingers, Steven tells them it's fine and normal, they stop finding it disturbing. He tells the cool kids that he is his mother and they don't see that as strange. He tells Ronaldo that he's a snake person and Ronaldo treats him as one, homemade costume and all. Kiki just goes with the dreamwalking. Sadie accepts without question that he's possessing Lars. (And just in general, nobody treats the Gems as noteworthy. They're magical superpowered immortal women, and that... just isn't a big deal. Greg brings Alexandrite to dinner and the Maheswarans treat her like any other mother-of-child's-friend. Ronaldo's the only one who sees anything odd about them and that wasn't until after he was insistently told there was something odd -- and nobody takes him seriously, even though it's true.) Steven was announcing that he was Future Boy Zoltron, robot from the future, so as far as everyone else was concerned a) that was what he was and b) it wasn't a big deal.
Will gem magic plus human organicness ever stop being so op that Steven can't keep bending the world to his will Spoiler montage of bismuth, jasper, eyeruby says yes :(
Well, it's not like Steven has a super-convincing power or anything. It's just catfingers and the mom thing and dreamwalking and possession are all things that make sense with what everyone knows about Steven, kid who hangs around with the Gems and has magic. And of course no one finds the Gems noteworthy - they've been in Beach City before Beach City was even a THING. They are a part of the world. It would be like someone getting confused at the existence of cities. The problem is not that a Beach Citier would look at a robot and go 'ok it's from the future that checks out.' The problem is that they are looking at a robot that sounds and looks exactly like Steven in facepaint and oven mitts and don't go 'oh hey it looks like this is Steven.'
Idk, ive had people not recognize me at conventions when they previously saw me in cosplay earlier that day, and im usually as dressed up as steven was in that ep(i dont like wigs so i usually dye my hair for my main cosplay).
I would even further notion the idea that maybe Gem anything is not particularly noteworthy in the world, or at least the sort of noteworthy that stumbling into a radioactive zone or a den of hungry lions would be noteworthy: these are things that in this point of human development and the involvement of Gems in historical and cultural events (possibly even thanks to Buddy's book) are recognized as existing and for the most part are looked at as dangerous and to be avoided until someone else can handle it. Or, in the case of the Crystal Gems, mostly benign but with no respect for property law whatsoever. Mostly, I'm just thinking back to the episode where Lapis traveled around the world. And, when faced with a flying blue water woman who's apparently flying around with what looks like a human child, someone's response was to throw a shoe at her and yell at her until she fucked off. (Also, that strikes me as a very NJ response to that kind of problem in the first place.)
Yeah but people at conventions are usually not people that you have known your entire life, and also are in a town that has like. 50 people.
Also yeah. Plus I mean, even if people have not seen a Gem? They've almost certainly seen Gem monsters, at least in books. I'm pretty sure that the US has not expanded nearly so much in Steven Universe just because large swathes of the continent are Gem-trapped or crawling with monsters or whatever and it just is not worth it. Probably there's signs up at specific locations with pictures of Gem monsters and big letters saying IF YOU ENCOUNTER THESE RUN AWAY. or whatever.
I do think it goes beyond that. Even if everyone accepts that the Crystal Gems are a thing which exists and that is fine, they should be celebrities. Beach City should be full of people hoping to see the strange magical women. I'm going to keep pointing to the Maheswarans -- they don't think Steven having a twenty-foot-tall six-armed mother is particularly odd, but we haven't seen anything to suggest giant women are a thing outside the CGs. (Hell, Nightmare Hospital -- Dr Maheswaran was insisting the fusion experiments were just car-accident victims, and they didn't even have heads! And one had three arms! That should have been a much bigger deal than it was.) But they don't seem to know who the CGs are, and Connie at least doesn't think they'll believe in magic at all. They do know that Steven isn't a robot from the future, though, and he's announcing that he's Zoltron, i.e. not Steven. If he wasn't so quick to introduce himself maybe people would have recognised him, but as long as they're agreeing that he's a future-robot noticing that he's Steven would contradict that. I mean, if I saw something that was definitely 100% a robot from the future, and also looked kinda like a friend of mine, I wouldn't conclude it was my friend. I'd figure it was a coincidence.
That's why I picked the word noteworthy over, say, strange: a radioactive zone or den of lions is noteworthy, very much so, even if it's not odd. But the gems don't seem to be known about at all except by people who've personally met them, nobody thinks they're dangerous, and there's nothing to suggest that things just as weird as them are commonplace enough that people should be that blase.
I don't think anyone seeing Steven-as-Zoltron was thinking he was an actual time traveling robot; they very likely assumed he was a street performer, and part of the performance was pretending to be a cheesy fortune telling machine. It is weird that no one seems to bat an eye at the gems, though. idk, it might be cartoon logic for the sake of story expediency.
My Watsonian view on this is that this is part of the "chameleon" aspect of Gem magic that I described earlier as being my headcanon. My Doyleist perspective is cartoon logic.
Why would the Gems be weird? They've been there forever. People in beach city who have been raised there have always known, oh, there's three/four magical ladies on the beach who fight monsters. None of them can remember a point in time when that didn't happen. And they've been involved in human history too, it's probably entirely possible to find poetry dedicated to Rose Quartz or whatever.
There has been classical poetry worldwide for all of recorded history dedicated to the beauty of giant pink women in pretty dresses.
I'm gonna have to agree that no one seems to think the Crystal Gems are particularly noteworthy/unusual, but I'm not going to bother with it. At least Beach City residents have the excuse of being used to it.
Yyyeah the Beach City residents being accepting of magic is perfectly reasonable, it's been a part of their lives for a long time, but it doesn't necessarily mean they think it's normal. Real and normal are two different standards.
One of the funniest things that's happened in the show was when Kevin figured out that Stevonnie was two kids fused together and accepted the fact this without any fuss.
Is there an episode link yet? I've started relying on getting them here since I don't have a TV at school :P
