Tilgoreth

On 5/17/2017 at 6:50 AM, Lambdadelta said:

What bothers me the most in that episode is how long Rarity hadnt spent time with Sweetie Bell... Cart Before the Ponies?

I forgot about that. Though it is hard too say how much time has passed since then. Espexially since it seems that the photos in Rarity's scrapbook were from when Sweetie was closer too being seven or eight. So about how old she was at the start of the show. I guess it is also a little weird that the CMC can help so  many people, when they still have too go too achool for at least eight hours a day.

On 5/13/2017 at 9:31 AM, Lambdadelta said:

Let see what you can do =]]

Hey I just posted the first review.

Reading books decreases aggression and reduces stress. It reduces crime, and helps prevent insomnia before bed. 

 

People get angrier with less brain function usually, it can be diet related, poor sleep, no exercise, too much alcohol or caffeine, a drug side effect, etc.

 

Also, hating bullies is pretty normal. This is why I offer the reading books(or even fanfics) idea. It is probably your primary source of stress. 

 

Also objectively life might have no value, but I think, objectively, life is less frequent than non-life, so its pretty basic to say life is more rare and thus superior. If you think the world is bad watch

 Also watch comedy, its really good to cope with insomnia and stress in my experience. 

 

Also boredom is a primary factor in breaking the law, acting up, etc. So if you have good hobbies, you could probably handle the bullies a little better. 

 

Also bullies pick on people they learn won't fight back or speak up. Because they are cowards, because they are bullied from their immediate family. If you stand up for yourself it may get worse before it gets better, but it will teach them to find a different target. Unless they enjoy your resistance, or the price of standing up for yourself is too high.

 

Also the depression n stuff I used to get from just watching anime, not exercising, laying around in bed all day, staying up too late. Fix that stuff, and you will feel better.

I'll definitely say a prayer for your success is forging your path ahead.And hey, I would recommend talking to a therapist or counselor. There's still an existing stigma that your have to be a barely functioning nutter to see a therapist, but that really not true. I think most "normal" people would indeed benefit from having some sessions with a professional dedicated to listening and helping sort out their feelings and thoughts. Find one nearby in your healthcare plan and see about a weekly or bi-weekly visit.

I'll definitely say a prayer for your success is forging your path ahead.And hey, I would recommend talking to a therapist or counselor. There's still an existing stigma that your have to be a barely functioning nutter to see a therapist, but that really not true. I think most "normal" people would indeed benefit from having some sessions with a professional dedicated to listening and helping sort out their feelings and thoughts. Find one nearby in your healthcare plan and see about a weekly or bi-weekly visit.

As Hazard Time pointed out, sex and gender are two different things: sex is biological; gender is a social construct. It's a bit grating to see the Steven Universe wiki list the Gems as genderless when they are in fact sexless -- at least by default. They clearly identify with the feminine gender, likely due to using the Diamonds (the Gem matriarchs) as their archetypes. The show has made it clear that the Gems have a strict hierarchy indicative of a developed, if stifled, social system; therefore, however it came about, Gems -- apart from Steven -- consider themselves female, if only an a social sense.

 

Peridot describes Gems as primarily designed for conquest, it's true, but I wonder if she's vastly oversimplifying their overall "purpose". From her perspective at the time, certain Gems were tasked with particular roles without any possibility of change. If we assume the Gems initially developed organically and were not artificially created, then we can at least deduce that they naturally possess a high level of tolerance in exchange for specialization. Although both their survivability and specializations have resulted in the Gems creating an intergalactic empire, it isn't necessarily indicative why Gems may exist in the first place. It would be like studying human development backwards by beginning with modern human society: you might conclude humans developed in order to conquer, reproduce, and exploit resources -- not unlike the Gems. Analyzing their current state can't tell us everything about their origins.

 

In short, to claim it's illogical for the Gems to have social constructs like gender assumes a great deal about them when our information remains limited. It's even unclear if they've made contact with other intelligent beings (apart from humans) in the universe. As for why they appear so aesthetically human, it's worth keeping in mind that humanity may have derived much of its aesthetics (i.e., clothing and architecture) from contact with Gems, not the other way around. We tend to load the deck by using terms like "humanoid" to describe their appearance, despite the fact the Gems were presumably humanoid prior to coming to Earth.

You said we don't understand the gems origins. That at one point they could have been organic. That they are such and advanced species they where able to shed their physical bodies in favor of one's composed of light. Making them virtually immortal. Assuming they had organic origins they could have also reproduced a sexually. There would be no definitive way to say they reproduced sexually.

But even if they reproduced sexually it doesn't necessarily mean male and female. They could have a third gender. But no matter which way you conceive they reproduced while they where still organic, it doesn't account for why they are all made to be female now. If they had organic origins and reproduced sexually then why aren't there male gems? Or even if they where asexual. That would make even less sense as to why they where female.

I don't like the idea of the gems being the ones who shaped humanities future. They use it to say "oh their wasn't a god! It was just these aliens that we used to worship!" That's so stupid and such a lazy answer. Besides if people did worship gems as gods then why wouldn't SU culture resemble that more? Wouldn't most of the world be a matriarchy? Wouldn't they live in a very class based society? They don't though. And as far as we know this is still a world where christianity exists. My point is that it's illogical to say we got aesthetics from these beings.

Then I suppose there's the even worse explanation. Human beings are either future gems or we created them in the future. Which is a paradox. It's like in Interstellar. Future humans created the worm hole. If they didn't then humanity would have died. But humanity had to of survivors in the first place in order to create the worm hole. But how did humanity survive in the first place without the wormhole? It's a paradox. It's be so disappointing if Steven Universe was just a paradox. It's so lazy and just raises more questions.

Then again there's always another alternative. Inorganic beings created inorganic beings. That's stupid. Because where did the inorganic beings that created these new inorganic beings come from? Who created the original inorganic beings? As far as science fiction is concerned saying god did it is lazy. It's a cop out. Besides why would a god create both a set of organic and inorganic sentient beings? Besides that it could what purpose would it serve?

Well that's it for now.

I'm sure that whatever they end up doing it'll be cool ^^. Was nice talking with you

We don't really know if they had a creator or not, but yeah. Still, fiction's full of examples of artificial intelligences developing emotions, so perhaps that happened with the gems too. Maybe we'll find out someday.

We can't really know for sure. But, if somebody else created the diamonds and the other gems, perhaps that person (or species) liked the idea of making them look the way they do. Still not seeing anything illogical here.

Well, if the Gems' creators were the Diamonds (who all look female) then it doesn't seem unusual for them to make female followers. And really, you don't need a justification for them all looking female any more than you would need a justification for making them look like robots, or any other more generic sci-fi alien appearance. It doesn't affect their ability to do their jobs one way or another, and they have to look like /something/. So again, we return to the question, what should they look like?

Firstly, where did you get this "sole purpose is conquest" thing? We've seen plenty of gems who aren't designed to fight or conquer anything. And even though war is extremely important to gems, there are tons of jobs in any military that don't involve fighting.

 

As for the gems' emotions, I can only infer that they aren't capable of designing intelligent gems that don't have feelings.

 

Finally, even if every gem is designed for combat, I see no reason why it would be somehow illogical for gems to look like women.

The elites have emotions and can appreciate aesthetically pleasing things, so they presumably prefer good-looking servants to less good-looking servants.

Not all of them, as Pearl proves. And military organizations pay a great deal of attention to cosmetic details, like how you wear your uniform, your posture, how you salute a commanding officer, all that stuff. Doesn't seem all that ridiculous for gems to do the same even down to the appearance of their troops, since that's a thing they can control.

For the heck of it, and because their culture seems to value strict attention to detail, which often goes hand in hand with caring about appearances and presentation. Isn't that a big plot point with Pearl, how she was designed to be pretty and a status symbol?

What's to say inorganic aliens can't have an appreciation for aesthetics?

What should they look like?

Maybe if there actually had been something leading up to the Korrasami moment at the end of the series finale, I would have appreciated it more. I don't have any issues with a lesbian relationship, in fact I'm glad that Steven Universe isn't the only well known animated show out there that isn't afraid of using LGBT characters. But doing it at the very end of the series seemed forced. Romance was never a MAJOR theme, even with the main cast all dating someone at some time or another. Yeah, it made for some drama (and comic relief with Bolin and Eska) but I don't know... I guess another relationship for Korra felt out of place.

I don't see why this would refute my idea. They're just behaving in ways that seem natural to them, and humans (including the audience) perceive those behaviors to be feminine. Aliens looking and behaving like women really isn't any more far-fetched than aliens looking and behaving like giant bugs, or whatever other concepts are more common in sci-fi.

If you want to get really particular about lore or whatever, why do all the gems speak English? It isn't just Garnet and the main gems who do, it's every single one, even those who have never been to Earth at all.

Now, if you want to explain this away, you could hypothesize that gems have some sort of built-in feature that translates everything they say into the language that the listener understands. This would make sense for a race that operates on a galactic level, colonizing, conquering, etc. If this is the case, then the gems all using female pronouns could just be an artifact of how the English language works. People traditionally refer to themselves with pronouns, and out of all the options, that label most accurately describes /to humans/ what gems are. It's true that an alien warrior race might not really have any use for the concept of a gender within their own society, but when interacting with humans, who fixate on it and use it to determine how they interact with people? Very important.

I always felt that the only reason Korra got with Asami was because Mako fumbled with both of them. I never really liked how any of the characters handled relationships in this show, but then again, they're teenagers, and very realistically written at that. How many successful relationships actually start at that age? How many times has love gotten in the way of the characters' work when it shouldn't have?

 

I'm not into shipping all that much, and in my opinion, much of the romance in Korra was more destructive than constructive. Most of the time spent mentioning love and relationships almost always put it at odds with the characters' duties. Just like Korra learned patience as the Avatar, maybe she and the others could have stood to learn more patience in a romantic context.

Korrasami = shark-jumper in an otherwise-great series finale.

I feel as if a major misunderstanding in your post comes from a lack of understand of what gender is.  Gender is an abstract construct that provides a basis for your psyche.  For example, a masculine person might be more aggressive, less emotive, more assertive, protective, etc.  A feminine person might be more inclined to be compassionate, intuitive, emotional, etc.

 

It is because of this link to psychology that gender is not exactly an issue of biology.  The word you were looking for was "sex" which does have a basis in biology as it is the type of sexual organs you were born with: male organisms are born with a penis and testes and female organisms are born with ovaries and an uterus.

 

In this case, yes, the gems are sexless beings and, as far as we know, have no concept as gender, despite the fact that all of them present as female archetypes.  In the canon, this is not explained.  Outside of the canon, however, at least one of the writers for the show (I can't remember his name) has expressed his contempt towards the idea of a masculine gem.  Jasper and Ruby are the closest the show will probably come to a "male" gem.

Now for humans it makes sense why that aesthetic exists. It was a part of our ancestry. Gems? They have no ancestry. There completely artificial beings. There have no purpose for sex or gender. Also why do gems still have breasts? It all of them do obviously. But Amthyst does. Why would she ate her form that way? They serve no purpose. There there for aesthetic s.

More so because that's how they animated her. Not because it's logical for her to exist that way. Beings who are created artistically, and who's sole purpose is to serve there master do not require gender. Gender is only meaningful in reference to physical sex. Otherwise is meaningless.

You can three strike your out any of the mane 6.

What are you hoping to achive with this?

You're acting like this person Shive'd you.  Sure, it's not fair that she refused to debate you, but is this a topic worth debating?  Both of you seem to have a dogmatic love for your respective characters, but after judging the content of both of your posts, I think it's safe to say that Applejacket made the better choice in agreeing to disagree.