k-m-anthony:

Today in “things I like about Steven Universe,” the Cluster.

There’s a tendency in fantasy media to create “acceptable targets” – basically, people it’s “okay” to kill. Zombies are “okay” to kill because they’re not “really alive” in the first place. They’re more like a plague than they are like people.

It doesn’t matter if you shoot them in the skull, if you blow off their limbs, make them bleed, make them writhe, make them howl, make them suffer. Whatever. You’re not murdering people. You’re curing a plague.

With a shotgun.

You know, like, check your humanity at the door. You don’t need it here. This is a world where there’s no reason not to be violent, a fantasy world where the name of the game is murdering dozens or hundreds or thousands of people without having to worry about that weird, pesky thing called a conscience.

And, hey, if you don’t get that, then you’re just…weak, or whatever, and you’re probably going to die or get someone else killed because those are the only options in this world we’ve created, and if you’re sitting there, wringing your hands, then you’re missing the point.

You don’t get it. Don’t you get it? Killing is okay now. Maiming is okay now. It’s good. It’s admirable. It’s even necessary. And it’s always unconditionally justified. At least as long as you’re aiming at the acceptable targets.

Hell, as long as you’re doing that, it doesn’t even matter who you hit in the meantime. It’s all okay. It’s unconditionally justified.

It doesn’t matter if Superman crushed half of Metropolis. He had to. It’s justified. Zod was a monster. He had to be stopped. Reactionary violence against a big enough threat, real or perceived, is always okay and always worth it. And if anyone else dies in the process, then…okay. Who cares?

We love creating these stories where mass murder is the only way out.

And it would have been easy to do that with the Cluster.

When the fusion experiments were introduced, they were basically played up for shock value. Body horror. Disembodied hands and feet, sewn together, writhing around on the floor and screaming digitally distorted screams.

It was far and away the most extreme thing Steven Universe had ever explicitly shown on-screen – and presented in such an unexpectedly tense and overtly terrifying way that I remember coming on here and posting a little trigger warning for people in all the other time zones.

It would have been easy to say, “Well, okay, so…this would be a mercy killing. I mean, these Gems technically died years ago, anyway. These are just their remnants, all twisted up and tortured. It’s okay to end them now.”

But I’m glad they were only initially shocking. Eventually, kind of cute. And, ultimately, sympathetic.

“Is that a weapon?”

No.

The Cluster is not a weapon.

Or a monster.

It’s not even scary.

It’s pretty. And it’s sad. And it’s trying. But it needs help.

Pictured: the Cluster. A group of traumatized, broken, desperate people lashing out in ways that are hurtful and destructive to the world around them because they don’t feel whole, and they don’t know how to cope with that.

Related images:

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Pictured: the Cluster. A group of traumatized, broken, desperate people who don’t want to hurt anyone. Who just need a little bit of patience, a little bit of understanding, a space where they can exist and heal in peace, and the support of other people like themselves.

“Shard, meet shard.”

The Cluster: Like all the Crystal Gems. Like me. Like a lot of us.