Idk man, a widowed father who works full time and lives in his car so he can afford to keep his child fed while he lives with his aunts, who still makes time to see his kid every day, and who is possibly the only family member that child has who has not implicitly or explicitly wished in front of him that his mother had survived instead of him, fostering an intense survivor’s guilt in him where he feels like his loved ones blame him for the death of his mother
I just don’t see how people have ever managed to call Greg Universe a deadbeat, I mean, the one time the dude did a mildly bad thing is when he lied about being hurt so he could spend more time with Steven who he felt was drifting away from him, and even then he copped to it and apologized. His sole concern as a character in the entire show is taking care of and being there for his kid, he’s honestly one of the best dads on TV and I think it’s sad that people act like he’s a shitty father because he’s poor and spends what little available time and money he has on his son who he loves more than anything
Fucking this. Also he’s called a ‘washed up musician’ when he made a choice to abandon what could have been a good career– we see he’s got the chops– on his life as a husband and then father.
He didn’t fail. He succeeded at being what he wanted to be, which was ‘the respected partner of Rose aka an alien war general’ and ‘Steven’s dad’. He still makes music in his spare time and loves it, but his priority #1 (by choice NOT because he isn’t good for anything else) is Steven.
He was Steven’s primary caretaker until he hit the limits of what he could teach (aka gem stuff), and he gave Steven a loving, nurturing life full of physical affection, musical tutoring, family traditions and outings.
I don’t think the gems pay for Steven’s cell phone subscription. I’m pretty damn sure that Greg thought a phone with music storage capacity for his son was a better use of his cash than anything for himself. He’s content living in the van, I think – he strikes me as being pretty zen– but he does have needs.
He always puts those needs second for Steven, except the once, which was such a huge anomaly we got an entire story arc about it.
Reviewers make a lot of how Steven seems to have ‘inherited’ Rose’s kind nature– bull. Bull and shit. Yes to some extent he does have Rose in him, but to ignore how much of his nurturing and forgiving nature he LEARNED from Greg is just lazy.
Greg Universe’s lover laughed in his face when he asked her if she respected him and he stuck around and talked it out like a goddamn adult.
Greg Universe had his home wrecked because he helped the Crystal Gems fight off Lapis and never turned his distress on them.
Greg Universe got pushed off a fucking roof because a badly socialized tech support agent wanted to see if he could fly and immediately forgave her because she didn’t know any better.
Greg has never told his son to ‘man up’ or ‘butch up’ or ‘toughen up’. Greg would have stared blankly if anyone ever suggested that he was ‘babysitting’ his own child. Greg is a huge part of why Steven is who he is and he chose to be there because he never for a second questioned or shirked his responsibility as a father.
Greg Universe for dad. Like, every dad of every animated character who has a shitty or absent father. Shinji from Evangelion? Now Greg’s son. Eren from SNK? Now Greg’s son. Meg from Family Guy? Now Greg’s daughter.
Steven has Rose’s boundless curiosity about and fascination with other people, but his empathy and patience? His desire to not only observe others’ growth in whatever intriguing form it takes, but to nurture? He gets that from Greg.
Like okay, 19th century painters, right? If you were gonna go back in time and get a portrait from someone the list is like this:
Renoir: MAYBE. He is a terrible draftsmen and actually the least technically skilled of the impressionists but sometimes he makes people look pretty. Other times he makes them look bruised. 50/50. Best not to go with him.
Manet: solid choice, edgy but not too edgy. Will use nice rich jewel tones. Put him on your list.
Monet: if you want an impressionist he’s your guy. Pretty straightforwards. You will look good and there will be tons of sunlight.
Van Gogh: it’ll be awesome but you might also be green and yellow. Literally. If you’ve always wanted to know what you’d look like with unnatural skin colors go for Van Gogh. Don’t bother trying to pronounce his name just call him Vincent. Maybe give the poor guy some antidepressants. He’s a delicate sad soul but desperately broke so tip him heavily. He will cry having made money on a painting. Also tell him to stop eating yellow paint. Definitely get a portrait from him.
Degas: you’ll either be a ballerina or a prostitute. Maybe even both. Somehow there will be diagonal lines in your portrait. Consider it.
Moreau: are you a woman who wants to know what you look like through the eyes of a man who is literally terrified of women??? Then this guy is for you! You may be framed with sperm.
Klimt: like Moreau except with less misogyny and sperm and more gold. Good choice if you want to look like you could kill someone without ruining your #look. Happy to paint Jewish women. You will also be super comfy in his studio wearing big drape-y gown type things. Medium to high chance your portrait will be stolen by nazis. Go for it. You will look great.
Morisot: like a better Renoir. Seriously skip Renoir and have Morisot paint you instead. You will still look sweet and lovely. Consider it.
Gauguin: literally screw Gauguin. He was a pedophile. Your portrait might look nice but he’s a gross jerk. If you want stupidly bright colors go get a portrait from Matisse or something at the turn of the century. You’ll still have a high chance of being green but at least you don’t have to go near a guy who left his wife and children to go prey on 14 year olds. Break his paintings over your knees and laugh at him.
Seurat: your face will be composed of thousands of tiny dots and you’ll be used as some greater metaphor in an 80’s teen movie and anyone who is colorblind will probably not get your portrait but optical illusions are always cool. Go for it.
Rossetti: ask yourself – do I have red hair? Do I want to sleep with Rossetti? If the answer is yes to both THEN get a Rossetti portrait done.
Cassatt: honestly a great choice for the people of tumblr, Cassatt is also really big on sprawling on couches as a general pose. She will do you a solid and you will laugh about how men usually screw up painting women.
Bouguereau: poor Bouguereau. Time has forgotten him and instead fallen in love with the rebellious impressionists. But in his day, HE was an ARTISTE of the ACADEMY!! He’s got technical skill for days and you’ll inevitably get a completed piece. You’ll get a beautiful portrait it might just seem a little…polished. But hey, that’s NOT a bad thing. Gotta respect his need to make money before he went wild with paint. Think about it.
William Merritt Chase: he’s not a BAD painter it’s just that sometimes he feels a bit like he could be someone else. There’s a 40% chance you’ll end up wearing a kimono. Maybe pass unless you want less drama than Whistler.
Egon Schiele: listen, no. Don’t do it. There’s like an 80% chance he will draw you masturbating with a creepy stare and yaoi hands.
Delacroix: sure he might be an orientalist painter and yes that’s kind of awful but you gotta hand it to Delacroix: his “harem” women are all actually dressed in clothes and at least you know he can paint a skin color other than litebrite. Could meet a Jewish or Muslim sitter without having a total heart attack probably.
Millais: honestly get your portrait done by Millais solely for the purpose of pissing Charles Dickens off. Do you need any other reason? No.
Turner: he’s a landscape artist ya walnut. The people he paints tend to be floating bodies in the water as a critique of slavery. Ask him to paint more social commentary. Maybe pass on as your portrait artist though.
Hiroshige: if you’re not Japanese you’re gonna be classed as a friggin weeaboo. Sorry those are the rules. But your portrait will be sweet.
Rosa Bonheur: ok like I really only remember her self portraits and cow paintings but she’s a lesbian and if you wanna bond over hot ladies this is your woman. Who cares if she paints a cow instead? Not you! Do it.
Goya: pass unless you want to look dark and maybe slightly tortured. Ultimately you’ll just be sad he’s no Velasquez.
Ingres: the older Bouguereau basically. If you’re super into neo-classicism or orientalist painting go for it. Otherwise skip it.
James Abbott McNeill Whistler: okay look – Whistler is a fantastic artist. He’s amazing with colors and uses impressionist techniques without just cribbing off of Monet or something. All of his portraits are lovely, and you can’t go wrong. Except there’s like a 40% chance he’ll never finish your portrait or will go broke painting it or will throw a tantrum at some point. He may or may not sleep with your wife. If he asks you if he can retouch a small thing in your house he will do it — and then promptly continue to repaint everything and try and charge you for it all. If you yell at him he will later break into your house and paint giant gold fighting peacocks on your dining room wall, and then he’ll tell you that without his additions to your decor you’d probably die forgotten but NOW people will remember you forever. Your normal interior decorator will see what Whistler has done to *HIS* room and then later be found lying curled up on the floor of his studio covered in gold leaf in the midst of a total breakdown. He will die three years later, never having recovered mentally. Also Whistler will go bankrupt and will paint you as a mean peacock if he owes you a lot of money. So you’ll basically get a second portrait for free. Do it.
John Singer Sargent: honestly probably the best American Portrait artist of his era. You’ll look amazing and he won’t break into your house to paint peacocks or sleep with your wife. Get a Sargent portrait, you will not regret it.
roommates.mp4
(as requested by @hntrgurl13)
Oh. My god.
OH MY GOD
OH MY GOD
SOMEONE DID IT
OH MY GOD THE LIP SYNC IS PERFECT
LMFAO
OH MY GAAAAAAAAAAAA
Oh my yes
(Source: http://blooniverse.tumblr.com/)
the idea of people having to be ‘useful’ is just so gross, like people do not exist to be used
having to produce something and have a use is a capitalist ideal and not an intrinsic part of humanity
just by being alive you are human and you are worth something and you can never be useless
this applies to animals as well
“Having to like DO THINGS is SO OPPRESSIVE. No one had to like DO THINGS before evil capitalism. In ancient times food, water, and shelter just existed and everything was taken care of for me”
Guess what happened to people who didn’t do things before capitalism? They died. Cause if you weren’t hunting, gathering, or useful in some aspect of nature. You were killed, died or starvation, dehydration, or exposure.
Being useful is literally part of our biology. Fucking moron. You pull some idea out of your ass because you literally don’t want to get off your ass.
I’m not saying nobody should ever do things ever, I’m saying people don;t have to produce to an arbitrary standard in order to prove their right to live
And if you really think disabled people deserve to die if we can’t ‘contribute’ or be useful in a way you approve of then congrats youre a fucking monster
actually there’s significant evidence in terms of Neolithic burials that disabled people who would not have been able to hunt for themselves (the archaeological evidence mostly shows mobility disabilities because it’s visible in the bone record) were well fed and cared for by their communities
so the “people like you would have been left to die” argument isn’t just cruel and violently ableist, it’s extremely historically inaccurate and based off of projecting modern prejudice on prehistoric cultures
sources because I’m on my laptop now!
note: in the neolithic era, a person in their 40s or 50s would be considered elderly
12,000-year-old burial of a woman about 45 with mobility disabilities both congenital and acquired
neolithic burial of a man in his 50s who lost the use of his left arm in adolescence
i read somewhere that you can measure the worth of a society by how it treats it’s helpless, elderly and sick and i think that’s totally on to something. this also ties in with the whole “survival of the fittest” garbage that people (mostly violent machismo men) spew without knowing what it actually means.
the inherent idea of productivity = worth IS a product of a culture based off of industrialization and capitalism, anyone who says otherwise is blinded by bias and needs to read some anthropology.
Animals do this, too. There’s a ten year old orca named Tumbo with severe scoliosis. He’s slower than the rest of his pod, but his mother and brother stay with him and help him hunt. He’s a transient, too, which means he travels great distances daily with his pod, and hunts dangerous prey like seals and sharks. Yet despite his disability, his pod takes care of him, and his pod thrives, even with the care they show him.
As someone said above me, a society can be judged by how it treats the sick, elderly and disabled. If animals can show such compassion, what’s a human’s excuse for lacking the same compassion for a fellow human being?
Children Deserve Respect
Children are not pets or objects adults can use for their own purposes. Kids are not problems to be resolved.
Unfortunately, many parents treat their kids as if they’re enemies, constantly battling to get their child/ren to do what they want. Parents like this rarely think about their child/ren’s wants and needs; they just assume that they are right and their children are wrong. This attitude teaches kids that they’re not really people, that love from other people is contingent on their behaviour, and that they don’t have rights. They see any kind of defiance or even disagreement as disrespectful, and railroad their kids with brute force or fear.
Sometimes, kids behave in unacceptable ways, and handling this is challenging for parents. Plus, sometimes parents have to make kids do things they don’t want to do; we all ave to brush our teeth, for example. Dealing with situations like this is difficult, but it’s part of being a parent and we have a responsibility to respect our kids and make sure we’re meeting their physical and emotional needs. Saying ‘it had to be done’ is not an excuse to mistreat or abuse anyone, including children and young people.
I recently had a frankly horrifying conversation where a group of parents flippantly discussed physically restraining their kids during medical and dental procedures. When I pointed out that this should be an absolute last resort, several parents reacted with ridicule, as if trying to explain to their kids that this had to be done and trying to address their fears was ridiculous.
A story I hope you’ll find relevant: when I was a toddler (about 3 or 4 years old), I fell through a glass door and got glass stuck in my forehead and scalp. The daycare centre called my mother, and my mother rushed me to the ER. I had to have multiple pieces of glass pulled out of my skin, and many stitches. My mother held me down and I wriggled and screamed and cried, and she realized what was going on – she stopped holding me down, and I relaxed. The Dr and nurses were able to pull the glass out and stitch me up without issue.
Parents often try to overpower kids with force, instead of thinking ‘what’s the actual problem here, and how can we resolve it? If it can’t be resolved, how can I help and support my child while they deal with it? Is there a way to work around it?’ Going back to our tooth-brushing example, a lot of people have sensory issues that make tooth-brushing difficult, even painful. Obviously we all need to clean our teeth, but that doesn’t mean that restraining a child and forcibly cleaning their teeth is an acceptable solution! Sometimes a different toothbrush works (especially one with softer bristles), sometimes the problem is actually the toothpaste, sometimes a washcloth can be used instead of a brush, or another implement can be substituted – but without talking to our kids and asking them what’s going on, we’ll never know. Kids in these situations are subjected to something that they often experience as torture because their parents have decided to use force and power over kids instead of approaching them as human beings with valid feelings who are deserving of respect.
Parenting is extremely difficult, one of the most difficult things a person can do, but that doesn’t excuse mistreatment, abuse, and violence. Children are human beings with a full range of emotions, and they have rights. As parents, it’s our job to make sure our kids needs are met and that requires treating them like people, not problems.