Steven Universe S04E18, "Rocknaldo"

[kate_nepveu]

Well, Ronaldo had been sort of tolerable for a while there in the background, but put him in the foreground and I still HATE HIM.

Every episode we get of a white dude being given the opportunity for growth, understanding, and acceptance must go on the trashfire while Bismuth remains bubbled. The end.

Comments

[rosefox]

He is the epitome of "face that needs punching".

[cofax7]

Point well made.

Ronaldo is one of those characters like cilantro: best in small quantities, and for some people, utterly intolerable.

[kate_nepveu]

And yet he doesn't have to be! There were points when he was OK!

[kate_nepveu]

OTOH at least I can see why he exists in the show, whereas I'm still not sure why Onion.

[rushthatspeaks]

I liked the meta-level of this episode, in which Lauren Zuke, the storyboard artist who was hounded off Twitter by Steven Universe fans being terrible, has Ronaldo clearly demonstrate the exact fannish behavior that was not okay and calls it out as not okay and why. That was pretty awesome. As, like, an actual episode, though, eh.

Also, I haven't looked it up, but I've been reading the Fryman family as Afro-Caribbean? I may be giving too much credence to deliberately unrealistic fry-dreads, though.

[kate_nepveu]

That never occurred to me! I'm aware that skin color varies wildly among people of Afro-Caribbean descent, but absent some references to family history or something, I'm going to fall on the side of "fries not dreads."

[mneme]

I have no idea why Onion.

[kate_nepveu]

I suspect no one but the writers do!

[mneme]

He...injects a bit of surreal anarchy in a show that's clearly nothing like that. I guess he's the kind even weirder than our viewpoint weird outsider, who might be...not all right, and who might be sort of ok?

But yeah; Onion. Wut?

[rosefox]

There's some intense debate over what Fryman hair is; I've seen both "definitely obviously locs" and "definitely obviously not locs". I think my favorite Tumblr comment so far is "undercuts run in the family".