hmmm. “aww, don’t take it personally, little bird.” “it’s nothing personal, dear.” “so you can believe me when i say this wasn’t personal.”
they made it plenty clear that none that happened at haven was personal which in turn kind of makes it suspicious like was it ever… personal? at any point, could it have even been mistaken as “personal”?
maybe. but: summer shoulder checking raven while walking past her + “you’ve been scheming, little brother. planning to attack your own sister.” + raven clearly not having a highest of opinions of summer in present day = was it personal, back then?
like. if some slight backstabbing did take place, it would seem it wasn’t due to something that happened during the mission, but rather had roots from way before.
esp since raven really hammers it home it wasn’t personal: “so you can believe me when i say this wasn’t personal.” <- did summer claim it wasn’t personal, but raven doesn’t quite believe it based on what happened? in the same vein as summer said “trust me” and raven did trust her, but “your mother must trust you a great deal.” / “the spring maiden must’ve trusted you a great deal before she died. i bet that was a mistake.” / “agreements like these are built on trust. and forgive me for saying, but i don’t trust a single one of you.” if summer lied to raven, if she had other plans than she did not let raven in on, then if raven’s trust in summer was a mistake, surely raven wouldn’t believe a thing summer has to say, be it true or not.
I’m not the first to mention this, but one bit that I thought was really clever in Steven Universe is the ways in which the show subtly justifies the cartoonism of the principle cast always wearing the same outfit for ease-of-animation purposes. The gems are a gimme in that they’re all hardlight-projections, and even before that’s solidified as a plot point they’re otherworldly and superheroic enough that you don’t really think to question it. But Steven canonically just owns hundreds and hundreds of those star shirts, which are leftover merchandise from his father’s fizzled-out career as a rock star. Into which you can read a whole bunch of other stuff if you really want to, right? And I do want to. It’s reflective of Greg’s misplaced optimism that he got hundreds of those made in the first place, and it’s a benign but visible example of how Steven’s life is shaped by the knock-on effects of decisions his parents made before he was even alive. He’s got his mother’s superpowers and he’s wearing his father’s shirts.
Today on clownery from my fraternity: I started “pavlov training” this guy from my frat as a joke but now it’s actually working
Context: This guy from my frat (I’m in a coed academic frat) is really into geography, and he’s been trying to learn all the state capitals of Brazil. I happen to be Brazilian, so I’ve been helping him learn them along with pronunciations. One day I was eating a pack of m&ms and decided to quiz him. If he got the question right he got an m&m, and if he got it wrong I’d eat it. Thus a tradition between us was born. If I’m eating a snack I’ll quiz him a bit and give him a tiny treat if he’s right.
Anyways, today I was in our frat lounge eating some m&ms by myself, kinda minding my own business. I eventually got really bored and wondered what would happen if I gave everyone in a lounge an m&m except for him, so I did that. He noticed and then started dropping every Brazilian state capital he could think of, getting increasingly desperate until he just started naming random Brazilian cities. A few of them he repeated multiple times to get the perfect pronunciation. It was like watching a dog do every trick it knows in rapid succession, just hoping something would get a treat. I eventually gave him a few m&ms and started wondering what the hell I’ve done
In this case “chat” is as in Twitch Chat, like when streamers talk to their twitch chats directly, like “hey, chat, what’s happening?” Not sure what they mean by 4th person pronoun - I would consider “chat” a 2nd person plural (you all) but I can see the potential for defining it as a completely separate thing due to the nature of “chat” being a undefined person instead of a specific one? Idk it’s fascinating tho
4th person is referring to the hypothetical collective of people beyond the fourth wall. the fourth wall is the invisible barrier between the stage and the seats, the actor and the audience. and actors ‘break’ the fourth wall when they address the audience directly and acknowledge that they’re a person playing a character for entertainment. in some styles of performance this should never be done, like opera or musicals, because it can collapse the weight and momentum of the story. in others, like improv and game shows, audience participation is encouraged because it’s explicitly a collaboration.
in the streaming era (in our panopticon culture) the fourth wall is extremely permeable in interesting new ways. streamers aren’t just playing to an audience, they’re able to read and respond to messages from that audience too. it’s a collaborative improv, there’s a call and response, the audience knows the streamer relies on them for attention as they rely on him for entertainment.
so, yeah, 'chat’ isn’t second person, it’s fourth. i’m not referring to the 'you’ that’s here with me on this side of the stage, im referring to the people beyond this situation, watching our funny little problems. all the world is a stage, now. don’t forget to like and subscribe.
This is not correct in a linguistic sense; “fourth person” has nothing to do with the fourth wall, though this speech pattern is absolutely talking across the fourth wall in a very theatrical sense - directly addressing the non-involved audience.
“Fourth person” is a relatively rare technique used by some languages (Algonquian languages in North America, for example) where two third-person entities in a sentence are marked as “proximate” (i.e. near/more relevant) and “obviate” (further/less relevant). The latter is called “fourth person”.
In English, if I said “she saw her”, we know that the sentence refers to two different women, and which is which depends on previously-established context. In these languages, you would instead say “[3p pronoun] saw [4p pronoun]” and they might require you to establish ahead of time which entity was which, possibly with inflectional endings on the nouns when they are first introduced.
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What we’re dealing with here is basically an aside - a remark made to spectators not participating in the conversation, or at the very least, to people who are not the direct addressee. From a linguistic standpoint, this is switching clusivity. It’s going from the person spoken to being “you” to “y'all” or “y'all” to “all y'all”; i.e. people other than those being directly addressed.
So for example, without using “chat”, and having a Southern American-influenced idiolect, the same exchange might go something like:
Me: *says something to X" X: *says something batshit back to me* Me: *cocks head slightly towards bystanders* “Y'all, is this real?”
That’s not exactly the same, though, because “y'all” and “all y'all” normally do include the speaker, which is why you have to gesture as well to fully get the point across.
I really like “chat” as a way to specifically address people who are neither the speaker nor the listener, as it provides a function that none of even the non-standard, “extended” English pronouns do.
I jokingly use “dear reader(s)” for the same effect, and have for ages. for what it’s worth
Unsurprisingly a lot of this plays into RWDE’s “Critique” of RWBY. IE, how they’ll ignore Qrow and Jaune outright assaulting Oscar, but insist Yang attacked him because she was angry at Ozpin.
It also made me think of a recent ‘complaint’ regarding the excellent Sousou No Frieren. After the introduction of third main character Stark, someone said:
“To bad the author forgets about him after this.”
Which flabbergasted me, as I knew the very next episode/chapter were were gonna get more of his backstory, motives ad emotional depth. I also knew of upcoming battles where he’s every bit as much of a major character as fellow MC Fern. Let alone more stuff to come regarding backstory and old foes ETC.
But then it hit me.
Stark isn’t somehow getting less attention than the women in the cast, he’s getting the same amount. But to this person, this was him being forgotten about and maligned, because he was on the same playing field focus wise as women.
Which is rather akin to how most men perceive women as talking too much or over them if they speak the same amount.
Which also ties back into RWBY and how a lot of RWDE flip out about a female centric show… Focusing on women, and not their favorite male projection character who wasn’t even advertised as an MC.
And so, like Optimus Prime before them, the Doctor demonstrates the correct way to handle a persons pronouns. If uncertain, ask, and if the wrong one has been used, apologize. That’s all it takes.
Australian, 22, lover of gaming, reading, general nerdiness, and nachos. If you need someone to talk to, or want to talk to me specifically, feel free to shoot me a message! I can't guarantee a swift response, but I will try to answer it.
