>>149946618
SU was more about mental illness than it was about sexual orientation/gender identity. Gay stuff took a fraction of the screentime that mental illness did.
And mental illness is vastly more important of an issue.
During her redemption arc Peridot would frequently attack the Crystal Gem's insecurities and the writers highlighted that she didn't do this out of some 'desire' to bully others. Peridot has aspergers, and she sees traits in others and she makes blunt comments about them. It's not portrayed that something is 'wrong' with her because of this. Instead she's given a clear window to learn that sometimes her comments hurt others. Like, that's great for children to see and it's a very mature way to teach about this disorder without demonizing people on the spectrum like "so yeah, Peridot? She's autistic and these people are bullies."
It's just one example. Pearl is a neurotic obsessive-compulsive hypochondriac, Amethyst has ADHD and body image issues, Garnet has AvPD. In a vacuum, none of this is important, but it forced all of these traits (mainly flaws) to interact in interesting ways when they are placed in scenes together. This framed a lot of the show's scenes where the gems are interacting beautifully because everyone was so clearly defined by their flaws. They played off of each other effortlessly. Whether this is the result of Rebecca Sugar or not, it's impressive, because female-centric shows usually fail miserably at painting women as being flawed. Not only does SU paint women as massively flawed, it doesn't downplay genuine mental illness like so many others do.
It just didn't make an effort to demonize people. That was its biggest 'sin' as a cartoon.
