CW: stalking, estranged parent fuckery, apologia, SU wank (won't be the only fandom discussed)

like i've been looking back through the excellent missing missing reasons blog and this. This. is one of the fundamental beefs i have with SU and people who think nuanced discussion is 'this show is Literally Perfect' dogpiles

even if the narrative were a hundred percent behind it being the right thing to do, 'anything that is not exactly what an estranged abusive parent would want their victim to do is either Literally Murdering Them or being at fault for whatever damage they do when they escalate' is the abuser's framing of the world. no narrative approval can change that

and SU is VERY DECIDEDLY not on the side of full 'then perish' support of the boundary-haver! it is not! and by extension so aren't the SU is the Second Coming stans! and it and they try to further muddy the matter by conflating 'escaping abusive family' with 'how to fight back against violent systems without fucking everyone over in The Revolution.'

people rush to defend it with IT'S COMPLICATED THERE'S NO GOOD ANSWER IT'S JUST AS MUCH OF A VALID CATHARTIC FANTASY AS THE VIOLENT COUP SAVING THE DAY, and like. leaving aside the political issues themselves, 'it feels like there is no good answer and sometimes you just want the relief of a fantasy where there is one for a minute' doesn't apply because

there is a good, pretty cut-and-dried answer for what to do when it comes to estranged abusers. the only potential moral ambiguity in cutting them out of your life is if there are vulnerable loved ones still trapped with them who will lose your support if you go no-contact with the abusers, and nothing to do with the abuser in this scenario is your fault.

that is an incredibly painful saw trap of a nightmare scenario, and ~taking the high road and extending good faith~ has NOTHING to do with which of these choices is the lesser evil and to what extent it's your responsibility to act. the framing of SU is not the diamonds putting steven and co in the saw trap and then trying to warp the nature of the trap into

~taking the high road~ against the abuser, and manipulate and victim-blame from there. THE STORY ITSELF IS DOING THAT. the very worldbuilding is contrived to do this from the get-go even before you get into the way it's executed from there.

CW: CSA, apologia

and even in the cases where victims acting to protect themselves or others does inflict major,

terrible harm on the aggressors in real life, it's STILL about as vile as you can get to try to turn that into ~moral ambiguity,~ because the very direct line you are drawing is that it's morally ambiguous for victims of CSA, including children, to testify against their abusers in court because it might ruin their lives or outright get them killed in jail.

CW: queerphobia, murder

the framing of 'of course the stakes are exaggerated, it's all fantasy metaphor!' is a really goddamn nasty one too, because this show is aimed at not just queer people but queer kids and purports itself to be Validating and Teaching Life Lessons to them; and not only are queer people uhhh Extra Fucking Likely to Have Reason to Cut

Family and Run, 'murder' is not ever the stake for an abusive parent whose child is trying to escape them. murder of queers- -abuse victims in general, but ESPECIALLY queers- -is a VERY REAL FUCKING FEAR. and i cannot express how despicable it is to minimize and erase that to say fleeing your abusers is the same thing as them leaving your body in a ditch.

just. ugh. i have more thoughts about this, and a lot of them turn to a niche SFF series with in-depth examples of this, but for now tl;dr SU isn't Evil and its groundbreaking historical impact is worth the bullshit, and people who rabidly hate it have done A Lot of Damage. but also god fuck SU and the people who rabidly defend it from any and all criticism