Thread:Trigger009/@comment-995426-20150803034742/@comment-995426-20150805073016

I have to wonder why so many of the other users didn't see it. I know a lot of users didn't see it, and I can speculate why, but I can't really be sure when I can't see what they're seeing (or failing to see) myself. If the slow-onset panic attack wasn't awkward enough, the suggestion that I was seeing imaginary things was very frustrating. The worst part was someone's suggestion that it would be pedo after the time skip&mdash;that would just be gross, and also incorrect, considering their memories of each other are the same age as each of them are. My dad, the longtime science fiction geek, informs me that there are lots of works of fiction involving the abrupt age change of one half of a couple.

Since this is at worst a good faith mistake, I wish there were an easier way to address it in the articles. There has to be a reasonable difference between reasonable perception and mere speculation. But then we're back to the frustrating part where it turned out a lot of users weren't seeing it in the first place. But I saw it. My friends saw it. My dad saw it. It has to count for something that this was the necessary impression we had.

I'm not sure how to continue editing like business as usual when it seems like no one has faith in my powers of observation. I wish there were some kind of face-saving option where I can continue editing honestly and not be treated like I'm delusional. Because I can go to one group of people and they tell me "X", and go to another group of people and they tell me "Y", and I know neither of them are being dishonest or think they're speculating. There has to be reasonable wiggle room for this in articles. As in...of course what the writers decide has to take precedence, but appearances (including earlier impressions) should also be relevant, especially when they create ambiguity or diverging reasonable conclusions. We as editors make quiet logical assumptions all the time whether we actively realize it or not, based largely on our own backgrounds of conventional wisdom. I think it's time we all provide some sort of acknowledgment and allowance for this margin of human error&mdash;within reason, of course. We're not all robots, right?

I like the way the Zelda Wiki handles this: They try to keep most of an article as objective as possible, and funnel subjective impressions into "Theory" sections that are surrounded by visible brackets to help set them apart from the rest of the article&mdash;here's an example of one. Even Theory sections have limits&mdash;it can't be every random theory under the sun (it's not Wild Mass Guessing like on the tropes wikis), but it should be one or more recurring reasonable impressions that have been known to crop up. After all, what is a work of fiction without its living audience? (That is, the members of the audience who aren't clearly trolls or vandals.)

By the way, most of my friends are already huge Steven Universe fans. The gay fan base is enormous. They seem to like Pearl the most. But I almost never catch it when it's on. Only seen a handful of episodes.