Steven Universe is Garbage and Here's Why

Steven Universe was a revolutionary cartoon that shook the boundaries of children's entertainment and took it to new heights or rather everyone thought that in reality Steven Universe turned out to be a mess of inconsistent storytelling mixed with clichés that have not been allowed to die. a conga character line so consistently awful it's like being around all the worst members of your family during the longest Thanksgiving ever. Steven Universe enjoyed widespread praise and praise from the general press when it first aired, but as time went on, its fanbase became significantly more critical. and dissatisfied with the content of the show to the point that being critical of the show was a whole subculture of its own and that's not undeserved, everything about the show is unprofessional and lazy, from the writing to the animation to the core ideas behind it. series intends.

It's long since burned through much of the goodwill it initially had and these days people are just trying to figure out what went wrong, that's what I'm going to try to do

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, going as deep as possible, but Lord knows even I miss . something because it keeps getting worse and worse as time goes by, dear lord, someone please put an end to my miserable existence. This is an exhaustive deconstruction of why Steven Universe is a trash show and if it's bad, we can think we can pearl, I've gotten something like this. reputation in the past for serialization and I need to make it clear that I don't necessarily hate serialization per se, I hate the prevailing attitude that serialization is objectively superior to episodic storytelling in all possible scenarios, like any other narrative tool, serialization works very well when it's appropriate to the story, it's very easy to simply say that shows with a continuous overarching plot are always better than a monster of the week, but that's simply not true and is most evident in shows that try to have both things, but regardless of which narrative tool you decide to use for your show, you have to choose one and this is what seems to trip up Rebecca Sugar at every possible angle.

Steven Universe has this long overarching plot about the Crystal Gem War and the homeworld finding out they're still active. and with her plans for a while now, the crystal gems and the homeworld plot were really interesting and we'll see why she fell down the drain in just a few minutes, but what was constantly aggravating is that Sugar clearly wanted to keep a monster of the weak vibe on top of that and I focus on more specific elements of the character like the last airbender did now I can hear your confusing comments, but don't you just love that lily?

Yes, I love it, but t

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's a problem, you see, it wasn't the character. work for the characters you'd think would focus time

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connie pearl amethyst garnet peridot lapis lazuli clearly nothing to do with any of them let's have seven different episodes about why lars is an incredible asshole let's do three about ronaldo as a conspiracy theorist let's do something with mayor dewey for some reason oh I know what about that family that runs a pizzeria I bet their lives are totally interesting what's that intergalactic fascism with a bit of natural rule boring let's talk about the wrestling scene there it is Where the real actions in The Last Airbender's side stories were so good because they offered insight into a main character: the Southern Raiders, it was about Katara getting revenge on the man who killed her mother.

Only Zuko was about witnessing firsthand the damage her father's warmongering caused. has been causing in the earth realm, you know what the last airbender didn't have a full character arc for cabbage boy, but that's what

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is doing. The residents of Beach City are not active players in the thin veneer of a story that Steven Universe pretends to have as background characters, they are strangely deformed and constantly shrinking. They don't get proper character arcs because they show up, deal with the crisis of the day, and then sit in the green room until the sugar wants to stop. for once literally the only one who changes is Lars and that's because Sugar literally killed him and replaced him with another character entirely, the rest of them are just there to distract from the fact that the story drags on and continues normally.

It's fine to develop the world and the other characters, but the world that is being developed is the land that doesn't need to be developed. The characters that are explored are random parts that ultimately mean nothing and are not fun filler episodes for the shows. the fun, light-hearted episodes that the writers use to relieve the tension of the main story, if they have one, Steven Universe doesn't have that need to relieve tension, as the filler episodes greatly outweigh the story episodes, almost being It feels like sugar wants to have them. a story about an intergalactic space war, but she also wanted to write fanfics about random people in Beach City and she couldn't seem to pick one and for a while that worked for her, at least the fandom seemed to love all of this and steven.

Season 1 of Universe Circus had an extremely uncritical fanbase, but that all changed when the hiatus hit. Steven Universe's schedule went off the rails almost immediately and aired regularly for a while, but was then condensed into short bursts of episodes called Steven Bombs. The first hiatus lasted 41 days and began with the episode bubble buddies the seventh episode of the series the show had just started and was already taking a break the second lasted three weeks with arcade mania just five episodes later the third lasted another three weeks another five episodes later it got progressively worse the fourth hiatus lasted just over three months and returned to Coach Steven just five episodes after the last hiatus he returned and then stayed consistently for a few months before going on hiatus for another month we haven't even finished the season. one yet and now steven

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has been on hiatus for over 220 days the sixth hiatus finally broke into season 2 which lasted 45 days and he swore to fly again and just a week later he went on hiatus for another three weeks to cry again for helping Keystone Motel and then a week later I started seeing the theme go on hiatus for another 54 days and return to the Nightmare hospital, then the show managed to stay consistent for a while before going on hiatus again for 80 days and go back to the answer. once again, the show lasted just one more week before going on the second longest hiatus of five months between then and Super Watermelon Island, another five episodes, then went on hiatus again for 44 more days and returned to Stephen's Summer, where the series managed to remain. air for the rest of the summer, then came the 12th break that lasted another two months and returned with the gem harvest.

The 13th hiatus lasted another two months and came back with Steven's dream, then another one that lasted just under three weeks, so I won't count it. the longest hiatus of six months and this was possibly the most egregious offender because one series left Lars dying and being revived and then they left him on his homeworld and then we went back to a municipal election. Stephen gets angry because Connie doesn't want to talk to him, Lapis Lazuli. panicking because his homeworld is coming to Earth and reminding everyone that there are fascists in space coming to kill them all and Stephen and the cool kids form a band, then the show went on hiatus for another three months.

Steven Universe spent so much time on hiatus that the wait continued to wear people down I talked about this in the watch drawer podcasting glass of water as the wait went on and on and people started to get angry. Pauses have happened on TV shows all the time, but Steven Universe has too many pauses and that kind of long wait is unheard of, but this is where the biggest problem lies. If you binge watch the series, everything seems fine now. The biggest problem with the filler episode in retrospect is that they are boring and most people would prefer to have the interesting story told. about space battles, not the boring story about a loudmouth brat who doesn't have earlobes, but when you put it in the context of people who wait six months after leaving that kid on a hostile alien planet only to come back and not even bother giving it to him.

A passing glance for several weeks and people are going to get angry because you're just shaking them down and wasting their damn time. The fact is that Steven Universe had enough time to put the filler in properly and just decided to fill it with nothing. Filler episodes exist so that you don't have to take a break, your story lasts 12 episodes with the order 24, so you distribute those story episodes between fun filler episodes to pass the time and create organic spaces between the events of the history. Steven Universe just has pauses and spaces in between. otherwise the programming is organic and ruins everything when people hear that Steven Universe is coming back after six months, the last thing they want to see is some episode about Mayor Dewey, we don't need a break from the story, we just had one.

This contributes to what many people see as a feeling that the story is stagnating because it has long periods of nothing and then returns to the filler that should have been put in those spaces if you believe that it is all the work of Cartoon Network because of the constant pauses that No, Sugar should have realized this a while ago and written her episodes accordingly, if you constantly pause you don't need to do this kind of crap, but Sugar continued doing it anyway, you don't even know why who does all that effort to make magical lesbian space rocks and then spend so much time on regular humans?

Are you telling me that all the literally colorful characters on this show? Your favorite is Lars, that guy doesn't have one. earlobes, Rebecca, the problem with padding is even worse when there is an active story arc in the cluster arc, a massive artificial fusion made up of millions of gem fragments, by the way, remember this will be important later, It is discovered that it is baking beneath the earth's crust and will soon form and destroy the entire planet, I repeat, soon it will destroy the entire planet. Now on any other show this type of story would have a sense of urgency, not on Steven Universe, however the back to the barn episodes are too far away. the response, the birthday message received from Steven, and the registration date 7152, barely have anything to do with the real story.

They spend most of their time relaxing and not doing much. Only the return to the barn is what somehow advances the story itself and there is no reason for it. the other three couldn't have waited until after the cluster stopped. If you take the episode that forms the cluster arc and rearrange them so that the confusion occurs after the cluster has been bubbled, this problem disappears because of something threatening the Earth. What matters most to the Crystal Gems is that there is a distinct lack of real tension in the story, no one is stressed, no one is worried, wait, no scratches, that peridot is worried, but don't worry, we'll lobotomize her enough soon for an arc supposedly over the cluster.

In fact, I forgot it even existed the first time I watched it because several episodes and a four-month hiatus went by without it receiving a passing mention after Malachi is defeated, the group starts waking up and everyone's like, oh yeah, the group exists in almost all arcs. has this problem, the gem hunter earthlings jasper bow has bismuth punched in the middle, the homeworld bow has dew gems win and kevin party wedged inside it and the pink diamond bow that immediately follows has five episodes interspersed before anything remotely resembling The Conclusion begins to inch forward. The biggest contributor to this constant starting and stopping is the fact that Steven Universe plays out like any other cartoon, but unlike any other cartoon, it's tied to Steven himself at all times, so even in theory, the plot tends to develop. at a relatively realistic pace, all the important and interesting things happen completely off screen, that's why there are so many episodes about Steven wandering around Beach City, why there are so many cases of random characters doing everything with Steven, why there are so many episodes. where steven is dating another gem only for the plot to hit the wall or a character's personal problems to jump out of nowhere, this is most egregious in the last episode outside of Beach City where the episode is entirely about the pearl seduction . a human lady who looks like Rose and also like Steven is there.

They threw him into the episode only because the show mandated that he always be here even though the episode worked just as well, if not better, if he didn't hog the screen time. I must emphasize thatThis is unusual for any television show. Television shows are usually written in a full third-person perspective so that the focus can shift a bit when necessary. There are plenty of moments in Avatar where the perspective shifts to Zuko and Ira early on. like the first episode and even episodes where ang is not present at all, fan favorite episodes like zuko alone, tales of bosses say boiling rock, southern raiders and three quarters of sozin's comment wouldn't have happened if the series would have tied itself to aang The way Steven Universe tied itself to Stephen we'd probably have more information about Diamonds as a whole if the show could be bothered to separate itself from Steven even for a second, even the episodes that don't technically feature Steven They are a story. told to him or feature a fusion inhabiting Steven with this arbitrary restriction in place, a lot of interesting things happen completely off-screen, which in storytelling terms means it's not actually the case that Legend of Korra had this problem until certain point in his final season. where 95of kuvira's dictator's behavior happens off screen and is only vaguely alluded to and a lot of people bought into that laziness with oh well it happens off screen that's not good enough you have to show us.

Steven Universe has so many characters that you just sit there and do nothing because Steven isn't around to see them. Lapis Lazuli and Peridot are the two most important examples, as they are locked in the barn at all times until Steven decides to visit them, at which point something actually happens. Lapis Lazuli is actually one of many characters who have a lot to work on but can't actually do it in the vast majority of cases because Steven isn't there, so he isn't allowed to do anything as a result of this Lapis Lazuli seems to them. many people like one of Sugar's dozens of attempts to wubify absolutely terrible and reprehensible people and we'll get to that, but Lapis didn't have to be like this if you replace every episode of Steven fucking in a coastal town with some rando with episodes about the other gems Lapis might have actually been a character, the peridot might have contributed in some way, the amethyst might have been able to overcome her insecurities more organically, the pearl might not have been such a crazy garnet, it might not have been relegated to an exposition about fusion and nothing more, a whole arc about Lapis becoming a better person and changing the stick abuse he used to be, that sounds a hell of a lot better than the six episodes that tried to save Lars before the sugar just gave up, killed it and replaced it with zayfod beeblebrocks that sugar likes to put.

Terrible people in leather pants, why not have someone actually grow and improve and earn that so-called redemption instead of just stagnating for years until you steal your girlfriend's and once again leave another story about abuse that is surpassed by the family man of all things? The end result of this laser focus on Steven means that nothing happens. There are so many throwaway episodes you can skip and not miss where nothing interesting happens. None of the characters we really like show their faces and no one who really cares. grows or changes in any way the universe steven because of this forced perspective remains steadfast in his refusal to really explore any of the ideas he presents, instead offering clues, hinting that lapis lazuli might have PTSD, hints that Peridot might have self-esteem issues. hints at character development this is not good writing it's lazy writing the sad thing is it's lazy writing that works when I made my video about Tempest Shadow one of the most common rebuttal attempts by people was to accuse me of not being I could see hints of character development and people speculating about what Tempest Life could have been, but I saw those hints of character development and speculating about its potential, but I also came to the legitimate conclusion that because the movie didn't bothered to do anything with that potential so that potential was irrelevant this is something most fandoms can't grasp and why hinting at character development is the easy way out for many shows.

Steven Universe hints at something interesting about a character and just leaves it there, the fandom chooses it. He gets up and speculates, invents elaborate theories that delve into layers of intrigue, and then concludes that because of all the speculation about Steven Universe being an incredible show, do you see what just happened? Although Rebecca Sugar gets all the credit and praise, but the fans are the only ones. doing all the actual work, they're writing elaborate story ideas that the show won't even try to use, but she takes all the credit for it. Steven Universe is providing little more than a collection of writing prompts and is being billed as an incredible, deep show.

Just because a bunch of much more creative people can write 50 pages based on those prompts, the show's big twist is that the rose is a pink diamond, but the fandom guessed that twist the moment the name was first mentioned. of the pink diamond and I said it at the time that the pink diamond of the rose theory was without a doubt the worst possible way to end that whole arc, which meant that Sugar was definitely going to do worse, not only does Steven Universe trust In the alternate ending of episode Lion 4, Stephen spends an episode deconstructing Rose's tape and trying to find the answer to its purpose in the story. life.

This has been a common trend in fandom theory since the beginning of the show, i.e. why did Rose give? She prepares to bring Stephen into the world. Stephen investigates as much as she can and finds a tape for Nora and spends the rest of the episode trying to figure out who Nora is. Nora is exactly what she would have called Steven if she were a girl and the only reason she exists is simply because Rose wanted a baby. Now you might be wondering why it had to be a whole episode that teases the viewer with something interesting only to pull it out of them at the last minute because that's why this episode's only defense for existing is that we have to remind people that they're special like that. as they are, but anyone who really needs reminding will need a stronger foundation than Steven Universe to tell them this is as close as it gets.

Something related to a solid theme that Steven Universe even has, with the exception of the characters who already have their together, almost every character arc is about learning to love yourself, but not loving yourself in the practical way in which you have aspirations and goals and work to achieve them while taking Engage in self-improvement and ensure that you are a healthy and functional person. You know what it really means to love yourself. We're talking about the Internet version of loving yourself, where you're complacent, never make any effort to solve your problems, and mope until someone spoils you. and pretend like you don't have problems in the first place and give up the moment you face failure because acknowledging that you have things to work on isn't comfortable;

You are already as good as you will ever be. says the diamond, I mean rebecca sugar, curiously, the best characters on the show are the ones who don't do this, connie aspires to be more than what she currently is, she works hard and at the end of her effective character she is able to defend herself against a fusion alone while steven has another bout of temper, she's the most emotionally stable among the cast, which I know isn't a high bar to clear in the first place, but bear with me and she frequently takes everyone else out of the loop. danger.

Bismuth was another character who aspired to be more than she was, so much so that she longed to take that aspiration to her home world and free everyone and on her initiative was labeled as bad as diamonds by the show as a genocidal murderer by the fandom and then bubbled into what is still the most horrible act of intellectual carelessness on the part of sugar. This happens because the show simply has no writers. The show was written entirely by the storyboard team, who prioritize jokes and scenes above all else and try to make the story bend around the entire plot.

The arc about Lars going to space existed entirely because Sugar had this vision of Lars being a space captain and was determined to say that somewhere all of this combined means that the show is going nowhere every time something looks like it might happen. We're now five seasons in, but with only two seasons of actual content, there are plenty of people who have completely given up on Steven Universe but only persist in watching it because of the need for closure all this time. I've invested in needing to see how it ends, if it ends, you can't create a show about pathological sugar addiction, you can't keep bothering people with clickbait titles only to find out that the episode it's attached to is just more people.

Going around and doing nothing is very boring, so this is where we run into a problem, you see, unlike many other shows, Steven Universe has always had a scattershot approach to character design, most of the time. character development doesn't happen, then it comes in dribs and drabs and then. an epiphany simply arrives at the last possible second of an extended narrative arc, this means there's not much to say about each character on their own, especially Steven, which is why they're all piled into one section instead of Stephen. one only for him as Cora made the only exception to this, however, is Rose Quartz, who is the culmination of all of Sugar's failures as a writer and is such a critical character despite never appearing in the present and, as such , has its own section detailing how problematic his story is, no, even if we disagree, no one deserves it.

Steven has never been able to catch a break in this series. He goes from being a really annoying kid who doesn't seem aware of what's going on. around him he becomes a simple parasite who doesn't do much except watch other people solve problems and then learns the magic trick of talking to the monster, which he uses over and over again and then becomes a coward who withers in the end . From the series, Steven has a bit of a Twilight Sparkle problem, as he constantly changes depending on what Sugar needs him to do, for example, Steven is no stranger to violence and for most of the series approaches fighting with neutral detachment. or perverse joy Despite being Steven, something of a pacifist, he isn't particularly concerned with fighting per se, but because Bismuth wants to lean heavily on an anti-violence message, there are many instances, even before it is revealed breaking point, in which Steven is visibly nervous and uncomfortable around fairly standard standards.

Training Exercises I would say that Steven was at his best during the second season, since this was after he stopped being an idiot kid, the Gems took care of him, and before he became such a self-righteous coward, if we do everything what they say, they could be soft on us. but they are bad they hurt my friends they hurt my face they have you here in prison that's why we can't fight with them that's why we have to fight with them there is no reason to fight let me talk to her please the fight is over Stop it, we are not enemies, we are family.

I especially like it when it has to come for Peridot, who mistakes thunder for clouds. He still has problems that plagued the entire series, such as the fact that he is too playful when he is supposed to be. taking something seriously and too seriously when something stupid happens, Steven doesn't really get to be a character because he has to spend all his time being the vessel for Sugar's crying and the forgiveness plot, he's like starlight in That sense is lost too much time. trying to prove a point and as a result he has nothing beyond that, this is not helped by the fact that the show treats him as some kind of messiah figure half the time and has him solve long-standing problems that the gems somehow could I won't figure it out until this special boy came into their lives, oh really, Lily, a bland, generic white boy plays a part in the artificially inflated plot between the numerous women and non-white characters, god.

My, what a mystery, okay, I came in that you do it for him. and would you do it again, you do it for her, that is, you will do it for him, oh dear lord, where do I begin? Pearl Pearl wasn't so much a good character that she fell by the wayside as the series progressed. As much as she was made up of various dark romance tropes from the beginning, for the first two seasons, all we knew about Pearl was that she was obsessively in love with Rose and that she was tormented by a combination of pain and trauma, but pain and The trauma, as Rebecca understands itSugar Pearl, was an erratic and dangerous character who rarely faces the consequences of her actions, like that time she almost killed Steven in space or that time she almost dropped Steven and died because she was mad about a sword or That time He almost ripped the gem out of Steven.

Pearl really wants to kill Steven Pearl. She suffers greatly from the fact that Rebecca Sugar keeps adding extremely dark content to her story for tertiary reasons and doesn't do anything with it, much of what made Pearl interesting in that. She was dealing with the loss of a loved one and that unrequited love, something you never do with a gay character, was destroyed once it was revealed that Pearl was literally Rose's slave, Sugar actually went on to interview for describe the dynamic between them as if alfred was in love with batman, not bruce, just batman. sugar doesn't seem to understand that there's a reason why alfred isn't in love with batman because he's a surrogate father to him and that would be really cool, plus batman doesn't own alfred and alfred gets paid stupid i see a tower built from my mistakes and everything collapses.

Amethyst is the character who suffers the most from Steven Universe's unbalanced approach to telling her character's story. The arc about dealing with her inadequacies is never really resolved. She is just kind. de disappears after meeting the other Amethysts who were made in the same kindergarten, but I'm getting ahead of myself for most of the first season. Amethyst was the cool older sister of the group, she existed mainly to make fun of Garnet and Pearl. This even went as far as the other Gems treating her like an animal at times like when Pearl asked if they would really let Steven keep a lion and Garnet replied that we were keeping Amethyst.

This continued for a while and Amethyst was a character regarded with derision. from a lot of people, which coincided nicely with the mockery of everyone except Steven, then while fleeing Amethyst took Steven to the kindergarten where she was created and then a complete tonal whiplash ensued when Amethyst attacks Pearl angrily before vocalizing loudly. her self-loathing for being a jewel of her home planet, you know, Segren in the new colossus, yeah. that's amethyst, this is where the problems start because it was completely abandoned until it reformed, where amethyst's self-loathing returns In the good form, she spends the episode constantly destabilizing and speeding up her regeneration much to Garnet's chagrin when Garnet comments that her new forms look ridiculous, Amethyst becomes enraged and her inadequacy issues arise a second time and she was abandoned again until she asks. help where amethyst sings about being unsuitable for sardonyx, is abandoned again until she cracks the whip and steven vs amethyst where jasper makes fun of her for being overcooked and then is abandoned again until the zoo where amethyst meets the other amethyst from the same kindergarten and sees that they are all overcooked and defective like her at the time of writing, she has not appeared since and it seems that she won.

She will never appear again, as Amethyst has made it clear that she is not going to leave her problems to Steven when Steven is already dealing with too many people. This is one of the many unresolved plot threads in the Steven universe, but Sugar spends a lot. time retreading the same terrain and not going anywhere with it, it seems that Sugar used the famous, that word is uncomfortable to say as a means to just quietly get her out of it again, like Hasbro did with Fluttershy and in front of the entire Everyone else's trash. In the show, honestly, I respect that a lot more than just trying to force it to work, acknowledging even slightly that your story idea was terrible and finding a way to quietly reconfigure it and transform the character into an actual supporting character takes a lot. more integrity than stubbornly sticking to your bad ideas and amethyst after the zoo was generally one of the more likable characters now that she didn't add to the pile of misery in everyone else oh garnet garnet was an interesting character at least until it was revealed that she She was a fusion for the first season, she was the no-nonsense straight arrow to Pearl and Amethyst, often showing genuine compassion for Steven. that no other character seems to show that an episode has garnet, it gives steven his clairvoyant powers and steven becomes absolutely furious because he sees millions of possible deaths which leads to this rather poignant line, stephen.

I see so many things that can hurt you. I should never have let one of them be me. It's a really touching moment and Garnet was full of them in the first season once. it was revealed that she was a fusion, however, oh boy, Garnet was demoted to extra the moment this happened, except in cases where the fusion was the subject of an episode, all episodes in which Garnet plays an important role, the fusion was involved in some way, some of them were good like Garnet. being horrified by the forced fusion experiments the homeworld was doing, which is conveniently forgotten when it comes time to talk about how sad diamonds are, but then there's some direct conscious education where Garnet vaguely sings about the trauma during the half of the episode and nothing happens until the At the last minute, once the fusion became a major aspect of the series, Garnet simply stopped being a character, she was a vector to talk about fusion, she was a resource of plot every time Ruby and Sapphire had to break up and then proved exactly what the majority of the fandom thought.

This plot twist into three gems and a baby maroon only has scant moments to shine and even she has to share her own wedding episode with her archenemies. The complete abandonment of Garnet is one of the main low points of the series because Garnet was a fan favorite. for so long and was pushed aside in favor of more steven rose and the diamonds, it's all i am. Peridot is possibly the best character on the show, but that's not the high praise anyone thinks it is. You see a common element of a lot of steven. The in-universe characters struggle with insecurities, traumas, or other assorted personal demons that they do little about except sulk about.

What makes Peridot so great is the fact that she doesn't have any of that peridot that she introduces herself to as doing a routine check on the cluster before getting trapped on Earth. and she's so terrified of being trapped there when the cluster hits that even the thunder makes her panic and cling to Stephen for support. There are many aspects of the Earth's organic nature that she is not aware of and as a result, many things can easily trick her into believing that the group is about to emerge, she enters into a tenuous alliance with the crystal gems to stop the group, where she gains a better appreciation for Earth and living outside of her homeworld's rigid caste system, after that there wasn't much to do with Peridot and her two biggest episodes after the cluster arc were her trying of bubbling a gem monster and having to deal with the fact that it has no powers.

I'll level with you too low to ride, it's my favorite episode of the series because it involves Paradox accepting the fact that she is a stunted gem like Amethyst. Side note: Have you ever noticed that Peridot gets character arcs from other people, but it's better anyway Paradox clings to technology as a kind of prosthetic because Era 2 Peridots don't either. has powers or in her case she has extremely weak powers, Steven tries to make up for destroying her limb enhancers by giving her a recorder to keep records in which Peridot greatly appreciates and then Lapis Lazuli destroys it after the group arc.

Steven gives Peridot a tablet to which Peridot is ecstatic and appreciates it as she did with her recorder, then Amethyst tries to throw it into the ocean. She insists that Peridot doesn't need her because Amethyst doesn't exactly understand why Peridot is so despondent about not having powers and Peridot freaks out, stop it. playing with that thing give me that no you don't need it you don't know that yes I hope wait like no that's all I am the panic and desperation in peridot's voice I just felt that when you have possessions that matter to you especially when they are a gift of the closest thing you have to your family, those things have great personal value for you.

Peridot received her tablet as a gift, a very thoughtful gift from Steven, something Steven gave her because he knows technology is very important to Peridot and then Amethyst tries to throw it away, why is everyone tearing up Peridot's gifts? of Stephen? In his panic, Peridot discovers that he can actually move metal, which is fine, come to think of it, we should have seen it coming, but it's still just the sheer desperation he feels that even unlocks this. and while steven and amethyst are freaking out about it, you can watch peridot very carefully navigate her tablet safely back to shore, the sheer amount of paradoxes they go through in this episode alone is intense and contains more work from actual character than almost all the other episodes combined.

Can someone give this gem a hug? After this point, Peridot didn't star much, mainly playing a comedic role for other characters and sticking around to be a support for the others from time to time, but once her arc ended, no one really knew what. having to do with her was almost like Sugar realizing that unlike every other character, Peridot had just ended, all the other character arcs were tediously dragged out so Sugar could continue training on the same ground. She couldn't do that with Peridot. Peridot was a three-dimensional character. Something Sugar isn't completely familiar with right now, what do we do?

Yes, Peridot just fell by the wayside until season five, where she had a brief period of depression after Lapis left and she was dealing with the breakup, so she took up gardening, but because she tried . to bring the kindergarten back to life and failed, she has a nervous breakdown over the fact that she will probably never get the house or lapis back from her. We'll talk about lapis lazuli in a moment, but I find the relationship between lapis lazuli and peridot fascinating. Peridot loves lapis lazuli very much. much that darkly contrasts how cruel and unpleasant Lapis Lazuli often is with her cruelty which Peridot is aware of but apparently doesn't care about, even when Lapis Lazuli takes all her things and flees to the moon, there is apparently no anger towards Lapis Lazuli at all. , just a period of depression she's gone through if it was that intentional, it would have been interesting to explore Peridot's tertiary role as comic relief after most of her arc was over, it's a contentious point for a lot of people, but for To be honest, I'm okay with that, she's generally fun to be around, and like most Gems who are new to Earth, she usually has a hard time learning social graces, while Peridot's behavior can be a bit off.

Irritating to people for whom comic relief is a dirty word, his attitude and behavior actually contrast nicely with the constant crying everywhere else. You see, I'm on the opposite of that drama spectrum and angst only works in small bursts or if that angst is a result of the characters being mean to each other, while outside of a certain tone at the required moments, it doesn't really exist. too much comedy. it was terrible to you i liked taking it out on you all i needed i hated you it was bad oh boy so the idea behind lapis lazuli is pretty good sugar wanted to write a character arc about an abuse victim recovering from an unhealthy relationship and we know it because she admitted it, this is something that is rarely talked about with lgbt characters and may actually take advantage of the fact that the gems are monogender, most of the episodes that heavily feature lapis are about her alleged trauma in her relationship with Jasper deep down. of the ocean, her slow progress when it comes to adapting to the land, especially compared to the navy blue ruby, and her budding relationship with the peridot, so you're laying the groundwork for an arc about an abuse victim coming back to life. from a trauma, this is just a small insignificant problem. everyone is a prisoner now you are my prisoner I can't be distracted I have to hold us down with the weight of the ocean of your planet I liked taking it out on you I know I'm not the only one who realizes this but in all the cases that are supposed to show the relationship little healthy between lapis lazuli and jasper, it is lapis lazuli who is the abuser in that scenario, she played a trick on jasper by agreeing to fuse only to then trap them at the bottom of the ocean and keep her chained there. for over a year and then she admitted it, this doesn't even address Sugar's usual problem of just ignoring things in previous episodes to fit her tunnel vision of hers.

The episode that is supposed to establish Lapisas a victim of abuse she does the exact opposite because Sugar writes as Someone who has never left her house or spoken to another human being, even after this mistake, lapis, she is still a pretty unpleasant person. That's to be expected. Anyone who has even a passing experience with abuse knows that it doesn't create likable people, and it's just as easy to believe that Lapis Lazuli's trauma comes from being trapped in the mirror for thousands of years. Instead, it wasn't the fact that Lapis Lazuli was an angry heel that made her so controversial, but the fact that she repeatedly took it out on one. character that people really liked, you see that the public is biased by nature and the quickest way for a character to eliminate any sympathy they may have had for them is to kick the fandom's favorite person.

Peridot was that character and possibly the best designed crystal gem in the world. If the series had had a good redemption arc he would have actually helped save the world, speaking of a fascist dictator he actually learned to deal with his problems and outside of those cases he was one of the funniest characters in the cast secondary and she was the one who approached Lapis and tried so hard to make her feel welcome even though Lapis treated her like trash at every possible opportunity, what inevitably happened was that Lapis found a new victim, but because Sugar continues to write for the character she thinks she wrote, rather than the one she actually wrote and has an understanding of abuse on par with Dr.

Wolf, this is all left unaddressed and more time is spent reinforcing how sad and distressing Lapis is. This all comes to a very heated conclusion by raising the bar where Lapis' fear of getting caught up in another war makes me want to leave Earth, the entire episode is one long chain of lapis lazuli being the worst, but a personal highlight is this scene. I can't, I won't get caught up in another war. Imagine writing and animating a scene with this sinister look. and I still get the impression that you are writing about a victim of abuse.

All of this could have been potentially interesting. I like the idea. The idea of ​​a story about an abuser who goes through his own personal redemption story by changing his ways and turning a corner needs to be reinforced. on their own, but that idea can only happen when the writer is aware of who this character is and Sugar remains blissfully unaware of that fact. You can see this clearly in the episodes where Lapis' trauma is the central focus when in this position she is almost a completely different person. person that is jarring to say the least you could have been me and what are you instead amethyst just kidding jasper was possibly the first villain the show had and as far as setting up a conflict they nailed it with jasper never There was a lot. for Jasper, just a bunch of lectures about purging the weak and hating the things she sees as a crutch while also trying to turn them into weapons, yeah sugar, mostly just promoted a boss fight with her, even At the end of the jailbreak, he fuses with Lapis Lazuli, who proceeds to trap. she went under the ocean to torture her unfortunately when Jasper came out she was different.

Sugar went on record saying that Jasper was someone who was tormented by self-loathing and it was actually another self-loathing plot, regardless of which we can't do much with that as Jasper is immediately defeated in a fusion battle and then corrupted because he fused with a corrupted gem. This is probably the closest the show has come to literally lying its way out of a plot and it's mostly due to the Steven-centric morality the show has. Bottom line because we will expand on it later if Steven likes someone then there are a million excuses and that wasn't that bad for his actions but if Steven doesn't like someone he deserves to strangle them this would be an interesting character flaw if it weren't for the fact that the show is using this metric to determine who the likable and irredeemable characters are, so Jasper and Kevin are terrible, but the consistently worse diamonds, Lars Ronaldo, Lapis, and Andy, are sympathetic.

The program says that Steven likes this person, therefore, you should also leave the group to make it grow. It will destroy the earth and I will have immense satisfaction in erasing that horrible rock from our star charts. That light yellow diamond is proof that everything Sugar says about having planned everything from the beginning as a complete lie when the yellow diamond first appeared. She was exactly the type of character we expected from the whole setup, menacing, ruthless and cold hearted, she posed animatedly and expressed perfectly, what do I mean when I say this? Well the diamonds are all blatant space nazis to the point of committing at least two acts of genocide there's not much you can do with that as far as complexity goes unless you're a person so all you can really do is to instill in the viewer the feeling that getting your ass kicked is going to be fun, this tends to This is why the more overtly totalitarian a character is, the more they are reduced to just a series of intimidating poses and butt kicks.

Everything says that here is our villain. They kick so much ass, so it will be that much sweeter when we smash their faces. The dirt, there's just one problem, Sugar hated it, Sugar didn't write this episode and apparently she hated Yellow Diamond so much that she personally storyboarded her next appearance and that will be all that made her radically change from being ruthless and cold. willing to suppress her pain over the loss of the pink diamond after this, her next appearance was at the trial and it was not written by sugar either and the yellow went back to being a colorful darth vader oh, I ignore that last statement, I could have gotten carried away, you can see.

This push and pull with yellow throughout the series and depending on who writes it, he becomes a completely different character for a while, someone was rejecting Sugar's insistence that the villains be sad little babies, but Sugar eventually won and at the time of meeting. Yellow was wracked with grief and immediately experiences a change towards Stephen, literally removing everyone's problems and oh my god, out of the four diamonds, the yellow diamond was the biggest disappointment because she was the only one presented as a villain and with whom Sugar had to keep herself together. to break her into the terrible and sad mold of her, you cannot imagine how much I have mourned what thousands of years of pain have done to me.

Blue Diamond is possibly one of the worst characters on the show because from the moment of her debut, her actual debut she was nothing more than a pain-ridden mess who is supposed to be sympathetic to people who don't know what it's like to sympathize. personally. I find this quite disgusting and the blue diamond is portrayed as having greed for thousands of years over the loss of the pink diamond while holocausting them both. crystal gems and her homeworld before and after that time for various reasons, including talking about faulty fusions and just because she feels like it Hello Starlight, you certainly gave everyone a scare, everyone is excited to see you safe and sound, white.

The Diamond was Sugar's last-ditch effort to make the other three Diamonds seem sympathetic in the face of mounting harsh criticism of her writing, presented with shutters and dread shown as a towering figure who speaks like Mother Gothel and whose pearl has a split eye. and a thousand yard stare and the implication that she has the original pink diamond pearl because of the way her gems are placed and that the theory is stupid enough to actually be a canonical white diamond was an enigma for a long time and is presented as the real villain by being much scarier than the villains we have already had, may be familiar to people who play modern video games and are used to microtransactions after the loot box armageddon of 2017, no works for people who actually paid attention to this but it's still disgusting, you can see that the characters suffer the most from poor sugar priorities in the fragmented narrative, when the main characters have to deal with their problems it happens extremely quick because sugar is putting everything in at the last minute to be able to make I'm sure there's plenty of time for your coffee shop in the coastal town.

This means that the characters' arcs have the simultaneous problem of being dragged and rushed beyond belief, as their problems are ignored or ignored for most of the arc before reaching the finish line in the episode. In the end, the only character I would say was handled well was Peridot, as once her arc was complete, she became an uplifting person and honestly, that's what I think works best, as the rest It's scattered and the sugar doesn't seem to know it. what to do with them, so many characters just stand around doing nothing because they have to be there and it seems like Sugar would rather find some excuse to remove them from the plot entirely, you know, at the same time I was writing this script, I was also Covered Little Witch Academia in a minute and I noticed something similar happened there where the main cast changes in the second half of the series and the fun characters are demoted to extra while being replaced by characters that are much less interesting and now I'm wondering something: see that Steven Universe is full of anime references, too many.

The team is really obsessed with anime and inserts references into it at every possible opportunity and I think they are including it in their writing as well, that would explain why. The character arcs rush to get to the next poorly animated fight scene. Wow, did I just say that out loud? I don't want to dwell too much on the animation since I don't think it is a critical priority within the program, but a lot of people talk about it and it is a symptom of the disease that is rotting within the steven universe in its essence, the animation in the steven universe is bad, really bad, the characters constantly move away from the model, they change height, they change proportions, they change facial structure, the models completely. breaking and many of the main characters have been reduced to increasingly chibi forms as the series progresses, there are almost never two episodes in which the characters look the same, with characters made of angular shapes such as peridot, being the most heinous criminals, it is clear that the program does. has no model sheets, a minimum pre-production standard for animation, and there's a good chance storyboards will be drawn freehand.

None of the usual practices for maintaining proper character proportions are employed here, in an appalling display of laziness and unprofessional behavior. There is no excuse for the animation to be so sloppy, the only episode where the animation stays in the fluid model without any animation errors is Conscious Education, the best animated episode. I need to make that distinction clear because I'm going to break this down. New in a Minute Conscious Education is a strange case study because all the other episodes have constant model changes and animation problems dating back to the first season. There is no other episode except conscious education, which does not seem to have been animated without any prior preparation. -production at all, so what happened was easy, they got someone else to do it.

Conscious education was encouraged by the study trigger. You know the lesbian witches, so the animation is much more floaty than what Steven Universe is generally known for and the characters don't constantly change models. like a ps2 era kingdom hearts scene done during the turning point, so you really care about it, in that case the answer is no, you run, are you mad? You hate me? Are you angry? You hate me? So yes, the episode is very beautifully animated and really shows what Steven Universe would look like if they knew what they were doing, but here's the part where I pulled the rug out from under it.

Remember how at the beginning of the section I said that animation is not something I would like? what to focus on because ultimately it has no effect on the quality of the show conscious education is one of the worst episodes in the steven universe about three quarters of the story is dedicated to connie apologizing for suplexing someone As a result of her combat training, this results in Stevonnie being unable to maintain her stability as a fusion and having to meditate with Garnet in a tediously long musical number about dealing with traumatic experiences. However, a major problem with this is that the inciting incident is not a traumatic experience, it is muscle memory of the traumatic.

The experience ends up being Steven having to deal with leaving the eyeball trapped in space bubbling bismuth for nothing and letting Jasper become corrupted and feeling guilty about all thosethings, but only for two minutes because the episode hastily rushes a conclusion to it at the end of the episode. An accident is given more time than the deep-rooted problems a character faces before leaving them hanging. Oh, and before you ask, yes, the next episode is completely separate from this and left there until 13 episodes later. why the animation is a small thing because the most attractive episode of the series is also one of the worst episodes of the series because the sloppy and unprofessional animation is just a movie of a disease that affects the entire program most of the drawings animated have animation errors and a Many modern cartoons are full of them, but they often amount to technical glitches with Steven Universe.

It's a direct decision by the creators to say so about the very concept of effort, however, handing over the animation to someone else won't really improve the show. because that same laziness is also present in the writing and characterization, the core of a work that breaks down the animation and does comparative shots is ultimately meaningless and conscious education is proof that it is appropriate that this episode was animated by the studio shooter because they have the exact same problem I'm talking about, many of their shows are beautifully animated but the quality of the writing is boring at best and disgustingly regressive at worst except it's actually lie because this episode was not animated by Studio Trigger and this is where I am.

I'm going to pull the rug out from under everyone again. This episode was animated by the same South Korean studio that animated every other episode. A trigger person was hired to do the storyboards, not to animate the storyboards. You see, many shows are animated in South Korea. and if there's one thing that characterizes South Korean animation, it's that they don't have time for any of that, they'll give you the exact type of animation that your storyboards tell you to give. Simply put, if your storyboards suck, your animation will suck too. in the storyboards for most episodes of the steven universe they now look haphazardly drawn, storyboards in general have never been the pinnacle of art, they are strictly utilitarian, but you will notice that there is a constant theme of a single drawing line, someone drew it with a pencil tool in ms. painting and frankly I wasn't surprised that the characters are constantly going off model and deformed in size when that's what your boards look like, the big indicators of this is simply the filmography of the two studios that animate the show. images whose work includes buzz lightyear from star command ben 10 and gargoyles and draft studios whose work includes ren and stimpy the modern life of critic rocco dexter's boy pinkie and the brain king of the hill johnny bravo daria the powerpuff girls bob sponge squarepants chalk zone samurai jack the old man and the reboot kim possible codename the kids next door my life is a robot teenage ghost danny american dragon jake long the modifiers phineas and ferb gravity falls grandpa star vs the forces of bad we take bears the simpsons family Futurama boy American father Fern Gully the last rainforest hotel transylvania and many others that I didn't have time to mention, so if a studio, an animation studio has a job like this and features some of the stones best animated angles from anyone's childhood who probably started gawking at the screen when I said this, then I think we can rule out the animators themselves as being responsible and of course the conscious upbringing that a guest storyboard artist had storyboards much cleaner and consistent they do the job they are supposed to do and communicate with the animators conscious education brought in takafumi hori as the main storyboard artist and who are the main storyboard artists in most episodes.

I'm really surprised. This is my surprised face. The comment defending this from a certain subset of Steven Universe fans. It's that this is all a stylistic choice, isn't that what every terrible hack says about his shitty work that you want to see as intentionally bad as a stylistic choice. I ask you to look one more time at a 90s cartoon that pretends to look like the doodles in a children's math book have been brought to life with a good amount of surreal animation and even that manages to stay on the model for five minutes, but a Again, the Korean draft pedigree completely eliminates that concept, the storyboards are simply drawn as a scribble with no thought to maintaining consistent proportions, no one checks the proportions or models at all, there is no pre-production in this program, just draw freehand, whatever, I know this is the general theme of the video, but it's worth repeating, guys. they are so lazy when it comes to lgbt representation, steven universe got a free ride with low expectations because lgbt relationships are rare in children's shows, many people were prepared to claim steven universe as the pioneer of a new era in design Of course, this all happened in the first season when the show was hammering home how much Pearl was still losing her.

It wasn't until the end of the first season that a real relationship was even established in Ruby and Sapphire and that's where the problems begin. I've talked before about how Garnet was an interesting idea of ​​literally being a relationship, but with the show absolutely working. nothing with her the implications of her existence became even more prominent the garnet was a very easy way to avoid doing any real work with ruby ​​and sapphire regarding the development of their relationship if you remember last year in my legend of korra video I talked about how one of the easiest ways to build a strong relationship is to start with breaks and make liberal use of couple banter.

Those who want to know how to write a relationship. This is a good base to start with. It's also comedy. This is the minimum standard that Steven Universe simply cannot commit to sugar always took every excuse it could to hide the ruby ​​and sapphire in the dressing room that is the garnet hips and I find this surprising because when the garnet is not fused , Ruby and Sapphire are surprisingly well written. and a fun relationship, whether they're in the middle of a heated fight like in Keystone Motel, being adorable to the point of hilarious incompetence like in Hit the Diamond, or just being the lol rock that keeps each other grounded. in a moment of anxiety like that. will be all they even have a big fight after the pink diamond reveal, it looks like they might break up and after a few episodes where Pearl Gaslight Sapphire and Steven go to find Ruby, they not only make up but get engaged, which I admit. that took me by surprise because i thought they were already married, by the way, the episode where they get married is probably the best episode of the sea would be the best episode of the series, but in the last half the space fascists crash the party and steven try to make friends with them, that's a mess we'll talk about later, although I find it funny and sad that the first gay wedding on a children's show had to share screen time with look how sad these Nazis are, I mean, Well. about rebecca sugar for accurately reflecting modern politics, at least for all her failures in other areas, when it's time for ruby ​​and sapphire to come out of her coat. sugar shows an amazing ability to write a nice and grounded relationship when people talk about lgbt representation, this is Right Here, writing a good lgbt relationship is so easy that even Rebecca Sugar can do it when she is forced to, but it seems that most of the time he just doesn't want to and keeps the ruby ​​and sapphire locked inside the garnet at all times.

It wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for the fact that garnet experienced a rapid and steady decline from being the only gem with a straight head to simply being a vessel for giving a lecture on fusion, which only happens about five percent. hundred of the time. Anyway, in the series, as a result, the ruby ​​and sapphire can't do much unless the garnet has become unstable, which has only happened on a few occasions. This is the fundamental problem with garnet being a permafusion, they are separate characters from the gems they contain. they refuse and only rarely function as two or more people.

It's hard to say that Steven Universe is a pioneer of LGBT representation when the only two characters who promote that idea are not present in the vast majority of the series. Another example of this was Pearl's one-sided relationship with Rose, characterized for most of the series as a pathological obsession brought on by unrequited love. To say Pearl was devastated to lose Rose is an understatement. She almost constantly breaks down considering the gems. They have been around for 6,000 years and Steven is only 14 years old. Rose's absence is still something very new for them. Pearl's creepy obsession with Rose was interesting for a while, but it became stale very quickly, even attempts to pair Pearl up with someone else failed. so someone else looking exactly like Rose people finally got tired of Pearl's character going nowhere outside of her unrequited love and were hoping Sugar would do something else with her which unfortunately turned out to be a regret because what Sugar did was disgusting and horrible with the revelation that Rose's pink diamond also came, the revelation that the pearl was the pearl of the pink diamond that was given to her as a slave, this fundamentally altered the dynamic between the rose and the pearl, as that now we are shown a slave who falls in love with her master and the spectacle is absolutely seen.

There's nothing wrong with that, if this had been some kind of sad fact about Pearl, that would have been one thing, but the show treats it as, at best, a quirk of their relationship and at worst , like incredibly romantic. It's over, isn't it? Why not? I move on, oh we know why tell me to stop, please never let a slave girl fall unilaterally in love with her master and said the master takes advantage of it, like Rose did, it's an extremely dark story premise, but not sugar. Think about it that way: Steven Universe loves to talk about abuse as a central theme, and yet the biggest example of it goes completely over Sugar's head, not even a single acknowledgment of how good this all is.

It's like reading erotic fan fiction written by the weirdest, scariest submissive of all time. Pearl's strange, twisted relationship with Rose even extends to her relationship with Stephen. Why are you here? Pearl, nothing, I was just uh well, you know how I always say um, I just uh, I like watching you sleep sometimes and by sometimes I mean, I often find it's funny because it's not really funny, it's just creepy, this It's played as a joke, Sugar's idea of ​​relationships is warped to say the least, this isn't good representation, there's a reason stories about lgbt relationships rarely cover these types of topics. and that's because when these themes get so messed up, it ends up reinforcing conservative paranoia about gay relationships as some kind of twisted deviance and finds its way into the next bill to criminalize being gay, for so there has been a sort of tacit agreement that we won't cover those things until we can be sure that they won't become arrows in the quiver of prohibition.

Gays, conservatives, and their stubborn bigotry are the reason LGBT representation is so politicized, as the greatest concentration of representation comes from such a short-sighted, melodramatic, reckless person like Rebecca Sugar is not a political milestone, so that many people think they are handling those issues well. It would be great, it would be amazing if a show talked about gay relationships and talked about how, like straight relationships, they can be difficult. or sometimes it's unhealthy and in fact got stuck on the landing, but doing so is extremely difficult and Sugar continues to put her foot in her mouth by bringing up cases of clear and obvious abuse and saying how romantic this is even before to address the fact that the LGBT characters in the series are restricted exclusively to the Gems, a monogenerated race of aliens, which conveniently avoids the usual conservative panic that the show might otherwise generate, but in doing so, gives the implicit lesson that providing valuable representation is second priority to placating a bunch of emotionally stunted whiners who LGBT representation is something that will be easily dismissed if it risks affecting the bottom line and you know what happens if that's your attitude then more power to you, but don't pretend that Steven Universe is some kind of pioneer, blink the half-measure and you'll do it. the strange thing, the representation is not new,has been around for over a decade, it's practically a formula, the fact that people pretend this is brave in any way, it's ridiculous, this doesn't even get into the whole middle finger of non-binary people becoming non binary.

The characters in Steven Universe exist entirely to avoid having to deal with the implications that many of Sugar's character designs create, such as how Stevonnie, despite being a fusion of a boy and a girl, has her design leaning heavily toward the male. feminine end of the gender spectrum. Say something interesting about Stephen, especially considering some choice moments in the first season when he says, but if it were me, I'd really want to be a giant, no, envy, that's easier, congratulations, Steven Universe, you've created a situation where that a character is non-binary is the least interesting explanation you could offer, I don't know how you managed to do that, that should be literally impossible.

Non-binary people are, by definition, interesting and you manage to make that boring, it's like trying to make it. going up some stairs and getting hit by a train, how did you do that? Speaking of which, the two characters that are introduced as non-binary Steven and Smokey Quartz are fusions, the only indication given that they are non-binary is that they use plural pronouns which are common among non-binary people, but they are also fusions of multiple people, so it is very likely that these two fusions will not even become their own person like other fusions do. There is a bigger problem due to a language quirk, I have no idea if these characters are actually singular non-binary entities or just a hive mind like a borg, the only thing known would be how they refer to themselves in first person, I wish that you would be here if we were together.

It would be okay, I hate you, I really do, actually, in a season five episode, Kevin explicitly referred to Stevonnie because they did it so well, Kevin, you were finally good for something better four years later than ever. It's almost as if someone pointed out to Sugar that the information about Stevonnie being non-binary was only confirmed on Twitter and that's not how the narrative works. Speaking of which, Stevonnie comes with her own set of problems. This show really perverts Stevonnie every chance she gets even though they are androgynous. Well, you know, according to Sugar in At Least Stevonnie is as feminine as possible and the camera pans around her to get as many shots of her body as possible.

Normally, this wouldn't be surprising as animated shows perverting female or female characters are nothing new, but Stevonnie literally is. two boys in a trench coat and this is a fact that the writers do not casually ignore in her debut episode. Stevonnie is molested by a creep, but the moment her fusion destabilizes, this happens, they are two children. I'm out, okay, great, well done, Kevin. surpassed the basic minimum requirement of a human being, here's your mediocre trophy, except Kevin and Stevonnie have another encounter in the episode Beach City Drift and Kevin not only remembers that Stevonnie has two fused children, but he continues to flirt with them, he maintains. two kids in a The beautiful trench coat routine won't fool me this time, so don't even try.

I know you want to be close, but this is a little sticky. Kevin is literally flirting with two boys and is aware of that fact. The episode portrays him as a standard jerk that literally every woman on the planet has met at least once in their lives, but Kevin's disturbing behavior runs much deeper than that and none of the writers notice or seem to care. and it doesn't surprise me that that's the case for the show aggressively. sexualizes stevonnie almost every time they appear and the constant and ever-present fact that their two children merge is repeatedly acknowledged and at the same time ignored when the writers want to pull some kind of trick as subversive as the fact that it is about steven and connie. placed front and center when the writers want to gawk at Stevonnie's butt, they never seem to acknowledge it.

Also, Stevonnie is apparently 26 because those are Steven Connie's ages merged together, is that you? That's the kind of excuse I'd expect to see as a bad anime actually. That brings me to the big question of why two little boys create a conventionally attractive woman when fused together from all the fusion designs pulled from the bowels of the world's craziest acid trip, this historic fusion of a human being into a gem creates a fairly generic look. woman as a result and let's not forget that these are children, leaving aside how sleazy it is to do this with children, children are some of the most imaginative little idiots in the world, if any fusion should have four arms, six eyes and a cobra that she spits poison for an ass, she's stevonnie, but no, she's just a generic beautiful lady.

If I had to hazard a guess based on the rest of the decisions on the show, I think Sugar developed the Stevonnie aspect first and then tried to find a way to work them into the story. somehow and I just didn't consider the implications of Stevonnie's very existence and the way they are often framed and sexualized. The fact that these are two kids who the camera often gawks at just didn't occur to anyone, I mean, that's the optimistic reading. the cynical reading is that sugar's obsession with anime has taken a toll on his psychological well-being the hasty addition of steven and connie's ages after the fact seems to lean heavily in that direction hello, it's lily, I'm interrupting because as I was Editing this part, i found a little nugget of information about stefani straight from sugar's mouth in an interview in 2015, sugar talked about her supposed intention behind stevonnie and it reads like this: stevonnie defies gender norms as an individual but also serves as a metaphor of all the scary firsts in a first relationship and what it feels like to hit puberty and suddenly find yourself in the body of an adult, how quickly that happens, what it feels like to have new power over people or suddenly find yourself objectified, all for seemingly no reason, since You're still just you and they're still just them, they're Stephen and Connie, who you already know and identify with and if you do you can feel in this episode what those feelings are like.

Well, first of all, that's not how puberty works, idiot, you don't suddenly have an adult body, you develop it over time, no. 14 A 15 or 16 year old boy has a fully developed body, that's just a stupid idea people have had since teenagers are played by adults on television. You want to show puberty. Give Stevonnie a cracking voice and acne. That's what puberty is like, but not that. be conventionally attractive now, could it come second to everything? your best way to show that you're objectified is to literally objectify stevonnie, that's your best excuse, holy man, this isn't a metaphor, this is just being the thing, honey, you're a creep, there's one more thing though. and that's ruby ​​and sapphire's wedding after breaking up with the revelation that rose was a pink diamond all the while they wander apart for a moment with ruby ​​becoming a cowgirl.

I like the little red lesbian, but I don't understand the little red lesbian when they finally make up, Ruby asks Sapphire to marry her, and we have the first on-screen same-sex wedding on a children's show. I don't have much to say about it, I'm just pointing out the actual small milestone that Steven Universe has reached. well done on that front steven universe here's your little trophy I look forward to the day when a good show does this and we can all collectively forget about you okay so if you're new to literary criticism you've probably heard me use terms like coded or encode and say what that means lily, it seems like even among steven universe fans the concept of coding is not widely understood.

This is a problem because it means that the extremely troubling racial aspects of Steven Universe fly over people's heads because the characters involved are aliens and not human, so for the uninitiated the coding is the use of visual and auditory signifiers to Applying traits commonly understood as indicative of gender, ethnicity, or other demographic data on characters that would otherwise be completely separate from human understanding or even just those demographic data in a particular encoding can be subtle or overt and the concept is best understood when it is The last thing, for example, here are the tauren from World of Warcraft.

How does that sound to you? This is called racial coding and with tauren in particular it goes beyond the visual. significant and directly to how they characterize themselves up to being nomads and forming a tenuous alliance with new colonizers in their homeland, it works better for them than for us Thrall and Karen Bloodhoof are brothers, okay, they were brothers anyway, what does this mean ? has to do with steven universe, well racial and gender coding is universal among the gems, it's been obvious and obvious since the moment the series began and only recently did Sugar confirm that racial coding is an aspect of deliberate design that makes it even more strange.

In how exactly the show treats its black characters in the main cast, this was most recognizable with the introduction of Bismuth, a character that was appropriately coded considering her overwhelming characterization as a revolutionary against an unjust oppressive regime whose supreme leader has white on his name from the beginning. from characterization to visual design to voice acting, you'd have to be willfully ignorant not to see what's going on here. The fact is that bismuth is black-coded, which makes it even more disgusting that his character's defining moment is Rose. on her case for being too extreme in dealing with literal fascists for whom the rigid, aggressive caste system was an all-too-familiar wound and then bubbling it up for thousands of years only for her to come out of her bubble and repeat this whole shenanigan in which she presumably he will write the letter from the beach temple jail, that's a clever joke on everyone and let's not forget who it is that mocks bismuth as too extreme, first of all a character emerged who is not at all interested in liberation of the gems of her homeworld and just wants the earth to be left alone so she has a place to walk among gardens and human types, a literal white moderate who is sarcastic and dismissive of a black woman who wants to fight an oppressive regime Oh, but the shocking twist is that Rose was one of the people who was benefiting. of the oppressive regime all the time that's not as shocking as you think it is Rebecca of course Rose was privileged because only a privileged person would try to do that just as bad, why can't we all be moderate?

Which makes this moment so horrible. is that this was just left here for years supposedly sugar planned every element of the story beforehand, something I just don't believe, but if it's true, sugar, let this episode sit here, stinking up the place and leaving a bad taste of mouth to everyone just so I could have done it. its shocking twist that didn't really surprise anyone and her grandma was tearing this episode apart for the topic lol so neutral and the team just let it happen let's go back in time a bit there was a controversy surrounding far cry. 4 when this image was posted on ubisoft social media featuring a passing white man sitting on a throne with his hand condescendingly resting on the head of a native, many people questioned that this seemed extremely racist, now this image was taken out of context with Ubisoft clarifying a week later that this guy is not white and that he is also the villain of the game;

However, although the image was taken out of context, it was ubisoft who posted it on their Twitter without any context to draw from, they threw out this image of a light skinned man looking cool and smooth while dominating a local and saying nothing to the regard. The image being taken out of context is a direct result of Ubisoft not providing context, so when people say we don't know all the details, I ask. and whose fault is that this image without any other context behind it was what bismuth was for two years. Sugar's insistence on giving the audience as little information as possible backfired in the most spectacular way and for a long time she was considered a big black mark on the series.

A lot of people forgave him after the pink diamond reveal and the bismuth for the wedding was unleashed, but it shouldn't have taken this long to get here without the context of the rest of the series, this episode seems so disgustingly racist that you could practically hear him Steven scream. all lives matter and sugar just let it stay in that state. Bismuth was not the first example of some rather worrying attitudes on the part of writers. However, Garnet, despite being a fan favorite,He never had the chance to be his own person. All of her episodes were about The Fusion or Future Vision, unlike any other fusion, Garnet is the most stoic one-dimensional, which is strange considering she is one of the two permafusions in the show.

Garnet like bismuth is explicitly encoded to an unprecedented degree and yet has very little actual development, but garnet is small. potatoes when it fuses even more you see here's the interesting thing about crystal gem fusions, see when it comes to the other crystal gems the pearl is coated white because it's shaded that way and it gets away with it in an assassination attempt and Amethyst is okay, Amethyst is actually some kind of I don't get it because I'm not as insightful as I'd like to think, but I've heard people say that she has a code black.

I've heard others say she's Latina and honestly, either makes my point anyway. My point is when Pearl fuses with Someone, the fusions that are created tend to be elegant and are often accompanied by soft easy listening music, sardonic opal, rainbow quartz, they are all elegant dancers who take in more of the pearl than anyone else, So what happens when the views of garnet and amethyst turn into a horrible ape? -like a violently aggressive monster with absolutely no impulse control and needs to be subdued by a pearl, but hey, at least Amethyst is the one wielding the whip.

I forgot how good it feels to be me, wait a minute, what sounds familiar is that Mila Kunis waits. I'm really going to look this up, Nicki Minaj voicing a horrible evil monster. Great, that's great. That's what a bad 4chan meme is. Interestingly, Sugalight appeared in the next season, but was suspiciously unvoiced and the audio from the first season was recycled for a short clip in Meet Your Fusion. Why do I have a sneaking suspicion that this design wasn't revealed and then when the episode aired, someone got mad anyway? The best part of this episode is that Sugelite, who is characterized as the angriest out of control, has to be subdued by the delicate and pearly female (sorry, I said better, I meant depressing), the most blatantly discouraging part of this episode is that this subjugation of a great black woman is seen as a way to make Pearl better as a character and as a person.

Pearl's growth in this episode depended on her ability. to tear down a big unrepentant black woman, she sings a damn song about how she can't be strong in a real way until she can stand up to this big brute Jesus Christ, Rebecca, are you on ambien? Look, this shouldn't be rocket science when one of the decidedly non-white characters fuses with the white character, the end result is something elegant and beautiful when they fuse together creating a horrible monster that is aggressively violent and lacking self-control. I could go on, but the sugalite has been completely deconstructed. by much of Steven Universe's black fanbase in much more detail and from a much better position of experience than I could ever hope to achieve.

I'll be honest, racial coding while character design runs through my head most of the time I had to read essays. from black viewers to starting to cover the many problems with sugilite, so I'll put them in the description and you can have the depressing learning experience I had making this video, plus we have more concrete examples of cruniversa's racist

garbage

. That transition was brilliant. Steven Universe had an art book release that contained many unused gem concepts, such as Steven healing the ground beetle to discover that she is a very small gem and an amethyst that looks like oh oh, that's not good, the entire book features many things. of unused or discarded ideas that never made it into the show proper, but then you turn the page and are greeted with "oh, for the love of it, are you kidding me about this particular thing?

A gem with pitch-black skin, white lips, thick and shiny and bears the production note". that she can't read, guess what that was like this time, no one was beating around the bush at all, this was very explicitly racist and like the bismuth was left out in the open, so many people tried to finalize the concrete design to make it. It looks less like a 1930s Warner Brothers cartoon, but that doesn't exempt the sugar from this sugar. He didn't design this, but he apparently did nothing about its existence and it just sat there in the sketchbook, worse off when it came time to release the Sketchbook, this drawing somehow, beyond all reason, it managed to reach the hands of the public and the public reacted very appropriately.

The response to this was so heated and so bad that Sugar had to take the rare opportunity to open her damn mouth and explain these pieces. They were created carelessly and it was wrong to include them in this book, since I did not personally create or select this material, I lost it during the approval process, and I take full responsibility as executive producer. This apology and explanation confirmed what I have been saying. about rebecca sugar for years, she just hasn't paid attention to what's going on around her this drawing should never have come into public hands it should have been found and remembered like oh yeah let's not publish this one this sugar admits there was a process of approval, but apparently the concrete passed along with the amethyst pimp anyway.

I will call. Nobody was checking this. Nobody is ever checking. Your steam has more supervision than this program. How do you draw something like this and not immediately recognize what you've done? How come you don't realize what your team is drawing until Twitter blasts you about it? The sheer density and forgetfulness of the team is infuriating. Oh, and by the way, we're not done, let's not forget the human zoo, that thing. the pink diamond put humans in for his amusement who appeared in which episode and then never returned the human zoo is particularly disgusting because they were real things during the colonial era it was not uncommon for blacks and first nations to be paraded in zoos for the amusement of rich white people and they considered it totally acceptable because they didn't believe that black people and native people were human.

The pink diamond human zoo appears and nothing is ever done with it. Here's what's up with the human zoo. it exists for no other reason than Sugar to draw what she believes to be a utopian society. Katie Matroff, a Steven Universe writer, said the same thing on her tumblr years ago. Rebecca introduced the Sioux to Lamar and me as this whole utopian hippie society. of beautiful, healthy people without any concept of pain or sadness, so we set ourselves the task of drawing as many different types of attractive people as possible. The 70s sci-fi hippie communes, the time machine, the footlights parade, and the centaurette sequence from Fantasia were all influences on this. episode, I find it interesting how she says they were inspired by the centaurette sequence from Fantasia because this is the centaurette sequence from Fantasia, so this has happened four times.

Now also the fact that these people used a human zoo, which I will remind you was real. horrible things from history as a vector to draw as many types of attractive people living in a hippie-loving utopia as possible hey crewniverse what's wrong with you, what's really wrong with you, here's the thing and I've been Putting off mentioning this until now, Steven Universe has an ethnically diverse team, the way it's written you could be forgiven for thinking this show was made by Rebecca Sugar and all her whiter friends, but no, there's a lot of diversity on the team. , how does this keep happening?

I know that being a minority doesn't automatically make you a complete expert on systemic bigotry. Rebecca Sugar is Jewish, and yet she constantly struggles with the concept that Fascists are bad, but at some point someone had to look at some of what's in this show and wonder why we're doing this. Any of these things can be attributed to a mistake or oversight, but all four at the same time. The apology regarding the concrete does not explain why the sugalite made it through the supposed vetting process. It doesn't explain why when Sugar proposed the idea of ​​a human zoo as a hippie utopia, no one raised their hand and said, why didn't anyone think to question everything about it?

Introduction to Bismuth Why did no one, despite supposedly knowing all along, tell Sugar that having the big twist that the supposed hero of the story was actually one of the Nazis in space the whole time was an idea stupid, speaking of which, then the pink diamond? This arc has to be the most erratically written arc in the entire series and it seemingly came out of nowhere like a bomb dropped on everything. Sugar clearly imagined that this was a shocking twist that took everyone by surprise and changed the entire dynamic of the series. and it did, but not in the way Sugar intended, the dark pink diamond ultimately took every shred of potential the series could have had and completely destroyed it, every possible bad decision you could have made and a lot of growth from the character was completely this story denies it, so about halfway through the series, right after bismuth, in fact, they were presented with the idea that rose quartz started the war by breaking the pink diamond, the leader of the earth colony at the time steven spends some time agonizing over this and the rest of all gems just accept it as a reality of war.

This is a powerful moment for Stephen, as he literally just finished telling Bismuth that breaking gems was the worst thing in the world, apparently even worse than death, and now he has to deal with the fact that his mother smashed the pink diamond, okay, a fact that fundamentally alters the way Steven has to think about his mother and his own narrow view of what is morally well done, sugar, that was very interesting, there was a lot of discussion. about whether or not it was a good or bad story thread with a lot of people pointing out that the raging hypocrisy of bismuth had immediately prevented it, but at least it was interesting to see how steven would have to deal with that guilt and in that In the briefest of Flashes of conscious education, it seemed like he was at least torn by this, so what happened, Sugar, he stayed with that.

That's what happened when the trial comes. This once earth-shattering revelation becomes the catalyst for a block of murder mystery that comes completely out of nowhere. Steven transforms. to his homeworld to face trial for killing the pink diamond and his lawyer concludes, based entirely on Steven's lack of memories of Rose, that Rose could not have destroyed the pink diamond and then proceeds to go through the security measures that should have existed. During the war, the lawyer assumes that the only person who could have killed Pink Diamond would be someone Pink Diamond would not have thought twice about trusting and that he had the authority to cover it up.

Then he points his finger at the remaining diamonds. which leads to one of my favorite scenes in the entire series, oh I ignore that last statement, I may have gotten carried away, boop, I think it says something about a show when a character uncrosses their legs and stands up is the most exciting thing that can happen in this revelation. and the yellow diamond's reaction caused many people to suspect that it was the yellow diamond who killed the pink diamond as a means of pushing the other diamonds to use the corrupting light. A suspicion that, on reflection, would have been a much better plot point, little happened.

Snippets of the pink diamond's life were given in flashbacks to a single pale rose where the rose was revealed to be a pink diamond all along and he changed his mind about the earth because the flowers before deciding to give them to the crystal gems, obviously the pink diamond disappeared. took the mantle of the rose quartz and started his revolution properly, no, no, that would make sense, but no, that would cause the pink diamond to experience a moment of growth and realize how terrible and regressive his way of governing is. sister and would make her a flawed but sympathetic character.

Sugar wants it to be that way and we can't let what really happened was that Pink Diamond started the war and pulled strings on both sides like Emperor Palpatine before deciding to fake her own death and live as Rose Quartz forever so she can free herself. of your diamond responsibilities and have an exciting new beginning with Pearl. You know Kingdom Hearts' plot is less unnecessarily complicated than this, so this is where things go wrong. Steven Universe has a big problem because many of the characters who are The Designated Heroes are some of the most vile and despicable creatures I have ever had the misfortune of spending time with.

Lapis Lazuli willingly allows her impulses to take over her and is borderline abusive towards everyone, except for Steven Amethyst, who is a perpetual sulk who seems to see the improvementpersonal as some kind of admission of weakness, Pearl is absolutely insane and Steven is a self-righteous, depressed idiot with no awareness of his surroundings, but neither of them can compare to the pink diamond. The pink diamond is a character who was born into a privileged idyllic life. He demanded more than he legitimately deserved on the basis that his status demanded it. He realized that the responsibility was more than he could take on and decided to abandon it in order to live a life of relaxation and laziness.

In doing so, completely with the mind of the oppressed Gems they manipulated her into starting a war against her own people and pulled the strings of that war long enough until she had fun and then faked her own death, which had a deeply traumatic impact on her. the gems that were still loyal to her and her sister diamonds she was born into wealth she got bored of people to laugh she played with their emotions endlessly and then continued to do all that as pink for thousands of years after the pink diamond is one of the three characters, the others are starlight glimmer and vary that after learning her origin story, which was clearly set up to seem sympathetic, it made me sit back and think, how incredible, the blowback from this was so massive that the first episode upon returning from the break was Pearl telling her own version of Rose's story, which again is completely disconnected from everything we know about Rose and is clearly set up to make her seem like just a precious little baby, and then one episode later, Amethyst tells them. remind everyone that Pearl is not an impartial party.

I honestly don't know what Sugar is trying. What to do here I don't know what kind of character Rose is supposed to be. She is characterized so erratically, repeatedly rewritten and seemingly drawing new personalities out of thin air. They are trying to understand what Sugar is trying to accomplish with Rose. an impossible task the dark pink diamond exposes the truth of sugar's writing she is completely opting for what she believes could be the most subversive options regardless of whether or not they contradict each other sugar is so desperate for people to think that her writing is so clever that she is completely abandoned to telling an interesting story in favor of creating another shocking twist and Rose Quartz had her entire character hacked to pieces to achieve that goal.

Now I can already hear you angrily typing your comments that Sugar actually intended this to be the reveal from the beginning and laid out all the clues that were hinted at from the beginning and I'm going to stop you right there and tell you that no it wasn't she's with you the only indication we have that Sugar planned the pink of this rose. The diamond twist from the beginning is that Sugar said yes and Cartoon Network released a compilation of all the clues throughout the series. Now here's where I'm going to spoil a writer's trick for everyone watching if they want to give it a spin but don't.

You don't know what that turn will be. You can leave clues throughout a series that are so vague that you can warp them to retroactively mean whatever you want. You're exploiting hindsight bias to trick people into thinking your writing is smarter than it really is. in the case of this compilation, Cartoon Network so proudly showed many of their own clues do not imply that Rose's pink diamond, even in retrospect, imply that Rose had secrets, what those secrets were are not implied in any way, they are so vague and open which could mean that rosa was a diamond rosa could mean that she was secretly the pearl of jehovah silenced only means that rosa ordered her to keep a secret does not imply what that secret was again could mean that rosa's pink diamond could also means that Rose liked to force Pearl on random people for a larf.

Those aren't hints that Rose's pink diamond are hints that something happened, something that was vague enough to technically fit once Sugar actually decided what it was and the audience is so desperate for this show to be smart, mature and challenging who enjoyed it. If you're a Steven Universe fan and you're still watching this video and think it was clever, you got ripped off and we're not done yet. See this? The revelation not only cut Rose's character, but it also cut Pearl. At this point, Pearl was already a controversial character, but at least she was forcing a member of a race of gems literally bred to be slaves, but who turned on her master and became her. own gem that was the pearl's saving grace, while the yellow and blue pearls were subservient and devoted to the point of being scary.

The pearl was the strange one for being her own person, guess what she is not, she was the pink diamond pearl and continued to serve her. Most devotedly, even after Pink Diamond faked her death, she was as devoted to her diamond as the other pearls and possibly even more so because she secretly desired her and it is unknown if the other pearls do so as well in a single scene. He went from being Dobby to being Winky the talk about being his own gem was a lie the renegade pearl was a lie pearl proudly saying she doesn't belong to anyone was a lie this whole arc revealed a really nasty undercurrent within the steven universe and goes from hand in hand with the rest of the series, slavery is a very real thing among the homeworld and pearls are apparently raised to be slaves and nothing more.

At one point, a ruby ​​soldier happily comments that they could give him his own pearl for killing the rose quartz. What does Steven Universe have to say? About that, none of this goes unnoticed except for the peridot in one episode and the bismuth in another, other than that it never gets a passing mention, it apparently exists entirely, so Pearl can have a triumphant moment in her fight with the peridot and then it just lies there, the worst. Pearl's one-sided lust for the rose goes from being a vector for her to deal with grief to something incredibly disgusting and twisted.

Pearl is now a slave who harbors romantic feelings towards her master and given the behavior of gems such as jasper, holly blue and peridot before her defection. It is safe to assume that this type of devotion and adoration for a diamond is common and possibly encouraged. Diamonds are what make and shape gems. You're really going to tell me that they wouldn't program their servants with obsessive attachment to keep them loyal. What kind of problematic Pandora's box are you opening with this? Almost every aspect of the pearl is contaminated by this almost pitiful current. It's almost impossible to know if something she does or feels is genuine or if she even feels anything at all.

Where does the programming of the diamond and a personality end? These would all be things a good writer would consider to begin with, but Sugar is so blinded by the desire to be subversive that she just leaves all of this out in the open, the whole aspect of Pearl existing as a slave was never part of the series until she became the reason why Peridot despises her and was ignored after that because we already had our climax. It's no surprise that Steven Universe has nothing to say about homeworld slavery when he's only set up to give an excuse to punch Peridot in conversation. between the pearl and the pink diamond in the flashback, the pink diamond is talking to the pearl as if they were best friends and not literally as a master and a slave.

The whole dynamic between diamonds and their pearls has been completely forgotten, oh wait, because we're not there yet. I remember the human zoo before we knew about Rose. Pink Diamond had a zoo where she kept humans because she thought they were cute and after her death, Blue Diamond continued to run it in her memory. Something Diamond Yellow views with utter contempt. There is even a complete cut. of rose quartz gems that were kept bubbling in their rooms because during the war the diamonds didn't want the rose hiding in plain sight after the revelation that the rose's pink diamond, the human zoo was rewritten so that it actually it would have been run by yellow and blue diamonds all along.

To interpret Kate Pink's concerns that the colony is destroying humans, the human zoo was a huge black mark on Pink Diamond's character when a single pale rose was released, everyone pointed to the human zoo as an obvious issue to be addressed. had left out of Rose's story, so sugar did it. which she always does and reconfigures it so that the pink diamond wasn't responsible. This goes hand in hand with the overwhelming attempts to characterize the pink diamond as a diamond without royal authority in order to wash Rose's hands of all responsibility for the sins of the diamond's authority.

Sugar backed himself into a corner with Rose and instead of just abandoning this stupid red herring of a plot, he just started bullshitting the story as a Republican Senator on the Confederate Wikipedia page, do you mind if I talk for a second about the old republic? ? I promise I'm going somewhere with this, just listen to me. The old republic is a star wars themed mmo from bioware with an inspired style. The Knights of the Old Republic games, unlike any other MMO, feature the usual bioware storytelling in addition to the dual faction system found in World of Warcraft, meaning you can create your character for either the Republic or the Resurgence. of the sith empire and choose your moral options.

Also, the trick is that going too far in one direction on the morality table doesn't make your character change sides, so a dark side jedi won't betray the republic to join the sith, now the republic and the Jedi have always done it. It's been a den of corruption since the original trilogy, so this isn't really a new concept, what caught people's attention, however, was the fact that this also applies to the Sith. You can play as a Sith and make morally good decisions. something star wars has never done while light jedi dark jedi and dark sith were common and ubiquitous this was completely unique to the old republic so naturally it was everywhere like lizzy on a black cloth.

I went in expecting not to get much, just a sith I didn't bother killing subordinates for failing and not much beyond that I wasn't prepared for how good it would actually be fine the master will grant the slaves last wish the emperor asks for your death Attack me if you dare I never was nor will I ever be your slave, you see, it's a common joke in bioware games that the quote-unquote evil options are ridiculously cartoonish and often amount to little more than killing everything; that's also the case in the old republic, but when you play as a sith it's much less noticeable because well, this is what sith do, kill random people for no other reason than because you can and there's nothing they can do about it.

Regarding this, it's something the Sith are well known for and most Sith npcs you encounter actively encourage you to behave this way. showing mercy to people even from the initial mission will be something that other characters will find peculiar, even surprised that it works, the fact that the sith or a thinly veiled fascist empire in space is not lost on the writers of the old republic and you would think that in a game like spotor they would reduce that and rewrite the seth empire to be less fascist so people would feel more comfortable playing it, in fact they don't duplicate it, see in the movies.

The fascist undertones of the empire take the form of marching in step, calling soldiers stormtroopers and talking about how fear will keep local systems at bay in the sequel trilogy we update hux shouting a strong speech and using the word degenerate and new Stormtroopers actively give the Nazi salute in the old republic, however, aliens are not considered citizens and are even reduced to slaves. Force-sensitives are considered so important that they are granted special privileges even when they are barely trained acolytes and blood purity is important. which many imperial npcs are obsessed with to the point that not only is the pure blood of the Sith a racial choice, but impure diluted blood is one of the most common reasons why the Sith betray each other, for what they took the space nazis and added all the things the nazis knew.

Because playing a Sith character is actively playing the role of a fascist. Now, at this point, you're probably thinking, Lily, you said the Sith were interesting, but so far my opinion of you is deteriorating rapidly. Where are you going with this? Remember that. I said about the dueling faction system working hand in hand with the morality system, well all of the above applies to you, the player, if you are dark side, if you are light side, the underlying theme of the story It's that all of this is difficult for us. If one man can thwart the empire, how can we show our faces in public as a light side Sith if you frequently work with the Jedi to achieve your goals and in many cases have interactions with the Jedi that make them questionfundamentally everything that has guided you?

To believe in the sith, you actively crush people who are obsessed with blood purity, you hold acolytes responsible for their rampant murderous frenzy, you treat prisoners of war with respect, and when you reach illum, you actively encourage acceptance of aliens in the empire and even go so far as to forcefully strangle a racist who opposes it and you, I did not request your help so that you could bring aliens to the empire, talk to me again, I'm sorry my lord, both sith classes you can play as a complement to this idea, the sith. The Inquisitor is a slave considered to be of impure blood who is allowed into Korriban only because he is Force sensitive and from the moment you set foot on the planet, the mocking disdain the purebloods have for you is immediately obvious, while the Sith warrior is actually a scion. of some ancient sith lineage who enjoy some of the highest privileges in the empire and yet roll their eyes at all this nonsense from the master race and that the privileges they have benefited from, in fact, The Warrior contrasts directly with the Inquisitor's main rival in The Korriban Fawn.

Alf, like the Warrior Fawn, is a descendant of a prominent Sith family who enjoys special treatment at the hands of a prejudiced Overseer who deliberately manipulates the various evidence to help him. Succeed as a dark side warrior. Thon is quite proud and dismissive of his sociality. The lesser ones kill one with a forced lightning bolt just for show and they certainly have the raw power to back it up; However, unlike the warrior whose trials still test his abilities and whose skill and power are backed by a strong work ethic and genuine bravery, the fawn is very lazy. and it never really improves as a result of gentle and easy testing of it.

One of the story's threats to the warrior involves luring a Jedi Padawan out of hiding by pursuing his parents. You discover that they are humble servants on Alderaan and in an attempt to hurt the padawan's heart, you offer them a life of riches and luxury in the empire, you literally lift them out of poverty and pseudo-slavery and promise them riches and in a conversation with baris immediately Then you have the option to fulfill that promise that the Jedi protects them from. You didn't give a damn what kind of life they were going to lead after you were gone and what are the main reasons why light side Sith tend to reject this fascist nonsense is for the simple fact that the Sith empire is now in its fifth resurgence in the galaxy on multiple occasions both sith characters repeatedly ask if all this blood purity and master race shit really matters, then why does the republic keep kicking our asses with all the backstabbing and the subterfuges the sith do to fight for a little? more personal power has the effect of weakening the empire as a whole.

Every subordinate killed is a free death for the republic. Every sith betrayed by another sith is a free score for the jedi. When you meet a Jedi like a Sith character, they are very arrogant towards you even to the point of talking about you as if you are not even there. The Jedi have become comfortable with the idea that they will always win against the Sith because good will always triumph over evil, but the Jedi are not the good guys. The guys in Star Wars never have been, they just beat the Sith so often because the Sith do most of the work for them.

The story of the Sith warrior involves a major character who has done nothing but fight for power for decades and even attempts to impersonate the Sith. Emperor Darth Malgus himself is one of the few Sith who recognized that the rate of attrition that all this master race nonsense creates ultimately weakens the empire. What they believe makes them stronger actively overwhelms them at every possible opportunity. The stories of the Sith are a definitive refutation. of fascism and racist policies on a very practical level one that you can participate in is not only that it is terribly evil to behave this way, but that you are the one who actively controls the process, you play a character who benefits from the systems of castes that the empire has established. instead and you still decide to take it all down anyway, because because your character really cares about the empire and doesn't want to see it destroyed by the republic again, personal power means nothing if you keep losing, ultimately it's the real deal.

Patriotism what drives. that your character abandons the systems that have benefited him personally and works to improve the empire, this is ultimately why your character doesn't become a jedi and join the republic, he doesn't believe in any of those things and while working with the Jedi. on several occasions they fundamentally reject their passive philosophy, it seems that in the case of the sith warriors they don't even believe in democracy itself, in the knights of the fallen empire, you can have a conversation with arik jordan about how chancellor suresh has effectively become a dictator in the republic, the republic I signed up to protect no longer exists, we gave the reins to people who don't care how we win as long as we win, it's a rash, it's almost a dictator now, aren't you proud ? yourselves in keeping all power out of the hands of one individual, there are not enough politicians with the courage to stick to their principles when it really mattered.

Suresh and her puppet chancellor have convinced everyone that the state of emergency requires executive action that she and her top minx just pushed through. through whatever suits their interests, I never thought I'd miss bureaucrats meddling in military affairs, but when we won in inefficiency we lost in Seoul, a war won't wait for you to count the votes and it doesn't matter if you can't get to a consensus. Someone still has to answer for those decisions at the end of the day because of the way you meet Chancellor Suresh later when she tries to kill you to take control of the alliance.

I assume you know everything, so I'll take that as a yes. It doesn't matter the alliance needs a leader like me I saw an opportunity and I took it I won't apologize for that we are beyond apologies what do we do with its execution I hope that's what I would do okay it's what I would do and it's exactly what you deserve Is it wrong to say that I enjoyed it? I was more surprised than I should be to learn that my own character didn't believe in democracy, but I guess that's the beauty of a game where the protagonist has his own voice and personality are separate from the player, but despite Of all this, despite the severe beating that fascist dogma takes in these stories, your character is still not a good person, there is a lot of light-hearted dialogue to the effect that this doesn't need to turn violent, but instead of begging for a peaceful solution, threaten people to accept a peaceful solution or you will kill them.

I am very glad that you have reached an agreement, but there is still the question of you being our enemy, since not only will I not allow it. the wilsons to do this, but you had a murder spree when you got here that can't go unpunished, they get in my way and everyone dies, in quotes, good decisions are either conspiratorial, manipulative or just exploit the fact that you have a lightsaber and they No, it's often a little more than keeping your word not to kill people. You get light points for actively choosing not to murder. In fact, there is a case where you break into a ship that was following you and a Jedi in the Holocaust. showing mercy to the ignorant team the light side option is little more than gesturing for them to run the writers accepted the reality that even a well-intentioned character who has been in this environment since birth will not suddenly become a loving child of the flowers only because they have realized that the philosophy of the master race is a destructive and counterproductive illusion.

The writers went in with the idea that if a player has chosen to play as a sith and make light-hearted decisions, they're not a mouth-breathing idiot who obsessively needs to be able to support the main character and therefore they wouldn't object to a villainous protagonist or even just a protagonist who is ruthless, so they don't rock the totalitarian space, you don't share anything, you enslave yourself. devour, I will never be a part of that and this is where we go back to the steven universe because if pink diamond had been this type of character, we wouldn't be having this discussion if sugar accepted that, no matter how well-intentioned pink diamond may have been. that his upbringing and comfortable privileged position had instilled in him a twisted sense of what is moral and that he had simply realized that then the pink diamond might actually have been an interesting character whose entire existence didn't constantly piss us all off if we had a pink diamond who cared about humanity cared about the crystal gems and cared about them being able to live their own lives, but she was still ruthless and merciless in her tactics, besides that, we wouldn't have to keep writing this spirograph of a plot to explain it.

Half of the things he does because the audience would have already agreed with the idea that Pink Diamond is not a good person and they could have presented a much more consistent and less absurd plot. In fact, this wouldn't even have been necessary. As for the pink diamond, they could have kept the shattered pink diamond as a reveal and that would have actually been more interesting and in my case it would have made me like her a lot more because having her stand up and take ownership and scream is so much more satisfying than a indecisive person who wipes the blood off his hands, that's why I exclusively write characters like this because it's more satisfying when the characters own their cruelty, this strange moral purity where, despite starting a war for their own freedom, the characters are supposed to stay 100 true to their virtues and never kill even though it's a war, it's one of those weird fandom attitudes that shows how sheltered and stupid this person is.

You won't kill if you look at the protagonist. The rule set by both the creators and the fan communities is complete and utter nonsense. If Sugar had had the guts to write Rose less like Twilight and more like Sylvanas, this show probably would have come closer to earning its reputation as an important and significant work of animation. You abandoned Saurfang to die out there is the death he wanted if that you care you are free to join him as much as you can take care of the living the choice is yours the problem is that despite all his claims otherwise sugar really wants people to think Pink Diamond is a good person , but that was a crushing failure because Sugar didn't bother to address anything that contradicted that vision of Pink Diamond.

Everything he needed to be addressed or dealt with was ignored when it mattered. most and many characters are too willing to accept it without a doubt. Rosa's entire story throughout the series is supposed to be about Rose being put on a pedestal by partial parts, but Sugar doesn't want to take her off that pedestal, which is why we only hear about Rose in those partial parts. ? Anything bad she does is surrounded by a thousand asterisks and Sugar can't bring herself to commit to a single idea for Rose and there's also this: "Okay, let's rip off the blindfold." Rebecca Sugar has a very strange relationship with fascism .

Quasi-fascist villains are common in animation, especially children's animation, but in most cases, the things that make fascism such a vile ideology are often casually dismissed. The vast majority of fascist villains are just somewhat generic totalitarians. that made the nazis so horribly evil white supremacy eugenics the mass killing of racial minorities gay and trans jews communists and the disabled all of these are casually ignored because no one really likes to think about them, especially in the united states where many of those ideas have disappeared. They are completely extinct and the people who hold them are very susceptible to being compared to their own ideological predecessors, instead you have a sinister posture, sinister poses, sinister gestures that speak vaguely of sovereignty and security and generally appear authoritarian.

Remember how I talked about Kuvira and that 90 of the things she does to cause dissent are either never shown or explained to the viewer, that's all, a lot of Avatar fans accuse me of putting Kuvira in lederhosen, but the reality is that He was criticizing a huge gap in information needed in this line. In particular, I am concerned about the reports I have heard about Kuvira's growing army. They say he is throwing some of his dissidents into prison camps. Great, she has dissidents who she treats like what did she do to provoke them? Dissenters need a reason to dissent, they don't.

It doesn't just appear at random, the dictator does something that bothers people, people disagree, the dictator gives the dick back to thedictator, this is such a simple and obvious concept that many people just don't understand it, which is sad and funny at the same time. At the same time, Star Wars has a similar whitewashing of its fascist elements in the films, the fascist overtones with the empire take the form of marching in step, the soldiers are called stormtroopers and talk about how fear will keep the systems at bay. locals and I just said this. In the last segment, my point is that the deliberate cleansing of the elements of fascism that make it so vile and horrible in the first place is done so that people don't have to think about things that make them uncomfortable.

Korra's predominant presentation of fascism. a star wars is the holocaust what holocaust there are very rare cases in which these themes are presented openly, such as arthouse films such as schindler's list and the pianist steven universe is one of those rare cases in which the main antagonist of the series diamond's great authority shows every last Of the traits I listed above, diamonds have convinced the other gems that diamonds are perfect and flawless, unlike other gems in the empire, at one point, despite Having been literally built to be tech-savvy, the yellow diamond explicitly screams that the puny thoughts of a peridot lie beneath. she, you are out of line, I just think I'm not interested in the petty thoughts of a paradox, come on, I'm just trying to do my job, yes I'm doing mine, sir, she's a former construction employee, I'm not going to go having arguments with these people the first appearance of the garnet before other gems was considered so abhorrent that the blue diamond ordered her to be killed immediately, they literally keep people as slaves and have destroyed millions of gems and are cooking them in a combination of mass grave and weapon of mass destruction just look at this scene of steven and peridot emerging into the cluster chamber, they are looking at literally millions of bodies, that's pretty straight forward for a kids show, so the diamonds are as Nazi as they get get without them doing a ridiculous Salute to my diamond peridot report, it doesn't really matter, they have it too good, which is why Steven Universe pulls no punches in its take on fascism, which is bolder than any caricature would have the balls to do.

There is only one problem. Rebecca Sugar is not. Really aware that she has done this, the show is not about fascism, the rebellion that arose against her homeworld had nothing to do with her fascist police state, it was about protecting nature from the harm that a colony creates when it really we see the diamonds in person. Their entire person begs the viewer to feel sorry for them. Blue Diamond is constantly grieving the loss of his sister. Yellow Diamond is angrily compensating for her own pain. Pink Diamond is like a white hippie who just wants to lie on the beach, get high, and land.

Guys, when it comes time to talk about diamonds, none of the above things I listed get even a passing nod. In fact, when Steven finally discovers his true identity as Pink Diamond, he considers the other Diamonds as family despite knowing everything. Well, that blue diamond tried to murder the closest thing to a real mother she's ever had and shattered enough gems to create a massive artificial fusion and, oh yeah, I forgot to mention the artificial fusion that horrified Garnet so much that it made her cry and almost It destabilized her. She, by the way, it's only her identity as Pink Diamond that keeps Steven and the Crystal Gems safe.

If he hadn't been able to prove that he was Pink Diamond, he and the others would have been killed in this episode. This is once again something that is not acknowledged by the show and is creepy as all the sugar spends most of the second half of the series attacking space fascists to a disturbing degree. There is no hook to any of this. If you're looking for one, don't you know the corrupting light that came on? most of the crystal gems turned into beastly monsters, the diamonds didn't know what they would do, they just thought it would destroy them and their homeworld they were also the aggressors in that war by the way, and the diamonds are overwhelmingly portrayed as sympathetic with the dissonance of his very real, unfiltered fascism he just completely ignores it or waves at it because he made some mistakes and I know what you're thinking you're reading too much into your stuff you're looking for an allegory with reason okay what? such an individual meeting? -an explicit modern depiction because the gem harvest episode heavily featured Steven's xenophobic uncle Andy, whose beliefs are so strong and republican that I think I last saw him in a Wolfenstein game, the episode in which he appears He spat it out completely.

Steven's real family anger over his non-standard relationships sparks collusion over the fact that Greg is letting Lapis and Peridot live in the barn and generally behave as pleasantly as a catheter full of wasps only for Steven to then deliberately insist on Let everyone make peace. because they are family and for Uncle Andy to see absolutely no consequences for his horrible behavior and the diamonds are a thousand times over, this not only reflects poorly on Sugar as a writer, but it reflects poorly on her as a person by portraying her so thoroughly. a fascist regime with a disturbing amount of precision only to then turn around and insist that they are simply misunderstood babies who need a hug.

Throughout this video, I've made multiple attempts to attribute Sugar's writing to overwhelming writing flaws like tunnel vision or wanting to have a story both ways or trying to do literally everything and it just doesn't work the way she expected I did it because people get very touchy if you start directly insulting someone on a basis other than the merits of their work and I try. at least give people as little reason as possible to criticize me, even though they're going to do it anyway, hello ghazi player, but honestly, after writing all that, reading it and thinking about it, I can't say anything.

More than God, what a completely disgusting piece of person. I mean, obviously this show meant something at some point and I'm clearly passionate about it. Otherwise I would have been picking it apart for 50 pages and I know Sugar has the deepest fans of hers. but I think the woman is terrible, I know I made a big show about how I hate Lars and his stupid face and his stupid hair and his stupid square skull and his stupid lobeless ears that make him look like a soby bag, but the real deal talk is just silly. this just bothers me this this is disgusting on every possible level this guy no one reached out to me and now i feel abandoned and sad this is the exact kind of attitude the alt-right likes to fool people with in life Real in one episode, she told Sugar Kids that killing a Nazi makes you a Nazi, and then in another, she told the kids that Nazis just made some mistakes and that they're totally forgivable.

You can't ignore what that says about you. Yes, sugar is very unrelated to all this. Shit and she really thinks she's writing with her feet on the ground and with people she can relate to and I have a feeling that if she were watching this video or if someone told her all this, she would sit down and have a moment of what I have done and if that ends. If it's the case now or a year or five years from now, then great, but that's not relevant to the here and now, you know, I get it, redeeming villains is a trend these days and some people seem to think which is a really good idea, Sugar clearly thinks the same too.

Sugar wants to create a world where redemption is always a possibility and where everyone can get a second chance, but my question is: if that's the path you want to take, why is the stake so high? Every time this story comes up, it's always the people who are determined to destroy everything. Why are the targets of redemption always the nastiest vile creatures imaginable? I'm not the only one who has noticed this just when Friendship is Magic, the villains began. They were over-the-top acting pieces, fun moments with fun people who were memorable precisely because of how extra they were, but when they switched to redemptions for everyone, suddenly the villains became so much nastier, they crossed the line so much and came out just fine. for the jugular at every possible opportunity the movie had this in direct contrast the villain who dies is a jovial fool and the one who is redeemed is much nastier and vengeful in steven universe the villains who are not redeemed are very funny saturday cartoons the morning villains aquamarine malachite holly blue most corrupted gems are fun performance driven characters in malachite's case she literally does nothing until it's time to fight the boss but when it's time to deal arcs of redemption, it is the fascists and the abusers who choose first, they are the ones who have the second chances, they are the ones to whom we must reach out and there is no reason for it to be that way, there is no reason for the redemption to be tied up and forgiveness of such monstrous people if you wanted sugar redemption is a central element of the series, why aren't the antagonists just domestic problems, people who have hurt you personally or who have been an uncomfortable presence in your life, things that are relatively small in the grand scheme of things Sugar loves Beach City?

Much as half the show spends there, but when it comes time to talk about forgiveness, it's suddenly time to turn to the galactic empire. My question is always the same. Because they? Why diamonds? Why did they get up? Why lapis lazuli? with infinitely less horrible baggage you could easily write a satisfying and much more impactful redemption arc where they actually earned that forgiveness and wouldn't reflect so badly on sugar and in all my years of asking that question, whether it's the diamonds or the starlight or whoever. the terrorist getting a redemption this week no one has been able to answer why they had to be so extreme forgive and forget is a strange lesson because its not universal it should be limited to trivial matters of someone hurting you whether accidentally or out of ignorance. applicable to children whose feelings are hurt by other children the problem is that this lesson reverses as you grow war abuse genocide these things cannot and should not be forgiven forgiveness does not work in these circumstances it is not absolute it only works in a small number of cases the problem is that Steven Universe is about war, it is about abuse, it is about genocide, it is about the things that cannot and should not be forgiven and yet it insists on doing them anyway.

Steven Universe is that mother who tells her daughter, oh, that child. He pulled your hair because he likes you to tacitly teach them that affection is shown through violence and to those of you who roll your eyes at all this and prepare your knee-jerk comments and Reddit posts about how he shows who he is just a child, so of course they will. Do this. I would like to ask why so many of our favorite children's shows growing up didn't do this maybe we can make some big bottles of glue and then I can use glue to bend and attach his arms and legs so he can't bend anymore yeah then you can show him her baby photos and all those happy photos.

The memories will make it good again. Do you really think that would work? No, look, this shit is important, whether you like it or not, you know it. Otherwise you wouldn't have flocked to the Steven universe like this kid-challenging adult show or whatever Ign calls it. is the avatar of this generation, christ, and you wouldn't be watching a web series where all the cartoons are the most serious thing all the time, we can't cry over the children's remakes, the sloppy animation, the imaginary anger over the cal art style and the mysterious abodes of mares and then dismiss the whole thing as just showing kids when the topic of criticism makes us uncomfortable, we can't keep bringing up the fact that rebecca sugar is a half non-binary jewish woman every time brings up this particular criticism as if that means there's no way she's affected by the stupid virus, it doesn't change the fact that Sugar still did this and still doesn't realize how gross it really is.

I am concerned by Rebecca Sugar's insistence on bringing redemption arcs to the most vile of creatures and begging her audience to consider her feelings. I am disgusted by this level of principled writing that insists that redemption is always best, regardless of the circumstances. I'm disappointed in Rebecca Sugar for not being able to understand a simple concept that Children Have No Problems Dealing With, and I'm embarrassed to see so many people dismiss these glaring problems as if it were a children's show, as if teaching children to forgive this kind ofhorrible behavior was more than abhorrent and irresponsible.

The basics of this, since I know this is what everyone is going to do, pull quotes. Do I think Rebecca Sugar is a fascist sympathizer? No, I blame anyone who concludes that she is based on Steven Universe content. No, I maintain that Rebecca Sugar remains completely unaware of the implications of her writing because she simply isn't paying attention outside of her very specific goals. Many people, not just her, don't understand that forgiveness doesn't apply everywhere. Many people will commit atrocities if it means getting their villain redemptions many people on the political left actually believed the GOP about economic anxiety not making them fascists diamonds are the latest idiotic cliche that started with characters like starlight glimmer sugar was dumb enough to include the fact that he corrupted millions of gems while trying to kill them all and kill millions more.

Sugar was dumb enough to include a scene where the main characters walk over literally millions of bodies. Sugar was dumb enough to push for redemption despite all that, I think the core problem. It's that, like many adult cartoon fans, Sugar is deeply stupid, yet it's not my job or anyone else's to hold her hand through her own myopia. If someone calls Sugar a fascist because of what they saw on Steven Universe, then that's a bar she created. Off his own damn back, he made the decision to give the Diamonds a galaxy-wide body count and then spend an extreme amount of time talking about how sad they are and every attempt to address this since then has simply been to blame him. to someone else.

It wasn't their fault, everything was a white diamond, they were just following the order, wait, part of being a creator is accepting that the conclusions people draw from your work are your responsibility, yes, people can make tremendously bad readings of your work, but unless you can do it completely. explain why their reading of your work is bad, then you are responsible for it. Sugar realizes this considering she addressed the specifics so directly, but about everything else she is suspiciously quiet. It's a writing lesson I learned the hard way if you set out to teach one. idea in your work and through ineptitude you accidentally give the opposite impression, you must accept responsibility for that and refuse to support that work and fix it, either by rewriting it or disassociating yourself from it, if you can't do the minimum, then you will. just reap what you sow, one of the most common defenses of the steven universe's frankly bizarre philosophical bent is to simply ignore that it even has it, said one poster about player ghazi in response to bismuth, as usual oh it's just a kids show that doesn't need to get bogged down in real world ideology, but I'm not the one bringing real world ideology into steven universe, he did it himself. 90 of the series' story is about rebellion against a fascist empire that is inherently political and not just in form. that all art is political steven universe happily simmers in a political subtext one of the characters is a walking beacon of non-traditional identities whose mere existence was considered so abhorrent that it warranted a death sentence steven universe was a show about big ideas fascism rebellion rights lgbt and pride, trauma, the need for violence, disabilities, individuality, personal freedom, unrequited love, grief, loss, holy shit, they just kept coming, but while Sugar could have a lot of ideas, he couldn't fulfill any of them, repeatedly portraying his fascist villains as sad and sympathetic by failing to understand that while sympathetic villains are good ideas in theory, in practice they only work under very specific circumstances and this wasn't one of them.

Her approach to trauma, pain, abuse, and loss was to continually let them dominate her life. Make no effort to actively heal yourself. she resists any attempt to help you because that's the only way she knows how to create drama. Her approach to the need for violence was to claim that it was never the answer and Bran was the only character who didn't follow that philosophy is bad, which is wrong. At every possible resolution scale, I know it seems like I've been hard on sugar, but in reality I've been extremely lenient. The cynical explanation for all of these problems is that Rebecca Sugar doesn't care about the impact these issues might have and might actually sympathize with many of the nastier ideas presented on the show than why the Crystal Gems don't.

They bother to bring the fight to their home planet is because Sugar doesn't consider this kind of naked fascism to be a problem worth addressing. With that, the reason slavery is treated like it's no big deal is because Sugar doesn't care, and the reason the characters never get help for their crippling problems is because Sugar just exploits these things for cheap, easy drama, but what I think is the real problem is that Sugar and the rest of the crew have severe, paralyzing tunnel vision. That's why the implications of, say, the human zoo are not addressed because the human zoo only exists so that the crew can introduce as much science from the 70s and 80s. fi designs and hippie love as much as possible and everything else and sugar one to do a prison break episode, that's why it doesn't occur to anyone to free the zumans because that's not part of the story sugar wanted and she just didn't bother to consider the implications The characters show abilities or impressive insights in one episode that fade in another because they can get in the way of the story going exactly where Sugar wants it to go when the story hits a roadblock.

Sugar just removes it. Ideas are piled up and then almost discarded. Immediately, Sugar wants to do everything in Steven Universe, she wants the villains to be space Nazis so they can be intimidating and threatening, but she also wants to have sympathetic villains, which bad writers translate as I'm sad, they feel bad for me, and they don't care. they bother consider that those two don't fit together the whole pink diamond arc was written because sugar wanted her shocking twist the way she pees so thoroughly everything that came before she didn't care about the twist it was the only thing that mattered it's very remember how to spell it fan fiction following literally every idea you can think of and without regard to whether it actually fits the story, subverting tropes simply for the sake of subverting tropes, following the idea that shocking twists and vague mysteries are good purely in principle and not carrying the execution to effect sugar writes like someone who has never written before or even taken a basic writing class and that makes sense because she's not a writer, she's an artist and based on how steven universe is animated, she's a bad artist.

The Steven Universe problem. has always been and will continue to be its executive producer, you see no animation budget, no writing staff, no adherence to a height chart, nothing tertiary that Tumbler believes will magically fix the Steven universe, actually fix the Steven universe, these they are not the disease, these are symptoms of the disease rebecca sugar is the disease steven Universe does not have a writing staff because, as an artist, Rebecca Sugar does not respect writers enough to hire them and maintains full responsibility for the details of the plot and story structure on the storyboard computer.

Steven Universe's animation is so frequently warped beyond all reason and has characters constantly changing sizes because Rebecca Sugar is too lazy to organize the material she needs to keep things under control. Steven Universe's issues are constantly veering back and forth into extremely problematic territory every two weeks because Rebecca Sugar simply doesn't care enough to review her own work before submitting it. Steven Universe can't keep its attention focused on a single plot idea without immediately getting distracted because Rebecca Sugar has no organizational skills and will chase the next butterfly that crosses her desk. The essence of Rebecca Sugar is all the worst aspects of Lauren Faust, David Cage, Steven Moffat and Seth Macfarlane, all rolled into one person and then given the reins of a show with an unusual amount of production time and creative control , and no one to control their worst habits.

Everyone is cut out to be an executive producer or showrunner no matter how good their ideas may be, but in this era where all creators are required to be allowed to do whatever they want without supervision, Steven Universe's showcase of why we don't actually do it That's why creators have to answer to studios or networks that will have to be associated with whatever comes out of your mouth when you set out to make a children's show that aims to be a higher art than something like spongebob. You should be under a lot of scrutiny because kids are observant people and if the crop of '90s kids who became adults enraged by the Thundercats reboot is any indication that what you see in fiction as a kid will color your view of the world, even if subtly when an adult is shown to a teenage adult audience. and the mind usually gets its way because the audience is expected to already know better, so the creator has more inherent freedom to make silly jokes or tell stories about complete monsters.

Sugar is making her her show for her kids or at least claiming to do so so she can't. Be that irresponsible, but she is that irresponsible and just doesn't care personally. I would never let a child in my care watch Steven Universe despite the few moments of brilliance I've seen. This show is simply made too recklessly and is likely to resonate with someone in all the wrong ways, know who you are, but as long as you hide at all times, never try to improve yourself as a person, you are already as good as those will ever be. that they have hurt you. they should be given a fourth, fifth and sixth chance those people who have murdered literally millions on multiple occasions deserve to be forgiven it is totally acceptable to remain on friendly terms with people who have seriously hurt their loved ones despite the defense in question of a children's affair The show Steven Universe is not a show that anyone should allow their children to watch.

You know, I've been sitting here for a while trying to find a way to close like I did last time with a single scene showing the core problems of Steven Universe. full display for everyone to see, but as I was reviewing the footage I found something that goes in the opposite direction, something that answers the inevitable question: If you think this show is so bad, why do you keep coming back to it? And that moment is garnet. Offering to fuse with Peridot along the entire arc of the cluster, Peridot has been prodding Garnet to be a permafusion and then, after seeing Opal lift the drill into position, loses it and demands to know why Garnet it's fused all the time when she's not doing anything. and in an effort to help peridot understand the fusion, garnet offers to fuse with her, this is actually quite significant since garnet doesn't fuse with people lightly, this isn't long after keystone motel. , where it is stated that fusion is extremely personal to ruby ​​and sapphire and they only form sugalite or sardonic alexandrite when it is absolutely necessary to offer to fuse with peridot just to help her understand that fusion is not a decision made lightly, it is possible that Sugar has simply forgotten that the fusion is Garnet's personal, but I will choose to believe. someone was hitting her over the head with a stack of post-its that day anyway peridot is shocked and garnet assumes she's not ready peridot insists she can do it but backs out at the last second garnet talks about how proud she is of Peridot to do makes an effort to understand her and then explains why she is fused all the time in a way that Peridot, who has been addicted to the field of romantic series and sighing hearts, can understand.

Until this point, Peridot has only been referring to garnet as a fusion and after this it stops doing so. that and she starts using her real name. Steven Universe receives a lot of praise for its significant LGBT representation, but the moments where it actually earns that praise are extremely rare; it's only when some other random story idea that popped into Sugar's head is presented that this kind of thing shows up. Even the arc about Peridot's redemption requires her to understand fusion, so she actually makes an effort to understand fusion by agreeing to merge which Garnet is grateful that this applies to well, really, anyone who falls within the LGBT spectrum, is it a spectrum?

I'm going to say it's because this doesn't fit veryright in the spoken dialogue and this is an insult and that noise anyway, regardless of where you stand in this beautiful combination of pride flags, chances are you've been in this scene at some point in your life and if you're not Are you likely to be or have been Peridot in the same way that Sheldon helped many parents understand something that seemed vague and mysterious to them? This scene further reduces the gap between LGBT people and those who still cannot understand them. and this is the kind of thing steven universe needed a lot more of because of all the talk i've done about sugar being a terrible producer, actually sugar is like steven moffat, it can produce really cool things as long as it can contain its worst instincts .

For five minutes, moments like this Keystone motel, Garnet, discovering the artificial fusion of the ruby ​​and sapphire wedding, all show that Steven Universe could have been a truly beautiful piece of animation if Sugar didn't feel so compelled to chase after every cliche. of the last 20. years my favorite episode of the show is too short to put together an episode dealing with Peridot's feelings of inadequacy no technology no major plot revealed no mystery no questions answered just one person dealing with their problems a character who people really like, care, and want to see them succeed, and yet these episodes were so rare as Sugar pursued her redemption by the space fascist and whatever member of the oddly shaped coastal town decided it was important that week and if she had someone to control her a little and force her to choose one idea and focus on it instead of chasing everything and constantly deviating, then the program would have been much better, so why did I keep coming back to it?

I always had the slightest hope that another episode would be too short to edit or another moment. like peridot, finally understanding garnet, that's the kind of storytelling I love, simple, personal and direct, something that has sadly been lost in modern cartoons as more time is spent building a huge world with a story detailed and big stakes and then not putting anything into it, something that steven universe was. more than capable of doing but I just chickened out and chased the big boring serialized story, now come out if I could start being half of what you think of me I could do about anything I could even learn to love when I see the way where you act wondering when I'll be back I could do about anything I could even learn to love like I could start to be half of what you think of me I could do about anything I could even learn I always thought I could know bad now I'm sure it's true because I think you are so good and I am nothing like you look at you, I simply adore you.

I wish I knew what makes you think I'm so special.