Steven Universe is Garbage and Here's Why

oh good lord this was a mistake Steven universe was a revolutionary cartoon that shook the boundaries of children's entertainment and bringing it to new heights or rather everybody thought that it was in reality Steven universe turned out to be a mess of inconsistent storytelling mashed up cliches that haven't been allowed to die a conga line of character so consistently horrible that is like being around all of your worst family members for the longest Thanksgiving ever Steven universe enjoyed ample praise and lavishing from the general press when it first aired but as time went on its fanbase became significantly more critical and unhappy with the show's contents to the point that being critical of the show was an entire subculture of its own and that is not undeserved everything about the show is unprofessional and lazy from its writing to the animation to the very core ideas the series pretends to have it's long since burned off much of the goodwill and initially had and these days people are just trying to figure out what went wrong that's what I'm gonna try to do here going as in-depth as I possibly can but lord knows even I miss something because it just keeps getting worse and worse as time wears on dear [ __ ] Lord somebody please end my miserable existence this is a thorough deconstruction of why Steven universe is a garbage show that is bad and if you think we can [Music] I've gotten something of a reputation in the past for [ __ ] on serialization and I need to make it clear that I don't necessarily hate serialization itself I hate the prevailing attitude that serialization is objectively superior to episodic storytelling in every possible scenario like any other narrative tool serialization works very well when it's appropriate to the story it's very easy to just say that shows with a continuous overarching plot are always better than a monster of the week but that's just flat-out not true and it's most evident in shows that try to have it both ways but regardless of what narrative tool you decide to use for your show you do have to pick one and this is what seems to trip up Rebecca sugar in every possible angle Steven universe has this long overarching plot about the crystal gem war and homeworld discovering they're still active and [ __ ] with their plans now for a while the crystal gems and homeworld plot was really interesting and we'll get into why that fell down the plughole in just a few minutes but what was consistently aggravating is that sugar clearly wanted to maintain a monster-of-the-week vibe on top of that and focus on more character specific elements like The Last Airbender did now I can already hear you confused comments going through Lua boot shoot Lily yes I do but there's a problem you see it wasn't character work for the characters you would think would get the time in focus Steven Connie pearl amethyst garnet peridot lapis yeah clearly nothing to do with any of them let's have seven different episodes about why Lars as an unbelievable douche let's do three about Ronaldo being a conspiracy theorist let's do something about mayor Dewey for some [ __ ] reason ooh I know how about that one family that runs a pizza shop I bet their lives are totally [ __ ] interesting what's that intergalactic fascism with a smattering of natural rule boring let's talk about the wrestling scene that's one of the real actions at UC the side stories in The Last Airbender were so good because they offer an insight into a primary character the southern Raiders was about Katara Kenny revenge on the man that killed her mother Zuko alone was about witnessing firsthand the damage that his father's warmongering has been causing on the earth Kingdom you know what The Last Airbender didn't have an entire character arc for the cabbage guy but that's what Steven universe is doing the residents of beach city aren't active players in the thin veneer of a story that Steven universe pretends to have their background characters they were weirdly misshapen constantly shrinking lye resin they don't get proper character arcs because they show up deal with the crisis of the day go sit in the green room until sugar wants to stall for time again literally the only one who does change his 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 is dragging on and on and on normally filler is fine to flesh out the world and the other characters but the world being fleshed out is earth which doesn't need fleshing out the characters being explored a random bit parts who ultimately mean nothing and they're not funny filler episodes of shows are usually the fun light-hearted episodes the writers used to ease off the tension of the main story if they have one Steven universe doesn't have that need for easing tension is the filler episodes outnumber the story episodes considerably it almost feels like sugar wanted to have a story about an intergalactic space war but also wanted to just write fanfics about random people in Beach City and couldn't seem to pick one and for a while that worked for her the fandom at the very least seemed to love all of this and Steven universe circa season one had an extremely critically undiscerning fan base but everything changed when the hiatus is attacked Steven universe schedule went off the rails almost immediately airing regularly for a while but then condensing itself in a short burst of episodes called Steven bombs the first hiatus lasted for 41 days and started with the episode bubble buddies the seventh episode of the series the show had just started and it was already taking a break the second lasted three weeks with arcade mania just 5 episodes later the third lasted another three weeks another five episodes later then they got progressively worse the fourth ie this lasted just over three months and came back to coach Steven just five episodes after the last hiatus came back and then stuck around consistently for a few months before going on a hiatus for another month we're not even through season one yet and already Steven universe has been on hiatus for over 220 days the sixth iead is finally broke into season two lasting 45 days and return to sworn to the sort then only a week later went on hiatus for another three weeks to come back to cry for helping Keystone Hotel been a week later starting to see the theme went on hiatus for another fifty four days and returned to nightmare Hospital then the show managed to remain consistent for a little while before going on hiatus again for 80 days and coming back to the answer once again the show lasted for only another week before having the second longest hiatus of five months between then and Super watermelon I'm another five episodes then I went on hiatus again for 44 more day returning to the summer of Stephen where the series managed to stay on air for the rest of the summer then the twelfth I ATIS came lasting another two months and returned on gem harvest the thirteenth hiatus lasted another two months returning on Stephens dream then another one that was just under three weeks so I don't count it then the longest hiatus of six [ __ ] months and this was arguably the most egregious offender because a series left off on Lars dying and being revived and then left on homeworld and then we came back to a municipal election Stephen being pissy that Connie won't talk to him lapis panicking that homeworld was coming to earth and reminding everyone that there are fascists in space coming to kill them all and Stephen and the cool kids start a band then the show went on hiatus for another three months Steven universe spent so much time on a hiatus that the waiting just continued to wear people down I talked about this on the club tour podcast and glass of water as the waiting dragged on and on and on people started getting angry hiatus has happened in TV shows all the time but Steven universe has hiatuses in excess and that kind of drawn-out waiting is unheard of but here's where the biggest problem lies if you've been to watch the series now everything seems fine the filler episodes biggest problem in retrospect is just that they're boring and most people would rather be told the cool story about space battles not the boring story about some loudmouth frat who doesn't have any earlobes but when you put it into the context of people waiting six months after leaving that kid on a hostile alien planet only to come back and not even bother giving it a passing glance for multiple weeks people are going to get angry because you're just jerking them around and wasting their goddamn time the fact is Steven universe had ample time to appropriately put filler and just decided to fill it with nothing filler episodes exist so that you don't have to go on a hiatus your story lasts 12 episodes when they order 24 so you spread those story episodes out between fun filler episodes to pass the time and create organic gas between story events Steven universe just has pauses and gaps in between that otherwise organic scheduling it throws everything off when people hear the Steven universe is coming back after six months the last thing they're gonna 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 stalling because it has these long stretches of nothing then comes back filler that should have been put in those gaps if you believe that it's all Cartoon Network's doing for the cost of hiatuses which I don't sugar should have caught on to this a while ago and written her episodes accordingly if you're constantly going on a hiatus you don't need to make this kind of crap but sugar continued making it anyway I don't even know why who goes through all that effort to make magical lesbian space rocks and then devote so much [ __ ] time to just average ordinary everyday humans are you telling me that all of the literally colorful characters in this show your favorite is Lars that guy doesn't have earlobes Rebecca the issue with filler is even worse when there's an active story arc going on in the cluster arc a massive artificial fusion comprised of millions of gem shards by the way remember this this is gonna be important later is discovered to be baking beneath the earth's crust and will soon form and destroy the entire planet I repeat it will soon destroy the entire [ __ ] planet now in any other show this kind of story would have a sense of urgency about it not in Steven universe however the episodes back to the barn to far the answer Stephens birthday message received and log date 7 1 5 - barely have anything to do with the actual story they spend most of the time chilling and not really doing much it's only back to the barn that in any way advances the story itself and there's no reason why the other three couldn't have waited until after the cluster had been stopped if you take the episode that make up the cluster arc and rearrange them so the waffling happens after the cluster is then bubbled this problem goes away for something that threatens the earth the thing that crystal gems care about more than anything else there's a distinct lack of actual tension in the story nobody stressed out nobody's worried wait no scratch that paradox worried but don't worry we'll lobotomize her soon enough for an arc supposedly about the cluster I actually forgot it was even a thing on first viewing because several episodes in a four-month hiatus went by without it getting a passing mention after malachi has defeated the cluster starts to wake up and everyone's like oh yeah the clusters a thing nearly every arc has this issue that Jasper arc from gem hunter Earthlings has bismuth smacked in the middle of it the homeworld arc has dewy winds gem tation and Kevin party wedged inside it and the pink diamond arc that immediately follows has five episodes jam between it before anything rim IRA's emblem a conclusion starts to inch its way 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 / - Steven himself at all times so while in theory the plot tends to play out at a relatively realistic pace all the important and interesting things are happening completely off-screen this is why there are so many episodes about Steven bumming around Beach City why there are so many instances of random characters doing fuck-all with Steven why there are so many episodes where Steven is hanging out with some other gem only for the plot to come bursting through the wall or a character's personal issues just jump right out of the blue this is most egregious in last one out of Beach City where the episode is entirely about pearls seducing some human lady who looks like rose and also Steven is there he's been shoved into the episode just because the show has mandated that he always be here despite the fact that the episode would work just as well if not better if he wasn't hogging screen time I need to stress that this is unusual for any TV show TV shows are typically written in a full third-person perspective so that the focus can shift for a bit when necessary avatar is a ton of moments or the perspective shifts to Zuko and Iroh as early as the first episode and even episodes where Aang isn't present at all fan favorite episodes like Zuko alone tales of bossing say the boiling rock the southern Raiders and three-quarters of sozin's comet wouldn't have happened if the series lashed itself to aang the way Steven universe lashed itself to Steven we probably have more insight into the diamonds as a whole if the show could just bother to tear itself away from Steven for even a second even episodes that technically don't feature Steven are either a story being told to him or feature fusion that Steven inhabits with this arbitrary restriction in place a lot of interesting things happen completely off screen which in terms of storytelling means it doesn't actually happen Legend of Korra had this problem to an extent in its final season where 95% of kuvira's [ __ ] dictator behavior happens off screen and is only ever vaguely alluded to and a lot of people bought that laziness with Oh will it happens off screen that's not good enough you have to show it to us Steven universe has so many characters that just sit there and do [ __ ] nothing because Steven isn't around to see them lapis and peridot of the two biggest examples as they're locked in the barn at all times until Steven decides to visit them at which point something actually happens laughs this is actually one of many characters who has a lot of [ __ ] to work through but can't actually do that in the vast majority of cases because Steven isn't there so she's not allowed to do anything as a result of this lapis comes off too many people as one of sugars dozens of attempts at whoo-whah fiying absolutely terrible and reprehensible people and will [ __ ] get to that but lapis didn't have to be this way if you replaced every single episode of Steven's screwing around a beach city with some Rando with episodes about the other gems lapis could have actually been a character peridot could contribute in some way amethyst might have been able to work through her insecurities more organically pearl might not have been such a crazy [ __ ] garnet might not have been relegated to explanation about fusion and nothing else an entire arc about lapis becoming a better person and making a turnaround from the abuse of fuckstick she used to be that sounds a hell of a lot better than the six episodes trying to salvage Lars before sugar just gave up killed them off and replace them with safe on Beeblebrox sugar likes to put terrible people and leather pants so much why not have someone actually grow and become better and earn that supposed to redemption rather than just stagnating for years until you just steal your girlfriend [ __ ] and leave once again another story about abuse that gets outclassed by Family Guy of all [ __ ] things the end result of this laser focus on Steven means that nothing is [ __ ] happening there are so many throwaway episodes you can just skip and not miss anything where nothing interesting happens none of the characters we actually like so much as show their faces and nobody who matters actually grows or changes in any way Steven universe because of this forced perspective remain steadfast in its refusal to actually explore any of the ideas it presents instead it offers hints it gives hints that lapis might have PTSD it gives hints that peridot might have self-worth issues it gives hints of character development this isn't good writing it's lazy right the sad thing is it's lazy writing that works when I did my video about tempest shadow one of the most common attempts at a reputation from people was to accuse me of not being able to see hints of character development and people speculating on what tempest life could have been but I did see those hints of character development and I did speculate on their potential but I also rightfully concluded that because the movie didn't bother to do anything with that potential then that potential was irrelevant this is something most fandoms can't grasp and why hinting at character development is the easy way out for a lot of shows Steven universe hints at something interesting about a character and just [ __ ] leaves it there the fandom picks it up and speculates concoct elaborate theories delve into layers of intrigue and then concludes that because of all the speculation that Steven universe is an amazing show do you see what's just happened though Rebecca sugar is getting all the credit and praise but the fans are the ones doing all the real work they are writing elaborate story ideas that the show will never even try to use but she's getting all the credit for it Steven universe is providing little more than a collection of writing prompts and being heralded as an amazing and deep show just because a bunch of far more creative people can write 50 pages based off those prompts the big twist of the show is that roses pink diamond but that twist was guessed by the fandom the moment pink diamonds nameless first mentioned and I said at the time that the Roses pink diamond theory was without it's out the worst possible way to end that entire arc which meant sugar was definitely going to do it worse off not only the Steven universe rely on the fans to imagine a better show in its place it actively mocks them for doing so in the episode lion 4 alternate ending steven spends an episode deconstructing roses tape and trying to find the answer whose purpose in life this has been a common trend for fandom theory since the start of the show namely why did Rose give herself up to bring Steven into the world Steven investigates as much as he can and finds a tape for Norah and spends the rest of the episode trying to discover who Norah is Norah is just what Stephens name would have been if he was a girl and the only reason he exists at all is just because Rose wanted a baby now you might be asking yourself why did this need to be an entire episode that teased the viewer with something interesting only to yank it out from under them at the last minute because [ __ ] you that's why this episode's only defense for existing is we need to remind people that they're special just the way they are but anybody who actually needs to be reminded of that is going to need more solid ground than Steven universe to tell them this is the closest thing to a solid theme that Steven universe even has with the exception of characters that already have their [ __ ] together almost every character arc is about learning to love yourself but not loving yourself in the practical way where you have aspirations and goals and work toward them while taking a part in self-improvement and making sure you're a healthy and functional person you know what loving yourself actually means we mean the internet version of loving yourself where you're complacent never put in any effort to solve your problems mope until somebody Cottle's you and pretend you don't have problems in the first place and give up the moment you're confronted with failure because acknowledging that you have things to work on isn't comfortable you're already as good as you're ever going to be says the diamond I mean Rebecca sugar interestingly enough the best characters in the show are the ones that don't do this Connie aspires to be more than she currently is works hard and by the end of her effective character rock she's able to fend off a Fusion alone while Stephen has another sulking fit 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 here and frequently pulls everyone else out of danger bismuth was another character who aspired to be more than she was so much so she longed to take that aspiration to homeworld and liberate everyone and for her initiative she was labeled just as bad as the diamonds by the show a genocidal killer by the fandom and then bubbled in what is still the most horrific act of intellectual carelessness by sugar this happens because the show just doesn't have any [ __ ] writers the show was entirely written by the storyboard team who are prioritizing jokes and set pieces above everything else and trying to make the story Bend around that the entire arc about Lars going into space exists entirely because sugar had this vision of Lars being a space captain and was determined to crowbar that [ __ ] in somewhere all of this combined means the show is going [ __ ] nowhere anytime something looks like it might happen sugar bullshit's her way out of it we're now on five seasons but with only two seasons worth of actual contents there are so many people have completely given up on Steven universe but are only persisting and watching it out of a need for closure for all this time they've invested I need to see how it ends if it even does end you can't build a show on pathological addiction sugar you can't keep teasing people with qlik fake titles only to turn out that the episode it's attached to is just more people jerking around and not doing anything it's so [ __ ] boring [Music] so here's what we hit a snag you see unlike many other shows Steven universe has always had a scattered approach to character design most of the time character development doesn't happen then it comes in trickles and then an epiphany just rushes in at the last possible second of a dragged out story arc this means there isn't really much to say about each character on their own especially Steven which is why all of them are being piled into one section rather than Steven getting one all to himself like Cora did the sole exception to this however is rose quartz who was a culmination of all of Sugar's failings as a writer and is such a critical character despite never appearing in the present time and as such she gets her own section detailing the problematic [ __ ] that is her story steven has never been able to catch a break in this series he goes from being this really annoying kid who doesn't seem to be aware of what's going on around him to just a hanger-on who doesn't do much except watch other people solve problems and then he learns the magical trick of talking the monster down which he uses over and over and over again and then becomes a waffling wilting coward by the end of the series steven has something of a Twilight Sparkle problem and that he changes constantly paced on whatever sugar needs him to do for example steven is no stranger to violence and throughout the majority of the series approaches fighting with either neutral detachment to a perverse acally despite being something of a pacifist steven isn't particularly troubled by fighting itself but because bismuth wants to lean really hard on an anti-violence message there are a lot of instances even before the breaking point has revealed that steven is visibly nervous and uncomfortable around rather standard training exercises I'd say that Steven was at his best during season two as this was after he stopped being just some idiot kid the gems were babysitting and before he became such a sanctimonious coward if we do everything they say they might go easy on us but they're mean they hurt my friends they hurt my face they've got you here in prison that's why we can't fight them that's why we have to fight them there's no reason to fight let me talk to him please we aren't enemies we're family I particularly like when he has to come for peridot who mistakes the Thunder for the cluster he still has issues that plagued the entire series like the fact that he's way too playful when he's supposed to be taking something seriously and way too serious when something stupid is happening Steven doesn't really get to be a character because he has to spend all of his time being the vessel for sugars crying forgive plot he's like star like that way too much time is spent trying to prove a point and as a result he's got nothing beyond that this isn't helped by the fact that the show treats him like some kind of Messiah figure half the time and results in him solving long-standing problems at the gem somehow couldn't solve until this special boy came into their lives oh really Lilly a bland generic white boy has his importance of the plot artificially inflated among the numerous women and non-white characters gosh what a mystery okay I walked into that you do it for him you would do it again you do it for her that is to say you'll do it for him oh dear Lord where do I begin with pearl pearl wasn't so much a good character that fell by the wayside as the series went on so much as she was stitched together from various dark romance tropes on the word go but the first two seasons all we knew about pearl was that she was in love with Rose obsessively and that she was racked with a combination of grief and trauma but grief and trauma as understood by Rebecca sugar pearl was an erratic dangerous character who rarely ever faced the consequences for her actions like that time she almost killed Stephen in space or that time she almost let Stephen fall to his death because she was freaking out over a sword or that time she almost ripped out Stephens gym pearl really wants to kill Steven pearl greatly suffers 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 and that she was dealing with loss over a loved one and that love being unrequited which is something never done with a gay character was destroyed once it was revealed that pearl was literally Rose's slave sugar actually went on to an interview to describe the dynamic between them as if alfred was in love with Batman not Bruce just Batman sugar doesn't seem to grasp that there's a reason Alfred isn't in love with Batman because he's a surrogate father to him and that would be really [ __ ] up also Batman doesn't own Alfred and Alfred is paid you stupid [ __ ] [Music] amethyst is the character who suffers the most from Steven universe's lopsided approach to storytelling her character arc about dealing with her inadequacies is never really resolved it just kind of vanishes after meeting the other amethyst who were made in the same kindergarten thought I'm getting ahead of myself for the majority of the first season amethyst was the cool big sis of the group she mostly existed to take the piss out of garnet and pearl this went as far as for the other gems to treat her like an animal at times like when pearl asked if they were really gonna let Steven keep a lion and garnet replied we kept amethyst this continued for a while and amethyst was a character regarded with derision by a lot of people which matched up nicely to the derision she was given by everyone except Steven then on the run happened amethyst took Steven to the kindergarden she was made in and then complete tonal whiplash occurred as amethyst attacks pearl in a rage before loudly vocalizing her self-hatred at being a homeworld gem you know Seagram in the new Colossus yeah that's amethyst this is where the problems start because this was completely abandoned until reformed where amethyst self-loathing returns in the form of well her form she spent the episode constantly getting destabilized and rushing her regeneration much to garnet chagrin when garnet remarks that her new forms look ridiculous amethyst flies into a rage and her inadequacy issues come up to the second time and was abandoned again until cry for help where amethyst sings about being inadequate to sardonyx it's abandoned again until crack the whip and Steven versus amethyst where Jasper taunts her about being overcooked and is then abandoned again until the zoo where amethyst meets the other amethyst from the same kindergarten and sees that they're all overcooked and defective like she is at time of writing it hasn't come up since then and it looks like it won't come up ever again as amethyst has made it clear that she's not going to dump her problems on to Steven when Steven is already dealing with too much from too many people this is one of Steven universe's many unresolved plot threads but sugar spends a lot of time retraining the same ground and not going anywhere with it it seems sugar use the fam'ly this [ __ ] that word is awkward to say as it means to just quietly wreak on it out of her much like Hasbro did with Fluttershy and in the face of all that garbage ever else in the series I honestly respect that a lot more than just trying to force it to work recognizing even if only slightly that your story idea was terrible and finding a means to just quietly retcon it and transform the character into an actual supporting character carries a lot more integrity than sticking stubbornly to your bad ideas and amethyst post Zoo was generally one of the more enjoyable characters now that she wasn't adding to the pile of misery everywhere else Oh garnet garnet was something of an interesting character at least until it was revealed that she was a fusion for the first season she was the grounded and sensible straight arrow to pearl and amethyst [ __ ] often showing genuine compassion for Steven that no other character seems to show one episode has garnet gives Steven her powers of clairvoyance and Steven goes absolutely ballistic because he sees millions of possible deaths for himself leading to this rather touching line Steven I see so many things that can hurt you I should never have let one of them be me that'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 got demoted to extra the moment this happened except in instances where Fusion was the subject of an episode all episodes were garnet plays a major role Fusion was involved somehow some of them were good like garnet being horrified of the forest fusion experiments that homeworld was conducting that is conveniently forgotten about when it's time to talk about how sad the diamonds are but then there's direct like a mindful education where garnet vaguely sings about trauma for half the episode and nothing happens until the last minute once fusion became a major aspect of the series garnet just stopped being a character she was a vector to talk about fusion she was a plot device wherever Ruby and Sapphire had to split up and then demonstrated exactly what the majority of the fandom thought of this plot twist in three gems and a baby [Music] garnet only ever gets scant moments to shine and even has to share her own wedding episode with her arch enemies the complete neglect of garnet is one of the series major low points because garnet was such a fan favor for so long and was shunted aside in favor of more Steven rose and the Diamonds peridot is arguably the best character in the show but that's not the high praise anybody thinks it is you see a common element of a lot of Steven universe's characters is that they struggle with insecurities trauma or other assorted personal demons that they do little about except sulk what makes paradox so great is the fact that she has none of that [ __ ] peridot has introduced making a routine check on the cluster before getting trapped on earth and is so terrified that she'll be stuck there when the cluster emerges that even Thunder sends her into a panic and clinging to Steven for support there are many aspects of Earth's organic nature that she is unaware of and as a result many things can easily trick her into thinking the cluster is about to emerge she enters a tenuous alliance with the crystal gems to stop the cluster where she gains a better appreciation for them earth and living outside home world's rigid caste system after that there wasn't really much to do with peridot near two biggest episodes after the cluster Ark were her trying to bubble a gem monster and her having to deal with the fact that she doesn't have powers I'll level with you guys too short to ride is my favorite episode of the series because it involves peridot coming to terms at the fact that she's a stunted gem like amethyst side note you ever noticed that peridot gets other people's character arcs but better anyway peridot clings to tech as a sort of prosthetic because era to peridots either don't have powers or in her case have extremely weak powers Steven tries to make up for destroying her limb enhancers by giving her a tape recorder to keep logs in which peridot appreciates very much then lapis destroys it after the cluster arc Steven gets paired on a tablet to which peridot is ecstatic and cherishes like she did her tape recorder then amethyst tries to throw it in the ocean she insists that paradox doesn't need it because amethyst doesn't understand exactly why peridot is so dejected about not having powers and peridot freaks out you don't know yes I do the panic and desperation in peridots voice just I felt that when you have possessions you care about especially when they're a gift from the closest thing you have to family those things have a strong personal value to you peridot got her tablet as a gift a very thoughtful gift from Steven something Steven gave her because he knows that tech is very important to peridot and then amethyst tries to [ __ ] trash it why is it her own breaking peridots gifts from Steven in her panic peridot discovers that she can actually move metal which ok on reflection we should have seen that coming but still it's only the sheer desperation she's feeling that even unlocks this and while Steven and amethyst are freaking out about it you can see peridot very carefully navigate her tablet safely back to shore the sheer amount of crap peridot goes through in this one episode alone is intense and contains more actual character work than nearly every other episode combined just can someone please give this gem a hug after this point peridot didn't star much she mostly played comic relief to other characters and stuck around to be a support for others once in a while but once her arc was actually done nobody really knew what to do with her it was almost like sugar realized that unlike any other character peridot was just finished every other character arc is tediously dragged out so sugar can keep retreating the same ground she couldn't do that with peridot peridot was a three-dimensional character something sugar is completely unfamiliar with now what do we do so yeah peridot just fell by the wayside until season 5 where she had a brief stint of depression after lapis left and she was just dealing with the break-up so she took up gardening but because she tried to bring life back to the kindergarden and failed she has a breakdown over the fact that she's likely never getting her home or lapis back again we're gonna talk about lapis in just a moment but I find lapis in peridots relationship fascinating peridot loves lapis very much which darkly contrasts just how cruel and nasty lapis often is to her cruelty that peridot is aware of but seemingly doesn't care about even when lapis takes all of her things and flees to the moon there's seemingly no anger toward lapis at all just a stint of depression that she's gone were this intentional this would have been interesting to explore peridot ster she roll as comic relief after most of her art was finished is a contentious point for a lot of people but to be honest I'm ok with it she's generally fun to be around and like most gems that are new to earth she generally fumbles through learning social graces while peridots demeanor can be grating two people for whom comic relief is a dirty word her attitude and behavior actually contrasts very well to the constant crying everywhere else you see I find myself on the opposite of that spectrum drama and angst only work in small bursts or if that angst as a result of characters being shitty to each other while outside of certain tone required moments there's really no such thing as too much comedy I was terrible to you I liked taking everything out on you I needed you it was bad ho boy so the idea behind lapis is pretty sound sugar wanted to write a character arc about an abuse victim recovering from an unhealthy relationship and we know this because she admitted to it this is something that's rarely ever talked about with LGBTQ characters and can actually take advantage of the fact that the gems or mono gender most of the episodes that heavily feature lapis deal with her suppose in trauma at her relationship with Jasper at the bottom of the ocean her slow progress in regards to adjusting to earth especially compared to Navy Ruby and her budding relationship with peridot so you're getting the groundwork laid for an arc about an abuse victim recovering from trauma this is just one little itty bitty niggling problem everyone's prisoner hold us down with the weight of your planet's ocean I liked taking everything out I know I'm not the only one who notices this but in every case that is supposed to demonstrate the unhealthy relationship between lapis and Jasper its lapis who is the abuser in that scenario she pulled a fast one on Jasper by agreeing to fuse only to then track them at the bottom of the ocean kept her chained there for over a year and then admitted to it this doesn't even go to sugars usual problem of just disregarding things in previous episodes to suit her tunnel vision the episode that's supposed to establish lapis as an abuse victim does the exact opposite because sugar writes like somebody who has never left her [ __ ] house or indeed spoken to another human being even after this blunder lapis continues to be a pretty nasty person now that's to be expected anybody who is even a cursory experience with abuse knows that it does not create nice people and it's just as easy to believe that lapis is trauma comes from being trapped in the mirror for thousands of years instead it wasn't the fact that lapis was a raging shitheel that made her so contentious it was the fact that she repeatedly took that out on the one character people actually liked you see audiences are biased by nature and the quickest way for a character to piss away any sympathy one might have had for them is to kick the fandoms favorite person peridot was that character and arguably the most well designed crystal gem the series had she had a good Redemption arc actually helps save the world mouth off to a fascist dictator actually learned to deal with her problems and outside of those instances was one of the funniest characters in the supporting cast and she was the one who reached out to lapis and tried really hard to make her feel welcome despite lapis treating her like dirt at every possible opportunity what inevitably happened was lapis found a new victim but because sugar continues to write for the character she thinks she wrote rather the one that she actually wrote and has an understanding of abuse on par with dr. Wolfe this all goes unaddressed and more time is spent reinforcing how sad and angsty lapis is this all comes to a very heated conclusion in raising the bar where the fear of being caught up in another war makes lapis want to leave Earth the entire episode is one long string of lapis being the [ __ ] worst but a personal highlight goes to this scene I can't I won't let my son get caught up in another porn imagine writing out and animating a scene this sinister looking and still being under the impression that you're writing an abuse victim now this could have all been potentially interesting I like the idea need to reinforce the idea of a story about an abuser going through their own personal Redemption story changing their ways making a turnaround for themselves but that idea could only happen when the writer is aware of who this character is and sugar remains blissfully ignorant of that fact you can see this clearly in the episodes oral APIs as trauma is the central focus when in this position she's almost a completely different person which is jarring to say the least Jasper was arguably the first villain the show ever had and as far as setting up a conflict they nailed it with Jasper there was that never really much to Jasper just a lot of preaching about purging the weak and hating things she used as a crutch while simultaneously trying to weaponize them yeah sugar mostly just hyped up a boss fight with her even at the end of jailbreak she fuses with lapis who perceives a trapper under the ocean to torture her unfortunately when Jasper came out she was different sugar went on record as saying Jasper was somebody who was wracked by self-loathing and really another self-loathing plot regardless we don't get to do much with that as Jasper's immediately defeated in a fusion battle and then corrupted because she fused with a corrupted gem this is probably the closest the show has ever come to literally bullshitting their way out of a plot and it's mostly because of the Stephen Focus morality the show has to put it simply because we're gonna expand on it later if Stephen likes someone then there are a million excuses and that wasn't so bad further actions but if Stephen doesn't like someone they deserve to choke 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 sympathetic and irredeemable characters are so Jasper and Kevin are terrible but the consistently worse diamonds Lars Ronaldo lapis and Andy are sympathetic the show says Stephen likes this person therefore you should too you are to leave the cluster to grow it will tear apart the earth and I will take immense satisfaction in erasing that hideous rock off of our star maps clear yellow diamond is the proof that everything sugar says about having planned everything from the start as a complete lie when yellow diamond first appeared she was exactly the kind of character we had come to expect from all the set up menacing ruthless and cold-hearted she was posed animated and voiced perfectly what do I mean when I say this well the diamonds are all blatant space Nazis right down to committing at least two acts of genocide there isn't much you can do with that as far as complexity goes unless you're a [ __ ] person so all you could really do is instill a feeling in the viewer of kicking your ass is going to be fun this tends to be why the more overtly totalitarian a character is the more they reduced to just a string of intimidating poses an ass-kicking it's all saying here's our villain they kick so much ass so it's gonna be all the sweeter when we grind their face into the dirt there's just one problem sugar hated it sure didn't write this episode and apparently hated yellow diamond in this so much that she personally wrote in storyboard at her next appearance and that will be all which had her radically changed from being ruthless and cold-hearted to repressing her grief over the loss of pink diamond after this her next appearance was in the trial also not written by sugar and yellow was back to being a colorful Darth Vader oh I just regard that last statement I might have gotten carried away you can see this pushing and pulling with yellow throughout the series and depending on who is writing her she becomes a completely different character for a while someone was pushing back against sugars insistence that the villains be sad little babies but sugar ultimately won out and by the time of reunited yellow was wracked with grief and immediately experiences a turnaround uh Stephen literally bullshit's everyone's problems away and oh my god of the four diamonds yellow diamond was the biggest disappointment because she was the only one introduced as a villain and whom sugar had to keep [ __ ] with in order to break her into her terrible sad mold much more Blue Diamond is arguably one of the worst characters in the show because from the moment of her debut her actual debut she was nothing but a grief wracked a mess that's supposed to be sympathetic to people who don't know what sympathetic is personally I find something rather disgusting and blue diamond being portrayed as having greed for thousands of years over the loss of pink diamond while Holocaust in both crystal and homeworld gems both before and after that time for various reasons up to and including mouthing off being defective fusing and just because she feels like it hello everyone a scare they're all just thrilled to see you safe and sound white diamond was sugars last-ditch effort to make the other three diamonds look sympathetic in the face of mounting and severe criticism of the way she was writing introduced with shudders and red showcased as a towering figure that talks like Mother Gothel and whose pearl has a cracked eye in a thousand-yard stare and the implication that she has pink diamonds original pearl because of the way their gems are positioned and that theory is just stupid enough to actually be canon white diamond was an enigma for a long time and is presented as the true villain by being a [ __ ] ton scarier than the villains we've already had it may be familiar to people who play modern video games and are accustomed to microtransactions after the loot box Armageddon of 2017 it's not working for the people who actually paid attention to this [ __ ] but it's still scummy you can see that characters are the ones that suffer the most from sugars bad priorities and fragments and storytelling when main characters have to deal with their issues it happens extremely quickly because sugar is cramming it all in at the last minute in order to make sure there's plenty of time for her beach city coffee shop au this means character arcs have the simultaneous problem of being dragged out and rushed beyond belief as their issues are ignored or shrugged off for the majority of an arc before bolting to the finish line in the final episode if at all the only character I would say was handled well was peridot as once our arc was completed she mostly became a mood lifter and that's honestly what I think she works best as the rest are scattered the sugar doesn't seem to know what to do with them so many characters just stand around doing nothing because they have to be there and it seems sugar would rather find some excuse to write them out of the plot entirely you know at the same time I was writing this script I was also covering little witch academia on in a minute and I noticed a similar thing happened there where the main cast shifts in the second half of the series and the fun characters get demoted to extra while being replaced by characters that are far less interesting and now I'm wondering something you see Steven universe is chock-full of anime references like way too [ __ ] many the crew is really obsessed with anime and shoves references into it at every possible opportunity and I think they're shoving it into their writing as well that would explain why character arcs get rushed in order to get to the next poorly animated fight scene whoops did I just say that out loud I don't want to dwell too long on the animation as I don't think it's a critical priority within the show but a lot of people do talk about it and it is a symptom of the disease that is festering inside Steven universe at its core the animation in Steven universe is bad really [ __ ] bad characters are constantly being drawn off model changing heights changing proportions changing facial structure models flat-out breaking and many of the main characters have been shrinking down to increasingly chippy forms as the series goes on there is almost never two episodes where the characters look the same with characters made of angular shapes like peridot being the most egregious offenders it's clear the show does not have model sheets a bare minimum pre-production standard for animation and there's a good chance the storyboards are drawn freehand none of the usual practices to maintain proper proportions for characters is being employed here in an egregious show of laziness and unprofessional behavior there is absolutely no excuse for the animation to be this [ __ ] sloppy the only episode where the animation remains on model fluid and without any kind of animation flubs is mindful education the best animated episode I need to make that distinction clear because I'm gonna tear this thing a new [ __ ] in a minute mindful education is a strange case study because every other episode has consistent model changing in animation problems going back to the first season there isn't any other episode except mindful education that doesn't look like it was animated without any pre-production whatsoever so what the [ __ ] happened easy they got someone else to do it mindful education was animated by Studio trigger you know the lesbian witch people so animation is a lot more floaty than Steven universe is usually known for and characters aren't model switching constantly like a ps2 era Kingdom Hearts cutscene majoring crunch time so you really do care for her in that case the answer's no you run are you angry do you hate me are you angry do you hate me so yeah the episode is very beautifully animated and really shows what Steven universe can look like if they know what they're doing but here's the part where it's the rug out from underneath people you remember how at the start of the section I said that the animation is not something I'd like to focus on because it ultimately has zero effect on the quality of the show mindful education is one of the worst episodes of Steven universe about 3/4 of the story is dedicated to Connie apologizing over suplexing someone as a result of our combat training this results in stevonnie not being able to maintain their stability as a fusion and having to meditate with garnet set to a tediously long musical number about dealing with traumatic experiences one major problem with this however is that the inciting incident is not a traumatic experience it's muscle memory the traumatic experience ends up being Steven having to deal with leaving eivol trapped in space bubbling bismuth for nothing and letting Jasper get corrupted and the guilt he feels about all of those things but only for two minutes because the episode hastily rushes a conclusion for that in the episode ends more time is given to an accident than the actual deep-seated issues a character is facing before just leaving it hanging there oh and before you ask yes the very next episode is completely detached from this and it's just left there until 13 episodes later this is why the animation is small potatoes because the single best-looking episode of the series is also one of the worst episodes of the series because the sloppy and unprofessional animation is just a sinem of a disease that affects the entire show most cartoons have animation errors and a lot of modern cartoons are absolutely packed with them but they often amount to glitches with Steven universe it's a direct decision by the creators to say [ __ ] it to the very concept of effort however handing the animation off to someone else won't really make the show better because that same laziness is also present in the writing and characterization the core of a work picking apart the animation and making comparison shots are ultimately meaningless and mindful education is proof of that it's fitting that this episode was animated by Studio trigger because they have the exact same problem I'm talking about a lot of their shows are beautifully animated but the writing quality is boring at best and disgustingly regressive at worst except that's actually a lie because this episode wasn't actually animated by studio trigger and here's where I'm gonna rip the rug out from underneath everyone again this episode animated by the same South Korean studio that animated every other episode one person from trigger was brought on to do the storyboards not animate the storyboards you see a lot of shows are animated in South Korea and if there's one thing that characterizes South Korean animation is that they ain't got time for any of your [ __ ] they will give you the exact kind of animation your storyboards tell them to give you simply put if your storyboards suck your animation will also suck looking at the storyboards from most Steven universe episodes they look haphazardly drawn now storyboards in general had never been the pinnacle of art they're strictly utilitarian but you'll notice there's a consistent theme of a single line drawing somebody drew it with the pencil tool and mspaint and quite frankly didn't give a [ __ ] it's no surprise the characters are constantly going off model and warping in size when this is what your boards look like the big indicators of this is simply the filmography of the two Studios who animate the show soon men image pictures whose body of work includes Buzz Lightyear of Star Command Benton and gargoyles and rough-draft Studios whose body of work includes Ren & Stimpy The Critic Rocko's Modern Life Dexter's Lab Pinky and the brain king of the hill Johnny Bravo Daria the Powerpuff Girls Sponge Bob Squarepants choc zones Samurai Jack the old one and the reboot Kim Possible codename kids next door my life is a teenage robot Danny Phantom American Dragon shake long the modifiers Phineas and Ferb gravity falls uncle grandpa star vs. the forces of evil we bare bears The Simpsons Futurama Family Guy American Dad Fern Gully the last rainforest Hotel Transylvania and many others which I did not have time to mention so if one studio one animation studio has a body of work like this and feature some of the most well animated cornerstones of anybody's childhood who likely started gawking at the screen when I said this then I think we can rule out the animators themselves as the ones responsible and of course mindful education which had a guest storyboard artist has much cleaner and consistent storyboards that do the job they're supposed to do and communicate with the animators mindful education brought on takafumi hoary as the lead storyboard artist and who are the lead storyboard artists in most episodes I'm shocked truly I am this is my shocked face the comment defense of this from a certain subset of Steven universe fans is at the as a stylistic choice it's not that's what every terrible hack says about their crappy work you want to see intentionally bad as a stylistic choice I asked you to look once again at sticking around a cartoon from the 90s that is intended to look like the doodles and a kids math book have come to life with a healthy amount of surrealist animation to it and even that manages a say on model for five [ __ ] minutes but once again the pedigree of rough-draft Korea completely eliminates that concept the storyboards are just drawing like a [ __ ] scribble with no thought put toward maintaining consistent proportions nobody is checking proportions or models at all there's no pre-production put into this show it's just draw freehand whatever I know this is the overall theme of the video but it bears repeating you guys are so [ __ ] lazy [Music] when it comes to LGBT representation Steven universe got a free ride on low expectations because LGBT relationships are rare in children shows a lot of people were prepared to claim Steven universe as the pioneer of a new era in relationship design of course all of this came about in the first season when the show was hammering home just how much pearl was still losing her [ __ ] over rose it was until the end of the first season that an actual relationship was even established in Ruby and Sapphire and that's where the problems start I've talked before about how garnet was an interesting idea of literally being a relationship but with a show doing absolutely nothing with her the implications of her existence became even more prominent garnet was a very easy way to avoid doing any actual work with Ruby and Sapphire in regards to developing their relationship if you recall last year in my Legend of Korra video I talked about how one of the easiest ways to write a solid relationship is to start in media stress and make liberal use of couple banter those of you wanting to know how to write a relationship that's a good foundation get you started also comedy this is the bare minimum standard the Steven universe just can't commit to sugar always took every excuse you could to hide Ruby and Sapphire in the walk-in closet that is garnets hips and this strikes me as surprising because when garnet is unfused Ruby and Sapphire are a surprisingly well-written and fun relationship either they're in the midst of a heated fight like in Keystone Motel being adorable to the point of hilarious and competence I can hit the diamond or just being the rock wall that keeps the other grounded in a time of anxiety like in that will be all they even have a big fight after the pink diamond revelation it looks like they might break up and after a few episodes were pearl gasps light sapphire and Steven goes off to find Ruby they not only make up but they get engaged I'll admit that caught me off guard because I thought they were already married incidentally the episode where they get married is probably the best episode of the see okay it would be the best episode of the series but in the last half the space facist crashed the party and Steven tries to make friends with them that's a whole mess of [ __ ] up that we'll get into later although I find it both hilarious and sad that the first gay wedding in a children's show had to share its screen time with look how sad these Nazis are I mean good on Rebecca sugar for accurately reflecting modern politics at least for all of her failings in other areas when it's time for Ruby and Sapphire to come out of their overcoats sugar shows the surprising ability to write a grounded enjoyable relationship when people talk about LGBT representation this is it right here writing a good LGBTQ relationship is so easy and even Rebecca sugar can do when she's forced to but it seems like most of the time she just doesn't want to and keeps Ruby and Sapphire locked inside garnet at all times this wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for the fact that garnet saw consistent and rapid decline from being the only gem with her head on straight to just being a vessel to give exposition about fusion which only happens about 5% of the time in the series anyway as a result Ruby and Sapphire don't get to do much unless garnet has become unstable which has only happened on a few rare occasions this is the fundamental problem of garnet being a perma fusion fusions are separate characters from the gems they're fused with and only in rare instances do they function like two or more people it's hard to say Steven universe is a pioneer of LGBT representation when the only two characters who further that idea aren't present for the vast majority of the series the only other instance of this was pearls one-sided relationship with Rose characterized for most of the series as a pathological obsession brought on by unrequited love to say pearl was a wreck over losing Rose as an understatement she's almost constantly falling apart at the seams considering the gems have been around for 6,000 years and Steven is only 14 Rose's absence is still very much a new thing for them Pearl's creepy obsession with Rose was interesting for a while but it got old very quickly even attempts to pair a pearl up with someone else were kneecapped by that's someone else looking exactly like Rose people ultimately got tired of pearls character going [ __ ] nowhere outside of her unrequited love and her hoping sugar would do something else with her that unfortunately turned out to be a regret because what sugar did was gross and horrifying with the revelation that roses pink diamond also came the revelation that pearl was pink diamonds pearl given to her as a slave this fundamentally altered the dynamic between rose and pearl as now we're being shown a slave falling in love with her master and the show seeing absolutely 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 as impossibly romantic [Music] oh we know why tell me to stop please don't ever stop a slave falling in one-sided love with her master and said master taking advantage of that the way Rose did is an extremely dark story premise but sugar doesn't think of it that way Steven universe loves to talk about abuse as a central theme and yet the biggest example of it is flown completely over sugars head not even a single acknowledgment of just how [ __ ] up this whole thing is it's like reading erotic fan fiction written by the weirdest scariest sub ever Pearl's strange and lopsided relationship with Rose even extends to her relationship with Steven why are you here pearl me nothing I was just well you know how I always say I just I like to watch you sleep sometimes and by sometimes I mean often ah see it's funny because actually that's not funny that's just creepy this is played for a joke Sugar's idea of relationships is warped to say the least this is not good representation there's a reason that stories about LGBTQ relationships rarely cover these kind of issues and that's because when these issues are botched this badly it ultimately ends up being a reinforcement for conservative paranoia about gay relationships is some kind of twisted deviancy and finds its way into the next bill to criminalize being gay so there's been something of an unspoken agreement to not cover those things until it can be certain that they won't become arrows in the quiver of the ban gays crowd conservatives and they're stubborn bigotry are the reason LGBT representation is as politicized as it is having the biggest concentration of representation come from such a myopic melodramatic and reckless person like Rebecca sugar is not the political milestone so many people think it is handling those themes well would be great it'd be amazing if a show talked about gay relationships and talked about how just like straight relationships they can be rocky or sometimes unhealthy and actually stuck the landing but doing that is extremely difficult and sugar continues to put our foot in our mouth by coming up to instances of clear and obvious abuse and saying how romantic this is before we even address the fact that LGBT characters in the series are exclusively restricted to the gems a mono gendered race of aliens this conveniently sidesteps the usual conservative freak out that the show might otherwise but in doing so gives the implicit lesson that giving valuable representation is second priority to placating a group of emotionally stunted crybabies the LGBT representation is something that will be easily discarded if it risks cutting into the bottom line and you know what if that's your attitude then more power to you but don't pretend Steven universe is some kind of pioneer the half-measure blinking you'll miss it representation isn't new it's been around for over a decade it's practically formulaic the fact that people pretend this is in any way brave is [ __ ] ridiculous this isn't even getting into the complete middle finger that non-binary people get non-binary characters of Steven universe exists entirely to avoid having to deal with the implications that many of sugars character designs create like how stevonnie despite being the fusion of both a boy and a girl has they're designed very much leaning on the feminine end of the gender spectrum might say something interesting about Steven especially considering some choice moments in the first season when he says but if it were me I really want to be a giant now they're Envy that's just easier congratulations Steven universe you've created a situation where a character being non-binary is the least interesting explanation you could offer I don't know how on earth you managed to do that that should be literally [ __ ] impossible non-binary people are by their very definition interesting and you managed to make that boring that's like trying to climb a set of stairs and getting hit by a train how'd you even do that speaking of which the two characters who are presented as non-binary Steven and smokey quartz are both fusions the only indication given that they're non binaries that they use plural pronouns which are common among non-binary people but they're also fusions of multiple people so it's highly likely that these two fusions don't even get to be their own person like other fusions do there's a bigger problem because of a quirk of language I have no idea if these characters are actually singular non-binary entities or just a hive mind like a [ __ ] Borg the only tell would be how they refer to themselves in the first person I wish you were here if we were together it would be okay I hate you I really do actually a season 5 episode had Kevin explicitly refer to Steve on E as they so well done Kevin you were finally good for something better four years late than never it's almost like somebody pointed out to sugar that the information about Stefani being non-binary was only ever confirmed on Twitter and that's not how storytelling works speaking of which Diwani comes with their own host of issues this show really pervs on Steve on e every chance can get despite them being androgynous well you know according to sugar at least Stefani is about as hard feminine as you can possibly get and the camera angles around them to get as many shots of their body as possible ordinarily this wouldn't be surprising animated shows perving on female or feminine characters is nothing new but Stefani is literally two kids in a trench coat and this is a fact that's not casually ignored by the writers in their debut episode Stefani is creeped on by some skeezy [ __ ] but the moment their fusion destabilizes this happens to kids I'm out okay great well done Kevin you passed the basic minimum requirement of a human being here's your mediocre trophy except Kevin and Steve on e have another encounter in the episode Beach City drift and not only does Kevin remember that Steve on e has two kids fused he continues to hit on them you hold two kids in a beautiful trenchcoat routine won't fool me this time so don't even try it Kevin is literally hitting on two kids and is aware of that fact the episode portrays him as a bog-standard creep that literally every woman on the planet is met at least once in their lives but Kevin is disturbing behavior goes a lot deeper than that and none of the writers notice or seem to care and I'm not surprised that's the case the show aggressively sexualized stevonnie nearly every time they appear and the consistent and ever-present fact that their two kids fuse together is repeatedly acknowledged and simultaneously ignored when the writers want to pull some kind of Russo subversive stunt the fact that this is Stephen and Connie is loudly placed front and center when the writers want to gawk at Steve Anees ass they never seem to acknowledge it also Steve on E is apparently 26 because that's Stephen connie's ages fused are you [ __ ] me that's the kind of excuse I'd expect to see at a bad animation actually that brings me to the big question why did two small children's create a conventionally attractive woman when they fuse out of all the fusion designs dragged from the bowels of the world's craziest acid trip this landmark fusion of a human and a gem creates a rather generic looking woman as a result and let's not forget these are children putting aside it's just how sleazy it is to do this with children children are some of the most imaginative little shits in the world if any fusion should have four arms six eyes and a venom spitting cobra for an ass stefani but no it's just generic pretty lady if I had to hazard a guess based on the rest of the decisions in the show I think sugar developed the look of Steve on e first and then tried to find a way to cram them into the story somehow and simply didn't consider the implications of Steve on ease very existence and the way they're often framed and sexualized the fact that this is two children often being gawked at by the camera it just didn't occur to anybody I mean that's the optimistic reading the cynical reading is that Sugar's obsession with anime has taken a toll on her psychological well-being the hasty addition of Steven and Connie's ages after the fact seems to lean hard in that direction hi this is Lilly I'm cutting in because as I was editing this bit I found a little nugget of information about Stefani straight from sugars mouth in an interview in 2015 sugar talked about her supposed intent behind stevonnie and it reads like this Steve Ani challenges gender norms as an individual but also serves as a metaphor for all the terrifying firsts in a first relationship and what it feels like to hit puberty and suddenly find yourself with the body of an adult how quickly that happens how it feels to have new power over people or to suddenly find yourself objectified all for seemingly no reason since you're still just you and they are still just them they're Steven and Connie who you already know and relate to and if you do you can feel for this episode what those feelings are like okay first of all that's not how puberty works you [ __ ] idiot you don't just suddenly have the body of an adult you develop it over time no fourteen fifteen or sixteen year old has a fully developed body that's just a stupid idea people have from teenagers being played by grown-ass adults on TV you want to showcase puberty give Steve Ani a cracked voice and acne that's what [ __ ] puberty is like but that wouldn't be conventionally attractive now would it second of all your best way to demonstrate being objectified is to literally [ __ ] objectify stevonnie that's your best excuse holy [ __ ] this isn't a metaphor this is just being the thing sugar you are such a [ __ ] creep there is one more thing though and that's Ruby and sapphires wedding after coming apart from the revelation that roses pink time in the entire time they wander around apart for a bit with Ruby turning into a cowgirl I like the tiny red lesbian but I don't understand the tiny red lesbian when they finally make up Ruby asked sapphire to marry her and we get the first on-screen same-sex wedding in a children's show I don't have much to say about it I'm just pointing out the one actual tiny milestone Steven universe has well done on that front Steven universe here's your tiny trophy I look forward to the day 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 coding and going what the [ __ ] does that mean Lily it seems that even among Steven universe's fanbase the concept of coding isn't 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 humans so for the uninitiated coding is the use of visual and auditory signifiers to apply traits commonly understood to be indicative of gender ethnicity or other demographics onto characters that are otherwise completely detached from human understanding or even just those demographics in particular coding can be subtle or blatant and the concept is most understood when it's the latter for example here are the tauren from world of warcraft now what does that look like to you this is called racial coding and with the tauren in particular it goes beyond visual signifiers and directly to how they're characterized right down to being nomadic and forming a tenuous alliance with new colonizers to their homeland it works out better for them than it did for us Thrall in cairne bloodhoof herb Rose okay they were pros anyway what does this have to do with Steven universe well racial and gender coding is universal among the gems it's been blatant and in-your-face from the moment the series began and only recently did sugar confirm that racial coding is a deliberate design aspect which makes it all the more strange and how exactly the show treats its black characters in the main cast this was most recognizable with the introduction of bismuth the character that was appropriately coded considering her overwhelming characterization as a revolutionary against an unjust oppressive regime whose Supreme Leader has white in their name from the characterization to the visual design to the [ __ ] voice you'd have to be willfully ignorant to not see what's going on here the fact of the matter is bismuth is coded black which is what makes it all the more gross that her defining character moment is rose getting on her case for being too extreme when dealing with literal fascists for whom the rigid and aggressive caste system was an all-too-familiar wound and then bubbling her for thousands of years only for her to break out of her bubble and repeat this entire run around where she will presumably write the letter from beach temple jail that's a smart joke everyone and let's not forget who it is that derides bismuth is too extreme in the first place Rose a character who is wholly uninterested with the liberation of gems from homeworld and just wants the earth to be left alone so she has somewhere to walk through gardens and [ __ ] human do it's a literal white moderate being snippy and dismissive of a black woman who wants to fight against an oppressive regime oh but the shocking twist is that Rose is one of the people who is benefitting from the oppressive regime the entire time that's not as shocking as you think it is Rebecca of course roses a privileged [ __ ] because only a privileged [ __ ] would try to pull that just as bad why can't we all be moderate horseshit what makes this moment so horrible is that this was just left here for years allegedly sugar planned every story element before hand something that I simply do not believe but if it's true sugar let this episode sit here stinking up the place and leaving a bad taste in everybody's mouths just so she could have her shocking twist that didn't actually shock anybody everyone and their grandmother was tearing this episode apart for the [ __ ] up Lowell so neutral hack of a theme and the crew just let it happen let's go back in time a bit there was a controversy around far cry 4 when this image was posted to Ubisoft social media with the presence of a white passing man sitting on throne with his hand rested patronizingly on the head of a native many people questioned that this looked extremely racist now this image was taken out of context with Ubisoft clarifying a week later that this guy isn't white and he's also the villain of the game however while the image was taken out of context it was Ubisoft who posted it to their Twitter without any context to draw from they threw up this image of a fair-skinned man looking cool and suave as he dominated a local and said nothing about it the image being taken out of context is a direct result of Ubisoft not providing the context so when people say we don't know all the details I asked and whose fault is that this image without any other context behind it was what bismuth was for two [ __ ] years sugars insistence on giving the audience as little information as possible backfired in the most spectacular way and was long considered a huge black mark on the series a lot of people forgave it after the pink diamond reveal and bismuth was unbuttoned but it shouldn't have taken this long to get here without the context of the rest of the series this episode looks so disgustingly racist that you could practically hear Steven yelling all lives matter and sugar just let it remain in that state bismuth wasn't the first example of some pretty worrying attitudes from the writers however garnet despite being a fan favorite never really got the chance to be her own person all her episodes were either about you in her future vision unlike any other fusion garnet is the most stoic in one dimensional which is weird considering she's one of two perma fusions in the show garnet like bismuth is explicitly coded to an unprecedented degree and yet gets so little actual development but garnet is small potatoes - when she fuses even further you see here's the interesting thing about crystal gem fusions see when it comes to the other crystal gems pearl is coated white because she shaded that way and gets away with attempted murder and amethyst is okay amethyst is actually kind of lost on me because I'm not as perceptive as I like to think I am but I've heard people claim she's black coated I've heard others saying she's Latin and honestly either one makes my point anyway my point is when pearl fuses with someone the fusions that are created tend to be graceful and are often accompanied by smooth easy listening music opal sardonyx rainbow quartz they're all graceful dancers taking more from pearl than anybody else so what happens when garnet and amethyst views they turn into a hideous ape like violently aggressive monster with absolutely no impulse control and needs to be subdued by pearl but hey at least amethyst is the one who's wielding the whip wait a minute that sounds familiar it's that mila kunis hang on i'm gonna look this up really nicki minaj voicing a hideous evil monster great that's [ __ ] great that's what a bad fortune meme funnily enough sugilite appeared in the next season but was suspiciously unvoiced and season 1 audio was recycled for a brief clip and no your fusion why do I get the sneaking suspicion that this design was not disclosed and then when the episode aired someone was pissed anyway the best part about this episode is that sugilite who is characterized as the most out-of-control angry [ __ ] has to be subdued by the dainty and feminine pearl sorry did I say best I meant depressing the most blatantly daunting part about this episode is that this subduing of a large black woman is considered a way to make her better as a character and a person Pearl's growth in this episode hinged on her ability to tear apart a large unrepentant black woman she sings a damn song about how she can't be strong in a real way until she can take on this big [ __ ] brutes Jesus Christ Rebecca are you on [ __ ] ambhi 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 graceful and beautiful when they fuse with each other they create a hideous monster who's aggressively violent and with no self-control I could go on but sugilite has been thoroughly deconstructed by much of Steven universe's black fan base in much more detail and from a much better position of expertise than I could ever hope to achieve I'll be honest racial coding as character design flies over my head most of the time I had to read essays from black viewers to even begin to cover the myriad of problems with sugilite so I'm gonna put them in the description and you can have the depressing learning experience that I did making this video besides we have more concrete examples of crooner versus racist crap [ __ ] you that segue was brilliant Steven universe had an art book release I contained a lot of unused gem concepts such as Steven healing the earth beetle to find that she's a very tiny gem and amethyst looking like oh oh that is not good the whole book featured a lot of unused or scrapped ideas that never made it into the show proper but then you turn the page and you're greeted with Oh for [ __ ] sake are you kidding me with this [ __ ] concrete a gem with pitch black skin thick bright white lips and carries the production note that she can't read take a wild guess how that went over this time nobody was pulling any punches whatsoever this was very explicitly racist and like bismuth was just left there out in the open like that many people attempted to finalize concrete's design to make her look like less of a 1930s Warner Brothers cartoon but that doesn't absolve sugar of this sugar didn't design this but she seemingly did nothing about its very 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 managed to make it into the public hands and the public reacted very appropriately the response to this got so heated and so bad that sugar had to take the rare occasion to actually open her damn mouth explain herself these pieces were created carelessly and it was wrong to include them in this book while I did not personally create or select this material I did miss it during the approval process and I take full responsibility as executive producer this apology and explanation confirmed what I've been saying about Rebecca sugar for years he's just not paying attention to what is going on around her this drawing should never have made it into the public hands it should have been found and remembered as oh yeah this one let's not release this sugar admits to there having been an approval process but apparently concrete snuck past anyway alongside pimp amethyst I'm gonna call [ __ ] nobody was checking this [ __ ] nobody is ever checking their [ __ ] [ __ ] steam has more oversight than this [ __ ] show how do you draw something like this and not immediately recognize what the [ __ ] you've done how is it that you don't realize what your crew is drawing until Twitter blows up at you about it the sheer density and obliviousness of the crew is [ __ ] infuriating oh and we're not done by the way let's not forget the humans ooh that thing pink diamond put humans into for her amusement that showed up in one episode and then never made a single return the human zoo is particularly gross because they were real things during the colonial era it wasn't uncommon for black and First Nation people to be paraded around in zoos for the amusement of rich white [ __ ] and was considered to be totally okay by them because they didn't believe black and Native people were human pink diamonds human zoo shows up and nothing has ever done with it here's the thing about the human Zoo it doesn't exist for any other reason than for sugar to draw what she thinks is a utopian society Katie metrof a story border for Steven universe said as much on her tumblr ages ago Rebecca pitched the suit to Lamar and I is this utopian hippie Society full of beautiful and healthy people with no concept of pain or sadness so we went to town drawing as many different kinds of hot people as possible 70s sci-fi hippie communes the time machine the footlight parade and the Centaurus sequence from Fantasia were all influences for this episode I find it interesting how she says they drew inspiration from the centaur s sequence from Fantasia because this is the centaur s sequence from Fantasia so that's four times this has happened now also the fact that these people used a human zoo which I will remind you were actual horrific things in history as a vector to draw as many kinds of hot people living in a hippie loving utopia as possible hey Karuna vers what's wrong with you like what is actually [ __ ] wrong with you here's and I've been holding off on mentioning this until now Steven universe has a very ethnically diverse crew with the way this is written you could be forgiven for thinking that this show is made by Rebecca sugar and all of her whitest friends but no there's a lot of diversity in the crew how does this keep happening I know being a minority doesn't automatically make one a complete expert of systemic bigotry [ __ ] Rebecca sugar is Jewish and yet she constantly struggles with the concept that fascists are bad but someone had to at some point see some of the [ __ ] that goes into the show and go why the [ __ ] are we making this anyone of these things can be written down to a mistake or an oversight but all four at the same time that apology regarding concrete doesn't explain why sugilite made it through the suppose inventing process it doesn't explain why when sugar pitched the idea of a human Zoo as a hippy utopia nobody raised their hand and went what the [ __ ] why nobody thought to question everything about business introduction why did nobody despite supposedly knowing it from the start say to sugar that having your big twist be that the supposed hero the story was actually one of the Nazis in space the whole time was a stupid idea speaking of which so the pink diamond dark this has got to be the most erratically written story arc in the entire series and seemingly came right out of nowhere as a bomb to drop on to everything sugar clearly imagined this being a shocking twist that completely blindsided everyone and changed the entire dynamic of the series and it did but not in the way sugar intended the pink diamond dark ultimately took every single scrap of potential the series might have had and completely tore it to pieces every possible bad decision you could have made was made and a lot of character growth was completely negated by this story so about halfway through the series right after bismuth in fact were introduced to the idea that rose quartz kicked off the war by shattering pink diamond the leader of Earth's colony at the time Stephen spends awhile agonizing about this and the rest of the gems all just accepted as a reality of war this is something of a hard-hitting moment for Steven as he literally just got done telling bismuth that shattering gems was the worst thing in the world to do even worse than death apparently and now he has to contend with the fact that his mother shattered paint diamond okay a piece of information that fundamentally alters the way Steven has to think about his mother and his own narrow view of what's moral 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 the raging hypocrisy of bismuth having immediately precluded this but at the very least it was interesting to see how Steven would have to deal with that guilt and in that briefest of glimpses in mindful education it looked like he was at least torn over this so what happened sugar kept [ __ ] with it that's what happened come the trial this previously earth-shattering revelation becomes the catalyst for a murder-mystery plot completely out of [ __ ] nowhere Steven turns himself in to homeworld to face judgment for killing pink diamond and his lawyer comes to the conclusion based entirely off of Steven's lack of roses memories that Rose couldn't have shattered pink diamond and then proceeds to go through the security measures that had to have been in place during the war the lawyer then assumes that the only person who could have killed pink diamond would be someone who pink diamond wouldn't have thought twice about trusting and who had the authority to cover it up afterward he then points the finger at the remaining diamonds leading to one of my favorite scenes in the entire series oh I just regard that last statement I might have gotten carried away OOP [ __ ] I think it says something about a show when a character uncrossing their legs and standing up is the most exciting thing to happen this revelation and yellow diamonds reaction to it made a lot of people suspect that it was yellow diamond who killed faint diamond as a means to push the other diamonds into using the corrupting light a suspicion that on reflection would have been a much better plot point little happened as snippets of pink diamonds life were given in flashbacks until a single pale rose where it was revealed that rose was pink time in the entire time and had a change of heart about earth because flowers before deciding to give it to the crystal gems so obviously pink diamond vanish took up the mantle of rose quartz and started her revolution right no no that would make sense but no that would make pink diamond experience a moment of growth and realizing how terrible and regressive her sisters way of governing is and make her the flawed but sympathetic character sugar wants her to be and we can't have that what actually happened was that pink diamond started the war and pulled the strings on both sides of it like emperor [ __ ] Palpatine before deciding to fake her own death and live his rose quartz forever so she can be free of her responsibilities as a diamond and have an exciting fresh start with pearl you know the plot of Kingdom Hearts is less needlessly complicated than this so here's where things go wrong Steven universe has a big problem and that a lot of the characters who are designated heroes of some of those vile despicable creatures I've ever had the misfortune of spending time with lapis wilfully allows her impulses to dominate her and is borderline abusive to everyone except Steven amethyst is a perpetual sulk who seems to view self-improvement as some kind of admission of weakness pearl is absolutely [ __ ] insane and Steven is a mopey self-righteous idiot with no awareness of his surroundings whatsoever none of them however can hold a candle to pink diamond pink diamond is a character who was born into a privileged idyllic life demanded more than she rightfully deserved on the basis that her status demanded it realized the responsibility was more than she could chew and decided to bail out on it so she could live a life of relaxation and laziness in doing so she completely [ __ ] with the minds of the oppressed gems manipulated them into starting a war against her own people pulled the strings long enough on that war until she'd had her fun and then faked her own death which had a profoundly traumatic impact on the gems that were still loyal to her and her sister diamonds she was born into wealth got bored [ __ ] with people for a laugh toyed with their emotions endlessly and then proceeded to continue doing all of that as rows for thousands of years afterward pink diamond is one of three characters the others being starlight glimmer and Varion who after learning their origin story that was clearly set up to seem sympathetic made me sit back and go what a [ __ ] what an unbelievable [ __ ] the blowback from this was so massive that the first episode of Han returning from hiatus was pearl telling her own version of roses story which once again is completely disconnected from everything else we know about Rose and is clearly set up to make her look like just a precious Schmo bab and then one episode later amethyst reminds everyone that pearl is not an unbiased party I honestly do not know what sugar is trying to do here I don't know what kind of character Rose is supposed to be she so erratically characterized repeatedly rewritten and seemingly draws new personalities out of [ __ ] nowhere they're trying to get a bead on what sugar is trying to achieve with Rose's almost an impossible task the pink diamond dark lays out the truth of sugars writing she's going entirely with what she thinks might be the most subversive choices regardless of whether or not they contradict each other sugar is so desperate for people to think her writing is smart that she is completely abandoned telling an engaging story in favor of setting up another shocking twist and rose quartz had her entire character hacked up to pieces to achieve that goal now I can already hear you angrily typing out your comments that Ben actually should you intended this to be the revelation from the very beginning and lead out of the hints he resisted at from the very start and I'm gonna stop you right there and say no it wasn't she is [ __ ] with you the only indication we have that sugar planned this roses pink diamond twist out from the very start is that sugar said she did and Cartoon Network released a compilation of all the clues throughout the series now here's where I'm gonna spoil a writer's trick for everyone you see if you want to have a twist but you don't know what that twist is going to be you can lay Clues throughout a series that are so vague you can warp them too retro actively mean whatever you want you're exploiting hindsight bias to trick people into thinking your writing is smarter than it actually is in the case of this compilation that Cartoon Network's so proudly displayed many of their own clues don't imply that roses pink diamond even in hindsight may imply that Rose had secrets what those secrets were are not in any way implied they're so vague and open-ended could mean roses pink diamond it could mean she was secretly Jehovah pearl silencing herself only means that Rose ordered her to keep a secret it doesn't imply what that secret was again it could mean that roses pink diamond it could also mean that rose like to force pearl to [ __ ] random people for a life those aren't hints that roses pink diamond they're hints that something happened a something that was vague enough so is - technically fit once sugar actually decided what it was and the audience is so desperate for this show to be smart and mature and challenging that they'll act it up if you are a fan of Steven universe still watching this video and you think this [ __ ] was clever you got scammed and we're still not done you see this revelation didn't just hack up Rose's character and also hacked up pearl pearl at this point was already a contentious character but the very least she was compelling a member of a race of gems literally bred to be slaves but turning on her masters and becoming her own gem that was the saving grace of pearl while the yellow and blue pearls were subservient and devoted to the point of being scary pearl was the odd one out by being her own person well guess what she's not she was pink diamonds pearl and continued serving her with utmost devotion even after pink diamond faked her death she was just as devoted to her diamond as the other pearls and arguably even more so because she was secretly lusting after her and it's unknown if the other pearls do so as well in one single scene pearl went from being dobby to being winking the talk about being her own gem was a lie the renegade pearl was a lie pearl proudly saying she belongs to no one was a lie this entire arc revealed a really nasty undercurrent with in Steven universe and goes along with the rest of the series slavery is a very real thing among homeworld and pearls are seemingly bred to be slaves and nothing else at one point a ruby soldier gleefully remarks that they might give her her own pearl for killing rose quartz what a Steven universe had to say about that nothing this goes unremarked on except by peridot in one episode in bismuth and another outside of that it never gets a passing mention it seemingly exists entirely so pearl can have a triumphant moment in her fight with peridot and is then just lying there afterward worst off Pearl's one-sided lustful Rose turns from a vector for her to deal with grief into something unbelievably gross and twisted pearl is now a slave harboring romantic feelings for her master given the behavior of gems like Jasper Halle blue and peridot before her defection it's safe to assume that this kind of devotion and adoration for a diamond is commonplace and possibly encouraged the diamonds are the ones who make and shaped gems you're really gonna tell me they wouldn't program their servants with obsessive attachment to keep them loyal you see what kind of problematic Pandora's box you open with this almost every aspect of pearl is tainted by this almost pitiable undercurrent it's almost impossible to know if anything she does or feels is genuine or even if she feels at all where does diamond programming end and a personality begin this would all be things that a good writer would consider but sugar is so blinded by a desire to be subversive that she just carelessly leaves all of this out in the open the whole aspect of pearls existing to be slaves was never a part of the series until it became the reason peridot is dismissive of 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 it was only established to give an excuse to punch peridot in the conversation between pearl and pink diamond in the flashback pink diamond is talking to pearl as if they're BFFs and not literally a master and slave that whole dynamic between the diamonds and their pearls has just been completely forgotten about oh wait cuz we're still not done 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 running it in her memory something that yellow diamond views with absolute contempt there's even a hole cut of rose quartz gems being kept bubbled in her chambers because during the war the diamonds didn't want Rose hiding in plain sight after the reveal that roses pink diamond the human Zoo was rewritten to actually have been run by yellow and blue diamond the entire time to placate Pink's worries that the colony is destroying humans the human zoo was a huge black mark on pink diamonds character when a single pale rose released everyone was pointing to the human Zoo as a Glary issue being left out of roses story so sugar did what she always does and rek Condit so pink diamond wasn't responsible this goes alongside the overwhelming attempts to characterize pink diamond is a diamond with no real authority to wash Rosa's hands of all responsibility for the diamond authority sins sugar wrote herself into a corner with Rose and rather than just abandon this stupid red herring of a plot she just started taking the white out to the story like a Republican senator on the Confederate Wikipedia page do you mind if I change it for a second to talk about the Old Republic I promise I'm going somewhere with this just hear me out the Old Republic is Bioware Star Wars themed MMO styled after the Knights of the Old Republic games unlike any other MMO it features the usual Bioware storytelling on top of the dual faction system found in World of Warcraft this means you can create your character for either the Republic or the resurgent Sith Empire and pick your moral choices on top of it and the kicker is that going too far in one direction on the morality chart doesn't make your character switch sides so a darkside Jedi won't betray the Republic to join the Sith now the Republican the Jedi have always been a den of corruption as far back as the original trilogy so this isn't really a new concept what did turn people's heads however was the fact that this also applied to the synth you can play as a Sith and make morally good choices this is something Star Wars has never done while light Jedi Dark Jedi and dark Sith were common and omnipresent this was wholly unique to the Old Republic so naturally I was all over that like Lizzie on black fabric I went in expecting to not get much just a Sith who didn't bother killing subordinates for failure and not much beyond that I was not prepared for just how good it would actually be the master will grant the slaves last wish the Emperor calls for your death attack me if you dare I was never nor shall I ever be your slave you see it's a common joke in Bioware games that the quote unquote evil options are laughably cartoonish often amounting to little more than R or R or kill everything that's also the case in the Old Republic but when you're playing as a Sith it's a lot less noticeable because well this is what sis do killing random people for no other reason than because you can and there's nothing they can do about it is something Sith are well known for and most sit NPCs you encounter actively encourage you to behave this way showing mercy to people even as early as the starting quests will be something that other characters will regard as peculiar even being surprised that it works the fact that the Sith are a thinly veiled fascist Empire in space isn't lost on the writers of the Old Republic and you might think that in a game like smooch or they would dial that down and rewrite the set Empire to be less naked Li fascist in order to make people more comfortable playing it they don't in fact they double down on it see in the movies the fascist undertones of the empire take the form of marching in step the soldiers being called stormtroopers and talking about how fear will keep the local systems in line in the sequel trilogy we upgrade to Huck's yelling a loud speech and using the word degenerate and the new stormtroopers actively do the Nazi salutes in the Old Republic however aliens are not considered citizens that are even reduced to slaves force sensitives are considered to be so important they're granted special privileges even when they're only barely trained acolytes and blood purity is something that many Imperial NPCs are obsessed with to the point that not only is Sith pureblood a racial choice but impure diluted blood is one of the most common reasons Sith betray each other so they took the space Nazis and added all the things the Nazis were known for playing a SIF character is to be 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 rapidly deteriorating where are you going with this well remember what I said about the dual faction system working hand in hand with the morality system well all that above [ __ ] applies to you the player if your dark side if you're a light side Sith the fundamental theme of the story is all this [ __ ] is [ __ ] us hard if one man can force the Empire how do we show our faces in public as a light side Sith you frequently work with the Jedi to accomplish your goals and in many cases you have interactions with the Jedi that make them fundamentally questioned everything they've been led to believe about thus if you actively quash people who are obsessed with purity of blood hold acolytes accountable for their rampant murder frenzy treat prisoners of war with respect and by the time you come to Ilham you actively encourage the acceptance of aliens into the Empire and even get to force choke a [ __ ] racist who objects to it and you I did not request your help so that you could bring alien Zin to the Empire speak to me again [Music] I'm sorry my lord the two SIF classes you can play as complement this idea the Sith Inquisitor is a slave considered to be of impure blood allowed onto Korriban only because therefore sensitive and from the moment you set foot onto the planet the sneering disdain that the pure Bloods have for you is immediately apparent while the Sith Warrior actually is a scion of some ancient Sith bloodline who enjoy some of the highest privileges in the Empire and who nonetheless rolls their eyes at all this master race nonsense and not the privileges that they have benefitted from in fact the warrior stands in direct contrast to the inquisitors main rival on Korriban fallen alf like the warrior faun is a scion of a prominent set family who enjoy special treatment at the hands of a prejudiced overseer who deliberately rigs the various tests to help him succeed like a dark side warrior Thawne is quite proud and dismissive of his social inferiors killing one with forced lightning just to show off and certainly has the raw power to back his up however unlike the warrior whose trials still test their abilities and whose skill and power are backed up with a strong work ethic and genuine bravery Thawne is very lazy and never really improves as a result of his soft easy trials one of the story threats for the warrior involves drawing a jedi padawan out of hiding by going after her parents you discover that their lowly servants on Alderaan and in an attempt to wound the Padawans 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 beerus immediately afterward you're given the option to keep that promise the jedi protecting them from you didn't give two licks of a [ __ ] about what kind of life they were going to lead after you left and one of the big reasons that light side says tend to reject this fascist nonsense is for the simple fact that the Sith Empire is now on its fifth resurgence into the galaxy on multiple occasions both Sith characters repeatedly ask if all this blood purity and master-race crap really is important then why does the Republic keep kicking our asses all the backstabbing and subterfuge of the Sith do in order to Scrabble for just a little more personal power has the knock-on effect of weakening the Empire as a whole every subordinate slaughtered is one free kill for the Republic every sit betrayed by another Sith is a free score for the Jedi when you do encounter Jedi as a synth character there really [ __ ] snotty to you even to the point of talking about you like you're not even there the Jedi have gotten 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 in Star Wars they never have been they only beat the Sith so often because the Sith do most of the work for them the Sith Warrior storyline involves a major character who's been doing nothing but Scrabble for power for decades and even tries to supplant the Emperor himself Darth Malgus is well a few sethe who recognize that the attrition rate that all this masterrace nonsense creates ultimately makes the Empire weaker the thing they believe makes them stronger is actively [ __ ] them over at every possible opportunity the Sith storylines are an ultimate refutation of fascism and racist policies on a very practical level one that you get to take part in it's not just that it's hideously evil to behave this way it's actively [ __ ] you over in the process you play as a character who benefits from caste systems the Empire is put in place and still decide to tear it all down anyway why because your character actually cares about the Empire and doesn't want to see it destroyed by the Republic again personal power doesn't mean anything if you keep losing it's ultimately true patriotism that leads to your character abandoning the systems that have benefited them personally and working to make the Empire better this is ultimately why your character doesn't become a Jedi enjoying the Republic they don't believe in either of those things and while working with the Jedi on several occasions they fundamentally reject their passive philosophy it seems that in the Sith warriors case they don't even believe in democracy itself in Knights of the Fallen Empire you get to have a conversation with Erik Jordan about how Chancellor Suresh has effectively become a dictator in the Republic the Republic I signed up to protect doesn't exist anymore we gave the reins over to people who don't care how we win just as long as we do Suresh is all that it dictator now don't you pride yourselves on keeping all the power out of the hands of one individual not enough politicians with the spine to stick to their principles when it really mattered Suresh in her puppet Chancellor have everyone convinced the state of emergency requires executive action she and her top brass just pushed through whatever suits their interests never thought I'd miss bureaucrats butting into military matters but when we gained in efficiency we lost in Seoul a war won't wait feed you to tally votes and it doesn't care if you can't reach a consensus someone still has to answer for those decisions at the end of the day by the way you get to meet Chancellor Suresh later when she attempts to kill you to seize control the alliance [Music] [Music] I assume you know everything then 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 well beyond apologies what do we do with her execution I expect it's what Valen would do it's what I would do and it's exactly what you deserve [Music] is it wrong to say I enjoyed that I was more surprised than I ought to be to learn that my own character didn't believe in democracy but I suppose that's the beauty of a game where the protagonist has her own voice and personality separate from the player but despite all this despite the thorw pummeling that fascist Dogma gets in these stories your character is still not a good person there's a lot of light side dialogue in the vein of this doesn't need to get violent but instead of pleading for a peaceful solution you threaten people to accept a peaceful solution or you'll kill them I'm so glad you've all found an accord but there's still the matter of you being our enemy SIF not only will I not allow the Wilsons to do this but you had yourself a killing spree getting here that can't go unpunished stand in my way and everyone dies quote-unquote good choices are either conniving manipulative or just flat-out exploiting the fact that you have a lightsaber and they don't oftentimes has a little more than keeping your word to not kill people you get given lightside points for actively choosing not to murder there's actually one instance where you break into a ship that was tailing you and a Jedi on the holla comm ask that you show the ignorant crew mercy the light side option is little more than gesturing to them to run the writers accepted the reality that even a well-intentioned character who has been in this environment since birth is not going to suddenly become a loving flower child just because they've realized that master race philosophy is a destructive and self-defeating delusion the writers went in with the idea that if a player has elected to play a Sith and make light sided decisions they are not some mouth-breathing idiot who obsessively needs to be able to root for the main character and so they're not going to be opposed to a villain protagonist or even just a protagonist to his ruthless so they didn't Wi-Fi the space totalitarian yeah you don't hear anything you enslave you devour I will never be part of that and this is where we circle back to Steven universe because a pink diamond had been this kind of character we would not be having this discussion if sugar accepted that regardless of how well-intentioned pink diamond might have been that her upbringing and comfortable position of privilege had instilled in her a warped sense of what's moral and just rolled with that then pink diamond might have actually been an interesting character whose entire existence didn't constantly piss everyone off if we had a pink diamond that cared about humanity cared about the crystal gems and cared about them being able to live their own lives but was still ruthless and cold-hearted in her tactics on top of that we wouldn't have to keep writing the spirograph of a plot to explain away half the things she does because the audience would have already been on board with the idea that pink diamond is not a good person and they could have laid out a far more consistent and less nonsensical plot in fact this wouldn't have even needed to go as far as pink diamond they could have just stuck with rows shattered pink diamond as a revelation and that would have actually been more interesting and in my case would have made me like her a lot more because having her stand up and own it and shout is a lot more satisfying than some wishy-washy [ __ ] to clean the blood off her hands this is why I exclusively write characters like this because it's just more satisfying when characters own their ruthless this weird moral purity where despite starting a war for their own freedom characters are supposed to remain true to their virtues 100% and never kill despite the fact that it's a [ __ ] war is one of those weird fandom attitudes that showcases just how [ __ ] sheltered and stupid a person is this thou shalt not kill if thou watts protagonist rule set by both creators and fan communities is complete and total nonsense if sugar had the guts to write rose less like Twilight and more like Sylvanas this show probably would have been closer to earning its reputation as an important and meaningful work of animation it is the death he wanted if that troubles you feel free to join him oh you can tend to the living the choice is yours the problem is that for all her claims otherwise sugar really wants people to think of pink diamond is a good person but that was an overwhelming failure because sugar didn't bother to address any of the [ __ ] that contradicted that view of pink diamond anything that needed to be addressed or dealt with was ignored when it mattered the most and too many characters are too willing to just accept it without question Rosa's entire story throughout the series is supposed to be about Rose being placed on a pedestal by bias parties but sugar doesn't want to actually take her down from that pedestal which is why we only ever hear about Rose from those biased parties anything bad she does is doused in a thousand asterisks and sugar can't bring herself to actually commit to any single idea for Rose and also there's this alright let's rip the bandage off Rebecca sugar has a very weird 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 hand waved away the vast majority of fascist villains are just kinda generic totalitarians the things that made the Nazi so horrific aliy evil white supremacy eugenics the mass slaughter of racial minorities Jews gay and trans people Communists and the disabled these are all casually ignored because nobody really likes thinking about them especially in the United States where a lot of those ideas haven't quite died out and the people who hold them are really touchy about being compared to their own ideological predecessors in its place you have ominous standing ominous poses ominous gestures vaguely talking about sovereignty and security and just overall looking authoritarian remember how I talked about kuvira and that 90% of the things she does to provoke dissent are never shown or explained to the viewer that's it right there a lot of avatar fans accused me of putting kuvira and leather pants but the reality is I was criticizing a massive gap of necessary information this line in particular I'm concerned about reports I've heard regarding kuvira's growing military they say she's throwing some of her dissenters into prison camps great she has dissenters who she's treating like [ __ ] what did she do to provoke them dissenters need a reason to dissent they don't just pop up randomly the dictator does something that pisses people off the people dissent the dictator puts the dick back in dictator this is such a simple and obvious concept and so many people just don't get it which is sad and funny at the same time Star Wars has a similar whitewashing of their fascist elements in the movies the fascist undertones with the Empire take the form of marching and step the soldiers being called stormtroopers and talking about how fear will keep the local systems in line and I just said this in the last segment my point is that the deliberate scrubbing of the elements of fascism that make it so vile and horrible in the first place is done so people don't have to think about things that make them uncomfortable the overriding presentation of fascism from Chora to Star Wars is Holocaust what Holocaust there are very rare instances where these issues are openly presented such as art house films like Schindler's List in the pianist Steven universe is one of those rare instances the main antagonists of the series the great diamond tooth or showcases every last one of the traits I listed above the diamonds have convinced the other gems that diamonds are perfect and without flaws unlike other gems on the Empire at one point despite being literally built to be tech experts yellow diamond explicitly shouts that the puny thoughts of a peridot are beneath her I just think I'm not interested in the puny thoughts of a paradox garnets first appearance before other gems was considered to be so abhorrent that blue diamond ordered that she be immediately killed they literally keep people as slaves and they have shattered millions of gems and are cooking them in a combination mass grave and weapon of mass destruction just look at this scene of Steven and peridot emerging into the clusters chamber they're looking on to literally millions of bodies that's pretty [ __ ] direct for a children's show so the diamonds are about as Nazi as you can get without having them do a ridiculous salute peridot reporting in actually never mind they have that - okay so Steven universe is pulling absolutely no punches in its portrayal of fascism that's more bold than any cartoon would ever have the balls to do there's just one problem Rebecca sugar isn't actually aware that she's done this the show isn't about fascism the rebellion that rose started against homeworld had nothing to do with their fascist police state it was about protecting nature from the damage a colony creates when we actually do see the diamonds in person their entire persona is begging the viewer to feel pity for the blue diamond is constantly grieving over the loss of her sister yellow time it is angrily compensating for her own grief pink diamond is like some white hippy who just wants to lay on the beach get high and [ __ ] earth guys when it comes time to actually talk about the diamonds none of the above things I listed get so much as a passing nod in fact when Steven finally learns about his real identity as pink diamond he regards the other diamonds as family in spite of knowing full well that blue diamond tried to murder the closest thing to an actual mother he'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 it brought her to tears almost destabilized her by the way it's only his identity as pink diamond that keeps Steven and the crystal gem safe had he not been able to prove he was pink diamond he and the others would have been killed in this episode this is once again something that goes unacknowledged by the show and it's creepy as all [ __ ] sugar spends the majority of the latter half of the series whoooo fiying space fascists to a disturbing degree there's no hook to any of this if you're looking for one there isn't you know the corrupting light that turned the majority of the crystal gems into B steel monsters the diamonds didn't know it would do that they just thought it would obliterate them and homeworld were the aggressors in that war too by the way and the diamonds are overwhelmingly portrayed as sympathetic with the dissonance of their very real and unfiltered fascism just completely ignored or hand-wave Dez made some mistakes and I know what you're thinking Lilly you reading too much into things you're reaching for L agree with you he's none okay how about a one-to-one modern-day explicit depiction Ned because the episode gem harvest strongly featured Stephens xenophobic uncle Andy whose beliefs are so for Elise Traum and Republican that I think I last saw him in a Wolfenstein game the episode of which he features in has him thoroughly spit on Stephens actual family raged about their non-standard relationships throw a conniption over the fact that Greg is letting lacus and peridot live in the barn and generally behave about as pleasant as a catheter filled with wasps only for Stephen to then deliberately insist that everyone make up because their family and for uncle Andy to see absolutely no consequences for his horrible behavior and the diamonds are that times a thousand this doesn't just reflect badly on sugar as a writer it reflects badly on her as a person just so thoroughly depict a fascist regime with the disturbing amount of accuracy only to then turn around and insist that they're just misunderstood Babs that need a hug just okay throughout this video I've made multiple attempts to attribute sugars writing to over whelming writing flaws like tunnel vision or wanting to have a story both ways or trying to do literally everything and it's just not working out the way she hoped I do that because people get really touchy if you start directly insulting someone on a basis other than the merits of their work and I try to at least give people as little reason to strawman me as I possibly can even though they're going to do it anyway hi gamer gauzy but honestly after writing that out and reading through it and thinking about it I can't say anything else but God what a piece of [ __ ] it's just a thoroughly loathsome person I mean obviously this show meant something at some point and I've clearly been passionate about it otherwise I wouldn't been taking it apart for fifty pages and I know sugar has her deep admirers but I [ __ ] think the woman's 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 stupid ear lobe let's ears that make it look like a so V's bag but real talk that's just dumb [ __ ] that only bugs me this this is [ __ ] gross at every possible level this kind of nobody reached out to me and now I feel abandoned instead is the exact kind of attitude the alt-right likes to Gaslight people with in real life in one episode sugar told kids that killing a Nazi makes you a Nazi and then in another she told kids that Nazis just made some mistakes and that they're totally forgivable you can't get past what that says about you yeah sugar is very much oblivious to all of this crap and she seriously thinks she's writing down-to-earth and relatable people and I get the feeling that if she was watching this video or someone laid out all this [ __ ] to her she'd sit back and have a what have I done moment and if that ends up being the case now or a year down the line or five years down the line then great but that's not relevant to the here and now you know I get it redeeming villains is such a trend these days and some people seem to think it's a really good idea sugar clearly thinks so too sugar wants to make a world where redemption is always a possibility and where everyone can get a second chance but my question is if that's the road you want to take then why are the stakes so [ __ ] high why is it that every time this story comes up it's always the people who are hell-bent on destroying everything why are the targets of redemption always the most nasty vile creatures imaginable I'm not the only one who's noticed this right when friendship is Magic started out the villains were hammy over-the-top performance pieces fun times with fun people who were memorable precisely because of just how extra they were but when they shifted to redemptions for everyone the villains got so much nastier they went so far over the line and went right for the jugular and every possible opportunity the movie had this directly contrasted the villain who dies as a jovial doof and the one who gets redeemed is far more nasty and vindictive in Steven universe the villains that don't get redeemed are well fun Saturday morning cartoon villains aquamarine malachite Holly blue most of the corrupted gems they're fun performance driven characters in malachite skate she does literally nothing until it's time for the boss play but when it's time to hand out redemption arcs it's the fascists and the abusers who get first pick they're the ones who get the second chances they are the ones who have to be extended a hand and there's no reason for it to be this way there's no reason why redemption and forgiveness has to be lashed to such monstrous people if sugar wanted Redemption to be a core element of the series why aren't the antagonists just domestic problems people who have personally wronged you 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 so much she spends half the show there but when it's time to talk about forgiveness suddenly it's time to turn to the Galactic Empire my question is always the same why then why the Diamonds why Rose why lapis why Tandy Lars Renaldo hell even Kevin are all sitting there with infinitely less horrific baggage that you could easily write a satisfying and far more impactful Redemption arc where they actually earn that forgiveness and wouldn't reflect so badly on sugar and in all my years of asking that question be at the Diamonds or star light or whoever the [ __ ] terrorists getting a Redemption is this week nobody's ever been able to answer why they had to be this [ __ ] extreme forgive and forget is a strange lesson because it's not Universal it's meant to be kept to trivial issues of someone hurting you either accidentally or through ignorance it's applicable to kids who get their feelings hurt by other kids the problem is that this lesson reverses itself as you grow up war abuse a genocide these things cannot and should not be forgiven forgiveness does not work in these circumstances it's not an absolute it only works in a tiny number of cases the problem is that Steven universe is about war it's about abuse it's about genocide it's 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 boy called your hair because he likes you tacitly teaching them that affection is shown through violence and to those of you rolling your eyes at all this and readying your knee-jerk comments and reddit posts about how to do this I'd like to ask why so many of our favorite kids shows growing up didn't do this so he can't bend anymore yeah then you can show them as baby pictures and all those happy memories will make them good again do you really think that would work no look this shit's important whether you like it or not you know it is otherwise you wouldn't have been flocking to Steven universe as this mature show that challenges kids or as IGN calls it this generations avatar [ __ ] Christ and you wouldn't be watching a web series where all cartoons are the most serious of business all the time we can't cry foul about childish remake sloppy animation imaginary rage about CalArts style and mysterious mayor duels and then write off the entire thing as just kids shows when the subject of the criticism makes us feel uncomfortable we can't keep dragging up the fact that Rebecca sugar is a non-binary half Jewish woman every time this particular criticism is dragged up as if that means it's impossible for her to be afflicted with the stupid virus that doesn't change the fact that sugar still did this [ __ ] and remains unaware of just how [ __ ] gross it really is I disturbed by Rebecca sugars insistence on pushing redemption arcs onto the most vile creatures and begging her audience to consider their feelings I'm disgusted by this level of on principle writing that insists that redemption is always the best regardless of the circumstances I'm disappointed in Rebecca sugar for not being able to grasp a simple concept that children have no trouble grappling with and I'm ashamed to watch so many people write off these glaring issues as it's a kids show as if teaching kids to be forgiving of this kind of horrific behavior is anything other than AB Horan and irresponsible [Music] let's get down to the bare bones of this since I know this is what everyone is going to be quote mining do I think Rebecca sugar is a fascist sympathizer no do I blame anybody who comes to the conclusion that she is based on Steven universe's content no I maintain that Rebecca sugar remains completely unaware of the implications of her writing because she's just not paying attention outside of her very specific goals a lot of people not just her failed to grasp that forgiveness does not apply everywhere a lot of people will hand wave atrocities if it means getting their villain redemptions many people on the political left actually bought the gops [ __ ] about economic anxiety that doesn't make them fascists the Diamonds are the latest in an idiot cliche that began with characters like starlight glimmer sugar was just dumb enough to include the fact that they have corrupted millions of gems while trying to kill them all and slain millions more sugar was dumb enough to include a scene where the main characters walk across literally millions of bodies sugar was dumb enough to push for redemption despite all of that I think the core problem is that like many adult cartoon fans sugar is just profoundly [ __ ] stupid however it is not my or anybody else's job to hold her hand through her own myopia if someone calls sugar a fascist because of what they saw in Steven universe then that is a road she created for her own damn back she 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 sense has just been to shift the blame onto somebody else see it wasn't their fault it was all white diamond they were only following or dat way part of being a creator is accepting that the conclusions people draw from your work are your responsibility yes people can make wildly bad reads of your work but unless you can fully explain why their read of your work is bad then you're responsible for it sugar realizes this considering she addressed concrete so directly but everything else she is suspiciously quiet about it's a writing lesson I learned the very hard way if you set out to give one idea in your work and through ineptitude accidentally give the opposite impression you should accept the respond ability for that and refused to stand by that work and fix it by either rewriting it or disassociating yourself from it if you can't do that bare minimum then you will simply reap what you sow one of the most common defenses of Steven universe is frankly bizarre philosophical bent is to just ignore that it even has it one poster on gamer gauzy said in response to bismuth as usual oh it's just a kids show it doesn't need to get bogged down in real-world ideology but I'm not the one bringing a real-world ideology into Steven universe it did that to itself 90% of the series lore is about the rebellion against a fascist Empire that is inherently political and not just in the way that all art is political Steven universe gleefully stews in 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 LGBT rights and pride trauma the necessity of violence disabilities individuality personal freedom unrequited love grief loss holy [ __ ] they just kept coming but while sugar could have a lot of ideas she couldn't deliver on any of them she repeatedly portrayed her fascist villains as sad and sympathetic failing to understand that while sympathetic villains are good ideas in theory in practice they only work under very specific circumstances and this was not one of them her approach to trauma grief abuse and loss was to continuously let them dominate your life make no effort to heal yourself and actively resist any attempt to help you because that's the only way she knows how to create drama her approach to the necessity of violence was to claim that was never the answer and brand the only character who didn't follow that philosophy as evil which is wrong at every possible scale of resolution I know it seems like I've been harsh on sugar but in reality I have been extremely lenient the cynical explanation for all of these problems is that Rebecca sugar doesn't care about the impact these things might have and that she actually might sympathize with a lot of the more nasty ideas presented in the show that the reason the crystal gems don't bother taking the fight to homeworld is because sugar doesn't consider this kind of naked fascism to be a problem worth dealing with that the reason slavery is treated like no big deal is because sugar doesn't care about it that the reason characters never get help from their crippling issues is because sugar is only exploiting these things for cheap and easy drama but what the actual problem is that sugar and the rest of the crew have severe and crippling tunnel vision this is why the implications of say the human Zoo aren't addressed because the human Zoo only exists so the crew can shove in as many 70s and 80s sci-fi designs and hippie Loven as possible and [ __ ] everything else and sugar one to do a Prison Break episode that's why it never occurs to anybody to free the zuman's because that's not part of the story sugar wanted and she just didn't bother to consider the implications characters display impressive abilities are inside in one episode which vanished in another because they might get in the way of the story going exactly where sugar wants it to go whenever the story reaches a roadblock sugar just [ __ ] deletes its ideas are crammed in and then discarded almost immediately sugar wants to do everything in Steven universe she wants the villains to be space Nazis so they can be intimidating and menacing but she also wants to have sympathetic villains which bad writers translate as I'm sad feel bad for me and doesn't bother to consider that those two don't mesh the entire pink diamond dark was written because sugar wanted her shocking twist the way in which it so thoroughly pisses on everything that's come before it didn't matter to her the twist was all that mattered it's very reminiscent of how fanfiction is written going with literally every idea you come up with and no regard toward whether it actually fits in the story subverting tropes purely for the sake of subverting tropes going with the idea that shocking twists and vague mysteries are good purely on principle and not taking execution into effect sugar writes like someone who is 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 Steven universe's 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 no tertiary thing that tumblr thinks will magically fix Steven universe will actually fix Steven universe these are not the disease these are symptoms of the disease Rebecca sugar is the disease Steven universe doesn't have a writing staff because as an artist Rebecca sugar doesn't respect writers enough to hire any keeping all the responsibility for plot details and story structure on the storyboard team Steven universe's animation is so frequently warping itself beyond all reason and causing characters to constantly change sighs because Rebecca sugar is too lazy to organize the material she needs to keep things under control Steven universe's themes are constantly whip lashing back and forth into extremely problematic territory every other week because Rebecca sugar just doesn't give enough of a [ __ ] to check her own work before sending it off Steven universe cannot keep his attention focus on single plot idea without becoming immediately distracted because Rebecca sugar has no organizational skills whatsoever and will chase the next butterfly that passes her desk in essence 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 on a show with an unusual amount of production time and creative control and nobody to rein in her worst habits not everyone is cut out to be an executive producer or showrunner no matter how good their ideas might be but in this age of demanding that all creators be allowed to do whatever they want with zero oversight Steven universe is exhibit a of why we don't actually do that why creators have to answer to studios or networks who will have to be associated with whatever next comes spilling out of your mouth when you set out to make a children's show that aims to be higher art than something like spongebob you should be under a large amount of scrutiny because kids are observant people and if the crop of 90s kids who turned into adults raging about the Thundercats reboot or any indication what you see in fiction as a child will color your worldview however subtly as an adult shows with a teenage or adult audience and mine generally get away with more because the audience is expected to already know better so the Creator has more inherent freedom to make dumb jokes or tell stories about complete monsters sugar is making her show for kids or at least claiming to so she can't be this irresponsible but she is this irresponsible and she just doesn't care personally I would never let a child in my care watch Steven universe ever in spite of the few moments of brilliance I've seen this show is simply too recklessly made and is likely to resonate with someone in all the wrong ways be who you are but just as long as you hide at all times never try to improve as a person you're already as good as you're ever going to be those who have hurt you should get 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 the people who have severely hurt the ones you love despite the defense of this being a kids show Steven universe is to show anybody should be allowing their children to watch you know I was sitting here for a while trying to find a way to close out like I did last time with a single scene that showcased the core issues of Steven universe on full display for everyone to see but as I was going through 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 a peridot throughout the entire cluster arc peridot has been needling garnet about being a perma fusion and then after watching opal lift the drill into position she loses it and demands to know why garnet is fused all the time when she isn't doing anything and in an effort to help peridot understand fusion garnet offers to fuse with her this is actually pretty significant as garnet doesn't fuse with people lightly this is not too long after Keystone Motel where it's established that fusion is extremely personal to Ruby and Sapphire and they only form sardonic sugilite or alexandrite when it's absolutely necessary offering to fuse the peridot just to help her understand Fusion is not a decision made lightly great that it is possible that sugar just forgot that fusion is personal to garnet but I'm gonna choose to believe someone was smacking her in the head with a stack of post-its that day anyway peridot is surprised and garnet assumes she's not ready peridot insists that she can do it but box out at the last second garnet talks about how she's proud of peridot for making an effort to understand her and then explains why she's fused all the time in a way that peridot who has been addicted to the romance cereal camp pining hearts can understand up until this point peridot has been only referring to garnet as fusion and after this stops doing that and starts using her actual name Steven universe gets a lot of praise for meaningful LGBT representation but the moments where it actually earns that praise are extremely rare it's only when serving some other random story idea that popped into sugars head that this kind of thing shows up the arc about paradox Redemption necessitates that she understand fusion so she actually makes an effort to understand fusion by agreeing to fuse two which garnet is appreciative of this is applicable toward well really anybody who falls under the LGBTQ spectrum is it a spectrum I'm gonna say it is because this doesn't fit in a spoken dialogue very well and this is a slur and [ __ ] that noise anyway regardless of where you are on this gorgeous combination of pride Flags chances are you have been and garnet in this scene at some point in your and if you aren't chances are you are or have been peridot in much the same way that Sheldon helped a lot of parents understanding something that was seemingly vague and mysterious to them this scene further narrows the gap between LGBT people and those that still fail to understand them and this is the kind of thing Steven universe needed so much moral for all the talk I made about sugar being a terrible producer in reality sugar is like Steven Moffat she can produce really great things provided she can just hold back her worst instincts for five minutes moments like this key solo tell garnets discovering the artificial fusion Ruby and sapphires wedding these all show that Steven universe could have been a really beautiful piece of animation if only sugar didn't feel so compelled to chase every single cliche of the last 20 years my favorite episode of the show is too short to ride an episode dealing with paradox feelings of inadequacy without tech no wager plot reveals no mysteries no questions being answered just one person dealing with their problems a pair achter that people actually like and care about and want to see succeed and yet these episodes were so rare as sugar chased her redemption for space fascist and whatever oddly shaped a beach city member she decided was important that week and if she had someone raining her in just a bit and forcing her to pick one idea and focus on it instead of chasing everything and getting constantly sidetracked then the show would have been so much better so why did I keep coming back to it I was always holding out the tiniest bit of hope that another episode like too short to ride or another moment like peridot finally understanding garnet that's the kind of storytelling I love simple personal and direct something that has been sadly lost in modern cartoons as more time is spent building a massive world with detailed lore and grand stakes and then putting nothing into it something Steven universe was more than capable of doing but just chickened out and chased the boring serialized big grand story now get the [ __ ] out begin to be half of what you think of me I could do about anything I could even learn how to love when I see the way you act wondering when I'm calm I can do about anything I could even learn [Music] again to be half of what you think of me I could do about anything I could even learn [Music] [Music] might be bad now I'm sure that's true I think you're so and I'm nothing like you look at you go I just what makes you think I'm so special

Channel: Lily & Mikaila Orchard

Views: 5,997,930

Rating: 3.8586252 out of 5

Keywords: Lily Orchard, Steven Universe, Cartoon Network

Id: flLEr_sYC-k

Length: 127min 13sec (7633 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 24 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/jamieisonreddit2k18]

49 minutes in... I mean, yeah.

[u/Rasamune]

I couldn't be arsed to watch 45 minutes of someone complaining about shit the show's been doing since Gem Glow the last time a video like this came up; what makes this person think I'm going to sit through two goddamn hours of it

[u/iauiugu]

I just got 25 minutes in and found the arguments weak so far

Saying Rebecca should reformat the show for how CN is choosing to release it dumb. Lily admits those who watch it without the hiatuses finds it paced well, and ultimately they’re the final audience for the show.

It’s fair that putting the whole show through steven’s eyes kinda sucks but it doesn’t bother me that much

They have a good point about complicating the dynamic between pink and pearl with their master-servant relationship but considering there’s at least one more season it’ll undoubtedly get more complicated

steven’s progression just looks like it was a progression not him becoming an apologist. If you don’t agree with the moral stance of the show (“all life is worth protecting”) that’s one thing but it has one it’s consistently headed towards

The critique of amethyst’s development made me stop watching because it doesn’t make sense. She freaks out at pearl for making off hand remarks about the kindergarten and making her feel inherently bad and pearl apologizes. She feels inadequate with the slinker because she’s judged for how she’s capricious and doesn’t reflect on herself and ends up learning to do so. Before jasper appears she’s fine with herself but jasper creates insecurities that fusing with Steven resolves. Then meeting other amethysts makes her feel more normal in her humor and uniqueness.

I see it all as unique issues arises under the broad theme of insecurities that do get resolved, not that they never will. The critique of lily not acknowledging subtle development is fair, but this didn’t even seem that subtle to me

[u/irihS]

i've since watched the video fully and reached the conclusions i expected to.

she makes many good points regarding themes and messages. i agree a lot with her ideas of the Diamonds being a bit too comfy right now, but I'm not dropping the show or anything, as we don't know what we're going to DO with the Diamonds yet. I don't know if they're going to become borderline main characters or just get dropped after betraying the Crystal Gems.

But the points htemselves are still sound. Animation? Who gives a fuck really, but factually correct. LGBT representation? Solid all around, Garnet is a way to bypass censors. Unintentional but still hurtful racism due to white ignorance? Also yes.

Her analysis of characters - namely Rose Quartz, Lapis, and Pearl - are all fucking terrible and if I were to make a rebuttal as I initially said I'd target the horrific mangling of characters. Lapis' trauma in the mirror, for example, isn't even given a PASSING MENTION, in spite of that fact it is of the UTMOST importance to her character. Furthermore, Pink Diamond's "responsibilities" as a diamond are something Lily says she ran away from. Her "responsibilities" amounted to little more than genocide and enforcing a caste system as Lily herself points out about the Diamonds. How is abandoning these shitty responsibilities ANYTHING but a good thing? How is that not moral? She fails to realize the actual reality of Rose's story because she doesn't RECONTEXTUALIZE what she knows with what she has found out, and seems to COMPLETELY DISREGARD Pearl's story because she was unreliable in the past, ignoring the multitude of reasons to believe she's telling the truth. Cathartic release after being unable to for so long; the lack of stylistic liberties such as the shadow puppets present in Garnets incorrect backstories; utmost consistency with facts and even tries to paint Pink as bad for the Zoo - a sentiment I shared - NOT EVEN REALIZING BLUE DIAMOND IS THE ONE WHO MADE AND POPULATED IT.

It's like someone watched A Single Pale Rose and NOTHING after it and didn't even attempt to adjust their now firmly made views. As someone who has watched her other videos, I can also state there are MANY contradictions. Bismuths ideology for example is impractical becuase it won't actually work. She plans to brute force a problem versus those who are FAR stronger than her (the Crystal Gems cannot even come CLOSE to defeating two Diamonds) and the delicate nature of a caste system AND the adoration the Diamonds have. The Homeworld wouldn't take it lightly; they'd be mad their Diamonds are gone, a fact proven by the existence of Jasper, who embodies Homeworld in the present day despite how ugly it may be. Lily has made videos on the topics of brute forcing problems being bad loosely, so while she DOES NOT DIRECTLY say (to my memory) that brute force conflicts are bad, she talks about how problems that can be solved with brute force and shows an understanding of the concept. Yet fails to apply it to Bismuth in this scenario, when her ideas are literally just "I want to try to kill people with all the power when I have none and my plan is a glorified knife". You will NOT win, and if you somehow do succeed, the corrupt general public will be against you because they're brainwashed by the fascism.

This video means well, but comes across as "Rebecca might end up justifying space Nazis which is horrible and to convey this point I will falsely drag everything ELSE through the mud and the show isn't actually even over yet so we don't know how the Diamonds end. They could be shattered by the CGs or betray them and then get the rebellion I want, but I'm going to make this video far too preemptively and release it and expect people to take my shitty character analysis seriously."

If this was JUST a talk on the problems of her themes and messages, nobody would have a real problem with it.

edit: nevermind lily is a pedophile remove this mods i beg you

[u/[deleted]]

Not saying anything bad about anyone's opinions, but there seems to be a large influx of SU hate videos recently, especially after Robobuddies.

[u/namuhna]

I disagree with some very very few points (I have the biggest soft spot for Mindful Education and Stevonnie), but overall I LOVED EVERY SINGLE SECOND.

[u/[deleted]]

There are a lot of parts where she's not wrong I just don't care that much about the issues she brings up, but the one point she addresses that really does bother me a lot is all the uncomfortable implications the show is making and just not addressing.

The Diamonds rule over a horrific dictatorship that keeps lesser gems as slaves and outright murders "impure" gems in cold blood. They kill any gem that goes against their personal world view. Ruby and Sapphire had to flee because their relationship and fusion was seen as degeneracy. They colonize worlds and suck them dry for resources. They butchered and stitched together body parts in an attempt to make a weapon of mass destruction. They attempted to murder an entire planets worth of life to stop what seemed to be a small rebellion including murdering their own soldiers. They've attempted to kill Steven's family multiple times without a single thought. They only stopped trying because Steven was able to prove to them that he/Rose was Pink Diamond.

So why are we suddenly trying to redeem them like they're not horrific monsters? Because they're really really sad over Pink Diamond being shattered? Even if you want to ignore how they draw a perfect parallel to Nazis it doesn't change the atrocious things the show has shown they've done or at the very least authorized by their leadership.

This really isn't okay and it has honestly made the show incredibly uncomfortable for me to watch. It's fine to want to show them as having sympathetic motivations, but that should have at the very least been the line. They should have stayed as villains to overcome and defeat. Maybe feel a little sorry for them before you remember that they cut gems up and sewed their body parts together into a horrific monster that literal tries to tear itself apart in agony of its own existence.

[u/[deleted]]

I did a little research into who "Lily Peet" was, and turns out, they're a pretty goddamn terrible person.

I mean we're talking an intolerant, bigoted, hypocrite with pedophilic/zoophilic tendencies.

They are honestly the most despicable internet person with a sizeable following I have ever had the displeasure of encountering.

[u/Katamariguy]

Lily references the same few shows and video games way too often but I do appreciate learning about the morality of The Old Republic.