The Fall Of Steven Universe: How It Fell From Grace

hello everyone i know it took me a while but i'm happy to finally present to you my full review on the fall of steven universe i understand this might have taken more time than it should have and i did a lot of teasing for it but i'm really glad to finally have it done not since my review of the last jedi have i put so much time and preparation into making one of my videos i deeply thank you for your patience as this was definitely one of my more trying projects to get out there before we begin i want to warn you ahead of time that there will be some points where i put in some additional thoughts as i came across some last minute changes to make there will also be subtitles containing additional comments so be sure to watch the video to not miss those i also want to give a special shout out to my friend who took the time to make the thumbnail art for this video it was really nice of her to take the time to make this for me and i think it came out pretty well if you want to check out our stuff or even ask for a commission the link to our deviantart will be in the description this is gonna be a long one so be sure to grab some snacks as you'll certainly be needing them for the ride we're in for today so sit back relax and enjoy the fall of steven universe how it fell from grace let's begin the 2010s is seen by a lot of people as a new golden age of animation or at the very least as silver age after the horrendous second half of the 2000s the tv animation industry was in serious need of a rejuvenation and nowhere was that more obvious than the television network known as cartoon network for a long time it was overtaken by uninspired and passionless material and a lot of terrible live-action shows to the point of people making jokes about how there were no more cartoons on a network called well cartoon network but luckily for them things started to take a turn for the better when the network launched adventure time after it was denied by nickelodeon though looking back on it they probably dodged a bullet adventure time was seen by many as the beginning of a new turning point in the animation industry with many other great shows following in its footsteps with each network having their own widely recognized gems disney had gravity falls and star vs the forces of evil nickelodeon had a few bumps on the road but would eventually have the legend of korra in the loud house and the hub would be home to the greatest cartoon of the entire decade my little pony friendship is magic and i'm still going through depression after that one ended but today we're here to talk about what just might be the biggest name out of all of them aside from adventure time sian found itself getting back to its classic roots as it became home to a number of pretty good shows after its long period of creative drought like we bear bears and the amazing world of gumball but out of all the cartoons that cien was putting out at the time there was one particular show that grabbed everyone's attention an idea that came from the creative mind of american screenwriter rebecca sugar an idea that would become to be known as steven universe when this show came out people went nuts it spawned a huge fan base with an incredible passion for the series and through the fandom steven universe was becoming one of the biggest names in cartoon network's history you could practically feel the presence of the show on its fandom in almost every corner of the internet from fan art to fan animation to cosplayers to music to fan theories it was all over the place its dominance on the internet practically rivaled the presence of my little pony and the brony fandom to the point where even if you didn't watch the show you are at least familiar with it the adventures of a boy named steven universe who alongside his guardians garnet amethyst and pearl protected the earth from the corrupt forces and a galactic empire ruled by the mysterious diamond empire people were talking about the show like it was the next avatar claiming it to be one of the greatest cartoons of all time a show that really pushed the boundaries of what was normally expected from children's programming something that went the extra mile to appeal to not just children but to adults how it was intelligent funny thought-provoking creative relatable something that took risks and chances imaginative and revolutionary it was seen as one of the greatest cartoons of this generation but for a while i've been meaning to ask a simple question was it really i'll admit that i was one of the people who got into the show a lot later so i eventually took the time to binge watch the show as a whole in order to get a better idea as to what it was all about but even then it still felt like steven universe was lacking something something that actually made it worthy of being a masterpiece of animation that everyone was saying it was but what exactly was it missing was it a good story characters consistency or some combination of all three so today we're gonna go over all of steven universe in one go to see what exactly happened how it was once one of the biggest shows on cartoon network became a figure of controversy this is the fall of steven universe how it fell from grace it all began back in 2011 when rebecca sugar who was working on adventure time as a storyboard rsn writer was given an opportunity to start her own show curtis lilach was asking for ideas about a new show and rebecca came forward with her own idea for a series she discussed her ideas for a show that would become steven universe initially being about a boy helping teenagers with problems they couldn't verbalize but as it was commissioned rebecca decided that some changes need to be made to his plot and identity so the production team would have more freedom as a result she departed from adventure time in order to work on her own show which in time resulted in a pilot for the series it was this very pilot that got rebecca's idea greenlit and work on the official first season was underway the pilot itself was a huge source of advertisement for the show as cn uploaded it on their website as well as featuring it at that year's comic con additionally fans of adventure time were already familiar with rebecca's work on the show which led to additional attention being drawn to her crew a lot of people were waiting in anticipation for what rebecca had in store with steven universe steadily making its way onto cartoon network until it finally aired on november 4th 2013. the show went through a drastic change in its design and style but the spirit of the show was still widely recognized from what people saw in the pilot the atmosphere was lively the characters were fun to be around with their distinct personalities and the world they lived in offered some interesting ideas for telling good stories the premiere set the ground for how the rest of the series would play out and offered a window into things that were about to be experienced and for a while it seemed to be working in the show's favor with the first season having a really good sense of identity it actually surprised me just how solid the first season turned out to be for the most part it focused on the misadventures that steven would get into while trying to understand and control his powers and developing relationships with people in beach city along the way their crystal gems who acted as steven's guardians helped him understand his gem heritage by explaining the philosophy and nature behind his powers and what it means to be a crystal gem oh and there is usually a monster terrorized in the city that may not have something to do with a war on homeworld but they don't go into that much here i think the key to what makes season 1 so enjoyable is that it's able to keep track of the things that people were interested in and use these elements to create a strong framework for telling a collection of interesting stories before the more complicated story and filler that later seasons were known for the first season was largely sticking to an episodic formula which allowed the audience to enjoy each and every new episode that came out without feeling distracted by anything there was never any urgency to watch every single episode in order to understand what was happening as the grand majority of season 1 was its own isolated incident focusing primarily on steven and the crystal gems and watching them work off each other while getting into the different situations and this first season does an amazing job at establishing the personalities of steven garnet amethyst and pearl and several other key characters who would become prominent in the rest of the show's run one of the biggest strengths being steven himself he comes across as a really likable and profound character who actually grows progressively as the episodes go on rebecca actually went on record saying that she based steven's character on her little brother steven sugar who was actually pretty open to the idea of his name being used to promote the show if it was used wisely someone who was really comfortable with his life because he was getting a lot of attention but also wanted to rise up and not just be seen as the little brother in the family and for the most part this description actually fits stephen in season 1 pretty well he has a really close relationship with the gems and spends a lot of time with them but when it comes to their missions he tends to either be left behind or be underestimated by his guardians as steven gets more involved he feels a drive to prove himself that he can really live up to his mother's legacy as a crystal gem and help helping keep the odyssey surrounding beach city under control on the surface it may sound like a typical coming-of-age story but what makes steven's journey fun to follow is his bright and bubbly personality a lot of the times he approaches situations with a cheerful optimistic attitude with an upbeat and happy mindset he's really friendly with pretty much everyone around him and he's always excited to try out new things and when the time comes for him to confront more tense situations he's pretty straightforward and takes more precautions instead of just being bubbly he never becomes too brooding or dark or downhearted which is a good thing since his juvenile attitude greatly complements the lighthearted tone the first season goes for some have criticized steven in the first season for being annoying which tends to be the usual territory when writing child characters and in some ways i can't understand why some people would feel that way there are times stephen can get in over his head or act a little too ignorant of a certain situation which results in either him or the other characters getting in trouble but what keeps steven's character from just being an annoying kid is that his childish behavior is handled in a very responsible manner although he can bite off more than he can chew he's never portrayed as stupid or incompetent in fact he's actually pretty smart in spite of his flaws he can be clever no one to take his situation more seriously and he takes responsibility for himself when he makes a mistake there's even moments where he admits to his own immaturity like in the episode sirius stephen but the thing that steven addresses about himself in this situation isn't exactly something that's associated with immaturity being afraid and feeling overwhelmed by tense situations are things that can happen to anybody regardless of their maturity but because steven wants to be seen as an equal to the crystal dems he doesn't really think about that he then takes a moment to calm himself down and better observe the situation which helps him and the team discover the secret behind the temple it's moments like this that help delve into the human aspect of steven's character where we see he clearly has flaws and weaknesses but also has strengths and a nice personality to even them out and he works towards overcoming those flaws by facing them head-on the season paces his growth very well so it never feels like his development is too fast or too slow his arc this season usually follows him learning how to use his powers but it also focuses on his steady growth as a person through his bonds with the gems his father his girlfriend and the citizens of beach city steven on his own is a pretty fun character but when he starts working off the other characters it gets pretty interesting and that's mostly because the other characters are just as well fleshed out as steven himself making their interactions much more interesting the three gems named pearl garnet and amethyst are initially introduced as steven's guardians but as we see more and more of them interacting together we start to see intriguing layers of a very real family dynamic between the four main characters pearl is an overprotected aunt who means well but can sometimes be a little overbearing towards steven amethyst is the cool reckless older sister with attitude who tries to make the most out of her situations and just wants to mess around with stephen and garnet is the highly supportive mother figure who helps steven through by giving him mutual support and teaching him things to know while also giving him enough space for him to learn things on his own the episodes also do a pretty good job establishing their personalities outside of just their family dynamic with stephen pearl is a perfectionist who tries to be the most logical of the group which sometimes results in her being nervous when it comes to speaking emotionally garnet is a reticent and aloof leader who doesn't talk much but nonetheless comes across as really wise and disciplined she's mostly introvert and keeps her emotions to herself but when she's around steven she's a lot more willing to express herself amethyst is a really wild prankster who acts fairly rebellious against the discipline of the other gems she tends to be irresponsible and ridiculous and there's several hints that her rebellious moody attitude is used as a mask to hide her more sensitive emotions i particularly like how the first episode gives us a window into their personalities through the different ways they explain weapons summoning to stephen having different perspectives and beliefs for how it works and how they act as an influence over stephen the first season does a really good job developing all four of them with episodes that demonstrate how they function as a team and how they interact with each other in more mundane scenarios tiger millionaire for example is a pretty good way the show develops all four of them at one time even though it's an amethyst-centric episode it introduces her constant inner struggle wanting to be better and stronger and be approved of by garnet and pearl her passion for wrestling is a way of dealing with her frustrations of being underminded and underestimated by them and being in the ring allows her to freely be herself without any scrutiny we also get to see how stephen begins to change his tone for how he approaches a situation by actually thinking with his head and seeing it from a realistic point of view in episodes leading up to this one stephen is usually trying to impress someone while approaching problems by using what's available at the time and hoping that it sticks in this one he already has permission to wrestle with amethyst so he already believes that he belongs in the situation so he's not pressured with the idea that he has to impress somebody he also comes across as more confident as he employs creativity to cheat his way to the finals he doesn't rely on the suggestion of others and is much more active and independent in pursuit of his goals instead of just reacting to situations he's thrusted into and when he starts to see that this whole wrestling thing might be getting out of hand he has a moment of reflection and wonders if it's right to keep up this persona he made for himself but as pearl and garnet try to stop their wrestling he explains to them how the wrestling helped amethyst work past her insecurities as the people who came to see her wrestle gave her the support and confidence she needed pearl and garnet begin to see how wrestling has helped her in a way they haven't been able to and they even join in on the wrestling to give stephen and amethyst the final win by the end of the episode all four of the main characters have developed a better understanding of one another in a scenario that had a believable setup this is what i largely love about the first season because it strongly focuses on the four main characters it's able to develop them properly by focusing on their chemistry it delves into the dynamic between them by showing how they go through daily routines and how they interact with each other at home and during missions we also see more of the three gems personalities and how they work off each other and it's particularly well done with how they interact pearl and amethyst are opposites in every way but they're willing to put aside their differences and cooperate in order to solve a problem the chemistry between them is something i found very interesting in season one as they heavily imply a falling out that happened between the two of them it's something that's never stated directly but it's heavily implied by the way they interact with each other it's done in a way that shows how their strained relationship wasn't always like this with plenty of subtle hints to it episodes like giant woman's secret team and story of steven show how they used to be very close but after rose died the two had a falling out and their relationship was strained for a very long time but in the episode on the run after amethyst comes out of her shell and becomes honest with pearl by letting go of her emotions they reconcile and their relationship feels like it was properly rekindled and stephen provides some appropriate mutual support during this endeavor as he knows that he's not the best person to help amethyst and tells pearl that she needs to talk to her because she's more familiar with how she feels and understands her better it's an episode that adds more depth to both amethyst and pearl and adds meaning to their relationship on a new level another great thing about this episode is how well it develops amethyst by bringing up the subject of having a home and what it means to the found family she has with stephen and the gems she always felt like she never had a home because of her feelings regarding the kindergarten and her strained relationship with the others her defensive attitude suddenly makes more sense after this episode because it explains why she acts so rebellious as pearl describes the bad things that were done here amethyst begins to feel like some of these bad things are being directed at her since she was made here pearl didn't actually see it this way but she realizes that she might have unintentionally made her feel that way she sees how she might have been saying it in an insensitive way and tries to better explain what she meant she always saw amethyst as her own person and not as a product of the kindergarten and she wants her to feel proud about being herself and it's this moment of honesty that helps the two to rekindle their previous friendship it was a really touching moment that was properly developed there's a lot of moments like this throughout season one that help to give a realistic depiction of friendship between the characters how they're not always perfect and they can fight sometimes but they still take the time to understand each other and rekindle things in the end and aside from amethyst there's also some pretty good spotlight moments for pearl and garnet like pearl's homesickness as she reminisces the time she was in space with rose are garnet handling her responsibilities as leader of the gems while trying to be a good mother to steven and i think the two best episodes for each of them were rose's scabbard and future vision respectively i really like how rose's scabbard details pearl's dedication arose and grieving over her death in a way that's believable she never blames steven for her death and her trying to cope with her love being unrequited as she chose greg over her at least makes sense since the only person who ever made her feel like an eagle was gone and she never got a chance to express how she truly felt about the one she loved she was suffering from an inferiority complex since rose was the one who guided her through so many hard times and now that she's gone she feels lost and doesn't know what to do she tried so hard to lock up her doubts and insecurities deep inside so she can appear strong in front of stephen showing how in spite of her logical way of thinking she still has to deal with her emotions and even though steven could never replace rose he still wants to be there for pearl encouraging her to be the best she can be it's a really deep and touching moment and you really don't see too much of that in the later seasons then there's the episode future vision which really puts steven's relationship with garnet in a new perspective she's normally really stoic in reserve trying to keep a straight head and be a responsible leader in the face of pearl and amethyst nonsense but when she spends time with steven we get to see more of her sensitive side she's more emotional more expressive more silly and bubbly and openly expresses her confidence in steven even that quiet good luck she gives to steven and rosa scabbard is really touching and adds a layer to just how deep her relationship is with stephen and at the end of future vision where steven is scared of all his possible deaths garnet comes out to help him understand how her future vision is an absolute and how he still has control over his fate the episode does a pretty good commentary on the subject of anxiety the fear that we have of things that are out of our control with steven's very real fears of the thousands of ways he can suddenly kick the bucket it's a pretty relatable message considering all the scary stuff that's going on in the world today it's a pretty difficult thing to represent but the episode succeeds in tackling it in a respectable manner garnet teaches steven that you can't live your whole life in fear of things out of your control and that you can still choose what you do with your life and the decisions you make along the way it's a really important lesson for anyone to learn and it's one that does a really good job adding more detail to garnet's future vision it avoids making garnet overpowered by showing how instead of seeing one absolute future she sees multiple possible paths that people can take but what i really love about the episode is how it greatly solidifies the relationship between stephen and garnet she really is the motherly and affectionate member of the gems looking after steven and being a figure of guidance in a way that pearl and amethyst can't be she really thinks of him as her own child being protective of him but in a way that isn't overbearing encouraging him in a healthy way supporting and believing in him when others wouldn't and just being a really good influence on him this is the first time where we actually see how garnet has her own weaknesses such as her uncertainty and her vulnerability regarding her feelings towards stephen it's one of my favorite episodes as it shows a really good message with a lighthearted sense of humor and displays a really profound and strong connection between stephen and garnet and outside of the gems the first season takes its time establishing stephen's relationship with the human characters as well steven and his sensitive father greg get to bond over so many things like cleaning out his storage sharing stories about his mother building a spaceship and so on and i feel like the episode houseguest was the first episode where we really get to see a two development with steven and his father helping to show how their connection is one of the more interesting ones in the series the plot basically revolves around greg miss using a whistle which he uses to call steven back from a mission with the gems it may seem like greg wasn't taking these missions seriously but this was after the lapis incident in which he became a lot more concerned with steven's well-being during these missions his use of the whistle could just be seen as his way of knowing if steven is safe during these missions as opposed to just trying to keep steven to himself or taking advantage of his hospitality and when he sees how badly he messed up he actually takes the time to go to the geo to try and fix the problem himself it's not a standout episode by any means but it does a nice job helping to add more depth to their relationship there's also steven's relationship with connie which is really adorable there's clearly a blossoming romance between the two but they take proper steps in developing their relationship naturally instead of just suddenly making them boyfriend and girlfriend they do start out by having a realistic relationship as close friends and through their friendship we get to learn more about connie as these episodes do a nice job developing her while having to cope with overbearing parents she also wants to have more in her life than just doing mundane average things with her interactions with steven giving her the excitement she longs for she takes a liking to stephen because of all the oddities surrounding his life sometimes wondering if he actually wants to be friends with someone so ordinary but steven explains how he doesn't care if she's special or not because he just wants to be a good companion to her making her feel accepted and appreciated when she couldn't make friends with other people in beach city in lion two of the movie he uses a strange movie called dog copter as a nice allegory for how in spite of connie being ordinary he still wants to be by her side it's a really nice and subtle way of showing how he really cares about her and in the episode indirect kiss connie gets to return the favor in this episode she helps steven cope with his own feelings of inadequacy to the gems because of his inability to control his powers she tells him how there's nothing wrong with not having any powers because he still has a relationship with her and the two can just be ordinary together it's a pretty clever way of bringing back the message from the lion episode while reversing their roles and it feels genuinely touching i really feel like the first season did a nice job establishing connie and steven's relationship and how they never became an official couple yet if they ended up confessing their love this early in the show it probably would have been too soon they don't have a lot in common when they first meet but as they hang out they find new things to relate to and there's so many little touches they put in there to make it more meaningful the looks they give each other the smiles they express how the other characters are supportive of their relationship it's just really sweet even the other beach city citizens that only appear in two or three episodes had some good screen time with stephen and the season does a pretty good job in establishing its different connections with all these people steven helping the pizza family get along with the gems helping petey at his job to reconcile with his dad helping buck to better connect with his father helping mayor dewey to be a more responsible leader even helping lars learn to stop worrying about what other people think of him and stop being a douchebag even though he just goes back to being a douchebag normally these types of shows don't really take the time for the audience to really get to know these background characters but the season does a pretty good job in fleshing out their place in beach city and how steven interacts with them the duty of frozen the crystal gems was protecting earth from the forces of the empire so it's fairly interesting to see how the beach city citizens act as a representation for what the rebellion was fighting for that scene with all of the citizens watching over stephen in the season finale to see if he's okay with steven realizing what he's truly fighting for wouldn't have worked so well if the first season hadn't done such a good job making you care about them except for lars because he's an unbelievable douchebag i know there's a lot of people who don't like ronaldo for being an over-obsessed conspiracy theorist but at the very least it's actually funny to see him getting beaten up by the other characters even the slice of life episodes that don't primarily feature any story heavy elements can be really good there's too many birthdays where steven ages rapidly which is both funny and really heartbreaking there's monster buddies where steven befriends the corrupt gem from the first episode which is really bittersweet and there's also the really heartwarming line three straight to video which made everybody want to give their mom a phone call in this episode we finally get to see rose's character in a more direct way instead of just expedition dumps from what kind of person she could have been from one of the other characters she has a very soft-spoken voice that sounds mysterious but also comes across as really soothing and comforting and her words are just so meaningful and touching listening to her talk about the fascination and love for life on earth how she wants to share it with steven how she wants him to experience all the happiness and joy that life can provide and helping him learn that even though he might have her gem he's still gonna be his own unique person it really felt like the kind of character you would expect rose to be like from how season one was building her up a loving caring figure who really wanted to be a good mother to steven and help him grow up to be a strong confident person it's very deep in meaningful writing that sets up rose as one of the most engaging characters in the whole show until season 5 ruined everything but we'll get to that later season 1 of steven universe just feels like an amazing introduction to the series the characters are brilliantly written and just raw enough for you to feel invested in their lives the relationships between the main cast is tight their development is handled very well and it knows just exactly how to hit you in the feels with its realistic depiction of friendship fascinating characters interesting stories and its witty sense of humor season one was really laying the ground for steven universe to become a household name it really seemed as if steven universe would become to be known as one of the greatest shows in cartoon network history and then season two happened season two was when things started to get complicated it still has plenty of good episodes going forward but it was at this moment that the show started developing several notable problems because after this first season steven universe started to slowly but visibly transform into a very different kind of show in the halfway point of season 1 we're introduced to a character named lapis lazuli a gem who was imprisoned in a magic mirror after stephen frees her she tries escaping earth but gets abducted by homeworld gems working for the diamond empire and they're on their way to earth to finish what they started thousands of years ago they defeat the two imperialist gems named peridot and jasper but peridot escapes somewhere on earth while lapis sacrifices herself to trap jasper under the sea this was the turning point of steven universe in which it would transition from slice of life storytelling to being considered a serialized narrative with a continuing story arc it doesn't take immediate effect as the second half of the season remains largely slice of life but there were still episodes made with a connection to lapis and the homeworld gems invading earth now for the most part the second half of the season does a nice job building up these events steadily with enough material from the episodes being threaded in a way that felt consistent that way when we finally get to the season finale it doesn't feel like something that comes out of nowhere and there was enough intrigue presented in these episodes to build anticipation for what was coming up next garnet is revealed to be a fusion steven begins to hone a deeper connection to his powers the diamond empire is sending soldiers to attack earth steven is revealed to have a deeper connection to rose than was previously believed he also learns that the gems are part of an alien race that invaded the planet peridot is on the run and lapis disappears under the ocean with jasper there's quite a number of reveals and plot elements introduced that built anticipation for season two and it seemed like the season one finale was laying ground for a much more interesting story the only problem is that seasons two through five don't really do a good job delivering that story and the primary reason for that is how badly the episodes were organized unlike season one future seasons of the show were now expected to tell an overarching narrative with several story arcs but instead of staying focused on telling that story the show was still trying to play itself out in an episodic fashion and if i'm gonna start talking about this i am gonna have to bring up something that was an absolute plague on steven universe the infamous hiatuses you see cartoon network had some problems when it came to scheduling their cartoons and this was most evident in the way they handled steven universe season one alone had the show going on hiatus for a total of at least five times and not only were these hiatuses numerous they were also very very long lasting from weeks to entire months on end the first five hiatuses combined resulted in season 1 getting dragged out very badly from its premiere on november 2013 to its finale on march 2015 it took almost a year and a half for a single season of steven universe to finish airing that is just crazy instead of releasing episodes traditionally week by week steven universe released episodes in short bursts called steven bombs where the show would air one episode per day for that week before going off the air indefinitely the crew needed more time to animate and produce new episodes so they use these bursts in order to get viewers content hoping it would keep them satisfied but that reason becomes inexcusable when you realize that there are far too many filler episodes and the actual story is going at a snail's pace people were starting to become more invested in steven universe's narrative but these hiatuses and steven bombs were done in a way that completely disregarded the viewer base the hiatus has often left the show on huge cliffhangers that went unresolved and unanswered for long periods of time which was really starting to test people's patients and not only were the hiatuses getting longer but they were also becoming much more frequent and inconsistent season two had four hiatuses that totaled in just over 200 days season three had two hiatuses stretching into season four with a total of 231 days season 4 had three hiatuses with a total of 181 days stretching into season five and finally season five had three hiatuses with a total of a whopping 527 days these hiatuses were quickly becoming a problem as they were forcing viewers to wait for far too long to see the story continue half the time only coming back for more meaningless filler before going on hiatus again leaving all of those annoying cliffhangers completely unresolved once again now you might say this shouldn't apply to me because i was one of the people who waited until the show ended before binge watching it but i think it would be unfair to ignore all the steven universe fans at the time who had to suffer through all those hiatuses getting in the way instead of continuing the grand story regarding the battle against the empire and steven's heritage they just come back to more filler either focusing on beach city citizens who don't need any more development or the characters just sitting around doing nothing of substance the story is repeatedly disjointed with several filler episodes played in between resulting in the urgency being lost because the show isn't prioritizing and telling its story in a consistent manner a huge example of this is throughout season 2 where lapis and the cluster are completely forgotten about for most of the season then we just come back after a four month hiatus to rescue lapis right before the characters go oh right we have to stop the cluster this doesn't feel like a natural resolution it was really badly rushed and it revealed how the hiatuses were starting to contribute to a huge overbearing problem the filler episodes are being used specifically to stall for time before rebecca sugar is ready to develop the story because of this the filler largely doesn't mean anything because the characters don't go through any meaningful development it's just random mundane situations that don't delve into their personalities and backgrounds not only that but the filler just started to make less and less sense and started to feel more and more like a waste of time steven gets turned into a baby on his birthday mayor dewey auditions of stage play sadie becomes a singer for bicha palooza stephen switches bodies with lars a warren seuss between the frying pizza business connie peridot and lapis run the car wash steven and the cool kids start a band and pearl becomes infatuated with a random woman just because she looks like rose that makes no sense you see the slice of life episodes in season 1 works so well because they served as an introduction to the characters and the world they acted as a setup and helped frame the ground for the rest of the story to play out the season was also majorly focused on being slice of life and only became story oriented during the last few episodes so it didn't feel like the plot was constantly being put on pause but with the abundance of filler episodes constantly interrupting the plot combined with the huge number of days worth of multiple hiatuses seasons two through five were constantly putting the plot on pause with story threads being completely unresolved for an indefinite amount of time they don't introduce anything important and they just have the characters going around in circles there is so much meaningless filler going on in seasons two through five which i really started to pick up halfway through season four because by that point i realized that hardly anything has actually happened at all with only two and a half seasons worth of worthwhile episodes going on and because they spent so much time focusing on filler and beach city citizens the main characters started to get heavily shafted and in some cases went through really steep decline in their development this is where things get tricky as i find seasons two through four going on an up and down roller coaster in terms of how they're handled some characters remain as likable as they were in season one while others deteriorate into troubling and problematic figures first the good garnet remains one of the best characters in the cast with her words of wisdom as well as being the best mother figure to stephen she continues to watch out for him and still has that more bubbly and optimistic attitude when hanging out with him there's a lot of little moments between the two that are sprinkled across the three seasons and it helps to add more meaning to their relationship she's actually the one who provides the most comfort for him after finding out the truth about rose shattering pink she gives this soft spoken but tough speech about the realities of war and what the gems had to do to get their freedom from the empire and she says it in a way that really weighs out the moral sacrifice that his mother had to make she's really upfront and honest about it which helps to add some sentiment to how steven views rose she also goes through some pretty tough stuff such as the moment she witnesses the artificial fusion and keeping it together we can clearly see how garnet felt traumatizing what the diamonds were forcing gems to do how fusion like this wasn't a choice and how gross it is that they just saw it as a means to an end this is not too long after the season 1 finale where she was revealed to be a fusion which would explain why it's extremely important to her it's not just that garnet is defined solely by fusion it's that she views it as a means for individuals to have a clear understanding of one another through how they bond the thing is a lot of people have wrongfully taken fusion as a metaphor for sex because of those suggestive dances but the thing that fusion actually personifies is different relationships between different people it's symbolic of a lot of different types of relationships whether platonic family or romantic it's a rather unique take on the concept of fusion where instead of just being seen as two characters morphing to increase their power it's used to delve into the relationship between those who fuse like the embodiment of what the component parts are like together it's used as a metaphor to show how consent is not just important in a romantic relationship but all relationships how it requires a mutual understanding and how consent is a deep requirement even if it's something mundane garnet is able to exist because of this deep understanding that ruby and sapphire have for each other so it makes perfect sense that she would treat fusion as something sacred that shouldn't be taken lightly it's why she was so horrified by the sight of the force fusion because gems were being forced together against their will something that was very distinctive and intimate to her was used to violate and torture people to the point where she describes it as something else entirely she was very deeply ashamed that her existence as a fusion had to be associated with that it's a moment that really shines a new light on her character and gets the audience to rethink their thoughts on her she also gets a couple of other scenes such as giving greg relationship advice to help him better connect with rose which is a fitting role for her to take considering how garnet's existence is literally being a relationship it's something carried over to the log date episode where she offers to fuse with peridot to help understand her better garnet doesn't fuse with others lightly and only does it when she thinks it's absolutely necessary so seeing her willing to let her guard down to help a former adversary understand or better is rather commendable and it also gives way to one of my favorite things about the show the adorable romance between ruby and sapphire when garnet is unfused they have a very fun and well-written relationship they hug kiss give each other sentimental looks support each other emotionally flirt say really sweet things to each other but they also explore how a relationship is never perfect they get into arguments they can be bumpy they don't agree on every single thing they might even need some time apart to set out their issues it can actually be really difficult and flawed it's actually most prominent in keystone motel where they get in an argument over forgiving pearl because of her future sites sapphire believes that staying angry is pointless as they'll just forgive her eventually anyway which results in her being too eager to move past it ruby on the other hand is very stubborn and shows no signs of wanting to move past it given her short temper the two handle their stress very differently resulting in a feud as to how they should handle their feelings and it's a pretty good showcase for how some personal crisises work either people's emotions will flow or logic will lead them to uncertainty but as steven starts to blame himself the two realize that what they need to do is just talk it out sapphire realizes that she was focusing on the future instead of the present which drove her away from the issue and ruby realized that holding onto her feelings towards pearl wasn't going to change anything they realized that they need to be there for steven because he's already dealing with a lot of complicated issues the way ruby and sapphire complement each other really shows how garnet is who she is they balance out each other perfectly with their emotional control and their passion with ruby being the strength and finesse and sapphire being the deep thinker who tries to keep everyone grounded and the way their conflict is resolved is really organic because of how eager sapphire was willing to put it behind them ruby didn't think she was getting proper support from her she was bottling up her emotions which exacerbated because she wasn't being honest she states their problem directly and shows how they need to talk it out before they can start thinking about forgiving pearl even steven blaming himself was played out very well as a metaphor for kids blaming themselves for their parents fighting sometimes things can get pretty tense between families and steven was already feeling pretty down over garnet and pearl distancing themselves i also really like how the answer establishes the romance between them and explains why they would fall in love ruby started out only thinking of herself as a bodyguard but over time really started to care about sapphire's safety and sapphire felt like ruby saved her from an unchangeable future by defying fate showing how through willpower you can change history and make a difference in spite of the odds ruby saves sapphire from fate and sapphire saved ruby from only being what the diamonds wanted her to be it's a really touching and somber episode that places new insight on them together now on to other characters in spite of his minimal role in the show i really like how greg still gets to appear as an affectionate father towards stephen in times of stress he's always there to give him a leg up to keep him from feeling too unsure or depressed i find greg's position to be really sympathetic as he has to constantly deal with all the bizarre enough situations regarding the gems while still being a good father to his son it really shows just how much pressure and [ __ ] he has to go through to be there for him the sheer level of dedication that this character has is really commendable there's a really potent sense of compassion that emits from him no matter who he's talking to or how stressful a situation gets so he also demonstrates a good sense of patience on top of being a thoughtful caretaker to steven there's also peridot who's a really lovable antagonist turned hero she starts out as a systematic villain who is assigned to overlook the status of the cluster and along the way she gets into some pretty wacky conflict with the gems she can be funny but also pretty menacing knowing how to lure the heroes into a trap and take advantage of their train of thought to lower their guard she's really sporadic and unpredictable in how goofy she is but she can also be really calculated which allows her to be a legitimate threat and after her defeat she starts developing into a more interesting character the way her relationship with the heroes is developed is very well paced and that they take the proper steps in turning her from a villain to an ally at first she's only cooperating with them to get something out of it that being preventing the cluster from emerging while she's still on earth but over time she gets to know each of the gems on a personal level and begins to understand why their battle to liberate earth was so important she learns about life on earth understanding human emotions how to have fun to prevent yourself from feeling stressed out and finding a new family with stephen and the gems what i like about peridot's redemption is that they show how she just doesn't instantly become a good guy it was done steadily with some bumps on the road she even obsesses over how great the earth colony would have been while ignoring the seriousness of how they destroy life on planets peridot was raised under a galactic dictatorship for thousands a year so it would make sense that she would need time to work out her old tendencies the second season takes its time developing her character properly so nothing about her reformation feels rushed learning to acknowledge pearl's individuality accepting garnet's state of being and being mindful of amethyst's disabilities while admitting to her own flaws she learns to stand up for herself by telling off yellow when she also goes through some interesting arcs after her reformation she goes through a learning experience about gaining experience from failure when chasing a corrupt gem and she also deals with her disability as a cheaply made gem in the episode too short to write she reveals that her obsession with technology is a coping mechanism to deal with being defective she thinks she can amount to anything without limb enhancers or any sort of technology as not having these things makes her feel inferior but when she's about to lose her tablet she discovers her ability to bend metal and she finally feels truly useful she has a functioning purpose that she discovered through her friendship with the gems that makes her feel more capable of all the characters post season 1 peridot really feels like the most fleshed out and properly developed as she still gets to be fun and comedic while changing and evolving over the course of four seasons i also like bismuth in spite of her smaller role compared to other characters she leaves a really good impression as a liberator longing for her freedom and wanting to provide it for her fellow gems she gets well acquainted with old friends in a steady way and she forms a close and meaningful bond with stephen over their connection with rose it's interesting to see how the thing that bismuth and steven bond over is an aspect of their history the relationship they had with rose and the impression she left on them she talks about how inspired she was by rose and how she was able to think for herself because of her influence and wanting to share those feelings of individuality with others she's a real rebel as her desire to defeat the diamonds runs very deep even going so far as to invent a weapon capable of shattering gems outright the thing about bismuth is that she actually makes a really good case for why she thinks the breaking point should be used the empire is made of tyrants who will destroy anything that gets in their way so she believes that an equally lethal response is the only way to fight them these feelings of being a liberator and freeing gems meant a lot to her and suddenly she was being betrayed by rose and not being given the support she needed so she took it pretty personally unfortunately bismuth was wrongfully perceived as an extremist who was taking her goals too far but she was actually much more nuanced than that she never shows any motivation for using the breaking point except to provide freedom for others while fighting a totalitarian regime allowing her to remain sympathetic but just before she's bubbled again she recognizes stephen as his own person which shows how she's willing to congratulate him for being a better gem than rose which represents the honorable side of her character and after being frieden told the truth she has a hard time coping with the revelation that everything she knew was a lie thinking there's no longer a place for her among old friends but steven helps her realize that the rebellion isn't the sole thing that made up her connection with others it was her loyalty and camaraderie to other gems that made her who she is she was a well-written ally who had to struggle through memories of an old friendship based on a lie and she had to make up for lost time after being bubbled for thousands of years i also like connie her relationship with steven is still adorable and cheerful and now she's making some really good progress she learns to stand up to her overbearing mother and she has a really nice heart to heart about the two being able to put trust in each other connie's mom learns to be less restrictive and it's a development that actually sticks she learns to put more trust into her daughter because she understands how experienced she is and she trusts that steven is capable of protecting her after this episode connie's relationship with her parents becomes a lot more enjoyable as their overbearing attitude stops being a plot device and they actually learn to give her her own space she also has a small arc about her sword training with pearl in which she strikes to be more than what she already is to be a proper ally she does get a little in over her head due to pearls indoctrination but steven helps her understand that she doesn't have to be just a bodyguard instead of just connie fighting for him they can fight for each other as a team steven wants to fight alongside connie which is a much more sensible direction to go as it's better than doing everything by yourself he clearly sees kanye as his equal and seeing the two work together in a perfectly coordinated way shows how well balanced their relationship is there's an actual partnership between them as they're very open about their support for each other even avoiding dumb cliches like the one where the hero has to break her heart in order to protect her in the episode full disclosure stephen begins to realize how serious his battle against the empire is and doesn't want connie to be put in danger if she gets involved at first it seems they're gonna do that trope where stephen pretends to not want to be with connie anymore because he thinks it'll keep her safe but at the end of the episode he just tells her the truth instead of lying he actually comes forward with her about this whole mess choosing to be upfront about his feelings and she reassures him that whatever happens they can face it together it's a really touching moment and a great sentiment to how well handled steven zenkani's relationship is and then you have amethyst pearl and lapis which well let's start by talking about amethyst after on the run it was made pretty clear that amethyst was going through insecurity issues while trying to live up to the expectations of the other gems which isn't a bad idea for a character flaw there was a lot of room for the show to tackle the issue she was going through as an overcooked gem as a metaphor for disabilities but the show doesn't actually do that and this is where the problems start at first i thought they were gonna do something with this as the episode reformed does a pretty good job reflecting on how little esteem she tends to have but after this episode every time this was brought up it's done in a way that feels heavily neglected we see how she was supposed to be created as a more capable gem and how she feels about how she came out wrong making her a burden to the others the problem is that seasons two through four don't give amethyst enough focus to properly establish her overcoming this obstacle the episode cry for help brings this up very briefly through a song before completely forgetting about it it's actually more about her understanding and relating to pearl's low self-esteem than actually confronting her own then it's forgotten about for multiple episodes until she gets beaten up by jasper where her inferiority is only briefly brought up then in the episode steven vs amethyst she spends half the episodes sulking before she gets into an argument with stephen over how much she hates herself and in spite of being aware of her problem she's not doing anything about it instead of training to get stronger or improve her combat skills she spends the episode being lazy and pouty it ends with a montage of steven and amethyst arguing over how much worse they are than the other and it's really cringy and it just wraps up with amethyst's insecurity issues hardly being taken care of the show doesn't give her nearly enough episodes to properly tackle her issues because of the abundance of filler and focusing on someone else she has a lot of angst going on in the episodes where she's the focus and it never feels properly resolved and it makes episodes where she's regulated to a supporting role really confusing and out of place in spite of the show treating her issues like a big deal they just seem completely non-existent and she just goes back to being goofy and crude and it's only until the episode earthlings where it comes up again after being defeated steven gives amethyst a speech about how cool she is for being herself and not like jasper and on paper i really like the idea this leads to it shows how amethyst's condition isn't something she can just get over and she has to live with it instead of making it that she can be just as strong as jasper with enough work she actually doesn't instead of teaching the lesson that disabled people can just be good as able people it teaches the lesson that you don't have to be as good as them to be worth anything you can still be good at things even if you're not as good at it as other people it teaches the audience that you don't have to measure up to someone else's abilities to be worth something it's a really good message and i really like the idea of it being taught in an honest way in a children's show but again the problem is how badly amethy's character arc is paced because so much time that could have been used to develop her is wasted in episodes where she's the focus she spends too much time sulking and in episodes where she's not the focus her self-worth issues are completely forgotten about if they gave more episodes to amethyst they could have dealt with her insecurities much better and it's weird that i harp on her like this because after defeating jasper she stops being a sulk and is a much more fun character she forms a close friendship with peridot which is nice considering they both relate to being defective she also develops a new outlook on the kindergarten she no longer feels ashamed of it and thinks of it as a source of inspiration since she can relate to the other amethyst that grew there and she also handles the big plot twist very maturely she expresses how she's gonna start carrying her own weight and deal with her problems herself instead of being a burden to steven she stops harping on the past and starts moving forward which is something she takes seriously considering steven is already dealing with enough pressure from his mom being a horrible person she's much more supportive in episodes following jasper being bubbled and her self-esteem issue stopped being a problem they're still the issue of how badly her arc was paced and how it feels like something that was largely ignored but at least it's not as bad as how the show handles pearl one of the things people quickly picked up about pearl in the first season was how she had this rather unsettling obsession with rose it was an ongoing issue until it was confronted in the episode rose's scabbard where she explains her self-esteem issues to steven and for a while it was actually a pretty good moment of growth for her it was a way of showing how the loss of someone she loved and that love being unrequited was something that was bothering her for a long time but never blamed it on stephen the way the two make up at the end of the episode seems like it was establishing a newfound understanding between them and how pearl was getting ready to move on but when season 2 came along the way pearl's past relationship was being portrayed started to feel really unsettling first they're sworn to the sword where she offers to help connie with her sword training to be a proper bodyguard to stephen at first it seems normal that pearl would want to help connie be a more capable warrior but then she starts laying out similarities between connie's desire to protect steven and her own desire to protect rose during the war it's at this point where garnet explains how reckless and upset she was about protecting rose and how she's trying to project that recklessness onto connie we even see her brainwashing kanye into being a mindless soldier by having her say that her life doesn't matter that is nothing short of disturbing she tries to justify this by saying stephen is too important and shouldn't be risking his life to fight the diamonds and when steven defies her she becomes so unhinged that she melts down and refers to him as rose instead of stephen so in one episode we have pearl not only obsessing over her past relationship with rose to the point of identifying her with stephen but also brainwashing connie and willing to risk her dying recklessly then in the episode chill tide we see her dreaming about being out at sea with rose and telling her to forget about greg which really feeds into just how badly her jealousy was there were hints of her jealousy in season 1 but this was really on the nose then she repeatedly deceives garnet in defusing with her knowing how uncomfortable she would feel about it being used for her own personal pleasure and her reason for doing this is because she wants to feel strong like she did when rose was with her because she feels useless without someone telling her what to do you know what we already knew when rose's scabbard i do like that there were consequences for what pearl did in the episodes leading up to friendship but it still feels like she got off pretty easily when you think about how thoroughly deceitful and serious her actions were then in the episode three gems and a baby she's so deranged in the belief that rose is still conscious inside of steven that she almost pulls out his gem she almost killed steven due to her obsession with her unrequited love some may try to excuse this by saying how she stopped herself while explaining her frustration about having a difficult time adapting to change but that really doesn't change how disturbing it is that even in a previous point in time just how thoroughly irrational her behavior was even in the episode mr greg where she confronts her jealousy towards him she still sings a song about how rose chose him over her the problem with pearl during seasons two through four is that it never feels like her character is allowed to develop outside of her obsession with rose every pearl-centric episode has to involve her past relationship with her in some way which results in her development growing stagnant they try to fit in the notion that pearl is responsible for all that's left of someone she loved and has to try and be a mother to him to honor her memory but this all gets underminded by how garnet ends up being a much better mother figure anyway and how the waypro continuously obsessed with rose became repetitive and uncomfortable and this was before season 5 which made her past relationship with rose even more disturbing and then you have lapis lapis is not a good character at first i was willing to give her a chance as she has a soft and likable relationship with steven but in each of her centric episodes after she just gets more uncomfortable to be around in the beginning she was established as someone suffering from trauma after spending thousands of years trapped in a mirror with her gem cracked alright we're off to a good start then in the episode barmage she spends the episode holding a grudge against peridot okay then she acts needlessly spiteful towards her being verbally abusive and even crushing her tape recorder which was previously given to her as a very thoughtful gift from steven then in the episode alone at sea she reveals how between her and jasper she was the one being abusive saying she liked taking everything out on her i liked taking everything out on you i needed to i i hated you it was bad excuse me then in the episode room for ruby she becomes jealous of a ruby who's able to quickly adjust to earth when she was having a hard time herself and her jealousy comes across as really petty but that's okay because it turns out that ruby was a villain the whole time and lepis was right to be jealous which renders the whole episode a complete waste of time and then in the episode raising the barn she tries pressuring peridot into abandoning earth and leaving everyone defend the diamonds off by themselves and when peridot says she wants to stay not only does lapis leave her without a second thought she literally takes the barn with all of her stuff why the hell did she need to take all of peridot's stuff why didn't she just fly into space without taking anything but wait she comes back later during the battle against blue diamond and what does she say to peridot after all the stress she put her through lapis you're really here hey hey you [ __ ] i'm gonna punch you in the face here's where i have my problem with lapis the way she goes about dealing with her problems is extremely selfish and in some cases really toxic and abusive she constantly makes everything about herself and she's needlessly judgmental towards the other characters and her attitude in these episodes just feels spiteful the way she describes how she liked taking everything out on jasper demonstrates very clearly how she was using her as a vessel to take her anger out on someone she was literally putting someone else through the exact same trauma she suffered through and the show sees nothing wrong with this it would have been one thing if she was just doing it to protect steven and the crystal gems but she specifically states how she was taking her anger out on jasper what exactly is supposed to be sympathetic about a victim of trauma putting someone else through the exact same trauma and the grudge she holds against peridot is really unsettling she gives her all these sinister looks and speaks in a really malicious tone and the moment she crushes the recorder is just a step too far peridot is clearly making an effort to make amends and is giving her something with a lot of personal sentimental value to her and lapis responds by calling it garbage and breaking it right in front of her throughout the episode she is so thoroughly nasty and bitter and is just hand waved away at the end of the episode and in raising the barn she just runs away with no regard for peridot and just takes her whole life away from her seriously how could you do something like that to someone who cares about you so much and she never makes a proper apology for her bad behavior at any point her character development is extremely rushed in that a lot of her appearance has her being extremely arrogant and she only ever stops acting like this at the very last minute i really don't get why people shape her with peridot because it's clearly not a positive relationship okay so i just wanted to add this little bit here because i think it's important to bring up in one of the previews i posted i got this comment from someone called no patient joe who outlined one of the bigger problems regarding lapis character i know there are people who talk about how underdeveloped her relationship is with peridot or how they try to make her becoming a crystal gem a big deal despite never really interacting with the three main gems or lapis just being underdeveloped in general but this come and broke down the idea that because lapis is a victim of abuse the show thinks it's okay for her to be an abuser herself and that is something that should be brought up in spite of lapis's speech about regretting being horrible she just goes back to being horrible anyway by being selfish towards navy and abandoning peridot and taking all her stuff for no reason and in her speech from alone at sea she doesn't bring up the way she treated peridot in barn mates i get the notion that jasper and lapis were being abusive to each other but lapis is the one that the show is telling us we're supposed to sympathize with it would be one thing if lapis actually got some consequence for this but she never does she just says hate a peridot and that's meant to be the end of her character arc so in hindsight lapis kind of is sending the message that abusive behavior is justified if you're a victim of abuse which is just a terrible lesson to teach people so no offense if you're a fan of lapis but she pretty much is a bad character not only for being badly developed but also sending an unhealthy message if you want to develop her better in a fan fiction or something that's fine but in the show itself yeah finally there's steven who i still like in the later seasons even though he contributes to a problem i'm gonna go into later he still acts bright and bubbly like he did in season 1 but with an added sense of maturity i really like how steven starts to realize that his gem missions and fight against the empire are more serious than he thought and he actually sees just how dangerous this stuff really is it stops being a fun-filled kids adventure and becomes a responsibility he has to live up to and he does this without changing into a completely different character maintaining his lighthearted charm and friendly attitude he also has an arc about dealing with the revelation that his mother rose was probably not as good of a person as she was built up to be he learns the truth about her shattering pink diamond which hits him really hard considering he just got done arguing with bismuth about the morality of killing dictators which would make his worldview seem really hypocritical he starts to ask rather tough questions about himself like if he actually is rose and if he needs to take responsibility for her bad decisions and it's not something that just gets glossed over in the episode storm in the room he wants to know what his mother was really like outside of the stories that others have said about her in which he goes to his room to interact with a copy of his mother and at first it does seem like a really standard situation we see stephen spending time with rose doing things that you would usually see a mother and son doing but after a while he goes a step further and really begins to think about his relationship with her contemplating his true thoughts on rose and the decision she made he realizes this version of rose is only a deconstructed idea of who he thinks she was before he started learning more about her and when he sees this he starts to confront her directly and question if she really was just an awful person before he only ever knew about rose from stories by by his people and now he's putting his thoughts on rose in his own words without any of that bias getting in the way now he's seeing exactly how he feels instead of pearl or greg or any of rosa's enemies but then she gently approaches steven and asks him if he truly believes that she reminds him of the tape she left behind and how she really wanted steven to be born and experience life asking him if he thinks she was lying about that the videotape is the only direct thing of her we have because it's not based on a story by greg or any of the crystal gems it was rose herself telling us what kind of person she was without someone else's filter and steven replies by saying no because in spite of all her bad decisions he knows that she wanted steven to be born as his own person she really wanted him to experience all the happiness and joy that life can provide and he's grateful for that while acknowledging he has to face this new challenge head-on he lets her go and leaves his room with a different view on himself and even though he may feel uncertain he still has his new family to support him what makes this episode so important to steven's character is that it shows how he understands the value of questioning things it's the first time in the entire show where he actually questions something and then his real feelings wanting a mother that was the summation of everyone's expectations and the reality of who she was based on what she did steven is really questioning why rose had him moving beyond his naive view of her and looking at it more realistically it's an episode that really changes how stephen regards his thoughts on himself and what makes it more fascinating is the way the room uses its image of rose to communicate with him in the beginning it over exaggerated her positive nature because all stephen ever heard was stories of her just being nice but when he started venting his anger the room realized he didn't want to talk to the ideal version of rose but the real one and it did its best to impersonate who she really was and in the end steven settles that worry he had about him just being an escape for rose it demonstrates how much he really is like the other crystal gems since they each carry their own self death it's about overcoming those feelings treasuring the family he's been fortunate enough to have and in time not being someone just like rose but someone even better just like bismuth said he would it's episodes like this that show just how much he's grown since that first season but unfortunately the focus given as steven ends up turning into a really big problem as it really starts to get in the way of the development of the plot and the other characters you remember how we talked about the abundance of filler episodes focusing on beach city citizens instead of the main characters and storyline well another factor of this is how in every single episode of the show it's all done from steven's point of view the audience is slashed to him 100 of the time meaning we can only go where he goes and only see what he sees and as a result none of the other characters are allowed to actually develop unless they're sharing an episode with him lapis and peridot don't develop unless he visits the barn and pearl doesn't develop unless steven invites her with him and greg on their vacation none of the other elements of the show are allowed to develop naturally on their own because they only develop when steven is around to do something the only time stephen acts to advance the plot in any way is when circumstances force him out of beach city otherwise he's doing nothing of relevance which results in two things either major plot elements end up developing off-screen or they end up being completely forgotten about for example after stephen returns from homeworld you'd think he'd be spending the next couple of episodes consulting with the gems and connie or at least go to lars parents and tell them what happened to their son but nope instead we get pointless filler that contributes nothing from connie being a [ __ ] to an election between dewey and mrs pizza to stephen moping over connie being a [ __ ] to steven and the cool kid starting a band that goes nowhere just even going to a party with kevin to talk to connie over how she was being a [ __ ] in spite of the matter that lars has trapped on a hostile alien planet and the diamonds are coming to earth to kill steven the show doesn't treat either of these things with the urgency they need it goes back to being an episodic comedy in spite of the looming threat of an alien invasion and then when we cut back to lars he's suddenly the captain of a spaceship out of nowhere with a really rushed explanation for how he got there this is just a small sample of a huge problem steven universe focusing on filler and constantly lashing as steven results in rush plot development and things happening completely off screen heavily reducing their impact in the story the season 3 premiere in particular is really off the rails with how badly they went through the events as quickly as possible first we find out the watermelon people have created a civilized society in the middle of the ocean and then we find out it's being attacked by jasper as malachite so the crystal gems go there to battle her and save lapis oh when wouldn't you know it now the cluster is acting up and stephen and peridot have to drill to the earth's core to stop it everything they've been building up for a whole season is completely resolved in 15 minutes the whole arc about amethyst dealing with her inadequacy since season one is completely resolved in a 30-second speech from stephen in the earthlings episode and in season four the build-up to the greg rescue mission and the abduction of steven's friends is jumbled by a bunch of episodes that have nothing to do with anything you'll want to see an episode about what the diamonds are going to do after the cluster was disrupted nope instead we get stories about that one ruby from hid the diamond top or tray lapis as a jerk or ronaldo wanting to be a member of the crystal gems despite being absolutely pathetic or stephen moping about his destiny trying to decipher the meaning of rose's last message when it just amounts to rose wanting a baby you know something that we already knew when both storm in the room and the third lion episode and it doesn't even end there as i continue to watch seasons two through five i began to notice a really irritating pattern in the vast majority of episodes they focus on a bunch of mundane filler and pointless fluff and it's only in the last minute where any sort of character or plot development occurs the most egregious example being mindful education it spends three-fourths of its run time on connie overreacting to unintentionally throwing someone and judging by the looks of it wasn't even a serious injury then she reveals that she talked to the student off-screen and they just made up really fast which begs the question as to why the episode was treating this like a big deal if it was this easily resolved then in the last two minutes steven starts to break down over bubbling bismuth and jasper being corrupted as well as the revelation of roe shattering pink diamond causing them to fall off a cliff then connie just wrecked con steven's trauma in a 30 second conversation then they refuse and float down to the ground without crashing and then the episode just ends like that's literally how it ends we don't even see garnet and pearl trying to figure out if they're okay we're just left to assume that they're still up on the cliff panicking about the kids falling down another example would be crack the whip where it seems it's going to be a basic slice of life episode before it suddenly turns into an episode about amethyst's insecurities and of course there's the classic case of lapis being horrible to peridot until the last 20 seconds of barn mates this pattern of plotting character relevance happening out of nowhere at the last minute was becoming increasingly common and it got old really quickly as it makes important aspects of the overall story feeling rushed beyond belief with the show's attitude of being lashed to stephen at every possible opportunity it's not allowed to have a living organic world and setting outside of his point of view remember how i said that stephen couldn't be bothered to tell lars parents that he's still alive his parents are worried sick and don't know if he's still alive and stephen doesn't seem to care but here's the thing they do hear about lars being okay but they don't hear it from stephen they hear it from sadie she's the one who goes to do something plot relevant which ends up happening off-screen while steven is messing around in a pointless election campaign and because it ends up happening off-screen we don't feel the emotional weight of lars parents worrying about their son it's just something in the background literally nothing is allowed to exist in the show unless steven is there to witness it and it severely weakens the experience by not allowing the audience to immerse themselves into the world the show sets up imagine if you will if teen titans the original teen titans was constantly being told from the perspective of robin the show is constantly being lashed to him at all times and he has to be the main or secondary character in every single episode if they ended up doing that the relationship between the characters and their individual development wouldn't have been as strong one of the main appeals to the original teen titans cartoon was how it developed its characters and the reason it worked so well was that the show took the time to explore all possible relationships between the titans to make them feel like an actual team that cooperates and looks out for each other episodes like forces of nature where beast boy learns from starfire how a joke can go too far and uses that experience to lecture a duo of delinquents misusing their powers or car trouble where cyborg and raven have a heart to heart about how special his car was because he put so much passion and hard work into making it even when there's an episode where robin is present it knows how to take a break from having him around so we can experience the show from the perspective of the other characters episodes like truck where starfire talks to cyborg about the hardships of her people being discriminated against by other alien races or the beast within where beast boy talks to raven about the frustration of being part feral and how that side of him is hard to control or titan's rising where terra works to gain raven's trust even the more comedic moments from episodes like the quest are handled better because we get to spend time with the other characters without robin being arbitrarily shoved into the scenes all of those things that i just went over and so many other great moments throughout the show wouldn't have happened if teen titans was constantly lashing a robin in the same way steven universe was constantly lashing to stephen and the relationships between the other titans would have been underdeveloped because they weren't allowed to develop without robin being there to witness it what i'm saying is that if steven universe did the same thing teen titans did that being not constantly being lashed as steven we could have gotten episodes that better explore the relationships between the other gems maybe an episode about lapis and peridot developing their relationship or pearl getting parental advice from greg or connie trying to adjust to an ordinary life at school after becoming a part of steven's extraordinary life all without stephen being constantly shoved into the plot mlp is another show that does this better with the second season breaking from the status quo by making it so other characters could write about friendship lessons so twilight wouldn't have to be in the episode allowing the characters to develop without twilight being shoved into the plot all of these things put together means that steven universe's story is developing at a horrendously awful pace it wants to tell an action-packed story about a rebellion against a galactic empire but it plays itself out like an episodic sitcom in spite of later seasons having an overarching narrative it doesn't feel that way because it's constantly distracting itself from the main plot and season 1 was just so much better at doing this it was able to keep the setting interesting because it wasn't constantly jumping between trying to be a serious space opera and a silly slice of life comedy and the slice of lifestyle it went for was more tolerable because there wasn't an overarching narrative dangling over the audience it was full of isolated storylines that you could freely enjoy because there wasn't a requirement to watch every single episode to understand them with the way the story was handled in seasons 2 and onward the show just started to slowly decline in quality important characters are constantly getting shafted with their development being horribly rushed the story is developing too slowly constantly being interrupted by pointless filler and the abundance of hiatuses that lasted for months on end just made the whole experience even more agitating okay now i was going to bring up the common criticism that the show isn't written by actual writers but instead storyboard artists and how it results in the story being an unfocused mess because it's not being done by a team of writers with a shared vision but i took the time to check this video made by grandpa glasses and to his credit he does shine some light on the criticism that the story is only being done by storyboard artists he explains through the art and origins book that there's some details and explanations for the writing process of episodes and i do appreciate some of the clarification even though there's still the issue that the story is written horribly and not paced properly the added context is welcome but it's still a problem the filler the hiatuses the rush character development the steven only perspective all these things combined result in a giant unfocused mess with the story having no real sense of direction a problem that would eventually reach its apex in season five where everything the show has been building up for the last four seasons is completely demolished and what better place to start than the horribly handled breakup between stephen and connie now before i talk about connie i want to take some time to talk about steven's side of the argument because honestly both stephen and connie were made into complete idiots in order for this conflict to happen so here's the thing steven is uncharacteristically oblivious and emotionally inept in this scene he's acting like he has absolutely no idea what connie is talking about despite knowing how much their teen dynamic means to her she mentions stevonnie to him which would really spell out what she was trying to say and he completely ignores it while rambling about how he was sacrificing himself stephen is clearly not listening to connie in spite of how much time he's put into understanding her at this point and he's not expressing concern for what she might be thinking or making an effort to talk to her more clearly rather than just keep repeating how noble his sacrifice was at this point in the show steven's social skills especially towards his girlfriend should be much more experienced and stephen himself should be less oblivious when people are trying to explain something to him this is something he would do back in season one not in season 5 when he's supposed to be maturing he's just fully unaware of anything connie is trying to say and is only focusing on what he's saying almost as if he's deaf there's no excuse for steven to be this tone deaf he should have tried to explain himself more clearly and not be so inept to her side of the argument instead he's just being dumb for the sake of driving connie off taking lyon with her so the writers have an excuse for steven to not check on lars until several filler episodes later so now let's talk about the problems with connie's side because there's a lot more to talk about i talked before about the lack of urgency in the story with stephen neglecting to tell lars parents about their missing son and him not bothering to consult with the gems about what happened on homeworld but the one thing that really sticks out like a sore thumb is connie's unbearable selfishness in leaving stephen you might try to make a case for connie and that she was hurt by steven going back on their promise that they would face obstacles together but here's the thing the way connie reacts to this situation and her feelings towards it are not justified the situation was extremely dire and aquamarine was established to have enough power to overwhelm alexandria stevonnie was certainly not gonna do anything they literally had no chance of winning that fight and stephen surrendering himself was what saved everyone from being kept prisoner and even if they somehow ended up winning the diamonds would have just come to inspect the situation and everyone would be in even more danger steven minimalized the damage by surrendering himself and if you still want to make a case for connie it doesn't change the fact that her actions are terrible first of all connie takes lion with her and for whatever reason he just stays with her in spite of having a stronger relationship with stephen this already makes no sense because in the first line episode steven was in danger lion saved him and stayed with him even after he went off on him so now when there's a way more urgent situation he just decides to leave him in favor of connie and isn't lying the only means to check up on lars while he's trapped on a hostile planet what if stephen needs to check on him why would lion suddenly have a stronger bond with connie over stephen why does he have a stronger bond with connie over rose the person who saved him from death stephen has a more familiar connection with lyon than connie due to a life debt and he just decides to run off and not think about him at all and connie never tells lyon to return to stephen she literally took his pet connie is acting extremely selfish here her feelings are not more important than the fact that steven's sacrifice saved everyone maybe he could have been more aware of her feelings but that doesn't change the fact that he made the right decision all of the other characters understood this and were actually thankful that steven got home safe connie should have realized this and not acted so narrow-minded she's putting her feelings and egotistical need to fight alongside stephen over the seriousness of the situation and it just comes across as really immature this is extremely out of character for connie because she was built up to be a lot smarter and understanding than this her need to fight with stephen blinded her to the reality that they were out of options and it makes steven seem completely in the wrong when the dispute is supposed to be ambiguous his sight of the argument is never explored and it sends the message that one person's feelings matter more than several people's lives which is a terrible lesson to send to the audience it makes it seem like steven giving himself up to homeworld only affected connie when it literally affected everyone including the gems and his dad wasn't there an episode where connie learns a lesson about how it's better to vent your frustrations rather than bottle them up why wasn't that applied here why is there no attempt at resolving this verbally instead of running off this problem could have been resolved in a single episode but it gets stretched out for six stephen and connie are supposed to have a good enough relationship that they can talk things out instead of running away moping they should have just said what they were feeling and make up it didn't need to be dragged out like this and there's more important things going on than this dumb angst between stephen and connie they brushed off really deep issues about the possible loss of humanity with the way lars was killed and brought back to life we could have explored how this would affect the rest of his life and whether or not he's still human if he can live life normally anymore how his absence would affect the people in his life and it only gets worse from there when stephen and connie finally get back together you'd think there would be a good reason for why connie didn't contact steven for all those episodes but there is no good reason and connie was just being a [ __ ] purposefully leaving steven in the dark they bring up how she could have easily sent a text but she didn't do it because she thinks it sounds dumb that she would be sending a text saying she can't talk to him but that would technically be talking to him which is a stupid reason for not wanting to contact someone even if you wanted to talk in person you could have sent a message telling steven where to meet you and if you still needed time to yourself the least you could have done was text steven saying we'll talk about it later but here's what really really gets me connie has this dumb outburst over feeling ignored and says i guess kevin is your best friend now that is extremely petty for connie to say when she was ignoring him and she really has no ground to stand on when she was repeatedly failing to make an effort to reach out to him and it's a huge contradiction to how her character was established over the last four seasons there's an extreme single-mindedness to how this conflict is handled and it gets really irritating to think about the episode gemcation showed how greg spending time with stephen by camping out in the woods was his way of dealing with what his son did couldn't we have gotten something like that for stephen and connie an episode where they try to do something together to make up for their disagreement but the worst thing about this arc it's completely pointless it adds absolutely nothing to the story you can easily skip the next six episodes after lars head except racing the barn and back to the kindergarten and you would miss nothing they waste so much time on this pointless conflict when they could have focused on the fallout of the abduction or lars parents and their reaction to their son being turned into a space zombie or the gems reflecting on what happened on homeworld but instead we get episodes about steven and the cool kids starting a stupid band in an election for a town that has long since overstated screen time and it just gets worse for connie because after kevin's party for the rest of the show she just stops being a character she just isn't relevant to the plot anymore she went from being cool to annoying to just kind of being there she doesn't do anything noteworthy and just serves as a plot device for steven defuse at the ball to kickstart the conflict on homeworld she has no actual purpose in the remainder of the show other than fusion so why is she still here she's quickly shown to be powerless against the diamond so what purpose does she have in the team oh wait there is one scene where she uh gets a new sword and another scene where she uh gets in a fight with possessed pearl for about 10 seconds like it's literally 10 seconds and 5 seconds of it happens off screen and then she uh then she uh carries steven over to his diamond when the diamond could have easily just walked over to stephen on its own that's about it but connie's breakup and irrelevance is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how bad season five is aside from spending the most time in hiatus and being dragged out for the longest time amongst the other seasons it's also home to the worst writing in the entire show sloppily handled storylines sluggish pacing and it ends up teaching some of the worst lessons in a show meant to be a positive influence on children we've already talked about how selfish and bratty connie is as well as how horrible and toxic lapis is to peridot and the lack of urgency by spending more time on pointless filler than developing the actual story so now it's time to talk about the big one the shocking twist that rose was pink diamond the whole time and it's the rose was pink diamond plot twist and all the unfortunate implications surrounding it where steven universe's narrative breaks entirely in the episode a single pale rose stephen returns home after his conflict with lapis thinking of a vision he saw while he was streaming a vision that seems to imply that the true culprit behind ping shattering was pearl an idea that now that i think about it would have been a much better plot twist stephen goes to confront her but she begins to panic and hides her phone in her gem he travels inside to find it while exploring several of her deepest life memories until he arrives at the point in time where roe shattered pink or so it would seem pearl shows steven that pink's gem is still intact revealing that she was never really shattered which leaves him confused he's transported into one last memory where we see rose talking to pearl about how this will change everything she's excited about this fresh new start she's going to have with her in which she says i can't exactly shatter myself and so she shapeshifts into her true form revealing how rose quartz was actually pink diamond herself we then get a backstory revealing pink's desire to have her own colony and she was given the earth to harvest resources for gems but then she gets bored and pearl encourages her to have fun by traveling to the planet's surface so she disguises herself as a rose quartz to blend in with the other gems in secret while exploring earth until she discovers the truth behind colonization and sees how it destroys planets by draining resources she tries to persuade yellow and blue to stop the colony but they won't listen with no other option she pretends to be rose quartz and starts a rebellion against the gems to leave earth thus she pretends to be both pink and rose and starts a rebellion amongst her own people to free earth at least until she decides to end the war by faking our death which results in the diamonds corrupting the remaining gems on earth in their anger this twist is the worst way they could have possibly advanced the plot as there's not only numerous reasons why it makes no sense but it also completely destroys the lore and pink's character by having rose reveal that she was pink diamond living a double life it shatters the integrity of her character by saying that this freedom fighter and inspiring rebel that we've been following for the last four seasons was never real it tells us that the background and upbringing that made rose who she was in the first season which was very important to both her and steven's character development didn't actually happen instead of being a rebel fighting a fascist empire for the freedom of gems she was just one of the fascists who tricked her own people into killing each other because she wanted to preserve life on earth she didn't fight the empire because she cared about the freedom of gems or the planets that they were destroying just the earth this character that was carefully built up since the very first season and a source of conflict for many of the characters was a fabricated lie all for the sake of a plot twist that damages the immersion of its world as opposed to making it more interesting just the questions that this twist raises alone are enough to express how poorly handled and thought out it was like if pearl was supposed to know all this why did her fusing with garnet and amethyst not reveal her deepest secrets it stated very clearly that fusion allows you to understand each other and learn everything there is to learn about one another so why didn't this result in pearl's secret getting exposed why is it that blue and yellow are incapable of recognizing steven's gem as pink diamond until that stupid ghost mind trick and reunited they knew right away that steven was rose and can virtually sense any other gems so why couldn't they tell that she was a diamond and wouldn't they question where this quartz came from there's even a flashback of blue witnessing rose and pearl fighting in the battle that resulted in garnet's creation yet she couldn't sense that rose was pink during that fight how was rose able to change the placement of her stone it doesn't matter if they shapeshift they're still the same gem from before pearl and rose fusing would have made some kind of diamond not rainbow quartz amethyst and steven fusing should have made some kind of diamond instead of smoky quartz and wouldn't rose dying in order to become steven just mean that she's back to being a diamond if pink was really fighting to liberate gems from homeworld why does she leave the off color stranded there remember those off-color gems that were with lars remember how it was stated that there's hundreds of gems like them that are branded by the empire as defective and useless to their cause so they're ordered to be killed did pink just not care about them if she was really fighting for the freedom of gem she would have tried to find a way back to homeworld to rescue them in spite of us being told that she was fighting for the freedom of gems the implication that she just left those off collars to be trapped and killed is never brought up all she cared about was preserving life on earth and just left them to die because she didn't think it was her problem if all pink wanted was to protect earth and free the gems from the empire why did she pretend to be someone else and trick her own people into fighting each other if she was fighting to protect earth she had no reason to lead this stupid double life she should have just broken away from the authority and confronted the other diamonds as pink diamond and not rose quartz that way there would have been an honesty to her war and all of her subjects would be fighting with her instead of cutting her allegiances in half and it would have avoided her character being retconned because that would have made pink diamond a real beacon of freedom and liberation that she was built up to be as rose why did she not bother to leave any information to stephen about the diamonds she forced pearl to keep all this secret and now her son has no way of knowing how to defend the earth if they come back why didn't rose ask garnet to use her future vision to see the possible outcomes of pink being shattered even if it is an absolute she's still capable of seeing multiple possibilities at the very least she could have used garnet to prepare herself for the corrupting light to just do something to minimalize the damage and those are just questions from the top of my head if i were to put more time into it i'm pretty sure i would be asking more questions but let's get to other issues this twist causes first of all not only does this twist reveal that the rose quartz we've been building up for four seasons was never real but it also replaces her with pink diamond and it completely botches her up from season 1 to season 4 rose was being developed as an inspiring rebel who risked her life to grand freedom to other gems and because the war was becoming so dire she was forced to make tough decisions to protect her friends and comrades she wasn't a completely moral person but she was still honest with those she was close to in spite of making that decision she was still a good person who did everything she could to keep her new home safe and in one single two-minute plot twist a single pale rose undoes all of that you see instead of starting out as a rebellious leader she actually started out as a spoiled self-entitled brat she was constantly pestering yellow and blue to give her a colony because she felt her status as a diamond demanded it and she does so in a really rude and juvenile way she was only thinking about what she wanted as opposed to what was best for the empire even being called out by yellow for her immature outburst and then when she actually does get her colony she decides to trash it because she doesn't want it anymore then in her plan to protect the earth by staging a rebellion against herself she was basically pulling an emperor palpatine messing around with both sides of the war and deceiving her own subjects into killing each other she was deliberately lying to her subjects about who she really was making both sides fight over who they thought was the enemy the gems loyal to the rebellion and the gems loyal to pink diamond were both being toyed with and risking their lives for a lie and pink was completely okay with watching her subjects killing each other for this lie that is so thoroughly deceitful and grossly sinister and definitely not something a heroic rebel would do staging a fake rebellion and making your own subjects fight each other is incredibly villainous and the rest of the show never addresses that they completely neglect to question the dark implications that pink was doing all this messed up stuff and it just feels wrong not to mention that it makes her actions in bubbling up bismuth even more horrible because now it seems that she didn't bubble bismuth because she was an extremist taking her rebellious nature too far instead she had her bubbled because it would have blown her cover bismuth was the only one who knew that rose sword was incapable of shattering gems if she was unbubbled and somehow heard about roe shattering pink with the sword she would have revealed it was impossible and that was something that ping couldn't risk she actively imprisoned one of her closest friends and lied to the others about what really happened to her just to keep her identity a secret once again pink was only thinking about herself and not the gems that she was sworn to protect then when she made the decision to fake her death she did so without thinking about the consequences of traumatizing her siblings she basically egged them into using the light that shattered and corrupted all the gems on the planet's surface causing the deaths of all the gems that got caught in her rebellion pink diamond in her carelessness is responsible for the genocide of all the gems on earth and provoking the remaining diamonds into destroying the planet now you could make the argument that she had no way of knowing this was going to happen except she would totally know that they would react to her death like this pink new blue and yellow better than anyone in spite of their arguments they're clearly shown to have a close relationship with her and cared about her well-being pink just made her situation even worse because now it has the scorn of her sisters the fact that she thought they would encounter strike in response to her death is absolutely ridiculous so not only is pink a horrible person she's also a complete idiot and it gets even worse because the last thing ping did before faking her death was ordering pearl to remain silent and never speaking of this to anyone this comes across as a huge red flag because in spite of fighting for the equality of all gems she's still abusing her power over pearl by ordering her to stay silent about all this she still made her keep her emotions bottled up for thousands of years as a direct order from a diamond she never considered how pearl would feel and you can clearly see how badly she was affected by all this she was forced to stay quiet about the truth which resulted in her stress and having nervous breakdowns whenever it was brought up she played a hand in the event that made the diamonds retaliate and destroy everything and she's not allowed to talk about it to anyone this look on pearl's face really spells out how she feels responsible and guilty for all this heavily regretting what she's done did pink not consider that maybe pearl might be experiencing just a little bit of trauma from this did she just not trust her to keep a secret without forcing her to bottle up her emotions and even after that she got hundreds of innocent rose quartz gems bubbled and imprisoned they're not guilty of anything yet they're being punished as a result of pink hiding amongst their ranks throughout this whole scheme pink never once considered the long-term consequences for her actions and it's a complete [ __ ] of backfires as she ends up doing the complete opposite of what she set out to do instead of protecting the earth she just put it in greater danger and instead of helping others she just made things worse for all of them remember that line from steven in storm in the room where she ended up hurting everyone despite not wanting to well she did hurt everyone she hurt stephen by forcing him to bear responsibility for her mistakes she heard pearl by forcing her to bottle up her emotions she hurt garnet by line door and causing the death and corruption of all her friends and comrades she hurt amethyst by not helping her to deal with her insecurities she hurt bismuth by betraying her and locking her away for thousands of years she hurt lapis by getting her trapped in a mirror with her gem cracked which led to her being mentally unstable she hurt greg by leaving him to take care of steven by himself she hurt blue and yellow by faking her death and leaving them to grieve over her for thousands of years she heard all the gems who were loyal to her by making them fight each other and getting them corrupted she hurt all of them for a woefully misguided scheme as a result of her own selfishness she was unbelievably close-minded and didn't think about the consequences that may result from her choices or how they would affect others pink only did what she wanted and what she thought was honorable but there's nothing honorable about what she did she treated her status as a diamond as just a game and was needlessly bratty about it she ran away from her responsibilities and caused a war destroying lives in the process she betrayed one of her closest friends and locked her up she was being hypocritical about telling people to be themselves when she herself wasn't being her true self she was willingly sacrificing her own subjects while lying to them about the enemy they were fighting against she thoughtlessly dragged others in her plan to kill herself in getting gems punished in the process she forced her closest companion to bottle up her emotions without thinking about how it would affect her mental health instead of actually standing up for what she believed in she just beat around the bush and didn't stand up to blue and yellow as herself instead of being honest and a real leader to her people she just abandoned those who needed her and shrugged off her responsibilities she left her sisters to believe she was dead traumatizing them and leaving them to grieve over their loss she basically caused the experiments on chatter gems to create force fusions and the cluster that would have destroyed the earth she dumped all her problems on her son leaving him to fix her mess and to top it all off she'll never be held accountable for any of this because she was already dead effectively before the series even began everything this twist does to so thoroughly destroy rose character by completely replacing her with pink diamond is minomily asinine it completely reverses so many character arcs and turns her into a spoiled brat even her objective to preserve human life on earth ends up being twisted into something disturbing now it feels like she only cared about them because she was fascinated by them like a scientist fascinated with his research material and i'm sure a lot of people are gonna try and justify this twist by saying that it shows how flawed she was and how those flaws make her more interesting because it's more believable and realistic and i need those people to stop right now because she was already flawed as rose when it was revealed she shattered pink diamond after bubbling bismuth for wanting to do the same thing and i really need to stress out this next point there's a very clear difference between a character being flawed and a character being completely unlikable spongebob squarepants is flawed twilight sparkle is flawed pink diamond is completely unlikable rebecca sugar went on record saying she planned this twist from the very beginning and she admits to pink being a horrible person and her character being written intentionally if that's the case that just makes the twist even worse sugar had all those years of production to think about how bad this idea was and in all that time the realization never came to her she was clearly going for a morally grey character but that doesn't work because pink diamond's actions are 100 immoral even if she had good intentions her actions are absolutely unjustified and make no sense whatsoever she's way too impulsive and is constantly making mistakes that end up hurting others having a reason for doing something doesn't change the fact that what she did was raw sugar stated that the show doesn't really have a villain despite the fact that the diamonds are clearly portrayed as villainous and pink's actions throughout the show are really villainous she hurts so many people because she wanted to pretend to be a rebel she orchestrated a fake war amongst her own people faked her death forcing her family to grieve for her forced pearl to keep the truth hidden also she could escape her responsibilities and goof around with the funny humans this doesn't make pink a morally grey character it makes her into a complete monster rose was already a morally grey character and this terrible twist completely screws that up it twists her from a flop but sympathetic rebel who had to make tough choices to a horrible manipulative schemer who tricked her own people into killing each other and traumatizing her sisters by faking her death this is luke skywalker from the last jedi levels of character assassination taking someone that a lot of people liked and completely changing them in the worst ways possible i really wanted to believe that in spite of her flaws that rose was a caring person who did what was best for everyone but in the end she only did what she thought was best for herself and it only gets worse from there because not only does this twist completely destroy pink's character but it also drags pearl down with her you remember how we talked about pearl having this really uncomfortable romantic obsession with rose the very thing that her entire character seemed to revolve around you also remember how pearls are literally made to be slaves as stated by peridot yeah this is where things get really gross pearl was a slave falling in one-sided love with her owner and i really shouldn't have to explain what's wrong with that apparently this was supposed to explain why pearl was so obsessed with rose for the last four seasons but it does so in an extremely dark and twisted way and it completely deletes the concept of pearl being her own gem and being a renegade all those times she said she belonged to nobody were just as much of a lie as pink being a thoughtful caring leader no matter how ping treated her she was and still technically is her slave she was never freed from her owner and had such an inherently twisted power dynamic especially with her being under a seal of silence for thousands of years a slave falling in one-sided love with their master is a really unsettling idea and it's made even worse by the fact that pearl and rose were supposed to be the first lgbt couple in steven universe before ruby and sapphire showed up it would have been one thing if the show acknowledged how messed up this was but this plot point goes completely unacknowledged it gets to the point where pink's original pearl and steven universe's future is also revealed to be a slave falling in one-sided love with her owner and steven's pearl describes it as oh that's adorable oh god no what's the matter with you this is unbelievably nasty and for it to be treated as cute and charming is i don't even think the word exists to describe how gross and horrifying that is it completely derails pearl's entire character by turning her grievances over the loss of a loved one into something very disturbing and even after that it just keeps getting worse because the rose was pink diamond revelation completely destroys the lore causing the show's entire universe to completely collapse and implode on itself following a single pale rose we have pearl explaining her point of view where she basically just says a bunch of things that don't align with what we've already been shown up to this point so this entire alternate point of view flashback is basically just another red car they even rewrite how the human zoo was blue diamond's idea instead of pinks it's really suspicious just how badly this story from pearl is completely detached from everything that's come before now and it just feels like a flimsy excuse to justify the existence of this terrible twist and this whole thing about how pink was never shattered and she was actually rose is such a boring and half-baked idea and on reflection it makes the entire background of the show less interesting by changing the story to make it so rose never shattered pink so that stephen can remain justified in being a pacifist who hands forgiveness to genocidal tyrants it severely hurts the bittersweet tone that they were establishing it tries to erase the concept of moral ambiguity in a show focused so heavily on flawed characters on all sides of a war and how tough decisions have to be made for the greater good so much of the show's backstory revolved entirely around the crystal gem rebellion and now we're being told that the whole thing was based on a petty and horribly thought out lie because pink didn't start out as a rebel and her fight against the empire wasn't about liberation she was an extremely privileged and entitled brat who avoided responsibilities and didn't deal with her problems appropriately and the only thing she cared about was earth's ecosystem it takes deep and complex themes about war and the struggles that come with it and turns it into an incredibly generic good versus evil scenario i know i've gone on for a very long time about how bad this twist is but that's only because it's just so bad it's like a stupid fan fiction idea that they threw in completely out of nowhere like they just decided to go with the most shocking and ridiculous twist possible without actually thinking through the implications or how it would fit into the story and it all leads up to the final nail in the coffin the season five finale change your mind this is possibly the most badly rushed finale that i've ever seen in a cartoon and i saw the season five finale to samurai jack it literally just feels like a huge checklist of things that the staff still need to do before the show ends the very first scene is just blue talking about how she won't cave in and let them go until stephen apologizes for fusing with connie and then immediately caves in and lets them out and from that moment forward it's nothing but going through that checklist of things they still have to do uh oh yellow is still a bad guy let's make her a good guy now but wait we still need to have steven fuse with pearl oh and we also have to have steven fuse with garnet oh and we also have to give connie her new sword even though she ends up doing nothing with it oh and after that we have to have the crystal gems fused into obsidian and then we have to have steven's conflict about seeing himself as his own person and not ping completely resolved in about two minutes and then we have to pull off a [ __ ] redemption for white diamond in the last seven minutes of the entire story and just forgive the fact that she destroyed trillions of life forms because they didn't fit her vision of perfection at least samurai jack ended with the hero actually killing the genocidal piece of [ __ ] then we need to have lars return to earth and reunite with sadie then we need to cure all the corrupt gems then we have to resolve the feud between amethyst and jasper for everything the show has been building up to this finale is extremely anticlimactic with so many things being crowded and crammed into 45 minutes it feels like each of these things should have been given their own episode to properly build up and resolve these remaining loose ends but they just sort of put them all together in this lame fight against what and because of how quickly they resolve all these plot threats it just feels like a string of coincidences as opposed to being major events blue and yellow who've been running this empire for thousands of years suddenly don't want to do it anymore after they each got a 2 minute pep talk from steven and the reason is because they realized this empire wasn't something they wanted because it was damaging their relationship with pink and on a surface level i do like the idea of blue and yellow coming to terms with their actual feelings towards the empire in spite of their devotion to it they also had a really close relationship with pink and their continued years of service after her supposed shattering acted as a constant painful reminder of the family they lost now they realize it didn't make them happy but were too scared of white's power and influence but it's not executed very well because of how quickly they shift from being bad guys to good guys after thousands of years of serving the empire it just feels unbelievable we could have gotten an extended arc maybe even half the season about blue and yellow trying to make a turn for the better coming to term with their fears and expressing regret for all the things they did but instead of that it happens in three short minutes getting crammed into this finale when there's already a bunch of stuff going on and the episode is unable to properly develop their reformation even the big moment where stephen fuses with pearl and garnet for the first time is lackluster because there was no build up to it they didn't put enough time into any major development in steven's relationship with either of them at least not recently they were supposed to be huge steps in steven's connection with them and they just fly by without any real thought being put into it it's just something that happens and there's no substantial emotion to it the same thing happens when they fuse into obsidian nothing about it is character-driven so it just feels like a random power-up and if the goal is to get up to white diamond to confront her why don't any of the gems just shapeshift into something that can fly why doesn't lapis just grab steven and fly him up to the robot head the battle between the robot and obsidian is a force climax so obsidian appearing only happens because it's part of that checklist and then you have white diamond's villain reformation and it's really just as bad as i remember it white diamond's transition from the main villain to an ally of the heroes is the most forced contrived hastily written and laughably absurd villain reformation i've ever seen in my life first off the final battle against her is extremely underwhelming this all-powerful tyrant who was built up as the ultimate enemy is easily defeated and overpowered by steven's pink diamond no joke he literally curb stomps white as well as the other gems that she was mind controlling to increase her power if pink was really supposed to be this powerful the entire time why did this whole five-season conflict have to happen in the first place why the rebellion why the numerous invasions on earth why the giant robot fight ping could have simply overthrown white diamond and liberated all the worlds the diamonds were controlling and after that steven just uses some comeback and suddenly white goes off color that is asinine you seriously can't be telling me that the supreme gem leader who killed millions of life forms and is feared by all who mention her was taken out with one roast line and that's it that would be like defeating ozai by throwing a bucket of water on him that is the most anticlimactic thing you could have possibly given us with all the setup that you were doing with this villain and after reuniting with his diamond stephen offers her a hand in forgiveness and resolves her of all wrongdoing but the problem is that she's done absolutely nothing to deserve it she led a galactic dictatorship that oppressed anything that didn't fit her view of perfection had thousands of planets destroyed to expand her empire had trillions of life-forms destroyed pressured the other diamonds into following her corrupted all the gems on earth experimented on shattered gems to create force fusions that traumatized garnet as well as the cluster that was going to destroy the earth and brainwash people against their will up to this point white has only made one appearance a 30-second cameo which only occurs at the tail end of the final season where she just dismisses steven and sends into pink's room before disappearing until the climax of this episode her character is horribly underdeveloped we never get any sort of in-depth look and dwight's motivations what drove her to do any of this her relationship with any of the other characters and it just makes her redemption even more forced and half-assed and aside from that we learn absolutely nothing about the diamond's background except for this empire that white made for herself where did they come from how were they created if diamonds don't have ages then why does pink act like a child there's a lot of questions surrounding the diamonds that are never answered and they're never going to be answered because this is supposed to be the end of their arc blue is good now yellow is good now and white is good now that's it that's all they decided to do with them it's so cheap and asinine that white diamond is just handed forgiveness on a silver platter when she's not only a literal mass murdering brainwashing psychotic but she's shown to have absolutely zero positive or redeeming qualities that warrant that forgiveness and when you look back on previous episodes it doesn't even make any sense stephen has been shown to hate other characters for far less severe actions than committing genocide on a galactic scale he hates kevin for being a stuck up teenager he was willing to sell out peridot in season 2 when she was trying to contact yellow he decides what sour cream in telling off his neglectful father he angrily tells jasper off when she tries to get back together with lapis but now when face to face with a galactic genocidal maniac stephen is being the worst pacifist ever and is giving her his friendship and forgiveness just because she's family to a character who was just established several episodes ago to be an absolutely terrible person it is the stupidest hypocritical most [ __ ] message that you could possibly teach to people in a show like this so steven is hateful of kevin for being guilty of rather trivial wrongdoing but is willing to forgive white diamond who's guilty of galactic mass murder and fascism and this is a really huge problem with stephen's character in the final season not only is he emotionally oblivious and inept he is the worst type of pacifist and apologist imaginable he's willing to mindlessly forgive terrible people for doing terrible things and doing nothing to hold them accountable for their actions he's actively disregarding the trillions of life forms who have suffered as a result of the empire and giving the diamonds a second chance they don't deserve and it ends up sending this rather harmful message to the audience because steven universe in its final season has this really aggressive leaning towards forgiveness no matter how bad vile or nasty a person might be we must never kill them and offering them forgiveness is the most absolute option to take and it might have been one thing if the actions of the character being offered forgiveness weren't so severe but the diamonds are literally responsible for a galactic mass grave they were fascists who killed disabled gems for being deemed useless to their cause they punish their subjects for fusing with different breeds of gems which are supposed to be a standard for non-traditional lgbt representation and identities they created weapons of mass destruction with the full intent of using them they brainwash individuals to follow their way of governing and for all these crimes stephen gives them a slap on the wrist and becomes friends with them this is still a showing that children and i don't particularly think that forgiving unforgivable individuals is a good lesson to teach them forgiveness isn't something that can be applied to every single thing and it certainly doesn't apply to literal genocidal supremacists forgiveness is something that you offer to people who are guilty of far less than what the diamonds are guilty of and there's simply nothing forgivable about what they've done if they want to teach a lesson then they should teach how some people just can't be redeemed with a pat on the back it's a harsher but much more important lesson to teach people and the way the show was originally meant to end like this is just really bland and tasteless but i suppose that's not what happened as the story of steven universe would continue for a little while longer with a tv movie as well as an eplog season under the name of steven universe future i've talked about the movie before and for what it's worth it does serve as a huge improvement over the show's later seasons i suppose it could be because my expectations of the movie were set relatively low after the season 5 finale but i do think it was pretty good the characters were fun it had a sympathetic villain done right with a motivation that actually made sense it tackled themes of abandonment and loneliness in a believable way and it had much better pacing probably because unlike the show itself the movie was made with a very clear three-act structure in mind in spite of its flaws the movie was a really big step in the right direction after the disaster that was season five and it actually made me interested in checking out steven universe future the staff showed with the movie that they were capable of making improvements to their work so i was willing to give future a chance to see how much it would improve over the original saga and it doesn't actually do that steven universe future has a number of problems that really weigh it down on a surface level it does seem like it's going back to the show's original roots with a return to form to what made season 1 so great it was much more episodic with the exception of an ongoing issue regarding steven's pink outburst it has a better sense of focus with not a lot of complicated stuff going on a lot of the stories are down to earth's slice of life scenarios and it had a relatively consistent daring schedule with episodes coming out every friday it did go on hiatus for about two months but compared to the years long wait for seasons four and five and the horrible steven bombs it was a lot better and as an eplog season it does put forth a relatively good effort in tying up loose ends pink's original pearl moving on from her abuser and finding a new relationship in steven's pearl the crystal gems accepting that steven is grown up and no longer a silly kid giving homeworld gems a new purpose after dismantling the empire the imprisoned rose quartz gems being freed providing closure to sadie and lars relationship and lapis experiencing growth from how awful she used to be though that isn't really a high bar to jump over considering her arc in the original show so if steven universe future is appearing to be an improvement over the original show where do the problems lie well the main problem doesn't seem to be coming from any of the side characters but the main character stephen himself the way he's written and the conflict involving his pink outbursts are very poorly executed the plot of the season is basically watching steven adapting to the changes around him coping with the passage of time how it's affected people in his life and steven starting to feel insecure about being left behind by his friends unsure of his own ability to move forward as a result he begins to feel unneeded and wonder if he still has a purpose in beach city and this does sound like an interesting conflict for most of the show's run he's always been acting as a figure for helping others but now he's in an environment where no one needs his help and since there's no one in town who can relate to this situation he doesn't think he can talk to anyone about this problem it's an arc about the inability to get help when he was always the helper as well as losing a sense of purpose steven grew up in a life where he had to constantly fix his mother's mistakes while teaching people how to fix their problems so i'm willing to buy the idea that he has a hard time adjusting to a new environment where he no longer has a problem to solve there's just one problem the way steven is written is absolutely terrible and the main reason why his character writing is so terrible is because steven in future is a different character he's a completely different person than who he was in the original saga in a way that makes him completely unrecognizable and before someone says that's the point because it said in a time skip and people are expected to be different over time with age there's still such a thing as doing it in a way that feels consistent with the character and that's the core issue nothing about the way steven is written here is consistent throughout the season stephen is constantly expressing behavior that doesn't fit him at all and apparently the reason he's acting like this is because he's dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder but i have a hard time believing that steven has been dealing with any kind of trauma since season 1. the vast majority of the original show has him experiencing basically no lasting trauma from all the stuff he went through even without a supportive care group steven was characterized as largely optimistic remember his reaction appeared that stressing out over the cluster that was going to destroy the earth he was totally chill about literal earth-shattering danger and in instances where he has to deal with a stressful situation like in mindful education or storm in the room the emotional trouble he's going through is completely resolved with no sign of lasting stress in the following episode it's really hard to believe that stephen is dealing with trauma over how he didn't mean to hurt anyone when his feelings towards it are literally resolved in the last 30 seconds of that episode and the following one is about him playfully pretending to be a robot while showing no signs of stress trauma or depression in a story that's completely detached from the events of mindful education maybe if we saw hints of his trauma in the first five seasons i would believe it but the staff was clearly not setting up an arc about dealing with trauma the way steven's trauma and his ping powers are introduced are completely random and out of nowhere there's no build up to it like they go oh look steven can do that now with no setup and it might not be so bad except for the fact that steven is portrayed as an aggressive angsty teenager who tries to yell all his problems away remember all that character development from the other seasons let's just forget all that and have steven act as a pretentious dick for a good chunk of the season he comes across as uncharacteristically selfish a lot of the time and in many points in between he's venting about other people for no justified reason in episode 1 he gets really impatient with jasper for being uptight over changes to gem culture when he's been a lot more patient with much more stressful situations like talking down the genocidal tyrants who were hellbent on destroying the earth and wanting to pick a fight with jasper is heavily contradictory to his more passivist nature in both the first five seasons and the movie back then he only fought in self-defense or when there was no other option but here not only is he picking a fight with jasper he's completely okay with beating her senseless and blasting her across the mountain then in episode 4 it's really disturbing how he yells at volleyball in the healing chamber he just found out she's a victim of domestic abuse and he's completely okay with shouting at her just because he hates being reminded of pink he literally makes her curl up in a ball quivering in fear a pretty legit reaction from someone suffering from trauma as a result of physical domestic abuse and don't excuse it by saying he regrets doing it a second later because if stephen was written consistently he wouldn't have even done it in the first place he says he wants to undo the damage ping caused and then proceeds to throw a violent tantrum similar to the one where she cracked volleyball you're starting to see the issue steven is acting a lot like pink this season being really childish and throwing tantrums at people who did nothing wrong and i'm pretty sure that acting more like pink is a really bad sign and then we get to episode 5 which is the most hypocritical [ __ ] you will ever see from stephen you remember the episode where lapis was suspicious of that lovable ruby from hit the diamond and the other characters explain how wrong she is for being judgmental only to reveal that this lovable ruby was a dastardly trickster thus making lapis write about acting judgmental rendering the whole episode completely pointless well let's do that again but with steven being the needlessly judgmental one he spends the entire episode assuming that bluebird is up to no good and that she doesn't deserve his good graces which is absolutely insane since he was willing to be friends and family with mass murdering dictators without a second thought it's not even an interesting episode because of how obvious it is that blue bird is secretly a villain they keep doing these obvious fake outs to subvert your expectations but it's far too apparent that this is all a red herring making the viewer lose interest in the situation and it just hits home how incredibly biased the series is in determining who gets redeemed and who doesn't kevin and blue bird are hated and suspected by stephen but the diamonds are completely okay and the hypocrisy doesn't end there as episodes 7 9 and 10 come along and show how steven is really bad at remembering lessons from previous episodes the seventh episode has him characterized as learning to manage himself better while making steps to be more responsible okay some actually good characterization but then in episode 9 he acts in a manner that's completely contradictory to episode 7 where he panics over lars and sadie breaking up while moving forward with their own lives he just goes back to being stressed out and immature in spite of an episode where we just saw him being mature and in control of himself he also comes across as really nosy where he feels the need to interfere with other people's lives even trying to bait sadie and lars into getting back together when it's none of his business remember how he went on and on about helping people by letting them be themselves he's literally not allowing people to be themselves then in episode 10 in spite of learning how to accept change he acts really aggressive towards the concept of change he literally names all the plants after the people he just got in a fight with over moving forward with their lives and when he talks to the lars plan he goes on a rant about lars leaving to be with the off colors and then he goes on a really dumb rant about being annoyed by the other gems because he wants to believe he knows better he's extremely ungrateful towards them which is really disrespectful to their friendship after everything they've been through he even goes so far as to chastise amethyst for being more mature seriously you're getting mad at amethyst for being more mature when you previously praised her for being more mature that is such a load of crap even in the episode guidance which was just a couple of episodes earlier he apologizes to her for not trusting her with the gem mentor program amethyst actually knew what she was doing in that situation and he came to realize that he was wrong for trying to change things for himself and now all of a sudden he's angry with amethyst just because he wants to feel superior that's just petty and when the time finally comes for steven to actually talk about his issues after the cactus fight he just says that he said enough which is stupid as that was the opportune moment for him to talk about his problems he's given a clear chance to fix things and he actively makes the decision to not fix them then in episode 13 he tries to get connie to marry him and trap him in a fusion estevani even though he has absolutely no plans for how they're gonna live together and in the following episode he spends the whole time freaking out because he didn't get to marry a 14 year old girl which is apparently more traumatic than anything else he's been through and then we get to episode 15 where i believe that stephen is at his absolute worst i could forgive snapping at jasper acting condescending towards amethyst yelling at volleyball being suspicious of bluebird after forgiving the diamonds trying to force sadie and lars into a relationship being disrespectful towards his family when talking to a cactus maybe even trying to get connie to marry him before she's ready but none of that compares to what he does to greg in episode 15. this is supposed to be the episode where steven learns the origin of his last name but what really stands out is how unfairly judgmental he is towards grey he gets angry at him for leaving his parents and trying to start a new life for himself claiming that he was being ungrateful in spite of knowing that they weren't supporting him even seeing firsthand that they never bothered to read any of the letters he sent them greg tries to explain to steven that he doesn't know what they were like and yes greg is right stephen doesn't know what they were like this entire show was forced at gunpoint to only see things from steven's perspective and greg's parents never make a single physical appearance steven doesn't know what his parents were like because the show never bothers to make an episode where he meets them and because of the steven only perspective we could never get an episode where stephen is in present just to give him some breathing room so we never get an episode where greg could reflect on the time he spent with his relatives even the audience doesn't know what they were like and because greg was the one who had to put up with them we have no choice but to take his word for it and then stephen has the absolute goal to say that his father is just as bad as pink and how the problem isn't how he's a gem but how he's a universe and just for good measure he deletes the photo that he took of his father just to spite him what the hell is wrong with this piece of [ __ ] where does he get off comparing greg to pink the guy who actually raised him and took care of him since he was a baby he actually supported stephen throughout his life he was there for his son he was more of a responsible adult than his mother ever was he was a loving caring father who was actually thoughtful of others and cared about steven's feelings and even if he wasn't perfect he always did his best to give stephen a good life the previous episode literally ended with grey comforting his son after stephen vented about his fears of dying at any moment and now steven is calling him a shitty parent because he might have been a shitty son which are two completely different things and denounces his namesake just despite greg who was an actual caretaker over pink then he goes ballistic on the van and crashes it steven literally almost killed greg because he went on another one of his pink temper tantrums and needlessly lashed out at him for a petty and stupid reason yes i'm sure steven would have wanted a normal life where he didn't have to deal with his mom's problems but this is implying he isn't grateful for the life he has now he has friends and family who love and support him and he's regarded as a hero across the galaxy for dismantling the empire stephen is absolutely awful this season nothing about his behavior is justified and he repeatedly goes off on people for the dumbest reasons he's constantly acting hypocritical and failing to learn lessons from previous episodes while actively refusing to seek help for his mental breakdowns he's ungrateful spiteful disrespectful and straight up spoiled and he's also stupid like incredibly stupid what the hell did they do to steven's iq this season there's a bunch of episodes where he does stupid things for stupid reasons because the writers need him to be stupid for the plots to work in episode 2 he's a complete [ __ ] with no awareness of his surroundings and is constantly forcing gems into jobs they're not suited for causing utter chaos as a result this is another episode where in spite of previously telling people to be themselves steven doesn't allow anyone to be themselves he's completely okay with causing mayhem and disregarding amethyst messing with people's jobs because he feels like they should be doing something different from when they were on homeworld he doesn't even think about how these new occupations are putting their old positions to good use for the town amethyst even tells him they were given a choice to have these jobs instead of being forced into them but steven doesn't want to listen and just wants to throw things out of order regardless of how much sense it makes seriously why did he give a balloon handling job to someone with a literal pincer for a hand then in episode 3 instead of just being honest with the rose quartz he just keeps his feelings buttled up inside and lets them think there's nothing wrong dude this really isn't that hard just talk to them about how weird it is that they look like your mom in fact why is this even a problem if steven has moved on from his mom why does he still have her tape with him why does he even have it anywhere near the vhs considering what he just learned about her in the movie you'd think he would have cut her out of his life by now steven shouldn't be having a hard time suppressing memories of his mother and he certainly wouldn't be caving into them and having these fits the solution to steven's problem is really simple and yet he never takes the time to actually solve it he just has to get a therapist and discuss these things with someone he never thinks that he might need one until after he turns into a giant pink godzilla that nearly destroyed the town it can't be because of a money issue because greg is still stinking rich from those 10 million dollars and he's managing a ban going on tour i'm pretty sure that grey can afford to pay for a therapist even in episodes where he's given a clear chance to talk to the gems he never takes the chance to do it the cactus episode brings up a lot of issues and they go completely unacknowledged even in the final episode they don't show stephen getting a therapist he just says that he got one and he got it completely off screen everything about steven's character and future is completely backwards he was really grown up at the end of the movie and now he's written as an incompetent buffoon he was all about spreading peace and now he just gets angry at everything at the drop of a hat and in spite of going through so many situations about how learning how bottling up your emotions isn't good for you he's constantly bottling up his emotions until they explode steven should be a lot smarter and more mature than this the way he's written a lot of the time just feels really underwhelming as he constantly goes between learning and forgetting lessons while flip-flopping between being incredibly stupid and incredibly angry if they wanted to do an arc about stephen dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder it's far too late into the series to do that as they did nothing to foreshadow an arc about dealing with ptsd he was clearly keeping it together by the end of the movie and like i said before he showed no signs of lasting trauma during the first five seasons now he's just suffering from ptsd completely out of nowhere at the last minute maybe they were trying to develop him in real time but it doesn't work in the majority of the episodes it just keeps coming out in random outbursts and nothing about it is believable no sensible person would be dealing with their stress like this and if they are those people need help because this is not a good way to deal with it and another thing that makes nothing about this situation believable is that nobody notices the very obvious signs that something's wrong with him when stephen yells at volleyball pearl doesn't talk to him about it the cactus episode ends with the gems asking steven if he needs to talk about something and they never talked to him about it just because he said he said enough there's an instance in episode 14 where stephen has a heart to heart with greg and it looks like they're finally gonna start exploring his trauma after they just made a big deal out of it but the next episode is just about them going on a road trip and they never acknowledge anything that happened at the hospital even when the car crashes as a result of steven's outburst greg just takes it as an opportunity to tell him that he's proud of his son for being honest it's only in episode 16 when the other gems actually try to confront stephen about his outburst but by then it's already too late they didn't talk to him when they were supposed to and now he's closing himself off and getting more aggressive by the time they acknowledge how the other characters didn't help him when they should have they completely rushed through the moment instead of pacing it out properly and i think the reason why this ends up happening is because steven universe future shares the same two big problems that the original had not only does it still have filler in a season this short and limited but it also has the steven only perspective that limits the scope of the story the episode's guidance bluebird bismuth casual and a very special episode contribute absolutely nothing that's an entire fifth of the season wasted on pointless stuff that could have been spent on developing steven's ptsd more appropriately even the episode everything's fine is nothing but cringe comedy until the last two minutes and because of the steven only perspective we don't get any episodes where we see other characters adjusting to their new lives maybe an episode where lapis confronts jasper and they sort out their differences or pearl developing a relationship with volleyball and officially moving on from pink or connie studying for her finals stories that explore the lives of the other characters instead of just making it all about stephen and with these two problems combined the storyline of the entire season is horribly rushed especially the last three episodes because just like in the original series several plot points are completely resolved off-screen and we only get to see very small fragments of the world we don't get to see lars adventures in space the new beach city government or how the diamonds are running homeworld because steven isn't there by only focusing on steven and never breaking from his perspective everyone and everything else is nothing but a tool for moving the story forward and there's also a bunch of inconsistencies that are really irritating jasper was handed out to be moving on from being a power obsessed warrior but now all of a sudden she's a power obsessed warrior and in spite of pearl supposedly moving on from pink she tells volleyball that she didn't stop hurting meaning she didn't move on from pink why does pearl still have any sort of emotional attachment to pink after we've seen so many times at this point how horrible she was and for that matter why does pearl shapeshift into little stephen we already know that pearl hates shape-shifting and it also contributed to some of her trauma since shape-shifting played a role in the plan that got all her friends killed and corrupted but now she's willing to shape-shift for the sake of a stupid game and in the fight against the cactus why are the gems so easily thwarted by this creature garnet can grow the size of her gauntlets pearl can shoot lasers and amethyst can generate electricity with her whips why are they easily overpowered by the cactus despite having the upper hand and then when steven runs away the three main gems never consult bismuth lapis or peridot about steven having violent outbursts and that he just ran away from home why aren't they calling for help when there's a very serious problem going on and why are they still using pink's corpse in order to generate drama instead of writing antagonists with irredeemable qualities to attention to the show they just make 90 of everything bad to ever happen pink's fault they refuse to commit to a character being a villain and instead just push all the more serious faults onto ping because she's dead and thus can't be redeemed it's just become an easy way out at this point it feels like the story they wanted to tell what steven was about for getting past mistakes and being doomed to repeat them but nothing about the way it's written gives the themes the strength that they need the way they keep resolving things in the last minute just feels forced lazy and way too fast the pacing is just all over the place and stephen himself is such an emotionally unstable prick who refuses to help himself he's clueless dense and only ever thinks of himself like recognizing someone's maturing to better themselves being then countered by that same person being a hypocrite is totally called for and that's not including how much of an ass pull it is that steven keeps getting new powers every other episode steven getting new powers has always sort of been an ass pull but at this point they're just being treated like plot devices these powers are apparently tied to his emotions or whenever it's convenient for the plot and it's really far-fetched that it's only happening now there's no consistency to how they work like sometimes steven has full control over them and then suddenly he doesn't know how they work there isn't even an explanation for how these powers are tied to his trauma and frankly seeing that pink had this many powers this whole time is absolutely ridiculous as it just further emphasizes how she could have easily beaten the other diamonds if pink had all these destructive capabilities and out of nowhere powers why didn't she use them during the war if they wanted to go for a twist where we see these new abilities and get swept up by how cool they are before dropping the bombshell that it was all symptoms of steven's trauma it was done sloppily and with no foreshadowing and it all leads into the finale which is badly rushed in every sense of the word first of all the episode homeworld bound is more or less just an excuse to show how the diamonds have been redeemed and it still feels undeserved their turnaround is a terrible 180 with no proper build up they just gave them the final touches of a villain reformation to get people to stop complaining about it and it feels unnatural all they did was show the end result of a character arc instead of showing all the important stuff that happens in the middle they just tell the audience that they're good now and expect people to just accept such an abrupt change if you want to redeem the diamonds at least blue and yellow you need to show actual consequences and progression in order for their reformation to feel deserved this doesn't feel deserved it just feels compulsory then the episode everything's fine is nothing but cringe comedy that could have easily been cut out and replaced with something that would have actually added weight to the story it goes too far with its dark humor and spends the majority of the episode treating a dark and serious situation in a really light-hearted way it would have been much better if the episode just played straight with itself over how dark it was it could have explored steven's emotional state seeing him progressively lose his mind and break down instead of just shoving it all in at the last minute and what really bugs me is how the thing that causes steven to have his final breakdown is really underwhelming all he does is vent about stuff we already know before just deciding he's a monster now what should have been the breaking point was something of actual consequence what if in his anger he accidentally punches pearl he would have cracked her eye like pink did to volleyball this would have been the final stop for him as his worst fear has been realized in spite of trying so hard to be a better person than his mother he still ended up hurting people he cared about like she did that would have been a good catalyst for steven to become corrupted fearing that he's no different from pink but this really generic venting at himself is really lacking in consequence since nothing of actual consequence has happened it's completely undercooked and a mediocre way for steven to turn and if you thought those episodes were rushed that's nothing compared to the final battle with steven's corruption the first third is just them going through the motions of everyone taking turns trying to heal steven before the second one where we have a really poorly done scene of everyone crying and trying to one up each other self-pity when this scene came up i couldn't believe how ridiculous it was and how badly it offset the tone of the episode it severely took away from the seriousness of the situation knocking it down from a genuine goal of helping stephen to haha random and pointless exchange this scene with everyone taking turns feeling sorry for themselves is really over the top which doesn't fit the mood and it feels like pointless filler that takes up too much time there is a moment where connie shows up to tell everyone to stop crying and actually do something and for what it's worth it does feel properly done she comes to the aid of her partner and gets everyone to take action coming across as an underdog when she's usually left out of more serious situations actually doing something instead of being a pointless background character but it really doesn't fix how badly the rest of the episode is paced and how anticlimactic it is immediately after this the entire conflict is suddenly solved by a hug just a few minutes after he turned into a hulking beast then steven just goes back to being normal and the episode immediately ends everything about steven's corruption happens far too quickly and it didn't even feel big enough in terms of scale the entire fight takes place at stephen's house and he never becomes a danger to beach city or even little home world why couldn't we see steven going somewhere and crushing a couple of buildings that would have made the situation a little more dire we could have had a scene of the gems and the diamonds acting to protect the citizens like they did at the end of the movie showing that there's actual stakes involved because people could get hurt but instead this high-stakes final battle just takes place at steven's house and it's resolved in two minutes with a hug and that's what hurts most about this climax there's no real investment in it it's anticlimactic horribly rushed and it just feels like a really bad way to represent healing trauma the season spends the majority of its time on pointless filler poorly building up stephen's issues while having him act uncharacteristically and then this bombshell is suddenly thrown onto us after 18 episodes and after they supposedly spent 18 episodes building up to this one they offset the tone by wasting the episode's run time on characters idiotically wallowing in self-pity and then two minutes to the end they resolve the entire conflict with a single group hug and it's the rushed group hug that heals stephen of his trauma and then having the final episode take place in a small time skip after all that intensity just feels like an extreme mood whiplash you can't have steven kill someone breaking down transforming into a giant monster crying after being healed and then suddenly have him acting all happy and cheerful at the very beginning of the following episode this isn't a realistic portrayal of dealing with emotional trauma it's bad storytelling something like emotional trauma should be taken much more seriously than this especially when you're a children's show trying to tackle a really serious issue steven universe drastically fails at portraying ptsd because nothing about stephen's behavior is a realistic reflection of how people with ptsd would act shouting at connie because she didn't agree to marry him almost killing greg wanting to kill white diamond and actually killing jasper are not things that you would associate with ptsd it's not just that they did nothing to set up steven's trauma it's that his trauma is portrayed very dishonestly his behavior is so exaggerated and hostile that it feels borderline psychotic to go through all the crazy stuff that happened to steven this season including actually killing someone and turning into a giant monster just to suddenly be acting all happy and cheerful like he's been cured or completely gotten over all of it is absolutely horrible everything about the finale just feels like it went through the motions without actually giving the audience a reason to feel invested in anything steven's breakdown his corruption and his healing are done so swiftly that you can't get invested in anything it's really underwhelming when the show was making such a big deal out of it and that's not even the worst part the worst part isn't the bad pacing the underwhelming drama the rush resolution or even the fight having low stakes the worst part of all is steven literally shattering jasper just to immediately bring her back to life now i think is the perfect time to explain just how absolutely awful it was that they killed jasper just to immediately bring her back the way they did having the main character immediately fix the murder they caused by bringing the victim back to life with unexplainable and inconsistent powers is the purest and highest level of [ __ ] right next to the rose was pink diamond twist how is steven a believable character now how is he supposed to learn a valued lesson if there's no repercussions in the mistakes he makes you can't just bring someone back to life immediately after you kill them steven shouldn't just be able to cry into a tub and fix that remember that scene where he was venting about how we can just fix anything and there would be no consequences now it's true steven can just do whatever the hell he wants because he can literally bring any character back from the dead first you bring back lars immediately after he got blown up just by crying on his corpse and now you mean to tell me that steven can fix broken gems and bring them back by crying into a tub so not only can the organic characters be immune to death but now the gem characters can be immune to death as well instead of hurting a lesson about how he shouldn't hurt people out of anger because he might go too far and do something irreversible now he doesn't have to learn anything because there's no consequences whatsoever now he thinks that all he has to do is cry on someone and that'll fix everything now there's no turmoil now there's no tension now there's no reason to care about anything that happens to anyone because the concept of death is no longer a revelation the show has absolutely zero stakes in it now because steven can just do whatever bad thing happens to anyone stephen and the diamond should not have the ability to bring back someone whose very soul has been clipped from their mortal coil why should the audience feel any ounce of fear for the characters if there's literally no casualties that couldn't immediately be fixed and before you say they would need the essence of all four diamonds mixed together to reverse shattering we literally see yellow reviving a dead shattered gem by herself in the next episode without combining her essence with the other diamonds if any of the diamonds could revive shattered gems at any time why was pink shattering treated as such a huge revelation why was her shattering treated as a big deal if it could easily be reversed the entire concept of shattering gems doesn't mean anything anymore because it can be reversed almost immediately gems being shattered was what made the threat of the diamonds feel so huge and real it's why they were so intimidating if you did anything that went against their wishes they could kill you in an instant but now you can be revived in an instant it's not even a process with any negative side effects jasper was revived 100 so casually with all of her memories intact and it didn't even take a toll on steven's life force nothing was sacrificed to bring jasper back from death the worst outcome for any character should be the possibility of them dying and never being able to come back but now death doesn't mean anything and there's no stakes what would have been better was if shattering gems was actually permanent and irreversible if jasper couldn't be brought back that would have added actual consequence to steven's actions it would have added so much to what the season was trying to convey how steven can fix every single mistake and there are just certain things he has to live with jasper shattering is what should have been his turning point we could have spent the next several episodes with him coming to terms with the permanent ramifications of his action slowly losing his sanity because he committed murder and can't do anything to take it back it would have made the build-up to the finale better it would have made the situation more believable so many things could have easily been fixed if they actually had the balls to keep jasper dead but no let's just revive her like she just wasn't immediately murdered five minutes ago let's completely break the show's internal consistency by introducing the ability to revive shattered gems out of nowhere let's completely destroy the show's integrity by deleting the threat of any of the characters dying it makes everything completely pointless it makes the conflict with the diamonds pointless it makes the episode bismuth and her invention of the breaking point pointless they completely change the consequence of shattering gems into something that's completely reversible immediately after killing them this just proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that rebecca sugar is a terrible storyteller because she didn't think a single thing through she didn't think about the unfortunate implications of the pink diamond twist or how to pace the overall story properly or how redeeming literal fascists is a bad idea or how gross it is for slaves to fall in one-sided love with their owners or even the repercussions of suddenly making it so that gems can just be brought back to life after being shattered the choices they made to tell this story are so insane and so nonsensical that it makes star vs the forces of evil's fourth season lotane it's pure incomprehensible madness okay i think it's time i wrapped up this video when i first started going through steven universe i wasn't expecting much i figured it would be a charming little cartoon with some cute stuff in it that would make it worth my time and for a while it was the first season of the show was surprisingly well put together the characters were very well developed and it told a fun collection of stories with good humor it was paced well and it had enjoyably dark story elements without being needlessly grim it was done in a way that really got me invested in this cast and this world rebecca sugar created and i wanted to see where it was going i was interested in seeing what else they could do with this material but it mostly ended up amounting to nothing it always felt like the first season of steven universe was laying the ground for a much bigger story but the rest of the series never managed to deliver on it with so much time wasted on pointless filler multiple character arcs being underdeveloped and going nowhere a storyline that went at a snail's pace plot twists and narrative choices that were poorly thought out and mishandling important themes in a way that felt lost amongst all the chaos going on it's a real shame that a show that started out so promising ended up being so disappointing it could have been one of the best cartoons of the decade and it's just not it ended up having too many problems with not enough positive qualities to even it out and it's a real shame because it had a lot of promise rebecca sugar was very passionate about the show and it did have a lot of good ideas but the way a lot of them were executed was just terrible honestly it's really tragic to see what ended up happening to this show what could have been something truly special ended up just being mediocre especially for something that's supposed to be a big icon of lgbt representation i know there are people who say cartoon network interfere too much cutting the show's budget bad scheduling cutting it short without giving the crew more time to work on it but in the end it doesn't really matter because we got what we got and what we got was a show that squandered its potential and oddly enough in spite of all its failings i still have respect for it it was a show that really strived to push the boundaries of what could be done with children's animation and allow us to explore certain ideas more freely than what we could do before it had a drive to change animation by tackling themes that no other show would do in such an open manner which is definitely something that should be acknowledged lgbt representation was seen as something really taboo in children's cartoons decades ago but now we're getting to a point where it no longer has to be that way and steven universe is one of those things that made it possible to explore these things more deeply it was an important stepping stone to let people try these things more freely without network interference at least in a way that would allow future shows to delve into these things better and for what it's worth i think it's a good enough accomplishment for rebecca sugar to make she wasn't a good storyteller but she was an ambitious artist who really cared about the medium of animation it's really telling that she wanted good things for the industry by making something that strived to create new opportunities for children's animation and even animation at large and i think that's why i respect steven universe so much it was made by people who really cared about what they were doing and wanted to elevate the medium of animation beyond just kid stuff even with all its feelings the people behind it had something meaningful to say the things that it talks about are things that should be talked about in cartoons for both kids and adults it really tried to do something good and be something more than just a cartoon which is actually pretty commendable even if rebecca sugar failed more than she succeeded she cared about animation and she cared about the audience she was trying to appeal to which is a lot more than i can say for other types of entertainment out there it's really different from something that's not only bad but you can tell so easily that the people behind it didn't give one [ __ ] about the subject matter they were representing and didn't care about the audience and just wanted to make money off of a popular ip so in the end steven universe is a show that i respect more than i actually like it and i think that's okay the 2010s is seen as a huge decade of animation as it was the decade that truly challenged the idea that adults can enjoy cartoons in the same way that children can enjoy cartoons and for better or worse steven universe is one of the big names that really help people challenge this idea and help animation to become a more widely appreciated medium and now that the decade is over with i'm hoping that storytellers and animation teams can take what we learned and experience these last 10 years and create better and more imaginative shows we might not get another samurai jack or mlp or last airbender but we might get something that's worth praise and attention so with all that said what will become of steven universe will it still be remembered as a show that helped create new opportunities for animation will it still have a legacy as something that revolutionized cartoons and what will rebecca sugar do now that it's all over well i suppose the answers to those questions are left for time to decide for now steven universe has had its time and run its course and although it might be hard to leave some things behind it's an important experience for us to learn from as we take what we experienced in the present and use that knowledge to move forward in the future hey everyone thank you so much for watching my big video on steven universe this one took quite a lot of time and work for me to put together and i really appreciate that you take the time to listen to what i have to say i'm gonna take a short break and then i'm gonna start working on another video so feel free to stick around for that also i really would appreciate it if you took the time to check my patreon and consider throwing in support for me every little bit helps and i think i'll really be needing it going forward for future projects i look forward to seeing you all again when my next project comes out and i hope you all be doing okay until next time take care of yourselves you

Channel: MisAnthro Pony

Views: 224,074

Rating: 4.7574077 out of 5

Keywords: steven universe, review, analysis, video essay, garnet, amethyst, pearl, greg, rose, pink, blue, yellow, white, diamond, spinel, connie, beach city, cartoon network, rebecca sugar, lars, lapis, peridot, bismuth, volleyball, movie, future, finale

Id: Ti3eEXaFdS8

Length: 139min 38sec (8378 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 17 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Bacxaber]

Fusion is a metaphor for sex though.