They Completely Ruined Steven Universe

[Music] I actually really like Steven universe and I really feel that it gets the short end of the stick in a lot of internet discussion well there are certainly things you can criticize it for I feel that its strengths often go overlooked when it's being discussed online and it's these strengths that make it into a show that I absolutely will vouch for is how this video would have opened if I was making it before change your mind came out change your mind is a stupid garbage story that takes all of the potential built up over the previous five seasons of the show and completely destroys it over the course of forty five excruciating minutes a police hear me out okay before this episode came out I was planning on and it started scripting a video about the strengths of Steven universe where I was going to talk exclusively about the positives of the show without really touching on any of the things that you can completely fairly criticize it for but change your mind killed any interest I had in making that video because it killed my interest in the show it was genuinely like the writers had my checklist of things that were good about it and then went through it point by point like okay how can we royally [ __ ] this up now if you like change your mind that's okay okay the nasty Internet man has now told you that you're allowed to have your feelings before he criticizes something but let's get started by talking about what were formerly some of the strengths of this show I've talked about it before on this channel but one thing this show gets very right is setups and payoffs it's very good at building up to things that are gonna happen or be revealed later on if you are wildly unfamiliar with the show and are just watching this video because I guess it's something to do the story of Steven universe sent us around an alien race called gems their whole thing is that their bodies are projections coming out of actual geological gems if their body gets seriously damaged they'll be fine and can just reform however if their gem gets damaged that can cause some serious problems or even death but they all have one no matter how inconvenient of a place on their body they have it it's on your right okay I guess you only get to have one eye no depth perception for you you [ __ ] in season one we meet such great characters as amethyst lapis and egg all of who are gems and all of who have one gem because that's how the species works and yes the fact that they have a body part called gems but also their species is called gems can get really confusing but I can't do anything about that but each gem has one gem except garnet garnet is a special case she has two gems one on each hand it's not something that's ever mentioned or talked about it's only something that you notice if you actually pay attention but it begs the question why why does this character have two gems when all the other members of her species we've met so far have one well as it turns out and is revealed at the end of the season garnet has two gems because she is two gems the answer that were given to the question raised by the show is that she was two characters this whole time existing together as one character using a previously established power called fusion which allows two or more gems to break down their individual bodies and form one bigger body between them the show managed to set up a mystery purely through visuals and background details that were never actually talked about this is a perfect little mystery because the audience has all of the parts they need to figure out the puzzle but certain parts of it aren't drawn to the audience's attention so they may not have picked up on it for the more eagle-eyed viewers they might have figured this out before it was even revealed the parts of the puzzle are all there you just need to put them together and this would have remained a neat little theory until it was confirmed by the show at which point the viewer gets the satisfaction of being told they were right people who noticed all the parts of the puzzle but hadn't thought about it enough or weren't smart enough to put them all together would also have got a different kind of satisfaction where they saw all of these previously separate elements come together in a way that totally makes sense and finally people who were even dumber than that and hadn't even noticed she had two gems in the first place like me will still get the satisfaction of once it's actually pointed out to them explicitly realizing that oh yeah it actually has always been like that and that totally does make sense in fact this answer recontextualizes events in ways that makes them make more sense than they did without the new information Steven universe is great at mysteries like this loads of things that you might have previously assumed were just the way that things were in this show actually have intricate reasons behind why they're like that mysteries and Steven you of us may even be set up without you realizing that their mysteries the show's core premise for example of a few aliens with whacky powers living together on earth may when you first see it just seem like a wacky premise but then as you watch further you find out that the actual reasons they live on earth are fairly intricate and tie really well into the story did you know that you can have a mystery in a show without pointing out that it's a mystery and drawing attention to it while loads of things love to just have a big wank over there mysteries like oh I wonder what the answer will be who are raised parents once this is books who is in this room but you don't really need to do that the only thing you need to have a mystery is simply to have a piece of a puzzle missing you can if you want have a big wank over what that missing piece might be but you definitely don't have to Steve both of these methods of conveying a mystery to your audience are completely acceptable although based only on the presentation of this video I invite you to take a wild guess at which one I might prefer one thing a writer does have to consider when they're drawing more and more attention to the fact that they've got a mystery is that their answer better be satisfying and when Steven universe pens age is building up to the answer to a mystery it's great at that as well if you've seen the show you know exactly what example I'm about to bring up and if you haven't this is like the biggest you spoiler in the show this is your last chance to drop out okay okay so there's a reveal that Steven universe's mother rose quartz actually used to be pink geo - pink pink diamond one of the four members of the diamond authority who are the bad space people the the whole group main characters are fighting against I explained that really well the gem Empire is the evil empire the antagonistic force that our main characters fight against and the four diamonds now three since pink diamond isn't around anymore are the evil dictators that rule over that Empire before the reveal the show spent a good long time making it very clear that there was a piece of the puzzle missing here we as the audience had been told that pink diamond had been murdered by rose quartz but this explanation didn't really make sense for a number of reasons and the show drew attention to that the weapon we're told rose quartz used to do it supposedly wouldn't have been strong enough to actually kill white diamond white diamond to fight Rebecca sugars the one who killed white diamond the weapon we're told she used to do it supposedly wouldn't have been strong enough to kill pink diamond whether or not she even would go so far as to kill someone is definitely brought into question and it's also brought into question how she would even have been able to do it there were no rose quartz soldiers in her entourage so how did a rose quartz with no business being anywhere near pink diamond get so close in the first place where were pink diamonds attendants her agates her sapphires the show makes it explicitly clear and basically slaps you in the face with its mystery going oh yeah there was certainly a piece of the puzzle missing here you bet your ass you're getting an answer to it soon now the pink diamond twist is understandably controversial as any big twist that like changes everything is but it is most certainly well executed for a mystery like this one where there's been loads of build-up to it not only does the answer we get have to make sense it also has to have a big impact or it will be a massive anticlimax and the pink diamond twist does both of these things first of all this answer makes sense it fits in pretty well with what's already being established whoever did this was already close to pink diamond someone her guards would allow to get near her and someone with the authority to cover it up afterwards someone was supreme authority someone like herself this also fits pretty well it fits in with what we already know about rose quartz and with what we already know about being diamond I would elaborate more on this but since I don't like this show anymore I can't be bothered I've already talked about how one of the reveals made sense and I don't really feel the need to do that again you're just gonna have to trust me that it does because I brought this one up to talk about its impact on the show and the impact that this twist has is huge not only does it recontextualize loads of events that have happened in the past Rose kept many things secret even from us but not from me I was the one she told everything it also has a huge impact on what might happen next Stephen is a human gem hybrid and gems that don't know him that meet him think that he just is his mother because in his belly is his mother's gem and now we know that that gem isn't just a quartz it's a diamond if he decides to reveal that the gem in his belly is literally pink diamond then any number of things could happen the evil gem empire that we've spent the entire series fighting against might even see Stephen as one of the four rightful rulers of them garnet being a fusion didn't actually really change much story wise so if there was this much build-up to the answer to that mystery it would definitely have run the risk of being huge anticlimax imagine for example a mystery where some mysterious masked hero has been helping out the characters of a show it's built up for ages who this mysterious person might be and it turns out he's some guy called Dave that no one has met before he's just some bloke yeah that's it you can see what the problem with that would be right but Steven universe really has the self-awareness to figure out which mysteries to hype up and which ones not to at least it used to another thing that Steven universe is nailed in the past has been Redemption arcs it's not been perfect at deciding who should get them but it's been good at executing them take peridots for example she's introduced as a villain a servant of the evil gem Empire it's also made pretty clear why she serves them and this is a really important part of the arc if you're going to break down someone's motivation so that you can change them into something else you first have to establish why they've got those motivations in the first place if you want a character's values to change they can't just change there needs to be a valid reason and often the reason that they believe to the things they previously believed is an important part of figuring out what actually might lead to them changing their mind peridots arc of loyal servant of the gem Empire - telling yellow diamond that she can stick it up her ass takes about half a season of her repeatedly having her views come into question and being confronted with evidence that opposes the things she believes but it's only really that first because she realizes that she's only really based her previous views on the way that she's been told and shown life should be she's been shown that things are done this way told them that's the way they should be done and has blind faith that those people telling her that are right she thinks everything should be like it is in the gem Empire why well because that's how everything is in the gem Empire then when out of circumstances she's forced to live with our heroes her worldview gets shattered pretty much on the daily let's look at the episode back to the bun in the gym Empire pearls are used as servants that's what they're made to be so peridot is appalled to learn that our pearl who rebelled against the gem Empire is a very skilled technician pearl can't build a thing like this why not girls aren't for things they're for standing around and looking nice and holding your stuff for you and we spend a full episode challenging that belief if pearls are really like you say they are then pearl isn't common at all she works hard every day to be greater than she already is that's not common that's amazing until eventually welcome to earth but you can [ __ ] see her process that no dumb little peridot face it's because the show really put in the legwork to change peridots mind that we can really get behind and believe this arc it's after several episodes of things like this happening that we eventually get a scene where she questions yellow diamond to her face peridot is still naive enough to believe that things are done the way they are in the gem Empire because that's the best way to do things so I was convinced that if she tells yellow diamond that she's figured out a better way to do things that yellow diamond might go oh good idea but when yellow diamond doesn't do that and instructs peridot to act against her own better judgment but all of these things she's learned over the course of the last season finally slot into place alongside one another and she loses the faith in that regime she once had but after that she's just completely finished changing sides right and she's just a full-on crystal gem from now on who believes everything that the heroes believe oh no right that's not how people work is it you really made her mad do you know what this means traitor to my homeworld after her angry outburst she still has a lot of growing to do she's not just completely changed allegiances and is no completely happy to go against her former allies mmm are you listening Carol he may now have made one active decision to support our heroes and go against the JEM Empire but previously her relationship with the gem Empire defined how she saw herself as a person how she valued herself how she rated her achievements how she distinguished right from wrong and now that that's all falling down around her she has to figure out who she is now and that's something we get to see I wonder if I'm bringing all of this up for a particular reason perhaps speaking of Arc's this show has a really good device for showing the progression of Arts I've already mentioned it in this video can you guess what is its fusion from when fusion is first introduced as a power we understand that two gems have to at least be on the same page to do it with each other if they're not in sync with each other when they try to fuse their fusion will fall apart so every time we meet a new fusion in the show Viet stevonnie or smoky quartz it marks a new chapter in the relationship between those characters the first time Steven and amethyst fuse for example only really manages to happen after a load of build-up to that point without them falling out freaking out but then figuring everything out and being there for each other this fusion really wouldn't have the same impact or really any impact other than whoa stephan and allyce's fused and so far they've put in at least some legwork to each new significant fusion that Steven gets I hope they keep doing that oh hey look after Stevens first fusion garnet is the one giving advice about all the fusion related stuff I wonder why she might be doing that maybe this is just a small piece of some kind of puzzle it might start fitting together later I'm so glad that all the little details matter in this show it just really shows the amount of thought that's been put into okay let's start talking about how they [ __ ] this all up change your mind is the name of the season five Steven universe finale and it wraps up basically all of the loose plot lines in this show and the stupidest most boring lazy ways possible the arc leading up to it saw a yellow diamond and blue diamond learning that steven has pink diamonds gem now of course they don't react to this by just putting aside all of their own core values and replacing them with Steven's values could you imagine after learning that he's got pink diamond in his belly they start listening to him they are under the impression that he literally is the person they've been mourning for thousands of years but that's as far as it goes they decide that they need to get white diamond involved what white diamond you mean the person that we've been building up to for years now for a very long time now when it comes to the diamonds we've known that there are four of them yellow blue white and pink it's at least implied that white is the most powerful and the highest ranking and after the pink diamond twist white diamond became the only diamond yet to make an appearance in the show when each of the other three diamonds got involved with the plotline of the show the impact had been huge which of course only makes sense given they're the most powerful and influential characters in this world I mean you know we've already been over the impact that pink diamonds reveal had and as that was happening we were still waiting for white diamond to finally appear and then finally after all this time you certainly gave everyone a scare they're all just thrilled to see you safe and sound did you have fun did you get everything out of your system I good welcome home pain holy [ __ ] this character has been so hyped that there were huge ripples in the fandom after we saw literally just her hand for a couple of seconds here she is standing right in front of Steven then after white diamonds reveal there are a couple of episodes in which she doesn't appear and these aren't great our heroes definitely should know that this is an incredibly high-stakes situation and impressing the Diamonds which is what they're trying to do is incredibly important if it goes well they could literally put an end to their entire conflict but at the same time if it goes poorly they could get in seriously deep [ __ ] potentially even deep enough to end their entire conflict only with them losing and maybe all dying I'd know you'd think they would understand the vital importance of this situation especially since a couple of them keep saying how vitally important the situation is but then some of them particularly amethyst and Connie just start [ __ ] around in ways that could really piss off the Diamonds and therefore ruin everything and oh look the diamonds are pissed off I definitely didn't see this coming great thanks for that really contrived way of injecting conflict into the situation the episode ends with all of our main characters except Steven and Connie being poofed which means their bodies have been seriously damaged and they'll be just rocks sitting on the ground until they can regenerate them and they won't really be able to do anything because they're rocks the next episode is change your mind watching change your mind feels like you're watching someone go through a checklist of everything that needed to happen before the show ended the episode starts with blue diamond visiting Steven in the tower that he's been thrown into blue diamond really isn't a fan of Steven fusing with quote-unquote lesser life-forms which is you know the thing that he did to piss her off in the first place blue diamond gets really mad at Steven and then stops realizing that this kind of behavior is exactly the thing that she did to drive pink diamond away in the first place she's just scared that she's seriously mistreating someone that she cares about deciding that maybe if Steven was happier on earth that's where he should be so she frees him in kearney from the tower and then goes to collect the rest of his friends from yellow diamond at this point we are maybe starting to push a character a little further than it's reasonable to he's disgusted by Stevens actions she's disgusted by him fusing with lower life-forms and definitely should understand that if she sends him back to earth that's what he'll continue to do but since her main driving force throughout the show so far has been grieving pink diamond if she's gonna prioritize anything over those values it's gonna be pink diamond which is fine so long as she doesn't just forget she has those values it makes total sense that she'd want pink diamond to be safe and happy so long as she doesn't just become a radically different person for no reason anyway they all go to visit yellow who is outraged by this good she's acting in character then they fight then they have a conversation that lasts a minute and a half and then yellow decides to completely switch sides it turns out both of these characters are really unhappy with the state of the gem Empire and don't like it anymore I'm sorry it turns out both of these characters are really unhappy with the state of the gem Empire and anymore yeah I thought that's what I said blue and yellow diamond weren't just servants of the Empire like peridot was they were two of the people in charge of the Empire who were making loads of the decisions these characters had their own agency and were the ones deciding that the Empire should be the way it should be in season two and three yellow diamond was happily destroying planets and service of this Empire and she kept that faith in this regime up until now at which point blue diamond essentially says I know that you've had doubts in our Empire - which yellow diamond says yeah you're right I have let's turn against it and completely switch sides she was suffering in silence for ages just like our gems just like me and I know you're suffering in silence - we've all must make sacrifices for the sake of our perfect Clio does this look perfect to you I guess if you just say that the characters have always just wanted to be good actually that makes it true but it turns out one of the main reasons that they've been acting the way they've been acting throughout the course of the whole show is simply because they don't want to piss off white diamond white diamond is the true villain she's the one making them act the way they've been acting blue and yellow don't like it they've just been too scared to go against her well blue and yellows development to this point was definitely rushed but this could totally be interesting it turns out they don't really believe in this regime themselves either they're just too scared to go against the greater evil that is white diamond maybe the next season will be the story of Steven blue-and-yellow rebelling against white diamond together that could be great seeing blue and yellow have to come to terms with the horrible things they did just out of fear of her are we getting ahead of ourselves there's still like half an hour of this episode to go I wonder what they're going to do with it well Steven persuades blue and yellow to just try talking to white diamond so they do that they stand in front of white diamonds big headship and they say white we're not really happy with how things are it feels really forced coming out of yellow blue I could believe but then white mind controls them and they go and join her in her headship leaving Steven to accidentally drop all of the gems of the main characters down a big hole yep that's how we're pushing the plot forwards now whoops butterfingers I just dropped all of my closest friends okay so what does this actually do for the plot though well Steven saves them all from full damage by fusing with the midair fusing with all of them hang on sorry what but they weren't even awake up until literally just now Fusion has been something that both parties have had to decide to do together not only that even they have to be in sync with each other to do it excluding of course situations where gems are actually torn apart and then stuck back together one gem can't just decide to fuse with another gem may have to be in sync they have to be feeling it together that's what this whole power is about and hey what about that whole you know character development thing this is Stevens first fusion with pearl and his first fusion with garnet but there's nothing character based to drive it at all there's been literally no development of pearl and Stevens relationship or of pearl and garnet relationship in any recent episode but I guess the writers wanted to just wrap up everything in the show including character arcs that they hadn't put any work into at all we all knew that when Steven finally fused with pearl and finally fused with garnet that it was going to be a big deal and it seems like that's why they held off until the finale to actually do it but the reason it is a big deal is because of what it represents for their characters and that's just been completely removed and now the potential for what should have been the biggest arcs between pearl and Steven and between garnet and Steven in the show has just gone this has happened now and it can't be undone their first fusion didn't happen because they finally saw each other as equals or because they had some newfound understanding of one another it happened because Steven dropped them down a hole and the show decided that this would work to wake them up even though there's no precedent for this being a way to wake them up hey that's how we're supposed to react to this isn't it well with all of the heroes now reassembled they formulate a plan what are we gonna do what diamonds never going to listen and she's never going to let us leave if she won't listen we'll make her listen I know she's in there well bust into her head and change her mind you know she's in you know who's in there you've had a 30-second conversation with this person in which you didn't get to say anything what are you talking about I know she's in there whoever she is wait really that's what you plan to do the only thing we really know for sure about white diamond is that she's the one who's been making all of the evil decisions behind the evil empire for thousands of years and that when the people that she's most likely to view as equals in the entire universe went and said we feel that something is a bit wrong her reaction was to not listen to them for a second before completely taking away their free well so good luck changing her mind because there's no way that's ever gonna happen certainly not within the next 20 minutes at least so they decide to climb up into white diamonds had to change her mind but hey there's still one fusion we haven't seen yet right at the temple they live in on earth there's a statue which appears to be of a fusion between all four crystal gems which then would have been amethyst garnet pearl and rose quartz we've never seen this fusion to actually happen in the show and the fact that this is what the statue is of has never been explicitly drawn to the audience's attention it's just been a neat little background detail this whole time waiting for its payoff and now all of the crystal gems decide to fuse together to climb up to get white diamond this fusion could have been one of the biggest payoffs in the show but now it just sort of happened because they don't really screw it up or anything it just sort of happens though there's a lot of wasted potential here imagine if this moment was character-driven imagine a situation where garnet Steven amethyst and pearl believe there's no hope left they hug for what they think are going to be their final moments when suddenly obsidian emerges that would be a good payoff this they just sort of decide to form obsidian and it's fine it's just fine though I'm also not really clear why they decide this is the solution they need to use to get up to white diamonds had given their with several characters who can fly but [ __ ] it it's almost as if this is only really here because they wanted to just include it before the show ended they managed to get into white time and said we're white diamond mine controls all of the heroes claiming that they're imperfect she lists off their character flaws going see they're much happier when they're controlled by me she takes full control of everyone they tipos to show dominance and the only person left is Steven she talks about how she sees herself as perfect and now that everyone else is her they're perfect as well she also talks about how she thinks that Steven is still just pink diamond just hiding inside a human child like a priest and she pulls Stephens gem out of his belly this makes fleshie Steven incredibly weak as the gem reforms a pink glowy Steven this shocks white diamond who asks where pink is to which the pink glowy Steven just says he's gone then goes back towards fleshie Steven and they recombine into original Steven white diamond gets furious with this saying you're not half human you're not Steven you're pink diamond why are you acting like such a child - which Steven says I am a child what's your Excuse - which white diamond decides to be good high oversimplified but that's that's basically it after failing to restore pink diamond white diamond realizes that she's not perfect and has a flaw herself she frees everyone she has an identity crisis and Steven tells her that it's ok not to be perfect nobody has to be perfect and just like that she's happy to side with Steven and listen to everything he has to say then the next time we see the diamonds Oh about to spoil the beginning of the movie by the way if you don't want that skip a few seconds then next time we see the diamonds they're all just completely good now happy to do whatever Steven tells them is the right thing to do I've been seeing please and thank you even to lower life-forms what did we talk about equal life-forms remember when these characters were evil genocide all dictators three seconds ago please stop you're just name checking them like oh look at me I don't do anything evil anymore either so that's it the conflict is concluded white diamond is good yellow diamond is good and blue diamond is good now what a [ __ ] disaster that was there's so much stuff that we didn't know about the diamonds so many little things that could have slotted into place like the perfect mystery but none of that really happened we literally don't know where the diamonds even come from we've seen that pink diamond is supposedly more immature than the other diamonds but is that because she's newer did they make her why did they decide they needed another diamond why wasn't three enough did white make the other three diamonds and if so where did white come from in fact even if that's not the case where did white come from we didn't need to learn this information but so far the reasons behind everything being the way that it is have been saved for big reveals that have an impact on the show and its plot going forward earlier I was praising the show because nothing is ever just the way it is because that's just the way it is there's always a reason behind everything but now for the first time we just have to accept that this is the way it is and after all of that build-up to white diamond who is she it doesn't matter she's fine arguably everything in the show's history has been building up towards white diamond the gem monsters that they were fighting in season one only happened because of the diamond attack on the earth and now apparently the other diamonds are only really following white diamond paradox Redemption arc remember how I talked about that for a while that only needed to happen in the first place because peridot served the Diamonds from the point of view of the plot she was only a stepping stone towards then we build up to meeting the gem Empire then build up to meeting who's in charge of the gem Empire then build up to meeting who's in charge of them and then the first time she gets any real screen time to speak of I don't worry about it it's fine why did you build up to this you could literally write her out of this story so easily now it have no meaningful impact on the plot if you just removed her and replaced her with yellow is the main antagonist for this episode wasn't they show supposed to know what to hype up and what not to hype up also it wasn't the show supposed to know how to do redemption arcs peridot who was just one of the countless servants under the Diamonds got half a season of her views being challenged before she was ready to stand up to yellow diamond I have to admit it's remarkable that a pearl such as yourself could become such a knowledgeable technician and even after confronting yellow diamond she wasn't totally transformed but the three antagonists are literally responsible for everything get 40 minutes between them to go from our way is flawless and perfect and correct - let's give your way a shot and most of that isn't even spent changing their minds the scene in which white diamond goes from totally evil to fine takes 10 minutes but that's just the length of the scene itself how actually changing her mind is only a fraction of that because in that scene they also have to establish why she's evil in the first place because we know next to nothing about her yet the actual character development takes about three minutes this isn't character development it's character whiplash she was a horrible person who killed billions in the service of her empire but then she couldn't pluck a princess out of a teenager so decided to throw away her entire identity and replace it with just whatever new identity was offered to her next and then Steven going being evil is bad I used to love this show flaws and all but they've ruined it I know some people who never liked the show in the first place might see this as man this hit me hard there was a chance I felt that the movie might solve some of these problems so I waited until I saw that to make this video but it didn't it made them worse but that's me for today I hope you've enjoyed this and I hope you've learned how not to do character development I'll see you soon with whatever I decide to make next in fact I can't promise it will be my next video or even that it will come out soon but I have got something pretty good planned up next but until then a goodbye [Music] [Music] you [Music] [Music]

Channel: undefined

Views: 1,787,059

Rating: 4.5489755 out of 5

Keywords: steven universe, change your mind, white diamond, blue diamond, yellow diamond, pink diamond, rose quartz, garnet, pearl, amethyst, fusion, obsidian, steven, universe, steven universe: the movie

Id: kg06xOuLjf0

Length: 32min 32sec (1952 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 15 2019

Reddit Comments

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[u/PimpNinjaMan]

Jay,

It seems like your biggest complaints are primarily that the season finale happened too fast. You don’t provide much criticism for the actual arcs themselves (aside from maybe Yellow Diamond), but you just feel like they should have taken place over the course of a season rather than an episode. I think that’s a fair take, but it in no way “ruins” the show. I always point to the Sense8 Final Episode when things like this pop up.

Sense8 was cancelled after season 2 with a ton of cliffhangers. It was an underwhelming end to the show. Long story short, the showrunners were given the ability to make a final “movie” (a 151 minute episode) that effectively wrapped up all the loose ends and served as a condensed Season 3. It felt incredibly rushed and the pacing was all over the place, but it was a much better end to the show than if it had just stayed at s2e11.

Would Steven Universe have been better if the events of Change Your Mind happened over the course of an entire season? Sure! But there’s no guarantee that such a thing was possible or if the quality of that season would match the quality of the previous ones. There’s also the issue of resources going between the movie and the last season.

Now, to get to your specific critiques (which don’t really happen until halfway through your video), let me start with the falling fusion scene. You present it as if it’s just a random convenient plot point that doesn’t involve a connection, but it seems like you watched the scene on mute. Here are Steven’s words when he tries to reform Amethyst:

Amethyst! Please reform. I need you.

Amethyst, can you hear me in there?

Everyone’s falling!

We can save them! Together!

It’s the connection that they share that allows them to fuse and awaken Amethyst. Now I agree that it was almost anti-climactic to see Steven and Pearl fuse for only a moment, but I think it’s unfair to say that they don’t have the capacity to fuse. Firstly, Pearl and Rose Quartz/Pink Diamond fused before. Second, the episode where Steven actually learns about Pink Diamond involved him going into the different levels of Pearl’s compartmentalized mind. They could have fused at that point, but it just wasn’t necessary to that episode.

Regarding Garnet, the entire pre-wedding sequence shows his relationship with her. He understands both Ruby and Sapphire individually and Garnet separately. Garnet also grew with Steven when she previously mentioned how she needed to amend her future vision to acknowledge that Steven has grown.

Again, both of these things weren’t in the same episode as Change Your Mind, but it’s not like that development disappeared.

Now, regarding Obsidian, I think your disappointment with the previous falling fusions made your ignore the significance of Obsidian. Steven hadn’t yet fused with Pearl and Garnet yet, so the idea of them fusing to make Obsidian isn’t considered before that point. Since Steven just recently established that he can fuse with all of the gems, the possibility of them fusing into Obsidian is now available. Does it happen a bit too fast? Sure. I’ll absolutely concede that, but I don’t think it’s just a casual throwaway plot device.

Now, why don’t they just use one of the flying gems? Well, as we can see, they all get swatted away! They aren’t strong enough to make it inside the Diamond robot, so they need a powerful fusion to withstand the bipedal housing unit.

Now, to get to White Diamond. Again, I think this is just an issue of speed and pacing over logical flaws. Her arc is primarily that there is a set order to things that should be maintained at all costs. She is blind to any deviation from this, until Steven shows up. She views Steven as a faulty deviation, but when she is unable to return him to the form she perceives to be ideal, she is presented with the first crack to her foundational beliefs. This leads her to doubt what she’s been doing, and leads to a change of heart.

The entire point of this show is that no one is inherently evil. Every single “villain” that appears is given the ability to reform. Steven may defeat them through violence, but he doesn’t win until they’ve had a conversation and learned to grow. For some, that growth is gradual (see Peridot and Lapis). For others, it’s fast (see the Diamonds and some single-episode arcs) but the entire theme of the entire show (and the entire movie) is that people can grow and change and improve.

Now, why did White Diamond change so quickly? Part of it is external to the show (i.e. wrapping up a season in one episode) but the other part is that her influences are entirely internal. Peridot’s main fear was that she was a “traitor to the gem empire” and she worried that she would be killed by the Diamonds. Lapis was afraid of war with the Diamonds. When we get to Blue & Yellow, they’re only influenced by White. Once their internal conflicts are resolved, they have to face White. Keep in mind how Blue & Yellow don’t attack White. They don't try to raise their armies against White. They simply offer to talk to her. White, on the other hand, has no external influences. There is no one telling White what to do or how to be. It is all internal, so when Steven challenges that internal belief, that is all that’s left.

I’d definitely love to learn more about the origins of the Diamonds and the creation of the gem empire, but that’s all secondary. It’s not necessary to the arcs that are presented. It’s cool, but it doesn’t impact the rest of the series.

I think there’s a lot of interest in taking down Steven Universe because some people just don’t enjoy it and want others to feel the same, but there wasn’t any actual detailed critique describing inherent flaws with this show other than “I wanted it to take longer to get to all this.” If the show ended just before Change Your Mind and the movie never came out, would you be happier?