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This is a curious kind of commission from the lovable Rodney Talon, that asked me to draw whatever I wanted, so I chose our most recent discussion topic: Steven Universe.
Here imagined in a very fanart-y and fanfiction-y scene where he grows up and becomes a magical space knight, guardian of life in the ex-Gem Empire.
A direction that sadly wasn't taken in the SU Future series. That Steven probably is waiting tables in some greasy diner in the middle of the desert.
Not that I had any hope about the story fully committing to the (ex) Gem Empire plotline. Steven Universe has always been about mixing slice-of-life comedy and space opera, on how the presence of a group of alien superheroes and their trainee could impact the life of a town of… Frankly, very wacky people.
Like, borderline Adventure Time's level of wackiness and cluelessness. Especially early Steven and that eldritch monster called Onion.
That's what kept me from watching the series for a long time, the fact that initially looked like, and was promoted as, Adventure Time in pink. I had to stumble upon this video essay from Pop Culture Detective for giving it a shot, and by then the show was well into season 4.
Yeah, I've binged the show, without experiencing the infamous hiatuses, and that meant having a different opinion about the "Townies" episodes and characters, less to no time to let my impressions marinate on Tumblr. I don't hate Kevin, Ronaldo, not even Lars.
Instead, I loved the hell out of the show: the color schemes, the backgrounds, the music, and the courage they had in displaying their queer themes even if that meant being ineligible to the market of Russia, China… You know, the evil Countries.
Making an episode that contained both the first lesbian marriage in the history of animation, and the arrival of the alien invaders on Earth, and giving to the more masculine spouse the white dress and the more feminine a black suit, so it was impossible to edit it out or make one of them pass as a male in the dub. That was ballsy.
Even for today's standard, where mega-corporation Disney still makes cartoons where the queer scenes are easily editable without damaging the flow of the story.
Also, mixing the magic adventures of the Gems with the Townies episodes gave a pretty novel approach to the character growth of Steven: most of Steven's new abilities are discovered in the Townies episodes and the story is about solving the problem that they cause.
The twist isn't anymore about the protagonist obtaining an unforeseen power-up that saves his ass during a critical battle, it's about the protagonist learning to control a power that we already know. And that's a way more respectful treatment of the viewer.
(Looking at you, last episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender.)
Moreover, grounding the protagonist in a mundane and relatable reality (it gets far less wacky after the first half of season 1) where sometimes a magical and colorful monster comes in, is charming.
It reminds me of Sailor Moon, the original anime, where the abundant filler episodes were essential in establishing how much the heroines liked and loved each other and also the earthlings they were protecting, making the plot-advancing episodes far more dramatic than just an uninterrupted string of power-ups, hentai gazes, abductions, and deaths could have been.
(Looking at you, Sailor Moon Crystal.)
But if I have to point at a flaw of the show, Steven Universe feels more like Sailor Moon didn't hang out with Mars, Jupiter, Mercury, and Venus, but with the Outer Senshi.
Because that's how much the Crystal Gems seem isolated and sometimes contemptuous of humans.
Garnet and Pearl don't interact with them if not through Steven, and Amethyst behaves like a mischievous imp that loves watching humans struggle. Or just beating them in unfair wrestling matches.
But I feel like it's more a bug than a feature: the reason we don't see them hanging around Beach City, going groceries and such, it's that there's no time or money.
The 10 minutes mark per episode is a leash that prevents every story from having a B plot about the other characters or even letting any kind of episodic tension brew before an immediate release.
Making full episodes centered around other characters? Well, despite its religious following, Steven Universe never was the show that could afford a gamble like episodes without Steven Universe.
Because it was an outwardly queer show that couldn't sell in the evil Countries and ran on a shoestring budget because of that. That, and maybe Cartoon Network's cowardice.
You can sense the budgetary restrictions in that show, mostly in the small array of voice actors, in a way that also impacts the plot:
Why did Steven wait two seasons before trying to talk Bismuth out of her murderous rage? Because they couldn't pay her voice actress to be around for so long. Heck, they couldn't even pay her for the last appearance of Bismuth in the finale of Future, and they had to rely on a soundalike.
That's sad, especially considering how the show wasn't just about tolerance and solving conflicts through communication, but also about the sense of self-worth discovered through human bonding.
It's a very subtle message, that lies between the two extremes of complete and egocentric self-reliance (your average self-help babble that's still very popular among straight men) and instead outsourcing your entire personality and self-esteem to others (usually to romantic partners that will take advantage of that.)
It's about being open to human contact because you can find one or more people that can remind you're worthy of love and respect. Or also be you the kind of person that reminds that to another person.
It's such a complex moral that most of the detractors got instead one of the extremes, and considered characters like Pearl a fuckup because without Rose Quartz she would still be a handmaiden without agency.
And I mean, guys, that's how life works. You can't rely entirely on yourself or on other people. You have to find the balance.
But yeah, I wouldn't be honest if I didn't say that Pearl is considered a fuckup because of her obsession with the memory of Rose Quartz, that was a very temperamental and opportunistic kind of person, a member of a family of space emperors that colonized and exhausted a lot of planets and maybe wiped out a bunch of civilizations, and should have had a long, honest and painful period of penitence before switching to the side of Good and having everything forgiven.
And to that, I respond… Have you ever heard of a thing called anime? The medium where fucking psychopaths are celebrated, romanticized, and immediately forgiven because they sell figures? Vegeta, Sesshomaru, fucking Gendo Ikari?!
(I've mentioned only dudes. What a coincidence.)
I don't care, I'm tired of applying double standards to cartoons and anime, just because they're from another culture. If the climax of Dragon Ball Super is Goku teaming up with fucking Freezer to defeat some guy from another universe, and the straights get their pants wet at looking at that scene, go ahead.
I will enjoy my alleged genocidal dictators being redeemed in the span of two episodes. They never killed anyone onscreen and that's much more than I can say about any one of the aforementioned characters.
But there's something I genuinely don't like about Steven Universe: the Future series.
(Massive spoilers from now on.)
SU Future is good, up to the episode Volleyball that ties a lot of loose ends, then it starts feeling like a bad fanfiction that was accidentally animated.
Why bad fanfiction? Because it picks contrivances and corks orf the original story, stuff you're expected to suspend your disbelief on, and turns it into plot points.
In this case, SU Future is about Steven realizing he's being left behind by his friends at Beach City, because they have jobs and dreams and education, to follow, while Steven never went to school and never set up his life as an adult human. Missing his friends, the PTSD of his past adventures creeps in and his powers go out of whack.
This premise is like we made an arc in Sailor Moon where her biological mother realizes that she misses several days fighting evil and she has more of a bond with the ghost of her past mother Queen Selene.
Or like if in Harry Potter the protagonist said things like "I really wonder what will be the reason this year for all of my schoolmates to ostracize me" or "Hey, June is approaching, better get ready for another Voldemort's attack!"
It's amusing, but not material for the canon story. People tuned in for watching magical girls chilling together and throwing laser beams at flamboyant monsters, not for their parents freaking out.
Steven didn't go to school for the same reason the monsters in Sailor Moon never attack during the morning of a workday, or because Gravity Falls, Ben Ten, and Phineas & Ferb are all set during endless summers: because the trope of the teenage hero that has to fight evil and attend school is frustrating and overdone. Buffy and Spider-Man have already ground it to a paste.
If a story has such contrivances, it shouldn't acknowledge them in canon like it's the last of the nitpicky fans, but ignore them and focus the attention elsewhere, or write around to fix them.
I can give two examples for both solutions:
• Make Steven Universe Future an actual Space Opera where Steven has to travel around the galaxy and maybe face the creators of the apparently artificial Gem kind. Who cares about his friends leaving Beach City in such a scenario.
• The Gem School. Instead of making it a segregated school attended only by gems that "learn" from the Crystal Gems to live with humans (ugh) make it a prestigious mixed school where both humans and gems go to learn space engineering from Pearl and Peridot, people that can build space crafts with the scraps left in a barn. Problem solved: Steven gets both education and interactions with people of his age.
(Such kind of "fix" was even done in the show proper: the analogy between fusion and sex, which made some fusions quite awkward, like Stevonnie and Sardonyx, was fixed by introducing in season 3 Smoky Quartz, a fusion between Steven and Amethyst, two characters that have nothing else but brother and sister, showing us that fusion didn't equal to sex.)
With SU Future, Rebecca Sugar decided to go The Legend of Korra route instead: make our protagonist a victim of PTSD, even if 40% of the story so far ran on Looney Toons' logic.
But the absolute worst was what they did to Pearl, Garnet, and Amethyst in order to further this plot. Completely oblivious, amnesiac, and borderline malicious to Steven's obvious signs of distress.
(TBH it was Jasper the character that was done the dirtiest. She talks like she suffered actual brain damage compared to her former self.)
It's not a plausible kind of carelessness, relatable to real-life situations of parents and friends dismissing your signs of distress: he's Steven Universe, he's half-Diamond when he's distressed he fucking generates shock waves and slows time down.
I guess every parent on planet Earth would notice their child not doing well if they started creaking the walls with their yells of rage.
The finale where they all hug kaiju-Steven got me literally disgusted: those three morons have ignored his loud, literal cries for help. And now they try to fix it with a hug? Oh my god Steven, kill them all and become the best villain in the history of cartoons.
I don't even feel like piling on SU Future more than this, because it is clear that the Crewniverse got a shit deal from CN and they had to make another season with even a lower budget, for contractual obligations, or because it was still better than not working at all.
The lack of money is palpable, mostly in the voice acting, with all the times a gem shows up and doesn't talk, and in the final kaiju battle that doesn't have a specific atmosphere but the default color scheme of every other run of the mill episode.
It had also fewer producers compared to the series proper, and that meant that some bad ideas went freer and that sadly makes me reconsider Rebecca Sugar's competence at writing.
I feel like they did the best they could with ridiculous limitations, budget, timing, feedback in the writer's room, and characters' availability. And the result wasn't good.
Steven Universe is a flawed series, like all the great series that do something that wasn't ever tried before and reshape their genres. Without Steven Universe, queer characters in cartoons would have been still non-existent.
Look, two animated movies this year, Turning Red and The Bad Boys, adopt the same character design of Steven Universe. That's something.
When you do something new you're bound to make mistakes, and fans will point at them. But they will point at them because they're fans.
Posted using PostyBirb
Here imagined in a very fanart-y and fanfiction-y scene where he grows up and becomes a magical space knight, guardian of life in the ex-Gem Empire.
A direction that sadly wasn't taken in the SU Future series. That Steven probably is waiting tables in some greasy diner in the middle of the desert.
Not that I had any hope about the story fully committing to the (ex) Gem Empire plotline. Steven Universe has always been about mixing slice-of-life comedy and space opera, on how the presence of a group of alien superheroes and their trainee could impact the life of a town of… Frankly, very wacky people.
Like, borderline Adventure Time's level of wackiness and cluelessness. Especially early Steven and that eldritch monster called Onion.
That's what kept me from watching the series for a long time, the fact that initially looked like, and was promoted as, Adventure Time in pink. I had to stumble upon this video essay from Pop Culture Detective for giving it a shot, and by then the show was well into season 4.
Yeah, I've binged the show, without experiencing the infamous hiatuses, and that meant having a different opinion about the "Townies" episodes and characters, less to no time to let my impressions marinate on Tumblr. I don't hate Kevin, Ronaldo, not even Lars.
Instead, I loved the hell out of the show: the color schemes, the backgrounds, the music, and the courage they had in displaying their queer themes even if that meant being ineligible to the market of Russia, China… You know, the evil Countries.
Making an episode that contained both the first lesbian marriage in the history of animation, and the arrival of the alien invaders on Earth, and giving to the more masculine spouse the white dress and the more feminine a black suit, so it was impossible to edit it out or make one of them pass as a male in the dub. That was ballsy.
Even for today's standard, where mega-corporation Disney still makes cartoons where the queer scenes are easily editable without damaging the flow of the story.
Also, mixing the magic adventures of the Gems with the Townies episodes gave a pretty novel approach to the character growth of Steven: most of Steven's new abilities are discovered in the Townies episodes and the story is about solving the problem that they cause.
The twist isn't anymore about the protagonist obtaining an unforeseen power-up that saves his ass during a critical battle, it's about the protagonist learning to control a power that we already know. And that's a way more respectful treatment of the viewer.
(Looking at you, last episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender.)
Moreover, grounding the protagonist in a mundane and relatable reality (it gets far less wacky after the first half of season 1) where sometimes a magical and colorful monster comes in, is charming.
It reminds me of Sailor Moon, the original anime, where the abundant filler episodes were essential in establishing how much the heroines liked and loved each other and also the earthlings they were protecting, making the plot-advancing episodes far more dramatic than just an uninterrupted string of power-ups, hentai gazes, abductions, and deaths could have been.
(Looking at you, Sailor Moon Crystal.)
But if I have to point at a flaw of the show, Steven Universe feels more like Sailor Moon didn't hang out with Mars, Jupiter, Mercury, and Venus, but with the Outer Senshi.
Because that's how much the Crystal Gems seem isolated and sometimes contemptuous of humans.
Garnet and Pearl don't interact with them if not through Steven, and Amethyst behaves like a mischievous imp that loves watching humans struggle. Or just beating them in unfair wrestling matches.
But I feel like it's more a bug than a feature: the reason we don't see them hanging around Beach City, going groceries and such, it's that there's no time or money.
The 10 minutes mark per episode is a leash that prevents every story from having a B plot about the other characters or even letting any kind of episodic tension brew before an immediate release.
Making full episodes centered around other characters? Well, despite its religious following, Steven Universe never was the show that could afford a gamble like episodes without Steven Universe.
Because it was an outwardly queer show that couldn't sell in the evil Countries and ran on a shoestring budget because of that. That, and maybe Cartoon Network's cowardice.
You can sense the budgetary restrictions in that show, mostly in the small array of voice actors, in a way that also impacts the plot:
Why did Steven wait two seasons before trying to talk Bismuth out of her murderous rage? Because they couldn't pay her voice actress to be around for so long. Heck, they couldn't even pay her for the last appearance of Bismuth in the finale of Future, and they had to rely on a soundalike.
That's sad, especially considering how the show wasn't just about tolerance and solving conflicts through communication, but also about the sense of self-worth discovered through human bonding.
It's a very subtle message, that lies between the two extremes of complete and egocentric self-reliance (your average self-help babble that's still very popular among straight men) and instead outsourcing your entire personality and self-esteem to others (usually to romantic partners that will take advantage of that.)
It's about being open to human contact because you can find one or more people that can remind you're worthy of love and respect. Or also be you the kind of person that reminds that to another person.
It's such a complex moral that most of the detractors got instead one of the extremes, and considered characters like Pearl a fuckup because without Rose Quartz she would still be a handmaiden without agency.
And I mean, guys, that's how life works. You can't rely entirely on yourself or on other people. You have to find the balance.
But yeah, I wouldn't be honest if I didn't say that Pearl is considered a fuckup because of her obsession with the memory of Rose Quartz, that was a very temperamental and opportunistic kind of person, a member of a family of space emperors that colonized and exhausted a lot of planets and maybe wiped out a bunch of civilizations, and should have had a long, honest and painful period of penitence before switching to the side of Good and having everything forgiven.
And to that, I respond… Have you ever heard of a thing called anime? The medium where fucking psychopaths are celebrated, romanticized, and immediately forgiven because they sell figures? Vegeta, Sesshomaru, fucking Gendo Ikari?!
(I've mentioned only dudes. What a coincidence.)
I don't care, I'm tired of applying double standards to cartoons and anime, just because they're from another culture. If the climax of Dragon Ball Super is Goku teaming up with fucking Freezer to defeat some guy from another universe, and the straights get their pants wet at looking at that scene, go ahead.
I will enjoy my alleged genocidal dictators being redeemed in the span of two episodes. They never killed anyone onscreen and that's much more than I can say about any one of the aforementioned characters.
But there's something I genuinely don't like about Steven Universe: the Future series.
(Massive spoilers from now on.)
SU Future is good, up to the episode Volleyball that ties a lot of loose ends, then it starts feeling like a bad fanfiction that was accidentally animated.
Why bad fanfiction? Because it picks contrivances and corks orf the original story, stuff you're expected to suspend your disbelief on, and turns it into plot points.
In this case, SU Future is about Steven realizing he's being left behind by his friends at Beach City, because they have jobs and dreams and education, to follow, while Steven never went to school and never set up his life as an adult human. Missing his friends, the PTSD of his past adventures creeps in and his powers go out of whack.
This premise is like we made an arc in Sailor Moon where her biological mother realizes that she misses several days fighting evil and she has more of a bond with the ghost of her past mother Queen Selene.
Or like if in Harry Potter the protagonist said things like "I really wonder what will be the reason this year for all of my schoolmates to ostracize me" or "Hey, June is approaching, better get ready for another Voldemort's attack!"
It's amusing, but not material for the canon story. People tuned in for watching magical girls chilling together and throwing laser beams at flamboyant monsters, not for their parents freaking out.
Steven didn't go to school for the same reason the monsters in Sailor Moon never attack during the morning of a workday, or because Gravity Falls, Ben Ten, and Phineas & Ferb are all set during endless summers: because the trope of the teenage hero that has to fight evil and attend school is frustrating and overdone. Buffy and Spider-Man have already ground it to a paste.
If a story has such contrivances, it shouldn't acknowledge them in canon like it's the last of the nitpicky fans, but ignore them and focus the attention elsewhere, or write around to fix them.
I can give two examples for both solutions:
• Make Steven Universe Future an actual Space Opera where Steven has to travel around the galaxy and maybe face the creators of the apparently artificial Gem kind. Who cares about his friends leaving Beach City in such a scenario.
• The Gem School. Instead of making it a segregated school attended only by gems that "learn" from the Crystal Gems to live with humans (ugh) make it a prestigious mixed school where both humans and gems go to learn space engineering from Pearl and Peridot, people that can build space crafts with the scraps left in a barn. Problem solved: Steven gets both education and interactions with people of his age.
(Such kind of "fix" was even done in the show proper: the analogy between fusion and sex, which made some fusions quite awkward, like Stevonnie and Sardonyx, was fixed by introducing in season 3 Smoky Quartz, a fusion between Steven and Amethyst, two characters that have nothing else but brother and sister, showing us that fusion didn't equal to sex.)
With SU Future, Rebecca Sugar decided to go The Legend of Korra route instead: make our protagonist a victim of PTSD, even if 40% of the story so far ran on Looney Toons' logic.
But the absolute worst was what they did to Pearl, Garnet, and Amethyst in order to further this plot. Completely oblivious, amnesiac, and borderline malicious to Steven's obvious signs of distress.
(TBH it was Jasper the character that was done the dirtiest. She talks like she suffered actual brain damage compared to her former self.)
It's not a plausible kind of carelessness, relatable to real-life situations of parents and friends dismissing your signs of distress: he's Steven Universe, he's half-Diamond when he's distressed he fucking generates shock waves and slows time down.
I guess every parent on planet Earth would notice their child not doing well if they started creaking the walls with their yells of rage.
The finale where they all hug kaiju-Steven got me literally disgusted: those three morons have ignored his loud, literal cries for help. And now they try to fix it with a hug? Oh my god Steven, kill them all and become the best villain in the history of cartoons.
I don't even feel like piling on SU Future more than this, because it is clear that the Crewniverse got a shit deal from CN and they had to make another season with even a lower budget, for contractual obligations, or because it was still better than not working at all.
The lack of money is palpable, mostly in the voice acting, with all the times a gem shows up and doesn't talk, and in the final kaiju battle that doesn't have a specific atmosphere but the default color scheme of every other run of the mill episode.
It had also fewer producers compared to the series proper, and that meant that some bad ideas went freer and that sadly makes me reconsider Rebecca Sugar's competence at writing.
I feel like they did the best they could with ridiculous limitations, budget, timing, feedback in the writer's room, and characters' availability. And the result wasn't good.
Steven Universe is a flawed series, like all the great series that do something that wasn't ever tried before and reshape their genres. Without Steven Universe, queer characters in cartoons would have been still non-existent.
Look, two animated movies this year, Turning Red and The Bad Boys, adopt the same character design of Steven Universe. That's something.
When you do something new you're bound to make mistakes, and fans will point at them. But they will point at them because they're fans.
Posted using PostyBirb
Category Artwork (Digital) / Fanart
Species Lion
Size 1500 x 2400px
File Size 2.57 MB
Listed in Folders
Small nitpick: Gendo's never forgiven. End of Eva ends with him admitting he screwed up while multiple characters, including his wife, rub salt in the wound, right before getting devoured by a demonic Unit-01 during Instrumentality. Rebuild!Gendo only gets some form of redemption when Shinji, after almost four movies' worth of trying and at his friend's insistence, is finally able to reach out and reconcile their relationship, and it's ultimately what saves the world.
The Evangelion fanbase loves him because he's an evil asshole, not in spite of it. It's why his figures are popular and why the Schick commercial featuring him is so incongruously hilarious.
Other than that, decent points and lovely art.
The Evangelion fanbase loves him because he's an evil asshole, not in spite of it. It's why his figures are popular and why the Schick commercial featuring him is so incongruously hilarious.
Other than that, decent points and lovely art.
Thank you for the compliments on my art.
I'd say, Gendo in End of Evangelion got what he deserved.
The fourth film of the Rebuild tries instead too hard to convince us that his motivation "My wife died, so I've decided to end all of existence because fuck other people" is reasonable. IMHO because Anno has become older and identifies more with the 50 yo abusive asshole that makes life for the people around him worse than with the teen that suffered that damage.
And the scene where he hugs child Shinji is so fucking coward. Hug the real Shinji, for fuck sake, you horrible, horrible inhuman being.m
I'd say, Gendo in End of Evangelion got what he deserved.
The fourth film of the Rebuild tries instead too hard to convince us that his motivation "My wife died, so I've decided to end all of existence because fuck other people" is reasonable. IMHO because Anno has become older and identifies more with the 50 yo abusive asshole that makes life for the people around him worse than with the teen that suffered that damage.
And the scene where he hugs child Shinji is so fucking coward. Hug the real Shinji, for fuck sake, you horrible, horrible inhuman being.m
Well I guess I can throw in my 6 cents:
1. This alternate universe that you illustrated looks most interesting and the coloring matches the shows aesthetic. Not really sure if making Steven into a Barazoku works though since baring the episode where he was training with Jasper, Steven has generally been on the soft/feminine side. And even in that episode he was more of a Twunk than a bear cub. I do not know, maybe you should practice drawing non-baras and furries like that Cavewoman professor in that upcoming, time-traveling, Italian Pokémon game.
2. In defense against your criticism (or not): I remember in a OSP Trope Talk on Realism they talked about how the worst thing you can do is soundly reject realism and force the audience to suspend their disbelief, only to inject it into the story when it is convenient for the drama. At first glance, it is like you said, many of the character are derailed especially Steven because they force him to face the realistic ramifications of having been an ex-chosen one and child hero/soldier who has no plans or resource for adult life. As well as confront the PTSD from when he was a the aforementioned hero. In Crewniverse's defense they did establish these things in the original series. In episodes like "Mindful Education" and "Storm in the Room" they established that Steven does have trauma from all the adventures he experienced and that he does not like to acknowledge it. Episode like "Joy Ride", "Watermelon Steven", and most of the episodes involving Lars, The Cool Kids, or Onion established that Steven does in fact struggle with normal human interaction and has an stunted understanding of human society. And then episodes like "Steven vs. Amethyst", "The Test", and "Earthlings" established that Steven did experience insecurities, inadequacy, and resentment towards The Crystal Gems, especially (because of) Rose. A good story could have been told with the acknowledgment of these things, especially since at that point in the series we all knew the end was near and we needed to move on. An exploration of both mental health and the existential question of "What comes next?" could have been the main theme of Future and could have been a fitting end to the series. The infuriating problem is that the Gems do not really do anything until the very end of the series for despite all the signs being super obvious. Peridot saw Steven's dreams on a screen. Amethyst was fused with Steven as Smoky during one of his Pink rampages. Pearl witnessed one of his tantrums in The Reef. Garnet can literally see the future and all possibilities and did not foresee and in some ways encouraged Steven's destructive behavior. Sure they did intervene eventually. And the hug did not fix Steven so much as calm him down so he could be fixed over the course of a several month time-skip we as the audience never witness, which sucks but is fine. But the kicker is that it all happened after Steven turned into a Kaiju, shattered Jasper and attempted to shatter the Diamonds, effectively assassinating Steven's previous characterization as a pure-hearted, patient, and peaceful messianic paragon of forgiveness and making the entire journey up to this point feel kind of pointless.
3. Criticisms against Steven Universe (Future) that I think you are wrong about: Your idea about actually getting to know the origin of the gems as a species is something that I wanted to see as well. But what we got is some kind of "Word of God" explanation in an interview that The Gems are basically Homunculi from Full Metal Alchemist" Brotherhood. White Diamond is basically Father, trying to purge their imperfections by removing and personifying them and then making herself feel better by bullying them herself. This lead to the creation of the other 3 Diamonds who proceeded to do the same to other gems, forming their caste system. But on that note, that is part of the reason why people hate the Diamonds, the redemption of the Diamonds, most notably White happened too fast. Faster than two episodes. Her redemption seemingly happened within 2 scenes after being introduced as the Big Bad of the series only 3 episodes prior. But the other thing is that while Steven Universe was heavily influenced by Anime, there is not guarantee that everyone who watched the show was also influenced by Anime, much less Shonen Anime where characters are redeemed in 2 episodes with enough time to establish them as a villain and enough time to give circumstance to justify their heel-face turn like a bigger bad. Even still, without that contextualization normies will feel cheated and like we need to accept that this big and powerful Space Empress who annihilated countless civilizations is now A-O.K. and absolved of their crimes of intergalactic genocide.
Aside from that the point of the Gem school was to teach Gems how to self-determinate via exposure to Earth culture since humans do not know what they are supposed to be doing half the time. While it would have probably been better to have actual humans as part of the staff to help with that it was not needed. Still, I do not remember or understand why Steven stopped working there. He could have reasonably helped Gems find their place in a Universe where they have no inherent purpose anymore for decades and not have to concern and effectively give himself a way to spend his mortal existence for years. But, making him abandon Little Homeschool just created more drama and character assassination. Seeing him go to planets and actually get Gems to stop destroying worlds and help restore planets would have been more interesting to see though. And it is strange because in Future we do see that when Steven goes with Lapis to stop the two rogue Lapisus, despite the fact that the Empire was supposed to be already completely dismantled at that point according to the movie.
4. Overall, I still love Steven Universe for what it is and understand why it had the flaws that it did. I wish that Steven Universe could have ended on its own terms, it could have been great. Anyway, how goes your progress on Skyhorn Adventure and/or Celebrity Bangmatch?
1. This alternate universe that you illustrated looks most interesting and the coloring matches the shows aesthetic. Not really sure if making Steven into a Barazoku works though since baring the episode where he was training with Jasper, Steven has generally been on the soft/feminine side. And even in that episode he was more of a Twunk than a bear cub. I do not know, maybe you should practice drawing non-baras and furries like that Cavewoman professor in that upcoming, time-traveling, Italian Pokémon game.
2. In defense against your criticism (or not): I remember in a OSP Trope Talk on Realism they talked about how the worst thing you can do is soundly reject realism and force the audience to suspend their disbelief, only to inject it into the story when it is convenient for the drama. At first glance, it is like you said, many of the character are derailed especially Steven because they force him to face the realistic ramifications of having been an ex-chosen one and child hero/soldier who has no plans or resource for adult life. As well as confront the PTSD from when he was a the aforementioned hero. In Crewniverse's defense they did establish these things in the original series. In episodes like "Mindful Education" and "Storm in the Room" they established that Steven does have trauma from all the adventures he experienced and that he does not like to acknowledge it. Episode like "Joy Ride", "Watermelon Steven", and most of the episodes involving Lars, The Cool Kids, or Onion established that Steven does in fact struggle with normal human interaction and has an stunted understanding of human society. And then episodes like "Steven vs. Amethyst", "The Test", and "Earthlings" established that Steven did experience insecurities, inadequacy, and resentment towards The Crystal Gems, especially (because of) Rose. A good story could have been told with the acknowledgment of these things, especially since at that point in the series we all knew the end was near and we needed to move on. An exploration of both mental health and the existential question of "What comes next?" could have been the main theme of Future and could have been a fitting end to the series. The infuriating problem is that the Gems do not really do anything until the very end of the series for despite all the signs being super obvious. Peridot saw Steven's dreams on a screen. Amethyst was fused with Steven as Smoky during one of his Pink rampages. Pearl witnessed one of his tantrums in The Reef. Garnet can literally see the future and all possibilities and did not foresee and in some ways encouraged Steven's destructive behavior. Sure they did intervene eventually. And the hug did not fix Steven so much as calm him down so he could be fixed over the course of a several month time-skip we as the audience never witness, which sucks but is fine. But the kicker is that it all happened after Steven turned into a Kaiju, shattered Jasper and attempted to shatter the Diamonds, effectively assassinating Steven's previous characterization as a pure-hearted, patient, and peaceful messianic paragon of forgiveness and making the entire journey up to this point feel kind of pointless.
3. Criticisms against Steven Universe (Future) that I think you are wrong about: Your idea about actually getting to know the origin of the gems as a species is something that I wanted to see as well. But what we got is some kind of "Word of God" explanation in an interview that The Gems are basically Homunculi from Full Metal Alchemist" Brotherhood. White Diamond is basically Father, trying to purge their imperfections by removing and personifying them and then making herself feel better by bullying them herself. This lead to the creation of the other 3 Diamonds who proceeded to do the same to other gems, forming their caste system. But on that note, that is part of the reason why people hate the Diamonds, the redemption of the Diamonds, most notably White happened too fast. Faster than two episodes. Her redemption seemingly happened within 2 scenes after being introduced as the Big Bad of the series only 3 episodes prior. But the other thing is that while Steven Universe was heavily influenced by Anime, there is not guarantee that everyone who watched the show was also influenced by Anime, much less Shonen Anime where characters are redeemed in 2 episodes with enough time to establish them as a villain and enough time to give circumstance to justify their heel-face turn like a bigger bad. Even still, without that contextualization normies will feel cheated and like we need to accept that this big and powerful Space Empress who annihilated countless civilizations is now A-O.K. and absolved of their crimes of intergalactic genocide.
Aside from that the point of the Gem school was to teach Gems how to self-determinate via exposure to Earth culture since humans do not know what they are supposed to be doing half the time. While it would have probably been better to have actual humans as part of the staff to help with that it was not needed. Still, I do not remember or understand why Steven stopped working there. He could have reasonably helped Gems find their place in a Universe where they have no inherent purpose anymore for decades and not have to concern and effectively give himself a way to spend his mortal existence for years. But, making him abandon Little Homeschool just created more drama and character assassination. Seeing him go to planets and actually get Gems to stop destroying worlds and help restore planets would have been more interesting to see though. And it is strange because in Future we do see that when Steven goes with Lapis to stop the two rogue Lapisus, despite the fact that the Empire was supposed to be already completely dismantled at that point according to the movie.
4. Overall, I still love Steven Universe for what it is and understand why it had the flaws that it did. I wish that Steven Universe could have ended on its own terms, it could have been great. Anyway, how goes your progress on Skyhorn Adventure and/or Celebrity Bangmatch?
The only point where I strongly disagree it's about adult Steven's appearance. We had seen a bunch of grown-up versions of Steven through the show (beach hunk, Steg, Rodrigo, shonen Steven) and they're all about making him more muscular and leaner.
Sure, there was always magical shapeshifting behind, but that's what the animators imagined over and over when tasked with "make Steven an adult."
It might still be that Steven will keep a chubbier body type growing up naturally, but your theory is as good as mine.
(And sorry, you suggested the worst example for a feminine body-type, because I currently hate the horny wave that generates every time a new pokémon character is announced. Because pokémon is an evil franchise that sells indie games with crappy graphics at the price of AAA games, coasting on nostalgia and fanart.)
The interpretation of White Diamond is the Papa Smurf of the whole Gemkind and created all the other Diamonds and gems is interesting, and apparently the official one, but it doesn't solve the problem of the gems looking so computer-like in their base functioning. Like having their mind reset by the Rejuvenation or creaks in the gem (hardware) causing bad rendering of their personality and body (software.)
I still prefer the idea that even White Diamond was created by someone, with a purpose she now forgot.
And that would have explained much better an overkill weapon like the Cluster. Better than the Diamonds being just anxious.
I'd say, I might even have liked a "fourth act syndrome" for Steven in this series, but what breaks the deal for me is the Crystal Gems being totally jaded and absent about their foster child feelings up until the end, when his pink outbursts start inconveniencing them. That's pretty much character assassination for me, to the detriment of three of the four leads.
Sure, there was always magical shapeshifting behind, but that's what the animators imagined over and over when tasked with "make Steven an adult."
It might still be that Steven will keep a chubbier body type growing up naturally, but your theory is as good as mine.
(And sorry, you suggested the worst example for a feminine body-type, because I currently hate the horny wave that generates every time a new pokémon character is announced. Because pokémon is an evil franchise that sells indie games with crappy graphics at the price of AAA games, coasting on nostalgia and fanart.)
The interpretation of White Diamond is the Papa Smurf of the whole Gemkind and created all the other Diamonds and gems is interesting, and apparently the official one, but it doesn't solve the problem of the gems looking so computer-like in their base functioning. Like having their mind reset by the Rejuvenation or creaks in the gem (hardware) causing bad rendering of their personality and body (software.)
I still prefer the idea that even White Diamond was created by someone, with a purpose she now forgot.
And that would have explained much better an overkill weapon like the Cluster. Better than the Diamonds being just anxious.
I'd say, I might even have liked a "fourth act syndrome" for Steven in this series, but what breaks the deal for me is the Crystal Gems being totally jaded and absent about their foster child feelings up until the end, when his pink outbursts start inconveniencing them. That's pretty much character assassination for me, to the detriment of three of the four leads.
Eh, maybe. It just that all of those times did not make sense. Like, most of Steven's adult forms are a direct byproduct of magical shapeshifting based on what he thinks an adult is like, not really who he would be as an adult. In the same episode where he turned into an adult he also turned into a teenager that does not look like how he did as a teenager in the movie or future. Steg also does not make sense because he is super jacked and looks younger than Greg even though Stevonnie established that when Steven fuses with humans they have the average BMI and combined age of the components. It's not a bad or unreasonable interpretation, I just think that Steven would have probably looked the same as he did in Future, just taller, softer or muscular depending on his life choices while retaining his youthful facial features. But like you said it is just a speculative theory.
As for the White Diamond and Gems in general, you are right: even if that is the official explanation which is debatable depending on who said it and when (Remember when Gems used to be considered magical?) There was a separate account that described all the gems, including the diamonds, as technology. Which implied that not only where they each created for a specific purpose to fulfill but also meant they could be replaced, modified, upgraded, reset, (re)programmed, etc. Which just arouses more questions regarding who or what programmed White and why. Questions that I do not think were ever properly answered. Also the cluster was not meant to be a Gem in the traditional sense. It was made by forcing the broken fragments of already existing gems shattered during the war to create a fusion the size of Galactus to destroy the earth and other planets afterwards.
Anyway, the last bit with the Gems kind of ignoring Steven both does and does not make sense. For better or worst, the only characters in the series that experienced a complete character arc are best girl Peridot and Pearl. Even still, all the Crystal Gems had to go through an Arc where they accepted that Steven is not Rose, Rose was not a perfect person, and that they need to learn to live for themselves instead of Rose or the legacy she left behind. Because of this, it makes sense that the gems would have learned to give Steven his space and leave him to his devices rather than constantly worrying about him. Unfortunately, it goes from reasonable confidence unreasonable ignorance of Steven's needs and does not necessarily assassinate the characters so much as make you question how they have not noticed what is happening to Steven until the last minute and makes you want to slap them silly for not acting sooner.
As for the White Diamond and Gems in general, you are right: even if that is the official explanation which is debatable depending on who said it and when (Remember when Gems used to be considered magical?) There was a separate account that described all the gems, including the diamonds, as technology. Which implied that not only where they each created for a specific purpose to fulfill but also meant they could be replaced, modified, upgraded, reset, (re)programmed, etc. Which just arouses more questions regarding who or what programmed White and why. Questions that I do not think were ever properly answered. Also the cluster was not meant to be a Gem in the traditional sense. It was made by forcing the broken fragments of already existing gems shattered during the war to create a fusion the size of Galactus to destroy the earth and other planets afterwards.
Anyway, the last bit with the Gems kind of ignoring Steven both does and does not make sense. For better or worst, the only characters in the series that experienced a complete character arc are best girl Peridot and Pearl. Even still, all the Crystal Gems had to go through an Arc where they accepted that Steven is not Rose, Rose was not a perfect person, and that they need to learn to live for themselves instead of Rose or the legacy she left behind. Because of this, it makes sense that the gems would have learned to give Steven his space and leave him to his devices rather than constantly worrying about him. Unfortunately, it goes from reasonable confidence unreasonable ignorance of Steven's needs and does not necessarily assassinate the characters so much as make you question how they have not noticed what is happening to Steven until the last minute and makes you want to slap them silly for not acting sooner.
TLDR i skipped around and got that you like our hosehold were more than a bit asnnoyed that this show set up directly to be an, "In space lazers and lesbians space ballad" which upon seeing the sketches and story for the season that was sapost to be Diamond days cartoon network pulled a what the fandoms now call an "owl house" on Rebbeca and ended it.
We liked SUFuture but can't not see that it only exists to stabalize her legit double penetrated story line...
We liked SUFuture but can't not see that it only exists to stabalize her legit double penetrated story line...
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