Steven Universe: Intriguing beyond belief

Cafe Society
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So now a two week hiatus, then an hour movie and then?

Probably a good place to unpack these appetizers.

They’ve aired so I’m not sure that spoiler box is needed but what the hey.

[spoiler]I had been pretty sure WD would not come to the ball but feel like I should have seen Stevonnie and the immediate aftermath coming. Didn’t though.

I’m thinking that White Pearl is broken not because of any abuse inflicted upon her by WD but as a reflection of how WD is broken (which I think many besides me assume she is in some way).

“Escapism” is a lot to unpack. Obviously every Steven interaction with the watermelon people in his image has had an impact bringing them to a different level. Now he’s taught them about boats and how to travel off island. How’s that going to impact their cultural evolution, eh?

Of course the sad melonbird thud was disturbingly funny and the significance of each Steven statue is pretty clear. The getting us to expect his fighting the melonshark with the spear and instead loving it into leaving him be was a good twist.

Whereever he goes he ends up being disruptive to established norms, doesn’t he?

I’m thinking the back up ends up being the whole rest of the team, not just Peridot and Lapace but Lars with the off-colors and maybe even Sadie insisting on coming along. [/spoiler]

I’ll miss this show when it is done but I am of mixed mind knowing that there will be a season six. I feel like they need to bring the arcs to some conclusions and not stretch it out too much farther.

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Am I reading too much into it, or was anyone else bothered by Garnet’s comment at the beginning of this arc that Steven would be fine? As in, just Steven?

Also,

maybe someone will swing by the zoo and collect a few of the Famethyst as backups!

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I watched the entire show this summer(not including the most recent episodes, obviously). I liked, but did not love it.

But I agree with you entirely. I would be well-served to just find a natural ending and pursue it. I’m kind of surprised it is coming back for more episodes after this current storyline.

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Pretty sure it was meant to get us worried. Whether or not that is real foreshadowing or a head fake though? Another season is coming so I’m going with head fake.

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On the other hand, I was worried Cartoon Network was pulling the plug and expected the Crew to wrap up all the loose threads in a handful of episodes and end with the movie. Since everyone was expecting a series conclusion that involved Steven using his empathy to talk out a solution with the Diamonds, now that that doesn’t like like a possibility, I have no clue how the crew is going to bring the show to a conclusion, but I don’t think it can be done in a handful of episodes.

386

So. “Change Your Mind.”

I’d like to not have to use spoilers so for this post just seeing if posters have seen it yet.

My first spoiler-free reaction is that it didn’t quite have the reveals I was hoping for. Fine but not as powerful as I have come to expect from the series.

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Ach. I’ll spoiler some initial thoughts.

[spoiler]Glad they finished various plot lines but it seemed rushed, like a show that expected to have another season quickly finishing up, bringing a bunch of stuff all at once. After the dribs this was flying through.

New fusions so fast they couldn’t really be appreciated.

The self-awareness and acceptance by the Diamonds was too quick and easy to the point of making these emotional transformations seem trite. Especially White’s 180. “I’m not perfect? What do I do now? Oh I will follow the lead of the new Pink form and be all kumbaya! Because I blushed.” Abusive parents and partners don’t reform so easily. And their victims should have some trepidation about trusting them from there. It made the healing of broken families seem to be a quick thing if only we have enough empathy and self-love. Again, after the powerfulness of this series that seems trite.

Steven’s pure gem form - any reason that it should be SO powerful as to brush off White’s full power attacks? I can get that the initial attack was weakened by having spread some of her essence into the other gems but using all of them was a full attack and Gem-Steven just shrugged it away?

Still the fingernails removal of Steven’s gem was a great and creepy bit.

I was kind of hoping that Connie would be needed for the final fusion, that the extended family strength was the bit that tipped the balance. But that is a minor complaint.[/spoiler]

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Finally got to watch it!

[ul]
[li]I loved all the fusing that went on, but was mildly disappointed that we didn’t get to see any Stevonnie fusions.[/li][li]Definitely very rushed, but I’m glad they wrapped up most of the big loose ends. I’m still not buying that any of the Diamonds – particularly White – is fully reformed.[/li][li]Unless Pink Stephen’s demonstration of power was enough to wake her up? I took the blushing to indicate that some essence or something of Pink Stephen had seeped into White somehow. This was another area of the episode that was too rushed.[/li][li]The gem removal was super creepy, but the split screen view afterward was neat.[/li][li]If the pool party in the healing fountain with the Diamonds was supposed to heal all the corrupted gems, why does Jasper still have horns and a splotch?[/li][li]The other Crystal Gems got spiffy new outfits, but Stephen is in the same clothes…does he have a new gem placement or orientation?[/li][li]I was sort of sorry to see Stephen’s Pink Diamond outfit go, especially the shoes.[/li][li]Lars talked about Sadie so much that the Off-Colors couldn’t wait to meet her. ^_^[/li][/ul]

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[spoiler]

Several of the healed gems seem to have ‘scars’ from their corruption. Biggs and the Snow Monster are both Jaspers, and thus, presumably, didn’t originally have horns (since none of the other Jaspers we’ve seen have), but still have them after they’re uncorrupted.

There’s a couple others who still strongly resemble their corrupted state (such as Watermelon Tourmaline, who used to be the Pufferfish), but cause and effect is less clear there, since we’ve never seen other uncorrupted versions of those gems, as far as we know, so they might be like the Nephrites/Centipeetles, and the elements are ones that came from their pre-corruption forms.

And, while I thought White Diamond coming around was awful abrupt, Yellow and Blue have been building toward this basically since their first encounter with Steven, so this is a culmination, not a sudden change. And White still seems to have trouble with it - she, unlike Yellow and Blue, seems to need to make an active effort to change, so I expect there’ll be some more extreme backsliding with her, even with empathy installed. This is the end of the active conflict with the Diamonds, but only the start of White Diamond’s redemption.[/spoiler]

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I’m not going to bother with a spoiler box-

This was a great episode, but I am inclined to agree with those who thought it was rushed. They could have had a whole season on homeworld doing a slow buildup. I am sure that the writers decided against it for good reason. Honestly, it works well enough for the narrative. If you start asking real questions, the whole thing falls apart anyway. (Why are gems so like humans psychologically when they have basically nothing in common with them physically? How would a civilization with citizens that require neither food nor water nor clothing or even waste disposal be remotely recognizable to us? How is it that Homeworld is so heavily militarized when they seem to have no organized enemies or even peers? What are all those guards guarding against, anyway?)

The whole episode is obviously a gift to the fans, giving us the kind of answers and closure we want, and a bunch of awesome gifts in the form of new fusions and uncorrupted gems. Is it just me, or is Sunstone basically a gem version of Poochie?

There’s a movie and another season to go, making me wonder where it’s going to go from here. I’d love it if it was just a bunch of low key episodes about Steven and the gang helping the new gems find their place on earth. For some reason I’m imagining Barb training Jasper to become her replacement mail lady.

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I hadn’t considered the ‘scars’ aspect.

I could see some growth with both of them, but for me I think it goes back to everything feeling so rushed. It would have been nice to have some stand-alone episodes with Blue and Yellow in particular, just to get a better feeling for their characters. (Would love to see their reaction to hot dogs…)

On a second viewing, I really liked the similarity between the Obsidian dance and the dance steps shown in the beginning of “Alone Together”.

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I think I might stop watching now that I have caught up through “Change Your Mind”.

I really think it is the ending the show built up to and was a fine wrap-up. I don’t know why they would consider continuing on after this.

I watched all the episodes up to this new batch in July and have now watched the latest bunch and kind of feel cool with how it is concluded.

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Very late to the the party.

Was “Change Your Mind” the best episode ever of Steven Universe? No. (That would be “Mindful Education”.) Was it the best finale for an animated show, I’ve seen? No. (Gravity Falls had a better ending.) However, it’s still a very good episode and season finale. It gives every indication that it was written as a series finale, as if the crew was uncertain there would be a sixth season. (And it is where Rebecca Sugar and the Crew planned to end the series when they plotted it out years ago.)

I was posting earlier in this thread that I was assuming that that the assumed Season 6 would be about dealing with White Diamond, because I didn’t see a way for Steven to reach all off the Diamonds and get a resolution in the few episodes that were left. I apparently didn’t keep a few things in mind.

-SU will stretch a storyline out over several episodes, but will resolve that storyline quickly, usually in one episode.

-Ever since we found out that all four Diamonds would be needed to reverse the corruption wave, I knew the show would end in a reconciliation, as there is no way the show would leave the gems corrupted

-Starting from “Legs From Here to Homeworld” and counting “Change Your Mind” as four episodes, this storyline took eight episodes, which is very long for SU. (I feel a lot fewer people would complain about the finale feeling “rushed” if it was divided into four parts and broadcast over four weeks.)

-My original thought was that Steven would persuade Blue and possibly Yellow to take his side, but would be unable to reach White, and that would be the main conflict for Season 6. However, with the Diamonds picking sides, that would like to a full-scale Gem civil war, which is the last thing Steven would want or participate in.

-Thinking about it, maybe White’s quick turnaround wasn’t so unnatural after all. Remember how she not only blushed pink, but the entire chamber developed a pink tinge? Remember how Blue and Yellow reacted to this? I don’t think the White reacted the way she did because Steven’s sick burn reply to her caused her to see the light. I think that Steven unconsciously used a Pink Diamond power on her, one that even Pink/Rose herself wasn’t aware of. Instead of projecting his own feelings onto White, which is Blue’s ability, I think Steven projected his empathy onto White. Since White had been living in her own head both literally and figuratively for 5,000 years, suddenly developing a sense of empathy would have been a huge shock for her.

-As the final stretch the show made crystal clear the Diamond Authority, and Homeworld itself, is modeled on an abusive family. Obviously, in the real world, abusive families and the trauma they inflict aren’t resolved so easily, but I can’t really blame this show for going for a happy resolution.

-On the other hand, a chunk of the online community seemed to think the point fo the show was overthrowing fascism, and since Steven did not overthrow the Diamond Authority, reform Homeworld, and dispense justice and vengeance, they took that to mean that show and Rebecca Sugar are objectively pro-fascist. Aren’t fandoms great?

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A few points on “Change Your Mind”:

-White Diamond’s design, with the the thin linework except for the very thick lines for the eyes and mouth, looks very impressive in her chamber, where it looks like she is radiating light. It looks less impressive outside the chamber, especially with the scale issues of showing her in a shot.

-The part of the special that felt flattest to me was Connie’s talk to Yellow Diamond. I guess the writers wanted to give her something to do besides say “Steven!”

-That animated sequence where Steven and Pink Steven dance and reunite with each other? It was animated by none other than animation legend JAAAMES Baxter.

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That’s very true - I’ve noticed how the pacing of release can affect the perception of the pacing of storytelling in other serialized stories - comic books and webcomics, particularly, though mostly in the other direction - something that feels tediously drawn out when it comes out on a monthly basis, or one page every two days, feels perfectly snappy when read in the collection or archives. (It’s a common criticism of recent comics - writing to the trade.)

Even being a standard once-a-day Stevenbomb would probably have helped the perception of this being rushed.

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So, the next question is, whither Season 6? I’m guessing that the season will start after some sort of time skip. It could be a skip of a few months, or a few years in the future, when Steven and Connie are old enough to drive the Dondai on their own. This way, the Crew can show how loose ends such as the Famethyst and the Zoomans were resolved as fait accompli, and catch up with how the uncorrupted Gems and Off-Colors hav e settled on Earth. I suspect that after catching up, the season will turn into a space adventure season, with Steven and the Gems having to help resolve some Homeworld issue.

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As an aside, I’m really liking Craig of the Creek on Cartoon Network. It’s still in its first season, but has dropped about 30 11-minute episodes, most or all of which should be on the app or On Demand.

I’m bringing it up in this this thread because the creators/showrunners are Ben Levin and Ben Burnett, who were until relatively recently the head writers of Steven Universe. (They helped plot out the show until “Change Your Mind”.)

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Saw Steven Univererse: Season 2 in the store the other day and picked it up. Other than the animatics for a bunch of episodes, there are no special features. I wish they would do some commentary tracks for the shows key episodes.

It comes in an oversized box, so they can fit a big, plushy keyring of original form Garnet in there.

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Movie tomorrow.

400

That was a bit … underwhelming.

Minimally I would have liked to have Steven realize that he was being the same self-centered selfish user to the Diamonds that Pink had been to Spinel. There was a remarkable LACK of growth.

This does not leave me looking forward to a next season.