Yearly Archives: 2019

“Last One Out of Beach City” is a standout episode, and a moment of intense growth for Pearl, but from Steven’s perspective it’s also disconcerting. Pearl, for all her drama, has always been the stable domestic presence. Closest thing to a mom Steven has ever had.

And here, he can’t even have a quiet night in to play a puzzle. It’s like a weird dream, how Pearl decides to act here. And Steven gets dragged along the whole time, not entirely willingly, getting more unsettled as the night goes on.

It’s not exactly a bad experience, and it’s good for Pearl and exciting and all, so he’s enthusiastic as well, but it’s a weird night that can only contribute to the growing unease. As signaled by the new ending music that appears in “Mindful Education.”

A troubling thing in hindsight is how much Steven keeps buried and unexamined. It builds up.

The whole Holo-Pearl as Depression thing in “Steven the Sword Fighter” is about as direct as the show gets in terms of discussing unreliable parenting, though it arcs around to touch the topic whenever she has one of her breaks.

In lines like the “almost let me die” thing, there’s a repressed mania going on there while he struggles to remain optimistic and supportive, the way he figures he’s expected to be. But the fact he’s even saying it, and the tone of his voice, and the look on his face… yikes.

So many of the show’s best comedic lines become much less funny when you start to think about them closely.

“Ha ha ha… wait… uh, Jesus Christ. Um.”

But then, I guess that’s how comedy is supposed to work.

There tend to be several levels of weight and implication to most of the humor in this show. But then you take a step away from the immediate scenario and its rhythms and you realize, you know, that’s actually pretty disturbing, there.

Unfiltered Truth Drop is kind of the default joke model on this show.

Going back to the early seasons with better knowledge of the characters’ psychologies and dynamics and backgrounds and personal traumas, and lots of the humor lands very differently. It’s all on-point but it’s biting and uncomfortable where it used to just seem like banter.

In the extended intro, I always thought Steven’s line in the bridge section was a bit… off, and potentially troublesome. With the arc of the series clear now,, looks like that was the intention, though? Actually, they’re all kind of… not healthy.

There are a few issues. Steven’s a sweet kid, and he takes everyone else’s stuff on board and doesn’t know how to process his own feelings about it. But he’s been handed over to a bunch of psychologically fucked space aliens with no social skills, who can’t see what’s happening.

One of the only times the show gets overt about what’s going on with him, prior to his slow-motion meltdown over series four, is in “Joy Ride,” where the Cool Kids treat him like someone his own age for once, and he feels little enough responsibility to slightly open up to them.

Even then he’s not sure what he’s saying, but what little he does admit to, and in the offhanded way he does it… pretty much appalls them.

Anyway, about the music—when “Mindful Education” aired, the new ending did not go unnoticed. The contemporary comment here says it all.

That unease continues through all of seasons four and five, as Steven’s problems grow. It’s only in the last few episodes, once he reaches Homeworld, that the music lays down its cards and reveals what it’s actually doing.

Anyway. Though far from an original observation, Pearl as Recovering Disaster Gay is one of the best things in the show so far. Somehow I never noticed that was the Big Donut they stopped at. I thought it was just some random gas station along the way.

But. Yeah, of course it’s a fucking doughnut shop. Because…

It’s impossible to overstate my appreciation for the background artists.

And yeah, Rebecca Sugar confirmed that Pearl’s new regeneration is in response to her experiences in this episode. This is where her self-concept has been sitting ever since, more or less.

With all this in mind, “Future Boy Zoltron” makes a hell of a lot more sense. It’s far from one of the show’s greatest episodes, but it’s genial enough until Mr. Frowny turns up, after which it gets… weird, and uncomfortable.

In particular, as a follow-up to “Mindful Education,” the trouble with Mr. Frowny here, it… like. This is not going to be an easy season, okay. By way of Garnet’s future-vision, the foreshadowing is made literal in the same way as “Steven and the Stevens” resetting the pilot.

Incidentally, Mr. Frowny’s original character design was… rather different. Also, lots of people read in the last part, though even with that knowledge and looking for it, the subtext is super unclear. But, guess it’s fully intentional!

I know I had more to say on this topic. I can’t seem to figure out where I put my notes, though. Hm. Will update if I come across them again.

Buddy’s Book is a subtle one, setting up lots of details for later. But like every Connie episode the dialogue is just amazing. The kinds of things she gets wrong due to her rigorous and enthusiastic tunnel-vision. Also note the diamond theme here.

That’s a whisper of a detail. The music in this show is just so important for communication, and the choice to work in the Diamond music, quietly, while Steven and Connie mill around the library… it’s so fascinating, in terms of the signals it trickles in about what’s happening

Makes it sound a little Twin Peaks, if you’re not quite keyed into the cues.

Suppose it helps that this is one of the few times the show reflects something I recognize from my own childhood. When I wasn’t being dumped in a shopping mall alone all night, I used to wander the stacks of various libraries while my father researched forgotten publications.

Those goddamned stepstools. You can’t even push them effectively. And they smell and feel so odd.

The Crystal Temple was ruined even a couple hundred years back. Though, notably, the dunes didn’t yet stretch up to her entrance.

Hadn’t noticed the later call-back. When Steven first presents Connie with Buddy’s book, she gets all dramatic as she does. Then in “Steven’s Dream,” when he asks her to bring him the book — well, of course. It’s this attention to detail, you know.

The show is roughly 45% foreshadowing, 45% callback, and 10% tears.

Either Dewey’s name changed over time or Buddy isn’t so good at spelling.

Likewise their shared image of Buddy as Jamie in full “drama zone” harks back to “Love Letters” — even as the story here builds on the play in “Historical Friction.” Neither of those is particularly eventful, so it’s tempting to dismiss “Buddy’s Book” by association. But, no.

This is actually a super important episode not just for establishing the season arc that people insist doesn’t exist and setting up or contextualizing random bits of mythology, but for looping those earlier episodes back in and showing how they’re actually relevant.

And… I mean. Unreliable history, right? Everything about this episode deals with the ways in which we get the past wrong, and change stories for our convenience, down to picturing Buddy as Jamie and the CGs first by their modern incarnations then as shown in a painting earlier

Through the whole story, Buddy keeps recording details of Gem history all wrong. Some he gets right; not many. The very last beat in the story addresses how Steven and Connie pictured Buddy very differently from the reality, and how they kind of prefer their version of the truth.

Which as an opening volley to the show’s third act is pretty fucking important.

Half the episodes in this show seem to basically contain all the elements for every future episode. Like, pick any random episode and there’s a good chance you can work out an argument for why It All Starts Here. That’s more true than usual for “Buddy’s Book,” though. Endgame.

It’s not a particularly eventful episode, and maybe that’s the thing that trips people up this season. So much of the season is people sitting and talking and learning and thinking things through, and figuring out how they feel. It’s… drama, you know. As opposed to melodrama.

Guess I’m also always a sucker for ancient texts and maps and artifacts and whatnot. So wrapping the fragments of Gem history that we know in a human context, more clearly illustrating how they’ve affected and influenced the development of the world, is super interesting to me.

This is fun, speaking of new details. The beefsteak strawberry. I could do with a few of those.

“Fare-thee-well!” from a penny farthing. Have I mentioned the internalized wordplay on this show?

Wish I had a library near here. Wish I lived in a place that was livable.

For a show without scripts, this show really loves its words.

Bits of this remind me of Edward Gorey.

Or, you know, this.

The next episode has its problems, but it also has this. (Just noticed Pearl getting protective over her sock after Smoky threatens to knock it off.)

In terms of characterization, it’s interesting that Smoky is the second fusion who isn’t named Garnet to be treated like their own person, rather than an ostentatious short-term mish-mash of personality traits. So far it’s just Stevonnie and Smoky. The Steven fusions.

Given the whole show is from Steven’s perspective, I guess it’s a given that his fusions will tend to *have* a perspective, but. I guess maybe his empathy gives them a level of stability that other fusions might struggle to reach? If he’s ready to fuse, it’s going to be complex.

Assuming this is anything like representative, one wonders where Amethyst and Steven would sit on this chart. Apparently Stevonnie is about halfway between Pearl and Garnet, in raw strength. Which is something, considering they’re 75% human.

The episode starts well, and then the ending… man. The middle doesn’t work at all, unfortunately. It’s one of those things that — it feels like it was carefully thought-out on paper so well in advance that it’s stripped down to nothing but an idea.

Whatever happened to her, anyway? 

In a recent… thing, somewhere, one of the crew suggested Peridot eventually noticed the bubble in the barn and moved it over to the Burning Room. If so, did we see it in the fountain later?

Granted there’s a lot to go over in this scene.

Don’t see any green bubbles, but that’s hardly conclusive.

Anyway, the comedic timing in this episode is flawless. I know Fans In General (also see Doctor Who, anything ever) tend to be down on comedic episodes, so for them this must start off season 4 on a bum note, but… yo, this is how you do it. I don’t even mind the pastiche.

Talk about animal byproducts

Seriously, if you can’t appreciate this majesty, I don’t think we have much to talk about.

This isn’t a real sequence of posts, as such; it’s a collection of tweets, carried over and plopped in order in part for the sake of readability and in part to keep them from vanishing into the aether. So! Let’s talk about Steven Universe, huh!

I guess people don’t like season four that much? People are weird. I can understand how its scheduling must have been annoying, after getting all of season three in, like, a month, but season four is where the show really starts to become the psychologically intense thing it is.

A thing I’ve heard a few times is that it’s the only season without a plot. And, uh, what? The entire season is about Steven’s mental breakdown. It’s about his trying and failing to cope with all the things that have happened, the things he’s learned, and what they mean for him.

But then the same people who dismiss season four are the ones who describe “Storm in the Room” as a pointless filler episode. Which is… I mean. The actual fuck? I really don’t get how people interpret art, more often than not. Or, well, rather, don’t.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cmpprrp365g

Strikes me that too many people I’ve been close to, they’ve based their sense of right on whether a thing meets their expectations — as opposed to basing their expectations on whether a thing is right.

I take a special interest in art critique, as I… kind of have noticed that the way people respond to art is almost identical to the way one can expect them to respond to people. And, in particular, to me. You open them up to empathy for weird perspectives, you’re doing well.

I notice that some people, their notion of empathy is… it’s kind of like a sociopath’s concept of respect. Actual respect is about acceptance. Authoritarians will insist it’s about obedience. Actual empathy is about understanding. They’ll say it’s about meeting expectations.

Etiquette. To the authoritarian, empathy is the same thing as etiquette.

To the authoritarian, respect is a social game of doing what’s expected and empathy is a social game of saying what’s expected. Both are forms of manipulation, with end goals of winning in some way.

This, incidentally, is part of what growing up rich will do to a person.

To a person like this, empathy means you memorize this series of rules and follow them exactly, or else you’re demonstrating that you don’t care. As opposed to, you know, listening and validating one’s experiences, relating to them. Getting that people are people.

This twisted idea of empathy, it all cycles around shame rather than love. About performance. Ritual. Never putting people out, offending them, by breaking the rules of behavior put upon you. As opposed to… you know, being kind?

Which is, I guess, how you get here.

(Yes, I am speaking from experience, if you’re wondering.)

So what I’m saying is, White Diamond must have a really long TubeTube rant out there about season four.

It’s worth stressing that in a way, the show’s real hero is Greg. When you first see him, you’re probably tempted to dismiss him. The show sure sets you up to. A washed-up middle-aged rock musician, living out of a van. He let himself go years back.

And it’s not like the Gems are wrong. He clearly is a mess. He didn’t have much direction to start with, and since Rose died he’s pretty much given up. But as becomes clearer, the more one sees of him, he’s also preternaturally kind. And it’s his kindness that saves everyone.

Through the vehicle of Steven, mind you. But he didn’t get that from Rose, and he didn’t get that from the other Gems, who basically have no clue how to relate to others. When Steven talks down a family of intergalactic fascists, he’s working with the humanity he’s been handed.

If Rose had never met Greg, and Greg had never made such an impression on her, and then formed the basis of Steven’s understanding of the world, this conflict would never have been resolved. The Earth would be just gone. The Diamonds would still be expanding their empire.

In hindsight, this scene may be one of the most central to the entire story. This is where Greg saves the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC3UVEt-7G4

Smash that Diamond Authority, Greg.

Greg is kind of an ancillary character through most of the show, only popping up to spout advice or provide comic relief. In dramatic terms, he doesn’t want much. His main breakthrough is no longer feeling shunned by the people he’s closest to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06PIH5lTm1k

It’s a smaller arc for his smaller screen time, but it’s pretty distinct from the start. What’s interesting is that the Gems are themselves a group of misfits and outcasts, and never mind wider society, he’s an outcast even from the outcasts.

He’s a flawed character like any other, and this neediness (if that’s what we call it) helps to explain his one really big, selfish blunder, in “House Guest.” There, he’s just… Well, for context, check out the extended intro, and that last look before he hands Steven over.

“Okay, Greg. Thanks for building us this house. We’ll take it from here. Bye.”

Something else weird. So people rag on season four for having no plot, when it actually… is kind of the turning point for the story to get intense. But they also consider season three the show’s pinnacle. Yet it’s, like, all townie episodes. Which, they continually whine about?

I’m not saying I expect fan blargh to ever make sense. I’m just scratching my head at another aspect of its nonsense. “Obliterate all townie episodes! They are the plague!” “What, the best season? The one with all the townie episodes, of course!”

Well, anyway. Regarding season four…