I remember “The Zoo” as my least favorite part of the whole zoo arc. The first two episodes, and the final one, are all great. “Gem Heist” is functional bridge material. “The Zoo”… I don’t even know why my brain swerves with this one. I guess I’ll have to interrogate that, huh.
I bet it has to do with the zoomans, though.
I think the whole 1960s sci-fi story here is kind of… you know, I’m. My brain has been here before? So many times? Hang on, though. Just strikes me, Greg is kinda living out Passions of Xandor here, isn’t he. In a different sense from, you know, the overall Rose thing.
I guess Steven’s revolt here among the zoomans, suggesting they just do whatever they want, sort of serves as foreshadowing for his later misadventures on Homeworld. Start with the human Gem experiment; move on to actual Gem society.
Yeah, it’s the zoomans. It’s their whole Star Trek Planet of Single Metaphor schtick. I’ll go full-force with allegories if they work. This feels more like dancing with paper plates; having fun with pastiche of an old sci-fi trope. There’s probably more here that I’m not engaging
I do enjoy every time the show remembers how strong Steven is, though. All twelve times ever. In almost every case it comes off as an incidental “OH YEAH” sort of gag.
Here, though, with Steven consciously holding back at first, it plays into his degrading confidence this season. It’s a microscopic moment, but he sweats and consciously holds back, knowing how badly he could hurt Greg if he allowed himself to. There’s stuff going on in his head that he’s not saying, because he isn’t usually this aware of what he’s doing.
It’s the simplemindedness. The zoomans, I mean. It’s, you know. I get it. Don’t @ me. I understand the storytelling here. But it gets old within about twelve seconds, and we’ve got eleven minutes of this. It’s not even cute, like Padparadscha. It’s just, WHEE! WE’RE NAIVE!
(If they were New Yorkers (Er, in-universe, would that be Empiricists?), they would be naïve.)
It feels like from beat to beat we’re going through the motions of a predictable story, based on old, well-trod ideas, decorated with people who understand nothing and state the obvious. And it’s… you know. Normally the show works on more levels than this? It’s so dull, to me.
The mass freak-out at Greg rejecting the choosening is also kinda not my party. Though I do love how the Amethyst guards handle it. Whenever we get away from the frickin’ zoomans, even for a second, it gets so much more interesting.
Oh well. It’s eleven minutes.
As for what’s playing on repeat in Steven’s head, that he’s not saying? Well.
Listening to Steven Universe in headphones, you really appreciate all the work that goes into the overall sound design. The light environmental sounds —crash of the surf, wind—the tangible Foley, how sounds get muffled or reflected. Tinnitus ring. All about Steven’s bubble.
I get confused about the geography sometimes, though, especially during season one. Where is this, for instance?
It’s not the cliff with the Crystal Temple. Is it on the other side of the bay, by Brooding Hill and the warehouse? If so, Stevonnie seems to drift pretty far…
It’s interesting also that for the expressive purposes of this episode, twilight seems to last for hours on end.
One of many things that makes this story so heightened and uncanny.
I think the twilight palette here also affects my idea of Stevonnie’s coloring. Considering Connie’s and Steven’s relative skin tones, their medium tone here seems about right. But in other episodes, in the daylight, they’re way more pink than it feels like they should be.
But seriously, yikes: the sound design. Every little thing a character touches, there’s Foley, appropriate to the material and the properties of the room or environment. Everything is directional. There’s always appropriate spatial resonance. So present. And the music floats above.
And, here: when Stevonnie exits the shop, the sound of external crickets and surf, cut off by the slamming door…
I’m not understanding the level of detail here. What’s the process for mapping out how this works, and doing it?
(By the way, if we’re going to focus on deliberate expressive choices like Stevonnie proffering a $3 bill (ahem), their selection of doughnuts seems… potentially significant. Particularly in the context of the moment they’re having. )
(You can pick apart their anatomy yourself. )
(Come to it, there are an awful lot of deep, blank stare reaction shots in this show. Prime example, from another episode by this storyboard team.)
It’s easy to assume Beach City is just those few blocks on the peninsula, between the temple mount and the mainland, but there’s stuff all over the area. The warehouse is part of this industrial zone, across the bay by Brooding Hill.
And it’s clearly still in Beach City.
Stevonnie should pull out the sparkle powers more often.
Okay, right. So, sound design. Bopping on back to the next season’s first Florido/Mitroff/Sugar jam—here when the two of them spin in their little world, the Philosophy Majors recording goes from crackly record on tinny diegetic open-air speakers to full-on direct-line soundtrack, filling the stage…
… and when we pull out, it’s back to the tinny speakers.
The “What Can I Do For You” sequence (referenced previously, in the open-eyed gawp tangent) isn’t mixed like an album recording; it’s mixed like a slightly off live performance, with people not-close enough to mikes, the guitar too prominent, weird environmental acoustics, and so on. The reverb to the temple entrance, before the house is there to soak up sound…
I feel like I’ve been missing out on a whole dimension, here. There’s such a tangible sense of place, simply from the sound mix. I could close my eyes and know exactly what was going on, where, in relation to what or whom, at all times.
Same goes for the rinky-dink record Greg puts on for Rose. As they dance, it swells from diegetic crackle tin to full-stage direct-line cinema swoop mix, reflecting the emotional focus of the moment. And tying in the story with Connie and Steven’s moment at the start.
And again it pulls back out to the record player, after Greg disengages and realizes things didn’t quite go as he hoped.
I don’t think the parallel is lost on the two of them.
Retreating into Connie’s less-spectacular world, the Maheswarans’ house is quiet to the point it dulls all sound—as a wooden house full of furniture would, one supposes—but there’s still a barely perceptible fizz of street noise, as if heard through the windows.
As one might expect at this point, the soundscape of the hospital is every bit as uncomfortable as if one were there: hard surfaces; gross, persistent fluorescent hum.
I love how the sound completely changes inside the bubble, versus outside.
It’s stark, in headphones. Barely perceptible on speakers.
This effect isn’t unique to “Nightmare Hospital;” it’s been there since the bubble’s first appearance alongside Connie.
Again, inside, outside the bubble. When we go to an interior shot, all the subtle sounds of the shore, they’re distorted—not just muffled, but the curvature seems to phase the sound as much as the material blocks certain frequencies. It all depends on “camera” placement.
The audio impression is significant in this case, with Steven and Connie trapped in their protective bubble. The whole audio environment is different in there. Resonance. Presence. Which adds to the separation between the literal bubble the two of them are in, relative to world.
Also nothing new here, but that’s our first glimpse of Obsidian’s sword.
And the incidental music — when the headphones pull it out in the mix, and cinematically wrap it around the reality of the scene, it stands out all the more how beautiful it all is. And there’s so goddamned much of it in this show.
Connie has lived in a bubble her whole life. In meeting her, Steven’s first impulse was to literally put her in another protective bubble. It’s not until they reach an understanding, she stops being so scared, and he stops trying to be so cool, that the bubble pops. Both bubbles.
(On the topic of protective bubbles, in the early days every time Garnet bubbles a gem it’s when Steven is distracted or has his back turned. He literally has no idea what’s going on most of the time, and nobody takes the time to explain it to him or the audience.)
The bubble typifies the best environmental effect in the show: transitional atmospherics. A subtler example is when Steven and Connie are up by the laundry, and all the wind and surf are around them—then the scene cuts to the beach house, and the same sound is muffled by the thin walls.
(So many of the backgrounds contain things like this. A STORE or A GAME.)
The musical number that follows demonstrates a thing the show does more regularly than is obvious. Here, Pearl’s part is diegetic—which is to say it sounds like she’s in the place, just singing there alongside Connie—but the piano is… there needs to be another term, but it’s floaty. It’s superimposed in that ethereal way.
So Pearl’s really there, singing, for whatever reason, in the reality of the show, but the accompaniment is clearly there just for our benefit, like any other soundtrack element.
Another good example comes a season on, with “Mr. Greg.” Get past a bunch of really nice lobby sounds, and when Pearl’s song comes in, just as in “Sworn to the Sword” she’s mixed so that her singing is contextual, in real-space as far as the narrative, but the overlaid piano is coming from that phantom soundtrack zone.
To contrast, this piano is mixed in differently, because it physically exists in the scene.
Though predictably, if we’re studying the way the show handles these things, when we get to the Expressive Zone, it expands out and becomes full, all-absorbing soundtrack material.
This tendency dates back to the show’s earliest song cues. In the case of “Giant Woman,” Steven starts off singing diegetically, with the ukulele strumming in on the cinema stage. Through this first shot the atmospheric wind continues, albeit higher and lower in the mix according to music volume. But then it expands, as it becomes a montage.
For just a beat here until the singing comes in and it’s clear that it’s an overdub rather than happening in the minute, we continue to hear the Andes wind whirl through the frame. But then it quickly pulls out, and we’re on full OST mode…
… until Steven Junior chimes in at the end.
(Or, I should say, until that shot, which is where we transition back to Steven’s diegesis, and so start to hear a few subtle environmental noises buried in the mix—insects and birds, mostly.)
Back at the beach house, one notes that the ocean becomes an almost constant presence in the show once you can hear all the sound design. It gives the whole show this undercurrent (if you will) of melancholy, grounding every scene in and around Steven’s home in a sort of baseline of unsteadiness.
And it’s not just Beach City. Everywhere they go (e.g., the sky arena), there’s some kind of mournful environmental noise, just low enough that maybe you pick it up in your muscles, but you don’t quite hear it without headphones. Combine that with the complexity and detail of the incidental and contact sounds, and the environments practically become characters.
Cute incidental, on the topic of sound design: the three words Connie speaks through her hands, someone muffled in the mix. You can tell Rolek didn’t record the lines that way, but whoever’s doing this apparently thought this was an important detail.
And whoa, fusion-space has… interesting acoustical properties. Like a closet made of Plexiglas.
Also I don’t think I’d clocked just how much bass there is in this song. Which there would be, considering Garnet’s role. It’s just so low, it doesn’t come across in the white-people speakers I have.
Seriously, though, the atmosphere in the beach house is one of my new favorite things about the show. It’s like some quiet purgatory, technically safe but not quite… secure.
That turmoil of the constant surf and wind, it accentuates the way Rose looms over everything, her eyes often as not dramatically blocked by the rafters, depending on what’s happening in the story.
Here we’re right about to see Steven’s freak-out in which he envisions Rose’s face glaring down at him from the sky—and look how we’re introduced to that sequence.
I need to document how that portrait is used through the course of the show. It’s some Hitchcockian shit, I tell you. Every time it comes into frame, it’s… there’s a reason for it. Even for all my tangents, this topic is way outside the remit of our discourse here—but worth a deep spelunk at another time.
Anyway, the grinding, phasing bass tones here…
Golly, I’ve never had a 5.1 sound system. But I guess this show would be something with one of those, huh.
Speaking of which, “Storm in the Room” is certainly a go-to episode for unsettling beach house atmosphere.
In the room, it’s another level of purgatory: all distant wind, and the rustle of Rose’s dress.
Even as they play the weird Lonely Blade arm wrestling foreshadowing simulator, the wind continues to roil, preventing anything from feeling quite secure.
Then when this happens, there’s this deep grinding noise, similar to Stevonnie’s panic attack zone in the Sky Arena.
Curiously, the atmospherics on the jungle moon aren’t… quite as alien as one might expect. It sounds like a plausible Earth rainforest, including what sounds suspiciously like Earth crickets. It’s not even all that all-encompassing.
The hum and thrum of the failing radio is something, though.
Though the outside surprises me with how underwhelming it sounds, considering how engrossing it looks, the interior of the overgrown moonbase is another story. Here’s where the sound design finally wakes up.
Thing that always gets me about this picture, the way it’s re-staged with Stevonnie, it almost makes Priyanka and Doug look like an older Connie and Steven. I don’t think it’s an accident they gave Doug Steven’s nose and hair type, or general head shape. Because, Freud and all.
Actually, to build on the whole Doug/Steven parallel (I guess as parallel to the Pearl/Connie parallel):
“I’m a member of the Crystal Gems! We fight monsters and protect humanity and stuff.”
“Oh! That’s kinda like my dad. He’s a cop. W-well, more like a private security guard.”
I think I mentioned this before, but the Pearl/Connie thing is extra complicated in that—uh. So, okay. Steven’s the reincarnation of Rose, right. So it makes sense on that level he’d find his own “Pearl.” But also, Pearl’s as close to an actual mother figure as Steven’s known.
So, there are a couple of levels of “Hm” to his immediate fixation with her, depending on how you want to come at the situation.
Another aspect to the Connie/Pearl thing is their role as catalyst to their respective Diamonds’ (well, technically the same Diamond) stories. Rose would never have been Rose without Pearl’s imaginings and motivating influence. Until he met Connie, Steven had no in to his world.
It’s largely through Connie’s enthusiasm for his whole situation and his motivation to (at first) impress her, then just spend time with her, that he was shaken out of… what, four years of taking things for granted, doing what exactly, and began to question and learn and grow.
Without Connie to push him and take an active interest, Steven might never have gotten much further than Cookie Cats until the Cluster emerged and the Earth exploded.
Also on the topic of portraits, in that same episode (“Jungle Moon”)—I, uh.
I don’t know that there’s a deeper reading here exactly, but this can’t be an accident.
Back on topic, though—best piece of sound design in the episode: when our friend climbs up on the dome. Every click-thunk of its claws resonates convincingly through the structure. It’s really satisfying.
Continuing this Stevonnie theme, because why wouldn’t we—the thrum from Kevin’s speakers is overwhelming. He’s one of those people, where you can feel the bass down the block before you even see the car coming.
Kevin’s and Stevonnie’s cars have very different idle sounds. The Dondai is… uh, let’s say rickety by comparison.
Panic attacks are a good excuse for the sound design to go nuts. Here it more goes for a deranged detachment. Which fits well.
Toodling right along to wrap up the pre-Homeworld Stevonnie material, weirdly there’s next to zero environmental noise in “Crack the Whip,” once you get past the point where Amethyst refuses to actively watch them train.
Well, a little really low-in-the-mix white noise at the very end, but. Actually, the mix seems really weird in season 3.
Though I’ve covered the episodes I most wanted to discuss, I’ve got lots more to say on this topic. Hang tight. There shall be more.
Keep in mind, Sapphire isn’t fused here. So she’s only able to see one future probability. It’s Ruby’s spontaneity that gives Garnet the ability to churn through multiple branching points and pick the one she wants to follow.
Amethyst’s revisitation of the Jasper masquerade feels significant, thematically. Not sure how, yet. Even uses the same Ruby ship to do it.
Worth noting though, that this is Michaela Dietz’s chance to go nuts with slightly different readings for the Famethyst, much as Charlyne Yi has done with the Ruby squad. I think Estelle is the only major or recurring Gem actor not to voice multiple characters at this point?
(“This point” being 2019; not midway through season 4. We don’t get another Sapphire variant for a while yet. And I guess we technically have a couple episodes before we meet another Jasper. Squaridot is exclusive to the game, but that’s deuterocanonical.)
(Okay, we also have only met the one Lapis, and Bismuth.)
So, curious thing. Amethysts and Jaspers are Quartz soldiers, just like Rose. Accordingly, they all look similar aside from coloration and a minor details like hair texture. Agates are also Quartzes, though, and Holly Blue sure as heck does look different. Similar build, but.
I’ve always had a poor sense of self. The confusing thing, that I’m only just working out, is that this doesn’t mean disliking myself; it means being hopelessly out-of-touch with a concept of me. With an inner narrative about who I am, and why, and how I feel about that.
This is an engineered situation. I know I’m not alone in this, except in that my experience is my own. But the effect is that this whole zone of selfness, this area that defines me and what I want and need, it’s fogged over with a perception filter. I try to look, and I roll off. To look at myself, try to identify myself as a person, even work out what I might want from moment to moment, it’s like making eye contact with a stranger or staring into the sun. Or checking one’s inbox, when an unpleasant response is likely. More than that. It feels shameful.
I lived in an abusive house. One of those where almost daily my father would congratulate himself at me for not hitting me, and telling himself (one suspects) more than me how grateful I should be, because other people had it much worse. Constant screaming. Near total neglect.
There were no mirrors in the house, except a high and dark one above the bathroom sink and a palm-sized one high up by the front door. I’ve mentioned this, but it seems important. I never got in the habit of seeing myself. I learned to keep my head down, make no demands or noise. If I did nothing, didn’t add to the noise, didn’t draw attention to myself, I could maybe get through the day without any of the surrounding war landing in my lap. Life was a matter of deflection, avoiding confrontation, reading danger signs, and pleasing the unpleasable. In return, at best, I got nothing. I got left alone.
And when I mean alone, I mean alone. No one ever really talked to me. Asked me questions. Showed me how to do anything, take care of myself. I had to figure out how to survive myself, sort of, in a house with two adults. As long as I was blank, I was fine. Because, if I weren’t blank I would be wrong.
In hindsight, anything would have been wrong. But I also… I didn’t have a strong concept, again, but I knew almost nothing that people expected of me applied to me in the slightest. In the ’80s and early ’90s, concepts of gender and sexuality weren’t so developed in the culture that would reach a small town in Maine. Whatever other people were doing, it sure didn’t fit me. Lots of people assumed, or feared, I was gay. I knew that wasn’t quite right either.
This whole scenario, it created a sort of limbo where it was impossible to move forward. The warfare between my parents undermined a desperate attempt to attend college out-of-state, and I just wound up doing what I was expected, trying my best to hack out a tolerable space in it. It wasn’t until I was 25 that I stumbled onto a lifeline, an excuse to get me out of that house. I had no idea what I was doing, but I didn’t care; I had to go. And I shifted into a totally different abusive situation. Someone looking for a void mirror like mine for themself.
So it went. I’m now 40; of those, only three years have been of my own company, outside of relationships where my lack of a sense of self was the main draw for the other, and I was a tool for their vanity. The point of me was not to be a person. I was obedient, so as to survive.
Obedience is the thing. It’s the only way that I’ve known, yet I’m so very bad at it. I’m okay when it means doing nothing, but when it means to do that which comes naturally to others, or to play a role written for me, I don’t have it in me. And this is where the pain comes in. The depression, the anxiety, the shame, it’s actually nothing to do with me. My poor self-concept isn’t a concept of a poor self. That’s not where the hyphen is. It’s all to do with the narrative put on me by others, that I’m expected to reflect without flaw. And I’m not so glossy.
Getting to know myself, it’s scary. I’m so used to checking over my shoulder. Making sure no one sees me glancing in the mirror, or the glass of the shop window. What I see there, it feels forbidden on so many levels. But, it’s all that I have. I need to take a serious tally. When I step away from the shame of looking at all, and the fear that what I find may not match the expectations of those who control my fate, I like the person who I find. It’s a shaky relationship, the one I’m building, and one started far too late. But at least I’ve found them.
I still don’t know what to do about all this, how to support this person who it seems that I am, how to help them be who and what they need to be. But I see them now, and I’m coming to understand. And I’m starting to care. So this can be my little project from now on.
So last we knew, it was… maybe September. Then “Gem Harvest” leaps forward to late November. The next episode leaps to late December. And the episode after that, “Steven’s Dream,” brings us to early spring, the following year. ZOOM ZOOM GOTTA CATCH UP
This whole season is just non-stop dread, basically. Every episode so far has served to foreshadow Big, Not-Good Shit that’s going to happen before too long. And now we reach one of its big stress points.
God, I don’t know what I’m going to parse out of Rocknaldo when I get there.
I know there’s a big time-skip between this and the previous episode — at least three or four months — but every time an episode starts in Greg’s van, or with Steven waking somewhere other than the Temple, I feel like I’ve walked into something halfway through.
I wonder how Greg’s filing system works, considering the clutter in his van is completely different in property and volume depending on the dramatic or comedic needs of the individual scene. And he doesn’t seem to use his storage unit anymore.
The way things start here, the issues that immediately come up, you know we’re revving up to go into Season Plot overdrive at this point. There’s no way to tell quite where the story’s pointed, but something ominous is looming. And Steven’s discomfort has never been more palpable
After waking up crying (though there’s another explanation for that, as we’ll see, it certainly isn’t a great way to begin), he tries to make sense of all the things that have been haunting him, but he doesn’t quite have the words, or know the right questions. Greg tries to help.
If you’re only gonna use Connie for two minutes, you better wave her dork flag hard.
There follows only the second shouting match Steven has ever had with the Gems. Significantly, at this point Amethyst’s first impulse is to back him up.
For the first time, really, all of that frustration over everyone’s failure to see or hear or tend to Steven’s own building, roiling problems boils over, and he lashes out, turning to his human family for support.
Greg, being Greg, doesn’t get anything but implicitly goes with it
The thing that’s so important here, is that he’s been holding back all of these feelings for so long — then when he finally lets them explode out, the consequences are catastrophic. And by involving Greg in his problems, he nearly loses him. The lesson here being… not healthy.
This whole sequence of events, it not only compounds his trauma and outsized sense of guilt; it confirms for him that all of his problems, they’re for him alone to carry. Nobody can help him. Nobody should help him. It’s irresponsible to let anyone even try, from here on.
This is also where Garnet’s social awkwardness really becomes a liability, for maybe the first but not for the last time. She has no idea how to talk to Steven, and she’s so caught up in the battle between her anxiety and her need to seem in control, it all falls apart.
She throws out one command, then rehearsed mom-ism, after another, hoping to shape events the way she sees they need to go, but she has no idea how to actually connect with Steven in the present. It’s all some formula that she can’t figure out.
And that relationship that they’d been building to that point, it kind of evaporates. They get a new relationship later. And it will be better, probably. But that’s for when it comes.
When it becomes clear she doesn’t have any tools left, she just drops it all, and we see her as earnest as Garnet probably ever is. All she has left is to plead.
But, it comes too late. These character dynamics, I don’t see people discussing them. It sets up everything to come.
That’s her Sapphire side, the rational side, crying. The one who sees what’s coming and tries to organize everything, keep everything under control. The one who failed here.
Steven is so taken aback that anyone could give a shit what he’s going through. Of course Greg would care, even if he had no clue what was going on, but it’s all coming out now. And just that moment of feeling validated, it puts him off guard. Makes him feel safer than he should.
Steven himself doesn’t even know. He doesn’t have words for it. So many of the facts are so cryptic in and of themselves. He doesn’t know how to untangle his emotions from the mystery they relate to. This is all just a desperate grasp at understanding, via this one tangible clue.
It’s not that the palanquin or the dream are themselves important. It’s the fact that he feels like no one gives a damn. They’re the current, practical symbol of everything he’s been going through that he feels incapable of dealing with and yet completely alone in trying.
Obviously after Greg defuses the tension, we’re in for a comedy montage. HA HA Korea! What happens in Korea? It’s the eye in the storm, and it’s such a new level of wacky that you know it’s dialing hard to compensate for the tone that’s to follow.
If you notice, the animator even has a model sheet of herself.
“This feels familiar.”
Pearl has been here, and recently. Geologically speaking. Exact same handwriting, in fact.
Just in terms of dramatic mirroring, note that the threat Steven uncovers here is the Diamond who most demonstrates her grief and guilt over… well, a certain someone. Whose deeds and absence are the whole reason Steven has been suffering, and presumably tuned in to Blue’s tears
Steven is lured in by this shared experience, and it’s only Greg’s substitution of his shared experience with Blue that the dramatic link with Steven is severed enough to escape the pull. If it weren’t for Greg, Steven would probably be the one carted away at this point.
Of course, that leaves Steven to interpret things exactly the other way around.
Classically, the Diamonds never look directly at anyone. One only sees them in profile, or from behind, even if they deign to speak. Just as Greg caught Steven off guard with the notion that anyone could care, Blue is astonished at meeting anyone with the capacity for empathy.
Sorry, just. The way they draw lips on this show never fails to puzzle me.
I just noticed how this failed, desperate grasp almost exactly mirrors Steven’s hopeless dive after the falling Gems in “Change Your Mind.”
S04E12: Adventures in Light Distortion
“Adventures in Light Distortion” is… Okay, sidebar here. Often I find when people complain a story doesn’t make sense, or doesn’t do what it plainly does, it’s just that they’ve talked over the parts that explain what’s happening, because Big Plot Stuff isn’t screaming at them
I’m sure you’ve been in a room, trying to show someone a thing, and at the key brilliant moment you’ve been waiting for, suddenly they turn and have a random loud conversation about yarn with someone in another room or whatever. This also happens in a distributed critical sense.
“Adventures in Light Distortion” is kind of a buffer episode, to pace out the Big Plot Stuff. In terms of strict story details, it just documents a voyage from Place A to Place B, and so therefore could be elided, and therefore people shrug it off as filler and tune out somewhat.
But it’s also the episode where all of the emotional impact of the previous episode has a chance to register and where Steven basically… gets broken. To an extent, everything else that happens for the rest of the show is a result of what he goes through in these eleven minutes.
This isn’t a show about plot. It’s a show about emotional consequences. The show barely even cares about plot. It rushes through Things Happening at such a pace that the action barely registers, so it get get to people feeling things about what occurred. Which is what matters.
But, people are bad at understanding stories. Just, as a rule. So the parts of the story that actually matter, they’ll talk over or fall asleep or fast-forward and dismiss as filler, so that they can crunch on the narrative pretzels on the boundaries of the actual point of it all.
Anyway, “Adventures in Light Distortion” is basically… yeah, not much happens, except in the sense that almost every beat is what we’re looking for. This is where Steven’s guilt and his trauma all crystallize. And he’s never quite the same after this.
(Which is a statement one could, and I do, keep making almost every episode. Doesn’t make the significance any less here, though.)
I could go over it beat by beat, but I’d just be quoting the entire episode. The most key point is how the episode drives home the Bad Lesson from the previous one: that Steven can never let anyone in. No one can help him, and if he lets them try, he’ll only get them hurt.
The whole point of the zoo arc, the final trigger to Steven’s downward spiral, is in the climax to this episode.
None of this is new. He’s been haunted for a long time. Ever since the start of season two, Steven’s been… not quite right. But he’s been able to put aside Ronaldo’s terrible advice, more or less, and try to be Steven. Until the point it was too much to cope with.
Had “Mindful Education” come a season or two earlier, maybe things would have been different. By the time it hit, Garnet’s otherwise solid guidance wasn’t nearly good enough. Too much had happened. The trauma was too deep. It was out of his hands.
So we kind of go back to this. Except, now, all the time.
Which makes the fallout to the season 4 finale, and all the… stuff that comes up over that estrangement arc, it’s basically like someone flipped back and explored an alternate path where Steven chose not to let Connie in at the end of “Full Disclosure.” But, amplified grandly.
I’ve also seen people dismiss “Full Disclosure” as a dull padding episode. Which just… I don’t… Okay, look, I need to calm myself down. But yow, the precise qualities that lead to a fan mindset seem to be the qualities that make a person terrible at understanding a thing.
I guess the deal is, watching a TV show or a film takes a certain kind of literacy, just like reading a book. But it can be less obvious when a medium just flows at you on its own accord, rather than requiring that you pick it up and run the source code in your head.
I kind of feel like… Okay. You know how I sometimes talk about my hyper protectiveness of art and its messaging, and how from my experience the way that people respond to art is much the way that they respond to other people? To me, in particular?
The deal with this, it’s like autism. Let’s say you’ve got autism. It’s mild enough that you can kind of pass for neurotypical, if odd, most of the time, with effort. So, you’d think you can just live in the same world as other people, right, so long as you stay mindful.
The problem is, you’re not speaking the same language as them. You’ll meet the odd other person on the spectrum, and your brain will explode at the notion that you seem to speak the same language. Because otherwise, you don’t. At all. You use the same words, but they don’t align.
People will say things, and you’ll think you’ll understand, then they’ll grow hostile because… apparently they meant something other than the words they spoke. You’ll say something innocuous, and they’ll grow hostile, accusing you of saying things you never intended or would’ve
If you’re high enough functioning, over time and trial and error you’ll be able to triangulate some things and draw up some mental flowcharts and paranoia yarn boards to allow you to traverse the constant riddles posed by the neurotypicals you meet, only tripping on occasion.
You’ll develop these absurd problem-solving muscles that, with great energy, will with maybe a three-out-of-four accuracy will help you to understand at least what you don’t understand in the things that people say to you, and clue you in on what may be missing.
But you’ll be the only person you’ll ever meet who’s doing this. Nobody will ever return the favor to you. They’ll read you at face value in their own language, and take away what they want, and make it your problem. Every single time. Every single person you’ll meet. Forever.
They’ll assume they know exactly what you’re saying, exactly what you mean, because they know what a neurotypical person would probably mean if they said the things that you said in the way you were saying them. And they’re not used to making accommodations for alternative views.
This is also the way almost everyone approaches art.
The issue with a populist medium like TV or film or videogames, that does spells out much of its representation, is that it inadvertently tricks people much as you might do as a person with high functioning autism into thinking it’s having a simple conversation on their terms.
So people can skip the idea of literacy, and just be… bad at watching TV, bad at watching films, bad at listening to recorded music. And so on. Even if they find a thing they like and obsess over it, watch it over and over, that doesn’t guarantee they’ll actually listen to it.
I don’t think I’m coming at this from the position of a snob. It’s more like the position of… a snub? It’s that I empathize with the plight of art. And I feel furious on art’s behalf at a belligerent lack of engagement, especially when it has something worthwhile to say.
Which just redoubles this thread’s fractalline recursion:
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.
Gad’s menagerie, I’m just feeling sad now.
I will say, though: just caught Peridot’s comment about “Era 1 light kites,” suggesting that in Rose’s time Homeworld used to conquer worlds with the power of solar sails. Colonial technology indeed. Helps to be functionally immortal when you’re travelling as slow as light.
There are also things to say about the Rubies popping up as objects of turbulence, during this journey. Considering what happened before, how hard that affected him on at least a couple of fronts (the Rose/Pink end; the Eyeball end). Considering how they’ll come up later.
They’re there both for thematic/representative and long-term plot/objective value, yet the moment is played off for comedy. Because this is how Steven Universe works. And this is why it’s easy to miss even glaring pieces of straight-out allegory, at times.
One obvious thing: the way it turned out, the first volume of Steven Universe has three clearly delineated acts. Season one, the first 52 episodes, is nearly all exposition. World-building. Plot Event One, that sets up the second, development, act, is “The Return”/”Jailbreak.”
Seasons two and three (originally produced as one entity) are kind of the Two Towers of this story. Lots of wheel-spinning, slowly putting pieces in place, exploring themes, making a journey out of the journey, so the third act can happen. Seasons four and five are act three.
Though really it feels like season four takes up a transitional role, because although it’s technically the first half of the third act, it also acts as sort of the third half of the second act. Which… would explain structurally, I guess, why season five is so long.
The split, that maybe in part explains why season four confuses people, is plot development, versus character and theme. In empirical story terms, Plot Event Two is Steven learning about the shattering of Pink Diamond. This sets up what the show is about for the rest of its run.
Thematically and in character terms, though, Plot Event Two is Steven throwing himself away, in response to all of the fallout from Plot Event One. Which is why the through-line from “Full Disclosure” to “I Am My Mom” is so direct.
“You don’t need this / You don’t need me”
So season four is simultaneously in the shallow end of exploring new story territory while it ramps up to a huge emotional climax, with the latter taking up most of its concentration and the plot details operating almost in the background. Like we’re back at season 1A again.
It’s curious that each of the three acts had different production circumstances. The first half of season one was meant as a full season in its own right — but then the network extended it by 26 episodes, so there’s this bump and swerve in the middle of the season.
Season two was then commissioned as a full 52-episode season, so they took the time to plan out the story over that length, letting it sprawl more organically. However, after 26 episodes went out, the network arbitrarily said, OKAY, THAT WAS SEASON TWO. Which made it all weird.
Seasons four and five were at first commissioned as a full 52-episode season, but then I guess after the season two split (into two and three), they hacked up the production into halves, with S4 as production S3 and S4 as production S4.
Somewhere along the way, I dunno under what circumstances, I guess someone finagled an extra six episodes. That seems to have happened before they began active work on season five, because they seem to have planned out the season for 32 episodes from the start.
Anyway, this does add to the sense of the middle being muddled, and the third act having a similar dramatic bumpiness to the first one.
Scanning back to Plot Event One there, to muse on The Song. “Stronger Than You” is so much larger than life, almost larger than the surrounding show, that it’s hard to talk about in sensible terms. But the thing that gets me is the part I don’t see discussed nearly as often.
Yeah, the sequence is boarded and animated and edited better than almost anything on the show. Yeah, the song is a catchy stand-out, the first to be sung by Estelle, as part of a major revelation for the show that recontextualizes everything to that point. It’s exciting, heroic.
But it’s the lyrics that get me. Rebecca Sugar’s lyrics tend to be nearly Reznor levels of on-the-nose. Except even his work under a layer of tortured sub-collegiate poetry. Sugar’s words just… say what they’re saying. They carry some levels, but they’re direct. Open. Earnest.
It’s the context and delivery that make them. I talked about this before with “Escapism”; how Sugar’s uke demo was genial enough, but the song never did much for me until fully arranged, performed by AJ Michalka, and positioned in the narrative.
And what makes “Stronger Than You” work for me, more than anything, is what’s being said. In particular, after the bridge with the dialogue up on, er, the bridge (God, is that narrative pun intentional? Likely.) and Jasper plowing Garnet into the ground.
That moment Garnet resumes singing, the battle seems dangerously like it could go either way. We’ve already seen her poofed. This was the finale. It wouldn’t be outside of a reasonable story structure for this to be her last stand. It would make total sense as that.
The animation and framing and editing here, they all contribute to that sense of tension and fragility. Then we have the lyrics, and particularly Estelle’s delivery of them. The self-declaration. The defiance. The mantra-like statement of what she holds dear. She sounds ready to go.
It seems clear, by all context, that Garnet is prepared for this to be the last thing she ever does. And if it is, she’s going to make it about everything. The clarity. The earnestness. The directness of the lyrics. This is their strength. They contain a sense of finality.
Garnet kneels there in the dust: battered, torn, her visor cracked; leered over by Jasper. And just calmly now, as if to herself: “This is who we are / This is who I am / And if you think you can stop me / Then you need to think again…” And every time, I can’t help mist over.
She pulls herself to her feet; steadies herself. “Because I am a feeling / And I will never end… “
She re-manifests her gauntlets; readies a stern but weakened stance. “And I won’t let you hurt my planet / And I won’t let you hurt my friends.”
Cue round two. This is it.
Every line accompanies an action, or directorial beat. It feels out what’s happening That last couplet is close to the final new thing Garnet has left in her to say. The act of saying it is the thing that gives her the strength to push one last time. From here she’s mostly repeating. She does come up with another short verse, the moment she gets in her first good strike in the battle and seems to begin plotting out her ending move. Which seems significant, in terms of melo-narrative.
Especially as her ending move basically involves backing down, conserving her energy, letting Jasper make a big move of her own and planning to jiu-jitsu it. “I am their fury / I am their patience / I am a conversation” Her own strength is illustrated in action as she sings it.
It’s likely a ploy. We just saw her reference future-vision seconds before the fight. As she pulls herself up, she seems to be struggling to rehash the start of the first round, letting Jasper get over-confident, then basically narrates how she’s outwitting her as she does it.
She may have led Jasper to the core, knowing she’d stand no chance in direct one-on-one. Which would give purpose to her taunting in the first round. Ali vs Foreman and all. But as it plays, that’s made to be unclear. It’s made to feel that this could be the end of her story. And structurally, all kind of a vamp, chasing after that declaration.
People thought Ali was getting killed in the ring during that fight, like they were literally witnessing a murder, when what he was doing was letting Foreman tire himself out and waiting for an opening. I don’t follow things like boxing, but it’s one of those cultural things.
Another curious thing about this sequence is how it’s one of the only times the show fudges the rule that everything has to come through Steven’s perspective. We do once, briefly, see him peer at a monitor in the bridge, but he can’t have seen the whole fight.
Still, the premise is that he’s watching the fight on TV, same as we are. Which makes me wonder if Ali is what they had in mind here. His deal was never that he was the strongest; it’s that he was wily, playing people’s weaknesses. And he’s often seen as an aspirational figure.
Mind you, Garnet did just endow Steven with future-vision before he ran off. So he may have watched the fight infinite times from infinite angles, and we’re just seeing the stitched-together version.
I’m just wondering if removing him and ostensibly setting him up as a common viewer with the audience was intentional for other reasons besides the logistics of staging and so forth. Establishing that dramatic distance, so we really don’t know how it’s going to play out.
If he were right there, we’d know things would turn out okay. But with this setup, it introduces the plausible idea that we’re witnessing a tragedy as it happens. Which again makes me wonder if that Ali fight was an inspiration on some level. The show references so many things.
So. People read the whole sequence as triumphant, which it is, but the thing that hits me is the vulnerability. The desperation. The fact that the outcome is not clearly preordained; the song serves at once as an ideological declaration, personal meditation, and potential epitaph.
“This is who we are / This is who I am” reads to me like a final statement. If it comes to this, then that’s what happens. She is who she is. This is how she will be remembered. But then, the statement that begins the next round also has a troubling sense of famous last words.
So it’s those two lines, in fairly rapid order—written so directly, sung with such steely vulnerability, visualized so carefully—that really make the song for me. That nail the emotional stakes of the thing. She’s ready to die here, basically. Making her peace. But not giving up.
And I think that’s what makes the whole sequence. Which in turn makes the whole episode. It’s really about that couple of lyrics.
Oh, and immediately after Steven throws that party to try to convince his bigoted relative to change their ways comes the episode where someone tries to rip the gem out of his body.
Notable here is the time skip. All of seasons two and three take place over, like, a few weeks. Steven’s Birthday is August 15th. The leaves start to change at the start of season three. Connie returns to school at the start of season four. “Gem Harvest” is basically Thanksgiving
At that point I guess the show starts to try to make up for lost time? “Three Gems and a Baby” is already the dead of Winter; the constant in-your-nose religious context suggests it’s a Christmas episode. Which also serves as foreshadowing, if the Diamonds are effectively gods.
Honestly this is one of my favorite running gags.
I feel like it comes up more often than it probably does.
Never noticed this look at adolescent Sour Cream. I clocked the family picture, sure, but it went by so quickly I never quite saw the details.
And. Yeah, everyone has pointed this out by now, but. That’s a diamond, there.
And there are the three unwise Gems, bearing gifts. Worth noting that they’ve all regenerated since we last saw them in flashback…
Including Pearl, who was in another form not long before Steven’s birth.
And who, I guess, won’t regenerate again for another twelve years or so.
One wonders the method they have for continuity on this show. Or if it’s all just in their heads. “Oh, he’ll need it… in the future.” Amethyst is weirdly off-model all episode. More so than usual.
The tagline…
The return of ca-ra-bi-NUH.
I always wonder if this is a reference to something.
Honestly though, he nose what’s up.
From the publisher of How to Talk to People, presumably.
So who does Greg try (and fail) to mug, Marty McFly style, to try to catch up with the Gems and his van? Squint and age up about twelve years.
“Wow! You guys were wrong about everything.” In which Steven sums up the whole goddamned show.
Seriously, even when an episode ends on a joke, that ending theme comes crashing in, and deflates the whole thing, reminds you that something is very much not right here.
“Augh, wait, what the?! Hobos broke inta da bahn!”
“Hey! Don’t you touch our things!”
“… Yer hobettes?! A hobo is a man’s job!”
And, meet Uncle Red Cap. Uigh. Guessing the point here is to presage Steven’s later attempt to change the mind of a bigoted elder relative.
“Hey, it worked for Uncle Andy! He stopped screaming about immigrants and hippies after I talked to him for twice the length of nearly any other episode. Give me a quadruple-length episode, and I bet I can do it again! What could possibly go wrong?!”
It’s a shame the “hug a Republican” episode came out days after Trump’s election. That just… I mean. I see what they were trying to do here. And they couldn’t have known what was coming when they were boarding it, years earlier. But… this is where the show’s fantasy falters.
As for how this fits into Steven’s whole emotional journey this season, there are a couple of things. For one, this is the first biological family Steven’s ever met, aside from his father. Again he’s the first real concentrated dose of bigotry on the show, setting up Homeworld.
His introduction… it kind of messes with the stability of Steven’s world, introducing another tiny wedge of uncertainty. Rose isn’t the only one with secrets. The surname Steven inherited, it’s not Greg’s original name. Much as his middle name would turn out to be false, later.
Well, I say false. That’s the wrong approach, because Rose is who Pink chose to be. In the narrative it’s fair to think of Pink Diamond as her deadname. But from Steven’s perspective, the revelations reflect on his own sense of identity, adding to his uncertainty.
The show loops around and dots the lower-case j when Greg later shrugs at Rose’s given name, saying he never told Rose he used to be Gregory DeMayo. But here it serves as clear foreshadowing, as well as helping to undermine Steven’s confidence that he’s even a real person.
“So, ah, which one of these girls is the wife? I gotta give ’em my condolences, right? Ha ha ha ha!”
“Hey, c’mon, what, I gotta guess heeyah? It’s gatta be you. I bet this useless lump needs a big girl to keep ‘im in line.”
Where’s Padparadscha when you need her?
This is what I was talking about. “You’re telling me… ‘Universe’ isn’t even a real last name?!”
The whole show is Pearlception, really.
When Steven decides to change Andy’s mind, this is, uh, the pose he strikes.
… Not to be mistaken for…
His plan, incidentally? Throw a big party. … So, yeah.
Line of the episode? Not much contest. It’s so nice to see the development in “Mr. Greg” sticking, and continuing.
She’s still such a… Pearl, but now she feels some personal ownership over Greg. So that’s something.
It’s also echoed a couple of episodes later. Which helps, in terms of setting up the emotional stakes for the zoo arc. Illustrating that Pearl actually does care on more than an abstract level.
Runner-up quote, though.
“Gem Harvest” is also where the unsettling ending theme starts to evolve. It’s hard to over-emphasize how that change in ending music supports the show’s whole tonal shift after season three. Every episode now ends with this uncertainty. Emotionally the show has become off-kilter
Instead of lulled into a childlike security, you’re now left dangling with every episode, unclear what’s happening, where things are going, or why or how. But it doesn’t seem good, whatever it is.
Oh good Lord again. This Garbanzo business, what does one imagine it could possibly serve to foreshadow? “It’s a miracle! Pinto has healing pow-uh, -ers? W-, why’d you nudge me and wink, like this was all…”
So what on Earth is the point of Onion Gang? Well. Keeping in mind the general themes of this season, I think we get at it here:
Steven: Woo, no more weirdo friends. Let’s see. (leans over balcony) I bet my best friend Connie’s free. (dials her number) Hey, Connie! It’s me, Steven. I was wondering if you-Um, no there’s no mission. I wanted to hang out. You’ve-got to do back to school shopping. Oh, okay. Say hi to the pencils for me! (hangs up) Well, I bet Peedee wants to hang. (Steven pauses, when a text from Peedee reads, “Can’t hang out. End of summer work rush.” No big deal. I’m sure someone else is free. (Scrolls down his contact list, which is half empty) Umm… Oh. Looks like the lonely boy with no friends his age was actually.. Steven.
(In the morning, Steven is lying on the couch by the windowsill, when Onion knocks on the screen door)
Steven: No, Onion! Just leave me alone! (turns away) You don’t have to play with me anymore.
(Onion walks away for a second, then returns, jumping through the screen of the door, bursting it open, and comes over to Steven)
Steven: What are you doing?! (Onion pulls him down by the foot and begins to drag him) No, Onion! Onion listen! I figured it out! The only reason you hang out with me is cause you feel bad for me, isn’t it? (Onion, shocked, shakes his head) You don’t have to lie to me to protect my feelings! Those kids, out there in the woods. You understand each other and you don’t even talk! They’re your real friends. So just go. I don’t need you to pity me. It’s the one thing I can do by myself.
Notice that last line in particular.
This is how the (relatively few) townie episodes all play out, over the course of season four. They serve to deal less with the townies themselves than with Steven’s ongoing emotional issues through the lens of dealing with others, making them relevant to the season’s ongoing story and themes.
What’s significant is Steven’s relationships with the characters. The common point of all these interactions is Steven, with each specific character serving to elicit a slightly different response due to the different nature of their relationship. Collectively it’s all of these threads, from all of these relationships, that bind Steven to his humanity and illustrate the emotional stakes, for him, of the decisions that he makes. It’s not important that we spend a long time with Jamie in particular for Jamie to serve as one of many faces binding Steven to this life.
Which goes back to what I was saying about the townie episodes in season four existing less to build up the world, as they tend to in earlier seasons, than to serve as mirrors and outlets for Steven’s changing emotional state.
They’re there to show us what’s going on with Steven.
“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.
It’s also a small thing, but I think it helps “Mindful Education” that we just saw Connie in the previous episode, in reasonably good spirits, getting ready for school. (Everything in seasons 2-3 happens in, like, a few weeks at most. It’s nuts.) Now, suddenly, this.
I’ve talked before about how I often consider Steven and Connie the two aspects of Stevonnie more than I do Stevonnie a merger of Steven and Connie. One of the reasons is the way “Mindful Education” uses fusion to discuss a duality of self, in a way that reflects other episodes.
Stevonnie is the most complex and challenging character in the show, the one who most clearly defines the show’s themes and arc and boundaries and interests. The one who would be unimaginable in any other show, who in their conception is both the most revolutionary and relatable.
When Stevonnie is there, the show has a chance to cover things it otherwise wouldn’t. We wouldn’t have an episode like “Mindful Education” without them. We wouldn’t have the framework for such nuanced discussions of consent and puberty and anxiety and gender identity.
They’re the most complete character on the show, and the most advanced canvas for ideas. You can pick out and identify the Steven and Connie parts of their personality, and study how that duality informs their sense of self, but they’re more than that. They’re a culmination.
Even in story terms, clearly it had to be Stevonnie who would kick off the revolution. It has to be Steven and Connie’s mixed memories, the fact of their comfort being one person, that offers a vehicle to understanding the past with Pink and Rose, and thereby the future.
Most of Steven’s powers, most of his discoveries, they all come to him when he’s with Connie. She’s learning about his world at just about the same rate that he is, and nearly as responsible as he is. As Stevonnie, they’re literal co-owners of that growth. Like sword and shield.
That right there is pretty much all you need, for symbolism. Connie and Steven, each only has half the puzzle. It’s telling, they’re the only fusion in the show with no extra parts. Even Garnet has that third eye. And when they’re not freaking out, they’re in no hurry to split.
Anyway. If low-key Greg is the real hero of the show, I think I can say that secretly Stevonnie is the real protagonist. Even if they’re only in it every now and then. Heck, they’re the only character other than Steven to carry a whole episode.
We know that, newly unfused, characters can get a little disoriented. The first time we meet Ruby, she’s fretting over being unable to use Garnet’s future vision. Given the slow growth that Stevonnie has, resolving their two personalities into one, one wonders about lingering effects.
Like, how often does Connie expect to be able to float or lift something huge, or summon something from her gemstone? Which… she doesn’t happen to have on her, as herself.
It’s hard to say anything new or interesting about “Mindful Education” as it’s such a pivotal, showcase episode for the show. But, God, seriously. What other TV show has done this?
In this case Garnet’s not saying “your fusion” to refer to the two of them. She’s referring to the individual. Which is to say, Stevonnie. Who is the stand-in for the viewer, because they’re the clearest vessel for a discussion of complex psychological and emotional issues.
That’s the thing about this whole fusion metaphor. It’s about relationships, right. Often that makes it a clear analog for sex. People who deny that aspect are kind of hilarious to me, because, you know.
But it’s such a broad and powerful metaphor that it can apply to damn near anything. “Mindful Education” is where the show double-underlines for you in case you missed it how the metaphor also works for one’s relationship with one’s self. Which is what Stevonnie is usually for.
Another thing that stands out about Stevonnie episodes is that they tend to be more experiential, environmental, focused on the internalized feeling of being in a moment regardless of any objective concerns. These are the moments the whole coming-of-age narrative becomes tangible
To wit:
Got to say, though, the circumstances around that Sugilite fusion sure cast a weird shadow on some later events.
I can never not cackle at this. “Magic stuff” indeed.
Cue a thousand pages of DeviantArt.
So, all right. Here’s an obvious thing that I don’t know I’ve seen anyone state outright, maybe because it is so obvious. After a few episodes of build-up, “Mindful Education” also serves to establish the tone and themes and announce the basic story of season four.
This is what season four is about, more or less. In particular, Steven’s own freak-out in the second half, running through all his trauma and guilt before settling on the glowering image of his mother, this is what carries us through to his… attempt at martyrdom, shall we say.
It may be putting too fine a point on it to say that this is the season that Steven becomes suicidal, but that’s basically where this is going.
And the episode that officially kicks off Steven’s downward spiral, particularly in relation to Rose, is “Mindful Education.” What happens at the climax here? In backing away from a looming spectre of Rose, Stevonnie loses footing and plummets into space.
One more example of the show being super duper literal with its narrative.
From here the season just keeps piling on, causing Steven’s actions to result in more and larger unintended consequences, warping his sense of identity, refusing to give him any kind of stability or catharsis. The season of doubt. Never far from the next stage of the breakdown.
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.
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.
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!”
