“Tiger Philanthropist” is a weird one, in that it’s a direct sequel to “Tiger Millionaire”—an episode that everyone seems to adore yet leaves me cold outside some early character stuff for Amethyst. This one is basically the same episode, but With Meaning, and everybody hates it.
The idea here is, well, yet another part of Steven’s life is falling apart. Yet another relationship is sort of collapsing, another piece of what he considered stable just isn’t there anymore. As has been happening all season. It’s yet another window into his inability to cope.
I know many of the random characters who show up around town are based on production team members, but I wonder about Fanny Pack Grandpa down there in the corner. I mused about him elsewhere, but he’s in the show as early as “Bubble Buddies” and as late as “Change Your Mind.”
Part of the subtext of this episode is basically, yeah, the show has moved on now. The daft little things that used to merit whole episodes in the early seasons, they seem inconsequential compared to what’s been happening—yet for exactly that reason, Steven still clings to them.
He’s still a kid. He shouldn’t be dealing with the shit he’s going through. All he wants is to hang onto these little things to give him joy and a sense of purpose and normality. It’s not just that he’s growing up, losing innocence. It’s that, he wants things to still matter.
He feels like everything is slipping through his fingers and leaving him behind, grasping at air. Barely acknowledging him. Everyone’s moving on. This is going to continue for some while to come. It’s going to get really bad at the start of the next season.
The specific way that Amethyst gives up their shared thing, without consulting him, just typifies this. Just moments before he was soaking in the escapism of their little role play routine, forgetting all the garbage that’s been going on. Then she just quit on him, like that.
“What a sad and anticlimactic end to one of the greatest tag-team careers to ever grace the squared circle.”
“Ahhh! Got my Saturday nights back!” To do what, exactly, Amethyst? What defines Saturday for you? How do you even know what day it is?
And then we get into all this messiness, complicating Steven’s own ambivalence with his outsized sense of responsibility. This is just one little thing, that maybe he can kind of control, that maybe he can keep from going completely to shit and ruining things for everyone else?
He’s just, so desperate to make this work. To save this one dumb little thing, to make a few people happy. He does a face turn and just starts giving things away. Which only further irritates Lars (at least, and as proxy for the rest of Tiger Millionaire’s fans).
“It’s like… the sequel no one asked for.”
“What?! It’s the sequel YOU asked for!”
“You want him to lose, and… keep his money, right?” “No, I don’t want him to *lose*. It’s just…” “What do you want him to do?! Just tell me!”
“I don’t know! I don’t even know what I want for breakfast half the time!”
And, you know what Tiger Philanthropist does, right? He just… gives up. He doesn’t care anymore. He gives away the title belt to whoever can reach it first. Amethyst leaps in at the last minute to give some emotional closure, but. Yeah.
How can this be happening?! It was just getting good! You can’t quit now! Tiger!”
Okay. If we can get over the experience of Ronaldo being insufferable and look at why we have an episode about Ronaldo being so insufferable, it gets a little more interesting.
What we’ve got here is a discussion of toxic allyship. Which is… it’s an unusual thing to talk about, but it’s relevant to a lot of stuff going on in leftie spheres. On the one hand, swell; good to have people theoretically on your side. But, none of this is really about them.
It’s not even all that subtle about what it’s doing, with this white dude who starts off passing out, er, Ronalphlets about these insidious figures infiltrating society who, among other things, “hate men.” When checked on his bullshit, he goes away to think then has a revelation.
And now he’s like Joss Whedon or some shit. Just creepily in there and making this whole discussion about someone else’s struggle all about him. Ultimately, after all the familiar fuckery of even accusing in-group members of not being in enough, he learns to be a better ally.
Like. Show your support, but give them breathing room. Don’t speak for them, but have discussions with other out-group members about who the group is and try to correct misconceptions. Help to spread acceptance. Keep your own ego out of it.
It’s, hm. Not sure exactly how to talk about this. But I think part of the long, long delay in my recognizing my gender diversity and accepting my sexuality for what they are was out of fear of co-opting someone else’s thing. Like, who am I to say that any of this applies to me?
I’ve co-opted things before, as I’m sure most people have. And I’m not entirely certain if I meant well or not; it’s hard to tell, you know? I don’t want to act like a dick. I don’t want to be like Ronaldo here, barging into a scene he doesn’t understand and making his groove.
Ronaldo is a fragile guy. He has a really poor sense of self. I don’t know what hole it is in his life, what he’s avoiding with all his conspiracy theories and everything else he does. I’m tempted to connect a few dots with his lack of a mother figure. He’s older than Peedie…
And, like, when is “Lion 4: Alternate Ending?” Soon, right? Three episodes from here. Which is where Steven goes all conspiracy crazy about his mother and his place in the world. Ronaldo is this lost figure, just trying to figure out where he belongs, what everything really means
At the end of the season, Steven of course figures he’ll rid everyone of the burden of himself and all the weight he carries as his mother’s son. When, uh, the Rock People do in fact come to town and… what is it Ronaldo says in this episode? Hang on.
Seriously, though, I want to feel free to walk around town like this.
Okay, not many details, but. Again, this is just a few episodes before this all… kinda actually becomes relevant, what with Aquamarine and Topaz. Could be a little more on-the-nose, but in retrospect, this absolutely serves as foreshadowing.
Point being, there are parallels in this episode between Ronaldo and Steven. It’s safe to say when Ronaldo shows up, he’s usually there for a reason actually. Sort of a canary thing. You don’t want to make the connections because he’s so friggin’ annoying, but that’s the point?
Ronaldo has no filter, and so he tends to play out things that other people choose not to say or haven’t fully processed yet, and serve as, um, a catalytic clown. Gosh, that’s a term, huh. He presages the development of important themes and concepts before they fully manifest.
And Ronaldo’s whole misadventure with the Crystal Gems… it’s not accurate, because when does Ronaldo ever really get the meaning right, but it kind of mirrors how Steven is starting to feel about himself at this point.
Which again the episode even makes explicit, during the scene where Ronaldo in his seventh day (or whatever) of sleep deprivation convinces Steven to walk out and question his own role in the team. Which is over almost immediately, because it’s a Bugs Bunny gag, but. You know.
Like. Ronaldo in this episode is who Steven is starting to get scared that he is. The way that everyone feels about Ronaldo is how Steven is becoming scared that everyone feels about him. Sorta kinda. Broadly. He’s not fully one of them. He’s a burden. He’s a liability.
And at the same time we get an episode about how absolutely not to support a marginalized group of people.
You can get a lot more out of a story if you’re not all caught up in this notion of being entertained.
All of this hit me about two minutes into the episode. I’ve not actually watched this full thing get. Possibly because of my hang-ups about being entertained. Hang on, let me get some cola and see this through in full before I say anything else.
It’s some character trait to be able to yell an ellipsis.
Yeah, Steven leaps right in by comparing himself to Ronaldo. The CGs tell him his body is organic and he doesn’t have a gem.
“M-my body’s organic, and I’m a Crystal Gem!”
“You’re going to entertain this?”
This whole conversation, yeah, hits both of the above points square-on.
It both goes on about how isn’t it good that someone’s taking an interest, and shouldn’t we accept allies where they come—and also shows how much Steven is projecting his own insecurities onto Ronaldo. Like, accepting Ronaldo into the group is proxy or test for accepting himself.
Here I am Ronaldoing my own self. This isn’t the end of the episode. This is, like, twenty seconds after I said I wouldn’t post anymore.
Well, whatever. The episode also kind of deals with Ronaldo, um, fetishizing, for lack of a better way to put it, the CGs and their identities and ways of life. He’s role-playing with stuff he bought at anime conventions. Already getting close to the line with this nonsense.
The fetish thing often being a big element of toxic allyship. Again, look at the Joss Whedons of the world. They downplay the creep factor here, but they get the psychology down hard.
As a long-time aficionado of James “Kibo” Parry, I have to once again commend the writers and storyboarders for their commitment to the inexplicable ubiquity of durian juice.
As a character note, I absolutely have to underline that Ronaldo wears khaki cargo shorts.
I don’t think I need to say much more about that.
Hell. Yeah. So. When Ronaldo doesn’t get to go with them on the next mission that comes up, again here’s Steven projecting himself onto him: “I didn’t get to come along at first either!” (All of which we thematically revisit, of course, a season later…)
Oh fuck. And what does Ronaldo say as they warp away?
“But… I’m a Crystal Gem too… “
In terms of Steven’s mental breakdown, I think it’s actually kind of relevant to have an episode that establishes he’s afraid on at least some level that he’s just another Ronaldo.
Ronaldo, actively undercutting Steven’s already-shaky confidence in his identity at every step. Even in the dumbest fucking ways. “Funny that you… sleep, when Gems don’t need sleep. Why is that?” “I—I don’t know?”
A very relevant time for a callback, actually.
Steven doesn’t get outwardly angry all that often, but his annoyed face always kills me.
What the—they actually fucking redrew the whole background for a very slightly closer-up shot in the same scene?
Again, Ronaldo saying what nobody wants to address.
Notably, it’s not until Ronaldo picks on Connie that Steven gets his ire up.
And as I’ve commented before, this episode probably has the single best line in the whole show.
The signs… don’t quite say what they seem to say.
NOW WITH 100% EEEL POTATO
YES, LAE’RE OPEN
It’s not ambiguous. They’re just… intentionally misprinted for some reason. Which just adds another level to the strangeness.
About five seconds later, drawn even smaller, we get REAL POTATO. It could have looked like this in the other one, but it doesn’t. On purpose. Just… because?
I mean. Ronaldo is Ronaldo, and this show isn’t about him. Really, none of this is about him. But the growth that he demonstrates, tortured and minor as it may be, it’s not unimportant for the things the show has to say.
Right, and the very last note of the episode is Ronaldo asking Steven why he never uses his Gem name. To which he responds that it’s his mom’s name, and nobody ever calls him that unless they’re about to kidnap him or beat him up.
Going to go light on “Storm in the Room” because I’ve unraveled that one so heavily elsewhere. And, uh, I can’t quite figure out where that was at the moment. I did track this down, though:
A thing that particularly baffles me is when people dismiss “Storm in the Room,” which for my money is close to my favorite episode of the entire show. It’s the apotheosis of the show’s themes to that point, and basically the crux for the show’s entire third act. And, it’s such an unnerving piece of drama. The whole pacing of it is unlike anything else in the show. I’m almost not sure if I’m more impressed with the quiet first half, in which Steven sweats and tries to avoid his mother’s portrait, or the stormy climax to the second half.
His rage against Rose’s figure, it may be his most upsetting character moment. There’s a little Wizard of Oz moment in the resolution (oh, that Sugar) to cheer the audience up a bit, but this is, I think, the moment that finally breaks him, allowing the finale to happen; allowing Lars to die; allowing all of the relationship upset in early season five to occur; allowing him to finish his journey that ends on the beach with that little song about self-love.
Season four is when the show finally breaks Steven. And it does so in such a heartrending way. The show had been unavoidably building to this point ever since “Full Disclosure,” but in reality since its earliest episodes, with the Gems consciously protecting Steven from a reality they knew he couldn’t yet handle. It’s a thing that had to happen, dramatically, to produce the consequences that would permit a resolution of the show’s overarching conflicts—all of which is what season five serves to fuss over. But, season four—this is what the show has been preparing us for the whole time. This is what the rest of the show serves to clean up. This is the centerpiece, in dramatic terms.
And, personally, I think it pretty well nails it.
I’ve written so much about this episode. It’s galling that I can’t find more. But, it’s just one of the very best things the show has done as of early 2019. I’ll probably come back to it in later thought-chunks.
Likewise if I can locate my notes or other material, I may well return to update this entry.
Connie asking the real questions in here. Did the zoo machines pierce Steven’s ears, or are those some kind of magnetic clip-on?
Also, this is Connie’s best shirt. It’s the same one she wears back in “Love Letters,” and probably some other places. I’ve always loved teal and turquoise—that whole range. Connie’s outfits, though they change frequently, usually incorporate some version of the color.
Dialogue thing: apparently despite there being, like, a few dozen people in Beach City, never mind wherever Connie lives (which isn’t Beach City), apparently it’s enough for a bus system, with a fairly regular schedule. One that connects neighboring towns, even.
Judging by the sound outside her house—in the daytime, compared to last time I had headphones on for this location—her house must be near a freeway. The sound is muffled, insulated, to the point nearby bird chirps are more prominent, but it’s persistent. Those cars sound fast.
I need to go back and pinpoint when Pumpkin’s pronouns changed.
Also, the bathroom scene: it’s interesting, as the dialogue bounces around, how the soundtrack mirrors, zorping back and forth between Lapis’ celesta and Peri’s… eerie… synth-celesta (?) thing, that she’s had since her first appearance on the warp pad, way back.
This is all especially curious as one of Connie’s key instruments (she has a couple) is celesta. Normally the show differentiates pretty well, but putting the three in a room together… I guess aivi and surasshu had fun with what that meant on their end.
Exhibit A:
Exhibit B:
Exhibit C:
How is Connie seeing all this? The magic of artistic license, I guess.
This episode, it kinda… I understand its role as a cool-down after an intense multi-part plot arc, but I feel disappointed it doesn’t do more with the premise. It kinda just takes the idea of a B-team and shrugs it away. The best thing here is Lapis’ usual horrible attitude.
Seriously, this is some prime Lapis in here.
It’s just, you know. Three of the best characters in the show, teamed up for the first time as a backup for the Crystal Gems. You’d think this episode would write itself. … And as it happens, it kind of feels like it did?
It’s not awful by any means. It’s just weirdly slight. Like, really, argue over a car wash? That’s where we’re going to spend these eleven minutes? And not just that. The character points the episode hits, they’re not, um. It doesn’t cut very deeply, shall we say. Rather obvious.
It’s also curious, in that it’s Molisee and Villeco, who tend to be pretty solid. But as I mused before, they’re better with the slowly boiling tension. Their comedy, it’s… it works great as asides amidst awful happenings, yet feels directionless and without purpose on its own.
I’m assuming this is the first time Connie’s slept in Steven’s bed? She seems to have gone right for it.
Not sure what GameCube (er, that is, Dolphin) game is on the end there, but I’m sure it’s something. I like the one randomly upside-down, because, Steven.
The mystery of who knows whom on this show and why or why not is always a big head-scratcher, given, again, how few people live in the area. Like, nobody seems to know who anyone else in town is until we see them meet on-screen. But it makes sense Connie wouldn’t know Yellowtail.
Got to say this is a bit of a mood as well.
Lapis looks curiously like Jamie Lee Curtis there.
Just me? Okay.
Yellowtail doesn’t have the best experiences at Greg’s car wash, does he.
It’s also, I’m…
Okay, these two, their art style works when there’s a ton going on and their sketchy off-model boards make for constant expressive cutaways, conveying extra emotional information on top of the story beats. For flat sitcom staging? It doesn’t work so well.
Connie ranting about the two “super-powered children.”
“We’re both thousands of years older than you,” Lapis Darias back.
“Then act like it!”
Man, why wouldn’t you get the 10 x SUPER?
See, there’s always some kind of teal going on.
How many pairs of red shoes did Connie bring on this trip?
I’m struggling to grasp what larger role the episode serves in terms of anchoring or presaging or supplementing the larger concepts going on around it. Maybe I’ll have an epiphany somewhere down the line. Right now, it’s just… yeah, it’s there. It pads us out before “Storm in the Room.”
Any time Amethyst spots someone in a strange outfit, she fatuously comments on how it’s “a good look for you.” In this case, Greg… Ah, Greg.
Most of this discussion, it originates on Twitter, and my tweets from March 2019 have mostly vanished for some reason. Don’t know if the pertinent tweet survives, but when I was musing a while back on Jasper’s gem placement (i.e., in the middle of her face) and how it was probably chosen to obscure how much Jasper would otherwise look like Rose, in particular with that upturned Universe style nose? Well, here’s Skinny, with her nose.
There’s this whole theory out there that’s almost become an accepted truism, that surely all these Rose Quartz gems are fakes that Pink created to throw people off her trail, and there never was any real Rose Quartz. Reminds me a bit of how 1980s Who fans grew weird about Susan.
Surely she can’t be the Doctor’s REAL granddaughter, because (we’ve decided) the Doctor doesn’t fuck! So many elaborate lattices were erected to prevent the Doctor himself from ever having to have been.
I mean, maybe. It’s a theory. Who knows. It’s got that kind of fan funk to it, though: a thing that maybe would be structurally clever, but that feels like it overlooks the show’s themes and emotional logic.
I love the lighting in this show. Every environment, every time of day has its own palette for every character. Ergo Stevonnie having a different skin tone in almost every episode; they never seem to appear twice at the same time of day. Also, Gem tech tends toward gel lighting.
I mean. The reason Pink would have had to have bubbled every Rose Quartz she could find… it’s obvious, right? Especially in light of everything I’ve been saying about drawing comparisons. Jasper’s nose and all, for our benefit. CG Rose ain’t no normal Quartz soldier.
She’s this mythic figure with powers and properties that no normal Gem should have. And the strangeness would be so much more obvious if there were other Roses walking around, who didn’t exhibit any of those things. It would raise so many awkward questions.
It’s bad enough to wind up in a room with one Diamond. Worse enough with two. Then they have to reignite this strange domestic conflict partway through, and sing the most melodically and rhythmically awkward, off-putting song in the show. (Also the most difficult and best.)
Seems like every time Steven meets a Diamond, he’s wearing something peculiar.
But the best thing about this scene, that makes it one of the best scenes in the show, I think, is that sense of “Oh fuck, what did I just walk into?” that just keeps getting heightened. We’re not supposed to be seeing this. It’s uncomfortable, erratic, and none of our business.
Which makes it scarier. Like, I don’t know, you happen to be hiding in your parents’ closet as part of a game and then they go in there and start shouting at each other right in front of you about something you can’t begin to understand, and you don’t even dare to breathe.
At this point in the show, the Diamonds are a scarce commodity, and portrayed as immense, detached figures, scary in the way of an indifferent Greek god; beyond good and evil, as it were. Everything is just less significant than they are. And, they’re doing this.
Their most common view is still a profile; just barely deigning to taking notice, if at all.
Which is for the best, as if you happened to see them dead-on, happened to earn their full attention… that might not be a desirable turn of events.
There’s really a sense of, Christ, what is going on here? We didn’t ask for this, and they keep getting more and more worked up. If that rising emotional energy were to find a too-convenient outlet… well, uh. Best to get out of here, huh.
This would be a best-case scenario.
God, Blue is so fucking 1970s, it kills me.
Neither the Amethysts nor the Rubies seem to make particularly good guards. Like, as general categories of Gem, they’re all a bit… uh, erratic? Yet they seem to be among the most common types.
I wonder what’ll become of these guys.
It’s interesting that Holly Blue (with her Rose nose) has Amethyst’s kind of whip. Which suggests it’s sorta a Quartz thing. If that’s true, it raises questions about Jasper’s helmet. I mean, it might be individual to the particular Gem, but this is so specifically Amethyst-ish.
With all the hexagons, it’s hard to avoid lots of Homeworld architecture feeling Gallifreyan.
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.
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.
