• they/it

I do art, sometimes


evanonline
@evanonline

my opinion on steven universe had been "it was really rocky & uneven but they stuck the landing with the last season, movie & epilogue". having fully rewatched it as of last night, not only is it way less rocky than i thought but the stuff i thought was good is even better. steven universe future is a fucking gut punch and i relate very deeply to it and i'm glad they not only told that story but had the confidence to put steven, their protagonist, through that as a character. it's ugly and raw and real. i have also been through that "everyone is leaving me behind and i've got to lock down anything i can" wringer. i've been the person who can't stop self-sacrificing because i don't know who i am otherwise.

also, just. god "mr. universe" is a heartbreaking episode.

i've mentioned this but i think steven universe was a victim of both its toxic fandom and the insane airing schedule. when you watch it now, free of both problems, it really really holds up. if you are like me and my friends and didn't follow through with steven universe or remember it not-so-fondly, i strongly suggest checking it out again. i'm really glad i was able to re-evaluate this show and see it for what it is, and not for what fans wanted it to be. i think sooner or later a lot of people are going to start waking up and realizing steven universe whipped ass all along whether they're taking my word for it or not.

and in the last stevonnie episode, they finally put on shoes!


JillKatze
@JillKatze

to this day saying the words "Steven Universe was good actually" makes me feel like someone's going to read them and finally order the sniper outside my window to take the shot but i do think it's time for SU's cultural redemption as people who were put off by the horrible airing schedule and all the Yelling Online and bailed like i did come back around to it, or the (mostly) kids who were doing a lot of the yelling enter their prime Nostalgia Years for it and reapproach it with more mature viewpoints.

the show does not deserve to have a legacy as The Discourse Cartoon and instead we should all be hauving covid for Pearl like normal, civilized humans


Bigg
@Bigg

Back in April I had the good fortune to get to attend an event at Vancouver's Emily Carr art school being put on by Women in Animation Vancouver consisting of a fireside chat with Rebecca Sugar and Ian Jones-Quartey followed by a meet-and-greet and signing. Rebecca Sugar is the single most creatively-inspiring person I can personally think of, and I knew I couldn't be me and not go, so I'm very happy I did even if the event organization itself left something to be desired (I'll grouse about that in a postscript). Attendance was, as you might imagine, absolutely packed, and I was lucky enough to pick a seat that happened to be right on the aisle where the lineup for the Q&A portion formed, so I actually got to ask something.

My question (which I'm proud to say I didn't garble TOO much despite being so nervous my knees were literally shaking) was if the bad-faith tenor of discussions around Steven Universe had changed how the two of them were approaching future creative projects. Their answer, which turned into something of a free-wheeling discussion, boiled down to "not really".

If you've read then 2nd Steven Universe art book you'll be familiar with a lot of the meat of their response. The main point Ian brought up is that the simple fact of the time delay between when episodes were being planned to being animated to finally releasing, which could be months to years, made trying to anticipate every possible angle of discourse an exercise in futility from the get-go. They knew the story they wanted to tell and the themes they wanted to include, they had an EXTREMELY clear vision, and ultimately they were vindicated. Rebecca talked quite a bit about the difference between bullying & criticism, specifically how "a bully wants you to believe something about yourself that isn't true" and that "the thing a bully wants most is to see their actions affecting you". Rebecca also gave a few examples of people just straight-up lying about things related to the show, like how they supposedly didn't use model sheets (you can see the model sheets and ton of other excellent production materials in the two very good art books!)

There was a lot of other good stuff in the talk. They talked about Trojan-Horsing the queer content by Rebecca pitching SU as a story based on her relationship with her little brother, coasting on that for like 50 episodes, and then by the time the CN c-suite started catching on, too much had already been planned, boarded, and animated for significant changes to not be extremely costly (Ian was VERY smug about this). Rebecca talked about Estelle being extremely helpful in developing all of Garnet's songs - Rebecca would describe the general vibe of a song, like how "Stronger Than You" is all at once a love song, and a fight song, and a victory song, and then later that evening Estelle would send back a bunch of incredible reference material for Rebecca to build from. Rebecca also closed out the talk by performing "Love Like You", and while it was a terrific performance the best part was absolutely watching Ian watch Rebecca while she sang. That man loves his wife SO much. I don't know that I've ever in my life seen a man more in love.

I'm not JUST reminiscing about a fun experience (though I absolutely am) - my point in sharing this is to say that I think in the majority of the world that exists outside the deeply-unwell crab-bucket echo chambers of limitless media discourse, Steven Universe IS rightfully regarded as an indispensable classic & towering achievement. The energy in the room was SO good - pretty much every age group was represented; it was majority Emily Carr students but also a lot of folks my age and older. The show took swings with its storytelling that basically no other piece of Western animation ever attempted and carried them off with unrivalled grace & competence, trusting its audience at every step. It could pack more emotional resonance in an 11-minute episode than a lot of prestige dramas ever achieve in a full season. Perhaps most impressively, the show managed to tell its story in its entirety, complete with a satisfying (if gutting) epilogue, and then stopped.

(Kvetching about the bad parts of the event: I think WiAV really underestimated just how popular the event would be because their time management and organization for the post-talk signing/meet-and-greet was abysmal. The talk started late, went long, and then they did absolutely no line management for the signing, including allowing people to get pictures taken with Rebecca & Ian. This led to the signing running HOURS overtime, and by the time I got to the front of the line both of them were so exhausted that they both misspelled my name in different ways (I've got the prints from the event displayed proudly, I think it's hilarious). Really embarrassing stuff on the part of the organizers, I felt terrible for Rebecca & Ian because they were clearly exhausted. Rebecca still recognized me from the Q&A and thanked me for my question, which is a memory I'll keep fondly.)


You must log in to comment.

in reply to @evanonline's post:

SU is one of my favorite shows and it always bummed me out that its reputation became "it was bad" or "it was cringe." It feels like you cant even bring it up without people's minds going directly to fandom stuff or video essays. It's such a shame.

The internet was actually absurd about this show, it was like people were in a competition to try and read it in the worst faith possible and the stakes kept raising like they were in a Dragonball Z fight.

I made the mistake of reading too much of it and it made me drop it in the middle of season 5 because it was just frustrating to witness constantly. I need to go back to it

had this same experience of "i know everyone is saying this in bad faith but the vibes of the Posts about it have gotten so bad i dont think i can even watch the show" and I wish it hadnt been this way!! what the hell was going on with tumblr and this show!!

yea i think while it was airing, around the time stevonnie was introduced i stopped interacting with the fandom too much aside from posting fanart here and there. the reputation it ended up with has always bummed me out cause its a show that helped me a lot as a queer kid still coming around to their identity and following the future series and movie as an adult really was like saying bye to a good friend, it was a great send off. i look forward to more ppl rediscovering it the future!! its a wonderful work of art

I've been saying this about SU for years now. It's a fantastic show with mediocre plot and awful world building (and pacing at times), but the best fucking characters and a protagonist that's so me so hard that you'd think I was writing self insert fanfiction. Future fixes most of the problems I had with the show, honestly my only complaint is that I feel like it physically needed to take place over more time. Give me like 4 more episodes and it probably would've worked out even better.

After watching it for the first time, I remembered the first season as kind of slow and episodic compared to the breakneck density of most of the show, but I re-watched it with my partners during the pandemic and it's astonishing how many of those early episodes are either introducing vital worldbuilding that comes up again in a much later season or doing some staggering foreshadowing ("Cookie Cat! He left his family behind!").

my opinion on this comparing my recent rewatch to the original airing - a lot of episodes that stuck out in my mind as bad were... not actually awful, it was just that the frequent breaks meant you lingered on a batch of episodes for months

i rewatched SU a couple years ago whilst in the process of a long slow breakup and it was like, genuinely a big help to me in processing my big messy tangle of emotions around a long complicated relationship. because it is a show about relationships and human connection and it handles those things in such a real, mature way. part of me wants to qualify that as "for a kid's show" and obviously it's framed for a young demographic, but at the risk of coming off as "2016 tumblr user who never watches shows made for adults" i think it genuinely handles its themes and relationships in a way that is just Good, Period.

it feels like there was a certain segment of toxic puriteen online fandom culture that latched onto it so hard (and made it a pet dumping ground for Discourse) that it caused a general backlash not just against the fandom but the show itself. we all kinda mentally tied steven universe to "person who sends anon harassment because you're following someone with a pr*blematic ship" and "people stuck in arrested development who won't expose themselves to media that is mature or ugly" and projected that kind of person back onto the show. which in retrospect was just a real fuckin bummer

also Here Comes A Thought is still a banger

I was a fan but without contact to a fandom, so my main thing to keep pointing out is that SU had more breaks that were longer than homestuck's. The work that is famous for having breaks so long that they are named, and have statistics about them.

future was so... poignant. very different tone obviously, but in a way that made a lot of sense for me. you can only be the cool optimist holding the world together for so long. reminded me of the last animorphs book, in a way

I do think it was a triple threat; like you said, the airing schedule and fandom did it no favors, but there absolutely was havoc in the writer room. There was weird hidden agendas, infighting (a crew member legit got fired and started that weird ass hate campaign), and etc.

it definitely is better now, as a Whole Complete Thing, tho. and fucking god yes, future is phenomenal, and will forever have a spot on the podium as some of the best character writing, imo.

in reply to @JillKatze's post:

I think the only thing, in hindsight, that I don't enjoy about SU/Future is that it wanted to have it both ways. It wants to be a fun adventure cartoon. it wants a magical boy saving the galaxy, it wants lighthearted magic and cool battles. AND it wants the trauma, it wants the 'actually this was so terrible', the deconstruction, the incredible price of war

SU Future was cool but it felt like it went out of its way to recontextualize a lot of what we were shown as Fun Space Adventure to be like 'oh you LIKED that? You had FUN? This kid was a child soldier, not so fun NOW huh? Look how much it fucked him up! Don't you feel bad now?'

like

yes, I do feel bad now, thanks for that

still really liked both shows, I just didn't appreciate that

it really did thread the needle of "you kids want wild and crazy characters that have incredible sci fi adventure' AND have down to earth meaningful relatable problems?" from the Poochie episode of the Simpsons though, that's an incredible achievement

oh and the fandom collectively owe that one writer they drove off the internet for not catering to their fucking stupid ship a billion dollars

i was lucky enough to watch the show as it came out and only really talk about it with friends in-person or in group DMs, it really was a much better experience it seems. hopefully everyone can get to the point of simply thinking Bad Pearl is Good.

Steven Universe was good actually, and I agree with all of the above. I also want to expand on one part of what @evanonline mentioned - 'steven universe was a victim of both its toxic fandom and the insane airing schedule'.

I've talked about this before - most notably in the context of Homestuck on the latest FITP - but it is really significant to look at what happened with the fandom during the "Steven Bombs" and the fallow periods. An experimental way to release the show, that ensured the fanbase would all have something big to look forward to...and then open the floodgates for gushing/ranting in the wake of each 'bomb. Great way to generate hype! Also a great way to make sure the fandom goes completely feral during the gaps between episode releases. I haven't gone back and tracked the timelines of the biggest SU fandom awfulness-spikes to see where they line up to the release schedule, but my suspicion is that there were some intense negative feedback loops driving the worst of it.