Steven Universe - Now a Griefing Thread

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Two new episodes, darn near flawless as per usual.
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It's a shame too, they could have easily used that episode to further develop their relationship (Steven and Connie's just to clarify) instead of emotionally torturing him for the 20th time.
It’s a reoccurring problem; there’s so many interesting plotlines they could have done but instead they focus emotionally wringing Steven. Connie and Steven’s relationship has always been a cornerstone of the show and it’d be great to see them explore it now that they’re older but as pointed out, we’re stuck in a rut concerning Steven’s problems.
This sort of pointless drama is what happens when your creative team consists of people who act like they’re still just glorified fan artists rather than supposed professionals.
I mean, most of them are just glorified fan artists to an extent. Danny Cragg, Jesse Zuke, Maya Petersen, and most of the Future staff were just fanartists for SU until they got the job. Judging by the casual use of TV Tropes terms, I’m guessing they never learned how to stop being fans and start being professionals.
I'm all caught up now that my job told me to stay home this weekend. (thank you and curse you, Chingchong Flu.)

"In Dreams" - Trippy and drippy in cringy meta commentary. Peridot soured for me when she lost her limbs and villainous angle to the point I wanted the shattering of Gems to start with her being under YD's boot. But after this episode... she alright.
"Bismuth Casual" - The human designs are fucking AWFUL. I think they're either fancharacters or staff members inserting themselves in the show like they did in PPG 2016. Pearl and Bismuth is...cute? It makes more sense than Pearl and Human Rose. (pearl likes em big, pearl likes em chunkay)

As for "Together Forever", I'm not surprised how disastrous it turned out for Steven seeing as how his exposure of relationships is his widower Dad with a 16-year dryspell, two codependent aliens, the very embodiment of "it's complicated" that is Lars and Sadie, and Vidalia who married a man who adopted her bastard son and gave her a hellspawn son. Garnet really is nothing but a guru for relationships when she really can't say shit since she barely interacts with humans.

In "Growing Pains", @Private Pyle had a point about no religion being in SU and yet there's the token muslim girl. This ep proved that it took the human straight father to help fix a problem that three lesbian space moms caused. Progress. 🚬 And I think they heard me when I mentioned gay dudes kissing would be new with the Dogcoptor thing haha.
Yeah, I enjoyed the Peridot and Steven interacting and actually talking heart to heart. But I didn’t care for the meta commentary and I don’t how to feel about her send off revolving around her nerdy fandom side.

And the human designs...yeesh. The original human designs aren’t what I would call super attractive but compared to Shep and Pearl’s friends, they look like Frank Franzetta paintings.
 
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I mean, most of them are just glorified fan artists to an extent. Danny Cragg, Jesse Zuke, Maya Petersen, and most of the Future staff were just fanartists for SU until they got the job. Judging by the casual use of TV Tropes terms, I’m guessing they never learned how to stop being fans and start being professionals
Exactly. A common pitfall I see with people when they go from fan artists to members of a creative team is that they fail to learn/understand that the things you want as a fan of something are not always what’s going to be best for the overall show. If you don’t reel that fan mindset in a little, you’ll end up either making creative choices that only appeal to the fraction of the audience with your specific tastes or you risk the whole series succumbing to the fandom drama bullshit - like shipping and head canons - that can be absolutely disastrous in the writing room.
 
I guess the asumption is that the kids watching the show became older and now the show deals with the stuff a teenager might deal with. Not a bad thing per se, but teen drama is much more boring than space adventures, for kids and adults. I really like the setting of the series, but you only get glimpses, Homeworld is vastly underexplored, instead you get a bunch of episodes about accepting rejection.
 
Ok get ready for a ramble from me that looks way too much into fictional characters.

Out of all the characters Steven could’ve asked this particular advice from, Ruby and Sapphire would have the worst response. And demonstratively, they did.

They’ve been quite literally joined at the hip for thousands of years, as someone stated earlier, codependent. And for a fraction of those many years coexisted with humans without really bothering to understand their socially acceptable behaviors and customs.

They were barely introduced to the concept of marriage from Steven’s own limited, childish viewpoint, and that’s all they’re ever gonna know about it.

They could’ve easily put in time from a normie villager like Vidalia or best character Greg who actually can give a human response to a human question. But nah, the core audience doesn’t want grounded answers. Also lol at Garnet just showing up like “lol my bad”.

Even with Steven’s unresolved stress about everything, his reaction was still out of proportion. Connie didn’t even say no to his proposal.
 
I mean, Garnet said it best “Whatever hole in your life you’re trying to fill, Stevonnie won’t fill it.” He was essentially trying to escape his trouble by disappearing into someone else’s life. He needs to get himself worked out and become stable again before doing anything major like that.
 
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I mean, Garnet said it best “Whatever hole in your life you’re trying to fill, Stevonnie won’t fill it.” He was essentially trying to escape his trouble by disappearing into someone else’s life. He needs to get himself worked out and become stable again before doing anything major like that.
It’s consistent with her giving out the best love advice. Although I hate how this whole mess started because her components have really bad love advice and Steven’s emotional intelligence has degraded that he took it to the next extreme. Plus, I feel that Stevonnie is slowly being degraded into a plot device for romance rather than an actual character.

But I need to give the episode props because I have been too harsh lately; like In Dreams, the episode was at it’s best when focusing on positive character interactions, with arguably one of the best relationships of the show. It reminds of the better parts of We Need To Talk, Mindful Education and Sworn to the Sword without rehashing them. And it makes me hate the concept of slow burn all the more because the show would be much better if they got together earlier; I don’t even mean that in a shippy way.
 
I guess the asumption is that the kids watching the show became older and now the show deals with the stuff a teenager might deal with. Not a bad thing per se, but teen drama is much more boring than space adventures, for kids and adults. I really like the setting of the series, but you only get glimpses, Homeworld is vastly underexplored, instead you get a bunch of episodes about accepting rejection.
I think SU’s greatest weakness is that while the show is capable of doing some well done individual scenes and moments, Sugar seems completely uninterested in developing the connective tissue that makes those moments actually have impact.

Those moments seem to exist in this vacuum where they’re only remembered or relevant when the crew finds it convenient, and it’s lead to the audience being frustrated with the plots being left on the back burner and, as someone else mentioned, the repetitive nature of characters seeming to have the same conversations or hitting the same emotional beats over and over until they’ve lost their impact.

SU never seemed to find the right balance between their fantastical setting and the mundane problems either; it’s always one or the other.
 
I feel that Stevonnie is slowly being degraded into a plot device for romance rather than an actual character.

Was she EVER a character? (fuck the "they/them" bullshit, Stevonnie looks and sounds like a chick.)
Stevonnie, compared to other fusions, never felt like someone different from Connie and Steven. Everything she did is something both of them would do. Have fun on the beach, eat donuts, dance at parties, fight Gem monsters. The only thing they both couldn't do by themselves was race a car. As much as I can't stand Smokey Quartz, she's at least different from Amethyst and Steven. (she's their combined inferiority complexes so she's a helpful and sassy performer to hide that fact.)

The thing that disturbs me the most is that Onion still looks the same.

Oni means demon troll in Japanese you know.
 
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