#but they were on Cartoon Network and got shut down for a gay wedding. in their show about war crimes.

[lovely-v]

While my Steven Universe rewatch has mostly informed me that, yes, this show was very very good, beautiful, and well thought out despite a few issues which were way overblown on the internet during its peak popularity, I can’t deny that there are some major children’s-show-adult-themes whiplash moments in the later seasons. For example. In one episode a character is making an ube roll for a potluck and feels insecure about his love of baking and then almost immediately the show takes a turn into a sequence of episodes where Steven is on trial for war crimes. And the thing that I forgot most since I last saw this show is that they do actually use the term “war criminal.” Even in the ube roll episode.

[jasper-pagan-witch]

Out of all the Pop-Culture Paganism you talk about I have yet to see you ramble on Owl House cause Legit it is my FAVORITE depiction of witchcraft in popular media in general, but I personally think I may be biased on that matter, however, what's your take on it?

We got Glyphs, Sigil magic, Potions, Palismen (Aka Talismen merged with Familiars which is GREAT and AMAZING), And even Demons and Witches! How cool is that? Plus there's some of the best representation of Lgbt I've ever seen in media to begin with, Lumity for example tends to follow in making a loving girlfriend couple that doesn't even try to hide that they're gay like some lgbt rep does.

I am so, so sorry to disappoint, but I've literally never seen the Owl House.

And a lot of the early queer rep had to hide that they're queer because they were fighting against waves and waves of censorship. Korra and Asami holding hands at the end of Avatar: The Legend of Korra was as far as they could push at the time, which paved the way for Steven Universe's lesbian wedding, which paved the way for newer things. Many times, the writers or showrunners involved would have wanted more overt representation, but the host service (often Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon) shut it down.

I ain't judging you for the phrasing here, as I'm sure you meant it in earnest and likely were referencing more things I've never heard of that have done queer rep quite terribly, but I wanted to take a moment to talk about an overlooked aspect of media made and hosted by many different people.

And, unfortunately, just the promise of representation doesn't really endear me to the idea of a show. I have to know the tone, the plot, what the protagonists are going for, what the antagonist is doing, stuff that actually makes the story. And then I probably won't even watch it, merely skim the wikis, because I refuse to give streaming services my money and we don't get jack shit for television out here.

It sounds really neat, even though I'm not a witch personally. But until the moons align and I can become able to go into new media, I'm gonna have to pass for now. I'm glad you enjoy it! Let me know if you write any posts yourself about The Owl House and pop culture magic/paganism, I'll give it a read and a reblog!

~Jasper

(PS: This post isn't rebloggable because there are much better explanations of the above things than I've put out here. Go reblog those instead. This was written in a post-work fugue state, you don't want this on your blog.)

[popculturebuffet]

Jake Reviews Stuff: Steven Universe: The Answer

Happy pride everyone and naturally, it just wouldn’t feel like a celebration of pride in animation without one of the frontrunners of LBGTQ represintation in Children’s television, as well as quality in storytelling in general: Steven Universe.  Since your seeing this you probably know the gist but as my idol peter parker would say let’s do this one last time:  The story of Steven, a 14 year old, though he dosen’t look it, boy with a boundless amount of love, compassion and empathy,  lives in beach city with his borderline homeless dad , surrogate moms and surrogate until we find out they actually are kinda related sister: Garnet, a fusion of two gems in love and thus the sum total of both them and their feelings, Peal, an emotional but loving gem who grew from a servant to Rose’s right hand, sometimes lover, and confidant, and Amythest, a gem born long after the war that brought everyone else here who acts like a 20 something or teenager half the time. Steven soon finds himself fighting alongside themt o protect earth both from the monsters caused by the final battle of the war his mother fought to save earth from distruction and let her army live life how they choose, and the gem homeworld as it starts to take an intrest in earth again. And as the fight goes on Steven also starts to see just how flawed his family is and how much they haven’t moved on from his moms death and finds himself forced to help them past it while grappling with his mom’s terrible and complicated legacy, everyone expecitng him to basically be her, and what it means to be a  being that’s truly one of a kind.  I absolutley love the show: it’s not without flaws; Characters tend to be ingnored for seasons or episodes at a time,some arcs are really weirdly paced and the slice of life episodes can be jammed in the weirdest places. But the show’s strength: a devotion to having emotional resolution be even more important, and sometimes just as powerful animated and framed, than fighting, though the show’s fight scene’s are incredible, incredibly deep characters with fully fleshed out arcs and growth, and a love for tackling deep, heavy subjects through metaphor or even directly, taking on things such as gender identity, societal conformity, ptsd, grief, gender identity and many many more with grace and weight and helping kids with them in the process.  The show is also the frontrunner for LBGTQ+ representation in cartoons in the 2010′s. While other shows had bits nad pieces, series creator Rebecca Sugar was the one responsible for making Marcline and Princess Bubblegum ex-lovers and making it obvious as possible without saying it because standards were bullshit, Steven Unvierse decided to say fuck subtley and thus had PLENTY OF gay content: Garnet is a fusion of two women and the embodiment of their love and relationship, and when the two show up their very affectionate with one another to the point of bullcrap censorship in less tolerant countries such as india and russia, while Pearl out and out had a CENTURIES LONG romantic relationship with Steven’s mother who was explictly pansexual, and that’s just the main cast!  But I genuinely believe that it’s thanks to Steven Universe that children’s animation is as LBGTQ+ positive as it is now. SU wasn’t the first to have gay leads but it was one of the few kids shows with the balls and, at least in the us, network support to explictily have gay characters as some of the main cast, and I feel the show’s success softend execs at CN and other companies to let more representation too. Since SU”s airing, most CN shows have had gay content great and small, Nick has had gay parents and a bisexual lead, not to mention the korra ending kicking it all off, and Netflix has said hold my beer, having not only multiple gay main characters, but having the finale of she ra be built on a decleration of love between two women saving the universe and being the climax of the entire series.  Not that those crews likely still didn’t have to FIGHT for most of that, i’m not bilind and NOelle Stevenson has outright admitted she had to be sneaky about catradora for season 1 as to not get it shut down, but I feel SU”s sucess and Rebecca and crew’s own likely fights put the various studio goon’s reflector shields down and got more representation into children’s media. And that’s a wonderful thing.  So naturally the show was a lock for this month and for coverage here.. i’ts just given the show’s heavily seralized nature and the fact it dosen’t really have any long romantic story arcs. Sure ther’es plenty of romance, but it’s mostly either in the past or between an already married couple that’s also a person. The show’s arcs were more focused on worldbuilding and character building, which I do prefer and will be doing one in July.  But it did make it tricky to find an episode to spotlight the character I wanted to spotlight: Garnet Garnet is easily my faviorite character, with pearl a very close second: she has a great dynamic, is a decent if flawed mother and leader, and is also damn funny with her deadpanned reactions to things being utterly divine. As well as whatever the hell this is. 

The problem is I also wanted to spotlight the parts making up her: Ruby and Sapphire, their relationship etc as they themselves are fantastic and i’m 100% convinced were the inspriation for one mr mc skat kat and one paula abdul’s magnum opus in steven’s unvierse

The problem is most rupphire episodes are tangled in bigger arcs. They debuted at the end of the invasion arc, they had the baseball episdoe together shortly after another arc, and their wedding is tied up in the reveal rose was pink diamond and the reception is crashed by the climactic battle with Yellow and Blue that sets up the final arc of the whole series. But thankfully season two gave us The Answer to my problem.. ironically named the Answer, basically Garnet Year One as Garnet tells steven how she came to be, a story so beauitful they made a storybook out of it.. and it’s my honor to present it here after the cut. 

We open at the Barn... as a refresher at this point the Gems and Steven have been staying at Greg’s old family farm in order to have the  space and suplies to build a drill to stop the cluster from hatching and destroying earth, with Peridot reluctantly working with them. So as such Steven’s sleeping there when Garnet wakes her.. and in a notable departure for her it’s san’s shade, which shows her adorable excitment as she wakes Steven. Turns out it’s his birthday! And.. I don’t really begrudge the show for takin ga break for two episodes to celebrate it: besides being the only time steven went up a year, on screen, it was a nice break from the peridot/cluster storyline for a second, and this and the following episode are pretty great and both add a lot to the world as a whole. It’s why i don’t MIND when SU takes a break from the plot, as long as they do it for good reason. 

IN a great callback steven asks if garent’s going to tell him she’s a fusion, as Jailbreak revealed the reason she hadn’t yet is she was saving it for his birthday, which is a good joke and a great callback. Garnet cheerfully tells him know but has clearly found a backup: While steven knows she’s a fusion now.. she never told him how she came to be and how ruby and sapphire met after all.  So we journey back about 5000 years to, as we’d learn much later with the pink diamond reveal, the start of the gem war. Earth was to be the next great colony, as we’d learn next season for pink diamond, but something was in the way: The rebel rose quartz and her brutal right hand pearl were causing tons of distruption, so the rest of the diamonds had come to snuff out the rebellion personally.  So that’s where Ruby and Sapphire came in. Sapphire is a higher class gem, and befiting her caste is a precog, with Sapphires brought in to tell the diamonds the future so they can either make sure it happens or change it’s course. Garnet neaturally has this ablility too but vastly improved to see multiple timelines. She’s proper and distant.  Ruby meanwhile is a shy, if more intellgent then her peers grunt soldier. Rubies as we learned here are basically made in groups to fuse. To homeworld, Fusion is simply a tactic to create a slightly stronger gem out of three other gems, and basically creates one giant person. In Contrast up to this point the series has shown fusion as something important to the crystal gems and requriing more work: It requires all parties to be in sync to even happen much less stay together, and requires an emotional connection; Freindship, romance, kinship... whatever it is it’s needed to hold the fusion together. It’s part of what MAKES garnet so impressive: Garnet is a permafusion, only unfusing either when her two halves are needed. or when thier personal conflict is so great they CAN’T stay fused. It also means due to said emotional resonance and combining the best traits of two gems rather than creating just one big gem, that the crystal fusions we’ve seen are vastly more powerful and versitale.. evne if they dont’ speak much because Rebecca made the mistake of getting big artist to do the role and apparently refused to just you know.. recast? It’s something that always baffled me. There’s no shortage of talented poc performers who can sing out there.  Anyways, that’s part of what makes this intresting: up till now, we’d only seen one form of fusion.. we hadn’t seen what homeworld thought of it and used it for, and to the show’s credit it was hinted back during the return arc when Jasper called fusion a “tactic for making weak gems stronger”, since as far as homeworld used it, that’s what it was and it’s a stark contrast to the crystal gems harder to maintain but much more intresting and unique fusions. 

We’ll get more into this later. The two front rubies argue about whose going to punch people whie our ruby just points out the obvious: Their just going to fuse into a really big ruby and punch together. This gets her shoved into sapphire, which despite not being her fault gets gasps and monocle pops from the gems around them. And it’s about time I dug into the episodes unique animation style: instead of the usual, only a handful of characters, the rubies, sapphire, and later rose and pearl, are animated normally and even then, at least for the first half, are brightly lit in their primary colors, while the rest of the gems present are just barely animated sytlistic shadows. It’s a really intresting choice and a clever way to save on budget, while still looking gorgeous. 

Sapphire, while refusing Ruby’s help getting up, is understanding if monotone, but as w’eve seen in the present, tha’ts mostly just a side effect from seeing where everything’s going, and likely the reason garnet’s own emotional process is much like that; Stoic but willing to emote when necessary. Sapphire however has a reason for brushing her ruby off: the reason she was called here.. Blue Diamond.  This is intresting as it’s not only the first time we HEARD of blue, as before this we only heard of Yellow, who’d make her proper debut at the end of this season, but the first time we saw a diamond in any way shape of form. Sure we had murals and such, but given the lack of info about the diamonds this early on it was impossible to tell whow as who and the only giveway there was more than was diamond was the symbols: the era 1 symbols in temples and at the arena showing all 4, hinting at pink, and the modern one shown in jailbreak that was a triforce. We do only see Blue in a hood, covered by her palquin and her voice done by Garnet, but it’s still the first tiem we’d see any of the diamonds in any onscreen form. The Garnet voice is also notcable as every other voice in the flashabck, including characters who aren’t either part of garnet or the same gem type as part of her, is normal.. it’s only blue Garnet does a voice for.. and a clever way of covering for the fact they likely hadn’t cast her voice actress yet. It’s also notable for the introduction of Blue Pearl, who silently stands by her Diamond teh whole time.. it’s weird thinking back to the fact that this was the first time we’d really SEEN other versions of our main cast: other rubies and another pearl. Sure we knew they were all part of one type or another with the obvious exception of garnet.. but this episode is notable, and weird to think about giiven how many variants we see as the series goes on, for being the FIRST time we see this on screen. 

Sapphire reveals that while she, and two of her rubies, will poof the rebllion will end here, and Blue is releaved to here this, thanks sapphire and dismisses her. As Garnet explains, Sapphire had no issue with this as she simply saw her life as one straight line: No choice no, option: Fate would just come as it may. Sapphire also muses to Our Ruby on the fact that she finds this planet a wonderful place for a colony.. and that she wishes she could’ve seen more of it. While Our Ruby says theirs more time, Sapphire, while appricating the sentiment gently shoots it down.  This little moment is interuptted however as Rose shouts out, signaling her and Pearl’s arrival. The battle has begun. And I do like the clever use of storytelling here.. not in presetnation but in what we’d learn muchhhh later with the big reveal: To a first time watcher, we just thought that it was only rose and pearl for story purposes or it was a small attack. After all the rest of the characters we’d seen were just shadows, so I, and I presume many others just assumed the rest were off screen or failing that this was just a small strike. As we’d learn once we got the full story of Pink Diamond becoming rose.. it was indeed JUST them, and only them at the time. it’s probably why in the future sapphire saw the rebellion ended her: Pink while powerful had to reign it in as not to be found out and pearl, while as we see her is already utterly badass and an ace with a sword as she mows down Quartz soldiers, is still one gem going up against a literal army.  Another noticable thing, that hints at when this takes place is the fact that when Rose takes down the fused rubies, poofing two of them and leaving ours to flump to the ground.. she uses her fists. At this point her iconic sword is well established and it’s assumed it was just left out for artistic purpose.. but since we meet who made it next season with Bismuth, it’s another clever hint this is before there was a proper army. Bismuth wasn’t a gem yet so Rose/Pink just had her natural strength and shield to protect her, which wasn’t nothing, but the sword probably made it far easier to hold back. 

And thus we come to the moment of truth: Pearl has come back and is about to mow down sapphire.. when Ruby realizes just waht Sapphire meant and waht she’s about to do and thus.. the future changed. Ruby tackles her out of the way. And Garnet is born. 

I absolutley love Garnet’s cotton candy design, both as a sensible evolution, as this is a garnet formed in a moment of passion and accidently versus the one we see in the present or even in flashbacks: a person formed by choice and love and thus having a more stable form. Naturally, Rose and Pearl are baffled by this.. and it’s even more understandable.. as the above mentioned pink diamond origin episode explained.. they had never SEEN this kind of fusion before. While i’m sure this isn’t the first time this happend in gem history, any others were likely killed as soon as it were over or went into hiding as we saw with the off colors. And Pink being sheltered and Pearl being created for her, probalby simply never thought of something like this existing. But they also realize this never before seen to them miracle is their cue to skidoo and book it out of there.  Naturally Blue is pissed and the court are disgusted as the two defuse and both have about the same reacation. 

Before Blue can murder Ruby for you know, doing her fucking job, Sapphire ttakes her by the hand and books it off the sky arena and the two plummet to earth  while ruby screams no a lot. The foundation of any good relationship. 

They float down to earth.. because she’s Mary Poppins Ya’ll. Ruby reveals why she’s upset: Because as she sees it, there’s dozens of her. She’s not WORTH this. Sapphire has no reaction because for the first time, she has no idea what the future brings, what it means and the future she saw was just shattered. She’s frozen. 

Jokes aside I really love that pun. Ruby worries and quickly scoops her up bridal carry style and quickly finds the two a cave. In the cave the two light that flame get that and Ruby continues to freak out over what happened,  upset with her self that she’s supposed to save sapphire.. with Sapphire gently reassuring her “you already did.”  It’s also intresting as it shows even garnet, or at least half of her, had to go through what peridot did.. it went down a bit easier since exile happened right away, but Ruby still had to shake off the homeworld conceived notion that she was WRONG for saving sapphire simply because it lost them the fight and got them fused and all that. It’s also a nice metaphor for someone whose been told, for a nightmarish rainbow assortment of bullshit resaons, that being gay is wrong only to discover they are and having to realize there’s nothing wrong with who they are. 

After a breif flash the two finally talk about their fusion, with Sapphire being suprised considering she figured fusion wasn’t anything like they experinced.. only for Ruby to chime in that sh’es RIGHT: Their fusion wasn’t anything like Ruby’s normal “me but bigger’ fusion.. they lost htemselves.. and both clearly enjoyed it, expressing it through having a third eye for ruby and more than one for sapphi 

We then get the utterly adorable musical number: “Something Entirely New”Which takes the so far mildly subtle “This is like two people who had sex with the oppsite gender for the first time “ metaphor.. and just makes it texual as the song basically screams of two people talking over an unfamiliar sexual experince, but in a cute, well done, and intentionally awkward way that’s still approraite for the kids. it’s a real beautiful song and also shows the burgoning couple bond on earth. This is important as a previous episode had garent and out and out say that love takes time and work, accurate and that love at first sight simply dosen’t exist.. and we also see she practices waht she preaches as the montage does show some time past and even before that the two genuiely bonded. Sure they FUSED on the spur of the moment.. but actually loving each other took time and bonding. 

As the song ends, the two dance romantically,deciding to be Garnet for good as we get some nice callbacks to jailbreak: the two hum the tune to stronger than you, now revealed to be their song and spin similarilty to the way they have when they’ve fused, a nice callback that also add’s weight to those previous moments.. and thus two become one and Garnet is reborn. 

Garnet narrates as her past self gets used to her strange new form.. and just as she does she falls down a ditch. Eh could’ve been worse. 

Garnet finds herself face to sword with Pearl. Pearl backs off a bit once she realizes who their dealing with, and Garnet panickedly offers to unfuse.. only for Rose to enter. Garnet narrates them as Rose Quartz and her terrifying renegade pearl. 

Truly a force to be reckoned with. Rose dosen’t care about her own feelings though “What you feel is bound to be more intresting” It’s a good moment both because Garnet , up to this point hasn’t had to think about what they are or how they feel.. but more notably... no one but the two gems makingthem up ever cared, not before they were garnet and after all the homeworld gems wanted was to kill her. We also get a great line from garnet: “Why am I sure that i’d rather be this than anything else and that i’d rather do this than anything else i’m supposed to do? “  Rose’s response.. to give a giant grin while saying welcome to earth. As Garnet continues to question things, Rose tells her to never question this, never question what you are... which is a damn good message for a kids show to give out. The metaphor is crystal clear: no matter where you are on that beautiful lbgtq+ rainbow: NEVER be ashamed of who you are, never question it.. just enjoy it. Be who your meant to be and love that person. It’s a damn good message and one badly needed in a medium that for way too fucking long was SCARED to tell messages like this: Of sponsors, of foreign markets, and of idiots like one million moms. it took people like rebecca and her crew to say “fuck that”, to say that queer kids NEED these kinds of stories to know they aren’t alone, they are beautiful how they are. They shoudln’t have to wait to find out what they are.. is okay. And that’s beautiful. 

As Rose Tells Garnet that she is the answer, and as we cut back to the present, Steven asks what the answer is. Garnet simply answers: Love. And we close on one great exchange Steven: I knew it Garnet; (wistfully) So did I. 

Final Thoughts: While I remembered the episode being good, hence part of the reason I choose it I forgot just HOW great this episode was, especially post reveal. The art direction is goregous, shot like a fairy tail and rightfully so since this episode is told as one, the story is heartwarming and erica and charlene really act their hearts out as ruby and sapphire while Estelle kills it as both present garnet narrating and past garnet, a garnet ENTIRELY diffrent from what we’ve seen but acted beautifully. It’s espcially noticable since unlike the other two lead gems, we obviously wouldn’t see more garnets like we would amythests and pearls, so unlike her contepraries estelle really didn’t get to flex her vocal range as much playing alternate versions as the seasons went on, with this being the closest she got.  The episode is beautiful, has a wonderful message, and is just utterly charming and is agian why I DON’T mind that every su episode dosen’t advance the plot: Sometimes it dosen’t need to. And even so this one ended up being WAY more important than I remembered, introducing blue diamond and turning out to be MASSIVELY important once the reveal kicked it: For it was Garnet, and the love dthat forged her that changed Pink’s direction. Before the rebellion was simply a way to stop the occupation of earth and would’ve been snuffed out if not for ruby’s actions.. but seeing garnet, seeing how earth and being free from homeworld’s restraints could positvely impact someone.. it changed rose. Besides bringing her and Pearl together, it also made her realize just what her rebellion could bring to people and what a gem could be and even more how precious her future home was. By forming in an act of Love, garnet changed the entire future of gemkind. By staying that way she did so once more. And that’s beautifully. overall an underated, even by me, little masterwork with once again a damn fine message.  We’ll get back to SU soon enough, as I plan to cover the series first full arc as we meet peridot, and see into the souls of our heroines. But first Pride isn’t over yet, and I have one last card on the table as we todd it up a bit with my first look at bojack horseman. Like this if you enjoyed it, comments subscirbe etc etc and don’t be afraid to comission a review for 3 bucks, and until we meet agian, later days. 

[sorio99]

Well, I just watched the latest episode of Steven Universe (Reunited)

And holy CRAP do I have a lot of thoughts on it.

In a bit, I’m gonna rewatch the whole Stevenbomb and write my thoughts on each episode semi-live, then post them here, but first, just an over-all analysis of the five episodes. Six? No. No, its just five.

Spoilers under the cut.

Well, that was. A lot. Can’t say I was expecting most of it. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I saw a couple leaks, so I knew Bismuth was coming back, and just based on the episode titles, I could tell there was gonna be a wedding. Probably between the only official unmarried couple still alive, AKA Garnet. And I suspected Lapis was gonna be coming back at some point, but goddamn. What an entrance.

The whole bomb seemed extremely well-done. It basically centered around two concepts: the revelation of Rose being Pink Diamond, and the relationship between Ruby and Sapphire (which, it turns out, was extremely important in the story of the former). It featured most of the Crystal Gems thoughts on the revelation (minus Lapis and Peridot, since Lapis wasn’t around and Peridot probably wouldn’t be too impacted), as well as the possible dissolution turned certain strengthening of the relationship, all culminating in whatever the hell Reunited was. And I for one loved ALL of it.

Now, to get a bit more specific, lets talk about three aspects: the two I mentioned above, and everyone’s favorite problematic Crystal Gem.

1: The Problem And Solution With Bismuth

Now, if you go back on this blog to when the episode “Bismuth” dropped, you may see a post or two where I mentioned some not too positive opinions of her. I do still stand by the fact that her actions did warrant her “punishment”. After all, merely because Steven (and Rose) didn’t want to shatter any gems, even horrible ones like the diamonds, she tried to shatter Steven (or, as she thought, Rose). That’s obviously a problem, and one that’s really big. I’ve seen people comparing it too how quickly Lapis and Peridot were forgiven, but I think a lot of people are forgetting how important motivation really is in regards to “redemption”. Lapis had been imprisoned for thousands of years, and she believed the CG’s were trying to keep her imprisoned. Peridot was following the Diamonds’ orders and was basically still brainwashed to adore them. Bismuth, meanwhile, was acting on her own, and when she first had an altercation with Rose, all she thought was that Rose didn’t want to permanently kill the Diamonds. Is that understandably infuriating? Yes. To the point of permanently killing HER? No.

That said, I do think the character is ultimately good-hearted, and I do and did think she deserved some form of redemption and reconciliation. I didn’t think the show would have it, honestly, due to how many other threads were being juggled, as well as how she was seemingly unpersoned for quite some time (though, in-universe, would you want to take about your friend who you had to put in jail because they wanted to straight up murder anyone who even THOUGHT to negotiate with the opposition?). And I will agree that the underlying “moral” of her episode, as well as possibly with the one from “Gem Harvest” was a little mistimed given recent... let’s say “world events”. 

Still, I was very interested to see how they were going to deal with her character, and I must say, I was very glad with how they handled her return. I really do think she’s going to be a major CG from now on, at least at the level of Lapis and Peridot. She does make for an interesting foil to the rest of the cast, and she’s just an all-around fun character, both to watch and, I imagine, to write.

2: The Tragedy Of Pink Diamond The Young

So, in “Now We’re Only Falling Apart”, an episode seemingly named after a lyric from a pop-punk song, we learned quite a bit more about Pink Diamond’s life and personality, and by extension, Rose’s. I have seen a couple people on tumblr say “Well, it was still her colony, why couldn’t she just shut it down?” To those people, I say “Did we watch the same episodes?” I think it was pretty clearly demonstrated that it WASN’T her colony anymore, for all intents and purposes. A fact that, now that I think about it, was foreshadowed as far back as “The Answer”. Huh. First time we saw a diamond, and it foreshadowed a reveal from 4 seasons later. I guess it’s appropriate, since this episode also shows how important the events of that episode were, not just to Garnet, but to Pink/Rose, Pearl, and the Crystal Gems as a whole.

Speaking of Pearl, I love how we see her, even before she was a part of Pink Diamond’s “revolution”, thinking her own thoughts. Seriously, SHE came up with the Rose Quartz persona! How freaking cool is that?! On top of that, we see very subtle and not so subtle hints that she really did view Pearl as, if not an equal, at least not a mere servant or trophy. Pearl may have been forced into a life of servitude, but it was never by Rose.

Overall, I think all of the character’s reactions make a lot of sense for who they are. Sapphire and Ruby are both devastated, for much the same reason but shown in different ways. Steven is kinda shell-shocked, but he’s pushing it aside to help others, often at his own expense. Amethyst is seemingly blasé about the whole thing, only to reveal some serious issues about it that she doesn’t want Steven to have to deal with. Bismuth is 

yeah, that. Greg is so used to learning new, sometimes literally world shattering things about Rose that he’s like “Yep, same shit as always”. And Peridot never met Rose Quartz or lived under Pink Diamond, so she really doesn’t care other than “What if the currently LIVING diamonds come to Earth?”

In particular, I think “What’s Your Problem” has my favorite reaction to the revelation, and that’s Amethyst. Like I said, she seemingly takes it really well, but I think anyone who's ever tried to ignore or mask problems they’re having can tell she’s just barely keeping her feelings inside. I really love her reasoning for doing so, though. Not because she doesn't want to deal with it, or because she’s scared or even particularly upset. She’s holding it in because Steven doesn't need it. It honestly reminds me of the “New Crystal Gems”.

Connie: I don't care! So I'm not Steven. Maybe he's really great at helping people work out these arguments, maybe he's really patient and caring, even though it must be hard for him having to be the adult for a bunch of super-powered children! 

Throughout the series, ever since season one really, Steven has had to play Only Sane Man to a bunch of walking, talking, super-powered emotional issues that are millennia older than him. Now, Amethyst has realized “Yeah, that’s stupid, he has his own issues that need to be taken care of, I’m not gonna push mine on him. At least, not anymore.”

I don’t know. I just really liked it.

3: The First Animated Gay Wedding Proposal

Not counting that one joke one in GAoB&M, of course.

Look, I’m a human with emotions, okay? So of course I automatically love Ruby and Sapphire. They’re adorable, they’re badass, and they fuse into a mega-adorable, mega-badass mom. What’s not to love, right?

This is the first time we’ve had multiple episodes in a row of Ruby and Sapphire being, well, Ruby and Sapphire. Seriously, any other time we’ve gotten to know them individually, it’s been in one-episode bursts. And as much as I love Garnet, I’ll be honest, I’d be willing to see less of her if it means seeing more of them.

I saw a few people online talking before the episodes came out about how “Out Of Character” Ruby being happy without Sapphire was. Even Cartoon Network played it up like “Oh, they may never get back together!” But, really, I could see Ruby was lying through her teeth when I first saw the promo where she claimed to be fine. I think people need to get better about telling when a cartoon lesbian rock alien is lying.

...admittedly, that’s not actually that vital a skill.

Nonetheless, I think it was important to show the two of them come to the conclusions they did on their own (sort of? I mean Sapphire had help from Pearl and Steven, and even Ruby got a push from Steven, but you know what I mean). It can be important to take a step back and see what a relationship means to you, and what you really want out of your future together. Wether that means leaving your girlfriend of almost 6 millennia to become a cowboy, or host the first serious LGBTQIA+ wedding in Cartoon History, that’s up to the individuals involved.

Also

these

dorks

are

ADORABLE!!!

So, yeah. Those are my raw thoughts. Play-by-Play reaction coming probably tomorrow! See y’all then.