#it's hard not to be upset when someone ostensibly in charge talks about you like you're stupid or just seeing things

[lovecolibri]

SaL anon here friend, coming back from my travels to a striking sense of deja vu in the form of a showrunner apparently completely ignorant of how character development works or just human interactions in general. Seriously did CAM change her name because after S2 no one would hire her and somehow ended up at Fox?? It would explain the disturbing resemblance between TayKay and that other show's loathed character. At least the 911 writeers have talent to write themselves out of the 5a hellscape.

Hello! I hope you had pleasant and enjoyable travels! And bestie this week has been a ROLLERCOASTER, with that interview being a huge drop on the excitement scale for a lot of people. Talk about badly timed interviews.

I am cackling over that comparison because I've had that discussion with a few people 🤣🤣🤣 It really is deja vu over here with showrunners trying to gaslight fans and say they aren't seeing the things they think they're seeing, and that they never intended things to come across the way they did, even though a) literally any reasonable person could have predicted how things would come across, and b) everything gets screened and reviewed and edited, and you can't tell me that NO ONE along the way mentioned how things looked. So either these women are exceptionally bad at their jobs, or they knew exactly what they were doing, did it anyway, and then lied about it. Either way, not a good look!

And seriously, the similarities between the reporter and the bartender? The way both of them talked down to their boyfriends and ignored and invalidated their feelings? How selfish they both are? At least 911 has the decency to make sure fans KNOW she's awful and allow the other characters to (for the most part) react in a normal way to her being awful instead of trying to pretend she isn't by having the characters falling all over themselves to praise how wonderful and beautiful she is and how great of a friend she is while showing her being the exact opposite 🤷🏻‍♀️ (I still hold that Athena should have been allowed to be angry and not want to invite her over after the treasure hunt, but Bobby talks her down because he's the forgiving kind and Athena can hold a (very understandable) grudge, but otherwise reactions have been understandable and they also just....don't talk about her much which also makes sense.)

It was nice to get some vindication from the cast saying 5a felt like working on a different show (getting rid of Chim was a Mistake, but replacing his screen time with the reporter was pretty unforgivable), but seeing how engaged and excited they all are about 5b does give me *some* hope. I mean, we all saw how that turned out on the other show with the cast being excited because they got to do fun acting stuff vs how the final product was put together so 🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️. At least 911 addressed how Chim and Maddie being gone were affecting Buck and Hen instead of pretending they just didn't exist, and it looks like they'll be addressing all that as well in 5b so there is lots to look forward to!

I do wonder at them releasing that article three days before the premier but it is what it is! And this is why shows have teams of people working on them! No one person can see or understand or predict every angle or tell every story, so at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if SHE gets it, because a) she doesn't have the final say (thank goodness) and b) there are other writers, and directors, and actors working with the directors, and set and costume designers, and editors, and music departments, that are ALL working together to tell these stories and make these scenes. And the story they are collectively working to put on our screens? That's a lot more telling than one writers opinion on what's going on. AND, the audience response to the story she pushed to tell in 5a that sidelined Chim and focused on the creep and his gaggle of supporters and the copaganda around that whole thing, and on the reporter instead of any of the other mains or secondary mains (like Ravi)? Well, that was all pretty telling too, especially given the HARD shift it looks like they are making in 5b to get back to what people love about the show. 911 isn't perfect, but they are pretty good at adapting and course correcting when they get the chance (unlike SOME shows), and the love the cast and crew and everyone puts into the show is what makes it SO comforting and re-watchable.

I think we are in for a ride!

(Also, I am really excited to see what songs we can pull from these new episodes to talk about! It's SUCH a bummer that Fear is an instrumental song, but I'm eyeing things like Silhouettes if Eddie's trauma ties back to his parents at all, but Aperture, and Page 28 are high up there for both Maddie and Eddie in this back half. I can't wait! Also looking at the TK stuff coming up in Lone Star and getting big Uneven Odds vibes. We're so close now! I'm not letting her steal my joy!)

[pepperonitimeline]

There is an interesting emphasis on timelines in Steven Universe

but like. Why?

Hypothesis: Steven Universe is made up of multiple timelines, but shown in an order that makes the events seem linear. read part 2 here!

I'm not the first person to speculate this at all. A lot of this stuff has been pointed out by @dogcopter​ @arrozbrillante​ @stevenutheories and many others on various platforms!

I just gathered the most conspicuous "evidence" into 1 post. If you’re interested in SU theory and analysis you should check out their blogs. :o) This was as short as I could make it..

And a big thank you to @love-takes-work for her podcast summaries!!! 

So, most ostensibly there’s Garnet, who can see multiple futures. In Pool Hopping she begins to call her visions timelines specifically.

Garnet: In this timeline, we do the opposite of that. Hey, you! Have a pizza!

Steven: Hey, Vidalia's house is around here. Let's bring her the last pie.

Garnet: Now, that would be nice. She must be upset that her son was taken into space by those Homeworld Gems. (referring to the events of I Am My Mom)

Steven: You mean Onion? He isn't in space. He's right over there. *points*

Garnet: Sorry, I-I must be thinking of a different timeline.

-

Garnet: My bad. I was sure we were in the pepperoni timeline.

-

Garnet: It's important to keep in mind that all these horrible things did happen to you in alternate timelines. Safety is fun.

In Steven and The Stevens:

Yeah

It was confirmed on the podcast that the Steven we see from that episode on is a different Steven than the one from episodes 1-21. In “The Fantasy of Steven Universe” Sugar explains:

"I think, early on, we knew for sure what we wanted to do was to create episodes that feel self-contained but give you a new piece of information or change the characters fundamentally. So, Steven and the Stevens, is tight but Steven does change fundamentally after having that experience. He's not the same- in THAT case he's LITERALLY not the same character..."

It’s muffled because they're all laughing but right after they say this Matt Burnett goes “He died.” 

Link to the episode

Love-takes-work also has a text summary of the episode

But something I haven't seen discussed very much is the time travel chase scene. Granted it’s very blink-and-you’ll miss it, there are some Stevens who witness the other Steven’s fighting but that don’t end up in the Sea Shrine at the end.

Way back in 2015 @stevenutheories already did the math as to how many alternate timelines may have stemmed from the time shenanigans: 3 to 5. Not counting the original one who is definitively gone. 

Technically quantum mechanics don’t work like that and those Stevens should have been Thanos’d too. I’m not going to pretend I understand physics, that is just what I’ve been told by someone who does. But then again the magic time thingy wasn’t bound by rules of real-life physics in the first place… so ??

Let’s cross-examine SATS’ accompanying KBCW post.

“At any given moment, if you asked me what I was thinking about, the answer would be one of two things: katana swords, or THE POSSIBILITY OF ALTERNATE TIMELINES RUNNING PARALLEL TO OUR OWN!

Proving the existence of these timelines can be pretty tricky, even for a seasoned paranormal investigator such as myself.  An inter-temporal incursion caused by the momentary weakening of the time-space continuum doesn’t really photograph well.  And all the cross dimensional time travelers I know don’t want to go on the record about their experiences.  Frankly, the only thing I can submit as evidence of alternate timelines is the fact that THEY ARE PROBABLY JUST SO COOL AND AWESOME THAT THEY HAVE TO BE REAL.

Think about it!  What about a universe where that asteroid missed Earth and we had DINOSAURS for pets instead of dogs?  Or a universe where someone was like “Hey, zeppelins are way cooler than planes, let’s just do that!”  Or a universe where AN ALTERNATE VERSION OF ME CAN GROW A FULL BEARD?!  What an amazing life that Ronaldo must have… in THIS stupid reality I have a really hard time getting my moustache to connect to the rest of my facial hair and it’s incredibly frustrating.”

KBCW and Ronaldo’s commentary in general are usually half-right. Like the “Polymorphic Sentient Rocks are aliens who want to hollow out the earth… to make it lighter so they can transport it back to their star system” thing.

I can't help but think the "Dinosaurs for pets instead of dogs" is a reference to the live action Super Mario Bros. movie- where the meteor that killed the dinosaurs sent them to a parallel universe instead, causing mammals to go instinct in said universe. (Don’t know about the zeppelins.)

And then, and THEN there’s Keep Beach City Safe, KBCW’s more obscure rival blog run by (most likely) Onion under the pseudonym "The Observer". Apparently he’s planted cameras all over town to record Steven’s adventures. There's also a "Recruiter" and second mystery narrator calling themselves "Marco Díez", it's a whole thing,

Assuming it’s real, here’s one of the posts I think are the most relevant.

“I have been on zero gem hunts over the years, and what i have learned over the years is: always be prepared for anything, and everything. Connie’s already knows that and this her first mission. I, wasn’t so fortunate on my first mission. It was a crisp Autumn morning, - with notes of cinnamon in the air. I was the mountains, the air temperature, humidity and level elevation levels, were perfect.

Then, I noticed the creature, it was charging me. I tried to evade the gem monster, but it just kept on coming, and coming! There was no escape! And then- Wait! I just remembered. I never been on a gem hunt! So where did I get that story from?”

This was posted on August 1st alongside Gem Hunt… and the day after the Greg The Babysitter post, which was deleted earlier this year, right after people started interacting with it again.

Being a Babysitter is hard, especially if your Greg Universe. This guy, in the picture above me. Wait did I just become self aware? Hey, I did! Haha, I always knew I was more to me than just a narrator. Actually this is the first time I thought about, Because I'm self aware baby! Woohoo, yeah! Wait, what was I talking about? Ah yes, Gregory. So this Greg guy,Has to Babysit this cool baby, because he owes her for letting him mooch off her. And Greg, is like totally irresponsible, he some how lets the baby climb a Ferris Wheel. How does that even happen? This dude is so not getting payed. And what's up with his hair!?!

So here it is, another story, told by Greg, about his past self. I wonder how many times I started a paragraph with the word so. And when he was telling this story, we got some clues that could finally tell use when all of this started. We know about the gems and what happened  thousands of years ago, but we don't know about the hems and  what happened thousands of years ago. They wee being very vague about the whole thing. Almost intentionally, well it was obsessively intentional.

?

There are subtle inconsistencies in Beach City's layout. ("The Observer" points this out, too.)

Remember Danny’s? In Bubble Buddies and Joking Victim, there’s a shop named Danny’s Salt Water Taffy.

Then in Watermelon Steven it’s gone.

As for a prop: Chaaaaps used to just be Chips

That’s from Monster Buddies, the episode right after Steven and The Stevens.

It's just as likely someone on the show simply thought the background/chips looked a little too busy or whatever. But re-doing stuff costs a lot of time and money, yknow? Neither of which is the animation industry very generous about. Did you know even props have model sheets?

Of course it could just be another brand of chips. Maybe Utz got involved somehow.

Lastly I want to highlight a quote from a Rebecca Sugar interview regarding SU ending.

“The story is continuing off screen and I do know what happens next, at least in certain timelines, for the characters,” Sugar says. “But I would have to decide how and when I’d want to dig into that, or if it’s best to give them their privacy.”

yeah so like what the fuck