#might try with steven universe. i think the dub version is not bad

[thesecretingredientislove]

Will I be able to convince my mom to watch another cartoon with me?

I've already convinced her to watch Over the Garden Wall (she loved it and now we watch it every summer) and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (she liked some of it but I don't think she loved it).

[andrewmoocow]

Steven Universe Alternate Future chapter 22: Pumpkin Patch (originally published on August 9, 2021)

AN: At long last, the homestretch of Part 3, which I have already dubbed the Tearjerking Three last time. And for our first entry into this trilogy, we finally get an update on the relationship between Peridot and Lapis, which I found to be done so dirty in Future as a Lapidot shipper. I mean, they didn't even interact with each other even when they were in the same episode together! Plus, Pumpkin just disappeared into thin air once the movie came along, leaving the only hint of where she is now are those similar gourd puppies from The Future. But enough griping, let's get my personal answer on what really happened, and maybe a big surprise that I no doubt have already spoiled on DeviantArt anyways.

Synopsis: Steven, Peridot and Lapis reminisce on the anniversary of Pumpkin's death.

Cast:

Zach Callison as Steven, Pumpkin

Shelby Rabara as Peridot, Squaridot

Jennifer Paz as Lapis, Laz, Zuli

Estelle as Garnet

Michaela Dietz as Amethyst, Ocean Jasper

Deedee Magno-Hall as Pearl

Uzo Aduba as Bismuth

Amy Sedaris as Teal Zircon

Jeff Bergman as Farmer

Featuring Billie Eilish as Turquoise

--

"Maybe I'll find myself smiling on that distant shore," Steven sang to himself while gazing at his watch as the oven timer counted down in front of him. "Maybe I'm not alone."

The timer beeped, notifying Steven that whatever he had in the oven was ready. After putting on some oven mitts and opening the oven, Steven pulled a pumpkin pie out and set it on the counter to cool. "This one is for you two, guys." He said before gazing at a nearby calendar that read June 7th. "I remember it like it was yesterday." Steven then began to reminisce on the aftermath of his visit to Homeworld.

--

A few weeks the Crystal Gems have successfully convinced the Diamonds to help them in healing the corrupted Gems on Earth, these Gems now needed somewhere to live. As far as Steven knew, there was no way they could expand the Temple to make room for all of them, and he's sure none of the newly healed Gems wanted to return to Homeworld, so the Crystal Gems decided that their only choice now was to build them their own little town. They had some basic ideas down, but all they needed now was a name.

"How about Peritropolis?!" Peridot suggested as she wrote down her choice of name on the whiteboard, with little sketches of her face surrounding the name for emphasis. "Pretty cool, huh?"

"How about something that won't stroke your ego?" Steven frowned at the idea.

"What about Barnstantinople?" Lapis proposed. "We are building it around where the barn used to be after all."

"Speaking of which, how's clean-up on that going?" Amethyst asked, looking out the window to gaze at the wreckage that was once Lapis and Peridot's barn house home. "I think some bits of it might be useful somehow."

"I say we put that on hold." Lapis stated. "That old barn caused just as much harm to Peridot and me as much as it did good."

"You serious about this?" Peridot asked her blue roommate. "I mean, we had so many good memories in there."

"Yeah, and a lot of those memories were you just bending over backwards trying to keep me happy." Lapis added. "I know you're still sad about me jumping ship and coming back with only a "Hey", but I still got things to work out, y'know."

"OK." Peridot said just as their pet Pumpkin opened the door. "Oh, hey Pumpkin!"

In contrast to Peridot being excited to see Pumpkin, the little canine fruit let out an exhausted bark before sitting down to nap, revealing wrinkles around her eyeholes.

"Hey, is your little buddy there doin' alright?" Bismuth asked. "I barely know a thing about the lifespan of organic creatures, but even I know she ain't doing so hot."

"Oh, I'm sure she's just tired!" Peridot assured Bismuth. "Just needs to rest, that's all!"

"Don't be so sure Peridot." Garnet advised the little Gem. "Pumpkin was brought to life with magic, which means she's probably lived longer than a pumpkin normally does."

"Just let her be happy Garnet." Pearl whispered into Garnet's ear. "She's already been through so much recently, and I don't think she can take anymore."

"You sure she's OK Dottie?" Steven asked Peridot regarding Pumpkin. "Nothing lasts forever, you know."

"Oh, she just needs some extra time in the Sun!" Peridot laughed. But despite her insistence, that wasn't how the story really went.

--

"Okay, a little to the left!" Peridot commanded Squaridot as the eye Gem Peridot levitated a lifeguard chair around while Bismuth, Ocean Jasper & Teal Zircon dug up the ground to build a swimming pool. "No, your other left!" she corrected herself. "Wait wait, your other OTHER left!"

"There's no such thing as an other other left!" Squaridot yelled and grumpily set the chair down next to where she was standing. "How's this?"

"Perfect." Peridot gave her fellow technician a thumbs up before turning around to see the Lapis twins walk towards the construction site. "Oh, I see our lifeguards wanna start early!"

"Why was it necessary for us to dress in these?" Laz wondered while modeling the red one-piece she was wearing. "I don't think red is my color."

"I don't know about you Laz, but I make this look good!" Zuli declared while flaunting her body in a matching outfit. "We look just like the hotties on Coast Patrol or Destiny from CPH season 3! By the way, where's Lapis? She's head lifeguard, so shouldn't she be out here with us?"

"She still has the suit, but she's not coming out because today is a special day." Peridot stated. "It's the anniversary of a certain something."

"Hey, I think I can see Steven's car!" Ocean Jasper cried out as she peeked out of the hole to find Steven disembarking from his Dondai Supremo and walking over with the pumpkin pie in hand. "And he's got a pie, maybe as thanks for our hard work."

"Naw, I don't think it's for us Ocean." Bismuth said just as Steven walked over to Peridot. "I think we should leave them alone for a bit and get back to work."

"Aw, but I wanted a pie!" Teal Zircon complained.

"I see you got the pie." Peridot said to Steven while gazing at the pie in his hands. "In case you're wondering, we worked on a new meep morp last night dedicated to her."

"Okay, why don't you show me?" Steven offered.

"I'd be happy to." Peridot smiled before turning back to everyone at the in-progress pool. "Keep up the good work everyone, I'll just be taking the rest off!"

"Yeah, take some time for yourself, Peri." Bismuth replied while Squaridot used her burgeoning ferrokinesis to lift the blacksmith out of the pool. "Just don't get too teary-eyed and fill up the pool early."

"Yeah, we're planning on filling the pool for our opening ceremony!" Teal called while struggling to get out.

"And I'm just gonna catch some rays." Laz declared as she sat down on a lawn chair, pulled some sunglasses over her eyes, and began sunbathing. However, her moment of peace was cut off by Zuli loudly blowing into her whistle and laughing.

"So, who's the pie really for Bis?" Ocean Jasper asked as she climbed out the pool before helping Teal and the two sat down next to Bismuth.

"You two got a moment?" Bismuth asked, and the Jasper and Zircon nodded in affirmation. "Well, the pie is actually for a friend of theirs."

--

Steven and Peridot kept walking away from the pool and eventually found themselves in front of the Little Homeworld house that Lapis & Peridot shared. It looked like a smaller version of the barn the two Gems once lived in, but instead of being decorated with a mishmash of items around the barnyard, it now looked like Peridot did most of the construction with bits of metal and advanced technology sprinkled onto a simple-looking two-story cabin.

"Hey Lapis, we're here." Steven called out to Lapis as he and Peridot entered the cabin to find Lapis napping on the couch with a manga on her lap and a red one-piece hanging on a clothes hanger nearby. "Lapis, wake up."

"Agh, don't go with her Pierre!" Lapis yelled as she woke up from her nap and rubbed her eyes to find Peridot & Steven before her. "Sorry you guys, I was trying on my lifeguard uniform, but then I got bored and decided to relax a little."

"You still remember what day it is?" Peridot asked while Steven presented his pumpkin pie.

"Yeah, I still do." Lapis declared sadly. "Want to see the meep morp we've been working on, Steven?"

"Sure." Steven replied before the two Gems took him upstairs to their shared bedroom & workshop, where a very large sculpture of Pumpkin stood, a big smile permanently etched onto the front beneath a pair of innocent eyes. "Almost like the real thing. Except bigger."

"Showing this to you makes me miss her even more." Peridot began to hold back tears. "I still remember how I coped with it too."

--

The groundbreaking ceremony of what would soon become Little Homeworld went quite swimmingly for the Crystal Gems, thanks to the support of their Beach City friends and the Diamonds. But amidst the rejoicing of a new beginning for Gems on Earth, there was some bad news that flew right under everyone's noses.

After Peridot marked the giant pit where the barn once was with Little Homeworld's flag, Pumpkin came strolling up to her green owner looking far wearier and more decayed than she did previously, a sight which worried them greatly. As soon as the ceremonies ended, Pumpkin was rushed back to the beach house.

"Please Steven, you gotta do something!" Peridot begged Steven while Pumpkin laid before the trio with a heavy sigh emitting from her mouth. "Pumpkin doesn't have much time left, surely you must have the solution like you always do!"

"I'm really sorry Peridot." Steven said regretfully. "As much as I would love to help you and Lapis out, Pumpkin wasn't long for this Earth anyways. Death is a perfectly natural part of life. It can be real sad and scary to watch someone you treasured so dearly go, but ultimately, their time will come all the same."

"So, she was going to die regardless?" Lapis said apprehensively while stroking the living gourd's rotting body. "I don't really see how this is possible since you did bring her to life with your powers, but I can deal with it."

"Well, I'm not!" Peridot objected tearfully. "It's not fair! I've already been through so much, why does the universe have to keep nailing the hammer into the coffin?!"

"Peridot, I know you're upset, but you gotta listen." Steven tried comforting his little green pal. "Death is completely natural, even if it's scary. I mean, my dad might die someday, and so might Connie. I'm not sure if I can die like a human though."

"Well, your race is different." Peridot declared. "None of you will ever know what it's like to live forever!" With that, she stormed out of the beach house to vent, leaving her two friends to worry for Peridot.

"I don't think I want to know where this is going." Lapis muttered.

"If it's anything like what happened to Peridot after you left Earth, I don't think she'll take it very well." Steven agreed.

--

Using a trashcan lid, Peridot flew far away from the general area of Beach City and into the countryside, where farmlands were very prosperous. Farmlands like the ones she and Lapis tended to together in the past, and the ones where Pumpkin was born. The very sight of all these fresh crops made her more miserable. What gave them the right to grow so healthy while Pumpkin looked so withered?

"Rackum frackum produce, I'll show you what for!" Peridot mumbled as she touched down in front of a pumpkin patch and swiftly got to work on destroying them. "You walked so Pumpkin could die!" she yelled as her green body became covered in orange pumpkin insides. "Why can't anything go my way for once?!"

"Hey, get offa my crops ya gremlin!" a farmer yelled at Peridot while stomping over to her with a pitchfork in hand. "You got any idea what it's like to work so hard on a great harvest, only for it to be ruined by a bunch of punks?!"

"No, but I'm sure you don't know what it's like to love someone only to lose them!" Peridot argued with the farmer, a retort that stunned him a little before he tried to look more sympathetic.

"Coping, eh?" the farmer said. "Look, you have every right to get mad, but that don't mean you can just stomp all over someone else's hard work! You gotta find better ways to vent, ya know!"

"Look, sir, I literally just ran away from home, I don't have time right now." Peridot coldly rejected the farmer's advice.

"Well, looks like you left me no choice." The farmer shook his head before reaching behind his back and pulling out a scary mask to frighten Peridot with. "BOOGEDY BOOGEDY BOOGEDY!"

"AAAAAHHHHHH!" Peridot screamed loudly before flying away from the farm on her lid.

--

As soon as Peridot returned to Beach City, she soared right towards Steven's house, where she found him making a grilled cheese sandwich, and began pounding on his window.

"Steven! Steven!" Peridot yelled from outside, getting the half-Gem's attention. "Let me in, I wanna talk!"

"You know you can just come in yourself." Steven suggested before opening the door for his green friend. "How have things been going?"

"I got an idea for you." Peridot stated. "How about in exchange for helping me with Pumpkin, I'll do something for you in return. Just name your price, I'll do anything!"

"Peridot, are you trying to bribe me into saving Pumpkin?" Steven asked. "Didn't I tell you earlier that death is a natural part of life?"

"But you managed to save Lars from death with your crying!" Peridot objected. "Why can't you do the same to Pumpkin?! Why does she have to die while so many other pumpkins have to live?!"

"Pumpkins?" Steven asked. "What other pumpkins?"

"I vented my frustrations by whaling on some farmer's pumpkin harvest." Peridot confessed innocently. "He didn't take too kindly to that."

"I think I know where this is going." Steven realized. "Five Stages of Grief, right? First was anger, now you're bargaining. Which means depression might not be too far behind." Just then, as if on cue, Steven's phone started ringing with a message from Lapis that he readily picked up. "Hello?"

"Steven, is Peridot there?" Lapis asked from the other end of the line. "Ever since she fled the house, I took Pumpkin back to our place, and now she wants to see us both before, you know."

"See what I mean?" Steven declared to Peridot, who was now on the verge of breaking down because now, she finally realized it was too late. "Do you want to see her?"

"Yes please." Peridot began to sob and hugged Steven tight. "Promise me that you won't ever leave too, Steven."

"I promise." Steven stated, hugging Peridot back.

--

Meanwhile, at the massive construction site that would soon become Little Homeworld, Lapis gently watched over the slowly dying Pumpkin, whose normally bright orange skin now had splotches of grayish-black, as she let out a weak yip. "Don't die yet, sweetie." Lapis assured Pumpkin. "Peridot will be here soon, I know it."

And right on cue, Peridot and Steven soared right towards Lapis on the trash can lid to see Pumpkin off one last time. Peridot raced as fast as she could towards the groundwork for her and Lapis's new home and tightly nuzzled her pet gourd, unaware that it wasn't in the mood for such a tight hug.

"Peridot, let her go! She's in pain!" Lapis yelled while prying the sentient pumpkin from Peridot's embrace, much to the green Gem's agony.

"No, please!" Peridot cried. "Just let me hold her!"

"I'm sorry Peri, but I don't think she can take much more!" Lapis argued while on the brink of crying just as much. "Pumpkin's already dying. She's so scared right now, so let's just-"

"Don't try to argue Lapis." Steven solemnly interrupted Lapis. "Peridot's already having a breakdown as is."

"I'm sorry about that." Lapis quickly apologized before she turned to Pumpkin. "Pumpkin, if you can still hear me, I want you to know that you and Peridot were the only things keeping me sane here, even when I ran off to the moon." She said to the dying fruit. "I can't thank you enough for brightening my day with your cute little smile, your barking, and all the days we spent playing together. Even if we find a replacement, none can ever replace you, little guy."

"You want a turn, Peri?" Steven said to Peridot.

"Fine, but I won't like it." Peridot sniffed loudly as she walked up to Pumpkin. "You were like an offspring to us, Pumpkin." She said quietly. "When I first saw your little carved face, those adorable stubby legs, it filled my heart with so much joy. Figuratively, of course, since we naturally don't have hearts. But every step we took together, every struggle, kept me grounded here on this crazy planet. Oh stars, now I won't know what to do now."

"Mah, mah," Pumpkin barked weakly with her last breath. "Mommy."

"I promise you," Peridot declared while her gem touched Pumpkin's forehead. "I'll never forget."

And with that, Pumpkin gently shut her eyes, allowing herself to pass on with her mothers and her creator by her side.

--

The funeral that followed was a private affair, with only the other Crystal Gems, Connie and Greg in attendance, and Pumpkin buried outside Peridot & Lapis's house. However, it was after the funeral when trouble began brewing. Just like when she had first begun living with the Gems, Peridot began hiding away in the bathroom for the next week to grieve the demise of Pumpkin and seemed resilient in refusing to come out, no matter how much they tried.

"C'mon P-Dot, open up!" Amethyst called while pounding on the door. "If you're planning on flushing yourself down the toilet again, let me tell you again, I tried that once and it didn't work."

"I think I know what to do." Greg proposed his idea and held up a boombox that began playing a song he knew she would recognize. "I look up to the sky, that's full of stars-"

"I'm trying to mourn here, leave me alone." Peridot despondently declared.

"I say we should respect her wishes." Garnet stated before she turned her gaze to Lapis. "Unless…."

"You think I should go in there?" Lapis asked.

"You are quite possibly Peridot's closest friend." Pearl agreed with Garnet.

"Closest friend?" Bismuth raised an eyebrow. "C'mon, we all know there may be something more than that!"

"Well, okay then." Lapis finally accepted with a shrug and slowly pushed the door open. "Wish me luck." She then said before entering the bathroom and closing it behind her. "You still in here?"

"So, they sent you in now." Peridot observed hoarsely. "I may have lost all hope, but I can still hear you know."

"They do say we're the closest." Lapis said before she sat down on the edge of the tub where Peridot had hidden herself away beneath a cocoon of Steven's bedsheets. "Come on now, get up and sit next to me."

"Okay, if it's you, I'll talk." Peridot succumbed to Lapis's offer and rose from her comfy shell to talk with her barn mate. "I'm sorry for worrying you all this past week, it's just that Pumpkin was basically our baby! Watching her die was like watching a child die!"

"Except the child wasn't human, it was a magical living pumpkin." Lapis remarked, which caused Peridot to glare at her. "No offense."

"But still, outside of our relationship, why did you volunteer?" Peridot wondered.

"Well, because I wanted to return the favor." Lapis answered. "Remember what happened after that boat trip I took with Steven and his dad?"

--

As soon as Lapis dropped Steven and Greg off at the docks following the boat trip gone wrong, she needed someone to lean on in her time of need. It didn't matter who, it could be any of the other Crystal Gems, or one of Steven's human friends. But right now, there was only one person, or rather Gem, that she could turn to.

Lapis could now see the barn in the distance, and as reluctant as she was to admit it, Peridot was the only one who could understand her regarding a certain Quartz. "Peridot, are you there?" she called for her green housemate. "I'm back!"

"Lapis, so glad you could make it!" Peridot exclaimed while racing out of the barn. "I discovered that I can move spoons with my mind, I made some decent progress on my Camp Pining Hearts essay; though I'm still stuck on the poutine theory, and-" However, she realized a bit too late what Lapis was feeling. "Is something the matter?"

"Steven and I found Jasper during the trip." Lapis said morosely. "She wanted to fuse with me again because she says I changed her. And to be honest, I think it was kind of my fault. Unfusing with Jasper drove her mad and I even said I missed taking all my frustrations out on her!"

"Lapis, are you serious?" Peridot gasped in alarm.

"Yes, I'm serious." Lapis declared as her eyes darkened and she turned away from Peridot. "Go ahead, run off and live with the Gems again so you don't have to be another one of my victims. If Jasper says I'm a monster, then I guess I really am one, especially after the way I treated you when we first moved in together."

"Okay Lapis, I don't want your garbage right now!" Peridot yelled, briefly breaking Lapis out of her funk with the almost exact words she described the tape recorder she broke. "I can see you're very stressed out. You want to scream so bad, to hit something, to let your anger out! But whatever you do, don't lose it on other people."

"Wh-what are you saying?" Lapis asked.

"I'm mostly just repeating stuff I read online," Peridot admitted. "I think what you need is a way to vent healthily, maybe on a perfectly defenseless object."

"Like what?" Lapis raised an eyebrow in suspicion.

"One second!" Peridot exclaimed while walking into the barn and coming back out with an alien plush wearing a top hat and bowtie that she gazed at with a solemn expression. "I'm so sorry my sweet." She said softly to the stuffed toy before presenting it to Lapis. "Go ahead, hit it as hard as you can. Or maybe something else violent, whatever."

"Okay." Lapis sighed as she began feeling around the toy for something to do before grabbing at the bowtie and ripping it off the alien's neck, causing some stuffing to spill out of the hole she created. "Whoa."

"So, how did that make you feel?" Peridot asked as the alien dropped from her grip.

"Good." Lapis muttered in awe of what she just did. "I feel so much lighter now, like a real adrenaline burst."

"See, as I told you." Peridot smiled happily. "You just needed healthier ways to relieve stress."

"You're right." Lapis agreed when she got an idea. "Now, how about I try something a little heavier?" She then glanced over to a nearby pickup truck and used the water from Peridot's makeshift pool to lift it into the air. "How about this?"

"Yeah, I think that could work." Peridot nervously replied before Lapis suddenly tossed the truck into the air. "NO WAIT, THAT'S A LITTLE TOO-" she screamed and covered herself to avoid getting hit, but the truck instead crashed into the wall over the barn entrance, creating a massive hole that the vehicle filled. "Hm, guess I was wrong."

"Well, if we're gonna be living here together, why don't we make ourselves at home?" Lapis laughed and put a hand on Peridot's shoulder.

"Yeah, I think this is a good start." Peridot agreed while wrapping her arm around the taller Gem's waist and the two began brainstorming ideas for remodeling the barn.

--

"Yeah, I really was there for you back then." Peridot realized with a grin. "And from then on out, we were so close."

"You bet." Lapis replied and cupped Peridot's face in her hands. "Let me be a shoulder for you to cry on this time. I love you Peridot."

"I love you too Lapis." Peridot responded happily before the two began to kiss, and their gems started glowing as they began to fuse into a tall, slender Gem with turquoise hair, dark cyan hair in the shape of a maple leaf, Peridot's glasses, Lapis's top with a bright yellow star on it, a skirt with a bronze ribbon around her waist and dark teal sandals with bronze accents.

The new, accidental fusion of Peridot and Lapis looked around the bathroom and gazed down at her four hands. Feeling around her body, she felts the gems of her components on her forehead and back before coming to a shocking realization and let out a loud, confused scream. "AAAAAHHHHHHHH!"

"Is something wrong?!" Steven exclaimed as he barged into the bathroom to discover the fusion before him and started screaming as well, but this time in joy. "AAAAAAHHHHHHH!"

"AAAAAHHHHHHHH!" the new fusion continued screaming and covered her face in alarm at Steven as the two continued shrieking at each other.

--

"But was that fusion really an accident or maybe something more?" Peridot asked while she, Steven, and Lapis walked outside to her and Lapis's garden in their backyard.

"Maybe a mix of both?" Lapis answered with a shrug. "I mean, we did kiss each other after saying "I love you" to each other, but the fusion part came out of nowhere."

"Still, we were all so happy to see you two fuse at last." Steven said. "Words could not describe how long I've been waiting for that moment."

"I couldn't shapeshift, so I just assumed I couldn't fuse as well." Peridot observed before they happened upon a makeshift tombstone that read 'In memory of Pumpkin. A good girl to the end.' "You know, all this talk reminds me of a song I've been writing for the past few days. It may seem a little short and I pulled from other sources, but it's the best I got."

"Well, what are you waiting for?" Lapis suggested eagerly. "Sing for us."

"Yeah, we never heard you do a solo before either." Steven agreed with the ocean Gem.

"Okay, if you insist." Peridot declared before she cued a nearby Robonoid tending to the garden to start playing jazzy music, and she started to sing. "My sweet little pumpkin o' mine, a living gourd with a smile so fine. You made us smile with your bark, your stem's like emerald, and filled with seeds of gold. You were our most beloved work of art."

Almost as if Pumpkin was coming back to listen to Peridot's eulogy, many similar living produce like additional pumpkins, some gourds, and squashes, began coming out to watch. "You saw fields of corn, sandy beaches too. In summers so warm, it was just us and you." Peridot continued singing. "And I think to myself, what a wonderful pet."

Soon, Lapis began to join in on the song as well. "Though your time was short, like all things are." She joined Peridot in singing with her own solo. "We'll always think of you, when we look at your star."

"Our sweet little pumpkin of ours," the pair finished the song and embraced each other. "You were a wonderful pet."

With that, the two Gems fused into Turquoise, this time on purpose while surrounded by living Cucurbita, and smiled.

"Thank you for coming today, Steven." Turquoise said to Steven. "It really means a lot to us."

"Nothing to it girls." Steven smiled while rubbing his finger on his upper lip.

In Memory of Thea "Muriel Bagge" White

June 16, 1940 – July 30, 2021

"What courage you have."

--

So ends the first installment of the Tearjerking Three. In comparison to what will come next, I'm pretty sure this will be tears of happiness at these two dorky barnmates basically becoming an item at last and even fusing too (also, I totally took Turquoise's design from @artifiziell, she makes some amazing stuff, go check her out). But next time, we move on from someone being dead for real to someone being dead to Steven. Can you guess which one? Oh who am I kidding, if you watch me on DeviantArt, I basically spoiled everything after this.

[nodelinquent]

an obnoxiously long liveblog where i react to the swedish dub of the steven universe movie (warning: i actually like dubs and wont constantly complain, sorry).

"come live with us in the palace, you can stay here FOREVER" jesus christ lmao

steven's voice finally fits lmao

wait it's sadie THRILLER in swedish????

some of these rhymes are impressive but hus and ljus? not great gang fdsjkhf

wow ok the lyrics for steven's part in here we are in the future is uuuh not great??? like they threw words in at random

FUCKING.... PäRLAN..... hate that still

they didnt translate homeworld..... im crying why is the dub LIKE THIS....

BUT KINDERGARDEN SHOULD BE TRANSLATED I SEE HOW IT IS LMAO

i do wanna show this movie to my nephew, he really liked watching the su clips i showed him back in the day.... i think it's the bright colors and singing honestly lmao

OK SHUT UP EVERYONE SPINEL IS COMING!!!!!!!!!

OH.... idk if i recognize this voice actress?? she sounds so cute

amethyst just said "pucko" and i feel blessed lmao

who IS this girl??? i like her but WHO IS SHE

lets hear her sing ahhhhhh

"ive listened plenty of times to steven's refrain, oh how fun it is to finally meet pink's gang" I LOVE THAT.....

the song is a lil meaner to steven specifically i kinda love it lmao

the actress does a good job kinda copying spinel's voice and laugh without overdoing it, i think? it's nice i like her!!

they missed the opportunity to almost have greg say "shit" and i will never forget, never forgive.

god the way they translated some of these lyrics makes it even MORE confusing to understand what's happening lmao

i recognize ruby and sapphire's voice actresses, veterans

theres actually a lot of talented veterans in swedish su, even if ppl complain all the time abt them lmao

like man steven's voice actor is finally allowed to emote now that he doesnt have to sound like a baby all the time

idk how i feel abt bismuth... i dont think ive heard her before so it might just be like, shock fhshjdshfds

bismuth's voice is very interesting??? she seems to have a lisp or smth? man i kinda like it?? too bad she has to sing THE WORST SONG IN THE MOVIE..........

"krullhåriga" is accurate yes but god they should have used "lockhåriga"....

"isn't it love" in swedish is very good, i have no complaints

i wonder how much of the cast is woc

one of my favorite songs is coming up ahhhhhhh

oh it's cuute.... the "no matter what"-end part could have been stronger but it's good!!

"what are you doing here now huh what?" like those old anime dubs...

they used "backa undan" but "håll dig undan" would have sounded more natural imo

"i'm back you nut" again, im blessed

half of the time i cant tell if the written lines are bad or if it's the actors dinking them up and no one bothering to fix it

YEAH IT'S SADIE THRILLER????? im crying that makes no sense lmao

man am i excited to hear steg

"disobedient" is also okay fjsdhfds

i wonder if these are on swedish spotify fdshkfsd (theyre not and never will be)

OOOOOOH I LOVE HIM!!!!!!!!!!!! good voice

"independent together" is VERY GOOOOD AHHHHH they're using a word thats more like "unbound/unfettered together" and thats very sexy lmao

OPAL??? her voice is omg??? not prepared. it's good tho lmao

they dont use happily ever after, instead they say "promising future" and idk how i feel abt that

we're getting to HERE IN THE GARDEN

theyre so hit and miss with the lyrics in swedish dub su so im very scared

HOMEWORLD im still not over that lmao WHY DID THEY NOT TRANSLATE IT?!?!?

here in OUR garden????

"och sen så log hon, till min förtjusning, ögonen blänkte, det var sån berusning" ("and then she smilled, to my delight, eyes shining, it was such an intoxication")  is actually SUCH a good translation ahhhhh

i quite like "gled iväg" for "drift away" too... it's the word we use for things like "slip out of my hands (gled mig ur händerna)". like she just WATCHED pink slip out of her hands.... ahhh

"she doesn't exist anymore, only the son is left, what am i waiting for now?" MAKES ME VERY SAD LMAO

"i feel so RAW" DANG....

overall "drift away" was also good, nice job ya dinguses

i wish there were subtitles bc it took me several listens to realize spinel was very quickly shouting "JUST POUR SALT IN MY WOUNDS WHY DONTCHA"

"Found" is interesting bc they make it sound like Spinel needs romantic love and not like, general love fdjskhfdsk also instead of found it's "needed" which is hm.... i mean.... a lil messed up fdskjf

i rly like connie's voice, idk if ive said that yet

spinel's voice actor cant quite be as unhinged as og spinel, but she's trying and she's good!! we stan!!!

"true kinda love" is also good, they say "cause i believe in love" which is cute... excited to hear steven's lil bit in it

wow... steven's bit was bad, very disappointing.

steven's voice actor is so good wtf??

why did they use "förgöra" (destroy) instead of kill??? the cowards at swedish CN can fight me

theres no good translation for "change" in swedish, which is very unfortunate for this bit of the movie kfdskdsfhds

steven's swedish voice actor obviously does not hold a candle to zach callison BUT it's extra bad when he sings lmao

ok i REALLY love the lyrics they did for "change" like good job gang i wanna learn this version and sing it all the time

"let us adore you reprise" is also good, now it makes sense why they used love like that in "found", so it'd match up with this

ok steven's voice actor could pull off the high notes for "happily ever after reprise" but he missed it so many other times bfdkshfhdskds DO RE-TAKES PLEASE SWEDISH CN I BEG???

overall this dub was good, i think?? at least they didnt censor any queers this time fdshjdsfjkfjds

[joealwyndaily]

Sometimes the best Christmas presents are the ones we don’t think we need; a new Christmas Carol, for instance. Indeed it may be indicative of a certain unappreciated vacancy around the Christmas tree that in discussing the BBC’s new version of the Dickens classic both its director and leading man refer back to The Muppet Christmas Carol made way back in 1992.

“I was sent the script,” admits Nick Murphy, best known for directing the Rebecca Hall ghost movie The Awakening, “and my first thought was, ‘For God’s sake! The Muppets! They nailed it. What’s the point?’ ”

Joe Alwyn, who plays Scrooge’s clerk Bob Cratchit in the BBC three-parter, has meanwhile posted a trailer on Instagram with the caption: “Hard to fill the shoes once worn by Kermit. But I tried.” The self-deprecation was quickly “hearted” by the singer Taylor Swift, who is the actor’s girlfriend and who will be watching the mini-series with Alwyn and his family in London in the final days before Christmas.

There is nothing wrong, of course, with The Muppet Christmas Carol. It is probably in most people’s top three adaptations of Dickens’s masterpiece (alongside, I would say, Alastair Sim’s 1951 version and Scrooged). Its endurance does suggest, however, that it may be time someone did something a bit more serious, a little darker and a touch more grown-up with a tale that excoriated Victorian neglect and associated Christmas with the relief of poverty for ever more.

And this is exactly what Nick Murphy has achieved with a bracingly fresh script by the Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight. Guy Pearce’s Ebenezer Scrooge is still a “squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner”, but since Pearce is only 52, there is rather less of the old. At the end of the novel, Dickens wrote that “ever afterwards” — that is after Scrooge’s Very Bad Night — “it was always said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well”. That is rather more of an achievement when, as in this version, you may have 40 Christmases, rather than a couple, left to you.

Equally remade is Cratchit, who in Alwyn’s incarnation is far from the bashfully gulping frog thanking his master for granting him Christmas Day off before scampering back to Miss Piggy’s fleshy arms. Although Alwyn grew a rough beard for the part, his is also the best-looking Bob Cratchit you have seen. As the actor and I talk at the Picturehouse Central cinema in London, I find him as mesmerising off screen as on.

“Bob is trapped by Scrooge,” Alwyn says. “He’s abused by him. He’s not treated fairly. He’s there only because he has to be. He’s treated like shit.”

I’d say there’s a definite feeling in their shared scenes that Bob might just snap and hit Ebenezer over the head with a poker. “That was the intention. He’s at breaking point. He’s pushed right to his limits and Scrooge, I think, relishes winding him up. All Bob can do is hold his ground and fight back as much as he can — but he isn’t such a sap in this version.”

Scrooge and Cratchit’s relationship so much resembles an unhappy marriage that the niggling, bitter exchanges invented by Knight, with very little reference to Dickens’s dialogue, resemble Steptoe and Son rewritten by Strindberg. The easy contrast would have been with the Cratchits’ poor but happy marriage, but this too comes under scrutiny. There is an acknowledgment of the challenges a disabled child can bring to a household, and it is somehow emphasised by Tiny Tim being played by Lenny Rush, an extraordinary young actor, aged ten, who has a rare form of dwarfism called spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenita, the same condition as Warwick Davis.

“It really mattered to me that nobody was photo-fit,” Murphy says from a studio where he is dubbing the last episode. “Bob Cratchit is always a winsome, put-upon nice guy and the Cratchits themselves represent this idea of an ideal, working-class, lovely family. So we looked into their relationship on the page and there seems a genuine tension between Bob and his wife. Things are hard. It isn’t easy to have no money and a disabled child, and they lean on each other and they’re not straight with each other and there is a genuine antagonism between them.”

Knight has written into the narrative a family secret that connects the Cratchits to Scrooge. The secret belongs to Mrs Cratchit, played by Vinette Robinson, whose part is greatly expanded; indeed, the novella does not even grant her a first name, although the Muppets, and other adaptors, opted for Emily.

“Inevitably the secret begins to surface and cracks appear in the family,” Alwyn says. “Something has to happen. I think what Steven has done is take the story and drill deeper. He hasn’t taken too much liberty. It’s not bending the truth too much from what Dickens would have wanted. Or I hope not.”

Murphy insists that worthwhile adaptations of classic texts should be “edgy” and have “a good bite to them”. “If you absolutely don’t want any variation from the book then I strongly suggest you sit in a corner at Christmas and read it again. But if you want to see it used as a prism through which we can see a broader and slightly different subject explored, then this one’s for you.”

Alwyn’s performance is part of the iconoclasm. “Joe’s instinct as an actor is always to push away from the obvious and into ambiguity,” Murphy says. “He’s very quietly spoken. He’s not brash at all. He’s a gentle, intelligent guy, but he just simply wasn’t interested in fitting a Dickensian cliché.”

“I’ll take that,” Alwyn says when I pass on the compliment, having not considered his technique in such terms. He is 28 and would probably accept that he is best known for two facts: the first is that he is Taylor Swift’s boyfriend; the second that, aged 25 and with no professional acting experience, he won the title role in an Ang Lee movie.

He is from north London, the middle of three sons. Their father is the television documentary-maker Richard Alwyn, renowned for making The Shrine about the public reaction to Princess Diana’s death.

“He was away a bit,” Alwyn says. “He made quite a lot of films in Africa when I was growing up. He was often in Uganda, Rwanda at one point, South Sudan. So he’d come back with stories and artefacts from all over the place. He made a great documentary in Liverpool during the World Cup about two kids on an estate growing up there.”

His mother, Elizabeth, is a psychotherapist. So, I say, although his family were comfortably off and he was sent to the fee-paying City of London School, he knew something of other people’s lives?

“All different kinds of people, all different kinds of stories,” he says. “Obviously, she couldn’t share them with me in the same way that Dad could, but both their jobs take an interest in other people and are about how to empathise, understand, and listen to stories and tell stories. I suppose it’s not a million miles away from an actor’s job; listening to other people, understanding them, trying to tell stories.”

I ask about the contemporary political resonances of A Christmas Carol. I cite the wealth of certain members of his profession and of Swift’s. Only the other day I have read that she has a private jet so she can visit Alwyn on a whim. He promises me that 99.9 per cent of what the press write about them is false, and this is an example.

I ask if he finds it embarrassing.

“Find what embarrassing?”

The disparity between the amount some people earn and the wages of workers in, say, Amazon fulfilment centres.

“I saw something in The Guardian the other day, I think, saying that the top six richest people in the UK accumulate the same amount of wealth as the poorest 13 million. I think that was the figure,” he says.

And politics today?

“It’s bigger than Scrooge, but it’s the same thing amplified; not being able to see beyond yourself, building walls, cutting yourself off from other countries. If there was ever a story to counter that, featuring someone who epitomises that and then who remembers who he is as a human being, it is A Christmas Carol.”

Unlike the young Dickens, Alwyn was not a boy to stand on a table and sing and dance. As a child he auditioned to play Liam Neeson’s son in the Richard Curtis film Love Actually, but didn’t get it. He harboured ambitions to act, but pursued them only later at the University of Bristol, where he took plays up to the Edinburgh Fringe. One night he acted before an audience of one: the writer’s mother. Undeterred, he went on to the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, joining the scramble at the end to find an agent. Weeks later, his new agent rang to say that Ang Lee was working on a new film, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, and wanted to see an audition tape.

“I got some mates to film me in a lunch break and then my dad filmed another scene, and we got a call that night saying, ‘He wants to meet you this weekend. He’s saying, we’re going to put you on a plane and take you out of school. Come for the weekend. Learn these scenes.’ ”

As Billy, a young US Marine fêted for killing an enemy assailant in Iraq, Alwyn was painfully believable; a virgin solider returning home to be exploited for an act that had devastated him. The film did not do well, mainly because it was shot at a hyper-reality frame rate that few cinemas had the technology to show, but Alwyn was on his way.

“Things only evolve by change and people taking risks,” he says. “And Ang Lee is someone who I admire for that. None of his films are the same. Maybe thematically they draw on the same things, but he’s always pushing the boundaries.”

The same can be said for A Christmas Carol and, even more, about Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite, in which Alwyn appeared alongside Emma Stone and Olivia Colman. It applies less so to his other recent films, Mary Queen of Scots, Boy Erased and now Harriet, a faithful biopic about the slave liberator Harriet Tubman in which he played a slave owner’s son. What he has managed to do consistently is work and learn from some seriously good actresses — Colman, Stone, Saoirse Ronan and Cynthia Erivo. “I know. I am targeting them,” he jokes.

I tell him my daughters have insisted I ask if he minds Swift writing songs about him (whole albums, actually, but check out London Boy if you are in search of a little cringe). “No, not at all. No. It’s flattering.”

Does it matter to him that the press — it’s a bit metatextual this, I admit, for I’m probably doing the same thing — make it obvious that they are as interested in his girlfriend as they are in him? “I just don’t pay attention to what I don’t want to pay attention to,” he explains tolerantly. “I turn everything else down on a dial. I don’t have any interest in tabloids. I know what I want to do, and that’s this, and that’s what I am doing.”

The boyf, described only the other day as “mysterious” in one of those tabloids, is no mystery at all. He knows what he wants for Christmas, and it is the career he is already forging.

A Christmas Carol begins on BBC One at 9pm on Sunday

[medea10]

Medea Rambles - Parents in the Pokemon Anime

If you watched Pokemon the way I have for the last 20 years, you start to notice things along the way and start to get a little curious.

Take the second episode of the original series for example. A simple line that might have come and gone. When Ash reaches Viridian City and his mother mentions that it took Ash’s father four days to reach that town. You probably won’t give it a second thought especially if you just started the series.

Fast-forward another year or so and you start to question about Ash’s father a little more. You only see Delia. And at times you’ll see Delia being accompanied by Professor Oak. Go a little further and you watch the third Pokemon movie. Sure this guy Professor Hale has a wife and child, but what kind of past does he share with Delia? More years pass by and you start keeping this question in the back of your mind. Who is Ash’s father? And along the way, you’ve compiled several theories on that question. And for added drama, you might have added Giovanni from Team Rocket to this paternity suit. And then you meet some of Ash’s other companions and notice that some of them are also without another parent...or just flat out DON’T have any parents (to our knowledge).

Don’t get me wrong, I love how Pokemon has given us different families to look at throughout the years. From Ash’s small family with Delia, to May’s family, to Clemont and Bonnie’s father, and despite it being dysfunctional as fuck, Brock’s family, we see different things.

But when I see single parents like Delia, Johanna, Grace, Meyer, and Abe (and if you’re not keeping up that’s Ash, Dawn, Serena, Clemont, and Mallow’s parents), I often wonder what happened to their partner. I don’t find anything wrong with this. Single parents rule! I was raised by a single parent and have the highest respect for them. I just get curious is all. I’m sure everyone else does too. I know I spent just about 20 years speculating who was behind Ash’s creation. And I know we will never know Ash’s father’s true identity. Though thanks to a certain light novel, we can officially squash any chances of it being Professor Oak, Professor Hale, or Giovanni. I know it seems wasteful to bring up the parents of this show. I mean, they send their child out at the ripe-old age of 10 to catch wild monsters in a ball and get caught up in butt-loads of trouble. Meanwhile, they stay at home or do their routine day-to-day jobs like proper adults. But we have to remember this one thing.

THEY BROUGHT THESE CHARACTERS INTO THIS WORLD! Delia didn’t spend God-knows-how-long to squeeze Ash out of her lady clown-car to not get a mention or appearance every now and then. So yes, mention these parents! In most cases, they’re great, offer great comedic relief, a home-cooked meal every now and then, and there to wipe away the tears. Well...those are the good ones. Brock and James had some interesting families. And I use the term ‘interesting’ loosely. I will mention Jessie’s train-wreck of a life later. And then there are those characters whose parents are never mentioned. While Misty has three older sisters, her parents are never mentioned or seen. Iris’s parents are never mentioned and all we know about her is that she was probably taken care of by the village elder (not even a grandparent). Cilan has his brothers Cress and Chili, and once again, no mention of parents. And then there’s Tracey...Okay, here she goes again!

*sighs dreamily* TRACEY! No mention of parents. Not a damn thing. We’re not even sure if Tangelo Island (the island where Ash and Misty first met him on) is where he’s originally from. Yes, I’m guilty of writing fanfics of Pokemon and decided to add backstories to characters like Tracey, yes especially Tracey because he’s worth it and deserves it. I’ve written fics where his mother dies when he was younger, fics where she’s just sickly, and other ones where she’s perfectly fine and she’s actually there. And while I was at it, I had Misty’s parents be on constant business trips, Ash’s real father died in a car accident, and Dawn’s father did bad things (that’s the cleaned-up spoiler-free version of it) That’s the fun of writing fanfics. It’s fun to imagine your favorite characters with things the show would never think of doing or bother throwing a bone to. It’s been 13 years Pokemon. Are you gonna show my anime husbando or not? Tick-tock. Needless to say, the Pokemon anime has been rather lax about the identity of these missing parents. And people without a trusty search engine or are not fluent in Japanese are shit-outta-luck. Because some of these characters have some interesting, sad, and down-right fucked up family back-stories.

On the anime’s surface, there are only a few standard families shown. May and Max have their parents Norman and Caroline. And despite having one almost fall-out episode in mid-AG season, they’re quite the happy family. Sophocles’s parents are quite the cute-lovey type and because they look too much like each other, I’m starting to have other theories. Like are Sophocles’s parents brother and sister...like Milhouse’s parents? (don’t be silly Medea, they’re not). And the same happiness can be said about Kiawe and Lana’s families.

And then you have the single-parent household as seen with Dawn, Serena, Clemont, Bonnie, and Mallow. I’ll get to Mallow later.

Brock... *sighs* Yeah, fun times with this one. As we all remember from episode 5 (and in the dub), his mother died and his father ran off, leaving Brock alone to take care of the 10 brothers and sisters. In actuality, Lola left the kids in Brock’s care, she didn’t die. Imagine my shock in 2004 when I learned that Pokemon Chronicles was a thing and that the bitch was alive and well this entire time. Thanks a lot 4Kids. Even when Lola and Flint are around, they often leave and do erratic actions. And usually it’s up to the eldest siblings (Brock and Forrest) to take charge. Trust me, their doofy behaviors have lead to the Pewter Gym to almost be shutdown several times. So, they’re not the best of parents.

Lillie and Gladion gets a little complicated. In the games, we all saw that Lusamine wasn’t a very caring mother and would put her work ahead of her children. She even downright verbally disowned them at one point. Harsh. The anime decided to be nicer to Lusamine. Yes, she’s dedicated to her work, but also cares for her children Lillie and Gladion (though Lillie had her own reservations about her mother early on). Lusamine even sacrificed herself to the Ultra Beast in order to save Lillie. That’s a mother for you! Where does it get complicated? The father, Mohn. In the games he disappeared while researching the Ultra Beasts. And in the anime, Gladion and Lillie have assumed that he has passed away. But thanks to revelations in SM108, there’s hope for both as Mohn could still be alive. I just fear that his memories will be gone like in the games.

James of Team Rocket had one of the best backstories in the entire anime with the one episode Holy Matrimony back in season one. I’m actually surprised they kept a lot of things in tact in the English dub. Yes, both of his parents are alive and they are horrible people. Faking their deaths to try and drag James back home and force him to marry a dominatrix. Yeah, Pokemon has some fucked-up backstories. Time for it to get more fuckier! Again, if you’re not fluent in Japanese or haven’t lived in Japan during the height of the Pokemon fandom, you probably didn’t know these existed. RADIO DRAMAS! Yes, Pokemon had them! And with that, Jessie’s backstory time!

In the dub, we were pretty sure that Jessie was either very poor or in an orphanage and very poor. In actuality, Jessie’s mother was a high-ranking member of Team Rocket and left her daughter at a young age in order to search for Mew. And because Miyamoto was never heard from again, Jessie was sent into foster care. Wonder why the anime never wanted to cover that little detail about Jessie! Kinda shines a light on how sad it was that she used to eat snow for dinner.

And then between 1997-1999, Takeshi Shudo (creator of the Pokemon anime) came out with the light novel, Pocket Monsters The Animation. And that’s where we learn a little more about several original characters. Ash’s mother Delia was indeed a young mother. She met a man, got married, and had Ash when she was around 18-19 years. And in a flash, Ash’s father left on a journey and hasn’t been back since.

Brock’s mother Lola married and divorced SEVERAL men after Flint left the family. Most of Brock’s siblings are just half-siblings, if not all of them. Do you know why Brock keeps hitting on older women? He wants to bring one home to be a mother to the young siblings. DAMN. And as for Misty, her parents left Misty and her sisters. Yeah, you’re gym leaders now. Laters! Okay, I can see why the Pokemon anime decided to be a little laxer when it comes to some of these stories. Abandonment is not a happy story to write for an age-appropriate anime like Pokemon. And maybe because of the rate of women having babies at younger ages, they probably didn’t want to show that Delia was one of them. And then Brock’s story...Yikes, man! Yeah, stories like Delia, Lola, Misty’s parents, and even Jessie’s mother might be a little much for little children to absorb. Or so people thought in the 90s when Pokemon first debuted. Nowadays, there’s so much in western media and even anime that has advanced from just 20 years ago. Look at how parents are portrayed in western animation like The Loud House and Steven Universe. Who knows, Gen8 of Pokemon could possibly give us a same-sex family (one can only hope).

In the latest episode of Pokemon (Sun & Moon episode 108), we get an unanswered question of a character’s parent. All we knew about Mallow was that she has a father and a brother. This being the 20th year watching Pokemon and have gotten so used to seeing characters in single family homes, I decided not to give it a second thought and write fics later down the line. That was until a couple of weeks ago when we learn about an upcoming episode involving a pokemon and communicating with the dead. And we get a screenshot of Mallow crying. Holy shit. Is Pokemon really going to do this? Or is this going to be a bait and switch?

Guess what, they gave us a story about Mallow’s mother. They even went the extra mile to show us that she was actually sick in the hospital and mention how Mallow’s anger-induced words were her final words to her mother. In this episode, we see Mallow reunited with her deceased mother even for just a moment. I’m glad we got an episode like this. There are children who have lost a parent at a young age and sometimes don’t know how to deal with the feelings that come up pre, during, or post-death. And many of us wish we could say one last unresolved feeling to that loved one again. Mallow definitely wanted to see her mother again and she got to say what she wanted to and even hug her before she disappeared.

DAMN POKEMON. Mother/daughter moments are like my absolute weakness. And while I didn’t cry, I still felt the feels deep in my soul. That also means Misty and Togetic’s goodbye is still my #1 for saddest Pokemon moments. However THIS is now #2.

I honestly think Pokemon is evolving when it comes to stories about the character’s parents. And other heavy subjects including death. Writers are seeing that children are more mature than they originally thought. In the last two years, Pokemon has talked about death 4 times (three of those were pokemon deaths). God only knows what the English dub will do to this episode. We’re getting more heart-wrenching stories from this series. I’m glad I kept with watching Pokemon well into my adult years. Cut through a lot of the crap and sometimes, you get little gems like this. I can’t wait to see if Pokemon has it in them to continue giving us stories like Sun & Moon episode 108 (and others) or even on the same level as the radio dramas and Pocket Monsters light novel. Maybe not the Brock story. Okay, I think that’s all I wanted to talk about here.