Steven Universe S5 Episode 23 REACTION

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  1. The reason Ruby and Sapphire wearing a dress and suit respectively is because when they were censored Ruby was given a mustache to make her seem like a man and that was if the scenes of both of them being in love weren’t cut out entirely. Putting Ruby in a dress makes that kind of censorship impossible or at least harder.

  2. Since they weren’t able to make it seem like Ruby was the groom in the wedding, CN had a problem because it got the show banned in several countries so they canceled it.

  3. I’m aware you guys don’t really read longer comments but I just wanted to expand on some points, because you are corrected, SU is one of the most toxic and controversial communities – almost entirely in its later seasons.
    Theres a lot, including in the team and in the fanbase, but as cliffnotes as it can get:
    – obviously, a lot of homophobia because of the blatant queer representation. a lot of this was because of the show, but also a lot of queer kids gravitated to it and were kinda cringey on the internet, which drew the ire of a lot of internet edgelords.
    – people were very attached to certain characters, and so any person who either didn’t like that character, or did like them but deviated from the popular interpretation of them was promptly harrassed – as I’m sure you’re all aware. POC fans got the brunt of this since they had criticisms of how the show would handle certain topics and for some old concept art that contained racial charicatures.
    – Honestly SU had a lot of issues with racial coding, especially with the main three gems, but having a nuanced opinion on them got you a lot of flack. Having nuanced opinions about Steven/Rose/Pink was worse

    TLDR: Steven Universe is a good but flawed show, but genuine criticism of it that wasn’t “this is bad because gay” got people harrassed off the internet. Very messy fanbase

  4. i saw apparently songs by rebecca sugar and patrick mchale (creator of over the garden wall) will be featured in fionna and cake! awesome to hear they will be involved at any capacity

  5. (Apologies for the length of this. I’m autistic and queer and this is the result lol)
    So a really interesting piece of inspiration and subtext in regards to Ruby, Sapphire, and Garnet is that Steven Universe creator Rebecca Sugar has stated that the character in the series closest to an author avatar for themself is Ruby, and the character closest to an avatar for their long-time partner and current husband, Ian Jones-Quartey (who worked on both SU and Adventure Time with Rebecca and also created his own show, OK K.O.! Let’s Be Heroes) is Sapphire. As an extension of that, Garnet is a representation of their own relationship. Rebecca is nonbinary, genderqueer, and bisexual, which has some very apparent influences in Steven Universe via the intentional messing with and deconstructing of traditional media gender stereotypes, the number of queer characters (subtextual and explicitly), and of course the fact that a primary component of the show is an entire race of agender, shapeshifting beings that are nonetheless perceived as and operate in the world as women. Rebecca wasn’t publicly out as queer or nonbinary at the time SU began airing, and the show was heavily promoted as the first show on the network to be created solely by a woman; that was understandably conflicting for them, because while that’s a very good thing, it’s also not really an accurate claim.
    With the Ruby and Sapphire storyline in SU, Rebecca wanted to make sure they got all of the stories that heterosexual couples regularly got in media. “The Answer” was a fairy tale origin, “Hit the Diamond” was a romcom, “Keystone Motel” was a wacky break up/make up, etc. A core component of their design and intent was to be a classic cartoon couple in the same way as, say, Mickey and Minnie, who get everything those couples get but just so happen to be a queer couple. They were, in fact and looking back, a very, very major force in the transition of mainstream cartoons featuring queercoded but never explicit characters and romances to the current era where characters are actually able to clearly declare themselves gay or bi or to have onscreen kisses and romances and weddings.
    In a lot of non-english dubs in even less progressive countries, they presented Ruby as a male character so as to remove the queer component of their romance. Ruby being the one to wear the wedding dress, and the overall extremely plot crucial nature of the episode, made that pretty hard to uphold, but that’s actually not the sole reason for this change. When Rebecca married Ian in 2019, they made the decision to wear a wedding dress, and this was reflected in Ruby wearing one as well. And just as wearing a dress didn’t make them any less nonbinary, the dress doesn’t make Ruby a cis woman or make their wedding or their relationship any less queer in all regards.
    And I think that’s neat.

  6. Last time Lapis and Steven saw each other they talked about Lapis dropping the barn on the beach when she returned, which she technically did in this episode.

  7. Hey I don’t know if you guys saw the news or what you’ve been watching on – but the Steven Universe Movie is set to leave Max at the end of this month! If you plan on watching the movie after the finale, it’s a good thing to keep in mind 🙂

  8. I heard that the network wanted Ruby to be masculine enough to mistake for a man and Sapphire a woman at least for the wedding to air and at the last minute Rebecca defied that 🙂 They can’t erase us <3

  9. Such a great episode, I love Lapis’ return, the way when Peridot runs up to her she’s just nonchalant, ‘yep, just dropped a barn on a galactic dictator, no big deal’ but the song, the wedding, the battle, they fit so much into this! I admit the fandom’s reputation precedes it, I stayed away because of it, and I remember the story with the artist; she did survive so luckily it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, still really unacceptable stuff and yeah, if you can act that way, did you even watch the show?
    But on the subject of shows with wild fanbases, you guys ever consider reacting to RWBY? Lawd the shipping wars . . . heaven forbid you like all the characters and not really care who ends up with who lol.

  10. If you guys like Steven’s voice actor, Zach Callison, you should really listen to his EP Picture Perfect Hollywood Heartbreak! It’s really good! (Though it can be difficult to not think about Steven while he’s singing about cocaine lol)

  11. On the drama thing- I wish I would say the suicide thing was fake or exaggerated, but a couple years back I had gone through old videos I saved on a YouTube Playlist. One was a silly animation video I liked years prior and I was horrified at how vile the comment section was for seemingly no reason. Didn’t know why at first. Turns out, that was the girl :,)

    The SU community has never been one I’ve been majorly a part of, but I do REALLY enjoy seeing Youtuber’s reacting to it! I like seeing how much people love it, how they laugh at the GOOD the humor is, commenting on how sweet the softer moments are, the action, the suspense, ect ect. Ect.

    This show has a special place in my heart, and it sparks joy to see others finding joy in it too

  12. I know this is buried in the comments, but please listen to the credits music from here on. The music has been building to someone and we are here now.

  13. So there are 4 more 11 min episodes ( 2 normal episodes with 2 11 min episodes in each). And then the 44 minute finale which is made up of episodes 29-32. Then the movie and future! You’re honestly so close to finishing the main series.

  14. Loved the call out at the end here because it’s 100% true. The people claiming to be fans of this show and then getting prissy and shitty with everyone that disagrees with them and bullies them are exactly the kinds of people Steven hated. They are the Kevins.

  15. I know you awesome guys don’t usually read long posts/comments, but I just felt like I had to share my experience with this fandom and its toxicity as an original viewer of the show when it first aired, and why this renewed appreciation for this wonderful show has made me feel so happy and validated regarding my love for this show.

    As somebody who watched the show since it first aired, and who has always loved Pearl, I’m totally on board with you guys with your final statements. When the show was airing, there was so much positivity with this show, but by season 4, there was just SO MUCH negativity overtaking the entire mood of fandom. I left the sub-Reddit and stopped looking for SU fan communities because it felt like these viewers were not watching the same show I was or were not watching this show with the same good-faith intentions, but rather were watching it with an eye to destroy. The sad part was that I think a lot of people felt like me, and decided to “leave” the fandom, and just enjoy the show on our own with reactors who also enjoyed the show at the time. The vast majority of the show’s fans were positive-minded and were not about the more toxic (and mentally unstable) viewers who were trying to turn the fandom into their own LiveJournal or exclusory clique. But yet, their power was so strong.

    I sort of get why there was so much toxicity. I think it came from two places. Regarding the first place, as somebody who is kind of older (I was in my mid-twenties when the show first premiered), our generation, and maybe even older, were craving a show like this. We were so taken aback that it came from a Cartoon Network show that was seemingly innocuous and cute, but even in the first 13 or so episodes that aired, we all kept watching because there were hints of themes, progressive values, and showcasing real life dynamics that are never shared in mainstream media. Then it just blew up. When this show exploded, it really hit people like a ton of bricks and there was so much joy and catharsis that this show provided. But that also meant it attracted a lot of people who still haven’t gotten over so many of their very legitimate issues, but instead of learning and growing, they stewed in their corner of resentment and wanted to spread their destruction to this fandom. And it did spread just enough for it to be noticeable.

    Regarding the second place, this show attracted a lot of really angry people who disliked the messages of the show and the values espoused by the show. Like, it REALLY attracted those types of people. They took advantage of the more toxic mood that was growing and latched on to the toxicity…. used those toxic members as examples and weaponized them to dismiss this show, but, ironically, they were also kind of unhinged themselves and dedicated a lot of time to criticizing every little thing about this show, even things the Crewniverse clearly did not care about, and called the show a “failure” for failing to achieve things that Sugar and her creatives never intended or wanted to achieve. There was even one YouTuber who made like a three-hour video (not kidding!) just bashing this show (and most of her criticisms were utterly ridiculous and showed she was not a creative herself). So many latched on to that video and held her up as some sort of deity of animation critique and creation. However, almost ten years later, that YouTuber has not made anything anybody has seen, and she is now of ill-repute to where nobody takes her seriously and people realized she was a person whose opinions weren’t really worth listening to due to her need to just destroy things she personally didn’t like for reasons that were just… hers but not based in reality. She was just one of a few very loud viewers who just wanted to destroy the show just to feed whatever their own personal issues made them crave.

    Rebecca Sugar is clearly a very sensitive and empathetic person, who also has very strong values and beliefs. So, although she was ecstatic that the show and the messages she wanted to push through (with her like-minded creatives who made up the Crewniverse, many of whom were able to push through storylines and characters they wanted to pursue), her whole experience creating the show also really pained her and drained her. I think that explains why she hasn’t been very public in years and is just quietly living her life and working on projects without a long-term commitment.

    But, things have turned around, SU is kind of enjoying a Renaissance and fellas like you four have helped bring awareness and new joy to the fandom. Thank you guys!

    1. Thank you, the shows fanbase is labeled as toxic but did they see the youtubers dogging on the show while it was airing? Literal death threats towards the crew and fans yet nobody called it out when the other side did it. I love su making a positive comeback 3 years after ending

  16. I have loved Steven Universe since its creation and I can confidently say that the fandom that cares so much about it are VERY toxic. They go against everything the show’s message asks for which is hilarious.

  17. By their own rules, the Diamonds aren’t allowed to fuse. Even if they are same Gem type, if Gems are different colors they are considered too different. And the Diamonds are already very different in general (being allowed to openly be very distinct individuals to the point of having simple nicknames like Yellow, Blue and Pink is a privilege they have as rulers.)

    And Lapis is uncomfortable with fusion because of trauma while Peridot personally just doesn’t like the idea of fusing herself.

  18. You were right, the wedding and kiss were what cancelled the show– it actually gets more shitty than that, though.
    The whole reason Ruby is the one in the dress and Sapphire is the one in the suit is because a few of the international dubs had been changing Ruby into a guy, because she was more androgynous. When the crew realized that, they decided that for the wedding episode, their gender presentations would be switched so that Ruby would look more feminine and Sapphire would look a little more masculine, so that any homophobic dubs would have to decide whether they wanted to gender Ruby correctly, or make it seem like Ruby was a gender nonconforming guy– a lose-lose situation for any of the homophobic dubbers. The wedding episode being so plot heavy and so important to the story was also a deliberate choice: this isn’t an episode that channels could just decide not to air without missing massive chunks of the story and getting inevitable complaints from viewers. I’m not sure what some of the dubs from more conservative places/companies actually ended up doing, admittedly, but I do remember the discussions around the censorship and how deliberate all the choices around the wedding were.

    1. True, but I also do like story-wise that Sapphire’s trying something else than a dress and Ruby’s trying a dress, since as Gems they were created to only look certain way forever, so I like the idea of them trying other styles just for fun.

      1. Oh I do too, I think that’s a very cute idea and I love the outfits, it’s just a little sad that that’s where the cute outfit changes originated from.

  19. Don’t worry, Fionna and Cake’s showrunner is Adam Muto, who was a driving creative force in Adventure Time, Fionna and Cake will be fine.

  20. People have already said it, but yes, the wedding is the thing that cartoon network tried to pull the plug on. Rebecca fought tooth and NAIL to keep garnets wedding in. She sacrificed an extra season, she added in the musical number and the diamond fight sequence to make it epic, because the network said a wedding would be boring. She pulled out all the stops and I’m so glad she did because this wedding is the first major queer wedding in a kid’s cartoon. It was groundbreaking and Steven Universe has since paved the way for other cartoons to stop queer coding and openly have the queer rep that has always been struggling to come to the forefront in these stories. Rebecca is an icon. ?♥️

    1. Yeah, the network tried to make some really pathetic excuses at first for why the wedding can’t happen like “Steven wouldn’t be into weddings.”

      Like have you seen the guy? There was literally an entire episode about Steven fanboying over some overly long cheesy wedding from a fantasy book series (while Connie hated it.)

    1. It’s also because ruby was in a dress and sapphire was in a suite. (For some place they dubbed ruby as male. So her in a dress made this scene hard to handle)

    2. Yea the hate that people get from this community is insane. At least there are still some good parts of the community but the bad parts are really disappointing to see and deal with.

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