ok "" crits"" listen up

unbubble her you cowards

[cartoonnetwork]

Big congratulations to the @crewniverse for the Choice Animated TV Show nomination at the Teen Choice awards!

[crewniverse]

dude

[cartoonnetwork]

Big congratulations to the @stevencrewniverse for the Choice Animated TV Show nomination at the Teen Choice awards!

[crewniverse]

oh

[unbubbled-and-doing-just-fine]

they fixed it :(

[shacklefunk-deactivated20220623]

im gonna make my own lapis with bigger, worse hair than canon lapis, just to prove that she can always look worse, and things can only go downhill from here

[shacklefunk-deactivated20220623]

her fav thing to do is use water vapors to suffocate humans by filling their lungs w fluid slowly

[crewniverse]

So what do you guys think is in Lions Mane Chest™

[critical-topaz]

A drawing of roses fursona

[crewniverse]

Surely lion is Roses fursona?

[critical-topaz]

fuck

[crewniverse]

Life and death and love and birth

and peace and vore on the planet earth

[sodomymcscurvylegs]

I haven’t watched Steven Universe in months, but all I know is that every time I log on to Tumblr, someone else shattered Pink Diamond.

[gireferig]

[hiranyaksha-deactivated20220613]

headcanon that connie’s actual first name is kanchana and “connie” is a nickname for western school’s sake

[hiranyaksha-deactivated20220613]

@ everyone getting mad at me for this post: thanks for being a shit about someone trying to feel better about their own ethnic name. also this is what you call a h e a d c a n o n !!! Wow! Didn’t know that headcanons have to be 100% agreeable and canon !!!!

also literally none of yall getting upset seem to be south asian so i’d rather you stay out of the conversation thx! 

[jellyfax]

???zoomans????

“Ages ago, Rebecca pitched The Zoo to Lamar and I as this absolute utopian, hippie society full of beautiful and healthy people with no concept of pain or sadness. So we went to town drawing as many different kinds of hot people as possible!” - Katie Mitroff 

“a good good friend of mine told me about a quote from…uh…someone…about how utopias usually have something/someone missing, or that you should look for what’s not there in these settings. with that in mind i wanted to make the zoomans (zoo humans) as varied and diverse as possible.” - Lamar Abrams  

For a series that has creators who are so concerned with inclusion and diversity, it’s really confounding to see stuff like “the Zoo” crammed into the narrative. You would expect the crew to be more educated about the history of colonization, especially since the main antagonists of the series are colonizers. It can’t be refuted that colonization plays a huge role in the story. Steven Universe lifts a lot of stuff from real life, but hippie communes should not have been used as the inspirational foundation for Pink Diamond’s “human zoo.” Crewniverse should have researched how colonization efforts contributed to the creation of actual human zoos long before they even began brainstorming. Hell, even a vague knowledge of Antebellum era stereotypes would have sufficed. Then the crew would be like: “No, let’s not have mostly black and brown captive humans act like docile, happy Uncle Toms, because if we did that’d be pretty racist!” 

If the crew is truly as invested in the promotion of diversity as they claim to be, then they would have known about human zoos. Had they done their research, they would have known not to represent the “zoomans” as unburdened, overly innocent, clueless, and totally dependent on their captors, because such a portrayal would fall in line with racist stereotypes propagated by white colonizers. Had they done their research, they would have known not to have characters say “human zoo.” Had they done their research, they would have known that making the “zoomans” mostly “hot” black and brown people would be a terrible idea, because racial fetishitization is dehumanizing and the inclusion of predominantly black/brown people in a “human zoo” would have unfortunate implications. Had they done their research and had they really cared about being inclusive, “the Zoo” would not be a thing that exists. 

“The Zoo” just makes it painfully clear that Crewniverse is full of really ignorant people who are not aware of their ineptitude at meeting their own ideals. 

[vidoriparadnight]

Weren’t like half the “zoomans” white though? Like I see what you’re saying, but the zoo wasn’t just full of hot people of color, there were some pretty pasty people in there too, discluding Greg and Steven. The most attractive people of all races were picked and chosen for the zoo to make the most visually appealing for the gems visiting. The gems treated all races of human beings equally: like garbage

[jellyfax]

As you can clearly see, the storyboarders working on the episode made a point to include a lot of brown and black people. The presence of white looking people aside, putting brown and black people in this situation and having them act like stereotypes was an awful idea. Brown and black people being depicted as happy in a utopian human zoo has nasty implications and the addition of white people in the zoo does nothing to diminish those negative connotations.

Also, remember to take into account the fact that the gems are the equivalent of white colonizers and the captive humans are synonymous with colonized people. Again, colonization plays a big role in the story and the crew takes cues from real life to get that across (e.g. colonizing lands for resources, brutally uprooting the native population of those lands, expressing prejudice toward native populations, the Gem Homeworld salute, etc.)

“The most attractive people of all races were picked and chosen for the zoo to make the most visually appealing for the gems visiting.”

ALSO please don’t use in-universe logic to try to justify any of this nonsense.”The most attractive people” were “chosen for the zoo” because Mitroff and Abrams wanted some ~inclusive~ eye candy to fit their half-baked hippie utopia theme. 

[vidoriparadnight]

So would it have made you happier if everyone was white? The human zoo was meant to be something that was really messed up, a take on the overly organized utopia trope. Personally the problem I had was that I thought that everyone would have been mixed raced instead of having very distinct races in the zoo due to such a small gene pool. But I think it was definitely something that was meant to be messed up and I really don’t think there was a racist agenda against it. And let me ask again, would it have been better if everyone was white?

[jellyfax]

My point is the crew handled “the Zoo” very poorly. In their enthusiasm to make a diverse society, they did not consider the unfortunate implications of that decision.  

“So would it have made you happier if everyone was white?”

I don’t care about the hypothetical right now. I care about how they executed their narrative badly. Sorry, but I’m not letting you derail this. Anyway, aside from a few moments of wrongness, the mood of the episode is much too lighthearted. On top of that, the storyboarders don’t seem too concerned with how “messed up” the zoo is. For the most part, they seem pretty convinced “the Zoo” is a cute and fun little utopia. That aside, that’s not why “the Zoo” is so terrible. It’s terrible because the captive humans are written in way that enforces white colonist racist propaganda. Crewniverse did nothing to challenge or refute those stereotypes, they just copy and pasted them in their story, because they can’t write very well and they’re very ignorant. 

[vidoriparadnight]

But it’s not enforcing white colonist propoganda.

The human zoo is something that all the main characters agree is something that is WRONG. Pearl is outright torn at the fact that humans were ripped from their families and forced to live in a tiny enclosure out in the middle of space.

Never once is the concept of colonization and slavery their prerogative. Never once does anyone in the main cast agree with this behavior towards humans of any race. The Diamonds are villains and supposed to do heinous acts out of either contempt or literally just not knowing any better.

But outside of the universe where the show takes place, I have to ask how you would have made it better, I want to know.

People get upset because ideas are poorly handled. That being said, how should it have been handled better? Maybe we can avoid something like this in the future if we can think of a better solution

[jellyfax]

I really don’t think you understand how bigotry can manifest in mass media, but whatever. These characters enforce white colonist propaganda, because they are written to be carefree, simple, happy and dependent on their captors in order to survive. They have no freewill, they’re being bred like animals, and they’re portrayed as being completely fine with their plight. 

These are all traits that white colonizers assigned to the people they colonized. Crewniverse didn’t disrupt these stereotypes. Examples of disruptions that would challenge such stereotypes are as follows: the humans rebel against their captors, the humans ask to go back to Earth with Steven, Greg, and the Crystal Gems, our heroes help the humans escape, or the humans express the smallest amount of displeasure with their current situation. More examples here.  By thoughtlessly repeating the propaganda of white colonizers, the crew has gone against their pro-inclusion, progressive stance on social issues, especially issues pertaining to race. The condemnation of the “human zoo” by characters in Steven Universe has nothing to do with the stereotypical way in which the captive humans were written. The freewill of the humans did not need to be sacrificed just so the Diamonds could be portrayed as *eviler*. It wasn’t worth it.

[the-rumbless]

[siobhanblank-deactivated2019011]

Okay it really pissed me off how they made Steven so uncomfortable watching Bismuth fight, to foreshadow the end of the ep?

He’s always loved watching gems fight/fighting with them when the stakes aren’t too high, and nothing here is even “crossing the line” like the breaking point was.

[fixitstevenjunior]

EXACTLYYY!!!

[salty-sapphire]

Also the fact that he’s super wary of Bismuth shattering a boulder

[the-cheshire-cat-grin]

Actually when you put it that way……it’s kinda funny how he was so excited to see sugilite (giant aggressive sugilite who took immense joy in destroying things and visibly made pearl nervous) destroy the tower, yet watching bismuth spar with the gems (who, aside from amethyst, knew and trusted bismuth completely and regarded her with smiles and laughter) made him uncomfortable??

[incubusmindgame-deactivated2020]

i finally figured out how to put into words how i feel about this. the vibe steven gives off during this is very pretentious. especially afterwards with the whole “look at how many UNVIOLENT and cool activities i do”. even if it was unintentional, its like steven is saying “look at how much better i am as a person compared to bismuth cuz of how nicey nice and relaxed i am”. steven has seen the crystal gems do many “”violent”” things before so it makes no sense to me why he would suddenly be uncomfortable with it.

[critical-army]

I need help

I’ve got a hernia near my privates. It’s important I have it fixed, but it isn’t urgent I have it fixed right now, which is code: “I’m a poor student who must decide between getting a degree in this uncertain economy or getting a needed surgery before my life’s at total risk”

Do you mind if I post my PayPal? PayPal.me/jimolina

[anarcho-smarmyism]

i cant believe that we’re supposed to see blue diamond, the colonizer and slave owner, more sympathetically than bismuth the revolutionary because Blue cried onscreen lmao

[anarcho-smarmyism]

to put this in perspective, imagine if han solo was portrayed by the narrative as ~just as bad~ as vader because when given the opportunity, han shot to kill.

it’s literally that bad. vader commits genocide. the gems are canonically colonizers. it being a kid’s show doesn’t release it from the horrific implications of teaching children it’s categorically wrong to kill someone who, given the opportunity, wouldn’t hesitate to kill you.

[salty-sapphire]

“But how can Stephan Uwuniverse be racist??? half the crew are people of colour uwu”

*proceeds to list 900 voice actors (who have no involvement on the reation of the actual scripts) and 1 writer*

[bicth-and-in-that-order]

Me: “lmao Peridot is so fuckin tiny"

Su stan: “HA ! So you do hate Steven Universe! #sucritwordsmeannothingtome : )”

Su stan:

[siobhanblank-deactivated2019011]

also what’s with stans using memes for their bitter jabs in ways that completely undermine what’s supposed to make the meme funny?

in the second one they blanked out the text and wrote a completely different sentence. just make a text post.

[siobhanblank-deactivated2019011]

[bucketofchum]

The real question is how the fUck do sardonyx's top set of eyes work

Um, so my friend @syntaxeme has this horrible hypothesis that because Sardonyx’s glasses seem opaque… that is, you can’t see her face or hair line through her glasses, but you can see her eyes… and her top eyes float off her face (and it is apparent through this screencap that so do her bottom eyes… 

My friend has this terrible hypothesis that her eyes are not actually attached to her face and body but rather only exist on the plane of her glasses. 

Do you…. do you follow…? So like. Her glasses contain her eyes.

It’s a horrible hypothesis and I can’t unthink it.

[thewatcherinthewoods]

I was actually thinking that the second set were kinda like projections, like on a TV screen, but this idea is a little more horrifying

[bitteruniverse]

I used to have a theory that lapis is just. lying her ass off. she hates earth, she hates the crystal gems, she hates peridot and the barn and meep morps. She’s manipulating everyone, planning *something*, and now that everyone really trusts her she can do whatever Steven and peridot already blindly trust her regardless of what she does, greg and Connie(?) forgave her, and even tho she’s had about 0 interactions with everyone else I’m pretty sure they’re all cool.

Idk I just thought it’d be a cool direction to take her in, that she’s fully aware of how simplistic and bland and simple she’s acting, and that’s just a diversion. Even her appearance is intentional, I mean she’s just a cute skinny little blue girl in a dress!!! What harm could she do? I never really put enough thought into this for why she’s doing it, maybe waiting for the moment to turn and strike them all down, and it’s got a lot of holes, but it’s doable. She’s shown what she’s capable of with malachite.

But I don’t think the crew is….how do i say…. well, I just think not making lapis into a cold manipulative lying dick was a missed opportunity. Instead, she’s just simplistic and bland and simple, no deep secrets, no hidden evilness. Or who knows.

[thewatcherinthewoods]

That would honestly be SO COOL if it were the case!!

[barneddiamonds]

“What if people were critical of {under cartoon here} like they are of Steven Universe x3”

Have you ever been on YouTube? They are people who do criticizing shows as a living.