Need to get something off my mind.
I've recently been struck with a bit of nostalgia for Steven Universe, which led me to a bit of online diving into posts and blogs from the heyday of the show. Oh boy.
Back during 2014-2016, before I even had any interest in shipping, when I was busy drawing my Gemsona and playing the ''Steven Universe RP ''Roblox game, the community was busy indulging itself in unprecedented levels of toxicity. This was during a time when artists would be bullied and sent death threats for drawing a character wrong (we all know what I'm talking about) and a time when cross-site wars were happening (4chan-Tumblr wars). Bullying, trolling, drama, you name it, it all used to be so much worse.
And don't even get me started on the shipping community at that time. Which what this post will focus on;
Long ago in a distant time, before dinosaurs roamed the Earth, before the continents resembled what they are today and before opposable thumbs, there existed a ship called ''Pewey.''
Pewey was one of the earliest controversial and likely the most undeservingly hated ship in the show's history. People are allowed to hate ships, any ships, for any reason. That does not make it okay to stigmatize the very real people who like and post those ships. I'm appalled by the treatment people who shipped Pewey received and I'm glad that sort of behavior died down as the show matured.
This got me thinking about the simple yet genius approach the Crewniverse have towards shipping. As everyone knows, shipping is an integral part of any fandom and people put ungodly amounts of effort into producing material relating to their favorite fictional couples, canon or not. Due to this, the creators and creative teams of fictional media have a huge burden to carry. You do not wanna piss off and cause division within your own fanbase. The way the Crewniverse approach this is that they have a policy of ''ship everything and ship as much as possible!''
Some of you may know exactly what I'm talking about but I'll go further into it anyway because I'm in the mood to write today for some reason;
The scene above is the Crewniverse's animated response to shipping. It's the in-universe equivalent to what Rebecca Sugar and Ian JQ have been saying for years.
The best way to achieve peace and prevent shipping wars, is to give every ship fuel and regard every ship (except p3d0 ones of course) as valid and a net-positive for the community and its creative output.
Look deeper at the dialogue and the relationships between characters and you will notice how vague and complicated pretty much every relationship in the show is. This is by design. Every relationship is purposely suspended in this ''purgatory'' between friendship, platonicity and romantic potential. Barring couple dynamics necessary for the plot like Garnet, Connverse, Rose and Greg, Rose and Pearl etc, every relationship between characters that could be considered potentially ''shippable'' is just vague enough that it neither canonizes nor outright rejects shipping validity.
A recent example of this is in Bismuth Casual. Bismuth is shown having a crush on Pearl, much like Dewey did back in the day. Yet Bismuth herself states that, because Pearl is happy with whatever she has going on now, and because Bismuth wants Pearl to be happy, she won't (yet) approach Pearl with any romantic intent. This gives the ship between them (Bispearl) enough fuel to satisfy shippers, give a character (Bismuth) some sort of closure as a sendoff yet does not establish them as a canon couple, leaving other Pearl shippers satisfied and not feel left in the dust. Due to this, people can put their own spins on what happens next, if anything.
I really hope, that if by some miracle, or when the planets align and Steven Universe as an animated IP makes a comeback, in whatever capacity or form, that the Crewniverse continue on with this philosophy towards shipping. At least for the sake of our collective sanity.
If you've reached the end, thank you for reading through this and please, leave comments and opinions. We all miss this show so the least we can do is have discussions like these to keep the fans inside of us satisfied.
''Sir, this is a Wendy's.''
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