#(<- overexaggerating but also it pained me to not put servant of evil on there. it hurt so bad)

[vocaloid-song-showdown]

hello again!

the songs on the bracket have been finalized and i'm working on the bracket right now!

originally my plan was to put songs against each other by both the time they came out and their popularity to give lesser known songs a chance against some of the super notable classics, but i've been seeing a post go around about matchups that are final round worthy happening round one. while i don't think it's anything worthy of any major (or minor) backlash, i do have to agree that having more challenging matchups so early on can lead to a bit of an anticlimactic ending

the way the bracket is set up now, there's no way to avoid several major matchups so early on (ex :: rolling girl vs. matryoshka or world is mine vs. triple baka)

as much as i want to give songs that might not be as well known a chance (especially considering some only got in w one nomination via a random number generator), i also don't want some of what i at least consider to be the most well known songs to be disqualified round one. those songs are popular and well loved for a reason and i genuinely think they should also have a chance to make it to the end. round two at the very very least

i'll make a bracket for each possibility so it can go up when the pool closes, so please vote for whichever one you think would be the most fun !

also unrelated to this poll, i realize kinda forgot to make a post responding to the bracket song list one ?? since it ended showed up as a tie but wasn't really one after factoring in a missclick vote, the last songs were chosen via a random number generator ^^

there were some nominated but ultimately unpicked songs that i felt were too notable and influential to go unmentioned though??? so there's also a little hand picked honorable mentions bracket (it's very small !! it only has 8 songs total on it) :D

i will admit that some songs on it are more biased than others, but w the exception of one they all have at least 5 million views (counting unofficial reprints). i did try and make sure they're all at least somewhat notable (or were when they came out) in one way or another. so it's a little compromise in a way ^^

[sanctferum]

Steven Universe – Now We’re Only Falling Apart reactions

Hey, it’s another Stevenbomb, and therefore another pseudo-liveblog of an episode!

Last time on Steven Universe: Rose was, in fact, a shape-shifted Pink Diamond, making Steven himself Pink Diamond. Pearl knew all along, of course. Steven and Amethyst are shocked, and Garnet…is about to suffer a meltdown over the whole thing, for understandable reasons.

Onto the current episode! Amethyst is kinda freaking the hell out.

When PD reformed, she reformed in the shape of Rose, with her gem in its fake position to start with – there’s no way anyone, even a Diamond, could’ve kept up a mere shapeshift for 6000 years, after all. And thanks to Pearl’s tireless efforts, she was never poofed, so the truth didn’t come out that way.

Apparently, now that the Crystal Gems know the truth, PD’s command to Pearl is no longer binding, or at least isn’t with people and gems who are in the know. I think.

Yeah, having the name “Pink” generally leads to your stuff having specific color schemes. Speaking of cotton candy, isn’t that what everyone compares Garnet’s first fusion to?

And speaking of Garnet…yeah. Speaking of Ruby and Sapphire, more like it.

Sapphire is hurt and feels utterly betrayed. And it’s not just that Rose lied. It’s that Sapphire has future vision. Her JOB as a gem is to know things. And even if the truth was so deeply hidden, Sapphire could have found out. The reason she didn’t, is that due to her trust in Rose, she never bothered to look for any deeper hidden truths in the first place.

She put her trust in Rose. Fully, and, as we saw in The Answer, without question. And it’s thanks to that, that she was able to do the same with Ruby. THAT is Garnet.

That WAS Garnet.

Sapphire flees via warp pad. Pearl and Steven head after her, while Amethyst sits shellshocked on the couch and Ruby bawls her eyes out.

First stop, Rose’s fountain. Ooh, lucky guess, that’s exactly where Sapphire is. And she’s not afraid to use her ice powers to stop Pearl and Steven from getting close to her.

Sapphire, in despair, can’t help seeing the whole thing as not just Rose’s fault, but her intended results. If Rose was a Diamond, then, from Sapphire’s point of view, of course all the pain and suffering and corruption and shattering was something she wanted to happen. It’s a simplistic view, that Diamond = evil full stop. And it’s a view that in the end, would seem to absolve the Diamonds of their crimes – if they’re inherently evil, are they truly responsible for the suffering they bring? But Sapphire’s not exactly in the mood to think clearly, and I know all too well that when you’re in a bad place, you start to assume the worst of everything, and overexaggerate all the bad while downplaying the good.

And of course, if Sapphire’s vaunted powers couldn’t uncover Rose’s deception…for now, she’s lost all faith in being able to use those powers…

Pearl starts to explain Rose/Pink’s backstory…and her own. At the time the two of them first met, Pink still didn’t have her own colony. A couple thousand years before Pink was gifted Earth…she was gifted a present from her older sisters (I’m assuming Pearl was from White Diamond’s court in particular). A Pearl. A status symbol, to try and make Pink a bit happier than the angsty rebellious teenager she was.

By the time she was given Earth, Pink had matured somewhat from how she was in Jungle Moon, albeit a long way from becoming a true Diamond, or even the rebel Quartz she’s eventually masquerade as. And Pearl…was, like Yellow Pearl and Blue Pearl have been seen as, a mere yes-man and servant, a far cry from the “terrifying renegade Pearl” Sapphire would eventually hear rumors of.

Interesting! At this point in Earth’s history, the prime kindergarten was being worked on, as seen on the holo-globe. And the shape of the continent it’s on…hmmm. I’d thought Florida’s absence from the SU version of Earth was caused by some sort of gem event, perhaps something during the war. But not just Florida, but much of the surrounding area, is just…not there. I don’t know what the Earth looked like 10000-7000 years ago, or however long this takes place, so I dunno if this image matches up with our world’s version, but…South America still contains much of what would eventually become Africa, what will become Greenland is a lot smaller than what Greenland is today, etc etc.

Anyways, PD is clearly pretty bored. However, the kindergarten is starting to bear fruit – quartz soldiers, though none have actually been fully created yet. But soon, they will emerge. And PD wants to watch! Luckily, she’s on the throne in the moon base, and the viewing orb that Lapis will use many thousands of years in the future is in perfect condition, and only a flight of stairs away.

Hmmm. PD seems awfully excited about creating life. But, there’s no way she wouldn’t know about how that works, right? That creating gems uses up energy? That the energy taken will eventually leave nothing behind for organic life? She must be well aware of that by now, she just hasn’t had any reason to care about lifeforms other than gems, due to the way she was raised.

First quartz out of the prime kindergarten is an Amethyst! A regular sized one, of course.

PD welcomes the new amethyst to Earth, but is reminded that she isn’t actually there via the amethyst not being able to hear her, and walking right through her to two other amethysts that have either beaten this one to the “first gem born out of the kindergarten” achievement or maybe they were part of the crew that set up the kindergarten in the first place?

PD, naïve as she is, wants to be part of the gang. She wants to be friends with the amethysts, and seems unaware that in her current position, that simply isn’t possible. I wonder if a bad experience at trying to befriend those who can’t see her as anything but their ruler will be what makes her invent Rose?

Oh, nevermind, she didn’t come up with Rose at all. Pearl did. Pearl, trying to figure out how to let PD mingle with the other gems without Blue and Yellow ever finding out, had a spur-of-the-moment idea – a shapeshift-aided disguise, one that would let PD pass as a quartz. This is the moment that, unbeknownst to the two of them, changes everything.

Pearl looks up as she finishes her explanation, only to find nothing. And lowering her eyes, she sees…

There it is, the very first time Rose Quartz ever was a thing, all in front of Pearl’s eyes. Though, I suspect at this point only the general idea and appearance were a thing – after all, there were only amethysts in the kindergarten. Could it be that PD created Rose Quartz gems in her alter ego’s image, instead of the other way around? As a way of explaining her strange-looking gem, which is very obviously faceted differently than an amethyst?

Huh, even though “Rose”, if she’s even called that yet, was created as a concept moments ago, PD’s shapeshift still has star-shaped pupils when excited.

Hmmmm. I wonder how obvious it is that Rose is PD at this point? She certainly has a pearl with her. That’s not something a simple worker gem would have…

Rose immediately gets knocked over by a hurrying amethyst, and has to stop Pearl from taking any punitive action.

“I am…fitting right in!” Uh-huh. I…think that’s a thing that might go better if you don’t loudly talk about how much you fit right in? And also don’t have your pearl with you.

pfffffff

“Hey, fellow amethyst guards” oh god I know EXACTLY the meme for this situation and it is “how do you do fellow kids”

“That is the first and nicest thing anyone has ever said to me” That really doesn’t mean much you know? Well, I guess you don’t, being a freshly made gem, but still…

“But…8XM hasn’t emerged yet” wait

8XM? As in…

…is this facet 5?

No, that…doesn’t make sense, does it? There’s no fucking way this is OUR Amethyst, is it? I’m certain her designation was Facet 5 Cut 8XM though.

gfdi crewniverse

“What if…we took some time to explore some of Earth’s…other features?” And so it begins. Rose’s infatuation with organic life begins here, doesn’t it.

Oh, we’re back in the present, huh

And back to flashback time!

In the guise of a quartz, PD tours the Earth. Plants…animals…even humans. Life is everywhere!

I wonder…some of these humans must have been the ancestors of the Zoomans. Hell, the Zoo itself makes so much more sense with Pink Diamond being Rose’s true identity. As does Pearl’s knowledge of stuff like it’s existence, and location, and etc.

As her day of fun comes to an end, PD’s expression becomes gloomy. It was easy to say “whatever life is here must be sacrificed for the production of gems” when she was sitting in her throne on the moon. But now she’s seen it for herself. She has a deeper understanding of that life…and of what all her plans will do to it.

There’s no such thing as a perpetual motion machine, or an infinite source of energy, or creating something from nothing. In order to create gems, energy must be used. And there’s only so much energy than can be used before nothing is left.

Pearl apologizes for taking PD to see what she’s seen, but it’s not an apology PD can accept. Now that she understands what’s really going on, she knows that seeing what she saw, coming to the awful revelations she came to…it was important.

Sapphire still doesn’t understand why PD couldn’t just stop Earth’s colonization herself. But…she tried. She may have been a Diamond, but when among the other Diamonds, she was no one. No one but a petulant brat of a child.

…And as for the zoo, it wasn’t even PD who kidnapped the humans and sent them off to live their lives in a cage. PD asked to preserve the life on Earth, and that’s how Blue “fulfilled” her request. Yellow didn’t even go so far as to try and compromise, she just scolded Pink and told her to, essentially, get back to work. For all the power of a Diamond, in the end PD was powerless. At least, as Pink Diamond.

But were a regular gem to rebel, one who couldn’t simply be scolded or mollified, one whose resistance would upset the status order much more than a Diamond arguing with another Diamond, one with all the support of an ideal and, unbeknownst to the other Diamonds or to her own followers, all the resources of a Diamond…her sisters wouldn’t be able to brush that off. They would have to respond, whether they liked it or not.

But the ideal that Rose Quartz rallied all those troops around didn’t exist till later on. Originally, it was just “Rose” and Pearl, fighting on their own, not for gem freedom or anything, but simply as an excuse for Pink to “abandon” her own colony. And then something happened that changed everything.

Instead of letting Pink abandon Earth to its own devices, Yellow and Blue decided to help her hunt down and shatter Rose and Pearl. And in pursuit of this goal, Blue Diamond came to Earth with her retinue. And that retinue included a specific Sapphire and her three Ruby guards. And just as Sapphire predicted, Rose and Pearl took the opportunity to attack. And in the heat of the moment, in a desperate attempt to save the Sapphire she was tasked with guarding, Ruby accidentally fused with Sapphire into Garnet.

Oh hey, two Topazes among the amethyst guards! Dunno if they’re OUR Topaz’s, but they could be. Law of character conservation and all.

And in the aftermath…Rose couldn’t help gushing over fusion. Suddenly she had so many questions! Suddenly, entirely new experiences had opened up!

And Pearl, bless her soul, immediately attempted to fuse with Rose.

And after the failure of that fusion, Pearl freaks out. What was she thinking? Fusing not only with another gem, but a Diamond?! She’s convinced that she’s defective. Not just the whole fusing thing but…she has an imagination. Even when Pink doesn’t ask her to think about stuff, she thinks about stuff. She has fantasies, daydreams about being together with Rose – Rose, a normal Rose Quartz, with no status or high rank, just the two of them, being together and happy. She thinks the fact that she thinks that way means there’s something wrong with her.

Rose completely disagrees.

“Ridiculous, right, haha, tell me to stop–“

“Please, don’t ever stop!”

And in that moment, Rainbow Quartz was born…and immediately falls apart as they react in shock. And then Rose remembers Ruby and Sapphire, and immediately resolves to rescue their fusion from Blue.

And a few moments later, guess who comes stumbling along nearby? Someone who didn’t need to be rescued from Blue Diamond, due to having managed to flee in time. Garnet.

Garnet was the first gem Rose wanted to fight for. In a sense, it was Garnet, not Rose or Pearl, who started the Crystal Gems. And Garnet decided to follow Rose, when in actuality, Rose was following Garnet…

Huh, the credits are rolling before the episode even ends. Hey, Steven’s VA also voices Pumpkin. Huh.

Anyways, it was Pearl who introduced Pink to Earth. And Pink fell in love with Earth, and with Pearl.

Now that Sapphire’s finally calmed down, she remembers she left Ruby alone at the house and rushes back. But…the house is empty. No Ruby. No Amethyst. No sign of Peridot or Pumpkin, even. The only thing that seems to be there is a piece of paper with Sapphire’s name on it. Some sort of letter, I think?

That’s all for now, folks! We’ll read Ruby’s (?) letter next time I guess!