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toyota12 · 4 months

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My Criticisms of Change Your Mind

These are the problems I had with this episode overall, though I will still attempt to add possible solutions whenever I can.

The Crystal Gems

One of the first things that annoyed me with the episode is the amount of involvement the Crystal Gems had in it. Because outside of each of them fusing with Steven (which I believe is more for fan service, if anything) and all of them fusing to form Obsidian, none of them seem to make any meaningful contributions to the final confrontation with White Diamond. Almost immediately after they enter White's ship with Steven, they're taken out of commission by White until the end of episode.

Also, this is problem I've noticed with the Crystal Gems, especially in the later seasons, they immediately get curbstomped by whatever gem threat they're facing, leaving Steven to be the one to have to deal with them, mostly without help. It gets to the point that even Spinel (a gem with no fighting experience whatsoever) can easily take all three of them out in the movie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6fJp-hoH-s I mostly agree with this YouTube video that Steven is the only character who actually communicates and the other characters don't, though I instead believe there should have been ways to work around the first-person perspective, even if it involved characters making decisions off screen. One moment that sticks out to me after this is how the show treated Bismuth's bubbling in her titual episode and eventual release in Made of Honor. In Both episodes Bismuth's fate is left to Steven to decide and the Crystal Gems just accept it without questioning it or offering any input on the situation. Getting back to this episode, I believe it would've been better if the Crystal Gems were written out of it, at least until after White Diamond had been defeated, and have the Steven and co. enter White's ship another, either through being flown or leviatated to the top, by either Lapis or Peridot respectively. Since their goal is to simply talk to White Diamond and not to fight her, this would have been an effective way to enter the ship. Another option would have been to have them contribute more and showing White how gems changing outside their designated roles doesn't have to be a bad thing.

Also rest assured, that at this point, this isn't the only show's finale where I would make the criticism that characters should have been written out of episode until the end or simply contributed more to the story.

2. White Diamond's characterization and motives

One of the few times where I can actually agree with The Roundtable is the criticism of the way White is portrayed from her first appearance in Legs from Here to Homeworld to this episode. In the former episode, while still being slightly condescending, she has a more motherly and welcoming tone in her voice. Also, it seems as though she was going to portrayed as being oblivious to the harm she's causing others as she mostly welcomes Steven as Pink Diamond, back to Homeworld and sends him to her room, which seemed to give off this mindset of focusing on managing the empire and not processing anything that happened in the time Pink was gone. However, in Change Your Mind, she is even more condescending towards Steven (though she still refers to him as Pink) than the former episode, talking down to him by saying, "look what happened last time," and overall appearing more arrogant.

Also the revelation that White knew Pink was Rose Quartz makes her contribution to the corruption beam make no sense because why would she help blast the planet or even allowed something that like that all with Blue and Yellow if she knew? White claims to be perfect, she knows Pink isn't dead, and the End of an Era timeline shows that didn't take the rebellion seriously, but if that's the case why didn't she tell Blue and Yellow Pink was still out there, or was Rose. Why did she instead go through with the attack alongside the former two diamonds, even though it would ruin what Yellow describes as "perfectly adequate gems." Also wouldn't it have already poked holes to White in the idea the she's a perfect gem who puts logic before emotion (more on this later). If White actually thought Pink was alive and was coming back eventually, why would choose to hide in her ship, furthermore, why does she continue to do so even after she thinks Pink is back? One more thing to note is if she thought Steven was just Pink using a kid as a vessel, why didn't she think to remove the gem from him when she first saw him instead of doing so when she sees him again? Overall, I believe most of White's character in this episode seems to contradict what was setup about her in Legs. An idea to resolve this would be to build into this characterization in more subtle methods, as in having Blue and Yellow show more harsher methods of controlling Steven as Pink, which would actually be done in their attempt to keep "Pink" safe from White until she herself decides to take charge, which Legs also appeared to set up with them.

I believe an idea to solve most of White's decision process would be to make it that White actually knew she wasn't perfect and was trying to present the idea to everyone that she was, similar to how Blue and Yellow know they're not perfect, but still try to maintain the idea that they are. Also, I would have it that White did actually buy into the idea that Pink was shattered, but never wanted to accept that Pink was actually dead. Doing so would likely help most of her decisions make more sense as she's prioritizing the image of a perfect empire over actually helping others, which would play into themes of toxic perfectionism (skip to this timestamp for more insight on what I mean: 19:07) seen in the show. She would blast the planet alongside Yellow and Blue to maintain the image that they won't let the Crystal Gems' actions go unpunished and hide in her ship because she refuses to abandon the ideal she wants to show as she believes that would be a selfish decision to make. It may be reasonable to assume that White was just in denial about being perfect, but in the story, it's still left ambiguous about if she really was in denial or if she really was a lot more informed than the rest of the characters since she also knew what "acting like a child" and a mom meant when Blue and Yellow weren't familiar with Earth customs.

3. Part 4 of the episode (or at least, the beginning of it)

Before starting, I don't have any problems in the revelation that Steven is himself and not Pink, as that makes sense. One of the issues that I do have with this scene is that it is noted in End of an Era that the reason White is as controlling as she is towards Pink is because she knew she couldn't use her powers on Pink due to her shield. Also it's revealed in Future that Pink always had a destructive scream. If both of these are true then why is White taken aback by how powerful Gem Steven is than her, and why would still try to use her powers on him if she already knows it isn't going to work? It also makes her defeat come across as too as either easily done or contradictory as part of it has to do with how she isn't able to make Steven into the person that she wants, which she again, should've known she couldn't do so anyway. More on this point, how was Pink Diamond, and by extension Steven, somehow have able to have an entire arsenal of powers at their disposal while the other three Diamonds only seem to have one or two unique abilities, and how are they somehow stronger than the others as well despite being the smallest? One method of resolving this could be to have it be that Pink Diamond really was the weakest out of the Diamonds. That way when she gives birth to Steven and he discovers how to handle his powers, training with them makes him gain more control over them. That way when Gem Steven faces White, him being stronger than her would be due to how he's trained with them, it would also make White's surprise and outrage more sensible opposed to trying something she should already know is going to fail.

#steven universe #change your mind #steven universe spoilers

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