#and the latter with Westly himself

[uraharashouten]

Shouten Out Loud Podcast

Episode 1: Ricardo Montalbán Part 2  [ continued from Part 1 ]

Yoruichi: Are you sure these are the right time coordinates?

Tessai: I am highly confident.

Yoruichi: Well, it sure seems like “we” aren’t here.

Past Kisuke: Oh, hey, you two are back early!

Tessai: Yes. Early. We are back early.

Yoruichi: Something came up.

Tessai: Now, where were we?

Yoruichi: Ricardo Montalbán.

Tessai: Yes. Speaking of him, please allow me to introduce Soul Society’s own venerable, world-renowned, and incredibly handsome Mexican actor. You may have seen him in such movies as Once Upon A Time In Mexico, The 13th Warrior, and Assassins! Just don’t ask him to take his shirt off—it's too sexy! Please welcome... Westly Hartford!

Yoruichi: How did you find working with Sylvester Stallone?

Westly: A-ah.. Thank you... uh... I don't remember working with Sylvester Stallone...! Haha... I’m... American…

Tessai: American? Hmm... please allow me to check my notes... [ papers shuffle ]

Tessai: Hm. Well, unfortunately, my information appears to have been incorrect. It seems you are better known as a... prognosticator of events.

Tessai: As a self-proclaimed Oracle, did you find Karakura just as you expected it?

Westly: Yes, and more! It’s perfect.

Yoruichi: [ coughs ]

Tessai: And would you say the same of the inhabitants of the Urahara Shōten?

Westly: Of course. You’re all amazing. Jinta-kun can be a little rough at times, but he’s cool.

Tessai: I think you will find us all in general agreement on that point. Is there anyone or anything that you have encountered since arriving that has defied your expectations?

Westly: Well... not really. Everyone is pretty much how I expected them to be. Strong, smart... fun. Urahara-san can be scary at times, but I think it’s because his thought process can be very unpredictable.

Yoruichi: That’s certainly one way of putting it.

Tessai: … I suppose it depends on who you are.

Yoruichi: See, I’m not the variable one around here.

Tessai: I understand your own arrival here was unpredictable enough to fluster our Tenchō. As I recall, he took considerable interest in your unique bracelet. Would you mind describing it for our listeners, and sharing its significance for you?

Westly: Oh... um, sure. It’s a replica of Ishida Uryū’s bracelet. The one his grandfather had. I connect to Uryū... so, I wear it for him. So I don’t feel so alone. It was a gift, and I’ve treasured it since.

Tessai: I see. And has Ishida-san come to appreciate that fact?

Westly: I don’t think so... when I met him, he seemed almost angry. I get that reaction a lot... so, I don’t mind it.

Tessai: Perhaps he will, in time, considering the significant role he and his father will be playing in your near future.

Past Kisuke: [ background audio ] What was that?

Yoruichi: I think that’s quite the aspirational notion.

Westly: True. But if he hates me, I’m okay with that…

Yoruichi: However... You didn’t really answer the earlier question about coming here as an American. What would you say was the biggest change you had to deal with?

Yoruichi: Was it the squat toilets?

Westly: Yeah, kinda. I don’t have very good balance and due to injuries to my back in the past, it's hard to squat down to use them!

Yoruichi: They do require a certain range of motion in the ankles. Don’t worry, even the Japanese hate them. They only persist because of economics.

Tessai: I believe Tenchō retained them as long as he did simply for the aesthetic. It is fortunate that our facilities had been upgraded by the time you arrived.

Yoruichi: I wonder who was responsible for that.

Westly: Yeah! [ soft laughter ] I wonder...

Tessai: When it comes to your prognostications, you have a self-imposed limit, do you not? Would you care to explain that?

Westly: [ sighs ] One question, one answer. One per person per day. It’s to keep everything in order and to keep myself safe. I know Aizen isn't a threat right this moment, but he still is one. Anyone with a mind like his would use my knowledge to hurt the Soul Society and the World of the Living. So I use that rule to the fullest... but hints now and then never hurt to steer everyone in a safer direction.

Tessai: Please allow me to assure you that there is no need to be as circumspect as usual. Our listeners will understand your concerns.

Yoruichi: Doesn’t this security schema rely on an assumption that minds like Aizen’s—or say, Kisuke's—can’t, Sherlock Holmes-like, reassemble the whole picture from the clues they may gain access to?

Westly: Out of all the possible outcomes, only one can come to light. So the one they think might happen may not happen, with or without my hints or answers.

Yoruichi: Well, wouldn’t the ultimate threat really be something like Tsukishima stabbing you with his Fullbring and gaining unrestricted access to your entire timeline?

Westly: I dunno if that would be possible... besides... he’s currently not that much of a threat. Now that Ginjou has been taken care of by Ichigo.

Yoruichi: [ clears her throat ]

Tessai: Hartford-san, is there a particular outcome you would hope to see avoided at all costs?

Westly: … Yes... but... if it doesn't happen... all hell could break loose and become worse...

Tessai: It is—we do not—it is beyond the scope of this podcast—

Yoruichi: I too dread and fear the possible return of New Coke.

Tessai: … The fault is mine; the question was too broad.  Perhaps instead I should ask: do you at times find yourself overburdened with the knowledge you possess? Is it tempting to divulge it all?

Westly: … Yes. It... it is...

Yoruichi: You could always write it all down and leave scattered clues leading to where it was hidden, all in... one piece.

Westly: I don’t think that would work for me, Yoruichi...

Tessai: It requires a certain flexibility of character...

Yoruichi: That’s a funny way of saying, “The price of airfare is quite high.”

Yoruichi: Maybe if somebody would pay higher wages...

Westly: I’m okay... really. [ soft laughter ] But... yeah. If I just reveal it all, I could get in big trouble... I’m just lucky I ended up here and not the Soul Society.

Tessai: If Hartford-san would appreciate a secure location where it may not be found, perhaps I could assist. If nothing else, such an archive would be invaluable to future research, I am sure.

Westly: Yeah... it probably would...

Tessai: I will leave a note to myself.

Yoruichi: Well, at least Nicholas Cage will be affordable.

Yoruichi: Here’s a question: if you could give your past-self one bit of advice, whether that was before you arrived here or immediately after, what would it be?

Westly: … Before... I’d say: “You’ll be somewhere better. Just wait. You’ll be okay.”

Past Kisuke: That's good advice regardless of circumstance. —Would someone care to explain why—

Yoruichi: And after?

Westly: … After? I’d probably say... “You're home.” But I’d say it’s for my own mental health...

Past Yoruichi: What in the hell...?

Yoruichi: I knew I should’ve brought the eyepatch. Well, time is a luxury we don’t have!

Past Kisuke: Wait, are they like, reigai?!

Tessai: Please do not ask questions, Tenchō!

Yoruichi: We’re Martians, don’t think too hard about it! [ sharp explosion sound ]

Wes: A-ah! What’s happening…!?

[ outro plays ]

[sage-nebula]

why didn't you like steven universe future? not mad, just wondering

I didn’t like it for … quite a few reasons. Fair warning that this is probably going to be long, it’s going to contain spoilers for Future, and those who really liked Future for whatever reason are probably not going to agree with me. And that’s fine! But I do ask that if you disagree that you don’t try to start a fight over it. That would be a waste of everyone’s time, including yours, because I’m going to be thirty in twelve days and so I really don’t have the time or energy to get into heated fights with people over children’s cartoons anymore. I’m well past that stage of my life. (Also keep in mind that while I’m very critical of Future, I really like the original series, which is why I’m critical of Future. So if there’s any confusion, let me clear it up now: I am not in the “SU crit” crowd.)

So with that said …

My first issue with Future is with its format, and particularly the issues that it had with character balance. In the original show, while there were obviously some characters who were relegated to side character status and thus didn’t get as much attention as other characters did (e.g. Lapis Lazuli, Peridot, Lars, et cetera), we still had a sensible mix of characters in each episode, there not only to contribute to the plot, but also to bounce off each other. If it was a townie episode, you’d probably see a good mix of human characters interacting with Steven. If it was a Crystal Gems episode, in most cases all of the gems would show up at some point or another, and so on. Characters who had established relationships with each other often showed up with and interacted with each other (e.g. Lapis and Peridot, however you want to interpret their relationship). It felt natural for this to happen. It made sense for all the characters involved for everyone to get focus, for the episodes to not be centered on One Character and One Character Only.

And Future … didn’t do that.

Particularly notable and bad in the latter half of Future, Future’s episodes tended to focus on Steven + One Other Character. “Guidance” was Amethyst’s episode, so Amethyst was the only person Steven interacted with at length. “Volleyball” was Pearl’s episode, so Pearl (and Pink Pearl) was the only character Steven acted with at length, and so on. In a particularly egregious example, and the one that really made me notice the problem, “In Dreams” was Peridot’s episode, and so Lapis was not seen nor mentioned despite loving Camp Pining Hearts so much that she rewatched all the seasons with Peridot, made a meep morp specifically due to her love for the show (e.g. she made fanart!), and in the comics has an entire issue where she and Peridot not only put on a Camp Pining Hearts play, but where Lapis shows that she’s memorized the show’s dialogue and even does impressions for Peridot. Yet although Lapis is such a passionate and devoted fan of the show—although their mutual love for the show was something that helped Lapis and Peridot bond—she apparently has no interest in watching the reboot. Or if she does, we don’t get to hear about it, because again, she isn’t mentioned at all because “In Dreams” was meant to be Peridot’s episode.

Now, a disclaimer: I do ship Lapidot. I think I’ve made that pretty clear before. But the fact that I ship Lapidot isn’t why I’m annoyed that “In Dreams” was only allowed to have one (1) character besides Steven, and thus Lapis was excluded. I’m annoyed because it makes zero sense given things about Lapis’ character that were established in the previous series and supplementary materials. Lapis loves Camp Pining Hearts. Therefore, Lapis should at least have an opinion on the reboot, even if it’s only Peridot saying that Lapis wants a full report on the reboot to know whether it’s worth watching or not. The fact that she isn’t mentioned at all distracted me, because I spent the episode wondering why she wasn’t being included in a watch party for a show she loved so much she made fanart for it and memorized the dialogue to impersonate the characters.

And as I said, this is far from the only episode where this happens. Each non-Steven character seemed to get one, and only one, episode where they were Steven’s Plus One, and therefore were either inexplicably missing from other episodes, or only had brief cameos at best. It took until episode 12, “Bismuth Casual”, for Connie to have an appearance for more than a few seconds, and even then, she was mostly only there to show how awkward Steven was interacting with humans (since apparently all those townie eps we sat through in the original series meant nothing in the end), because “Bismuth Casual” was Bismuth’s episode, and thus the only one she had a real appearance in. In “Together Forever”, we were given a half-assed excuse for why Garnet didn’t stop Steven from getting his heart broken (”you would have done it anyway”) because a.) having Garnet give Steven good advice might have ruined the “plot” and b.) it wasn’t her episode, so they didn’t want to give her real focus. As a result of wanting to keep the Steven + One Other format, they sacrificed characterization and narrative cohesion by excluding characters that it would have made more sense to include. It was distracting, and it didn’t work for me at all.

Now, you might be wondering: why did they do this? Was it really necessary to do things this way to focus on how awful Steven’s mental state was? Well, no — but that’s not why they did it. Rebecca Sugar revealed why she chose to write Future this way in an interview after it ended:

“… There was a lot about the story that the initial run of episodes had told that I wanted to recontextualize because I think that people […] really put a lot of their focus on—not unlike Steven himself in the character—put a lot of focus on the Gems’ stories that were going on when really as a team we were always very interested in his human story.”

To paraphrase: Rebecca Sugar was upset that people were more interested in the Gems rather than Steven, and as such she cut them out of Future as much as possible to put the maximum amount of focus on Steven and his issues so that we could learn to appreciate Steven instead.

And this … does not work for me. 

First and foremost: You cannot force your audience to like or be invested in a character. You just can’t. In fact, trying to do that often results in the opposite effect; the more you try to shoehorn audience focus and love onto one particular character, especially at the cost of other characters, the more the audience tends to dislike them. I believe the term that TV Tropes uses for this is “The Westly”, or “The Scrappy”, named after characters that, well, became disliked because of how the creators tried to force the audience to like them. It’s perfectly fine, as a writer, to want your audience to focus on a particular character or story point that you think is cool, and it’s perfectly valid to be disappointed when they don’t. But when you create a sequel series specifically to … punish, for lack of a better word, your audience for, say, taking comfort in how good of a parent Greg was to Steven, or for caring deeply and being invested in the plight of the Gems and all they went through in their past instead of being focused on the child character who, in a lot of ways, acted as the audience surrogate … a.) it’s not going to work, and b.) you’ve lost a lot of my respect (not that you care, because you don’t know me), from one writer to another.

But on a more personal level, this doesn’t resonate with me because I never did care about Steven that much, in honesty. In fact, to be the most honest, part of the reason why I put off watching Steven Universe for so long is because Steven’s bratty behavior in the early episodes annoyed me to no end. I was so frustrated by the fact that this bratty, annoying little boy somehow had all the answers that these strong, brave, very competent women around him just somehow couldn’t see or have themselves. When I did start watching, I watched solely for the Gems. I did come to like Steven over time as character development set in and matured, but even so I was never personally invested in him or his story. I always liked side characters more. Even when it came to the humans, I preferred characters like Greg, Connie, and Lars to Steven himself. (And yes, Lars was a huge jerk at first, but this wasn’t treated like an acceptable thing like Steven’s often bratty behavior, which is why it was palatable to me. Also, yes, Steven was a child and so was allowed to be bratty, but that doesn’t mean that I have to like him as a character even if I acknowledge that his behavior is in-character for a thirteen-year-old who has the maturity of an eight-year-old.) So to have Future focus entirely on Steven and his woes, and especially in a way that clashed hard with some of my own lived experiences and values (tl;dr: as a survivor of parental abuse, I would have killed to have a parent as loving and supportive as Greg, so Steven lashing out at him really did not sit well with me at all) really put me off Future and Steven as a character. Rebecca wanted me (and by me I mean “as a person in the audience”, not me in specific) to focus more on and appreciate Steven, but her writing in Future actually did the opposite. It took a character I grew to like and made me dislike him again.

And on that note, Steven himself. In the Gizmodo interview mentioned above, Rebecca talks about how she believes the audience took what Steven was going through for granted (which I don’t think is very true at all given fan discussions and pleas for Steven to see a therapist even before the Future episodes started airing, but hey), but she also says that she wanted to focus on feelings of inadequacy, overwork, and learning that you deserve love because those were experiences she herself had while working on the original show, and so she wanted to explore those experiences through Future and chose Steven to do it. To quote:

“I learned that I just really needed to take care of myself and respect myself and believe that I deserved friends and love. When I started the show, all I cared about really was working. I was very proud to work myself into abysmal health, and I think a lot of people can relate to this, especially artists and people in animation. […] So a lot of what I ended up writing towards the end of the show was about the work that I was doing to try and build a foundation of self-respect that would just allow me to keep functioning at work. By the end, I think I really arrived somewhere that I’ve never been before, where I felt comfortable reaching out to people and saying, ‘Hey, do you want to hang out?’—something as simple as that without assuming that they wouldn’t want to spend time with me? Or little things, you know? Something as simple as putting down my pen and taking a bath just cause I wanted to, or taking a nap in the middle of the day—things I just didn’t feel I deserved before. That really became part of the arc of the show and a lot of what I ultimately wanted to write about in Future.”

Now, there are two things that I want to say first, before I continue:

The fact that Rebecca went through such a horrible time with her mental health, that she suffered as much as she did, and that the animation industry is an industry which promotes suffering like it does, is all heartbreaking, and I am so relieved to hear that she’s in a better place now, and I am goddamn proud of her for reaching that better place. I’m so proud of her for taking care of herself, I’m happy that she has better self-esteem. It’s awful that she had to suffer breakdowns to get there, but the fact is that she’s been working successfully on recovery and that is amazing.

Fiction is an incredible outlet and way for expressing what you’ve gone through in your life. Anyone who has ever written a story can tell you that they put some part of themselves and their lived experiences into what they write. The fact that Rebecca wanted to use a cartoon to share her experiences with mental illness and mental health recovery is perfectly valid and understandable. Not only can she create what she wants, but sometimes telling stories is the best way to express to others what you went through in a way that makes it easier for them to understand your experiences. I don’t condemn Rebecca for doing this at all.

With those things said, though … I really have to ask if Steven Universe was the correct fictional universe to do it in, and if it really worked for Steven Quartz Universe, the character.

The thing I loved most about the original show is that it was, in Rebecca Sugar’s own words, an idealist fantasy world where all conflicts could be solved by talking them out and that the tone was overwhelmingly optimistic. I started watching Steven Universe during a breakdown of my own, because I needed something soft and easy to digest that also had a ton of episodes (and by that point, Steven Universe did have a lot of episodes). Steven Universe didn’t have Reality Ensues moments, by and large. There were characters that had trauma (e.g. Lapis Lazuli), but although trauma was portrayed realistically (and in fact, as someone with complex post-traumatic stress disorder, a.k.a. C-PTSD, Lapis is one of the best portrayals of it that I’ve ever seen), for the most part the show always erred on the side of optimism. It wasn’t, “Things are bad, and now they’re getting worse, and now they’re getting worse, and now they’re getting worse” on and on for twenty episodes straight with no reprieve. Even when characters were in bad places that weren’t fixed by the end of an episode (e.g. Garnet and Pearl’s fight lasting several episodes, Lapis running away to the moon and then running away again when she couldn’t overcome her hypervigilance and anxiety), the tone of the show typically suggested that there was still hope for things to get better. It dipped the audience’s feet into the angst bucket, rather than grabbing them by their hair and waterboarding them with it.

But Future was so heavy on the angst that it was memetic to call it Steven Universe: Fear instead. Every single episode only seemed to make things worse. And while that is understandable in the sense that the show wanted to lead up to Steven’s emotional breakdown corrupting him (if that is indeed what happened; it’s still unclear), it’s jarring when you consider the original show’s tone wasn’t that dark and emphasized the importance of communication, rather than showing that the titular character, once known for employing Jesus no Jutsu (a.k.a. talking at problems until they’re no longer problems) to great effect now suddenly actively shunning communication as a means of conflict resolution. “Prickly Pair” is, in fact, a great example of how much of a departure Future was from its predecessor. Steven spends the episode having a conflict over how he feels that he can’t talk to the Gems because they’ll feel guilty for not being there for him, which, okay, I can buy that given that he was always acting as their counsel in the original series. The episode ends with Cactus Steven going on a rampage and attacking the Gems, Steven realizing that this happened because he vented to Cactus Steven about the Gems and didn’t show Cactus Steven love or affection, and the Gems (after Cactus Steven leaving) asking Steven if there’s anything he needs to talk about in a way that’s gentle and shows they want to listen to and help him. And Steven, having realized that this entire mess happened because he talked about the Gems rather than to them … decides to double down on not talking to them and instead bottle everything up instead.

See, in the original series, Steven would have realized that since Cactus Steven went on a rampage because Steven vented to it rather than talking to the Gems about the issues he had with them that what he should do instead is, you know, talk to the Gems and tell them how he feels, especially since they now already have a pretty good idea given that Cactus Steven regurgitated it all to them. This would have resulted in, perhaps not an instant-fix, but a definite road to communication and healing much, much earlier than the fifteen-odd episodes of things getting worse that we had to sit through after this episode aired. But because Future needed to build up to Steven having a breakdown, and because Rebecca wanted to write about her own experiences of bottling things up and pushing onward despite her worsening mental health, Steven didn’t learn the obvious lesson that he would have learned in the original series (hell, that he arguably already knew in the original series), and the Cactus Steven incident was literally never brought up or followed up on again in the episodes that followed, because the episodes that followed didn’t have a big focus on the main CGs. (Which, again, goes back to the format issues, because in the original series you better believe the main CGs would have followed up with Steven about that little incident rather than just apparently forgetting it ever happened.)

I’m not saying that it’s unrealistic for Steven to have trauma or issues due to everything he went through in the original series. What I am saying is that being so heavy-handed with showing those issues, plus having Steven do things that don’t necessarily align with previous characterization, feels a bit more like writing for the sake of a message rather than writing for the sake of character. I’m also saying that Future’s hyper-focus on showing just how Bad things were for Steven, as well as how Bad the Gems and Greg were at parenting, as well as the whole “Steven gets CORRUPTED, GASP” bit at the end, felt quite a bit like a fanfiction to me. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking fanfiction—believe me, I’ve written a LOT of it in my day—but there is a reason why fanfiction is, well, fanfiction, rather than show canon. It’s fun to explore concepts such as Steven going darkside and shattering Jasper and trying to shatter White Diamond and then turning into a giant dinosaur, but is that really something that we want written down in the history of the show’s canon? Do we really want to make Steven Quartz Universe the only character in the show to outright murder someone on-screen, and then laugh about it later, and also never give the murdered character any sort of closure or conclusion to her own arc? Is that something better off in canon, rather than in the realm of fanfiction?

Hm.

All in all, I just feel that Future doesn’t jive with the original series in terms of content or tone. The episodes were entertaining enough, but overall it left a bad taste in my mouth. Given that the original series had a perfectly fine finale with “Change Your Mind”, I’ve decided to take that as the ending to Steven Universe, with the movie serving as the epilogue. Future is, to me, something optional. Rebecca wanted to explore her own experiences through the lens of the character she liked the most, and that’s fine. I’m happy that she got that out of her system. But Future didn’t work for me, I didn’t like it, and so I’m electing to ignore it, personally. I’m not going to include it the next time I rewatch the series. YMMV, and that’s fine! If you liked Future, I’m happy for you. But I didn’t, and this is why.

I hope that was a satisfying answer.