#well except in the case of my stuff actually being bad and devolving constantly but

[skunkes]

i know i also already said this but i keep having art ""'realizations""" that read exactly like this post

[jalapenocupcake]

SU White Diamond

I'm going to be critical and talk about the new 1 hour special, so there's going to be a lot of spoilers under the cut.

So I'm going to say what was good before I critique the bad/off stuff in the scene. We get an entire scene dedicated to White Diamond being an awful manipulative dictator. Which is great! We finally see what makes the main antagonist of the series so powerful, so terrifying! She zaps people and makes them her puppet slaves! Cool! A power befitting of an evil dictator! And the visuals were amazing! Maybe a slight animation error here or there forgetting the location of gems (blue and yellow swap places) but it wasn’t distracting from ait's a beautifully animated scene where Steven becomes Steven.

There wasn't a lot of dramatic tension going into this scene imo. Steven and Co just drop in from the mecha fight, and we see the crystal gems get zapped by the laser eyes. Nobody really does anything to avoid being hit? Yes, Amethyst has an excuse, she was blindsided. But not Garnet, Pearl, or Steven. Garnet and Pearl are also, well, warriors. They fought in the gem war, and suddenly they don't have the capability to realize they're in danger? After seeing their friend get zapped, they just sit there and make no attempts to dodge or attack or anything? Like I understand this is nitpicking but it would've been cool to see the crystal gems do something in this scene, and not just stand there like deer in the headlights screaming "No don't do this".

Then we see white talk about the impurities of the CGs. And honestly? She has a point. Steven doesn't help the crystal gems with their flaws of insecurity, dependence, or obsession. He's usually just kinda there, giving them a pat on the back and giving a thumbs up, but not helping them with their shortcomings to better themselves. Pearl is still obsessed with Rose/Pink Diamond and still can't let go, even having a crush on mystery girl, a dead ringer for Rose. We never see Garnet unfused, except when Ruby and Sapphire disagree, and when they are unfused both Ruby and Sapphire can't really function on their own. And Amethyst is actively trying to work through her insecurities but it's not through Steven she's getting better. We can even kinda see this from Lapis in Can't Go Back. She voices concerns to Steven and he pretty much pats her on the back and says she's perfect, while she's conflicted and terrified and trying to explain it to Steven.

The scene kinda devolves from there. Steven defends his friends having flaws, White Diamond gaslights him into thinking he's his mom. (Sidenote, White knew Rose was Pink and said nothing to the other diamonds. That's messed up.) And then white removes Steven’s gem. I think it's funny that when Steven was reforming,  White's lines are "I only want you to be yourself" as she's shooting beams at him, when she was just saying how she wants everyone to be perfect just like her, and using the same attack that turns gems into her puppets. It doesn't really match what's happening. 

But other than that I really liked Steven coming together and loving himself, and not being Rose. I thought it was a great character moment for him and really capitalized on showing us his relief that all the doubts he had about himself weren’t warranted, and that he is, and will always be, just Steven. 

From here on the scene stops making sense. We see White lose her cool, which should be scary. The matriarch of an intergalactic empire who puts an emphasis on everyone being the same, who’s wiped out entire civilizations to expand her  own, is screaming and having a fit. She has Steven’s friends hostage. We’ve seen Yellow and Blue cower in fear before her, and they have voiced that they are afraid of her.

So what does Steven do in this circumstance? He mouths off to her and says “I’m a child, what’s your excuse?”, which makes White Diamond embarrassed. This doesn’t make sense from what we’ve heard about White. Why would she be embarrassed, and why would this quip not make her angrier? If Blue doesn’t even know humans need to eat food to survive, why would White know what a child is? Why would she care? She refers to humans as pets and constantly dismisses them. Why would someone making fun of her make her stop and think about her actions, especially when we’ve seen yellow and blue get angry at this kind of disrespect? More importantly, why is this path of action chosen over more reasonable ones that would be more in line with the plot thus far? Steven has made it pretty clear he wants to have heart to hearts with everyone and convince them they’re wrong rather than fight it out. So why not go that route, with the established notion of perfection versus imperfection, maybe have Steven point out that everything has flaws but it’s what makes everything unique and interesting, point out he has flaws and is half human and to white a lesser being but is still strong, still capable and make the point everyone should be loved or something? He could loop back to Blue and Yellow’s earlier pleas about fixing the family, and that if White controls them are they really themselves, and can they truly be happy? 

Then White relinquishes control of her puppets and she’s “off-color”, what’s up with that? Was White always off color and no one in her entire empire, not even her fellow diamonds, could notice she wasn’t perfect? Or did Steven mouthing off to her somehow make her off-color, with the pink motif spreading from her and changing the room color? Was it the work of Steven’s empathy powers forcing White to feel empathy for imperfect gems and destroying White’s status as perfect? And in any case, why does she care? She leads homeworld, she makes and enforces the laws, she’s destroyed other civilizations for existing, why would it even matter to her that she’s not perfect? She is the standard for homeworld gems, she’s the top of the food chain. Of course, this isn’t to say powerful people can’t have flaws and feel ashamed about them, but what part of her is flawed? Is she a grey or pale pink diamond, being literal off color? Can she not perform her assigned function like Padparadscha, was she over or undercooked like Amethyst? This part of the scene doesn’t add up. It feels too convenient that White is/was an off-color, and that being the only thing that pushes her over to Steven’s side. We never see her apologize for anything she’s done either. It’s somewhat implied at the end during the montage of White, Yellow and Blue coming to earth and fixing the corrupted gems, but for an episode called “Change your mind”, Steven never actually convinces White she’s a bad leader, that her caste system is too rigid and harsh, or see him actually make a case for the Earth being worthwhile. For me it didn’t feel rewarding to see White be won over how she was. Comparing White to Navy of the Ruby Squad, who was the only villain Steven attempted to redeem and fail at it, it’s a little strange Navy is harder to win over than White Diamond.

And I do get it, one of the central themes of Steven Universe is forgiveness and redemption. But seeing the main antagonist of the series won over so easily didn’t sit right with me, especially considering all the horrible things she’s done that is never even touched upon. Maybe I’m thinking way too hard about a show about rocks for kids.

tldr; The white diamond scenes were pretty but weren’t well written. WD didn’t live up to my expectations and I felt she was converted too easily and conveniently to the good guys.