milo

I'VE BEEN OBSESSED WITH EARLY STRANGETOWN FOR MONTHS, TO THE POINT THAT I COULDN'T WAIT TO DRAW SOMETHING DECENT ABOUT IT!!!!!!!!

I believe in the supremacy of Vidcund metalhead in adolescence, I want to talk about my hcs but huhhu3hi I don't want to infodump, I'm lazy

i didn't render the background, but let's ignore that

close up on their faces

the other week/month we were talking about an au where rq’s gem got cracked, but she wouldn’t be able to heal herself by crying because crying is something she personally associates with guilt and shame and ultimately her self contempt. with her own mind split into three: her adult self, her inner child and the bully; the only way she could heal is if she refused to be accomplice of the bully and be there for her inner child for the first time - an act of self love and compassion.

Fav moments #4:

This scene usually gets overshadowed by the rest of the episode (understandably), but one thing I really like in this show is the series of expressions the characters often go through during emotional moments, and this scene is a great example of that.

This is the first thing Steven does once Connie leaves, and after his energetic and cheerful performance in front of her it’s a stark contrast to see him staring mournfully at himself in the mirror before taking his earrings out with a somber look on his face. It immediately shows that, yeah, everything that happened is still weighing on him, despite the happy outcome. He’s not as okay as he wants Connie to think he is. It’s almost like he waited to get changed because his zoo outfit is symbolic of the mask he wears, a costume so to speak, and so he doesn’t take it off until he’s alone. Only then does he show his true face.

i compiled a bunch of direct quotes about pink diamond/rose quartz from the newest artbook, end of an era. some of these quotes are taken from charts and scribbled notes, so the sentence structure might be weird.

let me know if there are any typos/missing information you think i could add!

most likely umby pumby is la la’s kid and duggle dee is po’s. Yellow and red make orange, so Po and La La got together to have Ruru. 

Nin is purple, so that one is Tinky Winky’s. Dipsy’s is Daa daa because they’re both green. but look at daa daa’s antenna. seems a bit similar to la la’s no? la la and dipsy had some shit on the side.  

po, that other cheating fuck, had ping with tinky winky because ping is pink and that’s suspiciously similar to red and purple. also check out that fucking antenna. same as tinky winky’s. can’t hide the facts. po and la la were cheating on each other and now they have a shit ton of kids to pretend aren’t theirs. 

tinky winky and dipsy also aren’t innocent in this. the actual color of mi mi is an aqua green. green and blue. dipsy and tinky winky had mi mi AND they probably had Baa too. they had TWO KIDS and they’re off getting some tubby custard on the side. 

*Stares*

Teletubbies have a very odd reproductive cycle

The Teletubbies we know and love

were all alone on that strange green world

because after mating

teletubby adults get the unquenchable urge

to eat their young

and must therefore be sent away

to the land where there’s a sun with a baby face

that is why the now adult teletubs are not around here

it is likely they have all but eaten each other

She has to realize that she is capable of growth.

I think Rose’s defining thing is seeing growth and change as beautiful - in everything except herself. 

She saw beauty in the organisms of other planets long before the Diamonds even acknowledged the idea that mindless killing might be unnecessary. She saw the beauty of earth and its humans, saw them being able to make choices and become something else. 

She even saw the OTHER gems being capable of change. She saw them as capable of freedom of choice, she thought they could be anything they wanted - and of course, this REQUIRES growth. 

But she, herself, never realized that out of ALL the other characters, she was arguable the one that grew the MOST throughout the series.

She went from a spoilt, naive child-like Diamond…

To a brokenhearted but determined Diamond willing to do anything for her planet…

To a much kinder, much more free gem who wanted to help others…

To a rebel leader with strong convictions and a purpose to fight for…

And at the end of all that, Rose STILL  talked as if she didn’t believe that she, herself, had changed at all. 

Out of all the other characters, Rose not only did a complete 180 personality-wise, but she also turned herself in 3D space and launched in a fully different direction in terms of morality. She completely abandoned one of her identities - and then went to far as to literally decide to cease existing for the purpose of reinventing herself AGAIN. 

I think Rose is the epitome of a character that is extremely emotional and has a lot of potential to be good… that was raised in a HORRID environment of very little sympathy and developed TERRIBLE coping mechanisms in order to survive. And even after she finally had the chance to make good choices… She had no idea how to. 

AND SHE STILL DID A LOT OF GOOD, EVEN WITH THAT!!!!

She never developed a frame of reference for NOT lying to the people she loved. Her entire life revolved around hiding things from people - from the Diamonds, from her friends, from her family… With the exception of Pearl, she never once felt safe enough to truly reveal herself to anyone. 

If she did so to the Diamonds she would be punished and pushed aside and ridiculed. 

If she did so to the other gems who thought she was Rose, they would only treat her as their Leader and would not take her seriously as an equal. 

If she did so to the Crystal Gems, they would likely abandon her and mistrust her cause.

And you know who inherited that ‘can’t talk about my feelings, gotta keep it all pent up inside otherwise people will think I’m a monster!’ attitude?

I gotta say, I understand why people don’t like Rose and critique her. She did terrible things to Bismuth, and to Pearl, and etc. 

But what I’d like to see more of is the acknowledgement that she TRIED and she changed A HELL OF A LOT MORE THAN MANY OTHER CHARACTERS ON THE SHOW. 

And yes, maybe I’m projecting, but the people screaming “WHY COULDN’T SHE JUST TELL THE CGs THE TRUTH” are missing a HUGE and very obvious part of her trauma, and are also simplifying how much SHE was affected by the war. She’s not just a cog in the machine, she literally broke the system singlehandedly and set everything in motion, and I, for one, think that it is a LOT of weight to carry on her shoulders.

But just like with Steven, no one was around to help her through it. Everyone else relied on her to ‘make things better’. She didn’t have anyone to turn to, to trust to listen to her without judging… except Pearl, and I think she knew that Pearl was already burdened enough and didn’t want to burden her any further, didn’t want to deepen that hole she’d dug. 

And yes, I am ABSOLUTELY planning to cover this in the WD!Steven comic, and yes, I am DEFINITELY planning to draw ALL the parallels between her and Steven as children from broken families that have unhealthy coping methods (because actually, she and Steven have many of the same ones…) and yes, they WILL be good for each other because in the end, they are perhaps the two people in this comic that know exactly what the other could be feeling. 

I LOVED THE HUG OKAY.

I’ve seen a lot of people saying things like “uGh thE eNdiNG sUcKEd geTtiNg a hUG doEsN’T sOLvE aLL yOuR pRoBLeMs”. but in my opinion, that’s exactly the point. 

All throughout the second half of SUF, they’re trying to show us that there is no one way to feel immediately better and have all of your problems solved. He goes to pretty much every source he can. The gems aren’t necessarily seeing what he’s going through, Connie isn’t going to solve this for him, his Dad is helping in an unhelpful way, so he goes to Jasper and that went haywire, so he goes to the diamonds and they just make it worse. And then what is he supposed to do?

Every single time Steven goes to a person to “help” him, he’s going to them seeking help in order to fix it. and there’s a big difference between the two. 

I have anxiety, depression, and OCD, and often when I’m panicking or having moments of high anxiety, I do what Steven did: I seek out people not to help me, but to fix it for me. I then react the same way Steven did - with anger - when people try to help instead of just fixing it.

Anxiety, depression, panic, none of those things can be completely and magically cured and rid of in the snap of a finger. But in the moment, for people like me, for a person like Steven, the thought of that feeling not being entirely solveable is petrifying.

 It’s like if someone is drowning and splashing around: you can’t get the life ring around them because of how much movement and commotion they’re creating. But they’re drowning, so you can’t just tell them “Hey, stop moving so I can help you!” From your perspective, you’re trying to help them by encouraging them to do something that will in turn allow you to help them. But to that person, if they stop flailing, they’re going to sink even further, and that is terrifying, so much so that they can’t even consider that you might be wanting to help them. All they can process is that you told them to stop doing the one thing that they don’t want to do: sink. Even if they’re sinking just for a moment, before you save them, that doesn’t matter. That feeling of sinking is terrifying, so they end up splashing around more. 

When Steven seems to be babbling on, almost comedically, in “Everything is Fine”, trying to convince himself he’s fine, he’s gotten to a stage that I was in for a while, a sort of mania, where he is not only attempting to convince everyone around him that he’s fine, he has convinced himself that he is fine. This is a huge red flag for people with bipolar disorder or manic depression (NOT diagnosing Steven, I am not a professional, I’ve just experienced many of these things and been surrounded by people experiencing these things and professionals explaining them to me. Like I said, I was in the hospital for this, so). Everyone around him starts to see that he is, in fact, not fine, as they’ve already surmised. But the physical consequences of them not doing anything, not doing enough, are starting to manifest.

When he morphs into the Steven Worm, he has lost his sense of self. He doesn’t know what to do with himself, he can’t exist within himself with the world he’s created. He didn’t tell the Gems about the hospital, he didn’t tell his dad he was angry, he didn’t actually tell Connie he needed her he just proposed. He doesn’t know what to DO with all of this. So it explodes around him.

He can’t control his feelings, himself anymore. He feels he’s lost control. For me, a human, this morphs into a panic attack. But for him, he’s a gem, he turns into Steven Worm.

Not even the diamonds, the most powerful beings in the entire Gem universe, are incapable of changing him. His emotions bring White Diamond to her knees. But what they’re doing wrong here is they’re trying to fix him!

When Connie bolts in on Lion and is making her (iconic) rallying cry, she never says they need to fix Steven or heal him; she says they need to help him. Because that’s the only way he can get better.

When you go to the psychiatric hospital, you don’t go to get fixed. You’re in an environment where you’re made so you’re not a physical danger to yourself, and then you do a shit ton of work. You have therapy multiple times a day, every day, all week. You do work, they don’t just fix it for you. And this is the solution that we need to see portrayed. This is the solution they did portray in SUF.

Mental health disorders can’t be fixed. And Steven’s problems weren’t solved with a hug. 

But we needed to see the hug. Because Steven needed to see the hug.

The hug wasn’t just about hugging him. It was about literally forcing him to come face-to-face with the love and support he had been inadvertenly, and then intentionally, pushing away. It forced him to say, “Okay, this is who I am right now. And these people love me.”

I had to have the people in my life tell me over and over that they loved me when I went to the hospital. I had to have my doctors tell me that they cared for me, my therapist tell me that I wasn’t talking too much, because I didn’t believe them. I had convinced myself I wasn’t worthy, I was a fraud, just like Steven. Sometimes you need that love in your face, surrounding you so that it is the only thing you can see, for you to be able to let it in. 

The hug didn’t fix everything! That’s the big thing. The hug was a pure, beautiful moment, but I don’t believe it was meant to be a plot device to try to fix everything. Everyone was still emotional, he still destroyed things, he scared people, he scared himself. That wasn’t all magically fixed because of the hug. But his resolve to do the work, get help, and accept what happened to him - that is what made him go from Worm Steven to Boy Steven.

And afterward, we seen Steven has grown. He hasn’t morphed, his hair hasn’t changed, he’s not pink. But he’s grown mentally. He’s communicating more making plans, his disposition has changed. I don’t like that they called what he had a meltdown (again, I vouch that it was a gem version of a panic attack), but YALL STEVEN HAS A THERAPIST NOW! He’s is not only getting the help that he needs, he is showing that he is going to continue needing this help, and that’s okay! He’s making plans to visit people, to go see the world, on his own terms! 

 He’s scared and sad of leaving the gems, and it’s also time to leave the gems. It’s time to move on, and be a new Steven.

We’ve seen a lot of Stevens the past few weeks. But Steven driving off past the Big Donut into the night was my favorite Steven. That was vulnerable Steven. That was Steven doing the work to be himself, to exist with his feelings and the ways he had acted, and the things he had gone through. That was my boy. Steven Universe.

When I saw my mom for the first time while I was in the hospital, the first thing she did was give me a big hug (I was a blubbering mess, of course). But it wasn’t just that my mom was giving me a hug. She was telling me she was there for me, she loved me, she was telling me she would stay up on the phone with me as long as the doctors would let me, she would drive 3 ½ hours from our home in Michigan to the hospital in Ohio at a moments notice (I went to school in Ohio and went to the hospital there too before coming home). That hug was her forcing me to see that she was there for me, even if I didn’t believe it, or didn’t want to believe it.

This is probably very obvious but what the hell.

In the movie, Steven gets slashed with the Rejuvinator–multiple times.

At first no one suspects anything happened to him, as he seems to be fine. But then his powers start to malfunction, and he finds he has to relearn how to use them. That goes away pretty quickly, 

but uhh....then this sudden change in character happens in Future. 

Steven, our little Steven, starts having anger issues, seemingly from out of nowhere. Look i know we can sit here and argue that its a natural progression but, I don’t buy it. We’ve seen little Steven be put through the ringer an get frustrated before, he never behaved like this, 

This is too much, all at once, with no explanation. Then we’re given this bombshell by Pink Pearl:

That punch she throws at the wall in Yellow’s observatory wasn’t a one-off thing; Pink Diamond threw tantrums, tantrums she couldn’t control, and had a scream that could crack walls, and once she hurt Pink Pearl, and she was given White Pearl, she changed all at once and to the other extreme, as if traumatized that she had the power to damage someone that much, someone she cared deeply for. And now, after being hit with the rejuvinator in the movie… 

..he’s cracking walls like his mom? And I’m supposed to write it off as some natural progression? Nah. We’ve seen this destructive power before.

I think the foreshadowing is pretty clear,

THIS THING DID WORK; ON PINK STEVEN!!

and what this implies is fucking terrifying; Remember this?

Yeah, this is Pink Diamond after having gone through 8,000 years of character development. Here, she isn’t the screaming, wall cracking tantrum throwing bitch, she’s become a good person, with the bagage one would expect one to have when one starts off as toxic and becomes good, so when Steven was born, his Pink half had all its character development–but since Spinel hit Steven with the rejuvinator multiple times, I think his Pink side has regressed to Pink Diamond’s state, from 8,000 years ago. 

Which means, his Pink side doesn’t love being him right now.  

How can it? Every other gem hit with the rejuvinator had to be reminded of the experiences that made them who they are after all, how can Pink Steven love being himself when it doesn’t remember how it got there?

…and with this show’s track record with forshadowing, since Pink Diamond had to hurt someone she loved before learning to control her temper…

“Stop” really seems to be a rescue ring word when it comes to pink Steven, huh? 🤔🤔🤔

"Connie" may be a Campanula (Bellflower)

A Bellflower means gratitude, humility, attractiveness and everlasting love

But also associated with death, often planted on graves

to see people say that they hate Pink Diamond because she abandoned Spinel in the garden for 6000+ years.

I get it, yeah, that’s p fucked up. But y’all need to remember something about the show Steven Universe—

It is a show about well-rounded and deeply personal characters.

What’s that mean? A lot of them are gonna do some horrible things. Look at The Diamonds, for example. White was so obsessed with perfection, that she not only repressed her own feelings, individuality, and happiness, she forced everyone else to repress theirs as well. And Blue and Yellow just rolled with it because they believed she was right in her ways of doing things, no matter how it made them feel.

But not Pink. Oh no, she hated it! She tried so hard to be herself and every time she was, she and the gems closest to her got hurt. She was seen as childish, arrogant, and maybe even lesser and more pathetic than the other Diamonds.

Pink lived in an abusive, manipulative, emotionally destructive environment for EONS! That was all she knew. Over time, that was the personality she adopted. She never truly knew what love was, and every time she would get so close to understanding it, she would have it taken away from her. She would be punished for it.

They would lock her in a cell, deprived of light, basically the equivalent of starving a human being. This is what she experienced, y’all! So it’s no surprise to me that she would eventually pass this awful behavior onto the way she would treat other gems— like Spinel!!

It is assumed that Spinel was a replacement friend after Pink got her OG Pearl taken away from her, so already Pink is going to see Spinel in a negative light. And as time went on, she must have began to resent Spinel.

“You’re not supposed to be here.” “I should be doing this with my Pearl, not you.” “This is wrong, I shouldn’t be doing this with you”

And then later, she could’ve seen herself in Spinel.

“So childish!” “Be more serious!” “You’re so annoying!”

She resented and reflected upon Spinel so much so, that as soon as she had the chance to leave her, she took it. No, it wasn’t right, but after all Pink went through, this type of behavior can be expected. Because, again, it’s all she knew.

After the war on Earth with The Diamonds and Homeworld ended, I strongly believe that Pink as Rose began to regret what she did to Spinel. I believe she began to regret so many things she had done while trapped on Homeworld. I believe she wanted to take those actions back, including leaving Spinel behind. But doing so would be too risky. It would alert The Diamonds and start up so much more drama that Pink just wouldn’t be able to withstand.

I’m sure that if she could have, Pink would have gone back for Spinel. She would apologize and bring Spinel to Earth, do her best to free Spinel from her warped belief of friendship drilled into her by The Diamonds. I believe Pink would have done this because, on Earth, Pink learned to love. She learned what love was. What it meant. How to love. The different types of love.

Steven Universe is so personal and so real, that these kinds of behaviors shouldn’t be that much of a surprise. Every. One. Will. Do. Bad. Shit.

Greg manipulated Steven into believing his leg was broken for longer than it was, causing Steven to think his powers were gone, because he just wanted to spend more time with his only child. His only son.

Pearl manipulated Garent to fuse with her so she could feel more powerful, so she wouldn’t feel as weak as she thought she was.

The Diamonds enforced harmful and repressive laws unto their people for the image of a “perfect empire.” They destroyed worlds!

HELL!! We even see Steven make awful, damaging decisions!! Through out the majority of Steven Universe: The Movie, we witness Steven WILLFULLY ignore and do everything he can to avoid and escape from Spinel versus being his usual kind hearted, gentle, “We-Can-Talk-About-This” self. And that hurts Spinel, it throws her into panic, reliving the same thing Pink had done to her.

So please, stop hatin’ on Pink Diamond. She made some horrible decisions, yes, but she is no villain. No one on this show is a villain.

Just a whole lotta people with a whole lotta problems to figure out and fix.

Together.