Bob lives in Lapis Lazuli's basement

Hello fellow people with su crit blogs! This blog is still dead, but I have decided to try researching something that I care about, and that involves getting the opinions and experiences of others in the community! My DMs are open! So here is my question:

What drove you to create an entire side blog dedicated to criticizing Steven Universe? Why did you choose that over just making some review-type posts on your main? What experiences have lead you to stand in this community separate from the rest of the fandom?

Please note, this is not a condemnation of any of those actions. I just want to collect as many different perspectives as I can, and obviously I made one too, so I can't fault anyone else for doing so. No worries there. ^^

Hey guys. I've done some thinking, and I've come to the difficult conclusion that I'm going to retire from SU Critical.

It gave me such relief at first because I needed to vent, not just my issues with the show, but with the people who blindly defend their fave media at all costs who reminded me of the "anti-crits" of the last critical community I was in.

But I've realized that it's made me incredibly angry and bitter towards even the mere mention of SU. The aphobia and "anti su criticals" are stressful enough, but now the show itself just PISSES ME OFF when I think about it, and I... don't want to keep festering over it anymore.

Anytime someone talks to me about SU, I feel this burning need to go on a huge rant about how terribly they treated Bismuth or how much they botched Pearl up. I like Pearl because I appreciate what she COULD have been, but what they ended up doing was making her abusive and pitiful, and she deserves better. A LOT of the characters and concepts deserve better than writers this incompetent. And frankly, a network that would actually give the show a chance to be well-paced or keep any of the mystery it had left.

I'm so burnt out on SU that I might actually just drop the show out of boredom and frustration. It's become my go-to target to make fun of when I'm talking about bad writing lol.

But my anger never dulls, and I hate feeling that much seething negativity, using that much energy to hate what a show has done when I honestly have far better ways to spend that energy. I have my own story to write. I'm going to learn from SU's mistakes, but I want to focus on making my story great, not tearing into a show that has nothing left to offer me.

This isn't to say I won't talk about SU anymore though. I will likely always make fun of it or use it as an example of What Not To Do, but I need to do it in balance with all my other focuses.

Aaaanyway, I guess that's my confusing attempt at an explanation. Maybe I'll see some of you as a creator next time. :)

If anyone is interested in what content I'm trying to put out, I have a YouTube channel called The Angry Librarian (which I need to update more often RIP) and a webcomic called All the World's a Roulette, which will be released soon (I hope).

I hadn't been able to watch the new eps for awhile because of irl family issues and I've just been BUSY, so this might be late.

But okay, the newest set of eps, from "Your Mother and Mine" to "Letters to Lars," were such a slap in the face. I had been so excited to watch them and finally got time out of my day to do so, and what I got was one episode full of juicy teasing lore and then THREE MORE Beach City filler episodes!

I expected them to elaborate like any other naturally-flowing storyline would, but we got literally POINTLESS episodes!  I’ll admit, I thought The Big Show was really cute, and Pool Hopping was good enough on its own, but NOW was NOT the time!  I would have accepted The Big Show as the one break between serious shit, and I personally think Pool Hopping could have been saved for an actual period of calm after a crisis has been dealt with.  But Letters to Lars was utterly pointless.  The only parts that I liked (Mayor Dewey working at the Big Donut) could have been summed up in a few sentences in an otherwise useful episode.

This was just so frustrating to sit through.  I am COMPLETELY, 100% FOR taking breaks between serious arcs and action.  But lately, SU has really started to feel like it’s focusing on Beach City and using LORE as the BREAKS!  It’s so backwards and makes me wanna pull my hair out.

And now that I think about it, I do kind of blame CN for this one.  This Steven Bomb shit is stupid.  This show can’t breathe or it wastes our time, because the  only time they’re allowed to show us anything is when it’s the short return from a long-ass hiatus.  And so, they’re unable to tell a flowing story with all the elements that would make it great: a good balance of action/plot and calm/breaks (NOT filler, which should rarely ever be used).

At the same time, though, the crew should know by now how to make calmer / diverging episodes mean something.  They could actually spend time on a character’s development (and no, showing almost a whole episode of Mayor Dewey sulking in BG while Steven tells us shit we already know, and then working at the big donut in the last minute isn’t really character development, just a drawn-out change of scenery).

I just... feel like the writers are just not good at what they’re doing anymore.  Maybe they were at one point, but now it feels like they’re just forcing something out to get it over with, and it makes me sad.

Especially since I just rewatched all of A:tLA.  Even if SU can’t have the same flow, they can still have the same quality put into “filler” episodes.  They could actually TRY.  When I watch something that knows what the fuck it’s doing and then watch SU, I feel like I’m losing something. -sigh-

I'm a little torn. I made this blog to help me finally embrace criticism of what used to be a show I held on a pedastal. I loved it so much and felt personally attacked when people criticized it.

Now I feel like I have the opposite problem. The show I used to love makes me angry and frustrated, and I struggle to figure out which of those griefs should stay and which are influenced by circle-jerk.

I've been in one other "critical" community before, and it was SUCH a relief at first. But the people turned to circle-jerking and saying nasty things about the author (the author was a jerk, but the stuff they said was dehumanizing), and generally making the community look bad. I get defensive of our community instead of SU now, but at the same time, it's not healthy for me to only focus on the negative either.

I'm still struggling to find a balance, and taking a break from su critical has been helping a little. But I'm still trying to become comfortable with both enjoying something and criticizing it heavily.

When people hear the way I talk about SU, they think I hate it. I don't hate it exactly, I just really resent how much they've ruined it. I love the concepts and I hate that they're wasted on a botched up story like this. I like Pearl too, but her writers ruin her, and she deserves better. I love so many things about the show that the writers keep screwing up for me, and THAT is what I hate.