Holy Lord, Steven Universe is Such a Good Show! · 11:12am Jun 2nd, 2016
(With title apologies to Murder by Death)
Yes, I'm stupidly late to the party here, but I've been binge-watching Steven Universe the past week or so, and I'm just about done with season 2. This show is good. Really good. Amazingly good! I haven't been so emotionally connected to a show since binge-watching all of Gravity Falls (also incredible, and also me = incredibly late to the party) a few months ago. So I've been thinking why that is, and I think I have a few answers.
SPOILERS AHEAD THROUGH SEASON 2
It's short.
Every episode is 11 minutes long. First off, this means no commercial break. That means there's no silly "cliffhanger" before a fade-out, nor any dumb recap on return. This means 11 minutes of pure, solid storytelling. Secondly, this means stories MUST be compact. There's no room for wasted time in this format, so every episode has to do the full conventional plot arc with minimal distraction. As a consequence, the storytelling is stronger. Lastly, there's no room for the typical A/B plots. For those not familiar, A/B plots are where there's a main story for an episode (the A plot) and some more minor story (the B) plot occurring. When written well, A/B plots weave together and can be great, but in most shows, it means simply more cuts away from one story to tell the other, then cuts back. In Steven Universe, we have only one story per episode, straight through, pure.
Everything has consequences.
There is no sitcom-style "reset" each episode. MLP, as much as I love it, really suffers from this. A pony can learn an important lesson and change their attitude in one episode, then half a season later, revert to acting just like they did before. Steven doesn't do this though. The entire run of the show is basically continuous, with each episode more like a chapter in book than anything else. As such, the characters are always growing and changing, as is the world they inhabit. A single moment like healing Connie's nearsightedness in one episode ripples through the whole thing before becoming a major plot point in another episode a year later when she confronts her mom. Because of this, the world, despite it's ridiculous premise, feels far more real than even that of most live action shows.
The art matches the story.
At first, I wasn't a huge fan of the art style of the show. But it grew on me, and I learned to love it. Moreover, I started to see that the art and animation in each episode has a lot of love put into it, with tiny details really selling me on the "reality" of the world. One of my favorite examples is Steven's video games. In almost any other show, animated or not, there'd just be some generic controllers, with maybe a quickly sketched stick or two and some buttons. But this show... I recognize the N64 and the three-armed alien controller. I see that yellow c-stick of the GameCube. These are real machines that the animators put a lot of detail into reproducing accurately, despite existing in a world where the characters themselves look like impossible caricatures.
The second part of this is the moods the art sets. The main setting, Beach City, is obviously on a beach. But the animation has a particular penchant for sunrises and sunsets, and especially the oddly diamond (gem?) shaped stars studding the sky just before and after. The blending of the colors and the shading are similarly artistically intentional. Everything has this sort of art-deco feel to it, but with clean lines and colors blending through geometric shapes rather than traditional ways. Reflections on water take the form of mario-like boxes or trapazoids. As the entire show is about a race of "crystal gems" the stylistic use of geometric patterns throughout is really cool to me.
Every trope is subverted.
What I mean by this is that Steven Universe does exactly the opposite thing of what you expect from most shows. My favorite example is the season 2 premier, "Full Disclosure." In it, Steven (still with a black eye after the fight that ended last season) realizes that his life IS dangerous, sees his (human) dad freak out, and realizes he wants to protect his (girl)friend Connie as well. He starts down the familiar trope of "cut her off and never see her again... for her own good" that happens in nearly every other movie/show/book. Spiderman did this for most of a movie. Batman did this for a half a movie. 8 minutes in, Connie (who he's only texted) tells him he has to say it to her face. So Steven emerges from hiding on the top of a piece of wrecked spacecraft. He stands up in sillouhette, then leaps down to the sand, landing in the superhero pose. He looks up, face leaving the shadows... In any other story, this would be that heart breaking bit where he stoically says some dumb lie about why they must split up, and we have to wait half a season or more for the protagonist to come to his senses. Steven Universe? Nope! He's crying... balling his eyes out, snot running from his nose. "I still want to be friends!" And in the two minutes remaining, both Steven and Connie explain everything about why they did what they did... how he wants to protect her, and she, how she is of COURSE worried, but that means she cares and can't help it. They resolve in 5 minutes what superhero movies typically take an entire trilogy to do. And that's just one single instance.
In other times, fights matter. Characters hurt one another, and it takes weeks for them to reconcile. Steven's dad loves him, and is a "cool dad" but also worries and frets and is a REAL dad in the way he treats his son. Steven's dad (Greg) talks about his romance with Rose (Steven's mom) and we see how it was crazy for both of them. Neither knew what was going on. Other characters (Pearl) were jealous. Everything you ever expect from normal movies and TV goes out the window, and instead, you see something far more realistic, even if it is about magic alien women fighting monsters.
Steven is a genuine optimist.
This is my favorite thing about the show. Steven is a true optimist. He's not naive (generally.) He knows the world is dangerous. He knows people die, friendships end, and sometimes the good guys lose. But he doesn't ACT like it. He always sees the best in people. Even Onion, the weird kid that steals his food and makes creepy shrines to action figures. Steven genuinely cares about everyone, and truly believes there's a way for them all to be happy. In any other story, a character that optimistic would be, at best, someone set up for a fall, and more typically, just the comic relief. The show plays it so that, at first, Steven seems exactly that... comic relief. But in the end, he saves the day time and time again by simply being himself. By being nice, talking first and only fighting when needed. It's everything I love about MLP (read: redemption) but written in a way that's far less contrived and far more convincing. Steven wins not because "the good guys always win," but because he is actually and truly a good guy, and the stories in Steven Universe paint an amazing picture of why that matters far, far more than any tactic, weapon, or army.
I'm glad I wrote Three Wishes some time ago. If I was writing it today, I'm pretty sure the chapter I titled "Tibi Ipsi Esto Fidelis" (To Thine Own Self Be True) would've instead been some convoluted psuedo-latin reference to Steven Universe. Because everything I tried to capture in Sweetie Belle's attitude and approach to life is done just so much better by this fat kid with a crystal belly-button. 
Darn right!
I consider SU a part of the same wave of cartoons as FiM, but as it came on the scene three years later, it was able to take advantage of 21st-century technology and tell its story in a way it couldn't have before. FiM's limitations, I believe, come from being one-half a product of 20th-century thinking by corporate executives, who tend to be risk-averse (you'd be risk-averse too, if you were taking chances with that many millions of dollars).
And of course, as with FiM, there are no end of stories that can also be told by fan-authors. Such as, say, me.
Don't forget the bomb "fusion" of musical styles.
I haven't analyzed why, but I and a lot of other authors have a lot harder time writing Steven universe fanfiction though.
I'm glad that you're catching up! I'm also sad you're catching up because the you're gonna have to wait for new episodes like the rest of us.
I too enjoyed Gravity Falls and am still enjoying Steven
Have you read this minific of mine? It's quasi-relevant.
3991764
I think the main problem MLP has is that, unlike Steven Universe, it doesn't have a single "mom" or "dad". Faust created it, but three people have headed the show at various points, and everyone has skipped time with the show to do other things. As a result, it sometimes ends up more episodic, and it lacks the sort of holistic vision that SU has.
On the other hand, MLP got good at the very start. I feel like Steven Universe took far too long to hook me. I actually started watching it the first time and stopped ten episodes in because it just wasn't very interesting. The problem is that the show is kind of coy about what it is at first; it seems very episodic, and very random, but in reality those early episodes were setting up a ton of later plot points. That said, I do feel like a few of the early episodes are also amongst the weakest ones, with bizarre events that still feel kind of offbeat.
3992307
I think it is because Steven Universe is a continuous narrative, while My Little Pony is episodic in nature. As a result, it is the difference between trying to write another episode and trying to write a chapter of a book.
3992521 No, but I'll check it out soon!
3991764 3993767 Both good points. I agree with TD that having a single creative lead lets SU be a lot more coherent over the long run. More importantly, I think Cartoon Network (and it's partner, Adult Swim) are much better homes for doing creative experiments. You can try almost anything over there, as there's no huge pressure to succeed. MLP, on the other hand, got saddled with trying to jumpstart The Hub (which kinda failed) and like Horse Voice said, that lead to a lot of risk aversion.
3992365 I've been rationing the few remaining episodes of backlog as best as I can. I actually wrote this blog to stop myself from watching "just one more" episode.
3992515 I'm really going to have to write another one of these on Gravity Falls, because it is at least as amazing, if not more so, but for so many OTHER reasons.
3992307 3993769 I'm going to disagree with TD here. There's plenty of room for "episodic" stuff in SU. Even in the show, Steven does a lot of "side quests" with various townsfolk and the like, which don't directly relate to the main arcs. So no, I don't think that's why it's hard to write fanfic. For me, it's two reasons.
First, SU is doing what it sets out to do very, very well. It's clear the show's story is going somewhere and knows what its doing, so we're mostly content to simply wait and see what that is. MLP however, well... it kinda falls short of the mark a lot of times. There are tons of great elements in MLP (no pun intended) but they often fail to provide a satisfying narrative for many of us older viewers. There's hardly an MLP episode I watch where I'm not thinking "wow, I really wish this had happened instead" or even "No, that character would never do that... she'd say this instead!" It's those thoughts of "I can make this better" that, at least to me, lead to great fanfiction potential. Steven Universe is already pretty darn good though. There are precious few points where I can legitimately say "I could write that better" and still have it feel/be a real SU story.
The second reason, is that Steven Universe isn't nearly as big of a universe. Or rather, it is, but it's well defined and solid. It's not nearly as open and unbound. What I mean is that MLP gives us a setting where all the edges are fuzzy and lots of stuff is undefined. We don't know what's one continent over. We have no idea what's in the mountains between Canterlot and Manehatten. The Equestrian map, and by extension, the world of Equestria itself is full of "Here there be dragons" and is a setting where that can be absolutely literal. I can tell a story about almost anything, from spaceships to viking caribou, from fashion show catwalks to undersea temples, and it can still legitimately fit in the world of MLP. For Steven Universe, we're almost entirely constrained to the modern, real world of Earth, save in Steven and the Gems themselves. Yes, the larger universe is out there and full of potential, but as we've seen barely a glimpse of anything beyond earth, writing about other planets would be less "fanfiction" and more blatant speculation.
That's not to say that one can't write good SU fanfiction, but it has to fit in a pretty narrow range to feel like it's really Steven Universe, which means very few ideas (and styles of writing) are likely to work. MLP just leaves so much more room for diverse stories of every type.