![]() Amethyst was made to be a soldier in an intergalactic war waged by the Gem Homeworld against a renegade band of Gems calling themselves the Crystal Gems. And the way each character recovers represents a different lesson necessary for those who wish to love themselves and others.įor Amethyst, the key to growth is accepting affection and loving herself as she is. Over the next hour and change, they’re forced to relive that development in order to recover their memories and powers after Spinel, a dangerous new foe traumatized after eons spent in an abusive friendship with Steven’s mother, employs a strange weapon, the Rejuvinator, to return them back to, in effect, their factory settings. The show’s five seasons are neatly summarized in an early musical number, “ Happily Ever After,” detailing not only the series arc but, as it is equally important, each of the four main characters’ development over the course of the series. The Steven Universe movie - which premiered on Labor Day and will run an encore presentation on September 7 - serves as a sort of series-in-miniature, encapsulating the themes Sugar’s show has so well established. He does so by harnessing and encouraging the very thing that’s scariest about the act of loving and the process of trauma recovery: change. By the time the movie begins, all of Steven’s friends and family - especially the three Gems closest to Steven, his aunts-cum-best-friends Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl - have grown into balanced beings who know how to love and accept themselves and those they care about.Īnd Steven, the half-human, half-Gem son of a mysterious, powerful, revered, and very imperfect late mother, has learned from, and helped, all of them. The series is packed with femme-coded nonbinary characters in various stages of emotional development and a wide range of relationships: platonic and romantic, abusive and supportive, unequal and equal. ![]() Still, perhaps no cartoon has explored this theme with the same honesty, insistence, and complexity as Steven Universe, the first show in Cartoon Network’s history to be created solely by a woman, let alone one who identifies as nonbinary. This isn’t exactly untrod territory for children’s or all-ages animation. Over the course of five seasons, creator Rebecca Sugar’s motley cast of human beings and alien Gems learns many lessons, but paramount among them is this: Growth comes from choosing to confront one’s traumatic experiences in spite of hardships and is founded on self-acceptance and healthy relationships built on empathy and mutual support. Steven Universe: The Movie, like the Cartoon Network series that precedes it, is a user’s manual for performing this work, and a beautifully jewel-toned, musically ambitious, plot-driven manual at that. To care for friends and family and partners and self in spite of fights and failings and trauma and change - that’s what’s hard, and that’s what hurts. Human beings: We like to wallow!Įxcept that’s not quite it, is it? What really hurts isn’t love but loving, and all the small things that challenge it. Listen to Joni Mitchell’s Blue and try not to cry. ![]() Nicole Krauss’s novel The History of Love? Whew. The romantic flings and failures of Fleabag? Ouch. It’s a message regurgitated regularly by popular media in all formats. “Love hurts,” wails the Scottish rock singer Dan McCafferty in Nazareth’s famous cover of the Everly Brothers tune of the same name. Spoilers for Steven Universe and Steven Universe: The Movie below.
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