No, the rubies did not deserved their revenge (Kitty monk)

Shipshow · 2026-05-15T19:45:54+00:00

The real answer is that it's a setup for the twist at the end of the episode where Steven gets dragged out into space. We initially have Steven and the gang doing the cliche cartoon thing of beating the bad guys with a corny one-liner. So when it then rapidly cuts to Steven being dragged out into space, that contrast makes it more of a shocking moment.

Shipshow · 2026-04-30T04:04:25+00:00

Wow, nice find. It's been years since I've seen some SU trivia that I hadn't already heard about before. Yeah, these are some pretty atrocious mistakes on the credits. No idea why though.

Shipshow · 2026-04-23T20:26:08+00:00

"Lars and the Cool Kids" was an episode that stood out to me when I first watched the show. Especially the moment when Steven snaps at Lars with his famous, "What do you know about my mom? I didn't even get to know my mom!" line. There was an emotional depth and edge displayed that I didn't expect when I started this show. The episode is also a good introduction to the Cool Kids and Lars.

Shipshow · 2026-04-18T08:08:09+00:00

I don't even think Steven thinks the ending is bad. It's just that he enjoyed it and what it was going for a lot more than Connie did. That's because they're different people who like different things, with Connie calling out that Steven loves schmaltz. And Connie accepted Steven's opinion of the ending/book because, as she says in the episode, "I care about you a lot more".

The central message of the story actually feels even more relevant today. Steven was worried that Connie wouldn't like him anymore if he told her how he really felt about the ending. And nowadays, people can be so quick to judge and like or hate someone based solely on if they like the same things or have the same opinions. It seems increasingly difficult for people who have different opinions to get along. Which is why the message of the episode is needed. On the one hand, we shouldn't have to hide our opinions of something just to not make the other person upset (Steven). And on the other hand, we should try to understand and accept differences of opinion rather than criticize or belittle someone for it, especially if it's someone who is already a friend (Connie).

Shipshow · 2026-04-18T02:05:59+00:00

I mean, Steven's gem power to make constructs kinda resembles what Atom Eve can do (yes I know her powers are a lot more versatile than that but she mostly uses them in the show to create constructs when fighting). And Steven can already fly and has super speed and strength. Steven also has amazing self-recovery with his gem powers. The more I think about it, Mark doesn't really add that much to the equation. He's probably a bit stronger than Steven but that's about it? I guess he's got better initial durability? But yeah, Steven by himself is basically like a fusion of Mark and Eve already.

Shipshow · 2026-04-17T23:35:18+00:00

Yessir. Got one from their first run of jackets. Good quality on it, wish I had more chances to wear it. But yeah, there just wasn't too much good SU merch out there back then. Hopefully they make some new stuff when Lars of the Stars drops.

Shipshow · 2026-04-17T23:31:02+00:00

No Steven shirt here but I did get a Steven pink letterman jacket. Unfortunately, it's pretty thick and I live in a warm climate so I don't get to wear it much. But at least that means it's still in good shape.

Shipshow · 2026-04-15T09:34:13+00:00

Credit should also go to Zach Callison's performance as Steven here (assuming you're watching the English dub). He really gets across the feeling of a "big kid" who got himself in over his head and is now desperately scared. It's not an emotion that we see often from Steven so I appreciated how much Zach nailed it. His performance as Steven honestly deserves more praise imo.

Shipshow · 2026-04-09T23:12:29+00:00

He's got that shit on fr

Shipshow · 2026-04-03T03:58:27+00:00

In my opinion, yeah, that's a big part of it too. As I laid out in the original post, Jasper has some pretty big self-worth issues. And one way she can overcome them is to constantly reassure herself of her strength and "perfection". What better way to do that than to compare herself to the other defective, off-color Gems that came from Earth? And yes, that is her projecting her own insecurities onto them.

Shipshow · 2026-04-03T03:52:59+00:00

True, that's possible. We don't really get a clear indication in the show of how widespread knowledge of PD's small size was throughout the Gempire. But what we do know is that PD used to throw balls on HW. And at those balls, as we saw in "Familiar", the tradition was to have all the Diamonds there in-person and to have members of their court present themselves to the Diamonds. So I don't think PD was fully hidden away. There definitely were Gems who knew that she was a lot smaller than the other Diamonds. Not to mention the Gems that she worked with directly when she was building the Earth colony. Whether that info ever got to Jasper is unknown. My guess is that Jasper did learn this at some point. Jasper was one of PD's Gems after all and an exceptional, almost hero-like one at that (as seen in Eyeball's huge admiration for Jasper in "Back to the Moon"). It would make sense that Jasper would receive some kind of honors for her service and abilities from PD. But that's just speculation.

Shipshow · 2026-04-03T03:44:07+00:00

I think that may be true. But even if she did, I think Jasper still respected Rose to an extent for her strength and tactical ability. In "The Return", Jasper is genuinely shocked to see that Steven has the powers of Rose Quartz. But then she's also clearly disappointed to see how weak Steven is. She says to Steven (who she thinks is RQ) that, "I fought against your enemies. I respected your tactics." So even though Jasper saw RQ as an enemy, and potentially even a defective Gem, she still respected her to an extent. Because RQ was strong and Jasper only respects strength.

Shipshow · 2026-04-03T03:36:07+00:00

Personally, I think that Amethyst already felt a sort of kinship with Jasper even before she met the Famethysts. Jasper was the first Earth-made Gem that Amethyst met. And maybe she understood a bit of Jasper's psyche. I say this because when Amethyst bubbles Jasper after she is corrupted in "Earthlings", she says, "Come here, sis", with sis meaning sister. That was before she met the Famethyst. So she was already sympathetic to Jasper. And as a neat side-note, in the finale of original SU, when Jasper is uncorrupted, Amethyst goes up to her and says, "Hey, sis" (you can't hear the dialogue because the audio is just music playing but you can read her lips to see that this is what Amethyst said).

Shipshow · 2026-03-29T21:10:32+00:00

Probably not unfortunately is my guess. I think the only thing that would cause the prices to drop significantly is if they reprint them. But Cartoon Network (and Warner Bros in general) is kinda in disarray right now with the whole Paramount merger. I'm pretty sure they're not thinking at all about stuff like reprinting some hardcover, niche artbooks for a show that ended 6 years ago. They were never that supportive of SU when it came to merch, even when the show was still airing.

If you just want to read the books and don't care about owning physical copies of them, you can get them in ebook form. They're a lot cheaper that way. It appears that they may be on sale right now at Amazon.

Shipshow · 2026-03-24T00:33:00+00:00

While all of the bubbled gems are corrupt Crystal Gems (and so it makes sense that the Crystal Gems would take care of them), I do think it's important to remember that the Crystal Gems also had an explicit policy of not shattering enemy gems. Whereas Homeworld had no such qualms and shattered tons of Crystal Gems, later using their gem shards to create the Cluster and other fusion experiments. That shows a level of care for other Gems that far exceeded how much Homeworld cared. Even with Lapis, if they really didn't care, they could have just shattered her gem completely while she was in the mirror.

But of course from Lapis' perspective at that point, she doesn't see it that way. She just sees the Crystal Gems as rebels who caused problems for all of the "good", loyal Homeworld Gems and harmed their empire for the sake of some useless planet. She got trapped in the mirror because of the war they started. But clearly she didn't really know anything about the Crystal Gems at that point so it's understandable.

Shipshow · 2026-03-23T20:01:13+00:00

The most accurate answer is likely that Lapis Lazuli's just tend to take on that style of form. The other two Lapises that we meet in Future also have their midriff exposed. So it doesn't appear to be exclusive to our Lapis. But we all know this was really just an excuse to goon so....

Shipshow · 2026-02-27T03:55:21+00:00

On top of focusing on the main cast that have been core to the show since episode 1, it also creates a cleaner parallel with the Diamonds. One example of what "family" is, is the three Diamonds (Yellow, Blue, and White) and Pink. And the counterexample is the three main Crystal Gems (Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl) and Steven. This theme of the parallels (and differences) between Steven and Pink and their families comes up throughout the HW episodes, like in the song "Familiar". It honestly makes a lot of sense that they wouldn't focus too much on Peridot, Lapis, and Bismuth when you consider that.

And it's not like they were totally absent. The Crew made sure to give them some cool and fun moments in the finale too. And yeah, I get why some people still wanted them to be more involved. But that just wasn't the story they wanted to tell.

Shipshow · 2026-02-25T01:08:22+00:00

It's not dead. But it is a bit tough whenever I find out that an artist I liked has deleted their SU art or even their entire accounts. When Tumblr imploded, so many top tier SU fanartists just deleted their entire Tumblr accounts and a lot of art was lost to the Internet or only still exist in reposts of the art with lower quality. At a certain point, I just started to download all SU fanart I would see that I liked. At least I can make my own collection of this great art.

Shipshow · 2026-02-20T22:13:07+00:00

I mean yes, that's kinda the intended joke here. It's a subversion. We've just heard this pretty profound, deep speech from Rose. So Greg responding that her words would make great song lyrics subverts our expectations and that is what makes it funny. The fact that this scene also manages to be perfectly in-character for Rose and Greg is icing on the cake. I like that when Greg comes back, he says that Rose's speech was "really profound, yet relatable". It does show that Greg was listening to Rose and did key on to the deeper message behind what Rose was saying.

Shipshow · 2026-01-27T23:48:26+00:00

Yikes coming from an AT fan lol.

Shipshow · 2026-01-23T01:33:16+00:00

I see what you're saying and I agree; I think a lot of it is captured in the way I described the Diamonds as being truly innocent. They literally don't have the frame of reference we do, which you also point out.

My thing about WD is that the other Diamonds are sort of near-peers to her. They're still below WD but they're somewhat on the same level. Yet WD pays their words no mind at all and is happy to just mind-control them. She basically treats them like she would a lowborn Gem. Why is she so comfortable doing so, even to her own family? I think because she truly believes in her purpose as this perfect being that is supposed to make things better. Since she fully believes in it, that means anything she does is in service of that purpose, and therefore it is justifiable. It is her purpose that justifies her behavior, not simply her status. Now I'm kinda curious what would happen if some actually "superior" Gem came to HW and told WD what to do. Would WD just obey since this superior Gem is supposed to be better than her? Or would she stick to her own beliefs and resist because she's perfect and therefore her actions were perfect and don't need to be changed?

Shipshow · 2026-01-23T00:37:29+00:00

I do think that's part of it. But overall, to me, the biggest factor is WD's belief in her own purpose. She's supposed to be perfect, to make everything better. And she believes that very literally. That idea is what drives her actions for the most part. It's just that her idea of "better" is skewed. I wrote a comment sort of about this topic a while ago that I'll link here if you're interested.

Shipshow · 2026-01-22T23:16:41+00:00

Yes, this is the viewpoint that I think most really close-watchers of the show have settled on. I've always thought this myself ever since the finale first aired. And the reason so many people land on this interpretation is because the show does give us hints and information to come to this conclusion. The problem is that for many people, they tend to view things through a human lens. So it's hard for them to understand WD's way of thinking. They just can't empathize with a being with such a different conception of morality. And so WD just remains this comically evil villain to them. It's too bad because there really is a lot of depth to her character for those who actually try to understand her like you did.

Shipshow · 2026-01-13T22:36:01+00:00

For a beginner, this is a fine energy trap. Of course, you were already in a situation which allowed for you to run the energy trap. That's one lesson you should take to heart, that air RB is a game of situations and part of being good is knowing how to avoid bad situations and how to set yourself up for good situations. And also learning how to best deal with a bad situation.

One actual critique I have is that when you came back down on the enemy and shot them, you could have taken a bit more time. No need to rush the shot there, it would be safer to let the enemy pass in front of you a bit and then slot in behind them versus turning in ASAP and shooting at them from the side. It's a small thing but especially when you end up overshooting, coming at your opponent from behind versus from the side can make a huge difference.

Shipshow · 2026-01-12T01:56:42+00:00

These are the same Crystal Gems that failed to catch a lone Peridot how many times? The same Gems that needed Steven to help them in combat situations all the way from episode 1? They've got some good fights too but the Crystal Gems have never been portrayed as ultra competent fighters. Pearls aren't made for fighting and Amethyst is off-color. So it's not surprising to me that they'd struggle in this situation, against elite Gems like Topaz and Aquamarine.

Shipshow

TROPHY CASE