Steven Universe Shrine

How I got into SU

About a year into community college I broke up with my highschool sweetheart. I had dated her for like 4 years and it was really messing with my head to see just how much of my personality had been her. The parts that hadn't been defined by her were defined by the toxic masculinity I had been surrounded by. I kinda realized that I was a peice of shit. I knew I wanted to be different and wasn't really sure how to go about doing that. So I looked online.

I had determined at that point that I was going to be a writer, and most of what I liked to do was learn how stories worked and what made them good. I had bought a copy of "Story: Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting" by Robert McKee and was reading it when I first saw fanart on Tumblr about the Garnet plot twist. It piqued my interest, so I gave the series a watch, and in the first season I felt like the show was a bit meandery, but when I got to "Ocean Gem"/"Mirror Gem" I realized I was watching something amazing. After that I was hooked.

Now looking back at the first season, with an understanding of how an Inciting Incident is handled, I see what they were doing. Steven Universe is a slow but very intense burn a lot of the time, and that slowness made it a little easier to analyze what the show was doing and how it was working. It helped that the community around the show was constantly making analysis videos about the show, which made me realize just how much this show cared about the details. It was an excellent example of what McKee meant by "Author, Authority, Authenticity." Where the world is so fleshed out that you can just trust that the little things your noticing are clues, and not continuity errors."