I hope Lily has grown since making this video, but the Damage it has done still needs to be corrected for. Lily has a pretty bad track record of attacking and misrepresenting anyone who criticizes her, so again, I hope she has grown and doesn't go nuclear. Still, making this video was a risk- so please support me if you can! Like, comment, and share!
About the gay wedding, Sugar did two amazing things to break how the show was being adapted in homophobic countries: First was putting Ruby on a dress. In Russia, Ruby was being dubbed as male so their relationship would turn heterossexual, and having Ruby in dress now meant that those places would have to have a "man" using a dress without it being a joke or the "man" being femme the rest of the time. And second, having the Diamonds crash the wedding meant that now the episode couldn't be cut off, because the next one started at the exact end of this one. Well played, Sugar, well played :D
Ugh, listening to the "Pearl is a slave" thing is so infuriating. Literally the song that brings her back in the movie is "Let's be independent together".
@@gh0stward0o0 Its even worse because she DID make a writing advice thread on twitter a couple of years ago and it is the WORST tips and advice you'll ever hear. It was just HER preferences. If she likes certain tropes, its the best, if she dislikes it, its bad and you should be in jail for writing it.
To be fair, on her tumblr she's also trashed the music as being done by "a borderline r*tard and a genderspecial", referring to Aivi and Serasshu, who are a queer couple (Aivi is nonbinary, Serasshu is neurodivergent, AMAB and agender). So sometimes she DOES expand her hatred to others.
Once saw Discord drama where someone mentioned being excited for the SU movie, and someone else replied "uuh SU is nazi propaganda ://" and when everyone else was like "what the FUCK are you talking about" the person doubled down and kept linking Lily's video as their source. The damage of that video is insaneee lol
Lily calling everything that doesnt include the space fascists filler, and calling Garnet's emotional split filler, then saying that Garnet is tossed to the side as a character, THEN saying that the conclusion to her emotional split was great until the space fascists came in is truly beyond parody.
The point about Pearl and Rose/Pink’s relationship. I’ve seen some people be like “How could she have picked Greg over Pearl? They had so much history, Pearl was willing to die for her, etc” but that’s the thing. Pearl _idolized_ Rose/Pink, who was understandably uncomfortable with being put on that pedestal, and had told Pearl that she didn’t want to be treated like that. Greg treated her like an equal from the beginning, even almost forgetting that she wasn’t another human.
Yes! This is what the so-called "Nice Guys" don't get; most women don't want to be put on a pedestal & "treated like a princess", & it's not because we want to be "treated like crap" instead; it's because we want to be treated like PEOPLE. I want to be cherished & respected & supported, but not worshipped.
Its also a good kids lesson, sometimes you can choose not to reciprocate a another persons love if its not right for you. I love how rose/pearl is not the ultimate way a relationship could be and is the right way to love someone, we choose who we want to be with not the other way around.
This reminds me of THAT duo from darling in the franx with the nice girl who abandons her friend and the guy who's basically forced to ignore how terrible she did him.
This is a problem I’ve seen in the anime rezero, the fans raged when the mc picked emilia over rem. Their reasoning was “she saved him time and time again, took care of you, and loved you” when acts of service do not entitle you to someone’s love. Subaru is not required to pick rem because she does stuff for him, rose does not have to pick pearl because pearl does a ton for her, relationships and love are not transactional, it is creepy as hell to hear so many people think you choose someone based on how much they do for you
What really irks me about Lily and her criticism is that she has the most "damned if you do, damned if you don't" mentality I've ever seen. She basically wants to watch characters who are flat, one note NPCs because she can't go for 4 seconds without screeching that a character is horrible for daring to be flawed, but then turns around and screeches that a character is horrible if they're not perfectly multi-faceded and full of story. Sooo.... Which is it? Do you want an NPC or do you want an actual character?
Now that you _mention_ it... It's weird. So many of her "criticisms" (I use this loosely) come from a place that seriously makes you wonder "Have you ever even seen... _stuff?_ " but at the same time they feel like they're from someone who has (if anything) seen _too much_ stuff.
@@NintendoMeister2260 And 100% of it boils down to "Cause I said so." Remember her "simple writing tips" where it was mostly "Don't do this because you're a bad person if you do" ?
She likes characters she likes and shits on everything else. When you realize that her criticism is little more than pointless ranting and unprofessional intangible opinions trusted at you in an aggressive Gish gallop, it's obvious she's not worth listening to or taking seriously.
Personally, I love the fact that Rose goes from being seen as this perfect, loving, selfless character only to be revealed as a flawed, and frankly problematic person. It's devastatingly realistic, beautifully nuanced and elevates the show greatly imo
Yeah, I remember someone saying that the thing about Rose was that we saw her character arc in reverse, and that that seriously affected how the audience saw her.
it’s kinda like learning about people irl. At first someone you admire may seem like they could do no wrong but eventually you learn they’re flawed too. I think her character was very well done!
yessss this, its kind of like growing up and idealizing your parents just to slowly find out over time that they're as flawed as you and never fully met the expectations you held them to, steven kind of does this with greg in one of the future episodes too. i really like that honesty and nuance about recognizing how people you love will never be purely "good" or "bad", it's being both that makes them people in the first place
34:07 Okay, so this criticism from Lily has bothered me for YEARS because it so clearly misinterprets Steven's relationship with violence. Steven being excited and gleeful with violence was only early in the show because he thought it was cool and he only ever fought against literal monsters. Once REAL violence started affecting Steven and his loved ones ( Steven The Sword Fighter, ENTIRE JAILBREAK ARC), his entire perception of violence changes. This is not inconsistent writing like she claims, it's literally the most blatant example of subtle character development throughout the show and she completely misses it. By "Bismuth" Steven has been severely negatively affected by violence and does not view it as he once did, hence why he's uncomfortable.
Agreed. It's like trying to condemn someone for being a vegetarian because they ate meat as a child, and said they liked it. They had to come to that realization themselves. No one starts out saying "I don't think eating meat is right." They see how animals are killed and decide they don't want to support that. They make that conscious decision that their desire to become vegetarian outweighs their thought that hamburgers are tasty. They can still remember that they thought hamburgers were tasty, while still obstaining from eating them. Note: This is not me preaching about the "evils of meat eating". I'm just making a comparison to show how stupid it is to condemn Steven for being excited about violence as a kid, and then deciding later to be a pacifist.
Literally there's a lot of symbolism about why steven has a shield rather than a sword or other weapons, he prefers to protect rather than attack, and the audience then asks why he doesn't go berserk, like, dude... Almost every "hero story goes like that give it a rest
@@manumooo9071 and contrary to what the Anti-Steven memes to this day insinuate, Steven is perfectly capable of fighting back and using his shield in a combative manner. Remember the shield gauntlets he made in The Movie?
@@manumooo9071 I also noticed this especially when it came to Rose's sword. To my recollection, Steven never actually wields the sword in the show. In face, the only one other than Rose/Pink Diamond to actively wield it is Connie, who was presumably given the sword by Steven. Note: I could be wrong about this it's been awhile since I've seen the show. But I'm pretty sure Steven never uses the sword in combat.
That, and what would shattering the Diamonds achieve? Suppose he did shatter them. Then what? There would be a power vacuum. Steven and the Crystal Gems start by changing the culture of strict hierarchies and caste systems first, THEN he uses his authority as Pink Diamond (something he only learned later on) to be granted an air of authority. He shows White Diamond that no matter how much you try, no authority will be able to control everyone.
Lily constantly insisting that Rebecca does not know what she's writing about is so sinister to me. How cruel to say that about someone that has clearly put years of her life into creating meaningful artwork. Creating a cartoon is no small thing, and Rebecca earned the credentials to make her own show. Acting like she's just some idiot that walked into a writers room is just wrong.
I saw Rebecca Sugar at the Animation Festival of Annecy 2019. They were answering questions to a small audience and her husband, Ian Jones-Quartney, was there as well. Rebecca was very sweet and gracious with everyone. The last question someone asked was “what do you think about the criticisms towards the show and certain haters?” And Rebecca started to get emotional, saying she didn’t understand certain claims and as she started to stutter, Ian Took the microphone and said with a slightly angry tone: “this show is about accepting others and Kindness, if some can’t understand that is really on them” he started comforting rebecca and brought her out of the room and the meeting ended there. I’m pretty sure they were talking about Lily The Jerk and her followers, and Ian was clearly mad at them for being so cruel towards Rebecca.
The fact that she really said all those disrespectful shit about lapis, stevonnie and rebecca and still had the gut to scream about how sexualized stevonnie is literally so embrassing. like mf do YOU have eyes 😭😭??
Lily has been caught looking at 3D, photorealistic loli, shotacon and toddlercon on Sankaku Complex, so my guess is yes, she does, and what she saw, she thought wasn't hot enough.
@@morganqorishchi8181adding to that, she literally co-wrote Stockholm. A disturbing fanfic that involves children and smut. Just gross. Lily does not deserve a platform.
@@SphericalNervousSystemshe also allegedly would molest her younger sister and partially based Stockholm off of the disgusting shit she wanted to do to her
Lily referring to arcs being repeatedly "abandoned" and then mentioning the episode they come back in is actually hilarious. it's not abandoned if it comes back in a later episode. An arc doesn't have to be explored in every single episode for it to remain an important thing to a character, then it wouldn't really be an arc.
@@animeotaku307 even then there is no written rule that either have to be constant in storytelling. Its okay to take breaks from story and character arcs. Shakespeare was famous for it. He'd write an emotionally intense scene and then open the next scene with a raunchy joke to break the tension. Sometimes arcs need interuption. Sometimes character development has to happen before plot development. Sometimes the creators are tired and need a fun episode to animate in between the really important plot heavy ones to make the work managable.
Creating "throws and catches" of setups and payoffs in your story is like, the basic foundation of engaging long-term writing. who seriously sees a previously established plot point come back and be paid off and considers the fact that it did that _inconsistent?_ That's a telltale mark of a writer paying attention to the story they're crafting!
except that starting an arc and then dropping it for a while would have been considered abandoning it. lily is from a generation, i think, of pre internet binging. or that's the sense i get. back when you got one or two episodes of a show per week. so introducing an arc and then not mentioning it for 8 episodes ... and then you consider the hiatuses that steven universe experienced and yes abandoning is an appropriate word to use here.
@@kitrana That kind of depends on the arc. For example with The Test, that's inherently something that has to come up later by nature of Steven needing to grow as a character before he discovers that episode 3 was a test. Other arcs, like Garnet being (rightfully) upset with Pearl for the Sardonyx situation, persist and are present between back-to-back episodes, because that's a very active plot point. I see your point for some things like the events of Warp Tour not being addressed in the following episode at all (that drove me a bit nuts also) but by and large the arcs that get left on hold between their relevant episodes do so because it's fairly natural for them not to follow up immediately.
I find "Rose just wanted to have a baby" to be the most interesting possible answer, honestly, because it really...humanizes her, for lack of a better term. Rose Quartz is spoken of like a myth or a legend throughout a lot of the show, so of course Steven, and the audience, expects some sort of complicated reason for his existence, some sort of plot or plan or meaning that would align with her mythical status. But there was no plot, no plan. Rose didn't create him for some grand purpose. Despite all of the great and terrible things she's done, she wasn't some distant mythological figure. She was just another Gem, just a person who wanted a baby.
EXACTLY, that, and it makes steven more relatable to the viewer as a lot of people were born for that exact reason, their parents just wanted a kid. very rarely do parents have this huge overarching plan when deciding to have a kid. it's realistic because it shows that steven, just like us, doesn't have a greater meaning behind his existence. his purpose in life is to just live it.
Also strongly plays into the themes of Pink Diamond’s revolution of rejecting some kind of necessity and reason for doing anything in favor of just doing what makes you happy. Rose didn’t sacrifice herself to make a half human half gem child that would save Earth, she just wanted to have a kid cuz she heard about it from Greg and thought it was beautiful and worthwhile.
Weird how lily ignores how rose adores humanity’s ability to choose what they become and do in comparison to gems being made for a purpose and only doing that purpose, it’d completely go against roses beliefs, what she admired about humans, and the whole reason she had Steven if he was made to serve a purpose or if he was supposed to be something specific. This episode also literally comes back up when Steven returns to roses room and starts a storm while yelling at a fake rose over whether she just had him so she could avoid her problems and have him deal with it
@@zero_55555 honestly, that message resonates with me and i never even got into watching steven universe. just the idea of coming into existence for no particular reason relates to me and probably a lot of other people
honestly i dont even think lapis has that many writing flaws. she's a very honest portrayal of the kind of disordered behavior and disordered interpersonal relationships that are born out of complex post traumatic stress disorder. that includes taking on abrasive, violent, argumentative, and angry traits as forms of defense and self isolation. she spent months relying on only her own anger to keep the one person she views as having helped her safe. of course shes going to be an abrasive asshole when she comes out of that. thats who she needed to be to do what she needed to do for steven
Most the flaws for me is how she kinda gets shafted in the later half of the story. Like she doesn't do much then suddenly she's back for a thing then she's gone again. Just Wish she was integrated a bit better
For me, she just became kind of boring But it didn't help that Peridot was my favourite 😂 And also the moment in the show where they were all crying because of Blue Diamond's powers or something and Lapid didn't cry because oooh she felt worse That was hands down the stupidest moment in the show for me 😂 I'm sorry but that's the moment where I stopped taking the shoe seriously. People point out the ending where Steven easily beat White Diamond in an argument but the Lapis moment was the worst one for me
@@HidinginPrivate I think she was meant to have a greater role in the series but how much we lost when CN decided not to renew the series is the worst thing about SU.
They clearly show Lapis trying to fly away and being stopped by Jasper grabbing her and holding her down. Framing Jasper as the sole victim is pretty disgusting. Especially when this scene was as close to something looking rapey in a kids show that you can possibly get
dude right!!! people gloss over this detail all the time😭flying away was the first thing she tried to do and had jasper not grabbed her malachite wouldn't have happened in the first place
@@petergriffinfortnite69 Also, I know Jasper said "come on, just say yes" but since she already stopped Lapis from getting away, am I right that the implication is that Lapis really wasn't getting the option of saying no even though this wasn't explicitly said? That was the vibe I was getting from that scene
@@thevarietychannelofyoutube4769yeah yeah I'm yyehyeah d yeah I'm pretty sure the way it was supposed to come off was dubious consent. "technically" jasper got consent, but she had to force it out of lapis (and she tries to manipulate her like "didnt these people use you? dont you want to hurt them? ooo you want revenge so bad" like putting words in her mouth based off of what she knows about lapis's history) lapis doesn't exactly jump for joy at the thought of fusing w jasper, she responds with bewilderment and based on visual context clues she feels cornered. she of all people knows what homeworld can do to her, she got trapped in a mirror for thousands of years by them lol, and jasper is just gonna keep her from running away again--and she has to concentrate to use her water powers, obviously jasper isnt gonna let her do that either--so she goes basically with the last resort
Lily has two very independent ideas; One: Slavery is a very real thing on Homeworld and that is bad. Two: Rose Quartz is a bad person for trying to liberate Homeworld.
@@HuxtableK im sorry, when has Rose ever wanted to play both sides? What she wants, and what Homeworld wants, are fundamentally incompatable. Has it not occured to you that maybe a character can learn to grow and appreciate a world they thought little of? Can a character not fall in love and draw the courage to fight what she used to grow up believing? Rose was never supposed to be perfect, but her fight for Earth is very much a genuine cause she believed in. Either you have the empathy of a sociopath, or you just listened to other critics talk about Rose.
The whole "puberty isnt instant" freakout Lily has is silly. Rebecca intended Stevonnie's arc partially to represent puberty, which in turn represents growing up. Lily claims that because Stevonnie already has the body of an adult that Rebecca's intent for the character is wrong. Sure, puberty is not instant, thats obvious. However, the point is that once puberty has affected a young person to the point of looking older/devoloping a more adult body, it can feel all too sudden when people start to treat them in ways they never thought they'd be treated. Its a metaphor for how fleeting childhood innocence feels, especially once it's lost. The fact that Lily misunderstood this is fascinating.
I can't tell you when I grew into my current body (my adult body, I guess), but I can tell you the first time I realised that people viewed me in a sexual light. I was 11 or 12. We just had swimming class and I had been held back because (unbeknownst to me at the time) I was feeling really insecure because I was getting daily comments back my body and how I looked. It was raining and because it was raining and my hair being wet, I let it hang down over my shoulders. One of my recurring bullies looked me up and down and asked me, "whose the father?" while referring to the fact that my shirt was wet around my chest. In that moment, I realised how I was viewed in my class, by other girls in my class, by people in my life. Again, I was 11 or 12, my bully was a few days older than me, so also 11 or 12 and she felt comfortable just sexualising me blatantly and with no regard. That instant still plays in my head over and over. Watching the episode where Stevonnie were just having fun together made me feel weird. Now, as an almost 22 year old, it's been almost a decade and it still hurts. I think that I saw myself in that episode, but I might never know. Even though I was not at all developed outside of being slightly ahead of the curve of development, I was blatantly commented on in the light of sex, of pregnancy, of a piece of meat rather than a person. Lily, being trans, might never have had that experience as a child, but I did. I feel with Stevonnie in a way that I can't explain. Being sexualised while a child is always going to be horrific and disturbing, but Lily can't see it from a child's perspective, probably because of her own fucked up history of being a sexual assaulter to a child
My thoughts are this- she likely is mad at her own lack of "female" puberty. Thus lashed out. I've been there myself and I'm just genderfluid. Also she did WHAT??
my #1 pet peeve in relation to steven universe discourse is the fact that it's managed to mindfuck people into thinking that the representation is "bad"
At this point in time basically anyone who talked about representation where the toxic tumblr users so people got turned of from representation because everyone advocating for it was a pretentious jackass trying to feel better about themselvs by helping some minority.
But no rep is better than bad rep. Bad rep is used to paint us as if we are deviants or some anomaly that just happened or it's glorifying abuse and toxic relationships(She-ra, SU, ect.) So yeah, I'd rather that these shows never fucking try and instead watch th owl house season 1 because it's just more wholesome.
Before you ask, yes, the "rep" in SU is garbage. If any of you actually watched Lily's video instead of jacking off to this dude's shitty editing, you'd know that Ruby and Sapphire are two of the best characters in the series because when they are separate, they are written insanely well. Notice I said, when they are separate because Sugar would much rather sideline Garner to all hell unless it's an episode about Fusion than to let Ruby and Sapphire out to be an actual relation. Telling the two newly wed "women"(Gems are monogender and uses she/her pronouns) that Steven pronounces them Garnet and not wives shows just how much metaphor Sugar is using to avoid saying the real thing. I do give her credit by making sure that the episode can't be censored due to the diamonds showing up during the last half. But also the diamonds showing up, trying to kill everyone and Steven calling them "family" is gross. No Steven, your real family is the individuals who aren't actively trying to kill you aka the people who's staying behind you.
The way Lily popularized painting Rebecca as a Nazi sympathizer is actually disgusting. Like an absolutely abhorrent way to talk about a queer Jewish person who wanted to write an escapist kid's story about how people have the ability to change their minds and atone for their bad deeds if only they were willing to listen to those they've harmed. Just gross, puts such a bad taste in my mouth.
Considering that Lily has a track record of controversies regarding the Stockholm fanfic that she's trying to hide as well as calling everyone an "abusers" for just disagreeing, then that's not surprised about the quality of her character. She's just unhinged and ill-tempered, yet not the brightest light bulb in the lampshade.
i don't like lily orchard, but you're absolutely wrong. 1. lily literally said rebecca ISN'T a nazi sympathizer 2. it's not her fault that typical twitter users see her as one 3. if she made a non jewish, hetero person look like a nazi sympathizer, that WOULDN'T be disgusting???
@@gamingtime468 1. just because she didn't say "Rebecca is a Nazi sympathizer" out loud that doesn't mean she didn't directly imply it through her words and portrayal and popularize that interpretation. That rhetoric was absolutely jumpstarted and encouraged by Lily. 2. As someone with a platform she has a responsibility to not spread blatant misinformation in order to degrade the reputation of someone else just because they made a show she doesn't like. 3. Of course it would still be disgusting if it happened to anyone and I never said otherwise, but for it to be aimed at someone who is already in a vulnerable demographic let alone a demographic that had been targeted and victimized by the holocaust is especially gross.
@@oMuStiiA yea and that's the thing. the things the diamonds did are literally the same stuff the Nazis did x 1000. the cluster and the off colors are proof that if someone can't fit the job their were made to do, there would be taken out. the same thing the Nazis did. so to sit there and say "oh there were just sad, you should forgive them" is disgusting. if someone said that "Oh Hitler was only increase and grow Germany" and brought up his dead brother when people bring up the holocaust. they would be called a Nazi sympathizer or straight up a Nazi.
All this review says to me is that Lily has absolutely NO media literacy. The bland, black and white idea that villains should be clear-cut, undeniably evil with no redeeming qualities, and that protagonists should be perfect, standup moral role models who make no mistakes. That forgiveness is a myth that should be relegated to petty preschool spats and that the only real solution to problems in the world is to kill the bad guys. She glazes over the characterization of the show’s cast and focuses only on the plot beats because she doesn’t understand them. She sees the multi-faceted, nuanced view of rose as confused because she can’t comprehend that a character could not fit into good or evil. Instead, she would rather have the most childish possible portrayal of the world. In Lily’s perfect world, Steven universe would play out as follows; The story opens clearly laying out the diamond’s villainous plans and intentions. Steven’s storyline follows him gaining more mastery of his powers until he is in the same level of the diamonds, thwarting their plots to increasing degrees and eliminating their minions in epic battle scenes, until the plot culminates in her ‘satisfying’ conclusion, where the diamond’s monologue maliciously, Steven slays them in his righteous anger, and the world is saved. She doesn’t understand nuance. She can’t comprehend any plot more complex than doom slayer. Everything she suggests is boring, and sucks all the intrigue, complex messages, and nuance out of the story. It’s pathetic
the thing is the whole thing with forgiving the diamonds is the only valid point here Because like yes forgiveness can exist, but theres a point where it becomes a copout and is a bizarre response to bad actions. Forgiveness also doesnt magically fix things and often puts more onus on the vicrim rather than the perpetrator. One cant just always "forgive" their brutal oppressors, and its not like that would do anything by itself The problem with su ending is that it wrote itself into a corner. It established a big bad, and leveraged white diamond into a way to lead the other diamonds into a path towards earned forgiveness and reconciliation. Oh, it said, to a point they are also forced into this by white diamond, they are also lost hurt ppl,thus this can be leveraged into taking them into our side But the problem with that is that it renders white diamond as the absolute villain and ideological center of the evil of the system. So now we have a problem. Theres nothing to leverage here. Either we kill what we ourselves wrote as the root of all evil, and violate the ideals and tone of the show, or we forgive and resolve the situation with a joke, which ends up looking bizzare and unearned because, again, this is the person established as the one absolute ruler responsible for everything, not just the product of a system but THE system. Essentially they wrote the diamonds and white diamond specifically too evil. It was established they commited genocides, destroyed planets making gems into literal objects etc, so then they have our protagonist defeat ultra space hitler with a joke , it feels unearned, and when he subsequently forgives em, bizarre and jarring, and the analogies with real life oppressive regimes deliberately cultivated in the show just engender thoughts like "so does this show think we should just forgive x genocidal maniac?". And again, how does the person whose been established as the supreme leader for centuries just... change their mind just like that this is the corner this show wrote itself into and couldnt find a satisfying answer. My solution by the way would be prison, just like how avatar the last airbender. That way you dont have a "just forgive ms eugenics genocide over here" and youd have the character available to do a more long term understanding and forgiveness thing
That's not really the point. It isn't that she doesn't GET nuance, it's that the show responds to people saying "Hey isn't it fucked up that someone literally made a zoo of sentient people" with "don't worry about it :)" To be fair, there are a lot of people in real life that we preform that sort of hand waving towards. For example, Abraham Lincoln wanted to send freed slaves to the American colony in Africa, Liberia, rather than have them live in the United States. Thing is, though, most of those people are from hundreds of years ago, and are not only long since dead, but lived in a completely different context to the one we live in now. To bring up the Lincoln thing again, one of the most common reasons against the liberation of American Slaves was a fear of a mass slave revolt like what happened in Haiti, and Lincoln, realizing that the freedom of the slaves was much more important than leaving them in bondage, was willing to send them away if they would be freed. Steven Universe does none of this. The show just says "Hey here's this good guy" in no uncertain terms and then shows them doing fucked up shit, gives no rational behind their actions, then moves on like it's all hunky-dory. We all think that the plan to deport slaves is fucked up, and will point that out as a flaw in Lincoln's character. Steven Universe says nothing about the Human Zoo, and actively tries to make it go away so that the character of Rose isn't as flawed.
@@boss_boy_ that’s just not true though, the point of the show is that rose is flawed. She’s seen in good terms from the point of view of characters that loved her, like Pearl, but we’re also directly exposed to her faults and wrongdoings. One of the major themes in the show is the trope of Steven being forced to pay back for his mother’s mistakes, and this is a negative thing.
@@Entlty007 I'll admit it's been a while since I watched the show, so maybe I'm remembering things wrong. Just to clarify, at the end of your reply you said "One of the major themes in the show is the trope of Steven being forced to pay back for his mother’s mistakes, and this is a negative thing." Can I ask what you meant by "and this is a negative thing." The way you worded it makes it sound like you're saying that the theme of Steven paying for Rose's sins is a bad thing, which doesn't sound right. Would you mind clearing things up for me?
What’s so frustrating is that she goes on and on about the negative traits of the character and how that makes them all terrible and poor characters. All the while ignoring that they were CALLED OUT BY OTHER CHARACTERS IN THE NARRATIVE! Pearl being overbearing, jealous, erratic? She’s called out by multiple characters multiple times and she learned to work through those traits! Rose was childish and secretive? It’s clear she was working on that up until Steven and then he went on to end that unquestioning worship of her memory. Steven is immature, annoying, and oblivious to his surroundings? Well, he’s a child and then he GROWS TF UP! Like Lily you can just say you have no media literacy and just keep it moving!
In addition to the Steven part, it's also a coming of age show. As a result, he's meant to be seen as occasionally obnoxious until the end of Season 1 when he gains more competence.
The insane thing Abt this is that Lily makes this argument (the character is called out in the narrative which is why it's okay that they're not always right) in a different show. She made this argument to say that Big Bang Theory wasn't sexist bcs whenever the dudes were shitty they'd get called out for it. (This is a debatable take, I don't recall enough of Big Bang Theory to really say 'yes' or 'no' to it..) Regardless of opinions on Big Bang Theory, she MADE THIS ARGUMENT, yet doesn't apply it to Steven Universe. It has bad faith written all over it, or at least a deep, deep lack of thought (I was a pretty big fan of Lily as a teen, yes it is very embarrassing with a pinch of hindsight)
This was the hardest parts of the video to go through. Pointing out how a character did a bad thing.. like yeah.. hello? Whats so bad about that, its not terrible writing
Video was fantastic! I'm very glad you took the time to do this two part series. Steven Universe is one of my favorite pieces of media and it was traumatic to see how easy it was for bad faith confident videos to take over the conversation around it and gaslight people into thinking it's worse than it was. The show was not perfect but it certainly wasn't as dangerous as they tried to push. Glad to know upon watching unbothered, new viewers can find the same value many others and I had when watching it live.
Yeah I think the biggest thing I was surprised by is after I watched it- it was just like...innocuous? Like it was good, I liked it- but I expected something to be more divisive? Thanks so much for the support both in sharing and supporting financially! It means a lot!
Lily Orchard is a horrible person who has abused everyone in her life in some way. Her painting Lapis fighting Jasper as abusive is hardcore projection. She expects her victims to give in, and if they don’t she labels them as abusive and tells all of their friends and family about how horrible they are. This video is so goddamn revealing I can’t believe she would post it.
THIS. I'm seeing that a ton of her SU critiques were her projecting her personal feelings onto the show. Like the part where she hated on one of Steven's character progressions, from going with the flow and demanding we have to fight the bad guys, to deescalating the situation with a non-violent approach seems like projection from her part too if you know about how aggressive of a person Lily is, and also remembering a time where she believed a way to stop bullying is to "just beat them up and punch them in the face." Her solution to a conflict is to cause violence is because she aggressive.
Something that stuck out to me was how she said something like "Being quiet and complacent in an abusive situation gets you abused more. You shouldn't be quiet, you should fight back." (I'm paraphrasing heavily because I'm not going to go back and rewatch the video it was from). There's already discourse about "good" victims versus "bad" and at the time of my own abuse I was just a tiny 11yo child and my abuser was my mother who got away with what she did for so long only because she was good at lying to people and she manipulated me into thinking I deserved it. And at the time of hearing what Lily said it really messed me up because I legitimately could not fight back. I wasn't even out of elementary school and I didn't even call what happened to me abuse until I was 15. It felt so victim-blamey and I hated myself for a long time for it. I was a child. A _lot_ of abuse survivors were just children.
@@randompromises1038 It is totally victim-blaming. I had a similar experience when I was getting bullied. When I would tell my close friends about the harassment I dealt with, I was always left with them questioning, "Well, why didn't you fight them back or something? They're only going to pick on you more if you don't do anything." I know how you feel about those types of judgment messing you up because they certainly did to me. I felt like I shouldn't complain because I didn't do anything about it, but like you said, I literally couldn't do much about it myself unless I told the teacher and seek out counseling. Also, the statement about compliance only make you get abused more is not only untrue, but it invalidates the experiences of people who did fight back against their abuser and the situation got worse. There are countless stories of victims lashing out at their abusers, and their abusers uses their rage and defense as leverage against them to further frame their victims as the abusers. I'm sorry that you had to go through that experience. And I wish you well, and I hope you're in a safe, better place now.
@@randompromises1038 sounds like you were in a situation where a much larger and more powerful person took advantage of their power to hurt you. You couldn't have fought back, and you shouldn't have had to. You were a child. I hope you're doing well now.
I wanna comment specifically on the whole “the show sexualises Stevonnie” thing. Almost every woman or fem presenting person has had an uncomfortable experience as a teenager where they realise their body is being looked at sexually. I felt very seen in that episode, the rush that comes with the new found attention only to realise how uncomfortable and non-consensual it all feels when you realise you aren’t in control of the situation. I feel like the episode plays it off well. If characters looking at stevonnie that way makes you uncomfortable, good. Realise that’s what a lot of teen girls go through as their bodies are stigmatised. And if you look at a pretty normal representation of a teen fem body and think it’s inappropriately sexual, you’re part of the problem.
That Rebecca Sugar comment about Stevonnie's experience and being looked at like you have the body of an adult when you're still a kid... *so* relatable to me. Which makes Lily completely flipping her shit over that quote even funnier and sadder to me.
hey uh, not to disagree with your point or anything but teenage amab trans femmes also have this kind of experience, so i don't know why their experiences wouldn't be mentioned here too
@surprisedlobsta8543 Stevonnie is not AMAB, and this person is talking about their own particular experience. They don't have to add another caveat when they're talking about their own personal experience.
I noticed she really enjoys bringing up blue diamond as sympathetic and not like. Directly explicitly manipulative. That IS her power. Manipulating other people's emotions. She's supposed to represent toxic relationships of the same nature. People who try to control other people's emotions with their own behaviors. It's important for kids to recognize that just because someone cries doesn't necessarily mean that they're inherently good or sympathetic. Blue diamond may have cried, but she cried while everyone was fighting her with everything they had and she reigned destruction on everything around her. she isn't portrayed in a completely sympathetic light. It's portraying a complex situation with someone who clearly has toxic behaviors that happen to have a sympathetic cause behind them, but it doesn't necessarily make what she's doing okay or sympathetic in itself. This is like.... basic media literacy.
I was also thinking of that, anytime she was crying, that was damaging any gem that was around her, in other words, forcing them to cry, which in other words, it's a toxic method that Blue uses that show her grief by how powerful she is, that has never been seen as positive.
Exactly, Blue Diamond symbolizes abusers who cry, and its a good thing to show to kids who are at heavy risk of being in an abusive dynamic with someone.
I’m halfway through getting my college degree for animation and boy Lily does not understand how the animation pipeline works. She continuously blames Rebecca Sugar for the choices made by studio executives, sporadic scheduling, the rushed conclusion due to cancellation etc. She also doesn’t seem to realize how important storyboard artists actually are, they are the ones who plan out the look of an episode for the rest of the art and animation department and work very closely with the script writers. But her thinking that doesn’t surprise me, I remember in her “writing advice” thread she flat out stated that artists cannot be writers, and writers cannot be artists. Which as someone who also has a major in communications and a minor in English on top of working my way through an art degree, I have a lot of problems with.
The "writers can't be artist/vice versa" thing is especially insane like... the vast majority of the manga industry is THAT. Even outside of Japan it's common, most show creators did the art for their show (ie spongebob, flapjack, chowder and more!)
Lily has so many incorrect ideas about writing and storytelling that I genuinely feel nauseous listening to her. It's like being in the bizarro world. Up is down, left is right, town building isn't world building in her weird view of whatever. I don't think she is someone with much love for fiction. She has a specific niche she wants and refuses anything else. It is deeply upsetting to me as a writer how she characterizes things in the craft as "oh its so simple if you were just competent" as if writing were a scripted play and not a constant improv where your partner dies halfway through and you have to figure out how to dispose of the corpse without breaking the illusion this is all just fun and natural. This got long winded. But yeah lily's view on writing sucks.
The point about Lily misunderstanding they/them pronouns is so funny to me because she said some time ago that it took her two full years to get used using they/them pronouns for a singular person. And even then, she still misgenders trans people if they dare criticize her so...
@@nevaehhamilton3493hey let’s not go around discrediting people’s trans identity or speculating on the validity of it. This might not’ve been your intention but the wording “claims” really makes it seem your don’t believe Lily about that. And sure Lily Orchard is a bad person who has lied but we still shouldn’t use language like that or assume she’s lying in her trans identity.
@nevaehhamilton3493 Uh, homie, it isn’t our place to assume if someone is “really trans” or not. Not all transphobia comes from outside of the house, and it’s important to acknowledge that.
@@strawberryqueen0382i don’t think they were implying they aren’t trans! I think they said that because they actively disrespect and disregard other transgender peoples identities and pronouns. I could be wrong but I just how i interpreted it 🥲
I'm so tired of this idea that if a 'bad thing' is shown in media, then the creator must endorse said 'bad thing' and just including a depiction of it (regardless of what it's trying to say) reveals something fundamentally bad about the creator themselves. Like it's evidence of their moral failings. Having Uncle Andy be a bigot doesn't mean Rebecca is a bigot too or agrees with him. The point is to show he's WRONG. What is with people anymore? They're so unhinged. I see these 'hot takes' all the time on twt and it's so annoying. People have horrible media literacy skills (and lack common sense) and need everything literally spelled out for them or they'll give the least charitable interpretation of stuff that usually results in a creator being labeled with some flavor of bigotry or creep. Then when it is spelled out for them they'll turn around to complain the writing is awful and the team are treating the viewers like braindead kids. It's a lose-lose game that stifles creativity.
Plus, Andy literally changes his perspective at the end of the episode. Steven isn't forced to accept him, he choses to reach out to him and on his own, Andy decides that he needs to stop being the way he is.
i've always had a "closeted conservative" reading on andy, considering how easy he turns around on the crowd after seeing how accepting they are, being single at his ripe old age, not getting offended when the gems say "let's all marry eachother!" and also talking about everyone leaving the family for personal freedom. it really sounds like he never had the bravery himself to free himself from the suffocating mindset of the demayo family, whether it be that he was queer or not. in any case, steven and his family brought him healing in a way that didn't rely on condemnation or violence. why does that offend people?
I'm so thrown by how often Lily seems to not get that people are complicated, and that it's a huge part of the show. Especially with the Rose Quartz/Pink Diamond stuff, the show doesn't "want you to feel like rose is perfect while repeatedly showing her do bad stuff", it wants you to get that she's a _complicated_ person. Edit: also like, because it's a kid's show, you need to think about how kids are going to respond and connect to it. I think that Rose's story and how Steven learns about it and relates to her is something that a kid could probably see themselves reflected if they had a parent or loved one who passed away before they were born or when they were very young, and who they heard all of this amazing stuff about but never got the chance to actually know as a person. I think that looking up to someone and then learning that they weren't this amazing divine and hero and were, in fact, just a person like you and I is something that lots of kids (and adults!) have lived through. And Lily keeps on getting mad that Steven and pals aren't just grinding their enemies into dust, but she doesn't get that a lot of the villains in this show are literally Steven's family and they represent the experience of being a kid and having family members who are sometimes really shitty and set in their ways and who don't understand you or respect you. Most 12 year olds can't exactly just kill their conservative aunts, so "just destroy them" is a message that rings really hollow. And another thing! It's extremely annoying how Lily can't grasp that you can sympathize with a character and also not approve of their actions, that you can care for someone and also think that what they are doing is wrong. It's, ironically, very immature. A lot of kid-oriented media has a habit of equating care and approval, and I respect the hell out of SU for averting that. Double edit: I actually like Lily's(?) proposed alternate Stevonnie design at 11:43:58, but I feel like it doesn't quite capture the idea of 50% Steven 50% Connie as well as the canon one. They look mostly like how older teen Steven looks in Too Many Birthdays, and neither Connie nor Steven have braces. Admittedly though, I do think it would've been cool to see a character who looks like that (with visible body fat, acne, and leg/arm hair) portrayed as cool and beautiful in the way that canon Stevonnie was because you almost never see that on TV.... but I think that if they really did look like that, Lily and people like her would also find it horrible and disgusting because of the increased focus on stuff like pimples and braces that are mostly associated with teens. A really damned if you don't, damned if you do situation.
And I can understand why someone as spiteful and toxic as her would hate a show where the main message spreads positivity and that everyone deserves a second chance as long as they’re willing to change.
Worst part of SU critical stuff was ppl aggressively pretending SU wasn't a show for kids. Lots of the "weak" plot stuff is easily understood when you remember its a show for 10 year olds. People held SU to an insanely high standard, expecting an adult-level of nuance from its themes, all while comparing it to an imagined version of ATLA which WASN'T full of silly kids stuff and met the brutality of war head on
@@user-gq3eu8id7cHm, not really? It’s more of a 12+ show? While SU was 8-12. Both focus on dark themes, but in the end SU was always meant to be more light hearted and easier to consume for young viewers. It was made for young queers specifically and to defy gender norms. So it’s very different to what ALTA set out to achieve.
@@user-gq3eu8id7c what im saying is that yes there are certain kids shows that deal sith dark topics snd handle them seriously, but su was a queer show through a queer lesne.
A while ago, Lily made a massive thread of tweets about writing advice (which she later deleted) and one that always stuck with me was "if you're afraid of your story getting spoiled, it's a bad story." That 'tip' is what makes me believe that Lily just doesn't get the appeal of mysteries, and because SU includes mystery aspects, she doesn't get SU. I also don't like how many people compare the Diamonds to Nazis. They're more akin to extreme space capitalists, who turn planets into giant factories to make more robots so they can turn more planets into factories. I haven't actually seen SU all the way through so I never realized that Steven never actually forgave the Diamonds and they were made to spend thousands of years undoing the harm they caused to the Gems they shattered. I'd seen the memes about Steven forgiving people like Hitler when that's not what actually happened. I never believed those memes, so I guess on some level I knew those were made in bad faith.
"Extreme space capitalists" makes more sense to me too. Or, "poachers/mining company that ruins nature" (because the Diamonds never found any sentient species before humans - they've only found animal-like or plant-like ones like the rainbow worm or the aliens in Jungle Moon), which makes the Crystal Gems more akin to environmentalists and anti-capitalists than anything. Not to mention the Diamonds are also written as a toxic/conservative family allegory.
Yeah theyre more of colonizers with a caste system. They invade planets to take its resources and expand their empire. Space hitlers would imply they have deep seated hatred against a certain species which, they dont. At best they just see organic life as inferior and more of a means to further their empire, you know, like how humans view nature?
39:44 THANK YOUUU, ROSE NEVER WANTED A SLAVE SHE SAW PEARL AS HER OWN GEM!! THE PROBLEM WAS THAT PEARL DIDN'T SEE HERSELF AS HER OWN GEM she is not her slave, definitely an unhealthy dynamic though
LITERALLY!! there were several instances where Rose showed genuine concern and sadness when she saw Pearl treat herself that way, she herself was smart, but she always encouraged and praised pearl for her own talents, which is something the other diamonds NEVER did, not even to each other!
THIS! The dynamic isn't meant to be idolized. The entire point is that it's an unhealthy power dynamic that happens in real life. Her character growth was literally learning her worth beyond Rose.
I definitely get that Rose did not treat Pearl negatively and saw her as her own person but that doesn't change the fact that she still OWNED Pearl and Pearls role in her society WAS as a slave. Just because Rose treated her nicely doesn't mean that she's suddenly in the clear. This is like slave owners from 1800s America who were nice to their slaves wondering why they wanted to leave them once the Civil war was over. It doesn't matter how nice they were, they're still fucking slave owners.
I feel that Lily Orchard completely missed the idea that the more humanoid fusions have good relationships. The reason Lapis and Jasper make a giant monster is cause their relationship is toxic. Garnet is humanoid because they have a strong, solid relationship. Steven and Connie's relationship is stable and strong, so they have a humanoid fusion. ALSO we would come to see that not all human fusions end up fully looking human, as we would get Steg and he has an extra set of arms.
Seriously, it was like being shunted back to the mid-2000s where internet critics thought insulting the creator and fans of the thing they hated was totally a-ok. And from what I've heard, Lily hasn't let go of that hatred to this day.
Lily screaming that rebecca is a "stupid fuck" was insane to me. She don't know them at all like why is this riling her up so much she goes into these deep and bitter rages. It's a tv show for children. Says anger issues to me
@@jtlego1 I feel like the "angry reviewer" aspect on the online critic with the likes of Cinemasins and Nostalgia Critic is a big mistake. Can't be surprised that Lily never changes over the years and acts just as the same as she was in the past.
That's STILL FUCKED UP THOUGH. Under a system of slavery, humans (or in this case humanoids) are treated as chattle, animals forced to work at the whims of their master. Therefore, we must consider the issue of consent under the idea that Pearl is nothing but an animal, as that is what society treats her as. What happens if Pearl wants to leave? Or Rose wants to do something that Pearl doesn't want done to her? Pearl wouldn't be allowed to leave. If you think that fucking a dog is wrong because it lacks the ability to consent, then you have to think that this behavior is unacceptable by extension of your own logic.
@@boss_boy_correction: the society that treats pearls like slaves is the Homeworld society, which is the exact same society Rose broke away from due to the lessons of value she developed by going to Earth. Rose would NOT be treating Pearl "like a dog" by having feelings for her because she does not view someone like Pearl as someone beneath herself, but rather as someone with equal value to her, as a companion. But the way you frame Rose in your argument is as someone who doesn't see Pearl as her own person, which is ridiculous because the entire formation of the crystal gems WAS in opposition to the idea that people aren't their own selves. Oviously there are still implied power imbalances in the relationship, what with a literal Diamond being one of the two gems; but it's not like there HASN'T been other, much more prominent pieces of media that features dynamics like these, with the example given in the very video we're watching being Beauty and the Beast. In that movie, Belle's literally kidnapped and kept as prisoner, and has no free will in this situation; yet, nobody dogpiled this movie for the obvious power imbalances when it came out, because the Beast changed his mind on how he should act and treat others. When you say that we should consider the implications that Pearl is nothing but an animal, even under a system that does not enforce the authoritarian, classist ideals of Homeworld, then you are ascribing her the very values that Rose wished to liberate gems from.
Lily Orchard cranks everything to 11. The Diamonds aren't totalitarian dictators, they are nazis, Pearl isn't a servant and a maid, she's a slave. She uses inflammatory language to crank up the implications of what she dislikes while treating the subject matter with a total lack of respect, depth, or nuance
In hindsight, I really hate how Lily and all of the other people who make these bad faith critiques went on to judge the crew as people behind the show and assume that they all deserve to go homeless and die under a bridge. They're just doing their jobs, and the crewniverse specifically had to deal with a lot of pushback from Cartoon Network because of their attempts to have LGBTQIA+ representation in the show. Steven Universe does have its flaws as a show, but it's beyond unhinged to call someone a n*zi when they're not and to suggest that people should lose their jobs just because they wrote for a show that you don't like.
Agreed. Not to mention that it led to a lot of her followers and imitators, including kids, to honestly grow up believing that messages of redemption and forgiveness were somehow fascist propaganda and abuse apologia. People SHOULD be taught that people can change and get better!
@Fern-0217 isn't this a kids show?? i don't think someone is gonna look at genocide then look back on SU and try to justify it. and I don't think anyone young enough to be that impressionable is gonna know what genocide is. kids shows do need to teach good messages but I really don't think this is going to teach kids that genocide is okay or smth.
Seeing Lily's continued opinions on shows like She-Ra, too just make it worse. I'm so glad I never watched her when her videos showed up. She's just a nasty person ... Even ignoring the Stockholm in the room
The funny thing is that Lily herself is a terrible person who SA'd her own sister, turned her incest fantasies into MLP fanfiction, and tried to convince her (at the time) friend to groom a 17 year old. While she did succeed on convincing him for a time, he did fortunately wise up and realized just how wrong/gross it was. That same ex-friend being the one who's image she used to depict LGBTQ+ people crying about being misrepresented in SU, when in reality it was from a joke he made about himself being overly sensitive to how stupid the Equestrian guard was portrayed.
Watching Lily Orchards video before seeing SU and then ACTUALLY watching the show really made me realize how much bullshit someone can say online without any sort of questioning or backlash
I remember the ESSAYS of responses to her video and why it was a terrible argument towards the show. I'm not talking about "oh, I actually disagree with her and also she got these details wrong" kinda responses either. I'm talking fully in depth breakdowns as to why these specific talking points and argument structures make for a terrible argument that shouldn't be held with any regard (a couple of which are even pointed out in this video, like the bit about how she just says things are bad with no further argument as to _why_) A lot of it either got buried or deleted due to the waves of people siding with this. People are saying this video was the thing that ruined steven universe's fandom...but trust me, this was an amalgamation of what had become of this show, it had basically every bad faith criticism ever listed about the show gathered together in a nice summary and that's why it got so much traction. It was awful having to see it get so popular and it certainly ruined the show's reputation for future fans.
You've addressed pretty much every point here, but I'll just add onto the "The Diamonds were presented as sympathetic" point she constantly bangs on about. Blue Diamond's grief is used to manipulate those beneath her. It is toxic. Her constant crying is also not a good thing in general for the character because she stays stuck in the past as a result.
Common red-flag media analysis: 1: Criticizing a work via a demonized version of the author 2: Calling things filler (filler is a specific term that almost never actually applies to what they're talking about) 3: Disregarding STORY and over-emphasizing the literal PLOT events (if you want just the literal events of a story idk read a fucking wiki then) 4: Getting upset that a piece of art "forced you to feel a certain way" (babes that has never happened, this is not how art works, if you felt a way, you just felt that way, and if you didn't then the story clearly wasn't forcing you to) 5: Assuming that because a character acts unkindly they are a bad/malicious character (good people can hurt eachother, and so can characters, please dear god i hope you dont treat people in your actual real human life like this) 6: Assuming that a piece of art is completely reflective of an author. Just, no. Watch Innuendo Studios video on The Creator's Guide
my hot take is that i think disregarding story and in favour of plot literalism and a lot of the sex negative talking points surrounding media are both symptoms of the same problem. a lot of people will tell you there's a kind of new puritanism among young people, and there may be some aspects of that, but i think the more prevalent issue is the prioritization of efficiency, analytics, and streamlinization as the most important aspects of storytelling. ofc there are times when prioritizing efficiency is the right choice, like when you need to take a scientific measurement of something, but art doesn't work like that and trying to force it into that box makes for worse art and really stupid analysis.
The way lily completely dropped pretending to not be nbphobic to call stevonnie a "conventionally attractive woman". She would hate how i express myself lol
STOP BC I WAS THINKING THAT THE WHOLE TIME TOO. Stevonnie isn't even that fem!! Has Lily never met a nonbinary person in her life?? Like she has to know that gender identity doesn't equal presentation, especially for nonbinary people...
24:10 "It's like Lily can only conceive of a singular story that could be good." I'm SCREAMING because that is the best way to put all of my critiques about Lily. I have been watching Lily's content for (jfc) a decade now and I've always been so frustrated with how she seems to think that the stories *she* enjoys are the only stories that are good. Like, she has no recognition of the fact that people have different tastes in media. No, it's "I don't like seeing this, therefore, it's bad. And *furthermore* if you *like* seeing it, then you are a *bad* person." I'm so glad to hear someone else say it.
"MLP should have been a comedy driven slice of life instead of sharing screen time with the action." "Steven Universe was worse because Sugar kept inserting her slice of life coffee shop au into an action show." I 100% agree with you when it comes to her thinking whatever she does or doesn't like is either morally good or morally evil, and she can't just say "I don't like something" it has to be "this is a writing problem", but her "writing advice" is so woefully inconsistent that it really just feels like she's looking for excuses to justify her immediate dislike of something by wrapping it in a veneer of "writing advice". It's incredibly frustrating, and it becomes so transparent what she's doing is just complaining about not all shows appealing to her specific tastes in the moment once you realize it. "I don't like it when shows transitions into different genres or styles" becomes "this is bad writing".
yeah. like some of the more general arguments she makes against certain stories can be pretty accurate sometimes, but what she ends up applying it to is nonsensical. Like in her video about being morally grey in cartoons, the overall point she has that you can't excuse every character as just being morally grey and that sometimes they're just absolutely horrible people is definitely something I wish people realized more when analyzing media. But the shows and characters she ends up applying it to just doesn't work and it becomes clear that she's just using some of her actually decent advice to butcher some pretty alright shows she personally isn't a fan of. And furthermore, as some of the others in the replies have mentioned, a lot of it is also just personal opinion being treated as fact.
Every time Lily talks about "90% of the show is about this fascist empire" it absolutely makes me think that she was told by a friend "Here's the episodes that matter for the interesting plot stuff, here's some you should maybe watch for context, and here's just a simple summary of what happens in the rest." And she's based all her arguments on that. It makes perfect sense that her conclusion of Garnet's arc in season 5 is "She fell apart over it, and then a few episodes later had a wedding and then the diamonds showed up." How could you watch every one of those episodes and actually come to that conclusion? I posit that she simply hasn't. Any "filler" episodes she DID see, I'm guessing she only watched because she was told that something interesting happens in it, and then just sat there confused and angry that she was being "forced" to watch a bunch of "filler" stuff, when the "only interesting thing that happens" only happens in the last minute of the episode.
Nah, she definitely watched 'em. The filler episodes between arcs opinion was one spread quite commonly around that time (though it may have been more popular because of her video, I remember these opinions coming up during stevenbombs), the opinion that there's a big plot point going on currently and we moe on to a different topic at hand. The *idea* behind that thought is that this plot point is set as VERY important and then you kind of do the equivalent of side quests while the world is collapsing at an rpg. However Lily kind of took this complaint to an extreme while also breezing past the central idea of it, so it kind of just seems she's complaining about filler plots that aren't really filler. I do think that was still her aim, as most people following this complaint actually mean, not to say that this "filler" plots are filler and unneeded, but rather that an urgency was created and we move on to these other plots, so you keep asking "Why are we doing this *NOW* if the show just told me this other plot is VERY important?", but after believing this complaint, she relegated these plots into "not important whatever plots that are happening while the important plot is" instead of realizing that while, yes, these plot points may be happening at an important time of another important arc that you may prefer to happen at another time, they can still be very important and impactful plots!! And I think with that disconnect of an idea she ends up boiling down to basically filler a lot of the developments that happen and ends up misjudging a lot of the story and characters. Apparently you can't have two important plot stories during an arc!
Also she says that Pearl gaslit Sapphire into forgiving her...which what...Pearl talked about her feeling with Sapphire and they both talked it out...how...what
The weird hate boner Lily has for Rebecca is so strange to me. Like, she knows Rebecca is not the only person who worked on the show, right? And it's VERY ironic to me that the author of some shit FAR worse than Steven Universe ever was has such a strong belief that an author's work reflects their morals. I guess it's projection, since Lily is an actual abuser and wrote fanfic about abuse.
Very random point from a very random part of the video, but it really honestly isn't creepy for Pearl to watch Steven sleep. Pearl is one of his adoptive moms, she partially raised him. Mothers and parents in general often talk about enjoying watching their children sleep because they are safe and peaceful and thusly, it lowers their stress. Pearl is absolutely terrified of the notion of Steven getting hurt so I think it's very fitting for her to take comfort in watching him when he's at his safest, peacefully sleeping. Also, she was definitely one of those moms who had to constantly check that he was still breathing as a younger child. Especially because she's an alien and doesn't fully understand humans, so I think that makes her even more protective and anxious about his well being.
+also Stevens a child hero and will not only always constantly be in danger but is also just generally accident prone with how confrontational he is. Considering the things that happened to him later on in the series (and before it) I’d be throwing up from stress too Pearls literally a war veteran and some of the last of the crystal gems, she knows how bad things can get Greg’s more lowkey about it, but he was also a pretty similar way for awhile too.
Hell I’m a daycare teacher and in my state we’re legally required to check on sleeping children every 20/30 minutes to make sure they’re still breathing looks like lily would call all of us weird
I honestly don't doubt that at some point Pearl read a parenting book and saw that advice to check in on small children when they're asleep and went "this is a parenting book, so this tip applies to children of all ages!" It seems really in character for her lol
"moms who had to constantly check that he was still breathing as a younger child. " There's a fan comic literally stating this!!! I saw it a few years ago.
I love how Lily cites The Last Air Bender positively in this video, and then goes on a hate-filled rant about how Steven Universe is pro-fascism because Steven doesn't kung-fu kick all the diamonds to death for being fascists, meanwhile the ending of The Last Air Bender is literally just every other character telling Aang "nah bro you gotta kill Ozai, there's no other way sorry, you gotta kill that mfer" and Aang refusing to do it.
I kinda hate how people compare TLA's ending with Steven Universe's. Both are based around a pacifist protagonist sparing the BBEG, yes, but the difference is that while Steven converted White Diamond to his POV, there was _no reasoning_ with Ozai. And that's the entirety of Aang's conflict throught the last book. So when they fought, he did the next best thing, which was stripping Ozai of his bending, the entire thing his ideology, hell, his whole identity was based on. He was still an evil monster and was punished with something arguably even worse than death.
They're undoing the damage they did by repairing all the gems they shattered because they are the only ones that can do it. They are unkillable, so fixing their messes is the next best thing.....@@thomasallister3446
@funninoriginal6054 Personally, I think it's kind of weird that the show insists Aang has never killed anyone despite him having definitely killed people before (albeit maybe without intending to). I also don't much care for how little went into Aang learning how to energy bend.
Despite hiding behind a facade of being left-wing, she falls into many of the same pitfalls as right-wing grifters, like the “bad writing” argument and misrepresenting what is presented in the story A different flavor of grifting still tastes like sh*t
I don't think she is a grifter I think she is just genuenly deluded since she always advocates for violence but then condems it when people she disagrees with usually "nazis".
I wouldn't be surprised if Lily Orchard went anti-SJW without even realizing it. The anti-SJW community, especially for TheQuartering of all people, really lost their credibility to criticize any media due to screaming "woke" or "SJW" for like a hundredth time, which no wonder nobody takes them seriously.
@@ThatGreenMach1ne grifters usually wind up believing the shit they peddle, at least a little. they won't become full-blown believers but you can't adopt a public personality like this for years and years, especially when you're such a public person, and NOT have it affect who you are in private.
Lily saying Rose was "erratically written" doesnt sit right with me, because she wasn't, she did grow and progress too, we just don't see it chronologically from beginning to end. The other characters all knew and remember Rose at the end of her life, after she has grown and changed. That's the Rose they talk about, mostly. The Rose in Lion's video is towards to end of her life, after she has developed. We then see various snippets going almost backwards (not always in direct reverse order, but still). She's not written erratically, we just learn her backstory and see how she got there, not watch it in real time.
It's crazy cause it's like Oh wow this 20 year old is acting differently from when I last saw him when he was 5, hes so erratically written... How come Batman just didn't beat up the guy who shot his parents, hes so erratically written!
i do honestly think she was somewhat erratically written, as far as the characters go. i feel like for all the wrong she did, she's treated way worse than any other diamond by the story, even though she's the one who gave it her all to change, and to make a stand with having steven that incited the biggest change. the other diamonds didn't even try until they saw through roses actions and stevens very own existence that what they were doing was wrong, and rose is met with way more resentment than gratitude or sympathy. she tried!
one of the weirdest things about Lily is her always mentioning being a writer, but never brining up her work. That's because her body of work includes MLP p*rn featuring minors
@@themechanic9974 there are multiple videos talking about the fact that, yes, lily orchard did write explicit CP. the fic was called stockholm, i believe.
@@flamboyantroach was responding to the first point since the second point is completely worthless as it happened nearly a decade ago and people change
@@themechanic9974 Sure, but she clearly hasn't. There's also a difference between used to be homophobic and used to be racist vs used to be so openly attracted to children they not only write child porn, but posted it online. Like, yeah, it's disturbing and to most people one of the few unforgivable things.
It’s pretty bizarre that someone can say in their steven universe’s review video that the show has “blink and you miss it queer representation” unironically and still be taken seriously Also it’s worrying how many of her points are essentially her not comprehending that characters can be complex?? Has she never engaged with media more complex than “hero good, villain bad”? Idk it just reminds me of when people talk about how only consuming children’s media is bad for your media interpretation skills
@@NapaCat particularly see it this way but Lily argues in her video a part he cut out of this one that if you're only queer representation is non-human characters it doesn't count and honestly that's a pretty good standard to go bye
@@themechanic9974 sure but have you considered that the fact the queer characters where not human might have been the only reason the queer themes were even allowed to be shown? keep in mind that before steven universe the only positive example of queer representation in children's western animation was two women holding hands in the final scene of korra. It's fine to have higher standards of queer rep but it's pretty dumb to argue that a series that was actively fighting to put queer rep on screen is somehow at fault for not doing enough.
The deleting of all critical or counter comments on her videos is so damn manipulating, holy shit. Coming from her updated SU video, that comment section reads like an alternative universe or something. Even in the updated SU video, someone literally pointed out that it was kind of odd to see no negative or counter arguments to the actual video itself, and her response was that no one actually had any genuine counter points besides spam, and those were cleared out by a “spam” filter. As someone who was put off from checking out SU because of her video until just recently, I was so shocked when I actually sat down and watched the show cause holy shit does she completely misinterpret and misrepresent the show. It’s not perfect, and there are some parts I do have some criticisms for, but there were also way more great moments that got me super emotional, and that I am bummed I skipped out on when I was younger and would have actually benefited a lot from hearing. That echo chamber of a comment section really had me thinking SU was the most problematic kids show to come out of CN, and that everyone agreed unless you were a die hard psycho fan. I feel like such a fool, when all I had to do was actually watch it to know how misleading her interpretation of it was.
Yeah her claim that it's a "spam filter" is SUPER fishy. I don't know how a lot of that works with TH-cam comments but it's not working well apparently because i can still see new comments that say funny quick things about how wrong she is (like "yes you were wrong lol") But NO critical comments??? That's absurd
“The most problematic show to come out of CN” Yeah. Like sis , Rebecca Sugar is not even close to the most problematic creator CN has hired. Does Skylar Page mean nothing to you?!! (Although don’t take this a criticism against Clarence, I like Clarence otherwise)
59:51 I hate the romantization of abuse implied by Lily, like as if someone that suffered through abuse would be the sparkliest and happiest character. Abuse isn't pretty, it hurts, it kills, and it scars, and someone that has been abused is likely to act how Lapis did, and I know this because I related to her a lot watching the show, pushing away people that tried to help me, lashing out at those who had nothing to do with it, and I did bad things to cope with my suffering too. Abuse isn't fun, isn't so one sided, like "the abuser is bad, and the abused is a sweetheart", that's not how it works, and most oftentimes the abused will inherit some traits from the abuser, the goal is getting rid of them and healing, to become a better person and apologize to those you have hurt.
As someone that had seen abuse victims, the Lapis section was so infuriating, because yeah, she endured thousands of years in trauma being an artifact and being used, but noooo, she is the abuser because she treats bad a dorito.... a dorito that was part of the genocidial gems group. That makes me think that Lily is more of an abuser than an abuse victim tbh its like they told me: "Yeah, you will be living with your school bully from now on, now forgive him because if you dont, you will be the bully" and... no fucking way, if I met my school bully again, my first reaction will be destroy his face edit: Now I'm in the 2 and half hour and wtf man, Lily rants like Rebecca Sugar killed all her family, poisoned her lands and kicked her dog, wtf!
plotlines like these are what makes the ending, the one actual flaw of the show, so bizzare. Like, imagine steven going GOOD NEWS EVERYONE, WEVE FORGIVEN WHITE DIAMOND, THE LITERAL GENOCIDAL MANIAC WHO HAS BEEN MAKING YOUR LIFE HELL FOR MILLENIA. NOW SHELL BE LIVING IN MY HOUSE AND HELPING YOU REBUILD Like the whole thing with jasper is that change takes time, sometimes violence is the only thing some ppl will understand and how victims arent required to be perfect or forgive their abusers and then BAM white diamond
It blows my mind that Lily not only misunderstood that the Diamonds' portrayal was NOT "nazis have feewings" it was an active challenge to everything they believed and deconstructing it completely, but also their grief at the loss of Pink Diamond was the foothold that was the key to breaking through to them.
Lily was seconds away of calling her video "Rebecca Sugar is Garbage and Here's Why". Steven Universe is a good show and Lily's video is an embarassment and a character assassination attempt.
@@themechanic9974I did watch it, more than once. You see, I actually like Lily's content, watch many of her videos and think she makes interesting points, even if I don't always agree with her. I don't mind that she doesn't like Steven Universe. What I don't think is fair or called for is the way she talked (and still sometimes talks) about Rebecca Sugar, like some kind of vendetta.
@@quiquochan most of the time in the video when she's screaming it's very clearly comedy and when it's not she's not talking about Rebecca sugar she talks about the crew
Nobody viewed Bismuth as a genocidal killer in the fandom wtf?? We sympathized with her! We understood what she wanted to do, and yeah some agreed with Bismuth. But most of us understood the show was about helping ppl, rehabilitating them, and by using the breaking point to shatter gems wouldn’t have allowed any of that. Plus it wouldn’t have allowed the healing of corrupted and shattered gems if the diamonds were shattered.
Oof it sounds like Lily doesn’t like fanfiction, that’s kinda sad. At the same time it makes sense bc Lily said essentially whatever the og source is, that creator can’t allow ppl to see it as anything other than what it is or it’s bad. Lily has a very weird black and white mentality and that seems unfortunate when living life. I think I understand where Lily is coming from, I used to be much like her, but I grew as a person. I also got had a lot of help. I don’t want to label Lily or say things that might be untrue, so I just hope Lily can also come to grow as well. It kinda seems maybe not so much with her latest vid, but I’ve not watched all of it and I’m not going to.
I dont think its much of an overstatement to say that Lily had a lasting impact on media analysis in fandom culture, especially around cartoons. Her ideas about what makes a show 'good', and why Steven Universe was therefore 'bad' were adopted by so many people that even now, they are still being applied to other shows (She-Ra, the Owl House, etc). Which is crazy, because many of those ideas are completely arbitrary.
The elements I notice: Rushed endings (as if SU and TOH didn't face early cancellation because of queerness and had to squeeze seasons into a few episodes)... Not killing all the enemies... having complex queer relationships with conflict in it...
My main takeaway from this video is that Lily is an unbelievably bad author. In summary, she advocates (passionately) for plot-driven stories where character development happens in big clumsy chunks entirely separate from the plot, if at all, and characters have no meaningful nuance whatsoever (having proudly stated that she "exclusively" writes characters who "own their ruthlessness"). You've expressed optimism regarding Lily's development into a better person, which I respect and appreciate; I hope to God she's improved as a writer. Some of these criticisms were extremely telling.
Lily is also incapable of separating redemption or atonement from forgiveness. Steven never forgave the diamonds. Nobody did. They made peace with the diamonds because it was the only possible solution left to them. They could not defeat the diamonds by fighting them, the diamonds were too strong. Bringing the Diamonds over to their side was Steven's hail Mary. And that's a situation that can occur in real life too. Sometimes you can't just kill your problems away.
That's true - no one is forgiven. Diplomacy is the only way it could've worked - violence would cause another war. And the Diamonds literally FIXED EVERYTHING they did. In S5, They healed corrupted gems, in Future, they restored the shattered ones - it's also a power fantasy, I say, that oppressive people would do better.
I'm never going to forgive Lily Orchard for putting "The Diamonds Are Nazis" into the public discourse. This brain-dead idea is never used as anything other than a weapon to shut down anyone who disagrees with the most bad-faith takes of the show. "You don't think it would have actually done anything to help the Gempire if Steven killed the Diamonds? Are you saying that Hitler should have remained in power?" Any time you express any kind of nuance about the Diamonds or their relationship or how they were handled, you always get these paint-huffing morons who will outright say you're a Nazi sympathizer for pointing out that Blue and Yellow genuinely missed and mourned Pink. What's even worse about it is that none of them can even name one good thing that would come from "punishing" the Diamonds that wasn't already accomplished by Steven. What would putting them in jail do? What would killing them do? What jail could hold them and how would you deal with the millions upon billions of Gems who are loyal to them? None of them think about that because all they can think about is how Steven didn't kill them, but they like the idea of being righteously angry so there _has_ to be explicit punishment even if it wouldn't accomplish any actual goal.
I'm literally arguing with someone regurgitate those talking points right here. Luckily, that means more engagement, which means this vid gets an algorithm boost.
YES!!! THANK YOU! Edgelords and extremely online people who like video essays are SO damn quick to gleefully, blindly repeat the points of video essays, oftentimes verbatim instead of actually thinking for themselves.
Let's not forget how "The Diamonds are Space Nazis" is almost always paired up with "Steven Forgave the Diamonds", and that these two bits of misinformation are often peddled out by detractors or embittered ex-fans whenever anyone talks about how Steven Universe ended.
@@Dukeofnachos Oh yes, that scene. Steven admits during his meltdown that he only actually shattered Jasper, (and later revived her) and that he thought about smashing White's head through a pillar but never went through with it. Would you believe that some fans/detractors missed the point of Steven's session with White, and assumed that Steven should've shattered her, despite the negative consequences of such an action.
Lilly calling the use of they/them as using "plural pronouns" feels incredibly offensive towards us nonbinary folks. It's a subtle jab that uses the "people who use they/them are grammatically incorrect" argument. Also saying that Stevonnie is uninteresting because they're nonbinary, calling them and Rebecca women when they're not, as well as the consistent hate towards Rebecca, it's incredibly clear that Lily *really* hates nonbinary people Also, even if stevonnie was "hyper femme" (they're very not) it doesn't reduce or erase their nonbinary identity. The idea that all nonbinary people have to be 100% androgynous is just another form of enforcing gender roles onto people who don't want to be tied to them
No, it was pointing out the fact that they/them are used a plural pronouns when referring to more than one person. The critic was to Stevonnie being NB is weak because unlike most fusions, they were treated like two people in one body rather than one individual. It almost seems like they were written like a two in one so Stevonnie could have plausible deniability from being NB. If Garnet was NB, it would stand because she functions as one individual. Stevonnie being NB is problematic because they behaved like multiple beings. Using they or them when referring to more than one person doesn't make those people NB. In short, the problem is the they/them pronouns used for Stevonnie could be because they are NB, but it could also be because they function like two people in one body(on their debut ) and it's just referring to more than one person.
@@dragonscar3670@dragonscar3670 Lily specifically stated that "plural pronouns are common among nonbinary people" By saying this, she says that even singular nonbinary individuals that use they/them are using "plural pronouns" She was not saying that Stevonnie is using "plural pronouns" because they're 2 people, but that all people who use they/them are using "plural pronouns" And does the deniability of the debut episode really matter when the later episodes are way more explicit?
@@SugaMot Ah, I misinterpreted the quote. However, simply stating that they/them are plural pronouns isn't throwing shade at NB individuals nor is it pushing that whole, "not grammatically correct" bullshit. As for calling Stevonnie a generic pretty lady, it was a critic that despite being NB, Stevonnie's character(prior to the re-design) was hard feminine and speculated on the idea that Stevonnie being NB was less of a design feature and more of an excuse for why Steven and Connie when fused creates a female presenting character rather than a cross-gender hybrid(such as Stevonnie is post re-design).
@@dragonscar3670the singular "they" has been around since the 1300s. To say that they/them is explicitly plural is wrong. The only reason one would insist that is if they are ignorant, or if they wanted to imply that people who use it are grammatically incorrect. Also, did you even watch the video? It literally talks about Lily calling Stevonnie "high femme" in the Stevonnie section and how it's wrong and calling them female presenting is actually offensive to actual nonbinary people
calling a JEWISH person a nazi and characterizing them as an evil villain is evil, disgusting and not to mention, very very ANTISEMIC. So I sure hope that Lily reflected on those words because who knows how much damage they caused.
Alright calm down there. Lily very blatantly did not call her a nazi, all she said was that she understood why other people would think that she was because of her work. And also, in general it’s not anti-semitic to criticise Jewish people for having immoral beliefs as unfortunately not all Jewish people are completely innocent people
She called them a diamond and later called the diamonds nazis. I'd say it counts. Also, she didn't critisize Rebecca Sugar for her work, she spent three hours painting a narrative where Rebecca Sugar is the Big Bad who Controls Everything From The Shadows and the reason for every single thing she doesn't like about the show. She said personal insults about a person she knows nothing about for millions of people online to see, based on a TV show they made. Honestly who knows how much harassment Rebecca Sugar got from people who watched this video alone? Taking one person and scapegoating them as The Evil In This World and calling them a "desiease".... That sounds pretty antisemic to me.
The "I can't believe they put something this sinister into the show, light blue and lime green, one looking slightly serious and one looking slightly concerned-" running gag is my life source. Thank you so much for making these. I know Steven Universe isn't a perfect show and I don't blame people for not liking some of its elements, but it still meant so much to me and it sucks to constantly see people shit on it all the time. Also, yeah, I find it funny how people don't acknowledge the practical reasons for keeping the Diamonds alive, as in, making them fix their mistakes that would have stayed unsolved if they just died. ALSO, the "Why are we redeeming the serious villain instead of the funny villain" argument is so weird to me, because someone who is not having fun being evil and is just treating it as a job personally seems more redeemable to me than someone who is a sadistic, gleeful asshole who likes causing people misery, idk. Edit: ALSO, YES, PEARL HAS A CRUSH ON ANOTHER TALL, CHUBBY, PINK-HAIRED WOMAN, WHAT OF IT?! That's okay! People have types. That doesn't mean she hasn't moved on, that just means she has a type, which is perfectly valid. I have a whole... thing about people criticizing others for what kinds of people they are attracted to (Obviously, some types of attractions are immoral, like attraction to children, but being attracted to big women with a certain hair color? I mean... idk) and it just feels weird to see it as a failing on that person's end. Pearl is still trying to move on, at MOST, I could see the mystery girl looking so similar to Rose being some sort of comfort blanket/baby step, but that's still good, if she was real, I'd say I am proud of her for taking that first step towards moving on and healing, even if it feels familiar!
What the hell, I'm late to this but I didn't remember Lily being so weird about this?? Why is she, a trans woman, aknowledging that Rebecca is nonbinary and STILL calling them a woman? SAME WITH STEVONNIE??
2:44:55 "Like many adult cartoon fans, Sugar is profoundly stupid." How does Lily have any fans with that kind of attitude? Unless a large portion of her fans are kids (which I fear for) she's basically insulting her own audience in this review of a cartoon.
We need a term for this. Ooh! How about “The DSP Paradox”? Y’know, how anyone could unironically like this person despite their horrible actions and character?
@@thelastwindwaker7948 oh he’s still active after everything. He’s currently playing Street Fighter 6 and Chrono Trigger. I just watch compilations because I’m not gonna give him views in TH-cam or Twitch.
@@GravityFaiz I know, I just didn't think people actually LIKE him and watch him unironically. I thought it was just like Game Grumps where you're in it to watch someone fail and scream like a baby about it.
1:21:36 Respectability politics.That's that's the term. When you gotta work twice as hard to get half of what they have. When you have to be perfect just to be treated like a human. When you have to be respectable in order to be respected, but it's actually impossible to be respectable enough in the eyes of the oppressor because your marginalized identity is inherently devoid of respectability.
1:30:12 Stevonnie being slightly more feminine presenting doesn't make them any less non-binary. Non-binary people don't owe anyone perfect androgyny. They don't owe us androgyny at all. Just like how people who exist on the binary don't owe anyone any specific gender presentation. I do wish that some of the other Steven fusions (like Rainbow 2.0 and Sunstone) got some more screentime and development. But that's another conversation.
A lot of these excessive abuse sympathizing and child sexualization accusations from Lily really track differently when you take into account the kind of things she herself used to write. Kind of feels like the lady doth protest too much.
@@themechanic9974 Essence of Thought got some damming receipts against your sentiment. Also, make up your mind. Sometimes, you say it didn't happen, and in others you say that it did, but we shouldn't care anymore because of how long ago it was. Either way, not a good look.
If you watched HiP’s other videos, the ones about the other two big SU hate videos, the constant mentioning of sex and p3d0philia and fetishes really reeks of projecting. Its a weird pattern I noticed
I hate the fact that Lily and so many others believe that the only way to be nonbinary is to look purely or mostly masculine, and partaking in feminine things or even looking fairly feminine, does not make you nonbinary. It goes against the definition of being nonbinary. You don't need to look or act a certain way to be nonbinary.
My personal experience with my own identity has been such a shit show, and constantly being told and hearing that my experience and feelings were inherently wrong because I was always either too much or too little was a major part of why I spent the majority of my adolescence and early adulthood hating everything about myself. My algorithms got me all fucked up for the longest time, wondering why the hell I couldn’t just be “one of the acceptable ones.” And just, damn, I actually wasted so many damn years isolating myself out of shame while simultaneously feeding into the algorithms of the ones making me feel that way, lmao. Sorry for the therapy dump, this comment section got me feeling a certain type of way, feel free to completely ignore this, I really just meant to thank you once and move on, but oops-
2:38:03 THANK YOU! People always act like Steven is buddy-buddy with the Diamonds now and didn't kill them simply because he hates violence but no, he *needed* them to fix the corrupted Gems. He needs all four of their collective powers to even come close to restoring Gems to their former state, it takes using up all the stores he has of the other Diamonds to bring Jasper back from being shattered. If you look at it from a purely pragmatic stance, Steven didn't kill or shatter or imprison the Diamonds because he still needs them, and they in turn spend the rest of their time trying to fix the damage they caused. They're not even necessarily redeemed, they're still kinda jerks who are only playing nice now because Steven wants them to (at least in White's case) and Steven can hardly stand to be around them for prolonged periods of time. You can argue till the cows come home on whether their characterization and past deeds deserved more punishment and I don't have the answer for that, but they are no woobified and forgiven wholesale by any means. People who actually watch the show for more than a few milliseconds realize this.
Yeah White diamond was a jerk when she disbanded her galactic empire started to heal broken gems stepped down as a leader and adopted Spinel. Man if this is being a jerk then what is being nice.
Not only that, but what alot of people don't think about is what would happen if you take down the leaders of those in dictatorship? When there's a hole in power, especially dangerous power, it's easy for a worse person to step into place. And it's not like steven can just take over everything. Especially since there will still be gems that prefer the previous way everything ran, just like the lapisis in future.
@samuelclayhills3298 Well, White is still prissy and condescending to an extent and is still doing everything because of Steven. While her actions are not a jerk, her character is still an underlying jerk.
Calling Rebecca a piece of shit because they worked their butt off to push the envelope on representatjon and made a show that was so important to a ton of people? ...sure Jan.
The way she goes after Sugar and blames every single perceived flaw of the show on them personally is so bizarre and detached from reality. for a lot of reasons, but particularly if you have even the slightest idea of how television shows work like yes it is Sugar's show and they obviously had a big hand in the overarching story and characters. But there were like a dozen other writers/storyboard artists and people contributing and working on the show. Lily orchard acts like every single episode or moment was personally written by rebecca when it's very likely that many of the parts of the show that Lily uses as an example of how horrible Sugar is was the contribution of someone else entirely Her saying she's a bad artist because the animation made me type this comment because WHAT? she didn't animate the fucking show lmao! what is she even on about. lol "Ah shit lapis is is one inch smaller in this shot than she was in the previous shot. Unbravo Sugar"
that aside it's also funny to claim that all the hints that rose is pink diamond is just vague weird nonsense that wasn't meant to actually signal that she was PD as if rose being pink diamond wasn't an incredibly common fan theory beforehand
In a different video Lily said only big studios like Nickelodeon can afford good animation. Which is just...wrong on so many levels? Money is important, but so is having a good production crew. One Punch Man had a fairly average anime budget, but it had a really talented team of animators and directors. One Punch Man (Season 1) despite being made in 2015 looks just as good, or better than some modern anime. Just goes to show she doesn't fully understand what she's complaining about.
@@danielzakgaim2764 _"Only big studios like Nickelodeon can afford good animation..."_ Meanwhile, Nickelodeon shows get canned for not having enough ratings as Spongebob SquarePants and Loud House. It can be true for Rise of the TMNT and Glitch Tech but still.
I pissed myself from how scary it was when the blue person looked unpleased and put their hand on smaller green fellow! My horror was immense when small plant animal had quivered! -869/10 too sinister.
Wow, I just realized that when Lily talkes about the supposed mocking of audience for creating their own theories in "Lion 2: alternative ending", it's actually just a stolen point from hbomberguy's "Sherlock is garbage and here's why", only it doesn't fit in this case
The reason for Steven Universe's choppy storytelling is because that Cartoon Network kept cutting budgets for the show, so all the plot holes were the result of factors outside of the creators' control
Not that Lily would ever understand that. She wholeheartedly believes that creators always have the power to do whatever they want without having to worry about the executives getting in the way.
@Br1annaFr33man the show could’ve been perfect, but I do admit I have a problem as to why would all the gems take female forms and use feminine pronouns when they're supposed to be genderless? They could’ve made them androgynous or completely inhuman and used gender neutral pronouns.
One criticism I've always found frustrating against Steven Universe is the claim that Rose Quartz was always glorified and framed as a great hero throughout the series despite the mistakea she's made. Because, that's not true! The show clearly portrays Rose through many perspectives, including ones that highlight her flaws as a person. I fully believe that was intentional, not a retcon. If anything, it gives off the very real effect of learning the unpleasant truths behind glorified historical figures in real life. People who played important roles in significant changes in history are usually portrayed in a much more heroic light. But that light is only looking at their impact, not the reality of the person they were. Rose was heroic and brave in a number of ways, but she was also clearly naiive, selfish, and generally unaware of the effect created by her treatment of those closest to her. She had good intentions, but those intentions were also fueled by her own fantasies and personal desires. The negative effects of Rose's impact were explored quite thoroughly. The longer the series went on, the more we learned about the truth of Rose. That truth being that she was far from perfect, despite her initially glorified portrayal to Steven. That's not a retcon. That's exploration!
Lilys alleged SA against her sister and overall manipulative behavior towards her really makes me question lily’s definition of what “self love” means Also it makes so much sense as to why she views lapis’s actions as abusive and victim blames her
These bad faith and straight up factually incorrect Steven Universe videos and the lasting impact they've had on the show's online reputation are the epitome of the phrase "its easy to tell a lie, it's harder to disprove one"
1:14:23 THEY HAD TO SHARE TIME WITH THE DIAMONDS BECAUSE REBECCA WAS FORCED BY THE NETWORK. They were going to cut out the gay wedding and the only way Sugar found to keep it was by making it EXTREMLY plot important. As in, the Diamonds attack Earth plot important. Did Lily make no research? Of course she didn't. And even if she did, and she knew about this, she was probably lying. Because she is a lying liar.
The thing that makes me so sad about the Lapis discord is that as an abuse survivor it was actually pretty cathartic to see a character like Lapis who left an abusive situation and came out of it still hurt, turning hypervigilant from their pain and hurting others in the process but then heal little by little, even if they mess up sometimes. Don't get me wrong, her arc wasnt perfect and I wish they would have given a bit more pushback on her bad behaviour from time to time but it was still so damm impactful to see someone healing and recieving sympathy and not having to be portrayed as an angel who did nothing wrong ever. Alot of people who face abuse lash out at their abuser and more often than not that reactive abuse is ledgered against them to keep them in that abusive relationship. I found it pretty powerful that the show said "Yes Lapis did cruel things while being joined as Malachite but she still does deserve to live and heal." Edit: spelling and grammar lol
Lily calling Stevonnie "the most hyper-fem you could possibly be" has the same energy as people on twitter calling Taylor Swift butch because she wore pants
I'm late but what disgusts me most is that the idea that Stevonnie is the most "fem presenting thing ever" is incredibly enbyphobic by itself, completely disregarding her wording. Nonbinary people can look like anyone regardless of appearance or traits. Nonbinary people don't owe anyone androgyny.
Lily just salty because Stevonnie (a mixed gender character) was prettier than her IRL. 😂 It's like that Homer Simpson line "WHY DOESN'T MINE LOOK LIKE THAT?!"
1:33:25 also non binary people don't owe you androgeny. stevonne mostly leaning towards fem is completely fine, critising stonvonne cuz they're not completely androgenous is alienating a big part of the non binary community
People might say the character looks fem and I cam see, but like they have a look that any mix of what society thought they would be as a kid and what they are now would not phase me to learn about.
Lily's complaint here wasn't that stevonnie was fem presenting, her complaint was that a masc presenting child and a fem presenting child made a fem presenting adult person who is repeatedly perved on.
Wait what, hurt people hurt people? What an incredibly original phrase for such an original idea! We’re onto something here, like abuse is some sort of… cycle. Crazy.
I would argue even before Lapis started perpetuating the cycle of abuse the longer she was fused with Jasper, she originally just wanted to fuse and trap Jasper under the sea in order to protect Steven from her. Up to this point, Lapis has had nothing but gratitude and positive feelings toward Steven so it would make sense that she felt the need to protect her one friend from somebody out to get him. She did it when they first arrived in the hand ship in The Return. She even lied about Steven being just a plain human just to protect him from Jasper’s assault. It was only when she stayed Malachite for an extended period of time that she began relishing in the torture she was putting Jasper through for hurting her and threatening to hurt the one person she cared about. It became so toxic that Lapis stopped thinking about herself as her own entity and embraced being Malachite. That’s where the toxicity in Lapis comes in, I feel. Too many people acknowledge the wrong things she was doing to Jasper since Jail Break but end up leaving out the part where she was also trying to protect Steven from a Homeworld Gem bent on destroying him and his friends/family.
@@theluigifan1 Exactly. Lapis was clearly initially trying to help, but it was when she had time to stew in her trauma from and hatred of Jasper and Homeworld (not to mention being trapped by the thing she's meant to control for so many months), she decided to take it out on Jasper. Hell, I wouldn't put it past her to at first thing this was a good thing and that Jasper deserved it for hurting her and threatening Steven before she eventually relished in it. But then she was able to come to the realization that that wasn't healthy in the slightest (meanwhile Jasper just came to the realization that she liked to be dominated /j). I really don't know how someone can misinterpret that. No one's saying Lapis didn't hurt Jasper, and I feel like that's what some people miss, idk
@@47ratsinahoodieExactly. I don’t know how people forget that Lapis *literally* said to Steven in Chille Tid “Just let me do this for you!” That’s why I feel my interpretation for why she ultimately chose to form Malachite with Jasper is apt.
I think that Lily Orchard was against the portrayal of Lapis because she needs to shield her own actions. She needs people to believe that abuse survivors can't become abusive themselves, because she falls into the same category as Lapis: someone who was horribly abused, who went on to horribly abuse others.
I think while Lily definitely deserves this criticism, in my mind she's kinda a symptom of a larger problem. The attention economy has gotten so grotesque on the internet that it's no longer just acceptable to say "here's why I don't like this thing" and instead the video has to be "this is why this piece of media is irredemable GARBAGE." The fact that ragebait/negativity gets so many clicks on this platform rewards lazy, unsubstantiated critiques at best, and vicious misinformation at worst. Yucky.
I am a professional hater. What separates me from all the amateurs is that I know I'm the problem. Sometimes I have legitimate reasons but I just as often don't. It's freeing to just hate something because you're petty and are just irked by that thing. I dislike Taylor Swift for example. There are real nuanced critiques of her activism, her writing/sings, and even who she associates with. But I don't dislike her because of those things, I just dislike her because her fan base thinks she's the best thing since sliced bread. You don't have to have a good reason to hate something. You have to have a good reason to hate them in public or online. Online forums dedicated to venting about a celebrities are a grey area bc I think it's fine as long as you have to actively search for it.
Doug Walker and CinemaSins need to be held accountable for poisoning the well of online media discourse so thoroughly that people like Lily Orchard and the MANY alt-right grifters like Nerdrotic and The Quartering are able to parrot bad-faith criticisms to an audience who will lap it up unthinkingly.
You're completely right! Its this innate feelings of needing to be "smarter" and "totally OWNING" the media you criticize that completely derails from genuine critique to just being "loud and absence as i possibly can!!!!" I don't mind comedy and criticism being mixed together for a video but god, its never really a full mix. Its just this smug sense of being inherently "better" than the media youcritique. Its kind of like the basement nerd rage of smugly insulting media, hiding behind it either being a "joke" or "just my opinion," simultaneously switching between the two, and then rinse and repeat. Its built this REALLY annoying rhetoric that if you don't enjoy a piece of media, then you have to absolutely tear into it and in fact, its entirely the medias fault, you're just way too smart for the it! I'm not saying you have to be 100% positive or even fully LOVE the piece of media you critic, but to frame your own feeling based on personal taste as a critique or "essay" will make it completely fall flat. Hate anything all you want! You dont need a 2 hour video essay to prove your feelings are valid, they already are. Not everything was made for you and your personal tastes are no less valid, until you start acting as if its actual fact. And if you do want to engage with media you dont like, genuinely engage with it and the people who enjoy it. This fucking reddit narrative of needing to be the most giga chad smart boy cinamasins facts over feelings critic is going to put media literacy 6ft under.
I never noticed before, but she complains about queer characters being explicitly limited to gems, while showing Pearl's punk lesbian hookup on screen.
Plus, while this could be a grey area on whether or not it's considered queer, Kevin acknowledges that Stevonnie is enby and still hits on them. So that's another human, who shows up multiple times, who could be considered some flavor of queer
I hope Lily has grown since making this video, but the Damage it has done still needs to be corrected for. Lily has a pretty bad track record of attacking and misrepresenting anyone who criticizes her, so again, I hope she has grown and doesn't go nuclear. Still, making this video was a risk- so please support me if you can! Like, comment, and share!
she hasnt. she's still attacking people in her comment section under that video, and is still bigoted as all hell.
She’s worse! 👍
She hasn't. In fact, she got worse. Your faith in her is admirable but horribly misplaced.
Nah, she's way worse now actually!
hasn’t grown that much💀
About the gay wedding, Sugar did two amazing things to break how the show was being adapted in homophobic countries:
First was putting Ruby on a dress. In Russia, Ruby was being dubbed as male so their relationship would turn heterossexual, and having Ruby in dress now meant that those places would have to have a "man" using a dress without it being a joke or the "man" being femme the rest of the time.
And second, having the Diamonds crash the wedding meant that now the episode couldn't be cut off, because the next one started at the exact end of this one.
Well played, Sugar, well played :D
THAT IS FUCKING GENIUS?????? HOLY SHIT
Lily calls it bad representation
I call it a great swindle
@@KingThundersRealsounds delicious
A masterful play 💙❤️
they cancelled those episodes anyway tho.
"blink and you'll miss it representation" i'm sorry, does lily blink for 8 fucking hours??? because that's not blinking, that's sleep
Just look up "every ruby and sapphire moment" and you get compilation videos of over 10+ minutes 💀
This made me laugh my ass off, perfect reply.
She did NOT watch keystone motel
Fall into a year long coma and you’ll miss it
If she was sleeping the whole time, that would explain a lot of the inaccuracies.
Lily's insistence in constantly referring to Rebecca Sugar personally as if she was the only writer in th show is so grating.
Ugh, listening to the "Pearl is a slave" thing is so infuriating. Literally the song that brings her back in the movie is "Let's be independent together".
she wants to be a real writer sooo bad
fr its like she doesn't understand that creating and writing a show is a collaborative effort
@@gh0stward0o0 Its even worse because she DID make a writing advice thread on twitter a couple of years ago and it is the WORST tips and advice you'll ever hear. It was just HER preferences. If she likes certain tropes, its the best, if she dislikes it, its bad and you should be in jail for writing it.
To be fair, on her tumblr she's also trashed the music as being done by "a borderline r*tard and a genderspecial", referring to Aivi and Serasshu, who are a queer couple (Aivi is nonbinary, Serasshu is neurodivergent, AMAB and agender). So sometimes she DOES expand her hatred to others.
Once saw Discord drama where someone mentioned being excited for the SU movie, and someone else replied "uuh SU is nazi propaganda ://" and when everyone else was like "what the FUCK are you talking about" the person doubled down and kept linking Lily's video as their source. The damage of that video is insaneee lol
Now you can counter with this and be just as annoying except you will be right
To quote Carl Wheezer about it: I don't feel so good.
The show literally shows Nazi stuff as awful.
did this person not know su is made by a jewish person... lmao
Sugar is literally Jewish 💀💀
Lily calling everything that doesnt include the space fascists filler, and calling Garnet's emotional split filler, then saying that Garnet is tossed to the side as a character, THEN saying that the conclusion to her emotional split was great until the space fascists came in is truly beyond parody.
You could barely be more inconsistent if you tried
I legit think she's schizophrenic.
Agreed
Lol 'the Garnet' ❤
@@Mimipking Hmm? I have no clue what you're talking about :)
The point about Pearl and Rose/Pink’s relationship. I’ve seen some people be like “How could she have picked Greg over Pearl? They had so much history, Pearl was willing to die for her, etc” but that’s the thing. Pearl _idolized_ Rose/Pink, who was understandably uncomfortable with being put on that pedestal, and had told Pearl that she didn’t want to be treated like that. Greg treated her like an equal from the beginning, even almost forgetting that she wasn’t another human.
Yes! This is what the so-called "Nice Guys" don't get; most women don't want to be put on a pedestal & "treated like a princess", & it's not because we want to be "treated like crap" instead; it's because we want to be treated like PEOPLE. I want to be cherished & respected & supported, but not worshipped.
Its also a good kids lesson, sometimes you can choose not to reciprocate a another persons love if its not right for you. I love how rose/pearl is not the ultimate way a relationship could be and is the right way to love someone, we choose who we want to be with not the other way around.
This reminds me of THAT duo from darling in the franx with the nice girl who abandons her friend and the guy who's basically forced to ignore how terrible she did him.
This is a problem I’ve seen in the anime rezero, the fans raged when the mc picked emilia over rem. Their reasoning was “she saved him time and time again, took care of you, and loved you” when acts of service do not entitle you to someone’s love. Subaru is not required to pick rem because she does stuff for him, rose does not have to pick pearl because pearl does a ton for her, relationships and love are not transactional, it is creepy as hell to hear so many people think you choose someone based on how much they do for you
@@marngao THANK YOU.
What really irks me about Lily and her criticism is that she has the most "damned if you do, damned if you don't" mentality I've ever seen.
She basically wants to watch characters who are flat, one note NPCs because she can't go for 4 seconds without screeching that a character is horrible for daring to be flawed, but then turns around and screeches that a character is horrible if they're not perfectly multi-faceded and full of story. Sooo.... Which is it? Do you want an NPC or do you want an actual character?
What do you expect? She tried to make the argument that Mary Sues are fun.
Now that you _mention_ it...
It's weird. So many of her "criticisms" (I use this loosely) come from a place that seriously makes you wonder "Have you ever even seen... _stuff?_ " but at the same time they feel like they're from someone who has (if anything) seen _too much_ stuff.
@@fluffywolfo3663 Her criticism is 80% made up, 10% random political points, and 10% pain.
@@NintendoMeister2260 And 100% of it boils down to "Cause I said so." Remember her "simple writing tips" where it was mostly "Don't do this because you're a bad person if you do" ?
She likes characters she likes and shits on everything else. When you realize that her criticism is little more than pointless ranting and unprofessional intangible opinions trusted at you in an aggressive Gish gallop, it's obvious she's not worth listening to or taking seriously.
Bruh. Lily Orchard legit went "These bad cartoons are the reason why bigots make laws against us"
??? ?????? ? ? ??
Girl what
Personally, I love the fact that Rose goes from being seen as this perfect, loving, selfless character only to be revealed as a flawed, and frankly problematic person. It's devastatingly realistic, beautifully nuanced and elevates the show greatly imo
Yeah, I remember someone saying that the thing about Rose was that we saw her character arc in reverse, and that that seriously affected how the audience saw her.
@MathematicalVoid Ooo that's a really good observation! I hadn't thought about it like that
it’s kinda like learning about people irl. At first someone you admire may seem like they could do no wrong but eventually you learn they’re flawed too. I think her character was very well done!
the revelation of rose being pink diamond was the biggest plot twist ever at the time
yessss this, its kind of like growing up and idealizing your parents just to slowly find out over time that they're as flawed as you and never fully met the expectations you held them to, steven kind of does this with greg in one of the future episodes too. i really like that honesty and nuance about recognizing how people you love will never be purely "good" or "bad", it's being both that makes them people in the first place
"imagine writing a scene THIS sinister looking"
*looks like a 'she asked for no pickles' meme*
Imagine ordering a burger THIS pickled looking
Im gonna make that frame a meme now because of this comment
34:07
Okay, so this criticism from Lily has bothered me for YEARS because it so clearly misinterprets Steven's relationship with violence.
Steven being excited and gleeful with violence was only early in the show because he thought it was cool and he only ever fought against literal monsters. Once REAL violence started affecting Steven and his loved ones ( Steven The Sword Fighter, ENTIRE JAILBREAK ARC), his entire perception of violence changes. This is not inconsistent writing like she claims, it's literally the most blatant example of subtle character development throughout the show and she completely misses it. By "Bismuth" Steven has been severely negatively affected by violence and does not view it as he once did, hence why he's uncomfortable.
Agreed. It's like trying to condemn someone for being a vegetarian because they ate meat as a child, and said they liked it. They had to come to that realization themselves. No one starts out saying "I don't think eating meat is right." They see how animals are killed and decide they don't want to support that. They make that conscious decision that their desire to become vegetarian outweighs their thought that hamburgers are tasty. They can still remember that they thought hamburgers were tasty, while still obstaining from eating them.
Note: This is not me preaching about the "evils of meat eating". I'm just making a comparison to show how stupid it is to condemn Steven for being excited about violence as a kid, and then deciding later to be a pacifist.
Literally there's a lot of symbolism about why steven has a shield rather than a sword or other weapons, he prefers to protect rather than attack, and the audience then asks why he doesn't go berserk, like, dude... Almost every "hero story goes like that give it a rest
@@manumooo9071 and contrary to what the Anti-Steven memes to this day insinuate, Steven is perfectly capable of fighting back and using his shield in a combative manner. Remember the shield gauntlets he made in The Movie?
@@manumooo9071 I also noticed this especially when it came to Rose's sword. To my recollection, Steven never actually wields the sword in the show. In face, the only one other than Rose/Pink Diamond to actively wield it is Connie, who was presumably given the sword by Steven.
Note: I could be wrong about this it's been awhile since I've seen the show. But I'm pretty sure Steven never uses the sword in combat.
That, and what would shattering the Diamonds achieve? Suppose he did shatter them. Then what? There would be a power vacuum. Steven and the Crystal Gems start by changing the culture of strict hierarchies and caste systems first, THEN he uses his authority as Pink Diamond (something he only learned later on) to be granted an air of authority.
He shows White Diamond that no matter how much you try, no authority will be able to control everyone.
Lily constantly insisting that Rebecca does not know what she's writing about is so sinister to me. How cruel to say that about someone that has clearly put years of her life into creating meaningful artwork. Creating a cartoon is no small thing, and Rebecca earned the credentials to make her own show. Acting like she's just some idiot that walked into a writers room is just wrong.
Rebecca is one of a kind. Her cartoon has such a unique concept. She's my inspiration.
Facts bro
agreed. however, it's not as sinister as 🍏🔵🌤 tbh
I saw Rebecca Sugar at the Animation Festival of Annecy 2019. They were answering questions to a small audience and her husband, Ian Jones-Quartney, was there as well.
Rebecca was very sweet and gracious with everyone.
The last question someone asked was “what do you think about the criticisms towards the show and certain haters?” And Rebecca started to get emotional, saying she didn’t understand certain claims and as she started to stutter, Ian Took the microphone and said with a slightly angry tone:
“this show is about accepting others and Kindness, if some can’t understand that is really on them”
he started comforting rebecca and brought her out of the room and the meeting ended there.
I’m pretty sure they were talking about Lily The Jerk and her followers, and Ian was clearly mad at them for being so cruel towards Rebecca.
this is such an important story, thank you so much. poor rebecca ;-; @@rebecca_rh
The fact that she really said all those disrespectful shit about lapis, stevonnie and rebecca and still had the gut to scream about how sexualized stevonnie is literally so embrassing. like mf do YOU have eyes 😭😭??
Literally
Lily has been caught looking at 3D, photorealistic loli, shotacon and toddlercon on Sankaku Complex, so my guess is yes, she does, and what she saw, she thought wasn't hot enough.
@@morganqorishchi8181adding to that, she literally co-wrote Stockholm. A disturbing fanfic that involves children and smut. Just gross. Lily does not deserve a platform.
@@SphericalNervousSystemshe also allegedly would molest her younger sister and partially based Stockholm off of the disgusting shit she wanted to do to her
@@SphericalNervousSystem she also made doomsday rising and creeped on her sister, later went on to insert fantasies about her sister into stockholm
Lily referring to arcs being repeatedly "abandoned" and then mentioning the episode they come back in is actually hilarious. it's not abandoned if it comes back in a later episode. An arc doesn't have to be explored in every single episode for it to remain an important thing to a character, then it wouldn't really be an arc.
She may have confused character arcs with story arcs in how they operate.
@@animeotaku307 even then there is no written rule that either have to be constant in storytelling. Its okay to take breaks from story and character arcs.
Shakespeare was famous for it. He'd write an emotionally intense scene and then open the next scene with a raunchy joke to break the tension.
Sometimes arcs need interuption.
Sometimes character development has to happen before plot development.
Sometimes the creators are tired and need a fun episode to animate in between the really important plot heavy ones to make the work managable.
Creating "throws and catches" of setups and payoffs in your story is like, the basic foundation of engaging long-term writing. who seriously sees a previously established plot point come back and be paid off and considers the fact that it did that _inconsistent?_ That's a telltale mark of a writer paying attention to the story they're crafting!
except that starting an arc and then dropping it for a while would have been considered abandoning it. lily is from a generation, i think, of pre internet binging. or that's the sense i get. back when you got one or two episodes of a show per week. so introducing an arc and then not mentioning it for 8 episodes ... and then you consider the hiatuses that steven universe experienced and yes abandoning is an appropriate word to use here.
@@kitrana That kind of depends on the arc. For example with The Test, that's inherently something that has to come up later by nature of Steven needing to grow as a character before he discovers that episode 3 was a test.
Other arcs, like Garnet being (rightfully) upset with Pearl for the Sardonyx situation, persist and are present between back-to-back episodes, because that's a very active plot point.
I see your point for some things like the events of Warp Tour not being addressed in the following episode at all (that drove me a bit nuts also) but by and large the arcs that get left on hold between their relevant episodes do so because it's fairly natural for them not to follow up immediately.
I find "Rose just wanted to have a baby" to be the most interesting possible answer, honestly, because it really...humanizes her, for lack of a better term. Rose Quartz is spoken of like a myth or a legend throughout a lot of the show, so of course Steven, and the audience, expects some sort of complicated reason for his existence, some sort of plot or plan or meaning that would align with her mythical status.
But there was no plot, no plan. Rose didn't create him for some grand purpose. Despite all of the great and terrible things she's done, she wasn't some distant mythological figure. She was just another Gem, just a person who wanted a baby.
It was also supposed to show how Steven can overthink every single piece of information that crosses his mind. It's to foreshadow Future.
EXACTLY, that, and it makes steven more relatable to the viewer as a lot of people were born for that exact reason, their parents just wanted a kid. very rarely do parents have this huge overarching plan when deciding to have a kid. it's realistic because it shows that steven, just like us, doesn't have a greater meaning behind his existence. his purpose in life is to just live it.
Also strongly plays into the themes of Pink Diamond’s revolution of rejecting some kind of necessity and reason for doing anything in favor of just doing what makes you happy. Rose didn’t sacrifice herself to make a half human half gem child that would save Earth, she just wanted to have a kid cuz she heard about it from Greg and thought it was beautiful and worthwhile.
Weird how lily ignores how rose adores humanity’s ability to choose what they become and do in comparison to gems being made for a purpose and only doing that purpose, it’d completely go against roses beliefs, what she admired about humans, and the whole reason she had Steven if he was made to serve a purpose or if he was supposed to be something specific.
This episode also literally comes back up when Steven returns to roses room and starts a storm while yelling at a fake rose over whether she just had him so she could avoid her problems and have him deal with it
@@zero_55555 honestly, that message resonates with me and i never even got into watching steven universe. just the idea of coming into existence for no particular reason relates to me and probably a lot of other people
honestly i dont even think lapis has that many writing flaws. she's a very honest portrayal of the kind of disordered behavior and disordered interpersonal relationships that are born out of complex post traumatic stress disorder. that includes taking on abrasive, violent, argumentative, and angry traits as forms of defense and self isolation. she spent months relying on only her own anger to keep the one person she views as having helped her safe. of course shes going to be an abrasive asshole when she comes out of that. thats who she needed to be to do what she needed to do for steven
Most the flaws for me is how she kinda gets shafted in the later half of the story. Like she doesn't do much then suddenly she's back for a thing then she's gone again. Just Wish she was integrated a bit better
For me, she just became kind of boring
But it didn't help that Peridot was my favourite 😂
And also the moment in the show where they were all crying because of Blue Diamond's powers or something and Lapid didn't cry because oooh she felt worse
That was hands down the stupidest moment in the show for me 😂
I'm sorry but that's the moment where I stopped taking the shoe seriously. People point out the ending where Steven easily beat White Diamond in an argument but the Lapis moment was the worst one for me
@@HidinginPrivate I think she was meant to have a greater role in the series but how much we lost when CN decided not to renew the series is the worst thing about SU.
She’s my favorite character (sorry peridot but you’re number 2 for me)
They clearly show Lapis trying to fly away and being stopped by Jasper grabbing her and holding her down. Framing Jasper as the sole victim is pretty disgusting. Especially when this scene was as close to something looking rapey in a kids show that you can possibly get
dude right!!! people gloss over this detail all the time😭flying away was the first thing she tried to do and had jasper not grabbed her malachite wouldn't have happened in the first place
@@petergriffinfortnite69 Also, I know Jasper said "come on, just say yes" but since she already stopped Lapis from getting away, am I right that the implication is that Lapis really wasn't getting the option of saying no even though this wasn't explicitly said? That was the vibe I was getting from that scene
@@petergriffinfortnite69 Also, was that scene supposed to look somewhat rapey? Was that intentional?
@@thevarietychannelofyoutube4769yeah yeah I'm yyehyeah d yeah I'm pretty sure the way it was supposed to come off was dubious consent. "technically" jasper got consent, but she had to force it out of lapis (and she tries to manipulate her like "didnt these people use you? dont you want to hurt them? ooo you want revenge so bad" like putting words in her mouth based off of what she knows about lapis's history)
lapis doesn't exactly jump for joy at the thought of fusing w jasper, she responds with bewilderment and based on visual context clues she feels cornered. she of all people knows what homeworld can do to her, she got trapped in a mirror for thousands of years by them lol, and jasper is just gonna keep her from running away again--and she has to concentrate to use her water powers, obviously jasper isnt gonna let her do that either--so she goes basically with the last resort
I dont know how my comment stuttered like that, sorry 😭
Lily has two very independent ideas; One: Slavery is a very real thing on Homeworld and that is bad. Two: Rose Quartz is a bad person for trying to liberate Homeworld.
is she that insane
@@BestOneEver247Clearly
But Rose Quartz wasn't trying to liberate Homeworld. She was starting a war where she was playing both sides. Because she was bored.
@@HuxtableK im sorry, when has Rose ever wanted to play both sides? What she wants, and what Homeworld wants, are fundamentally incompatable.
Has it not occured to you that maybe a character can learn to grow and appreciate a world they thought little of? Can a character not fall in love and draw the courage to fight what she used to grow up believing?
Rose was never supposed to be perfect, but her fight for Earth is very much a genuine cause she believed in. Either you have the empathy of a sociopath, or you just listened to other critics talk about Rose.
@@BubbyBoy Well, there's the fact she absolutely did play both sides. What she wants is entertainment.
The whole "puberty isnt instant" freakout Lily has is silly. Rebecca intended Stevonnie's arc partially to represent puberty, which in turn represents growing up. Lily claims that because Stevonnie already has the body of an adult that Rebecca's intent for the character is wrong. Sure, puberty is not instant, thats obvious. However, the point is that once puberty has affected a young person to the point of looking older/devoloping a more adult body, it can feel all too sudden when people start to treat them in ways they never thought they'd be treated. Its a metaphor for how fleeting childhood innocence feels, especially once it's lost. The fact that Lily misunderstood this is fascinating.
I can't tell you when I grew into my current body (my adult body, I guess), but I can tell you the first time I realised that people viewed me in a sexual light.
I was 11 or 12. We just had swimming class and I had been held back because (unbeknownst to me at the time) I was feeling really insecure because I was getting daily comments back my body and how I looked.
It was raining and because it was raining and my hair being wet, I let it hang down over my shoulders.
One of my recurring bullies looked me up and down and asked me, "whose the father?" while referring to the fact that my shirt was wet around my chest.
In that moment, I realised how I was viewed in my class, by other girls in my class, by people in my life.
Again, I was 11 or 12, my bully was a few days older than me, so also 11 or 12 and she felt comfortable just sexualising me blatantly and with no regard. That instant still plays in my head over and over.
Watching the episode where Stevonnie were just having fun together made me feel weird. Now, as an almost 22 year old, it's been almost a decade and it still hurts. I think that I saw myself in that episode, but I might never know.
Even though I was not at all developed outside of being slightly ahead of the curve of development, I was blatantly commented on in the light of sex, of pregnancy, of a piece of meat rather than a person.
Lily, being trans, might never have had that experience as a child, but I did. I feel with Stevonnie in a way that I can't explain.
Being sexualised while a child is always going to be horrific and disturbing, but Lily can't see it from a child's perspective, probably because of her own fucked up history of being a sexual assaulter to a child
Exactly!!!
My thoughts are this- she likely is mad at her own lack of "female" puberty. Thus lashed out. I've been there myself and I'm just genderfluid.
Also she did WHAT??
I should also point out some 15 and 16 year old *DO* have adult bodies, some people achieve physical maturity fast
Also like.. puberty happens relatively quickly to any other growth the body has.. like, it takes a year or maybe less
my #1 pet peeve in relation to steven universe discourse is the fact that it's managed to mindfuck people into thinking that the representation is "bad"
That's seriously wild
Omg yeah tumblr was genuinely awful with that. I felt bad for watching it as a teen because I enjoyed it and saw myself in Stevonnie (
At this point in time basically anyone who talked about representation where the toxic tumblr users so people got turned of from representation because everyone advocating for it was a pretentious jackass trying to feel better about themselvs by helping some minority.
But no rep is better than bad rep. Bad rep is used to paint us as if we are deviants or some anomaly that just happened or it's glorifying abuse and toxic relationships(She-ra, SU, ect.) So yeah, I'd rather that these shows never fucking try and instead watch th owl house season 1 because it's just more wholesome.
Before you ask, yes, the "rep" in SU is garbage. If any of you actually watched Lily's video instead of jacking off to this dude's shitty editing, you'd know that Ruby and Sapphire are two of the best characters in the series because when they are separate, they are written insanely well. Notice I said, when they are separate because Sugar would much rather sideline Garner to all hell unless it's an episode about Fusion than to let Ruby and Sapphire out to be an actual relation. Telling the two newly wed "women"(Gems are monogender and uses she/her pronouns) that Steven pronounces them Garnet and not wives shows just how much metaphor Sugar is using to avoid saying the real thing.
I do give her credit by making sure that the episode can't be censored due to the diamonds showing up during the last half. But also the diamonds showing up, trying to kill everyone and Steven calling them "family" is gross. No Steven, your real family is the individuals who aren't actively trying to kill you aka the people who's staying behind you.
The way Lily popularized painting Rebecca as a Nazi sympathizer is actually disgusting. Like an absolutely abhorrent way to talk about a queer Jewish person who wanted to write an escapist kid's story about how people have the ability to change their minds and atone for their bad deeds if only they were willing to listen to those they've harmed. Just gross, puts such a bad taste in my mouth.
Considering that Lily has a track record of controversies regarding the Stockholm fanfic that she's trying to hide as well as calling everyone an "abusers" for just disagreeing, then that's not surprised about the quality of her character. She's just unhinged and ill-tempered, yet not the brightest light bulb in the lampshade.
i don't like lily orchard, but you're absolutely wrong.
1. lily literally said rebecca ISN'T a nazi sympathizer
2. it's not her fault that typical twitter users see her as one
3. if she made a non jewish, hetero person look like a nazi sympathizer, that WOULDN'T be disgusting???
@@gamingtime468 1. just because she didn't say "Rebecca is a Nazi sympathizer" out loud that doesn't mean she didn't directly imply it through her words and portrayal and popularize that interpretation. That rhetoric was absolutely jumpstarted and encouraged by Lily.
2. As someone with a platform she has a responsibility to not spread blatant misinformation in order to degrade the reputation of someone else just because they made a show she doesn't like.
3. Of course it would still be disgusting if it happened to anyone and I never said otherwise, but for it to be aimed at someone who is already in a vulnerable demographic let alone a demographic that had been targeted and victimized by the holocaust is especially gross.
@@gamingtime468 her video has 8 MILLION views. it is absolutely her fault the way that some people view sugar.
@@oMuStiiA yea and that's the thing. the things the diamonds did are literally the same stuff the Nazis did x 1000. the cluster and the off colors are proof that if someone can't fit the job their were made to do, there would be taken out. the same thing the Nazis did. so to sit there and say "oh there were just sad, you should forgive them" is disgusting. if someone said that "Oh Hitler was only increase and grow Germany" and brought up his dead brother when people bring up the holocaust. they would be called a Nazi sympathizer or straight up a Nazi.
All this review says to me is that Lily has absolutely NO media literacy. The bland, black and white idea that villains should be clear-cut, undeniably evil with no redeeming qualities, and that protagonists should be perfect, standup moral role models who make no mistakes. That forgiveness is a myth that should be relegated to petty preschool spats and that the only real solution to problems in the world is to kill the bad guys. She glazes over the characterization of the show’s cast and focuses only on the plot beats because she doesn’t understand them. She sees the multi-faceted, nuanced view of rose as confused because she can’t comprehend that a character could not fit into good or evil. Instead, she would rather have the most childish possible portrayal of the world. In Lily’s perfect world, Steven universe would play out as follows;
The story opens clearly laying out the diamond’s villainous plans and intentions. Steven’s storyline follows him gaining more mastery of his powers until he is in the same level of the diamonds, thwarting their plots to increasing degrees and eliminating their minions in epic battle scenes, until the plot culminates in her ‘satisfying’ conclusion, where the diamond’s monologue maliciously, Steven slays them in his righteous anger, and the world is saved.
She doesn’t understand nuance. She can’t comprehend any plot more complex than doom slayer. Everything she suggests is boring, and sucks all the intrigue, complex messages, and nuance out of the story. It’s pathetic
True. Lily doesn't even understand the concept of foreshadowing. I never understood why anyone ever listened to her. Her media takes are ass
the thing is the whole thing with forgiving the diamonds is the only valid point here
Because like yes forgiveness can exist, but theres a point where it becomes a copout and is a bizarre response to bad actions. Forgiveness also doesnt magically fix things and often puts more onus on the vicrim rather than the perpetrator. One cant just always "forgive" their brutal oppressors, and its not like that would do anything by itself
The problem with su ending is that it wrote itself into a corner. It established a big bad, and leveraged white diamond into a way to lead the other diamonds into a path towards earned forgiveness and reconciliation. Oh, it said, to a point they are also forced into this by white diamond, they are also lost hurt ppl,thus this can be leveraged into taking them into our side
But the problem with that is that it renders white diamond as the absolute villain and ideological center of the evil of the system. So now we have a problem. Theres nothing to leverage here. Either we kill what we ourselves wrote as the root of all evil, and violate the ideals and tone of the show, or we forgive and resolve the situation with a joke, which ends up looking bizzare and unearned because, again, this is the person established as the one absolute ruler responsible for everything, not just the product of a system but THE system.
Essentially they wrote the diamonds and white diamond specifically too evil. It was established they commited genocides, destroyed planets making gems into literal objects etc, so then they have our protagonist defeat ultra space hitler with a joke , it feels unearned, and when he subsequently forgives em, bizarre and jarring, and the analogies with real life oppressive regimes deliberately cultivated in the show just engender thoughts like "so does this show think we should just forgive x genocidal maniac?". And again, how does the person whose been established as the supreme leader for centuries just... change their mind just like that
this is the corner this show wrote itself into and couldnt find a satisfying answer. My solution by the way would be prison, just like how avatar the last airbender. That way you dont have a "just forgive ms eugenics genocide over here" and youd have the character available to do a more long term understanding and forgiveness thing
That's not really the point. It isn't that she doesn't GET nuance, it's that the show responds to people saying "Hey isn't it fucked up that someone literally made a zoo of sentient people" with "don't worry about it :)" To be fair, there are a lot of people in real life that we preform that sort of hand waving towards. For example, Abraham Lincoln wanted to send freed slaves to the American colony in Africa, Liberia, rather than have them live in the United States. Thing is, though, most of those people are from hundreds of years ago, and are not only long since dead, but lived in a completely different context to the one we live in now. To bring up the Lincoln thing again, one of the most common reasons against the liberation of American Slaves was a fear of a mass slave revolt like what happened in Haiti, and Lincoln, realizing that the freedom of the slaves was much more important than leaving them in bondage, was willing to send them away if they would be freed. Steven Universe does none of this. The show just says "Hey here's this good guy" in no uncertain terms and then shows them doing fucked up shit, gives no rational behind their actions, then moves on like it's all hunky-dory. We all think that the plan to deport slaves is fucked up, and will point that out as a flaw in Lincoln's character. Steven Universe says nothing about the Human Zoo, and actively tries to make it go away so that the character of Rose isn't as flawed.
@@boss_boy_ that’s just not true though, the point of the show is that rose is flawed. She’s seen in good terms from the point of view of characters that loved her, like Pearl, but we’re also directly exposed to her faults and wrongdoings. One of the major themes in the show is the trope of Steven being forced to pay back for his mother’s mistakes, and this is a negative thing.
@@Entlty007 I'll admit it's been a while since I watched the show, so maybe I'm remembering things wrong.
Just to clarify, at the end of your reply you said "One of the major themes in the show is the trope of Steven being forced to pay back for his mother’s mistakes, and this is a negative thing." Can I ask what you meant by "and this is a negative thing." The way you worded it makes it sound like you're saying that the theme of Steven paying for Rose's sins is a bad thing, which doesn't sound right. Would you mind clearing things up for me?
What’s so frustrating is that she goes on and on about the negative traits of the character and how that makes them all terrible and poor characters. All the while ignoring that they were CALLED OUT BY OTHER CHARACTERS IN THE NARRATIVE! Pearl being overbearing, jealous, erratic? She’s called out by multiple characters multiple times and she learned to work through those traits! Rose was childish and secretive? It’s clear she was working on that up until Steven and then he went on to end that unquestioning worship of her memory. Steven is immature, annoying, and oblivious to his surroundings? Well, he’s a child and then he GROWS TF UP!
Like Lily you can just say you have no media literacy and just keep it moving!
In addition to the Steven part, it's also a coming of age show. As a result, he's meant to be seen as occasionally obnoxious until the end of Season 1 when he gains more competence.
Fr, I'm honestly happy that the likes in her channel in comparison to the likes of the other channels responding to her really speak for themselves
The insane thing Abt this is that Lily makes this argument (the character is called out in the narrative which is why it's okay that they're not always right) in a different show. She made this argument to say that Big Bang Theory wasn't sexist bcs whenever the dudes were shitty they'd get called out for it. (This is a debatable take, I don't recall enough of Big Bang Theory to really say 'yes' or 'no' to it..)
Regardless of opinions on Big Bang Theory, she MADE THIS ARGUMENT, yet doesn't apply it to Steven Universe. It has bad faith written all over it, or at least a deep, deep lack of thought
(I was a pretty big fan of Lily as a teen, yes it is very embarrassing with a pinch of hindsight)
It's not a lack of media literacy, though. It's active lying. She said that Pearl wasn't called out for her behavior.
This was the hardest parts of the video to go through. Pointing out how a character did a bad thing.. like yeah.. hello? Whats so bad about that, its not terrible writing
Video was fantastic! I'm very glad you took the time to do this two part series. Steven Universe is one of my favorite pieces of media and it was traumatic to see how easy it was for bad faith confident videos to take over the conversation around it and gaslight people into thinking it's worse than it was. The show was not perfect but it certainly wasn't as dangerous as they tried to push. Glad to know upon watching unbothered, new viewers can find the same value many others and I had when watching it live.
Oh my stars it's jakeneutron!🌟
Yeah I think the biggest thing I was surprised by is after I watched it- it was just like...innocuous? Like it was good, I liked it- but I expected something to be more divisive? Thanks so much for the support both in sharing and supporting financially! It means a lot!
❤
@@HidinginPrivateI was divisive at the time i think!
🗣💯💯💯💯
Lily Orchard is a horrible person who has abused everyone in her life in some way. Her painting Lapis fighting Jasper as abusive is hardcore projection. She expects her victims to give in, and if they don’t she labels them as abusive and tells all of their friends and family about how horrible they are. This video is so goddamn revealing I can’t believe she would post it.
THIS. I'm seeing that a ton of her SU critiques were her projecting her personal feelings onto the show. Like the part where she hated on one of Steven's character progressions, from going with the flow and demanding we have to fight the bad guys, to deescalating the situation with a non-violent approach seems like projection from her part too if you know about how aggressive of a person Lily is, and also remembering a time where she believed a way to stop bullying is to "just beat them up and punch them in the face." Her solution to a conflict is to cause violence is because she aggressive.
She should be in a museum she’s a fucking caricature of herself it’s incredible
Something that stuck out to me was how she said something like "Being quiet and complacent in an abusive situation gets you abused more. You shouldn't be quiet, you should fight back." (I'm paraphrasing heavily because I'm not going to go back and rewatch the video it was from). There's already discourse about "good" victims versus "bad" and at the time of my own abuse I was just a tiny 11yo child and my abuser was my mother who got away with what she did for so long only because she was good at lying to people and she manipulated me into thinking I deserved it. And at the time of hearing what Lily said it really messed me up because I legitimately could not fight back. I wasn't even out of elementary school and I didn't even call what happened to me abuse until I was 15. It felt so victim-blamey and I hated myself for a long time for it. I was a child. A _lot_ of abuse survivors were just children.
@@randompromises1038 It is totally victim-blaming. I had a similar experience when I was getting bullied. When I would tell my close friends about the harassment I dealt with, I was always left with them questioning, "Well, why didn't you fight them back or something? They're only going to pick on you more if you don't do anything." I know how you feel about those types of judgment messing you up because they certainly did to me. I felt like I shouldn't complain because I didn't do anything about it, but like you said, I literally couldn't do much about it myself unless I told the teacher and seek out counseling. Also, the statement about compliance only make you get abused more is not only untrue, but it invalidates the experiences of people who did fight back against their abuser and the situation got worse. There are countless stories of victims lashing out at their abusers, and their abusers uses their rage and defense as leverage against them to further frame their victims as the abusers. I'm sorry that you had to go through that experience. And I wish you well, and I hope you're in a safe, better place now.
@@randompromises1038 sounds like you were in a situation where a much larger and more powerful person took advantage of their power to hurt you. You couldn't have fought back, and you shouldn't have had to. You were a child. I hope you're doing well now.
Can we please turn “imagine writing a scene this sinister looking” into a meme?
imagine writing a comment this sinister
if you want a REAL "sinister looking" scene check out the owl house S2E16 hollow mind
"Imagine writing a scene this sinister looking!"
th-cam.com/video/4Jog1B_as7Q/w-d-xo.html
@@ronan-outoftime sadly she thinks of that as the worst episode of the series.
@@randompromises1038okay, then she’s insane. Got it.
I wanna comment specifically on the whole “the show sexualises Stevonnie” thing. Almost every woman or fem presenting person has had an uncomfortable experience as a teenager where they realise their body is being looked at sexually. I felt very seen in that episode, the rush that comes with the new found attention only to realise how uncomfortable and non-consensual it all feels when you realise you aren’t in control of the situation.
I feel like the episode plays it off well. If characters looking at stevonnie that way makes you uncomfortable, good. Realise that’s what a lot of teen girls go through as their bodies are stigmatised. And if you look at a pretty normal representation of a teen fem body and think it’s inappropriately sexual, you’re part of the problem.
That Rebecca Sugar comment about Stevonnie's experience and being looked at like you have the body of an adult when you're still a kid... *so* relatable to me. Which makes Lily completely flipping her shit over that quote even funnier and sadder to me.
hey uh, not to disagree with your point or anything but teenage amab trans femmes also have this kind of experience, so i don't know why their experiences wouldn't be mentioned here too
@surprisedlobsta8543 Stevonnie is not AMAB, and this person is talking about their own particular experience. They don't have to add another caveat when they're talking about their own personal experience.
@@surprisedlobsta8543wouldn’t they fit into fem presenting people?
@@peppito8408 the op was edited to say women and fem presenting people to include them
I noticed she really enjoys bringing up blue diamond as sympathetic and not like. Directly explicitly manipulative. That IS her power. Manipulating other people's emotions. She's supposed to represent toxic relationships of the same nature. People who try to control other people's emotions with their own behaviors. It's important for kids to recognize that just because someone cries doesn't necessarily mean that they're inherently good or sympathetic. Blue diamond may have cried, but she cried while everyone was fighting her with everything they had and she reigned destruction on everything around her. she isn't portrayed in a completely sympathetic light. It's portraying a complex situation with someone who clearly has toxic behaviors that happen to have a sympathetic cause behind them, but it doesn't necessarily make what she's doing okay or sympathetic in itself. This is like.... basic media literacy.
Complete agree
I was also thinking of that, anytime she was crying, that was damaging any gem that was around her, in other words, forcing them to cry, which in other words, it's a toxic method that Blue uses that show her grief by how powerful she is, that has never been seen as positive.
Exactly, Blue Diamond symbolizes abusers who cry, and its a good thing to show to kids who are at heavy risk of being in an abusive dynamic with someone.
It's the most direct metaphor for "Projecting your emotions onto others" you could thing of.
Yeah. Blue always reminds me… a bit too much of my mom for comfort.
I’m halfway through getting my college degree for animation and boy Lily does not understand how the animation pipeline works. She continuously blames Rebecca Sugar for the choices made by studio executives, sporadic scheduling, the rushed conclusion due to cancellation etc. She also doesn’t seem to realize how important storyboard artists actually are, they are the ones who plan out the look of an episode for the rest of the art and animation department and work very closely with the script writers. But her thinking that doesn’t surprise me, I remember in her “writing advice” thread she flat out stated that artists cannot be writers, and writers cannot be artists. Which as someone who also has a major in communications and a minor in English on top of working my way through an art degree, I have a lot of problems with.
The "writers can't be artist/vice versa" thing is especially insane like... the vast majority of the manga industry is THAT. Even outside of Japan it's common, most show creators did the art for their show (ie spongebob, flapjack, chowder and more!)
Also, writing IS art? I know that by “artist” she means someone who works with a visual medium, but still.
@@animeotaku307Yeah an artform, it should still be respected like one- wait is your name LegalAssassin a repo reference?!
Lily has so many incorrect ideas about writing and storytelling that I genuinely feel nauseous listening to her.
It's like being in the bizarro world. Up is down, left is right, town building isn't world building in her weird view of whatever.
I don't think she is someone with much love for fiction. She has a specific niche she wants and refuses anything else. It is deeply upsetting to me as a writer how she characterizes things in the craft as "oh its so simple if you were just competent" as if writing were a scripted play and not a constant improv where your partner dies halfway through and you have to figure out how to dispose of the corpse without breaking the illusion this is all just fun and natural.
This got long winded. But yeah lily's view on writing sucks.
@@cyruscrompton8221 It is!
The point about Lily misunderstanding they/them pronouns is so funny to me because she said some time ago that it took her two full years to get used using they/them pronouns for a singular person.
And even then, she still misgenders trans people if they dare criticize her so...
@@nevaehhamilton3493hey let’s not go around discrediting people’s trans identity or speculating on the validity of it. This might not’ve been your intention but the wording “claims” really makes it seem your don’t believe Lily about that. And sure Lily Orchard is a bad person who has lied but we still shouldn’t use language like that or assume she’s lying in her trans identity.
@nevaehhamilton3493 Uh, homie, it isn’t our place to assume if someone is “really trans” or not. Not all transphobia comes from outside of the house, and it’s important to acknowledge that.
@@one-onessadhalf3393 alright
@@strawberryqueen0382i don’t think they were implying they aren’t trans! I think they said that because they actively disrespect and disregard other transgender peoples identities and pronouns. I could be wrong but I just how i interpreted it 🥲
@@bri6165Some trans people do have internalized transphobia, unfortunately, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the case for Lily.
I'm so tired of this idea that if a 'bad thing' is shown in media, then the creator must endorse said 'bad thing' and just including a depiction of it (regardless of what it's trying to say) reveals something fundamentally bad about the creator themselves. Like it's evidence of their moral failings. Having Uncle Andy be a bigot doesn't mean Rebecca is a bigot too or agrees with him. The point is to show he's WRONG. What is with people anymore? They're so unhinged.
I see these 'hot takes' all the time on twt and it's so annoying. People have horrible media literacy skills (and lack common sense) and need everything literally spelled out for them or they'll give the least charitable interpretation of stuff that usually results in a creator being labeled with some flavor of bigotry or creep. Then when it is spelled out for them they'll turn around to complain the writing is awful and the team are treating the viewers like braindead kids. It's a lose-lose game that stifles creativity.
I fully agree. I think some people just like complaining for the sake of complaining.
Oh absolutely. It's inasne to me how people don't... get it.
Plus, Andy literally changes his perspective at the end of the episode. Steven isn't forced to accept him, he choses to reach out to him and on his own, Andy decides that he needs to stop being the way he is.
i've always had a "closeted conservative" reading on andy, considering how easy he turns around on the crowd after seeing how accepting they are, being single at his ripe old age, not getting offended when the gems say "let's all marry eachother!" and also talking about everyone leaving the family for personal freedom. it really sounds like he never had the bravery himself to free himself from the suffocating mindset of the demayo family, whether it be that he was queer or not. in any case, steven and his family brought him healing in a way that didn't rely on condemnation or violence. why does that offend people?
I'm so thrown by how often Lily seems to not get that people are complicated, and that it's a huge part of the show. Especially with the Rose Quartz/Pink Diamond stuff, the show doesn't "want you to feel like rose is perfect while repeatedly showing her do bad stuff", it wants you to get that she's a _complicated_ person.
Edit: also like, because it's a kid's show, you need to think about how kids are going to respond and connect to it. I think that Rose's story and how Steven learns about it and relates to her is something that a kid could probably see themselves reflected if they had a parent or loved one who passed away before they were born or when they were very young, and who they heard all of this amazing stuff about but never got the chance to actually know as a person. I think that looking up to someone and then learning that they weren't this amazing divine and hero and were, in fact, just a person like you and I is something that lots of kids (and adults!) have lived through.
And Lily keeps on getting mad that Steven and pals aren't just grinding their enemies into dust, but she doesn't get that a lot of the villains in this show are literally Steven's family and they represent the experience of being a kid and having family members who are sometimes really shitty and set in their ways and who don't understand you or respect you. Most 12 year olds can't exactly just kill their conservative aunts, so "just destroy them" is a message that rings really hollow.
And another thing! It's extremely annoying how Lily can't grasp that you can sympathize with a character and also not approve of their actions, that you can care for someone and also think that what they are doing is wrong. It's, ironically, very immature. A lot of kid-oriented media has a habit of equating care and approval, and I respect the hell out of SU for averting that.
Double edit: I actually like Lily's(?) proposed alternate Stevonnie design at 11:43:58, but I feel like it doesn't quite capture the idea of 50% Steven 50% Connie as well as the canon one. They look mostly like how older teen Steven looks in Too Many Birthdays, and neither Connie nor Steven have braces. Admittedly though, I do think it would've been cool to see a character who looks like that (with visible body fat, acne, and leg/arm hair) portrayed as cool and beautiful in the way that canon Stevonnie was because you almost never see that on TV.... but I think that if they really did look like that, Lily and people like her would also find it horrible and disgusting because of the increased focus on stuff like pimples and braces that are mostly associated with teens. A really damned if you don't, damned if you do situation.
Lily exclusively watches shows for kids and also isn't very smart, so I get why the idea of three-dimensional characters are a foreign concept to her
She really hates anime, but basically wants every show to spoon feed her like a Shonen anime. Really paradoxical...
You: "The reading comprehension here is piss poor." Lily "literal abuser" Orchard: "HOW DARE YOU SAY WE SHOULD PISS ON THE POOR"
Its pretty clear lily is just a bitter, hateful person and Steven Universe happened to be a victim of lily's hatred
And I can understand why someone as spiteful and toxic as her would hate a show where the main message spreads positivity and that everyone deserves a second chance as long as they’re willing to change.
Her seething vitriol is most apparent with when she talks about characters like Hunter from The Owl House
@amirgarcia547 i mean...everyone but space hitler
@@amirgarcia547Not really, the show doesn’t really do a good job of applying or communicating it’s themes.
@@Laiser oh god what the fuck did she say about hunter?
Worst part of SU critical stuff was ppl aggressively pretending SU wasn't a show for kids. Lots of the "weak" plot stuff is easily understood when you remember its a show for 10 year olds. People held SU to an insanely high standard, expecting an adult-level of nuance from its themes, all while comparing it to an imagined version of ATLA which WASN'T full of silly kids stuff and met the brutality of war head on
@@user-gq3eu8id7cHm, not really? It’s more of a 12+ show? While SU was 8-12. Both focus on dark themes, but in the end SU was always meant to be more light hearted and easier to consume for young viewers. It was made for young queers specifically and to defy gender norms. So it’s very different to what ALTA set out to achieve.
@@user-gq3eu8id7c Okay.. this isn’t even a show about facism, and that was presented in VERY simple terms. This is a show about queerness ?
@@user-gq3eu8id7c okay, jesus. yall complain about everything 😭
@@user-gq3eu8id7c it’s called a rhetorical question. go back to english class
@@user-gq3eu8id7c what im saying is that yes there are certain kids shows that deal sith dark topics snd handle them seriously, but su was a queer show through a queer lesne.
A while ago, Lily made a massive thread of tweets about writing advice (which she later deleted) and one that always stuck with me was "if you're afraid of your story getting spoiled, it's a bad story." That 'tip' is what makes me believe that Lily just doesn't get the appeal of mysteries, and because SU includes mystery aspects, she doesn't get SU.
I also don't like how many people compare the Diamonds to Nazis. They're more akin to extreme space capitalists, who turn planets into giant factories to make more robots so they can turn more planets into factories. I haven't actually seen SU all the way through so I never realized that Steven never actually forgave the Diamonds and they were made to spend thousands of years undoing the harm they caused to the Gems they shattered. I'd seen the memes about Steven forgiving people like Hitler when that's not what actually happened. I never believed those memes, so I guess on some level I knew those were made in bad faith.
"Extreme space capitalists" makes more sense to me too. Or, "poachers/mining company that ruins nature" (because the Diamonds never found any sentient species before humans - they've only found animal-like or plant-like ones like the rainbow worm or the aliens in Jungle Moon), which makes the Crystal Gems more akin to environmentalists and anti-capitalists than anything. Not to mention the Diamonds are also written as a toxic/conservative family allegory.
I would personally associate them more with Early Modern mercantilist/colonial empires, but on an interplanetary scale.
@@franksonatra yeah they arent "space h*tlers" and more space oncelers 💀
@@enviisykOH MY GOD
Yeah theyre more of colonizers with a caste system. They invade planets to take its resources and expand their empire. Space hitlers would imply they have deep seated hatred against a certain species which, they dont. At best they just see organic life as inferior and more of a means to further their empire, you know, like how humans view nature?
39:44 THANK YOUUU, ROSE NEVER WANTED A SLAVE SHE SAW PEARL AS HER OWN GEM!! THE PROBLEM WAS THAT PEARL DIDN'T SEE HERSELF AS HER OWN GEM she is not her slave, definitely an unhealthy dynamic though
LITERALLY!! there were several instances where Rose showed genuine concern and sadness when she saw Pearl treat herself that way, she herself was smart, but she always encouraged and praised pearl for her own talents, which is something the other diamonds NEVER did, not even to each other!
Now that you bring it up, it's kind of a somewhat worse version of Fuyuhiko and Peko from Danganronpa 2.
THIS! The dynamic isn't meant to be idolized. The entire point is that it's an unhealthy power dynamic that happens in real life. Her character growth was literally learning her worth beyond Rose.
I definitely get that Rose did not treat Pearl negatively and saw her as her own person but that doesn't change the fact that she still OWNED Pearl and Pearls role in her society WAS as a slave. Just because Rose treated her nicely doesn't mean that she's suddenly in the clear. This is like slave owners from 1800s America who were nice to their slaves wondering why they wanted to leave them once the Civil war was over. It doesn't matter how nice they were, they're still fucking slave owners.
I feel that Lily Orchard completely missed the idea that the more humanoid fusions have good relationships. The reason Lapis and Jasper make a giant monster is cause their relationship is toxic. Garnet is humanoid because they have a strong, solid relationship. Steven and Connie's relationship is stable and strong, so they have a humanoid fusion.
ALSO we would come to see that not all human fusions end up fully looking human, as we would get Steg and he has an extra set of arms.
She talked about this exact thing in her most recent video
When I first watched Lily's video, it was super...creepy to me. How she kept taking personal jabs at Rebecca and how angry she got in some moments.
Seriously, it was like being shunted back to the mid-2000s where internet critics thought insulting the creator and fans of the thing they hated was totally a-ok.
And from what I've heard, Lily hasn't let go of that hatred to this day.
Yeah right? As if Lily and Rebecca had a personal beef between each other (Even though Rebecca most likely doesn't even know Lily's Existence)
@@norikofu509 real lmao
Lily screaming that rebecca is a "stupid fuck" was insane to me. She don't know them at all like why is this riling her up so much she goes into these deep and bitter rages. It's a tv show for children. Says anger issues to me
@@jtlego1 I feel like the "angry reviewer" aspect on the online critic with the likes of Cinemasins and Nostalgia Critic is a big mistake. Can't be surprised that Lily never changes over the years and acts just as the same as she was in the past.
Lily being so dense that she thinks Pearl's love was unrequited is astounding
Seriously. Rose and Pearl weren't exactly *subtle* in all the flashbacks.
That's STILL FUCKED UP THOUGH. Under a system of slavery, humans (or in this case humanoids) are treated as chattle, animals forced to work at the whims of their master. Therefore, we must consider the issue of consent under the idea that Pearl is nothing but an animal, as that is what society treats her as. What happens if Pearl wants to leave? Or Rose wants to do something that Pearl doesn't want done to her? Pearl wouldn't be allowed to leave. If you think that fucking a dog is wrong because it lacks the ability to consent, then you have to think that this behavior is unacceptable by extension of your own logic.
@@boss_boy_correction: the society that treats pearls like slaves is the Homeworld society, which is the exact same society Rose broke away from due to the lessons of value she developed by going to Earth. Rose would NOT be treating Pearl "like a dog" by having feelings for her because she does not view someone like Pearl as someone beneath herself, but rather as someone with equal value to her, as a companion. But the way you frame Rose in your argument is as someone who doesn't see Pearl as her own person, which is ridiculous because the entire formation of the crystal gems WAS in opposition to the idea that people aren't their own selves. Oviously there are still implied power imbalances in the relationship, what with a literal Diamond being one of the two gems; but it's not like there HASN'T been other, much more prominent pieces of media that features dynamics like these, with the example given in the very video we're watching being Beauty and the Beast. In that movie, Belle's literally kidnapped and kept as prisoner, and has no free will in this situation; yet, nobody dogpiled this movie for the obvious power imbalances when it came out, because the Beast changed his mind on how he should act and treat others.
When you say that we should consider the implications that Pearl is nothing but an animal, even under a system that does not enforce the authoritarian, classist ideals of Homeworld, then you are ascribing her the very values that Rose wished to liberate gems from.
@@boss_boy_ well it’s not the same thing because pearl is… not…. A dog???
@@offbranddorito9668 explain why sex with a dog is bad. then re read what i said
Lily Orchard cranks everything to 11. The Diamonds aren't totalitarian dictators, they are nazis, Pearl isn't a servant and a maid, she's a slave. She uses inflammatory language to crank up the implications of what she dislikes while treating the subject matter with a total lack of respect, depth, or nuance
She's making it sound like Pink got bored one day and decided to start a war, and that lapis segmant was just straight up victim blaming.
In hindsight, I really hate how Lily and all of the other people who make these bad faith critiques went on to judge the crew as people behind the show and assume that they all deserve to go homeless and die under a bridge. They're just doing their jobs, and the crewniverse specifically had to deal with a lot of pushback from Cartoon Network because of their attempts to have LGBTQIA+ representation in the show. Steven Universe does have its flaws as a show, but it's beyond unhinged to call someone a n*zi when they're not and to suggest that people should lose their jobs just because they wrote for a show that you don't like.
Agreed. Not to mention that it led to a lot of her followers and imitators, including kids, to honestly grow up believing that messages of redemption and forgiveness were somehow fascist propaganda and abuse apologia. People SHOULD be taught that people can change and get better!
@Fern-0217 isn't this a kids show?? i don't think someone is gonna look at genocide then look back on SU and try to justify it. and I don't think anyone young enough to be that impressionable is gonna know what genocide is. kids shows do need to teach good messages but I really don't think this is going to teach kids that genocide is okay or smth.
Seeing Lily's continued opinions on shows like She-Ra, too just make it worse. I'm so glad I never watched her when her videos showed up. She's just a nasty person ... Even ignoring the Stockholm in the room
If any show has LGBT characters in it will get massive amounts of hate.
The funny thing is that Lily herself is a terrible person who SA'd her own sister, turned her incest fantasies into MLP fanfiction, and tried to convince her (at the time) friend to groom a 17 year old. While she did succeed on convincing him for a time, he did fortunately wise up and realized just how wrong/gross it was. That same ex-friend being the one who's image she used to depict LGBTQ+ people crying about being misrepresented in SU, when in reality it was from a joke he made about himself being overly sensitive to how stupid the Equestrian guard was portrayed.
Gods, hearing Lily of all people call others "creeps" over something that she made up in her head 💀
Watching Lily Orchards video before seeing SU and then ACTUALLY watching the show really made me realize how much bullshit someone can say online without any sort of questioning or backlash
She kinda helped control the narrative by deleting most comments tbf
That’s actually most critic channels to be honest.
"Nice argument Lily, why don't you back it up with a source?"
"My source is that I made it the fuck up"
There WAS backlash but she deleted those comments.
I remember the ESSAYS of responses to her video and why it was a terrible argument towards the show. I'm not talking about "oh, I actually disagree with her and also she got these details wrong" kinda responses either. I'm talking fully in depth breakdowns as to why these specific talking points and argument structures make for a terrible argument that shouldn't be held with any regard (a couple of which are even pointed out in this video, like the bit about how she just says things are bad with no further argument as to _why_)
A lot of it either got buried or deleted due to the waves of people siding with this. People are saying this video was the thing that ruined steven universe's fandom...but trust me, this was an amalgamation of what had become of this show, it had basically every bad faith criticism ever listed about the show gathered together in a nice summary and that's why it got so much traction. It was awful having to see it get so popular and it certainly ruined the show's reputation for future fans.
You've addressed pretty much every point here, but I'll just add onto the "The Diamonds were presented as sympathetic" point she constantly bangs on about. Blue Diamond's grief is used to manipulate those beneath her. It is toxic. Her constant crying is also not a good thing in general for the character because she stays stuck in the past as a result.
It's also just quite literally manipulative, like her powers directly force others to experience her sadness.
@@thegreatBarbossa it is LITERALLY her weaponizing her sadness to hurt others, like it can't be any clearer
Common red-flag media analysis:
1: Criticizing a work via a demonized version of the author
2: Calling things filler (filler is a specific term that almost never actually applies to what they're talking about)
3: Disregarding STORY and over-emphasizing the literal PLOT events (if you want just the literal events of a story idk read a fucking wiki then)
4: Getting upset that a piece of art "forced you to feel a certain way" (babes that has never happened, this is not how art works, if you felt a way, you just felt that way, and if you didn't then the story clearly wasn't forcing you to)
5: Assuming that because a character acts unkindly they are a bad/malicious character (good people can hurt eachother, and so can characters, please dear god i hope you dont treat people in your actual real human life like this)
6: Assuming that a piece of art is completely reflective of an author. Just, no. Watch Innuendo Studios video on The Creator's Guide
my hot take is that i think disregarding story and in favour of plot literalism and a lot of the sex negative talking points surrounding media are both symptoms of the same problem. a lot of people will tell you there's a kind of new puritanism among young people, and there may be some aspects of that, but i think the more prevalent issue is the prioritization of efficiency, analytics, and streamlinization as the most important aspects of storytelling. ofc there are times when prioritizing efficiency is the right choice, like when you need to take a scientific measurement of something, but art doesn't work like that and trying to force it into that box makes for worse art and really stupid analysis.
Another red flag, calling everything you don't like "woke"
The way lily completely dropped pretending to not be nbphobic to call stevonnie a "conventionally attractive woman". She would hate how i express myself lol
STOP BC I WAS THINKING THAT THE WHOLE TIME TOO. Stevonnie isn't even that fem!! Has Lily never met a nonbinary person in her life?? Like she has to know that gender identity doesn't equal presentation, especially for nonbinary people...
24:10 "It's like Lily can only conceive of a singular story that could be good." I'm SCREAMING because that is the best way to put all of my critiques about Lily. I have been watching Lily's content for (jfc) a decade now and I've always been so frustrated with how she seems to think that the stories *she* enjoys are the only stories that are good. Like, she has no recognition of the fact that people have different tastes in media. No, it's "I don't like seeing this, therefore, it's bad. And *furthermore* if you *like* seeing it, then you are a *bad* person." I'm so glad to hear someone else say it.
this!!!!
"MLP should have been a comedy driven slice of life instead of sharing screen time with the action."
"Steven Universe was worse because Sugar kept inserting her slice of life coffee shop au into an action show."
I 100% agree with you when it comes to her thinking whatever she does or doesn't like is either morally good or morally evil, and she can't just say "I don't like something" it has to be "this is a writing problem", but her "writing advice" is so woefully inconsistent that it really just feels like she's looking for excuses to justify her immediate dislike of something by wrapping it in a veneer of "writing advice". It's incredibly frustrating, and it becomes so transparent what she's doing is just complaining about not all shows appealing to her specific tastes in the moment once you realize it. "I don't like it when shows transitions into different genres or styles" becomes "this is bad writing".
@@superflyghtheart it’s mainly because it’s not advice, it’s just personal nitpicks with “writing advice” slapped onto the end.
@@socks456 Literally.
yeah. like some of the more general arguments she makes against certain stories can be pretty accurate sometimes, but what she ends up applying it to is nonsensical. Like in her video about being morally grey in cartoons, the overall point she has that you can't excuse every character as just being morally grey and that sometimes they're just absolutely horrible people is definitely something I wish people realized more when analyzing media. But the shows and characters she ends up applying it to just doesn't work and it becomes clear that she's just using some of her actually decent advice to butcher some pretty alright shows she personally isn't a fan of. And furthermore, as some of the others in the replies have mentioned, a lot of it is also just personal opinion being treated as fact.
Lily saying how much Stevonnie was "sexualized" while she wrote fanfics containing minors having sexual relationships with adults is crazy 💀
she SA her sister and wrote fanfic about that 💀💀💀
Every time Lily talks about "90% of the show is about this fascist empire" it absolutely makes me think that she was told by a friend "Here's the episodes that matter for the interesting plot stuff, here's some you should maybe watch for context, and here's just a simple summary of what happens in the rest." And she's based all her arguments on that. It makes perfect sense that her conclusion of Garnet's arc in season 5 is "She fell apart over it, and then a few episodes later had a wedding and then the diamonds showed up." How could you watch every one of those episodes and actually come to that conclusion? I posit that she simply hasn't. Any "filler" episodes she DID see, I'm guessing she only watched because she was told that something interesting happens in it, and then just sat there confused and angry that she was being "forced" to watch a bunch of "filler" stuff, when the "only interesting thing that happens" only happens in the last minute of the episode.
Nah, she definitely watched 'em. The filler episodes between arcs opinion was one spread quite commonly around that time (though it may have been more popular because of her video, I remember these opinions coming up during stevenbombs), the opinion that there's a big plot point going on currently and we moe on to a different topic at hand. The *idea* behind that thought is that this plot point is set as VERY important and then you kind of do the equivalent of side quests while the world is collapsing at an rpg. However Lily kind of took this complaint to an extreme while also breezing past the central idea of it, so it kind of just seems she's complaining about filler plots that aren't really filler. I do think that was still her aim, as most people following this complaint actually mean, not to say that this "filler" plots are filler and unneeded, but rather that an urgency was created and we move on to these other plots, so you keep asking "Why are we doing this *NOW* if the show just told me this other plot is VERY important?", but after believing this complaint, she relegated these plots into "not important whatever plots that are happening while the important plot is" instead of realizing that while, yes, these plot points may be happening at an important time of another important arc that you may prefer to happen at another time, they can still be very important and impactful plots!! And I think with that disconnect of an idea she ends up boiling down to basically filler a lot of the developments that happen and ends up misjudging a lot of the story and characters. Apparently you can't have two important plot stories during an arc!
Also she says that Pearl gaslit Sapphire into forgiving her...which what...Pearl talked about her feeling with Sapphire and they both talked it out...how...what
The weird hate boner Lily has for Rebecca is so strange to me. Like, she knows Rebecca is not the only person who worked on the show, right? And it's VERY ironic to me that the author of some shit FAR worse than Steven Universe ever was has such a strong belief that an author's work reflects their morals. I guess it's projection, since Lily is an actual abuser and wrote fanfic about abuse.
She really saw a show titled "Steven Universe" and then complained that they focused on Steven too much. The title of the show is literally his name
She’s not the only one. Humans are so stupid.
I thought it was because the show never leaves Steven's perspective that people were so mad?
Very random point from a very random part of the video, but it really honestly isn't creepy for Pearl to watch Steven sleep. Pearl is one of his adoptive moms, she partially raised him. Mothers and parents in general often talk about enjoying watching their children sleep because they are safe and peaceful and thusly, it lowers their stress. Pearl is absolutely terrified of the notion of Steven getting hurt so I think it's very fitting for her to take comfort in watching him when he's at his safest, peacefully sleeping. Also, she was definitely one of those moms who had to constantly check that he was still breathing as a younger child. Especially because she's an alien and doesn't fully understand humans, so I think that makes her even more protective and anxious about his well being.
+also Stevens a child hero and will not only always constantly be in danger but is also just generally accident prone with how confrontational he is.
Considering the things that happened to him later on in the series (and before it) I’d be throwing up from stress too
Pearls literally a war veteran and some of the last of the crystal gems, she knows how bad things can get
Greg’s more lowkey about it, but he was also a pretty similar way for awhile too.
Hell I’m a daycare teacher and in my state we’re legally required to check on sleeping children every 20/30 minutes to make sure they’re still breathing looks like lily would call all of us weird
I honestly don't doubt that at some point Pearl read a parenting book and saw that advice to check in on small children when they're asleep and went "this is a parenting book, so this tip applies to children of all ages!" It seems really in character for her lol
"moms who had to constantly check that he was still breathing as a younger child. "
There's a fan comic literally stating this!!!
I saw it a few years ago.
I love how Lily cites The Last Air Bender positively in this video, and then goes on a hate-filled rant about how Steven Universe is pro-fascism because Steven doesn't kung-fu kick all the diamonds to death for being fascists, meanwhile the ending of The Last Air Bender is literally just every other character telling Aang "nah bro you gotta kill Ozai, there's no other way sorry, you gotta kill that mfer" and Aang refusing to do it.
If I remember right, she did actually hate that ending. She basically enjoyed the show but ignored the ending intentionally.
I kinda hate how people compare TLA's ending with Steven Universe's. Both are based around a pacifist protagonist sparing the BBEG, yes, but the difference is that while Steven converted White Diamond to his POV, there was _no reasoning_ with Ozai.
And that's the entirety of Aang's conflict throught the last book. So when they fought, he did the next best thing, which was stripping Ozai of his bending, the entire thing his ideology, hell, his whole identity was based on. He was still an evil monster and was punished with something arguably even worse than death.
Aang took Ozai's power away thus he emasculated him. Truly a fate worse than death for a genocidal maniac.
They're undoing the damage they did by repairing all the gems they shattered because they are the only ones that can do it. They are unkillable, so fixing their messes is the next best thing.....@@thomasallister3446
@funninoriginal6054 Personally, I think it's kind of weird that the show insists Aang has never killed anyone despite him having definitely killed people before (albeit maybe without intending to). I also don't much care for how little went into Aang learning how to energy bend.
I didn't even realize but when she's referencing a complicated gay relationship "sticking the landing" she literally uses a picture of her own OCs
It's like that edit of Obama giving himself a medal, lol
Despite hiding behind a facade of being left-wing, she falls into many of the same pitfalls as right-wing grifters, like the “bad writing” argument and misrepresenting what is presented in the story
A different flavor of grifting still tastes like sh*t
I'm not fully convinced she isn't some kind of grifter
I don't think she is a grifter I think she is just genuenly deluded since she always advocates for violence but then condems it when people she disagrees with usually "nazis".
@@ThatGreenMach1ne yeah me neither
I wouldn't be surprised if Lily Orchard went anti-SJW without even realizing it. The anti-SJW community, especially for TheQuartering of all people, really lost their credibility to criticize any media due to screaming "woke" or "SJW" for like a hundredth time, which no wonder nobody takes them seriously.
@@ThatGreenMach1ne grifters usually wind up believing the shit they peddle, at least a little. they won't become full-blown believers but you can't adopt a public personality like this for years and years, especially when you're such a public person, and NOT have it affect who you are in private.
Lily saying Rose was "erratically written" doesnt sit right with me, because she wasn't, she did grow and progress too, we just don't see it chronologically from beginning to end. The other characters all knew and remember Rose at the end of her life, after she has grown and changed. That's the Rose they talk about, mostly. The Rose in Lion's video is towards to end of her life, after she has developed. We then see various snippets going almost backwards (not always in direct reverse order, but still). She's not written erratically, we just learn her backstory and see how she got there, not watch it in real time.
It's crazy cause it's like
Oh wow this 20 year old is acting differently from when I last saw him when he was 5, hes so erratically written...
How come Batman just didn't beat up the guy who shot his parents, hes so erratically written!
i do honestly think she was somewhat erratically written, as far as the characters go. i feel like for all the wrong she did, she's treated way worse than any other diamond by the story, even though she's the one who gave it her all to change, and to make a stand with having steven that incited the biggest change. the other diamonds didn't even try until they saw through roses actions and stevens very own existence that what they were doing was wrong, and rose is met with way more resentment than gratitude or sympathy. she tried!
one of the weirdest things about Lily is her always mentioning being a writer, but never brining up her work.
That's because her body of work includes MLP p*rn featuring minors
One no
Two you clearly don't watch her videos since she brings them up all the time
@@themechanic9974 there are multiple videos talking about the fact that, yes, lily orchard did write explicit CP. the fic was called stockholm, i believe.
@@flamboyantroach was responding to the first point since the second point is completely worthless as it happened nearly a decade ago and people change
And it's clear that Lily hasn't changed much.
@@themechanic9974 Sure, but she clearly hasn't. There's also a difference between used to be homophobic and used to be racist vs used to be so openly attracted to children they not only write child porn, but posted it online. Like, yeah, it's disturbing and to most people one of the few unforgivable things.
It’s pretty bizarre that someone can say in their steven universe’s review video that the show has “blink and you miss it queer representation” unironically and still be taken seriously
Also it’s worrying how many of her points are essentially her not comprehending that characters can be complex?? Has she never engaged with media more complex than “hero good, villain bad”?
Idk it just reminds me of when people talk about how only consuming children’s media is bad for your media interpretation skills
I mean it is blink and you miss it for the first 2 sessions
@@themechanic9974As if Jailbreak doesn't exist, or Pearl's entire arc (the plotline around Rose's scabbard?).
@@NapaCat particularly see it this way but Lily argues in her video a part he cut out of this one that if you're only queer representation is non-human characters it doesn't count and honestly that's a pretty good standard to go bye
@@themechanic9974 Ever tried coherency?
@@themechanic9974 sure but have you considered that the fact the queer characters where not human might have been the only reason the queer themes were even allowed to be shown? keep in mind that before steven universe the only positive example of queer representation in children's western animation was two women holding hands in the final scene of korra.
It's fine to have higher standards of queer rep but it's pretty dumb to argue that a series that was actively fighting to put queer rep on screen is somehow at fault for not doing enough.
The deleting of all critical or counter comments on her videos is so damn manipulating, holy shit. Coming from her updated SU video, that comment section reads like an alternative universe or something. Even in the updated SU video, someone literally pointed out that it was kind of odd to see no negative or counter arguments to the actual video itself, and her response was that no one actually had any genuine counter points besides spam, and those were cleared out by a “spam” filter. As someone who was put off from checking out SU because of her video until just recently, I was so shocked when I actually sat down and watched the show cause holy shit does she completely misinterpret and misrepresent the show. It’s not perfect, and there are some parts I do have some criticisms for, but there were also way more great moments that got me super emotional, and that I am bummed I skipped out on when I was younger and would have actually benefited a lot from hearing. That echo chamber of a comment section really had me thinking SU was the most problematic kids show to come out of CN, and that everyone agreed unless you were a die hard psycho fan. I feel like such a fool, when all I had to do was actually watch it to know how misleading her interpretation of it was.
Yeah her claim that it's a "spam filter" is SUPER fishy. I don't know how a lot of that works with TH-cam comments but it's not working well apparently because i can still see new comments that say funny quick things about how wrong she is (like "yes you were wrong lol")
But NO critical comments??? That's absurd
“The most problematic show to come out of CN”
Yeah. Like sis , Rebecca Sugar is not even close to the most problematic creator CN has hired. Does Skylar Page mean nothing to you?!! (Although don’t take this a criticism against Clarence, I like Clarence otherwise)
59:51 I hate the romantization of abuse implied by Lily, like as if someone that suffered through abuse would be the sparkliest and happiest character. Abuse isn't pretty, it hurts, it kills, and it scars, and someone that has been abused is likely to act how Lapis did, and I know this because I related to her a lot watching the show, pushing away people that tried to help me, lashing out at those who had nothing to do with it, and I did bad things to cope with my suffering too. Abuse isn't fun, isn't so one sided, like "the abuser is bad, and the abused is a sweetheart", that's not how it works, and most oftentimes the abused will inherit some traits from the abuser, the goal is getting rid of them and healing, to become a better person and apologize to those you have hurt.
As someone that had seen abuse victims, the Lapis section was so infuriating, because yeah, she endured thousands of years in trauma being an artifact and being used, but noooo, she is the abuser because she treats bad a dorito.... a dorito that was part of the genocidial gems group. That makes me think that Lily is more of an abuser than an abuse victim tbh
its like they told me: "Yeah, you will be living with your school bully from now on, now forgive him because if you dont, you will be the bully" and... no fucking way, if I met my school bully again, my first reaction will be destroy his face
edit:
Now I'm in the 2 and half hour and wtf man, Lily rants like Rebecca Sugar killed all her family, poisoned her lands and kicked her dog, wtf!
Lily's grudge on Rebecca is extreme with this one.
plotlines like these are what makes the ending, the one actual flaw of the show, so bizzare. Like, imagine steven going GOOD NEWS EVERYONE, WEVE FORGIVEN WHITE DIAMOND, THE LITERAL GENOCIDAL MANIAC WHO HAS BEEN MAKING YOUR LIFE HELL FOR MILLENIA. NOW SHELL BE LIVING IN MY HOUSE AND HELPING YOU REBUILD
Like the whole thing with jasper is that change takes time, sometimes violence is the only thing some ppl will understand and how victims arent required to be perfect or forgive their abusers and then BAM white diamond
@@DimT670Stop typing
It blows my mind that Lily not only misunderstood that the Diamonds' portrayal was NOT "nazis have feewings" it was an active challenge to everything they believed and deconstructing it completely, but also their grief at the loss of Pink Diamond was the foothold that was the key to breaking through to them.
Lily was seconds away of calling her video "Rebecca Sugar is Garbage and Here's Why". Steven Universe is a good show and Lily's video is an embarassment and a character assassination attempt.
Haha lol if you're going to try and argue against something maybe you should try and watch it
@@themechanic9974I did watch it, more than once. You see, I actually like Lily's content, watch many of her videos and think she makes interesting points, even if I don't always agree with her.
I don't mind that she doesn't like Steven Universe. What I don't think is fair or called for is the way she talked (and still sometimes talks) about Rebecca Sugar, like some kind of vendetta.
@@quiquochan most of the time in the video when she's screaming it's very clearly comedy and when it's not she's not talking about Rebecca sugar she talks about the crew
@@themechanic9974 Typically, comedy has...jokes.
good ol' plausible deniability.@@themechanic9974
Nobody viewed Bismuth as a genocidal killer in the fandom wtf?? We sympathized with her! We understood what she wanted to do, and yeah some agreed with Bismuth. But most of us understood the show was about helping ppl, rehabilitating them, and by using the breaking point to shatter gems wouldn’t have allowed any of that. Plus it wouldn’t have allowed the healing of corrupted and shattered gems if the diamonds were shattered.
Also, non-binary doesn’t owe you androgyny.
I truly don’t understand why Lily hates Rebecca so much. She keep ascribing all these things based on her own legitimately bad takes.
Oof it sounds like Lily doesn’t like fanfiction, that’s kinda sad. At the same time it makes sense bc Lily said essentially whatever the og source is, that creator can’t allow ppl to see it as anything other than what it is or it’s bad. Lily has a very weird black and white mentality and that seems unfortunate when living life.
I think I understand where Lily is coming from, I used to be much like her, but I grew as a person. I also got had a lot of help. I don’t want to label Lily or say things that might be untrue, so I just hope Lily can also come to grow as well.
It kinda seems maybe not so much with her latest vid, but I’ve not watched all of it and I’m not going to.
@@audraverela3663lily definitely likes fanfic...unfortunate given the kind she writes and probably reads.
@@calvintyler9281 so Lily is a hypocrite, guess I’m not surprised.
I dont think its much of an overstatement to say that Lily had a lasting impact on media analysis in fandom culture, especially around cartoons. Her ideas about what makes a show 'good', and why Steven Universe was therefore 'bad' were adopted by so many people that even now, they are still being applied to other shows (She-Ra, the Owl House, etc). Which is crazy, because many of those ideas are completely arbitrary.
What ideas are you referring to? You may be onto something
The elements I notice: Rushed endings (as if SU and TOH didn't face early cancellation because of queerness and had to squeeze seasons into a few episodes)... Not killing all the enemies... having complex queer relationships with conflict in it...
My main takeaway from this video is that Lily is an unbelievably bad author. In summary, she advocates (passionately) for plot-driven stories where character development happens in big clumsy chunks entirely separate from the plot, if at all, and characters have no meaningful nuance whatsoever (having proudly stated that she "exclusively" writes characters who "own their ruthlessness").
You've expressed optimism regarding Lily's development into a better person, which I respect and appreciate; I hope to God she's improved as a writer. Some of these criticisms were extremely telling.
Lily is also incapable of separating redemption or atonement from forgiveness. Steven never forgave the diamonds. Nobody did. They made peace with the diamonds because it was the only possible solution left to them. They could not defeat the diamonds by fighting them, the diamonds were too strong. Bringing the Diamonds over to their side was Steven's hail Mary. And that's a situation that can occur in real life too. Sometimes you can't just kill your problems away.
That's true - no one is forgiven. Diplomacy is the only way it could've worked - violence would cause another war. And the Diamonds literally FIXED EVERYTHING they did. In S5, They healed corrupted gems, in Future, they restored the shattered ones - it's also a power fantasy, I say, that oppressive people would do better.
I'm never going to forgive Lily Orchard for putting "The Diamonds Are Nazis" into the public discourse. This brain-dead idea is never used as anything other than a weapon to shut down anyone who disagrees with the most bad-faith takes of the show. "You don't think it would have actually done anything to help the Gempire if Steven killed the Diamonds? Are you saying that Hitler should have remained in power?" Any time you express any kind of nuance about the Diamonds or their relationship or how they were handled, you always get these paint-huffing morons who will outright say you're a Nazi sympathizer for pointing out that Blue and Yellow genuinely missed and mourned Pink.
What's even worse about it is that none of them can even name one good thing that would come from "punishing" the Diamonds that wasn't already accomplished by Steven. What would putting them in jail do? What would killing them do? What jail could hold them and how would you deal with the millions upon billions of Gems who are loyal to them? None of them think about that because all they can think about is how Steven didn't kill them, but they like the idea of being righteously angry so there _has_ to be explicit punishment even if it wouldn't accomplish any actual goal.
I'm literally arguing with someone regurgitate those talking points right here. Luckily, that means more engagement, which means this vid gets an algorithm boost.
YES!!! THANK YOU! Edgelords and extremely online people who like video essays are SO damn quick to gleefully, blindly repeat the points of video essays, oftentimes verbatim instead of actually thinking for themselves.
Let's not forget how "The Diamonds are Space Nazis" is almost always paired up with "Steven Forgave the Diamonds", and that these two bits of misinformation are often peddled out by detractors or embittered ex-fans whenever anyone talks about how Steven Universe ended.
@@king2.0smods17 Absolutely! Like he's not literally having thoughts about making White Diamond shatter herself in SUF!
@@Dukeofnachos Oh yes, that scene. Steven admits during his meltdown that he only actually shattered Jasper, (and later revived her) and that he thought about smashing White's head through a pillar but never went through with it. Would you believe that some fans/detractors missed the point of Steven's session with White, and assumed that Steven should've shattered her, despite the negative consequences of such an action.
Lily insinuating that victims of abuse always turn out to be bad people was and will always be abhorrent to me
Lilly calling the use of they/them as using "plural pronouns" feels incredibly offensive towards us nonbinary folks. It's a subtle jab that uses the "people who use they/them are grammatically incorrect" argument. Also saying that Stevonnie is uninteresting because they're nonbinary, calling them and Rebecca women when they're not, as well as the consistent hate towards Rebecca, it's incredibly clear that Lily *really* hates nonbinary people
Also, even if stevonnie was "hyper femme" (they're very not) it doesn't reduce or erase their nonbinary identity. The idea that all nonbinary people have to be 100% androgynous is just another form of enforcing gender roles onto people who don't want to be tied to them
No, it was pointing out the fact that they/them are used a plural pronouns when referring to more than one person. The critic was to Stevonnie being NB is weak because unlike most fusions, they were treated like two people in one body rather than one individual. It almost seems like they were written like a two in one so Stevonnie could have plausible deniability from being NB. If Garnet was NB, it would stand because she functions as one individual. Stevonnie being NB is problematic because they behaved like multiple beings. Using they or them when referring to more than one person doesn't make those people NB.
In short, the problem is the they/them pronouns used for Stevonnie could be because they are NB, but it could also be because they function like two people in one body(on their debut ) and it's just referring to more than one person.
@@dragonscar3670@dragonscar3670 Lily specifically stated that "plural pronouns are common among nonbinary people" By saying this, she says that even singular nonbinary individuals that use they/them are using "plural pronouns" She was not saying that Stevonnie is using "plural pronouns" because they're 2 people, but that all people who use they/them are using "plural pronouns"
And does the deniability of the debut episode really matter when the later episodes are way more explicit?
@@SugaMot Ah, I misinterpreted the quote.
However, simply stating that they/them are plural pronouns isn't throwing shade at NB individuals nor is it pushing that whole, "not grammatically correct" bullshit. As for calling Stevonnie a generic pretty lady, it was a critic that despite being NB, Stevonnie's character(prior to the re-design) was hard feminine and speculated on the idea that Stevonnie being NB was less of a design feature and more of an excuse for why Steven and Connie when fused creates a female presenting character rather than a cross-gender hybrid(such as Stevonnie is post re-design).
@@dragonscar3670the singular "they" has been around since the 1300s. To say that they/them is explicitly plural is wrong. The only reason one would insist that is if they are ignorant, or if they wanted to imply that people who use it are grammatically incorrect.
Also, did you even watch the video? It literally talks about Lily calling Stevonnie "high femme" in the Stevonnie section and how it's wrong and calling them female presenting is actually offensive to actual nonbinary people
"How could you go against your own people???"
Lily is the kind of person who would kill Paarthurnax.
she’d be a delphine supporter
Why is it kinda hilarious that Lily talks about 99% of this show with such exaggerative disdain but then is obsessed with peridot
calling a JEWISH person a nazi and characterizing them as an evil villain is evil, disgusting and not to mention, very very ANTISEMIC. So I sure hope that Lily reflected on those words because who knows how much damage they caused.
based bill cipher pfp
Lily writes CP
Alright calm down there. Lily very blatantly did not call her a nazi, all she said was that she understood why other people would think that she was because of her work. And also, in general it’s not anti-semitic to criticise Jewish people for having immoral beliefs as unfortunately not all Jewish people are completely innocent people
It’s not evil anyone can be a Nazi sympathizer. Her ethnicity is NOT AND NEVER WILL BE A SHIELD
She called them a diamond and later called the diamonds nazis. I'd say it counts. Also, she didn't critisize Rebecca Sugar for her work, she spent three hours painting a narrative where Rebecca Sugar is the Big Bad who Controls Everything From The Shadows and the reason for every single thing she doesn't like about the show. She said personal insults about a person she knows nothing about for millions of people online to see, based on a TV show they made. Honestly who knows how much harassment Rebecca Sugar got from people who watched this video alone? Taking one person and scapegoating them as The Evil In This World and calling them a "desiease".... That sounds pretty antisemic to me.
The "I can't believe they put something this sinister into the show, light blue and lime green, one looking slightly serious and one looking slightly concerned-" running gag is my life source.
Thank you so much for making these. I know Steven Universe isn't a perfect show and I don't blame people for not liking some of its elements, but it still meant so much to me and it sucks to constantly see people shit on it all the time.
Also, yeah, I find it funny how people don't acknowledge the practical reasons for keeping the Diamonds alive, as in, making them fix their mistakes that would have stayed unsolved if they just died. ALSO, the "Why are we redeeming the serious villain instead of the funny villain" argument is so weird to me, because someone who is not having fun being evil and is just treating it as a job personally seems more redeemable to me than someone who is a sadistic, gleeful asshole who likes causing people misery, idk.
Edit: ALSO, YES, PEARL HAS A CRUSH ON ANOTHER TALL, CHUBBY, PINK-HAIRED WOMAN, WHAT OF IT?! That's okay! People have types. That doesn't mean she hasn't moved on, that just means she has a type, which is perfectly valid. I have a whole... thing about people criticizing others for what kinds of people they are attracted to (Obviously, some types of attractions are immoral, like attraction to children, but being attracted to big women with a certain hair color? I mean... idk) and it just feels weird to see it as a failing on that person's end. Pearl is still trying to move on, at MOST, I could see the mystery girl looking so similar to Rose being some sort of comfort blanket/baby step, but that's still good, if she was real, I'd say I am proud of her for taking that first step towards moving on and healing, even if it feels familiar!
What the hell, I'm late to this but I didn't remember Lily being so weird about this?? Why is she, a trans woman, aknowledging that Rebecca is nonbinary and STILL calling them a woman? SAME WITH STEVONNIE??
Hypocritical.
2:44:55 "Like many adult cartoon fans, Sugar is profoundly stupid." How does Lily have any fans with that kind of attitude? Unless a large portion of her fans are kids (which I fear for) she's basically insulting her own audience in this review of a cartoon.
We need a term for this. Ooh! How about “The DSP Paradox”? Y’know, how anyone could unironically like this person despite their horrible actions and character?
@@GravityFaiz People do that? I don't watch DSP but my impression was that people just want to watch a train wreck and laugh at it.
@@thelastwindwaker7948 oh he’s still active after everything. He’s currently playing Street Fighter 6 and Chrono Trigger. I just watch compilations because I’m not gonna give him views in TH-cam or Twitch.
@@GravityFaiz I know, I just didn't think people actually LIKE him and watch him unironically. I thought it was just like Game Grumps where you're in it to watch someone fail and scream like a baby about it.
also them's are figthing words for a woman who exclusively watches childrens cartoons and nothing else
1:21:36
Respectability politics.That's that's the term. When you gotta work twice as hard to get half of what they have. When you have to be perfect just to be treated like a human. When you have to be respectable in order to be respected, but it's actually impossible to be respectable enough in the eyes of the oppressor because your marginalized identity is inherently devoid of respectability.
1:30:12
Stevonnie being slightly more feminine presenting doesn't make them any less non-binary. Non-binary people don't owe anyone perfect androgyny. They don't owe us androgyny at all. Just like how people who exist on the binary don't owe anyone any specific gender presentation.
I do wish that some of the other Steven fusions (like Rainbow 2.0 and Sunstone) got some more screentime and development. But that's another conversation.
👏
that's not what respectability politics are tho. Just plain prejudice
A lot of these excessive abuse sympathizing and child sexualization accusations from Lily really track differently when you take into account the kind of things she herself used to write. Kind of feels like the lady doth protest too much.
Not just write, but DO.
@@AnakhaSilverno just no your flat f##king wrong
@@themechanic9974 Essence of Thought got some damming receipts against your sentiment. Also, make up your mind. Sometimes, you say it didn't happen, and in others you say that it did, but we shouldn't care anymore because of how long ago it was. Either way, not a good look.
If you watched HiP’s other videos, the ones about the other two big SU hate videos, the constant mentioning of sex and p3d0philia and fetishes really reeks of projecting. Its a weird pattern I noticed
I hate the fact that Lily and so many others believe that the only way to be nonbinary is to look purely or mostly masculine, and partaking in feminine things or even looking fairly feminine, does not make you nonbinary. It goes against the definition of being nonbinary. You don't need to look or act a certain way to be nonbinary.
thank you for saying this
My personal experience with my own identity has been such a shit show, and constantly being told and hearing that my experience and feelings were inherently wrong because I was always either too much or too little was a major part of why I spent the majority of my adolescence and early adulthood hating everything about myself. My algorithms got me all fucked up for the longest time, wondering why the hell I couldn’t just be “one of the acceptable ones.” And just, damn, I actually wasted so many damn years isolating myself out of shame while simultaneously feeding into the algorithms of the ones making me feel that way, lmao.
Sorry for the therapy dump, this comment section got me feeling a certain type of way, feel free to completely ignore this, I really just meant to thank you once and move on, but oops-
The show literally said that Pink wanted to preserve life on earth but the other diamonds created the human zoo thinking that would satsify Pink
2:38:03 THANK YOU! People always act like Steven is buddy-buddy with the Diamonds now and didn't kill them simply because he hates violence but no, he *needed* them to fix the corrupted Gems. He needs all four of their collective powers to even come close to restoring Gems to their former state, it takes using up all the stores he has of the other Diamonds to bring Jasper back from being shattered. If you look at it from a purely pragmatic stance, Steven didn't kill or shatter or imprison the Diamonds because he still needs them, and they in turn spend the rest of their time trying to fix the damage they caused. They're not even necessarily redeemed, they're still kinda jerks who are only playing nice now because Steven wants them to (at least in White's case) and Steven can hardly stand to be around them for prolonged periods of time. You can argue till the cows come home on whether their characterization and past deeds deserved more punishment and I don't have the answer for that, but they are no woobified and forgiven wholesale by any means. People who actually watch the show for more than a few milliseconds realize this.
Yeah White diamond was a jerk when she disbanded her galactic empire started to heal broken gems stepped down as a leader and adopted Spinel. Man if this is being a jerk then what is being nice.
Not only that, but what alot of people don't think about is what would happen if you take down the leaders of those in dictatorship? When there's a hole in power, especially dangerous power, it's easy for a worse person to step into place. And it's not like steven can just take over everything. Especially since there will still be gems that prefer the previous way everything ran, just like the lapisis in future.
@samuelclayhills3298 Well, White is still prissy and condescending to an extent and is still doing everything because of Steven. While her actions are not a jerk, her character is still an underlying jerk.
Lol, my takeaway is Lily wants Steven Universe to be just a Star Wars film.
I would never put a child in Lily Orchard's care.
And even Star Wars redeemed Darth Vader at the end of ROTJ, when he saved his son from being electrocuted to death by Palpatine.
Case in point for the OP's argument. Redemption through death is apparently all that's acceptable for anyone not named Zuko, to her.
I would also never put a child in Lily Orchard's care, but mainly bc she SA'd her sibling when they were children 🙃
Calling Rebecca a piece of shit because they worked their butt off to push the envelope on representatjon and made a show that was so important to a ton of people? ...sure Jan.
Wasn't it supposed to be longer until cartoon Network threaten to take it down? Only for her to literally fight for it
The way she goes after Sugar and blames every single perceived flaw of the show on them personally is so bizarre and detached from reality. for a lot of reasons, but particularly if you have even the slightest idea of how television shows work
like yes it is Sugar's show and they obviously had a big hand in the overarching story and characters. But there were like a dozen other writers/storyboard artists and people contributing and working on the show. Lily orchard acts like every single episode or moment was personally written by rebecca when it's very likely that many of the parts of the show that Lily uses as an example of how horrible Sugar is was the contribution of someone else entirely
Her saying she's a bad artist because the animation made me type this comment because WHAT? she didn't animate the fucking show lmao! what is she even on about. lol
"Ah shit lapis is is one inch smaller in this shot than she was in the previous shot. Unbravo Sugar"
that aside it's also funny to claim that all the hints that rose is pink diamond is just vague weird nonsense that wasn't meant to actually signal that she was PD as if rose being pink diamond wasn't an incredibly common fan theory beforehand
In a different video Lily said only big studios like Nickelodeon can afford good animation. Which is just...wrong on so many levels?
Money is important, but so is having a good production crew.
One Punch Man had a fairly average anime budget, but it had a really talented team of animators and directors. One Punch Man (Season 1) despite being made in 2015 looks just as good, or better than some modern anime.
Just goes to show she doesn't fully understand what she's complaining about.
@@danielzakgaim2764 _"Only big studios like Nickelodeon can afford good animation..."_
Meanwhile, Nickelodeon shows get canned for not having enough ratings as Spongebob SquarePants and Loud House. It can be true for Rise of the TMNT and Glitch Tech but still.
I pissed myself from how scary it was when the blue person looked unpleased and put their hand on smaller green fellow! My horror was immense when small plant animal had quivered! -869/10 too sinister.
Wow, I just realized that when Lily talkes about the supposed mocking of audience for creating their own theories in "Lion 2: alternative ending", it's actually just a stolen point from hbomberguy's "Sherlock is garbage and here's why", only it doesn't fit in this case
The reason for Steven Universe's choppy storytelling is because that Cartoon Network kept cutting budgets for the show, so all the plot holes were the result of factors outside of the creators' control
Not that Lily would ever understand that. She wholeheartedly believes that creators always have the power to do whatever they want without having to worry about the executives getting in the way.
@Br1annaFr33man the show could’ve been perfect, but I do admit I have a problem as to why would all the gems take female forms and use feminine pronouns when they're supposed to be genderless? They could’ve made them androgynous or completely inhuman and used gender neutral pronouns.
@@duskdweeb1368 I think Rebecca Sugar said she based the Gems off her own personal non-binary experience.
@@Br1annaFr33man huh good to know
No Steven universe kept getting a higher budget every session
One criticism I've always found frustrating against Steven Universe is the claim that Rose Quartz was always glorified and framed as a great hero throughout the series despite the mistakea she's made.
Because, that's not true!
The show clearly portrays Rose through many perspectives, including ones that highlight her flaws as a person. I fully believe that was intentional, not a retcon.
If anything, it gives off the very real effect of learning the unpleasant truths behind glorified historical figures in real life.
People who played important roles in significant changes in history are usually portrayed in a much more heroic light. But that light is only looking at their impact, not the reality of the person they were.
Rose was heroic and brave in a number of ways, but she was also clearly naiive, selfish, and generally unaware of the effect created by her treatment of those closest to her. She had good intentions, but those intentions were also fueled by her own fantasies and personal desires.
The negative effects of Rose's impact were explored quite thoroughly. The longer the series went on, the more we learned about the truth of Rose. That truth being that she was far from perfect, despite her initially glorified portrayal to Steven.
That's not a retcon. That's exploration!
Lilys alleged SA against her sister and overall manipulative behavior towards her really makes me question lily’s definition of what “self love” means
Also it makes so much sense as to why she views lapis’s actions as abusive and victim blames her
These bad faith and straight up factually incorrect Steven Universe videos and the lasting impact they've had on the show's online reputation are the epitome of the phrase "its easy to tell a lie, it's harder to disprove one"
1:14:23 THEY HAD TO SHARE TIME WITH THE DIAMONDS BECAUSE REBECCA WAS FORCED BY THE NETWORK.
They were going to cut out the gay wedding and the only way Sugar found to keep it was by making it EXTREMLY plot important. As in, the Diamonds attack Earth plot important.
Did Lily make no research? Of course she didn't. And even if she did, and she knew about this, she was probably lying. Because she is a lying liar.
The thing that makes me so sad about the Lapis discord is that as an abuse survivor it was actually pretty cathartic to see a character like Lapis who left an abusive situation and came out of it still hurt, turning hypervigilant from their pain and hurting others in the process but then heal little by little, even if they mess up sometimes.
Don't get me wrong, her arc wasnt perfect and I wish they would have given a bit more pushback on her bad behaviour from time to time but it was still so damm impactful to see someone healing and recieving sympathy and not having to be portrayed as an angel who did nothing wrong ever.
Alot of people who face abuse lash out at their abuser and more often than not that reactive abuse is ledgered against them to keep them in that abusive relationship. I found it pretty powerful that the show said "Yes Lapis did cruel things while being joined as Malachite but she still does deserve to live and heal."
Edit: spelling and grammar lol
Lily calling Stevonnie "the most hyper-fem you could possibly be" has the same energy as people on twitter calling Taylor Swift butch because she wore pants
Twitter seriously called Taylor Swift bitch because she wore fucking jeans? 😂
she literally grows and shaves facial hair on-screen, lolllllll “HYPER FEM”
God forbid an intersex person has curves and long hair fucks sake
I'm late but what disgusts me most is that the idea that Stevonnie is the most "fem presenting thing ever" is incredibly enbyphobic by itself, completely disregarding her wording. Nonbinary people can look like anyone regardless of appearance or traits. Nonbinary people don't owe anyone androgyny.
Lily just salty because Stevonnie (a mixed gender character) was prettier than her IRL. 😂
It's like that Homer Simpson line "WHY DOESN'T MINE LOOK LIKE THAT?!"
1:33:25 also non binary people don't owe you androgeny. stevonne mostly leaning towards fem is completely fine,
critising stonvonne cuz they're not completely androgenous is alienating a big part of the non binary community
Agreed!
Definitely. I personally am an non-binary person who happens to enjoy a lot of traditionally feminine things
People might say the character looks fem and I cam see, but like they have a look that any mix of what society thought they would be as a kid and what they are now would not phase me to learn about.
YES.
Lily's complaint here wasn't that stevonnie was fem presenting, her complaint was that a masc presenting child and a fem presenting child made a fem presenting adult person who is repeatedly perved on.
Wow, lapis is an abuse victim who does bad things? Woah man, its almost as if hurt people hurt people, or something crazy like that. Ugh
Wait what, hurt people hurt people? What an incredibly original phrase for such an original idea! We’re onto something here, like abuse is some sort of… cycle. Crazy.
I would argue even before Lapis started perpetuating the cycle of abuse the longer she was fused with Jasper, she originally just wanted to fuse and trap Jasper under the sea in order to protect Steven from her. Up to this point, Lapis has had nothing but gratitude and positive feelings toward Steven so it would make sense that she felt the need to protect her one friend from somebody out to get him. She did it when they first arrived in the hand ship in The Return. She even lied about Steven being just a plain human just to protect him from Jasper’s assault.
It was only when she stayed Malachite for an extended period of time that she began relishing in the torture she was putting Jasper through for hurting her and threatening to hurt the one person she cared about. It became so toxic that Lapis stopped thinking about herself as her own entity and embraced being Malachite. That’s where the toxicity in Lapis comes in, I feel. Too many people acknowledge the wrong things she was doing to Jasper since Jail Break but end up leaving out the part where she was also trying to protect Steven from a Homeworld Gem bent on destroying him and his friends/family.
@@theluigifan1 Exactly. Lapis was clearly initially trying to help, but it was when she had time to stew in her trauma from and hatred of Jasper and Homeworld (not to mention being trapped by the thing she's meant to control for so many months), she decided to take it out on Jasper. Hell, I wouldn't put it past her to at first thing this was a good thing and that Jasper deserved it for hurting her and threatening Steven before she eventually relished in it. But then she was able to come to the realization that that wasn't healthy in the slightest (meanwhile Jasper just came to the realization that she liked to be dominated /j). I really don't know how someone can misinterpret that. No one's saying Lapis didn't hurt Jasper, and I feel like that's what some people miss, idk
@@47ratsinahoodieExactly. I don’t know how people forget that Lapis *literally* said to Steven in Chille Tid “Just let me do this for you!”
That’s why I feel my interpretation for why she ultimately chose to form Malachite with Jasper is apt.
I think that Lily Orchard was against the portrayal of Lapis because she needs to shield her own actions. She needs people to believe that abuse survivors can't become abusive themselves, because she falls into the same category as Lapis: someone who was horribly abused, who went on to horribly abuse others.
I think while Lily definitely deserves this criticism, in my mind she's kinda a symptom of a larger problem. The attention economy has gotten so grotesque on the internet that it's no longer just acceptable to say "here's why I don't like this thing" and instead the video has to be "this is why this piece of media is irredemable GARBAGE." The fact that ragebait/negativity gets so many clicks on this platform rewards lazy, unsubstantiated critiques at best, and vicious misinformation at worst. Yucky.
Been saying this myself for a long time now
I am a professional hater. What separates me from all the amateurs is that I know I'm the problem. Sometimes I have legitimate reasons but I just as often don't. It's freeing to just hate something because you're petty and are just irked by that thing.
I dislike Taylor Swift for example. There are real nuanced critiques of her activism, her writing/sings, and even who she associates with. But I don't dislike her because of those things, I just dislike her because her fan base thinks she's the best thing since sliced bread.
You don't have to have a good reason to hate something. You have to have a good reason to hate them in public or online. Online forums dedicated to venting about a celebrities are a grey area bc I think it's fine as long as you have to actively search for it.
You don’t get rewarded for integrity. There is something deeply diseased about Internet culture :(
Doug Walker and CinemaSins need to be held accountable for poisoning the well of online media discourse so thoroughly that people like Lily Orchard and the MANY alt-right grifters like Nerdrotic and The Quartering are able to parrot bad-faith criticisms to an audience who will lap it up unthinkingly.
You're completely right! Its this innate feelings of needing to be "smarter" and "totally OWNING" the media you criticize that completely derails from genuine critique to just being "loud and absence as i possibly can!!!!" I don't mind comedy and criticism being mixed together for a video but god, its never really a full mix. Its just this smug sense of being inherently "better" than the media youcritique. Its kind of like the basement nerd rage of smugly insulting media, hiding behind it either being a "joke" or "just my opinion," simultaneously switching between the two, and then rinse and repeat. Its built this REALLY annoying rhetoric that if you don't enjoy a piece of media, then you have to absolutely tear into it and in fact, its entirely the medias fault, you're just way too smart for the it!
I'm not saying you have to be 100% positive or even fully LOVE the piece of media you critic, but to frame your own feeling based on personal taste as a critique or "essay" will make it completely fall flat. Hate anything all you want! You dont need a 2 hour video essay to prove your feelings are valid, they already are. Not everything was made for you and your personal tastes are no less valid, until you start acting as if its actual fact. And if you do want to engage with media you dont like, genuinely engage with it and the people who enjoy it. This fucking reddit narrative of needing to be the most giga chad smart boy cinamasins facts over feelings critic is going to put media literacy 6ft under.
I never noticed before, but she complains about queer characters being explicitly limited to gems, while showing Pearl's punk lesbian hookup on screen.
Also didn't sadie get into a queer relationship in future? Then again lily probably doesn't count that.
@@TheBonkleFox Yep! She had an enby partner.
Plus, while this could be a grey area on whether or not it's considered queer, Kevin acknowledges that Stevonnie is enby and still hits on them. So that's another human, who shows up multiple times, who could be considered some flavor of queer
@@TheBonkleFox Sadie was also attracted to Stevonnie in the original show, so she was queer in OG SU too.
Also, a lot of reoccurring characters are gems. At some point, it's just a matter of statistics.