http://artemispanthar.tumblr.com/ is one of my favorites, they post a lot of solid information, are pretty funny and smart and calm, and try to avoid spoilers/leaks as much as possible.
I can't explain how I find these videos, or why I find them funny or feel the need to post them here, just that it's a thing that is.
Speaking of hiatuses and boredom, is it appropriate to ramble about 'augh I'm trying to make an OC WHY IS THIS SO HARD, TROLLS WERE EASY' here, o is that better taken to the roleplay boards? I know what rock I want, but as far as visual look and social role, etc, I'm at such a loss.
I can't tell if binging on the Utena anime has ruined me or enhanced my SU experiences but now I want to write all the TLDR posts about parallels and crewniverse art and I wish I could post about this on tumblr but I want to keep my tumblr and my account here separate ;_; (If I still have the energy tomorrow to do this I will probably post here.)
Please please please PLEASE DO. <3 I've watched Utena, and I can catch the little animation references, but I don't know it well enough to spot other parallels!
OK SO I HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS but I am going to start this one first: SPOILERS FOR UTENA IF YOU HAVN'T WATCHED THAT YET. So almost everyone knows about the Utena references in Steven the Swordfighter, @Vast Derp made a connection between Blue Diamonds Court and the upside down castle in Utena. But I don't think those are the only references to the twisted fairy tale when it comes to the diamonds. Let's take a look at the Moon Base: Hmmm. It's a giant tower, with an observatory at the top, heavily decorated with a certain motif. Gee, where have we seen this before- What do we have inside of the moon base? Why, lot's and lots of stairs that spiral up to the top, of course. Steven even comments that wow, these guys must really like stairs! HMMMMM.... Oh, but that's not all! At the top of the Tower, Akio projects illusions of the upside down castle which you read by walking up that giant spiraling staircase. The top of the moon base that you reach with that giant spiraling staircase also has a projector, showing what the Diamonds wanted to do to the earth. Peridot thought was totally perfect, and at this point she still hasn't let go of her hero worship of the diamonds. The floating castle exists in Utena because the duelists have not let go of the fairytale illusion. However a huge part of Peridot's redemption arc is having that illusion shattered. She only changes side when she finds out that her Diamond isn't some goddess like figure of reason and logic who will see her side of things. Yellow Diamond is flawed, and Peridot needs to shift her entire worldview. Similarly, Utena needed to let go of her illusion of the noble prince who rescues the damsel in distress. Which up until that point, was the only reason why she had kept going after her parents died. So what I'm saying is, it wouldn't surprise me if we had more Utena imagery in the future when it comes to The Diamonds. We may even get scenes that parallel the inside of the castle or the rose bride (which will kill me) since the Diamonds and their "matriarch" rule of the diamonds have used design choices similar to Akio's fairytale and I don't think that's a coincidence since many of the crew members are huge Utena fans.
OK I think that is all for official stuff off the top of my head. (except generally flailing about roses because Roses are a motif for Rose and her armies and there is a reason why the Utena thread is titled "ROSES EVERYWHERE") so now we are onto the crewniverse art. Which isn't "official" but I think is interesting and worth over analyzing to death.
First we have Stevonnie dressed as a duelist. Which doesn't mean a lot besides "Rebecca Sugar is a huge nerd for Utena" since I can't really find a duelist with a similar design. I thought the design was vaguely similar to Dios, but eeeeeh, upon looking at other Dios art and screenshots the similarities are pretty weak so I'm not going to jump to any conclusions. I'm just posting it here because it's super pretty lol
Up next we have this really sad piece of art from "the week of Sardonyx" where Pearl is being tormented by Peridot shadows Which bares a striking resemblance to the Shadow Puppets/Drama club that act as the wacky "muses" for each Utena episode. Note the vines/thorns wrapping around both pictures. Though Peridot's "roses" have been replaced by Yellow Diamonds, which would make some sense since she is still aligned with Yellow Diamond and not Rose. They also play a very important role later in the story by performing a play that explains the backstory of the prince and the rose bride. In the pic with Pearl and Peridot, you can see curtains being pulled at the edges, like a stage that is putting on a play. In the background you can see symbols of the from the previous episodes (the ruins of the communication hub, the dragonflies that appear when they make Sardonyx, the beach) but also consider during this week we also get very important backstory for the gems. Specifically, the ships used to invade earth (which have pink diamonds everywhere). This will probably be really important later when we learn more about Rose.
Ok so up next: It's not just her fighting style, or her pilot design (which as Luka mentioned looks like Utena's school uniform) Pearl is consistently drawn as Utena in crewniverse art. (using thumbnails now because the images are pretty big, probably should have done that earlier, whoops.) Even in a halloween themed drawing with a "Vampire" Pearl, her coffin is filled with roses. Like the coffin imagery in Utena where the coffins we see for Utena and Anthy are filled with roses. Which might be a bit of a stretch but whatever, I'm counting it. Which makes a lot of sense when you think about Utena and Pearl as characters. Utena wanted to become a Prince (basically a knight in shining armor) because she wanted to see her prince again and held onto that memory, which kept her going after her parents died, and she wanted to protect and save Anthy. Somehow, Rose saved Pearl from an unbearable situation. Rose kept her going, she made her feel like she was everything, and in return Pearl completely dedicated herself to Rose and she tried to turn herself into her knight in shining armor who comes to her rescue. Does this make Rose Dios? Well, that's a mental image I never want to have again in my life. But Rose actually gives a crap about other people and tried to let Pearl know exactly what she was getting into instead of abusing that power dynamic. So we can probably rest assured that she's not secretly like Akio. (though eventually we will probably get bombs dropped where we find out that Rose is not the perfect benevolent angel that the show portrays her as and she actually did some really messed up shit during the war. Which is... close enough for me!) However when you consider this, and the posts I made above about how the diamonds imagery draws parallels to the upside down castle, the observatory, and the twisted fairy tale illusion that the gems must overcome? And the imagery of the shadow puppet play with Pearl and Peridot that represents the same story arc that gave us a brief glimpse to the backstory for the initial invasion of earth (with pink diamonds all over the space ship)? Having Rose be the Prince that inspires Pearl might just be another one of the many clues that point towards Rose being Pink Diamond. Interesting note: I have looked up a lot of Utena/SU crossover fanart. A ton of that fanart that draws Pearl as Anthy. It's really interesting the way the crew interprets the characters vs the way the fandom does. but that giant rant about how the fandom frustrates me will be saved for my final post here with the Utena/SU analysis!
OK SO LAST PICTURE TO ANALYZE. I saved it for last because I love Juri SO MUCH and I have so many feelings about Jaspis (that I keep posting here over and over and over again but HERE WE GO) I think the choice of Juri and Shiori here is actually very significant and very telling. If we just wanted to dress them up as Utena characters because it's fun and we went by color scheme, Jasper could have easily been dressed as Touga (who wears red the way Jasper does, and is a manipulative sociopath) and Kozue (who does some messed up stuff herself because she wants her brother to worry about her and she wants to protect him) which coincidentally, also would fall neatly in line with fandom interpretations of Jasper being predatory and basically irredeemable and abusing Lapis, and Lapis doing something messed up to protect Steven. Some have taken this to mean "The Crewniverse ships Jaspis!" and leave it at that, there was actually a really good post floating around tumblr that basically explains who Juri and Shiori are and why this is significant. I was going to find it and link it here but I can't seem to find it right now. So I will have to sum it up myself: So basically, Juri and Shiori knew each other since they were kids. Juri was always very kind to Shiori, but Shiori had an inferiority complex and hated her. She thought Juri was only nice to her out of pity. So she told her about how if she believed in miracles "they" would understand how she feels (meaning the person in her locket which she assumed was the boy, would realize that she loved him and they'd hook up). Then she decided to date the boy, all because she wanted to badly hurt her feelings. During the Black Rose arc when she confronts Juri with her "true" self, we get this lovely exchange: When she duels with Utena she enjoys the fact that she "controls" Juri. and when Utena asks why she's doing this because she thought they were supposed to be friends: I havn't watched the movie yet, but from what I've heard, Shiori is even worse. I've also seen a post on tumblr that talks about how Shiori actually loves Juri back. However I am just going to copy and paste the notes here and let them speak for themselves: Ok so there are some very obvious differences. For one, Jasper certainly isn't nice to Lapis. You can't say they love each other. But there are a few really obvious similarities: Like I've mentioned basically every time I talk about Malachite, Lapis fused with Jasper because she wanted to control someone else. She was tired of feeling like she had no control over her life. She was pissed off and wanted revenge, and deceived Jasper (who basically thought she wanted to fuse because she hated the Crystal Gems as much as she does) in order to get it. Disclaimer: Jasper is a huge asshole who likes to shove people around and bully her way into getting whatever she wants and the way she tries to push Lapis for consent was skeevy as hell. But that doesn't justify or excuse what Lapis did either. I maintain that you can be a baby eating puppy kicker and you still don't deserve to be abused. Shiori was tired of feeling inferior to Juri, so she deceived her (trying to get her hopes up, before crushing them as hard as possible) in order to get what she wanted. When she found out that she was the one Juri loved, she was happy that she had so much power and control over her and thought she "won" like this is a game of dominance. Speaking of dominance... Jasper and Lapis are constantly fighting to dominate one another, and Lapis is almost always winning. From the beginning she was the one in control as she keeps Jasper from unfusing with her and drags them down to the bottom of the ocean, and even within Malachite's headspace she is dragging Jasper down to god knows where underwater so she can stay in control. As we see in Chille Tid, Jasper only got to drag Lapis down because she was distracted, and Lapis quickly regained control. She wants them to stay fused forever, she wants to be in control forever. The same way that we see that Shiori wants to keep Juri a prisoner to her own love forever. The same way Jasper is constantly being dragged down, Juri cannot get over Shiori no matter how hard she tries. She is only freed from Shiori when Utena shatters her locket, and even then Juri is seems devastated by this event. Spoiler: spoilers from the recent Steven Universe leaks Also it seems like Jasper gained control over Malachite in the end. The fandom was expecting her to be traumatized since she literally spent several months forced into a hellish relationship she couldn't escape, but she seemed to really enjoy being Malachite when she was in control. So who knows how the whole Malachite thing is going to affect Lapis and Jasper long term. I suspect both of them are traumatized to some degree based on what we've seen of Lapis after they split up. My best guess with the short clip we have is that Jasper is dealing with it via denial that any part of the Malachite situation is actually fucked up or hurting her. Even though she's been desperately struggling the vast majority of the time, suddenly that this is actually the best thing ever after she gains control. She's focusing on the whole "free power boost!" aspect of fusion because physical power is something familiar and comfortable for her, instead of the relationship part because their relationship is literally described as "the worst relationship imaginable". I imagine that Jasper isn't going to be over Malachite for a long time, and it's going to take a lot of work on her part to actually process what happened as being unhealthy and see fusions as more than a free power boost. Especially because y'know, Jasper seems to hate anything she considers "weak" and that includes admitting when she lost. Admitting that she was actually hurt by anything let alone that someone else had over over her and exploited that is probably the same thing as admitting that she was weak, that she was powerless, that she "lost" to someone. Jasper seems to go through mental gymnastics to avoid that. but meh, my speculation has been proven wrong time and time again and we only have one short clip to go off of so this is all just wild speculation and who knows what will happen. It's only at the end of the series that Juri seems to be actually over Shiori, when she asks Utena for a picture of her to put inside her new locket. (Now between this and all of the "Pearl is Utena" art I ship Jaspearl. As if I needed another ship.) TLDR: yeah, the crewniverse has drawn shippy art of them together. This particular piece though actually speaks volumes about their relationship and it is not saying anything nice about Lapis. and now a personal vent about my frustrations, as promised in my last post: The crewniverse has basically done everything but flash a giant neon sign saying "Lapis is abusive!" (including this artwork imo) and I am so tired of people making posts that say she's the victim and Jasper is the abuser that if I have to see one more post about how Lapis needs to be freed or one more fanart that reverses their power dynamic (where Lapis is the one being dragged down/chained down/drowned by Jasper) I will flip a god damned table. I am so tired of this idea that people can only be abused if they are precious fragile cinnamon buns and that the cycle of abuse doesn't exist and that the only abuse that counts is physical/sexual. (but then again I am also biased as fuck because I've been in that situation where I had no control, no escape, and was pinned down not for any physically abusive reasons or sexual reasons but because they decided that was the only way to deal with my anger. So people pretending that's no big deal, or that the power dynamics are reverse of what they actually are in the show because Jasper happens to be a jerk and Lapis has had bad things happen to her is like a personal slap in the face. Like nah son, that is actually abuse. Stop trying to erase that. Stop trying to victim blame.)
I'm glad you like it :D (also I am very pleased I got to kick off page 108 with a giant TLDR post about my fav orange lesbians)
Yes. This also ties back to Buddhism and 108 because images of Guanyin are used to represent the Virgin Mary in some cases. So clearly. Yes.
