In the thirteenth episode of the fifth season of Steven Universe, Steven brings a friend to visit Lars and his crew. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Steven Universe.
Every time this show comes back, I am reminded how much I miss it. (I also have avoided pretty much all the discourse online, so it hasn’t been ruined for me, either. BLESS YOU, FILTERING/KEYWORD MUTING.) I AM FULL OF LOVE FOR THIS SHOW AND THESE CHARACTERS, and look at this: an entire episode that serves as a reminder of the thematic power of this story. “Your Mother and Mine†is almost like a clip episode, since it summarizes the story of Rose Quartz, but there are quite a few things that still make this feel like it’s own thing. I would like a Garnet-focused episode at some point (I feel like it’s been a while since we’ve had one), but I was pleased that out of all the Crystal Gems, she was the one that Steven brought to the ship.
Why? Because those gems—the Off-Colors—needed to see someone like themselves. They needed to hear this story from someone who had been rejected, who had been told that they were wrong and flawed and unloveable, and that’s especially since they’d bought all the tales that painted Rose Quartz as a villain. It’s propaganda at work, and through state control, the Diamonds were able to convince legions of gems that Rose Quartz was evil. That she was ruthless and unforgivable. And that in the end, she was defeated because the Diamonds are all that is right and good in the world. Given what the Off-Colors have experienced on Homeworld, it’s not at all hard for them to believe these stories, you know?
So Garnet re-tells it, filling in this story with all the necessary information that was kept from the gems. Much of that felt like a summary, at least for the audience. I did appreciate the unique animation during that sequence, though! That helped this to remain interesting for me on a superficial level. (Look, retell a familiar story with pretty pictures and I AM IN.) Of course, there’s a secondary layer of meaning to this retelling. We might know why Rose Quartz staged a rebellion, and we might know how the Crystal Gems came to be, but that story is a source of motivation for the Off-Colors. And what a time to need that message! Stranded in space, aboard a ship that doesn’t work, far from either home (Homeworld for the Off-Colors, Lars for Earth), it would have been easier for them to give up, to give in to despair.Â
It’s also not lost on me how much this metaphor works for queerness and the LGBT community. I mean, that’s basically built into the framework of Steven Universe, but knowing that there are a lot of canonically queer/LGBT characters made Garnet’s speech even more meaningful to me. It’s why so many of us form our own communities! It’s why we seek one another out in social situations. Lots of us are so used to be told we are broken that we crave people who see us as whole. Like, the Off-Colors LITERALLY COULD NOT CONCEIVE OF COMPLIMENTS. That’s how low their own self-esteem was! And then in comes Garnet, a fusion herself, telling them that they are beautiful and important, and GUESS WHAT, I’M EMOTIONAL ALL OVER AGAIN.Â
I was hoping that Garnet would finally be able to help explain Steven’s bizarre empathic visions, but it sounds like that’s all the explanation we’ll get for now. I suspect there’s still more to this story that we don’t know. There must be! I don’t know that I’m ready to believe that Pink Diamond is still “out there,†as Steven suggests here, but there’s another piece of the puzzle left. How will that change our own perception of what really happened? Is Garnet wrong about history, too?
I can’t wait to find out.
The video for “Your Mother and Mine†can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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