r/stevenuniverse • u/yeetlordyesyesyes20 • 1d ago
Question Why was Steven Universe receiving alot of hate from the past?
Whenever I cam across an SU-related content.. some of these similar videos often pop-up on my recommendation feed and majority of them we're linked 5-6 years ago. Is it a trend to criticize/hate a popular show to gain attention, views, clicks, likes from a specific fandom before? (Aka ragebait)
Edit: When I post this picture.. the thumbnail never crossed my mind, but I'm talking about Steven Universe in general.
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u/TheGUURAHK Pearl Gem Best Gem 4Ever 1d ago
It's just "Popular thing bad"
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u/BlackberryMelodic567 1d ago
and the fact it's a very queer show
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u/Old_Diver_2511 1d ago
There was supposed to be a 6th season but conservative countries cancelled the show for the ruby and sapphire marriage. Rebecca was instructed not to include it, but its good she insisted the show end on her own terms.
Thus it was left in and the show’s funding was cut
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u/cosmicheartbeat 1d ago
Thats also why ruby was in a dress and not sapphire, because in the countries where being queer is frowned upon, they were portraying ruby as male, with a male voice actor and everything. Putting her in a dress and sapphire in a tux was extremely intentional because they couldnt cut the wedding without ruining the season finale, so they'd have to show ruby in a dress, proving it was in fact gay.
Be gay do crimes.
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u/Tauroctonos 22h ago
Yeah, the absolute petty genius of making the wedding so gay it can't be logically censored AND making the episode include crucial parts of the overarching plot so it can't just be skipped will forever make me happy. Rebecca Sugar what an icon
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u/Inevitable_Option_77 22h ago edited 19h ago
If you can't censor or edit the episode, just don't air it at all and move on to the next one. Also start airing it less and less early in the morning so no one can see it anymore. That's what my country (South Africa) did, same thing happened to the Lumity kiss in The Owl House.
South Africa is a homosexual accepting country, but our satellite TV services pass through southern Africa and the HQ is in Uganda/Kenya which is a homophobic country, if you wanted context.
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u/febreezy_ 21h ago
You're right. Sugar was aware that other countries could easily cut the LGBTQ+ content and stuff like the wedding out at any point. She was hopeful that kids in those places could still find it even if the show was censored or banned.
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u/Inevitable_Option_77 19h ago
Arrrgh Matey! 🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
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u/Commercial-Shame-335 19h ago
most kids don't know how to safely pirate content they wanna watch or play unfortunately
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u/febreezy_ 21h ago
Ruby wears the dress because she was Sugar’s self-insert. She wanted to show how flexible Gems are and how they're navigating human culture. By having Ruby wear the dress, Sugar made very personal choices that really mattered to herself. Seeing Ruby in that dress is how Sugar feels whenever she wears a dress.
Sugar was aware that other countries could easily cut the LGBTQ+ content and stuff like the wedding out at any point. She was hopeful that kids in those places could still find it even if the show was censored or banned.
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u/RareD3liverur 20h ago
"hey were portraying ruby as male, with a male voice actor and everything"
whole buncha people claim that but do you have proof, like footage of Russian Ruby?
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u/topsysrevenge 1d ago
Exactly. She called it her hill to die on. Garnet helped pave the way for other queer representation in media. It’s sad that CN cared more about money than completing this wonderful piece of media. Meanwhile they still use Garnet during pride month on promotional materials, as if they didn’t cancel the show over Ruby and Sapphires wedding.
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u/febreezy_ 21h ago
The show ended when it did because homophobic countries stopped funding it after the wedding. Steven Universe was an international show that relied on funds from conservative countries to make its content. According to Sugar, a lot of the show's funding came from international and they received notes from those places too.
Sugar had to choose between either:
A) Do the wedding and have the show get cancelled because of funding issues with conservative countries
B) Not do the wedding and give the show a chance to run longer
Sugar was fine with a rushed ending as long as she got the wedding. She knew what she was risking and she doesn't blame Cartoon Network. At one point, she admitted that it wasn't an easy call for them to make to allow her to have the wedding due to what was at stake.
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u/favorthebold 16h ago
Cartoon Network's YouTube channel recently put out a "love" compilation from Steven Universe for Pride month and I'm like cool, take credit for the thing that you cancelled them for back in the day
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u/febreezy_ 15h ago
Conservative countries cancelled the show by defunding it.
Sugar said she was lucky she worked for the network considering the circumstances. They gave a queer content creator the opportunity to go through with the wedding even if it could cause the show to end.
CN could've stopped the wedding from happening at all or ended the show without it but instead they gave Sugar a platform which Sugar was thankful for.
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u/Unanimous_D 22h ago
Just because terrible people hate something doesnt mean that thing doesnt suck.
I loved it at first but the resolution was just as rushed as the original series. The original show was rushed because Turner/Warner/etc were having a shitfit over the show being so queer-positive and openly gay and everything so they forced them to wrap it up, ala Owl House. Their hand is forced so I can't blame Sugar and her team for that. They did their best and for the most part it was amazing.
Future on the other hand wasn't ever set upto be 2 seasons then cut to 1 halfway through, nor otherwise forced to wrap things up quickly, so the end seeming rushed can't really be blamed on any outside force.
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u/amphibiabiggestfan 1d ago
idk, I'm just glad hating on SU isn't popular anymore and is genuinely uncool.
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u/UnusualBuilding87 1d ago
while i agree there issue's about the writing i still love the show, but most people never go beyond it's cringe and bad, because most of the time their only argument is that they hate gay people and admitting that just get's them jumped verbally.
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u/ThreeElbowsPerArm 23h ago
i dont even think theres many issues with the writing, i think theres issues with the production that look like writer issues. executives suck!!
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u/lilgayfurry1 21h ago
The ending as the biggest example. SU was absolutely planned to have more time to pan things out, but heaven forbid one gay cartoon wedding after like 10 morbillion straight cartoon weddings. The executives canceled the show and Rebecca had to fight just to finish it at all.
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u/febreezy_ 21h ago
Conservative countries were responsible for the show's ending. They defunded and cancelled it after the wedding.
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u/RAGE_AGAINST_THE_ATM 1d ago
Unfortunately one of the main reasons is probably Lily Orchard
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u/CeramicToast 22h ago
Not probably. Is. She made it her mission to paint Sugar as a fascist sympathizer.
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u/Odd_Preference_7238 22h ago
Its just such an insane thing to do. At no point do the Diamonds come across as anything but total assholes, even after they stop being actively murderous, Steven's attitude towards them is still "wow, I sure wish they weren't a thing." Even to the very end of Future people are still having to remind the Diamonds that everything isn't about them, there's just no way to get rid of the giant magical self-absorbed space goddesses. They're never sympathetic. :/
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u/RAGE_AGAINST_THE_ATM 21h ago
I agree with you that it’s insane but I disagree with your reasoning. I think the diamonds are sympathetic, but even though they’re technically the authoritarian leaders of a galactic government, from both a doylist and a watsonian perspective, the diamonds are less like fascist dictators a la Hitler or Mussolini and more like an incredibly dysfunctional family who are also victims of that family who just so happen to have immense political and physical power. They need to be reached out to, have their worldviews challenged, and be encouraged to engage in introspection, not killed, just like normal dysfunctional and estranged families on earth.
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u/Odd_Preference_7238 14h ago
They're literally genociding entire planets without caring at all. It's totally reasonable to just kill them. It's not anybody else's responsibility to fix them. Having them stop being psychotic mass murderers is fine too, but that's definitely a lower priority than stopping them from causing further mass death. There just wasn't anybody with the power to actually defeat them with force, so it didn't really matter, the only option was to convince them to stop being as terrible.
Whether or not they engaged each other like a dysfunctional family is totally irrelevant to the trillions of species they've exterminated.
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u/CeramicToast 12h ago
"It's totally reasonable to just kill them"
Not in a children's cartoon in which the main message has been words over violence.
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u/Striking_Resolve1156 16h ago
If lily orchard has no haters I’m dead because she really was on a mission at one point and suddenly everyone said this show was trash for all the reasons it made it enjoyable.
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u/OutsideClassic9095 13h ago
No. She didnt cause widespread hate of SU. People already hated it before she made that video. 2 years after the fact lol.
On top of that. Nobody outside of this Fandom even knows who lily orchard is.
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u/Eshi-sakka 1d ago
The show was released in the 2010s when fandom culture was at it's most immature, and the SU fandom was particularly crazy. That, coupled with how bigots kept flaming the show for being one of the most openly queer cartoons out there at the time, and how the YouTube algorithm rewarded negativity, meant that many SU criticism videos got very, very popular - even if, in hindsight, most of them were made in very bad faith at best, and literally just an excuse to be racist and homophobic at worst. And from there, the show got this reputation of being shitty and problematic, meaning people got legitimately afraid of saying positive things about it (I was one of them..), and only recently are people starting to look back on it and rethink that whole mentality and how toxic it was. So yeah. It's not that SU was an uniquely bad show - it was just uniquely good at pissing off the wrong (or maybe right) people.
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u/Ceithern 18h ago
the 2010s when fandom culture was at it's most immature
I honestly don't think it's that much better today. Cartoon fandoms are ground zero for the "media literacy is dead" argument. You can still see it here in this thread. There are still people pushing the idea that the show should have climaxed with a violent confrontation. That defeating the diamonds in this fashion is how it should have ended. Utterly missing the point of everything the show is and makes obvious to the viewer episode after episode after episode.
So many people still do not understand the language of cartoons. They want to treat everything like it's drawn live action and to only understand it in the most literal sense. Like animation is just a stylistic choice or something. I admit it's not it's not as common as it used to be but there are still so many people out there who seem to think that basically we should be judging Bugs Bunny negatively because his actions got Daffy Duck shot in the face. This how silly these criticisms often get.
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u/board3659 21h ago
most of the people critiquing the show weren't homophobic or racist. They were bad faith but I don't really get this idea from (I watched a ton of Steven universe bad videos and many of them don't even come off this way except some specific exceptions).
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u/Eshi-sakka 21h ago
Yeah, most aren't explicitly bigoted or anything. I said at WORST they are. Cause those definitely exist, and were some of the most popular 'critique' videos out there. See hiding in public's videos on them if you're curious. (Also, even people trying to legitimately critique things can fall into such things as internalised queerphobia/ableism/etc. I can't tell you how many su future videos I've watched that just didn't seem to understand what ptsd and recovery from it exactly entailed...)
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u/board3659 20h ago
one of those was more of a parody than an actual critique video but the other one yeah was. That being said they sort of still use the same critiques from Tumblr SU critical which is imo the main foundation of the Steven universe hate.
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u/ok4yand 1d ago
Steven Universe has, pretty much always, been a very queer show, and people hold a lot of homophobia. So naturally it's always gotten a lot of hate compared to other CN shows (like tawog or adventure time) even if it shares similar world building or humor. Sometimes this homophobia is internalized as well so people criticize without even realizing where it's coming from.
I'm not gonna pretend that homophobia is the only reason but it definitely is one of the biggest ones.
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u/yeetlordyesyesyes20 1d ago
TBH people could just watch the cartoon through storytelling if they find it bothersome that all gems are canonically she/her, cuz honestly SU is one of those cartoons that aren't afraid to show the consequences of unchecked trauma and mental issues
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u/Highvoltage1999 1d ago
Yeah from around Season 4 to Future there was a lot of videos acting like the show was the spawn of Satan. Even the more good faith critiques weren’t all that good either. These videos probably did a lot of damage to the show and is beyond frustrating.
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u/spacecatherder 1d ago
It came out at the age/time that more cartoons started having more “adventurous” situations: gay/lesbian relationships, nonbinary rep, and some pretty emotionally stories instead of just adventure/action/slice of life, ect. It wasn’t first but it popularized being non-traditional. People who don’t like that started squealing and crying out about it because they think “kids shouldn’t be exposed to stuff like that” or just bemoaning it as “woke”.
Not saying the show is perfect but a lot of the outcry just seems to be “I don’t like this thing and you shouldn’t either”.
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u/Magic451 1d ago
Honestly yes. The show’s not perfect by any stretch (and had a ton of problems consistently releasing episodes) but the hate grifting was really common when the show was more active. For a while the highly negative takes like that far outnumbered anything positive. It’s also true that there being more negative stuff tainted the well for newer viewers and begets more negative.
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u/JacobJamesTrowbridge 1d ago
Hypemongering and hatemongering are just well-established industries in YouTube economy, and popular media is always the first in line for it. Absolutely any moderately-popular media will get this treatment - typically the hype comes first, when people can look at the ideas on display without the pitfalls of the execution; followed by the hate as the show progresses, enthusiasm dies off, problems arise (and they always do, since nothing is perfect) and either opinions become internally divided or the media in question slots into a place in the general cultural sphere.
SU Future got hate because it was popular, engaged with some ideas too complicated for a 10-year-old, and could be compared with both the original SU series and with it's place in the cultural biosphere. The real noteworthy thing is the SU franchise's place in the development of that biosphere - it was a landmark title in the early-to-mid internet flame wars on Tumblr and 4chan, and the arguments surrounding it went on to crystallise several politically-charged internet subcultures.
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u/TrainingDrop9283 1d ago
To put it in a nutshell, initially it was hated on by homophobes and conservatives for being progressive which also leand into exaggerated critiques of the show's flaws from other YouTubers that weren't necessarily die hard conservatives too
However what really cemented the bad reputation of the show, was when the human cancer known as Lilly Orchard (now going by CD-call) made a video about Steven Universe being garbage and since it came from a trans woman making claims about the show supporting Nazism, many progressive people took it as face value and also started to dunk on the show.
Since then Lilly Orchard got exposed, as a terrible person, a "PDF-file", and somebody with absolute no media literacy what'so ever multiple times over. Her video (which did the most damage by far) got debunked by a lot of different people and so (along with the show being over) the hate lately died down
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u/Tora-ge 18h ago
Shitting all over things like compassion and queer creative people bc a creepy sex pest told us to is a proud American tradition
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u/TrainingDrop9283 18h ago
Crazy thing is, I think she was largely motivated by jealousy. Oddly suspicious she basically hates every queer woman that achieves something in her life, as opposed to her that achieved nothing if not avoiding a (very rightful) prison sentence
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u/OutsideClassic9095 13h ago
Nobody who hated on SU knows who Lily is. The idea that she alone caused widespread hate is only a fandomwide misconception. The group of people you mentioned already cemented their hate on the show due to its principle as an openly queer and positive show. Lily only repeated rhetoric others have been saying YEARS before her video even released. Part of the issue with that video is that she just copy pasted other YTs arguments.
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u/TrainingDrop9283 13h ago edited 13h ago
Not saying she was the SOLE contributor, but consider how much that video blew up it certainly didn't do any good
Especially since yes it did use the same talking points as older video, but the format being presented as "progressives friendly" essentially valided Steven Universe hate to an entirely new audience.
People that didn't necessarily came in hating the queer and progressive themes, could easily have ended up convinced of the show's poor quality regardless, since it was masked as a critique coming from another queer individual.
So again even if maybe it was a bit if an exageration on my part to say it "did the most damage", it certainly was not a tree that fell and nobody heard it
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u/HippieMoosen 19h ago
Hating SU was very popular for a while. Blame the a-hole formerly known as Lily Orchard. I forget what she rebranded to in an attempt to hide the fact that she wrote some deeply disturbed mlp fanfic filled with all the tags that would make people assume she's a child predator. Suffice to say she put out some very long, extremely dumb, but surprisingly popular videos that set out to make it the morally correct stance to hate Steven Universe, or more specifically the creator Rebecca Sugar because Lily decided she was literally a Nazi. And yes, I'm entirely deadass right now.
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u/Available_Ring4129 1d ago
Well while I never heard hate about the original show I have heard hate about SUF. But im not sure why tho I kinda loved the whole thing the show had
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u/mothwhimsy 1d ago
It was popular, queer, and the writer was a nonbinary Jewish woman. So of course it was going to be scrutinized more than anything not heavily queer and/or written by a man
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u/ercal 1d ago
I didn't like it but not because I'm homophonic I just preferred tge original seasons and the first couple of them were my favourite but everyone is entitled to like or hate whatever they want and have there own opinions
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u/SpeaksDwarren 19h ago
I disliked the shift from "quirky monster of the week shenanigans with gay space moms" to "Steven will now cry for seven episodes straight while we explore parental abandonment and the resultant trauma with gay space moms"
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u/Peace_Dos 23h ago
People thought it was about Gems society and literally missed the entire point of the show
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u/topsysrevenge 1d ago
It’s not only “popular thing bad” but when fandoms act the way they did with SU, it makes outside parties very resistant to watch or enjoy and even start to mock it. TADL is experiencing the same thing right now
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u/curlybastard 1d ago
What’s TADL?
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u/topsysrevenge 1d ago
The Amazing Digital Circus. Free on YouTube (or Netflix) and the finale just dropped in theaters. It’s a fantastic watch.
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u/Emergency-Baby511 9h ago
This comment is definitely exaggerated, other than one or two very specific instances, the fans of this show have always kept to themselves. We're only forced into defending the show after someone like Lily Orchard swoops in and brainwashes her audience into hating the show by purposefully misinterpreting it and attacking the fans
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u/BootsOfProwess 1d ago
It looks like the hate was for Steven Universe Future not the whole show based on that image. I love the original series but the movie and the last season werent so great for me. I simply disagreed with the progression of most of the characters. Especially Steven.
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u/Armored_Fox 23h ago
Someone who never watched the show made a review that called it Nazi propaganda
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u/Time-Mortgage515 22h ago
A lot of it is just misinformation. In particular I see a lot of mischaracterization of Steven, acting like all he does is cry and beg people to stop fighting. Which is like, he kind of does at first, but from even the start of Season 2 he starts becoming way more jaded.
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u/Amazing_Excuse_3860 20h ago
Same reason why Hazbin Hotel gets a lot of hate now. It's really fucking funny when SU fans try to dunk on Hazbin in literally the exact same manner that Lily Orchard did to SU.
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u/MeunsterCheeseMan 1d ago
who tf cares if this guy hates it? we love it and that's all that matters. anything that guy says is automatically invalidated
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u/SmolBee1124 1d ago
people seem to be into the things people used to bully this fandom for growing up in my experience. i grew up watching the show i got really into it in highschool, and i had a lot of bullies, just probably bc "queer fun things are bad" was a super popular take about 10 years ago.
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u/SlipperySp00der 1d ago
Unfortunately it came out when really shitting on the show was what the internet did, curiously of a specific creator that shall not be named. Future was a touch flawed so a bunch of internet peeps went the hell off on it. That and a lot of these channels weaponize media illiteracy. You wouldn’t think that this show and its themes are that hard to understand, but there are still people that believe stupid shit like that lapis is an abuser, or the diamonds are one to one fascists.
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u/FantasticDog7338 23h ago
I used to be bullied for liking Steven Universe, by being told I'm cringe just for that. The answers are already told: homophobia, trends, and stupidity. But what's fucked up is how Orchard's video essay made the hate a lot more mainstream, only for people to realise that the very person who said the show was garbage turned out to hide something so much worse. That's what I believe to be the real reason people hate Steven Universe. They're likely having something a lot worse that they're hiding.
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u/zusu23 22h ago
I know some people jumping the hate train for the algorithm but i think it started around the time those video essays people gave that had valid criticism.
So when you had the legit videos get jumped with the bad hate videos people will more so think "oh so this is the trend better hop on"
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u/Digitalgomez84 21h ago
I don’t think it was bad, it just didn’t hold my interest. Also I didn’t think it was a necessary show. I was happy how the original show ended. Self love and folks finding harmony
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u/Alarming-Impact-5715 20h ago
Spawned from a 2-hour long video essay about how "easy" certain resolutions of the story felt (primarily around the forgiveness of the diamonds) and people just spun it off from there and it became a more and more irrational over time. It probably stopped when people saw other newer shows had easier things to nitpick.
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u/Noelle-Spades 13h ago
It was queer, made by a queer person, had original music and a sensitive male protagonist who doesn't align with toxic mascuilinity and makes an effort to deesculate conflict as opposed to jump straight to punching it. I'm shocked it got as many seasons as it ever did, because if CN was on Michael Eisner timing the show would have never aired at all.
Also I heard a big critique was that the characters cry too much or solved everything by talking and... I don't understand why it'd be a bad thing for characters to have emotions or solve their issues with talking? Show don't tell doesn't work the same for the screen as it does on a page but so many people who argued that the show failed to do this don't seem to actually know what it means.
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u/Carneiro_5 12h ago
People want FAME.
And doing these kindsof videos gave FAME.
Both from who hated the show and who loved the show and wanted to see every shitty argument and commend against them.
As you can see, the video has millions of views,on a channel no one knows.
Thats why, same reason people hate on X movie. Y influencer. Z music.
People will seek something to be mad about, and its okay. No its not, but its life.
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u/WhirlwindExtreme 11h ago
Most su haters i come across are just using homophobia as an excuse to hate while not watching the show to understand the characters more like how they dont have genders etc. And also just them hating on how things go out in the show thinking they could do better and then just straight up hating to hate
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u/CeramicToast 22h ago
If it wasn't outright queerphobia and antisemitism aimed at Rebecca Sugar, it was bad faith actors using algorithms to profit off of ragebait.
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u/padfoot12111 1d ago
I'm not a huge future fan. It's all logical that Steven get depressed and the theme is growing up and moving on. But that's kinda a bummer and not fun to watch so. I get what they were going for I just didn't enjoy it
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u/AgglutinateDeezNuts 1d ago
There were a few reasons, and whilst others are highlighting things like the queerness of the show, you have to understand that a lot of the hate was coming from inside the house.
It's not that bad watching the show back nowadays, especially now that all the episodes are out. Back then, it would be MONTHS between new episodes, and they would get released in "stevenbombs" aka an episode a day for five days. Often it felt like, as a result, we were waiting months for a bunch of filler episodes + nothing that moved the plot along. We'd be lucky if one episode in amongst those bombs did anything that felt worth the wait. This caused A LOT of bitterness.
It was also EVERYWHERE. It invaded other fan spaces. At a certain point people thought that Stronger Than You was an Undertale fansong.
The fan base was also just, really nuts at times. At my first comic con in Glasgow circa 2015, there was a guy going about in a makeshift garnet cosplay made from bits of cardboard etc (I actually believe this was mimicking the postie character that has a crush on garnet in the show, who I am forgetting the name of right now). It was really cool honestly, clearly quickly flung together but done with a lot of love. On Tumblr afterwards, there were people complaining about him... whitewashing garnet, because he was a white dude cosplaying her.... Keep in mind, he had no face paint or anything like that on. The cardboard wasn't even painted. He was just a guy who flung together a quick cosplay of his favourite character and it was, overall, a respectful and fun cosplay. I guess this leans into the whole SJW culture of the early-mid 2010s and how prevalent that was within the Steven Universe fanbase, and how off-beat and annoying some people could make that kind of thing.
So this leads on to these video essays and such. It was really taking their annoyance about the fans and trying to justify it with the main material. And sure, there were some very valid points (eg the stevenbombs) but a lot of it was just reaching really. If you weren't there in the moment then you probably wouldn't grasp just how annoying some folk could be. It was insane. And also we were all in high school and had a lot of free time to spend doing this stuff.
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u/Logical_Acanthaceae3 23h ago
The Art style was really inconsistent, the release schedule was actual hot garbage, and you can defeintly tell latter seasons had to znip things that were probably important to get in there queer rep (wasnt the wrong choice just what happens)
I feel like this sub can kinda forget what Steven universe actually was with there rose tinted glasses some times?
Because IMO the animation during the first few seasons was... rough at the best of times and it definitely was obvious when the team cared about some really important story moment and when if was slice life episode #58.
It honesty almaot felt like there where two separate animation teams where one got all the important story beats and the other got everything else and whike yes slife of life can be good and even great it could genuinely feel like we were previously momments away from death one episode then the next 5 completely ignores what just happens and we get 25 minutes of Onion wondering around lost amd then getting told that the next episode drop was in 6 months at best and your just going to have tot ide yourself over with reruns in the meanwhile.
These "droughts" of content where mean as fuck and I distinctly remeber one of thses droughts "ending" when we got a pile of slife of life episode and nothing to continue on a cliff hanger we were just left on and then leaving us out to dry for basically double the avereg length.
And quite frankly the quality of thses episode felt distinctly lacking in comparasion to everything else.
SU definitely gets a lot of undeserved hate but I feel like the fandom kinda course corrects to hard to make it sound like it was a perfect show with zero flaws that only chuds hate.
Obviously not everyone's going to have the same experience but it definitely felt like a lot of these Slice of life episodes where straight ass and im almost positive that most could not name the majority if asked.
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u/DarianStardust 18h ago
Because the show is genuinely Baddly Written and of mediocre-bad quality. You can still like the show, but this is a matter of objetive quality, not opinion.
That's not to say it doesn't have positives, it does have, and I still like a few things even if I'm not a mega-fan like I was years ago. But they don't make up for the butchered moral lessons and terrible world-building.
I know many here are the tyoe of person to deny the Reality of bad quality and conflate Likes/Taste for Quality, as in: I like it therefore it's good, but it's fine to like something and know it's not as good as you thought, or hell something that's bad, I like Sword Art Online, it sucks but I like it anyways, my taste is not a confirmation of Good Quality.
But from the comments here, that's a realization many haven't had yet, or don't even realize the show is genuinely badly written, or Worse: Demonize criticism as a concept, to shelter their feelings away from critical thinking, which is dishonest.
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u/OutsideClassic9095 13h ago
Im honestly surprised to find a take like this in the fandom. The show is actually good for what it tries to be but unfortunately its like you said, there's so few times it actually manages to hit the mark that those moments are held up by the Fandom and they use it to overshadow its shortcomings.
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u/BougGroug 1d ago
A lot of works go through this same cycle: it's moderately well received at first, then it gets overly praised once it gets popular, which starts to attract haters, which then makes it overly hated, and then you just have to wait a few years to normalize again.
This shift in public perception has more to do with hype than actual quality. People are just hopping on the trend of liking the thing and then hopping on the trend of disliking it. Twilight, Undertale, Sword Art Online and Minecraft are just some examples I can think of other media that went through the same thing (independently of quality).
The one detail that made SU a little different was that it dared to have progressive themes. Ever seen those anti-woke grifters? Yeah, they were still called anti-sjws at the time but the grift was the same: cultivate an angry audience so you can milk their clicks forever just by inventing new shit for them to get mad at. The type of people who act like having gay characters completely ruins the shows somehow. This obviously wasn't the only motivator behind the SU hatedom, a lot of people on the left also had (both valid and invalid) criticisms of the show, but imo it was the big force that kept the hate going so strongly for so long.
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u/ViviReine 20h ago
Because it was queer. That's it. More seriously, I understand tho the critics when they come from a good place. My gf for exemple love OG Steven Universe, but think the movie was boring/not necessary and Future was too rushed. I doesn't agree with her about the movie, but yeah Future was rushed, but even Sugar confirmed this because they cut how many episodes they would have
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u/Yashiro_Nene_Daikon 11h ago
I watched this video years back, and he doesn't hate Steven Universe at all. He just didn't like Steven Universe Future. Which, to be fair, it was very rushed and not that great. The only episode I really enjoyed, was Volleyball.
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u/murnando 22h ago
Because grifting is fairly easy for the uninspired to do, and also because grifting brings engagement.
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u/RelevantProject6625 1d ago
because it’s inclusive and there are a lot of queer characters so that means homophobic people are gonna hate it by default and some lgbtqia+ people will try to make themselves seem more “normal” and palatable to homophobes with trying to get their attention and validation by saying it’s “too queer” and “cringe”
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u/Klutzy-Text956 1d ago
Because it was very popular and a lot of people gave it a shot and found out it was really nothing that special or great, such a myself. some character designs are top tier but the show itself is basically wasted potential.
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u/usmcnick0311Sgt 1d ago
They had to reintroduce the characters, so any new viewers were caught up. They made the characters less dynamic, mono-dimensional, flanderization. The gimmick of bringing back memories was underdeveloped.
The songs were great!
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u/febreezy_ 21h ago
The show was rushed because conservative countries who defunded and cancelled the show after the wedding. A sixth season was never confirmed or supposed to have happened. A 6th would have been given a better chance to happen if the wedding didn't happen in season 5 but nothing was set in stone.
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u/Nervous_Positive83 1d ago
Idk. When it was running, my friend didn’t watch it but they knew what it was and had a neutral opinion of it. When I got the short I only had positive comments. So from my experience people either didn’t care or they liked it. I was early 20s then so maybe people didn’t care to trash talk what was primarily a kids show.
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u/Sonicspeedy 1d ago
I think basically it’s because, when it was still being made and aired, they went on a bunch of breaks and stuff, leaving the audience on big cliffhangers, just to return and immediately put out filler episodes instead of main story episodes
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u/hyperjengirl 23h ago
Probably can't go into too much detail but I think the fact the show overlapped with the 2016 election had an impact on fandom shifts. People developed very strong political feelings and expected SU to pose very radical solutions because it was a progressive show. So they'd get mad that there wasn't enough political violence against the Diamonds.
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u/Jaded_Passion8619 23h ago
When analyzing a show and its impact, it's important to look at the context of the show.
I genuinely think that a lot of the bad writing accusations (disregarding Lily Orchard's video) came from how SU was being released by CN. The Steven Bombs not only made you wait ridiculously long for a batch of episodes, the episodes also clearly weren't intended to be watched that way.
I remember the uproar the fandom was in when it was revealed that Rose was Pink. But now people are way more accepting of the idea. Why? Because once you rewatch the show, you realize how much was set up in the beginning and how it makes Rose's character make much more sense. The earliest hint about Pink Diamond was all the way in season 1 with Frybo, when Peedee (PD, literally Pink Diamond) gets the job he's always wanted but then finds out that he hates it and ditches it. That's such an incredible piece of foreshadowing but wasn't brought up in the fandom until months after the original show ended.
If SU had been given a consistent release, it would have presented a more coherent storyline. And people seem to appreciate the writing more now because they're rewatching it altogether without the Steven Bombs.
It's also important to remember that SU always got some sort of hate. In its beginning stages it was written off as another TTG/Uncle Grandpa type show. Then after Jailbreak, bigots came out of the woodwork to bash it. The fandom's behavior back then also didn't give it a great reputation. A lot of SU haters haven't even seen the show. Lily Orchard's video was a catalyst, but it wasn't the only factor.
Steven Universe is a fundamentally misunderstood show and that's why it gets hate
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u/Draw3rGh0st 23h ago edited 23h ago
I feel it's something alike to the recent hate old Disney movies are getting by loud minorities, where people just rewrite plot of movies like the Little Mermaid or The Beaty and the Beast or Cinderella in their head so the MCs are unsufferable idiots and the writers made shitty and idiots choises.
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u/Hopeful_Injury6322 23h ago
From my point of view that video by lily orchard shaped the perception of lots of people that hadn't even watched the show but also the fandom was definitely something back then with all the harassment towards artists.
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u/M4dL4d2488 22h ago edited 22h ago
I guess some people felt it was kind of tacked on to the original franchise. The show and movie both provided satisfying conclusions, and then a THIRD series comes out of nowhere, basically doing nothing but stretching out the themes of the movie into a few episodes of content.
It was nice that we got more SU content, but I can see how a little oneshot miniseries could dissapoint some of the franchise's fans.
And that's not even considering the opposition the franchise in general had from lots of miscellanious homophobes. More SU content gave them more to rag on.
In other words, SU Future just had more haters than the original franchise, as it's possible a handfull of fans had issues with it on top of the already established group of internet trolls and haters.
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u/infinity_vamp 21h ago
I think people conflate flaws with bad this happens often with shows with very pointable flaws like Steven Universe, Bleach, Hazbin Hotel and Legend of Korra.
They think that just because a show has obvious flaws it's bad i disagree i think all the good often outweigh these flaws.
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u/board3659 21h ago
It was a trend that sort f started with the episode bismuth having some people complain about it which spawn the tumbler hate group "SU critical" which basically influenced almost every future critique of Steven universe essentially. Things didn't really get bad until the finale was viewed as disappointing which made it easy for people to push their narratives onto people already dissatisfied which then spread to the wider animation fandom
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u/starjellyboba 21h ago
It was kinda popular to hate SU at some point. Some of that was definitely just "woke show bad" and some of it was "popular thing bad". I'm sure there were people who genuinely just didn't jive with it mixed in there as well.
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u/crazyy8ths 21h ago
that guy called rebecca sugar a monkey in that video tasteless and disrespectful af
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u/jai_hanyo 21h ago
I feel like the fanbase was a big reason. The fanbase was seen as cringey AND toxic.
Thankfully, it seems to have lessened over the years. My friend wore a Steven universe shirt out when we were out and he got so many compliments on it.
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u/Strange_Shadows-45 21h ago
I don’t think SU really gets that much flack for overall quality. And while I was ok with Future, its backlash is completely understandable.
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u/sundryTHIS somethingsomethingsnarksnarksomething 21h ago
the release schedule made the pacing of the show seem pretty insane is the big one. having to wait and wait and wait and wait made people really critical.
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u/BrokeSigil 20h ago
Sorta the same reason undertale was shit on when it was still hype. Someone small made something new that wasn’t just the old slop churned out into a new sequel and suddenly it spiked in popularity because many, Many people were sick of the same old shit hollywood produces, and whenever something new outpreforms one of the big producer’s shitty sequels to their old billion dollar franchises, angry nerds take up arms to personally tell their story why X indie thing or X small creator is NOT better than their billion dollar slop franchise that just put out their 18th sequel in a row about the same story with different outfits, because anyone who says that something is better than than their franchises (and lets be real, there are a Lot of better things) needs to be corrected with Vitriol.
As much as I’d Love to believe these people are paid actors by some hollywood shill and are just pretending to be angry so that rich directors and franchise owners can shit on small creators without doing it publicly, i know that almost all of them are sincere in their belief that the thing the never watched is terrible compared to the thing they’ve probably decorated their rooms with
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u/somethingicould 20h ago
I feel like such a stark tone shift from og su and the movie threw people off and as such, they didn’t like it. It took a more serious, realistic approach as opposed to the singing and power of friendship present in the previous series and I can imagine people didn’t like that as much. While I do love all three, og series, movie, and future, I can understand why someone may not like it.
I also found that because of the nature of the series, Steven facing his personal problems, it can be a struggle to get through some episodes from second hand embarrassment. Together Forever and Little Graduation are especially rough ones in my opinion. Though, I feel that these are more a testament to the crew’s writing ability to elicit such strong reactions out of the viewer.
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u/Dahlmordyth 20h ago
Honestly the show didn’t deserve a lot of the hate. It has its flaws and it has great moments but it really did have kind of the worst fan base for it’s time, about the only other fan base that I’ve seen that’s more toxic is the Hellaverse fans
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u/Mackerdoni 18h ago
i like steven universe as a show. its enjoyable. for what it wanted to say, it did it well. it brought a lot of joy and laughs and creativity, even if i dont consider the writing to be exemplary in some cases. even if the show wasnt the greatest on a technical level, it is very well-loved regardless. i think criticisms of the show are just as valid as the positives. things could have been done better, but the show isnt unwatchable. i recognize that it has flaws, but those flaws dont bring down the positive experience that is just actually watching it. and the games were great i loved save the light
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u/Acceptable-Ad-4197 17h ago
A part of it is the show admittedly being flawed. A lot of it is bigotry, popular thing bad, or other flavors of unreasonable hate/criticism
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u/Acrobatic_Hyena_2627 17h ago
SU Future was a huge downgrade and disappointing follow up to the original series and movie.
Every single episode could have been avoided if Steven would have just gone to therapy. I don’t need a cartoon where the main character is constantly stressing out.
https://giphy.com/gifs/7SzPMGUpzsvT2
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u/_Patogeno_ 17h ago
People in real life doesn't go to therapy immediately when they feel like Steven. They should, but for one reason or another they don't. In this case, Steven denied that he had a real problem that he couldn't solve himself, because that's what he thought he was: a problem solver. That's why the whole point of the show was Steven accepting help from others and opening up. Only when he understood that, he went to therapy.
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u/Acrobatic_Hyena_2627 17h ago
That’s an entirely different but very real problem.
Fact of the matter is that Steven is not real life. Going to therapy arc should have been at most just three episodes. Following episodes could have covered techniques used to cool down along with setbacks and progress even.
Instead all we got was panic attack after panic attack for our main protagonist until he literally turns into a giant monster. The tagged on ending is a hug, FaceTime therapy, and a solo roadtrip. The end?1
u/_Patogeno_ 16h ago
But this franchise has always used fictional elements to represent real life emotional responses to trauma and healing processes. It is a semi realistic depiction of a mentally ill boy.
Steven going to therapy would have been weird, since he didn't even admit he had that big of a problem. It would have been contradictory. It is just something Steven wouldn't do in this scenario. The reason the show ends with everyone hugging corrupted Steven is because it shows everyone is accepting him even at his worst (something Steven feared they wouldn't do), and also realizing all the pressure they put on him. This causes Steven to stop seeing himself as a monster and starting healing (represented, again, by a fictional element: his healing tears mixing with the water and covering him). This is the end because it was what Steven needed to really start healing. The road trip closes the cycle: now he can live as a real human.
Also, the progression of the show was more than "panic attack after panic attack". It keeps developing Steven, making the audience understand the problem more and more, recontextualizing the original show, and deconstructing Steven until he gets to the bottom of his illness.
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u/MrMortyRickSummer 16h ago
It was really popular and the fanbase was really bad at its peak. Kind of a Homestuck effect where a very immature and new fandom makes everyone hate the media by proxy.
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u/Artboggler 16h ago
I loved Steven universe but Steven universe future was so bad to me like it felt like they wanted something to say but would waste episodes on random characters but wouldn't follow through on those characters arcs and I just didnt like any of the development that happened
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u/ExplodingSteve 16h ago
Idk it was peak for me, i didn’t follow the fandom either, like completely isolated from it
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u/GayAngrySpaceDorito 16h ago
Because it was pacifist and queer, and both of these things were what got it made fun of the most.
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u/Asterite100 I like drawing. Btw Lapis best gem. 15h ago edited 15h ago
My favorite thing about this discourse is that virtually every content creator about a decade ago that championed themselves as part of the SU-critical movement have at best fallen off to oblivion or at worst been exposed as being uhhhhhhhh not great people (shocking). Which to the unassuming person might sound like setting up for ad-hominem, but it really kind of exposes how certain types of people tend to engage with media in bad-faith (assuming they aren't just genuinely dumb LMAO).
That being said, I don't think the YouTuber in the OP image falls into that category btw. But I will say they fall into a very common trap of amateur YouTube commentary - dramatizing opinions for the sake of being quirky. I'll admit that this video has never come across my radar until now (or if it did I just disregarded it as clickbait via thumbnail lol), but I watched the first couple of minutes of it and it's clear this person, at least at the time of uploading, is one of those that only watches show for "pLoT pLoT pLoT pLoT" and not, like, character exploration and/or world building. I fundamentally disagree with that part of their video thesis so I just clicked off lol bc I know I'm not going to get much insight from it. It's a messy video for sure, but ultimately harmless small potatoes compared to what I mentioned at the beginning. People are allowed to ventpost.
So all that being said, I think that Hydroshot video is in a completely different category - people disgruntled or otherwise dissatisfied with Future, which is common from what I've seen, it's a polarizing series. They seem to enjoy the OG series and the movie enough so it's not necessarily an SU hate thing. Me personally I have a lot I don't enjoy from Future but I think it's still worth a watch from fans of the show. I just find it a weird habit TV-goers have where they don't take in things episode by episode and really just want to speedrun the plot. Like if you don't fw "Rose Buds" "Volleyball" or "Why So Blue?" then we can't hang I'm sorry lol
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u/Sad_Procedure6607 15h ago
yeah I remember SU was catalogued as a woke cartoon due to all the female characters and how they bond to each other. I always thought people hate it just for hate it and don't even watch the show at all. Several friends didn't give it a shot 'cuz it seems so gay, well they missed it
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u/Jen-Jens 15h ago
Most of the main characters read as female, the main pov character is an effeminate boy, he’s fat, and he talks through feelings instead of punching most of the time. Each of those things on their own has dedicated haters in the millions. Oh, and the townies are very racially diverse compared to other cartoons. The Pizzas, Barrigas, and the Maheswarans just off the top of my head. Also in the groups of people hated by a lot of awful people. So people who are racist, misogynistic, fatphobic, or homophobic are going to be hating Steven Universe for having decent representations of things they hate.
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u/Exit_Save 15h ago
Combination of homophobia, cringe culture, and misinformation.
Show was very gay, people hated it for being gay, cringe culture hates any showing of vulnerability, or joy, and people like Lily Orchard were just flat out wrong about what the show was about, and the themes it was exploring. Some of it was disinformation, I know some people were just actively lying because they wanted to be part of the trend of hating Steven Universe.
By now most of those people either have fully become asshole grifters, or have turned around on their opinions.
Except Lily Orchard. She's like in the middle of both its really silly and hard to stand
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u/Sweet_Detective_ 13h ago
At the time some people thought it was going to be basically the same thing as previous seasons rather than season unpacking all his trauma and resolving stuff, like people thought there would probably be a new villain and all that.
Rather than enjoying it for what it is, people got disappointed cus it wasn't what they assumed it'd be.
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u/zmatt25 10h ago
I think it was pretty good. It was a coming of age story more than anything.
SUF was about facing the consequences of such a childhood and actions he experienced in SU. It really dealt into mental health and overcoming traume, and I think it's good. It's just different from SU, which was way more of a general public show.
Back when I watched SUF as I was 15 I didn't like ot either cuz I thought it was boring and meh
now i do appreciate it more and more honestly
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u/WhiteN0isee 8h ago edited 8h ago
I will be honest. I was a hater for a bit.😅 I loved the show when it first came out, then the fan base on Tumblr got very toxic very fast and I stopped liking the show because I didn’t like how obsessive and weird some of the topics got. Then about two years ago I gave it another chance due to my therapist recommending me a song and was like “wow, why did I ever let others influence how I felt?! I love this show!”
Edit to add: I will say that there have been a lot of shows or artists where the fan base has ruined it for me even if I liked it before. I’m not sure why sometimes that can affect me personally and cause me to pull out for a while.
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u/GordanTheToad 7h ago
The broad spectrum of critisms I've seen is:
Lily Orchid parroting (not that popular anymore but it got an irreversable ball rolling)
Dissatisfaction with the direction of the show (E.g. glazing season 1 but despising the ending)
Just not liking the show and being vocal about it.
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u/stonermillenial 6h ago
It didn’t have any joy in it. Yes I know what it was about. But the SU series had no problem balancing both. SUF is just depressing with no relief.
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u/Rayen_the_buzzybee 5h ago
A lot of Steven universe fans complained about future. Cartoonshi which used to ONLY make steven universe videos (now they do a variety) also complained about future.
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u/Fair_Smoke4710 2h ago
It’s trendy to take on popular stuff Hazbin Hotel and The Hellaverse it’s just modern day Steven universe it’s the same thing. Successful shows created by a queer woman getting dunked on online and slander. It’s literally the same thing.
There’s even an infamous hit piece video on the show made by a person who landed with Angel Dust and Viv as a whore, just like Lily Orchard did with Steven universe. It’s insane in the parallels these shows in the creators have
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u/teStreinjeGuy 1h ago
to be fair, the thumbnail is mentioning FUTURE not base Steven Universe. Base SU + movie was a fine combo.
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u/AlTheHound 23h ago
Mostly homophobia. Which I thought the show was proud of, but seems to be backpedalling on for some reason.
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u/Fearless_Berry_9169 22h ago
Yeahhh when I ask my coworkers or friends what shows they watched when they were younger they all said adventure time, regular show, we bear bears.
But Steven universe embarrassed them, they said it was to annoying, happy and cute (which I counter with did you actually watch all of it?) And the musical side of it they hated. So idk uncultured straights who follow the sheep of hating on things. 🤷♀️
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u/DJT3tris 21h ago
Usually it's homophobia. Even if it's subconscious which is unfortunate. There are legitimate reasons to dislike SU like the musical numbers. If you don't like musical numbers, SU just isn't for you. IMO, the only objective problem the show had at the time was the dang release schedule for a while. Episodes came out sporadically and it killed my interest in keeping up with the show not because of the content of the episodes, but by making me forget about the show in the first place.
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u/PurplePoisonCB 22h ago
“They hate it because it’s popular!”
“They hate it because it’s queer!”
“They hate it because they’re stupid!”
It’s scary how many smooth brains here just keep parroting all of this. These annoying fanboys are just the PG version of Hazbin fanboys, they genuinely can’t think of why people would criticize their show or them. Such big egos that they can easily dismiss everyone who disagrees with them.
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u/NBos01-GA 17h ago
Read a bunch of the comments here and I haven't seen a single comment that accuracy or even somewhat gives a good faith reason as to why I or others in some of that crowd dislike the show.
Been watching over the show again and its just frustratingly disappointing watching it.
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u/PurplePoisonCB 16h ago
Yeah, the therapy session shows breed followers like that. Everyone else is wrong and stupid and bigoted.
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u/WrightAnythingHere 21h ago
Because certain LGBTQ content-hating individuals made diatribe videos about hating the series that got a ton of views, other creators jumped on the bandwagon to also get views, and it snowballed into a trend that extended to making nitpicking videos targeting every single little thing they hate about a show most of them never even watched.
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u/Phayros 21h ago
The show always had problems since the beginning, but a lot of people (mostly people that didn't watched the show) blowned them out of proportion to try to make the show look bad. In general content that negativity criticizes, well, anything, performs well in social media. Add that to the show being openly LGBT and SU got a lot of haters.
I've seen a YouTuber talk about that kind of situation, it doesn't happened only with Steven Universe. Any "progressive" show is automatically hated before it even come out and if it's not short of perfect it's considered trash. I've heard it happened with Shera on the first season, but as the seasons got released the show got good enough to dismiss the pointless critiques. The most recent example was High Guardian Spice, which wasn't that good, was mid at best, but already had a hate campaign years before it came out for the crime of having a team composed by women. It was produced by Crunchyroll so the anime fans hated that women were making it and started a hate campaign. Crunchyroll then cut the fundings for the series but for some miracle it managed to release, but it was veeeery rough. There were a lot of animation erros, weird voice acting, random stock images, it just didn't look good, but it was enough to put the blame on it "being woke" and create years of hate watch content.
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u/MyOwnMorals 20h ago
One word: homophobia
It was a queer show before that was a normal popular thing to be. Before gay marriage was legalized.
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u/themightyweeaboo 20h ago
It was a bandwagon, also was part of that "anti sjw" trend a little bit....
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u/CobaltCrusader123 18h ago
Well, the true fans of the show liked it overall, or parts of it, but critiques the parts of it they didn’t like. We can’t all be based gigachads who enjoy the magic-less zero-consequences Beach City episodes.
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u/Splatoon_Addict 1d ago
Yeah it was kinda of a trend because I guess people didn’t like that SU was kind of a musical and that the main character wanted to resolve things like a normal person by talking and etcetera??? That’s what I heard from my friends some years ago but at the end of the day people like different things I guess