Steven Universe, the recent moon 2 parter
Wow, Steven Universe does better than almost anything else I can think of, bringing in additional worldbuilding which doesn't overthrow everything which came before, but adds to it.
I'm always interested in backstory and worldbuilding and how it's conveyed. I'm always annoyed when things that SHOULD be common knowledge are withheld from the reader (it can be a good effect, but it's usually just mystery for mystery's sake which undermines the story in the meantime), and SU does that occasionally but doesn't rely on it.
Successive revelation works well for SU for a few reasons. Because the protagonist is quite young, and grows over the course of the series, it's more natural that sometimes they don't explain all the answers immediately. And several times we've had revelations which aren't a massive twist, but, say, explain the background of the conflict in a way which simply wasn't dwelt on before.
Another thing I'm annoyed by is when shows over-rely on "everything you know is a lie". The worst case is things like "this character you've been trusting for years is actually a secret double agent" -- it usually doesn't really make sense that they'd be maintaining the pretence this long. But it often seems to come with a "everything you poured empathy into isn't actually what was happening". And that can work well, when it's a well-judged deliberate subversion. But usually the show poured a lot of energy into the supposed status-quo as well, and then the 'twist' comes across more as "suckers! we just change stuff at random, don't try to follow", or "just give up on caring about any characters, everyone is lying about who they are more than everyone else and no-one is worth rooting for".
SU manages to avoid that with revelations that add a *lot* to what was originally there, both factually and emotionally, but without just overwriting what was originally there.
Specifics (incl spoilers)
Wow. OK, yes, I'd seen fan theories that Rose = Pink Diamond, but when we saw Pink Diamond I discounted them. It didn't occur to me it could still be true as a secret, not just the generally known who-was-Rose.
And oh my god, poor Pearl. No wonder she was in love with Rose all this time! That adds a lot more context to episodes where I blamed her for that.
I'd had this idea of her as the first convert to Rose's cause, overthrowing all her previous programming. And it still seems like she willingly embraced the cause, but in accordance with her Diamond's will rather than against it.
And that last order. That was unfortunate: I hope Rose regretted not leaving some wiggle room for Pearl, although I don't know if she could have changed it later when she'd given up her role as diamond or not.
And it also adds a lot or context to Rose's place as the great saviour. It seems, by *now* she became the leader she was always seen as. But originally she was in a much more complicated position: she was probably in less personal danger from the diamonds; but admitting all the things she'd grown up with were wrong was maybe a harder decision. She was fairly inexperienced at the time, so it's hard to say whether to praise her for acting at all, or blame her for not acting openly and ordering her followers to follow the new way, or both.
I don't know if this is true, but it also occurred to me, if the diamonds gave pink diamond a colony of lower importance, it might explain why they didn't put more effort into reconquering earth permanently just to end the annoyances they keep experiencing, and why they used it up to make a bizarre doomsday shard weapon thing.
Now I need to rewatch everywhere the diamonds have been shown. And pink diamond's youth makes their grief for her feel quite different as well.
And as someone pointed out, there's several scenes where Rose's past *might* have come up, and it dodged it in a way without looking suspicious -- the example where Greg says she didn't like talking about her past, and he didn't think he needed to know, we don't know if she told him. Which means that the show still has wiggle room to go either way if they accidentally write themselves into a corner. It's only with Bujold have I noticed how this artful ambiguity contributes to being able to develop a rich backstory over time (although all creators do it in unpublished works, and maybe some do it in published works well enough I didn't notice :))
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comments so far.
I'm always interested in backstory and worldbuilding and how it's conveyed. I'm always annoyed when things that SHOULD be common knowledge are withheld from the reader (it can be a good effect, but it's usually just mystery for mystery's sake which undermines the story in the meantime), and SU does that occasionally but doesn't rely on it.
Successive revelation works well for SU for a few reasons. Because the protagonist is quite young, and grows over the course of the series, it's more natural that sometimes they don't explain all the answers immediately. And several times we've had revelations which aren't a massive twist, but, say, explain the background of the conflict in a way which simply wasn't dwelt on before.
Another thing I'm annoyed by is when shows over-rely on "everything you know is a lie". The worst case is things like "this character you've been trusting for years is actually a secret double agent" -- it usually doesn't really make sense that they'd be maintaining the pretence this long. But it often seems to come with a "everything you poured empathy into isn't actually what was happening". And that can work well, when it's a well-judged deliberate subversion. But usually the show poured a lot of energy into the supposed status-quo as well, and then the 'twist' comes across more as "suckers! we just change stuff at random, don't try to follow", or "just give up on caring about any characters, everyone is lying about who they are more than everyone else and no-one is worth rooting for".
SU manages to avoid that with revelations that add a *lot* to what was originally there, both factually and emotionally, but without just overwriting what was originally there.
Specifics (incl spoilers)
Wow. OK, yes, I'd seen fan theories that Rose = Pink Diamond, but when we saw Pink Diamond I discounted them. It didn't occur to me it could still be true as a secret, not just the generally known who-was-Rose.
And oh my god, poor Pearl. No wonder she was in love with Rose all this time! That adds a lot more context to episodes where I blamed her for that.
I'd had this idea of her as the first convert to Rose's cause, overthrowing all her previous programming. And it still seems like she willingly embraced the cause, but in accordance with her Diamond's will rather than against it.
And that last order. That was unfortunate: I hope Rose regretted not leaving some wiggle room for Pearl, although I don't know if she could have changed it later when she'd given up her role as diamond or not.
And it also adds a lot or context to Rose's place as the great saviour. It seems, by *now* she became the leader she was always seen as. But originally she was in a much more complicated position: she was probably in less personal danger from the diamonds; but admitting all the things she'd grown up with were wrong was maybe a harder decision. She was fairly inexperienced at the time, so it's hard to say whether to praise her for acting at all, or blame her for not acting openly and ordering her followers to follow the new way, or both.
I don't know if this is true, but it also occurred to me, if the diamonds gave pink diamond a colony of lower importance, it might explain why they didn't put more effort into reconquering earth permanently just to end the annoyances they keep experiencing, and why they used it up to make a bizarre doomsday shard weapon thing.
Now I need to rewatch everywhere the diamonds have been shown. And pink diamond's youth makes their grief for her feel quite different as well.
And as someone pointed out, there's several scenes where Rose's past *might* have come up, and it dodged it in a way without looking suspicious -- the example where Greg says she didn't like talking about her past, and he didn't think he needed to know, we don't know if she told him. Which means that the show still has wiggle room to go either way if they accidentally write themselves into a corner. It's only with Bujold have I noticed how this artful ambiguity contributes to being able to develop a rich backstory over time (although all creators do it in unpublished works, and maybe some do it in published works well enough I didn't notice :))
You can also comment at https://jack.dreamwidth.org/1066269.html using OpenID.
comments so far.