The Steven Universe Podcast: Steven Selects episode 8, hosted by McKenzie Atwood, covers the episode “Off Colors.”
It’s the eighth of an eight-part series of spotlights on fan favorite episodes. The guests are Matt Burnett, Ben Levin, Ian Jones-Quartey, and Rebecca Sugar. The official description:
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“Off Colors” is the Steven Universe episode that introduced fan-favorite Padparadscha, provided a more detailed look at Homeworld, and focused on Steven and Lars’ relationship! And those are just a few of the things that writers Ben Levin and Matt Burnett discuss in this episode of the pod! Steven Universe Creator Rebecca Sugar also returns to answer some fan Q&A including a question about Lars’ character development and initial ideas! Plus, former Steven Universe Executive Producer, Ian Jones-Quartey, tackles a few questions involving the “Rule Of Cool” and fun facts about Opal!
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Outline:
McKenzie opens as usual with a question about how the episode changed from conception to completion. The first point they discussed was how they decided when the episode would end (before going into “Lars’ Head”). Since you have a significant character death and revival, you have to figure out where to place that in a storyline for the most satisfying storytelling. Sad cliffhangers are difficult, so they decided he needed to be resurrected before the end.
Another big point was that originally there were two more Off Colors! Their names were Flint and Chert, and they were Quartzes who’d had a moral objection to fighting. Then they decided that might just be too many characters, and also the Off Colors were supposed to have been rejected by Homeworld for who they were, not what they believed. So they decided to scrap the idea of these extra Quartzes.
McKenzie asks if, while coming up with the group as a group all at the same time, how is that different from coming up with individual characters? Matt and Ben discuss how they intended to show a snapshot of the kinds of Gems who get rejected from Homeworld, with the Rutile Twins coming out wrong, Rhodonite being a cross-class Fusion, Fluorite being a polyamorous Fusion, and Padparadscha functions differently–they’re all not normal by Homeworld’s standards.
Next, they discuss Padparadscha and how she became an instant fan favorite–how do they make her one joke so adorable throughout even though it’s sort of repetitive? The writers say they had to make them memorable, so each had to have a special way of talking that distinguished them. The Rutiles rephrase what each other said, Fluorite is “consulting with many different Gems” so she speaks very slowly, Rhodonite is like a “reverse Garnet” so the Pearl side is always showing her freakouts, and then Padparadscha has future speech for things that already happened. People love her because she’s so earnest and trying to help, she thinks her friends don’t know the information she’s offering and she just wants to be useful.
Regarding being on Homeworld, the writers said they haven’t shown much of the world by this point but you do get that glimpse of the skyline as they break out of the trial room and then you get to see the core of the planet all eroded from the Kindergartens. Initially they had this idea that the palanquin would land in a populated area and the drones that came after them would poof some bystanders! But Matt says they wanted to focus on what really matters about the episode. The street level of Homeworld is like the lowest of the low, and having it so empty helps make it scary and hopeless. They’re holding onto showing off populated areas of Homeworld for … another time.
McKenzie asks about tackling the Lars arc. They’ve had plans to kill Lars for a long time, but they thought it would happen earlier and less significantly–maybe even as early as when Steven first learns about his healing powers in the first place. They felt like waiting longer helped them “earn” a big significant character change for Lars. There’s also the question of whether Steven always had the healing tears, but it’s a little unclear; he wasn’t able to heal Amethyst with his tears, but later he cried on Lars (without intent) and it brought him back to life. The differences of course were that Steven’s powers have evolved since then, and also that this was the first time he’s tried it on someone who needed to be reanimated. It’s nice for Steven to have grown in his abilities so you didn’t go into, like, episode 2 thinking Steven can bring people back from the dead.
McKenzie also brings up what might happen if Lars went in Lion’s mane. They have no idea what would happen. They joke that if he went into Lion and came out his own head, it’d be like Inception, and he’d just have to continuously crawl out of levels of himself until he came out of Lion again.
Fan Questions (answered by Ian Jones-Quartey):
Question: How do you think TV animation is changing, or how did it change over the course of your time on SU?
Answer: Ian says TV animation hasn’t changed too much. Cartoon Network is basically built on top of Hanna Barbera, and they pitch shows and episodes the same way they did. There’s been a trend toward more creator-driven shows, but that’s been going on since the 1990s. But because things can be more specific these days, they can do deeper stories sometimes, but the process is about the same. There’s also the multi-platform thing, but the stuff Ian liked as a kid had toy lines and video games too. The characters and stories are new, and the process is similar.
Question: How do you find a decent balance between keeping fusion special and giving fans what they love to see? (In general, how do you balance timing reveals?)
Answer: Ian says they had so many ideas, but at the end of the day they’d decide what’s the COOLEST way to unveil an idea. They aren’t necessarily going for surprising–they just want it to feel good.
Question: Any fun facts about Opal?
Answer: Most of the facts about Opal are known. But she’s based on two people with different personalities when they feel like they’re on the same wavelength. Opal is designed to be temporary. Because she’s made only for a specific use at a specific time, between two Gems who only get along sometimes, she would focus on a singular task. Opal is a little forgetful or distracted.
Question: When a character is introduced, how do you set them up in their first few episodes?
Answer: Every character needs their main gimmick that they’re all about. You have to find what animates them to do that. Where do they get that from? For instance, Onion is kinda creepy, he does weird stuff, and then it’s because his dad is gone all the time so he’s always getting in trouble and doing weird things because no one tells him no. In later episodes, they’d lean on that idea whenever they have Onion around. As long as you as the creator know it, there’ll be an internal consistency to the character.
Question: On Stewood Plaven Turbiverse?
Answer: Rebecca and Ian came up with the idea of a crossover episode between Steven Universe and Lakewood Plaza Turbo (the original title of OK KO), as a fun dream from when they were both coming up with their shows’ pilots. Instead of a crossover exactly, they thought they would blend the shows together, resulting in K-Ven, Penid, Radethyst and Mr. Garnet. They’d go on an adventure. An idea like that, says Ian, is impossible–the best thing about crossovers is that you can reuse stuff, while a blending would be impractical. Never say never, but there’d be a lot of labor.
Fan Questions (answered by Rebecca Sugar):
Question: What is the process for coming up with plot devices and characters that will forward the development of challenging characters specifically?
Answer: The plot and the characters are not entirely separate–plots evolve from who the characters are and why they need each other, so it’s all interconnected as to what ends up challenging them. For instance, the way that Pearl idolizes Garnet helps them function as a team but also is a problem for her as a character, and the reason she’s like that is associated with her past. Amethyst is always covering up insecurities, etc. Once you understand who they are, you know why they are pulled together or apart–it always comes from the CHARACTERS.
Question: What are your favorite tropes?
Answer: Rebecca loves silly old cartoon tropes. One-dimensional, wacky tropes. She loves the idea of adding realism and complexity to these silly old clichés. Rebecca always wanted to make something completely original, but Ian encouraged her to use the groundwork that already exists that people will recognize, and build on those, since people already recognize them and you can do so much with them. She just likes classic, corny things.
Question: Was Lars’s character arc always planned or more recent?
Answer: Steven resurrecting Lars was one of the oldest ideas in the show–always planned. Rebecca’s first ten episode outlines originally included an arc for Lars that’s similar to what eventually happened with him. Steven and Lars have always been counters; Lars can’t accept help and Steven wants to help everyone; Lars is always putting on a façade and Steven can’t do that to save his life. So they’re always bouncing off each other in interesting ways. And of course, as mentioned in other places, Lars was an even older character from Rebecca’s college comics; his relationship with Sadie was based on Rebecca and people she knew, kind of an amalgam, and the characters were also college students at the time. She wanted a mundane comic strip where very everyday stuff happens–she mentions having one about Sadie just sitting down and eating boxed mac and cheese, with no punch line. Very much about a college experience. Rebecca brought Lars and Sadie in from those comics because they represented the “real world,” and that was part of the SU concept–the magical meeting the mundane. So she borrowed her own characters for that.
“Steven Selects” is over with this final broadcast, but new special episodes of the podcast started on December 19th, 2017.
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