Tag: Steven Universe

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(spoilers for SU ahead, right up to the latest episode)

So, what with Lapis and Bismuth (and Diamonds???), do you have anything to add regarding CGs vs. Undersiders or S9?

Apart from fire resistance (good against Burnscar, obviously) and a specialty in shapeshifting her arms into tools and weapons, Bismuth doesn’t have a lot of good combat powers that we know of, beyond what most Gems have. She’d be super good as a motivator and weaponsmith, though, and is capable of making weapons with magical properties. Her weapons and weapon upgrades might give the other Gems some new tricks, and while she doesn’t have many combat powers, she does have experience in using what she’s got. But yeah, send her (alongside Garnet, the best Burnscar counter the Gems have) after Burnscar.

The Diamonds may be less useful than you’d think simply because so far, all the powers Blue and Yellow have shown us only work on Gems (and Steven). Still, though, they’re resilient and big, making them similar to Fenja and Menja. And, judging by Pink, it’s likely they have a lot of powers they haven’t shown us yet, some of which may be incredibly strong against the Undersiders or the Nine.

Lapis… oh, boy, Lapis.

Apart from being only tangentially affiliated with the Crystal Gems up until the latest episode, the main reason I left Lapis out of previous “Gems vs” posts (I’m gonna make a tag for that at this point) is that she made the outcome too clear.

Lapis is more powerful than Leviathan. Not defensively (she’s a glass cannon like Shatterbird), admittedly, but her hydrokinesis could drain an ocean while she was cracked (not to mention pull all that water upwards). If the battle happens somewhere there’s a lot of water – which describes both Beach City and post-Leviathan Brockton Bay, Lapis is practically a goddess. It’s just a matter of staying alive and unpoofed to use that raw power. Jack and Shatterbird might be her main threats, considering Lapis is typically out in the open and sometimes flying, but Lapis is far from defenseless.

Huh, Burnscar really gets the short straw against the Gems, doesn’t she? Discounting non-Garnet fusions, the Gems have three members who are immune to fire, two members who can predict where Burnscar will teleport, one member who can exude coldness and create ice, one member who controls large amounts of water… Apart from Lapis “OP” Lazuli, Garnet is definitely the best one to match up against Burnscar, though, between fire resistance, future vision, super speed and rocket gauntlets. Burnscar can’t even teleport through the fire before a pair of explosive hands are soaring towards where she’s going to be.

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“A plan?”

“Of attack.  It’s easier if we wait until everyone’s arrived before I get into it, so I’m not repeating it too many times.  Might even be smarter, if Cherish is looking in and trying to read my emotions to figure out what we’re doing.”

Let’s make a plan of attack! Start looking forward and stop looking back!

I do think Cherish might get involved, but not in that exact way.

“Attack?”

“Being careful and being on the defensive isn’t getting us anywhere.”

The best defense is a good offense, they say.

“It’s keeping us alive.”

Barely.

It’s a really risky idea, and I’m not sure if it’s a good one, but it may be worth a shot if they can think of a good execution.

I shook out my costume and examined it.  Progress was too slow.  I put down the wire cutters and got the plastic lighter from my utility compartment.  I proceeded to burn through the material on the inside of the leggings, from the cut I’d made all the way to the crotch, then back down the other side, putting out any flame that lingered.

Careful. You’re not immune to fire to the nether regions.

I was nearly done when I finally responded,  “I don’t think it is.  We’re still dying.  It’s just… slower.  Can you honestly tell me we’re going to survive another two confrontations like this?”

And they have quite a lot of such confrontations ahead of them if the game keeps going.

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“That might complicate things if we have to run for it,” Grue said.

I didn’t have a response to that.

I guess you’ll just have to roll with it.

Charlotte left with the kids, and we took the time to manage our wounds.  I headed into the ground floor bathroom to run cold water over the burns on my legs and back.  Grue sat on the toilet’s lid and began gathering the necessary things from the first aid kit.

They really need and deserve a short rest right now.

My power found Genesis, but only briefly.  She was big, some sort of flying pufferfish with a hard exterior and tentacles.

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It was a hard image to piece together.  She floated slowly over the streets, and the bugs that I had on her died as Burnscar pelted her.  I tried to send some bugs after her, but she disappeared into the side of a burning building as they approached.

Damn teleporters, am I right?

I tried and failed to find where she’d teleported to.  Frustrating.  Whatever her destination, it was a place my bugs couldn’t touch, so I had to wait for her to move away or start attacking from another vantage point.

I wonder what sort of range she has on her teleportation.

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It was worse than she’d expected.  She ducked under the police tape and pushed one officer out of her way as she stepped into the area.

Oh yeah, I suppose they’d want to investigate the carnage from Jack’s Interlude.

Police cars and PRT vans had formed a broad perimeter, with police tape strung between them.  She momentarily wondered why they didn’t have the wooden barricades.  It was flimsy as security went.

Humans will just see this and walk away!

It was drizzling, and the small amounts of rain did little to clean the streets of the blood that spattered it.  Water soaked into the white and brown sheets that had been draped over the bodies that still waited for someone to clean them up.  The brown, she realized, was dried blood.

Nasty stuff.

Aisha picked her way through the fallen.  The worst of the carnage was at the edges, as if some invisible line had been drawn that nobody was permitted to cross, and in the center, where the masses of people had gathered before being murdered together.

There may be some truth to the invisible line thing. I don’t recall it specifically mentioned, but there were eight psychopaths to keep track of, so who knows, maybe one or more of them made sure nobody would get away.

Krixwell JaceLeave a comment

Re: Shatterbird vs the Crystal Gems – Wildbow has said that Shatterbird doesn’t make grasses which contain silicon explode because of (her version of) the Manton Effect. It wouldn’t surprise me if Gems are covered as well. (Although they’d still have a really hard time with her – remember that sand-controlling pillow?)

I suppose that’s fair. Although we’re once again back to whether it’s organic vs inorganic or alive vs dead, which seems to depend on either the person or the power (Weld is unaffected by powers that exclude either side of organic vs inorganic despite definitely being alive, so we know powers like that exist, but Faultline was able to cut dead wood but not living wood, both of which are organic) – in the former case, grass counts but Gems don’t.

But yeah, the Desert Glass is absolutely relevant, and Shatterbird’s sand control seems to be vastly more powerful.

(I actually tried to find a video of the Desert Glass fight to use in this post, but couldn’t find a good one.)

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The table was silent for a moment.  I could see something in the faces of the Travelers.  Pain?  It wasn’t physical, so perhaps it was emotional?  It could be fear, guilt, regret, or any number of other things.

Clearly this means they trapped Noelle in a mirror for thousands of years.

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Re: Crystal Gems having Manton protection from Shatterbird, remember Weld has certain power immunity: (from 9.1) “In addition, his biology fell into some optimal middle ground between organic and inorganic. For those whose powers affected only living things, he counted as inorganic. The opposite was also true.” So it depends on how the powers see their gems.

That is a good point, though it’s worth noting that in SU canon, Gems are explicitly inorganic life (which hits a weird spot with the Manton effect, since whether it operates on “organic vs inorganic” or “alive vs lifeless” seems to vary). But who knows if the power will see it that way?

By the way, while we’re on the topic of SU and the Manton effect: I think it’s in effect

along the “alive vs lifeless” axis for one of Steven’s powers, but the characters don’t realize it.

Steven has the power to heal, but for a while he’s presented as having “lost” this ability due to lack of confidence in it after Greg pretended it didn’t work. I think that’s bullshit and conclusion jumping on the characters’ part – his healing power not working for a while is far better explained by him not trying to use it on anything he perceived as alive between “losing” the power and “regaining” it, nor have we seen the reverse outside this period. 

It didn’t work to heal a crack in a giant stormy rock that wasn’t a living being like the Gems and humans are (the power works on both Gems and humans, so it’s not an “organic vs inorganic” thing), so he concluded it had outright disappeared.

(He does discover that “it’s back” by way of accidentally healing a teddy bear, to which you could argue that it isn’t alive, but I think MC Bear Bear is alive to Steven.)

I think what rubs me most the wrong way about the whole thing is that if I’m right about this and Steven couldn’t heal lifeless things in the first place, taking away the healing power he only unlocked three episodes earlier didn’t even serve any narrative purpose beyond the (mediocre at best) episode it happened in.

</rant>

Krixwell JaceLeave a comment

The Crystal Gems may or may not be protected from Shatterbird by the Manton effect. Hard to say for sure.

Maybe, if they’re lucky. Unfortunately for them it’s quite unclear at this point how exactly the Manton effect works, not to mention whether it’s even a thing in the first place. The strongest hypothesis has it depending on the power, which adds another layer of uncertainty as to how the effect works specifically for Shatterbird.

Notably, the Gems are not protected if the Manton effect prevents Shatterbird from controlling silicates in organic beings, but are protected if it operates on the distinction between living vs non-living instead.

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His monsters returned to their carnage.

This is an… oddly cute sentence, actually. Just the way Jack refers to the Slaughterhouse Nine as his monsters. Sure, it’s probably just the fact that he’s in charge and can direct these people largely to his whim, but on some level it also feels like a term of endearment.

He watched them at their work and their play, noting all of the little things.  He knew all too well that Shatterbird pretended civility, but she got as restless as Siberian when things got quiet, and she would look up from whatever book she read every thirty, fifteen or ten seconds, as if waiting for something to happen, craving it.

Boredom is a powerful force.

Siberian would begin to look at her group members in a hungry way.  She didn’t need to eat, but she enjoyed the experience, wanted it the same way someone else might crave their morning coffee.  Stimulation.

That sounds very familiar.

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