Lily Orchard was Wrong, and Here's Why

I hope Lily has grown since making this video, but the Damage it has done still needs to be corrected for. Lily has a pretty bad track record of attacking and misrepresenting anyone who criticizes her, so again, I hope she has grown and doesn't go nuclear. Still, making this video was a risk- so please support me if you can! Like, comment, and share!

Lilly is someone who relies on her viewers to be too stupid and closed-minded to do their own research. Then, they actively silence the people who did their research so her opinion can go un questioned. She's kind of a piece of garbage, TBH.

Lily's talk about Yellow Diamond having an inconsistent character make it blatantly obvious she's just not comprehending what she's watching.

Yellow Diamond clearly takes her role very seriously and believes that she's meant to set an example as a leader for the other gems, that's something she expresses in the show. So she's strict, imposing, unyielding, authoritarian when performing duties and tasks.

But she's softer with the other Diamonds, and especially with Blue. They're family, they care deeply for each other. Yellow's grief and deeper feelings don't vanish between episodes, she just tries not to express them to her subject, or at least not unfamiliar gems. Which, you know, is very normal.

stop calling a sick man a woman

What I would like to point out as a person who has gone through abuse? Lapis is a good example of the process.

And with the fact she isn't in therapy for it or seeking the help she needs because Gems were not TAUGHT about these things or enouraged to is another factor into her character.

Yes, people like Steven and the gang can reach out. Yes, they can try to lend an ear or make untrained opinions in HOPES of helping but they just aren't trained for that. They showed any signs of defect or mental anguish? They were factory reset with that handy dandy weapon Spinel was sporting in the movie.

I mean SUF hinted at that much since he literally went to an appointment to discuss such things. Steven in Future was even showing trauma responses and lashing out.

I applaud the show for showing just how messy it is. Its not fast. Its not a straight line of progress.

What Lapis and Steven were doing when lashing out was a common victim tactic called "self-sabotage".

Where the victim unconsciously lashes out as a self defense mechanism in order to keep themselves safe because they are interpreting these moments with fight or flight. Their minds, in that moment, are emotionally or sometimes literally thrown back into that trauma. They then lash out with the same intensity as the moment the trauma started.

They are acting like this, often innocent individual they are attacking, ARE the same as the person/situation that hurt them.

Their minds are constantly in a state of panic. Looking for some moment or sign that someone is out to get them, secretly hates them, or is bored of them.

Its the "get them before they get me" so that way when they react (justifiably) to the victim's constant lashing out their mind can twist it.

"AHA! See?! I told you! They were out to get me! They always hated me!" And etc etc. The brain spirals from there.

The point is your brain is sick. Its not thinking clearly when being triggered. And no one can really map out their triggers 100% of the time when just starting.

Btw not all victims of abuse act the same. Not all PTSD is the same. Its a spectrum and I suggest study. Genuinely asking the victim their boundaries and respecting them as long as it isn't unhealthy or encroaching on YOUR boundaries.

THIS IS ALSO NOT EXCUSING WHAT LAPIS DID. IT DOES NOT EXCUSE ABUSE VICTIMS HURTING OTHERS.

I don't condone the harm Lapis does. Just like I don't condone mine when I lash out when triggered. (I am doing better than I was and I make sure to apologize while striving for improvement.)

I am just happy she eventually found her path to recovery SUF.

I just love the honest lense this series brought to PTSD. Most series or movies use it as an excuse to make mental health the villain or a character trait of the villain.

(LOOKING AT YOU WRITERS OF "SPLIT" AND "THE BOY".)

honestly, i think what lily does not understand is... Violence is easy, Violence and harming, breaking things... its the easy way out, and with stories... you can't take the easy way out, they would get boring, villians take the easy way because thats how it goes, they take the bath thats least resistant. while villians are cool, we only see them at that point, we like struggling we like to watch someone go against the big bad, it's why the underdog is a popular trope. we want to see them struggle, fuck up, but raise the the occasion. yet if all they do is beat people up, and not find a way thats a bit more hard... whats the point, its why there's the saying Might isn't always right. its why its more satasfying to create something rather then destroy cause you grow and appreciate what you make, cause when all you do is destroy... whats left? just nothing but broken pieces.

okay counterpoint to saying Lapis is abusive to Peridot- in some ways she can be but i dont think its intentional. like, when your only frame of reference for relationships is being abused, you dont really know how healthy relationships are supposed to work

Also i hate the narrative that the diamonds are forgiven.

Yes, they weren't destroyed, but they weren't forgiven. They are working to right their wrongs and fix the damage they caused, but what we see om earth is a fraction of the planets they've destroyed for resources, and things they can never repair.

Im sure, in world, they found a new way to make gems and continue to keep planets alive, but they do it to Placate Steven. They do it because he asked them to, and they want him happy.

He tolerates them in Future, as he doesn't actually like them much, but still tries because he does consider them family in some way. If, in the end, they can eventually be better people, then.. good!

But i don't think they were forgiven. Because ultimately. Its the gem society and the people harmed by the diamonds who have to choose whether or not they do, and that is 1. An individal thing for each and every person, and 2. There's no wrong decision. They have the right to forgive or to not forgive.

Lily's bad faith face-value interpretation of Lapis' "I enjoyed taking it out on you" speech has caused so much damage to not only discussion around Lapis' victimhood but also real life abuse victims. Abuse pushes people to do things they never would have considered before, just to survive, and sometimes they find themself enjoying it or spiralling out of control and that deserves to be discussed and sympathised with because abuse victims struggle so hard to reconcile that they were abused because of that spiral they end up in.

"I did this one bad/morally grey thing therefore I'M the bad person and I wasn't abused at all" is SUCH a common mindset among abuse victims and that's basically what Lapis is saying in that scene??? "I found myself enjoying taking back power from you and I hate that about myself". Not "I was abusing you this is me admitting it" as Lily and now so many other people have decided. I no longer feel safe discussing Lapis in any depth because people who agree with Lily's take are AGGRESSIVE about it. Lily's mindset of "you're a terrible person in real life if you like xyz" has caused an entire chunk of fandom to take the same viewpoint and I'm not about to go into fandom space to discuss the importance of an abused character to my own abuse recovery only for a dozen people to tell me actually I was the abuser all along

I saw Lily’s video after showing Steven Universe to a previous boyfriend of mine, the both of us loving the show and leaving it with the real messages about grief and self-acceptance and love - that was being delivered visually, directly, and emotionally to the audience.

I opened Lily’s video out of curiosity, as a fan of the show who wondered why there would be a 2 and half hour long video about how “garbage” it is.
And I feel like I was nearly taken in by the way Lily manipulates the whole thing with disconnected statements and clips, trying to make me want to change my beliefs about the show.
And for a moment I was definitely battling with my thoughts, especially when she talked about Lapis, or Bismuth, or the whole thing about Diamonds being a Nazi sympathizer story -
I was watching with my guard down and almost wanted to believe what she was saying.. or making me feel wrong for liking a show like this.

But it has been a good few years, and I still love Steven Universe for what it meant for me. And anything Lily has talked about over the years has grown increasingly directionless and only filled with negative takes on media that doesn’t even harbor the exact subject matter Lily likes to talk about.

I want to make video essays myself one day, and I know now what NOT to do when it comes to criticism. I enjoy videos like yours where every perspective is considered and every counter-argument is backed by evidence and open minded discussion.

How is JoJo's both episodic and Serialized? Like every episode leads into the next episode almost perfectly

I will say; it makes a lot of sense for Stevonnie to be leaning towards fem since both characters that make them up are often androgynous-fem leaning in of themselves (plus the intersex rep is cool)

Tldr: Lily didn't watch the show

Lily Orchard is a fantastic example of why you shouldn't vent all your complicated, fiddly negative feelings through a random ass video essay. Also fuck the 'ideological purity' online illness, you can't and shouldn't police everything and anything some one says or believes and expect total compliance, you can try and be convincing, you can crtiticise, but this extremist tendency to label othwerise progressive people with what is essentially 'anti-revisionism' is just plain sad.

Keep in mind Lily was hating on Rebecca despite being a worse person herself.

Yeah you're right. This is true.

Something I find kinda infuriating about Lily’s framing of Rose and the Crystal Gems refusal to kill/shatter is that she completely ignores that the series literally bakes away around it into its foundation.

There is literally no downside to the Crystal Gems poofing and bubbling their enemies rather than resorting to shattering them, it’s simpler, safer and means they don’t have to kill people they have no ill will towards.

Lily’s rant about Stevonnie is absolutely insane for numerous reasons but the two big ones to me are that she nonsensically complains about the sexualisation of minors when she herself is guilty of that and complains about them being a bad metaphor for puberty because they don’t do things like gain weight or get acne but completely ignores that they do later grow facial hair.

The thing that shows me that Lily put absolutely no meaningful research into her video is complaining about the wedding episode having to be shared without acknowledging that it was INTENTIONALLY WRITTEN THAT WAY SO IT COULDN’T BE CENSORED!

I said this in another lily orchard debunking videos comments but I'll say it again here, Lily seems to judge Steven universe by how she thinks it should be written, but instead of it being just an opinion, its a genuine problem with the show

and don't quote me on this, but I personally have a theory that most of this anger possibly stems from how Rebecca was the first major queer female show creator to make such major milestones in television and animation and not her, I'm mostly going by what it looks like to me cause she just seems like the type of person to get jealous over that, also has she responded in any way? I'm curious

IMO that first criticism doesn't really make sense in this context, if a piece of media is attractive to problematic groups for whatever reason that does not mean that it reflects poorly on the creator (necessarily)

Both Anti-Semites and Human right's activists dislike Israel, therefore any movement against it is going to attract both groups, that doesn't make the Nazis human right's activists and it doesn't make the human right's activists Nazis

Everybody hating on Lily because somebody else had a different opinion 💀 get it together peolle

You can't just go " these people were abused and there fore criticism of them is --phobic or ---ist " and when you start out your defense of a media with the inferred position that all opinions counter to yours are aligned with X-Phobes and X-ists... You lose all credibility and I tuned out everything else you said for the next 2-3 minutes I watched.

Also.. Kevin said 'the two kids in a trench coat trick wont work', meaning that.. He thinks it was a trick. That Stevonnie *isn't two kids*. He doesn't believe it. That was my interpretation.

Lily is a fascinating individual: she knows absolutely nothing about the media she talks about and yet she presents her thoughts and opinions as cold hard fact

Anyone know the intro song?

“I should stop, tell me to stop”
“Don’t you ever stop”

THATS LITERALLY ROSE TELLING PEARL TO BE HER OWN PERSON!
how did Lilly look at that point, extrapolate one thing, and then never think about it past that!?

i feel like im too old for this video lol

I now believe one thing, after watching a few episodes of the show proper




Steven universe is a good show, that i don't like

It's just not my thing

I can already tell, by tone and by the specific choice of words here that the original video isn't made to point out ANYTHING. You could say whatever rebuttal you want to say, and this video's really really good at that. But the reason people watched that video was to hate a show they wanted hated for other reasons.

The most telling slip of the tongue for me? Complaining about the message of it being okay to be yourself. That's veeeery telling. Especially when Lily says: "The internet's version of being yourself." Please stop doing this, this isn't a stand-up stage. People can tell what you're actually doing. At least to me, people doing this look ridiculous.

I think the pacing of arks is a valid critic because you were meant to watch the show as it released but when you binge it the pacing can be more lenient. Also using anime to the reason as to why so many filler episodes is not a good comparison when filler in anime exist because they have to wait for new chapters from the manga. Also the way lily acts as if SU didn’t do a lot for it’s time is insulting.

complains about lack of focus on rose, the diamonds, and the story

complains garnet is shunted in favor of rose, the diamonds, and the story

??????????????????????????????????

This mechanic person is absolutely giving Lily on an alt account. Under every comment. Its so camp.

Steven Universe is about connection, togetherness, and being there even if everything is terrible. A sense of warmth in the coldest time. In a very accurate way, Steven Universe IS Christmas

This is what i hate about left leaning online people. Mfs hate any type of win unless its literly their exact belifs

how do grown people lack so much media literacy that they can't watch a show meant for children and understand it on a basic level. like surely this isnt rocket science lol

Not that i disagree with most of your video, i do find SOME of your defenses of the show's writing a little weak. For instance, how Steven being put off by Bismuth's aggressiveness despite in previous episodes being pretty gleeful about battle himself, you agreed that it was forced, yet still felt the need to defend it by saying "it's a kids show they probably needed to be a little heavy handed." While I agree that for a kids show there's a need to be a little less subtle, that point shouldn't be used to defend a character being uncharacteristic JUST to drive home a moral. It's just a pet peeve of mine with essayists especially for kids media, kids are naive and ignorant, yes, but they'll still get confused by contradicting information if it's not presented well.

And while I don't agree with Lily's description of Garnet, I do admit she pretty much is just there for fusion plots and that's about it. While she has her moments of relevance here and there, the vast majority of her story relevance after she's revealed to be a fusion is THAT she's a fusion, and that's pretty much it. You might speak on the things Ruby and Sapphire do, like their marriage, but like, that just changes Garnet from being the two of them dating to the two of them married, Garnet is still their patience, their fury and their conversation, a fusion. It doesn't take away from the scene or anything, but it'd be wrong to say she isn't more than a fusion. It's a common complaint I see even amongst the diehard fans. It's probably because she's the coolest character, too.

Gods, hearing Lily of all people call others "creeps" over something that she made up in her head 💀

The way Lily keeps making personal attacks on Rebecca Sugar was so vile and abhorrent. She acts like Rebecca Sugar personally shot her family or something.

I find it very dissapointing that I fell for a lot of the things lily said in their video even though I felt something was off in the moment. I think its very true that lily employs the tactic of saying "kind of" right thing with just enough confidence to convince people even though they provide zero evidence. I found this show to be very powerful for an animated show that was accessible to younger audiences and it really did make me happy to see LGBTQ+ themes on kids television. It goes without saying that Rebecca is nowhere near a perfect writer or person but I'm glad this piece of media was made in the end because its done tremendous amounts of good for so many people. Its unfortunate that lily would twist and almost violate the show to fit their abstract and toxic ideals when it comes to media, writing, and "good television". There are so many things in this show that were done fantastically and while we should always be critical of the media we consume, I think this show gets a bad wrap as a whole due to people like lily and the things it did do right should get some recognition.