7 February 2016: Gem Glow

Season 1 Episode 1

    Back with another episode commentary for the first episode of the series, "Gem Glow" I guess it's technically the second because the pilot was really the first episode, but that's how it's referred to in the Steven Universe Wiki page. It's the first canon episode of the series. 

    The opening credits is not the same as the pilot and resembles the way the characters will look for the rest of the series, showing some of the citizens of Beach City, (like Connie, Lars and Sadie) and the main setting of the story. It also features Steven's song, "We are the crystal gems" which was sung during the pilot episode. The reason for the character design changes, as best as I understood, is to make them simpler and easier to animate.

The beginning of "Gem Glow" starts with Steven at the Big Donut, discovering the discontinuation of his favorite ice cream sandwich, "Cookie Cat" 

  The Crystal Gems, (in Garnet's words, really "her idea") stole/ and then paid for by Pearl, a bunch of Cookie Cats for Steven, knowing they were being discontinued and they were his favorite. Upon eating one Steven's gem is activated and begins to glow. He tries to summon his weapon but is unable to.
  From there the Crystal Gems, per Steven's request, try to teach him how to summon his weapon from his gem. Each of the crystal gems summon their weapon differently, offering a look into each of the distinct personalities of Pearl, Amethyst, and Garnet.

(Pearl Summoning her weapon from her gem)

  Pearl offers to teach Steven how to summon his weapon. Her process is a "dance" of sorts, carefully calculated, and is compared to a petal from a cherry blossom tree. 

(Amethyst summoning her weapon)

    According to Amethyst, "All that practice is no fun, whenever I need to summon my weapon, it just happens. Didn't try at all" Amethyst is far more laid back than Pearl. The placement of their gems is also significant to this, Amethyst's core is at her heart, her instincts, her emotions, and Pearl's is in her head and her intellect.

(Garnet summoning her weapon)

      And then there is Good ole' Garnet. She channels "all states of existing matter and the powers of the universe". I don't know what this says exactly about Garnet but she is pretty freaking great.

   Of course none of these methods ended up helping Steven. In his last ditch effort he hoped to re-create the events that led to his gem glowing, and after taking a bite out of the cookie cat this time his gem glowed and he was finally able to summon his weapon: Rose Quartz's shield. 

He connects eating a cookie cat with summong his shield, leading Pearl to ask, quite puzzled, "what's in these things?" 

   Centipeetles have escaped from the Crystal Temple, and the Gems fight the Mother Centipeetle. It doesn't seem to be going too well and Steven wants to help with his newfound ability to summon his shield. However it turns out that cookie cats don't in fact, summon his shield, and he is put in a dangerous situation which he gets out of by electricuting Mother Centipeetle with his, now broken, cookie cat vender which was a gift from Sadie at the Big Donut.

   It was a pretty simple episode, nothing too complicated. We got to learn about the Crystal Gem's personalities and style of summoning their weapons but, from this episode, we still don't know what exactly it is that makes Steven summon his weapon. 

                                                        (Cookie Cats make their debut)

       Cookie Cat Rap Sung by Steven:

Ohhhhhhhh! He's a frozen treat with an all new taste, cause' he came to this planet from outer space. A refugree of an interstellar war, but now he's at your local grocery store!

Cookie Cat! He's a pet for your tummy! Cookie Cat he's super duper yummy! Cookie Cat! He left his family behind! Cookie caaaaaaaat! Now avaliable at Gurgens off Route 109!

    It's interesting but the song for Cookie Cat foreshadows the history of the Crystal Gems and the Gem Rebellion. Also I found a recipe to actually make Cookie Cats online, they look delicious and I would totally love to be surprised with some *wink wink, babe*

 

Steven Universe’s COOKIE CAT!

All of the recipes and DIYs I have seen so far used mixes and I am a fan of making things from scratch, so after much research. I have a cookie cat from scratch recipe.

Slideshow recipe (x)

INGREDIENTS: (based on this)

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• ½ cup cocoa powder
• 2 tbsp. cocoa powder
• ¼ tsp salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
• 1 ½ cup confectioners’ sugar
• 2 large egg yolks
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• vanilla and strawberry ice cream (without strawberry chunks if you can find them)
• Aluminum can to make cookie cutter shape

DIRECTIONS:

DOUGH

1. Mix flour, cocoa and salt in a medium sized bowl and set aside.
2. Beat butter and sugar with an electric mixer til light and fluffy
3. Add egg yolks and vanilla, mix until combined
4. Slowly mix in flour mixture and beat until it forms dough
5. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and chill until firm (about 30 minutes)

ICE CREAM

1. Line a 9x13 baking pan with plastic wrap
2. Spread the vanilla ice cream on one half and strawberry ice cream on the other half
3. Cover in plastic wrap and refreeze (it should be refrozen by the time you need it again)

COOKIE CUTTER

1. Based on this tutorial
2. I cut two strips of the aluminum can and attached them together to make the cookie cutter big enough and I used the leftover bit to make the circle cutter for the eye holes
3. I made my cookie cutter approximately 4 ½” by 3 ¾”
4. Template: 

BAKE

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
2. Line a flat surface or cutting board with plastic wrap and roll out a portion of the dough until it is about ¼ inch thick
3. Keep re-rolling and cutting the dough until you have the desired amount of cookies (half the dough yields about 12-14 cookies or 6-7 sandwiches)
4. Cut eye holes in half of the cookies
5. Place them on a greased pan around 2” apart and poke several holes into the cookies with the blunt end of a wooden skewer
6. Bake for 10-15 min.
7. Remove and let cool completely

ASSEMBLY

1. Place the back cookies face down on a clean work surface.
2. Remove ice cream from freezer and unwrap.
3. Use the cookie cat cutter and cut out enough ice cream cats for your sandwiches
4. Cut them in half and put the strawberry half on the right side of the cookies and the vanilla half on the left side of the cookies
5. Place the top cookies on top, wrap with plastic wrap
6. Freeze the finished cookies until set (20-30 min)

  I took this directly from the original maker of the recipe's page, Sam, this is their tumblr account I recommend you follow them, they are pretty cool. http://samskookingdessert.tumblr.com

And last but not least, 

  The centipeetle mother, who is the featured monster in this episode. Centipeetles come back in a later episode where Steven tries to train one of it's babies, I just recently saw fanfic about a Centipeetle in a gem form (all these creatures are just gems gone bad, losing their "humanish" forms), and I really like the character ideas for centipeetle, I think I'll make a post about that. 

ANYWAY, that's all for now, I have some things to do, hope you've enjoyed reading this. 

  Magnes