Tier 1+ Bonus Post 🎁 Steven Universe Cosplay Video

Hey folks! This is Rose writing here!

I have a special bonus Post for you today! Around 5-6 years ago I lead a Steven Universe Cosplay group called "Space Punk Rocks". Punk versions of Gems, so to speak. We had many fun moments together, were on different conventions, had many photoshoots and I even produced a Music Video!

In that video I am Rose (lol) Quartz & Jasper and Schpog is Garnet. I also did the choreography, most of the camera shots, the post production and the location scouting. 

Some background info, in case you're interested! Phew, this is going to a little ride and I'm a bit afraid to tell you about it, but I also think it's important to share together with the video and the group.

While Schpog did Garnet very well, she never felt fully comfortable in it. Garnet is an alien, but she's massively black coded, and Schpog only did her for the group in the beginning, not because she actually wanted to. Later, after we shot the video and everything was almost completely done in post production we thought it wasn't the right thing to actually post it, and just kept it as a video for us and our friends. We even did ask around in especially black communities how they feel about Schpog cosplaying Garnet, and while many were okay with it, there were also some who were a little torn, and I understood that perfectly. It would've been pretty hurtful in case that video got some traction and a white person cosplaying a black coded character would get a lot of attention/praise, while many actual POC cosplayer are often ignored. Plus there are only so little POC representing characters in cartoons and other media.

We also got some hate because the Ruby in the group was male presenting, and even though Ruby is a non binary alien, Ruby x Sapphire was a very important lesbian representation back during those days, and our Ruby & Sapphire (a couple) were very affected by being caught in the middle of such a big discourse, since they mainly did it for fun and because they were their comfort characters.

Furthermore, and these are reasons I don't get behind and I'm conflicted about, I got hate because I was wearing a corset as Rose Quarz (which some called fatshaming) and people were very offended about us posting pictures as Jasper & Lapis together (calling us out for supporting toxic relationships). The more traffic we gained with our other social medias, the more people treated us like we were obliged to represent everything perfectly, like we were an officially licensed group or something, not just a bunch of friends having fun. People tried to force us into type casting (this person is to tall for that character, that person looks too female, this person's boobs are too big), criticized the quality of our cosplays, I even lost an actual friend because I did not want to redo my Rose Quarz wig that consisted of 3 wigs. They said "you can do it better", I said "I already put so much work into it and I'm tired of redoing it", she said "yeah but it looks bad", I said that I don't care and that I like it, she again said that it looks bad and that I should do a better job if were doing it "professional" (??), I repeated that I have to be the only person who likes it and I do like it. She unfriended and blocked me, we never talked again since that day. Apparently the called me a fragile drama queen after that.

The growing stress caused discomfort in all of us (most of all me, I think, haha. It wasn't easy talking to me during that time. I didn't want to offend anyone, I was afraid of ruffling feathers and very terrified by the SU fandom). Eventually we let the group fizzle out.

Because of these reasons this video - the last thing we did together properly - remained a  thing amongst friends and we never posted it officially, and never will!
I hope you can enjoy it as such a thing and not an actual representation. 💜

Have a great weekend!

🌹Rose (Glasmond)

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