Part 4 is on Writing and Storyboarding. More Crewniverse interviews provide insight into the process, including how much is revised from the early days and how collaborative everything is. Some specific episodes, like "Ocean Gem," "Monster Buddies," and "Island Adventure" are put into perspective with how they were written by the group. There's heavy discussion of how the process works and why processes that work on other shows wouldn't work here, and what "rules" are firm and what's just a suggestion, and what's changed as the show's plot became more complex and important. Steven still having access to the "side" stories, the ones that involve Beach City humans and non-world-shaking stakes, is still very important to the story that the original Crew wants to tell. Cute images from the Crew's thumbnail storyboards, Gem designing, and technology designing workshops are shared too. Originally the Diamonds were based on a quartet of themes: Love, Fear, Pride, and Sorrow. It got too complicated to keep and it was abandoned, with Pink's identification of "love" being described as "particularly outdated."

Music nerds like me will very much appreciate the photographed notes on music motifs--the Diamonds each have a solfège syllable and a chord (White is F#M7/Sol, Yellow is BM7/Fa, Blue is EM7/Fa, and Pink is AM7/Mi), and Steven's powers and modes are coded with instruments and styles. A sheet of corrupted Gems and their healed selves is offered, though it doesn't appear to be final. It was known from interviews that Shelby Rabara (voice of Peridot) is a dancer and provided the foot sounds and coaching to create the short tap number in the episode "Mr. Greg." But what's great is here, there's a visual reference included! Photos of Shelby doing the dance are lined up next to the drawings of Pearl and Steven in the "Mr. Greg" number doing the steps! She poses in dance moves with her husband for the Greg/Pearl dance for "Both of You" too.What this book is, is inspiring: to read the testimonies of the creators, their love and devotion, but also their fears and doubts, truly turned me upside down. For example, there's a part where one of the creators didn't know how to draw birds, so he drew a whole comic about them! Or another passage where one of the animators explain that the biggest obstacle in an artist's journey, is themself! As someone who loves to create but is often really insecure about what I do, this definitely hit me right where it hurts, while making me want to do better. The official national flower of South Korea, Hibiscus syriacus, is the name of Pink Diamond's flower. Rebecca always had to "fight" notes against Ruby and Sapphire's relationship, but once she didn't fight a note because it was just for a signing card. She was also scolded over her book The Answer because the powers that be expected her to downplay that relationship. She always argued that queer youth deserved these things. Steven Universe: End of an Era, like its predecessor Steven Universe: Art and Origins, is a collection of developmental documents, character sketches, concepts, and commentary from various creators and insiders. Whether you really like to get down into the guts of how it's produced or whether you want to hear reflections from Rebecca Sugar and other Crew members about what it was like to make the show or whether you're just here for the amazing art, this book is for you. (Personally, I'm excited about all three of those things.)

It's been established before, but Amethyst's origin in Earth's Prime Kindergarten was not initially known as part of her character when she was invented, and that was discussed in Part 4 of this book--how the writing retreats the Crew takes to discuss the story sometimes result in huge revelations like this. "Oh, that makes sense, that's why we wrote her like that" is one of those things I recognize as a writer--you know a character has a certain vibe, but you don't know what explains it. You just trust that something does. And eventually, sometimes you find out what it is and it all makes sense. Interesting to know they did this with Amethyst. The original designs for the Gems fluctuated a lot, and in a couple cases even names flopped around. An early name for Garnet was "Onyx," and if you've seen the pilot, you know Pearl got her signature nose later and Garnet's hair took a while to become the splendid square afro. Amethyst seems to have changed the least. Themes were given to them initially (like Amethyst being "flora and fauna," which you can sort of see in her pilot intro with her lying on big cats). You can still see some of the original intentions in how the ideas manifested, but the first ideas do not gel particularly well with what the show became. This is particularly interesting because non-creatives commonly think creative people simply receive inspiration and birth their creations into the world wholesale. Inspiration exists, but it's much more common to take an inspired idea and REALLY WORK ON IT. This book's origins section does a great job showing how that works. One of Steven Sugar's comments about the silhouette difference between humans and Gems points out that humans have ears.Rebecca Sugar apparently just pops up with concepts she wants the writers to work in. Like "I want Steven to be in a mushroom forest" (which hasn't happened yet) or "I want Steven to have cats on his fingers" (which, obviously, happened early on). Rebecca gets little concepts that are sort of dreamlike, and they figure out which episode they can put them in. Working those things in sometimes seems like as much of a priority as getting plot elements in! Part 2 discusses the show's Green Light and Development. Rebecca and some of the other crew, in interview format, talk about getting the team together and allowing for both nailed-down character essentials and flexibility for the writers to explore and collaborate. Developing the setting was also a big part of the to-do list; coming up with Beach City itself, its businesses, its residents, and also the creatures the Gems would fight. Some cute stories are shared about the early Crewniverse hanging out at a cabin and talking about the show all the time, hashing it out. There are some great, loose character model sheets for early versions of Greg, Connie, Sadie and Lars, and the four main characters. The sketches for concepts on the Off Colors and the final outfits of the Crystal Gems were a lot of fun! Steven, speaking of the Diamonds, at one point says "I can't believe I helped these" and then there's a censor bar. Welp.

Some of the newer writers get a chance to share their perspectives on coming into the show when it was already in an epilogue. They were excited to have Steven make HIS OWN mistakes instead of trying to clean up someone else's! Now, instead of doing the usual shonen anime thing and having the final battle be a big physical rumble, Steven has to make peace with himself and take an active role in coping with what all the fighting has done to him and what effect it's had on who he is (and who he wants to be). There is no sudden "I love myself!" answer, either. It's always a process.Part 5 is on Sound and Vision. There's some history of how they found the voice actors for the major roles, and some of the actors give perspectives on their relationship and experience on the show. Aivi and Surasshu, as the composers, discuss their process as well, with some anecdotes and discussions of why musical palettes work better for characters instead of assigning them themes. Places and objects have their own sounds too.

Rebecca Sugar shares an anecdote about thinking there was a "best" way to draw that was objectively correct (influenced by some art-school stuff), and through that she arrived at the idea that Pearl was a cone, Amethyst was a sphere, and Garnet was a cube, because all of those things say something about who they are (pointedness, fluidness, stability). She evolved from that idea to a more flexibile idea of how drawing works for different artists, but that was part of what helped her nail the characters down. Steven, eventually, was fixed to having a heart-shaped face. Steven Sugar’s development drawings of proposed Beach City locations, including It’s a Fold, Fish Stew Pizza, Big Doughnut, Beach Citywalk Fries, Kone ‘n’ Son, and Tee Time.Rainbow Quartz 2.0's design is not discussed, though the other two new Fusions from "Change Your Mind" (Sunstone and Obsidian) were. RQ2 has some sketches included, but no accompanying narrative in the text. Read this after reading the 1st book, “Steven Universe Art and Origins.” I enjoyed this just as much as the last book. It’s just like watching a documentary, with all the interview questions and hearing about the behind scenes of the series. I also loved all the art in the end of the book by those who’ve worked on the show. My favorite was Whisper of the heart parody. My favorite part of the book was about Steven’s mom. It talks more about her character and her relationship with others. It talked about her and Greg and gave me more of an insight of her character. Steven’s mom is one of the characters I’m curious of since usually we get info about her through opinions of the characters that “knew” her. So it’s nice to see some perspective of Steven’s mom through the creator. I like that they dish a bit about the fan reaction to Garnet's Fusion status. They thought they were being a little too obvious to not get caught, but Ian said the fans figured it out and then got bored of the idea and decided it must be even more complicated than that. People were apparently worried that Garnet would be replaced by her component Gems in the story if she were to unfuse, but obviously since Ruby and Sapphire want to be together, that doesn't happen. One of the concept art images for the Off Colors features Rhodonite crouching by Padparadscha saying "Don't worry, I won't let them hurt you." It's very interesting because she DOES seem to protect Padparadscha in the show, but doesn't seem confident about it in her final version, even though it does seem like she'd be "programmed" to guard aristocratic Gems because of her Ruby and Pearl makeup. Cool.