Alternate promo
Steven's dreams start broadcasting onto his bedroom TV.
Tropes:
- Acid Reflux Nightmare: Invoked when Steven deliberately eats chili before bed to enhance his dreams.
- Adaptation Decay: Steven and Peridot hate the reboot of the Soap Within a Show Camp Pining Hearts, calling all the characters uninteresting and the cinematography terrible. By the end of the episode, they conclude that it's So Bad, It's Good, laughing hysterically at it.
- An Aesop: After the reboot of Steven and Peridot's favorite show is a bust, Steven goes to painful lengths to make their own, better version just so they'll still have something to do together. Peridot gets him to stop once she realizes the stress she put him under, and concludes that friends don't need an excuse to hang out.
- Astonishingly Appropriate Interruption: Peridot calls the Camp Pining Hearts reboot a "nightmare" right before it gets cut off by a recording of Steven's actual nightmare from the previous night.
- Author Avatar: Steven's Camp Pining Hearts Original Character, Stefan, is obviously based on himself. He looks like Steven's adult form, with small resemblances to Steg. Stefan is popular and everyone is happy to accept his help.
- Bad "Bad Acting": When Steven is trying to use his dreams to fix Camp Pining Hearts, his self-insert character Stefan can only convincingly do a flirty voice, so everything he says that's not an attempt at flirting either sounds strange for the context of the scene, or just sounds flat and stilted.
- Bile Fascination: In-Universe. Peridot and Steven hate the Camp Pining Hearts reboot so much, they end up having a blast laughing at it together.Peridot: (laughing) This show is the worst.
Steven: (content) This show is the best. - Black Comedy Burst: While laughing, Peridot mentions one of the characters of Camp Pining Hearts committing a crime.Peridot: Jasmine, you just buried a body in the woods, and now you're mad that Rodrigo cheated at cards?!
- Color Motif: When Steven talks to Peridot in his dream in front of a giant test screen, he's standing in front of a green band while she's in front of a red one (the colour of Steven's shirt before the Time Skip). A pink band is between them, symbolic both of past events and Steven's own powers to connect people.
- Continuity Nod:
- The character Steven makes to fix the Camp Pining Hearts reboot, Stefan, heavily resembles Steven's adult form from "So Many Birthdays".
- Peridot, overwhelmed and upset, picks up Steven's TV in a rage as if about to smash it, then awkwardly sets it down as she falls to her knees, showing she's gained a bit more awareness for others' property than when she used to casually break Steven's things.
- This is not the first time Yellow Diamond has been shown merged with something/someone else, or hilariously deformed, in Steven's dreams.
- Steven's repeated use of his dream powers causes him to not get any actual sleep, like when he fought off Kiki's nightmares in "Kiki's Pizza Delivery Service".
- When confronting Peridot in his dreams, Steven recalls the times they dealt with the Cluster, the Diamonds, and Spinel together.
- Conversational Troping: Peridot and Steven talk about some elements of story structure when discussing ways to improve the Camp Pining Hearts reboot, including the importantance of conflict and the term "Foil".
- Cope by Pretending: Overlapping with Cope by Creating, Steven makes an indulgent self-insert who's great at helping other people during a period Steven himself feels unneeded. When Peridot suggests rewriting said character to be a homewrecker, Steven is naturally uncomfortable.
- Dream Intro: The episode opens up with Steven's nightmare involving his friends and family partying without him.
- Dream Sue: Steven makes a blatant wish-fulfilling self-insert character, a buff adult version of himself named "Stefan", who's very popular and whose friends are always happy to accept his help. A literal example, given that Stefan actually manifests in Steven's dreams.
- Dream Within a Dream: Steven seems to wake up from another of his dreams, but when he tries to get Peridot's attention, her visor is covered in a TV test pattern, showing Steven's still dreaming.
- Exhausted Eyebags: Steven's repeated dream attempts gets him dainty tired eyebags.
- Eyeless Face: Dream Peridot has no eyes underneath her shades.
- Face-Revealing Turn: Steven wakes up from his Dream Within a Dream and tries to get Peridot's attention, but when he manages to turn her around, her visor and gem are covered in a screen test pattern.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing:
- When Steven peeks inside the windows to his house, Lars and the Off Colors, who went back into space two episodes ago, are inside with everyone else, hinting that Steven's dreaming before it's revealed shortly after.
- After waking up from another bad dream, Steven is in his old bedroom. When he attempts to talk to Peridot, it's revealed that he's in a Dream Within a Dream.
- Giant Foot of Stomping: While dreaming, Steven gets stomped on by a dream version of Obsidian with Connie's face.
- Fix Fic: Steven and Peridot try to use Steven's dreams to make the Camp Pining Hearts reboot better.
- Her Code Name Was "Mary Sue": Steven's first idea of fixing the reboot is to add a new character, Stefan. Stefan is a "hunky lifeguard friend with nice muscles who everyone wants to hang out with".
- Internal Reveal: Peridot learns Steven's worries about everyone leaving him behind once she sees what's he experiencing on the TV during his nightmare.
- Mental Picture Projector: Steven's dreams start projecting themselves onto his television. Peridot and him take advantage of this to create their version of ''Camp Pining Hearts: New Generations".
- Misery Builds Character: Discussed. Peridot argues with Steven that making Rodrigo suddenly find his then-best friend Stefan kissing Jasmine before he could is needed to make an engaging character go through conflict. Steven, at first, tries to scrap the idea until seeing Peridot leave panics him and makes him go through with it.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Peridot is horrified by her viewing of Steven's last attempt to do their "dream show" right, and reassures him she's happy to hang out with him even without having to do their "remake" of the remake (and calling herself a clod).
- Please, Don't Leave Me: Even as Steven trying to use his dreams to reenact Peridot's script makes him continuously more restless, he keeps pushing himself because he's desperate to keep Peridot around.
- Real Dreams are Weirder: Steven tries to help Peridot remake the Camp Pining Hearts reboot in his dreams, but they keep getting interrupted by various things (like Steven turning back into a baby or Dogcopter showing up and flying away) to more personal content (Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl flying away from him, the Diamonds appearing as landscape, and Connie suddenly appearing before transforming into Obsidian, etc).
- Reboot Snark: Steven and Peridot watch the first episode of a Camp Pining Hearts reboot, which they find extremely disappointing. When Steven discovers that he can broadcast his thoughts and dreams on his TV, they get the idea to "reboot the reboot" by having Steven dream up his own version of the show.Peridot: What is with this Rodrigo guy? He has no charisma!
Steven: And can we talk about this cinematography?
Peridot: (growls) They changed all the characters, and I don't care about any of them! - The Scrappy: In-Universe. Peridot mentions several times how much she hates Rodrigo, and even Steven doesn't have anything good to say about his character.
- Self-Insert Fic: Steven tries to fix the Camp Pining Hearts reboot by dropping in a blatant self-insert. Because self-inserts are usually poorly-written wish fulfillment fantasies, this only makes the story worse.
- Shout-Out: Maya Petersen's promo art is a recreation of the poster for La La Land.
- Skewed Priorities: In the Camp Pining Hearts reboot, a plot point involves Jasmine getting mad at Rodrigo for cheating at cards right after she had to bury a body.
- So Bad, It's Good: In-Universe. Steven and Peridot ultimately decide to continue watching the Camp Pining Hearts reboot because it's so hilariously silly.
- Suddenly Always Knew That: Turns out Peridot picked up storyboarding at some point.Steven: You drew all of this in one night?
Peridot: Well, duh! I'm good at everything. - Take That!: The Camp Pining Hearts reboot is a thinly-veiled one at the recent trend of reboots that fundamentally change what made the original so popular in the first place. Or, alternately, at unpleasable fans who complain bitterly about every new version for not being identical to the original rather than being able to enjoy them for what they are. Perhaps even both.
- They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: In-Universe, Steven and Peridot hate quite a number of changes the Camp Pining Hearts reboot has done, feeling that the changes have ruined the show. This is exemplified best with Peridot not liking how the reboot has exchanged the entire cast of characters for a new one.Peridot: Arggh! They changed all the characters and I don't care about any of them!
- Tinfoil Hat: Mentioned. Steven wonders if he has to start wearing a tinfoil hat now to keep his dreaming from broadcasting onto electronic devices.
- We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties: The Peridot in Steven's dream initially has her visor and gem covered in a test pattern, and eventually the front of the dream house turns into a giant test bar; the static noise even covers Steven's words.
