Steven Universe

Steven Universe is an American animated television series created by Rebecca Sugar for Cartoon Network. It is the coming-of-age story of a young boy named Steven, who grows up in the town of Beach City living with three magical humanoid aliens, the "Crystal Gems" Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl. Steven, who is half-Gem, goes on adventures with his friends and helps the Gems protect the world from their own kind. Sugar developed the series while working as a storyboard artist on Adventure Time, and it premiered on November 4, 2013 as Cartoon Network's first series to be created by a woman.

The series has received critical acclaim, being praised for its art design, music, voice acting, and complex characterization and science-fiction worldbuilding. It was nominated for an Emmy Award and five Annie Awards. Steven Universe was renewed for a third season in 2015. Companion books, comics, and a video game based on it have also been released.

Setting and synopsis

Universe

The Universe is all of time and space and its contents. The Universe includes planets, stars, galaxies, the contents of intergalactic space, the smallest subatomic particles, and all matter and energy. The observable universe is about 28 billion parsecs (91 billion light-years) in diameter at the present time. The size of the whole Universe is not known and may be either finite or infinite. Observations and the development of physical theories have led to inferences about the composition and evolution of the Universe.

Cartoon Network

Cartoon Network is an American basic cable and satellite television channel that is owned by the Turner Broadcasting System division of Time Warner. The channel airs primarily animated programming, ranging from action to animated comedy. It was founded by Betty Cohen and launched on October 1, 1992.

It is primarily aimed at children and teenagers between the ages of 7–16, and also targets older teens and adults with mature content during its late night daypart Adult Swim, which is treated as a separate entity for promotional purposes and as a separate channel by Nielsen for ratings purposes. A Spanish language audio track for select programs is accessible via SAP; some cable and satellite companies offer the Spanish feed as a separate channel.

As of February 2015, Cartoon Network is available to approximately 96.4 million pay television households (82.8% of households with television) in the United States.

History

Development

On August 4, 1986, Ted Turner's Turner Broadcasting System acquired Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/United Artists from Kirk Kerkorian; due to concerns over the debt load of his companies, on October 17, 1986, Turner was forced to sell MGM back to Kerkorian after approximately only 74 days of ownership. However, Turner kept much of MGM's film and television library made prior to May 1986 (as well as some of the United Artists library) and formed Turner Entertainment.

The Trial

The Trial (original German title: Der Process, later Der Prozess, Der Proceß and Der Prozeß) is a novel written by Franz Kafka from 1914 to 1915 and published in 1925. One of his best-known works, it tells the story of a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor to the reader. Heavily influenced by Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, Kafka even went so far as to call Dostoevsky a blood relative. Like Kafka's other novels, The Trial was never completed, although it does include a chapter which brings the story to an end.

After Kafka's death in 1924 his friend and literary executor Max Brod edited the text for publication by Verlag Die Schmiede. The original manuscript is held at the Museum of Modern Literature, Marbach am Neckar, Germany. The first English language translation, by Willa and Edwin Muir, was published in 1937. In 1999, the book was listed in Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century and as No. 2 of the Best German Novels of the Twentieth Century.

Cartoon Network (UK & Ireland)

Cartoon Network (commonly abbreviated as CN) is a British television channel available on Sky, Virgin Media, Smallworld Cable, TalkTalk Plus TV, UPC Ireland and Freeview (UK) (via VuTV on channel 238). Distributed by Turner Broadcasting System Europe (a semi-autonomous unit of Time Warner).

The channel primarily shows animated programming and was launched in the United Kingdom and Ireland as Cartoon Network UK/Europe on 17 September 1993.

The United Kingdom was the first country to have a Cartoon Network headquarters outside of the United States in 1993, serving Western Europe, but did not have a UK and Ireland only version until 1999. This was even though until 1999, the pan-European version only showed British advertisements, and a majority of its audience were British. All programmes on the pan-European version were dubbed in English, with different audio language channels when a translated programme is available, which were indicated as language symbols on Now/Next bumpers. Cartoon Network UK also serves as the English language feed for Europe, which is also used by Malta. Cartoon Network launched a high definition version of the channel on 14 September 2011.