About

Yellow Diamond is an antagonist from the animated series Steven Universe. Although she was conceived as a menacing character, she became viral online mainly due to jokes about her long neck and an iconic face she made during her first appearance.

History

While her existence had been theorized by fan theorists for some time, Yellow Diamond's first appearance on screen was in the official video clip of the song "We Are The Crystal Gems", first shown during the San Diego Comic-Con, on July 10th, 2015.

Her first official appearance was in "Message Received", the 25th episode of Steven Universe's second season. It immediately led to the appearance of the two memes associated with this character: Yellow Diamond's Neck and the Yellow Diamond Face.

Apart from those memes, Yellow Diamond gained some minor traction in the fandom as a popular antagonist, and later on as a secondary character; this popularity led to a respectable number of fanarts, and even some cosplays.

Yellow Diamond's Neck

Although Yellow Diamond's first appearance was meant to look menacing and oppressive, many fan artists, monstly on Tumblr, focused on the reveal of her rather long neck, and immediately started jokes putting emphasis and exaggeration on it. For instance, as soon as January 8th, Drawendo posted^[1] on popular request a drawing of Yellow Diamond as a giraffe, which gained more than 3,200 notes; while Steve Yurko posted a drawing^[2] of her as a Pez dispenser.

Relevant Examples

Yellow Diamond Face

At the end of their confrontation, Peridot violently calls Yellow Diamond a "clod", to which she reacts with a face of anger and frustration (shown below).

The humorous impact of this face immediately inspired many memes and redraws online. A lot of them consisted in face-swapping, either by putting the iconic face on another character's head, or by changing Yellow Diamond's expression in that scene, similarly to the Give Pikachu A Face meme.

Due to both memes originating from the same scene, and also for their synergy and their sheer comedic value, fan arts and memes about Yellow Diamond's neck often also feature her iconic face.

Various Examples

Templates

Search Interest

External References

^[1] Tumblr – I really like these new characters

^[2] Tumblr – Hey check it out, it’s Yellow Diamond’s neck!