"It's like a DVD shaped like a box."
— Sadie Miller, and the blog's motto
VHSrip Steven Universe Screencaps
is a semi-popular Steven Universe aesthetic-humor fanblog started on Tumblr in 2015 that specializes in well... posting Steven Universe content ripped from VHS, and the namesake of a rather esoteric series of short YouTube Poop-flavored comedy videos hosted on the blog, referred to by the characters in them as "joke videos".
Sadie Miller and Lapis Lazuli appear frequently as regular characters in the videos and function as the blog's mascots, with somewhat exaggerated or flanderized personalities.
The videos themselves can be viewed more conveniently on YouTube, across two playlists:
- VHSrip Steven Universe Screencaps (2015-2017, first 101 videos)
- VHSrip Steven Universe Screencaps Part II (2018-present revival videos)
Tropes pertaining to the "joke videos":
- Author Appeal: Half of the references in the videos are to media the blog creator enjoys.
- Catchphrase: Sadie's "videotape".
- Crossover: The April Fools 2018 video has SU characters edited into the Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! intro.
- In-Series Nickname: Sadie is almost exclusively referred to in onscreen titles as "Donut Girl", and Lapis Lazuli as "Double L".
- Manipulative Editing: The bulk of the videos' jokes stem from sentence-mixing, though the older YTP-era style of using multiple characters to form sentences is predominantly used. This is explained by Lapis Lazuli allegedly in-universe "editing" the videos in a fashion similar to her word-spliced lines in Mirror Gem. Some videos occasionally use compositing to bridge visual elements, though this is sparingly used.
- No Fourth Wall: The bulk of the humor is self-referential and characters seem mostly aware everything's being edited.
- One-Word Title: Most videos tend to be given very basic, lower-case titles consisting of lines from the videos themselves.
- Quote Mine: A given with primarily sentence-mixing oriented humor.
- Running Gag: There's many of them.
- Sadie's "videotape" line and the aforementioned page quote from the episode Joking Victim shows up in the videos many times.
- The first syllable of "Lapis" or words that begin similarly sentence-mixed to say "Lal" (in vein of "sus" from many a classic YTP).
- References to Speed Racer, including repeated uses of "dangerous..." from the English theme song, a loud snippet of music from the first episode, and occasional footage "cameos" from actual episodes. This was inspired by the Speed Racer-centric YTP-er JazzDanceForChildren's work.
- A Half-Life 2 resistance soldier shouting "Look! He's dead!" whenever a character supposedly "dies".
- A recurring snippet of canned laughter from a obscure Belgian prank show called Just Kidding!.
- A monotone text-to-speech voice saying "joke video".
- The stock footage of the old ladies applauding from Monty Python's Flying Circus.
- A rather infamous soundbyte of a group of children exclaiming "YAAAAAAAY!!!!"
- Self-Deprecation: Appears frequently through sentence-mixing, often poking fun at the gimmicky nature of the blog itself.
- Series Fauxnale: "penultimate" and "wander and remember", which were intended as the finale of the videos and the blog as a whole, but the blog began activity again in February 2018 and the videos were brought back as "VHSrip Steven Universe Screencaps Part II".
- Shout-Out: A staple of the joke videos. Notably, in the first joke video that's over a minute long, there's one given to "I'D SAY HE'S HOT ON OUR TAIL".
- References to Homestar Runner appear often.
- Stylistic Suck: All of the videos are recorded several generations over on real VHS tape to make the audiovisual quality terrible.
- Most of the editing is fairly basic and blunt, more reminiscent of older YTPs than contemporary popular ones.
- This Is the Part Where...: "daily routine" spoofs the basic structure of many of the joke videos with this.
- Word Salad Lyrics: "Oram Universe", an absolutely nonsensical rendition of the extended intro made using lines from the English dub of The Return of Godzilla.
