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loveaurapearl · 4 years

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Steven’s Breakdown Analysis

First and foremost, I got to say that I love the ending of Steven Universe Future. It felt so right and so perfect. Yes, it is annoying that we still don’t know anything about the chest. Yes, it does stink a little that we don’t have a resolution on what’s going on with Bluebird Azurite, Mean Lapis, where Cactus Steven, watermelon Stevens and now the Steven Shrubs are, and yes, it is a little silly that Steven doesn’t have any marks after becoming a monster, but honestly, I’m still fine with the finale. It was great, it was moving, we know Steven has a therapist now, and it was just sweet. Sure, I had a few grips on Homeworld Bound, but that was the only episode that I had this feeling, all the other episodes were great. However, as I rewatched the finale, something caught my eye.

Before Steven corrupted into Wormy boi/Godzilla, (I have no idea what were are going to call him other than corrupted Steven.) I was thinking about what Steven said in his breakdown. Here’s the part of his breakdown that I need you guys to know. “I can fix anything. I can just keep messing up and fixing things forever and you’ll never know or think about it.” Steven said. Garnet calls out Steven’s name.

“*Deep Sigh* How messed up is that…? That I’ve gotten away with this for so long…? You have NO idea how bad I am. Y-You think that I’m sooo great and I’m so mature and I always know what to do… but that’s not true! I haven’t learned a thing from my problems. They’ve all just made me worse! You think of me as some Angel, but I’m not that kid anymore! I’m a fraud… *quietly sobs*… I’m a fraud... I’M… I’M A MONSTER!”

This hit hard and was very emotional... but a weird thought kept going through my head. The way he was talking, about being an angel and being put up on a pedestal. About how he keeps messing up and fixing things. It didn’t sound like Steven the character despite him using his voice... Yes, this does sound weird. Let me explain. While Steven always thought he had been the better person and to not hurt people, this still didn’t sound right for Steven to say. I mean, you could still see this as Steven talking about himself, but I still don’t get that feeling. Yeah, Steven has gone through a lot of ‘imposter syndrome’ throughout his life, but even then, I still felt like this speech wasn’t exactly Steven. Steven was never put up on a pedestal by the crystal gems. He didn’t feel like people were calling him an angel. That he was so mature and always knew what to do. Hell, Pool Hoping was about Garnet not expecting Steven to become so mature and wise, so this notion was never something that Steven had felt all his life. So, it was weird hearing him say all of this. Sure, Steven has put himself on a pedestal, especially after helping the universe, but this speech doesn’t feel like it was Steven doing this to himself. Then I thought back to Steven’s life and more specifically Rose Quartz/Pink Diamond’s life.

Pink Diamond was raised to be something great. To be better, to know better. She was a Diamond after all, and Diamonds were supposed to be perfect. However, Pink was very flawed. She had a temper, she was childish, she left Spinel behind to try and be more ‘mature’, and she hurt Volleyball in a fit of rage because she was denied a colony from White. Pink wasn’t exactly Diamond material. We still don’t know why Pink came out this way, so we can only speculate that now. When Pink became Rose Quartz, she thought she was free. She thought she could escape and find herself. Then she realized that what her family was doing was wrong and tried her best to stop it. She started a war to end it, but Even after becoming Rose Quartz, Pink still had to be the mature one, the healer, the perfect image of herself. This was made because she created the war and tried to convince people to help save the earth and stop the Diamond Authority. However, this doesn’t excuse the fact that, during the war, Pink/Rose couldn’t be confident in themselves except for Pearl. And even then, Pink didn’t want Pearl to know about her violent temper and her immaturity, so she tried her best to great and powerful. She hid secrets because she didn’t want to admit the ugly side of herself. She hid away Bismuth because she was afraid of her and her ideology. She hid Lion away from Pearl and never told anyone about him. She hid away the fact that she was a diamond because she hated being one. So, her hating herself isn’t that loose of an idea.

Now, Rose was happier as Rose Quartz than when she was Pink Diamond, but even then, Rose still wasn’t happy inside. She could never tell the other crystal gems about her identity, she couldn’t trust people because of her upbringing, and she couldn’t heal the people she hurt. She still didn’t like herself, but due to her work and the fact that she had humans to distract her, this self-hatred came in shorter bursts. That is until Greg pointed out how she didn’t respect him, it made her realize that she was still Pink Diamond inside. Rose began to engulf herself in the human ways to try and better herself. To be the perfect being her followers saw her as. But it was never enough, and so, after some time, she made Steven. Steven was raised to be as good as Rose Quartz during his life. He always felt like he had to be as good and pure as her. He believed that he could never measure up to her. But then everyone realized that real her wasn’t like that, the real she was just like Steven, a scared, confused little girl who didn’t know what to do and hanged onto other people.

“I can just keep messing up and fixing things forever and you’ll never know or think about it.” This was the exact quote that made me think something was off. Steven has never made a ‘mistake’ that he had to fix. Sure, he messed with the Sea Spire, but he couldn’t fix that. And other than that, Steven hasn’t done anything bad. The only one is Jasper, and that was recent. Plus, it doesn’t explain why Steven said he could mess up and nobody will know. When has Steven ever make a mistake and ‘get away with it’ other than with shattering Jasper? Never is what I’m saying. He has hidden his feelings, but that’s not making a mistake and hiding it from everyone. However, these things do make sense if you see this speech as Pink Diamond/Rose Quartz saying these things about herself, it makes a lot of sense. Rose was depicted as a saint, an angel, and a healer in the original series. She had to be the ‘bigger gem’ and to help people out. She also made a lot of mistakes. She hurt Volleyball, she hurt Spinel by leaving her behind, she hurt everyone by causing the gem war and faking her shattering. However, even after her faked shattering, she couldn’t escape the person she was. But then Steven was born and fixed everything. He ‘fixed’ spinel, he fixed the earth, he fixed the diamonds and changed homeworld, and his relationships with the Crystal gems, especially Bismuth. Pink/Rose hid many secrets and made many mistakes. Only ‘recently’ (in gem time) did most of her secrets and mistakes come out. Steven was there to fix all of Pink’s mistakes. However, he couldn’t fix himself or his mother whom he saw as a fraud. “I’m not a real person,” Rose said this to Greg.

“But, but Pink’s gone, right? Pink Steven even yelled to White Diamond that she was gone. There’s no way Pink is still alive. So… so what’s going on?” You may ask. I thought so too... but then, why did Steven say those things? Why is there a video showing that Pink isn’t gone? (Link by the way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaLRGg6UJQw ) Why do we still have no idea on the chest? How come Steven is the only gem to not have corruption scars? Like not even one. I think the crewiverse is still hiding something about Pink Diamond and Steven’s identity with her.

After all, we don’t know why the trailer called Steven pink? We don’t know why it mentioned Steven remembering the Strawberry battlefield when that had nothing to do with the ending. We don’t have a complete resolution on Steven and his feelings about his mother. We haven’t seen Steven fully healed. We know he’s healing now but we still don’t have all the pieces. We know that has a therapist and has moved on. But not all our questions were answered.

So… here’s a theory, what if… Steven, complete Steven, is Pink Diamond? Like, the flawed version of herself that she didn’t like. The real her. The version of her that wasn’t build-up by the diamonds or the crystal gems. Let’s start with how Everything’s Fine started. After Steven talks to Connie, he sees himself in the tv reflection and begins denying the horrible thoughts and actions he did. He denies he’s a Diamond like he did in Homeworld Bound. He keeps proclaiming that he’s Steven Universe and that he doesn’t hurt people. He doesn’t want to be a Diamond. After all, they’re the bad guys. Steven isn’t a bad guy. He isn’t Pink or Rose, so he shouldn’t be acting this way. The part that interested me was the fact that he kept saying he’s Steven Universe. At first, you think it’s just denial that he hurt people and had thoughts about hurting people, but then the break down happens and this made me rethink Steven’s claims. I think Steven or in this case, Pink Diamond is denying that she is still Pink Diamond inside. She can’t be back, Pink and Rose were bad people. Steven is a good person. He doesn’t hurt people like how she used to do. He’s the one who makes everything better. However, once the intervention happened, Pink/Steven realized that they haven’t changed and gotten worse.

When Steven talks about how ‘great’ he was, it looks at Pearl. But Pearl never thought about Steven like this. She did, however, thought Rose was great and powerful. Pearl loved Rose for being sweet and caring. She loved the version of Rose that was a healer and didn’t do anything wrong. But that was only one side of Pink. Volleyball was the one who knew the other side of her. The side of Pink that Pink didn’t like anymore. When he was talking about maturity, it shot to Amethyst, not only as a show that Steven is jealous of Amethyst’s maturity, but also, back when Rose was around, Amethyst saw Rose as the most mature gem, with Garnet second in command. Rose was a mother symbol to Amethyst, so she had to build up the image that she was always mature. Then it cuts to Connie when Steven talks about how he always knows what to do. This was the most interesting. Connie was the one who got Steven to think that he had a magical destiny. She was the one who thought Rose was this magical, all-knowing creature who had planned a destiny for Steven. I mean, with Lion and the armory, it’s not that hard for her to jump to the conclusion and she was just a young kid who read a lot of stories about destinies so seeing these signs, it’s no wonder she thought Steven had a destiny. However, Rose never wanted Steven to have a destiny. She just wanted Steven to be Steven. She wanted a normal human life like Greg, and she wanted to be apart of the human world. Then when Steven said he only has gotten worse; it cuts to Greg. Greg was the one who made Rose realize in We Need to Talk, that Rose hadn’t changed. That she didn’t respect humans, and that he was the reason Rose began to want to have Steven so she could change. Then it cuts to Garnet when Steven talks about how he’s an angel. This represents back during the war that Garnet saw Rose as an angel. A pure being who told Garnet to be herself and don’t question anything. Garnet saw Rose as the perfect leader. However, that’s not true at all. In “We’re only falling apart”, we learned that Rose depended on the other Crystal Gems to help lead the rebellion because she didn’t how to exactly lead on her own.

Then, there’s the final line. “I haven’t learned a thing from MY problems.” Which doesn’t make sense if Steven was truly himself and not Rose/Pink? If he wasn’t her, then why did he say that? What problems didn’t he learn from? The only way this line makes sense is the fact that Pink felt she never changed from being a diamond. That she thought she had changed and become a better person when really, she hadn’t changed at all. Steven says, “they’ve just made me worse.” This is the fact that Steven shattered Jasper and thought about shattering White Diamond horrified him. He had done something, not even his mother did… (Maybe, we don’t know exactly how Pink Pearl was hurt. Some people have said that Pink Pearl was shattered, but we don’t know.) Pink/Rose was against Shattering, no matter what. It’s the reason she bubbled Bismuth away. So, knowing she betrayed her word to everyone, especially herself, would horrify her. She was now like the other diamonds, but now they’ve healed. They recovered, but Pink hadn’t.

Also, let’s look at Homeworld Bound, mostly the scene of Steven running away from the Diamonds and losing one of his slippers. Besides allowing the Diamonds a chance to follow Steven back to Beach City, the slipper is a reference to Cinderella. When Cinderella lost her slipper, she was reverting into her true self. I think the same thing happened to Steven, or should I say, Pink Diamond. Of course, no magic turned Pink into Steven and there wasn’t a magic fairy godmother who gave Rose her wish. But Pink did become Steven Universe, she embraced this new identity, forgetting about her life as both Rose Quartz and Pink Diamond. She was given a whole new world, a new relationship with Greg and the crystal gems. She was given a new lease on life and learned to better herself as Steven. But she couldn’t escape herself. White was right about her, about Pink’s flaws and how Pink’s light was in Steven. However, White was wrong about him. White thought Steven’s human body wasn’t Pink. After all, Pink’s not human, she’s a gem. However, the human side of Steven is Pink as well. The human side was Pink’s memories, her personality, her ‘humanity’. Pink Steven was her powers, her anger, her code. But removing the gem wouldn’t bring Pink back, because Pink was already there as Steven. The group just never realized this. Not even Steven.

That is until Steven loses his slipper in Homeworld Bound. There, the magic of just being Steven was gone. Steven/Pink was slowly realizing the truth, but because they’re desperate and hate being Pink Diamond, they deny to their heart content that they were JUST Steven Universe. They do all the things old Steven used to do. They went to Little Homeworld to try and pick up the broken pieces, to try and keep the effects of the ‘spell’ up. To try and make nobody realize that Pink Diamond/Rose Quartz was back. And it did work since all the characters except for Pink/Steven never realize that Pink was back, and they assumed that Steven was just having a meltdown. However, just because the characters don’t realize Pink is back doesn’t mean they don’t realize that something is wrong with Steven, so they have the intervention. They try and get the truth out of Steven, and this is where Steven spills the beans about Shattering Jasper and thinking about shattering White Diamond. Once that pin was dropped, the magic was gone. Pink/Rose/Steven had fully returned, and the mask was off. They finally vent about being put up on a pedestal. They vent about having to be perfect and how they made mistakes. They’re scared, angry, and full of doubt and despair. They realize that they were back to Pink Diamond, but even worse since they shattered Jasper. Then, they corrupt. They lose control of themselves and turn into Godzilla Steven/Pink Diamond. They become a monster. Thankfully, Steven recovers and turns back to normal. He begins to learn to love himself and moved out of Beach City. Steven… Pink Diamond is going to find themselves.

Okay, so if this theory is true, then why did Pink Steven said that Pink Diamond was gone in Change Your Mind? Well, it’s because they weren’t wrong. The old version of Pink Diamond was gone as far as Steven was a concern. Pink Steven/Pink Diamond hated being Pink Diamond, of being Rose Quartz. They were never as happy as those identities. They wanted nothing to do with their past identities. They were tired of everyone wanting the old versions of Pink Diamond to come back, so Pink yelled that she was gone. She assumed that since she was now Steven, she wasn’t Pink Diamond anymore. She thought she was free. But by the time of Steven’s Breakdown, she realized that she wasn’t free from herself and that she was still Pink Diamond inside. She’s just been denying it because she didn’t WANT to be Pink Diamond. That’s why Pink Steven yelled, “SHE’S GONE!!!!”.

So, then what Steven is? Steven is Pink Diamond, but in the form, she always wanted to be. During the Diamond Days arch, it was at first depicted as an allegory of someone who had become trans and was dealing with a toxic family that didn’t accept that the person was trans. But we decided that it was more than that since we thought Steven wasn’t Pink Diamond. However, with this info, I think we’re thinking of black and white. Pink Diamond never went away. She changed her form into something she liked, and his name is Steven Universe. Pink Diamond is trans and she transitioned into the male identity of Steven Universe. Pink Diamond as Steven found himself. She was never comfortable being a diamond, and even when she became Rose Quartz, she was never herself because of the war and the fact that she technically stole the identity of the other Rose Quartzes. But Steven. Steven can be himself. There aren’t any Stevens that Pink is stealing the identity of. They realize that they can learn to love and be loved. They learned how to make real connections with people and how to help people with their problems. But now, they’ve grown. They realized that they aren’t perfect, that they don’t have to be perfect, and everyone will love them even if they aren’t perfect. They realized that it’s okay that to be ugly, that it’s okay to feel awful sometimes, and that this ugly side of themselves will always exist. They began to learn to accept the fact that they are still a Diamond despite the gender-flipped. They’re beginning to learn to accept that the Diamonds have changed, and the world is changing around them. Steven accepted that he’s Steven and Pink Diamond and that he’s allowed to love himself. Steven will learn to love like the People around himself and learn how to be human.

Anyway, maybe I’m right, maybe I’m wrong. But these have been my thoughts about Steven’s Breakdown. Maybe we’ll never know the answers to the questions I asked. Maybe Steven isn’t Pink Diamond and I’m just blowing smoke into a room. Maybe fanfic could answer them? I don’t know. But hope you like my little post.

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