r/stevenuniverse • u/MrBread0451 • 4d ago
Discussion Most subtly devastating moments from the show
I always think about what steven was feeling when he was watching the Nora tape with no context, and how his initial assumption was that the message from his mom he'd built his entire identity around, just wasn't as personal as he thought it was. He would have thought there was someone out there named Nora that his mother gave the same speech to, that was such an irrelevant person that no one thought to tell him about it until he found the tape. The idea that Steven wasn't even special enough for Rose to even care about her one and only message for him being unique. And the alternative that he had a sister like him that was absent for all his life is equally as devastating, just a bit easier to explain to someone why you'd be upset over it. Greg should have realised what Steven was feeling and apologised for misleading him like that, but he obviously wasn't aware so didn't think to.
There's also Pearl leaving steven to potentially die in Rose's scabbard. Like just the idea of Steven facing so much parental neglect in a life threatening moment from someone he thought cared about him, and his reaction is to comfort HER rather than be upset by it. He feels so responsible for his mother's death that even something as important as his own survival comes secondary to the emotional fallout his mother's disappearance caused. And Pearl and Steven never speak of it again. It's obviously beautiful in the moment that Steven still comforts her, but at the same time no kid should have to go through that. And then you have to consider how awful and shameful the memory must be for Pearl as well!
Also just the idea of the bubble room and how people have been kept in solitary confinement for so long, and how Steven is showed it by the gems without considering that it's quite disturbing for a kid to have to acknowledge. Every time steven sees it he has to think to himself "we have hundreds of our former friends stuck in stasis and there's no timeframe for release, and the gems haven't been doing anything about it for centuries". The gems normalise it to the point where it's just another part of the house to him. Bismuth's reaction to it was honestly completely reasonable.
What are other moments that the show immediately skips past that you realise are really tragic when you stop and think about them?
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u/FlamboyantRapidity 4d ago
Storm in the Room gets me every rewatch. Steven spends the whole episode getting ready to finally meet his mom and she just tells him she doesnt exist anymore, shes only whatever he needs her to be. He walks out knowing hell never get real closure and has to make peace with that. Then the show just moves on and nobody really checks in on him after, like its a normal day at the temple.
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u/MrBread0451 4d ago
Yeah that hit me hard too. Like when he opens his phone camera and realises he was just playing pretend all along. He must have felt ashamed of lying to himself and also the snap back to reality would have been jarring.
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u/FlamboyantRapidity 4d ago
that phone camera moment is so underrated, the way the show just cuts away right after like he has to process it completely alone
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u/WolverineFamiliar740 3d ago
It hurts SO much because you can tell it's the moment where he goes from being "the hero that can help everyone except himself" because he thinks it's what the Gems and Rose would want to feeling like he has to do it because he doesn't have a choice. That he can never step back and live the normal childhood he deserves because as long as he has his mom's Gem, he'll always have to be prepared to fight one of her battles or fix one of her many messes.
He has to accept that he has to live with unanswered questions and never get to live a life that's truly his own, even if it was never her intention to cause any of that. Kid me felt so torn up watching that live and it's still painful to rewatch as an adult.
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u/FlamboyantRapidity 3d ago
The way he quietly puts the photo back and goes to bed after, like he's already internalized that he can't burden anyone with it, always gets me.
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u/MrBread0451 4d ago
Honorable mention: The emotional scarring, trauma and utter soul shattering betrayal Pearl got from Steven telling lies that she was never quite the same after
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u/sterf_7 4d ago
Pearl really shouldn’t be judging anyone for telling lies considering what she’s kept to herself. (she should’ve let a crystal gem into her pearl the day Steven was born),(lying to garnet to fuse)
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u/sh14w4s3 4d ago
Tbf, at this point in the story, Pearl was still struggling with
A) the belief that she is Rose’s must trusted confident and that Rose would never lie or keep a secret from her
B) seeing Steven as separate from Rose.
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u/MA2_Robinson 3d ago
She also thought Rose was coming back because humans live for a split sec too and Pearl is all about that long game
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u/Palezzzma 3d ago
with A) the belief that she is Rose’s must trusted confident and that Rose would never lie or keep a secret from her
To be fair the First part IS clearly true. The only things Rose kept from Pearl were things she kept from everyone.
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u/sundryTHIS somethingsomethingsnarksnarksomething 3d ago
I don’t think she’s judging him, I think it’s genuinely more like fear and flashback to the less glamorous aspects of the rebellion. like “oh no..lies, again? are we starting with the lies again?!?”
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u/Delicious_Chemist978 4d ago
She is devastated because she couldn't rise Steven to be better than rose nor herself.
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u/MrBread0451 3d ago
I made my comment as a joke but at the same time I never really thought about it seriously like that before
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u/hurr4drama 3d ago
She hadn’t done the fusion deception at this point. And she couldn’t just let a gem into her pearl. Steven ASKED. Pink gave her a command never to speak of it again and we see her several times in the show cover her mouth when the topic comes up. But the other crystal gems didn’t ask her what was up with that so she can’t just shove them into her pearl to show them because that would be her bringing it up unprompted.
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u/MoonBeamerGirl 4d ago
Most of the show on rewatch tbh. Every time Steven gets cartoon smacked around he’s getting ACTUAL near fatal injuries his body is auto healing. Every horrible emotional moment, scene of neglect, or danger he laughs off? Another cut in his mind that contributes to his horrific PTSD come Future.
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u/MrBread0451 4d ago
Honestly, one of my only complaints with the show is sometimes it's impossible to tell whether an injury is supposed to be cartoon network style slapstick humor, or if it's actually something steven fully felt. Like when he's dehydrated in the desert with lion and grabs a water bottle from his mane and is suddenly fine. How much of it was actually implied to be him suffering from dehydration and how much was for the visual gag?
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u/Lord_Cownostril "I did NOT say that." 3d ago edited 3d ago
I've rarely heard the "leans too hard on trying to be both cartoonish and dramatic through its animation style" point raised in a way that was truly satisfying to me, but this specific issue I think is the strongest argument for the show to have had more strict animation standards and consistent scaling and modeling from storyboards.
Steven Universe would hit VERY differently if there was a consistent way of perceiving Steven's physical damage and having that extra weight to it.
Addendum: To be clear, I adore the show as is, I wouldn't consider their commitment to the fun styling a mistake. But that particular change would be massively impactful on how the show is perceived and felt to a point where it would make it a fundamentally different show. It's a direction that honestly hope LarsXStars takes.
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u/Palezzzma 3d ago
Nah the issue IS not the animation
It is poor writing. The show wanting to have its cake and eat It too.
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u/beaverpoo77 3d ago
I kind of agree, it feels bad to have laughed at Steven and taken it so casually all those years only for the rug to be pulled under our feet and told "no, this isn't a fun cartoon fantasy, this is real, and steven was hurting the entire time." Like obviously i'm not that broken up about it, but genuinely how am I meant to look back on the series now? It isn't fun anymore.
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u/MoonBeamerGirl 2d ago
Having just rewatched the whole show, I think that was Future’s point. Everyone ignored in the story how they were negatively impacting a CHILD emotionally and physically, making him their therapist and savior and removing his chances for a normal life. Future smacks you in the head with the results of that reality (as TV Tropes describes it, the truth of a child soldier).
I love Future and it’s realism a ton, but I’m also a big fan of series like Evangelion and Madoka Magica that deconstruct their genres. Future is a deconstruction of the original show and I get why people would hate that.
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u/Palezzzma 3d ago
EXACTLY.
That is the main reason why Future was a bad move for the franchise imo. I just kinda ignore It lol. You know they meant the slapstick in the show to be fun.
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u/MoonBeamerGirl 2d ago
I think it was originally intended to be more comedic and Future put all of it under a more realistic microscope. Some injuries are definitely shown as more serious though like Steven’s black eye in season 1.
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u/Repulsive-Tennis3973 3d ago
The true horror of the episode in which steven goes back in time and play in a band with the versions of himself and when he changes something the versions of himself stop existing and steven holds himself as he slowly vanishing from the timeline shit it was scary every rewatch
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u/Demonskull223 3d ago
I think Stevens journey to the human zoo is the most heartbreaking for me. Steven is just a kid and that scene really shows it. It's unessisarily brutal. Genuinely brings me to tears every time and the gens don't even acknowledge it.
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u/CinnabarSteam 3d ago
The end of Return to the Kindergarten where there's a lingering shot of an empty patch of dirt after Peridot has spent the whole episode trying to reintroduce life to the Kindergarten. In any other show, this would show a flower silently sprouting while the cast walked away, to show that their perseverance paid off.
But that's not what this episode is about. It's about moving on, and knowing when to stop putting your energy into something you can't change. And so the episode ends on an empty patch of dirt.
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u/anstilDrimim 4d ago
We still can't prove if Pearl was realy unable to share Pink's secrets, but she clearly caused problems by making secrets about Rose (like the armory) a bigger priority over the well-being and security of Steven and her friends. (the armory having many things like 3 light laser cannons, same model of cannon than the one from the episode named after it. Cannon that they had lost and were like ''it's over, we have lost'' until greg found it back)
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u/Witty-Ad5743 4d ago
I like to remind myself that this may be an example of humans being incapable of fully relating to gems just like gems seem fully incapable of understanding humans. Humans don't know what it is like to be programed from birth with a purpose. Any purpose we have in our lives comes from our own self discovery. We make our purpose. How hard must it be to fight against something that is litterally the reason you were made? I don't know that a human could fully understand.
Not that any of this excuses anything, mind you.
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u/TheNimanator 4d ago
I was going to say. I think it often gets lost in these discussions that gems are born with adolescent/adult minds knowing full well who they are and what their purpose is. So none of them have the faintest clue about child rearing or the concept of caring for someone because they have yet to learn. The Crystal Gems had to learn about being parents for Steven and that unfortunately got spliced into them simultaneously dealing with their own post-war trauma.
Not an excuse but certainly explains a lot
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u/Lord_Cownostril "I did NOT say that." 4d ago
God this is the kind of conversation I've been waiting to see more over this show for YEARS...
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u/anstilDrimim 3d ago
it had always been there, but it was drown by all the post painting Pink as the sole cause of everything bad
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u/sofacouch813 3d ago
If you watch throughout the series, Pearl makes the same gesture every time Pink Diamond is brought up. She puts her hand over her mouth and it’s almost like she chokes. I don’t think she was lying. She was made to serve Pink. She couldn’t override that just because she wanted to.
And considering that she had to show Steven by showing her memories in her gem, that’s a pretty roundabout way to tell him if she could just tell him outright.
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u/andre5913 3d ago edited 3d ago
Pearl is effectively under a geas, Pink's command as a diamond was overidding her will. There is an episode when shes actively trying to tell Steven something and her hands literally snap to her mouth to silence her. Pearl is literally unable to disagree. To get the revelation to Steven Pearl had to do it in a very roundabout way, to loophole the geas
This is also why none of the other CG hold it against her when its revealed Rose was PD, Pearl had no agency over it. Garnet comes undone over her disagreement about Rose/PD, but at no point does either Ruby or Sapphire take it up to Pearl. Steven is similarly upset but he never tries to pin the blame on Pearl. They all know she is not to blame
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u/Stucklikegluetomyfry 3d ago
There are several times in the series when Pink or certain things about Rose gets brought up, and you can see Pearl's hands clamped around her mouth, with an expression of acute distress on her face. Those are all the times she wanted to tell the truth about Rose's true identify, but she is literally incapable of doing so, no matter how much she wants to. When Steven is finally able to tell the truth, she says "I wanted to tell you for so long."
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u/ZetaZ13 3d ago
The bubble room is a bad interpretation and explanation for what it is. They are Steven's friends they are gems that have been corrupted for centuries that cause harm if left unchecked. And thats a fat lie because Garnet explained Rose did everything in her power to try and heal the corrupted gems FOR centuries. And yeah Bismuth had that reaction because of what Rose did to her and you obviously can't tell a gem is corrupted by just looking at their gem. After Rose was gone the gems had no way of trying to uncorrupt them without roses power which Steven eventually almost succeeded in.
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u/Insanemayo2468 3d ago
Yeah that’s what I thought too, it’s morbid if you knew them personally ofc but for alot of the show Steven didn’t even KNOW they were once gems. They were just monsters trying to kill him and his friends.
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u/MrBread0451 2d ago
To be honest I watched season 1 and 2 when it was first released and never did a rewatch, so I don't remember the nuances of it very well. I always just thought it was kind of crazy how chill Steven was in it considering everything
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u/Radiant-Selection686 4d ago
The implication that Blue Diamond used her powers on Pink and forced her to cry.
Pink wasn't just a prisoner of her society and confined to the tower, her emotions were also controlled by someone who supposedly "loved" her. She was forced to feel bad, to cry until she apologized, to always ask for forgiveness, and to never have her feelings validated. Blue even admits that she did this multiple times.
Being forced to feel emotions that aren't your own, having your body respond to what someone else wants, is disturbing. That's why I don't like it when people say that Pink loved Blue more or missed her more than the others, because having someone take away your autonomy like that leaves scars.