I’ve seen a sentiment circulating that indicates a lack of understanding about the nuanced process of growth so
Yes, in “Snow Day” Steven was super frustrated that the Gems were trying to bond with him using activities and expectations that were more appropriate for his childhood. He felt that they didn’t understand he’d matured and moved on from some things they seemed to be clinging to.
And yes, almost immediately afterwards in “Little Graduation” Steven was so in denial refusing to accept others’ changing/growing that he tried to stop them from embracing change for themselves.
But no, this was not “contradictory” or “hypocritical” or bad writing.
I mean, technically, sure, it’s kind of a contradictory idea if a person wants others to respect their evolution but won’t do the same for those others. The problem with framing this as hypocrisy is that Steven has been aware of his own growth the entire time he’s been doing it, while some of the “offscreen” growth for others has happened while he wasn’t able to participate in it. He’s only just gotten to a relatively stable part of his life where he can start to see a future for himself outside of constant firefighting and crisis mode, and he’s finally allowed to discover who he is beyond “everything that everybody wants me to be when I’m grown.”
The Gems’ behavior in “Snow Day” made him feel like they hadn’t been paying attention to who he’d been growing up to be right under their noses. The people he tried to trap into not leaving him had grown similarly, but their choices and changes came as a great shock to him–so much so that he felt like he was losing them. Kids who are growing up don’t feel like their parents are “losing” the child they once were–though parents do sometimes say they feel that. He did not understand the Gems’ feeling of loss, but he did understand his own, and believed they were very different things.
All that time that Steven was fighting for his family and fighting for Earth, he was doing it because he wanted to preserve and be part of this world he loved. In a similar sense to what he dealt with in the movie, he finally felt like he was DONE and had earned a stable existence, and he wanted to enjoy that … only to find he’ll always have more to do AND the people he did it for/with are ready to scatter to the edges of the Earth (and beyond) without him. His desire to change and grow in a way comfortable to him WHILE seeing his friends as a stable, comforting constant that will support him is not hypocritical or contradictory. It actually all comes from the same place: he wants to flourish in the garden he’s helped to plant, and his childhood having been spent in an ever-changing, goalpost-moving, terrible roller coaster of trauma has made him want to finish his growing up with a stable ground for once.
Trauma is often processed after some time, when it’s become safe. And then, like we saw in “Growing Pains,” Steven had to come to terms with the fact that he was now reacting to smaller things the way his body and mind had learned to react to anything upsetting. He melts down and has freakouts, and nobody understands.
Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl have their own ways of changing, but none has done so in a way that it fundamentally damages Steven’s relationship with them or makes them unable to continue interacting. They live for thousands of years and he can count on them, and they’ve been there for him through many to most of the traumatic experiences even though they failed to protect him from the traumatic effects. He understands, logically, that things must change and that change is GOOD sometimes, but when that change breaks up your friend’s band, brings in a stranger to love your friend, throws your friend into space for more dangerous adventures, and makes you face that your best friend is moving into a stage of her life that you don’t understand and can’t necessarily follow, you just want to stop feeling bad. You just want to stop feeling like you’re always on the brink of losing everything.
The writers of Steven Universe Future did not forget their own movie happened and have Steven still pining for a happily ever after despite lessons learned. The writers also did not write Steven as a hypocrite who thinks change is okay for himself but bafflingly cannot handle it in others. He wanted the Gems to continue to be there with him on his journey, and when they kept wanting to do things that took him back before he’d worked through so much of this–not realizing he’d become a vegetarian, thinking he’d like Pupcopter because it’s a (kiddie) version of Dogcopter, mommying him with clothes he doesn’t want to wear and criticizing his breakfast choices–he felt that they were not making the minimum effort to journey with him. He felt like they were out-of-touch parents who needed him to be a young child to relate to him. He felt like he wasn’t being respected in the growth and change he’d made.
And he can feel that at the same time as he feels others’ changes are forcing him to be more distant from them.
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