I’ve been seeing a lot of people within the fandom asking why Steven is suddenly so angry and where it all came from.
It is shown in Steven’s Birthday that Steven is a bit delayed in his development. His appearance and mentality hadn’t changed since he was 9, despite him being 14. The same thing can be said about his struggles with mental health. They don’t show up until later on because he didn’t have the time or the ability to recognize that he felt wrong until SUF.
We don’t see Steven develop physically until the movie. He was 16 when he had his first growth spurt. This can lead to the conclusion that he is starting to experience puberty, which means that his hormones will start to fluctuate. His anger issues are understandable and don’t really come out of nowhere. From what I’ve seen, people seem to forget that Steven is a human child, which means that he experiences human issues as well as gem problems.
Steven has experienced extreme trauma (as we know) and his maturity level has gotten to a point where he is able to comprehend his feelings towards what has happened to him in the past. His life has been hell and since it’s Era III in SUF, there isn’t really much that Steven can do to avoid dealing with his complicated emotions. He’s angry, he’s hurt, and he bottled everything up out of fear that it would send others spiraling or cause someone else pain. That would destroy anyone from the inside out and the effects that would have on someone’s mental health, half gem or not, are extreme.
Steven’s reactions to everything aren’t actually that out of the ordinary when you consider his position, aside from turning into a literal monster. The amount of trauma he was put through would most definitely elicit that type of emotional response. Trauma messes people up a lot. Add to that Steven’s struggle with his own identity as well as his support group drifting away from him for bigger and better things in their own lives and now you’ve got a mental breakdown waiting to happen. Steven was destined to break from the very first episode of SU back in May of 2013.
Steven is struggling a lot throughout the entire series, we just don’t see it as much or in as extreme of ways as we do in Future, but he’s been beating himself up and blaming himself for everything since Season 1. It’s more sprinkled in through the show, but it is most definitely there. He feels bad for things that aren’t his fault. For example, everyone around him expects him to be like Rose, whether they know it or not. That is how they tend to behave, especially once his powers start to show up. Pearl makes it so much worse because of how in love with Rose she was. She probably didn’t have cruel intentions or mean to hurt Steven, but the amount of time she spends praising Rose and how great Rose was and what an amazing leader she was makes Steven feel like he’s not good enough to be around the gems because he’s not enough like his mom.
The fact that every other gem in the series aside from the Main 3 call Steven “Rose Quartz” or “Pink Diamond” contributes to his identity crisis which in turn damages his mental health and then becomes a reason for his breakdown. Now apply that same amount of detail to every single thing that has happened to Steven since Episode 1 and it starts to build up.
People can only bottle things up for so long, that dam is only so strong. It was bound to come crashing down sooner or later, and it’s probably a good thing that it happened while Steven was still living with the gems, otherwise the end result could’ve been a lot worse.
All I’m saying is Steven’s breakdown and his anger didn’t really come out of nowhere, they were built up over years and years of trauma. Era III gave him the time to think about it, and because he hadn’t dealt with his own issues before, he had absolutely no idea what to do so he pushed everyone away until he snapped.
