what makes steven himself?
in this year’s emmy-nominated SU episode, jungle moon, steven has a surreal, symbolic dream where he’s seeing through pink diamond’s eyes and feeling her emotions. when he wakes up, he finds the crack in the glass that pink made in the dream. this tells us that this wasn’t a mere dream, but a memory.
in a later episode, your mother and mine, steven asks garnet if being able to feel pink’s emotions and see her memories means she still exists.
in the episode rose’s scabbard, pearl asks steven if he remembers the strawberry battlefield. if he remembers anything about being rose. he doesn’t.
fast-forward. back to jungle moon.
further back, before the dream. stevonnie enters the place where pink and yellow once bickered, and they ask this question.
“have i been here before?”
the dream happens. they’re pink, steven’s pink and he knows exactly how she feels. but he doesn’t know why yet. he doesn’t know who pink is.
he finds out. pink is the gem he’s carried with him this whole time.
in other words, steven remembered being pink. being rose.
he tells blue and yellow who his mother was. in the episode legs from here to homeworld, they immediately treat him like he’s pink. not the gem type, but the person. he insists he’s not, of course. he isn’t, right? after all, this is the distinction he makes: “i don’t have any of pink’s or rose’s memories”.
yellow diamond denies it. she says, “i’m sure your memories are in there somewhere, pink”. like steven can become pink again, if he remembers.
in steven’s own terms, that’s the distinction between them.
what would separate them, if he does find those memories?
at the recent 2018 argentinian comic con, rebecca sugar is asked about the coming episodes. the interviewer conflates steven with rose, saying we now know that “pink is rose, and rose is steven”.
rebecca sugar pauses. she doesn’t deny it. instead, she says:
“you said pink is rose, and rose is steven… i’m trying to figure out how to say this without it being a spoiler. i hope that you’ll wonder if - no, i can’t”.
i think she wonders if people ever questioned that difference, or just took it for granted, as if it were a normal parent/child relationship. which it isn’t.
what did pink lose in becoming steven, if not her memories?
in the trailer to diamond days, we see steven vomiting rose’s hair. it’s coming from within, consuming him inside and out. if the clip is continuous, it makes sense that white diamond is thrilled. everything back to the way it “should” be.
this is something that horrifies and fascinates me - he is himself, but i don’t have an answer for what makes steven not rose. because even the making of new steven memories in a steven-specific context could be seen as a continuation of rose, if he also regained those memories. in a way, i can see him feeling like he’s slowly bringing her back to life through recovering that connection. just letting her have a childhood this time, before she “becomes herself”.
it will be a creeping dread for him, i think, as he’s pushed to ‘be pink’. i can see him asking himself whether he 'is’ pink, if being there triggers more memories. which it very likely will - he’s dreaming about her again.
the question itself is a form of dehumanization. it’s not whether rose could literally emerge like a magical mcguffin to fix everything - it’s the existential question of what makes steven “himself”, how he identifies and copes with not having an easy way to completely separate himself from her past.
it’s one nobody but him can answer.
like i said, i don’t feel entitled to answering that for him… but. i think the thing that would ultimately make him steven, even if he remembers being rose, is that he chooses to be. she chose to change, and he chose to stay. that’s his identity, that’s his context, and the recovery of old memories will always be put into context of their newfound humanity, and the ability to understand others like never before.
