What keeps Steven from rebuilding his supportive Network
Short answer: The black-and-white sense of morality that he holds not others, but himself to.
Steven is known to sympathize with people and gems who did bad things. He sees them not as the abusers, but as the victims, and, as we all know, fixes them. He grants them a sense of self worth and supports them and guides them through their pain to help them reach a better state of being.
He has always been a symbol of change, both in his actions and in what he brings out in others. He helps others change. So why is he struggeling to change so badly? Isnāt he a victim, too, of circumstance, of Era 2, of unintentional harm cause to him by people who love him?
Steven grew up in the image that he should be his mom, Rose Quartz. He felt he had to reach that perfection someday: Be as strong as her, as kind as her, as good as her, as loving as her, fix everything like her. He held himself to this morality FIRST.
And THEN out of that morality and out of his innate desire to help others, he aided others in change.
Steven grew up first knowing the portrait of his mother and his dadās stories of her as well as the CGs dearly missing her. He knew, he felt, that this was an image he had to reach, somehow. So, on that foundation, on those expectations, he began to build his identity.
His identity, son of Rose Quartz. Meant to be as good as her, meant to fulfill some kind of magical destiny. This is not to say he only helps or helped people because of her: But I am certainly trying to say that he started doing so because of her, because of these expectations. And those expectations also determined the approach he takes.
His approach is similar to that of Rose Quartz: The perfect one looking down on someone imperfect, and aiding them to be better.
Rose Quartz was beloved and adored during the rebellion. She was always right. She was the leader. Nobody questioned her. She was seen as the perfect, the pure and good gem that should lead this kind of rebellion. When she met Garnet, she deflects Garnetās question on whether she makes Rose upset or not. Of course she doesnāt make Rose upset. Oh, no, it doesnāt even MATTER how she feels. The only thing that matters to this perfect and mysterious and everloving gem, with behavior never before seen by gemkind, is how this imperfect, new fusion sees the world.
Itās romantic, itās pretty, like out of a fairytale. Life isnāt a fairytale, though, and Rose wasnāt perfect. That, however, was her approach. When she speaks to Pearl, the way she says sheās willing to let Pearl do whatever she wants without forcing her to fight for the rebellion, as if Pearl having the right to leave should be equal to the fact that Rose would simply accept it if it were so. Or, remember the sheer horror on her face when Greg calls out her laughter, as she realizes sheās made a mistake, that her abuse really did leave scars and she has to admit that the perfect Rose isnāt real. The imperfect one is, though.
Rose held herself to an image of perfection, likely something that the diamonds raising her planted deeply in her mind (gem?). Thus, even during the rebellion, she built a sense of morality, and refused to back down from it... and when she had to, with Bismuth, when she felt holding to that morality was no longer perfect, when her philosophy of friendship and perfection failed: She hides the evidence. Kinda like the diamonds hid Homeworldās failures.
This image of perfection, despite not being truly real, prevailed till her death, till the moment Steven was born. So Steven, born into the world having immedietly a perfect, a not even REAL personās space, an impossible space of perfection to fill, holds himself to the same standards. (Not to mention his gem programming likely still playing a part.)
She was perfect, so he has to be perfect. He has to know better. He has to be better. He has to be as strong as her, and as kind as her, and as sacrificing as her. He despises himself when his solutions dont immedietly work out the best way possible (blaming himself for the boat trip with lapis). He blames himself for when his attempts at helping go wrong, because Roseās failures were covered up. There is no story where Rose Quartz The Perfect has to make morally ambiguous decisions, or where her way doesnāt work out despite the best intentions. She was just Good.
He apologizes in the series constantly: Because he feels he just canāt make mistakes. Making mistakes is unacceptable. Making mistakes distances him from the image he is meant to fill, an image he slowly, story for story, finds out wasnāt real. An image that he finds as just that: An image, a dream, a concept. His mother wasnāt perfect.
If he isnāt her son striving to be her, striving to be as good as her, if he isnāt the only one who can reach her level of perfection, if the very purpose he feels he was made for and the very foundation of his identity is a lie, then who is he?
That brings us to the problem. The moral problem of a character that means good but makes undeniable mistakes isnāt something that Rose solved. She left. Either way to see it, Steven is now there, meant to figure out what she didnāt: How does he deal with the inevitable guilt he feels for not being perfect? How can he be perfect? And thatās not even the question thatās going through his brain right now.
The question he seems to be stuck on is Why am I not perfect?
Why does it hurt? Why do I have thoughts of vengeance? Why did all of this stick with me? Why do I keep making mistakes? Why do things feel good that shouldnāt?
The world, as it is, divides itself into two perspectives: How we see ourselves, and how we see other people. These two are fundamentally different. Steven lived and grew up in a very specific dynamic: He has to be Better, he has to be Good, and he has to help the rest of the world be Better too.
And now heās hit with the truth. Heās not perfect. He can hurt people on accident. He already has. His trauma leaves a lasting, lingering effect. When he speaks to other gems, he aids them because he feels their existance is already fundamentally justified. When he thinks of himself, he still feels he NEEDS to justify his existance FIRST. And the only way to do that is to be perfect. And the thing is, to be better, he has to accept heās not perfect. Itās an endless cycle.
And now he feels his world is falling apart.
He canāt tell the gems what happened to Jasper, because then theyāll see that he failed. He failed to fill the mold, the place in the world he was born into. Heās terrified of what he did to WD in a dissociative, trauma-triggered rage because, dammit, now they know heās not perfect. What will they think? What will they do when they find out?
And the funny thing is? The only person running away from who he truly is is Steven himself.
Steven has to change. He has to change his worldview, and especially his view of himself. Thereās a difference between āIām not my momā and āBeing her son doesnāt mean I need to live up to her imageā.
Steven has to accept that heās flawed, because then, he can see that nobody wanted him to be perfect in the first place. That is a conscious and incredibly difficult choice to make, however. A choice people usually only make when they have nowhere else to turn, which is where the show is getting him to right now.
Another problem that comes up is that Stevenās only known advice to change from himself. He knows it only in the dynamic of āGood Person helps person B get to a better placeā. Heās been the ony dishing out advice so far. He sees the flaws in gems, in the CGs, in humans, and immedietly dismisses their advice, because theyāre flawed. Because theyāre not better than him.
Because heās built his worldview on an unrealistic dynamic that heās always been a part of, and now his confused brain insists he has to meet/see someone who is perfect and someone who could say a few words and give him an immediete easy fix.
That fix doesnāt exist, though, and sooner or later, Steven Universe has to accept that not only is the world grayscaled, but so is he.
