Steven’s TV Powers: Good or Bad?
I know I’m a few weeks late but whatever.
When I first saw the Steven Universe: Future episode “In Dreams”, I was perfectly fine with Steven’s TV manipulation powers. First off, he’s going through puberty and so we’re bound to see new variations on his mother’s powers. Second, it wasn’t convenient for a big fight (what I mean is, it wasn’t introduced in the middle of a sticky situation for the sake of convenience). It wasn’t until later that I found out some people had an issue with this, with some going so far as to call defense of this reveal “retarded”.
(Please don’t go out and attack Cartoonshi or anything like that, but still, c’mon man. It’s not 2010 anymore and you’re [presumably] over the age of 13. You should be better than that.)
So that led me to think, was this reveal something that should have bothered me more? I mean, the reveal did come out of left field, and there wasn’t a lot of in-universe explanation to justify it. Or was there?
So, because we’re under quarantine and I have nothing better to do, let’s take a look at some evidence to better explain Steven’s TV signal manipulating powers! Wow, that was a mouthful!
First of All, Does This Make Sense????
Let’s look at some of Steven’s other powers, starting with the original series (going sorta in order of appearance). He can summon a shield, change his physical form (often overwhelming himself in the process), create a protective bubble around him and others, create an offensive variant of the same bubble with spikes, heal others (organics and Gems alike), bring plants to life, bubble Gems, fuse, turn TVs to static, communicate with others through his dreams, astral project himself into a new body when his physical one sleeps, telepathically communicate with others during states of intense of emotional distress, enter the dreams of others, float, view the world quite literally through the eyes of others when he sleeps, resurrect the dead, access his mother’s memories in dreams, project his aura to communicate with the Diamonds in some pseudo-dream dimension, pilot Pink Diamond’s ship, and create craters in the ground with powerful screams (Pink Steven). Moving onto Future, we’ve seen Steven achieve a new form that I can only compare to Dragon Ball Z’s Super Saiyan mode. In this Pink Steven mode, Steven has superhuman strength, stamina, and speed. Although Steven has always been stronger and more durable than a regular human, this form puts all that to shame. As Pink Steven, he can hold his own in a one-on-one against Jasper. When fused with Smoky Quartz, he and Amethyst achieve supersonic speeds capable of making an out of control roller coaster appear to move at a snail’s pace. He also has the ability to cause immense destruction of the environment around him, creating craters in the ground when Connie rejects his marriage proposal. While one could make the argument Pink would have been strong and fast, and we learn she was capable of mass destruction in the episode “Volley Ball”, we never learn about Pink having the ability to move so fast the world seems to stop around her. It’s possible that Steven’s powers, thanks to his ever changing human half, have gained the power to evolve! Whew, that’s a lot! Although it’s technically not a Gem-exclusive power, Steven is also very empathetic, and tries to reason with people before fighting them.
At first, Steven’s ability to hijack a TV signal and make it project his dreams doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Looking at his abilities, however, it becomes a little more plausible. Steven has telepathic powers that let him communicate in a variety of ways that others cannot. He can also manipulate technology, although this isn’t showcased in the main series as often. However, these can work together to create his new signal-interrupting abilities.
But maybe you’re not satisfied with this answer. Maybe you want us to keep going. So let’s take a deeper look at more evidence.
1: Steven’s Ability to Manipulate Technology
Steven’s ability to manipulate technology is the most important component to making his new signal interrupting powers work in the context of this show. The issue here is, we don’t see a whole lot of it in the show’s original run. We see him turn the TV to static in the episode, “Maximum Capacity,” but as others have pointed out, that doesn’t translate to hijacking a broadcast and staining his dreams onto VHS tapes. It can be paired with his telepathic abilities, especially those that he uses in his sleep, but still, maybe we should have gotten a few more hints to this along the way. Like, maybe he wakes up and finds an illustration from his dream in his schedule, or maybe he boots up a video game and finds one of the files named, “HELP ME” or something. Still, I don’t think the twist is irredeemable at this point.
On a side and mostly unrelated note that I wasn’t sure where to put, we also know Rose Quartz used video tapes to communicate with Steven, knowing that she’d never get the ability to talk to him in person. Greg also has a preference for VHS tapes, making them significant to all aspects of Steven’s life. As he’s able to live out events from Rose and Pink’s lives, I guess we could argue that using these VHS tapes to project his dreams is an extension of that “ability”. There is significance here but honestly, that isn’t enough on its own to justify Steven’s new power.
2: Steven’s Ability to Communicate With Others Through His Dreams (and the Power of his Dreams in General)
While I think showcasing his technology manipulation powers more would really help the plausibility of his new power, I find his telepathic abilities make everything a little more believable. Steven has been able to share dreams with others, and communicate with his Gem when he himself was unable to form his feelings into words. His telepathic abilities are working with his technology manipulating abilities to reach out for help when his organic half is refusing to. This could be an evolution of these powers, brought on by necessity. While Gem abilities stay the same throughout the entirety of a Gem’s existence, Steven isn’t all Gem, he’s half human, and that allows him to grow and change.
3: Gem Abilities & Technology
Lastly, let’s take a look at some of the other abilities held by Gems and their technology. First, we’ve seen Gems project their dreams before in the episode “Chille Tid” when we see Pearl’s dream/nightmare of surfing the seas on a piece of pizza with Rose Quartz. So we know that, at least some Gems, are capable of projecting their dreams for others to see. There are some complications with this, however. First off, Gems don’t need to sleep. Some, like Amethyst and Lapis, enjoy sleeping, but they don’t need to, and as a result, what we know about Gem dreaming is limited. Second, Pearl projected her dream in this episode, not Steven. Steven is not a Pearl. For all we know, Pearls are the only ones capable of projecting their dreams for others to see, but again, because we don’t see a lot of Gems sleep in the series, we don’t know a lot about this ability. Steven does have a strange relationship with dreams, as he can use it to get in touch with others in the present as well as the past, as it seems some of Pink’s memories are still in her Gem somewhere. While Steven having deep and complicated dreams is possible, his ability to project his dreams for others to see outside of a telepathic state is still a little wishy-washy for me. After all, a TV doesn’t have sentience. But…
But now let’s take a look at Gem technology. Gem technology is strange. From Gem rooms to ships, destabilizers to time-bending hourglasses, we’ve seen a lot of the things Gemkind is capable of. Rose’s room, for example, is capable of projecting whatever its inhabitant wants. While this wasn’t an ability of hers per se, it can be argued that it can tie in with Steven’s new ability to project his wants and fears onto his TV; the ability to project wants or needs is a capability of Gem technology. Additionally, and more importantly in the context of making these new TV powers work, is the Gem communication towers. We’ve only seen these things a few times, notably in the episodes “Coach Steven” and “Cry for Help”. Both times, the communication towers were interfering with TV broadcasts. While this wasn’t their purpose, it was a latent function in getting messages across the galaxy. Now you might be asking, what’s the purpose of bringing all this up? It’s Gem technology, not actual Gem ability. Except, it’s not uncommon for Gem technology to be powered by Gems.
In the episode “Catch and Release”, Peridot awakens in the Burning Room and exclaims, “Oh my stars. You’re going to harvest me!?” Although we never get a direct answer as to what “harvest” means, it can be inferred that harvesting is a process by which a Gem is used to power a piece of technology. We’ve seen Gem shards bring Frybo to life in the episode “Frybo.” We’ve seen walls and statues move in the episode “Familiar”, with the heavy implication that those are either Gems or Gem-like beings. And, most importantly for the case we’re trying to make for “In Dreams”, we see a Gem powering one of these communication towers.
Now, if memory serves, we never get a lot of information about this Gem in question. By the looks of it, it is some variation of Quartz, which makes sense as Quartz in real life is used to power some technologies, including clocks, because of its electrical conductivity. It should be noted that this doesn’t look anything like any Gem we’ve seen before in the show, instead bearing a strong resemblance to a real life cluster of quartz crystals. Whether this is a batch of Quartz harvested prematurely is unknown, but the significance of its use here cannot be ignored.
What does this tell us?
That Gems, not just Pearls, are capable of projecting non-verbal messages.
So Wait, What Did We Learn?
Steven’s ability to manipulate technology was not explored very much in the original series. However, it is plausible from the other things we have seen thus far. Steven has always had telepathic abilities that let him reach out to others when they were in need, including abilities that allow him to interact with others in shared dream worlds. Although many of these abilities come from his Gem, we need to remember that Steven is mostly organic. His Gem half has had a tremendous impact on his organic half, and so it isn’t too farfetched to think that his organic half has had an impact on his Gem half as well, possibly even to the point that his powers are evolving to surpass those of Pink Diamond. We’ve already seen this when he and Amethyst (as Smoky Quartz) were able to save a roller coaster full of screaming people at supersonic speeds. We also know that Gems are able to project messages, including dreams, so that others can see, and that sometimes, these abilities interfere with human technology, including TV broadcasts. All this, combined with the unpredictability that is puberty, and Steven’s ability to interfere with TV signals isn’t as farfetched as we may have thought.
The Takeaway
Maybe Steven’s ability to manipulate technology and put his dreams onto VHS tapes isn’t as far-out as we thought. The pieces are there, and whether or not they come together well is really up to the viewer. Maybe I helped you better understand it, maybe I didn’t. I don’t know. I’m mostly looking for a way to keep my mind active during this quarantine. Like this new power or not, but to say it comes completely out of left-field is a little unfair to the show. Poor writing? Yeah, there is a little bit of that. But completely out of nowhere? Nope. You just haven’t been watching very actively. But I blame the hiatuses mostly. If we didn’t have to wait years in between episodes, it would probably flow a lot better.
