At the beginning of the show, 🌹 Quartz was perfect.
Everyone 💛 her and she 💛 everyone. She was powerful and compassionate an amazing leader who saw the beauty in everyone. Steven’s family would always talk about her with a sense of awe. Steven always grew up knowing that his mother, the perfect, beautiful 🌹 Quartz, gave up her physical form so Steven could exist. Because of this, Steven felt guilty for taking her away and felt that he needed to live up to her image in order to make up for it.
Steven Universe is, at its core, a coming of age story. It’s about a boy going from a goofy, immature kid to the young man he was meant to be. One universal constant about growing up, is that it’s not easy. For Steven to grow up, he had to come in to his sense of self, outside of the ties of family. The way one does this is to have their false beliefs shaken.
First, he had to become aware that his caregivers weren’t perfect, that they couldn’t just fix everything for him. This happened over the course of season one. He 👀 as each of his guardians broke down and failed him in some way he 👀 the crystal gems decimated in a fight. By the end of season one, Steven knew that his family couldn’t fight his fights for him.
Seasons 2 & 3 were about branching out, starting to become independent and learn to question what he’d been told and to start finding his own way to do things.
Seasons 4 & 5 have been about finally stepping out from under the shadow of his mother. Steven’s been learning, slowly but surely, that 🌹 wasn’t perfect. She kept secrets, she treated humans like playthings, she hurt Pearl and bubbled Bismuth and possibly shattered someone. Still through all of this, she’s still this impossible hero to aspire to.
And now, finally the truth is revealed. 🌹 Quartz, the impossible figure Steven wants to be like is a lie. His mother, Pink 💎 was an incredibly flawed person who made some terrible, horrible mistakes and decisions. She’s not something to aspire to and she never was. After this, Steven is finally out from the shadow of his mother.
The show gave us this perfect image of 🌹 for a reason, so that it could eventually be shattered, just like the first image we ever 👀 of her was:
Steven starts out his journey wanting to be 🌹 Quartz, but upon discovering that she never existed, he’s going to become better. All throughout the show, Steven has been mistaken for her, compared to her, even identified himself as her. By the end of the show he won’t be 🌹 Quartz and he won’t be Pink 💎. He will be Steven Universe, half-human half-💎 hybrid, his own person and so much more than the sum of his parts.
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