Steven Universe Character Analysis PDF

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Character arc analysis for ENG-132. enjoy...

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Halliday 1 Tobin Halliday Professor Higgins ENGL-132-03 5/5/20 Steven Universe: Being Human

Steven Universe is a super powered human boy who lives with magical, human-like aliens known as the Crystal Gems in a town called Beach City. Steven is a Gem-Human Hybrid, the first of its kind. He inherited his “gem” from his mother when he was born, granting him many magical abilities such as flight, super-human strength, and the ability to heal injuries of humans and Crystal Gems alike. For as long as Steven can remember, he’s been living with the Gems as a family and training to use his abilities to protect earth from interstellar threats. More specifically, they were protecting earth from other Gems who sought to take it over and add the planet to their empire of enslaved worlds. The Crystal Gems were traitors to the “Homeworld” of gems, because they participated in a rebellion against the empire with Steven’s mother, Rose Quartz. Rose was once a powerful leader of the empire but left when she realized how horribly all the enslaved planets were treated. Long after the war was over, Rose passed her gemstone and powers on to Steven when he was born. Unfortunately, she lost her life in the process. Sometime after Steven is born, Homeworld decides to make another move to capture earth once and for all. This forces Steven to train to control his inherited power and to fight alongside his friends and family to ward off the Homeworld Gems once again. After years of training, fighting, befriending some of his enemies, and learning about his mother’s legacy and finding out that she wasn’t the hero he thought she was, Steven finally brings the war to an end. He befriends the other three leaders of Homeworld, known as “The Diamonds” after showing them the error of their ways. Because Rose Quartz was once a Diamond, and Steven inherited her gem, he was

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considered a Diamond. He used this fact to dismantle Homeworld’s empire and teach the other Diamonds about treating all life forms equally. This brings the Steven Universe series to its current time period. It has been about two years since the Gem war officially ended. Many Gems have come to live on earth and most of them attend Steven’s “Little Home School “. In order to learn how to live as individuals and create their own life on earth. Everything is finally becoming peaceful on Earth and all over space due to Steven’s heroic and selfless actions. However, with the world at peace, Steven starts to develop multiple internal conflicts that send him down a dark path. The war is over. Earth is officially recognized as an independent planet in the eyes of Homeworld, and the Homeworld Empire has been dismantled to give everybody a chance to live the way they want to live. There is even a school on earth for gems to go to and learn how to live freely like earthlings. Steven has accomplished everything that he has set out to do. He now finds himself in the epilogue of his story. Even though the world’s problems have been solved, This is where Steven’s problems begin. Steven’s girlfriend Connie is getting a head start on her college preparations, and she has had to see steven much less because of it. Steven knows that eventually she will be going off to college and it will become even harder to see her than it is now. Steven’s other close friends, Sadie and Lars, are both moving away from Beach City, possibly forever. Sadie and Lars were once a couple, but Steven finds out that while he was participating in the war on Homeworld, they broke up and decided to go their separate ways. Sadie plans to travel with her new boyfriend as a couple’s band across the world, and lars plans on exploring space with some Gems that he met. On top of all of this, the Crystal Gems, known as Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl all have become very busy with running the Gem school, and are trying to do more with their lives now that they no longer have to spend every day fighting. All of this is

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starting to make Steven feel stuck. In the episode “Little Graduation”, he says “Everybody is moving on to bigger and better things….except for me…I’ll still be right here…” (Sugar) Steven obviously doesn’t want to lose all of his friends. He’s lived with, laughed with, and fought alongside all of them, but that isn’t what bothers him the most. He wants to find himself, and move on as well. Everyone around him is getting ready to start the next chapter of their lives, but he doesn’t even know where to start. In the episode “Prickly Pair”, He states that “Everyone is moving on and I know that I should be too…but now I don’t know what comes next.” (Sugar) Steven wasn’t raised like a traditional human. He was always focused on being a strong Gem warrior and almost never thought about how he wanted to live his life after the war. Now that the time has come to live like a human, he can’t decide what he really wants. The more he thinks about it, the more confused he gets. Despite being a human-gem hybrid, he doesn’t fully understand how to live like a human. KC Ifeanyi of Fast company puts it best by saying “Steven’s driving force throughout the whole series has been helping everyone else. One of his principle powers is, in fact, the ability to heal both people and objects instantly. But as gems and humans happily settle into their ever after in Future, Steven struggles to find his own sense of normalcy” (Ifeanyi). Steven was becoming desperate to find peace in his life. Because of this, he makes a bold move. On one of the rare occasions that he gets to see Connie, he proposes to her. Unfortunately for Steven, she very quickly turns him down, In the episode “Together Forever” she tells him “Of course I want to be with you…but I need to figure how to be me before we can be us. It’s not a no, it’s a not now” (Sugar). This messes with Steven’s head even more. He wants to be with Connie more than anything, so he thought that if he got married to her, he would be able to start the next chapter of his life. This, however, did not become reality.

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Garnet, having witnessed the entire ordeal, tries to talk to Steven when Connie leaves. “Whatever hole that there is in your life, I want you to know that Connie won’t fill it” (Sugar, “Together Forever”). She does her best to explain to Steven that he must choose the next step for himself. He won’t find his future in Connie, at least not his entire future. The entire ordeal serves as another serious blow to Steven’s already fragile mental state. Up until this point, his struggle has been mainly in his head. However, the constant increase in stress and anxiety cause him to physically react as well. As stated earlier, each Crystal Gem has their own gemstone that is embedded in their body, granting them extraordinary abilities. The fact that Steven is a hybrid causes problems for his gem. After he gets turned down by Connie, Steven starts to spiral physically in addition to mentally. His gemstone starts to make him glow pink, swell to double his normal size, and randomly create bursts of air that are powerful enough to blow away anything around him. These new uncontrollable powers start to concern Connie, and she forces Steven to go see a doctor. When he goes in to find out what is going on, the doctor does her best to explain to him that he has seemingly contracted PTSD, a human ailment that is negatively affecting his gem half. Rebecca Sugar, who created Steven Universe: Future spoke on why Steven’s PTSD is a worse case than what a normal human would have when she tells bitch media that “At this point, Steven’s been in so many life-threatening situations that his gem is responding as if his life is in danger... It’s making him whatever he needs to be to get out of a life-threatening situation. The problem is that he’s not in a life-threatening situation, but his body has learned to react that way.” (Lewis) Steven has never had to deal with human stress. He has always been fighting, always been trying to protect someone or something. In order to keep himself and others alive, his gem would sometimes automatically react and unlock new abilities

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to keep him safe. Now that he is experiencing a bunch of anxiety and stress, his gem thinks he’s in danger when in reality he’s just having normal human emotions. These physical reactions are all coming from Steven’s struggle to move on, and knowing this stresses him out even more. After nearly killing a gem named jasper who angered him during a sparring match. He decides that the best way to get himself under control is to get answers from the only people who may be able to stop his gemstone’s reactions. For the first time in months, he goes to Homeworld to visit the Diamonds. Despite all of their efforts, none of the diamonds are able to figure out how to stop Steven’s gem. In fact, he has another anxiety attack while on Homeworld. This causes his gem to react again and he almost kills one of the diamonds while she is trying to help him. Scared of what he was becoming, he travels back home without saying another word to the Diamonds. Upon coming home, Steven tries to act normal around the rest of his friends. But he isn’t able to fool them. Steven may not realize it yet, but keeping his problems bottled up is actually making it worse for him. The more he bottles up, the more stressed he gets. Every time he gets more stressed, his gem reacts accordingly. The ever increasing amount of anxiety and stress is causing his gem to make him become more powerful for his own “protection”. Trying to pretend everything is okay is making his gem think that he is in even more danger than before. Steven’s friends and family start to realize this, and conclude that the only way he’s going to get better is to get him talking. After days of failing to get him to talk to them, the Crystal Gems, Connie, and Steven’s father decide they need to force Steven to talk. Until now, He has been avoiding them and refusing to talk to them about what was bothering him. The Gems, Connie, and even some civilians in Beach City try to help. However, Steven refuses to talk to anyone. Rebecca sugar tells Vulture that “we considered a lot of his selflessness to be his biggest flaw.” (Thurm) He

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refuses to talk about what’s wrong with him because he doesn’t want to bother his friends. He doesn’t want to prevent them from going on to the next chapter of their lives. Every time someone asked him if there was something bothering him, he would brush it off and say something to dismiss his problems. In the episode “Growing Pains”, he tells Connie “It’s probably nothing anyway” (Sugar). The Gems and Connie are starting to become desperate. One afternoon before Steven tries to leave the house, they block off the exit and surround him to keep him from going anywhere. Now, with nowhere left to run, he starts talking. However, he doesn’t reveal what is making him so anxious. He instead gets pressured into talking, and admits to almost killing Jasper and one of The Diamonds, as well as all of the other trouble he’s gotten into as a result of his gemstone. This news horrifies his friends, and they start to pressure him even more. This extreme level of stress causes Steven’s to spiral even more. He has his biggest anxiety attack yet, and his gemstone reacts to this “threat” with the best defense it can muster. Steven’s body grows and mutates into an unrecognizable monster. Steven crashes through the wall of his house and begins to grow even more. At this point, he has lost all control of himself and his gemstone. He’s let his anxiety run wild, and now his gem is defending him from what it believes to be the biggest threat he has ever faced. The Diamonds show up due to being worried about Steven, and are horrified to see the giant rampaging monster that the Gems claim is him. They’re unable to use their powers to stop him. Nothing they try seems to phase him. The situation is becoming hopeless, and the Gems are doing nothing but sitting around blaming themselves for letting Steven’s condition get this far until Connie finally speaks up in the episode “I am my Own Monster” when she says that “This isn’t the time to blame yourselves and make it all about you!...Steven is always there for us, This time it’s our turn to be there for him!” (Sugar). After snapping out of it, they come up with a plan to restrain Steven. By using their size to hold him

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down, the Diamonds are able to create and opening for Connie and the Gems to get in Steven’s face to talk to him. They’re able to calm him down and finally get him to open up about everything that was bothering him. A few months pass after the incident, and Steven has decided that the best way to find out what he wants to do with the rest of his life is to travel the world. With a therapist on speed dial should he need it, and the blessing of all of his friends, he packs up his car and departs on his journey. Steven Universe: Future Is very much so a show that explores what happens after the hero of the story has won and finished their quest. It gives Steven the character development he was missing in the original series and shows that even the Heroes that save the day have their own internal conflicts to learn from and solve. Steven’s lesson happened to be that you shouldn’t shy away from letting your feelings be known. Rebecca Sugar tells all of her fans in an interview with ComicBook.com that the theme of Future “is Steven's relationship with himself, and it's finding that ability to take care of yourself, to care about yourself.” (Bishop) Future demonstrates that It’s important to lean on the people who are there to help when needed, and that there’s no shame and seeking help from someone like a therapist. There isn’t a person alive that can handle everything themselves, and Steven had to learn that the hard way. He started out with his anxiety and stress running wild and refusing to let his friends and family in. He eventually learned that his support system is there for a reason, and he doesn’t have to be the hero or the problem solver all of the time. The show does a great job of showing that no matter how tough things get, it’s not necessary to face it alone.

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Works Cited Baron, Reuben. “Steven Universe Future: Steven Is in Need of Serious Therapy.” CBR, 15 Mar. 2020, www.cbr.com/steven-universe-therapy/. Bishop, Rollin. “Steven Universe Creator Rebecca Sugar Talks the Finale, Life After Steven, and Fandom.” TV Shows, ComicBook.com, 29 Mar. 2020, comicbook.com/tv-shows/news/steven-universefuture-finale-rebecca-sugar-interview/#8. Ifeanyi, KC. “'Steven Universe' Creator Rebecca Sugar Explains the Series Finale, 'Future'-and Her Future.” Fast Company, 31 Mar. 2020, www.fastcompany.com/90480992/steven-universecreator-rebecca-sugar-explains-the-series-finale-future-and-her-future. Lewis, Rachel Charlene. “Steven Universe Is Finally Facing His Own Trauma.” Bitch Media, 1 June 2016, www.bitchmedia.org/article/steven-universe-future-review-mental-health-ptsd. Sugar, Rebecca, creator. Steven Universe. Cartoon Network, 7 Dec. 2019. Thurm, Eric. “Rebecca Sugar Says Good-Bye to Steven Universe.” Vulture, 28 Mar. 2020, www.vulture.com/2020/03/steven-universe-future-finale-rebecca-sugar.html....