Steven Universe Future Episode 13-16 REACTION

this episode put into words to me for why I don't love Greg as much. He's a great characters and super funny and silly but he really dropped the ball with Steven when it came to his human half. Just like when Pearl said bad things/treated Greg badly in front of Steven it was wrong and Greg also did certain things that really put a bad taste in my mouth when I first watched the show and now during my entire rewatch. There really is absolutely no excuse for Greg to have not brought Steven to a doctor, get him involved with more kids HIS age (Connie was like his only friend), and heck! Steven didn't even know was school was (we see that in the first Lapis episode). If he was worried about doctor's knowing about Gems etc, then he should have been relieved when he found out about Connie's mom and had Steven brought to her for checkups etc but he didn't and it kinda blows my mind as an adult!! He could have had Steven put in online classes as a kid or homeschooled him. In my opinion at least the gems have the excuse of being literal aliens (who are mourning their friend/lover/leader of several thousand years) when it comes to them being insensitive and being selfish when it came to Steven, but Greg was his dad!! There's no reason Steven should have been left alone so often in season 1, like for example how was he stranded on an island for so long without Greg noticing? Or the Together breakfast episode! How was Greg not keeping him company while the gems were gone for days on important missions? Even though he does his best to be there for Steven and his gem heritage etc and does help him a lot in the show, I'm glad this ep came out and addressed some of Greg's shortcomings/ how it effected Steven.

I love how relatable this show can get. When I grew up I always saw my dad as just that, I didn't realise that he was a real person until my teenage years. I have unironically felt like Steven in Mr. Universe before, like this ultimate pillar of stability wasn't all that it seemed when I was a kid.

Now that I'm an adult, I realise that I can't really fault my dad for that. When I think about all the stories he's told me over the years of when he was young, I actually began to see myself in him and I'm sure he see's himself in me the same, watching me grow up. It's frustrating sometimes, that feeling of getting the rug pulled from under you, but no matter what happens we're always going to be family. Not just that, but, there's an added layer of respect there. I personally am not ready for children, but, at some point in his life my dad was. Nobody's perfect but they do their best, we fight sometimes because of how our opinions and beliefs have deviated (I'm not my dad after all) but in the end I could never see either of us cutting each other off, it's a different kind of stability that comes with growth. It takes time.

Fun fact! The idea that anger builds up inside of you and needs to be released in the form of agression is now understood to be a myth by experts. The best thing to do with anger is to rationalize and dissipate it, neither ignoring it nor encouraging it.

I think these episodes slowly prove that at the end of the day, Steven is becoming worse than Rose was. At least in my eyes.

Seeing the entire reaction series where H-Man has consistently been unforgiving of anything Pearl has done made it more entertaining upon seeing him being so quick to defend Greg's pitfalls as a parent. Not saying Greg was a bad parent or anything (I love him as a character), but everybody makes mistakes. Greg just allowing the Gems to take over the child-rearing of Steven to where he wasn't sleeping under the same roof with him... not to mention Steven living in a van with him prior to him moving in with the gems, and not even taking him to school or to the doctor or maybe taking more responsibility to realize a 14-year-old kid maybe shouldn't be going on life-threatening missions... hell, Steven didn't even know Greg's original surname or any of his family members... Hello, stranger... I mean Uncle Andy (to be fair that wasn't all on Greg as Andy had a role to play in that too).... Yeah.... Greg's own personal trauma dealing with overzealous and controlling parents made him go too far in the opposite direction.

I think Boom said it best when he said Greg only offered Steven this image of freedom but he never really gave Steven the full picture to see what freedom was. He only wanted Steven to have what Greg didn't have, so in a way, the power of Greg's parents was still dictating how Greg chose to live his life, and ultimately, how he raised Steven.

Further, the episode where Mrs. Maheswaran examined Steven and having her explain repressed trauma and non-stop trauma you condition yourself to survive as a child, and then having Steven describe all the trauma he went through (and hearing the way he described it) and it was so much and all he did was edit the first season... wow. It makes one look at the entire original series in a wholly different light. I love both shows to death, but I just respect the guts Sugar and the rest of the Crewniverse had to make this statement. The entertaining cartoon violence of the series wasn't actually cartoon violence when it came to Steven... it was real violence.

H-Man defending all things Greg like it's his life haha.

I love how Garnet basically says that Steven proposing is a canon event. Predating the meme lol