“It’s not you, Connie, it’s all the other stuff from before.”

“What is he talking about?”

“You didn’t tell your mom?!”

“Didn’t tell me what?!”

Some thoughts:

Just in time for new episodes! I was intending to make another prediction, but this time, I’m treating this one as a wish, in addition to some analysis. Connie is one of my favorites, and I’ve never written meta in my 8 years being in this fandom. With a week left until the finale, I think it’s time I did one as a bit of a final farewell for myself.

The center focus for Future is on Steven now canonically having PTSD. He has trauma, and it’s serious, and it needs to be explored and brought to a place of healing first and foremost. But there was another child who was there for a lot of the things Steven experienced his age– Connie.

There’s a plethora of incidents she dealt with in the original series, starting with Bubble Buddies. The biggest one? Change Your Mind. Connie was held against her will with her mouth closed by a possessed version of her mentor, and had to watch her best friend have one of his key body parts torn out of him while she couldn’t do anything. She thought he was dead. She had to carry his dying body over to his other half while he was struggling in pain.

Future has established that their adventures weren’t just fantasy violence. Trauma is a part of this show now. With that in mind, there is, realistically, absolutely no way that Connie wouldn’t have at least some issues with all of the stuff she went through. She may have been through less than Steven, but she was still a human child that was part of a war, and witnessed some rather gruesome events when broken down. Some of which were included in Steven’s flashbacks. She almost drowned, twice. She was kidnapped. She’s been attacked by monsters on numerous occasions.



I don’t think she would have PTSD. She had a normal life to go back to and her adventures weren’t on the daily like Steven. But notice how she throws herself into her studies. She could be overworking herself as a coping mechanism for all the stuff that’s starting to come up now that she’s older. She could easily have some anxiety, or perhaps trauma effects her without a label.

You could argue that she had her parents to talk about it with… but here’s the thing. Those lines above from Growing Pains? I don’t think that was about the proposal. Think about it. Why would Steven be surprised about Connie not telling her mom about his proposal? That’s, for one, super embarrassing for both of them, and I doubt a mother would react well to a boy proposing to her teenage daughter. It’s too soon for either of them to talk about it. I think it was about her adventures with Steven.

Priyanka didn’t even know about any of the things Steven talked about during his flashbacks, she had to ask him about any stressful experiences he went through as a child. If Connie told her about even some of the details of her adventures with Steven, how would she not know?



Nightmare Hospital established that Priyanka wanted Connie to stop lying to her about her adventures with Steven.. but, I don’t think she stopped lying.

Or at the very least, she continued to hide it. Maybe some things were just too much for her to talk about, so she kept them in her head. Like she always does.

“I’m thinking mad” -From Beach City Drift



Steven was there for that conversation in Nightmare Hospital. Of course he’d be surprised that Priyanka doesn’t know about anything, when Connie promised she would stop lying to her mom.

From a writing standpoint, Connie having trauma would be a great addition to her character. It gives her flaws, and it gives her something that she and Steven can mutually understand about each other. Their support for each other would only strengthen. Not only that, but it would tell the audience– most importantly, kids– that trauma effects everyone in different ways, and that everyone handles it differently.

We have a week left until the finale. Connie is one of my favorites, and I think it would be awesome if the series touches on this idea at least a smidge.