A big thing I really liked about the ‘Sadie’s Song Episode’ is its subtle reveal of character flaws, most notably in Steven.



Steven is a genuinely nice little boy, but he is shown in this episode that he can also be ignorant of other people’s feelings, ie self-absorbed when he is excited about something.

It starts to become obvious during the episode Sadie is not into the idea of singing on stage anymore, and she makes several faces to prove it:

She walks away when they are dancing and other small signs she is in distress. Now, it is not necessarily Steven’s job to observe Sadie’s emotional health, especially as a young kid. However, he does directly interact with Sadie’s mood when he draws lipstick on her,

Sadie accidentally loses her makeup when she nervously chugs water- which Steven also doesn’t pick up on. Steven’s reaction to her then frown is to redraw her lipstick on in a smiley face. This isn’t obliviousness, this is at the very least a failure to interrupt others emotional signals and react fittingly.

It is a disengagement with negative emotions.

This is the mark of Steven’s character flaw, he has accessed people’s feelings before, such as when Pearl is crying, but when he is excited he doesn’t stop and observe them.

He is somewhat caught up in the moment, or himself.

The most significant part of this is it is strikingly similar to someone else. Rose Quartz.

When Greg expresses his worries about their relationship in ‘We Need to Talk’ Rose just laughs at him- a depiction of how she doesn’t register or react to emotions in an appropriate way. This is chalked up to her being an alien, but the other gems don’t seem to have similar issue as this. Greg then yells at her and she sobers up, a similar situation with Sadie when they both sober up after a clear outburst from Sadie/Greg.

I’m not going to categorize this, but it is showing a pattern of being so caught up in positive emotions to really deal with/register people’s distress.

This pattern I think really lends itself to foreshadowing for Steven’s future character growth. Suggesting he will have to engage with negative emotions in either others, or himself. This confrontation with negative feelings may thus separate him from his mother- marking him as more human than her.

