“What are you doing here?”

It was never guaranteed that we’d see any more of Rose Quartz than a videotape. This is Steven’s show, and our perspective has always been his; even alternate-protagonist adventure Garnet’s Universe is a Steven story (in this case literally). Rose by necessity doesn’t exist during his lifetime, so the only way to show her true self outside of recorded messages was an unprecedented flashback episode.

Fortunately, precedent takes a back seat to character and plot, and Story for Steven switches to Greg’s perspective for an episode to allow us a new look into an earlier world. Despite his past self’s eerie visual similarity with his son, Greg is a perennial outsider looking in when it comes to magic, which is bound to shape his worldview in a way we haven’t seen from his drenched-in-magic son. And for some of the episode, this works! Buuuuuuut…

I have this pet peeve. I’ve always had it, even as a kid. It all began with Batman: The Animated Series, a.k.a. the optimal Batman experience, and one of its all-time classics, Heart of Ice. In the middle of the episode, Batman discovers a video tape documenting the accident that transformed Victor Fries into Mr. Freeze:

Okay, several questions.

How does the camera pan during this footage? Did Victor have an actual person filming instead of a tripod? If so, why didn’t they help out or say anything?

Why do we cut between Victor’s camera and what seems to be security footage? Who took the time to edit this thing from multiple sources?

How do we get the shot-reverse shot back-and-forth between Victor and the villainous Ferris Boyle? Has Victor’s camera operator shoved himself between the two? And if so, why doesn’t said operator appear on the security footage segments? Why didn’t Ferris Boyle destroy the tape that proves he murdered somebody?

These, to me, aren’t nitpicky questions. We’ve been given a specific lens through which Batman sees events, and that lens requires certain limitations that the sequence ignores.

This issue is common in flashbacks, where the audience sees things that the character having the flashback can’t possibly perceive, and it drives me nuts. Steven Universe is unfortunately no exception. And to make matters worse, Story for Steven does this to the detriment of the storytelling! How great would it be if we saw Greg’s entire story as if he was telling it to Steven (which is the framing device in the first place) instead of this:

We shouldn’t know that the owl is Amethyst. Not only because Greg doesn’t know, and this is his perspective, but because it ruins the joke! This is our hero’s very first interaction with something explicitly supernatural, but we aren’t allowed to feel his shock because the camera decided to spoil the surprise.

Now, perhaps we see Amethyst because Steven has heard the story so many times that he knows it’s Amethyst, and Story for Steven is stealthily from his point of view after all. But how would he know about other events that Greg wasn’t privy to? What would Greg even tell him? “And then after I left, Pearl said she could sing and the others all laughed”?

It wouldn’t irk me half as much if the introduction to the flashback wasn’t so amazing. Comet does the impossible by making Greg Universe, one of the dadliest dads on television, actually kind of cool. Seeing his name in lights as he rules the stage in a song whose length is rivaled only by Stronger Than You at this point in the show is spectacular, and the song itself makes the most of Stemage’s fantastic guitar work with Tom Scharpling’s versatile singing voice: he manages to vividly portray modern Greg’s eternal earnestness, but with far more edge than the likes of Dear Old Dad or Wailing Stone, to actually sell Mr. Universe’s rock cred.

And then we see the reality, where Greg’s on an empty stage with a (nearly) empty crowd, cementing the scene as something from Greg’s head. In his mind, at that moment, he was a rock star. I just wish the rest of the episode maintained this fun with perspective, because Greg’s mind is a wonderful new way to see Steven’s Universe.

For comparison, just look at The Answer, where we’re always following Ruby, Sapphire, or Garnet. The storyboarders have a blast with the style, using a new color palette and hyper-stylized backgrounds to make Garnet’s story feel like an actual story instead of a regular episode that happens to be in the past.

Story for Steven is one of the few times Steven knows way more than we do, which could’ve easily been used to add some real flavor to Greg’s tale, whether through Steven interjecting, Greg speeding through “boring stuff” to taunt the audience, or another idea that the show’s incredibly creative crew could drum up far better than I could. Missed opportunities like this are a real drag.

Okay, so does this make me dislike the episode? Of course not. It could’ve been great, but that hardly means it isn’t good.

Story for Steven is a surprisingly quiet marvel, given the volume of its introduction and the excitement of seeing Rose for an extended period of time. The only “villain” is easily vanquished, and the action overall is minimal. Important information is underplayed or left to implication: there’s something so sad about seeing the surviving Crystal Gems as childlike figures, back when they were allowed to be young followers instead of adult guardians, but these forms are never discussed. Amethyst’s fascination with the human world and Pearl’s discomfort with it are both seen through their reactions to Greg, and Garnet is a delight as always. And even though Greg crashing through their fence isn’t the subtlest symbolism in the cosmos, his role in bringing the outside world back to the Gems really is that important.

I’ve said a lot about Pink Diamond’s biggest flaw: her pathological secrecy. But this episode only comes about because of her greatest strength: her curiosity. We’ve seen time and again how the remaining Crystal Gems are set in their ways, but their leader, ever the rebel, is fascinated with change. Her specific interest in Greg’s space-themed set is a cute touch, allowing us a taste of the unintentional condescension that drives We Need To Talk as she stage whispers about him to her friends. Even though she’s still a mystery from Greg’s perspective (which this flashback does do right, despite other flaws) not a second is wasted in developing her as an individual and a leader.

Like Ruby, Lapis, and Jasper in Jailbreak, Rose’s gem is neatly emphasized in Story for Steven. Our first glimpse of her frames her gem instead of her face or entire body, and while her final scene in Greg’s shirt obviously showcases her affection towards him and references our previous sightings of said shirt, it also covers the gem as she builds a human connection.

Despite prompting the story, Marty mostly remains in the background, which is good and bad. For a while, I enjoyed his one-dimensional portrayal, complete with shark teeth, as I figured it was a peek into Greg’s view of his evil manager. But then Drop Beat Dad came along and it turns out that Marty is exactly what he seems like here, if not worse. (I also initially figured the child Gems were part of Greg’s perspective, but he has video footage of them in We Need to Talk.)

It’s a shame to see such a big part of Greg’s life so underdeveloped, but Marty scrapes by through his skeevy charisma and terrifically gross dialogue: his weird but lived-in chemistry with Greg should come as no surprise when you consider he’s performed by Tom Scharpling’s longtime comedy partner Jon Wurster. Even if the craziest part of Marty’s involvement is that we ostensibly find out that Sour Cream was conceived in Greg’s van (which, yikes, kid’s show), my favorite is his revelation that Greg clearly has a thing for giant women. Marty knowing stuff like this suggests a close relationship that’s also implied by Greg’s photo, and I do wish we got a little bit more of that instead of a straight-up villain.

While I felt that the framing device was underutilized, the actual transitions between past and present are marvelous on both ends. Both are eased in with Greg’s guitar, but while the former opts for some rockin’ juxtaposition, the latter quietly gives us a variant Rose’s Theme to take us home. (And considering Greg starts the story by playing the opening of Comet for Steven, we’re allowed to imagine he just sang the whole song in his van if we want.)

Despite its issues, Story For Steven is a pleasant surprise: we already learned the essentials of how Greg met Rose from all the way back in Laser Light Cannon, and Steven knows much more than we do on the subject, so we could’ve gone without a whole episode about it. Rose didn’t have to show up until much later, if at all, but glimpses into the past help round out his world as it grows more and more complicated in the present and future.

Future Vision!

I doubt anyone, in Beach City or real life, could’ve predicted that Comet would get a second life as a burger jingle that somehow turns Greg into a multimillionaire. Is that how jingles work? Write one and you’re set for life?

If every pork chop were perfect, we wouldn’t have inconsistencies…

As I mentioned in So Many Birthdays, the sweet implication that Amethyst copped her modern hairstyle from Greg back in the day is marred by seeing that hair in colonial times.

I guess you could read it that way…

I’ve already written at length about why I prefer watching Story for Steven in Season 2 that covers all the stuff I’d usually say in this section.



We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

I understand the appeal of Story for Steven and genuinely like it, but its execution bugs me in a way that I doubt is too common among fans. If this is one of your favorites, that’s great, but by my reckoning (which this is) it’s outdone by many of its peers.

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