closertotheheartofthesunrise:

I spent 2 hours on this….god forgive me

Rose goes barefoot. That’s something the Crewniverse has shown us. Steven’s sandals are a symbol of Steven. He’s lost them a few times and they’ve all been symbolically important.

The first I can recall - Bismuth. “Wait! I’m not my mom!”



Steven dodges a hit from Bismuth, and, crucially, loses a sandal into the lava. Only then does he go on the offensive, but he still yells….

“Bismuth, watch out!”

Still that helping spirit! Under life-threatening circumstances and in the midst of self-defense, Steven is still concerned for his attacker. But the sandal is off! He’s fighting. That’s not the way Steven ever wants to handle a conflict.



“This has to stop.”

He’s still trying to resolve the conflict nonviolently. He’s literally standing on his personality! He’s trying to avoid doing what Rose did, he’s trying not to follow in her footsteps, but it’s making him unsteady. He’s keeping his bare foot in the air! The symbolism!

But he does what Rose did, in poofing Bismuth. It’s something he desperately didn’t want to do. Poofing and bubbling Bismuth is the opposite of helping her. Look how he puts his bare foot down on the hot ground, placing his weight and survival on something decidedly un-Steven.



But he’s still got one shoe. He promises Bismuth he’ll tell the gems what happened. “Then you really are better than her,” says Bismuth. It’s not how Steven wanted the conflict to end, but in promising Bismuth closure, he maintains the element of help, even if watered down.

He loses them when Jasper corrupts, too, in Earthlings!



(worth noting that she cuts his star, too.)

A minute later, Jasper lets loose the revelation of her old diamond…PINK DIAMOND! Steven looks on barefoot as a gem he’s unable to help succumbs to corruption (and utterly reshapes the course of his self-discovery). He’s not able to do the “Steven” thing and save her. He’s unable to do what he’s driven to do - help someone in need.

(And his confidence in the CGs, I’d add, has been rocked - but I believe that’s more a function of star symbolism than shoe symbolism here.)

Steven’s sandals are a symbol of Steven’s identity, which is built around helping and fixing and being needed. They’re a symbol of successful engagement with the world on his terms, and Steven’s terms are fixing and helping and being needed. I say again - they represent success!

A barefoot Steven is a Steven who has failed to help.

Now, Future is all about Steven struggling with compulsive helping and fixing. From Jasper to Sadie and Lars to Sunstone and Rainbow 2.0, to Aqua and Eyeball as they fail to form Bluebird, to his anxious note-writing to Greg’s parents - you guys don’t need me to get into that. We’ve all been watching very closely.

But check this out. Steven is now the one who needs help. Arguably he’s needed it since The Test (Season ONE of SU!). He can’t ignore it anymore - his problems are literally causing him to lose control of his physical form. Can you say alarm bells?



None of the CGs can help him, though they’re trying. Connie tried, but Steven “can’t be around her right now” because she reminds him of his failed proposal. Greg tried, but we saw how well that turned out. He finally tried to help himself by going to the Diamonds, who he believes will fix him.

But none of the Diamonds, who were supposed to “make [Steven] BE better”, can help him. He makes a desperate grab for the last life preserver before he starts to drown - someone who was abandoned, unneeded, forgotten about by her only friend. Spinel.

And she gives Steven his own advice. You can make it different, you can make it right, you can make an effort. But Steven doesn’t believe he can help himself.



All options are exhausted - and now he’ll begin to fail. He’s going under. No help is coming. Not from without, and not from within.

In Nicole Rodriguez’s promo, you’ll notice…

Steven is barefoot.

