Comics Review: Steven Universe #20

Victories and failures.

Overview:

Connie and Steven train together and finish their session once corrupted gems appear. When Connie is unable to hold them off on her own, she starts to think that she isn’t good enough.

Our Take:

The Crystal Gems try to take on another slew of corrupted gems, and in the process, Connie gets in way over her head. Once she realizes that she doesn’t have as much of a handle on her sword skills as she thought, she sees her failures and takes from it that she needs to work harder. She goes through extra training and completely devotes herself to polishing her sword skills. She does this so much that she forgets that she needs time to have fun as well. She rebuffs Steven when he tries to hang out with her, and plunges herself only into work. Concerned, Steven tells the other gems and the other gems are surprised. While Connie may have blamed herself for not being able to hold her own, all the gems think she’s doing just fine. They see her improvement, not her being unable to pull off perfection.

Connie compares herself to Steven and the gems without realizing that’s an unrealistic standard to hold herself to. The gems have fought for centuries, and Steven has been in battle much more than she has. At the same time, that doesn’t mean she hasn’t greatly improved. It definitely doesn’t mean she’s not a valuable member of the team- just advancing at a different pace. Importantly, they also don’t handwave Connie’s fears. She feels that she needs more work and that’s her perception, that’s fine! What Connie has forgotten is that her stumbling isn’t permanent, and her working hard doesn’t mean she can’t have fun as well. The Gems instead of calling her wrong, give her an additional perspective that she can add to her own.

That’s the thing with Steven Universe and why so many people like it: it always shows a very gentle, human story. At the end of the day, Connie’s feelings are perfectly understandable. Throwing yourself into your work when you hit a bad spot is something that many people end up doing. Wanting to work hard to overcome your failures isn’t a bad thing. The issue is when it becomes an obsession, or is so all-consuming that you can’t get over it. That’s when you get stuck because you’re caught up in a cycle of being unable to overcome your wrongs. These are very human problems, and they are by no means uncommon. I’ve done it, and I’m sure you have too.