the only thing that could have made everythingâs fine even worse
i canât stop thinking about steven shapeshifting into classic steven during everythingâs fine. god, how painful would that have been?Â
picture diamond steven shapeshifting into his younger form at some point in little homeworld, as he ruins thing after thing, in a frantic attempt to make himself feel like a person who can help people again. picture the opposite of his birthday, him distorting his body into something small and soft, squeezing it into a mold that it doesnât fit because heâs scared of the alternative.
or after, he destroys the baseball field, heâs doing construction work, but he can feel everybody watching him, wondering what heâs going to break next. he doesnât want to be big and scary. he doesnât want to have done this. so he shapeshifts to classic. thatâs what they want, right? thatâs certainly what he wants.
or after that, even during the intervention. itâs way too on the nose, but just imagine big steven trying to insist heâs okay, he has this under control. heâs never been a burden and heâs not going to start being one nowâheâs still the same steven theyâve always known! so of course he shifts into his younger self to underline that.Â
heâd still be in diamond mode for all of this, obvs. canât escape that.
alternatively, forget little homeworld entirely. what if the episode had just been steven as his younger self, trying to recreate moments from early su, akin to that stepford smiler promo? i would love a story about steven interacting with the crystal gems in this stateâthem puzzling out whatâs going on, while steven tries to avoid a mental breakdown by pretending really hard that the last four years never happened.
âyou gotta go teach? câmon, how long has it been since we had a together breakfast? amethyst, i thought your whole class was about doing whatever you want?â
âyou guys were just talking about how you wanted me home! what happened with jasper? oh, itâs nothing. câmon, letâs go on a good olâ fashioned mission! track down some corrupted gems!â
look what iâm getting at is that the final breakdown coming from a steven who looks like (or god forbid sounds like) his younger self is something i canât stop thinking about. stevenâs transformation over the time skip is always going to make it a little difficult to mentally connect the smol boy and his older self, and getting that monologue about thinking about smashing white, or shattering jasper, and everything else he said, from the original stevenâs body would be a visceral and horrifying way to hammer in that all of this is steven, and always has been.
iâm gonna try to fic this, but it obviously would work better visuallyâso if any artist out there wants to take a shot at this concept? you would have my undying gratitude.