A Short Uranus Ramble
In addition to posting my comics here, I also post them over on TikTok (mainly because I like being able to set them to music, haha). My most recent comic, the one in which Uranus helps Saturn learn the names of his moons, received several comments that all had the same general sentiment: I wish Uranus was like this in the actual show. Which I take to mean either that people wish he was this kind/helpful in general or that they wish the relationship between Uranus and Saturn was more amicable.
I actually think Uranus is canonically very kind/helpful and does have a friendship with Saturn, but 1) his kindness gets overlooked or overshadowed by less positive traits in the series, and 2) he sometimes has trouble displaying this kindness when it comes to Saturn for various reasons.
Explanation:
Point #1: I think there's a lot of evidence pointing to Uranus as being empathetic, considerate, and generally quite kind. Examples:
His first interactions with Pluto and Charon (smiling and gently asking their names, introducing them to the Sun and everyone else, asking Neptune if he'd want to turn them into his moons to protect them).
Helping Neptune after his moons got destroyed by Triton. Like, he hardly even hesitates to offer a solution that would get neither Neptune nor Triton in trouble with the Sun.
His general genuine concern for Neptune regarding his (Neptune's) distant orbit and the effects it has on him. We see this when they're young and at several different points when they're grown.
His concern over Neptune returning to his old orbit after the planets were ordered by size.
Multiple attempts at apologizing to his moons after the joke about turning them into rings (the apology he read to them and the other apology he was writing during that episode when Triton got caught in his orbit).
His guilt after realizing that Earth ended up in the Kuiper Belt in part because of his (Uranus') leaving the Solar System.
Being the only one to really sympathize with X (he's the only one who ever outright acknowledged how hard the loneliness/banishment was on X, apart from maybe the Sun).
Caring about his moons' safety during/after the asteroid dodgeball challenge with X.
The problem is that all these instances come in little micro-doses. Compare that to the longer Uranus-centric episodes or segments, where his insecurities (and the negative emotions/reactions related to them) are usually the highlight:
Joking about turning his moons into rings.
Getting upset at jokes about his name (entirely justified, but still...)
Getting upset with Neptune when he (loudly) talks about how bad Uranus smells (and then ends up telling everybody even though he said he wouldn't).
Getting upset with Neptune for disappearing for long periods of time.
Anger/insecurity when his rings are compared to Saturn's.
Not necessarily the act of siding with Planet X during the Planet X arc, but more so some of the less-than-ideal consequences of doing so, such as agreeing to the rearrangement of orbits (though I still think he just wanted a name change out of that whole deal) and his moons being put in danger.
His actions post-Planet X arc, which weren't all necessarily bad or unjustified but were often framed to be that way.
My point: he is a kind, considerate planet, but this kindness gets pushed into the background because whenever he's featured, he's featured for his insecurities. And I don't know about y'all, but when I'm feeling super insecure, kindness and considerateness aren't the traits that I exhibit with the greatest intensity.
This brings me to Point #2: he has trouble displaying his kindness when it comes to Saturn.
There are a lot of facets of Uranus' personality and actions that could have been explored better within the series or have just been completely erased/glossed over *cough* Neptune's little pep talk SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN SUFFICIENT ENOUGH TO CONVINCE URANUS TO RETURN TO THE SOLAR SYSTEM, for example *cough* but I think they do a decent job with his insecurities, especially when it comes to how they affect his interactions with Saturn.
Uranus sees in Saturn a lot of the traits he wishes to have, physical and otherwise. The most obvious is the rings, but I think it's more than that. Saturn has a closeness with Jupiter (and even with the other inner planets) that Uranus wishes he had. Saturn has a natural social ease to him; it's easy for him to talk to others and make friends. Uranus (at least in my opinion) is more introverted and socially awkward. Saturn is well-liked. Uranus (as he says to X and Neptune) is forgotten about and/or made fun of. And what naturally arises out of all of this? Jealousy. Feelings of inferiority and insecurity. Not pleasant emotions, that's for sure.
What makes it more complicated is that I think Uranus genuinely likes Saturn. It's clear from what we've seen of the early Solar System that Uranus wants to hang out with him and befriend him and this desire is still there once they're older (remember how shocked but happy Uranus was when Saturn wanted to spend time with him while they looked for Neptune?).
And when someone likes a person but is also jealous of them and/or feels insecure around them, interactions can get complicated.
Uranus has never been unkind to Saturn. But I think he gets flustered around him and lets his emotions drive his interactions more quickly than he otherwise would because of all these competing feelings. Or even if Saturn is just mentioned to him, he may go straight to those more negative emotions. It's that "I genuinely like you but god it's also so frustrating to be around you or even talk about you because you're everything I wish I could be" feeling.
Unfortunately, we don't have a ton of concrete examples to go off of when it comes to their actual one-on-one interactions. There really aren't that many cases where it's just the two of them together. But we do have cases where Uranus gives a negative (or at least a less-than-positive) response to something related to Saturn. The most obvious is how upset he gets when Neptune asks him about Saturn's rings, but the more frequent one is how he's more than once shown a desire to be "the new Saturn," regardless of the consequences of what that would entail. And hell, he's even referred to himself as "discount Saturn," which on its own probably says more than I've said here about those mixed emotions of admiration, jealously, and insecurity.
Again, it's those competing emotions. He likes Saturn and naturally wants to be kind to him, but those negative emotions are easier to act on and come to the forefront more readily. And that's more of what's shown in the series, for sure, pushing aside most positive interactions that could exist between the two.
ANYWAAAAAY
This is way longer than I was originally planning, so to wrap it all up and go back to those TikTok comments and my two points:
I can see how people may not immediately associate kindness with Uranus, but I think it's definitely there if you look at those moments in between the flares of his insecurities.
I can also see how people may look at a positive interaction between Uranus and Saturn as "they wouldn't act this way" because we don't really see many positive interactions between them in the show. But that doesn't mean that there are no positive feelings between the two; it just may mean that there are other competing feelings/emotions there as well, especially on Uranus' part.
[ramble complete]
