STEVEN UNIVERSE 2X23 "Steven's Birthday" Full Length Reaction
Added 2024-02-22 18:00:04 +0000 UTCHere is my full length unedited reaction for Steven Universe! This only includes my reaction and thoughts. There is no intro. I always start my recordings at 00:00:00 of the show to make timecode syncing much easier and the timecode is included. I watch through any recaps (if any) and intros. But it always starts at 00:00:00. Must have your own copy to watch along with, since I can't offer that due to copyright laws. Streamer: Max
Comments
It's interesting to me that a lot of newer reactors are less surprised by the age reveal than the fandom used to be. I wonder if it's related to the age that people are when they watch the show? Obviously there's always been fans of all ages but in my purely anecdotal experience the online fanbase as SU was airing skewed more high school to college aged. I think the closer you are to 14, the harder it is to conceive of Steven as a 14 year old boy -- 14 year old boys are usually almost as tall as grown men in my experience. To me Steven looks about 8 years old, which I guess means the character design is pretty accurate since he's supposed to be physically 8 per this episode.
Duck
2024-02-27 04:35:07 +0000 UTCAhahah your reaction to the Amethyst car seat gag was hilarious! As a Steven enthusiast (as my icon likely suggests lol), this is one of my absolute favorite episodes of the show for how deeply it delves into his headspace. Echoing your comment in the thoughts at the end, there's no "playbook" for how to handle life's ups and downs for Steven. He's the only hybrid Gem there is, and in this case, that means everything about his life is tinged in all these uncertainties. There's a few moments that especially stand out to me in this one- Steven overhearing Greg and Connie's little chat and "human beings? Human beings" moment is one, which you also pointed out as you watched... the poor kid just looks so downtrodden after that. Like, damn... the Gems often don't understand how to satisfy his human needs, and the humans in his life often fall into this trap of "othering" him due to his abilities and and referring to him as more Gem than human. I mean, even I as a fan do it, ahah- I usually say "half-Gem" or "hybrid Gem" to describe him, when "half human" would be just as accurate a description. That must be a heavy, isolating experience. The second moment is Steven's line "When Connie grows up and becomes president, what will that make me? First Boy??" First Boy, of course, in replacement of "First Man." There's always been those little hints and insinuations that the two of them are smitten with each other, but I'm pretty sure this is the first time Steven even halfway vocally ADMITS as such- like, damn my guy, you're already out here imagining potential scenarios where Connie is president and you're married to her? You got it bad. XD Also a big kudos to the voice work in this scene, I'm unsure if they just overlaid a few different takes of Zach Callison (Steven's VA) speaking at different pitches or if this was one take with him modulating his pitch midway through, but it still comes across as really seamless- also jarring on a plot scale, because goodness, is this what Steven is SUPPOSED to look and sound like at 14 had he aged like a standard human? Wild. (And for context, the age itself was a huge surprise to the fandom when this aired. People typically imagined him as 10-12 up until this point. No clear age was given for him until now.)
Novantinuum
2024-02-27 04:18:01 +0000 UTCNice little Breather episode. The fact that Steven hasn't changed since he turned 8 years old was already kind of explained in Season 1.... in the episode called "Too Many Birthdays" Steven started aging rapidly because the Gems made him feel like Birthdays parties were pointless and therefore he was slowly losing his child-like wonder. What this means is that Steven's body reflects how "old or young" he feels, which in turn means that he never stopped feeling the way he did back when he was 8 years old. Although in this episode's case Steven was merely shapeshifting his body in order to look older, which is an ability that all Gems have but can't do for very long. Also... this was a smart way to make Zack Callison use his normal voice for the character, since he grew up faster than Steven did in the show... he needed to start doing a falsetto in his voice acting in order to match the character. A little fun fact... when they're in the Dance scene Garnet and Greg are searching for more vinyls to play and Greg takes out one that has a cover named "Stella" and when Garnet sees it she playfully pushes Greg's face. This is a reference to Garnet's voice actress Stelle... who is also a Singer in real life.
Julio Castillo
2024-02-23 02:16:29 +0000 UTC
