...I don't buy the Garnet-as-multiple thing. I mean, she says herself! Garnet's not just Ruby and Sapphire piloting a tall lady-shaped shell, she is a cohesive being all herself. Or at least that's how I see it. Sidenote: Check this out, from the New Batgirl previews:
I saaaawwwww :D Omg yes Pearl feelings. So, so many Pearl feelings. I cried through the second half of the episode and just finished watching it for a third time. Unsurprising considering the board team that worked on it- I think all of my favorite episodes have been by them.
The thing with Pearl, I think, is that she was really dependant on Rose to give her purpose and her sense of self-love was deeply tied in how useful she could be to Rose - which i'm headcanoning as some secondary programming of Pearls, or the category of gem Pearl is - like, she sees devotion and servitude as an expression of love, and the most extreme that devotion and serviture are, the deepest, truest the love is. she identifies some of this in Connie, and that's why she projects and pushes her so hard into dehumanization territory. also, dude, she's still obviously grieving a lot. she's not over Rose being dead. give my fav a break, tumblr fandom
@witchknights - considering the extreme lifespan of a Gem, it's not terribly surprising that Pearl's really not over it. Especially with the presumed-to-be-abnormal emotional connection(s) between the Crystal Gems. if a few thousand years is just barely old enough to start swordfighting, ten-odd years is NOT long enough to get over your (love? liege? both?) favourite person ever's death. *wants to give Pearl all the hugs* T_T
I just watched the episode and my throat feels all tight. Oh god, oh man Pearl you absolute train wreck of a gem, and Connie getting all swept up in storybook plots and grand destinies and loyal knights laying down their lives for the bigger more important people and her face when Pearl talks about Steven dying, Stevens face when Pearl talks about Connie dying, oh god, and how they work together so naturally in the end, god. I am weak, lord I am weak.
@Kaylotta exactly! 10-odd years is a second in comparison to a gem's lifespan, and with how deeply attached to rose she was... argh. im going to cry over this stupid cartoon again, i cant believe it. she just lost basically everything when Rose died... Ruby/Sapphire have each other to help go through grief, and amethysts copin mechanisms arent particularly great either, but pearl had the most emotional energy invested, more things attached to her relationship with Rose than either of them and... God, I cant imagine how hard it was when Rose got pregnant, when they planned the whole thing. I understand Pearl a lot because i had a lot of unhealthy ways to deal with my affection for other people that took me years of therapy to get rid of, and i was a 19 year old at the time. i cant imagine how much psychological help she'd need to deal with, idk, ten, twenty thousand years of love and affection and weirdly warped devotion.
also, the tumblr post that was like, "if one of rose's powers was creating a protective shield or bubble, why didn't she ever use it to protect pearl when she tried sacrificing herself?" is really bugging me. is there a good answer for that that doesn't involve rose quartz not caring about pearl? 'cause, like, i just... if rose didn't care about pearl...
Slightly off topic but I havn't really liked the newest season of adventure time and Rebecca Sugar was responsible for many of my favorite episodes and plotlines in that series. ... but it's totally flipping worth it, because Steven Universe is literally everything I could possibly want out of an 11 minute cartoon aimed at kids. It didn't even need a season or two to find it's footing and grow. It was excellent right out of the gate. It's my favorite cartoon on TV now that Korra is gone. The only show that comes close is Gravity Falls and it has a weird schedule. So I always end up forgetting it exists for like a year and then binge watch all the episodes I missed.
i saw it more as pearls representation/idealized version of what happened than what actually happened, bcause i highly doubt they were actually that tall, and that they were just standing in front of each other, and that the enemy would be just hitting THE GROUND IN FRONT OF ROSE instead of, idk, her torso.
That is supremely fucking depressing and I didn't even think about that because I was so caught up in relating to the blind devotion.
@unknownanonymous see, I've always interpreted that whole shebang as being, partially at least, the dichotomy between Rose's offensive stance and Steven's defensive stance. Because yeah, Rose cared about her Gems, but she was still very much a warrior. There could also be a certain amount of lingering Homeworld tradition involved (especially if we think about the theories as to Pearl's possible purpose) - protection and defense don't really seem to have been priorities. Wreaking havoc, however, very much was. iirc, Steven first uses his gem to create a shield - and the first we see of Rose's 'weaponry' is her sword. my brain is telling me that Rose didn't use the shield. but then I am remembering the talk at the end of the season about how Rose's shield saved only a few friends. that makes me think that it may have been a last resort, a last-ditch effort. which, to my mind, falls into the offense-first-and-possibly-only strategy - and brings up the interesting possibility that it may have been a surprise. like, imagine Rose, deciding that this is it, she'll take this hit to save her friends, even if it kills her - and then bam look a shield! also imagine the guilt that would ensue. why didn't that power show up before? does it require selfless sacrifice? is that not a thing that Gems had thought of? what if it was considered defective? i dunno, my brain's chasing plot bunnies.
yeah. I imagine that in actual battle she'd be catching attacks on rose's back, or generally out of her reach when she was engaged with someone else, and because Pearl is Pearl and brainweird, she idealizes the situation. @Kaylotta oooh i like that idea. Steven's shield very much only comes out in situations of selfless sacrifice, so its a nice idea. and we already know that bubbles have a health points cap.
Rose definitely cared about Pearl. She was incredibly worried about making sure she 100% understood the consequences of what she was doing. Like Steven, I don't think she was comfortable having a person she cares about dying all the time trying to protect her. But it was the middle of a War. Rose was leading and fighting alongside an entire army. I interpret it as: it's not that Rose didn't care, it's just that Pearl basically went on suicide missions that "defied strategy and common sense" for the sake of her devotion over and over and over again. If she had to keep protecting Pearl every time she threw herself into a situation that would get her killed, that's all she would be doing. She probably had a lot of other gems to look out for too that she had close emotional ties to. (IIRC there is even a bubbled gem in Lion's mane along with all the other war stuff too)
@Kaylotta @liminal @witchknights thanks! that tumblr post was really messing with me 'cause of my identification with pearl, and i'm so glad to have several reasons now for what it says to not be as horrible as it tries to imply. :D so yeah... thank you so, so, so much!!!!!
UGH, Pearl's 'why don't you just let me do this for you, rose" is STILL fucking killing me. D'you think it was, like, Rose didnt want her doing that stuff but Pearl still wanted to risk her life for Rose because she didnt care for her life in relation to Rose's like truly honestly didnt care about her safety or am i just. projecting too much.
like 'i want to sacrifice myself for you, i honestly want to sacrifice my life for you because i think you are worth everything and i am not' and like. i cant stop thinking how much keeping rose alive and unharmed meant to pearl and how... she couldnt... do anything to make her not die when steven was born....
That's exactly what I think it was. They were in a war, making desperate choices, but Rose tried to talk Pearl out of the more reckless things (that Pearl did out of that sacrificial, unequal love)... And in the end Pearl couldn't save Rose.
I think one of the other possible reasons Rose didn't use the shield to protect her in battle was because Rose often just wasn't there: Pearl said something about how ideally, Steven wouldn't be there in battle with Connie, because he was too important. So, I'm wondering if that was often the case with Rose and Pearl too.
