Spoiler: Oh yeah How could I forget to mention how delighted I was with the (song) jam about (fruit spread) jam??? Punspunspunsyesssss
Holy shit. Lapis being Teleri is perfect. Especially with the First Kinslaying thing. Also now that I think about it. Elves also like pretty rocks a lot. So much so that numerous wars were started over the prettiest pretty rocks in all the land. Pretty rock obsession might provide reason for why the gems are named as they are. "I have decided that my self name is Amethyst because this is the prettiest rock." Clearly that is how this will go. Or "I HAVE DECIDED THAT YOUR EPESSE IS PEARL BECAUSE YOU HAVE WEIRDLY FAIR FUCKING HAIR AND SKIN. LIKE WHAT IS UP WITH THAT HAIR." Except worded differently because children's show and also Tolkien.
From the way garnet made it look pearl literally threw herself in front of weapons every time rose even got near danger. Unless rose had literally chained pearl to her wrist to keep her from doing that or had her under constant watch by another gem there was probably NO WAY to keep pearl from being a self-destructive trainwreck. Like right now, Garnet doesn't seem to have any reason to lie to Steven about how this went down and the Rose in Garnet's version looks sad/surprised/conflicted. I don't think Rose wanted Pearl to do this, but we know how Pearl gets and I do doubt Rose had any real way of keeping Pearl away from oversized weapons smashing her, short of inducing a nervous breakdown in Pearl by restraining her and keeping her away from the battle. That scene was such a blow because Pearl doesn't seem to even realize what's bothering Steven about this. Granted she didn't witness Steven's vigilance over her gem and how hard the poof hit him but, MY GOD that apparently neither Amethyst nor Garnet warned her to NOT bring out holopearl again afterwards? Like Steven immediately summons the bubble that he accidentally-summons only when he is in deep distress and Pearl knows this. But instead of investigating that she brushes it off. Bad Parenting, Pearl, get your shit together! Also bad communication skills, other moms. Yes, yes the gem does look like Jasper. And I think both conclusions are valid, since Jasper heavily implied (or actually outright confirmed? Man I should rewatch thos episodes when I'm done with crying over Pearl) that she already fought against Rose once and would like a rematch, with Steven if need be. Though I personally lean more towards the Metaphor interpretation because ~symbolism~ Now If You'll excuse me I need to howl every Pearl Song to the moon because I love them. Pearl has so many issues, I really wish they actually go and get her help. Like even if the help is just a parenting class for ALL the gems, because wow. Also something about Amethyst in the episode: Spoiler: I don't even know why I'm spoilering this but just in case It also just occured to me that the way Amethyst reacted to Steven was somehow unexpectedly direct. If I'm not completely off, in the first season she would have tried cheering steven up without actually stating 'Oh No, You Are Sad', but now it was the first thing out of her mouth. 'Yo Ste-man', she starts but then is immediately angry and shouts 'WHY ARE YOU STANDING HERE ALL SAD LIKE THAT?' Her mood whiplashed from laughing and joking with Garnet to being angry on Steven's behalf in a split second and I'm not sure whether that means that she has been dealing with her problems effectively enough to become more perceptive of other people's moods or that she is latching onto steven or what.
My idea is that they're going to have a hell of a time finding a therapist capable of dealing with all their shit, because wow, they all need some serious counseling.
OMG THIS IS THE BEST AU I HAD TO PUT MY BREAKFAST DOWN TO JUST FLAIL FOR A SECOND @Wiwaxia i second teleri!lapis being perfect. how do jasper and peridot fit in? i figure they're probably also noldor - maybe they're feanorians? like, i could see rose and co. being in/being the equivalent of fingolfin's (is that the right one? gdi why do they all have names starting with f) crew - they wanted to leave aman and got caught up in the badness and kept going forward, but eventually were able to turn away in part from that path because they weren't bound by the oath. but i could see jasper being more one of feanor's (or the gem equivalent's) loyal soldiers. like, one of the people that actually got to ride the teleri ships over instead of crossing the helcaraxe. i could see peridot being born later in arda in one of feanor's sons' territories. doing the crossover the other way - i really want to see a silmaril gemsona. i would try myself, but i cannot think of any design ideas.
Well actually, I'm not sure sure about that. It's still a simple thought bubble Steven is having, isn't it? I figured that Pearl was not literally throwing herself in front of Rose - suicide missions, or trying to stop backstabs, seem more likely, and Pearl just romanticized it into the way we see in her projection. I am quite certain it wasn't Jasper. The hair is similar (at least in fluffiness) but her helmet has no protrusion, and she is, y'know, using a battle axe. One that looks nearly identical to the one Garnet grabbed from the strawberry fields, which was black and purple.
I think, unless it was a metaphor for "the enemy" I think the ad guy in her flashback was a Jasper, not the Jasper that we got to know, since it's heavily implied that there are multiples of every kind of gem. I think her respect for humans will come in time and enough interaction. She and the other gems have definitely been observing humans for thousands of years, but given that if they are lucky they MIGHT make it to a century when a "child" gem is a few thousand years old? They probably didn't intervene with their lives too much or they risk getting too attached. Humans are cool and I love them, but from a gem's perspective they are just another species of earth fauna. Even Rose, the epitome of love and kindness, really patronized Greg and acted like he was some kind of pet the first time she met him. Spoiler I don't think there are any "pedophilic undertones". I think Pearl just is not dealing with her grief well at all. It's only been about 12 years. So like, Rose has only been gone for .001% of her life. It's all still very raw to her and she isn't handling it well at all considering how codependant she was and how she based all of her self-worth on how she could be of use to Rose (notably one of the things Connie says to her is "I don't want to be a burden"). I don't even think she processed her trauma from the war at all even though it's been 6,000+ years. It's kind of disturbing that even though we see in her flashback she is visibly freaked out by what's going on around her and her behavior defied logic and strategy and was just her getting killed over and over again in her self destructive frenzy fueled by her "loyalty" and "the life you'll have after the war". Yet in present day she is all happy and smiley about their glorious victory and is incredibly enthusiastic about it. Which probably also plays into her grief with Rose a lot and why she is not handling it well. "The life you'll have after the war" has kept her going during the war and kept her from dealing with her experiences during the war for thousands of years. She likes to deal with unpleasant things by repressing the hell out of them. But now Rose is gone. The source of her self worth is gone, the reason why she fought is gone, she tries desperately to see "Rose" in Steven because she doesn't know who she is and how she is supposed to exist without her. It's not right, but I don't think it's pedophilic either. As much as I like to ship Rose and Pearl it's looking more and more that Rose was her rock and not her lover. Without Rose to cling to suddenly she has to exist by herself and that includes dealing with everything she's been to up until this point that she's beat down with "Just think about Rose and everything will be okay" for thousands of years. I mean, even though she was "a few thousand years old" from a gem perspective she was a child soldier. Bleh, sorry if that came off defensively. I reiterate that Pearl is messed up and her behavior is messed up. If she was a human or if gems actually cared about things like each other's feelings then she should have gotten some serious therapy a long time ago way before Steven came into the picture. I think over the course of the show Steven will pull through his rough patches and all of the gems will start healing. Pearl'messed up behavior will be a source of conflict for awhile but if anything the ending looks very optimistic (at least compared to her thousand yard stare at the end of Rose's Scabbard) that things will get better.
hmmm... possible the helmet thing comes from her having a new form by now? Also I don't think the axe is necessarily a counterpoint since both rose's sword and the scabbard belonging to it don't seem to be magically summoned gem weapons, since they haven't despawned after Rose's death and Steven cannot summon them. Also we've seen Pearl use swords that aren't her spear/halberd (what's it supposed to be??) for at least training purposes, suggesting that Gems do in fact use weapons other than their special summonable ones. So the colorscheme could be an argument. Hm. I'm still more feeling the 'jasper look-alike as metaphor for all bad guys' explanation tru, I misattributed whose magic narration visualization device the bubble was, somehow assumed it belonged to Garnet, not steven
I have to go out, and I'll catch up on the thread later but BUT I HAVE TO SAY: Spoiler: AAAHHHHHHH SCREAMING FOREVER
Except that Jasper's helmet is her Gem weapon, and those have never changed. Even Garnet's gauntlets are the same in Story for Steven. Also Pearl's weapon is a weird spear. It's not a halberd, since there's nothing like an axe blade on there or a hook. It's possible that it used to just be a wand that Pearl modified to be more suitable for melee combat, though...
oh shit I FORGOT THAT SORRY! I am useless about Jasper she just kind of makes me hella angry so I try not to pay too much attention to her whoops I was thinking of 'Kung Fu Halberds' which is probably a shit translation of Guan Dao but still idk could be what they based Pearl's weapon off of
Ah, OK. Also I was wrong about the axe in the flashback being the one from the strawberry fields. That one had one blade and a more cylindrical gem on top, while the one in Pearl's hologram was two-headed and had a diamond on top.
if the "gems are mass produced in batches" thing is true, then it could have been a jasper, not necessarily the one we met but a different one? what if the weapons are more of a personality thing than a type thing? i.e. not all pearls wield spears, or not all garnets use gauntlets (we could go even deeper and consider not all ruby/sapphire fusions make a garnet) therefore still providing a sense of individualism. also pearl mains a spear, but is proficient in sword fighting which suggests maybe it was the jasper we know and she had to use something more practical than her helmet for whatever reason. either that or the "jasper is a fusion" theory is correct, and the second gem isn't immediately visible, so she mains two different weapons. i think that's highly unlikely though, since that theory seems to be entirely based around the fact that she is large for a "non fusion". this is probably the most plausible theory tbh.
I was kind of thinking that the enemy's appearance was just simplified a lot, like how it didn't really show her face. It makes sense that Rose and Pearl herself are more detailed in the flashback because that's what Pearl was really focused on. i thought the helmet looked similar enough to be Jasper's, but like someone else said it could have just been a different Jasper. Also yeah, I figured the helmet was her gem weapon, and the axe was like Rose's sword. Someone had a neat theory about why they would use non summoned weapons, saying that it might be because their summoned weapons might be unable to actually destroy gems.
Jasper summons her helmet from her Gem, it is definitely her Gem weapon. It could be another Jasper, or some other Gem from a quartz-related stone (since Amethyst, Rose, and Jasper all have giant hair). And in any case, in Pearl's hologram, that Gem is so big that her axe is larger than Pearl - she's got to be the size of Sugilite, right? I think it's just a simplified version of the base Gem tank-type warrior. How could Jasper be a fusion? When we see Malachite forming she's only got two Gems, one from Jasper and one from Lapis.
