Spoiler ptsd is a hell of a thing, I’m assuming. I mean, Pearl bottled it up and buried it in layers of her psyche, Rose wanted to just pretend it never happened. And pretend Bismuth never happened. And pretend Lion never happened. What she did was fucked up and it screwed a lot of people over. But she, herself, was kinda fucked up.
Spoiler Especially if a major part of the problem was Pearl not talking about it. Rose, from everything we've seen and heard, can be inferred to be a character who deeply cares and sympathizes with people, but who struggles a lot with empathizing. There's a lot of stuff she doesn't pick up on, and I think when personal issues are kept hidden by people, it takes a lot for her to realize they're there, even with people who she's known longer and better than anyone else, like Pearl. Because Pearl could literally not express the anguish the geas eventually started causing her, Rose could not pick up on that, especially because Pearl had initially been okay keeping the secret. Also, we know it got really bad after Rose died. I'm sure it had been festering beforehand, but until Rose died and Steven was born, things had been calm. There were the corrupted gems to take care of, of course, but there had been no sign of Homeworld returning. The only people who would understand if Pearl talked about Rose being Pink were Garnet and Amethyst, and Amethyst wouldn't even get it, since Rose deliberately with-held a lot of Homeworld stuff from Amethyst so that Amethyst could be free to choose who she wanted to be and what she wanted to do without social pressure or expectations. I think while the binding was still a problem back then, it didn't start tearing Pearl apart so obviously until Rose was already gone and couldn't reverse it, so Rose never... knew. Speaking of Rose and Amethyst... Spoiler It's easy to read Rose keeping things from Amethyst as condescending and paternalistic, but I actually think that's not what was going on. Amethyst is off-color, she came out too small. Who else came out too small? Pink Diamond. We still know very little about Pink Diamond pre-Earth, but while she was bigger in A Single Pale Rose than Stevonnie's empathic dream implied, she is massively smaller than the other two Diamonds we've seen, and although I'm comfortable assuming she was by far the youngest diamond (and I'm guessing White is the oldest, just by placement in the symbol), we also know that Gems are supposed to be created fully formed and adult, yet Pink Diamond was babied and treated like a child, and responded by acting like a child. It's hard to say for sure if that was related to her size, though, because as a species that doesn't reproduce sexually, Gems shouldn't have the association of smallness with youth. I mean, Rose thought babies and adults were different species at first! What we do know is that Pink was small, and Amethyst is small, and Pink felt smothered by societal expectations, and from that it's easy to think that maybe Rose just over-identified with Amethyst and gave her the care and attention and freedom that Rose deeply desired and craved when she was younger, while failing to consider that by keeping Amethyst unaware of Homeworld culture, she was also denying Amethyst the chance to choose to defy expectations. Amethyst learns how other Quartzes consider her in an extremely cruel way, with Jasper, and that could have been avoided while still letting Amethyst know that she's perfect just the way she is.
Spoiler And pretend her death never happened. And pretend that p much everything she wasn't planning on Steven hearing from either her tapes, Greg, or the Crystal Gems never happened. ....On another topic, did we ever find out whether, uh Spoiler was wrong or not?
Spoiler: context A theory from back when "Rose is PD" was a popular theory last year, that suggested that the structure where Rose's stuff was was actually part of Pink Diamond's Hand Ship
i finally caught up with the like last 15 episodes or something (everything since Lars’ Head) and wow!! Spoiler guess that theory about rose was right all along :0 also i love sadie’s singing... i wish sadie killer & the suspects had a full album to listen to
Spoiler: I mean.... I'm not sure the Diamonds were associating SMALLNESS with youth so much as "she's a Diamond and she's new" with youth, if that makes sense? like, to the Diamonds themselves, another Diamond is not just another Gem, and she's got a big job, and she can't learn it easily, and she doesn't know how to do it yet, and she's still young and learning, so I think to some extent that'd cause them to treat her like a child. also, what I keep coming back to is just, we know NORMAL Gems are supposed to be created fully formed and adult, but....are the Diamonds normal Gems? bc given that the flashback of White involved White's hand being larger than Blue and Yellow's (not by much, but still), and given that while Garnet wasn't there for the shattering at all (which accounts for her patchy recount of things there), but was was made of a soldier and a HOMEWORLD ELITE, meaning there's a decent chance she probably knows what the Diamonds of Homeworld look like, I'm thinking no, or at least they are not on the same level of normal Gems in terms of size constraints, unless certain types of Diamonds just inherently have certain size differences and White is a very large Diamond, while Blue and Yellow are naturally slightly smaller, or something. but I personally like the theory that the Diamonds grow with their colonies--and the mural seems to imply White owns more planets than Blue and Yellow (just not a HUGE amount more), it'd make sense for her to be somewhat larger than Yellow and Blue. and then Yellow and Blue have roughly the same amount of planets, so they're roughly the same size. like, when it comes down to it, we know plenty about Gems, but we DON'T know much about Diamonds specifically. I'm not sure we can actually definitively declare Pink WAS "too small" because we don't actually know how the Diamonds themselves work, and if they're different from other Gems because they can absorb planet energy to grow, or something, or even if maybe that's just a thing all Gems are capable of to some extent but they don't know that because the Diamonds don't want it to be common knowledge, or something completely different. like, she COULD be too small--or what happened to her could just be how Diamonds work, and if she'd stuck around longer she would've grown more and not been small, and the reason the Diamonds treat her like a child is because she processes like another actual person to them rather than a tool designed for a purpose. you don't treat your tools like children, and the Diamonds, imo, don't view other Gems as PEOPLE, so they don't treat them or view them like children or actual beings capable of thoughts and feelings--just tools, designed as fully functional adults and thus treated that way. but I feel like Pink has a more significant chance of processing to them as an actual person--not designed to just arrive and go to work, she's Like Them in some aspects but she's also young and inexperienced and has a lot to learn, and I feel like that's a big part of why they treat her the way they do. I can see Pink suffering from societal expectations, but imo, that has little to do with her SIZE and a lot more to do with, she wanted a colony because she wanted to jump into being like the other Diamonds, but once she GOT a colony, the societal expectations stopped lining up at all with what she wanted. she felt like she was being crushed by rules and ideals that would destroy a thing she actually cared about. I could easily see her taking "Quartzes are expected to be big soldiers" and "she as a Diamond was expected to destroy a thing she'd come to love" and putting them into the same category, but I really don't think her being SMALL is as big a thing as the whole "here's Earth, it's full of organic life, oh no I love it but as a Diamond I have to destroy it." especially when we don't actually....have any real confirmation on whether or not her being small is GENUINELY a defect. like, no one has said that in the show. you can read it as being implied, but you can also find other reasons for the things that happened that DON'T connect to her being small. afaik, no one has confirmed that Pink being small is what makes her off-color. and I honestly don't think it is, especially considering that she seemed to grow in size between the two times we've seen her.
Spoiler That's true. My main idea was just that Rose loved and adored Amethyst so much anyway, and that's like, canon.
http://theothin.tumblr.com/post/173944540347/mommacomms-i-m-snek-yunisverse-lately I cannot fucking believe this post from A FUCKING YEAR AND A HALF AGO
Spoiler (drinking pink lemonade, listening to “pink” by Aerosmith, looking at my Pink Diamond phone background) My Diamond <3
http://charlesoberonn.tumblr.com/post/174034921756/grimphantom2-coonfootproductions GODDAMMIT I HATE THIS FUCKING SHOW AND ITS FUCKING BRILLIANT FORESHADOWING
god.....thats the kind of thing where if someone had pitched it before the reveal i would have been like "idk, that sounds like a bit of a reach" but knowing what we do now........gdi crewniverse
Spoiler: recent episodes I’m still so astonished at how much Rose’s demeanor makes perfect sense for someone who genuinely cares about others but was raised with incredible privilege. No wonder she has such a commanding presence. It's probably harder to remember not to be commanding. She appears to have a strong moral compass, but she also doesn't seem to have a very solid concept of the consequences her decisions might have for other people. Or that there are some things you shouldn't even ask for, let alone inform people of. She started a civil war by running away and faking her own death. She fell for a handsome young man with a guitar, big dreams, and no sense of responsibility. Oh hell, the lyrics of "What Can I Do for You?" You are so much fun. I hadn't planned on finding you quite this entertaining. I like the way human beings play. I like playing along. Good heavens, Rose. Your flirting is a little unnerving in context and also did you really think this through?
This is why I will never be a writer. I can’t compete with this. This is bullshit and I hate it and I’m not smart enough to do it anyway.
It's hard but it's doable. The bit I have trouble with is figuring out what the big twist is supposed to be before even starting, which is the most vital part... Off-topic, but am I the first person to think that it would be really cool to have a crossover fic in which the "Diamonds" are the "Heathers"?
