Have you seen the episode yet? ;n; ahhhh I'm so glad I'm not in either of those fandoms, I don't think I could take so much happening at once lol
Shoot! I forgot about the new steven bomb and missed the first episode ;_; better luck tomorrow EDIT: I am watching a potato quality video someone uploaded where they recorded their TV while steven universe is playing and I LOVE THE NEW OPENING.
Ah well, it'll probably be online within a couple hours- there's someone who always posts them right after they air.
Watching it on potato quality didn't hurt the episode in any way it was adorable and action packed but also really sad. Also my shipping has intensified. (I know Pearl bugs a lot of people with her neurotic tendencies but she is legit my favorite of the crystal gems. I think I really ID with her coexisting perfectionism/lack of self worth/overwhelming emotional states turning her into a giant bundle of nerves with a veneer of being put together) EDIT: this has given me enough Pearl feels to go back to using my Pearl avatar xD
Wow, Pearl...Pearl, I love you, but you need some fucking help ASAP. Spoiler: Sworn To The Sword spoilers Seriously, her treatment of Connie and Steven in this episode was pretty fucked up and creepy. It's a logical extension of her behavior in Rose's Scabbard, but even that was pretty fucked. I think she probably read a lot further into her relationship with Rose than she should've, to be honest? Like, I don't doubt that Rose loved and treasured her, but I think Pearl might've viewed them as having had some sort of much deeper (likely romantic) relationship that wasn't actually there. And that's fucked up! She's gonna need a reality check ASAP. ...Actually, Pearl's kind of an unreliable narrator in general (see: Garnet pointing out that she left out her own repeated self-sacrifices when she retold the story). And given that she's our major source of info on Gem history...well, who knows where that'll go.
Spoiler: see your spoiler talk and respond with more spoiler talk I think the problem with Pearl in the episode is that she is really projecting herself onto Connie. She's very young, she wants to protect "Rose" (Steven). It's been shown many, many times that once Pearl latches onto something she takes it to obsessive extremes. This episode really isn't any different. We don't know how old gems in general are but Amethyst is still sort of the "kid" of the group and is at least 6,000 years old if I remember correctly. Pearl said she was only "a few thousand years old" when she started fighting for Rose. So she was probably the gem equivalent of a child. I forgot where, but someone speculated in the past that Pearls are not actual gemstones and are made organically. Pearl was described as "defective". So Pearls may be a created slave/servant class on home world. For some reason in her development Pearl was born "defective" and thus was treated worthlessly as concepts like love, family, and friendship are foreign concepts to home world gems. Rose made her feel like "she was everything" for the first time in her entire life. So she got really, really unhealthily attached and devoted her entire existence to her, because Rose was the only person who actually saw something of value in her. I think Pearl is seriously messed up, but I don't think she is nearly as malicious as parts of the fandom make her out to be. (not talking to anyone here specifically about that, just whenever I check the SU fandom on sites like tumblr and reddit there is a very vocal section of the fanbase that talks about how neurotic/screwed up/obsessive/hypocritical/etc etc. Pearl is and how she is A Bad Person, while glossing over any flaws that Amethyst and Garnet have. Or maybe it's not that bad and I am doing a Pearl and projecting myself all over the fucking place. Wheee.) Like dang Pearl, you could use some human psychotherapy.
two songs in one episode? *star eyes* Spoiler: Pearl you need help I think Pearl's relationship with Rose was probably romantic and reciprocated, but I do think Pearl read a lot more into it wrt utter devotion and willingness to self-sacrifice that Rose was maybe aware of. Also that implication that Pearl feels like she is worth nothing and only Rose's love made her feel like she was worth something. (I've been thinking that her dismissiveness towards humans is self-loathing-by-proxy for a while, too.) Actually, Pearl's reminding me of Homura kinda a lot right now.
Spoiler: moar talk about Pearl To me at least Pearl's dislike of humans to me makes sound logical sense. Humans live a fraction of any gem's lifespan (Pearl's apparently been around for at least 10,000 years and watched humans go from hunter gatherers to agriculturalists to statehood.) The Gems have probably lived in Delmarva for the past 10,000 years and Saw Some Shit regarding colonialism, war, and how humans treat each other based on their emotions and how they justify that. After a few thousand years of many, many humans with their big ideas about their place in the universe when they've never even left their space rock and self destructive actions as a species I can imagine it all starts looking very silly to her. Even Rose saw Greg as some kind of "pet" initially and she is the nicest gem around. On top of that Pearl is a perfectionist all all living creatures have some pretty disgusting functions. I'm not sure if she is self aware enough to realize how "human" she really is.
Spoiler: Defective Pearl oh! Adding to the whole speculation on how Pearl is defective, she says something in the song about "your body's not made to fight" or something like that, and it was at a point where it was clear it was very likely supposed to apply to Connie and her.
Spoiler: It's Pearl all the way down YES I was just about to mention that! Though with Peridot also not being a very good fighter but a technician, and with Pearl's tendencies for perfection, obsession, lack of self worth and strategy this points to Pearls being either a technical class like Peridot and/or a servant/slave class that predates more technical gems like Peridot and are meant to tend to the needs of other gems and not participate in their war like activities (since strength, fighting, and conquering appear to be the values of homeworld that even "weak" gems seem to participate in with fusion that would make them more of second class citizens). That's my theory anyways.
Spoiler: Even more Pearl see I was thinking the opposite- that Maybe Pearls are meant to be fighters, and she's defective because she's not as strong as she should be and not really built for fighting.
Spoiler: pearlpearlpearlpearlpear That's a good alternative too! I think she could be defective because of her really intense emotions, and how she gets really carried away with things, since homeworld gems tend to be a little more... stable than that. Peridot only got frustrated when her stuff kept getting broken, Jasper just wants to crush her enemies, Lapis is desperate for freedom and spiteful but she was also trapped in an inanimate object for thousands of years with nobody really caring about her. Amethyst has the same issues but she is ALSO defective because she's "an over cooked runt", Ruby and Sapphire seem to have their own weaknesses but balance out (possibly why they are considered very weak gems? are they when separate considered defective too?) I have a feeling Rose's army was a lot of gems who didn't fit the gem homeworld mold and were tossed aside as unimportant.
Do people read Pearl as malicious? Is that an actual fandom thing, like people reading Feferi as manipulative or abusive? I mean, it's very clear that she's fucked up and she does some very fucked up things, but I don't see how anyone could see her as actively trying to cause harm.
I don't have any specific posts right now (because I tend to just roll my eyes and keep scrolling) but I think in the past whenever Pearl went really over the line in an episode some people would talk about how she's a big hypocrite, thinks of herself as perfect (oh boy did this episode shatter that one), how mean she is to everyone. Usually this kind of criticism comes from the same people who really ID with Amethyst and her issues. The only conclusion I got it the people who really ID with these characters tend to have similar personalities to these characters and ae antagonistic to each other in similar ways (example: Amethyst often criticizes Pearl for being holier-than-thou). Alternative: the SU fandom is pretty reasonable and I am just sensitive when people point out her flaws because I have similar ones and have been criticized as being "self centered" and "think [I am] perfect and can never do anything wrong" when the opposite is true. Alternative 2: Both of the above. Because when is tumblr actually good at being nuanced and reasonable with characters?
Hnn, I'm not an active participant in the tumblr SU fandom, but from the outside looking in it feels really hostile and weird about characters and their fans. I mean, I mostly check the #jasper and general #steven universe tags, cause I am nothing if not singlemindedly determined to love only the most unrepentantly terrible of ladies (see my teenage obsessions with Larxene, Glados, and Vriska) and that could very well be coloring my perceptions. Cause, Jasper's p controversial, and gets a lot of "urgh why would anyone even like this character/I hate how fandom portrays this character/jasper is literally the devil and anyone who likes her wants poor innocent lapis to suffer forever irl" kind of things. So, yeah. I can see people getting really personal about characters in this show. Dunno where I'm going with this, sorry.
Unfortunately no, it is not the alternative :( the Steven universe fandom is one of the most overall hostile fandoms I've been in- and this is considering the whole CAA debacle and the fact that I was in the homestuck fandom for like 3 years. Also yeah, anything with the Homeworld gems(including Lapis here) people tend to get really... Idk. Very weird. Like its like CAAs whole thing about kinks and abusive ships, but spread out over lots of people. And idk if it's still up, but there was literally a blog called grosssufandomthings with 7 mods who basically went around throwing a shit fit about nsfw art among other things. And like, this was fanart that was properly tagged, didn't show up if you had the safe search on.
Spoiler: yes but connie okay but let's talk about how completely willing Connie was to be the sidekick character to Steven's protagonist. Connie has a problem with seeing things as... story tropes? and it breaks my heart a little, but also she just loves Steven SO MUCH and he loves her SO MUCH in return and when they teamed up together I just ldsjafdjldkafd. I MAYBE CRIED A LOT THIS EPISODE.
No no, I get it. Lars is my trash baby and going on the tags is a 3 way split between "precious baby uwu" "has his flaws but possibly redeemable and is very human" and "I HATE THIS CHARACTER AND EVERYONE WHO LIKES HIM HE IS SHIT YOU'RE ALL SHIT" after the island adventure episode the fandom is a 50-50 split of Sadie being "a precious baby who did what she thought was right" and a "MANIPULATIVE PSYCHO WHO EMOTIONALLY ABUSED LARS AND DOESN'T DESERVE TO BE IN A RELATIONSHIP" and then the "LARS IS SATAN" crew duke it out with them for what half of their OTP is the most awful.
Spoiler: Oh no all these Pearl feels Thanks to having Nobilis on the brain, I'm thinking about how Amethyst and Pearl both have problems with thinking of themselves as terrible and how they cope in opposite directions. Where Amethyst takes anything and everything, Pearl tries to make everything perfect. Amethyst tries to avoid thinking about herself (though she assumes the others do) and embraces disarray and disaster because then she doesn't stand out; if anything can be accepted and appreciated and doesn't have to be just so, then there's nothing wrong with her. Pearl, quite possibly related to whatever inspired that "defective" remark, came to Earth certain that she was nothing and nobody. But then Rose, and the war, her love/admiration for Rose and how Rose made Pearl feel like "everything..." Everything Pearl values about herself is what she believed Rose valued in her; that everything Pearl now has she owes to Rose and she wished to pay it all back to help her. Over and over and over again. No wonder she clung so fiercely to the idea that she was Rose's greatest confidante. And now that Rose is no longer with them, she's starting to latch onto others. That hyperfocus... When Stephen believed she could build a rocket, or teach him to fight with a sword, she took it and pushed it like it would replace the old validation thing. So when Pearl got all starry-eyed, and when she started training Connie into the mindset that she used for fighting? Unpleasant to watch but very unsurprising. Pearl genuinely believed that was her value to Rose, and that it was her strength. Of course she would teach it to Connie. What I'm happily surprised by is how quickly she grokked that those two were different and would work differently, that she found a way to approximate the partnership Connie and Stephen pushed for. It's a good thing those kids have such strong wills.
