Spoiler Suddenly I remember the end of Sword to the Sword... Steven echoing "human being," in an unusually melancholy voice. What's going on with the two people of that gem that they're so concerned that they're not real?
I think I was kind of interpreting it as her feeling kind of inadequate compared to this picture of her people had in their heads? Like, she's the figurehead of this huge destructive war, there are temples built depicting her struggle and statues in her honor, and Pearl has built up this image of Rose as huge and perfect and worth so much more than herself, and I'm thinking that can wear at a guy? And the way she seemed to be working off a script throughout that episode, it could very well be that she feels like she has to put on an act because she doesn't feel things that she thinks people need/want/expect her to feel? This might just be me projecting, cause I often feel very unattached to my emotions, and like I have to play pretend/lie or just plain allow other people's incorrect assumptions of me stand unchallenged, cause otherwise I have to admit to being a generally worse person than they imagine me to be.
Yeah but she flatout says 'I'm - not - a real person.' I can get the 'I'm not as good as you think I am' - especially from the 'I barely know anything about you.' 'That's a good thing.' exchange. But that line suggests that - I dunno, maybe she kind of envies something about humans? But I didn't get that from the rest of her behavior.
This...this actually makes a lot of sense. Rose seems to have become practically mythical in a lot of ways, nearly deified by her supporters and respected to some degree even by her worst enemies. And the fact of the matter is that no one is that perfect. SU seems to be largely about that fact, really--showing that everyone is flawed, and that no one is perfect, and that that's okay. (Not that you shouldn't try to overcome those flaws, of course, but y'know what I mean.) So given that pretty much everyone in the show is depicted as flawed in some way, it would seem odd that Rose...well, isn't. We Need To Talk showed us that she really was just as flawed as everyone around her, which was incredibly refreshing. And given that her most loyal obsessed fangirl friend and follower has, as you've said, built her up as this goddess, I feel like she'd feel pressured to be just as perfect as everyone thought she was. And ironically enough, that could be considered a flaw as well. It's probable that the term "person" just means "human" in this case. Given that Greg--who respects the Crystal Gems and loved (and still loves) Rose with all his heart--refers to "gems and people" in The Return ("Lots of gems were destroyed...people, too."), it's probably just a matter of unusual word choice. (Hell, given that gems have been around for a lot longer than humans and tried to conquer Earth, it's possible that "person" was a derogatory term among them...</wild mass guessing>)
*love like you playing softly in the background* #also #if every porkchop was perfect, we wouldn't have hotdogs
-Rose, from the recording in Lion 3. "Isn't it remarkable? ...Each living thing has an entire unique experience." Hmmmm.
If I may put on my angsty-crack-theory-hat (tm) for a moment: The 'But I'm Not A Real Person!' line made me think that, well there has gotta be some immediate reprimand for rebellion, right? Somehow Homeworld gems have to be kept in their lanes, doing their jobs. What if the punishment for open rebellion was immediate loss of legal Personhood. So when Rose says she is not a person, she may well be refering to the fact that, to her culture, she is not a person anymore, she is a bug, a lose cogwheel, an annoyance to be gotten rid of. Even though she technically came out of the war alive and beat homeworld back at least for now (presumably because homeworld assumed they'd won the war and killed all crystal gems?) she couldn't consider herself a person anymore, too deeply entrenched in millenia of hearing the same rules over and over. If someone rebels they aren't a Person anymore and get removed, Rebels aren't people, they are inconveniences, etc.
Oooohhhhh that's an interesting idea, I like it :o I was thinking it was more along the lines that gems might be sort of... Interchangeable? Like all of one class(like Pearls) are meant to fill a certain role, and if one of them is struck down they can pretty much just be replaced by another. Pearl's defective because she doesn't fill the proper role of a Pearl, whatever that might be- and this might be why fusions(long term ones at least) are looked down on because the gems that make up the fusion are rejecting their typical roles in gem society. That's why it was so wonderful to Rose that every single human had a completely unique life and set of experiences.
I've been seeing a lot of evidence that Gems value things working as intended. I hadn't thought about it in terms of fusions but that definitely makes sense, plus Jasper's reaction, seeing it as cheating. You can put two poorly-functional things together and get something very functional, which mucks up the "your worth is tied to how well do your job." Legal loss of personhood could definitely tie into that. Maybe that's why Pearl's so self-sacrificing, aside from her obvious love for Rose. She's bad at ~being a Pearl~ one way or another, so she throws herself into being Rose's knight and got really into it because it's a function she feels she can fulfill (also she can protect Rose, huge bonus)
yeah, i always got the impression Homeworld society valued more the collective than individual personhood. i think she was referencing the fact that she's.. not a person, like a human is, but an alien - she may look human, and like playing with humans, but she doesn't understand and hasn't lived human experiences, and... that'd be what makes people people. they're rather clueless about humanity with their limited contact with society, and they're still learning things about relationships and love and stuff, so like... gems can fuse and know everything about a person and be completely with that person they like and feel like they'll never and were never alone because of the fusion, so... conversation is not a way to achieve intimacy for them. communication is the only way we have to connect, but gems have fusion and roles and stuff like that that give an innate understanding. so she is... not a person, she doesn't know how a person works, she doesn't know how a 'real person' would talk to Greg.
So I was watching one of those trivia videos for SU and one of the facts was that one of Pearl's favorite songs is 24 hours by Sunmi Spoiler: english translation of the lyrics for anyone who doesn't wanna watch the music video for any reason 24 hours are not enough When I’m with you, when I lock eyes with you 24 hours are not enough When I’m touching you and when you’re touching me 24 hours (uh uh) 24 hours (baby baby) 24 hours (uh uh) 24 hours (baby baby) Time goes so fast A day with you feels like 1 minute, I’m going crazy (It’s a pity, it’s a pity) When I go to you, I run When I have to go, my feet won’t go, they won’t leave (It’s a pity, it’s a pity) When I’m looking at you, I forget everything You fill me up all the way When I’m holding you, everything is perfect I want to stay like this forever 24 hours are not enough When I’m with you, when I lock eyes with you 24 hours are not enough When I’m touching you and when you’re touching me 24 hours (uh uh) 24 hours (baby baby) 24 hours (uh uh) 24 hours (baby baby) When our hands touch, electricity spreads all over my body I close my eyes, what do I do? (Going crazy, going crazy) The more I drink, the thirstier I get The more I taste, the more my body seeks I’m falling into you (Going crazy, going crazy) When I’m looking at you, I forget everything You fill me up all the way When I’m holding you, everything is perfect I want to stay like this forever I’ve never felt like this before So falling endlessly is so scary But if it’s you, if you will catch me I’m not afraid, I want to keep going 24 hours, 24 hours, 24 hours, 24 hours 24 hours are not enough When I’m with you, when I lock eyes with you 24 hours are not enough When I’m touching you and when you’re touching me 24 hours (uh uh) 24 hours (baby baby) 24 hours (uh uh) 24 hours (baby baby)
I just thought of a thing related to the idea that Jasper was demoted and the whole "gem society is rigidly utilitarian" thing. Jasper is kinda old. She mentioned that she fought in the first gem war, yeh? I wonder if she might be obsolete, or at least heading that direction. I'm not doing words good tonight. But I like the thought of gems developed to suit certain roles, and certain types falling in and out of style along with technological growth and whatever. So. I dunno. Maybe this is dumb? Can't tell. Slow tonight.
I dunno, I could see that. My own personal headcanon is that there is a lot of obsolescence in support-types like Peridot and Pearl, but that combat Gems generally stay pretty constant except for rare revampings.
Yeh, advancements in tech would definitely hit techie gems harder. But mental issues might be a problem for long term fighter gems. Gem PTSD and stuff. And since they're made for specific roles, you can't just promote them off the battle field, and retirement seems like it might be off the table as well. So what do with vets? Why keep soldiers around for so long? Maybe for morale reasons? Maybe soldiers won't fight if they know they're no future for them. But all they can do is fight. Made for it. No future but fighting. Fight till you're old enough to get sent on crap escort duty to backwater mudballs where your skills won't even be needed. "Looks like another waste of my time." You think gems can be recycled? Seen a comic with that theory. I think if I were a gem overlord, I'd probably wanna recycle my soldiers every couple millennia.
Well, my idea is that Gem PTSD is heavily correlated with monstrification. My thought is that, as a Gem is on the battlefield or gets PTSD, they have faster reformations/as they reform faster then they are put under mental stress. That leads to forms with more flaws - usually not as unstable as having feet for arms but some small flaw, and since they're in a war there's no time to take them out of combat to recover. Those small flaws lead to more deaths in battle, and therefore more flaws, which build up. Now, I'm assuming that Gems have a basic body type that their default forms need to have- bipedal, humanish, etc. Deviations from that can be done safely (see Peridot's hands) but it requires a lot of patience and fiddling. So all those deaths result in a more and more corrupted form until the idea of what a Gem's body should look like is overwritten and a monster form becomes the default, and the Gem's mind essentially devolves into fight-or-flight. Also, I'm not sure if Gems wouldn't fight if they thought there was no future. My idea for Gem brains is... they think that their best purpose is to effectively serve their commanders to the best of their ability. Serving the homeworld is what gives them meaning and happiness - at least that's the result of propaganda.
@KarrinBlue that's a really interesting idea, and I definitely agree that mental state plays a big role in corruption, but what I'm getting stuck on is the regeneration part, since it was implied Pearl sacrificed herself a huge number of times on the battlefield in order to protect Rose, and to our knowledge Pearl is fine as far as being able to create a normal, humanoid form. Then again though(and I just thought of this as I was typing sorry) Pearl took two weeks to return. For Amethyst, a couple hours was a long, long time and they were worried. And while yes I think that that's in part due to the fact that Amethyst doesn't want to do a lot of self reflection, I also wouldn't think that Pearl would take -that- much time unless she needed to. The other two didn't seem worried, though Amethyst does comment something along the lines of "man, she's really taking her time with this one" after the two weeks. This could be part of what makes Pearl defective(as we have no sense of time between battles or if Pearl was able to reform multiple times per battle or not) but it could also be that with each regeneration it takes them longer to create a stable form. Speaking of corrupted gems though, what do you guys make of all the corrupted gems on earth? I like the idea that Homeworld used something along the lines of a biological weapon against the gems that were still on earth(or possibly one of the Homeworld loyal gems still on earth(possibly trapped there after the warp pad was broken) set it off) and that was what corrupted all of the other gems, while Rose was only able to save the few, using her shield. This would also give a good base, I think, to why she would want to fix them- guilt, in part, but also because she thinks she might actually be able to, given that her shield protected the four of them from becoming corrupted as well. But she may have realized something was missing that she couldn't provide(not sure what, this is all just sperging because I can't really make mouth noises right now and I need something to pour my energy into) but that Steven might be able to. In the episode where Steven gets the video tape, at the end of the tape Rose says "take care of them Steven" and it's ambiguous who she's talking about. It might be the Crystal Gems because she realizes that they'll still be mourning her loss and struggling to lead themselves even by the time Steven is given the tape(I say given because Lion was very deliberately trying to get him to go into his mane, and that especially interests me because Lion had been with them for awhile, so why now? Was it a preset thing? Maybe that was exactly so many years after she put the stuff in his mane? Idk) , she could be talking about the human race and basically telling him to protect them because she realizes Homeworld will eventually come back someday, or she could be telling him to take care of the corrupted gems and figure out how to fix them. I think in a way it's all three, but given that the quote is very obviously vague when it could have easily been altered slightly to be more clear, and the fact that after the war their main priority was finding, capturing, and trying to find a way to fix the corrupted gems on earth, I think there's an especially good case for it being at least partially about the corrupted gems. (Okay gonna make a separate post to talk about other theories and crap, because this is LONG already but I still have more I wanna say/ask your guys' opinion about)
@Alska my pet theory is that corruption is a biological weapon sort of thing, like you're thinking, but that it was deployed by Rose, not Homeworld. No such thing as a good war, kid. #i've talked about it in a bit more detail upthread if you wanna go digging #i'm tired and don't really wanna rewrite stuff rn
Ohhhh also interesting. I'll go find that as soon as I'm done writing this other thing, because I don't wanna lose my train of thought. Did you touch on why Rose might have chosen to save the three gems that she did, or the possibility that there might have been others she'd saved? I mean it's probably unlikely, but then again the war was thousands of years ago.
