It seems to vary, honestly. Like, I'll affectionately refer to myself and to certain characters (in multiple fandoms) as trash, but I often see it being used in a legitimately hateful way as well.
Yeah, context is important with insults. Like, I call people dudebro sometimes as just a placeholder word that feels nice to say, but I've also seen it used as a straight up pejorative, and still others using it affectionately. Hard and fast rules for insults don't seem to work, in my experience. Alsoooo, I was thinking. I've seen a lot of people talk about the Homeworld Gems as foils. And I'm not sure the show is trying to do that at all, but it seems in some circles to be accepted fanon that they are, in very specific ways. Like, Jasper is there to contrast Garnet, and Peridot is there to contrast Pearl, and Lapis somehow matches to Amethyst? I dunno. Anyways, I'm not wording good now, but it feels to me like people have been trying to match characters up based on very superficial commonalities, like Jasper and Garnet being big physical fighters, and Peridot and Pearl both being cerebral, but I think it'd be pretty fucking funny if they actual turn out to foil characters whom they have nothing in common with at first glance. Like, as we see more of Peridot, it sort of feels like she's got more personally in common with Amethyst. They're both the youngest(at least acting) of their respective groups and they both talk themselves up a bit. Or a lot. Like, maybe Peridot has similar "fake it till you make it" ideas to Amethyst, or whatever. Fuck, I am completely losing the plot here. Basically, I just think it'd be super fucking hilarious if the proposed matchups turned out to be Garnet-Lapis, Amethyst-Peridot, and Pearl-Jasper. Especially the later, after all the people making weird ass badness level competitions between them. and i dunno if this is a thought worth expressing, but i'm trying to be better about talking, so whatever, can't be thought that much worse of, yeah? .... y-yeah?
Actually, I can kind of see the Peridot-Pearl similarities! They have their Gems in the same place, both have holograms, and apparently their respective musical themes mirror each other a bit! Though I think there's an argument to make about Lapis and Pearl mirroring each other (hehe, mirror)?
Yes. And then we get an awesome Pearl and Jasper fight and it's awesome and teaches me to stop calling Jasper Jaspers. Jaspers already has a Rose. He is in fact now a Rose.
Yeah, Pearl and Peridot are similar in a lot of ways. It's not a serious theory, it's just a thought I had. Cause, yeah, there are a lot of immediate similarities between Pearl and Peridot, and Jasper and Garnet. The Lapis-Amethyst connection loses me, cause it's just. Not there. So if it was gonna work, it'd have to be reshuffled a bit.
I... think the only similarity between Amethyst and Lapis is that they're both not from the same place (well, Lapis sort of is but she's got similar culture shock) as the rest of their team and spent a lot of time alone before joining the group. Though Lapis' allegiance to the Homeworld Gems is dubious at best, all things considered.
The comparison I've always heard was Amethyst-Jasper. Which...makes slightly more sense, but not much.
The only comparison I can really draw between Amethyst and Jasper is the fact that their features point to them being similar in regards to the type of gem they are, namely that they have big pale hair (not always in the case of amethyst in the flash backs) and that they can use sonic the hedgehog spin dashes as a type of battle technique. :P
Yeah, the Jasper as a Kindergarten Gem theory makes the rounds every once in a while. Figure it'll have a resurgence, now that Jasper as a fusion has been jossed by that one tweet. And all connections with Lapis are kinda weak, I think. Like, what I saw between Garnet and Lapis was that they're both the strongest gems of their respective groups(by my estimate), hold themselves separate from others (to varying degrees), and have goofy sense of humor. Also thought that Garnet's little "I will fight..." blurb in the extended theme could have worked for Lapis as well. Pearl probably works the best, cause of the "Just let me do this for you" thing...
I think a Lapis-Amethyst connection kind of works, but on the basis more that they can be childish and fun people who, when push comes to shove, act in highly irrational and self-destructive ways, but the biggest contrast is Amethyst actually has a support base that can supercede her on occasion. So when Amethyst ends up running away or gets herself cracked, the other Crystal Gems (and Steven) will be right there to convince her to come home or drag her to Rose's fountain to save her life. Meanwhile, when Lapis ends up with Jasper and left with the choice of "Fuse with me or I'll kill your companions", she doesn't have anyone she can trust to reason with her (that four against one really injured Jasper is a lot better for her) and goes with her first plan of 'I'll just lock her and myself up at the bottom of the ocean forever. That's doable, right?' Mind you, she's also got a very valid reason to not trust the rest of the Crystal Gems (or at least Pearl and Garnet, I'm not sure if Amethyst knew about her beyond 'Something's up with the Mirror Gem and Garnet and Pearl are flipping out about it'?), so even if it's a poor choice, it's one out of what Lapis understood as two equally bad choices since she just doesn't have a reason to trust them. It's a weak connection, but it's still a neat foil and plays up more with the trust/connections themes that SU has. Amethyst has at least enough trust in those around her to listen to them, and has a pretty safe life for the most part. Lapis does not, and she's living on the bottom of the ocean, doing her best to deny she needs help even as Steven is begging her to let him help her.
I actually kinda liked that theory, mainly because where I saw it suggested that Jasper was a successful gem cluster fusion and that her feet.....MAY ACTUALLY BE HANDS IN BOOTS and I thought that was fuckin hilarious
It was a pretty cool theory! It was fun to see every point in it's favor be systematically destroyed, though, not gonna lie. I've never been part of an active fandom before, so seeing theories go up and get knocked down in real time is kind of invigorating!
So Gems make paint out of crushed gems. Trolls make paint out of troll blood. HOMEWORLD IS ALTERNIA CONFIRMED
You think it's to make a statement, or does it have some sort of function? Like, a living code or something. Gem fragments don't have much of a consciousness, though, so a powderized gem's prolly not gonna be all about being useful. God, but gem fragments move and junk! Making ink out of them, ain't that just asking for some sort of trouble? Maybe that's the point? Send your enemies a letter made from their powderized comrades, a one two punch of morbid and actually dangerous.
My thought is - the thing about the scroll is that it became dangerous when the smoke entered organic matter. So, perhaps the idea is that you make them and use them to turn the trees or animals or whatever into monsters, which then attack your enemies in the location where you dropped them. I figure that, while other Gem colony planets had life, it was microscopic life, and Earth was the first time there were complex organisms already there, so the scrolls were only ever really used on Earth; microsized monsters aren't going to do much good against beings of light and stone.
Rose certainly talks like she's never seen organic life before Earth. Huh. I've always just sort of assumed that Homeworld has tussled with other sapient species before, but hell, it's a big damn universe. Fuck, it'd be super weird to travel through all this empty ass space and touch down on all these empty ass planets and then the first time you see a place that's full up with living things, the very first thing you do is plot to wreck it, without even putting any thought into conservation at all. Oh, on the topic of Rose, was rewatching the extended theme, and fuck does she look ominous as hell looming over Steven like that. I really hope she's done something rotten. She's gotta have, right? No good wars and all that.
