So how about yesterday's episodes, huh?

[erinptah]

You know, for a while now (basically since the Lars development) I had been feeling like Steven was getting over-powered, and it was straining credibility.

I...do not have that complaint anymore.

Comments

[militarypenguin]

For once, I'm glad we're getting a break; it's a lot to take in. Biggest game-changer since Jailbreak, and this revelation makes that one's look like a fun-sized bar...

[erinptah]

On a personal level I want the fallout episodes Right Now...but taking the broader view, I'm glad fandom-at-large is getting time to digest it.

The initial outpouring of fanart alone has been amazing. Based on what gets drawn in just 24 hours, I can't wait to see what people come up over the next couple of weeks.

[full_metal_ox]

Hooboy--so where should I even begin? Be forewarned that this is going to come in intermittent fits and spurts.

(An important disclosure is in order here. Much of the heat and vehemence of fandom wank discourse comes from fans' projection into the characters in question [notice, for example, how many shipping preferences consist of Character I Identify With/Character I Fancy.] I prefer to keep identifying details to a minimum, allowing my real name and likeness nowhere near my social media and navigating the Net in the anonymity of my virtual Oxhide; that said, I've gradually come to realize that I'm a lot higher in the privilege pecking order than my immediate social circle had led me to believe, and have been grappling with the fact that I occupy the space I do as an invasive species, and what to do about that; that I'm rather bad at empathy and slow on the social uptake (they weren't really looking for The Spectrum when boomers were in school); that I've often not been making the impression I thought I was. In short, I've been increasingly identifying with Rose Quartz [you can probably also deduce the secretiveness that has proven to be her defining flaw.])

That said: I have the greatest admiration for the deftness with which the Crewniverse--having become aware of the fan theory--methodically and cumulatively discouraged without refuting it; the discrepancies were all in place, as pointed out by Blue Zircon, and Pink's disguising her gem by displaying it at a different angle is the sort of ridiculously simple trick that underlies so much stage magic.

(Should we still be calling her Pink? Now I'm wondering about the etiquette of deadnaming fictional characters...)

[erinptah]

Sounds like quite a perspective to be taking in the show from! And yeah, a lot of fandom argument is related to people not being able to draw the line between themselves and the characters...

To me it seems appropriate to use "Pink" for the times when she was presenting herself to the world as Pink Diamond. One of her last statements in that form was "soon it will be just 'Rose'", so I think she associates the two names with her two forms, rather than one of them being the "real name" she identifies with internally.

There was definitely at least one Crewniverse member who refuted the Rose Diamond theory! Someone on Twitter asked point-blank what kind of gem Rose was, and they said "She's a Quartz." (So all my theories and speculation incorporated that.)

And yeah, it explains so much, including plenty of things the characters don't even draw attention to. I mean, Steven has the power to project his will into people's minds and control their bodies, or to raise organics from the dead and turn them into nodes on his own personal intergalactic portal network. There's no reason Kindergartens would create foot-soldier Gems to have that kind of power. But a queen-warlord Gem? Totally reasonable.

[full_metal_ox]

There was definitely at least one Crewniverse member who refuted the Rose Diamond theory! Someone on Twitter asked point-blank what kind of gem Rose was, and they said "She's a Quartz." (So all my theories and speculation incorporated that.)

Ah--but the devil (or the Diamond) lies in the exact wording; what Ian Jones-Quartey actually said was, "Yo her name is Rose QUARTZ": https://twitter.com/ianjq/status/664605171041746944?lang=en

He didn't say thing one about her literal mineralogical makeup, did he?

My own gradual dismissal hinged largely upon taxonomy--Rose bore a much stronger resemblance to Jasper and Amethyst than to the other Diamonds--and a Jossing of the theory that "Diamond" was a title rather than a race, social rank and Gemtype having been shown to be synonymous in Homeworld society. I found myself accommodating Steven's New Powers As The Plot Demands as a result of unexpected consequence and hybrid vigor. (Heck, mundane interspecies breeding often yields counterintuitive results; ligers are much bigger than either their lion or tigress parents, and pumapards much smaller than either pumas or leopards.

And now I'm wondering what the razzlefrazz Steven's physiological makeup might be--whether Rose somehow gemetically installed X chromosomes, or whether Steven might be something utterly cattywampus like ✩Y; I'm leaning toward the latter.)

[erinptah]

Okay, but the original question was brought up by this image in an official guidebook:



"Gem Type: Quartz." Hard to get a plainer exact wording than that!

Hybrid vigor could've been a cool idea. The problem was that so many of Steven's over-the-top powers were confirmed as inherited from Rose, either by the Crystal Gems saying "oh, yeah, Rose could do that" or by direct evidence (in the case of Lion).

The only exception is his ability to fuse with humans, where the CGs' reaction is "wow, we've never seen another Gem do that, in fact Rose tried to do that and she couldn't." Which made sense, and I liked it (especially since it was balanced out by non-advantageous hybrid things, like "his growth is stunted and we don't know why"). So it probably would've worked fine as the backstory for more of his powers...if the writers had set it up that way.

"✩Y" is great chromosome notation. Sounds most logical to me.

[full_metal_ox]

Unfortunately, I can't think of a way to hold that 500-foot Spoilerzilla in reserve, aside from omitting "Gem Type" from the character sheet--being coyly evasive on the subject would itself arouse suspicion.

One possible recourse is the Literary Agent Hypothesis: the Crystal Gems told the Crewniverse what they knew (or, in Pearl's case, were capable of communicating) at the time.

[erinptah]

The irony is, at the time this guide was released, the show itself hadn't revealed that "Quartz" was an overarching category! The viewers didn't know, Steven didn't know...they could've left that line off of everyone's profiles, and nobody would've thought it was strange.

Then a few months later we would've gone "aha, they were obscuring this technical spoiler about Gem species, how clever." And a few years after that we would've have gone "heyyy, hold on, they were straight-up lying about this major spoiler about Rose."

[full_metal_ox]

Some more (not particularly organized) points, and my apologies for the slow-motion nature of the conversation:

I very much doubt we'll ever get a single definitive account of who and what Rose Quartz/Pink Diamond was/were--that's the whole point about loss and memory, isn't it?

I'd been seeking real-world analogies for Rose; Lawrence of Arabia and David Attenborough, among others, came to mind; now it's looking as if Thomas Jefferson and Rachel Dolezal ought to join the list.

The Pearlception sequence demonstrated a gemologically informed Fridge Brilliance: what, after all, is a pearl but layer upon layer upon layer of defenses secreted in response to trauma? (Steven's addressing the "Pearl within the Pearl within Pearl's Pearl" also--and probably quite consciously--evokes a particular folkloric sort of cumulative storytelling.) A related question: now that Steven has pried out her secret, is Pearl freed from the geas?

The queue of Unfinished Business and collateral damage continues to lengthen--to Bismuth and the Zoomans, we can add the real Rose Quartzes, who found themselves rounded up (and would've been shattered, had Yellow had her druthers) in a put-down-all-the-pit-bulls panic.

(And just how many unintended consequences did Rose/Pink leave scattered around Earth's ecology, anyway? Consider the Strawberry Battlefield and the random crystal animals who keep popping up, for example. An interesting point I've noticed about Lion--who is strongly hinted to be an unintended consequence himself, if his story parallels Lars': the evidence so far is that as a hunter, he stays in his lane, preying only upon fellow crystal animals, such as the basilisk in "Lion 2: The Movie" and the rats in the comics story "Lion's Share"; there is no indication that he poses any threat to humans or mundane animals. As a pet, of course, he's perfectly happy to mooch whatever Steven's eating--see "Cooking with Lion.")

[erinptah]

I wouldn't expect a single objective flashback sequence to cover Pink's history, and of course she's not around anymore to burst out with a long coming-clean confession. But we're getting more and more pieces of information that I'd take as factually accurate.

Rachel Dolezal isn't effective enough to be a Rose-analogue. But the Founding Fathers, definitely. Who better to mount a successful rebellion against the rich white landowning colonizers than a disgruntled subset of rich white landholding colonizers?

Pearl's backstory and composition are all kinds of brilliant.

I'm betting she's not free of the geas, but she's been trying to talk around it for a while. They should be able to have clear, effective conversations about it now that Steven knows what she's talking around -- "oh, you mean X, right?" "[hands-over-mouth nod]"

The mass of bubbled Rose Quartzes were already known collateral damage, even assuming our Rose was one of them. At least they're conveniently on the same outpost as the Zoomans, so a single mission could go break them all out....

What do you mean by crystal animals? There's all the corrupted Gems, which for once I don't think are Rose's responsibility at all -- that's entirely on the other Diamonds. Lion is a whole different thing, an ordinary Earth lifeform infused with magic. Steven himself has made a bunch of unintentional independent entities, from the Watermelon Island civilization to the Pumpkin-dog, but as far as I can remember Lion is the only one we've seen from Rose's era.

[full_metal_ox]

I'm betting she's not free of the geas, but she's been trying to talk around it for a while. They should be able to have clear, effective conversations about it now that Steven knows what she's talking around -- "oh, you mean X, right?" "[hands-over-mouth nod]".

So could Steven wield the authority of Pink Diamond to release Pearl explicitly from the geas? Freeing someone is about as uncorruptive a use of such power as I can think of.

What do you mean by crystal animals? There's all the corrupted Gems, which for once I don't think are Rose's responsibility at all -- that's entirely on the other Diamonds. Lion is a whole different thing, an ordinary Earth lifeform infused with magic. Steven himself has made a bunch of unintentional independent entities, from the Watermelon Island civilization to the Pumpkin-dog, but as far as I can remember Lion is the only one we've seen from Rose's era.

As mentioned, "Lion's Share" from the comic Steven Universe #6 features a couple. The basilisk (page 1, panel 4) has jutting gemstones as dorsal spines; the Steven Universe Wikia page notes that the specimen in "Lion 2: The Movie" died in organic fashion, leaving a tangible carcass, rather than poofing. The rat's eye (closeup in page 2, panel 3) is an amber-toned cabochon.





(Also, I'm betting Amethyst ate the rat Lion brought her.)

[erinptah]

I wasn't sure whether even Rose could still control the geas on Pearl after reinventing herself, although I don't have the stamina to go back and analyze all their interactions to see....

Hmm. I'd heard that the comics aren't always great about worldbuilding continuity -- for instance, they have a story about celebrating Halloween, which isn't supposed to be a thing in this world. So I wonder if the lizard in the show was supposed to be just a regular organic lizard, and the artist for the comic embellished things. (Lion himself doesn't have any gem-type eyes/spines/etc that we can see, either.)

Mostly because, if it was supposed to be a feature of the show, wouldn't it have come up more during the episodes? They've been so thorough about laying early groundwork for so many other things.