to be fair I am not the most media literate person but rose quartz is the first and last time I remember a fat woman in a mainstream animated show be a symbol of elegance and beauty can we do that again
ya know i dont think id really mind the fact shy rose is an exact copy of The Rose Quartz….if there was a real reason for it.
i just really have beef with it because it wasnt a purposeful thing, its kind of bs that its a coincidence and that pearl just happened to think of the design
like it really would have played off better if like we knew pearl had seen that rose quartz some time before or maybe even an interaction,
or just something that theres a reason this rose quartz looks exactly the same because it really only serves for stevens mother issues fuel when theres two other roses right there that pointedly dont look like our rose quartz, like we could have that shy rose still look the similar, maybe just change the bangs and like put that gem somewhere different at the LEAST
i just really dislike that because she would have been the one immediately pointed as guilty for being that rose quartz and i dont know how she even got away with that
how early did pink diamond bubble those rose quartz?
Before the movie aired, I had a theory that PD Rose had been modeled after a Rose Quartz that actually existed, and she’d had to “get rid of” the real one somehow, and that’s what was going to be in the chest in Lion’s mane. Alas, it was not so.
Rose and I talked about tons of important stuff. Music, comic books, getting sand between your toes, y'know, feelings. We both made a lot of mistakes when we were young—I thought disco was coming back, she started a war. I think she felt like she needed to confess everything to me, but I told her, “The past is the past. All that matters to me is who you are now.”
This episode gave me so much sweet sweet validation. I’ve been so sure forever that Greg came from an abusive home, even when I wasn’t actively following the damn show! You don’t experience the death of your wife and be a new father with a magic baby and no money and not go running to your family for, at the very least, comfort, unless they’re either dead or not safe to run to. I assumed they were all dead, but the Gem Harvest episode and the reveal of the DeMayo family (and Andy’s parroted lines about Greg thinking he was too good for the rest of them and ‘abandoning his family’) made me realize it had to be the latter.
And it was through that and Greg’s quote above that I realized this is why they clicked so well. Besides just having compatible personalities and similar interests, they understood each other, even if they never talked about this one giant thing: their pasts.
Starlight. Pink Diamond. Star Child. Gregory DeMayo. They had such miserable beginnings but they found happily ever after in each other.
(Which then got interrupted.)
They didn’t make mistakes in leaving. Greg still loved his parents and wanted a relationship with them even despite what they put him through; he wrote to them, and even included a PO Box (those cost money! He got a PO Box specifically SO THEY COULD WRITE BACK) with the city he lived in underneath, risking them just coming down to yell at them by sending the letters. They chose not to respond. Rose didn’t start a war out of a vacuum. She wanted to protect the planet she was being ordered to decimate and along the way found out other gems were suffering too and wanted to give them freedom, wanted to give them a safe place to live and liberate them the way Pearl helped open her eyes.
They may not have been blameless in other things they did; they undoubtedly had their flaws. Greg was a little bit of an irresponsible freeloader who had to grow up and whose poor self-esteem kept him out of asking too much about gem business even later in life when he really should have because his son was involved. Rose was a naive, head-in-the-clouds dreamer who didn’t know how to properly open up to people and when she grew up a little and figured that out, she still kept way too many secrets that she didn’t foresee coming back to bite anyone when they absolutely could– and eventually did.
But as far as leaving goes? They didn’t start that. They just finally responded to the aggression that was already there. They were abused and they got out. Full stop.
Oh my god, the new SU Future episodes have put so much in context for me about Pink and her fear of confrontation. Why she lied to the Crystal Gems, hiding from her past, running away and abandoning Spinel… she wasn’t only afraid of being hurt herself, she was also afraid she would hurt them.
Pink had powerful destructive abilities that were activated by negative emotions and emotional confrontation, and had badly hurt someone she loved in the past. (Likely without ever meaning to, if Steven was any indication - the power activated simply because he was angry and hurting, not because he made any moves to harm anyone.) Pink was terrified that if she got into an emotionally heated argument that she might do it again, terrified that if she ever lost her temper, if she ever so much as raised her voice in a moment of anger or pain she could literally scar someone for life. She was so afraid that she bottled up and suppressed those feelings, and avoided any situation that might lead to her exploding at people she cared about, even if it meant lying, manipulating, or leaving them rather than risk ever doing something like that again.
This is an excellent take on it!
I find it fascinating that, by trying to resolve a character flaw of hers, she wound up creating new character flaws by going in the complete opposite direction! I think it’s a good showcase of how you need to find a balance in the way you express your emotions.
So are you still a rose quartz apologist now that it's CANON that she was abusive to her pearl, and used classic abuser excuses such as 'oh she didn't mean to' 'I was just standing too close it's my fault'
I want to know why y’all are SO invested in absolutes. Is this kindergarten? Are Disney Villains the only concept of morality we have now? Have none of us passed the Theory of Mind test?
Is there no median to how you interpret characters?
You either LOVE LOVE LOVE a character and excuse their every flaw and are completely blind to any bad thing they’ve done
or
You HATE HATE HATE a character, think they’re undeserving of any sympathy (or analysis) and need to be trash-talked at every opportunity.
Why am I ‘an apologist’ for still liking Pink’s character for its complexity and moral greyness? Are we not allowed to interact with anything that isn’t ‘pure’ anymore? Are we now monsters for not openly and constantly condemning every part of her during our free time?
I have news for you:
People do bad things, and they can still be interesting characters/worth considering. And there’s nothing you can do about it - and nothing you can do to make EVERYONE hate the character you hate.
And you shouldn’t try, because it’s none of your fucking business how others view that character. Stop trying to make everyone agree on an analysis that personally satisfies your needs.
Here’s MY analysis:
Pink was absolutely NOT a healthy relationship for Pink Pearl. She hurt her, Pink still has trauma from what she’s done, etc. You can definitely call it abusive (though as someone who was RAISED in an abusive environment - with an abusive parent - I have hated how easily that word is thrown around. Abuse is a pattern of repetitive harmful behaviors. Pink appears to have only hurt her Pearl once. Was it a case of abuse? Yes, indirectly.)
And is Pink still a character I enjoy thinking about the origins of? Is Pink still a character I like to talk about, and a character I can sympathise with?
YEP.
Because guess what? I find her growth relatable, and I think it’s one of the best-portrayed, non-linear, non-fairytale-happy-ending growths out there.
AND THAT’S A VALID THING TO LIKE ABOUT A CHARACTER.
Most of the people that hate Pink are analysing not her - but her victims. And that’s fine! You can focus on that and hate Pink. If that’s what you need, emotionally - if you’ve had personal experiences that make it impossible for you to forgive Pink and relate to her - THAT’S FINE! tHAT’S WHAT YOU NEED. AND THAT’S COOL.
But even if YOU personally don’t care WHY or HOW Pink Diamond began to act this way, even if YOU personally don’t give a shit about how she attempted to change for the better (and overshot and ended up with another whole set of issues, welp, that’s life for ya, that’s actually very realistic) - OTHER PEOPLE ARE STILL ALLOWED TO CARE ABOUT IT AND TALK ABOUT IT.
And you know what? YOU DON’T NEED TO BE A PART OF THAT CONVERSATION.
But here’s the thing - SOME PEOPLE DO.
Some people - and I know this is gonna blow some minds - NEED THAT.
I NEED THAT. I grew up with a family dynamic that strongly resembles Pink’s. I grew up with unhealthy coping mechanisms. I grew up and learned some very unhealthy shit. And now I have OTHER coping mechanisms. And guess what? I am allowed to have characters that are complex and similar to me who have fucked up and who did some bad things.
I know it’s WILD but here’s the thing:
You will hurt people in your life. That’s a fact.
Someday, YOU might be Pink Diamond.
You will not realise it. You will not know it at the time. But you will be an unhealthy influence on someone. You will cause undue harm to your friends. You will over-react emotionally and use some bad coping habits and end up making things WORSE instead of better.
And when - not if, but when - you do, I hope you have enough mental flexibility to view yourself as a whole person capable of change and growth instead of slam-dunking yourself into the trash without any further analysis because you can’t cope with the idea of thinking about people being capable of both good and bad deeds.
Because when you say ‘I don’t care about how she tried to change, that doesn’t matter to her victims’ - you’re right! From the victim’s point of view, that doesn’t matter. Victims don’t need to care about their abusers or what they’re doing or not doing. They need to focus on healing, getting better, etc.
But you won’t be a victim for your whole life.
Someday, you’ll fuck up and you’ll be the unhealthy one in the equation - perhaps even someone who takes the role of an abuser - and you will need to be capable of thinking about what you’ve done, instead of only what was done to you. And you’ll need to be able to think about it and reason through it.
And that’s why Pink’s character is important and useful and why we need to stop throwing her away after just dismissing her as ‘bad’. She isn’t meant to be easily consumable. But she’s just as important as anyone else.
So stop being angry at people who need her and need to relate to her.
Talking about how she tried to be better is not ‘redeeming’ her character. It’s not erasing anything she’s done. Facing all those bad things and saying ‘I can move on and change’ is literally a part of bettering yourself. It’s the first step.
So unless you want your world to be full of people who only see characters in unmoving black-and-white and good-or-bad dichotomies
LET PEOPLE LIKE CHARACTERS THAT REFLECT DIFFERENT STAGES IN THEIR LIFE.
the su movie has convinced me forever and eternally, without a shadow of a doubt, that the lyrics of this song are rose/pink singing about a lifetime of regrets and how maybe… if she’s lucky… she can learn to love and become a better person.
I just saw such a Bad Take on the Rose/pearlrose tags
Little do they know, every time I see a Bad Take I draw cute content as protest
So in order to make you draw more, all I have to do it make up a bad take?
OH nO WHAT HAVE I DONE?
I’m not sure if you’ve answered this or not but how do you feel about Rose/Pink? Do you hate her for what she’s done or???
This is nothing against you, anon, but I’m SHOCKED that there is still a person on this blog that doesn’t know how I feel about Rose/Pink. It feels like I’m yelling about it every other day.
SHE’S LITERALLY MY FAVORITE CHARACTER.
And now before I get the metaphorical gun to my head from 450245 of you screaming “BUT SHE’S A BITCH I wanna punch her face!” in my askbox, I will explain further:
I know she’s not a blameless character. I know she’s done many very bad things. She’s not even a good person, per se, and she can be stupid and selfish.
But I don’t give a shit! She’s a morally grey dumbass but she’s trying her goddamn best and given the kind of upbringing she had, given where she came from and how much she legitimately tried to grow and given how far she’d come, I think she’s one of the most fascinating characters on the entire show.
The problem is - we’re seeing Rose’s growth backwards, chronologically. And a lot of people don’t have the sense of realizing that it’s fooling them into believing her character itself is regressing.
We fell in love with her as she was when she had Steven - loving and more aware of herself, and more respectful of humans and human life in general. She seemed like a good person because… she was! That was who she was, in the end! And she was having Steven because she legitimately thought that he would have a good life!! It was a choice made 5000 years after the war, and she presumed that the earth would remain a safe haven for her son and family, as it had until then.
And then, we go even FURTHER back. We see what she was like during the Rebellion and what she did - shattering Pink Diamond and building up a new legacy. We see her locking up Bismuth without actually explaining anything. And it gets even more morally questionable.
The further we go into her past, the more mistakes we see. And that’s not a sign that she’s a terrible person -
that’s a sign of how far she’s come!!
And honestly, she’s still not blameless. She left Bismuth where she was. She left Spinel. She bubbled the Rose Quartz gems away. And although I legitimately think she did this because she saw it as the lesser evil and was, in a way, trying to protect them, she still made poor decisions.
And ya know what? That’s fascinating to me. She’s a character with great potential who never got her loose ends tied up and never got her ‘full redemption’ which makes people hate her.
But she’s the most realistic out of all the characters. She has flaws that are impossible to like. She has bad coping habits that helped her survive during her time with the Diamonds that ruined things for all her family. And she tried to deal with it all and ended up causing… well…. the entire damned show, for a start.
And I just feel like it’s such a shallow take on her character: “She did bad things and I hate her.” It’s such a childish, surface-level comprehension of what her history is, and what drives her. And I hate it, and I will always love Rose. Not because she’s a good person, but because she’s real and flawed and multidimensional and relatable.
You can disagree, obviously, and you can dislike her character! But I’m gonna be in my own corner, loving every moment of it.
Rose Quartz’s Sword - Steven Universe - MAN AT ARMS: REFORGED
one of my favorite things about SU is how you start off knowing nothing about Rose, and you see Greg and you’re like ‘how did such a beautiful powerful inspiring rebellion leader of an alien race fall in love with such a doofy shlub of a man?’ and then as the show goes on you slowly start to realize that it was, in fact, GREG who was too good for HER
Had a dream the other night that I was the next Pink Diamond, to replace Steven on Homeworld. But not in like, a mean way. It was just a fact. And I had been sent to Earth to learn about the war and the previous Pink.
I remember looking at a picture of Rose and then shapeshifting to look like her, but out of curiosity. Like, “she prefered this form, I wonder why?” Kinda thing.
And Pearl walks in and sees it, and I freak out, because I know the story between them, and I apologize for taking Rose’s form. And Pearl, like, is surprised at first, but is okay with it, even suggesting I keep the form for a bit while she showed me around. (Pearl. Pearl no.)
And of course, we start getting along and having fun, but the day ends and I’m like, well, time to become Pink again. And Pearl just has this horrible heartbroken look like she’d forgotten I wasn’t Rose.
I’ve been thinking about that Steven Universe reveal. (So, you know, SPOILERS)
And…. how did she become a Rose Quartz? Did she just… make a new gemsona and shape into it? Making a new one out of nothing seems a bit… odd for the organized gems. Did she forge kindergarten documents for herself? Did she just hope no one went looking for which facet she was? Or did she copy and replace a quartz that already existed? Did she replace one that got shattered by accident or did she shatter one herself? Or did she just bubble her?
An interesting note in “That Will be All” is that all the Rose Quartz appeared to be in pink bubbles. This makes it unlikely that the other diamonds did it. Did Pink bubble all of them herself? To save them? To make sure no one knew she wasn’t one of them?
I’ve been thinking about the episode where Steven jumps into Lars’ body too. Like… of all his weird powers, why that one? Did Pink have that power? Did she jump into a Rose Quartz body? Did she jump into human bodies?
There’s a lot of questions. I hope we get some answers.
