It’s implied in the aftermath of Steven sacrificing himself to Homeworld that–after realizing that doing what Rose would have wanted and doing right by Steven might be mutually exclusive–Pearl chooses Steven. It’s as a direct result of this that, in Gemcation, she tells himthat she wants to tell him everything, and then in A Single Pale Rose, she figures out a way to do it. And her emotion afterward isn’t framed as angst at disobeying–it’s framed as relief. In Reunited, she’s finally able to admit to herself, “I do it for me!” And in Change Your Mind, she comes off as free–in a way that has always been an aspiration for her, but that I don’t think we’ve ever actually seen. It’s as if she’s finally accepted Rose’s death (symbolized, perhaps, by her new form?)
It’s as if, in choosing Steven in the here and now over her memory of Rose at the beginning of the season, Pearl chose life,even in the midst of the tremendous loss she feels and continues to feel. She chooses life–and in this way, is finally able to accept her loss, and is finally able to be free.
I’m just so proud of her.
Okay, I’ve been stewing on this arc–and Pearl’s arc throughout the show and pre-canon–and I want to add on to this a little bit. I’ve written a bit about this in a few places-both meta and fic (for the latter, mainly Cyclesand my new piece Moving On), but something I think is clear is that Pearl’s relationship with Rose, especially after Pink Diamond became Rose all the time, wasn’t just about love. (Though the love is real,even if it originally developed at least in-part out of Pearl’s programmed devotion to her Diamond.) Her relationship with Rose was also about identity.
Pink’s “shattering” also represents a shattering of the paradigm of Pearl’s entire existence and identity-framework. She was Pink Diamond’s Pearl…and now, without that, what is she? And that’s terrifying. And to cope, I think, she makes a shift. She loves Rose Quartz already, so she decides–perhaps subconsciously–that thatis her new identity. What is she? She’s someone who loves Rose Quartz.
And she keeps this identity for the next five thousand years. It’s why she’s so threatened by Greg–he represents a threat to her being able to enact that identity. And even after Rose dies to give birth to Steven, this is her identity, though now how she enacts it is by honoring Rose’smemoryin every way possible. In the extended intro, while Garnet and Amethyst both mentioning fighting for something, Pearl says only: “I will fight in the name of Rose Quartz and everything that she believed in.” What does she,Pearl, fight for? What does shewant? It doesn’t matter. Only what Rose wanted did.
This is also the answer to the question she asks herself in “It’s Over Isn’t It,” as to why she can’t move on. Because to “move on” from the sense of immediate grief that she’s still holding would again represent the destruction of her identity.
But, like I said, Steven’s sacrifice at the end of Season 4, when Pearl realizes that she might have to choose between honoring Rose’s memory and doing right be Steven, she chooses Steven. In realizing that she wants to choose Steven, she realizes that she is capable of wanting. She is even capable of wanting things that are in direct contradiction to what Rose wants.
InGemcation,when she tries to tell Steven the truth, she says:
“There are things that are impossible for me to explain. But I want to. I–”
And then, in A Single Pale Rose, after Steven finally doesknow the truth, she says:
“I’vewanted to tell you for so long.”
Pearlwants. She’s wanted. She has desires all her own. And if that’s the case, she realizes, if she has desires independent of Rose, she must also have motivations independent of Rose, as she realizes (with a little help from Steven!) in Reunited:
“I do it for me!”
What is she fighting for? She finally has an answer. She’s fighting for herself.
And if she has motive–if she can fight for herself–she must have a self!! One that’s independent of Rose. And we finally see that embodied in her new form–and her utterly new contentment–in Change Your Mind.
And if that’s the case, Pearl is finally, finally truly free to be herself. She’s free to discover and create who she is. She’ll never stop missing Rose or loving her, but missing and loving Rose is no longer all she is.
Ugh I’m so proud of her!
The more I think about it, the more it occurs to me that this is like the exact opposite of what Ruby learns in The Question before deciding to ask Sapphire to marry her.
Ruby tells Steven:
“Sapphire was always there with me. I feel her smile just like it was mine. And now…gah! That’s lame, right? I came here to be my own Gem, but I’m still thinking about what she’d like, what she’dwant! All. The time.”
It’s not a perfect parallel—there are marked differences in the relationship between Ruby and Sapphire and that between Pearl and Rose. And there are marked differences between Ruby and Pearl themselves. But here, too, Ruby seems to think that “being one’s own Gem” and being in love and like actively concerned with the desires and needs and wants of the person one loves are mutually exclusive concepts. For Ruby, she’s decided she wants to be her own Gem, and feels like she therefore can’t let go of that love. Pearl had the opposite problem–the love was non-negotiable, and she’d thought that meant that she couldn’t be her own person.
In both scenarios, and in different ways, it’s Steven that helps each of them realize that you can be your own person within a relationship. That these things aren’t mutually exclusive.
Season 5 is just big for everyone finding agency and selfhood in their relationships with others!!! yay!
(There’s more I wanna think about parallels between Ruby and Pearl and their relationships @meskime gets at this a little in their incredible fic goodbye to the river joining the creek,but this seems like an less-tapped-than-it-might-be well…)
Tel’enara bellana bana’vhenadahl, Sethen’a ir san’shiral, mala tel’halani Ir sa’vir te’suledin var bana’vallaslin, Vora’nadas san banal’him emma abel revas. Ir tela’ena glandival, vir amin tel’hanin. Ir tela las ir Fen halam, vir am’tela’elvahen.
“We lost eternity, the ruined tree of the People Time won’t help when the land of dreams is no longer our journey We try to lead despite the failing of our markings. To the inevitable and troubling freedom we are committed. When we could no longer believe, we lost glory to war. When the Wolf won, we lost the People to war”.
I’ve dreamed of the kiss I stole ‘neath the arbor. I’ve dreamed of the promise ‘neath the old ash tree. O, I know she is there, daisies in her hair, Waiting by the chantry to marry me.
1. The room that has slowly grown back into trees and skin. The trees have not yet shed their ink so you can enter into their crumbly trunks and read most of their secrets still, although you will need a torch and some patience and to know the right song to open the tree back up should it slam shut on you. The skin is mostly confused; it has formed back into limp, meatless cows which flap in the breeze from the air conditioning unit. 2. The toilet. Legend has it that there is only one toilet in the library; it is merely very busy in space and time. This is why there is always the same dog-eared book of cartoons on the shelf. Enterprising explorers have been known to stash energy bars in the cistern for emergency retrieval once lost in the booky depths. 3. The room you get into by opening that very small book on the bottom shelf and reaching your hand into the hole on page twelve to flip up the latch in the room beyond, after which you can open up the large book on the stand and enter through any of the doors on pages six, twenty-eight or one hundred and sixteen at your leisure. I do not know what is in that room, because my hand is too big for the hole in the small book. But yours may be smaller. 4. The large large print romances section. No, larger than that. Larger than that, too. It is not so much an area for the partially-sighted as a lobby for massive letters to hang around in, posing and slouching and occasionally making words, but mostly making out with each other. At least one of them is probably a colossal squid and not a letter at all, but every time it faces suspicion it covers itself in ink and that will do, for this place at least. 5. A room of propaganda. It has a number of entrances; based on certain aspects of your appearance and personality, the librarian will recommend an entrance for you if you want to first be exposed to propaganda only against them and not you. But the room is so designed that you can always look up and see them as they sit and read texts about you. Given the vast asymmetry in the amounts of propaganda available, its geometry is a marvel to behold. 6. The room where they keep the books that you write in your dreams (not the ones you would like to write; the ones that you write in your dreams). You may not remember the dreams, but there they are. It is a round room with one great spiral shelf, starting with the tiny books you wrote in infancy and progressing onwards and upwards through taller and thicker tomes. There is a ladder, should you need one. You are not sure if they stop at now or not. 7. A room of infinities and of their puzzles and paradoxes. Perhaps surprisingly, this is right at the entrance of the library. Of course, the way back out from there is infinitely long. There is a sign stating this at the entrance of the room and for some reason, perhaps some slavish devotion to conventional notions of space and time that we in the library have quite transcended, nobody takes it seriously enough. Anyhow, there is a mirror in there where you can find your other sibling, the one who always when you never and vice versa and so on.
