Small Fry

I’ve already found someone

Spinel: I'm going to kill you and your planet

SO I WAS GOING BACK FOR SCREENSHOTS (specifically for the Pearls because they’re uwus)

At first glance it would seem like they’re doing their normal pearl duties to which I was like “fair enough” BUT

Then Yellow Pearl gives White Diamond SASS

“Cut the feed!”

“Your time is over anyway”

AND (this is the big part)

They’re wearing headsets. They’ve never worn headsets before. And I know why.

They have their own freaking TV show. (I bet you Blue Pearl designed the logo) BUT THEY HAVE A SHOW THAT IS ADORABLE OH MY GOD I AM SO PROUD AAAAAAAAAAAAA

LOOK AT HOW HAPPY BLUE IS

SHE IS LITERALLY SKIPPING

MY BABIES ARE ALL GROWN UP *gross crying*

and perhaps this could be compared to an arranged marriage; apparently, many of these work out well. but even with arranged relationships, a partner isn’t custom-made; they have a life outside of their marriage, they have other things to do. and the diamonds didn’t understand that, of course, which is why pink gravitated towards other gems for stronger relationships. while pearl, pink pearl, and the pebbles are in servitude to pink, they weren’t literally made to be her Friend (tm)

maybe rose quartz would have tried to bring spinel to earth, and attempted to form a real friendship with her. but pink, after having another “plaything” forcibly taken and mind-controlled by white, didn’t know how to gently let go of spinel. perhaps spinel would react to any hint of rejection with complete horror—i don’t know if factory reset spinel desperately saying “don’t leave me!” to steven is in her nature, or the repressed memories of pink leaving her. it’s probably both.

maybe rose had plans to come back, maybe she didn’t. it’s likely the corruption song that ended the war completely blindsided her, and any plans to aid spinel were forcibly put to rest. as the garden montage goes on, pink becomes less happy around spinel—is she annoyed at the living reminder of her childish past? is it her growing discomfort with the oppressive gem system? was pink’s game for spinel to wait an order, akin to pearl’s, or was it the best “take a hint” she could manage?

- Spinel was, as you say, never really her “friend”. Spinel was a toy that the other diamonds probably made to try to placate Pink as she became more and more unhappy. As usual, they didn’t really understand what was actually making her unhappy in the first place, so it didn’t work, akin to parents that buy their child expensive new toys to try to make up for a lack of emotional support.

- Pink thought that having Spinel around would jeopardize her new colony at best, or actually endanger the both of them at worst. We have to remember that the Pink we see here isn’t the one that’s ready to become Rose Quartz; it’s the Pink that did THIS:

At this moment, Pink is full of anger - anger about Pink Pearl being taken, angry that she was helpless to do anything about it, angry that she just can’t seem to FUNCTION as a Diamond no matter how hard she tries. This is Pink right when she’s starting to understand that she can’t carry on like this, and is actively trying to suppress her childishness and “shape up” so that she can finally, hopefully, be treated like an equal to the others. Spinel, unfortunately, becomes a problem here: for one, she’s a reminder of how the other Diamonds see Pink, and she’s also a DISTRACTION. Pink now knows what happens when she gets distracted. In Pink’s mind, if she wants to move on, she has to leave Spinel behind. Unfortunately, Pink is absolutely shit at confrontation, so instead of just telling Spinel this, she....well, she did that.

- And finally, Pink is just....honestly really really short-sighted. I’ve talked in a few places about how Pink is ADHD-coded, and the #1 reason I have for thinking that is the fact that she displays the classic ADHD time-blindness: she can only ever see what’s in front of her RIGHT NOW. If we want to be honest about what she was thinking would happen here, the answer is probably that she wasn’t thinking anything. She certainly didn’t think Spinel was going to stand there forever and be traumatized. She was solving what she thought was the problem in that exact moment, and very likely didn’t give much thought to how it was going to effect the future at all. If anything, she probably thought she could come back and get Spinel, and maybe everyone else (coughPinkPearlcough) after she’d become a Real Good Diamond and was respected. It’s not like she KNEW that she’d be launching herself headfirst into a rebellion as soon as she stepped foot on her new planet.

As for why she never came back for Spinel during the rebellion...well, Rose never came back for ANYBODY. Not Spinel, not Pink Pearl, not even the Pebbles. There’s no clear-cut reason why, but probably because she didn’t believe that she could. Rose always seemed to think that Homeworld was untouchable - she could fight for the Earth and the gems on it, but anything that was back home? It was too risky to try to save.