welcome to frown town

ok so yknow that handsome squidward thing

imagine the noise you associate with that picture

I DID IIIITTT! Larimar and Hessonite!!

AND THEY LOOK GREAT (especially Hessonite!)

As you can tell they’re both Homeworld Gems, and they always tag along as a duo

For the last two Stevenbombs, we’ve been seeing a less than perfect side of Pearl. I don’t think this is some kind of negative character development, and I don’t think this is her showing her true colors. I think we’re watching Pearl come undone. 

Garnet may be the team leader, but Pearl more than anyone keeps things together. Steven the Swordfighter and Coach Steven come to mind. With Pearl gone in StSF, things steadily decay. It’s mostly played for laughs: the house becomes a mess, Garnet and Amethyst are messing with reckless (albeit funny) magical items, Holo!Pearl nearly kills Steven. Pearl was gone for all of two weeks, and things were crumbling. Keep in mind the Gems are thousands of years old, and a lack of Pearl for two weeks was enough to make things go to shit. 

In Coach Steven we’ve got Sugilite literally wrecking everything. The Gems - Pearl = havoc and destruction. Pearl’s “real” strength is in her stability, her caution, her composure. Garnet is genuinely apologetic and remorseful for this whole mess in Cry for Help—she acknowledges her rashness, and Amethyst’s recklessness, and turns to Pearl instead. Because Pearl is stable. Pearl is composed. Pearl is solid. 

And this is exactly who Pearl needed to be for Rose! Pearl takes pride in having been Rose’s confident, someone solid enough for Rose Quartz to lean on. She talks about Rose sharing things with her that no one else could know, because Pearl was strong enough to handle it. It’s not officially stated, but it is definitely Pearl’s job to be fine and composed and available all the time. 

And that, I believe, is why we’re watching her come undone now. She’s making under-handed bad decisions (not maliciously) because she feels like she can’t look like she isn’t coping. Every time Pearl breaks down, it’s because she’s realized she’s not the stable rock she needs to be. 

Rose’s Scabbard: The break happens when Pearl realizes that she wasn’t the all-knowing confident she thought she was to Rose

Sworn to the Sword: The break happens when Pearl acknowledges that Rose wouldn’t trust her to give her whole body and soul to protecting her

Cry for Help: The break happens when Pearl admits that she needs to be fused with Garnet to feel happy and confident (though not in those words) 

Pearl resorts, rather often, to under-handed, childish, secretive, sometimes even manipulative means of getting what she wants not because she’s a bad person, not because she’s fake, not because she’s mean—but because she feels she needs to maintain her air of infallible stability on the surface.

But she’s not. She’s not always stable, or solid, or composed. She slips, and now more than ever, we are watching Pearl slip.