Dumb question but how do you feel about Bellow Diamond? (Blue x Yellow diamond) I know you've reblogged some shippy stuff before but I was just curious with the whole "They're like sisters!" thing going on
Iâm mostly just casually interested in it, not super invested like I am with some ships. Generally I just like seeing cute art of it.
Re: the sisters thing, I assume you mean how some folks in the fandom read them as sisters? Iâm not going to judge or critique peopleâs personal readings. While I personally donât read them as sisters (obviously, otherwise I wouldnât ship them at all!), I can understand why someone might read them that way. I feel like while theyâre contradictory, both readings of the relationship are valid because theyâre based on the individual worldview and experience of each person.
Hereâs the thing about sibling relationships - thereâs no one archetype to how siblings interact. This is true for all relationships, of course, but with siblings itâs even more variable than, say, a parental one. I personally have four siblings and my relationship with each of them is very different and I know plenty of other people with siblings who have relationships that are wildly different than any of my sibling relationships. So when interpreting the relationship between characters who are not actually related, youâre going to get wildly different readings based on what that specific person thinks a sibling relationship is like and what constitutes one in the absence of the source material making the relationship explicitly familial.
My criteria for what makes a character relationship explicitly familial:
Explicit adoption or similar incorporation within a family structure
Referring to one another as âlike a brother/sisterâ within the source material
After that, it has more to do with oneâs own personal interpretation of a relationship and it really isnât for one person to decide which is the right reading of it (but, of course, itâs within everyoneâs right to avoid content that bothers them). Sometimes people are just going to have contradictory views on things.
Regarding Blue and Yellow Diamond, Gems do not have blood relations since theyâre not organic, Gems donât have family structures (thatâs an Earth concept), and theyâve never been referred to within the show as âlike sisters,â so now weâre down to personal interpretation.Â
My personal interpretation reads them more as a couple, they just donât feel like siblings to me, based on my personal life experience of what a sibling relationship is. The way the show portrays their relationship with Pink reads more of a parental one to me, especially since âJungle Moonâ portrays Yellowâs interaction with Pink through the lens of Stevonnie with Connieâs mom, an explicitly parental relationship. Blue and Yellowâs interactions in âLegs from Here to Homeworldâ also read more as two parents with differing parenting styles to me.
Another thing to remember in terms of fan readings is that same gender relationships are overwhelmingly read as familial by many people, particularly those who arenât LGBT. This is often because a lot of people do not have a frame of reference for a close relationship between two people of the same gender other than familial, so the closeness of two people of the same gender inherently feels familial if there isnât overt romantic closeness like kissing (and sometimes even when there is).Â
By contrast, you rarely ever see people get aggressive about people interpreting a het relationship as romantic while others view it as âlike brother and sister!â because most people have more of a frame of reference for various romantic relationships between a man and a woman, often even more than they have a frame of reference of a close brother and sister relationship. Often, the only frame of reference people have of a brother and sister relationship is a contentious one, so itâs easier to view a relationship between a man and a woman as romantic (whether it textually is) than familial.Â
All things being equal, if you have a man and a woman character being close, it will most readily be read as romantic but if you just swap it for being two woman with everything else being exactly the same it will be most readily read as either âlike sistersâ or âbest friends!â And most people donât even mean it, itâs just, again, the lack of or abundance of a particular frame of reference colors peopleâs ability to interpret relationships
I shipped Pearlrose pretty early on (around âAn Indirect Kissâ) and even once the show started to make the romantic aspect of the relationship more obvious, it took a long, long time before people stopped insisting that the relationship was familial and anyone who didnât read it as such as a Very Awful Person. I had someone come after me after âWe Need to Talkâ aggressively accusing me of condoning incest because âobviously Pearl was jealous in the way a child is jealous when their mother starts dating.â And pretty much every Gem ship has a group of people who read the relationship as familial (even Ruby and Sapphire were read as siblings by some people back in âJailbreakâ)
If gay people had to stop shipping something because someone, somewhere reads the relationship as familial, we wouldnât be able to ship anything. And yes, even if the person who reads it as familial is also gay. Again, sometimes people just have contradictory views on things.
My point is that people often have different interpretations of things, especially of relationships, and itâs okay. In the absence of explicit definition within the source material, itâs not the place of one person to aggressively assert their own personal interpretation on everyone.
tl;dr - While I think the interpretation of Blue and Yellow as sisters is certainly a valid one, itâs by no means the only valid interpretation of their relationship and I do not personally view them as siblings, which is why Iâm okay with shipping them.
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