#endless words

to the beauty we saw today, Pearl as the cool self-assured in-her-element rebel, and Bismuth with the blushy yearning? “Wait... Bismuth... you’re here for Pearl”? And everything steeped in this very adamant and outspoken respect and refusal to take Pearl away from what she has (“Pearl’s fanclub”, I love it, are membership applications open, also we KNOW Bismuth was the founder of that one some thousands of years ago) or impose anything upon her? They really went out of their way to highlight the whole “love her for who she is” stuff on both sides and I am so glad.

Also THE CAR SCENE, rolling up sleeves and undoing shirt buttons? Are you kidding me? BLESS YOU PEARL AND THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THAT SMALL BUT CRUCIAL INTERVENTION

And then the romantic comedy style bumping into each other that turns into a smooth save?

“This one goes out to Bismuth and Pearl” and serenading her with the silly car repair shop commercial jingle she loves?

The game is tragically an Apple Arcade exclusive so I’m sifting through a whole bunch of gameplay clips on YouTube to get the whole picture, alas. It is, however, pretty much the canon tale of some Gempire-dismantling and related events such as the intro with the ex-diamond pearls hanging out with Steven and working on a draft of a constitution-type document, a look at a variety of Gem-controlled planets and colonies, and a bit of democracy-establishing courtesy of Bismuth and some bismuths, all taking place in the time skipped between the original series and the Movie and Future. While I’m bummed it wasn’t handled in the show itself somehow (beyond us seeing the results and the Zircon elections etc.), I’m glad we at least got some glimpses of it here, because it’s something I’ve been really, really invested in for a very long time. It also contains BISMUTH AS A PLAYABLE CHARACTER so I tell you it’s a crime that it isn’t available on a platform I personally have access to (and wouldn’t have, like, moral objections to using, but that’s another can of worms).

But, what I wanted to post about - Bismuth’s regeneration. The relevant bit of the game that got updated is during the boss fight against Demantoid, one of Homeworld’s three bigwig garnets armed with light-army producing prisms (the other two being Hessonite, the main boss from the previous game, and Pyrope - and seeing the other garnets puts Blue Diamond’s assholish comments about Garnet going to the ball on Homeworld into even more context). In fact it’s an expansion of the segment where the bismuths under Demantoid’s command unionise and establish a democracy, and you get an achievement highlighting the importance of voting. 

Demantoid, very modern and tech-oriented, wants to use the power vacuum left by the diamonds to impose a new order all of her own, while her counterpart Pyrope is very much an old-fashioned aristocrat whose colonies are kept stuck in the past in some very literal ways. They each control an incredibly powerful prism, just like the one the previous games revolved around and who we see helping the Crystal Gems out in this game - and who once belonged to Hessonite, a general fighting on Earth during the rebellion (aka the yellow doodle of Centi’s commander from Monster Reunion).

Since the Crystal Gems fought against the light armies produced by Hessonite’s prism back in the day and had a tough time of it, Bismuth, it turns out, made a containment chest that could neutralise the prisms - but she never got to use it. Until now, that is.

The plan goes awry, however, as Demantoid uses her beefed-up prism to attack Bismuth and take the containment chest away.

Prompting Bismuth to go into full heroic sacrifice mode:

And despite the game seeming to give you a choice of trying to help Bismuth or getting the chest back, Bismuth herself won’t let you.

With a little callback to her Made of Honor line. Solid, flexible, diamagnetic, and not as dense as you might think.

So, we get the containment chest back...

… but Bismuth isn’t done being a Big Damn Hero.

A little sidenote that Bismuth (and the other bismuths that appear throughout levels set on Demantoid’s colonies, and whose portrayal I find immensely loveable) is here voiced by Miriam Hyman, the same VA who did those few episodes of SUF when Uzo Aduba wasn’t available - and she does a pretty great job imo.

Bismuth is in a pretty tight spot, but the cavalry arrives just in time.

But sadly even the power of puns isn’t enough, and Bismuth gets poofed by Demantoid:

Prompting reactions from the rest of the team and the assembled bismuths, who try to give the CGs a chance to use the chest and contain the prism.

Sadly, Demantoid gets away with her prism, and it all ends on a bittersweet note. The team still has the chest - their one shot at beating the prisms - but Bismuth is out, at least for a little while.

TAKIN’ CARE OF BISMUTH

A few stages of Bismuth being unavailable on the party screen later, she reforms in her new outfit - tragically, without a pun.

One thing I have to say I don’t get is - who’s the “special friend” she’s referring to? I’m drawing a complete blank here on anyone in SU wearing an outfit like that, and maybe there’s a wider joke/reference here I’m just not getting. Maybe something completely obvious. Anyway, beats me, so I’m open to suggestions. In any case, that concludes the tale of How Bismuth Got Her Overalls.

To finish off, I just have to point out that when you have Bismuth in your party and she gets defeated in battle, she gets a little band-aid on her cheek:

- The blatant insistence on not letting us see the left half of Volley’s face ever since she and Pearl unfused is amazing and awful, hahah.

- I miss Uzo Aduba :( I also miss Susan Egan :(

- Pearl still at it with the bass! Aw yeah.

- The big kaiju battle... was a hug. It’s cheesy as all hell but honestly felt super right. Massive hugs for the son boy. Good healthy cry afterwards, too. Huge kudos to Zach Callison, he really really acted his heart out in SUF.

- I really thought they were gonna go somewhere later on with the whole thing about Rose’s portrait - I mean the symbolism of Steven hiding it away is pretty clear, I just thought there’d be a more direct twist/resolution to it.

- Bismuth the Truest Crystal Gem Who Lives and Breathes the Cause getting the flag, with the CG theme gently playing in the background, made my heart grow about 20 times. If asked, I’d have probably defaulted to giving it to Pearl, but honestly? This works on every level imaginable, and forms a nice thematic mini-arc starting with her debut episode and her loud, insistent “We are the Crystal Gems!”-flavour proclamations, culminating in the Forge showdown with:

Don't tell me what a Crystal Gem would do. Nobody is more Crystal Gem than I am!

To the discussion in the Forge in Made of Honor, then to the whole segment of “Who We Are” in the movie and it being a take on “We Are the Crystal Gems”. And now this nice sendoff:

Bismuth, I can’t think of anyone who is more of a Crystal Gem than you.

- I’m bummed that Steven is leaving after the whole... literally building a massive support structure for him thing (and not even just on a long road trip of self-discovery, kid is literally moving out, “possibly forever”), and I seem to be one of the rare people to think this. I love bittersweet, I really do, and it was done nicely enough, but this is a specific sticking point for me I guess. But I’ve also noticed this has a whole cultural element to it that I’ve had nice chances to discuss with friends, so that was interesting I guess.

- EDIT: I CAN’T BELIEVE I FORGOT THIS ORIGINALLY but Pearl bringing up the gag order and once again cementing that as one of the primary roots of her ongoing issues and trauma - the forced secrecy making it impossible to properly process it all.

- Directly addressing and basically spelling out the whole issue of long-running and perpetuating cycles of abuse and the endless parallels and echoes, with Connie there telling White to cut the self-centering crap? I really liked that. Diamonds doing community service, actually actively working to undo the damage they did, in fact devoting pretty much all of their time to very thematically appropriate use of their reimagined powers, tying back into/echoing the shift from Pink with the wall-cracking screams to Rose the healer... good.

Sudden? Yeah. Like with so many things and loose ends of various kinds SUF touched on addressed at least briefly to give some sort of sendoff to, I would have loved to see actual episodes exploring this, more detailed development and buildup, instead of just seeing the result. I’m happy we got what we did and that the endgame of this stuff is what it is, but I’ll always be sad Rebecca Sugar wasn’t just given all the episodes she needed or wanted, no cancellation/renewal limbo, no network shenanigans, in order to tie things together without having to rush anything. Especially since a lot of the stuff that got handled only briefly was some of the things I was personally very invested in. But that’s a whole other discussion and, you know, in an ideal world... etc.

Hey, I posted a fic about Bismuth and Pearl working together in the forge just last night and I feel very validated here. Thanks. (I was also reminded of this older thing I did. Let me see Bismuth with all the pearls, all of them.)

She has a little apronnnnnnn

(Ah, yes, the comforting.)

Of course I absolutely have to point out... the (utterly gorgeous) pearl-sized “wedding armour”? With the beautiful detailing that requires “a light touch”. 

Look at that! We totally got to see a Knight Pearl on screen! Well, technically.

Now, who is this beauty for? Of course it could just be a demo piece, but seems a bit much for just that, no? YP/BP is absolutely a classic ship I’d love to see - just look at them over there! And now free to play around with all the artist/muse tropes.

(RIP Bismuth’s anvil, a pained laugh at the “my precious scaffolding” callback... truly, Bismuth is the long-suffering Cabbage Man of SU)

But Yellow is a modelling superstar, as we well know, so she could easily be present in that capacity only, and I’m gonna quite happily put this one away with many of the other little hints, such as, hmmmmm

or, you know, every scene they’ve had together, and the entirety of Bismuth Casual.

EDIT: Just spotted this. Don’t toy with me, CN.

The villain seems to be after Steven personally... and organic life in particular, is attacking Earth with some kind of mega-injector, and we are shown the kindergarten-like life-sucking damage spreading in several shots of the trailer. So possibly in the process of defeating her we might arrive at a method of undoing that damage, and reviving Gempire-drained planets. Would go hand in hand with “dismantling the empire and saving all your planets”.

The villain is all pink (and very old timey 30s animation... I’d buy her as a straight up Cuphead boss), and we’ve by now repeatedly heard about the huge role of both diamonds and colour (and colour theory) in Gem production, which would strongly indicate she was made by Pink (and only Pink). Rebecca was also just at the SDCC panel asked about Pearl and confirmed that Pearl has never belonged to White Diamond, but that White Diamond is involved in the creation of pearls in general and that there is a connection, but that going more into that would be spoiler territory. Makes me think that in the process of getting the new antagonist’s backstory, we might go into Gem production a bit more.

Pearl, spectacularly singing her heart out: We became our faaaaantasyyyyyyy, and I was sure she set me freeeeeeeeeee