We can see from as early as secret life that gem was constantly being subtly forced into this powerful leadership role—she’s bearing the entire weight of the team and when it comes down to the final moments of her season, she’s put in an impossible position. She never really asked to be put on a pedestal in SL but throughout the season and even through WL she leans into this expectation people have for her—she dehumanizes herself, essentially. this is a result of gems most glaring fatal flaw. She wants everything to fit into perfect boxes (this is made super apparent throughout her insane need for control in WL) and that’s what brings us to SL pearl.

When gem first meets red pearl, she IMMEDIATELY likes her.

She has a really strong reputation throughout the server as someone Dangerous—which is basically the reputation Gem gets throughout SL, just in a more positive way (funny how both of these reputations were heavily influenced by a certain blue haired guy…) instead of admiring red pearl however, the server seems to just dislike and fear her instead. Gem, however, has no such qualms. She LOVES how bloodthirsty red pearl is because she has the fixed expectation that that’s how the game is Supposed To Work. She sees this angry, dangerous, unstable individual and just wants to get closer.

It’s important to note that gems behavior towards pearl in secret life is nearly a mirror of Scott’s behavior towards gem. One person elevating another person on a pedestal they didn’t ask to be placed on. 

Pearl is initially very surprised by this, because nobody has acted so outwardly positive towards red pearl as gem does in secret life. But Pearls not fully aware of how this positivity comes with rigid expectations, and when she betrays gem in the finale, gem REALLY takes it personally. She grew an understanding of the game just for it to be shattered. And throughout wild life, gem seems like she’s desperately trying to regain her sense of control, through pearl—telling Scott he needs to keep her under control, only saying nice things to pearl in the one time where she physically cannot speak, telling her that they can only be friends when pearl is red again, these are not just examples of gem dehumanizing pearl, they’re also examples of gem trying to regain control of her own (shes Supposed to be Powerful and Intimidating) 

I just want to offer up my thoughts. With something as unpredictable as an improv roleplay series set in minecraft, there is gonna be a sizable disconnect between what the cc's WANT us to take away from the narrative and what the actual narrative shows. In order to analyze the life series strictly as a piece of media, we have to set aside our preconceived notions about the CCs and how THEY interact, so we can focus on the characters and how THEY interact. (which, to be fair, can be quite confusing—different ccs build different levels of narrative after all.)

Starting with what the actual narrative shows—lots of other analysis posters on this site have gone deeper into the villys' dynamics this season (@huggywuggysuppy has some really cool analysis posts in my humble opinion) but the synopsis is, there is a pattern of Gem and Grian constantly belittling pearl, acting like she's bound to betray them at any moment (despite her being one of the most loyal lifers), and essentially "othering" her from the group.

When you step back and look at what the cc's want us to take away from the story, it gets much more complicated. Obviously the season isn't over yet, so if there IS some big overarching plan, there is no way we would know of it yet. Nevertheless, Gem, Grian, and Pearl are all very much narrative-focused CCs. They like to build a story and a character for themselves. It wouldn’t be so far-fetched to assume that the whole pearl-isolation within the villies IS intentional. However, from Pearl’s stream the other day, Gem mentions that “the audience thinks [the villies are] toxic because [we] don’t understand [them]”. Which does poke a hole in the theory that their dynamic is intentional. If the villies are cleary toxic from what the videos show us but Gem the CC is telling us to our face that they’re not BUT we also know that Gem is incredibly aware of narrative arc, her character, and fandom response/analysis, AND pearl doesn’t agree with Gem’s remark here, pointing towards the possibility that they both have very different storytelling visions then we have to circle back to our original assumption–we don’t know what is intentional and what is not intentional and there’s no way of knowing until the season’s over and the CCs explain themselves.