Basically, Gem Steven’s here because his human half Did the Die (hence “Gone Wrong”), and when he appears, it’s normal. But, after spending some time along in the bathroom, it rotates so that the pentagon is facing downwards. In my theory, I speculated that this meant that he felt that he wasn’t Steven anymore, and is now trying to figure out who he is aside from him. He and his human half together = Steven, but who is he without the other half? That’s the main question for him in the AU at the moment.

Keep that in mind.

With Rose, she is about to make the biggest decision of her life. By deciding to become Rose forever, she’s killing her old self (honestly quite literally) and moving on. So it makes sense for her gem to rotate.

But, here’s the thing; it was already upside-down as she chose this, meaning that she herself must have been having some kind of crisis beforehand to make it upside-down in the first place.

This means that she’s been thinking about herself as Pink Diamond and herself as Rose Quartz for a long time.

Blue telling her that”as long as you are there to rule, this colony would be completed” was the final thing to get her to decide once and for all that this is something she wants to do.

When she reforms again, permanently as Rose, the pentagon is upside-right.

Because she’s found her identity.

Spud, if you knew all of this, I APPLAUDE YOU.

She is more comfortable as Rose Quartz. Pink Diamond was a b*tch she wanted to leave in the past. She says it herself. “If this is really my world, then I want to give it to the Crystal Gems. I want to live here with human beings. I want to live here with you [Pearl]!” By assuming Rose Quartz, she is leaving Pink behind forever.

That’s not an easy decision to make. She must have been thinking about it for a while. After all, what happens when the Crystal Gems win or lose, and Homeworld leaves? Does Rose reveal her identity and go home? Or does she stay on Earth? How would she stay on Earth? So, becoming Rose Quartz must have become a stressor regarding her persona’s future, the persona she loves being.

Hence, the gem is flipped.

But once she decides to fake her shattering, it becomes normal again, facets flipped, the pentagon pointing up.

We know this is a recent development because in The Answer, Rose’s gem looks like this:

And in Rose’s Scabbard, it looks like this (though this is also a memory, so maybe Pearl never noticed!):

Rose Quartz knew that she wouldn’t be able to stay Rose after the war was over (and this scene in Rose’s Scabbard might have been the beginning of that realization). So, once she realized that faking her death would allow her to continue to exist as she wanted, of course she leaped at the chance. She was so excited in A Single Pale Rose.

Wouldn’t you be, too, if you realized you knew a way to live how you wanted instead of a life you were forced into?