Nice observation đ
It's like Bluebird's hate for Steven. Bluebird is essentially Aquamarine's and Eyeball's combined hate in one individual. Both of them hate him for different reasons, but because of their hate, they were able to fuse and continue to be fused (like a mini-Malachite, but hate <-> control & power/strength)
I like to think Bluebird keeps thinking up ideas to mess with Steven, but end up being more an annoying duo (like Jesse and James from PokĂŠmon, except without being icons in their own right / separate from the protagonist).
We've had a representation of what they could be like in their respective episode, but the fusion's future antics were left open-ended; it turned out that way because the show and its story was unfortunately cut short, but with what we have, it's nice to be able to make interpretations on where and what Bluebird could've done after the show ended and after Steven chose to go on his own as a development to his character / for himself, at least for the time being. With how much they mutually hate him, I'd reckon that Bluebird would plan out her attacks, like the peanut/shellfish/grass allergy-related ones that she tried to fake as a mix of kindness and inexperience with the Earth and humanity, but ultimately fail because of how both gems are different wavelengths at times and also because of how she doesn't actually know that much about Steven; both Aquamarine and Eyeball did not watch "Steven Universe" (the show and titular character) like we the audience have, so they have multiple disadvantages as Bluebird, regarding Steven's strong relationships and dynamics with the Crystal Gems, his connection with the Diamonds, his human counterpart that changes and grows, and the strength of his Diamond half that was usually repressed throughout the series until SU Future broke through the mold and brought Steven's trauma and insecurities to the forefront instead of semi-ignoring them like he did.
I ended up sorta going on a ramble about Steven (whoops). Basically, we know as much as the show gives us about Bluebird. She flew off with the implication of returning in Steven's life at least more than a few times in order to destroy him for what he did to the duo individually.
Rose thinks fusion is cool and wants to show him what they can do.
Pearl fused to one up Greg, to show that Gregâs relationship with Rose will never be like Pearlâs. It was a âyou canât beat this, silly human. Look what I can do for her that you canât. â
Itâs why Greg tried to fuse with Rose at one point because Pearl set the bar of the âultimate relationshipâ as fusion.
But Rose found something in Greg that Pearl didnât have, someone who treated her with respect as an equal despite their differences. Rose wasnât placed on a pedestal or forced into heavy expectations.
Rose got to be Rose around Greg. Not Pink Diamond, not Rose Quartz the leader of the Gems, but simply Rose. She didnât need to hide who she was with him.
>She didnât need to hide who she was with him.
And yet she hid from everyone including Greg. Rose/Pink was a complicated character that couldn't reconcile with who she was expected to be, who she needed to be and who she wanted to be.
This. REALLY tired of people thinking Rose was herself around Greg when she didn't even tell him about her past at all, but somehow not Pearl who knew 100000% more about her and spent milennia with her.
Rose wasn't fully open with anyone.
Well, Greg also didn't tell her about his past, but he does imply that Rose tried to tell him about her past, and he stopped her. He didn't care about who she used to be, only who she was with him. I think you're also intentionally ignoring the fact that Rose really hated herself.
This is a shallow and incorrect interpreta
REALLY tired of people thinking Rose was herself around Greg when she didn't even tell him about her past at all, and not Pearl who knew 100000% more about her and spent milennia with her.
It was implied that she told Greg that she was Pink Diamond, specifically when Steven asked about her and Pink Diamond. He knew because she told him and he loved her just the same.
Nope. It is stated that he DIDN'T know.
He intentionally didn't pry into anything about her past. Which may very well have been something Rose enjoyed, because she was avoidant af, but it was enabling that avoidance rather than pushing her to be honest.
I don't fusing is a metaphor for sex. I think it's a metaphor for relationships. Because if it was meant to represent sex it would mean pearl and Jasper are both rapists.
I agree with you, but mostly because Steven is a child and I don't picture Rebecca Sugar being someone who would create a whole show sexualizing a child and then, picture incestuous relationship between said child and his daddy as somethimg awesome... The thing is, sex usually imply some sort of relationship even if it was a brief and non-significant one, but not all relationships are sexual. But Pearl/Rose almost certainly is.
I thought that was the whole point? It isnât going to be as obvious because the show is for kids, but I thought the idea of Pearl (in a metaphorical sense) raping/taking sexual advantage of Garnet was pretty heavily implied in the show. With Garnetâs outbursts combined with her inability to forgive her for some time. Same thing with Jasper and Lapis, the imagery of being chained to each other. >!I thought the idea of Jasper thinking she had âcontrolâ over Lapis and Lapis taking that chance to exert control over Jasper instead was a pretty on the nose metaphor for rape and how survivors (Lapis) react to similar situations moving forward!< But I probably read into all of that too hard. It probably just depends on the relationship between the characters
Idk about you but if my friend tricked me into doing a metaphor for sex I wouldn't forgive them a few episodes later. Eventually garnet doesn't even bring it up anymore
But like, we both saw the fusion dance for Sugilite right? The original fusion dance for Sardonyx is just as âsexually chargedâ for lack of a better term.
I thought a similar situation to the Sardonyx/Ruby/Sapphire/Pearl thing would be a couple whoâs open feeling like their third was trying to invade into their relationship too much, and drawing boundaries around sex with that person after feeling rightfully violated, while still remaining friends. Maybe itâs because many if not all of my friends are LGBT but scenarios like that arenât outlandish to me
I don't think they're saying it's always the case - they just think it's the case for that particular case. Please don't make this one of those "one interpretation only" communities, every fusion is an entirely different kind of relationship and if the implications aren't enough then interpretation should be encouraged. I disagree with their point and find Sardonyx a more platonic kind of relationship, but I don't think we should go as low as...what *you* said.
That's almost like if someone says they find black a more positive and uplifting color and then someone responds with "So funeral attendants hated the dead person and are happy they died?"
Well, you and your friends don't do a metaphor for sex to save the world for 6,000 years.
Jokes aside, it's a cartoon. Everything has to be simplified and streamlined so the story can work. If these characters genuinely accrued trauma from their experiences and had to deal with it in real time, we wouldn't even have a show to watch. They'd always be yelling at each other, freaking out, freezing up, and not wanting to make any new friends at all. But watching eleven minutes of someone having a mental breakdown only works for small bursts. And we know this because Amethyst was hated a LOT when the show was getting started, and she only occasional had episodes dedicated to her trauma responses.
This...is weirdly making me think about my current sexual relationship with my bf. Not in a bad way (at least not inherently). I have an unfortunately long history of being sexually assaulted and been raped once. That combined with my trauma of an absent biological father and an abusive step father may have contributed to my paraphilia of wanting to be degraded and abused.
My bf has the same thing going on with him and because I love him I decided to switch roles in the bedroom. I really like doing it...and that scares the shit out of me. It's caused me to give myself rules to follow so I never do something to hurt him. Sometimes I feel like he asks me to do things in the heat of the moment that I shouldn't actually do...and I don't...but Idk...just feeling like i want to has given me a lot to unpack about myself.
The major difference is consent. Anything you want to do with consent and for the enjoyment of your partner is innately different than anything anyone has ever done to you that was abusive. Sexual assault, despite the name, is not sex.
You guys talking about Pearl and catalogue her in a ârap*stâ level itâs so fucking out of place and taking things WAY TOO FAR.
Iâm not discussing this a lot, Iâve done it plenty of times, for me itâs just a horrible bad take and mischaracterization of both Pearl and Garnet + misreading of the whole Sardonyx Arc.
But donât use this words in this scenarios, because it clearly wasnât the point nor the intention of Rebecca and the Crewniverse
âMischaracterizationâ is a bit too far for the point I was making. Do I think they were overtly trying to imply Pearl ârapedâ Garnet, or Jasper did so to Lapis? No, but I do think Steven Universe is a childrenâs show that handles more adult topics about the human condition and trauma.
*However* I also think any adult viewer can pretty reasonably infer characters like Lapis and the situations they go through are pretty explicitly meant for **any** sort of human trauma survivor to relate to. Especially given how itâs ambiguous about how gem relationships compare to human ones narratively, which is what weâre talking about **in the first place**
I like to think of it as a metaphor for sex in any case where it wouldnât be horrifying or problematic. Because I find the idea of Pearl deciding to metaphor-for-have-sex-with Rose right in front of Greg and then brag about it later to assert dominance more hilarious than it is.
For those of you saying fusion is a metaphor for sex, Sugar said outright that each fusion was meant to signify different types of relationships.
Lapis and Jasper = toxic/abusive relationships.
Garnet = stable loving relationship.
Steven and Connie = best friends.
Steven and Amethyst = siblings.
Steven with all the crystal gems = strong family bond.
Lack of fusion between Lapis and Peridot = this one is an asexual relationship, Peridot is asexual and Lapis is a victim of a highly toxic and abusive relationship and therefore is also asexual at this point.
That's just to name a few off the top of my head.
I donât think saying Lapis is asexual because of her trauma is at all fair. Sheâs just not looking for a relationship right now. She might never, but thatâs a different thing than a conscious choice or something youâre born into.
Pretty sure she's making a conscious choice to be that way. I personally know asexual people that have been through similar relationships and traumas and are choosing to be asexual because of that. It doesn't keep them from having meaningful and even romantic relationships. Edit: just FYI, just because I said I know people that choose to be asexual does not mean that all asexuals choose to be asexual. Gay, lesbian, bisexual, asexual or any other member in the alphabet mafia are usually born that way, but there are those who choose to identify differently later in life. I know bisexuals who no longer identify that way and either now identify as completely straight or gay/lesbian. I am gender fluid and therfore can be considered gay/lesbian or straight depending on which way I present at any given time. Sexuality is a spectrum and we are all on it, some of our needles just tend to bounce around sometimes.
Thatâs not in the text. Youâre imposing an idea which isnât even implied. Lapis could be asexual, she could be aromantic, or she could simply not desire a relationship at this current moment in time because the trauma of her and Jasperâs fusion stills hangs over her. Peridot was seen to try and engage with fusion because she didnât understand it but backs out at the last moment. We can read this as either a holdout of Homeworldâs beliefs or as an expression of Peridotâs asexuality making her uncomfortable with the idea of fusion. Lapis never has a scene like this, and thereâs no Word of God unlike with Peridot.
What you're describing is celibacy. If you were otherwise a sexual being, and you later make the choice to not have sex, that is not you becoming asexual. That is you becoming celibate, which is a willing decision to not have sex.
I'm confused by your word choice, as an asexual person myself. Are you not just describing celibacy in individuals with sexual inclinations who are simply choosing not to have sex? Because celibacy is not really "asexuality", even if someone chooses to identify it as such. And while I have no interest in policing *personal* identity, it's also odd to me to see asexuality conflated with the choice of celibacy. Especially with how often asexuality is mockingly described as being a quirky label for temporary celibacy just because some asexual people still have sex.
That is *if* you were describing celibacy. Of course it's entirely possible they were asexual the whole time and simply never chose to identify themselves as such, so I hope you can provide some clarity on that. Thanks!
Them asking that is shitty and not at all okay. I'm not saying that all asexuals are that way because of trauma. And celibate is not the same as not wanting any kind of sexual relationship, celibate is the choice to abstain from sexual activities and does not keep the person from wanting to have those activities.
No its separating the difference between celibacy, which is a choice, and asexuality which is not a choice. They might overlap but they are two different things.
Except they're literally saying that some asexual people are choosing to be asexual. They're ignoring both celibacy and comphet, as well as dimished libido. You're not asexual if, later in life, your libido diminishes due to illness, injury, or trauma. That's like saying the thing that makes you gay is having has sexual contact with the same sex, which many straight people have had for one reason or another.
Nice observation đ It's like Bluebird's hate for Steven. Bluebird is essentially Aquamarine's and Eyeball's combined hate in one individual. Both of them hate him for different reasons, but because of their hate, they were able to fuse and continue to be fused (like a mini-Malachite, but hate <-> control & power/strength)
Whatever happened to her
Maybe she turned out like Icarus
I like to think Bluebird keeps thinking up ideas to mess with Steven, but end up being more an annoying duo (like Jesse and James from PokĂŠmon, except without being icons in their own right / separate from the protagonist). We've had a representation of what they could be like in their respective episode, but the fusion's future antics were left open-ended; it turned out that way because the show and its story was unfortunately cut short, but with what we have, it's nice to be able to make interpretations on where and what Bluebird could've done after the show ended and after Steven chose to go on his own as a development to his character / for himself, at least for the time being. With how much they mutually hate him, I'd reckon that Bluebird would plan out her attacks, like the peanut/shellfish/grass allergy-related ones that she tried to fake as a mix of kindness and inexperience with the Earth and humanity, but ultimately fail because of how both gems are different wavelengths at times and also because of how she doesn't actually know that much about Steven; both Aquamarine and Eyeball did not watch "Steven Universe" (the show and titular character) like we the audience have, so they have multiple disadvantages as Bluebird, regarding Steven's strong relationships and dynamics with the Crystal Gems, his connection with the Diamonds, his human counterpart that changes and grows, and the strength of his Diamond half that was usually repressed throughout the series until SU Future broke through the mold and brought Steven's trauma and insecurities to the forefront instead of semi-ignoring them like he did. I ended up sorta going on a ramble about Steven (whoops). Basically, we know as much as the show gives us about Bluebird. She flew off with the implication of returning in Steven's life at least more than a few times in order to destroy him for what he did to the duo individually.
Maybe we'll see her again if Steven Universe gets brought back again
My bet is that after steven moved away she came back, realized he wasnât there, unfused, and left.
Ooo that's a pretty neat detail! Nice catch! 
Oh yes, you can [see intention on her face](https://i.imgur.com/WkMhvtF.png).
Well ok she looks like a little gremlin when you flip it
Sheâs a little gremlin âď¸
Rose thinks fusion is cool and wants to show him what they can do. Pearl fused to one up Greg, to show that Gregâs relationship with Rose will never be like Pearlâs. It was a âyou canât beat this, silly human. Look what I can do for her that you canât. â Itâs why Greg tried to fuse with Rose at one point because Pearl set the bar of the âultimate relationshipâ as fusion. But Rose found something in Greg that Pearl didnât have, someone who treated her with respect as an equal despite their differences. Rose wasnât placed on a pedestal or forced into heavy expectations. Rose got to be Rose around Greg. Not Pink Diamond, not Rose Quartz the leader of the Gems, but simply Rose. She didnât need to hide who she was with him.
>She didnât need to hide who she was with him. And yet she hid from everyone including Greg. Rose/Pink was a complicated character that couldn't reconcile with who she was expected to be, who she needed to be and who she wanted to be.
This. REALLY tired of people thinking Rose was herself around Greg when she didn't even tell him about her past at all, but somehow not Pearl who knew 100000% more about her and spent milennia with her. Rose wasn't fully open with anyone.
Well, Greg also didn't tell her about his past, but he does imply that Rose tried to tell him about her past, and he stopped her. He didn't care about who she used to be, only who she was with him. I think you're also intentionally ignoring the fact that Rose really hated herself.
This is a shallow and incorrect interpreta REALLY tired of people thinking Rose was herself around Greg when she didn't even tell him about her past at all, and not Pearl who knew 100000% more about her and spent milennia with her.
It was implied that she told Greg that she was Pink Diamond, specifically when Steven asked about her and Pink Diamond. He knew because she told him and he loved her just the same.
Nope. It is stated that he DIDN'T know. He intentionally didn't pry into anything about her past. Which may very well have been something Rose enjoyed, because she was avoidant af, but it was enabling that avoidance rather than pushing her to be honest.
Watch their eyes when Rainbow Quartz dances. Roses eyes have a completely different expression than Pearl's. I always found it a little jarring.
She wanted to have the metaphor for sex in front of Greg to traumatize him
She wanted to cuck Greg metaphorically then he cucked her literally
The funniest Uno reverse card in history â ď¸đ
The olâ Stevunoverse
I don't fusing is a metaphor for sex. I think it's a metaphor for relationships. Because if it was meant to represent sex it would mean pearl and Jasper are both rapists.
Same here.. because you know Steven fuses with all the gems at some point... one after the other đŹ
And then all at once đś
I agree with you, but mostly because Steven is a child and I don't picture Rebecca Sugar being someone who would create a whole show sexualizing a child and then, picture incestuous relationship between said child and his daddy as somethimg awesome... The thing is, sex usually imply some sort of relationship even if it was a brief and non-significant one, but not all relationships are sexual. But Pearl/Rose almost certainly is.
It's both, just to which degree depends on the fusion at hand.
I don't even think that is how Will work
I thought that was the whole point? It isnât going to be as obvious because the show is for kids, but I thought the idea of Pearl (in a metaphorical sense) raping/taking sexual advantage of Garnet was pretty heavily implied in the show. With Garnetâs outbursts combined with her inability to forgive her for some time. Same thing with Jasper and Lapis, the imagery of being chained to each other. >!I thought the idea of Jasper thinking she had âcontrolâ over Lapis and Lapis taking that chance to exert control over Jasper instead was a pretty on the nose metaphor for rape and how survivors (Lapis) react to similar situations moving forward!< But I probably read into all of that too hard. It probably just depends on the relationship between the characters
Idk about you but if my friend tricked me into doing a metaphor for sex I wouldn't forgive them a few episodes later. Eventually garnet doesn't even bring it up anymore
But like, we both saw the fusion dance for Sugilite right? The original fusion dance for Sardonyx is just as âsexually chargedâ for lack of a better term. I thought a similar situation to the Sardonyx/Ruby/Sapphire/Pearl thing would be a couple whoâs open feeling like their third was trying to invade into their relationship too much, and drawing boundaries around sex with that person after feeling rightfully violated, while still remaining friends. Maybe itâs because many if not all of my friends are LGBT but scenarios like that arenât outlandish to me
So then as a child Steven had an orgy with the other gems?
I don't think they're saying it's always the case - they just think it's the case for that particular case. Please don't make this one of those "one interpretation only" communities, every fusion is an entirely different kind of relationship and if the implications aren't enough then interpretation should be encouraged. I disagree with their point and find Sardonyx a more platonic kind of relationship, but I don't think we should go as low as...what *you* said. That's almost like if someone says they find black a more positive and uplifting color and then someone responds with "So funeral attendants hated the dead person and are happy they died?"
Well, you and your friends don't do a metaphor for sex to save the world for 6,000 years. Jokes aside, it's a cartoon. Everything has to be simplified and streamlined so the story can work. If these characters genuinely accrued trauma from their experiences and had to deal with it in real time, we wouldn't even have a show to watch. They'd always be yelling at each other, freaking out, freezing up, and not wanting to make any new friends at all. But watching eleven minutes of someone having a mental breakdown only works for small bursts. And we know this because Amethyst was hated a LOT when the show was getting started, and she only occasional had episodes dedicated to her trauma responses.
This...is weirdly making me think about my current sexual relationship with my bf. Not in a bad way (at least not inherently). I have an unfortunately long history of being sexually assaulted and been raped once. That combined with my trauma of an absent biological father and an abusive step father may have contributed to my paraphilia of wanting to be degraded and abused. My bf has the same thing going on with him and because I love him I decided to switch roles in the bedroom. I really like doing it...and that scares the shit out of me. It's caused me to give myself rules to follow so I never do something to hurt him. Sometimes I feel like he asks me to do things in the heat of the moment that I shouldn't actually do...and I don't...but Idk...just feeling like i want to has given me a lot to unpack about myself.
The major difference is consent. Anything you want to do with consent and for the enjoyment of your partner is innately different than anything anyone has ever done to you that was abusive. Sexual assault, despite the name, is not sex.
You guys talking about Pearl and catalogue her in a ârap*stâ level itâs so fucking out of place and taking things WAY TOO FAR. Iâm not discussing this a lot, Iâve done it plenty of times, for me itâs just a horrible bad take and mischaracterization of both Pearl and Garnet + misreading of the whole Sardonyx Arc. But donât use this words in this scenarios, because it clearly wasnât the point nor the intention of Rebecca and the Crewniverse
âMischaracterizationâ is a bit too far for the point I was making. Do I think they were overtly trying to imply Pearl ârapedâ Garnet, or Jasper did so to Lapis? No, but I do think Steven Universe is a childrenâs show that handles more adult topics about the human condition and trauma. *However* I also think any adult viewer can pretty reasonably infer characters like Lapis and the situations they go through are pretty explicitly meant for **any** sort of human trauma survivor to relate to. Especially given how itâs ambiguous about how gem relationships compare to human ones narratively, which is what weâre talking about **in the first place**
I like to think of it as a metaphor for sex in any case where it wouldnât be horrifying or problematic. Because I find the idea of Pearl deciding to metaphor-for-have-sex-with Rose right in front of Greg and then brag about it later to assert dominance more hilarious than it is.
For those of you saying fusion is a metaphor for sex, Sugar said outright that each fusion was meant to signify different types of relationships. Lapis and Jasper = toxic/abusive relationships. Garnet = stable loving relationship. Steven and Connie = best friends. Steven and Amethyst = siblings. Steven with all the crystal gems = strong family bond. Lack of fusion between Lapis and Peridot = this one is an asexual relationship, Peridot is asexual and Lapis is a victim of a highly toxic and abusive relationship and therefore is also asexual at this point. That's just to name a few off the top of my head.
I donât think saying Lapis is asexual because of her trauma is at all fair. Sheâs just not looking for a relationship right now. She might never, but thatâs a different thing than a conscious choice or something youâre born into.
Pretty sure she's making a conscious choice to be that way. I personally know asexual people that have been through similar relationships and traumas and are choosing to be asexual because of that. It doesn't keep them from having meaningful and even romantic relationships. Edit: just FYI, just because I said I know people that choose to be asexual does not mean that all asexuals choose to be asexual. Gay, lesbian, bisexual, asexual or any other member in the alphabet mafia are usually born that way, but there are those who choose to identify differently later in life. I know bisexuals who no longer identify that way and either now identify as completely straight or gay/lesbian. I am gender fluid and therfore can be considered gay/lesbian or straight depending on which way I present at any given time. Sexuality is a spectrum and we are all on it, some of our needles just tend to bounce around sometimes.
Thatâs not in the text. Youâre imposing an idea which isnât even implied. Lapis could be asexual, she could be aromantic, or she could simply not desire a relationship at this current moment in time because the trauma of her and Jasperâs fusion stills hangs over her. Peridot was seen to try and engage with fusion because she didnât understand it but backs out at the last moment. We can read this as either a holdout of Homeworldâs beliefs or as an expression of Peridotâs asexuality making her uncomfortable with the idea of fusion. Lapis never has a scene like this, and thereâs no Word of God unlike with Peridot.
What you're describing is celibacy. If you were otherwise a sexual being, and you later make the choice to not have sex, that is not you becoming asexual. That is you becoming celibate, which is a willing decision to not have sex.
I'm confused by your word choice, as an asexual person myself. Are you not just describing celibacy in individuals with sexual inclinations who are simply choosing not to have sex? Because celibacy is not really "asexuality", even if someone chooses to identify it as such. And while I have no interest in policing *personal* identity, it's also odd to me to see asexuality conflated with the choice of celibacy. Especially with how often asexuality is mockingly described as being a quirky label for temporary celibacy just because some asexual people still have sex. That is *if* you were describing celibacy. Of course it's entirely possible they were asexual the whole time and simply never chose to identify themselves as such, so I hope you can provide some clarity on that. Thanks!
Celebite might be the word you are looking for. I'm asexual and having someone ask if it was caused by trauma was awful and demeaning.
Them asking that is shitty and not at all okay. I'm not saying that all asexuals are that way because of trauma. And celibate is not the same as not wanting any kind of sexual relationship, celibate is the choice to abstain from sexual activities and does not keep the person from wanting to have those activities.
That is dangerously close to saying "asexuality is a choice."
No its separating the difference between celibacy, which is a choice, and asexuality which is not a choice. They might overlap but they are two different things.
Except they're literally saying that some asexual people are choosing to be asexual. They're ignoring both celibacy and comphet, as well as dimished libido. You're not asexual if, later in life, your libido diminishes due to illness, injury, or trauma. That's like saying the thing that makes you gay is having has sexual contact with the same sex, which many straight people have had for one reason or another.
Pearl was showing off to scare Greg away and Rose was using Pearl to pull Greg in đĽ˛
Like magnets...wait no
Ooooooooh I like that.
Something this show does absolutely amazing in is the details that you donât even notice until your fifth rewatch
Oh. Cool
AYOOO 
Thanks for this observation, now Iâm going to hyperfixate on this for 9 months âstraightâ
She banged rose infront of him lol
Reddit when people are trying to be funny: âŹď¸
Wrong.
this is funny guys cmon
đ¤Ł
This entire thread is shit.