Song Analysis: Cookie Cat

I know that the song is really short, and that there’s one central message, but I find it easier to categorise it this way, as a Song Analysis, so that it’ll be easier to find it later on.

If anything, Cookie Cat could easily represent the Crystal Gems (and all succeeding defectors who have decided to make Earth their home).

Source: SU Wiki 

Some things that stick out in the rap are:

And all of that puts Cookie Cat in a place of disadvantage. CC is someone left vulnerable after the war that happened. In fact, CC is the party that’s being hunted down, so he’s hunkering down on Earth. 

This implies that CC defied the very authority that he’s now running from. In the process though, he’s had to leave his family behind.

This is why, though Steven had left his family behind to go into space, he's going to face the authorities in episodes like I Am My Mom, and Gem Heist. But I would still say that CC is foreshadowing for another set of gems.

When we look at the CGs in their first appearance, we have no idea they’re aliens. They seem superhuman, magical even. But in Gem Glow, when the rap makes its first appearance, we don’t know how well-built the world of SU is yet. We don’t know how vast it is, with a Homeworld and it’s own socio-political structure.

And if we were to be very specific about which Crystal Gem CC could be alluding to, we’d have to narrow it even further to the gems born on Homeworld. Gems like Lapis, Rose, Pearl, and Peridot. These are gems who have at one point or another earned the contempt of the world that was once their home. In fact, they continue to call it home.

In Pearl’s holographic replay of the day Rose told her about the Rebellion, she says, “We can never go home.” Lapis, despite being interrogated by Homeworld during the war, and then abandoned after, tells Steven she just wants to go home in Ocean Gem. Pearl longs to see how Homeworld has changed in the years she’s been gone. Peridot says it’s impossible not to have feelings for the place where you were made.

And they know full well that Home isn’t a perfect place, that Home has hurt them in some ways. Nonetheless, something about Homeworld is still familiar and welcoming, and even comforting. It stands as testament to Homeworld’s not being a wasteland where all gems suffer just because. There is something about Home that made Rose very torn up about instigating the Rebellion, and all the other characters want to try defending it before realising that something could be better on Earth.

They left gems that they knew behind, knowing that one day they might have to fight against them. And now they’re defectors, criminals because of their desertion. 

And I think this read more completely captures the essence of the song.

Episode Analysis: Mr. Greg

I had so many thoughts about this episode and I’d had multiple drafts scrapped because i didn’t get a feel for how I wanted to discuss it until now. And then I suddenly realised I had to cover Rose Quartz’s character analysis before I could explore the themes of this episode. I decided this takes the form of an episode analysis, because it’s more than the songs. It’s the setting, the dialogue, the imagery, everything.

Coming off the episode, there are some pretty strong feelings from Greg and Pearl about Rose, and the relationships they have with each other, as well as their history. And I think caught in the middle of a context no one really let him into, though he totally deserves to know about his mother, is Steven.

There are several things we learn through the subtext of the musical episode as well, and I think some important storytelling tools helped us there, and I’ll be discussing that in this article. At the same time, there are some asks I’ll be integrating, because I feel they can best be answered in the context of this post.

With that said, let’s get going!

1. Rose is really gone, but that’s okay

I know I’m directly going to butt heads with those who believe Rose is making a comeback, and that she’s just retreated into Steven’s gem, but this to me is an aspect of the narrative that is not only necessary, but also holds a lot of truth.

One of the earliest posts I’d ever made was about characters and trauma. Steven has never met Rose, but that doesn’t mean trauma isn’t there. Trauma doesn’t have to cripple, though it most certainly can. Trauma can heal, but it can’t be healed over, because what happened will definitely have happened and can’t be undone. 

Steven is surrounded by people who, everyday, have feelings and memories about his mother. They knew who she was and they could tell him everything about her, but that will never be equivalent to his actually meeting her. On top of that, there’s still an expectation for him to take up his mother’s mantle. In the episodes in which he can’t control his powers, or can't summon them at will, Steven is dejected, upset, and frustrated. Implicitly, he’s comparing himself to Rose. Gem Glow, An Indirect Kiss, House Guest, even Steven Floats. In these episodes, he lives out what he says in the extended opening, “I will fight to be everything that everybody wants me to be when I’m grown.”

The pressure isn’t because Steven wants to become Rose. But the people around him can’t help drawing parallels. And as a perceptive individual, Steven can feel he has to fill her shoes. It causes him stress and doubt at times. 

As an audience, we feel for him. One way or another, some of us have lost loved ones. And one way or another, there’s a feeling that no words can ever explain that person’s being. Steven succinctly puts it in An Indirect Kiss:

Source: SU Wiki

Note this: He wants to share their grief. He feels that never having met Rose alienates him from those he cares about. That’s not something you want a child growing up feeling.

And look at Greg and the gems. They’re torn up about Rose. I mentioned before that Greg and Amethyst trying to preserve their past with Rose as much as they can. We’ve seen Pearl overcome with grief multiple times, and now that we know more about Garnet, there’s no doubt she has feeling we haven’t heard about as well. The grieving process is different for everyone. The amount of time it takes to grieve is different as well. How someone grieves even more so.

Engaging the idea that Rose may just be in stasis in Steven’s gem, commonly cited evidence is Rose’s line from Lion 3: Straight to Video. 

Source: SU Wiki

Or Pearl’s lament in Rose’s Scabbard

Source: SU Wiki

I get it. Gems store data. Steven has Rose’s gem, so Rose’s data must still be retrievable right? But that isn’t the case. Rose prepared for Steven’s arrival. She did the science. She experimented on plants and made gem hybrids. In the future I may talk about this some more, but I’m of the belief that she made lion in a similar way. 

Steven is a new person. He isn’t Rose. And that’s why it was so uncomfortable when he told Greg and Pearl, “Just you, me, Pearl, and mom” and lifted his shirt to display his gem. He’s more than just half-Greg and half-Rose. He’s Steven. He was born a completely new individual. Rose’s information gave him his curly hair, his star eyes, his powers, his gem abilities, but she doesn’t live through him because that’s against everything Rose stands for.

In Lion 3, Rose says,

Source: SU Wiki

I mentioned in her character analysis how important individuality and choice was to her. That’s the entire reason she started the Rebellion, so gems would have choices. Why would she exert her influence on Steven’s life in any way? Her own son. It’s against her principles. She wants him to have a unique experience, not be Rose 2.0. 

See, if Rose could come back, and she was just living in Steven’s gem, what would happen to Steven? They can’t both exist at the same time. Rose says this herself. That’s because like Rose, Steven does need his gem. He’s more than just the physical processes of a human being. He’s a gem too, and the entire season one was dedicated to proving that to us. 

And if she did come back somehow, that wouldn’t make narrative sense. Why cause this much suffering and pain? Why draw it out for this long? What was the point of the grief if Rose was never really gone anyway. What do they gain from it? SU is a great show, because reality isn’t like the “conventional” nuclear family portrayed on many of the shows we grew up with. In reality, a lot of families have single parents, have multiple guardians raising a child, have extended families involved in one way or another. In reality, many people have lost loved ones. 

Rose’s death is something that we can greatly identify with. And because SU strives to mirror the reality of relationships, what kind of message does it send should she manage to return? Because our lost loved ones aren’t coming back. But we say that’s okay, because we cope, we move forward, we honour their memories. That to me, is a more compelling narrative.

And after all the gains that everyone left behind has made in the show, these characters deserve the same respect. It’s faith in them that they can honour Rose, and cope, and move forward with her memory. 

It’s devastating to have a character lost, especially because, like Steven, we’ve never met her. But the significance of her passing, to me, shows that even those who aren’t here exert a presence in our lives. And if we don’t have to take that negatively. We can be everything they wanted us to be and much more. We can go on living, because they worked hard to create a world that we could cherish every day. It’s this premise that moves the show. All the gems lost during the war deserve to be mourned as well, but it never ends with mourning. They fought to make lives better, as Rose did. To do them justice would be to work towards that world in the small ways that we can, which leads to the next point.

2. For all his progress, Greg is still healing

Something to appreciate is Greg’s decision to have Steven with Rose. Steven is obviously human. He needs to eat, sleep, go to the washroom, breathe, and a lot of other things. And he obviously looks like a young Greg too. 

The thing is, Greg knew Rose couldn’t be with him to raise Steven. Greg knew that in beautiful irony, the half of their relationship who could technically live forever would be the one to pass away first. But he said yes. 

And since then, Greg has continued to try and be the best father he could be, despite not having a lot of money, despite not having the gems’ support many times in the show, despite his sadness over losing Rose.

Greg has never resented Steven’s coming into the world as the reason for Rose’s passing. And of all his guardians, he talks about Rose more openly and candidly without being prompted by Steven. Most of the time, it seems as though Greg is okay already, but I think it’s fair that for most, nothing will ever heal over losing someone. Greg has not replaced Rose with Steven. He loves Steven dearly because he’s Steven, not because he’s Rose’s son. 

Greg has allowed Steven to make his own choices. He didn’t push Steven to live with the gems and be trained by them. He made sure Steven really did want to do this. In the extended opening, he says, “Steven’s so excited to start living with you.” And in that same short, he’s there every night when Steven falls asleep. He wants Steven to feel that the latter can back out of this any time, that he has a choice.

Though I’ve mentioned before, Greg can still by hit by moments of sadness. His reaction in Laser Light Canon is a clear indicator. Talking about Rose to Steven in the storage unit was more or less fine. But when the canon fires in Rose’s image, that seemed to elicit a different emotion altogether. He cried. 

We have different triggers for the ones we’ve lost, and this was clearly one of Greg’s. Greg is still healing, and what I really liked about Mr. Greg was that it addressed something big about his healing process: Much of it involves not engaging with Pearl.

To engage this ask, I’d like to talk about his healing.

I agree. Something happened between Rose and Pearl that was “spicy.” My character analysis brought up how their relationship ended up, but in between, there were many possible things they could have tried. Because Rose and Pearl got along well. They were very intimate with one another, and in my post, I point out that Rose probably did tell Pearl a lot of things, enough for Pearl to feel like Rose’s sole confidante. 

Greg knew this. And his banter with Pearl changed dramatically from We Need to Talk to how it is now. Back then, he would quip at her the same way she’d be snide with him.

Source: SU Wiki

This exchange happens before the titular talk, before things got serious. When did Greg say he and Pearl stopped getting along? In Mr. Greg he says he and Pearl hadn’t been on good terms since he started “dating” Rose. As in, it stopped being a phase. It stopped being like all the other men.

They weren’t on the best terms here, but Greg felt comfortable enough around Pearl to make fun of her. After this, he never calls her out again. Not even after she insults him in Wailing Stone, not after all the moments of doubt thrown straight into his face. Not even after he makes known that he heard Pearl singing “It’s Over.”

Greg feels he ruined things for Rose and Pearl. As a result, now he feels he doesn’t have the right to say or do anything to Pearl.

That’s a lot of emphasised words, I know, but it hearkens back to what he says in Mr. Greg.

This is significant, because it informs his actions, particularly, why he wasn’t confronting the things she was saying, when he was able to do so before. From his perspective, Pearl’s actions are more than looking down on humans, or not trusting him. He thinks actions are because she doesn’t like him personally, for what he did. He believes that she resents him for taking Rose away.

Whenever he sees Pearl, Greg would be reminded of the “wrong” he did. And that opens up a lot of what ifs in his mind. Greg is considerate, and he’s one to empathise with others. What if he didn’t interfere in the relationship? Would Rose have fallen in love with Pearl the way she did Greg? We know now that the answer is “probably not.” Rose had her preferences, and Pearl tried to be that. Pearl tore herself up competing with all the men who’d entered Rose’s life. She makes it a point to say, “I can sing too!” when Rose brings up Greg’s singing. Pearl was certain it was a contest, but that was never how Rose saw it. Rose wanted to love them both.

Greg knows now that it isn’t the case. “Rose always did what she wanted.” Pearl’s admittance of that freed him from his guilt. But he did spend about twenty years thinking that Pearl “hated him.” If it weren’t for that trip, he probably would have gone on to believe so.

3. No, they couldn’t have done this at home

Character Analysis: Rose Quartz

This was supposed to be an episode analysis for Mr. Greg, but I realised that I couldn’t even begin to talk about that episode without talking about Rose first. I think seeing the customary Rose photo shot in the episode was already a huge indicator of what kind of story we’d have in Mr. Greg. To understand what motivated both Greg and Pearl to act the way they did after all these years, we’re going to have to understand Rose. 

1. Rose loves human beings, but knew nothing about them until Greg arrived

From what we’ve seen of Rose in Story for Steven, she has the air of someone used to being in power, being superior. Not only was she a leader both on Homeworld and on Earth, but she was also a very motherly figure towards the gems. When Greg first stumbles upon the fenced off area, the gems’ initial goal is to get him back over the fence, “as the sign says.” It was likely Rose’s decision to put up the fence and limit their contact with human beings, though.

Because Rose was always admiring and observing human beings from a distance. She says as much in the episode.

Source: SU Wiki

And it’s easy to dismiss that as Rose looking down on human beings. But let’s take some perspective here. Rose was likely one of the gems in the fusion that led Captain Dewey to Beach City as was seen in Historical Friction. And even if she weren’t one of the fusion components, she would still have authorised or have been informed of it. This is a significant scene, because Rose makes a good point. She has never connected with human beings at a level considered genuine because to her, they’re young and still have a ways to go. From her perspective, their lives as a species has only just begun. Captain Dewey’s expedition is very similar to those in the Age of Exploration. Rose was around since before that.

We have relatively short lifespans. When you live as long as Rose has, you start to see patterns; you see people and history repeat itself. You start doubting whether you can still connect to these people, each one entering the world with so much hope and promise.

Look at how specifically she mentions Greg’s dreams, because in comparison, Rose had become rather jaded. She fought a war on a scale human beings can only imagine. She’s been through so much and lost her home. And that was years ago. She no longer believes she can make real connections with human beings, and that leads her to not try. And that’s specifically where people got the feeling she thought human beings were inferior to gems.

It’s very similar to an older person complaining about “kids these days” not understanding how difficult life was in the past. Granted, their experiences are different, but it doesn’t mean both parties can’t try to understand each other.

Under all of that though, Rose does want to love and to be loved. She wants to make connections. She’s just not great at it. Take this scene from We Need to Talk:

Source: SU Wiki

All this time, Rose has been acting like what she thought Greg would like: A human woman. She’s been laughing at all his “jokes,” complimenting him, and all the other things a human being purportedly does. And she’s no stranger to human men. In Mr. Greg, Pearl notes explicitly that there were other men in Rose’s life. Rose says so herself in We Need to Talk; she’s loved other humans before.

But the reason Greg stuck and the others didn't? Greg got her to open up and be real. He didn’t want the human woman Rose was trying to be. He wanted to be with Rose, the giant pink haired lady who was enthralled by his music.

It’s easy to simplify romantic relationships if you’ve never actually been in one. You do certain things together and say the right things, and from an outsider’s perspective, you’re in a relationship, right?

That’s what Rose thought. She loved human beings. That’s for certain. She protects their planet; she helped them out when they needed it, just as she did Captain Dewey when he was lost at sea. Remember, Rose doesn’t want to interfere and involve herself and the gems in their lives. That’s why she put up the fence.

She believes in the importance of individual experiences and decisions. In The Answer, she tells Garnet never to apologise for fusing, and asks about Garnet’s experience, despite inter-gem fusion having many societal ideas attached to it.

Watching human beings from afar has given her the idea of what human beings are and what they do, but not really. It’s all appearances. Because of Greg, she started to make a real connection and the distance between them was closed.

Because of the circumstances that brought them together, mentioned above, I understand that there may be some doubt as to whether Rose really wanted to be with Greg specifically, or whether she chose him only because she finally got to open up to someone, and that leads to the next idea.

2. Rose truly loved Greg

Summer of Steven Promo (Part 3 of 4)

This was my favourite part of the promo, if only because of the possibilities that it brought up.

1. Interaction developments between Pearl and Greg 

In the scenes Steven shares with Pearl, we actually see Greg in them. And to me this is significant, because Pearl is the only Crystal Gem we’ve seen openly have something against Greg, to his face. In canonically earlier episodes, like We Need to Talk, Pearl goes out of her way to thwart Greg’s advances towards Rose. 

Later on, Pearl is much better with Greg, but visibly shows discomfort when she has to interact with Greg, such as his giving her a hug after she fixed his van. But Pearl offers Steven hugs all the time. I think she behaves this way partly because she used to openly display her dislike for him, doing things such as calling him replaceable, or a passing fling. And now, their relationship has improved significantly, but it’s awkward, because they never reached a point of resolution. They sort of just opted not to talk about it any more, but neither know whether the other is still holding something against them.

So to me, this is a welcome development; they’re interacting because they want to, not because they happen to be at the same place at the same time. We’ve seen Garnet and Amethyst have their own times with Greg and I think Pearl is the one who needs time with him the most.

In On The Run, we see that Pearl isn’t good with apologies. “You were the one good thing that came out of this mess.” Isn’t meant as an insult, but there are clearly undertones of Amethyst still being inferior, whether Pearl is aware of them or not. Greg on the other hand, is great at getting to the point and moving a conversation to something real. That is what he forces Rose to do in We Need to Talk, and I think it would be nice for Pearl and Greg to have a talk.

After all, they loved the same individual, and now they clearly both love Steven. And they’ve been raising him together with the other gems. It makes no sense for them to keep a divide between them if that divide is resolvable. And knowing Steven, he’d want them to get along and I wouldn’t be surprised if Steven was the prime mover for all this to happen in the first place.

2. Bonding time with Steven

The moments Steven has alone with Pearl have sometimes been tense and similar to the way she’s treated her moments with Greg in the past, I feel these aren’t fully resolved as well. For instance, in Rose’s Scabbard, after she was consumed in her self-destructive tendencies and let Steven dangle dangerously off the side of a cliff, she tells him her issue with Rose and they call it a night after their storytelling montage. 

Pearl has very deep-seated issues, and I’m certain they can’t all be dealt with in one episode. But Steven is a child; he looks up to Pearl. Again, Pearl is bad at apologies, but that doesn’t mean that just because she’s in a position that ranks above Steven, that he doesn’t deserve that apology. Children need to know they have their authority figures’ respect as well, and Steven has more than earned it.

In an episode like this, I’m hoping for some of those issues to be explored in a way that doesn’t introduce them as a consequence of an emotional explosion the way they had been before. This is a casual and safe space, and it’s my hope that Pearl gets to open up a little, particularly because Greg is there.

They both have wonderful memories of Rose, and that’s a good place to start talking. At the same time, Greg prevents the power dynamic of the exchanges to tilt in Pearl’s favour, because she’s older, because she knows more, because she’s physically stronger and faster. It becomes a safer space not only for her to air out her issues, but also for Steven to get to know these issues without the burden of having to be the one to “fix” them by himself. Because Greg has a good, balanced head on his shoulders and it’d do a lot of good for him to remind Steven he’s not totally responsible for the gems’ lives.

3. Some more flashbacks

I mention that Greg and Pearl have a lot of memories about the past. It’s significant for me that the shot in which they’re all in the van (travelling somewhere) is tinted Rose-coloured. SU is pretty clear about its colour-themed aesthetics as relating to specific characters.

I’m very much hoping for more flashbacks and some more insight into the past, particular centred around Rose. They’re probably going to another Rose-related place and I’m willing to bet there are a lot of stories they have about it. We’ll have another look at history, and again, Greg and Pearl balance each other out. While Pearl like great arcing narratives and at times embellishes history, Greg is one to be pragmatic in his storytelling. He was the one to tell Steven that gems and humans died during the war; that there’s no such thing as a good war.

I love all the SU characters, and there’s a special place in my heart for Pearl. I’d like to stay critical of these characters though, and that’s definitely a habit Pearl needs to realise she’s doing. It could get both of them to open up a little more as well.

4. The musical episode Rebecca Sugar hinted would happen

Others have pointed this out before, but I think it’s worth reiterating. Rebecca Sugar had mentioned in an interview with the Society of Illustrators that she was developing an episode that was a musical. Nine songs in eleven minutes. Given the general manner of dress for Steven, Greg, and Pearl (at the very least) in the promo, there’s a good chance that this is that episode. I’m not a hundred percent certain though, because they could just be going somewhere “fancy,” as they were seen going somewhere in Greg’s van. 

But it does show us that Sardonyx’ outfit may have some of Pearl’s influence. Her finger gloves are Garnet’s style after all, but her button down shirt, bowtie, and coat could be something Pearl is comfortable wearing.

Here is the complete series for this promo analysis:

Part 1 (Peri, Ame, and Steven) Part 2 (Steven and Lapis) Part 3 (Greg, Pearl, and Steven) Part 4 (Steven, Connie, and Stevonnie) Bonus (Steven floats, Amethyst’s Announcement)

Weapon Analysis: Rose Quartz

Rose has a lot of weapons, but I feel like we can talk about the more iconic ones, namely, her shield and her sword. The reason I don’t limit it to just her shield, is that she’s the product (and possibly even the cause) of an era in which gems fought exclusively with weapons. Additionally, Rose’s position as a military leader makes weaponry an important aspect of her life. So I’ll start from a top-down approach, starting with which weapons I believe she started using first to the most recently developed one.

Although Rose possesses other weapons, we don't see them being used in the show.

Source: SU Wiki

She has an entire armoury filled with weapons, but something tells me when all else fails, she relies on her trusty source and shield. The armoury has more axes, amour, and odds and ends, that she could ever need. I’d like to think Rose is a collector. Because she wanted one o the Mr. Universe shirts from Greg’s concert. And I think this is one field in which she deviates from the rest of Homeworld society already. From what we’ve seen, gems from the past don’t really hold on to anything that isn’t part of them. I think this is why Peridot was so amazed by “appearance modifiers that aren’t melded to your body!” in Log Date 7 15 2. From what we’d seen Yellow Diamond works in an empty office, and Blue Diamond sits in an empty palanquin. That behaviour makes sense if all gems did only their prescribed roles and tasks. There would be no way to explore other personal plans, hobbies, and fixations, no deviations from who they’re “supposed” to be.

Earth is absolutely the opposite of that. On Earth, we get to make our own choices. Look at Greg, he was in college, going to take a conventional profession. In a society like Homeworld’s, that would be the end of the story. But Greg left that behind so he could become a rockstar. And then he gave that up to be with Rose, and then that changed when they decided to have Steven. Life on Earth is dynamic; it’s ever-changing. There are so many choices an individual can have. So many facets of life. You don’t have to just be a carwash owner; you can also be a father, a singer, a friend, a music-collector, and all the other things Greg is. On Homeworld, the options are much more limited. It’s why Rose fell in love with Earth. Even if you inevitably choose the road assigned to you, it’s still okay, because you had the choice. I think that’s something a lot of people take for granted. A lot of people think they’d be happy without those choices because they would have chosen that road anyway, but life would have been so much more different if that choice weren’t available in the first place.

So onto her weapons, because Rose was able to use a good number of weapons, I think that they do represent the evolution of her personality as time went on, the war progressed, and Earth developed. Let’s get to that now.

1. The Sword (And Scabbard)

Source: SU Wiki

What I find interesting about Rose’s weapons, among other things, is that there’s an insignia that’s clearly hers on all those things. For instance, the Sword, though not her own summoned weapon, is decorated in her colours, and a design that clearly says “Rose.”

To me, this is an indicator that Rose was ranked highly enough that she warranted her own special weaponry designed in her image. Less rare or more lowly ranked gems have generic gear. Peridot and Doc have very similar-coloured and shaped visors. Pearl had a generic sword in her fight scenes, and she still has a number of them in her room. That Rose has her own special sword easily identified as hers shows that she was important enough, and irreplaceable enough for that. The other thing about the uniqueness of it, is that she had a presence on Homeworld. She was one of those gems who had an image people knew and recognised. If her insignia meant nothing, then there would be no point plastering it everywhere.

So her sword and scabbard are an indicator of rank and power. It’s a position she has that comes with both responsibility and constituents who rally around her symbol.

Given its size, the sword itself is a weapon that requires immense strength to yield. It’s scaled up just right for Rose’s proportions: Tall. Swordsmanship indicates precision as well. It works best when she can strike at exact points. If she just hacked at everything, then she’d leave herself vulnerable to attack. It’s what Pearl was explaining in Steven the Swordfighter. It was most likely Rose who taught Pearl how to fight with a sword.

Right away, we know that Rose is a Quartz. She’s meant to be a fighter and that means she has the strength and physique to go with it. But she managed to make it high enough on Homeworld, again, to warrant her having personalised weaponry.

Source: SU Wiki

It shows that Rose is both strong, but controlled. When we see Rose in her scenes prior to The Answer, she doesn’t look anything like a gem who could take down others. She’s wearing a long ballgown, and it would be rather difficult to move around in that. But we see her move incredibly quickly and takes down the Ruby Fusion, causing it to unfuse. To put in perspective, it took Pearl a lengthy chase, a cliff, and Sugilite’s own flail for her to accomplish destabilising a three-gem fusion.

Her presence isn’t terrifying, in the sense that she doesn’t have to flaunt her power and strength for people to know she’s capable. She can control exactly how much force or strength she has to use. In Story for Steven, Rose tells Garnet not to toss him out of the fence and she doesn’t raise her voice. She doesn’t need to. It takes a lot of experience to know how much force to use in the right situations.

And I think this is why it’s very significant she has a scabbard. It’s a sheathe for the sword. She’s not always at her most intense mode. That’s reserved for only battle, the right time and the right place. And I think that’s significant, because when she’s not stressed, Rose is caring, nurturing, for all accounts harmless. But that’s not how Homeworld views her. That’s the Rose we know. That’s the Rose we see in the show, talking to Greg, regretting the war, hoping to create a world full of wonder and love for Steven. We see Rose in her scabbard.

Source: SU Wiki

Homeworld sees only the sword. The knew Rose as the leader of the Rebellion, the starter of wars, which killed thousands and thousands of gems, for what cause? In order to have a planet they couldn’t use for other gems? A planet just for the sake of it? The same way she collected things just for the sake of it? Because on Homeworld, the needs of the society trump the desires of the individual by a long-shot. There’s no point in protecting Earth because it takes away opportunities and lives from other gems. Rose is cruel; Rose crushed Homeworld troops with her small, persistent group of rebels. And I think that this explains the way older Homeworld gems act around the rebels and about the war. We’ve seen the Crystal Gem side of the war. We’re supporting the Earth, because it’s our planet, our characters, stories we’ve already heard and identify with. We don’t see Homeworld’s side, but no side wins in a war.

From their point of view, Rose killed gems for a rock in space. To them, she’s the bad guy. It’s the duality in her character that I find very interesting. And Rose still feels Homeworld is her home. She calls it as much. We can feel where her guilt comes from. She lost everything, her rank, her Homeworld friends, many followers, her home, over Earth. To her, it was worth it. But that doesn’t mean she didn’t pay a price. She’s guilty precisely because she’s still able to see her actions from Homeworld’s point of view as well. She sees what it must look like from both sides of the story and that’s why she’s so torn up about it. When she finally opens up to Greg, she worries he won’t be able to accept her anymore. Because she understands more than anyone the gravity of what she's done. Sword and scabbard represent how she’s perceived by those around her.

2. The Shield

The Implications of Lapis’ Backstory

I’ve watched Same Old World and I have a lot of feelings about it so I’m just going to get right into my analysis.

In my recent Lapis Analysis post, I wrote a lot about what may have been Lapis’ past, her current character, and her prospects in the future of the show. In this episode, we do get to see some of her character development as well as her history, and I’m pretty excited with the way things turned out.

1. Lapis’ backstory aptly captures the horrors of war and fits in perfectly with the SU storytelling style

I think off the bat, some people may have felt underwhelmed by the story of how Lapis got trapped in the mirror. Many fans, including myself, made the assumption that there was a strategic or political reason to have Lapis trapped in the mirror. And in hindsight, that’s because we’re taught to see war films and spy movies as exactly that. Films where one protagonist is seemingly at the centre of a convoluted plan and is the linchpin of either saving or stopping everything at work. When we see Lapis as that mysterious remnant of Homeworld, we immediately project this sort of image that she was that special agent who was targeted and neutralised, either by Homeworld or CG forces.

But the real story is actually way more engaging than a story about Lazuli, Lapis Lazuli, 007.

Because now we have a story that shows us something about conflict and war that most of those other stories don't. In war, there is always collateral damage. For me, this revelation needn’t diminish the idea that Lapis had a high standing on Homeworld, in fact, it hits that point home even harder. With Lapis getting poofed because she just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time when war broke out, it shows that everyone loses in the war. Rich, poor, strong, weak. the powerful, and the subjugated. It doesn’t matter who you are, you can get hurt, you can die, you can lose everything.

An interesting parallel would be the wars fought here on our world. Oftentimes, civilian cities or towns would end up becoming the strongholds as armies moved forward, even today with modern warfare, these same civilian areas become the hiding places of war criminals and fugitives. All those people living are walking potentials of collateral damage. They’re innocent; they might not even know that there’s a war being fought, but one day big scary people say they need to use their houses, their supplies, that it’s for the greater good. Maybe you have worse situations where those scary people take without asking and hurt anyone who tries to stop them, loot, and kill because they believe they have the right. And these innocent civilians are powerless to stop it, because for some reason, all the money in the world won’t ward off those guys with the guns, who say they can drop a bomb on their village with the push of a button in some far off command centre.

So Lapis could have been a Homeworld delegate, or someone higher in the social echelons. She might not be making major political decisions, but she’s rare enough that she’s considered special. We know Lapis likes keeping to herself and likes to observe things from a distance and keep a low profile. When she first arrived, that might have been exactly what she was doing.

Everyone on Homeworld was talking about this “Earth” thing, and they were willing to fight a war over it. Lapis never believed in Earth, but she might have wanted to check it out, because she wanted to understand what her home wanted with this planet. It was only supposed to be for a short while, as she said. And then she got poofed and it didn’t matter which side she was really on. Homeworld thought she was a CG, and the CGs, I assume, didn’t even know she existed.

In wars, there is a voiceless majority of people who don’t have the guns and the power to fight. Lapis was one of those helpless people, sort of just getting dragged along the flow of the conflict. She didn't have a say in whether she wanted to be part of this war or not, and she didn’t get a choice in which part she’d have to play in it. In wars, people get irrational and paranoid and angry. That’s what Homeworld did to Lapis, insisting she was a Crystal Gem, and these voiceless people are often the vast majority of the victims of the war. I’m not just talking about civilians here. I’m talking about the soldiers who were raised as children to think that the greatest and only sacrifice worth making was to die on the battlefield. All the quartz gems we see in Lapis’ flashback, how many of them knew what they were fighting for in this war? How many were following programmed orders from the day they emerged? When you have a war like this, a lot of people get dragged into the conflict.

I mentioned in my Lapis character update that her gem must have been broken after she got trapped in the mirror. Here we see that’s true. But it’s not an act of malice or vendetta that makes it happen. It’s an accident because everyone else was scrambling and fearing for their lives and running away, and she just got left, again, as collateral damage.

And this is why this new angle on Lapis’ history is so significant, because she represents that voiceless group of people who didn’t want a war, but found themselves getting tangled up in one. And most of the time, these are the very people who bear the most of the burden and the horrors of war. The "leaders” planning things in their war rooms aren't in the villages where the innocent people get slaughtered alongside “enemy” soldiers because someone misfired or like Lapis, someone happened to be at the wrong place in the wrong time. When the dust clears, the permanent damage done to the lives of the people will be labelled “necessary” or “an accident,” but that doesn’t make the suffering any less real.

Given this backstory, the stand is clear that war is never something you can win. War hurts everyone. For a while, we’ve been looking at the war canonically as something noble that the CGs did as a last resort to free people and let gems start a new life. Canonically, Homeworld seemed like the enemy to that, who had the upper hand while the CGs were a “small persistent group of rebels.” But everyone was hurt by the war, Homeworld and Crystal Gem.

This angle is so in line with what SU as a show is trying to do. It’s trying to take what we normally associate with certain things in cartoons and flip it completely on its head (but in the process, actually make it more realistic). When we see two sides of people on the war, we tend to identify the hero and villain immediately, and we sort of preempt the narrative before it even happens. That may also be why these themes tinge the way we see character interactions and have to take a second look to really understand what the characters meant.

So for me, this isn’t a “soft” way out for the Lapis narrative to be told. In fact, it’s infinitely more horrifying, because you have someone who made no move to consent in being part of the war efforts used so mercilessly for those very purposes. And it begs the question, Lapis was one of the gems on Earth at the time, how many more were there? Who were shattered, who were corrupted, who were lost and never seen and just forgotten.

2. This explains why Lapis hates the Crystal Gems and Earth so much