a discussion of the change in pearl between friend ship and back to the barn.

first of all, a disclaimer: i am fully aware that this is me reading too much into things, and that the chances of this turning out to be canon are slim to none. however, rebecca sugar herself said ‘by all means, overanalyze the shit out of my show’, and so i’m gonna go ahead and do just that, because it makes for an interesting thought if nothing else.

stashing under the cut for length.

i’ve been having conflicting feelings about pearl’s development arc. on one hand, everything that’s been happening has been incredibly important, and definitely needed to happen, and i’m very happy that it has! however, it all seems to have happened very quickly, maybe even too much so.

think about it: it’s been five episodes since friend ship. in-series, i don’t think it could’ve been more than a month. in that time, pearl has gone from 'i’m just a pearl’ to 'that’s right, i AM a pearl’. but we haven’t seen her go through the process of getting there, outside of her conversation with garnet in friend ship.

pearl’s dependency is coded into her very being. she’s struggled with it for millennia, and it’s gotten infinitely harder to manage with rose being gone. as anyone with a mental illness knows, it’s not something you can just shake off. and yet that’s essentially what garnet tells her: you need to stop this. you need to be independent.

that’s pretty much the equivalent of walking up to a chronically depressed person and telling them, 'have you considered, i dunno, not being so sad all the time?’. i think most of us can agree it’s kind of bullshit, even when well-intentioned, and that there isn’t a chance something like that could have any lasting effect.

and yet pearl agrees with her, says she’ll try harder, and almost instantaneously seems to succeed.

it feels to me like that conversation should have put pearl on the path towards recovery, and yet instead, it looks like she recovered within the span of that conversation. no longer does she look down at who she is, even proudly declaring she belongs to no one. it could definitely just be peridot’s sheer antagonism and the other gems’ support that brought out this confidence in her, but consider for a moment, if you will, the exact way that conversation with garnet went:

'i need someone to tell me what to do.’

(…)

'you are your own gem. you control your destiny. (…) you must choose to be strong, so we can move forward. so i can trust you again.’

'i understand. i can’t give up anymore.’

'good.’

of course, you can read this as just a very firm pep talk – this was probably the intention! but breaking it down, it can also be read as:

1) pearl asking for orders.

2) garnet instructing her on how to act – yes, she tells her she must ‘choose’, but in that same breath she tells her exactly what that choice she needs to make is.

3) pearl accepting and internalizing those instructions. (notice how she says she ‘can’t’ give up, as if hinging on external restrictions, rather than ‘won’t’ give up, which would sound more like asserting her own will.) 

4) garnet showing approval.

garnet is the leader figure pearl has imprinted on in rose’s absence, and though i doubt garnet had those intentions in mind, she did tell her exactly what she needed pearl to do.

so what if now pearl acts independent, autonomous, and sure of herself… because she was told?