Pearl and Peridots interactions are so interesting to me because of how they both mirror and contrast each other, not just how much it reveals about Homeworlds fucked-up power dynamics.
They're both smart and want to be rational while getting easily carried away with emotions, they are both very low in Homeworlds hirachy, and they both have awful social skills which constantly causes them problems. They hate themselves but try to dispel the feeling by acting better than someone even lower from their view.
It's so amazing to see these two autistic (coded) queer women interact. Well, non-binary aliens read as women.
But Peridot, at least until later in her arc, still completely defines herself through being useful enough to deserve existing. She was created to be a technician, and she is skilled at that, so she tries to gloss over her flaws with that. She thinks Homeworlds system is both just and immutable. What little power she has comes from serving this system.
Pearl didn't fit into the role Homeworld forced her into, and doesn't want to. She knows the system harms her, and fights it. She learned to define herself through skills she herself choose. But it's still not quite enough. She still, deep down, she feels like lesser. She doesn't quite have enough strength to make up for it, she is always lacking. She fought the system and lost, and is sure that she can't possibly win unless there is intervention from outside.
Peridot attempting to humiliate Pearl, the only Gem even lower than her in Homeworlds system, into submission is a great and haunting allegory for many instances of someone marginalized punching down in an fruitless attempt to be at least a little bit more accepted. But in this interpretation, this reminds me of how autistic people lucky enough to be able to work and live alone and have many friends and good relationships go that well, at least they are better than those autistics, because at least they are able to function.
Even how their autistic traits represent for both of them.
Now, there are some autistic people who will never be able to "tone it down" and mask no matter how hard they are abused into it. But from my own development and from all the autistic people I met, they hardly ever act as openly blunt and loud and confident and socially incompetent as Peridot. Being constantly nervous and compliant and helpful and in the background like it's default for Pearl seems a lot more accurate representation at least for most for me. Especially with autistic women, who have even harsher expectations in terms of acting perfectly social against them than autistic men.
Don't get me wrong, I see myself so much in both of them and their struggles.
And it does make sense in universe too. Peridot, by the time she gets stranded on Earth, is still useful for Homeworld, so she can get away with being feisty and weird. Pearl isn't. I also assume that for Pearl, her lack of social skills would be punished even harder because in her status as a Pearl she likely is expected to have good social skills. I am not sure how long she was exposed to Homeworlds toxic system until Rose and her ran away, but even if it was a comparatively short time, already just being exposed to how you should be and how lacking you are is extremely damaging. My family never mistreated me, but I still have all this self-hate because I still saw that I should be different to how I was.
Even how Pearl is already subjected to human womanhood ideas and how restrictive and arbitrary they are (not explicitly shown as far as I remember, but there is no way that never caused problems for her), while Peridot is still blissfully unaware of it. Can't really formulate the connection well, but something about how you are seen as a failed woman or a perpetual girl as an autistic women and expected to compensate by being an even more perfect woman than its already expected of all women.
Pearl and Peridot almost feel like two stages in being an autistic woman in that sense. Not as in Peridot having the exact same character as Pearl once she reaches her age, of course. But as in that Peridot in her redemption arc being at the beginning of a process Pearl has already fought millennia ago.
God, I wish there had been more interactions between them.
