something’s been bothering me
specifically about the timeline
so, our Pearl clearly recognises Spinel, that’s very much established
so, it’s safe to say, that Pink Diamond must have lost Pink Pearl prior to leaving Spinel in the garden for our Pearl to have known who she was
we know from Change Your Mind that White Diamond took Pink Pearl away because Pink continued ‘misbehaving’ despite being told not to (and being high key abused)
so when it came to Spinel, Pink had already lost one Gem she loved as a direct result of her ‘childishness’, something Spinel fundamentally represented
i think Pink not only wanted to stop associating herself with Spinel to prove to the Diamonds that she could be responsible, but also to protect Spinel from them; take the flashback scene
here, Spinel acts as bouncy and immature as she’d designed to do, and Pink visibly enjoys it, only becoming more and more worried as time goes on, which im going to assume is over a long enough period of time for her to have had Pink Pearl replaced
when the Diamonds tell her she’s finally getting a colony, she looks at Spinel’s antics with anger, but that anger lasts only a moment before being replaced by an expression i’d say is more grateful than pitiful
Pink is very aware of what the Diamonds do to Gems that don’t act appropriately, and she’s worried Spinel will be punished like Pink Pearl was, so she leaves her somewhere she knows is safe, thinking short term
if Spinel was out of the way, not in the firing line, then she couldn’t be taken away and wiped clean like her Pearl— she could exist outside of Diamond influence
as mentioned by @artemispanthar, Pink Diamond never really understood how loved she was, even after she’d started a war and thousands of her people, such as Jasper, mourned her and fought for her
she never thought Spinel, bouncy, hyperactive, endlessly loyal little Spinel, would stay in the Garden forever waiting, but she did think Spinel would be happy existing there alone and safe, which was her mistake
until Greg, Rose didn’t truly understand what love was
Pearl loved her, but it was tainted by their history of servitude and adoration
the Diamonds loved her, in some type of way, but neither party really knew how to form a healthy dynamic with one another as they couldn’t communicate properly
and Spinel loved her, but Pink assumed it was childish nonsense
while im not excusing Pink Diamond’s actions, a lot of her choices came from what she thought would best protect those she cared about as well as fuel an arguably selfish desire to live freely and do as she wanted– starting a new life on Earth away from a toxic regime, having a human heir, even generating her shield could be a visual metaphor for this need for protection
she acted from the position of someone who’d experienced abuse, and who knew that her choices would negatively impact others while she existed within that cycle of abuse and her solution, to start an intergalactic war and literally kill her past self, wasn’t the greatest or the smartest, but she was acting desperately to free herself from the threat of pain
just like she hoped she’d done for Spinel
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