i’ve seen this post come across my dash multiple times today and every time i see it, it sits with me less comfortably.
while i understand what this post is saying, i also feel like it wildly overlooks one of the main points that the movie (and the entire show in general) is trying to push - yesterday’s mistakes don’t define who you are moving forward.
it’s not really appropriate to compare spinel to other antagonists since her situation was so different than everyone else’s. every other villain was arguably just “playing their part” in gem society by trying to kill or capture steven/rose. now that it’s been revealed that rose=pink and there’s no murder to avenge, their motivations for being antagonists literally don’t exist anymore.
before the movie, no one ever had a reason to go after steven that was as personal as it is to spinel. (except for maybe the diamonds, but that’s a different conversation). spinel was taken out of the equation before pink even set foot on earth. she didn’t even know that pink had been “shattered.” she didn’t know that rose quartz existed. a 6,000 year long intergalactic war went on and spinel didn’t even know until it was completely over. in the same moment, spinel found out that the person she thought was her best friend had 1) died 2) abandoned her and 3) established a new home with a new set of friends while spinel was literally created to be pink’s best friend. as far as character motivation goes, i can’t think of anything more understandable considering who she is and what happened to her.
maybe her motivation as a villain is selfish, but it’s also understandable. she spent her entire existence being entirely devoted to pink, trying to make her happy and to be her friend - and pink repaid her by telling her to stand still and leaving for 6,000 years.
in the end, all she wanted was to have someone that cared about her. she was designed to give love, and likely to receive it as well. she was abandoned not knowing why for 6,000 years, and i know it’s not that deep but there are countless studies on how solitary confinement is extremely detrimental to mental health. how is spinel’s situation any different?
she’s acting out because she’s hurt, betrayed, and emotionally scarred. for 6,000 years, she wondered what she had done to make pink leave her, what she had done to deserve being left behind. when she sees the happy new home that the crystal gems built for themselves, she sees it as everything that she could have had if she was “good enough” for pink. she’s angry because pink didn’t prioritize her when all she had ever done was try to make her happy. in her own words: “I used to be just not good enough… just not good enough for Pink - but now I’m not good at all.”
it’s true that she took out her anger unfairly on steven/the crystal gems/beach city. the literal plot of the movie is to explain why that was wrong and how it’s possible for her to move on from that trauma in a way that doesn’t hurt more people. the main lesson of the movie is that even after everything spinel went through and did, she’s still deserving of love.
at the end of the movie she realizes that hurting others doesn’t make her own pain go away. she realizes that she was in the wrong and is about to leave to work on herself when the diamonds show up.
i think a lot of people in the fandom understand what it’s like to be in a similar position, and therefore empathize with her. being abandoned is confusing and painful. it elicits all sorts of unpleasant emotions that in reality, are not pretty - i appreciate the reality that this movie portrays. it’s reassuring that spinel can go through a trauma that leaves her feeling unloved and broken and still get a “happily ever after” just like everyone else.
she, like many characters from steven universe, is multi-faceted and flawed. but wanting to be loved isn’t selfish, and this movie did everything right by having steven teach her that even though she had already done bad things, she was still capable of choosing to be good. and that is what she chose.
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