White Diamond analysis: post-SU future
i've spoken about why i like white diamond before, but i want to update it. i've made a mediocre little video ages ago (i think its called "white diamonds cognitive journey" but i don't wanna link it here because while i stand by a lot of the conclusions, i was very bad at youtube and cringe at my editing)... but that's somewhat outdated now. because SU the movie and SU future happened.
so i will summarize my old thoughts, and add new ones.
i will say that i don't think white's arc, whatever you feel about it, is meant to read as "complete." i think that's where a lot of fandom cognitive dissonance comes from. i think it's meant to read as a continuous, breathing thing that could change more now that steven is gone. i wanna thank future for that, both problematizing white's current mindset and giving her a jumping-off point - along with jasper and the other diamonds - to keep changing.
so. what do i mean by this?
in CYM, white falls apart. then the movie, and future, are extensions of the mindset she gains at the end of CYM. people complain about an "offscreen" redemption but i don't think that's true. what i will explore is how white submits herself to what steven wants because she doesn't trust herself or her own judgement anymore if she's not perfect. the movie and future are just natural extensions of that.
by the end of it, white finally questions herself, to perhaps an extreme degree because she'd built herself up around the idea of having to be perfect. to her, perfect means being wise, correct, unquestionable. she's kept watch over gemkind, she's always looking from afar. how its played, its ambiguous as to whether she could Literally see everything pink did, or if she just put herself in denial that of course pink was alive, of course this was all one of her games.
but if its the former, if she can Literally see all of gemkind through her divine light, i think the reason she can't predict steven is that he's half-human. she can't see him as clearly. she knew he was human from the get go, calling pink "hiding" and "embedded in that human child", so perhaps part of her obsession was not being able to see.
anyway, what others say they feel isn't that important, she knows what they "really" need and feel. she can see them, better than they can. she's their creator, their goddess "mother", after all.
and if she can, in a meta sense, see everything, she is the opposite of steven and the audience - they are subjective, and they know that. "we" can only see from steven's pov. white is a challenge to that, someone who represents the standard tv drama where an omniscent audience gets to see everything. we don't, we are limited to steven. because the point is that no one can truly be objective.
but anyway - white styles herself as being objective. she's facts and logic, she doesn't care about feelings (tm). so yellow and blue's emotional pleas don't matter. what matters is if she can be logically proven wrong. if she SEES that steven isn't pink, then she is objectively wrong. that's something she can't handle. she can't justify it, so her worldview falls apart. she's not perfect.
the question then becomes how she responds to this. and the answer is, well, like someone whose world has fallen apart! someone who trusts her own judgement so little that she has to follow someone else. so she acts like most homeworld gems, at some point.
as we see at the end of CYM, and made more explicit in the movie and future... she starts following whatever steven wants. the era 3 diamond symbol is flipped on its head - steven is the "highest" diamond, and white sees herself as the "lowest."
i don't think white, personally, has reached a conclusion on how she feels about corrupted gems. i don't think she has anything but gut feelings - some base disgust (as drawn throughout CYM, there's a great shot about getting into the pool but looks conflicted, that i think someone in the crew described as her "hesitantly getting into a public pool", which can be read through several different lenses of prejudice.) , but also wanting to help because she feels bad enough about herself to do whatever someone else tells her is helpful.
and that someone else is steven. even if she herself is conflicted, she spends the end of CYM looking to him for approval. its only through his joy and acknowledgement of her that she allows herself to hesitantly, awkwardly smile. despite everything.
and then the movie shows this at its logical extreme. like white, yellow and blue are also following steven - they are almost obsessed with him. he's made things better, after all! he's a hero! he even guided them at their worst, the way white was supposed to do. he's surely worthy of worship as the superior diamond.
when steven understandably wants to leave, they beg for him to stay! they whine about how they've done everything he asked. they're clearly doing it for him. because of him. just let us worship adore you.
in a way, they are extremely childish. they're not really changed in the sense of a mature understanding of the world based on their own experiences and moral compass, but they know they are flawed. and they love and adore steven, so HE will tell them what to think. what to be. what to do.
we'll do it all. whatever you say. you know better than us!
our heroic, superior steven isnt the perfect golden child anymore. perhaps he never was. he's no longer able to hide it, at least, because now that the war is over, he's not able to focus on a life's purpose ("living up to rose quartz" first, "being a hero" later), so he is haunted by his PTSD. everything catches up to him. he even questions his own relationships - a lot of them having formed around him being that "good," helpful person. someone who needs to be needed. someone who doesn't know who he is when he isn't perfect.
are we really surprised he went to the diamonds, at his worst? of course he did. on some level, i think he hoped they could heal him... but failing that, maybe he would find a fellowship of flawed, broken people who had abused others high opinions of them. instead, he found them doing good things, being useful, being better than him, despite how he himself was still suffering. suffering because of them.
another huge reason steven was "set off" by white was by literally seeing himself in her body, right after shattering jasper and making a bunch of other mistakes. the fear of becoming like her, an ignorant or cruel person in an abusive chain. but the poison was already in him. and in trying to hurt white, he was literally hurting himself. trying to focus on destroying everything imperfect around you, you become incapable of accepting the imperfections within.
anyway. this is still about white!! i just wanted to "catch us up" on my interpretation of steven in future, and also lay some groundwork of the parallels between white and steven here. i think steven, in all of future, is a disharmonic, symbolic mix of white and pink.
anyway, now this messed up, openly broken steven has to meet the diamonds. and of course, when they fail to heal him, despite his pain being partially their fault, and seeing himself "as white", fearing being like her, deluded instead of a true hero... he doesn't take it well.
and that brings us back to white. while she's clearly scared in this scene, "i am my monster" clarifies that she doesn't hate him, and certainly doesn't blame him. she and the others still come to call, they still help him however they can. even if he doesn't love them (as spinel puts it, he never writes or calls), they still love him. he still helped them. he still made them better.
and i think that's a crucial bit of progress, because it shows them putting the pieces together. yes, steven isn't the perfect diamond they hoped would guide them, he isn't their holy "father" the way they tried to be authoritarian "mothers" to gemkind, but they don't turn on him for that reason. blue and yellow aren't disgusted with steven "turning pink" like white did. and white isn't even mad at him for trying to kill her. she knows why:
spinel: this is my fault!
white diamond spinel! don't be silly! everyone knows that all of this is because of me!
spinel: NO, it's because of ME! i tried to wipe his friends memories so he could die alone on a barren world!
white: but that was because you were angry with pink, and if pink hurt you, it was because i hurt her! like i hurt yellow, and blue, and steven, and everyone in the entire universe! *sobbing* this is all my fault!
and after that, of course, chad connie comes in and focuses their attention on the fact that yes, they did hurt him. but this pity party - this obsession with self-punishment - is just making it about themselves. like the way some parents respond to their children hurting with "where did i go wrong?!" instead of actually helping.
but what's crucial is that despite the diamonds following steven almost blindly, it wasn't completely blindly. they understand the concept of generational trauma: it wasn't just spinel, and it wasn't just pink. it was all of them. and white may in some ways be the "source", but connie still insists they all try to help anyway.
the diamonds are not fully "there yet" in terms of emotional development, but they did learn one thing - you can't abandon or destroy people because they are flawed. through steven, and through being there for each other, they have seen how even they, themselves, can help despite their own flaws... and so, they are forced to accept that part of steven too. that is something they're able to process and turn into practice by the end of future.
so then... steven leaves.
earlier, when he left homeworld, he told the diamonds the exact same thing he told jasper: don't follow me.
that can be interpreted literally, but also figuratively. with jasper, its explicitly about looking up to him: "find something better to do with your life." so that leaves them all - white diamond, yellow, blue, jasper... adrift. but now, with some morals and experiences to guide them. they're not children anymore, they can't rely on steven to tell them what to do. maybe they'll even have PTSD and existential crises of their own! we don't know, because we are bound to steven - someone who has decided that's not his business anymore. he has to heal himself, regardless of what everyone else does.
so the show prompts us to accept that no, we don't really know whether the diamonds (and jasper) will "fully" heal, what the world will look like to them in 10, 100, 1000 years. but it gives them all hope. it gives them a starting point, recognizing that their flaws are not the end of the world. jasper goes to little homeworld. the diamonds have each other. they just have to keep going without an authority to guide them... the same way all of gemkind must find a way to exist without the diamonds.
i'm not the first to say a lot of this. thereâs been a lot of digital ink spilled to say the diamonds are only doing what steven wants, and that steven is "using" them... but thatâs usually in the service of saying they're not âreallyâ redeemed, end of story. because steven doesnât like them, the show ITSELF must hate them and have no real desire to redeem them. itâs usually a reactionary stance to âdefendâ SU against âsoft on crimeâ allegations lol.
but i donât care about that kind of punitive bs, nor do i think thatâs the shows intended message. they couldâve had steven actually shatter white, but it wouldâve been at the cost of the societal goods of rehabilitation. this is a show where revenge and healing are contradictory - rehabilitation is necessary for true structural change (literal and figurative healing). people are flawed and they can change. they couldâve written revenge to be more important or equal, but no. steven doesnât need to kill them, he needs therapy.
as iâve hopefully shown, while the diamonds are far from perfect, they HAVE learned something. they accept steven despite his flaws, theyâre well on their way to accepting the concept of flaws in general. they seem happy with their new powers to heal and find meaning in helping people. and in future, they continue to do good despite how steven never calls or visits. even humbling yourself and admitting youâre wrong is, i think, more than many of us could do.
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