Ok watching this short ab how Garnet can’t ask questions because Rose told Garnet not to, and I’m really thinking ab this shit.
Any time Rose tells someone something— gives them a task, a job, a purpose— they HAVE to execute on that will. That thing is now engraved into their very being and they will commit to doing it no matter what. And the horrible thing is it’s subconscious. She’s just the defect who couldn’t do what she was meant to do, so is doing something Drastically different instead. I think she knows she inspired others to join her cause, but ultimately it’s their free will and want. Rose does not understand and would refuse to believe that the Crystal Gems did everything they did for her.
I think on a narrative level it’s about Rose not realizing how much people trust her. She hated herself so much, thought herself to be so unreliable. She never in all the universe would think she could tell someone something and they hold onto it like that. That they would hold her word in such reverence. I think, if anyone, the only person who she knew would is Pearl. But I think she believed this not because she thought Pearl relied on her, but because she knew SHE relied on Pearl and that Pearl was the only one SHE trusted enough with those secrets. It’s because she looked up to Pearl, not the other way around.
She had no clue that when she told Pearl never to tell a soul, that she would be Physically Incapable of doing so FOREVER (even with it being a diamonds order). How would she know that when she told Garnet never to question things, that Garnet would Genuinely Never Ask Another Question For a Thousand Years?
But also on a worldbuilding side I really find it neat: we know for a fact that, because it was a Diamonds Order, that made Pearl incapable of talking about pinks shattering. She was only able to say anything when it was revealed through other means and Steven (who is effectively her Diamond using gem logic) allowed her to speak of it again. But is that ‘Diamonds order’ thing transferring to other gems? When she tells a gem something, even if that gem believes her to just be Rose Quartz and not a Diamond, does that force of will still transfer? I think that’s a subtle power of a Diamond in relation to ‘inferior’ gems. That gem has to have a LOT of willpower to be able to disobey any order from a Diamond (even small requests, or things you wouldn’t interpret to be an order but technically are). I think that’s why the war was even possible in the first place— the Gem War wasn’t a choice, it was just an order from another diamond. Through this war they learned that a gem CAN have free will. But it was that Diamonds Order that allowed them to rebel in the first place. If Rose Quartz was actually a Rose Quartz who was born in the kindergarten and saw the beauty in life on Earth, her rebellion would have failed. Because no one, physically, could listen to her. Even if they wanted to. She gave all of gemkind an order: choose your own purpose. Without that order? Nothing would have changed.
