seen from Australia
seen from Indonesia
seen from Singapore
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Germany
seen from Germany
seen from United States
seen from Italy
seen from Singapore
seen from Russia
seen from Indonesia
seen from South Korea
seen from Australia
seen from Germany
seen from Germany
seen from Kazakhstan
seen from Macao SAR China
seen from Brazil
OH I THOUGHT THINGS WERE UPSETTING FIVE SECONDS AGO, OKAY.
Greg’s healthy approach to relationships has so much collateral damage, my god. We thought the moral of the story was how open communication is a beautiful and powerful tool to resolve unspoken emotional conflict, but the actual moral is ‘sometimes our open communication is an unintended microaggression that will alienate and batter a random third party’s fragile self-esteem into the dirt’.
Well that’s not a regular thing to say.
Welcome to secret thought number three. So Rose is kinda... spaced out in this conversation. A lot of staring, a lot of statements about not being comfortable with herself, with the concept of time, not feeling like a real person, and not having any emotional connection to her home.
Obviously this is informed by the fact Rose is an alien, and by that very fact struggles to connect to a human conception of the world. Buuuut is her alienness in fact a metaphor for the concept of alienation itself?
The war has long tendrils. Pearl panic spirals. Garnet has anger issues and represses things. Amethyst struggles to develop a stable sense of self. Is Rose dissociative?
Depersonalisation is a disruption of your experience of reality. You reject your own connection to your emotions in order to protect yourself from the immense pain you feel, and so you start to feel unreal. That partners up with derealisation, the feeling that the things around you don’t exist and you’re living in a dream. You stop feeling things and you struggle to recognise other people’s emotions.
Her inability to connect with Greg, her dream room where she decides what reality looks like, her lack of insight into Pearl’s intensity - maybe Rose does not recognise the world in front of her, and as a consequence she's become numb to it.
Greg here getting his own back with some uncomfortably extended laughter of his own (and Rose’s lack of expression sure is something).
Okay. RANDOM THOUGHTS TIME.
1) So all the bubbly laughter and teasing really was just ‘playing along’ with Greg. She wasn’t engaging with him on a personal level, because her head was stuck on how on earth she was supposed to relate to a human. And her answer was to get horny on main 24/7, which is a fair assessment of the human race tbh.
2) I guess Garnet’s advice to get real and honest was equally about wanting Rose to open up more? Obviously Pearl thinks she and Rose are permanently giggling at a sleepover and swearing to tell each other everything, and she will one day be devastated to learn Rose had a cat-
2a) While we’re on that thought, I don’t think Pearl is sharing much of herself with Rose. Pearl is definitely not hiding her authentic, emotional self from anyone, but she’s also not naturally forthcoming either. Like this episode opens with her choosing to channel her turmoil into putting on a performance for the guy she hates instead of talking to the gal she loves. So does Pearl feel angry because she feels Rose is the one person she can be real and open with, only to discover Rose didn’t actually feel the same? Or is it more of a case that Pearl doesn’t think she needs to offer her authentic herself to anyone? Like she clearly isn’t going to Rose and sharing how she really feels about Rose dating humans, so Pearl feels somewhat hypocritical on this front.
More 2) So obviously Pearl thinks she’s super bff’s 5ever with Rose. Garnet and Amethyst seem aware that Rose holds the burden of leadership which makes her stand apart from the team, even though it’s just the four of them left in the entire world so no one really needs to do that any more. We see this attitude with Garnet in the current day as well.
4) But also this concern about playing along with humans is very definitely a ROSE thing. Pearl would never awkwardly stutter about how she isn’t a person because she only cares about being a gem. Garnet is super into being her real authentic self, wouldn’t change that to make someone like her. We know that during the war Rose stuffed her real feelings down in order to act as a leader (I guess dating Some Guy causes her just about as much stress as fronting a war effort).
I think it’s not that Rose isn’t a flirty, pure banter sexpot, or she isn’t a powerful-yet-loving general. It’s that Rose is super aware that she’s a lot of things to a lot of people, and is deliberately choosing which parts she emphasises as a response to what she thinks people want from her. Her real self seems to be getting a little lost in the process.
OF COURSE THEY’VE BEEN TEN FEET AWAY THIS ENTIRE TIME.
It is illegal to be this cute in front of my salad.
Okay, well thanks for throwing in a quick moment to punch me directly in the heart, Rebecca Sugar.
Did Greg throw this into his story? ‘And then Amethyst said I was the best and Pearl totally admitted she was a beta cuck and-’
Man, a solid eight seconds of laughter.
