#Back to the Kindergarten

[subestu]

Round 2: Easy

[yahoo201027]

Day in Fandom History: December 22…

With Peridot upset over Lapis leaving Earth, Steven and Amethyst decide to help her cheer up by attempting to plant flowers at the utterly barren Kindergarten. “Back to the Kindergarten” premiered on this day, 6 Years Ago.

[picturejasper20]

Peridot and Lapis Lazuli´s relationship in Steven Universe: An analysis

Lapis Lazuli and Peridot's relationship is, as many relationships from Steven Universe, quite messy and complex and changes throughout the series in more than one way going from somewhat enemies to friends and companions and even then, later gets explored how that dynamic wasn't in balance, showing there how doesn't always have the full idea of the nature of the relationship between two people.

To say that Lapis was upset with finding out that Peridot living in the old barn would be putting it lightly. Peridot was partially involved in keeping Lapis prisoner in the spaceship that brought them to Earth as well as interrogating her. She had more than one reason to not be fond of Peridot and want to avoid her.

In most of ¨Barn Mates¨ Peridot tries to be nice to her to make amends and Lapis turns down everyone of them. While it is understandable the reason of why Lapis acted this way, she went a little to out of the line when she destroyed Peridot's gift, which was a tape recorder, something that was personal for her.

Peridot gets frustrated with this and then goes off about how she gets why Lapis feels this way: She can't never go back to Homeworld, Earth doesn't feel like a home yet and she feels alone in this. ...But she later adds that this is one of the reasons of why she wants to make amends with Lapis, because she gets what Lapis is going through since she is going through the same issues.

Lapis demands for Peridot to leave, to which Peridot does, giving up on trying to make peace with Lapis. That's when even Steven gets tired of Lapis's behaviour and points out that she isn't giving Peridot a chance and is not right to be so mean to her.

Some minutes later Peridot comes back running, being chased by the Roaming Eye Homeworld spaceship that is, of course, looking for her. Lapis sees that Peridot is in danger and decides to help her by taking down the Roaming Eye using her water powers. While it isn't said, her actions indicate that she was trying to make up for how she was so mean to Peridot earlier. Some seconds later she asks to Peridot if she was okay, showing that she was willing to give her a chance now.

In the episode that followed, Hit the Diamond, Lapis helped by distracting the ruby squad to protect Peridot from being taken away. I wouldn't say they were friend at that point but that Lapis seemed to like Peridot at least enough to care about her well being.

For a while we didn't see too much of Lapis and Peridot until Amethyst's arc in the episode ¨Beta¨. In this episode we see them being friends and hanging around. They got into human things. They like watching shows together, they like playing music and making art things with junk they find lying around in the barn.

So for some time it seemed like everything was going more or less well between them. In ¨Gem Harvest¨ they are growing together crops. Peridot believes that they work like gems in the kindergartens but she is dissapointed to learn that crops work differently from that.

So Steven ends up bringing up a dog like pumpkin to life using his gem powers and Peridot and Lapis end up adopting her.

Some fans have described Peridot and Lapis Lazuli's relationship as a queerplatonic relationship, considering that Peridot was written with the intention to be aro-ace. This interpretation could apply as in some ways their dynamic can be read as a ¨old married couple¨ for the way they interact and are living with each other. Pumpkin could be seen somewhat as their daughter with Peridot and Lapis being her ¨parents¨.

Moving on, their relationship seemed to be going well until ¨Room for Ruby¨ showed that Lapis was still struggling a lot to adapt to Earth because of her own trauma. Most of the episode she felt really down, specially by seeing how Navy was supposely adapating so quickly to Earth, making Lapis feel jealous. At the end of the episode it was revealed that this wasn't the case and that Navy was faking it to get her spaceship back.

"Raising the Barn" acts a bit of followed up to ¨Room for Ruby¨ by revealing that well, Peridot often has to walk on eggshells around Lapis and there are things she avoids telling Lapis to not upset her. Peridot has been negleting her own feelings in the relationship, for the sake of ¨being there¨ for Lapis. She tells to Steven that she wants to stay on Earth, that she doesn't want to leave, but she still has ¨to go¨ with Lapis.

The thing with Lapis Lazuli is that while she isn't a bad person... she can be a lot to deal with. From what it was said by Peridot, she felt that she couldn't be fully honest with her more often than not and she was losing herself in their dynamic, having to sacrifice quite a lot to make it work.

So Steven suggests to Peridot to be honest with Lapis about wishing to stay on Earth. Peridot does this and Lapis gets in part upset that this was brought up in the last minute and hurt because Peridot hasn't been completely honest with her. The two have a bit of a fallout that ends up with Lapis abruptly leaving Earth out of fear of ¨getting caught up in another war¨ again and taking the barn along with her. Leaving Peridot and Pumpkin on Earth.

The consequences of this fallout get explored in the following episode ¨Back to the Kindergarten¨. In this episode Peridot, Steven and Amethyst try growing a garden in the Prime Kindergarten. The whole episode acts as a metaphor for Peridot and Lapis Lazuli's fallout in ¨Raising the Barn¨, how Peridot misses Lapis and the barn and how she has been feeling down lately. The story ends with the idea that while her relationship with Lapis didn't work out, she can still try making connections with other people and start new elsewhere, finally seeing the possibility of moving on from the events of ¨Raising the Barn¨.

On the other hand, from Lapis Lazuli's perspective there is the episode ¨Can't Go Back¨ which explores many aspects of her character but mainly the guilt she feels about having left Earth so abruptly and taken the barn with her, feeling that she can't go back after the way she left. There is also her huge anxiety and fear of getting caught up in a war again due to her own traumatic past. Lapis explains to Steven how she is scared of having to go through the same situation again, believing only bad things are going to happen, something that Steven answers with ¨what if something good happens?¨

Steven's words seemed to have some effect on Lapis because in ¨Reunited¨ Lapis shows up in the battle against Blue and Yellow Diamonds and drops the barn on Blue to distract her for some moments. She has a brief exchange with Peridot, who is glad to see that Lapis came back and is helping them to fight the Diamonds.

It isn't clear what happened between Peridot and Lapis Lazuli after the events of Reunited and during the time skip after Change Your Mind. However, based on some hints and their interactions in the Steven Universe Movie, they seem to be in better terms now.

It's very likely that they had some conversations about what happened in ¨Raising the Barn¨, Lapis apologized to Peridot for the way she left and eventually Peridot forgave her for that. In addition to this, they likely established some boundaries between them and found other social circles to be in during Era 3. In that way they stayed as friends but also avoided going back to their previous status of their relationship by being in more equal (and healthy) terms.

In all, i think what can be taken away from their dynamic is that relationships can be messy and how it is important to avoid losing yourself in a relationship if you are trying to help someone who is going through a lot of problems in their life. You can support someone while establishing boundaries for yourself and being able to be honest with them. And, in part is how about how things don't always work out and people can go through fallouts. That doesn't mean that the two parties have to hate each other and then can even remain friends, accepting that their previous relationship didn't work as they wished.

[bonniecupcake]

I love the swap AU of them so much 💙 I got inspired by @ink-mar-qin's Irken Dib design bcs he is everything xD

For this, my idea is that Dib is an Irken scientist who tries to prove to Armada (but mostly his dad) that there are paranormal in the universe.

Membrane, who is also an Irken scientist, tries to convince his son to do the real science. Realizing Dib is too stubborn, he lets him fly and do his research but creates Gaz to protect him.

Gaz is programmed to always stay by Dib's side no matter how much she gets annoyed by this.

When they arrive on the planet with the most paranormal activity - Earth, they get immediately spotted by Zim, who was just walking by.

Dib is friendly towards Zim, not seeing him as a threat, and Zim even offers his help with hunting for cryptids but really just trying to get to Irken alien tech to help him rule over the world.

[tobyisave]

just a coupla lonesome cowgems roaming free without their sally mays

(aka they both canonically use country music to cope with their aloof blue life partners leaving them and i think thats beautiful) (alt under cut)

[kacievvbbbb]

Honestly with the workload these kids be getting, what they are studying in school and just generally how they are treated. You really forget these kids are like 6 years old.

Anya is the only one that consistently acts her age and so she sometimes comes off as immature which is insane when you think about it they are all literally 6. This also works cause we can assume she is a year or 2 younger than the rest of her grade, still, even then it’s insane.

Which is why when the other kids actually start to show their age usually in situations of great emotion, the bus hijacking for one. Or even when the kids think one of them is going to have to leave because his family is now poor and they all rally around this kid they never even really spoke to, or when they literally think that some macaroons will make them smarter and help them pass the test. Or when they simply want to play outside.

it’s so jarring and you’re left being like oh right they're six, this isn’t normal. Six-year-olds shouldn't be put under this kind of pressure.

It's another neat little insight into just what kind of society these kids are living in. And a little bit of irony that Loid who wants to create a society where little kids don't have to cry anymore is on a mission that requires the infiltration of a school where little kids can't even be ones.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Party of one (divided into four)

[tzufcallsmeshomps]

My 3 year old's first chanukiah!!

Happy first candle of Chanukah!

Í_______í

((don't mind me just trying to make a lil text one))

חנוכה שמח! ✨️

[bookishjules]

i feel so bad for the kids who have known little more than a post-trump america

[faceeeeee]

Cw: blood and gore

Flumboposting time

[gabycantart]

Wish I drew more stuff to add on this post but I got nothing sadly. Hope this is fine though._. Ozzy parents(Darlene & Xavier)by: @charliefqirie

[subestu]

Round 3: Medium

[yahoo201027]

Day in Fandom History: December 22…

With Peridot upset over Lapis leaving Earth, Steven and Amethyst decide to help her cheer up by attempting to plant flowers at the utterly barren Kindergarten. “Back to the Kindergarten” premiered on this day, 7 Years Ago.

[antigoneikk]

biblically accurate eugene sledge is about to make me bomb the pentagon, install myself as monarch of america, and outlaw all war in perpetuity

[sunrotdropbrain]

Depression vs autism let's goooooo

[vulpinesaint]

Hi! I just went through your quizzes (gorgeous writing, by the way!) and I wonder if you have the results for all of them posted somewhere? I know both saints quizzes have a full results post and the garden one too, but I don't think I've found the others. I'm especially curious about the supervillain one :)

hiya!! thank you so much i'm so glad you liked them <3 as of right now i only have results up for the saints + garden quizzes, but i would be so happy to post more results for you! anytime i post results, they should be linked on the masterpost in my bio :) i think i will. only post the supervillain one for now. the other ones make me feel a little silly. but you are so welcome to the supervillain results <3

for those of you who have taken the supervillain quiz: here's how your story could have ended!