#I'll get more into changes to Beta AU (again) once Battle of the Heart and Mind airs probably

[ajoraverse]

I was hoping to save this until captions were available on my favorite srt service, but they're just not there yet.

Episode blabbing at length, spoilers for Familiar.

Fun fact! Pebbles speak at a register that I cannot understand at all. Seriously. I can't understand small children, either. I'm abysmally hard of hearing.

First: I got some serious Crayon Shin-chan vibes from this:

Okay, now that that’s out of the way:

Pebbles: I expected the Cinderella mice the moment I saw them, tbh. I do have questions, though: 1) It looks like they loved PD. Couldn’t Rose have just... gone back home to take a few of them back with her? She had to leave them behind? Really? 2) Are they very wide-spread, or are they exclusive to upper crust gems? It seems like a waste of resources to have a crew of pebbles around to form furniture for every gem’s every whim. Which is something I’ll come back to. 3) Not so much of a question as an observation: “Always playing her games. Pretending she doesn't know us pebbles.“ We’ve had unfortunate implications (some anvil-sized, re: “Rose always did what she wanted!”) of Rose being flighty and immature, but that really drives it home, doesn’t it?

Also, Peridot using “pebble” as a slur takes on a whole new angle and, basically, I want her to apologize to everyone. I may or may not have a bunch of mental images of Alfredot/e1!Peridot dragging her by the ear/ear-approximate to apologize to Pearl, Steven, and the pebbles for her mouth.

Also also, I know that this is all handwavey woo-woo space magic, but how does anything built by the pebbles retain structural integrity? How much of the room is just panels backed by machinery or whatever it is they use and waiting to be shaped to Pink’s desires?

Basically I want blueprints and the name of whatever magic space materials they use for fic purposes.

Living Walls, Decor, Objects: We got hints of the concept of gems being disposable/actual objects since before Mirror Gem (cf. Frybo), so the living walls and comb seem excessive and terribly unsurprising. I expect the living usable objects to be restricted to upper-crust gems, but how wide-spread are the talking walls? The concept of being trapped in one place to do one thing (feeling extra sorry now for the musician/disco ball gem who had to wait 6000 years for another ball to entertain), with nothing to do but stay there and talk if you’re not being watched, is horrific enough. But there’s an added wrinkle that’s very... 1984. Those living walls are in an excellent position to report things back to whomever. I mean, I was already getting 1984 vibes from earlier eps (and, if you read my stuff, you’ll probably see shades of the book’s themes in Salva Nos and Beta AU’s Homeworld side), but this is extra blatant.

Sunny D: She reads like an overachieving daughter trying and trying to win White’s approval and salty that the baby of the family gets thrown a crumb of attention. It really shows in the backhanded compliment of “you’re almost worth the trouble”. Rude.

Blue Diamond: I mean, who doesn’t bathe with the shards of underlings and sprigs from some probably long-dead plant from a long-dead colony world? Also, I’ll bet that scrub there is just ground-up amethysts. And why does a diamond need a toothbrush?

Also, Fool’s Gold? Rude, Pink.

The picture painted is one of appreciation for the positive effects of Pink’s “silliness” on the diamonds’ lives, but no regard for her more serious thoughts and feelings. Which, yeah, sucks. It’s pretty obvious why Pink felt like she had to rebel personally, but... she also failed time and again to fully consider her actions. Just. Goddammit, Pink could have been this ideal of Rose if she just stopped balking and followed through for once.

I appreciate the need to focus on the diamonds, but honestly? I’m extremely tired of the focus on royalty that’s threaded all throughout the tapestry of human folklore, literature, and history. I’m much more interested in the lower classes. Can we see the average gem’s home and surroundings instead?

Diamond juicesbodily fluids: If there aren’t a bunch of naughty fanworks exploiting this, I will be thoroughly disappointed by fandom. The implication that the, uh, bodily fluids are used to make gems is pretty obvious, I thought. I do have to rethink my reverse-engineering for Beta AU, but... not by much, tbh? I already have the groundwork lovingly derived from my childhood influence (Greg Bear’s Blood Music, which I read at like... 9 or 10), wet nanotechnology isn’t all that new, and honestly? Water is one of the strongest eroding forced in nature and demonstrates peculiar behavior when trapped in beryl. I can go places with this that no one actually cares about.

Pearls: Pearl is Steven’s real mom. Fight me. I love how absolutely done she is with “they consider me one of your things”, but she’ll put up with it for Steven. There are absolutely subtle tinges of long-suppressed oh stars this nonsense again in Yellow Pearl’s expression after the Pink Lasagna scene, and a bit of salt in the clash between Blue Pearl’s tone of voice and her expression while welcoming Pearl back. I just... want a lot more of the pearls, thanks.

Anyway, done with diamonds. Ready for any and all lower class gems. Let’s see the slums, at least.