#Peri ends up as the most domineering partner

[blanceyblance]

*looks around* Can you guys tell me where are you seeing Alpha macho Irep and soft boy Peri?

Because most of the content I see of them is just little shit/annoying clingy loser Irep and bitchy sassy neurotic mess Peri.

And there is only like 70 works for that ship in ao3 and most is them is co parenting Dev or them being bitter exes.

Honestly, why are we now shaming creators when the ones that write the "problematic yaoi tropes" are in the minority?

[dustedmagazine]

Dust: Volume 3, Number 12

Pessimist

In early fall, the pace of record releasing and reviewing picks up, and with the new chill in the air, we all realize that we are way behind on everything. So to clear the pipes and celebrate what we’ve been meaning to celebrate all along, here is a new back-to-school issue of Dust. This time, we had a really broad range of participants covering all manner of music -- Bill Meyer, Ian Mathers, Matt Wuethrich, Derek Taylor, Eric McDowell, Michael Rosenstein, Jennifer Kelly and Mason Jones.  

176 — Music in Eight Octaves (Immediata)

IMM011: Music In Eight Octaves by 176

Ever wonder what Conlon Nancarrow’s music for player pianos would sound like stretched out over 50 minutes? If so, this is it. Pianist Anthony Pateras and fellow keyboardist Chris Abrahams of The Necks recorded this 50-minute performance in 2005, but are releasing it now as part of Pateras’ Immediata project, along with the series’ obligatory liner notes dialogue between Pateras and the other performer.  

The only formal structures the two seem to rely on are a stacking of temporal layers, timbral density, and surging intensities. There are no quiet or reflective moments here, the sound being continuous and mostly very fast, but neither is this uncontrolled cacophony. At times, there is so much activity the piece almost reaches stasis; at others, the sheer amount of pointillist notes is overwhelming. The tension between these poles creates, however, an engaging contradiction: hyperactive music that demands absolute concentration.

Matt Wuethrich

 1982 — Chromola (Hubro)

It makes sense that the trio 1982 is named for the band’s baby, drummer Øyvind Skarbø. He was nervy enough to get the project rolling when he asked Hardanger fiddle player Nils Økland, 20 years his senior, to play an improvised gig together after Økland gave him a lesson. Ten years on Skarbø, Økland, and harmonium/pipe organ player Sigbjørn Apeland are still at it, performing music that is simultaneously true to the sonic signatures of their instruments and the impulse to play things their own way. Which means that Apeland doesn’t shy from the churchy sounds his instruments were conceived to make, but he’s also willing to tangle some tone clusters up in Skarbø’s rustle and rumble. Likewise Økland, who also plays a conventional violin, lets his melodies unfold patiently, all the better to let the overtones radiate from his strings and form a halo of sympathetic vibrations. But he’s also right in there with his fellows, complicating the dissonances and accenting the rhythms. Skarbø moves fluidly between measured cadences, pulse-free surges, and patient silences, contributing most by contributing just what the music needs.

Bill Meyer

 Antoine Beuger — Ockeghem Octets (Another Timbre)

The title of Antoine Beuger’s latest for Another Timbre may mislead the uninitiated. Part of an additive series of homages to some of the Wandelweiser co-founder’s favorite artists and thinkers — Dedekind Duos, Cantor Quartets, Favery Tunings for Fourteen — Ockeghem Octets does reference the influential 15th-century Flemish composer of masses, motets and chansons, however obliquely. What Beuger distills from Ockeghem is the canon form: Each of the 25 pieces represented on this disc find the octet divided into two halves, each half playing a different line of four tones, entirely at each musician’s own pace. That playing through these micro-compositions takes nearly 70 minutes (over a single unbroken track) suggests the octet’s approach to the material — unhurried, to say the least. But when you consider that Beuger is the same composer who’s written a piece that asks audiences to listen to a solo musician “basically sitting in silence, very rarely playing one single very soft, rather short sound,” followed by anywhere from 20 to 80 minutes of complete silence, the Ockeghem Octets’ glacially shifting layers start to seem positively gaudy with harmonic and timbral colors. An exaggeration, of course, but phase one of the initiation into Beuger’s sound world is adjusting your perspective.

Eric McDowell

 Dungen — Häxan/Versions by Prins Thomas (Smalltown Supersound)

A couple of years ago, Dungen were asked to create a new soundtrack to Lotte Reiniger’s early 1926 animated film "The Adventures of Prince Achmed,” which led to the first instrumental album from Dungen, Häxan. Here, Prins Thomas takes that album's music and creates a new experience, over an hour of songs constructed using more or less of the originals. Some pieces are based on a few sounds, while others are primarily rearranged from the original tapes.  

When it comes to the recognizable pieces, Thomas mostly finds a way to accentuate the core. Just taking opener "Peri Banu vid sjön" as an example, the original is a slow, reverbed drum beat and floating synth tones, peaceful and vaguely pretty. The version here, stretched to five minutes, takes its time getting going, the warbly synth melody leading to the drums entering with a rather Floydian touch. In this version the reverb's gone, and everything's more immediate.  

Elsewhere, there's some good steady space rock, and plenty of kosmische stylings, with parts that have the head-nodding mekano beats of Neu! and their descendants, and "Kalifen" is one of the most Floydian songs that's come along in some time, harkening back strongly to Atom Heart Mother-era synth scapes. Others, though, come off as kind of soft-psych filler.  

Ultimately, although there's plenty of creative reconstruction here, nearly all of the songs carry on past the length they can support, not surprising given that a 40-minute album was rebuilt to 67 minutes. More aggressive editing could have honed this to a stronger core, but even so, if you're looking for a drawn-out hazy journey you could most definitely do worse.  

Mason Jones  

 The Elks — This Is Not the Ant (Mikroton)

This Is Not The Ant by The Elks

The great thing about the Berlin/Vienna Improv scene is the quirky collaborations that pop up between musicians of disparate backgrounds. The Elks is a perfect example, pulling together trumpet player Liz Allbee, clarinetist Kai Fagaschinski, tape manipulator Marta Zapparoli and audio-visual munger Billy Roisz. Across four cuts (two around five minutes long and two over twice that), the four pile together shredded tones, corroded timbres, arcing oscillations and hissing static into improvisations that buzz and thrum with an unstable energy. What’s particularly striking here is how the four eschew any sense of improv arc, instead diving in to a bucking collective flurry that can break into muted calm or vault to thundering stridency at any moment. One minute, Fagaschinski’s low-end clarinet tones hum and drone against a low-level thrumming electronic pulse. The next Allbee’s sibilant hiss kicks in against a whorl of electronic scree. Overtones meld with feedback, burred harmonics and glitched tapes are scumbled together. Braying trumpet, quavering chalumeau and sputtering electronics coalesce and then break open to dark, tolling low-end reverberations. The seamless mix of acoustic and electronic instruments makes for a rich palette which bares glints of detail within the constantly shifting field of sound.

Michael Rosenstein  

 Footings — Resolver (Don’t Live Like Me)

Resolver by Footings

Hey, a local band! Not living in anything remotely resembling a “scene,” this doesn’t happen to me often, but Thing in the Spring proprietor Eric Gagne slipped me a DL of his alt-country-ish, slacker rock Footings’ latest recording, and what do you know, it’s pretty good. I caught them a month or two ago opening for alt-Baptist-roots-revivalists House & Land, and the main problem then was that the guitar drowned out everything else. Here, with a proper mix, the slash of indie guitar (think Sebadoh or Jason Loewenstein solo) still dominates, but there’s enough space for Elizabeth Fuschia’s viola to seep through, whether in resonant bowed throbs (“Hopelessly”) or pizzicato plucking (“Vibrations, Too”). You can also hear the singing, which alternates from a rough but rueful rock howl a la Silver Jews or David Bazan in the louder songs to a sensitive country croon in the soft ones, which may put you in mind of Richard Buckner. As in the live set, “Pajo” stands out, with its circling, swirling, enveloping melancholy, but stick around for the very acoustic “Pollen” which tamps down the mayhem to minimum and finds a quiet revelation in picked acoustic, string tones, soft duet singing and the roll of cymbals.

Jennifer Kelly

  Joe Goddard — Electric Lines (Domino)

Goddard’s had plenty of side projects outside of his main gig at Hot Chip, but a listen to the accomplished, wide-ranging Electric Lines makes it clear why he calls this his solo debut. The warmth and dancefloor nous Goddard brings to Hot Chip are in evidence here too; the difference is more in sonic terms than emotional timbres. Here Goddard mostly takes the more traditional electronic producer's backseat to a rotating cast of singers (sampled and not) over an assorted but solid set of productions that range from the affectionate throwbacks of "Home" and "Lose Your Love" to the restrained digital ballardry of "Human Heart" and "Nothing Moves" to more purely banging "Lasers" and "Bumps.” The result is a kaleidoscopic but always endearingly humane tour through the various vistas of electronic music, culminating with the heart-rending, melancholy directness of his Hot Chip partner Alexis Taylor's vocals on the title track and singer SLO's joyful resolution on closer "Music is the Answer." That faith in his art form is one of the reasons that Goddard's work, in a band or here on his own, is so fulfilling.  

Ian Mathers

  Lo Tom— Lo Tom (Barsuk)

Lo Tom by Lo Tom

David Bazan first played with the guys in Lo Tom — that’s Trey Many, TW Walsh and Jason Martin — about the time they all started shaving, as part of a surprisingly fertile NW enclave of Christian-centered rock (that also included Damien Jurado, but forget him for the moment, he’s not in Lo Tom). All four of them have gone on to other bands, Bazan maybe the best known of the bunch for Pedro the Lion and his solo discs, but Many in Velour 100 and Starflyer 59, Walsh with Pedro, too, and Martin, also in Starflyer 59. Lo Tom is a kind of low-stakes, tossed off side project, performed mostly for the love of the game, but executed with a loose, comfortable, red-meat-rock brio that bends big guitar licks and rough poetry to the task of exploring mid-life issues. Bazan is in very fine form in these eight songs, exhibiting a trademark mordant directness, which is blunt enough to make you laugh, though you’re never sure whether he’s trying to be funny. The protagonist in “Bubblegum,” for instance, is mystified when he repeatedly wakes up with rubbery clumps of gum in his hair, “You blink your eyes and wonder how did it even get there/it’s not even the flavor of gum you chew/but either way your head’s stuck to your pillow, what’s wrong with you?’  You tell me, humorous or tragic? The lyrics, delivered in Bazan’s buzz cut baritone, are wrapped in a big-shouldered indie guitar racket, reminiscent of early aughts indies like Silkworm and Built to Spill. It’s loud and abrasive on the outside with a soft emotional center, the tough guy with a wry self-deprecating smile and a dog-eared copy of Seamus Heaney poems in his back pocket. What more could you want?

Jennifer Kelly

Milked — Death on Mars (Exploding in Sound)

Death on Mars by Milked

Chicago punk rocker Kelly Johnson has sweetened his sound since his Geronimo! days, kicking up a fizzy, rackety, ear-wormy sound that recalls the Rock A Teens, Red Kross and Exploding Hearts. “White Punks,” which bemoans the life-art balancing act of indie rock wage slavery, churns to a start with monster bass and a careening guitar vamp that owes a little to “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”  “Caledonia” is fizzier, more melodic, jangling like a particularly tuneful key ring in a working man’s pocket. And “Death on Mars,” the title track, is a punk romantic anthem, blaring in hearts-on-sleeve endearing-ness with slow, syrupy, overblown guitars with a plan for life partnership spanning the solar system. All nine tracks are irresistible hits of power pop aggression, rough on the edges and likely loud as fuck in the room, but bursting with a hand-drawn valentine’s worth of good feeling. Death on Mars came out early this summer as part of Exploding in Sounds’ tape series, and if you missed it, stay tuned for the next one. Johnson doesn’t sound like he’s anywhere near done with this exuberant project.

Jennifer Kelly

  Shane Parish—Ballad of an Unarmed Man  (Self-released)

Ballad of an Unarmed Man by Shane Parish

Musicians rarely get to capture their epiphanies in a shareable form, but Shane Parish lucked out. The Asheville NC guitarist, who tours and records with Ahleuchatistas and keeps a variety of other duos with players such as Michael Libramento and Tashi Dorji, has cultivated a formidable variety of playing modes, which has also come in handy in his day job as a guitar teacher. One night in February 2016 he sat down with the charts to a few American folk tunes, an acoustic guitar and the digital recorder that he uses for study. He started playing and found himself in a psychic and musical zone that felt simultaneously new and familiar. He was, at least for the time, home. Parish went on to develop this material into Undertaker Please Drive Slow, a superb solo album that Tzadik released at the end of 2016, but has decided to put out the original flash of inspiration as a download-only release. What’s remarkable about these performances is how at home he already sounds with a fairly personal approach to traditional material. He doesn’t exactly play it straight, nor does he prioritize a particularly improvisational language and he certainly doesn’t hew to the raga-tinged fingerpicking contemporary of American Primitive practice. Instead familiar melodies slip in and out of focus in a matter that feels akin to memories being recovered, even though that’s not what Parish was doing. You could get all speculative and say that maybe he was locking into something unconscious, or that you’re hearing a lifetime of skill-building aligning with the music on some sheets of paper in ways that the player could not foresee. What is clear is that Parish was onto something that night, and that this release provides a timeline node we can look to as we consider what he’s doing now and what comes next.

Bill Meyer  

 Anthony Pateras & Erkki Veltheim—The Slow Creep of Convenience (Immediata)

IMM010: The Slow Creep Of Convenience by Anthony Pateras · Erkki Veltheim

The title does double duty here as aesthetic and social statement. Aesthetically, “slow creep” captures the duo’s formal strategy: Veltheim’s electric violin and Pateras’ pipe organ are deployed as generators of long, continuous sounds, which flow over and against each other in dense layers of overtones and beatings through all levels of the frequency spectrum. Despite the single-minded approach, the performance is full of tension, energy and variety, with the duo having ample time to probe each subtle shift in timbre over the piece’s 50-minute duration. Socially, the title encapsulates the duo’s dialogue in the liner notes, where they dissect current contemporary musical and cultural practices, the discourse surrounding them and the effect technology has on both. This “formless” piece, they suggest, is one effort to reclaim our most valuable commodity: time.

Matt Wuethrich

 Pessimist — Pessimist (Blackest Ever Black) 

Bristol's Kristian Jabs, aka Pessimist, has been releasing EPs for several years now, but this self-titled album is technically his first full-length. Blending bits of drum and bass, techno, dub step, and cold, chilly experimental sounds, it works best when dealing in the combination of complex beats and warehouse ambience. It's difficult to describe the songs here without resorting to words like "cavernous" and "murky", though often the mechanical beats pull things out of the mud and onto the dance floor.  

As the score for an end-times dance, the reverb-laden factory floor beats here will do the trick. But while you can let these songs flow past in the background, they too often resort to the same tricks if you focus more closely. The result is that the first few pieces -- "Bloom" with its skeletal warehouse rhythms, "Grit" blending shadowy tones with mechanical beats, and the murky, panned tick-tocks of "Spirals" -- start the album pretty strongly, but as it continues things get more predictable. The rhythms, while often intriguingly layered, tend to be unchanging, and the move from beats to quiet floating to the sudden return of the beats is an overused trick.  

Taken individually, though, and certainly in the clubs, these tracks mostly work, with the shifting, interlocking beats of "Peter Hitchens" and the aforementioned "Bloom" particular standouts. The mix of sounds and attitudes Pessimist brings has a lot of potential. It shows through here and there, and the future holds yet more promise.  

Mason Jones

Saltland — A Common Truth (Constellation)

A Common Truth by Saltland

Rebecca Foon is (or ought to be) well known to fans of various Constellation acts; in addition to cofounding Esmerine, she and her cello have played with Thee Silver Mt. Zion, Set Fire to Flames and others. With her almost entirely solo project Saltland (here aided subtly and well by the Dirty Three's Warren Ellis and producer/Besnard Lakes frontman Jace Lasek on some tracks), her voice and cello take center stage and prove more than capable of holding that ground. It's relatively rare for an album split between instrumentals and vocal pieces like A Common Truth to be equally strong on both sides of the equation, but whether it's the foreboding drone of the opening "To All Us All to Breathe" or the layered cello and voices of the darkly pulsing "Light of Mercy," Foon's work consistently displays a darkly-hued beauty coupled with an intense, almost liturgical focus that marries the sound of the record with these songs' concern with the perils and complex nuances of climate change. With the summer much of the world is currently having, those issues need to be addressed more than ever; few reminders of this fact will be as enthralling as A Common Truth is. 

Ian Mathers

  Triptych - Michael Thieke : Tim Daisy : Ken Vandermark (relay 019) by Tim Daisy Michael Thieke Ken Vandermark

Michael Thieke/Tim Daisy/Ken Vandermark — Triptych (Relay Recordings)

Triptych is the latest in a series of fleeting encounters that Tim Daisy has documented on his Relay label. The Chicago-based multi-instrumentalist (drums, percussion, radios) invited Ken Vandermark (tenor saxophone, bass clarinet) and Michael Thieke (clarinet) into the studio to play three compositions and a handful of improvisations by the constituent members. It takes a bit of digging to grasp the title’s implications. While Daisy’s pieces celebrate the three musical personalities involved, they all seem to be very much on the same page. While the music shifts between stated and implied swing time, it does so quite cohesively, and the melodies make a case for Daisy’s growing elegance as a composer. But when you factor in the improvisations, it makes more sense. There is a pair of duets, one between the drummer and Thieke and the other between two clarinets, which display more elbows-out jostling than the compositions. There are also three solos that let you into the relationship between instrumentalist and instrument. Three ways of working, connected but separate — there’s your triptych.

Bill Meyer

 W-2—Fanatics (Astral Spirits)

Fanatics by W-2

The notion of battles between instrumentalists is built into jazz. You’ve got Ben Webster and Dexter Gordon on Tenor Titans, Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane on Tenor Madness, and these guys on the New York subway, all battling away. But W-2 say screw that divide and conquer shit; they may be going into battle when they play, but they’re pointing their weapons in the same direction, not at each other. Tenor saxophonist Sam Weinberg sounds like he’s taken a few lessons from Roscoe Mitchell. He’s got a similar affection for his horn’s extremes and a corresponding commitment to occupying the outer edges of pitch. Chris Welcome has his jazz guitar chops down, but in W-2 he sticks to synthesizer, blasting out dirty sputters and catch me if you can squiggles. Surrender while you can; these guys had you in your sets from the second you walked in the door.

Bill Meyer

  Judith Wegmann – Le Souffle du Temps (hat[now]ART)

Critic Brian Morton contributes a pithy and starkly simple piece of advice at the conclusion of his notes to Le Souffle du Temps. Make requisite time to listen to the music, as the musician made time to prepare for it. Play it again. Follow those simple instructions, and Morton confidently contends you’ll be playing it for years. The fourth dimension is a central aspect of pianist Judith Wegmann’s musical conception. Though she started playing at the age of six and studied jazz classical and improvised music earning two Master’s degrees along the way, this disc marks her debut as a leader. The training is evident, but what’s more striking is her mastery of pacing and placement. Preparing her instrument with an undisclosed array of objects and devices, the disc’s 10 pieces (delineated on paper by Roman numerals and temporal durations) transpire with a sustained air of both deliberateness and spontaneity, however incongruous that might sound. The clack of rocks or marbles, the brittle scraping of strings and the whistling creaks of metal on metal join sparely deployed keyboard notes and patterns to create a depth of field that becomes very easy to get lost in.

 Derek Taylor

[shinneth]

Gem Ascension Tropes (Peridot-specific: N - O)

Reference:

Primary Peri Post ▼ Primary General Post ▼ Full Article

The Napoleon: Per canon. Needless to say, during the brief time she has limb enhancers again in Act I, she doesn’t hesitate to revel in being taller than her friends – it’s really the only kind of joy Peridot can get from them. In Act III, this trope carries over to Chartreuse Diamond as well.

Native Guide: Best qualified for this position when the Crystal Gems are on Homeworld.

The Navigator: Is this by default, since Peridot is the only one who’s lived on modern-day Homeworld and thus the only one who has any idea of where to go and how to get there.

Near-Rape Experience: In This is Who I Am Chapter 3, Peridot reveals this is how her first meeting with Jasper went down, and the only reason Jasper didn’t go through with it was due to catching sight of the arriving Lapis. The moment Jasper set eyes on Lapis, she completely lost interest in dominating Peridot and exclusively subjected Lapis to this abuse instead. Still, enough happened to Peridot that not only scarred her for life, but gave her one hell of an identity crisis. 

Nice, Mean, and In-Between: The In-Between to Bismuth’s Nice and Lapis’ Mean.

No Poker Face: Right up there with Suspiciously Specific Denial on why Peridot is the most unconvincing liar in the universe. Averted only once in GA during Chapter 4 of Act I, and that is entirely due to Peridot being in Heroic Safe Mode, where her former Manipulative Bastard persona takes over.

Nonhuman Humanoid Hybrid: A Peridot made with a shard of Yellow Diamond inside her gemstone, along with diamond dust from White Diamond – which consequently makes her a Peridot/Diamond hybrid, although Peridot’s Diamond identity and abilities are benign until White Diamond speeds up the developmental process that would have taken hundreds of years on its own.

Not Afraid of You Anymore: Per canon, this was already the case with Yellow Diamond (now made even more trivial with how easily Peridot neutralizes her as a threat in Act I). Peridot is rightfully terrified of White Diamond, however, as she’s a threat well above Yellow who is largely a mystery. But, by Act III, Peridot is no longer afraid of White Diamond either, after managing to spend almost a week being able to lock her into a stalemate as a Determinator would. Granted, most of Peridot’s lack of fear in this instance is due to being aware of her status as a Hostage MacGuffin.

Not Afraid to Die: If it means Steven will live, Peridot will do so without hesitation if there are no other options. 

“Not If They Enjoyed It” Rationalization: Combined with knowing Jasper’s instinctive Might Makes Right justification and the fact that as far as Homeworld law is concerned, everything that happened to Peridot was perfectly legal even if it did fully happen, this leads to Peridot becoming very conflicted on why part of her actually wants Jasper to come back and finish the job (or worse). Peridot’s own natural submissive instincts (that were benign until this incident) came very close to convincing her to concede to her role and embrace the abusive treatment all other Peridots in her position inevitably go through. But in the end, she resists her own instincts and holds firm on the belief that she didn’t deserve what Jasper put her through.

Not Quite Back to Normal: When Chartreuse reverts back to her Peridot form for the first time, there are some minor, but notable differences in Peridot’s appearance that stick from here on out. Theorized to be a side effect of Peridot’s desire to have a more mature body just before she first ascended, she’s gained a bit of height. Not much, but enough to outgrow Amethyst. Of course, once Steven’s Plot-Relevant Age-Up happens, he outgrows her, and Peridot remains the 3rd shortest of the group, as she was pre-ascension. However, Peridot does have a more curvaceous and developed body than she had previously – and her newly-grown diamond still remains fused with her gemstone. These changes stick with her default appearance from that point forward.

Not Quite Dead: Although she sustained a massive concussion during her failed escape attempt at the end of Act I and was presumed Left for Dead by her friends, the most that happened to Peridot afterwards was her poofing back into her gemstone state, where she remained purely to spite White Diamond. Since White Diamond spotted Peridot’s Mismatched Eyes before this, on top of Peridot being the best way to bait Steven back to Homeworld, the Big Bad had no intention of shattering her as she was too valuable in more ways than one.

Not Quite Saved Enough: If only Peridot wasn’t such a klutz…

Not So Different: Both Act I and Act III point out the various personality quirks Peridot shares with Ruby. This is Who I Am invokes this with 5XF.

Not So Stoic: Per canon; re-examined in relation to how she was once legitimately stoic in her early life. A bit of an unfortunately-timed Trauma Conga Line exposed Peridot as this, though Steven points out this actually ended up saving not only Peridot’s life, but Earth (and everyone living there) as well. Steven seeing the cracks in her façade was what compelled him to free her from the Burning Room when she was captured.

Now, Let Me Carry You: Invoked in the final scene of This is Who I Am; while Steven and Peridot have supported each other when their partner falters, more often than not, Steven is the one who does the heavy lifting in this category (to be fair, it’s one of his main gimmicks as a character overall for the entire cast). When they finally have a moment alone together, Peridot takes notice to her boyfriend’s plight and pleads for him to let her be his pillar of emotional support (not knowing yet that Steven is actually mad at her specifically).

Peridot: “Steven… when you go this long without smiling even once, it’s extremely concerning. Please let me share your burden.”

Steven: “Uh, what…?”

Peridot: “Last time we were up here, you offered yourself to act as the buffer for all the stress, anger, and hatred I kept bottled up within me. I can tell just by looking at you; a ball of atmosphere-crushing pressure is tearing away into your innards. So, allow my center of gravity to counterbalance that harmful power.”

Official Couple: With Steven, as of Chapter 5 of Act III.

On Three: How Peridot and Steven prepare for their first kiss.

One of the Kids: Inverted; Peridot goes out of her way to fit in with her fellow gems – all of whom are no less than 5,000+ years old – to give the impression she’s just as ancient, experienced, developed, and “mature” as they are. However, at a mere 13 years of age, Peridot is actually younger than Steven, and most of the Crystal Gems were well aware Peridot was nowhere near their age range even before they learned how old she truly was in Act III.

One-Way Trip: How Peridot perceives the rescue mission in Act I is going to play out for her specifically.

Open Mouth, Insert Foot: No amount of Character Development will save Peridot from falling victim to this trope on a daily basis. She tries, bless her heart, but it’s inevitable that Peridot will run her mouth about something that will incriminate herself and probably offend somebody in the process… and by the time Peridot finally realizes that after shutting her mouth, she’s already in far too deep to salvage the situation.

Our Hero is Dead: How Act I concludes (presumably).