#steven universe a single pale rose

[olazart]

the best of the worst

-

saw that it was the 5th anniversary of a single pale rose and HAD to draw her! all this time and she's still my favorite 🌺✨

[dubiousnostalgia]

"If we lose, we'll be killed. And if we win, we can never go back home."

🌸💎🌸

Please do not reupload or use without permission!

[visualecholalia]

just a headcanon about a single pale rose...

close-ups... 🌹

[subestu]

Round 3: Medium

[mister-celery]

happy monday

[hazardouspup]

this will change everything

[stormesandshowersparttwo]

[daensaism]

5x18 - “A Single Pale Rose”

[theimkual]

thing I made like?? two months ago?? while rewatching a single pale rose. would've posted this earlier but the masochist in me wanted to try my hand at the palanquin wall pattern (and as you can see the masochist eventually gave up)

[treestarfloatingcloud]

[sullina]

it's been idek how many years (10ish?) and I'm still in absolute awe at how they decided to do the "Rose was Pink Diamond" reveal

They could've done it in a less convoluted way by something like Pearl, instead of saying it, just drawing or writing it on paper (if that would've even been a possible workaround to PDs command), but instead they decided to peel back the layers that are Pearls past, quite literally, and how Pearl felt about Rose in every memory Steven went through.

Pearl loved Rose and was dependent on her. Not just emotionally, but also on a deeper level. On homeworld, a pearls purpose is solely to serve other gems, not to be in charge of anything, least of all themselves.

At first, out Pearl was the same, but Pink Diamond was the one who was different, treating a simple pearl as a person, not like a glorified secretary.

Pink Diamond herself was also different, obviously. At first, she wanted to be like the other diamonds: equal to them and in charge of her own colony, for them to stop treating her like a little kid.

But as soon as she got that, she realized that "wait... this is not what i wanted...". I don't remember which episode it's from, but the whole reason Pink Diamond was so excited to have her own colony is because they were "creating life from nothing", until she realized that what they were actually doing was "taking life, and leaving nothing behind".

Pink Diamond didn't want a soulless army that followed her every command. She wanted real connections with others. Any gem that wasn't a diamond would give her the same, soulless "yes, my diamond" if she were to so much as look at them, and the diamonds themselves often disregarded anything she did as childish antics and often punished her when she didn't behave like they thought a diamon a should behave (mainly regal and soulless).

In just about every single flashback we see of Pink Diamond and the other diamonds, the interaction is bad in some way.

On the jungle moon, Pink just wanted to hang out with Yellow, have some fun, but Yellow pushed her aside like she was a child. Pink blew a fuse and insisted she was a diamond too. Upon Yellow telling her to "act like it", Pink stomped off and smashed a glass panel, where we can then see just how angry she was.

Then, when Pink finally got the earth as her first colony, after deciding that she didn't want to hollow it out and leave it a barren wasteland, Blue and Yellow insisted she finish was she started, not listening to her at all. Instead, they built a human zoo. Blue even told Pink she didn't have to do anything, just exist, and the colony would be finished. (Hence why Pink decided to make it look like she was shattered. It's not that she ran away, really, it's that this was the only way to do what she wanted, which was to save the earth and live on it, with Pearl, and all the humans, who weren't absolutely subservient to her)

Then in the last season, we see Blue actually imprison Pink for releasing some centipede things at one of her balls. Steven and Connie were only imprisoned for a few days, but who knows for how long Pink was imprisoned at a time? The diamonds are nigh-timeless beings, Pink could've been imprisoned for several years, decades, centuries, maybe even millenia at a time. Just existing in a dark room, in total isolation, for the sole crime of not fitting the mold that was picked out for her.

Being a diamond was just... not in Pinks nature. Running a colony was apparently just sitting around and doing a whole bunch of nothing, but that wasn't Pinks style.

She wanted to go down to earth, see her own colony with her own eyes. But that's not what a diamond should do, and i can imagine that Pink thought Blue and Yellow would take her colony away as soon as they got to know that she wasn't behaving properly (like a diamond), and probably punish her again.

But instead of being on her own, she now had a pearl. Our Pearl, who was "supposed to make her happy" (in Pearls own words), and how do you make a diamond who doesn't want to be a diamond happy? You help her not be a diamond!

Pink became not-a-diamond for the first time, and also for the first time, had a real interaction with another gem. That little "welcome to earth!" she said to that one quartz soldier was such a small thing, but to Pink, it was probably the first interaction with another gem as an equal.

And by equal, i mean something that didn't have to listen to her, and that she didn't have to listen to. They were all diamonds, but Blue and Yellow could still tell her "no" and punish her. All other gems were subservient to her as a diamond, saluting to her and ending every sentence with a "yes, my/pink diamond".

Pink Diamond could not be happy, be it as Pink or as a diamond.

Of course she would leave Blue and Yellow and White to go and be with Pearl, a gem considered so low in the gem hierarchy that many considered them to be glorified decorations (mentioned by Peridot when they conceptualized the drill).

Pink Diamond, now Rose Quartz, broke out of the mold she could never fit, and so inspired Pearl to do the same. As much as she could, anyway, with Pink Rose still being there.

In the movie, when Pearl and the others were reset by Spinels rejuvenator, we see Pearl take on the same form she had in the flashback on the moon base where her and Pink went down to earth for the first time.

It's possible that Pink Diamond was the first and only gem that Pearl has ever served. And with gems not having a natural end of life (shattering isn't a natural end, it's murder), it's possible that pearls are only "deployed", so to speak, for one gem given specifically to them. They're not "reused", to hopefully make it more understandable.

Meaning, Pink Diamond and then Rose Quartz, was the only gem Pearl had ever known on a more intimate level, and likely built her entire personal identity around her.

So when Rose decided to have a baby, Pearl was utterly distraught, not only because Pearl loved her, but because Rose was also her entire reason to exist, her entire life was centered around Rose.

Pearl asking "What am I going to do without her?" under tears was not just her being sad she would lose someone she loved, but also in a more literal sense. Pearl didn't know who she was outside of Rose, because she straight up just wasn't someone. Without Rose, Pearl was little more than a pearl without a master, without a reason for existing.

Rose having a baby wouldn't have been possible if the diamonds hadn't retaliated against Rose and the rebellion (thus leaving the earth alone in the belief that there were no more rebels), if Pearl hadn't taken on Roses form to shatter Pink Diamond, if Pearl hadn't agreed to Roses plan, if- if Pearl had never fallen for her diamond.

In the scene where Pearl, as Rose, shatters Pink diamond, Pearl is crying.

Pink is no more.

Pearl shattered her.

The one who came back was no longer Pink, but Rose.

Everything would be different.

And perhaps it was.

But in the end, Pearl only swapped one master for another.

Pearls purpose was still the same, to make Pink Rose happy, except this time the command came from herself instead of another diamond. Pearls existence was still centered around Pink Rose. She bore another name and purpose, but it was still the same gem.

But when Rose had a baby and Steven was born, that is when Pink Rose finally and truly died. There was no turning back. Steven was Steven, not just another form of Pink Diamond or Rose.

Rose was gone.

And who was Pearl without Rose?

[red--pirate]

A Single Pale Rose | Steven Universe I 2018

[thewormdraws]

"Everything I ever did, I did for her. Now she's gone, but I'm still here."

[subestu]

Round 2: Easy

[56thingsart]

Them!!!

[lambdal4b]

old version of art under cut