What have you got to say of shadows in your past?
I thought that if you paid, you’d keep them off our backs
But I don’t care; baby, I’m not scared
What have you got to hide? Who will it compromise?
Where do we have to be so I can laugh and you’ll be free?
I’d go anywhere; baby, I don’t care…
…I’m not scared.
– “I’m Not Scared”, Pet Shop Boys (originally made famous by Eighth Wonder)
Airdate: July 2nd, 2018
Written By: Lamar Abrams and Christine Liu
Plot: The reveal that Rose Quartz was actually Pink Diamond and Pearl was in on the act has shocked the Crystal Gems. The most emotionally affected is Sapphire, who runs off devastated, convinced that Garnet’s raison d’etre and the path her life took for so long were both based on the worst possible deception from the worst possible source. Chasing her down, Pearl offers some context to the whole damn debacle, particularly how Pink Diamond was refuted in her attempts to reason with her sisters in government, and how Garnet fits into the equation of the Earthican Rebellion.
Review:
Well, that was quite a preceding episode, wasn’t it?
“A Single Pale Rose” was the television equivalent of a meteorite crash-landing in the middle of Philadelphia. It’s not that often that a single episode so thoroughly demolishes the status quo and recontextualizes every damn moment of the involved series from the beginning. Steven Universe did so in eleven friggin minutes.
I mean, everything. Pearl’s fear of fusion (and possible aversion to eating, even), Rose’s entire character up to and including her love of the planet Earth, their relationship, Amethyst’s origin, the whole nature of the overarching conflict, all of it has to be seen through a new lens. And guess what? We now have an episode that tackles the fallout straight on but dares to add new context to the most stunning moment in the show’s canon – the moment that recontextualized everything is being contextualized in turn!
Still with me? good.
And how poetic; the first plot element that the show seriously re-analyzes is Garnet’s raison d’etre, starting with the appropriately titled “Now We’re Only Falling Apart”.
After all, Garnet might be the most iconic character in the canon. Maybe – this show has a lot of iconic characters. But her character is poignant, in part, for political reasons. After all, she is the personification of a relationship that society has unfairly maligned as taboo; cross-class, interracial, and/or same-sex. In fact, her counterparts Ruby and Sapphire are noted for their romantic entanglement with one another; to casual eyes, they are in a gay partnership, rather novel for Western animation when their characters were introduced.
Of course, that introduction embraced the groundbreaking nature of this dynamic. After all, you had Garnet reform, encounter Jasper who hurls rather bigoted insults at her… and kick her ass while singing a song about how their partnership has made them stronger and that love can overcome the prejudices of society and the deeply insecure who reinforce those biases. It helps that their partnership has been shown as almost perfectly complementary. As Garnet herself puts it, “I am their fury; I am their patience; I am a conversation…”
But that comes with years and years of reinforcing the partnership. “The Answer” has Garnet express self-doubt and try and figure out what, exactly makes Garnet’s existence tick, what drove Ruby and Sapphire to perform the actions that they undertook, only to be rebutted with a request – “Don’t ever question this; you already are the answer!” “…love.” A stunningly profound and romantic mission statement that Garnet has continued to fall back on. And, really, she doesn’t need much more justification than that; Ruby and Sapphire click damn near perfectly.
Of course, that request came from Rose Quartz, the general of the Crystal Gems. And, as we now know, was the new alias of Pink Diamond; one of the Diamond Authority. You know, the leaders of a society that would put Garnet to death for existing in the first place?
That’s a shock to the system for anybody, and the episode demonstrates this with Garnet just sitting, seemingly stoically. Amethyst notably takes the reaction with outward acceptance, cracking wise about, well, what the hell else can be revealed. In contrast? Garnet sits for a second, slowly trembles as she gets up, and comes undone violently. What follows is a masterclass in voice acting (this show is full of VA masterclasses) from Erica Luttrell and Charlyne Yi, the former conveying apoplectic devastation, the latter futile desperation:
Sapphire: (furious) “She lied to us! She lied about everything. (turns the floor into a sheet of ice) She held our hands, looked at us in the eyes, and told us to never question who we are as Garnet! We never questioned ourselves or her.”
Ruby: “We couldn’t have known.”
Sapphire: “No – you couldn’t have known! You never know what’s going on – that’s what I’m for!”
Ruby: (crestfallen) “Sapphire…”
Sapphire: “But I never looked into her. I trusted her. I let her make fools of us all!” (runs to the warp pad)
Ruby: “Sapphire, wait!” (runs after her)
Steven: “Guys!” (tries to run after them, slips on the ice)
Ruby: “Please – we could just stay calm and – and talk about this, right? Let’s just talk…”
Sapphire: (defeated) “Talk about what? How our relationship is based on a lie? What else is there to say?” (warps away)
This argument is intriguing because it feels like a complete reversal of their normal character dynamic, particularly when compared to their last severe argument – you have the normally stoic Sapphire lashing out indiscriminately and running off, all while the deeply passionate Ruby tries to talk her into sanity.
But that relies on a rather broad, if understandable, caricaturization of their dynamic. Where it really stands out is Sapphire’s precognitive nature versus Ruby’s more impulsive nature. After all, Sapphire’s future vision suffered its most iconic failure in part due to Rose and the fateful attack on Blue Diamond millennia ago. It was a glorious failure, however – Ruby’s defense of her led the two to flee, where they once again met the attacker and Pearl, the characters who reinforced their behavior and justified their continued fusion.
Finding out that pivotal moment was engineered by a member of the Diamond Authority… well, it makes sense that she would question proceedings the way she has. After all, if Pink Diamond doesn’t die, the Gem population on Earth isn’t corrupted en masse. The whole nature of the Crystal Gems, the movement that allowed their existence, was based on one great big lie from the worst possible source. The romanticism of the revolution might as well have been a joke. The possibilities she envisioned were all based on a mirage, one that had dire consequences. Her life, so much of it, feels like wasted time.
Remember Garnet’s questions at the end of “The Answer”? Well, Sapphire is likely wondering… was the answer really “love”? Was their existence really an affront? Awful, self-loathing thoughts, and surely refuted by evidence (read, the entire damn middle of “The Answer”)… but totally understandable given what has just been revealed.
Steven Universe, in a minute, conveys perfectly a crisis of faith from a rather secular perspective, assuming you don’t count the Diamonds as demigods but as political leaders. It conveys the feeling you get when you find out somebody whose work you idolized had personality faults, if not was a totally different person to the one you admire. Don’t be so quick to put people on a pedestal, because if it breaks, the pieces fall all over.
And boy, have the pieces fallen all over. Ruby is in a state of abject despair, hurt by the one she loves, and Pearl and Steven find themselves trying to perform damage control – more specifically, they are all but compelled to attempt to bring Sapphire to her senses. Quite the task, as Sapphire laments to herself:
Everything we were running from? She was right there all along – using us for her little war; smiling at us with those knowing eyes; making me believe in a better future that I couldn’t see… because it wasn’t real. And now here we are; our friends, shattered and corrupted? Of course, she was a Diamond! What a long road she took to torture us like this.
Yup. That’s probably Erica Luttrell’s best line read in the show. Lost. Despairing. Disgusted. Frankly wanting to go back in time to take out Pink Diamond herself, believing that it was all a long game meant to destroy the Crystal Gems and connected dissenters. Given the damage that occurred in the wake of her “shattering” – the corruption of the Earth, most importantly – can you really blame her for concluding the worst? It mirrors the increasingly antagonistic view the fandom held of Rose/Pink in the episodes leading up to the reveal; clearly, the Crewniverse figured that such a passionate fandom would be debating the character’s morality.
Pink Diamond was neither a saint nor a sinner. She was both… or, rather, neither. As we get more sweet, sweet backstory courtesy of Pearl, now free to ruminate on the path that brought her and the Crystal Gems to such a state; “I was given to Pink Diamond a few thousand years before she was given the Earth. I was supposed to make her happy; I just never could…“
What follows is a moment of sober reflection; Pink wonders whether or not running a colony was as exciting as it was cracked up to be, and Pearl merely responds that she’ll validate or refute Pink’s ideas based on what Pink believes. It’s rather morose; these women are bereft of passion, trapped in a world that forces both into boxes, with little or no challenge to the concepts and dynamics within and no innovation that could benefit the needs of Gemkind. It’s a repudiation of authoritarianism, social stratification, and most broadly, social conservatism. And most importantly, it’s a clear indicator that policies that create such an aura trap both the ruling class and the underclass.
In any event, Pink Diamond uses the viewing orb to try and meet a new cluster of Quartz soldiers that are popping out of the Kindergarten. To many, this would be a clear attempt to prove herself as a leader of the people and differentiate herself from the closed-off nature of her sisters.
Note the qualifiers because Pink Diamond’s case is rather unique. Her expressions reflect a more youthful mindset, with the idea that she would “laugh and play with the Amethysts”, being a leader who is one of the people and wants to hang with them. This isn’t to necessarily know them and their desires and wants, but to be with them; there is a distinction. Indeed, Pearl also points out – via projection – that Pink does look quite like a Rose Quartz, a pathway to temporarily change her shape and blend in with the soldiers. Her love of the third rock and what it entails – the creation of Gemkind, just to start – has been planted by Pearl herself. In fact, it almost mirrors Ruby and Sapphire’s initial fascination with Earth when they first fell from grace, unaware that they were set to enter their heaven. But while that was an act crafted in the height of adversity, this is one Gem wilfully liberating herself from the chains of command, at least at first glance.
Steven, in fact, can only think of such an act in the most critical terms; that every event the Crystal Gems have undergone was just because Pink Diamond wanted to break free and have some fun. What bitter irony, such a decision has led to the premature and dramatic demolition of Steven’s own childhood in the long run and the psychological damage against the rest of the Crystal Gems, even though she could have scarcely envisioned the former. Indeed, it’s just business at first; even Pearl suggests that Earth functions as a resource colony rather than as a center point for natural beauty, in an attempt to reinforce Pink’s mission.
But the above arguments negate the fact that Pink Diamond really did love the Earth, the natural beauty within, the vibrancy, and once she sees Humans all performing diversified tasks with little variance in themselves, she’s sold… but also remorseful at the inevitable endgame. The Homeworld invasion is invariably terminal for the planet – the resources are stripped and mined, and the natural residents, if there are any, are left for dead. “We’re not creating life from nothing; we’re taking life and leaving nothing behind.” The rain pours down, and Pink Diamond – Rose Quartz – is left sober.
Her pleas to control a colony of her own? Well, she got her wish… and the monkey’s paw has curled.
What followed was a Sisyphean task – trying to get her colleagues to pull back and abandon plans to colonize the Earth. They refused. Not helping is the one thing close to a caveat – they attempted to salvage human life, and thus appease Pink Diamond, by putting several humans in a zoo. (The end result was a civilization of emotionally stunted, childish humans.) On one hand, it underscores the abject callousness of the Homeworld authority – so dedicated to the colonization efforts, any attempt to pull back would be an affront to the nation-state, or the appearance therein, damn the consequences.
But consider it from their perspective. You need not sympathize with the space autocrats to consider – Pink had argued for her own army and colony for so long. She gets a colony to oversee; just her luck, it’s a colony of high physical quality. To the Diamond Authority, it’s resource-rich, perfect for creating a vast population. And she goes and begs for the planet to be abandoned? Yellow and Blue were probably thinking of Pink as feckless. Was she really worthy of a colony, or did she just want to eff around with her sisters? Callous as their endgame was, and it was very cold, their sentiments are understandable.
Ultimately, it doesn’t change the fact that their path of destruction can no longer be negotiated against. Even in the best-case scenario, their mind was made up. Enter the rebellion. After all, if she’s going to lose the colony anyway, she might as well go down swinging, albeit incognito. It’s a rebellion from the top, a civil war in disguise, but it’s still a damning indictment of the other Diamonds as family and as political leaders.
And it gains a new moral backing, as who else forms in the earliest battle than Garnet? The first verified cross-Gem fusion in front of Rose and Pearl’s eyes. The former is absolutely enchanted with such a historic moment and such a groundbreaking maneuver from the involved Gems, proof of personal reinvention now in the eyes of many. It’s a bit tragic that such a maneuver was undertaken in the crucible of battle; cross-Gem fusions would be unfairly maligned by the state as a threat to its existence for this alone. But to Rose, it’s the newness – that it had been merely “unheard of” for centuries as a theory and had been proven correct – that appeals to her.
Coincidentally, this exact series of events, or something akin to it, had been playing in Pearl’s mind for a while. It comes out in a stunning confession, almost self-loathing (a parallel to internalized homophobic sentiment, I suspect), to which Rose immediately refutes her doubts. Of course, to find that Pearl imagined falling in love with a Rose Quartz speaks to the unspoken dreams, the love that dared not speak its name in other centuries and locations; the desires of the marginalized within society who have their passions and desires dismissed. To find that she is living her dream, with a Pink Diamond existing incognito, is beyond the wildest imagination within her psyche.
Further, Garnet’s initial fusion serves as the key that opens their own desires. While the majority are confused and even tragically disgusted, it allows for Rose and Pearl to discuss and explore sentiments they had repressed, or otherwise question their own opinions and feelings. It’s a clear metaphor for Steven Universe‘s mission statement to improve cultural representation, particularly regarding the LGBT community, and how the askance from certain elements of society is countered by the psychological ease it gives quite a few non-heterosexual/cisgender viewers (particularly those starting to figure out their identity in that realm), that their views and lives are being seen and processed by those who can and will express support, or those who might wind up understanding their point of view. My big “complaint” with “The Answer” is that the episode felt like it was in love with itself? Well, this episode provides a damn good justification, one that I highly respect. These episodes are important to somebody; this show is important in quite a few ways.
Within the universe, while the duo are unable to fuse at this point in time – their dynamic is far too unstable at the moment – their attempt does add a new dimension to the raison d’etre of the rebellion. They had personal motives in loving Earth and wanting to break free from the monotony their societal status conferred; they had a moral objective in discovering Garnet’s debut; the two worlds had now combined directly for them. It’s a weird thing to consider. We romanticize societal change and revolution as being for the benefit of people, particularly those we might differ from. But we also tend to overlook the selfish undercurrents that reside under such movements. History is brutal, and obscuring it will only lead to more heartache as time goes on.
On that note, it underscores Garnet’s importance. “You already are the answer” is not just an expression of self-love, but a rallying cry for Gem freedom, freedom of thought, and freedom of expression. It’s the moral argument for Gemkind to throw off the past, the strongest possible rebuttal against the Diamond Authority’s management of the galaxy and the nation. But it also demonstrates what makes the Crystal Gems work as a unit. Rose might have been a de facto leader, but they all followed each other in one way or another. Garnet broke the mold in terms of philosophy. Pearl stunned Rose into falling in love with her and the planet Earth. It’s romantic in more ways than one. Steven Universe is really a romantic show – politically, emotionally, technologically, psychologically, you name it.
Yet this series is not shy of demonstrating when things go south. Sapphire’s realization that Rose Quartz was not inherently and wholly evil is countered by a stunning realization that she emotionally wounded the love of her life. By the time they return to the temple, Ruby has absconded. Just when Garnet seemed renewed, all appeared lost. Even the most romantic stories have sobering elements and undercurrents, and now it feels like her storybook tale has a ways to go before a happy ending.
But this tale? What a satisfying one.
“Now We’re Only Falling Apart” is better years down the road. It’s equal parts love story, contextual flashback, political treatise, and tragedy all rolled into one glorious outing. It had to follow up an absolutely herculean outing of Steven Universe; if it held its own, it would’ve been a success. But it’s a stunning effort in its own right.
Tidbits
- It’s probably a coincidence, but this episode aired on July 2nd. This is the anniversary of the Second Continental Congress – a committee of delegates from the Thirteen North American Colonies – passed the Lee Resolution, announcing their intent to sever ties with the United Kingdom after a year of armed conflict between the Royal Military and the Continental Army. So airing an episode that refers to rebellion and revolution from a distant central government on that date is surprisingly apt. I doubt that was on the CN scheduler’s mind (besides hey, holiday week, so let’s air a major StevenBomb), but it is worth mentioning.
- The idea of the Diamonds themselves being hierarchical, especially with Pink trying to obtain permission from Yellow and Blue, is fascinating even without the context of later episodes. You would think the Diamonds had functioned as a collaborative effort in some ways. Looks like that wasn’t as true as we thought… and there is almost certainly somebody else lurking in the shadows.
- Returning to Rose’s Fountain in an extended capacity for the first time since “An Indirect Kiss” is truly an inspired move. That episode was one of the earlier signs that Rose was not what she seemed, and it ended with Steven – the son of a Diamond, in retrospect – forever altering Connie’s life and moving their relationship forward. Here, we’re dealing with the fallout regarding the truth, discover that Garnet influenced Rose in turn, and end with Ruby and Sapphire’s relationship at its lowest point.
Wrap-Up:
Favorite Scene: Pink Diamond’s furious glare after being rebuked by the Diamonds once more. You can feel the dynamic collapse for good.
Best Character: Oh, Sapphire… Erica Luttrell just conveys the character at her most vulnerable. I’ve been there. We’ve all been there.
Memorable Quote: “What a long road she took to torture us like this…” – Sapphire. Not entirely accurate, but can you blame her?
Verdict: Platinum; the top tier gets a three-peat, and this episode deserves top honors. More worldbuilding, fascinating character development, and political intrigue; Steven Universe in peak form. It enters the episode rankings at #28, right behind “Hit the Diamond” and edging out “Message Received”.
The Review Nebula 