toloveviceforitself:

shobijinsandy:

Pearl took advantage of Garnet’s trust

Amethyst kept the truth secret until the last second instead of confronting them immediately and privately

Garnet pressured Amethyst into fusing when she was uncomfortable with it at the moment

All three gems fucked up tonight don’t put everthing on one

Okay, no. Putting the others’ screwups on the same level as Pearl’s is a disservice to both them and to Pearl’s narrative.

The worst you can say for Amethyst and Garnet is that they reacted poorly in the moment. Amethyst didn’t know how best to deal with a volatile interpersonal situation so she waited longer than she should have. Garnet was indelicate but ultimately she had no other choice: regardless of Amethyst’s feelings, that tower had to come down ASAP, and a fusion was the only way to do that.

Both of these are more forgivable in part because they were reactions. Reactions have a time limit, and we often aren’t prepared for them. It’s hard to arrive at the ideal solution. Pearl’s mistake, on the other hand, was proactive. She created the situation. There was no time pressure on her, there was no imperative that required her to act other than her own fucked up emotions. All she had to do was not do the thing.

But moreso than that, the difference is that everyone else’s fuckups were interpersonal. As fucked up as Pearl’s actions were toward Garnet especially, it really pales next to the fact that she willfully endangered the entire planet. Like, look at that in perspective. Every time she rebuilt that tower, she increased the chance of Peridot’s message reaching homeworld. Which could easily lead to literally billions of deaths. Her own, and her friends’, but also uncountable children like Connie dying screaming, burned to death under the particle blasts of homeworld gems, or starving slowly on a used-up world. Planetary genocide.

All because Pearl missed feeling strong. Or, more likely, because she missed intimacy. And also, I think, because she never really cared about Earth, beyond whatever emotional bells it rang for her with regards to Rose. She cared because Rose cared, and she sticks with it for Rose’s memory, but also because she doesn’t know what else to do. But when a more immediate emotional need arose, she threw the entire human race (and her revolutionary buddies) under the bus two nights in a row, and to all appearances would have just kept doing it until she was caught or Yellow Diamond finally sent a fleet. She sold out everything Rose fought and died for to get a few moments of emotional stability.

Isn’t that interesting? That a need so incredibly simple could lead her to become so desperate, so weak, as to make her fuck up in such a huge, potentially devastating way, while still being so incredibly understandable?

And doesn’t it put the others in such an interesting situation? Dealing with a friend and ally who has fucked up in such a massive way that, regardless of whether they understand it (Amethyst does, Garnet really doesn’t), it can’t be allowed to continue under any circumstances? And on an even more upsetting level, dealing with the fact that their ally, much as they love her personally, was never really fighting for the right reasons, and can’t necessarily be trusted to keep their best interests at heart when the wind changes?

Pearl is an incredibly complex and deeply flawed character, and as a result this is a really, really great story. Simplifying what happened in “Cry for Help” to “everyone screwed up and hurt each others’ feelings” ignores most of what makes it worth telling.