maybe, they might, think about fusion.
new outfits
The ending of Change Your Mind wasn’t “rushed,”
people are just misunderstanding White.
When White finally shows a flaw, it’s a downhill battle, because what she’s been trying to do for so long was maintain perfection. No doubt she was the creator of all Gems, and the one who determined how society would run. She needs to do her best, always, lest things fall apart.
But she hasn’t always been a perfectionist.
This is perfectionism. Shoving yourself inside other Gems so that they can’t think for themselves—so you’re the only one making decisions.
It’s easy to be perfect if nobody can think for themselves.
But she wasn’t always like that. Blue Diamond says so herself—they all used to spend time together, and even laugh. Which doesn’t sound much like the White Diamond we knew, does it?
That’s because White’s perfectionism was a response to Pink’s death.
We’ve seen the other Diamonds’ reactions to Pink’s death. Blue’s is the most obvious:
She became incredibly depressed all the time—so much so that she weaponized her sadness.
Yellow is a slightly more complex Diamond: her response to Pink’s death was to bury everything. Don’t feel anything. Move on like nothing happened. Yes, she’s sad. But she can’t show it.
She’s cold. Calculating. She’s weaponized her anger over Pink’s death.
Which brings us to White. How could a leader, the one Gem who holds Homeworld together, show any sort of emotion? She can’t be angry. She most certainly can’t be sad. What effect would that have on her Gems?
So she keeps everything perfect. Because if everything’s perfect, nothing like Pink’s death will ever happen again.
She weaponizes her perfectionism. She robs other Gems of their being. She extends her will into anyone who shows deviance, because the Empire cannot crack again.
Until it does.
White gets embarrassed, and she shows color—she shows a flaw, for the first time since Pink has died. And the world doesn’t fall apart.
And that makes her realize: if she can blush, and be sad, and flustered, and nothing bad will happen, maybe she can go back to being herself.
So she does. Begrudgingly, but she does.
And she starts her path back to normalcy.
One of my favourite details about this finale has to be how Pearl looks after reforming because it’s so telling of her character growth like
Look at how she starts out, chronologically
While in servitude, bending to her intended purpose, she is dressed in the epitome of femininity. A lovely perky dress, lots of layers, lots of frills. This is what Pearl was intended to be by the system.
Now the more she rebels and starts leaving the system and her purpose behind her, her clothes abandon the classical femininity.
Even in her first known reforming, already she is opting out of it
Her outfit is more practical, she started wearing pants, but there is still a large influence of who she used to be with the dress tunic.
And through her reformations, we see her start losing more and more of that societal expectations of her in the form of her outfits.
But the expectations she puts up for herself are still there, because she can’t help but base her entire sense of self worth around another person (Pink and later on, Rose, and even after that, Steven)
So remnants of what she thinks is expected of her still remain.
Even the clothes she chooses to wear when she picks out human clothes are polar opposites of what the gem society expects her to wear
and of course, the infamous Rebel Pearl outfit, which I am sure is where a good part of her healing really started (because it marked her moving on from Rose), and upon which her current reformation is based on
and the final reformation, which completely abandons the classical femininity, frills and pzazz of the first form she had. She is still very feminine, yes, but in a way that is her own, not in what is thrust on to her by expectations.
This is who Pearl, just Pearl, without having to depend on others, who doesn’t build her entire sense of self around others, is. Her self worth no longer depends on Pink, or Rose, or Steven, or anyone, but herself.
Pearls growth is one of the biggest ones in the show, and it shows so much in how she reforms.
gummycore
