Steven Universe: When It Rains
October 1, 2015 2:46 PM - Season 2, Episode 22 - Subscribe

Steven teaches a new friend about Earth weather.
posted by Small Dollar (23 comments total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
called it
posted by Small Dollar at 2:53 PM on October 1, 2015 [3 favorites]


I liked the episode quite a lot!

About the size of the cluster, think: when a gem incorporates, its physical form is much larger than its gem. When two gems fuse, the resulting fusion is much bigger than even the sum of the two gems' physical forms: Garnet is bigger than Ruby + Sapphire, Opal is bigger than Pearl + Amethyst, and Alexandrite is much much bigger than Pearl + Amethyst + Ruby + Sapphire. There's an exponential function at work. So, a large number of gem shards could produce a gem mutant of vast proportions.
posted by JHarris at 4:29 PM on October 1, 2015 [1 favorite]


Is it just me or did the image of the cluster look vaguely like Yellow Diamond's head?
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 7:41 PM on October 1, 2015


Do we know for sure that the head it looks like is Yellow Diamond's? Maybe the silhouette in the extended theme song was the Cluster all along.
posted by baf at 9:51 PM on October 1, 2015 [1 favorite]


It was nice watching Peridot begin to get a glimpse of Earth's wonders in the rainstorm, but I think the scene has a hidden second purpose. I can't help but think there was a day, thousands of years ago, when Rose Quartz and her companions had a scene very much like what Peridot had here.
posted by JHarris at 10:53 PM on October 1, 2015 [7 favorites]


Peridot is now the protagonist of this show and I am overjoyed at this prospect.

I want to write a thing about Peridot's limb enhancers as a metaphor for a disabled person's assistive devices, and the feeling when the Crystal Gems casually kick them into the ocean, but I'm not a good enough writer to do it justice. It's still really interesting to me that we still haven't seen her use a gem power. I was half expecting her to pull something out when her and Steven were in the bubble.
posted by Space Coyote at 11:04 PM on October 1, 2015 [5 favorites]


This adorable fanart someone made last week turned out to be such an accurate depiction of Peridot and Pearl's relationship in this episode. I love it.

And now I really, REALLY want to see Peridot interact with Greg.
posted by Pizzarina Sbarro at 11:11 PM on October 1, 2015 [3 favorites]


There's also a new Classroom Gems short. This one is on how Gems are made.
posted by painquale at 4:22 AM on October 2, 2015 [2 favorites]


I was really hoping the classroom gems short would hint that all gems are from kindergartens on various planets, since Peridot's question about Steven's origin hinted at that.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 8:45 AM on October 2, 2015


It's also worth noting---

Whether Peridot will be truly redeemed or not, she isn't yet. She had a nice experience with the rain, and probably for the first time in her life someone was legitimately nice to her, and she responded somewhat to that. But she still wants to save her own illusory skin more than anything, and she still is only helping the Crystal Clods Gems to save herself. She still thinks the Kindergarten is a good thing, and she still thinks there was nothing wrong with the work of the fusion experimenters.

She's taken a step, and she likes Steven, and they're working towards the same thing. That's the State Of The Dot as of 10/1.
posted by JHarris at 12:29 PM on October 2, 2015 [3 favorites]


"I wasn't lucky enough to be around for that. But I read a few hundred years of... REPORTS! *cackles*"

She is such a perfect foil for Pearl I can't even
posted by Pizzarina Sbarro at 8:48 PM on October 2, 2015 [8 favorites]


The hand holding!

"I love you!"

Peridot is like a semi-feral cat, and right now, I'd trust her about that far. BUT. As with the Centipeedle, Steven appears to have an ability to overwhelm those he cares about until they care back, or at least stop fighting him. Natural charm? Magic Gem charisma power? Who knows?

If Rose knew about the fusions, did she know about Mega World-Destroying Fusion (MWDF), or did that come after she rebelled?

Are quartzes generally "from Earth" and if so, what does that mean about Rose? Amethyst? Jasper?

What happens when Greg meets Peridot? When Connie does? What will Lapis think, after she presumably de-fuses? Or maybe she won't. Maybe Malachite will become a casualty of the fight against the MWDF?

We have an idea of why Yellow Diamond hasn't shown up; too dangerous to land on a world about to be busted up like an egg. Though she might be at a safe distance, observing.
posted by emjaybee at 3:20 PM on October 3, 2015 [3 favorites]


Hm. Amethyst fits with quartzes being "from Earth"; Amethysts are a kind of quartz.

Jasper is apparently "an aggregate of microquartz and/or chalcedony and other mineral phases". So it sounds like Jasper isn't necessarily a quartz. But hey, for all we know, maybe Jasper is from Earth! She could be from the same kindergarten as Amethyst, but emerged sooner and joined the Homeworld army. It fits with what little we know about Jasper's past -- mainly, that she fought against Rose Quartz during the war for Earth.
posted by baf at 7:17 PM on October 3, 2015 [1 favorite]


Ahh... so perhaps Pink Diamond took the name of Rose Quartz so as to symbolize her allegiance with Earth?
posted by NMcCoy at 2:37 AM on October 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


"Pink Diamond" has never been said in the show. It's a fan name. People decided that all four of the gem leaders were diamonds, so Rose must be a diamond. On the other hand, the evidence for this is pretty weak. There are a few scattered bits of evidence, but they demand a lot of reaching and interpretation. For instance, in the ancient Sky Arena, there are four diamond-shaped icons arranged in a bigger diamond shape. This might prima facie suggest that the characters are all diamonds... but on the hand-ship that Peridot came in, the iconography has been changed to exclude Rose, so now there are three triangle-shaped icons arranged in a triangle.

I didn't think Peridot was implying that all quartzes come from Earth. More likely she was implying that all or most gems made on Earth are quartzes. (She says he must have been made on Earth, and so she concludes that he's a quartz. Her intonation doesn't support the reading that she knows he's a quartz and so concludes that he was made on Earth.)
posted by painquale at 7:10 AM on October 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


I don't know, painquale. We know there is a Yellow Diamond who is obviously of high rank. We do have multiple instances of diamond icons being used, including yellow ones, making the leap "there are other Diamonds" a pretty easy one. Jasper's and Peridot's apparel incorporate yellow diamond shapes.
Lapis' clothes have a blue diamond made of two triangles.

As for the pink diamond theory, when Pearl puts on a space suit in Space Race, it has a pink diamond on it. Holo Pearl is only blue and white, but she also has a diamond on her. Sardonyx's shoes have pink diamonds on them. There are pink diamonds on the floating arena (one of which is broken; the arena is also "where some of the first battles of the rebellion took place") but not on the hand ship. We know Rose Quartz was powerful enough to be respected by Jasper, and also enormously tall, something that seems to correlate with high rank.

If the writers are not taking these clues where they appear to go, it's going to be very surprising.
posted by emjaybee at 2:14 PM on October 4, 2015 [3 favorites]


Apparently Sardonyx is a type of quartz. (Specifically, it's a type of onyx, which is a type of quartz.) Sardonyx is a fusion of three gems who we know for sure are not from Earth.

Maybe Sardonyx is named for a quartz because Garnet and Pearl were on Earth when they fused for the first time? But no: We have good reason to believe that most of the fusions we've seen were first formed on Earth. Opal, Sugilite, and Alexandrite all include Amethyst, who's lived on Earth her whole life. Jasper's attitude toward fusion makes it really unlikely that she ever formed Malachite before the events of Jailbreak. And none of them have quartz names.

All of which is just to say: If there are rules to quartz-naming, we don't really know them.
posted by baf at 3:02 PM on October 4, 2015


Yeah, I don't doubt that Rose was one of the four leaders, emjaybee. And and I agree her emblem was a little pink diamond shape. I just think we don't really have a reason to think that means the leaders are all diamond gems. They use a little diamond shape to represent themselves, true, but it's just a quadrilateral, not a gem. The evidence seems slight to me. If it that shape were meant to represent a diamond gem, I don't think the other three leaders would have changed them into triangles once Rose left. Moreover, Rose Quartz seems to be a quartz in every way... she's referred to as Rose Quartz by her friends and enemies alike.

I don't think the writers really intended the Pink Diamond theory to be picked up so thoroughly by the fans. I won't be shocked if they do make Rose turn out to be named Pink Diamond. I just don't think it's certain. Another possibility is that "Pink Diamond" and "Yellow Diamond" will turn out to be titles, not names.

On emblems: Rose apparently changed her symbol from the pink diamond to a yellow star, so that's what the Crystal Gems wear now. For a little while I thought that Rose did so out of tribute to Greg. It's Greg's symbol because his gimmick is space: it's on all of Greg's merch (Steven's identical red shirts are Greg's unsold merch). So I thought it was sweet that the other Gems have gone from displaying pink diamonds to displaying yellow stars... it's their way of showing that they follow Steven and Earth now, not Rose and the Homeworld.

Unfortunately, Story for Steven also showed the Gems wearing stars before they met Greg. And Greg had his star gimmick before meeting Rose. So it's all a coincidence. That feels like a missed opportunity. I really wanted the star to represent Greg and Steven.
posted by painquale at 3:40 PM on October 4, 2015 [4 favorites]


I've got a vaguely-formed theory that status among Gems comes down to two main factors: strength/power (which seems to correlate to size) and rarity. If Gems are made by sucking life-force out of the planet they're mined from, then I think it would make sense that larger batches of new Gems would be, individually, less powerful-- the planetary energy's getting split more ways. Smaller-batch Gems would be more powerful, if that's the case. A four-Gem batch, a whole planet's power split four ways, would be very rare, and very strong.

And if Gem naming conventions have anything to do with that, well, diamonds are both rare and very strong.
posted by nonasuch at 4:51 PM on October 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


Unfortunately, Story for Steven also showed the Gems wearing stars before they met Greg. And Greg had his star gimmick before meeting Rose. So it's all a coincidence. That feels like a missed opportunity. I really wanted the star to represent Greg and Steven.

I can't find stars on any of the costumes of Pearl, Garnet or Amethyst in Story for Steven, except for on Garnet's gauntlet. Their costumes since have very prominent stars. Rose had a star shape around her gem, though. I took that to mean she and Greg were fated to be together. I think it's safe to say the Gems do wear stars for Steven, but also for Rose. And that Greg is tied in to that.
posted by emjaybee at 3:22 PM on October 5, 2015


Yeah, it was specifically Garnet's gauntlet and Rose's dress I was thinking of. I hadn't noticed the stars on Garnet's gauntlets until a rewatch... when she pulled the gauntlet out, I was all, "aw, man." I really wanted all of the star iconography to flow from Greg or from humanity. (I was hoping there might still be some sort of story about how Rose ended up with the star, maybe having to do with foreseen visions of Steven, maybe having to do with the other human she loved before Greg. Garnet having star gauntlets makes this less likely. But then again... future vision.)
posted by painquale at 9:58 AM on October 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


I wish people would stop trying to make Rose Diamond happen. She's a QUARTZ, y'all. It's more likely that she was a subordinate to the entity represented by the pink diamond symbol.
posted by domo at 5:53 AM on January 27, 2016


SU - "Let's run into this corner. Oh no!"
P. - "We're cornered!"


The show has definitely started delivering some proper cheesy laughs in recent episodes alongside everything else.
posted by comealongpole at 1:35 PM on August 26, 2016


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