I mean, Pearl probably wouldn’t choose to fight like a ballerina if she was starting from scratch when she learned to fight. It’s not exactly the world’s most popular method, or the most efficient. And in “together breakfast” she uses a dance to open her vault of swords. She’s always doing little things like that, using dances for this or that. She’s always dancing, right?
She is always dancing, really, in little tiny ways in everything she does. I don’t think that is just because she’s the graceful one.
Hear me out for a sec. I really think Pearl was a dancer.
I think Pearl was a dancer, originally, and probably precious little else. I think she was a pretty thing that belonged to a powerful gem, and that when she was made she was made to be a servant, a doll, delicate and graceful and thoughtless.
I think, somewhere along the line, she realized that was bullshit. I think she fell in love, first with the woman that refused to own her, and then the earth. And when war broke out, I think she had something to fight for. A reason to change.
I think she calloused those elegant hands they gave her turning a baton into a spear, practicing endlessly to sharpen the dance steps she knew already into weapons. I think she fought, at first too viciously, because she only had one person she was fighting for, and I think that somewhere she still thought of herself as a tool for her. I think she poofed herself, for the very first time, and then again, and again, and again. I think she always kept going, until it started happening less and less and then one day no one could say she was there to “look pretty” anymore. And eventually, they won.
And, eventually, Pearl lost that person she’d fought for.
But life went on, anyway, and I think Pearl had to go with it. She built a house, and did laundry, fixed cars and lead missions, and realized that she had to be someone besides Rose’s knight. I think she buried those delicate hands in wires and engines until she had learned how to create something new, and learned what tools really were,
and that people were not tools.
I think Pearl fell in love, guys.
First with the woman that refused to own her, and then the earth. But next, with a couple who loved each other in a way that defied what they’d been told back home, and with the person they were together. Even later (and even now) I think she fell (and is falling) in love with a gem who had never known the place she’d come from, and never assumed she was anything less than an equal. And despite her grief, she definitely fell in love with Steven!
But recently? I think Pearl finally fell in love with herself.
Because even though a homeworld gem was literally screaming her ‘real purpose’ in her face, she didn’t wilt this time. She just smiled, and decked the little punk right in the face, with her elegant, calloused, but far from delicate hands.
See, she might still walk like a dancer and fight like a ballerina and hell, she might even doubt herself sometimes.
She’s a pearl! She’s a made-to-order servant just like the hundreds of other pearls being flaunted around back on Homeworld.
Oohhhhh boy, an episode seemingly made out of love for me personally! Time for some quick Pearl Thoughts, one of my favourite things.
So basically, continuing my Star Wars analogy from ages ago, what just happened in Oath headcanon land is
pre-Back to the Barn: Pearls are R2s
post-Back to the Barn: Pearls are 3POs
Not
gonna lie, I’m really going to miss blue-collar-y maintenance pearls
(but watch me still use that as a sort of dumping ground for repurposed pearls
who didn’t perform up to snuff for whatever reason, and also our Pearl being an
apparently “fancy one” implies there’s a gradation there as well).
Things that stood out to me in particular:
– Pearls are meant to literally belong to somebody (combines well with the made-to-order statement earlier), “made to take orders, not to give them”, and are apparently not considered (or allowed) to be independent Gems – “Where do you get off acting like your own Gem? You’re just a pearl!”
This of course brings to mind Friend Ship – bothPearl’s breakdown over being “just a pearl” and Garnet’s subsequent words to her about being her own Gem and controlling her own destiny – and the apparent effects of those events on Pearl now (culminating in her punching Peridot in the face).
– Pearls are a status symbol – Peridot describes Pearl as “an accessory” and “somebody’s shiny toy” meant to be flaunted and to “stand around and look nice and hold your stuff for you” (literally holding – or holding in their gemspace? I can completely see high-up Gems using and treating pearls as little more than expensive designer handbags) – in interesting and rather frivolous contrast with the apparent general utilitarianism we’ve so far seen of Homeworld (and Peridot’s reaction to the idea of having a pearl – and being seen with her own pearl by other Homeworld Gems – was very notable).
Peridot: So, who do you belong to, anyway? Pearl: Nobody! Peridot: Then…what are you for?
I’ll just lazily quote myself here (and re-reading that post now was really interesting!) and say that if/since(?) pearls are bought and sold and
literally owned by other Gems, I like the idea of Rose’s affectionate “my
Pearl“ being a term of endearment between the two, but also an
expression Pearl has reclaimed for herself by choosing to
dedicate herself to Rose and making it a badge of pride instead of
something used to devalue her and tear her down and make her
something lesser. “You are beneath me,” as Peridot screams.
There’s now the question of why our Pearl would be considered defective, as Jasper calls her. I’m personally very invested in this not being simply because she’s doing things that pearls “aren’t meant to” such as taking an interest in engineering and learning to fight and generally disregarding orders, but I guess this remains to be seen.
I’m super into Pink Diamond theorising, and this all fits into that very nicely, opening up the doors to all sorts of courtly politics and intrigue-flavoured stuff.
AngelMihe 